Comtesse Diane.

"Will you please introduce me to the lady with whom Mr. Daman has been talking all the evening? I have something I very much want to ask her, and I don't wish to say it before that horrid old man, so will you take him aside while I speak to her?"

Louise Marshall was standing before James Berwick. She looked beautiful, animated, good-humoured as he had not seen her look for a very long time, and the plaintive, rather sulky tone in which she had lately always addressed him was gone. There are women on whom the presence of a crowd, the atmosphere of violent admiration, have an extraordinary tonic effect. To-night, for the first time since she had become a widow, Mrs. Marshall felt that life, even without James Berwick, might conceivably be worth living; but unfortunately for himself, the man to whom she had just addressed what he felt to be so disquieting a request, did not divine her thoughts. Instead, suspicions—each one more hateful than the other—darted through his mind, and so, for only answer to her words he looked at her uncertainly, saying at last, "You mean Mrs. Rebell?"

She bent her head; they were standing close to the band, and it was difficult to hear, but he realized that she had some purpose in her mind, and there shone the same eager good-tempered smile on the face which others thought so lovely.

"Very well," he said, "I will take you across to her," and slowly they skirted the walls of the great room, now filled with movement, music, and colour.

Up to the last moment, Berwick had seriously thought of escaping the ordeal of this evening. The mere presence of Louise Marshall in his neighbourhood induced in him a sense of repulsion and of self-reproach with which he hardly knew how to cope in his present state of body and mind. And now had come the last day. Escape was in sight; not with his good will would he ever again find himself under the same roof with her—indeed, in any case he was actually going back to Chillingworth that very night. Wisdom had counselled him to avoid the ball, but the knowledge that Mrs. Rebell would be there had made him throw wisdom to the winds. Why spend hours in solitude at Chillingworth while he might be looking at Barbara—talking to Barbara—listening to Barbara?

But when it came to the point Berwick found that he had over-estimated the robustness of his own conscience. From the moment he had seen Mrs. Rebell coming up the broad staircase of Halnakeham Castle, he had realised his folly in not following the first and wisest of his instincts. Although the two women were entirely different in colouring, in general expression, indeed in everything except in age, there seemed to-night, at least to his unhappy, memory-haunted eyes, something about Barbara which recalled Mrs. Marshall, while in Mrs. Marshall there seemed, now and again, something of Barbara. So strong was this impression that at last the resemblance became to Berwick an acute obsession—in each woman he saw the other, and as the evening went on, he avoided as far as possible the company of both.

Now it had become his hateful business to serve as a link between them.

For a moment Mrs. Marshall looked at Barbara, then smilingly shook her head. "A string band would have been so much nicer, don't you think so, but the Duke believes in encouraging local talent. I wonder if you would mind coming out here for a moment—it is so much quieter in there—and I want to ask you to do me such a favour!"

Even as she spoke, she led the way from the ball-room into one of the book-lined embrasures of the long, now almost deserted, gallery, and Barbara, wondering, followed her.

Louise Marshall put on her prettiest manner. "I do hope you won't think me rude," she said, "but I am so very anxious to know if your beautiful gown came from Adolphe Peters? I do not know if you have noticed it, but of course I saw it at once,—there's a certain family likeness between my frock and yours! They say, you know, that Peters can only think out one really good original design every season—but then, when he has thought it out, how good it is!"

Mrs. Marshall spoke with a kind of sacred enthusiasm. To her, dress had always been, everything considered, the greatest and most absorbing interest of life.

After having received the word of assent she sought, she hurried on, "Of course, I felt quite sure of it! It is easy to see that he has followed out the same general idea—la ligne, as he calls it—in my frock as in yours. Several times this evening, I couldn't help thinking how awful it would have been if our two gowns had been exactly alike! I am probably going to India very soon"—Mrs. Marshall lowered her voice, for she had no wish that Berwick, who was standing a few paces off, his miserable eyes fixed on the two women while he talked to Septimus Daman, should thus learn the great news,—"but I shall be in Paris for a few days, and I have been wondering if you would mind my asking Peters to make me a gown exactly like yours, only of grey silk instead of white, and with mauve velvet bows and white tulle instead of green and black—that mauve," she added eagerly, "which is almost pale blue, while yet quite mourning! Well, would you mind my telling him that I have seen your dress?"

