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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The dogs came forward.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I stopped. Presently he looked up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It makes me laugh," I said.

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

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

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

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

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

"How is your arm?" I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You were ridiculous!" And I laughed.

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

"Not like this." And I lay back luxuriously.

"I generally choose things with a reason, if I can."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"A Digit of the Moon," I said, "What a queer title!"

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

"How rude, to call my hair mud-colored!" I said, indignantly, "I always thought it blond cendre."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Comtesse," he said, and his eyes swam, "fiendish little temptress, put up that hair. And come, I will tell you about A Digit of the Moon."

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

"It is a queer title," I said.

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

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

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

"It is, indeed, a beautiful description," I said.

"You probably are all those things, Comtesse, except, perhaps, the 'chattering of the monkeys.' You don't speak much."

"And do you feel like 'man'?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why should you suppose?"

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

I laughed.

"Well, did he make love to you?"

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

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

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

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

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

"I did nothing of the kind."

"He is an agreeable fellow, Berty."

"Full of information."

"Superficial."

"Possibly."

Then our eyes met.

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

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

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

I had nothing to say.

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

I was stupefied. I could not speak.

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

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

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

"Oh! it is dear of you!"

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

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

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

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

"Yes."

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

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

He frowned.

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

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

Mine was from Augustus, and ran:

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

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

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

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

"Now come and show me the ancestors," I said.

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh! she is lovely," I said, "and she has your cat's eyes."

"'She is your ancestress, too, but she is not like you. Do you see the dog in the picture?"

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

"Have you never heard the tradition, then?"

"No."

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

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

"Yes."

"No wonder they give themselves such airs."

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

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

"Now die, all of you!"

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

"I am flattered," I said, "and I have not even a biscuit to give you."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I spend a good deal of time here. One grows to like one's rooms."

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

"She died when I was in Russia," said Antony.

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

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

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

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



XIV

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

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

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

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

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

"The library. It is more cosey."

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

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

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

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

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

"I—do not know."

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

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

It broke the spell.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



XV

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Il s'en faut bien que nous commissions tout ce que nos passions nous font faire!"

Once more La Rochefoucauld has spoken truth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh no. It makes me glad to know it—only—only I cannot see you any more."

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

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

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

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

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

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

I promised.

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

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

"Alas!" I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And so this is the end.

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

And I—Oh! I wish—

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



BOOK III



I

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She quite broke down one day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How grandmamma would despise me!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



II

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

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

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

"I was twenty in October."

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

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

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

"Oh, tell me how the affair went," I said, smiling. "It—it's—a month ago we were at Myrlton."

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

"You did not tell her about the Coronation, then?"

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

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

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

"Poor Duke!" I said.

"Oh, I don't think Berty minds very much. Anyway, you will be able to console him."

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

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

"How has Lady Grenellen taken the engagement?" I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes, I heard."

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

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

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

"Oh, you are a wonderful company!" I laughed.

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

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

"But I always told you I loved you," he said, resignedly.

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

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

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

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

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

"And I bore you?"

"Only when you talk silly sentiment."

"Then it is a bargain. If I don't bore you, you will be friends with me?"

"And if you do—bon soir, monsieur," and I rose, laughing, and joined my hostess.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is an interesting problem.

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

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

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

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

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

He smiled. "I am fifty. It is a terrible age."

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

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

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

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

"What things?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He laughed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What makes you think so?"

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

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

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

"And then the barbarians came and the whole thing was blotted out. And so in the end, a quoi bon? No one was ever benefited."

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

"Poor Spain and Italy!" I said, and I laughed.

"I like to hear you laugh, I don't care what it is about," said the Duke.

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

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

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

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

I laughed.

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

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



III

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

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

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

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

It was from the war office, and ran:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"She's a pretty girl," she said, "and Gussie's wonderful took with her."

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

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

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

Amelia received only a very small legacy.

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

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

One great physician said to me, with truth:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And so January passed and February began.

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

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

It was long, and from an unknown firm of lawyers in America, to say that papa had died out in the West, leaving me and grandmamma a perfectly colossal fortune—all made in the space of three years, it must have been.

I seemed past feeling any grief. Papa was a shadow, a strange flash in my life for so long a time now.

