"Thank you so much," she wrote, "for wishing me to use your motor, but I don't care to go in it without you. Do let me know how your mother is. I hope with all my heart that you will find her better. Don't forget you have promised to have tea with the children next week!
"Sincerely your friend,"C. L."
He slipped the note into his pocket-book. It was pleasant to have that little remembrance from her.
Passing the corner of the house he bent forward unconsciously to look at the windows of the room where she was, but the blinds were drawn; in fact, as he took out the little note and read it again, he saw that it was dated at three o'clock that morning. She must have scribbled it before going to bed. He knew she had gone to her room very late, for he had sat waiting for the sound of her voice and the swish of her gown. Their rooms had been on the same landing.
He slipped his pocket-book back with a sigh, and as he drove rapidly away he found himself wishing with every turn of the wheels that he was going back again; that was the curious part of this charm which Camilla exercised over him.
When he was near to her she vexed him, she troubled him; when he was away he only felt the appealing claim of her beauty, of that simplicity, that "insouciance" that was so apart from and yet, with her, so much a part of her womanliness.
She was such a curious mixture, pre-eminently womanly, tender, sympathetic, and, at the same time, tainted unmistakably with pronounced worldliness. Much as he had studied her, he felt quite unequal to gauging her character.
Once he had heard some woman declare that Camilla was "insincere." He had felt a wholly unreasonable amount of anger against that woman. And yet he was quite unprepared to defend her this morning against such an accusation.
He had suffered, really suffered, when he had seen her with Broxbourne. It was inconceivable to him that a woman so delicately fashioned as she mentally (though not supremely intelligent, her mind had a tendency to poetry and charm evinced unconsciously a score of times) could find pleasure in the society of this young man with his rough voice, his sporting look, his peculiar manners. Nevertheless, she had laughed and sparkled and met Sir Samuel with all the ease and intimacy of a comrade.
"It is because she is alone, because she has no one to lead her," he said to himself as he sat in the train whirling to town. But ponder as he might, he could offer to himself nothing convincing or satisfying where Camilla Lancing was concerned. All he knew was that no matter how his mind might busy itself with other thoughts, it always circled back to Camilla in some fashion or other.
As he drew nearer to the smoke and the fog of the great city he closed his eyes and dreamed of the day before—of that wide expanse of restless, sun-kissed sea, with the sky fading in the distance into a glorious sweep of gold and purple and grey.
In his imagination he could hear again the break of the waves on the wet beach mingling with the musical hum of the car, and he could feel once again that sense of delight, almost of possessive delight, as he had looked back ever and anon and had met the smile of Camilla's sweet eyes and pensive lips.
She seemed to be cut away from him altogether by this darkness and heavy atmosphere.
The yellow gloom fell like a pall on all that was bright and beautiful and desirable.
He longed to go back to the country; above all, he longed to see her again, and quickly.
When he reached his mother's house in Kensington, Rupert Haverford was met with the information that Mrs. Baynhurst had left town the preceding day.
The house was all shut up, and the servant who opened the door to him wore no apron or cap.
He passed into the hall thoroughly vexed.
Of course by this time he ought to have been well prepared for any startling move on the part of his mother, who never by any chance did those things that were expected of her, or, indeed, anything that she had announced she intended doing.
He put the parlourmaid through a cross-examination.
"I came up from the country on purpose," he said to her, naturally irritated. "I understood from a letter that was sent on from my house that my mother had had an accident, and that she was anything but well!"
"No more she is, sir," said the maid. "Dr. Mortlock, he was quite angry when he come here this morning and found Mrs. Baynhurst gone; but there was a letter come yesterday from Mr. Cuthbert, saying as he was ill in Paris, and the mistress she fussed herself into a fever, and wouldn't rest satisfied, so she left last night. She wasn't no more fit to travel than this doormat, sir. You see, there was all but a smash up with the brougham."
Rupert Haverford was frowning sharply.
"Who is with my mother?" he asked.
"She's took Stebbings, her maid that is, sir, but not Miss Graniger. Most probable she'll have to join Mrs. Baynhurst in a day or two."
The maid rambled on loquaciously, and Rupert Haverford quickly gathered that his mother must have had a nasty shock, as her carriage had apparently just escaped collision with a runaway cab. She was not a nervous or a timid woman, far from it; but of late she had been in anything but good health, and this journey to Paris appeared to Haverford not merely an altogether needless fatigue, but a very foolish undertaking on her part.
In all probability his half-brother's serious illness would signify nothing more than an ordinary cold.
It was so typical of Cuthbert Baynhurst to write in a sensational way about himself; equally typical of their mother to take immediate alarm when any such news reached her.
It relieved Rupert Haverford to be angry with his half-brother now. He had made it a principle never to be angry with his mother. It was so useless. She was a strange creature was Rupert's mother. In a sense they were nothing more than acquaintances, for she had left his father when he had been a baby of a few months.
Octavia Marling had married John Haverford in a hurry, and had regretted the haste almost immediately.
Their life together had been unsupportable. It would, however, have been a very unusual kind of man who would have found life possible with a woman of her peculiar temperament and mental attributes, even in the most easy-going circumstances, and when such a woman was boxed down into the narrow limits of a struggling existence passed in a dull, smoke-grimed, small provincial town, the result was inevitable.
Rupert's father had adored his wife, but he could not live with her.
She was a brilliant woman, a woman with the brains, the will, the tenacious strength of a man, a woman who made rules for herself, and quietly and firmly rebelled against the position which tradition and nature had allotted to her sex.
When she had borne a child she had felt humiliated; motherhood was a natural evil, she admitted so much, but there were women created specially for the purpose, and she was assuredly not one of those women. She put the baby away from her as she put other objectionable things, and fell back on her work with new and deeper intentions.
She had been engaged, at the time when poor little Rupert came into the world, on an historical work of some magnitude, a work which entailed a considerable amount of research—indeed, which demanded that she should move about from one country to another, untrammelled by ties of any sort.
Perhaps the kindest letter she ever wrote to her husband was the one he received after she had left him. She was so unutterably glad to be free; to put the factory town, with its troops of working men and women clattering on the rough stones past the window where she worked, far, far behind her; to be liberated from the fretting duties and small events in her husband's professional life; to feel that miles and miles stretched between her and the clang of the factory bell and the ever-whirring noise of the restless machinery....
She only saw Rupert at a few odd times during the years that stretched between his birth and his father's death. And she was abroad when John Haverford died.
By his father's will the boy was left to the joint care of his mother and of a man called Matthew Woolgar.
No one knew where to find Mrs. Haverford, so the charge of the lad passed into the hands of this Woolgar, who accepted the trust in a very grudging spirit.
