THE morning delicacy to which Lady Austell was so subject was due to the fact that when staying in other people’s houses she found she saw enough of her hosts and fellow-guests if she denied herself the pleasure of their company at breakfast. In all other respects, she was stronger than most horses, and could go through programmes which would have prostrated all but the most robust without any feeling of unpleasant fatigue, provided only that the programmes interested or amused her or in any way furthered her plans. But she really became tired the moment she was bored, and since sitting at breakfast with ten or twelve cheerful people, with the crude morning sunlight perhaps pouring in at a window directly opposite her, bored her very much, she chose the wiser plan of not joining in those public festivities. But with her excellent tact she knew that at a house like Mrs. Osborne’s everybody was expected to come down, to be in admirable spirits and to eat a great deal of solid food, and so she explained to Mrs. Osborne that she never ate any breakfast. Hence it was that about half-past nine next morning her maid carried upstairs a tray groaning with coffee, hot milk, toast, just one poached egg, and a delicious plate of fruit. Mrs. Osborne had given her a very pleasant sitting room next her bedroom, furnished with Messrs. Linkwater’s No. 1 white boudoir suite, for, like half the house, it had been practically unfurnished; and Austell who had ascertained those comfortable facts when he bade his mother good-night the evening before, caused this particular groaning tray to be brought here also and paddled in to join her in carpet slippers and a dressing gown.

“I call this a devilish comfortable house nowadays,” he observed, “which is far more than could be said for it in our time. What a pity the Osbornes and we can’t run it together. They would pay the bills, and we could give tone. I wish it was possible to be comfortable, though poor. But it isn’t. Everything comfortable costs so much. Now, darling mother, let loose, and tell me what you think of it all. Really your—your absence of breakfast looks quite delicious. They have given me chops and beef and things. May I have a piece of your melon?”

Jim and his mother were rather fond of each other, but they seldom met without having a quarrel, for while both were agreed in the general plan of grabbing at whatever of this world’s goods could be appropriated, each despised and, in private, exposed the methods of the other. He, so his mother was afraid, was one of the very few people who was not afraid of her, and she often wished he was. He had lit a cigarette after the bath, and was standing in front of the fireplace, on the thick, white sheepskin rug, smoking the end of it.

“Dear Jim,” she said, “do you think you had better smoke in here? Mrs. Osborne may not like it.”

“Oh, she will think it is you,” said Jim calmly, “and so won’t dare to say anything. She fears you: I can’t think why. Now do tell me how it all strikes you. Can you bear it for three days? I can easily; I could bear it for months and years. It is so comfortable. Now what did you and Mrs. Osborne talk about at dinner? Mr. O. and I talked about the Royal Family. Sir Thomas seems a nice man, doesn’t he?”

Lady Austell gave him a very generous share of her half melon; it looked rather like a bribe. She was going to indulge in what Jim called humbug, and hoped he would let it pass.

“I think, dear, as I said to Dora the other day,” she remarked, “that we are far too apt to judge by the surface. We do not take enough account of the real and sterling virtues—honesty, kindness, hospitality—”

Austell cracked his egg.

“I did not take enough account of the effect of hospitality last night,” he remarked, “because I ate too much supper, and felt uncommonly queer when I awoke this morning——”

“You always were rather greedy, my darling,” said Lady Austell softly, scoring one.

“I know. I suppose I inherited it from my deli—I mean cerebral-hÆmorrhage grandfather. But I don’t drink.”

This brought them about level. Jim proceeded with a smart and telling stroke.

“I refer my—my failures to my grandfather,” he said, “so whatever you say about our hosts, dear mother, I shall consider that you are only speaking of their previous generations. Their hospitality is unbounded, their kindness prodigious, but I asked you how long you could stand it? Or perhaps the—the polish, the culture, the breeding of our hosts really does seem to you beyond question. Did you see the stuffed crocodile-lizard in the hall? I will give you one for your birthday.”

“I think you are odiously ungrateful, Jim,” she said. “I have got them to take Grote for seven years at a really unheard-of price, and all I get in return is this.”

Jim opened his pale weak eyes very wide.

“What have I done?” he said. “I have only agreed with you about their kindness, and asked your opinion about their breeding.”

“You are sarcastic and backbiting,” said his mother.

“Only as long as you talk such dreadful nonsense, darling mother,” he said. “You don’t indulge in rhapsodies about the honesty of your housemaid. Honesty in a housemaid is a far finer quality than in a millionaire, because millionaires are not tempted to be dishonest, whereas poor people like housemaids or you and me are. Really, I only wanted to have a pleasant little chat about the Osbornes, only you will make it serious, serious and insincere. Let’s be natural. I’ll begin.”

He took one of his mother’s crisp hot rolls, and buttered it heavily.

“I find Mr. and Mrs. O. quite delightful,” he said, “and should have told you so long ago if you had only been frank. I do really. There isn’t one particle of humbug about them, and they have the perfect ease and naturalness of good breeding.”

Lady Austell tossed her head.

