"There's a great deal more in this than you're telling me, Mr Tristram."

"Put everything you can imagine into it, and the result's the same."

She sighed and sat for a moment in pensive silence. Harry seemed to ponder too.

"I'm going to think of nothing but my work," he announced.

"So many young men in their early twenties succeed in that!" she murmured mockingly.

"Don't those who succeed in anything succeed in that?"

"Not all, happily—and none would if they were your mother's sons. My dear boy, just open a window in you anywhere—I know you keep them shut when you can—but just open even a chink, and Addie peeps out directly! Which means great success or great failure, Harry—and other things on the same scale, I fancy. Thank goodness—oh, yes, saving your presence, really thank goodness—I'm not like that myself!"

"Shall I prove you wrong?"

"I'm safe. I can't live to see it. And you couldn't prove me wrong without opening all the windows."

"And that I shouldn't do, even to you?"

"Do you ever do it to yourself?"

"Perhaps not," he laughed. "But once a storm blew them all in, Lady Evenswood, and left me without any screen, and without defences."

"Have another storm then," she counselled. She laid a hand on his arm. "Go to Blent."

"As things stand, I can never go to Blent, I can go only to—Blinkhampton."

"What does little Mina Zabriska say to that?"

"Oh, everything that comes into her head, I suppose, and very volubly."

"I like her," said the old lady with emphasis.

"Is there such a thing as an absolute liking, Lady Evenswood? What's pleasant at one time is abominable at another. And I've known Madame Zabriska at the other time."

"You were probably at the other time yourself."

"I thought we should agree about the relativity!"

"There may always be a substratum of friendship," she argued. "You'll say it's sometimes very sub! Ah, well, you're human in the end. You're absolutely forgetting Blent—and you spend your time with an old woman because she can talk to you about it! Go away and arrange your life, and come back and tell me all about it. And if you're discontented with life, remember that you too will reach the stage of being just told about it some day."

Things will come home to a man at last, strive he never so desperately against them—if the things are true and the man ever honest with himself. It was one night, a little while after this conversation, that the truth came to Harry Tristram and found acceptance or at least surrender. His mind had wandered back to that scene in the Long Gallery, and he had fallen to questioning about his own action. There was a new light on it, and the new light showed him truth. "I must face it; it's not Blent," he said aloud. If it were Blent, it was now Blent only as a scene, a frame, a background. When he pictured Blent, Cecily was there; if he thought of her elsewhere, the picture of Blent vanished. He was in love with her then; and what was the quality that Lady Evenswood had praised in a lover? Let him cultivate it how he would—and the culture would be difficult—yet it would not serve here. If he went to Blent against Cecily's commands and his own promise, he could meet with nothing but a rebuff. Yes, he was in love; and he recognized the impasse as fully as Mina herself, although with more self-restraint. But he was glad to know the truth; it strengthened him, and it freed him from a scorn of himself with which he had become afflicted. It was intolerable that a man should be love-sick for a house; it was some solace to find that the house, in order to hold his affections, must hold a woman too.

"Now I know where I am," said Harry. He knew what he had to meet now; he thought he knew how he could treat himself. He went down to Blinkhampton the next morning, harried his builder out of a holiday expedition, and got a useful bit of work in hand. It was, he supposed, inevitable that Cecily should journey with him in the spirit to Blinkhampton; he flattered himself that she got very little chance while he was there. She was the enemy, he declared, with a half-peevish half-humorous smile. It was not altogether without amusement to invent all manner of devices and all sorts of occupations to evade and elude her. He ventured to declare—following the precedents—that she had treated him shamefully. That broke down. Candor insisted once again on his admitting that he himself would have done exactly the same thing. It never occurred to him to regret, even for a moment, that he had not taken her at her word, and had not accepted her offer. That would have been to spoil his dream, not to realize it. He asked perfection or nothing, being still unhealed of that presumptuous way of his, which bade the world go hang if it would not give him exactly what he chose. The Tristram motto was still, "No compromise!"

An unexpected ally came to his assistance. He received a sudden summons from Mr Disney. He found him at work, rather weary and dishevelled. He let Harry in at once, but kept him waiting while he transacted some other business. Here was the place to see him, not in a drawing-room; his brusque words and quick decisions enabled him to do two men's work. He turned to Harry and said without preface:

"We're going to arbitrate this Barililand question, on behalf of the Company, you know, as well as ourselves. Another instance of my weakness! Lord Murchison's going over for us. He starts in a fortnight. He asked me to recommend him a secretary. Will you go?"

Here was help in avoiding Cecily. But what about Blinkhampton? Harry hesitated a moment.

"I should like it, but I've contracted certain obligations of a business kind at home," he said.

"Well, if you're bound, keep your word and do the work. If you find you're not, I should advise you to take this. It's a good beginning. This is Tuesday. Tell me on Saturday. Good-by." He rang a hand-bell on the table, and, as his secretary entered, said, "The Canadian papers, please."

"I'm very grateful to you, anyhow."

"That's all right, Tristram. Good-by."

There was no doubt what would be the practical way of showing gratitude. Harry went out.

He left Mr Disney's presence determined to accept the offer if Iver could spare his services for the time. The determining cause was still Blent, or his cousin at Blent. Blinkhampton was not far enough away; it rather threw him with people who belonged to the old life than parted him from them. He was weak himself too; while the people were at hand, he would seek them, as he had sought Lady Evenswood. At the Arbitration he would be far off, beyond the narrow seas and among folk who, recognizing the peculiarity of his position, would make a point of not mentioning Blent or speaking of anybody connected with it. It was from this point of view that he was inclined toward the offer, and he did not disguise it from himself; but for it he would rather have gone on with Blinkhampton, perhaps because he had a free hand there, while he could go to the Arbitration only as a subordinate. Blent apart, the offer was valuable to him as a sign of Disney's appreciation rather than on its own account.

He went home and wrote to Iver. The letter weighed all considerations save the one which really weighed with him; he put himself fairly in Iver's hands but did not conceal his own wish; he knew that if Iver were against the idea on solid business grounds, he would not be affected by Harry's personal preference. But the business reasons, when examined, did not seem very serious, and Harry thought that he would get leave to go. He rose from his writing with a long sigh. If he received the answer he expected, he was at the parting of the ways; and he had chosen the path that led directly and finally away from Blent.

An evening paper was brought to him. A tremendous headline caught his notice. "Resignation of Lord Hove! He will not arbitrate about Barililand. Will the Government break up?" Probably not, thought Harry; and it was odd to reflect that, if Lord Hove had got his way, he would have lost his heroic remedy. So great things and small touch and intersect one another. Perhaps Theo (who could now settle that question about the kicking with his friends) would maintain that Flora Disney had talked too much to Harry at dinner, instead of taking all pains to soothe Lord Hove!

It was his last struggle; he had no doubt that he could win, but the fight was very fierce. Impatient of his quiet rooms, he went out into the crowded streets. At first he found himself envying everybody he passed—the cabman on his box, the rough young fellows escaped from the factory, the man who sold matches and had no cares beyond food and a bed. But presently he forgot them all and walked among shadows. He was at Blent in spirit, sometimes with Addie Tristram, sometimes with Cecily. His imagination undid what his hand had done; he was smiling again at the efforts of Duplay to frighten or to displace him. Thus he would be happy for a moment, till reality came back and a dead dulness settled on his soul. Half afraid of himself, he turned round and made for home again; he could not be sure of his self-control. But again he mastered that, and again paced the streets, now in a grim resolution to tire mind and body, so that these visions should have nothing to work on and, finding blank unresponsive weariness, should go their ways and leave him in an insensible fatigue. Ever since he disclaimed his inheritance he had been living in a stress of excitement that had given him a fortitude half unnatural; now this support seemed to fail, and with it went the power to bear.

The remedy worked well; at eight o'clock he found himself very tired, very hungry, unexpectedly composed. He turned into a little restaurant to dine. The place was crowded, and rather shamefacedly (as is the national way) he sat down at a small table opposite a girl in a light-blue blouse and a very big hat, who was eating risotto and drinking lager beer. She assumed an air of exaggerated primness and gentility, keeping her eyes down toward her plate, and putting very small quantities into her mouth at a time. Glad of distraction, Harry watched her with amusement. At last she glanced up stealthily.

"A fine evening," he said, as he started on his chop.

"Very seasonable," she began in a mincing tone; but suddenly she broke off to exclaim in a voice and accent more natural and spontaneous, "Good gracious, I've seen you before, haven't I?"

"I'm not aware that I ever had the honor," said Harry.

"Well, I know your face, anyhow." She was looking at him and searching her memory. "You're not at the halls, are you?"

"No, I'm not at the halls."

"Well, I do know your face—Why, yes, I've seen your face in the papers. I shall get it in a minute now—don't you tell me." She studied him with determination. Harry ate away in contented amusement. "Yes, you're the man who—why, yes, you're Tristram?"

"That's right. I'm Tristram."

"Well, to think of that! Meeting you! Well, I shall have something to tell the girls. Why, a friend of mine wrote down to the country, special, for your photo."

"That must have proved a disappointment, I'm afraid. The romance was better than the hero."

"You may say romance!" she conceded heartily. "To be a lord and——!" She leant forward. "I say, how do you get your living now?"

"Gone into the building-trade," he answered.

"You surprise me!" The observation was evidently meant to be extremely civil. "But there, it isn't so much what your job is as having some job. That's what I say."

"I wish I always said—and thought—things as sensible;" and he took courage to offer her another glass of lager. She accepted with a slight recrudescence of primness; but her eyes did not leave him now. "I never did!" he heard her murmur as she raised her glass. "Well, here's luck to you, sir! (He had been a lord even if he were now a builder). You did the straight thing in the end."

"What?" asked Harry, a little startled.

"Well, some did say as you'd known it all along. Oh, I don't say so; some did."

Harry began to laugh. "It doesn't matter, does it, if I did the straight thing in the end?"

"I'm sure as I shouldn't blame you if you had been a bit tempted. I know what that is! Well, sir, I'll say good-evening."

