"Tristram's a queer fellow," pondered Bob Broadley.

"I only hope he isn't rushing her into it—on purpose. What do you think, Mr Neeld?"

"My dear Janie——"

"He may not want to give her time to think. It's not a good match for her now, is it?"

"I—I can't think that Harry Tristram would——"

"Well, Neeld," said Iver judicially, "I'm not so sure. Master Harry can play a deep game when he likes. I know that very well—and to my cost too."

What Janie hinted and Iver did not discard was a view which found some supporters; and where it was entertained, poor Mina Zabriska's character was gone. Miss S. herself was all but caught by the idea, and went so far as to say that she had never thought highly of Madame Zabriska, while the Major was known to be impecunious. There was a nefariousness about the new suggestion that proved very attractive in Blentmouth.

Late in the day came fresh tidings, new fuel for the flames. Mr Gainsborough had driven again into Blentmouth and taken the train for London. Two portmanteaus and a wicker-crate, plausibly conjectured to contain between them all his worldly possessions, had accompanied him on the journey. He was leaving Blent then, if not for ever, at least for a long while. He had evaded notice in his usual fashion, and nearly driven over Miss S. when she tried to get in the way. Miss S. was partly consoled by a bit of luck that followed. She met Mina's cook, come down from Merrion to buy household stores; her mistress was to return to her own house on the morrow! There seemed no need to search for inferences. They leapt to light. Either Blent was to be shut up, or it was to receive a wedded pair. On this alternative the factions split, and the battle was furious. Mrs Trumbler definitely fought Miss S. for the first time in her life. On one point only the whole town agreed; it was being cheated—either out of the wedding which was its right, or else out of the ball in the winter to which Miss S. had irrevocably committed Lady Tristram. The popularity of Blent fell to nothing in the neighborhood.

The next morning Mr Neeld gained the reward of virtue, and became a hero in spite of his discretion. At breakfast he received a telegram. Times were critical, and all eyes were on him as he read, and re-read, and frowned perplexedly. Then he turned to Iver.

"Can you let me have a trap this afternoon, Iver?"

"Of course, of course. But you're not going to leave us, I hope?"

"Only just for the evening; I—in fact I have to go to Blent."

There was a moment's silence. Glances were exchanged, while Neeld made half-hearted efforts to grapple with an egg. Then Bob Broadley broke out with a laugh,

"Oh, hang it all, out with it, Mr Neeld!"

"Well, I'm not told to be silent; and it must become known immediately. Madame Zabriska telegraphs to me that they are to be married early this morning, and will come to Blent by the 1.30 train. She herself leaves by the 11 o'clock, will be there at five, and wishes me to join her."

"By Jove, he's done it then!" exclaimed Iver.

Everybody looked very solemn except Neeld, who was sadly confused.

"Dear, dear!" murmured Mrs Iver.

"She must be very much in love with him," remarked Janie.

"It's his conduct more than hers which needs explanation," Iver observed dryly. "And what do they want you for, Neeld?" If his tone and his question were not very flattering, they were excused by the obvious fact that there was no sort of reason for wanting Mr Neeld—or at any rate seemed to all that party to be none.

"Oh—er—why—why no doubt it's—it's only a fancy of Mina Zabriska's."

"A very queer fancy," said Janie Iver coldly. It was really a little annoying that old Mr Neeld should be the person wanted at Blent.

"I'll drive you over," Bob kindly volunteered.

"Er—thank you, Broadley, but she asks me to come alone."

"Well, I'm hanged!" muttered Bob, who had seen a chance of being in at the death.

They were coming straight down to Blent. That fact assumed an important place in Neeld's review of the situation. And his presence was requested. He put these two things together. They must mean that the secret was to be told that evening at Blent, and that he was to be vouched as evidence, if by chance Cecily asked for it. On the very day of the wedding the truth was to be revealed. In ignorance, perhaps in her own despite, she had been made in reality what she had conceived herself to be; to-day she was Lady Tristram in law. Now she was to be told. Neeld saw the choice that would be laid before her, and, at the same time, the use that had been made of his silence. He fell into a sore puzzle. Yes, Harry could play a deep game when he chose.

"It's quite impossible to justify either the use he's made of me or the way he's treated her," he concluded sadly. "I shall speak very seriously to him about it." But he knew that the serious speaking, however comforting it might be to himself as a protest, would fall very lightly on Harry Tristram's ears; their listening would be for the verdict of another voice.

"Do you think Disney will repeat his offer—will give him a chance of reconsidering now?" asked Iver, who had heard of that affair from Lord Southend.

"I'm sure he wouldn't accept anything," Neeld answered with remarkable promptitude and conviction. It was a luxury to find an opportunity of speaking the truth.

"The least he could do would be to leave that to her."

"She'd say just the same," Neeld assured him. "I'm convinced there'll be no question of anything of the kind."

"Then it's very awkward," Iver grumbled crossly.

In all his varied experience of the Imp—which included, it may be remembered, a good deal of plain-speaking and one embrace—Neeld had never found her in such a state as governed her this evening. Mason gave him tea while she walked restlessly about; he gathered that Mason was dying to talk but had been sore wounded in an encounter with Mina already, and was now perforce holding his tongue.

"They'll be here by seven, and you and I are to dine with them," she told him. "Quite informally."

"Dear me, I—I don't think I want——" he began.

"Hush!" she interrupted. "Are you going to be all day with those things, Mason?"

"I hope I haven't been slower than usual, ma'am," said Mason very stiffly.

At last he went. In an instant Mina darted across to Neeld, and caught him by the arm. "What have you to tell me?" she cried.

"To tell you? I? Oh, dear, no, Madame Zabriska! I assure you——"

"Oh, there's no need for that! Harry said you were to tell me before they arrived; that's why I sent for you now."

