C. Chesterton.

It did not need much intuition on Mrs. Grant's part to know herself suspicious of Dick's behaviour. She listened to Mabel's information about the two young ladies he was bringing to tea with her eyes lowered. Mabel had not volunteered the information till Mrs. Grant had noticed that there were two extra cups provided for tea. They always had tea out under the trees if it was fine enough, so there had been nothing surprising in that, but Mrs. Grant's eyes had spotted the extra cups even while they stayed piled up one within the other in the shade of the silver tea-pot.

"Two girls to tea," she commented; "who are they, Mabel?"

"Well, I really don't know," Mabel admitted, nobly untruthful, out of a desire not to prejudice Mrs. Grant from the beginning. "I fancy Dick met them at Sevenoaks, anyway, he was having lunch with them yesterday."

"And dinner every day this week," supplemented Mrs. Grant. "Did he meet them on his travels?"

"He did not say so," Mabel answered, "only just that he was seeing a good deal of them at Sevenoaks, and I thought it would be nice to ask them out here."

"Mabel," said Mrs. Grant, with intense seriousness; she lifted her eyes from her work and fixed them on her daughter, "do you not think it is very probable that Dick has become entangled? I have even wondered lately whether he may not be secretly married to some awful woman."

"Dear mother," laughed Mabel—though the first part of the sentence rather hurt her, it was the truth—"why secretly married? What has Dick done to deserve such a suspicion?"

"His manner has been peculiar ever since the first night he came home," Mrs. Grant explained, "and he has an uneasy way of trying not to be left with me alone. The other day I thought of going to see him very early in the morning when I happened to be unable to sleep, and, Mabel, his door was locked!"

"If you had knocked he would probably have opened it," Mabel suggested. "It is hardly likely that he keeps his wife concealed upstairs, is it?"

"You may laugh," Mrs. Grant spoke with an expression of hurt pride on her countenance, "but surely a mother can see things in her son which other people miss. Dick is in love, and not nicely in love, or he would not be so shy about it."

Further discussion was prevented, for at this point the motor, bringing Dick and his guests, came round the sweep of the drive and drew up at the front door. Mabel went across the lawn to meet them. She had schooled herself to this meeting for Dick's sake, and to please him; she could not, however, pretend to any pleasure in the prospect. It was only natural that she should view Joan with distrust. Dick had allowed himself to become entangled; all unknowingly Mother had expressed the matter in a nutshell.

She picked out Joan as being the girl at once; her eyes sped past Fanny's muslin-clad figure even as she was greeting her, and rested on the other girl's face. Pale, for Joan was very nervous of this afternoon, wide-eyed, the soft brown hair tucked away under the small, round-shaped hat. She was pretty and very young-looking. Mabel, seeing her, and remembering all the old stories in connection with her, was suddenly sorry for her very childishness. Then she hardened her heart; the innocence must at least be assumed, and the girl—Mabel had made up her mind as to that—should not win Dick as a husband without some effort being made to prevent her.

Because of this sense of antagonism between them, for Joan had not missed the swift glance, the cold hardening of her hostess' face, it was a relief to have Fanny between them. Fanny was talking very hard and fast, it was quite unnecessary for anyone else to say anything.

"My," she gasped, standing and staring round her with frank approval, "you have a beautiful place here. Dr. Grant has been telling us about it till we were mad to see it. Joan and I live in London; there is not much in the way of trees round our place, nothing but houses, and dirty pavements and motor-buses. I always say"—she took Mabel into her confidence with perfect friendliness—"that there is nothing so disagreeable in this world as a dirty pavement; don't you agree with me?"

"The country is nicer than town, certainly," Mabel answered. "We are having tea over there under the trees; will you come straight across, or would you like to go in and take off your motor-veils?"

"We will do nicely as we are," Fanny did all the talking for the two of them; Joan so far had not opened her lips. "It is such a little drive from Sevenoaks, and I am just dying for tea."

Mabel led the way across the lawn, with Fanny chattering volubly beside her, and Dick followed with Joan.

"The sister is a dear," he tried to tell her on the way across, for in some way he suddenly felt the tension which had fallen between the two women; "only she is most awfully shy. She is one of those people who take a lot of knowing."

"And I am one of the people that she doesn't want to know," Joan answered. She was angry with herself for having come. A feeling of having lost caste, of being a stranger within these other people's friendship, possessed her. It set Dick's kindliness, his evident attraction on a plane of patronage, and brought her to a sullen mood of despair. Why had she ventured back on to the borderline of this life that had once been hers? Mabel's cold, extreme politeness seemed to push her further and further beyond the pale.

