“Here is the story. I don’t know how I’ve done it, but here it is. Do read it—because I really am a little mad, and if it’s any good, send it in at once to theMonthly Multitude. I slept all last night. I shall soon be well now. Everything is so delightful, and the air is splendid. A thousand thanks for sending me here. I am enjoying the rest and change immensely.—Your grateful“Jane.”
“Here is the story. I don’t know how I’ve done it, but here it is. Do read it—because I really am a little mad, and if it’s any good, send it in at once to theMonthly Multitude. I slept all last night. I shall soon be well now. Everything is so delightful, and the air is splendid. A thousand thanks for sending me here. I am enjoying the rest and change immensely.—Your grateful
“Jane.”
She read it through. Her smile at the last phrase was not pretty to see.
When the long envelope was posted, Jane went down to the quiet shore and gazed out over the sunlit sands to the opal line of the far receding tide.
The story was written. There was an end to the conflict of agonies, so now the fiercer agony had the field to itself.
“I suppose I shall learn to bear it presently,” she told herself. “I wish I had not forgotten how to cry. I am sure I ought to cry. But the story is done, anyway. I daresay I shall remember how to cry before the next story has to be done.”
There were two more nights and onewhole day. The nights had islands of sleep in them—hot, misty islands in a river of slow, crawling, sluggish hours. The day was light and breezy and sunny, with a blue sky cloud-flecked. The day was worse than the nights, because in the day she remembered all the time who she was, and where.
It was on the last day of the week. She was sitting rigid in the little porch, her eyes tracing again and again with conscious intentness the twisted pattern of the budding honeysuckle stalks. A rattle of wheels suddenly checked came to her, and she untwisted her stiff fingers and went down the path to meet Milly—a pale Milly, with red spots in her cheeks and fierce, frowning brows—a Milly who drew back from the offered kiss and spoke in tones that neither had heard before.
“Come inside. I want to speak to you.”
The new disaster thus plainly heralded moved Jane not at all. There was no room in her soul for any more pain. In the little dining-room, conscientiously “quaint” with its spotted crockery dogs and corner cupboard shining with willow pattern tea-cups, Milly shut the door and turned on her friend.
“Now,” she said, “I came down to seeyou, because there are some things I couldn’t write—even to you. You can go back to the station in the cab, I’ve told the man to wait. And I hope I shall never see your face again.”
“What do you mean?” Jane asked the question mechanically, and not at all because she did not know the answer.
“You know what I mean,” the other answered, still with white fury. “I’ve found you out. You thought you were safe, and Edgar was dead, and no one would know. But as it happensIknew; and so shall everybody else.”
Jane moistened dry lips, and said: “Knew what?” and held on by the table.
“You didn’t think he’d toldmeabout it, did you?” Milly flashed—“but he did.”
“I think you must tellmewhat you mean,” Jane said, and shifted her hold from table to armchair.
“Oh, certainly.” Milly tossed her head, and Jane’s fingers tightened on the chair-back. “Yes, I don’t wonder you look ill—I suppose you were sorry when you’d done it. But it’s no use being sorry; you should have thought of all that before.”
“Tell me,” said Jane, low.
“I’ll tell you fast enough. You shall see I do know. Well, then, that story you sent me—you just copied it from a story of Edgar’s that was in the old cabinet. He wrote it when he was here; and he said it wasn’t good, and I said it was, and then he said he’d leave it in the secret drawer, and see how it looked when he came back. And you found it. And you thought you were very clever, I daresay, and that Edgar was dead, and no one would know. But I knew, and——”
“Yes,” Jane interrupted, “you said that before. So you think I found Edgar’s manuscript? If I did it I must have done it in my sleep. I used to walk in my sleep when I was a child. You believe me, Milly, don’t you?”
“No,” said Milly, “I don’t.”
“Then I’ll say nothing more,” said Jane with bitter dignity. “I will go at once, and I will try to forgive your cruelty.Iwould never have doubtedyourword—never. I am very ill—look at me. I had a sleeping draught, and I suppose it upset me: such things have happened. You’ve known me eight or nine years: have you ever known me do a dishonourable thing, or tell a lie?The dishonour is in yourself, to believe such things of me.”
Jane had drawn herself up, and stood, tall and haggard, her dark eyes glowing in their deep sockets. The other woman was daunted. She hesitated, stammered half a word, and was silent.
“Good-bye,” said Jane; “and I hope to God no one will ever be such a brute to you as you have been to me.” She turned, but before she reached the door Milly had caught her by the arm.
“No, don’t, don’t!” she cried. “Idobelieve you, I do! You poor darling! You must have done it in your sleep. Oh, forgive me, Jane dear. I’ll never tell a soul, and Edgar——”
“Ah,” said Jane, turning mournful eyes on her, “Edgar would have believed in me.”
And at that Milly understood—in part, at least—and held out her arms.
“Oh, you poor dear! and I never even guessed! Oh, forgive me!” and she cried over Jane and kissed her many times. “Oh, my dear!” she said, as Jane yielded herself to the arms and her face to the kisses, “I’ve got something to tell you. You must be brave.”
“No—no more,” Jane said shrilly; “I can’t bear any more. I don’t want to know how it happened, or anything. He’s dead—that’s enough.”
“But——” Milly clung sobbing to her, sobbing with sympathy and agitation.
Jane pushed her back, held her at arm’s length and looked at her with eyes that were still dry.
“You’re a good little thing, after all,” she said. “Yes—now I’ll tell you. You were quite right. It was a lie—but half of it was true—the half I told you—but I wanted you to believe the other half too. I did walk in my sleep, and I must have opened that cabinet and taken Edgar’s story out, because I found myself standing there with it in my hands. And he was dead, and—— Oh, Milly. I knew he was dead, of course, and yet he was there—I give you my word he was there, and I heard him say ‘Take it, take it, take it!’ quite plainly, like I’m speaking to you now. And I took it; and I copied it out—it took me nearly all night—and then I sent it to you. And I’d never have told you the truth as long as you didn’t believe me—never—never. But now you do believe me I won’t lie to you. There! Letme go. I think I was mad then, and I know I am now. Tell every one. I don’t care.”
But Milly threw her arms round her again. The love interest had overpowered the moral sense. What did the silly story, or the theft, or the lie matter—what were they, compared with the love-secret she had surprised?
“My darling Jane,” she said, holding her friend closely and still weeping lavishly, “don’t worry about the story: I quite understand. Let’s forget it. You’ve got quite enough trouble to bear without that. But there’s one thing, it’s just as well I found out before the story was published. Because Edgar isn’t dead. His ship has been towed in: he’s at home.”