“That word again,” she said. “You seem to judge everybody by the standard of a certain superficial veneer, which you call breeding.”

“I know. One can’t help it. I grant you that lots of well-bred people are rude and greedy, but there is a certain way of being rude and greedy which is all right. I’m greedy, so was the cerebral grandpapa, only he was a gentleman and so am I. I’m rude: I don’t get up when you come into the room and open the door for you, and shut the window. Claude—brother Claude—does all these things, and yet he’s a cad.”

“I consider Claude a perfect gentleman,” said Lady Austell with finality.

“I know: that ‘perfect’ spoils it all,” said Jim meditatively. “Now Mr. Osborne is a frank cad—that’s how I put it—and Claude a subtle one. That’s why I can’t stand him.”

“I daresay you’ll do your best to live on him,” said Lady Austell.

“Certainly; though I shall probably succeed without doing my best. It will be quite easy I expect.”

“And do you think that is a gentlemanly thing to do?” asked his mother, “when behind his back you call him a subtle cad?”

“Oh, yes, quite; though no perfect gentleman would dream of doing it. I think Claude has masses of good points: he simply bristles with them, but he gives one such shocks. He goes on swimmingly for a time, and then suddenly says that somebody is ‘noble looking,’ or that the carpet is ‘tasteful’ or ‘superior.’ Now Mr. Osborne doesn’t give one shocks; you know what to expect, and you get it all the time.”

Lady Austell thought this over for a moment; though Austell was quite unsatisfactory in almost all ways of life, it was impossible to regard him as a fool, and he had the most amazing way of being right. Certainly this view of the frank cad and the subtle cad had an air of intense probability about it, but it was one of those things which his mother habitually chose to ignore and if necessary deny the existence of.

“I hope you will not say any of those ridiculous things to Dora,” she remarked.

“Ah; then it is just because they are not ridiculous that you wish me to leave them unsaid. If they were ridiculous you would not mind——”

Jim waited a second to give his mother time to contradict this if she felt disposed. Apparently she did not, and he interrupted her consenting silence.

“I shall not say them to Dora, I promise you,” he said, “because, in case they had not occurred to her, she might see the truth of them, and it might put her off. That would damage my chances of living on him. It would be very foolish of me. Besides, I have no quarrel with Dora—I like Dora. But my saying these things to her is superfluous, I am afraid. She sees them all perfectly, though to you they apparently seem ridiculous. Or am I wrong, mother, and do you only pretend to think them ridiculous?”

Lady Austell felt she could fight a little on this ground.

“They seem to me quite ridiculous in so far as they apply to Dora,” she said. “She is deeply in love with him, dear child, and do you suppose that she stops to consider whether he says ‘tasteful’ or not?”

Jim smiled with faint malice.

“No, she does not stop to consider whether he says it or not,” he replied, “because it is perfectly clear that he does. But when he does, she pauses. Not for long, but just for a second. She doesn’t exactly wince, not a whole wince, at least, but just a little bit of one. You can’t help it if you are not accustomed to it. If I was going to marry Mrs. Osborne, I should wince a little now and then. I don’t in the least wonder that she’s in love with him. I wish you would find me a girl, who would marry me, as handsome and rich as Claude. The only thing is——”

Jim finished breakfast, and was going slowly round the room looking at the furniture. He paused in front of a saddlebagged divan with his head on one side.

“The only thing is that though she may get accustomed to ‘tasteful,’ she may also get accustomed to his extraordinary good looks. Of course, then there’s the money to fall back upon. I don’t think I should ever get accustomed to so much. What is—is Uncle Alfred going to allow him on his marriage?”

“Fifteen thousand a year, I believe,” said Lady Austell gently, as if mentioning some departed friend.

Jim gave a little sigh in the same style. He had a dreadfully inconvenient memory, and remembered that the original sum suggested was twelve thousand, which his mother had thought decent but not creditable. There was no doubt, so he framed the transaction to himself, that she had “screwed this up” to fifteen. So he sighed appreciatively, and his comment that followed was of the nature of a testimonial.

“When I marry I shall leave the question of settlements completely in your hands, if you will allow me,” he said. “I think you are too clever for anybody.”

It was not once or twice, but many times, that Lady Austell had told her son the complete truth in answer to some question of his, and when she had said “fifteen thousand, I believe,” it was only reasonable to expect that the answer would be satisfactory. But Jim always remembered something else, and his memory was terribly good. It was not that he considered twelve thousand a poor sum: he only recalled to his mother’s mind the fact that she had successfully suggested fifteen. And he had not openly stated the fact: he had merely requested her kindly aid with regard to his own marriage settlements, if there were ever to be any. That should have been to her a completely gratifying request; as it was, it left her with the sense of having been found out. The complete correctness of this impression was shown by Austell’s next words.

“I think you have been fearfully brilliant about it,” he said, “and I am sure you have made them all think that you considered fifteen thousand far too much. Do tell me: didn’t you say that you thought it was a great responsibility for so young a couple to be—to be stewards of so much wealth? Lord, how I wish somebody would make me a steward. Come in.”

