The Reflections of Ambrosine by Elinor Glyn (page 4)

gallery that crosses the hall.

Tea was laid out on a large, low table, with plates and jam and cakes and muffins–a nice, comfortable, substantial meal. A fire of whole logs burned in the colossal, open chimney. The huge, heavily shaded lamps concentrated all the light beneath them, viewed from above.

And like a group of summer-flowers the women, in their light and fluffy tea-gowns, added the touch of grace to the heavy darkness of the old stone walls. I paused a while and watched them.

Lady Grenellen, gorgeous as a sultana, seemed to have collected all the cushions to enhance her comfort as she lay back in a low, deep sofa. Augustus sat beside her. From here one could not see his ugliness, and the dark claret color of his smoking-suit rather set off her gown. She had the most alluring expression upon her face, which just caught the light. His attitude was humble. The storm, for the present, was over between them.

Two other women, the heiress, Babykins, and Lord Tilchester, and several young men sat round the table like children eating their bread-and-jam.

The Duke and Miss Martina B. Cadwallader were examining the armor. Some one was playing the piano softly. Merry laughter floated upward. I doubt if any other country could produce such a scene. It would have pleased grandmamma.

“Why, by the stars and stripes, there is a ghost in the gallery!” exclaimed Miss Corrisande K. Trumpet, pointing to me. The faint glimmer of my white velvet tea-gown must have caught her eyes as I moved away.

“No, I am not a ghost,” I called, “and I am coming down to eat hot muffins.” So I crossed and descended the turret stairs.

Lady Tilchester had not appeared yet.

I sat down at the table next “Billy.” It was all so gay and friendly no one could feel depressed.

Viewed close, Miss Trumpet was, for her age, too splendidly attired. She looked prettier in her simple travelling-dress. But her spirits and her repartee left nothing to be desired. She kept us all amused, and, whether Lady Grenellen would eventually permit it or no, Lord Luffton seemed immensely _epris_ with her now.

There was only one other girl at the table, Lady Agatha de Champion, and her slouching, stooping figure and fuzzled hair did not show to advantage beside the heiress’s upright, rounded shape and well-brushed waves.

“Where have you been all the afternoon?” demanded the Duke, reproachfully, over my shoulder. “I searched everywhere down-stairs, and finally sent to your room, but your maid knew nothing of you.”

“I have been sitting with Lady Tilchester in her sitting-room,” I said, smiling.

“Here comes Margaret. She shall answer to me for kidnapping my guests like this.” And he went forward to meet her.

“Do not scold me,” said Lady Tilchester, as she returned with him. “I think Mrs. Gurrage will tell you we have spent a very pleasant afternoon.”

“Indeed, yes,” I said.

“And I mean to spend a pleasant evening,” he whispered, low, to me. “As soon as you have eaten that horrid muffin I shall carry you off to see my pictures.”

I looked at Lady Tilchester. What would she wish me to do?

“Impress upon him the necessity of being charming to the heiress. You were quite right. He has a serious rival,” she whispered, and we walked off.

The Duke can be agreeable in his unattractive, lackadaisical way. He is so full of information, not of the statistical kind like Miss Trumpet, but the result of immense cultivation.

“What do you think of my heiress?” he said, at last, as we paused beneath a Tintoretto. I said everything suitable and encouraging I could think of.

“I am quite pleased with her,” he allowed, “but I fear she will not be content with the role I had planned out for my Duchess. She is too individual. I feel it is I who would subside and attend to the nurseries and the spring cleaning. However, I mean to go through with it, although I am in a hideous position, because, you know, I am falling very deeply in love with you.”

“How inconvenient for you!”‘ I said, smiling. “But please do not let that interfere with your prospects. You must attend to the subject of pleasing the heiress, as I see great signs of Lord Luffton cutting the ground from under your feet.”

He stared at me incredulously.

“Luffy!” he said, aghast. “Oh, but Cordelia would take care of that. He is her friend.”

“Oh, how you amuse me, all of you,” I said, laughing, “with your loves and your jealousies and your little arrangements! Every one two and two; every one with a ‘friend.'”

“Anyway, we are not wearyingly faithful.”

“No; but to a stranger you ought to issue a kind of guide-book–‘Trespassers will be prosecuted’ here, ‘A change would be welcomed’ there, etc.”

“‘Pon my word new editions would have to come out every three months, then. In the space of a year you would find a general shuffle had taken place.”

“Shall you let your Duchess have a ‘friend’?” I asked.

He mused a little.

“Could I have found my cow brewer’s daughter, she would have been too virtuously middle class to have thought of such a thing. And if I take this American–well, the Americans are so new a nation they have still a moral sense. So I think I am pretty safe.”

“Old nations are deficient in this quality, then?”

“Yes. Artificial things are more worn out, and they get back nearer to nature.”

“But you would object to a ‘friend’?”

“Considerably, until the succession was firmly secured. After that, I suppose, my Duchess might please herself. She probably would, too, without consulting me. You don’t see the whole of your neighbors eating cake and remain content with your own monotonous bread-and-butter.”

This appeared to be very true. He continued in a meditative way:

“Because a few what we call civilized nations have set up a standard of morality for themselves, that does not change the ways of human nature. What we call morality has no existence in the natural world.”

“Why should the respectable middle-class brewer’s daughter have so strong a sense of it, then?” I asked.

“Because propriety is their god from one generation to another. You can almost overcome nature with a god sometimes. Babykins has a theory that the food we eat makes a difference in the ways of our class, but I don’t believe that. It is because we hunt and shoot and live lives of inclination, not compulsion, like the middle classes, and so we get back nearer to nature.”

“You are a sophist, I fear,” I said, smiling. “See, here is Miss Martina B. Cadwallader advancing upon us. Stern virtue is on every line of her face, anyway!”

“Pardon me, Dook,” she said, “but the guide to Myrlton I purchased at the station gave me to understand I should find a second portrait of Queen Elizabeth in this gallery. I cannot see it. Would you be good enough to indicate the picture to me?”

“Oh, that was a duplicate,” said the Duke, resignedly. “I sold it at Christie’s last year. It brought me in ten thousand pounds–more than it was worth. I lived in comfort upon it for quite six months.”

“You don’t say!” said Martina B. Cadwallader.

Before the party said good-night, the meanest observer could have told that things were going at sixes and sevens, no one doing exactly what was expected of them.

Signs of disturbance showed as early as the few minutes before dinner.

Lord Luffton was openly seeking the society of the heiress, with no regard to the blandishments of Lady Grenellen. But by half-past eleven the clouds had spread all round.

Augustus, perhaps, looked the most upset. He had spent an evening on thorns of jealousy. First, snubbed sharply by the fair Cordelia; then, having to witness her ineffectual attempts to detach Lord Luffton from Miss Trumpet.

The Duke, while devoting himself to me, could not quite conceal his annoyance at the turn affairs were taking.

Miss Martina B. Cadwallader was plainly irritated with her niece for not attending to the business they had come for. Babykins was exerting her mosquito propensities and stinging every one all round. In fact, only the few casual guests, who did not count one way or another, seemed calm and undisturbed.

“It is really provoking,” Lady Tilchester said to me. “What on earth did they ask Luffy here for? He is noted for this sort of thing, and, of course, posing as a war hero adds an extra lustre to his charms.”

The only two people supremely unconscious of delinquencies were the causes of all the trouble–Lord Luffton and Miss Trumpet.

They had gone off to look at the pictures in the long gallery, and at twenty minutes to twelve were nowhere to be seen.

Lady Glenellen’s eyes flashed ominously.

“Let us go to bed,” she said. “Betty, why don’t you have the lights turned out?”

Fortunately the aunt did not hear this remark. As her face showed, she was quite capable of a sharp reply to anything, and though, no doubt, annoyed with the niece, would certainly defend her.

“We had better go and look for them,” said the Duke.

“Perhaps they have fallen down the oubliette,” suggested Babykins.

“You don’t tell me there is danger?” demanded Miss Martina B. Cadwallader, anxiously, “On this trip I am answerable to her poppa for Corrisande’s safety.”

We started, more or less in a body, towards the gallery, Lady Tilchester, with her usual tact, stopping to point out any notable picture or tapestry to the aunt on the way, so that the search should not look too pointed.

In the farthest corner, perched on a high window-seat–that must have required a knowledge of vaulting to reach–sat the guilty pair, dangling their feet. Anything more engaging than Miss Trumpet looked could not be imagined. The tiniest pink satin slippers peeped out of billows of exquisite _dessous_. Her little face seemed a mass of dimpling smiles. Not a trace of embarrassment appeared in her manner.

“I say, Duke,” she called, “you have got a sweet place here. We have been watching for the monk to pass, but he has not come yet.”

