Chapter Three.

Chapter Three.The London season was over. Mr Norreys had been longing for its close; so, at least, he had repeated to his friends, and with even more insistence to himself, a great many, indeed a very great many, times, during the last hot, dusty weeks of the poor season’s existence. He wanted to get off to Norway in a friend’s yacht for some fishing, he said; he seemed for once really eager about it, so eager as to make more than one of his companions smile, and ask themselves what had come to Norreys, he who always took things with such imperturbable equanimity, what had given him this mania for northern fishing?And now the fishing and the trip were things of the past. They had not turned out as delightful in reality as in anticipation somehow, and yet what had gone wrong Despard, on looking back, found it hard to say. That nothing had gone wrong was the truth of the matter. The weather had been fine and favourable; the party had been well chosen; Lennox-Brown, the yacht’s owner, was the perfection of a host.“It was a case of the workman, not of the tools, I suspect,” Despard said to himself one morning, when, strolling slowly up and down the smooth bit of gravel path outside the drawing-room windows at Markerslea Vicarage, he allowed his thoughts to wander backwards some little way. “I am sick of it all,” he went on, with an impatient shake, testifying to inward discomposure. “I’m a fool after all, no wiser, indeed a very great deal more foolish, than my neighbours. And I’ve been hard enough upon other fellows in my time. Little I knew! I cannot throw it off, and what to do I know not.”He was staying with his sister, his only near relation. She was older than he, had been married for several years, and had but one trouble in life. She was childless. Naturally, therefore, she lavished on Despard an altogether undue amount of sisterly devotion. But she was by no means an entirely foolish woman. She had helped to spoil him, and she was beginning to regret it.“He is terribly, quite terriblyblasé,” she was saying to herself as she watched him this morning, herself unobserved. “I have never seen it so plainly as this autumn,” and she sighed. “He is changed, too; he is moody and irritable, and that is new. He has always been so sweet-tempered. Surely he has not got into money difficulties—I can scarcely think so. He is too sensible. Though, after all, as Charles often says, perhaps the best thing that could befall the poor boy would be to have to work hard for his living—” a most natural remark on the part of “Charles,” seeing that he himself had always enjoyed a thoroughly comfortable sufficiency,—and again Mrs Selby sighed.Her sigh was echoed; she started slightly, then, glancing round, she saw that the glass door by which she stood was ajar, and that her brother had arrested his steps for a moment or two, and was within a couple of yards of her. It was his sigh that she had heard. Her face clouded over still more; it is even probable that a tear or two rose unbidden to her eyes. She was a calm, considering woman as a rule; for once she yielded to impulse, and, stepping out, quickly slipped her hand through Mr Norreys’ arm.“My dear Despard,” she said, “what a sigh! It sounded as if from the very depths of your heart, if,” she went on, trying to speak lightly, “if you have one that is to say, which I have sometimes doubted.”But he threw back no joke in return.“I have never givenyoureason to doubt it, surely, Maddie?” he said half reproachfully.“No, no, dear. I’m in fun, of course. But seriously—”“I’m serious enough.”“Yes, that you are—too serious. What’s the matter, Despard, for that there is something the matter I am convinced?”He did not attempt to deny it.“Yes, Madeline,” he said slowly, “I’m altogether upset. I’ve been false to all my own theories. I’ve been a selfish enough brute always, I know, but at least I think I’ve been consistent. I’ve chosen my own line, and lived the life, and among the people that suited me, and—”“Been dreadfully,miserablyspoilt, Despard.”He glanced up at her sharply. No, she was not smiling. His face clouded over still more.“And that’s the best even you can say of me?” he asked.Mrs Selby hardly let him finish.“No, no. I am blaming myself more than you,” she said quickly. “You are much—much better than you know, Despard. You are not selfish really. Think of what you have done for others; how consistently you have given up those evenings to that night school.”“One a week—what’s that? And there’s no credit in doing a thing one likes. I enjoy those evenings, and it’s more than I can say for the average of my days.”But his face cleared a very little as he spoke.“Well,” she went on, “that shows you are not at heart an altogether selfish brute,” and now she smiled a little. “And all the more does it show how much better you might still be if you chose. I am very glad, delighted, Despard, that youarediscontented and dissatisfied; I knew it would come sooner or later.”Mr Norreys looked rather embarrassed.“Maddie,” he began again, “you haven’t quite understood me. I didn’t finish my sentence. I was going on to say that at least I had done no harm to anyone else; if no one’s any better through me, at least no one’s theworsefor my selfishness—oh, yes, don’t interrupt,” he went on. “I know what you’d like to say—‘No man liveth to himself,’ the high-flown sort of thing. I don’t go in for that. Butnow—I have not even kept my consistency. You’d never guess what I’ve gone and done—at least, Maddie,canyou guess?”And his at all times sweet voice sweetened and softened as he spoke, and into his eyes stole a look Madeline had never seen there before.“Despard,” she exclaimed breathlessly, “have you, can you, have fallen in love?”He nodded.“Oh, dear Despard,” she exclaimed, “I am so very glad. It will be the making of you. That’s to say, if—but it must be somebodyverynice.”“Nice enough in herself—nice,” he repeated, and he smiled. “Yes, if by nice you mean everything sweet and womanly, and original and delightful, and—oh, you mustn’t tempt me to talk about her. But what she isherselfis not the only thing, my poor Maddie.”Mrs Selby gave a start.“Oh, Despard,” she exclaimed, “you don’t mean that she’s a married woman.”“No, no.”“Or, or any one very decidedly beneath you?” she continued, with some relief, but anxiously still.Despard hesitated.“That’s exactly what I can’t quite say,” he replied. “She’s a lady by birth, that I’m sure of. But she has seen very little. Lived always in a village apparently—she has been in some ways unusually well and carefully educated. But I’m quite positive she’s poor, really with nothing of her own, I fancy. I’m not sure—it has struck me once or twice that perhaps she had been intended for a governess.”Mrs Selby gasped, but checked herself.“She has friends who are kind to her. I met her at some good houses. It was at Mrs Englewood’s first of all, but since then I’ve seen her at much better places.”“But why do you speak so doubtfully—you keep saying ‘I fancy’—‘I suppose.’ It must be easy to find out all about her.”“No; that’s just it. She’s curiously, no—not reserved—she’s too nice and well-bred for that sort of thing—but, if you can understand, she’sfranklybackward in speaking of herself. She’ll talk of anything but herself. She has an old invalid father whom she adores—and—upon my soul, that’s about all she has ever told me.”“You can ask Mrs Englewood, surely.”Despard frowned.“I can, and I have; at least, I tried it. But it was not easy. She’s been rather queer to me lately. She would volunteer no information, and of course—you see—I didn’t want to seem interested on the subject. It’s only just lately, since I came here in fact, that I’ve really owned it to myself,” and his face flushed. “I went yachting and fishing to put it out of my head, but—it’s been no use—I won’t laugh at all that sort of thing again as I have done, I can tell you.”“He’s very much in earnest,” thought Mrs Selby.“What—you don’t mind telling me—what is her name?” she asked.“Ford—Miss Ford. I fancy her first name is Mary. There’s a pet name they call her by,” but he did not tell it.“Mary Ford—that does not sound aristocratic,” mused Mrs Selby. “Despard, tell me—Mrs Englewood is really fond of you. Do you think she knows anything against the girl, or her family, or anything like that, and that she was afraid of it for you?”“Oh, dear no! Quite the contrary, Mai—Miss Ford is a great pet of hers. Gertrude was angry with me for not being civil to her,” and he laughed.“Not being civil to her,” she repeated. “And you were falling in love with her? How do you mean?”“That was afterwards. I was brutally uncivil to her at first. That’s how it began somehow,” he said, disconnectedly.Mrs Selby felt utterly perplexed. Was he being taken in by a designing girl? It all sounded very inconsistent.“Despard,” she said after a little silence, “shall I try to find out all about her from Mrs Englewood? She would not refuse any information if it was for your sake.”He considered.“Well, yes,” he said, “perhaps you’d better.”“And—” she went on, “if all is satisfactory—”“Well?”“You will go through with it?”“I—suppose so. Altogether satisfactory it can’t be. I’m fairly well off as a bachelor, but that’s a very different matter. And—Maddie—I should hate poverty.”“You would have no need to call it poverty,” she said rather coldly.“Well—well—I’m speaking comparatively of course,” he replied, impatiently. “It would be whatIcall poverty. And I am selfish, I know. The best of me won’t come out under those circumstances. I’ve no right to marry, you see—that’s what’s been tormenting me.”“But if she likes to face it—would not that bring out the best of you?” said Mrs Selby hopefully, though in her heart rather shocked by his way of speaking.“Perhaps—I can’t say. But of course if she did—”“And you are sure she would?” asked Madeline, suddenly awaking to the fact that Miss Ford’s feelings in the matter had been entirely left out of the question.Despard smiled.“Do you mean am I sure she cares for me?” he said. “Oh, yes—as for that—”“I don’t like a girl who—who lets it be seen if she cares for a man,” she said.Mr Norreys turned upon her.“Lets it be seen,” he repeated angrily. “Maddie, you put things very disagreeably. Would I—tell me, is it likely thatIwould take to a girl so utterly devoid of delicacy as your words sound? And is it so improbable that a girl would care for me?” He smiled in spite of himself, and Mrs Selby’s answering smile as she murmured: “I did not mean that, you know,” helped to smooth him down. “She did her best to make me think she detested me,” he added. “But—”“Ah, yes, but—” said his sister fondly. “Then it is settled, Despard,” she went on. “I shall tackle Mrs Englewood in my own way. You can trust me. You don’t know where Miss Ford is at present?” she added.He shook his head despondently.“Not the ghost of an idea. I didn’t try to hear. I thought I didn’t want to know, you see. But—Maddie,” he added, half timidly, “you’ll write at once?”“As soon as I possibly can,” she replied kindly, for glancing at him she saw that he looked really ill and worn. “And,” she went on, “as my reward, you will go with me to the Densters’ garden-party this afternoon. Charles can’t, and I hate going alone. I don’t know them—it is their first year here, though everybody says they are very nice people.”“Oh, dear,” said Despard. “Very well, Maddie. I must, I suppose.”“Then be ready at a quarter to four. I’ll drive you in the pony-carriage,” and Madeline disappeared through the glass door whence she had emerged.“I wonder if she will write to-day,” thought Mr Norreys, though he would have been ashamed to ask it. “I should like to know it’s done—a sort of crossing the Rubicon. And it’s a good while now since that last day I saw her. She was never quite so sweet as that day. Supposing I heard she was married?”His heart seemed to stop beating at the thought, and he grew white, though there was no one to see. But he reassured himself. Few things were less likely. Portionless girls, however charming, don’t marry so quickly nowadays.Madeline’s feelings were mingled. She was honestly and unselfishly glad of what she believed might be a real turning point towards good for Despard. Yet—“if only he had not chosen a girl quite so denuded of worldly advantages as she evidently is,” she reflected. “For of course if she had either money or connection Mrs Englewood would not have kept it a secret. She is far too outspoken. I must beg her to tell everything she knows, not to be afraid of my mixing her name up in the matter in any way. When she sees that Charles and I do not disapprove she will feel less responsibility.”And it was with a comfortable sense of her own and “Charles’s” unworldliness that Mrs Selby prepared to indite the important letter.She saw little of her brother till the afternoon. He did not appear at luncheon, having left word that he had gone for a long walk.“Provided only that he is not too late for the Densters’,” thought Madeline, with a little sigh over the perversity of mankind.But her fears were unfounded. At ten minutes to four Mr Norreys made his appearance in the hall, faultlessly attired, apologising with his usual courtesy, in which to his sister he never failed, for his five minutes’ delay, and Mrs Selby, feeling pleased with herself outwardly and inwardly, for she was conscious both of looking well in a very pretty new bonnet, and of acting a truly high-minded part as a sister, seated herself in her place, with a glance of satisfaction at her companion.“Everybody will be envying me,” she said to herself, with a tiny sigh as she remembered former air-castles in Despard’s behoof. “The Flores-Carter girls and Edith and Bertha Byder, indeed all the neighbourhood get quite excited if they know he’s here. He might have had his choice of the best matches in this county, to my own knowledge, and there are several girls with money. Ah, well!”The grounds seemed already fall of guests when the brother and sister drove up to the Densters’ door. Mrs Selby was at once seized upon by some of her special cronies, and for half an hour or so Despard kept dutifully beside her, allowing himself to be introduced to any extent, doing his best to please his sister by responding graciously to the various attentions which were showered upon him. But he grew very tired of it all in a little while—a curious dreamy feeling began to come over him, born no doubt of the unwonted excitement of his conversation with Madeline that morning. He had gone a long walk in hopes of recovering his usual equanimity, but had only succeeded in tiring himself physically. The mere fact of having put in words to another the conflict of the last few months seemed to have given actual existence to that which he had by fits and starts been trying to persuade himself was but a passing fancy. And even to himself he could not have told whether he was glad or sorry that the matter had come to a point—had, as it were, been taken out of his own hands. For that Madeline had already written to Mrs Englewood he felt little doubt.“Women are always in such a desperate hurry,” he said to himself, which, all things considered, was surely most unreasonable. Nor could he have denied that it was so, for even as he made the reflection he began to calculate in how many, or how few rather, days they might look for an answer, and to speculate on the chances of Mrs Englewood’s being acquainted with Maisie’s present whereabouts.“Maisie,” he called her to himself, though he had somehow shrunk from telling the name to his sister. It was so sweet—solikeher, he repeated softly, though, truth to tell, sweetness was not the most conspicuous quality in our heroine. But Despard was honestly in love after all, as many better and many worse men have been before him, and will be again. And love of the best kind, which on the whole his was, is clairvoyant—he was not wrong about Maisie’s real sweetness.“I do care for her, as deeply, as thoroughly as ever a man cared for a woman. But I don’t want to marry; it’s against all my plans and ideas. I didn’t want to fall in love either, for that matter. The whole affair upsets everything I had ever dreamt of.”He felt dreaming now—he had managed to leave his sister and her friends, absorbed in the excitement of watching a game of lawn tennis between the best players of the county, and had stolen by himself down some shady walks away from the sparkle and chatter of the garden-party. The quiet and dimness soothed him, but increased the strange unreal feeling, of which he had been conscious since the morning. He felt as if nothing that could happen would surprise him—he was actually, in point of fact,notsurprised, when at a turn in the path he saw suddenly before him, advancing towards him, her cloudy black drapery—for she was in black as ever—scarcely distinguishable from the dark shrubs at each side, the very person around whom all his thoughts were centring—Maisie—Maisie Ford herself!He did not start, he made no exclamation. A strange intent look came into his eyes, as he walked on towards her. Long afterwards he remembered, and it helped to explain things, that she too had testified no surprise. But her face flushed a little, and the first expression he caught sight of was one of pleasure—afterwards, long afterwards, he remembered this too.They met—their hands touched. But for a moment he did not speak.“How do you do, Mr Norreys?” she said then. “It is hot and glaring on the lawn, is it not? I have just been seeing my father off. He was too tired to stay longer, and I was glad to wander about here in the shade a little.”“Your father?” he repeated half mechanically.“Yes—we are staying, he and I, for a few days at Laxter’s Hill. I am so sorry he has gone—I would so have liked you to see him.”She spoke eagerly, and with the peculiar, bright girlishness really natural to her, which was one of her greatest charms.Despard looked at her; her voice and manner helped him a little to throw off the curious sensation of unreality. But he was, though he scarcely knew it, becoming inwardly more and more wrought up.“I should have liked to see him exceedingly,” he began, “any one so dear to you. I may hope some other time, perhaps, to do so? I—I was thinking of you when I first caught sight of you just now, Miss Ford—indeed, I have done nothing—upon my word, you may believe me—I have done little else than think of you since we last met.”The girl’s face grew strangely still and intent, yet with a wistful look in the eyes telling of feelings not to be easily read. It was as if she were listening, in spite of herself, for something she still vaguely hoped she was mistaken in expecting.“Indeed,” she began to say, but he interrupted her.“No,” he said, “do not speak till you have heard me. I had made up my mind to it before I met you just now. I was just wondering how and when it could be. But now that this opportunity has come so quickly I will not lose it. I love you—I have loved you for longer than I knew myself, than I would own to myself—”“From the very first, from that evening at Mrs Englewood’s?” she said, and but for his intense preoccupation, he would have been startled by her tone.“Yes,” he said simply, yet with a strain of retrospection in his eyes, as if determined to control himself and speak nothing but the unexaggerated truth—“yes, I almost think it began that first evening, rude, brutally rude as I was to you. I would not own it—I struggled against it, for I did not want to marry. I had no thought of it. I am selfish, very selfish, I fear, and I preferred to keep clear of all ties and responsibilities, which too often become terribly galling on small means. I am no hero—but now—you will forgive my hesitation and—and reluctance, will you not? You are generous I know, and my frankness will not injure me with you, will it? You will believe that I loved you almost from the first, though I could not all at once make up my mind to marrying on small means? And now—now that I understand—that—that all seems different to me—that nothing seems of consequence except to hear you say you love me, as—as I have thought sometimes—Maisie—you will not be hard on me?—”He stopped; he could have gone on much longer, and there was nothing now outwardly to interrupt him. She had stood there motionless, listening. Her face he could scarcely see, it was half turned away, but that seemed not unnatural. What then caused his sudden misgiving?“Maisie,” he repeated more timidly.Then she turned—there was a burning spot of red on each cheek, her eyes were flaming. Yet her voice was low and quiet.“Hard on you!” she repeated. “I am too sorry for myself to think or care much about you. I am—yes, I may own it, I am so horribly disappointed. I had really allowed myself to think of you as sincere, as, in spite of your unmanly affectations, your contemptible conceit, an honest man, a possible friend I was beginning to forgive your ill-bred insolence to me as a stranger at the first, thinking there was something worthy of respect about you after all. But—oh, dear! And to try to humbug me by this sham honesty—to dare to say you did not think you could have cared for me enough to risk curtailing your own self-indulgences, but that now—it is too pitiful. But, oh, dear—it is too horribly disappointing!”And as she looked at him again, he saw that her eyes were actually full of tears.His brain was in a whirl of bewilderment, bitterest mortification and indignation. For the moment the last had the best of it.“You have a right to refuse me, to despise my weakness if you choose—whether it is generous to take advantage of my misplaced confidence in you in having told you all—yes,all, is another matter. But one thing you shall not accuse me of, and that is, of lying to you. I have not said one untruthful word. I did—yes, Ididlove you, Mary Ford—what I feel to you now is something more like—”He hesitated.“Hate, I suppose,” she suggested mockingly. “All the better. It cannot be a pleasant feeling to hate any one, and I do not wish you anything pleasant. If I could believe,” she went on slowly, “if I could believe you had loved me, I think I should be glad, for it would be what you deserve. I would have liked to make you love me from that very first evening if I could—just to but unluckily I am not the sort of woman to succeed in anything of that kind. However—”She stopped; steps approaching them were heard through the stillness. Maisie turned. “I have nothing more to say, and I do not suppose you wish to continue this conversation. Good-bye, Mr Norreys.”And almost before he knew she had gone, she had quite disappeared.Despard was a strong man, but for a moment or two he really thought he was going to faint. He had grown deathly white while Maisie’s hard, bitter words rained down upon him like hailstones; now that she had left him he grew so giddy that, had he not suddenly caught hold of a tree, he would have fallen.“It feels like a sunstroke,” he said vaguely to himself, as he realised that his senses were deserting him, not knowing that he spoke aloud.He did not know either that some one had seen him stagger, and almost fall. A slightly uneasy feeling had made Maisie stop as she hurried off and glance back, herself unobserved.“He looked so fearfully white,” she said; “do—do men always look like that when girls refuse them, I wonder?”For Maisie’s experience of such things actually coming to the point, was, as should be the case with all true women, but small.“I thought—I used to think I would enjoy seeing him humbled. But he did seem in earnest.”And then came the glimpse of the young fellow’s physical discomfiture. Maisie was horribly frightened; throwing all considerations but those of humanity to the winds she rushed back again.“Perhaps he has heart-disease, though he looks so strong,” she thought, “and if so—oh, perhaps I have killed him.”She was beside him in an instant. A rustic bench, which Despard was too dizzy to see, stood near. The girl seized hold of his arm and half drew it round her shoulder. He let her do so unresistingly.“Try to walk a step or two, Mr Norreys,” she said, “I am very strong. There, now,” as he obeyed her mechanically, “here is a seat,” and she somehow half pushed, half drew him on to it. “Please smell this,” and she took out a little silver vinaigrette, of strong and pungent contents, “I am never without this, for papa is so delicate, you know.”Despard tried to open his eyes, tried to speak, but the attempt was not very successful. Maisie held the vinaigrette close to his nose; he started back, the strong essence revived him almost at once. He took it into his own hand and smelt it again. Then his face grew crimson.“I beg your pardon a thousand times. I am most ashamed, utterly ashamed of myself,” he began.But Maisie was too practically interested in his recovery to feel embarrassed.“Keep sniffing at that thing,” she said, “you will soon be all right. Only just tell me—” she added anxiously, “there isn’t anything wrong with your heart, is there?”“For if so,” she added to herself, “I must at all costs run and see if there is a doctor to be had.”Despard smiled—a successfully bitter smile.“No, thank you,” he said. “I am surprised that you credit me with possessing one,” he could not resist adding. “The real cause of this absurd faintness is a very prosaic one, I fancy. I went a long walk in the hot sun this morning.”“Oh, indeed, that quite explains it,” said Maisie, slightly nettled. “Good-bye again then,” and for the second time she ran off.“All the same, I will get Conrad or somebody to come round that way,” she said to herself. “I will just say I saw a man looking as if he was fainting.Hewon’t be likely to tell.”And Despard sat there looking at the little silver toy in his bands.“I did not thank her,” he said to himself. “I suppose I should have done so, though she would have done as much, or more, for a starving tramp on the road.”Then he heard again steps coming nearer like those which had startled Maisie away.They had apparently turned off elsewhere the first time—this time they came steadily on.