He was an ignorant, churlish man who had worked his way up from the gutter to the command of enormous wealth; a man whose very name was a curse in the ears of the men who served him; a man who was both feared and hated, and credited truly with being the hardest taskmaster in the world. It was asserted by many that the foundation of Woolgar's fortune lay in usury—money lent to his fellow-workers at an enormous rate of interest—but whether this was true or not no one knew. All that was certain was that he owned more than half the town and ruled with the hand of a tyrant.
John Haverford had written down his wishes as to his boy's education and profession, but Matthew Woolgar sneered these wishes into thin air.
A pauper had no right to the training of a prince.
Without waiting to consult Octavia Haverford, he took matters into his own hands, and sent the boy into the factory.
Rupert Haverford wore the common clothes as the others did, he ate the same common food, he lived and moved and slept among these people who adored his father, and for whose children his father had lost his life. There was nothing outwardly to tell the difference between Rupert Haverford and any of the others, except when Matthew Woolgar paid one of his surprise visitations (as he was fond of doing) to the works, when he would be certain to single out "t' poor doctor's lad" for some sharp reproof or snarling word.
Then the mother had flashed into existence again.
She wrote from America, announcing that she was married a second time, and peremptorily commanding Rupert to join her.
Matthew Woolgar quietly and grimly refused to permit this.
In truth, Rupert himself had no desire to go. His mother was nothing to him, hardly a name. The passion, the intense love, of his childhood and boyhood had been given to his father; even to live in the place where his father had lived and died signified a sort of happiness to Rupert. It was because he felt he was doing what John Haverford had wished him to do that he gave his strange guardian such unquestioning obedience, and it was certainly the loved memory of his father that sustained him, that made life possible. Every day he toiled eight to nine hours in the factory; every night he sat for hours studying, teaching himself. He had dreams of his own. He would get promotion, earn more, save money, and even yet follow that career which his father had desired for him.
It was a task of incredible difficulty, but he was his mother's child, and the will that spurred her on to such questionable lengths ran like a steady fire in Rupert's veins. The very work that to some would have seemed so paralyzing, so harmful, served to urge the boy on; it gave him grit; it taught him more than books can teach.
And he got on.
Against all odds he advanced.
He was about eighteen, a tall, raw youth with a thin resolute face, when his mother and he met.
Mrs. Baynhurst was a widow for the second time. This was apparently not a matter of great sorrow to her, but she was a changed woman.
For a second time also she had become a mother, a second son had been born to her—a little, delicate, neurotic child, whose birth was not, as Rupert's had been, merely a physical and a detestable fact, but whose frail little existence brought to her the knowledge of those things which neither logic, nor erudition, nor philosophy had ever vouchsafed to her.
With the coming of this second child (the offspring of a brief, a miserable passion), the flood of those natural yearnings which make the sum of most women's lives had broken its barriers at last. Rupert had been an amazement and a humiliation; Cuthbert was a delight, a happiness so illimitable, so wondrous, that the woman trembled even at the realization of it.
The meeting between Rupert and his mother had led to nothing. They were as far apart as the two poles.
Mrs. Baynhurst had misunderstood the boy's attitude; she supposed that he resented her second marriage, and in her turn she resented his right to do this.
But Rupert was quite indifferent to anything his mother had done. Had she had any tangible existence for him in the beginning, things, of course, would have been different, but he had never known a mother, he had never missed a mother; whereas even then, when at times he went to kneel at his father's grave, his heart would contract with that old incredulous anguish which had lived with him for so many black days after he knew he would never see that father again.... Nevertheless, though they parted so coldly, quietly, and indifferently, something in the boy's bearing, in his calm submission to his fate, had struck a reproach in the woman's heart.
She never wrote to Rupert, but she wrote very frequently to Matthew Woolgar, who never troubled to send her a word in reply.
She began to fidget and to fret.
It was monstrous, so she declared, that her son should be working in a factory. Such a circumstance stung her pride.
Rupert must go to a tutor's. She knew that John Haverford had left a small sum of money, and she declared that this money should be used for Rupert's education.
Matthew Woolgar took absolutely no notice of her wishes, and after a time she grew tired, and left Rupert to his fate.
The care, the anxious, engrossing care that her second boy demanded of her filled her every thought.
And so a few years rolled on, marked only for Rupert by the knowledge that he was slowly but surely moving upwards, and sweetened by the fact that he was following those lines which his father had laid down for him as far as he could.
Half his wages went in books and to pay for tuition. He had put himself into the hands of one of the masters of a school situated just outside the town, and with this man he had worked in every spare hour he had.
His craving for knowledge amounted to greediness.
Perhaps once in a while he met Woolgar, who had grown into a surly and suffering man; there was nothing, however, in this old man's treatment of him to indicate even in the faintest degree the wonderful future which awaited him.
When he was twenty-six Rupert was in a post of authority at the factory; when he was thirty he was master of all that Matthew Woolgar possessed—a fortune so large that no one quite knew its limits; a young man with the world before him, and a certain section of the world at his feet.
It was he, then, who had sought his mother.
A year or so back, when he had arrived at manhood, and had inherited the money his father had left (which in Woolgar's hands had accumulated to a decent sum), Rupert had made it his business to inquire into his mother's financial position, and finding, as he had imagined, that her circumstances were very poor, he had without hesitation immediately passed over to her his small inheritance.
And Octavia Baynhurst had taken the money.
"Not for myself," she had written to him, "but for Cuthbert. He is so delicate; he needs so much care, and he is so gifted! If he is properly trained he can attain to anything, but hemustbe in the proper environment."
Since that bygone day when his mother had sought him with that frail, pathetically small baby in her arms, Rupert had not met his half-brother till the day when he reached London, after he had followed Matthew Woolgar to the grave.
There was not the faintest possibility of sympathy or even friendship between Octavia Baynhurst's two sons.
A portrait of Cuthbert Baynhurst was hanging over the fireplace in the hall, and Rupert glanced up at it now as he turned to leave his mother's house and go out into the fog again, and as he glanced he frowned unconsciously.
There were portraits of Cuthbert all over the house. Young Baynhurst affected the society, and in a degree the calling, of artistic life, and was a favourite subject with most of the artists he knew; but not one of these portraits did justice in the mother's eyes to that strange, almost womanish beauty which the young fellow possessed. She was blind to any defect in Cuthbert either mentally or physically. Love, when it had come to her, had come in a wild, a primitive kind of way; she who had carped and analyzed and sought to find the cause and origin of all things, fell at the feet of this one creature, who claimed her heart and accepted her destiny unquestioningly.
The fact that Cuthbert was lazy, selfish, callous, never dawned in her comprehension. She had fashioned him out of the purest, the best of herself. She required nothing of him, and lived merely to pour out her love on him.
