"Square it with Colquhoun before you go any farther," said Ladds.

Square it with the guardian—speak to the young lady's father—make it all right with the authorities; what excellent advice to give, and how easy to follow it up! Who does not look forward with pleasure, or backward as to an agreeable reminiscence, to that half hour spent in a confidential talk with dear papa? How calmly critical, how severely judicial, was his summing up! With what a determined air did he follow up the trail, elicited in cross-examination, of former sins! With how keen a scent did he disinter forgotten follies, call attention to bygone extravagances, or place the finger of censure upon debts which never ought to have been incurred, and economies which ought to have been made!

Remember his "finally"—a word which from childhood has been associated with sweet memories, because it brings the sermon to an end, but which henceforth will awake in your brain the ghost of that mauvais quart d'heure. In that brief peroration he tore the veil from the last cherished morsel of self-illusion; he showed you that the furnishing of a house was a costly business, that he was not going to do it for you, that servants require an annual income of considerable extent, that his daughter had been brought up a lady, that lady's dress is a serious affair, that wedlock in due season brings babies, and that he was not so rich as he seemed.

Well, perhaps he said "Yes" reluctantly, in spite of drawbacks. Then you felt that you were regarded by the rest of the family as the means of preventing dear Annabella from making a brilliant match. That humbled you for life. Or perhaps he said "No." In that case you went away sadly and meditated suicide. And whether you got over the fit, or whether you didn't—though of course you did—the chances were that Annabella never married at all, and you are still regarded by the family as the cause of that sweet creature not making the exceptionally splendid alliance which, but for you, the disturbing influence, would have been her lot.

However, the thing is necessary, unless people run away, a good old fashion by which such interviews, together with wedding-breakfasts, wedding-garments, and wedding-presents were avoided.

Running away is out of fashion. It would have been the worst form possible in Jack Dunquerque even to propose such a thing to Phillis, and I am not at all certain that he would ever have made her understand either the necessity or the romance of the thing. And I am quite sure that she would never understand that Jack Dunquerque was asking her to do a wrong thing.

Certainly it was not likely that this young man would proceed further in the path of irregularity—which leads to repentance—than he had hitherto done. He had now to confess before the young lady's guardian something of the part he played.

Looked at dispassionately, and unsoftened by the haze of illusion, this part had, as he acknowledged with groans, an appearance far from pleasing to the Christian moralist.

He had taken advantage of the girl's total ignorance to introduce himself at the house where she was practically alone for the whole day; he found her like a child in the absence of the reserve which girls are trained to; he stepped at once into the position of a confidential friend; he took her about for walks and drives, a thing which might have compromised her seriously; he allowed Joseph Jagenal, without, it is true, stating it in so many words, to believe him an old friend of Phillis's; he followed her to Twickenham and installed himself at Mrs. L'Estrange's as an ami de famille; he had done so much to make the girl's life bright and happy, he was so dear to her, that he felt there was but one step to be taken to pass from a brother to a lover.

It was a black record to look at, and it was poor consolation to think that any other man would have done the same.

Jack Dunquerque, like Phillis herself, was changed within a month. Somehow the fun and carelessness which struck Gilead Beck as so remarkable in a man of five-and-twenty were a good deal damped. For the first time in his life he was serious; for the first time he had a serious and definite object before him. He was perfectly serious in an unbounded love for Phillis. Day by day the sweet beauty of the girl, her grace, her simple faith, her child-like affection, sank into his heart and softened him. Day after day, as he rowed along the meadows of the Thames, or lazied under the hanging willows by the shore, or sat with her in the garden, or rode along the leafy roads by her side, the sincerity of her nature, as clear and cloudless as the blue depths of heaven; its purity, like the bright water that leaps and bubbles and flows beneath the shade of Lebanon; its perfect truthfulness, like the midday sunshine in June; the innocence with which, even as another Eve, she bared her very soul for him to read—these things, when he thought of them, brought the unaccustomed tears to his eyes, and made his spirit rise and bound within him as to unheard of heights. For love, to an honest man, is like Nature to a poet or colour to an artist—it makes him see great depths, and gives him, if only for once in his life, a Pisgah view of a Land far, far holier, a life far, far higher, a condition far, far sweeter and nobler than anything in this world can give us—except the love of a good woman. In such a vision the ordinary course of our life is suspended; we move on air; we see men as trees walking, and regard them not. Happy the man who once in his life has been so lifted out of the present, and knows not afterwards whether he was in the flesh or out of the flesh.

