Men invariably termed her “a sweet woman.” Women called her other things.

What was she like? Of middle height and “caressable,” with a rounded, supple figure, exquisitely groomed and got up! Her golden hair would have been merely brown, if left to Nature. It came nearly to her eyebrows in the dearest little rings, and was coaxed into the loveliest of coils and waves and undulations. Her eyes were lustrous hazel, her eyelashes and eyebrows as nearly black as perfect taste allowed. Her cheeks were of an ivory pallor, sometimes relieved with a faint sea-shell bloom. Her features were beautifully cut, inclining to the aquiline in outline. Her voice was low and tender, especially when she was saying the sort of thing that puts a young fellow out of conceit with the girl he is engaged to, and makes the married man wonder why he threw himself away. Why he was such an infuriated ass, by George! as to beg and pray Clara to marry him ten years ago, and buy a new revolver when she said it was esteem she felt for him, not love. Why Fate should ordain just at this particular juncture that he should encounter the one woman, by jingo! the only woman in the world who had ever really understood and sympathized with him! It was Mrs. Osborne’s vocation to make men of all grades, ranks, and ages ask this question. She had followed her chosen path in life with enthusiasm, let us say, collecting scalps, with here and there a little shudder of pity, and here and there a little smart of pain. Fascination, exercised almost involuntarily, was to her, as to the cobra, the means of life. Not in a vulgar sense, because the late Colonel Osborne had left his widow handsomely provided for. But the excitement of the sport, the keen delight of capturing new victims—bringing the quarry boldly down in the open, or setting insidious snares, pitfalls, and traps for the silly prey to blunder into—these joys the huntress knows who sharpens her arrows and weaves her webs for Man.

I have said—or hinted—that other women did not love Mrs. Osborne. Knowing, as they did, that the lovely widow frankly despised them, her own sex responded by openly declaring war. They knew her strength, and never attacked her save in bands. Yet, strange to say, the invincible Mrs. Osborne was never so nearly worsted as in a single-handed combat to which she was challenged by a mere neophyte—“a chit”—as, had she lived in the eighteenth instead of the twentieth century, the fair widow would have termed Polly Overshott.

Polly’s real name was Mariana, but, as everyone in the county said, Polly seemed more appropriate. Sir Giles Overshott had no other child, and sometimes seemed not to regret this limitation of his family circle. Lady Overshott had been dead some five years when the story opens, and Sir Giles was beginning to speak of himself as a widower, which to experienced ears means much.

The estate of Overshott Foxbrush was a fine one, unencumbered, and yielding a handsome rent-roll. It was understood that Polly would have nearly everything. She had consented in the most daughterly manner to become engaged to the eldest son of a county neighbor, a young gentleman with whom she was very much in love, Costebald Ianson Smithgill, commonly known as “Cis” Smithgill, his united initials forming the caressing little name. He was six feet high, and had a bass voice with treble inflections, which he was training for a parliamentary career. He had, until the demise of an elder brother removed him from the service of his country, held a lieutenancy in the Guards. As to his family, who does not know that the Smithgills are a family of extreme antiquity, descended from that British Princess and daughter of Vortigern who drank the health of Hengist, proffering the Saxon General the mead-horn of welcome when he first set his conquering foot on British soil? Who does not know this, knows nothing. The mead-horn is said to be enclosed in the masonry of the eldest portion of Hengs Hall, the family seat in the country of Mixshire, where, of course, the scene of our story is laid. And Polly and Cis had been engaged about two months when Mrs. Osborne took The Sabines, and was called on by the county, because Osborne had been the cousin of an Earl, and she herself came of a very good family. You don’t want any name much better than that of Weng. And Mrs. Osborne came of the Wengs of Hollowshire.

She took The Sabines for the sake of her health, which required country air. It was an old-fashioned, square Jacobean house of red brick faced with stone, and it boasted a yew walk, the yews whereof had been wrought by some long-moldered-away tree-clipper into arboreal representatives of the Rape of the Sabines. That avenue was one of the lions of the county, and every fresh tenant of the place had to bind him or herself, under fearful penalties, to keep the Sabine ladies and their abductors properly clipped.

