Lady Holme had not been in the ballroom five minutes before Leo Ulford came up smiling.

"Here I am," he remarked, as if the statement were certain to give universal satisfaction.

Robin looked black and moved a step closer to Lady Holme.

"Thank you, Mr. Pierce," she said.

She took Leo Ulford's arm, nodded to Robin, and walked away.

Robin stood looking after her. He started when he heard Carey's voice saying:

"Why d'you let her dance with that blackguard?"

"Hulloa, Carey?"

"Come to the supper-room. I want to have a yarn with you. And all this"—he made a wavering, yet violent, gesture towards the dancers—"might be a Holbein."

"A dance of death? What nonsense you talk!"

"Come to the supper-room."

Robin looked at his friend narrowly.

"You're bored. Let's go and take a stroll down Park Lane."

"No. Well, then, if you won't—"

"I'll come."

He put his arm through Carey's, and they went out together.

Lady Holme was generally agreeable to men. She was particularly charming to Leo Ulford that night. He was not an interesting man, but he seemed to interest her very much. They sat out together for a long time in the corner of a small drawing-room, far away from the music. She had said to Robin Pierce that she thought there was something about Leo Ulford that was like her husband, and when she talked to him she found the resemblance even greater than she had supposed.

Lord Holme and Leo Ulford were of a similar type. Both were strong, healthy, sensual, slangy, audacious in a dull kind of fashion—Lady Holme did not call it dull—serenely and perpetually intent upon having everything their own way in life. Both lived for the body and ignored the soul, as they would have ignored a man with a fine brain, a passionate heart, a narrow chest and undeveloped muscles. Such a man they would have summed up as "a rotter." If they ever thought of the soul at all, it was probably under some such comprehensive name. Both had the same simple and blatant aim in life, an aim which governed all their actions and was the generator of most of their thoughts. This aim, expressed in their own terse language, was "to do themselves jolly well." Both had, so far, succeeded in their ambition. Both were, consequently, profoundly convinced of their own cleverness. Intellectual conceit—the conceit of the brain—is as nothing to physical conceit—the conceit of the body. Acute intelligence is always capable of uneasiness, can always make room for a doubt. But the self-satisfaction of the little-brained and big-muscled man who has never had a rebuff or a day's illness is cased in triple brass. Lady Holme knew this self-satisfaction well. She had seen it staring out of her husband's big brown eyes. She saw it now in the boyish eyes of Leo Ulford. She was at home with it and rather liked it. In truth, it had at least one merit—from the woman's point of view—it was decisively masculine.

Whether Leo Ulford was, or was not, a blackguard; as Mrs. Trent had declared, did not matter to her. Three-quarters of the men she knew were blackguards according to the pinched ideas of Little Peddlington; and Mrs. Trent might originally have issued from there.

She got on easily with Leo Ulford because she was experienced in the treatment of his type. She knew exactly what to do with it; how to lead it on, how to fend it off, how to throw cold water on its enterprise without dashing it too greatly, how to banish any little, sulky cloud that might appear on the brassy horizon without seeming to be solicitous.

The type is amazingly familiar to the woman of the London world. She can recognize it at a glance, and can send it in its armchair canter round the circus with scarce a crack of the ring-mistress's whip.

To-night Lady Holme enjoyed governing it more than usual, and for a subtle reason.

In testing her power upon Leo Ulford she was secretly practising her siren's art, with a view that would have surprised and disgusted him, still more amazed him, had he known it. She was firing at the dummy in order that later she might make sure of hitting the living man. Leo Ulford was the dummy. The living man would be Fritz.

Both dummy and living man were profoundly ignorant of her moving principle. The one was radiant with self-satisfaction under her fusillade. The other, ignorant of it so far, would have been furious in the knowledge of it.

She knew-and laughed at the men.

Presently she turned the conversation, which was getting a little too personal—on Leo Ulford's side—to a subject very present in her mind that night.

"Did you have a talk with Miss Schley the other day after I left?" she asked. "I ran away on purpose to give you a chance. Wasn't it good-natured of me, when I was really longing to stay?"

Leo Ulford stretched out his long legs slowly, his type's way of purring.

"I'd rather have gone on yarning with you."

"Then you did have a talk! She was at my house to-night, looking quite delicious. You know she's conquered London?"

"That sort's up to every move on the board."

"What do you mean? What board?"

She looked at him with innocent inquiry.

"I wish men didn't know so much," she added; with a sort of soft vexation. "You have so many opportunities of acquiring knowledge and we so few—if we respect the convenances."

"Miss Schley wouldn't respect 'em."

He chuckled, and again drew up and then stretched out his legs, slowly and luxuriously.

"How can you know?"

"She's not the sort that does. She's the sort that's always kicking over the traces and keeping it dark. I know 'em."

"I think you're rather unkind. Miss Schley's mother arrives to-morrow."

Leo Ulford put up his hands to his baby moustache and shook with laughter.

"That's the only thing she wanted to set her up in business," he ejaculated. "A marmar. I do love those Americans!"

"But you speak as if Mrs. Schley were a stage property!"

"I'll bet she is. Wait till you see her. Why, it's a regular profession in the States, being a marmar. I tell you what—"

He leaned forward and fixed his blue eyes on Lady Holme, with an air of profound acuteness.

"Are you going to see her?"

"Mrs. Schley? I daresay."

"Well, you remember what I tell you. She'll be as dry as a dog-biscuit, wear a cap and spectacles with gold rims, and say nothing but 'Oh, my, yes indeed!' to everything that's said to her. Does she come from Susanville?"

"How extraordinary! I believe she does."

Leo Ulford's laugh was triumphant and prolonged.

"That's where they breed marmars!" he exclaimed, when he was able to speak. "Women are stunning."

"I'm afraid I don't quite understand," said Lady Holme, preserving a quiet air of pupilage. "But perhaps it's better I shouldn't. Anyhow, I am quite sure Miss Schley's mother will be worthy of her daughter."

"You may bet your bottom dollar on that. She'll be what they call 'a sootable marmar.' I must get my wife to shoot a card on her."

"I hope you'll introduce me to Mrs. Ulford. I should like to know her."

"Yours isn't the voice to talk down a trumpet," said Leo Ulford, with a sudden air of surliness.

"I should like to know her now I know you and your father."

At the mention of his father Leo Ulford's discontented expression increased.

"My father's a rotter," he said. "Never cared for anything. No shot to speak of. He can sit on a horse all right. Had to, in South America and Morocco and all those places. But he never really cared about it, I don't believe. Why, he'd rather look at a picture than a thoroughbred any day!"

At this moment Sir Donald wandered into the room, with his hands behind his thin back, and his eyes searching the walls. The Duke possessed a splendid collection of pictures.

"There he is!" said Leo, gruffly.

"He doesn't see us. Go and tell him I'm here."

"Why? he might go out again if we keep mum."

"But I want to speak to him. Sir Donald! Sir Donald!"

Sir Donald turned round at the second summons and came towards them, looking rather embarrassed.

"Hulloa, pater!" said Leo.

Sir Donald nodded to his son with a conscientious effort to seem familiar and genial.

"Hulloa!" he rejoined in a hollow voice.

"Your boy has been instructing me in American mysteries," said Lady Holme. "Do take me to the ballroom, Sir Donald."

Leo Ulford's good humour returned as abruptly as it had departed. Her glance at him, as she spoke, had seemed to hint at a secret understanding between them in which no one—certainly not his father—was included.

"Pater can tell you all about the pictures," he said, with a comfortable assurance, which he did not strive to disguise, that she would be supremely bored.

He stared at her hard, gave a short laugh, and lounged away.

When he had gone, Sir Donald still seemed embarrassed. He looked at Lady Holme apologetically, and in his faded eyes she saw an expression that reminded her of Lady Cardington. It was surely old age asking forgiveness for its existence.

She did not feel much pity for it, but with the woman of the world's natural instinct to smooth rough places—especially for a man—she began to devote herself to cheering Sir Donald up, as they slowly made their way through room after room towards the distant sound of the music.

"I hear you've been plunging!" she began gaily.

Sir Donald looked vague.

"I'm afraid I scarcely—"

"Forgive me. I catch slang from my husband. He's ruining my English. I mean that I hear you've been investing—shall I say your romance?—in a wonderful place abroad, with a fascinating name. I hope you'll get enormous interest."

A faint colour, it was like the ghost of a blush, rose in Sir Donald's withered cheeks.

"Ah, Mr. Carey—"

He checked himself abruptly, remembering whet he had heard from Robin Pierce.

"No, Mr. Pierce was my informant. He knows your place and says it's too wonderful. I adore the name."

"Casa Felice. You would not advise me to change it, then?"

"Change it! Why?"

"Well, I—one should not, perhaps, insist beforehand that one is going to have happiness, which must always lie on the knees of the gods."

"Oh, I believe in defiance."

There was an audacious sound in her voice. Her long talk with Leo Ulford had given her back her belief in herself, her confidence in her beauty, her reliance on her youth.

"You have a right to believe in it. But Casa Felice is mine."

"Even to buy it was a defiance—in a way."

"Perhaps so. But then—"

"But then you have set out and you must not turn back, Sir Donald. Baptise your wonderful house yourself by filling it with happiness. Another gave it its name. Give it yourself the reason for the name."

Happiness seemed to shine suddenly in the sound of her speaking voice, as it shone in her singing voice when the theme of her song was joy. Sir Donald's manner lost its self-consciousness, its furtive diffidence.

