THE next day Mr. Grant hired a saddle-horse, and rode up to London, where, among other business, he made the call at Bendibow Bank, which has been already mentioned. His affair with that institution having been arranged, presumably to the satisfaction of both parties, Mr. Grant set out on his return home. As it was already six o’clock, however, he stopped at the “Holy Lands” hotel in the Strand, where he dined. By the time he was ready to resume his journey it was nearly dark, the rather as the night was moonless, and the sky was overlaid with heavy clouds. Partly by chance, partly because he fancied it would save him some distance, he took the northern or Uxbridge road, instead of that which goes through Kensington. After passing the northwest corner of Kensington Gardens, this road lay through a region which was, at that epoch, practically uninhabited. Mr. Grant rode easily along, absorbed in thought, and only occasionally taking note of his direction. He was a practiced horseman, and riding was as natural to him as walking. It was a very still night, though a storm might be brewing; and the only sounds audible to Mr. Grant’s ears were the steady tramp of his horse’s feet, the slight creaking of the saddle, and the rattle of the bit as the animal flung up his head. By-and-by, however, the rider fancied he heard the noise of another horse’s hoofs beating the road at a gallop, and coming up behind him. He drew his left rein a little, and glanced over his shoulder.

Meanwhile, at Mrs. Lockhart’s house in Hammersmith, dinner was ready at the usual time; but as Mr. Grant did not appear, it was resolved to wait for him. He had informed Mrs. Lockhart, previous to setting out, that it was his intention to go to London, and added that he might be detained some hours by business. No anxiety was felt, therefore: but, as Marion observed, dinner would not seem like dinner without Mr. Grant; and it was not worth while sitting down to table so long as any chance remained of his being present. Accordingly, the dishes were put to warm in front of the kitchen fire; and Marion and Lancaster went to the piano, and tried to set to music some words that the latter had written. But singing conduces to appetite; and appetite will get the better even of sentiment. When more than half an hour had added itself to the abyss of the past, it was generally admitted that Mr. Grant was hopelessly derelict, and neglectful of his social duties: the dishes were brought in from the kitchen, and the trio seated themselves at table, with Mr. Grant’s chair gaping vacantly at them all.

Now, whether a man be well or ill spoken of behind his back, depends not so much upon the man himself as upon those who speak of him; but probably the worst thing that can happen to him is not to be spoken of at all. Mr. Grant fared well in all respects; he was spoken of, he was well spoken of, he was well spoken of by honest people; and it may not be too much to add that he was not undeserving of having honest people speak well of him. The goodness of some good men is a long time in getting the recognition that it deserves; that of others is appreciated at once; nor does it follow that the latter’s virtues are necessarily shallower or less honorable than those of the former. Ten days ago, for example, Mr. Grant had been as good as non-existent to the three persons who were now discussing him with so much interest and even affection. There was something in his face, in his glance, in the gradual, kindly brightening of his smile, in the pleasant melody of his voice, in the manly repose of his general walk and conversation, that inevitably inspired respect and liking in such persons as were disinterestedly susceptible of those sentiments. And yet Mr. Grant was far from being handsome either in face or figure; and no one knew what his life had been, what was his social position, whether he were rich or poor, or wherefore he was living in lodgings at Hammersmith; none of which subjects of inquiry are apt to be disregarded in the life of a country so compact and inquisitive as England. But even in England, sheer and naked individuality has vast weight, altogether unaccountable upon any general theory whatever: and Mr. Grant was in this way the passive subject of a special social dispensation.

“He told me last night,” remarked Lancaster, “that he had been living in India for the last twenty years. I had been puzzling myself whom he reminded me of—physically, I mean; and that enlightened me. You have probably seen the man I mean, Mrs. Lockhart. I saw him the year he was acquitted, when I was eight or nine years old; and I never forgot his face—Warren Hastings.”

Mrs. Lockhart replied that she had never seen Mr. Hastings, but she was sure Mr. Grant bore no resemblance to him in character. Mr. Hastings was a cruel and ambitious man; whereas Mr. Grant was the most humane man she had ever known, except the Major, and as simple as a child.

“There is mystery about him, too,” said Lancaster.

