Chapter Twenty Four.

Chapter Twenty Four.Doubt and Pride—Which Wins?For a week Wareham stayed on at Firleigh, walked with another funeral through the garden and along the church path, and laid old Sir Michael down by the side of his young son and younger wife—ashes to ashes, dust to dust. There was much to arrange, much that a friend—a man—could do to spare poor women. Death, like life, has its routine, which must be gone through, though tears proclaim it heartless; and when the head of a family steps down from his place, another waits to climb into it, all of which needs moving out of the way for some, advancing for others, and filling of vacant space.Here the heir was a nephew, a young lad of fourteen, hastily sent for from Eton, and present at the funeral with his mother. The boy was a fine fellow, but the mother had that capacity for irritation which is by no means the exclusive property of the ill-tempered. Words, kindnesses even, grated. If it is ourselves that reveal others to us, Wareham found himself reflecting that she presented the world with a likeness of herself, painted blackly, when least she intended it, for she seldom spoke of any one without a depreciatory remark. He resented, too, the airs of ownership she had already assumed, and her benign patronage of Ella. Talking to Mrs Newbold, he let fly his dislike.“The woman fingers everything as if she were appraising it,” he said. “Her hand crooks involuntarily.”“I wish poor Ella could have her last days in peace,” sighed Mrs Newbold.“Do you mean that she intends to stay?” Mrs Newbold nodded emphatically, and sighed again.“Ella said something, and Amelia jumped at it. She said it would be as well to look round her. Said this to Ella, and not a thank you with it!”“If I can prophesy at all, this will quicken your own movements. What do you think of doing?”“Ella will come to me in Monmouthshire for the present. That will give her time to look round, instead of deciding hurriedly.” When things had so far advanced, Wareham felt that he might leave. It annoyed him to see Mrs Forbes already in possession, and hinting at this or that change.“Ella is young, very young,” she remarked to him one day. “She does her best, butIshould never allow the coachman to order what he chose,” and the “I” was imperial. The day before he left, Ella came to Wareham in the library, Venom at her heels.“You really must go to-morrow, Dick?”“I must—to avoid war. I can’t be decently civil to your aunt for twenty-four hours longer. You can. That’s the wonder.”“Worries have shrunk into pin-pricks, I think,” she said simply. “But I am sorry for the servants, who will all leave the place, and who have been here, some of them, as long as I have. Their hope is to return to me some time, but when the dragging up is going on, one feels as though one could never take root again. However, I didn’t come to say all this. I came to thank you, and I can’t.”“I should be ashamed of you if you could. Look here, Ella, I suppose this plan of yours about going with Mrs Newbold is the best just at present?”“Don’t you think so?”“Hum,” said Wareham ruefully. “She’s a kind old soul, but body and mind made up of cotton wool. The finest quality of cotton wool, that I allow, still—”Ella smiled.“There’s a time when cotton wool is just what one wants.”“I’ve never met with it, then.”She did not go on to tell him that he might. What she said was spoken with hesitation.“Dick, I’ve been thinking about Miss Dalrymple.”“Yes?” He drew his breath.“Shall you see her again?”He was conscious of the weakness of his answer.“Perhaps. I hardly know. She spoke of our meeting at Thorpe—Lord Milborough’s—next month. I may or mayn’t be there.” She took no notice of these carefully expressed doubts.“Please tell her that I should have liked to have seen her. She mustn’t think that I reproach her—I know it made Hugh happy at the last.”“Yes,” cried Wareham eagerly. “Thank you, Ella. You can be generous.”“If he had lived, perhaps I shouldn’t have been,” she said quietly. “But he loved her dearly. I believe it would hurt him if we bore a grudge. You don’t, do you?”He said “No” with fervour, thinking that our own pre-occupations serve as a thick bandage for the eyes, for once or twice he had suspected Ella of reading his secret. It appeared, however, that she was absolutely unsuspecting. She talked on for some time, and he saw that hers was a strong soul, facing the inevitable undauntedly, and without murmurs, strong enough not to refuse tears, but to control them. He said to her once—“You have learned to live,” to which she answered that one hasn’t got to learn that lesson by oneself. It seemed that she feared for the people in the village, who might lose Firleigh advantages, but she meant to talk to Catherine Oakleigh about them.“And Reggie is a nice boy,” she went on. “I am not afraid of things by and by.”So, on the next day, Wareham turned his back on Firleigh. For ever, he told himself, though Mrs Forbes had expressed a gracious hope that they might often see him, and was contentedly unconscious that he went away raging at her, and comparing her to a tremolo stop, to the scrapings of slate-pencils, and to many other sources of irritation; calling her, to himself, the trumpet of deterioration, that belittling woman! Relief at escape from her balanced the real grief it cost him to quit a place which had been like a home so long.When he left Firleigh he had hardly made up his mind where to go. Restlessness was upon him, but travel was impossible, when he was like some tethered creature, bound not to go out of call, of reach, and hobbled, as he told himself. Not much more than a fortnight of this uncertainty remained, yet the time appeared portentous in length. He had a vague inclination to bury himself in London, and write, but experience warned him that, pre-occupied, his brains would not answer to the call. The impulse, however, was strong enough at the station to lead him to take a ticket for London.Before he had been there two days he was sorry he had come. Writing was not for him; the sentences yawned at him like bald-headed idiots. But here his will stepped in and brought discipline, commanding that so much should be done at any cost, even probable future consignment to the fire. Something might be saved from it, at any rate his self-respect. Wareham ground away at his work, and in the afternoon plunged into street labyrinths, walking, walking, walking, without care where he went, so long as it was where he was not likely to meet his fellows. Oftenest he found himself down by the river, standing by black wharves, watching the river life with unseeing eyes, the river itself moving slowly, like the burdened thing it is. But sometimes he wandered round old city churches, quaintly named, lonely protests against the mammon around them, echoing emptily on Sundays, when the great human tide had flowed away from their walls. He passed up a narrow passage one day, and came full upon a lady sketching in a corner. It was Mrs Ravenhill, and escape was out of the question. Besides, his better nature was ashamed of the impulse. They greeted each other without astonishment, for no one is surprised to meet an acquaintance in great London, and Mrs Ravenhill explained that she was taking advantage of a fine day to finish an old sketch.He remarked—“And alone?”“Yes, I can’t condemn Millie to be my companion here. Have you come from Thorpe?”“No,” said Wareham, with wonder.“Lady Fanny certainly said in a letter that you were expected,” said Mrs Ravenhill, a little vexed with herself for a slip which appeared to prove them interested in his movements. She added rashly, “Or perhaps I made a mistake.”“I have not received any invitation to Thorpe,” returned Wareham, reserving the fact that one had been talked about. “Has Lady Fanny gone back?”“Yes. There were to be large shooting-parties, and her brother wanted her. You had a sad time after we saw you. It shocked us greatly to hear of Mr Forbes’ death, and now his father.”Wareham entered into particulars. She listened with interest, saying at last—“I am glad the poor young fellow had friends. The seeds of illness must have been in him when we saw him, and yet he seemed so full of life!”He wanted to find out whether Miss Dalrymple was at Thorpe, and could not bring himself to put the question. But the certainty that they would know led him to propose calling, which he would have fled from but for this inducement. He left Mrs Ravenhill to finish her drawing, and went to his club, a couple of hours earlier than usual, to ascertain whether any letter had arrived from Thorpe. The question of accepting or not accepting the invitation, he flattered himself remained in the balance. The fact of its arrival would prove to him that Miss Dalrymple was there.Nothing came. He read the evening papers, impressed by their dullness; dined, dropped in at a theatre, and was immeasurably bored. What had come to the world that it could do no better?Another day and no note. Now he wandered into wonder whether his reticence had for ever disgusted Anne, knowing nothing of his pledge. She had given him openings enough, he saw them the more clearly when he looked back at them; her verdict must have been either indifferent or stupid.The Ravenhills, with that link of Lady Fanny, began to look so attractive that he grew anxious for the time to arrive when he might pay his promised visit, and took many precautions to find them at home. He chose five o’clock, and was rewarded by hearing that both Mrs and Miss Ravenhill were out. The delay added to his determination. He left word that he would try his luck again at the same time, and went through another restless twenty-four hours, scourging himself with contempt that it should be so, and amazed to find his cool control swept away by a surging tide of passion.This time the Ravenhills were at home. Millie greeted him charmingly. The curves of her face had grown softer, her eyes had gained depth, the alert air, which sometimes annoyed him, was absent. Each time that he saw her he thought her prettier than before, but now no dream of comparing her with Miss Dalrymple crossed his heart. There Anne sat supreme.The talk of course fell upon those last days at Bergen. They sat near the fire, with the tea-table in a cosy corner and the room cheerfully lighted, while Millie plied him with questions. Both thought, and thought truly, that their interest lay with Hugh, yet with both the figure of Anne stood always in the background; he wanted Millie to speak her name, she was secretly relieved that he had not yet mentioned her. Then another lady came in, to whom Mrs Ravenhill devoted herself, and Wareham and Millie drew off a little.She said—“Directly we heard that sad news, we thought what a shock it would have been to you, but we did not know you had been there until Fanny told us.”He pricked his ears, and asked mendaciously—“The Lady Fanny I met here?”“Yes. You know she is Lord Milborough’s sister. Do you remember the clergyman, Mr Elliot, who was also here?”“Yes. I thought—perhaps—?”Millie laughed.“It is wonderful, but true. He is the last man I should have suspected Fanny would have chosen. But do not speak of it, for nothing is settled yet, and Lord Milborough will not say anything definitely.”“He can stop it?”“Only for a year, but Fanny would hate to go against him.”He was willing enough to talk about Lord Milborough and Thorpe.“So that, after all, it may come to nothing. Poor Mr Elliot!”“No, no, there is no fear of that. Fanny will not change. She will be quite independent when she is twenty-one. Indeed, she is in terror lest Mr Elliot should find out how large her fortune will be.”“Is Lord Milborough like his sister in character?” asked Wareham carelessly.She repudiated the notion. “You saw him at Bergen?”“I saw the surface. He was described to me as indifferent to most things.”Millie hesitated. “I think he will take trouble to get what he wants. I don’t know whether you will put that down to his credit or not? But I do believe that in his own way he is fond of Fanny, and perhaps—”She stopped. Wareham would have given a good deal to know whether the “perhaps” had remote connection with Miss Dalrymple. He had time to reflect, for Millie was called upon to provide another cup of tea for the visitor. When she came back he put a leading question.“Do you often go to Thorpe?”“Very very seldom. The house is generally full at this season, and just now there is a big party.” She hesitated again, reproached herself, and added, “The Martyns and Lady and Miss Dalrymple are there.”He looked up quickly, and his eye met hers. Something in it told his secret, and Millie turned pale. The thought was not strange to her, perhaps, although latterly it had withdrawn; it was always standing at hand, ready to step in; but withdrawn it had, and to see it again, and to have it advancing so determinedly that she could never any more treat it as a figment of her imagination, gave her a sharp stab. He, all unconscious of his self-betrayal, thought his remark, “A drifting together of Norwegian travellers!” diplomatic; and he ventured to add, “I have heard that Lady and Miss Dalrymple are not sympathetic.”“Fanny does not say. I believe they had only just arrived,” murmured Millie.The visitor was departing, and she was glad of the interruption. When it was over Mrs Ravenhill drew her chair near the others.“Millie,” she said, “I fancy Mr Wareham gives me credit for romancing, but surely Fanny in her last letter mentioned his name as among the people they were expecting?”“I think she said he was invited, or was going to be invited.”“Ah, then, that was it.”“And perhaps they have thought better of it,” returned Wareham, a little awkwardly.To this there could be no answer, and Mrs Ravenhill turned the subject. Wareham lingered as long as he thought decency required, and rose to take his leave. Mrs Ravenhill reverted with a smile to her supposition.“If you had been going to Thorpe, I should have asked you to put Lady Fanny’s gold thimble, which I only discovered this morning, in your pocket. But now I will send it by post.”“A safer plan,” Wareham agreed. “Even if I had received this visionary invitation, it is improbable that I could have accepted it.” The fiction served as indemnification for pricks which judgment administered when his mind flew to Thorpe, and beheld himself with Anne, rashly venturing within reach of temptation, while his promise still held him dumb. Walking away in the darkness through Sussex Place, he flung not a thought behind at poor Millie, all his dreams fluttering round Anne. He had succeeded in the object of his visit, and had discovered where she was, a knowledge which he would have been happier without, as the vague uneasiness which Lord Milborough’s name aroused became more insistent when he learnt that he and she were actually again together. It was in vain that he told himself it was, no doubt, the fulfilment of some promise made in Norway, that the same party which had foregathered in the yacht should meet again at Thorpe. Suspicion, thoroughly awakened, assured him that more lay in it. And why was he to be asked? This, he knew, must be Anne’s doing. Lord Milborough and he had scarcely met, certainly had shown no inclination for each other’s society, and although he was not unaccustomed to being sought as a literary lion, that would not be the explanation now. Perhaps Anne desired him to see her.An impulse led him to strike upwards to the Park, for the jangle and the fret of the streets became insupportable, and, more than this, it appeared that he had a companion at his elbow whom he loved, yet longed to dismiss. If not, why were Hugh’s words sounding—reverberating—in his ears? Above wheels, and underground hiss of train, louder, far, than when the dying man spoke them—“You promise? Not a word for two months.” And then again, again, the same words, the same voice.Wareham paced impatiently. Why this repetition, which seemed like doubt? Honour fretted under the imputation. But ten days remained of the trial time, then came free speech, at least the power to ask for what he wanted. If, as Love whispered deliciously, Anne loved him, she would not so quickly sell herself to another man. His heart plucked courage from the “No” which he shouted at it. And, during that time, it was better that they should not meet, for it was intolerable bondage to be tied hand and foot, yet be by her side. Count days and hours, but count them out of sight of her. He resolved to decline, and slept more peacefully that night than he had of late.The next morning he was half ashamed of the past evenings disturbance, and would have been amazed if any one had informed him that cool reflection is sometimes as much to be watched in love as a sudden drop of temperature in a fever. Among his letters were two which he looked at without a throb, although by the post-marks he knew that they must be from Thorpe. The first he opened was a brief invitation from Lord Milborough, asking him from Monday to Thursday. As he read, Wareham framed an answer of refusal in his mind. The other was from Anne, as short, but different. She underlined a hope that he would come.And now cool reflection stepped briskly forth. Go or not, let him choose which he deliberately preferred, only avoiding the cowardly fear that he might not be master of himself. Pledged he was, and pledged he must remain, since no thought of evasion could be honourably entertained for a moment; but he was not therefore bound to give false impressions, or to allow Anne to suppose that he by choice avoided her. His refusal would make her think so? Then let him go.Wareham wrote and accepted. As a compromise, he left Anne’s letter unanswered.Civility, he thought, required that he should go and ask for Lady Fanny’s thimble. He went on Sunday afternoon.“So I was right, after all,” Mrs Ravenhill said, with a laugh. “I hope you will get good shooting.”Millie chiefly talked to a boy about postage stamps. She and Wareham scarcely exchanged words until he rose to leave. Then he said—“Have you any message?”“For Fanny?” She looked surprised. “My love, please.”“I meant for Miss Dalrymple.”Her “Oh!” was abrupt. She added, immediately, “No, I shouldn’t venture. Miss Dalrymple has probably forgotten that we ever met.”In his hansom Wareham reflected that women were difficult to understand in their dealings with each other. Anne had always been charming, why should Millie turn a sharp edge towards her? It was the more astonishing because Millie had nothing of the angular about her. As little would he have imagined that she had the heroic soul. Yet one may call it so when a woman bears the quenching of her hopes without complaint or bitterness. Millie went cheerfully about her daily occupations. Her mother imagined her a little pale, no more. She preferred silence, but talked as usual when it was necessary. Altogether there was nothing to call for remark. Yet in that look she had read Wareham’s heart, the more quickly, perhaps, for the quickening in her own, and before it all the budding hopes which were gently unfolding themselves shrivelled and died. To believe that Miss Dalrymple might reject him would have brought her no comfort, for there still exist women to whom love is so delicate and wonderful a thing that they can only look upon it as eternal, and she was ready to stake her faith upon Wareham’s constancy. One night Mrs Ravenhill unconsciously fell into the channel of her thoughts.“Fanny has not written?”“Not a word; so I suppose she waits until she can tell us that something definite has been said or settled.”“It is too bad of Lord Milborough. I am afraid he is going to object strongly, andyetwishes to avoid upsetting Fanny while he has this large house-party. Or is he really taken up with thoughts and wishes of his own?”“I wonder,” said Millie.“If there was ever any truth in that fancy of yours about Mr Wareham, he will add another complication! But I don’t believe it. I think you were determined to create a romance.”The girl laughed, with successful hiding of the effort.“Well, we shall hear what Fanny thinks.”“Poor little Fanny!”“She will have to fight her own battles and his too.”“Oh, I am not so sure. He has fighting blood in him.”“Is it the glow of the Berserker?” asked Millie wickedly.Doubt had not left Wareham. It laid a hand, healthfully cold, as he had to own, upon the visions of Anne which crowded before him. It suggested a telegraphed excuse as a means of escaping the ordeal. But it found itself confronted determinedly by a strong man’s pride. Now that he had agreed to go, pride assured him that to shrink was disgraceful, and before pride, stepping robustly forward, doubt looked a poor shadowy thing. Wareham ordered it out of the way, and Monday saw him in the train which would take him to Thorpe in time for dinner. He had a drive of some miles from the station, and from the length of road which lay between the lodge and the house, perceived that the park was very large. A slight descent led to twinkling lights. Here stood the great house, planted solidly as a castle, of which, indeed, it only wanted the name.And here was Anne.

