The postman, entering through the garden gate which opened on to the street, found Ann busily engaged in cutting flowers. He greeted her with a smile, pleased to be saved the remainder of the distance to the house.
“Bonjour, mademoiselle. Only one letter for the villa this morning.” He handed her the solitary missive which the mail had brought and departed, whistling cheerfully, on his way down the street.
Ann fingered the bulky envelope with satisfaction. It was addressed in Robin’s handwriting, and she carried it off to a sunny corner of the garden to enjoy its contents at leisure.
“Dear Little Ann”—ran the letter.“Here, at last is the good newswe have both been waiting for! I have been offered exactly the kindof billet I wanted—that of estate-agent to a big land-owner. Thesalary is a really generous one, and there’s a jolly little cottagegoes with it, so that you’ll be able to chuck free-lancing and comeand keep house for me as we’ve always planned. Needless to say,I’ve accepted the job!“And now to give you all details. My future employer is one, EliotCoventry. We’ve had several interviews and I liked him very much,although he struck me as rather a queer sort of chap. I should puthim down as dead straight and thoroughly dissatisfied with life!Heronsmere, the Coventry place, is a fine old house—one of thoseold Elizabethan houses you’re so cracked on. It reminds me a bit ofLovell Court. There’ll be a lot to see to on the estate, as thebailiff in charge has just let things rip, and Coventry himself hasbeen out of England for some years. In fact, he has never lived atHeronsmere. He’s a distant cousin of the late owner and onlyinherited owing to a succession of deaths. He was abroad at thetime and never even troubled to come home and have a look at hisinheritance.“One thing I know will please you, and that is that we shall benear the sea. Silverquay is the name of the village, which isreally a part of the Heronsmere property. It’s comparatively small,not much more than a little fishing village, but the town ofFerribridge is only about ten miles distant, so you’ll be able toobtain the necessities of civilised existence, I expect.“Coventry wants me to take up the work straight away, so I shouldlike to move into Oldstone Cottage—our future place of abode—assoon as possible. How soon do you think Lady Susan would spare you?By the way, you won’t need to exercise your mind over the servantquestion. Knowing you were fixed out in Switzerland, I wrote off atonce to Maria Coombe to ask her if she knew of any one suitable,and she promptly suggested herself! So she goes to Oldstone Cottageto-morrow to get things in order for us.“I think I’ve told you everything. I’ve tried to imagine all thequestions you would want to ask—and to supply the answers!“Ever your affectionate brother,“ROBIN.”
Ann laid the letter down on her knee and sat looking out across the lake with eyes which held a curious mixture of pleasure and regret. The idea of sharing life once more with Robin filled her with undiluted joy, but she was conscious that the thought of leaving Lady Susan and dear, gunny Switzerland created an actual little ache in her heart. She could quite imagine feeling rather homesick for Lady Susan’s kindly presence, and for the Swiss mountains and the blue lake which lay smiling and dimpling at her now in the brilliant sunlight.
Her glance lingered on the lake. She had not been on the water since the Venetian fête, nearly three weeks ago, owing primarily to the destruction of theRêve, and secondly to Lady Susan’s incurable aversion to a hired boat. “They roll, my dear,” she asserted, when Ann vainly tried to tempt her into giving the hireling a chance. “And the cushions have villainous lumps in sundry places. No, I’ll stay on shore till we have a new boat of our own.”
So they had stayed on shore, but in spite of herself, Ann’s thoughts often travelled back to the occasion of that last journey she had made on the lake—with the purr of the motor-boat’s engine in her ears and the odd, unnerving consciousness of the Englishman’s close proximity. She would have liked to forget him, but there was something about the man which made this impossible. Ann admitted it to herself with an annoyed sense of the unreasonableness of it. He was nothing to her—not even an acquaintance, according to the canons of social convention—and in all human probability they would never meet again.
Yet, try as she might, she had been unable to dismiss him altogether from her thoughts, and since his departure she had several times caught herself wondering, with a fugitive emotion of odd trepidation, whether he would ever return. Once she had even thought she descried him coming towards her along the Grand’ Rue, and when the figure which she had supposed was his resolved itself, upon closer inspection, into that of a total stranger, bearing only the most superficial resemblance to the man for whom she had mistaken him, she experienced a totally disproportionate sense of disappointment.
The news contained in Robin’s letter promised, at any rate, to end all likelihood of any further meeting. Even if, later on, the unknown Englishman should return to Montricheux, it would only be to find her gone. She derived a certain feeling of relief from this thought. There was something disquieting about the man. He made you like and dislike him almost in the same breath. On the whole, Ann felt she would be glad to be in England, freed from the rather disturbing uncertainty as to whether they might or might not meet again. People so often came back to Montricheux.
She folded up Robin’s letter, and, slinging her basket of flowers over her arm, returned to the house, somewhat troubled in mind as to how she should break the news of her impending departure to Lady Susan. The difficulty solved itself, however, more easily than she had anticipated.
“At Silverquay!” exclaimed Lady Susan, when Ann had explained matters. “Now, how charming! I do think Fate is a good-natured old thing sometimes. I shall lose you and yet still keep you, Ann. You’ll be living quite near me.”