"No, of course not," said Barbara with some wonderment. "But I think that you should say that the gown in question was that made to the order of Madame Sampiero; he won't remember my name."

"Thanks so much! Madame Sampiero? Oh! yes, I know—I quite understand. Are you a niece of hers? Oh! only a god-daughter, that's a comfort, for then you need never be afraid of becoming like her,"—a look of very real fear came over the lovely, mindless face,—"I've often heard about her, and the awful state she's in! Isn't it a frightful thing? Do you think people are punished for the wicked things they do,—I mean, of course, in this life?"

Barbara stared at her, this time both amazed and angered. "Yes," she said, slowly, "I am afraid one cannot live long in this world and not believe that, but—but——"

Mrs. Marshall, however, gave her no time to speak, and indeed Barbara would have found it difficult to put into words what she wished to convey concerning the courage, aye, the essential nobility, of the poor paralysed woman whom she had come to love so dearly.

"I wish you had been staying here during the last few days, I'm sure we should have become great friends." The speaker took a last long considering look at Barbara's bodice. "Your black tulle is dodged in and out so cleverly," she said, with a touch of regret, "mine is not twisted half so well, it looks more lumpy"—without any change of tone she added, "Since you are Madame Sampiero's god-daughter, I suppose you have known James Berwick quite a long time, as he is Lord Bosworth's nephew."

"But I have never seen, and do not know, Lord Bosworth," Barbara spoke rather stiffly.

"How very strange! But you know he is expected here to-night. He's a dear, splendid old thing, always particularly nice to me. But there he is!—there they all are—the whole Fletchings party,—coming in now!"

Barbara turned eagerly round. She was intensely desirous of seeing Lord Bosworth, and she fixed her eyes, with ardent curiosity, on the group of figures slowly advancing down the gallery.

Slightly in front of the others came the Duchess, and by her side paced a tall, large-framed man; now he was bending towards his companion, listening to what she was telling him with amused interest. The Duke and Arabella Berwick walked just behind them, and some half-dozen men and women ended the little cortÉge.

Men wear Court dress with a difference. To Lord Bosworth, the velvet coat, the knee-breeches, and silk stockings, lent an almost majestic dignity of deportment. The short stout Duke, trotting just behind him, looked insignificant, over-shadowed by the larger figure—indeed, even the Garter gracing the ducal leg seemed of no account when seen in contrast with the red riband of the Bath crossing Lord Bosworth's stalwart chest.

As the procession came nearer, Barbara saw that the man in whom she took so great an interest still looked full of the pride of life, and just now his large powerful face was lighted up by a broad smile. His curling grey hair had receded, leaving a large expanse of broad forehead, and the shaggy eyebrows, which were darker than his hair, overhung two singularly shrewd grey eyes. Thanks to the many months of each year now spent by him in the country—thanks also to the excellent care taken of him by his niece—Lord Bosworth's face was ruddy with the glow so easily mistaken for that of health. Of the many who looked on him that night, marvelling at the old statesman's air of robust power, and inclined perhaps to criticise his long retirement from public affairs—for he had been one of the most successful, and therefore one of the most popular, Foreign Ministers of his generation—only two people—that is he himself and a certain famous doctor who had come to the ball as member of a house-party—were aware that Lord Bosworth would in all probability never see old age, in the sense that many of his Parliamentary contemporaries and former colleagues might hope to do.

And now, as Barbara Rebell saw him walking down the gallery, talking with mellow sonorous utterances, and now and again laughing heartily at the remarks of the Duchess, there swept over her a sudden rush of revolt and indignation. She contrasted the fine, vigorous figure, advancing towards her, with that of the paralysed woman, whom she had left to-night lying stretched out in that awful immobility; and she recalled Madame Sampiero's last muttered words to herself—"I think you will see Lord Bosworth to-night. I should like you to have word with him—you will tell me how he looks—how he seems——"

As the Duchess and her honoured guest drew close to the embrasure where Barbara and Mrs. Marshall were standing, Lord Bosworth's acute eyes—those eyes which had been early trained to allow nothing of interest, still less nothing of an agreeable nature, to escape them—became focussed on the charming group formed by the two women, the one as dark as the other was fair, who stood together against the soft deep background made by the backs of the Halnakeham Elzevirs.

