Trix was sitting in a summer-house in the garden of an hotel at Llandrindod Wells. She was reading a letter, a not altogether satisfactory letter to judge by the wrinkling of her brows, and the gravity of her eyes.

The letter was from the Duchessa di Donatello, and ran as follows:

“My Dear Trix:

“I am glad you had a comfortable journey, and that Mrs. Arbuthnot had not been pining for you too deeply. It is a pity her letters gave you the impression that she was feeling your absence so acutely. Possibly it is always wiser to subtract at least half of the impression conveyed in both written and spoken words. Please understand that I am speaking in generalities when I say that we are exceedingly apt to exaggerate our own importance to others, and their importance to us.

“Talking of exaggeration, will you forget our conversation on your last evening here? I exaggerated my own trouble and its cause. Rather foolishly I let your remarks influence me, and sought an explanation, or rather, attempted to ignore appearances, and return to the old footing. The result being that not only did I find that there was no explanation to be given, but that I got rather badly snubbed. As you, of course, will know who administered the snub, you can understand that it was peculiarly unpleasant. I had endeavoured to ignore the fact that he was my social inferior, but he reminded me of it in a way it was impossible to overlook, and showed me that he deeply resented what he evidently looked upon as a somewhat impertinent condescension on my part.

“The theories, my dear Trix, which you set forth in the moonlight under the lime trees, simply won’t hold water. For your own sake I advise you to abandon them forthwith. Blood will always tell; and sooner or later, if we attempt intimacy with those not of our own station in life, we shall get a glimpse of the hairy hoof. I know the theories sound all right, and quite beautifully Christian—as set forth in the moonlight,—but they don’t work in this twentieth century, as I have found to my cost. You had better make up your mind to that fact before you, too, get a slap in the face. I assure you you don’t feel like turning the other cheek. However, that will do. But as it was mainly through following out your theories and advice that I found my pride not only in the mud, but rubbed rather heavily in it, I thought you might as well have a word of warning. Please now consider the matter closed, and never make the smallest reference to that rather idiotic conversation.

“Doctor Hilary was over here again yesterday. He enquired after you, and asked to be very kindly remembered to you. I should like Doctor Hilary to attend me in any illness. He gives one such a feeling of strength and reliance. There’s absolutely no humbug about him.

Trix read the letter through very carefully, and then dropped it on her lap.

“It wasn’t Doctor Hilary!” she ejaculated. “So who on earth was it?”

She sat gazing through the opening of the summer-house towards the garden. It was the oddest puzzle she had ever encountered. Who on earth could it have been? And why—since it wasn’t Doctor Hilary—had Pia jumped to the conclusion that she—Trix—knew who it was?

It wasn’t Mr. Danver, that was very certain. “Social inferior” put that fact out of the question. But then, what social inferior had been mixed up in the business? Or—Trix’s brain leapt from point to point—had Pia’s trouble nothing whatever to do with the mad business at the Hall? Had she and Pia simply been playing a quite amazing game of cross-purposes that evening? It would seem that must have been the case. Yet the recognition of that fact didn’t bring her in the smallest degree nearer the solution of the riddle. Again, who on earth was it? What social inferior was there, could there possibly be, at Woodleigh, to cause Pia a moment’s trouble? Every preconceived notion on Trix’s part, including the colour of the soap-bubble, vanished into thin air, and left her contemplating an inexplicable mystery.

Whatever it was, it had affected Pia pretty deeply. It was absurd for her to say the incident was closed. Externally it might be, in the matter of not referring to it again. Interiorly it had left a wound, and one which was very far from being easily healed, to judge by Pia’s letter. It had not been written by Pia at all, but by a very bitter woman, who had merely a superficial likeness to Pia. That fact, and that fact alone, caused Trix to imagine that she had been right when she told Tibby—if not in so many words, at least virtually speaking—that love had come into Pia’s life. Love embittered alone could have inflicted the wound she felt Pia to be enduring. And yet the wording of her letter would appear to put that surmise out of the question. Truly it was an insolvable riddle.

