Even in the moment of her first dismay, that admirable woman Pauline Dormer-Smith was true to the great social duty of keeping up appearances. She turned her head over her shoulder to James, who was hovering uneasily in the background, and said softly, "Oh yes; it is Mr. Owen Rivers. That is quite right"—as if Mr. Owen Rivers's presence were the most natural and welcome thing in the world. Then, shutting the door on James and on society, she advanced towards the two young people, who had risen on her entrance, and said, with a kind of reproachful feebleness, conveying the impression that she was reduced to the last stage of debility, and that it was entirely their fault, "I had scarcely credited the footman's statement that you were here having a private interview with my niece, Mr. Rivers. He tells me that he informed you of the family affliction which has befallen us. Under the circumstances, you must allow me to say that I think you have shown some want of delicacy in insisting on being admitted."

May glanced at Owen, but as he did not speak on the instant, she did. She took her aunt's passive fingers in her own, and said, "Aunt Pauline, he had a right to insist on seeing me, because——"

"Excuse me, May," interrupted Mrs. Dormer-Smith, waving the girl off, "I beg you will go to your own room; I will speak with this gentleman."

Her tone would have suited the announcement that she was prepared to undergo martyrdom; and she sank into a chair in an attitude of graceful exhaustion.

"No, Aunt Pauline, I cannot go away until I have spoken," cried May pleadingly. "Please to hear me. I wished to tell you the truth long ago, but I was bound by a promise; now we are both agreed that it is right to speak out, are we not?" she said, looking across at Owen. It seemed to her that he was less eager to claim her, less proud of her affection, less ardently loving, than her imagination had pictured him. There was something in the quietude of his attitude which depressed and mortified her; it was like—almost like indifference. An insidious jealousy was discolouring everything which she looked on with her "mind's eye." It is not always a sufficient defence against a poison of that sort to have a noble, candid nature, any more than it is a sufficient defence against foul air to have sound, healthy lungs; it will fasten sometimes on the worthiest qualities: a humble opinion of ourselves, a high admiration for others. The hinted slanders which May had heard had aroused no baser suspicion in her than that Owen perhaps did not love her so entirely as he at first had fancied—that his sympathy and compassion and admiration for Louisa Bransby were strong enough to compete with his attachment for her. And she knew by her own heart that if this were so his love was not such a love as she had dreamed of—not such a love as she had given to him. And yet all the while she was struggling against the influence of this subtly-penetrating distrust, and trying to shake it off, like an ugly dream.

"I am engaged to marry Owen Rivers," she said abruptly, after a pause which lasted but an instant, but which had seemed long to her.

"No, no; I must beg you to retire. I cannot hear this sort of thing," returned her aunt, waving her hand again, and turning away her head. "You, at least, must understand, Mr. Rivers, that it is entirely out of the question. How you can have entertained so preposterous an idea I cannot imagine. You must have seen something of the world, I presume? You ought to be able to perceive that—but, in short, the thing is preposterous, and cannot be seriously discussed for a moment."

May Cheffington's blood was rising. "I do not intend to discuss it," she said haughtily.

"Dearest, since your aunt addresses me, let me reply to her," said Owen. He spoke in a quiet tone, although inwardly he was excited and indignant enough. "I must tell you, Mrs. Dormer-Smith, that we are neither of us acting on a rash impulse. We have been parted for more than three months, during which time May has been free to give me up without breaking any pledge, or incurring—from me, at least—any reproaches. If she had wavered—if she had found that she had mistaken her own feelings—she was free as air. I should have made no claim, and laid no blame, on her."

"Made no claim on her!" repeated Mrs. Dormer-Smith. Then she laughed the low laugh which, with her, indicated the very extremity of provocation. "Oh, really! Ha, ha, ha! This is too monstrous. The whole thing appears to me like insanity."

"To marry without loving—that appears to me like insanity," said May scornfully.

"May! I beseech you! Really, in the mouth of a young girl of your breeding that sort of thing is inconceivable—I am tempted to use a harsher word. This then, is the reason why you have rejected one of the most brilliant prospects! Are you aware, Mr. Rivers, that this school-girl nonsense has prevented——" She caught herself up hastily, and changed her phrase—"might have prevented Miss Cheffington from obtaining one of the most splendid establishments in England?"

"Aunt Pauline!" cried May with hot indignation. "How can you say so? I would never have thought of marrying Mr. Bragg, even if Owen had not existed!"

