HOW LADY ANCESTER CALLED ON LADY TORRENS, WHO WAS KEEPING HER ROOM. BUT SHE SAW THE BART. A QUEER AND TICKLISH INTERVIEW. MAURICE AND KATHLEEN TYRAWLEY. NO NEED FOR HUMBUG BETWEEN US! THE COUNTESS'S GROUNDS FOR OPPOSING THE MARRIAGE. HOW ADRIAN, WITH EYES IN HIS HEAD, WOULD HAVE BEEN MOST ACCEPTABLE. BUT HOW ABOUT JEPHTHA'S DAUGHTER? OUGHT WE, THOUGH, TO MEDDLE BETWEEN YOUNG LOVERS? AN AWKWARD TOPIC. HOW ROMEO DIDN'T FEEL, ABOUT HIS EX-JULIET! HOW COUNTY PARIS MIGHT HAVE WASHED, AND ROSALINE MIGHT HAVE MARRIED A POPULAR PREACHER. THE SAME LIPS. THE COUNTESS'S COURAGE. A GOOD SHAKE AND NO FLINCHING. CHRISTIAN-NAMING UNDER TUTELAGE. HOW SIR HAMILTON INDULGED IN A FIRESIDE REVERIE OVER HIS PAST, AND HIS SON AND DAUGHTER CAME BACK. HOW MISS SCATCHERD HAD BEEN SEEN BY BOTH. A FLASH OF EYESIGHT, AND HOPE. HOW THE SQUIRE TOOK THE NEXT OPPORTUNITY THAT EVENING. CUPID's NAME NOT DANIEL. WHAT AN IMAGE OF THE COUNTESS SAID TO ADRIAN

Sir Hamilton Torrens is at home, because when a messenger rode from the Towers in the morning with a note from the Countess to say that her ladyship was driving over to Poynders in the afternoon, and could manage a previous visit at Pensham by coming an hour earlier, his wife instructed him that it would never do for him to be absent, seeing that there was no knowing how indisposed she herself might be. There never is, with nerve cases, and she was a nerve case. So Sir Hamilton really must arrange to stay at home just this one afternoon, that Lady Ancester's visit should not be absolutely sterile. If the nerve case's plight and Sir Hamilton's isolation were communicated to her on her arrival, she could choose for herself whether to come in or go on to Poynders. She chose to come in and interview Sir Hamilton. So consider that the lady of the house is indisposed, and is keeping her room, and that the blind man and his sister, and Achilles, have gone to visit a neighbour.

The Countess was acting on her resolution made in the train to be a free lance. She had been scheming an interview with Adrian's father before the next meeting of the lovers, if possible; and now she had caught at the opportunity afforded by her daughter's absence at Chorlton. Hers was a resolution that deserved the name, in view of its special object—the organizing and conduct of what might be a most embarrassing negotiation, or effort of diplomacy.

These two, three decades back, had behaved when they met like lovers on the stage who are carried away by their parts and forget the audience. Unless indeed they had an audience, in which case they had to wait, and did it with a parade of indifference which deceived no one.

And now! Here was the gentleman making believe that the lady was bitterly disappointed at not seeing his amiable wife, who was, after all, only the Miss Abercrombie he married at about the same time that she herself became a Countess. And here was she adding to an insincere acceptance of the position of chief mourner a groundless pretext that the two or three decades were four or five—or anything you please outside King Memory's Statutes of Limitations!—and those endearments too long ago to count. And that the nerve case upstairs, if you please, had no existence for her ladyship as the Miss Abercrombie she heard Hamilton was engaged to marry, and felt rather curious about at the time, but was a most interesting individuality, saturated with public spirit, whose enthusiasm about the Abolition of Slavery had stirred her sympathetic soul to the quick.

Endless speculation is possible over the feelings of a man and woman so related, coming together under such changed circumstances, without the lubricant to easy intercourse of the presence of others. The Countess would not have faced the possible embarrassments, but would have driven on to her cousin's house, Poynders, if she had not had a specific purpose. As it was, it was the very thing she wanted, and she welcomed it. She had the stronger position, and was prepared for all contingencies.

Sir Hamilton had very few demeanours open to him. The most obvious one was that of the courteous host, flattered to receive such a visitor on any terms, especially proud and cordial in view of the prospect of a connection between the families. He maintained a penitential attitude under the depressing shadow of the absence of his better half, which certainly was made the most of by both; somewhat artificially, a perceptive visitor might have said, if one had been there to see. The jeremiads over this unfortunate misadventure must have lasted fully ten minutes before a lull came; for the gentleman could catch no other wind in his sails, and had to let out every reef to move at all.

Lady Ancester was not inclined to lose time. "I am particularly sorry not to see Lady Torrens," she said, "because I really wanted to have a serious talk with her.... Yes, about the boy and girl—your boy and my girl." A curious consciousness almost made her wince. Think how easily either of the young lovers might have been a joint possession! If one, then both, surely, minus their identities and the status quo? It was like sudden unexpected lemon in a made dish.