"Good-evening, miss, and thank you very much," said Harry, rising as she rose. His manner had its old touch of lordliness. His friends criticised that sometimes; this young lady evidently approved.

"You've no cause to thank me," said she, with an admiring look.

"Yes, I have. As it happened, I believe I wanted somebody to remind me that I had done the straight thing in the end, and I'm much obliged to you for doing it."

"Well, I shall have something to tell the girls!" she said again in wondering tones, as she nodded to him and turned slowly away.

Harry was comforted. The stress of his pain was past. He sat on over his simple meal in a leisurely comfortable fashion. He was happy in the fact that his enemy had at least nothing with which she could reproach him, that he had no reason for not holding his head erect before her. And the girl's philosophy had been good. He had a job, and that was the great thing in this world. He felt confident that the struggle was won now, and that it would never have to be fought again in so severe a fashion. His self-respect was intact; if he had been beaten, he would never have forgiven himself.

He regained his rooms. A letter lay waiting for him on the table. He opened it and found that it was from Mina Zabriska.

"We are back here," she wrote. "I am staying at Blent till my uncle comes down. I must write and say good-by to you. I dare say we shall never meet again, or merely by chance. I am very unhappy about it all, but with two people like Cecily and you nothing else could have happened. I see that now, and I'm not going to try to interfere any more. I shan't ask you to forgive me for interfering, because you've made the result quite enough punishment for anything I did wrong. And now Cecily goes about looking just like you—hard and proud and grim; and she's begun to move things about and alter arrangements at Blent. That's what brings it home to me most of all. ('And to me,' interposed Harry as he read.) If I was the sort of woman you think me, I should go on writing to you. But I shan't write again. I am going to stay at Merrion through the winter, and since you won't come here, this is the last of me for a long time anyhow. Oh, you Tristrams! Good-by,

MINA ZABRISKA."

"Poor little Imp!" said Harry. "She's a very good sort; and she seems about right. It's the end of everything." He paused and looked round. "Except of these rooms—and my work—and, well, life at large, you know!" He laughed in the sudden realization of how much was left after there was an end of all—life to be lived, work to be done, enjoyments to be won. He could know this, although he could hardly yet feel it in any very genuine fashion. He could project his mind forward to a future appreciation of what he could not at the moment relish; and he saw that life would be full and rich with him, even although there were an end of all. "But I don't believe," he said to himself, slowly smiling, "that I should ever have come to understand that or to—to fulfil it unless I had—what did the girl say?—done the straight thing in the end, and come out of Blent. Well, old Blent, good-by!" He crumpled up Mina's letter, and flung it into the grate.

The maid-servant opened the door. "Two gentlemen to see you, sir," she said.

"Oh, say I'm busy——" he began.

"We must see you, please," insisted Mr Jenkinson Neeld, with unusual firmness. He turned to the man with him, saying: "Here is Mr Tristram, Colonel Edge."



XXV

THERE'S THE LADY TOO!

There was nothing very remarkable about Colonel Wilmot Edge. He was a slightly built, trim man, but his trimness was not distinctively military. He might have been anything, save that just now the tan on his face witnessed to an out-of-door life. His manner was cold, his method of speech leisurely and methodical. At first sight Harry saw nothing in him to modify the belief in which he had grown up—that the Edges were an unattractive race, unable to appreciate Tristrams, much less worthy to mate with them. He gave the Colonel a chair rather grudgingly, and turned to old Mr Neeld for an explanation of the visit.

Neeld had fussed himself into a seat already, and had drawn some sheets of paper covered with type-writing from his pocket. He spread them out, smoothed them down, cleared his throat, and answered Harry's look by a glance at Edge. Mr Neeld was in a fidget, a fidget of importance and expectancy.

"You will know," said Edge gravely, "that no ordinary matter has led me to call on you, Mr Tristram. However little we may be responsible for the past, we have to recognize it. I should not, under ordinary circumstances, have sought your acquaintance. You must consider this interview purely as one of a business kind. I have just returned to England. For two months I have been out of the way of receiving letters or newspapers. I went to the Imperium Club to-night—I arrived only this morning—and dined in Neeld's company. As it chanced, we spoke of you, and I learnt what has happened since I left England. I have lost no time in calling on you."

Neeld was listening and fidgeting with his sheets of paper. The Colonel's preamble excited little interest in Harry. The reaction of his struggle was on him; he was courteously but not keenly attentive.

"It is not agreeable to me to speak of my brother to you, Mr Tristram. Doubtless we should differ if we discussed his character and conduct. It is not necessary."

"Is Sir Randolph Edge concerned in what you have to say to me?" asked Harry.

"Yes, I am sorry to say he is. Another person is concerned also."

"One moment. You are, of course, aware that I no longer represent my family? Legally I'm not even a member of it. It is possible that you ought to address yourself to Lady Tristram—my cousin—or to her lawyers."

"I have to speak to you. Is the name of the Comtesse d'Albreville known to you, Mr Tristram?"

"Yes, I've heard my mother speak of meeting her in Paris."

"That would be when Lady Tristram was residing with my brother?"

"My mother was never in Paris after that, I believe. It would be at that time, Colonel Edge."

"You are aware that later—after he parted from Lady Tristram—my brother went to Russia, where he had business interests?"

"I have very good reason to know that." Harry smiled at Mr Neeld, who had apparently got all he could out of his papers, and was sitting quiet and upright in an eager attention.

"What I am about to say is known, I believe, to myself alone—and to Neeld here, to whom I told it to-night. While my brother was in Russia, he was joined by the Comtesse. She paid him a visit—secretly, I need hardly add. She passed under the name of Madame Valfier, and she resided in the house adjoining Randolph's. Lady Tristram was not, of course, aware of the relations between her and my brother. I will come now to the time of my brother's death. When he fell ill, he had just completed the sale of one of his Russian properties. Lady Tristram did not, I dare say, speak of the Comtesse's character to you?"

"I never remember hearing my mother speak of anybody's character," said Harry with a smile.

"She was a brilliant woman—she died, by the way, two or three years ago—but extravagant and fond of money. She prevailed on my brother to promise her the price of this property as a gift. The sum was considerable—about seven thousand pounds."

Harry nodded. Here seemed to be some possible light on the reasons for the interview.

"This money was to be paid—in gold—on a certain day. I speak now from information imparted to me subsequently by the Comtesse herself. It was given under a promise of secrecy which I have kept hitherto, but now find myself compelled in honesty to break."

"There can be no question of what is your duty, Edge," Mr Neeld put in.

"I think none. My brother during his illness discussed the matter with the Comtesse. The money was payable in Petersburg. He could not hope to be well enough to go there. At her suggestion he signed a paper authorizing payment to be made to her or to an agent appointed by her. The money being destined for her ultimately, this naturally seemed the best arrangement. She could go and receive the money, or send for it—as a fact she went in person when the time came—and all would be settled."

"Quite so. And the transaction would not appear on the face of Sir Randolph's accounts or bank-book," Harry suggested.

"It's possible that weight was given to that consideration too, but it is not very material. The Comtesse, then, was in possession of this authority. My brother's illness took a turn for the worse. To be brief, he died before the day came on which the money was to be paid."

"And she presented the authority all the same?" asked Harry. "And got the money, did she?"

"That is precisely the course she adopted," assented Colonel Edge.

Harry took a walk up and down the room and returned to the hearthrug.

"I'm very sensible of your kindness in coming here to-day," he said, "and your conduct is that of a man of honor. But at this point I'll stop you, please. I'm aware that prima facie the law would pronounce me to be Sir Randolph's son. That has always been disclaimed on our side and could easily be disproved on yours. I have nothing to do with Sir Randolph Edge or his property."

The Colonel listened unmoved.

"In any case you would have nothing to do with my brother's property," he remarked. "He left a will by which I was constituted sole legatee."

"Then if she robbed anybody she robbed you?"

"Certainly; and three years later she came and told me so."

"Then how in the world does it concern me?" cried Harry impatiently.

"You put your finger on the spot, Mr Tristram, but you took it off again. You said she presented the authority all the same."

"Yes. The authority would be revoked by his death. At least I suppose there's no question of that? Did she get at them before they heard of the death?"

"This money was payable on the 22nd June—the 10th as it's reckoned in Russia—but we needn't trouble about that. As you and Neeld are both aware, on the 18th my brother fell into a collapse which was mistaken for death."

"Yes, the 18th," murmured Neeld, referring to the paper before him, and reading Josiah Cholderton's account of what Madame de Kries had told him at Heidelberg.

"From that attack he rallied temporarily, but not until his death had been reported."

"I am not the man to forget that circumstance," said Harry.

"The report of his death was, of course, contradicted immediately. The doctor attending him saw to that."

"Naturally; and I suppose the Comtesse would see to it too."

"And the only importance that the occurrence of the 18th has for us at present is that, according to the Comtesse's story, it suggested to the doctor the course which she, on his prompting as she declared and certainly with his connivance, afterward adopted. My brother, having rallied from his first collapse, kept up the fight a little while longer. It was, however, plain to the doctor that he could live but a very short time. The Comtesse knew this. My brother was not in a condition to transact business and was incapable of securing to her any benefit by testamentary disposition even if he had wished to do so. Her only chance was the money for the property. This she saw her way to securing with the doctor's help, even although my brother should die before it fell due and the authority she held should thereby lose its legal validity."

"You mean that they determined to carry out a fraud if necessary?"

"Precisely. I must remind you that my brother knew nothing of this. He was altogether past understanding anything about it. I may be very brief now, but I am still anxious that you should fully understand. All that I'm saying to you is beyond question and can be proved at any time by taking evidence on the spot; it is easily available."

Harry had sat down by now and was listening intently.

