"That," he said, and a certain pride had come into his voice, "is Lady Guinevere, and those ribbons are the prizes she has taken on both sides of the water."
"Isn't she a dear!" exclaimed Honora; "why, she's actually beautiful. I didn't know cows could be so beautiful."
"She isn't bad," admitted Joshua. "Of course the good points in a cow aren't necessarily features of beauty for instance, these bones here," he added, pointing to the hips.
"But they seem to add, somehow, to the thoroughbred appearance," Honora declared.
"That's absolutely true," replied Joshua,—whereupon he began to talk.And Honora, still asking questions, followed him from stall to stall."There are some more in the pasture," he said, when they had reached theend of the second building.
"Oh, couldn't I see them?" she asked.
"Surely," replied Joshua, with more of alacrity than one would have believed him capable. "I'll tell Susan to drive on, and you and I will walk home across the fields, if you like."
"I should love to," said Honora.
It was not without astonishment that the rest of the Holt family beheld them returning together as the gongs were sounding for luncheon. Mrs. Holt, upon perceiving them, began at once to shake her head and laugh.
"My dear, it can't be that you have captivated Joshua!" she exclaimed, in a tone that implied the carrying of a stronghold hitherto thought impregnable.
Honora blushed, whether from victory or embarrassment, or both, it is impossible to say.
"I'm afraid it's just the other way, Mrs. Holt," she replied; "Mr. Holt has captivated me."
"We'll call it mutual, Miss Leffingwell," declared Joshua, which was for him the height of gallantry.
"I only hope he hasn't bored you," said the good-natured Mrs. Joshua.
"Oh, dear, no," exclaimed Honora. "I don't see bow any one could be bored looking at such magnificent animals as that Hardicanute."
It was at this moment that her eyes were drawn, by a seemingly resistless attraction, to Mrs. Robert's face. Her comment upon this latest conquest, though unexpressed, was disquieting. And in spite of herself, Honora blushed again.
At luncheon, in the midst of a general conversation, Mr. Spence made a remark sotto voce which should, in the ordinary course of events, have remained a secret.
"Susan," he said, "your friend Miss Leffingwell is a fascinator. She's got Robert's scalp, too, and he thought it a pretty good joke because I offered to teach her to play golf this afternoon."
It appeared that Susan's eyes could flash indignantly. Perhaps she resented Mr. Spence's calling her by her first name.
"Honora Leffingwell is the most natural and unspoiled person I know," she said.
There is, undoubtedly, a keen pleasure and an ample reward in teaching a pupil as apt and as eager to learn as Honora. And Mr. Spence, if he attempted at all to account for the swiftness with which the hours of that long afternoon slipped away, may have attributed their flight to the discovery in himself of hitherto latent talent for instruction. At the little Casino, he had bought, from the professional in charge of the course, a lady's driver; and she practised with exemplary patience the art of carrying one's hands through and of using the wrists in the stroke.
"Not quite, Miss Leffingwell," he would say, "but so."
Honora would try again.
"That's unusually good for a beginner, but you are inclined to chop it off a little still. Let it swing all the way round."
"Oh, dear, how you must hate me!"
"Hate you?" said Mr. Spence, searching in vain for words with which to obliterate such a false impression. "Anything but that!"
"Isn't it a wonderful, spot?" she exclaimed, gazing off down the swale, emerald green in the afternoon light between its forest walls. In the distance, Silver Brook was gleaming amidst the meadows. They sat down on one of the benches and watched the groups of players pass. Mr. Spence produced his cigarette case, and presented it to her playfully.
"A little quiet whiff," he suggested. "There's not much chance over at the convent," and she gathered that it was thus he was pleased to designate Silverdale.
In one instant she was doubtful whether or not to be angry, and in the next grew ashamed of the provincialism which had caused her to suspect an insult. She took a cigarette, and he produced a gold match case, lighted a match, and held it up for her. Honora blew it out.
"You didn't think seriously that I smoked?" she asked, glancing at him.
"Why not?" he asked; "any number of girls do."
She tore away some of the rice paper and lifted the tobacco to her nose, and made a little grimace.
"Do you like to see women smoke?" she asked.
Mr. Spence admitted that there was something cosey about the custom, when it was well done.
"And I imagine," he added, "that you'd do it well."
"I'm sure I should make a frightful mess of it," she protested modestly.
"You do everything well," he said.
"Even golf?" she inquired mischievously.
"Even golf, for a beginner and—and a woman; you've got the swing in an astonishingly short time. In fact, you've been something of an eye-opener to me," he declared. "If I had been betting, I should have placed the odds about twenty to one against your coming from the West."
This Eastern complacency, although it did not lower Mr. Spence in her estimation, aroused Honora's pride.
"That shows how little New Yorkers know of the West," she replied, laughing. "Didn't you suppose there were any gentlewomen there?"
"Gentlewomen," repeated Mr. Spence, as though puzzled by the word, "gentlewomen, yes. But you might have been born anywhere."
Even her sense of loyalty to her native place was not strong enough to override this compliment.
"I like a girl with some dash and go to her," he proclaimed, and there could be no doubt about the one to whom he was attributing these qualities. "Savoir faire, as the French call it, and all that. I don't know much about that language, but the way you talk it makes Mrs. Holt's French and Susan's sound silly. I watched you last night when you were stringing the Vicomte."
"Oh, did you?" said Honora, demurely.
"You may have thought I was talking to Mrs. Robert," he said.
"I wasn't thinking anything about you," replied Honora, indignantly. "And besides, I wasn't I stringing' the Vicomte. In the West we don't use anything like so much slang as you seem to use in New York."
"Oh, come now!" he exclaimed, laughingly, and apparently not the least out of countenance, "you made him think he was the only pebble on the beach. I have no idea what you were talking about."
"Literature," she said. "Perhaps that was the reason why you couldn't understand it."
"He may be interested in literature," replied Mr. Spence, "but it wouldn't be a bad guess to say that he was more interested in stocks and bonds."
"He doesn't talk about them, at any rate," said Honora.
"I'd respect him more if he did," he announced. "I know those fellows-they make love to every woman they meet. I saw him eying you at lunch."
Honora laughed.
"I imagine the Vicomte could make love charmingly," she said.
Mr. Spence suddenly became very solemn.
"Merely as a fellow-countryman, Miss Leffingwell—" he began, when she sprang to her feet, her eyes dancing, and finished the sentence.
"You would advise me to be on my guard against him, because, although I look twenty-five and experienced, I am only nineteen and inexperienced. Thank you."
