Chapter Twelve.

Chapter Twelve.Concerning Two Claimants.“Well, Delia, how much was it?” was Bob’s first greeting.“A thousand pounds.”The effect of this announcement was electrical and diverse. Old Calmour dropped his knife and fork—they were at table—and stared. Even Clytie could not repress a gasp; while as for Bob, he hoorayed aloud.“Then Wagram has stumped up! Did he send it straight to you?”“Look! There’s the cheque,” holding it up.“Phew!” whistled Bob. “It ought to have come to you through our people, though.”“Good thing it didn’t,” said Clytie significantly.“Rather!” assented Bob briskly. “All the more for us. Now we need only pay for the letter of demand. Well done, Delia. I say, dad, we ought to have a jolly good dinner to-night on the strength of it, and some fizz to drink Delia’s health.”“So we will, so we will,” snuffled the old man. “It’s like a blessed gift of Providence coming as it does just now, for the devil only knows how we should have managed to get on much longer.”“Buck up, old girl,” cried Bob, boisterously affectionate on the strength of this sudden accession to wealth. “Buck up. You’re looking sort of white about the gills, and pulling a face as long as a fiddle, instead of hooraying like mad. Why, you’ve got your thousand—a cool thou—and no costs charged, and no delay, and you don’t seem a bit happy.”Then Delia spoke.“Happy! I feel as if I could never look anybody in the face again. A mean, extortionate, blackmailing swindle has been perpetrated in my name, and I shall not lose a moment in putting it right, and explaining that I had no part in it. I am going to return this cheque.”“Wh-at?” bellowed Bob.“Going to re—” gasped old Calmour, who had fallen back in his chair, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.“Is she mad?” snorted Bob, who had gone as white as the girl herself. “Gets a cool thou, sent her—a cool thou, by the Lord Harry!—and then says ‘No, thanks; I’d rather not. Take it back again.’ It oughtn’t to be allowed.”“And would rather see her old father starve,” yelped old Calmour. “Here, take it from her, Bob. We’ll keep it for her till she comes to a better frame of mind.”“You dare to lay a hand on me,” said Delia; and there was that in her livid face and blazing eyes that caused the move Bob had made to rise in his chair to subside again. “Besides, you couldn’t take it from me without tearing it to pieces, nor could you cash it without my endorsement—which you would never get. How’s that, Lawyer Bob?”“Damnable tommy-rot. Oh, hang it, Clytie, can’t you knock some sense into her silly noddle? You haven’t said anything.”“How can one when you’re all bellowing at once? Well, I may as well tell you both that you’ve made a thundering silly mess of the whole thing. My beautiful scheme, which was becoming simpler and simpler every day, is now irrevocably knocked on the head—”“Beautiful scheme! Tommy-rot!” interrupted Bob. “A cool thou, in the hand’s worth twenty ‘beautiful schemes’ in your head.””—But as you have knocked it out,” went on Clytie, ignoring the interruption, “I say stick to the thousand.”“Hear, hear!” cried Bob.“My mind is quite made up,” replied Delia. “I am going to return it. Why, we could never hold up our heads in the place again.”“We don’t hold them extra tall as it is,” laughed Clytie, “yet we manage to rub along somehow. A cool thou, doesn’t tumble our way every day, wherefore don’t be in a hurry about the thing, Delia; give it, say, till to-morrow. Think it well over.”“It won’t bear thinking about, much less thinking over. I am going to Hilversea as fast as my bicycle will carry me; now, immediately.”Then her father and brother began upon her again. Ingratitude for what they had done for her, callous indifference to her father’s declining old age and increasing wants, general selfishness—these were but few of the crimes laid to her charge. But she was adamant.“You’ll have to get your bike to carry you first,” snarled Bob, giving up the contest. Hardly had he flung himself from the room than the meaning of his words flashed upon Delia. She flew to the door. Too late. Her bicycle stood in the front hall, and Bob, with a nasty grin on his face, was in the act of replacing a pin in his waistcoat. He had punctured both wheels in two or three places, and, to make assurance doubly sure, had treated Clytie’s machine in like manner.“You cur!” she gasped. “Never mind; I’ll hire one at Warren’s.”“Wagram won’t pay the bill this time. Ta-ta!Bong voyadge!” And the abominable cub took himself off.“How could you do such a thing?” she flashed out, turning on her father. “You have disgraced me for ever. A downright blackmailing fraud!”“Fraud be damned?” snarled old Calmour. “What are you talking about, girl? That sort of talk is dangerous. A highly respectable firm like Pownall and Skreet don’t deal in frauds.”“What sort of firm did you say, dad?” said Clytie sweetly.The old man whirled round upon her.“What have you got to say to it, I’d like to know? You just mind your own blanked business. Are you backing that idiot up in her lunacy? And look here, my lady Delia. You’ve grown too big for your boots of late. If we’re not good enough for you, and our ways don’t suit your ladyship, you’d better go and look out for yourself. See then how much your swagger friends will do for you.”“Yes; I will go,” said the girl, “but not until I’ve put this matter right. Your ‘highly respectable firm’ ought to be struck off the rolls for this job. Faugh! it’s scandalous!” she flashed out, as angry as he was.“Here, Delia, come away,” said Clytie. “We’ve all let off quite enough steam, and we don’t want to go on nagging all day.” And she dragged her sister from the room almost by main force.The while Bob, heading for the offices of the said “highly respectable firm,” though hugely incensed at his sister’s decision, yet through it discerned a silver lining to that cloud. If Wagrampèrehad been so quick to respond to her claim—or rather to the spurious claim that he and his father had put forth—and that to the uttermost farthing, by parity of reasoning would not Wagramfilsbe equally ready to meet his own, issued simultaneously with the other? Clearly these people had a horror of litigation, and already he saw himself master of a thousand pounds, all his own, or at any rate of the result of a substantial compromise. Consequently, when he entered the office—incidentally a little late—it was with a jaunty, rakish air, as though, if he chose, he could buy up the whole concern.“Pownall wants you, Calmour,” said one of the clerks at once.“Ha, does he? I thought he would,” answered Bob lightly. Already he saw himself in possession. The reply had come. The only thing now to be reckoned with was that Pownall should not make an undue deduction for costs. Yet, somehow, as he knocked and entered, there was something in Pownall’s veined and scrubby-bearded face that was not propitious. And Pownall was not inclined to waste valuable time.“Look here, Calmour,” he began, “when you brought me this claim of yours I told you I didn’t think there was the slightest chance of your getting anything. Here’s the answer.”“Do they refuse, sir?”“Absolutely and uncompromisingly. Here, read it yourself,” chucking an open letter across to his discomfited clerk, who took it and read:“Hilversea Court,“23rd June1897.“Sirs,—I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter of yesterday’s date, demanding from me the sum of a thousand pounds as compensation to one Robert Calmour, for assaulting him. If this person is the blackguard I chastised last week on the Swanton Road for grossly insulting a young lady under my charge, I may mention incidentally that he is very ill-advised in revealing his identity, for the young lady’s father, on learning it, is not only prepared, but eager, to repeat the infliction, and that with very considerable exaggeration of the punishment he received at my hands. To come to the main point, I flatly refuse to pay one farthing; indeed, so impossible is it for me to treat this claim as a serious one that I have not even deemed it worth while to refer the matter to my solicitors.—Yours faithfully,“Wagram Gerard Wagram.“Messrs Pownall and Skreet.”Bob had gone very pale during the perusal of this letter. Not only had his house of cards gone down with a flutter—for he could read no compromise here—but he was threatened with the summary vengeance of an unknown and vindictive parent. The stripes that Wagram had laid upon him, now turned to yellow and red bruises, seemed to tingle afresh.“Is it no good pressing him further, sir?” he stammered. “This may be bluff.”“Ours was bluff,” sneered Pownall. “I thought it just worth trying on, but only just. Now I see it isn’t. No jury in England would find for you, and we can’t afford to take up such a case.”“But they paid my sister, sir, almost by return.”“What?” shouted Pownall, jumping from his chair. “What? Paid in full?”“Yes. Sent her a cheque for a thousand.”“But this ought to have gone through us. It’s irregular, damned irregular.”“So it is, sir. And what’s more irregular, she’s going to return it.”“Going to return it?”“Yes; swears she won’t accept it; calls it blackmail, and so forth.”“Does she? Well, see here, Calmour, I’m sick of all your family grievances, and am devilish sorry I ever took them up. If it hadn’t been that your father’s a very old friend of mine I wouldn’t have touched them with the tip of the tongs. Now you’d better get back to the office.”“One minute, sir,” stammered Bob. “Er—who is the person referred to in the letter as—er—threatening me with further violence?”“I shrewdly conjecture it’s Haldane—and, if so, you’d better give him a wide, wide berth. He just about worships that girl of his, and he has knocked about in rough, wild parts. Hang it! couldn’t you tell the difference between a lady—a thoroughbred—and a village wench if you must get playing the fool by roadsides, you silly young rip? Now get back to your job. I haven’t taken anything by either of you,” added the lawyer disgustedly as he resumed his work.If ever anybody found himself in an utterly abject state of mind, assuredly that individual was Bob Calmour as he slunk out of his principal’s room, and as he took his place at his own desk he felt as if he could have blown his brains out, only he lacked the courage. He cursed Pownall, he cursed Delia, he cursed everything and everybody, but more than all did he curse Wagram. Should he take his claim to some other solicitor? That would be useless, for he felt pretty sure that nobody but his principal would have touched it. Furthermore, the hint thrown out by Wagram with regard to his identity becoming known commanded his whole-hearted respect, and he grew green with scare at the thought that Haldane might be looking for him even at that moment. Heavens! what if Delia had let drop anything that might give him away when she was spending the day there? Hardly likely; and again he congratulated himself on his sound policy in keeping the thing a fast secret between himself and his principal. One comfort was that Haldane rarely came to Bassingham, his county town being Fulkston, away in the other direction; still, Bob Calmour was destined to expiate his act of Yahooism very fully, in the shape of a chronic apprehension, which rendered life a nightmare to him for some time thenceforward.

“Well, Delia, how much was it?” was Bob’s first greeting.

“A thousand pounds.”

The effect of this announcement was electrical and diverse. Old Calmour dropped his knife and fork—they were at table—and stared. Even Clytie could not repress a gasp; while as for Bob, he hoorayed aloud.

“Then Wagram has stumped up! Did he send it straight to you?”

“Look! There’s the cheque,” holding it up.

“Phew!” whistled Bob. “It ought to have come to you through our people, though.”

“Good thing it didn’t,” said Clytie significantly.

