Shortly after this unlucky visit Mr. Prentice wanted to tell Mrs. Thompson some startling news, but he did not dare. He consulted Mr. Mears, and asked him to tell her; but Mears did not dare either. Mears advised the solicitor to take Yates into his confidence, and let Yates tell her.

So then at last Mrs. Thompson heard what so many people knew already—that Enid was carrying on with a young man in a very unbecoming fashion. Scandalized townsfolk had seen Enid at the school with him, in the museum with him, in the train with him;—they had met her at considerable distances from Mallingbridge, dressed for riding, with this groomlike attendant, but without a horse.

The news shocked and distressed Mrs. Thompson—during her first surprise and pain, it seemed to her as cruel as if Enid had driven a sharp knife into her heart. But was the thing true? Yates thought it was all true—none of it exaggerated.

Mrs. Thompson made a few discreet inquiries, ascertained the correctness of the facts, and then tackled Enid.

"Mother dear," said Enid, with self-possession but slightly ruffled, "no one could help liking Charles. I'm sure you'll like him when you see him."

"Why haven't I seen him? Why have you left me to learn his name from the lips of servants and busybodies? Oh, Enid," said Mrs. Thompson indignantly, yet very sadly, "didn't you ever think how deeply this would wound me?"

"But, mother dear, you must have known that it would happen some day—that sooner or later I should fall in love."

"Yes, but I never guessed that, when the time came, or you fancied it had come, you would keep me in the dark—treat me as if I was a stranger, and not your best friend."

"Charlie didn't wish me to tell you about it just yet."

"And why not?"

"He said we were both old enough to know our own minds, and we ought to be quite sure that we really and truly suited each other before we talked about it. But we are both sure now."

"I think he has behaved very badly—almost wickedly."

"How can you say that, mother?"

"I say it emphatically. He is a man of the world—and he had no right to allow you to act so foolishly."

But Enid appeared not to understand her mother's meaning. She could not measure the enormity of her conduct when indulging in those train-journeys and museum-wanderings. She admitted everything; she was ashamed of nothing.

"Surely," said Mrs. Thompson, "you could see that a girl of your age cannot do such things without malicious people saying unkind things?"

"When one is in love, one cannot trouble to think what malicious people will say."

In fact Enid seemed to believe that she and Mr. Kenion had created a small universe of their own, into which no one else had a right to push themselves.

"Mother dear," and for the first time she spoke pleadingly and anxiously. "Please—please don't try to come between us. I could never give him up."

It was a turn of the knife with which she had stabbed her mother. The words of the appeal would have been appropriate in addressing a harsh and obdurate guardian, instead of an adoring parent.

"If," said Mrs. Thompson sadly, "he is worthy of you, I shall be the last person in the world who will ask you to give him up."

Enid seemed delighted.

"Mother dear, he is more than worthy."

"We shall see.... But it all hangs on that if—a big if, I am much afraid.... You must pull yourself together, Enid, and be a good and brave girl—and you must prepare yourself for disappointment. So far, I do not receive satisfactory reports of him."

"No one on earth ought to be believed if they bring you tales against him."

And then little by little Enid told her mother of Mr. Kenion's many charms and virtues, and of how and why he had won her love so easily.

He came to dinner at the Salters, and he wore a red coat. She had never seen him till she saw him dining in pink, with brass buttons and white silk facings. He was a magnificent horseman—rode two winners at Cambridge undergraduate races;—had since ridden several seconds in point-to-points;—even Mr. Bedford, Young's new riding-master, confessed that he had a perfect seat on a horse. And he belonged to one of the oldest families in England. Although old Mr. Kenion was only a clergyman, he had a cousin who was an English marquis, and another cousin who was an Irish viscount—if six people had died, and a dozen people hadn't legally married, or hadn't been blessed with children, Charles himself would have been a lord.