Once more she re-read the letter, but it didn’t help her in the smallest degree. There was only one small ounce of comfort in it. It wasn’t Doctor Hilary who had caused the wound. Pia had merely tried to pick a quarrel with him, as she had frequently tried to pick one with herself and Tibby, because she was unhappy. If only Trix knew what had caused the unhappiness. And Pia thought she did know. If she wrote and told her now that she hadn’t the smallest conception of what she was talking about, it would in all probability rouse conjectures in Pia’s mind as to what Trix had thought. That, having in view her promise, had certainly better be avoided.

Should she, then, ignore Pia’s letter, or should she reply to it? She weighed the pros and cons of this question for the next ten minutes, and finally decided she would write, and at once.

Returning, therefore, to the hotel, she indited the following brief missive:

“My dear Pia,—

“The incident is closed so far as I am concerned. But I don’t mean to give up seeking my pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I dare say most people would call it an imaginary quest. Well then, I like an imaginary quest. It helps to make me forget much that is prosaic, and a good deal that is sordid in this work-a-day world.

“Please remember me to Doctor Hilary when you see him. Best love, Pia darling,

Three days later Pia wrote:

“My dear Trix,

“The rainbow vanishes, and the sordidness and the prosaicness become rather horribly apparent, especially when one finds oneself obliged to look at them after having steadily ignored their existence.

To which Trix replied:

“My dear Pia,

“My rainbow shines after every shower, and is brightest against the darkest clouds. When I look towards the darkest clouds I wait for the rainbow.

And Pia wrote:

“My dear Trix,

“What happens when there is no longer any sun to form a rainbow?

And Trix wrote:

“Wait till the clouds roll by, Jenny, wait till the clouds roll by.”

And Pia wrote:

“My dear Trix,

“Some people wait a lifetime in vain,

And Trix wrote:

“Darling Pia,

“You’re twenty-eight. Trix.”

After which there was a cessation of correspondence for a time, neither having anything further to say on the subject, or at all events, nothing further they felt disposed to set down in writing.

Trix spent her mornings, and the afternoons, till tea time, in her Aunt’s company. After that, Mrs. Arbuthnot being engrossed in Bridge till bedtime, Trix was free to do exactly as she liked. What she liked was walking till it was time to dress for dinner, and spending the evenings in the garden.

Even before her father’s death, Trix had stayed frequently with her aunt. Her mother had died when Trix was three years old and Mrs. Arbuthnot, a widow with no children of her own, would have been quite ready to adopt Trix. But neither Mr. Devereux, nor, for that matter, Trix herself, were in the least disposed to fall in with her plans. Trix was merely lent to her for fairly lengthy periods, and it had been during one of these periods that Mrs. Arbuthnot had taken her to a farm near Byestry, in which place Mr. Devereux had spent most of his early years.

In those days Mrs. Arbuthnot’s one hobby had been photography. People used to say, of course unjustly, that she never beheld any view with the naked eye, but merely in the reflector of a photographic apparatus. Yet it is entirely obvious that she must first have regarded it in the ordinary way to judge of its photographic merits. Anyhow it is true that quite a good deal of her time was spent beneath the folds of a black cloth (she never condescended to anything so amateurish as a mere kodak), or in the seclusion of a dark room.

Veritable dark rooms being seldom procurable on her travels, she invariably carried with her two or three curtains of thick red serge, several rolls of brown paper, and a bottle of stickphast. The two last mentioned were employed for covering chinks in doors, etc. It cannot be said that it was entirely beneficial to the doors, but hotel proprietors and landladies seldom made any complaint after the first remonstrance, as Mrs. Arbuthnot was always ready to make handsome compensation for any damage caused. It is to be feared that at times her generosity was largely imposed upon.

In addition to the red curtains, the brown paper, and the stickphast, two large boxes were included in her luggage, one containing all her photographic necessaries, and they were not few, the other containing several dozen albums of prints.

Of late years Bridge had taken quite as large a place in her affections as photography. Not that she felt any rivalry between the two; her pleasure in both pastimes was quite equally balanced. Her mornings and early afternoons were given to photography. The late afternoons and evenings Mrs. Arbuthnot devoted to Bridge.

One exceedingly wet afternoon, tea being recently concluded, Trix in her bedroom was surveying the weather from the window.

