Beaumont and Fletcher.

It is wonderful how few mistakes are made by those who have the sending out of invitations to a great country function. The wrong people are sometimes included, but it rarely happens that the right people are left out.

Halnakeham Castle was famed for its prodigal hospitality, and on such an occasion as the coming-of-age ball of the only son, the ducal invitations had been scattered broadcast, and not restricted, in any sense, to those for whom the word "dancing" was full of delightful significance. In Chancton village alone, Miss Vipen could show the Duchess's card, and so could Doctor McKirdy, while both the Cottage and the Vicarage had been bidden to bring a party.

This being the case, it was felt by Mrs. Kemp's neighbours to be very strange and untoward that no invitation had been received at Chancton Grange, but, as so often happens, those who were supposed to be the most disturbed were really the least so. General Kemp and his wife were not disposed to resent what Miss Vipen eagerly informed their daughter was a subtle affront, and a very short time after the amazing omission became known, Lucy Kemp received five invitations to join other people's parties for the ball, and declined them all.

Then came an especially urgent message from Mrs. Boringdon, brought by Oliver himself. "Of course you will come with us," he said insistently, "my mother is to have the Priory carriage, and," he added, smiling as if speaking in jest, "I will tell you one thing quite frankly—if you refuse to come, I shall stay at home!"

Lucy gave him a quick, rather painful glance. What could he mean by saying that to her?—but Mrs. Kemp, again dowered with that sixth sense sent as a warning to those mothers worthy of such aid, asked rather sharply, "Are you and Mrs. Boringdon then going alone, for Lucy's father would not wish her in any case to remain up very late?" and Oliver answered at once, "Oh! no, Mrs. Rebell will, of course, be with us—in fact, in one sense we are going as her guests. It is she who is so anxious that Lucy should come too, and you need have no fear as to our staying late, for we are going especially early in order to be home before one o'clock." And then, to Mrs. Kemp's surprise, Lucy suddenly declared that she would come after all, and that it was very kind of Mrs. Rebell to have asked her.

On the great day, but not till five o'clock, the belated invitation did at last arrive at the Grange, accompanied by a prettily worded sentence or two of apology and explanation as to a packet of unposted cards. The General and Mrs. Kemp, however, saw no reason to change the arrangement which had been made; more than once Mrs. Boringdon had chaperoned their daughter to local entertainments, and, most potent reason of all, every vehicle in the neighbourhood had been bespoken for something like a fortnight. If Lucy's father and mother wished to grace the ducal ball with their presence, they would have to drive there in their own dog-cart, and that neither of them felt inclined to do on a dark and stormy November night, though there were many to inform them that they would not in so doing find themselves alone!

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Lucy Kemp had a strong wish, which she hardly acknowledged to herself, to see Mrs. Rebell and Oliver Boringdon together. The girl was well aware that Oliver's manner to her had first changed before the coming of this stranger to the Priory, but she could not help knowing that he now saw a great deal of Mrs. Rebell. She knew also that, thanks to that lady's influence, the young man was now free to see Madame Sampiero—that hidden mysterious presence who, if invisible, yet so completely dominated the village life of Chancton.

This, of course, was one reason why he was now so often at the Priory. Indeed, his mother complained to Lucy that it was so: "I suppose that, like most afflicted persons, Madame Sampiero is very capricious. As you know, in old days she would never see Oliver, and now she expects him to be always dancing attendance on her!"

Lucy implicitly accepted this explanation of the long mornings spent by her old friend at the Priory; but it may be doubted whether in giving it, Mrs. Boringdon had been quite honest. On making Mrs. Rebell's acquaintance, which she had not done till Barbara had been at Chancton for some little time, the mistress of the Cottage realised that the Priory now contained within its walls a singularly attractive woman.

