The galaxy of wax lights had illuminated the Jacobean drawing-room long enough to have become impatient, if only they had had human souls, before the first conscientious previous person turned up dressed for dinner, and felt ashamed and looked at a book. He affected superiority to things, saying to the subsequent conscientious person:—"Seen this?—'The Self-Renunciation of Theophilus Gotobed?'—R'viewers sayts 'musing;" and handing him Vol. I., which he was obliged to take. He just looked inside, and laid it on the table. "Looks intristin'!" he said. It was bad enough, said Mr. Norbury to Cook sympathetically in confidence, to put back three-quarters of an hour, without her ladyship making his lordship behindhander still. This was because news travelled to the kitchen—mind you never say anything whatever in the hearing of a servant!—that their two respective ships were in collision in the Lib'ary; harguing was the exact expression. It was the heads of the household who were late. Lady Gwendolen apologized for them, saying she was afraid it was her fault. It was. But she didn't look penitent. She looked resplendent. The two couples who had parted company, being anxious to advertise their honourable conduct, executed a quartet-without-music in extenuation of what appeared organized treachery. The soprano and tenor had lost sight of the alto and basso just on the other side of Clocketts Croft, where you came to a stile. They had from sheer good-faith retraced their steps to this stile and sat on it reluctantly, in bewilderment of spirit, praying for the spontaneous reappearance of the wanderers. These latter testified unanimously that they had seen the tenor assist the soprano over Guilty conscience—so Gwen thought at least—was discernible in every phrase of the composition. This was all very fine for Lieutenant Tatham and Di Accrington, the two young monkeys. But why Aunt Constance and her middle-aged M.P.? If they wanted to, why couldn't they, without any nonsense? That was the truncated inquiry Gwen's mind made. She herself was radiant, dazzling, in the highest spirits. But her mother was silent and pre-occupied, and rather impatient with her more than once during the evening. The Earl was the same, minus the impatience. This was because of two very short colloquies under pressure, between Gwen's departure upstairs and the Countess's overdue appearance at dinner. The first began in the lobby outside Gwen's room, where her mother overtook her on her way to her own. Here it is in full: "Oh—there you are, child! What a silly you were not to come! How's your headache?... I do wish your father would have those stairs altered. It's like the ascent of Mount Parnassus." Buckstone was presenting a burlesque of that name just then, and her ladyship may have had it running in her head. "It wasn't a real headache—only pretence. Come in here, mamma. I've something to say.... No—I haven't rung for Lutwyche yet. She's all right. Come in and shut the door." "Why, girl, what's the matter? Why are you...?" "Why am I what?" "Well—twinkling and—breathing and—and altogether!" Her ladyship's descriptive power is fairly good as far as it goes, but it has its limits. "I don't believe I'm either twinkling or breathing or altogether.... Well, then—I'm whatever you like—all three! Only listen to me, mamma dear, because there's not much time. I'm going to marry Adrian Torrens. There!" "Oh—my dear!" It is too much for the Countess after those "Why—do you know anything against him?" "Darling!—you might marry anybody, and you know it." "Oh yes; I know all about it. I prefer this one. But do you know anything against him?" "Only ... only his eyes!... Oh dear! You know you said so yourself yesterday—that the sight was destroyed...." "Who destroyed his sight? Tell me that!" "If you are going to take that tone, Gwendolen, I really cannot talk about it. You and your father must settle it between you somehow. It was an accident—a very terrible accident, I know—but I must go away to dress. It's eight.... Anyhow, one thing, dear! You haven't given him any encouragement—at least, I hope not...." "Given him any what?" "Any practical encouragement ... any...." "Oh yes—any quantity." She has to quash that flinching and brazen it out. One way is as good as another. "I didn't tell him to pull my hair down, though. I didn't mind. But if he had been able to see I should have been much more strict." "Gwen dear—you are perfectly ... shameless!... Well—you are a very odd girl...." This is concession; oddity is not shamelessness. "Come, mamma, be reasonable! If you can't see anybody and you mayn't touch them, it comes down to making remarks at a respectful distance, and then it's no better than acquaintance—visiting and leaving cards and that sort of thing.... Come in!" Lutwyche interrupted with hot water, her expression saying distinctly:—"I am a young woman of unimpeachable character, who can come into a room where a