CLAUDE, as became the future candidate for the constituency of West Brentwood, was sedulous and regular in reading the House of Common debates, and two mornings later was sitting after breakfast with his Times in front of him, to which he devoted an attention less direct than was usual with him, for he expected every moment to be told that the visitor whom he was waiting for would be announced, and he could form no idea of what the visitor’s business might be. Half an hour ago he had been summoned to the telephone and found that he was speaking to one of the partners in Grayson’s bank, who asked if he could see him at once. No clue as to what so pressing a business might be was given him, and Mr. Humby, the partner who spoke to him, only said that he would start immediately. He had first telephoned, it appeared, to Claude’s flat, and his servant had given him the address.

In itself there was little here that was tangibly disquieting, for Claude stood outside the region of money troubles, but other things combined to make him, usually so serene, rather nervous and apprehensive. For the last day or two he had been vaguely anxious about his mother, who appeared to him not to be well, though in answer to his question she confessed to nothing more than July fatigue, while his relations with Dora, or rather his want of them, continued to perplex or distress him. She was evenly polite to him, she went out with him when occasion demanded, but that some barrier had been built between them he could no longer doubt. He had not only his own feeling to go upon, for his mother had remarked it, and asked if there was any trouble. Lady Osborne was the least imaginative of women, he was afraid, and her question had so emphasized it to his mind that he had determined, should no amelioration take place, to put a direct question to Dora about it. He would gladly have avoided that, for his instinct told him that the trouble was of a sort that could scarcely be healed by mere investigation, but the present position was rapidly growing intolerable. All these things made it difficult for him to concentrate his attention on the fiscal question, and it was almost with a sense of relief to him that the interruption he had been waiting for came.

He shook hands with Mr. Humby, who at once stated his business.

“I may be troubling you on a false alarm, Mr. Osborne,” he said, “but both my partners and I thought that one of us had better see you at once in order to set our minds at rest.”

“You have only just caught me,” said Claude. “I am going into the country before lunch.”

“Then I have saved myself a journey,” said Mr. Humby gravely.

He produced an envelope and took a cheque out of it.

“The cheque came through to-day,” he said; “it was cashed two days ago at Shepherd’s Bank, quite regularly. But it is drawn by you to ‘self’ over a week ago. That was a little curious, since cheques drawn to self are usually cashed at once. Also, though that is no business of ours, it is a rather large sum, five hundred pounds, to take in cash. You have banked with us for some years, Mr. Osborne, and we find you have never drawn a large sum to yourself before. But the combination of these things seemed to warrant us in making sure the cheque was—ah, genuine. The handwriting appears to be yours.”

Claude looked at the date.

“June 24,” he said. “I did draw a large cheque about that time for a motor-car.”

“That has been presented; it was drawn to Daimler’s,” said Mr. Humby.

Claude turned the cheque over: it was endorsed with his name, but search how he might he could not recollect anything about it. And slowly his inability to remember deepened into the belief that he had drawn no such cheque.

“If you would refer to your cheque-book,” said Mr. Humby, “we could clear the matter up. I am sorry for giving you so much trouble.”

“The question is, Where is my cheque-book?” said Claude. “I came over here a week ago, but before that I was at my flat. But I will look.”

He went upstairs, into the sitting room, which was his and Dora’s. She was sitting there now, writing notes, and looked up as he came in.

“Claude, can I speak to you for a minute?” she said.

“Yes, dear, but not this moment. I have to find my cheque-book. Where do you suppose it is? One must attend to business, you know.”

“Oh, quite so,” said she, and resumed her letter again.

Claude’s heart sank. Perhaps she wanted to speak to him about things that were of infinitely greater moment, and he had made a mess of it, repulsed her, by his foolish speech.

“Dora, what is it?” he asked. “Is it——”

She must have known what was in his mind, for she made an impatient gesture of dissent.

“No, if you can give me a minute later on, it will be all right,” she said.

His search was soon rewarded, but proved to be fruitless, for the cheque-book was a new one, and he had only used it for the first time three days ago. But perhaps she would remember something.

“Dora, did I give you a rather big cheque for household bills or anything, while we were in the flat?” he asked.

“Yes, I remember that you did,” she said. “And I remember endorsing it as you drew it to me. Why?”

“Only that there is a cheque that I appear to have drawn for five hundred pounds, just before I left the flat, and for some reason my bankers want to be sure that I did draw it.”

“You mean they think that it may be forged?”

“Yes.”

“But who can have got hold of your cheque-book?” asked Dora. “You have found it, haven’t you?”

“Yes, but this is no use. The cheque in question was drawn before I began this book. I suppose I left it at the flat.”

Dora had continued writing her note as she talked, for it was only a matter of a few formal phrases of regret, but at this moment, her hand suddenly played her false, and her pen sputtered on the paper. And though she did not know at that second why this happened, a moment afterward she knew.

