The Coryston Family by Mrs. Humphry Ward (page 4)

perfectly easy for them to go elsewhere–in England or the colonies. If they separate, and she will accept the arrangements we propose for her–then he remains here, our trusted friend and right hand as before.”

“It is, of course, the wrench of giving up the farm–“

Lord William raised his hands in protesting distress.

“Perfectly true, of course, that he’s given the best years of his life to it!–that he’s got all sorts of experiments on hand–that he can never build up exactly the same sort of thing elsewhere–that the farm is the apple of his eye. It’s absolutely true–every word of it! But then, why did he take this desperate step!–without consulting any of his friends! It’s no responsibility of ours!”

The blanched and delicate face of the old man showed the grief, the wound to personal affection he did not venture to let himself express, mingled with a rocklike steadiness of will.

“You have heard from the Cloan Sisters?”

“Last night. Nothing could be kinder. There is a little house close by the Sisterhood where she and the boy could live. They would give her work, and watch over her, like the angels they are,–and the boy could go to a day school. But they won’t hear of it–they won’t listen to it for a moment; and now–you see–they’ve put their own alternative plan before us, in this letter. He said to me, yesterday, that she was not religious by temperament–that she wouldn’t understand the Sisters–nor they her–that she would be certain to rebel against their rules and regulations–and then all the old temptations would return. ‘I have taken her life upon me,’ he said, ‘and I can’t give her up. She is mine, and mine she will remain.’ It was terribly touching. I could only say that I was no judge of his conscience, and never pretended to be; but that he could only remain here on our terms.”

“The letter is curiously excitable–hardly legible even–very unlike Betts,” said Newbury, turning it over thoughtfully.

“That’s another complication. He’s not himself. That attack of illness has somehow weakened him. I can’t reason with him as I used to do.”

The father and son walked on in anxious cogitation, till Newbury observed a footman coming with a note.

“From Coryston Place, sir. Waiting an answer.”

Newbury read it first with eagerness, then with a clouded brow.

“Ask the servant to tell Miss Coryston I shall be with them for luncheon.”

When the footman was out of earshot, Newbury turned to his father, his face showing the quick feeling behind.

“Did you know that Mr. and Mrs. Betts are trying to get at Marcia?”

“No! I thought Coryston might be endeavoring to influence her. That fellow’s absolutely reckless! But what can she have to do with the Bettses themselves? Really, the questions that young women concern themselves with to-day!” cried Lord William, not without vehemence. “Marcia must surely trust you and your judgment in such a matter.”

Newbury flushed.

“I’m certain–she will,” he said, rather slowly, his eyes on the ground. “But Mrs. Betts has been to see her.”

“A great impertinence! A most improper proceeding!” said Lord William, hotly. “Is that what her note says? My dear Edward, you must go over and beg Marcia to let this matter _alone_! It is not for her to be troubled with at all. She must really leave it to us.”

The wandlike old man straightened his white head a trifle haughtily.

* * * * *

A couple of hours later Newbury set out to walk to Coryston. The day was sultry, and June in all its power ruled the countryside. The hawthorns were fading; the gorse was over; but the grass and the young wheat were rushing up, the wild roses threw their garlands on every hedge, and the Coryston trout-stream, beside which Newbury walked, brimming as it was, on its chalk bed, would soon be almost masked from sight by the lush growths which overhung its narrow stream, twisting silverly through the meadows.

The sensitive mind and conscience of a man, alive, through the long discipline of religion, to many kinds of obligation, were, at this moment, far from happy, even with this flaming June about him, and the beloved brought nearer by every step. The thought of Marcia, the recollection of her face, the expectation of her kiss, thrilled indeed in his veins. He was not yet thirty, and the forces of his life were still rising. He had never felt his manhood so vigorous, nor his hopes so high. Nevertheless he was haunted–pursued–by the thought of those two miserable persons, over whom he and his father held, it seemed, a power they had certainly never sought, and hated to exercise. Yet how disobey the Church!–and how ignore the plain words of her Lord–“_He that marrieth her that is put away committeth adultery_'”?

“Marriage is for Christians indissoluble. It bears the sacramental stamp. It is the image, the outward and visible sign of that most awful and most sacred union between Christ and the soul. To break the church’s law concerning it, and to help others to break it, is–for Christians–to _sin_. To acquiesce in it, to be a partner to the dissolution of marriage for such reasons as Mrs. Betts had to furnish, was to injure not only the Christian church, but the human society, and, in the case of people with a high social trust, to betray that trust.”

These were the ideas, the ideas of his family, and his church, which held him inexorably. He saw no escape from them. Yet he suffered from the enforcement of them, suffered truly and sincerely, even in the dawn of his own young happiness. What could he do to persuade the two offenders to the only right course!–or if that were impossible, to help them to take up life again where he and his would not be responsible for what they did or accomplices in their wrong-doing?

Presently, to shorten his road, he left the park, and took to a lane outside it. And here he suddenly perceived that he was on the borders of the experimental farm, that great glory of the estate, famous in the annals of English country life before John Betts had ever seen it, but doubly famous during the twenty years that he had been in charge of it. There was the thirty-acre field like one vast chessboard, made up of small green plots; where wheat was being constantly tempted and tried with new soils and new foods; and farmers from both the old and new worlds would come eagerly to watch and learn. There were the sheds where wheat was grown, not in open ground, but in pots under shelter; there was the long range of buildings devoted to cattle, and all the problems of food; there was the new chemical laboratory which his father had built for John Betts; and there in the distance was the pretty dwelling-house which now sheltered the woman from whose presence on the estate all the trouble had arisen.

A trouble which had been greatly aggravated by Coryston’s presence on the scene. Newbury, for all that his heart was full of Marcia, was none the less sorely indignant with her brother, eager to have it out with him, and to fling back his charges in his face.

Suddenly, a form appeared behind a gate flanked by high hedges.

Newbury recognized John Betts. A tall, broad-shouldered man, with slightly grizzled hair, a countenance tanned and seamed by long exposure, and pale-blue spectacled eyes, opened the gate and stepped into the road.

“I saw you coming, Mr. Edward, and thought I should like a word with you.”

“By all means,” said Newbury, offering his hand. But Betts took no notice of it. They moved on together–a striking pair: the younger man, with his high, narrow brow and strong though slender build, bearing himself with the unconscious air of authority, given by the military life, and in this case also, no doubt, by the influence of birth and tradition; as fine a specimen of the English ruling class at its moral and physical best, as any student of our social life would be likely to discover; and beside him a figure round whom the earth-life in its primitive strength seemed to be still clinging, though the great brain of the man had long since made him its master and catechist, and not, like the ordinary man of the fields, farmer or laborer, its slave. He, too, was typical of his class, of that large modern class of the new countryman, armed by science and a precise knowledge, which has been developed from the primitive artists of the world–plowman, reaper, herdsman; who understood nothing and discovered everything. A strong, taciturn, slightly slouching fellow; vouched for by the quiet blue eyes, and their honest look; at this moment, however, clouded by a frown of distress. And between the two men there lay the memory of years of kindly intercourse–friendship, loyalty, just dealing.

“Your father will have got a letter from me this morning, Mr. Edward,” began Betts, abruptly.

“He did. I left him writing to you.” The young man’s voice was singularly gentle, even deferential.

“You read it, I presume?”

Newbury made a sign of assent.

“Is there any hope for us, Mr. Edward?”

Betts turned to look into his companion’s face. A slight tremor in the normally firm lips betrayed the agitation behind the question.

Newbury’s troubled eyes answered him.

“You don’t know what it costs us–not to be able to meet you–in that way!”

“You think the arrangement we now propose–would still compromise you?”

“How could we?” pleaded the younger man, with very evident pain. “We should be aiding and abetting–what we believe to be wrong–conniving at it indeed; while we led people–deliberately–to believe what was false.”

“Then it is still your ultimatum–that we must separate?”

“If you remain here, in our service–our representative. But if you would only allow us to make the liberal provision we would like to make for you–elsewhere!”

Betts was silent a little; then he broke out, looking round him.

“I have been twenty years at the head of that farm. I have worked for it night and day. It’s been my life. Other men have worked for their wives and children. I’ve worked for the farm. There are experiments going on there–you know it, Mr. Edward–that have been going on for years. They’re working out now–coming to something–I’ve earned that reward. How can I begin anywhere else? Besides, I’m flagging. I’m not the man I was. The best of me has gone into that farm.” He raised his arm to point. “And now, you’re going to drive me from it.”

“Oh, Betts–why did you–why _did_ you!” cried Newbury, in a sudden rush of grief. The other turned.

“Because–a woman came–and clung to me! Mr. Edward, when you were a boy I saw you once take up a wounded leveret in the fields–a tiny thing. You made yourself kill it for mercy’s sake–and then you sat down and cried over it–for the thought of all it had suffered. Well, my wife–she _is_ my wife too!–is to me like that wounded thing. Only I’ve given her _life_!–and he that takes her from me will kill her.”

“And the actual words of our Blessed Lord, Betts, matter nothing to you?” Newbury spoke with a sudden yet controlled passion. “I have heard you quote them often. You seemed to believe and feel with us. You signed a petition we all sent to the Bishop only last year.”

“That seems so long ago, Mr. Edward,–so long ago. I’ve been through a lot since–a lot–” repeated Betts, absently, as though his mind had suddenly escaped from the conversation into some dream of its own. Then he came to a stop.

“Well, good morning to you, sir–good morning. There’s something doing in the laboratory I must be looking after.”

“Let me come and talk to you to-night, Betts! We have some notion of a Canadian opening that might attract you. You know the great Government farm near Ottawa? Why not allow my father to write to the Director–“

Betts interrupted.

“Come when you like, Mr. Edward. Thank you kindly. But–it’s no good–no good.”

The voice dropped.

With a slight gesture of farewell, Betts walked away.

Newbury went on his road, a prey to very great disturbance of mind. The patience–humbleness even–of Betts’s manner struck a pang to the young man’s heart. The farm director was generally a man of bluff, outspoken address, quick-tempered, and not at all accustomed to mince his words. What Newbury perceived was a man only half persuaded by his own position; determined to cling to it, yet unable to justify it, because, in truth, the ideas put up against him by Newbury and his father were the ideas on which a large section of his own life had been based. It is not for nothing that a man is for years a devout communicant, and in touch thereby with all the circle of beliefs on which Catholicism, whether of the Roman or Anglican sort, depends.

The white towers of Coryston appeared among the trees. His steps quickened. Would she come to meet him?