titled lady and her daughter are at loggerheads, no doubt about a love-affair, and can shut my eyes to the visible and my ears to the audible. Go it!" Nevertheless, the disputants seemed to prefer suspension of their discussion, and the elder lady departed, saying they would both be late for dinner. This was the first short colloquy. The second was in the Earl's dressing-room, from which he was emerging when his wife, looking scared, met him coming out in grande tenue through the district common to both, the room Earls and Countesses had occupied from time immemorial. He saw there was some excitement afoot, but was content to await the information he knew would come in the end. Tacit reciprocities of misunderstanding ensuing, he felt it safest to say:—"Nothing wrong, I hope?" This is what followed: "I think you might show more interest. I have been very much startled and annoyed.... But I must tell you later. There's no time now." "I think," says his lordship deferentially, "that, having mentioned it, it might be better to...." "I suppose you mean I oughtn't to have mentioned it.... Starfield, I cannot possible wear that thick dress to-night. It's suffocating. Get something thinner.... Oh, well—if I must tell you I must tell you! Go back in your room a minute while Starfield finds that dress.... Oh no—she's not listening ... never mind her! There, the door's shut!" "Well—what is it?" "It's Gwen. However, I dare say it's only a flash in the pan, and she'll be off after somebody else. If only my advice had been taken he never would have come into the house...." "But who is he, and what is it?" "My dear, I'll tell you if you'll not be so impatient. It's this young Torrens.... Yes—now you're shocked. So was I." For no further explanations are necessary. When one hears that "it" is John and Jane, one knows. "But, Philippa, are you sure? It seems to me perfectly incredible." "Speak to her yourself." "She's barely seen him; and as for him, poor fellow, he has never seen her at all." The rapidity of events seems out of all reason to a constitutionally cautious Earl. "My dear, how unreasonable you are! If he could see her, of course, she wouldn't think of him for one moment. At least, I suppose not." "I cannot understand," says the bewildered Earl. And then he begins repeating her ladyship's words "If—he—could...." as though inviting a more intelligible repetition. This is exasperating—a clear insinuation of unintelligibility. "Oh dear, how slow men are!" The lady passes through a short "But, then, she's not really in love with him, if it's a self-denying ordinance." The Countess is getting used to despair, so she only shrugs a submissive shoulder and remarks with forbearance:—"It is no use trying to make you understand. Of course, it's because she is in love with him that she is going in for ... what did you call it?..." "A self-denying ordinance." "I call it heroics. If she wasn't in love with him, do you suppose she would want to fling herself away?" "Then it isn't a self-denying ordinance at all. I confess I don't understand. I must talk to Gwen herself." "Oh, talk to her by all means. But don't expect to make any impression on her. I know what she is when she gets the bit in her teeth. Certainly talk to her. I really must go and dress now...." "Stop one minute, Philippa...." "Well—what?" "Apart from the blindness—poor fellow!—is there anything about this young man to object to? There's nothing about his family. Why!—his father's Hamilton Torrens, that was George's great friend at Christ Church. And his mother was an Abercrombie...." "I can't go into that now." Her ladyship cuts Adrian's family very short. Consider her memories of bygones! No wonder she became acutely alive to her duties as a hostess. She had created a precedent in this matter, though really her husband scarcely knew anything about her affaire de coeur with Adrian's father thirty years ago. It was not a hanging matter, but she could not object to the young man's family after such a definite attitude towards his father. Here ends the second short colloquy, which was the one that caused the Earl to be so more than usually absent that evening. It had the opposite effect on her ladyship, who felt better after it; braced up again to company-manners after the first one. Gwen, as mentioned before, was dazzling; superb; what is apt to be called a cynosure, owing to something Milton said. Nevertheless, the Shrewd Observer, who happened in this case to be Aunt Constance, noticed that at intervals the young lady let her right-hand neighbour talk, and died away into preoccupation, with a vital undercurrent It was this that Aunt Constance referred to in conversation with Mr. Pellew, at about half-past ten o'clock in that same shrubbery walk. They had cultivated each other's absence carefully in the drawing-room, and had convinced themselves that neither was necessary to the other. That clause having been carried nem. con., they