Below his cheque-book in the drawer lay Claude’s passbook. It had been very recently made up, for his allowance from Uncle Alfred, paid on June 28, appeared to his credit, and on the debit side a cheque to Dora of £150, cashed on the previous date. That, no doubt, was the cheque for “books” of which she had spoken.

She had gone on writing again, and Claude apparently had noticed nothing of that pen-splutter.

“Yes, here are cheques I have drawn up till the 29th,” he said, “and none of £500. It looks rather queer. I’ll be back again in five minutes. I must just see Mr. Humby, and tell him I can’t trace it.”

Claude went rather slowly downstairs again. The matter was verging on certainty. He had drawn a cheque for five hundred pounds, on June 24, and it had not been presented till two days ago. The cheque for the car was entered, and the cheque for books to Dora. He hated to think that Parker had forged his name, but if he had, good servant though he was, there was no clemency possible.

“May I look at the cheque again?” he asked.

He examined it more closely.

“I can find no trace of drawing any such cheque,” he said, “and I believe it is a forgery. It is very like my handwriting, but I don’t believe I wrote it.”

“That is what we thought,” said Mr. Humby.

“Then what are you going to do?” asked he.

“Find out who presented the cheque, and prosecute. I am very sorry: it is an unpleasant business, but the bank can take no other course.”

He folded up the cheque again, put it in his pocket and left the room. But Claude did not at once go back to Dora. There had started unbidden into his mind the memory of a morning at Grote before they were married, of a game of croquet, of a sovereign. Next minute he too had left the room, and the minute after he was in the road, walking quickly to Mount Street. His old cheque-book no doubt was there, and he would be able to find it. And all the way there, he tried desperately to keep at bay a suspicion that threatened to grip him by the throat. And upstairs Dora waited for him: the same doubt threatened to strangle her.

Jim was out, but was expected back every moment, and Claude went into his small room, and began searching the drawers of his writing table. There was a sheaf of letters from Dora in one, a copy of his speech on municipal taxation in another, and in the third a heap of old cards of invitation and the butt end of his cheque-book.

Sun blinds were down outside the windows, the room was nearly dark, and he carried this out into the large sitting room and sat down to examine it. There was a whole batch of cheques, most of which he could remember about, drawn on June 22. Then came a blank counterfoil and then the last counterfoil of the book, bearing a docket of identification as cheque to Dora for £150. That was drawn on the 27th.

He heard a step outside; the door opened and Jim entered. He was whistling as he came round the corner of the screen by the door. Then he saw Claude, his whistling ceased, and his face grew white. Once he tried to speak, but could not.

Claude saw that, the blank face, the whitened lips; it was as if Jim had been brought face to face with some deadly spectre, instead of the commonplace vision of his brother-in-law sitting in his own room, looking through the useless but surely innocuous trunk of an old cheque-book. And instantaneously, automatically, Claude’s mind leaped to the conclusion which he had tried to keep away from it. But it could be kept away no longer: the inference closed upon him like the snap of a steel spring.

In the same instant there came upon him his own personal dislike of Jim, and his distrust of him. How deep that was he never knew till this moment. Then came the reflection that he was doing Jim a monstrous injustice in harbouring so horrible a suspicion, and that the best way of clearing his mind of it was to let the bank trace the cheque and prosecute. But he knew that it was his dislike of his brother-in-law that gave birth to this, not a sense of fairness. And on top of it all came the thought of Dora and his love for her, and mingled with that a certain pity that was its legitimate kinsman.

The pause, psychically so momentous, was but short in duration, and Claude jumped up. His mind was already quite decided: it seemed to have decided itself without conscious interference on his part.

“Good morning, Jim,” he said. “I must apologize for making an invasion in your absence, but I had to refer back to an old cheque-book.”

Jim commanded his voice.

“Nothing wrong, I hope,” he said.

Again Claude had to make a swift decision. He could tell Jim that a cheque of his had been forged, and that the matter was already in the hands of the bank: that probably would force a confession, if there was cause for one. But it would still be his dislike (though he might easily call it justice) that was the mover here. There was a wiser way than that, a way that, for all the surface falsehood of it, held a nobler truth within.

“No, nothing whatever is wrong,” he said. “Excuse me: I must telephone to the bank, to say the cheque is all right. Ah, I’ll telephone from here if you will allow me.”

The telephone was just outside and Jim heard plainly all that passed. The number was rung up, and then Claude spoke.

“Yes, I’m Mr. Claude Osborne. I am speaking to Mr. Grayson, am I? It is the matter that Mr. Humby came to speak to me about this morning. Yes, yes: the cheque for £500. I find I have made a complete error. The cheque was drawn by me and is perfectly correct. Yes. It was very stupid of me. Please let Mr. Humby know as soon as he gets back. Yes. Thank you. Good morning.”

