Gradually the discussion was resumed.

"What you don't seem to see," said a voice, which to Lord Henry appeared to reveal the arrogance of its owner, "is that your Inner Light is but a vague and vapid abstraction, a mere whiff of the whisky bottle, but not the whisky itself."

Here followed a delighted feminine laugh, full of music and malice.

"And how do you hope," continued the arrogant voice, "ever to be able to build anything upon a vaporous abstraction? What authority can a spook have? What appeal to love, to fear, to reverence, to worship?"

"Come to bed, Gerald!" said a rather sweet feminine voice, which was half-drowned in the general laughter it seemed to provoke. "These discussions never lead to anything, and I'm sick of them. They only disturb your sleep."

"Half a minute, Mrs. Tribe," said another man's voice, which Lord Henry had not heard before, "we have reached an interesting point here. Do let us just settle that!"

"But my husband can only feel these things," continued the soft sweet female voice, "he cannot argue about them. You only laugh at him, so what's the good?"

"I'm not laughing, am I?" said the arrogant voice.

"No, but you make others laugh," persisted the soft sweet voice.

"Leave them to me," interposed a weak male voice, which Lord Henry recognised immediately as that of the Incandescent Gerald. And there was a note so pathetic in the feeble strains of it, that the listener could not help thinking of a hare being overtaken by harriers.

"How can you invite the enlightened nineteenth century to accept the idea of a godhead that is anything else than an abstraction?" continued the weak male voice. "Why, to personify your god is to limit him. How can a god be limited?"

"Bravo, old Tribe!" cried a boy's voice, "that's a jolly good point. Now what have you got to say to that, Malster?"

"To understand him at all," replied the arrogant voice, which Lord Henry now concluded must be Denis Malster's, "is in any case to limit him to the compass of your understanding, even if that can only grasp a monkey on a stick; so why not proceed to personal limitations at once? It makes things much easier for the bulk of humanity, and it also makes love and fear, and therefore morality possible. Without a personal god you feel as if you are dealing only with a natural element, or natural law. But who minds if the sea watched him while he picks his neighbour's pocket? Who cares that the sky is overhearing him when he courts and kisses his neighbour's wife?"

The remark provoked wild outbursts of laughter, followed by the weak voice, which said, "Don't, Agnes, don't fidget! Leave my coat-sleeve alone!"

Lord Henry having formed a fairly accurate estimate of the situation, and realising that little Mrs. Tribe was evidently miserable, felt he could endure it no longer. In any case Malster was having it too much his own way with his chorus of sympathetic females, and so, turning towards the group in the bower, the young nobleman advanced a few paces towards them.

"Forgive me," he began, "but the subject of your discussion, which I could scarcely help overhearing, interests me enormously. Might I be allowed to join in it too?"

Nobody recognised him. From the refined, gentle manner of his speech, he might have been one of the local vicars taking a stroll. Only Malster stirred, as if he felt there was something oddly familiar about the speaker, but seeing that he had no reason to suppose that Lord Henry was anywhere within twenty miles of the place, the identity of the stranger did not immediately occur to him. There was a pause, and then Malster said:

"Move up a bit, Leo! Yes, certainly, sir; we should be glad if you would."

"I'm tired," said the sweet soft female voice, which Lord Henry, as he sat down, realised that he had rightly ascribed to Mrs. Tribe, "I want to go indoors."

"One moment," said the weak voice, which had now become more than usually agitated.

"To begin with," Lord Henry said, "I should like to join issue most violently with the gentleman who has been arguing in favour of a personal god. Nothing,—in the last two centuries has been more fatal to Europe and humanity than this."

There was a general movement as if the whole party wished to draw closer to the speaker, and Stephen Fearwell, who was leaning against one of the outside uprights of the bower, swung round until his head was well inside the shelter.

"Good man!" he ejaculated enthusiastically, as he performed this movement. And Lord Henry recognised his voice as that of the boy who had previously endeavoured to support Gerald Tribe. It was evident that he could feel no deep concern about the issue. He merely wanted Gerald Tribe to get an innings for once against Malster.

"You see, as the supporter of a personal god has very truly pointed out," continued Lord Henry, "the morality of any race, or nation, or group of nations, who believe in a personal god, comes ultimately to derive its authority from the will of that personal god."

"Quite so!" said Denis in the same arrogant tone he had used all the time.

"Yes, but with what result?" Lord Henry demanded.

"With the result—" began the Incandescent Gerald.

"Leave it to him, you silly!" whispered the soft, sweet, female voice with some eagerness. It was clear that Mrs. Tribe had suddenly changed her mind about going to bed.

"With the result," continued Lord Henry emphatically, "that the moment the belief in the personal god declines, as on analysis it must decline, morality declines with it. For morality in such cases is bound up, as you say, with the belief in a personal god. Civilisation, in fact, is once again on the rocks and society is no longer safe—why? Because by making your moral code issue from the lips of your personal god, it has become so much waste paper now that your personal god is beginning to be felt as an absurdity. Thus in a religion with a personal god, heresy always kills two birds with one stone. But once the bird morality is killed, it takes a new civilisation and a new culture to hatch another one. Man can survive without a belief in a personal god; he cannot survive without a morality."

"But a personal god," objected Denis, "is omniscient, all-seeing. He is assumed to know all men's actions, and they dare not do wrong precisely because they know he is watching them. That surely is the best safeguard to decent conduct; it is in fact the meaning of conscience!"

"Yes, I was coming to that point," said Lord Henry gravely, "and what is the outcome of the thousands of years of belief in this omniscient god, who can see all men's action? Why, sir, whoever you are," Lord Henry exclaimed, his voice swelling with indignation, "the result is that to-day things have come to such a pass that it is scarcely possible to trust one man or woman in the whole of these islands to do the right thing against their own interests, when your god, and your god alone is their witness. That is the state to which your belief in an omniscient personal god has reduced us, and you know that what I say is true."

The Incandescent Gerald was so jubilant that he wished to laugh outright; but his keen eager wife prevented him. She had no wish to save the feelings of her husband's tormentor, but she was too much fascinated and spellbound by what she had been able to divine of Lord Henry's personality to brook the coarse interruption. Leonetta and Vanessa were beginning to be conscious of this feeling too, and stared eagerly through the darkness to try to catch a glimpse of the powerful stranger.

"People have got so used to violating even the most elementary principles of savage morality," continued Lord Henry, "without the thunder of your almighty descending on their heads, that there is scarcely a man or woman in Europe to-day who really fears your god as their only witness, who really troubles about your god as their only witness, or who even gives him a passing thought, when they stand absolutely alone before the temptation to perpetrate some mean, despicable or dishonourable action."

Lord Henry was at his best. His words were uttered with extreme precision, his manner was emphatic and passionate, and his mysterious presence in the party only magnified the impression that these characteristics made upon his listeners.

"May I ask who you are?" Denis Malster demanded, leaning forward in the darkness.

"Certainly," replied Lord Henry suavely. "I am Lord Henry Highbarn. I have come here this evening for a rest and a change."

A stillness as of death fell on the party, and the excited breathing of all present could be heard.

"I thought I knew you," Denis exclaimed at last, recovering from the unpleasant shock the announcement had given him. "But I couldn't for the life of me think who you could be."

"Do they know you are here?" Leonetta gasped.

"I presume so," said Lord Henry, "my luggage was taken up about an hour ago."

He rose, and immediately the rest of the party did likewise. Out on the bank of the Sprigg, in the moonlight, Denis then proceeded to introduce all those present, and the whole gathering slowly crossed the bridge and moved towards the house.

Lord Henry, with Denis on his left and Leonetta on his right, was in the van, but the others clustered round as closely as they could, and conversation was general.

Women of whatever station in life and from whatever clime, have a very acute sense of strength and power in the opposite sex. If modern society has dispensed with the arena and with the tilting jousts of chivalry, it has nevertheless not deadened either women's passion for the tournament, or the keenness with which they divine the merits of their respective knights. And if argument is the only remaining form in which that clash of arms of olden times is witnessed by them to-day, it is with no diminished interest or perspicuity that they register its results. Ordinary games hardly meet all the demands of the true joust; for, in the first place, they do not include to the same extent as argument, that formidable element in modern knightly equipment, the intellect; and, secondly, because to the most thick-skinned there is something so much more mortifying, ignominious, and humiliating in being beaten in argument than in losing a game, that argument still retains, though in an attenuated and spiritualised form, something of the excitement and gravity of armed conflict.

Denis Malster was well aware of all this,—indeed had he not thrown down his gauntlet every night to the Incandescent Gerald precisely because he knew how well he himself looked in the lists, and how well he tilted? But perhaps Lord Henry was even better aware than Denis of the important part played by intellectual male conflict in the presence of women; and he moreover realised more certainly than Denis could possibly have guessed, the precise effect on the female mind of repeated victories in this modern and polite form of tournament.

Certainly as Leonetta, Vanessa, Agatha, and Mrs. Tribe hastened their footsteps to catch every word that fell from Lord Henry's lips, they were largely animated by the natural curiosity provoked by the presence of a distinguished stranger; but in their eagerness to get close up to him and to be in constant earshot of his voice, there was also the tacit admission, possibly unrealised by any of them as yet, that in him they had recognised a knight of peculiar power and of brilliant style.

