The Duchess, a few mornings later, leaned back in her car and watched the perilous progress of her footman, dodging in and out of the traffic in the widest part of Piccadilly. He returned presently in safety, escorting the object of his quest. The Duchess pointed to the seat by her side.
"Can I take you or drop you anywhere?" she asked. "Please don't look as though you had been taken into custody. I saw you in the distance, walking aimlessly along, and I really wanted to talk to you."
David for a moment indulged in the remains of what was almost a boyish resentment.
"I have to go to the Savoy," he explained, "and I was rather intending to walk across St. James's Park."
"You can walk after your lunch," she insisted. "If you walk before, it gives you too much of an appetite,—afterwards, it helps your digestion, so get in with me, and I will drive you to the Savoy."
He took his place by her side with a distinct air of resignation. The Duchess laughed at him.
"You are a very silly person to dislike other people so," she admonished. "If you begin to give way to misanthropy at your time of life, you will be a withered up old stick whom no one will want to be decent to, except to get money out of, before you're fifty. Don't you know that the society of human beings is good for you?"
"There isn't a medicine in the world one can't take too much of," David ventured, smiling in spite of himself.
"To the Savoy, John," his mistress directed. "Tell Miles to drive slowly. To abandon abstruse discussions," she continued, leaning back, "have you regarded my warning?"
"Which one?" he demanded.
"I mean with reference to my brother. I happen to have come across him once or twice, during the last few days. On Wednesday he was in the most buoyant spirits—for him. He had the air of a man who has accomplished some great feat. If you only knew how amusing Reginald is at such times! His manner isn't in the least different, but you know perfectly well that he is thinking himself one of the most brilliant creatures ever born. There is a note of the finest and most delicate condescension in the way he speaks. I am perfectly certain that if he had happened to come across the Chancellor of the Exchequer on Wednesday, he would have discussed finance with him in a patronising fashion, and probably offered him a few hints as to how to reduce the National Debt."
"On Wednesday this was," David murmured.
"And on Friday," the Duchess continued, "he was a different man. He carried himself exactly as usual, but his footsteps were falling like lead. He looked over the eyes of every one, and there was that queer, grey look in his face which helps one to remember that, notwithstanding his figure, he is nearly sixty years old. What have you been doing to him, Mr. Thain?"
"Nothing that would account for his latter state," David assured her.
"When did you see him last?" she asked.
"On Thursday."
"Where?"
David hesitated.
"At Trewly's Restaurant."
"He was lunching or dining with some one?"
"Dining."
The Duchess nodded.
"Of course! With a lady, wasn't it?"
"Is this a fair cross-examination?" David protested.
"My dear Mr. Thain, don't be absurd," his companion admonished. "Every one in London and out of it has known of my brother's friendship with Marcia Hannaway for years. As a matter of fact, we all approve of it immensely. The young woman, although she must be getting on now, is a very clever writer, and I think that the influence she has exercised upon Reginald, throughout his life, has been an excellent one. So that was Thursday night, eh?"
David assented. He was looking out of the window of the car, as though interested in the passing throngs.
"I will tell you something," the Duchess continued. "You have heard, I dare say, of the lawsuits down at Mandeleys, and of that keeper's cottage within a hundred yards from the lawn, and of the old man Vont, who has come back just as bitter as ever? That girl is his daughter."
"The Marquis seems to have displayed the most extraordinary fidelity," David remarked.
"My dear Mr. Thain," was the emphatic reply, "they have been the making of one another's lives. It is the sort of thing one reads more of in French memoirs than meets with in actual life, but I can assure you that Reginald would be absolutely miserable without her, and she—well, see what she has become through his influence and companionship. Yet they tell me that that old man has come back to his ridiculous cottage, and sits there in the front garden, reading the Bible and blasting the very gooseberry bushes with his curses against Reginald. Most uncomfortable it will be, I should think, when you all get down there."
"Nothing that you have said alters the fact," David reminded her, "that Vont's daughter has been all her life, and is to-day, in an invidious situation with regard to your brother."
The Duchess's eyebrows were slightly raised.
"And why not?" she asked, in genuine surprise. "Of course, I don't claim to be so absolutely feudal in my ideas as Reginald, but I still cannot find the slightest disadvantage which has accrued to the young woman from her position."
