"Well, now your whim has been gratified, I should like to know what you think of Francis Symeon?" Claude Rutherford asked, as he put down his hat in Vera's sanctum, the day after her conference with the high priest of occultism.

The question was his only greeting. He slipped into the low and spacious chair by the hearth, and seemed to lose himself in it, while he waited for a reply. He had the air of being perfectly at home in the room, with no idea that he could possibly be unwelcome. He came and went in Madame Provana's house with a lazy insouciance that many people would have taken for indifference. Only the skilled reader of men would have detected the hidden fire under that outward serenity of the attractive man, who flirts with any attractive woman of his acquaintance, and cares for none.

"I think he is wonderful."

"And you believe in him?"

"Yes, I believe in him, because his ideas only give form and substance to the thoughts that have haunted me ever since I began to think."

"Grisly thoughts?"

"No, Claude; happy thoughts. When I first read my father's poetry and began to think about him—in my dull grey room in Grannie's lodgings—I had a feeling that he was near me. He was there; but behind the veil. When I read 'In Memoriam' the feeling grew stronger, and I knew that death is not the end of love. There was nothing that shocked or startled me in what Mr. Symeon told me yesterday."

"About 'Us,' the spiritual club, in which the dead and the living are members on the same footing? The club that elects, or selects, Confucius or Browning one day, and Lady Fanny Ransom—mad Lady Fanny as they call her—the next?"

"I saw nothing to ridicule in a companionship of lofty minds. But you know more about the society than I do. Perhaps you are a member?"

Claude answered first with a light gay laugh, and then in his most languid voice.

"Not I! I am of the earth earthy, sensual, sinful. If I went to one of their meetings I should have to go disguised as a poodle. Lady Fanny owns a fine Russian, that has a look of Mephisto, though I believe he is purely canine."

"Tell me all you know about their meetings."

"Imagine a Quakers' meeting, with the female members in Parisian frocks and hats—a large room at the back of Symeon's chambers in the 'Albany.' It was once a fashionable editor's library, smelling of Russia leather, and gay with Zansdorf's bindings—but it is now the abode of shadow, 'where glowing embers through the room, teach light to counterfeit a gloom.' And there the congregation sits in melancholy silence, till somebody, Lady Fanny or another, begins to say things that have been borne in upon her from Shakespeare or Browning, or Marlowe or Schopenhauer; or her favourite bishop, if she is pious. They wait for inspiration as the Quakers do. I am told Lady F. is tremendous. She is strong upon politics, and is frankly socialistic; she has communications from Karl Marx and Fourier, George Eliot and Comte. Her inspiration takes the widest range, and moves her to the wildest speech; but she is greatly admired. They never have a blank day when she is there."

"I should like to hear her. I know she is eccentric; but she is immensely clever, and she seems to have read everything worth reading, in half a dozen languages."

"She crams her expansive brain with the best books; but I am told she occasionally puts them in upside down, and the author's views came out topsy-turvy. You are of imagination all compact, Vera; but I should be sorry to see you lapsing into Fannytude."

"You scoff at everything. There is nothing serious for you in this world or the next."

"Which next world? There are so many. Symeon's for instance, and Father Hammond's. What could be more diverse than those? I have thought very little about the undiscovered country. But you must not say I am not serious about something in this world."

"I cannot imagine what that something is."

"I hope you will never know. If fact, you are never to know."

His earnestness startled her. When a man's dominant note is persiflage any touch of grave feeling is impressive. Vera was silent—and they sat opposite each other for a few moments, she watching the rise and fall of a blue flame in the heap of logs, he watching her face as the blue light flashed upon it for an instant and then left it dark.

It was a face worth watching. She had her mermaid look this evening, and her eyes—ordinarily dark grey—looked as green as her sea-water necklace.

"How is Provana?" he asked at last; an automatic question, indicating faintest interest in the answer.

"Oh, he is very well; but I am afraid he is worried. He stays longer in the City than he used to stay, and he is very grave and silent when we dine alone."

