CHAPTER XVI.

Thehoneymoon was over, and the London season drawing to a close before the Colonel, who, to Lauriston’s great regret, seemed, since that inauspicious introduction to Nouna, to have withdrawn into a permanent coldness towards him, made an attempt to bridge over the restraint which had grown up between them. It was one evening when George, to do honour to a visitor who was a friend of his, had dined at mess, that the Colonel broke silence towards his old favourite, and inviting him, at dessert, to a chair just left vacant by his side, asked if he was still as anxious as ever to get leave for September.

George was rather surprised.

“I am more anxious than ever for it now, sir,” he said. Then, seeing that Lord Florencecourt’s brows contracted slightly with a displeased air, he added apologetically, “You know, sir, I should not have ventured to ask for more leave this year if you yourself had not been kind enough to propose it. And now my wife is longing for the promised change.”

The Colonel instinctively frowned still more at the mention of the obnoxious wife, and after balancing a fruit-knife on his fingers for a few seconds, with his eyes fixed as intently upon it as if the feat were a deeply interesting one, he said very shortly:

“You still intend to go to Norfolk? It’s a damp climate, an unhealthy climate—not one suitable to a lady born in India, I should think. Beastly dull, foggy place at all times. Why don’t you go to Scarborough?”

George could not remind him that it was he himself who had probably suggested the Millards’ invitation, and certainly done his utmost to persuade him to accept it. The knowledge that it was disapproval of his wife which had caused this sudden change in the Colonel’s views, made him suddenly stiff, constrained, and cold.

“I have promised my wife, Colonel; it is too late to change my plans and disappoint her.”

The Colonel glanced searchingly up at him from the corners of his eyes, and said almost deprecatingly:

“I see—of course not. I only meant to suggest that the quiet country life the Millards lead might bore her, and, the fact is, our place will not be as lively as usual this year. I shall have some unexpected expenses to meet. I’ve been warned of them, and they will not be long in coming.” Here he paused, gazing still on the table, and seeming not so much to watch as to listen for some sign of comprehension on George’s part. “And so,” he continued, at last raising his eyes, and speaking in his shortest, bitterest tone, “I shall have to retrench, and there will be no merrymaking at Willingham this year.”

“I am very sorry to hear it,” said George, puzzled by a swift conjecture that he was expected to make some more significant remark, and wondering what it ought to have been.

He was wishing he could withdraw from this awkwardtête-à-tête, when, in a low distinct voice, the Colonel struck him into perplexity by the following question:

“How would you like to exchange into the ——th, and go over to Ireland?”

“Not at all,” answered George, just as low, and very promptly.

He was extremely indignant at this suggestion that he should go into exile just for having pleased himself in the matter of his marriage, which was unmistakably his own affair.

“Would you not if by so doing you could confer a very considerable favour upon one whom you used to be glad to call an old friend?” said the Colonel in the same low voice, and with a strange persistency.

Around them the sounds of laughter and of heated but futile after-dinner discussions, beginning in wine and dying away in cigar-smoke, filled the hot air and rendered their conversation more private and at the same time freer than it could have been if held within closed doors. George looked at the ashy pale face of the prematurely aged officer, and it seemed to him that his own frame shivered as if at touch of some unexpected mystery, some unknown danger. He answered with much feeling:

“Tell me why it is a favour, Colonel. I would do more than this to show I am grateful to you. Only let me understand.”

But the very sympathy in his tones seemed to startle the Colonel, who drew back perceptibly, with a hurried glance straight into George’s eyes. It seemed to the latter, who was now on the alert for significant looks and tones, that at the moment when their eyes met the Colonel took a desperate resolution. At any rate, when he spoke again it was in his usual manner.

“It’s nothing,” he said, waving the subject away with his hand. “Nothing but a passing freak which I beg you will not think of again.”

His tone notified that the discussion was closed, and for the whole of the evening George considered, without finding any satisfactory clue to an explanation, what Lord Florencecourt’s motive could be for so strongly objecting to Nouna’s appearance in the neighbourhood of Willingham. His prejudice against swarthy complexions could scarcely be sufficiently obstinate for him to hope to clear the county of them: but what was the origin of the prejudice?

On returning home George tried to probe the misty memories which the Colonel’s appearance had, on his introduction to Nouna, stirred in her mind. But he could elicit nothing further. Nouna was now showing at times little fits of petulance, born of the absence of violent novelty in her life now that the husband was growing to be quite an article of every-day consumption, as much a matter of course as dry toast at breakfast, and she was not going to be troubled to remember or try to remember faces.

“I dare say I only fancied I ever saw anybody like him,” she said with a little wearied twist of her head and sticking forward of her round chin. “I can’t count every hair on the head of every old gentleman I see.”

And however often he might return to this subject, and in whatever mood she happened to be, George could learn nothing more definite than her first vague impression, which grew even fainter as the meeting faded into the past.

In the meantime Nouna was becoming rather weary of looking into the pretty shop windows without being able to buy anything, and of walking among the people in the park without joining in any other of their amusements. George had had designed for her a tailor-made walking-dress of white cloth embroidered in gold thread and bright-coloured silks which, with a small white cloth cap embroidered in the same way, caused her appearance to make a great sensation among the conventionally ill-dressed crowds of Englishwomen with more money, rank, and beauty, than taste. He was himself much surprised to see how easily she wore a dress of a cut to which she was unaccustomed, and how well she looked in it. The conventional shape of the gown only emphasised the difference between the natural movements of her lithe form and the stiff bobbings and jerkings and swayings which mark the gait of the ordinary English girl. The reason was simply that Nouna had by nature that great gift of beauty of attitude and movement which we call grace; and as among the handsomest women of England only one in every hundred is graceful either by nature or art, that quality alone would have been enough to make the half Indian girl conspicuous. Therefore there was much discussion among onlookers as to her nationality. The Indian type is not common enough among us to be widely recognised, or the delicate little aquiline nose, the long eyes, and the peculiar tint of her skin, might have betrayed her; as it was, conjectures wavered between France and Spain as a birthplace for her; for while she wore her dress like a Parisian, she certainly walked like a Spaniard. By no means unconscious of the attention she excited, Nouna would have liked to come in closer contact with some of the handsome Englishmen who seemed by their respectfully admiring looks to be so well-disposed towards her. For she was decidedly of a “coming-on” disposition, and not at all troubled with raw shyness or an excess of haughty reserve. Neither was she conscious of anything forward or improper in her sociability.

“All these gentlemen that we pass, and those standing in a crowd near the railings under those trees—they are gentlemen, the English gentlemen mamma thinks so much of, aren’t they?”

“Oh yes,” answered George smiling, “they are among what are called the best men, though it’s rather a rum term to apply to some of them.”

“I should like to know some of them: you do, I see them nod to you.”

“Wouldn’t you rather know some of the pretty ladies?”

“No,” answered Nouna promptly. “Their dresses always drag on the ground one side, and they wear dreadful flat boots like Martha the servant. I like the gentlemen better.”

“But you mustn’t judge people only by their dress, Nouna,” said the young husband, feeling rather uncomfortable.

“I can’t judge them by anything else till I know them,” said Nouna fretfully.

