Chapter 5

"Really, Helen," observed Miss Bleecker, whose good-humor returned as she looked complacently around their pretty suite of rooms, where lights and flowers and a small fire of olive-wood combined to make the travellers forget their woes. "I must say they have done very well for us. I believe we shall be comfortable here until the yacht arrives. And how delightful it is to think you sent that cable, yesterday, consenting to join your dear father and his wife. When you lay your head on your pillow, every night after this, you will sleep more sweetly with the thought of having—why, child, you're white as a ghost! I suppose you're a little train-sick, after the shaking-up we got. It was too bad your having to sit out on that wretched little camp-stool, but you seemed to get along well enough with Mr. Glynn, and there wasn't an inch left in Countess de Saint Eustache's compartment. Do you know, she told me the whole story, from beginning to end, of Kate Ravenel's unfortunate marriage with the Marquis de Contour. My dear, he is an absolute decadent! And to think how the Ravenels bought and paid for him in hard cash, and how wretchedly they were sold in the transaction! By the way, the Countess knows our friend, M. de Mariol, intimately, and says that for people to get him to their dinners or country houses is the greatest feather in their caps! He isde tout, she assures me, which, of course, makes one enjoy his writings so much more. I hope we shall certainly meet him again. Helen, speaking of young Glynn, if ever a man was born with a gold spoon in his mouth, it's he. To be marrying Mr. Winstanley's only child, and they having gone up like a house afire! The Countess says the Winstanleys have been floated here by Lady Campstown, and already know everybody, and are much liked. It seems they have one of the most desirable villas, own a smart motor, the girl has no end of stunning gowns—you remember they showed us at Worth's the evening frocks they were sending down to her—and will soon be entertaining lavishly. The question is, where did Lady Campstown pick her up? We must call on both of them to-morrow. I am all anxiety to meet dear Lady Campstown again, and I confess I am anxious to get a peep inside Villa Reine des Fées.""I fancy you will find Miss Winstanley changed in many respects, Miss Bleecker," said Helen, wearily. "But it seems to me hardly probable she has lost her high spirit in this little time. And shemayremember your conduct to her on shipboard.""Nonsense, my dear!" answered the chaperon, complacently. "As we live now, it is always easy and generally convenient to forget. The girl, for all her barbarisms, seemed to have a level head. She will be charmed to see us, and so will Lady Campstown, who had set her heart upon marrying you to that nephew of hers, Clandonald. If it were not for young Glynn, I should imagine that the Lady Campstown had gone off on another tack in her heiress cruise. Looks like it, don't you think? If Miss Winstanley hasn't told her of her engagement to Glynn, there'll be a pretty row on presently. We'll call, at any rate. I am glad to hear Mr. Winstanley is no worse, and may be counted upon to recover permanently from this attack. I wonder if he likes being read aloud to, Helen? To show that I bear no ill-will to the girl for her pertness to me, I'd just as soon offer to sit with him, sometimes. I was always said to have great success with invalids. And we'd better be prompt in looking them up, for who knows whether this is really a business trip of Glynn's? I should be much inclined to think he has run over to look after his heiress, and see that she does not slip through his fingers, with all these fine people with titles hanging around her. Glynn looks like a positive, if not self-willed, fellow, Helen. Indeed, I shouldn't in the least wonder if the business pretext is a blind, andM. le fiancéwon't go back to America without his bride. In that case, we shall have a smart wedding at Cannes, and poor Mr. Winstanley will be left all to himself at Villa Reine des Fées. They say there is nothing like that entrance hall and staircase in the town, all marbles of the rarest and most beautiful colors; and the dining-room, with its wall tapestries and screens, is fit for a palace. Poor Mr. Winstanley! There is nothing so sad in life as a person of—well, middle age—left alone by young people for whom he has done everything. There should be some congenial and sympathetic soul to—poor Mr. Winstanley!"CHAPTER VIII"Come a little way down this walk, John," Posey said, the morning after her lover's arrival, while engaged in showing him the place, "and you will see exactly where the woman was sitting yesterday, when she got up and spoke to me in that dreadful way. I never dare tell my father, and it would worry dear Lady Campstown out of her wits to think any suspicious outsider had been seen lurking about the grounds. I rather fancied this person was out of her head, and so, when she vanished abruptly, I just told the gardener that a doubtful-looking stranger had been in the garden, and his men must be on the watch to see that it doesn't occur again.""Quite right," said Glynn. "I dare say you won't hear of her any more. What sort of a lunatic was she? Young or old, smart or shabby, English-speaking or foreign?""Oh! English decidedly, with one of their lovely low voices, from the throat. A lady, I suppose, one would call her, but shabby and deadly pale with glittering brown eyes, and lips with no color. I should think she took morphine, or some of those horrid things. Her clothes had been handsome once, but were put on in a slovenly way.""Probably some poor soul here for her health, who had escaped from her caretakers. Certainly, you can have no enemies, my dear girl?""I didn't think so," answered Posey, flushing, "until I received a number of anonymous letters on shipboard, and several afterward. Then they stopped suddenly.""Do you mind telling me their drift?"Posey's cheeks became crimson, but she looked him bravely in the face."They were all full of lying things against me and the man I told you I met at sea—and have never seen or heard from since.""Thank you, dear," said Glynn, simply. "We have both need of consideration for each other, and I trust you thoroughly. But this gives me an idea. You say the morphine lady told you she had a favor to ask of you——""Yes, but before she could get further, the gardener's man came in sight, and she took flight. She said that I was luckier than she, since I could buy my peace, and she'd advise me not to hold back now when I'd a chance to do so.""That's blackmail, not insanity. The woman has probably spent her last sou at Monte Carlo, and reading about you in the papers, thinks you're a good object to attack for funds.""It's no use, John. I can't tell half a thing, to save my life," exclaimed the girl, desperately. "At the moment she ran down that alley of laurustinus, she called back, 'You can't expect your friend, Lord Clandonald to pay all, and you nothing, to shut mouths.'"Glynn walked beside her in moody silence. The matter was worse than he had feared. To find Posey in the toils of an obnoxious scheme for torment and money-getting, was more than annoying. He justly considered that it was paying too high for her successes, her magnificent establishment in life. For the moment it blotted out the blue of sky and blurred the exquisite beauty of their surroundings.He had, like everybody else, heard of Clandonald and his matrimonial infelicities, his divorce, and his visit to the States. A strong resentment took possession of the young American at the idea that this Briton, battered by foul tongues and associations, should be the one who, even for a—moment, had won Posey's allegiance away from himself."You are angry. I knew you would be," she burst out finally. "I at first thought of telling Lady Campstown, and asking her advice. But Lord Clandonald is her nephew, almost her son, and I was ashamed. She has not the faintest idea there was ever anything between us.""Between you? What can you mean?" wrathfully demanded Glynn, whose merit was never that of tolerance."I don't know myself. It was all so sudden, and passed so quickly. He used to come and talk and walk with me upon the ship. I began by being sorry for him, because his life had been so spoiled. He never said a word of flattery or silly talk like the others. He seemed to me a man.""Well, go on, please," said Glynn, curtly."One evening when that old wretch Mr. Vereker tried to kiss me out on deck——""What!" thundered Glynn, his brows meeting, his eyes darting ire upon her."He didn't do it, John; just missed the tip of my ear, and I hit him in the face. I ran away to Miss Carstairs and Lord Clandonald, and told them, or rather didn't tell them—they understood. Clandonald looked just as you do now, and put himself in front of me, and I was so glad to be protected, when all the ship was saying mean, spiteful things of me, that for a little while I thought I must be in love with Lord Clandonald——""This alone is worth crossing the ocean to hear," commented Glynn with bitter sarcasm."Well, you know I told you of it at the time. It was a perfectly hopeless thing, anyhow. Even if you hadn't been there, I couldn't marry a divorced man whose wife is living. It's just one of those fashionable habits that doesn't happen to appeal to me.""Posey, you are unconquerable," he said, a gleam of amusement coming into his eyes."You might as well hear all the rest. After I had those nasty letters, I kept away from him and got daddy to give up London, because I'd promised we would go down to lunch at Beaumanoir, his home. It was my first and last chance at an English ancestral mansion, I reckon. The last night aboard, when we were at anchor near Liverpool, in a fog, daddy and I met him, by accident, on deck. Dear old dad, who can't be made to suspect anybody, would run off after his letter of credit, that he'd packed in a steamer coat and almost sent ashore. I was left with Lord Clandonald. I tell you, John, you couldn't have treated me better than he did then. There was one little minute when I was scared, though. He was furious when I told him of the anonymous letters. He said there was only one who could have done it, but how, in God's name, did she get upon that ship? And then he asked me to let him stand between me and all such people always——""You let him ask you that?""John, you know when a man and a girl are together things get said that they never dreamed of saying. I knew like a shot I ought to have told Clandonald about you before. But how could I introduce the subject in cold blood——""I am afraid it was cold blood," interpolated John ruefully."Well, you couldn't expect me to thrill and tremble, and all those things they do in novels, when I'd said yes in a telephone booth, and never seen you after. I tried to, John. Honestly, I did, but it wasn't the least use."Glynn would have been more than mortal not to laugh at her look of humble apology."Ah! well, Posey dear, I'll not be hard on you. But tell me, please, what further passed between you and Lord Clandonald?""Absolutely nothing. All I could do was to turn the conversation away from him and me. I couldn't find the least little way to bring you into it, or to say, 'Unhand me, sir, my heart and faith are another's,' since his hands were in his pockets and mine in my muff, and we were both saturated with Channel fog. I just thanked him for all his kindness to me on the voyage, and told him what's true, that I'd never forget it; though, if he ever met me again I'd probably be a very different sort of Posey Winstanley. And then he calmed down, and it was all over forever, and I ran away to see if daddy had found his letter of credit—and—and—I've never seen or heard from Clandonald since.""Posey, you are a child still, a charming child, and I love you for it, dear.""It's awfully good of you, John, and the greatest possible relief. If you knew what a double-faced sort of thing I've felt myself to be all these months, remembering that I'd let another man almost propose to me, when I had given you my word of honor—there's one thing I'd like to ask before we've done with the subject, though. What does it mean when a person is by you and you'd give, oh!anythingif they wouldn't go away?"John started genuinely. A vision flashed to him of those blessed maddening hours in the train the day before, when Helen and he had sat together, and he jealously begrudged every revolution of the iron wheels that, without mercy, carried them toward their parting."I don't know, Posey," he murmured guiltily. "Why in the world do you ask me that?""Because I thought you would tell me, honestly," said she, with a speculative expression. "It has bothered me often, wondering. But it doesn't matter. Now you are here, everything seems straight and clear before me. Shall I ever forget daddy's rapturous old face when he sat by your supper-tray at the library table, last night, forcing you to eat indigestible food, and looking from one to the other of us?""But he has aged, dear," said Glynn, with a twinge of pain. "One sees the spirit in his face above the flesh. We must never let him know care or trouble again, little girl. We must strengthen his arms, one on either side of him, and make him walk easily through life.""How beautifully you talk, John!" cried she. "Ah! No Englishman could ever have felt that way toward my daddy. No other man could give him what you do. Yes, you are right. It's our life-work to put him between us, and look out for him every day.""And to do so," went on Glynn resolutely, "we should marry soon."Posey started visibly."Must we, John? Oh! I hadn't thought of that.""Is the idea a pain to you?""Perhaps. I don't know. I've always put it out of my mind when it weighed on me. Daddy gave me a year, John," she added pleadingly. "And the year began in October. This is only February. We're all so happy as we are."Happy! Again that clutch of iron upon Glynn's heartstrings!"Happiness will come more fully and freely, my sweetheart," he said, striving for words, "when we have put his heart's desire beyond all chance. I think you will both have to come back with me to America this Spring, if I'm to serve his interests as I should. Let me take my wife with me, Posey.""What,now?" she cried, with wide-open, panic-stricken eyes. "Oh! goodness gracious, I hope not now!""I am due again in New York almost immediately, but will be free to return the beginning of next month, or a little later. By that time the heat will be sending you away from the Riviera, and would it not be best for us to be married very quietly here, and let Mr. Winstanley's son and daughter take care of him upon the voyage?""A wedding here? What a funny idea!" cried Posey. "Not a girl I know to ask as bridesmaid—at least, the only one I'd want would be Helen Carstairs, who has just arrived in Cannes, and I don't know about her. Perhaps she mightn't wish; but she wastoo dearto me, John, on shipboard, as I wrote you. By the way, you didn't seem to take the least interest in my friendship with Helen, and yet it has done me a world of good. Not a girly-girly affair in the least, I assure you. We'd both have scorned that. She has written to me several times, and I was simply wild with pleasure to hear she was coming down to Cannes. I think if you'd realized what Helen is, John, at least what she is to me, you'd not have been so indifferent. I must tell you the truth, I was really quite hurt with you. But you'll meet here, and then you'll see for yourself, and end by adoring her as I do—oh, John," she exclaimed, interrupting her light chatter with an exclamation of terror, "there's that woman now!""What woman, Posey?" he asked, bewildered at her rapid change of subject."Hush! The one I told you of, who frightened me yesterday—the mad woman. Don't turn suddenly, but, after a second, look between those two lemon trees. She just glided past as we were speaking, down the walk from Villa Julia, and is hiding behind the shrubbery. She's waiting for me, John. This is getting terrible!""She shall haveme," said Glynn grimly, his senses alert in a moment to the danger Posey ran."Don't make a scene with her—don't alarm daddy," she went on."Trust me," he answered briefly. "Do you go into the house, and stay there till I come. Say nothing to any one, and I'll rid you of your nightmare."As Posey mutely obeyed him, albeit with a blanched face, Clandonald's saying came into Glynn's mind, "There's but one woman who would do this thing." Verily, Glynn would not have to go far to find her.She arose from her bench as he approached—evidently badly scared. A man of his years and vigor and mastery of the situation had not entered into her calculations of this experience."You look surprised at seeing me here," she said rapidly, with perfectly well-bred ease. "I suppose it is trespass, but the villa had been so long unoccupied, we had got into the way of running into the garden from my aunt, Lady Campstown's, whose house is across the lane yonder."He was for a moment thrown off his guard and bowed, acquiescing, as any gentleman would have done."However, I am just going," she added. "The little green door is very familiar to me, I assure you.""Might I delay you one moment," he said courteously, "to ask what can be your motive in annoying and threatening the young lady of this house? I ask in her father's name, and we wish you to know that this must be absolutely the last time that you come into these grounds.""What difference does it make?" she asked fretfully, throwing out her hands with a weary gesture and losing her self-control. "I can always reach her, somehow. She has not done with me yet, I can tell her. Unless," she added, with a low, meaning laugh, "her friends are ready to make it well worth my while to disappear."