Mrs. Delarayne made determined efforts at restoring the natural and spontaneous good cheer which the party appeared to have lost, but her exertions were only partially successful, and although Agatha Fearwell and Cleopatra sang other songs, the recollection of that tragico-comic Les Epouseuses du Berry had evidently sunk too deeply to be removed.

That night, as Cleopatra was taking leave of her mother, in the latter's bedroom, she lingered a little at the door.

"What is it, my darling?" Mrs. Delarayne demanded. "Do you want to ask me something?"

"Yes, Edith," Cleopatra replied slowly, looking down at the handle she was holding. "I am perfectly prepared to admit that Leo did not perhaps intend to be offensive over my song, although, of course, as you know she ruined the whole thing; but anyhow, do you think that she has any right, so soon after meeting him, to call Mr. Malster 'Denis'? Isn't it rather bad form?"

Mrs. Delarayne sighed. "Very bad form, my dear, very bad form," she replied. "Of course, I admit, it's very bad form. But for all we know, he may have asked her to do it. You see, both you and I call him 'Denis,' and I suppose he thought it would sound odd if Leo did not also."

Still Cleopatra lingered. She wanted to say more, and Mrs. Delarayne divined that she wanted to say more. The words, however, were hard to find, and, at last, bidding her mother "Good-night," she departed only half comforted.



CHAPTER VIII

Lord Henry felt he had done his best for England, and now his mind turned covetously towards a country and a clime where his best promised to yield richer and better fruit. He had mended society's nervous wrecks so long that he had come to look upon the whole modern world as a machine too hopelessly out of gear to repay his skilful efforts.

"People who never sit down to a meal with an appetite," he would say, "people whose bodies are as surcharged as their houses with superfluous loot, cannot hope to be well, physically or spiritually. We live on an island huddled together, and yet we grow every day further apart. For the acquisition of superfluous loot means incessant strife. The worst sign of the times is that abstract terms no longer mean the same thing to any two people. Individualism is thus destroying even the value of language. Because where each man has his individual view a common language itself becomes an impossibility. The effort of the Middle Ages was to convert Europe into a single nation. The effort of the modern or 'Muddle' Age, is to convert each single nation into a Europe. That is why abstract terms are slowly losing their value as the current coin of speech."

St. Maur had attached himself to Lord Henry as a kind of voluntary or honorary secretary. He assisted his master where and when he could, and felt that he was more than adequately repaid in the enormous amount he learnt from him.

"Is there no remedy?" he demanded seriously on a day early in August, when the prospect of losing his friend was weighing more heavily than usual upon him. The two were sitting talking in the study of Lord Henry's cottage which stood in a lane off the London road, about two miles north of Ashbury, where his sanatorium was situated.

"There is a remedy, of course," replied Lord Henry. "It would consist in uniting modern nations afresh by means of a powerful common culture. It is only then that men can be guided and led, for it is only then that they can understand what they are taught about life and humanity. In the Middle Ages a common culture was so universal, that even the barriers of nationality did not prevent men from understanding one another. Now there is such a total lack of a uniform culture that men of the same nation speak an unknown tongue to one another. That is the recipe for stupidity."

"But cannot this new uniform culture be created?" St. Maur insisted.

"It would mean a great new religion," Lord Henry answered. "And we are all too much exhausted for such a stupendous undertaking. New religions depend in the first place upon the belief in great men, and where are the great men of to-day? Only those whose coarse impudence has made them forget their limitations start new religions nowadays. And look at the result!"

"There are enough of them at all events," suggested St. Maur.

"Exactly,—their number is the best comment on their futility."

"But surely the effort, general as it is, shows that people agree with you, and feel the need that you see and recognise?"

"Yes, but the arrogance with which they pretend to supply the need themselves, is the best proof of how deeply they misunderstand the gravity of their plight. Look at these Theosophists, Spiritualists, and members of the Inner Light,—mere cliques, mere handfuls of uninspired and uninspiring cranks. They'll never spread a uniform and unifying culture. They cannot therefore make language once more a common currency for thought."

Aubrey St. Maur had endeared himself to Lord Henry chiefly by the inordinate beauty of his person, his exuberant health, and his modesty. He was wealthy and the only son of a wealthy father. All the "loot" of the de Porvilliers had come to him through his mother, and to Lord Henry's surprise had failed to turn his head. On the contrary, it had if anything filled him with a feeling of guilt, or perhaps that which is most akin to guilt—obligation. And he had long wondered how best he could discharge this obligation to the world. In Lord Henry's company he had elected to find a solution to this problem.

But Lord Henry did not want the youth to join him on his journey to China. The love the young nobleman still felt for his native country bade him leave this promising member of it, if only as a forlorn hope, to prove to Englishmen that here and there, at ever more distant intervals, their blood was still capable of producing something that was eminently desirable.

"You will succeed your father in the Upper House," he said to St. Maur on this occasion, when the latter expressed the desire to become a pious mandarin, "and you will, I trust, be an example of health and wisdom to all. The faith in blood and lineage wants people like you. There is so precious little to which it can be pinned nowadays."

"That's all very well," protested St. Maur. "But you are deserting the battlefield, and leaving an unfledged pupil in charge. Is this nothing to you? Are you incapable of becoming attached to anybody? Without fishing for compliments, is it nothing to you to break our friendship in this way?"

Lord Henry, who as usual was curling his mesh of hair with his fingers, cast a sidelong glance full of meaning at his friend and smiled.

"My dear boy, if it hadn't been for you," he said, "I should not be here now. Do you suppose it amuses me to investigate the unsavoury details of every society lady's nervous affliction? Do you suppose I'm flattered by such and such a Guardsman's encomiums when I have cured his stammer, or his inability to proceed beyond the letter 'P' when writing a letter?"

"What is your real purpose in going to China?" persisted the younger man. "I shan't divulge. Can't you tell me?"

"In the first place, my dear boy," Lord Henry replied, "curiosity. I honestly want to see how Chinamen have escaped the madness that is overtaking Europe. Secondly, I have a heart, and I love my country, and I cannot witness my country's decline. Thirdly, and chiefly,—but this is a secret,—I feel that now it is the duty of all enlightened Western Europeans, who have seen the madness of European civilisation, to hasten to the last healthy spot on earth and to preach the Gospel of Europophobia,—that is to say, to warn the wise East against our criminal errors, and to save it from becoming infected by our diseases. If the world is to be saved, a cordon sanitaire must be established round Europe and everything like Europe; for Europe has now become a pestilence."

St. Maur who had been standing at the window with his back turned to his friend swung suddenly round, his face illumined as if by an inspiration.

"By Jove," he cried, "that is an idea! That is indeed a crusade! I hadn't thought of that!"

"It is the only beneficent direction in which I feel I can use my powers," said Lord Henry gravely. "It is, if you will, my religion. I feel I am called to be a missionary to the East, to preach the solemn warning against Western civilisation."

"God!" St. Maur exclaimed, "that's an idea with which to fire a generation. It is a new gospel; a new gospel of sin and the Devil."

"I assure you," Lord Henry rejoined, "the bulk of the men at my club would not turn a hair at the suggestion. They would simply turn their papers over, nod significantly at each other, and whisper, 'The fellow's not all there.'"

At this moment Lord Henry's man, Fordham, entered the room.

"Yes?" his master grunted from the depths of his chair.

"A lady to see you, my lord," replied the man.

"I'm out."

"That's what I said, my lord."

"Well?"

"The lady said that was all nonsense; she 'ad called at the Sanatorium, and they'd said you was 'ere."

"Then her name's Delarayne," said Lord Henry.

"Yes, that's it, my lord."

"Very well, then, show her up."

"That woman's a wonder," St. Maur exclaimed. "It is a boiling hot day; at any moment there may be a storm; there was probably no fly at the station,—there never is when I come,—and she must have walked the whole of the two miles in the dust. She has an eye on you, my friend."

"Yes," said Lord Henry, "and by the time a woman has her eye on you, she usually has her claws in you as well. You needn't go," he added, as he noticed St. Maur preparing to leave. "But she's an admirable woman. Good taste amounts almost to heroism in these women who battle with age until their very last breath."

Mrs. Delarayne, if anything more regal and more youthful than ever, but certainly showing signs of having taken violent exercise along a chalky thoroughfare, stepped eagerly towards Lord Henry.

"My dear Lord Henry," she began, "so good of you to be in only to me. But oh, I felt I must see you before leaving town."

She turned and shook hands with St. Maur, and Lord Henry moved an easy chair in her direction.

"Oh, that's right; give me a chair, quick!" she gasped. "I'm broken—broken in body and spirit."

Lord Henry asked the expected question.

"Only this," she said, "that my life soon won't be worth a moment's purchase."

"You are tired," suggested her host. "You don't look after yourself."

"It isn't that," Mrs. Delarayne rejoined. "Nobody takes greater care of themselves than I do. I go to bed every night at ten o'clock precisely, and read until half-past two. What more can I do?"

Lord Henry blinked rapidly, and surveyed her with an air of deep interest. "And you say you are leaving town?" he enquired.

"Yes, I'm taking my family to Brineweald, you know. It is my annual penance, my yearly sacrificial offering to my children. It lasts just six weeks. By the end of it, of course, I am at death's door; but I feel that I can then face the remaining forty-six weeks of gross selfishness with a clean conscience and a brazen face."

"Who's going?"

"Oh, the usual crowd,—my daughters, of course, a friend of theirs, a young Jewess, and perhaps the Fearwell children. The men of the party and my sister Bella will be lodged at Sir Joseph's place, Brineweald Park."

"It sounds engaging enough," said St. Maur.

"Oh, most!" sighed Mrs. Delarayne. "Oh, you can't think what a happy mother I'd be if only I had no children!"

Both men laughed, and Mrs. Delarayne who, ever since her arrival, had been casting unmistakable glances at St. Maur, at last succeeded in silently conveying her meaning to him.

"Well, I'm afraid I must be going downstairs," he said, "I've letters to write."