The London season was over. Mr Norreys had been longing for its close; so, at least, he had repeated to his friends, and with even more insistence to himself, a great many, indeed a very great many, times, during the last hot, dusty weeks of the poor season’s existence. He wanted to get off to Norway in a friend’s yacht for some fishing, he said; he seemed for once really eager about it, so eager as to make more than one of his companions smile, and ask themselves what had come to Norreys, he who always took things with such imperturbable equanimity, what had given him this mania for northern fishing?

And now the fishing and the trip were things of the past. They had not turned out as delightful in reality as in anticipation somehow, and yet what had gone wrong Despard, on looking back, found it hard to say. That nothing had gone wrong was the truth of the matter. The weather had been fine and favourable; the party had been well chosen; Lennox-Brown, the yacht’s owner, was the perfection of a host.

“It was a case of the workman, not of the tools, I suspect,” Despard said to himself one morning, when, strolling slowly up and down the smooth bit of gravel path outside the drawing-room windows at Markerslea Vicarage, he allowed his thoughts to wander backwards some little way. “I am sick of it all,” he went on, with an impatient shake, testifying to inward discomposure. “I’m a fool after all, no wiser, indeed a very great deal more foolish, than my neighbours. And I’ve been hard enough upon other fellows in my time. Little I knew! I cannot throw it off, and what to do I know not.”

He was staying with his sister, his only near relation. She was older than he, had been married for several years, and had but one trouble in life. She was childless. Naturally, therefore, she lavished on Despard an altogether undue amount of sisterly devotion. But she was by no means an entirely foolish woman. She had helped to spoil him, and she was beginning to regret it.