"He said I was to tell you——?"

"Yes, yes. Something you knew and I didn't; something that would explain it all."

She stood before him with clasped hands. "It's quite true; he did say so," she pleaded. "It's all been so delightful, and yet so strange; and he told me to be ready either to stay here or to go home to-night! Tell me, tell me, Mr Neeld!"

"Why didn't he tell you himself?"

"I only saw him alone for an instant after the wedding; and before it he didn't say a word about there being anything to tell. There's a secret. What is it?"

He was glad to tell it. He had carried his burden long enough.

"We've all made a great blunder. Harry is Lord Tristram after all."

Mina stood silent for a moment. "Oh!" she gasped. "And he's married Cecily without telling her?"

"That's what he has done, I regret to say. And I take it that he means to tell her to-night."

Mina sank into a chair. "What will she do?" she murmured. "What will she do?"

"There was a mistake—or rather a fraud—about the date of Sir Randolph Edge's death; his brother knew it. I'll tell you the details if you like. But that's the end and the sum of it. As to why he didn't tell—er—his wife sooner, perhaps you know better than I."

"Yes, I know that," she said. And then—it was most inconsiderate, most painful to Mr Neeld—she began to cry. Unable to bear this climax of excitement coming on the top of her two days' emotion, she sobbed hysterically. "They'll be here at seven!" she moaned. "What will happen? Oh, Mr Neeld! And I know he'll expect me to be calm and—and to carry it off—and be composed. How can I be?"

"Perhaps a glass of sherry——?" was Mr Neeld's not unreasonable suggestion.

No, the old brown would not serve here. But without its aid a sudden change came over Mina. She sprang to her feet and left the tears to roll down her cheeks untended as she cried,

"What a splendid thing to do! Oh, how like Harry! And it's to be settled to-night! What can we do to make it go right?"

"I intend to take no responsibility at all," protested Neeld. "I'm here to speak to the facts if I'm wanted, but——"

"Oh, bother the facts! What are we to do to make her take it properly?" She gave another sob. "Oh, I'm an idiot!" she cried. "Haven't you anything to suggest, Mr Neeld?"

He shrugged his shoulders peevishly. Her spirits fell again.

"I see! Yes, if she—if she doesn't take it properly, he'll go away again, and I'm to be ready to stay here." Another change in the barometer came in a flash. "But she can't help being Lady Tristram now!"

"It's all a most unjustifiable proceeding. He tricks the girl——"

"Yes, he had to. That was the only chance. If he'd told her before——"

"But isn't she in love with him?"

"Oh, you don't know the Tristrams! Oh, what are we to do?" Save running through every kind and degree of emotion Mina seemed to find nothing to do.

"And I'm bound to say that I consider our position most embarrassing." Mr Neeld spoke with some warmth, with some excuse too perhaps. To welcome a newly married couple home may be thought always to require some tact; when it is a toss-up whether they will not part again for ever under your very eyes the situation is not improved. Such trials should not be inflicted on quiet old bachelors; Josiah Cholderton had not done with his editor yet.

"We must treat it as a mere trifle," the Imp announced, fixing on the thing which above all others she could not achieve. Yet her manner was so confident that Neeld gasped. "And if that doesn't do, we must tell her that the happiness of her whole life depends on what she does to-night." Variety of treatment was evidently not to be lacking.

"I intend to take no responsibility of any kind. He's got himself into a scrape. Let him get out of it," persisted Neeld.

"I thought you were his friend?"

"I may be excused if I consider the lady a little too."

"I suppose I don't care for Cecily? Do you mean that, Mr Neeld?"

"My dear friend, need we quarrel too?"

"Don't be stupid. Who's quarrelling? I never knew anybody so useless as you are. Can't you do anything but sit there and talk about responsibilities?" She was ranging about, a diminutive tiger of unusually active habits. She had wandered round the room again before she burst out:

"Oh, but it's something to see the end of it!"

That was his feeling too, however much he might rebuke himself for it. Human life at first-hand had not been too plentiful with him. The Imp's excitement infected him. "And he's back here after all!" she cried. "At least—Heavens, they'll be here directly, Mr Neeld!"

"Yes, it's past seven," said he.

"Come into the garden. We'll wait for them on the bridge." She turned to him as they passed through the hall. "Wouldn't you like something of this sort to happen to you?" she asked.

No. He was perturbed enough as a spectator; he would not have been himself engaged in the play.

"Why isn't everybody here?" she demanded, with a laugh that was again nervous and almost hysterical. "Why isn't Addie Tristram here? Ah, and your old Cholderton?"

"Hark, I hear wheels on the road," said Mr Neeld.

Mina looked hard at him. "She shall do right," she said, "and Harry shall not go."

"Surely they'll make the best of a——?"

"Oh, we're not talking of your Ivers and your Broadleys!" she interrupted indignantly. "If they were like that, we should never have been where we are at all."

How true it was, how lamentably true! One had to presuppose Addie Tristram, and turns of fortune or of chance wayward as Addie herself—and to reckon with the same blood, now in young and living veins.

"I can't bear it," whispered Mina.

"He'll expect you to be calm and composed," Neeld reminded her.

"Then give me a cigarette," she implored despairingly.

"I am not a smoker," said Mr Neeld.

"Oh, you really are the very last man——! Well, come on the bridge," groaned Mina.

They waited on the bridge, and the wheels drew near. They spoke no more. They had found nothing to do. They could only wait. A fly came down the road.