"I have been brought up myself in a different school," David said quietly, "in the school Richard Vont was brought up in. I see no difference fundamentally between a Marquis and a gamekeeper, and to me the womenkind of the gamekeeper should be as sacred to the Marquis as the womenkind of the Marquis to the gamekeeper."
The Duchess laughed good-humouredly.
"I have always insisted," she declared, "that America is the most backward country in the world. So many of you come to Europe now, though, that one would have thought you would have attained to a more correct perspective of life. But you are certainly much more amusing as you are. No, be quiet, please," she went on. "I didn't call for you to enter into general discussions. I just wanted to know about Reginald. Of course, you have discovered already that I am ridiculously fond of him, and I am trying to find out what is depressing him so much. Do you know what I am most afraid of?"
"I have no idea," David confessed. "The workings of your mind seem to lead you to such unexpected conclusions."
"Don't be peevish," she replied. "What I am really more afraid of than anything is that Marcia Hannaway will leave him."
"Why?"
The Duchess shrugged her shoulders.
"She is twenty years younger than Reginald, and she has made for herself an entirely new place in life. That is the wonderful goal a woman reaches who has brains and is enabled to put them to some practical use. She has a circle of friends and admirers and sympathisers, already made. Now Reginald is a dear, but his outlook upon life is almost whimsical, and I have always wondered whether he would be able to hold a woman like this to the end. The only thing is," she concluded ruminatively, "that the affair has been going on for so long, and is so well known, that it would be positively indecent of her to break it off. Don't you think so, Mr. Thain?"
David looked at the Duchess and shook his head.
"Honestly," he admitted, "I can't give an opinion. I thought I understood something of human nature before I came into touch with you and those few members of your aristocracy whom I have met through you. But frankly, to use a homely metaphor, you take the wind out of my sails. I don't know where I am when you lay down the law. There is something wrong between us fundamentally. I was brought up the same way Vont was brought up. Things were right or wrong, moral or immoral. You people seem to have made laws of your own."
"It's time some one revised the old ones," his companion laughed. "However, I can see that you can be no help to me about Reginald, and here we are at the Savoy. By-the-by, I've never seen you except with men. Have you no women friends? Are none of those charming little musical comedy ladies I see through the windows there expecting you as their host?"
"They look very attractive," David admitted, smiling back at his companion, "but I am, in reality, lunching alone. I came here because I know my stockbroker lunches every day in the grillroom, and I want to see him."
"How pathetic!" she sighed. "I really believe that I have a duty in connection with you."
"At any rate," he promised, as he held out his hand, "there is a man here who will serve us some American lobster which is very nearly the real thing."
"Don't make me feel too gluttonous," she begged, as she stepped out. "I really am not in the habit of inviting myself to luncheon like this, but the fact of it is—"
She hesitated. He passed behind her into the little vestibule.
"Well?"
"Well, I rather like you, Mr. David Thain," she whispered. "You won't be vain about it, will you, but all the financiers I have ever met have been so extraordinarily full of their money and how they made it. You are different, aren't you?"
"I am content if you find me so," he answered, with rare gallantry.
David ordered a thoroughly American luncheon, of which his guest heartily approved.
"If you Americans," she observed, "only knew how to live as well as you know how to eat, what a nation you would be!"
"We fancy that we have some ideas that way, also," he told her. "Wherein do we fail most, from your English point of view?"
"In matters of sex," the Duchess replied coolly. "You know so much more about lobster Newburg than you do about women. I suppose it is all this strenuous money-getting that is responsible for your ignorance. No one over here, you see, tries for anything very much."
"You certainly all live in a more enervating atmosphere," David admitted.
"Tell me about your younger days?" she demanded.
"There is nothing to tell in the least interesting," he assured her. "My people were poor. I was sent to Harvard with great difficulty by a relative who kept a boot store. I became a clerk in a railway office, took a fancy to the work and planned out some schemes—which came off."
"How much money have you, in plain English?" she asked.
"About four millions," he answered.
"And what are you going to do with it?"
"Buy an estate, for one thing," he replied. "Fortunately, I am very fond of shooting and riding, so I suppose I shall amuse myself."
"Are those your only resources?" she enquired, with a faint smile.
"I may marry."
"Come, this gets more interesting! Any lady in your mind yet?"
"None whatever," he assured her, with almost exaggerated firmness.
"You'd better give yourself a few years first and then let me choose for you," she suggested. "I know just the type—unless you change."