Ann looked up in surprise.
“But you don’t live at Silverquay!” she said.
“Almost next door, though. My home, White Windows, is in the neighbouring parish—Heronsfoot—about five miles away, three if you cut across the fields.”
“Then of course you know this Mr. Coventry?”
“No, I’ve never met him. I knew Rackham Coventry, from whom your man inherited, and I’ve heard him speak of his cousin Eliot. They were on very bad terms with each other, so that Eliot never came near the place in poor old Rack’s time, and, as your brother tells you, he was abroad when the property fell in to him. Heronsmere is a lovely old house, by the way.”
“I wonder Mr. Coventry never came back until now,” said Ann. “He must take very little interest in the place.”
“He’s lived abroad for years, I believe. I remember Rack’s telling me he had been crossed in love, and he cut himself adrift from England afterwards. I think the girl threw him over because in those days he wasn’t rich enough. She must feel rather a fool now, if she knows how things have fallen out. The Heronsmere rent-roll is enormous.”
“It rather serves her right, doesn’t it?” commented Ann, with a feeling that for once poetic justice had been meted out.
Lady Susan smiled.
“Yes. Though I always feel a bit sorry for people who get their deserts. You never realise how heavy the bill is going to be when you’re running it up.” She fell silent a moment, then went on: “The pity of it is that I suppose Eliot Coventry will never marry now, and so Heronsmere will ultimately go to a very distant branch of the family. He tried to get himself killed out of the way during the war, I heard. I knew a man in the same regiment, and he told me Eliot didn’t seem to know what the word fear meant—‘Mad Coventry,’ they called him. He took the most amazing risks, and came through without a scratch.”
“While poor Robin got badly wounded and gassed into the bargain,” said Ann. “That’s why I’m so glad he’s got this post. The doctors told him that an out-door job was his one chance of getting really strong again.”
“Yes, I’m very glad—for you,” answered Lady Susan ruefully. “But I shall miss you badly, child. However, if Robin wants you he must have you, and as he wants you to go as soon as possible I should think the best plan is for you to travel back to England with Philip and Tony next week.”
It was typical of Lady Susan that she wasted no time in repining, but promptly proceeded to sketch out a definite plan of action.
“But what about you?” asked Ann with some concern.
“I’ll come with you all as far as Paris, and there you can drop me to do some shopping. I shall stay two or three weeks, I expect.”
Ann’s face still remained clouded. She felt that it was hardly fair to desert Lady Susan so suddenly, much as she longed to join Robin as speedily as possible.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather I stayed with you a little longer?” she suggested earnestly. “I’m sure Robin could manage for a few weeks—especially as he will have Maria Coombe.”
Lady Susan’s quick dark eyes flashed over her.
“Who is Maria Coombe?” she demanded.
Ann laughed.
“Maria Coombe is a host in herself,” she answered. “She’s an old Devonshire servant who was with my mother originally. I believe she came to Lovell when she was about eighteen as kitchen-maid. Then, when Robin and I were kiddies she was our nurse, and after we grew too old to need one she stayed on in a sort of general capacity. I never remember life without Maria until she got married. Her husband was killed in the war, and now she’s coming to Oldstone Cottage to look after us. I’m so delighted about it,” she added. “It will be like old times having Maria around again.”
“That’s really nice for you,” agreed Lady Susan heartily. “Still, I think”—smiling—“Robin will be glad to have his sister, too. And you needn’t worry about me in the least. I’ve heaps of friends in Paris. Besides, Brett Forrester—my scapegrace nephew—is there now, and he and I always amuse each other.”
“Tony knows him, doesn’t he? He mentioned having met him in London, I remember.”
“Yes. I believe they both belong to the same gambling set in town—more’s the pity!” replied Lady Susan, with grim disapproval. “The only difference between them being that Brett gambles and can afford to do it, while Tony gambles—and can’t. I haven’t seen Brett for a long time now,” she went on musingly. “Not since last August, when he was yachting and put in at Silverquay Bay for a few days. He’s always tearing about the world, though he rarely troubles to keep me informed of his whereabouts. I wish to goodness he’d marry and settle down!”
A sudden puff of wind blew in through the open window, disarranging the grouping of a vaseful of flowers, and Ann crossed the room to rectify the damage. Lady Susan’s eyes followed her meditatively. She liked the girl’s supple ease of movement, the clean-cut lines of her small, pointed face. There was something very distinctive about her, she reflected, and she had to the full that odd charm of elusive, latent femininity which is so essentially the attribute of the modern girl with her boyish lines and angles.
“I shall miss you dreadfully, Ann!” she exclaimed impulsively. “I wish you belonged to me.”
She was hardly conscious of the line of thought which had prompted the spontaneous speech. Ann turned round smilingly.
“It’s dear of you to say so,” she replied. “I shall insist on Robin’s letting me come over to White Windows as often as I like—and as you will have me!”
Lady Susan laughed and kissed her.
“You’d better not promise too much—or I shall want to abduct you altogether!” she declared. “I think Robin’s a very lucky young man.”