He paused to light another cigarette before he followed her across the turf. But she had the incomprehensible feminine satisfaction of knowing, as they walked homeward, that the usual serenity of his disposition was slightly ruffled.
A sudden caprice impelled her, in the privacy of her bedroom that evening, to draw his portrait for Peter Erwin. The complacency of New York men was most amusing, she wrote, and the amount of slang they used would have been deemed vulgar in St. Louis. Nevertheless, she liked people to be sure of themselves, and there was something "insolent" about New York which appealed to her. Peter, when he read that letter, seemed to see Mr. Howard Spence in the flesh; or arrayed, rather, in the kind of cloth alluringly draped in the show-windows of fashionable tailors. For Honora, all unconsciously, wrote literature. Literature was invented before phonographs, and will endure after them. Peter could hear Mr. Spence talk, for a part of that gentleman's conversation—a characteristic part—was faithfully transcribed. And Peter detected a strain of admiration running even through the ridicule.
Peter showed that letter to Aunt Mary, whom it troubled, and to Uncle Tom, who laughed over it. There was also a lifelike portrait of the Vicomte, followed by the comment that he was charming, but very French; but the meaning of this last, but quite obvious, attribute remained obscure. He was possessed of one of the oldest titles and one of the oldest chateaux in France. (Although she did not say so, Honora had this on no less authority than that of the Vicomte himself.) Mrs. Holt—with her Victorian brooch and ear-rings and her watchful delft-blue eyes that somehow haunted one even when she was out of sight, with her ample bosom and the really kind heart it contained—was likewise depicted; and Mr. Holt, with his dried bread, and his garden which Honora wished Uncle Tom could see, and his prayers that lacked imagination. Joshua and his cows, Robert and his forest, Susan and her charities, the Institution, jolly Mrs. Joshua and enigmatical Mrs. Robert—all were there: and even a picture of the dinner-party that evening, when Honora sat next to a young Mr. Patterson with glasses and a studious manner, who knew George Hanbury at Harvard. The other guests were a florid Miss Chamberlin, whose person loudly proclaimed possessions, and a thin Miss Longman, who rented one of the Silverdale cottages and sketched.
Honora was seeing life. She sent her love to Peter, and begged him to write to her.
The next morning a mysterious change seemed to have passed over the members of the family during the night. It was Sunday. Honora, when she left her room, heard a swishing on the stairs—Mrs. Joshua, stiffly arrayed for the day. Even Mrs. Robert swished, but Mrs. Holt, in a bronze-coloured silk, swished most of all as she entered the library after a brief errand to the housekeeper's room. Mr. Holt was already arranging his book-marks in the Bible, while Joshua and Robert, in black cutaways that seemed to have the benumbing and paralyzing effect of strait-jackets, wandered aimlessly about the room, as though its walls were the limit of their movements. The children had a subdued and touch-me-not air that reminded Honora of her own youth.
It was not until prayers were over and the solemn gathering seated at the breakfast table that Mr. Spence burst upon it like an aurora. His flannel suit was of the lightest of grays; he wore white tennis shoes and a red tie, and it was plain, as he cheerfully bade them good morning, that he was wholly unaware of the enormity of his costume. There was a choking, breathless moment before Mrs. Holt broke the silence.
"Surely, Howard," she said, "you're not going to church in those clothes."
"I hadn't thought of going to church," replied Mr. Spence, helping himself to cherries.
"What do you intend to do?" asked his hostess.
"Read the stock reports for the week as soon as the newspapers arrive."
"There is no such thing as a Sunday newspaper in my house," said Mrs.Holt.
"No Sunday newspapers!" he exclaimed. And his eyes, as they encounteredHonora's,—who sought to avoid them,—expressed a genuine dismay.
"I am afraid," said Mrs. Holt, "that I was right when I spoke of the pernicious effect of Wall Street upon young men. Your mother did not approve of Sunday newspapers."
During the rest of the meal, although he made a valiant attempt to hold his own, Mr. Spence was, so to speak, outlawed. Robert and Joshua must have had a secret sympathy for him. One of them mentioned the Vicomte.
"The Vicomte is a foreigner," declared Mrs. Holt. "I am in no sense responsible for him."
The Vicomte was at that moment propped up in bed, complaining to his valet about the weakness of the coffee. He made the remark (which he afterwards repeated to Honora) that weak coffee and the Protestant religion seemed inseparable; but he did not attempt to discover the whereabouts, in Sutton, of the Church of his fathers. He was not in the best of humours that morning, and his toilet had advanced no further when, an hour or so later, he perceived from behind his lace curtains Mr. Howard Spence, dressed with comparative soberness, handing Honora into the omnibus. The incident did not serve to improve the cynical mood in which the Vicomte found himself.
Indeed, the Vicomte, who had a theory concerning Mr. Spence's church-going, was not far from wrong. As may have been suspected, it was to Honora that credit was due. It was Honora whom Mr. Spence sought after breakfast, and to whom he declared that her presence alone prevented him from leaving that afternoon. It was Honora who told him that he ought to be ashamed of himself. And it was to Honora, after church was over and they were walking homeward together along the dusty road, that Mr. Spence remarked by way of a delicate compliment that "the morning had not been a total loss, after all!"
The little Presbyterian church stood on a hillside just outside of the village and was, as far as possible, the possession of the Holt family. The morning sunshine illuminated the angels in the Holt memorial window, and the inmates of the Holt Institution occupied all the back pews. Mrs. Joshua played the organ, and Susan, with several young women and a young man with a long coat and plastered hair, sang in the choir. The sermon of the elderly minister had to do with beliefs rather than deeds, and was the subject of discussion at luncheon.
"It is very like a sermon I found in my room," said Honora.
"I left that book in your room, my dear, in the hope that you would not overlook it," said Mrs. Holt, approvingly. "Joshua, I wish you would read that sermon aloud to us."
"Oh, do, Mr. Holt!" begged Honora.
The Vicomte, who had been acting very strangely during the meal, showed unmistakable signs of a futile anger. He had asked Honora to walk with him.
"Of course," added Mrs. Holt, "no one need listen who doesn't wish to. Since you were good enough to reconsider your decision and attend divine service, Howard, I suppose I should be satisfied."
