Lionel Ratcliffe closed behind him the gate of the house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields where he had his lodging. He crossed the road, then paused to survey the desolate scene.

The day was drawing to a close, but sullen fires of sunset were still burning low under a leaden, cloudy sky. Beneath his feet the grass was parched, the ground everywhere leprous grey. Though it was only early July, the foliage of the trees hung limp and sick-hued; there was not a flicker of life among the branches—indeed, hardly a stir anywhere in the languid atmosphere. Sky seemed to brood over earth, earth to lie paralysed, awaiting some moment of catastrophe, and heavy vapours to be fusing them together. The heat was a palpable presence. An anguished expectation caught the throat as with an actual pressure. The plague held all London in its grip.

Men can walk with fortitude under the wings of the Angel of Destruction, when the death he brings is a clean one, honourable, seemly; but this horrible Demon of Corruption that now spread its shadow over the world made its victims loathsome in each other’s eyes and infected them with coward selfishness and panic fears.

The Court had gone at last, though Charles was no poltroon. Half the population was in flight along country roads; blind terror was upon most of those whom circumstances retained within the doomed circle. Among the well-to-do only three classes still lingered in the town: those whom a sense of duty kept at their post; those again who, with a strange but not unknown faculty of self-deception, chose to ignore the visitation rather than to face the appalling presence; and lastly, those few strong natures who, for purposes of their own, found it worth while to set danger at defiance.

To these last belonged Lionel Ratcliffe. Fully aware of the peril, he challenged it deliberately. He knew that those yellow vapours were the very breath of the pestilence; that the smell everywhere meeting his nostrils was that of death; that among yonder prostrate figures reclining beneath the trees many were doubtless stricken, dying, or dead. He kept on, nevertheless, calm if wary, at a masterful gait, across the fields.

In his hand he swung a loaded cane of such proportions as almost to rival a watchman’s staff—one which could keep at a distance or at one stroke lay low the sturdiest onslaught. For it was well known that many of the pest-stricken in their delirium rushed into the street to die; that the passer-by might at any moment be confronted by some miserable wretch who, seized with madness, would rise and clasp him in an embrace of hideous contagion.

As for the mumpers and rufflers, who were wont to emerge at the darkening hours in the Fields—like night-moths, no one knew where from—one glance of this gentleman’s eye, not to speak of the knowing gesture of the staff hand, would have sufficed to bid even the stoutest of them pause and be wiser than to meddle.

And so Lionel Ratcliffe passed on, without undue haste, leaving the closed theatre on his left, making westward toward Arch Row. And presently, as he emerged from the shadow of the trees, he sighted the mansion that was his goal, Chillingburgh House, with its sharp roof, its coping balustrade and urns rising in relief, black against the lurid orange of the sky.

As he approached the gateway a sedan chair, escorted by a couple of armed footmen, was just depositing a lady voluminously wrapped in a silk cloak before the double flight of steps. He halted for a second to watch her begin the ascent on the right. She went slowly, as one fatigued; he swiftly entered the flagged courtyard, took the opposite side of the stairs, and reached the landing just before her.

“Madame de Mantes! … your servant—! Punctual to the moment!” cried he, bowed and clapped the feathered hat against his breast.

She halted on the last step and raised her handsome head slowly toward him, ignoring his hand. The light was growing dim, and the rosy folds of her hood looked grey; but even under its shadows and in spite of the rouge on her cheek he had an uncomfortable impression of her pallor.

“Oui,” she said tonelessly, “me voici.” Then, with sudden petulance, “Ouf! but one suffocates in this air!”

She caught at the strings of her cloak and tore them apart; the light silken thing slipped from her shoulders, but she hurried into the house as one unseeing. Ratcliffe picked up the garment alertly, and followed, just in time to offer his hand again at the foot of the great staircase. The touch of her fingers struck chill. His first misgivings deepened; but he quickly dismissed the rising thoughts. Bah! a woman in love (what was there about this Rockhurst, curse him! that all the fair should thus run mad upon him?)—a woman hopelessly in love, and a Frenchwoman at that! There would sure be scenes with the faithless lover, and she was even now rehearsing them in her agitated imagination. Well might her hands be cold.

“Are you ill at ease?” he whispered, with a perfunctory show of solicitude as they passed a couple of anxious-looking servants and drew closer together on the stairs.

“Mon Dieu! but not at all!” she mocked him irritably. “Neither ill in my ease, nor my heart, nor—oh, tranquillise yourself—nor in my head! Besides, who could be but well and happy in this merry London of yours?”

They had reached the gallery. She snapped her hand from his and dropped him a courtesy. He wondered to have thought her pale; now she seemed to him unwontedly flushed. Her heavy eyes shot fire. Appraising her critically, he approved. There were jewels at her ears and throat; her gown had the impress of French taste, and became her every beauty.

The grey-haired butler who flung open the doors of the drawing-room at her approach looked after the swaying, shimmering figure with melancholy approval.

“’Tis almost like old times, Master Lionel,” he whispered, as Ratcliffe passed in, “to see a Court lady about the place again.”

“Aye, from Court she is,” said Lady Chillingburgh’s grandson, halting on the threshold to let his gaze roam thankfully over the great white-and-gold room, which had a sense of coolness and repose about it, even on such a night. “But she had her reasons for not hasting off with the rest of them this morning.”

