Spenser.

Berwick walked up and down the hall waiting for Mrs. Rebell. Not only Mrs. Turke's ambiguous utterances, but his own knowledge of her parents, made him look forward with a certain curiosity to seeing her.

The story of Richard Rebell, the one-time brilliant and popular man about town, who, not long after his marriage to a reigning beauty, had been overwhelmed by the shameful accusation of cheating at cards; the subsequent libel case which had developed into a mid-Victorian cause cÉlÈbre; the award of nominal damages; and Mr. and Mrs. Richard Rebell's ultimate retreat, for ever, to the Continent—it was all well known to James Berwick.

Still, he would rather have met this Mrs. Rebell anywhere else than at Chancton Priory. Her presence here could not but destroy, for himself, the peculiar charm of the place.

How unpunctual she was! Why was it that women—with the one exception of his sister Arabella—were always either too early or too late?

McGregor's voice broke across the ungallant thought, "Mrs. Rebell, sir, is in the Blue drawing-room. She has been down some time."

The words gave Berwick a disagreeable shock. The Blue drawing-room? Years had gone by since the two charming rooms taking up the whole west side of the Priory had been in familiar use. He remembered very well the last time he had seen them filled with a feminine presence. It had been just after his first term at Oxford, when he still felt something of the schoolboy: Madame Sampiero, beautiful and gracious as she only knew how to be, had received him with great kindness, striving to put him completely at his ease. There had been there also his uncle, Lord Bosworth, and a certain Septimus Daman, an old friend and habituÉ of the Priory in those later days of Lord Bosworth and Madame Sampiero's intimacy, when no woman ever crossed its stately threshold.

Just before the little party of four, the three men and their hostess, had gone in to dinner, a radiant apparition had danced into the room, little fair-haired Julia, the incarnation of happy childhood. Her mother had placed her, laughing, beside the rather fantastic portrait which was then being painted of the child by an Italian artist, and which now hung in Lord Bosworth's study at Fletchings, bearing silent witness to many past events.

With the memory of this scene singularly vivid, it shocked Berwick that now, even after the lapse of so many years, another woman should be installed as mistress of the room towards which he was bending his steps. So feeling, he hesitated, and waited for a moment, a frown on his face, before turning the handle of the door.

James Berwick cultivated in himself a sense of the unusual and the picturesque; especially was he ever consciously seeking to find these qualities in those women with whom chance brought him into temporary contact. As he passed through into the Blue drawing-room, he became at once aware that the former ordered beauty of the apartment had been restored, and that the tall white figure standing by the fire harmonised, in some subtle fashion, with the old French furniture covered in the rather bright blue silk which gave its name to the room.

Barbara Rebell was gazing down into the wood fire, one slender hand and arm resting on the rose marble mantel-piece. She looked singularly young and forlorn, and yet, as she turned towards him, he saw that her whole bearing was instinct with a rather desperate dignity. She was not at all what the man advancing towards her had thought to find—above all she now looked curiously unlike the clear-eyed vigorous creature she had appeared when walking by McKirdy's side along the open down.

As James Berwick came into the circle of light thrown by the tall shaded lamps, she turned and directly faced him,—the expression of her face that of a shrinking and proud embarrassment. Then she spoke, the words she uttered bringing to her hearer discomfiture and rather piqued surprise.

"I have been wishing so much to see you, Mr. Boringdon, and also your mother. I think your sister must have written and told you of her kindness to me—though indeed I do not suppose for a moment she can have made you understand how very very good she and Mr. Johnstone both were. I am the bearer of several things from Grace. Also"—her low grave voice faltered—"I wish to ask if you will be so kind as to arrange for the sending back to your brother-in-law of some money he lent me." She held out as she spoke an envelope, "It is fifty pounds, and I do not know how to convey it to him."

Berwick felt keenly annoyed,—there is always something lowering to one's self-esteem in being taken for another person, and especially in receiving in that character anything savouring of a confidential communication.

"You are making a mistake," he said, rather sharply; "my name is Berwick—James Berwick. Oliver Boringdon, Mrs. Johnstone's brother, lives at Chancton Cottage. You will certainly meet him in the course of the next day or two."

Mrs. Rebell looked for a moment extremely disconcerted: a flood of bright colour swept over her face, but Berwick, now considering her closely, saw that, if confused, she was also most certainly relieved. Her manner altered,—she became, in a gentle and rather abstracted way, at ease. The man now standing close to her suddenly felt as if in the presence of a shy and yet confiding creature—one only half tame, ready to spring away at any rough unmannerly approach. He caught himself wondering how it was that she had already made friends with McKirdy, and he told himself that there was about this woman something at once delicately charming and at the same time disarming—he no longer grudged her presence at the Priory.

