A day or two after the Headforts’ return to Greenleaves, Philippa got a letter from Maida Lermont. The Dorriford people were now at home again, but they had travelled back by slow stages, and this was only the second time that any direct news of them had come since Mr Raynsworth and his daughter had left Cannes.

Miss Lermont wrote cheerfully. She was feeling so well, she said, far better than “this time last year,” and she was looking forward to seeing her cousin before long, though how or when exactly she could not say—it was more “a sort of presentiment.” She gave a few details, with the graphic interest of touch peculiar to her, of their journey homewards and certain new sights and experiences it had offered. And then at the close came a mention of the name which, almost unconsciously to herself, Philippa had been looking for all through the letter.

“I hear from the Bertrams that Mr Gresham has been down at Merle, but only for a short time,” she wrote. “They will be seeing him in town next week when they go up. He has been very busy about something or other, I forget what—oh, yes, I know—some electioneering through an unexpected vacancy.” And at the very end she added: “I forgot to give you Aline Worthing’s love, though I faithfully promised her to do so. They left Cannes the same day you did, but by a different route, so I did not see them again there, but we came across them in Paris.”

These two fragments of gossip did not detract from the generally pleasurable feeling which Miss Lermont’s letter left on her cousin’s mind. She was glad to know that Mr Gresham had been “unusually busy,” for—a girl’s fancy is an unmanageable thing—in spite of her strong self-control, Philippa, at the bottom of her heart, knew that she was not always mistress of her own thoughts. And now that several weeks had elapsed since her return and his, for he had told her he meant to be soon in England again, and he had made no sign, not even a letter to Evelyn, certain painful possibilities had now and then suggested themselves. Had the woman, Bailey, who, for some reason or other, seemed to have become her enemy, had Bailey done or said something? Had she retailed her discovery to Mrs Worthing, and had Mrs Worthing—a faint sick feeling came over Philippa at this stage of her conjectures, and she went no further with them, for what sort of interpretation a coarse, vulgar mind might give to what she had done, she was at a loss to imagine.

“She would probably say I had done it for a wager, or some hateful practical joke—just the kind of thing he would abhor,” she thought.

So in addition to the satisfaction of learning that Mr Gresham had been unusually occupied, was that of hearing that the Worthings had left Cannes so quickly.

“They cannot have met again,” thought Philippa to herself. And her heart grew lighter at once.

“If only,” she went on thinking, “if only I knew him well enough, or—or had any reason for telling him all about it—the whole story—what a relief it would be! And even Michael Gresham, rough and ready as he is, so different from his cousin, once he knew the whole, was really kind and I don’t think he looked down upon me for it. What he hated, I can see now, was the feeling that I was deceitful and unstraightforward. And Mr Gresham understands shades of thought and feeling so wonderfully—almost like a woman. Oh, no, it could not do me any harm in any real friend’s opinion if I could tell it all myself in the first place.”

And perhaps she was right.

“Philippa,” said Evelyn, one morning, “I have ever so many messages for you from Mrs Shepton—dutiful regards or affectionate respects, or something of that kind. She was sorely put to it to find out how to express herself correctly, with proper respect, I mean, and yet with the affection she really does feel for you. She is a nice woman and so devoted to Bonny. I only hope—” But here Mrs Marmaduke Headfort hesitated.

“Go on,” said Philippa, “I don’t mind any allusions now. And I love Mrs Shepton. Nothing she could say would vex me.”

“You are wrong for once,” said Evelyn. “It wasn’t anything about you I was going to say. It was only that I do devoutly hope if ever I come to be—well, at the head of things at Wyverston, that I shall find Mrs Shepton still there. And I hesitated, because it seems horridly cold-blooded to think of the dear old squire’s death.”

“Yes,” her sister agreed, “it does. Still he is an old man, and of course he now wants Duke to be recognised as his heir. That makes a difference. I should not think Mrs Shepton at all a lover of change. I daresay she will end her days at Wyverston. She has only been in two places in her life—first as nurse in one of the Gresham families, and then, after a few years of married life, as housekeeper at Wyverston. And her affections seem divided between the two families.”

“I don’t think she cares much about Bernard Gresham, our Mr Gresham,” says Evelyn. “It is Michael she is so devoted to, and that is natural, I suppose, as it was in his family she was nurse, though she had a good deal to do with Bernard too—he was so much with his relations as a child. She told me some interesting things about the Greshams, by-the-by. Did you know that Michael’s father was the elder brother, not Bernard’s, and that the grand-uncle—grand-uncle to these young men, I mean—from whom Bernard inherited Merle and all his wealth, left it away from Michael on purpose?”

