THE relation between Bertha and Nigel Hillier was a rather curious one. He had met her when she was eighteen. The attraction had been sudden, violent and mutual; and she was quite prepared to marry him against all opposition. There had been a good deal in her own family, because Nigel was what is euphemistically called without means, and she was the daughter of a fashionable London vicar who, though distinguished for his eloquence and extremely popular, successful and social, had a comparatively small income and a positively large family. In a short time Nigel—not Bertha—succumbed to the family opposition and the general prudent disapproval of worldly friends. He wrote and told Bertha that he was afraid after all they were right; persuaded to this view by having meanwhile met the only daughter of a millionaire when staying for a week-end at a country house. The girl had fallen in love with him, and was practically independent.

A few months after his gorgeous wedding, described and photographed with the greatest enthusiasm in all the illustrated papers, Bertha married Percy Kellynch, to the great satisfaction of her relations. Nigel was, by then, a lost illusion, a disappointed ideal; she did not long resent his defection and it cured her passion, but she despised him for what she regarded as the baseness of his motive.

She loved and looked up to Percy, but her marriage to him had not been at the time one of romance—to her great regret. She would have liked it to be, for she was one of those ardent souls to whom the glamour of love was everything; she could never worship false gods. But Bertha had a warm, grateful nature, and finding him even better than she expected, her affection threw out roots and tendrils; became deeper and deeper; her experience with Nigel had made her particularly appreciative of Percy’s good qualities. She was expansive, affectionate and constant; and she really cared far more about Percy now than she did when she married him. And this, though she was quite aware that he was entirely wanting in several things that she had particularly valued in Nigel (a sense of humour for one), and that he had inherited rather acutely the depressing Kellynch characteristic of taking oneself seriously.

Percy, on the other hand, had been quite carried away by her rosebud charm and prettiness, and he had continued to regard her as a pet and a luxury (for he was pre-eminently one of that large class of people who see only the obvious). But he had never realised her complexities, and was quite unaware of her depth and strength of mind. He was proud of her popularity, and had never known a jealous moment. Since they had never had a shadow of a quarrel, theirs might certainly be described as a happy marriage; although Bertha had always found it from the first rather deficient in the elements of excitement and a little wanting in fun.

Nigel, who had been in a frightful hole when he met the heiress, of course made a point of discovering, as soon as all grinding money troubles had been removed and agonising debts paid, that no material things were capable of making him happy. The gratification to his vanity of his big country house, and charming house in London and so forth, amused him for a very short time. He became horribly bored, and when Bertha married Percy Kellynch, felt pained and particularly surprised and disappointed in her. He had always believed her to be so superior to other girls, so true and loyal! It was quite a disillusion; to think that she could get over him so easily! Women usually took much longer than that. However, he now despised himself even more as a fool than as a coward for having given up Bertha, and not being of the type who trouble to conceal their feelings in domestic life, he openly and frankly showed to the unfortunate Mary that he knew he had made an irrevocable mistake. This was the natural way of regaining his self-respect, since he was under the deepest obligation to her. To add to his annoyance, not long after the marriage he and his brother Charlie came into a legacy from an unexpected and forgotten relative. He knew, then, that if he had waited a little longer, (as she had wished), he could, without sacrifice, have married Bertha; and so he was naturally very angry with Mary.

Now that Bertha was beyond his reach she seemed to him the one desirable thing in the world. For several years they hardly met; then Nigel contrived that they should become friends again. Her feeling for him could never be revived. His was far more vivid than formerly. It was fanned by her coolness, and was in a fair way to become an idÉe fixe, for he was not material enough to live without some dream, some ideal, and Bertha found him amusing. There always had been a certain mental sympathy between them; in a sense (superficially and humorously), they saw life very much from the same standpoint. With the instinctive tact of the real lover of women he carefully concealed from her the secret that made his home life miserable, instead of merely tedious. It was, simply, that Mary was morbidly, madly jealous of him. He had shown far too soon that he had married her for her money, and if he had convinced her that she had bought him, it was perhaps natural in return that she should wish for her money’s worth. The poor woman was passionately in love with Nigel. She suspected him of infidelity, with and without reason, morning, noon, and night; it was almost a monomania. They had two children in the first and second years of the marriage. Nigel was carelessly fond of them, but he regarded them rather as a private luxury and resource of his wife, mistakenly thinking their society could fill up all the gaps made by his rather frequent absences. Nigel knew better than to complain of his wife, or to ask for sympathy from Bertha, for he was certain that if she had the faintest idea of the jealousy, her door would be closed to him.

Bertha was peculiarly kind, peculiarly full of sympathy for her own sex. And yet she was not at all fond of the society of women, with few exceptions; and she was often bored by the liking and admiration she usually inspired in them. Something in her personality disarmed ordinary jealousy, for though she was pretty and attractive, it was easy for other women to see that she was not trying to attract. What the average woman resents in another woman is not her involuntary charm; it is her making use of it.