She extended a hand with alacrity. "Oh, it looks as if I were driving you away," she said.

St. Maur protested feebly against this truthful interpretation of his proposed retreat, and withdrew.

Lord Henry took a seat opposite to his visitor, who was obviously as shy as a schoolgirl in his presence, and surveyed her covertly.

"Have you come to tell me that you have abandoned that absurd Inner Light?" he demanded playfully.

"No, indeed; why should I?" she rejoined with affected indignation.

"It is unpardonable," he murmured.

"Why unpardonable?"

"Had you been a Protestant in the past, it would at least have been comprehensible," he said, "because any kind of absurdity is possible after one has been a Protestant. What after all are all these ridiculous, new-fangled creeds but further schisms of Protestantism? But seeing that you were once a Catholic, I repeat, it is unpardonable."

Mrs. Delarayne purred resentfully, as if to imply that it would require something more than that line of persuasion to convince her of her error.

"What do you do to induce me to abandon anything—however erroneous?" she protested at last. "It isn't as if you were even remaining in the country. You are going away. But I cannot bear to think of your going away."

Lord Henry folded his hands and scrutinised her for a moment beneath lowered brows. Her manner was unmistakable; she revealed as much of her game as her dignity allowed. His heart softened towards her.

"Is it so much to you that I am going?" he demanded.

"Oh, no," she replied, mock cheerfully, "le roi est mort, vive le roi!"

"Haven't you a number of friends?"

"Weighed in the scales, of course," she said, "they represent a tremendous amount of friendship."

"Aren't your daughters an interest?"

"Too adorable, of course,—so adorable that I sometimes wish I'd never been born."

The problem as it presented itself to Lord Henry was rightly: how could this quinquagenarian be given a son whom she could worship? To Mrs. Delarayne the problem was: how could she induce this young man to overcome the obvious objection consisting in the disparity of their ages? She could read her own nature no further than this.

"Have you never any feelings of loneliness?" she demanded. "Don't you ever reflect upon the happiness you might secure yourself and somebody else by being decently married?"

"I might be tempted to marry. It is perfectly possible," Lord Henry replied. "Hitherto the only thing that has deterred me has been my vanity. It would be so horrible to watch the love a woman might bear me slowly turning to indifference,—for that is what marriage means,—that I don't think I could have the courage to embark upon the undertaking."

"You are flippant," said the widow sadly. "You pipe and joke while Rome is burning."

"One day, of course, I shall have to marry," he muttered, as if to himself.

She would have liked to ask him to Brineweald. She wanted a deep breath of him before he left. For some reason, however, for which she was not too anxious to account, she did not express this wish.

"Why will you have to?" she asked.

"I mean," he said, "simply what I am always repeating in my clinique, that save in the case of those who are really called to celibacy,—the Newmans, the Spencers, and the Nietzsches of this world,—physical and spiritual health is difficult without a normal sexual life."

"Quite so," the widow agreed.

"Quite so," Lord Henry repeated, "a normal sexual life." He emphasised the word "normal," hoping thereby to convey gently how hopeless her scheme was.

"And when will that be?"

"Oh, Heaven knows!"

She rose, went to the window, and there was a pause.

"Lord Henry," she began after a while, "would it seem odd to you? Would you think me shameless? Am I hopelessly abandoned, to tell you now, how very much more than mere friendship, mere gratitude I feel for you?"

He buried his face in his hands and held his breath. He knew this was inevitable; but as he had already told St. Maur, he had a heart.

She did not look at him, but continued speaking fluently, warmly, incisively.

"Ever since I met you, I have felt what all of us women long to feel, the ridiculous inferiority of the bulk of modern men suddenly relieved by an object which we are willing to serve and obey. Your cures, if you have ever effected any in me, were just that,—not your regimens or your analyses,—but your words, your glance, the touch of your hand, your presence. Everybody knows you have a bewildering presence. I need not add to the idle compliments you must receive on all hands. But surely I have recognised the greatness beneath the outward glamour. And it has cast a spell over me. I admit it. I am fettered to it, riveted to it. We women suffer to-day because we have no such men as you to look up to. Oh, to have met for once something great, something precious, in a world where these things are so rare!"

He glanced up at her. He could not help observing her spruce footgear smothered in the dust of the road, her straight proud back, her fine profile outlined against the bright colours of the chintz, and her blue-veined hands. And he felt an uncontrollable impulse to tell her how deeply he admired her.

"You are no fool," she pursued; "you must have known that I loved you. Therefore I'm only confirming what you already know. But, believe me, Lord Henry, I am something more than one of your interesting cases."

He protested.

"Yes, I know; you always say women cannot understand men, because to comprehend is to comprise, and the smaller cannot comprise the greater——"

He smiled approvingly.

"You see how accurately I can quote you. That is possibly true. I do not claim to be able to understand you. But surely you will grant me that a woman may have a deep and very real knowledge of being in the presence of something exceptionally great, without precisely understanding it?"

Lord Henry rose. He was blinking rapidly and tugging with more than usual force at his mesh of hair.

"Am I impossible?" she asked hoarsely. "Is the disparity of our ages such that, hitherto, the thought of our being more than friends has been unthinkable to you?"

He went to her side by the window. Words were forming on his lips, but they would make no sentence. She saw his lips moving and noticed his distress.

"Is it not a sign of our deep sympathy that you are the only man in all England in whose presence I forget my ghastly age, my half century and more expended on futilities?"

He took her hand.

"Oh, Edith Delarayne, you wonderful creature!" he exclaimed; "that is the tragedy. You put your finger on the tragedy. If only you could be twenty again, what a wife you would make for me!"

She gave a little sob and fell into his arms. "Oh, my boy, my dear boy!" she cried, and kissed his hand almost with the avidity of hunger, as it clasped hers on his shoulder.

She released herself slowly and lightly dabbed her eyes.

"When are you going away?" he demanded gravely.

"The day after to-morrow," she replied.

"Write to me as usual," he said.

She caught his hand and grasped it firmly. "Oh, Lord Henry, be the same to me!" she pleaded.

He laughed the plea to scorn. "Of course I'll always be the same to you. What do you think?"

She saw that he meant it and moved lightly towards the door. "I must be going," she said, putting away her handkerchief, and trying to control an awkward catch in her breath which was reminiscent of her weeping.

He urged her to stay for lunch; he offered to have her fetched by the Sanatorium car; he begged to be allowed to accompany her back to Ashbury; but she stalwartly refused; and in a moment he and St. Maur were watching her, sprightly as a girl, tripping back along the dusty road to the station.

"My boy, my dear boy," he muttered to St. Maur, "that is what she felt, that is what she said. The unconscious voice in her knew the desired relationship and expressed the wish, although the conscious mind thought only of 'husband.'"



CHAPTER IX

"So inexhaustibly rich is the sun that even when it goes down it pours its gold into the very depths of the sea; and then even the poorest boatman rows with golden oars."

Thus spoke the greatest poet of the nineteenth century, and thus all generations of men have felt.

The warm rich colour, as of ripeness, that it gives to the youngest cheek, the tawny tinge as of jungle fauna with which it vitalises every dead-white urban hand, and the enchanting glamour it lends to the plainest head and face,—these are a few of the works of the sun that are surely a proof of its demoniacal glory. Halos, it is true, it fashions as well, and beyond reckoning; but the white teeth that flash from the tanned mask are scarcely those of a saint. Or has a saint actually been known who really had white teeth of his own?

August in England, between the moist wood-clad hills and the blinding glitter of the sea; August in a beautiful country homestead, with its flowering garden, its cool carpet of lawn stretching to a black line of thick hedgerow which seems to be the last barrier between earth and ocean,—what a season it is, and what a setting for the greatest game of youth, the game of catch as catch can, with a cheerless winter for the losers!

The world is at her old best, and all her children are exalted and exhilarated by the knowledge that they are at their best also. Even the trippers are perpetually in Sabbath clothes, as a sign that they are infected with the prevalent feeling of festivity.

Sabbath clothes without the Sabbath gloom, beauty without piety, freedom with open shops, sunshine without duty,—these to the masses are some of the chief joys of the summer sun in England.

In this enumeration of a few of the leading features of a sunny August in England, however, we should not forget to mention what will appear to some the least desirable of them all. The fact that this particular feature is omitted by the most successful English poets of the Victorian School, as by other sentimentalists, would not excuse us in failing to give it at least a passing reference here; for Victorian, alas! does not by any means signify Alexandrian in regard to the periods of English poetry; and even if it be a sin to mention this aspect of a sunny August, we prefer to sin rather than to resemble a Victorian poet.

The quality referred to, then, is a certain result of the eternally pagan influence of the sun. For, say what you will, the sun is pagan. It says "Yea" to life. In its glorious rays it is ridiculously easy to forget the alleged beauties of another world. Under its scorching heat the snaky sinuousness of a basking cat seems more seductive than the image of a winged angel, and amid the gold it lavishes, nothing looks more loathsome, more repulsive, than the pale cheek of pious ill-health. In short it urges man and woman to a wanton enjoyment of life and their fellows; it recalls to them their relationship to the beasts of the field and the birds in the trees; it fills them with a careless thirst and hunger for the chief pastimes of these animals,—feeding, drinking, and procreation; and the more "exalted" practices of self-abnegation, self-sacrifice, and the mortification of the flesh, are easily forgotten in such a mood.

Nothing goes wrong, nothing can go wrong, while the sun blazes and the flowers are beautiful. So thinks everybody who has survived Puritanism unscathed, so thought the majority of Brineweald's visitors that year, so thought Mrs. Delarayne and her party of eager young swains and still more eager virgins. Wantonness was in the air,—wantonness and beauty; and when these two imps of passion come together August is at its zenith.

Mrs. Delarayne had been down at Brineweald a little under a week; Vanessa Vollenberg and the young Fearwells had already been of the party four whole days; Sir Joseph with Denis Malster and Guy Tyrrell, Mr. and Mrs. Gerald Tribe and Miss Mallowcoid had arrived at Brineweald Park twenty-four hours after the Delarayne household had been completed, and now everybody was busy settling down to the novelty of life, effacing the traces of strangeness wherever they appeared, and measuring each other's skill and power at pastimes not necessarily confined to swimming, golf, and tennis.

