“Well! I suppose there is nothing for it but to go in here,” I said, marching, with my head well up, to the door of the den.

The Governor was only just in time to open it for me. Without a look at him I walked in, making straight for the piano-stool.

I sat down. I planted my foot firmly upon the loud pedal. My fingers clutched at the first chords of a spirited war-song as if it were a life-buoy.

“Do sing!” I heard myself fling almost imperiously at my employer.

He sang—not well.

“And please keep on singing,” I said, into the last chords of the song. “Loud ones, please.”

Without any further conversation, we went doggedly through “Drake’s Drum” and “The Two Grenadiers.”

I simply wasn’t going to let Uncle Albert Waters, left in the dining-room with Major Montresor, imagine that his nephew and I had gone into the den to—to make anything but—music for one single instant that evening. Let them hear for themselves that we were busy at the piano the whole time!

They could hear well enough through the wall of the dining-room——

No! Apparently they couldn’t hear well enough. For no sooner had we come to the end of those bars of the “Marseillaise” that conclude the Grenadier song, than the door of the den was thrown open and in walked those two other men.

Uncle Albert, of course in advance, pranced up to the piano, thumped his fist into the open palm of the other hand, leaned over the piano towards us, then, in a solemn, confidential, impressive tone of voice, he brought out—one word. It was the word:

“Wedded!”

“What?” rapped out the Governor, sharply wheeling round. And I couldn’t help gasping, wondering if this old gentleman had suddenly come under some hallucination about our being more, even, than merely “engaged.”

“Yes. ‘Wedded,’” repeated Uncle Albert, raising his voice again to its normal blare. “You know!—The fellow and the girl! That first-rate picture by Millais or Holman Hunt or one of ’em. Anyhow, you know it. She’s got her head resting right back against the young chap’s shoulder, like this”—

(Unsuccessful imitation of the pose of Leighton’s model by Uncle Albert against the piano.)

—“And he’s lifting her hand to his mouth—you know. That’s the one. That’s the name I was puzzling over half through dinner, and it only just dawned upon me just as I finished my cigar. I had to come in and tell you. And, if we’re not de trop,” added that appalling old man, settling down like a big collapsible toy in one of the huge arm-chairs, “we’d like to hear just one tune in here. ‘If he’s only singing,’ as I said to the Major, ‘he might just as well have company by as not, and I’m fond of a good song after dinner!’ So now, Billy, what have you got there? D’you know that A 1 thing—ah, what is it? What a man I am for forgetting names! Something bandy—not Bandy-legs——”

“Ha!” Major Montresor, from the other big chair, came to the rescue. “‘The Bando-lero’!”

“That’s it! Know it, William? ‘I am the Bando-lero!’” vociferated Uncle Albert, “‘the—something—Bando-lero——’”

“I know it,” said my employer, with restraint, “but I haven’t got it in the house!”

It was my turn to suppress a smile as I remembered how, in my nursery-days, I’d defined “a bandolero” as “a person with a very loud voice,” just as naturally as I used to think that “a Radical” meant “a dreadfully wicked man.” It was the very song that I could imagine Uncle Albert enjoying singing himself. A pity his nephew didn’t happen to have it in the house!

“You have this, though,” I suggested helpfully, as I turned to the rack and took out “The Storm-Fiend,” with a look at the Governor meaning, “Don’t dare to say you loathe this thing!” (It was because he did, by the way, that the song had been ordered for him in a burst of unsisterliness by Theo.)

“Yes! You can look soft nothings at the girl, my boy!” was Uncle Albert’s interpretation of that glance of the Governor’s as I spoke, “but she’s got to keep those pretty dark eyes of hers for the music!”

(—And I wonder the sheet of music didn’t shrivel up under the gaze of the eyes thus praised!)

We then proceeded to dash through “The Storm-Fiend.” I wondered whether the Governor found in the loud singing of it as much of a safety-valve as I found in the playing of the artillery-like accompaniment!

“Bravo! Very good! Stirring song, that!” Uncle Albert’s bellow swelled the echoes of the last chord. “Capital song—very well sung. I like that tune—‘I chuckle and laugh, ho, ho! I chuckle and laugh, ho, ho!’” he persisted (to some tune quite of his own). “‘The Storm-Fiend is the Lord—of—Woe!’ Very good! Still, not very appropriate for to-night, Billy? Not much Woe about this evening, my dear, eh?” (to me). “Supposing we have a bit of sentiment now. What was that other song, now? I was talking about it only at tea-time here—something tally-ho-ish that we could all join in the chorus of.”

But here I felt I simply must nip in the bud a request for the one about—

“All my Fancy dwells upon Nancy.”

“Nancy” had had enough!

So I rose, saying gently, “If you will excuse me, I am rather tired”—

This was no fib!

—“and I think I will go to bed early. Good night, Mr. Waters,” politely to that awful Uncle Albert. “Good-bye, Major Montresor; so nice to have seen you again like this.... Good-night,” with a little nod to my official fiancÉ.

“‘Be the day weary, be the day long....’” I thought. But we hadn’t even yet come to the end of it.

For Uncle Albert Waters had bounded up again from the deep chair like a large india-rubber ball, with yet another protest to his nephew.

“What’s that? what’s that? Ah, but that’ll never do. Never!” reverberated through the den. “You’re never going to let the girl go off like that, Billy?—Just a word and a nod?”

Good heavens—what could he mean?

