There was great consternation at Steephill when Somers came back, not indeed so cowed as when he left the Cliff, but still with the aspect more or less of a man who had been beaten and who was extremely surprised to find himself so. He came back, to make it more remarkable, while the diminished party were still at luncheon, and sat down humbly in the lowest place by the side of the governess to partake of the mutton and rice pudding which Lady Jane thought most appropriate when the family was alone. Algy was the only stranger left of all the large party which had dispersed that morning, the few remaining men having gone out to shoot; and to Algy, as an invalid, the roast mutton was of course quite appropriate.

“What luck! without even your lunch!” they cried out—Algy with a roar (the fellow was getting as strong as an elephant) of ridicule and delight.

“As you see,” said Sir Charles with a solemnity which he could not shake off. The very governess divined his meaning, and that sharp little Janey—the horrid little thing, a mite of fourteen. “Oh, didn’t Stella ask you to stay to lunch? Didn’t they give you anything to eat after your walk?” that precocious critic cried. And Sir Charles felt with a sensation of hatred, wishing to kill them all, that his own aspect was enough to justify all their jokes. He was as serious as a mustard-pot; he could not conjure up a laugh on his face; he could not look careless and indifferent or say a light word. His tail was between his legs; he felt it, and he felt sure that everybody must see it, down to the little boys, who, with spoonfuls of rice suspended, stared at him with round blue eyes; and he dared not say, “Confound the little beggars!” before Lady Jane.

“What is the matter?” she asked him, hurrying him after luncheon to her own room away from the mocking looks of the governess—she too mixing herself up with it!—and the gibes of Algy. “For goodness’ sake,” she cried, “don’t look as if you had been having a whipping, Charlie Somers! What has been done to you? Have you quarrelled with Stella on the way?”

Sir Charles walked to the window, pulling his moustache, and stood there looking out, turning his back on Lady Jane. A window is a great resource to a man in trouble. “Old man turned me off,” he said.

“What? What? The old man turned you off? Oh!” cried Lady Jane in a tone of relief; “so long as it was only the old man!”

Sir Charles stood by the window for some time longer, and then he turned back to the fire, near which Lady Jane had comfortably seated herself. She was much concerned about him, yet not so much concerned as to interfere with her own arrangements—her chair just at the right angle, her screen to preserve her from the glare. She kept opening and looking at the notes that lay on her table while she talked to him.

“Oh, old Tredgold,” she said. “He was bound to object at first. About money, I suppose? That of course is the only thing he knows anything about. Did he ask you what you would settle upon her? You should have said boldly, ‘Somerton,’ and left him to find out the rest. But I don’t suppose you had the sense to stop his mouth like that. You would go and enter into explanations.”

“Never got so far,” said Sir Charles. “He that stopped my mouth. Game to lay down pound for pound with him, or else no go.”

“Pound for pound with him!” cried Lady Jane in consternation. She was so much startled that she pushed back her chair from her writing-table, and so came within the range of the fire and disorganized all her arrangements. “Now I think of it,” she said, “(pull that screen this way, Charlie) I have heard him say something like that. Pound for pound with him! Why, the old——” (she made a pause without putting in the word as so many people do), “is a millionaire!”

Sir Charles, who was standing before the fire with his back to it, in the habitual attitude of Englishmen, pulled his moustache again and solemnly nodded his head.

“And who does he think,” cried Lady Jane, carried away by her feelings, “that could do that would ever go near him and his vulgar, common—— Oh, I beg your pardon, Charlie, I am sure!” she said.

“No pardon needed. Know what you mean,” Somers said with a wave of his hand.

“Of course,” said Lady Jane with emphasis, “I don’t mean the girls, or else you may be sure I never should have taken them out or had them here.” She made a little pause after this disclaimer, in the heat of which there was perhaps just a little doubt of her own motives, checked by the reflection that Katherine Tredgold at least was not vulgar, and might have been anybody’s daughter. She went on again after a moment. “But he is an old—— Oh! I would not pay the least attention to what he said; he was bound to say that sort of thing at first. Do you imagine for a moment that any man who could do that would please Stella? What kind of man could do that? Only perhaps an old horror like himself, whom a nice girl would never look at. Oh! I think I should be easy in my mind, Charlie, if I were you. It is impossible, you know! There’s no such man, no such young man. Can you fancy Stella accepting an old fellow made of money? I don’t believe in it for a moment,” said Lady Jane.