The reading took place in the library. Through the open window Honora perceived the form of Joshua asleep in the hammock, his Sunday coat all twisted under him. It worried her to picture his attire when he should wake up. Once Mrs. Robert looked in, smiled, said nothing, and went out again. At length, in a wicker chair under a distant tree on the lawn, Honora beheld the dejected outline of the Vicomte. He was trying to read, but every once in a while would lay down his book and gaze protractedly at the house, stroking his mustache. The low song of the bees around the shrubbery vied with Mr. Holt's slow reading. On the whole, the situation delighted Honora, who bit her lip to refrain from smiling at M. de Toqueville. When at last she emerged from the library, he rose precipitately and came towards her across the lawn, lifting his hands towards the pitiless puritan skies.
"Enfin!" he exclaimed tragically. "Ah, Mademoiselle, never in my life have I passed such a day!"
"Are you ill, Vicomte?" she asked.
"Ill! Were it not for you, I would be gone. You alone sustain me—it is for the pleasure of seeing you that I suffer. What kind of a menage is this, then, where I am walked around Institutions, where I am forced to listen to the exposition of doctrines, where the coffee is weak, where Sunday, which the bon Dieu set aside for a jour de fete resembles to a day in purgatory?"
"But, Vicomte," Honora laughed, "you must remember that you are inAmerica, and that you have come here to study our manners and customs."
"Ah, no," he cried, "ah, no, it cannot all be like this! I will not believe it. Mr. Holt, who sought to entertain me before luncheon, offered to show me his collection of Chinese carvings! I, who might be at Trouville or Cabourg! If it were not for you, Mademoiselle, I should not stay here—not one little minute," he said, with a slow intensity. "Behold what I suffer for your sake!"
"For my sake?" echoed Honora.
"For what else?" demanded the Vicomte, gazing upon her with the eyes of martyrdom. "It is not for my health, alas! Between the coffee and this dimanche I have the vertigo."
Honora laughed again at the memory of the dizzy Sunday afternoons of her childhood, when she had been taken to see Mr. Isham's curios.
"You are cruel," said the Vicomte; "you laugh at my tortures."
"On the contrary, I think I understand them," she replied. "I have often felt the same way."
"My instinct was true, then," he cried triumphantly; "the first time my eyes fell on you, I said to myself, 'ah! there is one who understands.' And I am seldom mistaken."
"Your experience with the opposite sex," ventured Honora, "must have made you infallible."
He shrugged and smiled, as one whose modesty forbade the mention of conquests.
"You do not belong here either, Mademoiselle," he said. "You are not like these people. You have temperament, and a future—believe me. Why do you waste your time?"
"What do you mean, Vicomte?"
"Ah, it is not necessary to explain what I mean. It is that you do not choose to understand—you are far too clever. Why is it, then, that you bore yourself by regarding Institutions and listening to sermons in your jeunesse? It is all very well for Mademoiselle Susan, but you are not created for a religieuse. And again, it pleases you to spend hours with the stockbroker, who is as lacking in esprit as the bull of Joshua. He is no companion for you."
"I am afraid," she said reprovingly, "that you do not understand Mr.Spence."
"Par exemple!" cried the Vicomte; "have I not seen hundreds' like him? Do not they come to Paris and live in the great hotels and demand cocktails and read the stock reports and send cablegrams all the day long? and go to the Folies Bergeres, and yawn? Nom de nom, of what does his conversation consist? Of the price of railroads;—is it not so? I, who speak to you, have talked to him. Does he know how to make love?"
"That accomplishment is not thought of very highly in America," Honora replied.
"It is because you are a new country," he declared.
"And you are mad over money. Money has taken the place of love."
"Is money so despised in France?" she asked. "I have heard—that you married for it!"
"Touch!" cried the Vicomte, laughing. "You see, I am frank with you. We marry for money, yes, but we do not make a god of it. It is our servant. You make it, and we enjoy it. Yes, and you, Mademoiselle—you, too, were made to enjoy. You do not belong here," he said, with a disdainful sweep of the arm. "Ah, I have solved you. You have in you the germ of the Riviera. You were born there."
Honora wondered if what he said were true. Was she different? She was having a great deal of pleasure at Silverdale; even the sermon reading, which would have bored her at home, had interested and amused her. But was it not from the novelty of these episodes, rather than from their special characters, that she received the stimulus? She glanced curiously towards the Vicomte, and met his eye.
They had been walking the while, and had crossed the lawn and entered one of the many paths which it had been Robert's pastime to cut through the woods. And at length they came out at a rustic summer-house set over the wooded valley. Honora, with one foot on the ground, sat on the railing gazing over the tree-tops; the Vicomte was on the bench beside her. His eyes sparkled and snapped, and suddenly she tingled with a sense that the situation was not without an element of danger.
"I had a feeling about you, last night at dinner," he said; "you reminded me of a line of Marcel Prevost, 'Cette femme ne sera pas aimee que parmi des drames.'"
"Nonsense," said Honora; "last night at dinner you were too much occupied with Miss Chamberlin to think of me."
"Ah, Mademoiselle, you have read me strangely if you think that. I talked to her with my lips, yes—but it was of you I was thinking. I was thinking that you were born to play a part in many dramas, that you have the fatal beauty which is rare in all ages." The Vicomte bent towards her, and his voice became caressing. "You cannot realize how beautiful you are," he sighed.
Suddenly he seized her hand, and before she could withdraw it she had the satisfaction of knowing the sensation of having it kissed. It was a strange sensation indeed. And the fact that she did not tingle with anger alone made her all the more angry. Trembling, her face burning, she leaped down from the railing and fled into the path. And there, seeing that he did not follow, she turned and faced him. He stood staring at her with eyes that had not ceased to sparkle.
"How cowardly of you!" she cried.
"Ah, Mademoiselle," he answered fervently, "I would risk your anger a thousand times to see you like that once more. I cannot help my feelings—they were dead indeed if they did not respond to such an inspiration. Let them plead for my pardon."
Honora felt herself melting a little. After all, there might have been some excuse for it, and he made love divinely. When he had caught up with her, his contriteness was such that she was willing to believe he had not meant to insult her. And then, he was a Frenchman. As a proof of his versatility, if not of his good faith, he talked of neutral matters on the way back to the house, with the charming ease and lightness that was the gift of his race and class. On the borders of the wood they encountered the Robert Holts, walking with their children.
"Madame," said the Vicomte to Gwendolen, "your Silverdale is enchanting.We have been to that little summer-house which commands the valley."
"And are you still learning things about our country, Vicomte?" she asked, with a glance at Honora.