Then his mind filled with repugnance. _Must_ he discuss this melancholy business again with her–with Marcia? How could he? It was not right!–not seemly! He thought with horror of the interview between her and Mrs. Betts–his stainless Marcia, and that little besmirched woman, of whose life between the dissolution of her first marriage, and her meeting with Betts, the Newburys knew more than they wished to know, more, they believed, than Betts himself knew.

And the whole June day protested with him–its beauty, the clean radiance of the woods, the limpid flashing of the stream….

He hurried on. Ah, there she was!–a fluttering vision through the new-leafed trees.

The wood was deep–spectators none. She came to his arms, and lightly clasped her own round his neck, hiding her face….

When they moved on together, hand in hand, Marcia, instinctively putting off what must be painful, spoke first of the domestic scene of the day before–of Arthur and her mother–and the revelation sprung upon them all.

“You remember how _terrified_ I was–lest mother should know? And she’s taken it so calmly!”

She told the story. Lady Coryston, it seemed, had canceled all the arrangements for the Coryston meeting, and spoke no more of it. She was cool and distant, indeed, toward Arthur, but only those who knew her well would perhaps have noticed it. And he, on his side, having gained his point, had been showing himself particularly amiable; had gone off that morning to pay political visits in the division; and was doing his duty in the afternoon by captaining the village cricket team in their Whitsuntide match. But next week, of course, he would be in London again for the reassembling of Parliament, and hanging about the Glenwilliams’ house, as before.

“They’re not engaged?”

“Oh dear, no! Coryston doesn’t believe _she_ means it seriously at all. He also thinks that mother is plotting something.”

“When can I see Coryston?” Newbury turned to her with a rather forced smile. “You know, darling, he’ll have to get used to me as a brother!”

“He says he wants to see you–to–to have it out with you,” said Marcia, awkwardly. Then with a sudden movement, she clasped both her hands round Newbury’s arm.

“Edward!–do–_do_ make us all happy!”

He looked down on the liquid eyes, the fresh young face raised appealingly to his.

“How can I make you happy?” He lifted one hand and kissed it. “You darling!–what can I do?”

But as he spoke he knew what she meant and dreaded the coming moment. That she should ask anything in these magical days that he could not at once lay at her feet!–she, who had promised him herself!

“_Please_–let Mr. Betts stay–please, Edward! Oh, I was so sorry for her yesterday!”

“We are all so sorry for her,” he said, after a pause. “My father and mother will do all they can.”

“Then you _will_ let him stay?” Her white brow dropped caressingly against him.

“Of course!–if he will only accept my father’s conditions,” he said, unwillingly, hating to see her bright look darkening.

She straightened herself.

“If they separate, you mean?”

“I’m afraid that’s what they ought to do.”

“But it would break their hearts.”

He threw her a sudden flashing look, as though a sword gleamed.

“It would make amends.”

“For what they have done? But they don’t feel like that!” she pleaded, her color rising. “They think themselves properly married, and that no one has a right to interfere with them. And when the law says so too, Edward?–Won’t everybody think it _very_ hard?”

“Yes, we shall be blamed,” he said, quietly. “But don’t you see, dearest, that, if they stay, we seem to condone the marriage, to say that it doesn’t matter,–what they have done?–when in truth it seems to us a black offense–“

“Against what–or whom?” she asked, wondering.

The answer came unflinchingly:

“Against our Lord–and His Church.”

The revolt within showed itself in her shining eyes.

“Ought we to set up these standards for other people? And they don’t ask to stay _here_!–at least she doesn’t. That’s what Mrs. Betts came to say to me–“

Marcia threw herself into an eager recapitulation of Mrs. Betts’s arguments. Her innocence, her ignorance, her power of feeling, and her instinctive claim to have her own way and get what she wanted,–were all perceptible in her pleading. Newbury listened with discomfort and distress–not yielding, however, by the fraction of an inch, as she soon discovered. When she came to an abrupt pause, the wounded pride of a foreseen rebuff dawning in her face, Newbury broke out:

“Darling, I _can’t_ discuss it with you! Won’t you trust me–Won’t you believe that neither father nor I would cause these poor things one moment’s pain–if we could help it?”

Marcia drew away from him. He divined the hurt in her as she began twisting and untwisting a ribbon from her belt, while her lip trembled.

“I can’t understand,” she said, frowning–“I can’t!”

“I know you can’t. But won’t you trust me? Dearest, you’re going to trust me with your whole life? Won’t you?”

He took her in his arms, bending his handsome head to hers, pleading with her in murmured words and caresses. And again she was conquered, she gave way; not without a galling consciousness of being refused, but thrilled all the same by the very fact that her lover could refuse her, in these first moments of their love. It brought home to her once more that touch of inaccessible strength, of mysterious command in Newbury, which from the beginning had both teased and won her.

But it was on her conscience at least to repeat to him what Coryston had said. She released herself to do it.

“Coryston said, Edward, I was to tell you to ‘take care.’ He has seen Mr. and Mrs. Betts, and he says they are very excitable people–and very much in love. He can’t tell what might happen.”

Newbury’s face stiffened.

“I think I know them as well as Coryston. We will take every care, dearest. And as for thinking of it–why, it’s hardly ever out of my mind–except when I’m with you! It hangs over me from morn till night.”

Then at last she let the subject be dismissed; and they loitered home through the woods, drawing into their young veins the scents and hues of the June day. They were at that stage in love, when love has everything to learn, and learns it through ways as old and sweet as life. Each lover is discovering the other, and over the process, Nature, with her own ends in view, throws the eternal glamour.

Yet before they reached the house the “sweet bells” in Marcia’s consciousness were once more jangling. There could be nothing but pleasure, indeed, in confessing how each was first attracted to the other; in clearing up the little misunderstandings of courtship; in planning for the future–the honeymoon–their London house–the rooms at Hoddon Grey that were to be refurnished for them. Lady William’s jewels emerged from Newbury’s pocket, and Marcia blazed with them, there and then, under the trees. They laughed together at the ugly setting, and planned a new one. But then a mention by Newbury of the Oxford friend who was to be his “best man” set him talking of the group of men who had been till now the leading influence in his life–friends made at Oxford, and belonging all of them to that younger High Church party of which he seemed to be the leader. Of two of them especially he talked with eager affection; one, an overworked High Churchman, with a parish in South London; another who belonged to a “Community,” the Community of the Ascension, and was soon to go out to a mission-station in a very lonely and plague-stricken part of India.

And gradually, as he talked, Marcia fell silent. The persons he was speaking of, and the ideas they represented, were quite strange to her; although, as a matter of mere information, she knew of course that such people and such institutions existed. She was touched at first, then chilled, and if the truth be told–bored. It was with such topics, as with the Hoddon Grey view of the Betts case. Something in her could not understand.

She guided him deftly back to music, to the opera, to the night of Iphigenia. No jarring there! Each mind kindled the other, in a common delight. Presently they swung along, hand in hand, laughing, quoting, reminding each other of this fine thing, and that. Newbury was a considerable musician; Marcia was accustomed to be thought so. There was a new and singular joy in feeling herself but a novice and ignoramus beside him.

“How much you know!”–and then, shyly–“You must teach me!” With the inevitable male retort–“Teach you!–when you look at me like that!”

It was a golden hour. Yet when Marcia went to take off her hat before luncheon, and stood absently before the glass in a flush of happiness, it was as though suddenly a door opened behind her, and two sad and ghostly figures entered the room of life, pricking her with sharp remorse for having forgotten them.

And when she rejoined Newbury down-stairs, it seemed to her, from his silent and subdued manner, that something of the same kind had happened also to him.

* * * * *

“You haven’t tackled Coryston yet?” said Sir Wilfrid, as he and Newbury walked back toward Hoddon Grey in the late afternoon, leaving Marcia and Lady Coryston in the clutches of a dressmaker, who had filled the drawing-room with a gleaming show of “English silks,” that being Lady Coryston’s special and peremptory command for the _trousseau_.

“No. He hasn’t even vouchsafed me a letter.”

Newbury laughed; but Sir Wilfrid perceived the hurt feeling which mingled with the laugh.

“Absurd fellow!” said Sir Wilfrid. “His proceedings here amuse me a good deal–but they naturally annoy his mother. You have heard of the business with the Baptists?”

Newbury had seen some account of it in the local paper.

“Well now they’ve got their land–through Coryston. There always was a square piece in the very middle of the village–an _enclave_ belonging to an old maid, the daughter of a man who was a former butler of the Corystons, generations ago. She had migrated to Edinburgh, but Coryston has found her, got at her, and made her sell it–finding, I believe, the greater part of the money. It won’t be long before he’ll be laying the foundation-stone of the new Bethel–under his mother’s nose.”

“A truly kind and filial thing to do!” said the young High Churchman, flushing.

Sir Wilfrid eyed him slyly.

“Moral–don’t keep a conscience–political or ecclesiastical. There’s nothing but mischief comes of it. And, for Heaven’s sake, don’t be a posthumous villain!”

“What’s that?”

“A man who makes an unjust will, and leaves everything to his wife,” said Sir Wilfrid, calmly. “It’s played the deuce in this family, and will go on doing it.”

Whereupon the late Lord Coryston’s executor produced an outline of the family history–up to date–for the benefit of Lady Coryston’s future son-in-law. Newbury, who was always singularly ignorant of the town gossip on such matters, received it with amazement. Nothing could be more unlike the strictly traditional ways which governed his own family in matters of money and inheritance.

“So Arthur inherits everything!”

“Hm–does he?” said Sir Wilfrid.

“But I thought–“

“Wait and see, my dear fellow, wait and see. He will only marry Miss Glenwilliam over his mother’s body–and if he does marry her he may whistle for the estates.”

“Then James will have them?” said Newbury, smiling.

“Why not Marcia? She has as good a chance as anybody.”

“I hope not!” Newbury’s tone showed a genuine discomfort.

“What is Lady Coryston doing?”

“About the Glenwilliam affair? Ah!–what isn’t she doing?” said Sir Wilfrid, significantly. “All the same, she lies low.” As he spoke, his eyes fell upon the hillside and on the white cottage of the Atherstones emerging from the wood. He pointed.

“They will be there on Sunday fortnight–after the Martover meeting.”

“Who? The Glenwilliams?”

Sir Wilfrid nodded.

“And I am of opinion that something will happen. When two highly inflammable bodies approach each other, something generally does happen.”