I was perfectly unacquainted with business, and had no more idea than a child what I should have to do about this. I wished I had a friend to advise me. Where could I turn? I thought of Antony. For the first time since my widowhood I let my thoughts turn to him. He would give me any advice I wanted, but then—no, he had had the good taste never even to write to me. There was time enough for our meeting. I would not push fate—I, who had been a widow only two months.

The only thing there seemed for me to do was to start for America immediately, and, after taking paid advice—one gets very good advice by paying for it—Roy, McGreggor, my lawyer, and I left England one cold and bleak March morning.



IV

As my trip to America was one of business entirely, and was unaccompanied by any interesting incidents or adventures, I have let it pass by in silence. I was too busy all the time, and too lonely, to take many fresh impressions. It seemed hurry and rush, continuous noises, and tension of the nerves. I felt glad when I once more found myself on board the great liner that was taking me to England.

It was fortunately a fine passage, not even really cold at the end of May. Just over a year ago since I was a very young girl, wondering what life had in store for me, and in twelve months a whole chapter of events and sensations had passed. I seemed to know the whole string of emotions—or so I thought.

I had my deck-chair put where I could watch the waves receding as the great ship cut her way through them.

The salt air seemed to bring fresh life to me—fresh life and fresh ideas. Two things were certain—first, that I was now much too rich for one woman, and Amelia, who had tasted nothing but the rough bits of life, was much too poor after her long service.

A scheme had come into my head in these months alone.

My mother-in-law was still an imbecile, happy and contented. She was surrounded with nurses and all the attention that money and affection could buy. Why should not poor Amelia get some pleasure out of life?

I had a feeling that I, too, meant to live when the period of my mourning should be over; and how glorious to live and to forget that I had ever even had the name of Gurrage! I would give the whole of Augustus's fortune to Amelia; then she would gain by it, and I, too, would have the satisfaction of feeling that my marriage was an episode, a year to be blotted out of my life.

This thought would never have come if Mrs. Gurrage had not passed into another sphere of mental living. I would not have wounded her for the world.

I settled all the details in my mind, on my voyage home, and no sooner got to London than I executed them. The law is a slow and delaying business, and even a deed of gift requires endless formalities to go through.

Amelia was overcome. Her gratitude was speechless some days, and at others broke into torrents of words.

"I can have aunt to live with me back in the dear old home," she said, once.

To Amelia the crimson-satin boudoir, and the negro figures, and the bears, and the stained-glass window are all household gods, and far be it from me to wish to disillusionize her.

And I? I can take my household gods to a more congenial setting, perhaps. Who can tell? With the summer coming on and the birds singing it would be useless for me to pretend to grieve any more. A joy lives always in my heart. Some day—not too soon, but some day—I shall see Antony.

I shall never hurry matters. If he cares for me as deeply as I once thought, he will write to me soon or make some sign. Meanwhile—oh, I am free! Free and rich and young again! The shadows are fading away.

Grandmamma was right.

"Remember, above all things, that life is full of compensations."

Dear grandmamma! I wish you could come back to enjoy this second youth with me.

Shall I travel? It is late June now. Shall I go and see the world, or shall I wait, and perhaps, later on, have a companion to see it with me?

To avoid the Coronation festivities, when all details about my transfer of Augustus's property to Amelia were finished, I went over to France. I should stop at Versailles for a month and see the Marquis in Paris, and then, perhaps, go back to the cottage.

I had often heard from Lady Tilchester—charming, sympathetic, feminine letters. I must come to them at Harley whenever I decided to go out a little, she said. I felt the whole of the world was opening fairly for me.

I stopped a day or two in Paris to do a little shopping on my way to Versailles, and coming down the steps at Ritz one day I met Mr. Budge. He had come over for a breath of gayer air, he told me, after the Coronation fiasco.

"You are looking wonderfully well," he said, "and not quite fifty years old now."

"I am hardly more than thirty," I informed him, "and hope, if the weather keeps fine, to grow a little younger still."

He said he was glad to hear it, and prayed I would let him come and see the process.

"One grows in the night, when one is asleep," I said, "so no one can see it. But if you would care to take tea with me in the afternoon, I shall be very pleased to see you."

He came the next day.

We talked gravely, as was befitting my mourning. He gave me news of my friends at Harley.

Lady Tilchester, he said, had a new scheme on hand for the employment of the returning volunteers whose places in business had been filled up in their absence. She was absorbed in this undertaking, but when not too busy was more charming than ever.