The excuse which Boringdon made, first to himself, and then to his mother, concerning Madame Sampiero's renewed interest in village affairs, was one of those half-truths more easily believed by those who utter them than by those to whom they are uttered. During the fortnight Mrs. Boringdon was away, Oliver spent the greater part of each day in Mrs. Rebell's company; the after-knowledge of that fact, together with his avoidance of Lucy Kemp, made his mother vaguely suspicious. She also, therefore, was not sorry for the opportunity now presented to her of seeing her son and Mrs. Rebell together, but she would have liked on this occasion to be with them alone, and not in company with Lucy Kemp.

In this matter, however, her hand was forced. Boringdon, when bringing his mother's note to the Grange, told the truth, as indeed he always did; the taking of Lucy to Halnakeham Castle was Mrs. Rebell's own suggestion, and in making it Barbara honestly believed that she would give her good friend—for so she now regarded Oliver Boringdon—real pleasure. Also, she was by no means anxious for a drive spent in the solitary company of this same good friend and his mother—especially his mother. In Mrs. Boringdon, Barbara had met with her only disappointment at Chancton. There had arisen between the two women something very like antipathy, and more than once Mrs. Rebell had felt retrospectively grateful to James Berwick for having given her, as he had done the first evening they had spent together, a word of warning as to the mistress of the cottage.

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Certain days, ay and certain hours, are apt to remain vividly marked, and that without any special reason to make them so, on the tablets of our memories.

Lucy Kemp always remembered, in this especially vivid sense, not only the coming-of-age ball of Lord Pendragon, but that drive of little more than half an hour, spent for the most part in complete silence by the occupants of the old-fashioned, roomy Priory carriage.

Lucy and Oliver, sitting with their backs to the horses, were in complete shadow, but the carriage lamps threw a strong, if wavering, light on Mrs. Boringdon and Barbara Rebell. For the first time the girl was able to gaze unobserved at the woman who—some instinct told her—had come, even if unknowingly, between herself and the man she loved.

Leaning back as far as was possible in the carriage, Barbara had a constrained and pre-occupied look. She dreaded the festivity before her, fearing that an accident might bring her across some of her unknown relations—some of the many men and women who had long ago broken off all connection with Richard Rebell and his belongings; for these people Richard Rebell's daughter felt a passion of dislike and distaste.

Barbara also shrank from meeting James Berwick in that world from which she herself had always lived apart, while belonging to it by birth and breeding; she found it painful to imagine him set against another background than that where she had hitherto seen him, and she felt as if their singular intimacy must suffer, when once the solitude with which it had become encompassed was destroyed.

That afternoon there had occurred in Mrs. Turke's sitting-room a curious little scene. Barbara and Berwick had gone in there after lunch, and Berwick had amused both Mrs. Rebell and his old nurse by telling them something of the elaborate preparations which were being made at Halnakeham Castle for the great ball. Suddenly the housekeeper had suggested, with one of her half-sly, half-jovial looks, that Mrs. Rebell should, there and then, go and put on her ball-dress—the beautiful gown which had arrived the day before from Paris, and which had already been tried on by her in Madame Sampiero's presence.

For a moment, Barbara had not wholly understood what was being required of her, and Mrs. Turke mistook the reason for her hesitation: "La, ma'am, you need not be afraid that your shoulders won't bear daylight—why, they're milky white, and as dimpled as a baby's, Mr. James!" And then, understanding at last the old woman's preposterous suggestion, and meeting the sudden flame in Berwick's half-abashed, wholly pleading eyes, Barbara had felt inexplicably humiliated—stripped of her feminine dignity. True, Berwick had at once altered his attitude and had affected to treat Mrs. Turke's notion as a poor joke, quickly speaking of some matter which he knew would be of absorbing interest to his old nurse.

But even so Mrs. Rebell, sitting there in the darkness, felt herself flush painfully as she remembered the old housekeeper's shrewd, appraising look, and as she again saw Berwick's ardent eyes meeting and falling before her own shrinking glance.