Mrs. Osborne was destitute of the faculty of reverence, Lady Smithgill of Hengs said afterwards. Because early in June, when she drove over to call—it would not become even a Smithgill to ignore a Weng of Hollowshire—upon turning a curve in the avenue so as to command the house, the lawn, and the celebrated Yew Tree Walk, the new tenant of The Sabines, exquisitely attired in a Paris gown and carrying a marvelous guipure sunshade, appeared to view; Sir Giles Overshott was with her, and the lady and the baronet were laughing heartily.

“Mrs. Osborne simply shrieked,” Lady Smithgill said afterwards, in confidence to a few dozen dear friends; “and Sir Giles was quite purple—that unpleasant shade, don’t you know?

“It turned out that they were amusing themselves at the expense of The Sabines. I looked at her, and I fancy I showed my surprise at her want of taste.

“‘We think a great deal of them in the county,’ I said, ‘and Sir Giles can tell you how severe a censure would be pronounced by persons of taste upon the tenant who was so audacious as to deface or so careless as to neglect them, or even, ignorantly, to make sport of them.’

“At that Sir Charles became a deeper shade, almost violet, and she uncovered her eyes and smiled. I think somebody has told her she resembled Bernhardt in her youth.

“‘Dear Lady Smithgill,’ she said, or rather cooed (and those cooing voices are so irritating!), ‘depend on it, I shall make a point of keeping them in the most perfect condition. To be obliged to pay a forfeit to my landlord would be a nuisance, but to be censured by persons of taste residing in the county, that would be quite insupportable.’ Then she rang for tea, and there were eight varieties of little cakes, which must have been sent down from Buszard’s, and a cut-glass liqueur bottle of rum upon the tray. ‘Do you take rum?’ she had the audacity to ask me. I did not stoop to decline verbally, but shook my head slightly, and she gave me another of those smiles and passed on the rum. Sir Charles brought it me, and I waved it away, speechless, absolutely speechless, at the monstrosity of the idea.

“She overwhelmed me with apologies, of course.

“And both Sir Giles—who, I regret to see, is constantly there—and Sir Costebald, who has once called—consider her a sweet woman. But—think me foreboding if you will—I cannot feel that county Society has an acquisition in Mrs. Osborne.”

“Papa goes to The Sabines rather often,” said Polly Overshott, when it came to her turn to be the recipient of Lady Smithgill’s confidence. “He does say that Mrs. Osborne is a sweet woman, and he is helping her to choose some brougham horses. He says the pair she brought down are totally unfit for country roads. And as for the rum, she offered it to me. Colonel Osborne held a post in the Diplomatic Service at Berlin, and Germans drink it in tea, and I rather like it, though a second cup gives you a headache afterwards.”

“Mary!” screamed Miss Overshott’s mamma-in-law elect, who had effected this compromise between Polly and Mariana.

“As regards The Sabines,” Polly went on, “we have bowed down before them for years and years, and we shall go on doing it, but they are absurd all the same. So are our lead groups and garden temples at Overshott—awfully absurd——”

“I suppose you include our Saxon buttress and Roman pavement at Hengs in the catalogue of absurdities,” said Lady Smithgill icily. “Fortunately, Sir Costebald is not a widower, or they might stand in some danger of being swept away. At the present moment, let me tell you, Mary, your lead figures and garden temples are far from secure. That woman leads your father by the nose—twines him round her little finger. Cis tells me——”

“What does Cis know about it?” said Polly, flushing to the temples.

“Cis is a man of the world,” said Lady Smithgill. “But at the same time he is a dutiful son. He tells everything to his mother. It seems—Cis personally vouches for the truth of this—that Sir Giles is constantly at The Sabines—in fact, every day.... He is dressed for conquest, it would appear.”

“Cis or Papa?” asked Polly, with feigned innocence.

“Sir Giles wears coats and neckties that would be condemned as showy if worn by a bridegroom,” said Lady Smithgill rapidly. “He is perfumed with expensive extracts, and his boots must be torture, Cis says, knowing all one does know of the Overshott tendency to gout. He never removes his eyes from Mrs. Osborne, laughs to idiocy at everything she says, and simply lives in the corner of the sofa next her. He monopolizes the conversation. Nobody else can get in a word, Cis tells me.”

