He shook off these idle fancies—a man should not give way to them—and walked up the room with a steady assured tread. Even then she did not seem to hear him till he spoke.

"Well, do you like it?" he asked, leaning against a table in the middle of the upper part of the room, a few feet from the chair where she sat. Now Mina Zabriska made out two figures, cast up by the bright light against the darkness, and watched them with an eagerness that had no reason in it.

"Like it!" she cried, springing to her feet, running to him, holding out her hands. "Like it! Oh, Harry! Why, it's better than all the rest. Better, even better!"

"It's rather a jolly room," said Harry. "The pictures and all the things about make it look well."

"Oh, I'm not going to say anything if you talk like that. You don't feel like that!—'Rather a jolly room!' That's what one says if the inn parlor's comfortable. This isn't a room. It's—it's——"

"Shall we call it a temple?" he suggested, smiling.

"I believe it's heaven—the private particular Tristram heaven. They're all here!" She waved toward the pictures. "Here in a heaven of their own."

"And we're allowed to visit it before we die?"

"Yes. At least I am. You let me visit it. It belongs to you—to the dead and you."

"Do you want to stay here any longer?" he asked with a sudden roughness.

"Yes, lots longer," she laughed defiantly, quite undismayed. "You needn't, though. You'll have it all your life. Perhaps I shall never have it again. Father's better! And I don't know if you'll ever ask us here again. You never did before, you know. So I mean to have all of it I can get." She darted away from him and ran back to the miniatures. A richly ornamented sword hung on the wall just above them. This caught her notice; she took it down and unsheathed it.

"Henricus Baro Tristram de Blent," she spelt out from the enamelled steel. "Per Ensem Justitia. What does that mean? No, I know. Rather a good motto, cousin Harry. 'That he shall take who has the power, and he shall keep who can!' That was his justice, I expect!"

"Do you quarrel with it? If this was all yours, would you give it up?"

"Not without a fight!" she laughed. "Per Ensem Justitia!" She waved the blade.

Harry left her busy with the things that were so great a delight and walked to the window at the other end of the long room. Thence he watched, now her, now the clouds that lounged off and on to the moon's disk. More and more, though, his eyes were caught by her and glued to her; she was the centre of the room; it seemed all made and prepared for her even as it had seemed for Addie Tristram. The motto ran in his head—Per Ensem Justitia. What was the justice and what the sword? He awoke to the cause of the changed mood in him and of the agitation in which he had been living. It was nothing to defy the law, to make light of a dry abstraction, to find right against it in his blood. His opponent now was no more the law, it was no more even some tiresome, unknown, unrealized girl in London, with surroundings most unpicturesque and associations that had no power to touch his heart. Here was the enemy, this creature whose every movement claimed the blood that was hers, whose coming repaired the loss Blent had suffered in losing Addie Tristram, whose presence crowned its charms with a new glory. Nature that fashioned her in the Tristram image—had it not put in her hand the sword by which she should win justice? The thought passed through his mind now without a shock; he seemed to see her mistress of Blent; for the moment he forgot himself as anyone save an onlooker; he did not seem concerned.

Once more he roused himself. He had fallen into a fear of the fancies that threatened to carry him he did not know where. He wanted to get away from this room with its suggestions, and from the presence that gave them such force.

"Aren't you ready yet?" he called to her. "It's getting late."

"Are you still there?" she cried back in a gay affectation of surprise. "I'd forgotten all about you, I thought I had it to myself. I was trying to think it was all mine."

"Shall we go downstairs?" His voice was hard and constrained.

"No, I won't," she said squarely. "I can't go. It's barely ten o'clock. Come, we'll talk here. You smoke—or is that high treason?—and I'll sit here." She threw herself into Addie Tristram's great chair. There was a triumphant gayety in her air that spoke of her joy in all about her, of her sense of the boundless satisfaction that her surroundings gave. "I love it all so much," she murmured, half perhaps to herself, yet still as a plea to him that he would not seek to hurry her from the place.

Harry turned away, again with that despair on him. She gave him permission to go, but he could not leave her—neither her nor now the room. Yet he was afraid that he could not answer for himself if he stayed. It was too strange that every association, and every tradition, and every emotion which had through all the years seemed to justify and even to sanctify his own position and the means he was taking to preserve it, should in two or three days begin to desert him, and should now in this hour openly range themselves against him and on her side; so that all he invoked to aid him pleaded for her, all that he had prayed to bless him and his enterprise blessed her and cursed the work to which he had put his hand.

Which of them could best face the world without Blent? Which of them could best look the world in the face having Blent? These were the questions that rose in his mind with tempestuous insistence.

"I could sit here forever," she murmured, a lazy enjoyment succeeding to the agile movements of her body and the delighted agitation of her nerves. "It just suits me to sit here, cousin Harry. Looking like a great lady!" Her eyes challenged him to deny that she looked the part to perfection. She glanced through the window. "I met that funny little Madame Zabriska who lives up at Merrion Lodge to-day. She seems very anxious to know all about us."

"Madame Zabriska has a healthy—or unhealthy—curiosity." The mention of Mina was a fresh prick. Mina knew; suddenly he hated that she should know.

"Is she in love with you?" asked Cecily, mockingly yet languidly, indeed as a great lady might inquire about the less exalted, condescending to be amused.

"Nobody's in love with me, not even the girl who's going to marry me."

"To marry you?" She sat up, looking at him. "Are you engaged?"

"Yes, to Janie Iver. You know who I mean?"

"Yes, I know. You're going to be married to her?"

"I asked her a week ago. To-day she wrote to say she'd have me." He was on his feet even as he spoke. "To marry me and to marry all this, you know."

She was too sympathetic to waste breath on civil pretences.

"To be mistress here? To own this? To be Lady Tristram of Blent?"

"Yes. To have what—what I'm supposed to have," said he.

Cecily regarded him intently for another moment. Then she sank back into Addie Tristram's great arm-chair, asking, "Will she do it well?"

"No," said Harry. "She's a good sort, but she won't do it well."

Cecily sighed and turned her head toward the window.

"Why do you do it? Do you care for her?"

"I like her. And I want money. She's very rich. Money might be useful to me."

"You seem very rich. Why do you want money?"

"I might want it."

There was silence for a moment. "Well, I hope you'll be happy," she said presently.

She herself was the reason—the embodied reason (was reason ever more fairly embodied?), why he was going to marry Janie Iver. The monstrousness of it rose before his mind. When he told of his engagement, there had been for an instant a look in her eyes. Wonder it was at least. Was it disappointment? Was it at all near to consternation? She sat very still now; her gayety was gone. She was like Addie Tristram still, but like Addie when the hard world used her ill, when there were aches to be borne and sins to be reckoned with. As he watched her, yet another new thing came upon him, or a thing that seemed to be as new as the last quarter chimed by the old French clock on the mantel-piece, and yet might date back so long as three days ago. Even now it hardly reached consciousness, certainly did not attain explicitness. It was still rather than Janie was no mistress for Blent and that this girl was the ideal. It was Blent still rather than himself, Blent's mistress rather than his. But it was enough to set a new edge on his questioning. Was he to be the man—he who looked on her now and saw how fair she was—was he to be the man to deny her her own, to rob her of her right, to parade before the world in the trappings which were hers? It was all so strange, so overwhelming. He dropped into a chair by him and pressed his hand across his brow. A low murmur, almost a groan, escaped him in the tumult of his soul. "My God!" he whispered, in a whisper that seemed to echo through the room.

"Harry! Are you unhappy?" In an instant she was by him. "What is it? I don't understand. You tell me you're engaged, and you look so unhappy. Why do you marry her if you don't love her? Are you giving her all this—and yourself—you yourself—without loving her? Dear Harry—yes, you've been very good to me—dear Harry, why?"

"Go back," he said. "Go back to your chair. Go and sit there."

With wonder in her eyes and a smile fresh-born on her lips she obeyed him.

"Well?" she said. "You're very odd. But—why?"

"I'm marrying her for Blent's sake—and I think she's marrying me for Blent's sake."

"I call that horrible."

"No." He sprang to his feet. "If Blent was yours, what would you do to keep it?"

"Everything," she answered. "Everything—except sell myself, Harry."

She was superb. By a natural instinct, all affectation forgotten, she had thrown herself into Addie Tristram's attitude. There was the head on the bend of the arm, there was the dainty foot stuck out. There was all the defiance of a world insensate to love, greedy to find sin, dull to see grace and beauty, blind to a woman's self while it cavilled at a woman's deeds.

"Everything except sell yourself?" he repeated, his eyes set on her face.

"Yes—Per Ensem Justitia!" she laughed. "But not lies, and not buying and selling, Harry."

"My word is given. I must marry her now."

"Better fling Blent away!" she flashed out in a brilliant indignation.

"And if I did that?"

"A woman would love you for yourself," she cried, leaning forward to him with hands clasped.

Again he rose and paced the length of the Long Gallery. The moment was come. There was a great alliance against him. He fought still. At every step he took he came to something that still was his, that he prized, that he loved, that meant much to him, that typified his position as Tristram of Blent. A separate pang waited on every step, a great agony rose in him with the thought that he might be walking this room as its master for the last time. Yes, it had come to that. For against all, threatening to conquer all, was the girl who sat in his mother's chair, her very body asserting the claim that her thoughts did not know and her mouth could not utter. And yet his mood had affected her. The upturned eyes were full of excitement, the parted lips waited for a word from him. Mina Zabriska had left her terrace and gone to bed, declaring that she was still on Harry's side; but she was not with him in this fight.