On their way to the dining-room, during their progress through the hall, Berwick looked down at the fingers resting on his arm. They were childishly small and delicate. She must have, he thought, a singularly pretty foot: yes, there was certainly something of the nymph about her,—his first instinct had not been at fault, after all.

Mrs. Rebell walked to the further side of the large round table, evidently regarding her companion as her guest, and from that moment onwards, James Berwick never disputed Barbara Rebell's sovereignty of Chancton Priory. Indeed, soon he was glad that she had chosen so to place herself that, whenever he looked up, he saw her small head—the ivory tinted face so curiously framed by short curling dark hair, and the rather widely set apart, heavy-lidded eyes—sharply outlined against the curtainless oriel window, of which the outer side was swept by the branches of a cedar of Lebanon.

Berwick felt himself in an approving mood. His old nurse had been right; Mrs. Rebell would add to, not detract from, the charm of the Priory. Many trifling matters ministered to his fancy. The dining-table was bare of flowers and of ornament: McGregor, it was clear, had lost touch with the outside world. Berwick was glad too that Mrs. Rebell wore no jewels,—not even, to his surprise, a wedding ring. She must be even more out of touch with her contemporaries than McGregor! And yet her dress,—yes, there could be no doubt about it—had an air of magnificence, in spite of its extreme plainness. Now that he came to think of it, her white lace gown, vaporous and mysterious, resembled, quite curiously so, that of a bride.

So, doubtless, sitting there, as they were sitting now, more than one Rebell bride and bridegroom had sat in this old dining-room, at this very round table, in those days when men brought their newly-wedded wives straight home. The last Rebells to have done so must have been Madame Sampiero's grandfather and grandmother, her own and her god-daughter's common ancestors. Berwick wondered swiftly if it was from that bride of a hundred years ago that Barbara had taken her eyes—those singularly desolate eyes which alone in her face implied experience.

He looked across the table with a whimsical, considering look. A stranger passing by outside that window would take them for husband and wife. So do folk judge by mere appearance! The fact that for himself as well as for her marriage was out of the region of practical possibilities made amusing,—gave something of piquancy to this little scene of pseudo-domesticity.

Barbara also looked up and across at him. She saw clearly, for the first time, for the lamps in the Blue drawing-room gave but a quavering light, the tanned and tense-looking face, of which perhaps the most arresting features were the penetrating bright blue eyes. The strong jaw—not a handsome feature, this—was partly concealed by a ragged straw-coloured moustache, many shades lighter than the hair brushed straight across the already seamed forehead. She smiled, a delicate heart-whole smile, softening and brightening, altering incredibly the rather austere lines of her face.

"I'm thinking," she said, "of Mrs. Turke. I was in her sitting-room to-day, and she showed me the many portraits she has there of you; that being so, I certainly ought not to have mistaken you, even for a moment, for Mr. Boringdon!"

But with the mention of the name the smile faded, and a look of oppression came over her face.

"Grace Johnstone," Berwick's sudden utterance of the name was an experiment: he waited: ah! yes, that was it! The painful association was with Mrs. Johnstone, not with Oliver Boringdon or his mother.

"Grace Johnstone," he repeated, "is a very old friend of mine, Mrs. Rebell, and it is always a pleasure to me to have news of her."

Barbara was opening and shutting her ringless left hand with a nervous gesture: she began crumbling the bread by her plate.

"I have not known her very long," she said, "but nothing could have exceeded her kindness to me. I was very ill, and Mrs. Johnstone took me into her own house and nursed me well again. It seemed so very strange a coincidence that her mother and brother should be living at Chancton, so near to my godmother." But Berwick realised that the coincidence was not regarded by the speaker as a happy one.

"Mrs. Boringdon," he said slowly, "is quite unlike her daughter. I should think there was very little confidence between them. If you will allow me to be rather impertinent, to take advantage of our relationship—you know my great-grandfather very wisely married your great-grandmother's sister—I should like to give you a piece of advice——"

Barbara looked at him anxiously—the youthfulness which had so disarmed him again became manifest in her face.

"My advice is that you write a note to the Johnstones, and then confide it to my care to send off with the fifty pounds you are returning to them. I will see that they receive it safely." Some instinct—the outcome, perhaps, of many money dealings with pretty women—made him add, with a touch of reserve, "But perhaps Mrs. Johnstone did not know of this loan?"

"Oh! yes, of course she did! Indeed it was she who suggested it. But for that I could not have come home." Barbara was blushing, and Berwick saw tears shining in her eyes. He felt oddly moved. He had often heard of, but he had never seen, the shedding of tears of gratitude.

"Yes," he said hastily, "I felt sure that was the case. But I do not think Mrs. Boringdon need be informed of the fact."