"I spent a Sunday at Harley a couple of weeks ago." he said. "I don't think many of the people were there that you met before—none, I believe, but Sir Antony Thornhirst."

"And how was he?" I tried to say as naturally as possible.

"He seemed in the best of health and spirits. There is an intelligent person, if you like. I wish he would enter Parliament."

"But Sir Antony is a Tory, I understand, Mr. Budge! He would be no use to you," I said.

"Yes, indeed, he would. We want some brilliancy just now in the House to wake us up. It does not matter which side it comes from."

"Don't you think he is too casual to care enough about it? He would not give himself the trouble to enter Parliament, I believe."

"That is just it. The ablest people are so lazy. Lady Tilchester has often tried to persuade him, but he has some whimsical answer ready, and remains at large."

I should like to have talked much more on this subject, but Mr. Budge changed the conversation. He drifted into saying some personal things which did not quite please me, considering my mourning. They were not in perfect taste. I remembered how in the beginning I had not liked his hands. One's first instincts are generally right.

When he had gone I said to myself I should not care to see him any more.

In Paris one finds a hundred things to do and to buy if one happens suddenly to have become a rich widow, as is my case. My few days stretched themselves into a week.

I had a letter from the Marquis de Rochermont. He was returning to his tiny apartments in the Rue de Varennes the following day, after a fortnight's absence, he told me. The dear old Marquis! I should be glad to see him again. He must be a very old man now, almost eighty, although he was several years grandmamma's junior.

He would lunch with me with pleasure, he said, and at one next day arrived in my sitting-room. He looked just as he used to do at first, but soon I noticed his gayety was gone. He seemed frail and older. He had deeply grieved for grandmamma.

His conversation was much the same, however. We spoke English as usual. I had grown, he said, into the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life, and my air and my dignity were worthy of the ancien regime. I had found, he hoped, that his conseils had been of some use to me in my brief married life.

"Yes, Marquis," I said, "I have often been grateful to you and grandmamma."

"You are of a great richesse now, n'est-ce pas, mon enfant?"

"Yes, of a richesse. And so I have given all the Gurrage money back to one of their family—you may remember her—Amelia Hoad was her name."

"Ah!" he said, and he kissed my hand. "That was worthy of you and worthy of your race. It would have pleased our dear madam."

"I had become so rich, you see, from papa, I did not really want the money, and I had a feeling that if I gave it all back I should have no further ties with them. I could slip away into another atmosphere and gradually forget this year of my life."

We had a delightful luncheon, in spite of my poor old guest's infirmities; he had grown blinder and more tottering since last we met. He eat very little and sipped his sparkling hock.

I had determined somehow to try and give him some of my great wealth; but how even to broach the subject I did not know. At last, driven into a corner with nervousness, I blurted out my wishes.

"Oh, I want you to benefit too, dear friend!" I said. "You shared our poverty, why not my riches?"

His old, faded cheeks turned pink. He rose from his chair.

"I thank you, madam," he said, haughtily. "The de Rochermonts do not accept money from women."

I felt as I used to when grandmamma was ever displeased with me. My knees shook.

"Oh, please forgive me!" I implored. "I have always looked upon myself as almost your child, although we are no relations, dear Marquis, and I thought—"

"Assez, assez, mon enfant," he said, and he resumed his chair, "You meant it gentiment, but it was a betise quand meme. We shall speak of it no more."

Before he left he gave me some more conseils.

"You took no amant, child? No? Well, perhaps in England it was as well. But now listen to me. Be in no hurry de prendre un second mari. The agrements of life are at their beginnings for you. All doors fly open to a jeune et belle veuve. Amusez-vous bien."

I looked at him. We were such old friends. I could speak to him.

"Even if one loved some one very much, Marquis?" I asked.

"On ne sait jamais combien de temps cela va durer, l'amour a vingt ans! C'est dangereux!" And he shook his head. Then, with an air of illumination, "It is your kinsman, Sir Thornhirst?" he said.

"Yes."

"And you love him very much?"

"I think so."

"In all cases wait—attendez—surtout—point trop de hate!"



V

Versailles for me is always full of charms. There is a dignity about it which reminds me of grandmamma. I love to walk in the galleries and look at the portraits of the great ladies of the past. The gay insouciance of their expressions, the daintiness of their poses, the beautiful and suitable color of everything give me a sense of satisfaction and repose.