There they sat, side by side. Cecily was leaning forward, her eyes were eager, and there was a bright touch of color on her cheeks; Harry leant back, looking at her, not at Blent. He wore a quiet smile; his air was very calm. He saw Mina and Neeld, and waved his hand to them. The fly stopped opposite the bridge. He jumped out and assisted Cecily to alight. In a moment she was in Mina's arms. The next, she recognized Neeld's presence with a little cry of surprise. At a loss to account for himself, the old man stood there in embarrassed wretchedness.

"I want you to wait," said Harry to the driver. "Put up in the stables, and they'll give you something to eat. You must wait till I send you word."

"Wait? Why is he to wait, Harry?" asked Cecily. Her tone was gay; she was overflowing with joy and merriment. "Who's going away? Oh, is it you, Mr Neeld?"

"I—I have a trap from Mr Iver's," he stammered.

"I may want to send a message," Harry explained. "Kind of you to come, Mr Neeld."

"I—I must wish you joy," said Neeld, taking refuge in conventionality.

"We've had a capital journey down, haven't we, Cecily? And I'm awfully hungry. What time is it?"

Mason was rubbing his hands in the doorway.

"Dinner's ordered at eight, sir," said he.

"And it's half-past seven now. Just time to wash our hands. No dress to-night, you know."

"I'll go to my room," said Cecily. "Will you come with me, Mina?"

A glance from Harry made the Imp excuse herself. "I'll keep Mr Neeld company," she said.

Cecily turned to her husband. She smiled and blushed a little.

"I'll take you as far as your room," said he.

Mina and Neeld watched them go upstairs; then each dropped into a chair in the hall. Mason passed by, chuckling to himself; Neeld looked harmless, and he dared to speak to him.

"Well, this is the next best thing to Mr Harry coming back to his own, sir," said he.

That was it. That was the feeling. Mason had got it!

"I'm glad of it after all," Neeld confessed to Mina.

"Wait, wait!" she urged, sitting straight in her chair, apparently listening for any sound. Her obvious anxiety extended its contagion to him; he understood better how nice the issue was.

"Will you come in the garden with me after dinner?" asked Harry, as Cecily and he went upstairs.

"Of course—when they've gone."

"No, directly. I want to say a word to you."

"We must escape then!" she laughed. "Oh, well, they'll expect that, I suppose." Her delight in her love bubbled over in her laugh.

They came to the door of her room, and she stopped.

"Here?" asked Harry. "Yes, it was my mother's room. You reign now in my mother's stead."

His voice had a ring of triumph in it. He kissed her hand. "Dinner as soon as you're ready," said he.

She laughed again and blushed as she opened the door and stood holding the handle.

"Won't you come in—just for a minute, Harry? I—I haven't changed this room at all."

"All is yours to change or to keep unchanged," said he.

"Oh, I've no reason for changing anything now. Everything's to be put back in the Long Gallery!" She paused, and then said again, "Won't you come in for just a minute, Harry?"

"I must go back to our friends downstairs," he answered.

The pretext was threadbare. What did the guests matter? They would do well enough. It had cost her something to ask—a little effort—since the request still seemed so strange, since its pleasure had a fear in it. And now she was refused.

"I ask you," she said, with a sudden haughtiness.

He stood looking at her a moment. There was a brisk step along the corridor.

"Oh, I beg your Ladyship's pardon. I didn't know your Ladyship had come upstairs." It was Cecily's maid.

"In about twenty minutes," said Harry with a nod. Slowly Cecily followed the maid inside.

After he had washed his hands Harry rejoined his friends. They were still sitting in the hall with an air of expectancy.

"You've told her?" cried Mina. "Oh, yes, Mr Neeld has told me everything."

"Well, I've mentioned the bare fact——" Neeld began.

"Yes, yes, that's the only thing that matters. You've told her, Harry?" The last two days made him "Harry" and her "Mina."

"No, I had a chance and I—funked it," said Harry, slow in speech and slow in smile. "She asked me into her room. Well, I wouldn't go."

He laughed as he spoke, laughed rather scornfully.

"It's rather absurd. I shall be all right after dinner," he added, laughing still. "Or would you like to do the job for me, Mina?"

The Imp shook her head with immense determination. "I'll throw myself into the Blent if you like," she said.

"What about you, Mr Neeld?"

"My dear friend, oh, my dear friend!" Undisguised panic took possession of Mr Neeld. He tried to cover it by saying sternly, "This—er—preposterous position is entirely your own fault, you know. You have acted——"

"Yes, I know," nodded Harry, not impatiently but with a sombre assent. He roused himself the next moment, saying, "Well, somebody's got to bell the cat, you know."

"Really it's not my business," protested Neeld and Mina in one breath, both laughing nervously.

"You like the fun, but you don't want any of the work," remarked Harry.

That was true, true to their disgrace. They both felt the reproach. How were they better than the rest of the neighborhood, who were content to gossip and gape and take the fortunes of the Tristrams as mere matter for their own entertainment?

"I've made you look ashamed of yourselves now," he laughed. "Well, I must do the thing myself, I suppose. What a pity Miss Swinkerton isn't here!"

Cecily came down. She passed Harry with a rather distant air and took Neeld's arm.

"They say dinner's ready," said she. "Mina, will you come with Harry?"

Harry sank into the chair opposite Cecily—and opposite the picture of Addie Tristram on the wall. "Well, somehow I've managed to get back here," said he.

The shadow had passed from Cecily's face. She looked at him, blushing and laughing.

"At a terrible price, poor Harry?" she said.

"At a big price," he answered.

She looked round at the three. Harry was composed, but there was no mistaking the perturbation of the Imp and Mr Neeld.

"A big price?" she asked wonderingly. "Isn't that a queer compliment, Harry?" Then a light seemed to break in on her, and she cried: "You mean the cost of your pride? I should never let that stand between you and me!"

