OF JUDITH'S STATE OF MIND, AND HOW SHE TOLD HER FATHER, BUT DID NOT IMPRESS HIM AS HE WOULD HAVE WISHED. WHO KNOWS WHAT JUDITH WAS? OF A MYSTERIOUS VISITOR TO THE HALL. HOW NO ONE RECOGNIZED MARIANNE. IS MY HUSBAND DYING? A SCENE ON THE BIG STAIRCASE, AND HOW TWO TOFFS WERE FAR FROM ODIOUS. HOW THE NURSE RECOGNIZED ATHELSTAN TAYLOR. HOW JUDITH SAID GOOD-BYE TO CHALLIS. HOW IT CAME OUT WHO MR. KEITH HORNE'S FRIEND WAS

A sleepless night had preceded that interview between Judith and Challis, and she was not at her best when his wandering speech and cold unrecognition struck a chill to her soul. When a like event occurs—and it does chance, now and again—between folk who have been linked together for a lifetime, and the uninjured survivor, awaiting with the return of consciousness the accents and the look of the affection of a few hours ago, is repelled by the insensate stare of eyes that only see a stranger, the unimpassioned sound of a voice from which all tenderness has vanished, even then the trial is a hard one. But the memory of the past years is too strong to allow belief that the thing will last—it is dismissed as a passing nightmare, as the nurse by the bedside of fever dismisses the wanderings of delirium. It will last its time, and pass away and be forgotten.

A cool judgment and more experience might have told the girl to bear her soul in patience; to treat the wanderings of a brain shaken as Challis's had been as mere sleep-waking. But even had her self-possession been at its best, she had no long-past years of love to look back to, to give her confidence in its return with a returning calm of health. And not only this, but these same wandering words of his had shown how full his soul still was of the past in which she had no share. She had been allowed a peep into her lover's heart, and had felt the force of another love's preoccupation of it. If only his utterances had been stark rambling, mere Tom-of-Bedlam incoherence! But the worst of it was, their outward form was clothed in such a terrible sanity.

There was one thing in it that hit very hard—had a special sting of its own. Judith knew perfectly well about Challis's bygones. He had taken her into his confidence about the humble home of the days of his obscurity. His half-humorous reviews of his past had shown her plainly how little hold his first wife Kate—the "Ziz" of his novel—had ever had upon him. He had evidently wedded the wrong sister first. He spoke of Bob's mother with affection, certainly, but it was an affection that was artificial and perfunctory, whereas, even if he had never been passionately in love with Polly Anne—if no volcanic eruption had ever raged on account of this young person, whom Judith would have classed as an insignificant puss—still, that Deceased Wife's Sister seemed to have generated something that was at least a very good working substitute for a grande passion. What was the worth of all his protestations to her, Judith, if this memory of the days of Great Coram Street was to be the first resurrection of his mind from its temporary death?

But where was the use of answering the question now? Or any question at all, for that matter? Was not the last chance gone of passing the barrier that held them apart? Well—she had kept her share of the compact. "I am ready, if it can be arranged," she had said. And she had complied with every arrangement, stipulating only that the wedding was to be a mere legal precaution—a formal bar to the creation of a new obstacle by a retrospective mood of the Lords and Commons. It would keep the position unaltered; and that was only fair-play, surely! But now all was changed. She had always been alive to the fact that Marianne in esse, legally warranted in the appropriation of her husband's children, and canonically warranted in her paroxysm of sensitiveness to consanguinity, was a very different force to reckon with from Marianne in posse, sained and assoilzied by an Act of Parliament.

Did she, we may wonder, ask herself the question: If it were possible, even at this eleventh hour, to get that knot officially tied, and be ready to laugh at the "retrospective action" of the measure that would be the Law of the Land in forty-eight hours, would she be ready to jump at the opportunity? Or, was she not rather relieved at the turn things had taken? However, there was this to be considered:—if the motor accident had not happened, and the wedding had come off, she would never have had to face that blank stare of oblivion, and Great Coram Street! Some women won't marry a widower lest too many tender memories should still be treasured in some secret corner of his heart. That is unreasonable; because the source of them is supposed to be underground, or in Heaven, or in Purgatory, according to the faÇon-de-parler of the moment. But ... Great Coram Street! And the Deceased Wife's Sister still undeceased, and to be legalized retrospectively on Wednesday! Be it noted, though, that this is only conjecture! The story has no warrant for saying that any such thought crossed Judith's mind.

She made a clean breast of the whole matter to her father. She told him all about that last interview of hers with Challis at Trout Bend three or four weeks since; and of the arrangement they had made, and confirmed by subsequent correspondence. Challis was to reside for fifteen days at some place far enough from his or her ordinary residence to insure practical secrecy, where there was a parish-priest qualified to receive his affidavit and issue an ordinary marriage-licence. "I forget what he called him," said Judith. "Something like Harrogate." No doubt it was "surrogate." If in Challis's judgment the passing of the Bill should be put beyond reasonable doubt, he was at once to procure this licence, and make every necessary arrangement, keeping her fully informed. He had at first intended to procure a special licence, but had been deterred by someone telling him that such a licence might be refused, or at least delayed. He preferred the idea of dealing with a country parson with whom he could make acquaintance, and to whose local charities he could subscribe liberally. Besides, he could mesmerize that parson. You can't mesmerize Doctor's Commons.