If it were not a digression, it might be interesting to speculate upon the reason why, in view of their expressed opinions of Silverdale, both the Vicomte and Mr. Spence remained during the week that followed. Robert, who went off in the middle of it with his family to the seashore, described it to Honora as a normal week. During its progress there came and went a missionary from China, a pianist, an English lady who had heard of the Institution, a Southern spinster with literary gifts, a youthful architect who had not built anything, and a young lawyer interested in settlement work.
The missionary presented our heroine with a book he had written about the Yang-tse-kiang; the Southern lady suspected her of literary gifts; the architect walked with her through the woods to the rustic shelter where the Vicomte had kissed her hand, and told her that he now comprehended the feelings of Christopher Wren when he conceived St. Paul's Cathedral, of Michael Angelo when he painted the Sistine Chapel. Even the serious young lawyer succumbed, though not without a struggle. When he had first seen Miss Leffingwell, he confessed, he had thought her frivolous. He had done her an injustice, and wished to acknowledge it before he left. And, since she was interested in settlement work, he hoped, if she were going through New York, that she would let him know. It would be a real pleasure to show her what he was doing.
Best of all, Honora, by her unselfishness, endeared herself to her hostess.
"I can't tell you what a real help you are to me, my dear," said that lady. "You have a remarkable gift with people for so young a girl, and I do you the credit of thinking that it all springs from a kind heart."
In the meantime, unknown to Mrs. Holt, who might in all conscience have had a knowledge of what may be called social chemistry, a drama was slowly unfolding itself. By no fault of Honora's, of course. There may have been some truth in the quotation of the Vicomte as applied to her —that she was destined to be loved only amidst the play of drama. If experience is worth anything, Monsieur de Toqueville should have been an expert in matters of the sex. Could it be possible, Honora asked herself more than once, that his feelings were deeper than her feminine instinct and, the knowledge she had gleaned from novels led her to suspect?
It is painful to relate that the irregularity and deceit of the life the Vicomte was leading amused her, for existence at Silverdale was plainly not of a kind to make a gentleman of the Vicomte's temperament and habits ecstatically happy. And Honora was filled with a strange and unaccountable delight when she overheard him assuring Mrs. Wellfleet, the English lady of eleemosynary tendencies, that he was engaged in a study at first hand of Americans.
The time has come to acknowledge frankly that it was Honora he was studying—Honora as the type of young American womanhood. What he did not suspect was that young American womanhood was studying him. Thanks to a national System, she had had an apprenticeship; the heart-blood of Algernon Cartwright and many others had not been shed in vain. And the fact that she was playing with real fire, that this was a duel with the buttons off, lent a piquancy and zest to the pastime which it had hitherto lacked.
The Vicomte's feelings were by no means hidden processes to Honora, and it was as though she could lift the lid of the furnace at any time and behold the growth of the flame which she had lighted. Nay, nature had endowed her with such a gift that she could read the daily temperature as by a register hung on the outside, without getting scorched. Nor had there been any design on her part in thus tormenting his soul. He had not meant to remain more than four days at Silverdale, that she knew; he had not meant to come to America and fall in love with a penniless beauty—that she knew also. The climax would be interesting, if perchance uncomfortable.
It is wonderful what we can find the time to do, if we only try. Monsieur de Toqueville lent Honora novels, which she read in bed; but being in the full bloom of health and of a strong constitution, this practice did not prevent her from rising at seven to take a walk through the garden with Mr. Holt—a custom which he had come insensibly to depend upon. And in the brief conversations which she vouchsafed the Vicomte, they discussed his novels. In vain he pleaded, in caressing undertones, that she should ride with him. Honora had never been on a horse, but she did not tell him so. If she would but drive, or walk-only a little way—he would promise faithfully not to forget himself. Honora intimated that the period of his probation had not yet expired. If he waylaid her on the stairs, he got but little satisfaction.
"You converse by the hour with the missionaries, and take long promenades with the architects and charity workers, but to me you will give nothing," he complained.
"The persons of whom you speak are not dangerous," answered Honora, giving him a look.
The look, and being called dangerous, sent up the temperature several degrees. Frenchmen are not the only branch of the male sex who are complimented by being called dangerous. The Vicomte was desolated, so he said.
"I stay here only for you, and the coffee is slowly deranging me," he declared in French, for most of their conversations were in that language. If there were duplicity in this, Honora did not recognize it. "I stay here only for you, and how you are cruel! I live for you—how, the good God only knows. I exist—to see you for ten minutes a day."
"Oh, Vicomte, you exaggerate. If you were to count it up, I am sure you would find that we talk an hour at least, altogether. And then, although I am very young and inexperienced, I can imagine how many conquests you have made by the same arts."
"I suffer," he cried; "ah, no, you cannot look at me without perceiving it—you who are so heartless. And when I see you play at golf with that Mr. Spence—!"
"Surely," said Honora, "you can't object to my acquiring a new accomplishment when I have the opportunity, and Mr. Spence is so kind and good-natured about it."
"Do you think I have no eyes?" he exclaimed. "Have I not seen him look at you like the great animal of Joshua when he wants his supper? He is without esprit, without soul. There is nothing inside of him but money-making machinery."
"The most valuable of all machinery," she replied, laughingly.
"If I thought you believed that, Mademoiselle, if I thought you were like so many of your countrywomen in this respect, I should leave to-morrow," he declared.
"Don't be too sure, Vicomte," she cautioned him.
If one possessed a sense of humour and a certain knowledge of mankind, the spectacle of a young and successful Wall Street broker at Silverdale that week was apt to be diverting. Mr. Spence held his own. He advised the architect to make a specialty of country houses, and promised some day to order one: he disputed boldly with the other young man as to the practical uses of settlement work, and even measured swords with the missionary. Needless to say, he was not popular with these gentlemen. But he was also good-natured and obliging, and he did not object to repeating for the English lady certain phrases which she called "picturesque expressions," and which she wrote down with a gold pencil.
It is evident, from the Vicomte's remarks, that he found time to continue Honora's lessons in golf—or rather that she found time, in the midst of her manifold and self-imposed duties, to take them. And in this diversion she was encouraged by Mrs. Holt herself. On Saturday morning, the heat being unusual, they ended their game by common consent at the fourth hole and descended a wood road to Silver Brook, to a spot which they had visited once before and had found attractive. Honora, after bathing her face in the pool, perched herself on a boulder. She was very fresh and radiant.
This fact, if she had not known it, she might have gathered from Mr. Silence's expression. He had laid down his coat; his sleeves were rolled up and his arms were tanned, and he stood smoking a cigarette and gazing at her with approbation. She lowered her eyes.
