While these events were happening at Hoddon Grey, Reginald Lester was passing a solitary Sunday at Coryston, until the afternoon, at least, when visitors appeared. To be left to himself, the solitary inhabitant, save for the servants, of the great classical pile; to be able to wander about it as he liked, free to speculate on its pictures and engravings; to rummage the immense collection of china in the basement rooms which no one but himself ever looked at; to examine some new corner of the muniment-room, and to ponder the strange and gruesome collection of death-masks, made by Coryston's grandfather, and now ranged in one of the annexes of the library—gave him endless entertainment. He was a born student, in whom the antiquarian instincts would perhaps ultimately overpower the poetic and literary tastes which were now so strong in him; and on Sunday, when he put aside his catalogue, the miscellaneous possessions of an historic house represented for him a happy hunting-ground through which he was never tired of raiding.

But on Sunday, also, he generally gave some time to writing the journal of the preceding week. He had begun it in the hopes of attaining thereby a more flexible and literary style than the methods of his daily research allowed, and with various Stevensonian ambitions dinning in his head. Why should he not make himself a writer, like other people?

But the criticisms of books, the records of political or literary conversation, with which the parchment-bound volume had been filled for some time, had been gradually giving place to something quite different, and it had become more necessary than ever that the book should be carefully locked when done with, and put away in his most private drawer. For instance:

"What is happening, or what has probably already happened, yesterday or to-day, at Hoddon Grey? It is very easy to guess. N. has been gaining ground steadily ever since he has been able to see her away from the distracting influences of London. What is impressive and unusual in his character has room to show itself; and there are no rival forces. And yet—I doubt very much whether it would answer his purpose that she should see much of his home. She will never endure any home of her own run on the same lines; for at bottom she is a pagan, with the splendid pagan virtues, of honor, fairness, loyalty, pity, but incapable by temperament of those particular emotions on which the life of Hoddon Grey is based. Humility, to her, is a word and a quality for which she has no use; and I am sure that she has never been sorry for her 'sins,' in the religious sense, though often, it seems to me, her dear life just swings hour by hour between the two poles of impulse and remorse. She passionately wants something and must get it; and then she is consumed with fear lest in the getting it she should have injured or trampled on some one else.

"Of late she has come in here—to the library—much more frequently. I am sure she feels that I care deeply what happens to her; and I sometimes am presumptuous enough to think that she wishes me to understand and approve her.

"It has grown up inevitably—this affair; but N. little realizes how dangerous his position is. Up to a certain point the ascetic element in him and his philosophy will attract her—will draw the moth to the candle. All strong-willed characters among women are attracted by the austere, the ascetic powers in men. The history of all religious movements is there to prove it. But there are tremendous currents in our modern life making against such men as Newbury—their ideals and traditions. And to one or other of those currents it always seems to me that she is committed. She does not know it—does not dream, perhaps, whither she is being carried; but all the same there are 'murmurs and scents' from 'the infinite sea' of free knowledge and experiment which play upon her, and will never play upon Newbury.

"Coryston will make a great effort to upset the engagement—if it is an engagement; that I can see. He thinks himself justified, on the ground that she will be committing herself to an inhuman and antisocial view of life; and he will work upon her through this painful Betts case. I wonder if he will succeed. Is he really any more tolerant than his mother? And can toleration in the active-spirited be ever anything more than approximate? 'When I speak of toleration I mean not tolerated Popery,' said Milton. Lady Coryston can't tolerate her son, and Coryston can't tolerate Newbury. Yet all three must somehow live together and make a world. Doesn't that throw some light on the ideal function of women? Not voting—not direct party-fighting—but the creation of a spiritual atmosphere in which the nation may do its best, and may be insensibly urged to do its best, in fresh, spontaneous ways, like a plant flowering in a happy climate—isn't that what women might do for us?—instead of taking up with all the old-fashioned, disappointing, political machinery, that men have found out? Meanwhile Lady Coryston of course wants all the women of her sort to vote, but doesn't see how it is to be done without letting in the women of all and any sort—to vote against her.