Once the date of her departure for England was actually fixed, it seemed to Ann as though the days positively flew by. There were a hundred and one things requiring attention. Sleeping-berths must be booked on board the train, last visits paid to various friends and acquaintances, and final arrangements made with regard to the shutting up of Mon Rêve. Last, but not least, there was the packing up of Ann’s own personal belongings, which, in the course of the last six months, seemed to have strayed away into various odd corners of the villa, as is the way of things.
But it was all accomplished at last, and close on midnight the little party of four travellers stood on the deserted platform at Montricheux, watching the great Orient Express thunder up alongside. Followed a hurried gathering together of hand-baggage, a scramble up the steep steps of the railway coach, a piercing whistle, and the train pulled out of the station and went rocking on its way through the starry darkness of the night.
The journey from Montricheux to London accomplished, Ann was speeding through the familiar English country-side once more and finding it doubly attractive after her six months’ sojourn abroad. The train slowed down to manipulate a rather sharp curve in the line as it approached Silverquay station, and she peered eagerly out of the window to see the place which was henceforth to mean home to her. She caught a fleeting glimpse of white cliffs, crowned with the waving green of woods, of the dazzling blue of a bay far below, and of a straggling, picturesque village which climbed the side of a steep hill sloping upward from the shore. Over all lay the warm haze of early July sunshine. Then the train ran into the station and she had eyes only for Robin’s tall, straight figure as he came striding along the platform to meet her.
Brother and sister resembled each other but slightly. In place of Ann’s tempestuous coppery hair Robin was endowed with sober brown, and for her golden-hazel eyes, with their changeful lights, nature had substituted in him a pair of serious greenish-brown ones. But they were attractive eyes, for all that, with a steady, “trustable” expression in them that reminded one of the eyes of a nice fox terrier.
“Robin!” Ann sprang out of the railway-carriage and precipitated herself upon him with unconcealed delight. “Oh, my dear, how are you? Let me have a good look at you!”
She pushed him a little away from her and her eyes flashed over his face and figure searchingly. Then she nodded as though satisfied with her inspection. Whereas when she had last seen him he had limped a bit as a consequence of his wound, to-day he had crossed the platform with the old, easy, swinging stride of the pre-war Robin, and although his face was still rather on the thin side, it had lost the look of delicacy which, a year ago, had worried her considerably.
“Isn’t this all simply splendid, Robin?” she said gaily, as, after giving her luggage in charge of a porter, they made their way out of the station. “Never tell me dreams don’t come true after this—if you dream them hard enough!”
He smiled down at her. Her spontaneous enthusiasm was infectious.
“It certainly looks as if they do,” he agreed. “Here’s our trap. Jump in!”
She regarded the smart ralli-cart and bright bay cob with interest. The latter, held with difficulty by a lad Robin had left in charge, was dancing gently between the shafts, impatient to be off.
“Ourtrap?” queried Ann.
“Yes. It goes with the cottage,” explained Robin. “Coventry’s been awfully decent over everything. Of course, he provides me with a gee to get about on, but as soon as he heard I had a sister coming to live with me he sent down this pony and cart from his own stables. Naturally, I told him that that kind of thing wasn’t included in the bond, but he shut me up with the remark that no woman could be expected to settle down at the back of beyond unless she had something to drive.”
“He must be an extremely nice young man,” commented Ann, as she settled herself in the trap.
Robin gathered up the reins and they set off, the sleek little cob at once breaking into a sharp trot which carried them swiftly along the leafy country road.
“Coventry’s not very young,” observed Robin, as they sped along. “Must be six or seven and thirty, at least. And I don’t thinkyouwould describe him as ‘nice’ if you’d met him. He’s very brusque in his manner at times, and I don’t fancy women figure much in his scheme of existence.”
“Oh, well, he’s of no importance beyond being the source of a perfectly topping billet for you.” Ann brushed the owner of Heronsmere off the map with an airy wave of her hand. “He’s quite at liberty to enjoy his womanless Eden as far as I’m concerned. Men—other than extremely nice brothers, of course!—are really far more bother than they’re worth. They’re—they’re sounexpected”—with a swift recollection of the upsetting vagaries of mood exhibited by a certain member of the sex.
Robin threw her a brief glance, then, drawing his whip lightly across the cob’s glossy flanks, he asked casually:
“And how did you leave the Brabazons?”
“They’re both looking very fit after three months in Switzerland, of course, but I think Tony found it a bit boring compared with Monte Carlo. They came straight on to Montricheux from Mentone, you know.”
“Tony still gambles as much as ever, then?”
Ann’s face clouded.
“I’m afraid he does,” she acknowledged. “At least, whenever he gets the chance.”
“Well, he won’t get much chance down at Lorne,” remarked Robin philosophically.
“They’re not going down to Lorne yet. They go back to Audley Square till the end of this month. That’s quite long enough for Tony to get into trouble”—ruefully. “Lady Susan says he plays a lot in her nephew’s set—that’s the Brett Forrester Tony sometimes speaks of as such a fine bridge player.”
“I’ve heard of Forrester from other people,” observed Robin. “He’s got the reputation of being one of the most dare-devil gamblers in London—in every shape and form. Cards, horses, roulette—anything you like as long as it’s got the element of chance in it.”
Ann’s brows drew together.