The worst of it was—not that each thought the same thing at the same moment; that was inevitable—but that each knew the other's thought. The Baronet fell back on mere self-subordination. Automatically non-existent, he would be safe. "Same thing—same thing—Lady Torrens and myself! Comes to the same thing whether you say it to me or to her. Repeat every word!... Of course—easier to talk to her! But comes to the same thing." He abated himself to a go-between, and was entrenched.

The Countess affected an easy languor to say:—"I really don't feel able to say what I want straight off. You know I never used to be able"—she laughed a deprecatory laugh—"in the old Clarges Street days. Besides, your man is coming in and out with tea and things. When he's done, I'll go on."

The sudden reference to the time-when of that old passionate relation contained an implication that it was not unspeakable per se—although its threat had been that it would do its worst as a cupboard-skeleton—but only owing to the childish silliness of a mere calf-love, a reciprocal misapprehension soon forgotten. Treated with contempt, its pretensions to skeletonhood fell through. Moreover, that pending tea had helped to a pause; showing the speaker to be quite collected, and mistress of the situation.

The little episode had put the Baronet more at his ease. He thought he might endeavour to contribute to general lubrication on the same lines. By-the-by, he had met Maurice Tyrawley last week in London—just back from India—been away much longer than our men usually—Lady Ancester would remember Maurice Tyrawley—man with a slight stammer—sister ran away with her father's groom? Her ladyship remembered Maurice very well. And was that really true about Kathleen Tyrawley? Well—that was interesting! Was she alive? Oh dear yes—living in Tavistock Square—fellah made money, somehow. That was very interesting. If the Countess had Kathleen's address, she would try to call on her, some time. What was her name? Hopkins. Oh—Hopkins! She felt discouraged, and not at all sure she should call on her, any time. But she did not say so. An entry of Mrs. Hopkins's address and full name followed, on some painfully minute ivory tablets. The Countess was sure to find the place, owing to her coachman's phenomenal bump of locality. Was Colonel Tyrawley married?... Oh—Major Tyrawley! Yes, he was married, and had some rumpus with his wife. Etcetera, etcetera.

This sort of thing served its turn, as did the tea. But both became things of the past, and left the course clear. Provided always that the servant did not recrudesce! "Is he gone?" said the Countess. "If he isn't, I can wait."

"He won't come back now."

"Very well. Then I can go on. I want to talk about our girl and boy.... I don't think there need be any nonsense between Us, Sir Hamilton?"

"About our boy and girl? Why should there?" Best not to add:—"Or anything else," on the whole!

"I am speaking of his eyesight only. Please understand that I should not oppose my daughter's wishes on any other ground."

"But I am to understand that you do oppose them?"

The Countess held back her answer a few seconds, to take a last look at it before sending it to press. Then she said decisively:—"Yes." She made no softening reservation. She had already said why.

He considered it his duty to soften it for her. "On the ground of his eyesight.... This is a sad business.... I gather that you empower me to repeat to my wife that you are—quite naturally, I admit—are unreconciled.... Or, at least, only partly reconciled to——"

"Unreconciled. I won't make any pretences, Sir Hamilton. I do not think there need be any nonsense between us. I am the girl's mother, and it is my duty to speak plain, for her sake."

"My wife will entirely agree with you."

"I hope so. But I am not sorry that I should have an opportunity of speaking freely to you. This is the first I have had. I wish you to know without disguise exactly how this marriage of Gwen and your Adrian—if it ever comes off—will present itself to me, as the girl's mother."

Sir Hamilton inclined his head slightly, which may have meant:—"I am prepared to listen to you as the boy's father, and his mother's proxy."

"As the girl's mother," repeated the lady. "I shall continue to think, as I think now, that there is an unreal element in my daughter's ... a ... regard for your son."

"An unreal element! Very often is, in young ladies' predilections for young gentlemen."

The Countess rushed on to avoid a complex abstract subject, with pitfalls galore. "Which may very well endanger her future.... Well!—may endanger the happiness of both.... I don't mean that she isn't in love with him—whatever the word means, and sometimes one hardly knows. I mean now that she is under an influence which may last, or may not, but which might never have existed but for ... but for the accident."

"My wife has said the same thing, more than once." Her ladyship could have dispensed with this constant reference to the late Miss Abercrombie. She felt that it put her at a disadvantage.

"And the Earl entirely agrees with me," said she. For why should her ladyship not play a card of the same suit? "There is something I want to say, and I don't know how to say it. But he said it the other day, and I felt exactly as he did. He said, as near as I recollect:—'If I had twenty daughters to give away, I would not grudge one to poor Adrian, if I thought it would do something to make up for the wrong I have done him....'"