Jane laughed.
“Don’t cry, dear,” said Milly; “I’ll help you to bear it. Only—oh dear, how awful it is for you!—he’s going to be married.”
Jane laughed again; and then she thinks the great, green waves really did rise up all round the quaint dining-room—rise mountains high, and, falling, cover her.
Jane was ill so long that Milly had to tell Edgar about the story after all, and they sent it in, and it was published in Jane’s name.So the little brothers were all right. And he wrote the next story for her too, and they corrected the proofs together.
Jane has always thought it a pity that Milly had not troubled to ask the name of the girl whom Edgar intended to marry, because the name proved, on enquiry, to be Jane.
I
It is a dismal thing to be in London in August. The streets are up for one thing, and your cab can never steer a straight course for the place you want to go to. And the trees are brown in the parks, and every one you know is away, so that there would be nowhere to go in your cab, even if you had the money to pay for it, and you could go there without extravagance.
Stephen Guillemot sat over his uncomfortable breakfast-table in the rooms he shared with his friend, and cursed his luck. His friend was away by the sea, and he was here in the dirty and sordid blackness of his Temple chambers. But he had no money for a holiday; and when Dornington had begged him to accept a loan, he had swornat Dornington, and Dornington had gone off not at all pleased. And now Dornington was by the sea, and he was here. The flies buzzed in the panes and round the sticky marmalade jar; the sun poured in at the open window. There was no work to do. Stephen was a solicitor by trade; but, in fact and perforce, an idler. No business came to him. All day long the steps of clients sounded on the dirty, old wooden staircase—clients for Robinson on the second, for Jones on the fourth, but none for Guillemot on the third. Even now steps were coming, though it was only ten o’clock. The young man glanced at the marmalade jar, at the crooked cloth stained with tea, which his laundress had spread for his breakfast.
“Suppose it is a client——” He broke off with a laugh. He had never been able to cure himself of that old hope that some day the feet of a client—a wealthy client—would pause at his door, but the feet had always gone by—as these would do. The steps did indeed pass his door, paused, came back, and—oh wonder! it washisknocker that awoke the Temple echoes.
He glanced at the table. It was hopeless. He shrugged his shoulders.
“I daresay it’s only a bill,” he said, and went to see.
The newcomer was impatient, for even as Guillemot opened the door, the knocker was in act to fall again.
“Is Mr Guillemot—— Oh, Stephen, I should have known you anywhere!”
A radiant vision in a white linen gown—a very smart tailor-made-looking linen gown—and a big white hat was standing in his doorway, shaking him warmly by the hand.
“Won’t you ask me in?” asked the vision, smiling in his bewildered face.
He drew back mechanically, and closed the door after him as she went in. Then he followed her into the room that served him for office and living-room, and stood looking at her helplessly.
“You don’t know me a bit,” she said; “it’s a shame to tease you. I’ll take off my hat and veil; you will know me then. It’s these fine feathers!”
And take them off she did—in front of the fly-spotted glass on the mantel-piece; then she turned a bright face on him, a pretty mobile face, crowned with bright brown hair. And still he stood abashed.
“I never thought you would have forgottenthe friend of childhood’s hour,” she began again. “I see I must tell you in cold blood.”
“Why, it’s Rosamund!” he cried suddenly. “Do forgive me! I never, never dreamed—— My dear Rosamund, you aren’t really changed a bit it’s only—your hair being done up and——”
“And the fine feathers,” said she, holding out a fold of her dress. “They are very pretty feathers, aren’t they?”
“Very,” said he. And then suddenly a silence of embarrassment fell between them.
The girl broke it with a laugh that was not quite spontaneous.
“How funny it all is!” she said. “I went to New York with my uncle when dear papa died—and then I went to Girton, and now poor uncle’s dead, and——” Her eye fell on the tablecloth. “I’m going to clear away this horrid breakfast of yours,” she said.
“Oh, please!” he pleaded, taking the marmalade jar up in his helpless hands. She took the jar from him.
“Yes, I am,” she said firmly; “and you can just sit down and try to remember who I am.”
He obediently withdrew to the window-seat and watched her as she took away the ugly crockery and the uglier food to hide them inhis little kitchen; and as he watched her he remembered many things. The lonely childhood in a country rectory—the long, dull days with no playfellows; then the arrival of the new doctor and his little daughter Rosamund Rainham—and almost at the same time, it seemed, the invalid lady with the little boy who lodged at the Post Office. Then there were playfellows, dear playfellows, to cheer and teach him—poor Stephen, he hardly knew what play or laughter meant. Then the invalid lady died, and Stephen’s father awoke from his dreams amid his old books, as he had a way of doing now and then, enquired into the circumstances of the boy, Andrew Dornington, and, finding him friendless and homeless, took him into his home to be Stephen’s little brother and friend. Then the long happy time when the three children were always together: walking, boating, birdsnesting, reading, playing and quarrelling; the storm of tears from Rosamund when the boys went to College; the shock of surprise and the fleeting sadness with which Stephen heard that the doctor was dead and that Rosamund had gone to America to her mother’s brother. Then the fulness of living, the old days almost forgotten, or only remembered asa pleasant dream. Stephen had never thought to see Rosamund again—had certainly never longed very ardently to see her; at any rate, since the year of her going. And now—here she was, grown to womanhood and charm, clearing away his breakfast things! He could hear the tap running, and knew that she must be washing her hands at the sink, using the horrid bit of yellow soap with tea-leaves embedded in it. Now she was drying her hands on the dingy towel behind the kitchen door. No; she came in drying her pink fingers on her handkerchief.
“What a horrid old charwoman you must have!” she said; “everything is six inches deep in dust—and all your crockery is smeary.”
“I am sorry it’s not nicer,” he said. “Oh, but it’s good to see you again! What times we used to have! Do you remember when we burned your dolls on the 5th of November?”
“I should think I did. And do you remember when I painted your new tool-chest and the handles of your saws and gimlets and things with pale green enamel? I thought you would be so pleased.”
She had taken her place, as she spoke, inthe depths of the one comfortable chair, and he answered from his window-seat; and in a moment the two were launched on a flood of reminiscences, and the flight of time was not one of the things they remembered. The hour and the quarters sounded, and they talked on. But the insistence of noon, boomed by the Law Courts’ clock, brought Miss Rainham to her feet.