Leonetta had been congratulated on her friend Vanessa. Mrs. Delarayne who had expected an over-dressed, heavy young lady, with Shylock countenance and shaggy negroid coiffure, had been not a little surprised when she saw alight on the Brineweald down platform a girl who, though distinctly Semitic in features, had all the refinement, good taste, and sobriety of a Gentile and a lady. It was a relief, to say the least, and when, in addition, she found her intelligent and a lively companion, she was devoutly thankful.

Nothing beneath that fierce August sun escaped the keen comprehending eye of Vanessa Vollenberg. The mother and the two daughters with whom she found her present lot cast, gave her food enough for meditation and secret comment; but while their acumen and penetration were hardly inferior to her own, she felt an adult among people not completely grown up. It was as if they still retained more of the ingenuousness of primitive womanhood than she, and thus she "circumnavigated" them, while they, all too self-centred, had barely discovered in which hemisphere her shores were to be found. In this way the seniority of her race was probably revealed.

Beautiful in her own Oriental style, voluptuous and graceful, with small well-made hands, and shapely limbs, she might have proved a formidable rival to Leonetta; or was it perhaps precisely her Jewish blood,—which seemed in Leonetta's eyes to preclude rivalry,—that had first endeared this attractive young Jewess to her wilful Gentile friend?

Girls have strange reasons for "falling in love" with each other at school. It is not impossible that the inconceivability of eventual rivalry should be one of these.

Mrs. Delarayne's house, "The Fastness," was one of a round dozen large houses that stood along the crest of Brineweald Hill, overlooking the little seaside town of Stonechurch. It took a little over fifteen minutes to walk down from Brineweald to the beach at Stonechurch, and perhaps a little over twenty minutes to walk back up the steep hill. Sir Joseph's place, Brineweald Park, lay inland on the far side of the village of Brineweald, about a mile from "The Fastness," but the distance was soon covered by the young people, even when they could not dispose of one of Sir Joseph's cars; and the two households were therefore practically always mingled.

Bathing, tennis, golf, picnicking, croquet,—these helped to fill the time while the sun was high; and when the cool of the evening came, the quiet paths and groves of Brineweald Park, or the bowers of Mrs. Delarayne's garden, were an agreeable refuge for bodies pleasantly fatigued and faintly langorous.

Mrs. Delarayne who was not uncommonly in a condition of faint languor was content, during these terrible six weeks of her life, to play the part of spectator. Silently, but with a good proportion of the available interest, she contemplated the younger members of the party, and whether she happened to be on her chaise-longue overlooking her own lawn, or on the terrace of Brineweald Park, her deep concern about the performances of her juniors never abated. The fact that a good deal of this determined attention was calculated to ward off the less attractive alternative of Sir Joseph's untiring advances, was suspected least of all by the generous squire of Brineweald himself; but it was noticeable too, that she would often sit for long spells neither observing the pranks of her young people nor listening to Sir Joseph's dulcet tones, and then it was that her daughters would suspect that age was after all beginning to tell, even in the case of their valiant parent. At such times she was, of course, simply dreaming day dreams of the life she could have had if, as "he" had said, she had been twenty now; and the beatific expression that would come into her face was scarcely one of reconciliation to senility.

To say that Vanessa Vollenberg and Agatha Fearwell were perfectly happy on this holiday, would be a little wide of the mark. Indeed their condition fell very much more short of perfect happiness than they could possibly have anticipated.

Truth to tell, Leonetta was too indisputably mistress of the stage. The infinite resource with which she contrived always to draw the limelight in her direction, the unremitting regularity with which she turned every circumstance into a "curtain" for her own apotheosis, while it fired the proud Cleopatra to ever fresh efforts at successful competition,—efforts which were proving tremendously exhausting,—left Vanessa and Agatha in a state not unlike a suspension of hostilities. They simply waited. Of all the men, Denis Malster was certainly the only one that a girl could have been expected to make a struggle for, and since he appeared to be entirely hypnotised by Leonetta, the remaining two, one of whom, in Agatha's case, was a brother, seemed to invite only a Platonic relationship of games and sports.

It is true that Guy Tyrrell felt he could have gone to any lengths with the fascinating, voluptuous Jewess; but he had the inevitable defects of his "clean-mindedness," and knew as little how to engage the interest of a thoroughly matriculated girl as to rouse enthusiasm for botany in a cat.

The first walk they had taken with the three young men and Cleopatra and her sister had been typical of much that followed.

In the middle of a conversation in which Vanessa's native Jewish wit was beginning to tell against the more homely gifts of the rest of the party, Leonetta would suddenly fall back, stand in an attitude of rapt attention over a brook, a well, a wild flower, a plank bridge, a pool, or anything; and, at a signal from her, the three men of the party would quickly rally to her halting place, and enter heartily into whatever spirit the object contemplated was supposed to stimulate.

It was usually the merest trifle that caused her thus to arrest for a moment the forward movement of her companions, and to interrupt a conversation to boot; but Vanessa alone had the penetration to see the unfailing instinct for power, the unflagging determination to be the centre of attention, which prompted this simple strategy, on Leonetta's part; and rather than compete with it,—seeing that it was practised with all the usual efficiency of unconsciousness,—she saved herself the vexation of possible defeat by yielding quietly to Leonetta the supremacy she apparently insisted upon having. Thus, while she kept a steady eye upon Denis Malster, whose manner had captivated her from the start, she was content, or rather discontent, to note step by step Guy Tyrrell's blundering innocence in attempted courtship.

Agatha, accustomed as she was to the role of padding in life, fell back on her devoted brother, and used such influence as she possessed over him, to keep his mind well aired and cool amid the slightly overheating breezes of that memorable midsummer.

Cleopatra, on the other hand, not so wise perhaps as Vanessa, certainly not so ready to retire as Agatha, and possibly less able to feel if not to simulate indifference, than either of them, plunged into the conflict with a vigour and a degree of animation which made her almost as unbearable to the other girls as Leonetta herself. Again, however, Vanessa was shrewd enough to realise the emergency Cleopatra was in, and forgave her much that left Agatha painfully wondering. For Cleopatra the fight was a serious one. It called for all her resources and all her skill. Unfortunately she lacked Leonetta's fertility in finding means by which to draw the general attention upon herself, and being overanxious as well, her tactics frequently failed. She would descend to every shift to thwart her sister's wiles,—only to find, however, that it was more often Stephen Fearwell or the Incandescent Gerald, than Guy and Denis, who allowed themselves to be diverted from their orbit round Leonetta, to attend to her.

At tennis it would be a blister suddenly formed on Leonetta's hand; at croquet it would be a fledgling just beside her ball; on the beach it would be a peculiar pebble,—anywhere, everywhere, there was always something over which Leonetta would suddenly stand dramatically still, until every male within sight, including sometimes Sir Joseph himself, had run all agog to her side.

Now the imitation of such tactics is difficult enough; their defeat, when they are combated consciously, is literally exhausting. In two or three days Cleopatra was exhausted.

Never at a loss for a pretext, never apparently thinking any excuse too jejune, too transparently fatuous, or too puerile, to draw the attention of the men, Leonetta, with unabated high spirits, won again and again, every day, every hour, such a number of these silent secret victories over the rest of the young women of the party, that at the end of a week, when their cumulative effect was so overwhelmingly manifest as no longer to allow of denial, she openly assumed the role of queen of the party.

Again and again, in a game of tennis, Cleopatra's tired and overworked brain would grapple with the problem, why a certain empty remark of Leonetta's had caused Denis and Guy to double up with laughter, and had thus held up the game for a moment; and the solution was hard to find. She knew that even a brighter remark from herself would not have so much as caused them to interrupt their service; but she was imperfectly acquainted with the psychology of rulership, and did not understand that when once, by fair means or foul, a certain member of a party has by her own unaided efforts elevated herself to the position of its queen, everything ostensibly witty that proceeds from her mouth is greeted with obsequious laughter by her devoted subjects.

Indeed, in order not to appear a spoilsport, Cleopatra was at last reduced to the humiliating resort of joining in the courtly merriment which appeared to her so extravagantly to result from her sister's mildest jests.

To say that by this time she was feeling a slight sinking sensation in the region of her heart, would be to express with scrupulous moderation what was actually taking place. For Cleopatra, theretofore, had held her own against the best. A good rider, a splendid shot, with almost a professional form in tennis and golf, and a good swimmer and dancer besides, she possessed none of those shortcomings, so handsomely acknowledged when they are present, which would even have justified her in taking up an unassuming position. Besides she was quite rightly aware of owning certain sterling qualities which promised to afford a very much more solid support to the everyday life of this world, than the constant carnival brilliance of her sister; and she found it oppressive to have to appear perpetually in carnival spirits, when she craved for those more sober moods in which her less volatile virtues could make a good display.

She was beginning to find her sister's hard, unrelenting rivalry difficult to forgive, and the steady shaping of a dreaded feeling of loathing for the cause of her partial eclipse began to cause her some alarm.

Thus each day ended with a tacit, concealed, but very real victory for Leonetta, without her sister deriving any further satisfaction from the unavowed contest, than an aching weariness both of body and spirit.

Meanwhile Vanessa, more piqued by her whilom "sweetheart's" increasing neglect of her than by that young lady's inordinate success with the men, would come on the scene in the evening with all the advantage of being less jaded than Cleopatra by the day's incessant duel, and then would frequently score point after point against her schoolmate, without ever revealing a sign of the eagerness she felt for the fray. In addition she made herself a great favourite of the wealthy baronet, and recognising in him a means of possibly exercising some power over Denis, cultivated his affection by every wile of which her clever race made her capable.