I had been there for some little while, spending days of peace and reflection, when, nearly eight months after the death of Augustus, I received two letters.

It was a most curious coincidence that neither of my correspondents had written to me before, even letters of condolence, and that they should select the same date now.

The letters were from Antony and the Duke. They were both characteristic.

"Comtesse," Antony wrote, "you know I am thinking of you always. When may I come and see you, and where?"

The Duke's was longer. It began conventionally, and went on in delicate language to tell me that time was passing, and surely soon I must be thinking of seeing my friends again, and he was entirely at my disposition when I should return to England.

This amused me. Antony's caused me a wave of joy. Oh! should I be able to take the Marquis's advice and wait for several years? I feared not.

Of course, I should not think of marrying Antony yet. It would be absolutely indecent haste. Certainly not for eighteen months or two years, anyway. But there could be no harm in my seeing him soon.

Excitement tingled to my very finger-tips at the thought. I did not answer either letter for nearly a week. I walked about the gardens at Versailles and luxuriously enjoyed my musings.

I was, as it were, a cat playing with a mouse, only I was both cat and mouse.

One day I would picture our meeting—Antony's and mine. The next I would push him away from my thoughts, and decide that I would not even let him come to me until the year was up. Then, again, when it grew evening, and the darkness gradually crept up, there came a scent in the air which affected me so that I longed to see him at once—to see him—to let him kiss me. Oh, to myself I hardly dared to think of this!

The kisses of Augustus were, as yet, the only ones I knew.

At last I wrote my answers.

To the Duke I said my plans were uncertain. I did not know when I should return to England; probably not at all until next year, as I thought of going to Egypt for the winter. I finished with some pleasant platitudes.

Antony's answer took longer to write, and was only a few words when finished.

"I am staying at Versailles," I wrote. "If you like to come and see me casually—to talk about the ancestors—you may; but not for a week."

Why I made this stipulation of a week I do not know. Directly I had posted the letter I felt the time could never pass. It was with the greatest difficulty I prevented myself from sending a telegram of three words: "Come now. To-day." How would he find me looking? Would he, too, think I had improved in appearance? I had grown an inch, it seemed to me. I was never very short, but now, at five feet seven, he could not call me "little Comtesse" any more. Oh, to hear his dear voice! To look into his greeny-blue, beautiful eyes! Oh, I fear no advice in the world of a hundred marquises could keep me from Antony much longer!

Would Wednesday never come? The Wednesday in August after the Coronation, that was the day I had fixed for our meeting.

Should I be out, and leave a message for him to follow me into the gardens, or should I quietly stay in my sitting-room? What should we say to each other? I must be very calm, of course, and appear perfectly indifferent, and we must not speak upon any subjects but the pictures here, and our mutual friends, and the pleasure of Paris, and the health of the dogs.

He had replied, immediately:

"I shall be there, and we can talk of the ancestors—and other things," No, there must be no "other things" yet.

But what immense joy all this was to think about for me! I who had never in all my life been able to do as I pleased. Now I would nibble at my cake and enjoy its every crumb—not seize and eat it all at once.

On Tuesday morning I got a telegram from Lady Tilchester, sent from Paris. I had written to her some days before. She had run over to Ritz for a week, she said, to recover from her fatigues of the Saturday, and would I come into town, and lunch with her that day at half-past twelve?

With delight I started in my automobile. I had not seen her for months.

"Oh, you beautiful thing!" she exclaimed, when we met, "I have never seen such a change in any one. You are like an opening rose, a glorious, fresh flower."

She looked tired, I thought, but fascinating as ever. We lunched together in the restaurant, and had a long conversation.

She told me an amusing story of the American Lady Luffton, whom she had seen the day before. An expected family event had prevented her from gracing the Coronation.

"My dear"—and Lady Tilchester imitated her voice exactly—"it is a dispensation of Providence that circumstances did not permit me to attend this ceremony. You Englishwomen would have gone anyhow; but we Americans are different. But, I say, it is a dispensation of Providence, as I am considerably contented with Luffy and my position up to the present time. But if I had gotten there, stuffed behind with the baronesses, and had seen those duchesses marching along with their strawberry-leaves ahead of me, I kinder think I should have had a fit of dyspepsia right there in the Abbey."

After lunch we went up to the sitting-room. I meant to stay for half an hour before going back to Versailles.