For a week Wareham stayed on at Firleigh, walked with another funeral through the garden and along the church path, and laid old Sir Michael down by the side of his young son and younger wife—ashes to ashes, dust to dust. There was much to arrange, much that a friend—a man—could do to spare poor women. Death, like life, has its routine, which must be gone through, though tears proclaim it heartless; and when the head of a family steps down from his place, another waits to climb into it, all of which needs moving out of the way for some, advancing for others, and filling of vacant space.

Here the heir was a nephew, a young lad of fourteen, hastily sent for from Eton, and present at the funeral with his mother. The boy was a fine fellow, but the mother had that capacity for irritation which is by no means the exclusive property of the ill-tempered. Words, kindnesses even, grated. If it is ourselves that reveal others to us, Wareham found himself reflecting that she presented the world with a likeness of herself, painted blackly, when least she intended it, for she seldom spoke of any one without a depreciatory remark. He resented, too, the airs of ownership she had already assumed, and her benign patronage of Ella. Talking to Mrs Newbold, he let fly his dislike.

“The woman fingers everything as if she were appraising it,” he said. “Her hand crooks involuntarily.”

“I wish poor Ella could have her last days in peace,” sighed Mrs Newbold.

“Do you mean that she intends to stay?” Mrs Newbold nodded emphatically, and sighed again.

“Ella said something, and Amelia jumped at it. She said it would be as well to look round her. Said this to Ella, and not a thank you with it!”

“If I can prophesy at all, this will quicken your own movements. What do you think of doing?”

“Ella will come to me in Monmouthshire for the present. That will give her time to look round, instead of deciding hurriedly.” When things had so far advanced, Wareham felt that he might leave. It annoyed him to see Mrs Forbes already in possession, and hinting at this or that change.

“Ella is young, very young,” she remarked to him one day. “She does her best, butIshould never allow the coachman to order what he chose,” and the “I” was imperial. The day before he left, Ella came to Wareham in the library, Venom at her heels.

“You really must go to-morrow, Dick?”

“I must—to avoid war. I can’t be decently civil to your aunt for twenty-four hours longer. You can. That’s the wonder.”

“Worries have shrunk into pin-pricks, I think,” she said simply. “But I am sorry for the servants, who will all leave the place, and who have been here, some of them, as long as I have. Their hope is to return to me some time, but when the dragging up is going on, one feels as though one could never take root again. However, I didn’t come to say all this. I came to thank you, and I can’t.”

“I should be ashamed of you if you could. Look here, Ella, I suppose this plan of yours about going with Mrs Newbold is the best just at present?”

“Don’t you think so?”

“Hum,” said Wareham ruefully. “She’s a kind old soul, but body and mind made up of cotton wool. The finest quality of cotton wool, that I allow, still—”

Ella smiled.

“There’s a time when cotton wool is just what one wants.”

“I’ve never met with it, then.”

She did not go on to tell him that he might. What she said was spoken with hesitation.

“Dick, I’ve been thinking about Miss Dalrymple.”

“Yes?” He drew his breath.

“Shall you see her again?”

He was conscious of the weakness of his answer.

“Perhaps. I hardly know. She spoke of our meeting at Thorpe—Lord Milborough’s—next month. I may or mayn’t be there.” She took no notice of these carefully expressed doubts.

“Please tell her that I should have liked to have seen her. She mustn’t think that I reproach her—I know it made Hugh happy at the last.”

“Yes,” cried Wareham eagerly. “Thank you, Ella. You can be generous.”

“If he had lived, perhaps I shouldn’t have been,” she said quietly. “But he loved her dearly. I believe it would hurt him if we bore a grudge. You don’t, do you?”

He said “No” with fervour, thinking that our own pre-occupations serve as a thick bandage for the eyes, for once or twice he had suspected Ella of reading his secret. It appeared, however, that she was absolutely unsuspecting. She talked on for some time, and he saw that hers was a strong soul, facing the inevitable undauntedly, and without murmurs, strong enough not to refuse tears, but to control them. He said to her once—“You have learned to live,” to which she answered that one hasn’t got to learn that lesson by oneself. It seemed that she feared for the people in the village, who might lose Firleigh advantages, but she meant to talk to Catherine Oakleigh about them.

“And Reggie is a nice boy,” she went on. “I am not afraid of things by and by.”

So, on the next day, Wareham turned his back on Firleigh. For ever, he told himself, though Mrs Forbes had expressed a gracious hope that they might often see him, and was contentedly unconscious that he went away raging at her, and comparing her to a tremolo stop, to the scrapings of slate-pencils, and to many other sources of irritation; calling her, to himself, the trumpet of deterioration, that belittling woman! Relief at escape from her balanced the real grief it cost him to quit a place which had been like a home so long.

When he left Firleigh he had hardly made up his mind where to go. Restlessness was upon him, but travel was impossible, when he was like some tethered creature, bound not to go out of call, of reach, and hobbled, as he told himself. Not much more than a fortnight of this uncertainty remained, yet the time appeared portentous in length. He had a vague inclination to bury himself in London, and write, but experience warned him that, pre-occupied, his brains would not answer to the call. The impulse, however, was strong enough at the station to lead him to take a ticket for London.