“Old fellows got sons—sometimes,” said Sir Charles, “City men, rolling in money, don’t you know?”

“One knows all those sort of people,” said Lady Jane; “you could count them on your fingers; and they go in for rank, &c., not for other millionaires. No, Charlie, I don’t see any call you have to be so discouraged. Why did you come in looking such a whipped dog? It will be all over the island in no time and through the regiment that you have been refused by Stella Tredgold. The father’s nothing. The father was quite sure to refuse. Rather picturesque that about laying down pound for pound, isn’t it? It makes one think of a great table groaning under heaps of gold.”

“Jove!” said Sir Charles. “Old beggar said shillin’ for shillin’. Had a heap of silver—got it like a fool—didn’t see what he was driving at—paid it out on the table.” He pulled his moustache to the very roots and uttered a short and cavernous laugh. “Left it there, by Jove!—all my change,” he cried; “not a blessed thruppenny to throw to little girl at gate.”

“Left it there?” said Lady Jane—“on the table?” Her gravity was overpowered by this detail. “Upon my word, Charlie Somers, for all your big moustache and your six feet and your experiences, I declare I don’t think there ever was such a simpleton born.”

Somers bore her laughter very steadily. He was not unused to it. The things in which he showed himself a simpleton were in relation to the things in which he was prematurely wise as three to a hundred; but yet there were such things. And he was free to acknowledge that leaving his seventeen shillings spread out on the millionaire’s table, or even taking the millionaire’s challenge au pied de la lettre, was the act of a simpleton. He stood tranquilly with his back to the fire till Lady Jane had got her laugh out. Then she resumed with a sort of apology:

“It was too much for me, Charlie. I could not help laughing. What will become of all that money, I wonder? Will he keep it and put it to interest? I should like to have seen him after you were gone. I should like to have seen him afterwards, when Stella had her knife at his throat, asking him what he meant by it. You may trust to Stella, my dear boy. She will soon bring her father to reason. He may be all sorts of queer things to you, but he can’t stand against her. She can twist him round her little finger. If it had been Katherine I should not have been so confident. But Stella—he never has refused anything to Stella since ever she was born.”

“Think so, really?” said Somers through his moustache. He was beginning to revive a little again, but yet the impression of old Tredgold’s chuckling laugh and his contemptuous certainty was not to be got over lightly. The gloom of the rejected was still over him.

“Yes, I think so,” said Lady Jane. “Don’t, for Heaven’s sake, go on in that hang-dog way. There’s nothing happened but what was to be expected. Of course, the old curmudgeon would make an attempt to guard his money-bags. I wish I were as sure of a company for Jack as I am of Stella’s power to do anything she likes with her father. But if you go down in this way at the first touch——”

“No intention of going down,” said Sir Charles, piqued. “Marry her to-morrow—take her out to India—then see what old beggar says.”

“That, indeed,” cried Lady Jane—“that would be a fine revenge on him! Don’t propose it to Stella if you don’t want her to accept, for she would think it the finest fun in the world.”

“By George!” Somers said, and a smile began to lift up the corners of his moustache.

“That would bring him to his senses, indeed,” Lady Jane said reflectively; “but it would be rather cruel, Charlie. After all, he is an old man. Not a very venerable old man, perhaps; not what you would call a lovely old age, is it? but still—— Oh, I think it would be cruel. You need not go so far as that. But we shall soon hear what Stella says.”

And it very soon was known what Stella said. Stella wrote in a whirlwind of passion, finding nothing too bad to say of papa. An old bull, an old pig, were the sweetest of the similes she used. She believed that he wanted to kill her, to drag her by the hair of her head, to shut her up in a dungeon or a back kitchen or something. She thought he must have been changed in his sleep, for he was not in the very least like her own old nice papa, and Kate thought so too. Kate could not understand it any more than she could. But one thing was certain—that, let papa say what he would or do what he would, she (Stella) never would give in. She would be true, whatever happened. And if she were locked up anywhere she would trust in her Charlie to get her out. All her trust was in her Charlie, she declared. She had got his money, his poor dear bright shillings, of which papa had robbed him, and put them in a silk bag, which she always meant to preserve and carry about with her. She called it Charlie’s fortune. Poor dear, dear Charlie; he had left it all for her. She knew it was for her, and she would never part with it, never! This whirlwind of a letter amused Charlie very much; he did not mind letting his friends read it. They all laughed over it, and declared that she was a little brick, and that he must certainly stick to her whatever happened. The old fellow was sure to come round, they all said; no old father could ever stand out against a girl like that. She had him on toast, everybody knew.

