Jeannie was standing on the first tee of the Wroxton golf links, doing what is technically known as addressing her ball. In other words, her driver was moving spasmodically backward and forward behind it, and she was thinking about her right foot. Some six yards behind her stood two impassive caddies, and Jack was standing opposite her ball and to the right of her.

“Don’t press,” he said, “and go back slowly. Let your left heel come off the ground quite naturally as the club goes back. Oh, keep your head still! Your spine is a pivot round which the arms work. And keep your eye on the ball.”

Jeannie’s club trailed very slowly back to about the level of her right shoulder, when suddenly an idea struck her, and she paused.

“Jack, how can I see my club head on the back swing out of my left eye if I am to look at the ball?” she asked.

“If you are going to argue, stand at ease,” said Jack. “You will certainly miss the ball if you pause on the top of your swing. Let’s talk it out, and take your stroke afterward.”

Jeannie was looking fixedly at the ball.

“Don’t talk when I’m playing,” she said, and with a long breath raised her club a little higher. Then she hit furiously, and a frenzied ball hid itself in long grass some ten yards in front of the tee.

“I told you so,” she exclaimed.

“Have it again,” said Jack.

“No, certainly not,” said Jeannie. “Oh, yes; I think I will. I will start now. That was trial.”

“About the club head,” explained Jack, “it’s like this. You can see it, but you don’t look at it. You look at the ball, and at nothing else whatever. But do remember that you have to hit a part of the ball which you don’t see at all.”

Jeannie’s caddie had teed her ball again.

“Then what’s the use of looking at it?” she asked.

“In about five years, if you stick to it, you will understand,” he said.

Jeannie shifted uneasily on her feet. Then another idea struck her.

“Then tell me that in five years’ time,” she said. “But for practical purposes, what am I to do this minute?”

There were already another couple waiting to start, one of which was Colonel Raymond. Jeannie saw him, and nothing in the world would have induced her to let him pass. Jack guessed as much.

“Hit this ball as hard as ever you can,” he said.

Jeannie shortened the intended swing, and threw her club at the ball. Oddly enough, it rose clear of the grass, towered, and fell a full hundred yards off, and getting a forward kick was like a bolted rabbit.

“I told you so,” she said again.

From behind came Cousin Robert’s voice.

“By gad!” he exclaimed loudly. But Jeannie did not turn round, and said negligently to Jack:

“Topped!”

Now, the ball was anything but topped, and Jack, struggling with inward laughter, sent a careless hooked drive down wind and far. Then, as is natural at golf, the great silences of the game which isolates the player from the whole world closed round them and they went forward.

Thereafter came distress and difficulties. A bunker welcomed Jeannie’s second, and the bunker retained her third. A sky-sweeping iron shot was recorded as her fourth, and the fifth leaped across the green as if a wasp had stung it. Jack, meantime, had laid his second nearly dead, and four was sufficient.

“That sha’n’t count,” said Jeannie; “we’ll begin now. The handicap is as follows: We both play on till we reach the green, do you see, and then the scoring begins. We are like as we lie on the green, Jack, and after that you give me a stroke a hole. And I’ll play you for half a crown,” she added, with a burst of reckless speculation.

It was an afternoon of spring, a day of that exquisite temper seldom felt except in our much-maligned climate. April had laid aside its outbreaks of petulant rain, and wore the face of a laughing child. The great grave downs over which they played were scoured by a westerly wind, which swelled the buds and smoothed out the creases in the little buttons of green which were bursting from the hawthorn. From the height an admirable expanse of big, wholesome country was visible on every side: to the west the houses of Wroxton stood red and glimmering in a hollow in the hills, and climbed the slopes of the circle. In the middle rose the gray Cathedral piercing the blue veil of pure air in which the lower houses were enveloped, and the tower was gilded with the sunshine. North and east lay a delectable land, where broad fields alternated with woods, round which hovered, like a green mist, the first outbreak of bursting leaves, and down the centre of the valley, unseen but traceable from a livelier flush of green, ran the river. To the south there were only downs, rising and falling in strong undulations like the muscles of strong arms interlaced. Overhead skylarks carolled unseen in the blue, or dropped, when their song was done, among the grass, breathless and drunken with music; the earth had renewed its lease of life, and the everlasting fountains of youth were unsealed again. Never since the seasons had begun their courses was winter farther away, and never since Adam had walked with Eve in the garden had love touched two lives more closely than it touched Jeannie and Jack as they went over the breezy downs, club in hand.