Before he had been there two days he was sorry he had come. Writing was not for him; the sentences yawned at him like bald-headed idiots. But here his will stepped in and brought discipline, commanding that so much should be done at any cost, even probable future consignment to the fire. Something might be saved from it, at any rate his self-respect. Wareham ground away at his work, and in the afternoon plunged into street labyrinths, walking, walking, walking, without care where he went, so long as it was where he was not likely to meet his fellows. Oftenest he found himself down by the river, standing by black wharves, watching the river life with unseeing eyes, the river itself moving slowly, like the burdened thing it is. But sometimes he wandered round old city churches, quaintly named, lonely protests against the mammon around them, echoing emptily on Sundays, when the great human tide had flowed away from their walls. He passed up a narrow passage one day, and came full upon a lady sketching in a corner. It was Mrs Ravenhill, and escape was out of the question. Besides, his better nature was ashamed of the impulse. They greeted each other without astonishment, for no one is surprised to meet an acquaintance in great London, and Mrs Ravenhill explained that she was taking advantage of a fine day to finish an old sketch.

He remarked—

“And alone?”

“Yes, I can’t condemn Millie to be my companion here. Have you come from Thorpe?”

“No,” said Wareham, with wonder.

“Lady Fanny certainly said in a letter that you were expected,” said Mrs Ravenhill, a little vexed with herself for a slip which appeared to prove them interested in his movements. She added rashly, “Or perhaps I made a mistake.”

“I have not received any invitation to Thorpe,” returned Wareham, reserving the fact that one had been talked about. “Has Lady Fanny gone back?”

“Yes. There were to be large shooting-parties, and her brother wanted her. You had a sad time after we saw you. It shocked us greatly to hear of Mr Forbes’ death, and now his father.”

Wareham entered into particulars. She listened with interest, saying at last—

“I am glad the poor young fellow had friends. The seeds of illness must have been in him when we saw him, and yet he seemed so full of life!”

He wanted to find out whether Miss Dalrymple was at Thorpe, and could not bring himself to put the question. But the certainty that they would know led him to propose calling, which he would have fled from but for this inducement. He left Mrs Ravenhill to finish her drawing, and went to his club, a couple of hours earlier than usual, to ascertain whether any letter had arrived from Thorpe. The question of accepting or not accepting the invitation, he flattered himself remained in the balance. The fact of its arrival would prove to him that Miss Dalrymple was there.

Nothing came. He read the evening papers, impressed by their dullness; dined, dropped in at a theatre, and was immeasurably bored. What had come to the world that it could do no better?

Another day and no note. Now he wandered into wonder whether his reticence had for ever disgusted Anne, knowing nothing of his pledge. She had given him openings enough, he saw them the more clearly when he looked back at them; her verdict must have been either indifferent or stupid.

The Ravenhills, with that link of Lady Fanny, began to look so attractive that he grew anxious for the time to arrive when he might pay his promised visit, and took many precautions to find them at home. He chose five o’clock, and was rewarded by hearing that both Mrs and Miss Ravenhill were out. The delay added to his determination. He left word that he would try his luck again at the same time, and went through another restless twenty-four hours, scourging himself with contempt that it should be so, and amazed to find his cool control swept away by a surging tide of passion.

This time the Ravenhills were at home. Millie greeted him charmingly. The curves of her face had grown softer, her eyes had gained depth, the alert air, which sometimes annoyed him, was absent. Each time that he saw her he thought her prettier than before, but now no dream of comparing her with Miss Dalrymple crossed his heart. There Anne sat supreme.

The talk of course fell upon those last days at Bergen. They sat near the fire, with the tea-table in a cosy corner and the room cheerfully lighted, while Millie plied him with questions. Both thought, and thought truly, that their interest lay with Hugh, yet with both the figure of Anne stood always in the background; he wanted Millie to speak her name, she was secretly relieved that he had not yet mentioned her. Then another lady came in, to whom Mrs Ravenhill devoted herself, and Wareham and Millie drew off a little.

She said—

“Directly we heard that sad news, we thought what a shock it would have been to you, but we did not know you had been there until Fanny told us.”

He pricked his ears, and asked mendaciously—

“The Lady Fanny I met here?”

“Yes. You know she is Lord Milborough’s sister. Do you remember the clergyman, Mr Elliot, who was also here?”

“Yes. I thought—perhaps—?”

Millie laughed.

“It is wonderful, but true. He is the last man I should have suspected Fanny would have chosen. But do not speak of it, for nothing is settled yet, and Lord Milborough will not say anything definitely.”

“He can stop it?”

“Only for a year, but Fanny would hate to go against him.”

He was willing enough to talk about Lord Milborough and Thorpe.

“So that, after all, it may come to nothing. Poor Mr Elliot!”

“No, no, there is no fear of that. Fanny will not change. She will be quite independent when she is twenty-one. Indeed, she is in terror lest Mr Elliot should find out how large her fortune will be.”

“Is Lord Milborough like his sister in character?” asked Wareham carelessly.

She repudiated the notion. “You saw him at Bergen?”

“I saw the surface. He was described to me as indifferent to most things.”

Millie hesitated. “I think he will take trouble to get what he wants. I don’t know whether you will put that down to his credit or not? But I do believe that in his own way he is fond of Fanny, and perhaps—”

She stopped. Wareham would have given a good deal to know whether the “perhaps” had remote connection with Miss Dalrymple. He had time to reflect, for Millie was called upon to provide another cup of tea for the visitor. When she came back he put a leading question.

“Do you often go to Thorpe?”

“Very very seldom. The house is generally full at this season, and just now there is a big party.” She hesitated again, reproached herself, and added, “The Martyns and Lady and Miss Dalrymple are there.”

He looked up quickly, and his eye met hers. Something in it told his secret, and Millie turned pale. The thought was not strange to her, perhaps, although latterly it had withdrawn; it was always standing at hand, ready to step in; but withdrawn it had, and to see it again, and to have it advancing so determinedly that she could never any more treat it as a figment of her imagination, gave her a sharp stab. He, all unconscious of his self-betrayal, thought his remark, “A drifting together of Norwegian travellers!” diplomatic; and he ventured to add, “I have heard that Lady and Miss Dalrymple are not sympathetic.”

“Fanny does not say. I believe they had only just arrived,” murmured Millie.

The visitor was departing, and she was glad of the interruption. When it was over Mrs Ravenhill drew her chair near the others.

“Millie,” she said, “I fancy Mr Wareham gives me credit for romancing, but surely Fanny in her last letter mentioned his name as among the people they were expecting?”

“I think she said he was invited, or was going to be invited.”

“Ah, then, that was it.”

“And perhaps they have thought better of it,” returned Wareham, a little awkwardly.

To this there could be no answer, and Mrs Ravenhill turned the subject. Wareham lingered as long as he thought decency required, and rose to take his leave. Mrs Ravenhill reverted with a smile to her supposition.

“If you had been going to Thorpe, I should have asked you to put Lady Fanny’s gold thimble, which I only discovered this morning, in your pocket. But now I will send it by post.”

“A safer plan,” Wareham agreed. “Even if I had received this visionary invitation, it is improbable that I could have accepted it.” The fiction served as indemnification for pricks which judgment administered when his mind flew to Thorpe, and beheld himself with Anne, rashly venturing within reach of temptation, while his promise still held him dumb. Walking away in the darkness through Sussex Place, he flung not a thought behind at poor Millie, all his dreams fluttering round Anne. He had succeeded in the object of his visit, and had discovered where she was, a knowledge which he would have been happier without, as the vague uneasiness which Lord Milborough’s name aroused became more insistent when he learnt that he and she were actually again together. It was in vain that he told himself it was, no doubt, the fulfilment of some promise made in Norway, that the same party which had foregathered in the yacht should meet again at Thorpe. Suspicion, thoroughly awakened, assured him that more lay in it. And why was he to be asked? This, he knew, must be Anne’s doing. Lord Milborough and he had scarcely met, certainly had shown no inclination for each other’s society, and although he was not unaccustomed to being sought as a literary lion, that would not be the explanation now. Perhaps Anne desired him to see her.

An impulse led him to strike upwards to the Park, for the jangle and the fret of the streets became insupportable, and, more than this, it appeared that he had a companion at his elbow whom he loved, yet longed to dismiss. If not, why were Hugh’s words sounding—reverberating—in his ears? Above wheels, and underground hiss of train, louder, far, than when the dying man spoke them—“You promise? Not a word for two months.” And then again, again, the same words, the same voice.

Wareham paced impatiently. Why this repetition, which seemed like doubt? Honour fretted under the imputation. But ten days remained of the trial time, then came free speech, at least the power to ask for what he wanted. If, as Love whispered deliciously, Anne loved him, she would not so quickly sell herself to another man. His heart plucked courage from the “No” which he shouted at it. And, during that time, it was better that they should not meet, for it was intolerable bondage to be tied hand and foot, yet be by her side. Count days and hours, but count them out of sight of her. He resolved to decline, and slept more peacefully that night than he had of late.

The next morning he was half ashamed of the past evenings disturbance, and would have been amazed if any one had informed him that cool reflection is sometimes as much to be watched in love as a sudden drop of temperature in a fever. Among his letters were two which he looked at without a throb, although by the post-marks he knew that they must be from Thorpe. The first he opened was a brief invitation from Lord Milborough, asking him from Monday to Thursday. As he read, Wareham framed an answer of refusal in his mind. The other was from Anne, as short, but different. She underlined a hope that he would come.

And now cool reflection stepped briskly forth. Go or not, let him choose which he deliberately preferred, only avoiding the cowardly fear that he might not be master of himself. Pledged he was, and pledged he must remain, since no thought of evasion could be honourably entertained for a moment; but he was not therefore bound to give false impressions, or to allow Anne to suppose that he by choice avoided her. His refusal would make her think so? Then let him go.

Wareham wrote and accepted. As a compromise, he left Anne’s letter unanswered.

Civility, he thought, required that he should go and ask for Lady Fanny’s thimble. He went on Sunday afternoon.

“So I was right, after all,” Mrs Ravenhill said, with a laugh. “I hope you will get good shooting.”

Millie chiefly talked to a boy about postage stamps. She and Wareham scarcely exchanged words until he rose to leave. Then he said—

“Have you any message?”

“For Fanny?” She looked surprised. “My love, please.”

“I meant for Miss Dalrymple.”

Her “Oh!” was abrupt. She added, immediately, “No, I shouldn’t venture. Miss Dalrymple has probably forgotten that we ever met.”

In his hansom Wareham reflected that women were difficult to understand in their dealings with each other. Anne had always been charming, why should Millie turn a sharp edge towards her? It was the more astonishing because Millie had nothing of the angular about her. As little would he have imagined that she had the heroic soul. Yet one may call it so when a woman bears the quenching of her hopes without complaint or bitterness. Millie went cheerfully about her daily occupations. Her mother imagined her a little pale, no more. She preferred silence, but talked as usual when it was necessary. Altogether there was nothing to call for remark. Yet in that look she had read Wareham’s heart, the more quickly, perhaps, for the quickening in her own, and before it all the budding hopes which were gently unfolding themselves shrivelled and died. To believe that Miss Dalrymple might reject him would have brought her no comfort, for there still exist women to whom love is so delicate and wonderful a thing that they can only look upon it as eternal, and she was ready to stake her faith upon Wareham’s constancy. One night Mrs Ravenhill unconsciously fell into the channel of her thoughts.