were entitled to five minutes' chat, without prejudice. Neither remembered, perhaps, the convert to temperance who decided that passing a public-house door À contre-coeur entitled him to half-a-pint. "How did you get on with little Di Accrington?" the lady had said. And the gentleman had answered:—"First-rate. Talked to her about your partner all the time. How did you hit it off with him?" A sympathetic laugh over the response: "Capitally—he talked about her, of course!" quite undid the fiction woven with so much pains indoors, and also as it were lighted a little collateral fire they might warm their fingers at, or burn them. However, a parade of their well-worn seniority, their old experience of life, would keep them safe from that. Only it wouldn't do to neglect it. Mr. Pellew recognised the obligation first. "Offly amusin'!—young people," said he, claiming, as the countryman of Shakespeare, his share of insight into Romeo and Juliet. "Same old story, over and over again!" said Aunt Constance. They posed as types of elderliness that had no personal concern in love-affairs, and could afford to smile at juvenile flirtations. Mr. Pellew felt interested in Miss Dickenson's bygone romances, implied in the slight shade of sentiment in her voice—wondered in fact how the doose this woman had missed her market; this was the expression his internal soliloquy used. She for her part was on the whole glad that an intensely Platonic friendship didn't admit of catechism, as she was better pleased to leave the customers in that market to the uninformed imagination of others, than to be compelled to draw upon her own. The fact was that, in spite of its thinness and slightness, this Platonic friendship with a mature bachelor whose past—while she acquitted him of atrocities—she felt was safest kept out of Attempts to sift the human mind throw very little light upon it, and the dust gets in the eyes of the story. Perhaps that is why it cannot give Miss Dickenson's reason for not following up her last remark with:—"And will go on so, I suppose, to the end of time!" as she had half-intended to do, philosophically. Possibly she thought it would complicate the topic she was hankering after. It would be better to keep that provisionally clear of subjects made to the hand of writers of plays. She would not go beyond hypnotic suggestion at present. She approached it with the air of one who dismisses a triviality. "It seems Mr. Adrian Torrens is a musician as well as a poet." "Had they been playing the piano?" "Really, Mr. Pellew, how absurd you are! Where does 'they' come in?" "Oh—well—a—of course—I thought you were referring to...." "Whom did you suppose I was referring to?" Aggressive equanimity here that can wait weeks, if necessary. "Torrens and my cousin Gwen! Be hanged if I can see why I shouldn't refer to them!" "Do so by all means. I wasn't, myself; but it doesn't matter. It was Nurse Bailey told Lutwyche, whom I borrow from Gwen sometimes, that Mr. Torrens was a great musician." "How does Nurse Bailey know?" "He was playing to her quite beautiful in the drawing-room just before her young ladyship came in. And then Mrs. Bailey went upstairs to write a letter because there was plenty of time before the post." "Can't say I believe Nurse Bailey's much of a dab at music." Mr. Pellew was reflecting on the humorous background of Miss "Is that the way you gossip at your Club, Mr. Pellew?" "Come, I say, Miss Dickenson, that's too bad! I merely remark that a lady and gentleman must have had plenty of time for music, and you call it 'gossip.'" "Precisely." "Well, I say it's a jolly shame!... You don't suppose there is anything there, do you?" This came with a sudden efflux of seriousness. Aunt Constance had landed her fish and was blameless. Nobody could say she had been indiscreet. She, too, could afford to be suddenly serious. "I don't mind saying so to you, Mr. Pellew," she said, "because I know I can rely upon you. But did you notice at dinner-time, when you said you had tried to persuade Mr. Torrens to come down, that Gwen took upon herself to answer for him all the way down the table?" "By Jove—so she did! I didn't notice it at the time. At least, I mean I did notice it at the time, but I didn't take much notice of it. Well—you know what I mean!" As Miss Dickenson knows perfectly well, she tolerates technical flaws of speech with a nod, and allows Mr. Pellew to go on:—"But, I say, this will be an awful smash for the family. A blind man!" Then he becomes aware that a conclusion has been jumped at, and experiences relief. "But it may be all a mistake, you know." Aunt Constance's silence has the force of speech, and calls for further support of this surmise. "They haven't had the time. She has only known him since yesterday. At least he had never seen her but once—he told me so—that time just before the accident." "Gwen is a very peculiar girl," says the lady. "A spark will fire a train. Did