CHAPTER XII

The weeks that followed offered no particular A event, but were none the less important to this history. Coryston was called off to an election in the north, where he made a series of speeches which perhaps in the end annoyed the Labor candidate he was supporting as much as the Tory he was attacking. For, generally reckoned a Socialist by friends and opponents alike, he preached openly, on this occasion, that Socialism was absurd, and none but fools would upset kings and cabinets, to be governed by committees.

And on one of his spare evenings he wrote a letter to Edward Newbury, loftily accepting him as a brother-in-law–on conditions.

“I see no reason,” he wrote, “why you and I should not be good friends–if only I can induce you to take the line of common humanity in this pitiful case, which, as you know, has set our whole neighborhood aflame. Your _opinions_ on divorce don’t matter, of course, to me–nor mine to you. But there are cruelties of which all men are judges. And if you must–because of your opinions–commit yourself to one of them–why then, whether you marry Marcia or no, you and I can’t be friends. It would be mere hypocrisy to suppose it. And I tell you quite frankly that I shall do my best to influence Marcia. There seem to me to be one or two ways out of the business, that would at any rate relieve you of any active connivance with what you hold to be immorality. I have dealt with them in my letter to your father. But if you stand on your present fiat–“Separate–or go–” well, then you and I’ll come to blows–Marcia or no Marcia. And I warn you that Marcia is at bottom a humanist–in the new sense–like me.”

To which Newbury promptly replied:

“My dear Coryston–I am quite prepared to discuss the Betts case with you, whenever you return, and we can meet. But we cannot discuss it to any useful purpose, unless you are prepared to allow me, before we begin, the same freedom of opinion that you claim for yourself. It is no good ruling out opinion–or rather conviction–and supposing that we can agree, apart from conviction, on what is cruelty in this case, and what isn’t. The omitted point is vital. I find it difficult to write about Marcia–perhaps because my heart and mind are so full of her. All I can say is that the happiness she has brought me by consenting to be my wife must necessarily affect all I think and feel. And to begin with, it makes me very keen to understand and be friends with those she loves. She is very much attached to you–though much troubled often, as of course you know, by the line you have taken down here…. Let me know when you return–that I may come over to Knatchett. We can be brothers, can’t we?–even though we look at life so differently.”

But to this Coryston, who had gone on to a Labor Congress in Scotland, made no reply.

The June days passed on, bringing the “high midsummer pomps.” Every day Newbury and Marcia met, and the Betts case was scarcely mentioned between them after Newbury had been able to tell her that Lord William in London had got from some Canadian magnates who happened to be there, a cordial and even enthusiastic promise of employment for John Betts, in connection with a Government experiment in Alberta. An opening was ready; the Newburys guaranteed all expenses; and at last Betts himself seemed to be reconciled to the prospect of emigration, being now, as always, determined to stick to his marriage. Nobody wished to hurry him; he was considering the whole proposal; and in a week or two Newbury quite hoped that matters might be arranged.

Meanwhile, though the pride of the Newburys concealed the fact as much as possible, not only from Marcia but from each other, the dilemma on the horns of which John and Alice Betts had found themselves impaled, was being eagerly, even passionately discussed through the whole district. The supporters of the Newburys were many, for there were scores of persons on the Newbury estates who heartily sympathized with their point of view; but on the whole the defenders of the Betts marriage were more. The affair got into the newspapers, and a lecturer representing the “Rational Marriage Union” appeared from London, and addressed large and attentive audiences in the little towns. After one of these lectures, Newbury returning home at night from Coryston was pelted with stones and clods by men posted behind a hedge. He was only slightly hurt, and when Marcia tried to speak of it, his smile of frank contempt put the matter by. She could only be thankful that Coryston was still away.

For Lady Coryston, meanwhile, the Betts case scarcely existed. When it did come up, she would say impatiently that in her opinion such private matters were best left to the people concerned to settle; and it was evident that to her the High Anglican view of divorce was, like the inconvenient piety of Hoddon Grey, a thing of superfluity. But Marcia knew very well that her mother had no mind to give to such a trifle–or to anything, indeed–her own marriage not excepted–but Arthur’s disclosure, and Arthur’s intentions. What her mother’s plans were she could not discover. They lingered on at Coryston when, with the wedding so close in view, it would have been natural that they should return at once to London for shopping; and Marcia observed that her mother seemed to be more closely absorbed in politics than ever, while less attentive, perhaps, than usual to the affairs of the estate and the village. A poster announcing the Martover meeting was lying about in her sitting-room, and from a fragment of conversation overheard between her mother and Mr. Page, the agent, it seemed that Lady Coryston had been making elaborate inquiries as to those queer people, the Atherstones, with whom the Glenwilliams were to stay for the meeting. Was her mother afraid that Arthur would do something silly and public when they came down! Not the least likely! He had plenty of opportunities in London, with no local opinion, and no mother to worry him. Yet when Parliament reassembled, and Arthur, with an offhand good-by to his mother, went back to his duties, Marcia in vain suggested to Lady Coryston that they also should return to St. James’s Square, partly to keep an eye on the backslider, partly with a view to “fittings,” Lady Coryston curtly replied, that Marcia might have a motor whenever she pleased, to take her up to town, but that she herself meant for another fortnight to stay at Coryston. Marcia, much puzzled, could only write to James to beg him to play watch-dog; well aware, however, that if Arthur chose to press the pace, James could do nothing whatever to stop him.

On the day before the Glenwilliam meeting Lady Coryston, who had gone out westward through the park, was returning by motor from the direction of Martover, and reached her own big and prosperous village of Coryston Major about seven o’clock. She had been holding conference with a number of persons in the old borough of Martover, persons who might be trusted to turn a Radical meeting into a howling inferno, if the smallest chink of opportunity were given them; and she was conscious of a good afternoon’s work. As she sat majestically erect in the corner of the motor, her brain was alive with plans. A passion of political–and personal–hatred charged every vein. She was tired, but she would not admit it. On the contrary, not a day passed that she did not say to herself that she was in the prime of life, that the best of her work as a party woman was still to do, and that even if Arthur did fail her–incredible defection!–she, alone, would fight to the end, and leave her mark, so far as a voteless woman of great possessions might, upon the country and its fortunes.

Yet the thought of Arthur was very bitter to her, and the expectation of the scene which–within forty-eight hours–she was deliberately preparing for herself. She meant to win her battle,–did not for one moment admit the possibility of losing it. But that her son would make her suffer for it she foresaw, and though she would not allow them to come into the open, there were dim fears and misgivings in the corners of her mind which made life disagreeable.

It was a fine summer evening, bright but cool. The streets of Coryston were full of people, and Lady Coryston distributed a suzerain’s greetings as she passed along. Presently, at a spot ahead of her, she perceived a large crowd, and the motor slowed down.

“What’s the matter, Patterson?” she asked of her chauffeur.

“Layin’ a stone–or somethin’–my lady,” said the chauffeur in a puzzled voice.

“Laying a stone?” she repeated, wondering. Then, as the crowd parted before the motor, she caught sight of a piece of orchard ground which only that morning had been still hidden behind the high moss-grown palings which had screened it for a generation. Now the palings had been removed sufficiently to allow a broad passage through, and the crowd outside was but an overflow from the crowd within. Lady Coryston perceived a platform with several black-coated persons in white ties, a small elderly lady, and half a dozen chairs upon it. At one end of the platform a large notice-board had apparently just been reared, for a couple of men were still at work on its supports. The board exhibited the words–“Site of the new Baptist Chapel for Coryston Major. All contributions to the building fund thankfully received.”

There was no stone to be seen, grass and trees indeed were still untouched, but a public meeting was clearly proceeding, and in the chair, behind a small table, was a slight, fair-haired man, gesticulating with vigor.

Lady Coryston recognized her eldest son.

“Drive on, Patterson!” she said, furiously.

“I can’t, my lady–they’re too thick.”

By this time the motor had reached the center of the gathering which filled the road, and the persons composing it had recognized Lady Coryston. A movement ran through the crowd; faces turned toward the motor, and then toward the platform; from the mother–back to the son. The faces seemed to have but one smile, conscious, sly, a little alarmed. And as the motor finally stopped–the chauffeur having no stomach for manslaughter–in front of the breach in the railings, the persons on the platform saw it, and understood what was the matter with the audience.

Coryston paused in his speech. There was a breathless moment. Then, stepping in front of the table, to the edge of the platform, he raised his voice:

“We scarcely expected, my friends, to see my mother, Lady Coryston, among us this evening. Lady Coryston has as good a right to her opinion as any of us have to ours. She has disapproved of this enterprise till now. She did not perhaps think there were so many Baptists–big and little Baptists–in Coryston–” he swept his hand round the audience with its fringe of babies. “May we not hope that her presence to-night means that she has changed her mind–that she will not only support us–but that she will even send a check to the Building Fund! Three cheers for Lady Coryston!”

He pointed to the notice-board, his fair hair blown wildly back from his boyish brow, and queer thin lips; and raising his hand, he started the first “Hip!–hip–“

“Go on, Patterson,” cried Lady Coryston again, knocking sharply at the front windows of the open landaulette. The crowd cheered and laughed, in good-humored triumph; the chauffeur hooted violently, and those nearest the motor fled with shrieks and jeers; Lady Coryston sat in pale endurance. At last the way was clear, and the motor shot forward. Coryston stepped back to the table and resumed his speech as though nothing had happened.

“Infamous! Outrageous!”

The words formed themselves on Lady Coryston’s angry lips. So the plot in which she had always refused to believe had actually been carried through! That woman on the platform was no doubt the butler’s daughter, the miserly spinster who had guarded her Naboth’s vineyard against all purchasers for twenty years. Coryston had squared her, and in a few months the Baptist Chapel his mother had staved off till now, would be flaunting it in the village.

And this was Coryston’s doing. What taste–what feeling! A mother!–to be so treated! By the time she reached her own sitting-room, Lady Coryston was very near a womanish weeping. She sat silently there awhile, in the falling dusk, forcing back her self-control, making herself think of the next day, the arrival of the Glenwilliams, and how she would need all her strength and a clear head to go through with what she meant to do–more important, that, than this trumpery business in the village!

A sound of footsteps roused her from her thoughts, and she perceived Marcia outside, coming back through the trees to the house. Marcia was singing in a low voice as she came. She had taken off her hat, which swung in her left hand, and her dark curls blew about her charming face. The evening light seemed to halo and caress her; and her mother thought–“she has just parted from Edward!” A kind of jealousy of her daughter for one strange moment possessed her–jealousy of youth and love and opening life. She felt herself thwarted and forgotten; her sons were all against her, and her daughter had no need of her. The memory of her own courting days came back upon her, a rare experience!–and she was conscious of a dull longing for the husband who had humored her every wish–save one; had been proud of her cleverness, and indolently glad of her activity. Yet when she thought of him, it was to see him as he lay on his death-bed, during those long last hours of obstinate silence, when his soul gave no sign to hers, before the end.