“Twelve!” she cried. “How time goes! And I’ve never told you what I came for. Look here. I’m frightfully rich; I only heard it last week. My uncle never seemed very well off. We lived very simply, and I used to do the washing-up and the dusting and things; and now he’s died and left me all his money. I don’t know where he kept it all. The people on the floor above here wrote me about it. I was going to see them, and I saw your name; and I simply couldn’t pass it. Look here, Stephen—are you very busy?”
“Not too busy to do anything you want. I’m glad you’ve had luck. What can I do for you?”
“Will you really do anything I want? Promise.”
“Of course I promise.” He looked at herand wondered if she knew how hard it would be to him to refuse her anything: for Mr Guillemot had been fancy free, and this gracious vision, re-risen from old times, had turned his head a little.
“Good! You must be my solicitor.”
“But I can’t. Jones——”
“Bother Jones!” she said. “I shan’t go near him. I won’t be worried by Jones. What is the use of having a fortune—and it’s a big fortune, I can tell you—if I mayn’t even choose my own solicitor? Look here, Stephen—really—I have no relations and no friends in England—no man friends, I mean—and you won’t charge me more than you ought, but you will charge me enough. Oh, I feel like Mr Boffin—and you are Mortimer Lightwood, and Andrew is Eugene. Do you call him Dora still?”
It was the first question she had asked about the boy who had shared all their youth with them.
“Oh, Dornington is all right. He’d be awfully sick if you called him Dora nowadays. He’s got on a little—not much. He goes in for journalism. He’s at Lymchurch just now; he lives here with me generally.”
“Yes—I know; I saw his name on thedoor.” And Stephen did not wonder till later why she had not mentioned that name earlier in the interview.
“Here, give me paper and pens, the best there is time to procure. Now tell me what to say to Jones. I want to tell him that I loathe his very name; that I know I could never bear the sight of him; and that you are going to look after everything for me.”
He resisted—she pleaded; and at last the letter was written, not quite in those terms, and Stephen at her request reluctantly instructed her as to the method of giving a Power of Attorney.
“You must arrange everything,” she said; “I won’t be bothered. Now I must go. Jones is human, after all. He knew I should want money, and he sent me quite a lot. And I am going away for a holiday—just to see what it feels like to be rich.”
“You’re not going about alone, I hope,” said Stephen. And then, for the first time, he remembered that beautiful young ladies are not allowed to clear away tea-things in the Temple, without a chaperon—even for their solicitors.
“No; Constance Grant is with me. Youdon’t know her. I got to know her at Girton. She’s a dear.”
“Look here,” he said, awkwardly standing behind her as she pinned her hat and veil in front of his glass, “when you come back I’ll come to see you. But you mustn’t come here again; it’s—it’s not customary.” She smiled at his reflection in the glass.
“Oh, I forgot your stiff English notions! So absurd! Not going to see one’s old friendandone’ssolicitor! However, I won’t come where I’m not wanted——”
“You know——” he began reproachfully; but she interrupted.
“Oh yes, it’s all right. Now remember that all my affairs are in your hands, and when I come back you will have to tell me exactly what I am worth—between eight and fourteen hundred thousand pounds, they say; butthat’snonsense, isn’t it? Good-bye.”
And with a last switch of white skirts against the dirty wainscot, and a last wave of a white-gloved hand, she disappeared down the staircase.
Stephen drew a long breath. “It can’t be fourteen hundred thousand,” he said slowly; “but I wish to goodness it wasn’t four-pence.”
II
The tide was low, the long lines of the sandbanks shone yellow in the sun—yellower for the pools of blue water left between them. Far off, where the low white streak marked the edge of the still retreating sea, little figures moved slowly along, pushing the shrimping-nets through the shallow water.
On one of the smooth wave-worn groins a girl sat sketching the village; her pink gown and red Japanese umbrella made a bright spot on the gold of the sand.
Further along the beach, under the end of the grass-grown sea-wall, a young man and woman basked in the August sun. Her sunshade was white, and so were her gown and the hat that lay beside her. Since her accession to fortune Rosamund Rainham had worn nothing but white.
“It is the prettiest wear in the world,” she had told Constance Grant; “and when you’re poor, it’s the most impossible. But now I can have a clean gown every day, and a clean conscience as well.”
“I’m not sure about the conscience,”Constance had answered with her demure smile. “Think of the millions of poor people.”
“Oh, bother!” Miss Rainham had laughed, not heartlessly, but happily. “Thank Heaven, I’ve enough to be happy myself and make heaps of other people happy too. And the first step is that no one’s to know I’m rich, so remember that we are two high-school teachers on a holiday.”
“I loathe play-acting,” Constance had said, but she had submitted, and now she sat sketching, and Rosamund in her white gown watched the seagulls and shrimpers from under the sea-wall of Lymchurch.
“And so your holiday’s over in three days,” she was saying to the young man beside her; “it’s been a good time, hasn’t it?”
He did not answer; he was piling up the pebbles in a heap, and always at a certain point the heap collapsed.
“What are you thinking of? Poems again?”
“I had a verse running in my head,” he said apologetically; “it has nothing to do with anything.”
“Write it down at once,” she said imperiously, and he obediently scribbled in hisnotebook, while she took up the work of building the stone heap—it grew higher under her light fingers.
“Read it!” she said, when the scribbling of the pencil stopped, and he read:
“Now the vexed clouds, wind-driven, spread wings of white,Long leaning wings across the sea and land;The waves creep back, bequeathing to our sightThe treasure-house of their deserted sand;And where the nearer waves curl white and low,Knee-deep in swirling brine the slow-foot shrimpers go.Pale breadth of sand where clamorous gulls conferMarked with broad arrows by their planted feet,White rippled pools where late deep waters were,And ever the white waves marshalled in retreat,And the grey wind in sole supremacyO’er opal and amber cold of darkening sky and sea.”
“Now the vexed clouds, wind-driven, spread wings of white,Long leaning wings across the sea and land;The waves creep back, bequeathing to our sightThe treasure-house of their deserted sand;And where the nearer waves curl white and low,Knee-deep in swirling brine the slow-foot shrimpers go.
Pale breadth of sand where clamorous gulls conferMarked with broad arrows by their planted feet,White rippled pools where late deep waters were,And ever the white waves marshalled in retreat,And the grey wind in sole supremacyO’er opal and amber cold of darkening sky and sea.”
“Opal and amber cold,” she repeated; “it’s not like that now. It’s sapphire and gold and diamonds.”
“Yes,” he said; “but that was how it was last week——”
“Before I came——”
“Yes, before you came;” his tone put a new meaning into her words.
