Set like a round silver shield in the midst of the starry sky hung a full moon, rippling a shining highway across the deep night-blue of the Mediterranean and turning the common-place walks of the hotel garden below into silvern paths of mystery. But Eliot remained unmoved by the exquisite beauty of the scene. It hardly seemed to penetrate his consciousness. He was musing with a grim, sardonic humour on the strange chance which had brought him, after nearly three months' solitary wandering through Europe, to the identical hotel at Mentone where Tony Brabazon and his uncle happened to be staying. It seemed as though fate had deliberately mocked him—perpetrating a bitter jest at his expense. Ever since he had quitted Silverquay he had been roving from place to place, seeking forgetfulness, and had at last turned his steps toward Monte Carlo, hoping that in the keen concentration and excitement of pitting his wits against the god of chance he might temporarily drown the memories that pursued him. And then, who should he encounter on the very first night of his arrival but Tony Brabazon!

The boy had been seated at the next table to the one allotted to Coventry himself, dining in company with a haughty, irascible old gentleman whom he had introduced as his uncle, Sir Philip Brabazon. One of the most ironical touches of the whole queer jumble of events, Eliot reflected, had been the jolly, friendly way in which, the instant Tony caught sight of him, he had jumped up from the table to greet him, joyfully inquiring for all the friends he had made at Silverquay and, in particular, for Ann.

Eliot had been conscious of a curious intermingling of feeling. The very sight of Tony, bringing with it, as it did, a quickened rush of torturing remembrance, filled him with a kind of insensate fury. He wanted to strike the friendly, good-humoured smile off the boy's face. And yet, underneath the burning anger and resentment which he felt, he was fain to acknowledge the rank injustice of it. Tony had done him no deliberate wrong, and, ignorant of the fact that indirectly his was the agency which had brought Eliot's happiness crashing to the ground, his open-hearted attitude of friendliness was the most natural thing in the world. Moreover, Eliot admitted to himself that had things been otherwise he would have felt quite disposed to reciprocate Tony's evident good-fellowship. The boy had a distinct charm of his own, and he had liked what little he had seen of him at Silverquay. But, circumstances being as they were, he opposed a quiet indifference to Tony's friendly overtures, although with characteristic obstinacy he declined to be driven out of Mentone by the fact of the other man's presence there.

Sometimes the Brabazons had visitors—Lady Doreen, Neville and her mother, and on these occasions Eliot derived a certain misanthropic amusement out of watching the incipient love affair which was obviously budding between the two young people—a development which, he could see, was clearly a source of satisfaction to at least one of their respective elderly relatives. Doreen's mother was all smiles. She had other daughters coming on.

That Tony and Doreen Neville were rapidly drifting towards the condition known as being in love was unmistakable, and Eliot envied the pliant facility of youth which can put the past behind and embark so soon upon a new adventure. Surely a man who had once believed himself in love with Ann—Ann, with her warm vitality and pluck and humour—could never be satisfied with the frail beauty and helpless, clinging sweetness which was all that Lady Doreen had to offer! Ann was not an easy person to forget, as Eliot knew to his own most bitter cost. Yet Brabazon seemed able to forget. God! If only the faculty of forgetting were purchasable!...

* * * * *

The waiter sped swiftly forward and deposited Eliot's coffee on the table by his side, rousing him out of his bitter reflections with a jolt.

"You've been an unconscionable time!" he flung at the man irritably, and then smiled wryly at his own irritability. His nerve must be going! A French newspaper lay on the table at his elbow. Drawing it towards him he deliberately immersed himself in its pages to the exclusion of the thoughts which were torturing him.

It was thus that Tony found him an hour later when he strolled into the salle, looking somewhat at a loose end and rather sorry for himself.

"Going to the tables to-night?" he asked, pausing irresolutely at Eliot's side.

Eliot glanced up.

"No. Are you? You do most nights, don't you?" He recollected having seen Tony's flushed, eager face opposite him at one or other of the tables on a good many occasions.

"No. Feel off it to-night. Besides"—with a frown—"I've dropped an awful lot of money at it lately. May I sit down?" he added, laying his hand on the back of a chair.

Coventry put down his newspaper. It was obvious the boy wanted to talk, to unburden himself of something. Better let him get it over and have done with it, he reflected. A word of encouragement and the whole story came out. Tony, it appeared, was feeling hipped. The Nevilles were leaving Mentone, a new doctor who had been consulted having advised a more bracing climate for Lady Doreen, and simultaneously Sir Philip had announced his decision to return to London—a combination of events which had succeeded in reducing Tony to unplumbed depths of despondency.

"It's rather a break-up, you see," he explained, "after nearly three months here together. We made a topping foursome"—ingenuously. "And now it's all over, I feel rather like a kid going back to school after the holidays."

Eliot found himself sympathising against his will. It was as difficult to maintain an inimical attitude towards Tony as to resist the spontaneous advances of a confiding puppy.

"Couldn't you persuade your uncle that a more bracing climate might suit him, too?" suggested Eliot, with a faint smile.

Tony flashed him a quick glance from under his long lashes—half laughing, half deprecating.

"That's just it," he admitted frankly. "I can't budge him. Doreen and I are—well, half engaged, you know—"

"Half-engaged?" asked Eliot, lifting his brows.

Tony nodded, suddenly moody.

"Yes. Depending on her health and my good conduct"—rather bitterly. "So they're swishing her off to the Swiss mountains for the one and my uncle is removing me from the temptations of Monte Carlo for the other."

"What part of Switzerland are the Nevilles going to?" inquired Eliot, more for the sake of saying something than because the subject held the remotest interest for him. "Davos?"

"No. Somewhere up above Montricheux."

"Montricheux?" The word left Eliot's lips involuntarily.

"Yes. You know it, don't you?"

"I've been there"—briefly.

"I had the adventure of my life there," volunteered Tony. "I've never forgotten it, by Jove! Up at a place called the Dents de Loup."

Had he been looking he would have seen a sudden smouldering fire wake in the keen grey eyes of the man beside him. But he was occupied in lighting a cigarette at the moment, and, failing to observe the change in Eliot's expression, he pursued reminiscently:

"Yes. I was up there with a girl I'd known ever since I was a kid—we'd almost been brought up together. And the first thing I did was to go and skid down the side of a ravine." He puffed futilely at his cigarette. "Blow! It's gone out."

He paused to relight it, while Eliot sat rigidly still, waiting in tense silence for the rest of the story. It all came out quite naturally and with a blissful unconsciousness on Tony's part that the tale could have any particular significance for the man beside him.

"She was the pluckiest girl I know," he wound up loyally. "Took it like a real sport and never blamed me in the least. Most women would have clamoured for my blood."

"Yes. I think they would." Eliot replied quite mechanically. He was hardly conscious that he had made any answer, and when, soon afterwards, Tony took himself off with a friendly: "Well, so long. See you in the morning, perhaps?" he responded once more like an automaton.

He was aware of only one thing. His whole consciousness concentrated on it. Ann was innocent—utterly and entirely innocent! There was no longer any question in his mind. Tony's transparent simplicity and candour in recounting his adventure at the Dents de Loup and its immediate consequences was too self-evident to doubt, and although he had refrained from mentioning the name of the girl who had been his companion—the "pluckiest girl he knew"—it was equally clear that he had been narrating the mountain episode in which Ann had been concerned and for which she had paid so dearly.

Grimly, with a ruthless resolution, Eliot faced the facts. He had completely and very terribly wronged the woman he loved. His suspicions had been absolutely unjustified. With his own hand he had pulled down his happiness—his own and Ann's, too—in ruins about them.

And there could be no going back—no undoing of what had been done. A man cannot doubt a woman, as he had doubted Ann, and then, when she is proved transcendently innocent, go back and tell her that he believes in her. If he did, she would be quite justified in flinging his tardy assurances of faith back in his face and thanking him for something of very trifling value. Even if out of the limitless tenderness of her woman's heart Ann forgave him—as, God knows, women are forgiving men every day that dawns!—still their love would be robbed of something infinitely precious—tarnished by an ugly and abiding memory. What was it Ann herself had said about love? "It's faith... and trust, Eliot." He remembered her grave, steadfast eyes and groaned in spirit, realising that he himself had despoiled love of its very pith and marrow, its deepest inner significance. There was no way out—no atonement possible.

Motionless, sunk in the inferno of his own thoughts, Eliot remained where Tony had left him until one of the hotel employes, who had several times glanced uneasily in the direction of the silent Englishman occupying the seat by the window, finally plucked up courage to begin switching off the lights for the night.

"Pardon, m'sieu". he murmured deprecatingly as he passed by the still figure in the course of his tour of the room.

Eliot stared at the man with blank, incurious eyes. Then he rose slowly to his feet and walked out of the hotel—moving with a peculiar precision like one who walks in a trance. After that he lost count of time. He went down into the depths and the dark waters of a grief and agony that was nigh to madness submerged him.