Tea under these circumstances would have been a trying meal if it had not been for Fanny. Fanny had dressed with great care for this party, and she had also made many mental resolutions to "mind what she was saying." Her harshest critic could not have said that she had not made herself look pretty; it was only Joan's hurt eyes that could discover the jarring note everywhere in the carefully-thought-out costume. And Fanny realized that Joan, for some reason or other, was suffering from an attack of the sulks. She plunged because of it more and more recklessly into conversation. Fanny always felt that silence was a thing to be avoided at all costs.

"The War will make a lot of difference to us," she attempted finally, all preceding efforts having fallen a little flat. "Daddy Brown says, if there is war between Germany and England, there won't be any Spring tours."

"But of course there will not be War," Mrs. Grant put in with great precision; "the idea is impossible nowadays. And may I ask what a Spring tour is?"?

"Tom says the city is getting very uneasy," Mabel plunged into the breach. "It does seem an absurd idea, but of course Germany has been aching to fight us for years."

"Horrors, the Germans, don't you think?" chipped in Fanny; "they do eat so nastily."

"No doubt you meet a great many foreigners, travelling about as you do," Mrs. Grant agreed politely.

"Do you know this part of the country at all?"? Mabel questioned Joan, then flushed herself at the absurdity of the question; "I suppose not, if you live most of your time in London."

Joan lifted hard eyes. "I lived down here as a child," she said stiffly.

"And in London"—Mabel was doing her best to be friendly—"have you nice rooms? Dick tells me you live all alone; I mean that your home is not there."

"I live in an attic," Joan answered again, "and I have no home."

"Your son is ever so much too fond of the theatre," Fanny's voice broke across their monosyllabic conversation. "He is there every night, Mrs. Grant."

"And do you also go to the theatre every night?" Joan heard the petrified astonishment in Mrs. Grant's tone and caught the agitated glance which Mabel directed to Dick. The misery in her woke to sharp temper.

"Fanny has let the cat out of the bag," she said, leaning forward and speaking directly to Mrs. Grant. "But I am afraid it is unpleasantly true. We are on the stage, you know; Dr. Grant ought to have warned you; it was hardly fair to let you meet us without telling you."

A pained silence fell on the party; Mrs. Grant's face was a perfect study; Dick's had flushed dull red. Mabel stirred uneasily and made an attempt to gather her diplomacy about her.

"It was not a case of warning us," she began; "you forget that we saw you ourselves the other night when you played The Merry Widow. Won't you have some more tea, Miss Leicester?"—Joan had been introduced to them under that name.

A great nervousness had descended upon Fanny. She had talked a great deal too much, she knew, and probably Joan was furiously angry with her. But beyond that was the knowledge that she had—as she would have expressed it herself—upset Joan's apple-cart. Real contrition shone in the nervous smile she directed at Mrs. Grant.

"I'm that sorry," she said, "if I have said anything that annoyed you; but you mustn't mix me up with Joan; she is quite different. I——"

"Fanny!" Joan interrupted the jumbled explanation. "You have nothing to apologize for. We eat and look very much like ordinary people, don't we?"—she stared at Mabel as she spoke—"it is only just our manners, and morals that are a trifle peculiar. If you are ready, Fanny, I think we had better be getting back."

Dick stood up abruptly; he did not meet Mabel's eyes, but she could see that his face was very white and angry.

"I am driving you back," he said, "if you do not mind waiting here I will fetch the motor round."

He took the girl's side straight away without hesitation. Mabel caught her breath on the bitter words that rose to her lips. Joan's outburst had been an extraordinary breach of good manners; nothing that had happened could in any way excuse or condone it. Yet it was not Joan that Dick was angry with, but herself.

"I very much regret you should feel as you do," she said to Joan, after Dick had gone off to fetch the motor; "your friend and yourself were my guests; we none of us had the slightest desire to be rude to you."

"Oh, no," flamed Joan in answer; "you did not want to be rude, you just wanted to make us understand quite plainly the difference that lay between us. And you have made us realize it, and it is I that have been rude. Come along, Fanny"—the motor could be seen coming along the drive; she swept to her feet—"let us go without talking any more about it."

She turned, saying no good-byes, and walked away from them. Fanny hesitated a moment, her eyes held a pathetic appeal and there were tears near the surface. She felt she had ruined Joan's chances of a suitable marriage.

"I am sorry," she whispered; "it all began beautifully, and—Joan isn't like me," she hurried out again, "she is proud and—well, you would understand"—she appealed to Mabel—"for you are proud, too—if you had to earn your money as she has to."

Then she turned and hurried after her retreating companion. Something that she had said stayed, however, like a little pin-prick, in Mabel's thoughts. It brought her to a sudden realization of Joan's feelings and regret that she had not succeeded in being nicer to the girl.

"If Dick is married to either of those two young ladies," said Mrs. Grant heavily, "he is ruined already." She rose majestically and gathered up her work. "I have been thoroughly upset," she announced, "and must go and lie down. Perhaps when Dick comes back you will point out to him that some explanation is necessary to me for the extraordinary scene I have just been through. I shall be ready to see him in an hour."