Denis Malster was obviously the most staggered by the turn events had taken. Bewildered and fascinated by Leonetta's art of blowing hot and cold, as the spirit moved her, kept constantly alert by the rapid changes of her caprice, he had come to have eyes and ears only for her imperious youth. If she ran off with Guy Tyrrell or with Stephen Fearwell,—a mere boy,—he grew grave, meditative, taciturn; when she returned he resumed his role of obsequious courtier without either reserve or concealment. And who can be more obsequious to a pretty schoolgirl than an Englishman of thirty?

The British are known all over the world for their stamina, for the grit and tenacity with which they can play a losing game; nay, it is even reported that they have frequently turned a losing game into a victory by this very capacity for stubborn patience in adversity.

Cleopatra lacked none of the qualities which have made the British nation famous. She, too, could play a losing game with dignity, grace, and pride; even if, as in this case, it was the cruellest game that a girl can be called upon to play. Perhaps, too, she noticed the conflict that had started in Denis Malster's heart; or maybe she simply saw the unmistakable signs of his dawning passion. But, in any case, and as quickly as surely as she realised that he was becoming enslaved to her sister, his charms underwent a mysterious intensification in her eyes that only aggravated the difficulties of her position.

Certainly he had not made the first advances. Or, if he had, they had been too subtle to be observed. What woman, moreover, really believes that a man is ever guilty in the traffic of the sexes? She had, however, been compelled to notice her sister's manoeuvres. They had been unmistakable, untiring, unpardonable.

At times she had even been constrained to admire the skill with which Guy Tyrrell, Stephen Fearwell, and the Incandescent Gerald himself had been employed by Leonetta in the business of tormenting Denis into a state of complete subjection. Every means was legitimate to Leonetta. If she could not pretend to read a man's hand, she would make a cat's cradle with him; if she could not take his arm, she would plead sudden fatigue in order that he might take her hand to pull her up hill; if she picked a wild rose, a thorn would be sure to remain buried in the skin of her finger, which at some propitious moment would require to be laboriously removed by one of the male members of the party.

A girl may struggle with fortitude against such a determined dispute for supremacy; she may deploy her whole strength and even contrive parallel manoeuvres of her own; but even when she is not less beautiful than her rival, as was the case with Cleopatra, the more conscious of the two engaged in such a match is bound in the end to be less happy in her discoveries, less spontaneous in her inventions, and therefore less successful in her results. For natural spontaneity is quickly felt and appreciated by a group of fellow-beings, as is also the element of vexation and overanxiousness, which Cleopatra was beginning to reveal despite all her efforts at concealment.

The most unnerving, the most jading, however, of all her self-imposed performances at this moment, was the constraint to laugh and be merry, when others laughed and were merry over the frequently empty horse-play of her sister.

It was this particularly that was beginning to tell against her in the duel. And as fast as she felt herself losing ground, as surely as she felt her hold on Denis slackening, the old gnawing sensation at her heart, which had first been felt years before when Leonetta had ceased to be a child, would assert itself with hitherto unwonted painfulness, unprecedented insistence, until it began like a disease to come between her and her meals, and, worse than all, to engage her attention when she ought to have been sleeping.

Thus during these wonderful summer days, while all nature was proud with her magnificent display, while the sun poured down its splendour without stint upon the homely Kentish coast, Cleopatra, nodding and bowing in the breeze, like any other flower, fragrant and unhandseled like the other blooms about her, and voluptuous and seductive like a full-blown rose, was yet aware of a parasitic germ in her heart that was eating her life-blood away. To her, alone, in all that party, the warm arms of the sun brandished javelins, and the calm riches of the landscape concealed jibes. The meanest field labourer seemed happier than she, the commonest insect more wanton and more free.

You would have passed her by without noticing that she was in any way different from her sister, except perhaps that she was obviously more mature. In her spirited glance and smile you would have detected nothing of the tempest in her soul, nothing of the fear in her heart. Only a botanist of the human spirit could have observed that subtle difference in her look, that suggestion of anxiety in her parted lips, which told the tale of her incomparably courageous, determined, undaunted, but sadly unavailing fight.

It was the night, the long silence alone, that she was beginning to dread. And those who dread the night show the lines of fear on their faces during the day. They laugh, they join in the general sport, their gait is light, their clothes may be gay, but at the back of their eyes, the sympathetic can see the previous night's vigil; and it is the haunting fear of experiencing it again that gives their voices, their words, their very laughter that ring of overanxiousness, that stamp of heavily overtaxed bravery.

Cleopatra dreaded the night; but she also dreaded the dawn. Denis, sunburnt, athletic, efficient at everything he undertook, Denis ironical, pensive, independent, Denis revealed anew to her in a way she had least expected, was obviously either humouring a flapper most shamelessly—or—or——

The alternative could not be articulated. To have pronounced it would have lent it a reality that it must not possess. It was, however, in the effort not to frame the alternative that her vigils were kept. And it is extraordinary how one can perspire even on the coolest night over such an effort.



CHAPTER X

"Peachy, what do you think has happened? Oh, do guess!"

The voice was Leonetta's. The question was followed by a laugh, a laugh that spoke at once of triumph and merriment.

It was lunch-time on the morning of the ninth day of their holiday. Mrs. Delarayne, in the garden of "The Fastness," was stretched on her chaise-longue reading. Beside her Cleopatra, who had not felt inclined for a bathe that morning, and who, therefore, had not been into Stonechurch, was working at some fancy embroidery.

"I haven't any idea," Mrs. Delarayne replied, as Leonetta stalked up the garden path with Denis at her side, followed by Vanessa, Guy Tyrrell, and the Fearwells. They all had their wet bathing things with them, and even the matronly Vanessa had her hair hanging over her shoulders.

"Why, the man in the sweetstuff shop at the corner of the High Street took Denis and me for husband and wife!" Leonetta exclaimed, bursting with laughter once more.

Cleopatra's hand shook a little, but she did not look up.

"He probably noticed us waiting outside and thought you were the schoolmistress of the party,—that's all," interjected Vanessa.

Everybody laughed except Leonetta.

"That's absurd," she protested, "because he could scarcely have thought I could be——"

But her voice was drowned by more laughter, led chiefly by Vanessa.

"Oh, well, it's not worth arguing about, any way," said the Jewess, twirling her bathing dress round very rapidly.

"Don't do that!" cried Leonetta sharply. "Can't you see that you're simply drenching poor Peachy?"

Mrs. Delarayne smiled imperceptibly at this remark, and all the bathers ran off to prepare for lunch.

"I think," said the widow to her elder daughter, "that it would have been only considerate if Denis had offered to stay behind to keep you company this morning."

Cleopatra, bundling up her work with lightning speed, rose. Her ears were hot and red, and she could not let her mother see her face.

"Do you,—oh, well, I don't," she said a little tetchily, and made rapidly towards the house.

Mrs. Delarayne stared sadly after her. Had she said anything offensive?—Children were difficult, very difficult, she thought; and she longed for the freedom and the society of her London home.

"I think I made Denis rather savage this morning," Leonetta was explaining to Vanessa, meanwhile, as the two were arranging their hair in the bedroom they shared.

Vanessa, stopping her operations for a moment, turned and regarded her friend with some interest.

"When and where?" she demanded.

"Well, you know that awfully good-looking boy who was sitting on the bench when we bathed yesterday——"

Vanessa nodded in her business-like way.

"Well, didn't you notice that he bathed at the same time as we did to-day?"

"Oh, I thought I saw him," replied Vanessa.

"And he kept standing in the water," Leonetta continued, "with his arms folded, staring at me. He looked most awfully wicked,—it was lovely!" she cried laughing.

"But where does Denis come in?" enquired the Jewess, who was not too prone to jump to hasty conclusions concerning other people's triumphs.

"Well, don't you see,—Denis saw him, and saw that I sometimes stared back at him."

"Oh, is that all?" Vanessa exclaimed, with a somewhat exaggerated note of disappointment in her voice. "But did he say anything then?"

"Yes, after the bathe," Leonetta rejoined, dropping her voice to a whisper, "he asked me whether I knew that strange young man."

"Well?" Vanessa demanded, still retaining the note of disappointed expectancy in her voice.

"That's all," Leonetta replied, conscious that Vanessa had ruined the effect of her little narrative.

For some moments Vanessa silently continued her toilet; then when she was quite ready to go downstairs, she sat down and waited for her friend.

"Are you fond of Denis?" she enquired at last.

"He's not bad," replied Leonetta carelessly. "What do you think he thinks of me?"

Vanessa's keen Jewish features became inscrutable in a moment, and her eyes turned as it were indifferently to the window. A week ago she might have replied that Denis was obviously "smitten"; but four days of almost total neglect and really formidable rivalry are hard to forgive, even when one flatters oneself that one is "above" such treatment.

"He certainly seems to be amused by you," she said cryptically.

Leonetta did not like this way of putting it, and the conversation therefore ceased to interest her. "Are you coming?" she said, and made towards the door.

In another room Cleopatra had been listening to Agatha Fearwell's account of what had occurred at Stonechurch that morning, and the facts she culled from the girl's guileless and unsuspecting statement had not reassured her.

"Cleo, what on earth's the matter?" Agatha cried suddenly.

"Why—what?" Cleopatra rejoined, bracing herself, but turning a drawn and haggard face, that had just grown unusually pale, to her friend.

"My dear, aren't you well?"

"Quite," replied Cleopatra, parting her lips in a faint, hardly convincing smile.

"But you can't be,—sit down, do!" said Agatha.

Cleopatra made a stupendous effort to recover herself, which was singularly reminiscent of her undefeated mother. "The heat, I suppose," she observed.

But Agatha was not satisfied. She was too intelligent to be silenced by such an obvious feminine defence. She could not help drawing her own conclusions, although Cleopatra's proud reserve forbade her asking any further questions.

Denis stayed to lunch at "The Fastness" that day, and in the afternoon there was tennis. The beautiful weather still continuing, Mrs. Delarayne was loath to join Sir Joseph on his interminable excursions by car. He had her sister with him, and the Tribes, and she had also sent Vanessa, of whom he had grown very fond, to represent her. "If people will keep a lot of fat chauffeurs who must be occupied," she said, "I don't see why I should be compelled to bore myself for hours at a time on that account." However, they were all returning to "The Fastness" to tea that afternoon.

