CHAPTER I
RECORDING A BRAVE MAN'S EFFORT TO CULTIVATE HIS
PRIVATE GARDEN

Joseph Challoner telephoned up to Heatherleigh from his office in Stourmouth that, being detained by business, he should dine in town to-night. This seemed to him the safest way to manage it, since you never could be quite sure how far your servants didn't shadow you.

He had put off dealing with the matter in question from day to day, and week to week, because, in plain English, he funked it. True, this was not his first experience of the kind; but, looking back upon other—never mind about the exact number of them—other experiences of like nature, this struck him as very much the most unpleasant of the lot. His own moral and social standpoint had changed; there perhaps—he hoped so—was the reason. In more senses than one he had "come up higher," so that anything even distantly approaching scandal was actively alarming to him, giving him—as he expressed it—"the goose-skin all over." Yet, funk or no funk, the thing had to be seen to. Further shilly-shallying was not permissible. The by-election for the Baughurst Park Ward, vacant through the impending retirement of Mr. Pottinger, was imminent. Challoner had offered himself as a candidate. The seat was well worth gaining, since the Baughurst Park Ward was the richest and, in many respects, most influential in the borough. To represent it was, with a little adroit manipulation, to control a very large amount of capital available for public purposes. Moreover, in a year or so it must inevitably lead to the mayoralty; and Joseph Challoner fully intended one of these days to be Mayor of Stourmouth. Not only did the mayoralty, in itself, confer much authority and local distinction, but it offered collateral opportunities of self-advancement. Upon these Challoner had long fixed his thoughts, so that already he had fully considered what course of action, in the present, promised the most profitable line of investment in view of that coveted future.

Should he push the construction of the new under-cliff drive, for instance? But, as he argued, at most you could invite a Duke or Field-Marshal to perform the opening ceremony—the latter for choice, since it gives legitimate excuse for the military display, always productive of enthusiasm in a conspicuously non-combatant population such as that of Stourmouth. Unfortunately Dukes and Field-Marshals, though very useful when, socially speaking, you could not get anything better, were not altogether up to Challoner's requirements. He aspired, he in fact languished, to entertain Royalty. But under-cliff drives were no use in that connection, only justifying a little patriotic beating of drums to the tune of coast defense, and incidental trotting-out of the hard-worked German invasion bogey. The first came too near party politics, the second too near family relationships, to be acceptable to the highest in the land. No, as he very well saw, you must sail on some other tack, cloaking your designs with the much-covering mantle of charity if you proposed successfully to exploit princes.

And, after all, what simpler? Was not Stourmouth renowned as a health resort, and are not hospitals the accredited highroad to royal favor? A hospital, evidently; and, since it is always safest to specialize—that enables you to make play with scare-inducing statistics and impressive scientific formulÆ, flavoring them here and there with the sentimental anecdotal note—clearly a hospital for the cure of tuberculosis—nothing just now more fashionable, nothing more popular! Really, it suited him to a tee, for had not his own poor little wife fallen a victim to the fell disease in question? And had not he—here Challoner just managed not to put his tongue in his cheek—had not he remained, through all these long, long years, affectingly faithful to her memory? Therefore, not only upon the platform, but during the private pocket-pickings he projected among the wealthy residents of the Baughurst Park Ward, he could give a personal turn to his appeal by alluding feelingly to the cutting short of his own early married happiness, to the pathetic wreck of "love's young dream" all through the operation of that terrible scourge, consumption. Yes, quite undoubtedly, tuberculosis was, as he put it, "the ticket."

He remembered, with a movement of active gratitude toward his Maker—or was it perhaps toward that quite other deity, the God of Chance, so ardently worshiped by all arrivists?—the big stretch of common, Wytch Heath, just beyond the new West Stourmouth Cemetery, recently thrown on the market and certain to go at a low figure. Lying so high and dry, the air up there must be remarkably bracing—fit to cut you in two, indeed, when the wind was northerly. Clearly it was a crying shame to waste so much salubrity upon the dead! True, Stourmouth already bristled with sanatoria of sorts. But these were, for the most part, defective in construction or obsolete in equipment; whereas his, Challoner's, new Royal Hospital should be absolutely up to date, furnished, regardless of expense, in accordance with the latest costly fad of the latest pathological faddist. No extravagance should be debarred, while, incidentally, handsome measure of commissions and perquisites should be winked at so as to keep the staff, both above and below stairs, in good humor. Salaries must be on the same extensive scale as the rest. Later, when a certain personal end had been gained, it would be plenty time enough to placate protesting subscribers by discovering reprehensible waste, and preaching reform and retrenchment.

Finally, Royalty should be humbly prayed to declare the record-breaking institution open, during his, Challoner's, tenure of office. He licked his lips, not figuratively but literally, thinking of it. "Our public-spirited and philanthropic Mayor, to whose generous expenditure of both time and money, combined with his untiring zeal in the service of his suffering fellow-creatures, we are mainly indebted for the inception and completion of this truly magnificent charity," et cetera, et cetera. Let them pile on the butter, bless them—he could put up with any amount of that kind of basting—until Royalty, impressed alike by the magnitude of his altruistic labors and touched by the tragedy of his early sorrow—for the sentimental personal chord should here be struck again softly—would feel constrained to bestow honors on so deeply tried and meritorious a subject. "Sir Joseph Challoner."—He turned the delicious phrase over in his mouth, as a small boy turns a succulent lollipop, to get the full value and sweetness out of it. He amplified the luscious morsel, almost blushingly. "Sir Joseph and Lady Challoner"—not the poor little first wife, well understood, with the fatal stamp of disease and still more fatal stamp of her father's shop upon her, reminiscences of whose premature demise had contributed so tactfully to the realization of his present splendor; but the second, the coming wife, in the serious courting of whom he thirsted to embark immediately, since she offered such conspicuous contrast to the said poor little first one both in solid fortune and social opportunity.

Only, unluckily, before these bright unworldly dreams could even approximately be translated into fact, there was a nasty awkward bit of rooting up and clearing out to be done in, so to speak, Challoner's own private back garden. And it was with a view to effecting such clearance, quietly, unobserved and undisturbed, that he elected to-night to eat a third-rate dinner at an obscure commercial tavern in Stourmouth, where recognition was improbable, rather than a first-rate one in his own comfortable dining-room at Heatherleigh.

After the consummation of that unattractive meal, he took a tram up from The Square to the top of Hill Street, where this joins the Barryport Road about three-quarters of a mile short of Baughurst Park and the County Gates. Here, alighting, he turned into the maze of roads, bordered by villas and small lodging-houses interspersed with undeveloped plots of building land, which extends from the left of the Barryport Road to the edge of the West Cliff. The late March evening was fine and keen, and Challoner, whose large frame cried out for exercise after a long day of sedentary employment, would have relished the walk in the moist salt air had it not been for that disagreeable bit of back-garden clearing work looming up as the ultimate purpose of it.

In the recesses of his mind, moreover, lurked an uneasy suspicion that he would really be very much less of a cur if he felt a good deal more of one. This made him savage, since it appeared a reflection upon the purity of his motives and the solid worth of his character. He stated the case to himself, as he had stated it any number of times already, and found it a convincingly clear one. Still that irritating suspicion of insufficient self-disgust continued to haunt him. He ran through the well-worn arguments again, pleading the justice of his own cause to his own conscience. For, when all is said and done, how can any man possessing an average allowance of susceptibility resist a pretty, showy woman if she throws herself at his head? And Mrs. Gwynnie had very much thrown herself at his head, pertinaciously coaxed, admired and flattered him. Whatever had taken place was more than half her doing—before God it was. He might have been weak, might have been a confounded fool even; but then, hadn't every man, worth the name, a soft side to him? Take all your famous heroes of history—weren't there funny little tales about every one of them, from the Royal Psalmist downward? If he, Challoner, had been a fool, he could quote plenty of examples of that particular style of folly among the most aristocratic company. And, looking at the actual facts, wasn't the woman most to blame? Hadn't she run after him just all she knew how? Hadn't she subjected him to a veritable persecution?

But now Challoner found himself at the turn into Silver Chine Road, the long, yellow-gray web of which meandered away through the twilight, small detached houses set in little gardens ranged on either side of it shoulder to shoulder, the walls of them shrouded by creepers, and their lower windows—where lights glowed faintly through muslin curtains and drawn blinds—masked by luxuriant growth of arbutus, escallonia, euonymus, myrtle and bay. Now and again a solitary Scotch fir, relic of the former moorland, raised its dense crown, velvet black, against the sulphur-stained crystal of the western sky. Stourmouth is nothing if not well-groomed and neat, so that roads, fences, lawns and houses looked brushed up, polished and dusted as some show-case exhibit. Only a misanthropic imagination could suppose questionable doings or primitive passions sheltering behind those tidy, clean-pinafored, self-respecting gray and red house-fronts, in their setting of trim turf, beds of just-opening snowdrops and crocuses, and fragrant glossy-leaved shrubs.

Joseph Challoner drew up and stood, in large vexation and worry, contemplating the pleasant, well-to-do prospect. The alert calm of an early spring evening held the whole scene. Faintly, in the distance, he could hear a long-drawn murmur of wind in the Baughurst woods and the rhythmic plunge of the sea. And he was aware that—still to employ his own not very graceful vernacular—he funked the business in hand, consciously and very thoroughly funked it. He had all the mind in the world to retrace his steps, board the tram again and get home to Heatherleigh. He took off his hat, hoping the chill, moist air might cool his tall brick-dust-red face and bare head, while he fenced thus grimly with indecision. For it had come to that—he had grown so ignominiously chicken-livered—had he the pluck to go on or should he throw up the game? Let the whole show slide, in short—Baughurst Park Ward, record-breaking hospital, probable mayoralty, possible knighthood, wealthy second wife, whose standing and ample fortune would lift him to the top of the best society Stourmouth could offer—and all for the very inadequate reason that a flimsy, flirtatious, impecunious little Anglo-Indian widow had elected to throw her bonnet over the windmills for his sake? To Challoner it seemed hard, beastly hard, he should be placed in such a fix. How could he be certain, moreover, that it was for his sake, and not mainly for her own, she had sent that precious bit of millinery flying? What assurance had he that it wasn't a put-up job to entangle and land him, not for love of him himself, of what he was, but for love of what he'd got?

Challoner dragged his handkerchief out of his shirt-cuff and wiped his forehead. Of all his amatory experiences this one did, without question, "take the cake" for all-round inconvenience and exasperation!

Of course, he went on again, picking up the thread of the argument, if he could be convinced, could believe in the sincerity of her affection, be certain it was he, himself, whom she really loved and wanted, not just Heatherleigh and a decent income, that would make just all the difference, put matters on an absolutely different footing and radically alter his feeling toward her.

And then, with a horse-laugh, he spat on the ground, regardless of the Stourmouth Borough Council's by-law prohibiting "expectoration in a public place under penalty of a fine not exceeding twenty shillings." The lie was so transparent, the hypocrisy so glaring, that, although no stickler for truth where the truth told against him, he was obliged to rid himself of this particular violation of it in some open and practical manner. For he knew perfectly well that her love, whether for the man or merely for his possessions, in no appreciable degree affected the question. Not doubt as to the quality or object of Mrs. Gwynnie's affections, but rank personal cowardice in face of the situation, kept him standing here in this contemptible attitude of indecision amid the chill sweetness of the spring dusk.

Yet that coarse outward repudiation of inward deceit, if failing to make him a better man morally, had emotionally, and even physically, a beneficial effect. It braced him somehow, so that he squared his shoulders, while his native bullying pluck, his capacity of cynically measuring himself against fact and taking the risks of the duel, revived in him.

For this shilly-shallying didn't pay. And it wasn't like him. Every man has a soft side to him—granted; but he'd be hung if he was going to let himself turn a softie all over! The smart of his own gibes stimulated him wonderfully, so that in the pride of his recovered strength of mind, and consciousness of his brawny strength of body, he found himself growing almost sentimentally sorry for the fate of his puny adversary. Poor little soul, perhaps she really was in love with him!—Challoner wiped his face again with a flourish. Well, plenty of people did call him "a splendid-looking man"! All the same, she'd got to go under. She must be rooted up and cleared out. He was sorry, for it's always a nasty thing for a woman to be made to understand she is only a side-show in a man's life. Only if he meant to stand for the Baughurst Park Ward—and unquestionably he did now mean to do so—his address to the electors must be printed and distributed and his canvass started within the week. Yes, no doubt very, very sorry for her, still he was bound to make short work with this rooting up and clearing out of poor Mrs. Gwynnie.

Nor did his election supply the only reason against further shilly-shally. Here Challoner cleared his throat, while the brick-dust of his complexion deepened to crimson. It was funny how shy the thought of Margaret Smyrthwaite always turned him! But when once the winding up of old Montagu Smyrthwaite's estate was completed, he would no longer have a legitimate excuse for dropping in at the Tower House at odd hours, indulging in nice confidential little chats with Margaret in the blue sitting-room or taking a tÊte-À-tÊte stroll with her around the gardens and through the conservatories. Miss Joanna did not like him, he was sure of that. She certainly wouldn't give him encouragement. So time pressed, for the completion of the winding up of the estate could not be delayed much longer. Montagu Smyrthwaite had left his affairs in quite vexatiously good order, from Challoner's point of view, thereby obliging the latter to expend much ingenuity in the invention of obstacles to the completion of business. His object was to keep Adrian Savage out of England and away from his cousins as long as possible. But the young man—with how much heartiness Challoner consigned him and all his works and ways to regions infernal!—might grow suspicious and run over from Paris just to hasten matters. That would not suit Challoner's little game in the least. He must make certain of his standing with Margaret before that most unwelcome descent of the enemy.

For the whole matter of Adrian Savage had become to him as the proverbial red rag to a bull. By its irritating associations it acted very sensibly upon him now, causing him to charge down the road headlong, with his heavy, lunging tread. Had Adrian proved a bad man of business, ignorant, careless, or bungling, Challoner felt his superiority in other departments might have been more easily stomached. But to find this highly polished man of the world as smart a business man as his somewhat unpolished and provincial self rubbed him very shrewdly on the raw. When, with an eye to a not impossible future, he essayed so to jockey affairs as to secure some advantage to Margaret Smyrthwaite, in the disposition of her father's property, Adrian invariably detected the attempted small swindle and promptly, though politely, checkmated it.

Such encounters had occurred more than once; and both his own failure and Adrian's adroitness in disposing of them rankled so much still that Challoner walked nearly half the length of Silver Chine Road absorbed in disagreeable remembrance. Then the name on a gate-post, which happened to catch his eye, acquainted him with the hardly less disagreeable fact that he neared the end of his journey.

Ferndale—and he went on repeating the names of the houses as he passed them, mostly by rote, occasionally refreshing his memory where the light permitted by a glance at gate or gate-post. Ferndale, then Ambleside, The Hollies, St. Miguel, Killarney, followed by Castlebar, The Moorings, Peshawar, Mon Repos, Clovelly. And next, after crossing the end of St. Cuthbert's Road, Leicester Lodge, Fairlawn, Chatsworth, Ben Nevis, Santander. Less than a year ago these same names had been to him as mile-stones on love's pilgrimage, each one of which brought him a few steps nearer to a hotly coveted goal. Now he waxed sarcastic at the expense of their far-fetched, high-flown titles. Take Chatsworth, for instance—a forty-five-pound-a-year house, rates and taxes included, with, at the outside, an eighth of an acre of garden to it—could snobbish silliness go much farther?

But here was Robin's Rest, capping the climax, in respect of its title, by vulgar folly.

Challoner's large, stiff-jointed hands came down roughly on the top bar of the little white gate. He waited a few seconds, breathing rather stertorously.

"Robin's Rest—why not Joseph's Coat?" he snarled, "a coat of many colors. Convenient, that, when you happen to want to turn it, perhaps! Now, no more squish-squash. Straight ahead—go in and win, and my best wishes to you, Sir Joseph Turncoat."

With that he swung the gate open and tramped up the path to the front door, a certain bullying swagger in the carriage of his big person and tall, upright head.

CHAPTER II
A STRATEGIC MOVEMENT WHICH SECURES VICTORY
WHILE SIMULATING RETREAT

Mrs. Spencer, the train of her mauve, cotton-back satin tea-gown thrown negligently over her arm, held aside the strings of the beaded chick, letting her guest pass into the inner hall. As she moved across to the open door of the much be-frilled and be-palmed little drawing-room, they rippled back into place behind her with a rattle of cane and tinkle of glass. The familiar sound gave Challoner, who, heavily deliberate, deposited gloves and hat on the hall table, a catch in his throat. He found the first sight of Mrs. Gwynnie in her flimsy satin, cream lace, and rather tired turquoise-blue ribbons, upsetting. She was a straw-colored, insignificant-featured, fairly tall, fairly plump, fairly graceful, uncomfortably small-waisted woman; looking, at a distance, five-and-twenty, at close quarters, nearer five-and-thirty, cheaply pretty and effective, though slightly washed out. And this latter quality, or absence of quality, in her appearance took hold of Challoner now with an appeal of pathos which he resented and made an effort to ignore. It did not tend to the improvement of his manners or of his temper.