Even if Mrs. Thompson had heard nothing to his disadvantage, the plain facts of the case would have convinced her that he was a bad lot. As a woman of business, she had little doubt that she was called upon to deal with a worthless unprincipled adventurer. His game had been to force her hand—by compromising the girl, insure the mother's consent to an engagement. If not interrupted in his plan, he would bring matters to a point where the choice lay between an imprudent marriage and the loss of reputation. When Mrs. Thompson thought of her cowardly adversary, anger made the blood beat at her temples. If she had been a father instead of a mother, she would have bought one of the implements of the chase to which he was so much addicted, and have given Mr. Kenion a wholesome horse-whipping.

But when she thought of Enid all her pride smarted, and anger changed to dolorous regret. It was indescribably mortifying to think that Enid, the carefully brought up young lady, the highly finished pupil of sedate private governesses and a majestically fashionable school, should forget the ordinary rules of delicacy, modesty, propriety, and exhibit less reticence in her actions than might be expected from one of Bence's drapery girls. Enid had been pointed at, laughed at, talked about. It was horrible to Mrs. Thompson. It struck directly at her own sense of dignity and importance. In cheapening herself, Enid had lowered the value of everybody connected with her. Enid, slinking out of the house, furtively hurrying to her lover, clandestinely meeting him, and lingering at his side in unseemly obliviousness of the passing hours, had been not only jeopardising her own good fame, but robbing her mother of public esteem.

Yet far worse than the wound to her pride was the bitter blow to her affection. Half her life had been spent in proving that her greatest wish, her single aim was her child's happiness; but all the years counted for nothing. Trust and confidence extinguished; no natural impulse to pour out the heart's secrets to a mother's ear—"Charlie didn't wish me to tell you." Enid said this as if it formed a completely adequate explanation: she must of course implicitly obey the strange voice. The mother who worshipped her had sunk immediately to less than nothing. A man in a red coat, a man in gaiters, the first man who whistled to her—and Enid had gone freely and willingly to exchange the dull old love for the bright new one. There lay the stinging pain of it.

What to do? One must do something. Mrs. Thompson took up the business side of it, and determined as a first step to tackle the young man. Purchased horsewhips impossible; but carefully chosen words may produce some effect.

She told Enid—after several conversations on the disastrous subject—that she desired an interview with Mr. Charles Kenion. Enid might write, inviting him to call upon her mother, or Mrs. Thompson would herself write.

Enid said she would write to him without delay; but she begged that he might be received at the house, and not be asked to enter the shop. She seemed to dread the idea of bringing so fine a gentleman into close touch with the common aspects of mercantile existence.

"No," said Mrs. Thompson firmly. "Let him come to me in my shop. It is purely a business interview, and I prefer to hold it in a place of business."

It was a most unsatisfactory interview.

Mrs. Thompson hated the young man at the very first glimpse of him as he came lounging into her room. He was tall and skinny; his dark, straight hair was plastered back from a low forehead; he had no moustache; and his teeth, which showed too much in a narrow mouth, were ugly, set at a slightly projecting angle, as with parrots. No reasonable being could call him handsome; but of course his general air and manner were gentlemanlike—Mrs. Thompson admitted so much at once, and disliked him all the more for it. Gentlemanlikeness was his sole stock in trade: he would push that for all it was worth, and she was immediately conscious that in his easy tone and careless lounging attitude there was a quiet, steady assumption of his social value as the well-bred young gentleman whose father is related to the peerage.

"Please be seated, Mr. Kenion."

"Thanks."

She had ignored his obvious intention of shaking hands, and he was not apparently in the least disconcerted by her refusal of the friendly overture.

"I feel sure, Mr. Kenion, that if we have a good talk, you and I will be able to understand each other."

"Er—yes, I hope so."

"I think it is important that you and I should understand each other as soon as possible."

"Thanks awfully. I'm sure it's very good of you to let me come. I know how busy you are."