When he came to himself it was to find that it was late afternoon and that he was back again in his room at the hotel. He could not have given the faintest account of how he had passed the hours which had intervened since he had walked out of the hotel into the moonlit night—whether he had eaten or drunken or where he had been. He had a vague recollection of wandering aimlessly about the streets, and then of diverging from the town into the country because he had twice encountered the same gendarme and on the second occasion the man had followed him for a few yards suspiciously. Beyond that he remembered nothing. He was only conscious of a physical fatigue so intense, so racking in every nerve and sinew and fibre of his body that for the time being it deadened even the mental torture he had been enduring. He flung himself down on his bed and slept till the noonday sun was high in the heavens, flooding his room with light.

When he resumed the normal usages of life once more and reappeared downstairs, he found that the Brabazons and Lady Doreen Neville and her mother had all gone their several ways. They were the only people with whom he had any acquaintance, and in an odd, indefinable way he missed their presence. He spent almost all his time at the Casino, working out and experimenting with different systems. He had come to no decision as to how he should order his future life, and until he had formulated some scheme he found that he could only stop the hideous treadmill of his thoughts by focussing his whole attention on the crazy gyrations of the spinning ball.

And then one day, about a month later, a letter was put into his hand, bearing the Silverquay postmark. The writing was unfamiliar, and its unfamiliarity woke in him a sudden horrible fear and dread of what the letter might contain. Had some one written to tell him—what Ann could no longer write and tell him herself? He slit the envelope and his eyes raced down the lines of the sheet it had enclosed.

"Dear Mr. Coventry," ran the letter, written in Lady Susan's characteristically big, generous hand. "Probably you'll think me an interfering old woman. I daresay I am. But try and remember that I was young once and that just now I'm looking at life for you and Ann through young eyes—and thinking what a long, weary lot of it there is still to be lived through if you each remain at opposite ends of the pole. The time will go a deal quicker if you are together—it's like dividing by two, you know.

"I hear you ran across Tony Brabazon in Mentone, and I think that by now you probably know as much about what happened up at the Dents de Loup as I or any one, and are probably cursing yourself. Don't. It's a waste of time and happiness. Come to my party instead."

Attached to this characteristic document was a card of invitation to a dance to be given at White Windows by Lady Susan Hallett on February the seventh.... And to-day was the sixth! But it could be done. By travelling all night, catching the morning boat and then the midday train to Silverquay, Eliot realised that he could reach White Windows in time.

A bell stood on a table near by—one of those shiny metal bells with a button on the top which you press down sharply to induce the thing to ring. Eliot thumped it, and continued thumping till a half-demented waiter came flying towards him in response.

"Bring me a time-table," he roared. "And bring it quick."



CHAPTER XXVIII

THE GREY SHADOW

The ball-room at White Windows was all in readiness for the forthcoming dance. The floor, waxed and polished till it was as smooth as a sheet of gleaming ice, caught and held the tremulous reflections of a hundred flickering lights, whilst from above, where the orchestra was snugly tucked away in the gallery behind a bank of flowers, came faint pizzicato sounds of fiddles tuning up, alternating with an occasional little flourish or tentative roulade of notes.

The dance was not timed to begin for half an hour or more, but the members of the house-party had congregated together at the upper end of the room and were chatting desultorily. Sir Philip Brabazon and Tony were included amongst them, in addition to a couple of pretty girls, nieces of Lady Susan, and three or four stray men who had been invited down to swell the ranks.

"And how's Ann?" demanded Sir Philip of his hostess.

"Ann? Oh, you'll find her a trifle thinner, I think, that's all," responded Lady Susan discreetly. To her own eyes Ann seemed to have altered wofully in the course of the last few months, but she reasoned that Sir Philip was no more observant than the majority of men and that if she prepared him for the fact that Ann was somewhat thinner than of old he would accept the change quite naturally and not worry the girl herself with tiresome questions as to the cause of such a falling off.

It had been a very difficult winter, but Lady Susan had the satisfaction of knowing that she and the rector between them had triumphantly routed Ann's detractors, and although it was well-nigh impossible to utterly stamp out of a country district such as Silverquay the hydra-headed monster called scandal, they had certainly succeeded in drawing his fangs. But if Lady Susan had been successful in her campaign against the tittle-tattle of the neighbourhood, she had been powerless to restore that sheer joy and happiness in living which had been so peculiarly Ann's gift until the day when Eliot Coventry went out of her life, taking from her, as he went, everything except the courage to endure.

Lady Susan had never forgiven Brett for his share in the work of destroying Ann's happiness, and she chafed bitterly against her own inability to help matters. It was only through the merest accident that she had at last seen the possibility of being of service. She had been up in town a few days prior to the date fixed for the dance and had encountered Tony shopping in the Army and Navy Stores. He happened to mention that he had run across Coventry at Mentone, and a chance remark elicited the fact that he had regaled him with the history of the Dents de Loup adventure.

Perhaps Lady Susan's face had expressed more than she knew, for Tony, perceiving that she attached some special importance to the matter, looked suddenly anxious.

"I say, I've not been giving Ann away, have I?" he demanded in honest consternation. "I made sure she'd told you all about it by this time. I never thought—"

"Don't worry," Lady Susan reassured him hastily. "You're not giving her away. She did tell me—all about it."

When she returned home she had taken her courage in both hands and written to Eliot asking him to come back. And to-night, doubtful whether her letter had reached him in time to allow of his returning for the dance, totally ignorant of the reception it would receive, and uncertain even as to how Ann would welcome him if he actually did return, she was on tenterhooks of nervousness and anxiety.

"You do grow thinner in the winter, you know," she continued airily to Sir Philip, unwisely elaborating her comment upon Ann's appearance.

"You don't," contradicted the old man with his usual acerbity. "You grow fatter if you've any sense—to keep the cold out." He glared at her, then demanded abruptly: "How do you think Tony's looking?"

Lady Susan's dark eyes rested thoughtfully a moment on Tony's face before she answered.

"Not too well," she admitted. "He looks a little strained and keyed up. Have you been bullying him, Philip?"

"Not more than usual"—grimly. "I've told him I'll pay no more debts for him. And a good thing, too! I fancy he's been keeping within his allowance since I put my foot down. Anyhow, he hasn't come to me again, begging for money." He paused and shot a swift glance of inquiry at her, obviously seeking her approval, but Lady Susan preserved a strictly non-committal silence. She thought Tony exhibited decided symptoms of nervous strain. His eyes were restless, and his mouth wore a dissatisfied, thwarted expression.

"It's love," pursued Sir Philip, as she made no response. "That's what's the matter with the boy. He doesn't know; whether he's on his head or his heels."

"Love?"

"Yes. He's in love with that slip of a Doreen Neville. And because I brought him back to Audley Square instead of careering all over Europe after her and her mother he's as sulky as a young bear."

"Doreen Neville?" Lady Susan felt that her replies were hopelessly inadequate, but she was too genuinely taken aback by the news to think of anything to say.

"I said so, didn't I?"—crustily. "I suppose I shall have to let him marry her in the end. She's all right, of course, as regards family. But a bit of a swear-stick—melt in a storm, probably. Confound the boy!"—irritably. "Why couldn't he have remained in love with Ann?"

"I'm very glad he didn't," returned Lady Susan quietly. "It was only calf-love. Besides, he would have leant on Ann—she's such a stalwart little soldier, you know"—with a smile.

Sir Philip nodded.

"Yes. She'd have kept him straight," he said gloomily. "Whereas Doreen Neville's the hot-house plant type—just the opposite. No good to Tony at all."

"I'm not so sure, Philip. Sometimes the need to care for and protect some one weaker than himself helps to steady a man down more than anything else. Ah!" Lady Susan broke off, her face brightening. "Here is Ann—with Robin. I told them to come early."

Sir Philip put up his monocle and glared in the direction of the new-comers. Yes, Ann was certainly thinner—too thin, perhaps—though, as far as appearances were concerned, he thought the change had only served to accentuate the charming angles of her face and give an additional grace to the boyishly slender lines of her figure.

Any one less like a love-lorn maiden than Ann looked at that moment could hardly be imagined. She was wearing a charming frock the colour of a pool of deep green sea-water, with a handful of orange-golden poppies clustered at the waist, and as the lights flickered over her, from the swathed gold-brown of her hair to the tips of her small gold shoes, she was as detail-perfect as a woman who hadn't a single care in life. The simple, appealing black frock generally adopted by the heroine in fiction who has been crossed in love did not allure Ann in the very least. Whatever happened to her, she would always confront the world with a brave face. And even if her small, individual barque of life were hopelessly foundered she would at least go down with colours flying.

Nevertheless, to the discerning eye the alteration in her was very palpable. In repose her mouth fell into lines of quiet endurance, and her eyes held a look of deep sadness. But, fortunately for most of us, the discerning eye is a rarity, and in public Ann rarely allowed herself to lapse into one of those moments of abstracted thought when the unguarded expression of the face gives away the secrets of the heart.

She greeted Sir Philip with all her old gaiety, and, when he told her she was much too thin, laughed at him gently.