They had not concerned themselves with the merits of the actual point that had been at issue. All they felt was that a certain speaker had spoken, not as one of the scribes, but as one having authority, and that the former champion of the lists had for once been worsted in their presence.

All this was in the air, unuttered, and even imperfectly present in unconsciousness. Only Denis Malster, a little uneasy and a little resentful, and Lord Henry, as usual perfectly serene and urbane, could have accurately explained what had taken place.

* * * * *

Lord Henry had been right. Cleopatra had given up. Jaded by the unremitting exertions of a week's struggle for supremacy with her sister, quite unable to face another week of similarly exhausting effort, and unwilling to acknowledge herself defeated, illness had come almost as a boon, almost as an angel of mercy. Something seemed to have snapped inside her,—her main-spring it appeared to be; and now she hugged her ailment, her weakness, or whatever it was, because it seemed to offer her the chance of a graceful retreat before her ebbing forces compelled her to surrender.

She did not come to breakfast now, and retired early. She half hoped, perhaps, that the very air of fragility and pathetic languor, which she had half consciously adopted, would draw even keener attention than had her former attitude of robust equality with her sister. Vanity is full of resources when it is wounded. But her attacks of sudden faintness she could not control; they represented the only genuine feature of her indisposition,—at least they, and the continued insomnia which was an important symptom.

On the first evening of his visit, therefore, Lord Henry did not see her, neither did she know as she tossed about in her bed at "The Fastness" that he was anywhere within call. Instinctively she felt that her mother's deep sympathy and anxiety to help were with her, but it never occurred to her that the maternal devotion to her would ever extend to extreme measures.

Meanwhile Lord Henry was quietly taking stock of everybody at Brineweald Park. An hour in the drawing-room there, after his walk in the grounds, supplied him with much useful information; and by the time the car arrived to take the Delarayne household back to "The Fastness," he had already formed certain very valuable conclusions.

It was clear to him that Denis Malster was head and shoulders above the other men of the party, and but for a certain priggishness of manner which, though offensive, was not altogether unamenable to correction, by far the most attractive English male he had seen for some time. He had almost forgotten their first encounter at the Inner Light meeting, and was more favourably impressed than he had expected to be by the young man who had quite evidently been the cause of Mrs. Delarayne's domestic troubles.

Conversely, the impression Lord Henry had made upon Denis Malster had been unfavourable in the extreme. Here was a man who could not be relied upon to be the same two days running. On the occasion of his first visit to Bullion Ltd. he had looked a vagabond; his clothes had hung in shapeless folds about his body, completely concealing whatever symmetry it might have possessed.

Denis remembered the faded green tie and the badly fitting collar he had seen Lord Henry wearing at the Inner Light meeting, the same green tie and badly fitting collar in which the young nobleman had had the simplicity to be photographed for the Bystander only a few weeks previously,—and filled with consternation at the unaccountable metamorphosis compared it with Lord Henry's present elegant neck-gear.

It was monstrous to be so unreliable, monstrous to be so saltatory, so capricious, as to upset other people's surest reckonings.

On the following morning it was obvious that Denis had made a supreme effort. It was an effect in white flannels with a superb foulard tie of navy blue and wonderful white buckskin shoes. He reached the breakfast-table at Brineweald Park unusually early, so eager was he to discover what further sartorial devilry Lord Henry would be guilty of, and he was not a little disappointed to find only Guy Tyrrell down.

"Hullo Malster!" cried Guy, looking up from a partly consumed dish of pork chop. "What the hell's up,—are you going to be married?"

"Don't be an ass!" Denis replied, helping himself to devilled kidneys.

"You're looking a howling swell this morning," continued the junior secretary.

"Oh, you mean my rig-out?" Denis enquired with a feeble pretence at not having understood the meaning of Guy's remarks. "That's nothing. As a matter of fact I hadn't tried these on since they were made, and I was wondering what they were like."

"Oh, tell us what you think of Lord Henry!" Guy pursued after a while.

"What do you?" Denis retorted, endeavouring to show indifference.

"He's rather wonderful," Guy exclaimed.

"What do you mean—wonderful?" the other demanded with an unmistakable sinking feeling in his stomach.

"Well, you know, smart in every sense of the word, brains and everything."

If Guy had deliberately intended to give Denis indigestion he could not have set about his task with greater scientific understanding.

In a moment Miss Mallowcoid appeared. Breakfast to her was an important meal only when she was visiting. At other times she was satisfied with a minute fish-cake, or a mere postage-stamp of thin bacon, particularly when she had to show by example how megalosaurian was the appetite of the frail Mrs. Gerald Tribe. She was quickly followed by Sir Joseph and Mr. and Mrs. Tribe, and a few minutes later by Lord Henry himself.

At the sight of Lord Henry, Denis grew unusually silent and the Tribes exceptionally voluble. Sir Joseph asked the conventional questions of his new guest, and on receiving the customary conventional replies, serenely continued his meal. Miss Mallowcoid, on the other hand, insisted on attending with scrupulous unselfishness to the latest arrival's wants, and encouraging him in every way to partake as plentifully as she herself of the generous board.

Meanwhile covertly and methodically Denis Malster was busy confirming his worst suspicions of this scion of the house of Highbarn, and his final conclusion was that the young man was behaving with deliberate malice.

Clad in a perfect grey flannel suit of graceful design in which even the seams in black thread were made an attractive feature, and with a collar and tie that had evidently been selected with taste, there was yet that character of artless unconsciousness in his attire which gave Lord Henry at once the appearance and the ease, without any of the traces of effort, of a well-groomed man. Denis felt that no one could pertinently have asked Lord Henry whether he was going to be married that day, and yet there was a glamour about his person which was unmistakable.

"There is no means of anticipating the wiles of charlatans," he thought as he finished his breakfast; and he braced himself for a difficult day.

Thus his imagination played with the new element that chance seemed to have dropped in his path, and as he smoked his after-breakfast cigarette on the terrace with Guy Tyrrell he was not in the happiest of moods.

Sir Joseph, the Tribes, Miss Mallowcoid, and Lord Henry were discussing the programme of the day.

"I suppose I had better consult Mrs. Delarayne," said Lord Henry, "before I dispose of any of my time. She will naturally——"

"Oh, don't trouble to do that!" Miss Mallowcoid exclaimed. "You are down here for a rest, and must do just as you like, Lord Henry."

Sir Joseph, who was the only member of the party in Mrs. Delarayne's secret, understood however what the young man meant. He might possibly have to remain with Cleopatra.

"Quite right, Lord Henry," he said. "We really cannot do anything before you see Mrs. Delarayne."

At that moment a thumping noise from the direction of Brineweald announced the usual morning visit of young Stephen Fearwell, and sure enough, up the main drive, at top speed, there appeared the familiar silhouette of the youth on his motor-cycle. This time, however, he did not seem to be alone, fair arms seemed to be clinging to him, and the flutter of a dress and a sun-bonnet seemed outlined at his back.

The party on the terrace concentrated into a group at the top of the steps, and the motor-cycle swung like a rocket round the last bend of the drive.

"Why, if it's not that little terror, Leonetta!" cried Miss Mallowcoid.

Denis Malster made an impulsive movement to descend the steps and checked himself. Never before had Leonetta accompanied Stephen like this. What could it signify?

The cycle stopped, and in a moment the children were running up the steps.

"Peachy has sent me for the morning at least," announced Leonetta, as Sir Joseph greeted her, "and she wants Lord Henry to go to "The Fastness" with Stephen at once, if he doesn't mind."

"Anything wrong?" Sir Joseph demanded.

It was difficult to imagine that such a sunny, happy messenger could bring sad tidings, and Sir Joseph had to smile as he contemplated her.

"I believe Cleo has had another fall, or something," replied the girl. "Anyhow, Agatha and Vanessa will be here in a minute, and Stephen of course will come back. Peachy and Cleo will stay at home."

Leonetta eyed Lord Henry up and down as she spoke in that solemn searching way in which virgins take stock of men. It was Nature measuring the worth of one of her own products through the medium of another of her own products.

"Am I to go at once?" Lord Henry enquired, glancing for a moment at Leonetta, and then turning to Sir Joseph.

"Yes, please," said Leonetta and Stephen together.

Lord Henry descended the steps while Stephen and Leonetta both assured him that he could make himself quite comfortable on the back of the motor-cycle. It was noticeable, however, that he paid more attention to Stephen than to the girl.

"I can order the car, and we can all go to the beach," said Sir Joseph.

Denis Malster was jubilant. There stood Leonetta, a dream of beauty in her simple cotton dress and sun-bonnet, magnetic in her grace and luxuriant health, and Lord Henry was to be out of the way for at least three hours.

At last the couple on the motor-cycle were ready. "Sorry you're leaving us," cried Sir Joseph. "But we'll see you later."

Leonetta remained at the foot of the steps waving her hand, but Lord Henry took no notice; he merely flourished his hat to Sir Joseph and Miss Mallowcoid on the terrace.