Telegrams called Lady Tilchester away for a little. She is always so full of business.

"I shall send Muriel to entertain you while I answer these," she said. "I brought her over with me to have a glimpse of Paris, too."

In a few moments the sound of feet running down the passage caused me to turn round as the door opened and a slender child of ten or eleven entered the room. She was facing the light. I happened to be standing with my back to the window.

"How do you do?" she said, sweetly, and put out her little hand. "Mother says I may come and talk to you."

There are some moments in life too anguishing for words!

Her face is the face of Lady Tilchester, but her eyes—her eyes are grayish-greeny-blue, with black edges, and that look like a cat's, that can see in the dark.

Now I know whom her photograph reminded me of.

There can be only one other pair of such eyes in the world.

I don't remember what I said. Something kind and banal. Then I invented an excuse to go away.

"Give my best love to your mother, dear," I said, "and say I must not stop another moment. I have remembered an important appointment with the dressmaker, and I must fly!"

She put up her mignonne oval face to kiss me.

"I have heard so much of you," she said. "I wanted so to see you. I wish you could have stayed." And so we kissed and parted.

When I got into the automobile outside, I felt as if I were going to faint for a few awful moments. Everything was clear to me now! I remembered the little photograph on his mantel-piece, his sudden changing of the conversation, a number of small things unnoticed at the time. How had I been so ridiculously blind? It was because she seemed so great and noble, and utterly apart from all these things.

Had it been Babykins or Lady Grenellen, or any other woman, this discovery would have made no difference to me. I did not doubt that Antony loved me, and me only, now. He had been "not wearyingly faithful," like the rest of his world, that was all.

But she—Lady Tilchester—my friend! Oh, I could not take her lover from her! She who had always been so good to me, from the first moment of our acquaintance, kind and sympathetic and dear! I owed her deepest gratitude. If one of us must suffer, it should certainly be I. I could not play her false like this. Of course she loved him still! He was often with her, I knew, and her face had softened when first she spoke of him. They had known each other for fourteen years, she had said. I seemed to see it all. This was her "mid-summer madness," and Antony had gone away to travel for several years, and then returned to her again. They had probably been so happy together until I came upon the scene.

Well, they can be happy once more when he forgets me. I, at least, shall not stand in the way. Dear Margaret, I am not so mean as that! You shall keep your lover, and I will never have mine!

All my life I shall hate the road to Versailles. "Go at top speed," I told my chauffeur.

I felt if we might dash against a tree and have done with the whole matter, it would be the best thing in the end.

The rapid motion through the air revived me. I had my wits about me when we drew up at the hotel door.

"I am going to Switzerland to-night," I said to McGreggor. "Pack up everything."

She is a maid of wonderful sense.

"Very well, ma'am," she said, without the slightest appearance of surprise.

I sat down and wrote a telegram to Antony. It would just catch him. He was to leave by the night mail:

"I have seen Muriel and I know. Lady Tilchester has been always kind to me. Do not come. Good-bye."

Then I took it to the post-office myself.

That night we left for Lucerne—McGreggor and Roy and I.



VI

It being August, crowds of tourists faced me everywhere. Lucerne, which I had always heard was such a pretty place, filled me with loathing. I only stayed a day there. At last, after stopping in several places, we arrived one afternoon at Zuiebad. Here, at least, there were no tourists, only ugly rheumatic invalids, and unattractive. What made me choose such a place I do not know, unless it was because I happened to see the name printed large upon the map. Any place would do. I had not felt much in my rapid rush. A numbness, as of a limb cut off, an utter indifference to everything in life.

But when I found myself alone in the vast pine-woods, an anguish, as of physical pain, took possession of me. Every tree spoke to me of Antony. The surroundings were all perfect.

What would he do? Would he follow me and try to persuade me to alter my mind? Oh no, he could never do that. He would know that this must be final. What had been his idea all along? How could he think I should never find out, and having done so, that I would ever accept such a position?

Or was it that he, like all his world, thought so lightly of passing from one love to another that fidelity to Lady Tilchester was among the catalogue of things that do not count.

I had taken no pains to hide my whereabouts.

At each hotel they would know to where I had gone on. For days a feverish excitement took possession of me. Every knock at the door made me start. Would he write? Would he make any sign? I almost prayed not, and yet I feared and longed to hear from him.