"I have about half done my cataloguing, and have been writing some letters to Germany this morning with a view to settling on some university work there for the winter. A big book on the rise and fall of Burgundy suggests itself to me; and already I hug the thought of it. Lady Coryston has paid me well for this job, and I shall be able to do what I like for a year, and give mother and Janie some of the jam and frills of life. And who knows if I sha'n't after all be able to make my living out of what I like best? If I only could write! The world seems to be waiting for the historian that can write.

"But meanwhile I shall always be glad of this year with the Corystons. How much longer will this rich, leisurely, aristocratic class with all its still surviving power and privileges exist among us? It is something that obviously is in process of transmutation and decay; though in a country like England the process will be a very slow one. Personally I greatly prefer this landlord stratum to the top stratum of the trading and manufacturing world. There are buried seeds in it, often of rare and splendid kinds, which any crisis brings to life—as in the Boer war; and the mere cult of family and inheritance implies, after all, something valuable in a world that has lately grown so poor in all cults.

"Mother and daughter here show what is going on. Lady Coryston is just the full-blown tyrannus. She has no doubt whatever about her right to rule, and she rules for all she's worth. At the same time she knows that Demos has the last word, and she spends her time in the old see-saw between threats and cajolery. The old vicar here has told me astonishing tales of her—how she turned her own sister out-of-doors and never spoke to her afterward because she married a man who ratted to the Liberals, and the wife went with him; how her own husband dreaded her if he ever happened to differ from her politically, and a sort of armed neutrality between her and Coryston was all that could be hoped for at the best of times.

"The poor people here—or most of them—are used to her, and in a way respect her. They take her as inevitable—like the rent or the east wind; and when she sends them coal and blankets, and builds village halls for them, they think they might be worse off. On the other hand, I don't see that Coryston makes much way among them. They think his behavior to his mother unseemly; and if they were he, they would use all his advantages without winking. At the same time, there is a younger generation growing up in the village and on the farms—not so much there, however!—which is going to give Lady Coryston trouble. Coryston puzzles and excites them. But they, too, often look askance; they wonder what he, personally, is going to get out of his campaign.

"And then—Marcia? For in this book, this locked book, may I not call her by her name? Well, she is certainly no prophetess among these countryfolk. She takes up no regular duties among the poor, as the women of her family have probably always done. She is not at her ease with them; nor they with her. When she tries to make friends with them she is like a ship teased with veering winds, and glad to shrink back into harbor. And yet when something does really touch her—when something makes her feel—that curious indecision in her nature hardens into something irresistible. There was a half-witted girl in the village, ill-treated and enslaved by a miserly old aunt. Miss Coryston happened to hear of it from her maid, who was a relation of the girl. She went and bearded the aunt, and took the girl away bodily in her pony-cart. The scene in the cottage garden—Marcia with her arm round the poor beaten and starved creature, very pale, but keeping her head, and the old virago shrieking at her heels—must have been worth seeing. And there is an old man—a decrepit old road-mender, whose sight was injured in a shooting accident. She likes his racy talk, and she never forgets his Christmas present or his birthday, and often drops in to tea with him and his old wife. But that's because it amuses her. She goes to see them for precisely the same reasons that she would pay a call in Mayfair; and it's inspiriting to see how they guess, and how they like it. You perceive that she is shrinking all the time from the assumptions on which her mother's life is based, refusing to make them her own, and yet she doesn't know what to put in their place. Does Coryston, either?

"But the tragic figure—the tragic possibility—in all this family galÈre at the present moment, of course, is Arthur. I know, because of our old Cambridge friendship—quite against my will—a good deal about the adventure into which he has somehow slipped; and one can only feel that any day may bring the storm. His letter to me yesterday shows that he is persecuting the lady with entreaties, that she is holding him off, and that what Lady Coryston may do when she knows will greatly affect what the young lady will do. I don't believe for one moment that she will marry a penniless A. She has endless opportunities, and, I am told, many proposals—"

The journal at this point was abruptly closed and locked away. For the writer of it, who was sitting at an open window of the library, became aware of the entrance of a motor into the forecourt of the house. Arthur Coryston was sitting in it. When he perceived Lester at the window he waved to the librarian, and jumping from the car as it drew up at the front door, he came across the court to a side door, which gave access to the library staircase.