Fanny wept a few tears on the drive home. It had all been her fault, she explained between sniffs to Joan.

"And I promised not to talk too much," she gulped. "Oh, honey, don't let it stand between him and you"—she nodded at Dick's back, for he was occupying the front seat alone—"I shall never forgive myself if you do."

"Don't fuss, Fanny," Joan answered; she was beginning to feel thoroughly ashamed of her ill-mannered outburst. "And for goodness' sake don't cry. You have not brought anything more between us than has always been there."

"Oh, I wish we hadn't gone," wailed Fanny. "He wants to marry you, Joan; they always do if they introduce their mothers to you."

For no reason whatsoever, for she had not thought of him for months, a memory of Gilbert flashed into Joan's mind. Her eyes were fixed on the back of Dick's head, and it was strange—the feeling that surged over her as she brought these, the two men in her life, before her mind's eye. Perhaps it was only at that very moment that she realized her love for Dick; realized it and fought against it in the same breath. She had known him so short a time; he had been kind to her; but what, after all, did that amount to? When the company left Sevenoaks he would probably never see her or think of her again. Does one build love from so fleeting a fancy?

None the less the thought brought her to a mood of gentleness and she could not bear to let him go away thinking her still hurt and angry. As he helped her out of the car she smiled at him.

"I am sorry that I lost my temper and was rude," she said. Fanny had fled indoors and left them tactfully alone. "I don't know what you must think of me." Her eyes fell away from his, he saw the slow red creeping into her cheeks.

"Don't," he spoke quickly, he was for the moment feeling very vindictive against Mabel. "When you apologize you make it ten times worse. It was not your fault the least little bit in the world."

"But it was," she answered; she looked up at him. "If you must have the honest truth, I was jealous from the moment I got out there. And jealousy hurts sometimes, you know, especially when it is mixed up with memories of something you once had and have lost for ever."

"That is nonsense," Dick said. It was in his heart to propose there and then, but he held it back. "I meant you to enjoy yourself, I hoped you would like Mabel, and you did not—thanks to her own amiability. Am I forgiven?"

"We forgive each other," she answered; she put her hand into his, "and good-night, if not good-bye. To-morrow is our last performance, you know, we leave the next day."

"And even with that it is not good-bye," he told her. "I shall be at the theatre to-morrow night."

Mrs. Grant and Dick had one very stormy and decided interview. That is to say, Mrs. Grant stormed and wept, Dick merely stated quite quietly and very definitely that he intended to follow Joan to London and that he was going to do his best to make her marry him.

"You do not mind how much you break my heart," Mrs. Grant sobbed, "your mother is of no consequence to you. My years of love and devotion to you when you were a baby count for nothing. You throw them all aside for this impossible, outrageous girl."

"Nothing is to be gained by calling her names," Dick answered, "and there is no reason why your heart should break, Mother. When you see her again——"

"Never," interrupted Mrs. Grant dramatically, "never. Even as your wife I shall always refuse to meet her."

"You must do as you please about that," Dick answered, and turned and went from the room.

Upstairs he met Mabel just coming out of the nursery and would have passed her without speaking, but that she put out a hand to stop him.

"Dick," she said, "you are awfully angry with me, I know, and I realize that more or less it was my fault. But I wanted and I still want to be friends with her. You know how sometimes, even against one's will, one stiffens up and cannot talk."

"I know you never were any use at dissembling," he answered. "I had hoped you might like her, but you evidently did not do that."

"I do not think I gave myself a chance," Mabel spoke slowly. "I had been arguing against her in my own mind ever since you told me about her. You see I am being truthful, Dick. It was just because one half of me wanted to like her and the other half did not, that the result was so disastrous."

Dick laughed. "Disastrous just about describes it," he admitted. "I am going to marry her, Mabel, though mother does threaten to break her heart."

"I know," Mabel nodded. "I knew from the very first moment I saw your eyes when they looked at her. Perhaps that was what made the unpleasant side of me so frigid. Will you give me her address, Dick, in London? Next week, when I am up there with Tom, I will call and make it up with her. If I go all alone I shall be able to explain things."

"And what about mother's broken heart?" Dick questioned.

Mabel shook her head. "It won't break," she said. "As soon as you are married she will start thinking that she arranged the match and saying what a good one it is."

Again Dick laughed, but there was more lightness in the sound now. He put his two hands on her shoulders and looked down at her.

"You are a good sort, Mabel," he said; "this afternoon I thought you were the most horrible sister a man could have, and that just shows how little even I know you."

"No," she answered; her eyes held a shadow of pain in them. "It is not that, it is just that a man in love is sometimes blind to everything and everybody excepting the woman he is in love with. She is a lucky girl, Dick, I nope she realizes how lucky."