"On the morning of the 22nd," Edge pursued in his level methodical way, "the Comtesse went to the station escorted by Dr Migratz; that was his name—rather that is his name; he is still alive. On the way they met the British Vice-Consul, and in reply to inquiries from him said that my brother had had another attack but had rallied again. Dr Migratz expressed the opinion that he would live another two days, while Madame Valfier (the Vice-Consul knew her by that name) was sanguine enough to talk of the possibility of a recovery. She impressed him very much by her courage and hopefulness; she was, I may remark, a handsome and attractive woman. Leaving the Vice-Consul, they reached the station and there parted. Migratz returned immediately to my brother's house and remained there, the case being declared to be so critical as to require unremitting attention. Madame Valfier—the Comtesse—took the train to Petersburg, reached it that evening, presented the authority early next morning, and was back about midnight—that being the 23rd. The next day my brother's death was announced, certified by Migratz, and duly registered as the law of the place required." He drew a paper from his pocket. "This is a copy of the entry, showing death on the 24th."

"That document is very familiar to me, Colonel Edge. It gives both styles, doesn't it?"

"Yes, both styles, but—Well, you see for yourself. My story is done. With Migratz's connivance—a woman who acted as nurse was squared too, and her evidence is available—the actual date of death was concealed, and the Comtesse d'Albreville had time to present her authority and receive the money. After paying her accomplices their price, she left Russia with the bulk of it immediately."

Harry glanced at Neeld; the old man's face was full of excitement and his hand trembled as it lay on the leaves of Josiah Cholderton's Journal.

"My mother was married to my father on the 23rd," said Harry slowly.

"My brother died on the 22nd," said Wilmot Edge. "He was dead before the Comtesse started for Petersburg."

Harry made no comment. He sat still and thoughtful.

"Of course I was put on the track of the affair," Edge pursued, "by the disappearance of the money. I had little difficulty in guessing that there had been something queer, but what it was did not cross my mind for a long while. Even after I had a clew, I found Migratz a tough customer, and for a long time I totally failed to identify Madame Valfier. When, thanks to a series of chances, I did so, it was a shock to me. She was the wife of a man of high position and high reputation. She had contrived—she was a remarkable woman—to carry out this expedition of hers without rousing any suspicion; she had returned to her husband and children. Finding herself in danger, she took the bold course of throwing herself on my mercy, and sent for me to Paris. It was not my desire to rake up the story, to injure my brother's memory, or to break up the woman's home. I pocketed the loss as far as I was concerned. As for you, I didn't know you were concerned. I had never gone into the details; I accepted the view which your own conduct, and Lady Tristram's, suggested. I promised silence, guarding myself by a proviso that I must speak if the interests of third persons were ever affected. Your interests are affected now, and I have spoken, Mr Tristram—or Lord Tristram, as I undoubtedly ought to say."

Harry turned to Mr Neeld with a smile and pointed at the leaves of the Journal.

"There was something Cholderton didn't know after all," he said. "A third date—neither the 18th nor the 24th! Twenty-four hours! Well, I suppose it's enough!"

"It's enough to make all the difference to you," said Neeld. "It makes the action you took in giving up your position unnecessary and wrong. It restores the state of things which existed——"

"Before you and Mina Zabriska came to Blent—and brought Mr Cholderton?" He sat smiling a moment. "Forgive me; I'm very inhospitable," he said, and offered them cigarettes and whiskey.

Neeld refused; the Colonel took both.

"You may imagine with what feelings I heard your story," Edge resumed, "and found that the Comtesse's fraud was really the entire basis of your action. If I had been in England the thing need never have happened."

"It has happened," said Harry, "and—and I don't quite know where we are." For the world was all altered again, just when the struggle of the evening had seemed to settle it. The memory of the girl in the restaurant flashed across his mind. What would she—what would she say to this?

Colonel Edge was evidently rather a talkative man. He began again, rather as though he were delivering a little set speech.

"It's perhaps hardly to be expected," he said, "that any degree of intimacy should exist between your family and mine, Lord Tristram, but I venture to hope that the part which it has been my privilege to play to-day may do something to obliterate the memories of the past. We don't perhaps know all the rights of it. I am loyal to my brother, but I knew the late Lady Tristram, and I can appreciate all that her friends valued and prized in her."

"Very good, Edge, very good," murmured emotional old Mr Neeld. "Very proper, most proper."

"And I hope that old quarrels need not be eternal?"

"I'm very much in your debt, and I'm sincerely grateful, Colonel Edge. As for the past—There are graves; let it lie in them."

"Thank you, Lord Tristram, thank you," and the Colonel gave Harry his hand.

"Excellent, excellent!" muttered Mr Neeld as he folded up the leaves of Josiah Cholderton's diary.

"You can call on me for proofs whenever you wish to proceed. After what has occurred, I presume they will be necessary."

"Yes, yes—for his seat," assented Neeld.

"And to satisfy public opinion," added Edge.

There was a pause. Neeld broke it by saying timidly:

"And—er—there is, of course, the—the lady. The lady who now holds the title and estates."

"Of course!" agreed Edge, with a nod that apologized for forgetfulness.

Of course there was! Harry smiled. He had been wondering how long they would take to think of the lady who now held the title and estates. Well, they had come to her at last—after providing for the requirements of the House of Lords and the demands of public opinion—after satisfying the girl in the restaurant, in fact. Yes, of course, there was the lady too.

Though he smiled, he was vexed and suffered a vague disappointment. It is to be wished that things would happen in a manner harmonious with their true nature—the tragic tragically, the comic so that laughter roars out, the melodramatic with the proper limelight effects. To do the Tristrams justice, this was generally achieved where they were concerned; Harry could have relied on his mother and on Cecily; he could rely on himself if he were given a suitable environment, one that appealed to him and afforded responsive feelings. The family was not in the habit of wasting its opportunities for emotion. But who could be emotional now—in face of these two elderly gentlemen? Neeld's example made such a thing ridiculous, Colonel Edge would obviously consider it unsoldier-like. The chance had been frittered away; life was at its old game of neglecting its own possibilities. There was nothing but to acquiesce; fine melodrama had been degraded into a business interview with two elderly and conscientious gentlemen. The scene in the Long Gallery had at least been different from this! Harry bowed his head; he must be thankful for small blessings; it was something that they had remembered the lady at last.

At a glance from Edge, Neeld rose to go.

"Pray wait—wait a minute or two," begged Harry. "I want to think for a minute."

Neeld sat down again. It is very likely they were as surprised at him as he was childishly vexed with them. For he exhibited perfect calm. Yet perhaps Colonel Edge, who had given so colorless an account of the Comtesse's wild appeal to him, was well suited.

"I'm going down to Iver's to-morrow," said old Neeld, tucking the extract from the Journal into his pocket.

"To Iver's?" After a moment's silence Harry fairly laughed. Edge was surprised, not understanding what a difference the Comtesse's manoeuvre had made there too. He could not be expected to know all the difference it had made to Harry's life, even to the man himself. Two irresponsible ladies—say Addie and—well, Madame Valfier—may indeed make differences.

"Yes, to Fairholme," continued old Neeld. "We—we may see you there now?"

Edge looked up with an interested glance. It had occurred to him that he was turning somebody out as well as putting somebody in.

"You'll have, of course, to communicate what I have said to—to——?

"Oh, we'll say Lady Tristram still," Harry interrupted.

Edge gave a little bow. "I shall be ready to meet her or her advisers at any time," he remarked. "She will, I hope, recognize that no other course was open to me. She must not think that there is any room for doubt."

Harry's brain was at work now; he saw himself going to Blent, going to tell Cecily.

"Possibly," Mr Neeld suggested, "it would be better to intrust a third person with the task of giving her this news? One of her own sex perhaps?" He seemed to contemplate a possible fainting-fit, and, remembering his novels, the necessity of cutting stay-laces, a task better left to women.

"You're thinking of Mina? Of Mina Zabriska?" asked Harry, laughing. There again, what a loss! Why had not Mina heard it at first hand? She would have known how to treat the thing.

"She's always taken a great interest in the matter, and—and I understand is very friendly with—with Miss Gainsborough," said Neeld.

"We shall have to make up our minds what to call ourselves soon," sighed Harry.

"There can be no doubt at all," Edge put in; "and if I may venture to suggest, I should say that the sooner the necessity is faced the better."

"Certainly, certainly," Harry assented absently. Even the girl in the restaurant must know about it soon; there must be another pow-wowing in all the papers soon. But what would Cecily say? "If ever the time comes——." He had laughed at that; it had sounded so unlikely, so unreal, so theatrical. "If ever the time comes, I shall remember." That was a strange thing to look back to now. But it was all strange—the affair of the beastly new viscounty, Blinkhampton and its buildings, the Arbitration and the confidence of Mr Disney. Madame Valfier—Comtesse d'Albreville—with a little help from Addie Tristram had brought all these things about. The result of Harry's review of them was English enough to satisfy Wilmot Edge himself.

"The whole thing makes me look rather an ass, I think," said he.

"No doubt you acted impulsively," Edge allowed. It was fully equivalent to an assent.

"Good heavens, I'd been brought up to it! It had always been the fact of my life." He made no pretences about the matter now. "It never occurred to me to think of any mistake. That certificate"—it lay on the table still—"was the sword of Damocles." He laughed as he spoke the hackneyed old phrase. "And Damocles knew the sword was there, or there'd have been no point in it."

The two had rather lost track of his mood. They looked at one another again.

"You've a lot to think of. We'll leave you," said the Colonel.

"But—but what am I to do?" Old Neeld's voice was almost a bleat in his despair. "Am I to tell people at Blentmouth?"

"The communication should come from an authoritative quarter," Edge advised.

"It's bound to be a blow to her," said Neeld. "Suddenly lifted up, suddenly thrown down! Poor girl!"

"Justice is the first thing," declared Wilmot Edge. Now he might have been on a court-martial.

They knew nothing whatever of the truth or the true position.

"We may rely on—on Lord Tristram—to treat the matter with every delicacy, Edge."

"I'm sure of it, Neeld, I'm sure of it."

"He has been through what is practically the same experience himself."

"A very remarkable case, very remarkable. The state of the law which makes such a thing possible——"

"Ah, there I don't agree, Edge. There may be hardships on individuals, but in the interests of morality——"

"You must occasionally put up with damned absurdity," Harry interrupted rather roughly. "I beg your pardon, Mr Neeld. I—I'm a bit worried over this."