Just as he was passing out of the door Haverford looked back.
"I shall be obliged if you will ask Miss Graniger to let me have my mother's address as soon as she gets it," he said.
He got into the cab that was waiting, and his thoughts lingered about Cuthbert.
"Paris," he said; "I thought he was going to stay in town and work all this winter."
Then he shrugged his shoulders.
He made it his business not to inquire too closely into anything that Cuthbert did, in which he showed himself to be unlike the majority of those people who give to others; and assuredly he was generous enough to his half-brother. For Cuthbert, of course, had the major portion of anything their mother had, and Rupert's first action (when he had realized that he had the command of so much money) had been to put his mother out of the reach of difficulty.
He bought her the house in which she now lived, she had her own carriage, and a very comfortable income. He gave her, in fact, exactly the sum equivalent to that which he spent on himself.
Matthew Woolgar had left him the money unreservedly—everything save a legacy to his sister, an old, crippled, and humble woman, had passed "To the son of the best man I ever knew." But Rupert himself had certain theories. He felt convinced that this money would never have come to him if Woolgar had not seen in him the proper medium through which this immense wealth could be handled judiciously, and it was his one desire, his one anxiety, that he should prove worthy of the immense trust which had been placed in his hands.
The schemes about which he had spoken to Agnes Brenton the night before were no paltry things; they were planned on the most generous lines.
There was scarcely a public charity to which Haverford did not already subscribe largely, and his private expenditure of this kind was almost without limit, but he intended to do more, much more. And his keenest, his most living sympathy was with those people among whom he worked so long; it was on these toilers and out of them that this great wealth had been gleaned in the first instance, and Rupert resolved to give back to them in full measure. Nothing was too large or too important that dealt with their welfare and the good of their rising generation.
Already there had sprung up in that smoke-grimed factory town a monument dedicated to the memory of the man who had enriched him and the man who had given birth to him. It took the form of a large institution designated for the practical education and the physical and moral uplifting of his old comrades.
Life in the factory served to stunt the growth and stultify the intellect of those who did not possess, like himself, that piercing, that vitalizing determination to keep looking upwards. It was to such as these that Haverford determined the major part of Matthew Woolgar's money should go.
After leaving Kensington he went back to the city, where he had an office, and it was late in the afternoon before he reached the house that was perhaps the sole reason why he had elected to make London his head-quarters.
Matthew Woolgar had raised up to himself a veritable palace. Money had been lavished on this house like water. The art experts of the various great Continental centres had been busy for months and months finding treasures with which to garnish this lordly dwelling-place.
But Rupert Haverford's benefactor had never lived in the house. His real home had been the shabby worker's cottage, where he had dwelt in those far-off years before his wife and son had died, and when greatness had not even dawned on the horizon of his future.
When first Rupert Haverford had passed through room after room of that magnificent house which Matthew Woolgar had raised up for himself, his feeling had been one of oppression and, in a sense, pain. Everything was so beautiful, everything was so cold. That element of desolation, of heart loneliness, which must have driven the wealth-burdened man to sit and smoke in his old wooden armchair by the broken down fireplace in that humble north-country cottage made itself felt to Rupert almost too sharply.
That had been more than two years ago, and his influence and the crowded, and to him wonderful, circumstances in those two years had made a change in everything—in himself and in all that surrounded him. Still, though the world had fluttered in and out of these rooms very often, this wonderful house remained only a house; it was never a home. That element of solitude, that deadness, as it were, that clings about the atmosphere of museums and other treasure storehouses, continued to oppress Rupert.
It was too big for one person.
And to-day, coming freshly from the cheery, sociable influence of Yelverton, Rupert was sensibly affected by this sense of solitude, this mockery of empty grandeur.
Happily, a vast amount of correspondence awaited him, and he set himself at the task at once.
Letters bombarded him wherever he went—the world seemed peopled with beggars.
It was a matter requiring great tact and discrimination, this giving to those who asked. Naturally there were other letters. Invitations poured in upon Rupert Haverford. There was scarcely a great house which had not thrown open its doors to him.
Already his small dinners had taken to themselves acachet. If he had responded to all the invitations that were poured upon him he would scarcely have had a moment to himself. As it was, he felt that he was drifting more swiftly into the stream of society than he had any desire or intention of doing.
Not once, but a dozen times he had told himself of late that he must change this.
Life for him had a serious meaning. It was full of serious projects.
Sometimes when he was a guest at the table of some illustrious personage, or sometimes when he would be standing in a ballroom watching the dancers and listening to the strains of softest music, he would lose himself, as it were; he would go back in his imagination to those days when he had stood working with the humblest of the factory hands, working and dreaming for the time when he should be free. Working, not for this bubbling gaiety, but for those big, those noble ambitions which his father had set before him as his ideals when he had been a child of only a few years.
He threw aside the letters now, and leaned back in his chair.
It was perhaps the first time he had let himself challenge himself.
With one of those curious tricks that imagination plays us at times he was suddenly wafted from the cosy warmth of his room to that cold, damp mist of the day before. He was walking through the white fog with Camilla Lancing nestling close to him.
If he were to turn his back on London, on society, on that life which had been circling about him of late, he must turn his back on this woman, for she, and she alone, was the magnet that held him so tenaciously.
He caught his breath suddenly, like one who fights for a cold, keen wind, and got up. It had grown to be the dominant influence of his present life, this struggle with himself on the subject of Camilla Lancing. How would it end?
His man came into his room at that moment, bringing a note.
It was written in pencil, and came from Camilla.
"I am waiting outside," she had scribbled. "I wonder if you would see me? I want to see youverymuch. I have a great favour to ask you. Could you spare me ten minutes?"
Rupert Haverford read the note two or three times; he wanted to calm himself and steady his voice.
"Please ask Mrs. Lancing if she will come in, Harper," he said.
She came in almost directly.
Yesterday she had been a brown fairy; to-day she seemed to be a living violet. He never knew in detail what she wore; he was only conscious of the exquisite effect she always made. Her near approach was heralded by the sweetest, faintest whisper of the flowers she personified.
She had thrown back her veil. He noticed that though she was smiling she looked pale and tired.
"How good of you to see me!" she said.
"How good of you to come!" he answered in his usual grave way—the way she called "stodgy."
He pushed forward a chair for her near the fire, but she chose to sit away from it in the shadows.