Lord Bosworth bent his head, and asked the Duchess a question—then in a moment the whole expression of the powerful, still handsome face altered, the smile faded from his lips, and a look of extreme gravity, almost of suffering, came over the firm mouth and square chin. The Duchess stayed her steps, and Barbara heard distinctly the eager—"Certainly, I shall be delighted! I have been most anxious to meet her. Yes—once, when she was a child, long ago, in France."

A moment later the formal group had broken up; Barbara's name was uttered, she felt her right hand taken in a strong grasp, and unceremoniously Lord Bosworth turned away with her. Still holding her hand, he led her aside and, looking down at her with a moved expression on his face, "I have been wishing much to see you," he said, "but, as you perhaps may know, I am not allowed to come to Chancton. I was attached, most truly so, to both your parents." He hesitated, and added in a lower tone, "Barbara,—that is your name, is it not?—to me the most beautiful, the noblest of women's names!"

Meanwhile, much by-play was going on around them, but of it all Mrs. Rebell was quite unconscious. Even Berwick was for the moment forgotten, and she did not see Arabella's mingled look of quick interest and slowly gathering surprise as Miss Berwick realised with whom her uncle had turned aside.

Still less was Barbara aware that the Duchess was speaking rather urgently to Mrs. Marshall. "There is no one in my sitting-room," she was saying, "and you will never have such a good opportunity again to-night. Do take him there now! I am sure, Louise, you will be acting wisely as well as rightly, but do not be too long, for everyone wants to see you,—even in the last few moments several people have come up and asked who you were, and wanted to be introduced to you. I have never seen you looking better than you look to-night." There was a commanding as well as a caressing quality in the kind voice.

Then the Duchess looked round, and in answer to her glance, Berwick, ill at ease and looking haggard, came forward. He also had been watching his uncle and Mrs. Rebell, wondering what they could have to say to one another that seemed to move Barbara so much; but he was not given much time for that or any other thought. Timidly, with more grace of manner than she usually showed, Louise Marshall turned towards him. "The Duchess," she said, nervously, "wants us to go into her sitting-room—I have something to say to you there."

For a moment, the man addressed looked round, as if seeking a way of escape: then he realised that the moment he had so dreaded, and which he had up to the present instant so successfully evaded, had come, and must be both faced and endured. A feeling of rage came over him—a self-scourging for his own exceeding folly in being here to-night. But without making any answer, he followed her down the gallery, only Arabella Berwick and the Duchess having overheard Mrs. Marshall's words, and witnessed their result.

In matters of feeling and emotion, as in everything else, it is the unexpected which generally happens. When at last James Berwick found himself alone with Mrs. Marshall in the small, dimly-lighted room which had but a few hours before seen the interview between the Duchess and his sister, his companion's words—even her action, or lack of action—took him entirely by surprise. He had expected, and was ashamed for so expecting, that the woman who had compelled him to follow her to this solitary place, would turn and fling herself into his arms with a cry of "Jimmy!"—the name which she herself had invented for him, and which he had always thought grotesque—on her lips.

While walking quickly down the long corridors which led from the more modern side of the Castle to this older portion, he had strung himself up to meet any affectionate demonstration with good-humour and philosophy, for, whatever else was not sure, this he was determined should be the last meeting between them, even if he had to give up half his friends and all his acquaintances in consequence.

But Mrs. Marshall's behaviour was quite different from that which he had expected. After he had shut the door of the boudoir, she walked away from him, and sitting down began to play with the fringe of a table cover, while he stood moodily staring down at her.

"Must you stand?" she asked at last, in the plaintive tone which he so much disliked.

"Oh! no, not if you wish me to sit down," and he sat down, fiercely waiting till it should be her pleasure to begin.

How could he have allowed himself to be so entrapped? He had heard it asserted that women never stood by one another—well, in that case the Duchess was an exception! He ground his teeth with anger at the thought of the trick which had been played him. But stay—now, at last, Mrs. Marshall was speaking—

"Albinia has been talking to me. She has been telling me things which I did not really know before,—I mean about your position, and how important it is to you that you should remain free. You remember our talk last year?"