The young lady then narrated, almost more graphically than seemed quite canny under her circumstances, her reception of a telegram the previous evening, fixing the time and place of their meeting in accordance with the terms of a letter of her own, which had told how her brother-in-law had placed the automobile at her disposal. She described the meeting at the Park Gate, minus its salutations; the rapid spin along the mile of road, till they reached the curve; Challis's appeal to the chauffeur for caution, and M. Rossier's contemptuous disregard; the sudden appearance of Jim as the car whirled round the corner; and how Challis, springing to his feet, was shot straight into the road at the very moment when she knew well, although her eyes had left him, that Jim was under the wheels; and then her own dazed condition, that almost grew to stupor as she rode back; and her arrival at home, when her mother, brought out by Elphinstone, simply ran back terrified. The Baronet suspected a shade of exaggeration here, and headed off an indictment of his wife for panic.

"But why the motor-car at all?" said he.

"We turned it all over," said the young lady, "and could see no other way. The railway was out of the question...."

"Why?" "Well—picture me to yourself, meeting a swarm of locals on the platform at Furnival. And fancy my asking for the carriage! Where should I have said I was going? You've no idea, papa dear, what a poor liar I am! Not because I'm truthful, but because I'm stupid. Anyhow, we had taken the trains for granted; and when it came to Bradshaw, we found that to get to this obscure place and back would mean eight hours. And what was worst was that if there had been any accident or delay I should have been stranded till next day—at the Hare and Hounds I believe it would have been, as a matter of fact—and that wouldn't have suited me at all...."

"Yes—yes—you were quite right. How long was it to take with the motor?"

"Within five hours, all told. An hour and three-quarters of car each way. If all had gone well...."

"Why did Sir Alfred Challis come to meet you?"

Judith didn't seem over-clear on this point. "He made believe," she said, "that he thought we should lose the way. But I don't believe that was it. I believe the fun of the ride had more to do with it than anything."

The Baronet seemed a little froissÉ by something in his daughter's tone. "It has been a sorry piece of fun for him," said he. "And for you, too, my girl." For he was almost vexed with himself for allowing the inception of a thought of condemnation. See how much she must have suffered, this fool of a daughter of his!

"Don't pity me!" said she. "But you are a dear, good papa always." There was something in this of her old tone of contrasting her experience with his simplicity. This belief in his pastoral character was a tradition in the family.

Perhaps it was a part of this character that made him feel that a blank was being left in their conversation that at least called for a passing word to fill it in. "This poor fellow's death ..." he began, taking for granted that Jim Coupland's share in the tragedy would be as prominent in his daughter's mind as his own. But she stopped him with an exclamation of alarm as he hesitated.

"Why should he die?" she cried. "There is no chance of his death. See what the doctors said—both of them...."

He interrupted her. "I was not speaking of Sir Alfred. I was speaking of Jim Coupland—the blind man, who was killed—is it possible you do not know that he died?" For, to hear her speak, no one could have dreamed she knew of that sombre background to a sad day's work, the man lying dead near at hand. "Jim Coupland!" she repeated; and the tone of her reply grated on her father, to whom the thought of Jim's death was an ever-present burden. Again she repeated, "Jim Coupland!" with a fuller stress on each syllable that all but seemed contempt. "Yes—but what is Jim Coupland ... compared to...?" Then she qualified her words: "Oh, well, of course, one feels all that I suppose one ought to feel, but...."

"What what?"

"But it's no use pretending...."

"My dear Judith, I don't understand."

"My dear papa, do you mean to say that if you were in my place.... However, it really is no use talking about it." Her manner was excited and resentful, till she suppressed it with an effort, and calmed down to say: "Suppose we don't talk about it!"

There was a symptom of indignation in her father's tone as he replied: "We shall gain nothing by talking at all, Judith, if I am right about your meaning. I may be wrong, my dear"—he softened rather—"but what you seem to me to mean, by the way you speak about this poor fellow's shocking death, is ... well!—in short, is, that you are indifferent to it."

"Is it so very surprising? Would you not think me a hypocrite if I were to profess to be heart-broken about this—this wretched blind cripple, who was the cause of it all?"

This took place in the garden, where the father and daughter had walked apart, to be alone, away from the house. Judith had really been as anxious to speak with him as he with her. But she was not in love with this turn in the conversation. As she stood with bitten lip and flashing eye in front of the wires of a cage containing a sulphur-crested cockatoo—for they were close to the aviary where she and Challis had talked about the parroquets—a hideous shriek from the bird caught her last words, and almost seemed a vindictive endorsement of their spirit.

Her father, to whom the death of the innocent man was a thing that threw all other disquiets into the shade, suppressed whatever he felt of resentment or disgust, and showed only wonderment. "My dear child," said he, "you are not yourself. If you were, you could not say such things. I can hardly believe that you realize that the man is dead when you speak so." He stopped a moment, puzzled. "I suppose, though, he must have been still alive when you last saw him?"

"Oh yes, he was shouting. But I knew he went under the wheel. I felt him." Her father shuddered, but she seemed calm.

"Did you not see him again?" "No—that was the last I saw of him. I never looked for him.... Well!—I thought Sir Alfred Challis was killed."

The Baronet felt apologetic. "I see, my dear, of course! Yes—yes—that would be so. I suppose the poor fellow must have had life enough in him to get off the road ... only ... well!—I don't understand...."

"What doesn't my papa understand?" There is again the shade of the old family tradition of patronage in her voice. Disinclination to accept it in this case may have roughened her father's reply a little:

"I don't understand what Taylor said. I'm sure—yes, I'm sure!—he said he found him lying in the road. You must have passed him as you returned?"

"Very likely."

"Judith!" This was sudden remonstrance, almost anger. But it softened as it had done before. "Well—well—perhaps it was only natural ... of course, I am forgetting...."

"Perhaps what was only natural?... Oh dear!—well, of course I know what you mean—my not being able to go into hysterics over this man's death. The circumstances are what I believe are called touching, no doubt, but...."