The Duke stepped forward to help her down.

“Don’t you trouble,” she said. “Why, we had a gymnasium at the convent. I can jump.”

Lady Grenellen now appeared upon the scene. She looked like an angry cat. I turned, with Lady Tilchester, and left the rest of the party. What happened I do not know, but when they joined us all in the hall again the heiress was with the Duke, Lord Luffton walked alone, while Augustus, once more beaming, was close to Lady Grenellen’s side. So it is an ill wind that blows no one any good.

Next day, after a delightful shooting-lunch and a brisk walk back, the heiress came to my room and talked to me.

She had apparently taken a great fancy to me, and we had had several conversations.

“I don’t know why, but you give me the impression that you are a stranger, too, like Aunt Martina and me,” she said. “You don’t look at all like the rest of the Englishwomen. Why, your back is not nearly so long. I could almost take you for an American, you are so _chic_.”

I laughed.

“Even Lady Tilchester, who is by far the nicest and grandest of them, does not look such an aristocrat as you do.”

(Miss Trumpet pronounces it _arrist_-tocrat.)

“I assure you, I am a very ordinary person,” I said. “But you are right, I am a stranger, too.”

“Now I am glad to hear that,” said Miss Trumpet, beginning to polish her nails with my polisher, which was lying on the dressing-table. “Because then I can talk to you. You know I have come here to sample the Duke. Poppa is so set on the idea of my being a duchess. But it seems to me, if you are going to buy a husband, you might as well buy the one you like best. Don’t you think so?”

“I entirely agree with you,” I said, feelingly. “You would probably be happier with the one you prefer, even if he were only a humble baron.” And I smiled at her slyly.

“Now that is just what I wanted to ask you about. But if I took Lord Luffton, instead of the Duke, should I have to walk a long way behind at the Coronation next year?”

“I am afraid you would,” I said.

She looked puzzled and undecided.

“That is worrying me,” she said. “As for the men themselves–well, we don’t think so much of them over in America as you do here. It is no wonder Englishmen are so full of assurance, the way they are treated. You would never find an American woman showing a man she was madly jealous of him, like Lady Grenellen did last night. Why, we keep them in their places across the Atlantic.”

“So I have heard,” I said.

“I have been accustomed to be run after all my life,” she continued, “so it does not amount to anything, a man making love to me. But he is beautiful, isn’t he?–Lord Luffton, I mean.”

“Yes, though he has the reputation of great fickleness. The Duke would probably make a better husband,” I said.

I felt I owed it to Lady Tilchester to do something towards advancing the cause.

“Oh, as for that, a man always makes a good enough husband if you have the control of the dollars, and poppa would see to that,” said Miss Trumpet.

This seemed so true I had nothing to say.

“Now, I will tell you,” she continued, examining her nails, which shone as bright as glass. “I have got a kind of soft feeling for that Baron, but I would like to be an English duchess. Now, which would you take, if you were me?”

“Oh, I could not possibly advise you,” I said. “You must weigh the advantages, and your level head will be sure to choose for the best.”

“The position of an English duchess is splendid, though, isn’t it? An Italian duke came over last fall, and poppa thought of him for about a day. But there is the bother of a foreign language, and all their silly ways to learn, so I told poppa I would have an English one or marry an American. It does seem a pity I can’t have both the Baron and the Duke!” and she laughed with girlish mirth.

I thought of my conversation the night before, and wondered.

* * * * *

That evening the Duke, also, made me confidences.

He was immensely taken with Miss Trumpet, he allowed, and could almost look upon the matter as a pleasure instead of a duty now.

“If you had shown the slightest sign that you would ever care for me, I should not have thought of her, though,” he said. “You will be sorry, one day, that you are as cold as ice.”

“Why should a person be accused of having no musical sense because one particular tune does not cause one rhapsodies?” I asked. “The one idea of a man seems to be, if a woman does not adore him personally, it is because she is as cold as ice. Surely that is illogical.”

He looked at me very straightly for a moment.

“I believe you do care for some one,” he said. “I shall watch and see.”

“Very well,” I laughed.

None of the people I have met since my marriage have seemed to think it possible that I should care for Augustus, or that my wedding-ring should be the slightest bar to my feelings or their advances.

“You are a dangerously attractive woman, you know–one’s idea of what a lady ought to look like. And you move with a grace one never sees now. And your eyes–your eyes are the eyes of the Sphinx. I fancy, if I could make you care, I would forget all the world. I am glad you are going to-morrow.”

“I understood you to say you were greatly attracted by Miss Trumpet,” I said, demurely.

And so the evening passed.

“I think it is going all right,” Lady Tilchester said to me as we walked up-stairs together. “They are making arrangements to meet in London, and Luffy has not been asked to join the theatre-party.”

“No. He is going to lunch and to take them to skate,” I said.

“Oh, the clever girl!” and she laughed. “But I expect she will decide to be a duchess, in the end.”

“If you could tell her anything especially splendid about her position at the Coronation next year, should she accept the Duke, I am sure it would have an effect.”

“Cordelia is behaving like a fool about it. She asked them here, and made all the arrangements, and now is absolutely uncivil to them.”

“How flattered Lord Luffton ought to be!” I laughed.

“Yes, if it were any one else; but Cordelia has too many fancies. How glad one should be that one has other interests in life! Really, when I look round at most of my friends, I feel thankful. Perhaps, otherwise, I should have been as they are.”

Augustus had greatly profited by Lord Luffton’s defection. Whether it was to make the latter jealous, I do not know, but Lady Grenellen had been remarkably gracious to him all the evening.

I learned, casually, that she was to be the fourth at Dane Mount.

“We shall be such a little party,” she said. “Only myself and you and your husband. I asked Antony to take me in, as it is on the road to Headbrook, where I go the next day, I thought he was having a large party, though.”

I wished she was not going; there seemed something degrading about the arrangement.

I had not let myself think of this visit. And now it would be the day but one after to-morrow!

A strange restlessness and excitement took possession of me. I could not sleep.

It was a raw, foggy morning when we all left Myrlton. The Duke accompanied us to London, and we were a merry party in the train, in spite of eight of us playing bridge.

Augustus told me he had business in town, and would stay the night and over Sunday, arriving at Dane Mount by the four-o’clock train on Monday.

“If you leave home at three, in the motor,” he said, “we shall get there exactly at the same time.”

And so I returned to Ledstone alone.

XIII

The fog was white round the windows as I came down to my solitary breakfast on the 4th. My heart sank. What if it should be too thick for me to start? I could not bear to think of the disappointment that would be.

I forced myself to practise for an hour after breakfast. Then I wrote a long letter to the Marquis de Rochermont. Then I looked again at my watch and again at the fog. I should start at half-past two, to give plenty of time, as we should certainly have to go slowly.

At last, at last, luncheon came. I never felt less hungry, nor had the servants ever appeared so pompous and slow. It seemed as if it could never be half-past two.

However, it struck eventually, and the automobile came round to the door.

For the first five miles the fog was very thick. We had to creep along. Then it lifted a little, then fell again. But at half-past four we turned into the lodge-gates. I could see nothing in front of me. The trees seemed like gaunt ghosts, with the mist and the dying daylight. The drive across the park and up the long avenue was fraught with difficulty. Even when we arrived I could see nothing but the bright lights from the windows. But as the door was thrown open, I realised that Antony was standing there against the flood of brightness.

I seem always to be saying my heart beats, but there is no other way of describing the extraordinary and unusual physical sensation that happens to me when I meet this man.

“Welcome!” he said, as he helped me out of the automobile. “Welcome to Dane Mount!”

A broad corridor, full of trophies of the chase and armor and carved oak, leads to a splendid hall, high to the top of the house, with a great staircase and galleries running round. It is hung with tapestry and pictures, and full of old and beautiful furniture.

Three huge, rough-coated hounds lay on the lion-skin before the fire. They rose, haughtily, to greet me.

“Ulfus, Belfus, and Bedevere, come and be introduced to a fair lady,” said Antony. “You can be quite civil, she is of the family.”

The dogs came forward.

“What darlings!” I said, patted them all. They received the caresses with dignity, and, without gush, made me understand they were glad to see me.

Then we said some _banal_ things to each other–Antony and I–about the fog and the difficulty of getting here and the length of the drive.

I did not look at him much. I felt excited and awkward–and happy.

“I am not going to let you stay here a minute in those damp things,” he said. “I shall give you into the hands of Mrs. Harrison, my housekeeper, to take you to your room. When you have got into a tea-gown, you will find me here again.” And he rang the bell.

Grandmamma would have approved of Mrs. Harrison when she appeared. She is like the housekeepers one reads of in books–stately and plump, and clothed in black silk, with a fat, gold-and-cameo brooch fastening a neat cambric collar.