Sir Hamilton interrupted warmly. "No, Lady Ancester, no! I cannot allow that to be said! We have never thought of it that way. We do not think of it that way. We never shall think of it that way. It was an accident, pure and simple. It might have happened to his son, on my bit of preserved land. All the owners about shoot stray dogs."

"But if it had, and you had had a mad daughter—because Gwen is a mad girl, if ever there was one—who got a Quixotic idea like this in her head, you would have felt exactly as my husband does."

"Should I? Well—I suppose I should. No, I don't think I should.... Well—at least...!"

"At least, what?"

"At least, if I had supposed that ... that Irene, for instance"—Sir Hamilton's mind required a tangible reality to rest upon—"that Irene was head over ears in love with some man...." He did not seem to have his conclusion ready.

"And you are convinced that my daughter is head over ears, in love with your son? Is that it?" The Countess spoke rather coldly, and Sir Hamilton felt uncomfortable. "It seems to me that the whole thing turns on that. Are you certain that you have not allowed yourself to be convinced?"

"Allowed myself—I'm not sure I understand."

"With less proof, I mean, than her parents have a right to ask for—less than you would have asked yourself in the reverse case?"

Sir Hamilton felt more uncomfortable. He ought to have answered that he was very far from certain. But an Englishman is nothing if not a prevaricator; he calls it being scrupulously truthful. "I have no right to catechize Lady Gwendolen," said he.

"And her parents have, of course. I see. But if her parents, are convinced—as I certainly am in this case, and I think my husband is, almost—that there is an unreal element on Gwen's side, it ought to ... to carry weight with you."

"It would carry weight. It does carry weight. But ... However, I must talk to Lady Torrens about this." He appeared very uncomfortable indeed, and was visibly flushed. But that may have been the red glow of a dying fire in the half-light, or half-darkness, striking his face as he rested his elbow on the chimney-piece, while its hand wandered from his brow to his chin, expressing irresolute perplexity. Until, as she sat silent, as though satisfied that he could have now no doubt about her wishes, he spoke again, abruptly. "I wish you would tell me exactly what you suppose to be the case."

She addressed herself to explicit statement. "I believe Gwen is acting under an unselfish impulse, and I do not believe in unselfish impulses. If a girl is to run counter to the wishes of her parents, and to obvious common sense, at least let her impulse be a selfish one. Let her act entirely for her own sake. Gwen made your son's acquaintance under peculiar circumstances—romantic circumstances—and, as I know, instantly saw that his eyesight might be destroyed and that the blame would rest with her family...."

"No, L-Lady Ancester"—he stumbled somehow over the name, for no apparent reason—"I deny that. I protest against it...."

"We need not settle that point. Your feeling is a generous one. But do let us keep to Gwen and Adrian." Her ladyship went on to develop her view of the case, not at all illogically. Her objection to the marriage turned entirely on Adrian's blindness—had not a particle of personal feeling in it. On the contrary, she and her husband saw every reason to believe that the young man, with eyes in his head, would have met with a most affectionate welcome as a son-in-law. This applied especially to the Earl, who, of course, had seen more of Adrian than herself. He had, in fact, conceived an extraordinary entichement for him; so much so that he would sooner, for his own sake purely, that the marriage should come off, as the blindness would affect him very little. But his duty to his daughter remained exactly the same. If there was the slightest reason to suppose that Gwen was immolating herself as a sacrifice—something was implied of an analogy in the case of Jephtha's daughter, but not pressed home owing to obvious weak points—he had no choice, and she had no choice, but to protect the victim from herself. If they did not do so, what was there to prevent an irrevocable step being taken which might easily lead to disastrous consequences for both? "You must see," said Gwen's mother very earnestly, "that if my daughter is acting, as my husband and I suppose, from a Quixotic desire to make up to your son for the terrible injury we have done him ... No protests, please!... it is our business to protect her from the consequences of her own rashness—to stand between her and a possible lifelong unhappiness!"

"But what," said the perplexed Baronet, "can I do?" A reasonable question!

"If you can do nothing, no one can. The Earl and myself are so handicapped by our sense of the fearful injury that we have—however unintentionally—inflicted on your son, that we are really tied hand and foot. But you can at least place the case before Adrian as I have placed it before you, and I appeal to you to do so. I am sure you will see that it is impossible for my husband or myself to say the same thing to him."

"But to what end? What do you suppose will come of it? What ... a ... what difference will it make?"

"It will make a difference. It must make a difference, if your son is made fully aware—he is not, now—of the motives that may be influencing Gwen." The Countess was not at all confident of her case, in respect of any definite change it would produce in the bearing of Adrian towards his fiancÉe, and still less of any effect such change would produce upon that headstrong young lady, if once she suspected its cause. But she had confidence in her memories of the rather stupid middle-aged gentleman of whom, as a young dragoon, she had had such very intimate experience. He was still sensitively honourable, as in those old days—she was sure of that. Unless, indeed, he had changed very much morally, as he had certainly done physically. He would shrink from the idea of his son profiting by an heroic self-devotion of the daughter of a man who was no more to blame for his son's mishap than he himself would have been in the counter-case he had supposed. And he would impress her view of the position on his son. It would have no visible and immediate result now, but how about the six months at Vienna? Might it not be utilised to undermine that position during those six months of fascinating change? She pictured to herself an abatement of what her mind thought of as "the heroics" in the first six weeks.