The Baronet was flushed, and quite angry at this. "The circumstances are what are rightly called touching," he said. "Poor Jim Coupland was coming out to meet him—so I understood the Rector—in the full expectation that he was bringing that dear little girl of his back to him. And he was only bringing the news of her death.... What did you say?..." For Judith had muttered sotto voce that then it didn't matter. But she did not repeat it, saying only, "I said nothing."

Her father did not believe this, and the end of his sentence hung fire, he looking doubtful. So Judith repeated his last words, to start him fresh. "'He was only bringing the news of the little girl's death' ... you were saying?..."

"Yes!—the news of her death. And then this damnable motor-car of yours comes tearing round the corner, with its damned hooting, and he's under the wheels in a moment! I shall tell Frank I won't have the thing in the house again, once he's taken it away. It's simply a horror and an abomination...." And so on. He was in want of a safety-valve, and here it was. The fact was that Judith's apathy about poor Jim had made him feel thoroughly uncomfortable; it was so unlike his measure and conception of what his family ought to be.

As for Judith, she may have felt that sort of alarm at this impetuous utterance that a child will remain susceptible of in later years, who would laugh at any like explosion of a non-parent. It is an inheritance from the nursery. Impressed by her father's denunciation of the motor-car, or possibly thinking to herself, "No more scenes, for Heaven's sake!" she relaxed so far as to say, formally, "I'm sorry for the little girl." But she spoiled whatever there was of graceful in a grudging concession by adding, "Perhaps that will satisfy you?"

The old gentleman said nothing, but looked at her, puzzled and hurt at what he shrank from thinking her heartlessness; trying to concoct excuses for it that would make her seem less ungracious. For he loved this daughter of his, so much so that even now he felt proud of her rich beauty, none the worse for all her stress and trouble. Indeed, as she stood there, caressing the great white bird that had shrieked—she had taken it as she spoke from its cage, and was kissing its terrifying beak with tenderness—her black mass of hair against its yellow crest; her ivory-white skin against the driven snow of its feathers, each made whiter in its own way by yet another white, the soft folds of a creamy summer dress most late Augusts would have condemned; her beautiful hand in the sun, with the bird's black claw upon its jewels—all these might have said a word in arrest of judgment to a parent readier to disbelieve in his daughter than Sir Murgatroyd. No doubt they influenced him to think that he had succeeded in glossing over what he would have condemned as callousness in one further away from him. But she—as other father's daughters are—was his little girl of twenty years ago grown up. She did not really mean this heartlessness, thought he; it was a sort of parti pris—a parade, an affectation!

Was he right, after all? Is the story wrong in its estimate of her? Has it laid too much stress on the hard side of this girl's character—its vanity and love of power? Some moralist has said that no mortal should be called heartless as long as he or she can fall in love. Judith Arkroyd must have been in love with Alfred Challis; for see what risks she was running to secure him! Why—yes!—to secure him; that was just it. She wanted him, and took the only road to possession that seemed open to her. Now if, when he lay insensible, that time when there was none to see, she had only stooped to kiss the inanimate hand, had even held it till the nurse returned! Should we not have felt more sorrow for her after that, when his returning speech showed how completely she had, for the moment, passed from his mind? No doubt she was in love with him, in one manner of loving. But there are so many! This story is not going to break its heart about her—to chant dirges over the grave of her share of this grande passion. And its commiseration for her grows no mellower from dwelling on the fact it has to record: that exasperation against poor Jim Coupland, to whom she thought proper to ascribe the whole miscarriage of the scheme, was really a source of relief to her—a sort of counter-irritant. To her father, Jim's death and his child's filled the whole horizon—a black cloud. Challis's mishap he did not distress himself about; he would be all right presently—had he not spoken? As for his loss of memory, that meant nothing. Did he not himself, when he came round after his mishap, ask whether "the trout" had been taken, meaning the fox? Loss of memory was the rule, not the exception, in such cases. And as for the future of Challis and Judith, that was a difficulty there must be some legal way out of. It was incredible that Challis's wife should go on holding him at arm's length, and yet bar his union with another woman. Some solution of that problem could be found, Bill or no Bill! As for opposing his daughter's wishes, if they were really deep-rooted, that he would not do. All his opposition to Challis hitherto had been to him as Marianne's husband. If their marriage could be legally annulled or dissolved, he was not going to stand in the way of his daughter's happiness.

But this anger of hers against Jim showed her as a new Judith, whom he had never suspected the existence of. In her childhood she had been proud and domineering with her brothers and sisters—two elder brothers had died in the army, and a sister was married in India; none of them have crossed this story—but not, so far as her father knew, malignant or revengeful. It gave him a great discomfort at heart; set him wondering which of her ancestors on either side she had harked back to. Was it Josceline de Varennes, who, in one of those spirited middle ages, hid a knife under her bridal pillow and gave her first husband a warm reception to his couch, in order that she should marry Hugh Arkroyd? There was the knife, to prove it, in the glass cabinet with the green-dragon china service. But—as long ago as King Stephen! Oh no!—it was that old fiend of a great-grandmother of TherÈse's. Every old family has an ancestral scapegoat, and a certain "Lady Sarah," of the days of the second George, was very popular in this one.

But Sir Murgatroyd scarcely did more than seek for the scapegoat, in case he should be forced to condemn this member of the congregation. He did not pass sentence. He only said gently, "You will feel differently, Judith dear, when you are yourself again. All this has upset you." In reply to which the young lady said wearily, "We shall see, I suppose, presently. I can't be very demonstrative about either now, though of course it's very sad, and so on, about the little girl." And then she talked to the parrot, kissing him and calling him her darling, and saying now he must go back in his wicked cruel cage. All which her father set down to mere bravado, and thought it best to say no more to her in her present mood. But he had a very serious look on his face as they walked towards the house together.