“He is terribly, quite terriblyblasé,” she was saying to herself as she watched him this morning, herself unobserved. “I have never seen it so plainly as this autumn,” and she sighed. “He is changed, too; he is moody and irritable, and that is new. He has always been so sweet-tempered. Surely he has not got into money difficulties—I can scarcely think so. He is too sensible. Though, after all, as Charles often says, perhaps the best thing that could befall the poor boy would be to have to work hard for his living—” a most natural remark on the part of “Charles,” seeing that he himself had always enjoyed a thoroughly comfortable sufficiency,—and again Mrs Selby sighed.

Her sigh was echoed; she started slightly, then, glancing round, she saw that the glass door by which she stood was ajar, and that her brother had arrested his steps for a moment or two, and was within a couple of yards of her. It was his sigh that she had heard. Her face clouded over still more; it is even probable that a tear or two rose unbidden to her eyes. She was a calm, considering woman as a rule; for once she yielded to impulse, and, stepping out, quickly slipped her hand through Mr Norreys’ arm.

“My dear Despard,” she said, “what a sigh! It sounded as if from the very depths of your heart, if,” she went on, trying to speak lightly, “if you have one that is to say, which I have sometimes doubted.”

But he threw back no joke in return.

“I have never givenyoureason to doubt it, surely, Maddie?” he said half reproachfully.

“No, no, dear. I’m in fun, of course. But seriously—”

“I’m serious enough.”

“Yes, that you are—too serious. What’s the matter, Despard, for that there is something the matter I am convinced?”

He did not attempt to deny it.

“Yes, Madeline,” he said slowly, “I’m altogether upset. I’ve been false to all my own theories. I’ve been a selfish enough brute always, I know, but at least I think I’ve been consistent. I’ve chosen my own line, and lived the life, and among the people that suited me, and—”

“Been dreadfully,miserablyspoilt, Despard.”

He glanced up at her sharply. No, she was not smiling. His face clouded over still more.

“And that’s the best even you can say of me?” he asked.

Mrs Selby hardly let him finish.

“No, no. I am blaming myself more than you,” she said quickly. “You are much—much better than you know, Despard. You are not selfish really. Think of what you have done for others; how consistently you have given up those evenings to that night school.”

“One a week—what’s that? And there’s no credit in doing a thing one likes. I enjoy those evenings, and it’s more than I can say for the average of my days.”

But his face cleared a very little as he spoke.

“Well,” she went on, “that shows you are not at heart an altogether selfish brute,” and now she smiled a little. “And all the more does it show how much better you might still be if you chose. I am very glad, delighted, Despard, that youarediscontented and dissatisfied; I knew it would come sooner or later.”

Mr Norreys looked rather embarrassed.

“Maddie,” he began again, “you haven’t quite understood me. I didn’t finish my sentence. I was going on to say that at least I had done no harm to anyone else; if no one’s any better through me, at least no one’s theworsefor my selfishness—oh, yes, don’t interrupt,” he went on. “I know what you’d like to say—‘No man liveth to himself,’ the high-flown sort of thing. I don’t go in for that. Butnow—I have not even kept my consistency. You’d never guess what I’ve gone and done—at least, Maddie,canyou guess?”

And his at all times sweet voice sweetened and softened as he spoke, and into his eyes stole a look Madeline had never seen there before.

“Despard,” she exclaimed breathlessly, “have you, can you, have fallen in love?”

He nodded.

“Oh, dear Despard,” she exclaimed, “I am so very glad. It will be the making of you. That’s to say, if—but it must be somebodyverynice.”

“Nice enough in herself—nice,” he repeated, and he smiled. “Yes, if by nice you mean everything sweet and womanly, and original and delightful, and—oh, you mustn’t tempt me to talk about her. But what she isherselfis not the only thing, my poor Maddie.”

Mrs Selby gave a start.

“Oh, Despard,” she exclaimed, “you don’t mean that she’s a married woman.”

“No, no.”

“Or, or any one very decidedly beneath you?” she continued, with some relief, but anxiously still.

Despard hesitated.

“That’s exactly what I can’t quite say,” he replied. “She’s a lady by birth, that I’m sure of. But she has seen very little. Lived always in a village apparently—she has been in some ways unusually well and carefully educated. But I’m quite positive she’s poor, really with nothing of her own, I fancy. I’m not sure—it has struck me once or twice that perhaps she had been intended for a governess.”

Mrs Selby gasped, but checked herself.

“She has friends who are kind to her. I met her at some good houses. It was at Mrs Englewood’s first of all, but since then I’ve seen her at much better places.”

“But why do you speak so doubtfully—you keep saying ‘I fancy’—‘I suppose.’ It must be easy to find out all about her.”

“No; that’s just it. She’s curiously, no—not reserved—she’s too nice and well-bred for that sort of thing—but, if you can understand, she’sfranklybackward in speaking of herself. She’ll talk of anything but herself. She has an old invalid father whom she adores—and—upon my soul, that’s about all she has ever told me.”

“You can ask Mrs Englewood, surely.”

Despard frowned.

“I can, and I have; at least, I tried it. But it was not easy. She’s been rather queer to me lately. She would volunteer no information, and of course—you see—I didn’t want to seem interested on the subject. It’s only just lately, since I came here in fact, that I’ve really owned it to myself,” and his face flushed. “I went yachting and fishing to put it out of my head, but—it’s been no use—I won’t laugh at all that sort of thing again as I have done, I can tell you.”

“He’s very much in earnest,” thought Mrs Selby.

“What—you don’t mind telling me—what is her name?” she asked.

“Ford—Miss Ford. I fancy her first name is Mary. There’s a pet name they call her by,” but he did not tell it.

“Mary Ford—that does not sound aristocratic,” mused Mrs Selby. “Despard, tell me—Mrs Englewood is really fond of you. Do you think she knows anything against the girl, or her family, or anything like that, and that she was afraid of it for you?”

“Oh, dear no! Quite the contrary, Mai—Miss Ford is a great pet of hers. Gertrude was angry with me for not being civil to her,” and he laughed.

“Not being civil to her,” she repeated. “And you were falling in love with her? How do you mean?”

“That was afterwards. I was brutally uncivil to her at first. That’s how it began somehow,” he said, disconnectedly.

Mrs Selby felt utterly perplexed. Was he being taken in by a designing girl? It all sounded very inconsistent.

“Despard,” she said after a little silence, “shall I try to find out all about her from Mrs Englewood? She would not refuse any information if it was for your sake.”

He considered.

“Well, yes,” he said, “perhaps you’d better.”

“And—” she went on, “if all is satisfactory—”

“Well?”

“You will go through with it?”

“I—suppose so. Altogether satisfactory it can’t be. I’m fairly well off as a bachelor, but that’s a very different matter. And—Maddie—I should hate poverty.”

“You would have no need to call it poverty,” she said rather coldly.

“Well—well—I’m speaking comparatively of course,” he replied, impatiently. “It would be whatIcall poverty. And I am selfish, I know. The best of me won’t come out under those circumstances. I’ve no right to marry, you see—that’s what’s been tormenting me.”

“But if she likes to face it—would not that bring out the best of you?” said Mrs Selby hopefully, though in her heart rather shocked by his way of speaking.

“Perhaps—I can’t say. But of course if she did—”

“And you are sure she would?” asked Madeline, suddenly awaking to the fact that Miss Ford’s feelings in the matter had been entirely left out of the question.

Despard smiled.

“Do you mean am I sure she cares for me?” he said. “Oh, yes—as for that—”

“I don’t like a girl who—who lets it be seen if she cares for a man,” she said.

Mr Norreys turned upon her.

“Lets it be seen,” he repeated angrily. “Maddie, you put things very disagreeably. Would I—tell me, is it likely thatIwould take to a girl so utterly devoid of delicacy as your words sound? And is it so improbable that a girl would care for me?” He smiled in spite of himself, and Mrs Selby’s answering smile as she murmured: “I did not mean that, you know,” helped to smooth him down. “She did her best to make me think she detested me,” he added. “But—”

“Ah, yes, but—” said his sister fondly. “Then it is settled, Despard,” she went on. “I shall tackle Mrs Englewood in my own way. You can trust me. You don’t know where Miss Ford is at present?” she added.

He shook his head despondently.

“Not the ghost of an idea. I didn’t try to hear. I thought I didn’t want to know, you see. But—Maddie,” he added, half timidly, “you’ll write at once?”

“As soon as I possibly can,” she replied kindly, for glancing at him she saw that he looked really ill and worn. “And,” she went on, “as my reward, you will go with me to the Densters’ garden-party this afternoon. Charles can’t, and I hate going alone. I don’t know them—it is their first year here, though everybody says they are very nice people.”

“Oh, dear,” said Despard. “Very well, Maddie. I must, I suppose.”

“Then be ready at a quarter to four. I’ll drive you in the pony-carriage,” and Madeline disappeared through the glass door whence she had emerged.

“I wonder if she will write to-day,” thought Mr Norreys, though he would have been ashamed to ask it. “I should like to know it’s done—a sort of crossing the Rubicon. And it’s a good while now since that last day I saw her. She was never quite so sweet as that day. Supposing I heard she was married?”

His heart seemed to stop beating at the thought, and he grew white, though there was no one to see. But he reassured himself. Few things were less likely. Portionless girls, however charming, don’t marry so quickly nowadays.

Madeline’s feelings were mingled. She was honestly and unselfishly glad of what she believed might be a real turning point towards good for Despard. Yet—“if only he had not chosen a girl quite so denuded of worldly advantages as she evidently is,” she reflected. “For of course if she had either money or connection Mrs Englewood would not have kept it a secret. She is far too outspoken. I must beg her to tell everything she knows, not to be afraid of my mixing her name up in the matter in any way. When she sees that Charles and I do not disapprove she will feel less responsibility.”

And it was with a comfortable sense of her own and “Charles’s” unworldliness that Mrs Selby prepared to indite the important letter.

She saw little of her brother till the afternoon. He did not appear at luncheon, having left word that he had gone for a long walk.

“Provided only that he is not too late for the Densters’,” thought Madeline, with a little sigh over the perversity of mankind.

But her fears were unfounded. At ten minutes to four Mr Norreys made his appearance in the hall, faultlessly attired, apologising with his usual courtesy, in which to his sister he never failed, for his five minutes’ delay, and Mrs Selby, feeling pleased with herself outwardly and inwardly, for she was conscious both of looking well in a very pretty new bonnet, and of acting a truly high-minded part as a sister, seated herself in her place, with a glance of satisfaction at her companion.

“Everybody will be envying me,” she said to herself, with a tiny sigh as she remembered former air-castles in Despard’s behoof. “The Flores-Carter girls and Edith and Bertha Byder, indeed all the neighbourhood get quite excited if they know he’s here. He might have had his choice of the best matches in this county, to my own knowledge, and there are several girls with money. Ah, well!”

The grounds seemed already fall of guests when the brother and sister drove up to the Densters’ door. Mrs Selby was at once seized upon by some of her special cronies, and for half an hour or so Despard kept dutifully beside her, allowing himself to be introduced to any extent, doing his best to please his sister by responding graciously to the various attentions which were showered upon him. But he grew very tired of it all in a little while—a curious dreamy feeling began to come over him, born no doubt of the unwonted excitement of his conversation with Madeline that morning. He had gone a long walk in hopes of recovering his usual equanimity, but had only succeeded in tiring himself physically. The mere fact of having put in words to another the conflict of the last few months seemed to have given actual existence to that which he had by fits and starts been trying to persuade himself was but a passing fancy. And even to himself he could not have told whether he was glad or sorry that the matter had come to a point—had, as it were, been taken out of his own hands. For that Madeline had already written to Mrs Englewood he felt little doubt.

“Women are always in such a desperate hurry,” he said to himself, which, all things considered, was surely most unreasonable. Nor could he have denied that it was so, for even as he made the reflection he began to calculate in how many, or how few rather, days they might look for an answer, and to speculate on the chances of Mrs Englewood’s being acquainted with Maisie’s present whereabouts.

