"La langue des femmes est leur epee, et elles ne la laissent pas rouiller."

The grounds of the house formed a parallelogram, of which the longer sides were parallel with the river. In the north-east corner stood the house itself, its front facing west. It was not a large house, as has been explained. A conservatory was built against nearly the whole length of the front. The lawns and flower-beds spread to west and south, sloping down to the river's edge. The opposite angle was occupied by stables, kitchen-garden, and boat-house. Gabriel Cassilis approached it from the east. An iron railing and a low hedge, along which were planted limes, laburnums, and lilacs, separated the place from the road. But before reaching the gate—in fact, at the corner of the kitchen-garden—he could, himself, unseen, look through the trees and observe the party. They were all there. He saw Mrs. L'Estrange, Phillis, his own wife—Heavens! how calm and cold she looked, and how beautiful he thought her!—with half a dozen other ladies. The men were few. There was the curate. He was dangling round Phillis, and wore an expression of holiness-out-for-a-holiday, which is always so charming in these young men. Gabriel Cassilis also noticed that he was casting eyes of longing at the young lady. There was Lawrence Colquhoun. Gabriel Cassilis looked everywhere for him, till he saw him, lying beneath a tree, his head on his hand. He was not talking to Victoria, nor was he looking at her. On the contrary, he was watching Phillis. There was Captain Ladds. He was talking to one of the young ladies, and he was looking at Phillis. The young lady evidently did not like this. And there was Gilead Beck. He was standing apart, talking to Mrs. L'Estrange, with his hands in his pockets, leaning against a tree. But he, too, was casting furtive glances at Phillis.

They all seemed, somehow, looking at the girl. There was no special reason why they should look at her, except that she was so bright, so fresh, and so charming for the eye to rest upon. The other girls were as well dressed, but they were nowhere compared with Phillis. The lines of their figures, perhaps, were not so fine; the shape of their heads more commonplace; their features not so delicate; their pose less graceful. There are some girls who go well together. Helena and Hermia are a foil to each other; but when Desdemona shows all other beauties pale like lesser lights. And the other beauties do not like it.

Said one of the fair guests to another—

"What do they see in her?"

"I cannot tell," replied her friend. "She seems to me more farouche than ever."

For, having decided that farouche was the word to express poor Phillis's distinguishing quality, there was no longer any room for question, and farouche she continued to be. If there is anything that Phillis never was, it is that quality of fierce shy wildness which requires the adjective farouche. But the word stuck, because it sounded well. To this day—to be sure, it is only a twelvemonth since—the girls say still, "Oh, yes! Phillis Fleming. She was pretty, but extremely farouche."

Gabriel Cassilis stood by the hedge and looked through the trees. He has come all the way from town to attend this party, and now he hesitated at the very gates. For he became conscious of two things: first, that the old feeling of not finding his words was upon him again; and secondly, that he was not exactly dressed for a festive occasion. Like most City men who have long remained bachelors, Gabriel Cassilis was careful of his personal appearance. He considered a garden-party as an occasion demanding something special. Now he not only wore his habitual pepper-and-salt suit, but the coat in which he wrote at his office—a comfortable easy old frock, a little baggy at the elbows. His mind was strung to such an intense pitch, that such a trifling objection as his dress—because Gabriel Cassilis never looked other than a gentleman—appeared to him insuperable. He withdrew from the hedge, and retraced his steps. Presently he came to a lane. He left the road, and turned down the path. He found himself by the river. He sat down under a tree, and began to think.

He thought of the time when his lonely life was wearisome to him, when he longed for a wife and a house of his own. He remembered how he pictured a girl who would be his darling, who would return his caresses and love him for his own sake. And how, when he met Victoria Pengelley, his thoughts changed, and he pictured that girl, stately and statuesque, at the head of the table. There would be no pettings and caressings from her, that was quite certain. On the other hand, there would be a woman of whom he would be proud—one who would wear his wealth properly. And a woman of good family, well connected all round. There were no caresses, he remembered now; there was the coldest acceptance of him; and there had been no caresses since. But he had been proud of her; and as for her honour—how was it possible that the doubt should arise? That man must be himself distinctly of the lower order of men who would begin by doubting or suspecting his wife.

To end in this: doubt so strong as to be almost certainty: suspicion like a knife cutting at his heart; his brain clouded; and he himself driven to creep down clandestinely to watch his wife.