“Since when did Cis begin to be jealous?” said Polly under her breath.

“I did not quite catch your remark,” returned Lady Smithgill. “By the way, Mary, I hope you will wear those pearls as often as you can. They require air, sunshine, and exercise.... I contracted my chronic rheumatic tendency thirty years ago through sitting in the garden with them on. For days together Sir Costebald’s mother used to skip in them upon the terrace, but I never went as far as that.”

“The pearls—what pearls?” asked Polly vaguely.

“Dear Mary, when a fiancÉ makes a gift of such beauty—to say nothing of its value—and the strings were originally purchased for two thousand pounds—it is customary for the recipient to exhibit a little appreciation,” Lady Smithgill returned.

“Appreciation!”

“Of course you thanked Cis, my dear. I never doubted that. But there, we will say no more....”

Polly’s blue eyes flashed. She rose up; she had ridden over to the Hall alone, and her slight upright figure looked its best in a habit.

“I should like to say a little more.” She put up her hand and unpinned her hat from her close braids of yellow-gold, and tossed the headgear into a neighboring chair. “Dear Lady Smithgill, Cis has not given me any pearls. Perhaps he has sent them to Bond Street to be cleaned——”

“Cleaned! They are in perfect condition.”

“Or—or perhaps he has given them to some one else. I have seen very little of Cis lately,” Polly ended. “But Papa tells me that he is a good deal at The Sabines. Papa seemed to find him as much in the way as ... as Cis found Papa. And—her new kitchenmaid is the sister of our laundrywoman, and a report reached me that she had lately been wearing some magnificent pearls.... I thought nothing of it at the time, but now....”

There was a snorting gasp from Lady Smithgill. All had been made clear. Her double chin trembled, and her eyes went wild.

“Mary!” she cried.... “I have been blind! My boy—my infatuated boy! That woman has a positively fiendish power over men.... She will enslave—ensnare Cis as she has done your father and dozens of others. Oh! my dear, there are stories.... She is relentless. The Sowersea’s second son, De la Zouch Sowersea, is now driving a cab in Melbourne, and the Countess attributes everything to her. At Berlin—where her husband had a diplomatic appointment, and she learned to offer refined English-women rum in their tea—there were worse scandals—agitations, duels! Now my son is in peril. Save him, Mary! Do something before it is too late!”

“I can hardly drop in at The Sabines—say I have called for my property, and take Cis and Papa away,” said Polly, her short upper lip quivering with pain and anger. “But I will think over what is best to be done. In the meantime do not worry Cis. Leave him to go his way. We need not be too nervous. He and Papa will keep an eye upon each other,” she ended.

“You know more of this than you have told me,” poor Lady Smithgill gasped. “There are scandals in the air—people are talking—about my boy and that woman! Why did she ever come here?” the unhappy lady murmured. “I said from the first that she would be no acquisition to the county!”

Polly’s cob, Kiss-me-Quick, came round, and Polly took leave. She had warm young blood in her veins, and an imperious temper of her own, and to be asked to “do something” to add a fresh access of caloric to the obviously cooling temperature of one’s betrothed is not flattering. Yes, she had suspected before; yes, she had known more than she had told the proprietress of the agitated double chin and the agitated maternal feelings. Sir Giles had betrayed Cis as unconsciously as he had betrayed himself. “Really, Poll, I think you ought to keep the young man better to heel,” he had said. “He means no harm, but Mrs. Osborne is a dangerously fascinating woman, and a woman of that type possesses advantages over a girl. And, of course, I don’t suggest anything in the nature of disloyalty to yourself—Cis is the soul of honor and all that. But to see an engaged young fellow sitting on footstools, and lying on the grass at the feet of a pretty woman—who doesn’t happen to be the right one—turning up his eyes at her like a dying duck in a thunderstorm—by George!—irritates me. He is always in Mrs. Osborne’s pocket, and one never can get a word with her alone—I mean, nobody is allowed to usurp her attention for an instant. And here is the key to the Crackle-Room, since you are asking for it.”