“I’m glad I brought good weather,” she said cheerfully, and the little stone heap rattled itself down under her hand.
“You brought the light of the world,” he said, and caught her hand and held it. There was a silence. A fisherman passing along the sea-wall gave them good-day. “What made you come to Lymchurch?” he said presently, and his hand lay lightly on hers. She hesitated, and looked down at her hand and his.
“I knew you were here,” she said. His eyes met hers. “I always meant to see you again some day. And you knew me at once. That was so nice of you.”
“You have not changed,” he said; “your face has not changed, only you are older, and——”
“I’m twenty-two; you needn’t reproach me with it. Yours is the same to a month.”
He moved on his elbow a little nearer to her.
“Has it ever occurred to you,” he asked, looking out to sea, “that you and I were made for each other?”
“No; never.”
He looked out to sea still, and his face clouded heavily.
“Ah—no—don’t look like that, dear; it never occurred to me—I think I must have always known it somehow, only——”
“Only what?—do you really?—only what?” A silence. Then, “Only what?” he asked again.
“Only I was so afraid it would never occur toyou!”
There was no one on the wide, bare sands save the discreet artist—their faces were very near.
“We shall be very, very poor, I’m afraid,” he said presently.
“I can go on teaching.”
“No”—his voice was decided—“my wife shan’t work—at least not anywhere but in our home. You won’t mind playing at love in a cottage for a bit, will you? I shall get on now I’ve something to work for. Oh, my dear, thank God I’ve enough for the cottage! When will you marry me? We’ve nothing to wait for, no relations to consult, no settlements to draw up. All that’s mine is thine, lassie.”
“And all that’s mine—Oh! Stephen!”
For, with a scattering of shingle, a man dropped from the sea-wall two yards from them.
The situation admitted of no disguise, for Miss Rainham’s head was on Mr Dornington’s shoulder. They sprang up.
“Why, Stephen!” echoed Andrew, “this—this is good of you! You remember Rosamund? We have just found out that——” But Rosamund had turned, and was walking quickly away over the sand.
Stephen filled a pipe and lighted it before he said: “You’ve made good use of your time, old man. I congratulate you.” His tone was cold.
“There is no reason why I should not make good use of my time,” Dornington answered, and his tone had caught the chill of the other’s.
“None whatever. You have secured the prize, and I congratulate you. Whether it’s fair to the girl is another question.”
In moments of agitation a man instinctively feels for his pipe. It was now Dornington’s turn to fill and light.
“Of course it’s your own affair,” said Guillemot, chafing at the silence, “but I think you might have given the heiress a chance. However, it’s each for himself, I suppose, and——”
“Heiress?”
“Yes, the heiress—the Millionairess, if you prefer it. I’ve been looking into her affairs: itisjust about a million.”
“Rather cheap chaff, isn’t it?”
“It’s a very lucky thing for you,” said Stephen savagely. “Perhaps I ought not to grudge it to you. But I must say, Dornington—I see we look at the thing differently—but I must say, I shouldn’t have cared to grab at such luck myself.”
Dornington had thrust his hands into his pockets, and stood looking at his friend.
“I see,” he said slowly. “And her fortune is really so much? I didn’t think it had been so much as that. Yes. Well, Guillemot, it’s no good making a row about it; I don’t want to quarrel with my best friend. Go along to my place, will you? Or stay: come and let me introduce you to Miss Grant, and you can walk up with her; she’ll show you where I live. I’m going for a bit of a walk.”
Five minutes later Stephen, in response to Rosamund’s beckoning hand at the window, was following Miss Grant up the narrow flagged path leading to the cottage which Rosamund had taken. And ten minutes later Andrew Dornington was striding along the road to the station with a Gladstone bag in his hands.
Stephen lunched at the cottage. The girls served the lunch themselves; they had no hired service in the little cottage. Rosamund exerted herself to talk gaily.
As the meal ended, a fair-haired child stood in the door that opened straight from the street into the sitting-room, after the primitive fashion of Lymchurch.
“’E gave me a letter for you,” said the child, and Rosamund took it, giving in exchange some fruit from the pretty disordered table.
“Excuse me,” she said, with the rose in her cheeks because she saw the hand-writing was the hand-writing she had seen in many pencilled verses. She read the letter, frowned, read it again. “Constance, you might get the coffee.”
Constance went out. Then the girl turned on her guest.
“This isyourdoing,” she said with a concentrated fury that brought him to his feet facing her. “Why did you come and meddle! You’ve told him I was rich—the very thing I didn’t mean him to know till—till he couldn’t help himself. You’ve spoilt everything! And now he’s gone—and he’ll never come back. Oh, I hope you will suffer for thissome day. You will, if there’s any justice in the world!”
He looked as though he suffered for it even now, but when he spoke his voice was equable.
“I am extremely sorry,” he said, “but after all, there’s very little harm done. You should have warned me that you meant to play a comedy, and I would have taken any part you assigned me. However, you’ve succeeded. He evidently ‘loves you for yourself alone.’ Write and tell him to come back: he’ll come.”
“How little you know him,” she said, “after all these years! Even I know him better than that. That was why I pretended not to be rich. Directly I knew about the money I made up my mind to find him and try if I could make him care. I know it sounds horrid; I don’t mind, it’s true. And I had done it; and then you came. Oh, I hope I shall never see you again! I will never speak to you again! No, I don’t mean that——” She hid her face in her hands.
“Rosamund, try to forgive me. I didn’t know, I couldn’t know. I will bring him back to you—I swear it! Only trust me.”
“You can’t,” she said; “it’s all over.”
“Let me tell you something. If you hadn’t had this money—but if you hadn’t had this money I should never have seen you. But I have thought of nothing but you ever since that day you came to the Temple. I don’t tell you this to annoy you, only to show you that I would do anything in the world to prevent you from being unhappy. Forgive me, dear! Oh, forgive me!”
“It’s no good,” she said; but she gave him her hand. When Constance Grant came back with the coffee, she found Mr Guillemot alone looking out of the window at the sunflowers and the hollyhocks.
“What is the matter?” she asked.
“I’ve made a fool of myself,” he said, forgetting, as he looked at her kind eyes, that three hours ago she was only a name to him.
“Could I do anything?”
“You’re her friend,” he said. “Miss Grant, I’m going down to the sea, if you could come down with me and let me talk—but I’ve no right to bother you.”
“I’ll come,” said Constance. “I’ll come by-and-by when I’ve cleared lunch away. It’s no bother. As you say, I’m her friend.”