As he entered the room Lester was disagreeably struck by his aspect. It was that of a man who has slept ill and drunk unwisely. His dress was careless, his eyes haggard, and all the weaknesses of the face seemed to have leaped to view, amid the general relaxation of tenue and dignity. He came up to the chair at which Lester was writing, and flung himself frowning into a chair beside it.

"I hear mother and Marcia are away?"

"They have gone to Hoddon Grey for the Sunday. Didn't you know?"

"Oh yes, I knew. I suppose I knew. Mother wrote something," said the young man, impatiently. "But I have had other things to think about."

Lester glanced at him, but without speaking. Arthur rose from his seat, thrust his hands into his pockets, and began to pace the polished floor of the library. The florid, Georgian decoration of ceiling and walls, and the busts of placid gentlemen with curling wigs which stood at intervals among the glass cases, wore an air of trivial or fatuous repose beside the hunted young fellow walking up and down. Lester resolutely forbore to cross-examine him. But at last the walk came to an abrupt stop.

"Here's the last straw, Lester! Have you heard what mother wants me to do? There's to be a big Tory meeting here in a month—mother's arranged it all—not a word to me with your leave, or by your leave!—and I'm to speak at it and blackguard Glenwilliam! I have her letter this morning. I'm not allowed a look in, I tell you! I'm not consulted in the least. I'll bet mother's had the bills printed already!"

"A reply, of course, to the Martover meeting?"

"I dare say. D—n the Martover meeting! But what taste!—two brothers slanging at each other—almost in the same parish. I declare women have no taste!—not a ha'porth. But I won't do it—and mother, just for once, will have to give in."

He sat down again and took the cigarette which Lester handed him—no doubt with soothing intentions. And indeed his state of excitement and agitation appeared nothing less than pitiable to the friend who remembered the self-complacent young orator, the budding legislator of early April.

"You are afraid of being misunderstood?"

"If I attack her father, as mother wishes me to attack him," said the young man, with emphasis, looking up, "Enid Glenwilliam will never speak to me again. She makes that quite plain."

"She ought to be too clever!" said Lester, with vivacity. "Can't she discriminate between the politician and the private friend?"

Arthur shook his head.

"Other people may. She doesn't. If I get up in public and call Glenwilliam a thief and a robber—and what else can I call him, with mother looking on?—there'll be an end of my chances for good and all. She's fanatical about her father! She's pulled me up once or twice already about him. I tell you—it's rather fine, Lester!—upon my soul, it is!"

And with a countenance suddenly softening and eyes shining, Arthur turned his still boyish looks upon his friend.

"I can quite believe it. They're a very interesting pair.... But—I confess I'm thinking of Lady Coryston. What explanation can you possibly give? Are you prepared to take her into your confidence?"

"I don't know whether I'm prepared or not. Whatever happens I'm between the devil and the deep sea. If I tell her, she'll break with me; and if I don't tell her, it won't be long before she guesses for herself!"

There was a pause, broken at last by Lester, whose blue eyes had shown him meanwhile deep in reflection. He bent forward.

"Look here, Arthur!—can't you make a last effort, and get free?"

His companion threw him a queer resentful look, but Lester persisted:

"You know what I think. You won't make each other happy. You belong to two worlds which won't and can't mix. Her friends can never be your friends nor your friends hers. You think that doesn't matter now, because you're in love. But it does matter—and it'll tell more and more every year."

"Don't I know it?" cried Arthur. "She despises us all. She looks upon us all—I mean, us people, with land and money and big houses—just as so much grist to her father's mill, so many fat cattle for him to slaughter."

"And yet you love her!"

"Of course I do! I can't make you understand, Lester! She doesn't speechify about these things—she never speechifies to me, at least. She mocks at her own side—just as much as ours. But it's her father she worships—and everything that he says and thinks. She adores him—she'd go to the stake for him any day. And if you want to be a friend of hers, lay a finger on him, and you'll see! Of course it's mad—I know that. But I'd rather marry her mad than any other woman sane!"