He returned to Cecily and stood by her. The sympathy between them kept her still; she watched, she waited. For minutes he was silent; all thought of time was gone. Now she knew that he had something great to say. Was it that he would and could have no more to do with Janie Iver, that another had come, that his word must go, and that he loved her? She could hardly believe that. It was so short a time since he had seen her. Yet why could it not be true of him, if it were true of her? And was it not? Else why did she hang on his words and keep her eyes on his? Else why was it so still in the room, as though the world too waited for speech from his lips?

"I can't do it!" burst from him suddenly. "By God, I can't do it!"

"What, Harry?" The words were no more than breathed. He came right up to her and caught her by the arm.

"You see all that—everything here? You love it?"

"Yes."

"As much as I do? As much as I do?" His self-control was gone. She made no answer; she could not understand.

With an effort he mastered himself.

"Yes, you love it," he said, and a smile came on his face. "I'm glad you love it. As God lives, unless you'd loved it, I'd have spoken not a word of this. But you're one of us, you're a Tristram. I don't know the real rights of it, but I'll run no risk of cheating a Tristram. You love it all?"

"Yes, yes, Harry. But why, dear Harry, why?"

"Why? Because it's yours."

He let go her hand and reeled back a step.

"Mine? What do you mean?" she cried. Still the idea, the wild idea, that he offered it with himself was in her mind.

"It's yours, not mine—it's never been mine. You're the owner of it. You're Tristram of Blent."

"I—I Tristram of Blent?" She was utterly bewildered. For he was not a lover—no lover ever spoke like that.

"Yes, I say, yes." His voice rose imperiously as it pronounced the words that threw away his rule. "You're Lady Tristram of Blent."

She did not understand; yet she believed. He spoke so that he must be believed.

"This is all yours—yours—yours. You're Tristram of Blent."

She rose to her height, and stood facing him.

"And you? And you?"

"I? I'm—Harry."

"Harry? Harry? Harry what?"

He smiled as he looked at her; as his eyes met hers he smiled.

"Harry what? Harry Nothing," he said. "Harry Nothing-at-all."

He turned and left her alone in the room. She sank back into the great arm-chair where Addie Tristram had been wont to sit.



XIV

THE VERY SAME DAY

"Shall I wait up, my lord? Miss Gainsborough has gone to her room. I've turned out the lights and shut up the house."

Harry looked at the clock in the study. It was one o'clock.

"I thought you'd gone to bed long ago, Mason." He rose and stretched himself. "I'm going to town early in the morning. I shan't want any breakfast and I shan't take anybody with me. Tell Fisher to pack my portmanteau—things for a few days—and send it to Paddington. I'll have it fetched from there. Tell him to be ready to follow me, if I send for him."

"Yes, my lord."

"Give that letter to Miss Gainsborough in the morning." He handed Mason a thick letter. Two others lay on the table. After a moment's apparent hesitation Harry put them in his pocket. "I'll post them myself," he said. "When did Miss Gainsborough go to her room?"

"About an hour back, my lord."

"Did she stay in the Long Gallery till then?"

"Yes, my lord."

"I may be away a little while, Mason. I hope Miss Gainsborough—and Mr Gainsborough too—will be staying on some time. Make them comfortable."

Not a sign of curiosity or surprise escaped Mason. His "Yes, my lord," was just the same as though Harry had ordered an egg for breakfast. Sudden comings and goings had always been the fashion of the house.

"All right. Good-night, Mason."

"Good-night, my lord." Mason looked round for something to carry off—the force of habit—found nothing, and retired noiselessly.

"One o'clock!" sighed Harry. "Ah, I'm tired. I won't go to bed though, I couldn't sleep."

He moved restlessly about the room. His flood of feeling had gone by; for the time the power of thought too seemed to have deserted him. He had told Cecily everything; he had told Janie enough; he had yielded to an impulse to write a line to Mina Zabriska—because she had been so mixed up in it all. The documents that were to have proved his claim made a little heap of ashes in the grate.

All this had been two hours' hard work. But after all two hours is not long to spend in getting rid of an old life and entering on a new. He found himself rather surprised at the simplicity of the process. What was there left to do? He had only to go to London and see his lawyer—an interview easy enough for him, though startling no doubt to the lawyer. Cecily would be put into possession of her own. There was nothing sensational. He would travel a bit perhaps, or just stay in town. He had money enough to live on quietly or to use in making more; for his mother's savings were indubitably his, left to him by a will in which he, the real Harry, was so expressly designated by his own full name—even more than that—as "Henry Austen Fitzhubert Tristram, otherwise Henry Austen Fitzhubert, my son by the late Captain Austen Fitzhubert"—that no question of his right could arise. That money would not go with the title. Only Blent and all the realty passed with that; the money was not affected by the date of his birth; that must be explained to Cecily by his lawyer or perhaps she would expect to get it. For the moment there was nothing to do but to go to London—and then perhaps travel a bit. He smiled for an instant; it certainly struck him as rather an anti-climax. He threw himself on a sofa and, in spite of his conviction that he could not sleep, dozed off almost directly.

It was three when he awoke; he went up to his room, had a bath, shaved, and put on a tweed suit. Coming down to the study again, he opened the shutters and looked out. It would be light soon, and he could go away. He was fretfully impatient of staying. He drank some whiskey and soda-water, and smoked a cigar as he walked up and down. Yes, there were signs of dawn now; the darkness lifted over the hill on which Merrion stood.

Merrion! Yes, Merrion. And the Major? Well, Duplay had not frightened him, Duplay had not turned him out. He was going of his own will—of his own act anyhow, for he could not feel so sure about the will. But for the first time it struck him that his abdication might accrue to the Major's benefit, that he had won for Duplay the prize which he was sure the gallant officer could not have achieved for himself. "I'll be hanged if I do that," he muttered. "Yes, I know what I'll do," he added, smiling.

He got his hat and stick and went out into the garden. The windows of the Long Gallery were all dark. Harry smiled again and shook his fist at them. There was no light in Cecily's window. He was glad to think that the girl slept; if he were tired she must be terribly tired too. He was quite alone—alone with the old place for the last time. He walked to where he had sat with Cecily, where his mother used to sit. He was easy in his mind about his mother. When she had wanted him to keep the house and the name, she had no idea of the true state of the case. And in fact she herself had done it all by requesting him to invite the Gainsboroughs to her funeral. That was proof enough that he had not wronged her; in the mood he was in it seemed quite proof enough. Realities were still a little dim to him, and fancies rather real. His outward calmness of manner had returned, but his mind was not in a normal state. Still he was awake enough to the every-day world and to his ordinary feelings to remain very eager that his sacrifice should not turn to the Major's good.

He started at a brisk walk to the little bridge, reached the middle of it, and stopped short. The talk he had had with Mina Zabriska at this very spot came back into his mind. "The blood, not the law!" he had said. Well, it was to the blood he had bowed and not to the law. He was strong about not having been frightened by the law. Nor had he been dispossessed, he insisted on that too. He had given; he had chosen to give. He made a movement as though to walk on, but for a moment he could not. When it came to going, for an instant he could not go. The parting was difficult. He had no discontent with what he had done; on the whole it seemed far easier than he could ever have imagined. But it was hard to go, to leave Blent just as the slowly growing day brought into sight every outline that he knew so well, and began to warm the gardens into life. "I should rather like to stay a day," was his thought, as he lingered still. But the next moment he was across the bridge, slamming the gate behind him and beginning to mount the road up the valley. He had heard a shutter thrown open and a window raised; the sound came from the wing where Cecily slept. He did not want to see her now; he did not wish her to see him. She was to awake to undivided possession, free from any reminder of him. That was his fancy, his idea of making his gift to her of what was hers more splendid and more complete. But she did see him; she watched him from her window as he walked away up the valley. He did not know; true to his fancy, he never turned his head.

Bob Broadley was an early riser, as his business in life demanded. At six o'clock he was breakfasting in a bright little room opening on his garden. He was in the middle of his rasher when a shadow fell across his plate. Looking up, he started to see Harry Tristram at the doorway.

"Lord Tristram!" he exclaimed.

"You've called me Tristram all your life. I should think you might still," observed Harry.

"Oh, all right. But what brings you here? These aren't generally your hours, are they?"

"Perhaps not. May I have some breakfast?"

The maid was summoned and brought him what he asked. She nearly dropped the cup and saucer when she realized that the Great Man was there—at six in the morning!

"I'm on my way to London," said Harry. "Going to take the train at Fillingford instead of Blentmouth, because I wanted to drop in on you. I've something to say."

"I expect I've heard. It's very kind of you to come, but I saw Janie Iver in Blentmouth yesterday."

"I dare say; but she didn't tell you what I'm going to."

Harry, having made but a pretence of breakfasting, pushed away his plate. "I'll smoke if you don't mind. You go on eating," he said. "Do you remember a little talk we had about our friend Duplay? We agreed that we should both like to put a spoke in his wheel."

"And you've done it," said Bob, reaching for his pipe from the mantel-piece.

