The Nun stopped, walked on a few paces, came to a stand again. She was visiting Nutley in pursuance of her plan of doing, if not that undiscoverable obvious, yet the more sensible thing—of preventing the "row" and, incidentally thereto, of finding out "what the woman really wanted."

Here was the woman. Whatever she might really want, apparently she was very far from having got it yet. She also looked very different from the adversary with whom Miss Flower had pictured herself as conducting a contest of wits—quite unlike the cool, wary, dexterous woman who had played her difficult game between the two men so finely, and who might be trusted to treat her opponent to a very pretty display of fencing. The position seemed so changed that the Nun had thoughts of going back. To discover a new, and what one has considered rather a hostile, acquaintance in tears is embarrassing; and the acquaintance may well share the embarrassment.

Fortunately Isobel stopped crying. She dried her eyes and tucked away her handkerchief. The Nun advanced again. Isobel sat looking drearily over the lake.

"Dropped your sixpence in the pond, Miss Vintry?" the Nun asked.

Isobel turned round sharply.

"Because—I mean—you're not looking very cheerful."

Isobel's eyes hardened a little.

"Have you been there long?"

"I saw you were crying, if that's what you mean. I'm sorry. I couldn't help it. People should cry in their own rooms if they want to keep it quiet."

"Oh, never mind; it doesn't matter whether you saw or not. Every woman is entitled to cry sometimes."

"I don't cry myself," observed the Nun, "but of course a great many girls do."

"I daresay I shouldn't cry if I were the great Miss Doris Flower."

The Nun gurgled. That ebullition could usually be brought about by any reference to the greatness of her position, not precisely because the position was not great—rather because it was funny that it should be. She sat down beside Isobel. "Please don't tell Vivien what you saw. I don't want her to know I've been crying. She's remorseful enough as it is about her marriage costing me my 'place.'"

"Was that what you were crying about?"

"It seems silly, doesn't it? But I've been happy here, and—and they've got fond of me. And finding a new one—well, it seems like plunging into this lake on a cold day. So quite suddenly I got terribly dreary."

"Well, you've had it out, haven't you?" suggested the Nun consolingly.

"Yes; and much good it's done to the situation!" laughed Isobel ruefully. "Oh, well, I suppose my feelings are the situation—at any rate there's no other."

"Then if you feel better, things are better too."

The Nun did not feel that she was getting on much with the secret object of her visit; she even felt the impulse to get on with it weakened. She was more inclined just to have a friendly, a consoling chat. However business was business. To get on she must take a little risk. She dug the earth on the edge of the pond with the point of her sunshade and observed carelessly, "If you very particularly wanted to stay at Nutley, I should have thought you might have the chance." "Oh, are people gossiping about that? Poor Mr. Wellgood!"

"It was the observation of my own eyes," said the Nun sedately. "Oh, of course you can deny it if you like, though I don't see why you should—and I shan't believe you."

"If you've such confidence in your own eyes as that, Miss Flower, it would be wasting my breath to try to convince you. Have it your own way. But even that would be—a new place. And I've told you that I'm afraid of new places."

"All plunges aren't into cold water," the Nun observed reflectively.

"That one would be colder, I think, than a quite strange plunge—away from Nutley."

"It's a great pity we're not built so as to fall in love conveniently. It would have been so nice for you to stay—in the new place."

"I'm only letting you have it your own way, Miss Flower. I've admitted nothing."

"All that appears at present is that you needn't go if you don't like—and yet you cry about going!"

Isobel smiled.

"I might cry at leaving all my friends, especially at leaving Vivien, without wanting to stop—with Mr. Wellgood, as you insist on having it. Is that comprehensible?" "Well, I expect I've asked enough questions," said the cunning Nun, wondering hard how she could contrive to ask another—and get an answer to it. "But in Meriton there's nothing to do but gossip to and about one's friends. That's what makes it so jolly. Why, this wedding is simply occupation for all of us! What shall we do when it's over? Oh, well, I shall be gone, I suppose."

"And so shall I—so we needn't trouble about that."

The Nun was baffled. A strange impassivity seemed to fall on her companion the moment that the talk was of Harry's wedding. She tried once again.

"I do hope it'll turn out well."

Isobel offered no comment whatever. In truth she was not sure of herself; her agitation was too recent and had been too violent—it might return.