"Since when have you taken to answering the front door yourself?" he inquired, in tones of heavy banter. "Been having the periodic rumpus with the maids again?"

"Oh no; the maids are quite good, thank you," she answered, punctuating her speech with a little meaningless, neighing laugh habitual to her. "I'm on excellent terms with both of them, for a wonder. But it's the cook's evening out, and I gave Esther leave to go with her. I didn't think we should have any particular use for them." Again she laughed. "But didn't you get my note?"

"Yes, I got it right enough," Challoner said. He had followed her into the drawing-room and stood with his hands behind him and his back to the hissing gas-fire, looking down at his seal-brown frieze trousers. The suit was almost new, yet the knees showed signs of bagging already. This vexed him. "That is why I am here. You said you wanted to see me. So I stayed and dined in town to save time, and came on just as I was."

"So I perceive," she put in with meaning.

Challoner continued to contemplate the knees of his trousers. Yet he was well aware that her eyes were fixed on another item of his costume—namely, his waistcoat, crocheted in red and white quarter-inch squares, and finished with a gray cloth border and flat white horn buttons. Mrs. Spencer had worked it for him last year as a Christmas present. He wished to goodness he had not happened to be wearing it to-night!

"Yes," he repeated, without looking up, "I got your note right enough. But, do you know, I begin to think I get rather too many of those notes. You've fallen into the habit of writing too frequently. Between ourselves, it worries me a lot."

"Why?" she asked.

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

"Why? Because I have some regard for your reputation, I imagine. I don't care a twopenny damn on my own account, of course. My back's broad enough to bear the consequences of my own actions, even if they are disagreeable. But it is quite another matter for you; and I must say you're getting very reckless. That's not fair by me. I've been awfully careful from the first. But where's the use of my taking extensive precautions to shield you if you go and invite gossip like this?"

"Don't be cross and scold me," Mrs. Spencer said, archly.

She had placed herself on the sofa at right angles to the fireplace, drawing the train of her tea-gown aside so as to leave room for a second occupant of this, the most solid seat in the room. The rest of the furniture ran to wicker chairs, colored Madras muslin veiling their original cretonne coverings, and tables, whatnots, cabinets, and flower-pot stands with mottled brown-and-biscuit bamboo frames and plaited straw tops, brackets, and shelves to them.

"I won't write so often if you really think it is dangerous," she added.

"It is dangerous," Challoner asserted, ignoring the invitation to share the sofa. "Think for yourself. At Heatherleigh there are my servants. At the office there are my clerks. Do you suppose they haven't tongues in their mouths or eyes in their heads? If that does not constitute danger, I'll thank you to tell me what does."

"But you forbid me to telephone, so how am I to communicate with you unless I write? You call so seldom. I hardly ever see you now."

"Oh! come," he remonstrated, "I was here Sunday week."

"But that's Beattie's afternoon at home. You know I always give it up to her friends. And a whole crowd of them was here Sunday week—Fred Lawley, and the Busbridge boys, and Marion Chase. I didn't get three words with you."

Challoner glanced at her in sharp anxiety.

"Fred Lawley come up to the scratch yet?" he asked.

"If you mean has he proposed, I am sure I can't tell you. I don't know myself. I suppose if he had, Bee would have told me. He seems tremendously gone on her. But you never can be sure of a man till your engagement has been publicly announced."

It was Challoner who laughed a little this time.

"Not quite invariably even then," he said.

His chin settled into the V of the turned-back corners of his high shirt-collar, while his eyes returned to contemplation of those vexatiously baggy trousers. Mrs. Spencer began to speak, but he hulled down her voice by asking, rather loudly:

"By the way, where is Miss Beattie?"

"Oh, she's gone over to Marychurch to the Quartermains. They asked her to stop the night because the Progressive Whist Club meets at their house. I think those club parties awfully slow, but Bee wouldn't miss one on any account. They don't play for money, only prizes."

"China lucky pigs or a black velvet cat, home-made, with a pink ribbon around its neck—I know the style," Challoner returned. "Fred Lawley's the attraction, I imagine, rather than those high-class works of art."

"I don't think he'll be there. Bee said something about his having gone to Southampton to join his ship. You seem very interested in Fred Lawley. But I told you in my note Bee was away to-night?"

"Very likely you did—I really don't remember," he replied, hastily.

For he detected, or fancied he detected, a suggestion in her tone and words eminently unwelcome and embarrassing. He felt the brick-dust red of his face and neck deepening to crimson; and this both angered and alarmed him. Notwithstanding repudiation of sentiment, was the soft side still uppermost? That would not do. He must buckram himself more resolutely against poor Mrs. Gwynnie's fascinations, and bring matters to a head at once.

"But that reminds me—speaking of Beattie, I mean—what do you want done about the lease of this house? It will be up at the end of the half quarter."

So far Mrs. Spencer had lolled in attitudes of studied ease upon the sofa. Now she sat bolt upright, clasping her small waist with both hands and advancing her bust. The little neighing laugh preceded, instead of punctuating, her speech. Challoner observed a nervous ring in the quality of it.

"Oh! well that rests more with you than with me, doesn't it? Of course I hadn't forgotten the lease is nearly up. It was partly—partly"—with emphasis—"about the house I wanted to see you to-night, and I think it awfully sweet of you to ask what I want done—"

She paused, while her auditor, in growing uneasiness, again shifted his weight, dancing-bear fashion, from one to the other foot.

"Yes, it's awfully sweet of you to put it that way," she repeated. "And I quite know I ought to make up my mind. I suppose, on the whole, I had better ask you to renew the lease for a year, or six months, unless—unless—"

"Unless what?" Challoner snapped.

He could have bitten his tongue out immediately after, perceiving how woefully he had blundered. For, although he carefully abstained from looking at her, he knew that the light leaped into Mrs. Spencer's eyes and the pink into her cheek, while even her straw-colored hair, through the intricate convolutions of which a wisp of turquoise chiffon was twisted, took on a livelier tint. She blossomed, in short; her faded, crumpled, played-out prettiness of person and manner transformed into the younger, smarter, more convinced, and consequently more convincing, prettiness which had raised an evil spirit of covetousness in him when he first met her, and continued to provoke that covetousness until—well, until something very much more profitable, socially and financially, in the shape of possibly obtainable womanhood had risen above his horizon. The moment was a very nasty one for Joseph Challoner; since it could not but occur to him that, while responsible for much existing damage, he was about to render himself liable for far heavier damages in the near future. This taxed his courage. Again, consciously, he "funked it"; so that for some few seconds Gwynneth Spencer's fate hung in the balance. But only for a few seconds did her fate so hang. Ambition, and a brute obstinacy in face of attempted coercion, a certain animal necessity to prove to himself the fact of his own strength, carried the day. Challoner turned his coat once and for all, in as far as poor light-weight Gwynnie Spencer was concerned, letting the underlying element of cruelty and cunning in his nature have free play.

"Unless what?" she echoed, laughing thinly. "Why, unless you have any other plan to propose, Joe; any arrangement which you'd like better and which I should like better than just sticking on here indefinitely at Robin's Rest."

Challoner had moved away to a rickety little bamboo table, set out with cheap flower-vases and knick-knacks. Absently he picked up a photograph, in dilapidated silver frame, from among these treasures and stood fingering it. The coat of many colors was fairly turned; yet at the sound of his pet name Challoner started, letting the object he held fall to the ground, where, to his relief, silver, leather, glass, cardboard and portrait incontinently parted company.

"I need not put it more plainly, need I?" she quavered, an upward break in her voice. "But, of course, if you have any other plan to propose there would be no occasion to bother about the renewal of the lease."

Challoner knelt on one knee, his large hands groping over the carpet as he gathered up the dÉbris.

"Bless me!" he said, "the wretched thing's smashed. What a nuisance! I hope you haven't any special affection for it. I am awfully sorry. Can't imagine how I came to drop it! Stupid of me, wasn't it? I must get you a new one. I saw some uncommonly tasty silver frames in a shop in the Marychurch Road to-day. I'll go in and buy you one the first time I pass. Tell your girl to be careful when she sweeps in the morning, though, for the glass has splintered all over the place."

He rose ponderously to his feet, and for the first time since his arrival looked full at her.

"Peuh!" he went on, blowing out his breath and laying one hand across the small of his back. "It strikes me I'm growing confoundedly stiff. Old age comes on apace, eh, Mrs. Gwynnie? Not in your case, I don't mean. You are one of the sort that wears well. I haven't seen you in better looks for months. Some other plan to propose, did you say? Yes, I have, otherwise I mightn't have been quite so ready to eat a beastly bad dinner down-town, so as to be free to come on here early to see you."

His manner had become almost boisterously jocose. Casting out the last remnant of pity, he cast out the last remnant of fear of her even in her present heightened prettiness. He came round behind the sofa and perched himself on the back of it, sitting sideways, looking down at her flushed, expectant, unimportant little face, and quite jauntily swinging his leg.

"You'll not forget to tell them about the broken glass?" he queried, parenthetically, "or you'll have somebody getting badly cut. As to my alternative plan now, Mrs. Gwynnie, I have been thinking things over too; and I feel, like you, they can't very well continue as they are. This Robin's Rest arrangement, which served its purpose well enough at first, is pretty thoroughly played out. We may regret that, but it is. And, to tell you the truth, Mrs. Gwyn, I have been troubled by some little qualms of conscience lately. Beattie's affairs have been on my mind a lot."

"Beattie, Beattie?" she broke in, shrilly. "What on earth has Bee to do with it?"

"The question is not so much what Beattie has to do with it"—laying stress on the last word—"as what it has to do with Beattie," Challoner returned, in a benevolent, heavy-father tone. "In my opinion she has been a mighty good little sister to you, and she must be mortally tired of keeping her eyes shut and playing gooseberry by this time. I see no reason why her prospects should be sacrificed. She's a perfect right to a look in of her own, poor girl."

The answer to the above might appear obvious. But Challoner gauged the mental caliber of the person he dealt with. Mrs. Spencer's shallow, trivial, fair-weather nature was ill-adapted to meet any great crisis. Her small brain worked slowly, and with a permanent inclination toward the irrelevant and indirect. He counted upon these defects of perception and logic, and he was not disappointed.

"But—but, when I marry," she said, essaying not very successfully to practise her little laugh, "I always meant to make it a condition that Bee should share my home."

"Very nice and thoughtful. Quite right of you," Challoner replied, still benevolently jocose. "Only I was talking about Beattie's matrimonial projects just now, not about yours, you see. And you are to blame, Mrs. Gwyn. You have been careless. I don't want to pile on the agony, but you have been most awfully careless. There is ever so much gossip going round. I am afraid people are beginning to look just a little askance. And what reflects on you reflects on your sister. I have taken the trouble to make inquiries, and, from all I hear, Fred Lawley is a very decent young fellow and will come into some money when his grandfather dies. He is second officer now, and stands well for promotion. The pay is above the average, too, on that Cape line. His people are in a good position; quite gentlefolk, a solid old clerical family—one of his uncles a canon of some cathedral or other, I forget which. It would be a first-class marriage for Beattie. But you cannot expect people like that to be best pleased at his taking up with a girl out of such a queer stable as—well, as this one, Mrs. Gwyn. Therefore I do not think I should be acting in your sister's interests if I renewed the lease of this house for you."

"I see that," she said, her aspect brightening. "I see what you are coming round to. How you have thought it all out! I see—of course—go on."

"I shall not renew the lease of this house," he repeated, slowly, "but I propose you and Miss Beattie shall move, bag and baggage, to Marychurch, where—"

"Marychurch? Why? I thought you meant Heatherleigh! Why? Do you want to get rid of us? Oh!" she gasped, "oh!"

"Yes," Challoner said, jocosity waning somewhat. "Exactly, Mrs. Gwynnie. How quick you are! I do want to get rid of you, for your own good, and my good, and Beattie's good as well—principally for hers. This gossip must be stopped. I cannot have it. It is unpleasant for me, but for you it is disastrous. At Marychurch Beattie has the Quartermains and plenty of other friends. It will be handy for her young man, too, when his vessel is at Southampton. You would see ever so much more society there than you do here. And I can give you an uncommonly nice house, very superior in every respect to this one—Sunnyside, the white house with a veranda, opposite the new Borough Recreation Ground in Wilmer Road. Nominally it belongs to old Manby, but actually it belongs to me. It has been standing empty since Christmas, and Manby will think himself only too lucky to let it to any client of mine at a low rent—which I pay, of course. No one need know anything about that."

Challoner talked on, swinging his leg jauntily, though every nerve in his big body was strained with the effort to apprehend and follow the workings of his hearer's mind. So far, save for that passing outbreak, she had received his admonitions and propositions more reasonably than he had anticipated. So he must exercise patience, must not rush her; but give the idea time to sink in.

"Manby's property is mortgaged up to the hilt," he went on, "and he is more than half a year behind with the interest. If he doesn't come into my terms I shall threaten to foreclose. He knows I have got him between my finger and thumb, poor old chap, and he goes in terror of the time I may begin to squeeze. I admit it does seem rather rough on him, for he is in this hole through no fault of his own. His family has owned the property for three generations. But his business has dwindled to nothing, and that compelled him to raise money. The co-operative stores at Stourmouth and Southampton are crushing him and old-fashioned, jog-along, retail tradesmen like him out of existence. The same thing is happening all over the country. Men of his type have neither enterprise nor capital to compete with those large company concerns."

She sat so still, listening with such apparent docility, that Challoner judged it safe to quit generalities.

"Sunnyside shall be properly done up and the sanitation inspected," he said. "I am willing to spend from seventy to a hundred on the place. It is bound to be my own sooner or later, so any money I lay out on it will come back to me in the end. Too, I want to do the thing handsomely for you, Mrs. Gwyn. You and Beattie could go out by tram to-morrow, or next day, and have a look at the place. I'll advise Manby by telephone to-morrow, first thing, I have found him a very desirable tenant, so that he may open the house. Better make a list of any little odds and ends you may think need doing. If you like, you can choose the wall-papers yourself."

"That's awfully sweet of you. But supposing I don't like the house when I see it? I know I am rather fanciful and particular," she put in, with her little neighing laugh.

"I'll guarantee you'll like it," he returned. "It's just the sort of house to appeal to your taste. Really high class, nothing cheap or tawdry about it, built somewhere in the early seventies, tip-top style in its own line, quite a gentlewoman's house."

Mrs. Spencer fingered the lace and ribbons of her tea-gown negligently, advanced her left foot, studied the pointed toe of her beaded slipper, then looked up archly in Challoner's face.

"But supposing," she said, "I really don't want a house at Marychurch at all—what then? Supposing I really prefer to remain at Stourmouth? Supposing I am really determined to stay on here at our dear old Robin's Rest?"

Challoner's expression darkened. He descended from his graceful perch and stood behind the sofa, towering above her.

"Very sorry, Mrs. Gwyn," he replied, "but I regret to say it can't be done. It doesn't suit me to have you stay on at Robin's Rest."

"But why?" she insisted.

Challoner hesitated for an instant, decided to make exact truth subservient to expediency, and spoke.

"Why? Well, if you press the point, not only for the very good reasons which I have already given you at some length, but because I want the house for another tenant. Pewsey, my junior partner, has asked for it for his mother. I am anxious to oblige Pewsey. I have promised him possession some time in the June quarter."

"You have let Robin's Rest, let our house, Joe, our own dear little house, without ever telling me? Let it over my head?"

Looking at her upturned face, pretty, scared, brainless, Challoner's memory played a queer trick on him, harking back to scenes of long ago, at which, as a schoolboy, he had more than once—to his shame—assisted, on the Fairmead at Marychurch, the great, flat, fifty-acre grass meadow which lies on the outskirts of the little town between the River Wilmer and the Castle Moat. He saw, with startling vividness of detail, the agonized leaping rush of the shrill-squealing rabbits, wire-netting barrier in front of them and red-jawed, hot-breathing dogs behind. Even then he had turned somewhat sick at the hellish pastime, although excitement, and a natural disposition to bully all creatures weaker than himself, made him yell and curse and urge on the dogs with the roughest of the crowd. He sickened now, watching this hapless, foolish, bewildered woman double and turn in desperate effort to elude pursuing, self-created Fate, only to find herself brought up short against the irrefragable logic of the situation as demonstrated by his own relentless common-sense. Yet, even while he sickened, excitement gained on him, and his bullying instinct began to find satisfaction in the inhuman sport.