He sat there till the June sun began to sink in the west. The river was covered with the evening craft. They were manned by the young City men but just beginning the worship of Mammon, who would have looked with envy upon the figure sitting motionless in the shade by the river's edge had they known who he was. Presently he roused himself, and looked at his watch. It was past seven. Perhaps the party would be over by this time; he could go home with his wife; it would be something, at least, to be with her, to keep her from that other man. He rose,—his brain in a tumult—and repaired once more to his point of vantage at the hedge. The lawn was empty; there was no one there. But he saw his own carriage in the yard, and therefore his wife was not yet gone.

In the garden, no one. He crept in softly, and looked round him. No one saw him enter the place; and he felt something like a burglar as he walked, with a stealthy step which he vainly tried to make confident, across the lawn.

Two ways of entrance stood open before him. One was the porch of the house, covered with creepers and hung with flowers. The door stood open, and beyond it was the hall, looking dark from the bright light outside. He heard voices within. Another way was by the conservatory, the door of which was also open. He looked in. Among the flowers and vines there stood a figure he knew—his wife's. But she was alone. And she was listening. On her face was an expression which he had never seen there, and never dreamed of. Her features were distorted; her hands were closed in a tight clutch; her arms were stiffened—but she was trembling. What was she doing. To whom was she listening?

He hesitated a moment, and then he stepped through the porch into the hall. The voices came from the right, in fact, from the morning room,—Phillis's room,—which opened by its single window upon the lawn, and by its two doors into the hall on one side and the conservatory on the other.

And Gabriel Cassilis, like his wife, listened. He put off his hat, placed his umbrella in the stand, and stood in attitude, in case he should be observed, to push open the door and step in. He was so abject in his jealousy that he actually did not feel the disgrace and degradation of the act. He was so keen and eager to lose no word, that he leaned his head to the half-open door, and stood, his long thin figure trembling with excitement, like some listener in a melodrama of the transpontine stage.

There were two persons in the room, and one was a woman; and they were talking together. One was Lawrence Colquhoun and the other was Phillis Fleming.

Colquhoun was not, according to his wont, lying on a sofa, nor sitting in the easiest of the chairs. He was standing, and he was speaking in an earnest voice.

"When I saw you first," he said, "you were little Phillis—a wee toddler of six or seven. I went away and forgot all about you—almost forgot your very existence, Phillis,—till the news of Mr. Dyson's death met me on my way home again. I fear that I have neglected you since I came home; but I have been worried."

"What has worried you, Lawrence?" asked the girl.

She was sitting on the music-stool before the piano; and as she spoke she turned from the piano, her fingers resting silently on the notes. She was dressed for the party,—which was over now, and the guests departed,—in a simple muslin costume, light and airy, which became her well. And in her hair she had placed a flower. There were flowers all about the room, flowers at the open window, flowers in the conservatory beyond, flowers on the bright green lawns beyond.

"How pretty you are, Phillis!" answered her guardian.

He touched her cheek with his finger as she sat.

"I am your guardian," he said, as if in apology.

"And you have been worried about things?" she persisted. "Agatha says you never care what happens."

"Agatha is right, as a rule. In one case, of which she knows nothing, she is wrong. Tell me, Phillis, is there anything you want in the world that I can get for you?"

"I think I have everything," she said, laughing. "And what you will not give me I shall wait for till I am twenty-one."

"You mean——"

"I mean—Jack Dunquerque, Lawrence."

Only a short month ago, and Jack Dunquerque was her friend. She could speak of him openly and friendly, without change of voice or face. Now she blushed, and her voice trembled as she uttered his name. That is one of the outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual state known to the most elementary observers.

"I wanted to speak about him. Phillis, you are very young, you have seen nothing of the world; you know no other men. All I ask you is to wait. Do not give your promise to this man till you have at least had an opportunity of—of comparing—of learning your own mind."

She shook her head.

"I have already given my promise," she said.

"But it is a promise that may be recalled," he urged. "Dunquerque is a gentleman; he will not hold you to your word when he feels that he ought not to have taken it from you. Phillis, you do not know yourself. You have no idea of what it is that you have given, or its value. How can I tell you the truth?"

"I think you mean the best for me, Lawrence," she said. "But the best is—Jack."

Then she began to speak quite low, so that the listeners heard nothing.