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"I don't know that we shall have a really pleasant evening"—Mrs. Boringdon's gentle, smooth voice struck across the trend of Barbara's thoughts. "It is certain to be a terrible crush—the Duke and Duchess seem to have asked everybody. Even Doctor McKirdy is coming! I suppose he will drive over in solitary state in one of the other Priory carriages?"

Mrs. Rebell stiffened into attention: "No," she said, rather distantly, "Doctor McKirdy is going to the Castle with a certain Doctor Robertson who lives at Halnakeham." Here Oliver interposed—"Robertson is one of the Halnakeham doctors, and, like McKirdy himself, a bachelor and a Scotchman; he is, therefore, the only medical man hereabouts whom our friend honours with his intimate acquaintance."

And then again silence fell upon the group of ill-assorted fellow travellers.

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One of the long low rooms on the ground floor of the Castle, a portion of the kitchens and commons in the old days when Halnakeham was a Saxon stronghold, was now turned into a cloak-room and dressing-room. There it was that Lucy and Mrs. Boringdon—animated by very different feelings—watched, with discreet curiosity, their companion emerging from the long black cloak which concealed her gown as effectually as if it had been a domino.

Some eyes, especially when they are gazing at a human being, only obtain a general agreeable or disagreeable impression, while others have a natural gift for detail. To Lucy Kemp, the sight of Mrs. Rebell, standing rather rigidly upright before a long mirror set into the stone wall, presented a quite unexpected vision of charm and feminine distinction. But, even after having seen Barbara for a whole evening, the girl could not have described in detail, as Mrs. Boringdon could have done after the first quick enveloping glance, the dress which certainly enhanced and intensified the wearer's rather fragile beauty. The older and keener eyes at once took note of the white silk skirt, draped with festoons of lace caught up at intervals with knots of dark green velvet and twists of black tulle—of the swathed bodice encrusted with sprays of green gems, from which emerged the white, dimpled shoulders which had been so much admired by Mrs. Turke, and which Barbara had inherited from her lovely mother.

Gazing at the figure before her with an appreciation of its singular charm far more envious than that bestowed on it by Lucy Kemp, Mrs. Boringdon was speculating as to the emeralds—might they not, after all, be only fine old paste?—which formed the leit motif of the costume.

"Paris?" Mrs. Boringdon's suave voice uttered the word—the question—with respect.

Barbara started: "Yes, Peters. My god-mother has gone to him for years. He once made her a gown very like this, in fact trimmed with this same lace,"—Mrs. Rebell hesitated—"and of the same general colouring. I am so glad you like it: I do think it really very pretty!"

And then, suddenly looking up and seeing the vision of herself and her dress in the mirror, again the memory of that little scene in Mrs. Turke's sitting-room came over Barbara in a flash of humiliation. Now, in a moment, she would see Berwick—Berwick would see her, and a vivid blush covered her face and neck with flaming colour.

"I hope you don't think the bodice is—is—cut oddly off the shoulders?" she said, rather appealingly.

"Oh! no—quite in the French way, of course, but very becoming to you." Mrs. Boringdon spoke amiably, but her mind was condemning Madame Sampiero for lending fine old lace and priceless jewels to one so situated as was Barbara Rebell. It was such a mistake—such ill-judged kindness! No wonder the woman before her had reddened when admitting, as she had just tacitly done, that the splendid gems encrusted on her bodice were only borrowed plumes.

"You will have to be careful when dancing," she said, rather coldly, "or some of those beautiful stones may become loosened and drop out of their setting."

Barbara looked at her and answered quickly—"I do not mean to dance to-night,"—but she felt the touch of critical enmity in the older woman's voice, and it added to her depression. Instinctively she turned for a word of comfort to Lucy Kemp.