She was debating within her mind whether to don mackintosh and souwester and face the elements, or whether to retire to a far corner of the drawing-room with a novel, as much as possible out of earshot of the Bridge players. She was still in two minds as to which prospect most appealed to her mood, when Mrs. Arbuthnot tapped on her door, and immediately after sailed into the room. It is the only word applicable to Mrs. Arbuthnot’s entry into any room.

She was a large fair woman, very distinctly inclined to stoutness. In her youth she had been both slender, and quick in her movements; but recognizing, and rightly, that quickness means a certain loss of dignity in the stout, she had trained herself to be exceedingly deliberate in her actions. There was an element of consciousness in her deliberation, therefore, which gave the impression of a rather large sailing vessel under weigh.

“Trix, dearest,” she began. And then she perceived that Trix had been observing the weather.

“You were not going out, were you, dearest? I really think it would hardly be wise. It is blowing quite furiously. I know it is rather dull for you as you don’t play Bridge. Such a pity, too, as you understand it so well. But I have a suggestion to make. Will you paste some of my newest prints into the latest album? There is a table in the window in my room, and a fresh bottle of stickphast. Not in the window, I don’t mean that, but in my trunk. And Maunder can find it for you.” Maunder was Mrs. Arbuthnot’s maid.

Trix turned from the window. Of course Mrs. Arbuthnot’s request settled the question of a walk. She had really been in two minds about it.

“Why, of course,” she said. “Where are the prints?”

Mrs. Arbuthnot brightened visibly.

“They’re inside a green envelope on the writing-table. You’ll find a small pair of very sharp scissors there too. The dark edges are so unsightly if not trimmed. You’re sure you don’t mind, dearest? It really will be quite a pleasant occupation. It is so dreadfully wet. And Maunder will give you the stickphast. There is clean blotting-paper on the writing-table too, and Maunder can find you anything else you want. Well, that’s all right. Maunder is in my room now. She will be going to her tea in ten minutes, so perhaps you might go to her at once. And she is sure to be downstairs for at least an hour and a half, if not longer. Servants always have so much to talk about, and take so long saying it. Why, I can’t imagine. It always seems to me so much better not to waste words unnecessarily. So you will have the room to yourself, till she comes to put out my evening things. And I must go back to the drawing-room at once, or they will be waiting Bridge for me. And Lady Fortescue hates being kept waiting. It puts her in a bad temper, and when she’s in a bad temper she is extraordinarily erratic as to her declarations. Though, for that matter, she is seldom anything else. I don’t mean bad-tempered, but seldom anything but erratic. So, dearest, I mustn’t let you keep me any longer. Don’t forget to ask Maunder for the stickphast, and anything else you want. And the prints and the scissors——”

“Yes, I know,” nodded Trix cheerfully, “on the writing table. Hurry, Aunt Lilla, or they’ll all be swearing.”

“Oh, my dearest, I trust not. Though perhaps interiorly. And even that is a sin. I remember——”

Trix propelled her gently but firmly from the room. Doubtless Mrs. Arbuthnot continued her remembrances “interiorly” as she went down the passage and descended the stairs.

Ten minutes later, Trix, provided with the stickphast, the green envelope, the scissors, and the clean blotting-paper, and having a very large album spread open before her on a table, was busily engaged with the prints. They were mainly views of Llandrindod Wells, though there were quite a good many groups among them, as well as a fair number of single figures. Trix herself appeared chiefly in these last,—Trix in a hat, Trix without a hat, Trix smiling, serious, standing, or sitting.

For half an hour or so Trix worked industriously, indefatigably. She trimmed off dark edges, she applied stickphast, she adjusted the prints in careful positions, she smoothed them down neatly with the clean blotting-paper. At the end of that time, she paused to let the paste dry somewhat before turning the page.

With a view to whiling away the interval, she possessed herself of a sister album, one of the many relations stacked against a wall, choosing it haphazard from among the number.

There is a distinct fascination in photographs which recall early memories. Trix fell promptly under the spell of this fascination. The minutes passed, finding her engrossed, absorbed. Turning a page she came upon views of Byestry, herself—a white-robed, short-skirted small person—appearing in the foreground of many.