Jack, with the influence of this great passion upon him, was transformed. Fortunately for us this emotion had its ebb and flow. Else that great dinner to Literature had never come off. But at all times he was under its sobering influence. And it was in a penitent and humble mood that he sought Lawrence Colquhoun, in the hope of "squaring it" with him as Ladds advised. Good fellow, Tommy; none better; but wanting in the higher delicacy. Somehow the common words and phrases of every-day use applied to Phillis jarred upon him. After all, one feels a difficulty in offering a princess the change for a shilling in coppers. If I had to do it, I should fall back on a draught upon the Cheque Bank.

Lawrence was full of his own annoyances—most of us always are, and it is one of the less understood ills of life that one can never get, even for five minutes, a Monopoly of Complaint. But he listened patiently while Jack—Jack of the Rueful Countenance—poured out his tale of repentance, woe, and prayer.

"You see," he said, winding up, "I never thought what it would come to. I dropped into it by accident and then—then——"

"When people come to flirt they stay to spoon," said Lawrence. "In other words, my dear fellow, you are in love. Ah!"

Jack wondered what was meant by the interjection. In all the list of interjections given by Lindley Murray, or the new light Dr. Morris, such as Pish! Phaw! Alas! Humph! and the rest which are in everybody's mouth, there is none which blows with such an uncertain sound as this. Impossible to tell whether it means encouragement, sympathy, or cold distrust.

"Ah!" said Lawrence. "Sit down and be comfortable, Jack. When one is really worried, nothing like a perfect chair. Take my own. Now, then, let us talk it over."

"It doesn't look well," thought Jack.

"Always face the situation," said Lawrence (he had got an uncommonly awkward situation of his own to face, and it was a little relief to turn to some one else's). "Nothing done by blinking facts. Here we are. Young lady of eighteen or so—just released from a convent; ignorant of the world; pretty; attractive ways; rich, as girls go—on the one hand. On the other, you: good-looking, as my cousin Agatha L'Estrange says, though I can't see it; of a cheerful disposition—aptus ludere, fit to play, cum puellÂ, all the day——"

"Don't chaff, Colquhoun; it's too serious."

But Colquhoun went on:

"An inflammable young man. Well, with any other girl the danger would have been seen at once; poor Phillis is so innocent that she is supposed to be quite safe. So you go on calling. My cousin Agatha writes me word that she has been looking for the light of love, as she calls it, in Phillis's eyes; and it isn't there. She is a sentimentalist, and therefore silly. Why didn't she look in your eyes, Jack? That would have been very much more to the purpose."

"She has, now. I told her yesterday that I—I—loved Phillis."

"Did she ask you to take the young lady's hand and a blessing at once? Come, Jack, look at the thing sensibly. There are two or three very strong reasons why it can't be."

"Why it can't be!" echoed Jack dolefully.

"First, the girl hasn't come out. Now, I ask you, would it not be simply sinful not to give her a fair run? In any case you could not be engaged till after she has had one season. Then her father, who did not forget that he was grandson of a Peer, wanted his daughter to make a good match, and always spoke of the fortune he was to leave her as a guarantee that she would marry well. He never thought he was going to die, of course; but all events I know so much of his wishes. Lastly, my dear Jack Dunquerque, you are the best fellow in the world, but, you know—but——"

"But I am not Lord Isleworth."

"That is just it. You are his lordship's younger brother, with one or two between you and the title. Now don't you see? Need we talk about it any more?"

"I suppose Phil—I mean Miss Fleming—will be allowed to choose for herself. You are not going to make her marry a man because he happens to have a title and an estate, and offers himself?"

"I suppose," said Lawrence, laughing, "that I am going to lock Phillis up in a tower until the right man comes. No, no, Jack; there shall be no compulsion. If she sets her heart upon marrying you—she is a downright young lady—why, she must do it; but after she has had her run among the ball-rooms, not before. Let her take a look round first; there will be other Jack Dunquerques ready to look at, be sure of that. Perhaps she will think them fairer to outward view than you. If she does, you will have to give her up in the end, you know."

"I have said no word of love to her, Colquhoun, I give you my honour," said Jack hotly, "I don't think she would understand it if I did."

"I am glad of that at least."

"If I am to give her up and go away, I dare say," the poor youth went on, with a little choking in his throat, "that she will regret me at first and for a day or two. But she will get over that; and—as you say, there are plenty of fellows in the world better than myself—and——"

"My dear Jack, there will be no going away. You tell me you have not told her all the effect that her beaux yeux have produced upon you. Well, then—and there has been nothing to compromise her at all?"

"Nothing; that is, once we went to the Tower in a hansom cab."

"Oh, that is all, is it? Jack Dunquerque—Jack Dunquerque!"

"And we have been up the river a good many times in a boat."

"I see. The river is pleasant at this time of the year."

"And we have been riding together a good deal. Phil rides very well, you know."

"Does she? It seems to me, Jack, that my cousin Agatha is a fool, and that you have been having rather a high time in consequence. Surely you can't complain if I ask you to consider the innings over for the present?"