In her white tulle skirt and plain satin bodice, the girl looked very fresh and pretty: she was smiling—the very sight of the lovely frock before her had given her a joyous thrill of anticipation. Lucy had never been to a great ball, and she was beginning to look forward to the experience. "Oh! but you must dance to-night, mother says that at such a ball as this everybody dances!" The other shook her head, but it pleased her to think that she had been instrumental in bringing this pretty, kind young creature to a place which, whatever it had in store for her—Barbara—could only give Lucy unclouded delight.

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Walking with stately steps up the great staircase of Halnakeham Castle, Mrs. Boringdon became at once conscious that her party had arrived most unfashionably early, and she felt annoyed with Mrs. Rebell for having brought about so regrettable a contretemps. While apparently gazing straight before her, she noticed that her present fellow-guests were in no sense representative of the county; they evidently consisted of folk, who, like Barbara, had known no better, and had taken the ducal invitation as literally meaning that the Duchess expected her guests to arrive at half-past nine!

Mrs. Boringdon accordingly made her progress as slow as she could, while Lucy, just behind her, looked about and enjoyed the animated scene. The girl felt happier than she had done for a long time; Oliver's manner had again become full of affectionate intimacy, and she had experienced an instinctive sense of relief in witnessing Mrs. Rebell's manner to him. A woman, even one so young as Lucy Kemp, does not mistake a rival's manner to the man she loves.

At last, thanks to a little manoeuvre on the part of the older lady, she and Lucy, with, of course, her son, became separated from Mrs. Rebell. Barbara was soon well in front, speeding up the staircase with the light sliding gait Oliver so much admired, and forming part of, though in no sense merged in, the stream of rather awe-struck folk about her.

The kindly Duchess, standing a little in front of a brilliant, smiling group of men and women, stood receiving her guests on the landing which formed a vestibule to the long gallery leading to the ball-room. There came a moment when Barbara Rebell—so Boringdon felt—passed out of the orbit of those with whom she had just had the silent drive, and became absorbed into that stationary little island of people at the top of the staircase. More, as he and his mother shook hands with the Duchess, he saw that the woman who now filled his heart and mind to the exclusion of almost everything else, was standing rather in the background, between James Berwick and an old gentleman whom he, Oliver Boringdon, had long known and always disliked, a certain Septimus Daman who knew everyone and was asked everywhere.

Down on Mr. Daman—for he was very short and stout—Mrs. Rebell was now gazing with her whole soul in her eyes; and to-night old Septimus found that his one-time friendship with poor forgotten Richard Rebell conferred the pleasant privilege of soft looks and kindly words from one of the most attractive women present. To do him justice, virtue was in this case rewarded, for Septimus Daman had ever been one of the few who had remained actively faithful to the Rebells in their sad disgrace, and when Barbara was a little girl he had brought her many a pretty toy on his frequent visits to his friends in their exile.

But of all this Boringdon could know nothing, and, like most men, he felt unreasonably annoyed when the woman whom he found so charming charmed others beside himself. That Mrs. Rebell should exert her powers of pleasing on Madame Sampiero and on old Doctor McKirdy had seemed reasonable enough,—especially when she had done so on his behalf,—but here, at Halnakeham Castle, he could have wished her to be, as Lucy evidently was, rather over-awed by the occasion, and content to remain under his mother's wing. In his heart, he even found fault with Barbara's magnificent dress. It looked different, so he told himself, from those worn by the other women present: and as he walked down the long gallery—every step taking him, as he was acutely conscious it did, further away from her in whom he now found something to condemn—his eyes rested on Lucy's simple frock with gloomy approval.

"Mrs. Rebell's gown?" he said with a start, "no, I can't agree with you—Frankly, I don't like it! Oh! yes, it may have come from Paris, and I dare say it's very elaborate, but I never like anything that makes a lady look conspicuous!"

So, out of the soreness of his heart, Oliver instructed Lucy as to the whole duty of woman.