"Don't be a fuss-pot, dear godparent," she adjured him. "I was never one of the fat kine, and really I'm very glad of it. You can dress ever so much more economically when you're thin, you know, and that's quite a consideration these days."

"Are you—do you mean—look here, Ann," he floundered awkwardly. "Are you hard up?"

She laughed outright.

"No, of course not. Robin gets a topping good screw, and I'm doing quite a millionaire business in the poultry line."

"Humph!" Sir Philip grunted. "Got any clothes fit for London?"

She nodded.

"Lots. Put away where moth and rust shan't corrupt their morals."

"Well, get'm out and come up to Audley Square for a bit. You look—I don't know the word I want—peeked."

"It's no use shelving it on to me like that," said Ann teasingly. "What you really mean is that you and Tony are getting awfully bored with each other alone!"

A smile glimmered in the depths of the fierce old eyes.

"Perhaps that's it. Will you come?"

"I'd love to. But you may just as well tell me what's worrying you."

"You're an impudent girl! Who said I was worrying?"

"Well—perhaps not worrying. But unsettled in mind," conceded Ann. "What's Tony teen doing?"—shrewdly.

"Getting engaged—or trying to."

She laughed.

"Pooh! I guessed that—months ago. And I think Lady Doreen's a dear. So you'd better be getting out your consent and furbishing it up so as to give it prettily as soon as it's required. You know you're pleased—really."

By this time the guests were arriving, and very soon Ann was swept away from Sir Philip on a tide of eager young men, anxious to inscribe their names on her programme. She was an excellent dancer, but although she was physically too young and healthy not to find a certain enjoyment in the sheer delight of rhythmic motion, she was conscious as the evening progressed of a certain quality of superficiality in the pleasure she experienced. There was a sameness about it all that palled. What was there in it, after all? One of your partners knew a priceless new glide or shuffle which he forthwith imparted to you, or else you initiated him into some step hitherto unfamiliar to him, and after that you both went on one-stepping or fox-trotting round the room in the wake of a number of other people doing likewise.

Ann, in the arms of a tall young officer from the Ferribridge barracks, caught herself up quickly at this stage of her unprofitable train of thought. This was not the first time lately that she had found herself impressed with the utter staleness of things—she who had been wont to find life so full of interest—and she knew that thoughts such as these were best dismissed as soon as possible. They linked up too closely with searing memories. She made a determined effort to steady herself, and pulled herself together so successfully that the young Guardsman from Ferribridge told quite a number of people that Miss Lovell was a "topping little sport all round—good dancer and jolly good fun to talk to."

She danced several times with Tony, and left him completely nonplussed by her uncanny discernment when, after he had stumbled through the revelation of his engagement to Doreen Neville, during one of the intervals, she promptly told him she had anticipated it long ago and wished him luck.

"And—and you and I?" he had queried with a certain wistful embarrassment.

"Pals, Tony," she answered frankly. "Same as always. You must let me meet Lady Doreen when she comes back from Switzerland, and"—smiling—"I'll hand over my charge to her. Have you been good lately, by the way?"

He flushed, and his eyes grew restless.

"I lost a bit at Monte," he admitted. "I was winning pots of money at first, and then all at once my luck turned and I lost the lot."

"And more, too, I suppose?" suggested Ann rather wearily.

He nodded.

"I shall get it all back at cards, though," he assured her.

"Have you got any of it back yet?" she asked pointedly.

"No, But it stands to reason my run of bad luck must turn sooner or later. Come on back to the ball-room and let's dance this, Ann—don't lecture me any more, there's a dear."

She yielded to those persuasive, long-lashed eyes of his, and they returned to the ball-room and finished the remainder of the dance. But her conversation with Tony had added to the oppression of her spirits. She felt sure, from the way he shirked the subject, that he was getting himself into financial difficulties again, and if the matter came to Sir Philip's ears she was afraid that this time it might end in an irreparable cleavage between uncle and nephew. The former had paid Tony's debts so often, and on the last occasion he had warned him very definitely that he would never do so again. And Ann was fain to acknowledge that one could hardly blame the old man if by this time he had really reached the limits of his patience—and his purse.

She was still brooding rather unhappily over Tony's affairs when Robin came to claim her for a dance. He, too, seemed rather preoccupied and distrait, and as they swung out into the room together Ann cast about in her mind for some explanation of his unwonted gloom. A minute later she caught an illuminating glimpse of Cara, sitting alone by the big fire which still smouldered redly at the far end of the room, and a queer little smile of understanding curved her lips.

"You've only danced with Cara once this evening, Robin," she observed. "Have you been squabbling?"

He laughed.

"Not likely. But Lady Susan caught me and trotted me round for some duty dances, and by the time those were fixed Cara had booked up a lot and we couldn't make our programmes fit."

On a quick, sympathetic impulse Ann pulled up near one of the doorways, drawing him aside out of the throng of dancers with a light touch on his arm.

"Then go and ask her for this," she said hastily. "She's not dancing it. And I—I'm really rather tired. I'd love a few minutes' rest." She gave him a little push, and before he could say yea or nay she had vanished through the doorway, leaving him free to secure at least one more dance with Mrs. Hilyard.

A good many couples were sitting about outside, partaking of ices and other forms of refreshment, and Ann made her way quickly through the hall and bent her steps in the direction of the library where, earlier in the evening, she had caught sight of a cosy fire. As she passed, she heard the ring of a bell, followed by the sound of some late-comer being admitted. She did not see who it was, and with a fleeting thought that whoever had chosen to arrive so late would have small chance of securing good partners, she slipped quietly into the library.

The fire had burnt down and she stirred it into a blaze before she settled herself in a low chair beside it. She was genuinely glad to be alone for a few minutes—glad of the peaceful quiet of the comfortable room with its silent, book-lined walls and padded easy chairs. She had lost the real spirit of enjoyment. Her old-time zest for dancing seemed to have deserted her entirely, and the daily necessity of playing up in public, of pretending to the world at large that all was well with her, was becoming an increasing strain.

In addition to this, she was conscious to-night of a vague sense of regret. In another few weeks the term of Robin's six months' notice would have expired and they would both be going away from Silverquay. He had heard of several suitable posts, but so far he had not definitely accepted any one of them. Probably within the next fortnight his decision would be made, and Ann realised that leaving Silverquay would be somewhat of a wrench. She had known both great happiness and great grief there, and a full measure of those unreckoned hours of everyday fun and laughter and enjoyment which we are all prone to accept so easily and without any very great gratitude, only realising for how much they counted When they are suddenly taken from us. But now, as the inevitable day of departure drew nearer, Ann found herself face to face with the fact that, although she might leave Silverquay itself behind, memories both sweet and bitter would forever hold out their hands to her from the little sea-girt village. Sometimes she would not be able to evade them. However fast she might hurry through life, they would reach out and touch her, and she would feel those straining hands against her heart.

And then, across her bitter-sweet musings, came the creak of the door as some one pushed it quietly open, and entered the room.

"Ann!"

At the sound of that voice she felt as though every drop of blood in her body had rushed to her heart and were throbbing there in one great hammering pulse. Her hands gripped the arm of her chair convulsively, and slowly and fearfully she turned her head in the direction whence came the voice. Coventry was standing on the threshold of the room. A strangled cry broke from her, and she sat staring at him with wild, incredulous eyes. For a moment the room seemed to fill with a grey, swirling mist, blurring the outlines of the furniture and the figure of the man who stood there silently in the doorway. Then the mist cleared away, and she could see his eyes bent on her with an expression of such stark bitterness and despair and longing that it hurt her to look at him. Was this her lover—who had left her in such fierce scorn and anger only a few short months ago? This man whose face was worn and ravaged with an intensity of suffering such as she had not dreamed possible! If she had grown thin in paying for that bitter parting, then he must have paid a hundredfold to be so terribly marred and altered.

"Eliot!" The word came stammeringly from her lips—hushed as one hushes the voice only in the presence of a great grief or of death itself. She bent her head, unwilling to look again on that soul's agony so nakedly revealed.

"Yes. I have come back," he said tonelessly.

Closing the door behind him, he advanced into the room and came and stood beside her.

"Look up!" he exclaimed suddenly, almost violently. "Lift up your face, and let me see what these months have done to you."

She lifted her face mechanically, and for a full minute he stood looking down at it, reading it feature by feature, line by line—the proud, weary droop of the mouth, the quiet acceptance of pain which had lain so long in the gold-brown eyes. Then, with a groan he dropped suddenly and knelt beside her, holding his arms close round her, and laid his head against her knees. His face was hidden, and hesitatingly, with a half-shy, half-maternal gesture Ann touched the dark head pressed against her. Moments passed and he neither stirred nor spoke. At last she stooped over him.

"Eliot," she said quietly, "tell me why you have come back?"

Even then he did not move at once, but at last he raised his head from her knees and met her eyes.