"All the same you could break it off," persisted Lester.

"Of course I could. I could hang—or poison—or shoot myself, I suppose, if it comes to that. It would be much the same thing. If I do have to give her up, I shall cut the whole business—Parliament—estates—everything!"

The quarter-decking began again; and Lester waited patiently on a slowly subsiding frenzy. At last he put a question.

"What are your chances?"

"With her? I don't know. She encourages me one day, and snubs me the next. But one thing I do know. If I attend that meeting, and make the sort of speech I should have made three months ago without turning a hair—and if I don't make it, mother will know the reason why!—it's all up with me."

"Why don't you apply to Coryston?"

"What—to give up the other meeting? He's very likely to climb down, isn't he?—with his damned revolutionary nonsense. He warned us all that he was coming down here to make mischief—and, by Jove, he's doing it!"

"I say, who's taking my name in vain?" said a high-pitched voice.

Lester turned to the doorway, and beheld a protruding head, with glittering greenish eyes, alive with laughter. Coryston slowly emerged, and closed the door behind him.

"Arthur, my boy, what's up now?"

Arthur paused, looked at him angrily, but was too sore and sulky to reply. Lester mildly summarized the situation. Coryston whistled. Then he deposited the butterfly-net and tin case he had been carrying, accepted a cigarette, and hoisting himself onto the corner of a heavy wooden pedestal which held the periwigged bust of an eighteenth-century Coryston, he flung an arm affectionately round the bust's neck, and sat cross-legged, smoking and pondering.

"Bar the meeting for a bit," he said at last, addressing his brother; "we'll come back to it. But meeting or no meeting, I don't see any way out for you, Arthur—upon my soul, I don't!"

"No one ever supposed you would!" cried Arthur.

"Here's your dilemma," pursued Coryston, good-humoredly. "If you engage yourself to her, mother will cut off the supplies. And if mother cuts off the supplies, Miss Glenwilliam won't have you."

"You think everybody but yourself, Corry, mercenary pigs!"

"What do you think? Do you see Miss Glenwilliam pursuing love in a garret—a genteel garret—on a thousand a year? For her father, perhaps!—but for nobody else! Her clothes alone would cost a third of it."

No reply, except a furious glance. Coryston began to look perturbed. He descended from his perch, and approaching the still pacing Arthur, he took his arm—an attention to which the younger brother barely submitted.

"Look here, old boy? Am I becoming a beast? Are you sure of her? Is it serious?"

"Sure of her? Good God—if I were!"

He walked to a window near, and stood looking out, so that his face could not be seen by his companions, his hands in his pockets.

Coryston's eyebrows went up; the eyes beneath them showed a genuine concern. Refusing a further pull at Lester's cigarettes, he took a pipe out of his pocket, lit it, and puffed away in a brown study. The figure at the window remained motionless. Lester felt the situation too delicate for an outsider's interference, and made a feint of returning to his work. Presently it seemed that Coryston made up his mind.

"Well," he said, slowly, "all right. I'll cut my meeting. I can get Atherstone to take the chair, and make some excuse. But I really don't know that it'll help you much. There's already an announcement of your meeting in the Martover paper yesterday—"

"No!" Arthur faced round upon his brother, his cheeks blazing.

"Perfectly true. Mother's taken time by the forelock. I have no doubt she has already written your speech."

"What on earth can I do?" He stood in helpless despair.

"Have a row!" said Coryston, laughing. "A good row and stick to it! Tell mother you won't be treated so—that you're a man, not a school-boy—that you prefer, with many thanks, to write your own speeches—et cetera. Play the independence card for all you're worth. It may get you out of the mess."

Arthur's countenance began to clear.

"I'm to make it appear a bargain—between you and me? I asked you to give up your show, and you—"

"Oh, any lies you like," said Coryston, placidly. "But as I've already warned you, it won't help you long."

"One gains a bit of time," said the young lover, in a tone of depression.