“Maisie,” he called her to himself, though he had somehow shrunk from telling the name to his sister. It was so sweet—solikeher, he repeated softly, though, truth to tell, sweetness was not the most conspicuous quality in our heroine. But Despard was honestly in love after all, as many better and many worse men have been before him, and will be again. And love of the best kind, which on the whole his was, is clairvoyant—he was not wrong about Maisie’s real sweetness.

“I do care for her, as deeply, as thoroughly as ever a man cared for a woman. But I don’t want to marry; it’s against all my plans and ideas. I didn’t want to fall in love either, for that matter. The whole affair upsets everything I had ever dreamt of.”

He felt dreaming now—he had managed to leave his sister and her friends, absorbed in the excitement of watching a game of lawn tennis between the best players of the county, and had stolen by himself down some shady walks away from the sparkle and chatter of the garden-party. The quiet and dimness soothed him, but increased the strange unreal feeling, of which he had been conscious since the morning. He felt as if nothing that could happen would surprise him—he was actually, in point of fact,notsurprised, when at a turn in the path he saw suddenly before him, advancing towards him, her cloudy black drapery—for she was in black as ever—scarcely distinguishable from the dark shrubs at each side, the very person around whom all his thoughts were centring—Maisie—Maisie Ford herself!

He did not start, he made no exclamation. A strange intent look came into his eyes, as he walked on towards her. Long afterwards he remembered, and it helped to explain things, that she too had testified no surprise. But her face flushed a little, and the first expression he caught sight of was one of pleasure—afterwards, long afterwards, he remembered this too.

They met—their hands touched. But for a moment he did not speak.

“How do you do, Mr Norreys?” she said then. “It is hot and glaring on the lawn, is it not? I have just been seeing my father off. He was too tired to stay longer, and I was glad to wander about here in the shade a little.”

“Your father?” he repeated half mechanically.

“Yes—we are staying, he and I, for a few days at Laxter’s Hill. I am so sorry he has gone—I would so have liked you to see him.”

She spoke eagerly, and with the peculiar, bright girlishness really natural to her, which was one of her greatest charms.

Despard looked at her; her voice and manner helped him a little to throw off the curious sensation of unreality. But he was, though he scarcely knew it, becoming inwardly more and more wrought up.

“I should have liked to see him exceedingly,” he began, “any one so dear to you. I may hope some other time, perhaps, to do so? I—I was thinking of you when I first caught sight of you just now, Miss Ford—indeed, I have done nothing—upon my word, you may believe me—I have done little else than think of you since we last met.”

The girl’s face grew strangely still and intent, yet with a wistful look in the eyes telling of feelings not to be easily read. It was as if she were listening, in spite of herself, for something she still vaguely hoped she was mistaken in expecting.

“Indeed,” she began to say, but he interrupted her.

“No,” he said, “do not speak till you have heard me. I had made up my mind to it before I met you just now. I was just wondering how and when it could be. But now that this opportunity has come so quickly I will not lose it. I love you—I have loved you for longer than I knew myself, than I would own to myself—”

“From the very first, from that evening at Mrs Englewood’s?” she said, and but for his intense preoccupation, he would have been startled by her tone.

“Yes,” he said simply, yet with a strain of retrospection in his eyes, as if determined to control himself and speak nothing but the unexaggerated truth—“yes, I almost think it began that first evening, rude, brutally rude as I was to you. I would not own it—I struggled against it, for I did not want to marry. I had no thought of it. I am selfish, very selfish, I fear, and I preferred to keep clear of all ties and responsibilities, which too often become terribly galling on small means. I am no hero—but now—you will forgive my hesitation and—and reluctance, will you not? You are generous I know, and my frankness will not injure me with you, will it? You will believe that I loved you almost from the first, though I could not all at once make up my mind to marrying on small means? And now—now that I understand—that—that all seems different to me—that nothing seems of consequence except to hear you say you love me, as—as I have thought sometimes—Maisie—you will not be hard on me?—”

He stopped; he could have gone on much longer, and there was nothing now outwardly to interrupt him. She had stood there motionless, listening. Her face he could scarcely see, it was half turned away, but that seemed not unnatural. What then caused his sudden misgiving?

“Maisie,” he repeated more timidly.

Then she turned—there was a burning spot of red on each cheek, her eyes were flaming. Yet her voice was low and quiet.

“Hard on you!” she repeated. “I am too sorry for myself to think or care much about you. I am—yes, I may own it, I am so horribly disappointed. I had really allowed myself to think of you as sincere, as, in spite of your unmanly affectations, your contemptible conceit, an honest man, a possible friend I was beginning to forgive your ill-bred insolence to me as a stranger at the first, thinking there was something worthy of respect about you after all. But—oh, dear! And to try to humbug me by this sham honesty—to dare to say you did not think you could have cared for me enough to risk curtailing your own self-indulgences, but that now—it is too pitiful. But, oh, dear—it is too horribly disappointing!”

And as she looked at him again, he saw that her eyes were actually full of tears.

His brain was in a whirl of bewilderment, bitterest mortification and indignation. For the moment the last had the best of it.

“You have a right to refuse me, to despise my weakness if you choose—whether it is generous to take advantage of my misplaced confidence in you in having told you all—yes,all, is another matter. But one thing you shall not accuse me of, and that is, of lying to you. I have not said one untruthful word. I did—yes, Ididlove you, Mary Ford—what I feel to you now is something more like—”

He hesitated.

“Hate, I suppose,” she suggested mockingly. “All the better. It cannot be a pleasant feeling to hate any one, and I do not wish you anything pleasant. If I could believe,” she went on slowly, “if I could believe you had loved me, I think I should be glad, for it would be what you deserve. I would have liked to make you love me from that very first evening if I could—just to but unluckily I am not the sort of woman to succeed in anything of that kind. However—”

She stopped; steps approaching them were heard through the stillness. Maisie turned. “I have nothing more to say, and I do not suppose you wish to continue this conversation. Good-bye, Mr Norreys.”

And almost before he knew she had gone, she had quite disappeared.

Despard was a strong man, but for a moment or two he really thought he was going to faint. He had grown deathly white while Maisie’s hard, bitter words rained down upon him like hailstones; now that she had left him he grew so giddy that, had he not suddenly caught hold of a tree, he would have fallen.

“It feels like a sunstroke,” he said vaguely to himself, as he realised that his senses were deserting him, not knowing that he spoke aloud.

He did not know either that some one had seen him stagger, and almost fall. A slightly uneasy feeling had made Maisie stop as she hurried off and glance back, herself unobserved.

“He looked so fearfully white,” she said; “do—do men always look like that when girls refuse them, I wonder?”

For Maisie’s experience of such things actually coming to the point, was, as should be the case with all true women, but small.

“I thought—I used to think I would enjoy seeing him humbled. But he did seem in earnest.”

And then came the glimpse of the young fellow’s physical discomfiture. Maisie was horribly frightened; throwing all considerations but those of humanity to the winds she rushed back again.

“Perhaps he has heart-disease, though he looks so strong,” she thought, “and if so—oh, perhaps I have killed him.”

She was beside him in an instant. A rustic bench, which Despard was too dizzy to see, stood near. The girl seized hold of his arm and half drew it round her shoulder. He let her do so unresistingly.

“Try to walk a step or two, Mr Norreys,” she said, “I am very strong. There, now,” as he obeyed her mechanically, “here is a seat,” and she somehow half pushed, half drew him on to it. “Please smell this,” and she took out a little silver vinaigrette, of strong and pungent contents, “I am never without this, for papa is so delicate, you know.”

Despard tried to open his eyes, tried to speak, but the attempt was not very successful. Maisie held the vinaigrette close to his nose; he started back, the strong essence revived him almost at once. He took it into his own hand and smelt it again. Then his face grew crimson.

“I beg your pardon a thousand times. I am most ashamed, utterly ashamed of myself,” he began.

But Maisie was too practically interested in his recovery to feel embarrassed.

“Keep sniffing at that thing,” she said, “you will soon be all right. Only just tell me—” she added anxiously, “there isn’t anything wrong with your heart, is there?”

“For if so,” she added to herself, “I must at all costs run and see if there is a doctor to be had.”

Despard smiled—a successfully bitter smile.

“No, thank you,” he said. “I am surprised that you credit me with possessing one,” he could not resist adding. “The real cause of this absurd faintness is a very prosaic one, I fancy. I went a long walk in the hot sun this morning.”

“Oh, indeed, that quite explains it,” said Maisie, slightly nettled. “Good-bye again then,” and for the second time she ran off.

“All the same, I will get Conrad or somebody to come round that way,” she said to herself. “I will just say I saw a man looking as if he was fainting.Hewon’t be likely to tell.”

And Despard sat there looking at the little silver toy in his bands.

“I did not thank her,” he said to himself. “I suppose I should have done so, though she would have done as much, or more, for a starving tramp on the road.”

Then he heard again steps coming nearer like those which had startled Maisie away.

They had apparently turned off elsewhere the first time—this time they came steadily on.

