Certainly the quartette made a very agreeable party in Madeira. It proved to be as happily composed as the Major had anticipated. The two elders enjoyed the sunshine, the fine nights, the casino, much gossip with one another and with casual coevals who had anything to add. The young couple made their excursions, had their bath and a little lawn-tennis (Winnie could not be roused to enthusiasm over this), gambled mildly and danced enthusiastically. Not all these things with one another exclusively. There were other young women there, and other young men. The Major was in request among the former; Winnie among the latter. There was no overdoing of the tÊte-À-tÊte. Among the colours, the flowers, and the fun, life ran very pleasantly.

But Mrs. Lenoir was a little impatient. Her pet scheme seemed to hang fire. She could not quite make out why. It was not, she thought, the other young men and women; there was no sign of any foreign attraction such as might induce either of her predestined lovers to wander from the appointed path. Yet the Major's advances were, in her judgment, painfully deliberate, and Winnie's good fellowship with him was almost demonstratively unsentimental. Mrs. Lenoir felt her experience at fault; she had expected that, in such a favourable climate, the affair would ripen more quickly. But there are ways of forcing plants, and she was a skilful gardener.

One day, a week after the party had arrived on the island, she came out into the hotel garden after lunch and settled herself, with the General's gallant assistance, in a long chair; the spot commanded a view over the harbour. The General, his offices performed, sat in a shorter chair and smoked his cigar. Far below them the ramshackle pretty town seemed to blink in the sunshine; a rather sleepy blinking is the attitude it takes towards existence, except when a tourist ship comes in, or a squadron of men-of-war. Then it sits up, and eats, and anon sleeps again.

"I suppose, when they come down from the Mount, they'll go straight to the casino," said the General.

"Yes, I told them we'd meet them there. Hugh!"

She did not very often call him Hugh. In the use of his name he was in the habit of recognizing some rather special call on his services or his attention.

"Yes, my dear Clara? Now you're not going to worry about your share of the wine again?"

"No," said she, smiling, "I'm not. I've a little confession to make to you. I told you a fib about Winnie. I told you the fib I told everybody—that she was a distant cousin. She isn't. I met her at some friends'—very nice people. She was quite adrift. I asked her to come to me for a bit, and we got on so well that she's stayed. She's an orphan, I know—her father was a parson—and I think she's quite alone in the world, though she has a small income." She laughed. "You see what a long story it is. With most people it's so much easier to tell the little fib. But I've told you the truth about her now." Yet not all the truth. Mrs. Lenoir's conscience certainly seemed sometimes to work on easy springs.

"Thank you for telling me, Clara. I suppose I know why you told me. But I think my boy knows already that, if he has any designs about Miss Winnie, he'll not find me an obstacle. Only she doesn't seem to me to be anything more than friendly towards him."

"Well, she'd naturally wait for a lead, wouldn't she?"

"You think it's that?" Mrs. Lenoir's slight wave of her fan was non-committal. "He's a very conscientious fellow. He looks at a thing all round. I'm sure he'd consider not only whether he liked her, but whether he could satisfy her—whether the life he could offer her would be to her liking. Being a soldier's wife isn't all beer and skittles. And getting on with all the regiment!"

"Dear me, is there all that to consider?" Her tone was playful, yet rather contemptuous. "It doesn't look as if he was desperately in love."

"Men differ," mused the General. "Look at my three sons. Bertie's as I tell you—slow and solid—make an excellent husband to a woman of sense. The Colonel never looks at a woman, so far as I know. George runs after every petticoat he meets, and hangs the consequences—confound him!"

"And which," asked Mrs. Lenoir, "is most like father, Hugh?"

"Ancient history, ancient history!" he murmured, half in pleasure, half in contrition, yet with a glance at his companion. "Shall I tell him what you've told me about Miss Winnie?"

"Just as you like." She laughed. "I don't think he's gone far enough to have any rights yet, you know."

"I don't think he has," agreed the General, laughing too—and not aware of the bearings of his admission.

Mrs. Lenoir, however, treasured it in her armoury: she might have need of it. Plainly the General might consider that, confession once begun, confession ought to have gone further. She had the same plausible answers she had given to Winnie herself. She had another; she acknowledged her own fib, but she would plead that she had no right to betray her friend. In the end she had not much doubt that she could manage the General. She had managed him before—in a much more difficult case; and he was very fond of Winnie. Something of partisanship influenced her mood; the free lance renewed memories of old raids in this little skirmish against convention; she was minded to fight at the best advantage she could—with the father 'contained' and the son as deeply committed to his position as she could get him before the blow was struck.