The details of the play would not be interesting even to golfers, to others tedious; but it may be remarked that Jack drove long balls, which started low and rose inexplicably toward the end of their flight, and that a clean ball rising suddenly against a blue sky is invariably felt to be a stimulating object.

“It must be so nice,” remarked Jeannie, “if it doesn’t hurt to be a golf ball. You lie there seeing nothing except blades of grass close round you, and then suddenly the ground races away from you, and you rise, rise, like that one did, over a bank and a road, and drop on the smooth short grass of the green.”

“The hole must be unpleasant,” said Jack. “You go trotting over the green, and then suddenly tumble into a horrible, small, dark prison, with iron at the bottom.”

“Yes, and somebody says ‘Good shot!’ but they take you out again. Oh, Jack, may I take off my hat?”

All mankind may be divided into those who like hats and those who do not. Some people habitually wear a hat unless there is a real reason, like a church or royalty, for taking it off, but to others a hat is to be always discarded if possible. Both Jeannie and the other were habitually hatless folk, a characteristic which goes hand-in-hand with a love for wind and large open places, and is borne out, to endless issues, in the normal attitude of the mind toward problems of life.

She gave it to her caddie to carry for her, and shook her head to free it of its prison-house shades.

“That is better,” she said. “Now my drives will go ten yards farther.”

Colonel Raymond, meantime, playing behind them, was lavish of advice to his opponent.

“Cultivate a style,” he said. “Hew out a style for yourself, and the rest will follow. Ah!”—and he watched his own ball, which he had topped heavily with his mashie, skip and bump over the outlying banks of a bunker and roll up gently to the hole.

“A useful stroke that,” said this incomparable man. “I picked it up from poor young Tom Morris. Time and again have I seen him skim his ball over the rough stuff and lay it dead. A fine, useful shot.”

Useful the shot undoubtedly was, and certainly there was no showiness about it, a quality which Colonel Raymond detested.

“You’ve got to get into the hole,” was his maxim. “Well, get there,” and he missed his putt.

Colonel Raymond, on his return to Wroxton after the recovery of Maria, had been at first a little disconcerted to find that the engagement of Cousin Jeannie was common property. Mrs. Raymond, no doubt, would have mentioned it in her letters to him, but the Colonel had begged her not to write at all.

“The other children will be with me,” he had said, “and a letter may so easily carry infection. Why, there was a man in India who got the cholera simply through a letter. So don’t write, Constance. Send me a telegram every day or two to say how Maria is, and don’t fret yourself. Worry and fright, as Cousin Jeannie said, are to be avoided.”

But almost before the first shock of the news had conveyed itself to the Colonel, he saw his ingenious way out of it.

“Didn’t I say they were engaged all along?” he roared to his old cronies. “I remember nearly letting it out one evening here. It was intended, as I said, not to be known at once, and I kept my counsel. But I remember letting it slip once at Miss Clifford’s. Ask her if it is not so. I knew all along, all along. Is that your lead, partner? A devilish poor one.”

As soon as the year’s mourning for Jeannie’s father was over the marriage was to take place—that is to say, they would not be married till June. Never had a courtship run more smoothly, and never did the course of true love behave less proverbially.

Canon Collingwood took the engagement as he took most things in life, with placid enjoyment, but the event had moved Mrs. Collingwood beyond the run of worldly matters. Like the rest of Wroxton, every time she had been brought in contact with Jeannie she had been moved to something warmer than mere liking, even when she disagreed with her, at the charm and simplicity of the girl. There were some people, like herself, who did many unselfish things from a sense of duty; Jeannie, on the other hand, seemed to do them from inclination, and her sense of duty was as invisible as the string which binds together a pearl necklace. All that could be seen were the series of beautiful shining acts; what made the series was left to conjecture. Mrs. Collingwood’s necklace of shining acts was differently constructed. There were hard, black knots in it, and the string showed between each pearl, and it looked remarkably strong. There was no fear whatever of its breaking.

