Sir Rupert Langley and his daughter had a small party staying with them at their seaside place on the South-Western coast. Seagate Hall the place was called. It was not much of a hall, in the grandiose sense of the word. It had come to Sir Rupert through his mother, and was not a big property in any sense—a little park and a fine old mansion, half convent, half castle, made up the whole of it. But Helena was very fond of it, and, indeed, much preferred it to the more vast and stately inland country place. To please her, Sir Rupert consented to spend some parts of every year there. It was a retreat to go to when the summer heats or the autumnal heats of London were unendurable—at least to the ordinary Briton, who is under the fond impression that London is really hot sometimes, and who claps a puggaree on his chimney-pot hat the moment there comes in late May a faint glimpse of sunshine. The Dictator was one of the party. So was Hamilton. So was Soame Rivers. So was Miss Paulo, on whose coming Helena had insisted with friendly pressure. Later on were to come Professor Flick, and his friend Mr. Andrew J. Copping of Omaha, in whom Helena, at Ericson's suggestion, had been pleased to take some interest. So were Captain Sarrasin and his wife. Mr. Sarrasin, of Hampstead, had been cordially invited, but he found himself unable to venture on so much of a journey. He loved to travel far and wide while seated at his chimney corner or on a garden seat in the lawn in front of Miss Ericson's cottage, or of Camelot, his own.

The mind of the Dictator was disturbed—distressed—even distracted. He was expecting every day, almost every hour, some decisive news with regard to the state of Gloria. His feelings were kept on tenter-hooks about it. He had made every preparation for a speedy descent on the shores of his Republic. But he did not feel that the time was yet quite ripe. The crisis between Gloria and Orizaba seemed for the moment to be hanging fire, and he did not believe that any event in life could arouse the patriotic spirit of Gloria so thrillingly as the aggression of the greater Republic. But the controversy dragged on, a mere diplomatic correspondence as yet, and Ericson could not make out how much of it was sham and how much real. He knew, and Hamilton knew, that his great part must be a coup de thÉÂtre, and although he despised political coups de thÉÂtre in themselves, he knew as a practical man that by means of such a process he could best get at the hearts of the population of Gloria. The moment he could see clearly that something serious was impending, that moment he and his companions would up steam and make for the shores of Gloria. But just now the dispute seemed somehow to be flickering out, and becoming a mere matter of formally interchanged despatches. Was that itself a stratagem, he thought—were the present rulers of Gloria waiting for a chance of quietly selling their Republic? Or had they found that such a base transaction was hopeless? and were they from whatever reason—even for their own personal safety—trying to get out of the dispute in some honourable way, and to maintain for whatever motive the political integrity and independence of Gloria? If such were the case, Ericson felt that he must give them their chance. Whatever might be his private and personal doubts and fears, he must not increase the complications and difficulties by actively intervening in the work. Therefore his mind was disturbed and distressed; and he watched with a sometimes sickening eagerness for every new edition of the papers, and was always on the look-out for telegrams either addressed to himself personally or fired at Sir Rupert in the Foreign Office.

He had other troubles too. He was beginning to be seriously alarmed about his own feelings to Helena Langley. He was beginning to feel, whenever he was away from her, that 'inseparable sigh for her,' which Byron in one of the most human of all his very human moods, has so touchingly described. He felt that she was far too young for him, and that the boat of his shaky fortunes was not meant to carry a bright and beautiful young woman in it—a boat that might go to pieces on a rock at any moment after it had tried to put to sea; and which must, nevertheless, try to put to sea. Then again he had been irritated by paragraphs in the society papers coupling his name more or less conjecturally with that of Helena Langley. 'All this must come to an end,' he thought. 'I have got my work to do, and I must go and do it.'

One evening Ericson wandered along outside the gates of the Park, and along the chalky roads that led by the sea-wall towards the little town. The place was lonely even at that season. The rush of Londoners had not yet found a way there. To 'Arry and 'Arriet it offered no manner of attraction. The sunset was already over, but there was still a light and glow in the sky. The Dictator looked at his watch. It wanted a quarter to seven—there was yet time enough, before returning to dress for the eight o'clock dinner. 'I must make up my mind,' he said to himself; 'I must go.'