"And why should I change?"
"Because," she said, eying him penetratively, "there is at present something bottled up in you. I do not know what it is, and if I asked you wouldn't tell me, but you're not quite your natural self, whatever that may be. Is it, I wonder, the result of that twenty years' struggle of yours? Perhaps you have really lost the capacity for generous life, Mr. Thain."
"You are a very observant person."
"Trust me, then, and tell me your secret sorrow?" she suggested. "I could be a very good friend, Mr. Thain, if friends amuse you."
"I have lived under a shadow," he confessed. "I am sorry, but I cannot tell you much about it. But in a sense you are right. Life for me will begin after the accomplishment of a certain purpose."
"You have a rival to ruin, eh?"
"No, it isn't that," he assured her. "It happens to be something of which I could not give you even the smallest hint."
"Well, I don't see how you are going to get on with it down at Broomleys," she observed. "What a horrid person you are to go there at all! You might as well bury yourself. You have the wealth of a Monte Cristo and you take a furnished villa—for that's all it is! Perhaps you are waiting till the mortgages fall in, to buy Mandeleys? Or did my warning come too late and is Letitia the attraction?"
He was conscious of her close observation, but he gave no sign.
"I have seen nothing of Lady Letitia," he said, "but even if she were content to accept my four millions as a compensation for my other disadvantages, it would make no difference."
"Any entanglements on the other side?" she asked airily.
"None!"
The Duchess finished her lobster and leaned back in her chair. Through her tiny platinum lorgnette she looked around the room for several moments. Then a little abruptly she turned again to him.
"Really," she said, "people are doing such mad things, now-a-days, that I am not at all sure that I am right in putting you off Letitia. It would be frightfully useful to have four millions in the family. And yet, do you know," she went on, "it's queer, isn't it, but I don't want you to marry my niece."
"Why not?"
"How crude!" she sighed. "I really shall have to take a lot of trouble with you, Mr. David Thain. However, if you persist—because Letitia is my niece."
"And you don't like me well enough," he asked, "to accept me as a husband for your niece?"
She laughed at him very quietly.
"Are you very ingenuous," she demanded, "or just a little subtle? Hadn't it occurred to you, for instance, that I might prefer to keep you to myself?"
"You must forgive me if I seem stupid," he begged, "or unresponsive. I don't wish to be either. I can understand that in America I might be a person of some interest. Over here—well, the whole thing is different, isn't it? Apart from my money, I know and realise how ignorant I am of your ways, of the things to do here and how to do them. I feel utterly at a disadvantage with every one, unless they happen to want my money."
"You are too modest, Mr. Thain," she declared, leaning a little towards him and dropping her voice. "I will tell you one reason why you interest me. It is because I am quite certain that there is something in your life, some purpose or some secret, which you have not confided to any living person in this country. I want to know what it is. It isn't exactly vulgar inquisitiveness, believe me. I am perfectly certain that there is something more of you than you show to people generally."
David was conscious of an odd sense of relief. After all, the woman was only curious—and it was most improbable that her curiosity would lead her in the right direction.
"You are very discerning, Duchess," he said. "Unfortunately, I have no confidence to offer you. The one secret in my life is some one else's and not my own."
"And you never betray a confidence?" she asked, looking at him steadfastly. "You could be trusted?"
"I hope so," he assured her.
Their lunch passed on to its final stages. The Duchess smoked a Russian cigarette with her coffee, and it seemed to him that imperceptibly she had moved a little nearer to him. Her elbows were upon the table and her hands clasped. She seemed for a moment to study one or two quaint rings upon her fingers.
"A few more questions, and I shall feel that we know one another," she said. "Just why have you left America and this wonderful pursuit of wealth?"
"Because there were no more railways in which I was interested," he answered, "nor any particular speculation or enterprise that appealed to me. I have more money than I can ever spend, and I know very well that if I remained in America I should have no peace. I should be a target for years for every man who has land to sell near railways, or shares to sell, or an invention to perfect. As soon as I decided to wind up, I decided also that it was necessary for me to clear right away. Apart from that, England and English life attracts me."
"And this purpose?" she enquired. "This secret—which is somebody else's secret?"
"Such as it is," he replied, "it belongs to this country."
"How old are you?" she asked suddenly.
"I am thirty-seven," he told her.
She sighed. Her slightly tired blue eyes seemed to be looking through the little cloud of cigarette smoke to the confines of the room.