`"You will not find her friends unwilling to aid in that desirable result. But I have first to know your motive in annoying her so cruelly.""Call it rivalry, call it revenge," she said, with a shrug. "Either one of these causes is strong enough. She is, if you must know, the only woman I ever feared could take my place in my late husband's life—permanently, I mean," she added, with an ugly smile."I take it that I am speaking to Lord Clandonald's divorced wife?""Really, my good sir, you give yourself, or rather Miss Winstanley, 'away,' as they say in the vernacular of your richly-gifted country. You are evidently well-informed of the progress of that immaculate young lady's affair with Clandonald—continued on shipboard doubtless from America, and who knows when and where since?""The young lady, whose name I forbid you to mention here," cried Glynn, with a darkened countenance, "met the gentleman in question on shipboard for the first time, as she did twenty others, and has never seen or communicated with him since.""She has convinced you of that fact—then rumor is right for once, and there is a confiding fiancé from America? After all, yours is a younger civilization than ours, and you still believe in your girls?"Glynn interrupted her. He had got all he wanted from Ruby Darien.She had been a striking beauty, had, even now, a certain reckless grace of manner. Her face was as Posey had described it. He read there untruth, degradation of moral fibre, and the ravage of disease and drugs. There was no use in dealing with her in heroics. Money would buy her, and money she should have."If Miss Winstanley's friends agree to make it worth your while—substantially worth your while" (her eyes glittered) "to keep at a distance from her, never again to approach her in deed or speech, at the risk of forfeiting a monthly allowance of say—" (here he mentioned a sum which caused Ruby Darien's haggard face to flush high with covetous delight)—"it will certainly not be without an understanding on their part of how you contrived to present yourself through Lady Campstown's premises without identification by her servants.""That was a small matter," she said eagerly. "Although my respected aunt-in-law has long since instructed her staff not to admit me to her presence, there remains in her employ a child of nature, an untutored Provençal housemaid, who in former days chose to idealize me, and even now would do anything reasonably atrocious at my bidding. She it was who contrived to let me in from the lane, to which a cab from the station brought me up the hill. I should tell you that I am stopping temporarily at Nice, in an hotel where they accept me without questions, but which has proved, alas, too fatally convenient to Monte Carlo!""Then, if you will allow me, I will myself see you into another cab for your return. There is a station for carriages at no great distance down the road from here. To-morrow I will present myself at your hotel in Nice, with the necessary papers insuring to you the allowance I named, and an agreement, which I shall in return ask you to sign, pledging yourself to keep your side of the bargain.""American promptitude in business is proverbial," she said, essaying an easy laugh, and darting a side glance, not unmixed with admiration, upon her interlocutor. "How nice it must be to be disgustingly rich as all you Yankees are; to be able to confound the politics and frustrate the knavish tricks of your enemies by the prompt administration of hard cash! I always thought that if I'd had money enough to be good on, I might have graduated as a saint."When Glynn walked up the steps at Reine des Fées, feeling a mixture of disgust and pride in his victory achieved, Posey ran out to meet him, slipping her arm in his."You've triumphed, I see. Oh! John, dear, what daddy needs is a real son like you, and I, just such a brother. Don't tell me anything about that horrid creature now, let's be happy for a while. Let us speak of something as far from her as one pole of earth is from the other—of dear Helen Carstairs, whose card I found on the hall table when I went in after leaving you. If it hadn't been that I was with you, I'd have begrudged missing her for anybody's sake. Of course the stupid servants said I was not at home. Now, why couldn't they have shown her into the garden, and then she could have been introduced to you, and how nice that would have been! The two people of all others I most admire, and shall expect and insist upon being friends with each other! Say, John, to please me that you are longing to meet Helen!""Posey," began Glynn, and his voice to his own ears sounded unnaturally thin, "I have been waiting a chance to tell you that I have known Miss Carstairs; that I ran upon her by chance at the Gare de Lyons yesterday, just as the train for the South had started. That we were, in fact, companions in the same compartment, and talked of you together, more than once, during our day's run.""You! Helen! Wonders will never cease!" cried the girl exultingly. "But," a sobering thought seizing hold of her, "how was it possible you never mentioned her to me in a single one of your letters?""Try to think why, Posey," the young man said gravely, as they paused together in the hall filled with dead marbles and living blossoms of the Spring."It was Helen, then, Helen?" Her eyes flamed the rest of the sentence."Yes.""Ah! I might have guessed it. And I—was vain enough and rash enough to think I could fill her place to you. Poor, dear John, what you have lost, and what have you got instead?""Far more than I merit in any case, dear. It is her secret, and, but that I dared not deceive you, should never have passed my lips. It is over, Posey, buried forty fathoms deep. You see, now, that each of us has need of charity and forbearance with the other, and you must set me an example of kind forgivingness for all I have done or left undone toward you.""My dear boy," said Mr. Winstanley, who, at this moment, came shuffling out from the library to join them, "you are late for luncheon, but how long wouldn't I wait to see you and Posey standing there together? It's better than any sun-bath to have you around, I tell you! I feel years younger since you came.""So do I, father," said Posey. "After this I am going to wear a collar with a little bell and a leash, and let John lead me upon the Croisette. It is good to have some one to be will and conscience, both, for me!""I'm afraid I've spoiled her for you, just a little, John," added her father wistfully."You and others, perhaps. But such as she is, she's a lot too good for me, sir—or any man. All the same, I think you'll have to be giving me Posey before the time you fixed for our probation. We are young and will grow together, and she'll help me to do big work. And it seems to me, Mr. Winstanley, that she's got a dose of this Old World at the start that'll make her willing to settle down in our own country.""We'll see," nodded the old gentleman. And, indeed, the idea of an earlier marriage chimed in with his own notions. Since the wing of the Angel of Death had brushed so near his face in passing, Herbert Winstanley often thought that to put the future of his impetuous child into safe hands would give him a happier feeling when he lay down to sleep o' nights.Thus Miss Bleecker was wiser than she knew, in predicting a matrimonial conclusion to the Winstanley winter in Cannes. When she and Helen accepted Posey's invitation to dine with them "to meet a few friends" on the night but one following their arrival—an invitation, needless to say, accepted by Miss Carstairs with perturbation of spirit and the feeling that she was walking up to the cannon's mouth—things seemed to point that way. They found Mr. Winstanley, simple and gentle as ever, standing to receive his guests in the drawing-room with its famous tapestries, surrounded by gems of art that for the first time in years had emerged from their Holland cerements. The stately room had flowers massed in its corners, and a great fire of logs was leaping under a carved stone mantelpiece also banked high with plants and blossoms. At her father's right hand stood Posey, blushing and dimpling with artless pleasure in receiving her friend under circumstances so radically different from those in which they had met and parted a few months before; but in dress and bearing so perfectly adapted was she to her luxurious entourage, that Miss Bleecker blinked when looking upon her, and refused to believe her eyes. And on Mr. Winstanley's other side, quiet, grave, a little pale, but collected and fully determined to maintain his position with dignified acceptance, stood Glynn—as handsome and bonny a lad as ever rejoiced a father's heart, Mr. Winstanley was saying inside his own warm receptacle of human emotions.As Helen's eyes met John's and dropped away; as he clasped her gloved fingers, marvelling at her grace and distinction in the trailing dinner gown of pale rose satin without frill or furbelow, each felt that this occasion had for them the solemn significance of a final renunciation of their love. It was as if she were standing in the church seeing Glynn take Posey to be his wife. A keen pang of shame for the weakness that had overcome her on their journey shot through her being. Ah, well! Fate had been too strong for her then. That was the last, the very last—like a farewell breathed into already deadened ears.Posey's attitude toward Helen also touched Miss Carstairs acutely. That there was in it a new consciousness she felt immediately. She recognized that Glynn must have eased his honest heart of its burden by telling his betrothed of his former love for her, and felt that this was as it should be, if Posey were to remain her friend. It was not tender apology, or loving sympathy, that Posey showed, nor yet bashful consciousness that she had in some way taken the ground from under Helen's feet, but an exquisite mixture of all these. Her high spirits had for the moment deserted her. She kept close to her father's side, answered Miss Bleecker's fulsome greetings with no attempt at tart or witty answers, and, as their other guests came in, proceeded to do the honors as if "born to the purple" (so Miss Bleecker whispered to John Glynn).The chaperon's day of wonder was upon her, while the room rapidly filled with a company of people distinguished in the world's eye of their winter colony, all of whom bore themselves toward the tenant of Reine des Fées and his youthfulchâtelainewith the friendly consideration of accustomed intimates. To each of the new-comers, Glynn was presented by his host; without special announcement, it is true, yet in fashion so intentional that there was no mistaking the attitude in which he stood toward father and daughter. As they presently went in to dinner, in a salle with carved panels of French walnut and great lustres of Venetian glass illuminating its four corners, to gather around a table that left nothing for fastidious taste to criticise, Miss Bleecker wanted to pinch herself upon taking off her gloves, to feel assured that she was not in a dream. The old gentleman, yonder, well turned out by a good valet, in appropriate evening clothes, seated between a great lady of France, whose neck was wrapped in historic pearls, and an Englishwoman, of rank and exclusive habit, could he be the little old man of shipboard, whom Helen's chaperon had despised and derided as the veriest pretender to good society? It was incredible! And the strangest part of the situation in old Sally's eyes was that, save in externals, Herbert Winstanley had not altered in any particular from the shrewd quiet observer of the game of life, the mild commentator upon the ways of men and women, the almost childlike recipient of courtesy and kind words, whom she remembered with amused contempt.Such as he was, these people had taken him up with a good-will there was no denying. Miss Bleecker had the pleasure of finding herself at table told off to an old beau of nativity American, overlaid with years of veneer Continental, who seemed to find satisfaction in extolling to her the "solid" success of the Winstanleys; the girl's extraordinary ease in presiding over this banquet of state, and the good luck of that fellow Glynn, whose significant appearance this evening was evidently intended to put all of Miss Winstanley's other admirers out of the running.Old Sally, who had long ago learned how to trim her sails, listened with bitterness, and while comforting her inner woman with the long succession of "plats" and wines presented at her elbow, made up her mind that she would stray over to Reine des Fées, without Helen, next morning (under her most becoming parasol), with the hope of finding Mr. Winstanley engaged in taking his sun-bath on the terrace. "And, if I only get my chance," she meditated, "trust me for following it up." The announcement, by cable from America that day, of the engagement of a contemporary of her own, long abandoned in appearance to celibate joys, to marry "the last man anyone would have expected to see pick her up"—a recent widower of large means and uncertain temper—accelerated the spinster's thoughts and lent a false brilliancy to the evening that had begun for her so dolefully.To Helen Carstairs, naturally, the ordeal of the dinner was interminable. Separated from Glynn by a wide extent of flower-decorated table, amid which candles gleamed softly, and silver lent its sheen to illuminate beds of maiden-hair and cyclamen, she dared not look in his direction. All of her efforts were given to self-control. The man who took her in, a handsome blond young Russian, with all the languages of earth