CHAPTER XIII

Mrs. Delarayne, hatless and tearful with impatience, was at the gate waiting for the sound that was to announce the arrival of Lord Henry. Inside Cleopatra had just recovered from another fainting fit, and Agatha, who was with her, had rendered valuable help. Mrs. Delarayne had never considered her weeks at Brineweald as a source of joy; if this continued, however, they would prove absolutely intolerable.

At last the familiar thumping sound became audible in the distance. Yes, it was that dear boy Stephen, and someone was riding on the pillion-seat of his cycle.

In a moment cyclist and passenger dismounted at Mrs. Delarayne's gate, but the latter alone accompanied the lady into the house.

"Oh, Lord Henry," gasped the widow, "it is really very tiresome. Poor Cleopatra has had another of her attacks, and I thought it would be best if she saw you immediately afterwards. That's why I sent for you in all that hurry."

"I'm afraid the attacks themselves can tell me little," observed Lord Henry gravely. "It really didn't matter when I saw her. However, I might just as well speak to her now."

"Half a minute," whispered Mrs. Delarayne, leaving him in the drawing-room. "I'll go and prepare her." And so saying she vanished into the adjoining apartment, which, as far as Lord Henry was able to tell from a glimpse, appeared to be the billiard-room.

High words seemed to pass between the widow, her daughter, and Agatha; for, although Mrs. Delarayne had closed the door behind her, Lord Henry could distinctly catch snatches of their discussion. It was clear that Cleopatra was resolutely objecting to see him, and that her mother and Agatha were doing their utmost to induce her to alter her mind.

At last Mrs. Delarayne returned.

"Isn't it tiresome," she exclaimed, taking a chair, "now she absolutely refuses to see you!"

"It's not surprising," observed Lord Henry, sitting down beside her.

"Yes, but she must see you; I insist," Mrs. Delarayne pursued.

"Her indisposition," muttered Lord Henry, "is probably a salutary refuge. She imagines that she alone knows the cause of it, and that it would therefore be utterly futile to be examined and worried by people who cannot possibly trace it to its origin. She knows, moreover, that even if it is traced to its origin, the discovery can only prove humiliating to her pride."

"Yes, but——"

"We must manoeuvre."

The widow did not understand.

"I mean, if you and Agatha will only disappear, I'll walk into the room and prevail upon her to make friends. That is to say," he added, "provided she doesn't escape meanwhile."

Mrs. Delarayne fingered her necklace pensively, and jerked her head forward once or twice in solemn silence.

"That's the only thing, I'm afraid," said Lord Henry.

The widow rose, still staring very thoughtfully before her.

"Don't make too heavy weather of it," continued Lord Henry. "It's not serious. It will all be well in a day or two."

"Really?" she exclaimed brightening.

"Certainly," he said.

Mrs. Delarayne surveyed him a moment. She hadn't the faintest idea what he was driving at, but such was her confidence in the soundness of his judgment that she started on her way to fulfil his instructions. There was but one circumstance that made her feel that Lord Henry was a trifle unfamiliar to her on this visit, and that was his unusually well-groomed appearance. In his present outfit he seemed just a little terrifying. It was as if she divined that his more normal, his more fashionable exterior on this occasion, made him accessible to other women besides herself.

She smiled a little nervously and left the room, leaving the door ajar.

He rose as soon as she had gone, heard her say a few words to her daughter and Agatha, and a second or two later, was given the signal which announced that the ground was clear.

He entered the room as if by accident, glanced casually round, and in doing so got a fleeting glimpse of Cleopatra.

She was lying back in a deep armchair, her chin resting in her hand. He noticed that she raised her head, regarded him with an expression of mingled interest, fear, and surprise, then slightly stirring in her chair, looked about her for some means of escape. Her back was turned to the light so that her face was in shadow, and with the object of leaving her under the protection of the discreet lighting she had chosen, he sat down facing her, with the whole glare of the sunlit garden upon him.

"Miss Delarayne," he began, "please don't move on my account. I don't think I shall disturb you. I heard you would not see me. Quite right too, perhaps. But surely there can be no harm in our talking, if it does not annoy you."

The woman in Cleopatra now urged her to show more animation, beneath this young man's gaze, than was compatible with her avowed condition of extreme lassitude and feebleness.

"I only said I did not wish to see you," she declared, "because I felt better alone."

He was a little staggered by the extraordinary beauty of this girl who so far had not taken her eyes off him. He had expected that Mrs. Delarayne's daughters would be beautiful,—and in Leonetta he had had his expectations confirmed. In Cleopatra, however, as he surveyed her then, he discerned a degree of nobility and pride, which were apparent neither in her mother nor her sister, and which lent a singular queenliness to her impelling charms.

"There, of course, you were wrong," he said with gentle persuasiveness, blinking rapidly. "We are no longer wild beasts of prey who can creep into caves to recover or die alone. We are human beings, social animals. Two heads are better than one, even in the matter of getting well."

She frowned and her expression grew more solemn than ever. If this were Lord Henry, the mental picture she had formed of him had evidently been very far from the truth; nor had Denis Malster's description of him been even fair. She wondered, as she examined his fine thoughtful head, and handsome athletic figure, telling to such advantage in his impeccable attire, what motive Denis could have had in saying what he had about the young noblemen before her. She was deeply interested, and for the time being this feeling overcame every other motive in her breast.

"If people don't understand you," she said, "it is surely better to be alone."

He smiled in his roguish irresistible way. "If—" he repeated.

A slight flush sprang into Cleopatra's cheeks, and quickly vanished again. He was distinctly attractive—almost bewildering. She was going to expostulate: "Surely you don't imagine that," when something which she read in his face, in his intelligent hands, and in his general manner made her feel that the words would sound banal.

"I wish you wouldn't stay with me, Lord Henry," she pleaded. He rose. Whatever she may have meant, the plea sounded sincere enough, and he did not wish to harass her.

"Of course I won't," he said, "if it is unpleasant to you," and he moved towards the door.

"You surely want to be out in the sun," she added quickly. "You don't want to stay indoors. Besides I am better now."

"Yes," he said, with his fingers on the handle of the door leading to the drawing-room. "One always feels a little stronger when one is excited. That is only natural. The presence even of the meanest stranger always causes a little excitement."

She sighed. She began to wish he would sit down again. "But I assure you I feel quite well now." The conviction was gradually stealing over her that it was ignominious to be ill in the neighbourhood of this young man. She asked herself whether he had seen Leonetta, and what he thought of her, and she was seized by an incontrollable shudder.

"You soon will be quite well," said Lord Henry gravely.

"How can you tell!" she exclaimed, smiling incredulously and with some satisfaction too as she noticed that he left the door and returned to his seat.

"Well, any way," he continued, "tell me just exactly what you feel. Try to explain to me exactly how you feel just before you fall. I need hardly tell you that it is of course not natural for a girl of your age to have these sudden fits of collapse. Can you tell me about it?"

There was a pause, and then she replied, with a strain of defiance in her voice: "I frankly don't know. It's something I can't explain."

"Is it something you frankly don't know, or something you can't explain?" he demanded.

She looked up as she heard her reply repeated in that form, and was a little discomfited.

"Will you try?" he added. "It is just possible, though, I admit, not probable, that I may be able to help you when I know."

"Well—" she began, determined if possible that he at least should never know the truth.

"Yes?" he interjected eagerly.

"Directly after lunch the day before yesterday," Cleopatra pursued, "—I must tell you we had curried chicken for lunch,—I felt a heavy sensation in the pit of my stomach. I felt sick and giddy, my hands grew cold, and about tea-time, I was walking in this very room, and my knees gave way."

He looked at her beneath lowered brows, as he tugged at his mesh of hair. "So you think it is all a fit of indigestion," he said.

She wondered whether he knew that she was lying. "Yes," she said.

There was a pause, and he looked away from her.

"Remember, Miss Delarayne," he muttered after a while, "that it will be difficult to start me off on a false scent, even if it is as savoury as curried chicken."

Cleopatra started a little at this remark; she noticed his enigmatic smile, and her brows twitched nervously.

"I don't see what you mean," she stammered.

"I mean," said Lord Henry, his head still bowed, and his free hand picking imaginary atoms of fluff from his trousers, "that if you tell me the truth, our two heads may make some progress. If you deliberately mislead me, although the task will even then not be beyond the wit of man, it will be a little more difficult."

"But I assure you, Lord Henry," she protested, "I am not trying to mislead you."

"Come, Miss Delarayne, come!" he remonstrated. Then he added, after a pause, "But perhaps I am wrong in assuming that you should feel any confidence in me. After all, why should you?"

She had never yet been in the presence of a man who inspired such complete confidence, or who made her desire so ardently to be up and about, active and well in his presence. Nevertheless her indomitable pride made her moderate the manner of her reply.

"What can I say?" she exclaimed, pretending to be at the end of her resources.

He flicked an imaginary feather from his knee. "Shall I prompt you?" he enquired.

His coolness at once mastered and terrified her.

"How can you!" she ejaculated, her resistance failing.

"Why haven't you told me, for instance," he began, "that you have scarcely slept for five or six nights."

Her mouth fell. "Lord Henry!"