Chapter Four.As Despard heard the steps coming nearer he looked round uneasily, with a vague idea of hurrying off so as to escape observation. But when he tried to stand up and walk, he found that anything like quick movement was beyond him still. So he sat down again, endeavouring to look as if nothing were the matter, and that he was merely resting.Another moment or two, and a young man appeared, coming hastily along the path by which Despard had himself made his way into the shrubbery. He was quite young, two or three and twenty at most, fair, slight, and boyish-looking. He passed by Mr Norreys with but the slightest glance in his direction, but just as Despard was congratulating himself on this, the new-comer stopped short, hesitated, and then, turning round and lifting his hat, came up to him.“Excuse me,” he said, “do you know Lady Margaret—by sight? Has she passed this way?”He spoke quickly, and Mr Norreys did not catch the surname.“No,” he replied, “I have not the honour of the lady’s acquaintance.”“I beg your pardon,” said the other. “I’ve been sent to look for her, and I can’t find her anywhere.” Then he turned, but again hesitated.“There’s nothing the matter, is there? You’ve not hurt yourself—or anything? You look rather—as if a cricket ball had hit you, you know.”Mr Norreys smiled.“Thank you,” he said. “I have got a frightful pain in my head. I was out too long in the sun this morning.”The boyish-looking man shook his head.“Touch of sunstroke—eh? Stupid thing to do, standing in the sun this weather. Should take a parasol; I always do. Then I can’t be of any service?”“Yes,” said Despard, as a sudden idea struck him. “If you happen to know my sister, Mrs Selby, by sight, I’d be eternally grateful to you if you would tell her I’m going home. I’ll wait for her at the old church, would you say?”“Don’t know her, but I’ll find her out. Mrs Selby, of Markerslea, I suppose? Well, take my advice, and keep on the shady side of the road.”“I shall go through the woods, thank you. My sister will understand.”With a friendly nod the young fellow went off.Despard had been roused by the talk with him. He got up now and went slowly round to the back of the house—it was a place he had known in old days—thus avoiding all risk of coming across any of the guests. By a path behind the stables he made his way slowly into the woods, and in about half an hour’s time he found himself where these ended at the high road, along which his sister must pass. There was a stile near, over which, through a field, lay a footpath to the church, known thereabouts as the old church, and here on the stile Mr Norreys seated himself to await Mrs Selby.“I’ve managed that pretty neatly,” he said, trying to imagine he was feeling as usual. “I wonder who that fellow was. He seemed to have heard Maddie’s name though he did not know her.”He was perfectly clear in his head now, but the pain in it was racking. He tried not to think, but in vain. Clearer, and yet more clearly, stood out before his mind’s eye the strange drama of that afternoon. And the more he thought of it, the more he looked at it, approaching it from every side, the more incapable he became of explaining Miss Ford’s extraordinary conduct. The indignation which had at first blotted out almost all other feeling gradually gave way to his extreme perplexity.“She had no sort of grounds for speaking to me as she did,” he reflected. “Accusing me vaguely of unworthy motives—whatcouldshe mean?” Then a new idea struck him. “Some one has been making mischief,” he thought: “that must be it, though what and how, I cannot conceive. Gertrude Englewood would not do it intentionally—but still—I saw that she was changed to me. I shall have it out with her. After all, I hope Madeline’s letterhasgone.”And a vague, very faint hope began to make itself felt that perhaps, after all, all wasnotlost. Ifshehad been utterly misled about him—if—He drew a deep breath, and looked round. It was the very sweetest moment of a summer’s day existence, that at which late afternoon begins softly and silently to fade into early evening. There was an almost Sabbath stillness in the air, a tender suggestion of night’s reluctant approach, and from where Despard sat the white headstones of some graves in the ancient churchyard were to be seen among the grass. The man felt strangely moved and humbled.“If I could hope ever to win her,” he thought, “I feel as if I had it in me to be a better man—I am notallselfish and worldly, Maisie—surely not? But what has made her judge me so cruelly? It is awful to remember what she said, and to imagine what sort of an opinion she must have of me to have been able to say it. For—no, that wasnotmy contemptible conceit—” and his face flushed. “Shewasbeginning to care for me. She is too generous to have remembered vindictively my insolence, for insolence it was, at the first. Besides, she said herself that she had been getting to like and trust me as a friend. Till to-day—has the change in her all come from what I said to-day? No girl can despise a man for the fact of his caring for her—what can it be? Good heavens, I feel as if I should go mad!”And he wished that the pain in his head, which had somewhat subsided, would get worse again, if only it would stop his thinking.But just then came the sound of wheels. In another moment Mrs Selby’s pony-carriage was in sight. Despard got off his stile, and walked slowly down the road to meet her.“So you faithless—” she began—for, to tell the truth, she had not attached much credence to the story which had reached her of the frightful headache—but she changed her tone the moment she caught sight of his face. “My poor boy, you do look ill!” she exclaimed. “I am so sorry. I would have come away at once if I had known.”“It doesn’t matter,” Despard replied, as he got into the carriage; “but did you not get my message?”“Oh, yes; but I thought it was just that you were tired and bored. What in the matter, dear Despard? You don’t look the least like yourself.”“I fancy it was the sun this morning,” he said.“But it’s passing off, I think.”Madeline felt by no means sure that it was so.“I am so sorry,” she repeated, “and so vexed with myself. Do you know who the young man was that gave me your message?”Despard shook his head.“It was Mr Conrad Fforde, Lord Southwold’s nephew and heir—heir at least to the title, but to little else.”“So I should suppose,” said Norreys indifferently.“The Southwolds are very poor.”“How queer that he knew your name if you have never met him before,” said Mrs Selby. “But I dare say it’s through the Flores-Carters; they’re such great friends of mine, you know, and they are staying at Laxter’s Hill as well as the Southwold party.”“Yes,” Despard agreed, “he had evidently heard of you.”“And of you too in that case. People do so chatter in the country. The Carters are dying to get you there. They have got the Southwolds to promise to go to them next week. They—the Carter girls—are perfectly wild about Lady Margaret. I think it would be better taste not to make up to her so much; it doeslookas if it was because she was what she is, though I know it isn’t really that. They get up these fits of enthusiasm. And she is very nice—notverypretty, you know, but wonderfully nice and unspoilt, considering.”“Unspoilt,” repeated Despard. He was glad to keep his sister talking about indifferent matters. “I don’t see that poor Lord Southwold’s daughter has any reason to be spoilt.”“Oh, dear yes—didn’t you know? I thought you knew everything of that kind. It appears that she is a tremendous heiress; I forget the figures. The fortune comes from her aunt’s husband. Her mother’s elder sister married an enormously wealthy man, and as they had no children or near relations on his side, he left all to this girl. Of course she and her father have always known it, but it has been kept very quiet. They have lived in the country six months of the year, and travelled the other six. She has been most carefully brought up and splendidly educated. But she has never been ‘out’ in society at all till this year.”“I never remember hearing of them in town,” said Despard.“Oh, Lord Southwold himself never goes out. He is dreadfully delicate—heart-disease, I think. But she—Lady Margaret—will be heard ofnow. It has all come out about her fortune now that he has come into the title. His cousin, the last earl, only died two months ago.”“And,” said Despard, with a strange sensation, as if he were listening to some one else speaking rather than speaking himself, “till he came into the title, what was he called? He was the last man’s cousin, you say?”“Yes, of course; he was Mr Fforde—Fforde with two ‘f’s’ and an ‘e,’ you know. It’s the family name of the Southwolds. That young man—the one you spoke to—is Mr Conrad Fforde, as I told you. They say that—”But a glance at her brother made her hesitate.“Despard, is your head worse?” she asked anxiously.“It comes on by fits and starts,” he replied. “But don’t mind; go on speaking. What were you going to say?”“Oh, only about young Mr Fforde. They say he is to marry Lady Margaret; they are only second cousins. But I don’t think he looks good enough for her. She seems such a womanly, nice-feeling girl. We had just been introduced when Mr Fforde came up with your message, and she wanted him to go back to you at once. But he said you would be gone already, and I—well, I didn’t quite believe about your head being so bad, and perhaps I seemed very cool about it, for Lady Margaret really looked quite vexed. Wasn’t it nice of her? The Carters had been telling her about us evidently. I think she was rather disappointed not to see the famous Despard Norreys, do you know? I rather wonder you never met her this summer in town, though perhaps you would scarcely have remarked her just as Miss Fforde, for she isn’t—”But an exclamation from Despard startled her.“Maddie,” he said, “don’t you understand? Itmustbe she—she, this Lady Margaret—the great heiress! Good heavens!”Mrs Selby almost screamed.“Despard!” was all she could say. But she quickly recovered herself. “Well, after all,” she went on, “I don’t see that there’s any harm done. She will know that you were absolutely disinterested, and surely that will go a long way. But—just to think of it! Oh, Despard, fancy your saying that you half thought she was going to be a governess! Oh, dear,howextraordinary! And I that was so regretting that you had not met her! What a good thing you did not—I meanwhata good thing that my letter showing your ignorance was written and sent before you knew who she was! Don’t you see how lucky it was?”She turned round, her eyes sparkling with excitement and eagerness. But there was no response in Mr Norreys’ face; on the contrary, its expression was such that Mrs Selby’s own face grew pale with dread.“Despard,” she said, “why do you look like that? You are not going to say that now, because she is an heiress—just because ofmoney,” with a tone of supreme contempt, “that you will give it up? You surely—”But Mr Norreys interrupted her.“Has the letter gone, Maddie?”She nodded her head.“Then I must write again at once—myself—to Gertrude Englewood to make her promise on her honour never to tell what you wrote. Even if I thought she would believe it—and I am not sure that she would—I could never allow myself to be cleared in her eyesnow.”Madeline stared at him. Had the sunstroke affected his brain?“Despard,” she said, “what do you mean?”He turned his haggard face towards her.“I don’t know how to tell you,” he said. “I wish I need not, but as you know so much I must. Ididsee her, Madeline. I met her when I was strolling about the shrubbery over there. She was quite alone and no one near. It seemed to have happened on purpose, and—I told her all.”“You proposed to her?”He nodded.“As—as Miss Fforde, or as—” began MrsSelby.“As Miss Ford, of course, without the two ‘f’s’ and the ‘e’ at the end,” he said bitterly. “I didn’t know till this moment either that her father was an earl, or, which is much worse, that she was a great heiress.”“And what is wrong, then?”“Just that she refused me—refused me with the most biting contempt—the—the bitterest scorn—no, I cannot speak of it. She thought I knew, had found out about her—and now I see that my misplaced honesty, the way I spoke, must have given colour to it. She taunted me with my insolence at the first—good God! what an instrument of torture a woman’s tongue can be! There is only one thing to do—to stop Gertrude’s ever telling of that letter.”“Oh, Despard!” exclaimed Mrs Selby, and her eyes filled with tears. “What ahorridgirl she must be! And I thought she looked so sweet and nice. She seemed so sorry when her cousin told me about you. Tell me, was that after? Oh, yes, of course, it must have been. Despard, I believe she was already repenting her cruelty.”“Hush, Madeline,” said Mr Norreys sternly. “You mean it well, but—you must promise me never to allude to all this again. You will show me Mrs Englewood’s letter when it comes—that you must do, and I will write to her. But there is no more to be said. Let to-day be between us as if it had never been. Promise me, dear.”He laid his hand on her arm. Madeline turned her tearful eyes towards him.“Very well,” she said. “I must, I suppose. But, oh, what a dreadful pity it all seems. You to have fallen in love with her for herself—you that have never really cared for any one before—when you thought her only a governess; and now for it to have all gone wrong! It would have been so nice and delightful.”“A sort of Lord Burleigh business, with the characters reversed—yes, quite idyllic,” said Despard sneeringly.“Despard, don’t. It does so pain me,” Mrs Selby said with real feeling. “There is one person I am furious with,” she went on in a very different tone, “and that is Mrs Englewood. She had no business to play that sort of trick.”“Perhaps she could not help herself. You say the father—Mr Fforde as he then was—did not wish her to be known as an heiress,” said Mr Norreys.“She might have made an exception for you,” said Madeline.Despard’s brows contracted. Mrs Selby thought it was from the pain in his head, but it was more than that. A vision rose before him of a sweet flushed girlish face, with gentle pleasure and appeal in the eyes—and of Gertrude’s voice, “If you don’t dance, will you talk to her? Anything to please her a little, you know.”“I think Gertrude did all she could. I believe she is a perfectly loyal and faithful friend,” he said; “but for heaven’s sake, Maddie, let us drop it for ever. I will write this evening to Gertrude myself, and that will be the last act in the drama.”No letter, however, was written to Mrs Englewood that evening—nor the next day, nor for that matter during the rest of the time that saw Despard Norreys a guest at Markerslea Rectory.And several days passed after the morning that brought her reply to Mrs Selby’s letter of inquiry, before the person it chiefly concerned was able to see it. For the pain in his head, the result of slight sunstroke in the first place, aggravated by unusual excitement, had culminated in a sharp attack which at one time was not many degrees removed from brain fever. The risk was tided over, however, and at no time was the young man in very serious danger. But Mrs Selby suffered quite as much as if he had been dying. She made up her mind that he would not recover, and as her special friends received direct information to that effect, it is not to be wondered at that the bad news flew fast.It reached Laxter’s Hill one morning in the week following Lady Denster’s garden-party. It was the day which was to see the breaking-up of the party assembled there to meet Lord Southwold and his daughter, and it came in a letter to Edith Flores-Carter from Mrs Selby herself.“Oh, dear,” the girl ejaculated, her usually bright, not to say jolly-looking countenance clouding over as she spoke, “oh, dear, I’m so sorry for the Selbys—for Mrs Selby particularly. Just fancy, doesn’t it seem awful—her brother’s dying.”She glanced round the breakfast-table for sympathy: various expressions of it reached her.“That fellow I found in the grounds at that place, is it?” inquired Mr Fforde. “I’m not surprised, he did look pretty bad, and he would walk home, and he hadn’t even a parasol.”“Conrad, howcanyou be so unfeeling? I perfectly detest that horrid trick of joking about everything,” said in sharp, indignant tones a young lady seated opposite him. It was Lady Margaret. Several people looked up in surprise.“Beginning in good time,” murmured a man near the end of the table.“Why, do you believe in that? I don’t,” replied his companion in the same low tone.Conrad looked across the table at his cousin in surprise.“Come now, Maisie,” he said, “you make me feel quite shy, scolding me so in company. And I’m sure I didn’tmeanto say anything witty at the poor chap’s expense. If I did, it was quite by mistake I assure you.”“Anything ‘witty’ from you would be that, I can quite believe,” Lady Margaret replied, smiling a little. But the smile was a feeble and forced one. Conrad saw, if no one else did, that his cousin was thoroughly put out, and he felt repentant, though he scarcely knew why.Half an hour later Lord Southwold and his daughter were talking together in the sitting-room, where the former had been breakfasting in invalid fashion alone.“I would promise to be home to-morrow, or the day after at latest, papa,” Lady Margaret was saying; “Mrs Englewood will be very pleased to have me, I know, even at the shortest notice, for last week when I wrote saying I feared it would be impossible, she was very disappointed.”“Very well, my dear, only don’t stay with her longer than that, for you know we have engagements,” and Lord Southwold sighed a little.Margaret sighed too.“My darling,” said her father, “don’t look so depressed. I didn’t mean to grumble.”“Oh no, papa. It isn’t you at all. I shall be glad to be at home again; won’t you? Thank you very much for letting me go round by town.”Mrs Englewood’s drawing-room—but looking very different from the last time we saw it. Mrs Englewood herself, with a more anxious expression than usual on her pleasant face, was sitting by the open window, through which, however, but little air found its way, for it was hot, almost stifling weather.“It is really a trial to have to come back to town before it is cooler,” she was saying to herself, as the door opened and Lady Margaret, in summer travelling gear, came in.“So you are really going, dear Maisie,” said her hostess. “I do wish you could have waited another day.”“But,” said Maisie, “you will let me know at once what you hear from Mrs Selby. I cannot help being unhappy, Gertrude, and, of course, what you have told me has made me still more self-reproachful, and—and ashamed.”She was very pale, but a sudden burning blush overspread her face as she said the last words.“I dosohope he will recover,” she added, trying to speak lightly, “though if he does I earnestly hope I shall never meet him again.”“Even if I succeed in making him understandyourside, and showing him how generously you regret having misjudged him?” said Mrs Englewood. “I don’t see that there need be any enmity between you.”“Notenmity, oh no; but still less, friendship,” said Maisie. “I justtrustwe shall never meet again. Good-bye, dear Gertrude: I am so glad to have told you all. You will let me know what you hear?” and she kissed Mrs Englewood affectionately.“Good-bye, dear child. I am glad you have not a long journey before you. Stretham will take good care of you. You quite understand that I can do nothing indirectly—it will only be when I see him himself that I can tell him how sorry you have been.”“Sorry andashamed, be sure to say ‘ashamed,’” said Lady Margaret: “yes, of course, it can only be if—if he gets better or you see him yourself.”Two or three days later came a letter to Lady Margaret from Mrs Englewood, inclosing one which that lady had just received from Mrs Selby. Her brother, she allowed for the first time, was out of danger, but “terribly weak.” And at intervals during the next few weeks the girl heard news of Mr Norreys’ recovery. And “I wonder,” she began to say to herself, “I wonder if Gertrude has seen him, or will be seeing him soon.”But this hope, if hope it should be called, was doomed to disappointment. Late in October came another letter from her friend.“I am sorry,” wrote Mrs Englewood, “that I see no probability of my meeting Mr Norreys for a long time. He is going abroad. After all, your paths in life are not likely to cross each other again. Perhaps it is best to leave things.”But the tears filled Maisie’s eyes as she read. “I should have liked him to know I had come to do him justice,” she thought.She did not understand Mrs Englewood’s view of the matter.“It would be cruel,” Gertrude had said to herself, “to tell him how she blames herself, and how my showing her Mrs Selby’s letter had cleared him. It would only bring it all up again when he has doubtless begun to forget it.”Nevertheless, Despard did not leave England without knowing how completely Lady Margaret had retracted her cruel words, and how bitterly she regretted them.Time passes quickly, we are told, when we are hard at work. And doubtless this is true while the time in question is the present. But to look back upon time of which every day and every hour have been fully occupied, gives somewhat the feeling of a closely-printed volume when one has finished reading it. It seems even longer than in anticipation. To Despard Norreys, when at the end of two busy years he found himself again in England, it appeared as if he had been absent five or six times as long as was really the case.He had been a week in England, and was still detained in town by details connected with the work he had successfully accomplished. He was under promise to his sister to run down to Markerslea the first day it should be possible, and time meanwhile hung somewhat heavily on his hands. The waters had already closed over his former place in society, and he did not regret it. Still there were friends whom he was glad to meet again, and so he not unwillingly accepted some of the invitations that began to find him out.One evening, after dining at the house of the friend whose influence had obtained for him the appointment which had just expired, he accompanied the ladies of the family to an evening party in the neighbourhood. He had never been in the house before; the faces about him were unfamiliar. Feeling a little “out of it,” he strolled into a small room where a select quartette was absorbed at whist, and seated himself in a corner somewhat out of the glare of light, which, since his illness, rather painfully affected his eyes.Suddenly the thought of Maisie Fforde as he had last seen her seemed to rise before him as in a vision.“I wonder if she is married,” he said to himself. “Sure to be so, I should think. Yet I should probably have heard of it.”And even as the words formed themselves in his mind, a still familiar voice caught his ear.“Thank you. Yes, this will do nicely. I will wait here till Mabel is ready to go.”And a lady—a girl, he soon saw—came forward into the room towards the corner where he was sitting. He rose at once; she approached him quickly, then with a sudden, incoherent exclamation, made as if she would have drawn back. But it was too late; she could not, if she wished, have pretended she did not see him.“Mr Norreys,” she began; “I had no idea—”“That I was in England,” he said. “No, I have only just returned. Pardon me for having startled you, Miss Fforde—Lady Margaret, I mean. I on my side had no idea of meeting you here or—”“Or you would not have come,” she in her turn interrupted him with. “Thank you; you are frank at all events,” she added haughtily.He turned away. There was perhaps some involuntary suggestion of reproach in his manner, for hers changed.“No,” she said. “I am very wrong. Please stay for two minutes, and listen to me. I have hoped and prayed that I might never meet you again, but at the same time I made a vow—a real vow,” she went on girlishly, “thatifI did so I would swallow my pride, and—and ask you to forgive me. There now—I have said it. That is all. Will you, Mr Norreys?”He glanced round; the whist party was all unconscious of the rest of the world still—“Will you not sit down for a moment, Lady Margaret?” he said, and as she did so he too drew a chair nearer to hers. “It is disagreeable to be overheard,” he went on in a tone of half apology. “You ask me what I cannot now do,” he added.The girl reared her head, and the softness of her manner hardened at once.“Then,” she said, “we are quits. It does just as well. My conscience is clear now.”“So is mine, as tothatparticular of—of what you call forgiving you,” he said, and his voice was a degree less calm. “I cannot do so now, for—I forgave you long, long ago.”“You have seen Mrs Englewood? She has told you at last that all was explained to me—your sister’s letter and all,” she went on confusedly, “that I saw how horrid, how low and mean and suspicious and everything I had been?”“I knew all you refer to before I left England,” he said simply. “But I asked Mrs Englewood to leave it as it was, unless she was absolutely forced to tell you. I knew you must hate the sound of my name, and she promised to drop the subject.”“And I have scarcely seen her for a long time,” said Maisie. “I saw she did avoid it, and I suppose she thought it no use talking about it.”“I did not need her explanation,” Despard went on gently. “I had—if you will have the word—I had forgiven you long before. Indeed, I think I did so almost at once. It was all natural on your part. What had I done, what was I that you should have thought any good of me? When you remembered the way I behaved to you at first,” and here his voice grew very low. “I have never been able to—I shall never be able to forgive myself—”“Mr Norreys!” said Maisie in a very contrite tone. But Despard kept silence.“Are you going to stay at home now, or are you going away again?” she asked presently, trying to speak in a matter-of-fact way.“I hardly know. I am waiting to see what I can get to do. I don’t much mind what, but I shall never again be able to be idle,” he said, smiling a little for the first time. “It is my own fault entirely—the fault of my own past folly—that I am not now well on in the profession I was intended for. So I must not grumble if I have to take what work I can get in any part of the world. I would rather stay in England for some reasons.”“Why?” she asked.“I cannot stand heat very well,” he said. “My little sunstroke left some weak points—my eyes are not strong.”She did not answer at once.Then, “How crooked things are,” she said at last suddenly; “you want work, and I—oh, I amsobusy and worried. Papa impressed upon me that I must look after things myself, and accept the responsibilities, but—I don’t think he quite saw how difficult it would be,” and her eyes filled with tears.“But—” said Despard, puzzled by her manner, “he is surely able to help you?”She turned to him more fully—the tears came more quickly, but she did not mind his seeing them.“Didn’t you know?” she said; “Papa is dead—more than a year ago now. Just before I came of age. I am quite alone. That silly—I shouldn’t say that, he is kind and good—Conrad is Lord Southwold now. But I don’t want to marry him, though he is almost the only man who, Iknow, cares for me for myself. How strange you did not know about my being all alone! Didn’t you notice this?” and she touched her black skirt.“I have never seen you except in black,” said Despard. “No—I had no idea. I am so grieved.”“If—if you stay in England,” she began again half timidly, “and you say you have forgiven me,”—he made a little gesture of deprecation of the word—“can’t we be friends, Mr Norreys?”Despard rose to his feet. The whist party had dispersed. The little room was empty.“No,” he said, “I am afraid that could never be, Lady Margaret. The one reason why I wish to leave England again is that I know now, I cannot—I must not risk seeing you.”Maisie looked up, the tears were still glimmering about her eyes and cheeks; was it their soft glistening that made her face look so bright and almost radiant?“Oh, do say it again—don’t think me not nice, oh,don’t!” she entreated. “But why—oh, why, if you care for me, though I can scarcely believe it, why let my horrible money come between us?Ishall never care for anybody else—there now, I have said it!” And she tried to hide her face, but he would not let her.“Do you really mean it, dear?” he said. “If you do, I—I will swallowmypride, too; shall I?”She looked up, half laughing now.“Quits again, you see. Oh, dear, how dreadfully happy I am! And you know, as you are so fond of work now, you will havelotsto do. All manner of things for poor people that I want to manage, and don’t know how—and all our own—I won’t say ‘my’ any more—tenants to look after—and—and—””‘That girl in black’ herself to take care of, and make as happy as all my love and my strength, and my life’s devotion can,” said Despard. “Maisie, my darling; God grant that you may never regret your generosity and goodness.”“No, no,” she murmured, “yours are far greater, far, far greater.”There was a moment’s silence. Then suddenly Despard put his hand into his pocket and held out something to Maisie.“Look,” he said, “do you remember? I should have returned it to you, but I could not make up my mind to it. I have never parted with it night or day, all these years.”It was the little silver vinaigrette.This all happened several years ago, and, by what I can gather, there are few happier people than Despard Norreys and Lady Margaret, his wife.