He heard the rattle of wheels, and towards him came a light pony carriage with two horses, a footman sitting behind, and a young woman driving. It was Helena. She pulled up the moment she saw him.

'I have been down into the town,' she said.

'Seeing after your poor?'

'Oh—well—yes—I like seeing after them. It's no sacrifice on my part—I dare say I shouldn't do it if I didn't like it. Shall I drive you home?'

'It is early,' he said, hesitatingly; 'I thought of enjoying the evening a little yet.'

This was not well said, but Helena thought nothing of it.

'May I walk with you?' she asked, 'and I'll send the carriage home.'

'I shall only be too happy to be with you,' the Dictator said, and he felt what he said. So the carriage was sent on, and Ericson and Helena walked slowly, and for a while silently, on in the direction of the town.

'I have not been only seeing after my poor,' she said, 'I have been doing a little shopping.'

'Shopping here! What on earth can you want to buy in this little place?'

'Well, I persuaded papa into occupying this house here every year, and I very soon found out that you get terribly unpopular if you don't buy something in the town. So I buy all I can in the town.'

'But what do you buy?'

'Oh, well, wine, and tongues, and hams, and gloves.'

'But the wine?'

'I believe some of it is not so awfully bad. Anyhow, one need not drink it. Only the trouble is that I was in the other day at the one only wine merchant's, and while I was ordering something I heard a lady ask for two bottles of some particular claret, and the proprietor called out: "Very sorry, madam, but Sir Rupert Langley carried away all I had left of that very claret, didn't he, William?" And William responded stoutly, and I dare say quite truly, "Oh yes, madam; Sir Rupert, 'e 'as carried all that off." Now I was Sir Rupert.'

'Yes, I dare say you were. He never knew?'

'Oh, no; my dodges to make him popular would not interest him one little bit. He goes in for charity and all that, and doing real good to deserving poor; but he doesn't care a straw about popularity. Now I do.'

'I don't believe you do in the least,' Ericson said, looking fixedly at her. Very handsome she showed, with the west wind blowing back her hair, and a certain gleam of excitement in her eyes, as if she were boldly talking of something to drive away all thought or possibility of talk about something else.

'Oh, not about myself, of course! But I want papa to be popular here and everywhere else. Do you know—it is very funny—the first day I came down here—this time—I went into one of the shops to give some orders, and the man, when he had written them down—he hadn't asked my name before—he said, "You are Sir Rupert Langley, ain't you, miss?" and I said, without ever thinking over the question, "Oh, yes, of course I am." It was all right. We each meant what we said, and we conveyed our ideas quite satisfactorily. He didn't fancy that "Miss" was passing off for her father, and I didn't suppose that he thought anything of the kind. So it was all right, but it was very amusing, I thought.'

She was talking against time, it would seem. At least she was probably not talking of what deeply interested her just then. In truth, she had stopped her carriage on a sudden impulse when she saw Ericson, and now she was beginning to think that she had acted too impulsively. Until lately she had allowed her impulses to carry her unquestioned whither they were pleased to go.

'I suppose we had better turn back,' she said.

'I suppose so,' the Dictator answered. They stood still before turning, and looked along the way from home.

The sky was all of a faint lemon-colour along the horizon, deepening in some places to the very tenderest tone of pink—a pink that suggested in a dim way that the soft lemon sky was about to see at once another dawn. Low down on the horizon one bright white spark struck itself out against the sky.

'What is that little light—that spark?' she asked. 'Is it a star?'

'Oh, no,' the Dictator said gravely, 'it is only an ordinary gas-lamp—nothing more.'

'A gas-lamp? Oh, come, that is quite impossible. I mean that star, there in the sky.'