"Why haven't you said that last night, or perhaps for the last two nights, you have tried a certain narcotic without much success? Sleep is a very essential thing, Miss Delarayne. One cannot go without it with impunity. You probably realise that."

She stammered the beginning of a denial, but the words died on her lips. She was too stiff with alarm to be able to speak. After all, vanity is a great power even in the noblest of us.

"Miss Delarayne," Lord Henry continued, "you and I can keep a secret. I can at any rate. Let me see whether I cannot tell you why you have tried to mislead me."

Her ears were hot, and she glanced involuntarily towards the garden door. Had any one else than Lord Henry revealed a fraction of his ability to pierce her secret she would have fled.

"A good suggestion," he exclaimed, following the direction of her eyes. "Let's sit in the garden."

He opened the door, and she walked out in front of him,—stiff, proud, and erect. He noticed a shadow running back into the house, and presumed it was Mrs. Delarayne.

They reached the small marquee, two or three wicker chairs lay about the lawn outside it, and they sat down. Now for the first time he could form a just estimate of his companion's beauty, and he experienced some difficulty in removing his glance from her. The stay at Brineweald had tanned her face, and deepened the warm colour of her skin, and though the recent vigils had somewhat deadened the brilliance of her eyes, they still flashed with a dignity and independence that were a warning to any one who might have thoughts of perpetrating an indiscretion in her presence.

Lord Henry tugged at his mesh, and wondered whether he had better proceed. This girl's secret, wrapped as it was in her pride and, worse still, in her vanity, seemed a very sacred thing to penetrate. Never had he felt that divination could lie so close to desecration as when he watched this magnificent creature before him, making her last proud stand in front of the humiliating cause of her breakdown. His heart went out to her, however; he suddenly felt the impulse, not of the trained psychologist to cure a patient, but of a gallant knight to save a beautiful lady in distress. He was prepared to use every weapon in order to defeat the dragon, and as his strongest weapons seemed to be his deep knowledge of the human soul, and his long experience in curing it, he proceeded on his old lines. But how different he was, notwithstanding, from the Lord Henry of the Ashbury Sanatorium none knew better than himself. He could no longer be cool and collected. He must fight with the girl against the canker in her heart as if he himself also felt the pain of it. He must tear it out and save her peace of mind, like the therapeutist that he was; but he could not help also being the fellow-sufferer, so deeply did he feel that he wished to share her woe and her fears.

"Well," he said, "I was beginning to tell you why you wished to lead me astray."

"I didn't wish to lead you astray," she cried, almost desperate lest he should guess the truth.

"Very often," Lord Henry continued, "we can confide in a friend concerning a blow directed at our hearts, in fact that is actually one of the uses of friendship. But it is difficult sometimes to confess the pain of a blow levelled at our self-esteem, at our vanity."

He looked discreetly away as he spoke, but he noticed that she stirred at this point.

"Not only your heart and your womanly yearnings are at stake here, Miss Delarayne," he pursued. "These when they are thwarted simply make one sweetly miserable, languorously self-commiserating,—but it is your pride and vanity that are concerned."

She regarded him now as one magnetised, hypnotised, petrified.

If every line of his face, and every sign in his whole person had not convinced her of his exceptional character, she would have fled his presence even now, never to confront him again.

"These are real savages when they are provoked," he went on suavely. "What do they care for the destruction their anger brings upon your body? They would devastate your whole beauty without scruple in order to calm their tempestuous rage. They begin by undermining the trust you feel in your own claims. They then proceed to keep you awake at night and to toss you about in your bed, when you ought to be refreshing your body with sleep; and, finally, when they have ravished your sleep, they open your mind to all the hideous spectres and shapes that are always waiting, like hungry unemployed, to get busy in a wakeful and anxious brain."

"Lord Henry!" gasped the girl, starting as if to rise.

"I am saying these things for you, Miss Delarayne," he said quickly, "because it is perhaps too much to expect you to say them yourself, and because you will find that their expression will relieve you. Oh, if I can only do that,—surely——"

She looked at him for a moment and noted the fervour in his face, the energy in his hands, and the honest nobility of his eyes; and anxious as she now felt to escape from his terrifying presence, she was riveted by his personality and could not move.

"It was not only the prospect of having all your life to stroke the cheeks of other people's children, Miss Delarayne, that you dreaded. This is a natural, noble, splendid dread, it is true, which every woman worthy of the name should feel when she reaches your age. But there is something far more poisonous, far more harmful to your system in the present situation, and that is the thought that you may have all your life to stroke the cheeks of other people's children, thanks to a creature who, delightful as she may be, you nevertheless rightly regard not only as your subordinate, not only as your junior both in age and claims, but also as one towards whom it is loathsome to you to feel any such feelings as rivalry."

Cleopatra gripped the arms of her wicker chair, and turned eyes full of horror upon her companion.

"It is this that is slowly causing your strength to ebb," he went on; "it is this acid which is corroding your life."

She gasped. "But it is a very real and additional pain," she exclaimed hoarsely.

"It is, of course," he assented. "It would be absurd to ignore it. Just as it would be absurd to ignore the extra filip which your presence, or your part in the business, adds to this, Leonetta's first affair. For what is a man to her, after all? Another feather in her cap,—another bauble! She has left school and her maiden's vanity,—we'll call it self-esteem,—bids her at once try to confirm the high claims she rightly thinks her beauty and her sex entitle her to make upon the world. She wants to win her first crown as May Queen. No deeper passion is involved. And should a man be induced, in his arrogance, to take these first steps of hers seriously, she would regret all her life what was merely a schoolgirl's whim. For society would take no pity on her, and would compel her to spend her life with a creature of whom she had only solicited the flattery of a season."

Cleopatra bowed her head, and toyed nervously with a bracelet. She was breathing heavily, but was now showing no desire to escape.

"But there is a difference, a very deep difference," he continued, "between the purchaser of a pearl necklet and the purchaser of a loaf of bread. The first is acquiring merely another ornament, another set-off to her beauty, another weapon in the fight for supremacy, and she performs the act with a frivolous smile. The other is obtaining a primitive and fundamental necessity, and she does it solemnly, aware as she is of its real uses. The first is the schoolgirl receiving her first attentions from a man; the second is the woman of passion who knows what life has promised her."

"Lord Henry," Cleopatra ejaculated, "how wonderfully you understand!"

"What aggravates your pain a thousandfold is the thought you are being robbed of a necessity, by one who uses it as a toy. You feel as a starving child might feel who sees the loaf that has been snatched from him being used as a football."

A tear trickled down Cleopatra's face. "That is wonderfully true," she assented, and brushed the tear quickly away.

He paused and looked at her for a moment beneath lowered brows. A wonderful serenity had come upon her, and her lips no longer seemed tormented with words they did not dare to utter.

"What is so terrible, Lord Henry," she said at last, "what the world does not seem to understand, and will not see, is that a girl with a sister is placed in intimate, daily, and inevitable contact with the very woman who is her most constant and most formidable rival. She sees her grow up and gradually assume womanly shape. She watches the development of every feature with eyes starting out of her head with horror. While her sister is at the gawky age, she gets a short breathing space, because a child at that time is so clumsy, so unattractive and foolish. But all of a sudden this vanishes. The child becomes a woman, startlingly beautiful and seductive. She realises it herself, and naturally wants her successes, as Baby did."

"Who's Baby?" Lord Henry interrupted.

"My sister, Leonetta."

"Oh, I see—go on."

"Then you do everything you can to make her feel she is not grown up yet. But it is hopeless. In vain you try to thrust her back into childhood——"

"By calling her 'Baby' instead of 'Leonetta,' for instance," said Lord Henry.

"Oh, of course!" Cleopatra cried. "I didn't think of that." Then she continued after a while, "But of course they want to shine, and you can do nothing. You are expected to love them, cherish them; you are even expected to take an interest in their clothes, in their hair! You even have to go and help put the finishing touches, when all the time you dread seeing her dressed up. It is excruciating, it is brutal. It is inhuman, Lord Henry! Shall I tell you the truth,—though it's dreadful, wicked. Well, I hate my sister. I loathe her with a deadly loathing. My fingers itch to—oh, all through the night I think of some means of disfiguring her. It is the most diabolical cruelty to put any woman into the position I am in now. I long to fly away, where I shall never, never see her again. It's that and nothing else that has given me these fainting fits. I have controlled my loathing too long. One day, if only fate is kind, I shall fall down and be killed."

She collapsed at the end of this tirade, and burst into a torrent of tears. There was no affectation about that flood. It was the expression of real anguish, of long-pent-up suffering, and Lord Henry knew what infinite good it would do.

"Come, come, Miss Delarayne!" he exclaimed, still fearing that the humiliation of the discovery, despite the relief it gave, would prove too much for her immensely proud nature. "I share your secret now. I am strong. You will feel my strength with you. You are no longer alone. You will not have any more of these fainting fits."

She still sobbed, and it was heartrending to Lord Henry to watch her. Unmoved as he was, as a rule, by women's tears, he felt that these, coming as they did from such a proud spirit, were almost like blood issuing from a wound.