Claude paused a moment with the receiver in his hand. Then he called to Jim.

“Can’t stop a moment,” he said. “I’ve the devil of a lot to do. Good-bye.”

He walked back again at once to Park Lane, still thinking intently, still wondering if he could have done better in any way. Honest all through, he hated with a physical repulsion the thought of what he felt sure Jim had done, but oddly enough, instead of feeling a crescendo of dislike to Jim himself, he was conscious only of a puzzled sort of pity. By instinct he separated the deed from the doer, instead of bracketting them both in one clause of disgusted condemnation. And then he ceased to wonder at that: it seemed natural, after all.

He went straight up to Dora’s room, and found her still at her table with letters round her. But when he entered she was not writing: she was staring out of the window with a sort of terror on her face. Claude guessed what it was that perhaps had put it there, and what lurked behind that look of agonized appeal that she turned on him.

“I’m sorry for being so long, dear,” he said, “but I’ve been making a fool of myself. That cheque I spoke to you about is quite all right. I found the counterfoil in my old book at the flat. I drew it right enough. Mr. Humby expects a fellow to carry in his head the memory of every half-crown he spends.”

Dora gave one great sobbing sigh of relief, which she could not check.

“I’m glad,” she said. “I hated to think that Parker perhaps had gone wrong. One—one hates suspicion, and its atmosphere.”

Claude heard, could not help hearing the relief in the voice, could not help seeing that the smile she gave him struggled like mist-ridden sunlight to shine through his dispelled clouds of nameless apprehension. Nor could his secret mind avoid guessing what that apprehension was, for it was no stranger to him; he had been sharer in it till he had seen Jim, when it deepened into a certainty which was the opposite to that which at this moment brought such relief to his wife. The other certainty, his own, must of course be kept sealed and locked from her, and Claude hastened to convey it away from her presence, so to speak, by talking of something else, for fear that it might, in despite of him, betray some hint of its existence.

“But there was something you wanted to speak to me about,” he said.

“Yes. It is about your mother. Do you think she is well?”

“No, I haven’t thought so for the last three or four days,” said he. “What have you noticed?”

“I went into her room just now,” said Dora, “and she was sitting and doing nothing. And she was crying.”

Claude paused in astonishment.

“Crying,” he said. “The mater crying?”

“Yes. She clearly did not wish me to see it, and so I pretended not to. I had thought she wasn’t well before now. We must do something, Claude; make her see a doctor.”

“But why hasn’t she been to see a doctor all these days?” he asked. “The governor goes to a doctor if his nails want cutting.”

“I don’t know why she hasn’t been. There might be several reasons. But I thought I would speak to you first and then if you approved I would go to her and try to find out what is the matter.”

“I wish you would,” he said.

Dora got up, but her mind went back to that which she had been brooding over in his absence, that which frightened her.

“Did you see Jim?” she asked.

“Yes: he came in when I was there.”

“How was he?” she asked negligently.

“Oh, much as usual. I couldn’t stop because I wanted to get back to you. Will you come and tell me about the mater, after you have seen her?”

Dora went back to Lady Osborne’s room, and knocked before she entered. The apparition of her sitting and crying all alone had frightened her more than she had let Claude see, for as a rule her mother-in-law’s cheerfulness was of a quality that seemed to be proof against all the minor accidents of life, and Dora remembered how, one day in Italy, when they had missed a train at Padua, and had to wait three hours, Lady Osborne’s only comment had been, “Well, now, that will give us time to look about us.” She was afraid therefore that the cause of her tears was not trivial.

And now, when she went in again, receiving a rather indistinct answer to her knock, she found Lady Osborne hastily snatching up the day’s paper, so as to pretend to be occupied. But her face wore an expression extraordinarily contorted, as if her habitual geniality found it a hard task to struggle to the surface.

“And I’m sure the paper gets more and more interesting every day,” said she, “though it’s seldom I find time to have a glance at all the curious things that are going on in the world. What a dreadful place Morocco must be; I couldn’t sleep quiet in my bed if I was there! What is it, my dear?”

On her face and in her voice the trace of tears bravely suppressed still lingered, and a great wave of pity suddenly swept over Dora. Something was wrong, something which at present Lady Osborne was bearing in secret, for it was quite clear that her husband, whose cheerfulness at breakfast had bordered on the boisterous, knew nothing, nor did Claude know. Her mother-in-law, as Dora was well aware, was not a woman of complicated or subtle emotion, who could grieve over an imagined sorrow, or could admit to a personal relation with herself the woe of the world, for with more practical wisdom she gave subscriptions to those whose task it was to alleviate any particular branch of it. Her family, her hospitalities, her comfortable though busy life had been sufficient up till now to minister to her happiness, and if something disturbed that, Dora rightly thought that it must be something tangible and personal. So she went to the sofa, and sat down by her, and did not seek to be subtle.

