EDWARD had written from Cambridge at the end of the term to say that his friend Lord Gresham was urging him to explore Brittany in an extended walking tour, and he had wondered in postscript if it would seem very rude should he not arrive home until the beginning of August; in view of the fact that the walking tour was to be in the company of Lord Gresham, his mother had been positive that it would be much more rude if he did arrive home, and she had telegraphed to him accordingly. Edmund and Edgar came home from Marlborough at the end of July. It was Edmund's last term at school, and he was going up to Cambridge in October with an exhibition at Pembroke and a reputation as a good man in the scrimmage. Edgar, who was seventeen, had another year of school before him. Jasmine knew from the youngest boys that 'Monday' and 'Tuesday' in their day had terrorized the inhabitants of Silchester much more ruthlessly and extensively than their juniors. Golf, however, had of late attracted their superfluous energy, and they spent the first fortnight of their holidays in trying to make what they described as a 'sporting' four-hole course in the Deanery garden. From their point of view the epithet was a happy one, for during the first match they broke a window of the dining-room and several cucumber frames, while in searching for lost balls they spoiled the gardener's chance of a prize at the horticultural show that year. The younger boys, jealous of such competent destruction, filled a ginger-beer bottle with gunpowder and blew a hole in the bottom of the lake. Jasmine, who was still working with her uncle, only heard of these events as nuns hear a vague rumour of the outside world. The proofs of the fifth volume were absorbing the Dean's attention; and even when Edred shot a guinea-pig belonging to the Senior Canon's youngest daughter he declined to interfere, much to the satisfaction of his wife, who considered that the Senior Canon should be ashamed to own a daughter young enough to take an interest in guinea-pigs. In fact it was not until a model aeroplane, subscribed for unitedly by the three youngest boys and flown by Ethelred from the ancient oak in the middle of the Close, maintained a steady course in the direction of the Dean's window, and to his sons' pride and pleasure flew right in to land on his table, scatter his notes with the propeller, and upset the ink over his manuscript, that he was moved to direct action. He then banished them to work in an allotment garden attached to the Deanery, where on the outskirts of Silchester for six hours a day they gathered what their father called the fruits of a chastened spirit. The punishment was ingenious and severe, because their enemy the head gardener benefited directly by their labour, and because the allotment afforded no kind of diversion except futile attempts to hit with catapults the bending forms of labourers out of range in the surrounding allotments.

The Dean worked harder than ever when his youngest sons were removed; and Jasmine, finding that she was being useful enough to be able to shake off the thought that she was an infliction, and that there was no hint of a wish for her departure from the Deanery, was anxious to prevent anything's happening to upset what so far were the jolliest weeks she had passed since she left Sirene. Although she had thought a certain amount about Harry Vibart, she had not allowed herself to grow sentimental over him, and after this sojourn at the Deanery, she had quite convinced herself that it would be wiser not to see him again. She had, of course, no reason to suppose that he wanted to see her again; at the same time she had had no reason to suppose as much at Rouncivell Lodge before he suddenly turned up with such disastrous results. His interruption had not mattered so much there, because she was only negatively happy at the time. Here she was something like positively happy, and it seemed from every point of view prudent to write him a letter and as sympathetically as possible to ask him not to disturb the present situation. She wondered whether if she sent it to him in the care of his uncle at Spaborough it would ultimately reach him. By a series of roundabout questions she arrived at the discovery that by looking up Sir John Vibart in Burke she could ascertain his address. When she had found that Sir John Vibart lived at Whiteladies, near Long Escombe in the North Riding of Yorkshire, she devoted herself to the composition of the following letter:—

She had been tempted to go back to Mr. Vibart, but inasmuch as she was writing to ask him not to see her again, the formal address seemed to lend a gratuitous and unnecessary coldness to her request, and even to give him the idea that she was offended with him.

She had written sweethearts at the first draft, but the word looked wrong somehow in a letter that was meant to be discouraging.

Jasmine was very proud of this postscript; it did not strike her that the bee's sting is in its tail. She would have been astonished if anybody had told her that it was unkind to end up with such an afterthought, did she seriously mean to forbid Harry Vibart to see her again. And she would have been still more astonished and a good deal horrified if anybody had suggested that the prohibition put like that might actually have the air of an invitation, should the recipient of the letter choose to regard it cynically.