"What would you do if the great house of Provana were to go down like a scuttled ship? Would you stick to a bankrupt husband—renounce London and all its pomps and vanities—give up this wilderness of a house and all the splendid things in it?"

"Can you suppose the loss of money would change my feeling for him? If you can think that you must think I married him because he was rich."

"And didn't you?"

"I hate you for the question. When Mario asked me to be his wife I had not a thought of his wealth. I knew that he was a good man, and I was proud of his love."

"But you were not in love with him?"

"I don't know what you mean. I loved him for his noble character. I was proud of his love."

"That is not being in love, Vera. A woman who is in love does not care a jot for her lover's character. She loves him all the better, perhaps, because he is a scoundrel—the last of the last—the off-scouring. There were women in Rome who doted upon CÆsar Borgia; women who knew that he was a poisoner—take my word for it. You liked Provana because he was your first lover, and you were tired of a year in year out tÊte-À-tÊte with Grannie."

"You know nothing about it. If he were to lose his fortune to-morrow I think I should be rather glad. We could live in Italy. Poverty would bring us nearer together—as we were in our honeymoon year. We should have plenty to live upon with my settlement."

She rose and moved towards the door.

"It is nearly five, and there will be people coming," she said.

The door opened as she spoke, and Lady Susan Amphlett looked in.

"Aren't you coming, Vera? There is a mob already, and people want their tea. What are you two talking about, entre chien et loup? You look as weird as Mr. Symeon, Claude."

"We were talking of Symeon, when Vera began to worry about the people downstairs, who are not half so interesting."

"I should think not. Mr. Symeon is thrilling. To know him is like what it must have been to be intimate with Simon Forman or Dr. Dee. I would give worlds to belong to his society. It is quite the smart thing to do. The members give themselves no end of airs in a quiet way."

Lady Susan would have stood in the doorway talking in her crisp and rapid way for a quarter of an hour, oblivious of the people in the drawing-room; but Vera slipped a hand through her arm, and they went downstairs together, Susan talking all the way.

"Fanny Ransom has just come in, with her girl—not out yet, but ages old in knowing what she oughtn't to know. How can a woman like Fanny, eaten up with spiritualism, look after a daughter? They say she went to Paris last winter on purpose to attend a Black Mass."

"The not-out daughter?" asked Claude.

"No, the mother; but she told the girl all about it, and the minx raves about the devil—and says she would rather be initiated than presented next year."

"Lady Fanny had better take care, or she will be expelled from Us. I don't think Symeon would approve of the Black Mass. His philosophy is all light. Light and darkness are his good and evil."

Claude spoke in an undertone, as they were in the room by this time, but he ran small risk of being overheard in a place where everybody seemed to be talking and nobody listening.

Lady Fanny was the centre of a group, her large brown eyes flashing, her voice the loudest, a tall, commanding figure in a black and gold gown, and a black beaver hat with long ostrich feathers and a diamond buckle, a hat that suggested Rupert of the Rhine rather than a modern matron.

Her girl stood a little way off, with three other not-outs, listening to her mother's "balderdash" with unsuppressed mockery.

"Isn't she too killing?" this dutiful child exclaimed, in a rapture of contemptuous amusement, and then she and her satellites bounced down upon the most luxurious ottoman within reach, and employed themselves in disparaging criticism of the company generally—their dress, demeanour, and social status, with much whispering and giggling—happily unobserved by grown-ups, who all had their own interesting subjects to talk about.

Lady Fanny was deserted in favour of Vera, who, at the tea-table, became the focus of everybody's attention. At the beginning she had taken a childish pleasure in pouring out tea for her friends, rejoicing in the exquisite china, the old-world silver, glittering in the blue light of the spirit lamps, the flowers, and beauteous surroundings; so different from the scanty treasures of shabby-gentility—the dinted silver, worn thin with long use, the relics of a Swansea tea-service with many a crack and rivet—to which her youth had been restricted. She performed the office automatically nowadays, oppressed with the languor that hangs over those who are tired of everything, most especially the luxury and beauty they once longed for. One can understand that in the reign of our Hanoverian kings it was just this state of mind which made the wits and beauties eager for a window over against Newgate—to see a row of murdering pirates hanging against the morning sky. Nothing could be too ghastly or grim for exhausted souls in want of a sensation.