They sat silent then, watching him for a few moments. He stood leaning his arm on the mantel-piece, his brows knit but a smile lingering on his lips. He was seeing the scene again, the scene in which he was to tell Cecily. He knew what the end of it would be. They were strangers now. The scene would leave them strangers still. Still Mina Zabriska would be left to cry, "You Tristrams!" Given that they were Tristrams, no other result was possible. They had been through what Mr. Neeld called practically the same experience already; in that very room it had happened.

Suddenly the two men saw a light born in Harry's eyes; his brow grew smooth, the smile on his lips wider. He gave a moment's more consideration to the new thing. Then he raised his head and spoke to Wilmot Edge.

"There are a good many complications in this matter, Colonel Edge. I've had my life upset once before, and I assure you it's rather troublesome work. It wants a little time and a little thinking. You get rather confused—always changing your train, you know. I have work on hand—plans and so forth. And, as you say, of course there's the lady too." He laughed as he ended by borrowing Neeld's phrase.

"I can understand all that, Lord Tristram."

"Do you mind saying Mr. Tristram? Saying Mr. Tristram to me and to everybody for the present? It won't be for long; a week perhaps."

"You mean, keep the change in the position a secret?" Edge seemed rather startled.

"You've kept the secret for many years, Colonel. Shall we say a week more? And you too, Mr. Neeld? Nothing at all to the people at Blentmouth? Shall we keep Miss S. in the dark for a week more?" The thought of Miss Swinkerton carried obvious amusement with it.

"You mean to choose your opportunity with—with your cousin?" Neeld asked.

"Yes, exactly—to choose my opportunity. You see the difficult character of the situation? I ask your absolute silence for a week."

"Really I——" Old Neeld hesitated a little. "These concealments lead to such complications," he complained. He was thinking, no doubt, of the Iver engagement and the predicament in which it had landed him.

"I don't ask it on my own account. There's my cousin."

"Yes, yes, Neeld, there's the lady too."

"Well, Edge, if you're satisfied, I can't stand out. For a week then—silence."

"Absolute!" said Harry. "Without a look or a word?"

"You have my promise," said Wilmot Edge.

"And mine. But—but I shall feel very awkward," sighed poor Mr Neeld. He might have added that he did feel a sudden and poignant pang of disappointment. Lived there the man who would not have liked to carry that bit of news in his portmanteau when he went out of town? At least that man was not Mr Jenkinson Neeld.

"I'll choose my time, and I won't keep you long," said Harry.

With that they left him. But they had a word together before Edge caught his 'bus in Piccadilly.

"Cool young chap!" said he. "Took it quietly enough."

"Yes, considering the enormous difference it makes," agreed Neeld. His use of that particular phrase was perhaps an unconscious reminiscence of the words in the Journal, the words that Addie used when she burst into Madame de Kries's room at Heidelberg.

Edge chuckled a little. "Not much put out about the girl either, eh?"

"Now you say so——" Neeld shook his head. "I hope he'll do it tactfully," he sighed.

Edge did not seem to consider that likely. He in his turn shook his head.

"I said no more than I thought about Addie Tristram," he remarked. "But the fact is, they're a rum lot, and there's no getting over it, Neeld."

"They—er—have their peculiarities, no doubt," admitted Mr. Neeld.



XXVI

A BUSINESS CALL

"My dear, isn't there something odd about Mr Neeld?" Mrs Iver put the question, her anxious charity struggling with a natural inquisitiveness.

"About Neeld? I don't know. Is there?" He did not so much as look up from his paper. "He's coming with us to Blent to-night, I suppose?"

"Yes. And he seems quite excited about that. And he was positively rude to Miss Swinkerton at lunch, when she told him that Lady Tristram meant to give a ball next winter. I expect his nerves are out of order."

Small wonder if they were, surely! Let us suppose Guy Fawkes's scheme not prematurely discovered, and one Member of a full House privy to it and awaiting the result. That Member's position would be very like Mr Neeld's. Would he listen to the debate with attention? Could he answer questions with sedulous courtesy?

From the moment of his arrival Mr Neeld had been plunged into the Tristram affair, and surrounded by people who were connected with it. But it must be admitted that he had it on his brain and saw it everywhere. For to-day it was not the leading topic of the neighborhood, and Miss S.'s observation had been only by the way. The engagement was the topic, and only Neeld (or perhaps Mina Zabriska too, at Blent), insisted on digging up a hypothetical past and repeating, in retrospective rumination, that Harry Tristram might have been the lucky man. As for such an idea—well, Miss S. happened to know that there had never been anything in it; Janie Iver herself had told her so, she said. The question between Janie and Miss S., which this assertion raises, may be passed by without discussion.

He had met Gainsborough essaying a furtive entry into Blentmouth and heading toward the curiosity-shop—with a good excuse this time. It was Cecily's birthday, and the occasion, which was to be celebrated by a dinner-party, must be marked by a present also. Neeld went with the little gentleman, and they bought a bit of old Chelsea (which looked very young for its age). Coming out, Gainsborough sighted Mrs Trumbler coming up High Street and Miss S. coming down it. He doubled up a side street to the churchyard, Neeld pursuing him at a more leisurely pace.

"It's positively worthy of a place at Blent—in the Long Gallery," panted Gainsborough, hugging his brown-paper-covered prize. "You'll be interested to see the changes we're making, Mr Neeld. Cecily has begun to take an enormous interest in the house, and I—I'm settling down."

"You don't regret London ever?"

"I shall run up now and then. My duty is to my daughter. Of course her life is changed." He sighed as he added, "We're getting quite used to that."

"She has come to love the place, I dare say?"

"Yes, yes. She's in very good spirits and quite happy in her position now, I think." He glanced over his shoulder. Miss S. was in sight. "Good-by. So glad we shall see you to-night." He made his escape at a run. Neeld, having been interrogated at lunch already, was allowed to pass by with a lift of his hat.

Janie was very happy. She at least thought no more of that bygone episode. She asked no questions about Harry Tristram. He had dropped out of her life. He seemed to have dropped out of the life of the countryside too. That was strange anyhow, when it was remembered how large a local figure the young man had cut when Neeld came first to Fairholme; it was stranger still in view of what must soon be. The announcement of the engagement seemed to assume to write Finis to Harry as a factor in Blentmouth society. In that point of view the moment chosen for it was full of an unconscious irony. Janie would not have gone back to him now, and Neeld did not suspect her of any feeling which could have made that possible. It was merely odd that she should be putting an appropriate finish to a thing which in the meantime had been suddenly, absolutely, and radically undone. Neeld was loyal to his word; but none may know the terrible temptation he suffered; a nod, a wink, a hint, an ambiguity—anything would have given him some relief.

Harry was mentioned only once—in connection with his letter to Iver about the Arbitration. Iver was not inclined to let him go.

"He has great business ability. It's a pity to waste his time. He can make money, Neeld."

"Disney's a good friend to have," Neeld suggested.

"If he stays in, yes. But this thing won't be popular."

Neeld could maintain no interest in the conversation. It had to proceed all along on a baseless presumption, to deal with a state of things which did not exist. What might be wise for Harry—Harry Nothing-at-all—might be unwise for Tristram of Blent, and conversely.

"I must leave it to him," Iver concluded. "But I shall tell him that I hope he won't go. He's got his way in the world to make first. He can try politics later on, if he likes."

"No doubt you're right," murmured old Neeld, both uneasy and uninterested. He was feeling something of what he had experienced once before; he knew the truth and he had to keep his friend in the dark. In those earlier days he had one confidant, one accomplice, in Mina Zabriska. The heavy secret was all his own to carry now.

As a consequence of his preoccupation Janie Iver found him rather unsympathetic, and with her usual candor she told him so.

"You don't really appreciate Bob," said she. "Nobody quite knows him except me. I didn't use to, but now I know what a strong character he has."

Unwontedly cynical thoughts rose in old Mr Neeld. Had he come down to Fairholme to listen to the platitudes of virtuous love? Indeed he had come for no such thing. All young men have strong characters while they are engaged.

"And it's such a comfort to have a man one can lean upon," Janie pursued, looking, however, admirably capable of standing without extraneous support.

There it was again! She'd be calling him her "master" next—as the heroine does in the Third Act, to unfailing applause. What was all this to ears that listened for a whisper of Harry Tristram?

"The most delightful thing is," Janie pursued, "that our marriage is to make no change at all in his way of life. We're going to live at Mingham just as he has lived all his life—a real country life on a farm!" There was no hint that other ideals of existence had ever possessed an alluring charm; the high life with Harry, the broad and cosmopolitan life with the Major—where were they? "I've insisted on it, the one thing I've had my own way in."

Bob was being transmogrified into a Man of Iron, if not of Blood. Vainly Mr Neeld consulted his memories.

"And Mingham's so bound up with it all. I used to go there with Mina Zabriska." She smiled in retrospect; it would have been pardonable if Neeld had smiled too. "I haven't seen her for ever so long," Janie added, "but she'll be at Blent to-night."

Ah, if he might give just the barest hint to Mina now!

"Bob isn't particularly fond of her, you see, so we don't meet much now. He thinks she's rather spiteful."

"Not at all," said Neeld, almost sharply. "She's a very intelligent woman."

"Oh yes, intelligent!" She said no more. If people did not agree with Bob—well, there it was.

Bob bore his idealization very well. It was easy to foresee a happy and a remarkably equable married life. But the whole thing had no flavor for Mr Neeld's palate, spoilt by the spices of Tristram vagaries. A decent show of friendliness was all he could muster. It was all that Iver himself seemed to expect; he was resigned but by no means exultant.

"The girl's very happy, and that's the thing. For myself—well, I've got most of the things I started to get, and if this isn't quite what I looked forward to—Well, you remember how things fell out?"

Neeld nodded. He remembered that very well.

"And, as I say, it's all very satisfactory." He shrugged his shoulders and relighted his cigar. He was decidedly a reasonable man, thought Neeld.

The evening came—Neeld had been impatient for it—and they drove over to Blent, where Bob was to meet them.

"It's a fine place for a girl to have," said Iver, stirred to a sudden sense of the beauty of the old house as it came into view.