However, she did not receive so much as a bare acknowledgment of her letter, and she convinced herself, perhaps a little regretfully, that Harry Vibart, offended by her request, had decided not to bother any more about her.

Meanwhile Edward had arrived. Edward was one of those young men of whom it can be postulated immediately that he could never have been called anything else except Edward. He was a tall and awkward, an extremely industrious, a clever and an immensely conceited young man, who hid the natural gloom established by years of nervous dyspepsia, or more bluntly by chronic indigestion, under a pretentious solemnity of manner. His arrival at Silchester coincided with a change of weather, and the rainy days that attended in his wake created in Jasmine's mind an impression that he was even more of a wet blanket than she might otherwise have thought. For the first few days he hung about the rooms like a low cloud, telling long stories about his tour in Brittany with Lord Gresham, stories that for the most part were about taking the wrong road and putting up at the wrong inn. When he had bored his family so successfully that every member of it had reached the point of regarding life from the standpoint of a nervous dyspeptic, he grew more cheerful and aired his latest discoveries in modern literature. Then he decided to keep a journal, with the intention, it was understood, of immortalizing his spleen. Like most people who keep journals, he was usually a day or two in arrears, and when people saw him pompously entering the room with a notebook under his arm, they used to hasten anywhere to escape being asked what he had done on Thursday morning between eleven and one. At last the sun appeared again, and Edward, looking at Jasmine—by the intensity of his regard it might have been the first time he had seen her—divined, as if the sun had possessed the power of X-rays, that she lacked education. Edward, whose success in life had been the success of his education, considered that he owed it to his cousin to remedy her deficiencies; keeping in view his principle of never offering to give something for nothing, he suggested that, in exchange for his teaching her Latin, she should teach him Italian. Jasmine would have willingly taught him Italian without the advantage of learning Latin; but she did not wish to appear ungracious, and the bargain was made. Edward advanced much more rapidly in Italian than she advanced in Latin, partly because he was better accustomed to study than she was, and partly because of the four hours a day they devoted to mutual instruction, three and a half hours were devoted to Italian and only half an hour to Latin. The result of this was that by the end of September he was reading Petrarch with fluency, while she had only reached the first conjugation of verbs and the second declension of nouns.

"You're very slow," Edward reproved her. "I can't understand why. It ought to be just as easy for you to learn Latin as it is for me to learn Italian. It's absolutely useless to go on to the third declension until you remember the genitive plural of dominus. Dominorum, not dominurum."

"I said dominorum."

"Yes, but you mustn't pronounce it like Italian."

"I'm not," Jasmine argued. "I think the trouble is that I've got a slight Neapolitan accent, and you think I'm saying urum when I'm really saying orum. You forget that I've got to unlearn my pronunciation to suit yours."

"Well, that applies equally to me," Edward argued.

The result of these difficulties was that Edward gave up trying to teach Jasmine Latin and confined himself entirely to learning Italian from her. About this time he read somewhere that the only way to master a language was to fall in love with somebody who speaks it. Such an observation struck him as a useful tip, in the same way as when he was at school he would remember the useful tip:

He therefore proceeded to fall in love with Jasmine in the same earnest acquisitive way in which he would have proceeded to buy a highly recommended new type of notebook. Edward's notion of falling in love was that he should be able to introduce into an ordinary conversation phrases that otherwise and outside his study of Petrarch would have sounded extravagant. He made up his mind that if Jasmine showed the least sign of taking him seriously—and he realized that he had to bear in mind that cousins are marriageable—he would explain that it was merely practice. At the same time he found her personable, even charming, and if without involving himself or committing himself too far he could for the rest of the summer establish between himself and her a mildly sentimental relationship, which at the same time would be of great benefit to his Italian, he should be able to go up to Cambridge next term with the satisfactory thought that during the Long Vacation he had improved his French, strengthened his friendship with Lord Gresham, effected an excellent beginning with Italian, amused himself incidentally, and made sufficient progress with his reading for the first part of the Classical Tripos not to feel that he had neglected the main current of his academic career.