"Will you make a note of that admission, Mina?" said Harry with a smile. "Because you didn't say so always, Cecily. Do you recollect what you once said? 'If ever the time comes, I shall remember!' That was what you said."

She looked at him with a glance that was suddenly troubled. There seemed a meaning in his words. She pushed back her chair and rose from the table.

"I don't want dinner. I'm going into the garden," she said.

They sat still as she went out. Harry refolded his napkin and slowly rose to his feet. "I should have liked it better after dinner," he observed.

Mina and Mr Neeld sat on.

"Are we to dine?" whispered Neeld. There is the body, after all.

"Oh, yes, sir," came in Mason's soothing tones over his shoulder. "We never waited for her late Ladyship." And he handed soup.

"Really Mason is rather a comfort," thought Mr Neeld. The Imp drank a glass of champagne.



XXIX

THE CURMUDGEON

In his most business-like tones, with no more gesture than a pointing of his finger now and then, or an occasional wave of his hand, Harry detailed the circumstances. He was methodical and accurate; he might have been opening a case in the law-courts, and would have earned a compliment on his lucidity. There was something ludicrous in this treatment of the matter, but he remained very grave, although quite unemotional.

"What was my position then?" he asked. "I remembered what you'd said. I saw the pull I'd given you. If I'd told you before, you'd have had nothing to do with me. You'd have taken a tragic delight in going back to your little house. I should have given you your revenge."

"So you cheated me? It shows the sort of person you are!"

He went on as though he had not heard her indignant ejaculation.

"I had fallen in love with you—with you and with the idea of your being here. I couldn't have anybody else at Blent, and I had to have you. It was impossible for me to turn you out. I don't think it would have been gentlemanly."

"It was more gentlemanly to marry me on false pretences?"

"Well, perhaps not, but a form of ungentlemanliness less repulsive to me—Oh, just to me personally. I don't know whether you quite understand yet why I gave up Blent to you. Just the same feeling has made me do this—with the addition, of course, that I'm more in love with you now."

"I don't believe it, or you'd have trusted me—trusted my love for you."

"I've trusted it enormously—trusted it to forgive me this deceit."

"If you had come and told me——"

"At the very best you'd have taken months."

"And you couldn't wait for me?"

"Well, waiting's a thing I detest."

"Oh, I've made up my mind," she declared. "I shall go back to town to-night."

"No, no, that's not it." Harry did not want the arrangement misunderstood. "If we can't agree, I go back to town—not you. I kept my fly."

"You needn't make fun of it anyhow."

"I'm not. I'm quite serious. You stay here, I go away. I accept this post abroad—the Arbitration business. I've got to send an answer about it to-morrow."

"No, I shall go. I'm resolved upon it. I won't stay here."

"Then we must shut the place up, or pull it down," said Harry. "It will look absurd, but—Well, we never consider the neighbors." For the first time he seemed vexed. "I did count on your staying here," he explained.

"I can never forgive you for deceiving me."

"You said you wouldn't let your pride stand between us."

"It's not my pride. It's—it's the revelation of what you are, and what you'll stoop to do, to gain——!"

"What have I gained yet?" he asked. "Only what you choose to give me now!"

She looked at him for a moment. The little scene in the corridor upstairs came back to her. So that was the meaning of it!

"I've taken your freedom from you. That's true. In return I've given you Blent. I did the best I could."

"Oh, do you really delude yourself like that? What you did was utter selfishness."

Harry sighed. They were not getting on prosperously.

"Very well," he said. "We'll agree on that. There's been a revelation of what I am. I don't—I distinctly don't justify myself. It was a lie, a fraud."

"Yes," said Cecily, in a low but emphatic assent.

"I gained your consent by a trick, when you ought to have been free to give or refuse it. I admit it all."

"And it has brought us to this!" She rose as she spoke, a picture of indignation. "There's no use talking any more about it," said she.

He looked at her long and deliberately. He seemed to weigh something in his mind, to ask whether he should or should not say something.

"And you conclude that the sort of person I am isn't fit to live with?" he asked at last.

"I've told you what I've made up my mind to do. I can't help whether you stay or go too. But I'm going away from here, and going alone."

"Because I'm that sort of person?"

"Yes. If you like to put it that way, yes."

"Very well. But before you go, a word about you! Sit down, please." She obeyed his rather imperative gesture. "I've been meek," he smiled. "I've admitted all you said about me. And now, please, a word about you!"

"About me? What is there to say about me? Oh, you're going back to that old story about my pride again!"

Once more he looked long at her face. It was flushed and rebellious, it gave no hint of yielding to any weapon that he had yet employed.

"I'm not going to speak of your pride, but of your incredible meanness," said he.

"What?" cried Cecily, rudely startled and sitting bolt upright.

"There's no harm in plain speaking, since we're going to part. Of your extraordinary meanness, Cecily—and really it's not generally a fault of the Tristrams."

"Perhaps you'll explain yourself," she said, relapsing into cold disdain, and leaning back again.

"I will. I mean to. Just look at the history of the whole affair." He rose and stood opposite her, constraining her to look at him, although her attitude professed a lofty indifference. "Here was I—in possession! I was safe. I knew I was safe. I was as convinced of my safety as I am even now—when it's beyond question. Was I frightened? Ask Mina, ask Duplay. Then you came. You know what I did. For your sake, because you were what you are, because I had begun to love you—yes, that's the truth of it—I gave it all to you. Not this place only, but all I had. Even my name—even my right to bear any name. Nobody and nameless, I went out of this house for you."

He paused a little, took a pace on the grass, and returned to her.

"What ought you to have felt, what ought you to have prayed then?" he asked. "Surely that it should come back to me, that it should be mine again?"