"You—you come and give my house its real baptism," he said, with a flash of ardour that, issuing from him, was like fire bursting out of a dreary marsh land. "Will you? This August?"

"But," she hesitated. "Isn't Mr. Carey coming?"

At this moment they came into a big drawing-room that immediately preceded the ballroom, with which it communicated by an immense doorway hung with curtains of white velvet. They could see in the distance the dancers moving rather indifferently in a lancers. Lord Holme and Miss Schley were dancing in the set nearest to the doorway, and on the side that faced the drawing-room. Directly Lady Holme saw the ballroom she saw them. A sudden sense of revolt, the defiance of joy carried on into the defiance of anger, rose up in her.

"If Mr. Carey is coming I'll come too, and baptise your house," she said.

Sir Donald looked surprised, but he answered, with a swiftness that did not seem to belong to old age:

"That is a bargain, Lady Holme. I regard that as a bargain."

"I'll not go back on it."

There was a hard sound in her voice.

They entered the ballroom just as the band played the closing bars of the lancers, and the many sets began to break up and melt into a formless crowd which dispersed in various directions. The largest number of people moved towards the archway near which the Duke was still sitting, bravely exerting himself to be cheerful. Lady Holme and Sir Donald became involved in this section of the crowd, and naturally followed in its direction. Lord Holme and Miss Schley were at a short distance behind them, and Lady Holme was aware of this. The double defiance was still alive in her, and was strengthened by a clear sound which reached her ears for a moment, then was swallowed up by the hum of conversation from many intervening voices—the sound of the American's drawling tones raised to say something she could not catch. As she came out into the hall, close to the Duke's chair, she saw Rupert Carey trying to make his way into the ballroom against the stream of dancers. His face was flushed. There were drops of perspiration on his forehead, and the violent expression that was perpetually visible in his red-brown eyes, lighting them up as with a flame, seemed partially obscured as if by a haze. The violence of them was no longer vivid but glassy.

Lady Holme did not notice all this. The crowd was round her, and she was secretly preoccupied. She merely saw that Rupert Carey was close to her, and she knew who was following behind her. A strong impulse came upon her and she yielded to it without hesitation. As she reached Rupert Carey she stopped and held out her hand.

"Mr. Carey," she said, "I've been wanting to speak to you all the evening. Why didn't you ask me to dance?"

She spoke very distinctly. Carey stood still and stared at her, and now she noticed the flush on his face and the unnatural expression in his eyes. She understood at once what was the matter and repented of her action. But it was too late to draw back. Carey stared dully for an instant, as if he scarcely knew who she was. Then, with a lurch, he came closer to her, and, with a wavering movement, tried to find her hand, which she had withdrawn.

"Where is it?" he muttered in a thick voice. "Where is it?"

He groped frantically.

"Sir Donald!" Lady Holme whispered sharply, while the people nearest to them began to exchange glances of surprise or of amusement.

She pressed his arm and he tried to draw her on. But Carey was exactly in front of her. It was impossible for her to escape. He found her hand at last, took it limply in his, bent down and began to kiss it, mumbling some loud but incoherent words.

The Duke, who from his chair, was a witness of the scene, tried to raise himself up, and a vivid spot of scarlet burned in his almost transparent cheeks. His daughter hastened forward to stop his effort. Lady Holme dragged her hand away violently, and Carey suddenly burst into tears. Sir Donald hurried Lady Holme on, and Carey tried to follow, but was forcibly prevented by two men.

When at length Lady Holme found herself at the other end of the great hall, she turned and saw her husband coming towards her with a look of fury on his face.

"I wish to go home," she said to him in a low voice.

She withdrew her hand from Sir Donald's arm and quietly bade him good-bye. Lord Holme did not say a word.

"Where is the Duchess?" Lady Holme added. "Ah, there she is!"

She saw the Duchess hurriedly going towards the place where the Duke was sitting, intercepted her swiftly, and bade her good-night.

"Now, Fritz!" she said.

She was conscious that a number of people were watching her, and her voice and manner were absolutely unembarrassed. A footman took the number of her cloak from Lord Holme and fetched the cloak. A voice cried in the distance, "Lord Holme's carriage!" Another, and nearer voice, echoed the call. She passed slowly between two lines of men over a broad strip of carpet to the portico, and stepped into the brougham.

As it glided away into the night she heard her husband's loud breathing.

He did not speak for two or three minutes, but breathed like a man who had been running, and moved violently in the carriage as if to keep still were intolerable to him. The window next to him was up. He let it down. Then he turned right round to his wife, who was leaning back in her corner wrapped up in her black cloak.

"With the Duke sittin' there!" he said in a loud voice. "With the Duke sittin' there!"

There was a sound of outrage in the voice.

"Didn't I kick that sweep out of the house?" he added. "Didn't I?"

"I believe you asked Mr. Carey not to call anymore."

Lady Holme's voice had no excitement in it.

"Asked him! I—"

"Don't make such a noise, Fritz. The men will hear you."

"I told him if he ever came again I'd have him put out."

"Well, he never has come again."

"What d'you mean by speakin' to him? What d'you mean by it?"

Lady Holme knew that her husband was a thoroughly conventional man, and, like all conventional men, had a horror of a public scene in which any woman belonging to him was mixed up. Such a scene alone was quite enough to rouse his wrath. But there was in his present anger something deeper, more brutal, than any rage caused by a breach of the conventions. His jealousy was stirred.

"He didn't speak to you. You spoke to him."

Lady Holme did not deny it.

"I heard every word you said," continued Lord Holme, beginning to breathe hard again. "I—I—"

Lady Holme felt that he was longing to strike her, that if he had been the same man, but a collier or a labourer, born in another class of life, he would not have hesitated to beat her. The tradition in which he had been brought up controlled him. But she knew that if he could have beaten her he would have hated her less, that his sense of bitter wrong would have at once diminished. In self-control it grew. The spark rose to a flame.

"You're a damned shameful woman!" he said.

The brougham drew up softly before their house. Lord Holme, who was seated on the side next the house, got out first. He did not wait on the pavement to assist his wife, but walked up the steps, opened the door, and went into the hall. Lady Holme followed. She saw her husband, with the light behind him, standing with his hand on the handle of the hall door. For an instant she thought that he was going to shut her out. He actually pushed the door till the light was almost hidden. Then he flung it open with a bang, threw down his hat and strode upstairs.

If he had shut her out! She found herself wondering what would have become of her, where she would have gone. She would have had to go to the Coburg, or to Claridge's, without a maid, without luggage. As she slowly came upstairs she heard her husband go into the drawing-room. Was he waiting for her there? or did he wish to avoid her? When she reached the broad landing she hesitated. She was half inclined to go in audaciously, to laugh in his face; turn his fury into ridicule, tell him she was the sort of woman who is born to do as she likes, to live as she chooses, to think of nothing but her own will, consult nothing but her whims of the moment. But she went on and into her bedroom.

Josephine was there and began to take the diamonds out of her hair. Lady Holme did not say a word. She was listening intently for the sound of any movement below. She heard nothing. When she was undressed, and there was nothing more for the maid to do, she began to feel uneasy, as if she would rather not dismiss the girl. But it was very late. Josephine strangled her yawns with difficulty. There was no excuse for keeping her up any longer.

"You can go."

The maid went out, leaving Lady Holme standing in the middle of the big bedroom. Next to it on one side was Lord Holme's dressing-room. On the other side there was a door leading into Lady Holme's boudoir. Almost directly after Josephine had gone Lady Holme heard the outer door of this room opened, and the heavy step of her husband. It moved about the room, stopped, moved about again. What could he be doing? She stood where she was, listening. Suddenly the door between the rooms was thrown open and Lord Holme appeared.

"Where's the red book?" he said.

"The red book!"

"Where is it? D'you hear?"

"What do you want it for?"

"That sweep's address."

"What are you going to do? Write to him?"

"Write to him!" said Lord Holme, with bitter contempt. "I'm goin' to thrash him. Where is it?"

"You are going now?"

"I've not come up to answer questions. I've come for the red book. Where is it?"

"The little drawer at the top on the right hand of the writing-table."

Lord Holme turned back into the boudoir, went to the writing-table, found the book, opened it, found the address and wrote it down on a bit of paper. He folded the paper up anyhow and thrust it into his waistcoat pocket. Then, without saying another word to his wife, or looking at her, he went out and down the staircase.

She followed him on to the landing, and stood there till she heard the hall door shut with a bang.

A clock below struck four. She went back into the bedroom and sank into an armchair.

A slight sense of confusion floated over her mind for a moment, like a cloud. She was not accustomed to scenes. There had been one certainly when Rupert Carey was forbidden to come to the house any more, but it had been brief, and she had not been present at it. She had only heard of it afterwards. Lord Holme had been angry then, and she had rather liked his anger. She took it as, in some degree, a measure of his attachment to her. And then she had had no feeling of being in the wrong or of humiliation. She had been charming to Carey, as she was charming to all men. He had lost his head. He had mistaken the relations existing between her and her husband, and imagined that such a woman as she was must be unhappily mated with such a man as Lord Holme. The passionate desire to console a perfectly-contented woman had caused him to go too far, and bring down upon himself a fiat of exile, which he could not defy since Lady Holme permitted it to go forth, and evidently was not rendered miserable by it. So the acquaintance with Rupert Carey had ceased, and life had slipped along once more on wheels covered with india-rubber tyres.

And now she had renewed the acquaintance publicly and with disastrous results.