Trix smiled at the representations. It really was rather an adorable small person. It was so slim-legged, mop-haired, and elfin-smiled. It was seen, for the most part, lavishing blandishments on a somewhat ungainly puppy. One photograph, however, represented the small person in company with a boy.

Trix looked at this photograph, and suddenly amazement fell full upon her. She looked, she leant back in her chair and shut her eyes, and then she looked again. Yes; there was no mistake, no shadow of a mistake. The boy in the photograph was the man with the wheelbarrow, or the other way about, which possibly might be the more correct method of expressing the matter. But, whichever the method, the fact remained the same.

Trix stared harder at the photograph, cogitating, bewildered. Below it was written in Mrs. Arbuthnot’s rather sprawling handwriting, “T. D., aged five. A. G., aged fourteen. Byestry, 1892.”

Who on earth was A. G.? Trix searched the recesses of her mind. And then suddenly, welling up like a bubbling spring, came memory. Why, of course A. G. was the boy she used to play with, the boy—she began to remember things clearly now—who had tried to sail across the pond, and with whom she had gone to search for pheasants’ eggs. A dozen little details came back to her mind, even the sound of the boy’s voice, and his laugh, a curiously infectious laugh.

Oh, she remembered him distinctly, vividly. But, what—and there lay the puzzlement, the bewilderment—was the boy, now grown to manhood, doing with a wheelbarrow in the grounds of Chorley Old Hall, and, moreover, dressed as a gardener, working as a gardener, and speaking—well, at any rate speaking after the manner of a gardener? Perhaps to have said, speaking as though he were on a different social footing from Trix, would have better expressed Trix’s meaning. But she chose her own phraseology, and doubtless it conveyed to her exactly what she did mean. Anyhow, it was an amazing riddle, an insoluble riddle. Trix stared at the photograph, finding no answer to it.

Finding no answer she left the book open at the page, and returned to the sticking in of prints. But every now and then her eyes wandered to the big volume at the other end of the table, wonderment and query possessing her soul.

Maunder appeared just as Trix had finished her task. Helpful, business-like, she approached the table, a gleam spelling order and tidiness in her eye.

“Leave that album, please,” said Trix, seeing the helpful Maunder about to shut and bear away the book containing the boy’s photograph.

Maunder hesitated, sighed conspicuously, and left the book, occupying herself instead with putting away the stickphast, the scissors, the now not as clean blotting-paper, and somewhat resignedly picking up small shreds of paper which were scattered upon the table-cloth and carpet. In the midst of these occupations the dressing-gong sounded. Maunder pricked up her ears, actually almost, as well as figuratively.

Ten minutes elapsed. Then Mrs. Arbuthnot appeared.

“What, finished, dearest!” she exclaimed as she opened the door. “Splendid! How quick you’ve been. And I am sure the time flew on—not leaden feet, but just the opposite. It always does when one is pleasantly occupied. Developing photographs or a rubber of Bridge, it’s just the same, the hands of the clock spin round. And I’ve won six shillings, and it would have been more if it had not been for Lady Fortescue’s last declaration. Four hearts, my dearest, and the knave as her highest card. They doubled us, and of course we went down. I had only two small ones. I had shown her my own weakness by not supporting her declaration. Of course at my first lead I led her a heart, and it was won by the queen on my left. A heart was returned, and Lady Fortescue played the nine. It was covered by the ten which won the trick. She didn’t make a single trick in her own suit. It is quite impossible to understand Lady Fortescue’s declarations. And did you put in all the prints? They will have nearly filled the last pages. I must send for another album. Are these they?” She crossed to the open volume.

“No,” said Trix, “that’s an old volume. I was looking at it. Who’s the boy in the photograph, Aunt Lilla?”

Mrs. Arbuthnot bent towards the page.