It was a relief to him to hear the robust musical voice of the Rector in the large drawing-room that opened on the lawn, which was their most natural way back into the house. But Judith paused on the terrace. "Oh dear!" said she. "There's our Father Confessor! I can't stand sympathy, and I don't want to be catechized, thank you! Be a dear good papa, and say pretty things for me!" And then, in spite of an attempt at remonstrance by her father, slipped away; going round by a side-terrace that, ending at the house-corner in a vague architectural effort three centuries old—a Nereid and a Triton and a sink, with an Ionic canopy over all to keep the rain off—allowed of an approach to the main faÇade of the house, and the carriage-drive through the beech avenue in the Park.

But she did not at once carry out her scheme of escape. The shadow of the Ionic canopy was sweet on the base of the sink, and the seat it made was tempting, and the cleanness of its moss and lichens acceptable even to a skirt of crÊpe-de-Chine. It was only an old dress, too, according to Judith's ideas, so she spent a little time with the Triton and the Nereid before going on into the house. She felt stunned and bewildered, for all she had shown so bold a front, and was glad of rest.

Presently her desire to know that Challis was progressing got the better of a terror that was on her that his oblivion might be lasting. She could hear the voices of the party in the drawing-room still in conversation, the Rector's very distinctly; so she decided that she could slip indoors with safety, and rose to go.

A little diffident gate, that had shrunk away into the heart of a yew hedge, led out to the drive and entrance to the house; and one could see and not be seen there, even by visitors who had been over the ground before. Judith stopped at this gate, not to be caught by an early sample, unexplained. It was not yet twelve o'clock, and there at the door was a vehicle with one horse, steaming. And a lady in black was descending from it, and Samuel evidently meant to let her in. Judith waited for her to vanish; gave her ample time, more than enough, to be shown into the drawing-room, and then went straight on to the house.

The vehicle was a hired fly from Furnival, whose driver Judith at once recognized as an habituÉ of the railway-station. He was mopping his brow with his handkerchief, for the morning had become very hot; but he put his hat on to touch it to Miss Arkroyd, who of course was very familiar to him. Having done this, he took it off again, and went on mopping. He referred to the dryness of this sort of day pointedly; but Judith missed his sub-intent, and conceived that the position was covered by the approach of Bullett the groom, with a pail of water for the horse. The lady must have come straight from the train.

Judith looked through the glass door—as she thought, carefully—to make sure the great hall at the foot of the stairs was empty. She was quite without conjecture or suspicion as to who the visitor was, or she might not have contented herself so easily that the coast was clear. Anyhow, there was no one visible from where she stood and looked through. So she passed in and walked straight across to the stairs, and so up to the first landing. As she turned the angle, she saw a lady in black, whom she did not recognize, seated in the recess on the left, who rose when their eyes met. Not a bad-looking woman, of a sort, but not self-explanatory.

Count over the times Judith had met Marianne. They do not amount to much—at least, until that evening at the theatre. Two dinners and a visit in London a couple of years ago—consider how little that means to a young lady who may be under an equal social obligation to remember half-a-dozen new faces every day! Consider, too, that in this early time Mr. Challis was in the eyes of this young lady nothing beyond a popular author whose works she hadn't read; and as for his wife, why should she notice her at all? "Which was she, Sib?" we can fancy her asking. Was she, for instance, the underdressed one with the mole, or the rawboned giggler? Then, as to that visit to the play a few months later, think of the exciting pre-occupations! Is it certain that Miss Arkroyd paid as much attention to her hostess as you and I might have thought the circumstances demanded? Anyhow, there had been nothing to fix Marianne in Judith's memory to such an extent that she should recall at once the travel-worn—and trouble-worn—face she hardly glanced at, and would have left without a second look had its owner not risen, as though to speak. She might have done so, nevertheless, if it had not been for something in the visitor's action which suggested a lady kept outside the drawing-room rather than a person allowed inside the house. You know the sort of difference—the difference between subservient conciliation and conciliatory self-assertion.

What caught and retained Judith's second look was that this person answered to neither description. Her manner was sui generis, and the genus had in it a touch of something odd that wasn't insanity. Was it desperation? It was creditable to Judith's penetration that she at once dismissed the only idea that suggested itself. An image shot into her mind of Jim Coupland's sister, employed as cook by Challis, humorously described by him more than once. Stuff and nonsense!—out of the question!

"Are you ... being attended to?" She threw a slight smile of protest into the question, to guard against the possibility of wrong form. If she had mistaken the facts, her hearer would understand the implication of courtesy—no fear of misunderstanding between us!

"The young man went in. I can wait." The speaker looked away from Miss Arkroyd. Her manner was not conciliatory. But even then no idea crossed Judith's mind of who she actually was. In fact, prohibitives were at every point of the compass. How could the news have reached Marianne? How could she have come so quick to Royd?

"Is it anything I can do?" This was bald civility on the face of it; almost stipulated that it should be refused. The speaker's arrested foot on the next stair waited to go up when the refusal should warrant it. But it had to wait, long enough to make its owner wonder what was coming.

"Yes!—you can, Miss Arkroyd." Judith's good breeding concealed her surprise. She stood committed, and awaited the instruction. Was this tiresome person going to give it, or be choked by it? It came at last. "You can tell me whether my husband is dying or not."

And then Judith knew that she was face to face with Marianne Challis, the woman she had injured.

Sir Murgatroyd found his wife talking with Athelstan Taylor, of course about the current events. "This is good news about Challis," said the Rector. "Lady Arkroyd tells me he has recovered consciousness."

The Baronet demurred slightly. "Ye-es. At least, he has spoken."

"And not incoherently?"