Berwick bent his head, but into his strained face there came no sign of the inward wincing which her words brought with them. Still, he began unconsciously to revise his opinion of the Duchess; she had meant well by him after all, but he wished she had kept out of his affairs, and left him to manage them himself—

Mrs. Marshall was again speaking: "I could not understand what you meant by what you said then, it seemed so unkind! But now, of course, I realise that you were right—in fact I've brought you here to-night to tell you that I do understand."

There was a long pause. Berwick was at an utter loss for words, and every moment he expected the woman before him to make some more direct allusion to the condition under which he held his fortune. He felt a kind of helpless rage to think of his affairs being thus discussed, even by one so good-natured and well-meaning as had evidently been, in this matter, the Duchess of Appleby and Kendal. But what did all this preamble signify?

"I am glad you do understand," he said at last in a hoarse voice which he scarcely recognised as his own. "I know I must have seemed a great brute."

"If you had only trusted me more," she said plaintively. "Of course I should have understood at once! I should have known that what I could offer was not enough—that there was no comparison——"

Berwick made a sudden movement. Was it really necessary that he should listen to this? Was it part of his punishment that he should endure such unforgettable abasement? But, alas for him! Louise Marshall was in a sense enjoying both the scene and the situation. While she was speaking, there came into the still air of the room the sound of distant melody, and she felt as if she were looking on at a touching last act in some sentimental play. Also there was, after all, something uplifting in the sensation—to her a novel one—of doing a noble action, for so had the Duchess, with innocent cunning, represented her renunciation of James Berwick.

This frivolous, egoistical woman, ever guided by her instincts, never by her heart or conscience, thoroughly understood, as many shrewd and clever women fail to do, the value of money. From the plane whence Mrs. Marshall took her survey of life, the gratification of that instinct which she called love had always been a luxury, and the possession of wealth with which to gratify all other instincts an absolute necessity of existence. The contempt which most women, even those themselves ignoble, naturally feel for a man whom they suspect of putting material possessions before the deepest feelings of the heart, would to her have savoured of gross hypocrisy.

The Duchess—clever woman as she was, and dealing, in this case, with one whose intellect she despised—would have been surprised indeed had she known that what had really impressed and influenced Louise Marshall during their painful talk that day, had been the short statement, thrown in as an after-thought, of Berwick's financial position and of what he would lose if he married again. That, so Mrs. Marshall at once told herself, made all the difference. To her mind it absolutely justified James Berwick in rejecting the offer practically made by her within a few weeks of her husband's death, for what were her few thousands a year compared to the huge income which he would lose on a second marriage? She was, however, inclined to consider that he had shown false delicacy in not at once telling her the circumstances of the case. Then, at any rate, they might have sorrowed together over the inscrutable dictates of Providence. But instead of taking that sincere and manly course, Berwick, during that interview which even she shrank from recalling, had actually implied that his distaste to her was personal, his horror of marriage a singular idiosyncracy! Now it behoved her to beat a dignified retreat. And so, "As things are——"

Berwick began to realise that the woman before him had prepared what she wished to say, nay more, that she had probably rehearsed the present scene—

"As things are, Jimmy, I think it will be best for us to part, and so I have made up my mind to go to India with the Thorntons." She hurried over the words, honestly afraid of provoking in herself emotion of a disfiguring nature, for the thought of her unselfishness naturally brought the tears to her eyes. "That's all," she said in abrupt conclusion, "and now I think we had better go back to the ball-room."

She gave Berwick a quick, furtive look, and suddenly felt sorry for him. How he must have cared after all! For, as he stood opening the door for her to pass through, his face had turned ashen, and his blue eyes were sunken. So might a man look who, suddenly relieved of an intolerable weight, is, for a moment, afraid to move or to speak, lest the burden should again descend upon his shrinking shoulders.

When once more in the ball-room, Berwick made his way straight to his sister. Even before he stood by her, the expression on his face had aroused her quick anxious attention. But Arabella had learnt to spare her brother feminine comment.

"Have you yet spoken to Mrs. Boringdon?" he asked her, rather sharply.

"No, I have not even seen her; do you wish me to speak to her? I think she must know many of the people here. Where is she?"