So she reclined on her chaise-longue in one of the shady corners of her garden behind the lawn, reading the latest of Richard Latimer's novels, and there very soon Cleopatra joined her. Between them stood an occasional table, and upon it were tumblers, a few bottles of ale, and a glass jug containing still lemonade.

A moment before Agatha had had five minutes' private conversation with Mrs. Delarayne, and the latter was looking a trifle serious when her daughter joined her.

"Cleo, my dear," she began, "you look tired,—been overdoing it?"

"I have a headache," Cleopatra retorted impatiently.

No more than Agatha was Mrs. Delarayne likely to be satisfied with this reply. She saw now that Agatha had been right, and blamed herself for her blindness hitherto.

"I don't like you to be so interested in that silly needlework," she added. "You are not yourself, or you would not work so ridiculously fast."

Cleopatra said nothing.

"Cleo, do you hear me?" she cried. "I'm speaking to you. Look up?—Why are you so silent?"

"Oh, Edith, for Heaven's sake!" exclaimed the distracted girl. "I don't think I could have slept well last night—that's all."

"Why aren't you Denis's partner at tennis?"

"For the simple reason," Cleopatra replied, with a self-revelatory glare in her eyes, "that Baby is!"

Mrs. Delarayne turned to her novel for a moment. "Who's Agatha playing with?" she enquired at last.

"With Guy of course."

"And where's Stephen?"

"Oh, he's somewhere. I believe he's cleaning his motor-cycle."

At this point Guy's voice was heard from the lawn:

"We're thirty and Leonetta and Denis are love!"

Cleopatra made a violent movement with her foot, and accidently kicked the table so that all the tumblers rang in unison.

"Oh, Cleo, my dear!—do be careful!" the widow exclaimed. "What have you done?"

"It's nothing, Edith—nothing."

"Forty—love," cried Guy Tyrrell.

"The terminology of tennis is at times a little tiresome," thought Mrs. Delarayne.

"You must play in the next game," she said, regarding her daughter a little anxiously.

"Oh, I'm sick of tennis," Cleopatra sighed. "I hate all games."

"You used to like it so!" her mother expostulated.

Then suddenly there came the sound of shrieks from the direction of the lawn, and Guy's voice was heard again: "I say, Denis, old man," it said, "do attend to the game, please; you can flirt with Leonetta later on."

Cleopatra put down her embroidery with a jerk and pressed a hand spasmodically to her brow. "Don't you think it's dreadfully hot here?" she exclaimed.

Mrs. Delarayne frowned. "My dear, you couldn't have a cooler place in all Brineweald. Take some lemonade." Then after a pause during which she made another brief examination of her daughter's looks, she added: "I certainly think you ought to go and lie down; but I do wish they wouldn't shout so."

Then she took up her novel again.

A few minutes passed thus, Mrs. Delarayne pretending to read, and wondering all the while whether Agatha had not perhaps overstated Cleopatra's trouble; and Cleopatra working frantically like one who is determined not to think at all.

All of a sudden Leonetta came racing down the path from the lawn, and dashed past her mother and sister, with Denis close at her heels.

Mrs. Delarayne looked up, and her expression was one of annoyance. She saw Denis catch her younger daughter just as she reached the shrubbery concealing the kitchen end of the house from the garden.

"Leo, will you give that up!" panted Denis.

They were only a few yards away, and Mrs. Delarayne followed the whole proceeding with a frown. "Well, tell me first what it is!" rejoined the flapper, holding her hands behind her back, and smiling defiantly at him.

"I thought you two were playing tennis," Mrs. Delarayne cried aloud, with just a suggestion of indignation, and craning her neck so as to be seen by them.

"Oh, we've done with that long ago," Leonetta replied, obviously a little excited.

"It's my note-book," said Denis, "it must have fallen out of my pocket." He caught the girl by the arm, and she laughed. Then quickly shaking him off, she dashed up the garden with Denis close behind her.

"The game of chasing and being chased," said a familiar voice, and Cleopatra looked up. It was Vanessa, followed by all the motoring party.

"Yes, the oldest game of mankind," added Sir Joseph.

"And one of which I suppose the human female never grows tired," Mrs. Delarayne observed rising.

"Any excuse will do," Vanessa continued, resting a hand gently on Cleopatra's shoulder. "Won't it, Cleo dear?"

Cleopatra darted up, saw that her mother was too much engaged greeting the party from the Park to notice her disappearance, and made rapidly towards the house.

"Isn't Cleo well?" Miss Mallowcoid demanded, her eyebrows high up in her fringe with indignant surprise.

"It surely isn't as bad as all that!" ejaculated the unfortunate widow. "Do you notice it too?"

"It certainly is very noticeable, I should have thought," Vanessa remarked.

Mrs. Delarayne then begged the young Jewess to find out what Cleopatra was doing, and to persuade her if possible to lie down. She thereupon conducted her guests to a small marquee where tea was laid, and called to the tennis-players to join them.

In a moment Vanessa returned.

"She doesn't want me," she exclaimed. "She says she wants to be alone."

"But isn't she going to have any tea?" cried Mrs. Delarayne shrilly.

"Later on, she said," the Jewess replied.

"How full of caprice these young things are!" interjected Miss Mallowcoid. "Why, she did not even wish us good-day!"

"The truth is," said Mrs. Delarayne, "Cleo hates being ill, and probably wished to avoid being asked questions."

"Oh, how natural that is!" Mrs. Tribe observed, glancing half fearfully at Miss Mallowcoid.

"You've made this place look very pretty," said Sir Joseph, smiling unctuously at his hostess; "charming, charming! A perfect setting for a—for a precious——"

"Here, you want some refreshment," snapped Miss Mallowcoid gruffly. "Edith, where's Sir Joseph's cup?"

Sir Joseph laughed a little boisterously, and the tennis players arrived.

"Where's Cleo?" was Leonetta's first question. She looked hot and excited, but extremely happy.

Miss Mallowcoid explained that Cleo was in one of her "precious" moods, as she put it. She had never been a great favourite with her nieces, and since the fuel of affection is so largely a distillation of vanity, she did not feel much love towards them. Her remark, however, succeeded in making Mrs. Delarayne fill Sir Joseph's saucer with tea.

"That's not kind," said the widow, glaring first at her sister and then at Denis. "Cleo, I'm afraid, is not very well."

"The heat perhaps," lisped the Incandescent Gerald.

"And other things," added Agatha, in her quiet, eloquent way.

Her brother Stephen stared perplexedly at her for some seconds, and then looked round the party with an air of utter bewilderment.

"Ah, these young people will do too much!" Sir Joseph remarked solemnly. Then turning to his hostess he added: "It was the same at the time of the bicycle craze in the early nineties,—but you would scarcely remember that, my dear lady!"

"What!" ejaculated Miss Mallowcoid. "Edith not remember the bicycle craze of the nineties! My dear Sir Joseph, what absurd rubbish!"

Miss Mallowcoid was beginning to make her sister feel what the doctors call "febrile."

"You so frequently jump at wrong conclusions in your efforts to set the world right, my dear Bella," she said with bitter precision. "Surely one's life may be so full of other preoccupations that one can forget even the most startling events."

"Oh, I see what you mean," said Miss Mallowcoid, speaking with her mouth full of very dry short-bread, "I didn't know he meant it in that way."

Sir Joseph was about to exclaim that he did not, as a matter of fact, mean it "in that way"; but realising the hyperbolic quality of his intended compliment, he preferred to appear eager to swallow the end of a chocolate eclair rather than attempt to explain.

At this point Denis was observed to try and snatch back a piece of cake that Leonetta had, in keeping with her customary tactics, previously taken from his plate. In doing so, however, he struck the top of the milk jug with his elbow, and the vessel toppled over and emptied itself upon his own and Leonetta's clothes.

Mrs. Delarayne flushed a little in anger. At any other time she would have laughed with the rest over such an incident, but in the circumstances it was too intimately connected with the cause of her anxiety to be passed over in silence.

"Leo, you really are a pest," she exclaimed. "You simply cannot leave Denis alone one minute. Really, Denis, if you'll excuse my being outspoken, I'm surprised at your encouraging the child!"

"What it is to be young and good-looking!" sighed Vanessa, casting a sidelong glance at the young gentleman in question.

"All right, Peachy!" Leonetta snapped, vexed and almost outraged by her mother's bald statement of the plain truth, "it's only an accident; you needn't be so cross."

Mrs. Delarayne was on the point of administering a stinging lesson to her flapper daughter,—a lesson which that young person would certainly have remembered to the end of her days,—when, suddenly, Wilmott appeared on the lawn in front of the marquee.

"Yes, Wilmott, what is it?" Mrs. Delarayne enquired irritably.

"If you please, mum, will you come and see Miss Cleopatra; she's fallen down in the billiard-room."

"Fallen down in the billiard-room?" everybody repeated.

The whole party were on their legs in an instant.

"Now, what are you all going to do?" cried Mrs. Delarayne, never more herself than when a heavy demand was laid upon her self-possession. "Please remain where you are, and get on with your tea. I'll go and see what's happened. Agatha!"

Mrs. Delarayne and Agatha, followed by Wilmott, went back to the house, and, as they went, the maid explained that it was a wonder Miss Cleopatra had not killed herself, as her head "was quite close up against the fender."

* * * * *

That evening, on the terrace of Brineweald Park, where the whole party had dined, Mrs. Delarayne and Sir Joseph sat solemnly talking.

"You will have to do something, Joseph," the widow was saying. "He's certainly in your power. Convey to him by some means that he cannot play fast and loose in this way. He accepted the rise of two hundred on the understanding that he would marry."

"Well, my dear Edith, I can't exactly make him marry, can I?" Sir Joseph protested.

"But he has not even proposed yet!" the lady cried.

Sir Joseph grunted.

"Instead, if you please, he is making a fool of himself with Leo, and turning her into an insufferable little prig."