'It is only a gas-lamp all the same,' he said. 'You will see in a moment. It is on the brow of the road—probably the first gas-lamp on the way into the town. Against that clear sky, with its tender tones, the light in the street-lamp shows not orange or red, but a sparkling white.'

'Come nearer and let us see,' she said, impatiently. 'Come, by all means.'

So they went nearer, and the illusion was gone. It was, as he had said, a common street-lamp.

'I am quite disappointed,' Helena said, after a moment of silence.

'But why?' he asked. 'Might not one extract a moral out of that?'

'Oh, I don't see how you could.'

'Well, let us try. The common street-lamp got its opportunity, and it shone like a star. Isn't there a good deal of human life very like that?'

'But what is the good of showing for once like a star when it is not a star?'

'Ah, well, I am afraid a good deal of life's ambition would be baffled if everyone were to take that view of things.'

'But isn't it the right view?'

'To the higher sense, yes—but the ambition of most men is to be taken for the star, at all events.'

'That is, mistaken for the star,' she said.

'Yes, if you will—mistaken for the star.'

'I am sure that is not your ambition,' she said warmly. 'I am sure you would rather be the star mistaken at a distance by some stupid creature for a gas-lamp, than the gas-lamp mistaken even by me'—she spoke this smilingly—'for a star.'

'I should not like to be mistaken by you for anything,' he said.

'You know I could not mistake you.'

'I think you are mistaking me now—I am afraid so.

'Oh, no; please do not think anything like that. I never could mistake you—I always understand you. Tell me what you mean.'

'Well; you think me a man of courage, I dare say.'

'Of course I do. Everyone does.'

'Yet I feel rather cowardly at this moment.'

'Cowardly! About what?'

'About you,' he answered blankly.

'About me? Am I in any danger?'

'No, not in that sense.' He did not say in what sense.

She promptly asked him: 'In what sense then?'

'Well, then,' said the Dictator, 'there is something I ought to tell you, something disagreeable—I am sure it will be disagreeable, and I don't know how to tell it. I seem to want the courage.'

'Talk to me as if I were a man,' she said hotly.

'That would not mend matters, I am afraid.'

They were now walking back towards the Park.

'Call me Dick Langley,' she said, 'and talk to me as if I were a boy, and then perhaps you can tell me all you mean and all you want to do. I am tired of this perpetual difficulty.'

'It wouldn't help in the least,' the Dictator said, 'if I were to call you Dick Langley. You would still be Helena Langley.'

The girl, usually so fearless and unconstrained—so unconventional, those said who liked her—so reckless, they said who did not like her—this girl felt for the first time in her life the meaning of the conventional—the all-pervading meaning of the difference of sex. For the mere sound of her own name, 'Helena,' pronounced by Ericson, sent such a thrill of delight through her that it made her cheek flush. It did a great deal more than that—it made her feel that she could not long conceal her emotion towards the Dictator, could not long pretend that it was nothing more than that which the most enthusiastic devotee feels for a political leader. A shock of fear came over her, something compounded of exquisite pleasure and bewildering pain. That one word 'Helena,' spoken perhaps carelessly by the man who walked beside her, broke in upon her soul and sense with the awakening touch of a revelation. She awoke, and she knew that she must soon betray herself. She knew that never again could she have the careless freedom of heart which she owned but yesterday. She was afraid. She felt tears coming into her eyes. She stopped suddenly, and put her hand to her side and gasped as if for breath.

'What is the matter?' Ericson asked. 'Are you unwell?'

'No, no!' she said hastily. 'I felt just a little faintish for a moment—but it's nothing. I am not a bit of a fainting girl, Mr. Ericson, I can assure you—never fainted in all my life. I have the nerves of a bull-dog and the digestion of an ostrich.'

'You don't quite look like that now,' he said, in an almost compassionate tone. He was puzzled. Something had undoubtedly happened to make her start and pause like that. But he could only think of something physical; it never occurred to him to suppose that anything he had said could have caused it.

'Shall we go back to what we were talking about?' he asked.