As Despard heard the steps coming nearer he looked round uneasily, with a vague idea of hurrying off so as to escape observation. But when he tried to stand up and walk, he found that anything like quick movement was beyond him still. So he sat down again, endeavouring to look as if nothing were the matter, and that he was merely resting.

Another moment or two, and a young man appeared, coming hastily along the path by which Despard had himself made his way into the shrubbery. He was quite young, two or three and twenty at most, fair, slight, and boyish-looking. He passed by Mr Norreys with but the slightest glance in his direction, but just as Despard was congratulating himself on this, the new-comer stopped short, hesitated, and then, turning round and lifting his hat, came up to him.

“Excuse me,” he said, “do you know Lady Margaret—by sight? Has she passed this way?”

He spoke quickly, and Mr Norreys did not catch the surname.

“No,” he replied, “I have not the honour of the lady’s acquaintance.”

“I beg your pardon,” said the other. “I’ve been sent to look for her, and I can’t find her anywhere.” Then he turned, but again hesitated.

“There’s nothing the matter, is there? You’ve not hurt yourself—or anything? You look rather—as if a cricket ball had hit you, you know.”

Mr Norreys smiled.

“Thank you,” he said. “I have got a frightful pain in my head. I was out too long in the sun this morning.”

The boyish-looking man shook his head.

“Touch of sunstroke—eh? Stupid thing to do, standing in the sun this weather. Should take a parasol; I always do. Then I can’t be of any service?”

“Yes,” said Despard, as a sudden idea struck him. “If you happen to know my sister, Mrs Selby, by sight, I’d be eternally grateful to you if you would tell her I’m going home. I’ll wait for her at the old church, would you say?”

“Don’t know her, but I’ll find her out. Mrs Selby, of Markerslea, I suppose? Well, take my advice, and keep on the shady side of the road.”

