“If I were loved, as I desire to be,

What is there in the great sphere of the earth,

And range of evil between death and birth,

That I shall fear, if I were loved by thee?”

Tennyson.

If yer plase, yer honour, Mr. Geraghty is below, and would like to see yer honour if its convaniant,” said little Nora Doolan, thrusting her untidy head into the cheerless back room in Paradise Street.

Ralph, who was pacing to and from learning a part in a Shakesperian play which he was little likely to act as yet, glanced round with brightening face.

“What? Dear old Geraghty!” he exclaimed. “I’m glad he has looked me up. Show him upstairs Nora, for I should like to have a talk with him.”

The old man-servant responded with alacrity to the warm welcome he received.

“It’s delighted I am to see you again, Mr. Ralph,” he exclaimed, looking him over with an air of satisfaction as though he had some share in his well-being. “And it’s in good health that you are looking, sir, and no mistake.”

“Nothing like hard work, Geraghty, for keeping a man well,” said Ralph. “And I hope I’m settled now for some time to come. You can tell Miss Evereld that I’m at the very theatre we so often used to go to, and that I have the pleasure of seeing Washington act every night.”

“I’m glad to hear it, sir,” said Geraghty. “We all knew long ago, sir, that you’d make a first-class actor; it took but a little small bit of discrimination to see that much.”

Ralph laughed. “Well, Geraghty, you mustn’t run away with the notion that I’m a star, for, as a matter of fact, I am nothing but a super at a pound a week. But it’s better to begin at the beginning in a good theatre than to be cock-of-the-walk in a fifth-rate one.”

“To be sure, sir, it’s just what I was saying but now to my sister about placing her eldest girl. ‘Never mind how little she earns the first year or two,’ said I, ‘but for heaven’s sake place her in a gentleman’s family, and don’t let her demean herself by takin’ service with them that hasn’t an ounce of breeding to bless themselves with. Let her be kitchen or scullery-maid or what you will, but have her with gentry.’”

“Geraghty,” said Ralph, with a mischievous smile, “You have such a respect for birth that it’s my firm conviction you’ll be the last and most staunch supporter left to the House of Lords.”

Geraghty laughed all over his face, and his broad shoulders shook.

“I’ve seen just a little too much of the aristocracy to pin my faith to them, sir. Handsome is as handsome does, and gentle is as gentle does. But from the House of Lords and their marrin’ and muddlin’—Good Lord deliver us!”

Ralph who had purposely provoked this tirade from the Irishman, laughed and changed the subject by an inquiry after Evereld.

“Well, thank God, she’s getting on finely, sir. Seems as if there was a special Providence over orphans, and Bridget she says why that’s natural enough, that their parents can see better how to guide them bein’ higher up so to speak. But, however that may be, at first we all thought she’d fret her heart out with missin’ you, sir. But in September, Bridget took her down to the school at Southbourne, and though she was a bit faint-hearted at the notion, she’d no sooner set eyes on the place than she was sure she’d be happy there. Bridget says it’s the most beautiful house and garden you ever saw, and all so comfortable and homelike in spite of the size. And Miss Evereld writes that she’s as happy as the day is long, and that they’re teaching her how to nurse sick folks, and that she’s learnt to darn her own stockin’s—a thing she never got a chance o’ doin’ at home—and to dance the minuet, and to do algebra, and I don’t know what beside. But, from what Bridget told me, I foregathered that it wasn’t a school where they cram them like turkeys for Christmas or geese for a Michaelmas fair, but just a home on a large scale for turnin’ out well-mannered young gentlewomen who’ll have a very good notion how to manage a home on a smaller scale.”

When the old Butler had gone, Ralph fell into a reverie. The effect of hearing all about Evereld had been to make him long very impatiently for the end of their separation. It was true that when she returned to the Mactavishes at Christmas he could write to her without any breach of regulations, but there seemed no chance of their meeting, and he greatly missed his old companion. He began to weave all manner of visions of future success, and to imagine that in an incredibly short space of time he had gained quite a high position at Washington’s theatre, that he met Evereld in society, and that Sir Matthew, who always paid homage to the successful, became quite friendly and cordial to him. How strange it would be to be invited as a distinguished guest to the very house in Queen Anne’s Gate where he had been snubbed and scolded as a boy.