"I did do it. I can't do it any more. You know there were certain reasons which made a marriage between Janie Iver and me seem desirable? I'm saying nothing against her, and I don't intend to say a word against myself. Well, those reasons no longer exist. I have written to her to say so. She'll get that letter this afternoon."

"You've written to break off the engagement?" Bob spoke slowly and thoughtfully, but with no great surprise.

"Yes. She accepted me under a serious misapprehension. When I asked her I was in a position to which I had no——" He interrupted himself, frowning a little. Not even now was he ready to say that. "In a position which I no longer occupy," he amended, recovering his placidity. "All the world will know that very soon. I am no longer owner of Blent."

"What?" cried Bob, jumping up and looking hard at Harry. The surprise came now.

"And I am no longer what you called me just now—Lord Tristram. You know the law about succeeding to peerages and entailed lands? Very well. My birth has been discovered [he smiled for an instant] not to satisfy that law—the merits of which, Bob, we won't discuss. Consequently not I, but Miss Gainsborough succeeds my mother in the title and the property. I have informed Miss Gainsborough—I ought to say Lady Tristram—of these facts, and I'm on my way to London to see the lawyers and get everything done in proper order."

"Good God, do you mean what you say?"

"Oh, of course I do. Do you take me for an idiot, to come up here at six in the morning to talk balderdash?" Harry was obviously irritated. "Everybody will know soon. I came to tell you because I fancy you've some concern in it, and, as I say, I still want that spoke put in the Major's wheel."

Bob sat down and was silent for many moments, smoking hard.

"But Janie won't do that," he broke out at last. "She's too straight, too loyal. If she's accepted you——"

"A beautiful idea, Bob, if she was in love with me. But she isn't. Can you tell me you think she is?"

Bob grunted inarticulately—an obvious, though not a skilful, evasion of the question.

"And anyhow," Harry pursued, "the thing's at an end. I shan't marry her. Now if that suggests any action on your part I—well, I shall be glad I came to breakfast." He got up and went to the window, looking out on the neat little garden and to the paddock beyond.

In a moment Bob Broadley's hand was laid on his shoulder. He turned and faced him.

"What a thing for you! You—you lose it all?"

"I have given it all up."

"I can't realize it, you know. The change——"

"Perhaps I can't either. I don't know that I want to, Bob."

"Who made the discovery? How did it come out? Nobody ever had any suspicion of it!"

Harry looked at him long and thoughtfully, but in the end he only shook his head, saying, "Well, it's true anyhow."

"It beats me. I see what you mean about myself and—Still I give you my word I hate its happening. Who's this girl? Why is she to come here? Who knows anything about her?"

"You don't, of course," Harry conceded with a smile. "No more did I a week ago."

"Couldn't you have made a fight for it?"

"Yes, a deuced good fight. But I chose to let it go. Now don't go on looking as if you didn't understand the thing. It's simple enough."

"But Lady Tristram—your mother—must have known——"

"The question didn't arise as long as my mother lived," said Harry quickly. "Her title was all right, of course."

There was another question on the tip of Bob's tongue, but after a glance at Harry's face he did not put it; he could not ask Harry if he had known.

"I'm hanged!" he muttered.

"Yes, but you understand why I came here?"

"Yes. That was kind."

"Oh, no. I want to spike the Major's guns, you know." He laughed a little. "And—well, yes, I think I'm promoting the general happiness too, if you must know. Now I'm off, Bob."

He held out his hand and Bob grasped it. "We'll meet again some day, when things have settled down. Beat Duplay for me, Bob. Good-by."

"That's grit, real grit," muttered Bob, as he returned to the house after seeing Harry Tristram on his way.

It was that—or else the intoxication of some influence whose power had not passed away. Whatever it was, it had a marked effect on Bob Broadley. There was an appearance of strength and resolution about it—as of a man knowing what he meant to do and doing it. As he inspected his pigs an hour later, Bob came to the conclusion that he himself was a poor sort of fellow. People who waited for the fruit to fall into their mouths were apt to find that a hand intervened and plucked it. That had happened to him once, and probably he could not have helped it; but he meant to try to prevent its happening again. He was in a ferment all the morning, partly on his own account, as much about the revolution which had suddenly occurred in the little kingdom on the banks of the Blent.

In the afternoon he had his gig brought round and set out for Blentmouth. As he passed Blent Hall, he saw a girl on the bridge—a girl in black looking down at the water. Lady Tristram? It was strange to call her by the title that had been another's. But he supposed it must be Lady Tristram. She did not look up as he passed; he retained a vision of the slack dreariness of her pose. Going on, he met the Iver carriage; Iver and Neeld sat in it, side by side; they waved their hands in careless greeting and went on talking earnestly. On the outskirts of the town he came on Miss Swinkerton and Mrs Trumbler walking together. As he raised his hat, a dim and wholly inadequate idea occurred to him of the excitement into which these good ladies would soon be thrown, a foreshadowing of the wonder, the consternation, the questionings, the bubbling emotions which were soon to stir the quiet backwaters of the villas of Blentmouth. For himself, what was he going to do? He could not tell. He put up his gig at the inn and sauntered out into the street; still he could not tell. But he wandered out to Fairholme, up to the gate, and past it, and back to it, and past it again.

Now would Harry Tristram do that? No; either he would never have come or he would have been inside before this. Bob's new love of boldness did not let him consider whether this was the happiest moment for its display. Those learned in the lore of such matters would probably have advised him to let her alone for a few days, or weeks, or months, according to the subtilty of their knowledge or their views. Bob rang the bell.

Janie was not denied to him, but only because no chance was given to her of denying herself. A footman, unconscious of convulsions external or internal, showed him into the morning-room. But Janie's own attitude was plain enough in her reception of him.

"Oh, Bob, why in the world do you come here to-day? Indeed I can't talk to you to-day." Her dismay was evident. "If there's nothing very particular——"

"Well, you know there is," Bob interrupted.

She turned her head quickly toward him. "I know there is? What do you mean?"

"You've got Harry Tristram's letter, I suppose?"

"What do you know of Harry Tristram's letter?"

"I haven't seen it, but I know what's in it all the same."

"How do you know?"

"He came up to Mingham to-day and told me." Bob sat down by her, uninvited; certainly the belief in boldness was carrying him far. But he did not quite anticipate the next development. She sprang up, sprang away from his neighborhood, crying,

"Then how dare you come here to-day? Yes, I've got the letter—just an hour ago. Have you come to—to triumph over me?"

"What an extraordinary idea!" remarked Bob in the slow tones of a genuine astonishment.

"You'd call it to condole, I suppose! That's rather worse."

Bob confined himself to a long look at her. It brought him no enlightenment.

"You must see that you're the very——" She broke off abruptly, and, turning away, began to walk up and down.

"The very what?" asked Bob.

She turned and looked at him; she broke into a peevishly nervous laugh. Anybody but Bob—really anybody but Bob—would have known! The laugh encouraged him a little, which again it had no right to do.

"I thought you'd be in trouble, and like a bit of cheering up," he said with a diplomatic air that was ludicrously obvious.

She considered a moment, taking another turn about the room to do it.

"What did Harry Tristram say to you?"

"Oh, he told me the whole thing. That—that he's chucked it up, you know."

"I mean about me."

"He didn't say much about you. Just that it was all ended, you know."

"Did he think I should accept his withdrawal?"

"Yes, he seemed quite sure of it," answered Bob. "I had my doubts, but he seemed quite sure of it." Apparently Bob considered his statement reassuring and comforting.

"You had your doubts?"

"Yes. I thought perhaps——"

"You were wrong then, and Harry Tristram was right." She flung the words at him in a fierce hostility. "Now he's not Lord Tristram any longer, I don't want to marry him." She paused. "You believe he isn't, don't you? There's no doubt?"

"I believe him all right. He's a fellow you can rely on."

"But it's all so strange. Why has he done it? Well, that doesn't matter. At any rate he's right about me."

Bob sat stolidly in his chair. He did not know at all what to say, but he did not mean to go. He had put no spoke in the Major's wheel yet, and to do that was his contract with Harry Tristram, as well as his own strong desire.

"Have you sympathized—or condoled—or triumphed—enough?" she asked; she was fierce still.

"I don't know that I've had a chance of saying anything much," he observed with some justice.

"I really don't see what you can have to say. What is there to say?"

"Well, there's just this to say—that I'm jolly glad of it."

She was startled by his blunt sincerity, so startled that she passed the obvious chance of accusing him of cruelty toward Harry Tristram, and thought only of how his words touched herself.

"Glad of it! Oh, if you knew how it makes me feel about myself! But you don't, or you'd never be here now."

"Why shouldn't I be here now?" He spoke slowly, as though he were himself searching for any sound reason.

"Oh, it's——" The power of explanation failed her. People who will not see obvious things sometimes hold a very strong position. Janie began to feel rather helpless. "Do go. I don't want anybody to come and find you here." She had turned from command to entreaty.

"I'm jolly glad," he resumed, settling himself back in his chair, "that the business between you and Harry Tristram's all over. It ought never to have gone so far, you know."

"Are you out of your mind to-day, Bob?"

"And now, what about the Major, Miss Janie?"