[Illustration: MARCIA WAS SINGING, IN A LOW VOICE AS SHE CAME]

Marcia’s state and Marcia’s feelings, meanwhile, were by no means so simple as her mother imagined. She was absorbed, indeed, by the interest and excitement of her engagement. She could never forget Newbury; his influence mingled with every action and thought of her day; and it was much more than an influence of sex and passion. They had hardly indeed been engaged a few days, before Marcia had instinctively come to look upon their love as a kind of huge and fascinating adventure. Where would it lead?–how would it work out? She was conscious always of the same conflicting impulses of submission and revolt; the same alternations of trust and resentment. In order not to be crushed by the strength of his character, she had brought up against him from the very beginning the weapons of her young beauty, carrying out what she had dimly conceived, even on the first day of their betrothal. The wonder of that perpetual contrast, between the natural sweetness of his temperament and the sternness with which he controlled and disciplined his life, never ceased to affect her. His fierce judgment of opinions–his bitter judgment, often, of men–repelled and angered her. She rose in revolt, protesting; only to be made to feel that in such bitterness, or such fierceness, there was nothing personal whatever. He was but a soldier under orders, mysterious orders; moved by forces she only faintly perceived. Once or twice, during the fortnight, it was as though a breath of something infinitely icy and remote blew across their relation; nor was it till, some years afterward, she read Madame Perrier’s life of her brother, Blaise Pascal, that she understood in some small degree what it had meant.

And just as some great physical and mental demand may bring out undreamt-of powers in a man or woman, so with the moral and spiritual demand made by such a personality as Newbury. Marcia rose in stature as she tried to meet it. She was braced, exalted. Her usual egotisms and arrogancies fell away ashamed. She breathed a diviner air, and life ran, hour by hour, with a wonderful intensity, though always haunted by a sense of danger she could not explain. Newbury’s claim upon her indeed was soon revealed as the claim of lover, master, friend, in one; his love infused something testing and breathless into every hour of every day they were together.

On the actual day of the Martover meeting Marcia was left alone at Coryston. Newbury had gone–reluctantly for once–to a diocesan meeting on the farther side of the county. Lady Coryston, whose restlessness was evident, had driven to inspect a new farm some miles off, and was to take informal dinner on her way back with her agent, Mr. Page, and his wife–a house in which she might reckon on the latest gossip about the Chancellor’s visit, and the great meeting for which special trains were being run from town, and strangers were pouring into the district.

Marcia spent the day in writing letters of thanks for wedding presents, and sheets of instructions to Waggin, who had been commandeered long before this, and was now hard at work in town on the preparations for the wedding; sorely hampered the while by Lady Coryston’s absence from the scene. Then, after giving some last thoughts to her actual wedding-dress, the bride-elect wandered into the rose-garden and strolled about aimlessly gathering, till her hands were full of blooms, her thoughts meanwhile running like a mill-race over the immediate past and the immediate future. This one day’s separation from Newbury had had a curious effect. She had missed him sharply; yet at the same time she had been conscious of a sort of relief from strain, a slackening of the mental and moral muscles, which had been strangely welcome.

Presently she saw Lester coming from the house, holding up a note.

“I came to bring you this. It seems to want an answer.” He approached her, his eyes betraying the pleasure awakened by the sight of her among the roses, in her delicate white dress, under the evening sky. He had scarcely seen her of late, and in her happiness and preoccupation she seemed at last to have practically forgotten his presence in the house.

She opened the note, and as she read it Lester was dismayed to see a look of consternation blotting the brightness from her face.

“I must have the small motor–at once! Can you order it for me?”

“Certainly. You want it directly?”

“Directly. Please hurry them!” And dropping the roses, without a thought, on the ground, and gathering up her white skirts, she ran toward one of the side doors of the facade which led to her room. Lester lifted the fragrant mass of flowers she had left scattered on the grass, and carried them in. What could be the matter?

He saw to the motor’s coming round, and when a few minutes later he had placed her in it, cloaked and veiled, he asked her anxiously if he could not do anything to help her, and what he should say to Lady Coryston on her return.

“I have left a note for my mother. Please tell Sir Wilfrid I sha’n’t be here for dinner. No–thank you!–thank you! I must go myself!” Then, to the chauffeur–“Redcross Farm!–as quick as you can!”

Lester was left wondering. Some new development of the Betts trouble? After a few minutes’ thought he went toward the smoking-room in search of Sir Wilfrid Bury.

Meanwhile Marcia was speeding through the summer country, where the hay harvest was beginning and the fields were still full of folk. The day had been thunderously fine, with threats of change. Broad streaks of light and shadow lay on the shorn grass; children were tumbling in the swaths, and a cheerful murmur of voices rose on the evening air. But Marcia could only think of the note she still held in her hand.

“Can you come and see me? to-night–at once. Don’t bring anybody. I am alarmed about my husband. Mr. Edward is away till to-morrow.–ALICE BETTS.”

This sudden appeal to her had produced in Marcia a profound intensity of feeling. She thought of Coryston’s “Take care!”–and trembled. Edward would not be home till the following day. She must act alone–help alone. The thought braced her will. Her mother would be no use–but she wished she had thought of asking Sir Wilfrid to come with her….

The car turned into the field lane leading to the farm. The wind had strengthened, and during all the latter part of her drive heavy clouds had been rising from the west, and massing themselves round the declining sun. The quality of the light had changed, and the air had grown colder.

“Looks like a storm, miss,” said the young chauffeur, a lad just promoted to driving, and the son of the Coryston head gardener. As he spoke, a man came out of a range of buildings on the farther side of a field and paused to look at the motor. He was carrying something in his arms–Marcia thought, a lamb. The sight of the lady in the car seemed to excite his astonishment, but after a moment or two’s observation he turned abruptly round the corner of the building behind him and disappeared.

“That’s the place, miss, where they try all the new foods,” the chauffeur continued, eagerly,–“and that’s Mr. Betts. He’s just wonderful with the beasts.”

“You know the farm, Jackson?”

“Oh, father’s great friends with Mr. Betts,” said the youth, proudly. “And I’ve often come over with him of a Sunday. Mr. Betts is a very nice gentleman. He’ll show you everything.”

At which point, however, with a conscious look, and a blush, the young man fell silent. Marcia wondered how much he knew. Probably not much less than she did, considering the agitation in the neighborhood.

They motored slowly toward the farm-house, an old building with modern additions and a small garden round it, standing rather nakedly on the edge of the famous checkered field, a patchwork quilt of green, yellow, and brown, which Marcia had often passed on her drives without understanding in the least what it meant. About a stone’s-throw from the front door rose a substantial one-storied building, and, seeing Miss Coryston glance at it curiously, Jackson was again eager to explain:

“That’s the laboratory, miss–His lordship built that six years ago. And last year there was a big meeting here. Father and I come over to the speeches–and they gave Mr. Betts a gold medal–and there was an American gentleman who spoke–and he said as how this place of Mr. Betts–next to that place, Harpenden way–Rothamsted, I think they call it–was most ‘ighly thought of in the States–and Mr. Betts had done fine. And that’s the cattle-station over there, miss, where they fattens ’em, and weighs ’em. And down there’s the drainage field where they gathers all the water that’s been through the crops, when they’ve manured ’em–and the mangel field–and–“

“Mind that gate, Jackson,” said Marcia. The youth silenced, looked to his steering, and brought the motor up safely to the door of the farm.

A rather draggled maid-servant answered Marcia’s ring, examined her furtively, and showed her into the little drawing-room. Marcia stood at the window, looking out. She saw the motor disappearing toward the garage which she understood was to be found somewhere on the premises. The storm was drawing nearer; the rising grounds to the west were in black shadow–but on the fields and scattered buildings in front, wild gleams were striking now here, now there. How trim everything was!–how solid and prosperous. The great cattle-shed on the one hand–the sheep-station on the other, with its pens and hurdles–the fine stone-built laboratory–the fields stretching to the distance.

She turned to the room in which she stood. Nothing trim or solid there! A foundation indeed of simple things, the chairs and tables of a bachelor’s room, over which a tawdry taste had gone rioting. Draperies of “art” muslin; photographs in profusion–of ladies in very low dresses and affected poses, with names and affectionate messages written across the corners;–a multitude of dingy knick-knacks; above the mantelpiece a large colored photograph of Mrs. Betts herself as Ariel; clothes lying about; muddy shoes; the remains of a meal: Marcia looked at the medley with quick repulsion, the wave of feeling dropping.

The door opened. A small figure in a black dress entered softly, closed the door behind her, and stood looking at Miss Coryston. Marcia was at first bewildered. She had only seen Mrs. Betts once before, in her outdoor things, and the impression left had been of a red-eyed, disheveled, excitable woman, dressed in shabby finery, the sort of person who would naturally possess such a sitting-room as that in which they stood. And here was a woman austerely simple in dress and calm in manner! The black gown, without an ornament of any kind, showed the still lovely curves of the slight body, and the whiteness of the arms and hands. The face was quiet, of a dead pallor; the hair gathered loosely together and held in place by a couple of combs, was predominantly gray, and there had been no effort this time to disguise the bareness of the temples, or the fresh signs of age graven round eyes and lips.

For the first time the quick sense of the girl perceived that Mrs. Betts was or had been a beautiful woman. By what dramatic instinct did she thus present herself for this interview? A wretched actress on the boards, did she yet possess some subtle perception which came into play at this crisis of her own personal life?

“It was very kind of you to come, Miss Coryston.” She pushed forward a chair. “Won’t you sit down? I’m ashamed of this room. I apologize for it.” She looked round it with a gesture of weary disgust, and then at Marcia, who stood in flushed agitation, the heavy cloak she had worn in the motor falling back from her shoulders and her white dress, the blue motor veil framing the brilliance of her eyes and cheeks.

“I musn’t sit down, thank you–I can’t stay long,” said the girl, hurriedly. “Will you tell me why you sent for me? I came at once. But my mother, when she comes home, will wonder where I am.”

Without answering immediately, Mrs. Betts moved to the window, and looked out into the darkening landscape, and the trees already bending to the gusts which precede the storm.

“Did you see my husband as you came?” she asked, turning slightly.

“Yes. He was carrying something. He saw me, but I don’t think he knew who I was.”