"Thanks. No, I won't have tea. I have had some already—two cups, and I must not stay more than two minutes. I have some news for you," she announced. "Agnes has come up with me; I simply refused to leave Yelverton without her. And she only wanted an excuse to come." Camilla laughed as she sank into a chair. "You have not an idea what a scene of excitement there was at my house when we arrived! My children simply adore Agnes, and she adores them. And oh, Mr. Haverford, I am charged with all sorts of messages to you! Betty and Baby are enchanted with your lockets and intend wearing them always, but, please, you must give them a picture of yourself to put inside; that is what they say."
There was a little pause.
Camilla let her sables slip from her shoulders on to her arms. She had come there with a distinct purpose, a purpose that was bound about with the iron of most pressing fear and necessity.
True to her nature, she was not going to speak frankly.
"I can't," she said to herself; "I absolutely can't!"
Haverford was standing by the fire.
The scent of her violets, the bewildering entrancement of her presence, made him dreamy.
How changed the room was!
The house was full of treasures—pictures, tapestries, bronzes, inanimate things which had cost thousands—but everything was as nothing compared with this living, breathing, beautiful woman.
How far more beautiful than all the rest she was!
"I shall be photographed on purpose," he roused himself to say; and then he pulled himself together with a great effort. "You want me?" he queried. "I am only too delighted to do any little thing for you, Mrs. Lancing. Pray let me know what I can do!"
Camilla got up and moved about a little aimlessly.
"It ... it's rather a big favour, really quite an enormous one," she said. "I ... I feel nervous...." Indeed, her voice broke a little.
"Don't be afraid," said Haverford.
She caught her breath, and then she steadied her voice.
"Well, I have come to you because a dear friend of mine is in great trouble, Mr. Haverford," she said. "When I got home this afternoon I found a letter waiting for me. You would not know if I were to tell you her name. She lives in the country, and oh! she has had such a hard life. We ... we are old, old friends, and I suppose that is why she has turned to me now and asked me to help her.... I only wish I could..." she broke off with a sharp sigh; "it is so hateful to feel one cannot do things of this sort for people who really need help..." she said half impatiently, half wearily.
He stood quietly by the fireplace looking at her; he was barely conscious of what she was saying. The fragrance that floated about her—her clear voice with its pretty enunciation—the realization that she was so close, made a curious effect upon him: he felt stupid, dazed, burningly hot one instant, strangely cold the next.
Camilla hurried on nervously.
"When I read that letter, Mr. Haverford, I thought immediately of you. I know I have no earthly right to bother you with things that belong to a stranger ... indeed"—she laughed faintly—"I amquiteprepared to hear you say that you are surprised; that you did not think that I should do anything of this sort I—I have come even expecting you to refuse."
He left the fireplace and went nearer to her.
The dream dropped away from him.
"Some friend of yours is in trouble?" he asked. He smiled at her. "You were quite right to come to me. I am only too glad to do anything for any one in trouble, but more especially I am glad to do anything for any one who is dear to you."
Camilla bit her lip, and moved a little away from him, approaching the fire in her turn.
"How good you are!" she said. The words were wrung from her involuntarily, and there were tears in her eyes and tears in her voice. Indeed, he moved her sharply at this moment.
There was such an element of simplicity about him and yet no weakness. He accepted her story without question. The flimsy fabrication she had just given him was merely the truth to him, essentially so because it was she who spoke. No other man she knew would have been deceived by this story of a friend in the country, but Rupert was not like all these other men. He was very far removed from being a fool, but he was a long, long way from grasping the meaning of life as it was lived by most of the men and women who circled about him now.
Why, he was in many things a child compared to herself!...
Haverford had set down to his writing-table.
"In any matter of this kind," he said, "I beg you will use me in every way that may seem good to you, Mrs. Lancing. I gather that your friend needs immediate help; pray do not let her be troubled an hour longer than is possible."
He signed a blank cheque, and slipped it into an envelope.
As he turned and held this out to her, Camilla Lancing gave a little shiver. She looked at him without taking the envelope.
"Oh!" she murmured, "I ... am half afraid to take this! I came ... on ... on the impulse of the moment, not because you have so much ... but because I ... felt ... I feel you are so glad to—to help any one but...."
"Why should there be any 'but'?" he asked, not very steadily; "by this time I hope you know that I hold it one of my greatest pleasures, as it is certainly an honour, to serve you whenever you will permit me to do so. Will you remember this always?..."
Camilla bit her lip again, and then put out her hand.
Haverford bent over it and kissed it. Her hand was kissed at least once or twice a day on the average but Rupert Haverford had never before permitted himself this old-fashioned and gracious sign of homage. It was with him an expression of something far, far deeper than mere courtesy to a very delightful and very pretty woman. She divined this instantly, and her heart began to beat nervously. As he released her hand she pulled her sables about her and prepared to go. She wanted to be away from him. The expression of his face troubled her. She had chafed almost angrily at his silence, his self-repression, yet now that she knew he would speak she dreaded to hear his words.
A thousand jarring feelings thrilled her.
Though there had been many moments recently when he had appealed to her physically, when, indeed, she had frankly admired him, in this moment she felt almost as though she hated him.
It was a sensation which she could not define which she would have found practically impossible to explain to another person, but it was very real, very oppressive.
She crushed the envelope he had given her in her hand, and hid it in her big muff; then she began speaking gaily.
"What are you doing to-night?" she asked. "You are engaged? Oh, I am so sorry! I thought that perhaps you would have taken Agnes and me to dinner somewhere. We have no engagement; but never mind, we can do that another night."
"Will you dine with me to-morrow?" he asked. He, too, was nervous. He had not her gift of slipping into a seeming indifference. Her easy, everyday manner separated them once again, brought back with a rush the old uncertainty, the old unrest.
She laughed.
"Oh! delightful! And let us dine here, do, please. I simply adore this house, and I want Agnes to see it. You know, you have always happened to be away when she has been up in town. How enchanting everything is! No matter where one looks one sees something that is perfect of its kind ... and that is not what one can say of every magnificent house, you know!" said Camilla. She had moved to the door, and he opened it. They passed out into the wide corridor. "The fact is a man's taste is always so much better than a woman's," she chattered on restlessly, "it is really a most absurd idea to suppose that a house must have a woman in it.... For the best of us will persist in filling our rooms with rubbish. Do you know, to this day I have the greatest difficulty in denying myself the joys of Japanese fans on the walls, and art muslin draperies and curtains? Oh!" she said suddenly, "I quite forgot to ask you; how is your mother? I hope she is better."
"I hope she is," said Rupert, "but I have not seen her. She has gone to Paris. My half-brother is ill."
He went with her to the entrance door, and himself put her into the cab that was waiting.
She stretched out her hand just before starting.
"I musttryand say thank you," she said nervously, "but it is not easy to say. I shall send ... this ... on to my friend at once. You will have the consciousness of knowing you have made one person very happy to-night, Mr. Haverford!A demain!May we dine late?... I have such a full day to-morrow.... Good night...."