"But apart from that," pursued Mrs. Dormer-Smith, ignoring the interruption, "your pretensions would have been quite inadmissible. You have heard of the death of my poor cousin Lucius. You had probably calculated on it. I do not mean to bring any special accusation against you there. Of course, in the case of a person of poor dear Lucius's social importance all sorts of calculations were made by all sorts of people. My brother Augustus is now the next heir to the family title and estates. Under these circumstances I leave it to your own good sense to determine whether he is likely to consent to his daughter's marrying—really I am ashamed to speak of it seriously!—a person who, in however praiseworthy a manner, is filling the position of a hired clerk!"

This shaft fell harmless, since both May and her lover were honestly free from any sense of humiliation in the fact of Owen's being a hired clerk, and sincerely willing to accept that position for him.

Owen answered calmly, "You can probably judge far better than I, as to what your brother is likely to think on that subject." Then turning towards May, he said, "I think, my dearest, that you had better leave your aunt and me to speak quietly together. You have been sufficiently pained and agitated already. You look quite pale! Go, darling, and leave me to speak with Mrs. Dormer-Smith."

"Agitated!" echoed that lady. "We have all been sufficiently agitated. What I have endured from pressure on the brain is unspeakable. Certainly you had better go away, May, I have said so several times already."

May walked slowly to the door. "I will do as you wish," she said to Owen.

"You see I am right, dear, do you not?"

"Yes; I suppose so."

The listlessness of her tone, he interpreted as a sign of her being weary and over-wrought. And, in truth, it was partly due to that cause.

As she moved across the room, two little figures crept out from a dark corner, behind an armchair, and followed her.

"Good gracious!" cried Mrs. Dormer-Smith faintly. "What is that? Have those children been here all the time?" She always spoke of Harold and Wilfred as "those children," in a distant tone as though they were somebody else's intrusive little boys. On this occasion, however, she did not altogether disapprove of their presence. It was certainly less inconvenable that they should have been known by the servants to be present at the interview, than if May had been without even that small amount of chaperonage. She had no idea that it was Harold who had brought about the interview, or he might not have got off so easily!

"Go away, little boys," she said, in her sweet, soft voice. "Go away upstairs. Cannot CÉcile find some lessons for you to do? You really must not prowl about this part of the house in the afternoon."

The children trotted after their cousin willingly enough. They never wished to stay with their mother.

"We shall meet again soon, my dear one," whispered Owen, as he opened the door. And then, with Mrs. Dormer-Smith's eyes fixedly regarding him, he took May's cold little hand in his own, and kissed it, before she passed out.

Pauline observed his demeanour with an unbiassed judgment. She would, in the cause of duty, willingly have had him kidnapped and sent off to New Caledonia at that moment. But she said to herself, "He has the manner of a gentleman. It is most disastrous!" For she felt that this circumstance increased her own difficulties.

"Now, Mrs. Dormer-Smith," said Owen, when the door was shut, "I can answer you with more perfect frankness than I should have liked to employ in May's presence. You were so kind as to say that you would leave it to my good sense to determine whether Captain Cheffington was likely to consent to my marriage with his daughter. My answer is quite simple. I do not intend to ask his consent."

"You do not intend—to ask—his consent?" ejaculated Pauline, leaning back in her chair, and, in the extremity of her astonishment at this young man's audacity, letting fall a hand-screen which she had been using to shield her face from the fire.

Owen picked it up and restored it to her before repeating, "No; I do not intend to ask his consent."

"And do you hope to persuade my niece to disregard her father's authority?—Not to mention other members of the family who have a right to be heard!"

"There is only one member of the family who has a right to be heard—Mrs. Dobbs. And her consent I hope I have obtained."

Pauline was for the moment stricken speechless by hearing Mrs. Dobbs mentioned as a member of the family. "The family!" Good heavens, what was the world coming to? She pressed her hand to her forehead with a bewildered look.

Owen went on resolutely. "As to parental authority—Mrs. Dormer-Smith, your brother has abdicated all parental authority over May. He abandoned her—pardon me, I must use that word; for it is the only one which expresses what I mean—when she was a young, motherless child. He went away to his own occupations, or pleasures—any way, he went to live his own life in his own way, utterly careless of May's welfare and happiness. You may tell me that he was sure of her finding the tenderest treatment under her grandmother's roof. He was not sure of it; for he never troubled himself to consider the question. But if he had been sure, he had no right to leave his child as he did. At any rate, having done so, it is too late to pretend that she is morally bound to consider his wishes."