"I did," she protested, stirred to self-defence. "I was miserable. You know I was. I couldn't stay here for the thought of you. I came to London. I came to you, Harry. I offered it to you."

"It's you who are deceiving yourself now. Yes, you came and offered it to me. Did you want, did you pray, that it might be mine again by no gift of yours but by right? Did you pray that the thing should happen which has happened now? That you should be turned out and I should be put in? Back in my own place, my proper place? That I should be Tristram of Blent again? Did you pray for that?"

He paused, but she said nothing. Her face was troubled now and her eyes could not leave his.

"You were ready to play Lady Bountiful to me, to give of your charity, to make yourself feel very noble. That was it. And now——" His voice became more vehement. "And now, look into your heart, look close! Look, look! What's in your heart now? You say I've cheated you. It's true. Is that why you're angry, is that why you won't live with me? No, by heaven, not that, or anything of the kind! Will you have the truth?"

Again she made no answer. She waited for his words.

"Are you rejoiced that mine's my own again, that I'm back in my place, that I'm Tristram of Blent, that it belongs to me? That I take it by my own incontestable right and not of your hand, by your bounty and your charity? Are you so rejoiced at that that you can forgive me anything, forgive the man you love anything? Yes, you do love me—You're welcome to that, if you think it makes it any better. It seems to me to make it worse. No, you can't forgive me anything, you can't forgive the man you love! Why not? I'll tell you why! Shall I? Shall I go on?"

She bowed her head and clasped her hands together.

"You hate my having come to my own again. You hate its being mine by right and not by your bounty. You hate being Lady Tristram only because I've chosen to make you so. And because you hate that, you won't forgive me, and you say you won't live with me. Yes, you're angry because I've come to my own again. You hate it. Look in your heart, I say, and tell me that what I say isn't true, if you can."

She made no answer still. He came a step closer and smote his fist on the palm of his other hand, as he ended:

"You called me a liar. I was a liar. But, by God, you're a curmudgeon, Cecily!"

For a moment longer she looked at him, as he stood there in his scornful anger. Then with a low moan she hid her face in her hands. The next minute he turned on his heel, left her where she sat, and strode off into the house.

Mina and Neeld—now at their sweets—heard his step and exchanged excited glances. He walked up to the head of the table, to Cecily's chair, plumped down into it, and called out to Mason, "Something to eat and some champagne."

"Yes, sir," said Mason in a flurry.

"Oh, by-the-bye, you can say 'my Lord' again. The lawyers blundered, and there's been a mistake."

The astonished Mason began to express felicitations. Harry was petulantly short with him.

"Oh, shut up that, my dear man, and give me some champagne." He drank a glass off and then observed, "I hope you two have had a decent dinner?" He had the manner of a host now.

"I—I hadn't much appetite," stammered Neeld.

"Well, I'm hungry anyhow," and he fell to on his beef, having waved soup and fish aside impatiently. "Tell them all downstairs what I've told you, Mason, but for heaven's sake don't let there be any fuss. Oh, and I suppose you'd better keep something hot for Lady Tristram."

Mason's exit was hastened by the consciousness of his commission. The moment he was gone Mina broke out:

"Where's Cecily?"

"I left her on the lawn," said Harry, frowning hard but eating heartily.

"You've told her?"

"Yes, I've told her."

"And what did she say?" The Imp's utterance was jerky from her perturbation.

"Look here, Mina, mightn't you go and ask her? It's a long story, and I'm deuced hungry, you know."

Mina needed no further permission. She rose and flew. Neeld, though uncertain what was expected of him, sat on, nervously eating gooseberries—a fruit which rarely agreed with him. Harry drank a second glass of champagne and his brow relaxed, although he was still thoughtful.

"I—I hope all has gone well?" Neeld ventured to inquire.

"I scarcely know. The interview took rather an unexpected turn." He spoke as though the development had surprised him and he could hardly trace how it had come about. "The whole thing will be settled very soon," he added. "Have a glass of port, Mr Neeld? It'll do you more good than those gooseberries."

Neeld laid a ready hand on the decanter, as he asked,

"Is—er—Lady Tristram not coming in to dinner?"

"Really I don't know. She didn't mention it." His thoughts seemed elsewhere. "Was I wrong to tell Mason to give me the title?" he asked. "Ought I to wait till I've formally established my claim?"

"Since it's quite clear, and there's no opposition from—from the dispossessed claimant——" Neeld smiled feebly and sipped his port.

"That's what I thought; and it's as well to put things on a permanent basis as soon as possible. When once that's done, we shall think less about all this troublesome affair." He sat silent for a few minutes, while Neeld finished his wine. "I'm going to have some cheese. Don't you wait, Mr Neeld."

Old Neeld was glad to escape; he could not understand his host's mood and was uneasy in talk with him. Moreover it seemed that the great question was being decided in the garden and not in the dining-room. To the garden then he betook himself.

Harry smoked a cigarette when his meal was done, twisting his chair round so that he could see Addie Tristram's picture. He reviewed his talk with Cecily, trying to trace how that unexpected turn in it had come about and at what point the weapon had sprung into his hand. He had used it with effect—whether with the effect he desired he did not yet know. But his use of it had not been altogether a ruse or an artifice. His sincerity, his vehemence, his very cruelty proved that. He had spoken out a genuine resentment and a righteous reproach. Thence came the power to meet Cecily's taunts in equal battle and to silence her charges of deceit with his retort of meanness.

"And we were married to-day! And we're damnably in love with one another!" he reflected. "I suppose we should seem queer to some people." This was a great advance toward an outside view of the family. Certainly such an idea had never occurred to Addie; she had always done the only possible thing! "Now what will she do?"