Somebody had tapped at the door, and to tell the truth Lady Austell was not very sorry to have an interruption, for she had actually used the words that Jim had conjectured in a little talk with Mr. Osborne and his brother in which settlements were very genteelly and distantly alluded to. But there had been a distinct twinkle in Alfred’s eye at this point, and she did not want more cross-examinations. The interruption, therefore, was welcome.

Mrs. Osborne entered, looking hot and pleased. Jim at this moment was looking at a large engraving of Landseer’s “Monarch of the Glen” (part of the No. 1 white boudoir set) in an angle of the room parallel to the door, and she did not at once see him.

“Good morning, Lady Austell,” she said. “I thought I would just step up and see what you would fancy doing this beautiful day. There’s some of the party going to motor over to Pevensey——”

Mrs. Osborne caught sight of Jim, and gave a faint scream.

“And I’m sure if I don’t beg your pardon, Lord Austell,” she said with averted head, “for I never guessed you were here paying a morning visit to your mamma in your bath wrapper. But I thought somebody said ‘Come in,’ for I always tap at every door now, or clear my throat to give warning, with so many lovers about, bless them.”

“Yes, I said ‘Come in,’” said Austell. “Mayn’t I come and talk to you and my mother? I thought my dressing—bath wrapper was rather smart.”

It was rather, being of blue silk, new and unpaid for, and with Mrs. Osborne’s permission he joined them. It had given her quite a turn for a moment to find that she had intruded on an earl in his dressing gown, but she rapidly recovered.

“Why, it’s beautiful,” she said, “and such a figure as Mr. O. is in his old green padded wrapper as hardly comes to his knees! It was the thought of that that gave me such a turn at finding a gentleman in his dressing gown. But I’m sure I needn’t have minded. And what will you be thinking of doing, Lord Austell? It’s Liberty Hall, as Mr. O. and I always tell our guests, and the more they say what they like to do, the better we’re pleased.”

Lady Austell had lit a cigarette just before Mrs. Osborne’s entrance, and, still looking at her, with her usual bereaved, regretful smile, was making efforts to pass it to Jim behind the shelter of the table. He observed this, and with a stealthy movement took it from her, for though they exposed each other in private, they were firm allies in the presence of others.

“I’ve been having such a scolding from my mother,” he said, “for smoking in here, but I told her you were far too good-natured to mind. Have I done very wrong?”

Mrs. Osborne beamed.

“And me just saying that the more our guests pleased themselves the better we were pleased!” she exclaimed. “Well, what is it to be, Lady Austell? A drive to Pevensey, with Sir Thomas and Mrs. Percy, and I’m sure there’ll be no difficulty about getting another gentleman when it’s known as you are going, or a stroll or what-not, and a bit of lunch quietly at home, and maybe a drive afterward. Give it a name, Lady Austell, and it’s settled.”

Lady Austell turned one glance of gratitude at her son, and continued to smile at her hostess.

“You are too kind,” she said, “but as I’ve just been telling Austell, what I should really like to do best would be to spend the morning quietly by myself, going over the dear old place again. And then may we see how the afternoon turns out?”

This pathetic mention of the “dear old place,” though “dilapidated old barrack” would have been a far more accurate description of Grote as it was, made Mrs. Osborne feel quite apologetic. She spoke to her husband about it afterwards. “I assure you, my dear,” she said, “to see her sitting there with that sad smile it was quite touching, as if it ought to have been she who asked me what I would fancy doing. Well, it’s one up and another down in this world, and after all we’ve done something in taking the place off their hands, and putting a stick or two of furniture in it, and keeping the rain out. And the white boudoir suite, it looks beautiful; I hadn’t seen it since they put it in.”

“Well, I’m sure the oftener Lady A. favours us with her visits, the more we shall be pleased,” said Mr. Osborne. “And we give them a rattling good rent for it, my dear, when all’s said and done. Why, there’s the motor coming round now, and the clock striking twelve already. Sir Thomas would like a glass of sherry, I’ll be bound, before his long drive.”

“And I must see cook,” said Mrs. Osborne, “and half the morning gone already. Have you any fancy for dinner, to-night, my dear?”

Mr. Osborne thought for a moment.

“No, peace and plenty, my dear,” he said, “such as we’ve always had, Maria. I shall be in for lunch, too. Thank God, old Claude doesn’t want any music to-night. We was hurried away from table last night, and I think Sir Thomas felt he hadn’t done justice to my port: ’40, Maria, and needs a lot of justice. But to-night he shall have his skin full.”

“Well, but Claude has said as how pleased Dora was with the music,” said Mrs. Osborne, “and we’re going to have a second go this evening. You can’t deny them their music, Mr. O.”

Mr. Osborne paused on his way to the door.