“What is it?” she said. “Is there anything the matter?”

The simplicity was not calculated; it was perfectly natural, and had its effect. Lady Osborne held the paper in front of her a moment longer, but it was shaken with the trembling of her hands. Then she dropped it.

“My dear, I am a selfish old woman,” she said, “but I can’t bear it any longer. I’ve not been well this long time, but I’ve tried to tell myself it was my imagination, and not bother anybody. And I could have held on, my dear, a little longer, if you hadn’t come to me like this. I warrant you, there would have been plenty of laughing and chaff at Grote this week-end, as always. But the pain this morning was so bad that I just thought I would have a bit of a cry all to myself.”

“But why have you told nobody?” said Dora. “Not Claude, nor Dad nor me?”

Lady Osborne mopped her eyes.

“Bless your heart, haven’t we all got things to bear, and best not to trouble others?” she said. “I know well enough how you’d all spend your time in looking after me, and having the doctor and what not, and I thought I could get through to the end of the season and then go and rest, and see what was the matter. And, my dearie, I’m a dreadful coward you know, and I couldn’t abear the thought of being pulled about by the doctor, and maybe worse than that. Anyhow, I’ve not given in at once. Some days my colour has been awful and no appetite, but I’ve kept my spirits up before you all. And I can’t bear to think now that I must give in, and have to take doctor’s stuff, and lie up, spoiling all your pleasure. But I don’t think as I can go on much longer like this. Perhaps it’s best that you know. Poor Eddie! Him and his jokes this morning at breakfast, chaffing me about Sir Thomas! Lor’, my dear, what spirits he has! I declare he quite took my thoughts off. And about Claude and Lizzie too, as if Claude ever gave a thought to anyone but yourself.”

Lady Osborne patted Dora’s hand a moment in silence. She was not sure that Dora had “relished” her husband’s fun at breakfast; now was the time to set it right.

“But then, Eddie knew that, else he’d never have made a joke of it,” she said. “And you, my dearie, have been so sweet to me these weeks, not that you haven’t been that always, as if you was my own daughter. Indeed, not that I complain of Lizzie, for I don’t, often and often she’s behaved high to Mr. O. and me, when you, who have excuse enough, have never done such a thing. Often I’ve said to him, ‘It’s as if Dora was an Osborne herself.’ Thank you, my dearie, for that, and for all you’ve done and been. I daresay it’s been difficult for you at times, but there! I daresay you think I’ve not noticed, but I have, my dear, and you’ve behaved beautiful always. I wanted just to say that, and you’re behaving sweet and kind to me still.”

Somehow, deep down, this cut Dora like a knife. There was a wounding pathos about it, that made those efforts she had put forth to behave decently, appear infinitely trivial, humiliatingly cheap. And the gentle patting on her hand continued.

“And now, dearie, I’m going to ask you to do another thing yet,” said Lady Osborne, “and that is to take my place down at Grote this Sunday, and let me stay up here and see my doctor this afternoon. If you hadn’t such quick and loving eyes, I should have gone through with it and held on, my dear, even if there was more mornings like this in store. But with you knowing, my dear, I’ll not wait longer, and maybe make matters worse, though perhaps it’s me as has been making a fuss about nothing, and a bottle of medicine will make me as fit as a flea again, as Mr. O. used to say. Now we must put our heads together and contrive, so that he may think it’s just a touch of the liver and nothing to be alarmed for, else he’ll never go and leave me. He’s gone off already to some committee, and the car is to call for him at twelve and drive him straight down, so that he’ll find himself at Grote before he knows anything is wrong. And then, my dear, you must do your best to make him think it’s nothing, as, please God, it isn’t. What a trouble our insides are, though, to be sure, mine’s given me little enough to complain of all these years. I’ve always eaten my dinner and got a good night’s rest until this began.”

They talked long, “contriving,” as Lady Osborne had said, the sole point of the contrivance being that her husband should enjoy his day or two at Grote, and have everything to his liking, and not fret about her. Once and again and again once, Dora tried to lead the conversation back to Lady Osborne herself, to get from her some inkling of what her indisposition might be, what its symptoms were, with a view of encouraging her to face the doctor with equanimity, for this was clearly an ordeal she dreaded. And on Dora’s third attempt she put an end to further questions.