“Rather!” assented Bob briskly. “All the more for us. Now we need only pay for the letter of demand. Well done, Delia. I say, dad, we ought to have a jolly good dinner to-night on the strength of it, and some fizz to drink Delia’s health.”

“So we will, so we will,” snuffled the old man. “It’s like a blessed gift of Providence coming as it does just now, for the devil only knows how we should have managed to get on much longer.”

“Buck up, old girl,” cried Bob, boisterously affectionate on the strength of this sudden accession to wealth. “Buck up. You’re looking sort of white about the gills, and pulling a face as long as a fiddle, instead of hooraying like mad. Why, you’ve got your thousand—a cool thou—and no costs charged, and no delay, and you don’t seem a bit happy.”

Then Delia spoke.

“Happy! I feel as if I could never look anybody in the face again. A mean, extortionate, blackmailing swindle has been perpetrated in my name, and I shall not lose a moment in putting it right, and explaining that I had no part in it. I am going to return this cheque.”

“Wh-at?” bellowed Bob.

“Going to re—” gasped old Calmour, who had fallen back in his chair, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.

“Is she mad?” snorted Bob, who had gone as white as the girl herself. “Gets a cool thou, sent her—a cool thou, by the Lord Harry!—and then says ‘No, thanks; I’d rather not. Take it back again.’ It oughtn’t to be allowed.”

“And would rather see her old father starve,” yelped old Calmour. “Here, take it from her, Bob. We’ll keep it for her till she comes to a better frame of mind.”

“You dare to lay a hand on me,” said Delia; and there was that in her livid face and blazing eyes that caused the move Bob had made to rise in his chair to subside again. “Besides, you couldn’t take it from me without tearing it to pieces, nor could you cash it without my endorsement—which you would never get. How’s that, Lawyer Bob?”

“Damnable tommy-rot. Oh, hang it, Clytie, can’t you knock some sense into her silly noddle? You haven’t said anything.”

“How can one when you’re all bellowing at once? Well, I may as well tell you both that you’ve made a thundering silly mess of the whole thing. My beautiful scheme, which was becoming simpler and simpler every day, is now irrevocably knocked on the head—”

“Beautiful scheme! Tommy-rot!” interrupted Bob. “A cool thou, in the hand’s worth twenty ‘beautiful schemes’ in your head.”

”—But as you have knocked it out,” went on Clytie, ignoring the interruption, “I say stick to the thousand.”

“Hear, hear!” cried Bob.

“My mind is quite made up,” replied Delia. “I am going to return it. Why, we could never hold up our heads in the place again.”

“We don’t hold them extra tall as it is,” laughed Clytie, “yet we manage to rub along somehow. A cool thou, doesn’t tumble our way every day, wherefore don’t be in a hurry about the thing, Delia; give it, say, till to-morrow. Think it well over.”

“It won’t bear thinking about, much less thinking over. I am going to Hilversea as fast as my bicycle will carry me; now, immediately.”

Then her father and brother began upon her again. Ingratitude for what they had done for her, callous indifference to her father’s declining old age and increasing wants, general selfishness—these were but few of the crimes laid to her charge. But she was adamant.

“You’ll have to get your bike to carry you first,” snarled Bob, giving up the contest. Hardly had he flung himself from the room than the meaning of his words flashed upon Delia. She flew to the door. Too late. Her bicycle stood in the front hall, and Bob, with a nasty grin on his face, was in the act of replacing a pin in his waistcoat. He had punctured both wheels in two or three places, and, to make assurance doubly sure, had treated Clytie’s machine in like manner.

“You cur!” she gasped. “Never mind; I’ll hire one at Warren’s.”

“Wagram won’t pay the bill this time. Ta-ta!Bong voyadge!” And the abominable cub took himself off.

“How could you do such a thing?” she flashed out, turning on her father. “You have disgraced me for ever. A downright blackmailing fraud!”

“Fraud be damned?” snarled old Calmour. “What are you talking about, girl? That sort of talk is dangerous. A highly respectable firm like Pownall and Skreet don’t deal in frauds.”

“What sort of firm did you say, dad?” said Clytie sweetly.

The old man whirled round upon her.

“What have you got to say to it, I’d like to know? You just mind your own blanked business. Are you backing that idiot up in her lunacy? And look here, my lady Delia. You’ve grown too big for your boots of late. If we’re not good enough for you, and our ways don’t suit your ladyship, you’d better go and look out for yourself. See then how much your swagger friends will do for you.”

“Yes; I will go,” said the girl, “but not until I’ve put this matter right. Your ‘highly respectable firm’ ought to be struck off the rolls for this job. Faugh! it’s scandalous!” she flashed out, as angry as he was.

“Here, Delia, come away,” said Clytie. “We’ve all let off quite enough steam, and we don’t want to go on nagging all day.” And she dragged her sister from the room almost by main force.

The while Bob, heading for the offices of the said “highly respectable firm,” though hugely incensed at his sister’s decision, yet through it discerned a silver lining to that cloud. If Wagrampèrehad been so quick to respond to her claim—or rather to the spurious claim that he and his father had put forth—and that to the uttermost farthing, by parity of reasoning would not Wagramfilsbe equally ready to meet his own, issued simultaneously with the other? Clearly these people had a horror of litigation, and already he saw himself master of a thousand pounds, all his own, or at any rate of the result of a substantial compromise. Consequently, when he entered the office—incidentally a little late—it was with a jaunty, rakish air, as though, if he chose, he could buy up the whole concern.

“Pownall wants you, Calmour,” said one of the clerks at once.

“Ha, does he? I thought he would,” answered Bob lightly. Already he saw himself in possession. The reply had come. The only thing now to be reckoned with was that Pownall should not make an undue deduction for costs. Yet, somehow, as he knocked and entered, there was something in Pownall’s veined and scrubby-bearded face that was not propitious. And Pownall was not inclined to waste valuable time.

“Look here, Calmour,” he began, “when you brought me this claim of yours I told you I didn’t think there was the slightest chance of your getting anything. Here’s the answer.”

“Do they refuse, sir?”

“Absolutely and uncompromisingly. Here, read it yourself,” chucking an open letter across to his discomfited clerk, who took it and read:

“Hilversea Court,

“23rd June1897.

“Sirs,—I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter of yesterday’s date, demanding from me the sum of a thousand pounds as compensation to one Robert Calmour, for assaulting him. If this person is the blackguard I chastised last week on the Swanton Road for grossly insulting a young lady under my charge, I may mention incidentally that he is very ill-advised in revealing his identity, for the young lady’s father, on learning it, is not only prepared, but eager, to repeat the infliction, and that with very considerable exaggeration of the punishment he received at my hands. To come to the main point, I flatly refuse to pay one farthing; indeed, so impossible is it for me to treat this claim as a serious one that I have not even deemed it worth while to refer the matter to my solicitors.—Yours faithfully,

“Wagram Gerard Wagram.

“Messrs Pownall and Skreet.”

Bob had gone very pale during the perusal of this letter. Not only had his house of cards gone down with a flutter—for he could read no compromise here—but he was threatened with the summary vengeance of an unknown and vindictive parent. The stripes that Wagram had laid upon him, now turned to yellow and red bruises, seemed to tingle afresh.

“Is it no good pressing him further, sir?” he stammered. “This may be bluff.”

“Ours was bluff,” sneered Pownall. “I thought it just worth trying on, but only just. Now I see it isn’t. No jury in England would find for you, and we can’t afford to take up such a case.”

“But they paid my sister, sir, almost by return.”

“What?” shouted Pownall, jumping from his chair. “What? Paid in full?”

“Yes. Sent her a cheque for a thousand.”

“But this ought to have gone through us. It’s irregular, damned irregular.”

“So it is, sir. And what’s more irregular, she’s going to return it.”

“Going to return it?”

“Yes; swears she won’t accept it; calls it blackmail, and so forth.”

“Does she? Well, see here, Calmour, I’m sick of all your family grievances, and am devilish sorry I ever took them up. If it hadn’t been that your father’s a very old friend of mine I wouldn’t have touched them with the tip of the tongs. Now you’d better get back to the office.”

“One minute, sir,” stammered Bob. “Er—who is the person referred to in the letter as—er—threatening me with further violence?”

“I shrewdly conjecture it’s Haldane—and, if so, you’d better give him a wide, wide berth. He just about worships that girl of his, and he has knocked about in rough, wild parts. Hang it! couldn’t you tell the difference between a lady—a thoroughbred—and a village wench if you must get playing the fool by roadsides, you silly young rip? Now get back to your job. I haven’t taken anything by either of you,” added the lawyer disgustedly as he resumed his work.

If ever anybody found himself in an utterly abject state of mind, assuredly that individual was Bob Calmour as he slunk out of his principal’s room, and as he took his place at his own desk he felt as if he could have blown his brains out, only he lacked the courage. He cursed Pownall, he cursed Delia, he cursed everything and everybody, but more than all did he curse Wagram. Should he take his claim to some other solicitor? That would be useless, for he felt pretty sure that nobody but his principal would have touched it. Furthermore, the hint thrown out by Wagram with regard to his identity becoming known commanded his whole-hearted respect, and he grew green with scare at the thought that Haldane might be looking for him even at that moment. Heavens! what if Delia had let drop anything that might give him away when she was spending the day there? Hardly likely; and again he congratulated himself on his sound policy in keeping the thing a fast secret between himself and his principal. One comfort was that Haldane rarely came to Bassingham, his county town being Fulkston, away in the other direction; still, Bob Calmour was destined to expiate his act of Yahooism very fully, in the shape of a chronic apprehension, which rendered life a nightmare to him for some time thenceforward.