seemingly at his disposal, decided that the American heiress not appropriated at this feast was as cold as the snows of his own Caucasus. The Roumanian prince on her other side gave her up also as a person impossible to interest. She went through it like an automaton, her one desire to see Posey signal to the lady with the pearls that it was time to arise from table.Lady Campstown, watching this little drama of every day, felt worried and puzzled. She had never given up the idea that Clandonald had cared for Miss Carstairs, and was only debarred from telling her so from his pride of poverty and the clog attached to his career. Although her ladyship's secret heart yearned over Posey, and she would have given worlds to see Clan's allegiance transferred to her, the American rival well disposed of in some other way (nature not settled in her mind) and Posey becoming a member of their family, her very own to cherish through life, the joyous regenerator of her nephew's hopes and fortunes—she now felt this to be a fairy tale beyond chance of reality. Much as she had talked to Posey about Clan that winter (and one must have experience of the wealth of conversation a lonely old woman lavishes upon the young, strong, vigorous manhood that belongs to her and has gone out to the world, forsaking her, to know just how much that was), the girl had never in return given her a hint of interest in him beyond the common. She had spoken of their meeting on shipboard, had acceded to Lady Campstown's appeals for interest in the chief events of his life, but had ventured nothing on her own account.Slowly, but surely, therefore, Lady Campstown had seen the evanishment of this hope, conceived in secret and brought forth in fear, without a suggestion of it having been consigned to Miss Winstanley. The arrival of Mr. Glynn, duly presented to her ladyship in form, had shown the dowager the futility of her hopes. The engagement with Glynn was real, tangible, not a boy-and-girl fancy that might drift into smoke—it was undeniably "there to stay."Lady Campstown, perhaps unwillingly, could not withhold from Glynn the tribute of admiration his manly exterior, his fearless earnestness of character, were wont to extort from strangers. She had failed, though, to discern in Posey any of the usual signs and tokens by which a girl takes the world into her confidence concerning her joy at a lover's coming. She marvelled at the child's matter-of-fact demeanor, her off-hand bonhommie, her warm spirit of comradeship to Glynn. It must be, thought the old lady, a little put out by these conditions, which were not according to her recollections or her views, "that is the way they do it in America!"Thus, perforce falling back upon the Helen Carstairs idea again, that young lady's arrival in Cannes had seemed little short of Providential. Clandonald must, according to his promises and forecasts of travel, be shortly in the field. There was no question that he had once admitted to his aunt it was some American lady who had caused the trouble from Ruby shortly after his return to Beaumanoir. He had been vague, elusive, as men always are in telling what their womenkind want to know about other women; but there had been a girl, an American girl; Ruby had attacked him through this girl, he had paid dearly to silence the base tormentor, and then, in an access of wounded pride and disgust, had again shaken the dust of his native land from his feet, and journeyed into the unknown. Months had passed, long enough for Clandonald's angry feelings to subside. He must soon come back to Villa Julia, where he had known so many happy hours. His aunt would make him thoroughly comfortable, happy, as she well knew how to do. She would go slowly, leaving Helen and himself to drift together again in the natural order of such things. It must, it must come out all right!While indulging in this optimistic thought for the twentieth time in two days, Lady Campstown had happened to catch a glimpse of Helen's face between two candelabra. It was the first time she had seen it in repose since the young lady's visit to Beaumanoir, and she was struck with an increase of thought and pain in the rare, fine countenance. At once she decided that Helen was fretting after Clan, and her warm heart bounded with sympathy. She went up to Miss Carstairs when the women were together after dinner and spoke to her cordially, flatteringly. Posey, from where she sat with her two greatest ladies—tarrying there, however, just long enough to say a few modest words, then leaving them to what they desired, conversation with each other—saw the talk between her two friends, and longed to join in it. Hastening upon her rounds as a hostess, she in due time came up with them."What a nice time you two dear souls are having!" she exclaimed. "And how I've wanted to be with you! It is so much nicer always to be with the few one loves than with the many one merely has to know.""You have been gleaning golden opinions, all the same," said Helen. "Lady Campstown has been telling me what Princess Z—— says of you as an entertainer—that you were born, not made.""I reckon—no, IfancyI came by it honestly," laughed Posey. "I always enjoy the things we give so much more than those we go to.""I am asking Miss Carstairs to come to me to-morrow for luncheon," said Lady Campstown, putting with loving fingers a stray bit of Posey's lace in place. "And I do hope, dear, you haven't promised anybody else.""I'll come, surely," exclaimed the girl. "Though I suppose I ought not to forsake daddy and John these few days we have together. But to tell you the mortifying truth, they are continually falling knee-deep into talks of which I can't understand a thing. And sometimes I slip out with my dogs, and they don't even know that I have gone.""'Slip out' to-morrow, then, at 1.30, and bring the dogs," said Lady Campstown. "But, my dear, what does this mean that I hear, Mr. Glynn is for leaving us on Thursday?""He's going to catch the 'Kronprinz' at Cherbourg, Saturday, and must have a few hours in Paris. It's awfully stupid, I tell him, but when an American man gets hold of a scheme that spells business you can no more induce him to loose hold of it than my darling Maida will consent to give up a particular pet bone.""But he's coming back very soon, they tell me. How you Americans can go racing back and forth across the Atlantic as you do——""Yes, he's coming back very soon," said Posey, faltering a little, and pulling to pieces a superb white rose with purple-red outside petals that hung from a vase on the console next to her. "I may as well tell you both, what I meant to do to-morrow, that daddy and he decided to-day the wedding's to come off at the end of March. John will accordingly rush through a lot of things in New York, tear back again, probably via Genoa, if they put on one of the fast ships, and where his trousseau's to come in, I can't imagine. My own will take every minute from now till then, and all of the missionary aid you two dears choose to lend me, to make it an accomplished fact.""You can count upon me in all things," Helen said very quietly."Oh, my dear lamb, and you ask me to be glad when it means that I've got to lose you," put in Lady Campstown, thinking for the moment honestly about herself, and thereby covering what might have been a trying pause to both girls. A servant, presenting a tray of coffee-cups at Lady Campstown's side, helped further to bridge the moment, and others of Posey's guests surrounding her with chat and laughter, the question of the marriage floated away into space. Helen, however, took it back to her hotel with her, wrestled with it during sleepless hours, and next day, to stave off intolerable thought, set out for a long walk alone.Whither she went she neither cared nor knew. She had a vague remembrance of having passed through the flower-market, and being set upon to buy, by a soft-voiced, smiling woman who stood behind great blurs of red and yellow and white and purple, shrined in verdure, from which luscious scent arose. To get rid of her, she had paid a persistent child a franc for a big bunch of violets, and the girl, with a saucy, merry face, thrust into her hand also a spray of orange blossom. Helen threw this last away impatiently. Impossible to be rid of the suggestions of that wedding, ten-fold more abhorrent to her now that she had seen for herself and knew beyond a peradventure that it was inspired by no such love as she and John had felt for each other only a day or two before; such love as she must feel for him, God help her, till she died.She walked on through the town, far into the outskirts, till seeing a sign of "New Milk" upon a chalet near the road made her suddenly remember she had set out without even her morning coffee. Going inside the building, she sat for a few moments at a table while a woman served her with rolls and a glass of milk, and then, starting forth again, was vaguely tempted to ascend a hillside which rose abruptly above the spot, crowned with a noble growth of trees.Helen had no sooner gained the smooth plateau of the summit than she remembered where she was. Long ago, as a child, in charge of her English governess, journeying from the Italian seashore to join her father at Marseilles, they had stopped over for a midsummer fête at Mont St. Cassien, where, in blazing heat, the Cannois and their rustic neighbors from miles around had fulfilled an old custom of Provence in holding service at a little chapel on this hill, the remainder of the day and evening being spent in feasting at tables spread on the slopes and in the green valley below. She could shut her eyes and see again the lights gleaming around the tables, as the hot darkness fell, the gay costumes, and the chain of dancers threading its way among the trees.The grass was growing wild and coarse where she followed a shaded path to the little hut in which a holy hermit had once lived and died. A peasant woman in the kitchen of the hermitage was cooking something in a casserole over a tiny fire, but she left it civilly to conduct the stranger through to the chapel adjoining. A girl grown to woman's height, but, alas, a child in intellect, began pulling and tugging at her mother's gown, asking witless questions and being repeatedly, but tenderly, thrust aside by the woman, and told to stay in her own place.Helen hardly knew why she had acceded to the woman's suggestion that she should visit the uninteresting sanctuary, with its cheap emblems and smell of stale incense, and decorations of paper flowers.But she understood, when through the now opened front door a gentleman stepped from broad sunshine into the chill interior, apparently as aimless as herself, and came up to her side."Helen! You are alone?""You here!" she answered under her breath. "When I have come all this distance to be away from you!""It is the same with me, Helen," Glynn said in a sombre voice. "I have wandered and wandered up here for no reason in particular, trying to believe you are not in Cannes, trying to master my ungovernable desire to be with you only once again.""It is all of a piece with our being thrust together that day upon the train," she cried impetuously. "What have we done that such things should be forced upon us?""Come out at least into the sunshine," he said, taking her cold hand. "You will be chilled in this dreary place."Giving a douceur to the poor guardian of the premises, they went together to a point of the hillside whereon the trunk of a fallen tree offered a semblance of a seat.Helen, actually nerveless, dropped upon it, Glynn standing beside her, neither daring to speak first."You know that I am leaving to-morrow?" he asked finally."Posey told me so last night," she answered."She told you what was to follow my return at the end of March?""Yes.""The question is, Am I a man of honor or a scoundrel?" he went on with a frowning brow. "I have thought of it so long, so intensely, that my judgment has ceased to act. Helen, you have the clearest mind, the most well-balanced conscience I ever knew——""You can say that, when I was so false to myself and you as to let you go that time in New York, before all these complications came upon us?" she interrupted him bitterly. "But there, what is the use? We have parted, there is no hope, let us never speak of ourselves together again. If it is your duty to Posey, to her father, that torments you; I bid you keep your pledge. It is impossible that you should now make any motion to withdraw from it. The one terrible thing to me was that we should all go on and Poesy have no idea what you and I once were to each other——""Nobody could know that," the man said sturdily. Helen shivered."But you have relieved me of that fear," she hurried on. "I saw at once, last night, that you had told her——""Only that you were the woman I had loved before plighting myself to her. She knows nothing of the circumstances of our acquaintance. That is my secret, mine only, to be treasured till I die.""She knows enough, however, to make clear the way between us," Helen made further haste to say. "If you are kind now, you will end this conversation that ought never to have begun. I shall be leaving Cannes shortly. My father is coming for me in his yacht. Before I see you again you will have in your keeping the happiness, the trust, of one—no, two, of the kindest, most confiding creatures God ever made. Never think that it is I who could try and weaken you at the outset of such a task. If necessary, rather let Posey think that I have grown cold to her than run the risk of such a re-awakening of old feeling as we two have innocently suffered from to-day."Her voice dropped to a whisper. Violet shadows had formed under her eyes, the lines around her mouth had deepened painfully. But when she looked at him full in the eyes, he knew there would be no more weakening in his direction. Presently she arose, and they walked together to the foot of the hill, where Helen hailed a passing carriage and asked him to put her in it. A moment more, and Glynn was indeed alone.As he walked rapidly homeward, he forced his mind away from the overpowering interest of this last chance interview to dwell upon minor things, among which he was inclined to classify even the settling of the affair with Posey's tormentor, Mrs. Darien. He had, according to his engagement with that lady, gone over to Nice by an early train the day following their interview in the garden. He had found her in the melancholy splendors of a saloon bedroom in a cheap hotel, with a screen half encircling an untidy couch, a dressing-table littered with strange scents and unguents, shabby finery hanging upon hooks, and achaise longueof rusty plush drawn up before a writing-table containing, in addition to its blotter and inkstand, a case of liqueurs and glasses.Mrs. Darien, for which he yielded her credit, made no attempt to apologize for her poor surroundings. She received her visitor with astonishing ease and vivacity; talked rapidly and cleverly of contemporaneous topics, and when he came, without overmuch delay, to the point of the business that brought him, treated Mr. Glynn in a semi-coquettish, rallying spirit, as though he were proposing to her a very good joke. She closed upon his offer like a vice, however, and affixed her name to the paper forfeiting the liberal allowance he had decided to make her should she be again heard of as molesting Miss Winstanley with an eager, trembling hand. Glynn had decided, as he walked away from her into purer air, that drink or morphia, or both, were driving the ex-Lady Clandonald to an end at a fearful rate of speed. He had paid high for this visit to Nice, but it counted as nothing provided she left Mr. Winstanley's little ewe lamb in peace.