“Eh—but they must be weighty reasons!” murmured the old servant, with a sigh.

“No doubt the lady thinks them so,” said Lionel Ratcliffe, with his detached laugh.—“We are full early here, ’twould seem,” he added in louder tones, advancing toward the card-table in the window before which the Frenchwoman had already taken seat.

But she disdained to cast toward him even the flutter of an eyelid. Her fingers were moving restlessly among the cards and dice.

“Zero … zero! Hein? Non-zero. Ah … mal-chance!”

The man stood over her a second or two in silence. Then sat down in his turn and faced her. His voice rang out with a kind of empty cheeriness:—

“What! to the dice already?—Nay,” here he leaned across the narrow space and whispered, “Remember, it was to play another game that I brought you here.”

She turned petulantly from him; then her eye became fixed, staring out through the unshuttered window.

“What a strange red moon is rising!” she cried. “Would to God, Monsieur Ratcliffe, you had never come to me this morning, tempting, tempting.… My boxes were packed: I should be now far from this pit of pestil—”

“Hush! hush!” he warned, finger on lip. “Not here! Do not forget my instructions.” Then, in his low, mock-gallant accents: “How now? Is the game, then, no longer worth the hazard?”

She caught up the dice-box again, feverishly:—

“Yes—yes. But I have no luck to-night!”

She muttered and cast. “Naught again!”

“Expect you luck at the game of chance,” quoth he, catching the dice-box from her hand, “when you are so lucky at the game of love?”

“I? I, lucky?”

“Yes,” proceeded he; “and have you not had Cupid’s best cards in your hand, since the very hour of your landing with Madame de France? First the King—King of Trumps himself, and eke the Queen.—Gad, she’d have loved you, were it but to spite the Castlemaine.—Then—”

“Tush!” she interrupted angrily. “Cards?—’Tis not all to hold the cards—one must play them. I held them all, in truth—” she put her hand to her throat with a little choking sob. “But—”

“You threw them all down!” he laughed.

“Ah, ciel!—When the heart begins to take a part in this game of love, then all goes astray.”

“Aye,” repeated the man, steadily, his hard eyes upon her, “you threw your cards away—and all for love of this Rockhurst, the greatest knave in the pack.”

She turned with sudden anger:—

“Knave, sir? Sho!… King of you all!” Then, with equally sudden change of mood, “Oh, he is a villain!” she moaned, and her lip trembled upon tears.

“And so you have not seen him,” said he, altering his tone to one of elaborate sympathy, “since he returned to town, escorting to his house my fair cousin, Diana Harcourt? What—not once, after all you have given up for him?—Faith, ’tis ungallant of him!”

Her elbows on the table, her chin sunk in her hands, she was now staring fiercely into his eyes.

“Your promise, sir, that I meet him here to-night?…”

“Nay, I can only tell you, my fair Jeanne, that he journeys hither from the Tower or Whitehall twice a day—when ’tis not thrice.”

“Mon Dieu! …” she breathed between her clenched teeth.

Satisfied with the temper he had aroused in her, the man withdrew his eyes, turned sideways on his chair, and crossed his legs.

“I fear you’ve been too cool with him,” he remarked airily. “Our ‘merry Rockhurst,’ as his Majesty calls him, is used to a vast deal of warmth.”

“I—too cool!” She laughed hysterically. “Oh, yes, it was that, of course, with this heart and brain of mine on fire!”

“Then I fear,” said Ratcliffe, on the edge of a yawn, “you’ve been too hot. The Lord Constable of his Majesty’s Tower is a man of niceties.”

“Monsieur Ratcliffe,” cried Jeanne de Mantes, beating the table with her palm and darting her head toward him like a pretty serpent, “you are the Devil!”

“And your very good friend, madam.” He smiled with a charming bow. “Come, come! Smooth that fair brow. Do you doubt but you can hold your own against a mere country widow?”

She fixed him with suspicious eyes.

“Aye, and now it comes to me,” she cried resentfully. “What is your motive in all this, Monsieur Ratcliffe? Not simply sympathy for me?”

“Come, come! Be calm.” There was authority under his blandness. “Be calm,” he repeated, “and let me whisper in your ear.—I will even trust you with my innermost thought. Diana Harcourt shall not be for my Lord Rockhurst, but for your humble servant.”

“Aye,” she commented, a twist of scorn upon her lips; “the lady, I was told, is passing rich.”

“Even so,” returned he, unmoved. “’Twould indeed be impossible to conceal aught from your perspicacity!—Now Mistress Harcourt, by an odd trick of fate, has become affianced to Harry Rockhurst, the virtuous, innocent country son of this most reprobate nobleman. The which, however, would be but a small matter (for she loves not the green lad, mark you, nor ever will), were it not the spur to other feelings.”

“I fail to follow you, sir,” she said wearily.

“Nay, a moment’s patience, pretty huntress, then you will come full on the scent. My Lord Rockhurst has had the singular maggot of playing a game of parental virtue with his heir.—But you are not listening.”