"I've come back," he said slowly, "because, though I've doubted you, I can't live without you. I've come back to ask your forgiveness—if it is still possible for you to forgive me." Then, as she would have spoken, he checked her: "No, don't decide—don't say anything yet. Hear what I have to tell you first."

She yielded to a curious strained insistence in his voice.

"Very well," she said gently, "you shall tell me just what you will."

He left his place by her side and went over and stood by the chimneypiece, looking down at her while he spoke, and as she listened it seemed as though all that he had fought against, believed and disbelieved, suffered and endured, was made clear to her in the terse, difficult sentences that fell one by one from his lips.

"You knew that I'd once been deceived by a woman," he said. "Her name doesn't matter. She deceived me, and my love for her died—as surely as a man dies if you stab him to the heart. She stabbed my love—and it died, and I swore then that I would give no other woman the power to hurt me as she had hurt me. When I met you I knew, almost at once, that you were a woman whom—if I allowed myself to—I might grow to love. I think it was your sincerity, your transparent honesty that won me. You were all I'd dreamed of in a woman—all that I hadn't found in that other woman. But I was afraid. So I left Montricheux—went away at once. I didn't want to care for you. I'd been too badly hit before. Cowardly, you'll say, perhaps—you were never a coward, were you, Ann? Well, it may have been. Anyhow, I did go away and I tried to forget all about you. It wasn't easy, God knows, and then, by a trick of fate, I found you again, at my cottage—living there, sister of the man with whom I'd just made a pact. After that it was a struggle between my joy at finding you there and my determination never to let myself care again for any woman." He paused, but Ann did not speak, and after a minute he went on again:

"Well, you know how it ended. I was beaten. I loved you and I had to tell you so. When I yielded, I yielded entirely—gave you my utter love and faith. I believed in you completely—far more than I knew or even suspected at the time. And then, close on the top of that, I was told the story of how you had stayed at the Dents de Loup with Tony Brabazon. Even then I could hardly credit it. I came and asked you. And you didn't deny it. It was true. What else could I think? I argued that you had thrown Brabazon over because I was a better 'catch' from, a worldly point of view—just as that other woman had thrown me over for a similar reason!—that you'd deliberately deceived me, that you'd been faithless both to Brabazon and to me, as you would be faithless to any other man who loved you.... Remember, it had been your seeming sincerity, your truth, your straightness which had first attracted me. And just as I had loved you for your truth, so then I hated you for your falseness—your unbelievable falseness.... Why didn't you deny it all, Ann? Explain—clear the mists away from my eyes?"

"I was too proud—and hurt," she said quiveringly.

"If you'd only stooped to explain—" He broke off, with a savage gesture. "Forgive me! What right have I to reproach or blame you? The whole fault was mine. Well, I believed you as disloyal and disingenuous as I had known you to be loyal and candid. And I went away. I went down into hell. You've at least the satisfaction of knowing that I paid for my distrust—paid for it to the last fraction owing—"

"Ah, don't!" She raised her hand swiftly, imploringly. But he took no notice. He continued doggedly:

"Then, when I thought I had suffered all that a man could be called upon to suffer, I met Tony—Tony over head and ears in love with quite another woman, as unlike you—oh, your very antithesis! He used to talk to me sometimes. God knows I didn't give him any encouragement! I hated the very sight of him. But he never guessed it. And one day he came and prattled out to me the story of an adventure he had had—at the Dents de Loup—how he got caught up there with a girl. And I knew, then, that it was your adventure, too—though of course he never mentioned your name. But it was as clear as daylight to me. It was as though scales had fallen from my eyes.... I knew then what I'd done. I'd pulled down our house of happiness about our heads. For a time I think I went mad. I could think of nothing except the fact that I'd made it impossible for me ever to come to you again—even to ask your forgiveness."

He was silent a moment, leaning his arm on the chimney-piece and shading his face with his hand. When he again resumed it was with a palpable effort and his voice roughened.

"Afterwards, when I came to my senses, I saw that I must come to you. I had destroyed my own life—all that was worth while in it. But I had no right to destroy yours. So I've come back—to ask your forgiveness, Ann—if you can give it. And by forgiveness"—he eyed her steadily—"I mean all that forgiveness can hold—not just a mere form of words. I want the love I threw away—the right you once gave me to call myself your lover. If you don't feel you can give it—I shan't complain. I've no right to complain. I shall just go quietly out of your life. But if you can—now you know all—" He broke off. "Ann ... shall I go ... or stay?"

He made an involuntary movement towards her, then, checked himself abruptly and stood looking down at her in silence. From the ball-room there floated out the strains of the latest fox-trot, sounding curiously cheap and tawdry as they cut across the deep, almost solemn intensity that prevailed in the quiet room where a man had just stripped his soul naked to the eyes of the woman he loved and now stood as one awaiting judgment.

Ann remained silent. Speech seemed for a few moments a physical impossibility. She had been touched to the quick. Step by step she had gone with Eliot down into that place of torment where he had been wandering, suffering an agony of pain of which the keenest pang had taken birth in the bitter knowledge that it was of his own making, and in every fibre of her being she ached to give him back all that he had lost—all that he asked for. Ached to give it back to him complete, whole, unharmed—that love which had been his and which he had so piteously thrown away.

And she could not. By no mere shibboleth of words, no waving of a wand, could she restore the past, reconstruct what had been out of what was. Love she could give him in full measure, the same enduring love which would be his for ever, believing or unbelieving, living or dead. And his love she would take again—only she herself knew how gladly! But always their mutual love must lack something—that fine thread of utter faith and trust which he himself had cut asunder. It could be knotted together again, it was true. But one would always feel the knot—know it was there. He believed in her now—because she had been proved innocent. But she would never know if his belief in her would withstand the stress of another such test as the one under which it had gone down. To the end of life there would be a doubt, an unanswered question in her heart, as to whether he really had faith in her or no.

She looked up at last to meet his eyes still fixed intently upon her as he waited for her answer. Her own were rather sad. But her surrender was complete. She held out her hands.

"Stay!" she said.

Yet even as he gathered her into his arms she was vitally, cruelly conscious of the absence of the one thing needful to make perfect their reunion. Not even the swift passion of his kisses could convince her of his faith in her. She was not sure—could never be sure, now.

It would be bound to come between them sometimes—that terrible uncertainty. The grey shadow of distrust which had divided them in the past still followed them from afar—a vague, intangible menace. Would it some day swing forward, like the dark, remorseless finger of an hour-dial, and lie once more impassably between them?



CHAPTER XXIX

A PATCH OF SUNLIGHT

The days which followed were very wonderful ones to Ann. She had come through darkness into light, out of infinite pain into infinite joy, and perhaps the very fact that in giving herself to Eliot she had forgiven much—forgiven what many women would have found it impossible to forgive—added something precious, some sacramental spikenard, to the gift which flowed back to the giver, deepening the profound sense of peace and happiness which encompassed her.

Eliot had known how to accept her gift—had taken it with simple thankfulness and a wondering reverence for the shining ways along which a woman's love can lead her, and the hour which they had passed together after Ann had bidden him stay had been, in a sense, sacred—a mutual revelation to each of them of the secret depths in the other's nature. But afterwards, once that wonderful hour was past, Eliot strode masterfully back into his man's kingdom. He was not of the type to remain a penitent, on his knees indefinitely. Nor would Ann have had it otherwise. She would have hated a subservient lover.

Eliot was very far from being subservient. Almost before the neighbourhood's congratulations had ceased to rain about them both he was demanding that Ann should fix the date of their wedding.

"You impatient man!" she teased him. "Why, we're only just this minute engaged! We shan't be married for ages and ages yet."

"Oh, shan't we?" he retorted. "We'll be married in May, sweetheart. That's exactly as long as I'll consent to wait. And I'm only agreeing to that because a woman always seems to think it's part of the ceremony to buy a quantity of clothes when she's married—just as though she couldn't buy them afterwards quite as well as before!"

"In May? Oh, no, Eliot." Ann shook her head with decision. "That's the unlucky month for marriages."

"You don't mean to say you're superstitious?"

"I don't know." She spoke uncertainly. "But—we've had so much ill-luck. I don't think I want to tempt Providence by getting married in May."

He shouted with laughter.

"Very well, you absurd baby, it shan't be May," he conceded, adding cheerfully: "We'll fix it for April then."

"No, no. That's too soon," she protested hastily. "Let's decide on—June."

"April," he repeated firmly.

"June"—with an effort to be equally firm.

"If you say that again," he returned coolly, "I shall make it March. I'd ever so much rather, too," he wound up boyishly.

"That would be quite impossible," replied Ann triumphantly. "I've promised to go and stay with the Brabazons in March."

He took her by the shoulders and pulled her towards him.

"Let it be April, then," he said, adding quickly, as he read dissent in her eyes: "We've wasted such a lot of time, beloved."

She yielded at that.

"Very well, then—April. But I'm afraid you're going to be a dreadfully self-willed husband, Eliot"—smiling as though the prospect were in no way distasteful.

"I think I am," he acknowledged, with all a man's supreme egotism. He laughed down at her, and, lifting her right off the ground into his arms, kissed her with swift passion.