"Well, we've had a pretty good time, haven't we?" he remarked.
Lightning sometimes fails in its effect, but the look she flashed back at him from under her blue lashes seldom misses.
"I'm afraid I haven't been a very apt pupil," she replied modestly.
"You're on the highroad to a cup," he assured her. "If I could take you on for another week" He paused, and an expression came into his eyes which was not new to Honora, nor peculiar to Mr. Silence. "I have to go back to town on Monday."
If Honora felt any regret at this announcement, she did not express it.
"I thought you couldn't stand Silverdale much longer," she replied.
"You know why I stayed," he said, and paused again—rather awkwardly for Mr. Spence. But Honora was silent. "I had a letter this morning from my partner, Sidney Dallam, calling me back."
"I suppose you are very busy," said Honora, detaching a copper-green scale of moss from the boulder.
"The fact is," he explained, "that we have received an order of considerable importance, for which I am more or less responsible. Something of a compliment—since we are, after all, comparatively young men."
"Sometimes," said Honora, "sometimes I wish I were a man. Women are so hampered and circumscribed, and have to wait for things to happen to them. A man can do what he wants. He can go into Wall Street and fight until he controls miles of railroads and thousands and thousands of men. That would be a career!"
"Yes," he agreed, smilingly, "it's worth fighting for."
Her eyes were burning with a strange light as she looked down the vista of the wood road by which they had come. He flung his cigarette into the water and took a step nearer her.
"How long have I known you?" he asked.
She started.
"Why, it's only a little more than a week," she said.
"Does it seem longer than that to you?"
"Yes," admitted Honora, colouring; "I suppose it's because we've been staying in the same house."
"It seems to me," said Mr. Spence, "that I have known you always."
Honora sat very still. It passed through her brain, without comment, that there was a certain haunting familiarity about this remark; some other voice, in some other place, had spoken it, and in very much the same tone.
"You're the kind of girl I admire," he declared. "I've been watching you—more than you have any idea of. You're adaptable. Put you down any place, and you take hold. For instance, it's a marvellous thing to me how you've handled all the curiosities up there this week."
"Oh, I like people," said Honora, "they interest me." And she laughed a little, nervously. She was aware that Mr. Spence was making love, in his own manner: the New fork manner, undoubtedly; though what he said was changed by the new vibrations in his voice. He was making love, too, with a characteristic lack of apology and with assurance. She stole a glance at him, and beheld the image of a dominating man of affairs. He did not, it is true, evoke in her that extreme sensation which has been called a thrill. She had read somewhere that women were always expecting thrills, and never got them. Nevertheless, she had not realized how close a bond of sympathy had grown between them until this sudden announcement of his going back to New York. In a little while she too would be leaving for St. Louis. The probability that she would never see him again seemed graver than she would have believed.
"Will you miss me a little?" he asked.
"Oh, yes," she said breathlessly, "and I shall be curious to know how your—your enterprise succeeds."
"Honora," he said, "it is only a week since I first met you, but I know my own mind. You are the woman I want, and I think I may say without boasting that I can give you what you desire in life—after a while. I love you. You are young, and just now I felt that perhaps I should have waited a year before speaking, but I was afraid of missing altogether what I know to be the great happiness of my life. Will you marry me?"
She sat silent upon the rock. She heard him speak, it is true; but, try as she would, the full significance of his words would not come to her. She had, indeed, no idea that he would propose, no notion that his heart was involved to such an extent. He was very near her, but he had not attempted to touch her. His voice, towards the end of his speech, had trembled with passion—a true note had been struck. And she had struck it, by no seeming effort! He wished to marry her!
He aroused her again.
"I have frightened you," he said.
She opened her eyes. What he beheld in them was not fright—it was nothing he had ever seen before. For the first time in his life, perhaps, he was awed. And, seeing him helpless, she put out her hands to him with a gesture that seemed to enhance her gift a thousand-fold. He had not realized what he was getting.
"I am not frightened," she said. "Yes, I will marry you."
He was not sure whether—so brief was the moment!—he had held and kissed her cheek. His arms were empty now, and he caught a glimpse of her poised on the road above him amidst the quivering, sunlit leaves, looking back at him over her shoulder.
He followed her, but she kept nimbly ahead of him until they came out into the open golf course. He tried to think, but failed. Never in his orderly life had anything so precipitate happened to him. He caught up with her, devoured her with his eyes, and beheld in marriage a delirium.
"Honora," he said thickly, "I can't grasp it."
She gave him a quick look, and a smile quivered at the corners of her mouth.
"What are you thinking of?" he asked.
"I am thinking of Mrs. Holt's expression when we tell her," said Honora. "But we shan't tell her yet, shall we, Howard? We'll have it for our own secret a little while."
The golf course being deserted, he pressed her arm.
"We'll tell her whenever you like, dear," he replied.
In spite of the fact that they drove Joshua's trotter to lunch—much too rapidly in the heat of the day, they were late.
"I shall never be able to go in there and not give it away," he whispered to her on the stairs.
"You look like the Cheshire cat in the tree," whispered Honora, laughing, "only more purple, and not so ghostlike."
"I know I'm smiling," replied Howard, "I feel like it, but I can't help it. It won't come off. I want to blurt out the news to every one in the dining-room—to that little Frenchman, in particular."
Honora laughed again. Her imagination easily summoned up the tableau which such a proceeding would bring forth. The incredulity, the chagrin, the indignation, even, in some quarters. He conceived the household, with the exception of the Vicomte, precipitating themselves into his arms.
Honora, who was cool enough herself (no doubt owing to the superior training which women receive in matters of deportment), observed that his entrance was not a triumph of dissimulation. His colour was high, and his expression, indeed, a little idiotic; and he declared afterwards that he felt like a sandwich-man, with the news printed in red letters before and behind. Honora knew that the intense improbability of the truth would save them, and it did. Mrs. Holt remarked, slyly, that the game of golf must have hidden attractions, and regretted that she was too old to learn it.
"We went very slowly on account of the heat," Howard declared.
"I should say that you had gone very rapidly, from your face," retortedMrs. Holt. In relaxing moods she indulged in banter.
Honora stepped into the breach. She would not trust her newly acquired fiance to extricate himself.
"We were both very much worried, Mrs. Holt," she explained, "because we were late for lunch once before."
"I suppose I'll have to forgive you, my dear, especially with that colour. I am modern enough to approve of exercise for young girls, and I am sure your Aunt Mary will think Silverdale has done you good when I send you back to her."