“Not the kind of mystery that makes you suspicious though,” said Marion. “I feel that what he hides would make us like him better if we knew it.”

“What I hide is of another color,” observed Lancaster.

“I’m sure it can be nothing bad,” said Mrs. Lockhart.

Marion broke out, “So am I! Mr. Lancaster thinks it would be picturesque and poetical to be wicked, and so he is always talking about it. If he had really done anything wicked, he would be too vain to make a mystery of it; he could not help telling. But he has only been good so far, and he has not outgrown being ashamed of it. If he had committed more sins, the people in his poetry would have committed much fewer.”

When Marion struck, she struck with all her might, and reckless of consequences. Mrs. Lockhart sat appalled, and Lancaster winced a little; but he was able to say good-humoredly, “I shall give up being a hypocrite; everybody finds me out. If I were a whited sepulchre, detection would not humiliate me; but when a bottle labeled ‘Poison’ is found to contain nothing worse than otto of roses, it can never hold up its head again.”

“Anybody can say what they please,” rejoined Marion; “but what they do is all that amounts to anything.”

“That is to say you are deaf, but you have eyes.”

“That is a more poetical way of putting it, I suppose. But some words are as good as deeds, and I can hear those.”

“It is not your seeing or hearing that troubles me, but your being able to read. If I had only been born an Arab or an ancient Hebrew, I might have written without fear of your criticism.”

“I suppose you wish me to say that I would learn those languages for the express purpose of enjoying your poetry. But I think you are lucky in having to write in plain English. It is the most difficult of all languages to be wicked in—genteelly wicked, at least.”

“You convince me, however, that it must have been the original language spoken by Job’s wife, when she advised him to curse God and die. If she had been as much a mistress of it as you are, I think he would have done it.”

“If he had been a poet, ’tis very likely.”

“I hope,” said Mrs. Lockhart with gentle simplicity, “that nothing has happened to Mr. Grant.”

Lancaster and Marion both turned their faces toward the window, and then Lancaster got up from the table—they had finished dinner—and looked out. “It has grown dark very suddenly,” he remarked. “I fear Mr. Grant will get wet if he does not return soon.”

Marion also arose and stood at the other side of the window. After a while she said, “I should like to be out in such a night as this.”

“I hate darkness,” returned Lancaster. “Come what come may, as long as I have a light to see it by.”

“I love darkness, because then I can see my mind. When father was alive, and I had more time to do what I wished, I used to lie awake at night as much as in the day-time.”

“Your mind must be fuller of light than most people’s, if you can see it only in the darkness.”

“I am light-minded—is that what you mean?”

“No, I am serious. You never are serious except when you are angry.”

“If I am never serious, I must be light-minded. Very likely I am light-headed, too, sometimes; mother has often told me so. I like to be out in the rain, and to get my feet wet and muddy. I should like to have been a soldier in my father’s regiment; he said I would make a good soldier.”

“And shoot Frenchmen?”

“I prefer killing with a sword. Washing dishes and marketing becomes tiresome after a while. I shall probably kill the baker or the greengrocer some day; I have a terrible tongue, and if I don’t let it have its way once in a while it will become worse. Hitherto I have only broken dishes; but that is not terrible enough.”

“I’ll be hanged if I can understand you,” said Lancaster, after a pause.

“You are such a handsome man you don’t need to understand people. The object of understanding people is to get the better of them; but when one is handsome, people open their doors at once.”

“Then why don’t you open yours?”

“If I don’t, it is as much on your account as on mine.”

“How is that?”

“When I tell you that, I shall have told you a great deal. But why didn’t you protest that you had no notion you were handsome, and that I was a flatterer?”

“I know I’m handsome, and I’m glad of it.”

“Do you often speak the truth like that?”

“You get more truth out of me than I suspected of being in me. But if, some day, you provoke me to some truth that I had better have kept to myself, it will be your fault.”

“I don’t think there is much danger. I like this first truth of yours. If I were handsome I should be glad of it, too. Ugly women are suspicious, designing and jealous. They talk about the charms of a cultivated intelligence being superior, in the long run, to beauty. But beauty does not wait for the long run—it wins at once, and lets the cultivated intelligence run on to Jericho, if it likes. I imagine most cultivated intelligences would be thankful to be fools, if they could afford it.”