"You're much too thin," he grumbled discontentedly, as he set her down again. "You weigh next to nothing."

"And whose fault is that, pray?" she asked gaily.

She was horrified to see his face darken with sudden pain.

"Don't," he said abruptly, in a stifled voice.

"Oh, my dear—" She was back in his arms in an instant, soothing, comforting, and scolding him all in a breath. "You needn't worry over my boniness," she assured him cheerfully. "When we're married and settled down and I've no worries, I expect I shall get appallingly plump and have to take to one of those anti-fat cures."

"You—fat!" He laughed. "There's about as much danger of that as of Mrs. Carberry becoming a philanthropist."

Eliot had been furiously angry when he heard of the gossip which had gathered for a time around Ann's name and of the part Mrs. Carberry had played in helping to disseminate it, but neither he nor Ann herself had been able to refrain from laughing at the complete volte-face which that excellent lady performed when the announcement of their engagement was made public. She had been one of the first to offer her felicitations, and had paid a special call at the Cottage—this time accompanied by the modest Muriel—to offer them in person. "It will be so delightful to have a chatelaine at Heronsmere at last," she had gushed. Presumably, recognising that her daughter's chance of acquiring the coveted position was now reduced, to nil, she had decided—with the promptness of a good general—to accept the fact and adapt her tactics to the altered situation. With mathematical foresight she argued that when Coventry was married Heronsmere would undoubtedly become the centre of a considerable amount of entertaining, and from every point of view it would therefore be wise to be on friendly terms there. After all, there were as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it, and the prospective hospitality which she anticipated would emanate from Heronsmere in the near future should provide excellent opportunities for fishing.

Apart from Mrs. Carberry, everybody seemed genuinely delighted at the engagement—even Miss Caroline. She confusedly mingled regrets "for any misunderstanding" with her congratulations, and Ann, too happy herself to wish any one else to be unhappy, forgave her whole-heartedly. Lady Susan was overflowingly pleased.

"Though, of course," as she characteristically informed Sir Philip just before he and Tony returned to London, "Eliot's been blessed far beyond his deserts—like most men. Anyhow, Philip, you may as well make up your mind to accept Doreen as a pis otter for Tony—and do it gracefully, my dear man! Mark my words, marriage will be the making of the boy. Every man ought to be married."

"I wish you'd held that opinion thirty years ago, Susan," retorted Sir Philip. "I suppose"—he hesitated, his eyes curiously soft—"it's too late in the day now?"

"Much too late," replied Lady Susan promptly, though her eyes, too, were unwontedly soft. "Besides, I could never bear to be parted from the Tribes of Israel—and you know you can't stand a dog about the house."

"Drat the man!" she muttered crossly to herself, as the train bearing the Brabazons Londonwards steamed out of the station. She brushed her hand across her eyes as she hopped briskly into the car which had brought them to the station, giving the chauffeur the order "Home!" in a sharper voice than she usually employed towards her servants. "Drat the man! It looks as though a single engagement has demoralised the lot of us."

It was certainly destined to be followed by far-reaching consequences as regards two, at least, of the other people in the neighbourhood. Robin's notice to give up his post as Eliot's agent had, of course, been suitably buried, a brief understanding handshake between the two men its only tombstone, and Robin had gone straight from his interview with Eliot to the Priory. He found Cara, surrounded by a small army of vases, arranging flowers, of which a great sheaf, freshly sent in by the gardener from the hot-houses, lay on the table.

"Aren't they lovely?" she said, when she and Robin had exchanged greetings. "Do you want a buttonhole?"

He looked at the deep-red carnation which she held out to him and shook his head.

"No, thank you," he said politely. "I want a wife."

Cara gasped a little.

"Robin!" she exclaimed faintly.

A lovely colour flooded her face. It had been a much happier face latterly—since Ann's engagement. The look of settled sadness had gone out of her eyes. She felt now—now that everything was made straight betwixt Ann and Eliot—as though the heavy burden she had carried all these years had been suddenly loosed from her shoulders. Eliot had found happiness, at last, and that terrible sense of responsibility for his maimed and broken life was taken from her. Of the existence of the grey shadow she could not know, or guess.

So she turned to Robin with a sweet hesitancy that brought him swiftly to her side.

"Cara!" he said eagerly. "Cara, are you going to give me that 'second-best,' after all?"

Still she hesitated.

"It doesn't seem fair, Robin," she faltered. "I'm older than you are, for one thing."

"One year—or two, is it?" he mocked joyfully.

"Half a century, I think!"—with a quick sigh.

"You'll grow younger," he suggested optimistically. "And anyway, can you bear to think of me living all alone at the Cottage after Ann is married? I should probably commit suicide."

Cara stood twisting a spray of maidenhair fern round and round her fingers till the tiny pale green leaves shrivelled up and dropped off and only the wiry stem remained.

"When is—Ann going to be married?" she asked slowly, at last.

"In April. It's all fixed. But the thing that matters is when are we going to be married?"

April! Eliot was to be married in April! Cara was conscious of a muffled stab of pain. But she felt no active rebellion. With a wistful sense of resignation she recognised that his life and hers were separate and apart. She herself had sundered them more than ten years ago. But now, at last, Eliot had won through to happiness! She thanked God for that. And there was still something she could give Robin in return for his eager worship—good comradeship, and that second love which, though it bears but a faint semblance to the rushing ecstasy of young, passionate, first love, yet holds, perhaps, a deeper, more selfless tenderness and understanding.

She turned to the man waiting so eagerly for her answer.

"Are you quite sure you want me, Robin?" she asked.

"Quite sure," he answered gravely.

"Then, if you're really sure, I'll marry you whenever you like—after Ann is married."

He kissed her with a deep, grave passion, holding her closely in his arms.

"You shall forget the past, dearest—I promise you, you shall forget all the things that hurt you," he said with tender reassurance. Presently, when the first few minutes were passed, he smiled down at her, a gleam of mirth in his eyes.

"I shall see to it that Ann and Eliot don't postpone their wedding—if it means postponing ours! You said 'after,' you know."

She nodded.

"Yes. I can't possibly commandeer Ann's natural protector"—smiling—"until she's safely bestowed in some one else's care."

But though she jested about the stipulation she had made, it was the outcome of a curiously definite idea. Since it was through her that Eliot's happiness had once been wrecked, she felt as though, until this new-found happiness which had come to him were assured—secure beyond any shadow of doubt—she was not free to take her own. It was in a sense an expiation, a pathetic little human effort to propitiate fate and turn aside any blow; aimed at Eliot's happiness by those jealous gods who exact payment to the very last farthing.

* * * * *

Ann was overjoyed when she heard of Robin's engagement. To know that her adored brother would not be left lonely by her marriage, and to see Cara, whose former experience of matrimony had proved such a ghastly failure, with a new, brooding gladness in her eyes, added the last drop to her cup of happiness.

"Dear Robin, I'm so pleased!" she told him. "If I'd been choosing a wife for you myself I couldn't have chosen any one nicer than Cara!"

"Glad you're pleased," Robin returned gruffly—the gruffness being merely the cloak to conceal his own riotous felicity which every Englishman in similar circumstances thinks it necessary to assume. But Ann saw through it, and was not to be deterred from frank rejoicing.

"It will be perfectly lovely to have my best friend married to my best brother," she continued. "Where shall you live? At the Priory or the Cottage?"

"We haven't got as far as making such world-shaking decisions as that," he grinned. "Perhaps we might live at the Priory and week-end at the Cottage"—whimsically.

Ann found a further cause for rejoicing in the continued absence of Brett Forrester. She had never seen him again since the morning when, with an intense feeling of relief, she had watched the Sphinx steam out from Silverquay harbour. Lady Susan was much too incensed against him to invite him to White Windows, and Ann rested fairly secure in the hope that she would never see him again, or, at least, not until she was Eliot's wife. After that, she felt she would not be afraid to meet him. He could work her no more harm then.

So that it was with a light Heart that she finally started on her journey to London to stay with the Brabazons. Eliot saw her off at the station.

"If you stop a day longer than a fortnight I shall come and fetch you back," he informed her despotically. "I'm not going to spare my girl to any one for more than two weeks. And I grudge even that."

And Ann, leaning out of the carriage window and waving her hand to the tall, beloved figure on the platform, felt no premonition, was conscious of no ominous foreboding that the train which was bearing her so swiftly away from him was actually carrying her straight towards the very danger from which she felt so sure she had escaped.

In the patch of brilliant sunshine which lay all about her, the grey shadow had paled until it had become almost imperceptible. But it was still there—only waiting for the sun to move a little in the heavens to fling itself blackly across her path once more.



CHAPTER XXX

THE KEEPING OF A PROMISE

Her first two or three days at the tall grey house in Audley Square sufficed to indicate to Ann that all was not going well there, Sir Philip had welcomed her warmly enough, and when she descended to breakfast on the morning after her arrival she found an envelope on her plate containing his cheque for two hundred pounds, together with a brief intimation that it was intended to "help towards the trousseau." But, apart from the bestowal of this signal mark of favour, Ann found her godfather's behaviour extremely difficult to understand.