She was pressing her temples with the tip of her fingers, as one who fights a stabbing pain. At his words, she looked up again and nodded; and he went on:—

“He has pledged himself to guard the goddess for his lad in the maze of the town. Mistress Diana has seen naught of my Lord Constable but the high-souled knight, the King Arthur of romance, and so he would fain remain in her eyes even as in those of his son; and thus he, whom the town has dubbed Rakehell Rockhurst, caught in his own springe, must go on playing the pattern of chivalry, the virtuous gentleman, the devoted father—play his part out, in fact, or else be dubbed now prince of hypocrites! Aye, and the cream of the jest is that they have fallen both so mad in love with each other, aha! that each can scarce breathe in the other’s presence for the weight of the secret!”

He laughed, but she brooded darkly, nibbling at her little finger.

“And so,” she said after a pause, “you count upon me to lure back my lord?”

“Aye,” retorted he, with a great show of ease. “That—or else to pluck the mask of grave virtue from his face … in Mistress Harcourt’s presence. Was it not agreed? Either course, I take it, will serve your purpose as well as mine. Why—I deemed you subtler, madam! Upon my Lord Constable’s discomfiture; upon the opening of my fair prude’s eyes, strikes my hour, I say. And, zounds, I take it!—Strikes your moment, too, so you know how to clutch it! Do you not see that?”

She made no answer. A meaningless laugh was on her lips; it died in a sigh. A strange feeling as of soaring and undulation had come upon her, and a splitting of her thoughts as though she were in two places at once. Her mind was wandering oddly, beyond her control, to the cool meadows of her childhood’s home, to the days when she plucked daisies with her baby brother in the dew-wet grass. Lionel Ratcliffe was still speaking; she caught a word here and there. One phrase at last fixed her attention.

“’Twill go hard,” he was saying, “if Lionel Ratcliffe comes not to his own to-night!”

“And Jeanne de Mantes to hers!” she cried then, in a kind of high-strained voice, rousing herself. And, falling back into her abstraction: “What a wicked mist there rises from the garden,” she went on, complaining. “Aye, would I were far from here!”

“And let pious Mistress Harcourt convert my Lord Constable?”

“A plague on you!” she shrieked in a sudden frenzy.

“Hush, hush! That word—have you forgot?”

A shadow fell on them as they leaned together. She looked up in terror. It was only the old butler, with a whispered message from Lady Chillingburgh to her grandson.

Lionel frowned: the interruption was unwelcome. He glanced at the clock, it was the hour of the reception; the guests would presently arrive, and he mistrusted the Frenchwoman’s tact, above all to-night, in this unwonted vapourish mood. He rose with ill humour.

“Some whimsy of my grandam about the tables, no doubt,” he muttered, as he sauntered from the room, pausing at the door to cast a last look of warning. And, truly,—for Fate plays such tricks upon those who would guide her,—scarce had his footsteps died away, when Lord Rockhurst himself entered unannounced upon the solitary guest, as enters the familiar of the house.

II
LOVE’S REPROACH

He reached the middle of the room before he caught sight of her. An angry frown suddenly overcast features which, in repose, were at once singularly dignified and melancholy.

“How now?” he said harshly. “How come you here?”

Whatever illusion Jeanne de Mantes might have cherished as to her power over the man she loved, that frown, the cutting tones, all too quickly dispelled it. She felt as one who, stretching her cheek for a kiss, receives a blow. Ingrate! And she who, this day, was braving death to see him once more! Quick upon the smart of pain, her fury rose. Squaring her elbows, she looked at him insolently.

“Why, in my sedan chair, milord.”

“Who brought you, then?”

But she had not the strength for the fight. What had come to Jeanne de Mantes? She found herself faltering:—

“Nay, say what brought me, Rockhurst, and I will tell you. It was to see you.” Her voice deepened, the tears she would not shed wept in it. “I was packing, if you would know, for country and safety, even this morning. And when Mr. Ratcliffe told me—”

“Ha!” he interrupted, speaking half to himself, “I might have known who had baited this trap.”

She went on with rising plaint:—

“Oh! What have I done to thee, my friend—?”

“This is no place for you, madam,” he said, coming close to her and speaking very low. “A house you have no right to enter.”

The colour flamed up again to her face.

“Nay, if you are here, milord,” she retorted, “why not I, then?”

He stood a few seconds, his dark eye upon her, deeply thinking; then, as though upon a sudden, wilful mood, a complete change came over him. The stateliness, the air of command, the something unapproachable as of one set apart, gave place to mockery, to languor. He let himself sink upon the chair that Ratcliffe had vacated; and, running his fingers through the black curls that lay on his shoulders, scrutinised her again insolently through half-closed lids.

“Lionel Ratcliffe,” quoth he then, “is a gentleman of birth and parts. And if he hath not much of this world’s goods, he hath wits, which is nigh as good. Mightest do worse, Jinny!”

“And is it for this,” cried she, laughing loudly, “that I gave up a king?” But in the midst of her laughter tears welled and ran down her cheeks.

“By the Lord Harry!” he said, wilfully hard, “but this becomes a wearisome refrain of thine! What now, Old Rowley is forgiving. Finish that packing of thine, and hie thee to Salisbury. You might still—”

She caught her kerchief from her bosom and set her teeth in it.

“Might I, indeed, my lord? Oh, you are gallant!” Then the tears came on that hysteric outburst: “You will break my heart!”

He glanced anxiously toward the door.

“Tush!—Hearts?” he cried impatiently. “We are set with five senses in this world, and ’tis but common wisdom to take note of them. But hearts? What have you and I to do with hearts?”