This is not a school-girl love story I am writing, but the chronicle of my life. I have always despised sentimental heart-burnings, and when I used to read of the heroine dying for love, it always made me laugh. But, oh, never again can I know such bitterness in life as I have suffered in this black week—to have been so near to bliss, and now to be away forever!

What good to me were my freedom and riches? As well be married or dead. I never knew before how much I had been looking forward to seeing Antony again. I never realized how, instinctively, for months my soul had been living in the background on this thought.

And now it was all finished. I must not be a coward. Oh, how I wished again for grandmamma's spirit! This time I must tear the whole thing out of my life at once.

To go on caring for another woman's lover was beneath contempt.

When I should have recovered a little, I would go back to England and mix with the world, and gradually forget, and eventually marry the Duke. Fortunately, as the Marquis said, a vingt ans one could never be sure of love lasting. So probably I should soon be cured, and there would be compensation in being an English duchess. It was a great position, as Miss Corrisande K. Trumpet had said. And all men make good enough husbands if you have control of the dollars, I remember she added.

Well, I should have control of the dollars. So we should see.

The Duke was a gentleman, too, and intelligent, agreeable, and had liberal views. His Duchess might eventually have a "friend," like the rest, he had said. So, no doubt, I should be able to acquire the habit of thus amusing myself. Why should I hesitate, when the best and the noblest gave me examples?

All my ideas on those subjects had fallen to pieces like a pack of cards.

"'Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow you die.'"

Well, I had never eaten or drunk of happiness yet, and now my heart was dead. So what was the good of it all, anyway? A quoi bon? and again, a quoi bon? That is what the trees said to me when they tired of calling for Antony.

I breakfasted and lunched and dined and walked miles every day. I loathed my food. I hated the faces of the people who stared at me. I fear I even snapped at McGreggor. Roy was my only comfort.

But gradually the beauty and peace of the pine-forests soothed me. Better thoughts came. I said to myself: "Enough. Now you will go home and face life. At least you can try to do some good in the world, and with your great wealth make some poor creatures happy. You have behaved according to your own idea of gratitude and honor. No one asked you to do it; therefore, why sit there and growl at fate? Have courage to carry the thing through. No more contemptible repinings."

* * * * *

Far away up the hills there is a path that leads to an open space—a tiny peep out over the tree-tops, sheer precipices below. I would go there for the last time, and to-morrow return to England.

The climb was steep. I was a little out of breath, and leaned on the stone ledge to rest myself when I arrived at the top. I was quite alone.

The knife on my chatelaine caught in the lichen and dragged at the chain. It angered me. I took it off the twisted ring and looked at it.

"Little 'ill omen,' as he called you, is it your fault that once fate, once honor, once gratitude to a woman have kept me from my love? Well, I shall throw you away now, then I shall have no link left to remind me of foolish things that might have been."

I lifted my arm, and with all my might flung the tiny, glittering thing out into the air. It fell far away down among the tree-tops in the valley.

Then I turned to go down the hill. I had done with ridiculous sentiment, which I had always disliked and despised.

Footsteps were coming towards me up the long, winding path. It was a lonely place. I hoped it was not one of the fat German Jews who had followed me once or twice. Ugly creatures!—hardly human, they seemed to me. I wished I had Roy with me. He had gone with McGreggor into the town.

A bend in the path hid the person from view until we met face to face.

And then I saw it was Antony, and it seemed as if my heart stopped beating.

"At last I have found you, Ambrosine, sweetheart!" he said, and he clasped me in his arms and kissed my lips.

Then I forgot Lady Tilchester and gratitude and honor and self-control, because in nature I find there is a stronger force than all these things, and that is the touch of the one we love.

* * * * *

It was perhaps an hour afterwards. The shadows looked blue among the pine-trees.

We sat on a little wooden bench. There was a warm, still silence. Not a twig moved. A joy so infinite seemed everywhere around.

"It was all over between us ten years ago," Antony said. "It only lasted a year or two, when we were very young. The situation galled us both too much, and Tilchester was always my friend. She knows I love you, and she only cares for her great works and her fine position now. So you need not have fled, Comtesse."

"I shall tell you something, Antony." I whispered. "I am glad I am doing no wrong, but if it was to break Lady Tilchester's heart, if grandmamma were to come back and curse me here for forgetting all her teachings, if it was almost disgrace—now that I know what it is like to stay in your arms—I should stay!"

THE END