She flushed red in indignation, perhaps in guilt too. "How dare you? You've no business to——"

"I don't know the right way to say things, I dare say," he admitted, but with an abominable tranquillity. "Still I expect you know what I mean all the same."

"Do you accuse me of having encouraged Major Duplay?"

"I should say you'd been pretty pleasant to him. But it's not my business to worry myself about Duplay."

"I wish you always understood as well what isn't your business."

"And it isn't what you have done but what you're going to do that I'm interested in." He paused several moments and then went on very slowly, "I tell you what it is. I'm not very proud of myself. So if you happen to be feeling the same, why that's all right, Miss Janie. The fact is, I let Harry Tristram put me in a funk, you know. He was a swell, and he's got a sort of way about him too. But I'm hanged if I'm going to be in a funk of Duplay." He seemed to ask her approval of the proposed firmness of his attitude. "I've been a bit of an ass about it all, I think," he concluded with an air of thoughtful inquiry.

The opening was irresistible. Janie seized it with impetuous carelessness. "Yes, you have, you have indeed. Only I don't see why you think it's over, I'm sure."

"Well, I'm glad you agree with me," said he. But he seemed now rather uncertain how he ought to go on. "That's what I wanted to say," he added, and looked at her as if he thought she might give him a lead.

The whole thing was preposterous; Janie was bewildered. He had outraged all decency in coming at such a moment and in talking like this. Then having got (by such utter disregard of all decency) to a point at which he could not possibly stop, he stopped! He even appeared to ask her to go on for him! She stood still in the middle of the room, looking at him as he sat squarely in his chair.

"Since you've said what you wanted to say, I should think you might go."

"Yes, I suppose I might, but——" He was puzzled. He had said what he wanted to say, or thought he had, but it had failed to produce the situation he had anticipated from it. If he went now, leaving matters just as they stood, could he be confident that the spoke was in the wheel? Up to now nothing was really agreed upon except that he himself had been an ass. No doubt this was a pregnant conclusion, but Bob was not quite clear exactly how much it involved; while it encouraged him, it left him still doubtful. "But don't you think you might tell me what you think about it?" he asked in the end.

"I think I'm not fit to live," cried Janie. "That's what I think about it, Bob." Her voice trembled; she was afraid she might cry soon if something did not happen to relieve the strain of this interview. "And you saw what Harry thought by his sending me that letter. The very moment it happened, he sent me that letter!"

"I saw what he thought pretty well, anyhow," said Bob, smiling reflectively again.

"Oh, yes, if that makes it any better for me!"

"Well, if he's not miserable, I don't see why you need be."

"The things you don't see would fill an encyclopaedia!"

Bob looked at his watch; the action seemed in the nature of an ultimatum; his glance from the watch to Janie heightened the impression.

"You've nothing more to say?" he asked her.

"No. I agreed with what you said—that you'd been—an ass. I don't know that you've said anything else."

"All right." He got up and came to her, holding out his hand. "Good-by for the present, then."

She took his hand—and she held it. She could not let it go. Bob allowed it to lie in hers.

"Oh, dear old Bob, I'm so miserable; I hate myself for having done it, and I hate myself worse for being so glad it's undone. It did seem best till I did it. No, I suppose I really wanted the title and—and all that. I do hate myself! And now—the very same day—I let you——"

"You haven't let me do much," he suggested consolingly.

"Yes, I have. At least——" She came a little nearer to him. He took hold of her other hand. He drew her to him and held her in his arms.

"That's all right," he remarked, still in tones of consolation.

"If anybody knew this! You won't say a word, will you, Bob? Not for ever so long? You will pretend it was ever so long before I—I mean, between——?"

"I'll tell any lie," said Bob very cheerfully.

She laughed hysterically. "Because I should never be able to look people in the face if anybody knew that on the very same day——"

"I should think a—a week would be about right?"

"A week! No, no. Six months."

"Oh, six months be——"

"Well then, three? Do agree to three."

"We'll think about three. Still miserable, Janie?"

"Yes, still—rather. Now you must go. Fancy if anybody came!"

"All right, I'll go. But, I say, you might just drop a hint to the Major."

"I can't send him another message that I'm—that I've done it again!"

She drew a little away from him. Bob's hearty laugh rang out; his latent sense of humor was touched at the idea of this second communication to the Major. For a moment Janie looked angry, for a moment deeply hurt. Bob laughed still. There was nothing for it but to join in. Her own laugh rang out gayly as he caught her in his arms again and kissed her.

"Oh, if anybody knew!" sighed Janie.

But Bob was full of triumph. The task was done, the spoke was in the wheel. There was an end of the Major as well as of Harry—and an end to his own long and not very hopeful waiting. He kissed his love again.

There was a sudden end to the scene too—startling and sudden. The door of the room opened abruptly, and in the doorway stood Mrs Iver. Little need to dilate on the situation as it appeared to Mrs Iver! Had she known the truth, the thing was bad enough. But she knew nothing of Harry Tristram's letter. After a moment of consternation Janie ran to her, crying,

"I'm not engaged any more to Harry Tristram, mother!"

Mrs Iver said nothing. She stood by the open door. There was no mistaking her meaning. With a shame-faced bow, struggling with an unruly smile, Bob Broadley got through it somehow. Janie was left alone with Mrs Iver.

Such occurrences as these are very deplorable. Almost of necessity they impair a daughter's proper position of superiority and put her in a relation toward her mother which no self-respecting young woman would desire to occupy. It might be weeks before Janie Iver could really assert her dignity again. It was strong proof of her affection for Bob Broadley that, considering the matter in her own room (she had not been exactly sent there, but a retreat had seemed advisable) she came to the conclusion that, taking good and bad together, she was on the whole glad that he had called.

But to Bob, with the selfishness of man, Mrs Iver's sudden appearance wore rather an amusing aspect. It certainly could not spoil his triumph or impair his happiness.



XV

AN INQUISITION INTERRUPTED

"My mother told it me just as a bit of gossip. She didn't believe it, no more did I."

"But you repeated it."

It was Iver who was pressing her. He was not now the kind host Mina knew so well. He was rather the keen man of business, impatient of shuffling, incredulous of any action for which he could not see the motive, distrustful and very shrewd.

"Oh, I repeated it to my uncle, because I thought it might amuse him—just for something to say."

"Your idea of small talk is rather peculiar," was Iver's dry comment. He looked at the Major on his right, and at Neeld on his left at the table; Mina was opposite, like the witness before the committee.

"So is yours of politeness," she cried. "It's my house. Why do you come and bully me in it?"

Duplay was sullenly furious. Poor Mr Neeld's state was lamentable. He had not spoken a word throughout the interview. He had taken refuge in nodding, exhausting the significance of nods in reply to the various appeals that the other three addressed to him. If their meaning had been developed, his nods must have landed him in a pitiable mess of inconsistencies; he had tried to agree with everybody, to sympathize all round, to indorse universally. He had won momentary applause, and in the end created general dissatisfaction.

Iver had his temper in hand still, but he was hard and resolute.

"You don't seem to understand the seriousness of the thing in the least," he said. "I've spoken plainly to you. My daughter's future is at stake. You say it was all idle gossip. I find that hard to believe. Even if so, I must have that gossip investigated and proved to be nothing but gossip."

"Investigate it then," said the Imp peevishly.

"You refuse me the materials. What you told Major Duplay was too vague. You know more. You can put me on the track."

Mina was silent. Neeld wiped his brow with his handkerchief. Iver changed his tone.

"Mina, we've been friends to you. I'm not ashamed to remind you of it. Janie's a great friend of yours; my wife and I have welcomed you first for her sake, then for your own. Is this the best return you can make us? Consult anybody you like, if you think I'm prejudiced, whether your conduct is honorable, is square." He paused a moment. "Ask Mr Neeld here what he would do. I'm willing to abide by his judgment."

Mina was sorely tempted to say, "Ask him then." The situation would thus become so much the more piquant. But Mr Neeld was in such distress—to her sharp eyes a distress so visible—that she did not dare to risk the coup. If he were let alone he might keep silence and quiet his conscience by the plea that he had been asked no questions. But she did not venture to face him with a demand for a verdict on her conduct; for her conduct was also his own.

"I must judge for myself. Mr Neeld can't help me," she answered. "Uncle has chosen to say he can prove these things. Let him try." She drew herself up with a prim prudish air. "I don't think it's desirable to mix myself up in such very peculiar questions at all, and I don't think it's nice of men to come and cross-question me about them."

"Oh, we're not in a girls' school," said Iver, with a touch of irritation hardly suppressed. "We come as men of the world to a sensible woman."

"Anybody will tell you I'm not that," interrupted the Imp.

"Well, then, to a woman of good feeling, who wishes to be honest and to be true to her friends. Duplay, have you no influence with Madame Zabriska?"

"I've spared no effort," replied the Major. "I can't believe that she won't help us in the end." His tone was almost menacing. Mina, remembering how he had terrorized the secret out of her before, and resenting the humiliation of the memory, stiffened her neck once more.

"I've nothing to say. You must do as you think best," she said.

"You must be made to speak."

Iver's threats alarmed where Duplay's only annoyed. He spoke calmly and with weight.

"Who can make me speak?" she cried, more angry from her fear.

"The law. When we have reached a certain stage in the inquiry, we shall be able to compel you to speak."

"I thought you couldn't move a step without me?"