"A magnificent age for a man," she murmured, "but a little ghastly for a woman. I was thirty-nine last birthday. Never mind, one has the present. So here are you, in the prime of life, with an immense fortune and no responsibilities. If Disraeli had been alive, he would have written a novel about you. There is so much which you could do, so much in which you could fail. Will you become just a man about town here, make friends partly in Bohemia and partly amongst some of us, endow a theatre and marry the first chorus girl who is too clever for you? Or—"
"I am more interested in the 'or,'" he declared rashly.
She turned her eyes slightly without moving her head, and knocked the ash from her cigarette into her plate.
"Let us go," she said, a little abruptly. "I am tired of talking here. If you really wish to know, you can accept the invitation which I shall send you presently, and come to Scotland."
Letitia and her escort pulled up their horses at the top of Rotten Row. Letitia was a little out of breath, but her colour was delightful, and the slight disarrangement of her tightly coiled brown hair most becoming.
"It was dear of you, Charlie, to think of lending me a hack," she declared. "I haven't enjoyed a gallop so much for ages. When we get down to Mandeleys I am going to raid Bailey's stables. He always has some young horses."
"Want schooling a bit before they're fit to ride," Grantham observed.
"If I had been born in another walk of life," Letitia said, "I am sure horse-breaking would have been my profession. You haven't been in to see us for ages, Charles."
"You weren't particularly gracious the last time I did come," he reminded her gloomily.
"Don't be silly," she laughed. "You must have come on an irritating afternoon. I get into such a terrible tangle sometimes with my housekeeping accounts up here. You know how impossible dad is with money matters, and he leaves everything to me."
The young man cleared his throat.
"I think you've borne the burdens of the family long enough," he remarked. "I wish you'd try mine."
"You do choose the most original forms of proposal," Letitia acknowledged frankly. "As a matter of fact, I have had enough of keeping accounts. I have almost made up my mind that when I do marry, if I ever do, I will marry some one enormously wealthy, who can afford to let me have a secretary-steward as well as a housekeeper."
"You've been thinking of that fellow Thain," he muttered.
"Oh, no, I haven't!" she replied. "Mr. Thain is a very pleasant person, but I can assure you that I have never considered him matrimonially. I suppose I ought to have done," she went on, "but, you know, I am just a little old-fashioned."
"I can't see what's the matter with me," the young man said disconsolately. "I've a bit of my own, a screw from my job, and the governor allows me a trifle. We might work it up to ten thousand a year. We ought to be able to make a start on that."
"It is positive wealth," Letitia acknowledged, "but I am sure you don't want me really, and I haven't the least inclination to get married, and heaven knows what would happen to dad if I let him go back to bachelor apartments!"
"He'd take care of himself all right," Letitia's suitor observed confidently.
"Would he!" she replied. "I am not at all sure. Our menkind always seem to have gone on sowing their wild oats most vigorously after middle age. Of course, if Ada Honeywell would marry him, I might feel a little easier in my mind."
"Ada won't marry any one," Grantham declared, "and I am perfectly certain, if she were willing, your father wouldn't marry her. She's too boisterous."
"Poor woman!" Letitia sighed. "She's immensely rich, but, you see, she has no past—I mean no pedigree. I am afraid it's out of the question."
"I wish you would chuck rotting and marry me, Letitia," he begged. "There's a little house in Pont Street—suit us down to the ground."
Letitia found herself gazing over the tops of the more distant trees.
"We are going down to Mandeleys in a few days," she said presently. "I'll take myself seriously to task there. I suppose I must really want to be married only I don't know it. Don't be surprised if you get a telegram from me any day."
"I'd come down there myself, if I had an invitation," he suggested.
She shook her head.
"Charlie," she declared, "it couldn't be done. So far as I can see at present, unless some of the tenantry offer their services for nothing—and our tenantry aren't like that—we shall have to keep house with about half a dozen servants, which means of course, only opening a few rooms. As a matter of fact, we shan't be able to go at all, unless Mr. Thain pays his rent for Broomleys in advance."
They turned out of the Park and not a word passed between them again until Letitia descended from her horse in Grosvenor Square.
"You were a dear to think of this, Charles," she said, standing on the steps and smiling at him. "I haven't enjoyed anything so much for a long time."
"You wouldn't care about a theatre this evening?" he proposed.