She conducted me up the staircase and into the most exquisite bedroom I have ever dreamed of in my life.

It is white, and panelled, and full of really old and beautiful French furniture. Everything is in keeping, even to the locks on the doors and the bell-ropes. How grandmamma would have appreciated this! And the fineness of the linen, and the softness of the pillows and sofa-cushions! And everywhere great bowls of roses–my favorite flower. Roses in November!

“Oh, what a lovely room!” I exclaimed, as I went round and looked at everything.

“It is pretty, ma’am. It has only just been arranged,” said Mrs. Harrison, much gratified. “Sir Antony bid me ask you to order anything you can possibly want.”

Then she indicated which bell rang into my maid’s room and which for the house-maids, and with a few more polite wishes for my comfort, and the information that the room prepared for Augustus was some way down the corridor, on the right, she left me in McGreggor’s hands.

With great promptness the luggage had been carried up, so I was not long getting into a tea-gown.

Augustus and Lady Grenellen would have arrived by the time I got down to the hall again. They ought to have been here before me, but no doubt the train was late.

The soft _crepe de chine_ of my skirts made no _frou-frou_. Antony did not see me as I looked over the bend of the stairs descending; he was staring into the fire, an expression I have never seen before on his face.

I stopped. Presently he looked up.

“How silently you came, Comtesse! I did not hear you.”

“You were thinking deeply. Upon what grave matters of state?”

“None at all. Do you know Lady Grenellen and your husband have not arrived? The brougham has with difficulty returned from the station after waiting until the train was in, and there was no sign of them.”

A joy, unbidden and instantly suppressed, pervaded me as he spoke.

“Perhaps they missed the train and will catch the next,” I hazarded.

“The fog in London is quite exceptional, the guard said. I have given orders for the coachman to return and try for the next train. It gets in at 6:42. After that there is one at 7, and the last one is at 10:18. But they will probably telegraph.”

“It makes me laugh,” I said.

“Come and have tea. We shall not bother our heads about them. They are, fortunately, well able to take care of themselves.”

Antony led the way to the library, where the tea was laid out.

I never have sat in such a comfortable sofa or felt more cosily at home. Everything pleased me. All is in perfect taste.

Antony talked to me gayly as he gave me some tea. It was as if he wanted to remove the least feeling of awkwardness this unusual situation might possibly cause me to feel.

Ulfus, Belfus, and Bedevere had followed us, and now lay, like three grim guardians, upon the tiger-skin hearth-rug.

“How is your arm?” I asked.

“Oh, that is all right. I had the shot taken out and it has quite healed up. Wonderful escape we had that day!” And he laughed.

“And you were so good about it! Augustus said he would have shot back if Mr. Dodd had hit him.”

“Mrs. Dodd would have made a nice target. One does not often come across a person like that. Are all your guests at Ledstone of the same sort as those I met?”

“No. Some of them are worse,” I replied, gravely, smiling at him. “Next time you shall come to an earlier party. You would enjoy that.” And I laughed, thinking of the first batch of relations we had entertained.

“I will come whenever you ask me,” he said, quite simply.

“No. You know I would never ask you again, if I could help it. Oh, you were so kind, but it–” I stopped. I did not know how to say what I meant. I had better not have said so much.

“I don’t want you to have that feeling. It amuses me to come, Comtesse, only you feed one too well. Do you remember how I drank everything I could get hold of, to please you?”

“You were ridiculous!” And I laughed.

“I thought I was heroic.” Then, in another voice: “I think you must have that boudoir altered a little, you know, before long. I can’t say I found your sofa comfortable.”

“Not like this.” And I lay back luxuriously.

“I generally choose things with a reason, if I can.”

“That sounds like one of grandmamma’s speeches.” Then I stupidly blushed, remembering, apropos of what she had said, almost the same thing. It was when she accepted Mrs. Gurrage’s invitation to the ball, where she calculated I should meet Antony. That was before she had the fainting-fit. I stared into the fire. What would have happened by now, if she could have carried out that plan–the “suitable and happy” arrangement of my future!

“Comtesse, why do you stop suddenly and blush, and then stare into the fire? Your grandmother was not, I am sure, in the habit of saying such startling things as to cause you such emotions.”

I looked up at him. I suppose my eyes were troubled, for he said, so gently:

“Dear little girl, I won’t tease you. Tell me, have you read any more books on philosophy lately?”

I drank the last sip of my tea, and held out my cup. It was nice tea.

“No, I have not had time to read anything. There, you can take my cup. You have such pretty things here. Everything is suitable, and it gives me pleasure. I don’t feel philosophical; I feel genuine human enjoyment.”

“That is good to know. Well, we won’t be philosophical, then, we will be humanly happy,” and he sat down beside me.

I took up, idly, a little book that was lying on a table near, because my silly heart had begun to beat again, like Lydia Languish or any vaporish young lady in an early romance. I looked at the title and Antony looked at me. I read it over without taking in the sense, and then the name arrested my attention.

“_A Digit of the Moon_,” I said, “What a queer title!”

“What long eyelashes you have, Comtesse!” said Antony, apropos of nothing. “They make a great shadow on your cheek, and they have no business to be so dark, with your light, mud-colored hair.”

“How rude, to call my hair mud-colored!” I said, indignantly, “I always thought it _blond cendre_.”

“So it is, and it shines like burnished metal. But you are a vain little thing, I expect, and I did not wish to encourage you.”

His voice was full of a caress. I did not dare to look into his queer cat’s eyes.

“You have black eyelashes yourself, and as I am of the family, why may I not have them too?” I said, pouting.

“Of course you can have them or anything else you wish, to oblige you. But I should rather like to know how long your hair is when you let it down. You look as if you had a great quantity there, but probably it is not all your own.” And he smiled provokingly.

“If I was not afraid of the servants coming in I would undo it to show you,” I replied, with great indignation and a sadden feeling that I, too, could tease. “I never heard anything so insulting!”

“My servants are well trained. It is not six o’clock yet. They won’t come in until half-past six, unless I ring. You have plenty of time.”

A spirit of _coquetterie_ came over me for the first time in my life. I took out the two great tortoise-shell pins that held it up, and let my hair tumble down around me. It falls in heavy waves nearly to my knees.

“That is perfectly beautiful!” said Antony, almost reverently. “I apologize. It is your own.”

I got up and shook it out and stood before him. It hung all round me like a cloak. Oh, I was in a wicked mood, and I do not defend my conduct.

“Comtesse,” he said, and his eyes swam, “fiendish little temptress, put up that hair. And come, I will tell you about _A Digit of the Moon_.”

I pretended to feel greatly snubbed, and in a minute had twisted it to my head again.

“It is a queer title,” I said.

Antony talked a little faster than usual. It seemed as if he was breathing rather quickly.

“I shall give you this book. It only came out last year. I think it is one of the most delightful things that ever was written. You must read it carefully.” And he put it into my hand. “The description, in the beginning, of the ingredients which God used to create woman is quite exquisite. Listen, I will read it to you.” And he took the book again.

His voice is the most refined and the tones are deep. One cannot say what quality there is in some voices and pronunciation that makes them so attractive. If Antony were an ugly man he still would be alluring with such a voice as his. I listened intently until the last word.

“It is, indeed, a beautiful description,” I said.

“You probably are all those things, Comtesse, except, perhaps, the ‘chattering of the monkeys.’ You don’t speak much.”

“And do you feel like ‘man’?”

“That I cannot do with you, or without you? Yes, especially the latter part of the sentence.”

I got up from the sofa and looked about the room. It seemed as if we were getting on dangerous ground.

“How comfortable men make their habitations! And I like the smell,” I said, sniffing. “The pine-logs, I suppose.”

“And the cedar panelling, perhaps, scents the place a little when it gets hot.”

“You have thousands of books here.” And I looked round at the high shelves between the long windows. “And what a nice piano! How happy you must be!”

“I should have been–and am sometimes, still,” he said. “The Duke had a good room, too, at Myrlton.”

I sat down on the sofa again. Antony had risen and leaned against the mantel-piece. He was idly pulling the ears of Bedevere, who, sitting there, reached up into his hand. I never could have imagined dogs so big as are these three.

“Of course you went to Myrlton. I had forgotten. The Duke made love to you, I suppose?”

“Why should you suppose?”

“Because I saw signs of it at Harley. Don’t you remember how I carried you off to the woods while he fetched your umbrella?”

I laughed.

“Well, did he make love to you?”

“Why should you think any man would make love to me? It is ridiculous. You seem to forget I have only been married five months. Even in a well-bred world, where they have gone back to nature, they don’t begin as soon as that, do they?”