“And, indeed,” she sobbed—“and, indeed, I never knew I had one, till you had taken it from me!”

“Dry your eyes, Jinny,” said he then, not unkindly. “When will ye women learn it?—tears are daggers with which ye slay your charms.… Enough! I for one never could abide a salt cheek.”

She thrust back the sob rising in her throat, and strove to smile upon him.

“Time was you thought me handsome,” she murmured with catching breath.

“I think thee handsome still,” he answered; stretched out a languid finger and touched her chin. Then a bitter laugh shook him. “A morsel fit for a king, as I said!”

With her snakelike movement she rose, and stood a second, glaring down at him. Then to her ears came a rustle along the oaken boards of the passage. Her rival! And she, la belle Jeanne de Mantes, tear-stained, a hideous thing to be mocked at! Like a hunted thing, she turned and dashed through the open window out upon the terrace that overlooked the gloom of the garden.

No fresh air there to cool her fevered temples, to revive that heart so strangely labouring. But stronger than all physical discomfort was the galling interest of her jealousy. She returned close to the window by which she had fled.… The mischief of it was that, with this hammering of her pulses, she could scarce catch a word of what passed within the room. But she could see! And the whole life power in her became concentrated in her burning eyes. Pshaw! it was but a pale girl when all was said and done! And the hair, positive red!… Aye, and overlong in the limb—an English gawk! She would call herself slender, no doubt—thin was the word for her. Not a jewel, not even a pearl, on the forehead! If Jeanne de Mantes knew milord—him so travelled, so fastidious, so raffinÉ—this dish of curds and whey would mighty soon pall upon his palate. Yet, through all this tale of her rival’s disabilities, a relentless voice, far away in her soul, yet clear as judge’s sentence, repeated that Diana was beautiful and held Rockhurst’s love. In her despair, something like madness ran hot through her veins. Very well, at any rate, as Lionel Ratcliffe had it, her moment was at hand! A shuddering fit came over her that seemed to shake her ideas away, as an autumn wind the leaves.… Her moment? What moment…?

In the yellow candle-light within, Lord Rockhurst had ceremoniously greeted his son’s betrothed. Silently she courtesied. Then, as they drew closer to each other, the man saw traces of tears on the fair cheek.

“What is this?” he exclaimed. “You have been weeping!”

“Truly, my lord,” said she, smiling, yet with a little catch in her breath, “I should be ashamed to show you this disfigured countenance.”

“Disfigured?” he echoed. “Nay—transfigured!”

He took a quick step toward her as she spoke; but she drew back.

“I have a letter from Harry,” she said constrainedly; and Rockhurst drew himself up, darkening.

“Aye,” said he, and then approached her again, his whole manner delicately, indescribably altered. “Good news, I trust?”

“Oh, vastly,” she answered, with a small, flustered laugh, drawing a folded sheet from her bosom. There was a deep pause. “I am glad to have heard from Harry,” she declared of a sudden, bravely.

“So glad,” he said, low-voiced, “that you wept.”

“My lord!” There was fear and warning in her cry.

“Ah, Diana, do not grudge me your tears, since ’tis all I may ever have from you!” He took a hasty turn about the room,—his eyes averted, not to read in her countenance the effect of this cry of revelation. When he came back to her, iron composure was once more upon him. “I, too, heard from my son. Harry clamours to be allowed to join us. That may not be. Less than ever now!” A church bell rang mournfully into his last words. “Why, hark! the very bells ring out the words, plague, plague!”

“Oh, my good lord!” she exclaimed, her finger on her lip.

“Aye, and is my Lady Chillingburgh still so mad?”

“Mad? No; but all London is gone mad, is labouring under a monstrous illusion. We, in this house, alone are sane. There never was such an ailment as the—” she dropped and formed the evil word only with a movement of the lips. “And if, as you see, our friends grow scarcer each Wednesday night, there are a thousand indifferent good reasons to explain their absence.”

Something in the sweet, assumed archness of her tone stirred him as could no outburst of feminine terror.

“Diana, child, I cannot permit this! You must not remain exposed to such peril. I will no longer be withheld from speaking to Lady Chillingburgh.”

“Believe me, my lord,” she prayed him earnestly, “you would but anger her; you would but be banished this house, and nothing gained indeed. Oh, do not speak!”

He took both her hands as she involuntarily flung them out.

“Then will I speak to you only. Diana, think of yourself, of Harry. The whole town is in flight. The departure of the Court has given the final signal for panic—”

She smiled as she slowly withdrew her hands.

“And you, my lord, when do you join the fugitives?”

“I?” He started. “Why, surely, madam, you know I have a post to keep! ’Tis one I would not desert if I might. My men, poor devils, look to me—”

“Ah,” she interrupted, “and have I no post to hold against the same enemy? How many servants would my grandmother retain if I set the example?”

“Diana!” The word escaped him in an uncontrollable impulse of tenderness. But he checked himself again on the very leap of passion. “Ah,” he murmured, “I shall have a brave daughter!”

She smiled, as a woman smiles at the hurt inflicted by the best-beloved.

There came from without the sound of voices, uplifted in the pleasant, artificial accents that mark the social meeting, and Lionel Ratcliffe ushered a couple of elderly visitors into the room with his elaborate, if ironic, courtesy.