George was silent. He was disappointed to learn that she was so soon weary of the perpetualtête-à-têtewhich had lost no charm for him; but he had the sense to own that his ambitions, even the daily meeting with his comrades at parade, made his life fuller than his young wife’s could possibly be. He resolved to call upon the Millards, who, anxious not to intrude upon the newly-married couple before they were wanted, had refrained from calling upon the bride until they should hear again from George. On the morning of the day he had fixed for his call, a note came for him from Captain Pascoe, asking him to join a party up the river in a couple of days. Nouna read the note over his shoulder.

“Shall you go, George?” she asked with interest.

“No, dear, how can I? I’ve got a little wife to look after now.”

“But if you were to write and say no, you couldn’t come because you’d got a wife, perhaps he’d ask me too!”

George had no doubt of this, believing indeed that this was the result Captain Pascoe had aimed at.

“Captain Pascoe is not quite the sort of man I should like you to know, dear,” he said.

“Isn’t he an English gentleman?”

“Oh yes, but English gentlemen aren’t all angels, you know.”

“And aren’t you ever going to let me know anybody who isn’t an angel?”

“Well, darling, I don’t think anybody else is good enough.”

A pause. George hoped she was satisfied for the present. She was still behind his chair, so that he could not see her face. At last she asked, in a low, rather menacing tone:

“Are angels’ wings made of feathers, like birds’?”

“I don’t know, dear, I suppose so,” said George laughing, and turning to look at her and pat her cheek.

“Then if I met one I should pull them out,” she cried in a flame of fury, and before her husband could recover from his astonishment, she had fled out of the room.

He followed her with a troubled countenance, and found her face downwards on the bed, sobbing her heart out. No remonstrances were of any use, she only murmured that she would like to be a nun, it was more interesting than to be a wife shut up and never allowed to speak to anybody.

“But, Nouna, the Indian ladies are much more shut up than you are.”

“They have beautiful wide palaces to live in. I shouldn’t care if I had a palace.”

“Well, you know I can’t give you a palace, but if you will be good and leave off crying, I will take you on the river myself one day.”

“Will you? When, when?” cried she, starting up excited, all her griefs forgotten.

“I’ll see if I can take you to-morrow.”

She flung her arms round his neck, not to ask his pardon for her petulance, but to assure him that he was the best, kindest husband that ever lived, and that no Indian Maharanee in all her splendour of marble courts and waving palms was ever so happy as she.

George kept his promise, and on the following day took her down to Kingston, and rowed her up as far as Shepperton and back. She was delighted with the river, and, charmed with the idea of being a person of responsibility, showed great aptitude for a beginner at steering. Being one of those quick-eyed, neat-handed persons whose wit is rather nimble than profound, she acquired accomplishments of this nature with a feminine and graceful ease; and sitting with the ropes over her shoulders, her dark eyes intent with care gleaming from beneath her white baby-bonnet, she made a picture so perfect that, as usual, every man who passed looked at her with undisguised admiration, and glanced from her to her companion to find out more about her through him. All this George, who was not too much lost in his own adoration to note the casual votive glances offered to his idol, bore with complacency, until, just as they entered Sunbury Lock, on the return journey, a well-known voice calling his name from a boat that was already waiting inside the gates, startled him. He turned and saw a crew of four men, two of whom were Captain Pascoe and Clarence Massey. The impetuous little Irishman dragged the two boats alongside each other, and instantly plunged into conversation with Nouna, who seemed delighted with the incident. George was not a Bluebeard; still, remembering all the circumstances of Nouna’s previous acquaintance with the all round lover, Massey, he by no means desired the friendship to grow closer between them, and he was not pleased by the glances of interest which Nouna exchanged with Captain Pascoe, who had an air of quiet good-breeding particularly attractive to women. The two boats passed each other again and again on the way to Kingston, for the stronger crew seemed to be in no great hurry, and were not perhaps unwilling to be occasionally passed by a boat steered by such an interesting little coxswain. At any rate the smaller craft arrived first at Bond’s, and George took his wife up stairs to the coffee-room for a cup of tea. Then she discovered that she felt rather “faint,” and had forgotten her smelling-salts; would George go out and get her some? What could a newly-fledged husband do but comply, however strong his objection might be to leaving his wife alone in a public room? There was no one in it, however, but a cheerful and kind little waitress, who seemed quite overcome by the young lady’s beauty; so he gave Nouna a hurried kiss when the girl’s back was turned, and hastened off to fulfil her behest as fast as possible.

He found a chemist’s very quickly, and returned with the smelling-salts in a few moments. But Nouna had entirely recovered from her faintness, and instead of finding her reclining on the horse-hair sofa with closed eyes and a face of romantic paleness, George discovered her enthroned in an arm-chair, all vivacity and animation, holding a small but adoring court composed of the crew that had dogged their progress on the river. Massey was talking the most; but Captain Pascoe, by virtue of his superiority in years and position as well as a certain distinction of appearance and manner, was undoubtedly the most prominent and the most favoured courtier. For a moment George stopped in the doorway, as a terrible remembrance of the tale of the genie who locked the lady up in a glass case flashed into his mind. He dismissed the ugly fancy immediately; what reason had he for supposing Nouna had any unconfessed motive in sending him away? There was nothing now but to make the best of it, to join the party, and even to hear Captain Pascoe repeat the invitation up the river as Nouna had hoped, and reluctantly to add his own acceptance of it to his wife’s.

The train in which the husband and wife returned to town was not crowded, and they had a compartment to themselves. The excitement of entertaining being over, Nouna took off her bonnet and leaned back in a corner with her eyes closed, tired out.

“Where are your salts, dear?” asked George, putting his hand tenderly on her wavy hair.

She opened her eyes languidly.

“Salts! Oh, I don’t know. I never use them!”

George was knocked over by this appalling confession.

“Never use them! Then you did not want them when you sent me out for them?” he said, almost stammering.

She half raised her heavy eyelids again with a malicious little smile, and patted his hand re-assuringly, with some pride in her own ingenuity, and quite as much in his.

“Clever boy!” she whispered languidly. “You see I wanted to go up the river again, and I knew you wouldn’t introduce him so that he could invite me.”

And clasping her little hands, which she had relieved of her gloves, with a beatific smile of perfect satisfaction, she curled her head into her left shoulder like a bird and prepared to doze.

“How did you know it was Captain Pascoe?” asked George in a hard, dry voice.

“Heard the little red man call him so,” murmured Nouna sleepily.

George drew back, shocked, wounded, and perplexed. To correct her for petty deceits was like demonstrating to a baby the iniquity of swallowing its toys; she could not understand how it was wrong to obtain by any means in her power anything she wanted. There was no great harm done after all, when the deed was followed by such quick and innocent confession. But none the less, the habit showed a moral obliquity which could not fail to be a distressing sign that the ennobling influences of matrimony, literature, the arts and religion had not yet had any great and enduring effect. He withdrew into the corner furthest from her, bewildering himself with conjectures as to what the right way to treat her might really be, not at all willing as yet to own that the wives who fascinate men most are not the docile creatures who like clay can be moulded to any shape their lord and master may please to give them, but retain much of the resistance of marble, which requires a far higher degree of skill and patience in the working, and had best be left alone altogether except by fully qualified artists of much experience in that medium. Even in the midst of his disturbed musings a consolation, if not a light, came to him. He heard Nouna move. He was staring out at the darkening landscape through one of the side-windows, and did not look round: before he knew she was near him she had climbed into his lap.

“Put your arms round me; I want to go to sleep,” cooed she.