Unfortunately for Edward's plans he found that Jasmine was inclined to laugh at him when in the middle of rehearsing a dialogue from the Italian Traveller's Vade Mecum between himself and a laundress he indulged in Petrarchan apostrophes. Now Edward was not inclined to laughter either at his own expense or at the expense of life in general, because his conception of the universe only allowed laughter to depend upon minor mistakes in behaviour or scansion. Therefore in order to cure Jasmine of her frivolity he was driven into being more serious and less academic than he had intended. In other words, Edward, even if he was already a perfectly formed prig, was not yet twenty-one, and to put the matter shortly, he really did fall in love with Jasmine; so much so indeed that he ceased to make love to her in Italian and began to make love to her in English. Jasmine, apprehensive of all the trouble such a state of affairs would stir up and knowing what an additional grievance it would create against her in the minds of her relatives, begged him not to be foolish. The more she begged him not to be foolish, the more foolish Edward became, so foolish indeed that he began to let his infatuation be suspected by his brothers, the result of which was that he lost the authority hitherto maintained for him by his attitude of discouraging gloom. In a weak moment he even allowed himself to bribe Ethelred to leave him alone with Jasmine in the dusky garden one evening after dinner, and Ethelred, realizing that Edwy and Edred would soon discover for themselves such a source of profit from their eldest brother, it might be to his own disadvantage, resolved to enter into a formal compact of blackmail with both of them.

Thenceforth Edward found himself being gradually deprived of various little possessions that however valueless in themselves had for him the sentimental importance he attached to everything connected with himself. In order to secure twilit walks with his cousin that she, poor girl, with one eye on a jealous mother, did her best to avoid, Edward parted with his choicest cricket bat, presented for the highest score in a junior match in the days before dyspepsia cramped his style; with a collection of birds' eggs made at the age of fourteen; in fact with everything that, should he die now, would have led anybody to suppose that he was once human. Finally he was reduced to forking out small sums of money to purchase the good will of his three youngest brothers. Their demands grew more exorbitant, and Edward, who had already decided to become a Government servant after that triumphant university career which was to crown his triumphant school career, tried to be firm. Indeed he smacked Edwy's head, and when he had done so felt that he had been firm. Unfortunately it was the worst moment he could have chosen to be firm—yes, he was certainly intended to be a Government servant—because the blackmailers had something up their sleeves, and of what that was Jasmine received the first intimation in the shape of a letter from Edwy.

The enclosed token was a lock of hair tied up with the end of a bootlace. Jasmine supposed that the three youngest cousins had discovered a new kind of game in the pleasure and excitement of which they wished her to share; glad of an excuse to escape Edward's attentions after dinner, she presented herself at the blasted elm and tried to appear as mysterious as the requirements of the game demanded.

She had not been waiting more than a minute when three cloaked figures stealthily approached the trysting-place. They were all wearing what Jasmine hoped were only discarded hats of the Dean, and when they drew nearer she perceived that they were also wearing gaiters of the Dean. She wondered if the Dean had so many gaiters to spare for his sons' pranks, and she began to fear that some of his present wardrobe had been requisitioned. Edwy's voice, in trying to assume the appropriate bass of a conspirator, ran up to a high treble at the third word he uttered, which set his brothers off laughing so unrestrainedly that in order to conceal such an intrusion of their own modern personalities, they had to pommel each other until Edwy at last rescued his voice from the heights and called upon Jasmine to follow his lead. She, still supposing that some game of buried treasure or capture by brigands was afoot followed with appropriate caution along the winding paths of the shrubbery to that favourite haunt of mystery, the ruined tower.

"Fair maiden," the eldest conspirator growled, "your betrothed awaitest you within."

"You've surely never persuaded Edward to hide himself up there?" she laughed.

"Edward avaunt!" he hissed. "The doom of Edward is sealed."

"Sealed!" echoed Edred, more successfully hoarse than his brother.

Ethelred was unable to take up his cue, being choked by laughter.

"I say, do you think she ought to climb up by the rope-ladder?" Edred asked, falling back into his ordinary voice for the moment.