“Nor I don’t want to,” he said, “though myself, I hate that scratching sound. But last night, Mrs. O., I don’t mind telling you, what with young—young Franklin lighting up before we’d got into the wine at all, and Claude and he leaving the room to join the ladies, and I’m sure I don’t wonder, the dining room was a sort of Clapham Junction. And you telling me not to stop too long there and all. To-night give us time to sit and think, and if Claude wants his concert, God bless the boy, let him have it. But let it be made clear that those who want their wine and a talk, sit and have it, and don’t feel they’re expected. It’s little I drink myself, as well you know, but there’s Sir Thomas, who’s a fish for his liquor, and little harm it seems to do him. I like my guests to have what they want, Maria, and there’s no reason why some of us shouldn’t stay quiet and pass the bottle, while others listen to them fiddles. That’s the way we’ve got on, old lady, by giving everybody what they want, and of the best quality. Well, let’s do so still. Those that care to leave the table this evening, let them leave, but don’t let there be any pressure on such as like to remain. Lord, if there’s Mrs. Per not coming out already with all her fallals on! I must go and get Sir Thomas his glass of sherry.”

Mr. Osborne was in every way the most hospitable of men, and he would have felt it as a personal disgrace if (as never happened) any guest of his had not all the wine he wanted, even as he would have felt it a personal disgrace if any guest was not met at the station, or did not have sufficient breakfast. But wine to his mind was something of quite a different class to all other hospitalities, and was under his personal control, so that if Sir Thomas liked his drop of sherry in the middle of the morning, Mr. Osborne, if the sherry decanter, as proved to be the case this morning, was empty, had personally to go down to the cellar, followed by Thoresby with a taper, and fish out from the bin the bottle he wanted. Moreover, as the motoring party had finished breakfast nearly two hours ago, and would not get their lunch for nearly two hours after, Mrs. Osborne had ordered a tray of the more sustaining sorts of sandwiches, a cold ham, and a dish or two of fruit to be put ready in the dining-room to fortify them for their drive; for when they did have lunch it would only be a cold picnic kind of lunch which they carried with them in a huge wicker basket like a coffin, which two of the resplendent footmen were even now staggering under, and bearing out to the motor. For the sake of good fellowship several of the party who were not going on this prodigious expedition joined the travellers in this collation, for, as Mr. Osborne said, with a large plate of ham in front of him, “It made a bit of a break in the morning to have a mouthful of sherry and a dry biscuit. Help yourself, Per, my boy, for you’re the guard of this personally conducted tour, and you’ll need a bite of something before you get your lunch.”

Jim Austell meantime had gone back to his room, from which he ejected two flurried housemaids who were emptying things into each other, and dressed in a leisurely manner. He found a letter or two on his dressing table, and among them a note from Mr. Osborne’s secretary containing an extremely satisfactory cheque for the first quarter’s rent of Grote, and with great promptitude he despatched it to his bank. Then, coming downstairs and out on to the terrace, he found Claude rather impatiently waiting for the return of Dora, who had strayed off after breakfast with May Thurston, and challenged him to a game of croquet, in which the two were still engaged when the girls came back from their walk. They refused to join, and May went into the house while Dora drew a chair to the edge of the ground and watched. Jim, wallowing in the remembrance of his cheque, had proposed a sovereign on the game and Claude had accepted. The game, therefore, since money was concerned, was serious, but Dora, not knowing this, was not. She had a great deal to say.

“I think Englishmen are perfect butchers,” she said. “The whole of the long glade is simply one mass of the most heavenly young pheasants, who ran to us in flocks to be fed. Then comes October, and when they run to be fed you shoot them in the eye.”

“There you’re wrong, Dora,” said Jim, calmly taking aim, “you shoot at running rabbits, but not——”

“Oh well, you know what I mean, and you call it sport. There, that serves you right, Jim, now it’s Claude’s turn and he’s got you. Oh, Claude, what a beautiful shot! Wasn’t it lucky it hit the wire first? If it hadn’t it would have missed blue altogether.”

Claude did not reply: even though it was Dora who was talking, the fact that at the present moment he was playing a game overrode all other considerations. He would have much preferred to stop playing the game, and talk to her instead, but since that was impossible he continued to be entirely absorbed in what he was doing. The balls (after the beautiful shot) were well placed for a break, but a little consideration was necessary. Then a somewhat lengthy and faultless exhibition followed. At the end he came and sat down on the grass by Dora.

“Not a bad break,” he said, “I shall have a cigarette.”

“What are we going to do after lunch?” asked she gently, as Jim walked off to the far end of the ground.

“Just exactly whatever you like so long as we do it by ourselves. I haven’t seen you all morning.”

“I know; it’s been beastly,” said she, “but May’s a dear, you know, and she wanted to talk about Harry, and I rather wanted to talk about you, so we both talked together, and I can’t remember a word she said.”

Claude was lying face downward on the grass, nursing his match, and Dora was looking at the short hair on the back of his neck. Then quickly and suddenly she looked up.

“Oh, Jim, you cheated,” she cried. “I saw you move that ball with your foot. What a brute he is! He always cheats at croquet, and is always found out. I don’t cheat: I only lose my temper. Claude, dear, keep an eye on him. Or perhaps you cheat too, do you? Oh, what a heavenly day. Do let’s go on the lake after you’ve finished your game. You shall row and steer, and I shall encourage you.”