“That may be all right for Mr. Forrester. As Lady Susan says, he can afford to throw money away if he chooses. Tony can’t, you know. Sir Philip’s pretty strict over his allowance.”
“I’m rather anxious to meet your Lady Susan,” said Robin. “It was very decent of her to let you leave her almost at once like that.”
“Lady Susan alwayswoulddo the decent thing, I think,” returned Ann, smiling. “The other thing doesn’t seem to occur to her. You’ll meet her before long, as she comes straight home from Paris. Isn’t it strange that you should get this berth and that we should come to live quite close to her?”
“Rather a coincidence.” Robin, occupied in restraining a sudden tendency on the part of the pony to frolic a little as they neared home, replied somewhat abstractedly. He was a good whip, and under his quiet handling the cob soon steadied down to a more reasonable gait and finally pulled up decorously at a green-painted gateway. A diminutive and hugely self-important young urchin, whom Ann learned later to know as Billy Brewster, the odd-job boy, appeared simultaneously and flew to the pony’s head, grasping his bridle with as much promptitude as if there were imminent danger of his bolting at sight. Billy’s ultimate ambition in life was to be a groom—he adored horses—and although, at present, the exigencies of fate ordained that boots, coals, and knives should be added to his lot, he proposed to lose no opportunity of acquiring the right touch of smartness requisite for his future profession.
Ann laughed as she passed through the gate which Robin held open for her, while Billy touched his hat rapturously for the third time.
“Who is that fascinating imp?” she asked. “Is he one of our retainers, Robin?”
He nodded, smiling.
“That’s Billy. He does everything Maria doesn’t choose to do, in addition to grooming the horses. You will observe he is the complete groom—minus livery!”
Ann’s eager glance swept the low, two-storied cottage which faced her. It was a cosy, home-like looking little house, approached by a wide flagged path bordered with sweet, old-fashioned country flowers. One of its walls was half concealed beneath a purple mist of wistaria, while on the other side of the porch roses nodded their heads right up to the very eaves of the roof. From the green-clothed porch itself clustered trumpets of honeysuckle bloom poured forth their meltingly sweet perfume on the air. And framed in the green and gold of the honeysuckle, her face wreathed in smiles, stood the comfortable figure of Maria Coombe.
Ann was conscious of a sudden tightening about her throat. The sight of Maria, with her shrewd, kindly eyes smiling above her plump pink cheeks, and her hands thrust deep into the big, capacious pockets of her snowy apron, just as she remembered her in the long-ago nursery days at Lovell, brought back a flood of tender memories—of the old home in Devon which she had loved so intensely, of Virginia, frail and sweet, filling the place of that dead mother whom she had never known, of all that had gone to make up the happy, care-free days of childhood.
“Maria!” With a cry Ann fled up the flagged path, and the next moment Maria’s arms had enveloped her and she was coaxing and patting and hugging her just as she had done through a hundred childish tragedies in years gone by, with the soft, slurred Devon brogue making familiar music in Ann’s ears.
“There now, there now, miss dear, don’t ‘ee take on like that. ‘Tis a cup of tea you be wanting, sure’s I’m here. An’ I’ve a nice drop of water nearing the boil to make it for you.”
She drew Ann into the living-room—a pleasant sunshiny room with a huge open hearth that promised roaring fires when winter came—and whisked away into the back regions to brew the tea.
Ann smiled up at Robin rather dewily.
“Oh, Robin, we ought to be awfully happy here!” she exclaimed. As she spoke, like a shadow passing betwixt her and the sun, came the memory of the morning at Montricheux, when she had been waiting for Lady Susan’s coming and some vague foreboding of the future had knocked warningly at the door of her consciousness. For a moment the walls of the little room seemed to melt away, dissolving into thick folds of fog which rolled towards her in ever darker and darker waves, threatening to engulf her. Instinctively she stretched out her hand to ward them off, but they only drew nearer, closing round her relentlessly. And then, just as she felt that there was no escape, and that they must submerge her utterly, there came the rattle of crockery, followed by Maria’s heavy tread as she marched into the room carrying the tea-tray, and the illusion vanished.
“There’s your tea, Miss Ann and Master Robin, an’ some nice hot cakes as I’ve baked for you.” Maria surveyed her handiwork with obvious satisfaction. “And I’m sure I wish you both luck and may a dark woman be the first to cross your threshold.”
“You superstitious old thing, Maria!” laughed Robin. “As if it could make twopenny-worth of difference whether a blonde or brunette called upon us first!”
“I don’t know nothing about blondes and brunettes, sir,” replied Maria, with truth. “But they do say ‘twill bring you luck if so be a dark woman’s the first to cross your threshold after the New Year’s in, and it seems only reasonable that ‘twould be the same when you go into a new house.”
Unfortunately Maria’s hopes were not destined to be fulfilled, as the first person to cross the threshold of Oldstone Cottage after Ann’s arrival was Caroline Tempest, the rector’s sister. “Miss Caroline,” as she was invariably called by the villagers, was a flat-chested, colourless individual with one of those thin noses which seem to have grown permanently elongated at the point in the process of prying into other people’s business. Her hair, once flaxen, was now turning the ugly yellowish grey which is the fair woman’s curse, and her eyes were like pale blue china beads.