At least it did not seem as though she meant to have any dinner. The fact would have meant much had a man been concerned. With a woman it possessed no more than a moderate significance. With a Tristram woman perhaps it had none at all. A cigar succeeded the cigarette in Harry's mouth, as he sat there looking at his mother's picture and thinking of his wife. He did not in the least regret that she was his wife or that he had lied. Any scruples that he ever had on that score he had removed for himself by realizing that she was a curmudgeon. Neither did he regret what he had called the troublesome affair. It had brought new things into his life; new thoughts and new powers had become his. And it had given him Cecily—unless one of them had still to go to town! He glanced at the clock; it was half-past nine. A sudden excitement came on him; but he conquered it or at least held it down, and sat there, smoking still.

Mason returned and began to clear away. "Madame Zabriska has ordered some soup and claret to be placed in the hall for her Ladyship, my Lord," said he, in explanation of his action.

Soup and claret might mean anything—peace or war—going or staying—anything except sitting down to table with him. On the whole their omen was not encouraging. A sudden thought shot across his brain: "By Jove, if she's taken my cab!" He jumped up; but in a moment sat down again. The coup would be a good one, but it would not beat him. He would walk to Mingham and get a bed there. He was quite clear that he would not sleep alone at Blent. He glanced at the clock again; to catch the train at Fillingford she must start at ten—and so with him. Stay though, she might go to Merrion. Mina would give her shelter.

She had looked very beautiful. Oh, yes, yes! Harry smiled as he conceded the natural man that point. It was seen plainly in retrospect; he had not noticed it much at the time. He had been too much occupied in proving her a curmudgeon. One thing at a time was the Tristram way—provided the time were reasonably short. But he felt it now, and began to wonder if he had said too much. He decided that he had not said a word too much.

At last he got up very deliberately and went into the hall. It was a quarter to ten; the soup and the claret were there. Harry stood looking at them a moment, but they could not answer his question. With an impatient shrug of his shoulders he walked out into the garden. And there his first thought was not of Cecily.

It was of Blent, Blent his own again, come back to him enriched by the experience of its loss, now no more all his life, but the background of that new life he had begun to make for himself. He was no longer puffed up by the possession of it—the new experiences had taught him a lesson there—but he was infinitely satisfied. Blent for his own, in his own way, on his own terms—that was what he wanted. See how fair it was in the still night! He was glad and exultant that it was his again. Was he too a curmudgeon then? Harry did not perceive how any reasonable person could say such a thing. A man may value what is his own without being a miser or a churl.

Nobody was to be seen in the garden—not Neeld, not Mina, nor Cecily. In surprise he walked the length and breadth of it without finding any of them. He went on to the bridge and peered about, and then on to the road; he looked even in the river in a curiosity that forgot the impossible. He was alone. With a quick step he came back and strode round the house to the stables. His fly was gone. He searched for a man to question; there was none; they had all gone to supper or to bed. And the fly was gone. He returned to the bridge with an uncomfortable feeling of loneliness.

Something came upon him, an impulse or an instinct. There was still a chance. She was not in the house, she was not in the garden. There was one other place where she still might be—if indeed she had not fled and left him desolate. Where? The answer seemed so easy to him, her choice of a spot so obvious. If he found her anywhere that night he would find her by the Pool, walking on the margin of its waters—where he had seen her first and started at the thought that she was his mother's phantom. He walked quickly up the valley, not thinking, his whole being strung to wait for and to meet the answer to his one great question.

On what things a man's life may seem to hang! A flutter of white through the darkness! That was all. Harry saw it with a great leap of the heart. His quick pace dropped to a leisurely saunter; he strolled on. She was walking toward him. Presently she stopped, and, turning toward the water, stood looking down into it. The Pool was very black that night, the clouds thick overhead. But for her white frock he might never had seen her at all. He came up to her and spoke in a careless voice.

"Where's Neeld?" he asked. "I can't find him anywhere."

"He's gone back to Fairholme, Harry. It was late. I was to say good-night to you for him."

"And what have you done with Mina?" His voice was level, even, and restrained.

"Mina's gone to Merrion." She paused before she added: "She was tired, so I put her in your fly to go up the hill."

There was silence for a moment. Then he asked: "Did you tell the fly to come back again?"

Silence again, and then a voice of deceptive meekness, of hidden mirth, answered him: "No, Harry."

"I knew you'd be here, if anywhere."

"Well, I was sure you'd come here to look for me, before you gave me up." She put out her hands and he took them in his. "It was all true that you said about me, all abominably true."

He did not contradict her.

"That's why I'm here," she went on. "When you've feelings like that, it's your duty not to run away from the place that excites them, but to stay there and fight them down manfully."

"I agree," said Harry gravely. "When you've basely deceived and tricked somebody it's cowardly to run away. The straightest thing is to stay with that person and try to redeem your character."

"How did you know it?" she asked. "I hardly knew it was in my heart myself."

"It sharpens a man's wits to be called a liar—and not to be able to deny the name."

"And you called me a—curmudgeon! Oh, how did you happen on that funny old word?" Her laugh rang fresh and gay through the quiet of the night. "After you'd gone, Mina came to me."

"What happened then?"

"Well, I ought to have cried—and Mina did."

"Did Mina stop you going?"

"Mina? No!" The acme of scorn was in her voice.

"What then?" he asked, drawing her a little nearer to him.

"I wanted to obey your wishes. You said I was to stay—and you'd go."

"Yes, but you've sent away the fly," objected Harry. "Well, all that you said of me was true too."

"We should start on a clear understanding then?"

"I'm a liar—and you're a curmudgeon? Yes."

"What awful quarrels we shall have!"

"I don't care a hang for them," said Harry.