It was with something of a shock that he came back to the prosaic present and found himself merely a super about to go through, for the fiftieth time, the wearisome business which was his allotted share in a play which was likely to run for many months more.

It was just at Christmas that he was confronted by one of those decisions that form the chief difficulty of an actor’s career. To seize the right opportunity of promotion, yet to avoid “Raw haste, half-sister to delay”; to have precisely that right judgment which often determines the success or failure of a life, is hard to all mortals, but hardest to those of the artistic temperament. The temptation to escape from the monotony of his present work came to him through the Professor’s granddaughter.

To little Ivy Grant he had from the very first seemed a full fledged hero. He was the first man she had ever looked up to, for although devoted to her old grandfather it was not easy to respect the Professor. He seemed, to shrewd little Ivy, a very weak old man, and she despised the weak, not understanding at all that habit of making large allowance for human infirmity which grows with the growing years. The old man was a confirmed opium eater. The habit, begun in a time of physical pain and great mental worry, had now bound him fast in its cruel chains, and the kindly benevolence which had struck Ralph at first sight as so strange a contrast with his blameworthy neglect of Ivy’s safety, was all due to the influence of the drug. His will was now not in the least his own, and though he had his moments of exquisite exaltation he had always to pay for them by times of black depression and misery. Under these circumstances the child’s life could hardly be a happy one; she was, moreover, scarcely strong enough for the late hours and the exposure to all sorts of weather which her work entailed, and in spite of her brisk, managing ways she began to crave for something more strong and trustworthy to support her than her grandfather whose simile of the lifeless trunk of the tree kept up by the ivy supporting it, had been singularly near the truth.

When Ralph no longer played at the same theatre, and their meetings became less frequent, the little girl flagged and lost heart. She had good impulses but she was easily led, and her friendship with Ralph had filled her with a sense of dissatisfaction with her own life, and the lives that most nearly touched her own. Her busy little brain began to form eager plans for the future, and at last fate put in her way a chance which revived her drooping spirits, and lighted up her blue eyes with hope. Her good news arrived on Christmas day, otherwise the festival would have been cheerless enough, for the old Professor had slept in his invalid chair the whole of the morning, and Ivy, sitting in solitary state beside the fire, had eaten a sober little Christmas dinner consisting of a slice of cold meat and a mince-pie kindly given to her by the landlady. Then having tidied the bare little room, and stuck a solitary piece of holly in the window that people might see she was “keeping Christmas” properly, she returned to her place on the hearthrug, and tried to become interested in a penny novelette which should have been exciting, but somehow failed to touch her.

“Stupid thing!” she exclaimed presently, throwing the book to the further end of the room with a little petulant gesture. “I can’t even cry when the heroine dies. What is the good of a book if you can’t cry over it?”

Just then there came a tap at the door, and in walked Ralph with his cheerful face, and in his hands was a great bunch of ivy and mistletoe.

“A happy Christmas to you,” he said, taking her cold little hand in his. “How’s the Professor? Not worse I hope?”

“He is no worse,” said Ivy, “but he has been asleep all day, and it’s dreadfully dull. Where did you get such lovely evergreens?”

“Walked out into the country this morning, right away beyond Hampstead. As for the mistletoe, that’s a particular present from Dan Doolan, and I’ve just had to kiss seven small Doolans beneath it before they would let me out of the house. Now your turn has come.”

Ivy laughed and protested, but was thrilled through and through by the kiss, though it was just as matter-of-fact as that which he had bestowed on Tim Doolan, aged three. Her little, pale face lighted up radiantly, but unobservant Ralph saw nothing of that, he was bestowing all his energies on the decoration of the dreary, little room, and crowning with ivy the portraits of sundry great actors and actresses.

“Do you think Mrs. Siddons ever looked as stiff and forbidding as this?” he said, glancing round with a smile, as Ivy held him a laurel branch to put above the frame.

“Yes,” she replied, saucily. “She must have looked like that when she said in awful tones, ‘Will it wash?’ to the poor frightened shopman who was serving her.”