"Really, Helen," observed Miss Bleecker, whose good-humor returned as she looked complacently around their pretty suite of rooms, where lights and flowers and a small fire of olive-wood combined to make the travellers forget their woes. "I must say they have done very well for us. I believe we shall be comfortable here until the yacht arrives. And how delightful it is to think you sent that cable, yesterday, consenting to join your dear father and his wife. When you lay your head on your pillow, every night after this, you will sleep more sweetly with the thought of having—why, child, you're white as a ghost! I suppose you're a little train-sick, after the shaking-up we got. It was too bad your having to sit out on that wretched little camp-stool, but you seemed to get along well enough with Mr. Glynn, and there wasn't an inch left in Countess de Saint Eustache's compartment. Do you know, she told me the whole story, from beginning to end, of Kate Ravenel's unfortunate marriage with the Marquis de Contour. My dear, he is an absolute decadent! And to think how the Ravenels bought and paid for him in hard cash, and how wretchedly they were sold in the transaction! By the way, the Countess knows our friend, M. de Mariol, intimately, and says that for people to get him to their dinners or country houses is the greatest feather in their caps! He isde tout, she assures me, which, of course, makes one enjoy his writings so much more. I hope we shall certainly meet him again. Helen, speaking of young Glynn, if ever a man was born with a gold spoon in his mouth, it's he. To be marrying Mr. Winstanley's only child, and they having gone up like a house afire! The Countess says the Winstanleys have been floated here by Lady Campstown, and already know everybody, and are much liked. It seems they have one of the most desirable villas, own a smart motor, the girl has no end of stunning gowns—you remember they showed us at Worth's the evening frocks they were sending down to her—and will soon be entertaining lavishly. The question is, where did Lady Campstown pick her up? We must call on both of them to-morrow. I am all anxiety to meet dear Lady Campstown again, and I confess I am anxious to get a peep inside Villa Reine des Fées."