He was looking at various objects in the room, and a slow smile flickered about his small mouth. He looked especially at some files on the desk, and at the massive door of one of the big safes standing ajar and displaying iron shelves. He looked at these things with childish interest; and Mrs. Thompson felt annoyance from the thought that the smile was intended to convey the inference of his never having seen such things before, and of his being rather amused by them.

But she permitted no indication of her thoughts to escape her. The governing powers of her mind were concentrated on the business in hand; her face was a solid mask, expressing quiet strength, firm resolution, worldly shrewdness, and it never changed except in colour, now getting a little redder, now a little paler; she sat squarely, so that her revolving chair did not turn an inch to one side or the other; and throughout the interview she seemed and was redoubtable.

"My daughter tells me that you have proposed to her."

"Yes—I may as well say at once that I'm awfully in love.... And Enid has been good enough to—er—reciprocate. I'm sure I don't know what I've done to deserve such luck."

"Nor do I as yet, Mr. Kenion."

"Exactly. Of course Enid is a stunner."

"But it was about you, and not my daughter, that I wished to talk. Perhaps it will save time if I ask you a few questions. That is usual on these occasions, is it not?"

"Well, as to that, I can't say," and he laughed stupidly. "This is the first time I've been bowled over."

"As a question to begin with—what about your prospects, in whatever career you have planned?"

"My plans, don't you know, would depend more or less on Enid."

"But you can give me some account of your position in the world—and so forth."

"Oh, well, that's pretty well known—such as it is. Not brilliant, don't you know.... But I relied on Enid to tell you all that."

"No, please don't rely on her. Only rely on yourself, Mr. Kenion."

Something of the quiet swagger had evaporated. The sunshine came streaming down from a skylight and fell upon him. Mrs. Thompson had put him where he would get all the light, and she scrutinized him attentively.

His suit of grey flannels, although not of sporting cut or material, suggested nothing but a stable and horses; and beneath his casual air of gentlemanly ease there was raffishness, looseness, disreputability. In the bright sunbeams he looked sallow and bilious; his eyelids drooped, an incipient yawn was lazily suppressed; and she thought that very likely he had been drinking last night and would soon be drinking again this morning.

Mentally she compared him with another young man. In her mind she carried now at all times the vividly detailed picture of a masculine type; and it was impossible not to use it as a standard or measure. Mr. Kenion seemed very weak and mean and valueless, when set beside her standard.

"What is your profession, Mr. Kenion?"

He had no profession: as she well knew, he was what is called a gentleman at large. With vague terms he conveyed the information to her again.

"Really? Not a professional man? Are you a man of property—landed estates, and so on?"

No, Mr. Kenion was acreless.

"But you are expecting property at your father's death? Is it entailed upon you? I mean, are you sure of the succession?"

Mr. Kenion smilingly confessed that his father's death would not bring him land.

"But you are assured that he can supply you with ample means during his lifetime?"

Oh, no. Mr. Kenion explained that the vicar of Chapel-Norton was in no sense a capitalist.

"My governor couldn't do anything more for me—and I shouldn't care to ask him. He has done a good deal for me already—it wouldn't be fair to my brothers and sisters to ask him to stump up again;" and he went on to hint plainly that in his opinion the fact of his being a gentleman—a real gentleman—should counterbalance such a trifle as the deficiency of material resources.

Mrs. Thompson refused to comprehend the hint.

"Surely, Mr. Kenion, if a young man proposes to a young lady—and asks her to engage herself to him without her mother's knowledge, that should imply that he is prepared to take over all responsibilities?"

She had not uttered a single reproach, or even by innuendo upbraided him for the improper course that he had pursued when persuading Enid to defy the laws of chaperonage and go about with him alone. Her pride would not permit her to make the slightest allusion to the girl's folly. Besides, that would be to play his game for him. By her silence she intended to show him that he had not scored a point.

"Don't you admit as much as that, Mr. Kenion? If I were to countenance the suggested engagement, how do you propose to maintain such a wife suitably—in the manner in which she has been brought up?"