"And now what will you think of me?" she said at last, lifting her head, and drying her eyes. "Now that you have heard how unwomanly I am, how wicked, how criminally wicked! Because, I suppose, morally speaking, to lie awake and scheme out one's sister's disfigurement is as bad as to accomplish it."

He smiled. "You don't imagine, do you," he said, "that I am so thoroughly modern and romantic as to turn away from an eagle when I find it has not only angel's wings but also claws?"

She laughed. "How did you manage to know so much about me?" she demanded. "Ordinary men know and understand nothing. They would be shocked and horrified, if I spoke to them about my sister as I have spoken to you. How do you know these things?"

"There is much less difference between human beings than one thinks," he replied. "To know one decent man and one decent woman well, is to be intimately acquainted with the rest of the decent world, I can assure you."

"How I dreaded that anybody should know!" she exclaimed, "and yet how simple it all seems to me now that you should know!"

"And now why don't you go and lie down for a bit," he said.

She rose, and without looking back at him, walked towards the house. Her gait was lighter, more assured, more self-confident. It was the gait of one who had ceased to run the gauntlet.



CHAPTER XIV

It wanted an hour and a half to lunch time. Mrs. Delarayne appeared to have left "The Fastness," and Lord Henry was alone in the garden, meditating and maturing his plans.

A strange and pleasant titillation of all his nerves, somewhat similar to that which in the morning convinces a man that he has had a refreshing and healing sleep, seemed to hint to him that here he was not the usual neuropathic therapeutist of Ashbury fame, not a mere specialist spectator, but an acting figure, a participator in this family affair. Could it be his old and deep-rooted admiration for Mrs. Delarayne that made him feel this hearty concern about a patient's condition?

He yawned lazily and stretched himself in the fierce August sunlight. Cleopatra's empty chair brought back to him her queenly presence, her passionate confession, and the thought of what it must have cost her. He felt a primitive and violent impulse to perform miracles for the girl whose health and happiness, out of blind friendship for her mother, he had undertaken to protect. He even felt prepared to go to greater lengths in rescuing her self-esteem than he would ever have dared to go with other people. For, to become normal again, he knew that her self-esteem must be revived.

Suddenly, in the midst of his meditations, the sound of somebody approaching from the direction of the house made him turn his head. It was Mrs. Delarayne, and, some distance behind her, the whole of "The Fastness" and Brineweald Park party.

He rose with alacrity and, seizing her by the arm, led her across the lawn to the far end of the garden.

"Quick," he said, "before the others join us."

She followed, looking up at him with the deepest interest.

"Do you want Leonetta to marry Malster?" he demanded.

"Oh no, most certainly not!" cried the widow with angry emphasis. "Anything but that. I have taken the most profound dislike to him. That must be avoided at all costs. The child doesn't know her own mind. Besides, he doesn't deserve her, and Cleopatra's feelings have surely been outraged enough. No, most emphatically not. She would only learn to despise him in a couple of months. In fact, I believe Sir Joseph is dismissing him from Bullion's."

"I thought you would take that view," he said. "You are not forgetting, I suppose, that they are very much in love with each other."

"In love!" she exclaimed. "Why, Leonetta would fall in love with a stuffed owl at present, provided it could dance attendance on her."

He grunted. "Now one thing more. Do you agree with me that, beautiful, fascinating, and bewitching as Leonetta undoubtedly is, she would be all the better for realising for once that she cannot have everything her own way?"

"She's an over-confident little hussy," ejaculated Mrs. Delarayne. "I've tried to make her feel that myself, but parents are not much good at that sort of thing. Children think we do it out of spite, you know. That's what I used to think of my own mother."

"It would make her deeper, more reflective, more desirable."

"Certainly," agreed the widow.

"Now let us go back," said the young man, and they returned to the others who had settled themselves round the marquee.

"Ah, here's Lord Henry!" Vanessa cried. "We'll ask him what he thinks!"

Leonetta was silent, because the difference of opinion concerned Denis, and she could not take sides against him. So she contented herself with observing Lord Henry in that grave, interested manner, which is always a sign that something deeper than consciousness is taking stock of an object.

The moment Lord Henry had settled himself in a chair, Stephen Fearwell, who was at the stage of distant and inarticulate adoration towards him, dropped on the grass in front of him, at Agatha's feet, and contemplated him with grave interest.

Stimulated pleasantly as he had been by his interview with Cleopatra, Lord Henry was still enough of a youth and a man to feel equally moved by the subtle influence of the beautiful girls and the silent young men about him. This was just the situation in which experience had always taught him he could shine to the best advantage, and in which his formidable weapons could be wielded with the finest effect.

"We are discussing poetry, Lord Henry," said Guy Tyrrell.

"Yes," said Stephen a little shyly, "those two fellows Guy and Denis have had a fit of indigestion I should think; they've been talking about what they call Victorian verse the whole morning. Look, Denis has got his Browning with him still. You don't like poetry, do you?" Stephen blushed a little. It was his first long and direct appeal to the man he had been secretly admiring ever since the previous evening.

"But I do very much indeed!" Lord Henry protested.

Miss Mallowcoid, Leonetta, Denis, and Guy laughed triumphantly at this, and Vanessa, Stephen, Agatha, and Sir Joseph stirred awkwardly.

"We're just four against four,—isn't it funny?" cried Vanessa, jerking Sir Joseph's arm in which hers was locked. "Of course the Tribes are on our side too, but they stayed at Stonechurch shopping."

"So I'm to give the casting vote, am I?" Lord Henry enquired.

"Yes, yes!" exclaimed Vanessa, clapping her hands eagerly, "and you'll give it to us, won't you, Lord Henry! Please!"

Leonetta regarded her schoolmate with grave disapproval, and as she glanced down at her hands, raised her eyebrows in grieved surprise.

"Well," said Denis, "you see, Lord Henry, I've been telling these people about the curious decline in poetry reading, and in the appreciation of poetry, which is noticeable nowadays."

"I confess I never read it," Sir Joseph averred. "I can never make out what the fellow's driving at, turning everything upside down and inside out!"

Vanessa cried "Hear, hear!" and the baronet laughed uproariously.

"'Ow can people read the stuff?" he pursued.

"I can't read it," said Stephen, "because it entirely fails to interest me."

"I can't read it," Agatha declared, "because it all seems to me mere beautiful words."

"Chiefly archaic!" added Stephen.

"I never read it," Vanessa observed, "because you have to wade through such quantities of stuff before you can find anything worth remembering."

Miss Mallowcoid, Leonetta, Guy, and Denis laughed.

"I tell them there's something lacking in them," snapped Miss Mallowcoid, looking as unlike a poetical muse as it was possible to be.

Lord Henry turned to Denis. "You hear what they have said?" he enquired.

"Yes, they've been repeating that the whole morning," Denis rejoined.

"Their voices are at least those of sincerity," said Lord Henry. "Neither can you say they are exceptionally ill-favoured human beings. Without wishing to cast any aspersions on you, Miss Mallowcoid, Leonetta, and Guy, I think an impartial judge might be excused if he regarded your opponents as at least as intelligent as yourselves."

"Unquestionably," Denis admitted.

"Of course!" cried Guy.

Miss Mallowcoid and Leonetta, however, who were not at all persuaded that they could excuse such a judge, looked stonily unconvinced.

"Well, then," said Lord Henry, "that shows we must seek the cause of this modern indifference to poetry elsewhere than in the inferiority of those who refuse to read it."

"Good!" cried the baronet, and Agatha, Vanessa, and Stephen cheered.

"The question is," Lord Henry continued, "why is poetry not read to-day?"

"What is poetry, to begin with?" Vanessa demanded.

Everybody agreed that this was obviously the first thing to decide, and various definitions were given, none of which proved satisfactory. Denis Malster's definition which was: "Fine thoughts expressed in rhythmic order, and sometimes rhymed," was rejected by Lord Henry.

"You must get out of your mind altogether, the idea that poetry is all exalted vapourings, and high-browed sublime blue steam!" he said. "Its most important characteristic is that it adopts a mnemonic form,—that is to say, the form you would instinctively cast words into if you wished to remember them."

This was generally agreed to.

"But what is it that can justly claim the right of a mnemonic form?" Lord Henry exclaimed. "Clearly only those things that are worth remembering,—important, vital things!"

Vanessa who was the only person present whose nimble mind foresaw Lord Henry's conclusion, cheered at this point.

"Very well, then," he continued. "A man who casts his thought or his emotion into a poetical or mnemonic form, implies that he is dealing with thoughts or emotions that are important or vital enough to be remembered. If they fall short of this standard, he is dressing asses in lions' skins!"

Stephen and Vanessa looked at each other and smiled approvingly.

"The disappointment felt is then all the greater," Lord Henry added, "seeing that the form leads us to anticipate important things and we do not get them. In fact," he said, withdrawing a note-book from his breast pocket, "I made a note the other day of the poet's duty. It is to prepare for mankind memorisable formulas in universal terms of important thoughts or emotions."

"But that's almost what I said," Denis protested.

"Yes, almost," Lord Henry replied, with just that restraint in scorn which makes scorn most scathing.