These were the encouraging suggestions addressed to Sir Charles by his most intimate friends, who encouraged him still more by their narratives of how Lottie Seton tossed her head and declared that Charlie Somers had been waiting all along for some rich girl to drop into his mouth. He had always had an arriÈre pensÉe, she cried (whatever that might be), and had never been at all amusin’ at the best of times. He was very amusin’ now, however, with Stella’s letter in his pocket and this absorbing question to discuss. The whole regiment addressed itself with all the brain it possessed to the consideration of the subject, which, of course, was so much the more urgent in consequence of the orders under which it lay. To go or not to go to India, that was the rub, as Charlie had said. Stella only complicated the question, which had been under discussion before. He did not want to go; but then, on the other hand, if he remained at home, his creditors would be rampant and he would be within their reach, which would not be the case if he went to India. And India meant double pay. And if it could be secured that Stella’s father should send an expedition after them to bring them back within a year, then going to India with Stella as a companion would be the best fun in the world. To go for a year was one thing, to go as long as the regiment remained, doing ordinary duty, was quite another. Everybody whom he consulted, even Lady Jane, though she began to be a little frightened by the responsibility, assured him that old Tredgold would never hold out for a year. Impossible! an old man in shaky health who adored his daughter. “Doubt if he’ll give you time to get on board before he’s after you,” Algy said. “You’ll find telegrams at Suez or at Aden or somewhere,” said another; and a third chaunted (being at once poetical and musical, which was not common in the regiment) a verse which many of them thought had been composed for the occasion:

“Come back, come back,” he cried in grief
Across the stormy water,
“And I’ll forgive your Highland chief,
My daughter, O my daughter!”

“Though Charlie ain’t a Highland chief, you know,” said one of the youngsters. “If it had been Algy, now!”

All these things worked very deeply in the brain of Sir Charles Somers, Baronet. He spent a great deal of time thinking of them. A year in India would be great fun. Stella, for her part, was wild with delight at the thought of it. If it could but be made quite clear that old Tredgold, dying for the loss of his favourite child, would be sure to send for her! Everybody said there was not a doubt on the subject. Stella, who ought to know, was sure of it; so was Lady Jane, though she had got frightened and cried, “Oh, don’t ask me!” when importuned the hundredth time for her opinion. If a fellow could only be quite sure! Sometimes a chilling vision of the “old beggar” came across Charlie’s mind, and the courage began to ooze out at his fingers’ ends. That old fellow did not look like an old fellow who would give in. He looked a dangerous old man, an old man capable of anything. Charles Somers was by no means a coward, but when he remembered the look which Mr. Tredgold had cast upon him, all the strength went out of him. To marry an expensive wife who had never been stinted in her expenses and take her out to India, and then find that there was no relenting, remorseful father behind them, but only the common stress and strain of a poor man’s life in a profession, obliged to live upon his pay! What should he do if this happened? But everybody around him assured him that it could not, would not happen. Stella had the old gentleman “on toast.” He could not live without her; he would send to the end of the world to bring her back; he would forgive anything, Highland chief or whoever it might be. Even Lady Jane said so. “Don’t ask me to advise you,” that lady cried. “I daren’t take the responsibility. How can I tell whether Stella and you are fond enough of each other to run such a risk? Old Mr. Tredgold? Oh, as for old Mr. Tredgold, I should not really fear any lasting opposition from him. He may bluster a little, he may try to be overbearing, he may think he can frighten his daughter. But, of course, he will give in. Oh, yes, he will give in. Stella is everything to him. She is the very apple of his eye. It is very unjust to Katherine I always have said, and always will say. But that is how it is. Stella’s little finger is more to him than all the rest of the world put together. But please, please don’t ask advice from me!”

Sir Charles walked up and down the room, the room at Steephill, the room at the barracks, wherever he happened to be, and pulled his moustache almost till the blood came. But neither that intimate councillor, nor his fellow-officers, nor his anxious friends gave him any definite enlightenment. He was in love, too, in his way, which pushed him on, but he was by no means without prudence, which held him back. If old Tredgold did not break his heart, if he took the other one into Stella’s place—for to be sure Katherine was his daughter also, though not equal to Stella! If!—it is a little word, but there is terrible meaning in it. In that case what would happen? He shuddered and turned away from the appalling thought.