'What we were talking about?' Already her new discovery had taken away some of her sincerity, and inspired her with the sense of a necessity for self-defence. Already, and for the first time in her life, she was having recourse to one of the commonest, and, surely, one of the least culpable, of the crafts and tricks of womanhood, she was trying not to betray her love to the man who, so far as she knew, had not thought of love for her.

'Well, you were accusing me of a want of frankness with you, and were urging me to be more open?'

'Was I? Yes, of course I was; but I don't suppose I meant anything in particular—and, then, I have no right.'

The Dictator grew more puzzled than ever.

'No right?' he asked. 'Yes—but I gave you the right when I told you I was proud of your friendship, and I asked you to tell me of anything you wanted to know. But I wanted to speak to you very frankly too.'

She looked at him in surprise and a sort of alarm.

'Yes, I did. I want to tell you why I can't treat you as if you were Dick Langley. I want to tell you why I can't forget that you are Helena Langley.'

This time the sound of the name was absolutely sweet in her ears. The mere terror had gone already, and she would gladly have had him call her 'Helena,' 'Helena,' ever so many times over without the intermission of a moment. 'Only perhaps I should get used to it then, and I shouldn't feel it so much,' she thought, with a sudden correcting influence on a first passionate desire. She steadied her nerves and asked him:

'Why can you not speak to me as if I were Dick Langley, and why can you never forget that I am—Helena Langley?'

'Because you are Helena Langley for one thing, and not Dick,' he said with a smile. 'Because you are not a young man, but a very charming and beautiful young woman.'

'Oh!' she exclaimed, with an almost angry movement of her hand.

'I am not paying compliments,' he said gently. 'Between us let there be truth, as you said yourself in your quotation from Goethe the other day. I am setting out the facts before you. Even if I could forget that you are Helena Langley, there are others who could not forget it either for you or for me.'

'I don't understand what you mean,' she said wonderingly.

'You would not understand, of course. I am afraid I must explain to you. You will forgive me?'

'I have not the least idea,' she said impetuously, 'what I am to understand, or what I am to forgive. Mr. Ericson, do for pity's sake be plain with me.'

'I have resolved to be,' he said gloomily.

'What on earth has been happening? Why have you changed in this way to me?'

'I have not changed.'

'Well, tell me the whole story,' she said impatiently, 'if there is a story.'

'There is a story,' he said, with a melancholy smile, 'a very silly story—but still a story. Look here, Miss Langley: even if you do not know that you are beautiful and charming and noble-hearted and good—as I well know that you are all this and ever so much more—you must know that you are very rich.'

'Yes, I do know that, and I am glad of it sometimes, and I hate it sometimes. I don't know yet whether I am going to be glad of it or to hate it now. Go on, Mr. Ericson, please, and tell me what is to follow this prologue about my disputed charms and virtues—for I assure you there are many people, some women among the rest, who think me neither good-looking nor even good—and my undisputed riches.' She was plucking up a spirit now, and was much more like her usual self. She felt herself tied to the stake, and was determined to fight the course.

'Do you know,' he asked, 'that people say I am coming here after you?'

She blushed crimson, but quickly pulled herself together. She was equal to anything now.

'Is that all?' she asked carelessly. 'I should have thought they said a great deal more and a great deal worse than that.'

He looked at her in some surprise.

'What else do you suppose they could have said?'

'I fancied,' she answered with a laugh, 'that they were saying I went everywhere after you.'

'Come, come,' he said, after a moment's pause, during which the Dictator seemed almost as much bewildered as if she had thrown her fan in his face. 'You mustn't talk nonsense. I am speaking quite seriously.'

'So am I, I can assure you.'

'Well, well, to come to the point of what I had to say. People are talking, and they tell each other that I am coming after you, to marry you, for the sake of your money.'

'Oh!' She recoiled under the pain of these words. 'Oh, for shame,' she exclaimed, 'they cannot say that—of you—of you?'