“You are not the first, gentlemen, you perceive. Indeed, my worthy ancestress is somewhat behind-hand in her usual punctilio. But she has been engaged (with my assistance) in the dismissal of a saucy footman who has had the insolence to remark to her upon these red crosses with which it hath become the rage to adorn the doors of certain houses these days.”

Both the men laughed uneasily.

“Tut, tut!” cried the elder and stouter, and sniffed surreptitiously at his pomander box.

“Quite so,” assented Lionel, suavely.

Whereupon the other guest broke out, as in anger:—

“A monstrous nuisance, ’pon honour! Gad, sirs, I am here straight from a crony’s house—my Lord Vernon’s and no other. What think you greets me from the door-step—a nobleman’s door, mark you! The cross, sir, the cross! and by my soul, the text, ‘Lord have mercy on us!’ writ beneath in chalk!”

“Lord ’a’ mercy!” exclaimed the stout man, starting back involuntarily. “You did not cross the threshold?”

“No, Mr. Foulkes,” returned the younger severely. Then he burst forth again, a man mightily offended by the indelicacy of events: “Gad, sir, I’m not fond of the country, but I’m for it to-morrow!”

Foulkes again sniffed his spice-box, this time openly.

“Why, so am I, Sir John!—Ah, Mistress Harcourt, your humble devoted!”

Ratcliffe, who had anxiously looked round the room for Madame de Mantes, while the guests exchanged greetings, now saw her emerge from the window recess, and threw her a keen, enquiring glance. Without meeting his eyes, she came forward with a great rustle of ballooning silk so that all turned toward her.

“Pray, Mr. Ratcliffe,” said she, in a gay and coquettish voice, “you have not yet presented me to your kinswoman.”

Ratcliffe shot swift scrutiny from beneath his drawn brows at Diana’s surprised face, at Lord Rockhurst’s dark, impassive countenance and the Frenchwoman’s crimson cheeks and haggard eyes, imperceptibly shrugged his shoulders, and complied:—

“Cousin Diana—Madame de Mantes, who is kind enough to add her charming presence to our dwindling company to-night. Agreeably to our grandmother’s wish, I have been acting herald to her hospitality.”

Jeanne sank into the centre of her amber and blue draperies; emerged languorous, extended with queenly grace a hand to Foulkes and another to Sir John, and from the very sweep of her courtesies flung a condescending phrase at her rival:—

“Monsieur, your handsome cousin, has been so eloquent about you, madam, that ’tis almost as if I knew you already.”

“He is very kind,” faltered Diana, ill at ease, she scarce knew why. Then, mindful of her duty as hostess, “You know my Lord Rockhurst?”

The lady looked beyond them into the night of the garden.

“We have met,” she said in dreamy tones, and sailed into a third obeisance.

The two gentlemen of the Court instinctively drew together.

“What has come to that pretty piece from France? Her looks are oddly altered, think you not? And her manner is somewhat singular to-night. What makes she in this prim circle? She should be at Salisbury,” whispered Foulkes.

Sir John Farringdon jerked his thumb knowingly toward the Lord Constable; both looked, laughed, and wagged their heads. Rockhurst stepped forward and unostentatiously drew Diana away from Madame de Mantes. Lionel seized his moment:—

“What did you, from the room?” he whispered hurriedly in his ally’s ear. “You had your chance, and let it slip! I had not brought you here—” He stopped suddenly, staring at her askance. The great enamel clasp, that held the artfully careless draperies at her breast, rose and fell with her over-quick breathing, yet her mood was strangely cheerful; nay, incomprehensible, for he marked that her eyes were red. She had wept, he angrily thought, and robbed herself well-nigh of all her beauty. “You’ve lost the trick for both of us,” he muttered bitterly.

“Don’t be too sure,” she bade him, drawing closer to him. “Look at them!” she cried, tossing her curls in the direction of Rockhurst and Diana. “Ha! you’d have me believe Rockhurst in love—in love with that white, bloodless, fireless country stock! Oh, sir, I have seen Rockhurst in love!”

A smile twisted his lips; he looked at her cruelly.

She proceeded with a mixture of exultation and bitterness:—

“I watched them; they thought themselves alone. I tell you he made no attempt to do more than kiss her finger-tips! Ah, mon Dieu!” Her laughter was like a flame running through her. “With me—Ah, you men! do I not know you?”

“Pshaw!” said Ratcliffe, deliberately. “Something you may know of us, and know well. But you know not what a virtuous woman can make of us.”

She wheeled on him, clenching her hands as though to strike him.

“Indeed!” she panted. “And have I not had as much virtue as any woman—once?” Then, finding his gaze fixed upon his cousin, she halted upon precipitate speech, watched him keenly for a second, and broke into loud laughter.

“Hush!” he cried, starting at the wanton sound.

“Excellent Lionel,” she said, catching him with her small, burning fingers, “if friends are to help each other, they should be frank. But now I know your secret, I know where I am. As Heaven is good to me,” her laugh rang out again, “’tis not for the money; why, ’tis for love! You’re in love with the widow!”

He looked at her for an instant as if he could have stabbed her willingly, but the next fell back into his cynic mood.

“Congratulate yourself, then,” he retorted drily, “since I have all the more reason to have my way. But, pray you, here comes my grandam. She cares not for such loud mirth.”