"See, Lawrence, you are kind, and I can tell you all without being ashamed. I think of Jack all day long and all night. I pray for him in the morning and in the evening. When he comes near me I tremble; I feel that I must obey him if he were to order me in anything. I have no more command of myself when he is with me——"

"Stop, Phillis," Lawrence interposed; "you must not tell me any more. I was trying to act for the best; but I will make no further opposition. See, my dear"—he took her hand in his in a tender and kindly way—"if I write to Jack Dunquerque to-day, and tell the villain he may come and see you whenever he likes, and that he shall marry you whenever you like, will that do for you?"

She started to her feet, and threw her left hand—Lawrence still holding the right—upon his shoulder, looking him full in the face.

"Will it do? O Lawrence! Agatha always said you were the kindest man in the world; and I—forgive me!—I did not believe it, I could not understand it. O Jack, Jack, we shall be so happy, so happy! He loves me, Lawrence, as much as I love him."

The listeners in the greenhouse and the hall craned their necks, but they could hear little, because the girl spoke low.

"Does he love you as much as you love him, Phillis? Does he love you a thousand times better than you can understand? Why, child, you do not know what love means. Perhaps women never do quite realise what it means. Only go on believing that he loves you, and love him in return, and all will be well with you."

"I do believe it, Lawrence! and I love him, too."

Looking through the flowers and the leaves of the conservatory glared a face upon the pair strangely out of harmony with the peace which breathed in the atmosphere of the place—a face violently distorted by passion, a face in which every evil feeling was at work, a face dark with rage. Phillis might have seen the face had she looked in that direction, but she did not; she held Lawrence's hand, and she was shyly pressing it in gratitude.

"Phillis," said Lawrence hoarsely, "Jack Dunquerque is a lucky man. We all love you, my dear; and I almost as much as Jack. But I am too old for you; and besides, besides——" He cleared his throat, and spoke more distinctly. "I do love you, however, Phillis; a man could not be long beside you without loving you."

There was a movement and a rustle in the leaves.

The man at the door stood bewildered. What was it all about? Colquhoun and a woman—not his wife—talking of love. What love? what woman? And his wife in the conservatory, looking as he never saw her look before, and listening. What did it all mean? what thing was coming over him? He pressed his hand to his forehead, trying to make out what it all meant, for he seemed to be in a dream; and, as before, while he tried to shape the words in his mind for some sort of an excuse, or a reassurance to himself, he found that no words came, or, if any, then the wrong words.

The house was very quiet; no sounds came from any part of it,—the servants were resting in the kitchen, the mistress of the house was resting in her room, after the party,—no voices but the gentle talk of the girl and her guardian.

"Kiss me, Phillis," said Lawrence. "Then let me hold you in my arms for once, because you are so sweet, and—and I am your guardian, you know, and we all love you."

He drew her gently by the hands. She made no resistance; it seemed to her right that her guardian should kiss her if he wished. She did not know how the touch of her hand, the light in her eyes, the sound of her voice, were stirring in the man before her depths that he thought long ago buried and put away, awakening once more the possibilities, at forty, of a youthful love.

His lips were touching her forehead, her face was close to his, he held her two hands tight, when the crash of a falling flower-pot startled him, and Victoria Cassilis stood before him.

Panting, gasping for breath, with hands clenched and eyes distended—a living statue of the femina demens. For a moment she paused to take breath, and then, with a wave of her hand which was grand because it was natural and worthy of Rachel—because you may see it any day among the untutored beauties of Whitechapel, among the gipsy camps, or in the villages where Hindoo women live and quarrel—Victoria Cassilis for once in her life was herself, and acted superbly, because she did not act at all.

"Victoria!" The word came from Lawrence.

Phillis, with a little cry of terror, clung tightly to her guardian's arm.

"Leave him!" cried the angry woman. "Do you hear?—leave him!"

"Better go, Phillis," said Lawrence.

At the prospect of battle the real nature of the man asserted itself. He drew himself erect, and met her wild eyes with a steady gaze, which had neither terror nor surprise in it—a gaze such as a mad doctor might practise upon his patients, a look which calms the wildest outbreaks, because it sees in them nothing but what it expected to find, and is only sorry.

"No! she shall not go," said Victoria, sweeping her skirts behind her with a splendid movement from her feet; "she shall not go until she has heard me first. You dare to make love to this girl, this schoolgirl, before my very eyes. She shall know, she shall know our secret!"