And, alas, for philosophy and high morality! at the touch of her arms all his fears and his misgivings melted into passionate, throbbing tenderness, and he drew the head of the perhaps not wholly undesigning Nouna down on to his shoulder with the sudden feeling that his doubts of her entire perfection had burst like bubbles in the air.

Nevertheless, it became clear again that evening that young Mrs. Lauriston contemplated a revolution in the tenor of her quiet life.

“I wonder,” she said pensively at supper, resting from the labour of eating grapes, with a face of concentrated earnestness, “that mamma has taken no notice of the letter I sent her the very day after I was married. I told her of a very particular wish I had, and you know mamma always has let me have every wish I have ever made; I can’t understand it.”

“What wish was that?” asked George, feeling it useless to complain of the want of confidence which had prevented her from communicating it before.

“I want to have a large house that I can furnish as I please, and where I can receive my friends,” said Nouna with rather a haughty, regal air.

George began to see that it was of no use to oppose the sociable bent of her mind, and he occupied himself therefore in wondering whether this wish of Nouna’s, expressed in a letter which passed through the lawyers’ hands before his last visit to them, had had any relation to their unexpected announcement of a possible accession of his wife to fortune.

A few days later the conjecture acquired still more force through a letter from Mr. Angelo, informing him that the will case of which he had spoken had been decided out of court, and that Mrs. Lauriston was entitled to an income of four thousand a year, and a house in Queen’s Gate which she could let or occupy at her discretion. The property was, by the late Captain Weston’s bequest, to be hers on her majority or on her marriage, whichever event should take place first; therefore if Mr. and Mrs. Lauriston would call at their office at an early date, Messrs. Smith and Angelo would put them in possession of all further details, and be able to complete certain necessary formalities. These formalities, however, turned out to be very few and very simple, and George was surprised at the ease with which such a young woman as Nouna could enter into possession of so considerable an income. As for her, she was crazy with delight, and on learning that she could have an advance to furnish her house and make in it what alterations she liked, she awoke into a new life of joyful activity which seemed almost to suggest some superhuman agency in enabling her to be in half a dozen places at once.

When at last, after having shown in the arrangement of her handsome home some of the skill of an artist, and herself superintended the work of the most intelligent artisans a distinguished firm in Bond Street could furnish, Nouna introduced her husband in triumph to the little palace on the south of the park, poor George was overwhelmed by a crowd of bitter and sorrowful feelings to which Nouna’s half-childish, half-queenly delight in the change from the home of his creating to the home of hers gave scarcely anything more than an added pang. What could he hope to be to her now but a modest consort half ignored amidst the pretty state with which she evidently meant to surround herself? What sense of authority over her, of liberty for himself, could he hope to have, when, instead of her sharing his prospects, he was simply sharing hers? Since she could so lightly part, with no sensation stronger than relief, from those associations with their first days of wedded love which he held so dear, what hold could he really have on her heart at all? And suddenly, in the midst of his grave reflections, Nouna herself, to-day clothed in a whirlwind, shattering or fluttering every object and every creature she came near, would fly at him down some corridor, or through some curtain, like an incarnate spirit of joyous triumph, and force him, with or without his will, to rejoice with her in her work. But with a laugh, and a rush of light words and a tempestuous caress, she would leave him again, it being out of the question that a man’s sober feet could carry him from attic to cellar with as much swiftness as she felt the occasion required of her, the new mistress. So George made his tour of inspection for the most part by himself, civilly declining the offer of the housekeeper as a guide. This he felt as a new grievance, this staff of servants, whom he and even Nouna had had no hand in choosing, Mr. Angelo, with his customary strange officiousness, having undertaken that and many other details of the new household. On this point, however, George could console himself; as soon as he and his wife were installed, he should make a bold demonstration of the fact that, however weak he might be in the dainty little hands of his wife, he was not to be ruled by anybody else, and intended, with that one important exception perhaps, to be master in his own house.

Even while he made these reflections, he was the unseen witness to a little scene which, in his irritable frame of mind, filled him with anger and suspicions. He was standing on the ground floor, at a bend in the hall, screened from view by a mass of the tall tropical plants with which it was a canon of taste with Nouna to fill every available nook, when his attention was attracted by a peculiar soft treble knock on the panels of the door of an apartment which he had not seen, but which he had been told was the housekeeper’s room. Looking through the great leaves, which he separated with his hand, he saw Mrs. Benfield, the housekeeper, standing at the door. The next moment a key was turned and the door opened from inside, another woman let her in, and immediately the door was re-locked. George, already not in the best of humours, would not stand these mysteries in a place which, as long as he chose to live in it, he was determined should be his own house. He crossed the hall, and knocked sharply on the panels.

“Who is it?” asked Mrs. Benfield’s voice.

“It is I, your master.”

There was a pause of a few seconds, and George could hear the rustling of women’s gowns. Then the door was unlocked and thrown wide with much appearance of deferential haste by Mrs. Benfield.

“I am sorry to have kept you so long, sir; but the locks are new and a little stiff just at first, and I——”

George did not hear the rest of her explanation. He was looking at the woman whom the housekeeper introduced as a friend of hers, avowing that she had been afraid it would be considered a liberty to have a visitor so soon; but she was so anxious to have a sight of the young master and mistress that——

George interrupted. “Of my wife? Pray come with me then, she will be quite pleased to find herself an object of so much interest.”

He spoke courteously and with suppressed excitement, making a step forward to where Mrs. Benfield’s visitor sat close against the window and with her back to the light. For he had a strong suspicion of the identity of this stranger, who shrank into herself at the suggestion, and said she thanked Mr. Lauriston, she would rather not be seen; she felt rather uncomfortable at having come.

“You need not, indeed,” said George in a vibrating voice, gazing intently at the black silhouette, of which he could make out exasperatingly little but the shape of a close bonnet. “I am sure my wife will have particular pleasure in seeing you. I beg you to let me fetch her.”

The lady—there was no mistaking a certain refinement in the voice, even in that hurried whisper—was evidently agitated; but she said nothing as Lauriston retreated towards the door. He crossed the hall to call his wife, scarcely leaving the door of the housekeeper’s room out of sight as he did so. But in that moment when his eyes were not upon it, the mysterious stranger found means to escape; for when Nouna flew down and rushed into the small apartment at her husband’s bidding, there was no one for her to see but Mrs. Benfield, who, much perturbed and grey about the face, explained that her friend, being a nervous woman, had not dared to face the ordeal of a personal introduction to the young lady.

George said nothing, and let his wife wander away again without further explanation, thinking that after all the one small bit of knowledge he had gained he had better at present keep to himself.

He knew by the unmistakable evidence of the voice that he had just seen and spoken with Nouna’s mother.

George Lauristonwas not allowed to make much of his small discovery that Nouna’s mother was not so far off as she wished it to be believed. The very morning after his meeting with the strange lady in the housekeeper’s room he received a private communication to the effect that Madame di Valdestillas had run over to England from Paris on purpose to see in the flesh the man upon whom her daughter’s happiness depended; she had not dared to show herself to Nouna lest her darling should be overwhelmed at the shortness of her visit, and ply her with prayers which it would be impossible to resist and cruel to her invalid husband to grant. She had seen, so she declared, generosity and all noble qualities imprinted in her son-in-law’s face, and she begged him to open his heart to receive her as his mother as well as Nouna’s, when, at two or three months’ time at farthest, she would induce her husband to settle permanently in England, so that she might be near her children.