“Fanny has not written?”

“Not a word; so I suppose she waits until she can tell us that something definite has been said or settled.”

“It is too bad of Lord Milborough. I am afraid he is going to object strongly, andyetwishes to avoid upsetting Fanny while he has this large house-party. Or is he really taken up with thoughts and wishes of his own?”

“I wonder,” said Millie.

“If there was ever any truth in that fancy of yours about Mr Wareham, he will add another complication! But I don’t believe it. I think you were determined to create a romance.”

The girl laughed, with successful hiding of the effort.

“Well, we shall hear what Fanny thinks.”

“Poor little Fanny!”

“She will have to fight her own battles and his too.”

“Oh, I am not so sure. He has fighting blood in him.”

“Is it the glow of the Berserker?” asked Millie wickedly.

Doubt had not left Wareham. It laid a hand, healthfully cold, as he had to own, upon the visions of Anne which crowded before him. It suggested a telegraphed excuse as a means of escaping the ordeal. But it found itself confronted determinedly by a strong man’s pride. Now that he had agreed to go, pride assured him that to shrink was disgraceful, and before pride, stepping robustly forward, doubt looked a poor shadowy thing. Wareham ordered it out of the way, and Monday saw him in the train which would take him to Thorpe in time for dinner. He had a drive of some miles from the station, and from the length of road which lay between the lodge and the house, perceived that the park was very large. A slight descent led to twinkling lights. Here stood the great house, planted solidly as a castle, of which, indeed, it only wanted the name.

And here was Anne.

Chapter Twenty Five.Fire and Cold Water.Wareham was met in the hall by Lord Milborough—thanked for coming. They went up the broad staircase together.“The first gong has sounded, and there’s nobody in the drawing-room,” his host explained. “You’ll find friends here, I hope. Colonel and Mrs Martyn.”He paused. Wareham did not feel the necessity for speaking.“Lady and Miss Dalrymple, and half-a-dozen others.”The half-dozen others multiplied before dinner. The great drawing-room with its fine Gainsboroughs looked cheerfully full. Lady Fanny welcomed Wareham warmly, and put a dozen questions about her friends.“You saw them yesterday?”“And am the bearer of lost property.”“My thimble! Thank you a thousand times. Sad to say, I had never missed it; but I must not let Millie know that, or I shall be scolded for my idleness. Oh, if you had only persuaded them to come with you!” She hoped that Wareham’s heart echoed the wish, and would have been mightily disappointed could she have peeped at it. Where was Anne? Not yet in the room. Mrs Martyn, however, smiled at him from a sofa, and he was obliged to seat himself by her side, and to endure a characteristic greeting.“I hope you don’t object, Mr Wareham; but it almost gave me a shock to hear you were coming. I knew the sight of you would bring back that nightmare time at Bergen.”“Did you mind it so much?”“How can you ask? I tell Lord Milborough he saved my life, for if the yacht had not been there, I might have hung myself. That poor young man! You never ought to have told him to come out. It wasn’t fair on us.”Wareham sat mute. She glanced at him, and played with her great fan.“And now you have arrived, I suppose, to see the next act of the play?”He inquired what that was to be.“You don’t know? Then I shan’t enlighten you. This is a good house, isn’t it? with capabilities. And the pictures are good. There are one or two smaller and extremely choice in the boudoir opening out of this room. Ah, Anne is coming from it at this minute.”Anne it was, followed by Lord Milborough; Anne in soft draperies of white and yellow, here and there flash of diamonds, brilliant as Wareham had never seen her before. She came towards him, and he rose.“You are to take me in to dinner,” she said smilingly.“Fortunate I!”Another man presented himself.“Not to-night, Mr Orpington. Go and ask Lady Fanny to effect an exchange between you and Mr Wareham.”“It seems that I am indebted even more than I knew,” said Wareham, in a low voice, as they proceeded to the dining-room.“It is my rule to resist tyranny. What can be so odious as to be handed over for two hours to a man with whom you have nothing in common?”Others noticed the act. As they passed Lord Milborough’s chair, he murmured—“Queens command.”Anne took no notice. As soon as they were seated, she said to Wareham—“Now for your apology.”“My apology?”“I wrote, and you did not bestow upon me so much as a line. Were you afraid that I should trade with your autograph?”“Folly is not yet quite rampant in man. I answered by obeying.”She turned a little towards him.“It is not a bad house to stay in. One has one’s liberty.” The next moment she added—“Do you know my step-mother?”“No.”“She is there—in black and green. Black hair as well. You need not murmur inarticulate admiration, for we do not love each other.”“That does not make her the less handsome.”“To women it does. Where a woman dislikes she cannot admire. Probably you know most of the other people?”“No. I see Lord Arthur Crosse next Lady Dalrymple.”Anne let her eyes rest reflectively upon the two persons he named, without answering the remark except by a slight nod. Presently, however, she said—“Do you think he will marry her? The question interests me more than it should, for you know that we are in a measure bound together. My father ruled that I was to be dependent upon her until I married—or she. I believe our old lawyer got that last clause put in out of sheer good-will to me, for my father had faith in her perpetual tears. He loved me, too, but he tried to see too far. I am not sure that a will is ever a just thing. The dead, should they control the living?” She was unconscious how closely Wareham’s thoughts flew with hers. He said—“They must, while men have hearts. Made as we are, it is impossible to refuse what the dying ask.”“What they ask?” repeated Anne, lifting her eyebrows. “I was talking of what they command. The most undecided of men becomes an irrevocable force by the mere act of dying.”“There are other forces besides that of law,” Wareham persisted. “A wish may bind as tightly as a will.”He was reminded of an old trick of Anne’s which he had almost forgotten, when she threw him a glance between half-closed lids. But the lady on his other side addressed a remark to him, and Anne took the opportunity to talk to her neighbour. Wareham saw Lady Fanny looking at them with what he supposed to be surprise at the audacity which had changed the order of the dinner, or, rather, the diners; of other thoughts of hers he was unsuspicious. By and by Anne addressed him again.“Are you the typical Englishman, only happy when you are killing something?”He broke into sturdy disclaimer.“You mean because I have come to shoot? I like the open air and the walking; as for results, I am absolutely indifferent.”“But you go out with them to-morrow?” He said yes, and added quickly, without looking at her—“Why else am I here?”“True. Why else?” Anne said, speaking deliberately, and nibbling an almond. “To tell the truth, I thought it probable the inducement might not be sufficient. That was why I wrote.”The answer “Your summons brought me,” rushed to his lips, and had to be driven back. He only ventured on, “And I have not thanked you,” and dashed in another direction. “Colonel Martyn looks almost happy. I expect this life is very congenial to him.”“Nothing could be more so. He is out from morning to night, and can tell you the history of every hit and every miss, chapter and verse. Norway was wasted time in his life.”“He has more heart than his wife,” said Wareham bluntly.“You were speaking to her just now. Has that caused your criticism?”“Not that more than another, but it did not change my impression.”“I suspect that to change would always cost you something,” said Anne, smiling.He was on the watch against a personal note, and held himself woodenly irresponsive. But the fretting consciousness of being tongue-tied whenever he was with her, of being forced into the condition of a surface against which a match was struck in vain, worried his nerves into irritation. More than once he thought that Anne glanced at him with surprise at his dullness, or might it be his coldness. This seemed hardly possible to him, conscious as he was of a fire within which had to be kept down by liberal sluicing with cold water. It was delight to be near her, yet torture, and he told himself that he had been a fool to come. Yet when the men were left in the room after dinner it had become a desert.The evening might have been blissful.Opportunity was there, could he have grasped her. Once or twice, it is true, Lord Milborough succeeded in monopolising Anne; but there was scarcely a minute when Wareham was not aware that the privilege might have been his, had he sought it.Anne’s extreme beauty, the brilliant beauty which belongs to night, the attraction she undoubtedly was bent on exercising, made his brain dizzy. As they parted in the hall, she said reproachfully—“So you desert us for the whole of to-morrow!”“Thank goodness!” said a voice behind.“Discontented men hanging about the whole of the day would be unendurable.”It was Mrs Martyn. Anne laughed good-humouredly.“I don’t know your discontented men.”She was told to wait until experience had been broadened by marriage, and rated with prophecies all the way up the stairs. At Mrs Martyn’s door she lingered, and finally entered, dropping into a deep chair near the fire. Blanche dismissed her maid, and stood by the mantelpiece, unfastening her bracelets.“The house has capabilities,” she said, “and you may make it charming.”Anne stared.“My dear, you don’t suppose that I am blind and deaf? Of course, we all know that you can marry Lord Milborough when you please. Why pretend?”“What do you expect me to say?” said Anne coolly.“Not the usual stock commonplaces.”“It is hard to be original when one has nothing to say; harder, perhaps, when one has. I give it up. Commonplace or not, I assure you Lord Milborough has not asked me to marry him, so that I have had no opportunity of—”“Accepting him?” said Mrs Martyn eagerly.“Giving him an answer.”“You are an adept, my dear, in holding a man at arm’s length, or drawing him nearer as you please!”Anne’s eyes were charged with anger.“Blanche!”“Can you deny it? Every now and then you land yourself in a scrape, as with that poor young fellow. Anne, tell me”—with a change of voice she leaned forward curiously—“if he had lived, what would you have done?”Anne glanced at her, and did not at first answer. She lay back in the chair, her dark head resting against the cushion, the flicker of the fire catching a diamond cluster which nestled in her hair. Presently she said slowly—“I don’t know. I believe he might have swept me into marrying him.”“Is that the secret?”“I feel like Samson—as foolish perhaps in breathing it—but the man who marries me must do it quickly, give me no time to find out that I hate him, or to change my mind. If I see him hesitate, he is lost.”“You want a stronger will than your own?” Mrs Martyn said in surprise. “What a dangerous wish!”“I want my eyes bandaged, like a shying horse,” said Anne, smiling at her own simile. “Then I might take the leap. Otherwise I see too much, and imagination refuses to trot along meekly gazing at the one side of the subject which is presented to me.”“It is a pity you did not live in old days. A border raid or a swoop of pirates might have given you the wooing you desire.”Anne agreed.“No time for hesitation.”Mrs Martyn remarked that Thorpe would be more to her own liking than an old Scotch stronghold. Anne got up.“Ah, don’t weary me with talk of it!”“I believe, after all, you are like Samson, and have not told me the truth at all. What you really want is a struggle. You conquer too easily.”Anne stood considering.“That is only the first act of the drama,” she said at last. “I hold to what I have said. No more questions. Good-night.”As her maid was brushing her hair, she asked whether the Mr Wareham who had arrived that evening was not the same gentleman who had come to their rescue in that dreadful accident when they were so nearly killed? Anne laughed.“Your memory is so creative, Watkins, that you add fresh horrors whenever you allude to that day. Yes, it was Mr Wareham with whom I walked to Oakwood.”“How you could, ma’am! My legs wouldn’t have carried me.”“They must, if the young farmer hadn’t been there. Did he tell you Mr Wareham’s name?”“Yes, ma’am. And that he was staying at Sir Michael Forbes’.”“Anything more?” asked Anne indifferently.“He was a great friend of the family, Mr Smith said, and down there a great deal. There was some talk of he and Miss Forbes making a match of it. But people are so ready to talk!”“They are!” Anne agreed with a smile. She sent Watkins away, and sat before the fire staring at a cheerfully blazing log, and bent on investigations. Mrs Martyn’s rather broad statements were not required to enlighten her as to the fact that a crisis in her life approached, and for once she did not know how to deal with it. A year ago—six months ago—she would have known very well; then there came a hitherto unknown stirring in her heart, not love, but liking, for Hugh. It amused her so much to find herself at last the sport of fancy, that she caught at the diversion, meaning to break away from the mischievous elf when she pleased. But that strange weakness of her nature which she had confessed to Mrs Martyn, that yielding to a dominating impetuosity, carried her further than she intended. She was on the verge before she knew, she did not love him well enough to take the plunge, yet liked him so much that her retreat had to be cowardly.Moreover, she had shocked her world, and felt her kingdom totter. To meet Wareham at this moment was to be irresistibly impelled to charm. Conquer him, and she was once more queen—at least in her own estimation. She found balm to her wounded vanity in re-asserting power.Then she was puzzled. Convinced that to a certain extent she had succeeded, she was met by a wall of reserve, tried to get round it, to break it down; failed, and stood piqued and revolving. Even when she had to her own satisfaction penetrated the cause, it displeased her, for though she had never felt a deep love, she insisted that to be true it must over-ride friendship. Difficulty and displeasure together attracted her to Wareham the more, and when Hugh died, her thoughts crowned him for his fidelity; the more readily, since it could no longer hamper her. The verdict upon her that she was heartless she had accepted with a jest, and quoted the world, but it had secretly stung her, because she was suspicious of its truth. But her feelings towards Wareham relieved her, for something had awakened in her different from what she had hitherto experienced. She told herself that to marry him she might be ready to give up a good deal—Thorpe, for instance—and she closed her eyes, recalling his face, his voice, the strength of his mouth, which had always fascinated her. Meeting him at Firleigh, she had expected more than he gave: as it did not come, she supposed that he was waiting for a decent interval to elapse, or perhaps trusted to that second interview which Sir Hugh’s death frustrated.But now, now she had cast her die. Only by dint of ingenious management of Lord Milborough had she gained the invitation. Nothing at Bergen had raised his suspicions, and when he consulted her as to the people who should be asked, Wareham was indifferently suggested. A man of note.“Not much in my line,” said Lord Milborough, whereupon her “But perhaps in mine,” alarmed him, lest she should think her tastes would not have full play. He was asked and was there. The next two days must decide. For that time she believed she could hold back her host. In that time she would take care that Wareham had his opportunity. She did not acknowledge herself to be won, but owned that he might win her. If he did not—then farewell, hearts and lovers. There remained Thorpe.

