Marriage à la Mode

 BY MRS. HUMPHRY WARD

ILLUSTRATED BY FRED PEGRAM

NEW YORKDOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY1909

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGNLANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY MRS. HUMPHRY WARDCOPYRIGHT, 1909, BY MARY AUGUSTA WARDPUBLISHED, MAY, 1909

TO L. C. W. 

[Illustration: DAPHNE FLOYD]

NOTE

THIS STORY APPEARED IN ENGLAND UNDER THE TITLE OF "DAPHNE. " THEPUBLISHERS ARE INDEBTED TO THE PROPRIETORS OF THE "PALL MALL MAGAZINE"FOR THEIR PERMISSION TO USE THE DRAWINGS BY MR. FRED PEGRAM. 

ILLUSTRATIONS

Daphne Floyd

"He caught the hand, he gathered its owner into a pair of strong arms, and bending over her, he kissed her"

"In the dead of night Daphne sat up in bed, looking at the face and headof her husband beside her on the pillow"

"Her whole being was seething with passionate and revengeful thought"

Marriage à la Mode

PART I

CHAPTER I

"A stifling hot day!" General Hobson lifted his hat and mopped hisforehead indignantly. "What on earth this place can be like in June Ican't conceive! The tenth of April, and I'll be bound the thermometer'ssomewhere near eighty in the shade. You never find the English climateplaying you these tricks. "

Roger Barnes looked at his uncle with amusement. 

"Don't you like heat, Uncle Archie? Ah, but I forgot, it's Americanheat. "

"I like a climate you can depend on, " said the General, quite consciousthat he was talking absurdly, yet none the less determined to talk, byway of relief to some obscure annoyance. "Here we are sweltering in thisabominable heat, and in New York last week they had a blizzard, andhere, even, it was cold enough to give me rheumatism. The climate'salways in extremes--like the people. "

"I'm sorry to find you don't like the States, Uncle Archie. "

The young man sat down beside his uncle. They were in the deck saloon ofa steamer which had left Washington about an hour before for MountVernon. Through the open doorway to their left they saw a wide expanseof river, flowing between banks of spring green, and above it thunderousclouds, in a hot blue. The saloon, and the decks outside, held a greatcrowd of passengers, of whom the majority were women. 

The tone in which Roger Barnes spoke was good-tempered, but quiteperfunctory. Any shrewd observer would have seen that whether his uncleliked the States or not did not in truth matter to him a whit. 

"And I consider all the arrangements for this trip most unsatisfactory, "the General continued angrily. "The steamer's too small, thelanding-place is too small, the crowd getting on board was somethingdisgraceful. They'll have a shocking accident one of these days. Andwhat on earth are all these women here for--in the middle of the day?It's not a holiday. "

"I believe it's a teachers' excursion, " said young Barnes absently, hiseyes resting on the rows of young women in white blouses and spring hatswho sat in close-packed chairs upon the deck--an eager, talkative host. 

"H'm--Teachers!" The General's tone was still more pugnacious. "Going tolearn more lies about us, I suppose, that they may teach them toschool-children? I was turning over some of their school-books in a shopyesterday. Perfectly abominable! It's monstrous what they teach thechildren here about what they're pleased to call their War ofIndependence. All that we did was to ask them to pay something for theirown protection. What did it matter to us whether they were mopped up bythe Indians, or the French, or not? 'But if you want us to go to all theexpense and trouble of protecting you, and putting down those fellows, why, hang it, ' we said, 'you must pay some of the bill!' That was allEnglish Ministers asked; and perfectly right too. And as for the menthey make such a fuss about, Samuel Adams, and John Adams, and Franklin, and all the rest of the crew, I tell you, the stuff they teach Americanschool-children about them is a poisoning of the wells! Franklin was aman of profligate life, whom I would never have admitted inside mydoors! And as for the Adamses--intriguers--canting fellows!--both ofthem. "

"Well, at least you'll give them George Washington. " As he spoke, Barnesconcealed a yawn, followed immediately afterwards by a look of greateralertness, caused by the discovery that a girl sitting not far from thedoorway in the crowd outside was certainly pretty. 

The red-faced, white-haired General paused a moment before replying, then broke out: "What George Washington might have been if he had held astraight course I am not prepared to say. As it is, I don't hesitate fora moment! George Washington was nothing more nor less than a rebel--adamned rebel! And what Englishmen mean by joining in the worship of himI've never been able to understand. "

"I say, uncle, take care, " said the young man, looking round him, andobserving with some relief that they seemed to have the saloon tothemselves. "These Yankees will stand most things, but----"

"You needn't trouble yourself, Roger, " was the testy reply; "I am not inthe habit of annoying my neighbours. Well now, look here, what I want toknow is, what is the meaning of this absurd journey of yours?"

The young man's frown increased. He began to poke the floor with hisstick. "I don't know why you call it absurd?"