Weeks before the time for the wedding the new dresses of the Miss Cliffords were ready. They were purple, real purple, fit for empresses, and their bonnets were purple, too. They had also both of them left cards at Bolton Street, with P. P. C. written in the corner. This was not meant to imply that they were going away, or to express a hint that Jeannie was; but Miss Phoebe remembered that cards had been left on a curate of her father’s just before his marriage and his promotion to a parsonage, and P. P. C. was connected in her mind with congratulations. The Miss Cliffords had had some discussion of the etiquette of high life prescribed on such occasions, and this had been fixed upon as a safe and elegant thing to do.

“It does not matter so much for you, Clara,” Phoebe had said, “because you saw Miss Avesham. I could not go and call in person and sit in the drawing-room and say pretty things, for I should feel so hot and awkward. It would be better simply to leave cards at the door. I hear in London that it is a very general custom to do so without even asking if people are in.”

“That seems so cold,” said Clara.

“It is better to be cold than to seem as if one were putting one’s self forward. As for P. P. C., I am sure that is right. I remember writing P. P. C. on the cards we left on Mr. Hopkinson as well as anything.”

“It would be a pity if it meant something different,” said Clara. “You see, Phoebe, neither of us can recollect what it stands for.”

“It is French, I am sure,” said Phoebe. “Let us see. What could it be? C. I think must be congratulations. To convey now. Pour prendre! Of course that is it. I remember pour prendre perfectly now. Pour prendre congratulations. I hope you are satisfied now, Clara.”

“Yes, Phoebe. I feel sure you must be right,” said her sister. “But shall we not send a little present together? Miss Avesham has been very good to me.”

Phoebe tossed her head. This was a covert allusion to that terrible affair of the picture.

“A diamond necklace, perhaps,” she said scornfully; “or would you prefer a pearl and diamond tiara?”

This cutting irony on the part of Phoebe closed the discussion for the time being; but Clara bore the thing in mind, and eventually decided on a silver bootjack and an ode of congratulation in the Wroxton Chronicle. Phoebe had not negatived this proposition when she had advanced it before, but of late she had been very sharp with her sister, and for weeks past she had not looked well; habitually she had a high colour, but of late she had become sallow and gray in skin. More than once Clara had asked whether she would not see a doctor, but Phoebe had always met the suggestion with a disdainful refusal. She had played hardly at all on her mandolin lately, and when the household work was over she would sit in a chair in her corner, with her hands on her lap, doing nothing. If Clara came in when she was sitting like this, she would jump up and pretend to occupy herself with something, for she did not wish her sister to see her tears. But when alone she would seldom do anything, and day by day a curious gnawing pain below her right collar-bone grew worse and worse. The pain, whatever it was, was not continuous. If she slept well at night it was usually bad the next day, or had been bad the day before; but if her night had been disturbed by it, in these early days, she usually passed a comfortable day. A little lump had appeared there below the skin, and Phoebe, before her bed-room glass, looked at it with some anxiety, and called it a rheumatic swelling. As such she rubbed it with embrocation, which did not seem to make it any better.

Both Clara and Phoebe were accustomed, even when alone, to dress for dinner. In the winter, when the evenings were cold, this usually only meant the donning of Sunday clothes; but when the milder days of spring succeeded, they faced each other in low dresses. By the beginning of April Clara had already worn her low dress more than once, but Phoebe never. It was still chilly, she said, and if Clara did not take care she would catch cold.

Phoebe had a horror of doctors. To call in a doctor implied that you thought that you were ill. Turkey rhubarb, quinine, and embrocation, according to her, were a trinity of greater potency than the whole college of surgeons, and she was not naturally nervous. She even doubted whether the epidemic of typhoid which had visited Wroxton in the autumn might not have been made too much of, and a plentiful exhibition of the staple drugs, she thought, should have been tried first. For this swelling underneath her collar-bone she tried all these in succession, but smarting, deafness, and general upset seemed only to have added to her discomfort. The pain, which at first had been only a dull ache, grew intenser. At times it stabbed and pierced her, and now, after a day of pain, a sleepless, tossing night succeeded.