Dora passed over the fact of Jim’s cheating as she passed over the other numerous topics of her conversation, things to be alluded to and left behind, and Claude, sitting up again when he had got a light, made no comment whatever to it. Jim continued to play calmly and correctly, and at the end of his break came toward them, leaving an unpromising position.

“You talk more rot in a short space of time than anyone I ever saw,” he remarked. “What with shooting at running pheasants and saying I cheat, you make my head whirl.”

“Oh, but you did, I saw you,” said Dora calmly. “Why not grant it?”

She paused a moment as Claude aimed, and then continued:

“Oh, Claude, what bad luck! Or did it hit it? I almost thought I saw it tremble, and in a minute I shall be sure of it.”

“I thought it hit,” said Jim.

“No, I’m sure it didn’t,” said Claude. “Full inch between them.”

The game was over in a couple of turns after this, but Dora, finding it hot on her grassy bank, had gone down to sit in the boat and wait for Claude. At the conclusion of the game he produced a sovereign and handed it to Jim.

“You gave me a good thrashing,” he said, “couldn’t get in but that once.”

“Thanks. Yes, you had bad luck all through. I say.... You’re satisfied that Dora was talking nonsense?”

“About what?”

“When she said I cheated. Of course I did nothing of the kind.”

“Why, of course I’m satisfied if you tell me so,” said Claude. “Are you coming down to the lake?”

“Not I. Dora would hurl me overboard.”

Claude strolled away and Jim walked aimlessly about, taking shots across the lawn with various balls. He knew perfectly well that he had cheated, but it was the worst luck in the world that Dora had looked up that moment. There had been a ball quite close to his, but as far off as if it had been in a better world by reason of the fact that it was lying neatly and inaccessibly behind the stump. He had just moved it with his foot as he went by, without, so he told himself, more than half meaning to. That was quite characteristic of him; he but rarely fully meant that sort of thing; something external to himself seemed to suggest a paltry little manoeuvre of this kind, and he yielded to it in an absent-minded sort of way, without any particular intention. Had the game, in fact, gone on without attention being called to it, he would probably have nearly forgotten about it by now.

But Claude’s remark, though innocent and even cordial (considering what he himself privately knew), irritated him a good deal. He had said that of course he was satisfied since Jim had told him so. That looked as if he would not have been satisfied if he had not been told, an utterly unjustifiable attitude, since he had never given Claude, so far as he knew, the very smallest grounds for supposing that he himself was capable of cheating at croquet or anything else. Perhaps in Sheffield it was the right thing to cheat, and at the end of the game everyone who had not cheated told his opponent so, who then kindly accepted his word. Claude would find, however, that among the sort of people he now moved, it wasn’t correct to cheat; in fact, it was distinctly advisable not to. Indeed, in a very few minutes, Jim felt rather as if Claude had cheated, and he was himself kind but a little troubled about it.

Then—he felt almost ashamed of himself for dwelling so long on so small an incident—he looked at the matter afresh. He had cheated, and pocketed a sovereign probably in consequence. That was a very small sum of money to cheat for, but he distinctly wished that it had not occurred. And then he threw down again the mallet he had taken up.

“Fact is, I’m a rotten chap,” he said to himself, and there was no dissentient voice in his brain.

Claude meantime had gone down to the lake after Dora. If he had been obliged to give his thoughts the definiteness of words, he would certainly have said that he thought the whole thing rather odd, but then, being of an extremely loyal, unsuspicious nature, he would have endorsed his remark to Jim, that his word was quite sufficient, and have turned his thoughts resolutely elsewhere. He did not want to think about such very nasty little things as cheating at croquet, whether there was a penny or a sovereign or nothing at all on the game, and he did not wish to examine a certain doubt that lurked in the bottom of his mind as to whether Dora had seen correctly or not. It was in the shade anyhow, and he let it lie there. But if anyone had told him (or Jim either) that the incident was a trifling and microscopic one, both would have been quite right to deny that. It was true that a game only and a sovereign were concerned, but the “directing” power no less important a personage than Honour. It really makes a great difference in the daily journey through life if that charioteer is at his post or not.

“Sorry for keeping you, darling,” he said to Dora, “but we had to finish the game. It didn’t take long, did it? I got my head knocked off.”

Dora had already established herself, and he pushed out through the shallow water, where the weeds trailed whispering fingers against the bottom of the boat, to deeper water.

“How clever of you to screw it on again so quick,” said she. “Yes, it’s quite straight. Oh, Claude, I’ve been thinking such a lot since I left you. How funny it is how little tiny things, like Jim’s cheating just now, suggest such a lot of other ones not at all tiny.”

Claude gave a little short uncomfortable laugh.

“I say, darling, do you know,” he said, “if I were you I shouldn’t say that sort of thing even to me. He didn’t cheat: he told me so. So you must have been mistaken, and it’s an awful pity to let things like that ever be talked about. But let’s go on to the big things which it (though it didn’t happen) suggested.”