III
Rosamund stayed on at the little house behind the sea-wall, and she wrote letters, long and many, which accumulated on the mantel-piece of the rooms in the Temple. Andrew found them there when he returned to town in the middle of October. The room was cheerless, tenantless, fireless. He lit the gas and looked through his letters. He did not dare to open those which came from her. There were bills, invitation cards, a returned manuscript or two, a cheque for a magazine article, and a letter in Stephen’s hand-writing. It was dated a fortnight earlier.
“Dear old Chap,” it ran, “I’m off to my father’s. I can’t bear it. I can’t face you or any one. I wish to God I’d never told you anything about Rosamund Rainham’s money. There isn’t any money: it was all in the Crystal Oil Co. No one had the least idea that it wasn’t good, but I feel as if I ought to have known. There’s a beggarly hundred or so in consols: that’s the end ofher million. It wasn’t really my fault, of course. She doesn’t blame me.—Yours,“Stephen Guillemot.”
“Dear old Chap,” it ran, “I’m off to my father’s. I can’t bear it. I can’t face you or any one. I wish to God I’d never told you anything about Rosamund Rainham’s money. There isn’t any money: it was all in the Crystal Oil Co. No one had the least idea that it wasn’t good, but I feel as if I ought to have known. There’s a beggarly hundred or so in consols: that’s the end ofher million. It wasn’t really my fault, of course. She doesn’t blame me.—Yours,
“Stephen Guillemot.”
Then he opened her letters—read them all—in the order of the dates on the postmarks, for even in love Andrew was an orderly man—read them with eyes that pricked and smarted. There were four or five of them. First, the frank pleading of affection, then the coldness of hurt pride and love; then, doubts, wonderings. Was he ill? Was he away? Would he not at least answer? Passionate longing, tender anxiety breathed in every word. Then came the last letter of all, written a fortnight ago:
“Dear Andrew,—I want you to understand that all is over between us. I know you wished it, and now I see you are right. I could never have been anything to you but your loving friend,“Rosamund.”
“Dear Andrew,—I want you to understand that all is over between us. I know you wished it, and now I see you are right. I could never have been anything to you but your loving friend,
“Rosamund.”
He read it through twice; it was a greater shock to him than Stephen’s letter had been. Then he understood. The Millionairess might stoop to woo a poor lover whose pride had fought with and conquered his love: thegirl with only a “beggarly hundred in consols” had her pride too.
The early October dusk filled the room. Andrew caught up the bag he had brought with him, slammed the door, and blundered down the stairs. He caught a passing hansom in Fleet Street and the last train to Lymchurch.
A furious south-wester was waiting for him there. He could hardly stand against it—it blew and tore and buffeted him, almost prevailing against him as he staggered down the road from the station. The night was inky black, but he knew his Lymchurch every inch, and he fought it manfully, though every now and then he was fain to cling to a gateway or a post, and hold on till the gust had passed. Thus, breathless and dishevelled, his tie under his left ear, his hat battered in, his hair in crisp disorder, he reached at last the haven of the little porch of the house under the sea-wall.
Rosamund herself opened the door; her eyes showed him two things—her love and her pride. Which would be the stronger? He remembered how the question had been answered in his own case, and he shivered as she took his hand and led him into the warm, lamp-lighted room. The curtains weredrawn; the hearth swept; a tabby cat purred on the rug; a book lay open on the table: all breathed of the sober comfort of home. She sat down on the other side of the hearth and looked at him. Neither spoke. It was an awkward moment.
Rosamund broke the silence.
“It is very friendly of you to come and see me,” she said. “It is very lonely for me now. Constance has gone back to London.”
“She has gone back to her teaching?”
“Yes; I wanted her to stay, but——”
“I’ve heard from Stephen. He is very wretched; he seems to think it is his fault.”
“Poor, dear boy!” She spoke musingly. “Of course it wasn’t his fault. It all seems like a dream, to have been so rich for a little while, and to have done nothing with it except,” she added with a laugh and a glance at her fur-trimmed dress, “to buy a most extravagant number of white dresses. How awfully tired you look, Andrew! Go and have a wash—the spare room’s the first door at the top of the stairs—and I’ll get you some supper.”
When he came down again, she had laid a cloth on the table and was setting out silver and glass.
“Another relic of my brief prosperity,” she said, touching the forks and spoons. “I’m glad I don’t have to eat with nickel-plated things.”
She talked gaily as they ate. The home atmosphere of the room touched Dornington. Rosamund herself, in her white gown, had never appeared so fair and desirable. And but for his own mad pride he might have been here now, sharing her pretty little home life with her—not as her guest, but as her husband. He flushed crimson. Blushing was an old trick of his—one of those that had earned him his feminine nickname of Dora, and in the confusion his blushing brought him, he spoke.
“Rosamund, can you ever forgive me?”
“I forgive you from my heart,” she said, “if I have anything to forgive.”
But in her tone was the resentment of a woman who does not forgive. Yet he had been right. He had sacrificed himself; and if he had chosen to suffer? But what about the blue lines under her dear eyes, the hollows in her dear face?
“You have been unhappy,” he said.
“Well,” she laughed, “I wasn’t exactly pleased to lose my fortune.”
“Dear,” he said desperately, “won’t you try to forgive me? It seemed right. How could I sacrifice you to a penniless——”
“I’d enough for both—or thought I had,” she said obstinately.
“Ah, but don’t you see——”
“I see that you cared more for not being thought mercenary by Stephen than——”
“Forgive me!” he pleaded; “take me back.”
“Oh no”—she tossed her bright head—“Stephen might think me mercenary; I couldn’t bearthat. You see you are richer than I am now. How much did you tell me you made a year by your writing? How can I sacrifice you to a penniless——”
“Rosamund, do you mean it?”
“I do mean it. And, besides——”
“What?”
“I don’t love you any more.” The bright head drooped and turned away.
“I have killed your love. I don’t wonder. Forgive me for bothering you. Good-bye!”
“What are you going to do?” she asked suddenly.
“Oh, don’t be afraid, nothing desperate. Only work hard and try to forgive you.”
“Forgiveme? You have nothing to forgive.”
“No, nothing—if you had left off loving me? Have you? Is it true?”
“Good-bye!” she said. “You are staying at the ‘Ship’?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t let’s part in anger. I shall be on the sea-wall in the morning. Let’s part friends, then.”