“I shall go through the woods, thank you. My sister will understand.”

With a friendly nod the young fellow went off.

Despard had been roused by the talk with him. He got up now and went slowly round to the back of the house—it was a place he had known in old days—thus avoiding all risk of coming across any of the guests. By a path behind the stables he made his way slowly into the woods, and in about half an hour’s time he found himself where these ended at the high road, along which his sister must pass. There was a stile near, over which, through a field, lay a footpath to the church, known thereabouts as the old church, and here on the stile Mr Norreys seated himself to await Mrs Selby.

“I’ve managed that pretty neatly,” he said, trying to imagine he was feeling as usual. “I wonder who that fellow was. He seemed to have heard Maddie’s name though he did not know her.”

He was perfectly clear in his head now, but the pain in it was racking. He tried not to think, but in vain. Clearer, and yet more clearly, stood out before his mind’s eye the strange drama of that afternoon. And the more he thought of it, the more he looked at it, approaching it from every side, the more incapable he became of explaining Miss Ford’s extraordinary conduct. The indignation which had at first blotted out almost all other feeling gradually gave way to his extreme perplexity.

“She had no sort of grounds for speaking to me as she did,” he reflected. “Accusing me vaguely of unworthy motives—whatcouldshe mean?” Then a new idea struck him. “Some one has been making mischief,” he thought: “that must be it, though what and how, I cannot conceive. Gertrude Englewood would not do it intentionally—but still—I saw that she was changed to me. I shall have it out with her. After all, I hope Madeline’s letterhasgone.”

And a vague, very faint hope began to make itself felt that perhaps, after all, all wasnotlost. Ifshehad been utterly misled about him—if—

He drew a deep breath, and looked round. It was the very sweetest moment of a summer’s day existence, that at which late afternoon begins softly and silently to fade into early evening. There was an almost Sabbath stillness in the air, a tender suggestion of night’s reluctant approach, and from where Despard sat the white headstones of some graves in the ancient churchyard were to be seen among the grass. The man felt strangely moved and humbled.

“If I could hope ever to win her,” he thought, “I feel as if I had it in me to be a better man—I am notallselfish and worldly, Maisie—surely not? But what has made her judge me so cruelly? It is awful to remember what she said, and to imagine what sort of an opinion she must have of me to have been able to say it. For—no, that wasnotmy contemptible conceit—” and his face flushed. “Shewasbeginning to care for me. She is too generous to have remembered vindictively my insolence, for insolence it was, at the first. Besides, she said herself that she had been getting to like and trust me as a friend. Till to-day—has the change in her all come from what I said to-day? No girl can despise a man for the fact of his caring for her—what can it be? Good heavens, I feel as if I should go mad!”

And he wished that the pain in his head, which had somewhat subsided, would get worse again, if only it would stop his thinking.

But just then came the sound of wheels. In another moment Mrs Selby’s pony-carriage was in sight. Despard got off his stile, and walked slowly down the road to meet her.

“So you faithless—” she began—for, to tell the truth, she had not attached much credence to the story which had reached her of the frightful headache—but she changed her tone the moment she caught sight of his face. “My poor boy, you do look ill!” she exclaimed. “I am so sorry. I would have come away at once if I had known.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Despard replied, as he got into the carriage; “but did you not get my message?”

“Oh, yes; but I thought it was just that you were tired and bored. What in the matter, dear Despard? You don’t look the least like yourself.”

“I fancy it was the sun this morning,” he said.

“But it’s passing off, I think.”

Madeline felt by no means sure that it was so.

“I am so sorry,” she repeated, “and so vexed with myself. Do you know who the young man was that gave me your message?”

Despard shook his head.

“It was Mr Conrad Fforde, Lord Southwold’s nephew and heir—heir at least to the title, but to little else.”

“So I should suppose,” said Norreys indifferently.

“The Southwolds are very poor.”

“How queer that he knew your name if you have never met him before,” said Mrs Selby. “But I dare say it’s through the Flores-Carters; they’re such great friends of mine, you know, and they are staying at Laxter’s Hill as well as the Southwold party.”

“Yes,” Despard agreed, “he had evidently heard of you.”

“And of you too in that case. People do so chatter in the country. The Carters are dying to get you there. They have got the Southwolds to promise to go to them next week. They—the Carter girls—are perfectly wild about Lady Margaret. I think it would be better taste not to make up to her so much; it doeslookas if it was because she was what she is, though I know it isn’t really that. They get up these fits of enthusiasm. And she is very nice—notverypretty, you know, but wonderfully nice and unspoilt, considering.”

“Unspoilt,” repeated Despard. He was glad to keep his sister talking about indifferent matters. “I don’t see that poor Lord Southwold’s daughter has any reason to be spoilt.”

“Oh, dear yes—didn’t you know? I thought you knew everything of that kind. It appears that she is a tremendous heiress; I forget the figures. The fortune comes from her aunt’s husband. Her mother’s elder sister married an enormously wealthy man, and as they had no children or near relations on his side, he left all to this girl. Of course she and her father have always known it, but it has been kept very quiet. They have lived in the country six months of the year, and travelled the other six. She has been most carefully brought up and splendidly educated. But she has never been ‘out’ in society at all till this year.”

“I never remember hearing of them in town,” said Despard.

“Oh, Lord Southwold himself never goes out. He is dreadfully delicate—heart-disease, I think. But she—Lady Margaret—will be heard ofnow. It has all come out about her fortune now that he has come into the title. His cousin, the last earl, only died two months ago.”

“And,” said Despard, with a strange sensation, as if he were listening to some one else speaking rather than speaking himself, “till he came into the title, what was he called? He was the last man’s cousin, you say?”

“Yes, of course; he was Mr Fforde—Fforde with two ‘f’s’ and an ‘e,’ you know. It’s the family name of the Southwolds. That young man—the one you spoke to—is Mr Conrad Fforde, as I told you. They say that—”

But a glance at her brother made her hesitate.

“Despard, is your head worse?” she asked anxiously.

“It comes on by fits and starts,” he replied. “But don’t mind; go on speaking. What were you going to say?”

“Oh, only about young Mr Fforde. They say he is to marry Lady Margaret; they are only second cousins. But I don’t think he looks good enough for her. She seems such a womanly, nice-feeling girl. We had just been introduced when Mr Fforde came up with your message, and she wanted him to go back to you at once. But he said you would be gone already, and I—well, I didn’t quite believe about your head being so bad, and perhaps I seemed very cool about it, for Lady Margaret really looked quite vexed. Wasn’t it nice of her? The Carters had been telling her about us evidently. I think she was rather disappointed not to see the famous Despard Norreys, do you know? I rather wonder you never met her this summer in town, though perhaps you would scarcely have remarked her just as Miss Fforde, for she isn’t—”

But an exclamation from Despard startled her.

“Maddie,” he said, “don’t you understand? Itmustbe she—she, this Lady Margaret—the great heiress! Good heavens!”

Mrs Selby almost screamed.

“Despard!” was all she could say. But she quickly recovered herself. “Well, after all,” she went on, “I don’t see that there’s any harm done. She will know that you were absolutely disinterested, and surely that will go a long way. But—just to think of it! Oh, Despard, fancy your saying that you half thought she was going to be a governess! Oh, dear,howextraordinary! And I that was so regretting that you had not met her! What a good thing you did not—I meanwhata good thing that my letter showing your ignorance was written and sent before you knew who she was! Don’t you see how lucky it was?”

She turned round, her eyes sparkling with excitement and eagerness. But there was no response in Mr Norreys’ face; on the contrary, its expression was such that Mrs Selby’s own face grew pale with dread.

“Despard,” she said, “why do you look like that? You are not going to say that now, because she is an heiress—just because ofmoney,” with a tone of supreme contempt, “that you will give it up? You surely—”

But Mr Norreys interrupted her.

“Has the letter gone, Maddie?”

She nodded her head.

“Then I must write again at once—myself—to Gertrude Englewood to make her promise on her honour never to tell what you wrote. Even if I thought she would believe it—and I am not sure that she would—I could never allow myself to be cleared in her eyesnow.”

Madeline stared at him. Had the sunstroke affected his brain?

“Despard,” she said, “what do you mean?”

He turned his haggard face towards her.

“I don’t know how to tell you,” he said. “I wish I need not, but as you know so much I must. Ididsee her, Madeline. I met her when I was strolling about the shrubbery over there. She was quite alone and no one near. It seemed to have happened on purpose, and—I told her all.”

“You proposed to her?”

He nodded.

“As—as Miss Fforde, or as—” began Mrs

Selby.

“As Miss Ford, of course, without the two ‘f’s’ and the ‘e’ at the end,” he said bitterly. “I didn’t know till this moment either that her father was an earl, or, which is much worse, that she was a great heiress.”

“And what is wrong, then?”

“Just that she refused me—refused me with the most biting contempt—the—the bitterest scorn—no, I cannot speak of it. She thought I knew, had found out about her—and now I see that my misplaced honesty, the way I spoke, must have given colour to it. She taunted me with my insolence at the first—good God! what an instrument of torture a woman’s tongue can be! There is only one thing to do—to stop Gertrude’s ever telling of that letter.”

“Oh, Despard!” exclaimed Mrs Selby, and her eyes filled with tears. “What ahorridgirl she must be! And I thought she looked so sweet and nice. She seemed so sorry when her cousin told me about you. Tell me, was that after? Oh, yes, of course, it must have been. Despard, I believe she was already repenting her cruelty.”

“Hush, Madeline,” said Mr Norreys sternly. “You mean it well, but—you must promise me never to allude to all this again. You will show me Mrs Englewood’s letter when it comes—that you must do, and I will write to her. But there is no more to be said. Let to-day be between us as if it had never been. Promise me, dear.”

He laid his hand on her arm. Madeline turned her tearful eyes towards him.

“Very well,” she said. “I must, I suppose. But, oh, what a dreadful pity it all seems. You to have fallen in love with her for herself—you that have never really cared for any one before—when you thought her only a governess; and now for it to have all gone wrong! It would have been so nice and delightful.”

“A sort of Lord Burleigh business, with the characters reversed—yes, quite idyllic,” said Despard sneeringly.

“Despard, don’t. It does so pain me,” Mrs Selby said with real feeling. “There is one person I am furious with,” she went on in a very different tone, “and that is Mrs Englewood. She had no business to play that sort of trick.”

“Perhaps she could not help herself. You say the father—Mr Fforde as he then was—did not wish her to be known as an heiress,” said Mr Norreys.

“She might have made an exception for you,” said Madeline.

Despard’s brows contracted. Mrs Selby thought it was from the pain in his head, but it was more than that. A vision rose before him of a sweet flushed girlish face, with gentle pleasure and appeal in the eyes—and of Gertrude’s voice, “If you don’t dance, will you talk to her? Anything to please her a little, you know.”

“I think Gertrude did all she could. I believe she is a perfectly loyal and faithful friend,” he said; “but for heaven’s sake, Maddie, let us drop it for ever. I will write this evening to Gertrude myself, and that will be the last act in the drama.”

No letter, however, was written to Mrs Englewood that evening—nor the next day, nor for that matter during the rest of the time that saw Despard Norreys a guest at Markerslea Rectory.

And several days passed after the morning that brought her reply to Mrs Selby’s letter of inquiry, before the person it chiefly concerned was able to see it. For the pain in his head, the result of slight sunstroke in the first place, aggravated by unusual excitement, had culminated in a sharp attack which at one time was not many degrees removed from brain fever. The risk was tided over, however, and at no time was the young man in very serious danger. But Mrs Selby suffered quite as much as if he had been dying. She made up her mind that he would not recover, and as her special friends received direct information to that effect, it is not to be wondered at that the bad news flew fast.

It reached Laxter’s Hill one morning in the week following Lady Denster’s garden-party. It was the day which was to see the breaking-up of the party assembled there to meet Lord Southwold and his daughter, and it came in a letter to Edith Flores-Carter from Mrs Selby herself.