And Sir Giles handed his daughter the key in question, a slim, rusty implement belonging to the showroom of Overshott, an octagonal boudoir, periodically dusted and swept by the housekeeper’s reverent hands, but otherwise untouched, since Lady Barbara Overshott, the friend and correspondent of Pope and Addison, was found by her distracted husband sitting stone dead at her spinet before the newly-copied score of the “Ode on Saint Cecilia’s Day,” which had been sent her with the united compliments of the author and the composer. The furniture of the boudoir was of the reign of William and Mary, the walls panelled with pink lacquer beaded with ormolu, the shelves, brackets and cabinets laden with priceless specimens of crackle ware—the joy of the connoisseur and the envy of the collector.

“Thank you,” said Polly, taking the key. “I was anxious to see for myself how many of Lady Bab’s vases and bowls are left to us.” She looked very tall and very fair, and rather terrifying as she confronted Sir Giles. They were in the hall of Overshott, the doors of which stood wide open to the faint September breeze and the hot September sunshine, and Sir Giles, who was going to luncheon at The Sabines, was putting on a thin dust-coat in preparation for the drive. He jumped at the reference to the crackle.

“I suppose Mrs. Brownlow has told you that I have removed a piece or two,” he said, bungling with the sleeves of his dust-coat, for lack of the daughterly hitch at the back of the collar which would have induced the refractory garment to go on.

“Mrs. Brownlow has told me that a baker’s dozen of bowls and vases and plaques and teapots—the cream of the collection, in fact,” said Polly, “are adorning Mrs. Osborne’s drawing-room.”

“Confound it!” said Sir Giles, as he struggled with his garment. “The crockery isn’t entailed; and if I desire to give a teapot to a friend I suppose I can do as I like with my own! And—I can’t keep the cart waiting. Fanchon won’t stand.”

“Undoubtedly,” said Polly, becoming cool as Sir Giles grew warm. “Only—if you are going on giving teapots to friends, and there is a hamper of china at this moment under the seat of the cart—I think it would be advisable to change the name of the Crackle-Room. One might call it the ‘Plundered Apartment,’ or something equally appropriate.”

“Call it what you choose, my dear.” Sir Giles was now recovering from the shock of the unexpected onslaught. “I have said the crackle is no more entailed than Overton Foxshott or the Lowndes Square house—or anything else that at present I may call my own. If I were a younger man, I might plunder my mother and disappoint my promised wife for the pleasure of making a considerable present of jewelry to a woman ten years my senior. As it is——”

Sir Giles did not finish the speech, but strode angrily out and got into the cart, and gave Polly a short, gruff “Good-bye,” as he drove away, leaving that puzzled young woman on the doorsteps.

“‘Plunder my mother and disappoint my promised wife.... Present of jewelry ... a woman ten years his senior.’... Can Cis have been giving jewels to Mrs. Osborne?” Polly wondered. The course of her love affair had run so smoothly that she was at a loss to account for the pain at her heart and the fever in her veins. Sir Giles’s complaint she diagnosed correctly. He was jealous ... jealous of Cis! He was angry with Polly. He had reminded her that he could do as he liked with his own, that the county might call her an heiress, but the county had no certain grounds for the assertion. Jealous and angry, the dear, cheery Dad. Because Cis chose to loll upon the grass at the skirts of a woman who was his senior by many more years than ten. Polly ordered round Kiss-me-Quick, and rode over to Hengs Hall, pondering these things in her mind. Much had been revealed to her, but it was for Lady Smithgill to lift the last corner of the veil and disclose to Cis’s future wife the true meaning of Sir Giles’s reference to jewels.

“So Cis gave her the pearls, and Dad has given her the crackle to recover lost ground. Mrs. Osborne must be a clever woman,” Polly reflected, as she rode slowly home through the sunset lanes on Kiss-me-Quick.

“How was it going to end, all this?

“If Dad married Mrs. Osborne, it will be extremely unpleasant to possess a stepmother who has been made love to by one’s husband. And should Mrs. Osborne succeed in marrying Cis——” Polly tightened the reins involuntarily, and Kiss-me-Quick quickened her paces. “Let her, if she wants him. No; let him if he wants her. But first—oh, first—there will be a Tug of War! I will not endure to be routed on my own ground by this designing charlataness,” thought Polly.