"N-no. Oh no—not incoherently." But the stress on this word had reservation in it, and her ladyship exclaimed impatiently, "Oh, my dear, you always make the worst of everything!" A pitying smile, aside to the Rector, was quite a little essay on the unreasonableness of husbands—that intractable class. Mr. Taylor looked from one to the other. It would be early to take sides, but of course the prescribed form in such a case is to help the wife to commiserate her mate's shortcomings. It was safest to endorse the lady's view, provisionally.

"We mustn't expect too much at first," said he, deprecating the crude judgment of inexperience, a quality common to all our family except ourself. "The author won't be in trim for dictating copy for some days to come, I'm afraid." He hesitated a moment, before adding, "You have kept it from him, I suppose, for the present?"

"Mr. Taylor is referring to poor Coupland's death, my dear," said the Baronet. Which his wife resented slightly, as suggesting that her sympathies needed a stimulus. "Do you suppose I don't understand that, my dear?" said she sotto voce; a reply apart. But she might just as well have left the matter to stand there, and not let herself be betrayed into a candid admission that, in view of the sad end of poor little Lizarann, her father's death almost assumed the form of a Merciful Dispensation. We should be thankful, at least, that he had been spared the hearing of it.

"The whole thing has been terribly sad," said Athelstan Taylor. Indeed, he seemed as if he could hardly bear to speak of it. He turned from the subject abruptly. When could he look forward to seeing Challis without danger of his hurting himself by talking?

Sir Murgatroyd looked inquiry at his wife, and she at him. Then he took the reply on himself, as she seemed very doubtful. "The fact is, Rector," said he, "it isn't by any means certain that he would know you. He can hardly be said to have come to himself yet. What he said to...."

"What he said to the nurse was hardly sense," Lady Arkroyd struck in abruptly. No doubt she wanted to keep Judith out of it. But Sir Murgatroyd held to his purpose—would have no evasion or prevarication.

"I was not referring to what he said to the nurse, my dear TherÈse. I was going on to speak of what he said to Judith. What did he say to the nurse?"

"Oh, I don't know! Tell it your own way." Lady Arkroyd abdicates.

Her husband did not notice her impatience, but continued: "It happened that my daughter was present when he showed consciousness, and he did not recognize her, and asked for his wife. It was a very singular thing, too, that when Judith told him we did not know where to write to her, he gave the address he lived at several years ago. But I cannot say that seems to me so strange as his non-recognition of Judith, considering...."

"My dear!" from the lady, remonstratively.

But the Baronet sticks to his colours, though he speaks temperately. "My dear TherÈse, Mr. Taylor is so old a friend that I really do think it would be absurd to make any secrets. After all, what does the whole thing amount to?..." Here the Rector interrupted him.

"I think it's only fair of me, Lady Arkroyd, to say that I know all about it already. This poor chap—I'm not going to say a word in defence of him—took me into his confidence some weeks ago. That is to say, he sketched as possible the scheme which I now see he and Judith must have attempted to carry out. I tried to dissuade him from it, and, indeed, fancied he had given it up.... No; I thought it best to hold my tongue about it, in order to retain my influence with him. He had been speaking freely to me, assuming that what he said would go no farther, and I should only have lost my hold over him by talking to you of it, without any corresponding gain." This was in answer to what was evidently the beginning of a question: "Why was the knowledge of this plan to be kept from us?"

However, the Baronet was ready with ungrudging admission that the Rector had acted for the best; his wife with a rather more stinted allowance of assent. Of course, Judith would have gone her own way in any case ... but still!... "Are we not her parents? Should we not have been told on principle?" seemed to be an implication lurking behind lips that had shut it in, and leaking out through a stirring of the eyebrows. Her husband, averse to reserves, and noting this one, said, "What were you going to say, TherÈse?"

But TherÈse said, "Do wait, my dear!" to him, and to the Rector, "Would you excuse me one moment?... What is it, Samuel?" The last was because Samuel was in the room with a card on a hand-tray, to be dealt with furtively, if possible, its bearer's mission in life being self-subordination. Being called on to state what it was, he said it was a lady, and might she speak to her ladyship for a moment. This was a metaphrasis, because it was palpably a card, on which her ladyship read to herself the name "Mrs. M. Craik," and seemed none the wiser. Then she handed it to Sir Murgatroyd, who took his glasses to the reading of it, and said, "No, I don't know the name." Whereupon her ladyship said, "I suppose I must see her. You'll excuse me, Mr. Taylor?" and departed, after instructions to Samuel about the room the lady was to be shown into.

Now, if she had read the name aloud, the chances are that Athelstan Taylor, who had a lively enough recollection of his visit of intercession to Marianne's mother a year ago, would have remembered it. And then Lady Arkroyd would have known beforehand who it was she was on her way to interview.

As it was, she continued quite in the dark about the identity of "Mrs. M. Craik," until, following Samuel at what she thought a sufficient interval to allow of his disposing of the stranger as arranged, she came out upon a scene at the stairfoot in the entrance-hall that taxed her presence of mind; with a result that was not an uncommon one with her, that she could see no way of meeting the demand upon it, except by an appeal to her husband to rescue her. For, ready as she always was to set his judgment aside when doing so involved her in no difficulty, she always looked to him to extricate her when she found herself in a bad one.

"Oh, thank God if he is living ... if he is only living to speak to me once ... just once! Oh, do say again that he is not dead. I will never think ill of you again. Oh, do let me go to him where he is now...." Thus far the poor soul had spoken through a deluge of tears, when Lady Arkroyd came out from a side-door, and her mind said to her that if it was to be hysterics, she did wish Sir Murgatroyd would come. But as to exactly who this was, this female in black who was making a scene gratuitously, the thing of all others her ladyship hated, she was for the moment quite at a loss to guess. Of course, a moment's reflection would have made it clear, but, you see, she was so totally unprepared. Her first information as to whom she was speaking with—seeing that she was as much at sea about Marianne's personal identity as Judith had been at first—came from her daughter, standing handsome and impassive on the stairs, above this excited woman; making her seem a suppliant by her own unmoved placidity, and herself almost cruel by the severity of the contrast.