The afternoon droppers-in had long become a weariness to Madame Provana, yet as her fashion had depended much upon her accessibility, she could not shut her door upon people who considered themselves obliging when they used her drawing-room as a rather superior club.

Claude Rutherford slipped out of the room imperceptibly, eluding the people who wanted to talk to him with the agility of a vanishing harlequin. He had another visit to pay before his evening engagements, an almost daily visit.

There was just one person in the world for whom he, who had left off caring for people or things, was known to care very much. In expatiating upon the blemishes in an agreeable young man's character, people often concluded with:

"But he is a model son. He adores that old woman in Palace Place."

It was to the old woman in Palace Place that Claude was going this November afternoon, and walking briskly through the clear, cold grey, he knew as well what the old woman was doing as if he had been gifted with second sight.

She was sitting in her large, low chair, with her table and exquisite little tea-service—his gift—at her elbow, and with her eyes fixed on the dial of the SÈvres clock on the mantelpiece, while her heart beat in time to the ticking of the seconds, and he knew that if he were but ten minutes later than usual those minutes were long enough for the maternal mind to visualise every form of accident that can happen to a young man about town.

Nobody talked of "poor Mrs. Rutherford," or pitied her widowed solitude, as they had pitied Lady Felicia. The fact that she had her own house in a fashionable quarter, and a handsome income, made all the difference.

The house was not spacious, but it was old—an Adams house—and one of the prettiest in London, for whatever had been done to it, after Adams, had been done with taste and discretion. Much of the furniture was of the same date as the house, and all that was more recent was precious after its kind, and had been bought when precious things were easier to buy than they are now. And Mrs. Rutherford was as perfect as her surroundings—a slim, pale woman, dressed in black, and wearing the same widow's cap which she had put on in sorrow and anguish fifteen years before—and which harmonised well with the long oval face and banded brown hair, lightly streaked with grey. She was a quiet person, and entertained few visitors except those of her own blood, or connections by marriage; but the name of those being legion, nobody called her inhospitable. Altogether she was a mother whom no well-bred son need be ashamed of loving.

Once, upon his friend saying something to this effect, Claude had turned upon the man fiercely:

"I should have loved her as well if she had been a beggar in the streets, and had hung about the doors of public-houses with me in her arms. To me she is not Mrs. Rutherford, but just the sweetest, tenderest mother on this earth—and she would have been the same if Fate had made her a beggar."

"You believe that in your fantastic fits—but you know it ain't true," said his friend.

Mrs. Rutherford looked up with a radiant face when her son entered the room. She had heard his light step on the stair. He had a latchkey, and there was no other sound to announce his coming.

"Am I late, mother?"

"It is eight minutes past five."

"And you have been watching the clock instead of taking your tea."

The butler entered with the tea-pot as he spoke, having made the tea immediately upon hearing the hall door open.

"What have you been doing with yourself this afternoon, dearest?" Mrs. Rutherford asked, looking up at him fondly, as he stood with his back to the mantelpiece, looking down at her.

"Loafing as usual. I looked in at the New Gallery—their winter show began to-day—half a dozen grand things—the rest croÛtes."

"And then?" she asked gently, seeming sure there would be something else.

"Then I walked up Regent Street—it was a fine bracing afternoon—from the Gallery to the 'Langham,' and along Portland Place."

"And you had tea with Vera Provana?"

"No—not tea. There is no tea worth tasting out of this room. There was a mob as usual at the Provanas'—and I slipped away."

"Was Signor Provana there?"

"Not he. He was last heard of in Vienna. But I believe he is coming home next week."

"An unsatisfactory husband for a young thing like Vera," said Mrs. Rutherford, with a faint cloud on her thoughtful face.

Claude knew that look of vague trouble. It was often on his mother's forehead when she spoke of Vera.

