Jack's morning was not a happy one. It was bad enough to have told so many fibs, or, at all events, to have invented so many opportune truths, and it was worse to have to go on inventing more of them to Mary, now that his dexterities had linked him to her.

Mary looked, as was only too natural, much surprised, when he told her that his letters required her help. She looked still more so when she found how inadequate were their contents to account for such a claim.

Indeed there was, apparently, but one letter upon which her advice could be of the least significance, and after she had given him all the information she had to give in regard to the charity for which it appealed, there was really nothing more for them to do.

"But—the letters that required the immediate answers?" she asked.

Jack's excited, plausible manner had dropped from him. Mary felt it difficult to be severe when his look of dejection was piercing her heart; still, she felt that she owed it to him as well as to herself, she must see a little more clearly into how he had "had things so."

He replied, his eye neither braving nor evading hers, that he had already answered them; and Mary, after a little pause, in which she studied her friend's face, said:—"I don't understand you this morning, Jack."

"I'm afraid you'll understand me less when I make you a confession. I didn't give your message this morning, Mary."

"Didn't give Mrs. Upton's message, to Miss Bocock, to Sir Basil?"

"No," said Jack, but with more mildness and sadness than compunction;—"I want to be straight with you, at all events. So I'd rather tell you. All I did was to say to Sir Basil that I found I couldn't take Mrs. Upton for the drive I'd promised, so that if he wanted to take my place, he was welcome to the buggy. He wanted to, of course. That went without saying."

"Why, Jack Pennington!"

"Miss Bocock, luckily, was on the other side of the veranda, so that I had only to go round to her afterward and tell her that Mrs. Upton had suggested their gardening, but that since she was going to drive with Sir Basil she could go off to the club, at once, too, with Imogen."

"But, Jack!—what did you mean by it?"—Mary, quite aghast, stared at her
Machiavellian friend.

"Why, that Sir Basil should take her. That's all I meant from the beginning, when I proposed going myself. Do forgive me, you dear old brick. You see, I'm so awfully set on her not being done out of things."

"Done out of things?"

"Oh, little things, if you like, young things. She's young, and she ought to have them. Say you forgive me."

"Of course, Jack dear, I forgive you, though I don't understand you. But that's not the point. Everything seems so queer, so twisted; every one seems different. And to find you not straight is worst of all."

"I promise you, it's my last sin," said Jack.

Mary, though shaking her bewildered head, had to smile a little, and, the smile encouraging him to lightness, he remarked on her changed aspect.

"So do forgive and forget. I had to confess, when I'd not been true to you.
Really, my nature isn't warped. What an extremely becoming dress that is
Mary;—and what have you done to your hair?"

"It's she," said Mary, flushing with pleasure.

"Mrs. Upton?"

"Yes, she did my hair and gave me the dress. She was so sweet and dear."

Jack lightly touched a plaited ruffle of the wide sleeve, and Mary felt that he had never less thought of her than when he so touched her dress. She put aside the deep little pang that gave her to say: "It's true, Jack, she ought to have young things, just because they are going from her; one feels that: She oughtn't to be standing back, and giving up things, yet. I see a little what you mean. Isn't it pretty?" Still, with an absent hand, he lightly touched, here and there, a ruffle of her sleeve. "But it's like her. I hardly feel myself in it."

"You've never so looked yourself," said Jack. "That's what she does, brings out people's real selves."

Mrs. Upton and Sir Basil did not come back to lunch, and Imogen's face was somber indeed as she faced her guests at the table. Jack, vigilant and pitiless, guessed at the turmoil of her soul.

She asked him, with an icy sweetness, how his letters had prospered. "Did you get them all off?"

Jack said that he had, and Mary, casting a wavering glance at him, saw that if he intended to sin no more, he showed, at all events, a sinful guilelessness of demeanor. She herself began to blush so helplessly and so furiously that Imogen's attention was drawn to her. Imogen, also, was vigilant.