Chapter Thirteen.Concerning One Claim.“A matter of urgent importance,” read the Squire again from a card just handed him by a servant, and which bore the inscription: “Miss Calmour.”“What on earth can the girl want next? She’s got her money—far more than any court would have awarded her. What the deuce is she bothering us further for?”“I can’t imagine. Still, I’ll see her, if you like.”“I wish you would, Wagram. The fact is, I’m sick of the very sound of the name.”It was the middle of the afternoon, and the two were strolling together in the shrubbery. Both were, not unnaturally, somewhat annoyed.“The young lady’s in the morning room, sir,” said the footman. “I put her in there, sir, because she said she’d come on a matter of business, and hoped no one else would come in.”“Quite right,” said Wagram.Delia rose as he entered. She did not put forth her hand, and did not seem to expect him to. She was busying herself extracting something from an envelope, and he noticed that her hands shook.“I would have been over about this the first thing this morning,” she began, speaking quickly, “but my tyres were punctured. I did not want to lose a moment. But”—looking up—“it was not you I came to see, it was your father.”“Won’t I do as well, Miss Calmour? Any matter of business is all within my province.”“Well, then, it is about this,” exhibiting the letter of demand and the cheque. Wagram felt himself growing grim.“Has any mistake been made in the drawing of it?” he asked, bending over to look at it. She caught at the word.“Mistake? The whole thing is a mistake, and worse. Mr Wagram, will you believe me when I assure you upon my honour that until I received these two enclosures this morning I knew no more about this than—than, well—than if I had never been born?”“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand.”“Don’t you? Oh, you do make it hard,” with a little stamp of the foot. “Well, then, this claim was never made by me—never—and until this morning I did not know it had been made at all.”“Well, but—if you were hurt that time why not accept a little—er—compensation?”“Hurt that time? I would be hurt now, if I were not too ashamed, that you should think me capable of such a thing. Even if I had been half killed I would not have—have—done—what has been done. Compensation! Look!”She tore the cheque twice across, and laid the fragments on the table before him, together with the letter of demand.“Now, will you believe that my hands are entirely clean in the matter? The moment I received this I never had a moment’s doubt as to the course I should pursue. That is the outcome.” And she pointed to the torn cheque.She looked very pretty standing there—her breast heaving in her excitement, her eyes brightened, and the colour coming and going in her face—very pretty and appealing.“Certainly I believe you,” said Wagram, who now, as by an inspiration, saw through the whole sordid affair; “and I don’t think you need go to the trouble of explaining it any further, for I can quite see how it happened.”“But I must explain a little. Oh, Mr Wagram, my father is not well, not always quite responsible. His health is weak, and he has had a great deal of trouble, and might do what he would never have dreamed of doing when he was a younger and stronger man; and the temptation, I suppose, was too great.”Her voice tailed off into a sob, and Wagram felt a great wave of pity overwhelm him as he looked at this girl, who now more than ever struck him as far too good for her sordid surroundings. Her laboured apology for her rascally old parent, too, had sent her up a hundred per cent, in his estimation, but as an excuse for the old sot it weighed not with him at all. The attempted blackmailing had been too flagrant, too outrageous, but to find that Delia was entirely innocent of it afforded him more satisfaction than he could have believed.“Sit down, sit down. Why have you been standing all this time?” he said gently; and the tone was too much for poor Delia, who broke down utterly, and wept.“There, there, now. Don’t give way over nothing,” he went on. “A mistake has been made, and put right again, that’s all. Meanwhile you must accept my sincere apologies for my side of it.”“Apologies! Mr Wagram, don’t. Apologies! Why, I have been feeling as if I could never look you in the face again.”“But you don’t feel that any more, of course not. Now, I know my father would like to see you, so I will let him know you are here, if you will excuse me for a minute or two.”As the door closed on him Delia brushed away her tears, and then did an inexplicable, a foolish thing. She rose and pressed her lips to the table, on the spot where his hand had rested during the interview.“And they would have had me extort money from him, blackmail him!” she said to herself. “Faugh! what a horrible word. But the whole thing was horrible, shameful. Oh, but the tactfulness of him! It was wonderful. No wonder such people seem to reckon themselves a separate order of being. They are.”Meanwhile Wagram had found the old Squire in the library.“The poor girl had no hand in it after all,” he said. “It appears she knew nothing about it until this morning, when she received the cheque. The whole thing was got up by her rascally father without her knowledge.”“Of course. But now that it’s within her knowledge she won’t find a thousand pounds come in badly,” was the somewhat testy answer.“She tore up the cheque of her own accord under my eyes.”“What? Did she? That looks genuine, Wagram. By George, that looks genuine. Fancy anything Calmour refusing a thousand pounds—or even a hundred! Good heavens! is the world coming to an end?”“Well, she’s done it anyhow. I want you to come in and see her, father, and put her at her ease. She’s genuinely distressed that we should have thought so badly of her, and all that.”“By the way, does she know of the trouncing you gave that precious blackguard of a brother of hers?”“I haven’t told her. If she knows I expect she thinks he richly deserved it. I fancy she’s that sort of girl.”The blend of the courtly and the paternal in the old Squire’s manner was charming, and soon Delia was quite at ease with herself and her surroundings. Then they showed her over the historic parts of the house, and she gazed with awed delight at the great staircase with its twisted stone banister and the gallery hung with family portraits and old war trophies.“Oh, but this is perfection,” cried the girl as she leaned out of one of the high windows to gaze upon the panorama unfolded beneath. Miles and miles of it lay outspread in the sunlight—green meadow and dark fir covert, cloud-like masses of feathery elms and hawthorn hedgerows, with here and there a gleam of silver, as a winding of the river broke into view. Then, from far and near, a chorus of song thrushes and the joyous sound of a cuckoo lent the finishing touch to this fairest of English landscapes.“That spire away there beyond the dark line is Fulkston, near Haldane’s place,” went on Wagram, in the course of pointing out to her the various landmarks.“Is it? What a delightful day that was. Isn’t Miss Haldane perfectly sweet? By the way, Mr Wagram, I enjoyed hearing how you thrashed a cad for insulting her.”If the faintest gleam of mirth came into the other’s eyes Delia missed its point.“Oh, I’m not proud of it, I assure you. If he had been impudent only to me I wouldn’t have touched him, for he was no match for me. If it had been any other girl I should have thought I had given the poor devil too much, but it being Yvonne Haldane he insulted it seemed as if he couldn’t have enough.”“I most heartily agree,” said Delia, and again that curious gleam passed across Wagram’s face.“Would you like to see a secret chamber?” he said.“Wouldn’t I? Is it a real secret chamber, opening with a sliding panel, and all that sort of thing?”“You shall see.”He led the way to a high gallery in an unused part of the house, a trifle gloomy by reason of the few and narrow windows that lighted it from one side. The old Squire had left them early in the investigation, declaring that he did not feel equal to going up and down so many stairs. The girl’s nerves were athrill with the delightful air of mystery suggested by the surroundings.“You haven’t asked as to the family ghosts yet,” he said, “and it seems strange.”“Strange? Why?”“Because you are the first within my knowledge to be shown over the house who has not asked about them long before this. Were you keeping it till we got down again?”“No. I wouldn’t have asked such a question. How could I tell but that it might be an unwelcome one?”It was a small thing, but somehow it seemed to Wagram to argue an uncommon thoughtfulness and delicacy of mind on the part of this girl—this daughter of a drunken, blackmailing, old ex-army vet.“I won’t insist on blindfolding you, Miss Calmour,” he said, with a smile, “but I’ll ask you just to look out of that window for a minute.”“Certainly,” she said. “Why, this is more than interesting.”“That’ll do. Thanks.”“Can I look?”“Yes.”The inner wall of the gallery was patterned faintly in large squares diagonally divided, so that you might see in them squares or triangles according to the caprice of the eye. Now, where one of these squares had been Delia saw a dark aperture easily large enough to admit the body of a man. It was about a yard and a half from the ground.“What was it used for?” she said, as her eyes becoming more accustomed to the gloom she made out a narrow, oblong chamber, or rather closet, about eight feet by four, and running parallel with the wall.“A priest’s hiding-place. There is still a sprinkling of them to be seen in our old country houses, more or less perfect still.”“This one seems perfect. But how did they get light and air?”“They didn’t get much of the first. For the last, there’s a small winding shaft that opens under the roof.”“And did they spend days in here? It must have been dreadful.”“Not to them, because their mission was in its highest sense the reverse of dreadful. But there was a dreadful side to it, for at that time every one of them who came to this country came with the quartering block and boiling pitch before his eyes, as, sooner or later, his certain end. You can imagine, then, that to such men there would be nothing very dreadful in spending a few days in a place like this.”“Of course not. What a stupid remark of mine.”“As a matter of fact, the last to use this place met with just that fate. He was a relation, and was captured in that avenue which was the route of the procession this day last week.”“How terrible,” said Delia, gazing with renewed awe into the gloomy chamber. “How you must venerate this place, Mr Wagram.”“Well, you can imagine we do; in fact, it isn’t often shown.”“Oh, then I do feel honoured—I mean it seriously.”He smiled.“Have you seen enough? because if so we’ll shut it up again.”“One minute. How does it open and shut? Why, it isn’t a mere panel, it’s a solid block of stone.”“Ah, that’s the secret of it. It is easily opened from within if you know how; but from without—well, it has never been discovered. The secret has been handed down among ourselves. It is always known to three persons, of which, needless to say, I am one.”“How interesting! But if I were in there, and you and the other two were not get-at-able, what then?”“You might as well be buried alive. Now, oblige me by looking out of that window once more.”“If I mayn’t look, may I listen?”“Certainly. Now you may turn again. Well, what did you hear?”“Nothing.”“Nothing? Well, see if you can tell which of the squares it was that opened.”“This one. No; it doesn’t sound hollow. None of them do. I give it up.”“We’ll be going down again, then. You’ll be glad of tea.”She protested that such a thing was beyond her thoughts amid the wonder and delight of all she had seen. On the way he pointed out a few of the more prominent family portraits.“That is our martyr relative.”A cry of surprise escaped Delia.“That! Why, Mr Wagram, it might be yourself.”The portrait was quite a small one, and in a massive frame of stained oak. It represented a man of about the same age, with the same thoughtful dark eyes, the same shaped face, and the same close-trimmed, pointed beard. The figure was gowned in black, and the head crowned with a Spanish biretta with high-pointed corners. Attached to the frame was a Latin inscription.“People do remark a likeness,” he said; “but you can guess how we value that portrait for its own sake. It was painted at Salamanca just before he left for St Omer to start on the English mission.”“Is there any Spanish blood in your family, Mr Wagram?”“A strain; but it dates rather far back. Aren’t you more than ever afraid of coming to our services now?” he added slily. “The Inquisition, you know.”“Afraid? If I didn’t know you were chaffing me I would say that I was the more attracted after what you have shown and told me to-day.”The old Squire was waiting for them in the great hall, where they had tea, and Delia, having now recovered her spirits completely, was chatting away as though the matter which had brought her there was but the recollection of a half-faded nightmare—a very note of interest and admiration concerning all she had just seen. Then, imperceptibly to her, they drew her on to talk about herself, and one point in the plain tale of real, plucky, hard work, which had come within her experiences of late, Wagram made a mental note of for future use.

“A matter of urgent importance,” read the Squire again from a card just handed him by a servant, and which bore the inscription: “Miss Calmour.”

“What on earth can the girl want next? She’s got her money—far more than any court would have awarded her. What the deuce is she bothering us further for?”

“I can’t imagine. Still, I’ll see her, if you like.”