As she sat there she began to wonder at herself, at the strength of her temper, the secret violence of her nature. She had yielded like a child to a sudden impulse. She had not thought of consequences. She had ignored her worldly knowledge. She had considered nothing, but had acted abruptly, as any ignorant, uneducated woman might have acted. She had been the slave of a mood. Or had she been the slave of another woman—of a woman whom she despised?

Miss Schley had certainly been the cause of the whole affair. Lady Holme had spoken to Rupert Carey merely because she knew that her husband was immediately behind her with the American. There had been within her at that moment something of a broad, comprehensive feeling, mingled with the more limited personal feeling of anger against another woman's successful impertinence, a sentiment of revolt in which womanhood seemed to rise up against the selfish tyrannies of men. As she had walked in the crowd, and heard for an instant Miss Schley's drawlling voice speaking to her husband, she had felt as if the forbidding of the acquaintance between herself and Rupert Carey had been an act of tyranny, as if the acquaintance between Miss Schley and her husband were a worse act of tyranny. The feeling was wholly unreasonable, of course. How could Lord Holme know that she wished to impose a veto, even as he had? And what reason was there for such a veto? That lay deep down within her as woman's instinct. No man could have understood it.

And now Lord Holme had gone out in the dead of the night to thrash Carey.

She began to think about Carey.

How disgusting he had been. A drunken man must be one of two things—either terrible or absurd. Carey had been absurd—disgusting and absurd. It had been better for him if he had been terrible. But mumblings and tears! She remembered what she had said of Carey to Robin Pierce—that something in his eyes, one of those expressions which are the children of the eyes, or of the lines about the eyes, told her that he was capable of doing something great. What an irony that her remark to Robin had been succeeded by such a scene! And she heard again the ugly sound of Carey's incoherent exclamations, and felt again the limp clasp of his hot, weak hand, and saw again the tears running over his flushed, damp face. It was all very nauseous. And yet—had she been wrong in what she had said of him? Did she even think that she had been wrong now, after what had passed?

What kind of great action had she thought he would be capable of if a chance to do something great were thrown in his way? She said to herself that she had spoken at random, as one perpetually speaks in Society. And then she remembered Carey's eyes. They were ugly eyes. She had always thought them ugly. Yet, now and then, there was something in them, something to hold a woman—no, perhaps not that—but something to startle a woman, to make her think, wonder, even to make her trust. And the scene which had just occurred, with all its weakness, its fatuity, its maundering display of degradation and the inability of any self-government, had not somehow destroyed the impression made upon Lady Holme by that something in Carey's eyes. What she had said to Robin Pierce she might not choose ever to say again. She would not choose ever to say it again—of that she was certain—but she had not ceased to think it.

A conviction based upon no evidence that could be brought forward to convince anyone is the last thing that can be destroyed in a woman's heart.

It was nearly six o'clock when Lady Holme heard a step coming up the stairs. She was still sitting in the deep chair, and had scarcely moved. The step startled her. She put her hands on the arms of the chair and leaned forward. The step passed her bedroom. She heard the door of the dressing-room opened and then someone moving about.

"Fritz!" she called. "Fritz!"

There was no answer. She got up and went quickly to the dressing-room. Her husband was there in his shirt sleeves. His evening coat and waistcoat were lying half on a chair, half on the floor, and he was in the act of unfastening his collar. She looked into his face, trying to read it.

"Well?" she said. "Well?"

"Go to bed!" he said brutally.

"What have you done?"

"That's my business. Go to bed. D'you hear?"

She hesitated. Then she said:

"How dare you speak to me like that? Have you seen Mr. Carey?"

Lord Holme suddenly took his wife by the shoulders; pushed her out of the room, shut the door, and locked it.

They always slept in the same bedroom. Was he not going to bed at all? What had happened? Lady Holme could not tell from his face or manner anything of what had occurred. She looked at her clock and saw her husband had been out of the house for two hours. Indignation and curiosity fought within her; and she became conscious of an excitement such as she had never felt before. Sleep was impossible, but she got into bed and lay there listening to the noises made by her husband in his dressing-room. She could just hear them faintly through the door. Presently they ceased. A profound silence reigned. There was a sofa in the dressing-room. Could he be trying to sleep on it? Such a thing seemed incredible to her. For Lord Holme, although he could rough it when he was shooting or hunting, at home or abroad, and cared little for inconvenience when there was anything to kill, was devoted to comfort in ordinary life, and extremely exigent in his own houses. For nothing, for nobody, had Lady Holme ever known him to allow himself to be put out.

She strained her ears as she lay in bed. For a long time the silence lasted. She began to think her husband must have left the dressing-room, when she heard a noise as if something—some piece of furniture—had been kicked, and then a stentorian "Damn!"

Suddenly she burst out laughing. She shook against the pillows. She laughed and laughed weakly; helplessly, till the tears ran down her cheeks. And with those tears ran away her anger, the hot, strained sensation that had been within her even since the scene at Arkell House. If she had womanly pride it melted ignominiously. If she had feminine dignity—that pure and sacred panoply which man ignores at his own proper peril—it disappeared. The "poor old Fritz" feeling, which was the most human, simple, happy thing in her heart, started into vivacity as she realised the long legs flowing into air over the edge of the short sofa, the pent-up fury—fury of the too large body on the too small resting-place—which found a partial vent in the hallowed objurgation of the British Philistine.

With every moment that she lay in the big bed she was punishing Fritz. She nestled down among the pillows. She stretched out her limbs luxuriously. How easy it was to punish a man! Lying there she recalled her husband's words, each detail of his treatment of her since she had spoken to Carey. He had called her "a damned shameful woman." That was of all the worst offence. She told herself that she ought to, that she must, for that expression alone, hate Fritz for ever. And then, immediately, she knew that she had forgiven it already, without effort, without thought.

She understood the type with which she had to deal, the absurd boyishness that was linked with the brutality of it, the lack of mind to give words their true, their inmost meaning. Words are instruments of torture, or the pattering confetti of a carnival, not by themselves but by the mind that sends them forth. Fritz's exclamation might have roused eternal enmity in her if it had been uttered by another man. Coming from Fritz it won its pardon easily by having a brother, "Damn."

She wondered how long her husband would be ruled by his sense of outrage.

Towards seven she heard another movement; another indignant exclamation, then the creak of furniture, a step, a rattling at the door. She turned on her side towards the wall, shut her eyes and breathed lightly and regularly. The key revolved, the door opened and closed, and she heard feet shuffling cautiously over the carpet. A moment and Fritz was in bed. Another moment, a long sigh, and he was asleep.

Lady Holme still lay awake. Now that her attention was no longer fixed upon her husband's immediate proceedings she began to wonder again what had happened between him and Rupert Carey. She would find out in the morning.

And presently she too slept.



CHAPTER IX

IN the morning Lord Holme woke very late and in a different humour. Lady Holme was already up, sitting by a little table and pouring out tea, when he stretched himself, yawned, turned over, uttered two or three booming, incohorent exclamations, and finally raised himself on one arm, exhibiting a touzled head and a pair of blinking eyes, stared solemnly at his wife's white figure and at the tea-table, and ejaculated:

"Eh?"

"Tea?" she returned, lifting up the silver teapot and holding it towards him with an encouraging, half-playful gesture.

Lord Holme yawned again, put up his hands to his hair, and then looked steadily at the teapot, which his wife was moving about in the sunbeams that were shining in at the window. The morning was fine.

"Tea, Fritz?"

He smiled and began to roll out of bed. But the action woke up his memory, and when he was on his feet he looked at his wife again more doubtfully. She saw that he was beginning, sleepily but definitely, to consider whether he should go on being absolutely furious about the events of the preceding night, and acted with promptitude.

"Don't be frightened," she said quickly. "I've made up my mind to forgive you. You're only a great schoolboy after all. Come along."

She began to pour out the tea. It made a pleasant little noise falling into the cup. The sun was wonderfully bright in the pretty room, almost Italian in its golden warmth. Lady Holme's black Pomeranian, Pixie, stood on its hind legs to greet him. He came up to the sofa, still looking undecided, but with a wavering light of dawning satisfaction in his eyes.

"You behaved damned badly last night," he growled.

He sat down beside his wife with a bump. She put up her hand to his rough, brown cheek.

"We both behaved atrociously," she answered. "There's your tea."

She poured in the cream and buttered a thin piece of toast. Lord Holme sipped. As he put the cup down she held the piece of toast up to his mouth. He took a bite.

"And we both do the Christian act and forgive each other," she added.

He leaned back. Sleep was flowing away from him, full consciousness of life and events returning to him.

"What made you speak to that feller?" he said.

"Drink your tea. I don't know. He looked miserable at being avoided, and—"

"Miserable! He was drunk. He's done for himself in London, and pretty near done for you too."

As he thought about it all a cloud began to settle over his face. Lady Holme saw it and said:

"That depends on you, Fritz."

She nestled against him, put her hand over his, and kept on lifting his hand softly and then letting it fall on his knee, as she went on:

"That all depends on you."

"How?"

He began to look at her hand and his, following their movements almost like a child.

"If we are all right together, obviously all right, very, very par-ti-cu-lar-ly all right—voyez vous, mon petit chou?—they will think nothing of it. 'Poor Mr. Carey! What a pity the Duke's champagne is so good!' That's what they'll say. But if we—you and I—are not on perfect terms, if you behave like a bear that's been sitting on a wasps' nest—why then they'll say—they'll say—"

"What'll they say?"