Wareham was met in the hall by Lord Milborough—thanked for coming. They went up the broad staircase together.

“The first gong has sounded, and there’s nobody in the drawing-room,” his host explained. “You’ll find friends here, I hope. Colonel and Mrs Martyn.”

He paused. Wareham did not feel the necessity for speaking.

“Lady and Miss Dalrymple, and half-a-dozen others.”

The half-dozen others multiplied before dinner. The great drawing-room with its fine Gainsboroughs looked cheerfully full. Lady Fanny welcomed Wareham warmly, and put a dozen questions about her friends.

“You saw them yesterday?”

“And am the bearer of lost property.”

“My thimble! Thank you a thousand times. Sad to say, I had never missed it; but I must not let Millie know that, or I shall be scolded for my idleness. Oh, if you had only persuaded them to come with you!” She hoped that Wareham’s heart echoed the wish, and would have been mightily disappointed could she have peeped at it. Where was Anne? Not yet in the room. Mrs Martyn, however, smiled at him from a sofa, and he was obliged to seat himself by her side, and to endure a characteristic greeting.

“I hope you don’t object, Mr Wareham; but it almost gave me a shock to hear you were coming. I knew the sight of you would bring back that nightmare time at Bergen.”

“Did you mind it so much?”

“How can you ask? I tell Lord Milborough he saved my life, for if the yacht had not been there, I might have hung myself. That poor young man! You never ought to have told him to come out. It wasn’t fair on us.”

Wareham sat mute. She glanced at him, and played with her great fan.

“And now you have arrived, I suppose, to see the next act of the play?”

He inquired what that was to be.

“You don’t know? Then I shan’t enlighten you. This is a good house, isn’t it? with capabilities. And the pictures are good. There are one or two smaller and extremely choice in the boudoir opening out of this room. Ah, Anne is coming from it at this minute.”

Anne it was, followed by Lord Milborough; Anne in soft draperies of white and yellow, here and there flash of diamonds, brilliant as Wareham had never seen her before. She came towards him, and he rose.

“You are to take me in to dinner,” she said smilingly.

“Fortunate I!”

Another man presented himself.

“Not to-night, Mr Orpington. Go and ask Lady Fanny to effect an exchange between you and Mr Wareham.”

“It seems that I am indebted even more than I knew,” said Wareham, in a low voice, as they proceeded to the dining-room.

“It is my rule to resist tyranny. What can be so odious as to be handed over for two hours to a man with whom you have nothing in common?”

Others noticed the act. As they passed Lord Milborough’s chair, he murmured—

“Queens command.”

Anne took no notice. As soon as they were seated, she said to Wareham—

“Now for your apology.”

“My apology?”

“I wrote, and you did not bestow upon me so much as a line. Were you afraid that I should trade with your autograph?”

“Folly is not yet quite rampant in man. I answered by obeying.”

She turned a little towards him.

“It is not a bad house to stay in. One has one’s liberty.” The next moment she added—“Do you know my step-mother?”

“No.”

“She is there—in black and green. Black hair as well. You need not murmur inarticulate admiration, for we do not love each other.”

“That does not make her the less handsome.”

“To women it does. Where a woman dislikes she cannot admire. Probably you know most of the other people?”

“No. I see Lord Arthur Crosse next Lady Dalrymple.”

Anne let her eyes rest reflectively upon the two persons he named, without answering the remark except by a slight nod. Presently, however, she said—

“Do you think he will marry her? The question interests me more than it should, for you know that we are in a measure bound together. My father ruled that I was to be dependent upon her until I married—or she. I believe our old lawyer got that last clause put in out of sheer good-will to me, for my father had faith in her perpetual tears. He loved me, too, but he tried to see too far. I am not sure that a will is ever a just thing. The dead, should they control the living?” She was unconscious how closely Wareham’s thoughts flew with hers. He said—

“They must, while men have hearts. Made as we are, it is impossible to refuse what the dying ask.”

“What they ask?” repeated Anne, lifting her eyebrows. “I was talking of what they command. The most undecided of men becomes an irrevocable force by the mere act of dying.”

“There are other forces besides that of law,” Wareham persisted. “A wish may bind as tightly as a will.”

He was reminded of an old trick of Anne’s which he had almost forgotten, when she threw him a glance between half-closed lids. But the lady on his other side addressed a remark to him, and Anne took the opportunity to talk to her neighbour. Wareham saw Lady Fanny looking at them with what he supposed to be surprise at the audacity which had changed the order of the dinner, or, rather, the diners; of other thoughts of hers he was unsuspicious. By and by Anne addressed him again.

“Are you the typical Englishman, only happy when you are killing something?”

He broke into sturdy disclaimer.

“You mean because I have come to shoot? I like the open air and the walking; as for results, I am absolutely indifferent.”

“But you go out with them to-morrow?” He said yes, and added quickly, without looking at her—

“Why else am I here?”

“True. Why else?” Anne said, speaking deliberately, and nibbling an almond. “To tell the truth, I thought it probable the inducement might not be sufficient. That was why I wrote.”

The answer “Your summons brought me,” rushed to his lips, and had to be driven back. He only ventured on, “And I have not thanked you,” and dashed in another direction. “Colonel Martyn looks almost happy. I expect this life is very congenial to him.”

“Nothing could be more so. He is out from morning to night, and can tell you the history of every hit and every miss, chapter and verse. Norway was wasted time in his life.”

“He has more heart than his wife,” said Wareham bluntly.

“You were speaking to her just now. Has that caused your criticism?”

“Not that more than another, but it did not change my impression.”

“I suspect that to change would always cost you something,” said Anne, smiling.

He was on the watch against a personal note, and held himself woodenly irresponsive. But the fretting consciousness of being tongue-tied whenever he was with her, of being forced into the condition of a surface against which a match was struck in vain, worried his nerves into irritation. More than once he thought that Anne glanced at him with surprise at his dullness, or might it be his coldness. This seemed hardly possible to him, conscious as he was of a fire within which had to be kept down by liberal sluicing with cold water. It was delight to be near her, yet torture, and he told himself that he had been a fool to come. Yet when the men were left in the room after dinner it had become a desert.

The evening might have been blissful.

Opportunity was there, could he have grasped her. Once or twice, it is true, Lord Milborough succeeded in monopolising Anne; but there was scarcely a minute when Wareham was not aware that the privilege might have been his, had he sought it.

Anne’s extreme beauty, the brilliant beauty which belongs to night, the attraction she undoubtedly was bent on exercising, made his brain dizzy. As they parted in the hall, she said reproachfully—

“So you desert us for the whole of to-morrow!”

“Thank goodness!” said a voice behind.

“Discontented men hanging about the whole of the day would be unendurable.”

It was Mrs Martyn. Anne laughed good-humouredly.

“I don’t know your discontented men.”

She was told to wait until experience had been broadened by marriage, and rated with prophecies all the way up the stairs. At Mrs Martyn’s door she lingered, and finally entered, dropping into a deep chair near the fire. Blanche dismissed her maid, and stood by the mantelpiece, unfastening her bracelets.

“The house has capabilities,” she said, “and you may make it charming.”

Anne stared.

“My dear, you don’t suppose that I am blind and deaf? Of course, we all know that you can marry Lord Milborough when you please. Why pretend?”

“What do you expect me to say?” said Anne coolly.

“Not the usual stock commonplaces.”

“It is hard to be original when one has nothing to say; harder, perhaps, when one has. I give it up. Commonplace or not, I assure you Lord Milborough has not asked me to marry him, so that I have had no opportunity of—”

“Accepting him?” said Mrs Martyn eagerly.

“Giving him an answer.”

“You are an adept, my dear, in holding a man at arm’s length, or drawing him nearer as you please!”

Anne’s eyes were charged with anger.

“Blanche!”

“Can you deny it? Every now and then you land yourself in a scrape, as with that poor young fellow. Anne, tell me”—with a change of voice she leaned forward curiously—“if he had lived, what would you have done?”

Anne glanced at her, and did not at first answer. She lay back in the chair, her dark head resting against the cushion, the flicker of the fire catching a diamond cluster which nestled in her hair. Presently she said slowly—

“I don’t know. I believe he might have swept me into marrying him.”

“Is that the secret?”

“I feel like Samson—as foolish perhaps in breathing it—but the man who marries me must do it quickly, give me no time to find out that I hate him, or to change my mind. If I see him hesitate, he is lost.”

“You want a stronger will than your own?” Mrs Martyn said in surprise. “What a dangerous wish!”

“I want my eyes bandaged, like a shying horse,” said Anne, smiling at her own simile. “Then I might take the leap. Otherwise I see too much, and imagination refuses to trot along meekly gazing at the one side of the subject which is presented to me.”