“You must have seen, my dear Mr. Lauriston,” she went on, “that at sight of you I was almost too much overcome to speak. Think what it is to be face to face, for the first time, with the person to whose care you have blindly confided the being you love best in the world, to be for the first time in seven years under the same roof with the creature for whose sake alone the world seems bright to you, and the chill air of this earth worth the breathing. I lead a brilliant life as the wife of a rich man, a man of rank; but it is empty and dreary to me without the child whom for her own sake I may not now see. Be kind to her, cherish her, be to her the tender guardian my other ties prevented me from being, for what I have entrusted to your care is the idol of my prayers.“Ever your affectionate mother,“Lakshmi di Valdestillas.“P.S.—Any money you may require for setting up your establishment in a manner befitting the position in the world I wish my son and daughter to take I will willingly advance at once through Messrs. Smith and Angelo. An officer of such a regiment as yours wants no passport to the best set in London; but if you propose to come to France, or Spain, or Germany, during the autumn, let me know, and I will take care to furnish you with the very best introductions.”

“You must have seen, my dear Mr. Lauriston,” she went on, “that at sight of you I was almost too much overcome to speak. Think what it is to be face to face, for the first time, with the person to whose care you have blindly confided the being you love best in the world, to be for the first time in seven years under the same roof with the creature for whose sake alone the world seems bright to you, and the chill air of this earth worth the breathing. I lead a brilliant life as the wife of a rich man, a man of rank; but it is empty and dreary to me without the child whom for her own sake I may not now see. Be kind to her, cherish her, be to her the tender guardian my other ties prevented me from being, for what I have entrusted to your care is the idol of my prayers.

“Ever your affectionate mother,

“Lakshmi di Valdestillas.

“P.S.—Any money you may require for setting up your establishment in a manner befitting the position in the world I wish my son and daughter to take I will willingly advance at once through Messrs. Smith and Angelo. An officer of such a regiment as yours wants no passport to the best set in London; but if you propose to come to France, or Spain, or Germany, during the autumn, let me know, and I will take care to furnish you with the very best introductions.”

This communication was the same curious combination as before of passionate letter and prosaic postscript, and again the rather flowery language and gleams of practical sense reminded him of Nouna. The romantic, hybrid signature, Lakshmi di Valdestillas, had an undoubtedly strong effect in explaining the eccentricity of the writer, who, with her Eastern descent and Spanish surroundings, could not fairly be judged by rules which govern the ordinary Englishwoman.

The Countess did not fail to impress the purport of her postscript on her daughter’s mind also, and Nouna was not slow to profit by the injunction. She loved luxury and splendour, had a strong sense of the picturesque, and would have surrounded herself, if that had been possible, with the half-barbarous state of an Oriental potentate. That being out of the question, she snatched readily at the best substitute that offered itself, and found her husband’s fellow-officers, who made no delay in calling upon her, more interesting, if less picturesque, than the turbaned slaves with whom she would have filled her fancifully-decorated apartments.

George was much astonished by the unexacting rapidity with which his wife was “taken up” by people to whom her mother’s foreign title meant nothing. For those officers who were married brought their wives, and no vagary either in Nouna’s dress or manner, no peculiarity in the arrangement of her rooms prevented them from making “a lion” of the fascinating little Indian, from imploring her to come to their receptions, enshrining her photograph—in an impromptu costume rigged up hastily with pins, out of a table-cloth and two antimacassars, and universally pronounced “so deliciously Oriental”—on their cabinets, and begging her scrawling signature for their birthday-books. It was not until some days after the stream of calls and invitations had begun to pour in upon the delighted Nouna that it occurred to George to remember that the pioneer of this invasion was Lord Florencecourt’s sister, the Countess of Crediton, a lady who combined her brother’s hardness of feature with a corresponding rigidity of mind which made her a pillar of strength to all the uncompromising virtues. When he did recall this circumstance, George felt more surprise than ever. No one but the Colonel himself, who had an enormous influence over his sister, could have induced her to take this step; and yet his attitude towards Nouna, on that awkward introduction which he had made no attempt to follow up by a call, had apparently been one of dislike but faintly tempered with the scantest possible courtesy. Why, his very endeavour to get Lauriston to exchange and put the Irish Channel between himself and his old friend was clearly born of the wish to get rid, not of the promising young lieutenant, but of the dark-complexioned wife!

An incident which happened when the Colonel did at last make his tardy call only increased the mystery of his conduct.

It was a hot August afternoon. The wide, tiled hall had in the centre a marble basin holding a pyramid of great blocks of ice, which melted and dripped slowly; large-leaved tropical plants filled all the corners; the walls, which were stencilled in Indian designs, were hung with huge engraved brass trays, and trophies of Asiatic armour. A low, broad seat covered with thin printed cotton stuff, so harmoniously coloured as to suggest some dainty and rare fabric, ran the length of one side. An Indian carpet covered the staircase, the side of which was draped with the richest tapestry. The simplicity, beauty, and coolness of the whole effect was unusual and pleasing to most unimaginative British eyes, but George, who came out into the hall on hearing the Colonel’s voice, saw him glance round at plants and trophies with an expression of shuddering disgust.

“You don’t admire my wife’s freaks of decoration, I see, Lord Florencecourt,” said George, smiling. Then, a new idea crossing his mind, he asked quickly: “Have you been to India?”

Lord Florencecourt shot a rapid, piercing look at him.

“Yes, it’s a d—d hole,” he answered briefly.

This was so summary and to the point, that Lauriston’s questions, if not his interest, were checked, and he led the way up stairs without pursuing the subject.

If the eccentricity of the hall were not to the Colonel’s taste, it was easy to predict that the drawing-rooms would have no charms for him. Here Nouna had let her own conceptions of comfort run riot. No modern spindle-legged furniture, no bric-a-brac. The floor of both rooms was covered with matting, strewn with the well-mounted skins of wild beasts. There the resemblance between the two apartments ended. For the walls of the first were painted black and lined from floor to ceiling with queer little shelves, and brackets, and cupboards, like a Japanese cabinet. The shelves and brackets were filled with vases of cut flowers, cups and saucers of egg-shell china, dainty baskets filled with fruit, brass candlesticks, bright blue plates, cut glass bottles of perfume, hand mirrors from the Palais Royal with frames of porcelain flowers, screens, fans, a hundred dainty and beautiful trifles, each one of which, however, had its use and was not “only for show.” The panels of some of the numerous and oddly-shaped cupboards were inlaid with Japanese work in ivory, pearl, and gold, while others were hung with bright-coloured curtains of Indian silk, fastened back with gold tassels. The ceiling was entirely covered with gold-coloured silk, drawn together in folds in the centre, where the ends were gathered into a huge rosette, tied round with a thick gold cord, finished by tassels which hung downwards a couple of feet. Under this was a large low ottoman, covered with tapestry squares that seemed to have been stitched on carelessly according to the fancy of the worker. From the middle of the seat rose a small pedestal supporting an Indian female figure in coloured bronze, who held high in her hands two tinted lamps, which gave the only light used in the room. The curtains to the windows and doors were gold-coloured silk, edged with gold fringe. Little Turkish tables inlaid with pearl, and immense cushions thrown about the floor in twos and threes, formed all the rest of the furniture.