"They'll say, 'That was really a most painful scene at the Duke's. She's evidently been behaving quite abominably. Those yellow women always bring about all the tragedies—'"

"Yellow women!" Lord Holme ejaculated.

He looked hard at his wife. It was evident that his mind was tacking.

"Miss Schley heard what you said to the feller," he added.

"People who never speak hear everything—naturally."

"How d'you mean—never speak? Why, she's full of talk."

"How well she listened to him!" was Lady Holme's mental comment.

"If half the world heard it doesn't matter if you and I choose it shouldn't. Unless—"

"Unless what?"

"Unless you did anything last night—afterwards—that will make a scandal?"

"Ah!"

"Did you?"

"That's all right."

He applied himself with energy to the toast. Lady Holme recognised, with a chagrin which she concealed, that Lord Holme was not going to allow himself to be "managed" into any revelation. She recognised it so thoroughly that she left the subject at once.

"We'd better forgive and forget," she said. "After all, we are married and I suppose we must stick together."

There was a clever note of regret in her voice.

"Are you sorry?" Lord Holme said, with a manner that suggested a readiness to be surly.

"For what?"

"That we're married?"

She sat calmly considering.

"Am I? Well, I must think. It's so difficult to be sure. I must compare you with other men—"

"If it comes to that, I might do a bit of comparin' too."

"I should be the last to prevent you, old boy. But I'm sure you've often done it already and always made up your mind afterwards that she wasn't quite up to the marrying mark."

"Who wasn't?"

"The other—horrid creature."

He could not repress a chuckle.

"You're deuced conceited," he said.

"You've made me so."

"I—how?"

"By marrying me first and adoring me afterwards."

They had finished tea and were no longer preoccupied with cups and saucers. It was very bright in the room, very silent. Lord Holme looked at his wife and remembered how much she was admired by other men, how many men would give—whatever men are ready to give—to see her as she was just then. It occurred to him that he would have been rather a fool if he had yielded to his violent impulse and shut her out of the house the previous night.

"You're never to speak to that cad again," he said. "D'you hear?"

"Whisper it close in my ear and I'll try to hear. Your voice is so—what's your expression—so infernally soft."

He put his great arm round her.

"D'you hear?"

"I'm trying."

"I'll make you."

Whether Lord Holme succeeded or not, Lady Holme had no opportunity—even if she desired it—of speaking to Rupert Carey for some time. He left London and went up to the North to stay with his mother. The only person he saw before he went was Robin Pierce. He came round to Half Moon Street early on the afternoon of the day after the Arkell House Ball. Robin was at home and Carey walked in with his usual decision. He was very pale, and his face looked very hard. Robin received him coldly and did not ask him to sit down. That was not necessary, of course. But Robin was standing by the door and did not move back into the room.

"I'm going North to-night," said Carey.

"Are you?"

"Yes. If you don't mind I'll sit down."

Robin said nothing. Carey threw himself into an armchair.

"Going to see the mater. A funny thing—but she's always glad to see me."

"Why not?"

"Mothers have a knack that way. Lucky for sons like me."

There was intense bitterness in his voice, but there was a sound of tenderness too. Robin shut the door but did not sit down.

"Are you going to be in the country long?"

"Don't know. What time did you leave Arkell House last night?"

"Not till after Lady Holme left."

"Oh!"

He was silent for a moment, biting his red moustache.

"Were you in the hall after the last lancers?"

"No."

"You weren't?"

He spoke quickly, with a sort of relief, hesitated then added sardonically:

"But of course you know—and much worse than the worst. The art of conversation isn't dead yet, whatever the—perhaps you saw me being got out?"

"No, I didn't."

"But you do know?"

"Naturally."

"I say, I wish you'd let me have—"

He checked himself abruptly, and muttered:

"Good God! What a brute I am."

He sprang up and walked about the room. Presently he stopped in front of the statuette of the "Danseuse de Tunisie."

"Is it the woman that does it all, or the fan?" he said. "I don't know. Sometimes I think it's one, and sometimes the other. Without the fan there's purity, what's meant from the beginning—"

"By whom?" said Robin. "I thought you were an atheist?"

"Oh, God! I don't know what I am."

He turned away from the statuette.

"With the fan there's so much more than purity, than what was meant to complete us—as devils—men. But—mothers don't carry the fan. And I'm going North to-night."

"Do you mean to say that Lady Holme—?"

Robin's voice was stern.

"Why did she say that to me?"

"What did she say?"

"That she wished to speak to me, to dance with me."

"She said that? How can you know?"

"Oh, I wasn't so drunk that I couldn't hear the voice from Eden. Pierce, you know her. She likes you. Tell her to forgive as much as she can. Will you? And tell her not to carry the fan again when fools like me are about."

And then, without more words, he went out of the room and left Robin standing alone.

Robin looked at the statuette, and remembered what Sir Donald Ulford had said directly he saw it—"Forgive me, that fan makes that statuette wicked."

"Poor old Carey!" he murmured.

His indignation at Carey's conduct, which had been hot, had nearly died away.

"If I had told him what she said about him at supper!" he thought.

And then he began to wonder whether Lady Holme had changed her mind on that subject. Surely she must have changed it. But one never knew—with women. He took up his hat and gloves and went out. If Lady Holme was in he meant to give her Carey's message. It was impossible to be jealous of Carey now.

Lady Holme was not in.

As Robin walked away from Cadogan Square he was not sure whether he was glad or sorry that he had not been able to see her.

After his cup of early morning tea Lord Holme had seemed to be "dear old Fritz" again, and Lady Holme felt satisfied with herself despite the wagging tongues of London. She knew she had done an incautious thing. She knew, too, that Carey had failed her. Her impulse had been to use him as a weapon. He had proved a broken reed. And this failure on his part was likely to correct for ever her incautious tendencies. That was what she told herself, with some contempt for men. She did not tell herself that the use to which she had intended to put Carey was an unworthy one. Women as beautiful, and as successful in their beauty, as she was seldom tell themselves these medicinal truths.

She went about as usual, and on several occasions took Lord Holme with her. And though she saw a light of curiosity in many eyes, and saw lips almost forced open by the silent questions lurking within many minds, it was as she had said it would be. The immediate future had been in Fritz's hands, and he had made it safe enough.

He had made it safe. Even the Duchess of Arkell was quite charming, and laid the whole burden of blame—where it always ought to be laid, of course—upon the man's shoulders. Rupert Carey was quite done for socially. Everyone said so. Even Upper Bohemia thought blatant intemperance—in a Duke's house—an unnecessary defiance flung at the Blue Ribbon Army. Only Amalia Wolfstein, who had never succeeded in getting an invitation to Arkell House, remarked that "It was probably the champagne's fault. She had always noticed that where the host and hostess were dry the champagne was apt to be sweet."

Yes, Fritz had made it safe, but:

Circumstances presently woke in Lady Holme's mind a rather disagreeable suspicion that though Fritz had "come round" with such an admirable promptitude he had reserved to himself a right to retaliate, that he perhaps presumed to fancy that her defiant action, and its very public and unpleasant result, gave to him a greater license than he had possessed before.

Some days after the early morning tea Lord Holme said to his wife:

"I say, Vi, we've got nothing on the first, have we?"

There was a perceptible pause before she replied.

"Yes, we have. We've accepted a dinner at Brayley House."

Lord Holme looked exceedingly put out.

"Brayley House. What rot!" he exclaimed. "I hate those hind-leg affairs. Why on earth did you accept it?"

"Dear boy, you told me to. But why?"

"Why what?"

"Why are you so anxious to be free for the first?"

"Well, it's Miss Schley's debut at the British. Everyone's goin' and Laycock says—"

"I'm not very interested in Mr. Laycock's aphorisms, Fritz. I prefer yours, I truly do."

"Oh, well, I'm as good as Laycock, I know. Still—"

"You're a thousand times better. And so everybody's going, on Miss Schley's first night? I only wish we could, but we can't. Let's put up with number two. We're free on the second."

Lord Holme did not look at all appeased.

"That's not the same thing," he said.

"What's the difference? She doesn't change the play, I suppose?"

"No. But naturally on the first night she wants all her friends to come up to the scratch, muster round—don't you know?—and give her a hand."

"And she thinks your hand, being enormous, would be valuable? But we can't throw over Brayley House."

Lord Holme's square jaw began to work, a sure sign of acute irritation.

"If there's a dull, dreary house in London, it's Brayley House," he grumbled. "The cookin's awful—poison—and the wine's worse. Why, last time Laycock was there they actually gave him—"

"Poor dear Mr. Laycock! Did they really? But what can we do? I'm sure I don't want to be poisoned either. I love life."

She was looking brilliant. Lord Holme began to straddle his legs.

"And there's the box!" he said. "A box next the stage that holds six in a row can't stand empty on a first night, eh? It'd throw a damper on the whole house."

"I'm afraid I don't quite understand. What box?"

"Hang it all!—ours."

"I didn't know we had a box for this important social function."

Lady Holme really made a great effort to keep the ice out of her voice, but one or two fragments floated in nevertheless.

"Well, I tell you I've taken a box and asked Laycock—"

The reiterated mention of this hallowed name was a little too much for Lady Holme's equanimity.

"If Mr. Laycock's going the box won't be empty. So that's all right," she rejoined. "Mr. Laycock will make enough noise to give the critics a lead. And I suppose that's all Miss Schley wants."

"But it isn't!" said Lord Holme, violently letting himself down at the knees and shooting himself up again.

"What does she want?"

"She wants you to be there."

"Me! Why?"