She appeared, accompanied by the rector, about half an hour after Maria had brought in tea, and seemed overwhelmed to discover that Ann herself had only just arrived.
“I really must apologise,” she declared, in the voice of a superior person making a very generous concession. “I quite thought you were expecting your sister yesterday, Mr. Lovell. I told you so, didn’t I, Brian?” She appealed to her brother, who nodded rather unhappily. “And we thought we’d like to call as soon as possible and welcome you to the parish.”
Ann didn’t believe a word of it.
“She knew perfectly well you were expecting me to-day,” she declared when, later on, she and Robin found themselves alone again. “Though I haven’t the slightest doubt she told that nice brother of hers just what she wished him to believe. She simply wanted to have first look at me so as to be able to give the village to-morrow a full, true, and particular account of what I’m like.”
However, she replied to Miss Caroline’s apologies with the necessary cordiality demanded by the occasion and, ringing for Maria, ordered fresh tea. The rector protested.
“No, no,” he said hastily. “You must be far too tired to want visitors when you’ve only just come off a long journey. We’ll pay our call another day.”
Brian Tempest was the very antithesis of his sister—tall and somewhat ascetic-looking, with a face to which one was almost tempted to apply the word beautiful, it was so well-proportioned and cut with the sure fineness of a cameo. His dark hair was sprinkled with grey at the temples, and beneath a broad, tranquil brow looked out a pair of kindly, luminous eyes that were neither all brown nor all grey. Later, when she knew him better, Ann was wont to inform him that his eyes were a “heather mixture—like tweed.” Small, fine lines puckered humorously at their corners, and there was humour, too, in the long, thin-lipped mouth.
Robin and Ann brushed aside his protest with a hearty sincerity there was no mistaking. Whatever each of them might feel concerning Miss Caroline, they were in complete accord in the welcome they extended to her brother. He was no stranger to Robin. The latter had put up at the village inn during the time occupied by Maria Coombe in “cleaning down” the Cottage and making it habitable, and the rector had dropped in to see him in a characteristically informal, friendly fashion on more than one occasion.
The two chatted together while Miss Caroline put Ann through a searching catechism as to her past, present, and future mode of life, including the age at which her parents had died, the particular kind of work she had undertaken during the war—appearing somewhat taken aback when Ann explained that she had driven a car, the making of shirts and mufflers coming more within the scope of Caroline’s own idea as to what was “suitable” work for a young girl—and the length of time she had lived with Lady Susan. The coincidence of Robin’s obtaining a post in the neighbourhood of Lady Susan’s home impressed her enormously, as fate’s unexpected shufflings of the cards invariably do impress those whose existence is passed in a very narrow groove.
“It’s really most extraordinary!” she declared, scrutinising Ann much as though she suspected her of having somehow juggled matters in order to produce such a phenomenon. “Did you hear that, Brian? Miss Lovell has been living with our dear Lady Susan.” She spoke as if she held proprietary rights in Lady Susan. “Isn’t it extraordinary that now she and her brother should have come to live so near White Windows?”
“I think it’s a very charming happening,” replied the rector, “since Oldstone Cottage is even nearer to the rectory!”
He smiled across at Ann—a quick, sympathetic smile that seemed to establish them on a footing of friendly intimacy at once.
“Really,” went on Miss Caroline, doggedly pursuing the line of thought to the bitter end of her commonplace mind, “it’s as though it weremeantin some way—that you should come to Silverquay.”
“Probably it was,” returned the rector simply, and Ann observed a quiet, dreaming expression come into his eyes—a look of inner vision, tranquilly content and confident.
“Fancy if it turns out like that!” exclaimed Miss Caroline. “It would be a most singular thing, wouldn’t it, if it was reallyintended?”
“Not at all,” answered Brian composedly. “You’re speaking as though you regarded the Almighty as a thoughtless kind of person who would let things happen, just anyhow.”
“Brian!” Miss Caroline’s tones shuddered with shocked reproach. Her brother often shocked her; he seemed to think of God as simply and naturally as he might of any other friend. She herself, in the course of her parochial work in the village, habitually represented Him as a somewhat prying and easily offended individual who kept a particularly sharp eye on the inhabitants of Silverquay.
She hastily turned the conversation on to less debatable ground.
“We shall have quite a lot of fresh people in the neighbourhood,” she remarked sociably. “Mr. Coventry himself is a stranger to us all, and then there will be a new-comer at the Priory, too.”
“Mrs. Hilyard, you mean?” said Robin.
“Yes.” Miss Caroline looked full of importance. “I hear she arrives to-day. The carrier told our cook that he was ordered to meet the four-thirty train this afternoon—to fetch a quantity of luggage.”
“Is there aMr.Hilyard?” asked Ann casually. She could see that Miss Caroline was bursting with gossipy news which she was aching to impart.
“No, she’s a widow, I hear, and very wealthy. The furniture that’s been coming down by rail is of most excellent quality—most excellent!”
“How do you know, Caroline?” inquired the rector, his eyes twinkling with amusement.
“Well,entirelyby accident, I happened to be taking a basin of chicken broth to old Mrs. Skinner—you know, she lives in one of the Priory cottages—on the very day the pantechnicons were delivering at the house, and I saw quite a number of the chairs and tables as they were being carried in.”