They were all silent for a moment. Such a place to have, such a place to lose! Neeld heard Mrs Iver sighing in her good-natured motherly fashion. But still Harry was not mentioned.

"And if they had a business man—with his head on his shoulders—to manage the estate, it'd be worth half as much again." This time it was Iver who sighed; the idea of anything not having all the money made out of it that could be made offended his instincts.

"She'll have a husband, dear," his wife reminded him.

"I wonder if Bob'll get there before we do," said Janie, with the air of starting a subject of real interest in lieu of continuing idle talk.

The evening was hot and the hall-door of Blent stood open. Cecily was sitting in the hall, and came out to greet them. She seemed to Neeld to complete the picture as she stood there in her young fairness, graciously welcoming her guests. She was pale, but wore a gay air and did the honors with natural dignity. No sign of strangeness to the place, and no embarrassment, were visible.

"Oh, my dear, how you remind me of Lady Tristram!" good Mrs Iver broke out.

Neeld pressed the girl's hand with a grip that she noticed; she looked at him in a sort of question and for a moment flushed a little.

"It's very kind of you to come," she said to him softly.

"How are you, Mr Neeld?" The Imp had suddenly darted out from somewhere and was offering her hand. "I'm staying here, you know." And in a whisper she added, "That young man of Janie's has been here a quarter of an hour, and Cecily wasn't dressed, and I've had to talk to him. Oh, dear!" She had her hand on his arm and drew him apart. "Any news of Harry Tristram?" she whispered.

"Er—no—none."

Her quick eyes looked at him in suspicion; he had hesitated a little.

"You've seen him?" she asked.

"Just casually, Madame Zabriska."

She turned away with a peevish little pout. "Then you're not very interesting," she seemed to say. But Neeld forgave her: she had asked him about Harry. He could forgive more easily because he had deluded her.

Addie Tristram's picture was at one end of the dining-room now, and Cecily's place was under it.

"My first dinner-party! Although it's a small one," she said to Iver as she sat down.

"Your first at Blent?"

"The first anywhere—actually!" she laughed, and then grew thoughtful for a moment, glancing out into the dark and listening to the flap of a bat's wing against the window.

"You'll have plenty now," said he, as he watched her admiringly. He forgot, man that he was, that girls do not find permanent happiness in dinner-parties.

It was evident that Neeld ought never to have come to Blent that evening. For the talk was of futures, and, out of deference to the young hostess, even more of hers than of the engaged couple's. Theirs indeed was not provocative of discussion; if satisfactory, it was also obvious. Cecily's opened more topics, and she herself was willing and seemed even eager to discuss it. She fell in with Mrs Iver's suggestion that she ought to be a centre of good works in the district, and in pursuance of this idea should accept the position of Patron to Miss Swinkerton's complicated scheme of benevolence. She agreed with Iver that the affairs of the estate probably wanted overhauling, and that a capable man should be engaged for the task, even at some expense. She professed herself ready to cooperate with Bob in protecting the fishing of the Blent. She was, in a word, very much the proprietor. It was difficult for Neeld to sit and hear all this. And opposite to him sat Mina Zabriska, rather silent and demure, but losing no chance of reminding him by a stealthy glance that this ordinary talk covered a remarkable situation—as indeed it did, but not of the precise nature that Mina supposed. Neeld felt as though he were behind the scenes of fate's theatre, and he did not find the place comfortable. He saw the next tableau in preparation and had to ask himself what its effect would be on an unsuspecting audience. He came to the conclusion that foreknowledge was an attribute not likely to make human beings happy; it could not easily make terms with sympathy.

When dessert was on the table, Iver, true to his habits and traditions, felt that it was the occasion for a few friendly informal words; the birthday and the majority of young Lady Tristram demanded so much recognition. Admirably concise and simple in ordinary conversation, he became, like so many of his countrymen, rather heavy and pompous when he got on his legs. Yet he made what everybody except Mina Zabriska considered a very appropriate little speech. Gainsborough grew quite enthusiastic over it; and Neeld thought it was wonderfully good (if it had not happened, of course, to be by force of circumstances an absurdity from beginning to end). Cecily was content to say, "Thank you," but her father could not refuse himself the privilege of reply; the reply was on her behalf, but it was mainly about himself—also a not uncommon characteristic of after-dinner oratory. However he agreed with Iver that everything was for the best, and that they were entitled to congratulate their hostess and themselves on things at large. Then Neeld had a turn over the engagement (a subject dull but safe!) and the proceedings were stopped only by Bob Broadley's headlong flight when the question of his response arose.

"Thank goodness, that's over!" said Mina snappishly, as she stepped out into the garden, followed by Mr Neeld. The rest went off to see the treasures of the Long Gallery. Mina turned to him with a quick question: "You saw Mr Tristram, how is he?"

"Harry Tristram is quite well and in very good spirits. I never saw a man better in my life."

Mina was silent for a moment. Then she broke out: "I call it disgusting. He's in good spirits, and she's in good spirits, and—and there's an end of it, I suppose! The next thing will be——"

"It's not the end if there's a next thing," Neeld suggested timidly.

"Oh, don't be tiresome. The next thing'll be some stupid girl for him and some idiot of a man for her. How I wish I'd never come to Merrion!"

"Don't despair; things may turn out better than you think."

"They can't," she declared fretfully. "I shall go away."

"What a pity! Miss Gainsborough—Lady Tristram, I mean—will miss you so much."

"Let her!" said the Imp ungraciously. "I've put myself out enough about the Tristrams."

Neeld forbore to remind her of the entirely voluntary nature of her sacrifices; after all he was not the man to throw stones on that account.

"Wait a few days anyhow," he urged her. In a few days something must happen.

"A few days? Oh, yes!" As a matter of fact she meant to stay all the winter. "She's started," she went on, with an irritated jerk of her head toward the Long Gallery, "putting all the things in different places and rearranging everything."

"I should imagine that Mr Gainsborough's enjoying himself then?"

"She doesn't let him touch a thing," replied Mina with a fleeting smile. "He just stands about with a duster. That contents him well enough, though. Oh, yes, I shall go. The Broadleys won't care about me, and Cecily won't want me long."

Neeld could give real comfort only at the price of indiscretion. Moreover he was not at all sure that a disclosure of the truth would bring any comfort, for Mina wanted to be on both sides and to harmonize devotion to Cecily with zeal for Harry. Neeld did not quite see how this was to be done, since it was understood that as Harry would take nothing from Cecily, so Cecily would refuse anything from Harry.

"We must wait and see how it all turns out," said he.

"I hate people who say that," grumbled Mina disconsolately. "And I do think that the Ivers have grown extraordinarily stupid—caught it from Bob Broadley, I suppose."

When injustice springs not from judgment but from temper, it is not worth arguing against. Neeld held his tongue and they sat silent on the seat by the river, looking across to Merrion and hearing the voices of their friends through the open windows of the Long Gallery.

Presently there came to them through the stillness of the night the sound of wheels, not on the Blentmouth side, but up the valley, on the Mingham and Fillingford road. The sound ceased without the appearance of any vehicle, but it had reminded Neeld of the progress of time.

"It must be getting late," he said, rising. "I'll go and see if they think of starting home. Did you hear wheels on the road—toward the Pool?"

"Bob Broadley's cart coming for him, I suppose."

"No, I don't think so. He's going back to Fairholme with us. I heard him say so."

Mina was languidly indifferent, and Mr Neeld trotted off into the house. Mina sat on, frowning at the idea that in a few minutes she would have to go in and say good-by; for the voices came no more from the Long Gallery and she heard the guests laughing and chattering in the hall, as they prepared for departure. Suddenly she discerned the figure of a man coming into sight across the river. He walked slowly, as it seemed stealthily, till he came to the end of the footbridge. Then he halted and looked up at the house. It was gayly lighted. After waiting a moment the man turned back and disappeared up the road in the direction of Mingham. Mina rose and strolled to the bridge. She crossed it and looked up the road. She could make out dimly the stranger's retreating form.

She heard Cecily calling to her, and ran back to the house. A wonderful idea had come into her head, born of a vaguely familiar aspect that the bearing of the man had for her. But she laughed at it, telling herself that it was all nonsense; and as she joined in the talk and farewells it grew faint and was almost forgotten. Yet she whispered to old Neeld with a laugh:

"I saw a man on the road just now who looked rather like Harry. I couldn't see him properly, you know."

Neeld started and looked at her with obvious excitement. She repaid his stare with one of equal intensity.

"Why, you don't think——?" she began in amazement.

"Come, Neeld, we're waiting for you," cried Iver from the wagonette, while Bob in irrepressible spirits burst into song as he gathered up the reins. He had deposed the coachman and had Janie with him on the box.

They drove off, waving their hands and shouting good-night. Mina ran a little way after them and saw Neeld turning his head this way and that, as though he thought there might be something to see. When she returned she found Gainsborough saying good-night to his daughter; at the same moment the lights in the Long Gallery were put out. Cecily slipped her arm through hers and they walked out again into the garden. After three or four minutes the wagonette, having made the circuit necessary to reach the carriage-bridge, drove by on the road across the river, with more waving of hands and shouts of good-night. An absolute stillness came as the noise of its wheels died away.

"I've got through that all right," said Cecily with a laugh, drawing her friend with her toward the bridge. "I suppose I shall be quite accustomed to it soon."

They went on to the bridge and halted in the middle of it, by a common impulse as it seemed.

"The sound of a river always says to me that it all doesn't matter much," Cecily went on, leaning on the parapet. "I believe that's been expressed more poetically!"

"It's great nonsense, however it's expressed," observed Mina scornfully.

"I sometimes feel as if it was true." Probably Cecily thought that nobody—no girl—no girl in love—had ever had the feeling before. A delusive appearance of novelty is one of the most dangerous weapons of Cupid. But Mina was an experienced woman—had been married too!

"Don't talk stuff, my dear," she cried crossly. "And why are we standing on this horrid little bridge?"

She turned round; Cecily still gazed in melancholy abstraction into the stream. Cecily, then, faced down the valley, Mina looked up it; and at the moment the moon showed a quarter of her face and illuminated a streak of the Fillingford road.