“Oh, dear,” the girl ejaculated, her usually bright, not to say jolly-looking countenance clouding over as she spoke, “oh, dear, I’m so sorry for the Selbys—for Mrs Selby particularly. Just fancy, doesn’t it seem awful—her brother’s dying.”

She glanced round the breakfast-table for sympathy: various expressions of it reached her.

“That fellow I found in the grounds at that place, is it?” inquired Mr Fforde. “I’m not surprised, he did look pretty bad, and he would walk home, and he hadn’t even a parasol.”

“Conrad, howcanyou be so unfeeling? I perfectly detest that horrid trick of joking about everything,” said in sharp, indignant tones a young lady seated opposite him. It was Lady Margaret. Several people looked up in surprise.

“Beginning in good time,” murmured a man near the end of the table.

“Why, do you believe in that? I don’t,” replied his companion in the same low tone.

Conrad looked across the table at his cousin in surprise.

“Come now, Maisie,” he said, “you make me feel quite shy, scolding me so in company. And I’m sure I didn’tmeanto say anything witty at the poor chap’s expense. If I did, it was quite by mistake I assure you.”

“Anything ‘witty’ from you would be that, I can quite believe,” Lady Margaret replied, smiling a little. But the smile was a feeble and forced one. Conrad saw, if no one else did, that his cousin was thoroughly put out, and he felt repentant, though he scarcely knew why.

Half an hour later Lord Southwold and his daughter were talking together in the sitting-room, where the former had been breakfasting in invalid fashion alone.

“I would promise to be home to-morrow, or the day after at latest, papa,” Lady Margaret was saying; “Mrs Englewood will be very pleased to have me, I know, even at the shortest notice, for last week when I wrote saying I feared it would be impossible, she was very disappointed.”

“Very well, my dear, only don’t stay with her longer than that, for you know we have engagements,” and Lord Southwold sighed a little.

Margaret sighed too.

“My darling,” said her father, “don’t look so depressed. I didn’t mean to grumble.”

“Oh no, papa. It isn’t you at all. I shall be glad to be at home again; won’t you? Thank you very much for letting me go round by town.”

Mrs Englewood’s drawing-room—but looking very different from the last time we saw it. Mrs Englewood herself, with a more anxious expression than usual on her pleasant face, was sitting by the open window, through which, however, but little air found its way, for it was hot, almost stifling weather.

“It is really a trial to have to come back to town before it is cooler,” she was saying to herself, as the door opened and Lady Margaret, in summer travelling gear, came in.

“So you are really going, dear Maisie,” said her hostess. “I do wish you could have waited another day.”

“But,” said Maisie, “you will let me know at once what you hear from Mrs Selby. I cannot help being unhappy, Gertrude, and, of course, what you have told me has made me still more self-reproachful, and—and ashamed.”

She was very pale, but a sudden burning blush overspread her face as she said the last words.

“I dosohope he will recover,” she added, trying to speak lightly, “though if he does I earnestly hope I shall never meet him again.”

“Even if I succeed in making him understandyourside, and showing him how generously you regret having misjudged him?” said Mrs Englewood. “I don’t see that there need be any enmity between you.”

“Notenmity, oh no; but still less, friendship,” said Maisie. “I justtrustwe shall never meet again. Good-bye, dear Gertrude: I am so glad to have told you all. You will let me know what you hear?” and she kissed Mrs Englewood affectionately.

“Good-bye, dear child. I am glad you have not a long journey before you. Stretham will take good care of you. You quite understand that I can do nothing indirectly—it will only be when I see him himself that I can tell him how sorry you have been.”

“Sorry andashamed, be sure to say ‘ashamed,’” said Lady Margaret: “yes, of course, it can only be if—if he gets better or you see him yourself.”

Two or three days later came a letter to Lady Margaret from Mrs Englewood, inclosing one which that lady had just received from Mrs Selby. Her brother, she allowed for the first time, was out of danger, but “terribly weak.” And at intervals during the next few weeks the girl heard news of Mr Norreys’ recovery. And “I wonder,” she began to say to herself, “I wonder if Gertrude has seen him, or will be seeing him soon.”

But this hope, if hope it should be called, was doomed to disappointment. Late in October came another letter from her friend.

“I am sorry,” wrote Mrs Englewood, “that I see no probability of my meeting Mr Norreys for a long time. He is going abroad. After all, your paths in life are not likely to cross each other again. Perhaps it is best to leave things.”

But the tears filled Maisie’s eyes as she read. “I should have liked him to know I had come to do him justice,” she thought.

She did not understand Mrs Englewood’s view of the matter.

“It would be cruel,” Gertrude had said to herself, “to tell him how she blames herself, and how my showing her Mrs Selby’s letter had cleared him. It would only bring it all up again when he has doubtless begun to forget it.”

Nevertheless, Despard did not leave England without knowing how completely Lady Margaret had retracted her cruel words, and how bitterly she regretted them.

Time passes quickly, we are told, when we are hard at work. And doubtless this is true while the time in question is the present. But to look back upon time of which every day and every hour have been fully occupied, gives somewhat the feeling of a closely-printed volume when one has finished reading it. It seems even longer than in anticipation. To Despard Norreys, when at the end of two busy years he found himself again in England, it appeared as if he had been absent five or six times as long as was really the case.

He had been a week in England, and was still detained in town by details connected with the work he had successfully accomplished. He was under promise to his sister to run down to Markerslea the first day it should be possible, and time meanwhile hung somewhat heavily on his hands. The waters had already closed over his former place in society, and he did not regret it. Still there were friends whom he was glad to meet again, and so he not unwillingly accepted some of the invitations that began to find him out.

One evening, after dining at the house of the friend whose influence had obtained for him the appointment which had just expired, he accompanied the ladies of the family to an evening party in the neighbourhood. He had never been in the house before; the faces about him were unfamiliar. Feeling a little “out of it,” he strolled into a small room where a select quartette was absorbed at whist, and seated himself in a corner somewhat out of the glare of light, which, since his illness, rather painfully affected his eyes.

Suddenly the thought of Maisie Fforde as he had last seen her seemed to rise before him as in a vision.

“I wonder if she is married,” he said to himself. “Sure to be so, I should think. Yet I should probably have heard of it.”

And even as the words formed themselves in his mind, a still familiar voice caught his ear.

“Thank you. Yes, this will do nicely. I will wait here till Mabel is ready to go.”

And a lady—a girl, he soon saw—came forward into the room towards the corner where he was sitting. He rose at once; she approached him quickly, then with a sudden, incoherent exclamation, made as if she would have drawn back. But it was too late; she could not, if she wished, have pretended she did not see him.

“Mr Norreys,” she began; “I had no idea—”

“That I was in England,” he said. “No, I have only just returned. Pardon me for having startled you, Miss Fforde—Lady Margaret, I mean. I on my side had no idea of meeting you here or—”

“Or you would not have come,” she in her turn interrupted him with. “Thank you; you are frank at all events,” she added haughtily.

He turned away. There was perhaps some involuntary suggestion of reproach in his manner, for hers changed.

“No,” she said. “I am very wrong. Please stay for two minutes, and listen to me. I have hoped and prayed that I might never meet you again, but at the same time I made a vow—a real vow,” she went on girlishly, “thatifI did so I would swallow my pride, and—and ask you to forgive me. There now—I have said it. That is all. Will you, Mr Norreys?”

He glanced round; the whist party was all unconscious of the rest of the world still—

“Will you not sit down for a moment, Lady Margaret?” he said, and as she did so he too drew a chair nearer to hers. “It is disagreeable to be overheard,” he went on in a tone of half apology. “You ask me what I cannot now do,” he added.

The girl reared her head, and the softness of her manner hardened at once.

“Then,” she said, “we are quits. It does just as well. My conscience is clear now.”

“So is mine, as tothatparticular of—of what you call forgiving you,” he said, and his voice was a degree less calm. “I cannot do so now, for—I forgave you long, long ago.”

“You have seen Mrs Englewood? She has told you at last that all was explained to me—your sister’s letter and all,” she went on confusedly, “that I saw how horrid, how low and mean and suspicious and everything I had been?”

“I knew all you refer to before I left England,” he said simply. “But I asked Mrs Englewood to leave it as it was, unless she was absolutely forced to tell you. I knew you must hate the sound of my name, and she promised to drop the subject.”

“And I have scarcely seen her for a long time,” said Maisie. “I saw she did avoid it, and I suppose she thought it no use talking about it.”

“I did not need her explanation,” Despard went on gently. “I had—if you will have the word—I had forgiven you long before. Indeed, I think I did so almost at once. It was all natural on your part. What had I done, what was I that you should have thought any good of me? When you remembered the way I behaved to you at first,” and here his voice grew very low. “I have never been able to—I shall never be able to forgive myself—”

“Mr Norreys!” said Maisie in a very contrite tone. But Despard kept silence.

“Are you going to stay at home now, or are you going away again?” she asked presently, trying to speak in a matter-of-fact way.

“I hardly know. I am waiting to see what I can get to do. I don’t much mind what, but I shall never again be able to be idle,” he said, smiling a little for the first time. “It is my own fault entirely—the fault of my own past folly—that I am not now well on in the profession I was intended for. So I must not grumble if I have to take what work I can get in any part of the world. I would rather stay in England for some reasons.”

“Why?” she asked.

“I cannot stand heat very well,” he said. “My little sunstroke left some weak points—my eyes are not strong.”

She did not answer at once.

Then, “How crooked things are,” she said at last suddenly; “you want work, and I—oh, I amsobusy and worried. Papa impressed upon me that I must look after things myself, and accept the responsibilities, but—I don’t think he quite saw how difficult it would be,” and her eyes filled with tears.

“But—” said Despard, puzzled by her manner, “he is surely able to help you?”

She turned to him more fully—the tears came more quickly, but she did not mind his seeing them.

“Didn’t you know?” she said; “Papa is dead—more than a year ago now. Just before I came of age. I am quite alone. That silly—I shouldn’t say that, he is kind and good—Conrad is Lord Southwold now. But I don’t want to marry him, though he is almost the only man who, Iknow, cares for me for myself. How strange you did not know about my being all alone! Didn’t you notice this?” and she touched her black skirt.

“I have never seen you except in black,” said Despard. “No—I had no idea. I am so grieved.”

“If—if you stay in England,” she began again half timidly, “and you say you have forgiven me,”—he made a little gesture of deprecation of the word—“can’t we be friends, Mr Norreys?”

Despard rose to his feet. The whist party had dispersed. The little room was empty.

“No,” he said, “I am afraid that could never be, Lady Margaret. The one reason why I wish to leave England again is that I know now, I cannot—I must not risk seeing you.”

Maisie looked up, the tears were still glimmering about her eyes and cheeks; was it their soft glistening that made her face look so bright and almost radiant?

“Oh, do say it again—don’t think me not nice, oh,don’t!” she entreated. “But why—oh, why, if you care for me, though I can scarcely believe it, why let my horrible money come between us?Ishall never care for anybody else—there now, I have said it!” And she tried to hide her face, but he would not let her.

“Do you really mean it, dear?” he said. “If you do, I—I will swallowmypride, too; shall I?”

She looked up, half laughing now.

“Quits again, you see. Oh, dear, how dreadfully happy I am! And you know, as you are so fond of work now, you will havelotsto do. All manner of things for poor people that I want to manage, and don’t know how—and all our own—I won’t say ‘my’ any more—tenants to look after—and—and—”

”‘That girl in black’ herself to take care of, and make as happy as all my love and my strength, and my life’s devotion can,” said Despard. “Maisie, my darling; God grant that you may never regret your generosity and goodness.”

“No, no,” she murmured, “yours are far greater, far, far greater.”

There was a moment’s silence. Then suddenly Despard put his hand into his pocket and held out something to Maisie.

“Look,” he said, “do you remember? I should have returned it to you, but I could not make up my mind to it. I have never parted with it night or day, all these years.”

It was the little silver vinaigrette.

This all happened several years ago, and, by what I can gather, there are few happier people than Despard Norreys and Lady Margaret, his wife.

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