In London it might have happened—almost without remark. But here—here in the open—under familiar pitying, curious eyes.... Never, never, never! And with each repetition of the word Kiss-me-Quick danced at a cut of the whip. For Polly was humane, yet human.

The double report of a gun in one of the Heng coppices gave Kiss-me-Quick an excuse for more dancing, and presently, as Polly looked, shading her blue eyes with her half-gauntleted right hand, Cis and a keeper came plainly into view. She pulled up Kiss-me-Quick and waited, as the young man, leaving his gun with the keeper, crossed the hot stubbles dangling a brace of birds.

“Why, Polly dear!” He tried to look natural and at ease as he lifted his leather cap from his crisp brown waves. “If you had told me you thought of riding over to see the mother, I’d have called for you and brought you over.”

“It was a sudden idea, Cis,” Polly said, as she gave him her gloved hand.

“Can you tie these birds on the saddle—or shall I send them over?” asked Cis, glad of an excuse that made it possible to fix his eyes below the level of hers. “They’re clean shot,” he added.

“Fasten them on—there’s a strap in the saddle pocket—and I will leave them at The Sabines as I pass!” said Polly cheerfully.

Cis’s jaw dropped: he turned pale under his sun tan. “Leave them at The Sabines!” he repeated blankly.

“I thought,” said Polly, bending a cool, amused glance upon her lover’s perturbed countenance, “that you meant them for Mamma. To be sure, she is not Mamma yet, but it is a pretty compliment to treat her as though she were already Papa’s wife—taking the pearls to show her before you brought them to me! I call it quite sweet of you!” Polly ended.

“I—I!” The young man’s face was an extraordinary study. “I am so glad you’re pleased,” he stuttered.

“Dad is with her to-day,” went on Polly, stroking Kiss-me-Quick’s glossy neck with her whip-lash. “He took her over a cargo of crackle china out of Lady Bab’s room. China is a taste one begins to cultivate at her age, dear thing, and I suppose they are having a nice, quiet, cosy afternoon, arranging the pieces. She has her fads, Dad has his, and I am sure they will get on excellently together. Dear me! how warm you are! Come to tea to-morrow! Good-bye!”

And Polly rode quickly away. Sore as she was, angry and jealous as she was, she laughed as the vision of Cis’s hot, astonished, indignant face rose before her. She laughed again as she turned in at the bridle-gate of The Sabines. But she was grave and earnest as she dismounted at the hall-door and followed Ames, the butler, down the long, cool hall to the drawing-room.

“Miss Overshott.”

The announcement made Sir Giles attempt to get up from the footstool on which he was sitting, but he did not succeed at the first attempt, thanks to his rheumatism, and his daughter’s eye lighted on him at once.

“Don’t move, Dad, dearest. Why should you? Oh! Mrs. Osborne!” Polly flew to the fair widow, who advanced, cool, smiling, and exquisitely clad, to greet her visitor. “Oh, Mrs. Osborne, I am so—so glad!” Polly seemed choking with joyful tears as she caught the rounded waist of Melusine in her strong young embrace, and vigorously kissed the exquisitely powdered cheeks. “And I may call you Mamma—mayn’t I?”

“Mamma?” echoed Sir Giles, sitting puzzled on the footstool.

“Mamma?” re-echoed Mrs. Osborne in cooing accents of surprise.

“You see, Dad has told me all,” explained Polly, turning beaming, childlike eyes of happiness upon the embarrassed pair. “Though Cis knew before I did, and I hardly call that quite fair. But as he is to be your son, dear Mrs. Osborne—as I am to be your daughter——Why, there is the crackle arranged upon your cabinets already! How nice it looks! But it will all be yours, presently, won’t it, Mamma?” Polly gave Mrs. Osborne another kiss, and then fluttered over to Sir Giles, who sat petrified upon the footstool, and gave him a couple. “You mustn’t be jealous,” she said, “you foolish old Dad! And now, Mamma darling, won’t you give me some tea?”