"Shut up, you ass," replied Edwy in the same commonplace accents. "Maiden," he continued in a bass that was now truly diabolic, "the ladder of knotted sheets for thy fell purpose awaitest thee."

"A terribly appropriate adjective," Jasmine observed with a smile. "I'm not really to climb up that, am I?"

"No," said Edwy reluctantly. "An thou wilt, thou cannest enter by the door."

"Poor Edward!" murmured Jasmine. "How he must be hating this!"

"Foolish maiden," Edwy reproached her. "It is not Edward who you seekest, but one more near, no, I mean more dear, but one more dear to thee. My trusty followers and me will watch without whilst thou speaketh with him."

The air of Bartelmytide was moist and chill, and Jasmine, with regretful thoughts of the Deanery fires which had just begun, hurried into the tower to finish off her part of the performance. She was not to be let off until she had mounted to the upper room, and though in the darkness the ladder felt more than usually wobbly and the stones on either side more than usually covered with cobwebs, she went boldly on, and had no sooner reached the upper room than she was aware that there was somebody there, somebody who did not greet her with the flash of a dark lantern, but with the flicker of a cigar-lighter.

"Well, this is a rum way to meet you again," Harry Vibart exclaimed genially.

"But...." Jasmine stammered, "I thought I told you not to come down here."

Vibart was too tactful to say that he had supposed the forbidding postscript was at least a suggestion if not an invitation that he should come down, and looking as suitably penitent as he could by the wavering beams of the cigar-lighter, he explained that he had only done so with great caution, and added a hope that she would forgive him.

"Yes, but supposing my uncle and aunt find out that you have arranged to meet me like this?"

"Oh, I didn't arrange to meet you like this," Vibart explained. "Those three young sportsmen downstairs arranged that. The only thing I did was to make enquiries beforehand where you were living, and somehow they got it into their heads—of course you'll think it ridiculous, I know—but ... well, to put it shortly, they imagined ... that I was ... rather keen on you."

"I suppose you realize that I am very angry indeed?" said Jasmine.

"Oh yes, I realize that," Vibart admitted. "I can see you're very angry. But don't you think that to-morrow I might call in the ordinary way? That's the main object of this interview. I've really rather enjoyed sitting up here thinking about you. I should have enjoyed it even more if something that was either a small bat or a large spider hadn't fallen on my head. But what about to-morrow?"

"Oh no, please," she expostulated. "No, no, no, you really mustn't. I'm quite enjoying myself here. I'm quite happy, and I know that if you arrive on the scene, something's bound to happen to make everything go wrong."

"That's very discouraging of you."

"I don't mean to be discouraging."

"You may not mean to be, but you certainly are. Look here, Jasmine, I've been thinking a tremendous lot lately about you, and if you'll risk it, I'll risk it."

"Risk what?"

"Well, you see ... confound this patent lighter; it's gone out."

The upper room of the tower was in complete darkness, and Jasmine was inclined to hope that it would remain in darkness; she felt that even the mild illumination of the cigar-lighter gave too intimate a revelation of her countenance for any promise to be made. Harry was gaining time for his reply by devoting himself to the cigar-lighter, and Jasmine felt that if this tension was continued, she should presently begin to emit white sparks herself.

"Risk what?" she repeated.

"Risk being cut off by my uncle and not having a penny to bless ourselves with, and getting married on what I made this August. I've had a topping August. I'm £84 10s. up on the bookies. And though of course it's not much for two, it would give us enough for an economical honeymoon, and I've got a friend who would give me a job in a teak forest in Burmah. It's a very useful wood, you know. They make boats of it and the better kind of packing-cases."

"Stop! Stop!" she exclaimed.

"What's the matter? Have you got a spider on you? Show me where it is and I'll brush it off. I'm frightfully afraid of spiders, but I'm so fond of you, you darling little girl, that I'll...."

"Oh, you mustn't call me that," Jasmine interrupted.

"Don't you like being called a darling little girl?" he asked with a sigh of relief. "Well, I promise you I won't ever call you that again. I assure you that it took a lot to work myself up to the scratch and get off that term of endearment. But, Jasmine, I love you. Look here, murmur something pleasant for goodness' sake. I'm feeling an awful ass now I've said it."