'Yes, they do. They say that I am a mere broken-down and penniless political adventurer—that I am trying to recover my lost position in Gloria—which I am, and by God's good help I shall recover it too.'

'Yes, with God's good help you shall recover it,' the girl exclaimed fervently, and she put out her hand in a sudden impulse for him to take it in his. The Dictator smiled sadly and did not touch the proffered hand, and she let it fall, and felt chilled.

'Well, they say that I propose to make use of your money to start me on my political enterprise. They talked of this in private, the society papers talk of it now.'

'Well?' she asked, with a curious contracting of the eyebrows.

'Well, but that is painful—it is hurtful.'

'To you?'

'Oh, no,' he replied almost angrily, 'not to me. How could it be painful and hurtful to me? At least, what do you suppose I should care about it? What harm could it do me?'

'None whatever,' she calmly replied. She was now entirely mistress of herself and her feelings again. 'No one who knows you would believe anything of the kind—and for those who do not know you, you would say, "Let them believe what they will."'

'Yes, they might believe anything they liked so far as I am concerned,' he said scornfully. 'But then we must think of you. Good heaven!' he suddenly broke off, 'how the journalism of England—at all events of London—has changed since I used to be a Londoner! Fancy apparently respectable journals, edited, I suppose, by men who call themselves gentlemen—and who no doubt want to be received and regarded as gentlemen—publishing paragraphs to give to all the world conjectures about a young woman's fortune—a young woman whom they name, and about the adventurers who are pursuing her in the hope of getting her fortune.'

'You have been a long time out of London,' Helena said composedly. She was quite happy now. If this was all, she need not care. She was afraid at first that the Dictator meant to tell her that he was leaving England for ever. Of course, if he were going to rescue and recover Gloria, she would have felt proud and glad. At least she would certainly have felt proud, and she would have tried to make herself think that she felt glad, but it would have been a terrible shock to her to hear that he was going away; and, this shock being averted, she seemed to think no other trouble an affair of much account. Therefore, she was quite equal to any embarrassment coming out of what the society papers, or any other papers, or any persons whatever, might say about her. If she could have spoken out the full truth she would have said: 'Mr. Ericson, so long as my father and you are content with what I do, I don't care three rows of pins what all the rest of the world is saying or thinking of me.' But she could not quite venture to say this, and so she merely offered the qualifying remark about his having been a long time out of London.

'Yes, I have,' he said with some bitterness. 'I don't understand the new ways. In my time—you know I once wrote for newspapers myself, and very proud I was of it, too, and very proud I am of it—a man would have been kicked who dragged the name of a young woman into a paper coupled with conjectures as to the scoundrels who were running after her for her money.'

'You take it too seriously,' said Helena sweetly. She adored him for his generous anger, but she only wanted to bring him back to calmness. 'In London we are used to all that. Why, Mr. Ericson, I have been married in the newspapers over and over again—I mean I have been engaged to be married. I don't believe the wedding ceremonial has ever been described, but I have been engaged times out of mind. Why, I don't believe papa and I ever have gone abroad, since I came out, without some paragraph appearing in the society papers announcing my engagement to some foreign Duke or Count or Marquis. I have been engaged to men I never saw.'

'How does your father like that sort of thing?' the Dictator asked fiercely.

'My father? Oh, well, of course he doesn't quite like it.'

'I should think not,' Ericson growled—and he made a flourish of his cane as if he meant to illustrate the sort of action he should like to take with the publishers of these paragraphs, if he only knew them and had an opportunity of arguing out the case with them.

'But, then, I think he has got used to it; and of course as a public man he is helpless, and he can't resent it.' She said this with obvious reference to the flourish of the Dictator's cane; and it must be owned that a very pretty flash of light came into her eyes which signified that if she had quite her own way the offence might be resented after all.

'No, of course he can't resent it,' the Dictator said, in a tone which unmistakably conveyed the idea, 'and more's the pity.'