"Not really!"

"Really!"

Sir Joseph grunted again.

"It's making Cleopatra quite ill. Agatha says it is, and I'm sure she's right. She fainted in the billiard-room this afternoon and her head was within an inch of the fender. The poor girl almost killed herself. Besides, I hate a child to have her head turned by a man of thirty. It's such easy going for him, and she's too young to know the difference between an actor and a coachman."

"I'll see what I can do," said the baronet, stirring himself a little. "But you'll admit the position is delicate."

"It's so absurd, because Leonetta has not got the marks of the cradle off her back yet."

"A child as fascinating as her dear mother," Sir Joseph interposed, taking the widow's hand.

She brushed his fingers from her. "I've lost patience with him," she cried. "What is it makes these young Englishmen always abandon full-blown maturity for flapperdom? I suppose it is the tradition of their manufacturing race to worship raw material."

"Oh, he's not in love with her," Sir Joseph objected.

In another part of the park Miss Mallowcoid, Agatha, and Cleopatra were walking arm-in-arm. Miss Mallowcoid, always stirred to some act of self-sacrificing devotion by the sight of genuine illness, was making it her duty to give her niece a little healthy exercise before going to bed. Cleopatra would have given a good deal to escape this determined altruism on her aunt's part, but Miss Mallowcoid was not so easily thwarted in the practice of her virtues.

Meanwhile, Denis, surrounded by the rest of the party, was indulging in a form of amusement that he had popularised of late among the younger members of the two households. It consisted in a sort of uneven cock-fight between himself and Gerald Tribe, on the question of religion, and it was punctuated by roars of laughter from Leonetta, Vanessa, Guy Tyrrell, and even Stephen Fearwell; while the unfortunate Mrs. Tribe, feeling that her husband was being made to look ridiculous for the edification of the rest of the party, would repeatedly interrupt the proceedings by urging her spouse to "come to bed." This, however, he always resolutely refused to do, much to the satisfaction of everybody present; and the unequal contest would be continued.

Sometimes the sensitive and sensible woman would interpolate a remark which considerably discomfited her husband's aggressor; and then, hoping to bring the controversy quickly to an end on this note of triumph, would tug vigorously at his coat sleeve. But Incandescent Gerald, hot, excited, beaten, and indignant, was not to be lured away to the marital bed while he still smarted from his opponent's blows, and endeavouring ever afresh to turn the tide of battle, would remain to blunder on into another rout.

At one moment on the evening of the day of Cleopatra's first fall, when the laughter against him rose too high, the moon revealed to Stephen Fearwell that tears of indignation were welling in Mrs. Tribe's eyes; and then thinking of Miss Mallowcoid, and of how this one holiday in the year, away from the hard spinster's cold tyranny, was being spoilt for her by these evening debates, he rose smartly to his feet, clapped the Incandescent Gerald on the back, and tugged at his collar.

"Look here, sir," he cried, "you're beginning to interest me in this Inner Light of yours. Come for a walk and tell me more about it. Perhaps Mrs. Tribe will join us?"

"Oh, don't take them away!" cried Guy Tyrrell, while Leonetta and Vanessa moaned.

"Sorry," said Stephen, "but I honestly want to hear all about it. Come on, Tribe!"

Incandescent Gerald rose, half dazed. He believed in his Inner Light, whatever Denis might have to say against it, and he could hardly resist Stephen's gratifying suggestion. He smiled guilelessly into the young man's face, and he, Stephen, and Mrs. Tribe vanished into the darkness.

"Stephen was a lout to go and do that!" Guy exclaimed.

"I think he noticed that Mrs. Tribe was beginning to cry," said Vanessa.

"Nonsense, Nessy, you must be dreaming!" retorted Denis.



CHAPTER XI

In the full-grown schoolgirl, who stands on the threshold of womanhood, we have a creature who, though probably admirably equipped with normal or even supernormal passions, is, possibly owing to the accident of her age and her position, less prone to be led by passion than by vanity in her first affairs with the other sex.

Standing on the threshold of life as she does, she may be a little too eager to prove that she is fit for the game, fit for the thrills and throbs of the great melodrama. Out of sheer anxiety therefore, without any genuine desire to gratify a passion, but simply with the view of giving her self-esteem the proof that she is mature, she may behave very much as if her heart and passions were involved. And though, in later life, she may develop into a supremely desirable woman, she behaves for the nonce very much like those deplorable people who in all they think and do are actuated by vanity alone.

The dupe in such cases, the fool in such cases, the creature who, owing to his gross misunderstanding of the situation, allows himself to be persuaded by his vanity that he has stimulated une grande passion in an unbroken filly, naturally deserves all he gets. Unfortunately, as the world is at present constituted, his punishment, like that of the modern co-respondent, always falls short of its proper severity.

Now Denis Malster was certainly no fool,—nay, he was probably above the average in intelligence; and yet the speed with which he had succeeded in monopolising Leonetta's attention made him feel in his gratified vanity, so immensely grateful to the girl, that willy-nilly, he found himself drifting all too pleasantly along that warm and intoxicating stream that the nineteenth century called "Love," without feeling either the obligation or even the desire to realise calmly and dispassionately what had actually happened.

Quite recently she had even allowed him to kiss her. It was unspeakable bliss, almost distressing in its transcendent quality. He "had such joy of kissing her," he "had small care to sleep or feed. For the joy to kiss between her brows time upon time" he "was well-nigh dead." How could he be deceived by such unequivocal demonstrations of real passion? In any case it was too wonderful to be wrong, and if wrong—what then? The Devil was worth a score of heavens!

He had not carelessly overlooked the other sister. He was not absent-minded where she was concerned. He had resolutely cast her out of his mind. With conscious deliberation he had banished her far beyond his horizon. His only remaining difficulty was not to discover the nature of his next step, but how to take it. He felt an irrevocable destiny bidding him solicit Leonetta's hand, but he rightly foresaw that there might be some difficulty where Mrs. Delarayne was concerned.

It was because he happened to be in this mood of conscienceless desire, unreflecting longing, that he had been able to listen calmly at the table, the day before, while Wilmott announced Cleopatra's fall. Dimly he had connected his behaviour with her indisposition; but the temptation to continue along his present lines was too great to allow him to dwell profitably upon that aspect of the situation.

Now again, just after he had come down from Brineweald Park to "The Fastness," as was his wont after breakfast, he had scarcely felt a fibre of pity or remorse stir in his body while Mrs. Delarayne had described Cleopatra's second fainting fit to him. He had expressed his sympathy formally, conventionally, like one who had but a few moments to spare for such considerations, and even before Mrs. Delarayne had completed her narrative, had allowed his eyes to wander eagerly all over the garden for a sign of Leonetta.

Rigid and unmoved, he had seen the stir caused by the arrival of the doctor, and later by the departure of Stephen Fearwell on his motor-cycle with an urgent message from Mrs. Delarayne to Sir Joseph to send one of his cars round at once for her immediate use.

What the car was wanted for, how it was connected with Cleopatra's illness, he hadn't either the inclination or the interest to discover; he only deplored the destiny that caused Cleopatra's breakdown when, suddenly, without Mrs. Delarayne's having made any mention of the plan to him, Leonetta, dazzling, electrifying, and elfish as usual, tripped out into the garden to whisper to him that her mother wished her to drive with her to Ashbury at once.

"To Ashbury—you—at once—with the Warrior?" he ejaculated. "Whatever for?"

"I don't know," said Leonetta.

"But it's impossible," he objected. "Can't you say you can't go?"

"I wish I could."

"But why should the old Warrior want to take precisely you to Ashbury?" he pursued.

"I only know," she replied, "that Lord Henry's Sanatorium is at Ashbury, and that Peachy's making far too much of Cleo's illness. Why, it's only the heat."

"How many miles is it to Ashbury?"

"Seventeen to twenty, I believe."

"So you'll be gone about two hours?"

"Yes, my darling,—cheer up."

He smiled at these words, pressed her hand tenderly as he did so, and heard the car glide round the drive.

"Good-bye, my goddess," he whispered.

Then suddenly Mrs. Delarayne's head appeared at one of the bedroom windows of the house.

"Come in and get ready at once, Leonetta!" she called out angrily. "The car has just arrived."

"Good-bye, my angel," she whispered, and ran in.

It was eleven o'clock; they could be back for lunch. The Fearwells, Vanessa, and Guy Tyrrell had gone to Stonechurch for a bathe. The whole place was a desert. He thought he might go for a walk, and entered the house to fetch his hat and stick. But he hesitated; he felt so desolate alone. The sound, however, of another car in the drive outside, and Sir Joseph's voice giving instructions to the chauffeur, brought him quickly to his senses, and snatching his hat down, he ran out of the house, through the garden, and out into the meadows beyond.

It was a glorious day. He had no wish to try to account for his reluctance to meet his chief alone at that moment, and as he swung his stick and whistled on his walk, he tried to convince himself that he could afford to snap his fingers at the powerful City magnate.

* * * * *

Meanwhile Mrs. Delarayne and Leonetta were racing along as swiftly as Sir Joseph's head chauffeur dared to go. The road and the hedges on either side seemed to be simply a green-edged ribbon which the bonnet of the car cut into two gigantic streamers that flew for miles and miles behind them. Villages were skirted as far as possible, and appeared to be packed hurriedly away like so much stage scenery. Narrow bridges and awkward turnings were negotiated at top speed, and seemed to be cleared more by good luck than skilled driving; but still the pace was not sufficiently hard for Mrs. Delarayne, who, sitting almost erect in the car, with neck craned and eyes fixed on the farthest horizon, spoke scarcely a word to her companion.

The mother instinct had been roused in the heart of this elegant, youth-loving widow,—that, and also the complex emotions provoked by the fact that, since her last momentous interview with Lord Henry, she had not heard from him.