But Jasmine could not murmur anything at all. By what she had read of love and of the way people declared their love, she would have supposed that Harry Vibart was making fun of her. And yet something in the tone of his voice forbade her to think that. Moreover, the way her own heart was beating prevented her wanting to think that. So she stayed silent, while he occupied himself with the cigar-lighter in case her eyes should tell him what her tongue refused to speak. He managed at last to kindle the wick, and holding the little instrument of revelation above his head so that from the vastness of the gloom around he could conjure her beloved countenance, he stood waiting for the answer. In the few seconds that had fluttered past, Jasmine felt that she had grown up, and now when she looked at the freckled young man, so obviously fearful of having made a fool of himself, she felt several years older than he, so much older that she was able to speak to him with what it seemed was a weight of worldly knowledge behind her.

"I'm afraid you've been rather impetuous," she said austerely. "I could never dream of asking you to give up anything on my account." Jasmine gained eloquence from not meaning a word of what she said, and unaware that she was trying to persuade herself rather than Harry of the imprudence of his project, she grew more eloquent with every word she uttered. "You must remember that I have not a penny in the world, and that you cannot afford to marry a girl without a dowry. I know that in England men do marry even quite ordinary girls without a dowry, but I should never feel happy if I were married like that."

"What on earth have dowries got to do with being in love? Do you love me? Do you think you could get to love me?"

"You've no right to ask me that," said Jasmine, "unless you are able to marry me."

"Well, I told you I was £84 10s. up on the bookies this August. I should have proposed in July, but I had rather a rotten Goodwood, and...."

"Yes, but you can't afford a wife with only that. Why, even if my uncle went on allowing me £10 a quarter...."

"I told you there was a risk. I asked you if you would risk it," he interrupted in an aggrieved voice. "Anyway, the point I want to get at is this: do you or do you not care for me?"

"I like you very much," Jasmine admitted politely.

"Yes, well, that sounds rather as if I was a mutton chop. Look here, you know, you're driving me into making a scene. When I first saw you at York, I fell in love with you. I didn't mean to tell you that, because it sounds ridiculous. But I did. Then when you were such a little sport on that mackerel hunt, I loved you more than ever. And then you were whisked off. I felt desperate, and I tried to kill my love. Please don't laugh. I know it's almost impossible not to laugh if a chap talks like this, and I should have laughed myself a year ago. But do you realize that you've driven me into reading books? That's a pretty desperate state of affairs. I can't pass a railway book-stall now without buying armfuls of the most atrocious rot. And the worse it is, the more I enjoy it. About fifty darlings a page is my style now. Where was I? Oh yes, I tried to kill my love. You know, playing golf, and all that sort of thing. But as soon as I heard where you were, I came to see you. Well, it was bad luck to drop that brick over the old boy's malacca, and I felt desperate. And then when I got your letter on top of the worst Goodwood anybody ever had, I said to myself that, unless I was fifty pounds up by the end of August, I'd go out to the Colonies and work myself to death. Well, I made more than that fifty pounds, and here I am. I'd got a lot of jolly things all ready to say to you, but now I'm here I can't say anything. Jasmine, I'm as keen as mustard on you. There!"

He had spoken with such vehemence that the cigar-lighter had long ago been puffed out; in the darkness Jasmine felt her hand grasped.

"What a topping little hand," he murmured. "It's as soft as a puppy's paw. Topping!"

Jasmine had an impulse to let herself sigh out her happiness upon his shoulder; she knew somehow that his arms were open, and that the touch of his tweeds would be as refreshing to her tired spirit as if she were to fling herself into the sunburnt scented grass of a remote meadow; she could not summon to her aid a single argument against letting herself be folded in his embrace. Then, just as she was surrendering to the moment, a clod of earth was flung through the ruined oriel of the tower, and from down below came hoarse cries of "CavÉ! CavÉ! Edward's coming down the path! You'd better bunk!"

"What's up?" asked Vibart, making fresh efforts to kindle his cigar-lighter. "Who's Edward?"