“Why! She’d never think anything of you again, lad! Never mind two old has-beens like us. We don’t count, do we, Major? Don’t you take any notice of us. You kiss your sweetheart good night, like a sensible youngster!” And before I could escape, before either of us had fully realized what this terrible, bellowing, stout, red-faced, eyes-on-stalked, cigar-scented, coarse, horrid old man would take it into his head to say or do next, he had literally pushed us into each other’s arms.

I don’t know whether it was for a minute or for half a second that I was given over to feeling the true horror of this position; to wondering what on earth my make-believe fiancÉ meant me to do about it—what he meant to do.

Then he—the Governor—decided the matter for me.

With the suddenest of movements he ducked swiftly forward and bent, without further look or word, to kiss me. I was too petrified to draw back even the fraction of an inch from the touch of his lips; it brushed by, scarcely stirring on my cheek, to fall almost roughly on the ripple of dark hair above my ear.

Then he bolted to the door and held it open for my headlong exit from the den.

To the sound of an explosive “That’s more like it!” from Uncle Waters. “You surely never——” (Slam! from the door) I tore across the hall. I didn’t pause for any more good nights in the drawing-room. I rushed upstairs to my bedroom.

Here I flung myself down into one of the rosy-chintz chairs by the open window and gasped while I tried to collect my whirling wits.

What had happened? What was he—that young man—doing to allow anything to happen? His “official” fiancÉe? Was this what he meant by “official”—it wasn’t what I meant, and I would let him know that. I was furious with him—His uncle’s fault?—Yes! But he ought to have managed so that That wasn’t thrust upon me like this.

I was angry!

Then I couldn’t help laughing a little at the mad incongruity of it.

Kissed, by Still Waters!

What could he think I thought of it? What was he thinking about it all now, downstairs there with those other two horrible men? What was his Uncle Albert thinking? Chuckling and laughing, ho, ho! I expected....

That ghastly moment!

That ghastly, ghastly moment!...

Thank goodness that the Governor did at least end it as soon as was humanly possible. And, after all, that quick gesture of his hardly counts as a kiss. I’ve seen the love-scenes in private theatricals carried out just like that by bashful amateurs. A stage-kiss; a sham one; in fact, no kiss at all.

Well, that, anyhow, was decent of Still Waters....

But was it? Was he thinking of my feelings? I don’t believe he was.

I believe—at least, a month ago I might have believed—with the rest of the girls at the office, that that would be his only conception of kissing a girl. I can’t believe that now—not of a brother of Theo’s and Blanche’s—not of a son of Mrs. Waters’s! His father, Blanche said, was so devoted to her ... their boy would have inherited some sort of idea of the real thing! Besides, a young man who’s already surprised me by being able to sing like that, and to be keen on dancing, and to win swimming competitions, and to look, sometimes, quite human! Oh, no!

It was meant for being decent.

He’d scarcely touched me—except just on the hair.

Then I felt furious again.

My hair—my pet vanity—the prettiest thing about me! Once Sydney Vandeleur begged me for a piece of it to keep—that piece with the ripple—as if I’d cut it! If I had, it wouldn’t have got kissed....

Hateful, clumsy, blundering, or something young man! He needn’t have kissed me at all! He could have got out of it—in spite of his detestable old uncle.

Couldn’t he have seemed to think that I was too shy to let him in public, and allowed me to slip away? Or couldn’t he have followed me into the hall and shut the door and pretended?

Or couldn’t he have hatched up some joke on the spur of the moment and announced cheerfully—

“Oh, we don’t say our good nights in here, Uncle; outside in the veranda is where we say good night”—or something like that?

Easily.

Then what did he mean by it?

Was it that this excruciating evening, with its countless trials, had worn his patience absolutely through, and that he felt he must vent his fury on something besides Cariad? Was that kiss a kind of “let-fly” at me?

How frightfully unfair! As if I’d done anything but rush into breaches and make the best of things for him! Good gracious! I shall tell him exactly what I think of it all to-morrow!

But the evening held one last trial for me before I was able to slip into that springy snowdrift of a bed and lie tossing, indignantly awake, for quite an hour after I’d heard the motor puff off, taking Major Montresor to catch his last train up to town.

This trial was heralded by a tap at my door.

Enter Blanche in her dÉbutante’s dinner-gown.

“How early you’re going to bed, Nancy! We thought you were still with Billy, but Uncle Albert’s taken him on at billiards—he says he’s playing worse than anyone he’s ever seen. Is anything the matter, dear?”

“Oh, no—nothing; why?”

“You look so flushed—I thought you might have a headache.”

A headache—ah! valuable antique feminine excuse for everything! “Yes—perhaps I have, a little.”

“Poor darling! Everybody did seem to be talking at once at dinner, and Uncle Albert is such a fog-horn, enough to go through anybody’s head. Let me brush your hair for you, will you?”

I had to let her.

“It’ll be better with all these pins and clips out,” said Blanche, unfastening and shaking loose. “Goodness, what lots you’ve got! It’s like yards and yards of black skein-silk. And how lovely and soft.”

And here, in the looking-glass, I saw the girl’s face, blonde and clear-featured as her brother’s, pressed for a moment to the ripple of dark hair above my ear.

It must have looked something like that just now to those two other men in the den....

Then I saw my own face turn scarlet.

Blanche Waters saw that too.

“Oh, sorry,” she murmured, with a little “understanding” smile. “Mustn’t I?”

She might just as well have said, “Mustn’t anybody except Billy kiss you just there?”

—Which did, as my brother Jack would say, put the lid on it!

Well! to-morrow I am going to put my foot down, very firmly, on anything more of this sort!