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To the Duchess, this especial group of guests was full of interest, and—if only Mrs. Boringdon had known it—she felt quite grateful to them all for coming so early! On becoming aware of Mrs. Rebell's approach, she was woman enough to feel a moment's keen regret that Arabella Berwick was not there to see the person whom she had called gauche and insignificant, coming up the red-carpeted staircase. Even the Duke had been impressed and interested, but rather cross with himself for not knowing who it was, for he prided himself on knowing everybody in the neighbourhood.

"Who's this coming up alone?" he asked, touching his wife's elbow.

"Poor Richard Rebell's daughter—I told you all about her the other day. Barbara Sampiero seems to be going to adopt her; don't you see she's wearing the Rebell emeralds? Remember that you saw and spoke to her at Whiteways!"

"Bless me, so I did to be sure! She looked uncommonly well then, but nothing to what she does now, eh?"

And so it was that Barbara successfully ran the gauntlet of both kind and indifferent eyes, and finally found herself absorbed into the group of people standing behind her host and hostess.

Then the Duchess passed on to Mrs. Boringdon and her son, treating them with peculiar graciousness simply because for the moment she could not remember who they were or anything about them! She felt sure she had seen this tall dark man before—probably in London. He looked rather cross and very stiff. A civil word was said to Lucy and an apology tendered for the mistake made about the invitation. "Let me see," the speaker was thinking, "this pretty little girl is to marry Squire Laxton's soldier cousin, isn't she? Pen must be told to dance with her."

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An hour later; not eleven o'clock, and yet, to the Duchess's infinite relief, every guest—with the important exception of the Fletchings party—had arrived. She was now free to rest her tired right hand, and to look after the pleasure of those among her guests who might feel shy or forlorn. But, as the kind hostess filled up one of the narrow side doors into the ball-room, she saw that everything seemed to be going well. Even Louise Marshall, to whom the Duchess had spoken very seriously just before dinner, appeared on the whole to be leaving James Berwick alone, and to have regained something of her power of judicious flirtation. She looked very lovely; it was pleasant to have something so decorative, even if so foolish, about! Too bad of Lord Bosworth to be so late, but then he was privileged, and a cordon of intelligent heralds had been established to announce his approach; once the Fletchings carriages drew up at the great doors, the Duchess would again take up her stand at the top of the staircase.

Lucy Kemp was thoroughly enjoying herself. Had she cared to do so she could have danced every dance twice over—in fact, she would willingly have spared some of the attention she received from the young men of the neighbourhood, the sons of the local squires and clergy, who all liked her, and were glad to dance with her.

Oliver seemed to have gone back to his old self. He and Lucy—though standing close to Mrs. Boringdon and an old lady with whom she had settled down for a long talk—were practically alone. Both felt as if they were meeting for the first time after a long accidental absence, and so had much to say to one another. Mrs. Rebell's name was not once mentioned,—why indeed should it have been? so Lucy asked herself when, later, during the days that followed, she went over every word of that long, intermittent conversation. Their talk was all about Oliver's own affairs—especially they discussed in all its bearings that important by-election which was surely coming on.

Then something occurred which completed, and, as it were, rounded off Lucy's joy and contentment. James Berwick made his way across the vast room, now full of spinning couples, to the recess where they were both standing, and at once began talking earnestly to Oliver, tacitly including the girl by his side in the conversation. At the end of the eager, intimate discussion, he turned abruptly to Lucy and asked her to dance with him, and she, flushing with pleasure, perceived that Boringdon was greatly pleased and rather surprised by his friend's action. As for herself, she felt far more flattered than when the same civility—for so Lucy, in her humility, considered it—had been paid her earlier in the evening by the hero of the day, shy Lord Pendragon himself. That Berwick could not dance at all well made the compliment all the greater!