"Victoria," said Lawrence calmly, "you do not understand what you are saying. Our secret? Say your secret, and be careful."

The door moved an inch or two; the man standing behind it was shaking in every limb. "Their secret? her secret?" He was going to learn at last; he was going to find the truth; he was going—— And here a sudden thought struck him that he had neglected his affairs of late, and that, this business once got through, he must look into things again; a thought without words, because, somehow, just then he had no words—he had forgotten them all.

The writer of the anonymous letters had done much mischief, as she hoped to do. People who write anonymous letters generally contrive so much. Unhappily, the beginning of mischief is like the boring of a hole in a dam or dyke, because very soon, instead of a trickling rivulet of water, you get a gigantic inundation. Nothing is easier than to have your revenge; only it is so very difficult to calculate the after consequences of revenge. If the writer of the letters had known what was going to happen in consequence, most likely they would never have been written.

"Their secret? her secret?" He listened with all his might. But Victoria, his wife Victoria, spoke out clearly; he could hear without straining his ears.

"Be careful," repeated Lawrence.

"I shall not be careful; the time is past for care. You have sneered and scoffed at me; you have insulted me; you have refused almost to know me,—all that I have borne, but this I will not bear."

"Phillis Fleming." She turned to the girl. Phillis did not shrink or cower before her; on the contrary, she stood like Lawrence, calm and quiet, to face the storm, whatever storm might be brewing. "This man takes you in his arms and kisses you. He says he loves you; he dares to tell you he loves you. No doubt you are flattered. You have had the men round you all day long, and now you have the best of them at your feet, alone, when they are gone. Well, the man you want to catch, the excellent parti you and Agatha would like to trap, the man who stands there——"

"Victoria, there is still time to stop," said Lawrence calmly.

"That man is my husband!"

Phillis looked from one to the other, understanding nothing. The man stood quietly stroking his great beard with his fingers, and looking straight at Mrs. Cassilis.

"My husband. We were married six years ago and more. We were married in Scotland, privately; but he is my husband, and five days after our wedding he left me. Is that true?"

"Perfectly. You have forgotten nothing, except the reason of my departure. If you think it worth while troubling Phillis with that, why——"

"We quarrelled; that was the reason. He used cruel and bitter language. He gave me back my liberty."

"We separated, Phillis, after a row, the like of which you may conceive by remembering that Mrs. Cassilis was then six years younger, and even more ready for such encounters than at present. We separated; we agreed that things should go on as if the marriage, which was no marriage, had never taken place. Janet, the maid, was to be trusted. She stayed with her mistress; I went abroad. And then I heard by accident that my wife had taken the liberty I gave her, in its fullest sense, by marrying again. Then I came home, because I thought that chapter was closed; but it was not, you see; and for her sake I wish I had stayed in America."

Mrs. Cassilis listened as if she did not hear a word; then she went on—

"He is my husband still. I can claim him when I want him; and I claim him now. I say, Lawrence, so long as I live you shall marry no other woman. You are mine; whatever happens, you are mine."

The sight of the man, callous, immovable, suddenly seemed to terrify her. She sank weeping at his knees.

"Lawrence, forgive me, forgive me! Take me away. I never loved any one but you. Forgive me!"

He made no answer or any sign.

"Let me go with you, somewhere, out of this place; let us go away together, we two. I have never loved any one but you—never any one but you, but you!"

She broke into a passion of sobs. When she looked up, it was to meet the white face of Gabriel Cassilis. He was stooping over her, his hands spread out helplessly, his form quivering, his lips trying to utter something; but no sound came through them. Beyond stood Lawrence, still with the look of watchful determination which had broken down her rage. Then she sprang to her feet.

"You here? Then you know all. It is true; that is my legal husband. For two years and more my life has been a lie. Stand back, and let me go to my husband!"

But he stood between Colquhoun and herself. Lawrence saw with a sudden terror that something had happened to the man. He expected an outburst of wrath, but no wrath came. Gabriel Cassilis turned his head from one to the other, and presently said, in a trembling voice—

"A fine day, and seasonable weather for the time of year."

"Good God!" cried Lawrence, "you have destroyed his reason!"

Gabriel Cassilis shook his head, and began again—

"A fine day, and seasonable——"

Here he threw himself upon the nearest chair, and buried his face in his hands.