"Yes, Mrs. Gwynnie," he said, "I own I have done just that—let Robin's Rest over your head. I saw it was the kindest thing, both by you and by your sister, though it might strike you as a bit arbitrary at first. My duty is to stop this infernal gossip at all costs. If you won't take proper care of your own reputation I must take care of it for you—isn't that as clear as mud?"

"But I don't want to go away," she cried, again missing the point. "I refuse to be sent away. You have no right to interfere. It isn't your place. You can't order me about and push me aside like that. I am a lady, and I refuse to put up with such treatment. It is very rude of you and quite unsuitable. Everybody would feel that. I shall appeal to my friends. I shall tell every one I know about it."

"Oh! as you please, of course. But just what will you tell them?" Challoner asked.

"Why, the whole story—the whole truth."

"As you please," he repeated. "Only I'm afraid it's not a story likely, when told, to enlarge your local visiting-list."

Challoner perched on the back of the sofa again, domineering, masterful, leaning down and looking her straight in the eyes.

"See here, Gwynnie," he said. "You're in a tight place. Listen to reason. Don't be a fool and throw away your last chance in a pet."

"I mean to expose you. I will tell everybody, everybody," she cried.

"No," Challoner said, "you won't. I give you credit for more worldly wisdom, more self-respect, more good feeling, than that. The injury you might do me, by publishing this little love-passage of ours, would not be a patch upon the injury you would do yourself. You don't want to commit social suicide, do you, and find every door shut in your face? Tell any of these friends of yours, the Woodfords, Mrs. Paull, Marion Chase, and they'd avoid you as they would a leper, drop you like a hot potato, cut you dead, whether they believed your charming little tale or not. You are fond of company, Mrs. Gwynnie—a gregarious being. You would not the least enjoy being left out in the cold all by yourself. And there is another point. I am perfectly willing to pay for my pleasure honestly, as a man should, but it is not wise to tax my good nature too far. Doing your best to blast my reputation is not exactly the way to make me feel kindly or act generously toward you. There would be no more nice houses, rent free, Mrs. Gwyn, rates and taxes paid; no more quarterly allowance, I am afraid. I should cut off supplies, my dear. Your widow's pension is paid in rupees, remember, not in sterling; and the value of the rupee is hardly likely to go up. So you had better look at the question all round before you take the neighborhood into your confidence. Listen here, I will give you a hundred a year and the Marychurch house—"

"But if I tell everybody how you have treated me, public opinion will force you to marry me," she cried, with an air of announcing an annihilating truth.

Challoner swung his big body from side to side contemptuously.

"Faugh!" he said. "Public opinion will do nothing of the sort. You forget it is a case of my word against yours, and that, considering our relative positions, my word will count a jolly sight most."

"But you dare not deny—"

"Oh, indeed yes, I dare," Challoner broke out. "I can deny and shall deny—or rather should, for it won't ever come to the test—that your accusations have any foundation whatsoever in fact. If a woman is mad enough to incriminate herself she must do so. But a man always denies, at least every man of honor and proper feeling does. No, no; be sensible. Think of Beattie. Think of yourself. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. You are a taking woman still, Mrs. Gwyn. Give yourself another chance. For remember, you haven't a shred of evidence to offer in support of your attack. You have bombarded me with notes, but, except as lawyer to client, I have never written you two lines in my life." He paused. "No, thank goodness! even at my hottest I kept my head screwed on sufficiently the right way to avoid the old letter-writing trap."

"Then from the first, the very first," she gasped, "did you never mean to marry me?"

Challoner had the grace to hesitate, look down at the floor, and lower his voice as he answered.

"No, my dear girl, never—from the day I found I could get what I wanted at the cheaper rate."

Gwynneth Spencer stared blankly in front of her. Then, as her small, slow-working brain began to take in the measure of her own disgrace, while the poor house of cards in which she trusted toppled and tumbled flat, her silly, little, neighing laugh rose to a shriek. Beating the air with both hands, she flung herself at full length on the sofa, her body convulsed from head to foot and her throat torn by hysterical cries and sobs. Challoner turned his back, put his hands over his ears. The squealing of the mangled rabbits, on the Fairmead, had been a lullaby compared with this! But he found it useless to try and shut out the sounds. Piercing, discordant, rasping, they echoed through the room. They must be heard next door. Heard out in the road. Heard, so it seemed to Challoner, through the length and breadth of Stourmouth. Must resound, startling the high respectabilities of the Baughurst Park Ward. Must break in upon the dignified seclusion of the Tower House itself, searing his name with infamy.

He turned round, leaned down over the back of the sofa. He felt the greatest reluctance to touch the shrieking, struggling woman, but the noise was unendurable. He caught both her wrists, in one hand, and pinned them down among the ribbons and laces at her waist. The other hand he laid upon her open and distorted mouth.

"Hush," he said. "Be quiet. Hush, you fool! Gwynnie, be a good girl. Hush, Gwyn. For God's sake, don't go on like this! Hush—pull yourself together. Try to control yourself. My dear little woman—curse you, leave off your caterwauling, you damned hell-cat. Do you hear, hold your infernal row! Gwynnie love, darling, chummy little sweetheart! Leave off, will you, or you'll make me smother you. Leave off.—Ah! my God! that's better.—Oh! Oh!—ouf!"

The next thing Challoner knew clearly was that he stood in the little dining-room. Upon the dinner-table, under the dim light of the turned-down-gas-jets, a square spirit decanter, a syphon of soda, and a couple of glasses were set out on a round red-lacquer tray. He remembered often to have seen them set out thus. But, for the moment, he could not recall why he was there or what he came for. He felt very tired. His hands shook, the veins stood out on his forehead, and great drops of perspiration ran down his face. He would be uncommonly glad of some brandy. Then he started with a sudden movement of disgust. He might be brutal, cynical, callous, but there were depths to which he could not descend. Never again could he eat or drink in this house.

He remembered what he came for. A sound away in the offices arrested his attention. The maids had come in, he supposed. He was glad of that. He poured some brandy into a glass, and, crossing the hall, went back into the drawing-room, shutting the door softly behind him. Mrs. Spencer lay quite still, the fit of hysteric violence spent. Her face was clay-colored. Her lips blue. Her eyes closed. Her body limp and inert. She cried a little weakly and quietly.

Challoner knelt down beside the sofa, slipped one hand under the back of her head, with its elaborately dressed hair and wisp of turquoise chiffon, and held the glass to her lips.

"Drink this," he said, in a thick whisper. "It will help to bring you round. It will do you good."

Then, as she sipped it, drawing away now and then and spluttering a little as the raw spirit burned her tongue and throat, he went on:

"You are going to be sensible and not throw away your chance?"

"No—I mean yes," she said.

"You will take Beattie over to Marychurch to look at the house?"

"Yes—oh! yes."

"I'll give you a hundred and fifty a year—fifty more than I promised. You can do quite nicely on that?"

"Yes—thank you—yes."

"And as long as you keep your part of the bargain I'll keep mine. If you play me false and talk—"

"I sha'n't talk," she said, feebly and fretfully. "Why should I talk now it's no use?"

"Ah," Challoner returned, "I am very glad you have come to your senses, Mrs. Gwyn. I believed, give it a little thought, you'd see it all in a reasonable light. That's right."

He rose and went out into the hall again, carrying the glass; put it down, took up his gloves and hat, crossed to the door leading to the offices, opened it and called.

A young woman, in a trim black serge coat and skirt and pink sailor hat, appeared in the kitchen doorway with a knowing and slightly disconcerting smirk.

"Look here, Esther," Challoner said, "Mrs. Spencer has been extremely unwell. It was most fortunate I happened to call in to-night. If I hadn't, I don't quite know what would have become of her. She ought not to be left alone in the house. Next time Miss Beattie is away, mind both of you do not go out. It is not safe."

He felt among the loose coins in his trousers pocket; laid hold of a sovereign, considered that it was too much—might have the flavor of a bribe about it. Found a couple of half-crowns, drew them out and put them into the young woman's hand.

"You understand what I say? Never let your mistress be alone in the house."

Once outside in the road, Challoner took off his hat, walking slowly. He was grateful for the freshness and the soothing half-dark. He had gone about fifty yards when the blond road seemed to lurch. That horrible shrieking laughter was in his ears—or was it only the squealing of the tortured rabbits? He turned giddy, laid hold of the top of some garden palings for support. A spasm contracted his throat. He retched, vomited. And then passed onward, homeward, through the chill, moist fragrance of the spring night.

CHAPTER III
IN WHICH EUTERPE IS CALLED UPON TO PLAY THE PART
OF INTERPRETER

The concert was over. Coming out of the Rotunda—a domed and pinnacled building of glass and iron, half conservatory, half theater, set on the hillside against a crown of evergreen-trees—the audience poured in a dark stream down the steep garden walks to where, flanked by red and yellow wooden kiosks, the turnstiles and entrance gates open on to the public road.

Joanna Smyrthwaite was among the last to leave the auditorium. She did so in a dazed and almost sleep-walking condition, exhausted and enervated by the tumult of her own sensations. But that enervation was singularly pleasant to her, since, by reducing the claims of her overdeveloped intellectual and moral nature, it left the emotional element in undisputed ascendancy. She was, indeed, jealous of any interruption or curtailment of this condition. Therefore she lingered, unwilling to leave the place where so much inward felicity had been procured her, and fearing to meet any of her acquaintance. Dr. and Mrs. Norbiton and Mrs. Paull had, she believed, occupied stalls a couple of rows behind her. She wished to avoid conversation with them, and still more to avoid offering—her carriage was waiting at the entrance gates—to drive them to their respective homes. Their comments upon the performance, however intelligent and appreciative, must, she knew, jar upon her in her present frame of mind. Felicity would be extinguished in irritation, and for such deplorable downfall she should, she knew, hold her good neighbors responsible. It was wiser to avoid occasion of offense since she so wanted, so really needed, to be alone.

Her sister Margaret's musical requirements went no further than the modern English ballad. For preference of the description in which roses, personal pronouns, cheap erotic sentiment, endearing diminutives, and tags of melody appropriated—without acknowledgment—from the works of early masters go to make up so remarkably meritricious a whole. Of this Joanna, while duly deploring Margaret's artistic limitations, was really very glad. It enabled her to attend the weekly Wednesday and Friday classical concerts, at the Rotunda, by herself. She had always wished to attend these concerts, but only since her father's demise had she felt free to gratify her wishes in respect of them. Since that event, they had become first a permitted pleasure, then an indulgence crying aloud for gratification, and finally a duty of a semi-religious character on no account to be omitted. To-day the religious sentiment was conspicuously present, as the programme consisted of excerpts from Wagner's operas. Reared in a creed which sublimates the deity to an inoperative abstraction, Joanna's thought reacted just now toward an exaggerated anthropomorphism. In her mind, as in those of many persons deficient in the finer and more catholic musical instinct, the titanic quality of so much of the great composer's work excited feelings of astonishment and awe which resulted in an attitude closely akin to worship. The elevation of primitive human passions—desire, remorse, anger, revenge, blood-hunger—to regions of portent and prodigy, so that they stalk, altogether phantasmal and gigantic clothed in rent garments of amazing and tormented harmonies across the world stage, their heads threatening the integrity of the constellations while their feet are made of, and squarely planted upon, very common clay, is, undoubtedly, a spectacle calculated at once to flatter human pride and provoke a species of idolatry. For some reason, moreover, lust is less readily conceivable in the neighborhood of the pole than in that of the equator; so that the bleak Northern atmosphere, in which the Wagnerian dramas move, procures for them an effect of austerity, not to say of chastity, almost amusingly misleading.

Humor, however, is indispensable to the recognition of the above little truths, and Joanna's composition was innocent of the smallest admixture of that merrily nose-pulling ingredient. She took her emotions quite seriously; not only nursing them when present, but finding in them later assurance of the reality of certain fond dreams, vehement hopes and longings, which possessed her. Therefore, standing under the glazed marquise of the Rotunda she watched, with strained face and pale, anxious eyes, until the little company of her acquaintance—she could distinguish Dr. Norbiton by his height and the green felt hat, cleft in the crown, which he wore—reached the turnstiles and passed out toward the animated open space of The Square.

This last, like the flat of the valley, lay in shadow; faint pearl-gray mist veiling the modest stream whence Stourmouth derives its name, and the lawns and borders—now gay with spring flowers—of the well-kept ornamental grounds through which it flows. But, across the valley, the fir plantation upon the opposite slope, and the houses and big hotels—the streaming flags of which supplied a welcome note of crude color in the landscape—rising behind the dark bar of it, along with the upward curve of shops and offices in Marychurch Road, and the three tall church spires—two of buff-gray stone, the third red-tiled and elegantly slender—were flooded with steady sunshine. Thrushes sang loud in the grove at the back of the Rotunda. Perched on the outstanding ironwork of the dome, starlings creaked and whistled. A grind of tram wheels, hooting of motor horns, barking of dogs, and sound of voices, borne on the easterly breeze, arose from The Square. The bell of an Anglican church called to evensong. From the bandstand, situated at the far end of the public gardens, came the strains of a popular march; while with these, in a soft undertone, mingled the murmur of the many trees and hush of the sea.

Seeing and hearing all of which, in her present highly sensitized condition, realization of the inherent beauty of things, the inherent wonder and delight of Being, pierced Joanna Smyrthwaite's understanding and heart. Her whole nature was fused by the fires of a limitless tenderness and sympathy. And, being thus delivered from the tyranny of words and empty phrases, from the false standards of thought and conduct engendered by her upbringing, and from ever-present consciousness of her own circumscribed and discordant personality, for the first time in her experience she tasted the strong wine of life, pure and undiluted. During a few splendid moments she knew the joy of genius' sixth sense—becoming one with the soul and purpose of all that which she looked upon. Hot tears rose to her eyes. She was broken by a mute ecstasy of thanksgiving.

But it was impossible this happy state should continue. The malady of introspection was too deeply ingrained in her. Tormenting fears and scruples again arose. Innate pessimism laid its paralyzing influence upon her. She felt as one in whose hands a gift of great value has been placed; but whose muscles being too weak to grasp it, the precious lovely thing falls to the ground and is shattered. Whereat tears of enraptured sensibility turned to tears of bitter humiliation. Drawing a black-bordered handkerchief from the silver-mounted bag hanging at her waist, she pressed it against her wet, yet burning, face and hurried down the hill.

At the gates the well-appointed barouche and pair of fine brown horses awaited her—Johnson, the coachman, rotund and respectful, in his black livery, upon the box; Edwin the footman, elongated and respectful, her rugs and wraps over his arm, at the carriage door. The spring evenings still grew chill toward sundown; and Joanna's circulation was never of the best. She stood silent and abstracted while Edwin put her cloak—a costly garment of Persian lamb lined with ermine—about her thin shoulders; nor, until she was seated in the carriage, the fur rug warmly tucked round her, had her agitation subsided sufficiently for her to speak. She would not go the short way home by Barryport Road. She disliked the traffic. The trams made her nervous. She would go by the new drive along the West Cliff, and across Tantivy Common.

Obediently the carriage turned to the left through the shadow, up the steep hill behind the Rotunda. The horses climbed, straining at the collar. Then, the top of the ascent being reached, they bowled along the broad, even road, snorting in the sparkle of the upland air and recovered sunshine. Joanna sat stiffly upright, shivering a little and blinking in the strong light. She still held her handkerchief in her hand, and it was through a blur of again up-welling tears that she saw the uninviting red and gray terraces and large, straggling boarding-houses, set in a sparse fringe of fir-trees, on either side the road. This quarter of Stourmouth, declining from fashion, is given over to cheap pensions, nursing-homes, and schools. The footwalks were infested by hospital nurses and bath-chairs, while long files of girls, marching two and two, meandered home and seaward. Some of these maidens stared enviously at the young lady, wrapped in furs, driving along in her smart carriage, and sighed for the glorious days when mistresses and lessons would have no more dominion over them. But Joanna remained unconscious of the interest she excited. Her thoughts had returned upon a subject which now constantly and all too exclusively occupied them—a subject to which even the admirable playing of the Rotunda orchestra and noble singing of the young dramatic soprano—though she had listened to both in a fervor of reverential emotion—supplied, after all, little more than a humble accompaniment.