“You are prevaricating. He did make love to you, then?”

“Lady Grenellen had brought an heiress there for him, and he was busy with her.”

“And you made it as difficult for him as possible to do his duty. How heartless of you, Comtesse! I would not have believed it of you.”

His voice was more mocking than I had ever heard it.

“I did nothing of the kind.”

“He is an agreeable fellow, Berty.”

“Full of information.”

“Superficial.”

“Possibly.”

Then our eyes met.

“Comtesse, we are not here to talk about the Duke of Myrlshire in these our few minutes of grace. The 6.42 train will soon be in.” And he sat down again beside me.

“What shall we talk about, then?” I asked, trying to keep my head. A maddening sensation of excitement made my voice sound strained. “First, I want to tell you how beautiful I find my room. If you had known my taste, and had it done to please me, you could not have found anything I should like so much.”

“I did know your taste, and I had it done to please you. It is for you. No one else shall ever sleep there,” he said, simply, and looked deep into my eyes.

I had nothing to say.

“I like to know there is a room for you in my house. I want everything in it to be exactly as you desire. When you have time to look, I think you will find some agreeable books, and your old friends La Rochefoucauld, etc. But if there is a thing you want changed, it would give me pleasure to change it.”

I was stupefied. I could not speak.

“Over the mantel-piece is the little pastel by La Tour I told you I bought last year.”

“Oh! it is good of you!” I managed to say.

“I have at least the satisfaction of knowing that I please myself too if it gives you pleasure. I want you to feel there is one corner in the world where you are really at home with the things that are sympathetic to you, so that whenever you will come over like this it will give you a feeling of repose.”

“Oh! it is dear of you!”

“You said the other day,” he continued, “that I, at all events, was never serious, and I told you I would tell you that when you came here to Dane Mount. Well, I tell you now–I am serious in this–that if there is anything in the world I can do to make you happy I will do it.”

“It makes me happy to know you understand–that there is some one of my kin. Oh! I have been very lonely since grandmamma died!”

He looked at me long, and we neither of us spoke.

“It was a very cruel turn of fate that we did not meet this time last year,” he said at last.

“Yes.”

“Comtesse, I want to make your life happier. I want to introduce you to several nice women I know. I shall have a big party next month. Will you come and stay again? Then you will gradually get a pleasant society round you, and you need not trouble about the Dodds and the Springers–no, Springle was their name, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. It is so kind of you, all this thought for me. Oh, Sir Antony, I have nothing to say!” I faltered.

He frowned.

“Do not call me _Sir_ Antony, child. It hurts me. You must not forget we are cousins. You are Ambrosine to me, or my dearest little Comtesse.”

The clock struck half-past six. The servants entered the room to take the tea-things away, and while they were there a footman brought in three telegrams, one for me and two for my host.

Mine was from Augustus, and ran:

“Hope you have arrived safely. Hear fog bad in country too. Impossible to get to Liverpool Street yet. Awfully worried at your being alone there. Shall come by last train.”

Antony handed the two others to me. One was from Lady Grenellen, the other from Augustus, both expressing their annoyance and regret. The telegrams were all sent off at the same hour from Piccadilly, so apparently they were together, my husband and his friend.

“It is comic,” I said, “this situation! Augustus and Lady Grenellen fog-bound in London, and you and I here, it is the fault of none of us.”

“I like a fog,” said Antony, with his old, whimsical smile, all trace of seriousness departed. “A good, useful thing, a fog. Hope it won’t lift in a hurry.”

“Now come and show me the ancestors,” I said.

He led the way to the drawing-room–a great room, all painted white, too, and in each faded green-brocade panel hangs a picture. The electric lights are so arranged that each was perfectly illuminated.

They were all interesting to me, especially the portraits of our common ancestors.

“That must be your grandfather’s father,” said Antony, pointing to a portly gentleman, with lightly powdered hair and a blue riding-coat, painted at the end of the eighteenth century. “It was his eldest son, who had no sons, and left the place to his daughter, who married Sir Geoffrey Thornhirst.”

“But where is your great-great-grandmother that you told me about, and rather insinuated she was as nice as my Ambrosine Eustasie de Calincourt?”

“There she is, in the place of honor. She was painted by Gainsborough, after she married. What do you think of her?”

“Oh! she is lovely,” I said, “and she has your cat’s eyes.”

“‘She is your ancestress, too, but she is not like you. Do you see the dog in the picture?”

“Yes. Why, it is just the portrait of one of your three knights!”

“Have you never heard the tradition, then?”

“No.”

“As long as Dane Mount possesses that breed of dogs fortune is to favor the owner; but if they die out I can’t tell you what calamities are not to overtake him. It has been going for hundreds of years.”

“Then Ulfus, Belfus, and Bedevere are the descendants of that dog in the picture?”

“Yes.”

“No wonder they give themselves such airs.”

“Do you hear that, boys?” said Antony, turning to the three, who had again followed us. “My Comtesse says you give yourselves airs. Come and die for her to show her your real sentiments.”

The three great fellows advanced in their dignified way, casting adoring glances at their master.

“Now die, all of you!”

They sneezed and curled up their lips, and made the usual grimaces of dogs when they are moved and self-conscious, but they all three lay flat down at my feet.

“I _am_ flattered,” I said, “and I have not even a biscuit to give you.”

“We are not so sordid as that at Dane Mount. We do not die for biscuits, but because we love the lady,” said Antony.

I bent down and kissed Ulfus, who was nearest to me.

“Now I am going to show you some Thornhirst pictures and some older Athelstans that are in the hall and the dining-room, and a portrait of my mother that I have in my own smoking-room.”

Antony made the most interesting guide. There was something amusing and to the point about all his comments. I soon knew the different characteristics of each member of the family. One or two, especially of the Thornhirsts, are wonderfully like him–the same level, dark eyebrows and firm mouths.

“This is my sanctum,” he said, at last, opening a door down a corridor, and we went into a large room with a lower ceiling than the rest of the apartments I had been into. It is panelled with cedar-wood also and sparely hung with old prints. A delicious smell of burning pine-logs again greeted me. The thick, silk curtains were drawn. The lamps were softly shaded. An old dog of the same family as the three knights basked before the fire. It was all cosey and homelike.

“Oh! this is a nice room, too!” I exclaimed.

“I spend a good deal of time here. One grows to like one’s rooms.”

His mother’s portrait hangs over the fireplace, a charming face, whose beauty is not even disguised by the hideous fashions of 1870, when it was painted.

“She died when I was in Russia,” said Antony.

My eyes fell on the mantel-piece. The narrow ledge held three photographs, one of a man, one of Lady Tilchester, and the centre one–an amateur production, evidently–of a little girl with bare feet, putting one fat toe into a stream, her hat hanging down her back, and her face bent down looking at the water.

“What a dear little picture,” I said. “Who is that?”

“Oh, that is the Tilchester child, Muriel Harley,” he said, carelessly. “We snap-shotted her paddling in the burn in Scotland a year or two ago. Come, it is dressing-time. I must send you up-stairs.” And then, as we left the room, “You look so comfortable in that tea-gown! Don’t bother to change,” he said.

“Why deprive me of displaying to you the splendors I brought over on purpose?” I said, gayly, as I ran up the broad steps.

XIV

I do not think there can be a more agreeable form of entertainment than a _tete-a-tete_ dinner, provided your companion is sympathetic. Anyway, to me this will always be one of the golden hours in my life to look back upon.

Never had Antony been so attractive. Every sentence was well expressed, and only when one came to think of them afterwards, did one discover their subtle flattery.

By the time the servants had finally left the room I felt like a purring cat whose fur has been all stroked the right way–at peace with the world.

The dinner had been exquisite, but I was too excited to feel hungry.

“Comtesse,” said Antony, looking at the clock, “there is one good hour before the arrivals by the last train can possibly get here. Shall we spend it in the library or the drawing-room?” He did not suggest his own sitting-room.

“The library. It is more cosey.”

As he held the door open for me, there was an expression in his face which again caused me the ridiculous sensation I have spoken of so often. I suddenly realized that life at some moments is worth living. Perhaps grandmamma and the Marquis were right after all, and these glimpses of paradise are the compensations.

“Will you play to me, Comtesse?” Antony said when we got to the library and he opened the piano. “I shall be selfish and sit in a comfortable chair and listen to you.”

I am not a great musician, but grandmamma always said my playing gave her pleasure. The music makes me feel–so, perhaps, that is why it makes others feel, too.

I played on, it seemed to me, a long time. Then, after some tender bits of Greig, running from one to another, I suddenly stopped. The music had been talking too much to me. It said, over and over again: “Ambrosine, you love this man. He is beginning to absorb the whole of your life.” And, again: “Life is short. This happiness will be over in a few moments. Live while you may.”