He held her hand very, very closely, and let it go reluctantly.
The light of the cab-lamp was shining on him fully. He looked very handsome as he stood there against the dark, foggy background, a man to make gladness to the eyes and heart of any woman. But as she rolled away swiftly, Camilla Lancing leaned back and flung up her veil, sighing rapidly and impatiently.
"After all, he does mean to speak ... and soon," she said to herself, "and when he does Imustagree; I must say 'Yes'! How can I possibly refuse? It would be madness. He would do everything so well there would be no more anxiety about the children, and I should have everything I want, no more horrible bills, no more difficulties, and an end to the hideous dependence on Ned's father...." She pulled aside the sable almost roughly from about her throat. The night was bitterly cold, but she felt as if she were stifling.
"But what a life!... I don't believe I shall be able to stand it for even a month.... I shall feel like a caged animal. My very thoughts will not be my own.... I wanted him to love me, but not like this. He loves me too much. He will exact too much. I shall have to give up everything I like. No more bridge, no more freedom, no more fun. Oh, my God!" said Camilla with fierceness, though she was crying, "IknowI shall never be able to do it! I don't want that sort of man," she said, "I don't want to stagnate and grow old, and good.... I want to live ... to live!... And I did live before Ned left me!... How can I marry a man like this after I have been Ned's wife? Oh, Ned, Ned, if only you had not died!... If only I could feel you were somewhere in the world, even though there were twenty women between us ... it ... it would be all so different!..."
She cried unceasingly for a few moments as the cab swayed and jerked over the greasy pavement, and then she pulled herself together.
"Oh! what an ass I am! If Agnes sees red eyes, she will want to know all there is to know. I can imagine her expression if I were to explain I had been crying about Ned!... that blackguard Ned!" She laughed in an impatient stifled way. "We must go somewhere to-night," she said a moment later; "I shall die boxed up at home. Why shouldn't we dine somewhere and then go on to a music-hall!"
As she got out of the cab she dropped the envelope Haverford had given her. She picked it up hurriedly, and her train of thought was changed swiftly; a sudden sense of delicious independence thrilled her. The man whom she feared, and the man who had shown her such chivalrous generosity, and the man she had married and lost, passed from her thoughts. She felt as if she were in sunshine. The cheque was blank! She had not expected that; there were no limits to her intentions.
"I shall give Veronique something on account; that will stop the writ," she said as she passed into the house. "And the children shall have new coats, dear souls; they have been lookingsoshabby lately. Then I shall get out my pearls and some of my rings and things first thing to-morrow...."
In the hall there were some cards, a splendid basket of flowers, and a square, white-coated packet. Camilla loved to find white packages and letters and flowers waiting for her.
She shivered as she remembered the cold perfection of the hall she had just left.
Sir Samuel's card was attached to the basket and the box of bonbons, and he had left a note. Camilla read this and ran upstairs quickly.
"Agnes," she called gaily, putting her head in at the door of the drawing-room, "Sammy wants us to dine with him and go afterwards to the play. We shall just have time to change. What a bother you have to go out to dress! Why not let me send for your things?"
Mrs. Brenton shook her head.
"Oh no. I will trot round to my rooms. As a matter of fact, I was just going. Will you call for me, Camilla? The children are just asleep. They tried to keep awake till you came, but they were too tired...."
Camilla threw off her furs and cloak in her room, and then stole upstairs softly till she reached the nursery. All was still. The two small bodies in the two small cots never stirred as she approached.
Mrs. Lancing bent over each child and lightly laid a hand as in benediction on each little head. Then she paused a moment before Betty's small altar. The child had arranged it carefully before going to bed, there were white flowers in the tiny brass vases, and the red light burning before the statue of the Virgin was the only light in the room.
Camilla shut her eyes. She never remembered any prayers; but Betty had just knelt there, and the child's prayers had hallowed the place; they seemed to carry the mother's soul with them—just a little way.
As the nurse came into the room, Mrs. Lancing turned and, with her finger on her lip, went noiselessly from the room.
She dressed for dinner in a happy mood.
Haverford's cheque was locked up in her dressing case. She had not settled yet what sum she would inscribe on it. Certainly a small sum would be useless. So she mused as she ordered her maid to bring her the flowers Sir Samuel had sent, and she chose a few to wear as a breast-knot.
"What is a thousand to him, or, for the matter of that, two?" she queried. "And even two will not go very far. Well, that is for to-morrow."
She pinned the flowers in her bodice and smiled at her reflection.
It was delightful not to spend a dull evening at home, and really she was just in the mood for a good dinner!
Though he had had short notice, Haverford managed to get together a few interesting men for dinner the following evening.
The greater part of the large house was not open, but enough was seen to impress and delight Mrs. Brenton.
She admired everything.
"I am full of envy," she said to him.
"So am I," said Camilla. "I want everything I see here, your servants especially. Howdoyou bachelor people always manage to get such good servants? That man of yours, Harper, is a perfect treasure. He is a sort of Monte Cristo—nothing seems difficult or impossible to him. I believe if I were to call him now and say to him, 'Harper, will you please give me the Earth?' he would answer in that quiet way of his, 'I have just put it in your carriage, madam.'"
She was all in white to-night, and looked languid and pensive. Rupert Haverford asked her once if she were tired; she nodded her head.
"Just a little; but that is my own fault. I have been skating at Prince's all the afternoon," she explained. "I wondered if you would come there by any chance. You must promise to go with me one day. It is really rather fun, and it gives one some exercise."
She was sitting in the place of honour. Mrs. Brenton and she were the only ladies.
"Don't send us away," said Camilla, when coffee was brought in; "please smoke, all of you. Agnes doesn't mind—do you, Agnes? and I love it."
As the liqueurs were being handed to him, Haverford's man addressed him confidentially.
"Could I speak to you, sir?" he asked.
Mr. Haverford looked upwards; the request was unusual; then he just nodded his head.
"All right, I'll come to you in a minute."
He waited a little while, and then, when the conversation was general, and there was a movement from the dining-room, with a murmured excuse to his two women guests, he left them.
Harper was waiting for him.
"What is the matter, Harper?" he asked impatiently enough.
"I'm sorry to bring you away, sir," said the man, "but there's a young person that wants to see you, sir. I told her that you'd friends to dinner, but she wouldn't be sent away. Says she must see you. She came quite a hour ago. I put her in your study. She's come from Mrs. Baynhurst, I think, sir," the man added. "I asked her to tell me what she wanted, but she wouldn't do it. Insisted that she must speak to you yourself, sir."