you notice nothing when we came in from the flower-show?" "Nothing whatever. Did you?" "Little things. However, as you say, it may be all a mistake. I don't think anything of the time, though. Some young people are volcanic. Gwen might be." "I saw no sign of an eruption in him—no lunacy. He chatted quite reasonably about the division on Thursday, and the crops and the weather. Never mentioned Gwen!" "My dear Mr. Pellew, you really are quite pastoral. Of course, Gwen is exactly what he would not mention." Mr. Pellew seems to concede that he is an outsider. "You think it was Love at first sight, and that sort of thing," he says. "Well—I hope it will wash. It don't always, you know." "Indeed it does not." The speaker cannot resist the temptation to flavour philosophy with a suggestion of tender regrets—a hint of a life-drama in her own past. No questions need be answered, and will scarcely be asked. But it is candid and courageous to say as little as may be about it, and to favour a cheerful outlook on Life. She is bound to say that many of the happiest marriages she has known have been marriages of second—third—fourth—fifth—nth Love. She had better have let it stand at that if she wanted her indistinct admirer to screw up his courage then and there to sticking point. For the Hon. Percival had at least seen in her words a road of approach to a reasonably tender elderly avowal. But she must needs spoil it by adding—really quite unconsciously—that many such marriages had been between persons in quite mature years. Somehow this changed the nascent purpose kindled by a suggestion of nth love in Autumn to a sudden consciousness that the conversation was sailing very near the wind—some wind undefined—and made Mr. Pellew run away pusillanimously. "By-the-by, did you ever see the Macganister More man that died the other day? Married the Earl's half-sister?" "Never. Of course, I know Clotilda perfectly well." "Let's see—oh yes!—she's Sister Nora. Oh yes, of course I know Clotilda. She's his heiress, I fancy—comes into all the property—no male heir. She'll go over to Rome, I suppose." "Why?" "Always do—with a lot of independent property. Unless some fillah cuts in and snaps her up." "Do tell me, Mr. Pellew, why it is men can never credit any woman with an identity of her own?" "Well, I only go by what I see. If they don't marry they go over to Rome—when there's property—dessay I'm wrong.... What o'clock's that?—ten, I suppose. No?—well, I suppose it must be eleven, when one comes to think of it. But it's a shame to go in—night like this!" And then this weak-minded couple impaired the effect of their little declaration of independence of the united state—the phrase sounds familiar somehow!—by staying out five or six minutes longer, and going in half an hour later; two things only the merest pedant would declare incompatible. But it kept the servants up, and Miss Dickenson had to apologise to Mr. Norbury. How many of us living in this present century can keep alive to the fact that the occupants of country-mansions, now resplendent with an electric glare which is destroying their eyesight and going out suddenly at intervals, were sixty years ago dependent on candles and moderator lamps, which ran down and had to be wound up, and then ran down again, when there was no oil. There was no gas at the Towers; though there might have been, granting seven miles of piping, from which the gas would have escaped into the roots of the beeches and killed them. Even if there had been, it does not follow that Miss Dickenson, in full flight to her own couch, would not have come upon the Earl in the lobby near Mr. Torrens's quarters, with a candle-lamp in his hand, which he carried about in nocturnal excursions to make sure that a great conflagration was not raging somewhere on the premises. He seemed, Miss Dickenson thought, to be gazing reproachfully at it. It was burning all right, nevertheless. She wished his lordship good-night, and fancied it was very late. The Earl appeared sure of it. So did a clock with clear ideas on the subject, striking midnight somewhere, ponderously. The lady passed on; not, however, failing to notice that the lamp stopped at a door on the way, and that its bearer was twice going to knock thereat and didn't. Then a dog within intimated that he should bark presently, unless attention was given to an occurrence he could vouch for, which his master told him to hold his tongue about; calling out "Come in!" nevertheless, to cover contingencies. The passer-by connected this with Gwen's behaviour at dinner, and other little things she had noticed, and meant to lie awake on the chance of hearing his lordship say good-night to Mr. Torrens, perhaps illuminating the situation. But resolutions to lie awake are the veriest gossamer, blown away by the breath that puts the bedside candle out. Miss Dickenson and Oblivion had joined hands some time when his lordship said good-night to