"I fancy you will find Miss Winstanley changed in many respects, Miss Bleecker," said Helen, wearily. "But it seems to me hardly probable she has lost her high spirit in this little time. And shemayremember your conduct to her on shipboard."

"Nonsense, my dear!" answered the chaperon, complacently. "As we live now, it is always easy and generally convenient to forget. The girl, for all her barbarisms, seemed to have a level head. She will be charmed to see us, and so will Lady Campstown, who had set her heart upon marrying you to that nephew of hers, Clandonald. If it were not for young Glynn, I should imagine that the Lady Campstown had gone off on another tack in her heiress cruise. Looks like it, don't you think? If Miss Winstanley hasn't told her of her engagement to Glynn, there'll be a pretty row on presently. We'll call, at any rate. I am glad to hear Mr. Winstanley is no worse, and may be counted upon to recover permanently from this attack. I wonder if he likes being read aloud to, Helen? To show that I bear no ill-will to the girl for her pertness to me, I'd just as soon offer to sit with him, sometimes. I was always said to have great success with invalids. And we'd better be prompt in looking them up, for who knows whether this is really a business trip of Glynn's? I should be much inclined to think he has run over to look after his heiress, and see that she does not slip through his fingers, with all these fine people with titles hanging around her. Glynn looks like a positive, if not self-willed, fellow, Helen. Indeed, I shouldn't in the least wonder if the business pretext is a blind, andM. le fiancéwon't go back to America without his bride. In that case, we shall have a smart wedding at Cannes, and poor Mr. Winstanley will be left all to himself at Villa Reine des Fées. They say there is nothing like that entrance hall and staircase in the town, all marbles of the rarest and most beautiful colors; and the dining-room, with its wall tapestries and screens, is fit for a palace. Poor Mr. Winstanley! There is nothing so sad in life as a person of—well, middle age—left alone by young people for whom he has done everything. There should be some congenial and sympathetic soul to—poor Mr. Winstanley!"

CHAPTER VIII

"Come a little way down this walk, John," Posey said, the morning after her lover's arrival, while engaged in showing him the place, "and you will see exactly where the woman was sitting yesterday, when she got up and spoke to me in that dreadful way. I never dare tell my father, and it would worry dear Lady Campstown out of her wits to think any suspicious outsider had been seen lurking about the grounds. I rather fancied this person was out of her head, and so, when she vanished abruptly, I just told the gardener that a doubtful-looking stranger had been in the garden, and his men must be on the watch to see that it doesn't occur again."

"Quite right," said Glynn. "I dare say you won't hear of her any more. What sort of a lunatic was she? Young or old, smart or shabby, English-speaking or foreign?"

"Oh! English decidedly, with one of their lovely low voices, from the throat. A lady, I suppose, one would call her, but shabby and deadly pale with glittering brown eyes, and lips with no color. I should think she took morphine, or some of those horrid things. Her clothes had been handsome once, but were put on in a slovenly way."

"Probably some poor soul here for her health, who had escaped from her caretakers. Certainly, you can have no enemies, my dear girl?"

"I didn't think so," answered Posey, flushing, "until I received a number of anonymous letters on shipboard, and several afterward. Then they stopped suddenly."

"Do you mind telling me their drift?"

Posey's cheeks became crimson, but she looked him bravely in the face.

"They were all full of lying things against me and the man I told you I met at sea—and have never seen or heard from since."

"Thank you, dear," said Glynn, simply. "We have both need of consideration for each other, and I trust you thoroughly. But this gives me an idea. You say the morphine lady told you she had a favor to ask of you——"

"Yes, but before she could get further, the gardener's man came in sight, and she took flight. She said that I was luckier than she, since I could buy my peace, and she'd advise me not to hold back now when I'd a chance to do so."

"That's blackmail, not insanity. The woman has probably spent her last sou at Monte Carlo, and reading about you in the papers, thinks you're a good object to attack for funds."

"It's no use, John. I can't tell half a thing, to save my life," exclaimed the girl, desperately. "At the moment she ran down that alley of laurustinus, she called back, 'You can't expect your friend, Lord Clandonald to pay all, and you nothing, to shut mouths.'"

Glynn walked beside her in moody silence. The matter was worse than he had feared. To find Posey in the toils of an obnoxious scheme for torment and money-getting, was more than annoying. He justly considered that it was paying too high for her successes, her magnificent establishment in life. For the moment it blotted out the blue of sky and blurred the exquisite beauty of their surroundings.

He had, like everybody else, heard of Clandonald and his matrimonial infelicities, his divorce, and his visit to the States. A strong resentment took possession of the young American at the idea that this Briton, battered by foul tongues and associations, should be the one who, even for a—moment, had won Posey's allegiance away from himself.

"You are angry. I knew you would be," she burst out finally. "I at first thought of telling Lady Campstown, and asking her advice. But Lord Clandonald is her nephew, almost her son, and I was ashamed. She has not the faintest idea there was ever anything between us."

"Between you? What can you mean?" wrathfully demanded Glynn, whose merit was never that of tolerance.

"I don't know myself. It was all so sudden, and passed so quickly. He used to come and talk and walk with me upon the ship. I began by being sorry for him, because his life had been so spoiled. He never said a word of flattery or silly talk like the others. He seemed to me a man."

"Well, go on, please," said Glynn, curtly.

"One evening when that old wretch Mr. Vereker tried to kiss me out on deck——"

"What!" thundered Glynn, his brows meeting, his eyes darting ire upon her.

"He didn't do it, John; just missed the tip of my ear, and I hit him in the face. I ran away to Miss Carstairs and Lord Clandonald, and told them, or rather didn't tell them—they understood. Clandonald looked just as you do now, and put himself in front of me, and I was so glad to be protected, when all the ship was saying mean, spiteful things of me, that for a little while I thought I must be in love with Lord Clandonald——"

"This alone is worth crossing the ocean to hear," commented Glynn with bitter sarcasm.

"Well, you know I told you of it at the time. It was a perfectly hopeless thing, anyhow. Even if you hadn't been there, I couldn't marry a divorced man whose wife is living. It's just one of those fashionable habits that doesn't happen to appeal to me."

"Posey, you are unconquerable," he said, a gleam of amusement coming into his eyes.

"You might as well hear all the rest. After I had those nasty letters, I kept away from him and got daddy to give up London, because I'd promised we would go down to lunch at Beaumanoir, his home. It was my first and last chance at an English ancestral mansion, I reckon. The last night aboard, when we were at anchor near Liverpool, in a fog, daddy and I met him, by accident, on deck. Dear old dad, who can't be made to suspect anybody, would run off after his letter of credit, that he'd packed in a steamer coat and almost sent ashore. I was left with Lord Clandonald. I tell you, John, you couldn't have treated me better than he did then. There was one little minute when I was scared, though. He was furious when I told him of the anonymous letters. He said there was only one who could have done it, but how, in God's name, did she get upon that ship? And then he asked me to let him stand between me and all such people always——"

"You let him ask you that?"

"John, you know when a man and a girl are together things get said that they never dreamed of saying. I knew like a shot I ought to have told Clandonald about you before. But how could I introduce the subject in cold blood——"

"I am afraid it was cold blood," interpolated John ruefully.

"Well, you couldn't expect me to thrill and tremble, and all those things they do in novels, when I'd said yes in a telephone booth, and never seen you after. I tried to, John. Honestly, I did, but it wasn't the least use."

Glynn would have been more than mortal not to laugh at her look of humble apology.

"Ah! well, Posey dear, I'll not be hard on you. But tell me, please, what further passed between you and Lord Clandonald?"

"Absolutely nothing. All I could do was to turn the conversation away from him and me. I couldn't find the least little way to bring you into it, or to say, 'Unhand me, sir, my heart and faith are another's,' since his hands were in his pockets and mine in my muff, and we were both saturated with Channel fog. I just thanked him for all his kindness to me on the voyage, and told him what's true, that I'd never forget it; though, if he ever met me again I'd probably be a very different sort of Posey Winstanley. And then he calmed down, and it was all over forever, and I ran away to see if daddy had found his letter of credit—and—and—I've never seen or heard from Clandonald since."