"What's the good of it? In a year's time Glenwilliam will still be Glenwilliam—and mother mother. Of course you know you'll break her heart—and that kind of thing. Marcia made me promise to put that before you. So I do. It's perfectly true; though I don't know that I am the person to press it! But then mother and I have always disagreed—whereas you have been the model son."

Angry melancholy swooped once more upon Arthur.

"What the deuce have women to do with politics! Why can't they leave the rotten things to us? Life won't be worth living if they go on like this!"

"'Life,'" echoed Coryston, with amused contempt. "Your life? Just try offering your billet—with all its little worries thrown in—to the next fellow you meet in the street—and see what happens!"

But the man in Arthur rebelled. He faced his brother.

"If you think that I wouldn't give up this whole show to-morrow"—he waved his hand toward the marble forecourt outside, now glistening in the sun—"for—for Enid—you never made a greater mistake in your life, Corry!"

There was a bitter and passionate accent in the voice which carried conviction. Coryston's expression changed.

"Unfortunately, it wouldn't help you with—with Enid—to give it up," he said, quietly. "Miss Glenwilliam, as I read her—I don't mean anything in the least offensive—has a very just and accurate idea of the value of money."

A sort of impatient groan was the only reply.

But Lester raised his head from his book.

"Why don't you see what Miss Coryston can do?" he asked, looking from one to the other.

"Marcia?" cried Coryston, springing up. "By the way, what are mother and Marcia after, this Sunday? Do you suppose that business is all settled by now?"

He flung out a finger vaguely in the direction of Hoddon Grey. And as he spoke all the softness which had gradually penetrated his conversation with Arthur through all his banter, disappeared. His aspect became in a moment hard and threatening.

"Don't discuss it with me, Coryston," said Lester, rather sharply. "Your sister wouldn't like it. I only mentioned her name to suggest that she might influence your mother in Arthur's case." He rose, and began to put up his papers as he spoke.

"I know that! All the same, why shouldn't we talk about her? Aren't you a friend?—her friend?—our friend?—everybody's friend?" said Coryston, peremptorily. "Look here!—if Marcia's really going to marry Newbury!"—he brought his hand down vehemently on Lester's table—"there'll be another family row. Nothing in the world will prevent my putting the Betts' case before Marcia! I have already warned her that I mean to have it out with her, and I have advised Mrs. Betts to write to her. If she can make Newbury hear reason—well and good. If she can't—or if she doesn't see the thing as she ought, herself—well!—we shall know where we are!"

"Look here, Corry," said Arthur, remonstrating, "Edward Newbury's an awfully good chap. Don't you go making mischief!"

"Rather hard on your sister, isn't it?"—the voice was Lester's—"to plunge her into such a business, at such a time!"

"If she's happy, let her make a thank-offering!" said the inexorable Coryston. "Life won't spare her its facts—why should we? Arthur!—come and walk home with me!"

Arthur demurred, stipulated that he should not be expected to be civil to any of Coryston's Socialist lodgers—and finally let himself be carried off.

Lester was left once more to the quiet of the library.

"'I have advised Mrs. Betts to write to her!'"

What a shame! Why should a girl in her first love-dream be harassed with such a problem—be brought face to face with such "old, unhappy, far-off things"? He felt a fierce indignation with Coryston. And as he again sat solitary by the window, he lost himself in visualizations of what was or might be going on that summer afternoon at Hoddon Grey. He knew the old house—for Lord William had once or twice courteously invited the Coryston librarian to examine such small treasures as he himself possessed. He could see Marcia in its paneled rooms and on its old lawns—Marcia and Newbury.

Gradually his head dropped on his hands. The sun crept along the library floor in patches of orange and purple, as it struck through the lozenges of old painted glass which bordered the windows. No sound except the cooing of doves, and the note of a distant cuckoo from the river meadows.