“Why do you stop, Comtesse?” asked Antony, in a moved voice.

“I–do not know.”

He rose and came and leaned on the piano, I felt–oh! I had never been so agitated in my life. At all costs he must not say anything to me, nothing that I should have to stop, nothing to break this beautiful dream–

“Oh! do you not hear the sound of carriage-wheels?” I exclaimed, in a half voice.

It broke the spell.

Antony walked to the window. He pulled the curtains aside and opened a shutter to look upon the night.

“It is the thickest fog I ever remember,” he said. “I doubt if the brougham, which put up at the station, could get back here, even if they have come by the last train.”

“Oh! of course they have come!” I said, unsteadily.

He did not answer, but carefully closed the shutter again and drew the curtains. I went to the fireplace and began caressing one of the dogs. My hands were cold as ice. Antony lost a little of his _sang-froid_. He picked up a paper-knife and put it down again.

It seemed to me my heart was thumping so loudly that he must hear it where he stood.

We both listened intently. Neither of us spoke. Eleven o’clock struck. The butler entered the room.

“Bilsworth has managed to get here on one of the horses, Sir Antony, and he says the last train is in, and no one arrived by it.”

“Very well,” said Antony, calmly. “You can shut up for the night.”

And the butler went out, softly closing the door behind him.

XV

Before I opened my eyes next morning in my beautiful room a telegram came from Augustus–a long telegram written the night before, telling me that it was impossible to penetrate the fog that night, and I was to come up and join him at once in London, as he had just decided to go to the war with his Yeomanry. He could not keep out of it longer, as all his brother officers had volunteered, so he had felt obliged to do so, too. They were to start in less than three weeks.

“I shall go by the ten-o’clock train,” I told McGreggor, as I scribbled my reply. “I must get up at once. Ask for my breakfast to be brought up here.”

I was dressed by nine o’clock and sipping my chocolate.

The daintiness of the old Dresden china equipage pleased me, forced itself upon my notice in spite of the deep preoccupation of my mind.

An exquisite bunch of fresh roses lay on the tray, and a note from Antony–only a few words–hoping I had slept well and saying the brougham would be ready for me at half-past nine, and that he also was going to London.

McGreggor had left the room. Oh! am I very wicked? I kissed the writing before I threw the paper in the fire!

And so Augustus is going to the war, after all. It must have been some very strong influence which persuaded him to volunteer, he who hated the very thought.

I felt bitterly annoyed with myself that this news did not cause me any grief. I have been this man’s wife for five months, and his going into danger in a far country leaves me cold. But I did, indeed, grieve for his mother. Her many good qualities came back to me. This will be a terrible blow to her.

I looked up at the little pastel by La Tour. The sprightly French Marquise smiled back at me.

“Good-bye,” I said. “You, pretty Marquise, would call me a fool because to-day Antony is not my lover. But I–oh, I am glad!”

He did not even kiss my finger-tips last night. We parted sadly after a storm of words neither he nor I had ever meant to speak.

“_Il s’en faut bien que nous commissions tout ce que nos passions nous font faire!_”

Once more La Rochefoucauld has spoken truth.

Why the situation is as it is I cannot tell. In my bringing up, the idea of taking a lover after marriage seemed a more or less natural thing, and not altogether a deadly sin, provided the affair was conducted _sans fanfaronnade_, without scandal. It was not that grandmamma and the Marquis actually discussed such matters in my hearing, but the general tone of their conversation gave that impression.

Marriage, as the Marquis said to me, was not a pleasure–it is a means to an end, a tax of society. The _agrements_ of life came afterwards. I had always understood he had been grandmamma’s lover.

Once I heard him express this sentiment when I was supposed to be reading my book: The marriage vows, he said, were the only ones a gentleman might break without great blemish to his honor. This was the atmosphere I had always lived in, and since my wedding the people of my own class that I have met do not seem to hold different views. Lord Tilchester is Babykins’s lover. The Duke has passed on from several women, and, to come nearer home, there are my husband and Lady Grenellen. Only Lady Tilchester seems noble and above all these earthly things.

Why did I hesitate? I do not know. There is a something in my spirit which cried out against the meanness of it, the degradation, the sacrilege. I could not break my word to Augustus. Oh! I could not stoop to desecrate myself, and to act for all the future–hours of deceit.

And now after to-day I will never see Antony alone again. That we shall casually meet I cannot guard against. But never again shall I stay in his house. Never again awake in this beautiful room. Never again–

“The brougham is at the door, ma’am,” said McGreggor, interrupting my thoughts, and I descended the stairs. The fog was still gray and raw, but had considerably lifted.

In the uncompromising daylight Antony’s face looked haggard and drawn.

“Comtesse,” he said, as we drove along, “I cannot forgive myself for causing you pain last night. Nothing was further from my thoughts than to harass and disturb you–here, in my own house–that I wanted you to look upon as your haven of rest. But I am not made of stone. The situation was exceptional–and I love you.”

In spite of our imminent parting, joy rushed through me at his words. Oh! could I ever get tired of hearing Antony say “I love you”?

“You did not cause me pain,” I said. “We had drifted, neither knowing where. It was fate.”

“Darling, do you remember our talk in your sitting-room, and of the _coup de foudre_? Well, it has struck us both. Oh! I could curse myself! Your dear little white face looks up at me pathetically without a reproach, and I have been a selfish brute to even tell you I love you. I meant to be your friend and comrade that you might feel you had at least some one that would stand by you forever. I wanted to make your life pleasanter, and now my mad folly has spoiled it all, and you decree that we must part. Oh! my little Comtesse, my loving you has only been to hurt you!”

“Oh no. It makes me glad to know it–only–only I cannot see you any more.”

“I would promise never to say another word that could disturb you. Oh! Why must we say good-bye?”

“Because I could not promise not to wish you to say things. You must surely know if we went on meeting it could only have one end.”

“Well, I will do as you wish, my darling white rose. In my eyes you are above the angels.”

Antony’s voice when it is moved could wile a bird from off a tree.

Then I told him of my telegram, and I know he, too, felt glad that last night we had parted as we had.

“Ambrosine, listen to me,” he said, “I will not try to see you, but if you want anything in the world done for you, promise to let me do it.”

I promised.

“There is just one thing I want to know,” I said. “That day before my wedding, when you sent me the knife and the note saying it was not too late to cut the Gordian knot, what did you mean? Did you care for me, then?”

“I do not know exactly what I meant. I was greatly attracted by you. That day we came over I very nearly said to you then, ‘Come along away with me,’ and then we never met again until your wedding. When I sent the knife I half wondered what you would say. I wrote the note half in joke, half in earnest. My principal feeling was that I could not bear you to marry Augustus. If we had chanced to meet then, really, I should have taken you off to Gretna Green.”

“Alas!” I said.

The footman opened the door. We had arrived at the station.

We did not travel in the same carriage going to London. We had agreed it would be better not. And I do not think any one, seeing Antony calmly handing me into the hired brougham Augustus had sent to me, would have guessed that we were parting forever, and that, to me at least, all joy in the world had fled.

It is stupid to go on talking about one’s feelings. Having cut off one’s hand, I am sure grandmamma would say it would be drivelling and mawkish to meditate over each drop of blood.

I tried hard to think of other things. I counted the stupid pattern on the braid that ornamented the inside of the brougham. I counted the lamp-posts, with their murky lights, showing through the fog. I looked at McGreggor sitting stolidly opposite me. Could any emotions happen to that wooden mask? “Have you a lover that you have said good-bye to forever, I wonder? And is that why your face is carved out of stone?” I said to myself.

In spite of all grandmamma’s stoical bringing-up, it was physical pain I was suffering.

In Queen Victoria Street a hansom passed us and I caught a misty glimpse of Antony. He smiled mechanically as he raised his hat.

And so this is the end.

The fog is falling thickly again. Everything is damp and cold and black as night.

And I–Oh! I wish–

“Hallo, little woman! Glad to see you!” said Augustus, in a thick and tipsy voice, as I got out of the carriage. And he kissed me in front of all the people at the hotel door.

BOOK III

I

The ship sailed a week ago and Augustus has gone to the war. Oh, I hate to look back and think of those dreadful three weeks before he started!

A nightmare of hideous scenes. Alternate drunkenness and inordinate affection for me, or sullen silence and cringing fear. Oh, of all the frightful moments there are in life, there can be none so dark as those that some women have to suffer from the drunken passions and ways of men!

Augustus would have deserted at the last moment if an opportunity had offered. His mother made matters worse, as, instead of remembering her country as so many mothers have, and sending her son on his way with brave and glorious words, she wept and lamented from morning till night.