Dora paid no attention whatever to these excellent moral reflections, but merely waited with her mouth open till he had finished in order to speak again.

“Oh, but he did, he did,” she cried. “I saw him with both eyes. We never could play together because he always cheated and I always lost my temper. How funny of him not to confess.”

Claude did not reply for the moment: it was all rather uncomfortable.

“Well, now for the big things,” he said.

“Oh, bother the big things,” said Dora. “I know you think I am wrong, and I’m not. I’m never wrong. I’m perfectly certain.”

She stopped suddenly and leaned over the side of the boat, dabbling her hand in the water. She saw some unuttered trouble in Claude’s face, and a rather dreadful conjecture occurred to her.

“Claude, you weren’t playing for money, were you?” she asked in a low voice.

He made up his mind in a moment and acted with promptitude.

“Good gracious, no,” he said. “What will you be suggesting next?”

But Dora was still grave.

“Oh, I am glad,” she said, with relief. “And do let’s talk about something else. I daresay I was quite wrong about Jim moving that ball. Oh, I know I wasn’t,” she cried. “It was only a game, you see, and there was nothing on it, and oh, poor Jim, you see he always used to cheat. It was just the same at billiards; if the balls were touching he used to go on before he really looked to see if they were. And that leads on to the big things.”

He had stopped rowing, and with the impetus which the boat had acquired in those vigorous strokes he made to get clear of the weeds, they were drifting toward the little island in the centre of the lake, where the swans made their nests. It was rimmed about with soft-branched willows that trailed yielding boughs toward the water, and the boat glided in under their drooping fingers, and ran on to a soft sandy promontory, where it beached its bows, while the enfolding willow gave shade.

“Yes, the big things,” said Dora. “It’s just this, darling. You’ve got heaps of attractions, but I’m not sure that one of your nicest things isn’t that you are so safe. It is such fun being able to trust a person quite completely and entirely and know one was right in doing so. I don’t believe you ever scheme or make plans. Mother does, and Jim does, and people get so keen on their plan that other things get rather out of focus. They go—oh, it’s like hounds when they are really running well: they don’t look at the scenery, you know. They put their dear noses down and follow, follow. And it’s all because of money—no, not the hounds, don’t be so foolish—but it is an advantage not to want to bother about money. I do like to know that I needn’t bother any more at all, and that if I want to take a cab I can. Somebody—Pierre Loti, I think—said it must be exquisite to be poor. Well, it isn’t. It’s far more exquisite to be rich. Of course I had great fun about trimming a hat for twopence, and making it look as if it came from May’s shop—Biondonetti, isn’t it, but really I should much prefer to order hats direct. Wouldn’t you?”

Claude happened to be hatless, but he passed his hand over his head instead, as if to recapture the sensation of ordering hats. “I suppose I order mine,” he said. “I’m sure I never made one. I shouldn’t know how to set about it.”

“No, darling, you don’t wear two feathers—and—nothing else. A hat of two feathers is fearfully smart.”

“Are these the big things you proposed to talk about?” asked Claude.

“No, as if hats mattered. Oh, Claude, you’re moulting. A short black hair! And there’s another sticking out. May I pull?”

He bent his head a little down: she pulled, and he screamed. The hair remained where it was.

“And is that a big thing?” asked he again.

“No, donkey; darling donkey. You will interrupt so about hats. As if anybody cared where you got your hats, and you haven’t got one. How did you lead the conversation round to hats? Let’s see, it was Austell first, and then ... then, oh, yes, I said you were safe. And now I think I’ll go on. You may sit down here, if you like. There’s room for us both. Let’s be common, as May said about—about people like us, the other day. I would change hats with you, if you had one. As it is——”

Dora pulled the thick black curls.

“Oh, I wish you had a wig,” she said, “and nobody knew but me. I shouldn’t mind, and everybody would say what beautiful hair you had, and I should know it wasn’t real, and shouldn’t tell. It would be such fun. Then some day you would annoy me, and I should tell everybody it was only a wig. Claude, when I am old and wrinkly and quite, quite ugly, do you suppose you will care the least little bit any more for me? Oh, dear, I felt so extraordinarily gay all the morning, and now I’ve gone sad all in a minute! Oh, do comfort me! There is such a lot of gray-business in life, unless one dies quite young, which it would immensely annoy me to do. I wonder how we shall stand the gray-business, you and I, when we see each other getting older and more wrinkled and stiffer, stiffer not only in limb, and that is bad enough, but stiffer in mind, which is infinitely worse. No, don’t look at me like that, but sit up and be sensible. It has got to be faced.”