"The consequence is," Lord Henry concluded, "that according to this view of poetry, which I believe is the right view, and the view unconsciously taken by the masses, more than three quarters of Victorian Verse is simply so much superior drivel."

The baronet's party clapped their hands.

"The works of your Wordsworths, your Tennysons, your Brownings, your Matthew Arnolds," cried Lord Henry above the noise, "might be distilled down to one quarter of their bulk and nothing would be lost."

Sir Joseph laughed. "Now I know, now I know!" he ejaculated.

"And as for your very modern poets, they are even worse than the Victorians. Masefield, for instance, is jejuneness enthroned. How can you expect the bulk of sane mankind to read poetry, when they repeatedly encounter this vacuity, this unimportance of thought and emotion, presented with all the pomp and circumstance of a memorisable form?"

"Bravo, Lord Henry!" Stephen cried.

"But have you read Wordsworth's Ode on Immortality?" objected Miss Mallowcoid, with mantling cheeks and indignant glare. She belonged to the class of persons who always fancy they have thought of an objection to a generalisation which the man who made it must have overlooked.

"Yes, of course," replied Lord Henry. "It is a preposterously false and therefore dangerous thought; but I admit it is magnificently expressed. A much more sensible and profound view of childhood is given by Browning at the end of A Soul's Tragedy; but unfortunately it is expressed in Browning's usual turbid and muddled way, without Wordsworth's art."

Denis Malster and Guy Tyrrell were shrewd enough to see that Lord Henry knew his subject, and had at least endeavoured to understand what poets should aspire to; Denis, however, felt that at all costs he must enter the lists against the young nobleman. He knew the women would be quick to account for his silence in a manner not too complimentary either to his courage or his ability, and he felt that his very prestige demanded at least a demonstration of some kind on his part. Leonetta, too, was beginning to look at him with a suggestion of enquiry in her eyes, and then ultimately Agatha made it impossible for him to desist any longer.

"Come on now," she said, "you two champions of Victorian verse,—aren't you going to defend it?"

"Lord Henry has admitted all we claim," he observed lamely. "No one would dream of saying that all Wordsworth or all Tennyson or all Browning was worth reading."

"Yes, but I claim that fully three quarters of it was not worth printing," said Lord Henry.

"I think that's a gross exaggeration," Miss Mallowcoid averred.

"Still at it?" enquired Mrs. Tribe, who accompanied by her husband now joined the party. "I agree with Lord Henry whatever he has said."

"Ah, you know a thing or two!" cried Vanessa.

At a signal from Sir Joseph, Lord Henry now rose, and the two strolled off together in the direction of the house.

"Have you seen Cleopatra?" the baronet asked as soon as they were out of earshot.

Lord Henry told him briefly what had happened.

"How strange!" Sir Joseph exclaimed.

"It is all the result of our detestable English system of leaving it to our daughters to dress their own shop window, so to speak," Lord Henry remarked, "so that at a given moment they each enter business on their own account, make the best possible show, and of course become the most bitter rivals. It is as cruel as it is stupid. It is the old Manchester School, the commercial idea of unrestricted competition, invading even the family."

Sir Joseph who imagined that the young nobleman was trying to be humorous, laughed at this.

"Ye-es, yes, I see!" he exclaimed chuckling.

Lord Henry groaned.

"But it is a most impossible situation," he said sternly. "Don't you understand? In the case of women of deep passions, like these beautiful Delarayne girls, it is a harrowing drama."

Sir Joseph looked up. Lord Henry's words had sobered him.

"You don't say so!" he muttered.

"I do, most emphatically," the young man continued "All our plan of life in England, you see, is founded on the assumption that only people of mediocre and diluted passion will hold the stage. We allow our girls to go about freely with young men, for instance. Why?"

"Because we can trust the young men," suggested Sir Joseph.

"Not a bit of it!—because both men and girls are usually so very much below par temperamentally that they can exercise what is called 'self-control,'—that is to say their passions are relied upon always to be weaker than their 'self-control'."

Sir Joseph was by now utterly bewildered.

"We allow our daughters to exercise the most heartless rivalry one against the other in the matrimonial field—why?"

Sir Joseph, who imagined that the young nobleman was growing impatient with him, did not venture to reply.

"Because," continued Lord Henry, "we know perfectly well that they are too tame, too mild, too listless about life, ever to become homicidal in their hatred of one another. The moment two deep, eager and adorable girls, like these daughters of Mrs. Delarayne, walk on to our English boards, our whole fabric, our whole scenery, and stage machinery, is shown to be wrong to the last screw. God! How different this country must have been when Shakespeare was able to say that thing about one touch of nature! Now one touch of nature in England sets the whole world by the ears!"

"Is Cleopatra very bad then?" Sir Joseph enquired anxiously.

"So bad that she would have been suicidal if steps had not been taken immediately. You see it isn't everybody who is so lukewarm, so anaemic, as to make a cheerful old maid. Cheery old maids are the condemnation of modern English womanhood Their frequency in England shows the shallowness of the average modern woman's passion. Among all warm-blooded peoples old maids are known to be bitter, resentful, untractable and misanthropic."

"Are they really?" exclaimed Sir Joseph. "I didn't know that."

Mrs. Delarayne came towards them.

"Lord Henry," she cried, "Cleopatra is coming to lunch. You have already done wonders with her. At least she wants to be well now. That's a great triumph."

The remainder of the party now came up the garden towards the house.

"Lord Henry!" Leonetta cried, skipping up to his side, bearing a kitten. "Do you like cats? Look at this little angel!"

Lord Henry, without looking at her, raised a hand deprecatingly.

"We are not out of the wood yet," he murmured in an aside to Mrs. Delarayne.

"Oh, she's scratching,—do look at her, Lord Henry!" Leonetta exclaimed, a little over anxiously this time, as she was not used to having her self-advertising manoeuvres disregarded in this manner.

"Yes," said Lord Henry with cold courtesy, glancing at the kitten only for a moment, and then quickly resuming his conversation with his hostess.

Leonetta, swallowing something in her throat, skipped with a somewhat forced affectation of childish gaiety in the direction of the house. Lord Henry, Denis, and Vanessa, however, were the only three of the party who correctly interpreted her action, though they appeared to be engaged with other matters.

* * * * *

After dinner that day, when the cool of a midsummer evening had fallen on Brineweald Park, and Cleopatra had been despatched to her bed by her new spiritual adviser, Mrs. Delarayne, Sir Joseph, Miss Mallowcoid, and Gerald Tribe sat down to Bridge on the terrace, Lord Henry invited Agatha to show him over the grounds, and Mrs. Tribe and Stephen went to the billiard room.

A moment before Lord Henry had descended the steps with his companion, he had seen Vanessa and Guy Tyrrell depart mysteriously in the direction of the woods, and Denis and Leonetta vanish just as mysteriously towards Headlinge.

For the purpose he had in view, he would have preferred Vanessa for his companion, more especially as he had noticed that she went reluctantly with Tyrrell, but he had missed securing her by a minute, thanks to Mrs. Delarayne's garrulousness.

He stood at the foot of the steps. It mattered not to him whither Vanessa and her companion were bound, and observing the direction Denis and Leonetta were taking, he walked slowly along the path to Headstone, which was exposed for the greater length of its course, and promised to keep him constantly in their view.

"This way, Lord Henry," said Agatha, starting in the direction of Headlinge.

"No, if you don't mind," he said, "I prefer this path. I like the sweep of the hill to the right. These vast stretches of grass at this hour always make me feel that I am walking on the edge of a carpet, on which the elves and the fairies are having their revels."

The girl acquiesced. The two figures to the left, on the road to Headlinge, buried themselves in a wooded grove, and the girl glanced a little apprehensively in their direction, as she caught the last glimpse of them.

"Denis and Leonetta are on the road to Headlinge," she said simply.

"Oh, are they?" replied Lord Henry. "Can you see them then?"

"No," she answered. "They are somewhere behind those trees."

* * * * *

Two proposals of marriage were made that evening in Brineweald Park. One was flatly declined; the result of the other was doubtful. The love-sick swains were Denis Malster and Guy Tyrrell, and their respective companions we know.

Guy Tyrrell, who was of the breed who scarcely ever receive a spontaneous kindly look from women, without offering something very substantial in exchange, was feeling that romantic passion for the voluptuous Jewess, which the sun and the plentiful food at Brineweald, had no doubt done an immense deal to fan to a flame in his breast. He had recognised very early that with Malster about, he stood no chance with Leonetta, and he found that had it not been for Leonetta's occupying the central place, he would have stood just as bad a chance with Vanessa. For two days now, moreover, he had been observing Vanessa lavishing her attentions on Sir Joseph, and utterly harmless though the old baronet was, Guy had been conscious of certain intolerable pangs when he had seen the girl's shapely little brown hands in the City magnate's, and her strong nicely rounded forearm enlocked in his master's.

Tremulously, therefore, but with studious persistency, he had that evening repeatedly whispered the request to her that she should walk out to the woods with him, and she, casting a longing glance first at Lord Henry, then at Denis Malster, had reluctantly acquiesced. Her curiosity was possibly awakened too; at all events she went, when she had no pressing need to go, and incidentally received the entertainment she deserved.