In the silver-mounted velvet bag hanging at her waist, neatly filed and dated, encircled by elastic bands to keep them perfectly flat and prevent their edges from crumpling, were all the letters she had received from Adrian Savage. Even the thin French envelopes, cross-hatched with blue inside to secure opacity, had been carefully preserved. Even the telegram she had received from Adrian, in response to the announcement of her father's death, found a place there. The letters in question were discreet, even ceremonious epistles, dealing with business and plans, expressing regret at the delays in his return to England caused by "our good Challoner's" slowness in preparing documents and accounts, and making civil inquiries as to Joanna and her sister's health and well-being. Quaint turns of phrase and vivacity of diction gave these letters a flavor of originality; but, taken as a whole, less intimate or more uncompromising effusions it would be difficult to conceive. By this fact, however, Joanna was in no wise daunted. As all his many friends agreed, Adrian Savage was a dear, delightful, and very clever fellow, who would assuredly make a name for himself. But Joanna went far beyond that, endowing him with enough virtues, graces, and talents to people this naughty old earth with sages and stock all heaven with saints. Consequently in the graceful lightness and polite restraint of his letters, alike, she found food for admiration and security of hope—namely, consideration for the difficulties of her unprotected position, delicacy in face of her recent bereavement, a high-minded determination in no way to hurry her to a decision.

At night Joanna placed the slender packet in a Russia-leather wallet beneath her pillow. By day she carried it in the bag at her waist. Often, when alone, she drew it forth from its hiding-place and fondled it tremulously. She had done so this afternoon during the concert more than once. It was unnecessary for her to re-read the letters. She knew their contents by heart. Adrian had touched them. He thought of her when writing them, when folding the thin sheets of paper, when stamping and addressing the envelopes. Thus they constituted a direct material, as well as mental, link between herself and him. Perpetually she dwelt on this fact, finding in it a pleasure almost painful in its intensity. Only for a few minutes at a time, indeed, could she dare to hold or look at the packet. Then, replacing it in the wallet or bag, she struggled to regain her composure, merely to take it out at the first favorable opportunity, and repeat the whole process again.

In the same way, although longing for the young man's return, to the point of passion, she hailed each obstacle which postponed that return. To see him, to hear his voice and footsteps, meet his gallant and kindly eyes, to watch him come and go about the house, to listen to his clever and sympathetic talk, would constitute rapture, but a rapture from which she shrank in terror. She felt that she could hardly endure his presence. It would drain her of vitality.

Now, sitting upright in the carriage, while the horses carried her forward at a spanking pace through the sea and moorland freshness and the delights of the spring sunshine, a new form of these fears tortured her. Adrian's love, constant association with him, participation in the varied interests and activities of his daily life and in that of the brilliant society in which he moved—this, and nothing less than this, in sum and in detail, constituted the lovely precious gift placed in her, till now, so sad and empty hands by a strange turn of Fortune's wheel. Were those poor hungry hands strong enough to close upon and hold it? Or would they, weakly faltering and failing, let it fall to the ground and be shattered? The shame of such prospective failure agonized her. To renounce a crown may be heroic, but to have it incontinently tumble off, when you are straining every nerve, exerting every faculty, to keep it safely balanced on your head, is feeble, as she felt, to the point of ignominy.

At last the schools, pensions, nursing-homes, and lodging-houses were left behind. The carriage reached the open common. Tracts of gorse, thick-set with apricot-yellow blossom, broke up the silvery brown expanse of heather. In sharply green, grass-grown hollows ancient hawthorns, their tops clipped by the sea wind into quaint shapes, compact and ruddy, were dusted over by opening leaf-buds. High in air screaming gulls circled. The shadows were long, for the sun drew down toward its setting. Then, as once before to-day, the happy appeal of outward things—in which, as in glass, man may, if he will, catch some faint reflection of God's glory—made its voice heard, awakening Joanna Smyrthwaite from the fever-dreams of her almost maniacal egoism.

Obeying a sudden impulse, she stopped the carriage, alighted, and walked out on to the little promontory the neck of which the road crosses. Here the sand cliffs, dyed all shades from deepest rusty orange to palest lemon-yellow and glistening white, descend, almost perpendicularly in narrow water-worn shelves and ledges to the beach nearly a hundred feet below. Looking eastward, up the wind, the sea horizon, Stourmouth, its many buildings and its pier, and all the curving coastline away to Stonehorse Head—the dark mass of which guards the entrance to Marychurch Haven—showed through a film of fine gray mist. Westward, the colors of both land and sea, though opaque, were warmer. Across the golden gorse of the common in the immediate foreground Joanna saw the great amphitheater of the Baughurst Park Woods extending far inland, the rich blue-purple of the pines and firs pierced here and there by the living sunlight of a larch plantation. Beyond Barryport Harbor, only the farthest coves and inlets of whose gleaming waters were visible, the quiet, rounded outlines of the Slepe Hills pushed seaward in blunt-nosed headland after headland, softening from heliotrope to ethereal lavender in the extreme distance, under a sky resembling the tint and texture of a pink pearl.

Joanna, her fur cloak gathered closely about her, stood a lonely black figure amid the splendor of the scented gorse. There is an exciting quality in the east wind. The harsh tang of it galvanized her into an unusual physical well-being, making her chest expand and her blood circulate more rapidly.

A new thought came to her. To doubt her power of meeting the demands of Adrian's affection and of rising to his level was really to doubt the vivifying power of that affection, to doubt his ability to raise her to his own level. Her doubt of her own worthiness was, in point of fact, an accusation against his intelligence and his judgment.

Joanna slipped one hand inside the velvet bag under her cloak and clasped the thin packet of letters. With the other she momentarily covered her eyes, as though in apology and penitence.

"Ah! how miserably faithless I am," she murmured in her flat, toneless voice. "How wickedly ungrateful it is not to trust him. As though he were not capable of supplying all that is wanting in me—as though he did not know so far, far best!"

CHAPTER IV
SOME PASSAGES FROM JOANNA SYMRTHWAITE'S LOCKED BOOK

That evening Joanna went to her room early. She permitted Mrs. Isherwood to help her off with her evening dress and on with a purple lamb's-wool kimono, the color and cut of which were singularly ill-suited to her pasty complexion and narrow-chested figure. She then rather summarily dismissed the good woman, who retired accompanied by black silk rustlings indicative of respectful displeasure and protest. These Joanna refused to let affect her. The experiences of the day had aroused an inherited, though until now latent, arrogance. She regarded herself as sealed to that altogether-otherwise-engaged young gentleman, Adrian Savage, and set apart. Yet ingrained habits of obedience and self-repression still stirred within her, making her timid in the presence of any sort of established authority, even in that of her old nurse. She needed solitude to enable her to enjoy the luxury of such "sealing" to the full. Therefore, when the door shut upon those remonstrant rustlings, she followed almost stealthily and locked it, stood for a moment listening to make sure of Isherwood's final departure, then extended both arms with a voiceless cry of satisfaction, crossed to her satinwood bureau, opened it and took the current volume of her diary from a pigeon-hole, fetched lighted candles and the silver-mounted bag containing Adrian's letters from off her dressing-table, and sat down to write.

"April 20, 190-

"I have neglected my diary for many weeks. But I have feared I might set down that which I should afterward regret. Indeed, all my accustomed occupations and employments have been neglected. They have appeared to me tedious and trivial. My mind has been strangely disordered. But to-night I feel this state is passed. I see my duty clearly, and shall not allow anything to interfere with it or deflect me from the pursuit of it. I owe this to the person who has so wonderfully chosen me."

At this point the small, neat, scholarly writing became irregular and almost illegible. Joanna rose and paced the room, pressing her hands against her high forehead. Presently she returned and sat down again.

"It is unwise to dwell too much on this. As yet I am unequal to any adequate expression of my feelings. When rearranging the books in library last week I happened to open a volume of Mrs. Browning's poems containing her 'Sonnets from the Portuguese.' They appeared to me singularly appropriate to my own case. I have, indeed, been weakly jealous that any other woman should have felt, and so exactly expressed, my own thoughts and emotions. Yet I read and re-read the sonnets daily. They speak for me not only more eloquently, but more truthfully, than I can speak for myself. But, unhappily, I have less, terribly less, to offer in return than the poetess had. This has racked me with distress, annihilating my peace of mind, and in great measure dimming my gratitude, until to-day. I see how very wrong this has been. It has its root in pride. For, as I now understand, distrust of myself is nothing less than distrust of him. I am resolved to exterminate my pride and submit to be nothing, so that he may give everything. Already I feel relief and a growing repose of mind from this resolve. Already I feel my pride yielding. Soon, I believe, I shall almost rejoice in my own absence of gifts and attractions, since it enlarges his opportunity for generosity."

The chatter of young women upon the gallery, accompanied by smothered laughter, not to say giggling. Joanna ceased writing, blotted the page, and returned the diary to its pigeonhole. She moved into the center of the room and stood anxiously listening. But to her relief no knock came at the door. The two voices grew faint along the corridor, and ceased. Joanna could not, however, immediately settle to her diary again. The giggling had brought her down, from high poetic regions to common earth, with a bump. Pride, cast out in one direction, pranced in another unrestrained—as is pride's wont. When Joanna resumed her writing subject and treatment alike were changed.

"Marion Chase is staying here, as usual," she wrote. "In some ways I am glad of this. It relieves me of any obligation to be constantly with Margaret. To be constantly with her would be very irksome to me. I no longer pretend that she and I have much in common. Since papa's authority has been removed the radical divergence between Margaret's character and mine becomes more and more evident. Marion Chase has no intellectual life. Her pleasures are active and practical. These Margaret appears increasingly to enjoy sharing. To-day she and Marion have been to Southampton and back in a new motor-car Margaret has on trial. Mr. Challoner selected it for her in London. It came down yesterday. Margaret is very much excited about it. She is, of course, at liberty to buy a motor-car if she pleases, though I think it would have been better taste to wait until the business connected with our inheritance was finally settled before making any such costly purchase. I prefer Johnson and the horses. Motoring would, I feel sure, cause me nervousness. Mr. Challoner, I heard this evening, met them in Stourmouth, and, under plea of seeing how the car worked before advising Margaret to keep it, accompanied them to Southampton and back. This appears to me quite unnecessary. I could not make out from Marion whether his going was by previous arrangement or merely the result of a sudden thought and invitation. In either case I cannot but disapprove of his joining the party. He is still here very frequently, and Margaret quotes his opinions on every occasion. Those opinions are prejudiced and insular, as one might expect from a man who has enjoyed few social and educational advantages. Papa used to say the worst enemies of patriotism were patriots. This is certainly true in the case of Mr. Challoner in as far as the effect of his conversation upon me is concerned. He knows nothing of foreign countries and foreign politics, and yet speaks contemptuously of whatever and whoever is not English. Margaret has taken to echoing him until I grow weary and irritable. Surely it might occur to her that reiterated depreciation of everything foreign must be displeasing to me. But Margaret has no perception. Argument is lost upon her, so I am constrained to remain silent. Yet I cannot disguise from myself that her constant association with Mr. Challoner and the influence he undoubtedly has obtained over her may lead to great difficulties in the future—particularly in the event of my own marriage."

Here, once again, the neat writing became erratic. Emotion gained upon Joanna, compelling her to lay down her pen, rise, and pace the room.

"My own marriage—my own marriage," she repeated, her head thrown back, her eyes shut, her arms hanging straight at her sides, while her hands worked, opening and closing in nervous, purposeless clutchings.

Presently she walked back to the bureau and took Adrian's letters out of the velvet bag. Resting her left hand, her fingers outstretched, upon the flat slab of the bureau for support, she held the letters in her right. Their contact made her wince and shrink, as though she held white-hot metal instead of innocent bluey-white note-paper. Only by degrees could she muster sufficient composure to look at the slim little packet upon which encircling elastic bands conferred a distinctly prosaic and even bill-like appearance.

"'And yet because thou overcomest so,
Because thou art more noble and like a king,
Thou canst prevail against my fears and fling
Thy purple round me, till my heart—'"

Her voice failed, dying in her throat, leaving the quotation incomplete. Hastily she pushed the packet of letters back into the bag, snapped to the silver catch, and, again pressing her hands to her forehead, paced the room till such time as her agitation had sufficiently subsided for her to resume her writing.

"I must resist the temptation to dwell upon a certain subject, save in silence. To refer to it in words moves me too deeply. That subject is the life of my life. Of this I am so utterly sure, so utterly convinced, that I can surely afford to keep silence. Just in proportion as I know that my heart is beating, it becomes unnecessary to count the heart-beats. I had better write of practical things. To do so has lessened the worry they too often caused me in the past. I trust it may do so again. I mean this specially in connection with the anxiety Margaret's association with Mr. Challoner occasions me. I fear Margaret is disingenuous. Mamma used to deplore a tendency to deceit in her, deceit in little things, even when she was a child. Margaret enjoys concealment. It amuses her and gives her an idea of her own astuteness and superiority. I do not wish to be unjust, but I cannot help fearing this tendency to slyness is increased by her intercourse with Mr. Challoner and with Marion.

"In addition to the fact of Mr. Challoner's drive with them to Southampton something else came out at dinner, to-night, which disturbed me. On my way home to-day, after crossing Tantivy Common, Johnson turned along Silver Chine Road. A pantechnicon van stood before one of the small houses which I recognized as that which Margaret once pointed out to me as belonging to Mrs. Spencer. As the carriage passed, I saw Mrs. Spencer herself and her young sister, Miss Beatrice Stacey, directing the men who were carrying out the furniture. I thought they both looked hard at me, but I did not bow. I sent cards to Mrs. Spencer, as to every one else who called here to inquire after papa's death, but I do not desire her acquaintance. On the few occasions when I have met her she appeared to me a frivolous, dressy person, whose influence upon Margaret would not be for good. I do not wish to be uncharitable, but her manners struck me as unladylike. At dinner I mentioned the circumstances under which I saw her this afternoon. Marion glanced at Margaret with a singular expression of face.

"'I heard Mrs. Spencer and Bee were leaving soon,' she said. 'I believe they have taken a house at Marychurch.'

"I observed Margaret flushed, but she did not speak.

"'Of course I don't believe there is any real harm in her,' Marion added, again looking at Margaret, 'or I should not have gone there so often. But I do think whatever talk there has been is entirely her own fault.'

"Then Margaret began to speak of the car, and Mr. Challoner's advice to her about buying it, in a rather loud tone. She hardly spoke to me during the rest of the evening. I certainly had no intention of annoying her by mentioning Mrs. Spencer, but she was evidently very angry with me. I cannot help being anxious—yet I know my own great happiness should make me patient and tolerant, even when vulgar and trivial matters are pressed upon my attention. I am very weak. I ought to rise above all such things and rest calmly in the one wonderful thought that I am no longer alone, that I no longer belong to myself."

Joanna put her hand over her eyes.

"'Thou canst prevail against my fears and fling thy purple round me,'" she again quoted half aloud. Then once more she wrote.

"I am glad that I am rich. I have never felt glad of this till to-day. We have always been rich, and, though papa inculcated economy as a duty, I have taken riches for granted as a natural part of my own position. Now I recognize their value. I have at least that to give—I mean, a not despicable amount of wealth, and the dignified ease which wealth obtains. In this respect at least I can make some slight return. Since there has been time to look into affairs, we find papa's estate considerably larger than we supposed. Margaret and I shall each have between seven and eight thousand a year. Yes, I am very, very glad. At least I do not go to him an empty-handed beggar in material things."

She sat awhile looking up, both hands resting on the edge of the slab. Her mouth was half open, her eyes fixed, her face irradiated by an expression of ecstasy painful in its strained intensity. A little more and ecstasy might decline to idiocy. Joanna doted; and always—though particularly under such circumstances as Joanna's—it is a mistake to dote.

CHAPTER V
IN WHICH ADRIAN'S KNOWLEDGE OF SOME INHABITANTS
OF THE TOWER HOUSE IS SENSIBLY INCREASED

A week of the burning mid-May weather, such as often comes in the fir and heather country. The Baughurst woods and all the coast-line from Marychurch to Barryport basked in the strong, still heat. Over open spaces the heat became visible, dancing and swirling like the vapors off a lime-kiln as it baked all residue of moisture out of the light surface soil. Aromatic scents given off by the lush foliage and lately risen sap filled the air. The furze-pods crackled and snapped. Fir-cones fell, softly thudding, on to the deep, dry beds of fir-needles, and films of bark scaling off the red upper branches made small, ticking noises in the sun-scorch. All day long in the heart of the woodland turtle doves repeated their cozy, crooning lament. Wandering cuckoos called. In the gardens blackbirds and thrushes, though silent at mid-day, sang early and late. Great blue and green dragonflies hawked over the lawns, darting back and forth from the warm dappled shade of the fir plantations, where their enameled bodies and transparent wings glinted across long slanting shafts of sunlight. In the shrubberies rhododendrons, azaleas, pink thorns, and crab-trees were in flower. Lilac and syringa blossom was about to break. The sky, high and unclouded, showed a deep, hot blue above the dark-plumed pines and fir-trees and against the red-tiled roofs and sextagonal red-brick tower—surmounted by a gilt weather-vane—of the Tower House from sunrise to sunset.