The second room was as full of flowers and plants as a conservatory. Between the groups of foliage and blossom were low black wicker seats, with crimson and gold cushions, and in one corner, hidden by azaleas and large ferns, was a grand piano, which, whenever Nouna was at home, a young girl, a professional pianist, was engaged to play. The walls of this room were bright with unframed sheets of looking-glass, divided only by long curtains of gold-coloured silk, which reflected both plants and flowers in never-ending vistas of foliage and bloom. The ceiling of this room was painted like a pale summer-sky with little clouds, and the only lighting was by tiny globes of electric light suspended from it.

When George entered the first of these rooms, ushering in the Colonel, Nouna was as usual lying indolently on a pile of cushions, an attitude which she varied for few of her visitors, certainly not for this old gentleman whom she did not like. She held up to him a condescending hand, however, which he did not detain long in his. The whole atmosphere of the place was evidently disagreeable to him; every object on which his glance rested, from Nouna’s fantastic white costume with red velvet girdle, cap, and slippers, to the tigers on the floor, whose glassy eyes and gleaming fangs reminded him of many a fierce jungle-encounter, seemed to excite in him a new disgust, until Nouna, to make a diversion in a conversation which her antipathy and the vagueness of his answers rendered irksome to her, told her husband to show Lord Florencecourt her new palms, and lazily touching a little bell on a table by her side, fell back quietly on her cushions as a gentle intimation that she was not going to throw away her efforts at entertainment any more. The two gentlemen walked obediently into the adjoining room, which was divided from the first only by gold-coloured silk curtains which were never closed.

As they did so, the outer door of the first room was softly opened, and the swarthy white-robed Sundran, walking with noiseless flat-footed tread, crossed the room and laid a little brass tray with porcelain cups and teapot down by her mistress’s side.

The Colonel, who was speaking to George, stopped suddenly, as if the thought that moved his words had been suddenly frozen in his brain, while his furrowed face turned at once to that dead greenish grey which, on sallow faces, is the ghastly sign of some strong and horrible emotion. Following the direction of his eyes with a swift glance, George saw that it was the Indian woman who had excited this feeling, and that this time the Colonel’s disgust was more than a reminder—it was a recognition. Lauriston’s first impulse was to call to Sundran, to make her turn, to confront the one with the other, and tear down at one rough blow the mystery which was beginning to wind itself about one side of his life. But the expression on his old friend’s face was too horrible; it was an agony, a terror; for the Colonel’s sake George dared not interfere. Lord Florencecourt, after the first moment, recovered enough self-possession to make a step further back among the plants, as if to admire one of them. But it was plain to his companion that he was merely seeking a stand-point from which he could observe the woman without being seen by her. And as George watched his face under cover of idle remarks about the flowers, he saw that further scrutiny was bringing about in the Colonel’s mind not relief, but certainty.

As soon as Sundran had withdrawn, Lord Florencecourt advanced to take his leave: but as he did so the door opened, and Lady Millard, accompanied by two of her daughters, was ushered in, and he was detained with or without his will by pretty chattering Charlotte. It was not their first visit; but they were so charmed with the picturesque little bride that they could not keep long away from her; Ella in particular finding a fascination in George’s wife, which was perhaps less extraordinary than the interest Nouna took in the plain abrupt-mannered girl. To Lord Florencecourt, who, in spite of his forced semi-civility, succeeded very ill in masking his intense dislike to young Mrs. Lauriston, the fuss his nieces made with the girl was nothing short of disgusting. Thus when he said, noticing an unmistakable fragrance prevailing over the perfumes of sandalwood and attar of roses:

“I observe that you let your husband smoke, Mrs. Lauriston.”

Nouna waved her hand towards a little engraved gold cigarette case, beside which a tiny lamp was burning, and answered with a bubbling laugh:

“How can I stop him when I set the example?”

The ladies were enraptured; they begged her to smoke to show them how she did it, and Nouna, with a sly, mock-frightened glance from under her eyelashes at Lord Florencecourt, whose expression of rigid disapproval did not escape her, said, addressing him in the half-aggrieved, half-deferential air of the man invaded by an elderly female in a smoking-carriage:

“I hope you don’t object to smoking, sir!”

He did: every line of his face said so. But he could do nothing but smile galvanically, assure her he thought it charming, and hand her the cigarette-case with all the easy grace with which a man travelling first-class produces a third-class ticket.

“You will have to lock up Henry’s cigars from Charlotte and Cicely before long, Effie,” said he to his sister-in-law in a dry aside.

“Oh, I don’t think so, Horace,” she replied easily.

Being the daughter of an American millionaire who had gathered together a priceless collection of paintings and then placed them in a gallery with a magnificent roof of elaborately coloured glass, she was used to eccentricity, and to allowing a wide latitude to individual taste. She had not time to say more, for at that moment Nouna herself crossed the room to her, and joined hands before her in a humbly suppliant attitude.

“If you please, Lady Millard, I want to ask a great favour. It’s such a very great favour that George says I ought not to dream of asking it of any one I haven’t known much longer than I have known you. Now—may I ask it?”

“With the reservation that if it’s anything penal I may refuse.”

“Certainly. Well, Lady Millard, I want you to help me to cure a poor man who is suffering for want of change of air.”

“Why, of course I will, with pleasure—”

“Oh, but do you understand? I want you to invite him down to Norfolk—and while I’m there!”

Every one began to laugh except Lord Florencecourt, and the suppliant turned to glance round gravely at the mockers.

“Ah, but I’m not in fun,” she continued undeterred. “I am interested in this poor fellow—” Again Ella was obliged to give vent to an irrepressible little titter. “And I know that he ought to go out of town, and he won’t unless he gets an invitation where he feels sure that he will enjoy himself.” Unmindful of renewed signs of amusement, she ended: “His own people are clergymen and great-aunts and other things like that, so of course he will not go to them.”

Lady Millard drew her down on to the ottoman beside her, repressing her own inclination to laugh.

“And what is the name of the interesting young invalid?”

“Dicky Wood.”

“Dicky Wood!” and the three ladies echoed it in much astonishment. “Why, he is quite well!” “We saw him only the other day!” they cried.

Nouna nodded sagaciously.

“Of course,” she said, glancing round with a patronising sweep of the eyes at the two younger ladies, both of whom were considerably older than she, “your daughters cannot know so well as I do; I am a married woman, the boys come and talk to me; but I know that he is not well at all, and if he does not go away soon he will go into a decline, I believe.” She ended with such tragic solemnity that all the girls’ inclination to laugh at her ingenuousness died suddenly away.

Lady Millard took off Nouna’s cap, smoothed her hair, and kissed her as if she had been one of her own daughters. She felt a strong sympathy for this little creature who dared to be impulsive and unconventional and natural in a country which to her had been full of iron bonds of strait-laced custom.

“I will see if it can be managed, dear,” she said kindly. “Of course I can’t promise till I’ve seen Sir Henry.”

Lord Florencecourt’s harsh voice rasped their ears just as the younger lady was heartily returning the kiss of the elder.

“And pray what does Mrs. Lauriston’s husband say?”

Nouna’s head sprang back with great spirit.

“Mrs. Lauriston’s husband has only to say yes to whatever Mrs. Lauriston wishes, or he would be no husband for me,” she said decidedly.

At this neither George nor any one else could help laughing.

“Oh, Nouna, you don’t know what a reputation you’re giving us both!” he said, as soon as he could command his voice. “They’ll say I’m henpecked.”