With the casual indiscretion of the selfish man, Nigel, of course, told his wife at length, early in the honeymoon, all about his romance with Bertha. This Mary had never forgiven. Curiously, she minded more this old innocent affair of ten years ago, which he had broken off for her, than any of his flirtations since. Bertha had rightly guessed that, when they met, Mary had taken a great dislike to her. But she had no idea that Nigel’s wife was suspicious, nor that she seriously and bitterly resented his visits. He never admitted them to Mary if he could help it, for he had learnt by now to be so far considerate to her—or to himself—that he would tell her fifty fibs in half-an-hour rather than let out one annoying fact. Nigel saw—he was very quick in these matters—that the only terms on which he could ever see anything of Bertha were those of the intimate old brotherly friend; the slightest look or suggestion of sentiment of any kind made her curl up and look angry. She made it utterly impossible for him to make the slightest allusion to the past. The friendliness had been growing to intimacy, and Nigel believed that perhaps with time he might get back to the old terms, or something like them. It was becoming the chief object of his life. He was a keen sportsman, and the ambition of the hunter was added to the longing of the lover. A born diplomatist, he had, of course, easily made Percy like him immensely. But he hated Percy, and could never forgive him for the unpardonable injury he had done to him, Nigel, in consoling Bertha. Nigel could not bear to own, even to himself, that Bertha was happy in her married life. Sometimes he would swear to himself when he remembered that it was all his own doing, that she might have been his wife. How coolly she had taken it! She had accepted it at the time with calm acquiescence, and met him again with amiable composure. Had she ever really forgiven him?

It had opened her eyes, had been a shock. She saw him now as the shattered dream of her childish fancy, and she was thankful for her escape. Yet deep down in her heart was a slight scar. It did not make her hate Nigel, but apart from the fun and pleasantness of their intercourse her real indifference to him was slightly tinged with acidity: probably she would have been less sorry for him in any trouble than for anybody else.

Bertha’s vanity was not a very vivid part of her, and it took only one form. When she cared for anyone she was deeply (though not outwardly) exacting; she wanted that person entirely. To say that the general admiration she received gave her no pleasure would be an absurd exaggeration; if she had suddenly lost it, she would have missed it very much, no doubt. But after all, she valued it chiefly because she thought it was good for Percy. Privately she was not satisfied that Percy valued her enough. Had her many friends and acquaintances been told that the chief wish of the pretty Mrs. Kellynch was the more complete and absolute conquest of her own husband—who seemed much more devoted than most husbands—they would have been surprised, incredulous, perhaps even a little shocked.

Nigel had promised to use all the means at his disposal to help Madeline. Bertha was anxious her friend should have what she had just missed.

“Well! Soon after the dinner I shall go and see Rupert in his rooms. I shall get to know him well, and I shall gradually tell him about Charlie, and how keen he is, and lead up to Miss Irwin, and say what a charming girl she is, and all that sort of thing. Nothing makes so much impression.”

“Don’t make him jealous of Charlie,” said Bertha. “Anything that he regarded as a slight I think would put an end to it. Rupert is not quite a commonplace man.”

“Jealous? Oh no, I should merely imply that Miss Madeline won’t have anything to say to Charlie, and that I wonder why. But it can’t do him any harm to know someone else wants her. My dear girl, a man understands another man. That is where women are such fools. They think they know more about men than men do, and that is why they are always being——” He stopped.

She smiled.“Oh no. I quite do you justice, Nigel. I am never above consulting you on that sort of subject. I may know just a little bit more about men than some women do, for one reason——”

“And what is that? Because you attract them?”

“No, that doesn’t help much. It’s because I have brothers, and they have always confided in me without reserve. Oh! there was one more thing I may have to ask you. I don’t want to, and I don’t like it at all, on account of Mrs. Hillier; but still it might happen to be necessary. It’s just possible I may ask you to flirt a little with a girl called Moona Chivvey.”

“Oh, I know her.” He smiled. “Of course I’d do anything for you, but that would be about the hardest thing you could command.”

“She’s not uninteresting,” said Bertha. “I shall find out how she stands with Rupert, and I don’t think there’s much danger. But if it should be required—well—you might go further and fare worse.”

“I expect I should go further than Rupert,” murmured Nigel.

“Nigel, don’t think I haven’t scruples about things. I have, very much, but I know a good deal about Moona, and I really think that any harmless thing we can do to remove obstacles for poor Madeline should be done. I promised Madeline. I shall be grateful if you’ll help, Nigel.”

“There’s no question about it,” said Nigel. “Of course it must be rushed through. And now I suppose you want me to go?”

“Oh no! Please don’t! Percy will be here directly.”

He got up.

“Good-bye. I’ll ring you up to-morrow. It’s some little consolation for being an idle man to have leisure to fulfil your commands.”

She answered that he was very good and she was very pleased with him, and he went away.