It was usually his custom to treat her with a species of crusty amiability, but, on this occasion, after the first warmth of his welcome had evaporated, she found that the crustiness became much more in evidence and the amiability conspicuously lacking. The old man was extraordinarily irritable, both towards her and towards Tony. It was as though he were labouring under a secret strain—prey to some anxiety which he was stubbornly bent on keeping to himself. Tony also, Ann observed, seemed to be living at high pressure of some kind. He was moody and restless, and unless some theatre or other plan had been proposed by his uncle he usually disappeared soon after dinner, and she saw him no more until the following morning.

It was all very unlike any previous visit which she had paid to the house at Audley Square. Formerly, if Sir Philip had felt disinclined to go out in an evening, Tony had always been eager with suggestions for their visitor's amusement, and many had been the occasions on which he and Ann had dined gaily at some little restaurant and gone on afterwards to a dance or theatre alone together.

But now the change was noticeable. Tony seemed entirely preoccupied with his own thoughts, and to judge by his manner, they were anything but pleasant ones. Sometimes he would sit in moody silence for an hour at a time, making a pretence at reading a magazine. Or he would get up suddenly when they were all three sitting together, and, without a word to any one, put on his hat and go out of the house. He never volunteered any information as to where he spent his evenings, and although Sir Philip would peer after him with angry, suspicious eyes when he took his departure, it seemed as if pride—or was it fear of what the answer might be?—kept the old man from questioning him. When eleven o'clock came, bringing no Tony, he would get up abruptly, fold his newspaper, and remark curtly to Ann: "Time we went to bed. No need to wait up for Tony. He has his latch-key." It was always the same formula, and the next day at breakfast uncle and nephew would exchange a brief greeting, and no further reference would be made to the previous evening. It was as though a kind of armed neutrality prevailed between them.

Decidedly something was radically awry, Ann reflected unhappily. Her visit, of course, was spoilt. But this troubled her very little in comparison with her increasing anxiety concerning Tony. He had never kept her out of his confidence before. She had always been able to stand by him—as she had promised his mother that she would. But now it seemed as if he had deliberately assumed an armour of reserve, not only in his relations with his uncle, but also in his attitude towards Ann herself, and her helplessness worried her intensely. She felt convinced that there must be something seriously amiss to account for Tony's extraordinary behaviour, and finally, the day before her visit was due to terminate, she decided to consult Mrs. Mellow, Sir Philip's faithful old housekeeper, whom Ann had known ever since those childhood days when she and Robin had been invited over to Lorne to have nursery tea with Tony.

Mrs. Mellow was one of the old-fashioned type of housekeeper—a comfortable black satin person, with pink cheeks and kind blue eyes and crinkly grey hair surmounted by a lace cap. Her name suited her admirably. When Ann put her head round the door of the housekeeper's room with the announcement, "Mellow, dear, I've come to have tea with you, if I may," she welcomed her with respectful delight.

"Now, come straight in, Miss Ann. As if you even needed to ask! I was afraid you meant going away this time without coming to have a cup of tea with your old Mellow."

Ann shook a reproving forefinger at her.

"Now, Mellow, you arch-hypocrite, you know I'd never dare! If I did, I expect the next time I wanted to come up and frivol in town you'd tell Sir Philip that you were spring-cleaning or something of the kind and that you couldn't put me up."

"How you do go on, miss, to be sure!" declared Mrs. Mellow beamingly, as she bustled about spreading the cloth for tea. "As if you didn't know you were always as welcome as the flowers in May, spring cleaning or no spring cleaning I And I suppose, miss"—archly—"it'll be 'Mrs.' the next time you visit us—if all I hear is true?"

Ann laughed. Throwing her arms round the old woman's neck, she kissed her warmly.

"Yes, it really will, Mellow. I believe"—teasingly—"you're just aching to hear all about it?"

"Well, miss," admitted Mellow, holding the kettle, suspended a moment above the teapot, "I don't want to seem inquisitive or disrespectful, you may be sure, but I would like to hear a bit about the gentleman who's going to marry my young lady. I always think of you as my young lady, you know, Miss Ann. You were more like a daughter than anything else to Master Tony's mother, God rest her! Perhaps you have his photograph, miss, that you could show me?"

Ann nodded smilingly—she knew her Mellow, and had anticipated this request!—and forthwith proceeded to descant on Eliot's various virtues and the beauty of Heronsmere until Mrs. Mellow declared that she could, as she phrased it, "picture it all as plain as if she'd seen it herself." Then, when the good woman's kindly interest was satisfied, Ann embarked on the quest which had been uppermost in her mind when she sought the housekeeper's room.

"Mellow, I'm worried about Tony," she announced at last.

The smile died out of Mrs. Mellow's face like the flame of a suddenly snuffed candle.

"You've noticed it, then, miss?" she parried uneasily.

"Of course I've noticed it. He isn't in the least like himself, and he's almost always out."

"Yes, miss." Mrs. Mellow shook her head. "I call it rare bad manners to ask a young lady to the house and then to leave her to entertain herself, as you may say. And I've told Master Tony so more than once."

"You told him so? What did he say?"

"Why, miss, he looked at me in a funny sort of way, and he said: 'Don't you worry yourself, Mellow. Miss Ann will understand all about it one day—and before very long, too.' I couldn't think what he meant, miss. But I didn't like the way he looked."

Ann's brows were knitted.

"How did he look?" she asked.

"Why, miss, sort of reckless. Like he did that time when we were down at Lorne last year and he and Sir Philip quarrelled something dreadful. He came down to me then, Master Tony did, in the housekeeper's room, at Lorne, and he said: 'Well, I'm off, Mellow, and whether you ever see me again or not depends on whether you can beat any sense into the head of that obstinate old man upstairs.' He was mad with anger, was Master Tony, or of course he wouldn't have spoken like that of his uncle. And I'm blest if he didn't go out of the house the very next day! Sir Philip was in a rare taking, I remember."

"He needn't have been," said Ann, smiling. "Tony only came to Oldstone Cottage and stayed with Robin and me."

"So I heard, miss, afterwards. But, really, at the time I was frightened lest he should do himself a mischief—he looked so wild."

Ann's heart skipped a beat.

"Do himself a mischief?" she interposed quickly. "What do you mean? How could he?"

"I don't know how, miss. But I tell you, I'm frightened for Master Tony. I am, truly."

Ann gazed thoughtfully into the fire.

"Where does he spend his time, Mellow? Have you any idea?"

"I have not, miss. But I do know this—that it's sometimes two and three o'clock in a morning before he comes home. My bedroom's on the ground floor, as you know, and I hear him come in and go upstairs almost always after midnight. Last night 'twas near one o'clock, and another night it may be later still. It bodes no good for a young gentleman to be coming home at all hours. Of that I am sure."

"I think you're right, Mellow," replied Ann gravely. "Does Sir Philip know about it, do you think?"

"Indeed, miss, I fancy he guesses. But mostly he's too proud to speak what he thinks. Though he did say to me, one evening about a week or ten days before you came here, 'Mellow,' says he, 'the boy's going the same way as his father.' And then he swore, miss—something awful it was to hear him—that he'd not lift a finger to keep Master Tony out of the gutter. 'He'll end up in jail, Mellow,' he said, 'and bring shame on the old name. All I hope is that I'll be dead and buried before it happens.' And with that he gets up and goes out and slams the door behind him."

Ann was silent. It seemed to her that things were even more seriously amiss than she had imagined. Mrs. Mellow glanced at her wistfully.

"Do you think, miss, that you could say a word to Master Tony!" she said. "Talk to him for his own good? He always used to take a lot of notice of what you said to him, I remember."

"I know he did," returned Ann. "But he doesn't give me any opportunity of talking to him now"—ruefully. "All the same," she added with determination, "I shall certainly talk to him before I go home. I'll get hold of him this evening."

But Tony proved obdurately uncommunicative.

"It's too late to 'talk'!" he told her, with a roughness that was quite foreign to him. "All the talking in the world wouldn't mend matters. It's"—he looked at her oddly—"it's neck or nothing now, Ann."

His eyes were feverishly brilliant, and Ann could see that even during the last few days his boyish face had grown strangely haggard-looking.

"Tony, you're in trouble of some sort. I wish you'd tell me about it," she entreated.

"There's nothing to tell. Don't fuss so, Ann"—irritably. "I said it was neck or nothing. Well, it's going to be neck! I swear it shall be. I'm going to win through all right. And before long, too!"