At least, she could see, at this moment, that she had gained her immediate end. The uneasiness of the Baronet was visible in all that can show uneasiness in a not very expressive exterior—restlessness of hand and lips, and the fixed brow of perplexity. "Very good—very good!" he was saying, "I will talk to my wife about it. You may depend on me to do what I can. Only—if you are mistaken...."

"About Gwen? If I am, things must take their own course. But I think it will turn out that I am right.... That is all, is it not? I am truly sorry not to have seen Lady Torrens. I hope she will be better.... Oh yes—it's all right about the time. They know I am coming, at Poynders. And I should have time to dress for dinner, anyhow. Good-bye!" Her ladyship held out a decisive hand, that said:—"Curtain."

But Sir Hamilton did not seem so sure the performance was over. "Half a minute more, L-Lady Ancester," said he; and he again half-stumbled over her name. "I am rather slow in expressing myself, but I have something I want to say."

"I am not in a hurry."

"I can only do exactly what you have asked me to do—place the case before my son as you have placed it before me."

"I have not asked for anything else."

"Well, then, I can do that, after I have talked over it with his mother. But I can't ... I can't undertake to influence him."

"Is he so intractable?... However, young men are."

"I did not mean that. I ... I don't exactly know how to say it...."

"Why should you hesitate to say what you were going to say?... Do you suppose I don't know what it was?" For he had begun to anticipate it with some weakening reservation. "I could tell you exactly. You were going to say, was it right to influence young people's futures and so on, and wasn't it taking a great responsibility, and so on? Now, were you not?"

"I had some such thought."

"Exactly. You mean you thought what I said you thought."

"And you think me mistaken?"

"Not always. In the present case, yes—if you consider that it would be influencing. I don't. It would only be refraining from keeping silence about—about something it may never occur to your son to think possible." It may have struck her hearer that to call shouting a fact on the house-tops "refraining from keeping silence" about it was straining phraseology; but it was not easy to formulate the idea, offhand. It was easier to hold his tongue. The Countess might have done better to hold hers, at this point. But she must needs be discriminating, to show how clear-sighted she was. "Of course, it is quite a different thing to try to bring about a marriage. That is certainly taking a grave responsibility." She stopped with a jerk, for she caught herself denouncing the very course of action which well-meaning friends had adopted successfully in the case of herself and her husband. If it had not been for the jerk, Sir Hamilton would not have known the comparison that was passing in her mind. She recovered herself to continue:—"Of course, trying to bring about a marriage is a grave responsibility, but mere testing of the strength of links that bind may be no more than bare prudence. A breaking strain on lovers' vows may be acknowledged by them as an untold blessing in after-years." Here she began to feel she was not improving matters, and continued, with misgivings:—"I am scarcely asking you to do even that. I am only appealing to you to suggest to your son a fact that is obvious to myself and my husband, because it is almost impossible for us, under the circumstances, to make such an appeal to him ourselves."

"Are you so confident of the grounds of your suspicions ... about ... about the motives that are influencing your daughter?"

"They are not suspicions. They are certainties. At least, I am convinced—and I am her mother—that her chief motive in accepting your son was vitiated—yes, vitiated!—by a mistaken zeal for—suppose we call it poetical justice. I am not going to say the girl does not fancy herself in love." She laughed a maternal sort of laugh—the laugh that seniority, undeceived by life's realities, laughs at the crazy dawn of passion in infatuated children. "Of course she does. But knowing what I do, am I not right to make an attempt at least to protect her from herself?" She lowered her voice to an increase of earnestness, as though she had found a way to go nearer to the heart of her subject. "Does any woman know—can any woman know—better than I do, the value of a girl's first love?"

It was a daring recognition of their old relation, and the veil of the thin pretence that it could be successfully ignored had fallen from between them.

The Baronet was a Man of the World. "Women do not take these things to heart as men do." And then, the moment after, was in a cold perspiration to think in what a delicate position it would have landed him. Just think!—with the Miss Abercrombie he had married cherishing her nervous system upstairs, and the pending reappearance of a son and daughter who were very liable to amusement with a parent whom they scarcely took seriously—for him to be hinting at the remains of an undying passion for this lady! He could only accept her estimate of girls by stammering:—"P-possibly! Young people—yes!"

But his embarrassment and hesitation were so visible that the Countess had little choice between flinching or charging bravely up to the guns.