Mr. Torrens. He had found him standing at his window, as though the warm night-air was a luxury to him, in the blue silk dressing-gown he had affected since his convalescence. There was no light in the room; indeed, light would have been of no service to him in his state. He did not move, but said: "I suppose I ought to be thinking of turning in now, Mrs. Bailey?" "It isn't Mrs. Bailey," said the Earl. "It's me. Gwen's father." "God bless my soul!" exclaimed Adrian, starting back from the window. "I thought it was the good creature. I had given you up, Lord Ancester—it got so late." For his lordship had "There is no light," said the visitor, "except mine that I have brought with me. I expected to find you in the dark—indeed, I was afraid I might wake you out of your first sleep. I came because of Gwen—because I felt I must see you before I went to bed myself." He paused a moment, Adrian remaining silent, still at a loss; then continued:—"This has been very sudden, so sudden that it has quite...." Then Adrian broke out:—"Oh, how you must be blaming me! Oh, what a brute I've been!..." "No—no, no—no! Not that, not that at all! Not a word of blame for anybody! None for you—none for Gwen. But it has been so—so sudden...." Indeed, Gwen's father seems as though all the breath, morally speaking, had been knocked out of his body by this escapade of his daughter's. For, knowing from past experience the frequent tempestuous suddenness of her impulses, and convinced that Adrian in his position neither could nor would have shown definitely the aspirations of a lover, his image of their interview made Gwen almost the first instigator in the affair. "Why, you—you have hardly seen her——" he says, referring only to the shortness of their acquaintance, not to eyesight. Adrian accepts the latter meaning without blaming him. "Yes," he says, "but see her I did, though it was but a glimpse. I tell you this, Lord Ancester—and it is no rhapsody; just bald truth—that if this day had never come about.... I mean if it had come about otherwise; I might have gone away this morning, for instance ... and if I had had to learn, as I yet may, that this black cloud I live in was to be my life for good, and all that image I saw for a moment of Gwen—Gwen in her glory in the light of the sunset, for one moment—one moment!..." He breaks down over it. The Earl's voice is not in good form for encouragement, but he does his best. "Come—come! It's not so bad as all that yet. See what Merridew said. Couldn't say anything for certain for "Well—he's a jolly good fellow. But what I mean is, what I was going to say was that my recollection of her in that one moment would have been the one precious thing left for me to treasure through the pitch-darkness.... You remember—or perhaps not—that about a hand's breadth of it—the desert, you know—shining alone in the salt leagues round about...." "N-no. I don't think I do. Is it ... a ... Coleridge?" "No—Robert Browning. He'd be new to you. You would hardly know him. However, I should try to forget the rest of the desert this time." The Earl did not follow, naturally, and changed the subject. "It is very late," he said, "and I have only time to say what I came to say. You may rely on my not standing arbitrarily in the way of my daughter's wishes when the time comes—and it has not come yet—for looking at that side of the subject. It can only come when it is absolutely certain that she knows her own mind. She is too young to be allowed to take the most important step in life under the influence of a romantic—it may be Quixotic—impulse. I have just had a long talk with her mother about it, and I am forced to the conclusion that Gwen's motives are not so unmixed as a girl's should be, to justify bystanders in allowing her to act upon them—bystanders I mean who would have any right of interference.... I am afraid I am not very clear, but I shrink from saying what may seem unfeeling...." "Probably you would not hurt me, and I should deserve it, if you did." "What I mean is that Gwen's impulse is ... is derived from ... from, in short, your unhappy accident. I would not go so far as to say that she has schemed a compensation for this cruel disaster ... which we need hardly be so gloomy about yet awhile, it seems to me. But this I do say"—here the Earl seemed to pick up heart and find his words easier—"that if Gwen has got that idea I thoroughly sympathize with her. I give you my word, Mr. Torrens, that not an hour passes, for me, without a thought of the same kind. I mean that I should jump at any chance of making it up to you, for mere ease of mind. But I have nothing to give that would meet the case. Gwen has a treasure—herself! It is another matter whether she should be allowed to dispose of it her own way, for her own sake. Her mother and I may both feel it our duty to oppose it." Adrian said in an undertone, most dejectedly: "You would be right. How could I complain?" Then it