He was agitated, as all "clean-minded" young men are, whose amorous passions have for once got the better of their qualms, and he breathed very heavily,—rather like a draft-ox at the turn of the plough. He was gauche, timid, thoroughly unskilled in the art of wooing, not even up to the wiles of the most guileless male animal or bird; and Vanessa felt only a sensation of extreme discomfiture as he blurted out his longings to her.

"No, really not!" she exclaimed. "I'm sorry, but I had no idea you felt like that about me."

He caught her arms. His hand was very hot, and she felt it through the gauze of her sleeve.

She turned back quickly. "Come on," she said, "let's get back to the house. They'll wonder what on earth we're doing."

He dropped his hand to hers, and pulled on it slightly.

"Listen," he pleaded. "Stop a minute and listen."

She screwed her hand deftly out of his, and drew aside.

"Oh, please leave me alone, Guy!" she cried. "It's no good. I couldn't dream of it. I'm never going to marry."

Still he persisted incoherently, unattractively, and with the increasing daring of swelling desire.

"No, I tell you," she ejaculated, laughing a little nervously. "Can't you take 'no' for an answer? You are not going to annoy me just because we happen to be alone, are you?"

He dropped his hands to his side, and was silent.

"Now, don't let's say any more about it," said Vanessa, feeling very much relieved. She had the sound instinct that informed her that this man's "clean-mindedness" was revolting, and breathed fast and irregularly at the thought of the danger she imagined she had been in. If he had kissed her with those uneloquent and untrained lips of his, impure in their purity, she would never have forgiven herself.

"Look at the moon," she said, as she strode rapidly back to the house. "It is beginning to wane. I wonder if the weather will change with it."

And so they reached the terrace,—she feeling that she wanted a wash; he feeling only that he had bungled it, because she was too worldly, too sophisticated to be natural.

Meanwhile, however, in another part of the grounds, a very much more subtle, irresistible, and skilful proposal was being pronounced. True, it was being made by a man who desired at all costs, and in good time, to secure his achieved success from threatened assault, and who was therefore a little desperate; but it was also the performance of a creature who knew his subject, who understood its difficulties, and who was not hindered by any of those scruples of ignorance and purity which temper ardour and paralyse daring.

For Malster was in the condition in which a man's desire may truly be said to have become a physical ache. A feeling of sick longing held his heart and entrails as in a vise, a sort of cramp of violent tension stiffened all his tissues. On Leonetta his eyes were fastened as if by some powerful magnet. The rest of the world, as also its inhabitants, was obliterated; they seemed nothing more than shadows passing and re-passing,—shadows which, if need be, could be pushed aside, offended, outraged. For what, after all, are shadows?

People are mistaken if they imagine that it requires any effort to sacrifice position, power, friends, parents,—aye, even home, nationality, and honour,—when a man is in this condition. For these things are as nothing, beside the all-devouring anguish of so great a desire. They are not sacrificed in such circumstances; they simply do not enter within his purview.

If Leonetta had acted wilfully, deliberately, and with her object clearly conceived before she began, she could not have achieved any greater success; for Malster was her abject slave. Jealous of every look or word she vouchsafed to another, hating even the kitten that her rosy well-made fingers clasped, literally ill away from her presence, and thrilled almost painfully by the sound of her voice when she returned, the whole of Brineweald had become for him but a fantastic and hardly material background, to a scene in which his emotions beat out their gigantic throbs like Titans wrestling for freedom. He was not even in a fit state to use an ordinary foot-rule with accuracy.

To speak to such a man of morals, of ethical duty, of certain obligations to an elder sister, of responsibility to host or hostess, or to society, would have been little better than to try to teach table etiquette to a boa-constrictor. There was only one thing that could force him to become sober for one instant and to reflect, and that was the menace of successful rivalry. But even then his sober mood would last only as long as he was maturing panic schemes to overcome the difficulty.

Such a mood of sober reflection had, however, possessed him ever since the advent of Lord Henry, and although he had not the slightest reason either to suspect or to surmise that the young nobleman wished to defeat him in any field, such was the magnitude of his desire for Leonetta and the jealousy it provoked, that every minute that Lord Henry spoke, every minute that his voice held the flapper's ears in attentive subjection, were to him so many hours of agonising dread.

A glance at Leonetta would convince him that she was listening; further observation would reveal the fact that she was also interested; and finally he would recognise that her eyes were upon the young nobleman, even when he was silent.

Denis Malster had perceived with female quickness the infernal charms of Lord Henry's personality; he had measured almost exactly, despite the natural tendency to exaggeration into which his jealousy led him, the precise effect of Lord Henry's persuasive and emphatic tongue upon the female ear. He had seen its effect on Mrs. Delarayne, on Vanessa, on Agatha, on Mrs. Tribe. Was it likely that Leonetta would long remain insensible to the difference between himself and the new arrival?

Already he had been obliged to abandon those daily contests on the subject of the Inner Light with the wretched Gerald Tribe, because Lord Henry promised to be too much for him. And yet they had been so valuable,—such a splendid opportunity for exhibiting his proudest achievements!

Things had come to such a pass that he literally did not dare to organise again those pleasant little assemblies, in which he could discuss anything and challenge all comers, with the perfect certainty of shining as he vanquished them. It is true that he could have continued them by carefully omitting Lord Henry from their midst; but he was by no means a fool, and did not underestimate the intelligence of those about him. Thus he realised the damaging effect it would be sure to have on his prestige, if he persistently manoeuvred to leave Lord Henry out; and he knew well enough how quickly women notice such things,—they who are such past-masters at precisely this kind of manoeuvring.

Had Lord Henry not come upon the scene, Denis would have been content, as was his wont, to prolong the delicious agony of his love indefinitely, secure in the thought that at any moment he would be able by a word to secure Leonetta for ever to him.

Now, however, there could no longer be any question of prolonging the situation indefinitely. The only problem that occupied his mind was, when and how to say that word to Leonetta which was to bind her for ever to him, before she receded one hundredth of an inch from the summit of ecstasy to which he imagined she too must have climbed in the last few days.

Thus he had been moved by a thought similar to Guy Tyrrell's; but there, as we shall see, the likeness ceased.

A girl of seventeen or eighteen is nearly always in danger when a man of thirty pays attention to her,—in danger, that is to say, of acquiescing too soon, too early in life, too unreflectedly and ignorantly.

Leonetta had been intoxicated by Denis Malster's worship. It would perhaps be unscientific here, and therefore untrue, to overlook the fact that the conquest of her sister's beau, had been in itself a triumphant achievement, apart from any particular claims he might have to attraction. But is not human nature such that in any case it is always partially subdued by devotion? Does not even the love of an animal make an irresistible appeal to the most callous? Is not the common preference for dogs before cats in England, largely ascribable to the fact that the flattery residing in devotion and affection makes such an impelling appeal to all vain people, that the superior animal is discarded for the inferior? The dog is grossly and offensively obscene; he is dirty, he pollutes our streets; he is a coward, and has the pusillanimous spirit of a rather faint-hearted lackey. The cat, on the other hand, is decent, clean, consistently sanitary, brave, and possessed of the great-hearted self-reliant spirit of a born warrior. The cat, however, does not fawn, it does not flatter, it shows no devotion, it knows none of the sycophantic wiles of the dog; but since modern mankind in England is animated chiefly by vanity, the dog with all his objectionable characteristics and habits is preferred.

Now women, though by no means alone in the possession of vanity, are perhaps a little more subject than men to its sway, and it is precisely their vanity which is their greatest danger. Like the modern Englishman, they all too frequently overlook the noble for the inferior animal, because the latter is a better worshipper, and, particularly when they are still in their teens, worship from the male, which is something so novel, so exquisitely strange, and so stimulating to their self-esteem, constitutes one of the greatest pitfalls they can encounter.

Why should it necessarily be a pitfall? Precisely because it may induce them to decide too soon in favour of an inferior man.

Leonetta was therefore in danger, and Lord Henry knew it.

Everything he had said and done in her presence since he had come to Brineweald, had been deliberate, premeditated, purposeful,—all with the intention of averting the danger she was in, or at least with the view of giving her time to collect her senses, and to obtain some breathing space before coming to the fatal decision.

Denis Malster was sufficiently sensitive to be vaguely aware of the element of an organised attack in the behaviour of the young nobleman, upright and above-board as it had been; hence his hurrying of his inestimable treasure,—the one creature that could give him peace,—along the road to Headlinge that evening; hence too the tactics he had resolved to adopt. For he felt instinctively, not only that Lord Henry was moving against him, but also that Mrs. Delarayne was fast becoming an open enemy.

They entwined fingers discreetly as they walked along, and the moment they had plunged into the grove, he would raise her hand from time to time, as he spoke, and kiss it fervently. It was cool and firm, a beautiful symbol of her beautiful body, and he was racked with a wildness of longing by the side of which the language of Cupid sounds like the pipe of a bird in a hurricane.

It seemed to his resourceful mind that possibly the best way of securing this girl's attachment to him, would be by a vivid appeal to her senses. His prestige was at stake, and in this dilemma men have been known to go to even greater lengths than when driven by sensuality alone. He did not underestimate the vigour of her passions, and knew that in this direction there was hope of uncontested victory.