To Ann's relief he made no suggestion of going out that evening after dinner—presumably in deference to the fact that she was leaving on the morrow, and, as Sir Philip appeared tired and Ann had still a few oddments of packing to finish off, by common consent they all retired early to bed. Half an hour later, however, as Ann was folding a last remaining frock into the tray of her trunk, she heard some one very quietly descending the stairs, and a minute later the house door opened and closed again softly. A sudden conviction seized her, and she ran swiftly down to the landing below, where Tony's room was situated, and tapped on his door. No answer being forthcoming, she threw the door open and looked in. She had switched on the landing burner as she passed, and the light streamed into the room. Tony was not there, nor were there any indications that he had contemplated going to bed. His room was untouched, just as the housemaid had left it prepared for the night—a fire burning in the grate, the bed neatly turned down, with his pyjamas laid out on it, a can of hot water, covered with a towel, standing ready in the basin on the washstand.

Very quietly Ann closed the door and returned to her own room. She had little doubt what had happened. In consideration of the fact that it was her last evening Tony had stayed indoors until she and his uncle might be supposed to be safely in bed. Then he had stolen out of the house and departed once more on his own pursuits. Ann could make a pretty good guess that these included gambling in some form or other.

She felt rather sick. It was so unlike Tony to resort to any hole-and-corner business such as this—slipping out of the house, as he believed, unknown to any one. That he must be caught in a terrible tangle of some kind she felt sure, and his mother's last words, as she had lain on her deathbed, came back to her with redoubled significance. "And if Tony gets into difficulties?" Vividly she recalled Virginia's imploring face, the beseeching note in her tired voice. And her own answer: "If he does, why, then I'll get him out of them if it's in any way possible." It looked as though the time had come for the fulfilment of that promise. And ignorant of what danger it could be which threatened Tony, unable to guess the particular kind of difficulties in which he found himself involved at the moment, she was powerless to help.

Slowly she undressed and got into bed. But not to sleep. She lay there with wide-open eyes, every sense alert, listening for the least sound which might herald Tony's return. She could hear the loud ticking of the tall old clock on the staircase—tick-tack, tick-tack, tick-tack. Sometimes the sound of it deceived her into thinking it was a footstep on the stairs, and she would sit up eagerly in bed, listening intently. But always the hoped-for sound resolved itself back into the eternal tick-tack of the clock.

Twelve, one, two o'clock struck, bringing no sign of Tony's return, and finally, wearied out, Ann fell into a brief slumber from which she awakened with sudden violence to the knowledge that, at length, there was the sound of an actual footfall in the house. She heard the stairs creak twice, unmistakably, then the muffled closing of a door—and silence.

For a moment she hesitated, uncertain how to proceed. Surely she could sleep in peace now? Tony was safely in the house once more, and to-morrow she would have a heart-to-heart talk with him and induce him to confide in her. But instantaneously her mind rejected the idea. Something bade her act, and act immediately. Urged by that imperative inner impulse, she rose and, throwing on a wrapper, ran swiftly down the stairs, her bare feet soundless on the carpet, and paused irresolutely outside Tony's bedroom door. Her hand was raised to knock softly on the panel, when all at once an odd little noise came to her from the inside of the room—a curious metallic sound, like the dull clink of metal dragged slowly across wood.

Seized by a sudden overwhelming fear, she flung open the door. Tony was standing beside an old mahogany bureau, one drawer of which had been pulled open. His arm was half-raised. In his hand he gripped a revolver. Ann could see the light from the rose-shaded burners run redly along its barrel like a thin stream of blood. In the fraction of a second she had fled across the room and grasped his wrist.

"Tony! What are you doing?" she cried hoarsely.

She felt his arm jerk against her hold, resisting it, but she clung determinedly to his wrist with her small strong fingers.

"Give it to me! Give it to me!" she whispered hurryingly, hardly conscious of what she was saying.

His instinctive resistance ceased. She felt his muscles relax, and he allowed her to take the pistol from him. He stared down at her curiously.

"Pity you didn't come two minutes later," he observed laconically.

Without reply, she proceeded to unload the revolver. He watched her with a faint, apathetic amusement.

"Shouldn't have thought you knew how to do that," he said.

"I learned how to handle a revolver during the war," she returned grimly. She crossed the room and very softly closed the door. "Now, Tony," she went on, turning back and forcing herself to speak composedly, "you're going to tell me all about it. Things must be pretty bad for you to have thought of—this." She glanced down with shrinking repugnance at the weapon which she still held. All at once the apathy which seemed to have possessed him vanished. He turned on her with sudden violence.

"Why did you come? If you hadn't, I should be safely out of it all!... Out of it all!... Oh, my God!..."

He dropped into a chair, burying his face in his hands, and the utter despair in his voice tore at Ann's heart. What had happened—what could have happened that Tony should seek to take his own life? Mechanically she stooped to replace the revolver in the opened drawer from which he had evidently taken it. A few loose cartridges still lay there, together with some torn scraps of paper and a blank cheque. Almost unconsciously her glance took in the contents of the drawer. Then suddenly it checked—concentrated. She caught her breath sharply and looked at Tony, a horrified, incredulous question in her eyes. But he was still sitting with his head buried in his hands, silent and motionless.

Very slowly, as though she approached her hand to something nauseous and abhorrent, Ann reached out and withdrew one of the torn sheets of paper and stared at it. It was covered with repeated copyings of a single name—sometimes the whole name, sometimes only one or other of the initial letters to it. And the name which some one was taking such pains to learn to write was that of her godfather, Philip Brabazon... Philip Brabazon... the sheet was covered with it, and some of the signatures were a very fair imitation of the old man's handwriting.

Ann snatched up the blank cheque. It was one that had been torn from Sir Philip's cheque-book. She could see that at a glance—remembered so clearly noticing the same heading on the cheque which he had given her towards her trousseau—the Watchester and Loamshire Bank. She held out to Tony the two pieces of paper—the sheet of scribbled signatures and the blank cheque.

"Tony," she said, her voice cracking a little. "What—what are these?"

The tense, vibrating horror in her tones roused him. He looked up wearily. Then, as he saw what she held, a dull red flush mounted slowly to his face. For a moment he did not speak. When he did, his voice sounded dead—flat and toneless.

"Those," he said, "are attempts on my part to forge my uncle's signature."

She stared at him speechlessly. Then, a sudden new fear shaking her, she went quickly to his side, thrusting the blank cheque under his eyes.

"Tony—you haven't done it before?... This—this isn't.... How many cheques of his have you had?"

"One," he said. "That one"—nodding towards the narrow pink slip she held. Ann gave, a gasp of relief. "Yes," he went on, "I found I couldn't do it. The old man's been decent to me, after all. He'd have hated the old name muddied by—by forgery."

"And do you think he'd like it stained by suicide?" she demanded fiercely. "Oh, Tony, you coward! You coward!"

It was as if she had struck him across the face. He sprang up, his eyes blazing.

"How dare you say that?" he cried stormily.

"I say it because it's true," she returned, her voice quivering. "Thank God you haven't committed forgery! And thank God I was in time to stop your taking this cowardly—utterly cowardly—way out of things. You've got into a mess, and you wanted to get out of it—the easiest way. Did you ever stop to think of us—afterwards? Of your uncle, and me, or of Doreen Neville—all of us who cared for you? Oh! I wouldn't have believed it of you, Tony!"

"You don't know how bad things are," he said desperately. "You've got to be hurt—you, and uncle, and—and Doreen." His voice broke, then steadied again. "I've got myself in such a mess that a bullet was the best way out—for everybody."

"I don't believe it," answered Ann, with stubborn courage. "There's some other way. There always is—only we've got to look for it—find it." Suddenly her heart overflowed in pity for this white-faced, haggard boy who must have suffered so bitterly, must have gone down into the veriest depths of despair, before he had been driven to seek that short and terrible way out of life. She held out her hands to him. "Tony, let me help! Let's look for a way out together. I'm your pal. I've always been your pal. Why did you bear all this alone instead of letting me share?"

At the touch of her strong, kind little hands he broke down for a moment. Turning aside, he leaned his arms on the chimneypiece and hid his face. A hard, stifled sob tore its way through his throat and his shoulders shook. Ann remained silent, giving him time in which to recover his self-command. Her heart was full almost to breaking-point with that eager, mothering tenderness which a woman instinctively feels for a man in trouble. She is the eternal mother, then—he the eternal child.

When at last Tony lifted his head from his arms he was very pale, but his eyes held a look of resolution.

"I'll tell you," he said jerkily.

Bit by bit the painful story came out—the same familiar story, only infinitely aggravated, of high play, losses, then still higher play in a desperate hope of recovery, and finally, the confession of heavy borrowings, of notes of hand given and accepted—and now falling due.

"That's the devil of it—the time's up and they're due for payment," wound up Tony hoarsely. "Payment! And I haven't twenty pounds in the world."

As Ann listened to the stumbling recital, her face paled and grew very grave. This was worse—far worse than she had anticipated.

"How much, do you owe—altogether, Tony?" she asked at last, when he had finished speaking.

"Twelve hundred."

"Twelve hundred pounds!" The largeness of the amount left her momentarily aghast, and the vague idea she had been harbouring that Robin and she might scrape up a hundred or two between them and so put matters straight crumbled to atoms.