"Because she's taken a deuce of a fancy to you."

"Really!"

An iceberg had entered the voice now.

"Yes, thinks you the smartest woman in London, and all that. So you are."

"I'm very sorry, but even the smartest woman in London can't throw over the Brayley's. Take another box for the second."

Lord Holme looked fearfully sulky and lounged out of the room.

On the following morning he strode into Lady Holme's boudoir about twelve with a radiant face.

"It's all right!" he exclaimed. "Talk of diplomatists! I ought to be an ambassador."

He flung himself into a chair, grinning with satisfaction like a schoolboy.

"What is it?" asked Lady Holme, looking up from her writing-table.

"I've been to Lady Brayley, explained the whole thing, and got us both off. After all, she was a friend of my mother's, and knew me in kilts and all that, so she ought to be ready to do me a favour. She looked a bit grim, but she's done it. You've—only got to tip her a note of thanks."

"You're mad then, Fritz!"

Lady Holme stood up suddenly.

"Never saner."

He put one hand into the breast pocket of his coat and pulled out an envelope.

"Here's what she says to you."

Lady Holme tore the note open.

"BRAYLEY HOUSE, W.

"DEAR VIOLA,—Holme tells me you made a mistake when you accepted my invitation for the first, and that you have long been pledged to be present on that date at some theatrical performance or other. I am sorry I did not know sooner, but of course I release you with pleasure from your engagement with me, and I have already filled up your places.—Believe me, yours always sincerely,

"MARTHA BRAYLEY."

Lady Holme read this note carefully, folded it up, laid it quietly on the writing-table and repeated:

"You're mad, Fritz."

"What d'you mean—mad?"

"You've made Martha Brayley my enemy for life."

"Rubbish!"

"I beg your pardon. And for—for—"

She stopped. It was wiser not to go on. Perhaps her face spoke for her, even to so dull an observer as Lord Holme, for he suddenly said, with a complete change of tone:

"I forgave you about Carey."

"Oh, I see! You want a quid pro quo. Thank you, Fritz."

"Don't forget to tip Lady Brayley a note of thanks," he said rather loudly, getting up from his chair.

"Oh, thanks! You certainly ought to be an ambassador—at the court of some savage monarch."

He said nothing, but walked out of the room whistling the refrain about Ina.

When he had gone Lady Holme sat down and wrote two notes. One was to Lady Brayley and was charmingly apologetic, saying that the confusion was entirely owing to Fritz's muddle-headedness, and that she was in despair at her misfortune—which was almost literally true. The other was to Sir Donald Ulford, begging him to join them in their box on the first, and asking whether it was possible to persuade Mr. and Mrs. Leo Ulford to come with him. If he thought so she would go at once and leave cards on Mrs. Ulford, whom she was longing to know.

Both notes went off by hand before lunch.



CHAPTER X

THE Ulfords accepted for the first. Lady Holme left cards on Mrs. Leo and told her husband that the box was filled up. He received the information with indifference. So long as his wife was there to please Miss Schley, and Mr. Laycock to "give her a hand and show 'em all whether she was popular," he was satisfied. Having gained his point, he was once again in excellent humour. Possibly Lady Holme would have appreciated his large gaieties more if she had not divined their cause. But she expressed no dissatisfaction with them, and indeed increased them by her own brilliant serenity during the days that intervened between the Martha Brayley incident and the first night.

Lord Holme had no suspicion that during these days she was inwardly debating whether she would go to the theatre or not.

It would be very easy to be unwell. She was going out incessantly and could be over-fatigued. She could have woman's great stand-by in moments of crisis—a bad attack of neuralgia. It was the simplest matter in the world. The only question was—all things considered, was it worth while? By "all things considered" she meant Leo Ulford. The touch of Fritz in him made him a valuable ally at this moment. Fritz and Miss Schley were not going to have things quite all their own way. And then Mrs. Leo! She would put Fritz next the ear-trumpet. She had enough sense of humour to smile to herself at the thought of him there. On the whole, she fancied the neuralgia would not attack her at the critical instant.

Only when she thought of what her husband had said about the American's desire for her presence did she hesitate again. Her suspicions were aroused. Miss Schley was not anxious that she should be conspicuously in the theatre merely because she was the smartest woman in London. That was certain. Besides, she was not the smartest woman in London. She was far too well-born to be that in these great days of the demi-mondaine. She remembered Robin Pierce's warning at the Arkell House ball—"Consider yourselves enemies for no reasons or secret woman's reasons. It's safer."

When do women want the bulky, solid reasons obtusely demanded by men before they can be enemies? Where man insists on an insult, a blow, they will be satisfied with a look—perhaps not even at them but only at the skirt of their gown—with a turn of the head, with nothing at all. For what a man calls nothing can be the world and all that there is in it to a woman. Lady Holme knew that she and the American had been enemies since the moment when the latter had moved with the tiny steps that so oddly caricatured her own individual walk down the stairs at the Carlton. She wanted no tiresome reasons; nor did Miss Schley. Robin was right, of course. He understood women. But then—?

Should she go to the theatre?

The night came and she went. Whether an extraordinary white lace gown, which arrived from Paris in the morning, and fitted too perfectly for words, had anything to do with the eventual decision was not known to anybody but herself.

Boxes are no longer popular in London except at the Opera. The British Theatre was new, and the management, recognising that people prefer stalls, had given up all the available space to them, and only left room for two large boxes, which faced each other on a level with the dress circle and next the stage. Lord Holme had one. Mrs. Wolfstein had taken the other.

Miss Schley's personal success in London brought together a rather special audience. There were some of the usual people who go to first nights—critics, ladies who describe dresses, fashionable lawyers and doctors. But there were also numbers of people who are scarcely ever seen on these occasions, people who may be found in the ground and grand tier boxes at Covent Garden during the summer season. These thronged the stalls, and every one of them was a dear friend of Lady Holme's. Among them were Lady Cardington, Lady Manby, Sally Perceval with her magnificently handsome and semi-idiotic husband, old Lady Blower, in a green cap that suggested the bathing season, Robin Pierce and Mr. Bry. Smart Americans were scattered all over the house. Most of them had already seen the play in New York during the preceding winter, and nearly everyone in the stalls had seen the French original in Paris. The French piece had been quite shocking and quite delicious. Every Royalty de passage in Paris had been to see it, and one wandering monarch had gone three nights running, and had laughed until his gentleman-in-waiting thought the heir to his throne was likely to succeed much sooner than was generally expected.

The Holmes came in early. Lady Holme hated arriving anywhere early, but Lord Holme was in such a prodigious fuss about being in plenty of time to give Miss Schley a "rousin' welcome," that she yielded to his bass protestations, and had the satisfaction of entering their box at least seven minutes before the curtain went up. The stalls, of course, were empty, and as they gradually filled she saw the faces of her friends looking up at her with an amazement that under other circumstances might have been amusing, but under these was rather irritating. Mr. Laycock arrived two minutes after they did, and was immediately engaged in a roaring conversation by Fritz. He was a man who talked a great deal without having anything to say, who had always had much success with women, perhaps because he had always treated them very badly, who dressed, danced and shot well, and who had never, even for a moment, really cared for anyone but himself. A common enough type.

Sir Donald appeared next, looking even more ghostly than usual. He sat down by Lady Holme, a little behind her. He seemed depressed, but the expression in his pale blue eyes when they first rested upon her made her thoroughly realise one thing—that it was one of her conquering nights. His eyes travelled quickly from her face to her throat, to her gown. She wore no jewels. Sir Donald had a fastidious taste in beauty—the taste that instinctively rejects excess of any kind. Her appeal to it had never been so great as to-night. She knew it, and felt that she had never found Sir Donald so attractive as to-night.

Mr. and Mrs. Ulford came in just as the curtain was going up, and the introductions had to be gone through with a certain mysterious caution, and the sitting arrangements made with as little noise as possible. Lady Holme managed them deftly. Mr. Laycock sat nearest the stage, then Leo Ulford next to her, on her right. Sir Donald was on her other side, Mrs. Leo sat in the place of honour, with Lord Holme between her and Sir Donald. She was intensely pink. Even her gown was of that colour, and she wore a pink aigrette in her hair, fastened with a diamond ornament. Her thin, betraying throat was clasped by the large dog-collar she had worn at Arkell House. She cast swift, bird-like glances, full of a sort of haggard inquiry, towards Lady Holme as she settled down in her arm-chair in the corner. Lord Holme looked at her and at her ear-trumpet, and Lady Holme was glad she had decided not to have neuralgia. There are little compensations about all women even in the tiresome moments of their lives. Whether this moment was going to be tiresome or not she could not yet decide.

The Wolfstein party had come in at the same time as the Leo Ulfords, and the box opposite presented an interesting study of Jewish types. For Mrs. Wolfstein and "Henry" were accompanied by four immensely rich compatriots, three of whom were members of the syndicate that was "backing" Miss Schley. The fourth was the wife of one of them, and a cousin of Henry's, whom she resembled, but on a greatly enlarged scale. Both she and Amalia blazed with jewels, and both were slightly overdressed and looked too animated. Lady Holme saw Sir Donald glance at them, and then again at her, and began to think more definitely that the evening would not be tiresome.

Leo Ulford seemed at present forced into a certain constraint by the family element in the box. He looked at his father sideways, then at Lady Holme, drummed one hand on his knee, and was evidently uncertain of himself. During the opening scene of the play he found an opportunity to whisper to Lady Holme:

"I never can talk when pater's there!"