"This is Lady Challis, mamma." Judith's speech quite ignores the tension of the situation—passes it by. "She wishes to go to Sir Alfred. Is there any objection?" What can it matter to the speaker?—is the implication. Let her go to Sir Alfred, by all means!

Her mother's breath is fairly taken away. "Lady Challis!" she repeats. And then, as silence seems to wait for something else, the blankest interjection: "Oh-h-h!" with the minimum of meaning sound can convey.

Then poor Marianne, with no Charlotte at hand to suggest possible ugly interpretations, bursts out, "I am not Lady Challis. I am nothing of the sort. Dear Lady Arkroyd—you must remember me?—you came to see me at home. Do let me go—let me go to my husband!"

Lady Arkroyd was puzzled. Perhaps, after all, there had been a mistake at the outset, and there had been all along "something against" this impossible wife. Nothing suggested itself to her as a practicable course. This lady had turned to her with a beseeching face, for which she had "Why, of course!" ready in her heart, being quite a good-natured woman, but there were such odd complications afoot she could not utter it. Judith, from her security behind Marianne, was endeavouring to telegraph without audible speech the words "Deceased Wife's Sister"; and, indeed, after two or three repetitions, her mother caught the clue. But she was little, if any, the wiser; and it was then the prompting came to rush for succour to her husband, still talking to the Rector in the drawing-room.

"Do you mind my speaking to my husband for a moment first?" Marianne minds nothing, so long as it is on a road that leads to her object, and her ladyship goes quickly away.

"May I leave you alone for a few moments, Lady Challis?" says Judith, going. "Please step in here till my mother returns, and sit down." That is, into the little room off the landing. Judith goes upstairs quickly; and Samuel, always on the watch, officiates as pilot.

Lady Arkroyd walked back into the drawing-room. She looked despair before trusting herself to speech, and the action of her hands laid an imaginary case for despair before the two gentlemen, who stopped talking to hear its spoken particulars. Her husband encouraged revelation by saying "Well?" interrogatively.

"Oh, my dear, what is to be done? It's the Deceased Wife's Sister! I wish you would come."

The Baronet gives the slightest of whistles. "Where have you got her?" he asks.

"My dear, she's in hysterics!"

"Yes—but where?"

"In the front hall. And Judith is there with her!"

"I say, we'd better go." Thus the Baronet to the Rector, who assents without reserve. Observe that this colloquy has gone on in undertones. Not that anyone could hear—they might have shouted, for that matter—but to endorse the tension of the situation.

Arriving in the hall, and seeing first the place where Judith had been standing, her mother felt a sense of relief. Her absence made the position easier to deal with. But—where was the Deceased Wife's Sister? Samuel explained. He had shown the lady into the mezzanina room, as directed. Samuel felt proud of his Italian, over this.

Marianne had not been sorry to be alone again for a moment, after her first effort of self-announcement. She looked out through the window over the rounded slopes, thickly wooded enough to seem a stretch of forest; with the little groups of roe-deer in the glades the beech-woods grudged them, in their ambition to cover the whole land. She saw the wide level lawns, clothed with the grass of centuries, dreaming of the music of bygone scythes, before the days of mowing-machines and their economies of power no man stinted then; the peacocks walking with precision, and satisfied that they were appreciated; the beds ablaze with asters and marigolds, and dahlias, and standard roses still blooming, and proud of their little tickets that told what variety they were. She saw all these, and out beyond them the smoke-cloud of the great manufacturing centre, with its confidence of one day gobbling up the park and its wood and warren, vert and venison, and getting at its coal, and using it up to make steel armour-plates, that shall send other armour-plates to the bottom of the sea. Unless, indeed, civilization collapses; whereof it is not proper form to say—the sooner the better!

All this has nothing to do with Marianne, except, perhaps, as showing what a many things did not cross her mind that might have done so. The whole thing was dim to her, and swam about. Now that the excitement was less, she began to be afraid she might make a fool of herself and faint off, as she did that time with Charlotte Eldridge. She was sorry now that after travelling so far on a very poor breakfast in London, she had not had the sense to get a biscuit or a sandwich at Furnival. When Sir Murgatroyd and her ladyship came into the mezzanina room, they found her seated with closed eyes, and alarmingly white. But she rallied at the sound of their voices. Oh no!—she was all right. Now all she wanted was to know about her husband. Was he in danger? Had he been in danger?

The Baronet, in a voice good to banish hysteria in any form, justifiable or otherwise, rather outwent the truth in his testimony. Sir Alfred had never been in any danger at all! Who had told Lady Challis that story? The old gentleman's pooh-poohing laugh was pleasant to Marianne's ears. Only she didn't feel quite sure she wasn't an impostor. She had come on the distinct understanding—with whom, hard to specify—that Titus was dying. Had she been imposed upon?

"It was in the Sunday paper yesterday," she said. "And I saw it on all the posters at the stations, coming by rail."

"Those damnable newspapers—you'll excuse me, Lady Challis—I should have all the editors hanged if I had my way. Yes, I would indeed! Why, there never was any danger! These things happen every day." He went on to narrate how, when his mare Eurydice threw him at Stamford's Croft, he had been carried home unconscious, and remained so over two days. "But your mare had to be shot, my dear," said his wife, vaguely.