Twelve hundred pounds! In her wildest imaginings she had never dreamed of Tony's owing such a sum. She shivered a little, partly from nerves, partly from sheer physical cold. The fire had smouldered to black ash long ere this, and the chill air which precedes the dawn was creeping into the room. Even the necessity of conducting the entire conversation in lowered tones, in order not to disturb the sleeping household, added to the aguish, strained feeling of which she was conscious.

"There is only one thing to do, Tony," she said at last. "You must tell Sir Philip."

A sharp ejaculation escaped him, hastily stifled as she raised a warning finger enjoining silence.

"Sh! Don't make a noise! We mustn't wake any one," she cautioned him. "You must tell Sir Philip," she resumed. "There's simply nothing else to be done."

"It would be utterly useless," he replied with quiet conviction. "He wouldn't pay. He said he wouldn't, last time. And he meant it.... You'd better have let me blow out my brains while I was about it, Ann"—with, a mirthless laugh.

"Don't talk rot," she returned succinctly.

"It's not rot. Don't you see I'm done for—gone in? A man who borrows, as I've done, and can't pay, is finished. Outside the pale. You don't suppose they'll let Doreen marry me after this, do you?"

Ann shook her head voicelessly. She could see—only too clearly—all the consequences which must inevitably follow if the matter became public. It signalled the end of things for Tony. It meant a ruined life—love, happiness, a clean name, all would go down in the general crash.

"The only thing I can do," he resumed hopelessly, "is to emigrate. Bolt, and start fresh somewhere."

Ann set her teeth.

"You're not going to bolt," she said doggedly. She was silent for a moment, thinking feverishly. There must he some way out—some way, if she could only come upon it.

"Whom do you owe this money to?" she demanded at last. "Several different people, I suppose?"

"No. One man offered to be my banker till—till my luck came round again," confessed Tony. "And I let him. But I didn't know I'd borrowed so much. It seemed to mount up all in a moment."

"'In a moment!'" There was a tiny edge of contempt to Ann's voice. "How long have you been borrowing from this man?"

"Oh, for a goodish time—on and off. I've paid back some. I'd have paid it all back if I'd only had a stroke of luck. But I've been losing every night for the last month."

Luck! The weak man's eternal excuse for failure Ann felt as though she loathed the very word.

"Who is the man you borrowed from?" she asked.

Tony preserved an embarrassed silence.

"Who is it?" she repeated. "I must know, Tony. We can't plan anything to help if you're not absolutely frank."

"Well, if you must know—it's Brett Forrester," he said wretchedly. "It's beastly, I know, his being a friend of yours."

Brett Forrester! Ann remained very silent, with bent head, absorbing the full significance of this confession. It seemed suddenly to have thrown an immense burden of responsibility upon her. Brett! As Tony said, he was a friend of hers. And desired to be much more than a friend, if Tony but knew! Were it not for this, it would have been simple enough for her to go and use her influence with Brett—ask him out of sheer friendliness to her to give Tony a chance—to grant him time in which to pay. It would have to be a very long time, she reflected. But perhaps, when she was Eliot's wife... Eliot was generous ... he would not think twice about paying twelve hundred pounds to give happiness to the woman he loved—to purchase peace of mind for her. And she would economise in her own personal expenses and so try to balance matters. Eliot had told her that one of his earliest presents to her was to be a new and very perfectly equipped car for her own special use. She would forego the car—ask him to pay Tony's debts instead. Her thoughts raced along.

But all this presupposed that Brett would be willing to wait a little for his money. If there had been only friendship between herself and Brett, Ann felt she could so easily have begged a chance for Tony. But to approach the man who had desired to marry her so much that he had been willing to go to almost any length to force her into marriage with him, this man whom she had defied and scorned at their last meeting—to ask a boon, a favour from him, seemed of all things the most impossible. To do so would be to strangle her pride, to walk deliberately through the valley of humiliation. Oh, she couldn't do it! She couldn't do it!

Virginia's sad, entreating voice seemed to plead in her ear: "Ann, will you do what you can for him—for him and for me?" It was almost as though she were there in the room, an invisible presence, beseeching, supplicating mercy for her son—claiming the fulfilment of the promise Ann had made so many years ago. "'If it's in any way possible,' Ann," the voice seemed to urge. "'In any way' you said. And it is possible. You could save Tony if you would."

After what appeared to Tony an interminable time, Ann lifted her bent head. Her face was white to the lips, but her eyes were strangely bright—like golden stars, he thought. They looked almost unearthly.

"Don't worry, Tony," she said. Familiar little comforting phrase! "Don't worry, old boy. Leave it all to me. I'm sure I can put things straight. I'll talk to Brett—I'm certain he'll do what I ask and give you time to pay."

"Time?" Tony laughed harshly. "If I had all the time until eternity I couldn't produce twelve hundred pounds!"

"But I could," asserted Ann confidently. "Won't you trust me, Tony? I'm sure—sure that I can get you out of this scrape."

He looked at her in blank amazement. But something in her face convinced him that she was speaking the truth—that he could rely on her.

"If you do," he said, and his voice rang true as steel, "I give you my word, Ann, that I'll never get into another. I'll chuck gambling from this day forth."

"Will you, Tony? Will you really?" she cried eagerly.

He took her hands in his.

"I promise," he said simply.

The two strained young faces gleamed palely in the chill dawnlight—on each of them the impress of a stern resolution. Suddenly, moved by an irresistible impulse of compassion, Ann lifted her arms and laying her hands on either side Tony's face, drew it down level with her own. Then she bent forward and kissed his forehead—tenderly, as his mother might have kissed him.

"Good night, Tony boy," she said. And a minute later her slender figure flitted, ghost-like, up the stairs to her own room.



CHAPTER XXXI

A BARGAIN

The day after Ann's return to the Cottage found her occupied in the composition of a letter to Brett Forrester, the number of torn, half-written sheets of paper which surrounded her testifying to the difficulty she was experiencing in the matter. The whole idea of appealing to Brett, of asking any service from him, was intensely repugnant to her and rendered the performance of her task doubly difficult, but at last, after several abortive attempts, it was accomplished. When completed, the letter read as simply and shortly as possible, merely saying that she was anxious to see him about a rather important matter and asking where it would be possible for them to meet. She had no idea where he was at the moment, but she had gathered from Tony that he had been in London as recently as a week ago, so she addressed her letter to his flat in town, posted it, and tried to possess her soul in patience until she should receive an answer. It might have eased matters somewhat if she could have shared her burden with Robin, but, as luck would have it, he had been obliged to leave home on the day following that of her own return. Eliot had unexpectedly commissioned him to inspect on his behalf a famous herd of cattle in which he happened to be interested, a matter which would take Robin up to Scotland and entail his absence from home for several days, and in the hurry of packing and departure there had been no chance of a cosy, confidential chat between brother and sister.

Two or three days passed, bringing no answer to her letter, and Ann began to be nervously agitated in mind as to whether it had reached its destination safely or not. She sought for reassurance by telling herself that, if Brett happened to be out of town, the letter was probably following him round and might not yet have caught up with him, but the knowledge that time was an important factor in the solving of Tony's difficulties, and the fear lest, in the interval, anything should occur to drive the boy once more to despair, kept her nerves on the stretch.

It was late in the afternoon of the fourth day that the response came to her letter—and in a form in which she least expected it. She had been out in the garden, gathering snowdrops, and was returning to the house, her hands filled with the white blossom of spring, when she lifted her eyes to find Brett Forrester standing directly in her path. Her heart gave a great terrified leap. She had pictured him as far enough away, and his appearance was utterly unexpected. Moreover, the very sight of him brought back a swift rush of painful memories, and involuntarily she recoiled a little. He regarded her quizzically.

"You don't seem exactly pleased to see me," he observed.

"I'm—I'm surprised, that's all," she said hastily. "I didn't—I wasn't expecting you." Transferring her harvest of snowdrops to one hand, she extended the other towards him.

"Not expecting me?" he returned, when they had shaken hands. "After the letter you wrote me?"

"I thought you would write first, suggesting where we could meet."

"I should have thought you would have known me better by this time," he commented dryly, as he turned and walked beside her up the path to the house. "I never waste time in preliminaries. You said you wanted to see me—so here I am."

Ann made no response—for the simple reason that she couldn't think of one to make. Brett always appeared t cut the ground from under one's feet, so to speak—certainly as regards the small change of social intercourse. Even behind his lightest remarks one seemed able to hear the threatening rumble of the volcano.

"What was it you wanted to see me about?" he continued.

"I'll tell you. Come in, will you?"

By this time they had reached the house and Ann led the way into the living-room. She was conscious of an acute feeling of trepidation and, by way of postponing the evil moment, paused to put her snowdrops in water in a bowl which she had left filled in readiness on the table.

"Are you staying at White Windows?" she asked, as she arranged the flowers with quick, nervous touches.

"I am not," replied Brett. "I gathered, during the last conversation I held with my revered aunt, that my welcome had worn a trifle thin—as you are doubtless aware," he concluded mockingly.