She chose the courageous course, influenced perhaps by the thought that if the marriage came off, there would be a long perspective of reciprocal consciousnesses in the future for herself and this man, who had an unfortunate knack of transparency. Could not she nip the first in the bud, and sterilise the rest? It was worth the attempt.

"Listen to me, Hamilton," said she; and she was perfectly cool and collected. "Did I not say to you that there need be no nonsense between us?... How funny men are! Why should you jump because I called you by name? Do you know that twice since we have been talking here you have all but called me the name you used to me as a girl?... Yes—you began saying 'Lip,' and made it Lady Ancester. Please say it all another time. I shall not bite you.... Look here!—I want you to help me to laugh at the mistake we made when we were young folks; not to look solemn at it. We were ridiculous.... You were going to say, 'Why?' Well—I don't exactly know. Young folks always are." The fact is, the Countess was beginning to feel comfortably detached, and could treat the subject in a free and easy manner.

The Baronet could not bring himself to allow that he had ever been ridiculous, without protest. The Man within him rose in rebellion against such an admission. He felt a little indignant at her unceremonious pooh-poohing of their early infatuation. He would have accorded it respectful obsequies at least. But what protest could he enter that would not lay him open to suspicions of that undying passion? It appeared to him absolutely impossible to say anything, either way. So he looked as dignified as he could, consistently with being glad the room was half dark, because he knew he was red.

His uncomfortable silence, instead of the response in kind her ladyship had hoped for, interfered a little with the development of her detachment. She judged it better to wind up the interview, and did it with spirit. "There, now, Hamilton, don't talk—because I know exactly what you are going to say. Shake hands upon it—a good shake, you know!—don't throw it away!"

How very different are those two ways of offering a hand, the tender one and the graspy one. The Countess's stopped out of its glove to emphasize the latter, and did it so frankly and effectually that it cleared the air, in which the smell of fire had been perceptible, as in a room where a match has gone out.

He had, as she said, twice very nearly called her by her old familiar name of the Romeo and Juliet days. Nevertheless, when he gave her his hand, saying:—"Perfectly right—perfectly right, Lip! That's the way to look at it," he threw in the name stiffly. It was under tutelage, not spontaneously uttered. Letting it come before would have given him a better position. But then, how if she had disallowed it? There was no end to the ticklishness of their relation.

A modus vivendi was, however, established. She could recapitulate without endangering it. "You will try to make Adrian see Gwen's motives as I see them. It is quite possible that it will make no difference in the end. If so, we must bow to the decrees of Providence, I suppose. But I am sure you agree with me that he ought not to remain in the dark. As I dare say you know, I am taking Gwen to Vienna for a time. If they are both of a mind at the end of that time—well, I suppose it can't be helped! But you must not be—I see you are not—surprised at my view of the case."

Sir Hamilton assented to everything, promised everything, saw the lady into her carriage, and returned, uncomfortable, to review his position before the drawing-room fire in solitude. He did not go upstairs to the nerve case. He would let his visitor die down before he discharged that liability. He broke a large coal, and made a flare, and rang the bell for lights, to show how little the late interview had thrown him out of gear. But it had done so. In spite of the fact that Lady Ancester was well over five-and-forty, and that he himself was four or five years older, and that she had all but hinted that the sight of him would have disillusioned her if the Earl had not—for that was what he read between her lines—she had left something indefinable behind, which he was pleased to condemn as sentimental nonsense. No doubt it was, but it was there, for all that.

Just one little tender squeeze of that beautiful hand, instead of that candid, overwhelming wrestler's grip and double-knock handshake, would have been so delightful.

He caught himself thinking more of his handsome visitor and her easy self-mastery, compared with his own awkwardness and embarrassment, than of her errand and the troublesome task she had devolved on him of illuminating his son's mind about the possible self-sacrificial motives of her daughter. His thoughts would wander back to their Romeo and Juliet period, and make comparisons between this now of worldly-wise maturities and the days when he would have been the glove upon that hand, that he might touch that cheek. He recalled his first meeting with the fascinating young beauty in her first season, at a moonlight dance on a lawn dangerously flanked with lonely sheltered avenues and whispering trees; and the soft rose-laden air of a dawn that broke on tired musicians and unexhausted dissipation, and his headlong reckless surrender to her irresistible intoxication; and, to say the truth, the Juliet-like acknowledgment it met with. He would have been better pleased, with the world as it was now, if less of that Juliet had been recognisable in this mature dame. The thought made him bite his lip. He exclaimed against his recognition perforce, and compelled himself to think of the question before the house.

Yes—he could quite understand why the girl's parents should find it difficult to say to his son:—"We know that Gwen is giving her love to make amends for a wrong, as she thinks, done by ourselves; and whatever personal sacrifice we should be glad to make as compensation for it, we have no right to allow our daughter to imperil her happiness." But he had a hazy recollection of Adrian's telling him something of the Earl himself having mooted this view of the subject at the outset of the engagement; and, hearing no more of it, had supposed the point to be disposed of. Why did Lady Ancester wish to impress it on him now?