“I think, dearie, we’ll not talk about that,” she said, “because, as I told you, I’m such a coward as never was, and the more I think about it, the more coward I shall be when I get to the doctor’s door. It was just the same with me about my teeth before I lost them all: if one had to come out, I had such a shrinking from a bit of pain, that if I thought about it, I knew I shouldn’t go to the dentist at all. So I used to busy myself with other things, and plan a treat, maybe, for the working folk, or an extra good dinner for Mr. O., or a surprise for Per or Claude; and it’s a similar to that what I’ll do now, if you don’t mind. And I assure you I’m so bothered over the thought of you and Dad being at Grote without me that I’ve little desire to think about anything else. Thirty-five years it is last May, my dear, since we took each other for better or worse, and it’s always been better, and not a night since then, I assure you, have we not slept under the same roof, and in the same room save when I had a cold and feared to give it him. And he’s got to depend on me, Gold bless him, and knows that I shall see he has a biscuit or two on a plate by his bedside and a glass of milk, against he wakes the night. Servants are never to be trusted, my dear, though I’m sure it’s a shame to say it, when ours are so attentive. But he’s got a new valet just of late, and if you could peep in at my lord’s bedroom door when you went up to bed, and see as all was prepared, and that his slippers was put where he can see them in his dressing room, else he’ll walk to bed in his bare feet and step on a pin or a tack someday, which I always dread for him. And if he comes in hot, as he’s taken to do in this weather from his walk, just you behave as if you was me, and say to him, ‘Mr. O., you go and change your vest and your socks, else I don’t pour out your cup of tea,’ and knowing as you’ll do that will take a load off my mind, and I shall go to the doctor this afternoon, knowing as you are looking after him as if I was there, as comfortable as if I was going to have a cheque cashed for me. And, my dear, if you’d sit next him in church, and just nudge him if he attempts to follow the lesson without putting his glasses on. It’s small print in his Bible, and never another one will he let me give him, just because it was that one he used to read out of to me when we were in Cornwall on our wedding trip, and sometimes no church within distance. But be sure he changes his underwear, my dear, when he comes in, for he catches cold easy, and his skin acts so well that it’s as if he’d had a bath. And give him plenty of milk in his coffee at breakfast, not that he likes it, but he will have the coffee made so strong that it’s enough to rasp the coats of the stomach, as they say, unless you drown it in milk. And you’ll cheer him up, I know, my dear, if he gets anxious, and just say to him ‘Stuff and nonsense, Dad, Mrs. O.’s had a bit of an upset, same as you have times without number, and she’s always nervous about herself, and has gone to see the doctor, and as like as not will come down to-morrow afternoon with a couple of pills in her pocket, and ready to be laughed at to your heart’s content.’ That’s what I want you to say, my dear, though you’ll put it in your own words, and much better I’m sure. But to-day it’s as if I feel I couldn’t go and look after my friends, now that I know you’ll take my place, for when there’s a multitude in the house, sometimes the mistress can’t get to bed till it maybe is one o’clock or worse, and I want a good long night. I shall try to see Sir Henry as soon as may be, and after that I don’t doubt I shall just get to bed and sleep the clock round. I’m so tired, my dear, and there’s something—— Well, I make no doubt that before many hours are out, we shall all be laughing together over my silliness, and Mr. O. will be asking if I have taken enough phosphorus jelly, or what not. Lor’, he’ll never let me hear the last of it!”

That was a triumphant conclusion. The whole speech punctuated by silences, punctuated by a little dropping of tears and by a little laughter, was hardly less triumphant. Once, ages ago, so it seemed to Dora, Claude had held up his father and mother as examples of the ideal antidote against the gray-business of middle age, and it had failed to satisfy her then. She would have thought it comical, had not there been some very keen sense of disappointment about it, that a lover should speak to his beloved in such language. But now, with rekindled meaning, she remembered the incident and its setting. She had asked him for consolation with regard to the gray-business that awaited everybody, hoping to hear words of glowing romance, and had found it half comical, half tragic, that he refuted her doubts by the visible example of his father and mother. He had said that she “was his best girl still.” But now Dora did not feel either the comedy or the tragedy of his reply; she felt only the truth of it. And she did not wonder that her mother-in-law was Dad’s best girl still.

But for herself, though there was heartache in much that had been said, there was the beginning of understanding also, or, at any rate, the awakening of the sense that there was something to understand. Lady Osborne had called herself a coward, and reiterated that charge, with regard to seeing a doctor only. But love—a golden barrier of solid defence, no filagree work—had come between her and her fear; yet it was scarcely true to say that it had come there: it was always there. Once Dora had thought that, compared to romance, any relation that could exist between Claude’s parents, must necessarily be of an ash-cold quality. But was it? She herself had known the romantic, but in comparison with all that she had been conscious of with regard to Claude for the last few weeks she could not call Lady Osborne ash-cold. In her there was some glow, some authentic fire that had never known quenching. It might have altered in superficials, for flames there might have been substituted the glowing heart of the fire. But it was the same fire. There had not been ashes at any time: the fire always burned, unconsumed, with no waste of cinder; it was immortal, radium-like.