“N-no,” Philippa replied. “At least I don’t know anything distinctly. Mr Gresham, in talking of his cousin one day, alluded to his having had troubles, and spoke of him as having behaved very well, or very unselfishly or something.”

How clearly she remembered the very spot at which they were standing—in the grounds of the old chÂteau—when Mr Gresham had alluded to Michael! “A bit of a hero,” he had called him, though he had added what, though vaguely, pleased her less, something about “quixotry.”

“That was nice of Bernard Gresham,” said Evelyn, “for the position is a delicate one, and many men without his good feeling and perfect good taste might almost have taken a dislike to Michael; the association of having in a sense supplanted him must be rather painful.”

“Supplanted him!” repeated Philippa. “I don’t understand what you mean?”

“Oh, no, of course—you know so little. It was this: Michael’s father was the elder brother, and though, by all accounts, very charming, he was terribly wild. He ran through all he had and half or wholly broke his wife’s heart. He died when Michael was about eighteen, leaving any amount of debts. They had been very well off, much better than Bernard’s parents, who were in India or somewhere—his father, that is to say—his mother died when he was born, and he was practically brought up at his uncle’s. Then his father died, just before Michael’s, so the two young men came next, though the property was not entailed. Well, the old uncle was furious at the way Michael’s father had behaved, but that would not have made any difference to Michael, whom he liked and respected. But he would do nothing to help to pay his dead nephew’s debts, and Michael and his mother were broken-hearted about them. Both on account of the disgrace to Mr Henry Gresham’s memory and also because some of the debts were unusually bad ones; he had borrowed money from all sorts of people who could ill afford to lose it, poor relations of his wife’s, even poorer people still, whom he had cajoled by his charming manners. It was actual ruin to several. Michael pleaded and pleaded with the old uncle till at last he got into a sort of rage and said that for peace sake he would pay them off, if Michael would renounce all expectation of being his heir. And Michael did, for his mother’s sake more even than for the other reasons, and he never let her know at what a cost his father’s memory had been cleared. She died soon after, in comparative peace of mind. And he had to face the world practically penniless. He knew it; he knew the old man would keep to what he had said, and he did.”

“Did he leave Michael nothing?” said Philippa.

“Nothing. His name was not mentioned in the will. The uncle might have modified it if he had lived longer, but he was very old and he died suddenly.”

“And,” Philippa went on, with some hesitation, “has her—has Mr Gresham done nothing for his cousin?”

Evelyn shook her head.

“I can’t say. I didn’t like to ask Mrs Shepton anything that she did not tell, but she is a very fair, just-minded woman. She did not say anything about Mr Gresham—Bernard, I mean—one way or the other. But she said a great deal about how proud Michael is. I should think it is most probable that Bernard has offered to help him, but that he has refused it.”

“Yes,” said Philippa, consideringly. “And then besides if—if he looked upon his arrangement with his grand-uncle as a compact, I daresay he would think it not strictly honourable to take any of his money, even from its present possessor. Still—”

“Still what?” said Evelyn, with some impatience.

“I was only going to say that I think Mr Gresham might have done—well something to help Michael on.”

“And how do we know that he has not? I feel almost certain he has tried to do so at any rate. You remember he used the word ‘quixotry’ in talking to you of Michael. Ten to one he was thinking of his cousin’s refusal to take anything from him.”

“Perhaps so,” said Philippa, somewhat absently. Evelyn felt slightly irritated with her, and half inclined to blame herself for her own communicativeness.

“Philippa is so fantastic,” she thought. “Very likely she will now begin making a hero in earnest of Michael Gresham, and blaming Bernard for what he probably deserves no blame for.”

But she scarcely understood her sister. Philippa’s thoughts were certainly occupied with the two men, but not exactly to the disparagement of the elder. She was only comparing the two in her mind and saying to herself how little she would have credited Michael with the delicacy and sensitiveness of feeling he evidently possessed.

“He must be almost a grand character,” she thought. “And I only saw his roughness and hardness. I never would have thought him so capable of devotion as he must have been to his mother. What a hard life he has had! It makes it seem easy for any one to be kind and considerate as Mr Gresham is, when one knows how smooth things have been for him in comparison. Still, prosperity might have made him hard and indifferent; it often does. And that I cannot think he would ever be.”