“Dear Mary, with pleasure!” assented Mrs. Osborne, who knew that her hand had been forced, and yet could not help admiring the audacity of the coup. As her graceful form undulated to the tea-table, she cast a glance at Sir Giles, raising her beautifully tinted eyebrows almost to her golden-brown curls. She gave him credit for being a party to the plot, while he, poor astonished gentleman, was as innocent as a new-born babe. In the passing out of a cup of tea she realized that a double game was no longer possible, and that Polly Overshott had the stronger hand. “Your father,” she said, as she gave Polly her tea, “has enlisted a powerful advocate. All was not so settled as you seem to think, dear Mary, but——” And she sighed, and extended her white hand to Sir Giles, and helped him up from the footstool; and he was in the act of gracefully kissing that fair hand as Cis, in riding-dress, pale, agitated, and breathless from the gallop over, was ushered in.

“Cis!” cried Polly, realizing that the supreme moment of the Tug of War was now or never. Her eyes were blue fires, her cheeks red ones, as she moved swiftly and gracefully to her lover and led him forward. “Kiss Mamma and shake hands with Dad,” she said, and added with a coquetry of which Cis had never thought her capable: “and then, perhaps, you may kiss me.” Bewildered, choking with the reproaches, the recriminations with which he was bursting, and which it need hardly be explained were intended for Mrs. Osborne’s private ear, the young man obeyed.

“I—I congratulate you both,” he said thickly. Mrs. Osborne had never felt so little the niceties of a situation in her life. Nonplused, angry, and perturbed, she looked every hour of her age, despite pink curtains; and the powder only served to accentuate the suddenly revealed hollows in her face. Polly, as I have explained, had never worn such an air of coquetry, of brilliancy, of dare-devil, defiant mastery as she now displayed. But her final blow was to be dealt—and she dealt it.

“Mamma darling,” she cooed, taking the vacated stool at Mrs. Osborne’s feet—the stool contested for by both the discomfited wooers—“how cosy we are here—all together! Won’t you please Dad—and me—and Cis—by bringing out the pearls!”

“The—pearls!” Mrs. Osborne said. An electric shock went through her; she turned stabbing eyes upon the speechless Cis. And Sir Giles, studying her face, made up his mind that he would never marry that woman—not if Polly did her level best to bring the match about.

While Polly prattled on.

“The pearls, of course. I told Cis I thought it sweet of him to bring them to show you—as though I were really your daughter, don’t you know. And if you will fasten them round my neck yourself, I shall think it sweet of you. Where have you hidden them? Why, I believe you are wearing them now—to keep them warm for me—under your lace cravat, you dear, darling thing!”

The affectionate daughter-elect raised a guileless hand and twitched the jewels into sight.

Mrs. Osborne, ashy pale, and with Medea-like eyes, unfastened the jewels from her throat.

“Here they are, dear Mary. Take them—and may they bring you all the happiness I wish you!” said Mrs. Osborne in cooing accents.

Polly could not restrain a little shudder, but she was grave.

“Now Cis and I will go,” she said, when the pearls were fastened round her neck over the neat white collar. “I am sure you and Dad want to be alone. Come, Cis dear.”

And she kissed Mrs. Osborne again, and bore Cis—not unwilling, strangely fascinated by the new Polly so suddenly made manifest—away. They were riding slowly home to dinner at Overshott Foxbrush, when the sound of wheels rattling behind them, and Fanchon’s well-known trot, brought a covert smile to Polly’s lips.

Mrs. Osborne had a headache, Sir Giles explained, and so he had decided not to remain to dinner.

But father, daughter, and betrothed dined pleasantly at Overshott Foxbrush. And when the dazzled Cis said good-night to the triumphant Polly, the valediction was uttered unwillingly with as many repetitions as there were pearls in the string Miss Overshott wore round her firm white throat.

There was no gas laid on at Overshott. Bedroom candlesticks were an unabolished institution. As Sir Giles gave his daughter hers, he spoke.

“You were a little premature in your conclusions, my girl, at The Sabines to-day. I won’t ask why you played that little comedy, because I know.... But you played it well ... and I don’t think Cis will kick over the traces in that direction again. Nor do I think”—the Colonel cleared his throat rather awkwardly—“that you are going to have Mrs. Osborne for your second mother. She is too clever—and so are you! Good-night, my dear!”