“But beauty doesn’t always imply folly.”

“Oh, I am speaking of women!”

“Thank you. But, speaking of women, what have you to say to the Marquise Desmoines, for instance?”

“So you know her?”

“I heard you speak of her last night as being both beautiful and clever.”

“But you know her?”

“I ran across her abroad,” said Lancaster, with an indifferent air. But before saying it he had hesitated for a moment, and Marion had noticed the hesitation.

“How did you like the Marquis?” she inquired.

“He was a very distinguished old gentleman, very punctilious and very bilious. He always wore a red ribbon in his button-hole and sat in a large arm-chair, and four times a day he had a glass of absinthe. ’Tis a wonder he lived so long.”

“Oh, did he die?”

“He is dead.”

“What did you do then?”

“I did not know of it until a few days ago. He has been dead six months.”

“Then Perdita is in England!” said Marion rapidly, meeting Lancaster’s glance with her own. Except when she was angry, or for some other reason forgot herself, she habitually avoided another person’s glance. For she was of an extremely sensitive, nervous temperament, and the “personal equation” of those with whom she conversed affected her more than physical contact would affect other people.

At this point the dialogue was interrupted by a startling glare of lightning, succeeded almost immediately by a crash of thunder so loud and so heavy as to rattle the window in its frame and jar the floor on which they stood. Marion laughed, and opening the window leaned out. Mrs. Lockhart, who had fallen into a gentle doze in her chair, awoke with a little jump and an exclamation.

“Oh, Marion ... what has gone off? Mr. Grant? Why is the window open? Dear heart! is that the rain? He will be drenched to the skin, Mr. Lancaster.”

“So will you if you don’t shut the window,” said Lancaster to Marion.

She looked round and appeared to answer, but her words were inaudible in the thunderpeal that accompanied them. The rain drove straight downwards with such force and weight that the drops might have been liquid lead. The sky was black.

“I shall take an umbrella and go out and meet him,” Marion was now heard to say.

“Oh, my child, you are mad!” cried Mrs. Lockhart. “Do put down the window, Mr. Lancaster.”

Lancaster complied. Marion glanced at him with an odd, quizzical kind of a smile. He did not know what she meant; but he joined Mrs. Lockhart in denouncing Marion’s project as impossible.

“He would be as wet as he is capable of being before you found him,” he said; “besides, he couldn’t use an umbrella on horseback; and even if you knew where he was and which road he was coming by, it’s a hundred to one you’d miss him in a night like this.”

“La! what a regiment of reasons!” she answered, with her short, irregular laugh. “I only wanted a reason for going out. As to being of use to Mr. Grant, ’twould be but a chance, of course; but so is everything for that matter.”

She did not persist in her intention, however, but began to move carelessly about the room, and made no answer to several remarks that her mother and Lancaster addressed to her.

When nearly half an hour had passed away, her bearing and aspect suddenly changed; she went swiftly out of the room, shutting the door behind her. Then the outside door was heard to open, and Marion’s step going down to the gate, which was likewise flung back; then, after a minute’s silence, the sound of voices, and Lancaster, peering out of the window, saw, by the aid of an accommodating flash of lightning, Marion and Mr. Grant (who was without his hat) coming up the paved way to the porch.

“What a strange thing!” he exclaimed. “How could she possibly have known he was coming?”

“Marion has wonderful ears,” said Mrs. Lockhart with a sigh, as if the faculty were in some way deleterious to the possessor of it. But Lancaster thought that something else besides fine hearing was involved in this matter.

The girl now came in, her cheeks flushed, her hair, face and shoulders wet, conducting Mr. Grant, with her arm under his. He was splashed and smeared with mud and looked very pale; but he smiled and said with his usual courteousness: “I am not going to spoil your carpet and chairs, dear madam. I do but show you my plight, like a truant schoolboy who has tumbled into the gutter, and then I retire for repairs.”