Iver was rather set back, but he braved it out.

"The difficulties are immensely increased, but they're not insuperable," he said.

"I shan't stay to be questioned and bullied. I shall go abroad."

Iver looked at the Major; the Major returned his glance; they were both resolute men.

"No, you won't go away," declared Iver slowly.

The Imp was frightened; she was an ignorant young woman in a land of whose laws she knew nothing. Neeld would have liked to suggest something soothing about the liberty of the individual and the Habeas Corpus Act. But he dared show no sympathy—beyond nodding at her unobserved. The nod told her nothing.

"You'll stop me?" Still she tried to sneer defiantly.

Another glance passed between Iver and Duplay. A shrewd observer might have interpreted it as meaning, "Even if we can't do it, she'll think we can."

"We shall," said the Major, executing the bluff on behalf of himself and his partner.

The Imp thought of crying—not for her uncle—which would be hopeless—but for Iver. She concluded it would be hopeless there too; Iver would not heed tears in business hours, however tender-hearted he might be in private life. So she laughed again instead. But the laugh was a failure, and Iver was sharp enough to see it.

"In this country people aren't allowed to play fast and loose in this fashion," he remarked. "I'll tell you one way in which we can make you speak. I have only to go to Lord Tristram and tell him you have spread these reports, that you have made and repeated these imputations on his birth and on his title. What will he do? Can he rest content without disproving them at law? I say he can't. In those proceedings you would be compelled to speak. I must assume you would tell the truth. I refuse to suppose you would commit perjury."

"I should hold my tongue," said Mina.

"Then you'd be sent to prison for contempt of court."

The bluff worked well. Mina knew nothing at all of what Harry Tristram would do, or might do, or must do, of what the law would, or might, or might not do, in the circumstances supposed. And Iver spoke as though he knew everything, with a weighty confidence, with an admirable air of considered candor. She was no match for him; she grew rather pale, her lips twitched, and her breath came quick. Tears were no longer to be treated merely as a possible policy; they threatened to occur of their own accord.

What wonder that a feeling of intolerable meanness attacked Mr Jenkinson Neeld? He was on the wrong side of the table, on the bench instead of in the dock. He sat there judging; his proper place was side by side with the criminal, in charge of the same policeman, wearing the handcuffs too. And he had less excuse for his crime than she. He was even more in Iver's debt; he had eaten his bread these weeks past; even now he was pretending to be his adviser and his witness; his deception was deeper than hers. Besides he was not a young woman who might find excuse in the glamour of Harry's position or the attraction of Harry's eyes; he was not a romantic young woman; he was only a romantic old fool. He could bear it no longer. He must speak. He could not get into the dock beside her—for that would throw away the case which she was defending so gallantly—but he must speak a word for her.

"In my opinion," he said nervously, but not without his usual precision, "we can carry this matter no further. Madame Zabriska declines to speak. I may say that I understand and respect the motive which I believe inspires her. She regrets her idle words. She thinks that by repeating them she would give them greater importance. She does not wish to assume responsibility. She leaves the matter in your hands, Iver. It is not her affair; she had no reason to suppose that it would be yours. By a train of events for which she is not accountable the question has become of importance to you. In her view it is for you to take your own steps. She stands aside."

"She's my friend, she's my daughter's friend. The question is whether my daughter marries Lord Tristram of Blent or an impostor (whether voluntary or involuntary) without a name, an acre, or, so far as I know, a shilling. She can help me. She stands aside. You think her right, Neeld?"

"Yes, I do," said the old gentleman with the promptness of desperation.

"Then your idea of friendship differs diametrically from mine. I desire no such friends as that."

It is to be hoped that the sting of Iver's remark was somewhat mitigated by Mina's covertly telegraphed gratitude. Yet Neeld was no happier after his effort than before it. A silence fell on them all. Mina glanced from her uncle's face to Iver's. Both men were stern and gloomy. Her sense of heroism barely supported her; things were so very uncomfortable. If Harry could know what she suffered for him, it would be something. But Mina had an idea that Harry was thinking very little about her. Moreover, in taking sides in a controversy, perhaps the most important practical question is—whom has one got to live with? She had to live not with Harry Tristram, but with that glowering uncle, Major Duplay. Agree with your enemy whiles you are in the house with him, even more than whiles you are in the way.

At this point—the deadlock demanded by the canons of art having been reached by the force of circumstances and the clash of wills—enter the Deus ex Machina, in the shape of a pretty parlormaid in a black gown and white apron, with a bow of pink ribbon at her neck; instead of the car, a silver salver, and on it a single letter.

"For you, ma'am," said the Deus, and with a glance at Neeld (merely because he was a man and a stranger) she ended her brief but momentous appearance on the stage.

The Imp was in no mood for ceremony; one glance at the handwriting, and she tore the envelope open eagerly. Iver was whispering to Duplay. Neeld's eyes were on the ceiling, because he did not know where else he could direct them with any sense of safety.

Mina read. A gasp of breath from her brought Neeld's eyes down from their refuge and stayed Iver and the Major's whispered talk. She gazed from one to the other of them. She had flushed red; her face was very agitated and showed a great stress of feeling. Duplay with an exclamation of surprise put out his hand for the letter. But Mina kept hers on it, pinning it immovably to the table. For another minute she sat there, facing the three. Then all composure failed her; she burst into tears, and bowing her head to meet her arms on the table, covering the letter with her hair, she sobbed violently.

The fort she had been defending was betrayed from within. For some reason unknown, unguessable, the champion she fought for had fled from the fight. And the few words of his message—aye, and that he should send a message to her—pierced her to the heart. Strained already by her battle, she was broken down by this sudden end to it, this sudden and disastrous end.

"I can't help it, I can't help it," the men heard her say between her sobs.

Her apology did nothing to relieve their extreme discomfort. All three felt brutal; even the Major's face lost its gloomy fierceness and relaxed into an embarrassed solicitude. "Ought we to call the maid?" he whispered. "Poor child!" murmured Neeld.

The sobs dominated these timid utterances. Was it they who had brought her to this state, or was it the letter? Iver stirred uneasily in his chair, his business manner and uncharitable shrewdness suddenly seeming out of place. "Give her time," he said gently. "Give her time, poor girl."

Mina raised her head; tears ran down her cheeks; she was woe personified.

"Time's no use," she groaned. "It's all over now."

Neeld caught at the state of affairs by an intuition to which his previous knowledge helped him. Duplay had been baffled by Harry's diplomacy and expected no action from his side. To Neeld such a development seemed possible, and it was the only thing which to his mind could throw light on Mina's behavior.

"Won't you show us the letter?" he asked gently.

"Oh, yes. And I'll tell you anything you like now. It doesn't matter now." She looked at Neeld; she was loyal to the end. "I was the only person who knew it," she said to Iver.

That was too much. Timid he might be, even to the point of cowardice; but now, when the result of confession would be no harm to anybody but himself, Neeld felt he must speak if he were to have any chance of going on thinking himself a gentleman—and it is an unpleasant thing for a man to realize that he has none.

"I must correct Madame Zabriska," he said. "I knew it too."

"What?" cried Duplay. Iver turned quick scrutinizing eyes on his friend.

"You knew too? You knew what?" he demanded.

"The facts we have been endeavoring to obtain from Madame Zabriska."

"The facts about——"

"Oh, it's all in the letter," cried Mina in a quick burst of impatience. "There it is."

She flung it across to Iver and rested her chin on her hands, while her eyes followed his expression as he read. Duplay was all excitement, but old Mr Neeld had sunk back in his chair with a look of fretful weariness. Iver was deliberate; his glasses needed some fitting on; the sheet of paper required some smoothing after its contact with Mina's disordered and disordering hair. Besides, he was really as excited as Duplay and almost as agitated as Mina herself. But these emotions are not appropriate to business men. So he was very calm and deliberate in his demeanor; he might have been going to deliver a whole speech from the way he cleared his throat.

"I have thrown up the sponge and fled. Please make friends with Lady Tristram of Blent.—H. T."

It was enough. What need of further witness? And if there had been, the principal criminal had confessed and the lips of his accomplices were unsealed.

For a while nobody spoke. Then Neeld, leaning forward to the table again, began to explain and excuse his silence, to speak of the hard case he was in, of the accidental and confidential character of his knowledge. Neither Mina nor her uncle even appeared to heed him. Iver seemed to listen patiently and courteously, but his mind too was distracted, and he did not cease fidgeting with Harry Tristram's letter and referring ever and again to its brief sufficient message.

"I dare say I was wrong. The position was very difficult," pleaded Neeld.

"Yes, yes," said Iver in an absent tone. "Difficult no doubt, Neeld; both for you and Mina. And now he has—he has given up the game himself! Or was his hand forced?"

"No," flashed out Mina, restored in a moment to animation, her fighting instincts awake again. "He'd never have been forced. He must have done it of his own accord."

"But why?" Again he returned to the letter. "And why does he write to you?"

"Because he knew I knew about it. He didn't know that Mr Neeld did."

"And this—this Lady Tristram of Blent?" Iver's voice was hesitating and conscious as he pronounced the name that was to have become his daughter's.

Again the pink-ribboned Deus made entry on the scene, to give the speaker a more striking answer.

"A lady to see you, ma'am. Miss Gainsborough."