She was right—right, that is to say, so far as a large nature can ever fairly judge a small one. Careless or indifferent to his cousin it was not in Bernard Gresham to be, nor forgetful of the kindness shown him throughout his youth by Michael’s parents. And Evelyn’s belief that the struggles the latter had gone through were far more due to his own determined independence than to Bernard’s selfishness or neglect, hit the mark pretty closely.

The very evening of the day on which the sisters had had this talk about the Greshams, a tÊte-À-tÊte, in which they themselves—Miss Raynsworth more especially—were the principal subject of discussion, took place in Michael Gresham’s rooms.

He had dined and was preparing for an evening’s study, for he was working very hard just then at the higher branches of technical knowledge connected with his profession, when the sound of a hansom stopping at his door made him glance out of the window with a touch of curiosity. For the street was a quiet one, and the neighbourhood was not fashionable and callers on himself were rare.

But that this caller was one of such, there could be no doubt, for standing on the pavement as he paid the cab, Michael recognised the familiar figure of his cousin Bernard.

He stepped back from the window with a murmur of impatience. Bernard’s visits, though infrequent, were not flying ones, and Michael had mapped out his evening’s work. There was no use in grumbling, however, and he met the new-comer pleasantly, as the door opened and the small boy who acted as page on such occasions announced Mr Gresham.

“Lucky to find you in, Mike,” was Bernard’s first greeting. “I would have telegraphed to say I was coming, but I only made up my mind to try to see you half an hour ago, so I thought I would just chance it.”

“I am not often out in the evening,” said Michael. “I don’t go in for dinner-parties and that sort of thing, as you know.”

“I have missed you sometimes, however,” said his cousin. “Last year I looked you up two or three times, don’t you remember? without ever finding you in.”

“Last year I stayed later at the office. I very often didn’t come home to dinner,” said Michael, quietly. “This year it is different. I have work that I can do better at home.”

Bernard glanced round the room as his cousin ceased speaking. Michael’s “home” was a somewhat dreary one, and somehow, though he had honestly meant to do his best for the man who had been all but a brother to him in bygone days, Bernard Gresham never realised Michael’s uphill life and struggles without a twinge of something like self-reproach.

“Are you satisfied with the berth you have got?” he said, abruptly. “Are these fellows—Matterson and Wheeler, I mean—treating you properly?”

“Quite properly—quite fairly, that is to say, thanks to you,” Michael replied, for the one thing he had accepted at his cousin’s hands was a substantial guarantee, which in due course was to pave the way towards his being taken in as a working partner. “One does not look for more than that in business matters. I have never expected ready roasted larks to fall to my share; but I am quite satisfied. Once I am thoroughly qualified in this special department,” and he glanced at the papers strewn on the table, “I have no doubt the permanent arrangement will be settled. But talking of roast larks or roast anything, have you dined, Bernard?”

Mr Gresham nodded.

“Yes, thank you, all right. I had something at my club early, on my way here. Have you dined?”

Just then there came a scratching at the door.

“Yes,” said Michael, as he got up to open it. “I take my meals down-stairs. That’s one thing I can’t stand, eating and working in the same room. And Solomon,” as the dachshund walked in solemnly, “Solomon has dined too, but he stays behind for a nap.”

Bernard eyed the dog with a smile that was not all amiability.

“Really, Michael,” he observed, “you are too ridiculous about that animal.”

“Was that all you had to say to me?” said Michael, carelessly. He knew his cousin quite well enough to be sure that there was some special reason for his visit, a reason which it was not altogether easy to express, for he was conscious that Bernard was beating about the bush.

“No,” Mr Gresham replied, with a touch of sharpness, “it was not all. I want to ask your advice. But besides that, you have no reason, Mike, to say or to think that I am indifferent about you. I did want to know how you were getting on.”

“All right, old fellow. I have never said or thought that you were indifferent,” Michael answered, and his smile was frank and cordial. “But what is it that you want to consult me about? You are not thinking of getting married, are you?”

“I don’t know,” was the reply.

Michael looked at him keenly.

“That means, I should say, that you are,” he said.

In his turn, Bernard fixed his eyes on his cousin.

“What makes you think so? Have you heard any gossip about it?”

“I don’t know if you would call it gossip or not. I have heard that you seemed—well, a good deal struck by some one you met at Cannes. But you need not mind about it; it came round to me in the most innocent way, though I cannot tell you how.”