She whispered back:

"We mustn't talk now."

Then she looked towards the stage with apparent interest. Mrs. Leo sat sideways with her trumpet lifted up towards her ear, Lord Holme had his eyes fixed on the stage, and held his hands ready for the "rousin' welcome." Mr. Laycock, at the end of the row, was also all attention. Lady Holme glanced from one to the other, and murmured to Sir Donald with a smile:

"I think we shall find to-night that the claque is not abolished in England."

He raised his eyebrows and looked distressed.

"I have very little hope of her acting," he murmured back.

Lady Holme put her fan to her lips.

"'Sh! No sacrilege!" she said in an under voice.

She saw Leo Ulford shoot an angry glance at his father. Mrs. Wolfstein nodded and smiled at her from the opposite box, and it struck Lady Holme that her smile was more definitely malicious than usual, and that her large black eyes were full of a sort of venomous anticipation. Mrs. Wolfstein had at all times an almost frightfully expressive face. To-night it had surely discarded every shred of reticence, and proclaimed an eager expectation of something which Lady Holme could not divine, but which must surely be very disagreeable to her. What could it possibly be? And was it in any way connected with Miss Schley's anxiety that she should be there that night? She began to wish that the American would appear, but Miss Schley had nothing to do in the first act till near the end, and then had only one short scene to bring down the curtain. Lady Holme knew this because she had seen the play in Paris. She thought the American version very dull. The impropriety had been removed and with it all the fun. People began to yawn and to assume the peculiar blank expression—the bankrupt face—that is indicative of thwarted anticipation. Only the Americans who had seen the piece in New York preserved their lively looks and an appearance of being on the qui vive.

Lord Holme's blunt brown features gradually drooped, seemed to become definitely elongated. As time went on he really began to look almost lantern-jawed. He bent forward and tried to catch Mr. Laycock's eye and to telegraph an urgent question, but only succeeded in meeting the surly blue eyes of Leo Ulford, whom he met to-night for the first time. In his despair he turned towards Mrs. Leo, and at once encountered the ear-trumpet. He glanced at it with apprehension, and, after a moment of vital hesitation, was about to pour into it the provender, "Have you any notion when she's comin' on?" when there was a sudden rather languid slapping of applause, and he jerked round hastily to find Miss Schley already on the stage and welcomed without any of the assistance which he was specially there to give. He lifted belated hands, but met a glance from his wife which made him drop them silently. There was a satire in her eyes, a sort of humorous, half-urging patronage that pierced the hide of his self-satisfied and lethargic mind. She seemed sitting there ready to beat time to his applause, nod her head to it as to a childish strain of jigging music. And this apparent preparation for a semi-comic, semi-pitiful benediction sent his hands suddenly to his knees.

He stared at the stage. Miss Schley was looking wonderfully like Viola, he thought, on the instant, more like than she did in real life; like Viola gone to the bad, though become a very reticent, yet very definite, cocotte. There was not much in the scene, but Miss Schley, without apparent effort and with a profound demureness, turned the dulness of it into something that was—not French, certainly not that—but that was quite as outrageous as the French had been, though in a different way; something without definite nationality, but instinct with the slyness of acute and unscrupulous womankind. The extraordinary thing was the marvellous resemblance this acute and unscrupulous womanhood bore to Lady Holme's, even through all its obvious difference from hers. All her little mannerisms of voice, look, manner and movement, were there but turned towards commonness, even towards a naive but very self-conscious impropriety. Had she been a public performer instead of merely a woman of the world, the whole audience must have at once recognised the imitation. As it was, her many friends in the house noticed it, and during the short progress of the scene various heads were turned in her direction, various faces glanced up at the big box in which she sat, leaning one arm on the ledge, and looking towards Miss Schley with an expression of quiet observation—a little indifferent—on her white face. Even Sir Donald, who was next to her, and who once—in the most definite moment of Miss Schley's ingenious travesty—looked at her for an instant, could not discern that she was aware of what was amusing or enraging all her acquaintances.

Naturally she had grasped the situation at once, had discovered at once why Miss Schley was anxious for her to be there. As she sat in the box looking on at this gross impertinence, she seemed to herself to be watching herself after a long degringolade, which had brought her, not to the gutter, but to the smart restaurant, the smart music-hall, the smart night club; the smart everything else that is beyond the borderland of even a lax society. This was Miss Schley's comment upon her. The sting of it lay in this fact, that it followed immediately upon the heels of the unpleasant scene at Arkell House. Otherwise, she thought it would not have troubled her. Now it did trouble her. She felt not only indignant with Miss Schley. She felt also secretly distressed in a more subtle way. Miss Schley's performance was calculated, coming at this moment, to make her world doubtful just when it had been turned from doubt. A good caricature fixes the attention upon the oddities, or the absurdities, latent in the original. But this caricature did more. It suggested hidden possibilities which she, by her own indiscreet action at the ball, had made perhaps to seem probabilities to many people.

Here, before her friends, was set a woman strangely like her, but evidently a bad woman. Lady Holme was certain that the result of Miss Schley's performance would be that were she to do things now which, done before the Arkell House ball and this first night, would not have been noticed, or would have been merely smiled at, they would be commented upon with acrimony, exaggerated, even condemned.

Miss Schley was turning upon her one of those mirrors which distorts by enlarging. Society would be likely to see her permanently distorted, and not only in mannerisms but in character.

It happened that this fact was specially offensive to her on this particular evening, and at this particular moment of her life.

While she sat there and watched the scene run its course, and saw, without seeming to see, the effect it had upon those whom she knew well in the house—saw Mrs. Wolfstein's eager delight in it, Lady Manby's broad amusement, Robin Pierce's carefully-controlled indignation, Mr. Bry's sardonic and always cold gratification, Lady Cardington's surprised, half-tragic wonder—she was oscillating between two courses, one a course of reserve, of stern self-control and abnegation, the other a course of defiance, of reckless indulgence of the strong temper that dwelt within her, and that occasionally showed itself for a moment, as it had on the evening of Miss Filberte's fiasco. That temper was flaming now unseen. Was she going to throw cold water over the flame, or to fan it? She did not know.

When the curtain fell, the critics, who sometimes seem to enjoy personally what they call very sad and disgraceful in print, were smiling at one another. The blank faces of the men about town in the stalls were shining almost unctuously. The smart Americans were busily saying to everyone, "Didn't we say so?" The whole house was awake. Miss Schley might not be much of an actress. Numbers of people were already bustling about to say that she could not act at all. But she had banished dulness. She had shut the yawning lips, and stopped that uneasy cough which is the expression of the relaxed mind rather than of the relaxed throat.

Lady Holme sat back a little in the box.

"What d'you think of her?" she said to Sir Donald. "I think she's rather piquant, not anywhere near Granier, of course, but still—"

"I think her performance entirely odious," he said, with an unusual emphasis that was almost violent. "Entirely odious."

He got up from his seat, striking his thin fingers against the palms of his hands.

"Vulgar and offensive," he said, almost as if to himself, and with a sort of passion. "Vulgar and offensive!"

Suddenly he turned away and went out of the box.

"I say—"

Lady Holme, who had been watching Sir Donald's disordered exit, looked round to Leo.

"I say—" he repeated. "What's up with pater?"

"He doesn't seem to be enjoying the play."

Leo Ulford looked unusually grave, even thoughtful, as if he were pondering over some serious question. He kept his blue eyes fixed upon Lady Holme. At last he said, in a voice much lower than usual:

"Poor chap!"

"Who's a poor chap?"

Leo jerked his head towards the door.

"Your father? Why?"

"Why—at his age!"

The last words were full of boyish contempt.

"I don't understand."

"Yes, you do. To be like that at his age. What's the good? As if—" He smiled slowly at her. "I'm glad I'm young," he said.

"I'm glad you're young too," she answered. "But you're quite wrong about Sir Donald."

She let her eyes rest on his. He shook his head.

"No, I'm not. I guessed it that day at the Carlton. All through lunch he looked at you."

"But what has all this to do with Miss Schley's performance?"

"Because she's something like you, but low down, where you'd never go."

He drew his chair a little closer to hers.

"Would you?" he added, almost in a whisper.

Mr. Laycock, who was in raptures over Miss Schley's performance, had got up to speak to Fritz, but found the latter being steadily hypnotised by Mrs. Leo's trumpet, which went up towards his mouth whenever he opened it. He bellowed distracted nothings but could not make her hear, obtaining no more fortunate result than a persistent flutter of pink eyelids, and a shrill, reiterated "The what? The what?"

A sharp tap came presently on the box door, and Mrs. Wolfstein's painted face appeared. Lord Holme sprang up with undisguised relief.

"What d'you think of Pimpernel? Ah, Mr. Laycock—I heard your faithful hands."

"Stunnin'!" roared Lord Holme, "simply stunnin'!"

"Stunnin'! stunnin'!" exclaimed Mr. Laycock; "Rippin'! There's no other word. Simply rippin'!"

"The what? The what?" cried Mrs. Ulford.

Mrs. Wolfstein bent down, with expansive affection, over Lady Holme's chair, and clasped the left hand which Lady Holme carelessly raised to a level with her shoulder.

"You dear person! Nice of you to come, and in such a gown too! The angels wear white lace thrown together by Victorine—it is Victorine? I was certain!—I'm sure. D'you like Pimpernel?"

Her too lustrous eyes—even Mrs. Wolfstein's eyes looked over-dressed—devoured Lady Holme, and her large, curving features were almost riotously interrogative.