He did his best to play the cynic with himself. He told himself that such painful longings and jealous revolts as he was conscious of are among the growing-pains of life, and must be borne, and gradually forgotten. He had his career to think of—and his mother and sister, whom he loved. Some day he too would marry and set up house and beget children, framing his life on the simple strenuous lines made necessary by the family misfortunes. It would have been easier, perhaps, to despise wealth, if he and his had never possessed it, and if his lack of it were not the first and sufficient barrier which divided him from Marcia Coryston. But his nature was sound and sane; it looked life in the face—its gifts and its denials, and those stern joys which the mere wrestle with experience brings to the fighting spirit. He had soon reconquered cheerfulness; and when Arthur returned, he submitted to be talked to for hours on that young man's tangled affairs, handling the youth with that mixture of sympathy and satire which both soothed and teased the sentimentalists who chose to confide in him.

Next morning Marcia and her mother returned from Hoddon Grey in excellent time. Lady Coryston never lingered over week-ends. Generally the first train on Monday morning saw her depart. In this case she was obliged to give an hour to business talk—as to settlements and so forth—with Lord William, on Monday morning. But when that was over she stepped into her motor with all possible speed.

"What a Sunday!" she said, languidly throwing herself back, with half-closed eyes, as they emerged from the park. Then remembering herself: "But you, my dear, have been happy! And of course they are excellent people—quite excellent."

Marcia sat beside her flushed and rather constrained. She had of course never expected her mother to behave like ordinary mothers on the occasion of a daughter's betrothal. She took her insignificance, the absence of any soft emotion, quite calmly. All the same she had her grievance.

"If only Edward and you—and everybody would not be in such a dreadful hurry!" she said, protesting.

"Seven weeks, my dear child, is enough for any trousseau. And what have you to wait for? It will suit me too, much best. If we put it off till the autumn I should be terribly busy—absolutely taken up—with Arthur's election. Sir Louis Ford tells me they cannot possibly stave off going to the country longer than November. And of course this time I shall have not only the usual Liberal gang—I shall have Coryston to fight!"

"I know. It's appalling!" cried Marcia. "Can't we get him to go away?" Then she looked at her mother uneasily. "I do wish, mother, you hadn't put that notice of Arthur's meeting into the Witness without consulting him. Why, you didn't even ask him, before you settled it all! Aren't you afraid of his cutting up rough?"

"Not in the least! Arthur always expects me to settle those things for him. As soon as Coryston had taken that outrageous step, it was imperative that Arthur should speak in his own village. We can't have people's minds in doubt as to what he thinks of Glenwilliam, with an election only five months off. I have written to him, of course, fully—without a word of reply! What he has been doing these last weeks I can't imagine!"

Marcia fell into a frowning silence. She knew, alack! a great deal more than she wished to know of what Arthur had been doing. Oh, she hoped Coryston had been able to talk to him—to persuade him! Edward too had promised to see him—immediately. Surely between them they would make him hear reason, before any suspicion reached their mother?

The usual pile of letters awaited Lady Coryston and Marcia on their arrival at home. But before opening hers, Lady Coryston turned to the butler.

"Is Mr. Arthur here?"

"Yes, my lady. He is out now, but he left word he would be in for luncheon."

Lady Coryston's face lit up. Marcia did not hear the question or the answer. She was absorbed in a letter which she happened to have opened first. She read it hastily, with growing astonishment. Then, still holding it, she was hurrying away to her own sitting-room when the butler intercepted her.

"There's a young lady, miss, who wants to see you. I took her to your sitting-room. She said she came from the dressmaker—something you had ordered—very particular."

"Something I had ordered?" said Marcia, mystified. "I don't know anything about it."

She ran up-stairs, still thinking of the letter in her hand.

"I won't see her!" she said to herself, vehemently, "without Edward's leave. He has a right now to say what I shall do. It is different with Coryston. He may argue with me—and with Edward—if he pleases. But Mrs. Betts herself! No—that's too much!"

Her cheeks flushed angrily. She threw open the door of her sitting-room. Some one sitting stiffly on the edge of a chair rose as she entered. To her amazement Marcia perceived a slender woman—a lady—a complete stranger to her, standing in her own private sitting-room, awaiting her arrival. A woman in rather slipshod artistic dress, with hands clasped theatrically, and tears on her cheeks.

"Who are you?" said Marcia, drawing back.