It had cost her a good deal to decide upon this step. For reasons which she had refrained from investigating, she had not introduced Lord Henry to her daughters. At first the omission had been the outcome of a series of pure accidents, quite beyond her control. Then, as she acquired the habit of meeting him alone, or at least unaccompanied by her offspring, her relationship to him had at last seemed to derive part of its essential character from this very exclusiveness. He appeared to belong to her. The thought of one of her daughters becoming perhaps attached to him filled her with vague qualms, as if her relationship to him would thereby be marred. Thenceforward intention or design began to take the place of accident, and her daughters had been rigorously excluded whenever Lord Henry and the widow met.

And now, in a moment of stress, in a mood of deep anxiety concerning a daughter who, despite the radical difficulty of daughter-and-mother relationships, had been on the whole singularly devoted and sensible, she had resolved to reverse the old order, to invite Lord Henry to "The Fastness," and thus necessarily to let her daughters meet him.

The sight of the blundering local practitioner that morning had revealed to her the danger of excluding Lord Henry any longer from her family affairs. Her difficulties had become too heavy. She knew that he and he alone could assist her; and she determined to enlist his help. Thus her principal "secret" man, the most cherished of all her clandestine male attachments, was to be brought by her own hand, by her own act and exertion, into the presence of charms far more magnetic, far more irresistible than any she could now hope to wield, and which were all the more apparent to her for being so much like her own. This was indeed a surrender of principle which showed that Mrs. Delarayne's maternal instinct had been moved to action; but its energy in this case, creditable as it was, fell so far short of what it might have been in the case of a beloved son, that the widow far from being happy, was conscious only of being urged by painful duty upon the errand she was now fulfilling.

The presence of Leonetta in the car, though an insoluble mystery to the child herself, was accounted for simply as an obvious manoeuvre on the part of an angry and ingenious woman of the world, to retaliate to some extent upon the chief cause of all her trouble, the annoyance and disturbance he had occasioned her. But she was too sensible to upbraid the girl herself. She knew how fatally decisive opposition might prove at this stage in Leonetta's sudden excitement over Denis Malster, and she resolved to be guided in the whole of the complicated business by the sure hand of Lord Henry.

To Leonetta's secretly guilty heart, however, her mother's silence seemed to remove the one possible explanation that yet remained for her having been made to drive to Ashbury; and by the time three quarters of the journey had been accomplished, she resigned herself to a mood of mystified boredom.

Occasionally her mother would mutter anxiously: "I wonder whether Lord Henry will be in";—but that was all. Her affability and good nature seemed to be the same as usual.

At last the car drew up at the northern outskirts of Ashbury, before a building that appeared to Leonetta as unlike her mental image of a sanatorium as anything could possibly be. It was a large building with a white stucco front, badly cracked all over,—evidently a sort of old manor house of about the period of George IV,—and the sight of the smart motor cars drawn up on either side of the road in front of its partly dilapidated gate, seemed but to enhance the general impression of decay which characterised both the house and its surroundings.

The string of cars, however, brought a smile to Mrs. Delarayne's lips, for they showed that Lord Henry's clinique was open that day.

"Now wait for me here, in the car," she said in her most positive manner, "however long I am."

Leonetta and Cleopatra knew from experience that when their mother spoke in this way she would brook no disobedience; and so throwing off her dust cloak, Leonetta settled herself in the car to see what interest she could derive from watching the activity at the gate.

Mrs. Delarayne's card sufficed to bring the matron hurrying down with the assurance that Lord Henry would see her next. He was very busy, and had been hard at work for at least a fortnight. There was a room full of people waiting.

"Unusually hard at work!" Mrs. Delarayne observed.

"Yes," replied the matron, "quite exceptional."

"And why is that?" the widow enquired.

"We think it is the heat. The dog days seem somehow to increase nervous trouble in quite a number of people,—at least so Lord Henry says."

"Then you may be sure it is so," said Mrs. Delarayne emphatically. She was taken to a private room, and there in a few minutes Lord Henry joined her.

He listened with his usual earnestness to all she had to tell him, and learned as much as he could from the description of her untrained observation of Cleopatra's symptoms.

"What is it, Lord Henry,—do tell me,—that makes grown-up men of the present day so susceptible to raw flappers? You surely have an explanation!"

"I have," Lord Henry replied, smiling in his malicious way. "It is accounted for by the whole trend of modern sentiment and modern prejudice. It is in the air. It is the result of the nineteenth century's absurd exaltation of rude untrammelled nature. It really amounts to anarchy, because it is always accompanied by a certain feeling of hostility towards law and culture. Hence the love of wild rugged moors and mountains which is a modern mania."

"Oh, didn't the ancients admire these things?" the lady exclaimed a little crestfallen.

"Of course they didn't," Lord Henry replied. "Hence, too, the ridiculous present-day exaltation of childhood, because children are stupidly supposed to trail 'clouds of glory' from whence they come, as that old spinster Wordsworth assures us. In fact everything immature or uncultivated is supposed to be sacrosanct. Of course that young man, Denis Malster, must be a sentimentalist, too, and he probably wants kicking badly; but it is not entirely his fault. The sentiment, as I say, is in the air. We are all threatened with infection. They had it in the eighteenth century in France."

"What can I do?" Mrs. Delarayne demanded.

"Nothing!"

"But I can't let Cleopatra fall about in all directions,—she'll kill herself."

"What did the doctor say?"

"Need you ask?"

"Prescribed iron and strychnine, I suppose. Or did he suggest cold baths?"

"No, as you say, he prescribed iron, quinine, and strychnine."

Lord Henry glanced at his note-book.

"Of course, I am absolutely full up. But—but——"

Mrs. Delarayne fidgeted.

"I'm afraid I shall have to come if I'm to do any good. My senior assistant here will have to do the best he can, that's all."

Although Mrs. Delarayne was quite prepared for this, she had hoped even until the last that Lord Henry might be able to treat Cleopatra from a distance, and that she would therefore be spared the duty of having him at Brineweald. It was a hard pill to swallow, but she took it gracefully.

"When can you come?" she asked with forced cheerfulness.

"Can you send the car for me at about quarter to eight this evening?"

Mrs. Delarayne promised to do this, and the young man rose.

She held his hand for some time as they said good-bye, and gazed longingly into his face. It seemed to her that after this last meeting, alone, on their old terms, nothing could any longer be quite the same. He would become the friend of other members of her family. He would no longer be her private refuge, her nook-and-corner intimate, her own friend, her secret.

"Lord Henry," she pleaded on their way downstairs, "would you advise me to say anything to Leonetta?"

"What can you say?" he protested.

"My sister says I ought to scold the child for what she calls her 'fast' way with young men."

"Oh, nonsense!" Lord Henry exclaimed. "What can you tell the girl?—to be less fascinating, to be less beautiful, to be less full of life? That would be as futile as it would be deforming. You can only watch her so that she does not come to harm, or fall into the hands of a villain. You cannot moralise. I think you have been wonderful to restrain yourself so far. But continue doing so."

"You see, I remember what I was at her age!" the widow admitted bashfully.

Lord Henry laughed, and in a moment she laughed with him.

He accompanied her to the door, and feeling very much relieved she rejoined her daughter.

* * * * *

At half-past four that afternoon, just as the car bearing away Lord Henry's last out-patient, had glided out of the drive, he sent for St. Maur.

The day had been a particularly heavy one. Unfortunate, miserable, and beautiful girls, with everything they could wish for, had come in their dozens for the last month, with nervous tics that utterly marred their beauty and blighted their lives. He had seen no less than three that day. Business men, Army men, clergymen, married women, mothers, each with some kind of nervous catch in their voices, uncontrollable spasms in their limbs, stammers, or obsessions,—everyone was now beginning to hear of Lord Henry's wonderful success in dealing with such cases, and he was getting inconveniently busy.

Only a few were perhaps aware that he derived most of his skill in the handling of these nervous disorders from the teaching of a certain Austrian Jew of brilliant genius; but even those who knew this fact also recognised that he had shown such enormous ability in adapting the principles of his Semitic master to modern English conditions that he was entitled to be regarded quite as much as an innovator as a disciple.

What Lord Henry had done could have been accomplished only by an Englishman of exceptional intelligence. He had discovered that the almost universal feature of nervous abnormalities in England, which were not the outcome of trauma or congenital disease, arose out of the national characteristic of "consuming one's own smoke." He had been the first to demonstrate with scientific precision that the suppression of Catholicism in England, with its concomitant proscription of the confessional box from the churches, had laid the foundation of three quarters of the nation's nervous disabilities. He had thus called attention to yet one more objectionable and stupid feature of the Protestant Church, and one which was perhaps more nauseating, more sordid, than any to which his friend Dr. Melhado was so fond of pointing. Thus he called his sanatorium in Kent "The Confessional," and his methods, there, followed pretty closely the methods of the mediaeval Church.

He would point out that it was this absence of the rite of confession that made people in Protestant countries so conspicuously more self-conscious than the inhabitants of Catholic countries. For nothing leads to self-consciousness more certainly than the attempt constantly to consume one's own smoke.

"The independence, individualism, and natural secrecy of the English character, together with the enormous amount of sex suppression that English Puritanism involves," he used frequently to say, "leads to an incredible amount of consumption of their own smoke by millions of the English people. Large numbers of these people are able to digest the fumes, others fall ill with nervous trouble owing to the poison contained in the vapours they try to dispose of in secrecy."

His startling successes had all been based upon the recognition of this fundamental fact. "But," as he said, "instead of these people keeping well through the ordinary exercise of their religion, they have, owing to their absurd Protestant beliefs, to pay me through the nose for providing them with a scientific instead of a sacerdotal confessional box."

Nevertheless, the hard work was beginning to tell, and as he waited for St. Maur and recalled the circumstances of Mrs. Delarayne's visit, it struck him that it would not be unwise to avail himself of that lady's need of him in order perhaps to take a short holiday.

Truth to tell, he was a little satiated with Society's nervous wrecks. You cannot hold your nose for long over any kind of smoke without being nauseated; but the fumes which men and women have tried to consume themselves, and failed, have this peculiarity, that they are perhaps more foetid, more unsavoury, more asphyxiating, than any that can be produced by the combustion of the most obnoxious and malodorous chemicals.