“I told you so, Gussie,” she said, when she first met us in London. “I was always against your joining that Yeomanry. I told you it wasn’t only the uniform, and it might get you into trouble some day. Oh, to think that an extra glass of champagne could have made you volunteer. And now you’ve got to go to the war and you have broken my heart.”

Augustus’s own terror was pitiable to see if it had not roused all my contempt.

Oh, that I should bear the name of a craven!

Lady Grenellen was also in London. When he was sober enough and not engaged with his military duties, Augustus went to see her, and if she happened to be unkind to him he vented his annoyance upon me on his return.

Had it not been that he was going to the war, I could not, for my own self-respect, have put up with the position any longer. But that thought, and the sight of his weeping mother, made me bear all things in silence. I could not add to her griefs.

She quite broke down one day.

“I always knew Gussie took too much. It began at Cambridge, long ago,” she wept. “But after he first saw you and fell in love, he gave it up, I hoped, and now it has broken out again. I thought marrying you would have cured him. Oh, deary me! I feared some one would tell your grandma, and she would break off the match. I was glad when your wedding was over.” And she sobbed and rocked herself to and fro. “I’m grateful to you, my dear, for what you have done for him. It’s been ugly for you lately. But there–there, he’s going to the war and I shall never see him again!”

“Do not take that gloomy view. The war is nearly over. There is no danger now,” I said, to comfort her. “Augustus will only have riding about and a healthy out-door life, and it will probably cure him.”

“I’ve lived in fear ever since the war began, and now it’s come,” she wailed, refusing to be comforted.

I said everything else I could, and eventually she cheered up for a few days after this, but at the end broke down again, and now, Amelia writes, lies prostrate in a darkened room. Amelia is having her time of trial. They left for Bournemouth yesterday.

Am I a cold and heartless woman because now that Augustus has gone I can only feel relief?

One of his last speeches was not calculated to leave an agreeable impression.

“You’d better look out how you behave while I am away,” he said. “I’d kick up a row in a minute, only you’re such a lump of ice no man would bother with you.” Then, in a passion: “I wish to God they would, and take you off, so I could get some one of more use to me!” He was surprised that I did not wish him to kiss me ten minutes after this.

And now he has gone, and for six months, at any rate, I shall be free from his companionship.

When he returns things shall be started on a different footing.

I came down to Ledstone by myself yesterday. I have no plans. Perhaps I shall stay here until Christmas, when I am to go to Bournemouth to my mother-in-law.

The house seems more than ever big and hideously oppressive. I must find some interest. The old numbness has returned with double force. I take up a book and put it down again. I roam from one room to another. I am restless and rebellious–rebellious with fate.

I know grandmamma would be angry with me could she come back to me now. She would say I was behaving with the want of self-control of a common person, and not as one of our race. Well, perhaps she is right. I shall go to the cottage and see Hephzibah and give myself a shock. That may do me good.

I never willingly let myself think of Antony, but unconsciously my thoughts are always turning to the evening in the fog. I do not know where he is. He may be at Dane Mount, only these few miles off, and yet we must not meet.

I wonder if Ambrosine Eustasie de Calincourt had ever a lover. Probably–and she would have listened to him, being of her time.

Oh, what is this quality in me that makes me as I am–a flabby thing, with strength enough to push away all I desire in life, to keep untarnished my idea of honor, and yet too weak to tear the matter from my mind once I have done so?

How grandmamma would despise me!

I think of the Princess’s answer to the riddle of the nineteenth day in _A Digit of the Moon_. I am this middle thing, and it is only the very bad and very good that achieve peace and perfect happiness.

“Come, Roy, away with us! Let us run, as we used to do last year when we were young. Let us shake ourselves and laugh. No more of this unworthy repining! There are some in the world that have but one eye, and some but one leg, and they cannot see or run, and are worse off than we are, my friend. So think of that, and don’t lift your lip at me, and tell me it is cold, and you want to stay by the fire.”

All the blinds were down in the front of the cottage as I unlatched the garden gate–the gate I had passed through last following grandmamma’s coffin to her grave. I ran round to the back door and soon found Hephzibah.

Her joy was great to see me there, her only regret being she had not known I was coming that she might have had the fires lit. They were all laid, and she soon put a match to them.

With what pride she showed me how she had kept everything! Then she left me alone, standing in the little drawing-room. It seemed so wonderfully small to me now. The pieces of brocade still hid the magenta “suite,” but arranged with a prim stiffness they lacked in our day. Dear Hephzibah! She had been dusting them, and would not fold them up and put them away in case that I should ever come.

The china all stood as it used, and grandmamma’s chair with her footstool, and the little table near it with her magnifying-glass and spectacle-case. There were her books, the old French classics, and the modern yellow backs, her paper-knife still in one, half-cut. I never realized how happy I had been here, in this little room, a year ago. How happy, and, oh, how ridiculously young! My work-box stood in its usual place, a bit of fine embroidery protruding from its lid.

For the first time in my life I sat down in grandmamma’s chair. Oh, if something of her spirit could descend upon me! I tried to think of her maxims, her wonderful courage, her cheerfulness in all adversities, her wit, her gayety. I seemed a paltry, feeble creature daring to sit there, in her _bergere_, and sigh at fate. No, I would grumble no more. I, too, would be of the race.

How long I mused there I do not know. The fire was burning low.

I went up to my own old room, I must see everything, now I was here. It struck me with a freezing chill as I opened the door. The fire had not drawn here, and lay a mass of smouldering sticks and paper in the narrow grate.

There was my little white bed, cold and narrow. The dressing-table, with its muslin flounces and cheap, white-bordered mirror. Even the china tray was there, where, I remember, my jewels lay the night before my wedding, and close beside it, the red-morroco case Antony’s present had come in–left behind, by mistake, I suppose, when the other gifts were packed away. The note he had written me with it was still in its lid.

The paper felt icy to touch. I pulled it out and read it to the end. Then I threw it in the fire. The sullen, charred sticks had not life enough to burn it. I lit a match and watched the bright flames curl up the chimney until all was destroyed. Then I fled. Here at least in the cottage I will never come again. The room is full of ghosts.

On the whole, however, my visit did me good. I returned to Ledstone with a firm determination to be more like grandmamma.

A telegram was awaiting me from Augustus, sent from his first stopping-place. He had caught the measles, it appeared. The measles! I thought only children got the measles.

Poor Augustus! He would make a bad patient. I was truly sorry, and sent the most affectionate and sympathetic answer I could think of to meet him at St. Helena.

I wrote to the war office, asking them please to send me any further news when they received it. But the measles! It almost made me laugh.

II

Next day Lady Tilchester wrote and asked me to go to Harley. She had heard I was alone, and would be so delighted to have me for a week, she said.

I started two days afterwards. To see her would give me pleasure.

“How very white and thin you are looking, dear!” she said, as we sat together in her sitting-room the first afternoon I arrived. “You are not the same person as the very young girl who danced at the Yeomanry ball in May. How old are you, Ambrosine?”

“I was twenty in October.”

“Twenty years old! Only twenty years old, and with that sad face! Nothing in life ought to make one sad at twenty. You look like a piteous child. I could imagine Muriel, with a dead bird, or a set of kittens to be drowned, looking as pathetic as you do.”

“I know, I am ashamed of myself,” I said, “Grandmamma would be so angry with me if she were here.”

“Well, now we are going to cheer you up. The Duke is coming on Saturday. He is not married yet, you see.”

“Oh, tell me how the affair went,” I said, smiling. “It–it’s–a month ago we were at Myrlton.”

“The silly girl preferred Luffy, but for the last weeks they both were hanging on. Miss Trumpet and her aunt were staying at Claridge’s, and they tell me it was too ridiculous! Luffy lunched with them every day, and Berty dined in the evening.”

“You did not tell her about the Coronation, then?”

“Yes, I _did_! But just for once in a way she had fallen in love–Luffy _is_ beautiful, you know!–and, my dear child, any girl or woman in love is the most unreasonable, absurd creature on the face of the earth.”

“Yes, I know. But the Americans don’t get in love like other nations. She assured me they knew how to keep men in their places on the other side of the Atlantic.”

“But the ‘place’ of a man is doing exactly what the particular woman in the case wants him to do, don’t forget that! And Miss Trumpet finally decided, last week, that she wanted him to be her husband.”

“Poor Duke!” I said.

“Oh, I don’t think Berty minds very much. Anyway, you will be able to console him.”

“You have quite a mistaken idea there. He likes to talk about himself, and explain to me his views on morals as manners, but he is not the least interested in _me_. I am a very good listener, you know. Grandmamma never let me interrupt people.”