Then for the first time the beauty of it struck her. Before this moment she had seen something that appeared comical; then, with better vision, she had seen something that struck her as pathetic. Now with true vision she saw all she had missed before—Beauty. It was that she had worshipped all her life, thinking that she would always recognize and adore. But she had missed it altogether in that which was so constantly under her eyes. She had been too quick in seeing all that was obvious: wealth, indiscriminate hospitality, vulgarity (since she had chosen to call it so); but the big thing, that which was the essential, she had missed altogether. Once before, when Mr. and Mrs. Osborne shared a hymn-book in church, she had seen, and thought she understood. Now she was beginning to understand. She began to want to take other hearts into her own. The desire was there. The beauty she had at last seen attracted her, drew her to it. Strangely had it been unveiled, by tale of slippers and biscuits and underwear. She never had expected to find it in such garb. But Claude had known it was there; he had not been diverted by superficial things, but had seen always that “the mater was the governor’s best girl still.”

Dora left her mother-in-law that morning with a sense of humility, a sense also of disgust at herself for her own stupidity. All these months a thing as beautiful as this great love and tenderness had been in front of her eyes, and she had not troubled to look at it with enough attention to recognize that there was beauty there. But now the tears that dimmed her own eyes quickened her vision. At last she saw the picture in its true value, and it made her ashamed. Was she equally blind, too, with regard to Claude? Was there something in him, some great thing which mattered so much that all which for months had got on her nerves more and more every day was, if seen truly, as trivial as she now saw were those things that had blinded her in the case of Lady Osborne? It might be so; all she knew was that if it was there, she had not troubled to look for it. At first she had so loved his beauty that nothing else mattered; nor did it seem to her possible that love could ever be diminished or suffer eclipse. But that had happened, even before she had borne a child to him; and to take its place (and more than take its place) there had sprung up no herbs of more fragrant beauty than the scarlet of that first flower. She had nothing in her garden for him but herbs of bitterness and resentment. That, at least, was all she knew of till now.

She paused a moment outside the door of the sitting room where she had left him, before entering, for she knew his devotion to his mother, and was sorry for him. And somehow she felt herself unable to believe that Lady Osborne’s optimistic forecast would be justified; she did not think that in a few hours they would be all laughing over her imaginary ailment. And Claude must see that she was anxious; it would be better to confess to that, and prepare him for the possibility of there being something serious in store.

He looked up quickly as she came in, throwing away the cigarette he had only just begun.

“Well?” he said.

Dora heard the tremble and trouble in that one word, and she was sorry for him. That particular emotion she had never felt for him before; she had never seen him except compassed about with serene prosperity.

“Claude, I’m afraid she is ill,” she said. “She feels it herself too. She has been in great pain.”

“But how long has it been going on?” he asked. “Why hasn’t she seen a doctor?”

“Because she didn’t want to spoil things for us. She thought she could hold on. But she is going now, to-day.”

“What does she think it is?” asked he.

“She wouldn’t talk of it at all,” said Dora. “I think she could hardly think of it, because she was thinking of Dad so much. She won’t come down to Grote, you see, but stop up here, unless she is told it is nothing. And so we must do our best that he shan’t be anxious or unhappy until we know whether there is real cause or not. She wants me particularly to go down there, or of course I would stop with her.”

“The mater must feel pretty bad if she’s not coming to Grote,” said he.

“Yes, I am afraid she does. Oh, Claude, I am so sorry for her, and you all. Her bravery has made us all blind. I ought to have seen long ago. I reproach myself bitterly.”

“No, no, there’s no cause for that,” said he gently. “She’s taken us all in, and it’s just like her. Besides, who knows? it may be nothing in the least serious.”

“I know that,” said she, “and we won’t be anxious before we have cause. Go and see her, dear, before we start, and make very light of it; just say you are glad she is being sensible at last, in going to be put right. There is no cause for anxiety yet. I shall go round to Sir Henry’s and arrange an appointment for her this afternoon, if possible, and get him to write to us very fully this evening, so that we shall know to-morrow. And then, if we are to get down by lunch, it will be time for us to start. I ordered the motor for twelve.”

Lord Osborne was a good deal perturbed at the ne with which Dora met him at Grote, and it was an affair that demanded careful handling to induce him not to go back at once to town and see her.

“Bless me! Maria not well enough to come down, and you expect me to take my Sunday off, and eat my dinner as if my old lady was a-seated opposite me?” he asked. “Not I, my dear; Maria’s and my place is together, wherever that place may be.”

“But you can’t go against her wish, Dad,” said Dora. “And what’s to become of me if you do? I’ve been sent down on purpose to play at being her. You’ve got to have a glass of milk by your bed, and a couple of biscuits. Oh, I know all about it!”

“To think of your knowing that!” he said, rather struck by this detail.

“Yes, but only this morning did I know it,” said Dora. “I sat with her a long time, and all she could think about was that you should be comfortable down here.”