As a result of this conversation the General carried away an uneasy idea—born of the confidence so pointedly reposed in him, enforced by the slight touch of contempt in Mrs. Lenoir's voice—that one of the ladies, even possibly both, considered his son, if not a laggard, yet at least somewhat prosaically circumspect in his love-making. Such a view, if really entertained, did some injustice to Bertie Merriam. He was not impulsive; he was not passionate. He took time to make up his mind. It would be almost true to say that, before falling in love, he made up his mind that he would—not the commonest order of events. But he had pretty well made up his mind by now. Only he received very little encouragement. Winnie was always 'jolly' to him; but she asked nothing of him, made no special claims on him—and took the same liberty as she accorded. In the pleasant round of their life he was one comrade among many; more intimate than the rest, no doubt, by reason of his habitual escort, the excursions, and the messing together at table, but not different in kind. Vaguely the Major felt that there was some barrier, real but imperceptible, which he could not pass—a thing made up out of a thousand unobtrusive trifles, yet composing in the mass a defence that he could not see how to penetrate.

There was a curious little man in the hotel—a man of about forty-five, short, bald, shabby, yet clean, though he did not bathe. In fact he did nothing—no excursions, no sports, no dancing, no flirtation. He did not even read; he sat about—meditating, it must be presumed. Something in him made the girls giggle and the men wink, as he passed by; the men said 'Dotty!' and the girls sniggered at the witticism. His name, sought out in the hotel register, proved to be Adolphus Wigram. The wit who had made the search called him 'Dolly'—and the name became his at once, varied back to 'Dotty' sometimes by an ultra-witticism.

When Winnie came home from the casino this evening, having some minutes to spare before dressing for dinner, she went on to the hotel balcony, which overlooks the town from a loftier and, so to say, a more condescending altitude than the garden. She rested her elbows on the balcony and surveyed the beauty of the scene, so artfully composed of hill and slope and sea that one can hardly conceive it the outcome of nature's mere—and probably violent—caprice. She was lost in thought, and was startled to find elbows on a level with hers and a head in close neighbourhood, though rather lower. She recognized 'Dolly'—in the shabbiest of all suits, looking meditatively down on the lights of the town and harbour of Funchal.

"Quite a small place, Miss Wilson," said 'Dolly.' "Full of people!"

"I suppose it is," Winnie agreed politely. She had come out on the balcony occupied with another question than the population of Madeira.

"I tried to understand things once—to grasp them in the large, you know. Seems easy to some people, but I couldn't do it. I teach history. I was a bit overworked; some of my friends subscribed to send me out here for just a fortnight. Doing me good."

Winnie turned her face towards the funny jerky little man. "Are you going to grasp things in the large when you get back?" she asked.

"No, no; I'm afraid not. Thirty thousand or so of them down there, I suppose! All thinking they're very important. All being born, or dying, or love-making, or starving, or filling their bellies, and so on. Quite a small place!"

Winnie smiled. "Yes, I dare say. It sounds true, but rather trite. I have problems of my own, Mr. Wigram."

"So have I—income, and taxation, and necessary expenditure. Still, these thirty thousand are interesting."

"They're awfully lucky to want very few clothes and hardly any fires, and to live in such a beautiful place. What do you mean by things in the large, Mr. Wigram?"

"Well, I mean truth," said the absurd little man, clutching the balcony railings, just as if he were going to vault over them and crack his skull on the nut-shaped stones which served for a path thirty or forty feet beneath. "Truth is things in the large, you know."

"I don't think I know that, but I know a friend in England who talks rather like you."

"Poor devil! How much money does he make?"

"He's got independent means, Mr. Wigram."

"Then he can afford to talk a great deal better."

"You really make me rather uncomfortable. Surely everybody can say what they like nowadays?"

The little man gave an abrupt hoarse laugh. "I teach history in a school, and get a hundred and fifty pounds a year for it. Can I say what I like? Do I tell the truth about the history? Oh dear, no!"

"I've got just a hundred and fifty pounds a year. Can I do what I like?" asked Winnie.

'Dolly' turned to her with a queer ridiculous solemnity. "It seems to me," he observed, "a competency for an able-bodied young woman. I don't know what you can do, but I think you're quite in a position to tell the truth—if you happen to know it. Anybody dependent on you?"

"Not a soul," smiled Winnie.

"I've a mother and an unmarried sister. You see the difference? I think I heard the gong. Good evening."

"Good evening, Mr. Wigram." Winnie rushed in to dress for dinner, pitiful, smiling, and thoughtful.