The three men sprang to their feet; with a sudden wrench Mina turned her chair round toward the door. A tall slim girl in black came in with a quick yet hesitating step.

"Forgive me, Madame Zabriska. But I had to come. Harry said you were his friend. Do you know anything about him? Do you know where he is?" She looked at the men and blushed as she returned their bow with a hurried recognition.

"No, I haven't seen him. I know nothing," said Mina.

"The letter, Mina," Duplay reminded her, and Mina held it out to Cecily.

Cecily came forward, took and read it. She looked again at the group, evidently puzzled.

"He doesn't say where he's gone," she said.

"You are——?" Iver began.

"I'm Cecily Gainsborough. But I think he means me when he says Lady Tristram of Blent."

"Yes, he must mean you, Miss Gainsborough."

"Yes, because last night he told me—it was so strange, but he wouldn't have done it unless it was true—he told me that he wasn't Lord Tristram really, and that I——" Her eyes travelled quickly over their faces, and she re-read the letter. "Do you know anything about it?" she demanded imperiously. "Tell me, do you know what he means by this letter and whether what he says is true?"

"We know what he means," answered Iver gravely, "and we know that it's true."

"Have you known it long?" she asked.

Iver glanced at Duplay and Neeld. It was Neeld who answered gently: "Some of us have been sure of it for some time. But——" He looked at Mina before he went on. "But we didn't intend to speak."

Cecily stood there, seeming to consider and for a moment meeting Mina's intense gaze which had never left her face.

"Had he known for long?" was her next question.

It met with no immediate answer. Duplay rose abruptly and walked to the mantelpiece; he leant his arm on it and turned half away from the group at the table.

"Had he known for long?" Cecily repeated.

"Ever so long," answered Mina Zabriska in a low voice, but very confidently.

"Ah, he was waiting till Lady Tristram died?"

Iver nodded; he thought what she suggested a very good explanation to accept. It was plausible and sensible; it equipped Harry Tristram with a decent excuse for his past silence, and a sound reason for the moment of his disclosure. He looked at Neeld and found ready acquiescence in the old gentleman's approving nod. But Mina broke out impatiently—

"No, no, that had nothing to do with it. He never meant to speak. Blent was all the world to him. He never meant to speak." A quick remembrance flashed across her. "Were you with him in the Long Gallery last night?" she cried. "With him there for hours?"

"Yes, we were there."

"Yes, I saw you from the terrace here. Did he tell you there?"

"He told me there." There was embarrassment as well as wonder in her manner now.

"Well then, you must know why he told you. We don't know." Mina was very peevish.

"Is it any use asking——?" Iver began. An unceremoniously impatient and peremptory wave of Mina's arm reduced him to silence. Her curiosity left no room for his prudent counsels of reticence.

"What were you doing in the Gallery?" demanded Mina.

"I was looking at all the things there and—and admiring them. He came up presently and—I don't remember that he said very much. He watched me; then he asked me if I loved the things. And—well, then he told me. He told me and went straight out of the room. I waited a long while, but he didn't come back, and I haven't spoken to him since." She looked at each of them in turn as though someone might be able to help her with the puzzle.

"Somehow you made him do it—you," said Mina Zabriska.

Slowly Cecily's eyes settled on Mina's face; thus she stood silent for a full minute.

"Yes, I think so. I think I must have somehow." Her voice rose as she asked with a sudden access of agitation, "But what are we to do now?"

Mina had no thought for that; it was the thing itself that engrossed her, not the consequences.

"There will, of course, be a good many formalities," said Iver. "Subject to those, I imagine that the—er—question settles itself."

His phrase seemed to give Cecily no enlightenment.

"Settles itself?" she repeated.

"Subject to formal proof, I mean, and in the absence of opposition from" (he hesitated a second) "—from Mr Tristram, which can't be anticipated now, you will be put into possession of the estates and the title." He pointed to Harry's letter which was still in her hands. "You see what he himself calls you there, Miss Gainsborough."

She made no answer. With another glance at Neeld, Iver pushed back his chair and rose. Neeld followed his example. They felt that the interview had better end. Duplay did not move, and Cecily stood where she was. She seemed to ask what was to be done with her; her desolation was sad, but it had something of the comic in it. She was so obviously lost.

"You might walk down to Blent with Miss Gainsborough, Mina," Iver suggested.

"No," cried the Imp in a passion, leaping up from her chair. "I don't want to have anything to do with her."

Cecily started and her cheeks flushed red as though she had been struck. Iver looked vexed and ashamed.

"It's all her fault that Harry Tristram's—that Harry Tristram's——" The Imp's voice was choked; she could get no further.

Old Mr Neeld came forward. He took Harry's letter from Cecily and gave it to Mina.

"My dear, my dear!" he said gently, as he patted her hand. "Read that again."

Mina read, and then scrutinized Cecily keenly.

"Well, I'll walk down with you," she said grudgingly. She came nearer to Cecily. "I wonder what you did!" she exclaimed, scanning her face. "I must find out what you did!"

Iver came forward. "I must introduce myself to you, Miss Gainsborough. I live at Blentmouth, and my name is Iver."

"Iver!" She looked at him curiously. At once he felt that she had knowledge of the relation between his daughter and Harry Tristram.

"Yes, and since we shall probably be neighbors——" He held out his hand. She put hers into it, still with a bewildered air. Neeld contented himself with a bow as he passed her, and Duplay escaped from the room with a rapidity and stillness suggestive of a desire not to be observed. When the men were gone Cecily sank into a chair and covered her face with her hands for a minute. She looked up to find Mina regarding her, still with mingled inquisitiveness and hostility.

"What were you all doing here when I came?" asked Cecily.

"They were trying to make me tell what I knew about Harry Tristram. But I wouldn't tell."

"Wouldn't you?" Cecily's eyes sparkled in sudden approval, and she broke into a smile. "I like you for that," she cried. "I wouldn't have told either."

"But now!" The Imp pouted disconsolately. "Well, it's not your fault, I suppose, and——" She walked up to Cecily and gave her a brief but friendly kiss. "And you needn't be so upset as all that about it. We'll just talk over what we'd better do."

There was not much prospect of their talk affecting either the laws of England or the determination of Harry Tristram to any appreciable extent. But the proposal seemed to comfort Cecily; and the Imp rang the bell for tea. Coming back from this task, she gave Cecily a critical glance.

"You'll look it anyhow," she concluded with a reluctant smile.

Meanwhile Iver and Neeld drove back to Blentmouth. Iver said nothing about his friend's bygone treachery; oddly enough it was not in the culprit's mind either.

"Now, Neeld, to break this news to Janie!" said Iver.

Neeld nodded once again.

But of course a situation quite other than they expected awaited them at Fairholme.



XVI

THE NEW LIFE

"You haven't mentioned it to the young man himself?" asked Lady Evenswood.

"Certainly not. I've only seen him once, and then he didn't talk of his own affairs. He takes the thing very well. He's lost his position and he's the hero of the newspapers, and he bears both afflictions quite coolly. A lad of good balance, I think."

"Is he agreeable?"

"Hum, I'm not sure of that. No excess of modesty, I fancy."

"I suppose you mean he's not shy? All young men are conceited. I think I should like you to bring him to see me."

For forty years such an intimation from Lady Evenswood had enjoyed the rank of a command; Lord Southend received it with proper obedience.

"The solution I spoke of has occurred to some of us," he went on. "He's poor now, but with that he could make a marriage. The case is very exceptional——"

"So is what you propose, George."

"Oh, there are precedents. It was done in the Bearsdale case."

"There was a doubt there." Lady Evenswood knew all about the Bearsdale case; though it was ancient history to Southend, she had danced with both the parties to it.

"The House was against the marriage unanimously." But he did not deny the doubt.

"Well, what are you going to do?" she asked.

"It would be necessary to approach Disney." Southend spoke with some appearance of timidity. Mr Disney was Prime Minister. "And the truth is, none of us seemed to like the job. So John Fullcombe suggested you."

"What brave men you are!" Her face wrinkled humorously.

"Well, he might bite us, and he couldn't bite you—not so hard anyhow."

"And you want me to ask for a higher rank! That wasn't done in the Bearsdale case, nor in any other that I ever heard of."

"We shouldn't press that. A barony would do. But if Disney thought that under the very exceptional circumstances a viscounty——"

"I don't see why you want it," she persisted. The slight embarrassment in Southend's manner stirred the old lady's curiosity. "It's rather odd to reward a man for his mother's——. There, I don't say a word about Addie. I took her to her first ball, poor girl."

"Disney used to know her as a girl."

"If you're relying on Robert Disney's romantic memories——" But she stopped, adding after a pause, "Well, one never knows. But again, why a viscounty?"

Driven into a corner, but evidently rather ashamed of himself, Southend explained.

"The viscounty would be more convenient if a match came about between him and the girl."

"What, the new Lady Tristram? Well, George, romance has taken possession of you to-day!"

"Not at all," he protested indignantly. "It's the obviously sensible way out."

"Then they can do it without a viscounty."

"Oh, no, not without something. There's the past, you see."

"And a sponge is wanted? And the bigger the sponge the better? And I'm to get my nose bitten off by asking Robert Disney for it? And if by a miracle he said yes, for all I know somebody else might say no!"