“It is a pity you did not live in old days. A border raid or a swoop of pirates might have given you the wooing you desire.”

Anne agreed.

“No time for hesitation.”

Mrs Martyn remarked that Thorpe would be more to her own liking than an old Scotch stronghold. Anne got up.

“Ah, don’t weary me with talk of it!”

“I believe, after all, you are like Samson, and have not told me the truth at all. What you really want is a struggle. You conquer too easily.”

Anne stood considering.

“That is only the first act of the drama,” she said at last. “I hold to what I have said. No more questions. Good-night.”

As her maid was brushing her hair, she asked whether the Mr Wareham who had arrived that evening was not the same gentleman who had come to their rescue in that dreadful accident when they were so nearly killed? Anne laughed.

“Your memory is so creative, Watkins, that you add fresh horrors whenever you allude to that day. Yes, it was Mr Wareham with whom I walked to Oakwood.”

“How you could, ma’am! My legs wouldn’t have carried me.”

“They must, if the young farmer hadn’t been there. Did he tell you Mr Wareham’s name?”

“Yes, ma’am. And that he was staying at Sir Michael Forbes’.”

“Anything more?” asked Anne indifferently.

“He was a great friend of the family, Mr Smith said, and down there a great deal. There was some talk of he and Miss Forbes making a match of it. But people are so ready to talk!”

“They are!” Anne agreed with a smile. She sent Watkins away, and sat before the fire staring at a cheerfully blazing log, and bent on investigations. Mrs Martyn’s rather broad statements were not required to enlighten her as to the fact that a crisis in her life approached, and for once she did not know how to deal with it. A year ago—six months ago—she would have known very well; then there came a hitherto unknown stirring in her heart, not love, but liking, for Hugh. It amused her so much to find herself at last the sport of fancy, that she caught at the diversion, meaning to break away from the mischievous elf when she pleased. But that strange weakness of her nature which she had confessed to Mrs Martyn, that yielding to a dominating impetuosity, carried her further than she intended. She was on the verge before she knew, she did not love him well enough to take the plunge, yet liked him so much that her retreat had to be cowardly.

Moreover, she had shocked her world, and felt her kingdom totter. To meet Wareham at this moment was to be irresistibly impelled to charm. Conquer him, and she was once more queen—at least in her own estimation. She found balm to her wounded vanity in re-asserting power.

Then she was puzzled. Convinced that to a certain extent she had succeeded, she was met by a wall of reserve, tried to get round it, to break it down; failed, and stood piqued and revolving. Even when she had to her own satisfaction penetrated the cause, it displeased her, for though she had never felt a deep love, she insisted that to be true it must over-ride friendship. Difficulty and displeasure together attracted her to Wareham the more, and when Hugh died, her thoughts crowned him for his fidelity; the more readily, since it could no longer hamper her. The verdict upon her that she was heartless she had accepted with a jest, and quoted the world, but it had secretly stung her, because she was suspicious of its truth. But her feelings towards Wareham relieved her, for something had awakened in her different from what she had hitherto experienced. She told herself that to marry him she might be ready to give up a good deal—Thorpe, for instance—and she closed her eyes, recalling his face, his voice, the strength of his mouth, which had always fascinated her. Meeting him at Firleigh, she had expected more than he gave: as it did not come, she supposed that he was waiting for a decent interval to elapse, or perhaps trusted to that second interview which Sir Hugh’s death frustrated.

But now, now she had cast her die. Only by dint of ingenious management of Lord Milborough had she gained the invitation. Nothing at Bergen had raised his suspicions, and when he consulted her as to the people who should be asked, Wareham was indifferently suggested. A man of note.

“Not much in my line,” said Lord Milborough, whereupon her “But perhaps in mine,” alarmed him, lest she should think her tastes would not have full play. He was asked and was there. The next two days must decide. For that time she believed she could hold back her host. In that time she would take care that Wareham had his opportunity. She did not acknowledge herself to be won, but owned that he might win her. If he did not—then farewell, hearts and lovers. There remained Thorpe.