“I wish you would, Wagram. The fact is, I’m sick of the very sound of the name.”

It was the middle of the afternoon, and the two were strolling together in the shrubbery. Both were, not unnaturally, somewhat annoyed.

“The young lady’s in the morning room, sir,” said the footman. “I put her in there, sir, because she said she’d come on a matter of business, and hoped no one else would come in.”

“Quite right,” said Wagram.

Delia rose as he entered. She did not put forth her hand, and did not seem to expect him to. She was busying herself extracting something from an envelope, and he noticed that her hands shook.

“I would have been over about this the first thing this morning,” she began, speaking quickly, “but my tyres were punctured. I did not want to lose a moment. But”—looking up—“it was not you I came to see, it was your father.”

“Won’t I do as well, Miss Calmour? Any matter of business is all within my province.”

“Well, then, it is about this,” exhibiting the letter of demand and the cheque. Wagram felt himself growing grim.

“Has any mistake been made in the drawing of it?” he asked, bending over to look at it. She caught at the word.

“Mistake? The whole thing is a mistake, and worse. Mr Wagram, will you believe me when I assure you upon my honour that until I received these two enclosures this morning I knew no more about this than—than, well—than if I had never been born?”

“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand.”

“Don’t you? Oh, you do make it hard,” with a little stamp of the foot. “Well, then, this claim was never made by me—never—and until this morning I did not know it had been made at all.”

“Well, but—if you were hurt that time why not accept a little—er—compensation?”

“Hurt that time? I would be hurt now, if I were not too ashamed, that you should think me capable of such a thing. Even if I had been half killed I would not have—have—done—what has been done. Compensation! Look!”

She tore the cheque twice across, and laid the fragments on the table before him, together with the letter of demand.

“Now, will you believe that my hands are entirely clean in the matter? The moment I received this I never had a moment’s doubt as to the course I should pursue. That is the outcome.” And she pointed to the torn cheque.

She looked very pretty standing there—her breast heaving in her excitement, her eyes brightened, and the colour coming and going in her face—very pretty and appealing.

“Certainly I believe you,” said Wagram, who now, as by an inspiration, saw through the whole sordid affair; “and I don’t think you need go to the trouble of explaining it any further, for I can quite see how it happened.”

“But I must explain a little. Oh, Mr Wagram, my father is not well, not always quite responsible. His health is weak, and he has had a great deal of trouble, and might do what he would never have dreamed of doing when he was a younger and stronger man; and the temptation, I suppose, was too great.”

Her voice tailed off into a sob, and Wagram felt a great wave of pity overwhelm him as he looked at this girl, who now more than ever struck him as far too good for her sordid surroundings. Her laboured apology for her rascally old parent, too, had sent her up a hundred per cent, in his estimation, but as an excuse for the old sot it weighed not with him at all. The attempted blackmailing had been too flagrant, too outrageous, but to find that Delia was entirely innocent of it afforded him more satisfaction than he could have believed.

“Sit down, sit down. Why have you been standing all this time?” he said gently; and the tone was too much for poor Delia, who broke down utterly, and wept.

“There, there, now. Don’t give way over nothing,” he went on. “A mistake has been made, and put right again, that’s all. Meanwhile you must accept my sincere apologies for my side of it.”

“Apologies! Mr Wagram, don’t. Apologies! Why, I have been feeling as if I could never look you in the face again.”

“But you don’t feel that any more, of course not. Now, I know my father would like to see you, so I will let him know you are here, if you will excuse me for a minute or two.”

As the door closed on him Delia brushed away her tears, and then did an inexplicable, a foolish thing. She rose and pressed her lips to the table, on the spot where his hand had rested during the interview.

“And they would have had me extort money from him, blackmail him!” she said to herself. “Faugh! what a horrible word. But the whole thing was horrible, shameful. Oh, but the tactfulness of him! It was wonderful. No wonder such people seem to reckon themselves a separate order of being. They are.”

Meanwhile Wagram had found the old Squire in the library.

“The poor girl had no hand in it after all,” he said. “It appears she knew nothing about it until this morning, when she received the cheque. The whole thing was got up by her rascally father without her knowledge.”

“Of course. But now that it’s within her knowledge she won’t find a thousand pounds come in badly,” was the somewhat testy answer.

“She tore up the cheque of her own accord under my eyes.”

“What? Did she? That looks genuine, Wagram. By George, that looks genuine. Fancy anything Calmour refusing a thousand pounds—or even a hundred! Good heavens! is the world coming to an end?”

“Well, she’s done it anyhow. I want you to come in and see her, father, and put her at her ease. She’s genuinely distressed that we should have thought so badly of her, and all that.”

“By the way, does she know of the trouncing you gave that precious blackguard of a brother of hers?”

“I haven’t told her. If she knows I expect she thinks he richly deserved it. I fancy she’s that sort of girl.”

The blend of the courtly and the paternal in the old Squire’s manner was charming, and soon Delia was quite at ease with herself and her surroundings. Then they showed her over the historic parts of the house, and she gazed with awed delight at the great staircase with its twisted stone banister and the gallery hung with family portraits and old war trophies.

“Oh, but this is perfection,” cried the girl as she leaned out of one of the high windows to gaze upon the panorama unfolded beneath. Miles and miles of it lay outspread in the sunlight—green meadow and dark fir covert, cloud-like masses of feathery elms and hawthorn hedgerows, with here and there a gleam of silver, as a winding of the river broke into view. Then, from far and near, a chorus of song thrushes and the joyous sound of a cuckoo lent the finishing touch to this fairest of English landscapes.

“That spire away there beyond the dark line is Fulkston, near Haldane’s place,” went on Wagram, in the course of pointing out to her the various landmarks.

“Is it? What a delightful day that was. Isn’t Miss Haldane perfectly sweet? By the way, Mr Wagram, I enjoyed hearing how you thrashed a cad for insulting her.”

If the faintest gleam of mirth came into the other’s eyes Delia missed its point.

“Oh, I’m not proud of it, I assure you. If he had been impudent only to me I wouldn’t have touched him, for he was no match for me. If it had been any other girl I should have thought I had given the poor devil too much, but it being Yvonne Haldane he insulted it seemed as if he couldn’t have enough.”

“I most heartily agree,” said Delia, and again that curious gleam passed across Wagram’s face.

“Would you like to see a secret chamber?” he said.

“Wouldn’t I? Is it a real secret chamber, opening with a sliding panel, and all that sort of thing?”

“You shall see.”

He led the way to a high gallery in an unused part of the house, a trifle gloomy by reason of the few and narrow windows that lighted it from one side. The old Squire had left them early in the investigation, declaring that he did not feel equal to going up and down so many stairs. The girl’s nerves were athrill with the delightful air of mystery suggested by the surroundings.

“You haven’t asked as to the family ghosts yet,” he said, “and it seems strange.”

“Strange? Why?”

“Because you are the first within my knowledge to be shown over the house who has not asked about them long before this. Were you keeping it till we got down again?”

“No. I wouldn’t have asked such a question. How could I tell but that it might be an unwelcome one?”

It was a small thing, but somehow it seemed to Wagram to argue an uncommon thoughtfulness and delicacy of mind on the part of this girl—this daughter of a drunken, blackmailing, old ex-army vet.

“I won’t insist on blindfolding you, Miss Calmour,” he said, with a smile, “but I’ll ask you just to look out of that window for a minute.”

“Certainly,” she said. “Why, this is more than interesting.”

“That’ll do. Thanks.”

“Can I look?”

“Yes.”

The inner wall of the gallery was patterned faintly in large squares diagonally divided, so that you might see in them squares or triangles according to the caprice of the eye. Now, where one of these squares had been Delia saw a dark aperture easily large enough to admit the body of a man. It was about a yard and a half from the ground.

“What was it used for?” she said, as her eyes becoming more accustomed to the gloom she made out a narrow, oblong chamber, or rather closet, about eight feet by four, and running parallel with the wall.

“A priest’s hiding-place. There is still a sprinkling of them to be seen in our old country houses, more or less perfect still.”

“This one seems perfect. But how did they get light and air?”

“They didn’t get much of the first. For the last, there’s a small winding shaft that opens under the roof.”

“And did they spend days in here? It must have been dreadful.”

“Not to them, because their mission was in its highest sense the reverse of dreadful. But there was a dreadful side to it, for at that time every one of them who came to this country came with the quartering block and boiling pitch before his eyes, as, sooner or later, his certain end. You can imagine, then, that to such men there would be nothing very dreadful in spending a few days in a place like this.”

“Of course not. What a stupid remark of mine.”

“As a matter of fact, the last to use this place met with just that fate. He was a relation, and was captured in that avenue which was the route of the procession this day last week.”

“How terrible,” said Delia, gazing with renewed awe into the gloomy chamber. “How you must venerate this place, Mr Wagram.”

“Well, you can imagine we do; in fact, it isn’t often shown.”

“Oh, then I do feel honoured—I mean it seriously.”

He smiled.

“Have you seen enough? because if so we’ll shut it up again.”

“One minute. How does it open and shut? Why, it isn’t a mere panel, it’s a solid block of stone.”

“Ah, that’s the secret of it. It is easily opened from within if you know how; but from without—well, it has never been discovered. The secret has been handed down among ourselves. It is always known to three persons, of which, needless to say, I am one.”

“How interesting! But if I were in there, and you and the other two were not get-at-able, what then?”

“You might as well be buried alive. Now, oblige me by looking out of that window once more.”

“If I mayn’t look, may I listen?”

“Certainly. Now you may turn again. Well, what did you hear?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? Well, see if you can tell which of the squares it was that opened.”

“This one. No; it doesn’t sound hollow. None of them do. I give it up.”

“We’ll be going down again, then. You’ll be glad of tea.”

She protested that such a thing was beyond her thoughts amid the wonder and delight of all she had seen. On the way he pointed out a few of the more prominent family portraits.

“That is our martyr relative.”

A cry of surprise escaped Delia.

“That! Why, Mr Wagram, it might be yourself.”

The portrait was quite a small one, and in a massive frame of stained oak. It represented a man of about the same age, with the same thoughtful dark eyes, the same shaped face, and the same close-trimmed, pointed beard. The figure was gowned in black, and the head crowned with a Spanish biretta with high-pointed corners. Attached to the frame was a Latin inscription.

“People do remark a likeness,” he said; “but you can guess how we value that portrait for its own sake. It was painted at Salamanca just before he left for St Omer to start on the English mission.”

“Is there any Spanish blood in your family, Mr Wagram?”

“A strain; but it dates rather far back. Aren’t you more than ever afraid of coming to our services now?” he added slily. “The Inquisition, you know.”