Then it gradually became clearer, as he thought it out, that it would have been impossible to form conclusions at once. The Earl had no doubt expressed a suspicion at first. But his daughter would never have confessed her motives to him. What more likely than that her mother should gradually command her confidence, and see that Adrian could not arrive at a full appreciation of them without an ungracious persistence on the part of herself and her husband, unless it were impressed on him by some member of the young man's family? His father, naturally.

He felt perceptibly gratified that Gwen's mother should take it for granted that he would feel as she did about the injustice to her daughter of allowing her to sacrifice herself to make amends for a fault of her parents. It was a question of sensitive honour, and she had credited him rightly with possessing it. At least, he hoped so. And though he was certainly not a clever man, the Squire of Pensham was the very soul of fair play. His division of the County knew both facts. Now, it seemed to him that it would be fairer play on his part to throw his influence into the scale on the side of the Countess, and protest against the marriage unless some guarantee could be found that there was no heroic taint in the bride's motives. In this he was consciously influenced by the thought that his side would suffer by his own action, so his own motives were tainted. A chivalric instinct, unbalanced by reasoning power, is so very apt to decide—on principle—against its owner's interests. Behind this there may have been a saving clause, to the effect that the young people might be relied on to pay no attention to their seniors' wishes, or anything else. Gwen was on her way to twenty-one, and then parental authority would expire. Meanwhile a little delay would do no harm. For the present, he could only rub the facts into his son, and leave them to do their worst. He would speak to him at the next opportunity.

Home came Adrian and Irene, and filled the silence of the house with voices. Something was afoot, clearly; something not unpleasant, to judge by the laugh of the latter. The room-door, whose hasp never bit properly—causing Adrian to perpetrate an atrocious joke about a disappointed Cleopatra—swung wide with an unseen cause, which was revealed by a soft nose, a dog's, in contact with Sir Hamilton's hand. He acknowledged Achilles, who trotted away satisfied, to complete an examination of all the other inmates of the house, his invariable custom after an outing. He would ratify or sanction them, and drop asleep with a clear conscience.

"Hay? What's all that? What's all the rumpus?" says the Baronet, outside at the stair-top. The sounds of the voices are pleasant and welcome to him, and he courts their banishment of the past his old fiancÉe had dragged from its sepulchre. Bury it again and forget it! "What's all the noise about? What's all the chatterboxing?" For the good gentleman always imputes to his offspring a volubility and a plethora of language far in excess of any meaning it conveys. His own attitude, he implies, is one of weighty consideration and temperate but forcible judgment.

"What's the chatterboxing?" says the beautiful daughter, who kisses him on both sides—and she and her skirts and her voice fill the discreet country-house to the brim, and make its owner insignificant. "What's the chatterboxing, indeed? Why,—it's good news for a silly old daddy! That's what it is. Now come in and I'll sit on his knee and tell him." And by the time Adrian has felt his way to the drawing-room, the good news has been sprung upon his father by a Moenad who has dragged off her head-gear—so as not to scratch—and flung it on the sofa. And a tide of released black hair has burst loose about him. And—oh dear!—how that garden of auld lang syne has vanished!

It behoves a Baronet and a J.P., however, to bring all this excitement down to the level of mature consideration. "Well—well—well—well!" says he. "Now let's have it all over again. Begin at the beginning. You and your brother were walking up Pratchet's Lane. What were you doing in Pratchet's Lane?"

"Walking up it. You can only walk up it or down it. Very well. We were just by the big holly-tree....

"Which big holly-tree? One—thing—at—a time!"

"Don't interrupt! There is only one big holly-tree. Now you know! Well! Ply ran on in front because he caught sight of Miss Scatcherd....

"Easy—easy—easy! Where was Miss Scatcherd?"

"In front, of course! Ply dotes on Miss Scatcherd, although she's forty-seven."

"I don't know about the 'of course,'" says Adrian, leaning on his father's arm-chair. "Because I don't dote on Miss Scatcherd. Miss Scatcherd might have been coming up behind. In which case, if I had been Ply, I should have run on in front."

"Don't be spiteful! However, I know she's bony. Well—am I to get on with my story, or not?... Very good! Where did I leave off? Oh—at Miss Scatcherd! Now, papa dear, be good, and don't be solemn."

"Well—fire away!"

"Indeed, it really happened just as I told you: as we were going to the Rectory, Ply ran on in front, and I went on to rescue Miss Scatcherd, because she doesn't like being knocked down by a dog, however affectionate. And it was just then that I heard Adrian speak...."

"Did I speak?"

"Perhaps I ought to say gasp. I heard Adrian gasp. And when I turned round to see why, he was rubbing his eyes. Because he had seen Miss Scatcherd."