St. Maur observed his friend's condition as he entered the room.

"Hard day?" he enquired.

"Very."

"I thought so. Cheques have been coming in pretty plentifully too. Any celebrities?"

"One M.P. and one Canon,—the rest ordinary, or rather extraordinary men and women. But don't let us talk about it; my stomach's turned as it is. I'm going to take a few days' holiday, Aubrey."

St. Maur in his astonishment had to sit down.

"Mrs. Delarayne has just been here. Her daughter seems to be an interesting case of self-surrender and inversion of reproductive instinct owing to repeated rebuffs. She is now at the self-immolating stage. Rather dangerous. Falls about. Her knees give way. Might cut her head open. Great struggle for supremacy apparently with flapper sister. Both passionate girls, of course. Only thrown up sponge after hard and unsuccessful fight. Local doctor orders iron, quinine, and strychnine. It's a wonder he didn't order brimstone and treacle. Mother doesn't understand the condition at all, but is sufficiently wise to suspect that the behaviour of a certain young man with fascinating flapper sister may be contributory."

"Can't she come here?" asked St. Maur.

"Well, she could. But it is one of those cases in which, if I want to do any real good, I must watch conditions on the spot."

"When do you leave?"

"In an hour or two. The car's coming to fetch me."

He rose, looked down with grave disapproval at his baggy trousers, and flicked a speck or two of dust from his jacket.

"Aubrey, dear boy, I want you to make me look smart,—do you think it can be managed?" He smiled in his irresistible way, and St. Maur had to laugh too. "You evidently think it quite impossible," he added.

"No, not at all, you ass!" St. Maur objected. "I'm always telling you that you can look the smartest man in England if you choose. You fellows who are habitually dowdy create a most tremendous effect when, for once, you really dress in a rational fashion."

Lord Henry scratched his head and glanced dubiously down at his clothes again.

"I suppose these would do," he said.

St. Maur expostulated with scorn. "Where are all your things? You've got some presentable clothes, only you never wear them; or if you do, you wear the wrong ties or the wrong shirts, or the wrong socks with them."

"Have you got your crow's nest here?" Lord Henry demanded.

St. Maur nodded.

"Drive me to the cottage, then," said the elder man, throwing out his arms dramatically, "and get me up to kill!"

St. Maur was interested, and showed it in his glance.

"Don't be alarmed, dear boy," said Lord Henry. "I may have to play a part down at Brineweald."

St. Maur did as he was bid, and the two spent about an hour and a half in Lord Henry's bedroom, sorting out ties, collars, shirts, lounge suits, dress clothes, and boots and shoes.

At last Lord Henry was clothed, and, as St. Maur had truthfully prophesied, looked the very paragon of a well-dressed man. Indeed, not only was the contrast with his usual self so bewildering as to banish all sense of proportion in estimating the splendour of his transformation but the singular nobility of his face, with its wise, youthful brow and deep, thoughtful eyes, also added such a curious piquancy to his fashionable attire, that the general effect was little short of startling. It is always so. Dress your scholar, your thinker, your poet, in clothes that Saville Row has carefully designed and carried out for a Society peacock, and the result is not a member of the phasianidae, but a golden eagle. It is as if the art of the tailor or shirt maker were grateful for once to adorn something more than a mere dandy. That depth of the eye, that wise and learned mouth, those intelligent and almost understanding hands, the noble studious brow,—all these embellishments added to the figure of the ordinary man, give a certain finish to well-made garments, which these in their turn impart to the aspect of the scholar; and the result is an effect of completeness which is perhaps the highest product of the fashion, as well as the taste, of any Age.

Perhaps it is because it is so rarely seen that it is so overwhelmingly attractive.

"Are you sure this is right?" Lord Henry demanded, scrutinising his image without a trace of recognition, in the long wardrobe mirror of his room, and lightly fingering a tie that St. Maur had lent him.

"Yes!" St. Maur cried in alarm; "for Heaven's sake don't touch it!"

On the floor lay the young nobleman's portmanteau, partly filled with St. Maur's shirts, collars, and ties; and in a large suit-case sufficient clothes to provide him with decent variety. St. Maur had drilled him carefully in the combination of socks, shirts, ties, and suits, and had gone so far as to pack certain groups of things together, in special sections, so that at Brineweald no mistake should be made.

"You are a marvel, Aubrey!" ejaculated Lord Henry, twisting about in front of the mirror. "I used to dress like this years ago, but I had completely forgotten how to do it."

"It's you who are the marvel," St. Maur exclaimed, contemplating his friend with a critical and approving eye.

They returned to the Sanatorium to partake of a light dinner. The porter stared as he opened the door, and could scarcely believe his eyes. The matron was unusually self-conscious as she received the parting instructions from her chief, and the nurses all turned their heads in Lord Henry's direction as they sped hither and thither, unable to understand the meaning or the object of the strange metamorphosis.

"The gorgeous vestments of the priest are all part of the general scheme," Lord Henry whispered to St. Maur, as he stepped into Sir Joseph's car.

"Rather!" St. Maur cried after him; and in a few moments the car was well on its way.



CHAPTER XII

Except to Sir Joseph, Mrs. Delarayne had revealed nothing about the nature of her journey to Ashbury to any member of the party at Brineweald. Lord Henry's visit was to be a surprise. She wished to safeguard Cleopatra from all suspicion that his arrival that evening might be connected with her indisposition, and contented herself with assuring her child that, having heard that he was overworked and very much run down, she had gone over to him in order to urge him to take a holiday. She merely hoped, she said, that he would be able to follow her advice and come to Brineweald.

The afternoon was spent by the whole of the two households in paying a visit to Canterbury. Under Mrs. Delarayne's vigilant eye, Leonetta and Denis Malster had therefore been very discreet, and as the cars returned in the evening, Sir Joseph was firmly of the opinion that his idol had, with her customary art, slightly exaggerated the attentions which his private secretary was paying to her younger daughter.

Dinner at Brineweald Park was over, the younger people, except Cleopatra, who had gone to bed, had dispersed themselves over the grounds as usual and Mrs. Delarayne, Miss Mallowcoid, and Sir Joseph were sitting on the terrace finishing their coffee, when Sir Joseph's head chauffeur was seen walking towards the steps with his junior, bearing Lord Henry's Gladstone bag and suit-case.

"Where did you leave Lord Henry?" Mrs. Delarayne cried.

"He told me to drive straight to the garage, ma'am," replied the man, "and bring the luggage here by hand."

"Yes," Sir Joseph exclaimed, in the bullying tones he usually adopted with his servants; "but can't you answer a question? Where did you leave his lordship?"

"He left the car at the Brineweald Gate," the man answered, "and said he would take a walk in the grounds, sir."

"Oh, that's all right!" Mrs. Delarayne remarked, and the men moved on with their load.

It was twilight. The lady scanned the stretch of park that lay before her, and discovering no sign of life, turned to Sir Joseph.

"I hope he will find his way," she said.

"Couldn't possibly help it, I should have thought," snapped Miss Mallowcoid.

"Oh, but he's so tiresome sometimes," replied the widow. "He's so incorrigibly absent-minded."

Brineweald Park was one of the largest in the whole of the West Kent districts. Its confines stretched to the straggling outskirts of four villages: Brineweald to the south-west, Hedlinge to the north, Headstone to the east, and Sandlewood to the south-east. Paths cutting diagonally through the Park, at a respectful distance from the house, joined all these outlying places one to another, and the inhabitants of all four villages were allowed a right of way, provided they conducted themselves with due propriety and did no damage. It was a favourite recreation ground for the children of the locality, but it was so vast that it was but seldom a stranger was ever encountered in the grounds.

The house, which was a large white building, three stories high, of Georgian design, stood on an eminence overlooking the whole country-side; and to the south a series of terraced lawns flanked by steps descended as far as the broad drive leading to the Brineweald Gate.

A large wild and wooded tract lay in the direction of Sandlewood, where Sir Joseph preserved his game, and where there were rabbits in abundance; while joining Brineweald to Hedlinge there was a small fast-running stream, called the Sprigg, which at certain points in its course, fell in picturesque cascades, surmounted by rockeries and ornamental foot-bridges. In the neighbourhood of these, on either bank, Sir Joseph had also built seats and bowers, and in the summer these resting-places were the coolest in the whole park.

It was towards one of these cascades that, on the evening in question, Lord Henry idly wandered. The vast and peaceful expanse of the grounds delighted him, and knowing the pertinacity and loquacity of his fair admirer, he wished to have both his walk and his first view of his new abode alone, before presenting himself at the house.

Dimly in the gathering dusk, he discerned the outline of a rustic bridge, and guided by the sound of plashing waters, directed his footsteps towards it. Then above the murmur of the stream he heard the ripple of a girl's ecstatic laughter, followed by what appeared to be high words between two men, and then more laughter, followed by more high words.

There was evidently a party round the bridge, and they seemed to be engaged in a fairly acrimonious discussion. He distinctly heard the words, Inner Light, Incandescence, Spiritualism, God-head, First Cause.

The argument was evidently religious, and it was conducted chiefly by the men, with the rest of the party as audience and occasional chorus.

He approached stealthily. A big dark shadow against the moonlit sky gradually assumed definition on the other side of the stream. And from the depths of that shadow came the voices to which he had been listening.

As he drew nearer, he recognised the shape of a bower in the mass of shadow he had seen, and within it vaguely guessed the form of human faces. It was evidently a large party. He could distinguish at least half-a-dozen different voices.

He stepped on to the bridge, and leant against the rail. There was a momentary pause in the discussion in the bower. Evidently its occupants were taking stock of him. The subject of their argument, however, interested him, and he stood motionless, hoping they would resume. He could have represented but a shadow to them, even though the steadily waxing light of the moon fell directly upon his head and shoulders; and he rightly divined that, as other people besides the inhabitants of Brineweald Park would probably enjoy the right of using the grounds, they could not possibly tell who he was.