"I've known Harry for so long—and I like Miss Wellgood so much." She gave as interrogative a note as she could to her remarks—without asking direct questions. "I think he really is in love at last!" Surely, that ought to draw some question or remark—that "at last"? It drew nothing. "But—well, we used to say one never knew with poor Harry!" ("Further than that," thought the Nun, "without telling tales, I cannot go.") Isobel sat silent.

The result was meagre. Isobel would talk about Wellgood, evasively but without embarrassment; references to Harry Belfield reduced her to silence. It was a little new light on the past; its bearing on the future, if any, was negative. She would not, it seemed, stay at Nutley with Wellgood. She would not talk of Harry. She had been crying. The crying was the satisfactory feature in the case.

The Nun rose.

"I must go in and see Miss Wellgood."

"She's gone out with her father, I'm afraid. That's how I happen to be off duty."

"And able to cry?"

"Oh, I hope you'll forget that nonsense. I'm quite resigned to everything, really." She too rose, smiling at her companion. "Only I rather wish it was all over—and the plunge made!"

The Nun reported the fact of her interview—and the results, such as they were—to Miss Dutton when she returned home.

"Her crying shows that she doesn't think she's got much chance," said the Nun hopefully.

"It shows she'd take a chance, if she got one," Miss Dutton opined acutely.

"You mean it all depends on Harry, then?"

"In my opinion it always has." That indeed seemed the net result. It all depended on Harry—not at first sight a very satisfactory conclusion for those who knew Harry. However, Andy, who came into the Lion later in the afternoon, was hopeful—nay, confident. He had mysterious reasons for this frame of mind—information which he declared himself unable to disclose; he could not even indicate the source from which it proceeded, but he might say that there were two sources. He really could not say more—which annoyed the Nun extremely.

"But I think we may consider all the trouble over," he ended.

For had not Harry, when he got his note, dealt quite frankly with Andy—well, with very considerable frankness as to the past, with complete as to the future? He admitted that he had "more or less made a fool of himself," but declared that it had been mere nonsense, and was altogether over. Absolutely done with! He gave Andy his hand on that, begged his pardon for having been sulky with him, and told him that henceforward all his thoughts would be where his heart had been all through—with Vivien. If Isobel had convinced Andy, Harry convinced him ten times more. Andy had such a habit of believing people. He was not, indeed, easily or stupidly deceived by a wilful liar; but he fell a victim to people who believed in themselves, who thought they were telling the truth. It was so hard for him to understand that people would not go on feeling and meaning what they were sincerely feeling and meaning at the moment. They could convince him, if only they were convinced themselves.

"Let's think no more about it, and then we can all be happy," he said to the Nun. It really made a great difference to his happiness how Harry was behaving.

After all, it was rather hard—and rather hard-hearted—not to believe in Harry, when Harry believed so thoroughly in himself. The strongest proof of his regained self-confidence was the visit he paid to the Nun—a visit long overdue in friendship and even in courtesy. Harry asked for no forgiveness; he seemed to assume that she would understand how, having been troubled in his mind of late, he had not been in the mood for visits. He was quite his old self when he came, so much his old self that he scarcely cared to disguise the fact that he had given some cause for anxiety—any more than he expected to be met with doubt when he implied that all cause for anxiety was past. He had quite got over that attack, and his constitution was really the stronger for it. Illnesses are nature's curative processes, so the doctors tell us. Harry was always more virtuous after a moral seizure. The seizure being the effective cause of his improvement, he could not be expected to regard it with unmixed regret. If, incidentally, it witnessed to his conquering charms, he could not help that. Of course he would not talk about the thing; he did not so much mind other people implying, assuming, or hinting at it.

If the Nun obliged him at all in this way, she chose the difficult method of irony—in which not her greatest admirer could claim that she was very subtle.

"My dear Harry, I quite understand your not calling. How could you think of me when you were quite wrapped up in Vivien Wellgood? I was really glad!"

Now that Harry had come, he found himself delighted with his visit.

"Country air's agreeing with you, Doris. You look splendid." His eyes spoke undisguised admiration.

"Thank you, Harry. I know you thought me good-looking once." The Nun was meek and grateful.

Harry laughed, by no means resenting the allusion. That had been an illness, a curative process, also—though her curative measures had been rather too summary for his taste. "Whose peace of mind are you destroying down here?"

"I've a right to destroy peace of mind if I want to. It's not as if I were engaged to be married—as you are. I think Jack Rock's in most danger—or perhaps your father."