Adrian Savage lay back in a long cane chair set upon the veranda, around the fluted terra-cotta pillars of which trumpet-flowered honeysuckle, jasmine, and climbing roses flourished. He found the English heat heavy and somewhat enervating, clear though the atmosphere was. It made him lazy, inclined to dream and disinclined to act or think. He laid The Times down on the wicker table beside him, put his Panama hat on the top of it, returned a small illustrated French newspaper, of questionable modesty, to the breast-pocket of his jacket, stretched, stifled a yawn, and lighted his third cigarette. Then, reclining in the chair again, he contemplated the perspective of his own person—clad in a suit of white flannel with a faint four-thread black stripe—to where the said perspective ended in a pair of tan boots. He had bought the boots in London. He knew they represented the last word of the right thing. So he ought to like them.—He crossed and re-crossed his feet.—But he wasn't sure he did like them. On the whole he thought not. Therefore he sighed meditatively, pulled the tip of his close-cut black beard and pushed up the rather fly-away ends of his mustache. Stared sadly at the tan boots, raised his eyebrows and shoulders just perceptibly, and mournfully shook his close-cropped black head. Sighed again, and then looked away, across the gravel terrace and flower-beds immediately below it crowded with pink, mauve, and pale-yellow tulips, to where, on the sunk court at the far end of the long, wide lawn, four agile, ruddy-faced, white-clothed young people very vigorously played tennis.

In the last three months Adrian had lost weight. La belle Gabrielle had not been kind; not at all kind. More than ever did she appear elusive and baffling. More than ever was the mysterious element of her complex and enchanting personality in evidence. She frequented drawing-room meetings at which Feminists, male as well as female, held forth. She received ZÉlie de Gand and other such vermin—the term is Adrian's—at her thrice-sacred flat. Finally, her attitude was altogether too maternal and beneficent toward M. RenÉ Dax. These things caused Adrian rage and unhappiness. He lost flesh. In his eyes was a permanently pathetic and orphaned look. Happily, his nose retained its native pugnacity of outline, testifying to the fact that, although he might voluminously sigh as a lover, as a high-spirited and perfectly healthy young gentleman he could still very handsomely spoil for a fight.

But no legitimate fight presented itself—that was exactly where, from Adrian's point of view, the worry came in. He might haunt la belle Gabrielle's staircase, spend hours in consultation with wise and witty Anastasia Beauchamp, exert all his ingenuity to achieve persuasion or excision of RenÉ Dax, but without practicable result. About as useful to try to bottle a shadow, play leap-frog with an echo, tie up the wind in a sack! Really he felt quite glad to go away to England for a time, out of the vexatiously profitless wear and tear of it all.

The sun, sloping westward, slanted in under the round-headed terra-cotta arches supporting the roof of the veranda. Adrian drew his feet back out of the scorch, and in so doing sat more upright, thereby gaining a fuller view of the tennis players.

Marion Chase happened to be serving. She interested him as a type produced by current English methods of mental and physical culture practically unknown in France. She stood—so she informed him with the utmost frankness—five feet ten in her stockings, took eight and a half in shoes, measured forty inches round the chest and twenty-nine and three-quarters round the waist. To these communicated details he could add from personal observation that she had the complexion of a Channel pilot, owned a sensible, good-tempered, very managing face, and spoke in a full barytone voice. He accredited her with being very fairly honorable, irreproachably virtuous, and conspicuously devoid of either the religious or artistic sense—though she frequented concerts, picture galleries, and church services with praiseworthy regularity and persistence. He liked her rather, and wondered at her much—being unaccustomed to the society of such large-boned, athletic, and sexless persons, petticoated, yet conspicuously deficient in haunches and busts.

Miss Chase, he further remarked, was permanently in waiting upon Margaret Smyrthwaite, while a tail of youths and maidens was almost as permanently in waiting upon Miss Chase. Their relation to her was gregarious rather than sentimental, a mere herding of children who follow a leader at play. The said tail to-day consisted of the Busbridge boys and Amy Woodford—the former two lanky, sandy-headed, quite innocuous young fellows in immaculate flannels, their nether garments sustained by green and orange silk handkerchiefs knotted—Adrian trusted securely—about their waists; the latter a rather stout, dark-haired young lady, arrayed in white linen, who would have been very passably pretty had not her mouth been too small, her nose too long, and her bright, boot-button-black eyes set insufficiently far apart.

Idly he watched the quartette as the members of it ran, leaped, backed, called, stood breathing after a long rally, with, apparently, as little soul or mind in their active young bodies as a mob of colts and fillies. Then his eyes traveled to Margaret Smyrthwaite sitting outside the larch-built, heather-thatched tennis pavilion beyond the court in the shade of a grove of tall fir and beech trees.

If Marion Chase caused him wonder, Margaret caused him very much more, though from a different angle. Her development in the last three months struck him as phenomenal—a startling example of the adaptability to environment inherent in the feminine nature. From a rather negative and invertebrate being, with little to say and a manner alternately peevish and silly, she had grown into a self-possessed young woman, capable of making her presence, pleasure, and displeasure, definitely felt. The likeness and the unlikeness she bore to Joanna had from the first appeared to Adrian both pathetic and singular. Now, on seeing the twin sisters again, this likeness and unlikeness passed the bounds of pathos and became, to his eyes, quite actively cruel. For they bore to each other—it was thus he put it—the same relation that the Édition de luxe of a book bears to its original rough copy—Joanna, naturally, representing the rough copy. All the ungracious and ungrateful aspects of Joanna's appearance were nicely corrected in her sister, fined down or filled out—heavy, yellowish auburn hair, improved to crisp copper; a pasty complexion giving place to a fair though freckled skin and bright color; blue eyes no longer prominent or anxious, but clear, self-content, and possibly a trifle sly.

At forty Adrian could imagine her fat and a little coarse-looking, but now her figure was graceful, and she dressed well, though with perhaps too great elaboration for impeccable taste. Adrian trembled as to the flights of decorative fancy which might present themselves when her period of mourning was passed! To-day she wore a black muslin dress and a wide-brimmed, black chip hat, trimmed with four enormous black silk and gauze roses, the whole of rather studied candor of effect. Yes, she was quite an agreeable object to look upon; but Joanna, oh! poor, poor Joanna!

Adrian lit a fourth cigarette, stretched himself in his chair again, crossing his legs and gazing up at the roof rafters. Joanna afforded him an uncomfortable subject of thought, and one which he tried to avoid in so far as possible. He respected her. More than ever he felt a chivalrous pity toward her. But he did not like her, somehow. Ridiculous though it might sound, he was a wee bit afraid of her, conscious of self-protective instincts, of an inclination to erect small barricades and throw up small earthworks behind which to shelter when alone with her. He was ashamed of his own sensations, but—and more particularly since he had seen those degraded drawings upon the wall of RenÉ's studio which so dreadfully resembled her—she, to use a childish expression, gave him the creeps.

Then, suddenly penetrated by a conviction that her pale eyes were at that very moment fixed upon him, Adrian whipped out of his chair and wheeled round, very alert and upright in his tan boots and light flannel suit.

"Ah! my dear cousin, it is you! I thought so," he said, quickly. "At last you come out to enjoy this ideal afternoon. That is well. Is it not ravishing?"

For quite a perceptible space of time Joanna made no reply. She stood on the stone step of one of the large French windows opening on to the veranda. Her lips were parted and upon her face was a singular expression, midway—so it struck Adrian—between driveling folly and rapture. This recalled to him with such vividness those evil drawings upon the studio wall that had the likeness been completed by her sporting masculine attire it would hardly have surprised him. She, in point of fact, however, wore nothing more peculiar than a modest, slightly limp, black alpaca coat and skirt. Adrian was aware of developing an unreasoning detestation of that innocent and very serviceable material.

"I am so sorry," she said, at last, in a sort of hurried whisper. "I ought not to have come out unexpectedly thus, by the window. I have disturbed you. It was thoughtless of me and inconsiderate."

"But—no—no—not in the least," he assured her. "I was doing absolutely nothing. The hot weather disposes one to idleness. I tried to read The Times. I found it a monument of dullness. I looked into a little French paper I have here." He patted the breast-pocket of his jacket. "I found it quite too lively."

The corners of his mouth gave slightly; for oh! how very far away from poor Joanna's was the outlook upon things in general of that naughty little print!

"Have no fear," he added. "It shall remain safely stowed away. It is not, I admit, exactly designed for what you call family reading—unsuited, for example, to the ingenuous minds of those excellent young tennis players! Ah, the energy they display! It puts me to shame."

Joanna came forward slowly, touching chairs, flower-stands, tables, in passing, as though blindly feeling her way.

"I have wanted so much to speak to you alone," she said.

"Yes—yes?" Adrian answered inquiringly, with a hasty mental looking around for suitable barricade-building material.

"Ever since you told me you had lately suffered anxiety and trouble," she continued.

"Ah! my dear cousin, you are too sympathetic, too kind. Who among us is free from anxieties and troubles—des ennuis? One accepts them as an integral part of one's existence upon this astonishing planet. One even cherishes a certain affection for them, perhaps one's own dear little personal ennuis."

Joanna sank into a chair. Her lips worked with emotion.

"I wish I could feel as you do," she said. "But I am weak. I rebel against that which pains me or causes me anxiety. I have no large tolerance of philosophy. But, therefore, all the more do I admire it in you. Now, when I allude to your trouble you try to put the matter aside gracefully out of consideration for me. Indeed, I appreciate that consideration, but while it causes me gratitude, it increases my regret.—You will not think me officious or intrusive? But I cannot tell you how it distresses me that you should endure any mental suffering, that you should have troubles or anxieties. I had never thought of the possibility of anything unhappy in your life or circumstances. Since you told me I think of it continually. Forgive me if I appear presumptuous, but you have done so incalculably much for—for us—Margaret, I mean, and me—especially, I know"—her voice faded to a mere thread—"I know, of course, for me—that I have wondered whether there was not anything in which I could be of some slight use to you, in which I could help you, in return?"

Adrian had subsided into his long chair again. He leaned sideways, his legs crossed, his right arm extended to its full length across the arm of the chair, holding his cigarette between his first and second fingers, as far from his companion as possible lest the smoke of it should be unpleasant to her. His lean, shapely hand and wrist showed brown against the hard white of his shirt-cuff, and the blue smoke from the smoldering cigarette curled delicately upward in the hot, fragrant air. And Joanna watched his every movement; watched with the fixed intentness, the beatified idiocy, of those who dote.

Outwardly the young man remained charmingly debonair. Inwardly he labored at the erection of barricades and the strengthening of earthworks with positive frenzy, distractedly apprehensive of what might be coming next.

"Sympathy so generously given as yours can never be otherwise than helpful, dear cousin," he said. "Believe me, I am deeply touched by the interest you take in me. But the trouble I have on my mind—and which it was foolish and selfish of me ever to allude to—"

"Oh no," Joanna interrupted, breathlessly. "Do not say that. Pray don't. It was entirely my doing. Both Margaret and I observed that you—you looked sad, that you had grown thinner. I questioned you. Perhaps it was intrusive of me to do so. Yet how could I remain silent when all which affects you necessarily concerns me so profoundly?"

Notwithstanding the high temperature, Adrian felt something queerly like a trickle of iced water down the length of his spine. He just managed not to change his position, but remained leaning sideways toward her.

"You are more than kind to me, dear cousin," he said. "Really, more than kind and good. But I am sure your ready sympathy will make you comprehend there is a stage of most ennuis, private worries and bothers, when it is only discreet, only, indeed, honorable, to maintain silence. Yet, believe me, I shall never forget your amiable solicitude for my happiness. Some day in the future it may become possible for me to explain—"

"Yes—oh! yes—in the future—thank you—I know—in the future," Joanna whispered, pressing her hands over her eyes.

And Adrian shrank away from her. He couldn't help it. Mercifully, she wasn't looking. He uncrossed his legs, sat upright. Then, leaning forward with bent head, he stared at the red and purple quarries of the pavement, resting his wrists upon his knees. He was about to reply, but Joanna's toneless speech rushed onward.

"Pray, pray do not suppose that I wish to cross-question you or force myself into your confidence. Nothing could be further from my intention than that. I am so sure you know far best what to tell and what to withhold from me. I could never question your judgment for an instant. In this, as in everything—yes, everything—I am ready and contented to wait. Only sometimes there are practical ways of being helpful. I have lived among business people all my life, and I could not help thinking that if there was any scheme—connected with your Review, for instance—forgive me if I am presumptuous—but any business affair in which you were interested and which might require capital, might need financing—"

Adrian raised his head slightly. His face was drawn and very pale. His nostrils quivered. He had sufficient self-control to keep his eyes steadily upon the white, capering forms of the tennis players there on the other side of the sunny lawn. Was it conceivable that she, Joanna—of all created women—was trying to buy him? The degradation, the infinite disgust of it!—But no, that really was too vile a thought. With all the cleanness, all the chivalry of his nature, Adrian thrust it aside, refusing to dishonor her so much. Again he nerved himself to speak, and again her speech rushed onward like—so it seemed to him—some toneless hissing of wind over a barren, treeless, seedless waste.

"Pray, pray do not be displeased with me," she pleaded. "I may be acting unconventionally in touching thus upon matters apparently outside my province. But, as I think you will admit, I am at most only forestalling the right, the privilege rather—for to me no privilege could be greater—which will be mine later on, in the future of which you just now spoke. Please think of it thus. And if my action is premature, a little unbecoming or unusual, you—who understand everything—will most surely forgive. No—Cousin Adrian, do not answer me, I implore you—not just yet. I have longed so earnestly for this opportunity of talking alone with you. Give me time. Let me finish. I know I do not express myself well. But be patient with me. When we are together I am only conscious of your presence. I become miserably deficient in courage and resource. Words fail me. I am so sensible of my own shortcomings. Therefore I cannot consent to lose this opportunity. There is something I so intensely need to tell you, because I cannot help hoping it may lighten the anxieties which have been troubling you—"

During this extraordinary address Adrian held himself rigidly still, his head again bent, while he stared at the red and purple quarries. He could not trust himself to move by so much as an inch lest he should betray the repulsion with which she inspired him. Meanwhile his mind worked like some high-powered engine at full pressure, for, indeed, the situation was extravagant in its unpleasantness. How to say anything conclusive without assuming too much passed human wit. Yet what more fatuous, what more execrably bad taste than to assume just that too much? He wanted to spare the poor woman, and act toward her with as perfect charity, as perfect good breeding, as he might.

"This is what I have so wanted to tell you, Adrian," Joanna went on. "Lately I have felt quite differently about my unfortunate brother, about poor Bibby, of whose unhappy career I spoke to you when you were here before. I have learned to think differently upon many subjects in the last three months—"

Joanna paused, pressing her hands against her forehead.

"Yes—upon many, many subjects," she said. "That is natural, inevitable, with the wonderful prospect which lies before me."

The young man braced himself, each muscle growing taut, as a man braces himself for a life-and-death fight. But he did not alter his position.

"When we talked of my brother before, I told you—I thought it right to do so—that I proposed to put aside the larger portion of my fortune for his benefit. I believed it my duty to do my utmost to make amends for papa's harshness toward him. But since then I have come to see the matter in a different light. I no longer feel that my brother has the first claim upon me. I no longer believe my first duty is to Bibby. It is to some one else. And I have ceased to believe he is still living. A strange and deepening conviction has grown upon me that he is dead."

Adrian's muscles relaxed. He threw back his head and looked into the sky, into the strong, steady sunlight. For hearing Joanna's last words, he hailed salvation—salvation coming, be it added, from the very queerest and most unexpected quarter.

"Consequently I have decided to alter my will," Joanna continued. "I scrutinized my own motives carefully. I have earnestly tried not to be unduly influenced by my own inclinations, but to do what is just and right. I have not yet spoken to Margaret about it, but I intend to make a redistribution of my property, devoting that portion of it which I held in reserve for my brother to another person—I mean another purpose. Under my altered circumstances I feel not only that I am justified in doing this, but that it has become an imperative obligation. Were my poor brother still living the news of papa's death must have reached him by this time and he would have communicated either with Andrew Merriman or with me. As he has not communicated with either of us, I am free to assume the fact of his death. You agree with me, Adrian? I am at liberty to make this redistribution of my property? You—you assent?"

"Since you are good enough to ask my advice, dear cousin," Adrian said, looking upon the ground and speaking quietly and distinctly, "I am compelled to answer you truthfully. You are not free at the present time, in my opinion, to make any alteration in your will which affects your bequest to your brother."

"But," Joanna protested, with a smoldering violence, "but if I am certain, morally certain, that my unfortunate brother is dead?"

Putting a strong force upon himself, Adrian leaned sideways in his chair, again crossing his legs, turning his face toward Joanna, and looking gravely and kindly at her.