"Come in at tea time and see how I am feeling," she suggested. "I have dad rather on my hands. He has been wandering about like a lost sheep, the last few afternoons. I can't think what is wrong."
She strolled across the hall and looked in at the study. The Marquis was seated in an easy-chair, reading a volume of Memoirs. She crossed the room towards him.
"Father," she exclaimed, "you ought to have been out a beautiful morning like this."
The Marquis laid down his book. He was certainly looking a little tired. Letitia came up to his side and patted his hand.
"How's the gout?" she asked.
"Better," he replied, examining the offending finger.
"You're just lazy, I believe," Letitia observed reprovingly. "The sooner we get down to Mandeleys the better."
The Marquis glanced at a silver-framed calendar which stood upon the table. He had glanced at it about a hundred times during the last few days.
"A little country air," he confessed, "will be very agreeable. I think perhaps, too," he went on, "that I am inclined to be weary of London. It is more of a city, after all, isn't it, for the bourgeois rich than for a penniless Marquis. Where did you get your mount from, dear?"
"Charlie lent me a hack," she replied. "I've had a perfectly delightful ride."
"You have not yet arrived, I suppose," her father went on, "at any fixed matrimonial intentions with regard to Charlie?"
She shook her head a little dejectedly.
"It's so hard," she confessed. "I am dying to say 'yes,' especially, somehow, during the last few days, but somehow I can't. I think it must be his fault," she added resentfully. "He doesn't ask me properly."
"You'll find some one will be taking him off your hands before long," her father warned her. "Personally, I have no objection to find with the alliance."
"Of course," Letitia complained, "it's very clear what you are thinking of! You want your bachelor apartments in the Albany again, and the gay life. I really feel that it is my duty to remain a spinster and look after you."
The Marquis smiled. Once more his eyes glanced towards the calendar.
"Better ask Charlie down to Mandeleys and settle it with him there," he suggested.
"That's just what he wants," she sighed. "If we begin a house party there, though, think what a picnic it will be! And besides, Sylvia Laycey is sure to be somewhere about, and he'll probably fall in love with her again. I do wish I could make up my mind. What are you doing to-night, dad?"
"I am dining with Montavon," her father replied, "at the club. He has a party of four for whist."
"Dear old things!" Letitia murmured affectionately. "I hope you have Sheffield plate candlesticks on the table. Why not go in fancy dress—one of those Georgian Court dresses, you know—black velvet knickerbockers, a sword and peruke! Much better let me give you a lesson at auction bridge."
The Marquis shivered.
"You play the game?" he asked politely.
"I tried it as a means of subsistence," Letitia confessed, "but my partners always did such amazing things that I found there was nothing in it. If you are really dining out, dad, I shall go to the play with Charlie."
"Alone?"
"Don't be silly, dear," Letitia protested, flicking her whip. "Remember what that wicked old lady wrote in her memoirs—'Balham requires a chaperon, but Grosvenor Square never.' I shall try and get used to him this evening. I may even have wonderful news for you in the morning."
The Marquis took up his book again.
"I wish, my dear, that I could believe it," he told her fervently.
"I feel like the German lady," Marcia observed, as she stood before her little sideboard and mixed a whisky and soda, "who went on cutting bread and butter. The world falls to pieces before my eyes—and I press the handle of a syphon. There!"
She carried the tumbler to Borden, who was seated by her fireside, and threw herself into an easy-chair opposite to him.
"I know it's all wrong," she declared. "My instincts are so obstinate even about the simplest things. You see, I have even wheeled away his easy-chair so that you shan't sit in it."
"Women always confuse instincts with prejudices," Borden rejoined, calmly sipping his whisky and soda. "May I smoke a pipe?"
Marcia gave a little gesture of despair.
"I never knew a man," she exclaimed, "who exhibited such a propensity for making himself at home! Tell me," she went on, "did you notice a very aristocratic looking, almost beautiful girl, with large brown eyes and a pale skin, seated in the stalls just below our box?"
"The girl with Charles Grantham?"
Marcia nodded.
"That was Lady Letitia Thursford," she told him.
"Is she engaged to Grantham?"
"She wasn't last week," Marcia replied. "I think the Marquis would like it, but Lady Letitia is by way of being difficult. I saw her looking at me thoughtfully, once or twice. I was dying to send down word to her that I had permission."
Borden moved in his chair a little uneasily.