"How did you know?" The interest of this has made Sir Hamilton lapse his disciplines for the moment. He takes advantage of a pause, due to his son and daughter beginning to answer both at once, and each stopping for the other, to say:—"This would be the second time—the second time! Something might come of this."

"You go on!" says Irene, nodding to her brother. "Say what you said."

Adrian accepts the prolocutorship. "To the best of my recollection I said:—'Stop Ply knocking Miss Scatcherd down again!' Because he did it before, you know.... Oh yes, entirely from love, no doubt! Then I heard you say:—'How do you know it's Miss Scatcherd?' And I told you."

"Yes—yes—yes—yes! But how did you?... How much did you see?" The Baronet is excited and roused.

"Quite as much as I wished. I think I mentioned that I did not dote on Miss Scatcherd." For, the moment a piece of perversity is possible, this young man jumps at it.

"Oh, Adrian dear, don't be paradoxical and capricious when papa's so anxious. Do say what you saw!" Thus urged by his sister, the blind man describes the occurrence from his point of view, carefully and conscientiously. The care and conscience are chiefly needed to limit and circumscribe a sudden image of a lady of irreproachable demeanour besieged by an unexpected dog. So sudden that it merely appeared as a fact in space, without a background or a foothold. It came and went in a flash, Adrian said, leaving him far more puzzled to account for its disappearance than its sudden reasonless intrusion on his darkness.

As soon as the narrative ended, perversity set in. It was gratifying, said Adrian, to listen while Hope told flattering tales, but was it not as well to be on our guard against rash conclusions? Even a partial restoration of eyesight was a thing to look forward to, but would not the extent of the benefits it conferred vary according to the nature of its own limitations? For instance, it might enable him to see everything in a mist, without outlines; or, for that matter, upside down. That, however, would not signify, so long as everything else was upside down. Indeed, who could say for certain that anything ever was, or ever had been, right side up? It all turned on which side "up" was, and on whether there was a wrong side at all.

"All nonsense!" said Irene.

"Shut up, 'Re," said Adrian. "These things want thinking out. A limited vision might be restricted in other ways than by mere stupid opaque fog, and bald, insipid position in Space. Consider how much more aggravating it would be—from the point of view of Providence—to limit the vision to the selection of peculiar objects which would give offence to the Taste or Religious Convictions of its owner! Suppose that Miss Scatcherd's eyes, for instance, could only distinguish gentlemen of Unsound opinions, and couldn't see a Curate if it was ever so! And, per contra, suppose that it should only prove possible to me to receive an image of Miss Scatcherd, or her congeners....

"Is that eels?" said Irene, who wasn't listening, but getting out writing-materials. "You may go on talking, but don't expect me to answer, because I shan't. I'm going to write to Gwen all about it."

Her brother started, and became suddenly serious. "No, 'Re!" he exclaimed. "At least, not yet. I don't want Gwen to know anything about it. Don't let's have any more false hopes than we can help. Ten to one it's only a flash in the pan!... Don't cry about it, ducky darling! If it was real, it won't stop there, and we shall have something worth telling."

So Irene did not write her letter.

That evening the Squire was very silent, saying nothing about the long conversation he had had with Gwen's mother. His good lady did not come down to dinner, and if she asked him any questions about it, it was when he went up to dress; not in the hearing of his son or daughter. They only knew that their mother had not seen Lady Ancester when she called, and curiosity about the visitor had merged in the absorbing interest of Miss Scatcherd's sudden visibility.

But no sooner had Irene—who was the ladies, this time—departed to alleviate the lot of her excellent mamma, who may have been very ill, for anything the story knows, than Sir Hamilton told the pervading attendant-in-chief to look alive with the coffee, and get that door shut, and keep it shut, conveying his desire for undisturbed seclusion. Then he was observed by his son to be humming and hawing, somewhat in the manner of ourselves when asked to say a few words at a public dinner. This was Adrian's report to Irene later.

"Had a visitor to-day—s'pose they told you—Lady Ancester. Sorry your mother wasn't up to seeing her."

"I know. We passed her coming away. Said how-d'ye-do in a hurry. What had her ladyship got to say for herself?" Thus far was mere recognition of a self-assertion of the Baronet's, as against female triviality. He always treated any topic mooted in the presence of womankind as mere froth, and resumed it as a male interest, as though it had never been mentioned, as soon as the opposite sex had died down.

"We had some talk. Did you know she was coming?"

"Well—yes—after a fashion. Gwen's last letter said we might expect a descent from her mamma. But I had no idea she was going to be so prompt."

"She sent over to tell us, this morning. They took the letter up to your mother. I had gone over to the Hanger, to prevent Akers cutting down a tree. Man's a fool! I rather got let in for seeing her ladyship. Your mother arranged it."

"I didn't hear of it. I should have stopped. So would 'Re."

"Yes—it rather let me in for a ... tÊte-À-tÊte." Why did Sir Hamilton feel that this expression was an edged tool, that might cut his fingers? He did.

"I should have been in the way."