"Dear cousin," he said, "perhaps I should have acted more wisely had I written or spoken to you before now of a certain discovery which I happened, accidentally, to make immediately after my return to France. I hesitated after the exhausting experiences you had recently passed through to subject you to further anxiety and suspense or to raise hopes which might be fated to disappointment. But I possess evidence—to myself conclusive—that your brother was living as lately as three months ago; that in February last he was in Paris. Yes, I know, I sympathize—I readily comprehend," he went on, feelingly, "how greatly this information is calculated to surprise you. On that account I have withheld it, and I grieve it is not possible to soften the shock of it by giving a happy account of your brother's state of mind or of his circumstances."

Here the speaker stopped, for Joanna raised her hand with an almost menacing gesture.

"Wait, Adrian," she cried, "wait! I cannot bear any more at present. I must accustom myself to this idea. It means so much, so dreadfully much. I must have time to think."

CHAPTER VI
WHICH PLAYS SEESAW BETWEEN A GAME OF
LAWN-TENNIS AND A PRODIGAL SON

Coming in by the wicket gate from the carriage-drive, Challoner sauntered with a deliberate and even proprietary tread along the shrubbery path skirting the eastern side of the lawn. He was clothed, with a view to sports and pastimes, in a loosely fitting gray Norfolk jacket, white trousers, and a hard, white straw hat, the low crown of it encircled by a band of purple-and-scarlet-striped ribbon. The said hat, set on the top of his tall, upright head and neck, and straight, solid figure, gave him—in outline—an appearance remarkably suggestive of a large medicine bottle with the cork rammed well in. Over his shoulder he carried a racket, from which dangled a pair of by no means diminutive tennis shoes.

Only recently had Challoner received invitations to the Tower House of this purely social character. They gave him the warmest satisfaction, as marking progress toward the goal of his ambitions. He had been elected to the Baughurst Park Ward; by a narrow majority, it is true, still he had been elected—and that was the main thing, since it supplied a secure basis from which to manoeuver. Before the next election, if all went well—and he would compel all, never fear, to go well—he would be in a position to ride rough-shod over the Baughurst Park Ward, herding its voters to the poll like so many obedient sheep. His wits and professional standing plus Margaret Smyrthwaite's fortune and social standing would make him master not only of the Baughurst Park Ward, but of all Stourmouth. Yes, Sir Joseph and Lady Challoner, sons, perhaps, at Eton, daughters presented at Court and marrying into the peerage! Such beatific visions floated before him, and Challoner felt then, indeed, he would not have lived in vain. The job of uprooting and deporting Mrs. Gwynnie had been a nasty one. It hit him very hard at the time. There were moments of it he didn't care to remember very clearly even now. But, as he sauntered slowly in the still afternoon heat through the aromatic atmosphere of the radiant garden, and glanced up at the imposing mass of the big red house, its gilt weather-vane cutting into the blazing blue, he thanked Almighty God from his heart, piously, that he had had the pluck, and forethought, and resolution to go through with that nasty job of uprooting and deportation. Only weak men let women wreck them; and, thank God, he, Joseph Challoner, wasn't weak. Meanwhile—here piety had the grace to walk out and let honest cynicism walk in, winking—meanwhile Margaret Smyrthwaite grew better-looking and more accessible every day. Yes, unquestionably Providence is on the side of the clear-headed, helping those who help themselves, who know the chance of their lives when it comes along and don't allow sentimental scruples to prevent their fixing right on to it. Only the unfit go under—such, for instance, as that flimsy little baggage, Mrs. Gwynnie. And, if you look at things all round calmly and scientifically, how very much better for everybody concerned, public morals included, that under such very unfit little feminine baggages should very completely and finally go!

Chewing the cud of which philosophic reflections, Challoner pursued his prosperous and contented way. From the tennis court the players waved and called their greetings as he approached them. Margaret Smyrthwaite, leaving her seat in front of the pavilion, came forward to meet him, her smart black figure and enormous hat backed by a bank of crimson and pink rhododendron in full blossom. She moved with the rather studied grace of a girl who expects, and is altogether ready, to be admired. Challoner had no quarrel with this. For his taste she could not be too ornate. He appraised her appearance, her costume, the general effect of her, as he might a fine piece of plate for his table. Well, didn't he propose she should be, in a sense, just that—his domestic and social centerpiece? The more glory to him, then, the more expensive she looked! And she could afford to look expensive, thank God!—here piety stepped in again momentarily.—And he could afford to let her look so; for once that handsome fortune of hers in his keeping, be d——d if he would not double or treble it.

He raised his hat and stood with it in his hand. His eyes covered her covetously. If she wanted admiration, it was hers to order. He could supply a perfectly genuine article in unlimited quantity. And, though his countenance was not an expressive one, he contrived to convey the above information to her quite clearly. The young lady responded. She talked of the weather, the heat, the game, and such-like inanities; but she displayed her fine plumage and trailed her wings all the while. Challoner began to think of a game of tennis as a wholesome corrective. The temperature became high in more senses than the meteorologic one. Presently she made a gesture calling his attention to her sister and Adrian Savage sitting on the veranda; smiled slyly, looking up at him, and then turned and sauntered a few steps beside him back along the path.

Witnessing all which suggestive pantomime from his distant station, Adrian had much ado to maintain an attitude of circumspection and restraint. For was it conceivable that those two—Margaret and Challoner—in any degree shared, or affected to share, poor Joanna's infatuated delusion? Was ever man landed in so false a position! An atmosphere of intrigue surrounded him. He felt as though walking among treacherous quicksands, where every step spells danger of being sucked under and engulfed. Inwardly he tore and plunged, cursing against the hateful, the dishonoring silence imposed upon him by circumstance. He was tempted to rush out on to the sun-bathed lawn, regardless of all mercy, of all decorum, and shout to the four winds of heaven his unique, inextinguishable devotion to Gabrielle St. Leger, his sole desire and love! Only by some such public loud-tongued demonstration did he feel he could regain safe foothold and cleanse his honor from the detestable and insidious duplicity fathered upon him through no act or lapse of his.

But here Joanna's voice once more claimed his attention. It still hissed and whispered, causing him shrinking and repulsion. Yet he detected a change in the spirit of it. Some finer, more wholesome chord had been struck. She no longer cringed.

"I am ready now, Cousin Adrian," she said, "to hear that which you have to tell me about my brother."

And the young man, finding relief to his pent-up feelings in voluminous and rapid speech, told her how, calling late one night upon an old school-fellow, a widely known draftsman and caricaturist, he had seen certain drawings—here Adrian picked his phrases a little—representing a young man of six or seven and twenty—"Who," he said, "bore such a striking resemblance to you, my dear cousin, and to Margaret, that I was transfixed with veritable amazement. I do not disguise from you that I was also pained, that for the moment I was furious. For these pictures were objectionable in character, in many respects odious. It appeared to me my friend had been guilty of an outrage for which it was my duty to administer sharp chastisement. But I could demand no immediate satisfaction, because he and I had already quarreled that evening, and he concealed himself from me, thereby rendering it impracticable that I should question him. This, perhaps, was as well, since I was heated and it gave me space for reflection. I realized the extreme improbability of his ever having seen either you or your sister—the absolute impossibility of his having done so recently, as you had been at home in England for some years. Then I recalled the pathetic history of your brother which you had confided to me. I grasped the situation. I understood. I called upon my friend next day. Still he was rancorous. He flew into a passion and refused to admit me. I restrained my resentment. I wrote to him explaining the gravity and urgency of the case. I appealed to his better nature, entreated him to be reasonable and to give me information. Indeed, I conducted myself with praiseworthy reticence, while he remained obstinate to the point of exasperation. Upon more than one count, I fear, I should have derived the very warmest satisfaction from wringing his neck."

Adrian's handsome eyes danced and glittered. His teeth showed white and wicked under his fly-away mustache.

"Yes, I, on my side, also possibly harbored a trifle of rancor," he said. "But I suppressed my legitimate annoyance. I ignored his provocations. I insisted. At last I elicited this much."

"That was very noble of you; still it distresses me that, indirectly, I should have caused you this trouble. Though I am grateful—some day I may find words in which to tell you how grateful," Joanna whispered, leaning forward and working her hands together nervously in her black alpaca lap.

All of which served to bring Adrian, who had grown quite comparatively at ease and happy in his subjective belaborings of The Unspeakable Tadpole, back to the entanglements and distractions of the immediate present, with a bounce.

"Upon my word, my dear Joanna," he replied almost brusquely, "I am afraid it very much remains to be proved whether I deserve your gratitude or not. I labor under the ungracious necessity of communicating much to you that is painful, that is sad. Yet, having gone thus far it becomes imperative, for many reasons, that I should put you in possession of all the facts. Then it will be for you to decide what further steps are to be taken next."

"You will know best—far best," she murmured.

The young man set his teeth. Never before had he come so near being cruel to a woman. Instinctively he crossed himself. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, in mercy preserve him from the guilt of so dastardly a sin! He turned to Joanna and spoke, dealing out his words slowly, so that the full meaning of them might reach her beclouded, love-sick brain.

"My friend, RenÉ Dax, found this young man, whose likeness to you and your sister is so indisputable, so intimate, in the act of attempting his life."

"Ah! Bibby, Bibby!" Joanna cried harshly, throwing back her head.

"Yes," Adrian continued, pursuing his advantage, "unnerved by the horror of his friendless and destitute condition, the unhappy boy was about to throw himself from one of the bridges into the Seine. At his age one must have suffered very greatly to take refuge in that! But from the drawings of which I have spoken one can form only too forcible a conception of his desperation. They supply a human document of a deplorably convincing order. RenÉ, who, notwithstanding his eccentricity, possesses admirable instincts, struggled with him and succeeded in preventing the accomplishment of his fatal design. Then, forcing him into a passing cab—kidnapping him, in short—carried him off with him home."

"Oh, wait, wait!" Joanna broke in. "This is all so very dreadful. It is so remote from my experience, from all I am accustomed to, from all the habits and purposes of my life. I do not wish to be self-indulgent and shirk my duty. I wish to hear the whole, Cousin Adrian; but I must pause. I must recover and collect myself, if I am to follow your narrative intelligently."

Just then Joseph Challoner, having laid aside hat and jacket and put on tennis shoes, came out of the pavilion and joined the group, gathered around Margaret Smyrthwaite, on the terraced grass bank of the court. Challoner had the reputation of being a formidable player, his height, and reach, and sureness of eye more than counterbalancing any lack of agility. It may be added that, along with a losing game, he had the reputation of too often mislaying his manners and losing his temper. But this afternoon no question presented itself of losing either game or temper. He had practised regularly lately. He felt in fine form. He felt in high good humor. While both sense and senses called for strong physical exercise as a wholesome outlet to emotion.

Amid discussion and laughter, Marion Chase tossed for partners. The elder of the Busbridge boys fell to her lot, the younger to Challoner's, and the set began. Margaret returned to her chair, and Amy Woodford lolled on the pavilion step, in the shadow close beside her, fanning a very pink face with a large palm-leaf fan. As the game progressed the two girls commented and applauded, with clapping of hands and derisive or encouraging titterings and cries. Against this gaily explosive feminine duet, the rapid thud of balls, and sharp calling of the score, Joanna's voice asserted itself, with—to her hearer—a consuming dreariness of interminable and fruitless moral effort, a grayness of perpetual non-arrival, perpetual frustration, misconception and mistake.

"I am composed now, Adrian," she said. "My will again controls my feelings. Please tell me the rest."

"I am afraid there is disappointingly little more to tell," he replied. "For two days the unfortunate boy remained with my friend as his guest. RenÉ clothed him properly, fed and cared for him, and paid him liberally for his services as a model. But on the third morning, under plea of requiring to obtain some particular drug from a neighboring pharmacy, the young man left my friend's studio. He did not return."

"Where did he go?"

"That is what I have asked myself a thousand times, and made every effort to discover. I have friends at the Prefecture of Police. I consulted them. They were generous in their readiness to put their knowledge at my disposal and aid me in my research. Unluckily I could only give them a verbal description of the missing man, for RenÉ refused me all assistance, refused to allow any police agent to view the drawings, refused even to allow photographs of them to be taken. To do so, he declared, would constitute an unpardonable act of treachery, a violation of hospitality and crime against his own good faith. The unhappy fellow had trusted him on the understanding that no inquiry would be made regarding his family or his name. Now the episode was closed. RenÉ did not want it reopened. He had other things to think about. Rather than have the drawings employed for purposes of identification, he would destroy them, obliterate them with a coat of paint. When it became evident, however, the young man had disappeared for good RenÉ's valet, less scrupulous than his master, carefully examined the wretched clothes he had left behind. Between the lining and stuff of the jacket he found a small photograph. It must have worked through from a rent in the breast-pocket. Though creased and defaced, the subject of it was still in a degree distinguishable. I did not wish to agitate you, my dear cousin, by communicating this matter to you until I had made further efforts to discover the truth. I sent the photograph to Mr. Merriman. He tells me it represents the garden front of your old house, Highdene, near Leeds."

Joanna neither moved nor spoke, though her breath sighed and caught. The sounds from the tennis court, meanwhile, increased both in volume and in animation, causing Adrian to look up.

Challoner stood as near to the net as is permissible, volleying or smashing down ball after ball, until his opponents began to lose heart and science and grow harried and spent. And Adrian, watching, found himself, though unwillingly, impressed by and admiring the force, not only the great brute strength but determination of the man, which bestowed a certain dignity upon the game, raising it from the level of a mere amusement to that of a serious duel. And across the intervening space Challoner became sensible of that unwilling admiration—the admiration of a quasi-enemy, curiously supplementing another admiration of which he was also conscious—namely, that of Margaret Smyrthwaite, of the woman who craves to be justified, by public exhibition of his skill and prowess, of the man to whom she meditates intrusting her person and her fate. This excited Challoner, flattering his pride, stimulating his ambition and belief in himself.—Yes, he would show them all what he was made of, show them all what he could do, what he was worth! So that now he no longer played simply to win a set at tennis from a harmless, lanky Busbridge boy and amazon-like Marion Chase; but to revenge himself for Adrian Savage's past distrust of him, detection and prevention of his shady little business tricks, played to revenge himself for the younger man's superiority in breeding, knowledge of the world, culture, talents, charm of manner and of looks. He gave himself to the paying off of old scores in that game of tennis, all his bullying instinct, his necessity to beat down and trample Opposition under foot, actively militant. Yet since Margaret Smyrthwaite's approval, not to mention her goodly fortune, came into reckoning, the bullying instinct made him deadly cool and cunning rather than headlong or reckless in his play.

Presently Joanna silently motioned Adrian once again to take up his sordid story. And with a feeling of rather hopeless weariness he obeyed, recounting his scouring of Paris, accompanied by a private detective. Told her of clues found, or apparently found, only again to be lost. Told her, incidentally, a little about the haunts of vagabondage and crime and vice, of the seething, foul-smelling, festering under-world which there, as in every great city, lies below the genial surface of things, ready to drag down and absorb the friendless and the weak. So doing—while he still watched Challoner, and divined much of the human drama—finding expression in his masterful manipulation of racket and ball—Adrian's imagination took fire. He forgot his companion, gave reign to his natural eloquence and described certain scenes, certain episodes, with only too telling effect.

"But you must have been exposed to great danger," she broke in breathlessly at last.

"Ah! like that!" he cried, shrugging his shoulders and laughing a little fiercely. "Danger is, after all, an excellent sauce to meat. I had entire confidence in the loyalty and discretion of my companion, and we were armed."

Joanna got up, pushing away her chair, which scrooped upon the quarries.

"And you did all this for me—for my sake, because Bibby is my brother!" she exclaimed. "You risked contracting some illness, receiving some injury! For me, because of Bibby's relation to me, you endangered your life!"

"But in point of fact, I didn't suffer in the least, my dear Joanna," he replied, rising also. "I enlarged my acquaintance with a city of which I am quite incorrigibly fond; which, even at her dirtiest and naughtiest, I very heartily love. And here I am, as you see, in excellent health, perfectly intact, ready to start on my voyage of discovery again to-morrow, if there should seem any reasonable hope of its being crowned with success. Common humanity demands that much of me. One cannot let a fellow-creature, especially one who has the claim of kinship, perish in degradation and misery without making every rational effort to rescue and rehabilitate him."

Joanna hardly appeared to listen. She moved to and fro, her arms hanging straight at her sides, her hands opening and closing in nervous, purposeless clutchings.