"Well, of course I couldn't promise to open a shop for her;" and he laughed with fatuous good-humour, as if what he had said was rather funny, and not an impertinence.

"There are worse things in the world than shops, Mr. Kenion."

"Exactly;" and he laughed again. "As to ways and means—of course I haven't made any inquiries of any sort. But Enid gave me to understand—or I gathered, don't you know, that money was no object."

"Indeed it is an object," said Mrs. Thompson warmly. "I might almost say it has been the object of my life. I know how difficult it is to earn, and how easy to waste.... But I doubt if anything can be gained by further discussion. Your answers to my questions have left me no alternative. I must altogether refuse my sanction to an engagement."

"You won't consent to it?"

"No, Mr. Kenion, the man who marries my daughter with my consent must first prove to me that he is worthy of her."

"But of course as to that—well, Enid tells me she is over twenty-one."

"Oh, yes. I see what you mean. A man might marry her without my consent. But then he would get her—and not one penny with her.... That, Mr. Kenion, is quite final."

He seemed staggered by the downright weight of this final statement.

"Of course," he said, rather feebly, "we are desperately in love with one another."

Contempt flashed from her eyes as she asked him still another question or two.

"What did you expect—that I should welcome your proposal and thank you for it?"

"Well, Enid and I had made up our minds that you wouldn't thwart her wishes."

"But, Mr. Kenion, even if I had agreed and made everything easy and pleasant for you, surely you would not be content to live as a pensioner for the rest of your days?"

She was thinking of what Dick Marsden had said to her in the dusk by the river. "I could not pose as the pensioner of a rich wife." It seemed to her a natural and yet a noble sentiment; and she contrasted the proper manly frame of mind that found expression in such an utterance with the mean-spirited readiness to depend on others that Mr. Kenion confessed so shamelessly. Marsden was perhaps not a gentleman in the snobbish, conventional sense, but how much more a man than this Kenion!

"Don't you know," he was saying feebly; and, as he said it, he stifled another yawn; "I should certainly try to do something myself."

"What?"

"Well, perhaps a little farming. I think I could help to keep the pot on the boil by making and selling hunters—and a good deal can be done with poultry, if you set to work in the right way.... Enid seemed to like the notion of living in the country."

Mrs. Thompson turned the revolving chair round a few inches towards the desk, and politely told Mr. Kenion that she need not detain him any further.

He had come in loungingly, and he went out loungingly; but he was limper after the interview than before it. He probably felt that the stuffing had been more or less knocked out of him; for he presently turned into a saloon bar, and sought to brace himself again with strong stimulants.

No doubt he complained bitterly enough to Enid of the severely chilling reception that he had met with in the queer back room behind the shop. Anyhow Enid complained with bitterness to her mother. Indeed at this crisis of her life Enid was horrid. Yates begged her to be more considerate, and committed a breach of confidence by telling her of how her unkind tone had twice made the mistress weep; but Enid could attend only to one thing at a time. She wanted her sweetheart, and she thought it very hard that anybody should attempt to deprive her of him.

"And it will all be no use, mother—because I never, never can give him up."

Thus the days passed miserably; and a sort of stalemate seemed to have occurred. Kenion had not retired, but he was not coming on; and Enid was horrid.

In her perplexity and distress Mrs. Thompson went to Mr. Prentice, and asked him for advice and aid.

Mr. Prentice, delighted to be restored to favour after his recent disgrace, was jovial and cheering. He pooh-poohed the notion that Enid had in the smallest degree compromised herself; he talked of the wide latitude given to modern girls, of their independence, their capacity to take care of themselves in all circumstances; and stoutly declared his belief that among fashionable people the chaperon had ceased to exist.

"Don't you worry about that, my dear. No one is going to think any the worse of her for being seen with a cavalier dangling at her heels."

Nevertheless he heartily applauded Mrs. Thompson for her firm tackling of the indigent suitor; he offered to find out everything about Kenion and his family, and promised that he would render staunch aid in sending him "to the right-abouts."