"Oh, I knew this would happen! I knew this would happen!" Jasmine exclaimed distractedly. "I told you not to come down here."

"But who's Edward?" Vibart persisted.

"It's my cousin. He's dreadfully in earnest, and he thinks he's in love with me."

"Well, I'm not particularly afraid of Edward; but if it's the fashion here to be afraid of him, I'll pretend to be afraid of him too, and the best way of showing our terror is to sit here holding each other's hands until the dangerous fellow passes on. The closer we keep together, the less frightened we shall be."

"It's nothing to joke about," she said. "He's evidently suspicious about something, or he would never have come out into the garden to look for me in the tower."

Jasmine was sure that the conspirators, in their desire for a more dramatic climax than they might otherwise have secured, had conveyed a mysterious warning to Edward, who, when she was nowhere to be found in the house had, preserving his own dignity as far as possible, set out upon a voyage of discovery.

Whatever the conspirators had done in the way of precipitating this climax, they were now doing their best to deflect Edward from the path. The methods they chose, however, were not sufficiently subtle, and they only had the effect of putting their eldest brother in a very bad temper, as was evident from the threats that were audible outside.

"Look here, young Edred, I'll give you the biggest thrashing you ever had in your life if you fling any more of those toadstools at me. All right, Edwy, I can recognize you, and you'll find out when you go indoors again that you can't wear the pater's gaiters without trouble. Where's Jasmine?"

And then, like the croak of a night-bird, Edwy's response was heard.

"Recreant knight, the maiden whom thou seekest is safe from thy lustful arm. Beware of advancing another step."

"You young swine, I'll give you the biggest licking you ever had in your life!" retorted Edward, still advancing in the direction of the door.

"Look here," Vibart whispered to Jasmine, "I think I ought to go out and help those sportsmen."

At this moment Ethelred, who had retreated into the tower, came up the ladder and told them not to worry, because he had invented something that was going to put Edward out of action the moment he attempted to advance beyond the first rung.

"No, please, Ethelred," Jasmine begged. "Don't make matters worse than they are."

"No, really it's all right, I swear," Ethelred promised. "Don't get excited. And if you want to elope to-night, Edwy's made all the necessary arrangements. He's got the ladder hidden by the stable, and the pony's harnessed, and if you're pursued, he's going to put people off the scent by saying the house is on fire; or he may be trying to set it on fire really, I can't remember; and he's only told Wilson"—Wilson was one of the under-gardeners—"so you needn't be in a funk of being found out. And look here," he added to Vibart, "you won't forget that man-lifting kite, will you? Because Edwy's awfully keen to go up with it."

"That's all right," Vibart promised. "You stave off Edward, and I'll send you a kite that will lift an elephant."

"Don't encourage him," said Jasmine. "You don't understand how dreadful all this is going to be for me."

By this time Edward, undeterred by the missiles of Edwy or Edred, had reached the foot of the ladder, and was asking Jasmine in that academic voice she so much disliked if she was in the tower.

"If those young brutes have been playing practical jokes on you, carissima, just let me know and I'll give them a lesson they won't forget."

"Will you, you stinking pig?" muttered Ethelred, bending over and releasing a heavy weight on his brother's head.

"Heavens! What have you done?" Jasmine cried in apprehension.

"It's all right. It's only a bag of flour," Ethelred explained. "And I think it hit him absolutely plum."

However it hit Edward, it had the effect of rousing him to fury; without pausing to consider that the steps of the ladder were broken and that the floor of the tower contained several holes and that his sense of direction was considerably impeded by the flour in his eyes, he came charging up the ladder. Just as he reached the top there was a crack of giving wood, followed by a crash, a cry, a thud, and several groans.

"Great Scott! He's really damaged himself this time," said Vibart.

"I say, I didn't work that," Ethelred protested a little tremulously.