“Afraid? If I didn’t know you were chaffing me I would say that I was the more attracted after what you have shown and told me to-day.”

The old Squire was waiting for them in the great hall, where they had tea, and Delia, having now recovered her spirits completely, was chatting away as though the matter which had brought her there was but the recollection of a half-faded nightmare—a very note of interest and admiration concerning all she had just seen. Then, imperceptibly to her, they drew her on to talk about herself, and one point in the plain tale of real, plucky, hard work, which had come within her experiences of late, Wagram made a mental note of for future use.

Chapter Fourteen.The Sea and her Dead.The old Squire was skimming the morning paper, without much show of interest, however. Of politics he declared himself sick, and there was not much of any interest all round. He felt himself wishing that all newspapers were only issued weekly.He was about to throw the paper aside when a paragraph caught his eye. It was headed: “A Terrible Tale of the Sea,” and set forth the picking up of an open boat, a small dinghy, in fact, containing three men in the last stage of starvation and exhaustion, survivors—probably the sole survivors—of the passengers and crew of the steamshipCarboceer, homeward bound from West Africa. The steamer, according to the narrative of these, had run at full speed ahead on to a huge floating hulk in black midnight, and had gone down in less than five minutes they estimated, and that amid a scene of terrible panic.“But,” continued the paragraph, “the survivors, consisting of two seamen and a passenger, seem unable to agree as to the cause of the disaster. The sailors pronounce the obstruction to be a derelict, and are emphatic on this point. On the other hand, the passenger, Mr Develin Hunt, is equally positive that he saw at any rate one man on board of it, which points to the possibility of another lamentable catastrophe due to the carelessness of those in charge of a certain type of windjammer in neglecting to show lights.”The paragraph went on to a little more detail, mainly conjectural, but of this Grantley Wagram took no heed. He had dropped the paper, and sat staring into space, with the look upon his face of a man who has met with a shock, as violent as it is unexpected—as one who had seen an apparition from beyond the grave.“Develin Hunt!” he repeated. “Good God! it can’t be. Yet—there can’t be two Develin Hunts.”He snatched up the paper again, with something of a tremble as he grasped it, and once more scanned the paragraph. Then he turned eagerly to several other morning dailies which lay on the table. More detail might be set forth in each—but no. Either too hurriedly did he turn over each close-printed sheet, or the item of news had been overlooked, but nothing further could he find concerning the tragedy. At last, stuck away in a corner of a different sheet, he found another paragraph: “The only surviving passenger of this ghastly marine tragedy,” it concluded, “proves to be a West African trader who has spent many years far up country—an elderly gentleman of some sixty years, named Develin Hunt.”Grantley Wagram’s face lost none of its set greyness.“Of some sixty years?” he repeated—“that would be about the age. No; he’d be more than that. There can’t be two Develin Hunts! The sea has given up her dead.”He looked years older as he sat there, still grasping the paper, and for it he had reason; for should his conjectural identification of this man prove an accurate one, why, then, it meant that the ruin of his house would be fixed, and, humanly speaking, beyond his power to avert.For long he sat, motionless as a stone figure. Through the open window came in the joyous sounds of the summer morning—the rustle of the great elms in a light breeze, the caw of rooks, and the distant clicking of a mowing-machine, and, with all, the scent of flowers upon a groundwork fragrance of new-mown hay. Every nerve and sense was alive to these. No wonder that he should look grey and stony. What if all should end with him?What if his son—? And then from without came the voice of his son, together with that of another, and both were inquiring as to his whereabouts. The voices from outside acted as a tonic; and, pulling himself together, the old Squire got up and went to meet their owners—his son and the family chaplain. Wagram had been serving the latter’s Mass, and had brought him in to breakfast.“Looking fit? Oh, well, I suppose so. I haven’t begun to feel my years as yet,” was the easy answer of the old diplomat to the fresh, cheery greeting of the priest. But the latter was not altogether deceived. His keen observational faculty did not fail to detect a certain drawn and anxious look, differing from the ordinarily suave expression of his host’s face. “Wagram, tell Rundle to get us out a bottle or so of that dry, sparkling hock. You know, the 13 bin. I believe that’s better than anything else on a warm morning like this.”“Upon my word, Squire, you’ve missed you’re vocation,” laughed Father Gayle. “You ought to have been a crack physician, for certainly no one answering to that qualification could have been guilty of a more salutary prescription.”“Any news?” said Wagram, picking up the paper. Then, as they sat down: “Why, this is a queer yarn, these three chaps being picked up in a boat.” Then, after briefly skimming it: “Why, by George! I wonder if that’s the hulk we were reading about the other day when Haldane was here? I shouldn’t be surprised. It must be very much in the same part of the world.”“You forget, Wagram,” said the chaplain quizzically, “that so far we none of us know what the mischief it is you are talking about, save that it concerns three men in a boat, a yarn, and Haldane. Now, even in my childhood, I was never good at piecing together puzzles. I can’t answer for the Squire.”“Here you are; read it for yourself,” said Wagram, pushing the paper across the table. “It’s a ghastly thing to figure out, though, if these are the sole survivors. Develin Hunt! That’s a rum name! How perfectly sick that fellow must have got all through boyhood, youth, and middle age of being—banteringly or the reverse—told he had the Develin him.”They laughed at this—none more heartily than that finished old diplomat Grantley Wagram. Laughed—in his bright, genial, humorous way, and yet all the time he was thinking how Wagram was, figuratively speaking, cracking jokes over his own open grave. Laughed—even as he might have laughed a few minutes earlier, before this dreadful bolt out of the blue had fallen. Laughed—as Wagram, sitting there in his blissful ignorance, was laughing. Why, the thing was so sudden, so unlooked-for, and withal so disastrous, that it seemed like a dream. Yet Grantley Wagram could laugh. But within his mind still hummed in mocking refrain his first ejaculation: “There can’t be two Develin Hunts.”They talked on of various matters—the prospects of grouse on the Twelfth, and when Wagram’s boy would be home for the holidays, and so forth. Then the priest said:“By the way, Squire, that’s a most astonishing thing Wagram has been telling me about that Miss Calmour and the claim made against you.”“Yes; I told Father Gayle because he seemed to have rather a—well, unexalted opinion of the poor girl when we first talked about her,” explained Wagram.“Oh, come; I didn’t say so.”“No. Still, I thought it only fair to show the other side of her.”“No one could have been more astonished than I was myself,” said the Squire. “She certainly behaved most honourably.”“I should think so,” declared Wagram. “Her people are chronically hard up, and, that being so, to tear up a cheque for a thousand pounds deliberately was in her case rather heroic.”“Probably the rest of them will lead her a terrible life on the strength of it,” said the Squire. “Poor child! she seemed a good deal better than her belongings. We must see if we can’t do something for her.”“Yes, we must,” agreed Wagram. “This is a morning to tempt one out. I think I shall jump on the bicycle and rip over to Haldane’s—unless you want me for anything, father.”“No, no. I’ve a thing or two to think over, but nothing that you need bother about,” answered the Squire, adding to himself—“as yet.”Soon after breakfast Father Gayle took his leave, and the Squire his usual morning stroll round the gardens and shrubbery. But he did wrong to be alone, for, try as he would, the one idea clung to his mind in a veritable obsession: “There can’t be two Develin Hunts.”The while Wagram, skimming along the smooth, well-kept roads, was again thrilled with the intense joy of possession as he revelled in the cool shade of over-arching trees; in the moist depths of a bosky wood, echoing forth its bird-song, with now and again the joyous crow of a cock pheasant; in the green and gold of the spangled meadows and the purl of the stream beneath the old bridge. Surely life was too good—surely such an idyllic state could not be meant to last, was the misgiving that sometimes beset him; for he had known the reverse side of all this—had known it bitterly, and for long years.Haldane and Yvonne were pacing up and down one of the garden walks, the former smoking a pipe and dividing his attention between the morning paper and the lovely child beside him. Just behind the latter, stepping daintily, and turning when they turned, was the beautiful little Angora cat.“Did you see this, Wagram?” said Haldane, the first greeting over, holding out the newspaper. “Well, you remember that confounded stray hulk we were reading about over at your place? It’s my belief that it’s the very one that’s sent this boat to the bottom. Did you read about it?”“Yes.”Yvonne’s face was now the picture of blue-eyed mischief.“Well, this chump that was picked up, did you notice what a devilish odd name they’ve given him?”“Develin Hunt, isn’t it?”“Yes. Well, now, think of his life spent in being told he had the Develin him.”A peal of laughter went up from Yvonne—and it was good to hear that child laugh—such a clear, merry, hearty trill.“I’ve been waiting for that,” she cried. “Mr Wagram, you’re a perfect godsend. Father has inflicted it upon every available being up till now. Briggs, the gardener, was gurgling to such an extent that he had to stop digging. He even stopped old Finlay, driving by to Swanton, and fired it off on him.”“Sunbeam, you are getting insufferably impudent,” said her father. “I shall really have to cane you.”With mock gravity she held out a hand that was a very model, with its long, tapering fingers, which closed upon those which descended upon it in a playful little slap.“He isn’t the only sinner in that respect, Sunbeam,” said Wagram. “I myself was inflicting it upon our crowd at just about the same time.”“And are not ashamed of yourself? I’ve a great mind not to show you where I took out a two-pounder the other evening.”“Did you get it out yourself?”“That’s stale. I sha’n’t even answer it. Come.”She had taken an arm of each, in the way of one who ruled both of them. But Haldane hung back.“Take him alone, dear. I must get two confounded letters behind my back, or they’ll never get done. I’ll come on after you if I’m done in time.”“All safe. Poogie, I think I won’t takeyou,” picking up the beautiful little animal. “Some obnoxious cur might skoff you.”“Why not chuck her in the river for a swim?” said Wagram mischievously. The look Yvonne gave him was beautiful to behold.“Now, I’ve a great mind not to takeyou,” she said severely. “Well, come along, then.”For nearly an hour they wandered by the stream that ran below the garden, talking trout generally, and peering cautiously over into this or that deep hole where big trout were wont to lie. Then, recrossing the plank bridge, with its rather insecure handrail, they started to return.The field footpath was a right-of-way, and now along it came a somewhat ragged figure, dusty and tired-looking. It was that of a swarthy, middle-aged woman, with beady, black eyes. Instantly Yvonne’s interest awoke.“She can’t be English,” she declared. “Wait, I’ll try her.”She opened in fluent Italian, but met with no response. A change to Spanish and French was equally without result.“It ain’t no good, young lady,” said the tramp; “I don’t understand none of them languages. And yet I ain’t exactly English, neither, as you was saying just now.”“What! You heard that?” cried Yvonne, astonished. “Youareable to hear far.”“Ay; and able to see far too. Would you like to know what I can see for you, my sweet young lady?” she went on, dropping into the wheedling whine of the professional fortune-teller.“It would be fun to have my fortune told,” said the girl rather wistfully.“Yvonne, I’m surprised at you,” said Wagram, with somewhat of an approach to sternness. “Don’t you know that all that sort of thing is forbidden, child, and very wisely so, too?”“I know; but I don’t mean seriously—only just for the fun of the thing.”“No—no. Not ‘only just for’ anything; it’s not to be thought of.”“It’s ’ard to live,” whined the woman, “and me that’s tramped without bite or sup since yesterday. And I’m that ’ungry!”She certainly looked her words. Wagram softened in a moment.“Here,” he said; “and now take my advice and get on your way. We don’t want any fortune-tellers round here.”The tramp spat gleefully—for luck—on the half-crown which lay in her surprised palm.“Thankee, sir, and good luck to you, sir, and to the sweet young lady. I’ll move on, never fear. You’re a genelman, you are.”“What are you up to, Wagram?” said Haldane, joining them. “Encouraging vagrancy—as usual? Good line that for a county magistrate.”“Oh, I can’t see those poor devils looking so woebegone and turn them away. The principle’s quite wrong, I know, but—there it is.”“Quite wrong. They’re generally lying.”“More than likely. Still, there it is.”He was thinking of his meditations as he had ridden over—of the contrast between his life now and formerly, of the intense joy of possession, which he hoped did not come within the definition of “the pride of life.” Of the ragged tramp he had just relieved he had no further thought. Yet it might be that even she would cross his path again. It might be, too, when that befell, little enough of “the pride of life” would then be his.