"I don't think women ought to call him unsatisfactory. He is the most indulgent husband I know. He adores his wife, and she reigns like a queen in that great house of his—and in their Roman villa."

"That kind of indulgence is a dangerous thing for a young woman—especially if she is capricious and full of strange fancies."

"Poor little Vera. You don't seem to have a high opinion of her."

"I don't want to be unkind. She has passed through an ordeal that only a woman of high principles and strong brain can pass without deterioration. A girlhood of poverty and deprivation, under close surveillance, and a married life of inordinate luxury and liberty. She was married at eighteen, remember, Claude—before her character could be formed. Nor was Lady Felicia the person to lay the foundation of a fine character. One ought not to speak ill of the dead—but poor Felicia was sadly trivial and worldly-minded."

"Madre mia, what a sermon. If you think poor little Vera is in danger, why don't you contrive to see a little more of her? She would love to have you for a real friend. She has a host of acquaintances, but not too many friends. Susan Amphlett is devoted to her; but Lady Susie is not a tower of strength."

"I believe they suit each other. They are both feather-headed, and both poseuses."

At this Claude fired, and was almost fierce.

"Vera is no poseuse," he said. "She is utterly without self-consciousness. I don't think she knows that she is lovely, in spite of the Society papers. Fortunately she has no time to read them. She is too absorbed in her poets—Browning, Shakespeare, Dante. I doubt if she reads a page of prose in a day."

"And is not that a pose? Her idea is to be different from other women—a creature of imagination—in the world, but not of it. That is what people say of Madame Provana.—So charming! So different!

"She can't help what people say, any more than she can help looking more like Undine than a woman whose clothes come from the Rue de la Paix."

Mrs. Rutherford let the subject drop. She did not want to bring unhappiness into the sweetest hour of her life, the hour her son gave her; and she knew she could not talk of Vera without the risk of unhappiness. He who was the joy of her life was also the cause of much sorrow; but from the day he left the Army, under some kind of cloud, never fully understood, but divined, by his mother, she had never let him know what a disappointment his broken career had been to her. She was a soldier's daughter, and a soldier's widow; and to be distinguished as a leader of men was to her mind almost the only way to greatness.

Yet she had smiled when this cherished son had made light of military fame, and told her he would rather be another Millais than another Arthur Wellesley. She had expressed no regret, a few years later, when he told her that art was of all professions the most hateful—and that he did not mean to follow up the flashy success of his early pictures.

"They might make me an Associate next year, if my work was a little better," he told her; "but I am not good enough to hit the public taste two years running. It was the subject or the devilry in my picture that caught on. I might never catch on again—and I'm sick of it all—the critics, the dealers, and the whole brotherhood of art."

There again his road in life came to a dead stop; but this time it was not a wicked woman's form that barred the vista, and shut out the Temple of Fame. As he had missed being a great soldier, he was to miss being a famous painter, though the men who knew, the men who had already arrived, had told his mother that a brilliant career might have been his, if he had chosen to work for it; to work, not by fits and starts, like a fine gentleman in a picturesque painting-room, but as Reynolds had worked, and Etty, and Wilkie, when he sat on the floor painting, with his own legs for his subject.

Again, after trying her powers of persuasion, and trying to fire his ambition, Mrs. Rutherford had resigned herself to disappointment, and had been neither reproachful nor lugubrious.

She was an ambitious woman, and her son had disappointed her ambition. She was a deeply religious woman, and she saw her son indifferent to his religion, if not an unbeliever; and she never persecuted him with tears and remonstrances, only on rare occasions, and with the utmost delicacy, pleading the urgency of a strong faith in the midst of a faithless generation, and the deadly risk the man runs who neglects the sacraments of his Church.

Although she did not often approach this subject in her talk with Claude, it was not the less a subject of anxious thought; and she relied on the influence of her old and devoted friend, Father Cyprian Hammond, rather than her own, for the saving of her son's soul.

If a good woman's prayers could have guarded his path and kept him from temptation, Claude Rutherford would have walked between guardian angels.