"No; I can't complain, if one may hope——"

"Let us hope nothing. Sufficient for the day. He who hopes nothing gets everything. Come out of it at once, Jack, before you get hit too hard."

"I think no one was ever hit so hard before," said Jack. "Colquhoun, you don't know your ward. It is impossible for any one to be with her without falling in love with her. She is——" Here he stopped, because he could not go any farther. Anybody who did not know the manly nature of Jack Dunquerque might have thought he was stopped by emotion.

"We all get the fever some time or other. But we worry through. Look at me, Jack. I am forty, and, as you see, a comparatively hale and hearty man, despite my years. It doesn't shorten life, that kind of fever; it doesn't take away appetite; it doesn't interfere with your powers of enjoyment. There is even a luxury about it. You can't remember Geraldine Arundale, now Lady Newladegge, when she came out, of course. You were getting ready for Eton about that time. Well, she and I carried on for a whole season. People talked. Then she got engaged to her present husband, after seeing him twice. She wanted a Title, you see. I was very bad, that journey; and I remember that Agatha, who was in my confidence, had a hot time of it over the faithlessness of shallow hearts. But I got over the attack, and I have not been dangerously ill, so to speak since. That is, I have made a contemptible ass of myself on several occasions, and I dare say I shall go on making an ass of myself as long as I live. Because the older you grow, somehow, the sweeter do the flowers smell."

Jack only groaned. It really is no kind of consolation to tell a suffering man that you have gone through it yourself. Gilead Beck told me once of a man who lived in one of the Southern States of America: he was a mild, and placid creature, inoffensive as a canary bird, quiet as a mongoose, and much esteemed for his unusual meekness. This harmless being once got ear-ache—very bad ear-ache. Boyhood's ear-aches are awful things to remember; but those of manhood, when they do come, which is seldom, are the Devil. To him in agony came a friend, who sat down beside him, like Eliphaz the Temanite, and sighed. This the harmless being who had the ear-ache put up with, though it was irritating. Presently the friend began to relate how he once had the ear-ache himself. Then the harmless creature rose up suddenly, and, seizing an adjacent chunk of wood, gave that friend a token of friendship on the head with such effect that he ceased the telling of that and all other stories, and has remained quite dumb ever since. The jury acquitted that inoffensive and meek creature, who wept when the ear-ache was gone, and often laid flowers on the grave of his departed friend.

Jack did not heave chunks of wood at Colquhoun. He only looked at him with ineffable contempt.

"Lady Newladegge! why, she's five-and-thirty! and she's fat!"

"She wasn't always five-and-thirty, nor was she always fat. On the contrary, when she was twenty, and I was in love with her, she was slender, and, if one may so speak of a Peeress, she was cuddlesome!"

"Cuddlesome!" Jack cried, his deepest feelings outraged. "Good Heavens! to think of comparing Phil with a woman who was once cuddlesome!"

Lawrence Colquhoun laughed.

"In fifteen years, or thereabouts, perhaps you will take much the same view of things as I do. Meantime Jack, let things remain as they are. You shall have a fair chance with the rest; and you must remember that you have had a much better chance than anybody else, because you have had the first running. Leave off going to Twickenham quite so much; but don't stop going altogether, or Phillis may be led to suspect. Can't you contrive to slack off by degrees?"

Jack breathed a little more freely. The house, then, was not shut to him.

"The young lady will have her first season next year. I don't say I hope she will marry anybody else, Jack, but I am bound to give her the chance. As soon as she really understands a little more of life she will find out for herself what is best for her, perhaps. Now we've talked enough about it."

Jack Dunquerque went away sorrowful. He expected some such result of this endeavour to "square" it with Colquhoun, but yet he was disappointed.

"Hang it all, Jack," said Ladds, "what can you want more? You are told to wait a year. No one will step in between you and the young lady till she comes out. You are not told to discontinue your visits—only not to go too often, and not to compromise her. What more does the man want?"

"You are a very good fellow, Tommy," sighed the lover; "a very good fellow in the main. But you see, you don't know Phil. Let me call her Phil to you, old man. There's not another man in the world that I could talk about her to—not one, by Jove; it would seem a desecration."

"Go on, Jack—talk away; and I'll give you good advice."

He did talk away! What says Solomon? "Ointment and perfume rejoice the soul; so doth the sweetness of a man's friend by hearty counsel." The Wise Man might have expressed himself more clearly, but his meaning can be made out.

Meantime Lawrence Colquhoun, pulling himself together after Jack went away, remembered that he had not once gone near his ward since he drove her to Twickenham.

"It is too bad," said Conscience; "a whole month."

"It is all that woman's fault," he pleaded. "I have been dangling about, in obedience to her, like a fool."

"Like a fool!" echoed Conscience.

He went that very day, and was easily persuaded to stay and dine with the two ladies.