The twinkle in Brian’s eyes grew more pronounced.
“I’m afraid you must have stood and watched the unloading process, then.”
“Well, I suppose I did—just for a minute,” she acknowledged, adding with some asperity: “It would be quite fitting if you took a little keener interest in future parishioners, Brian.”
“My interest in my future parishioners is quite keen, I assure you—though I don’t know that it extends to their furniture,” replied the rector, laughing.
“Oh, well, it’s nice to know that some one has taken the Priory who is in a position to keep it up properly,” persisted his sister. “Don’t you agree, Miss Lovell?”
“Of course,” said Ann. “Besides”—smiling across at the rector—“as we’re as poor as church mice, it’s just as well the new arrival at the Priory should he rich—to even things up.”
“I think it’s all very interesting,” pursued Miss Caroline, still intent on her own train of thought. “Here’s Mr. Coventry come home at last to live at Heronsmere—a very eligible bachelor—and with this Mrs. Hilyard, a wealthy widow, living so near by it wouldn’t be at all surprising if something came of it.”
The rector jumped up, laughing good-humouredly.
“Caroline! Caroline! I must really take you home after that, or Miss Lovell will think Silverquay is a veritable hot-bed of gossip. Coventry hasn’t been in the neighbourhood a month, poor man, and here you are trying to tie him up with a lady who doesn’t even arrive until this afternoon!”
“Besides,” suggested Robin, smiling broadly, “she may be a really disconsolate widow, you know.”
Miss Caroline shook her head.
“I don’t think so,” she answered obstinately. “The furniture didn’t look like it. One of the packages was a little torn, and I caught sight of the curtains inside. They were rose colour.”
“That was really quite bright of Miss Caroline,” observed Ann with some amusement, when the rector and his sister had started for home. “Only she didn’t know it!”
The morning breeze darted in and out of Ann’s bedroom like a child tentatively trying to inveigle a grown-up person into playing hide-and-seek. With every puff a big cluster of roses, which had climbed to the sill, swayed forward and peeped inside, sending a whiff of delicate perfume across to where Ann was kneeling, surrounded by trunks and suitcases, unpacking her belongings. Pleasant little sounds of life floated up from outdoors—the clucking of a hen, the stamping of the bay cob as Billy Brewster groomed him, whistling softly through his teeth while he brushed and curry-combed, the occasional honk of a motor-horn as a car sped by in the distance. Then came the beat of a horse’s hoofs, stopping abruptly outside the cottage gate.
Ann did not pause in her occupation of emptying a hatbox of its tissue-shrouded contents. Robin had ridden away almost immediately after breakfast, so she merely supposed that, having started early, he had returned early. But a minute later Maria was standing in the doorway of the room, her broad face red with the exertion of hurrying upstairs, her eyes blinking excitedly.
“‘Tis Mr. Coventry himself, miss,” she announced. “He didn’t inquire if any one was at home, but just followed me in and asked me to tell Master Robin he was here.”
Ann rose reluctantly from her knees, dusting her hands together.
“All right, Maria, I’ll go down and see him. Perhaps he can leave a message with me for Robin. I hope, though,” she added with a faint sense of irritation, “that he isn’t going to make a habit of dropping in here in the mornings.”
Only pausing to push back a stray lock of hair, she ran quickly downstairs and into the living-room.
“I’m so sorry”—she began speaking almost as she crossed the threshold—“but my brother is out.”
With a stifled ejaculation the man standing in the shadow of the tall, old-fashioned chimneypiece wheeled round, and Ann found herself looking straight into the grey eyes of the Englishman from Montricheux. For a moment there was a silence—the silence of utter mutual astonishment, while Ann was wretchedly conscious of the flush that mounted slowly to her very temples. The man was the first to recover himself.
“So,” he said, “youare Miss Lovell!”
Something in his tone stung Ann into composure.
“Yes,” she replied coolly. “You don’t sound altogether pleased at the discovery.”
“Pleased?” His eyes rested on her with a species of repressed annoyance. “It doesn’t make much difference whether we’re—either of us—pleased or not, does it?”
His meaning appeared perfectly plain to Ann. For some reason which she could not fathom he found her appearance on the scene the very reverse of pleasing.
“I don’t see that it matters in any case,” she replied frostily. “The fact that I happen to be your agent’s sister doesn’t compel you to see any more of me than you wish to.”
“True. And if I’d known you were here I wouldn’t have come blundering in this morning.”
“I arrived yesterday,” vouchsafed Ann. “Won’t you sit down?” she added with perfunctory politeness. She seated herself, and in obedience to her gesture he mechanically followed suit.
“Yes, you were expected to-day, weren’t you? I’d forgotten,” he said abstractedly.
No one particularly enjoys being assured that they have been forgotten, and Ann’s eyes sparkled with suppressed indignation.
“Can I give my brother any message for you?” she asked stiffly.
All at once he smiled—that sudden, singularly sweet smile of his which transformed the harsh lines of his face and which seemed to have so little in common with his habitual brusqueness.