Chapter Twenty Six.On the Watch.Wareham was an early riser; he went out to take a look at Thorpe before others were stirring. The house was a large block, flanked, except on one side, by four corner towers, each finished by a cupola dome. On the differing side an addition had been built out beyond the towers. A dome resembling those at the corners sprang from the original centre of the house. The windows were square Tudor. A large projection marked the porch, entered by carriages under an arch; a background of fine trees, their foliage thinned but gorgeous, made a fitting setting for a stately building. Wareham pushed his researches into the park. The morning glittered with frost and keen beauty, the air was still and clear, a white sky overhead, and blue distances disclosing; after a time he reached a wood, civilised by a well-kept path running through it; seeing a gleam of water beyond, he told himself that he would come there the next morning, and went back to the house, braced by the fresh air after a somewhat wakeful night.He had finished his breakfast by the time the ladies appeared, and had no more than a greeting from Anne before the shooting party set off. This, judgment told him, was well, since certain restive impulses of his heart warned him of danger.The home coverts were to be shot, and before starting Lord Milborough gave some emphatic directions to his sister. She nodded impatiently—“Oh, I understand, I understand. Mil, you never will give me a word.”“Is this the time for it?”“Your time is never! You don’t consider that I am breaking my heart. I declare if you are not quick, I’ll stand up when dinner is going on, and insist upon an answer.”“And you’re capable of it,” he said, with a laugh. “Well, I’ll tell you this, Fan. You’re nothing short of a goose, but if I get what I want, you shall have what you want. There?” She shook her head dubiously.“If you don’t?”“I am serious this time, and I mean to. Help me, and the better for you.” He was gone.“And for Millie,” Lady Fanny reflected with a sigh. She had read danger in Anne’s manoeuvre of the night before. And she already knew enough of the world to gauge pretty accurately the power of Anne’s charm. Spirits bubbled too persistently with her to be checked, and she had nothing to cause her serious uneasiness as to her choice of John Elliot, but she wanted every one dear to her to be happy, to which end it appeared that Anne’s marriage with Lord Milborough would most effectually minister. Her present task was to induce Anne to go out with the luncheon for the shooters.“Bring as many as you can,” had been her brother’s directions, so unwonted, that she perceived he feared too general a buzzing round Anne. She went in search of her aunt, Mrs Harcourt, Irish, impracticable, and witty; but she would have none of it, and shivered at the very idea of the neighbourhood of wet turnips.“As if you were afraid of turnips, Aunt Kathleen!”“English ones, my dear, and chilly. Take that Mrs Martyn.”“You don’t like her?”“No better than the turnips, and for the same reason.”Others were not so impracticable, Lady Dalrymple agreeing with alacrity, Anne too; in all, six or eight met in the hall when the time for starting came. A pony had gone on with the provisions, and when they reached the spot, the gentlemen were there, and luncheon spread. The neighbourhood of a wood-shed had been chosen; faggots and logs formed seats, servants were on the watch to anticipate every want. Lord Milborough fastened on the place next Anne, Wareham sat where he could see her. He noticed that she was silent, though smiling. What he failed to see was the quiet ingenuity with which she baffled Lord Milborough’s attempts to draw her away from the others when the luncheon was over. She was assured that the finest view in the county lay within twenty yards of where they were standing, a whispered entreaty implored her to let him show it to her. Anne refused, laughing.“Our part is done, we vanish!” she cried. “I hope I have been better brought up than to interfere with that more important part of creation which was provided for men to shoot. Go to your birds.”He was heard to mutter—“Hang the birds!”“Come, come!” she called to the others. “Lord Milborough’s patience is failing him so completely that he is on the verge of bad language. We are in the way.”Wareham had neither smile nor word, but a look in place of them in which he blissfully fancied reproach lurked.The wood-shed was nearly a mile from the house, and in the nearest curve of road two or three carriages were waiting; one was Lady Fanny’s pony-carriage. Miss Dalrymple asked to be taken in it.“I am obliged to drive to Risley, not an interesting little town for a stranger,” Lady Fanny demurred, but Anne held to her wish.“Are you two going off together?” Mrs Martyn asked discontentedly, only to be answered by a laugh from Anne, and a gesture which pointed out Lady Dalrymple to her as a companion.“Blanche detests my step-mother,” Anne explained as they drove away. The remark jarred on Fanny, who thought only close friendship excused family criticisms, and read them in the speech. She expressed civil regret that the carriage would hold no more.“Don’t regret it,” Anne said contentedly. “This is the first time that you and I have been alone together. But you are a very princess of hostesses.”Fanny flushed, pleased with the praise.“You should have been with us in Norway. Why did not your brother bring you?”“He thought better of it.”“And you would have come in for a sad time.” She went on to speak of the sadness. “It was a great shock to Mr Wareham to find his friend so ill.”“Terrible!” cried Lady Fanny, impulsively. “I saw him the day before he had the telegram.”“Yes?”“At the Ravenhills’. I was staying with them. Of course, then he knew nothing.” Anne felt as if cold fingers had touched her.“Ah, you made acquaintance with him at the Ravenhills’?” she remarked carelessly.“Yes, he came there two or three times,” said Millie’s friend, glad to put an emphasis on the acquaintance. “They know him well, I think; I suppose from having met in Norway. Yesterday, he brought something I had left at their house.”Anne pondered. She was sure that she was the preferred, but was it not probable that with Wareham, who succeeded so admirably in repressing his feelings, cool judgment might stand arrayed against her, and carry the day? A peep-hole to his heart. What would she not give for it! At that moment she felt as if all that she wanted was—to know.“Miss Ravenhill is your friend?”“The dearest!” Rash Fanny added quickly, “I would give a great deal to see her happy.”“And what does that mean?” asked Anne, her lips tightening, though she smiled.Fanny caught herself back.“I suppose only Millie could tell us.”“Or one other.”No answer was given. Lady Fanny whipped up her ponies, they went flying down one hill, swung up another. A wind had risen, a grey squadron of clouds scudded overhead, out of the yellow trees came rustle and fall of leaf. By way of a safer subject, Fanny prophesied change of weather and rain.“That will affect to-morrow’s shootings,” remarked Anne. “Poor Lord Milborough!”“Oh, he’ll not mind. I don’t think he was keen about it to-day.”Her companion sat reflective. She said at last—“I did not see much of your friend when we were travelling together.”“Millie is shy. And I think one must know her at home to know her at all. Once known, once loved!”“You are a warm friend,” said Anne, with a smile. “For a true estimate I must go to some indifferent person. Will Mr Wareham do? Or is he, too, bespoken counsel?”A glance at Fanny showed her red, she did not like the word bespoken.“I have never talked to Mr Wareham about Miss Ravenhill,” she said stiffly.“Oh, I have!”It was irresistible.“And what did he say?” asked Lady Fanny, with eagerness.“Well, not quite so much as you. Could you expect it?” There was a touch of malice in Anne’s voice, which Fanny resented.“What did I say? That to know her was to love her? Oh, no, I couldn’t expect that! Do you see that ugly little clump of houses? That’s the beginning of Risley.”On the whole, Anne had gathered enough to make her thoughtful. She kept on indifferent subjects the rest of the afternoon. As they drove back it was evident that rain was at hand, the sky had grown wild, the country had that ragged look which thinning leaves give in a high wind.“If I dared prophesy on my neighbours’ clouds, I should say there would be no shooting to-morrow,” Anne said.“A house full of bored men instead,” sighed Lady Fanny.For their misfortunes Anne cared little. She had meant to find opportunity somewhere, and this promised freely.That night she dressed for dinner with care, the white satin setting off her rich dark beauty, and if she had perplexities, no sign betrayed them. To see her lightly talking would have been to disbelieve that she could be keenly on the watch, eye and ear together heedful. She had to keep Lord Milborough pleased and yet doubtful, to ward off for another thirty-six hours what he was burning to say at once, to read Wareham’s mind—if possible, to bring him to her feet. Then and not till then would she decide. But meanwhile she could not, would not, cease to be charming.There was no repetition of her movement of the evening before, and thought for Millie led Lady Fanny to plant Wareham at a safe distance from the dangerous Miss Dalrymple. Anne submitted. That night she had foreseen would offer no chance of the words she wanted.She was not mistaken in the effect she produced on Wareham. Her beauty was of the kind which is set off by rich surroundings; she seldom looked at him, but when her dark smiling eyes rested upon him for a moment, he was conscious of the same dizzy thrill which had seized him that early morning at Haare; and the greediness with which his ears drank in every tone of her voice, made him a dull companion to a young lady in awe of a well-known author, and prepared to treasure words. Anne did not fail to note his silence, nor that she held his attention.After dinner he came to her, encouraged by her look, but Lord Milborough was there as soon. Would she prefer the billiard-room? Anne shook her head.“Listen to the rain, and keep billiards for to-morrow, when you will be wandering miserably about the house, wretched examples of the unemployed.”Lord Milborough protested that there was no fear of his finding the house miserable. He would have given up shooting that afternoon, could he only have gone with her and Fanny to Risley.“You would have been terribly in the way,” he was told. “Only two should drive together. Besides, we amused ourselves by discussing some of you.”This piqued him into curiosity, as she expected. Wareham sat indifferent, caring nothing whether he were discussed or no, but conscious of imprisoned words beating wildly at the bars behind which he had set them. He knew now that he had been mad to come.Ordinarily Anne and her step-mother exchanged as few words as possible; this night, as the party separated, Lady Dalrymple announced that she had something to say, and was bidden to Anne’s room at a later period. When she swept in, attired in a flame-coloured wrapper of softest silk, Anne flung her a glance of reluctant admiration. She was under thirty-five, tall, and sufficiently dark to annoy Anne, who hated to hear of likeness; a too important nose stood in the way of claims to beauty, but perhaps gave weight to the verdict of handsome. A high voice had rasping tones in it, and the line of her eyebrows was so unpleasantly even as to suggest pencilling.She sank into the chair which was pushed forward for her, and put her question.“May I ask whether anything is decided?” Anne’s eyes darkened, but she answered briefly—“Nothing.”“And we leave on Thursday. I go to the Sinclairs’ as settled, after that my plans are changed.”Anne did not turn her head.“You mean to marry?”“Lord Arthur Crosse.”There was a few seconds’ silence before Anne said—“I imagine you would like me to congratulate you. I hope you will be happy.”“Thanks. I might not have spoken of it for a day or two, but that I thought it might influence your own decision.”“Hardly.” Both voices were cold, but Anne’s the coldest, and she spoke with a sweet modulation which irritated Lady Dalrymple, conscious of her own harsher tones. Her next words were more hasty.“Hitherto, at any rate, you have had a home with me.”“By my father’s will it was provided for, I think?”Lady Dalrymple’s fingers tapped the arms of her chair impatiently.“Certainly. But alone, you will not find that you can live in the same comfort. If you could, General Hervey is not likely to permit it.”For the first time there was a trace of uneasiness in Anne’s repetition of the name.“General Hervey?”“Have you forgotten that in case of my marriage he was to act as your guardian?”She had.“Probably he will wish you to live in Eaton Square with them, and I scarcely think you will find this agreeable.”Anne’s refuge was silence and a smile. Lady Dalrymple wished to wound, but not to break with her, for the Thorpe shooting was dear to Lord Arthur, and having been made aware of Lord. Milborough’s wishes, he had impressed them upon his intended bride as requiring her co-operation. She therefore made haste to add—“But of course you will marry, and quickly, and I have only said this because, if Lord Milborough’s proposal has not come, it is undoubtedly imminent.”Anne listened, and said no more than—“Is Lord Milborough the one man then in the world?”“There are not many like him and available. That, I suspect, is the best answer to your question. Seriously, he is a magnificent match.”Anne sat mute. Lady Dalrymple glanced at her, and grew impatient.“You are not in any doubt as to your answer?” she demanded quickly.“I always doubt until the thing is said, and long afterwards,” said Anne.“Afterwards as much as you like. You can hardly toss over Lord Milborough as you have less important people.”“What an argument against accepting him!” There was angry light in her eyes, though she kept her voice cool.Lady Dalrymple could not resist a taunt.“It is an amusement, let me add, of which the world wearies in a woman. It forgives once for the sake of having something to talk about, the second time palls, and the third is wearisome and unpardonable. However,” she went on, remembering her instructions, “the point is not whether Lord Milborough shall be thrown over, but whether he will be accepted?”Anne sat upright.“I do not know,” she said coldly.“He will ask to-morrow.”“He has said so?”“Pray do not waste your indignation. Would he be likely to say so? But I can see.”“If he does,”—she leaned back again,—“he will be refused.”“Anne!”“Refused.”“You are mad.”“Perhaps. At any rate, that is what will happen to him if he puts his question to-morrow.”“But,” said her step-mother with a gasp, “you have just said that you are undecided?”“I am. I may veer round. I protest nothing, except that to-morrow shall not bind me.”Lady Dalrymple rose, feeling that the situation was more critical than she had imagined, so critical, indeed, that she began to fear she had said too much. She had never understood Anne, for which she was not to blame; at this moment she felt herself face to face with a sphinx, and looked askance. Luck, rather than tact, led her to add—“Well, it is your own concern, no others,” and to wish good-night.Anne sat still where she had been left, thought busy. She smiled at her own clear understanding of the position, and perceiving Lord Milborough working through Lord Arthur upon Lady Dalrymple, recognised that this interview was intended as a probe before he ventured on the momentous question. Her fencing of the past two days had doubtless left him uneasy. She herself had foreseen fresh difficulties the next day, and was proportionably relieved by the conviction that after what she had just announced she would be left unmolested. Would Wareham speak? He should have the opportunity, and if—if—he succeeded in carrying her heart captive, she believed herself capable of marrying him, and renouncing more brilliant prospects. No one, it was certain, had attracted and piqued her as he had.But Anne’s heart was guarded in its impulses. It made no rash resolves. It looked to circumstances to determine choice, not by any means suffering itself to be swept away by a dominant emotion, nor disposed to hang too long in the balance. Anne was the world’s pupil, and the world teaches the value of outer casings, with a side sneer at romance. The outer casings belonged unmistakably to Lord Milborough. This was not to be forgotten, though she was ready to make concessions to her heart. But there, too, uneasiness lurked. Millie’s name had given substance to vague fears. Her love for Wareham, for love it was, in its degree, prevented certainty. Before him she was no conqueror, but shy, unconvinced of her own power. Did he love her? If he did, what shut his mouth? Was he uncertain, hesitating between her and Millie? Anne sprang to her feet, and stood breathing hard, hands clenched, eyes dark with scorn, face flushing with the thought. Weighing all that she would resign, she demanded a mighty love from him as an equivalent, not a jot would she yield, and understood nothing of the inequality of the bargain. Had she but known it, her unconsciousness was pathetic.She went to the window, drew aside the curtain, and flung back the shutter. Rain drove wildly against the glass. She closed her defences again, and came back to the fire.To-morrow she would know.

Wareham was an early riser; he went out to take a look at Thorpe before others were stirring. The house was a large block, flanked, except on one side, by four corner towers, each finished by a cupola dome. On the differing side an addition had been built out beyond the towers. A dome resembling those at the corners sprang from the original centre of the house. The windows were square Tudor. A large projection marked the porch, entered by carriages under an arch; a background of fine trees, their foliage thinned but gorgeous, made a fitting setting for a stately building. Wareham pushed his researches into the park. The morning glittered with frost and keen beauty, the air was still and clear, a white sky overhead, and blue distances disclosing; after a time he reached a wood, civilised by a well-kept path running through it; seeing a gleam of water beyond, he told himself that he would come there the next morning, and went back to the house, braced by the fresh air after a somewhat wakeful night.

He had finished his breakfast by the time the ladies appeared, and had no more than a greeting from Anne before the shooting party set off. This, judgment told him, was well, since certain restive impulses of his heart warned him of danger.

The home coverts were to be shot, and before starting Lord Milborough gave some emphatic directions to his sister. She nodded impatiently—

“Oh, I understand, I understand. Mil, you never will give me a word.”

“Is this the time for it?”

“Your time is never! You don’t consider that I am breaking my heart. I declare if you are not quick, I’ll stand up when dinner is going on, and insist upon an answer.”

“And you’re capable of it,” he said, with a laugh. “Well, I’ll tell you this, Fan. You’re nothing short of a goose, but if I get what I want, you shall have what you want. There?” She shook her head dubiously.

“If you don’t?”

“I am serious this time, and I mean to. Help me, and the better for you.” He was gone.

“And for Millie,” Lady Fanny reflected with a sigh. She had read danger in Anne’s manoeuvre of the night before. And she already knew enough of the world to gauge pretty accurately the power of Anne’s charm. Spirits bubbled too persistently with her to be checked, and she had nothing to cause her serious uneasiness as to her choice of John Elliot, but she wanted every one dear to her to be happy, to which end it appeared that Anne’s marriage with Lord Milborough would most effectually minister. Her present task was to induce Anne to go out with the luncheon for the shooters.

“Bring as many as you can,” had been her brother’s directions, so unwonted, that she perceived he feared too general a buzzing round Anne. She went in search of her aunt, Mrs Harcourt, Irish, impracticable, and witty; but she would have none of it, and shivered at the very idea of the neighbourhood of wet turnips.

“As if you were afraid of turnips, Aunt Kathleen!”

“English ones, my dear, and chilly. Take that Mrs Martyn.”

“You don’t like her?”

“No better than the turnips, and for the same reason.”

Others were not so impracticable, Lady Dalrymple agreeing with alacrity, Anne too; in all, six or eight met in the hall when the time for starting came. A pony had gone on with the provisions, and when they reached the spot, the gentlemen were there, and luncheon spread. The neighbourhood of a wood-shed had been chosen; faggots and logs formed seats, servants were on the watch to anticipate every want. Lord Milborough fastened on the place next Anne, Wareham sat where he could see her. He noticed that she was silent, though smiling. What he failed to see was the quiet ingenuity with which she baffled Lord Milborough’s attempts to draw her away from the others when the luncheon was over. She was assured that the finest view in the county lay within twenty yards of where they were standing, a whispered entreaty implored her to let him show it to her. Anne refused, laughing.

“Our part is done, we vanish!” she cried. “I hope I have been better brought up than to interfere with that more important part of creation which was provided for men to shoot. Go to your birds.”

He was heard to mutter—

“Hang the birds!”

“Come, come!” she called to the others. “Lord Milborough’s patience is failing him so completely that he is on the verge of bad language. We are in the way.”

Wareham had neither smile nor word, but a look in place of them in which he blissfully fancied reproach lurked.

The wood-shed was nearly a mile from the house, and in the nearest curve of road two or three carriages were waiting; one was Lady Fanny’s pony-carriage. Miss Dalrymple asked to be taken in it.