She looked for a moment rather dismayed, as if not quite measuring the force of the accusation. Then with a sudden turn towards him, her whole face aglow with affection, she said in a low, impulsive voice:

“Does it matter what they say as long as we’re both so happy?”

“No, child, it doesn’t!” cried Lady Millard, carried away by the young wife’s frank simplicity.

But on Lord Florencecourt’s prejudiced mind the little scene was only another display of the most brazen coquetry. He and the ladies left together, and they were not out of the house before George, in a transport of passion, snatched into his arms the wife who was always discovering new charms for him. Presently she said:

“George, that wooden-faced Lord Florencecourt hates me!”

“When you’ve seen Lady Florencecourt, you’ll understand that a taste for the one type of woman is incompatible with a taste for the other.”

“But why then did he make his sister call upon me? For she said it was her brother made her call, and everybody thinks a visit from Lady Crediton a great thing!”

“Well, I suppose it must have been to please me, Nouna,” said her husband.

But in truth he did not feel sure of it, Lord Florencecourt’s conduct lately having been in more ways than one a mystery to him.

Two days later, however, he had a conversation with his chief, the end of which supplied, as he thought, a clue to it. Lord Florencecourt began by reproaching him for a falling off in the quality of his ambition.

“I can see it,” said he, “I can see the fire slackening every day, aims getting lower, if not more sordid. I am an old fool, I suppose, to begin ‘the service is going to the dogs’ cry; but I, for one, believe in enthusiasm; a soldier without it is not worth the cost of his uniform; and I’d sooner see a young officer’s body shot down with a bullet than his soul gnawed away by a woman.”

“Colonel, you are going too far—”

“No, I’m not. What will you remember of the hardest words an old man can speak when you are once again in the arms of that—”

“You forget you are speaking of my wife,” interrupted George hastily in a low hoarse voice.

“Your wife! How many of the duties of a wife will that little thing in the red cap perform? Will she look after your household, bring up your children well, keep you up to your work, advance your interests by her tact, nurse you when you’re laid up? No; she’ll ruin you by her extravagance, disgrace you by her freaks, and if you ever should be ill or ordered off and unable to keep your eye on her, ten to one she’d bolt with some other man.”

“With all respect, Colonel, I think I have chosen my wife as well as some of my superiors,” said George, at a white heat, scarcely opening his lips.

Now every one knew that Lady Florencecourt was the soul of “aggravation,” but Lauriston had no idea that his retort would bowl the Colonel over so completely. Instead of indignation at the lieutenant’s turning the tables upon him, his face expressed nothing but blank horror, and an agony as acute as that which he had suffered two days before at sight of the Indian woman Sundran. Again the look was momentary; and in his usual voice, with his eyes fixed upon George, without any irritation, he said slowly:

“Lady Florencecourt—” He paused. George remained silently facing him, rather ashamed of himself. The Colonel continued more glibly—“Lady Florencecourt may be surpassed in amiability, I admit that. But she is at least above reproach, infirmity of temper in a wife counting rather on the right side of the balance, as the due of uncompromising virtue.”

“But, Colonel,” hazarded George apologetically, being moved to some compassion by these outlines of a gloomy domestic picture, “you would not expect my wife to be yet as uncompromising as Lady Florencecourt?”

“Isn’t it going rather far when she cannot pass a week’s visit to a country-house without providing herself with a retinue of young men?”

“Oh, Dicky Wood!” said George cheerfully. “That’s all right; it is the purest good-nature her wanting to get poor Wood out of town now. He’s got into—”

He stopped. Lord Florencecourt was his friend, but he was also his commanding officer, and Dicky’s. He hesitated, grew red, and muttered something about retrenchment and pulling up. But he had said too much, and under promise of his communication being treated confidentially, he had to finish it.

“I’m as sorry about it as I can be, and so’s my wife; for we both like Wood, as everybody does. But some wretched woman has got hold of him—you know, sir, he is well off, and as generous as sun in the tropics, and so we want to get him away, if we can persuade him to go. And he hasn’t had any leave for ever so long.”

The Colonel listened gravely, and when the account was over he spoke in a rather less hard tone.

“H’m, if the young fool has once begun on that tack, you may as well let him be squeezed dry by one as by another,” he said grimly. “And a young gentleman fond of that kind of society will be a nice sort of companion for your wife.” His tone still implied also that the wife would be “a nice sort of companion for him.”

“But, sir, Wood isn’t like an ordinary fellow; he’s such a gentle, open-hearted creature, it quite knocks one over to see him made a meal of—and by a woman like Chloris White!”

Lauriston’s first impression, on noting the sudden contraction of his hearer’s face into greater rigidity than ever, at this contemptuous mention by name of one of the most notorious persons in London, was that he had “put his foot in it.” The Colonel’s austerity might not be so thorough-going as he had imagined. The next moment he was undeceived as Lord Florencecourt’s eyes moved slowly round, as if by an effort, till they rested on his face.

“God help the lad! Do your best for him, Lauriston, if you will; pulling a man out of the hug of a boa-constrictor’s d——d easy work compared to it!”

Lord Florencecourt shivered, and looked at the windows as he got up and walked away, so little himself that he began trying to smoke a cigar he had not lighted.

It was then that by an inspiration an explanation of his late extraordinary conduct occurred to Lauriston.

“Wonder if he’s going off his head!” he thought with sorrowful concern. “And it’s taking the form of antipathy to women. First Nouna; then Sundran; last of all this Chloris White! Poor old chap! Poor dear old chap! that comes of marrying Lady Florencecourt; or perhaps his marriage was the first sign of it.”

And George, trying in vain to account in any other way for the strange behaviour of his friend, went home to renewed raptures over his own happier choice.

George Lauriston’sgloomy forebodings at the entire change in their manner of life brought about by Nouna’s becoming a comparatively rich woman, were not, in the first few weeks at least, fulfilled. The new way of living pleased the volatile child-woman much better than the old; and as she was never happy or miserable by halves, her joy in her good fortune was so strong as to be infectious; it was impossible to live in the neighbourhood of her full sensuous delight in existence without catching some of its radiance; and George, while ashamed of the weakness which made him take the colour of his life from hers, when he had meant in the most orthodox way to make her tastes and feelings accord with his own, found a fierce and ever-strengthening pleasure in the intoxicating love-draughts his passion afforded him, until his ambition, which perhaps had been none of the highest, began to sleep, and thought and principle to grow languid under the enervating influence of the question: What good in heaven or earth is worth the striving for, when this, the most absorbing soul or sense can imagine, is close to my hand, at my lips? And so, as in all encounters of the affections, the greater love was at the mercy of the less; and George, telling himself that time and experience would develop in her all those other qualities which his own efforts had failed to draw out, but which, being part of his conception of the ideal woman, must lie dormant somewhere in the queen of his heart, gave himself up to adoration of those excellences in her which had been already demonstrated; and they lived through those hot summer weeks in happiness, which caused the one first awake in the morning to touch the other softly, doubtingly, to make sure that their life of dream-like joy was a reality still.