When Athelstan Taylor, who had hung back a moment to exchange a few words with the nurse, whom he had met on the stairs coming from Challis's bedside, followed his companions into the mezzanina room, he was surprised and pleased to find the Baronet apparently on the most comfortable and communicative terms with the embarrassing lady-visitor. It was all just as if none of the events that made the visit embarrassing had ever happened. Marianne might have been the wife of any neighbour, the victim of a bad accident; who had come at a summons to learn the worst, and was being assured that no bones were badly broken, and the patient in perfect trim for inspection without a shock to the feelings of the most sensitive. The escapade of Challis and Judith might have been a dream, and the terms he had been on with Marianne those of Philemon and Baucis. Ignoring was evidently the order of the day, and the Rector made up his mind to comply with it.

"This is our Rector, Lady Challis," said the old gentleman, introducing him. "The Rev. Athelstan Taylor. I think he will tell you he is just as confident as I am that Sir Alfred will be himself again in the course of a day or two—perhaps in a few hours. Eh, Rector?"

The voice of the big man with the fresh face, sun-tanned with a pedestrian summer, was a new reassurance to the frightened, worn-out woman. It said, filling the little room musically, "Every reason to suppose it, at any rate! I hope we shall all be as lucky if we are ever in as bad an accident, which Heaven forbid!" But an inflexion of his tone contained reference to other injury done in this accident, and made Marianne remember the details in the newspaper. "Was there not a man killed?" she asked. All looked very sad. "Yes, unhappily," was the joint reply. The Rector began giving some particulars of Jim's death, but stopped. "You were just going up to Sir Alfred," he said. For the general bias of the party in the room, as he entered it, had seemed to be towards migration. The visitor had half-risen from a sofa, but had fallen back as the conversation showed signs of continuing.

Lady Arkroyd and her husband exchanged looks, and appeared to assent to the move. Marianne began to rise again, but with such visible sign of fatigued effort that the other three signalled to one another, so to speak, that this would never do! Lady Arkroyd spoke, preferring to indicate that her husband, with man's proverbial want of tact, was inconsiderately overlooking a guest's comfort. "My dear, I'm sure Lady Challis has had nothing to eat since she left London, and she was travelling all night. She's completely worn out." She added a corollary, "Men forget these things."

The Rev. Athelstan had a suggestion to make: "One minute," said he. "Just let me say ... I spoke to the nurse just now. She said Sir Alfred had not talked again, but had shown he wanted to get rid of the bandage on his head. She was going to take it off, as she says it isn't the least wanted. Lady Challis would just have time to get a little refreshed while she does it. And then Sir Alfred will be looking quite like himself. You know, there was no visible injury ever, except that scratch on the forehead—just a bit of plaister!"

And thus it came about that Marianne Challis was taking a cup of black coffee and a biscuit, but nothing else, thank you, in the house she had refused to follow her husband to over a year ago, at the very moment that his second return of consciousness prompted him to ask again for Polly Anne.

Judith, barely pausing to see that Marianne was "shown in" to the side-room—because it is not enough to know which door; you have to be properly shown in by a servant—had gone quickly to the patient's room, meeting the nurse by the way. She stopped her.

"Is Sir Alfred Challis conscious?"

"I think a little more so. He hasn't spoken, but he evidently wants that bandage off his head. I thought it might be better to mention it before taking it off. Not that I'm really afraid of the responsibility. Only it's as well to be on the safe side. Is Lady Arkroyd downstairs?"

"I think she's just coming up. Sir Alfred's wife is here." "Oh, indeed. I hope she won't upset him. I shall find Lady Arkroyd downstairs.... Oh, by-the-bye, Miss Arkroyd, what did your mother say was the name of the big parson—Reverend what?"

"Reverend Athelstan Taylor."

"I thought so." And the nurse, a well-defined and explicit person, went downstairs as Judith passed on along the lobby.

The figure on the bed was moving slightly as she entered the room, feeling how venturesome her conduct was; and was evidently fidgeting, as the nurse had said, about the bandage. She went up and stood beside him, hiding a kind of desperation under an immovable exterior. Should she speak to him by name? If so, by what name? As his memory was playing such tricks, might not his present style and title be strange to him? Besides, she had never called him "Sir Alfred." And if she called him "Scroop," as she had done almost throughout, and still he did not recognize her, how then? But surely he was speaking again!

"You're very good—but what am I being kept here for? I say!—I hope Polly Anne's all right...."

"Please don't pull at that bandage; it shall be taken off as soon as the nurse comes back. Why shouldn't 'Polly Anne' be all right?" She couldn't help the inverted commas.

"Because she hasn't come. Did you send to the address I gave?"

Judith replied stonily, "Your wife is here. She will come directly.... Listen! Do you not know me?" For she knew how short their time must be; how brief and abrupt the farewell that had to be packed into it, whatever form it might take. She did not certainly know whether she hoped he would say "Yes."

He kept her waiting, to turn his eyes full on her and consider the point. "N-n-n-no!" said he, prolonging the first letter. "I don't think I do." His civil manner was heart-rending to the woman beside him. Recollect that only three days before, though they would not have become de facto man and wife, their compact of marriage would have been irrevocable! He kept his eyes still on her with a puzzled look, adding immediately after, "Could you not tell me of something to remind me?"

What to remind him of, and avoid all claim of tender memory for the past, in view of the fact that he might disallow that past altogether!—that was Judith's difficulty. She must keep to suggestions prosaic and bald—just the colourless events of daily life. She tried to speak with absolute calm indifference, tempered by good-will.

"Is it possible you do not remember this room—the room the German Baroness saw the ghost in?" She made a not too successful attempt at a laugh over this. "Why!—you slept here before!"

"Where is 'here'?"

"My father's house, Royd Hall. I am Judith Arkroyd."

Challis's voice and manner were like his old self again as he answered, "I do feel so out of it!" and laughed a sort of apology. "I'm horribly ashamed. I shall have to ask Polly Anne to jog my memory. Is she coming?"