“Ah, perhaps. Well, Ivy, there is no fear that you will ever strike terror into any one’s heart.”

“Who cares for striking terror into people?” she replied, merrily, and as she spoke she began to float dreamily away into an exquisitely graceful skirt-dance; her little, childish face growing more and more sweet and tranquil as she proceeded.

Clearly dancing was her vocation. Ralph stood with his back to the fire watching her perfect grace: it seemed to him the very poetry of motion. And Ivy was at her very best when she was dancing; at other times her ways occasionally jarred on him, her acting left much to be desired, and a certain vein of silliness in her now and then awoke his contempt, but when dancing she seemed like one inspired; he could only wonder and admire.

“Some day you will be our greatest English dancer,” he said, as once more she settled down into her nook beside the fire.

“I don’t want to be that,” said Ivy, “English dancers are never made so much of as foreigners, and besides, a dancer’s position is not so good. I mean to be an actress.”

“It’s a thousand pities,” said Ralph. “Why do people always want to do things they can’t do well.”

Ivy pouted.

“Grandfather doesn’t wish me only to dance,” she said. “And besides I have just heard of quite a fresh opening. What would you say to earning two pounds a week?”

“I should say I’m not likely to do that yet awhile,” said Ralph, philosophically.

“But you can! you can!” said Ivy, clapping her hands joyfully. “There’s an opening for you as well as for me, for I specially asked. It’s a ‘fit up’ company and we should be wanted in February when the pantomime is over.”

“Where?” asked Ralph, looking incredulous.

“For a tour in Scotland. A ‘fit up’ company too, and nothing to provide but just wigs and shoes and tights.”

“Who is the manager?”

“The husband of the leading lady. His name is Skoot.”

“Don’t like the name,” said Ralph, laughing.

“Why what’s in a name?” said Ivy. “The poor man didn’t choose it. For my part I think it is better than assuming some grand name that doesn’t belong to him. And then his Christian name is Theophilus.”

But Ralph still laughed.

“Worse and worse,” he said. “Theophilus Skoot is a detestable combination. Dick, Tom, or Harry, would have been better. No, no, Ivy; I think we had better stay where we are.”

Ivy looked much disheartened, and to change the subject Ralph suggested that they should go together to the Abbey. This pleased her, she forgot the Scotch tour and only revelled in the bliss of the present. To walk to church on Christmas day with her ideal man, to feel the subtle influence of the beautiful Abbey, the lights, the music, the religious atmosphere, seemed to her a sort of foretaste of heaven, a slightly sensuous heaven perhaps, but the highest she was as yet capable of imagining. Ralph was not sorry to have the child with him, for his Christmas had been lonely enough. But his thoughts wandered far away from her during the service. He was back again at Whinhaven listening to his father’s voice, or he was with Evereld and her governess listening to solemn old chorales at Dresden.

Presently a very slight thing recalled him to his actual surroundings. The sermon was about to begin and some one sitting in front of him rose to go just as the text was given out:

“And in the fulness of time God sent———”

He heard no more for the vacant place had revealed to him, at a little distance in front, a profile which arrested his whole attention. Something in its earnest, absorbed expression, in its exquisite purity, in the listening look of one who is eager to learn, appealed to him strongly. Then suddenly his heart gave a bound, for it was borne in upon him that he was looking at Evereld. Not the Evereld he had left on that summer day as a playmate and comrade, but a new Evereld who had developed into a woman—the one woman in all the world for him. He did not wish the sermon ended, he could have been almost content to sit on there for ever just watching her; that curious description of heaven as a place

“Where congregations ne’er break up,

And Sabbaths never end,”—

a notion which has cast a gloom over so many children’s hearts, seemed to him in his present mood after all not so impossible.

When the service was really over, and the people began to disperse, he was in a fever lest he should be unable to reach her, and it was not until he had discovered that Bridget was her companion that he could feel at all secure of any real talk with her.