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And Barbara Rebell? Barbara was not enjoying herself at all. It has become a truism to say that solitude in a crowd is the most trying of all ordeals. In one sense, Mrs. Rebell was not left a moment solitary, for both the Duke and the Duchess took especial pains to introduce her to those notabilities of the neighbourhood whom they knew Madame Sampiero was so eager, so pathetically anxious, that her god-daughter should know and impress favourably. But, as the evening went on, she felt more and more that she had no real link with these happy people about her. Even when listening, with moved heart, to old Mr. Daman's reminiscences of those far-off days at St. Germains, when his coming had meant a delightful holiday for the lonely little English girl to whom he was so kind, she felt curiously, nay horribly, alone.

With a feeling of bewildered pain, she gradually became aware that James Berwick, without appearing to do so, avoided finding himself in her company. She saw him talking eagerly, first to this woman, and then to that; at one moment bending over the armchair of an important dowager, and then dancing—yes, actually dancing—with Lucy Kemp. She also could not help observing that he was very often in the neighbourhood of the woman who, Barbara acknowledged to herself, was the beauty of the ball, a certain Mrs. Marshall, whose radiant fairness was enhanced by a black tulle and jet gown, and who was—so Mr. Daman informed her with a chuckle—but a newly-made widow. And in truth something seemed to hold Berwick, as if by magic, to the floor of the ball-room. He did not wander off, as did everybody else, either alone or in company, to any of the pretty side-rooms which had been arranged for sitting out, or into the long, book-lined gallery; and yet Mrs. Rebell had now and again caught his glance fixed on her, his eyes studiously emptied of expression. To avoid that strange alien gaze, she had retreated more than once into the gallery, but the ball-room seemed to draw her also, or else her companions—the shadow-like men and women who seemed to be brought up to her in an endless procession, and to whom she heard herself saying she hardly knew what—were in a conspiracy to force her back to where she could not help seeing Berwick.

Oh! how ardently Barbara wished that the evening would draw to a close. It was good to remember that Mrs. Boringdon and Lucy had both expressed a strong desire to leave early. Soon her martyrdom, for so in truth it was, would cease, and so also, with this experience—this sudden light thrown down into the depths of her own heart—would cease her intimacy with James Berwick.

The anguish she felt herself enduring frightened her. What right had this man, who was after all but a friend and a friend of short standing, to make her feel this intolerable pain, and, what was to such a nature as hers more bitter, such humiliation? There assailed her that instinct of self-preservation which makes itself felt in certain natures, even in the rarefied atmosphere of exalted passion. She must, after to-night, save herself from the possible repetition of such feelings as those which now possessed her. She told herself that those past afternoons and evenings of close, often wordless, communion and intimacy yet gave her no lien on James Berwick's heart, no right even to his attention.

Sitting there, with Mr. Daman babbling in her ear, mocking ghosts, evil memories, crowded round poor Barbara. She remembered the first time—the only time that really mattered—when she had been told, she herself would never have suspected or discovered it, of Pedro Rebell's infidelity, of his connection with one of their own coloured people, and the passion of outraged pride and disgust which had possessed her, wedded to a sense of awful loneliness. Even to herself it seemed amazing that she should be suffering now much as she had suffered during that short West Indian night five years ago. Nay, she was now suffering more, for then there had not been added to her other miseries that feeling of soreness and sense of personal loss.

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"Are you enjoying yourself, Doctor McKirdy?" His hostess was smiling into the old Scotchman's face. She had seen with what troubled interest his eyes followed Mrs. Rebell and James Berwick—the Duchess would have given much to have been able to ask the doctor what he really thought about—well, about many things,—but her courage failed her. As he hesitated she bent forward and whispered, "Don't say that it's a splendid sight; you and I know what it is—a perfect clanjamfray! Confess that it is!" and as Doctor McKirdy's ugly face became filled with the spirit of laughter, the Duchess added, "You see I didn't have a Scotch mother for nothing!"

And Mrs. Boringdon, watching the little colloquy with a good deal of wonderment, marvelled that her Grace could demean herself to laugh and joke with such an insufferable nobody as she considered Doctor McKirdy to be!

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