The man was there. He was there again. The moonlight fell on his face. He smiled at Mina, pointed a hand toward Blentmouth, and smiled again. He seemed to mock the ignorance of the vanished wagonette. Mina made no sign. He laid his finger on his lips, and nodded slightly toward Cecily. The clouds covered the moon again, and there was no more on the Fillingford road than a black blotch on the deep gray of the night; even this vanished a moment after. And still Cecily gazed down into the Blent.

Presently she turned round. "I suppose we must go in," she said grudgingly. "It's getting rather chilly." They were both in low-cut frocks, and had come out without any wraps. With the intuition of a born schemer Mina seized on the chance.

"Oh, it's so lovely!" she cried, with an apparently overwhelming enthusiasm for nature. "Too perfectly lovely! I'll run in and get some cloaks. Wait here till I come back, Cecily."

"Well, don't be long," said Cecily, crossing her bare arms with a little shiver.

Off the Imp ran, and vanished into the house. But she made no search for wraps. After a moment's hesitation in the hall, the deceitful creature ran into the library. All was dark there; a window was open and showed the bridge, with Cecily's figure on it making a white blur in the darkness. Mina crouched on the window-sill and waited. The absolute unpardonableness of her conduct occurred to her; with a smile she dismissed the consideration. He—and she—who desires the end must needs put up with the means; it is all the easier when the means happen to be uncommonly thrilling.

Harry was humbled! That was the conclusion which shot through her mind. What else could his coming mean? If it meant less than that, it was mere cruelty. If it meant that—— A keen pang of disappointment shot through her. It was the only way to what she desired, but it was not the way which she would have preferred him to tread. Yet because it was the only way, she wished it—with the reservation that it would have been much better if it could have happened in some other fashion. But anyhow the position, not to say her position, had every element of excitement. "Poor old Mr Neeld!" she murmured once. It was hard on him to miss this. At the moment Neeld was smiling over the ignorance in which he had been bound to keep her. It is never safe to suppose, however pleasant it may be to believe, that nobody is pitying us; either of his knowledge or of his ignorance someone is always at it.

She started violently and turned round. The butler was there, candle in hand.

"Is her Ladyship still out, ma'am?" he asked, advancing. "I was going to lock up." He was hardly surprised to find her—they knew she was odd—and would not have shown it, if he had been.

"Oh, go to bed," she cried in a low voice. "We'll lock up. We don't want anything, anything at all."

"Very good. Good-night, ma'am."

What an escape! Suppose Cecily had seen her at the window!

But Cecily was not looking at the window. She moved to the far end of the bridge and stood gazing up toward Merrion, where one light twinkled in an upper room. Mina saw her stretch out her arms for a moment toward the sky. What had happened? It was impossible that he had gone away! Mina craned her head out of the window, looking and listening. Happen what might, be the end of it what it might, this situation was deliciously strong of the Tristrams. They were redeeming their characters; they had not settled down into the ordinary or been gulfed in the slough of the commonplace. Unexpected appearances and midnight interviews of sentimental moment were still to be hoped for from them. There was not yet an end of all.

He came; Mina saw his figure on the road, at first dimly, then with a sudden distinctness as a gleam of moonlight shone out. He stood a little way up the road to Cecily's right. She did not see him yet, for she looked up to Merrion. He took a step forward, his tread sounding loud on the road. There was a sudden turn of Cecily's head. A moment's silence followed. He came up to her, holding out his hand. She drew back, shrinking from it. Laying her hands on the gate of the bridge, she seemed to set it as a fence between them. Her voice reached Mina's ears, low, yet as distinct as though she had been by her side, and full of a terrified alarm and a bitter reproach.

"You here! Oh, you promised, you promised!"

With a bound Mina's conscience awoke. She had heard what no ears save his had any right to hear. What if she were found? The conscience was not above asking that, but it was not below feeling an intolerable shame even without the discovery that it suggested as her punishment. Blushing red there in the dark, she slipped from the window-seat and groped her way to a chair. Here she flung herself down with a sob of excitement and emotion. He had promised. And the promise was broken in his coming.

Now she heard their steps on the path outside; they were walking toward the house. Telling herself that it was impossible for her to move now, for fear she should encounter them, she sank lower in her arm-chair.

"Well, where shall we go?" she heard Cecily ask in cold, stiff tones.

"To the Long Gallery," said Harry.

The next moment old Mason the butler was in the room again, this time in great excitement.

"There's someone in the garden with her Ladyship, ma'am," he cried. "I think—I think it's my Lord!"

"Who?" asked Mina, sitting up, feigning to be calm and sleepy.

"Mr Harry, I mean, ma'am."

"Oh! Well then, go and see."

The old man turned and went out into the hall.

"How are you, Mason?" she heard Harry say. "Her Ladyship and I have some business to talk about. May I have a sandwich afterward?"

There he was, spoiling the drama, in Mina's humble opinion! Who should think of sandwiches now?

"Do what Mr Tristram says, Mason," said Cecily.

She heard them begin to mount the stairs. Jumping up, she ran softly to the door and out into the hall. Mason stood there with his candle, staring up after Cecily and Harry. He turned to Mina with a quizzical smile wrinkling his good-natured face.

"You'd think it a funny time for business, wouldn't you, ma'am?" he asked. He paused a moment, stroking his chin. "Unless you'd happened to be in service twenty years with her late Ladyship. Well, I'm glad to see him again, anyhow."

"What shall we do?" whispered Mina. "Are you going to bed, Mason?"

"Not me, ma'am. Why, I don't know what mayn't happen before the morning!" He shook his head in humorous commentary on those he had served. "But there's no call for you to sit up, ma'am."

"I'll thank you to mind your own business, Mason," said the Imp indignantly. "It would be most—most improper if I didn't sit up. Why, it's nearly midnight!"

"They won't think of that up there," said he.

The sound of a door slammed came from upstairs. Mina's eyes met Mason's for a moment by an involuntary impulse, then hastily turned away. It is an excellent thing to be out of the reach of temptation. The door was shut!

"Give me a candle here in the library," said Mina with all her dignity. And there, in the library, she sat down to wonder and to wait.

Mason went off after the sandwiches, smiling still. There was really nothing odd in it, when once you were accustomed to the family ways.



XXVII

BEFORE TRANSLATION

Harry Tristram had come back to Blent in the mood which belonged to the place as of old—the mood that claimed as his right what had become his by love, knew no scruples if only he could gain and keep it, was ready to play a bold game and take a great chance. He did not argue about what he was going to do. He did not justify it, and perhaps could not. Yet to him what he purposed was so clearly the best thing that Cecily must be forced into it. She could not be forced by force; if he told her the truth, he would meet at the outset a resistance which he could not quell. He might encounter that after all, later on, in spite of a present success. That was the great risk he was determined to run. At the worst there would be something gained; if she were and would be nothing else, she should and must at least be mistress of Blent. His imagination had set her in that place; his pride, no less than his love, demanded it for her. He had gone away once that she might have it. If need be, again he would go away. That stood for decision later.

She walked slowly to the end of the Long Gallery and sat down in the great arm-chair; it held its old position in spite of the changes which Harry noted with quick eyes and a suppressed smile as he followed her and set his candle on a table near. He lit two more from it and then turned to her. She was pale and defiant.

"Well," she said, "why are you here?"

She asked and he gave no excuse for the untimely hour of his visit and no explanation of it. It seemed a small, perhaps indeed a natural, thing to both of them.

"I'm here because I couldn't keep away," he answered gravely, standing before her.

"You promised to keep away. Can't you keep promises?"

"No, not such promises as that."

"And so you make my life impossible! You see this room, you see how I've changed it? I've been changing everything I could. Why? To forget you, to blot you out, to be rid of you. I've been bringing myself to take my place. To-night I seemed at last to be winning my way to it. Now you come. You gave me all this; why do you make it impossible to me?" A bright color came on her cheeks now as she grew vehement in her reproaches, and her voice was intense, though low.

A luxury of joy swept over him as he listened. Every taunt witnessed to his power, every reproach to her love. He played a trick indeed and a part, but there was no trick and no acting in so far as he was her lover. If that truth could not redeem his deception, it stifled all sense of guilt.

"And you were forgetting? You were getting rid of me?" he asked, smiling and fixing his eyes on her.

"Perhaps. And now——!" She made a gesture of despair. "Tell me—why have you come?" Her tone changed to entreaty.

"I've come because I must be where you are, because I was mad to send you away before, mad not to come to you before, to think I could live without you, not to see that we two must be together; because you're everything to me." He had come nearer to her now and stood by her. "Ever since I went away I have seen you in this room, in that chair. I think it was your ghost only that came to town." He laughed a moment. "I wouldn't have the ghost. I didn't know why. Now I know. I wanted the you that was here—the real you—as you had been on the night I went away. So I've come back to you. We're ourselves here, Cecily. We Tristrams are ourselves at Blent."

She had listened silently, her eyes on his. She seemed bewildered by the sudden rush of his passion and the enraptured eagerness of his words that made her own vehemence sound to her poor and thin. Pride had its share in her protest, love was the sole spring of his intensity. Yet she was puzzled by the victorious light in his eyes. What he said, what he came to do, was such a surrender as she had never hoped from him; and he was triumphant in surrendering!

The thought flashed through her mind, troubling her and for the time hindering her joy in his confession. She did not trust him yet.

"I've had an offer made to me," he resumed, regaining his composure. "A sort of political post. If I accept it I shall have to leave England for a considerable time, almost immediately. That brought the thing to a point." Again he laughed. "It's important to you too; because if you say no to me to-night, you'll be rid of me for ever so long. Your life won't be made impossible. I shouldn't come to Blent again."

"A post that would take you away?" she murmured.

"Yes. You'd be left here in peace. I've not come to blackmail you into loving me, Cecily. Yes, you shall be left in peace to move the furniture about." Glancing toward the table, he saw Mr Gainsborough's birthday gift. He took it up, looked at it for a moment, and then replaced it. His manner was involuntarily expressive. Even if she brought that sort of thing to Blent——! He turned back at the sound of a little laugh from Cecily and found her eyes sparkling.