seemed to him that his words struck a false note, and he tried to qualify them. "I mean—how could I say a word of any sort? Could I complain of any parents, for trying to stop their girl linking her life to mine? And such a life as hers! And yet if it were all to do again, how could I act otherwise than as I did a few hours since. Is there a man so strong anywhere that he could put a curb on his heart and choke down his speech to convention-point, if he thought that a girl like Gwen ... I don't know how to say what I want. All speech goes wrong, do what I will." "If he thought that a girl like Gwen was waiting for him to speak out? Is that it?... Oh—well—not exactly that! But something of the sort, suppose we say?" For Adrian's manner had entered a protest. "Anyhow I assure you I quite understand my Gwen is—very attractive. But nobody is blaming anybody. After all, what would the alternative have been? Just some hypocritical beating about the bush to keep square with the regulations—to level matters down to—what did you call it?—convention-point! Nothing gained in the end! Let's put all that on one side. What we have to look at is this—meaning, of course, by 'we,' my wife and myself:—Is Gwen really an independent agent? Is she not in a sense the slave of her own imagination, beyond and above the usual enthralment that one accepts as part of the disorder. I myself believe that she is, and that the whole root and essence of the business may be her pity for yourself, and also I should say an exaggerated idea of her own share in the guilt...." "There was none," Adrian struck in decisively. "But I understand your meaning exactly. Listen a minute to this. If I had thought what you think possible—well, I would have bitten my tongue off rather than speak. Why, think of it! To ask a girl like that to sacrifice herself to a cripple—a half-cripple, at least...." "Without good grounds for supposing she was waiting to be asked," said the Earl; adding, to anticipate protest:—"Come now!—that's what we mean. Let's say so and have done with it," to which Adrian gave tacit assent. His lordship continued:—"I quite believe you; at least, I believe you would rather have held your tongue than bitten it off. I certainly should. But—pardon my saying so—I cannot understand ... I'm not finding fault or doubting you ... I cannot understand how you came to be so—so ... I won't say cocksure—let's call it sanguine. If there had Adrian fidgetted uneasily, and felt his cheeks flush. "I can answer for when it began, with me. I walked across that glade from Arthur's Bridge quite turned into somebody else, with Gwen stamped on my brain like a Queen's head on a shilling, and her voice in my ears as plain as the lark's overhead. But whether we started neck and neck, I know not. I do know this, though, that I shall never believe that if I had been first seen by her in my character as a corpse, either she or I would ever have been a penny the wiser." "You are the wiser?—quite sure?" The Earl seemed to have his doubts. "Quite sure. Do you recollect how 'the Duke grew suddenly brave and wise'? He was only the 'fine empty sheath of a man' before. But it's no use quoting Browning to you." "Not the slightest. I suppose he was referring to a case of love at first sight—is that it?... It is a time-honoured phenomenon, only it hardly comes into practical politics, because young persons are so secretive about it. I can't recollect any lady but Rosalind who mentioned it at the time—or any gentleman but Romeo, for that matter. Gwen has certainly kept her own counsel for three weeks past." "Dear Lord Ancester, you are laughing at me...." "No—no! No, I wouldn't do that. Perhaps I was laughing a little at human nature. That's excusable. However, I understand that you are cocksure—or sanguine—about the similarity of Romeo's case. I won't press Gwen about Rosalind's. Of course, if she volunteers information, I shall have to dismiss the commiseration theory—you understand me?—and suppose that she is healthily in love. By healthily I mean selfishly. If no information is forthcoming, all I can say is—the doubt remains; the doubt whether she is not making herself the family scapegoat, carrying away the sins of the congregation into the wilderness." "You know I think that all sheer nonsense, whatever Gwen thinks? She may think the sins of the congregation are as scarlet. To me they are white as wool." "The whole question turns on what Gwen thinks. Believing, as I do, that my child may be sacrificing herself to expiate a sin of mine, I have no course but to do my best to prevent her, or, at least to postpone irrevocable action until it is certain that she is animated by no such motive. I might advocate that you and she should not meet, for—suppose we say—a twelvemonth, but that I "Oh yes! Gwen told her of it across the table at dinner-time." "Across the table at dinner-time? Imp-ossible!" "Well—look at this!" Adrian produces from his