"Oh, I'm sure she will," said Honora.
In the meantime Mr. Spence was concentrating all of his attention upon a jellied egg. Honora glanced at the Vicomte. He sat very stiff, and his manner of twisting his mustache reminded her of an animal sharpening its claws. It was at this moment that the butler handed her a telegram, which, with Mrs. Holt's permission, she opened and read twice before the meaning of it came to her.
"I hope it is no bad news, Honora," said Mrs. Holt.
"It's from Peter Erwin," she replied, still a little dazed. "He's in New York. And he's corning up on the five o'clock train to spend an hour with me."
"Oh," said Susan; "I remember his picture on your bureau at Sutcliffe. He had such a good face. And you told me about him."
"He is like my brother," Honora explained, aware that Howard was looking at her. "Only he is much older than I. He used to wheel me up and down when I was a baby. He was, an errand boy in the bank then, and Uncle Tom took an interest in him, and now he is a lawyer. A very good one, I believe."
"I have a great respect for any man who makes his own way in life," said Mrs. Holt. "And since he is such an old friend, my dear, you must ask him to spend the night."
"Oh, thank you, Mrs. Bolt," Honora answered.
It was, however, with mingled feelings that she thought of Peter's arrival at this time. Life, indeed, was full of strange coincidences!
There was a little door that led out of the house by the billiard room, Honora remembered, and contrived, after luncheon, to slip away and reach it. She felt that she must be alone, and if she went to her room she was likely to be disturbed by Susan or Mrs. Joshua—or indeed Mrs. Holt herself. Honora meant to tell Susan the first of all. She crossed the great lawn quickly, keeping as much as possible the trees and masses of shrubbery between herself and the house, and reached the forest. With a really large fund of energy at her disposal, Honora had never been one to believe in the useless expenditure of it; nor did she feel the intense desire which a girl of another temperament might have had, under the same conditions, to keep in motion. So she sat down on a bench within the borders of the wood.
It was not that she wished to reflect, in the ordinary meaning of the word, that she had sought seclusion, but rather to give her imagination free play. The enormity of the change that was to come into her life did not appall her in the least; but she had, in connection with it, a sense of unreality which, though not unpleasant, she sought unconsciously to dissipate. Howard Spence, she reflected with a smile, was surely solid and substantial enough, and she thought of him the more tenderly for the possession of these attributes. A castle founded on such a rock was not a castle in Spain!
It did not occur to Honora that her thoughts might be more of the castle than of the rock: of the heaven he was to hold on his shoulders than of the Hercules she had chosen to hold it.
She would write to her Aunt Mary and her Uncle Tom that very afternoon —one letter to both. Tears came into her eyes when she thought of them, and of their lonely life' without her. But they would come on to New York to visit her often, and they would be proud of her. Of one thing she was sure—she must go home to them at once—on Tuesday. She would tell Mrs. Holt to-morrow, and Susan to-night. And, while pondering over the probable expression of that lady's amazement, it suddenly occurred to her that she must write the letter immediately, because Peter Erwin was coming.
What would he say? Should she tell him? She was surprised to find that the idea of doing so was painful to her. But she was aroused from these reflections by a step on the path, and raised her head to perceive the Vicomte. His face wore an expression of triumph.
"At last," he cried, "at last!" And he sat down on the bench beside her. Her first impulse was to rise, yet for some inexplicable reason she remained.
"I always suspected in you the qualities of a Monsieur Lecoq," she remarked. "You have an instinct for the chase."
"Mon dieu?" he said. "I have risked a stroke of the sun to find you. Why should you so continually run away from me?"
"To test your ingenuity, Vicomte."
"And that other one—the stock-broker—you do not avoid him. Diable, I am not blind, Mademoiselle. It is plain to me at luncheon that you have made boil the sluggish blood of that one. As for me—"
"Your boiling-point is lower," she said, smiling.
"Listen, Mademoiselle," he pursued, bending towards her. "It is not for my health that I stay here, as I have told you. It is for the sight of you, for the sound of the music of that low voice. It is in the hope that you will be a little kinder, that you will understand me a little better. And to-day, when I learn that still another is on his way to see you, I could sit still no longer. I do not fear that Spence,—no. But this other—what is he like?"
"He is the best type of American," replied Honora. "I am sure you will be interested in him, and like him."
The Vicomte shrugged his shoulders.
"It is not in America that you will find your destiny, Mademoiselle. You are made to grace a salon, a court, which you will not find in this country. Such a woman as you is thrown away here. You possess qualities—you will pardon me—in which your countrywomen are lacking, —esprit, imagination, elan, the power to bind people to you. I have read you as you have not read yourself. I have seen how you have served yourself by this famille Holt, and how at the same time you have kept their friendship."
"Vicomte!" she exclaimed.
"Ah, do not get angry," he begged; "such gifts are rare—they are sublime. They lead," he added, raising his arms, "to the heights."
Honora was silent. She was, indeed, not unmoved by his voice, into which there was creeping a vibrant note of passion. She was a little frightened, but likewise puzzled and interested. This was all so different from what she had expected of him. What did he mean? Was she indeed like that?
She was aware that he was speaking again, that he was telling her of a chateau in France which his ancestors had owned since the days of Louis XII; a grey pile that stood upon a thickly wooded height,—a chateau with a banquet hall, where kings had dined, with a chapel where kings had prayed, with a flowering terrace high above a gleaming river. It was there that his childhood had been passed. And as he spoke, she listened with mingled feelings, picturing the pageantry of life in such a place.
"I tell you this, Mademoiselle," he said, "that you may know I am not what you call an adventurer. Many of these, alas! come to your country. And I ask you to regard with some leniency customs which must be strange to Americans. When we marry in France, it is with a dot, and especially is it necessary amongst the families of our nobility."
Honora rose, the blood mounting to her temples.
"Mademoiselle," he cried, "do not misunderstand me. I would die rather than hurt your feelings. Listen, I pray. It was to tell you frankly that I came to this country for that purpose,—in order that I might live as my ancestors have lived, with a hotel in Paris: But the chateau, grace a dieu, is not mortgaged, nor am I wholly impoverished. I have soixante quinze mille livres de rente, which is fifteen thousand dollars a year in your money, and which goes much farther in France. At the proper time, I will present these matters to your guardians. I have lived, but I have a heart, and I love you madly. Rather would I dwell with you in Provence, where I will cultivate the soil of my forefathers, than a palace on the Champs Elysees with another. We can come to Paris for two months, at least. For you I can throw my prospects out of the window with a light heart. Honore—how sweet is your name in my language—I love you to despair."