"How heavenly it is," he said, "to have you quite alone for once, with nothing but wild nature looking on! How I loathe that crowd when it keeps us apart even for a moment."

He halted for a second, and they kissed.

"Oh, Leo, my darling," he continued, as they again walked slowly towards Headlinge, "you don't know how I suffer to see you in your present environment. You who are so natural, so essentially a creature of the wilds, surrounded by things that are so artificial, so overheated, so stagey. I shudder every time I hear you call the Warrior 'Peachy.' It shows how grossly your true nature has been distorted to serve her artificial ends. The beautiful word 'mother' would give the lie to the deception she tries to practice daily upon all of us, with every means that her art can supply. Excuse my speaking like this of your mother; but I imagine you a wild creature of the woods, with flowing hair; your mother a natural parent, who resigns herself cheerfully and becomingly to age, whose face is coloured uniquely by the sun, despising as much as you yourself surely do those petty tricks of make-believe,—those cosmetics and hair-dyes, that don't even deceive the coarsest chauffeur on the road,—and realising the charm of her years as much as she admires the beauty of yours. It makes me boil to see you corrupted by this atmosphere!"

He was careful at the end of each little speech to stop and fondle her, and to press her cool firm fingers to his lips in an ecstasy of devotion.

"You were not made to rear a town-street full of dandies, of Lord Henrys and his like, but to be the proud dam of a stalwart race of yeomen. It is in just such a wild setting as this that you, the Diana of a truly British country-side, could shine to greatest perfection. You are a child of freedom, a bird whose gorgeous wings they are trying to clip."

They sat down on a bank. The brilliance of the moon illuminated the country beyond. The chimneys of Sir Joseph's house were visible far away to the right.

He had another passionate outburst, convincing because he was genuinely at his wit's end with longing. He smothered her with his embraces, rained kisses on a face that was seductively screened by roughly dishevelled hair, and which smiled back at him with a look of intoxication almost equal to his own. And then at last, concluding instinctively that the moment had come for complete forgetfulness, he even thought he might proceed to discount bills of intimacy before they had become due,—a practice not uncommon in England,—and he held her in a way that was at least novel to the eager flapper.

Half fearfully he waited for the effect of his daring action. She said nothing, but simply showed her magnificent white teeth in a smile that betokened the most complete satisfaction.

"Leo, fly away with me, will you? Don't let us wait to ask. Let us go. I have savings; besides, I am no fool. It would mean leaving Bullion's of course, but why need we mind that? You can trust me, can't you? Let us leave this hated place, with its people who do not understand us. We might go to Canada, where wild nature has taught people to be more natural than they are here. Oh, say you will come with me. It would be heavenly!"

"Do you mean at once?" she exclaimed, laughing now at the transport of devotion which had just made him kiss her feet.

"Well, I suppose we could not go actually now, but at the latest to-morrow at this time. We might steal away while everybody's dressing for the dance."

She was lying back on the bank, her eyes were keen with thought, her mouth now closed in solemn reflection. Suddenly he recognised not fifty yards away, fully revealed in the moonlight, the figures of Lord Henry and Vanessa, walking slowly along the lower path which led to Headstone. As he had seen Lord Henry with Agatha on the same path about an hour before he could not at first believe his eyes. But the form of the stylish young Jewess was unmistakable. Lord Henry must have gone back to exchange companions. Where was Guy then? However, Leonetta had not seen them, so it did not matter.

"Quick, tell me—yes or no! because I must make all the arrangements for our flight immediately."

She made a movement to rise.

"No, don't get up," he said quickly. "You've no idea how beautiful you look there."

"But I must," cried the girl, "one of my slides is sticking into my head! If you will handle me so roughly," she added, smiling with the deepest contentment.

"Let me find it for you, don't get up!" he pleaded.

But what Delaraynes want, God wants; and in an instant his obstructing hand was brushed aside and she was sitting up.

He looked into her eyes, hoping to fasten them on himself, and keep them off the hateful spectacle not fifty yards away. For a few seconds he was successful. He then proceeded to kiss her again in order to blot out the vision for yet a while longer.

"Denis!" she exclaimed, "for mercy's sake let me put my slide right, and then you can do what you like."

He desisted, shaken with overstimulated craving, and then all at once, his heart sank; for her keen eyes had seen what he hoped would have disappeared before she could notice it.

"Why, look!" she cried, "there's that little cat Vanessa walking alone with Lord Henry!"

"Yes," he rejoined, with as much indifference as he could summon.

"What on earth can they be doing?" she demanded craning her neck to see as much of them as possible.

"Oh, nothing—they're only walking. Slow enough in all conscience, I should think."

Leonetta was silent, her eyes fixed upon the couple slowly proceeding along the lower path. What could Lord Henry possibly see in that Jezebel! She recalled his hauteur and studious coldness towards herself, his air of deep understanding and mastery, his magic look of wizardly youth, his eloquence, his immense self-possession, his mysterious connection with Cleopatra's indisposition and recovery. What could it be that made him so indifferent to her?

She rose.

"Oh, don't move!" said Denis irritably.

"I must see where that little cat is taking him," she muttered. And creeping to the nearest tree, she peered round it.

Meanwhile Denis ground his teeth, and flung himself back on the bank in a spasm of impotent loathing of Lord Henry. "They're holding hands!" whispered the girl in angry surprise.

Denis craned his neck. "Nonsense!" he exclaimed, "he's only explaining something to her. I suppose palmistry is another of his tricks or hers. Can't you see?" He felt the spell had been broken, and was savage. "Come and sit down, Leo!" he hissed.

"Half a mo!" she cried; and then after a while she added: "Oh, I say, do look! He's got his arm round her waist!"

"She's only showing him the latest two-step!" said Denis. "Can't you see—there—see? They're only practising a step.

"So they are!" gasped the girl. She recognised her own tactics in this dancing tuition of Vanessa's, and was obviously annoyed. "Copy-cat!" she murmured under her breath.

"Come on!" she cried at last, "let's go home."

"Oh, not yet!" he implored her.

"Yes, I want to," she replied with impatience.

"Oh, it's been such a gorgeous time!"

"Who would have thought!" she exclaimed, "that that young devil——!"

"Leo!" Denis remonstrated.

"Well, that's all she is!" snapped Leonetta, thrusting her arm roughly into his, and jerking him forward towards the house.

Denis was beside himself with fury. "Well, what about to-morrow?" he enquired lamely, feeling all the while that the effect had been missed.

"Oh, I'll tell you to-morrow," she replied. "Quick! I want to get home and to bed before they do. I wouldn't let her know that I'd seen her walking with Lord Henry for worlds!"



CHAPTER XV

Lord Henry had made many friends at Brineweald, but neither was Denis Malster quite alone. Miss Mallowcoid had not taken kindly to the patronage Lord Henry had thought fit to extend to Mr. and Mrs. Tribe, and the latter's assurance and good spirits in Lord Henry's presence had succeeded in making the spinster take a very strong dislike to him. Before he had come on the scene Mrs. Tribe had been as becomingly meek and humble as she always was in London, but for some reason, which the spinster could hardly explain, Lord Henry's friendship had quite transformed her.

Miss Mallowcoid knew nothing of the deep gratitude that the unfortunate little woman felt towards him for having put a stop to the nightly baitings her husband had theretofore received from Denis Malster, nor did she know of the intense devotion that the Incandescent Gerald felt for the new guest. She could only recognise one fact,—a fact that considerably disturbed her feeling of well-being,—and that was, that since Lord Henry's arrival, Mrs. Tribe had behaved like an ordinary, cheerful, and independent human being.

With her, against Lord Henry, Miss Mallowcoid knew that she could always count upon Sir Joseph, because his jealousy of the young nobleman made him scarcely rational. So that if we reckon Denis Malster as well, in the Mallowcoid camp, it is plain that there was no inconsiderable nucleus of hostility against Lord Henry at this time at Brineweald Park.

Alone with her sister and Sir Joseph, Miss Mallowcoid had already seized more than one opportunity of disparaging the nerve specialist of Ashbury, and on the evening of the two proposals just described, when the Incandescent Gerald had retired to bed, the three had an animated discussion about Leonetta, Denis, and Lord Henry.

Mrs. Delarayne had given her reasons for being irreconcilably opposed to Leonetta's match with Denis, and had declared that Lord Henry was in entire agreement with her. She had laid the blame of Cleopatra's sudden breakdown on Denis's shoulders, and had confessed to feeling a very strong instinctive dislike for him. She even reminded Sir Joseph of his promise to her earlier in the day, that he would dismiss Denis from his service.

"Oh, I think that would be most cruelly unfair!" exclaimed Miss Mallowcoid, when she heard the announcement.

"Why unfair?" snapped Mrs. Delarayne.

Miss Mallowcoid shook her head. "Well, Edith," she began, "of course you know best what to do with your girls, but personally I think it very honest and noble of Denis to have shown that he has changed his mind, if he really has done so. Besides, if you think he is prepared to marry Leonetta, why should you spoil her chances? Not that I think she deserves him, of course, but that's neither here nor there."