“He never came home last night at all,” said Mrs. Betts, looking away again out of the window. “He wandered about the fields and the sheds all night. I looked out just as it was getting light, and saw him walking about among the wheat plots, sometimes stopping to look, and sometimes making a note in his pocket-book, as he does when he’s going his rounds. And at four o’clock, when I looked again, he was coming out of the cattle-shed, with something in his hand, which he took into the laboratory. I saw him unlock the door of the laboratory and I bent out of my window, and tried to call him. But he never looked my way, and he stayed there till the sun was up. Then I saw him again outside, and I went out and brought him in. But he wouldn’t take any rest even then. He went into the office and began to write. I took him some tea, and then–“

The speaker’s white face quivered for the first time. She came to Marcia and laid both hands on the girl’s arm.

“He told me he was losing his memory and his mind. He thought he had never quite got over his illness before he went to Colwyn Bay–and now it was this trouble which had done for him. He had told Mr. Edward he would go to Canada–but he knew he never should. They wouldn’t want a man so broken up. He could never begin any new work–his life was all in this place. So then–“

The tears began quietly to overflow the large blue eyes looking into Marcia’s. Mrs. Betts took no notice of them. They fell on the bosom of her dress; and presently Marcia timidly put up her own handkerchief, and wiped them away, unheeded.

“So then I told him I had better go. I had brought him nothing but trouble, and I wasn’t worth it. He was angry with me for saying it. I should never leave him–never–he said–but I must go away then because he had letters to write. And I was just going, when he came after me, and–and–he took me in his arms and carried me up-stairs and laid me on the bed and covered me up warmly. Then he stayed a little while at the foot of the bed looking at me, and saying queer things to himself–and at last he went down-stairs…. All day he has been out and about the farm. He has never spoken to me. The men say he’s so strange–they don’t like to leave him alone–but he drives them away when they go to speak to him. And when he didn’t come in all day, I sat down and wrote to you–“

She paused, mechanically running her little hand up and down the front of Marcia’s cloak.

“I don’t know anybody here. John’s lots of friends–but they’re not my friends–and even when they’re sorry for us–they know–what I’ve done–and they don’t want to have much to do with me. You said you’d speak for us to Mr. Edward–and I know you did–Mr. Edward told John so. You’ve been kinder to me than any one else here. So I just wanted to tell _you_–what I’m going to do. I’m going away–I’m going right away. John won’t know, nobody’ll know where I’m gone. But I want you to tell Mr. Newbury–and get him and Lord William to be kind to John–as they used to be. He’ll get over it–by and by!”

Then, straightening herself, she drew herself away.

“I’m not going to the Sisterhood!” she said, defiantly. “I’d sooner die! You may tell Mr. Newbury I’ll live my own life–and I’ve got my boy. John won’t find me–I’ll take care of that. But if I’m not fit for decent people to touch–there’s plenty like me. I’ll not cringe to anybody–I’ll go where I’m welcome. So now you understand, don’t you–what I wanted to ask you?”

“No indeed I don’t,” cried Marcia, in distress. “And you won’t–you sha’n’t do anything so mad! Please–please, be patient!–I’ll go again to Mr. Newbury. I shall see him to-morrow!”

Mrs. Betts shook her head. “No use–no use. It’s the only thing to do for me to take myself off. And no one can stop it. If you were to tell John now, just what I’ve said, it wouldn’t make any difference. He couldn’t stop me. I’m going!–that’s settled. But _he_ sha’n’t go. He’s got to take up his work here again. And Mr. Edward must persuade him–and look after him–and watch him. What’s their religion good for, if it can’t do that? Oh, how I _hate_ their religion!”

Her eyes lit up with passion; whatever touch of acting there might have been in her monologue till now, this rang fiercely true:

“Haven’t I good reason?” Her hands clenched at the words. “It’s that which has come between us, as well as the farm. Since he’s been back here, it’s the old ideas that have got hold of him again. He thinks he’s in mortal sin–he thinks he’s damned–and yet he won’t–he can’t give me up. My poor old John!–We were so happy those few weeks!–why couldn’t they leave us alone!–That hard old man, Lord William!–and Mr. Edward–who’s got you–and everything he wants besides in the world! There–now I suppose you’ll turn against me too!”

She stood superbly at bay, her little body drawn up against the wall, her head thrown back. To her own dismay, Marcia found herself sobbing–against her will.

“I’m not against you. Indeed–indeed–I’m not against you! You’ll see. I’ll go again to Mr. Newbury–I promise you! He’s not hard–he’s not cruel–he’s not!…”

“Hush!” said Mrs. Berts, suddenly, springing forward–“there he is!” And trembling all over, she pointed to the figure of her husband, standing just outside the window and looking in upon them. Thunder had been rumbling round the house during the whole of this scene, and now the rain had begun. It beat on the bare grizzled head of John Betts, and upon his weather-beaten cheeks and short beard.

His expression sent a shudder through Marcia. He seemed to be looking at them–and yet not conscious of them; his tired eyes met hers, and made no sign. With a slight puzzled gesture he turned away, back into the pelting rain, his shoulders bent, his step faltering and slow.

“Oh! go after him!” said Marcia, imploringly. “Don’t trouble about me! I’ll find the motor. Go! Take my cloak!” She would have wrapped it round Mrs. Betts and pushed her to the door. But the woman stopped her.

“No good. He wouldn’t listen to me. I’ll get one of the men to bring him in. And the servant’ll go for your motor.” She went out of the room to give the order, and came back. Then as she saw Marcia under the storm light, standing in the middle of the room, and struggling with her tears, she suddenly fell on her knees beside the girl, embracing her dress, with stifled sobs and inarticulate words of thanks.

“Make them do something for John. It doesn’t matter about me. Let them comfort John. Then I’ll forgive them.”

CHAPTER XIII

Marion Atherstone sat sewing in the cottage garden. Uncertain weather had left the grass wet, and she had carried her work-table into the shelter of a small summer-house, whence the whole plain, drawn in purple and blue on the pale grounding of its chalk soil, could be seen–east, west, and north. Serried ranks, line above line, of purplish cloud girded the horizon, each circle of the great amphitheater rising from its shadowy foundations into pearly white and shining gray, while the topmost series of all soared in snowy majesty upon a sea of blue, above the far-spread woods and fields. From these hills, the Dane in his high clearings had looked out upon the unbroken forests below, and John Hampden had ridden down with his yeomen to find death at Chalgrove Field.

Marion was an Englishwoman to the core; and not ill-read. From this post of hers, she knew a hundred landmarks, churches, towns, hills, which spoke significantly of Englishmen and their doings. But one white patch, in particular, on an upland not three miles from the base of the hills, drew back her eyes and thoughts perpetually.

The patch was Knatchett, and she was thinking of Lord Coryston. She had not seen him for a fortnight; though a stout packet of his letters lay within, in a drawer reserved to things she valued; but she was much afraid that, as usual, he had been the center of stormy scenes in the north, and had come back embittered in spirit. And now, since he had returned, there had been this defiance of Lady Coryston, and this planting of the Baptist flag under the very tower of the old church of Coryston Major. Marion Atherstone shook her head over it, in spite of the humorous account of the defeat of Lady Coryston which her father had given to the Chancellor, at their little dinner of the night before; and those deep laughs which had shaken the ample girth of Glenwilliam.

… Ah!–the blind was going up. Marion had her eyes on a particular window in the little house to her right. It was the window of Enid Glenwilliam’s room. Though the church clock below had struck eleven, and the bell for morning service had ceased to ring, Miss Glenwilliam was not yet out of bed. Marion had stayed at home from church that she might enjoy her friend’s society, and the friend had only just been called. Well, it was Enid’s way; and after all, who could wonder? The excitement of that huge meeting of the night before was still tingling even in Marion’s quiet Conservative veins. She had not been carried away by Glenwilliam’s eloquence at all; she had thought him a wonderful, tawdry, false man of genius, not unlikely to bring himself and England to ruin. All the same, he must be an exhausting man for a daughter to live with; and a daughter who adored him. She did not grudge Enid her rest.

Ah, there was the little gate opening! Somehow she had expected the opener–though he had disappeared abruptly from the meeting the night before, and had given no promise that he would come.

Coryston walked up the garden path, looking about him suspiciously. At sight of Marion he took off his cap; she gave him her hand, and he sat down beside her.

“Nobody else about? What a blessing!”

She looked at him with mild reproach.

“My father and the Chancellor are gone for a walk. Enid is not yet down.”

“Why? She is perfectly well. If she were a workman’s wife and had to get up at six o’clock, get his breakfast and wash the children, it would do her a world of good.”

“How do you know? You are always judging people, and it helps nothing.”

“Yes, it does. One must form opinions–or burst. I can tell you, I judged Glenwilliam last night, as I sat listening to him.”

“Father thought it hardly one of his best speeches,” said Marion, cautiously.

“Sheer wallowing claptrap, wasn’t it! I was ashamed of him, and sick of Liberalism, as I sat there. I’ll go and join the Primrose League.”

Marion lifted her blue eyes and laughed–with her finger on her lip.

“Hush! She might hear.” She pointed to the half-open window on the first floor.

“And a good thing too,” growled Coryston. “She adores him–and makes him worse. Why can’t he _work_ at these things–or why can’t his secretaries prime him decently! He makes blunders that would disgrace an undergraduate–and doesn’t care a rap–so long as a hall-full of fools cheer him.”

“You usen’t to talk like this!”

“No–because I had illusions,” was the sharp reply. “Glenwilliam was one of them. Land!–what does he know about land?–what does a miner–who won’t learn!–know about farming? Why, that man–that fellow, John Betts”–he pointed to the Hoddon Grey woods on the edge of the plain–“whom the Newburys are driving out of his job, because he picked a woman out of the dirt–just like these Christians!–John Betts knows more about land in his little finger than Glenwilliam’s whole body! Yet, if you saw them together, you’d see Glenwilliam patronizing and browbeating him, and Betts not allowed a look in. I’m sick of it! I’m off to Canada with Betts.”

Marion looked up.

“I thought it was to be the Primrose League.”

“You like catching me out,” said Coryston, grimly. “But I assure you I’m pretty downhearted.”

“You expect too much,” said Marion, softly, distressed as she spoke, to notice his frayed collar and cuffs, and the tear in his coat pocket. “And,” she added, firmly, “you should make Mrs. Potifer mend your coat.”

“She’s another disillusion. She’s idle and dirty. And Potifer never does a stroke of work if he can help it. Moral–don’t bother your head about martyrs. There’s generally some excellent reason for martyrizing them.”