The quartette was not as merry as usual that evening. Bertie Merriam was rather glum, and when Winnie perceived it she grew remorseful. Up at the Mount he had, at last, shown signs of making a definite advance; if she had not snubbed him, she had at least fought him off by affected unconsciousness of his meaning, by persistent unsentimentality. It was almost against her own will; she could not help it; the instinct in her was irresistible. She might have been equal to standing by Tora Aikenhead's view—"As long as my own conscience is clear, it's no affair of yours what I did before I knew you, and I shan't say a word about it." She could certainly have followed Stephen's atavistic 'public-school' idea of honour with perfect readiness. These were both, in their different ways, forms of defiance. But Mrs. Lenoir's compromise—"I'll wait till the truth can't hurt me, though it may hurt you"—was not defiance; it was deceit. Under the influence of gratitude to the friend to whom she owed so much kindness, and of the deference which she honestly accorded to her adviser's experience and wisdom, she had accepted it. All very well to accept it in words! She found that she could not act upon it. Instead of making Bertie Merriam like her so well that the truth could be told to him without risk—or, at any rate, with the minimum of risk—she was spending her time in trying to prevent him from liking her in that way at all. If she went on, she would succeed; he was sensitive, proud, easy to discourage. Yet, as things stood, she knew that she would not be able to resist going on. Then it came to this—Mrs. Lenoir's compromise would not work. It might or might not be justifiable, but it simply would not work in Winnie's hands. She could not carry it out, because it meant in the end that she was to behave just as Godfrey Ledstone had. The gravamen of his offence was that he had been ashamed of her; now she was being ashamed of herself. He had conceded to his family the right to think her shameful; she was allowing the same right to the Major, and merely trying to curry favour enough to override his judgment. Such a course was not only flat against her theories; it was flat against the nature which had produced the theories. And, in practice, it resulted in a deadlock; it kept the Major at a standstill. He did not retreat, because his feelings dictated an advance. He could not advance, because she would not let him. There he stuck—up against that impalpable, impenetrable barrier.

"I've been talking—out on the balcony—with that funny little man they call 'Dolly,'" she remarked. "He told me that, if you had nobody dependent on you, and had a hundred and fifty pounds a year, you were in a position to tell the truth."

"Is it exactly a question of what money you've got, Miss Winnie?" asked the General.

She let the question pass. "Anyhow, that happens to be exactly my income. Rather funny!" She looked across the small table at Mrs. Lenoir—and was not surprised to find that Mrs. Lenoir was looking at her already.

"I suppose he meant that if you weren't absolutely obliged to get or keep some job——" the Major began.

"That's what he meant; and there's a lot in it, isn't there, Major Merriam?"

"Well, it's not what we're taught at school, but perhaps there is."

"More luxuries for the rich," smiled Mrs. Lenoir.

"The Radicals can make a new grievance out of it at the next election," said the General.

Of course, the two men did not know what underlay Winnie's talk. Equally of course, Mrs. Lenoir did; she saw it in a minute, and her reading hardly needed the confirmation of Bertie's glum demeanour. Winnie was in rebellion—probably in irreconcilable rebellion. Mrs. Lenoir glanced across at her with a satirically protesting smile. Winnie smiled back, but her eyes were resolute—rather merrily resolute, as though she liked this new taste of her favourite cup of defiance.

"There are times and seasons," said Mrs. Lenoir. "Isn't there even a thing called the economy of truth? I don't think I know the exact doctrine."

"You wouldn't tell a child everything—or a fool either," observed the General.

"Would you choose the wrong time to tell the truth to anybody?" Mrs. Lenoir asked.

"Are you entitled to settle what's the right time—all by yourself?" Winnie retorted gaily. Her spirits had begun to rise. This was almost like a discussion at Shaylor's Patch. There was a deeper reason. With her determination had come a sense of recovered honesty, and, more, of liberty regained. Whatever the Merriams might think, she would be herself again—herself and no longer Miss Winnie Wilson, a young person whom, in the last week or so, she had begun to hate cordially.

Winnie did not go to the casino that evening; she left the General and his son to walk there together. She followed Mrs. Lenoir into the drawing-room, and sat down by her.

"So you've made up your mind, Winnie?" Mrs. Lenoir did not seem angry or hurt. She merely recognized Winnie's resolution.

"Yes. I can't go on with it. And it's a good moment. The newspapers come to-morrow, and, if what Hobart Gaynor told me was right, there'll be something about me in them."

"Yes, I remember. Well, if you're set on doing it, that doesn't make such a bad—occasion." Mrs. Lenoir was considering how the 'occasion' could best be twisted into a justification of previous silence. With the Major that would not be so much a pressing question—other factors would probably decide his action—but it was a point that her friend the General might raise. She looked thoughtfully at Winnie. "How much do you like him?" she asked.

"I like him as much as I know him, but I don't know him very much. I shall know a little more to-morrow." She paused. "I should like the life, the whole thing, very much, I think."