"And what have you been doing, Mary dear?" she asked.

"I—oh"—poor Mary looked the sinful one;—"I—helped Jack a little."

"Helped Jack?—Oh, yes, he had heaps of letters, hadn't he? What were they all about, Mary?"

"Oh, charities."

"Charities?—What charities? How many charities?—I'm interested in that, you know—I'm rather hurt that you didn't ask my advice, too," and Imogen smiled her ominous smile. "What were the charities?"

Mary, crimson to the brow, her eyes on her plate, now did her duty.

"There was only one."

"One—and that of such consequence that Jack had to give up his drive because of it?—what an interesting letter."

"There were other letters, of course," Jack, in aid of his innocent accomplice, struck in. "None that would have particularly interested you, Imogen. I only needed advice about the one, a local Boston affair."

"There were others, Mary," said Imogen, laughing a little, "You needn't look so guilty on Jack's account." Mary gave her a wide, startled stare.

"You see, Mary," said Rose, after lunch in the drawing-room, "saints can sting."

"What was the matter!" Mary murmured, her head still seemed to buzz, as though from a violent box on the ear. "I never heard Imogen speak like that. To hurt one!"

"I fancy she'd been getting thwarted in some way," said Rose comfortably; "saints do sting, then, sometimes, the first thing that happens to be at hand. How Jack and she hate each other!"

Mary went away to her room and cried.

Meanwhile Jack wandered about in the woods until, quite late in the afternoon, he saw from the rustic bench, where, finally, he had cast himself, the returning buggy climbing up through the lower woodlands.

He felt that his heart throbbed heavily as he watched it, just catching glimpses, among the trees, of the white bubble of Valerie's parasol slanting against the sun. Yet there was a dullness in his excitement. It was over, at all events. He was sure that the last die was cast. And his own trivial and somewhat indecorous part, of shifter of scenes and puller of strings, was, he felt sure, a thing put by forever. He could help her no longer. And in a sort of apathy, he sat out there in the sunny green, hardly thinking, hardly wondering, conscious only of a hope that had become a mere physical sense of oppression and of an underlying sadness that had become, almost, a physical sense of pain.

He had just consulted his watch and, seeing it wanted but ten minutes to tea-time, had got up and was moving away, when a sudden rustle near him, a pause, a quick, evasive footstep, warned him of some presence as anxious for solitude as himself.

He stood still for a moment, uncertain as to his own best means of retreat, but his stillness misled, for, in another moment, Valerie appeared before him from among the branches of a narrow side path.

She had come up to the woods directly; he saw that, for she still wore her hat; she had come to be alone and to weep; and, as she saw Jack, her pale face was convulsed, with the effort to control her weeping, into a strange rigor of pain and confusion.

"Oh"—he stammered. "Forgive me. I didn't know you were here." He was turning to flee, as if from a sacrilege, when she recalled him.

"Don't—without me. I must go back, too," she said.

She stepped on to the broader path and joined him, and he guessed that she tested, on him, her power to face the others. But, after they had gone a few steps together, she stopped suddenly and put her hands before her face, standing quite still.

And Jack understood that she was helpless and that he must say nothing. She stood so for a long moment, not trusting herself to move or speak. Then, uncovering her face, she showed him strange eyes from which the tears had been crushed back.

"And—I can do nothing?—" he said at last, on the lowest breath, as they walked on.

"Nothing, dear Jack."

"When you are suffering like that!"

"I have no right to such suffering. I must hide it. Help me to hide it, Jack. Do I look fairly decent?" She turned her face to him, with, he thought, the most valorous smile he had ever seen.

Only a thin screen of leaves was between them and the open.

"You look—beautiful," said Jack. She smiled on, as though that satisfied her, and he added, "Can I know nothing?—See nothing?"

"I think already," said Valerie, "that you see more than I ever meant any one to see."

"I?—I see nothing, now," he almost moaned.

"You shall. I'll talk to you later."