When Mrs. Thompson called again Mr. Prentice had collected a formidable dossier, and he read out the damaging details of Mr. Kenion's history with triumphant relish.

"Now this is private detective work, not solicitors' work—and I expect a compliment for the quick way I've got the information.... Well then, there's only one word for Mr. Kenion—he's a thorough rotter."

And Mr. Prentice began to read his notes.

"Our friend," as he called the subject of the memoir, was sent down from Cambridge in dire disgrace. He had attempted an intricately dangerous transaction, with a credit-giving jeweller and three diamond rings at one end of it, and a pawnbroker at the other. The college authorities heard of it—from whom do you suppose? The police! Old Kenion paid the bill, to avoid something worse than the curtailment of the university curriculum. Since then "our friend" had been mixed up with horsedealers of ill repute—riding their horses, taking commissions when he could sell them.

"He gambles," said Mr. Prentice with gusto; "he drinks; he womani—I should say, his morals with the other sex are a minus quantity.... And last of all, I can tell you this. I've seen the fellow—got a man to point him out to me; and there's blackguard written all over him."

"Then how can respectable people like the Salters entertain him?"

"Ah," said Mr. Prentice philosophically, "that's the way we live nowadays. The home is no longer sacred. People don't seem to care who they let into their houses. If a fellow can ride and can show a few decent relations, hunting folk forgive him a good deal. And the Salters very likely hadn't heard—or at any rate didn't know anything against him."

At his own suggestion, jumped at by his client, Mr. Prentice returned with Mrs. Thompson to St. Saviour's Court, and told Miss Enid that it would be madness for her any longer to encourage the attentions of such a ne'er-do-well.

"If you were my own daughter," said Mr. Prentice solemnly, "I should forbid your ever seeing him again. And I give you my word of honour I believe that before a year has past you'll thank Mrs. Thompson for standing firm now."

But Enid was still horrid. She seemed infatuated; she would not credit, she would not listen to, anything of detriment to her sweetheart's character. She spoke almost rudely to her mother; and when Mr. Prentice took it on himself to reprove her, she spoke quite rudely to him. Then she marched out of the room.

"I am afraid," said Mr. Prentice, "there'll be a certain amount of wretchedness before you bring her to reason."

There was wretchedness in the little house—Enid pining and moping, assuming the airs of a victim; her mother trying to soften the disappointment, arguing, consoling, promising better fish in the sea than as yet had come out of it. Enid refused to go away from Mallingbridge. Mrs. Thompson herself longed for change, and the chance of forgetting all troubles; there was nothing to keep her here now, although her presence would be required in September; but Enid seemed tied by invisible strings to the home she was making so very uncomfortable.

She would not go away, and she would not undertake to refrain from seeing or writing to Mr. Kenion. She did give her word that she would not slink out and marry him on the sly. But she could safely promise that, because, under the existing conditions of stalemate, it was very doubtful if Mr. Kenion would abet her in so bold a measure. Probably she was aware that Mr. Kenion's courtship had been successfully checked; and the knowledge made her all the more difficult to deal with. Mr. Kenion was neither retiring, nor coming forward: he was just beating time; and perhaps Enid felt humiliated as well as angry when she observed his stationary position.

A pitiful state of affairs—mother and daughter separated in heart and mind; on one side increasing coldness, on the other lessening hope; an estrangement that widened every day.

Then at last Enid consented to start with her mother for a rapid tour in Switzerland. Mr. Kenion, it appeared, had crossed the Irish Channel on some kind of horse-business; and so Lucerne and Mallingbridge had become all one to Enid.

They stayed in many hotels, visited many new scenes; and Mrs. Thompson, looking at high mountains and broad lakes, was still vainly trying to recover her lost child. Enid was calm again, polite again, even conversational; but between herself and her mother she had made a wall as high as the loftiest mountain and a chasm as wide as the biggest of the lakes.

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