In the morning Andrew went into the fresh air. The trees, still gold in calmer homes, stood almost leafless in wild, windy Lymchurch. He stood in the sunlight, and in spite of himself some sort of gladness came to him through the crisp October air. Then thepingof a bicycle bell sounded close behind him, and there was Stephen.
They shook hands, and Stephen’s eyebrows went up.
“Is it all right?” he asked. “I knew you’d come here when I came home last night and found you’d had my letter.”
“No; it’s not all right. She won’t have me.”
“Why?”
“Pride or revenge, or something. Don’t let’s talk about it.”
“All right. I want some breakfast; we left town by the 7.20. I’m starving.”
“Who are ‘we’?”
“Miss Grant and I. I thought Rosamund would be wanting achaperonor a bridesmaid, or something, so I brought her and her bicycle.”
“Always thoughtful,” said Andrew, with something like a laugh.
Presently, strolling along the sea-wall they met the two girls. Rosamund looked radiant. Where was the pale, hollow-eyed darling of last night? The wind that ruffled her brown hair had blown roses into her cheeks.
“Do you forgive me?” whispered Stephen when they met.
“That depends,” she answered.
They all walked on together, and presently Stephen and Constance fell behind.
Then Rosamund spoke.
“You really think I ought to crush my pride, and—and——”
Hope laughed in Andrew’s face—laughed and fled—for he looked in the face of Miss Rainham, and there was no sign of yielding in it.
“Yes,” he said almost sullenly.
“That is as much as to say that you were wrong.”
“I—perhaps I was wrong. What does it matter?”
“It matters greatly. Suppose I had my money now would you run away from me?”
“I—I suppose I should act as I did before.”
“Then you don’t care for me any more than you did?”
“I love you a thousand times more,” he cried, turning angry, haggard eyes to her. “Yes, I believe I was wrong. Nothing would send me from you now but yourself——”
She clapped her hands.
“Then stay,” she said, “for it’s a farce, and my money is as safe as houses.”
He scowled at her.
“It’s all a trick? You’ve played with me? Good-bye, and God forgive you!”
He turned to go, but Constance, coming up from behind them, caught his arm.
“Don’t be such an idiot,” she said. “Shehad nothing to do with it. She thought her money was gone. You don’t supposeshewould have played such a trick even to winyourvaluable affections. You don’t deserve your luck, Mr Dornington.”
Rosamund was looking at him with wet eyes, and her lips trembled.
“Constance only told me this morning,” she said. “She and Stephen planned it, to get you—to make me—to—to——”
“And then she nearly spoilt it all by being as silly as you were. Whatever does it matter which of you has the money?”
“Nothing,” said Rosamund valiantly; “I see that plainly. Don’t you, Andrew?”
“I see nothing but you, Rosamund,” he said, and they turned and walked along the sea-wall, hand in hand, like two children.
“That’s all right,” said Stephen; “but, by Jove, I’ve had enough of playing Providence and managing other people’s affairs.”
“She was very sweet about it,” said Constance, walking on.
“Well she may be; she has her heart’s desire. But it was not easy. What a blessing she is so unbusiness-like! I couldn’t have done it but for you.”
“I am very glad to have been of some service,” said Constance demurely.
“I couldn’t have got on without you. I can’t get on without you ever again.”
“But that’s nonsense,” said Miss Grant.
“You won’t make me, Constance? There’s no confounded money to come betweenus.”
He caught at the hand that swung by her side.
“But you said you lovedher, and that was why——”
“Ah, but that was a thousand years ago. And it was nonsense, even then, Constance.”
And so two others went along the sea-wall in the October sunshine, happily, like children, hand in hand.
Maurice Brent knew a great deal about the Greek anthology, and very little about women. No one but himself had any idea how much he knew of the one, and no one had less idea than himself how little he knew of the other. So that when, a stranger and a pilgrim hopelessly astray amid a smart house-party, he began to fall in love with Camilla, it seemed to be no one’s business to tell him, what everybody else knew, that Camilla had contracted the habit of becoming engaged at least once a year. Of course this always happened in the country, because it was there that Camilla was most bored. No other eligible young man happened to be free at the moment: Camilla never engaged herself to ineligibles. The habit of years is not easily broken: Camilla became engaged to Maurice, and, for thesix months of the engagement, he lived in Paradise. A fool’s Paradise, if you like, but Paradise all the same.
About Easter time Camilla told him, very nicely and kindly, that she had mistaken her own heart—she hoped he would not let it make him very unhappy. She would always wish him the best of good fortune, and doubtless he would find it in the affection of some other girl much nicer and more worthy of him than his sincere friend Camilla. Camilla was right—no one could have been less worthy of him than she: but after all it was Camilla he thought that he loved, Camilla he felt that he wanted, not any other girl at all, no matter how nice or how worthy.
He took it very quietly: sent her a note so cold and unconcerned that Camilla was quite upset, and cried most of the evening, and got up next day with swollen eyelids and a very bad temper. She was not so sure of her power as she had been—and the loss of such a certainty is never pleasant.
He, meanwhile, advertised for a furnished house, and found one—by letter, which seemed to be the very thing he wanted. “Handsomely and conveniently furnished five miles from a railway station—a well-builthouse standing in its own grounds of five acres—garden, orchard pasture, magnificent view.” Being as unversed in the ways of house agents as in those of women, he took it on trust, paid a quarter’s rent, and went down to take possession. He had instructed the local house agent to find a woman who would come in for a few hours daily to “do for him.”
“I’ll have no silly women living in the house,” said he.
It was on an inclement June evening that the station fly set him down in front of his new house. The drive had been long and dreary, and seemed to Maurice more like seventy miles than seven. Now he let down the carriage window and thrust his head into the rain to see his new house. It was a stucco villa, with iron railings in the worst possible taste. It had an air at once new and worn out; no one seemed ever to have lived in it, and yet everything about it was broken and shabby. The door stuck a little at first with the damp, and when at last it opened and Maurice went over his house, he found it furnished mainly with oil-cloth and three-legged tables, and photographs in Oxford frames—like a seaside lodging-house. Thehouse was clean, however, and the woman in attendance was clean, but the atmosphere of the place was that of a vault. He looked out through the streaming panes at the magnificent view so dwelt upon in the house agents’ letters. The house stood almost at the edge of a disused chalk quarry; far below stretched a flat plain, dotted here and there with limekilns and smoky, tall chimneys. The five acres looked very bare and thistly, and the rain was dripping heavily from a shivering, half-dead cypress on to a draggled, long-haired grass plot. Mr Brent shivered too, and ordered a fire.