"And what about the Arbitration?"

"Absurd, if I'm going to live in a state of war!"

Suddenly came a sound of wheels rolling briskly along the road from behind them. Cecily sprang away with a start.

"Oh, the fly's not come back?" she cried.

"Perhaps there's still a chance for one of us."

She caught him by the arm. "Listen! Is it stopping? No! It must be past the house!"

"Do you want it to stop?" he asked.

She turned her eyes on him; he saw them gleam through the darkness. He saw her lips just move; he heard no more than the lingering fear, the passionate reproach, of her murmured exclamation, "Oh, Harry!"

The next instant a voice rang out in the night, loud, mellow, and buoyant. They listened as it sang, its notes dominating the sound of the wheels and seeming to fill the air around them, growing louder as the wheels came near, sinking again as they passed on the road to Mingham:

"Drink to me only with thine eyes, And I will pledge with mine: Or leave a kiss but in the cup And I'll not look for wine. The thirst that from the soul doth rise Doth ask a drink divine:—"

Gradually, melodiously, and happily the voice died away in the distance, and silence came. Harry drew his love to him.

"Dear old Bob Broadley!" said he softly. "He's driving back from Fairholme, and he seems most particularly jolly."

"Yes," she murmured. Then she broke into a low, merry, triumphant laugh. "I don't see why he should be so particularly jolly." She pressed his hand hard, laughing again. "He's only engaged," she whispered. "But we're married, aren't we, Harry?"

"My dear, my dear, my dear!" said he.



XXX

TILL THE NEXT GENERATION

Major Duplay had taken a flat in town, and Mina had come up to aid him in the task of furnishing it. The Major was busy and prosperous in these days. Blinkhampton was turning up trumps for all concerned, for Iver, for Harry, for Southend, and for him; the scheme even promised to be remunerative to the investing public. So he had told Mina that he must be on the spot, and that henceforward the country and the Continent would know him only in occasional days of recreation. He also murmured something about having met a very attractive woman, a widow of thirty-five. The general result seemed to be that he had forgotten his sorrows, was well content, and a good deal more independent of his niece's society and countenance than he had been before. All this Mina told to Lady Evenswood when she went to lunch in Green Street.

"Yes, I think I've launched uncle," said she complacently, "and now I shall devote myself to the Tristrams."

"You've been doing that for a long time, my dear."

"Yes, I suppose I have really," she laughed. "I've been a sort of Miss Swinkerton—I wish you knew her! Only I devoted myself to one family and she does it for all the neighborhood."

Lady Evenswood looked at her with a kindly smile.

"You were rather in love with Harry, you know," she said.

"Which was very absurd, but—yes, I was. Only then Cecily came and—well, it was altogether too artistic for me even to want to interfere. If I had wanted, it would have made no difference, of course. They've been pressing me to go on living at Merrion, and I shall."

"Oh, if you could get nothing but a pigsty on the estate, you'd take it. Though I don't know what you'll find to do."

"To do? Oh, plenty! Why, they're only just beginning, and——!" The wave of her hands expressed the endless possibilities of a Tristram household.

"And gradually you'll glide into being an old woman like me—looking at the new generation!"

"Her children and his! There ought to be something to look at," said Mina wistfully. "But we've not done with Harry himself yet."

"Robert says he's too fond of making money, or he might do something in politics."

"It isn't money exactly. It's a good deal Blent. He wants to make that splendid. Perhaps he'll come to the politics in time."

"He's made you believe in him anyhow."

"Yes, and I know I don't count. All the same I've seen a good deal of him. Mr Neeld and I have been in it right from the beginning."

"And in the end it was all a mare's nest. Fancy if Addie Tristram had known that!"

"I think she liked it just as well as she thought it was. And I'm sure Harry did."

"Oh, if he's like that, he'll never do for the British public, my dear. He may get their money but he won't get their votes. After all, would you have the country governed by Addie Tristram's son?"

"I suppose it would be rather risky," said the Imp reluctantly. But she cheered up directly on the strength of an obvious thought. "There are much more interesting things than politics," she said.

"And how is Cecily?" asked Lady Evenswood.

"Oh, she's just adorable—and Mrs Iver's got her a very good housekeeper."

The old lady laughed as she turned to welcome Lord Southend.

"I've just met Disney," he remarked. "He doesn't seem to mind being out."

"Oh, he'll be back before long, and without his incumbrances. And Flora's delighted to get a winter abroad. It couldn't have happened more conveniently, she says."

"He told me to tell you that he thought your young friend—he meant Harry Tristram—was lost forever now."

"What a shame!" cried Mina indignantly.

"Just like Robert! He never could understand that a man has a history just as a country has. He is and ought to be part of his family."

"No sense of historical continuity," nodded Southend. "I agree, and that's just why, though I admire Disney enormously, I——"

"Generally vote against him on critical occasions? Yes, Robert makes so many admirers like that."

"Is his work at Blinkhampton nothing?" demanded Mina.

"He got in for that while he was dispossessed," smiled Southend. "I say, thank heaven he wouldn't have the viscounty!"

"That would have been deplorable," agreed Lady Evenswood.

"It's all a very curious little episode."

"Yes. No more than that."

"Yes, it is more," cried Mina. "Without it he'd never have married Cecily."

"Romance, Madame Zabriska, romance!" Southend shook his head at her severely.