“I’ve been behaving like a boor, haven’t I?” he admitted. “Forgive me. And can’t we be friends? After all, I’ve some sort of claim. I pulled you out of Lac Léman—or rather, prevented your tumbling into it, you know.”
He spoke with a curious persuasive charm. There was something almost boyishly disarming about his manner. It was as though for a moment a prickly, ungracious husk had dropped away, revealing the real man within. He held out his hand, and as Ann laid hers within it she felt her spirits rising unaccountably.
“I hope you’ll like it here,” he pursued. He glanced round with a discontented expression. “Does the cottage furniture satisfy you? Is it what you like?”
“It’s perfectly charming,” she replied whole-heartedly. “I love old-fashioned things.”
“Well, if there’s anything you’d like altered or want sending down, you must let me know. There are stacks of stuff up at Heronsmere.”
“You’ve already sent down the one thing to complete my happiness,” she answered, smiling. “That jolly little pony.”
“Oh, Dick Turpin. Do you like him?”
“Is that his name? Yes, I like him immensely. Thank you so much for sending him.” She paused, then added rather shyly: “I always seem to be thanking you for something, don’t I? First for rescuing my bag at the Kursaal, then for rescuing me, and now for Dick Turpin!”
“You can’t do without a cob”—briefly. “Do you ride?”
She nodded.
“Yes. I thought of riding him sometimes. Does he ride all right?”
“Oh, he’s quiet enough. But if you want to hunt next winter, you must let me mount you.” His glance rested on her slim, boyish contours. “I’ve a little thoroughbred mare up at Heronsmere—Redwing, she’s called—who would carry you perfectly.”
“Oh, I couldn’t—you mustn’t—” she began with some embarrassment.
“Nonsense!” He interrupted her brusquely. “What are you going to do down here if you don’t ride and drive? Lovell will have his work. But you won’t.”
“I’m proposing to keep chickens,” announced Ann. “I’m not in the least an idle person. You lose the habit if you’ve earned your own living for several years,” she added, with a touch of amusement.
“Have you done that?”
She assented.
“Of course I have. You can’t live on air, you know, and as my father didn’t leave us much else, Robin and I both had to work.”
He regarded her with brooding eyes. She was so gay and cheery about it all that, against his will, his thoughts were driven back amongst old memories, recalling another woman he had known who had chosen to escape from poverty by a different road from the clean, straight one of hard work. She had funked the sharp corners of life, that other, in a way in which this girl with the clear, brown-gold eyes that met the World so squarely would never funk them.
Before he could formulate any answer there came the sound of the house-door opening and closing. He rose hastily from his chair.
“Ah! That must be your brother!” he exclaimed, a note of what sounded almost like relief in his voice. He seemed glad of the distraction, and shook hands cordially with Robin when he came in.
“I’m sorry I was out,” began the latter. But Coventry cut short his apologies.
“Don’t apologise,” he said. “It has given Miss Lovell and myself the opportunity of renewing our acquaintance.”
Robin looked from one to the other in surprise.
“Have you met before, then?” he asked.
Ann explained.
“At Montricheux,” she replied. “Mr. Coventry saved me from a watery grave on the night of the Venetian Fête there.”
“From nothing more dangerous than a wetting, actually,” interpolated Coventry in his abrupt way.
“Well, even that’s something to be thankful for,” returned Robin, smiling. “Will you smoke?”
He offered his cigarette-case, and the two men lit up.
“I’ve just been over to see Farmer Sparkes,” he continued. “He’s put in a list as long as your arm of repairs he wants doing.”
Coventry laughed good-humouredly.
“I suppose they’ll all be sticking me for alterations and repairs now I’ve come back,” he said. “What’s the use of a landlord unless you can squeeze something out of him?”
“I’m afraid there is a bit of that attitude about most tenants,” admitted Robin. “I expect the new owner of the Priory will get let in for the same thing. One or two of the Priory cottages want doing up, it’s true.”
“Have you seen her yet, Robin?” inquired Ann quickly, with feminine curiosity.
“Mrs. Hilyard, do you mean? No, I didn’t come across her this morning.”
“Whodid you say?” asked Coventry.
Something in the quality of his voice brought Ann’s eyes swiftly to his face. All the geniality had gone out of it. It was set and stern, and there was an odd watchfulness in the glance he levelled at Robin as he spoke.
“Mrs. Hilyard—the new owner of the Priory,” explained Robin. “She arrived yesterday.”
“Hilyard?” repeated Coventry. “Some one told me the name was Hilton. You don’t know what Hilyard she is, I suppose?”
“No, I don’t know anything about her. But Hilyard’s a fairly common name.”
“Yes, I suppose it’s fairly common,” agreed Coventry slowly.
As though to dismiss the topic, he returned to the matter of the repairs required on Sparkes’ farm, and for a few minutes the two men were engrossed in details connected with the management of the estate. But Ann noticed that Coventry seemed curiously abstracted. He allowed his cigarette to smoulder between his fingers till it went out beneath their pressure, and presently, bringing the discussion with Robin to a sudden close, he got up to go. He tendered his farewell somewhat abruptly, mounted his horse, which had been standing tethered to the gateway by its bridle, and rode away at a hand-gallop.