“Trust me,” she tittered. “I await but the ripe moment. The unmasking shall yet be played to your liking, and—” She faltered; into her eyes came the vagueness, into her voice the singular change, that once or twice already had aroused Ratcliffe’s attention. In a kind of toneless whisper, rapid and jerky, she added: “Unmask? Oh, yes, milord. No doubt—after supper!”

Lionel fell back with a frown of dismay.

The folding doors were thrown apart; two footmen entered, bearing candelabra which they deposited upon the centre card-table. There was an abrupt cessation of talk among the guests, and all turned in formal expectation of the venerable hostess’s entry. Into which stillness Lady Chillingburgh, seated very upright in her chair, was wheeled by a negro boy.

III
THE PLAGUE-CART

Through the fantastic mists that circled in her brain to-night, now shrouding her faculties in gloom like the sinister fog that hung without, now shot as with many-coloured fires, Madame de Mantes gazed upon this extraordinary personality.

Paralysed to the waist though the old lady was, a fierce vitality, an indomitable will, looked out of the sunken black eyes, spoke in the cavernous voice, imposed itself in the gesture of the shriveled hand. Here was one, in spite of age and infirmity, strong enough to bid defiance to universal calamity, to look Pestilence in the face, and choose to ignore it; who, in the midst of a terror akin to that of the scriptural last day—when the abomination of desolation seemed to have fallen upon the city, and he that was on the housetop might scarce come down to take anything out of his house—could still give her weekly card-party and find guests to obey the summons.

As her chair was brought to a stand in the middle of the room, Lady Chillingburgh drew her eyebrows together and swept a slow, severe glance over the circle.

“I was informed the company had assembled. How now! Are these all my guests?”

There was a kind of apologetic stir, as if each person felt responsible for the paucity of the gathering. Then Rockhurst and the other men advanced and gravely paid their devoirs. Diana drew her grandmother’s chair to a more suitable position by the big card-table, and stood behind her, in attendance. Ratcliffe instantly proceeded to the introduction of the new guest. He was once more suave, to glibness:—

“The Court has left this morning, dear madam; hence this unwonted emptiness of your rooms. Nevertheless, here is a lady of the royal circle. Madame de Mantes, of the house of Madame Henriette de France, and honoured by their Majesties’ particular regard—she still prefers the advantages of the town.”

The aged face became wreathed in smiles.

“I trust their Majesties were in good health, madam, when last you saw them,” said my Lady Chillingburgh in stately condescension.

Jeanne courtesied mechanically. She felt of a sudden childishly afraid of the figure in the chair, old, old and nearly dead, yet so alive!

The faint, hollow voice went on, as from the recesses of a tomb:—

“You play cards, of course, Madame de Mantes!” To which the other made answer feebly, into space:—

“Yes … yes, milady. I came to play.”

A slight shade of surprise appeared in the hostess’s eyes; but after a second, she made another gesture with the clawlike hand, and turned with an unerring precision of politeness to her friends:—

“Sir John, I rejoice to see you; you had failed us of late. Ah, Mr. Foulkes, you indeed are ever faithful! But where is your good lady?”

“She deemed it wiser—hem,” Foulkes coughed, a-sweat with embarrassment, “I mean, she had accepted an invitation to the country, and left this morning with our family.”

“Indeed!” commented the venerable hostess, regally. “My Lord Rockhurst, you prefer basset, I know. So does Sir John. Will you be seated yonder? Grandson, to my left. Madame, will you face me, if you please? Mr. Foulkes, sir, to my right. Diana, child, shuffle the cards.”

They fell into their places as she willed them; and for a little while round the greater table there was naught but the business of the moment: the necessary words of the game, the rattle of the dice, the whisper of sliding cards. Diana, her fresh young beauty drawn close in startling contrast to her grandmother’s awe-inspiring face, held the cards for the trembling fingers, flung the dice.

In the window recess, the two men, under cover of a languid contest, conversed gravely in undertones. But ever and again the Lord Constable’s gaze, charged with anxiety, sought Diana’s radiant head. Jeanne had flung herself feverishly into the game, which seemed to her all at once a matter of colossal importance.

“I marvel extremely,” quoth Lady Chillingburgh, “that my Lord Marsham should be so late. You are acquaint with my Lord Marsham, madame? He is much at Whitehall. We are indeed a small party to-night. Let us hope my lord will presently appear.”

Foulkes, who had shown increasing agitation during this speech, now dropped his cards with a muffled “Mercy be good to us!”

Ratcliffe kicked him under the table, the while addressing his bland tones to his grandmother.

“Do not expect his lordship to-night, madam. I hear he has convened a party of his own.”

Sir John Farringdon, straining startled ears and eyes from the other table, caught Ratcliffe’s glance, and mouthed at him with dumb lips, “Gone?”—jerking heavenward with his thumb.

“Gone,” asserted Ratcliffe’s nod, while his thumb pointed grimly down.

Lady Chillingburgh turned her quick glance, her high pyramid of lace and white curls, in daunting enquiry toward Sir John. But her grandson, diabolically fluent, was once more ready with his irony:—

“Sir John is offended at having received no invitation.”

“’Tis very strange,” said Lady Chillingburgh. “My Lord Marsham is not wont to be discourteous.”

“’Twas such a sudden inspiration,” soothed Lionel.