“I am obliged to drive to Risley, not an interesting little town for a stranger,” Lady Fanny demurred, but Anne held to her wish.

“Are you two going off together?” Mrs Martyn asked discontentedly, only to be answered by a laugh from Anne, and a gesture which pointed out Lady Dalrymple to her as a companion.

“Blanche detests my step-mother,” Anne explained as they drove away. The remark jarred on Fanny, who thought only close friendship excused family criticisms, and read them in the speech. She expressed civil regret that the carriage would hold no more.

“Don’t regret it,” Anne said contentedly. “This is the first time that you and I have been alone together. But you are a very princess of hostesses.”

Fanny flushed, pleased with the praise.

“You should have been with us in Norway. Why did not your brother bring you?”

“He thought better of it.”

“And you would have come in for a sad time.” She went on to speak of the sadness. “It was a great shock to Mr Wareham to find his friend so ill.”

“Terrible!” cried Lady Fanny, impulsively. “I saw him the day before he had the telegram.”

“Yes?”

“At the Ravenhills’. I was staying with them. Of course, then he knew nothing.” Anne felt as if cold fingers had touched her.

“Ah, you made acquaintance with him at the Ravenhills’?” she remarked carelessly.

“Yes, he came there two or three times,” said Millie’s friend, glad to put an emphasis on the acquaintance. “They know him well, I think; I suppose from having met in Norway. Yesterday, he brought something I had left at their house.”

Anne pondered. She was sure that she was the preferred, but was it not probable that with Wareham, who succeeded so admirably in repressing his feelings, cool judgment might stand arrayed against her, and carry the day? A peep-hole to his heart. What would she not give for it! At that moment she felt as if all that she wanted was—to know.

“Miss Ravenhill is your friend?”

“The dearest!” Rash Fanny added quickly, “I would give a great deal to see her happy.”

“And what does that mean?” asked Anne, her lips tightening, though she smiled.

Fanny caught herself back.

“I suppose only Millie could tell us.”

“Or one other.”

No answer was given. Lady Fanny whipped up her ponies, they went flying down one hill, swung up another. A wind had risen, a grey squadron of clouds scudded overhead, out of the yellow trees came rustle and fall of leaf. By way of a safer subject, Fanny prophesied change of weather and rain.

“That will affect to-morrow’s shootings,” remarked Anne. “Poor Lord Milborough!”

“Oh, he’ll not mind. I don’t think he was keen about it to-day.”

Her companion sat reflective. She said at last—

“I did not see much of your friend when we were travelling together.”

“Millie is shy. And I think one must know her at home to know her at all. Once known, once loved!”

“You are a warm friend,” said Anne, with a smile. “For a true estimate I must go to some indifferent person. Will Mr Wareham do? Or is he, too, bespoken counsel?”

A glance at Fanny showed her red, she did not like the word bespoken.

“I have never talked to Mr Wareham about Miss Ravenhill,” she said stiffly.

“Oh, I have!”

It was irresistible.

“And what did he say?” asked Lady Fanny, with eagerness.

“Well, not quite so much as you. Could you expect it?” There was a touch of malice in Anne’s voice, which Fanny resented.

“What did I say? That to know her was to love her? Oh, no, I couldn’t expect that! Do you see that ugly little clump of houses? That’s the beginning of Risley.”

On the whole, Anne had gathered enough to make her thoughtful. She kept on indifferent subjects the rest of the afternoon. As they drove back it was evident that rain was at hand, the sky had grown wild, the country had that ragged look which thinning leaves give in a high wind.

“If I dared prophesy on my neighbours’ clouds, I should say there would be no shooting to-morrow,” Anne said.

“A house full of bored men instead,” sighed Lady Fanny.

For their misfortunes Anne cared little. She had meant to find opportunity somewhere, and this promised freely.

That night she dressed for dinner with care, the white satin setting off her rich dark beauty, and if she had perplexities, no sign betrayed them. To see her lightly talking would have been to disbelieve that she could be keenly on the watch, eye and ear together heedful. She had to keep Lord Milborough pleased and yet doubtful, to ward off for another thirty-six hours what he was burning to say at once, to read Wareham’s mind—if possible, to bring him to her feet. Then and not till then would she decide. But meanwhile she could not, would not, cease to be charming.

There was no repetition of her movement of the evening before, and thought for Millie led Lady Fanny to plant Wareham at a safe distance from the dangerous Miss Dalrymple. Anne submitted. That night she had foreseen would offer no chance of the words she wanted.

She was not mistaken in the effect she produced on Wareham. Her beauty was of the kind which is set off by rich surroundings; she seldom looked at him, but when her dark smiling eyes rested upon him for a moment, he was conscious of the same dizzy thrill which had seized him that early morning at Haare; and the greediness with which his ears drank in every tone of her voice, made him a dull companion to a young lady in awe of a well-known author, and prepared to treasure words. Anne did not fail to note his silence, nor that she held his attention.

After dinner he came to her, encouraged by her look, but Lord Milborough was there as soon. Would she prefer the billiard-room? Anne shook her head.

“Listen to the rain, and keep billiards for to-morrow, when you will be wandering miserably about the house, wretched examples of the unemployed.”

Lord Milborough protested that there was no fear of his finding the house miserable. He would have given up shooting that afternoon, could he only have gone with her and Fanny to Risley.

“You would have been terribly in the way,” he was told. “Only two should drive together. Besides, we amused ourselves by discussing some of you.”

This piqued him into curiosity, as she expected. Wareham sat indifferent, caring nothing whether he were discussed or no, but conscious of imprisoned words beating wildly at the bars behind which he had set them. He knew now that he had been mad to come.

Ordinarily Anne and her step-mother exchanged as few words as possible; this night, as the party separated, Lady Dalrymple announced that she had something to say, and was bidden to Anne’s room at a later period. When she swept in, attired in a flame-coloured wrapper of softest silk, Anne flung her a glance of reluctant admiration. She was under thirty-five, tall, and sufficiently dark to annoy Anne, who hated to hear of likeness; a too important nose stood in the way of claims to beauty, but perhaps gave weight to the verdict of handsome. A high voice had rasping tones in it, and the line of her eyebrows was so unpleasantly even as to suggest pencilling.

She sank into the chair which was pushed forward for her, and put her question.

“May I ask whether anything is decided?” Anne’s eyes darkened, but she answered briefly—

“Nothing.”

“And we leave on Thursday. I go to the Sinclairs’ as settled, after that my plans are changed.”

Anne did not turn her head.

“You mean to marry?”

“Lord Arthur Crosse.”

There was a few seconds’ silence before Anne said—

“I imagine you would like me to congratulate you. I hope you will be happy.”

“Thanks. I might not have spoken of it for a day or two, but that I thought it might influence your own decision.”

“Hardly.” Both voices were cold, but Anne’s the coldest, and she spoke with a sweet modulation which irritated Lady Dalrymple, conscious of her own harsher tones. Her next words were more hasty.

“Hitherto, at any rate, you have had a home with me.”

“By my father’s will it was provided for, I think?”

Lady Dalrymple’s fingers tapped the arms of her chair impatiently.

“Certainly. But alone, you will not find that you can live in the same comfort. If you could, General Hervey is not likely to permit it.”

For the first time there was a trace of uneasiness in Anne’s repetition of the name.

“General Hervey?”

“Have you forgotten that in case of my marriage he was to act as your guardian?”

She had.

“Probably he will wish you to live in Eaton Square with them, and I scarcely think you will find this agreeable.”

Anne’s refuge was silence and a smile. Lady Dalrymple wished to wound, but not to break with her, for the Thorpe shooting was dear to Lord Arthur, and having been made aware of Lord. Milborough’s wishes, he had impressed them upon his intended bride as requiring her co-operation. She therefore made haste to add—

“But of course you will marry, and quickly, and I have only said this because, if Lord Milborough’s proposal has not come, it is undoubtedly imminent.”

Anne listened, and said no more than—

“Is Lord Milborough the one man then in the world?”

“There are not many like him and available. That, I suspect, is the best answer to your question. Seriously, he is a magnificent match.”

Anne sat mute. Lady Dalrymple glanced at her, and grew impatient.

“You are not in any doubt as to your answer?” she demanded quickly.

“I always doubt until the thing is said, and long afterwards,” said Anne.

“Afterwards as much as you like. You can hardly toss over Lord Milborough as you have less important people.”

“What an argument against accepting him!” There was angry light in her eyes, though she kept her voice cool.

Lady Dalrymple could not resist a taunt.

“It is an amusement, let me add, of which the world wearies in a woman. It forgives once for the sake of having something to talk about, the second time palls, and the third is wearisome and unpardonable. However,” she went on, remembering her instructions, “the point is not whether Lord Milborough shall be thrown over, but whether he will be accepted?”

Anne sat upright.

“I do not know,” she said coldly.

“He will ask to-morrow.”

“He has said so?”

“Pray do not waste your indignation. Would he be likely to say so? But I can see.”

“If he does,”—she leaned back again,—“he will be refused.”

“Anne!”

“Refused.”

“You are mad.”

“Perhaps. At any rate, that is what will happen to him if he puts his question to-morrow.”

“But,” said her step-mother with a gasp, “you have just said that you are undecided?”

“I am. I may veer round. I protest nothing, except that to-morrow shall not bind me.”

Lady Dalrymple rose, feeling that the situation was more critical than she had imagined, so critical, indeed, that she began to fear she had said too much. She had never understood Anne, for which she was not to blame; at this moment she felt herself face to face with a sphinx, and looked askance. Luck, rather than tact, led her to add—

“Well, it is your own concern, no others,” and to wish good-night.

Anne sat still where she had been left, thought busy. She smiled at her own clear understanding of the position, and perceiving Lord Milborough working through Lord Arthur upon Lady Dalrymple, recognised that this interview was intended as a probe before he ventured on the momentous question. Her fencing of the past two days had doubtless left him uneasy. She herself had foreseen fresh difficulties the next day, and was proportionably relieved by the conviction that after what she had just announced she would be left unmolested. Would Wareham speak? He should have the opportunity, and if—if—he succeeded in carrying her heart captive, she believed herself capable of marrying him, and renouncing more brilliant prospects. No one, it was certain, had attracted and piqued her as he had.

But Anne’s heart was guarded in its impulses. It made no rash resolves. It looked to circumstances to determine choice, not by any means suffering itself to be swept away by a dominant emotion, nor disposed to hang too long in the balance. Anne was the world’s pupil, and the world teaches the value of outer casings, with a side sneer at romance. The outer casings belonged unmistakably to Lord Milborough. This was not to be forgotten, though she was ready to make concessions to her heart. But there, too, uneasiness lurked. Millie’s name had given substance to vague fears. Her love for Wareham, for love it was, in its degree, prevented certainty. Before him she was no conqueror, but shy, unconvinced of her own power. Did he love her? If he did, what shut his mouth? Was he uncertain, hesitating between her and Millie? Anne sprang to her feet, and stood breathing hard, hands clenched, eyes dark with scorn, face flushing with the thought. Weighing all that she would resign, she demanded a mighty love from him as an equivalent, not a jot would she yield, and understood nothing of the inequality of the bargain. Had she but known it, her unconsciousness was pathetic.

She went to the window, drew aside the curtain, and flung back the shutter. Rain drove wildly against the glass. She closed her defences again, and came back to the fire.

To-morrow she would know.

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