He broke off–looking at her with a clouded brow.

“Marion!”

She turned with a start, the color flooding her plain, pleasant face.

“Yes, Lord Coryston!”

“If you’re so critical of my clothes, why don’t you come and look after them and me?”

She gasped–then recovered herself.

“I’ve never been asked,” she said, quietly.

“Asked! Haven’t you been scolding and advising me for weeks? Is there a detail of my private or public life that you don’t meddle with–as it pleases you? Half a dozen times a day when I’m with you, you make me feel myself a fool or a brute. And then I go home and write you abject letters–and apologize–and explain. Do you think I’d do it for any other woman in the world? Do you dare to say you don’t know what it means?”

He brought his threatening face closer to hers, his blue eyes one fiery accusation. Marion resumed her work, her lip twitching.

“I didn’t know I was both a busybody–and a Pharisee!”

“Hypocrite!” he said, with energy. His hand leaped out and captured hers. But she withdrew it.

“My dear friend–if you wish to resume this conversation–it must be at another time. I haven’t been able to tell you before, I didn’t know it myself till late last night, when Enid told me. Your mother–Lady Coryston–will be here in half an hour–to see Enid.”

He stared.

“My mother! So _that’s_ what she’s been up to!”

“She seems to have asked Enid some days ago for an interview. My father’s taken Mr. Glenwilliam out of the way, and I shall disappear shortly.”

“And what the deuce is going to happen?”

Marion replied that she had no idea. Enid had certainly been seeing a great deal of Arthur Coryston; London, her father reported, was full of talk; and Miss Atherstone thought that from his manner the Chancellor knew very well what was going on.

“And can’t stick it?” cried Coryston, his eyes shining. “Glenwilliam has his faults, but I don’t believe he’ll want Arthur for a son-in-law–even with the estates. And of course he has no chance of getting both Arthur and the estates.”

“Because of your mother?”

Coryston nodded. “So there’s another strong man–a real big ‘un!–dependent, like Arthur and me–on the whim of a woman. It’ll do Glenwilliam nothing but good. He belongs to a class that’s too fond of beating its wives. Well, well–so my mother’s coming!” He glanced round the little house and garden. “Look here!” He bent forward peremptorily. “You’ll see that Miss Glenwilliam treats her decently?”

Marion’s expression showed a certain bewilderment.

“I wouldn’t trust that girl!” Coryston went on, with vehemence. “She’s got something cruel in her eyes.”

“Cruel! Why, Lady Coryston’s coming–“

“To trample on her? Of course. I know that. But any fool can see that the game will be Miss Glenwilliam’s. She’ll have my mother in a cleft stick. I’m not sure I oughtn’t to be somewhere about. Well, well. I’ll march. When shall we ‘resume the conversation,’ as you put it?”

He looked at her, smiling. Marion colored again, and her nervous movement upset the work-basket; balls of cotton and wool rolled upon the grass.

“Oh!” She bent to pick them up.

“Don’t touch them!” cried Coryston. She obeyed instantly, while, on hands and knees, he gathered them up and placed them in her hand.

“Would you like to upset them again? Do, if you like. I’ll pick them up.” His eyes mocked her tenderly, and before she could reply he had seized her disengaged hand and kissed it. Then he stood up.

“Now I’m going. Good-by.”

“How much mischief will you get into to-day?” she asked, in a rather stifled voice.

“It’s Sunday–so there isn’t so much chance as usual. First item.” He checked them on his fingers. “Go to Redcross Farm, see Betts, and–if necessary–have a jolly row with Edward Newbury–or his papa. Second, Blow up Price–my domestic blacksmith–you know!–the socialist apostle I rescued from my mother’s clutches and set up at Patchett, forge and all–blow him up sky-high, for evicting a widow woman in a cottage left him by his brother, with every circumstance of barbarity. There’s a parable called, I believe, ‘The Unjust Servant,’ which I intend to rub into him. Item, No. 3, Pitch into the gentleman who turned out the man who voted for Arthur–the Radical miller–Martover gent–who’s coming to see me at three this afternoon, to ask what the deuce I mean by spreading reports about him. Shall have a ripping time with him!”

“Why, he’s one of the Baptists who were on the platform with you yesterday.” Marion pointed to the local paper lying on the grass.

“Don’t care. Don’t like Baptists, except when they’re downtrodden.” A vicious kick given to a stone on the lawn emphasized the remark. “Well, good-by. Shall look in at Coryston this afternoon to see if there’s anything left of my mother.”

And off he went whistling. As he did so, the head and profile of a young lady richly adorned with red-gold hair might have been seen in the upper window. The owner of it was looking after Coryston.

“Why didn’t you make him stay?” said Enid Glenwilliam, composedly, as she came out upon the lawn and took a seat on the grass in front of the summer-house.

“On the contrary, I sent him away.”

“By telling him whom we were expecting? Was it news to him?”

“Entirely. He hoped you would treat Lady Coryston kindly.” Then, with a sudden movement, Marion looked up from her mending, and her eyes–challenging, a little stern,–struck full on her companion.

Enid laughed, and, settling herself into the garden chair, she straightened and smoothed the folds of her dress, which was of a pale-blue crape and suited her tall fairness and brilliance to perfection.

“That’s good! I shouldn’t have minded his staying at all.”

“You promised to see Lady Coryston alone–and she has a right to it,” said Marion, with emphasis.

“Has she? I wonder if she has a right to anything?” said Enid Glenwilliam, absently, and lifting a stalk of grass, she began to chew it in silence while her gaze wandered over the view.

“Have you at all made up your mind, Enid, what you are going to say?”

“How can I, till I know what _she’s_ going to say?” laughed Miss Glenwilliam, teasingly.

“But of course you know perfectly well.”

“Is it so plain that no Conservative mother could endure me? But I admit it’s not very likely Lady Coryston could. She is the living, distilled essence of Conservative mothers. The question is, mightn’t she have to put up with me?”

“I do not believe you care for Arthur Coryston,” said Marion, with slow decision, “and if you don’t care for him you ought not to marry him.”

“Oh, but you forget a lot of things!” was the cool reply. “You simplify a deal too much.”

“Are you any nearer caring for him–really–than you were six weeks ago?”

“He’s a very–nice–dear fellow.” The girl’s face softened. “And it would be even sweeter to dish the pack of fortune-hunting mothers who are after him, now, than it was six weeks ago.”

“Enid!”

“Can’t help it, dear. I’m made like that. I see all the ugly shabby little sides of it–the ‘scores’ I should make, the snubs I should have to put up with, the tricks Lady Coryston would certainly play on us. How I should love fighting her! In six months Arthur would be my father’s private secretary.”

“You would despise him if he were!”

“Yes, I suppose I should. But it would be I who would write his speeches for him then–and they’d make Lady Coryston sit up! Ah! didn’t you hear something?”

A distant humming on the hill leading to the house became audible.

Marion Atherstone rose.

“It sounds like a motor. You’ll have the garden quite to yourselves. I’ll see that nobody interrupts you.”

Enid nodded. But before Marion had gone half across the lawn she came quickly back again.

“Remember, Enid,” her voice pleaded, “his mother’s devoted to him. Don’t make a quarrel between them–unless you must.” Enid smiled, and lightly kissed the face bending over her.

“Did Lord Coryston tell you to say that?”

Marion departed, silenced.

Enid Glenwilliam waited. While the humming noise drew nearer she lifted the local paper from the ground and looked eagerly at the account of the Martover meeting. The paper was a Radical paper, and it had blossomed into its biggest head-lines for the Chancellor. “Chancellor goes for the Landlords,” “Crushing attack,” “Tories writhe under it,” “Frantic applause.”

She put it down, half contemptuous, half pleased. She had grown accustomed to the mouthings of party politics, and could not do without them. But her brain was not taken in by them. “Father was not so good as usual last night,” she said to herself. “But nobody else would have been half so good!” she added, with a fierce protectiveness.

And in that spirit she rose to meet the stately lady in black, whom the Atherstones’ maid-servant was showing across the garden.

“Miss Glenwilliam, I believe?”

Lady Coryston paused and put up her eyeglass. Enid Glenwilliam advanced, holding out her hand.

“How do you do, Lady Coryston?”

The tone was gay, even amused. Lady Coryston realized at once she was being scanned by a very sharp pair of eyes, and that their owner was, or seemed to be, in no sort of embarrassment. The first advantage, indeed, had been gained by the younger woman. Lady Coryston had approached her with the formality of a stranger. Enid Glenwilliam’s easy greetings suggested that they had already met in many drawing-rooms.

Miss Glenwilliam offered a seat.

“Are you afraid of the grass? We could easily go indoors.”

“Thank you. This does very well. It was very kind of you to say you would see me.”

“I was delighted–of course.”

There was a moment’s pause. The two women observed each other. Lady Coryston had taken Marion’s chair, and sat erect upon it. Her face, with its large and still handsome features, its prominent eyes and determined mouth, was well framed in a black hat, of which the lace strings were tied under her chin. Her flowing dress and scarf of some thin black material, delicately embroidered with jet, were arranged, as usual, with a view to the only effect she ever cared to make–the effect of the great lady, in command–clearly–of all possible resources, while far too well bred to indulge in display or ostentation.

Enid Glenwilliam’s blood had quickened, in spite of her apparent ease. She had taken up an ostrich-feather fan–a traditional weapon of the sex–and waved it slowly to and fro, while she waited for her visitor to speak.

“Miss Glenwilliam,” began Lady Coryston, “you must no doubt have thought it a strange step that I should ask you for this conversation?”

The tone of this sentence was slightly interrogative, and the girl on the grass nodded gravely.

“But I confess it seemed to me the best and most straightforward thing to do. I am accustomed to go to the point, when a matter has become serious; and I hate shilly-shallying. You, we all know, are very clever, and have much experience of the world. You will, I am sure, prefer that I should be frank.”

“Certainly,” smiled Enid, “if I only knew what the matter was!”

Lady Coryston’s tone became a trifle colder.

“That I should have thought was obvious. You have been seeing a great deal of my son, Miss Glenwilliam; your–your friendship with him has been very conspicuous of late; and I have it from himself that he is in love with you, and either has asked you, or will ask you, to marry him.”

“He has asked me several times,” said the girl, quietly. Then, suddenly, she laughed. “I came away with my father this week-end, that I might, if possible, prevent his asking me again.”

“Then you have refused him?” The voice was indiscreetly eager.

“So far.”

“So far? May I ask–does that mean that you yourself are still undecided?”

“I have as yet said nothing final to him.”