"You are bound to no one," he reminded her. "There is no one of whom you need to ask permission."
"Don't be silly," Marcia replied. "I asked permission, and without it I wouldn't have dined with you alone to-night or lunched with Morris Hyde on Tuesday."
"I trust that both entertainments," he ventured, "have been a success."
Marcia shook her head.
"Morris Hyde was very disappointing," she confessed. "I was looking forward to being tremendously entertained, but instead of telling me all about these unknown tribes in Central America, his only anxiety seemed to be to know if I was going to let him kiss me in the taxi afterwards. Explorers, I am afraid, are far too promiscuous."
"Publishers," Borden said firmly, "are renowned throughout the world for their fidelity."
"Fidelity to their cash boxes," Marcia scoffed.
Borden, who had lit his pipe, blinked at her through a little cloud of smoke. They had come straight from the theatre, and he was in the evening clothes of a man who cares nothing about his appearance,—the black waistcoat, the none-too-well fitting shirt, the plainest of studs, and the indifferently arranged white tie. Nevertheless, Marcia liked the look of him, seated at ease in her low chair, and it was very obvious that he, too, approved of his hostess. She was curled up now at the end of the sofa, a cigarette in her mouth, an expression of curious perplexity upon her face. She was dressed very plainly in black, having alternately tried on and discarded all her more elaborate evening gowns. She had had a queer, almost desperate fancy to make herself look as unattractive as possible, but the very simplicity of her dress enhanced the gleaming perfection of her throat and arms. Even her posture, which should have been ungraceful, suited her. Her disturbed and doubtful frame of mind had softened her firm mouth, and lit with a sort of sweet plaintiveness her beautiful eyes.
"Do you think," he asked, "that I look upon you as a promising investment?"
"Well, I am," Marcia replied. "You admit having made money out of me this spring."
"At any rate, I am willing to divide it," he suggested.
"Upon conditions!"
"No one in the world gives something for nothing," he reminded her.
"We seem to be mixing up business and the other things most shockingly," Marcia declared. "Do you really mean that you are willing to share the profits of my next novel with me?"
"I couldn't do that," he objected, "it would be too unbusinesslike. I am quite willing, however, to share my life and all I have with you."
"Mere rhetoric!" Marcia exclaimed uneasily.
"Solemn earnest," he insisted. "Will you marry me, Marcia?"
She looked across at him. Her eyebrows were a little raised, her eyes inclined to be misty, her mouth tremulous.
"James," she replied, "I believe I'd like to. I'm not quite sure—I believe I would. But just tell me—how can I?"
"He has kept you to himself for pretty well twenty years," Borden said gruffly.
She sighed.
"When I was a child of seventeen," she confided, "a young farmer down at Mandeleys kissed me. If I had been one year younger," she went on, "I should have spat at him. As it was, I never spoke to him again. Then, a few months after that, the schoolmaster at the school where I was teaching made an awkward attempt at the same thing. He missed me, but his lips just touched my cheek. Then Reginald came. Let me see, that was nineteen years ago, and since then no one else has kissed me."
"A record of fidelity," Borden observed, "at which, even in your own stories, you would scoff."
"But then, you see," she reminded him, "I never write about a person with queer ideas like mine, because they wouldn't be interesting. People like a little more resilience about their heroines."
"Couldn't we talk brutal common sense for once?" he asked impatiently. "I have never abused your Marquis. From your own showing, he has played the game, as you have. All I want to say is that the natural time has come for your separation. I have waited for you a good many years, and I am a domestic man. I want a home—and children. It's quite time you wanted the same."
Perhaps for a moment the light in her eyes was a shade softer. She moved uneasily in her place.
"Quite primitive, aren't you, James?" she murmured.
"Life's a primitive thing when we get down to the bone," he answered. "You and I have wasted many an hour discussing the ologies, trying to thrust ourselves into the peculiar point of view of these neurotic Norwegians or mad Russians. When you come down to bedrock, though, for sober, decent people there is only one outlet to passion, only one elementary satisfaction for man and woman."
"You make things sound very simple."
"It isn't that," he persisted. "It's you who make them complex by being maudlin about this man. He has had what many would call the best part of your life. He has given up nothing for your sake, done nothing for your sake. He has kept you in the same seclusion that his grandfather would have done. He has treated you, so far as regards the outside world, as a man does—"
He stopped abruptly. Something in her eyes warned him.