He seized her hand and pressed it to his lips, but she drew it gently away. It seemed to her that he had made the very air quiver with feeling, and she let herself wonder, for a moment, what life with him would be. Incredible as it seemed, he had proposed to her, a penniless girl! Her own voice was not quite steady as she answered him, and her eyes were filled with compassion.
"Vicomte," she said, "I did not know that you cared for me—that way. I thought—I thought you were amusing yourself."
"Amusing myself!" he exclaimed bitterly. "And you—were you amusing yourself?"
"I—I tried to avoid you," she replied, in a low voice.
"I am engaged."
"Engaged!" He sprang to his feet. "Engaged! Ah, no, I will not believe it. You were engaged when you came here?"
She was no little alarmed by the violence which he threw into his words. At the same time, she was indignant. And yet a mischievous sprite within her led her on to tell him the truth.
"No, I am going to marry Mr. Howard Spence, although I do not wish it announced."
For a moment he stood motionless, speechless, staring at her, and then he seemed to sway a little and to choke.
"No, no," he cried, "it cannot be! My ears have deceived me. I am not sane. You are going to marry him—? Ah, you have sold yourself."
"Monsieur de Toqueville," she said, "you forget yourself. Mr. Spence is an honourable man, and I love him."
The Vicomte appeared to choke again. And then, suddenly, he became himself, although his voice was by no means natural. His elaborate and ironic bow she remembered for many years.
"Pardon, Mademoiselle," he said, "and adieu. You will be good enough to convey my congratulations to Mr. Spence."
With a kind of military "about face" he turned and left her abruptly, and she watched him as he hurried across the lawn until he had disappeared behind the trees near the house. When she sat down on the bench again, she found that she was trembling a little. Was the unexpected to occur to her from now on? Was it true, as the Vicomte had said, that she was destined to be loved amidst the play of drama?
She felt sorry for him because he had loved her enough to fling to the winds his chances of wealth for her sake—a sufficient measure of the feelings of one of his nationality and caste. And she permitted, for an instant, her mind to linger on the supposition that Howard Spence had never come into her life; might she not, when the Vicomte had made his unexpected and generous avowal, have accepted him? She thought of the romances of her childish days, written at fever heat, in which ladies with titles moved around and gave commands and rebuked lovers who slipped in through wicket gates. And to think that she might have been a Vicomtesse and have lived in a castle!
A poor Vicomtesse, it is true.
Honora sat still upon the bench. After an indefinite period she saw through the trees a vehicle on the driveway, and in it a single passenger. And suddenly it occurred to her that the passenger must be Peter, for Mrs. Holt had announced her intention of sending for him. She arose and approached the house, not without a sense of agitation.
She halted a moment at a little distance from the porch, where he was talking with Howard Spence and Joshua, and the fact that he was an unchanged Peter came to her with a shock of surprise. So much, in less than a year, had happened to Honora! And the sight of him, and the sound of his voice, brought back with a rush memories of a forgotten past. How long it seemed since she had lived in St. Louis!
Yes, he was the same Peter, but her absence from him had served to sharpen her sense of certain characteristics. He was lounging in his chair with his long legs crossed, with one hand in his pocket, and talking to these men as though he had known them always. There was a quality about him which had never struck her before, and which eluded exact definition. It had never occurred to her, until now, when she saw him out of the element with which she had always associated him, that Peter Erwin had a personality. That personality was a mixture of simplicity and self-respect and—common sense. And as Honora listened to his cheerful voice, she perceived that he had the gift of expressing himself clearly and forcibly and withal modestly; nor did it escape her that the other two men were listening with a certain deference. In her sensitive state she tried to evade the contrast thus suddenly presented to her between Peter and the man she had promised, that very morning, to marry.
Howard Spence was seated on the table, smoking a cigarette. Never, it seemed, had he more distinctly typified to her Prosperity. An attribute which she had admired in him, of strife without the appearance of strife, lost something of its value. To look at Peter was to wonder whether there could be such a thing as a well-groomed combatant; and until to-day she had never thought of Peter as a combatant. The sight of his lean face summoned, all undesired, the vague vision of an ideal, and perhaps it was this that caused her voice to falter a little as she came forward and called his name. He rose precipitately.
"What a surprise, Peter!" she said, as she took his hand. "How do you happen to be in the East?"
"An errand boy," he replied. "Somebody had to come, so they chose me. Incidentally," he added, smiling down at her, "it is a part of my education."
"We thought you were lost," said Howard Spence, significantly.
"Oh, no," she answered lightly, evading his look. "I was on the bench at the edge of the wood." She turned again to Peter. "How good of you to come up and see me!"
"I couldn't have resisted that," he declared, "if it were only for an hour."
"I've been trying to persuade him to stay a while with us," Joshua put in with unusual graciousness. "My mother will be disappointed not to see you."
"There is nothing I should like better, Mr. Holt," said Peter, simply, gazing off across the lawn. "Unfortunately I have to leave for the West to-night."
"Before you go," said Honora, "you must see this wonderful place. Come, we'll begin with the garden."
She had a desire now to take him away by himself, something she had wished, an hour ago, to avoid.
"Wouldn't you like a runabout?" suggested Joshua, hospitably.
Honora thanked him.
"I'm sure Mr. Erwin would rather walk," she replied.
"Come, Peter, you must tell me all the news of home."
Spence accepted his dismissal with a fairly good grace, and gave no evidence of jealousy. He put his hand on Peter's shoulder.
"If you're ever in New York, Erwin," said he, "look me up Dallam and Spence. We're members of the Exchange, so you won't have any trouble in finding us. I'd like to talk to you sometime about the West."
Peter thanked him.
For a little while, as they went down the driveway side by side, he was meditatively silent. She wondered what he thought of Howard Spence, until suddenly she remembered that her secret was still her own, that Peter had as yet no particular reason to single out Mr. Spence for especial consideration. She could not, however, resist saying, "New Yorkers are like that."
"Like what?" he asked.
She coloured.
"Like—Mr. Spence. A little—self-assertive, sure of themselves." She strove to keep out of her voice any suspicion of the agitation which was the result of the events of an extraordinary day, not yet ended. She knew that it would have been wiser not to have mentioned Howard; but Peter's silence, somehow, had impelled her to speak. "He has made quite an unusual success for so young a man."
Peter looked at her and shook his head.