This dark reference to the Highest Quarters caused Southend to nod thoughtfully: they discussed the probable attitude—a theme too exalted to be more than mentioned here. "Anyhow the first thing is to sound Disney," continued Southend.

"I'll think about it after I've seen the young man," Lady Evenswood promised. "Have you any reason to suppose he likes his cousin?"

"None at all—except, of course, the way he's cleared out for her."

"Yielding gracefully to necessity, I suppose?"

"Really, I doubt the necessity; and, anyhow, the gracefulness needs some explanation in a case like this. Still I always fancied he was going to marry another girl, a daughter of a friend of mine—Iver—you know who I mean?"

"Oh, yes. Bring Harry Tristram to see me," said she. "Good-by, George. You're looking very well."

"And you're looking very young."

"Oh, I finished getting old before you were forty."

A thought struck Southend. "You might suggest the viscounty as contingent on the marriage."

"I shan't suggest anything till I've seen the boy—and I won't promise to then."

Later in the afternoon Southend dropped in at the Imperium, where to his surprise and pleasure he found Iver in the smoking-room. Asked how he came to be in town, Iver explained:

"I really ran away from the cackling down at Blentmouth. All our old ladies are talking fifteen to the dozen about Harry Tristram, and Lady Tristram, and me, and my family, and—well, I dare say you're in it by now, Southend! There's an old cat named Swinkerton, who is positively beyond human endurance; she waylays me in the street. And Mrs Trumbler, the vicar's wife, comes and talks about Providence to my poor wife every day. So I fled."

"Leaving your wife behind, I suppose?"

"Oh, she doesn't mind Mrs Trumbler. But I do."

"Well, there's a good deal of cackling up here too. But tell me about the new girl." Lord Southend did not appear to consider his own question "cackling" or as tending to produce the same.

"I've only seen her once. She's in absolute seclusion and lets nobody in except Mina Zabriska—a funny little foreign woman—You don't know her."

"I know about her, I saw it in the paper. She had something to do with it?"

"Yes." Iver passed away from that side of the subject immediately. "And she's struck up a friendship with Cecily Gainsborough—Lady Tristram, I ought to say. I had a few words with the father. The poor old chap doesn't know whether he's on his head or his heels; but as they're of about equal value, I should imagine, for thinking purposes, it doesn't much matter. Ah, here's Neeld. He came up with me."

The advent of Neeld produced more discussion. Yet Southend said nothing of the matter which he had brought to Lady Evenswood's attention. Discretion was necessary there. Besides he wished to know how the land lay as to Janie Iver. On that subject his friend preserved silence.

"And the whole thing was actually in old Joe's diary!" exclaimed Southend.

Neeld, always annoyed at the "Joe," admitted that the main facts had been recorded in Mr Cholderton's Journal, and that he himself had known them when nobody else in England did—save, of course, the conspirators themselves.

"And you kept it dark? I didn't know you were as deep as that, Neeld." He looked at the old gentleman with great amazement.

"Neeld was in an exceedingly difficult position," said Iver. "I've come to see that." He paused, looking at Southend with an amused air. "You introduced us to one another," he reminded him with a smile.

"Bless my soul, so I did! I'd forgotten. Well, it seems my fate too to be mixed up in the affair." Just at present, however, he was assisting fate rather actively.

"It's everybody's. The Blent's on fire from Mingham to the sea."

"I've seen Harry Tristram."

"Ah, how is he?" asked Neeld.

"Never saw a young man more composed in all my life. And he couldn't be better satisfied with himself if he'd turned out to be a duke."

"We know Harry's airs," Iver said, smiling indulgently. "But there's stuff in him." A note of regret came into his voice. "He treated me very badly—I know Neeld won't admit it, but he did. Still I like him and I'd help him if I could."

"Well, he atoned for anything wrong by owning up in the end," remarked Southend.

"That wasn't for my sake or for—— Well, it had nothing to do with us. As far as we were concerned he'd be at Blent to-day. It was Cecily Gainsborough who did it."

"Yes. I wonder——"

Iver rose decisively. "Look here, Southend, if you're going to do exactly what all my friends and neighbors, beginning with Miss Swinkerton, are doing, I shall go and write letters." With a nod he walked into the next room, leaving Neeld alone with his inquisitive friend. Southend lost no time.

"What's happened about Janie Iver? There was some talk——"

"It's all over," whispered Neeld with needless caution. "He released her, and she accepted the release."

"What, on the ground that——?"

"Really I don't know any more. But it's finally over; you may depend upon that."

Southend lit a cigar with a satisfied air. On the whole he was glad to hear the news.

"Staying much longer in town?" he asked.

"No, I'm going down to Iver's again in August."

"You want to see the end of it? Come, I know that's it!" He laughed as he walked away.

Meanwhile Harry Tristram, unconscious of the efforts which were being made to arrange his future, and paying as little attention as he could to the buzz of gossip about his past, had settled down in quiet rooms and was looking at the world from a new point of view. He was in seclusion like his cousin; the mourning they shared for Addie Tristram was sufficient excuse; and he found his chief pleasure in wandering about the streets. The season was not over yet, and he liked to go out about eight in the evening and watch the great city starting forth to enjoy itself. Then he could feel its life in all the rush and the gayety of it. Somehow now he seemed more part of it and more at home in it than when he used to run up for a few days from his country home. Then Blent had been the centre of his life, and in town he was but a stranger and a sojourner. Blent was gone; and London is home to homeless men. There was a suggestion for him in the air of it, an impulse that was gradually but strongly urging him to action, telling him that he must begin to do. For the moment he was notorious, but the talk and the staring would be over soon—the sooner the better, he added most sincerely. Then he must do something if he wished still to be, or ever again to be, anybody. Otherwise he could expect no more than to be pointed out now and then to the curious as the man who had once been Tristram of Blent and had ceased to be such in a puzzling manner.

As he looked back, he seemed to himself to have lived hitherto on the banks of the river of life as well as of the river Blent; there had been no need of swimming. But he was in the current now; he must swim or sink. This idea took shape as he watched the carriages, the lines of scampering hansoms, the crowds waiting at theatre doors. Every man and every vehicle, every dandy and every urchin, represented some effort, if it were only at one end of the scale to be magnificent, at the other not to be hungry. No such notions had been fostered by days spent on the banks of the Blent. "What shall I do? What shall I do?" The question hummed in his brain as he walked about. There were such infinite varieties of things to do, such a multitude of people doing them. To some men this reflection brings despair or bewilderment; to Harry (as indeed Lord Southend would have expected from his observation of him) it was a titillating evidence of great opportunities, stirring his mind to a busy consideration of chances. Thus then it seemed as though Blent might fall into the background, his loved Blent. Perhaps his not thinking of it had begun in wilfulness, or even in fear; but he found the rule he had made far easier to keep than he had ever expected. There had been a sort of release for his mind; he had not foreseen this as a possible result of his great sacrifice. He even felt rather richer; which seemed a strange paradox, till he reflected that the owners of Blent had seldom been able to lay hands readily on a fluid sum of fifteen thousand pounds, subject to no claims for houses to be repaired, buildings to be maintained, cottages to be built, wages to be paid, and the dozen other ways in which money disperses itself over the surface of a landed estate. He had fifteen thousand pounds in form as good as cash. He was living more or less as he had once meant to live in this one particular; he was living with a respectable if not a big check by him, ready for any emergency which might arise—an emergency not now of a danger to be warded off, but of an opportunity to be seized.

These new thoughts suited well with the visit which he paid to Lady Evenswood and gained fresh strength from it. His pride and independence had made him hesitate about going. Southend, amazed yet half admiring, had been obliged to plead, reminding him that it was not merely a woman nor merely a woman of rank who wished to make his acquaintance, but also a very old woman who had known his mother as a child. He further offered his own company, so that the interview might assume a less formal aspect. Harry declined the company but yielded to the plea. He was announced as Mr Tristram. He had just taken steps to obtain a Royal License to bear the name. Southend had chuckled again half admiringly over that.

Although the room was in deep shadow and very still, and the old white-haired lady the image of peace, for Harry there too the current ran strong. Though not great, she had known the great; if she had not done the things, she had seen them done; her talk revealed a matter-of-course knowledge of secrets, a natural intimacy with the inaccessible. It was like Harry to show no signs of being impressed; but very shrewd eyes were upon him, and his impassivity met with amused approval since it stopped short of inattention. She broke it down at last by speaking of Addie Tristram.

"The most fascinating creature in the world," she said. "I knew her as a little girl. I knew her up to the time of your birth almost. After that she hardly left Blent, did she? At least she never came to London. You travelled, I know."

"Were you ever at Blent?" he asked.

"No, Mr Tristram."

He frowned for a moment; it was odd not to be able to ask people there, just too as he was awaking to the number of people there were in the world worth asking.

"There never was anybody in the world like her, and there never will be," Lady Evenswood went on.

"I used to think that; but I was wrong." The smile that Mina Zabriska knew came on his face.

"You were wrong? Who's like her then?"

"Her successor. My cousin Cecily's very like her."

Lady Evenswood was more struck by the way he spoke than by the meaning of what he said. She wanted to say "Bravo," and to pat him on the back; he had avoided so entirely any hesitation or affectation in naming his cousin—Addie Tristram's successor who had superseded him.