"Posey, you are a child still, a charming child, and I love you for it, dear."

"It's awfully good of you, John, and the greatest possible relief. If you knew what a double-faced sort of thing I've felt myself to be all these months, remembering that I'd let another man almost propose to me, when I had given you my word of honor—there's one thing I'd like to ask before we've done with the subject, though. What does it mean when a person is by you and you'd give, oh!anythingif they wouldn't go away?"

John started genuinely. A vision flashed to him of those blessed maddening hours in the train the day before, when Helen and he had sat together, and he jealously begrudged every revolution of the iron wheels that, without mercy, carried them toward their parting.

"I don't know, Posey," he murmured guiltily. "Why in the world do you ask me that?"

"Because I thought you would tell me, honestly," said she, with a speculative expression. "It has bothered me often, wondering. But it doesn't matter. Now you are here, everything seems straight and clear before me. Shall I ever forget daddy's rapturous old face when he sat by your supper-tray at the library table, last night, forcing you to eat indigestible food, and looking from one to the other of us?"

"But he has aged, dear," said Glynn, with a twinge of pain. "One sees the spirit in his face above the flesh. We must never let him know care or trouble again, little girl. We must strengthen his arms, one on either side of him, and make him walk easily through life."

"How beautifully you talk, John!" cried she. "Ah! No Englishman could ever have felt that way toward my daddy. No other man could give him what you do. Yes, you are right. It's our life-work to put him between us, and look out for him every day."

"And to do so," went on Glynn resolutely, "we should marry soon."

Posey started visibly.

"Must we, John? Oh! I hadn't thought of that."

"Is the idea a pain to you?"

"Perhaps. I don't know. I've always put it out of my mind when it weighed on me. Daddy gave me a year, John," she added pleadingly. "And the year began in October. This is only February. We're all so happy as we are."

Happy! Again that clutch of iron upon Glynn's heartstrings!

"Happiness will come more fully and freely, my sweetheart," he said, striving for words, "when we have put his heart's desire beyond all chance. I think you will both have to come back with me to America this Spring, if I'm to serve his interests as I should. Let me take my wife with me, Posey."

"What,now?" she cried, with wide-open, panic-stricken eyes. "Oh! goodness gracious, I hope not now!"

"I am due again in New York almost immediately, but will be free to return the beginning of next month, or a little later. By that time the heat will be sending you away from the Riviera, and would it not be best for us to be married very quietly here, and let Mr. Winstanley's son and daughter take care of him upon the voyage?"

"A wedding here? What a funny idea!" cried Posey. "Not a girl I know to ask as bridesmaid—at least, the only one I'd want would be Helen Carstairs, who has just arrived in Cannes, and I don't know about her. Perhaps she mightn't wish; but she wastoo dearto me, John, on shipboard, as I wrote you. By the way, you didn't seem to take the least interest in my friendship with Helen, and yet it has done me a world of good. Not a girly-girly affair in the least, I assure you. We'd both have scorned that. She has written to me several times, and I was simply wild with pleasure to hear she was coming down to Cannes. I think if you'd realized what Helen is, John, at least what she is to me, you'd not have been so indifferent. I must tell you the truth, I was really quite hurt with you. But you'll meet here, and then you'll see for yourself, and end by adoring her as I do—oh, John," she exclaimed, interrupting her light chatter with an exclamation of terror, "there's that woman now!"

"What woman, Posey?" he asked, bewildered at her rapid change of subject.

"Hush! The one I told you of, who frightened me yesterday—the mad woman. Don't turn suddenly, but, after a second, look between those two lemon trees. She just glided past as we were speaking, down the walk from Villa Julia, and is hiding behind the shrubbery. She's waiting for me, John. This is getting terrible!"

"She shall haveme," said Glynn grimly, his senses alert in a moment to the danger Posey ran.

"Don't make a scene with her—don't alarm daddy," she went on.

"Trust me," he answered briefly. "Do you go into the house, and stay there till I come. Say nothing to any one, and I'll rid you of your nightmare."

As Posey mutely obeyed him, albeit with a blanched face, Clandonald's saying came into Glynn's mind, "There's but one woman who would do this thing." Verily, Glynn would not have to go far to find her.

She arose from her bench as he approached—evidently badly scared. A man of his years and vigor and mastery of the situation had not entered into her calculations of this experience.

"You look surprised at seeing me here," she said rapidly, with perfectly well-bred ease. "I suppose it is trespass, but the villa had been so long unoccupied, we had got into the way of running into the garden from my aunt, Lady Campstown's, whose house is across the lane yonder."

He was for a moment thrown off his guard and bowed, acquiescing, as any gentleman would have done.

"However, I am just going," she added. "The little green door is very familiar to me, I assure you."

"Might I delay you one moment," he said courteously, "to ask what can be your motive in annoying and threatening the young lady of this house? I ask in her father's name, and we wish you to know that this must be absolutely the last time that you come into these grounds."

"What difference does it make?" she asked fretfully, throwing out her hands with a weary gesture and losing her self-control. "I can always reach her, somehow. She has not done with me yet, I can tell her. Unless," she added, with a low, meaning laugh, "her friends are ready to make it well worth my while to disappear."`

"You will not find her friends unwilling to aid in that desirable result. But I have first to know your motive in annoying her so cruelly."

"Call it rivalry, call it revenge," she said, with a shrug. "Either one of these causes is strong enough. She is, if you must know, the only woman I ever feared could take my place in my late husband's life—permanently, I mean," she added, with an ugly smile.

"I take it that I am speaking to Lord Clandonald's divorced wife?"

"Really, my good sir, you give yourself, or rather Miss Winstanley, 'away,' as they say in the vernacular of your richly-gifted country. You are evidently well-informed of the progress of that immaculate young lady's affair with Clandonald—continued on shipboard doubtless from America, and who knows when and where since?"

"The young lady, whose name I forbid you to mention here," cried Glynn, with a darkened countenance, "met the gentleman in question on shipboard for the first time, as she did twenty others, and has never seen or communicated with him since."

"She has convinced you of that fact—then rumor is right for once, and there is a confiding fiancé from America? After all, yours is a younger civilization than ours, and you still believe in your girls?"

Glynn interrupted her. He had got all he wanted from Ruby Darien.

She had been a striking beauty, had, even now, a certain reckless grace of manner. Her face was as Posey had described it. He read there untruth, degradation of moral fibre, and the ravage of disease and drugs. There was no use in dealing with her in heroics. Money would buy her, and money she should have.

"If Miss Winstanley's friends agree to make it worth your while—substantially worth your while" (her eyes glittered) "to keep at a distance from her, never again to approach her in deed or speech, at the risk of forfeiting a monthly allowance of say—" (here he mentioned a sum which caused Ruby Darien's haggard face to flush high with covetous delight)—"it will certainly not be without an understanding on their part of how you contrived to present yourself through Lady Campstown's premises without identification by her servants."

"That was a small matter," she said eagerly. "Although my respected aunt-in-law has long since instructed her staff not to admit me to her presence, there remains in her employ a child of nature, an untutored Provençal housemaid, who in former days chose to idealize me, and even now would do anything reasonably atrocious at my bidding. She it was who contrived to let me in from the lane, to which a cab from the station brought me up the hill. I should tell you that I am stopping temporarily at Nice, in an hotel where they accept me without questions, but which has proved, alas, too fatally convenient to Monte Carlo!"

"Then, if you will allow me, I will myself see you into another cab for your return. There is a station for carriages at no great distance down the road from here. To-morrow I will present myself at your hotel in Nice, with the necessary papers insuring to you the allowance I named, and an agreement, which I shall in return ask you to sign, pledging yourself to keep your side of the bargain."

"American promptitude in business is proverbial," she said, essaying an easy laugh, and darting a side glance, not unmixed with admiration, upon her interlocutor. "How nice it must be to be disgustingly rich as all you Yankees are; to be able to confound the politics and frustrate the knavish tricks of your enemies by the prompt administration of hard cash! I always thought that if I'd had money enough to be good on, I might have graduated as a saint."

When Glynn walked up the steps at Reine des Fées, feeling a mixture of disgust and pride in his victory achieved, Posey ran out to meet him, slipping her arm in his.

"You've triumphed, I see. Oh! John, dear, what daddy needs is a real son like you, and I, just such a brother. Don't tell me anything about that horrid creature now, let's be happy for a while. Let us speak of something as far from her as one pole of earth is from the other—of dear Helen Carstairs, whose card I found on the hall table when I went in after leaving you. If it hadn't been that I was with you, I'd have begrudged missing her for anybody's sake. Of course the stupid servants said I was not at home. Now, why couldn't they have shown her into the garden, and then she could have been introduced to you, and how nice that would have been! The two people of all others I most admire, and shall expect and insist upon being friends with each other! Say, John, to please me that you are longing to meet Helen!"

"Posey," began Glynn, and his voice to his own ears sounded unnaturally thin, "I have been waiting a chance to tell you that I have known Miss Carstairs; that I ran upon her by chance at the Gare de Lyons yesterday, just as the train for the South had started. That we were, in fact, companions in the same compartment, and talked of you together, more than once, during our day's run."

"You! Helen! Wonders will never cease!" cried the girl exultingly. "But," a sobering thought seizing hold of her, "how was it possible you never mentioned her to me in a single one of your letters?"

"Try to think why, Posey," the young man said gravely, as they paused together in the hall filled with dead marbles and living blossoms of the Spring.

"It was Helen, then, Helen?" Her eyes flamed the rest of the sentence.

"Yes."

"Ah! I might have guessed it. And I—was vain enough and rash enough to think I could fill her place to you. Poor, dear John, what you have lost, and what have you got instead?"