"The pater inherits some of my weaknesses," said Harry. "Or shares my tastes, anyhow."

"Yes, I know he's devoted to Vivien."

"You never look prettier than when you're trying to say nasty things."

"I'll stop, or in another moment you'll be offering to kiss me."

"Should you object?"

"Hardly worth while. It would mean nothing at all to either of us. Still—I'm not a poacher."

"You don't seem to me to be able to take a joke either." Harry's voice sounded annoyed. "But we won't quarrel. I've been through one of my fits of the blues, Doris. Don't be hard on a fellow."

"It would be so much better for you if people could be hard on you, Harry. Still you'll have to pay for it somehow. We all have to pay for being what we are—somehow. Perhaps you won't know you're paying—you'll call it by some other name; perhaps you won't care. But you'll have to pay somehow." The Nun made a queer figure of a moralist; she was really far too pretty. But her words got home to Harry—the new, the recovered, Harry.

"I have paid," he said. "Oh yes, you don't believe it, but I have! The bill's paid, and receipted. I'm starting fair now. But you never did do me justice."

"I've always done justice to what you care most about—Harry the Irresistible!"

"Oh, stop that rot!" he implored. "I'm serious, you know, Doris."

"I know all the symptoms of your seriousness. The first is wanting to flirt with somebody fresh."

Harry's laugh was vexed—but not of bitter vexation. "Give a fellow a chance!"

"The whole world's in league to do it—again and again!"

"This time the world is going to find me appreciative. You don't know what a splendid girl Vivien is! If you did, you'd understand how—how—well, how things look different."

The Nun relented. "I really think it may last you over the wedding—and perhaps the honeymoon," she said.

The extraordinary thing to her—indeed to all his friends who did not share his most mercurial temperament—was that this change of mood was entirely sincere in Harry, and his satisfaction with it not less genuine. For two painful hours—from his receipt of Isobel's note to his dispatching of that sentence about being bored with politics—he had struggled, keeping Andy in an adjoining room solaced by newspapers and tobacco, in case counsel should be needed. Then the right had won—and all was over! When all was over, it was with Harry exactly as if nothing had ever begun; his belief in the virtue of penitence beggared theology itself. What he had been doing presented itself as not merely finished, not merely repented of, but as hardly real; at the most as an aberration, at the least as a delusion. Certainly he felt hardly responsible for it. An excellent comfortable doctrine—for Harry. It rather left out of account the other party to the transaction.

What a right he had to be proud of his return to loyalty! Because Isobel Vintry was really a most attractive girl; it would be unjust and ungrateful to deny that, since she had—well, it was better not to go back to that! With which reflection he went back to it, recovering some of the emotions of that culminating evening in the drive; recovering them not to any dangerous extent—Isobel was not there, the thrill of her voice not in his ears, nor the light of her eyes visible through the darkness—but enough to make him pat his virtue on the back again, and again excuse the aberration. Oh, they had all made too much of it! A mere flirtation! Oh, very wrong! Yes, yes; or where lay the marvel of this repentance? But not so bad as all that! They had been prejudiced to think it so serious—prejudiced by Vivien's charms, her trust, her simplicity, her appeal. Yes, he certainly had been a villain even to flirt when engaged to a girl like that. However he thoroughly appreciated that aspect of the case now; it had needed this little—adventure—to make him appreciate it. Perhaps it had all been for the best. Well, that was going too far, because Isobel felt it deeply, as her words in the drive had shown. Yet perhaps—Harry achieved his climax in the thought that even for her it might have been for the best if it stopped her from marrying Wellgood. By how different a path, in how different a mood, had poor Isobel attained to laying the same unction to her smarting soul!

Wellgood did not know at all how quickly matters had moved. He was still asking about the sin—the aberration; he was not up to date with Isobel's renunciation or Harry's comfortable penitence. Nor was he of the school that accepts such things without sound proof. "Lead us not into temptation" was all very well in church; in secular life, if you suspected a servant of dishonesty, you marked a florin and left it on the mantelpiece. Had Isobel been already his wife, he would have locked her up in the nearest approach to a tower of brass that modern conditions permit; if Vivien had been already Harry's wife, he would no doubt have been in favour of Harry's being kept out of the way of dangerous seductions. But now, whether as father or as lover—and the father continued to afford the lover most valuable aid, most specious cover—he had first to know, to test, and to try. He had to leave his marked florin on the mantelpiece.