Unconsciously, or at the most half consciously, she was sounding him; she knew quite well that there were beautiful things to be said and said truly about what she had called the gray-business of life, and she wondered, longing that it might be so, whether there was within him that divine alchemy which could see how the gray could be changed into gold. Never had she felt his physical charm so potent as now, when he sat up obedient to her orders and leaned forward toward her, with a look, a little puzzled, a little baffled in his eyes. Almost she was tempted to say to him, “Oh, it doesn’t matter, nothing matters beside this exquisite day and you, you, as I know you already,” but some very deep-lying vein of curiosity wholly feminine, and very largely loving, made her not interrupt her own question, but wait, with just a touch of anxiety, for his reply. She and Claude, she felt, would have some day to be far more intimately known by each other than they were now. Of him she knew little but his personal beauty, though she felt sure that, as she had said to May, he was good, and as she had said to him, that he was safe. And of her she guessed that he knew no more; that he loved her she had no doubt, but she felt that she had shown him as yet but little beyond that which all the world saw, her quick and eager attitude toward life, the iridescent moods of her effervescent nature. There was something that sat below these, her real self. She wanted Claude to know that, even as she wanted to know his real self.

This was all vague to her though real, instinctive rather than describable, and flashed but momentarily through her mind as she waited for his reply. But that reply came at once: Claude seemed to find no difficulty about the facing of the gray-business.

“There’s no cause to worry,” he said. “Just look at Dad and the mater! Isn’t he in love with her still? And I expect what you call the gray-business for a woman cannot begin while her husband loves her. I don’t suppose either of them ever gave a look, so to say, at anybody else. Think of the way he proposed her health last night! Not much gray-business about that! Why it was as if she was his best girl still, and that he’d just come a-courting her, instead of their having been married over thirty years. And she is his best girl still, just as you will ever be mine. And as for her, why he’s her man still. How’s that for the gray-business?”

Dora felt one dreadful moment’s inclination to laugh. She had asked for a sign that he could turn the gray into gold, and for reply she got the assurance that she might put her mind at rest with the thought of what Mr. and Mrs. Osborne were to each other! She knew that for that moment she only saw the ludicrous side of it, and that a very real and solid truth was firm below it, but somehow it was not what she wanted. She wanted ... she hardly knew what, but something of the spirit of romance that triumphantly refuses to acquiesce in the literal facts of life, and see all things through the many-coloured blaze of its own light. She wanted the gray-business laughed at, she wanted the assurance that she could never grow old, given with a lover’s superb conviction, to be received with the unquestioning credulity of a child. No doubt it ought to have been very comforting to think that the years would leave with them the very warm and comfortable affection which the father and mother had for each other, and she ought to be glad that Claude felt so sure of that. But, to her mind, there was about as much romance in it as in a suet pudding.

He saw the eagerness die from her face, and the shadow of her disappointment cross it.

“And what is it now, dear?” he asked.

Dora tossed her head back, a trick she had caught from him.

“It isn’t anything now,” she said, “it all concerns years that are centuries away. I think it was foolish of me to ask at all.”

“I don’t think it was in the least,” said he. “You said it had to be faced, and I think I’ve given it a facer, at least the example of the governor and the mater has. Besides, there are other things that will colour up the gray-matter, children, we hope, sons going to school and daughters growing up.”

Again Dora knew that he spoke with excellent sense, but again she felt that it was not sense she wanted, so much as lovers’ nonsense, which is more essentially real than any sense. She wanted something airy, romantic, golden.... And then she looked at him again, and her wants faded from her. He brought her himself. She gave a little sigh and raised herself till her face was on a level with his.

“O Claude, I should be a donkey, if I was not content,” she said.

“Lord, there’d be a pair of us then, if I wasn’t,” said he.

Sunday succeeded and breakfast in consequence was put an hour earlier so that any servant in the house could go to church. Mr. Osborne himself, though the day was already of scorching heat, came down in a black frock-coat suit of broadcloth, and his wife rustled in black satin. It was clearly expected that all their guests would go also, for at half-past ten a stream of vehicles drove to the door past the window of the smoking-room.

“Got to start early,” said he, “so that the men may put up the cattle and come too, but there’s no call for you gentlemen to put out your cigars. The ladies won’t mind a whiff of tobacco in the open air, Sir Thomas, and the church is but a step outside the Park gates, so that you can sit and finish there. There are the ladies assembling. Time to go: never keep the fair sex waiting, hey? or else the most indulgent of them will turn a cold shoulder.”

The church, as Mr. Osborne had said, was but a stone’s throw beyond the Park gates, and as they all arrived at twenty minutes to eleven there was time, before the groaning of the organ summoned them in, to have a turn under the trees and finish the cigars that had barely been begun.

It had been so taken for granted that everybody was coming to church that out of all the party there was only one absentee, namely, Austell, to whose room Mr. Osborne had sent with inquiries if he was ready, and the suggestion to send back the motor for him if he was not. But he certainly was not ready and the motor had not gone back for him, since he had said that he was not very well. Otherwise the whole of the party were there, and by degrees strayed into church. Mrs. Osborne had gone there at once from the carriage with Lady Austell, in order to escape from the heat, and they were already seated in the big square family pew which belonged to the house, when the others began to come in. Sir Thomas and Mr. Osborne were the last, because they had been discussing the recent rise in the price of tin up till the last moment. They entered, indeed, so shortly before the procession of four choir boys, two men and the vicar, that Mr. Osborne had barely time to sit down by his wife in the place she always kept for him next her in church, after standing up and putting his face in his hat, before he had to stand up again. Sir Thomas sat next Lady Austell. The two looked rather like a codfish in conjunction with a withered lily.