"Over there, sitting with that old lady. I should be glad if you would tell her that we—that is, that you—are going to drive Mrs. Rebell back to Chancton to-night. The Boringdons have to leave early, and it would of course be absurd for Mrs. Rebell to go away just when you have arrived, and when the Duke has arranged for her to sit at supper next to Monsieur Parisot."

Now Monsieur Parisot was the French Ambassador.

"Of course, if you really wish it, it can be managed." Miss Berwick spoke hesitatingly; in these little matters she did not like to have her hand forced. "But, James, it will not be very convenient." And she looked at her brother with puzzled eyes.

Was it possible, after all, that Albinia had been right and she wrong? If so, why that obedient following of Louise Marshall out of the gallery half an hour before, and why this strange look on his face now? Miss Berwick had just spoken to Barbara Rebell, but her eyes were still holden; indeed, her feeling as to Madame Sampiero's god-daughter, or rather as to her beautiful gown and superb jewels, had not been unlike that of Mrs. Boringdon, and would have translated itself into the homely phrase, "Fine feathers make fine birds." Arabella did not credit, for one moment, the Duchess's belief that the mistress of Chancton Priory intended to make the daughter of Richard Rebell her heiress. Miss Berwick had persuaded herself that Chancton would pass in due course into her brother's possession, and she knew that there had been some such proposal years before, in the heyday of Lord Bosworth's intimacy with Madame Sampiero. This being so, it surely seemed a pity that Mrs. Rebell should now be treated in a way that might ultimately cause disappointment.

"I do wish it, and it will be quite convenient!" Berwick's tone was very imperious. "I myself am going back to Chillingworth to-night. I offered long ago to leave here to-day, for they have every attic full. I have of course arranged for an extra carriage, so you will be put to no inconvenience,"—but his bright blue eyes, now full of strange fire, fell before his sister's challenging glance, and the altered accent with which she observed, "Oh! of course if you and Mrs. Rebell have arranged to go back together——"

Berwick's hand closed on his sister's arm and held it for a moment in a tight, to her a painful, grip.

"You have no right to say, or even to think, such a thing! The arrangement, such as it is, was made by me, Mrs. Rebell knows nothing of it; she is quite willing, and even eager, to go back now with the Boringdons. The other proposal must come from you——" he hesitated, then, more quietly, muttered, "I don't often ask you to oblige me."

Arabella gave in at once, but with a strange mingling of feelings,—relief that she had been wrong as to Louise Marshall's hold on her brother; a certain pique that in this matter the Duchess had understood James better than she had herself; and, above all, there was a sensation of bewildered surprise that such a man as Berwick, one so intelligent, so eagerly absorbed in public affairs, should require this—this—Arabella did not know how to qualify, how to describe, even to herself, her brother's passion for romance, his craving for sentimental adventure. Well, if it was so, better far that he should find what he sought, that he should follow his will-of-the-wisp in their own neighbourhood, and, for the moment, with so colourless—so the sister seeking for another word, could only find that of respectable—yes, so respectable a woman as was this Mrs. Rebell!

Miss Berwick, on her way to Mrs. Boringdon, allowed her eyes to sweep over the great ball-room. Barbara was standing talking to Mr. O'Flaherty whom Lord Bosworth had just introduced to her. "She certainly looks intelligent," said Arabella to herself, "and quite, yes quite, a lady. Perhaps my first impression of her was wrong after all. But how foolish, how wrong of poor Barbara Sampiero to let her wear those emeralds!" Yet perhaps the jewels played their part in modifying her view of Barbara Rebell. The wearing of fine gems is a great test of a woman's refinement.

Then Miss Berwick's gaze softened as it became fixed on Barbara's companion. Thank Heaven, all men were not like James, or all women like Louise Marshall. Daniel O'Flaherty had the steadfast, pre-occupied look which soon becomes the mark of those men who are architects of their own fortunes; such men can find time for a great passion, but none for what the French happily describe as passionettes. As for Barbara Rebell, there was a look of pride and reserve as well as of intelligence in her dark eyes and pale face. "If James likes to flirt with her, and Dan,"—her thought lingered over the homely name,—"likes to talk to her, we must see about having her to Fletchings!"