Mrs. Rebell had risen. A sudden fear that she might be going upstairs, that he would not see her again that night, came over Berwick.

"Do go into the drawing-room and write that note to the Johnstones, and I will join you there in a few moments. I am going over to my own quarters to fetch something which will, I think, interest you."

Berwick held open the door, waited till the echo of her footsteps had gone, then quickly lighted a pipe, and walking across the dining-room pushed open one of the sections of the high oriel window. Then he made his way round, almost stealthily, to the stretch of lawn on which opened the French windows of the two drawing-rooms. The curtains were not drawn: McGregor, and his satellite, the village lad who was being transformed into a footman, had certainly grown careless,—and yet it would have been a pity to shut out the moon, and it was not at all cold.

Pacing up and down, Berwick, every few moments, saw, set as in a frame, the whole interior of the Blue drawing-room, forming a background to Barbara Rebell. Indeed, she was quite near the window, sitting—an hour ago the fact would have shocked him—at Madame Sampiero's own writing-table, at that exquisite Louis XV. escritoire which had been discovered by Lord Bosworth in a ProvenÇal chÂteau, and given by him, now many a long year ago, to the mistress of Chancton Priory.

Barbara had lighted the two green candles which her unseen watcher could remember as having been there so long that their colour had almost faded. She was bending over the notepaper, her slight supple figure thrown forward in a curiously graceful attitude. Again and again Berwick, walking and smoking outside, stopped and looked critically at the little scene. It is seldom that a man can so look consideringly at a woman, save perhaps at a place of public amusement, or in a church.

At last, slightly ashamed of himself, he turned round for the last time, and plunged into the moonlit darkness lying the other side of the house. In his room was a graceful sketch of Mrs. Richard Rebell, Barbara's lovely mother. He felt certain that the daughter would greatly value it. How surely his instinct had guided him he himself hardly knew. Barbara had loved her mother passionately, and after this evening she never glanced at the early presentment of that same beloved mother without a kind thought for the giver of it.

A curious hour followed: spent by Berwick and Mrs. Rebell one on each side of Madame Sampiero's couch—Barbara listening, quite silently, while Berwick, never seen to more advantage than when exerting himself to please and interest the stricken mistress of Chancton Priory, told news of that absorbing world of high politics which to Madame Sampiero had long been the only one which counted, and in which much of her past life had been spent.

So listening, Barbara felt herself pitifully ignorant. Pedro Rebell, proud as he had been of his British name and ancestry, made no attempt to keep in touch with England. True, certain names, mentioned so familiarly before her, were remembered as having been spoken by her father, but this evening, seeing how much this question—this mysterious question of the Ins and the Outs—meant to Madame Sampiero, Barbara made up her mind, rather light-heartedly considering the magnitude of the task, to lose no time in mastering the political problems of her country.

It must be admitted that Berwick's eager out-pouring—though it included what one of his listeners knew was a masterly forecast of the fate he hoped was about to overwhelm the Government which had already earned the nickname of "The Long Parliament"—did not add much to Mrs. Rebell's knowledge of contemporary statecraft. Still, her attention never flagged, and the speaker, noting her absorption, thought he had never had so agreeable an audience, or one which showed more whole-heartedly its sympathy with Her Majesty's Opposition.

The entrance of Doctor McKirdy into the room proved a harsh interruption.

"Be off!" he cried unceremoniously. "Madam won't be having a glint of sleep this night!" and then as Madame Sampiero spoke, her speech sadly involved, "Ay, ay, I've no doubt that all this company and talking has made ye feel more alive, but we don't want you to be feeling dead to-morrow, Madam—eh, what? That wouldn't matter? It would indeed matter, to those who had your death on their consciences!"

But already Berwick and Mrs. Rebell were in the corridor. "I hope I have not tired her?" he said ruefully.

"No—no, indeed! You heard what she said? You made her feel alive—no wonder she looks forward to your coming! Oh! I hope you will be here often."

Berwick looked at her oddly, almost doubtfully, for a moment. "I expect to be here a good deal this winter," he said slowly.

But if he thought that the evening, so well begun, was to be concluded in the Blue drawing-room downstairs, he was disappointed. Barbara turned and made him an old-fashioned curtsey—such an obeisance as French and Italian girls are taught to make to those of rank, and to the aged,—and then in a moment she was gone, up the winding staircase, leaving Berwick strangely subjugated and charmed.

He was turning slowly when there came the sound of shuffling feet. "Madam insists on your coming back just for a moment. Now don't go exciting of her or she'll never live to see you occupying that chair of little ease."

"What chair?" asked Berwick lazily: he was fond of McKirdy with an old fondness dating from his earliest childhood.

"The high seat, the gallows of fifty cubits set apart for the Prime Minister of this great country!"