dressing-gown pocket a piece of paper, much crumpled, with a gilt frill all round, and holds it out for the Earl to take. While the latter deciphers it at his candle-lamp, he goes on to give its history. Irene had been back very late from the Mackworth Clarkes, and had missed the soup. She had not spoken with Gwen at all, and as soon as dessert had effloresced into little confetti, had been told by that young lady to catch, the thing thrown being the wrapper of one of these, rolled up and scribbled on. "She brought it up for me to see," says Adrian, without thought of cruel fact. Blind people often speak thus. The Earl cannot help laughing at what he reads aloud. "'I am going to marry your brother'—that's all!" he says. "That's what she borrowed Lord Cumberworld's pencil for. Really Gwen is...!" But this wild daughter of his is beyond words to describe, and he gives her up. If the Duke's son had not been honourable, he might have peeped and known his own fate. For he had been entrusted with this missive, to hand across the table to Irene lower down. Lady Gwendolen ought to have given it to Mr. Norbury, to hand to Miss Torrens on a tray. That was Mr. Norbury's opinion. When the Earl looked up from deciphering the pencil-scrawl, he saw that Adrian's powers were visibly flagging; and no wonder, convalescence considered, and such a day of strain and excitement. He rose to go, saying:—"You see what I want—nothing in a hurry." Adrian's words were slipping away from him as he replied, or tried to reply:—"I see. If I were to get my eyes back, Gwen might change her mind." But he failed over the last two letters. Mrs. Bailey, still in charge, lived on the other side of a door, at which the Earl tapped, causing a scuttling and a prompt appearance of the good creature, who seemed to have an ambush of grog ready to spring on her patient. It was what was wanted. "Remember this, Mr. Torrens," said his lordship, when a rally encouraged him to add a postscript, "that in spite of what you "All nonsense, my lord! Excuse my contradicting you flatly. Your instruction, not expressed but implied, to old Stephen, was clearly not to miss his mark. If he had killed Achilles you would have been responsible, as Apollo was responsible for the arrow of Paris.... Yes, my dear, we were talking about you." This was to the collie, who woke up from deep sleep at the sound of his name, and felt he could mix with a society that recognised him. But not without shaking himself violently and scratching his head, until appealed to to stop. The Earl let further protest stand over, and said good-night, rather relieved at the beneficial effect of the good creature's ministrations. The excellent woman herself, when the grog was disposed of, facilitated her charge's dispositions for the night, and retired to rest with an ill-digested idea that she had interrupted a conversation about the corrupt gaieties of a vicious foreign capital, inhabited chiefly by atheists and idolaters. The Countess's long talk with her husband, wedged in between an early abdication of the drawing-room and the sound of Gwen laughing audaciously with Miss Torrens on the staircase, and more temperate good-nights below, had tended towards a form of party government in which the Earl was the Liberal and her ladyship the Conservative party. The Bill before the House was never exactly read aloud, its contents being taken for granted. When the Countess had said, in their previous interview, first that it was Gwen, and then that it was this young Torrens, she had really exhausted the subject. Nevertheless she seemed now to claim for herself credit for a clear exposition of the contents of this Bill, in spite of constant interruptions from a factious Opposition. "I hope," she said, "that, now that I have succeeded in making you understand, you will speak to Gwen yourself. I suppose she's not going to stop downstairs all night." The Earl also supposed not. But even in that very improbable event the resources of human ingenuity would not be exhausted. He could, for instance, go downstairs to speak to her. But other considerations intervened. Was her ladyship's information unimpeachable? Was it absolutely impossible that she should have been misled in any particular? Could he, in fact, consider his information official? The Countess showed unexampled forbearance under extreme "Very little, certainly," says the Earl reflectively. He seemed to consider the point slowly. "But it can hardly be said to be exactly the same thing in all cases. This case is peculiar—is peculiar." "I can't see where the peculiarity comes in. You mean his eyes. But a girl either is, or is not, in love with a man, whether he has eyes in his head or not." "Indisputably. But it complicates the case. You must admit, my dear, that it complicates the case." "You mean that I am unfeeling? Wouldn't it be better to say so instead of beating about the bush? But I am nothing of the sort." "My