“Well, it goes against the grain not to be with her,” said he. “But, as you say, there’s no cause to be alarmed yet. And Sir Henry’s going to see her this afternoon?”

“Yes, and telegraph to me afterward. Dad, if you upset all our beautiful arrangements, neither she nor I will ever speak to you again. Oh! do be good.”

“But it won’t be like home not to have Lady O. here,” said he.

“She knows that; but Claude and I have to make as good an imitation as we can. And you’ll put me in a dreadful hole if you go back to town. She will say I have made no hand of looking after you at all. I shall be in disgrace, as well as you.”

“Well, God bless you, my dear!” said he, “and thank you for being so good to us. Here I’ll stop, if it’s the missus’s wish. No, I don’t fancy any pudding to-day, thank you.”

Dora laid down her spoon and fork.

“Dad, not one morsel do I eat unless you have some!” she said. “And I’m dreadfully hungry.”

Lord Osborne laughed within himself.

“Eh! you’ve got a managing wife, Claude,” he said. “She twists us all round her little finger.”

The expected telegram arrived in the course of the evening, and though it contained nothing definite, Lord Osborne was able to interpret it in the most optimistic manner.

“Well, Sir Henry tells you that Mrs. O.’s in no pain, and that he’s going to see her again to-morrow,” he said. “Why, I call that good news, and it relieves my mind, my dear. Bless her! she’ll get a good night’s rest, I hope now, and feel a different creature in the morning. There’s nothing else occurs to you, my dear? Surely he would have said if he had found anything really wrong?”

Dora read the telegram again.

“No; I think you are quite right to put that interpretation on it,” she said truthfully enough. “We’ll hope to get good news again to-morrow. I am glad she is out of pain.”

But secretly she feared something she did not say—namely, that there was something wrong, but that Sir Henry had not been able without further examination to say what it was. Yet, after all, that interpretation might be only imagination on her part. But there was nothing in the telegram which appeared to her to be meant to allay the anxiety which he must know existed.

Dora went to bed that evening with a great many things to think about, which had to be faced, not shirked or put aside. The day, which by the measure of events had been almost without incident, seemed terribly full of meaning to her. Lady Osborne had seen a doctor; she had talked over domestic affairs with Dora ... that was not quite all: Claude had thought that a cheque had been forged, but found on examination that he had made a mistake. Set out like that, there seemed little here that could occupy her thoughts at all, still less that could keep away from her the sleep that in general was so punctual a visitor to her. But to-night it did not come near her, and she did not even try to woo its approach. She had no thought of sleep, though she was glad to have the darkness and the silence round her so that she might think without distraction. All these things, trivial as events, seemed to her to be significant, to hold possibilities, potentialities, altogether disproportionate to their face value. It might prove not to be so when she examined them; it might be that for some reason a kind of nightmare inflation was going on in her mind, so that, as in physical nightmare things swell to gigantic shape, in her imagination these simple little things were puffed to grotesque and terrifying magnitude. She had to think them over calmly and carefully; it might easily be that they would sink to normal size again.

She took first that affair of the cheque, which had turned out, apparently, to be no affair at all. Claude had made a mistake, so he had himself said, and the cheque which he and the bank had suspected was perfectly genuine. But Dora, between the time of his thinking there was something wrong and of his ascertaining that there was not, had passed a very terrible quarter of an hour—one that it made her feel sick to think of even now. There was no use in blinking it; she had feared that Jim had forged her husband’s cheque. She had hardly given a thought to what the consequences might be; what turned her white and cold was the thought that he had done it. Her pen had spluttered when the thought first occurred to her, but she believed Claude had not noticed that. But had he noticed the sob of relief in her voice when he told her that the cheque was all right? He was not slow to observe, his perceptions, especially where she was concerned, were remarkably vivid, and it seemed to her that he must have noticed it. Yet he had said nothing.

Anyhow the cheque was correct, and she was left with the fact that it had seemed to her possible that Jim had been guilty of this gross meanness. And, just as if the thing had been true, she found herself trying to excuse him, saw herself pleading with Claude for him. Poor Jim was not ... was not quite like other people: he did not seem to know right from wrong. He had always cheated at games; she remembered telling Claude so one day down here at Grote, when he and Jim had been playing croquet and Jim had cheated. But they had not been playing for money. So Claude had told her. And he had told her the cheque was all right. That was all: there was nothing more to be thought of with regard to this.

Yet she still lingered on the threshold of the thought of it. Jim had got “cleaned out” (his own phrase) in the Derby week, had pledged the quarter’s rent of Grote in advance to pay his Derby debts. And somebody had told her that Jim had lost heavily at Newmarket afterward, and he had told her that he had paid and was upright before the world in the matter of debts of honour.