"There are limits," she told him drily, "to my appreciation of unbridled speech. According to his lights, Reginald has been wonderful. To me there has been more romance than ignominy in many of his ideas. My trouble is something different. I can't quite make up my mind what it would mean for him if I were to strike out for myself now."
"You are like all women," he declared furiously. "You complicate every situation in life by thinking of other people. Think for yourself, Marcia. What about your own future? I promise you that your Marquis would think for himself, if he were up against a similar problem. He is getting all he wants. Are you? Of course you aren't!"
"Does anybody get all they want out of life?"
"It is generally their own fault if they don't get the main things," he insisted. "But, see here, I'll attack you with your own weapons. Here am I, forty-one years old, in love with you since I was thirty-two. What about those nine years? I am dropping into the ways of untidy, unsatisfactory bachelordom. I only order new clothes when some friend chaffs me into it, and if I do I forget the ties and shirts and those sorts of things. I've lost all interest in myself. I loaf at the club, play auction bridge when I might be doing something a great deal better, and drink a whisky and soda when any one asks me. I hang on to the business, but when I've finished my work I drift. In another five years' time I shall begin to stoop, I shall live with cigar ash all over my clothes, and I shall have to be taken home from the club every other night. Your doing, Marcia—your responsibility."
"I should think," she said severely, "that your self-respect—"
"Oh, don't bother about my self-respect!" he interrupted. "I am a human being, and I tell you, Marcia, that every man needs something in his life to lift him just a little, to live up to, not down to. There is only one person in the world can take that place for me. I'm a clear charge upon your hands. You know that I love you, that you've driven all thoughts of other women out of my head, that you keep me beating against the walls of my impotence every time we meet and part. I am perfectly certain, if you don't come down to the world of common sense, I shall sink into the world of melodrama and go and tackle your Marquis myself. He must let you go."
"Do you want me as much as all that?" she asked, a little wistfully.
He was by her side in a moment, inspired by the break in her tone, the sweet, soft look in her eyes. He sank on one knee by the side of her couch and took her hands in his, kissing them one after the other.
"Ah, Marcia," he murmured, "I want you more than anything else on earth! I want you so much that, when you come, you will make the years that have passed seem like nothing but a nightmare, and the minutes, as they come, years of happiness. I am awkward, I know, sometimes, and gruff and morose, but so is any man who spends his life fretting for the thing he can't get. I only ask you, dear, to be fair. I have never said an unkind word about the man for whom you have cared so long. I only say now that you belong to me. I am not a bit foolish—I am not even jealous—only your time has come, your time for that little home in the country, a husband always with you, and, I hope to Heaven, children."
She took his face between her hands and kissed him. He understood her so perfectly that, as she drew her lips away, he rose and stood on the hearthrug, a conqueror yet humble.
"You won't mind," she begged, "if I choose my own time? It may be very soon, it may be a little time. You will leave it to me, and you will trust me. From to-night, of course—"
She hesitated, but his gesture was sufficient. She knew that she was understood.
"You have made me the happiest man in the world," he said. "I can't stop a moment longer—I should simply say extravagant things. And I know how you feel. It isn't quite time for them yet. But you'll send for me?"
"Of course!"
"And about your visit to Mandeleys?" he asked. "I shan't begin to be busy again for another fortnight."
She hesitated.
"Somehow," she confessed, "it seems a little different now.
"It needn't," he replied. "I am content with what I have."
She glanced at the calendar.
"Tuesday?" she suggested.
"Tuesday would suit me admirably," he assented.
She let him out herself, and he kissed her fingers. He was never quite sure whether he walked down the stairs or whether he rang for the lift. He was never quite sure whether he looked for a taxi or decided to walk. He passed over the bridge, and the lights reflected in the dark waters below seemed suddenly like jewels. He made his way to his club because of the sheer impossibility of sleep. He stood on the threshold of the reading room and looked in at the little group of semi-somnolent men. In his way he was popular, and he received a good many sleepy greetings.
"What's the matter with Borden?" one man drawled. "He looks as though some one had left him a fortune."
"He has probably discovered another literary star," a rival publisher suggested.
"I wish to God some one would send him to a decent tailor!" a third man yawned.
Borden rang the bell for a drink.
"Dickinson was right," he said. "I've found a new star."