George had had, of course, to indulge the cravings of Nouna’s sociability, and to submit to the entertaining of visitors, and to the establishment of an institution which in its beginnings rather shocked him. Nouna, finding that the social day began late, readily understood that this necessitated “stealing a few hours from the night,” and she accordingly encouraged such of her husband’s friends as met with her approval, to “come and smoke a cigar with George after dinner.” As this invitation was invariably accepted, and as the entertainment always included a perfectly served little supper, under the famous golden silk ceiling, Mrs. Lauriston’s “midnight parties” soon began to be talked about, and to afford a nice little scandal to be worried by all the women who were jealous of the little lady’s rapid and surprising success. Even when with August the dead season sets in, there are always men detained in town by business or caprice, and Nouna found no falling off in attendance at these receptions, so consonant with masculine tastes and habits, and there was a general outcry of aggrieved bachelordom—bachelordom in its wide sense, including those who had attained a more complete form of existence, but still wallowed in the unworthy habits of the less honourable state—when the time came for Mr. and Mrs. Lauriston to start for Norfolk.

Lord Florencecourt, who was already at Willingham, had asked George, with an assumed carelessness which the latter was too well-informed to misinterpret, whether they intended to take “that hideous black woman,” whose ugliness, he declared, had nearly made the rest of his hair turn white the only time he saw her, with them to Norfolk. George said no, but he was not sorry when, later, Nouna insisted upon Sundran’s accompanying them, as he had a lurking wish to see what the effect would be if the woman were to confront the Colonel. Nouna had scoffed at the notion of his being insane, and on learning that his marriage might possibly have had an effect on his mind, she expressed great curiosity to see this formidable wife.

George laughed rather mischievously.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to forego that pleasure, Nouna,” he said, shaking his head. “I heard from Ella Millard the other day that Lady Florencecourt is so much shocked by what she has heard about you and your wicked heathen ways, that she has quarrelled with her brother, Sir Henry, about their invitation to you, and has refused to visit them while you are at the Lodge!”

Nouna, who was playing at packing, having been busy for twenty minutes with a delicate Sèvres tea-pot and some yards of tissue paper, let the china fall from her hands at these words, in a torrent of indignation. She scarcely glanced at the broken fragments on the floor, as she burst forth with great haughtiness in the high-flown language she habitually used when her passions were roused:

“Indeed! Does then the wife of this miserable little wooden soldier think the granddaughter of a Maharajah unworthy to bear the light of her eyes? We will see, we will see. Perhaps she is a little too imperious; there may be powers in the earth greater than hers! I will write to my mother, who has never yet failed to fulfil my wishes, and I will tell her to search if she can find means to humble this proud lady of the fens, so that she may sue to me to receive me in her house, heathen, foreigner, though I am!”

And with a superb gesture Nouna signified her contempt for the ironical laughter her husband could not restrain.

“Oh, little empress,” he said, good-humouredly, “you will have to learn that all magicians have limits, and that even a mother so devoted as yours can’t carry out all the freaks that enter into one little feminine head. The very king of the black art could not move Lady Florencecourt!”

“The king! Perhaps not, because he is a foolish male thing,” retorted Nouna coldly, “but what my mother wills to do she does, and I trust her.”

And she would not suffer any further word on the subject.

George was in the depths of his heart not without a little anxiety about this Norfolk visit. Unconventionality is so much more unconventional in the country, where every trifling detail in which a man differs from his neighbours is nodded over far and wide as a sign of mental aberration, while in the case of a woman it is held to warrant even graver doubts. Nouna herself was in the highest spirits at the prospect; delightful as life in London was, a change after five weeks of her new home was more delightful still. She had had made for the occasion a varied assortment of dainty white frocks, of the kind that charm men by their simplicity, and women by their costliness, and a white costume with fine lines of red and gold, for yachting on the broads, which might have carried off the palm at Cowes. Nouna had the instinct of dress, a regal instinct which revelled in combinations and contrasts, in forms and folds, which everyday English women might admire or marvel at, but copied at their peril. She travelled down, the day being cool, in a Spanish cloak of mouse-grey velvet, lined with ivory silk, and fastened with clasps of smoked pearl and silver. On her head she wore a cap of the same colours. The milliner, an artist spoiled by ministering to a long course of puppets, was aghast at the order, and suggested that it would make Mrs. Lauriston look, well—er—brown. Nouna replied, with a great sweep of the eyelashes, that shewasbrown, and she should be sorry to look anything else. And indeed her beauty was seen to great advantage in this original setting, and its tints might pleasantly have suggested to the fanciful brown woods in the haze of a grey October day.

They reached Gorleth, the nearest railway-station to Maple Lodge, at half-past four. Sir Henry and his daughter Cicely were on the platform, Cicely in a short grey riding habit, looking in this practical garment a thousand times handsomer and more captivating than she had done in her most brilliant ball-dress, according to the wont of her countrywomen, who, from the royal ladies downwards, never look worse than when dressed solely with the view to charm.

Let it be acknowledged once for all: the Englishwoman, to her credit be it said, is a riding animal, a walking animal, a boating animal, a cooking animal, a creature fond of hard work and hard play, full of energy and capabilities for better things than the piano-strumming and Oxford local cramming which are now drummed into her so diligently. But her social qualities are so poor as to be scarce worth cultivation unless some better methods be discovered than those now in vogue. Her dancing is more vigorous than graceful, her conversation is inane, her deportment in full dress uneasy and deplorable, and her manner at social gatherings where no active muscular exertion is required of her, dull and constrained. Ten girls are handsome and attractive in a boat or on the tennis-ground to one who at an “at-home” or a dance is passable enough to make a man want an introduction. The metropolis has the pick of the market, if the term may be allowed, in marriageable maidens as in flowers and fruit. But all alike lose their freshest, greatest charm when they are plucked from their natural setting of country green.

George had an inkling of this truth as he helped his tiny wife out of the railway carriage, amidst the stares of a crowd of country market-folk, who gaped as they would have done if a regulation fairy, gauze wings, wand and all, had suddenly descended down the wide chimney on to their cottage hearth. He should love and admire her whatever she did, but he wanted her to sway the sceptre of conquest over all these friends at Willingham and Maple Lodge, and his heart ached with fear lest a breath of disapproval should touch her, lest she should appear to any disadvantage under such new conditions.

She herself, happily, was tormented by no such fear. She ran up to Sir Henry, who was dressed in a vile suit of coarse mustard-coloured stuff, a common little hat on his head, and a broad smile of recovered bliss on his face, looking as no self-respecting farmer among his tenants would have dared to look, and rejoicing in his escape from town and tight clothes.

“Why, you little town-mouse,” he said, laughing good-humouredly as he looked down on the tiny lady, “I don’t know how you will live down here. We shall have to feed you on butterflies’ wings and dew-drops; I should think a mouthful of plain roast beef would kill you.”

“Oh no, it wouldn’t, Sir Henry,” cried Nouna, distressed and offended by these doubts cast on her accomplishments. “I eat a great deal, don’t I, George?”

“Well, more than one would expect, to look at you,” admitted her husband, remembering the fiasco of the wedding breakfast.

“Besides,” said Nouna astutely, “everything that one eats comes from the country. The town produces nothing but soot; perhaps you think I live upon that, and that’s what made me half a black woman.”

The genuine black woman, Sundran, was meanwhile creating a great sensation; so that, to save her from the rustic wit, which made up in blunt obtrusiveness what it lacked in point, she was packed with her mistress inside the Millards’ one-horse brougham, which, like all their surroundings in their country retreat, was almost ostentatiously modest and even shabby. George was content enough to share the coachman’s seat.