“‘A. G., aged fourteen.’ Let me see. Why, of course that was Antony Gray, Richard Gray’s son. But I never knew his father. He—I mean the boy—was staying in rooms with his aunt, Mrs. Stanley. She was his father’s sister, and married George Stanley. Something to do with the stock exchange, and quite a wealthy man, though a bad temper. And his wife was not a happy woman, as you can guess. Temper means such endless friction when it’s bad, especially with regard to things like interfering with the servants, and wanting to order the kitchen dinner. So absurd, as well as annoying. There’s a place for a man and a place for a woman, and the man’s place is not the kitchen, even if his entry is only figurative. By which I mean that Mr. Stanley did not actually go to the kitchen, but gave orders from his study, on a sort of telephone business he had had fixed up and communicating with the kitchen. So trying for the cook’s nerves, especially when making omelettes, or anything that required particular attention. She never knew when his voice wouldn’t shout at her from the wall. A small black thing like a hollow handle fixed close to the kitchen range. Quite uncomfortably near her ear. Worse than if he himself had appeared at the kitchen door, which would have been normal, though trying. And Mr. Stanley never lowered his voice. He always spoke as if one were deaf, especially to foreigners who spoke English every bit as well as himself. Mrs. Stanley gave excellent wages, and even bonuses out of her dress money to try and keep cooks. But they all said the voice from the wall got on their nerves. And no wonder. And then unpleasantness when the cooks left. As if it were poor Mrs. Stanley’s fault, and not his own. She once suggested they should give up their house and live in an hotel. He couldn’t have a telephone arrangement to the kitchen there. But he was more unpleasant still. Almost violent. And he died at last of an attack of apoplexy. Such a relief to Mrs. Stanley. Not the dying of apoplexy, which was a grief. But the quiet, and the being able to keep a cook when he had gone.” Mrs. Arbuthnot paused a moment to take breath.

“Do you know what became of the boy?” asked Trix.

Mrs. Arbuthnot considered for an instant.

“I believe he went abroad. Yes; I remember now, hearing from Mrs. Stanley just before she died herself, poor soul—ptomaine poisoning and a dirty cook, some people seem pursued by cooks, figuratively speaking, of course,—that her brother had lost all his money and died, and that Antony had gone abroad. We are told not to judge, and I don’t, but it did seem to me that Mrs. Stanley ought to have made him some provision, if not before her death, at least after it. By will, of course I mean by ‘after’! which in a sense would have been before death. But you understand. Instead of which she left all her money to a deaf and dumb asylum. No doubt good in its way, but not like anything religious, which would have been more justifiable, though she was a Protestant. And teaching dumb people to speak is always a doubtful blessing. They have such an odd way of talking. Scarcely understandable. But perhaps better than nothing for themselves, though not for others. Though with a penniless nephew and all that money I do think—But, as I said, we are told not to judge.”

“And you don’t know what became of him after that?” asked Trix.

Mrs. Arbuthnot looked almost reproachful.

“My dearest, how could I? Mrs. Stanley in the family grave with her brother,—she mentioned that particularly in her will, and not with her husband, I suppose she could not have had much affection for him,—I could not possibly hear any more of the young man. There were no other relations, and I did not even know what part of the world he was in. Nor should I have thought it advisable to write to him if I had, unless it had been a brief letter of consolation as from a much older woman, which I was. But even with age I do not think a correspondence between men and women desirable, unless they are related, especially with Mrs. Barclay’s novels so widely read. Not for my own sake, of course, as I do not think I am easily given to absurd notions. But one never knows what ideas a young man may not get into his head. And now, dear child, I must dress. Maunder has been sighing for the last ten minutes, and I know what that means. And you’ll be late yourself, if you don’t go.”

Much later in the evening, Trix, in a far corner of the drawing-room with a novel, found herself again pondering deeply on her discovery.

She was absolutely and entirely certain that the man with the wheelbarrow was none other than Antony Gray, the boy with whom she had played in her childhood. She remembered now that his face had been oddly familiar to her at the time, though, being unable to put any name to him, she had looked upon it merely as a chance likeness. But since he was Antony Gray, what was he doing at Chorley Old Hall?

Her first impulse had been to write to the Duchessa, tell her of her certainty, and ask her to find out any particulars she could regarding the man. She had abandoned that idea, in view of the fact that she would have to say where she had met him, which would very probably lead to questions difficult to answer.

One thing she would do, however, and she gave a little inward laugh at the thought, when she was next at Byestry, if she saw him again, she would ask him if he remembered the pond and the pheasants’ eggs. It would be amusing to see his amazed face.