It must not, however, be supposed that Meriton lacked problems because Harry Belfield seemed, for the moment at all events, to cease to present one. For days past Billy Foot had been grappling with a most momentous one, and Mrs. Belfield's mind was occupied, and almost disturbed, by another of equal gravity. Curiously enough, the two related to the same person, and were to some degree of a kindred nature. Both involved the serious question of the social status—or perhaps the social desirability would be a better term—of Miss Doris Flower.

In the leisure hours and the autumn sunshine of Meriton—an atmosphere remote from courts, whether of law or of royalty, and inimical to ambition—Billy was in danger of forgetting the paramount claims of his career and of remembering only the remarkable prettiness of Miss Flower. He was once more "on the brink"; the metaphor of a plunge found a place in his thoughts as well as in Isobel Vintry's; some metaphors are very maids-of-all-work. He was deplorably perturbed. Now that the great campaign was over he abandoned himself to the great question. He even went up to London to talk it over with Gilly, entertaining his brother to lunch—by no means a casual or haphazard hospitality, for Gilly's meals were serious business—in order to obtain his most inspired counsel. But Gilly had been abominably, nay, cruelly disappointing.

"I shouldn't waste any more time thinking about that, old chap," said Gilly, delicately dissecting a young partridge.

"You're not going out of your way to be flattering. It appears to me at least to be a matter of some importance whom I marry. I thought perhaps my brother might take that view too."

"Oh, I do, old chap. I know it's devilish important to you. All I mean is that in this particular case you needn't go about weighing the question. Ask the Nun right off."

"You really advise it?" Billy demanded, wrinkling his brow in judicial gravity, but inwardly rather delighted. "I do," Gilly rejoined. "Ask her right off—get it off your mind! It doesn't matter a hang, because she's sure to refuse you." He smiled at his brother across the table—a table spread by that brother's bounty—in a fat and comfortable fashion.

Billy preserved his temper with some difficulty. "Purely for the sake of argument, assume that I am a person whom she might possibly accept."

"Can't. There are limits to hypothesis, beyond which discussion is unprofitable. I merely ask you to note how much time and worry you'll be saved if you adopt my suggestion."

"You'll look a particular fool if I do—and she says yes."

"Are you quite sure they brought the claret you ordered, Billy?—What's that you said?"

"I'm sure it's the claret, and I'm sure you're an idiot!" Billy crossly retorted.

His journey to London, to say nothing of a decidedly expensive lunch, brought poor Billy no comfort and no enlightenment, since he refused his brother's plan without hesitation. His problem became no less harassing when brought into contact with Mrs. Belfield's problem at Halton. She also discussed it at lunch, Harry being an absentee, and Andy Hayes the only other guest. She had forgotten by now that a similar question had once arisen about Andy himself; his present position would have made the memory seem ridiculous; it had become indisputably equal to dinner at Halton, even in Mrs. Belfield's most conservative eyes.

"I have written the note you wished me to, my dear," she remarked to her husband. "To Miss Flower, you know, for Wednesday night. And I apologized for my informality in not having called, and said that I hoped Miss—Miss—well, the friend, you know, would come too."

"Thank you, my dear, thank you." Belfield sounded really grateful; the struggle had, in fact, been rather more severe than he had anticipated.

"It's not that I'm a snob," the lady went on, now addressing herself to Billy Foot, "or prejudiced, or in any way illiberal. Nobody could say that of me. But it's just that I doubt how far it's wise to attempt to mix different sections of society. I mean whether there's not a certain danger in it. You see what I mean, Mr. Foot?"

Belfield winked covertly at Andy; both had some suspicion of Billy's feelings, and were maliciously enjoying the situation.

"Oh yes, Mrs. Belfield, I—er—see what you mean, of course. In ordinary cases there might be—yes—a sort of—well, a sort of danger to—to—well, to something we all value, Mrs. Belfield. But in this case I don't think—" "So Mr. Belfield says. But then he's always so adventurous."

Belfield could not repress a snigger; Andy made an unusually prolonged use of his napkin; Billy was rather red in the face. Mrs. Belfield gazed at Billy, not at all understanding his feelings, but thinking that he was looking very warm.

"Well, Harry's engaged!" she added with a sigh of thanksgiving. Billy grew redder still; the other two welcomed an opportunity for open laughter.