"Far more than I merit in any case, dear. It is her secret, and, but that I dared not deceive you, should never have passed my lips. It is over, Posey, buried forty fathoms deep. You see, now, that each of us has need of charity and forbearance with the other, and you must set me an example of kind forgivingness for all I have done or left undone toward you."

"My dear boy," said Mr. Winstanley, who, at this moment, came shuffling out from the library to join them, "you are late for luncheon, but how long wouldn't I wait to see you and Posey standing there together? It's better than any sun-bath to have you around, I tell you! I feel years younger since you came."

"So do I, father," said Posey. "After this I am going to wear a collar with a little bell and a leash, and let John lead me upon the Croisette. It is good to have some one to be will and conscience, both, for me!"

"I'm afraid I've spoiled her for you, just a little, John," added her father wistfully.

"You and others, perhaps. But such as she is, she's a lot too good for me, sir—or any man. All the same, I think you'll have to be giving me Posey before the time you fixed for our probation. We are young and will grow together, and she'll help me to do big work. And it seems to me, Mr. Winstanley, that she's got a dose of this Old World at the start that'll make her willing to settle down in our own country."

"We'll see," nodded the old gentleman. And, indeed, the idea of an earlier marriage chimed in with his own notions. Since the wing of the Angel of Death had brushed so near his face in passing, Herbert Winstanley often thought that to put the future of his impetuous child into safe hands would give him a happier feeling when he lay down to sleep o' nights.

Thus Miss Bleecker was wiser than she knew, in predicting a matrimonial conclusion to the Winstanley winter in Cannes. When she and Helen accepted Posey's invitation to dine with them "to meet a few friends" on the night but one following their arrival—an invitation, needless to say, accepted by Miss Carstairs with perturbation of spirit and the feeling that she was walking up to the cannon's mouth—things seemed to point that way. They found Mr. Winstanley, simple and gentle as ever, standing to receive his guests in the drawing-room with its famous tapestries, surrounded by gems of art that for the first time in years had emerged from their Holland cerements. The stately room had flowers massed in its corners, and a great fire of logs was leaping under a carved stone mantelpiece also banked high with plants and blossoms. At her father's right hand stood Posey, blushing and dimpling with artless pleasure in receiving her friend under circumstances so radically different from those in which they had met and parted a few months before; but in dress and bearing so perfectly adapted was she to her luxurious entourage, that Miss Bleecker blinked when looking upon her, and refused to believe her eyes. And on Mr. Winstanley's other side, quiet, grave, a little pale, but collected and fully determined to maintain his position with dignified acceptance, stood Glynn—as handsome and bonny a lad as ever rejoiced a father's heart, Mr. Winstanley was saying inside his own warm receptacle of human emotions.

As Helen's eyes met John's and dropped away; as he clasped her gloved fingers, marvelling at her grace and distinction in the trailing dinner gown of pale rose satin without frill or furbelow, each felt that this occasion had for them the solemn significance of a final renunciation of their love. It was as if she were standing in the church seeing Glynn take Posey to be his wife. A keen pang of shame for the weakness that had overcome her on their journey shot through her being. Ah, well! Fate had been too strong for her then. That was the last, the very last—like a farewell breathed into already deadened ears.

Posey's attitude toward Helen also touched Miss Carstairs acutely. That there was in it a new consciousness she felt immediately. She recognized that Glynn must have eased his honest heart of its burden by telling his betrothed of his former love for her, and felt that this was as it should be, if Posey were to remain her friend. It was not tender apology, or loving sympathy, that Posey showed, nor yet bashful consciousness that she had in some way taken the ground from under Helen's feet, but an exquisite mixture of all these. Her high spirits had for the moment deserted her. She kept close to her father's side, answered Miss Bleecker's fulsome greetings with no attempt at tart or witty answers, and, as their other guests came in, proceeded to do the honors as if "born to the purple" (so Miss Bleecker whispered to John Glynn).

The chaperon's day of wonder was upon her, while the room rapidly filled with a company of people distinguished in the world's eye of their winter colony, all of whom bore themselves toward the tenant of Reine des Fées and his youthfulchâtelainewith the friendly consideration of accustomed intimates. To each of the new-comers, Glynn was presented by his host; without special announcement, it is true, yet in fashion so intentional that there was no mistaking the attitude in which he stood toward father and daughter. As they presently went in to dinner, in a salle with carved panels of French walnut and great lustres of Venetian glass illuminating its four corners, to gather around a table that left nothing for fastidious taste to criticise, Miss Bleecker wanted to pinch herself upon taking off her gloves, to feel assured that she was not in a dream. The old gentleman, yonder, well turned out by a good valet, in appropriate evening clothes, seated between a great lady of France, whose neck was wrapped in historic pearls, and an Englishwoman, of rank and exclusive habit, could he be the little old man of shipboard, whom Helen's chaperon had despised and derided as the veriest pretender to good society? It was incredible! And the strangest part of the situation in old Sally's eyes was that, save in externals, Herbert Winstanley had not altered in any particular from the shrewd quiet observer of the game of life, the mild commentator upon the ways of men and women, the almost childlike recipient of courtesy and kind words, whom she remembered with amused contempt.

Such as he was, these people had taken him up with a good-will there was no denying. Miss Bleecker had the pleasure of finding herself at table told off to an old beau of nativity American, overlaid with years of veneer Continental, who seemed to find satisfaction in extolling to her the "solid" success of the Winstanleys; the girl's extraordinary ease in presiding over this banquet of state, and the good luck of that fellow Glynn, whose significant appearance this evening was evidently intended to put all of Miss Winstanley's other admirers out of the running.

Old Sally, who had long ago learned how to trim her sails, listened with bitterness, and while comforting her inner woman with the long succession of "plats" and wines presented at her elbow, made up her mind that she would stray over to Reine des Fées, without Helen, next morning (under her most becoming parasol), with the hope of finding Mr. Winstanley engaged in taking his sun-bath on the terrace. "And, if I only get my chance," she meditated, "trust me for following it up." The announcement, by cable from America that day, of the engagement of a contemporary of her own, long abandoned in appearance to celibate joys, to marry "the last man anyone would have expected to see pick her up"—a recent widower of large means and uncertain temper—accelerated the spinster's thoughts and lent a false brilliancy to the evening that had begun for her so dolefully.

To Helen Carstairs, naturally, the ordeal of the dinner was interminable. Separated from Glynn by a wide extent of flower-decorated table, amid which candles gleamed softly, and silver lent its sheen to illuminate beds of maiden-hair and cyclamen, she dared not look in his direction. All of her efforts were given to self-control. The man who took her in, a handsome blond young Russian, with all the languages of earth seemingly at his disposal, decided that the American heiress not appropriated at this feast was as cold as the snows of his own Caucasus. The Roumanian prince on her other side gave her up also as a person impossible to interest. She went through it like an automaton, her one desire to see Posey signal to the lady with the pearls that it was time to arise from table.

Lady Campstown, watching this little drama of every day, felt worried and puzzled. She had never given up the idea that Clandonald had cared for Miss Carstairs, and was only debarred from telling her so from his pride of poverty and the clog attached to his career. Although her ladyship's secret heart yearned over Posey, and she would have given worlds to see Clan's allegiance transferred to her, the American rival well disposed of in some other way (nature not settled in her mind) and Posey becoming a member of their family, her very own to cherish through life, the joyous regenerator of her nephew's hopes and fortunes—she now felt this to be a fairy tale beyond chance of reality. Much as she had talked to Posey about Clan that winter (and one must have experience of the wealth of conversation a lonely old woman lavishes upon the young, strong, vigorous manhood that belongs to her and has gone out to the world, forsaking her, to know just how much that was), the girl had never in return given her a hint of interest in him beyond the common. She had spoken of their meeting on shipboard, had acceded to Lady Campstown's appeals for interest in the chief events of his life, but had ventured nothing on her own account.

Slowly, but surely, therefore, Lady Campstown had seen the evanishment of this hope, conceived in secret and brought forth in fear, without a suggestion of it having been consigned to Miss Winstanley. The arrival of Mr. Glynn, duly presented to her ladyship in form, had shown the dowager the futility of her hopes. The engagement with Glynn was real, tangible, not a boy-and-girl fancy that might drift into smoke—it was undeniably "there to stay."

Lady Campstown, perhaps unwillingly, could not withhold from Glynn the tribute of admiration his manly exterior, his fearless earnestness of character, were wont to extort from strangers. She had failed, though, to discern in Posey any of the usual signs and tokens by which a girl takes the world into her confidence concerning her joy at a lover's coming. She marvelled at the child's matter-of-fact demeanor, her off-hand bonhommie, her warm spirit of comradeship to Glynn. It must be, thought the old lady, a little put out by these conditions, which were not according to her recollections or her views, "that is the way they do it in America!"

Thus, perforce falling back upon the Helen Carstairs idea again, that young lady's arrival in Cannes had seemed little short of Providential. Clandonald must, according to his promises and forecasts of travel, be shortly in the field. There was no question that he had once admitted to his aunt it was some American lady who had caused the trouble from Ruby shortly after his return to Beaumanoir. He had been vague, elusive, as men always are in telling what their womenkind want to know about other women; but there had been a girl, an American girl; Ruby had attacked him through this girl, he had paid dearly to silence the base tormentor, and then, in an access of wounded pride and disgust, had again shaken the dust of his native land from his feet, and journeyed into the unknown. Months had passed, long enough for Clandonald's angry feelings to subside. He must soon come back to Villa Julia, where he had known so many happy hours. His aunt would make him thoroughly comfortable, happy, as she well knew how to do. She would go slowly, leaving Helen and himself to drift together again in the natural order of such things. It must, it must come out all right!