“No: you shall sit down here,” said Marion determinedly but quietly; and in despite of himself she led him to the stuffed easy chair which her mother had just quitted, and forced him into it. “Mr. Grant has had some hurt,” she added to the others; and to Lancaster, “Go up to his room and bring down his dressing-gown. Mother, get some water heated in the kitchen. I will attend to him.”

Her manner to the old man was full of delicate and sympathetic tenderness; to the others, of self-possessed authority. Lancaster went on his errand with a submissive docility that surprised himself. He had seen a great deal of Marion in the last few hours; but he was not sure that he had seen into her very far.

When he returned with the dressing-gown, Marion had got Mr. Grant’s coat off, and was wiping the mud from a bruised place on his right hand with her wetted handkerchief. “Nothing dangerous, thank God!” she was saying, in a soothing undertone, as Lancaster approached.

“You got a fall?” asked the latter of the elder man, who nodded in reply.

Marion said brusquely, “Don’t you see that he is too exhausted to talk? Wait, and you will know everything.”

In truth, Mr. Grant appeared a good deal shaken, and for several minutes could do little more than accept passively the ministrations that were bestowed upon him. Marion continued to direct the operations, the others assisting with abundant good will. At last Mr. Grant said:

“It is very pleasant to find you all so kind—to be so well taken care of. I fear I’m ruining your chair, Mrs. Lockhart. There was really no need for this. I am none the worse, except for the loss of a hat. Thank you, my dear; you are very good.”

“Have you had your dinner?” inquired Mrs. Lockhart.

“Yes, I am obliged to you, madam. I was belated, and.... But you must hear my adventure. I thought the highwaymen days were over in this neighborhood.”

“I wish I had been with you!” murmured Marion resentfully.

“Highwaymen? oh!” faltered Mrs. Lockhart.

“My highwayman was not so ceremonious as the best of the old-fashioned ones,” continued Mr. Grant smiling. “He came upon me just before the storm broke. I heard his horse overtaking me at a gallop, and I drew aside to let him pass. But he rode right against me—he was mounted on a very powerful animal—and nearly threw me down. As I turned toward him, he held a pistol in his hand, and fired at me. The ball knocked off my hat, and missed me. I had a heavy riding-whip, and I struck at him with it. I think I must have hit him across the wrist; at all events, he dropped the pistol. Neither of us had spoken a word. It was at that moment that the first flash of lightning came. It showed me that he was a large man, dressed in dark clothes; he put his arm across his face, as if to prevent my seeing it. The thunder was very loud, and my horse plunged and burst his girths; and I slipped to the ground. What with the rain and the noise, and the suddenness of it all, I was confused, and hardly knew what happened for a few moments. When I got on my feet again, I was alone; my highwayman had disappeared; and so had my horse, though I picked it up on the road later.”

“He may have thought, from your falling, that he had not missed his shot after all,” said Lancaster.

“It was the lightning that frightened him away,” said Marion. “He counted on darkness, and dared not risk recognition.”

“How did you get home? did you have to walk?” asked Mrs. Lockhart.

“Only a short distance. A wagon happened to come along, and the driver gave me a lift as far as the corner. And there Marion met me. What spirit told you I was coming, my dear?”

Marion replied only by a smile.

“It seems singular,” remarked Lancaster “that he should have ridden at you and fired at once, instead of going through the customary formality of inquiring whether you preferred your life to your purse. Those fellows are usually more cautious for their own sakes.”

“He was as much afraid of having his voice heard as of having his face seen,” said Marion. “He wished to kill Mr. Grant more than to rob him. You didn’t have much money with you, did you?”

“Not much, as it happened, my dear; though, as I had been to the Bank, whoever had taken the trouble to follow my movements might have inferred that I did have.”

“The Bendibow Bank?” demanded Marion.

“Yes; I introduced myself to your friend Sir Francis.”

Lancaster chanced to be looking at Marion, and noticed a troubled expression pass across her face. She laid her hand lightly on Mr. Grant’s shoulder, and passed it down his arm; the action seemed at once affectionate and reproachful. “You disapprove of that, don’t you?” the young man said to her, smiling.

The question appeared to annoy her: “I am glad he got home,” she said coldly. Then she got up and went out of the room.