"New York—success! What is to become of poor old St. Louis?" he inquired.
"Oh, I'm going back next week," Honora cried. "I wish I were going with you."
"And leave all this," he said incredulously, "for trolley rides andForest Park and—and me?"
He stopped in the garden path and looked upon the picture she made standing in the sunlight against the blazing borders, her wide hat casting a shadow on her face. And the smile which she had known so well since childhood, indulgent, quizzical, with a touch of sadness, was in his eyes. She was conscious of a slight resentment. Was there, in fact, no change in her as the result of the events of those momentous ten months since she had seen him? And rather than a tolerance in which there was neither antagonism nor envy, she would have preferred from Peter an open disapproval of luxury, of the standards which he implied were hers. She felt that she had stepped into another world, but he refused to be dazzled by it. He insisted upon treating her as the same Honora.
"How did you leave Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary?" she asked.
They were counting the days, he said, until she should return, but they did not wish to curtail her visit. They did not expect her next week, he knew.
Honora coloured again.
"I feel—that I ought to go to them," she said.
He glanced at her as though her determination to leave Silverdale so soon surprised him.
"They will be very happy to see you, Honora," he said. "They have been very lonesome."
She softened. Some unaccountable impulse prompted her to ask: "And you?Have you missed me—a little?"
He did not answer, and she saw that he was profoundly affected. She laid a hand upon his arm.
"Oh, Peter, I didn't mean that," she cried. "I know you have. And I have missed you—terribly. It seems so strange seeing you here," she went on hurriedly. "There are so many' things I want to show you. Tell me how it happened hat you came on to New York."
"Somebody in the firm had to come," he said.
"In the firm!" she repeated. She did not grasp the full meaning of this change in his status, but she remembered that Uncle Tom had predicted it one day, and that it was an honour. "I never knew any one so secretive about their own affairs! Why didn't you write me you had been admitted to the firm? So you are a partner of Judge Brice."
"Brice, Graves, and Erwin," said Peter; "it sounds very grand, doesn't it? I can't get used to it myself."
"And what made you call yourself an errand boy?" she exclaimed reproachfully. "When I go back to the house I intend to tell Joshua Holt and—and Mr. Spence that you are a great lawyer."
Peter laughed.
"You'd better wait a few years before you say that," said he.
He took an interest in everything he saw, in Mr. Holt's flowers, in Joshua's cow barn, which they traversed, and declared, if he were ever rich enough, he would live in the country. They walked around the pond, —fringed now with yellow water-lilies on their floating green pads, —through the woods, and when the shadows were lengthening came out at the little summer-house over the valley of Silver Brook—the scene of that first memorable encounter with the Vicomte. At the sight of it the episode, and much else of recent happening, rushed back into Honora's mind, and she realized with suddenness that she had, in his companionship, unconsciously been led far afield and in pleasant places. Comparisons seemed inevitable.
She watched him with an unwonted tugging at her heart as he stood for a long time by the edge of the railing, gazing over the tree-tops of the valley towards the distant hazy hills. Nor did she understand what it was in him that now, on this day of days when she had definitely cast the die of life, when she had chosen her path, aroused this strange emotion. Why had she never felt it before? She had thought his face homely—now it seemed to shine with a transfiguring light. She recalled, with a pang, that she had criticised his clothes: to-day they seemed the expression of the man himself. Incredible is the range of human emotion! She felt a longing to throw herself into his arms, and to weep there.
He turned at length from the view.
"How wonderful!" he said.
"I didn't know—you cared for nature so much, Peter."
He looked at her strangely and put out his hand and drew her, unresisting, to the bench beside him.
"Are you in trouble, Honora?" he asked.
"Oh, no," she cried, "oh, no, I am—very happy."
"You may have thought it odd that I should have come here without knowingMrs. Holt," he said gravely, "particularly when you were going home sosoon. I do not know myself why I came. I am a matter-of-fact person, butI acted on an impulse."
"An impulse!" she faltered, avoiding the troubled, searching look in his eyes.
"Yes," he said, "an impulse. I can call it by no other name. I should have taken a train that leaves New York at noon; but I had a feeling this morning, which seemed almost like a presentiment, that I might be of some use to you."
"This morning?" She felt herself trembling, and she scarcely recognized Peter with such words on his lips. "I am happy—indeed I am. Only—I am overwrought—seeing you again—and you made me think of home."
"It was no doubt very foolish of me," he declared. "And if my coming has upset you—"
"Oh, no," she cried. "Please don't think so. It has given me a sense of—of security. That you were ready to help me if—if I needed you."
"You should always have known that," he replied. He rose and stood gazing off down the valley once more, and she watched him with her heart beating, with a sense of an impending crisis which she seemed powerless to stave off. And presently he turned to her, "Honora, I have loved you for many years," he said. "You were too young for me to speak of it. I did not intend to speak of it when I came here to-day. For many years I have hoped that some day you might be my wife. My one fear has been that I might lose you. Perhaps—perhaps it has been a dream. But I am willing to wait, should you wish to see more of the world. You are young yet, and I am offering myself for all time. There is no other woman for me, and never can be."
He paused and smiled down at her. But she did not speak. She could not.
"I know," he went on, "that you are ambitious. And with your gifts I do not blame you. I cannot offer you great wealth, but I say with confidence that I can offer you something better, something surer. I can take care of you and protect you, and I will devote my life to your happiness. Will you marry me?"
Her eyes were sparkling with tears,—tears, he remembered afterwards, that were like blue diamonds.
"Oh, Peter," she cried, "I wish I could! I have always—wished that I could. I can't."
"You can't?"
She shook her head.
"I—I have told no one yet—not even Aunt Mary. I am going to marry Mr.Spence."
For a long time he was silent, and she did not dare to look at the suffering in his face.
"Honora," he said at last, "my most earnest wish in life will be for your happiness. And whatever may, come to you I hope that you will remember that I am your friend, to be counted on. And that I shall not change. Will you remember that?"
"Yes," she whispered. She looked at him now, and through the veil of her tears she seemed to see his soul shining in his eyes. The tones of a distant church bell were borne to them on the valley breeze.
Peter glanced at his watch.
"I am afraid," he said, "that I haven't time to go back to the house—my train goes at seven. Can I get down to the village through the valley?"
Honora pointed out the road, faintly perceptible through the trees beneath them.
"And you will apologize for my departure to Mrs. Holt?"
She nodded. He took her hand, pressed it, and was gone. And presently, in a little clearing far below, he turned and waved his hat at her bravely.