The old Squire was skimming the morning paper, without much show of interest, however. Of politics he declared himself sick, and there was not much of any interest all round. He felt himself wishing that all newspapers were only issued weekly.

He was about to throw the paper aside when a paragraph caught his eye. It was headed: “A Terrible Tale of the Sea,” and set forth the picking up of an open boat, a small dinghy, in fact, containing three men in the last stage of starvation and exhaustion, survivors—probably the sole survivors—of the passengers and crew of the steamshipCarboceer, homeward bound from West Africa. The steamer, according to the narrative of these, had run at full speed ahead on to a huge floating hulk in black midnight, and had gone down in less than five minutes they estimated, and that amid a scene of terrible panic.

“But,” continued the paragraph, “the survivors, consisting of two seamen and a passenger, seem unable to agree as to the cause of the disaster. The sailors pronounce the obstruction to be a derelict, and are emphatic on this point. On the other hand, the passenger, Mr Develin Hunt, is equally positive that he saw at any rate one man on board of it, which points to the possibility of another lamentable catastrophe due to the carelessness of those in charge of a certain type of windjammer in neglecting to show lights.”

The paragraph went on to a little more detail, mainly conjectural, but of this Grantley Wagram took no heed. He had dropped the paper, and sat staring into space, with the look upon his face of a man who has met with a shock, as violent as it is unexpected—as one who had seen an apparition from beyond the grave.

“Develin Hunt!” he repeated. “Good God! it can’t be. Yet—there can’t be two Develin Hunts.”

He snatched up the paper again, with something of a tremble as he grasped it, and once more scanned the paragraph. Then he turned eagerly to several other morning dailies which lay on the table. More detail might be set forth in each—but no. Either too hurriedly did he turn over each close-printed sheet, or the item of news had been overlooked, but nothing further could he find concerning the tragedy. At last, stuck away in a corner of a different sheet, he found another paragraph: “The only surviving passenger of this ghastly marine tragedy,” it concluded, “proves to be a West African trader who has spent many years far up country—an elderly gentleman of some sixty years, named Develin Hunt.”

Grantley Wagram’s face lost none of its set greyness.

“Of some sixty years?” he repeated—“that would be about the age. No; he’d be more than that. There can’t be two Develin Hunts! The sea has given up her dead.”

He looked years older as he sat there, still grasping the paper, and for it he had reason; for should his conjectural identification of this man prove an accurate one, why, then, it meant that the ruin of his house would be fixed, and, humanly speaking, beyond his power to avert.

For long he sat, motionless as a stone figure. Through the open window came in the joyous sounds of the summer morning—the rustle of the great elms in a light breeze, the caw of rooks, and the distant clicking of a mowing-machine, and, with all, the scent of flowers upon a groundwork fragrance of new-mown hay. Every nerve and sense was alive to these. No wonder that he should look grey and stony. What if all should end with him?

What if his son—? And then from without came the voice of his son, together with that of another, and both were inquiring as to his whereabouts. The voices from outside acted as a tonic; and, pulling himself together, the old Squire got up and went to meet their owners—his son and the family chaplain. Wagram had been serving the latter’s Mass, and had brought him in to breakfast.

“Looking fit? Oh, well, I suppose so. I haven’t begun to feel my years as yet,” was the easy answer of the old diplomat to the fresh, cheery greeting of the priest. But the latter was not altogether deceived. His keen observational faculty did not fail to detect a certain drawn and anxious look, differing from the ordinarily suave expression of his host’s face. “Wagram, tell Rundle to get us out a bottle or so of that dry, sparkling hock. You know, the 13 bin. I believe that’s better than anything else on a warm morning like this.”

“Upon my word, Squire, you’ve missed you’re vocation,” laughed Father Gayle. “You ought to have been a crack physician, for certainly no one answering to that qualification could have been guilty of a more salutary prescription.”

“Any news?” said Wagram, picking up the paper. Then, as they sat down: “Why, this is a queer yarn, these three chaps being picked up in a boat.” Then, after briefly skimming it: “Why, by George! I wonder if that’s the hulk we were reading about the other day when Haldane was here? I shouldn’t be surprised. It must be very much in the same part of the world.”

“You forget, Wagram,” said the chaplain quizzically, “that so far we none of us know what the mischief it is you are talking about, save that it concerns three men in a boat, a yarn, and Haldane. Now, even in my childhood, I was never good at piecing together puzzles. I can’t answer for the Squire.”

“Here you are; read it for yourself,” said Wagram, pushing the paper across the table. “It’s a ghastly thing to figure out, though, if these are the sole survivors. Develin Hunt! That’s a rum name! How perfectly sick that fellow must have got all through boyhood, youth, and middle age of being—banteringly or the reverse—told he had the Develin him.”

They laughed at this—none more heartily than that finished old diplomat Grantley Wagram. Laughed—in his bright, genial, humorous way, and yet all the time he was thinking how Wagram was, figuratively speaking, cracking jokes over his own open grave. Laughed—even as he might have laughed a few minutes earlier, before this dreadful bolt out of the blue had fallen. Laughed—as Wagram, sitting there in his blissful ignorance, was laughing. Why, the thing was so sudden, so unlooked-for, and withal so disastrous, that it seemed like a dream. Yet Grantley Wagram could laugh. But within his mind still hummed in mocking refrain his first ejaculation: “There can’t be two Develin Hunts.”

They talked on of various matters—the prospects of grouse on the Twelfth, and when Wagram’s boy would be home for the holidays, and so forth. Then the priest said:

“By the way, Squire, that’s a most astonishing thing Wagram has been telling me about that Miss Calmour and the claim made against you.”

“Yes; I told Father Gayle because he seemed to have rather a—well, unexalted opinion of the poor girl when we first talked about her,” explained Wagram.

“Oh, come; I didn’t say so.”

“No. Still, I thought it only fair to show the other side of her.”

“No one could have been more astonished than I was myself,” said the Squire. “She certainly behaved most honourably.”

“I should think so,” declared Wagram. “Her people are chronically hard up, and, that being so, to tear up a cheque for a thousand pounds deliberately was in her case rather heroic.”

“Probably the rest of them will lead her a terrible life on the strength of it,” said the Squire. “Poor child! she seemed a good deal better than her belongings. We must see if we can’t do something for her.”

“Yes, we must,” agreed Wagram. “This is a morning to tempt one out. I think I shall jump on the bicycle and rip over to Haldane’s—unless you want me for anything, father.”

“No, no. I’ve a thing or two to think over, but nothing that you need bother about,” answered the Squire, adding to himself—“as yet.”

Soon after breakfast Father Gayle took his leave, and the Squire his usual morning stroll round the gardens and shrubbery. But he did wrong to be alone, for, try as he would, the one idea clung to his mind in a veritable obsession: “There can’t be two Develin Hunts.”

The while Wagram, skimming along the smooth, well-kept roads, was again thrilled with the intense joy of possession as he revelled in the cool shade of over-arching trees; in the moist depths of a bosky wood, echoing forth its bird-song, with now and again the joyous crow of a cock pheasant; in the green and gold of the spangled meadows and the purl of the stream beneath the old bridge. Surely life was too good—surely such an idyllic state could not be meant to last, was the misgiving that sometimes beset him; for he had known the reverse side of all this—had known it bitterly, and for long years.

Haldane and Yvonne were pacing up and down one of the garden walks, the former smoking a pipe and dividing his attention between the morning paper and the lovely child beside him. Just behind the latter, stepping daintily, and turning when they turned, was the beautiful little Angora cat.

“Did you see this, Wagram?” said Haldane, the first greeting over, holding out the newspaper. “Well, you remember that confounded stray hulk we were reading about over at your place? It’s my belief that it’s the very one that’s sent this boat to the bottom. Did you read about it?”

“Yes.”

Yvonne’s face was now the picture of blue-eyed mischief.

“Well, this chump that was picked up, did you notice what a devilish odd name they’ve given him?”

“Develin Hunt, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Well, now, think of his life spent in being told he had the Develin him.”

A peal of laughter went up from Yvonne—and it was good to hear that child laugh—such a clear, merry, hearty trill.

“I’ve been waiting for that,” she cried. “Mr Wagram, you’re a perfect godsend. Father has inflicted it upon every available being up till now. Briggs, the gardener, was gurgling to such an extent that he had to stop digging. He even stopped old Finlay, driving by to Swanton, and fired it off on him.”

“Sunbeam, you are getting insufferably impudent,” said her father. “I shall really have to cane you.”

With mock gravity she held out a hand that was a very model, with its long, tapering fingers, which closed upon those which descended upon it in a playful little slap.

“He isn’t the only sinner in that respect, Sunbeam,” said Wagram. “I myself was inflicting it upon our crowd at just about the same time.”

“And are not ashamed of yourself? I’ve a great mind not to show you where I took out a two-pounder the other evening.”