Rupert Haverford gave a few orders to the man about having certain rooms lit up for Mrs. Brenton to see, and then went along the broad passage to the room where he usually sat and smoked and worked.
The girl who awaited him was standing by the fire. She turned as the door opened.
He had seen her once before, and recognized her as his mother's secretary.
Naturally his thoughts flew at once to his mother.
"Is anything wrong?" he asked. "Have you news from Paris? Do you want me?"
Caroline Graniger looked at him steadily.
She was a tall slip of a girl, with a thin, colourless face, and very large, impressive eyes.
Her dress was shabby and meagre; she looked, indeed, as if she had scarcely enough on for such a cold, raw night.
"I don't know whether I ought to have come to you, Mr. Haverford," she said, "but I'm in great trouble, and as I've no one to whom I can go, and I don't quite know what to do, I thought of you."
She spoke in a staccato kind of way. The voice was rather disagreeable to Haverford.
"I shall be very glad to help you if I can," he said coldly; and then he waited for her to say more.
"Mrs. Baynhurst has sent me away," the girl said; she spoke still in that same sharp, stiff way. "A letter came from Paris this morning by a midday post, but as I have been out all day I did not get it till late this afternoon. I have brought it with me so that you can read it."
Mr. Haverford looked annoyed.
He objected strongly to interfere in anything which concerned his mother.
"I am afraid it is not possible for me to go into this matter with you," he said. "I have nothing whatever to do with Mrs. Baynhurst's affairs."
The girl answered him sharply, authoritatively.
"Some onemustlisten to me, and as you are her son, I consider it your duty to do so."
At this he wheeled round.
This kind of tone was a new experience to him in these latter days, when every one who approached him had a soft word on their lips, and a subservient suggestion in their manner.
"I think you have made a mistake," he said, thoroughly annoyed now; "if my mother has seen fit to dispense with your services she has, no doubt, the very best reason for doing so. You must apply to her. As I have just said, this is a matter in which I could not possibly interfere at any time. And now——"
"And now," said Caroline Graniger, with a short laugh, "you want to go back to your guests; to your dinner!" She shrugged her shoulders. "Then go. I was a fool to come."
She left the fireplace and walked past him to the door, but before she could get there Rupert Haverford made a move forward.
"Wait," he said. He had suddenly caught a glimpse of her face; it wore an expression that was eloquent enough to him.
She paused, and stood biting her lip and blinking her eyes to keep back her agitation. Young as she was, she suggested an element of strength.
"I have not very much time at my disposal," said Rupert quickly, "but tell me exactly what has happened. If I can help you I will."
She did not answer him immediately. When she did, that sharp, almost pert, tone had gone from her voice.
"I know quite well I have not given Mrs. Baynhurst satisfaction," she said, "though I have tried my very best to fall in with her ways. But she is not very easy. She does not make allowances. If it were only that I should not complain...." She bit her lip again, "if I am not good enough for her as a secretary she is quite right to get some one else; but she ought to have prepared me, not dismiss me in this way. I did not go to her of my own accord. She took me away from the school where I have been living for so many years. I was given to understand that she was my guardian, but I suppose that cannot be true, or she would not write to me as she has written now," she broke off abruptly.
"What are my mother's orders?" asked Haverford very quietly.
"She says I am to go away at once, as she has no further use for me. In her letter she writes that as she intends to remain in Paris for some time, the house in Kensington is to be shut up immediately. In fact"—the girl gave a shrug of her thin shoulders—"this is already done. I find that some one has been good enough to pack my few things in a box, and the only maid who remains informed me that she, too, had heard from Mrs. Baynhurst, and that by her mistress's orders I was to leave at once...."
She looked at Rupert very steadily, and there was something of contempt in the expression of her dark eyes.
"Your mother is proverbially careless, Mr. Haverford," she said drily; "she never troubles herself about those small things that are called duties by other people, so I suppose it has not even dawned on her that by cutting me adrift in this way she puts me in a very awkward position. And yet I don't know why I should suppose her in ignorance of this," Caroline Graniger added the next moment, "for our life together has been so miserably uncomfortable that I dare say she is glad to have such a good opportunity of getting rid of me. You see," she smiled faintly, "I cannot possibly annoy her when she is so far away. She knows, of course, that I should have not merely required, but demanded, an explanation if she had dismissed me herself, but she hopes, no doubt, that I shall accept the inevitable if she remains out of reach for some time; or," with a shrug of her shoulders, "she may possibly hope that some good chance, such as destitution, may take me out of her way altogether. I have not a penny in the world," the girl said in that same harsh, sharp way, "and no one to whom I can turn for advice or help. Please understand that this is my only excuse for coming to you."
Then, before Mr. Haverford had time to speak, she went on eagerly—
"Above all things, I want to know something about myself. It is no new thing for me to feel lonely. I have always been one by myself. Perhaps I should have gone on accepting everything that came and asked no questions if this had not happened, but to-night I feel so ... so lost, so bewildered to know what to do: to understand...." She cleared her throat and looked pleadingly at Rupert Haverford. "As you belong to Mrs. Baynhurst, perhaps you can answer my questions, perhaps you can tell me why she took me away from the school where I have lived ever since I can remember, why I was told she had the right to take me away?"
Haverford had moved to the fireplace, and was standing there looking at her with contracted brows.
He listened with a sense of the greatest discomfort, and even uneasiness.
"Believe me," he said when he spoke, "if I could answer those questions I would do so most gladly, but I am an absolute stranger to all that passes in my mother's life. I know you were her secretary, but she has had a number of secretaries, and in this, as in other things, she acts for herself absolutely. She has never spoken to me about you." Here he paused. "If it is true that she called herself your guardian, this is a matter about which I know nothing. I am sorry," he finished abruptly. "Sit down," he said all at once, "you must be tired."
She had turned very white, and she sat down in the chair. For an instant her eyes closed, and in that spell of silence he saw how young she was, scarcely more than a child.
He was accustomed by this time to come in contact with all sorts of trouble, with the sordid misery of the very poor, the hopeless, pathetic endurance of those who have to keep a brave front to the world whilst they are literally starving. Sorrow was a well-worn study, and there was no mistake about the story written on that young, white face.
She opened her eyes almost directly.
"I—I beg that you will not let me detain you," she said in that sharp, proud way; then more proudly still she added, "I am sorry now that I came."
"On the contrary," said Rupert Haverford, "I am glad that you came. You did quite rightly. Though I have made it a principle never to mix in my mother's affairs, this appears to me to be a matter which requires investigation. As you have just said yourself, she acts with no conventional basis, doubtless she does not in the least grasp the meaning of your real position. You must permit me to charge myself with the care of you till we have communicated with Mrs. Baynhurst."