She was still firmly determined not to see a doctor; but when one afternoon, Clara being out, she had met Jeannie in the street, and had been persuaded to go to Bolton Street to have tea with her, Jeannie saying it would be a kindness, since she was alone, she confessed, in answer to a question of hers, that she was not well.

“I have pain,” she said, “oh, such pain! And it is all I can do to prevent Clara seeing it. I cannot sleep for it. Oh, Miss Avesham, do tell me that it is nothing.”

Jeannie had felt anxious when she saw her that day, but she tried to be consoling.

“Very likely it is nothing,” she said. “But one cannot tell. Do see a doctor at once. The thing worries you and makes you ill. If there is anything wrong, it ought to be attended to; but if you are assured it is nothing, that will be a relief, will it not?”

“But Clara will know,” objected Phoebe. “If it is anything wrong she would fret so.”

“Oh, you are absurd,” said Jeannie, frankly. “Supposing nothing is wrong, you need never tell her. But supposing you ought to see a doctor, how she would blame herself for not having insisted. Where is the pain?”

Miss Phoebe, with much diffidence, alluded distantly to her collar-bone.

“I think it is probably rheumatic,” she added.

Jeannie rang the bell, and went to the table to write a note.

“Now, Miss Phoebe,” she said, “you are going to see the doctor here and now. Don’t say you won’t, for it is no use. I am writing to Dr. Maitland; he will be at home by now, and I am sure he will come here at once. You see, in this way your sister will not know.”

The poor lady leaned back in her chair, almost with relief.

“It is very kind of you,” she said. “And indeed I think Clara must see if it went on any longer.”

Jeannie gave the note to the butler, and when he had left the room:

“I am sure it is wise, Miss Phoebe,” she said. “Why, if I or Arthur have an ache in our little finger we fill the house with surgeons. There is never anything the matter, and they tell us so. Now Dr. Maitland will be here in ten minutes or less. You shall go to my room, and he will look at you there.”

“It is very kind of you,” said Phoebe; “and you will not tell Clara?”

“Never without your consent,” said Jeannie. “Come, let us go upstairs.”

Dr. Maitland was in, and in ten minutes he was at Bolton Street. He was shown into the drawing-room, and Jeannie came down stairs to him.

“She looks as if it were only one thing,” she said. “But don’t tell her. When you have seen her, come and tell me. She is upstairs.”

After he had gone Jeannie went to the window and looked out. The full abundance of spring was in the air; the false death of winter was over, and all living things rejoiced in this renewal of the world. The grass of the lawn was starred with young crocuses, gnarled trees put out their sheaves of tender living leaves; all was as it had been twelve months ago. But in the lives of men no such renewal and repetition is admitted. The year passes, and they are a year nearer to the grim apparition of decay and death. It seemed to her a long time before the footstep of the doctor again sounded on the stairs. She faced round again into the room to meet him.

“I have not told her,” he said, “as you desired. But there is no doubt—cancer.”

“Would any operation give her a chance?”

“A chance certainly, but a more than doubtful one. It is of five months’ growth at least.”

“If she had come earlier this chance would have been better?” asked Jeannie.

“Undoubtedly.”

“Shall I tell her?” she asked.

“She had better be told. The operation would be dangerous. If it is left, the end is certain, and probably—though one can never tell—not far distant. It is a case where she must decide whether to have the operation or not.”

“Do you recommend it?”

“Scarcely. If I was in the same condition I would not have it done.”

Jeannie stood silent a moment.

“Oh, poor thing, poor thing!” she said. “And I suppose I must tell her.”

She put her hands before her eyes for a space, and then gave herself a little shake.

“What a coward one is!” she said. “Thank you very much, Dr. Maitland. I will let you know about it.”

“I will tell her if you wish, Miss Avesham,” said he.

“No; I know her better than you,” said Jeannie. “Good-bye. I shall go upstairs at once to her.”

Dr. Maitland shook hands with her; he felt an intense admiration for her.

“It is only yourself who will accuse you of being a coward,” he said.