Pauline put her handkerchief to her eyes. "My poor brother Augustus is much to be pitied," she murmured. "Allowances must be made for a man in his position. That unfortunate marriage——"

"I have never been told," said Owen, "that Miss Susan Dobbs seized upon Captain Cheffington and compelled him by main force to marry her. And—judging from what I know of her mother and daughter—I should think it unlikely."

"Oh, one understands that sort of thing," returned Pauline, with languid disdain. "A young woman in her class of life is not to be judged by our standards. No doubt she thought herself justified in doing the best she could for herself."

"It strikes me that she did very badly for herself—lamentably badly. I do not wish to say anything needlessly offensive, but we are in the way of plain speaking, and I must point out to you that so far from any consideration being due to your brother, he is—from the point of view of an honest man wishing to marry May—a person to be decidedly ashamed of. There are in the city of Oldchester, his late wife's native place, many tradesmen, and even mechanics, who would strongly object to connect themselves by marriage with Captain Cheffington."

To say that Mrs. Dormer-Smith was astonished by this speech would be but faintly to express her sensations. She was bewildered. She had often heard Augustus severely blamed. She had been compelled to blame him herself. Of course he ought not to have thrown away his career as he had done. They had agreed as to that. But all this blame had assumed that Augustus had chiefly injured—firstly, himself; and in the second place, and more indirectly, the whole Cheffington family.

Persons who live exclusively in any one narrow sphere are apt to have a strange simplicity, or ignorance, as one may choose to call it, as to large sections of their fellow-creatures outside that sphere. And in no class is that kind of naÏvetÉ more commonly found than in the class to which Mrs. Dormer-Smith belonged, where it is often intensified by the conviction that they possess what is called "knowledge of the world" in a supreme degree.

It was far too late in the day to bring much enlightenment to Mrs. Dormer-Smith. Owen's words merely struck her mind with a shock of wonder and dismay, and then glanced off again. The impression of having received a shock, however, did remain with her, and made her as resentful as was possible to her placid nature. In speaking of Mr. Rivers afterwards to her husband, she said—

"I believe him, Frederick, to be a Nihilist."

But for the present her mind was concentrated on the aim of breaking off what Owen chose to call his engagement to her niece, and she was not to be turned aside from it. She addressed herself to argue the case with Owen. In argument she possessed the immense advantage—if it be an advantage to reduce one's adversary to silence—of supposing that the statement of any one truth on her part was a sufficient answer to any other truth which might be advanced against her. As, for instance, when Owen insisted on Captain Cheffington's having forfeited all moral claim to May's duty and affection, she replied that it was a dreadful thing to set a child against a parent; and when Owen denied the right of May's relatives to prevent her from making a marriage of affection, she retorted that Mr. Rivers came of undeniably gentle blood himself, and ought to understand her (Mrs. Dormer-Smith's) strong family feeling.

But when even this powerful kind of logic failed to make any impression on Owen's obduracy, she changed her attack, and inquired what he was prepared to offer to her niece, in exchange for the magnificent prospect of being Mrs. Joshua Bragg, with settlements and pin-money such as every duke's daughter would desire, and very few dukes' daughters achieved.

"But, my dear madam," said Owen, "why speak of that alternative when May has assured you, in my presence, that nothing would induce her to marry Mr. Bragg?"

"Oh, Mr. Rivers, I am surprised you know so little of the world! May is a mere child: peculiarly childish for her age. Besides, even supposing she definitively rejected Mr. Bragg, there will be other good matches open to her now. The death of my poor cousin Lucius has made a vast difference in all that, as you must be well aware."

"To me, Mrs. Dormer-Smith, it has made no difference. May is herself. That is why I love her. She is not in the least transfigured, in my imagination, by being the daughter of a man who may, or may not, be Lord Castlecombe at some future day!"

"Oh," said Mrs. Dormer-Smith, shaking her head with the old plaintive air, "you need not entertain any doubts as to my brother's succession. He is the next heir. And the estates—at least the bulk of them—are entailed."

"Good heavens!" cried Owen, in despair, "can you not understand that I care not one straw whether they are entailed or not? That I would proudly and joyfully make May my wife—she being what she is—if her father trundled a barrow through the streets?"

Whether Mrs. Dormer-Smith could, or could not, understand this, at any rate she certainly did not believe it. She merely shook her head once more, and said softly—

"I think you ought to consider her prospects a little, Mr. Rivers. It appears to me that your views are entirely selfish."

This seemed very hopeless. With a last effort to come to an understanding, Owen took refuge in a plain and categorical statement of facts. He had loved May when she was penniless. So far as he knew, she was so still. He hoped to be able to offer her a modest home. She had not been accustomed to luxury or show—the season in London having been a mere episode, and not the main part of her life. Absolute destitution they were quite secure from.