Ivy, quite unconscious of all this, wondered a little when he paused in the nave; but she did not at all object to standing there with him, looking into the dim beauty of the stately building, and with a proud little consciousness that many people glanced at them as they passed by. It was so nice, she reflected, to go to church with a man like Ralph, a man wholly unlike any other she had yet come across in her short and rather dreary life.

Meanwhile, Evereld was drawing nearer. Ivy was just admiring her dark-green jacket and toque with their beaver trimmings, and longing to have just such a costume herself, when she saw a vivid colour suffuse the wearer’s face, her blue eyes shone radiantly, her lips smiled such a welcoming smile at Ralph that no words, no hand-clasp, seemed necessary. Side by side they passed together out of the Abbey, while Ivy, in blank surprise, followed in their wake.

“To think that you were there all the time and that I never knew it,” said Evereld, when the greetings were over. “Where is Bridget? How surprised she will be. Look, Bridget, here is Mr. Ralph come back.”

“An’ it’s glad I am to see you, sir. There’ll be no need, I’m thinkin’, to wish you a happy Christmas, for I can see by your face that you’ve got it.”

Ralph did, indeed, seem to be in the seventh heaven of happiness, but as he gave a cordial greeting to the old servant he happened to notice Ivy’s wistful, little face, and, with a pang of reproach for having altogether forgotten her, he took her hand in his and introduced her to Evereld.

“This is a little friend of mine,” he said. “The granddaughter of Professor Grant, my elocution master.” Evereld liked the look of the little fairylike figure, but she seemed to her the merest child, and after a few kindly words she thought no more of her, being naturally absorbed in Ralph and having so much to say to him after their long separation.

Ivy, with a sigh, dropped behind with Bridget, who, in her motherly fashion, took her under her special protection as they crossed the wide road near the Aquarium, little guessing that this small person was well used to going about London quite alone at all hours.

“And how are things going at Queen Anne’s Gate?” asked Ralph, when Evereld had told him all about her life at Southbourne.

“It’s so dull I hardly know how to bear it,” said Evereld. “You see, I’m too big now for children’s parties, and, of course, I’m not out yet. I miss you all day long, and no one so much as speaks of you, except now and then Mr. Bruce Wylie, and he always did like you.”

“Not he,” said Ralph. “He made believe, though, for the sake of pleasing you.”

“I see that you have not lost your way of thinking evil of people,” said Evereld, reproachfully. “Mr. Wylie is the kindest man I know.”

“But you don’t know him,” said Ralph. “You merely see him now and then and like his pleasant way of talking, and find him a relief from the Mactavish clan.”

“And how much do you know him?” said Evereld, teasingly.

“Not much, certainly,” he was constrained to own with a smile, “and it may be jealousy that makes me decry him. Yet, if instinct goes for anything, he is a man I should never trust.”

“What! such a frank, straightforward sort of man as that?” she exclaimed, in dismay.

“I know he’s very plausible, I know he has many good points even, but I fancy he could persuade himself that anything was right if only it promoted his own ends.”

“At any rate, he is the one person who ever troubles to inquire after you, and I believe that is the chief reason I have for liking him.”

Ralph was so well content with this speech that he let the subject drop, and, as Evereld was eager to hear all that he had been doing since they had been separated, he began to give her an amusing account of the straits he had been in and the work he had obtained. Far too soon they reached Sir Matthew’s house, and were obliged to part.

“You will write when you can?” said Evereld, wistfully, as she lingered for a moment on the steps with her hand in his. “I don’t think Sir Matthew has any right to object, and I shall want to know what you decide about Scotland.”

“Yes, you shall hear directly it is decided,” said Ralph, trying to feel hopeful. “I wish I knew what would be the wisest thing to do.”

Then, with a lingering glance into the sweet eyes lifted to his, he bade her good-bye and turned away.

“How I wish I were the Professor’s little granddaughter,” she thought to herself as she glanced down the dark road after them, with a sick longing to be going too. And, had she but known it, Ivy was at that very time thinking enviously of Ralph’s old friend and of her many advantages.

Meanwhile Geraghty threw open the front door, and in the cheerful light that streamed through the hall Evereld caught a vision of Sir Matthew coming down the stairs, and, taking her courage in both hands, she entered the house and went straight up to him.