He said very little, but Agatha observed him watching his ward closely.

After dinner she got a chance.

It was a pleasant evening, early in June. They had strawberries on a garden table. Phillis presently grew tired of sitting under the shade, and strolled down to the river-side, where she sat on the grass and threw biscuits to the swans.

"What do you think, Lawrence?"

He was watching her in silence.

"I don't understand it, Agatha. What have you done to her?"

"Nothing. Are you pleased?"

"You are a witch; I believe you must have a familiar somewhere. She is wonderful—wonderful!"

"Is she a ward to be proud of and to love, Lawrence? Is she the sweetest and prettiest girl you ever saw? My dear cousin, I declare to you that I think her faultless. At least, her very faults are attractive. She is impetuous and self-willed, but she is full of sympathy. And that seems to have grown up in her altogether in the last few months."

"Her manner appears to be more perfect than anything I have ever seen."

"It is because she has no self-consciousness. She is like a child still, my dear Phillis, so far."

"I wonder if it is because she cannot read? Why should we not prohibit the whole sex from learning to read?"

"Nonsense, Lawrence. What would the novelists do? Besides, she is learning to read fast. I put her this morning into the Third Lesson Book—two syllables. And it is not as if she were ignorant, because she knows a great deal."

"Then why is it?"

"I think her sweet nature has something to do with it; and, besides, she has been shielded from many bad influences. We send girls to school, and—and—well, Lawrence, we cannot all be angels, any more than men. If girls learn about love, and establishments, and flirtations, and the rest of it, why, they naturally want their share of these good things. Then they get self-conscious."

"What about Jack Dunquerque?" asked Lawrence abruptly. "He has been to me about her."

Agatha blushed as prettily as any self-conscious young girl.

"He loves Phillis," she said; "but Phillis only regards him as a brother."

"Agatha, you are no wiser than little Red Riding Hood. Jack Dunquerque is a wolf."

"I am sure he is a most honourable, good young man."

"As for good, goodness knows. Honourable no doubt, and a wolf. You are a matchmaker, you bad, bad woman. I believe you want him to marry that young Princess over there."

"And what did you tell poor Jack?"

"Told him to wait. Acted the stern guardian. Won't have an engagement. Must let Phillis have her run. Mustn't come here perpetually trying to gobble up my dainty heiress. Think upon that now, Cousin Agatha."

"She could not marry into a better family."

"Very true. The Dunquerques had an Ark of their own, I believe, at the Deluge. But then Jack is not Lord Isleworth; and he isn't ambitious, and he isn't clever, and he isn't rich."

"Go on, Lawrence; it is charming to see you in a new character—Lawrence the Prudent!"

"Charmed to charm la belle cousine. He is in love, and he is hit as hard as any man I ever saw. But Phillis shall not be snapped up in this hasty and inconsiderate manner. There are lots of better partis in the field."

Then Phillis came back, dangling her hat by its ribbons. The setting sun made a glory of her hair, lit up the splendour of her eyes, and made a clear outline of her delicate features and tall shapely figure.

"Come and sit by me, Phillis," said her guardian. "I have neglected you. Agatha will tell you that I am a worthless youth of forty, who neglects all his duties. You are so much improved, my child, that I hardly knew you. Prettier and—and—everything. How goes on the education?"

"Reading and writing," said Phillis, "do not make education. Really, Lawrence, you ought to know better. A year or two with Mr. Dyson would have done you much good. I am in words of two syllables; and Agatha thinks I am getting on very nicely. I am in despair about my painting since we have been to picture-galleries. And to think how conceited I was once over it! But I can draw, Lawrence; I shall not give up my drawing."

"And you liked your galleries?"

"Some of them. The Academy was tiring. Why don't they put all the portraits in one room together, so that we need not waste time over them?"

"What did you look at?"

"I looked at what all the other people pressed to see, first of all. There was a picture of Waterloo, with the French and English crowded together so that they could shake hands. It was drawn beautifully; but somehow it made me feel as if War was a little thing. Mr. Dyson used to say that women take the grandeur and strength out of Art. Then there was a brown man with a sling on a platform. The platform rested on stalks of corn; and if the man were to throw the stone he would topple over, and tumble off his platform. And there was another one, of a row of women going to be sold for slaves; a curious picture, and beautifully painted, but I did not like it."

"What did you like?"

"I liked some that told their own story, and made me think. There was a picture of a moor—take me to see a moor, Lawrence—with a windy sky, and a wooden fence, and a light upon. Oh, I liked all the landscapes. I think our artists feel trees and sunshine. But what is my opinion worth?"

"Come with me to-morrow, Phillis; we will go through the pictures together, and you shall teach me what to like. Your opinion worth? Why, child, all the opinions of all the critics together are not worth yours."