Lady Coryston paused a few seconds, to consider the look presented to her, and then said, with emphasis:

“If that is so, it is fortunate that we are able to have this talk–at this moment. For I wish, before you take any final decision, to lay before you what the view of my son’s family must inevitably be of such a marriage.”

“The view of Lord Coryston and yourself?” said Miss Glenwilliam, in her most girlish voice.

“My son Coryston and I have at present no interests in common,” was Lady Coryston’s slightly tart reply. “That, I should have thought, considering his public utterances, and the part which I have always taken in politics, was sufficiently evident.”

Her companion, without speaking, bent over the sticks of the fan, which her long fingers were engaged in straightening.

“No! When I speak of the family,” resumed Lady Coryston, “I must for the present, unfortunately, look upon myself as the only sure guardian of its traditions; but that I intend to be–while I live. And I can only regard a marriage between my son and yourself as undesirable–not only for my son–but first and foremost, Miss Glenwilliam, for yourself.”

“And why?”

Laying down the fan upon her knee, the young lady now applied her nimble fingers to smoothing the white and curling tips of the feathers.

The color rushed into Lady Coryston’s lightly wrinkled cheeks.

“Because it rarely or never answers that persons from such different worlds, holding such different opinions, and with such different antecedents, should marry,” she said, firmly. “Because I could not welcome you as a daughter–and because a marriage with you would disastrously affect the prospects of my son.”

“I wonder what you mean by ‘such different worlds,'” said Miss Glenwilliam, with what seemed an innocent astonishment. “Arthur and I always go to the same dances.”

Lady Coryston’s flush deepened angrily. She had some difficulty in keeping her voice in order.

“I think you understand what I mean. I don’t wish to be the least rude.”

“Of course not. But–is it my birth, or my poverty, that you most dislike?”

“Poverty has nothing to do with it–nothing at all. I have never considered money in connection with Arthur’s marriage, and never shall.”

“Because you have so much of it?” Lifting her broad, white brow from the fan on her knee, Enid turned the astonishing eyes beneath it on the lady in black sitting beside her. And for the first time the lady in black was conscious of the malice lurking in the soft voice of the speaker.

“That, perhaps, would be your way of explaining it. In any case, I repeat, money has nothing to do with the present case. But, Miss Glenwilliam, my son belongs to a family that has fought for its convictions.”

At this the younger lady shot a satiric glance at the elder, which for the moment interrupted a carefully prepared sentence.

Enid was thinking of a casual remark of her father’s made that morning at breakfast: “Oh yes, the Corystons are an old family. They were Whigs as long as there were any bones to pick on that side. Then Pitt bought the first Lord Coryston–in his earliest batch of peers–with the title and a fat post–something to do with the navy. That was the foundation of their money–then came the Welsh coal–et cetera.”

But she kept her recollections to herself. Lady Coryston went on:

“We have stood for generations for certain principles. We are proud of them. My husband died in them. I have devoted my life to them. They are the principles of the Conservative party. Our eldest son, as of course you know, departed from them. My dear husband did not flinch; and instead of leaving the estates to Coryston, he left them to me–as trustee for the political faith he believed in; that faith of which your father has been–excuse my frankness, it is really best for us both–and is now–the principal enemy! I then had to decide, when I was left a widow, to whom the estates were to go on my death. Painful as it was, I decided that my trust did not allow me to leave them to Coryston. I made Arthur my heir three months ago.”

“How very interesting!” said the listener, behind the fan. Lady Coryston could not see her face.

“But it is only fair to him and to you,” Arthur’s mother continued, with increased deliberation, “that I should say frankly, now that this crisis has arisen, that if you and Arthur marry, it is impossible that Arthur should inherit his father’s estates. A fresh disposition of them will have to be made.”

Enid Glenwilliam dropped the fan and looked up. Her color had gone.

“Because–Lady Coryston–I am my father’s daughter?”

“Because you would bring into our family principles wholly at variance with our traditions–and I should be false to my trust if I allowed it.” The conscious dignity of pose and voice fitted the solemnity of these final words.

There was a slight pause.

“Then–if Arthur married me–he would be a pauper?” said the girl, bending forward.

“He has a thousand a year.”

“That’s very disturbing! I shall have to consider everything again.”

Lady Coryston moved nervously.

“I don’t understand you.”

“What I _couldn’t_ have done, Lady Coryston–would have been to come into Arthur’s family as in any way dependent on his mother!”

The girl’s eyes shone. Lady Coryston had also paled.

“I couldn’t of course expect that you would have any friendly feeling toward me,” she said, after a moment.

“No–you couldn’t–you couldn’t indeed!”

Enid Glenwilliam sprang up, entered the summer-house, and stood over her visitor, lightly leaning forward, her hands supporting her on a rustic table that stood between them, her breath fluttering.

“Yes–perhaps now I could marry him–perhaps now I could!” she repeated. “So long as I wasn’t your dependent–so long as we had a free life of our own–and knew exactly where we stood, with nothing to fear or to hope–the situation might be faced. We might hope, too–father and I–to bring _our_ ideas and _our_ principles to bear upon Arthur. I believe he would adopt them. He has never had any ideas of his own. You have made him take yours! But of course it seems inconceivable to you that we should set any store by _our_ principles. You think all I want is money. Well, I am like anybody else. I know the value of money. I like money and luxury, and pretty things. I have been sorely tempted to let Arthur marry me as he has once or twice proposed, at the nearest registry office, and present you next day with the _fait accompli_–to take or leave. I believe you would have surrendered to the _fait accompli_–yes, I believe you would! Arthur was convinced that, after sulking a little, you would forgive him. Well, but then–I looked forward–to the months–or years–in which I should be courting–flattering–propitiating you–giving up my own ideas, perhaps, to take yours–turning my back on my father–on my old friends–on my party–for _money_! Oh yes, I should be quite capable of it. At least, I dare say I should. And I just funked it! I had the grace–the conscience–to funk it. I apologize for the slang–I can’t express it any other way. And now you come and say: ‘Engage yourself to him–and I’ll disinherit him _at once_. That makes the thing look clean and square!–that tempts the devil in one, or the angel–I don’t know which. I like Arthur. I should get a great many social advantages by marrying him, whatever you may do or say; and a thousand a year to me looks a great deal more than it does to you. But then, you see, my father began life as a pit-boy–Yes, I think it might be done!”

The speaker raised herself to her full height, and stood with her hands behind her, gazing at Lady Coryston.

In the eyes of that poor lady the Chancellor’s daughter had suddenly assumed the aspect of some glittering, avenging fate. At last Lady Coryston understood something of the power, the spell, there was in this girl for whom her son had deserted her; at last she perceived, despairingly perceived, her strange beauty. The long thin mouth, now breathing scorn, the short chin, and prominent cheekbones denied Enid Glenwilliam any conventional right indeed to that great word. But the loveliness of the eyes and hair, of the dark brows, sustaining the broad and delicate forehead, the pale rose and white of the skin, the setting of the head, her wonderful tallness and slenderness, these, instinct as the whole woman was, at the moment, with a passion of defiance, made of her a dazzling and formidable creature. Lady Coryston beheld her father in her; she seemed to feel the touch, the terror of Glenwilliam.

Bewilderment and unaccustomed weakness overtook Lady Coryston. It was some moments before, under the girl’s threatening eyes, she could speak at all. Then she said, with difficulty:

“You may marry my son, Miss Glenwilliam–but you do not love him! That is perfectly plain. You are prepared none the less, apparently, to wreck his happiness and mine, in order–“

“I don’t love him? Ah! that’s another story altogether! Do I love him? I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t know. I don’t believe I am as capable of falling in love as other girls are–or say they are. I like him, and get on with him–and I might marry him; I might–have–married him,” she repeated, slowly, “partly to have the sweetness, Lady Coryston, of punishing you for the slight you offered my father!–and partly for other things. But you see–now I come to think of it–there is some one else to be considered–“

The girl dropped into a chair, and looked across the table at her visitor, with a sudden change of mood and voice.

“You say you won’t have it, Lady Coryston. Well, that doesn’t decide it for me–and it wouldn’t decide it for Arthur. But there’s some one else won’t have it.”

A pause. Miss Glenwilliam took up the fan again and played with it–considering.

“My father came to my room last night,” she said, at last, “in order to speak to me about it. ‘Enid,’ he said, ‘don’t marry that man! He’s a good enough fellow–but he’ll drive a wedge into our life. We can’t find a use for him–you and I. He’ll divide us, my girl–and it isn’t worth it–you don’t love him!’ And we had a long talk–and at last I told him–I wouldn’t–I _wouldn’t_! So you see, Lady Coryston, if I don’t marry your son, it’s not because you object–but because my father–whom you insulted–doesn’t wish me to enter your family–doesn’t approve of a marriage with your son–and has persuaded me against it.”

Lady Coryston stared into the face of the speaker, and quailed before the flash of something primitive and savage in the eyes that met her own. Under the sting of it, however, she found a first natural and moving word, as she slowly rose from her seat.

“You love your father, Miss Glenwilliam. You might remember that I, too, love my son–and there was never a rough word between us till he knew you.”

She wavered a little, gathering up her dress. And the girl perceived that she had grown deadly white, and was suddenly ashamed of her own vehemence. She too rose.

“I’m sorry, Lady Coryston. I’ve been a brute. But when I think of my father, and those who hate him, I see red. I had no business to say some of the things I have said. But it’s no good apologizing. Let me, however, just say this: Please be careful, Lady Coryston, about your son. He’s in love with me–and I’m very, _very_ sorry for him. Let me write to him first–before you speak to him. I’ll write–as kindly as I can. But I warn you–it’ll hurt him–and he may visit it on you–for all I can say. When will he be at Coryston?”

“To-night.”

“I will send a letter over to-morrow morning. Is your car waiting?”

They moved across the lawn together, not speaking a word. Lady Coryston entered the car. Enid Glenwilliam made her a low bow, almost a curtsey, which the elder lady acknowledged; and the car started.

Enid came back to the summer-house, sat down by the table, and buried her face in her hands.

After a little while a hurried step was heard approaching the summer-house. She looked up and saw her father. The Chancellor’s burly form filled up the door of the little house. His dark, gipsy face looked down with amusement upon his daughter.

“Well, Enid, how did you get through? Did she trample on you–did she scratch and spit? I wager she got as good as she gave? Why, what’s the matter, my girl? Are you upset?”

Enid got up, struggling for composure.

“I–I behaved like a perfect fiend.”