She had passed the threshold of that thought and was inside again. Where had he got the money from? Well, anyhow, not by forgery. Claude had said that the mistake was his. But how odd that he should not have been able to recollect about a cheque for five hundred pounds, drawn only ten days before!

Dora still lingered in the precincts of that thought, though she beckoned, so to speak, another thought to distract her. What a wonderful thing, how triumphant and beautiful was the love of which she had seen a glimpse to-day! It was all the more wonderful because it seemed to be common, to be concerned with biscuits and coffee. A hundred times she had seen Lady Osborne wrapped up in such infinitesimal cares as these, and had thought only that her mind and her soul were altogether concerned with serving, that the provision for the comfortable house and the good dinner was aspiration sufficient for her spiritual capacity. Yet there had always been a little more than that: there had been the moment in church when the sermon was to her taste, and the hymn a favourite, and she and her husband had tunelessly sung out of one book. That had touched Dora a little, but she had then dismissed it as a banal affair of goody-goody combined with a melodious tune, when she saw the great lunch that they both ate immediately afterward.

But now these details, these Martha-cares had taken a different value. This morning Lady Osborne had been in great pain, had broken down in her endeavour to carry on somehow, and was face to face with a medical interview which she dreaded. But still she could think with meticulous care of her husband’s milk, of his slippers, of his tendency toward strong coffee. What if below the Martha was Mary, if it was Mary’s love that made Martha so sedulous in serving?

All that she had overlooked, not caring to see below a surface which she said was commonplace and prosperous. The surface was transparent enough, too: it was not opaque. She could have seen down into the depths at any time if she had taken the trouble to look.

Before her marriage and for a few months after it, she had thought she knew what “depths” meant. She thought she knew what it was to be absorbed in another. Then had come her disillusionment. She had worshipped surface only: she knew no more of Claude than that. She had loved his beauty, she had got accustomed to it. She had at first disregarded what she had grown to call his vulgarity, and had not got accustomed to it. She had known he was honest and true and safe, but she had grown to take all that for granted. She had never studied him, looked for what was himself, she had had few glimpses of him, no more than she had had of his mother. But to-day she felt that with regard to her these glimpses were fused together: they made a view, a prospect of a very beautiful country. But as yet there had no fusing like that come with regard to her husband. Now that she “saw,” even the country, the country of the gray-business was beautiful. And at present in her own warm country, her young country, beauty was lacking.

Perhaps—here the third subject came in—perhaps even in the trouble that she felt threatened them, there were elements that might be alchemized. She was willing, at least, to attempt to find gold, to transform what she had thought was common into the fine metal. Some alchemy of the sort had already taken place before her eyes; she no longer thought common those little pathetic anxieties which she had heard this morning. For days and months the same anxieties, the same care had been manifest. There was no day, no hour in which Lady Osborne had not been concerned with the material comfort of those whom she loved. She was always wondering if her husband had got his lunch at the House, and what they gave him; whether the motor had got there in time, and if he remembered to put his coat on. Nor had her care embraced him alone. One day she had come up to Dora’s sitting room and found that there was a draught round the door, and so had changed her seat. But next day there was a screen placed correctly. Or Claude had sneezed at dinner, and a mysterious phial had appeared on his dressing table with the legend that directed its administration. He had come in to Dora to ask if she had any explanation of the bottle. But she had none and they concluded Mrs. Osborne had put it there, fussily no doubt, for a sneeze was only a sneeze, but with what loving intent. She remembered everything of that sort. Per liked kidneys: his wife liked cocoa. It was all attended to. Martha was in evidence. But Mary was there.

Dora’s thoughts had strayed again. She had meant to think about the trouble that she felt was threatening, and to see if by some alchemy it might be transformed into a healing of hurt. She did not believe that she was fanciful in expecting bad news: she wished to contemplate the effect of it, if it came. Supposing Lady Osborne was found to be suffering from something serious, how was she herself to behave? She had to make things easier for her father-in-law: she had to be of some use. That was not so difficult: a little affection meant so much to him. He glowed with pleasure when she was kind. But for Claude? That was more difficult. She had to be all to him. It was much harder there to meet the needs she ought to meet, and should instinctively meet without thought. Once, if she had said, “Oh, Claude,” all would have been said because the simple words were a symbol. But now she could not say, “Oh, Claude” like that. She could be Martha, that was easy. But it was not Martha who was wanted.

The door from his dressing room opened, and he came in, shielding with his hand the light of his candle, so that it should not fall on her face. The outline of his fingers even to her half-shut eyes was drawn in luminous red, where the light shone through the flesh. He had often come in like that, fearing to awaken her. Often she had been awake, as she was now.

To-night she feigned sleep. And she heard the soft breath that quenched the candle; she heard a whisper of voice close to her, words of one who thought that none heard.

“Good night, my darling,” he said.