'Then what is the good of thinking about it?' Helena pleaded. 'Please, Mr. Ericson, don't trouble yourself in the least about it. These things will appear in those papers. If it were not you it would be somebody else. After all we must remember that there are two sides to this question as well as to others. I do not owe my publicity in the society papers to any merits or even to any demerits of my own. I am known to be the heiress to a large fortune, and the daughter of a Secretary of State.'

'That is no reason why you should be insulted.'

'No, certainly. But do you not think that in this over-worked and over-miserable England of ours there are thousands and thousands of poor girls ever so much better than I, who would be only too delighted to exchange with me—to put up with the paragraphs in the society papers for the sake of the riches and the father—and to abandon to me without a sigh the thimble and the sewing machine, and the daily slavery in the factory or behind the counter? Why, Mr. Ericson, only think of it. I can sit down whenever I like, and there are thousands and thousands of poor girls in England who dare not sit down during all their working hours.'

She spoke with increasing animation.

The Dictator looked at her with a genuine admiration. He knew that all she said was the true outcome of her nature and her feelings. Her sparkling eyes proclaimed the truth.

'You look at it rightly,' the Dictator said at last, 'and I feel almost ashamed of my scruples. Almost—but not quite—for they were scruples on your account and not upon my own.'

'Of course I know that,' she interrupted hastily. 'But please, Mr. Ericson, don't mind me. I don't care, and I know my father won't care. Do not—please do not—let this interfere in the least with your friendship; I cannot lose your friendship for this sort of thing. After all, you see, they can't force you to marry me if you don't want to;' and then she stopped, and was afraid, perhaps, that she had spoken too lightly and saucily, and that he might think her wanting in feeling. He did not think her wanting in feeling. He thought her nobly considerate, generous and kind. He thought she wanted to save him from embarrassment on her account, and to let him know that they were to continue good friends, true friends, in spite of what anybody might choose to say about them; and that there was to be no thought of anything but friendship. This was Helena's meaning in one sense, but not in another sense. She took it for granted that he was not in love with her, and she wished to make it clear to him that there was not the slightest reason for him to cease to be her friend because he could not be her lover. That was her meaning. Up to a certain point it was the meaning that he ascribed to her, but in her secret heart there was still a feeling which she did not express and which he could not divine.

'Then we are still to be friends?' he said. 'I am not to feel bound to cut myself off from seeing you because of all this talk?'

'Not unless you wish it.'

'Oh, wish it!' and he made an energetic gesture.

'I have talked very boldly to you,' Helena said—'cheekily, I fancy some people would call it; but I do so hate misunderstandings, and having others and myself made uncomfortable, and I do so prefer my happiness to my dignity! You see, I hadn't much of a mother's care, and I am a sort of wild-growth, and you must make allowance for me and forgive me, and take me for what I am.'

'Yes, I take you cordially for what you are,' the Dictator exclaimed, 'the noblest and the dearest girl in the world—to me.'

Helena flushed a little. But she was determined that the meaning of the flush was not to be known.

'Come,' she said, with a wholly affected coquetry of manner, 'I wonder if you have said that to any other girls—and if so, how many?'

The Dictator was not skilled in the wiles of coquetry. He fell innocently into the snare.

'The truth is,' he said simply, 'I hardly know any girl but you.'

Surely the Dictator had spoken out one of the things we ought to wish not to have said. It amused Helena, however, and greatly relieved her—in her present mood.

'Come,' she exclaimed, with a little spurt of laughter which was a relief to the tension of her feelings; 'the compliment, thank heaven, is all gone! I must be the dearest girl in the world to you—I can't help it, whatever my faults—if you do not happen to know any other girl!'

'Oh, I didn't meant that.'

'Didn't mean even that? Didn't even mean that I had attained, for lack of any rival, to that lonely and that inevitable eminence?'

'Come, you are only laughing at me. I know what I meant myself.'

'Oh, but please don't explain. It is quite delightful as it is.'

They were now under the lights of the windows in Seagate Hall, and only just in time to dress for dinner.