The girl did not answer him immediately; the gaze of her dark eyes had gone beyond him and was resting on the blaze of the fire.
"I don't want to be a trouble to anybody," she said, "I am really very independent, and very strong. I would not have come to you to-night," she added, "if I had been able to go to the school where I lived for so many years; but this is lost to me now. That is where I have been to-day. The black fog choked me, and as I knew I was not wanted, that there was nothing for me to do, I determined to have a little holiday. I borrowed a few shillings from the parlourmaid, and I went down into the country. There was no fog there. It was cold, but it was fresh and beautiful. I walked ever so far. It was silly, but I lost my way. I did not expect to be very warmly welcomed, for I believe I was kept out of charity for a great number of years, but I thought perhapssomebodymight be glad to see me. However, when I got to the old familiar house it was empty. There was a board saying that it was to let. It looked so desolate!..." She sighed faintly. "It took me a long time to get back to Kensington, and when I did arrive it was to find my box packed in the hall, and nothing before me but the doorstep."
"Come nearer the fire," said Rupert "I am going to send you in some dinner. I really must leave you for a little while, but I will come back again. Won't you make yourself comfortable? You had better take off your coat and hat...."
She got up at once and he helped her to remove the coat. She was painfully thin. When her hat was off he saw that she had masses of dark hair. But he scarcely realized what her appearance was, her story had surprised and troubled him sharply. He pushed a cosy chair near the fire, and gave her some papers to look at, and then hurried away.
His guests were scattered about the house.
On his way to join them Mr. Haverford paused to give Harper orders to take in some food at once to Miss Graniger.
"See that she has everything that she wants," he said.
By his tone the manservant understood that the girl who had come so unexpectedly was to be treated with the utmost courtesy.
This done, Haverford made his way up the stairs.
Mrs. Brenton was waiting for him almost impatiently.
"I shall come here every day whilst I am in town," she declared, "and even then I am sure I shall always find something fresh to admire! I congratulate you, Mr. Haverford; you have a beautiful home!"
"My house is beautiful," he corrected; "I sometimes feel I have no home. All my tastes are for small and simple things. This is so large, so much too splendid for me. It always feel so empty...."
"Oh! but you are going to change all that," Agnes Brenton said with a little laugh.
He took her to look at the portrait of Matthew Woolgar, the work of one of the greatest of modern painters, achef d'œuvrein its way.
"It's a living portrait," Haverford said. "Just fancy, Mrs. Brenton, I knew that man all my life, and I don't think he ever said a kind word to me. There was not the slightest sign of any sort to let me feel that he troubled himself about me one way or other." He was speaking with an effort, for all the time his thoughts were busy with the girl whom he had left in the study below. Naturally it was not a great astonishment to him to hear that his mother should be careless and indifferent to the welfare of others. The woman who could turn her back as she had done on her own little child, could not be blessed with too much sympathy or womanly thought; still, if this girl's story was true—and he saw no reason to doubt it—his mother was now guilty of a definitely cruel act, for which he failed in this moment to find any possible explanation.
"Have you a portrait of your father?" Mrs. Brenton asked, after a little while, as they wandered round.
"Yes, but not here," answered Rupert Haverford. "I have a few old photographs, but those are in my bedroom, and there is a sketch of him in water-colours in my study—that is a room downstairs," he added.
"May I see that room?" Mrs. Brenton asked.
He paused imperceptibly, and then he said in his frank way—
"I will show it to you another time. I have some one in it now."
Then all at once there flashed across him a suggestion that here was a woman who could possibly help him out of the difficulty of the moment.
That Caroline Graniger should remain in his house was, of course, impossible; but it was equally impossible that this young creature could be turned outside to find some lodging for herself at this late hour of the night. He knew Mrs. Brenton to be a practical woman, a woman of resource, and this was essentially a matter for a woman to deal with.
Briefly he explained to her that his mother's secretary had come to him in trouble.
"By some curious mistake," he said, "the house has been shut up, and, as far as I can understand, she is unable to sleep there to-night. The question is, Where can she go? Apparently, from what she tells me, my mother intends staying in Paris for some time. I have no news from her of any sort, so I know nothing of her plans; but the girl has come to me for advice, and I am not sure what to do with her. I have not a single woman in my household. My cook is a man, and Harper has only men under him. I suppose she had better go to an hotel."
"Oh, poor girl!" said Mrs. Brenton quickly; "she must be very much upset" She paused an instant, and then said briskly, "The best thing she can do is to come back with me. Dick is not coming up for a day or two, and there is a bed in his dressing-room. We never go to an hotel," she explained, "we have always gone to these rooms. Practically we keep them on during the winter. They have several advantages, the greatest being in my eyes the fact that I am really almost next door to Camilla. Suppose I go and speak to this young lady. What is her name?"
"Graniger," Rupert Haverford said; "but really, Mrs. Brenton," he protested, "I hardly like to bother you to such an extent. I am almost sorry I mentioned this. No doubt if we leave the matter to Harper he will arrange something. You know, according to Mrs. Lancing, he is the most marvellous man in the world."
"Oh! but this is not a case for Harper," objected Mrs. Brenton immediately. She felt a woman's sympathy for the probably well-bred young woman who had been so roughly treated.
"If you will tell me how I shall find my way to your study, I will go to her at once and fix up things."
She was gone almost directly, pausing only on her way to admire the almost priceless tapestry which lined the walls of the passage which led to the staircase.
Harper was in the study, arranging a dainty little dinner table, and Caroline Graniger was sitting in the chair, looking thoroughly tired out. She turned, and then rose quickly as Mrs. Brenton advanced with outstretched hand.
"How do you do, Miss Graniger?" said Agnes Brenton. "May I come in and chat with you a little while? Mr. Haverford is 'on duty,' you know. I must introduce myself," she added, as they were alone. "I am Mrs. Brenton, a friend of Mr. Haverford's."
This kindly, warm greeting startled Caroline. It was something so new, she hardly knew how to respond to it. She took Mrs. Brenton's hand, but she said nothing, and the other woman was very sorry for her.
"Poor child," she thought, "she looks scared and half starved. Why, she cannot be more than seventeen or eighteen. Fancy sending a child like that out of the house at this time of night. It is monstrous!"
Her easy bearing made the situation almost natural.
"Now you must eat some dinner," she said, "and I will sit here, if you will let me. Mr. Haverford has been telling me that you are alone by yourself just now," Mrs. Brenton chattered on, "and as you don't seem to know where to go, I have suggested that you should come home with me, at any rate for to-night. There is a small bed in a room close to mine. It is clean and comfortable, and that is about all that can be said of it."