"Yes," Lady Holme said. "Quite."

"She's startled everybody."

"Startled!—why?"

"Oh, well—she has! There's money in it, don't you think?"

"Henry," who had accompanied his wife, and who was standing sideways at the back of the box looking like a thief in the night, came a step forward at the mention of money.

"I'm afraid I'm no judge of that. Your husband would know better."

"Plenty of money," said "Henry," in a low voice that seemed to issue from the bridge of his nose; "it ought to bring a good six thousand into the house for the four weeks. That's—for Miss Schley—for the Syndicate—ten per cent. on the gross, and twenty-five per cent.—"

He found himself in mental arithmetic.

"The—swan with the golden eggs!" said Lady Holme, lightly, turning once more to Leo Ulford. "You mustn't kill Miss Schley."

Mrs. Wolfstein looked at Mr. Laycock and murmured to him:

"Pimpernel does any killing that's going about—for herself. What d'you say, Franky?"

They went out of the box together, followed by "Henry," who was still buzzing calculations, like a Jewish bee.

Lord Holme resolutely tore himself from the ear-trumpet, and was preparing to follow, with the bellowed excuse that he was "sufferin' from toothache" and had been ordered to "do as much smokin' as possible," when the curtain rose on the second act.

Miss Schley was engaged to a supper-party that evening and did not wish to be late. Lord Holme sat down again looking scarcely pleasant.

"Do as much—the what?" cried Mrs. Ulford, holding the trumpet at right angles to her pink face.

Leo Ulford leant backwards and hissed "Hush!" at her. She looked at him and then at Lady Holme, and a sudden expression of old age came into her bird-like face and seemed to overspread her whole body. She dropped the trumpet and touched the diamonds that glittered in the front of her low gown with trembling hands.

Mr. Laycock slipped into the box when the curtain had been up two or three minutes, but Sir Donald did not return.

"I b'lieve he's bolted," Leo whispered to Lady Holme. "Just like him."

"Why?"

"Oh!—I'm here, for one thing."

He looked at her victoriously.

"You'll have a letter from him to-morrow. Poor old chap!"

He spoke contemptuously.

For the first time Lord Holme seemed consciously and unfavourably observant of his wife and Leo. His under-jaw began to move. But Miss Schley came on to the stage again, and he thrust his head eagerly forward.

During the rest of the evening Miss Schley did not relax her ingenious efforts of mimicry, but she took care not to make them too prominent. She had struck her most resonant note in the first act, and during the two remaining acts she merely kept her impersonation to its original lines. Lady Holme watched the whole performance imperturbably, but before the final curtain fell she knew that she was not going to throw cold water on that flame which was burning within her. Fritz's behaviour, perhaps, decided which of the two actions should be carried out—the douching or the fanning. Possibly Leo Ulford had something to say in the matter too. Or did the faces of friends below in the stalls play their part in the silent drama which moved step by step with the spoken drama on the stage? Lady Holme did not ask questions of herself. When Mr. Laycock and Fritz were furiously performing the duties of a claque at the end of the play, she got up smiling, and nodded to Mrs. Wolfstein in token of her pleasure in Miss Schley's success, her opinion that it had been worthily earned. As she nodded she touched one hand with the other, making a silent applause that Mrs. Wolfstein and all her friends might see. Then she let Leo Ulford put on her cloak and called pretty words down Mrs. Leo's trumpet, all the while nearly deafened by Fritz's demonstrations, which even outran Mr. Laycock's.

When at last they died away she said to Leo:

"We are going on to the Elwyns. Shall you be there?"

He stood over her, while Mrs. Ulford watched him, drooping her head sideways.

"Yes."

"We can talk it all over quietly. Fritz!"

"What's that about the Elwyns?" said Lord Holme.

"I was telling Mr. Ulford that we are going on there."

"I'm not. Never heard of it."

Lady Holme was on the point of retorting that it was he who had told her to accept the invitation on the ground that "the Elwyns always do you better than anyone in London, whether they're second-raters or not," but a look in Leo Ulford's eyes checked her.

"Very well," she said. "Go to the club if you like; but I must peep in for five minutes. Mrs. Ulford, didn't you think Miss Schley rather delicious—?"

She went out of the box with one hand on a pink arm, talking gently into the trumpet.

"You goin' to the Elwyns?" said Lord Holme, gruffly, to Leo Ulford as they got their coats and prepared to follow.

"Depends on my wife. If she's done up—"

"Ah!" said Lord Holme, striking a match, and holding out his cigarette case, regardless of regulations.

A momentary desire to look in at the Elwyns' possessed him. Then he thought of a supper-party and forgot it.



CHAPTER XI

MRS. WOLFSTEIN was right. There was money in Miss Schley's performance. Her sly impropriety appealed with extraordinary force to the peculiar respectability characteristic of the British temperament, and her celebrity, hitherto mainly social, was suddenly and enormously increased. Already a popular person, she became a popular actress, and was soon as well-known to the world in the streets and the suburbs as to the world in the drawing-rooms of Mayfair. And this public celebrity greatly increased the value that was put upon her in private—especially the value put upon her by men.

The average man adores being connected openly with the woman who is the rage of the moment. It flatters his vanity and makes him feel good all over. It even frequently turns his head and makes him almost as intoxicated as a young girl with adulation received at her first ball.

The combination of Miss Schley herself and Miss Schley's celebrity—or notoriety—had undoubtedly turned Lord Holme's head. Perhaps he had not the desire to conceal the fact. Certainly he had not the finesse. He presented his turned head to the world with an audacious simplicity that was almost laughable, and that had in it an element of boyishness not wholly unattractive to those who looked on—the casual ones to whom even the tragedies of a highly-civilised society bring but a quiet and cynical amusement.

Lady Holme was not one of these. Her strong temper was token of a vivid temperament. Till now this vivid temperament had been rocked in the cradle of an easy, a contented, a very successful life. Such storms as had come to her had quickly passed away. The sun had never been far off. Her egoism had been constantly flattered. Her will had been perpetually paramount. Even the tyranny of Lord Holme had been but as the tyranny of a selfish, thoughtless, pleasure-seeking boy who, after all, was faithful to her and was fond of her. His temperamental indifference to any feelings but his own had been often concealed and overlaid by his strong physical passion for his wife's beauty, his profound satisfaction in having carried off and in possessing a woman admired and sought by many others.

Suddenly life presented to Lady Holme its seamy side; Fate attacking her in her woman's vanity, her egoism, even in her love. The vision startled. The blow stung. She was conscious of confusion, of cloud, then of a terrible orderliness, of a clear light. In the confusion she seemed to hear voices never heard before, voices that dared to jeer at her; in the cloud to see phantoms of gigantic size menacing her, impending over her. The orderliness, the clear light were more frightful to her. They left less to her imagination; had, as it were, no ragged edges. In them she faced a definite catastrophe, saw it whole, as one sees a near object in the magical atmosphere of the East, outlined with burning blue, quivering with relentless gold. She saw herself in the dust, pelted, mocked at.

That seemed at first to be incredible. But she saw it so plainly that she could not even pretend to herself that she was deceived by some unusual play of light or combination of shadows. What she saw—was:

Her husband had thrown off his allegiance to her and transferred his admiration, perhaps his affection, to the woman who had most deftly and delicately insulted her in the face of all her world. And he had done this with the most abominable publicity. That was what she saw in a clear light like the light of the East. That was what sent a lash across her temperament, scarring it perhaps, but waking it into all it could ever have of life. In each woman there is hidden a second woman, more fierce and tender, more evil and good, more strong and fervent than the woman who hides her in the ordinary hours of life; a woman who weeps blood where the other woman weeps tears, who strikes with a flaming sword where the other woman strikes with a willow wand.

This woman now rose up in Lady Holme, rose up to do battle.

The laughing, frivolous world was all unconscious of her. Lord Holme was unconscious of her. But she was at last fully conscious of herself.

This woman remembered Robin Pierce's odd belief and the light words with which she had chastised it. He had persistently kept faith in, and sought for, a far-away being. But she was a being of light and glory. His kernel of the husk was still a siren, but a siren with a heart, with an exquisite imagination, with a fragrance of dreams about her, a lilt of eternal music in her voice, the beaming, wonder of things unearthly in her eyes. Poor Robin! Lady Holme found it in her heart to pity him as she realised herself. But then she turned her pity aside and concentrated it elsewhere. The egoism of her was not dead though the hidden woman had sprung up in vivid life. Her intellect was spurred into energy by the suffering of her pride and of her heart. Memory was restless and full of the passion of recall.

She remembered the night when she softly drew up the hood of her dressing-gown above her head and, rocking herself to and fro, murmured the "Allah-Akbar" of a philosophic fatalist—"I will live for the day. I will live for the night." What an absurd patter that was on the lips of a woman. And she remembered the conversation with Fritz that had preceded her monologue. She had asked him then whether he could love her if her beauty were taken from her. It had never occurred to her that while her beauty still remained her spell upon him might be weakened, might be broken. That it was broken now she did not say to herself. All she did say to herself was that she must strike an effective blow against this impertinent woman. She had some pride but not enough to keep her passive. She was not one of those women who would rather lose all they have than struggle to keep it. She meant to struggle, but she had no wish that the world should know what she was doing. Pride rose in her when she thought of cold eyes watching the battle, cold voices commenting on it—Amalia Wolfstein's eyes, Mr. Bry's voice, a hundred other eyes and voices. Her quickened intellect, her woman's heart would teach her to be subtle. The danger lay in her temper. But since the scene at Arkell House she had thoroughly realised its impetuosity and watched it warily as one watches an enemy. She did not intend to be ruined by anything within her. The outside chances of life were many enough and deadly enough to deal with. Strength and daring were needed to ward them off. The chances that had their origin within the soul, the character—not really chances at all—must be controlled, foreseen, forestalled.