Letitia, on her return from the theatre that same evening, found her father seated in a comfortable corner of the library, with a volume of Don Quixote in his hand, a whisky and soda and a box of cigarettes by his side. He had exchanged his dinner jacket for a plain black velvet coat, and, as he laid his book down at her coming, she seemed to notice again that vague look of tiredness in his face.
"Quiet evening, dad?" she asked, flinging herself into a low chair by his side.
"A very pleasant one," he replied. "Montavon's party was postponed, but I have reopened an old fund of amusement here. With the exception of Borrow, none of our modern humourists appeal to me like Cervantes."
"You wouldn't call Borrow exactly modern, would you?"
"Perhaps not," the Marquis conceded. "I may be wrong to ignore the literature of the present day, but such attempts as I have made to appreciate it have been unsatisfactory. You enjoyed the play, dear?"
"Very much," Letitia acquiesced. "The house was crowded."
"Any one you know?"
She mentioned a few names, then she hesitated. "And that clever woman who wrote 'The Changing Earth' was there in a box—Marcia Hannaway. She was with rather a dour-looking man—her publisher, I think Charlie said it was."
The Marquis received the information with no signs of particular interest. Letitia stretched out for a cigarette, lit it and looked a little appealingly at her father.
"Dad," she said, "I've made an awful idiot of myself."
"In what direction?" the Marquis enquired sympathetically. "If it is a financial matter, I am fortunately—"
"Worse!" Letitia groaned. "I've promised to marry Charlie Grantham."
The Marquis stretched out his long, elegant hand and patted his daughter's.
"But, my dear child," he said, "surely that was inevitable, was it not? I have looked upon it as almost certain to happen some day."
"Well, I'm rather glad you take it like that," Letitia remarked. "Now I come to think of it, I suppose I should have had to say 'yes' sometime or another."
"Where is Charlie?"
"Gone home in a huff, because I wouldn't let him kiss me in the car or bring him in with me."
"Either course would surely have been usual," the Marquis ventured.
"Perhaps, but I feel unusual," Letitia declared. "It isn't that I mind marrying Charlie, but I know I shall detest being married to him."
"One must remember, dear," her father went on soothingly, "that with us, marriage is scarcely a subject for neurotic ecstasies or most unwholesome hysterics. Your position imposes upon you the necessity of an alliance with some house of kindred associations. The choice, therefore, is not a large one, and you are spared the very undignified competitive considerations which attach themselves to people when it does not matter whom on earth they marry. The Dukedom of Grantham is unfortunately not an ancient one, nor was it conferred upon such illustrious stock as the Marquisate of Mandeleys. However, the Granthams have their place amongst us, and I imagine that the alliance will generally be considered satisfactory."
"Oh, I hope so," Letitia replied, without enthusiasm. "I only hope I shall find it satisfactory. I didn't mean to say 'yes' for at least another year."
The Marquis smiled tolerantly.
"Then what, my dear child," he asked, "hastened your decision?"
Letitia became suddenly more serious. She bit her lip and frowned distinctly into the fire. At that moment she was furious with a thought.
"I can't tell you, dad," she confessed. "I'd hate to tell you. I'd hate to put it in plain words, even to myself."
He patted her hand tolerantly.
"You must not take yourself too hardly to task, Letitia," he said, "if at times you feel the pressure of the outside world. You are young and of versatile temperament. Believe me, those voices to which you may have listened are only echoes. Nothing exists or is real in life which the brain does not govern. I am quite sure that you will never regret the step which you have taken this evening."
Letitia stood up.
"I hope not, father," she sighed, a little wistfully. "There are times when I am very dissatisfied with myself, and to-night, I am afraid, is one of them."
"You analyse your sentiments, my dear, too severely," her father told her. "You are too conscientious. Your actions are all that could be desired."
"You won't be lonely if that idiot takes me away from you soon?" she asked.
The Marquis looked almost shocked.
"Loneliness is not a complaint from which I ever expect to suffer, dear," he said, as he rose and opened the door for her.
He returned to his empty chair, his half consumed whisky and soda, his vellum-bound volume, carefully marked. Somehow or other, the echoes of his last words seemed to be ringing in his ears. The fire had burned a little low, the sound of passing vehicles from outside had grown fainter and fainter. He took up his book, threw himself into his chair, gazed with vacant eyes at the thick black print. There was a sudden chill in his heart, a sudden thought, perhaps a fear. There was one way through which loneliness could come.