"No," she declared violently, "no! When I think of the risks which you have exposed yourself, and the shocking and cruel things which might have happened to you, I cannot control my indignation. When I think that Bibby might have been the cause of your death no vestige of affection for him is left in me. None—none—I cast him out of my heart. Yes, it is dreadful. Looking back, all the anguish of which my brother has been the cause is present to me—the constant anxiety which his conduct gave rise to, the concealments mamma and I had to practise to shield him from papa's anger, the atmosphere of nervousness and unrest which, owing to him, embittered my girlhood. He was the cause of estrangement between my parents; between papa and myself. He was the cause of the break-up of our home at Leeds, of the severing of old friendships and associations, of the sense of disgrace which for so many years lay upon our whole establishment. It destroyed my mother's health. It emphasized the unsympathetic tendencies of my father's character. And now, now, when so much has happened to redress the unhappiness of the past, to glorify and enlarge my life, when my future is so inexpressibly full of hope and promise, it is too much, too much, that my brother should reappear, that he should intervene between us, Adrian, between you and me—endangering your actual existence. And he will come back—I know it, I feel it," she added wildly. "I believed him dead because I wished him dead. I still wish it. But that is useless—useless."

And, as though in ironic applause of Joanna's passionate denunciation, the two young ladies watching the game of tennis broke into enthusiastic hand-clapping.

"Well played—good—good—splendid—played indeed!" they cried, their voices ringing out through the still, hot air.

Marion Chase flung herself down on the terraced grass-bank.

"You're out of sight too strong for us," she gasped, laughingly. "We didn't have the ghost of a chance."

Challoner stood wiping his face and neck with his handkerchief. He was puffed up with pride, almost boisterously exultant. Ah! yes, let the hen-bird display her fine plumage and trail her wings ever so prettily, when it came to a fight the cock-bird had his innings, and could show he wasn't lacking in virility or spunk! He'd given them all a taste of his metal this afternoon, he flattered himself; taught them Joseph Challoner was something more than a common low-caste, office-bred, country attorney, half sharper, half lick-spittle sneak!

"The gray mare isn't the better horse yet awhile, eh, Miss Marion, your friends the suffragettes notwithstanding?" he said, jocosely. "All the same, I congratulate you. You and your partner made a plucky stand."

The elder Busbridge boy lay on his back, panting and tightening the supporting silk handkerchief about his lean young waist.

"My hat! that last rally was a breather though," he grunted. "I got regularly fed up with the way you kept me bargeing from side to side of that back court, Challoner. Double-demon, all-round champion terrifier—that's about the name to suit you, my good chap."

Joanna had come close to Adrian. Her prominent eyes were strained and clouded. Seam-like lines showed in her forehead and cheeks. Her poor mouth looked bruised, the outline of her lips frayed and discolored. Her likeness to the drawings upon the wall was phenomenal just then. It shocked Adrian, and it caused him to think.

"They have finished playing," she said. "They will come in to tea directly. I cannot remain and meet them. I must show some respect for my own dignity. They are all Margaret's friends. I do not care for them. I cannot expose myself to their observation. She must entertain them herself. I will go to my room. I must be alone until I have had time to regain my composure, until I know my own thought about this cruel, cruel event; until I have recovered in some degree from the shock I have suffered, and begin to see what my duty is."

CHAPTER VII
PISTOLS OR POLITENESS—FOR TWO

"This is the last of the documents, Mr. Challoner?"

"Yes, that is the last of the lot. You noted the contents of Schedule D, covering the period from the end of the December quarter to the date of Mr. Smyrthwaite's death, among the Priestly Mills statement of accounts? The typed one—quite right. Yes, that's the lot."

"We may consider the whole of our business concluded?"

"That is so," Challoner said.

He stood in an easy attitude resting his elbow on the shelf of the red porphyry-mantelpiece of the smoking-room at Heatherleigh—a heavily furnished apartment, the walls hung with chocolate-colored imitation leather, in a raised self-colored pattern of lozenge-shaped medallions, each centered with a Tudor rose. The successes of the afternoon still inflated him. In addition to his triumphs in sports and pastimes, he had managed to say five words to Margaret Smyrthwaite. And, though the crucial question had neither been asked nor answered, he felt sure of her at last. His humor was hilarious and expansive—of the sort which chucks young women under the chin, digs old gentlemen in the ribs or slaps them familiarly upon the back. There was a covert sneer in the tail of Challoner's eye and a braggart tang in his talk. He swaggered, every inch of his big body pleased with living, almost brutally self-congratulatory and content.

"I am really under considerable obligation to you for giving up your evening to me, and letting me finish our business after office-hours thus. It will enable me to catch the night cross-Channel boat from Dover to-morrow. I shall be particularly glad to do so."

As he spoke, Adrian swung round the revolving chair, in which he sat before the large writing-table—loaded with bundles of folded papers, and legal documents engrossed on vellum tied round with pink tape. In turning, the light from the shaded incandescent gas-lamp, hanging directly above the table, brought his black hair and beard and white face into the high relief of some Rembrandt portrait.

"What's up with young Master Highty Tighty?" Challoner asked himself. "Looks off color, somehow, as if he'd had an uncommon nasty blow below the belt."

The windows and glass door stood open on to the garden, and the pungent scents of the great fir woods drawn forth by the day's sunshine mingled with that of Challoner's cigar and Adrian's cigarette.

"Oh! so you're off at once then, are you?" the former said. "That's something new, isn't it? I understood from the ladies you thought of stopping on here a bit. And when may we hope for the pleasure of seeing you again on this side of the silver strip?"

Adrian leaned back in his chair, stretching out his legs and crossing his feet.

"At the present time I really have no idea," he replied.

Challoner could hardly conceal his glee. For an instant he debated. Concluded he would venture on a reconnaissance. Flicked the end off his cigar into the fireplace.

"Miss Joanna will be sorry," he said.

"Both my cousins have been perfect in their amiability, in their hospitality, in their generous appreciation of any small services it has been in my power to render them," Adrian declared, rolling his r's and speaking with the hint of a foreign accent common to him when tired or vexed. "My cousins know that they can command my co-operation at a moment's notice should they require counsel or advice. But my own affairs, as they kindly and readily comprehend, cannot be too long neglected. My interests and my work are necessarily abroad—in France. It becomes imperative that I should return to my work."

"Not a doubt about it," Challoner said. "Work stands first. Though I own I'm glad my work doesn't oblige me to expatriate myself. I shouldn't relish that. Not a bit. Poor old England's good enough for me."

"Precisely—your interests and your work are here."

Challoner fitted the toe of his boot into the pattern of the hearth-rug, looking down and permitting himself a quiet laugh.

"Oh! Lord, yes," he said, "to be sure. My work and my interests are here right enough—very much here. I'm not ashamed of the word 'local,' or of the word 'provincial' either, Mr. Savage. My father invented Stourmouth, as you may say, and I've patented his invention. Stourmouth owes a good deal to the two Joseph Challoners, father and son; and I propose it should owe a long sight more, one way and another, before I join my poor old daddy 'under the churchyard sod.'"

"It is an act of piety to devote one's talents and energies to the welfare of one's native place," Adrian returned.

And therewith, judging he had made sufficient concession to the exigencies of the position in the matter of general conversation, he rose to depart. But Challoner stopped him.

"Just half a minute, will you please, Mr. Savage," he said. "It occurs to me if we're not likely to meet for some time there's one matter I ought to mention to you. I don't exactly care to take the whole onus of the thing upon my own shoulders. Of course, if you're cognizant of it, there's the beginning and end of the story as far as my responsibility goes. I may have my own opinion as to the wisdom, and—not to mince matters—the honesty of the arrangement. But, if you are aware of it and approve, my mouth, of course, is shut. Has Miss Smyrthwaite told you of the alteration she proposes making in her will?"

"Yes, she spoke of it to-day; and I dissuaded her from making it."

Challoner sucked in his breath with a soft whistle.

"Indeed?" he said. "That's a self-denying ordinance."

Adrian held himself extremely erect. His eyebrows were raised and the tip of his pugnacious nose was very much in the air.

"Pardon me, but I do not quite follow you," he said.

"Miss Smyrthwaite didn't explain the nature of the alterations very fully then, I take it?"

"My cousin informed me that she proposed to revoke certain gifts and bequests she had made to her brother, William Smyrthwaite—supposing him still to be living. Of this I disapproved. I told her so, giving her the reasons for my disapproval."

Challoner looked down and fitted the toe of his boot into the hearth-rug pattern once more.

"You hold the property should remain in the family—go to the direct heirs, the next of kin? A very sound principle; but one, if you'll excuse my saying so, few persons stick to where their personal advantage is involved."

"I repeat, I fail to follow you," Adrian returned, shrugging his shoulders and spreading out his hands with an impatient movement.

"Perhaps Miss Smyrthwaite omitted to explain that this redistribution of her property was exclusively in your favor; all she mulcted her precious specimen of a brother of was to go not to her direct heir—her sister—but to yourself."

Whereupon, it must be conceded, the younger man's bearing became not a little insolent.

"Preposterous, my dear Challoner, utterly preposterous!" he cried. "For once your professional acumen must have quite scandalously deserted you, or you could not have so misunderstood my cousin's instructions."

It was not Challoner's cue to lose his temper. He had too many causes for self-congratulation to-night. And then, whether Adrian was bluffing or not, he believed—though it was annoying to find the young man so unmercenary—this repudiation of the proffered inheritance to be sincere.

"Joanna—Miss Smyrthwaite, I mean, I beg her pardon—is too good a woman of business to trust to verbal instructions. I have got the whole thing on paper, in black and white, there"—he pointed to the table. "I can lay my hand on it in half a minute. Possibly you'd like to look at it yourself, as you appear to doubt my word."

But for the moment Adrian was incapable of reply. This was what Joanna had meant! It was even worse than he had feared. He felt humiliated, hot with shame. And then, in spirit, he clasped those infamous drawings upon the wall and the subject of them, Bibby, the miserable wastrel Bibby, to his breast.

"Do you wish to look at Miss Smyrthwaite's instructions as to the transfer of her property, Mr. Savage?" Challoner repeated, a sneer in his voice.

But the young man had recovered his native adroitness.

"Clearly it would be superfluous for me to do so; because, as I have already informed you, Miss Smyrthwaite, recognizing the validity of my arguments, decides to cancel those instructions, to make no alteration in the disposition of her property. Happily I was in a position to convince her that it is premature to assume the fact of her brother's death. I have comparatively recent news of him."

Challoner's jaw dropped.

"The devil you have," he said, under his breath.

"Yes—'the devil,' quite possibly—as you so delicately put it," Adrian returned, lightly. "I have been tempted, at moments, to put it myself so, my dear Mr. Challoner. At others I have seemed to trace a really providential element in this strange affair. Directly the facts of William Smyrthwaite's reappearance came to my knowledge I placed Mr. Andrew Merriman in full possession of them."

"Oh, you did, did you?" Challoner commented.

"Yes. I considered this the correct course to pursue. Mr. Merriman was formerly employed by Mr. Smyrthwaite as the channel of communication between himself and his son."

"Graceless young hound!" Challoner snarled, caution swamped by anger and chagrin. It made him mad to think Adrian Savage had had this eminently disconcerting piece of information up his sleeve all along! Once more he'd been checkmated.

"Mr. Merriman generously accepts all responsibility in the conduct of this matter," Adrian went on. "And, I am sure you will feel with me, that his long and intimate connection with my cousins' family renders him quite the most suitable person to deal with it. Therefore, until further developments declare themselves—I beg your pardon? You express a pious hope further developments never will declare themselves? Possibly that might save trouble; but I fear the saving of trouble is hardly the main point in the present case. Therefore, until they do declare themselves, you will, I feel sure, agree that it is most undesirable this subject should be spoken about. Discussion of it can only cause my cousins agitation and heighten their suspense. This I am naturally most anxious they should be spared. Nothing, meanwhile, will be neglected. I shall do my part. Mr. Merriman will do his. I will ask you therefore to consider this conversation as strictly confidential."

"Oh! you needn't be afraid I shall blab," Challoner said. "Poor girl," he went on presently, pronouncing that dangerous catch-word as though it rhymed with curl—"poor girl, poor Miss Margaret! It'll be an awful blow to her. She is so sensitive. She's given me to understand—indirectly, of course—when we've been talking over business, what an out-and-out rotter this precious brother of hers was. To my mind, you know, Mr. Savage, it's not a nice thing to turn such vermin as young Smyrthwaite loose on two defenseless women. I don't like it. Honestly I don't. So you needn't be afraid of my blabbing. My whole object, out of respect for the ladies and for poor old Smyrthwaite's memory, will be to keep matters dark. At the same time I note what you say about Merriman; which, I take it, is equivalent to telling me to keep my hands off. Very good, Mr. Savage. What I have just said proves I think that I am more than willing to keep my hands very much off this very dirty job. Still, there is one question which, even so, I imagine I am at liberty to ask. Are you sure of your facts?"

To Adrian Savage it appeared only two alternatives were open to him—namely, to treat his host with studied politeness or call him out. And England, perhaps unfortunately, is no longer a dueling country. Adrian's manner became elaborately sweet.

"As far as they go," he said, "I am, dear Mr. Challoner, absolutely sure of my facts."

"As far as they go? Well, there's room for hope they mayn't go very far, then—may be something of the nature of a scare, in short. And, if I may be allowed one question more, has this very edifying piece of family news been communicated to Margaret?"

"To—to whom?" Adrian said, with a civil interrogatory face, raised eyebrows, and a slightly elongated neck.

"Sorry I didn't speak plainly enough," Challoner snarled back. "Communicated to your cousin, Mr. Savage, Miss Margaret Smyrthwaite?"

"Not by me," the other returned, smiling affably. "And now, my dear Mr. Challoner," he went on, "since these labors in which we have been associated are at an end, let me thank you warmly for your able concurrence and for the priceless assistance you have given me in the administration of Mr. Smyrthwaite's estate. Accept, also, my thanks for your courtesy in permitting me to come here to your charming house to-night."

Adrian glanced around the forbidding apartment.

"I carry away with me so many interesting and instructive impressions," he said. "But now I really must trespass upon your time and indulgence no longer. Again thanks—and, since I leave at a comparatively early hour to-morrow, good-by, Mr. Challoner—good-by, good-night."

CHAPTER VIII
"NUIT DE MAI"

Some half-hour later Adrian turned into the garden of the Tower House by the wicket gate opening off the carriage-drive. And so doing, the tranquil beauty of the night made itself felt. During his walk from Heatherleigh his preoccupation had been too great to admit of the bestowal of intelligent attention upon outward things, however poetic their aspect. He possessed the comfortable assurance, it is true, of having worsted the animal Challoner in the only way possible, swords and pistols being forbidden. He also possessed the comfortable assurance of having scrupulously and successfully regulated the affaire Smyrthwaite, in as far as business was concerned, and taken his discharge in respect of it. But the events of the afternoon had proved to him, beyond all shadow of doubt and denial, the existence of a second affaire Smyrthwaite, compared with which regulation of hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of property was, from his personal standpoint, but the veriest bagatelle! Now the question of how to deal with this second affaire, alike scrupulously and successfully, racked his brain, usually so direct in decision, so prompt in honorable instinct and thought. And it was to the young man's credit that, while fully measuring the abominable nature of the hole in which the unhappy Joanna had put him, he remained just and temperate in his judgment of Joanna herself. The more to his credit, because, as a native of a country where certain subjects are treated in a spirit of merry common-sense—which, if it makes in some degree for license, also makes for absence of hypocrisy and much wholesome delight in life—Joanna's attitude offered an obscure problem. Were she a vicious woman his position would be a comparatively simple one. But Joanna and vice were, he felt, far as the poles asunder. Even that ugly matter of "trying to buy him"—as in his first overwhelming disgust he had defined it—proved, on calmer inspection, innocent of any intention of offense. She didn't know, poor, dear woman, she didn't know. In her virtuous ignorance of certain fundamental tendencies of human nature, of the correlative action of body and spirit, she had not a conception of the atrocities she was in process of committing! For she was essentially high-minded, deep-hearted, sincere; a positive slave to the demands of her own overdeveloped moral sense. But, heavens and earth, if only those responsible for her education had taught her a little more about the nature of the genus homo—male and female—and the physiology of her own emotions, and a little less about quite supererogatory theoretic ethics! The burning, though veiled, passion from which he recoiled was, he believed, in great measure the result of the narrow intellectualism on which she had been nurtured working upon a naturally ardent temperament. What she must have suffered! What she would suffer in the coming days!