"To me it seems both absurd and extravagant, " said the other withemphasis. "The last thing I heard of you was that Burdon and Co. Hadoffered you a place in their office, and that you were prepared to takeit. When a man has lost his money and becomes dependent upon others, thesooner he gets to work the better. "

Roger Barnes reddened under the onslaught, and the sulky expression ofhis handsome mouth became more pronounced. "I think my mother and Iought to be left to judge for ourselves, " he said rather hotly. "Wehaven't asked anybody for money _yet_, Uncle Archie. Burdon and Co. Canhave me in September just as well as now; and my mother wished me tomake some friends over here who might be useful to me. "

"Useful to you. How?"

"I think that's my affair. In this country there are alwaysopenings--things turning up--chances--you can't get at home. "

The General gave a disapproving laugh. "The only chance that'll helpyou, Roger, at present--excuse me if I speak frankly--is the chance ofregular work. Your poor mother has nothing but her small fixed income, and you haven't a farthing to chuck away on what you call chances. Why, your passage by the _Lucania_ alone must have cost a pretty penny. I'llbet my hat you came first class. "

The young man was clearly on the brink of an explosion, but controlledhimself with an effort. "I paid the winter rate; and mother who knowsthe Cunard people very well, got a reduction. I assure you, UncleArchie, neither mother nor I is a fool, and we know quite well what weare about. "

As he spoke he raised himself with energy, and looked his companion inthe face. 

The General, surveying him, was mollified, as usual, by nothing in theworld but the youth's extraordinary good looks. Roger Barnes's goodlooks had been, indeed, from his childhood upward the distinguishing andremarkable feature about him. He had been a king among his schoolfellowslargely because of them, and of the athletic prowess which went withthem; and while at Oxford he had been cast for the part of Apollo in"The Eumenides, " Nature having clearly designed him for it in spite ofthe lamentable deficiencies in his Greek scholarship, which gave hisprompters and trainers so much trouble. Nose, chin, brow, the poising ofthe head on the shoulders, the large blue eyes, lidded and set with aGreek perfection, the delicacy of the lean, slightly hollow cheeks, combined with the astonishing beauty and strength of the head, crownedwith ambrosial curls--these possessions, together with others, had sofar made life an easy and triumphant business for their owner. The"others, " let it be noted, however, had till now always been present;and, chief amongst them, great wealth and an important and popularfather. The father was recently dead, as the black band on the youngman's arm still testified, and the wealth had suddenly vanished, whollyand completely, in one of the financial calamities of the day. GeneralHobson, contemplating his nephew, and mollified, as we have said, by hissplendid appearance, kept saying to himself: "He hasn't a farthing butwhat poor Laura allows him; he has the tastes of forty thousand a year;a very indifferent education; and what the deuce is he going to do?"

Aloud he said:

"Well, all I know is, I had a deplorable letter last mail from your poormother. "

The young man turned his head away, his cigarette still poised at hislips. "Yes, I know--mother's awfully down. "

"Well, certainly your mother was never meant for a poor woman, " said theGeneral, with energy. "She takes it uncommonly hard. "

Roger, with face still averted, showed no inclination to discuss hismother's character on these lines. 

"However, she'll get along all right, if you do your duty by her, " addedthe General, not without a certain severity. 

"I mean to do it, sir. " Barnes rose as he spoke. "I should think we'regetting near Mount Vernon by this time. I'll go and look. "

He made his way to the outer deck, the General following. The oldsoldier, as he moved through the crowd of chairs in the wake of hisnephew, was well aware of the attention excited by the young man. Theeyes of many damsels were upon him; and, while the girls looked and saidnothing, their mothers laughed and whispered to each other as the youngApollo passed. 

Standing at the side of the steamer, the uncle and nephew perceived thatthe river had widened to a still more stately breadth, and that, on thesouthern bank, a white building, high placed, had come into view. Theexcursionists crowded to look, expressing their admiration for thenatural scene and their sense of its patriotic meaning in a frank, enthusiastic chatter, which presently enveloped the General, standing ina silent endurance like a rock among the waves. 

"Isn't it fine to think of his coming back here to die, so simply, whenhe'd made a nation?" said a young girl--perhaps from Omaha--to hercompanion. "Wasn't it just lovely?"

Her voice, restrained, yet warm with feeling, annoyed General Hobson. Hemoved away, and as they hung over the taffrail he said, with suppressedvenom to his companion: "Much good it did them to be 'made a nation'!Look at their press--look at their corruption--their divorce scandals!"

Barnes laughed, and threw his cigarette-end into the swift brown water. 

"Upon my word, Uncle Archie, I can't play up to you. As far as I'vegone, I like America and the Americans. "

"Which means, I suppose, that your mother gave you some introductions torich people in New York, and they entertained you?" said the Generaldrily. 

"Well, is there any crime in that? I met a lot of uncommonly nicepeople. "

"And didn't particularly bless me when I wired to you to come here?"

The young man laughed again and paused a moment before replying. 