Mina flinched a little under the opprobrium of the word. Yet why? In these days we have come to recognize—indeed there has been small choice in the matter, unless a man would throw away books and wear cotton-wool in his ears—that the romance of one generation makes the realities of the next, and that a love-affair twenty years old becomes a problem in heredity, demanding the attention of the learned, and receiving that of the general public also. So that though the affair and the man be to all seeming insignificant, consolation may be found in the prospect of a posthumous importance; and he who did nothing very visible in his lifetime may, when his son's biography comes to be written, be held grandfather to an epic poem or a murder on the high seas—and it seems to be considered that it is touch and go which way the thing turns out. Are there then any episodes left? Does not everything become an enterprise of great pith and moment, with results that will probably, some day or other, be found to admit of mathematical demonstration? Happily the human race, in practice if not in theory, declines the conclusion. We know that we are free, and there's an end of it, said Dr Johnson. Well, at least we can still think that we are doing what we like—and that's the beginning of most things.

That temporary inferiority of Bob Broadley's, on which Cecily had touched so feelingly, was soon redressed, and after the wedding Harry had a talk with the bride. It was not unnatural that she should blush a little when he spoke to her—a passing tribute to the thought of what might have been. Harry greeted it with a laugh.

"I suppose we'd better be straightforward about this?" he said. "Mingham's so near Blent, you see. We're both very glad, aren't we, Mrs Broadley?"

"I imagine so," said Janie. "You show no signs of pining anyhow."

"And as to our behavior—there's not a father in the kingdom who wouldn't think us right."

"I was the worst—because I think I was in love with Bob all the time."

"I was just as bad—because I thought you were too," said Harry.

"How could we do it then?" she asked.

"That's the odd thing. It didn't seem at all out of the way at the time," he pondered.

"You'd do it again now, if the case arose, but I shouldn't. That's the difference," said she.

Harry considered this remark for a moment with an impartial air. "Well, perhaps I should," he admitted at last, "but you needn't tell that to Cecily. Content yourself with discussing it with Mina or Mr Neeld."

"I'm tired of both of them," she cried. "They do nothing but talk about you."

That night as he sat in the garden at Blent with his wife, Harry returned the compliment by talking of the Imp. He looked up toward Merrion and saw the lights in the windows.

"I think Mina is with us for life, Cecily," said he.

"I like her to be," she answered with a laugh. "First because I like being loved, and she loves me. And then I like you to be loved, and she loves you. Besides, she's been so closely mixed up with it all, hasn't she? She knew about you before I did, she knew Blent before I did. And it's not only with you and me. She knew your mother, Addie Tristram, too."

"Yes, Mina goes right back to the beginning of the thing."

"And the thing, as you call it, is what brought us here together. So Mina seems to have had something to do with that too. It all comes back to me when I look at her, and I like to have her here."

"Well, she's part of the family story now. And she'll probably keep a journal and make entries about us, like the late Mr Cholderton, and some day be edited by a future Mr Neeld. Mina must stop, that's clear."

"It's clear anyhow—because nothing would make her go," said Cecily.

"Let's go up the hill and see her now?" he suggested.

Together they climbed the hill and reached the terrace. There were people in the drawing-room, and Harry signed to Cecily to keep out of sight. They approached stealthily.

"Who's with her? I didn't know anyone was staying here," whispered Cecily.

Harry turned his face toward her, smiling. "Hush, it's old Neeld!"

They peeped in. Neeld was sitting in an arm-chair with some sheets of paper in his hand. He had his spectacles on and apparently had been reading something aloud to Mina; indeed they heard his voice die away just as they came up. Mina stood in front of him, her manner full of her old excitement.

"Yes, that's it, that's just right!" they heard her exclaim. "She stood in the middle of the room and"—Harry pressed his wife's hand and laughed silently—"she cried out just what you've read. I remember exactly how she looked and the very words that Mr Cholderton uses. 'Think of the difference it makes, the enormous difference!' she said. Oh, it might have been yesterday, Mr Neeld!"

Harry leapt over the window-sill and burst into the room with a laugh.

"Oh, you dear silly people, you're at it again!" said he.

"The story does not lose its interest for me," remarked old Mr Neeld primly, and he added, as he greeted Cecily, "It won't so long as I can look at your face, my dear. You keep Addie Tristram still alive for me."

"She's Lady Tristram—and I'm the enormous difference, I suppose," said Harry.

Mina and Neeld did not quite understand why Cecily turned so suddenly and put her hand in Harry's, saying, "No, Harry, there's no difference now."

Meanwhile, down in Blentmouth, Miss Swinkerton looked up from the local paper and remarked across the table to Mrs Trumbler:

"Here's an announcement that Lady Tristram will give a ball at Blent in January. You'll remember that I told you that two months ago, Mrs Trumbler."

"Yes, Miss Swinkerton, but that was before all the——"

"Really I'm not often wrong, my dear," interrupted Miss S. decisively.

"Well, I hope there won't be any more changes," sighed Mrs Trumbler. "They're so very startling."

She might rest in peace awhile. Addie Tristram was dead, and the title to Blent was safe till the next generation. Beyond that it would not perhaps be safe to speak in view of the Tristram blood and the Tristram ways.

THE END.

[Transcriber's Note: Several typographical errors in the original edition have been corrected. The following sentences are as they originally appeared, with corrections noted in brackets.]

Chapter VII

That seemed to have little concern with Bod [Bob] Broadley and to be engrossed in the struggle between Harry and Duplay.

Both fell into silence again, lookingly [looking] absently at the sunshine playing among the trees.

Chapter VIII

As it was, be [he] began to be convinced that Mina would decline to remember any dates even approximately, and this was all she had professed to do in her first disclosure.

Miss S. looked as [at] her suspiciously.

Chapter XVIII

"Well, yes, I—I'm interested in the family.["] He telegraphed a glance of caution to the old lady; he meant to convey that the present was not a happy moment to broach the matter that was in their minds.

Chapter XXI

Iver listened atentively [attentively], Harry with evident impatience.

THE END