"She's not in love, but she'd take him," Mrs. Lenoir inwardly interpreted.

"I'm sorry to act against your advice, after all you've done for me. It does look ungrateful."

"Oh, I don't expect people to give up their liberty, just because I'm fond of them." She rose. "I'm off to my room, my dear. Good night—and good luck."

Winnie went out on the balcony, to seek for Mr. Adolphus Wigram and some more talk about truth. But he was not there; he had gone down to the casino, where he lost exactly half a dollar with unbroken bad luck every night—probably one of the things which the claims of his family and the figure of his salary would cause him to suppress the truth about when he got back to his school. So she remembered that there was an impromptu dance going on downstairs, and went and danced and flirted furiously till midnight. The girls said that they had never seen Miss Wilson look so well, and never had the young men crowded round Miss Wilson so eagerly. In fact Miss Wilson had her fling. Small blame to her. It was the last night of her life—at least, so far as that life had any real significance. Though Winnie did not propose to change her name in the hotel book or on the lips of casual companions during her stay in Madeira, yet for essential purposes that night saw an end of Miss Winnie Wilson.

Since English newspapers arrive in the island only once a week, the competition for them on the mail day is formidable. Persons who combine agility and selfishness with a healthy interest in public affairs may be observed sitting on five copies of their favourite journal, reading a sixth, and anon glaring angrily round at potential applicants for one of the spare copies. Winnie took no part in the scramble, and attacked nobody's reserve pile of intelligence. She knew that her paper would come in a separate wrapper, addressed to her personally by Hobart Gaynor; she wanted only one day's paper.

She found it laid by her plate at lunch—a meal which passed in the discussion of the news of the world; the Major had been a successful competitor in the struggle, and was well-primed. Winnie rose when coffee appeared, her paper in her hand. She addressed Bertie Merriam rather pointedly.

"I'm going into the garden—that seat under the trees. You know?"

"I'll come too. Directly I've drunk my coffee." As Winnie walked off he exchanged a glance with his father. They had had a confidential little talk at the casino the evening before, in which Winnie's behaviour was the subject of some puzzled comment. This invitation to the garden looked more promising. Mrs. Lenoir was busy reading a letter. Winnie had read one letter too—from Hobart Gaynor, telling her all she needed to know, and referring her to a certain page of her paper.

Yes, there it was—very short, matter-of-fact, and hard. Well, what else should it be? Only it seemed oddly to reproduce Cyril Maxon himself. The report sounded as if his exact words, nay, his very tones, had been caught; they seemed to echo in her ears; she almost heard him saying it all. And what more appropriate, what so inevitable, an ending could there be to Cyril's utterances than the words which closed this brief record—'Judgment accordingly'? Those words might always have been written at the end of Cyril's remarks. 'Judgment accordingly.' It seemed to sum up, as well as to close, the story of her relations with him. From the beginning right through to this, the end, on her and her works—on all she did and was—there had been 'Judgment accordingly.'

She let the copy of the Times fall on her lap, and sat idle—waiting for Bertie Merriam, yet not thinking much of him. The figure of 'Dolly' shuffled into view. The odd little man was smoking a cigarette, and, in the intervals of puffing, was apparently talking to himself in a cheerful and animated way—no sounds, but the lips moved quickly. As he passed, Winnie hailed him. "Had your mail, Mr. Wigram?"

He stopped. "I've had good news, Miss Wilson—good news from home. They've raised my salary."

"Oh, I am glad, Mr. Wigram."

"A twenty-pound rise, Miss Wilson. Well, I've done fifteen years. But still it's liberal." He seemed to swell a little. "And it's a recognition. I value it as a recognition." The transient swelling subsided. "And it'll help," he ended soberly.

"Shall you be able to tell the truth to any greater extent, Mr. Wigram?"

"Oh, I think not, I think not. I—I hadn't thought of it from that point of view, Miss Wilson."

"I've had no rise in my income, but I'm going to do it."

He was not really listening. He gave a feeble cackle of a laugh. "I'm just making a few calculations, Miss Wilson." On he went, apportioning every penny of that hard-earned increase of twenty pounds per annum. Valuable—but not enough to enable him to teach true history.

Major Merriam sauntered towards her with his cigar. He was really rather eager, but he did not look it. The invitation might be merely a tardy apology for the snubs of yesterday.

"May I sit down by you?"

"Please do. Have you seen the Times?"

"I looked through the lot of them."

"Have you seen this one—the 26th?" She held up her copy.

"I suppose I have. I had a run through them all."

"Read that." Her finger indicated the report.

He read it; the process did not take long. He took his cigar out of his mouth. "Well, Miss Wilson?"

"I was Mrs. Maxon; that's all," said Winnie.