"Oh yes—she's coming." Judith had hard work to refrain from breaking out "Have you forgotten Trout Bend and the convict's bridge; the little Tophet garden and the letter, and all my shawl in a blaze? Have you no memory of the play you wrote for me to play in; of your fatuous declaration of a passion a man of your sobriety should have been ashamed of; above all of our meeting of two days since, our reckless race along the sunlit road, and its tragic ending?" But she knew all this, that her tongue was itching to remind him of, was good for oblivion only; knew it by a thousand tokens, most of all by the revelation chance had given of the background of his mind. Even the knowledge that all fruition of their crazy scheme was perforce at an end was as nothing compared to that. Therefore she felt it safest to say curtly that Marianne was coming, and to add that the nurse would be back in a moment to remove the bandage.

Challis closed his eyes again with a tired sigh. "I can't trust myself to talk," said he. "All sorts of things keep coming into my head, and convincing me I must be out of my senses. But I'm clear about one thing. Someone is being very kind to me. I have a general impression that I don't deserve it, and I want to thank ... want to thank...." He seemed to give it up as a bad job, and to relapse into half-stupor.

Judith was fast coming to the conclusion that the sooner she and Challis saw the last of one another the better for both. But "to part at last without a kiss!" The words of Morris's poem came into her mind. Well—suppose in this case we were to say, "without a handshake"? That would be quite enough. At least, that knight beside the Haystack in the Floods would have known whom the kissed lips belonged to. Challis's disordered head had constituted him a stranger to her. All the same, to have the tale of their love end on a blank and vanish, and none write a word of epilogue—not so much as a bare finis!—grated on her sense of the fitness of things. She would just try to print the word herself, without provoking an appendix. If he was insensible again and did not hear her, what did it matter? "The nurse will come directly," she repeated. "I have to go now. Good-bye!"

He opened his eyes again, rousing himself. "Oh—good-bye—good-bye!" said he. "I am sorry you have to go." He took her hand, shaking it frankly and warmly. She was afraid the touch of her own hand might bring back the past—the useless past—and almost stinted to return its pressure.

She turned in the doorway, and said, referring to footsteps approaching the room without, "Perhaps you will know this gentleman who is coming now, and he will tell you who I am." A bitterness in her heart made the last words come, and then she said to the nurse and Athelstan Taylor, who was with her, "He's been talking again, quite like himself, only he doesn't know me from Adam. But I fancy he'll soon be all right."

"That's good hearing," said the Rector cheerfully. "You'll find the Duchess downstairs. She's asking for you, to take you to Thanes."

"Oh, is she? I think I shall put my things on at once, and go with her." She went to her room and rang for her maid, whom she sent with a message to the Duchess. She would be ready in five minutes, she said, and meant to stop the night.

When the little handmaiden had finished her ministrations, and her mistress and the Duchess had driven away, she was found in tears by a fellow-servant, and explained them by saying Miss Judith was angry with her. Because she had never once called her Cintilla, but only Clemency, which was merely her proper name.

"My dear sir," said Challis to the Rector, standing by his bed, "you say, 'Don't I know you?' And you say it so confidently that it convinces me I ought to know you. But I can't say I do. Honour bright!"

"Never mind! Don't try to think about it. You'll come to rights presently. Let this good lady get that thing off your head. The best thing you can do is to lie still."

So Challis lay still and listened to the conversation. And this is what he heard:

"I hadn't flattered myself you would remember your humble servant, Mr. Taylor, but I felt pretty sure you wouldn't have forgotten the incident."

"I wasn't likely to do that. Faugh!—I've got the flavour of the place upon me still. That antiseptic sack and rubber gloves!—all the horror of it! But apart from that, the story the creature told was such a queer one."

"Seal of confession, I suppose?" "Hardly that! But not, perhaps, to be repeated except to serve some special end. I understood he left it to my discretion."

"I had no motive but curiosity. Don't tell me!"

"How came you to remember my name?"

"I didn't. Miss Arkroyd told it me. I remembered your look when I showed you into the ward. But I ought to have remembered your name, because I posted Dr. Crumpton's letter to you...."

"I remember. It was to ask which of his aliases this man had given me. They didn't know what name to bury him under."

"Oh, I remember ... Thomas Essendean. No, it wasn't that. That was one they rejected. What was it he told you?"

"Kay Thorne, or perhaps Key—Key Thorne.... What?" For Challis, by this time bandageless and ready to receive visitors, but evidently glad to keep his head down on the pillow, had uttered an exclamation, without opening his eyes. "What's 'hullo,' Challis?" said the Rector. For a moment, he felt afraid that the patient's mind was wandering. But only for a moment. For when Challis spoke again, it was quite quietly and collectedly.

"Name of my first wife's first ... no!—I don't mean that. Name of a friend of mine eight—ten—years ago. Not Kaith; Keith Horne. He wasn't a shining light. He came to awful grief in the end. Penal servitude, I believe...."

"You mustn't tire yourself with talking," said the nurse. "We shall have her ladyship up directly. You know she's coming?"

"Oh no!—might my wife come? Her ladyship can come afterwards."

The Rector understood. He glanced at the nurse indicatively. "Mrs. Challis had better come first," he said. Then he said good-bye to Challis, and went his way. In the passage was Lady Arkroyd, followed by Marianne. "You'll find him immensely improved," said he. "I can't say he remembered me, but he will next time."

Then, as he shook hands with the scared and bewildered lady in black, he thought to himself, "Now, what a queer story I could tell you, if I didn't feel that the right course is to keep a lock on my tongue!"

For it had just come home to him that Marianne was not Challis's Deceased Wife's Sister at all, because "poor Kate" had never been his Deceased Wife. She was the late Mr. Keith Horne's! And as regarded the "living in sin business," evidently she was the real Simon Pure, and Marianne a mere pretender!