“Did you get it out yourself?”

“That’s stale. I sha’n’t even answer it. Come.”

She had taken an arm of each, in the way of one who ruled both of them. But Haldane hung back.

“Take him alone, dear. I must get two confounded letters behind my back, or they’ll never get done. I’ll come on after you if I’m done in time.”

“All safe. Poogie, I think I won’t takeyou,” picking up the beautiful little animal. “Some obnoxious cur might skoff you.”

“Why not chuck her in the river for a swim?” said Wagram mischievously. The look Yvonne gave him was beautiful to behold.

“Now, I’ve a great mind not to takeyou,” she said severely. “Well, come along, then.”

For nearly an hour they wandered by the stream that ran below the garden, talking trout generally, and peering cautiously over into this or that deep hole where big trout were wont to lie. Then, recrossing the plank bridge, with its rather insecure handrail, they started to return.

The field footpath was a right-of-way, and now along it came a somewhat ragged figure, dusty and tired-looking. It was that of a swarthy, middle-aged woman, with beady, black eyes. Instantly Yvonne’s interest awoke.

“She can’t be English,” she declared. “Wait, I’ll try her.”

She opened in fluent Italian, but met with no response. A change to Spanish and French was equally without result.

“It ain’t no good, young lady,” said the tramp; “I don’t understand none of them languages. And yet I ain’t exactly English, neither, as you was saying just now.”

“What! You heard that?” cried Yvonne, astonished. “Youareable to hear far.”

“Ay; and able to see far too. Would you like to know what I can see for you, my sweet young lady?” she went on, dropping into the wheedling whine of the professional fortune-teller.

“It would be fun to have my fortune told,” said the girl rather wistfully.

“Yvonne, I’m surprised at you,” said Wagram, with somewhat of an approach to sternness. “Don’t you know that all that sort of thing is forbidden, child, and very wisely so, too?”

“I know; but I don’t mean seriously—only just for the fun of the thing.”

“No—no. Not ‘only just for’ anything; it’s not to be thought of.”

“It’s ’ard to live,” whined the woman, “and me that’s tramped without bite or sup since yesterday. And I’m that ’ungry!”

She certainly looked her words. Wagram softened in a moment.

“Here,” he said; “and now take my advice and get on your way. We don’t want any fortune-tellers round here.”

The tramp spat gleefully—for luck—on the half-crown which lay in her surprised palm.

“Thankee, sir, and good luck to you, sir, and to the sweet young lady. I’ll move on, never fear. You’re a genelman, you are.”

“What are you up to, Wagram?” said Haldane, joining them. “Encouraging vagrancy—as usual? Good line that for a county magistrate.”

“Oh, I can’t see those poor devils looking so woebegone and turn them away. The principle’s quite wrong, I know, but—there it is.”

“Quite wrong. They’re generally lying.”

“More than likely. Still, there it is.”

He was thinking of his meditations as he had ridden over—of the contrast between his life now and formerly, of the intense joy of possession, which he hoped did not come within the definition of “the pride of life.” Of the ragged tramp he had just relieved he had no further thought. Yet it might be that even she would cross his path again. It might be, too, when that befell, little enough of “the pride of life” would then be his.

Chapter Fifteen.More Siege House Amenities.In conjecturing that Delia Calmour’s honourable renunciation was probably made at the cost of her peace at home the Squire proved himself a true prophet, for the poor girl’s life became anything but a bed of roses. When he heard that she had irrevocably carried out her intention old Calmour grew savage, first abusing her in the most scandalous manner, and, being half drunk, fell to whining about the ingratitude of children, deliberately allowing their parents to starve in their old age for the sake of gratifying a selfish whim. Then he got wholly drunk, so violently, indeed, that even Clytie, the resolute, the level-headed, found it all that she could do to keep her nerve, while the intrepid Bob promptly skulked off out of harm’s way.The said Bob, too, contributed his share of mean and petty annoyance. He would insinuate that he did not believe she had really returned the cheque. She wanted to keep it all for herself, and leave them out. He went further, like the mean and despicable cad he was, insinuating that there was plenty more where that came from, that Wagram knew a pretty girl when he saw one, and so forth; in short, behaving in such wise as would formerly, according to the ways of Siege House, have drawn upon himself some sudden and violent form of retaliation. But a change had come over the sister he was persecuting, and the ways of Siege House were no longer her ways, hence the abominable Bob took heart of grace, and his behaviour and insinuations became more and more scandalous. Even Clytie could no longer restrain him. But his turn was to come.Throughout all this Delia never regretted the decision she had arrived at, never for a single moment. She would act in exactly the same way were the occasion to come over again—were it to come over again a hundred times, she declared, goaded beyond endurance by her father’s alternate maudlin reproaches or vehement abuse. And he had retorted that the sooner she got outside his door and never set foot inside it again the better he would be pleased. This she would have done but for Clytie and—one other consideration.Clytie at first had been a little cool with her, but had come round, declaring that, on thinking it over, perhaps, on the principle of a sprat to catch a herring, what had happened was the best thing that could have happened, if only they played their cards well now. Then Delia had rounded on her.“Don’t talk in that beastly way, Clytie; I’m not going to play any cards at all, as you put it. Even if I were inclined to, look at us—us, mind,” she added, with a bitter sneer, and a nod of the head in the direction of the other room, where their father and brother were audibly wrangling and swearing—the former, as usual, half drunk.“Pooh! that wouldn’t count,” was the equable reply. “You don’t suppose you’d have that hamper lumbering around once you’d won the game, do you? I’d take care of that.”“Well, I shall go; he’s always telling me to.”“No, you won’t. Let him tell—and go on telling. I can do some telling too, if it comes to that—telling him that if you go I go too, and we know well enough how he’d take that. No; you stop and face it out. You’ll be jolly glad you did one of these days.”Poor Delia within her heart of hearts was glad already. A month ago less than a tenth of what she had had to undergo would have started her off independent, to do for herself. Now all the strength seemed to have gone out of her, and the idea of leaving Bassingham and its neighbourhood struck her with a blank dismay that she preferred not to let her mind dwell upon. Now she broke down.“I wish it had been me, instead of the bicycle, that had been knocked to pieces,” she sobbed. “I wish to Heaven the brute had killed me that day.”“But you should not wish that, my dear child,” mocked Bob, who, passing the door, had overheard. “You should not wish that. It’s very wicked, as your Papist friends would say.” Then he took himself off with a yahooing laugh.Now, it befell that on the following morning, while moving her post-card albums, Delia dropped several loose cards. Upon these pounced Bob, with no intention of picking them up for her, we may be sure, possibly in the hope of causing her some passing annoyance by scattering them still more; but hardly had he bent down with that amiable object than he started back, as though he had been about to pick up a snake unawares. “What—why? Who the deuce is that?” he cried. One of the cards was lying with the picture face upwards. This he now picked up. “Who is it?” he stammered, staring wildly at it. “Don’t you recognise it, or does it bring back painful recollections?” retorted Delia as she watched him blankly gaping at the portrait card which Yvonne had given her. For upon her a new light had dawned. “Don’t you? You should have good reason to,” she went on mercilessly, her eyes full upon his face. “Isn’t it Miss Haldane? You know—and I know—who it was that insulted her on the Swanton road one day, but Mr Haldane doesn’t know—as yet.” Bob’s face had gone white.“Hang it all, Delia,” he gasped, “you wouldn’t give your own brother away, surely?”“My own brother has just given himself away,” was the sneering reply. “Brother! Yes. You have been very brotherly to me of late, haven’t you—trying to drive me from the house, and making all sorts of perfectly scandalous insinuations! Very brotherly? Eh?”“Oh, well, perhaps I said a good deal more than I meant,” grumbled Bob shamefacedly.“And you’d have gone on doing the same if it hadn’t been for finding that card,” she pursued, not in the least deceived by an apology extorted through sheer scare. “Well, please yourself as to whether you do so or not, now.”Thus the abominable Bob’s turn had come, and so far as he was concerned Delia was henceforward left in peace. Bob, then, being reduced Clytie judged the time ripe for reducing her father also.“See here, dad,” she began one day when the old man was grumbling at his eldest daughter, and suggesting for the twentieth time that she had better clear out and do something for herself, “don’t you think we have had about enough nagging over that cheque business?—because if you don’t, I do.”“Oh, you do, do you, Miss Hoity Toity?”“Rather. And I move that we have no more of it—that the matter be allowed to drop, as they say in the House.”“What the devil d’you mean, you impudent baggage?” snarled her father.“What the devil I say—no more—no less,” was the imperturbable reply. “Two or three times a day you tell Delia to clear, and we’re tired of it.”“Are you?” he returned, coldly sarcastic. “Well, I wonder she requires so much telling.”“Well, you needn’t tell her any more—it’s waste of trouble. She isn’t going to clear, not until she wants to, anyway; except on these terms—if she clears I clear too. How’s that?”Thereupon old Calmour went into a petulant kind of rage, and choked and spluttered, and swore that he’d be master in his own house, that they were a pair of impudent, ungrateful baggages, that they might both go to the devil for all he cared, and the sooner they got there the better. Unfortunately, however, he rather neutralised the effect of his peroration by tailing off into the maudlin, and allusions to the wickedness and ingratitude of children who thought nothing of deserting their only parent in his old age, and so forth—to all of which Clytie listened with unruffled composure.“All right, dad,” she rejoined cheerfully. “Now you’ve blown off steam and are more comfortable again let’s say no more about it. What has been done can’t be undone, that’s certain; in fact, I’ve an instinct that it may have been all for the best after all, so let’s all be jolly together again as before. I’ve got a lot more orders for typing—in fact, almost more than I can do—and if they go on at this rate I shall have to get another machine, and take Delia into partnership—she has an idea of working it already.”“Well, well, there’s something in that,” said the old man, mollified by this brightening of prospects. “I must have a glass of grog on the strength of it.”Clytie looked at him for a moment, shook her pretty head, and then got out a bottle. He was quite sober, and it was the first that day.“Only one,” she said. “No more, mind.”She did not think it necessary to tell him that this increase of material prosperity was due to the good offices of Wagram. The latter was not the one to do things by halves, and had never forgotten the promise he had made on the occasion of his call at Siege House.“There you are, Delia!” she triumphantly declared as the orders came pouring in. “You never know what you lose through want of asking. If I hadn’t put it point-blank to him I shouldn’t have got all these—and it makes a difference, I can tell you. What a devil of a good chap he must be!”A few days later a surprise came for Delia in the shape of a letter from the editor of a particularly smart and up-to-date pictorial, requesting her to contribute to its illustrated series of articles on old country seats, so many words of letterpress and so many photographs of Hilversea Court, and quoting a very liberal rate of remuneration if the contribution proved to be to the editor’s satisfaction. The girl was radiant.“It’s too good to be true, Clytie. How can they have heard of me?” she exclaimed. “Surely no one has been playing a practical joke on me. I can hardly believe it.”Clytie scanned the letter “It’s genuine right enough,” she pronounced. “Wagram again.”“What? But—no—it can’t be this time. Why, don’t you see what it says: ‘Provided you can obtain the permission of Mr Grantley Wagram’? So, you see, it’s apart from them entirely.”“That’s only a red herring. I’ll bet you five bob he’s at the back of it. Are you on?”“N-no,” answered Delia, upon whom a recollection was dawning of things she had let fall on that memorable occasion of her last visit to Hilversea. She had prattled on about herself, and her experiences, among which had been a little journalism of a very poorly-paid order.“I believe you are right, Clytie,” she went on slowly. “I remember letting go that I had done that sort of thing in a small way, and even that I would be glad to do it again in a large one if only I got the chance, but I never dreamt of anything coming of it—never for a moment.”“No? Well, you’re in luck’s way this time, dear. Probably this editor is a friend of his; and then, apart from that, a man in the position of Wagram of Hilversea can exercise almost unlimited influence in pretty near any direction he chooses—by Jove, he can.”Delia did not at once reply, and, noting a certain look upon her meditative face, Clytie smiled to herself, and forebore to make any allusion to her cherished scheme, which, in her own mind, she decided was growing more promising than ever.