When the woman had gone, he sat long by the fire in one of those cane and wood chairs that fold up—who wants a chair to fold up?—so common in lodging-houses. Unless you sit quite straight in these chairs you tumble out of them. He gazed at the fire, and thought, and dreamed. His dreams were, naturally, of Camilla; his thoughts were of his work.
“I’ve taken the house for three years,” said he. “Well, one place is as good as another to be wretched in. But one room I must furnish—for you can’t work on oil-cloth.”
So next day he walked to Rochester and bought some old bureaux, and chairs, and book-cases, a few Persian rugs and some brass things, unpacked his books and settled down to the hermit’s life to which he had vowed himself. The woman came every morning from her cottage a mile away, and left at noon. He got his meals himself—always chops, or steaks, or eggs—and presently began to grow accustomed to the place. When the sun shone it was not so bad. He could make no way against the thorns and thistles on his five acres, and they quickly grew into a very wilderness. But a wilderness is pleasant to wander in; and a few flowers had survived long neglect, and here and there put out red, or white, or yellow buds. And he worked away at his book about Greek poetry.
He almost believed that he was contented; he had never cared for people so much as for books, and now he saw no people, and his books began to crowd his shelves. No one passed by “The Yews”—so called, he imagined, in extravagant compliment to the decaying cypress—for it stood by a grass-grown by-way that had once connected two main roads, each a couple of miles distant.These were now joined by a better road down in the valley, and no one came past Maurice’s window save the milk, the bread, the butcher, and the postman.
Summer turned brown and dry and became autumn, autumn turned wet and chilly and grew into winter, and all the winds of heaven blew cold and damp through the cracks of the ill-built house.
Maurice was glad when the spring came; he had taken the house for three years, and he was a careful man, and also, in his way, a determined. Yet it was good to look out once more on something green, and to see sunshine and a warm sky; it was near Easter now. In all these ten months nothing whatever had happened to him. He had never been beyond his five acres—and no one had been to see him. He had no relations, and friends soon forget; besides, after all, friends, unlike relations, cannot go where they are not invited.
It was on the Saturday before Easter that the quarryside fell in. Maurice was working in his study when he heard a sudden crack and a slow, splitting sound, and then a long, loud, rumbling noise, like thunder, that echoed and re-echoed from the hills on each side.And, looking from his window, he saw the cloud of white dust rise high above the edge of the old quarry, and seem to drift off to join the cotton-wool clouds in the blue sky.
“I suppose it’s all safe enough here,” he said, and went back to his manuscripts. But he could not work. At last something had happened; he found himself shaken and excited. He laid down the pen. “I wonder if any one was hurt?” he said; “the road runs just below, of course. I wonder whether there’ll be any more of it—I wonder?” A wire jerked, the cracked bell sounded harshly through the silence of the house. He sprang to his feet. “Who on earth——” he said. “The house isn’t safe after all, perhaps, and they’ve come to tell me.”
As he went along the worn oil-cloth of the hall he saw through the comfortless white-spotted glass of his front door the outline of a woman’s hat.
He opened the door—it stuck as usual—but he got it open. There stood a girl holding a bicycle.
“Oh!” she said, without looking at him, “I’m so sorry to trouble you—my bicycle’s run down—and I’m afraid it’s a puncture, and could you let me have some water, tofind the hole—and if I might sit down a minute.”
Her voice grew lower and lower.
He opened the door wide and put out his hand for the bicycle. She took two steps past him, rather unsteadily, and sat down on the stairs—there were no chairs: the furniture of the hall was all oil-cloth and hat pegs.
He saw now that she was very pale; her face looked greenish behind her veil’s white meshes.
He propped the machine against the door, as she leaned her head back against the ugly marbled paper of the staircase wall.
“I’m afraid you’re ill,” he said gently. But the girl made no answer. Her head slipped along the varnished wall and rested on the stair two steps above where she sat. Her hat was crooked and twisted; even a student of Greek could see that she had fainted.
“Oh Lord!” said he.
He got her hat and veil off—he never knew how, and he wondered afterwards at his own cleverness, for there were many pins, long and short; he fetched the cushion from his armchair and put it under her head; he took off her gloves and rubbed her hands and herforehead with vinegar, but her complexion remained green, and she lay, all in a heap, at the foot of his staircase.
Then he remembered that fainting people should be laid flat and not allowed to lie about in heaps at the foot of stairs, so he very gently and gingerly picked the girl up in his arms and carried her into his sitting-room. Here he laid her on the ground—he had no sofa—and sat beside her on the floor, patiently fanning her with a copy of theAthenæum, and watching the pinched, pallid face for some sign of returning life. It came at last, in a flutter of the eyelids, a long-drawn, gasping breath. The Greek scholar rushed for whisky—brandy he esteemed as a mere adjunct of channel boats—lifted her head and held the glass to her lips. The blood had come back to her face in a rush of carnation; she drank—choked—drank—he laid her head down and her eyes opened. They were large, clear grey eyes—very bewildered-looking just now—but they and the clear red tint in cheeks and lips transformed the face.
“Good gracious,” said he, “she’s pretty! Pretty? she’s beautiful!”
She was. That such beauty should so easily have hidden itself behind a green-tinted mask,with sunken eyelid, seemed a miracle to the ingenuous bookworm.
“You’re better now,” said he with feverish banality. “Give me your hands—so—now can—yes, that’s right—here, this chair is the only comfortable one——”
She sank into the chair, and waved away the more whisky which he eagerly proffered. He stood looking at her with respectful solicitude.
After a few moments she stretched her arms like a sleepy child, yawned, and then suddenly broke into laughter. It had a strange sound. No one had laughed in that house since the wet night when Mr Brent took possession of it, and he had never been able to bring himself to believe that any one had ever laughed there before.
Then he remembered having heard that women have hysterical fits as well as fainting fits, and he said eagerly: “Oh don’t! It’s all right—you were faint—the heat or something——”
“Did I faint?” she asked with interest. “I never fainted before. But—oh—yes—I remember. It was rather horrible. The quarry tumbled down almost on me, and I just stopped short—in time—and I cameround by this road because the other’s stopped up, and I was so glad when I saw the house. Thank you so much; it must have been an awful bother. I think I had better start soon——”
“No, you don’t; you’re not fit to ride alone yet,” said he to himself. Aloud he said: “You said something about a puncture—when you are better I’ll mend it. And, look here—have you had any lunch?”
“No,” said she.