“Did you?” The Chancellor’s laughter filled the summer-house. “The old harridan! At last somebody has told her the truth. The idea of her breaking in upon you here!–to threaten you, I suppose, with all sorts of pains and penalties, if you married her precious son. You gave her what for. Why, Enid, what’s the matter–don’t be a fool, my dear! You don’t regret him?”

“No.” He put his arm tenderly round her, and she leaned against him. Suddenly she drew herself up and kissed him.

“I shall never marry, father. It’s you and I, isn’t it, against the world?”

“Half the world,” said Glenwilliam, laughing. “There’s a jolly big half on our side, my dear, and lots of good fellows in it for you to marry.” He looked at her with proud affection.

She shook her head, slipped her hand in his, and they walked back to the house together.

CHAPTER XIV

The state of mind in which Lady Coryston drove home from the Atherstones’ cottage would have seemed to most people unreasonable. She had obtained–apparently–everything for which she had set out, and yet there she was, smarting and bruised through all her being, like one who has suffered intolerable humiliation and defeat. A woman of her type and class is so well sheltered as a rule from the roughnesses of life, so accustomed to the deference of their neighbors, that to be handled as Enid Glenwilliam had handled her victim, destroys for the time nerve and self-respect. Lady Coryston felt as if she had been physically as well as morally beaten, and could not get over it. She sat, white and shaken, in the darkness of a closed motor, the prey to strange terrors. She would not see Arthur that night! He was only to return late, and she would not risk it. She must have a night’s rest, indeed, before grappling with him. She was not herself, and the violence of that extraordinary girl had upset her. Conscious of a very rapid pulse, she remembered for a moment, unwillingly, certain warnings that her doctor had given her before she left town–“You are overtaxing yourself, Lady Coryston–and you badly want a rest.” Pure nonsense! She came of a long-lived stock, persons of sound hearts and lungs, who never coddled themselves. All the same, she shrank physically, instinctively, from the thought of any further emotion or excitement that day–till she had had a good night. She now remembered that she had had practically no sleep the preceding night. Indeed, ever since the angry scene with Arthur a fortnight before, she had been conscious of bodily and mental strain.

Which perhaps accounted for the feeling of irritation with which she perceived the figure of her daughter standing on the steps of Coryston House beside Sir Wilfrid Bury. Marcia had come to her that morning with some tiresome story about the Newburys and the divorced woman Mrs. Betts. How could she think of such things, when her mind was full of Arthur? Girls really should be more considerate.

The car drew up at the steps, and Marcia and Sir Wilfrid awaited it. Even preoccupied as she was, Lady Coryston could not help noticing that Marcia was subdued and silent. She asked her mother no questions, and after helping Lady Coryston to alight, she went quickly into the house. It vaguely crossed the mother’s mind that her daughter was depressed or annoyed–perhaps with her? But she could not stop to think about it.

Sir Wilfrid, however, followed Lady Coryston into the drawing-room.

“What have you been doing?” he asked her, smiling, taking the liberty of an old friend and co-executor. “I think I guess!”

She looked at him somberly.

“She won’t marry him! But not a word to Arthur, please–not a word!–till I give you leave. I have gone through–a great deal.”

Her look of weakness and exhaustion did indeed strike him painfully. He put out his hand and pressed hers.

“Well, so far, so good,” he said, gravely. “It must be a great relief to your mind.” Then in another and a lower tone he added, “Poor old boy!”

Lady Coryston made no reply except to say that she must get ready for luncheon. She left the room just as Sir Wilfrid perceived a rider on a bay horse approaching through the park, and recognized Edward Newbury.

“Handsome fellow!” he thought, as he watched him from the window; “and sits his horse uncommonly well. Why doesn’t that girl fly to meet him? They used to in my days.”

But Newbury dismounted with only a footman to receive him, and Marcia did not appear till the gong had rung for luncheon.

Sir Wilfrid’s social powers were severely taxed to keep that meal going. Lady Coryston sat almost entirely silent and ate nothing. Marcia too ate little and talked less. Newbury indeed had arrived in radiant spirits, bringing a flamboyant account of Marcia’s trousseau which he had extracted from a weekly paper, and prepared to tease her thereon. But he could scarcely get the smallest rise out of her, and presently he, too, fell silent, throwing uneasy glances at her from time to time. Her black hair and eyes were more than usually striking, by contrast with a very simple and unadorned white dress; but for beauty, her face required animation; it could be all but plain in moments of languor or abstraction; and Sir Wilfrid marveled that a girl’s secret instinct did not save her from presenting herself so unattractively to her lover.

Newbury, it appeared, had spent the preceding night in what Sir Wilfrid obstinately called a “monkery”–_alias_ the house of an Anglican brotherhood or Community–the Community of the Ascension, of which Newbury’s great friend, Father Brierly, was Superior. In requital for Newbury’s teasing of Marcia, Sir Wilfrid would have liked to tease Newbury a little on the subject of the “monkery.” But Newbury most dexterously evaded him. He would laugh, but not at the hosts he had just quitted; and through all his bantering good temper there could be felt the throb of some deep feeling which was not allowed to express itself. “Damned queer eyes!” was Bury’s inward comment, as he happened once to observe Newbury’s face during a pause of silence. “Half in a dream all the time–even when the fellow’s looking at his sweetheart.”

After luncheon Marcia made a sign, and she and Newbury slipped away. They wandered out beyond the lake into a big wood, where great pools of pink willow-herb, in its open spaces, caught the light as it struck through the gray trunks of the beeches. Newbury found a seat for Marcia on a fallen trunk, and threw himself beside her. The world seemed to have been all washed by the thunder-storm of the night before; the odors of grass, earth, and fern were steaming out into the summer air. The wood was alive with the hum of innumerable insects, which had become audible and dominant with the gradual silencing of the birds. In the half-cut hay-fields the machines stood at rest; rarely, an interlaced couple could be dimly seen for a moment on some distant footpath of the park; sometimes a partridge called or a jay screamed; otherwise a Sabbath stillness–as it seemed to Marcia, a Sabbath dreariness–held the scene.

Newbury put up his arms, drew her down to him, and kissed her passionately. She yielded; but it was more yielding than response; and again he was conscious of misgiving as at luncheon.

“Darling!–is there anything wrong–anything that troubles you?” he said, anxiously. “Do you think I’ve forgotten you for one moment, while I’ve been away?”

“Yes; while you were asleep.” She smiled shyly, while her fingers caressed his.

“Wrong–quite wrong! I dreamed of you both nights. And oh, dearest, I thought of you last night.”

“Where–when?” Her voice was low–a little embarrassed.

“In chapel–the chapel at Blackmount–at Benediction.”

She looked puzzled.

“What is Benediction?”

“A most beautiful service, though of late origin–which, like fools, we have let the Romans monopolize. The Bishops bar it, but in private chapels like our own, or Blackmount, they can’t interfere. To me, yesterday evening”–his voice fell–“it was like the gate of heaven. I longed to have you there.”

She made no reply. Her brow knitted a little. He went on:

“Of course a great deal of what is done at places like Blackmount is not recognized–yet. To some of the services–to Benediction for instance–the public is not admitted. But the brothers keep every rule–of the strictest observance. I was present last night at the recitation of the Night Office–most touching–most solemn! And–my darling!”–he pressed her hand while his face lit up–“I want to ask you–though I hardly dare. Would you give me–would you give me the greatest joy you could give me, before our marriage? Father Brierly–my old friend–would give us both Communion, on the morning of our wedding–in the little chapel of the Brotherhood, in Red Street, Soho–just us two alone. Would it be too much for you, too tiring?” His voice was tenderness itself. “I would come for you at half past seven–nobody but your mother would know. And then afterward–afterward!–we will go through with the great ceremony–and the crowds–and the bridesmaids. Your mother tells me it’s to be Henry the Seventh’s chapel–isn’t it? But first, we shall have received our Lord, we two alone, into our hearts–to feed upon Him, forever!”

There was silence. He had spoken with an imploring gentleness and humility, yet nevertheless with a tender confidence which did not escape the listener. And again a sudden terror seized on Marcia–as though behind the lover, she perceived something priestly, directive, compelling–something that threatened her very self. She drew herself back.

“Edward!–ought you–to take things for granted about me–like this?”

His face, with its “illuminated,” exalted look, scarcely changed.

“I don’t take anything for granted, dearest. I only put it before you. I talked it over with Brierly–he sent you a message–“

“But I don’t know him!” cried Marcia. “And I don’t know that I want to know him. I’m not sure I think as you do, Edward. You assume that I do–but indeed–indeed–my mind is often in confusion–great confusion–I don’t know what to think–about many things.”

“The Church decides for us, darling–that is the great comfort–the great strength.”

“But what Church? Everybody chooses his own, it seems to me! And you know that that Roman priest who was at Hoddon Grey the other day thinks you just as much in the wrong as–well, as he’d think me!–_me_, even!” She gave a little tremulous laugh. Then, with a quick movement she sat erect. Her great, dark eyes fixed him eagerly. “And Edward, I’ve got something so different, so very different to talk to you about! I’ve been so unhappy–all night, all to-day. I’ve been pining for you to come–and then afraid what you’d say–“

She broke off, her lips parting eagerly, her look searching his.

And this time, as she watched him, she saw his features stiffen, as though a suspicion, a foreboding ran through him. She hurried on.

“I went over to see Mrs. Betts, yesterday, Edward. She sent for me. And I found her half mad–in despair! I just persuaded her to wait till I’d seen you. But perhaps you’ve seen her–to-day?” She hung on his answer.

“Indeed, no.” The chill, the alteration in his tone were evident. “I left Blackmount this morning, after matins, motored home, just saw my father and mother for a moment–heard nothing–and rode on here as fast as I could. What is there fresh, dearest? I thought that painful business was settled. And I confess I feel very indignant with Mrs. Betts for dragging you–insisting upon dragging you–into it!”

“How could she help it? She’s no friends, Edward! People are very sorry for him–but they fight shy of her. I dare say it’s right–I dare say she’s deserved it–I don’t want to know. But oh it’s so miserable–so pitiable! She’s _going_!–she’s made up her mind to that–she’s going. That’s what she wanted to tell me–and asked that I should tell you.”

“She could do nothing better for herself, or him,” said Newbury, firmly.

“But she’s not going, in the way you proposed! Oh no. She’s going to slip away–to hide! He’s not to know where she is–and she implores you to keep him here–to comfort him–and watch over him.”

“Which of course we should do.”

The quiet, determined voice sent a shiver through Marcia. She caught Newbury’s hand in hers, and held it close.