"Father's birthday present, Harry," said she.

Delighted with her mirth, he came to her, holding out his hands. She shook her head and leant back, looking at him.

"Sit as my mother did. You know. Yes, like that!" he cried.

She had obeyed him with a smile. Not to be denied now, he seized the hand that lay in her lap.

"A birthday! Yes, of course, you're twenty-one! Really mistress of it all now! And you don't know what to do with it, except spoil the arrangement of the furniture?"

She laughed low and luxuriously. "What am I to do with it?" she asked.

"Well, won't you give it all to me?" As he spoke he laughed and kissed her hand. "I've come to ask you for it. Here I am. I've come fortune-hunting to-night."

"It's all mine now, you say? Harry, take it without me."

"If I did, I'd burn it to the ground that it mightn't remind me of you."

"Yes, yes! That's what I've wanted to do!" she exclaimed, drawing her hand out of his and raising her arms a moment in the air. Addie Tristram's pose was gone, but Harry did not miss it now.

"Take it without you indeed! It's all for you and because of you."

"Really, really?" She grew grave. "Harry, dear, for pity's sake tell me if you love me!"

"Haven't I told you?" he cried gayly. "Where are the poets? Oh, for some good quotations! I'm infernally unpoetical, I know. Is this it—that you're always before my eyes, always in my head, that you're terribly in the way, that when I've got anything worth thinking I think it to you, anything worth doing I do it for you, anything good to say I say it to you? Is this it, that I curse myself and curse you? Is this it, that I know myself only as your lover and that if I'm not that, then I seem nothing at all? I've never been in love before, but all that sounds rather like it."

"And you'll take Blent from me?"

"Yes, as the climax of all, I'll take Blent from you."

To her it seemed the climax, the thing she found hardest to believe, the best evidence for the truth of those extravagant words which sounded so sweet in her ears. Harry saw this, but he held on his way. Nay, now he himself forgot his trick, and could still have gone on had there been none, had he in truth been accepting Blent from her hands. Even at the price of pride he would have had her now.

She rose suddenly, and began to walk to and fro across the end of the room, while he stood by the table watching her.

"Well, isn't it time you said something to me?" he suggested with a smile.

"Give me time, Harry, give me time. The world's all changed to-night. You—yes, you came suddenly out of the darkness of the night"—she waved her hand toward the window—"and changed the world for me. How am I to believe it? And if I can believe it, what can I say? Let me alone for a minute, Harry dear."

He was well content to wait and watch. All time seemed before them, and how better could he fill it? He seemed himself to suffer in this hour a joyful transformation; to know better why men lived and loved to live, to reach out to the full strength and the full function of his being. The world changed for him as he changed it for her.

Twice and thrice she had paced the gallery before she came and stood opposite to him. She put her hands up to her throat, saying, "I'm stifled—stifled with happiness, Harry."

For answer he sprang forward and caught her in his arms. In the movement he brushed roughly against the table; there was a little crash, and poor Mr Gainsborough's birthday gift lay smashed to bits on the floor. For the second time their love bore hard on Mr Gainsborough's crockery. Startled they turned to look, and then they both broke into merry laughter. The trumpery thing had seemed a sign to them, and now the sign was broken. Their first kiss was mirthful over its destruction.

With a sigh of joy she disengaged herself from him.

"That's settled then," said Harry. He paused a moment. "You had Janie and Bob Broadley here to-night? I saw them as I lay hidden by the road. Does that kind of engagement attract you, Cecily?"

"Ours won't be like that," she said, laughing triumphantly.

"Don't let's have one at all," he suggested, coming near to her again. "Let's have no engagement. Just a wedding."

"What?" she cried.

"It must be a beastly time," he went on, "and all the talk there's been about us will make it more beastly still. Fancy Miss S. and all the rest of them! And—do you particularly want to wait? What I want is to be settled down, here with you."

Her eyes sparkled as she listened; she was in the mood, she was of the stuff, for any adventure.

"I should like to run off with you now," said he. "I don't want to leave you at all, you see."

"Run off now?" She gave a joyful little laugh. "That's just what I should like!"

"Then we'll do it," he declared. "Well, to-morrow morning anyhow."

"Do you mean it?" she asked.

"Do you say no to it?"

She drew herself up with pride. "I say no to nothing that you ask of me."

Their hands met again as she declared her love and trust. "You've really come to me?" he heard her murmur. "Back to Blent and back to me?"

"Yes," he answered, smiling. She had brought into his mind again the truth she did not know. He had no time to think of it, for she offered him her lips again. The moment when he might have told her thus went by. It was but an impulse; for he still loved what he was doing, and took delight in the risks of it. And he could not bear so to impair her joy. Soon she must know, but she should not yet be robbed of her joy that it was she who could bring him back to Blent. For him in his knowledge, for her in her ignorance, there was an added richness of pleasure that he would not throw away, even although now he believed that were the truth known she would come to him still. Must not that be, since now he, even he, would come to her, though the truth had been otherwise?

"There's a train from Fillingford at eight in the morning. I'm going back there to-night. I've got a fly waiting by the Pool—if the man hasn't gone to sleep and the horse run away. Will you meet me there? We'll go up to town and be married as soon as we can—the day after to-morrow, I suppose."

"And then——?"

"Oh, then just come back here. We can go nowhere but here, Cecily."

"Just come back and——?"

"And let them find it out, and talk, and talk, and talk!" he laughed.

"It would be delightful!" she cried.

"Nobody to know till it's done!"

"Yes, yes, I like it like that. Not father even, though?"

"You'll be gone before he's up. Leave a line for him."

"But I—I can't go alone with you."

"Why not?" asked Harry, seeming a trifle vexed.

"I'll tell you!" she cried. "Let's take Mina with us, Harry!"

He laughed; the Imp was the one person whose presence he was ready to endure. Indeed there would perhaps be a piquancy in that.

"All right. An elopement made respectable by Mina!" He had a touch of scorn even for mitigated respectability.

"Shall we call her and tell her now?"

"Well, are you tired of this interview?"

"I don't know whether I want it to go on, or whether I must go and tell somebody about it."

"I shouldn't hesitate," smiled Harry.

"You? No. But I—Oh, Harry dear, I want to whisper my triumph."

"But we must be calm and business-like about it now."

"Yes!" She entered eagerly into the fun. "That'll puzzle Mina even more."

"We're not doing anything unusual," he insisted with affected gravity.

"No—not for our family at least."

"It's just the obvious thing to do."

"Oh, it's just the delicious thing too!" She almost danced in gayety. "Let me call Mina. Do!"

"Not for a moment, as you love me! Give me a moment more."

"Oh, Harry, there'll be no end to that!"

"I don't know why there should be."

"We should miss the train at Fillingford!"

"Ah, if it means that!"

"Or I shall come sleepy and ugly to it; and you'd leave me on the platform and go away!"

"Shout for Mina—now—without another word!"

"Oh, just one more," she pleaded, laughing.

"I can't promise to be moderate."

"Come, we'll go and find her. Give me your hand." She caught his hand in hers, and snatched the candle from the table. She held it high above her head, looking round the room and back to his eyes again. "My home now, because my love is here," she said. "Mine and yours, and yours and mine—and both the same thing, Harry, now."

He listened smiling. Yes, it would be the same thing now.

There they stood together for a moment, and together they sighed as they turned away. To them the room was sacred now, as it had always been beautiful; in it their love seemed to lie enshrined.

They went downstairs together full of merriment, the surface expression of their joy. "Look grave," he whispered, setting his face in a comical exaggeration of seriousness. Cecily tried to obey and tumbled into a gurgle of delight.

"I will directly," she gasped as they came to the hall. Mason stood there waiting.

"I've put the sandwiches here, and the old brown, my Lord."

Harry alone noticed the slip in his address—and Harry took no notice of it.

"I shall be glad to meet the old brown again," he said, smiling. Mason gave the pair a benevolent glance and withdrew to his quarters.

Mina strolled out of the library with an accidental air. Harry had sat down to his sandwiches and old brown. Cecily ran across to Mina and kissed her.

"We're going to be married!" she whispered. She had told it all in a sentence; yet she added; "Oh, I've such a heap of things to tell you, Mina!" Was not all that scene in the Long Gallery to be reproduced—doubtless only in a faint adumbration of its real glory, yet with a sense of recovering it and living it again?

"No?" cried Mina. "Oh, how splendid! Soon?"

Harry threw a quick glance at Cecily. She responded by assuming a demure calmness of demeanor.

"Not as soon as we could wish," said Harry, munching and sipping. "In fact, not before the day after to-morrow, I'm afraid, Madame Zabriska."

"The day after——?"

"What I have always hated is Government interference. Why can't I be married when I like? Why have I to get a license and all that nonsense? Why must I wait till the day after to-morrow?" He grew indignant.

"It's past twelve now; it is to-morrow," said Cecily.

"Quite so. As you suggest, Cecily, we could be married to-day but for these absurd restrictions. There's a train at eight from Fillingford——"

"You're going—both of you—by that?" Mina cried.

"I hope it suits you, because we want you to come with us, if you'll be so kind," said Harry.

"You see it would look just a little unusual if we went alone," added Cecily.

"And it's not going to look unusual anyhow? Are you mad? Or—or do you mean it?"

"Don't you think both may be true?" asked Harry. Cecily's gravity broke down. She kissed Mina again, laughing in an abandonment of exultation.

"Oh, you're both mad!"

"Not at all. You're judging us by the standard of your other engaged couple to-night."

"Did Mr Neeld know anything about your coming?" Mina demanded, with a sudden recollection.

"Nothing at all. Did he say anything to you?" For a moment the glass of old brown halted on its way to his lips, and he glanced at Mina sharply.

"No. But when I asked him if he had seen you he looked—well, just rather funny."

The old brown resumed its progress. Harry was content.

"There's no better meal than fresh sandwiches and old brown," he observed. "You'll come with us, won't you, and keep Cecily company at the little house till we fix it up?"