While indulging in this optimistic thought for the twentieth time in two days, Lady Campstown had happened to catch a glimpse of Helen's face between two candelabra. It was the first time she had seen it in repose since the young lady's visit to Beaumanoir, and she was struck with an increase of thought and pain in the rare, fine countenance. At once she decided that Helen was fretting after Clan, and her warm heart bounded with sympathy. She went up to Miss Carstairs when the women were together after dinner and spoke to her cordially, flatteringly. Posey, from where she sat with her two greatest ladies—tarrying there, however, just long enough to say a few modest words, then leaving them to what they desired, conversation with each other—saw the talk between her two friends, and longed to join in it. Hastening upon her rounds as a hostess, she in due time came up with them.

"What a nice time you two dear souls are having!" she exclaimed. "And how I've wanted to be with you! It is so much nicer always to be with the few one loves than with the many one merely has to know."

"You have been gleaning golden opinions, all the same," said Helen. "Lady Campstown has been telling me what Princess Z—— says of you as an entertainer—that you were born, not made."

"I reckon—no, IfancyI came by it honestly," laughed Posey. "I always enjoy the things we give so much more than those we go to."

"I am asking Miss Carstairs to come to me to-morrow for luncheon," said Lady Campstown, putting with loving fingers a stray bit of Posey's lace in place. "And I do hope, dear, you haven't promised anybody else."

"I'll come, surely," exclaimed the girl. "Though I suppose I ought not to forsake daddy and John these few days we have together. But to tell you the mortifying truth, they are continually falling knee-deep into talks of which I can't understand a thing. And sometimes I slip out with my dogs, and they don't even know that I have gone."

"'Slip out' to-morrow, then, at 1.30, and bring the dogs," said Lady Campstown. "But, my dear, what does this mean that I hear, Mr. Glynn is for leaving us on Thursday?"

"He's going to catch the 'Kronprinz' at Cherbourg, Saturday, and must have a few hours in Paris. It's awfully stupid, I tell him, but when an American man gets hold of a scheme that spells business you can no more induce him to loose hold of it than my darling Maida will consent to give up a particular pet bone."

"But he's coming back very soon, they tell me. How you Americans can go racing back and forth across the Atlantic as you do——"

"Yes, he's coming back very soon," said Posey, faltering a little, and pulling to pieces a superb white rose with purple-red outside petals that hung from a vase on the console next to her. "I may as well tell you both, what I meant to do to-morrow, that daddy and he decided to-day the wedding's to come off at the end of March. John will accordingly rush through a lot of things in New York, tear back again, probably via Genoa, if they put on one of the fast ships, and where his trousseau's to come in, I can't imagine. My own will take every minute from now till then, and all of the missionary aid you two dears choose to lend me, to make it an accomplished fact."

"You can count upon me in all things," Helen said very quietly.

"Oh, my dear lamb, and you ask me to be glad when it means that I've got to lose you," put in Lady Campstown, thinking for the moment honestly about herself, and thereby covering what might have been a trying pause to both girls. A servant, presenting a tray of coffee-cups at Lady Campstown's side, helped further to bridge the moment, and others of Posey's guests surrounding her with chat and laughter, the question of the marriage floated away into space. Helen, however, took it back to her hotel with her, wrestled with it during sleepless hours, and next day, to stave off intolerable thought, set out for a long walk alone.

Whither she went she neither cared nor knew. She had a vague remembrance of having passed through the flower-market, and being set upon to buy, by a soft-voiced, smiling woman who stood behind great blurs of red and yellow and white and purple, shrined in verdure, from which luscious scent arose. To get rid of her, she had paid a persistent child a franc for a big bunch of violets, and the girl, with a saucy, merry face, thrust into her hand also a spray of orange blossom. Helen threw this last away impatiently. Impossible to be rid of the suggestions of that wedding, ten-fold more abhorrent to her now that she had seen for herself and knew beyond a peradventure that it was inspired by no such love as she and John had felt for each other only a day or two before; such love as she must feel for him, God help her, till she died.

She walked on through the town, far into the outskirts, till seeing a sign of "New Milk" upon a chalet near the road made her suddenly remember she had set out without even her morning coffee. Going inside the building, she sat for a few moments at a table while a woman served her with rolls and a glass of milk, and then, starting forth again, was vaguely tempted to ascend a hillside which rose abruptly above the spot, crowned with a noble growth of trees.

Helen had no sooner gained the smooth plateau of the summit than she remembered where she was. Long ago, as a child, in charge of her English governess, journeying from the Italian seashore to join her father at Marseilles, they had stopped over for a midsummer fête at Mont St. Cassien, where, in blazing heat, the Cannois and their rustic neighbors from miles around had fulfilled an old custom of Provence in holding service at a little chapel on this hill, the remainder of the day and evening being spent in feasting at tables spread on the slopes and in the green valley below. She could shut her eyes and see again the lights gleaming around the tables, as the hot darkness fell, the gay costumes, and the chain of dancers threading its way among the trees.

The grass was growing wild and coarse where she followed a shaded path to the little hut in which a holy hermit had once lived and died. A peasant woman in the kitchen of the hermitage was cooking something in a casserole over a tiny fire, but she left it civilly to conduct the stranger through to the chapel adjoining. A girl grown to woman's height, but, alas, a child in intellect, began pulling and tugging at her mother's gown, asking witless questions and being repeatedly, but tenderly, thrust aside by the woman, and told to stay in her own place.

Helen hardly knew why she had acceded to the woman's suggestion that she should visit the uninteresting sanctuary, with its cheap emblems and smell of stale incense, and decorations of paper flowers.

But she understood, when through the now opened front door a gentleman stepped from broad sunshine into the chill interior, apparently as aimless as herself, and came up to her side.

"Helen! You are alone?"

"You here!" she answered under her breath. "When I have come all this distance to be away from you!"

"It is the same with me, Helen," Glynn said in a sombre voice. "I have wandered and wandered up here for no reason in particular, trying to believe you are not in Cannes, trying to master my ungovernable desire to be with you only once again."

"It is all of a piece with our being thrust together that day upon the train," she cried impetuously. "What have we done that such things should be forced upon us?"

"Come out at least into the sunshine," he said, taking her cold hand. "You will be chilled in this dreary place."

Giving a douceur to the poor guardian of the premises, they went together to a point of the hillside whereon the trunk of a fallen tree offered a semblance of a seat.

Helen, actually nerveless, dropped upon it, Glynn standing beside her, neither daring to speak first.

"You know that I am leaving to-morrow?" he asked finally.

"Posey told me so last night," she answered.

"She told you what was to follow my return at the end of March?"

"Yes."

"The question is, Am I a man of honor or a scoundrel?" he went on with a frowning brow. "I have thought of it so long, so intensely, that my judgment has ceased to act. Helen, you have the clearest mind, the most well-balanced conscience I ever knew——"

"You can say that, when I was so false to myself and you as to let you go that time in New York, before all these complications came upon us?" she interrupted him bitterly. "But there, what is the use? We have parted, there is no hope, let us never speak of ourselves together again. If it is your duty to Posey, to her father, that torments you; I bid you keep your pledge. It is impossible that you should now make any motion to withdraw from it. The one terrible thing to me was that we should all go on and Poesy have no idea what you and I once were to each other——"

"Nobody could know that," the man said sturdily. Helen shivered.

"But you have relieved me of that fear," she hurried on. "I saw at once, last night, that you had told her——"

"Only that you were the woman I had loved before plighting myself to her. She knows nothing of the circumstances of our acquaintance. That is my secret, mine only, to be treasured till I die."

"She knows enough, however, to make clear the way between us," Helen made further haste to say. "If you are kind now, you will end this conversation that ought never to have begun. I shall be leaving Cannes shortly. My father is coming for me in his yacht. Before I see you again you will have in your keeping the happiness, the trust, of one—no, two, of the kindest, most confiding creatures God ever made. Never think that it is I who could try and weaken you at the outset of such a task. If necessary, rather let Posey think that I have grown cold to her than run the risk of such a re-awakening of old feeling as we two have innocently suffered from to-day."

Her voice dropped to a whisper. Violet shadows had formed under her eyes, the lines around her mouth had deepened painfully. But when she looked at him full in the eyes, he knew there would be no more weakening in his direction. Presently she arose, and they walked together to the foot of the hill, where Helen hailed a passing carriage and asked him to put her in it. A moment more, and Glynn was indeed alone.

As he walked rapidly homeward, he forced his mind away from the overpowering interest of this last chance interview to dwell upon minor things, among which he was inclined to classify even the settling of the affair with Posey's tormentor, Mrs. Darien. He had, according to his engagement with that lady, gone over to Nice by an early train the day following their interview in the garden. He had found her in the melancholy splendors of a saloon bedroom in a cheap hotel, with a screen half encircling an untidy couch, a dressing-table littered with strange scents and unguents, shabby finery hanging upon hooks, and achaise longueof rusty plush drawn up before a writing-table containing, in addition to its blotter and inkstand, a case of liqueurs and glasses.

Mrs. Darien, for which he yielded her credit, made no attempt to apologize for her poor surroundings. She received her visitor with astonishing ease and vivacity; talked rapidly and cleverly of contemporaneous topics, and when he came, without overmuch delay, to the point of the business that brought him, treated Mr. Glynn in a semi-coquettish, rallying spirit, as though he were proposing to her a very good joke. She closed upon his offer like a vice, however, and affixed her name to the paper forfeiting the liberal allowance he had decided to make her should she be again heard of as molesting Miss Winstanley with an eager, trembling hand. Glynn had decided, as he walked away from her into purer air, that drink or morphia, or both, were driving the ex-Lady Clandonald to an end at a fearful rate of speed. He had paid high for this visit to Nice, but it counted as nothing provided she left Mr. Winstanley's little ewe lamb in peace.

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