"She talks and moves and sits and looks at you in the same way. I was amazed to see it." He had said not a word of this to anybody since he left Blent. Lady Evenswood, studying him very curiously, began to make conjectures about the history of the affair, also about what lay behind her visitor's composed face; there was a hint of things suppressed in his voice. But he had the bridle on himself again in a moment. "Very curious these likenesses are," he ended with a shrug.

She decided that he was remarkable, for a boy of his age, bred in the country, astonishing. She had heard her father describe Pitt at twenty-one and Byron at eighteen. Without making absurd comparisons, there was, all the same, something of that precocity of manhood here, something also of the arrogance that the great men had exhibited. She was very glad that she had sent for him.

"I don't want to be impertinent," she said (she had not meant to make even this much apology), "but perhaps an old woman may tell you that she is very sorry for—for this turn in your fortunes, Mr Tristram."

"You're very kind. It was all my own doing, you know. Nobody could have touched me."

"But that would have meant——?" she exclaimed, startled into candor.

"Oh, yes, I know. Still—but since things have turned out differently, I needn't trouble you with that."

She saw the truth, seeming to learn it from the set of his jaw. She enjoyed a man who was not afraid to defy things, and she had been heard to lament that everybody had a conscience nowadays—nay, insisted on bringing it even into politics. She wanted to hear more—much more now—about his surrender, and recognized as a new tribute to Harry the fact that she could not question him. Immediately she conceived the idea of inviting him to dinner to meet Mr Disney; but of course that must wait for a little while.

"Everything must seem rather strange to you?" she suggested.

"Yes, very," he answered thoughtfully. "I'm beginning to think that some day I shall look back on my boyhood with downright incredulity. I shan't seem to have been that boy in the least."

"What are you going to do in the meantime, to procure that feeling?" She was getting to the point she wished to arrive at, but very cautiously.

"I don't know yet. It's hard to choose."

"You certainly won't want for friends."

"Yes, that's pleasant, of course." He seemed to hint, however, that he did not regard it as very useful.

"Oh, and serviceable too," she corrected him, with a nod of wise experience. "Jobs are frowned at now, but many great men have started by means of them. Robert Disney himself came in for a pocket-borough."

"Well, I really don't know," he repeated thoughtfully, but with no sign of anxiety or fretting. "There's lots of time, Lady Evenswood."

"Not for me," she said with all her graciousness.

He smiled again, this time cordially, as he rose to take leave. But she detained him.

"You're on friendly terms with your cousin, I suppose?"

"Certainly, if we meet. Of course I haven't seen her since I left Blent. She's there, you know."

"Have you written to her?"

"No. I think it's best not to ask her to think of me just now."

She looked at him a moment, seeming to consider.

"Perhaps," she said at last. "But don't over-do that. Don't be cruel."

"Cruel?" There was strong surprise in his voice and on his face.

"Yes, cruel. Have you ever troubled to think what she may be feeling?"

"I don't know that I ever have," Harry admitted slowly. "At first sight it looks as if I were the person who might be supposed to be feeling."

"At first sight, yes. Is that always to be enough for you, Mr Tristram? If so, I shan't regret so much that I haven't—lots of time."

He stood silent before her for several seconds.

"Yes, I see. Perhaps. I daresay I can find out something about it. After all, I've given some evidence of consideration for her."

"That makes it worse if you give none now. Good-by."

"It's less than a fortnight since I first met her. She won't miss me much, Lady Evenswood."

"Time's everything, isn't it? Oh, you're not stupid! Think it over, Mr Tristram. Now good-by. And don't conclude I shan't think about you because it's only an hour since we met. We women are curious. When you've nothing better to do it'll pay you to study us."

As Harry walked down from her house in Green Street, his thoughts were divided between the new life and that old one which she had raised again before his eyes by her reference to Cecily. The balance was turned in favor of Blent by the sight of a man who was associated in his mind with it—Sloyd, the house-agent who had let Merrion Lodge to Mina Zabriska. Sloyd was as smart as usual, but he was walking along in a dejected way, and his hat was unfashionably far back on his head. He started when he saw Harry approaching him.

"Why, it's——" he began, and stopped in evident hesitation.

"Mr Tristram," said Harry. "Glad to meet you, Mr Sloyd, though you won't have any more rent to hand over to me."

Sloyd began to murmur some rather flowery condolences.

Harry cut him short in a peremptory but good-natured fashion.

"How's business with you?" he asked.

"Might be worse, Mr Tristram. I don't complain. We're a young firm, and we don't command the opportunities that others do." He laughed as he added, "You couldn't recommend me to a gentleman with ten thousand pounds to spare, could you, Mr Tristram?"

"I know just the man. What's it for?"

"No, no. Principals only," said Sloyd with a shake of his head.

"How does one become a principal then? I'll walk your way a bit." Harry lit a cigar; Sloyd became more erect and amended the position of his hat; he hoped that a good many people would recognize Harry. Yet social pride did not interfere with business wariness.

"Are you in earnest, Mr Tristram? It's a safe thing."

"Oh, no, it isn't, or you wouldn't be hunting for ten thousand on the pavement of Berkeley Square."

"I'll trust you," Sloyd declared. Harry nodded thanks, inwardly amused at the obvious effort which attended the concession. "If you don't come in, you'll not give it away?" Again Harry nodded. "It's a big chance, but we haven't got the money to take it, and unless we can take it we shall have to sell our rights. It's an option on land. I secured it, but it's out in a week. Before then we must table twenty thousand. And ten cleans us out."

"What'll happen if you don't?"

"I must sell the option—rather than forfeit it, you know. I've an offer for it, but a starvation one."

"Who from?"

After a moment's scrutiny Sloyd whispered a name of immense significance in such a connection: "Iver."

"I should like to hear some more about this. It's worth something, I expect, if Iver wants it. Shall I go with you to your office?" He hailed a passing cab. "I've got the money," he said, "and I want to use it. You show me that this is a good thing, and in it goes."

An hour passed in the office of Sloyd, Sloyd, and Gurney. Harry Tristram came out whistling. He looked very pleased; his step was alert; he had found something to do, he had made a beginning—good or bad. It looked good: that was enough. He was no longer an idler or merely an onlooker. He had begun to take a hand in the game himself. He found an added, perhaps a boyish, pleasure in the fact that the affair was for the present to be a dead secret. He was against Iver too in a certain sense, and that was another spice; not from any ill-will, but because it would please him especially to show Iver that he could hold his own. It occurred to him that in case of a success he would enjoy going and telling old Lady Evenswood about it. He felt, as he said to himself, very jolly, careless and jolly, more so than he remembered feeling for many months back. Suddenly an idea struck him. Was it in whole or in part because there was no longer anything to hide, because he need no longer be on the watch? He gave this idea a good deal of rather amused consideration, and came to the conclusion that there might be something in it. He went to the theatre that night, to the pit (where he would not be known), and enjoyed himself immensely.

And Lady Evenswood had made up her mind that she would find a way of seeing Mr Disney soon, and throw out a cautious feeler. Everything would have to be done very carefully, especially if the marriage with the cousin were to be made a feature of the case. But her resolve, although not altered, was hampered by a curious feeling to which her talk with Harry had given rise. There was now not only the very grave question whether Robert Disney—to say nothing of Somebody Else—would entertain the idea. There was another, a much less obvious one—whether Harry himself would welcome it. And a third—whether she herself would welcome it for him. However, when Southend next called on her, she professed her readiness to attack or at least to reconnoitre the task from which he and John Fullcombe and the rest had shrunk.

"Only," she said, "if I were you, I should find out tolerably early—as soon as we know that there's any chance at all—what Mr Tristram himself thinks about it."

"There's only one thing he could think!" exclaimed Southend.

"Oh, very well," smiled Lady Evenswood.

A long life had taught her that only facts convince, and that they often fail.



XVII

RIVER SCENES AND BRIC-A-BRAC

The Blent was on fire indeed, and Mina Zabriska occupied a position rich in importance, prolific of pleasure. Others, such as Iver and Miss S., might meet Mr Gainsborough as he took timid rambles; they could extort little beyond a dazed civility. Others again, such as Janie Iver and Bob Broadley, might comfort themselves with the possession of a secret and the conviction that they too could produce a fair sensation when the appropriate (and respectable) time arrived; for the present they commanded no public interest. Others again, the Major notably, strove after importance by airs of previous knowledge and hints of undisclosed details. Even Mrs Trumbler made her cast, declaring that she had always known (the source of the information was left in obscurity) that pride such as Harry Tristram's was the sure precursor of a fall. None of them could compete with Mina Zabriska. To her alone the doors of Blent were open; she held exclusive right of access to its hidden mistress. The fact caused unmeasured indignation, the reason excited unresting curiosity. This state of things ought to have made Mina very happy. What more could woman want?

One thing only, but that a necessity—somebody to talk to about it. She had nobody. Janie showed no desire to discuss Blent or anything or anybody connected therewith, and with Janie out of the question there was nobody to whom loyalty allowed her to talk. The Major, for instance, was one of the enemy. She might pity him as an uncle—he was perplexed and surly, because somehow he never happened to meet Miss Iver now—but she could not confide in him. The gossips of Blentmouth were beneath her lordly notice. She was bubbling over with undiscussed impressions. And now even Mr Neeld had gone off on a visit to town!