"They may laugh, Mr. Foot, but I'm sure your mother would feel as I do."

A bereavement several years old saved Billy from the suggested complication, but he glared fiercely across the table at Andy, who assumed, with difficulty, an apologetic gravity.

"All my wife's fears will vanish as soon as she knows the lady," said Belfield, also anxious to make his peace with Billy.

"I always yield to Mr. Belfield, but you can't deny that it's an experiment, Mr. Foot." She rose from the table, having defined the position with her usual serene and gentle self-satisfaction.

Billy rose too, announcing that he would finish his cigar in the garden. His face was still red, and he was not well pleased with his host and Andy. Why will people make our own most reasonable thoughts ridiculous by their silly way of putting them? And why will other stupid people laugh at them when so presented? These reflections accompanied poor Billy as he walked and smoked.

Belfield smiled. "More sentimental complications! I hope Billy Foot keeps his face better than that when he's in court. Do you think he'll rush on his fate? And what will it be?"

"Oh, I don't know, sir," Andy answered. "I really haven't thought about it. I don't think she cares for him in that sort of way, though they're awfully good friends."

"You seem to manage to keep heart-whole, Andy?"

"Oh, I've no time to do anything else," he laughed.

"Take care; Cupid resents defiance. I've a notion you stand very well with the lady in question yourself."

"I? Oh, the idea's never entered my head."

"I don't say it's entered hers. The pretty rogue told me she never fell in love, and made me wish I was thirty years younger, and free to test her. But she's very fond of you, Andy."

"I think what she told you about herself is true. She said something like it to me too. But I'm glad you think she likes me. I like her immensely. Outside this house, she's my best friend, I think, not counting old Jack Rock, of course."

"I believe Vivien would dispute the title with her. She thinks the world of you."

"I say, Mr. Belfield, you'll turn my head. Seriously, I should be awfully happy to think that true. There's nobody—well, nobody in the world I'd rather be liked by."

"Yes, I think I know that," said Belfield. "And I'm glad to think she's got such a friend, if she ever needs one."

A silence followed. Belfield was thinking of Vivien, thinking that she would have been in safer hands with Andy than with his son Harry; glad, as he had said, to know that she would have such a friend left to her after his own precarious lease of life was done. Andy was thinking too, but not of Vivien, not of sentimental complications—not even of Harry's. Yet the thought which he was pursuing in his mind was not altogether out of relation to Harry, though the relation was one that he did not consciously trace.

"Back to work next week, sir!" he said. "Gilly's clamouring for me. I've had a splendid holiday."

"You've put in some very good work in your holiday. Your speeches are thought good."

"I somehow feel that I'm on my own legs now," said Andy slowly. "I hope I've not grown bumptious, but I'm not afraid now to think for myself and to say what I think. I often find people agree with me more or less."

"Perhaps you persuade them," Belfield suggested; he was listening with interest, for he had watched from outside the growth of Andy's mind, and liked to hear Andy's own account of it.

"Well, I never set out to do that. I just give them the facts, and what the facts seem to me to point to. If they've got facts pointing the other way, I like to listen. Of course lots of questions are very difficult, but by going at it like that, and taking time, and not being afraid to chuck up your first opinion, you can get forward—or so it seems to me at least."

"Chucking up first opinions is hard work, both about things and about people."

"Yes, but it's the way a man's mind grows, isn't it?" He spoke slowly and thoughtfully. "Unless you can do that, you're not really your own mental master, any more than you're your own physical master if you can't break off a bad habit."

"You've got to be a bit ruthless with yourself in both cases, and with the opinions, and—with the people."

"You've got to see," said Andy. "You must see—that's it. You mustn't shut your eyes, or turn your head away, or let anybody else look for you."

"You've come into your kingdom," said Belfield with a nod.

"Perhaps I may claim to have got my eyes open, to be grown up."

He was grown up; he stood on his own legs; he sat no more at Harry's feet and leant no more on Harry's arm. Harry came into his life there, as he had in so many ways. Harry's weakness had thrown him back on his own strength, and forced him to rely on it. Relying on it in life, he had found it trustworthy, and now did not fear to rely on it in thought also. His chosen master and leader had forfeited his allegiance, though never his love. He would choose no other; he would think for himself. Looking at his capacious head, at his calm broad brow, and hearing him slowly hammer out his mental creed, Belfield fancied that his thinking might carry him far. The kingdom he had come into might prove a spacious realm.