In point of fact, Michael’s informant was his old nurse, who had mentioned in a letter to him some allusions which Mrs Marmaduke Headfort had allowed herself to make, in her confidential talks with the housekeeper, to Mr Gresham’s admiration for her sister. But no comments, for or against, had been added by Mrs Shepton.

Bernard did not appear annoyed.

“Oh, at Cannes,” he repeated. “It is a nest of gossip about the English visitors, like all those places. And possibly,” he went on more slowly, “there was some little ground for it.”

“Then you need not trouble to tell me the young lady’s name,” said Michael, quickly, “which, to my mind, is always preferable in such circumstances. But taking that for known, what is it you want to consult me about? How can you—” He stopped short.

“Perhaps she has given you no encouragement to go further?”

A shade of irritation darkened Bernard’s face.

“On the contrary—” he began. Then he, too, stopped short. He had no wish to pose as a fat, even to Michael. “We need not enter into that part of it,” he said, composedly. “The thing is this, and, as you like plain speaking, you must not turn upon me, and call me coarse, or unchivalrous, or anything of that kind—the facts are these: I left Cannes all but decided in my own mind to—to—well, to go through with it. But circumstances delayed my return home, or, rather I should say, my return to my usual life. I was so busy about that canvassing business. And, on the whole, I thought it was just as well; I wanted to think it all over. Well, soon I was at leisure again; one day in London, when I was just considering how best to proceed, not having cooled upon it, I met some people you too know. The Worthings.”

Michael crushed up a sheet of paper lying on the table by his hand.

“Indeed,” he said. “And what about that? Has Mrs Worthing not relinquished her hopes for the fair Aline—poor little soul—and is she waxing spiteful?”

“She is far too clever to show her spite, whether she feels it or not,” said Mr Gresham. “And she is too cautious to state anything distinctly untrue. I can’t make it out. With all reasonable allowance for her—well, spitefulness is as good a word as any—I cannot understand her saying what she has done, unless—unless she has some facts to back her?”

“What did she say?” asked Michael, and he threw the ball of crushed paper into the fire, with a sort of fierceness.

“She said—” began Bernard. Then he got up and walked up and down the room. “Upon my soul,” he went on, “it’s awfully difficult to tell. It was so vague—just enough to be horribly annoying and upsetting, and—”

“People have no right—no right whatever—to be vague in mischief-making,” said Michael, angrily. “And mischief-making I infer that it was. She spoke ‘vaguely’ against Miss—no, I won’t name her. Why, in heaven’s name, did you not bring the woman to book?”

“How could I?” replied his cousin. “Don’t get so excited, Mike. By Jove! what a Don Quixote you are still! How could I bring her to book, as you say, without seeming to give credence to her hints? The very thing she would have liked. Of course, my only rÔle was to treat what she said with absolute indifference, as an absurd mistake. I could see that my doing so riled her. Besides, you would not have had me let her see that, mistake or no mistake, I took any special interest in Miss—in the person concerned?”

“No. I see what you mean,” said Michael, consideringly. “It would have been very wrong, seeing that you had not quite made up your mind; very wrong for her sake.” And again he eyed his cousin keenly.

Bernard gave a movement of impatience.

“It would have been very disagreeable for myself,” he said. “I wouldn’t allow that woman to think any chatter or warnings of hers had influenced me. I don’t say—candidly to you in confidence—I don’t say but what they did, for I believe I had made up my mind to go through with it.”

“Then, upon my soul,” said Michael, sharply, “I don’t understand you. You—you care for this girl; you love her or are in love with her, and you would let the poisonous tongue of a thorough-going, scheming woman like Mrs Worthing deter you from what you call going through with it, when you know her motive too! By Jove! Bernard, if you are fool enough to play into her hands, and I see you some fine day married to poor little Aline, you need not come to me to complain of your mother-in-law.”

Bernard flushed crimson.

“You are going too far, Michael,” he said. “To begin with, I have no right to impute the motive you do, nor to impugn Mrs Worthing’s truthfulness. It is possible her motives are sincere and disinterested. It is not inconceivable that she may have some friendly feeling for me.”

“It is conceivable that she is clever enough to make you think so,” muttered Michael. Then, after a moment’s silence. “But, after all,” he said, suddenly, “what did she say? All through this conversation you have put off telling me.”

“You never asked distinctly,” said his cousin. “I began by telling you it was vague—vague, and so extraordinary; so—upon the face of it—absurd, that I—I scarcely know how to make you take it seriously.” Michael laughed, but it was somewhat forcedly.

“You are really a good deal of an idiot, Bernard. But go on, the more absurd the better.”