Edred and Edwy, who had followed in their brother's wake, were calling up that he had broken his leg. Vibart's cigar-lighter refused to shed even a momentary flicker on the scene, and there was nothing for it but to send one of the boys below back to the house for help. Jasmine begged Harry Vibart to escape if he could, but when he tried the floor with a view to letting himself down, the rotten planking began to break off, so that he had to draw back lest the whole floor of the room should collapse and precipitate himself and Jasmine upon the prostrate and groaning form of Edward underneath. He then attempted in response to Jasmine's entreaties to escape from the oriel window, but no sooner had he put himself into a position to make the drop than she begged him with equal urgency to come back.

"You might break your leg too, and it would be so dreadfully embarrassing to have you and Edward both in bed. My aunt would hate looking after you, and I should never be allowed to look after you."

"Are you sure of that?" he asked.

"Sure, sure. But why do you ask?"

"Because, if I thought there was a chance of getting you as my nurse, I'd break every bone in my body with the greatest pleasure."

The only one who escaped without damage moral or physical from that evening was Ethelred. When the Dean and Mrs. Lightbody with Edgar and Edmund, gardeners and lanterns and ladders, and an improvised stretcher, arrived at the tower, Ethelred managed somehow to get back to the house unperceived, and was able to claim, relying upon the loyalty of his fellow-conspirators, that he had gone to bed immediately after dinner with a bad headache. The rest of the family suffered in various degrees. Edwy suffered from being caught wearing his father's best gaiters, Edred from being caught wearing his father's best hat. The Dean suffered in his character as owner of the gaiters and the hat. Mrs. Lightbody suffered in her deepest feelings as a mother, as the wife of the Dean of Silchester, and as an aunt. Harry Vibart suffered from the ridiculous situation in which he found himself, and from the unpleasant situation in which his imprudence had placed Jasmine. Edward suffered from a broken leg, but derived some pleasure from the effort he had made to be noble. His nobility of behaviour consisted in abstaining from any comment on Vibart's presence in the tower, and the consciousness of his nobility was so sharp that the pain of his fractured limb was dull in comparison. Yet Jasmine was so unreasonable as to think him lacking in generosity because he did not explain away Vibart's presence, explain away his own accident, explain away the whole situation, in fact. She even blamed him for what had occurred, ascribing the disaster to his vanity in supposing that she would send him a message by the boys to meet her in the tower. But then Jasmine had suffered most of anybody; and it was she who was to discover that Aunt May at her worst was angelic beside Aunt Ellen.

"I'm bound to say, Jasmine, that I did not imagine the existence of such depravity. A servant would not behave like that. And what is so lamentable is that the boys knew that you were up in the tower with that young man. It seems to me almost criminal to put such ideas into their little heads. I've been so strict with them. I've even wondered sometimes if I could let them read the Bible to themselves. Your poor uncle has aged twenty years in the last twenty-four hours."

What really had happened to Uncle Arnold was a bad cold from going out in his slippers without a hat. But Aunt Ellen was enjoying herself too much for accuracy. She was in the raptures of a grand improvisation. Presently her fancy soared; she indulged in Gothic similes.

"It was like a witches' sabbath. And poor Edward! Not a word has he said in blame of you. He lies there as patient as a martyr. And then I suppose you'll go off this afternoon and confess to your priest down in Bog Lane, and come back under the impression that you're as white as driven snow. To me such a pretence of religion is disgusting."

"Perhaps you don't realize, Aunt Ellen," said Jasmine, "that Edward has been making love to me for weeks, and that I've had to laugh at him to prevent his doing something silly."

"What do you mean, doing something silly, you wicked and vulgar girl? I cannot think where you got such a mind. A servant would not get such disgusting ideas into her head. I suppose we must put it down to your mother."

"Stop!" said Jasmine, white with anger. "Stop, will you? Or I shall throw this inkpot at you." And when Aunt Ellen did stop, she was half sorry, because she was hating her so much that she was really wanting to throw the inkpot at her. However, she put it back on the table, rushed from her aunt's presence up to her own room, where, after weeping for an hour, she sat down and wrote to Harry Vibart.

Dear Mr. Vibart,

I hope you realize by now that you acted abominably in coming down here after what I said in my letter. I never want to see you again. Please understand that I mean it this time. However, I'm going back to Italy almost at once where people know how to behave themselves. I hate England. I've been miserable here, and you've made me more miserable than anybody.