Mina looked from one to the other in new amazement, with all her old excited pleasure in the Tristram ways. They did a thing—and they did not spoil it by explanations.

"And Mr Gainsborough?" she asked.

"We're going to leave a note for father," smiled Cecily.

"You're always doing that," objected Mina.

"It seems rather an early train for Mr Gainsborough," Harry suggested, laying down his napkin.

"Oh, why don't you tell me something about it?" cried Mina despairingly. "But it's true? The great thing's true anyhow, isn't it?"

"Well, what do you think I came down from town for?" inquired Harry.

"And why have we been so long in the Gallery, Mina?"

"You've given in then?" exclaimed the Imp, pointing a finger in triumph at Harry.

"Mina, how can you say a thing like that?"

"It looks as if it were true enough," admitted Harry. "Really I must go," he added. "I can't keep that fly all night. I shall see you in the morning, Madame Zabriska. Eight o'clock at Fillingford!"

"I'm really to go with you?" she gasped.

"Yes, yes, I thought all that was settled," said he, rather impatiently. "Bring a pretty frock. I want my wedding to be done handsomely—in a style that suits the wedding of——" He looked at Cecily—"of Lady Tristram of Blent."

"Cecily, it's not all a joke?"

"Yes!" cried Cecily. "All a delicious delicious joke! But we're going to be married."

After a moment's hesitation Mina came across to Harry, holding out her hands. "I'm glad, I'm so glad," she murmured, with a little catch in her voice.

He took her hands and pressed them; he looked at her very kindly, though he smiled still.

"Yes, it undoes all the mistakes, doesn't it?" he said. "At least I hope it will," he added the next moment with a laugh.

"It's really the only way to be married," declared Cecily.

"Well, for you people—for you extraordinary Tristrams—I dare say it is," said Mina.

"You'll come?" Cecily implored.

"She couldn't keep away," mocked Harry. "She's got to see the end of us."

"Yes, and our new beginning. Oh, what Blent's going to be, Mina! If you don't come with us now, we won't let you stay at Merrion."

"I'm coming," said Mina. Indeed she would not have stayed away. If she had needed further inducement the next moment supplied it.

"You're to be our only confidant," said Harry.

"Yes! Till it's all over, nobody's to know but you, Mina."

The Imp was hit on her weak spot. She was tremulously eager to go.

"Eight o'clock! Oh, can we be ready, Cecily?"

"Of course we shall be ready," said Cecily scornfully.

Harry had taken his hat from the table and came up to shake hands. He was imperturbably calm and business-like.

"Don't run it too fine," he said. "Good-night, Madame Zabriska."

She gave him her hand and he held it for a moment. He grew a little grave, but there was still a twinkle in his eye.

"You're a good friend," he said. "I shall come on you again, if I want you, you know." He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it.

"I don't know that I care much about anything except you two," stammered Mina.

He gripped her hand again. She seemed well paid. He held out his hand to Cecily. Mina understood.

"I shall be up a little while, Cecily. Come to me before you go to bed," she said; and she stood in the hall, watching them as they walked out together. There was joy in her heart—ay, and envy. The two brought tears to her eyes and struggled which should make the better claim to them. "But they do like me!" she said in a plaintive yet glad little cry, as she was left alone in the silent old hall.

So still was the night that a man might hear the voice of his heart and a girl the throb of hers. And they were alone; or only the friendly murmur of old Blent was with them, seeming to whisper congratulations on their joy. Her arm was through his, very white on his sleeve, and she leant on him heavily.

"After tempests, dear," said he.

"There shall be no more, no more, Harry."

"Oh, I don't know that. I shall like you in them perhaps. And there may be one more, anyhow."

"You're laughing, Harry?"

"Why, yes, at anything just now."

"Yes, at anything," she murmured. "I could laugh—or cry—at anything just now."

They came to the little bridge and passed on to it.

"We talked here the first evening," said she. "And how you puzzled me! It began for me then, dear Harry."

"Yes, and for me a little sooner—by the Pool for me. I was keeping you out of your own then."

"Never mine unless it could be yours too."

Fallen into silence again, they reached the road and, moved by the same instinct, turned to look back at Blent. The grip of her hand tightened on his arm.

"There's nothing that would make you leave me?" she whispered.

"Not you yourself, I think," said he.

"It's very wonderful," she breathed. "Listen! There's no sound. Yes, after tempests, Harry!"

"I am glad of it all," he said suddenly and in a louder tone. "I've been made a man, and I've found you, the woman for me. It was hard at the time, but I am glad of it. It has come and it has gone, and I'm glad of it."

He had spoken unwarily in saying it was gone. But she thought he spoke of his struggle only and his hesitation, not of their cause.

"You gave when you might have kept; it is always yours, Harry. Oh, and what is it all now? No, no, it's something still. It's in us—in us both, I think."

He stopped on the road.

"Come no farther. The fly's only a little way on, and while I see you, I will see nobody else to-night. Till the morning, dearest—and you won't fail?"

"No, I won't fail. Should I fail to greet my first morning?"

He pushed the hair a little back from her forehead and kissed her brow.

"God do so unto me and more also if my love ever fails you," said he. "Kiss me as I kissed you. And so good-night."

She obeyed and let him go. Once and twice he looked back at her as he took his way and she stood still on the road. She heard his voice speaking to the flyman, the flyman's exhortation to his horse, the sounds of the wheels receding along the road. Then slowly she went back.

"This is what they mean," she murmured to herself. "This is what they mean." It was the joy past expression, the contentment past understanding. And all in one evening they had sprung up for her out of a barren thirsty land. Blent had never been beautiful before nor the river sparkled as it ran; youth was not known before, and beauty had been thrown away. The world was changed; and it was very wonderful.

When Cecily went into her the Imp was packing; with critical care she stowed her smartest frock in the trunk.

"I must be up early and see about the carriage," she remarked. "I dare say Mason——. But you're not listening, Cecily!"

"No, I wasn't listening," said Cecily, scorning apology or excuse.

"You people in love are very silly. That's the plain English of it," observed Mina loftily.

Cecily looked at her a minute, then stretched her arms and sighed in luxurious weariness. "I dare say that's the plain English of it," she admitted. "But, oh, how different it sounds before translation, dear!"



XXVIII

THE CAT AND THE BELL

Mr Gainsborough lost his head. He might have endured the note that had been left for him—it said only that his daughter had gone to town for a couple of days with Mina Zabriska; besides he had had notes left for him before. But there was Mason's account of the evening and of the morning—of Harry's arrival, of the conference in the Long Gallery, of the sandwiches and the old brown, of the departure of the ladies at seven o'clock. Mason was convinced that something was up; knowing Mr Harry as he did, and her late Ladyship as he had, he really would not like to hazard an opinion what; Mr Gainsborough, however, could see for himself that candles had been left to burn themselves out and that china had been broken in the Long Gallery. Availing himself dexterously of his subordinate position, Mason was open to state facts but respectfully declined to draw inferences. Gainsborough rushed off to the Long Gallery. There lay his bit of Chelsea on the floor—upset, smashed, not picked up! There must have been a convulsion indeed, he declared, as ruefully and tenderly he gathered the fragments.

Quite off his balance and forgetful of perils, he ordered the pony-chaise and had himself driven into Blentmouth. He felt that he must tell somebody, and borrow some conclusions—he was not equal to making any of his own. He must carry the news.

He deceived himself and did gross injustice to the neighborhood. Fillingford is but twelve miles inland from Blentmouth, and there are three hours between eight and eleven. He was making for Fairholme. While yet half a mile off he overtook Miss Swinkerton, heading in the same direction, ostentatiously laden with savings-bank books. With much decision she requested a lift, got in, and told him all about how Harry had escorted Cecily and Madame Zabriska from Fillingford that morning. The milkman had told the butcher, the butcher had told the postman, the postman had told her, and—well, she had mentioned it to Mrs Trumbler. Mrs Trumbler was at Fairholme now.

"Mr Tristram had been staying with you, of course? How nice to think there's no feeling of soreness!" observed Miss S.

In Gainsborough at least there was no feeling save of bewilderment.

"Staying with us? No, I haven't so much as seen him," he stammered out.

Immediately Miss S. was upon him, and by the time they reached Fairholme had left him with no more than a few rags of untold details. Then with unrivalled effrontery she declared that she had forgotten to call at the grocer's, and marched off. In an hour the new and complete version of the affair was all over the town. Mrs Trumbler had got first to Fairholme, but she did not wrest the laurels from Miss S.'s brow. The mere departure from Fillingford shrank to nothing in comparison with the attendant circumstances supplied by Mr Gainsborough.

"They don't know what to think at Fairholme," Mrs Trumbler reported.

"I dare say not, my dear," said Miss S. grimly.

"They were dining there that very night, and not a word was said about it; and none of them saw Mr Tristram. He came quite suddenly, and went off again with Lady Tristram."

"And Mina Zabriska, my dear."

Mina complicated the case. Those who were inclined to believe, against all common-sense, that Cecily had eloped with her cousin—Why, in heaven's name, elope, when you have all the power and a negligible parent?—stumbled over Mina. Well then, was it with Mina Harry had eloped? Miss S. threw out hints in this direction. Why then Cecily? Miss S. was not at a loss. She said nothing, no; but if it should turn out that Cecily's presence was secured as a protection against the wrath of Major Duplay (who, everybody knew, hated Harry), she, Miss S., would be less surprised than many of those who conceived themselves to know everything. A Cecily party and a Mina party grew up—and a third party, who would have none of either, and declared that they had their own ideas, and that time would show.

Gossip raged, and old Mr Neeld sat in the middle of the conflagration. How his record of evasion, nay, of downright falsehood, mounted up! False facts and fictitious reasons flowed from his lips. There was pathos in the valor with which he maintained his position; he was hard pressed, but he did not fall. There was a joy too in the fight. For he alone of all Blentmouth knew the great secret, and guessed that what was happening had to do with the secret. Harry had asked silence for a week; before two days of it were gone came this news.

"If they do mean to be married," said Janie, "why couldn't they do it decently?" She meant with the respectable deliberation of her own alliance.