For it was that last which hit Adrian hardest, in all this distracting imbroglio, giving him that "uncommon nasty blow below the belt" the effects of which Joseph Challoner had noted. The more he analyzed, and, analyzing, excused, Joanna's attitude the more odiously distasteful did his own position become. In how far was he to blame? What had he done, by word, act, or look, to provoke or to foster Joanna's most lamentable infatuation? He explored his memory, and, to his rather bitter amusement, found it an absolute blank. He had not flirted with her, even within the most restrained of the limits sanctioned by ordinary social intercourse. For this he did not commend himself. On the contrary, he felt almost penitent; since—there hadn't been any temptation to flirt. Positively not any—though Adrian knew himself to be by no means insensible to feminine influence. He loved Madame St. Leger. She constituted, so to speak, the religion of his heart. But he found dozens of other women charming, and did not scruple to—as good as—tell them so.—Why not? Are not such tellings the delightful and perfectly legitimate small change of a gallant man's affections? And out of the farthings and half-farthings, the very fractions of half-farthings, indeed—of such small change, Joanna had constructed a great and serious romance terminating in matrimony! The young man could have beat his breast, torn his hair, poured ashes upon his thus forcibly denuded scalp, and rent his up-to-date and particularly well-tailored garments. He, Adrian Savage, the husband of Joanna!—From this his lively Gallic imagination galloped away, blushing in humorous horror, utterly refusing to contemplate the picture. At the same time his pity for her was immense. And how, oh! how, without gross and really sickening cruelty, to dispel her disastrous delusion?

With the above question upon his lips, Adrian turned by the wicket gate into the garden, where the tranquil beauty surrounding him compelled his observation.

High above the dark-feathered crests of the firs, the moon, two days short of the full, rode in the south-eastern sky, obliterating all stars in the vicinity of her pathway. She showed to-night not as a flat disk plastered against the solid vault, but as a mammoth, delicately tarnished silver ball, traveling in stateliest fashion the steel-blue fields of space. The roofs and faÇade of the house, its multiplicity of glinting window-panes, the lawns and shrubberies, and all-encircling woodland, were alike overlaid with the searching whiteness of her light. The air was dry and very mellow, rich with a blending of forest and garden scents. Faintly to northward Adrian's ear could detect the rattle and grind of a belated tram on the Barryport Road, and, southward, the continuous wistful murmur of the mile-distant sea!

Now, as often before, he was sensible of the subtle charm produced by this conjunction of a highly finished, material civilization with gently savage and unsubjugated Nature. England is, in so great measure, a sylvan country even yet; a country of close-coming, abounding, and invading trees. And when, as now, just upon midnight, its transitory human populations—which in silly pride suppose themselves proprietors of the soil and all that grows upon it—are herded safe indoors, abed and asleep, the trees resume their primitive sovereignty, making their presence proudly evident. They had no voice to-night, it is true. They stood becalmed and silent. Yet the genius of them, both in their woodland unity and endless individual diversity of form and growth, declared itself nevertheless. For this last the infiltration of moonlight was partly accountable, since it lent each stem, branch, and twig, each differing species of foliage—the large leaves of laurel and rhododendron, the semi-transparent, fringed and fluted leaves of the beech, the finely spiked tufts of fir-needles—a definiteness and separateness such as hoar-frost might. Each tree and bush stood apart from its fellows in charming completeness and relief, challenging the eye by a certain sprightly independence of mien and aspect. Had they moved from their fixed places, the big trees mingling in some stately procession or dance, while the shrubs and bushes frisked upon the greensward, Adrian would hardly have been surprised. A spirit of phantasy was abroad—here in the Baughurst Park Ward, local municipal government notwithstanding—entrancing to his poetic sense.

Therefore he lingered, walking slowly along the path leading to the garden entrance of the house, here shaded by a broken line of tall Scotch firs, their smooth stems rising like pillars, bare of branches for some twenty or thirty feet. Now and again he stopped, held captive by the tranquil yet disquieting beauty of the scene. It reminded him strangely of Gabrielle St. Leger's beauty, and the something elusive, delicately malicious and ironic, in the character of it. Her smiling, unclosed lips, the dimple in her left cheek; those mysterious oblique glances from beneath her long-shaped, half-closed eyelids, full at once of invitation and reserve; the untamed, deliciously tricksy spirit he apprehended in her; and a something majestic, too, as of those vast, calm, steel-blue fields of space,—these, all and severally, he, lover-like, found mirrored in the loveliness of this May night.

On his left the lawns, flooded by moonlight, stretched away to the tennis court and the terrace walk in front of the pavilion. On his right, backed by the line of Scotch firs aforesaid, a thick wall of deciduous shrubs—allspice, lilac, syringa, hydrangea, sweetbrier, and laburnum—shut out the carriage-drive. The quaint leathery flowers of the allspice gave off a powerful and luscious sweetness as of sun-ripened fruit. Adrian paused, inhaling it, gazing meanwhile in fond imagination into la belle Gabrielle's golden-brown eyes, refreshingly forgetful of the distracting perplexities of the affaire Smyrthwaite No. 2.

It was a good moment, at once chaste and voluptuous, wherein the very finest flame of ideal love burned upon his heart's altar. But it was broken up by an arresting apparition. For a white owl swept, phantom-like, out of the plantation behind the pavilion and beat over the moonlit turf in swift and absolutely noiseless flight. A soft thistle-down could hardly have passed more lightly or silently than the great wide-winged bird. Beneath it, its shadow, skimming the close-cut surface of the grass, seemed as much alive and more substantial than itself. Twice, while Adrian watched, moved and a little startled, it quartered the lawn in search of prey; then flung itself up, high in air, vanishing among the tree-tops, with a long-drawn hoo-hoo-hooing of hollow laughter. And in the space of a few seconds, from the recesses of the woodland, its mate answered with a far-off elfin echo of its sinister note. Then Adrian heard a window open. And, on to the far end of the red-balustraded balcony—extending along the first floor of the house, in the recess above the veranda—a woman came.

She was dressed in a white nÉgligÉ of some soft, woolen material, which hung straight in knife-edge pleatings from her shoulders to her feet, covering them—as the young man could see between the wide-spaced balusters—and lying outspread for some inches around her upon the floor. Over this she wore a black cloak, straight-hanging too, made of some fine and supple fur. The fronts of it, which were thrown open, leaving her arms free, appeared to be lined with ermine. Her peculiar garb and the perceptible angularity of her form and action suggested some crabbed medieval figure of church wood-carving or memorial brass.

The woman looked so tall standing there as in a mural pulpit, high against the house-front, that at first sight Adrian, took her to be Marion Chase. But medieval and ecclesiastical associations were a little too glaringly out of place in connection with that remarkably healthy young amazon and athlete. Adrian dismissed them, with a sensible sinking of the heart. Instinctively he moved aside, seeking the deepest of the shadows cast by the fir-trees, pressing himself back among the bushes of sweet-flowered allspice. Of two evils one must choose the least. Concealment was repugnant to him; but, to go forward meant to be recognized and compelled to speak. And, to play the part of hero in some grim travesty of the Garden Scene from "Romeo and Juliet," was of the two vastly the more repugnant.

Becoming aware of a movement in the garden below, the woman leaned forward and gazed fixedly in his direction, showing in the bleaching moonlight Joanna Smyrthwaite's heavy, upturned hair, strained, prominent eyes and almost terrible face, so ravaged was it by emotion.

The night traffics in exaggerations; and Adrian's senses and sensibilities were already somewhat over-stimulated. Perhaps, therefore, it followed that, looking up at Joanna, she appeared to him clothed in hieratic garments as the elect exponent and high-priestess of all lovelorn, unmated, childless womanhood throughout the world. To him, just then, her aspect gathered up and embodied the fiercely disguised sufferings of all the barren, the ugly, the ungifted, the undesired and unsought; of that disfranchised multitude of women whose ears have never listened to recitation of a certain Song of Songs. Her youth—she was as young as he—her wealth, the ease, leisure, solid luxury which surrounded her, her possession of those material advantages which make for gaiety and security, for pleasant vanities, for participation in all the light-hearted activities of modern life, only deepened the tragedy. Denied by man and—since she was without religion—denying God, she did indeed offer a piteous spectacle. The more so, that he apprehended a toughness of fiber in her, arguing a power of protracted and obstinate resistance. Happier for her, surely, had she been made of weaker stuff, like her wretched brother of the vile drawings upon RenÉ Dax's studio wall!

Adrian's own personal share in this second and tragic affaire Smyrthwaite came home to him with added poignancy as he stood thus, in hiding, amid the luscious sweetness of the flowering allspice. For one intolerable moment he questioned whether he could, whether he should, sacrifice himself, transmuting Joanna's besotted delusion into fact and truth. But reason, honor, love, the demands of his own rich vitality, his keen value of life and of the delights of living, his poetic and his artistic sense, the splendid call of all the coming years, his shrewdness, his caution, his English humor and his Gallic wit, arose in hot and clamorous rebellion, shouting refusal final and absolute. He couldn't do it. Death itself would be preferable. It came very simply to this—he could not.

Just then he saw Joanna draw her costly cloak about her neck and shoulders, as though struck by sudden and sharp cold. Again the sinister note of the owls in greeting and in answer came from the recesses of the great woodland. And again Joanna, leaning forward, scrutinized the shadows of the garden path with pale, strained eyes. Then raising both hands and pressing them against her forehead as though in physical pain, she turned and went indoors, closing the window behind her.

Both pity and policy kept the young man for another, far from agreeable, five minutes in the shelter of the allspice bushes before venturing into the open. Upon the veranda he waited again, conscious of intense reluctance to enter the house. He knew his decision to be sane and right, the only one possible, in respect of Joanna; yet he felt like a criminal, a betrayer, a profligate trader in women's affections. He called himself hard names, knowing them all the while to be inapplicable and unjust; but his sympathies were excited, his imagination horror-struck by that lately witnessed vision of feminine disfranchisement and distress.

At his request the men-servants had left the door opening from the veranda unlocked. Passing along the corridor into the hall, he became very sensible of the silence and suspended animation of the sleeping house. The curtains of the five-light, twenty-foot staircase window were drawn back. Through the leaded panes of thickened clouded glass moonlight filtered, stamping misty diaper-work upon walls and floor, painting polished edges and surfaces of woodwork with lines and patches of shining white. On a small table at the foot of the stairs decanters and glasses, a cut-glass jug of iced water, a box of cigars, silver candlestick and matchbox had been placed against his return. But the young man was in no humor just now for superfluous drinks or superfluous lights. He felt apprehensive, childishly distrustful of the quiet reigning in the house, as though, behind it, some evil lay in wait to leap upon and capture him He felt nervous. This at once annoyed him and made him keenly observant and alert. He stood a moment listening, then ran up the wide, shallow tread of the stairs lightly, three steps at a time. On the level of the half-flight, under the great window, he paused. The air was hot and heavy. His heart beat. A door opened from the right on to the gallery above. Some one came forward, with a soft dragging of draperies over the thick carpet, through the dim checkerings of the moonlight.

"Adrian," Joanna called, whisperingly, "Adrian, is that you?"

The young man took a long breath. His nerves grew steady. He came calmly up the remaining half-flight, his head carried high, his face serious, his eyes a little hard and very bright. Childish fears, exaggerations of self-condemnation, left him at the sound of Joanna's voice; but he was sorry, very sorry, both for her and—for himself.

"Yes, Cousin Joanna," he answered, and his speech, to his own hearing, had a somewhat metallic ring in it.

If there must be an interview at this highly indiscreet hour of the night it should at least be open and above-board, conducted in tones which the entire household could, if it chose, hear plainly enough. Both for his own honor and Joanna's this was best.

"I have just come back from Heatherleigh," he continued. "You will be glad to know that Mr. Challoner and I have finished the business connected with your father's property. All outstanding accounts and all duties upon the estate are now paid. All documents are signed, receipted, and in order."

Joanna made an impatient gesture as though thrusting aside some foolish obstruction.

"Yes," she said, "no doubt; but it is not about the property I need to speak to you, Adrian. My mind is quite at ease about that. It is about something else. It is about myself."

"Ah, yes?" the young man inquired, gravely.

"I did not come down to dinner to-night. I felt sure you would understand and excuse me. I could not. I could not have borne to be with Margaret and Marion Chase and to listen to their trivial talk in your presence, after our conversation of this afternoon. I had to be alone that I might think, that I might bring my temper into subjection to my will. Isherwood told me you had gone out after dinner. But I felt I could not rest without seeing you again to-night. I felt I must speak to you, must ask your forgiveness, must try to explain. So I waited up. The owls startled me, and I went on to the balcony. I fancied you were in the garden. But I could not see you. Later I heard your footsteps"—Joanna paused breathlessly—"your footsteps," she repeated, "upon the pavement of the veranda. My courage failed. I felt ashamed to meet you. But it would be so very dreadful to have you think harshly of me—so, so I came."

Owing to the vague quality of the light Adrian failed to see her face distinctly, and for this he was thankful. But he knew that her arms hung straight at her sides, and that, under cover of her costly cloak, her poor hands clutched and clutched against the white knife-pleatings of her dress.

"Dear cousin," he said, "I have no cause to think harshly of you. Indeed, my thought has been occupied with sympathy for the trials that you have already undergone, and with regret that I should be instrumental in recalling distressing events to your mind."

"Ah! I deserve no sympathy," she declared, vehemently, turning aside and moving restlessly to and fro. "I do not deserve that excuses should be made for me. This afternoon I showed my character in a shocking light. Perhaps it was the true light. Perhaps my character is objectionable. I both felt and said what was cruel and intemperate. I was selfish. I only considered my own happiness. I repudiated my duty toward my brother. I wished him dead, because his return, and all the anxiety and thought the probability of that return necessarily occasions, interfered with my own plans, with my own beautiful prospects and hopes."

She came close, standing before the young man, her hands clasped, her body visibly shuddering beneath her hieratic garments.

"Now I have come to myself, Adrian. I realize—indeed I realize—the enormity of my own callousness, my own selfishness. I realize, too, the dreadful impression of my nature which you must have received. If you repudiated me I should have no valid cause for complaint. My reason forces me to acknowledge that I deserve your censure; that if you turn from me—dreadful, dreadful as it would be—I shall have brought that misery upon myself. Dreadful, dreadful," she moaned, "too dreadful to contemplate—yet deserved, invited by the exhibition of my own ungovernable temper—deserved—there is the sting of it."

"But—but, my dear Joanna," Adrian broke forth, carried out of himself by the spectacle of her grief, "you are fighting with shadows. You are torturing yourself with non-existent iniquities. Calm yourself, dear cousin. Look at things quietly and in a reasonable spirit. Your brother is, unfortunately, unsatisfactory and troublesome, a difficult person to deal with. His errors of conduct have caused his family grave inconvenience and sorrow. Let us be honest. Let us freely admit all that. He is not a young man to be proud of. What more natural then than that you should recoil from the idea of his return? That, in the first shock of the idea being presented to you, you should strongly express your alarm, your distaste? It is only human. Who but a hypocrite or pedant would condemn you for that! Calm yourself, dear cousin. Be just to yourself. I could not permit you to revoke your gifts to your brother. My own honor was a little involved there perhaps—"

Adrian smiled at her reassuringly, putting some force upon himself.

"Let us be sensible," he continued. "Let us be moderate. At the present time we have no reliable information as to where your brother is. We may not discover him. He may never come back. Meanwhile, I implore you, dismiss this painful subject from your mind. Be merciful to your own nerves, dear Joanna. Remember Andrew Merriman and I engage to do our best, to exercise all care, all delicacy, in the prosecution of our inquiries. When necessary we will consult with you"—he spread out his hands, his head a little on one side, consolatory, debonair, charming.—"Ah! dear cousin, be advised—do not agitate yourself further. Leave it all at that."

Joanna sighed once or twice. Put up her hands, pressing them against her forehead. Her body swayed slightly as she stood. Her hands dropped at her side again. She looked fixedly, intently, at Adrian Savage. Her mouth was a little open. The ecstatic expression, so nearly touching upon idiocy, had come back.

"Then nothing is changed—nothing is altered between us?" she whispered.

The young man took her hand, and bowing low over it, kissed it. As he raised himself he looked her full in the face.

"No, nothing, my dear cousin," he said.

There were tears in his eyes, and his voice shook. He was filled with apology, with immeasurable concern and regret, with an immeasurable craving for her forgiveness, in that he spoke actual and literal truth. For nothing was changed—no, nothing.—He never had loved, he did not love, he never could love Joanna Smyrthwaite.

He stayed for no further word or look. Practically he ran away. But there is just one thing, on the face of the earth, from which a brave man may run without smallest accusation of cowardice—namely, a woman who loves him and whom he does not love! Once in his room Adrian bolted the door on the inside as well as locking it, and began to pack. He would take the mid-day rather than the night cross-Channel boat to-morrow. Then, with relief, he remembered that it was already to-morrow. In a few hours the servants would be about.

Twice before dawn he fancied he heard footsteps and a soft dragging of draperies over the carpet of the corridor. He opened the windows wide, and let in the singing of birds greeting the morning from the woodland. For the sound of those footsteps and softly dragging draperies cut him to the heart with sorrow for womanhood unfulfilled—womanhood denied by man, and, not having religion, denying God.