Another time this might have procured a rebuke for levity. Sir Hamilton perceived in it a stepping-stone to his text. "Perhaps you might," he said. But he wavered, lest that stone should not bear; adding, indecisively:—"Well—we had some talk!"

"About?" said his son. But he knew perfectly well what about.

"About Gwen and yourself. That conversation of yours with the Earl. You remember it? You told me."

"I remember it, certainly. He was perfectly right—the Earl. He's the sort of man that is right. I was horribly ashamed of myself. But Gwen set me up in my own conceit again."

His father persevered. "I understood his view to be that Gwen was under the influence of ... was influenced by ... a distorted view ... a mistaken imagination...."

"Not a doubt of it, I should think. My amour propre keeps on suggesting to me that Gwen may be of sound mind. My strong common sense replies that my amour propre may be blowed!"

"Adrian, I wish to talk to you seriously. What did you suppose I was referring to?"

"To Gwen's distorted view of your humble servant—a clear case of mistaken imagination. That, however, is a condition precedent of the position. Dan Cupid would be hard up, otherwise."

"Dan Who?"

"The little God of Love ... not Daniel Anybody! Wasn't that what the Earl meant?"

"Not at all! I was referring to his view of ... a ... his daughter's view ... of the accident ... some idea of her making up to you for.... No wonder he hesitated. It was difficult to talk to his son about it.

Adrian cleared the air with a ringing laugh. "I know! What Gwen calls the Self-Denying Ordinance!—her daddy's expression, I believe." He settled down to a more restrained and serious tone. "The subject has not been mentioned, since Lord Ancester's first conversation with me—in the consulship of Mrs. Bailey, at the Towers—not mentioned by anyone. And though the thought of it won't accept any suggestions towards its extinction, from myself, I don't see my way to ... to making it a subject of general conversation. In fact, I cannot do anything but hold my tongue. I am sure you would not wish me to say to Gwen:—'Hence! Begone! I forbid you to sacrifice yourself at My Shrine.' Now, would you?"

The Squire was at liberty to ignore poetry. He took no notice of the question, but proceeded to his second head. "Lady Ancester has a strong opinion on the subject." He never said much at a time, and this being difficult conversation, his part of it came in short lengths.

"To the effect that her daughter is throwing herself away. Quite right! It is so. She is throwing herself away."

"Lady Ancester expressed no opinion to that effect. She considers that Gwen is not acting under the influence of ... under the usual motives. That's all she said. Spoke very well of you, my boy!—I must say that."

"But...?"

"But thought Gwen ought to act only for her own sake."

"Of course she ought. Of course she ought. I see the whole turn out. Her mother considers, quite rightly, that Jephtha, Judge of Israel, ought to have been jolly well ashamed of himself. Perhaps he was. But that's neither here nor there. What does Gwen's mammy think I ought to do—ought to say—ought to pretend? That's what it comes to. Am I to refuse to accompany Gwen to the altar till she can give sureties that she is really in love, and plead the highest Spartan principles to justify my conduct? Am I to make believe that I cannot, cannot love a woman unless she produces certificates of affection based solely on the desirability of my inestimable self? I should never make anyone believe that. Why—if I thought Gwen hated me worse than poison, but was marrying me on high moral grounds to square accounts, I don't think I could humbug successfully, to that extent."

"Well, my dear boy, I am bound to confess that I do not see what you can do. I can only repeat to you her ladyship's conviction, and tell you that I believe it to be—what she says it is. I mean that she speaks because she is certain Gwen is under the influence of this—of this Quixotic motive. I can only tell you so, at her wish, and—and leave it to you. I tell you frankly that if I were in her place, I should oppose the marriage, under the circumstances."

"Why doesn't she tackle me about it herself?"

"H'm—well—h'm! I think if you look at it from her point of view ... from her point of view, you'll see there would be many difficulties ... many difficulties. Done your cigar? I suppose we ought to go and pay your mother a visit."

Yes—Adrian saw the difficulties! On his way upstairs a vivid scene passed through his head, in which an image of the Countess addressed him thus:—"My dear Mr. Torrens, Gwen does not really love you. She is only pretending, because she considers her family are responsible for your blindness. All her assurances of affection for you are untrustworthy—just her fibs! She could not play her part without them. I appeal to you as an honourable man to disbelieve every word she says, and to respect the true instinct of a maternal parent. No one grieves more sincerely than I do for your great misfortune, or is more contrite than my husband and myself because it was our keeper that shot you, but there are limits! We must draw the line at our daughter marrying a scribbler with his eyes out, on high principles." At this point the image may be said to have got the bit in its teeth, for it added:—"If Gwen squinted and had a wooden leg, nothing would please us better. But...!"

How did the growing hope of a revival of sight bear on the question? Well—both ways! May not Gwen's pity for his calamity have had something to do with her feelings towards him, without any motive that the most stodgy prose could call Quixotic?