“Poor old Berty!” she said. “He has the best heart underneath all his silly mannerisms. I have known him since he was a child. He is much older than he looks, almost my age, in fact.”

“How has Lady Grenellen taken the engagement?” I asked.

“Cordelia? Oh, she is simply furious. It is the first time any other woman has ever had a chance with her. An English girl would have a rather blank prospect in front of her for the afterwards. But these Americans are so wonderfully clever and sensible, probably Luffy will remain Miss Trumpet’s devoted slave for years.”

Lord Tilchester entered the room, and said “How d’y do,” to me. He is a gruff, unattractive person. I do not know what Babykins sees in him.

He spent his time eating tea-cake and feeding the dogs, with a casual remark here and there. At last he left. I was glad. Lady Tilchester’s manner to him is always gracious and complacent. She attends to his wishes, and talks to him without yawning. She must be my model for my future treating of Augustus This is the most perfect and beautiful lady in the world. I think.

There were only a couple of men staying in the house besides myself until the Saturday, when a crowd of people came. In these few days I got to know Margaret Tilchester more intimately. Her beautiful nature would stand any test. All her real and intense interests are concentrated upon her schemes to benefit mankind, practical, sensible schemes, with no sentiment about them. I wish I could see her children. The boy is, of course, at Eton, and the little girl is again away, visiting her grandmother. There are dozens of photographs of them about, and the girl keeps reminding me of some one, I cannot fix who. She looks a dear little creature. Oh, I should love a baby! But still I shall always pray I may never have a child.

The Duke arrived with the other guests on Saturday. He looked just the same. His reverse of fortune had not altered his appearance. He seemed extremely glad to see me.

“You have heard how the affair went,” he said to me the first night after dinner. “After keeping me in the most ridiculous position, dangling for weeks, she preferred Luffy.”

“Yes, I heard.”

“My only satisfaction out of the whole thing is that, for once, Cordelia is paid out in her own coin. As a rule, she only cares to take away some one who belongs to some other woman, and now this little girl has turned the tables.”

“How spiteful of you, when Lady Grenellen was trying to arrange for your future happiness!”

“Nothing of the kind. You don’t know Cordelia. She is only afraid I shall shut up Myrlton, or let it, and she amuses herself a good deal there. She thought if I had a rich wife her opportunities would oftener occur. I can only keep it open in the autumn now.”

“Oh, you are a wonderful company!” I laughed.

“I wish you were a widow. You would suit me in every way.”

“Hush!” I said, frowning. “I do not like you to speak so, even in jest.”

“But I always told you I loved you,” he said, resignedly.

“Nonsense. What is this ridiculous love you all speak about? A silly passion that only wants what it cannot have, or, if it succeeds, immediately translates itself to some one else. You told me so yourself. You said at least you were not wearyingly faithful–you, as a class.”

“How you confute one with argument, lovely lady! I shall call you Portia. But what an adorable Portia!”

“Now stop,” I said, severely. “I would rather hear your views on morality and religion than the rubbish you are now talking.”

“I have never been more snubbed in my life. Even Miss Corrisande K. Trumpet did not flatten me out as you do,” he said, with feigned resentment.

“You told me in the beginning I looked unlike the Englishwomen. Well, I am unlike them. I am a person of bad nature. I refuse to be bored.”

“And I bore you?”

“Only when you talk silly sentiment.”

“Then it is a bargain. If I don’t bore you, you will be friends with me?”

“And if you do–_bon soir, monsieur_,” and I rose, laughing, and joined my hostess.

The party this time was much nicer than the former one I came to. It was composed of clever, interesting people. The conversation was often brilliant and elevating. No one talked like Babykins or Lady Grenellen. In fact, it appeared another society altogether. It seemed impossible among these people to realize that perhaps, in reality, they are like the rest. There was not a word or a look which would suggest that they held any but the highest views.

Lady Tilchester shone among them. She seemed to be in a suitable setting. They were mostly of very high rank, and the rest politicians and diplomats. They did not clip their sentences and use pet words, and they did not smoke cigarettes all the time.

The women, although not nearly so well dressed or attractive to look at, were much more agreeable to one another, and one was a perfectly wonderful musician. Her playing delighted us all. She played the things of Greig that I played to Antony on the evening at Dane Mount. I sat by myself and listened. I seemed to see his face and hear his voice, but the good resolutions I had made while sitting in grandmamma’s chair helped me to put these thoughts away.

I felt more at rest, at peace, here. Every one’s life seemed full of interest–interest in something great. I would like this society best if I had to choose which I would frequent, but I can realize that people as good as these, but duller and less brilliant, would make one look at the clock.

Perhaps Lady Tilchester’s plan of having every sort at her house is the best, after all. Then she can have variety and never be bored.

I wonder if it is the occupation of their minds with great things, in this set, which balances with the “lives of compulsion” led by the middle classes, and so prevents them also from “getting back to nature,” as the Duke said.

It is an interesting problem.

Mr. Budge sat down and talked to me. He has a very strong character, I am sure, and I was flattered that he should think me worth speaking to.

“I admire your perfect stillness,” he said at last, after there had been a pause of a moment or two. “I have never seen a woman sit so still. It is a great quality.”

“I was not allowed to fidget when I was young,” I said. “Perhaps one acquires repose as a habit.”

“When you were young! Why, you look only a baby now! I would take you for about eighteen years old, and that is what interests me. Your eyes have a question and a story in them that is not usual at eighteen.”

“Oh, I am ever so much older than that! I must be at least fifty!” I said.

He smiled. “I am fifty. It is a terrible age.”

“I dare say it would be nice to be fifty if one had been long enough young–to get there gradually. But to jump there, that is what is not amusing.”

“And you have jumped to fifty? I thought there was a story in those Sphinx eyes.”

“Why do you say that? You are the second person who has said I have the eyes of the Sphinx. I would like to know why?” I asked.

“Because they are inscrutable. They suggest much and reveal nothing. It would interest me deeply to hear your impression of things.”

“What things?”

“The world, the flesh, or the devil–anything that would make you lift the curtain a little. For instance, what do you think of this society here now?”

“They all seem to be clever people with interests in life.”

“Most people have interests in life. The candle would soon burn out otherwise. What are yours, if I may ask?”

“I am observing. I have not decided yet what interests me. I would like to travel, I think, and see the world.”

“That is an easy matter at your age. But have you no other desires?”

“No, unless it would be to sleep very soundly and enjoy my food.”

“What a little cynic! A gross little materialist! And you look the embodiment of etherealism.”

“At fifty I have always understood creature comforts begin to matter more. Each age has its pleasures.”

He laughed.

“Tell me something else about the emotions of the fifty-year-olds.”

“They get up in the morning and they wonder if it will rain, and, if they are in England, it often answers them by pouring. Then they breakfast, and wonder if they will read or play the piano or walk, or if it matters a scrap if they do none of these things, and presently they look at the papers, and they see the war is going on still, and people are being killed, and they wonder to what end. And they read that the opposition is accusing the government of all sorts of crimes and negligences, and they remember that is the fate of governments, whichever side is in. And then they lunch, perhaps, and see friends. And they find they want some one else’s husband but their own, and that the husband, perhaps, only cares for sport, or some one else’s wife. And then they sleep after lunch, and drive, and have tea, and read books about philosophy, and dine, and yawn, and finally go to bed.”

“What a terrible picture! And when they were young what did they do?”

“It is so long ago I heard of that, but I will try to remember. They woke feeling the day was a glorious thing in front of them, that even if they were in England, and it was raining, the sun would soon come out. And they sang while they dressed, and, if it was summer, they rushed round the garden, and loved all the flowers, and the scent in the air, and the beauty of the lights and colors, and the dear little butterflies. And they saw the shades on the trees, and they heard the different notes in the birds’ songs. And they were hungry, and glad to eat bread and milk. And every goose was a swan, and every moment full of joy, because they said to themselves, ‘Something glorious’ is coming to me, also, in this most glorious world!'”

I laughed softly. It seemed so true, and so long ago.

Mr. Budge looked at me. His face was grave and puzzled.

“Child,” he said, “it grieves me to hear you talk so. I assure you, I, who am really fifty, still enjoy all those things that you say only the very young can appreciate.”

“We have changed places, then!” I answered, lightly. “And I see Lady Tilchester making a move towards bed. That is a delightful place, where fifty and fifteen can both enjoy oblivion–so good-night!” And I smiled at him over my shoulder as I walked towards the door!