In conjecturing that Delia Calmour’s honourable renunciation was probably made at the cost of her peace at home the Squire proved himself a true prophet, for the poor girl’s life became anything but a bed of roses. When he heard that she had irrevocably carried out her intention old Calmour grew savage, first abusing her in the most scandalous manner, and, being half drunk, fell to whining about the ingratitude of children, deliberately allowing their parents to starve in their old age for the sake of gratifying a selfish whim. Then he got wholly drunk, so violently, indeed, that even Clytie, the resolute, the level-headed, found it all that she could do to keep her nerve, while the intrepid Bob promptly skulked off out of harm’s way.

The said Bob, too, contributed his share of mean and petty annoyance. He would insinuate that he did not believe she had really returned the cheque. She wanted to keep it all for herself, and leave them out. He went further, like the mean and despicable cad he was, insinuating that there was plenty more where that came from, that Wagram knew a pretty girl when he saw one, and so forth; in short, behaving in such wise as would formerly, according to the ways of Siege House, have drawn upon himself some sudden and violent form of retaliation. But a change had come over the sister he was persecuting, and the ways of Siege House were no longer her ways, hence the abominable Bob took heart of grace, and his behaviour and insinuations became more and more scandalous. Even Clytie could no longer restrain him. But his turn was to come.

Throughout all this Delia never regretted the decision she had arrived at, never for a single moment. She would act in exactly the same way were the occasion to come over again—were it to come over again a hundred times, she declared, goaded beyond endurance by her father’s alternate maudlin reproaches or vehement abuse. And he had retorted that the sooner she got outside his door and never set foot inside it again the better he would be pleased. This she would have done but for Clytie and—one other consideration.

Clytie at first had been a little cool with her, but had come round, declaring that, on thinking it over, perhaps, on the principle of a sprat to catch a herring, what had happened was the best thing that could have happened, if only they played their cards well now. Then Delia had rounded on her.

“Don’t talk in that beastly way, Clytie; I’m not going to play any cards at all, as you put it. Even if I were inclined to, look at us—us, mind,” she added, with a bitter sneer, and a nod of the head in the direction of the other room, where their father and brother were audibly wrangling and swearing—the former, as usual, half drunk.

“Pooh! that wouldn’t count,” was the equable reply. “You don’t suppose you’d have that hamper lumbering around once you’d won the game, do you? I’d take care of that.”

“Well, I shall go; he’s always telling me to.”

“No, you won’t. Let him tell—and go on telling. I can do some telling too, if it comes to that—telling him that if you go I go too, and we know well enough how he’d take that. No; you stop and face it out. You’ll be jolly glad you did one of these days.”

Poor Delia within her heart of hearts was glad already. A month ago less than a tenth of what she had had to undergo would have started her off independent, to do for herself. Now all the strength seemed to have gone out of her, and the idea of leaving Bassingham and its neighbourhood struck her with a blank dismay that she preferred not to let her mind dwell upon. Now she broke down.

“I wish it had been me, instead of the bicycle, that had been knocked to pieces,” she sobbed. “I wish to Heaven the brute had killed me that day.”

“But you should not wish that, my dear child,” mocked Bob, who, passing the door, had overheard. “You should not wish that. It’s very wicked, as your Papist friends would say.” Then he took himself off with a yahooing laugh.

Now, it befell that on the following morning, while moving her post-card albums, Delia dropped several loose cards. Upon these pounced Bob, with no intention of picking them up for her, we may be sure, possibly in the hope of causing her some passing annoyance by scattering them still more; but hardly had he bent down with that amiable object than he started back, as though he had been about to pick up a snake unawares. “What—why? Who the deuce is that?” he cried. One of the cards was lying with the picture face upwards. This he now picked up. “Who is it?” he stammered, staring wildly at it. “Don’t you recognise it, or does it bring back painful recollections?” retorted Delia as she watched him blankly gaping at the portrait card which Yvonne had given her. For upon her a new light had dawned. “Don’t you? You should have good reason to,” she went on mercilessly, her eyes full upon his face. “Isn’t it Miss Haldane? You know—and I know—who it was that insulted her on the Swanton road one day, but Mr Haldane doesn’t know—as yet.” Bob’s face had gone white.

“Hang it all, Delia,” he gasped, “you wouldn’t give your own brother away, surely?”

“My own brother has just given himself away,” was the sneering reply. “Brother! Yes. You have been very brotherly to me of late, haven’t you—trying to drive me from the house, and making all sorts of perfectly scandalous insinuations! Very brotherly? Eh?”

“Oh, well, perhaps I said a good deal more than I meant,” grumbled Bob shamefacedly.

“And you’d have gone on doing the same if it hadn’t been for finding that card,” she pursued, not in the least deceived by an apology extorted through sheer scare. “Well, please yourself as to whether you do so or not, now.”

Thus the abominable Bob’s turn had come, and so far as he was concerned Delia was henceforward left in peace. Bob, then, being reduced Clytie judged the time ripe for reducing her father also.

“See here, dad,” she began one day when the old man was grumbling at his eldest daughter, and suggesting for the twentieth time that she had better clear out and do something for herself, “don’t you think we have had about enough nagging over that cheque business?—because if you don’t, I do.”

“Oh, you do, do you, Miss Hoity Toity?”

“Rather. And I move that we have no more of it—that the matter be allowed to drop, as they say in the House.”

“What the devil d’you mean, you impudent baggage?” snarled her father.

“What the devil I say—no more—no less,” was the imperturbable reply. “Two or three times a day you tell Delia to clear, and we’re tired of it.”

“Are you?” he returned, coldly sarcastic. “Well, I wonder she requires so much telling.”

“Well, you needn’t tell her any more—it’s waste of trouble. She isn’t going to clear, not until she wants to, anyway; except on these terms—if she clears I clear too. How’s that?”

Thereupon old Calmour went into a petulant kind of rage, and choked and spluttered, and swore that he’d be master in his own house, that they were a pair of impudent, ungrateful baggages, that they might both go to the devil for all he cared, and the sooner they got there the better. Unfortunately, however, he rather neutralised the effect of his peroration by tailing off into the maudlin, and allusions to the wickedness and ingratitude of children who thought nothing of deserting their only parent in his old age, and so forth—to all of which Clytie listened with unruffled composure.

“All right, dad,” she rejoined cheerfully. “Now you’ve blown off steam and are more comfortable again let’s say no more about it. What has been done can’t be undone, that’s certain; in fact, I’ve an instinct that it may have been all for the best after all, so let’s all be jolly together again as before. I’ve got a lot more orders for typing—in fact, almost more than I can do—and if they go on at this rate I shall have to get another machine, and take Delia into partnership—she has an idea of working it already.”

“Well, well, there’s something in that,” said the old man, mollified by this brightening of prospects. “I must have a glass of grog on the strength of it.”

Clytie looked at him for a moment, shook her pretty head, and then got out a bottle. He was quite sober, and it was the first that day.

“Only one,” she said. “No more, mind.”

She did not think it necessary to tell him that this increase of material prosperity was due to the good offices of Wagram. The latter was not the one to do things by halves, and had never forgotten the promise he had made on the occasion of his call at Siege House.

“There you are, Delia!” she triumphantly declared as the orders came pouring in. “You never know what you lose through want of asking. If I hadn’t put it point-blank to him I shouldn’t have got all these—and it makes a difference, I can tell you. What a devil of a good chap he must be!”

A few days later a surprise came for Delia in the shape of a letter from the editor of a particularly smart and up-to-date pictorial, requesting her to contribute to its illustrated series of articles on old country seats, so many words of letterpress and so many photographs of Hilversea Court, and quoting a very liberal rate of remuneration if the contribution proved to be to the editor’s satisfaction. The girl was radiant.

“It’s too good to be true, Clytie. How can they have heard of me?” she exclaimed. “Surely no one has been playing a practical joke on me. I can hardly believe it.”

Clytie scanned the letter “It’s genuine right enough,” she pronounced. “Wagram again.”

“What? But—no—it can’t be this time. Why, don’t you see what it says: ‘Provided you can obtain the permission of Mr Grantley Wagram’? So, you see, it’s apart from them entirely.”

“That’s only a red herring. I’ll bet you five bob he’s at the back of it. Are you on?”

“N-no,” answered Delia, upon whom a recollection was dawning of things she had let fall on that memorable occasion of her last visit to Hilversea. She had prattled on about herself, and her experiences, among which had been a little journalism of a very poorly-paid order.

“I believe you are right, Clytie,” she went on slowly. “I remember letting go that I had done that sort of thing in a small way, and even that I would be glad to do it again in a large one if only I got the chance, but I never dreamt of anything coming of it—never for a moment.”

“No? Well, you’re in luck’s way this time, dear. Probably this editor is a friend of his; and then, apart from that, a man in the position of Wagram of Hilversea can exercise almost unlimited influence in pretty near any direction he chooses—by Jove, he can.”

Delia did not at once reply, and, noting a certain look upon her meditative face, Clytie smiled to herself, and forebore to make any allusion to her cherished scheme, which, in her own mind, she decided was growing more promising than ever.

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