"You will? If only you knew how I cared!"

"I do, dear Jack."

"Not how much, not how much. You can't know that. It almost gives me my right, you know, to see. When will you talk to me?"

"Some time to-night, when we can have a quiet moment. I'll tell you about the things that have happened—nothing to make you sad, I hope. And I'll ask you some questions, too, Jack, about your very odd behavior!"

Really she was wonderful; it was almost her own gaiety, flickering like pale sunlight upon her face, that she had regained, and, as they went together over the lawn to where the tea-table was laid in the shade, he saw that she could face them all. No one would know. And her last words had given him heart, had lifted, a little, the heavy weight of foreboding. Perhaps, perhaps, her grief wasn't for herself. "Oh, but I can't be candid till you are," he said, the new hope shining in his eyes.

"Oh, yes, you will be," she returned. "You won't ask me to be candid.
You'll give and not ask to get back. I know you, Jack."

No one could guess; Sir Basil least of all. That was apparent to Jack as he watched them all sitting at tea under the apple-trees. Sir Basil had never looked so radiant, so innocent of any connection with suffering. He exclaimed over the beauties of their long drive. They had crossed hill and dale; they had lost their way; they had had lunch at a village hotel, an amusing lunch, ending with ice-cream and pie, and, from the undiminished reflection of his contentment on Valerie's features, Jack knew that any faintest hint of the pale, stricken anguish of the woodlands had never for an instant hovered during the drive. This was the face that Sir Basil had seen for all the happy, sunny, picnic day, this face of gay tranquillity.

Sir Basil and Mrs. Upton, indeed, expressed what gaiety there was among the group. Mary, in her blue lawn, looked very dreary. Rose and Eddy were ill-tempered, their day, plainly, having ended in a quarrel. As for Imogen, Jack had felt her heavy eye rest upon him and her mother as they came together over the lawn, and felt it rest upon her mother and Sir Basil steadily and somberly, while they sat about the tea-table. The long drive, Sir Basil's radiance, her mother's serenity, how must they look to Imogen? Jack could conjecture, though knowing, for his own bitter mystification, that what they looked like was perhaps not what they meant. Imogen must be truly at bay, and he felt a cruel satisfaction in the thought of her hidden, her gnawing anxiety. He was aware of every ring of falsity in her placid voice and of every flash of fierceness under the steeled calmness of her eye. He noticed, too, for the rest of the day, that, whatever Imogen's desperation, she made no effort to see Sir Basil alone. Almost ostentatiously she went away to her room after tea, saying that she had had bad news of an invalid protÉgÉ and must write to her. She paused, as she went, to lean over Mary, a caressing hand upon her shoulder, and to speak to her in a low tone. Mary grew very red, stammered, and said nothing.

"Miss Upton overworks, I think," observed Miss Bocock. "I've thought that she seemed overstrained all day."

Mary had risen too, and as she wandered away into the flower garden, Jack followed her.

"See here," he said, "has Imogen been hurting you again?"

"No, Jack, oh no;—I'm sure she doesn't mean to hurt."

"What did she say to you just now?"

"Well, Jack, you did bring it upon yourself, and upon me"—

"What was it?"

"She said that she couldn't bear to see her white flower—that's I, you know,"—Mary blushed even deeper in repeating the metaphor—"used for unworthy ends. She meant, of course, I see that,—she meant that what she said at lunch was for you and not for me. I'm sure that Imogen means to be kind—always."

"I believe she does."

"I'm glad that you feel that, too, Jack. It is so horrible to see oneself as—oh, really disloyal sometimes."

"You need never feel that, Mary."

"Oh, but I do. And now, when everything, every one, seems turning against Imogen! And she has seemed different;—yet for two years she has been a revelation of everything noble to me."

"You only saw her in noble circumstances."

"Oh, Jack," Mary's eyes were full of tears as she looked at him now, "that's the worst of all; that you have come to speak of her like that."