The pew was four-sided, the fourth side opening into the body of the church through the easternmost of the arches of the south aisle. In the centre of it was a very beautiful alabaster monument to the first earl and his wife, while the window was of exquisite early German glass to the memory of the second. Elsewhere in numbers round the walls were other smaller tablets, some bearing medallions, others merely catalogues of the cardinal virtues with which the deceased were blessed, but the whole place was historical, established. And here this morning sat Mr. Osborne and his family and friends, among whom were Lady Austell and her daughter, who was going to join together the two families. She sat just opposite Claude, and of them all, he alone to the most observant eye was ambiguous. He might as well, so far as appearance went, have been of the Austells as of the Osbornes.

Dora, it was to be feared, was not very attentive, and her face wore that peculiarly rapt look, which, as May Thurston had once told her, was a certain indication that she was not thinking about what was going on. As far as the service of the church went that was true; she was completely occupied with the occupants of the pew. The sermon was in progress and her mother sat with eyes mournfully fixed on the Elizabethan monument in the centre, just as if the first earl had been her husband, while next her Sir Thomas had his eyes fixed on nothing at all, for they were tightly closed. His wife, next to him, and round the corner, made futile little attempts to rouse him to consciousness again, by pretending to put her parasol in a more convenient place, so that it should incidentally hit his foot. This, eventually, she succeeded in doing, and he opened one eye and rolled it drowsily and reproachfully at Lady Austell, as if she had interrupted some celestial reverie. Then he closed it again.

Claude, as Dora felt, had observed this, and was looking at her, so she passed over him, for fear of catching his eye, and went on to Uncle Alfred, who sat next him. He was closely wrapped up in a shawl that went over his shoulders, and a certain stealthy movement of his lower jaw caused her to suspect that he was eating some sort of lozenge. Then came Mrs. Osborne: Dora could hear her rather tight satin bodice creak to her breathing. She had the Bible in which she had verified the text open in her lap, and she was listening intently to the sermon, which was clearly to her mind, for her plump, pleasant face was smiling, and her eyes fixed on the preacher were a little dim: her smile was clearly one of those smiles of very simple happiness which are allied to tenderness and tears. And then Dora focussed her ear and heard what was being said:

“So this earthly love of ours,” said the preacher, “is of the same immortal quality. Years do not dim it; it seems but to grow stronger and brighter as the mere purely physical part of it——”

And then Dora’s eye was focussed again by a movement on the part of Mrs. Osborne, and her ear lost the rest of the sentence. Mrs. Osborne gave a great sigh and her dress a great creak, and simultaneously she took away the hand that was supporting the Bible in which she had verified the text, so that it slid off the short and steeply inclined plane between her body and her knee, and fell face downward on the floor. She did not heed this: she laid her hand, making kaleidoscopic colours in her rings as she moved it, on the hand of her husband, who sat next her.

He, too, had been following the sermon with evident pleasure, and it was hard to say to which of them the movement came first. For within the same fraction of a second his hand also let fall the silk hat which he had already gathered up in anticipation of the conclusion, and in the same instant of time it was seeking hers. His head turned also to her, as hers to him, and a whispered word passed between them. Then they smiled, each to the other, and the second whisper was audible right across the monument of Francis, first earl, to Dora, where she sat opposite to them.

“Maria, my dear,” whispered Mr. Osborne, “if that isn’t nice!”

Then Mrs. Osborne’s belated consciousness awoke; she withdrew her hand and picked up her Bible.

Mr. Osborne’s instinct in taking up his hat had been quite correct; the doxology followed, and a hymn was given out. He and his wife, so it was clear to Dora, had no consciousness except for each other and the hymn. She was the first to find it in her hymn-book, while he still fumbled with his glasses, and when they all stood up he shared the book with her and put down his own.

Then the organ indicated the first lines of the tune, and again the two smiled at each other, for it was a favourite, as it had been sung at the service for the dedication of the church in Sheffield. They both remembered that, but that did not wholly account for their pleasure: it had been a favourite long before.

Mrs. Osborne sang what is commonly called “second.” That is to say, she made sounds about a third below the air. Mr. Osborne sang bass: that is to say, he sang the air an octave or thereabouts below the treble. They both sang very loudly; so also did Percy, so also did Mrs. Per, who sang a real alto.

And then without reason Dora’s eyes grew suddenly dim. In the last verse Mrs. Osborne closed the large gilt-edged hymn-book with tunes, and looked at her husband. He moistened his lips as the last verse began, and coughed once. Then Mrs. Osborne’s rings again caught the light as she sought her husband’s hand. And she started fortissimo, a shade before anybody else:

Mr. Osborne did not sing: his fat fingers closed on his wife’s rings, and he listened to her. He would not have listened then to Melba. He would not have been so completely absorbed if the seraphim had sung to him.

And then finally Dora looked at Claude. She thought she understood a little more. But she only saw a little more.