dear, am I likely to say so? Have you ever heard me hint such a thing? But one may be sincerely sorry for the victim of such an awful misfortune, and yet feel that his blindness complicates matters. Because it does." "I'm not sure that I understand what you are driving at. Perhaps we are talking about different things." This is not entirely without forbearance—may show a trace of uncalled-for patience, as towards an undeserved conundrum-monger. "Perhaps we are, my dear. But as to what I'm driving at. Can you recall what Gwen said about his eyes?" "I think so. Let me see.... Yes—she said did I know anything against him. I said—nothing except his eyes. And then she said—I recollect it quite plainly—'Who destroyed his sight? Tell me that!'" "What did you answer to that?" "I refused to talk any longer, and said you and she must settle it your own way." "Nothing else?" "Oh—well—nothing—nothing to speak of! Lutwyche came worrying in with hot water." The Earl sat cogitating until her ladyship roused him by saying "Well!" rather tartly. Then he echoed back:—"Well, Philippa, I think possibly you are right." "Only possibly!" "Probably then. Yes—certainly probably!" "What about?" "I thought I understood you to say that, in your opinion, Gwen had got it into her head that...." "Oh dear!... There—never mind!—go on." She considered her husband a prolix Earl, sometimes. "... That the accident was our fault, and that it was her duty to make it up to him." "Of course she has. What did you suppose?" "I supposed she might have—a—fallen in love with him. I thought you thought so, too, from what you said." "My dear Alexander, shall I never make you understand?" Her ladyship only used the long inconvenient name to emphasize rhetoric, which she did also in this instance by making every note staccato. "Gwen, has, fallen, in, love, with, Mr. Torrens, because, we, did it? Now do you see?" "She has a—mixture of motives, in fact?" "Absolutely none whatever! She's over head and ears in love with him because his eyes are out. No other reason in life! What earthly good do you think the child thinks she could do him if she didn't love him? Men will never understand girls if they live till Doomsday." The Earl did not grapple with the problems this suggested; but reflected, while her ladyship waited explicitly. At last he said:—"It certainly appears to me that if Gwen's ... predilection for this man depends in any degree on a mistaken conviction of duty, the only course open to us is to—to temporise—to deprecate rash actions and undertakings. Under the circumstances it would be impossible to condemn or find fault with either. It is perfectly inconceivable that poor Torrens—should have—should have taken any initiative...." "Oh, my dear, what nonsense! Of course, Gwen did that. She proposed to him when I was away at the flower-show...." "Philippa—how can you? How would such a thing be possible? Really—really!.... "Well, really really as much as you like, but any woman could propose to a blind man—a little way off, certainly—only I don't know that Gwen...." However, the Countess stopped short of her daughter's reference to a respectful distance and card-leaving. It was at this point that Gwen and Irene were audible on the stairs, suggesting the lateness of the hour. The Earl said:—"I think I shall go and see Torrens as soon as there's quiet. I have Then followed his interview with Mr. Torrens already detailed. Perhaps the foregoing should have come first. If ever you retell the tale you can make it do so. But whatever you do be careful to insist on that point of not talking before the servants. Dwell on the fact that Miss Lutwyche went straight to the Servants' Hall, after putting a finishing touch on her young ladyship, and said to the housekeeper:—"You'll be very careful, Mrs. Masham, to say nothing whatever about her young ladyship and Mr. Torrenson"; it being one of her peculiarities to alter the names of visitors on the strength of alleged secret information, to prove that she was in the confidence of the family. To which Mrs. Masham replied:—"Why not be outspoken, Anne Lutwyche?" provoking, or licensing, further illumination on the subject; with the result that in half an hour the household was observing discreet silence about it, and exacting solemn promises of equal discretion from acquaintances as discreet as itself. But there were words between Mrs. Starfield, the Countess's abettor in dressing, and Miss Lutwyche; the former having found herself forestalled in her theory of the argument in the Lib'ary, which she had reported as the cause of delay, by the latter's prompt expression of cautious reserve, and having accused her of throwing out hints and nothing to go upon. Whereupon the young woman had indignantly repudiated the idea that a frank nature like hers could be capable of an underhand insinuendo, and had felt a great and just satisfaction with her powers of handling her mother-tongue. |