Next day, after church, the Duke and I went for a walk. He kept his promise and did not bore me. We discussed all sorts of things, some interesting, and all in the abstract. We left personalities alone. At last he said:

“Until the beginning of the nineteenth century things went along gradually. People could look ahead for a hundred years and say, with something like certainty, what would be likely to take place. But since then everything has gone with such leaps and bounds that no one could prophesy! Though in five hundred years we shall probably be a wretched republic, constructed out of the debris of the old order, and the Americans will be an aristocratic nation with a king.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Because when companies of people get sufficiently rich not to have to work they grow to like whatever will appeal to their vanity and self-importance. There is a halo round a title, and you can leave it to your children. A king becomes a necessity then.”

“An American king! It does seem a strange idea. Well, we shall not be there to see, so it does not matter to us. ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.'”

“History always repeats itself. Look at the Romans, a civilized republic, and then they must have an emperor.”

“And then the barbarians came and the whole thing was blotted out. And so in the end, _a quoi bon_? No one was ever benefited.”

“But the world would not go on if we said ‘_a quoi bon_’ to everything. The fortunate thing is that for the time we think things matter immensely. When people begin to feel nothing matters at all, it is because their livers are out of order. And when a nation becomes apathetic, that is what is the matter too. Look at Italy or Spain! Their livers are completely out of order. All their institutions are jaundiced and each country is going down-hill.”

“Poor Spain and Italy!” I said, and I laughed.

“I like to hear you laugh, I don’t care what it is about,” said the Duke.

“I believe if I had your great position and traditions of family I should try to be a strong influence in the country. I would try to make a name for myself in history,” I said. “I would not be contented with being just a duke.”

“Ah, if I had you always near me perhaps I should,” and he sighed pathetically.

“Now, now! you are breaking your bargain, and talking personally, which will bore me.”

“But you began it. I was quietly discussing something–the evolution of the world, I think–when you gave me your opinion of what you would do in my case.”

I laughed.

“Yes, but I am permitted to be illogical, not being a man, and I am thinking it might cause me an interest if I had your case.”

“I will tell you what my grandfather, the tenth Duke, said to me when he was a very old man–you know his record, of course? He was one of the greatest politicians and _litterateurs_ of his time, but had been in the Guards when a boy, and at sixteen fought at Waterloo. ‘After having tasted the best of most things in life, Robert,’ he said, ‘I can tell you there are only two things really worth having–women and fighting.'”

III

Before the end of my visit to Harley the Duke and I became fast friends, and while not possessing Antony’s lightness of wit or personal attractions, he is an agreeable companion and out of the ordinary run of young men. He promised me, as we said good-bye, that he would think of my words, and try to do something with his life to deserve my good opinion.

“Come here whenever you are lonely, dear child,” said my beautiful hostess, as we parted. “We delight in having you, and you must not mope at home all by yourself.”

The roads were too bad for the automobile, so I drove back to Ledstone in my victoria. It was a brilliant, frosty day, the 11th of December. Something in the air sent my spirits up. I felt if Mr. Budge had only been with me I could have told him I was growing younger. My first interest when I got home should be to alter my boudoir. Augustus had left me fairly provided with money, and I could, at all events, run up what bills I pleased. That thought brought me back to the last bill I had tried to incur.

What had been the result of my orders? Would the shop-people have told Lady Grenellen that a strange lady had sent her the tea-gowns? Would she have wondered about them and made inquiries? I had heard nothing further. I dismissed the subject and returned to my boudoir. I was just thinking deeply what change I should make as we drove up the avenue. Should I take away the mustard walls and do the whole thing white, or have it pale green, or what? Then we caught up a telegraph-boy. He handed me the orange envelope.

It was from the war office, and ran:

“We are deeply grieved to inform you intelligence has been received that your husband, Lieutenant Augustus Gurrage, of the Tilchester Yeomanry, died of measles on board the troop-ship _Aurora_ on the 6th instant.”

The sky suddenly became dark, I remember nothing more until I found myself in the hall with a crowd of servants round me. For the first time in my life I had fainted. I shall not analyze my feelings at this time. The principal emotions were horror and shock.

Oh, poor Augustus! to have died all alone at sea! Oh, I did, indeed, grieve for him! And the measles, which I had almost laughed at! The measles to have killed him! Afterwards, when we heard the details, it appeared his constitution was so weakened with the quantity of alcohol he taken in those last three weeks that he had no strength to stand against the attack.

My one thought was for his poor mother. A telegram had gone to her, too, it appeared.

I left for Bournemouth by the first train I could catch, but when I arrived I was met by a doctor. Mrs. Gurrage had lost her reason, he told me, upon hearing the news. She had been weak and ailing and in bed ever since her return from London, and this had proved the last straw, and now she lay, a childish imbecile, in her gorgeous bedroom up-stairs.

Oh, I can never write the horrors poor Amelia and I went through for the next ten days. The sadness of it all! My poor mother-in-law did not recognize me. She talked incessantly of Augustus. She seemed quite happy. He was a boy again to her–sometimes an infant, and at others almost grown up.

Once or twice she asked Amelia if I was not the new tenant at the cottage.

“She’s a pretty girl,” she said, “and Gussie’s wonderful took with her.”

Her poor voice had gone back to the sound and pronunciation of her early youth. Sometimes her accent was so broad and her expression so unusual that I could hardly understand her.

They had buried Augustus at sea. A grand and glorious grave, I think.

By the beginning of the new year I found myself a very rich woman. Augustus had left me his fortune, to be divided with his mother, should she survive him, and if not, to go to me and any possible children we might have. The will had been made directly we returned to Ledstone after our wedding.

Amelia received only a very small legacy.

Towards the end of January there was a change in the poor invalid up-stairs. My presence began to awake some memories. She was unhappy, and pointed at me. I disturbed and distressed her. It grieved me. I would so willingly have stayed and nursed her, but the doctors absolutely forbade my ever going into her room.

We had all the greatest specialists down from London to consult about her case, but they all shook their heads. It seemed hopeless and most unlikely she would ever recover her reason.

One great physician said to me, with truth:

“For the poor lady’s sake I could almost hope she will remain in her present state. She is happy and quite harmless, whereas she would suffer agonies of grief should she recover.”

I tried to take this view, and after making every possible arrangement for her comfort and attendance I left for London. There was a great deal of business to be seen about in connection with the will.

Lady Tilchester had telegraphed at once all her sympathy, and I got numbers of letters from all sorts of people.

Among them Lady Grenellen! A beautifully expressed note, full of the friendliest sympathy.

When I got back to Ledstone, after my week in London, I found quantities of letters and bills had accumulated for Augustus. His lawyers were coming down the next day to sort and settle everything. They had been piled up in the smoking-room.

I sadly glanced through them as they lay. Oh, I am not a hypocrite to say that when I first went back into this room, full of tipsy horrors as its associations were, it brought Augustus back so vividly that I sat down and cried.

I had never wished him ill, and would have given him back his life if I could. To die so young, with everything to make existence fair! It seemed too sad.

I lifted the pile of papers, one after another, and at last came upon one with the address printed on the outside of the envelope–the address of the dress-maker where Lady Grenellen’s clothes came from.

This bill the lawyers should not see. I looked carefully to the end of the pile. There were no more of any consequence. I wished I could find her letters too, to save them also. The drawers were all locked. I could not think that night what to do, but when the lawyers came next day I asked them to give me any letters they might find with the same writing on the envelope as the one I showed them–her note of sympathy to me–and not to examine them.

And so it was that a day or two afterwards I had before me six letters with a gold coronet emblazoned upon the envelopes.

I had paid the bill. I wrote the check and despatched it the night I found it, and now the receipt also lay beside the letters. I tied them together and sealed the bundle with Augustus’s seal. I put the receipted bill with them, and enclosed the whole packet in another envelope, and addressed it to Lady Grenellen.

I had not answered her letter of sympathy. This would be my answer.

A thick skin is a fortunate gift, it appears, and one I had thought of extreme rareness in the class to which she belongs. What was my surprise to receive a gushing letter of thanks by return of post! My husband and she had been such friends, she said, and he had helped her before so kindly out of her difficulties, and it was too good of me to have paid this bill–she could see by the date I must have paid it–and it all was too sad, and she hoped we should meet later on, perhaps at Harley! Her own husband was coming home, slightly wounded, she added.

Had I been in a laughing mood I should have laughed aloud at the effrontery of the whole thing. Well, perhaps it was better so. As far as I am concerned the whole incident shall be forgotten–a memory of Augustus sunk into the past.

And so January passed and February began.

It seems in life that things all come together. One’s days go on smoothly, uneventfully, for months, and then, one after another, a series of startling, unusual events occurs, which changes the course of the peaceful river.

At the end of February–I was still at Ledstone, and my daily communications from Amelia told me my poor mother-in-law was still a happy idiot–another telegram came to me–this time it was addressed to grandmamma–to grandmamma at the cottage! The very outside startled me.