"I'm afraid Madam will have to wait a long time before she sees me there!"

"Well, man, give her at least the chance of living to see that glorious day!"

But Madame Sampiero had, as it turned out, very little to say, and nothing of an exciting nature.

"Do I think Arabella will like her?" Berwick was rather taken aback and puzzled. He had not thought of his sister and Mrs. Rebell in conjunction, and the idea was not a particularly agreeable one. "Well, yes, why shouldn't she? They are absolutely unlike," a not unkindly smile came over his face. He added, "I am sure my uncle will be charmed with her," then bent forward to catch the faltering utterance, "Yes, I know Richard Rebell was a friend of his—but do I understand that you want Arabella to ask her to Fletchings?" There was a rather long pause—"Yes, yes, Arabella shall certainly call on Mrs. Rebell, and at once."

One fact necessarily dominated Berwick's relations with, and attitude towards, women. That he often forgot this fact, and would remain for long periods of time quite unaware that it lay in wait for him to catch him tripping, was certain. But even so, any little matter, such as a moment of sudden instinctive sympathy with some pretty creature standing on the threshold of life, was apt to bring back the knowledge, to make the Fact the one thing to be remembered.

Again, it was never forgotten—not for a moment—by the human being who had Berwick's interest most at heart, and who had played from his earliest boyhood a preponderant part in his life. Arabella Berwick always remembered that her brother's dead wife, behaving on this unique occasion as a man might have done, and as men have often done, had so left her vast fortune that even the life interest must pass away from him, and that irrevocably, in the event of his making a second marriage.

At the time of his wife's death, James Berwick had been annoyed—keenly so—by the comment this clause in her will had provoked—far more so indeed than by the clause itself. His brief experience of married life had not been such as to make him at all desirous of repeating the experiment; and what he saw of marriage about him did not incline him to envy the lot of the average married man. Accordingly, the condition of bachelorhood attaching to his present wealth pressed very lightly on him. It was, however, always present to Miss Berwick, and when her brother was staying at Fletchings—even more, when she was acting, as she sometimes did, as hostess to his friends—attractive girls were never included in the house party, and the agreeable, unattached widow, who has become a social institution, was rigorously avoided by her.

Unless the attraction is so strong as to cause him to overleap each of the many barriers erected by our rather elaborate civilisation, a man of the world—a man interested supremely in politics, considerably in sport, and in the hundred and one matters which occupy people of wealth and leisure—is generally apt to know, in an intimate social sense, only those women with whom he is brought in contact by his own womenfolk. Berwick went into many worlds to which his sister had no wish to have access, but both before his marriage and since he had become a widower, she had been careful to throw him, as far as lay in her power, with women who could in no way dispute her own position as his trusted counsellor and friend. This was made the more easy because James Berwick in all good faith disliked that feminine type which plays in politics the part of francs-tireurs—he called them by the less agreeable name of "stirabouts." Miss Berwick cultivated on her brother's behalf every type of pretty, amusing, and even clever married woman, but no worldly mother was ever more careful in keeping her daughter out of the way of detrimentals than was Arabella Berwick in avoiding for her brother dangerous proximities of an innocent kind.

Unfortunately Berwick was not always as grateful as he should have been to so kind and far-sighted a sister. He would suddenly take a fancy to the freshest and prettiest dÉbutante, and for a while, perhaps from June to August, Arabella would tremble. On one occasion she had conveyed some idea of her brother's position to an astute lady who had regarded him as a prospective son-in-law, and when once the mother had thoroughly realised the dreadful truth concerning the tenure of his large income, the young beauty had been spirited away.

Then, again,—and this, it is to be feared, happened more frequently—Berwick would deliberately put himself in the way of some devastating charmer, who, even if technically "safe" from his sister's standpoint, belonged to the type which breeds mischief, and causes those involuntary appearances in the law courts of his country which stand so much in the way of the ambitious young statesman. Such ladies, as Miss Berwick well knew, have a disconcerting knack of getting rid of their legal impediment to re-marriage. Berwick had lately had a very narrow escape from such a one. In the sharp discussion between the brother and sister which had followed, he had exclaimed sardonically, "Really, Arabella, what you ought to look out for—I mean for me—is some poor pretty soul with a mad husband safe out of the way. You know lunatics live for ever." And Arabella, though she had smiled reprovingly, had been struck by the carelessly uttered words.

Miss Berwick's attitude to certain disagreeable and sordid facts of human life had been early fixed by herself as one of disdainful aloofness. She did not permit herself to judge those about her, and far preferred not to know of their transgressions. When such knowledge was thrust upon her—as had necessarily been the case with her uncle, Lord Bosworth, and Madame Sampiero—she judged narrowly and hardly the woman, contemptuously and leniently the man.