He possessed one hundred and fifty pounds a year of his own. (Pauline gave a little shudder at this. It positively seemed to her worse than nothing at all. With nothing certain in the way of income, a boundless field was left open for possibilities. But a hundred and fifty pounds a year was a hard, hideous, circumscribing fact, like the bars of a cage!) He was receiving about as much again for his services as secretary. Moreover, he had tried his hand at literature, not unsuccessfully. He had earned a few pounds by his pen already, and hoped to earn more. That was the state of the case. If May, God bless her! were content with it, he submitted that no one else could fairly object.

Mrs. Dormer-Smith rose from her chair, to signify that the interview was at an end. Indeed, what use could there be in prolonging it?

"I confess," she said, "you have astonished me, Mr. Rivers. If May—an inexperienced young girl not yet nineteen—is content, you think no one else has a right to interfere! At that rate, if she chose to marry the footman, we must all stand by without raising a finger to prevent it. That is, certainly, very extraordinary doctrine."

Owen drew himself up, and looked full at her with those blue eyes, which could shine so fiercely upon occasion as he answered—

"I have already admitted the right of one person to be consulted about May's future:—the benevolent, unselfish, high-minded woman, who befriended her, and cherished her, and was a mother to her, when she was deserted by every one else. As to her marrying the footman—it is clear, madam, that she might have married the hangman, for all the effort you would have made to prevent it, until Mrs. Dobbs bribed you to take some notice of your niece! But in marrying a Rivers of Riversmead I need not, I suppose, inform you that she will confer on you the honour of a connection with a race of gentlemen compared with whom—if we are to stand on genealogies—half the names in the Peerage are a mere fungus-growth of yesterday."

It was the first word he had said to her which was less than courteously forbearing. And it was the first word which gave her a momentary twinge of regret that his suit was altogether inadmissible. She contrasted his bearing with that of May's two other wooers:—Bransby the smooth, and Bragg the unpolished; and she said to herself with a sigh, that there was no doubt about this young man's pedigree, and that "bon sang ne peut mentir." But not therefore did she flinch from her position. She answered him in the same words she had used years ago to her brother, in that very room.

"It will not do, Mr. Rivers. I assure you, it will not do!"

Then she bent her head with quiet grace, and moved to go away.

"One instant, Mrs. Dormer-Smith!" Owen said, following her to the door of the dining-room. "I wish, if you please, to speak with May again before I go away."

"Impossible. I cannot, compatibly with my duty, consent to your seeing her now, or at any future time."

"Am I to understand that you forbid me your house?"

"If you please. Unless, indeed, you consent to come in any other character than as my niece's suitor. In that case it would give me great pleasure to receive you as I have done before."

He stood looking at her rather blankly. The position was undeniably awkward. It was impossible—for May's sake, if from no other consideration—to make a scene of violence, and insist upon seeing her. And, even if he did so, Mrs. Dormer-Smith might still resist. She was mistress of the situation so far. Even in his vexation and perplexity, the ludicrous side of the affair struck him.

"Well," said he, after a moment, taking up his hat, "I cannot intrude into your house against your will. Our only resource must be to meet elsewhere. I warn you we shall do so. Of course, it is idle to suppose that you have the power to keep us apart."

Mrs. Dormer-Smith shook her head, and repeated with gentle obstinacy, "It will not do, Mr. Rivers. I really am very sorry, but it will not do."

"War, then, is declared between us?"

"Oh, I hope not! I trust you will think better of it," she said in a mildly persuasive tone, as though she were suggesting that he should leave off tea, or take to woollen clothing. "I, at least, have no warlike intentions, Mr. Rivers; for I am going to ask you to do me a favour. Be so very kind as to wait until I ring, and let my servant show you out in a civilized manner. It is quite unnecessary to publish our differences of opinion to the servants' hall."

Accordingly she rang the bell, and, when James appeared, said sweetly, in an audible voice, "Good-bye, Mr. Rivers." Whereupon Owen made her a profound bow, and departed.

As he passed through the hall, he looked about him wistfully in the hope that May might be lingering near—might possibly be looking down from the upper part of the staircase. But she did not appear. The house was profoundly silent. James stood waiting with the door in his hand. There was no help for it. He strode away with various conflicting feelings, thoughts, projects, and hopes struggling in his mind—of which the uppermost at that special moment was a strong inclination to burst out laughing.