Ann made no comment at the time, as Robin seemed rather preoccupied with estate matters, but over dinner in the evening she broached the subject upon which she had been exercising her mind at intervals throughout the day.
“Robin, did you notice Mr. Coventry’s expression when you mentioned Mrs. Hilyard?”
Robin looked up doubtfully from one of Maria’s beautifully grilled cutlets.
“His expression? No, I don’t think I was looking at him particularly. He thought she was called Hilton, or something, didn’t he?”
Ann went off into a small gale of laughter.
“Does a man ever notice anything unless it’s right under his nose?” she demanded dramatically of the universe at large. “My dear,” she went on, “his face altered the instant you mentioned Mrs. Hilyard’s name.”
“Well, but why should it?” demanded Robin, still at sea.
“I think,” she pronounced oracularly, “thataMrs. Hilyard must have played a rather important part in Mr. Coventry’s life at one time or another.”
“Well, it’s no business of ours if she did,” responded Robin unsympathetically.
“No. But it would be queer if the Mrs. Hilyard who’s bought the Priory happened to be the other Mrs. Hilyard—the one Mr. Coventry knew before.”
“We’ve no grounds for assuming that he ever knew a Mrs. Hilyard at all, and if he did—as I said before, it’s no business of ours.”
There never was a real woman yet who failed to be intrigued by the suggestion of a romance lying dormant in the past life of a man of her acquaintance, and Ann was far too essentially feminine to pretend that her interest was not piqued.
“No, of course it’s no business of ours,” she agreed. “But still, one may take an intelligent interest in one’s fellow beings, I suppose.”
“It depends upon circumstances,” replied Robin. “I’m here as Coventry’s agent, and my employer’s private affairs are no concern of mine.”
There was just a suspicion of the “elder brother” in his manner—only a suspicion, but it was quite sufficient to arouse all the latent contrariety of woman which Ann possessed.
“Well, Mrs. Hilyard isn’t your employer,” she retorted. “So I’ve a perfect right to feel interested in her.”
“But not in her relation to Mr. Coventry,” maintained Robin seriously.
The corners of Ann’s mouth curled up in a mutinous smile, and her eyes danced.
“My dear Robin, you can’t insulate a woman as you can an electric wire—at least, not if she has any pretensions to good looks.”
“No, I suppose you can’t,” he admitted, smiling back unwillingly. “More’s the pity, sometimes!”
There, for the moment, the subject dropped, but the imp of mischief still flickered defiantly in the golden-brown eyes, and when, after dinner was over, Maria brought in the coffee, Ann threw out a tentative remark which instantly achieved its nefarious purpose of loosening the springs of Maria’s garrulity.
“They be telling up a tale in the village about the new lady as has taken the Priory,” began Maria conversationally.
Ann sugared her coffee with an air of detachment, and watched Robin fidgeting out of the tail of her eye.
“You shouldn’t listen to gossip, Maria,” she reprimanded primly.
“Well, miss, ‘tis true folks say you shouldn’t believe all you hear, and ‘tis early days to speak, seeing she’s scarcely into her house yet, as you may say.”
“You give me an uncomfortable feeling that she spent the night on the doorstep,” observed Ann.
“Oh, no, miss,” replied Maria, matter-of-factly. “She slept in her bed all right last night. But maybe, for all that, it’s true what folks are saying,” she added darkly. “I’d run out of sugar, so I just stepped round to the grocer this evening after tea, and he told me ‘twas all the tale in the village that this Mrs. Hilyard isn’t a widow at all, and some of them think she’s no better than she should be.”
An ejaculation of annoyance broke from Robin.
“The tittle-tattle in these twopenny-halfpenny villages is almost past believing!” he exclaimed angrily. “Here’s an absolute new-comer arrives in the district, and they’ve begun taking away the poor woman’s character already.”
“Well, sir, of course I’m only speaking what I hear,” replied Maria, who, with all her good points—and they were many—had the true West Country relish for any titbit of gossip, whether with or without foundation. “Let’s hope ‘tisn’t true. But they say her clothes do be good enough for the highest lady in the land. Mrs. Thorowgood—her that’s been helping up to the Priory all day—called in on her way home just to pass the time of day with me. It seems Mrs. Hilyard has arranged she shall wash for her, and she was taking a few of her things home with her for to wash to-morrow. And she told me her own self, did Mrs. Thorowgood, that the lace on them be so fine as spider’s web.”
Ann endeavoured to conceal her mirth and reply with becoming gravity.
“Maria, dear, if a disreputable character is considered inseparable from pretty undies in Silverquay, I’m afraid I shall get as bad a reputation as Mrs. Hilyard,” she suggested meekly.
“You, miss?” Maria’s loyalty rose in wrathful protest. “And whoshouldhave good things if ‘tisn’t you, I’d like to know? ‘Twouldn’t be fitting for any Miss Lovell of Lovell Court to have things that wasn’t of the very best. And as to telling up little old tales—there’ll be no tales told about you, nor Mr. Robin neither, so long as I’m in Silverquay. I’ll see to that!”
Thoroughly devoted, illogical, and belligerent, Maria picked up the coffee tray and stalked out of the room, leaving Ann and Robin convulsed with laughter.