His grandmother fixed him with stern disapproval. Diana sometimes thought that, though it was the old woman’s fancy to be humoured, not a jot of their elaborate pretence escaped her; that she fiercely resented the mocking manner with which Lionel acted his rÔle.

“And your cousin, sir? Where lurks he? Your brother Edward, I mean, Diana?”

And as Diana had no answer but a look of dumb distress, the old lady finished the phrase for herself:—

“I fear young Edward can find little time for the duties he owes to his grandmother, for the claims of a genteel society, so eager is he, since he is come to London, for less reputable amusements!” Again the fiery eyes wandered, seeking. “And Mistress Hill? ’Tis the first time in seven years that Mistress Hill has failed me.”

Sir John Farringdon, who had been unaccountably nettled by Ratcliffe’s mocking remark, here lifted his voice somewhat overloudly:—

“I can give tidings of Mistress Hill, madam. I happen to know that this evening she was driven out in state. No doubt, Mr. Ratcliffe, ’twas to join that gathering of my Lord Marsham’s to which, as you were good enough to inform the company, I was not asked.”

Rockhurst rose, frowning. And, laughing, not pleasantly, at his own wit, Sir John gathered the neglected stakes and slipped them into his pocket. Madame de Mantes echoed the laugh, shrilly, hysterically.

“Mon Dieu! How amusing you all are!” she cried, and furtively wiped her forehead, wet with unaccountably cold clamminess this sultry night.

A dark flush crept to the old hostess’s bleached cheek. Desultory talk or grim jest failed alike to relieve the tension. The game languished; scarce passed a card or rang a die; the ever-shadowing Horror hung, nightmare-dark, ever closer, ever more palpable, over all.

“The game, madam! The game, gentlemen!”

But it was idle, even for the bravest spirit among her guests, to deny the invisible Presence in their midst. And when, following upon a confused rumour on the stairs, a great cry of anguish and terror was raised at the very door of the room; when, staggering and wringing his hands, a distraught youth rushed in, it was almost as if his voice was that of the unacknowledged Fear; his livid face its very countenance.

“For the Lord’s sake, a cup of the plague water!”

“Brother!” cried Diana. She sprang toward him. But hastily, even roughly, Rockhurst thrust her on one side, and the boy collapsed into the nearest chair.

Whereupon Lionel, coming forward with his usual coolness, ran his fingers, with a movement the sinister significance of which most people had learned to interpret these days, under the fair curls of the bent head, feeling behind the ears.

“Pshaw—’tis nothing!… Sheer poltroonery,” cried he, and laughed loudly, and struck his cousin’s hunched shoulders with no gentle hand. “Art a pretty fellow to come thus, bellowing like a calf, into the presence of ladies!”

“Curse it!” moaned the lad. “I have just knocked against two women carrying a coffin! They howled like sick cats.” Sinking his head on his hands once more, he rocked himself backward and forward. “Oh, this wicked London! Oh, the judgment of God!”

“Edward!” cried Lady Chillingburgh imperiously. Her voice dominated the horrified whispers of Sir John and Foulkes, Madame de Mantes’s hysterical cries, young Edward’s obtrusive groans.

But there was a force stronger than her in her house that night. Sir John Farringdon unceremoniously poured himself a bumper of wine, drank it hastily, his eye on the door toward which Foulkes was already uneasily edging. Madame de Mantes, who had been sobbing out inarticulate words in her own tongue, broke into babbling laughter.

Edward sprang to his feet, thrusting aside his cousin’s restraining hand.

“I will speak! Grandam shall hear the truth at last! ’Tis everywhere! Every one is getting it! Lord Marsham, ill at noon, dead at four! Mistress Hill, well yesterday, buried to-night!”

“I command you to silence, Edward!”

The quavering voice rose high, catching painfully at lost authority; the palsied hand aimed a feeble blow at the table.

“Why must we stay, because of the old woman’s whimsy?” continued the boy in fury. “Zounds! I go to-night, and sister with me. D’ye hear, grandam! I’m only come here to get the travel money from you, and I’ll have it. I’ll go, and sister with me!”

But the aged queen was not yet dethroned. Her spirit asserted itself in a supreme effort. Life seemed to come back to her paralysed limbs; she flung out one hand in a gesture of authority; this time it scarce trembled.

“Diana, your brother is drunk. I order him to be expelled. Mr. Foulkes, the game is not concluded; resume your seat!”

She broke off. Sir John Farringdon had made a sudden unmannerly dash from the room. Foulkes stood at command with a sickly smile; but his friend’s example, the open passage, were too much for him; stealthily the door closed upon his retreat.

Only by a rigid aversion of her head did Lady Chillingburgh betray her knowledge of this double defection.

“Grandson Lionel, your cousin Edward is drunk. Conduct him, I say, from this apartment and let him be physicked. Madam, I am surprised you find amusement in such an indecorous scene. Foh! It seems truly that we shall have no cards to-night. Diana, child, take your guitar and sing for us. Sing that old sweet song of Master Herrick’s.—My Lord Rockhurst, have you yet heard this new instrument?”

But the Lord Constable had followed Diana as she moved across the room to seek the guitar. They stood together a second; he saw her hand tremble over the olive-wood case.

“Nay, child, you can never sing to-night!” he whispered.

“My lord, I must—anything to soothe her. Oh, the physicians have ever warned us of the danger of agitation for her!”