“I thought the maid would sit outside; I hadn’t reckoned upon your bringing a lady of so striking a complexion, George,” said Sir Henry apologetically. “The old carriage is such a lumbering concern that I thought the brougham would be quicker, and there’s a cart for the luggage.”

George laughed. “If I had my choice I’d go on the cart,” said he. “I am yet unspoiled by my promotion to matrimony.”

It was a pleasant drive over the flat country, too marshy to be dry and burnt up even in summer. Sir Henry and his pretty daughter kept pace with the carriage, and flung breezy commonplaces at their guests with smiling, healthy faces that made their conversational efforts more than brilliant. Nouna peeped out like a little bird at the flat green fields and the pollard willows with an expression which seemed to say that she had quite fathomed the hidden humour of the whole thing.

“I like the country,” she called to Cicely with an exhaustive nod, as if she had lived in and loved the fields for years.

And at sight of the Lodge itself she grew rapturous.

Sir Henry Millard’s modest country residence was nothing more than a fair-sized one-storied white cottage, close to the road, from which it was separated only by a little garden just big enough to contain a semicircular drive, a small half-moon lawn, and two side-beds full of roses. A stone-paved verandah ran the whole length of the house, and a hammock swung between two of the supports of the green roof, in what would have been glaring publicity if there had ever been any public to speak of on the quiet road in front. It would have been rather a pretty little place if Sir Henry, to meet the requirements of his family, had not preferred enlarging it by adding at the back various hideous red brick wings and outbuildings of his own designing, to the more reasonable course of taking a larger house. The pleasure of conceiving and superintending these original “improvements” had indeed, while it lasted, been the most unalloyed joy of Sir Henry’s simple life; to worry the architect, who had had to be called in at the last to put a restraining check on Sir Henry’s inspirations, which threatened to dispense with the vulgar adjuncts of passages and staircases; to test the building materials, samples of which lay about the sitting-rooms for days; above all, to do a little amateur bricklaying during the workmen’s dinner hour—were joys the mere memory of which thrilled him more than any recollection of his honeymoon.

Whatever the architectural defects of the house might be, Nouna had nothing but admiration for it. The tiny little hall; the box-like drawing-room to the right, with high glass cupboards on each side of the fireplace containing apostle spoons, old china bowls, fragments of quartz and the like; the bare-looking dining-room to the left, furnished as plainly as a school-room, and even the bake-house which led out from it, all enchanted her by their novelty; while the bedroom up stairs, ten feet square, into which she was shown, put the climax to this deliciously new experience, and made her feel, as she expressed herself to her husband, “that she wished she had married a farmer.”

To George’s delight she ran down stairs within twenty minutes of her arrival in the simplest of white muslin frocks, with a wonderful scarlet and gold sash. But he had no time to congratulate her on her good sense in dressing so appropriately before she was off, in a huge garden-hat taken with instinctive knowledge of what was most becoming from a collection in the hall, to see the farmyard—Sir Henry’s pride. They made an odd pair—the broad-shouldered, solid-looking country gentleman, in his rough suit, and the small airily-clad person who varied her progress by occasional ecstatic bounds in the air, which made the ends of her sash swirl in the breeze like the wings of some gorgeous butterfly. George and the girls, with Lady Millard, followed much more sedately. When, after due admiration of cows and horses, pigs and poultry, they all returned to the verandah, fresh objects of interest presented themselves in a pretty group of riders at that moment climbing the hill upon which the lodge stood.

“Uncle Horace!” cried the girls, as Nouna recognised in the eldest of the party Lord Florencecourt. He was accompanied by two pretty boys of about eight and ten on ponies which they already managed as if boy and pony had been one creature.

“How Horace worships those boys!” muttered Sir Henry enviously.

Charlotte had run down to open the gate, and there was much clatter of lively greeting. Lord Florencecourt, though he seemed happier down here with his children than he had been in town, showed his old constraint with Nouna. It was therefore with great surprise not only to the young husband and wife, but to their host and his family that they learnt the object of his visit.

“You see I haven’t lost much time in paying my respects, Mrs. Lauriston,” he said, speaking in a lively tone, but with an ill-concealed reluctance to meet her eyes. “Those girls would like to flatter themselves that my visit is for them, but they are all wrong.”

“Never mind, uncle, Regie and Bertie come to see us,” cried Ella, giving a kiss to the youngest boy.

Lord Florencecourt continued: “The fact is, Mrs. Lauriston, we know that you will be so run after down here, that when you have been seen a little there will be no getting hold of you. So my wife sent me to ask you and George to stay with us from Friday to Monday the week after next. Mr. Birch, our member, will be there, and we thought as he has come to the front so much lately you might like to meet him.” Nouna stole a triumphant glance at her husband, and the girls, who were near enough to hear, could not forbear little unseen eyebrow-raisings of astonishment. He went on: “Lady Florencecourt will call upon you on Monday, but she thought it best to send her invitation at once to make sure of you.”

“It is very kind of Lady Florencecourt; I shall like to come very much,” said Nouna, who was brimming over with delight and triumph. “Only I don’t think I could do much to entertain a rising member of Parliament. I can’t talk politics; but perhaps he’d like to learn to make cocked hats out of newspaper, and then he can amuse himself when the other members are making dull speeches.”

“I’m sure he’d like it immensely if you will teach him,” said Lord Florencecourt, with cold civility, which would have damped frivolity less aerial than Nouna’s.

The girls thought Lady Florencecourt must have been bewitched thus to transgress her own well-known rule of ignoring any stranger whose pedigree was not at her fingers’ ends. She had, besides, gone so far as to gibe at her brother for admitting “a loose-mannered young woman of unknown and questionable antecedents”—as she styled young Mrs. Lauriston—into the society of his daughters. And now she was sending a pressing invitation by the mouth of her husband, whose prejudice against the interloper was hardly concealed! Decidedly Nouna had a dash of Eastern magic about her. Meanwhile the young lady herself was troubling her head very little with the problem. She was much struck with the blue eyes and curly dark hair of the younger of the two boys, and bending down to him with her little head perched on one side in the coquettish manner she used alike to man, woman, child or animal, she asked with a smile what his name was.

“Allow me to present him with proper ceremony,” said Ella playfully. “Permit me to introduce you,” gravely to her small cousin, “to Mrs. George Lauriston. Mrs. Lauriston,” turning to the lady, “the Honourable Bertram Kilmorna!”

She had scarcely uttered the last word when Nouna shot up from her bending attitude as if at an electric shock, and fixed her great eyes, wide with bewilderment and surprise, on Lord Florencecourt, who was standing behind Ella and his son, near enough to hear these words and to see their effect.

“Kilmorna!” she repeated in a whisper, still looking full at the Colonel, whose rugged face had grown suddenly rigid and grey. Then, without further ceremony, she ran away to her husband, who was talking to Lady Millard at a little distance.

“George, George!” she said in a tumultuous whisper, her face quivering with excitement, “I don’t want to go to Lady Florencecourt’s; tell him I don’t want to go!”

“Why, what’s this? How has the Colonel offended you?” asked George laughing.

“He hasn’t offended me at all. Only I’ve changed my mind. I know I—I shouldn’t like Lady Florencecourt. I’d rather not go.”

But as George insisted that it was impossible to break an engagement just made, without any reason, she broke from him with an impatient push, and disappeared into the house just before Lord Florencecourt, who had abruptly discovered that he was in a hurry to be off, took his leave. Ella prevented George from fetching his wife out.

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