"You are very kind," said Caroline Graniger; she spoke shyly, nervously; in the presence of this womanly sympathy she lost her self-reliance a little; she almost felt inclined to cry. Only a long time ago she had taught herself the futility of tears.
"I can't eat anything," she said rather abruptly the next moment; "it is a pity to give so much trouble, for I am not a bit hungry."
"Oh! that is because you are over-tired," said Agnes Brenton. "I should have some soup and a little fish. You won't sleep if you don't eat something."
The girl sat down in the chair that was put for her, and as the soup was put before her she ate it obediently.
Harper had gone, but one of his subordinates waited upon her with great importance. Mrs. Brenton talked on pleasantly and brightly, and her thoughts were busy.
"She looks awfully thin," she said to herself; "if she had a little more flesh on her bones she would be rather pretty. As it is, she is decidedly interesting. Poor little soul! She makes my heart ache, and she is only a type after all, one of thousands who have to go out and fight the world when they have only just left their cradle, as it were. I should imagine she has been having a pretty rough time with Mrs. Baynhurst. A genius is a delightful thing in its way, but not a very comfortable thing to live with."
"Now when you have had some sweets," Mrs. Brenton announced, "I am going to get Harper to put you in a cab, and you shall go to my rooms. I will give you a little note to take with you." She sat down at Haverford's writing-table and scribbled a few words, explaining that Miss Graniger was her guest, and desiring that the dressing-room should be made ready for her.
"Please light a fire," she wrote at the end.
"When you go in, ask for my maid, and give that to her," she said, "then you will find everything all right." And then Mrs. Brenton stood up and looked about her.
"This is Mr. Haverford's favourite room, I am sure," she said, "it looks so cosy, and that must be his father." She advanced and looked up at a portrait on the wall. "Yes, I can see a strong likeness to him, can't you?"
"I think he is very like his mother," Caroline Graniger said, "only," she added, "his is a much better face. He ought to have been the woman...."
"Oh! do you think so? I think him such a splendid man," said Mrs. Brenton warmly, "there is not the slightest trace of effeminacy in him."
"I did not mean that," said the girl. "I mean that his mother has no right to be a woman. Do you know her?" the girl asked abruptly.
Mrs. Brenton shook her head.
"No, I don't know her personally, but of course I know of her. As Octavia Haverford she made a great name for herself."
"She may be a wonderful woman," said Caroline Graniger, "but she is a very cruel one!"
"Well now," said Mrs. Brenton, "I think you had better get on your hat and coat. I should go straight to bed. You look so tired. Ask my maid to give you anything you want. I won't disturb you when I come home, as you may be asleep, and I am sure to be a little late. We will have a chat in the morning."
Harper was waiting in the passage outside, and to his care Mrs. Brenton confided Miss Graniger.
"You are not afraid to go alone, are you?" she asked, and Caroline Graniger only smiled as they shook hands.
"I am not afraid," she said; then she tried to say some words of gratitude, but Agnes Brenton would not listen.
"Please don't thank me.... I am only too glad that I am able to be of some use."
Camilla floated across one of the big rooms when Mrs. Brenton reappeared upstairs.
"Wherehaveyou been?" she asked half petulantly, as she slipped her hand through Mrs. Brenton's arm. "Haven't you finished admiring yet? It is all very beautiful and wonderful, and everything has cost a mint of money, of course ... but oh! isn't it dull?... Agnes, I am ever so tired!... All this sense of money is so oppressive. Suppose we go home."
But at this moment one of the men sat at the piano, and began to play softly. Camilla looked round, and her eyes lit up.
"Sing something, Mr. Amherst," she commanded; and then she changed this, "No, play a waltz." She slipped her hand from Agnes Brenton's arm. "This will make a heavenly ballroom," she said. She paused, looking about her, tapping the floor with her foot. Then she gathered her white skirts in her hand, and fluttered up to Rupert Haverford.
"Listen..." she said, "this is a waltz.... I am dying to dance.... Will you dance with me?"
Rupert looked into the laughing, radiant face, into the large blue eyes that could be so dreamy, so full of sadness at times, but which now had a touch of fire in them ... a look to bewilder and fascinate.
"Alas," he said, "I cannot dance, Mrs. Lancing."
Camilla struck him lightly on the arm with her fan.
"Oh! you tiresome person! You do nothing! You won't play cards ... you can't dance; you! ... Whatcanyou do?" With one of her bird-like movements she turned to a man standing beside him. "I knowyoucan dance," she said, "come along."
They slipped away, and Rupert Haverford stood looking after her with his heart beating uncomfortably quickly.
He was conscious of a rush of sharp, resentful anger, and of course he was mortified. Camilla could sting very surely when she liked.
She was laughing and chatting away to the man whom she had annexed so calmly; he was neither young nor handsome, but he made no sort of incongruous figure. He danced as a matter of course, as a habit.
At all times dancing as a social custom was something that startled Rupert Haverford; now, as he saw Camilla held ever so lightly in the arms of another man, he felt choked, hurt, almost outraged.
His face was so stern, so angry that Camilla was satisfied.
"A pity our host is so puritanical," she said to her partner; "he is looking at us now as if he would like to annihilate us both, and all because we are dancing! I love shocking him! He is such a nice old maid."
"A real good sort, though, all the same," answered the man, "one of the best...."
"I begin to hate good people, they are so wet-blankety," Camilla said impatiently. "Isn't this a splendid floor?" she said the next moment. "I could waltz all night. Tell me when you have had enough."
Mrs. Brenton moved across to where Rupert was standing.
"I love to see Camilla dance," she said, "she is all grace, and she dances with the heart of a child. Indeed, to me she always remains a child.... Sometimes when I see her with her babies I cannot realize that she is their mother, or that she has gone through more dark experiences as Ned Lancing's wife than happily one woman in a hundred is called upon to endure." Mrs. Brenton was silent a moment. Then she turned. "I think I have made things comfortable for Miss Graniger," she said; "she looked so tired, poor child. She is an interesting-looking child. I wonder if she is purely English?"
Rupert Haverford did not answer. He had of course warmly thanked her, but now he scarcely heard her words. He was watching Camilla intently.
Now and then she seemed to circle so closely to him he could have touched her floating draperies; then she was swept away from him swiftly—far, far away. Her small white feet appeared scarcely to touch the ground; to his jealous fancy she leaned too intimately on the arm that embraced her.
Her blue eyes mocked him at one moment, and pleaded the next.
Sometimes she ceased laughing, and then her lips would take the pensive expression that was so pathetic, and which moved him so.
When the music ceased, Camilla came slowly towards them—she was panting a little.
"You must really give a ball, Mr. Haverford," she said; then, restlessly, "Is it time to go, Agnes? I am sure it is. You look as though you were longing to be in your little bi-bi."