“Then—if you’ll allow me.” He left the room, and presently returned with the tray set for his own lunch; then he fetched from the larder everything he could lay hands on: half a cold chicken, some cold meat pudding, a pot of jam, bottled beer. He set these confusedly on the table. “Now,” he said, “come and try to eat.”
“It’s very good of you to bother,” she said, a little surprise in her tone, for she had expected “lunch” to be a set formal meal at which some discreet female relative would preside. “But aren’t you—don’t you—do you live alone, then?”
“Yes, a woman comes in in the mornings. I’m sorry she’s gone: she could have arranged a better lunch for you.”
“Better? why, it’s lovely!” said she, accepting the situation with frank amusement, and she gave a touch or two to the table to set everything in its place.
Then they lunched together. He would have served her standing, as one serves a queen—but she laughed again, and he took the place opposite her. During lunch they talked.
After lunch they mended the punctured tyre, and talked all the while; then it was past three o’clock.
“You won’t go yet,” he said then, daring greatly for what seemed to him a great stake. “Let me make you some tea—I can, I assure you—and let us see if the tyre holds up——”
“Oh, the tyre is all right, thanks to your cleverness——”
“Well, then,” said he desperately, “take pity on a poor hermit! I give you my word, I have been here ten months and three days, and I have not in that time spoken a single word to any human being except my bedmaker.”
“But if you want to talk to people why did you begin being a hermit?”
“I thought I didn’t, then.”
“Well—now you know better, why don’t you come back and talk to people in the ordinary way?”
This was the first and last sign she gave that the circumstances in which she found herself with him were anything but ordinary.
“I have a book to finish,” said he. “Would you like to have tea in the wilderness or in here?” He wisely took her consent for granted this time, and his wisdom was justified.
They had tea in the garden. The wilderness blossomed like a rose, to Maurice’s thinking. In his mind he was saying over and over again: “How bored I must have been all this time! How bored I must have been!”
It seemed to him that his mind was opening, like a flower, and for the first time. He had never talked so well, and he knew it—all the seeds of thought, sown in those long, lonely hours, bore fruit now. She listened, she replied, she argued and debated.
“Beautiful—and sensible,” said Maurice to himself. “What a wonderful woman!” There was, besides, an alertness of mind, a quick brightness of manner that charmed him. Camilla had been languid and dreamy.
Suddenly she rose to her feet.
“I must go,” she said, “but I have enjoyed myself so much. You are an ideal host: thank you a thousand times. Perhaps we shall meet again some day, if you return to the world. Do you know, we’ve been talking and wrangling for hours and hours and never even thought of wondering what each other’s names are—I think we’ve paid each other a very magnificent compliment, don’t you?”
He smiled and said: “My name is Maurice Brent.”
“Mine is Diana Redmayne. If it sounds like somebody in theFamily Herald, I can’t help it.” He had wheeled the bicycle into the road, and she had put on hat and gloves and stood ready to mount before she said: “If you come back to the world I shall almost certainly meet you. We seem to know the same people; I’ve heard your name many times.”
“From whom?” said he.
“Among others,” said she, with her foot on the pedal, “from my cousin Camilla. Good-bye.”
And he was left to stare down the road after the swift flying figure.
Then he went back into the lonely littlehouse, and about half-past twelve that night he realised that he had done no work that day, and that those hours which had not been spent talking to Diana Redmayne, had been spent in thinking about her.
“It’s not because she’s pretty and clever,” he said; “and it’s not even because she’s a woman. It’s because she’s the only intelligent human being I’ve spoken to for nearly a year.”
So day after day he went on thinking about her.
It was three weeks later that the bell again creaked and jangled, and again through the spotted glass he saw a woman’s hat. To his infinite disgust and surprise, his heart began to beat violently.
“I grow nervous, living all alone,” he said. “Confound this door! how it does stick—I must have it planed.”
He got the door opened, and found himself face to face with—Camilla.
He stepped back, and bowed gravely.
She looked more beautiful than ever—and he looked at her, and wondered how he could ever have thought her even passably pretty.
“Won’t you ask me in?” she said timidly.
“No,” said he, “I am all alone.”
“I know,” she said. “I have only just heard you’re living here all alone, and I came to say—Maurice—I’m sorry. I didn’t know you cared so much, or——”
“Don’t,” he said, stopping the confession as a good batsman stops a cricket ball. “Believe me, I’ve not made myself a hermit because of—all that. I had a book to write—that was all. And—and it’s very kind of you to come and look me up, and I wish I could ask you to come in, but—— And it’s nice of you to take an interest in an old friend—you said you would, didn’t you, in the letter—and—I’ve taken the advice you gave me.”
“You mean you’ve fallen in love with some one else.”
“You remember what you said in your letter.”
“Some one nicer and worthier, I said,” returned Camilla blankly, “but I never thought—— And is she?”
“Of course she seems so to me,” said he, smiling at her to express friendly feeling.
“Then—good-bye—I wish you the best of good fortune.”
“You said that in your letter, too,” said he. “Good-bye.”
“Who is she?”
“I mustn’t tell even you that, until I have told her,” he smiled again.
“Then good-bye,” said Camilla shortly; “forgive me for troubling you so unnecessarily.”
He found himself standing by his door—and Camilla on her bicycle sped down the road, choking with tears of anger and mortification and deep disappointment. Because she knew now that she loved him as much as it was in her to love any one, and because she, who had humbled so many, had now at last humbled herself—and to no purpose.
Maurice Brent left his door open and wandered down across his five acres, filled with amazement. Camilla herself had not been more deeply astonished at the words he had spoken than he had been. A moment before he had not even thought that he was in love, much less contemplated any confession of it: and now seemingly without his will he stood committed to this statement. Was it true, or had he only said it to defend himself against those advances of hers in which he merely saw a new trap? He had said it in defence—yes—but it was true, for all that; this was the wonderful part of it. And sohe walked in the wilderness, lost in wonder; and as he walked he noted the bicycles that passed his door—along his unfrequented road, by ones and twos and threes—for this was a Saturday, and the lower road was still lying cold and hidden under its load of chalk, and none might pass that way. This road was hot and dusty, and folk went along it continually. He strolled to his ugly iron gate and looked over, idly. Perhaps, some day, she would come that way again—she would surely stop—especially if he were at the gate—and perhaps stay and talk a little. As if in mocking answer to the new-born thought came a flash of blue along the road; Diana Redmayne rode by at full speed—bowed coldly—and then at ten yards’ distance turned and waved a white-gloved hand, with a charming smile. Maurice swore softly, and went indoors to think.