“Diana!” Lady Chillingburgh’s voice was weak and strained; her face seemed to have suddenly shrunk; extinct was the fire in the eyes. Yet the will still struggled. “Sing!”

Rockhurst stood behind Diana, a strong, quiet presence, watchful, comforting. She smiled at him over her shoulder. He bent to her, and under cover of the first chords:—

“You, at least, are not afraid?” he asked.

“No, my lord.”

Lionel Ratcliffe had taken no pains to fulfil his grandmother’s behest; and already she seemed to have forgotten it; but he had soothed Edward Hare after his own fashion—by a bumper of wine and a whispered promise to provide the travel money himself. Now in the lull he took a seat behind Madame de Mantes and, his eyes on Rockhurst and Diana, began in a fierce undertone:—

“Do you not see how it is with them? Why, in this evening’s folly everything conspires to give them to each other. You wait the ripe moment, say you? Gad! Look there, I say: there is that other woman with the man you love—claim him now! ’Tis your last chance!”

Madame de Mantes, who, since Lady Chillingburgh’s rebuke, had been sitting, her chin propped up on her hands, her curls concealing her face, turned slowly toward him. He started. For all his fortitude a shudder ran through him.—Through her mad eyes the Pestilence was looking upon him!

Diana’s voice rose faint but sweet:—

Lady Chillingburgh, with closed lids, beat time vaguely on the arm of her chair; Edward Hare pondered over his last mouthful of wine; the Frenchwoman was muttering to herself and drawing, under the shadow of the curls, restless patterns on the table with her forefinger. Lionel sat beside her, his starting eyes upon her face.

sang Diana, in a voice that had grown firmer and clearer.

And now, so faintly at first as to be almost imperceptible, something began to mingle itself with the music. The clang of a bell struck at intervals, followed by a long, monotonous call. The sound drew ever nearer. Diana faltered, took up her song again bravely, failed once more, struck a broken note; then hand and voice fell mute. Stillness held them all within the great room, which seemed to wait doom the more inevitably for its bright lights, for its futile air of indifference and gaiety.

Through the open window, out of the darkness, gathered a heavy rumble of wheels; then again uprose the call of the bell, the cry of the hoarse voice:—

“Bring out your dead!”

In the breathless pause, Lady Chillingburgh, rising upon those feet that had been dead to motion so long, stood erect, and flung out her arm with an angry cry; and then it seemed there was naught in the big chair but a huddled heap of drapery. The Terror, petrified on young Hare’s lip, broke out roaring:—

“She’s dead also! Grandam’s dead! The plague! She’s dead of the plague!” He made one leap for the door, his screams awaking confusion in the house.

Within Lady Chillingburgh’s drawing-room the drama was quickly played.

Diana bent in anguish over her grandmother, crying:—

“She has swooned! For Heaven’s sake, madame, as you are a woman, give me your assistance!”

But Lionel had sprung to her side:—

“Back, Diana! Away out of this room. Our grandmother is dead.”

“The—the sickness?” she faltered, with white lips.

“The plague? Not here—” he answered her. “But there!” He flung his pointing finger toward Jeanne de Mantes, who turned her face with a crazy laugh toward them.

Diana recoiled a pace, threw out her hands as if seeking support, and Rockhurst, ever close to her, caught her in his arms as she swooned. A sudden, blind, all-encompassing fury fell upon Ratcliffe.

“Stay, my Lord Constable!” he cried fiercely, and made a spring to wrest the unconscious burden from the hated man’s embrace. “Ah, Rakehell Rockhurst, not so fast!”

The table was between them. He was wrenching at his sword as he dashed round it, pushing Jeanne de Mantes aside; when, with her soft, bare arms, she clutched his throat from behind.

It was perhaps his horror of the embrace that robbed him of the power of resistance; perhaps it was the strength lent by the delirium that rendered her burning clasp irresistible. He struggled, yet was powerless. His starting eyes beheld the Lord Constable pass out of the room to the garden, bearing Diana into the night. He gathered his energy for a last shout in the hope of raising the household to his help; but the hot arms were writhing closer about him, the scented curls beat softly against his cheek. The creature was laughing, pressing upward her disfigured face, devouring him with her mad, unseeing eyes, striving to reach his lips for the kiss of death.—And she was raving:—

“At last, O Rockhurst!… O mon beau DÉmon!”

He never knew how he loosed himself—that moment was blank, stamped with too deep a horror to be ever recalled.

He found himself as in a nightmare rushing blindly through the blackness of the fields, feeling as if he could never escape from that lingering touch of contamination, as if no waters could ever lave him from the taint!

It was only when he was brought to a standstill by the edge of the river, by the Essex stairs, that he realised where his frenzy was taking him, and awoke, as it were, to sanity. But it was with a trembling in every limb and a weakness that forced him to sit on the steps. The water lapped at his very feet, shivering in a little circle of light cast by the stair lantern. He dipped his hand in the dark ripple and began mechanically to lave his brow—to lave, above all, his lips.

Thought took coherent shape again.—This was the end of his close-set plans. Madame de Mantes had failed him with a completeness it seemed that must have required Satan’s own ingenuity to devise. Lord Rockhurst had not been unmasked, Diana was with him in his power,—and he, Lionel Ratcliffe (God, with what appalling reason!), was at last afraid of the plague!

BROKEN SANCTUARY