And yet she had not douched the flame of defiance which she had felt burning within her on the night of Pimpernel Schley's first appearance on the London stage. She had fanned it. At the Elwyns' ball she had fanned it. Temper had led her that night. Deliberately, and knowing perfectly well who was her guide, she had let it lead her. She had been like a human being who says, "To do this will be a sin. Very well, I choose to sin. But I will sin carefully." At the Elwyns she had discovered why her husband had not come with her. She had stayed late to please Leo Ulford. Mr. Laycock had come in about two in the morning and had described to Leo the festivity devised by Lord Holme in honour of Miss Schley, at which he had just been present. And Leo Ulford had repeated the description to her. She had deceived him into thinking that she had known of the supper-party and approved of it. But, after this deception, she had given a looser rein to her temper. She had let herself go, careless whether she set the poor pink eyelids of Mrs. Leo fluttering or not.

The hint of Fritz which she recognised in Leo Ulford had vaguely attracted her to him from the first. How her world would have laughed at such a domestic sentiment! She found herself wondering whether it were Miss Schley's physical resemblance to her which had first attracted Fritz, the touch of his wife in a woman who was not his wife and who was what men call "a rascal." Perhaps Fritz loved Miss Schley's imitation of her. She thought a great deal about that—turning it over and over in her mind, bringing to bear on it the white light of her knowledge of her husband's character. Did he see in the American his wife transformed, made common, sly, perhaps wicked, set on the outside edge of decent life, or further—over the border? And did he delight in that? If so, ought she not to—? Then her mind was busy. Should she change? If herself changed were his ideal, why not give him what he wanted? Why let another woman give it to him? But at this point she recognised a fact recognised by thousands of women with exasperation, sometimes with despair—that men would often hate in their wives the thing that draws them to women not their wives. The Pimpernel Schleys of the world know this masculine propensity of seeking different things—opposites, even—in the wife and the woman beyond the edge of the hearthstone, a propensity perhaps more tragic to wives than any other that exists in husbands. And having recognised this fact, Lady Holme knew that it would be worse than useless for her to imitate Miss Schley's imitation of her. Then, travelling along the road of thought swiftly as women in such a case always travel, she reached another point. She began to consider the advice of Robin Pierce, given before she had begun to feel with such intensity, to consider it as a soldier might consider a plan of campaign drawn up by another.

Should she, instead of descending, of following the demure steps of the American to the lower places, strive to ascend?

Could she ascend? Was Robin Pierce right? She thought for a long time about his conception of her. The singing woman; would she be the most powerful enemy that could confront Miss Schley? And, if she would be, could the singing woman be made continuous in the speech and the actions of the life without music? She remembered a man she had known who stammered when he spoke, but never stammered when he sang. And she thought she resembled this man. Robin Pierce had always believed that she could speak without the stammer even as she sang without it. She had never cared to. She had trusted absolutely in her beauty. Now her trust was shaken. She thought of the crutch.

Realising herself she had said within herself, "Poor Robin!" seeing perhaps the tigress where he saw the angel. Now she asked herself whether the angel could conquer where the tigress might fail. People had come round her like beggars who have heard the chink of gold and she had showed them an empty purse. Could she show them something else? And if she could, would her husband join the beggars? Would he care to have even one piece of gold?

Whether Lord Holme's obvious infatuation had carried him very far she did not know. She did not stop to ask. A woman capable, as she was, of retrospective jealousy, an egoist accustomed to rule, buffeted in heart and pride, is swift not sluggish. And then how can one know these things? Jealousy rushes because it is ignorant.

Lord Holme and she were apparently on good terms. She was subtle, he was careless. As she did not interfere with him his humour was excellent. She had carried self-control so far as never to allude to the fact that she knew about the supper-party. Yet it had actually got into the papers. Paragraphs had been written about a wonderful ornament of ice, representing the American eagle perched on the wrist of a glittering maiden, which had stood in the middle of the table. Of course she had seen them, and of course Lord Holme thought she had not seen them as she had never spoken of them. He went his way rejoicing, and there seemed to be sunshine in the Cadogan Square house. And meanwhile the world was smiling at the apparent triumph of impertinence, and wondering how long it would last, how far it would go. The few who were angry—Sir Donald was one of them—were in a mean minority.

Robin Pierce was angry too, but not with so much single-heartedness as was Sir Donald. It could not quite displease him if the Holmes drifted apart. Yet he was fond enough of Lady Holme, and he was subtle enough, to be sorry for any sorrow of hers, and to understand it—at any rate, partially—without much explanation. Perhaps he would have been more sorry if Leo Ulford had not come into Lady Holme's life, and if the defiance within her had not driven her into an intimacy that distressed Mrs. Leo and puzzled Sir Donald.

Robin's time in London was very nearly at an end. The season was at its height. Every day was crowded with engagements. It was almost impossible to find a quiet moment even to give to a loved one. But Robin was determined to have at least one hour with Lady Holme before he started for Italy. He told her so, and begged her to arrange it. She put him off again and again, then at last made an engagement, then broke it. In her present condition of mind to break faith with a man was a pleasure with a bitter savour. But Robin was not to be permanently avoided. He had obstinacy. He meant to have his hour, and perhaps Lady Holme always secretly meant that he should have it. At any rate she made another appointment and kept it.

She came one afternoon to his house in Half Moon Street. She had never been there before. She had never meant to go there. To do so was an imprudence. That fact was another of the pleasures with a bitter savour.

Robin met her at the head of the stairs, with an air of still excitement not common in his look and bearing. He followed her into the blue room where Sir Donald had talked with Carey. The "Danseuse de Tunisie" still presided over it, holding her little marble fan. The open fireplace was filled with roses. The tea-table was already set by the great square couch. Robin shut the door and took out a matchbox.

"I am going to make tea," he said.

"Bachelor fashion?"

She sat down on the couch and looked round quickly, taking in all the details of the room. He saw her eyes rest on the woman with the fan, but she said nothing about it. He lit a silver spirit lamp and then sat down beside her.

"At last!" he said.

Lady Holme leaned back in her corner. She was dressed in black, with a small, rather impertinent black toque, in which one pale blue wing of a bird stood up. Her face looked gay and soft, and Robin, who had cunning, recognised that quality of his in her.

"I oughtn't to be here."

"Absurd. Why not?"

"Fritz has a jealous temperament."

She spoke with a simple naturalness that moved the diplomat within him to a strong admiration.

"You can act far better than Miss Schley," he said, with intentional bluntness.

"I love her acting."

"I'm going away. I shan't see you for an age. Don't give me a theatrical performance to-day."

"Can a woman do anything else?"

"Yes. She can be a woman."

"That's stupid—or terrible. What a dear little lamp that is! I like your room."

Robin looked at the blue-grey linen on the walls, at the pale blue wing in her hat, then at her white face.

"Viola," he said, leaning forward, "it's bad to waste anything in this life, but the worst thing of all is to waste unhappiness. If I could teach you to be niggardly of your tears!"

"What do you mean?"

She spoke with sudden sharpness.

"I never cry. Nothing's worth a tear," she added.

"Yes, some things are. But not what you are going to weep for."

Her face had changed. The gaiety had gone out of it, and it looked hesitating.

"You think I am going to shed tears?" she said. "Why?"

"I am glad you let me tell you. For the loss of nothing—a coin that never came out of the mint, that won't pass current anywhere."

"I've lost nothing," she exclaimed, "nothing. You're talking nonsense."

He made no reply, but looked at the small, steady flame of the lamp. She followed his eyes, and, when he saw that she was looking at it too, he said:

"Isn't a little, steady flame like that beautiful?"

She laughed.

"When it means tea—yes. Does it mean tea?"

"If you can wait a few minutes."

"I suppose I must. Have you heard anything of Mr. Carey?"

Robin looked at her narrowly.

"What made you think of him just then?"

"I don't know. Being here, I suppose. He often comes here, doesn't he?"

"Then this room holds more of his personality than of mine?"

There was an under sound of vexation in his voice.

"Have you heard anything?"

"No. But no doubt he's still in the North with his mother."

"How domestic. I hope there is a stool of repentance in the family house."

"I wonder if you could ever repent of anything."

"Do you think there is anything I ought to repent of?"

"Oh, yes."

"What?"

"You might have married a man who knew the truth of you, and you married a man incapable of ever knowing it."

He half expected an outburst of anger to follow his daring speech, but she sat quite still, looking at him steadily. She had taken off her gloves, and her hands lay lightly, one resting on the other.

"You mean, I might have married you."

"I'm not worth much, but at least I could never have betrayed the white angel in you."

She leaned towards him and spoke earnestly, almost like a child to an older person in whom it has faith.

"Do you think such an angel could do anything in—in this sort of world?"

"Modern London?"

She nodded, keeping her eyes still on him. He guessed at once of what she was thinking.

"Do anything—is rather vague," he replied evasively. "What sort of thing?"

Suddenly she threw off all reserve and let her temper go.

"If an angel were striving with a common American, do you mean to tell me you don't know which would go to the wall in our world?" she cried. "Robin, you may be a thousand things, but you aren't a fool. Nor am I—not au fond. And yet I have thought—I have wondered—"