"I'm always very glad to come and keep you company, Uncle Archie. "

The old General reddened a little. Privately, he knew very well that histelegram summoning young Barnes from New York had been an act oftyranny--mild, elderly tyranny. He was not amusing himself inWashington, where he was paying a second visit after an absence oftwenty years. His English soul was disturbed and affronted by a whollynew realization of the strength of America, by the giant forces of theyoung nation, as they are to be felt pulsing in the Federal City. He wasup in arms for the Old World, wondering sorely and secretly what the Newmight do with her in the times to come, and foreseeing anever-increasing deluge of unlovely things--ideals, principles, manners--flowing from this western civilization, under which his owngods were already half buried, and would soon be hidden beyond recovery. And in this despondency which possessed him, in spite of the attentionsof Embassies, and luncheons at the White House, he had heard that Rogerwas in New York, and could not resist the temptation to send for him. After all, Roger was his heir. Unless the boy flagrantly misbehavedhimself, he would inherit General Hobson's money and small estate inNorthamptonshire. Before the death of Roger's father this prospectiveinheritance, indeed, had not counted for very much in the familycalculations. The General had even felt a shyness in alluding to amatter so insignificant in comparison with the general scale on whichthe Barnes family lived. But since the death of Barnes _père_, and thecomplete pecuniary ruin revealed by that event, Roger's expectationsfrom his uncle had assumed a new importance. The General was quite awareof it. A year before this date he would never have dreamed of summoningRoger to attend him at a moment's notice. That he had done so, and thatRoger had obeyed him, showed how closely even the family relation maydepend on pecuniary circumstance. 

The steamer swung round to the landing-place under the hill of MountVernon. Again, in disembarkation, there was a crowd and rush which setthe General's temper on edge. He emerged from it, hot and breathless, after haranguing the functionary at the gates on the inadequacy of thearrangements and the likelihood of an accident. Then he and Roger strodeup the steep path, beside beds of blue periwinkles, and under old treesjust bursting into leaf. A spring sunshine was in the air and on thegrass, which had already donned its "livelier emerald. " The air quiveredwith heat, and the blue dome of sky diffused it. Here and there amagnolia in full flower on the green slopes spread its splendour ofwhite or pinkish blossom to the sun; the great river, shimmering andstreaked with light, swept round the hill, and out into a pearlydistance; and on the height the old pillared house with its flankingcolonnades stood under the thinly green trees in a sharp light and shadewhich emphasized all its delightful qualities--made, as it were, themost of it, in response to the eagerness of the crowd now flowing roundit. 

Half-way up the hill Roger suddenly raised his hat. 

"Who is it?" said the General, putting up his eyeglass. 

"The girl we met last night and her brother. "

"Captain Boyson? So it is. They seem to have a party with them. "

The lady whom young Barnes had greeted moved toward the Englishmen, followed by her brother. 

"I didn't know we were to meet to-day, " she said gaily, with a mockinglook at Roger. "I thought you said you were bored--and going back to NewYork. "

Roger was relieved to see that his uncle, engaged in shaking hands withthe American officer, had not heard this remark. Tact was certainly notMiss Boyson's strong point. 

"I am sure I never said anything of the kind, " he said, looking brazenlydown upon her; "nothing in the least like it. "

"Oh! oh!" the lady protested, with an extravagant archness. "Mrs. Phillips, this is Mr. Barnes. We were just talking of him, weren't we?"

An elderly lady, quietly dressed in gray silk, turned, bowed, and lookedcuriously at the Englishman. 

"I hear you and Miss Boyson discovered some common friends last night. "

"We did, indeed. Miss Boyson posted me up in a lot of the people I havebeen seeing in New York. I am most awfully obliged to her, " said Barnes. His manner was easy and forthcoming, the manner of one accustomed tofeel himself welcome and considered. 

"I behaved like a walking 'Who's Who, ' only I was much more interesting, and didn't tell half as many lies, " said the girl, in a high penetratingvoice. "Daphne, let me introduce you to Mr. Barnes. Mr. Barnes--MissFloyd; Mr. Barnes--Mrs. Verrier. "

Two ladies beyond Mrs. Phillips made vague inclinations, and youngBarnes raised his hat. The whole party walked on up the hill. TheGeneral and Captain Boyson fell into a discussion of some military newsof the morning. Roger Barnes was mostly occupied with Miss Boyson, whohad a turn for monopoly; and he could only glance occasionally at thetwo ladies with Mrs. Phillips. But he was conscious that the whole groupmade a distinguished appearance. Among the hundreds of young womenstreaming over the lawn they were clearly marked out by their carriageand their clothes--especially their clothes--as belonging to thefastidious cosmopolitan class, between whom and the youngschool-teachers from the West, in their white cotton blouses, leathernbelts, and neat short skirts, the links were few. Miss Floyd, indeed, was dressed with great simplicity. A white muslin dress, _à la_ Romney, with a rose at the waist, and a black-and-white Romney hat deeplyshading the face beneath--nothing could have been plainer; yet it was asimplicity not to be had for the asking, a calculated, a Parisiansimplicity; while her companion, Mrs. Verrier, was attired in what thefashion-papers would have called a "creation in mauve. " And Roger knewquite enough about women's dress to be aware that it was a creation thatmeant dollars. She was a tall, dark-eyed, olive-skinned woman, thinalmost to emaciation: and young Barnes noticed that, while Miss Floydtalked much, Mrs. Verrier answered little, and smiled less. She movedwith a languid step, and looked absently about her. Roger could not makeup his mind whether she was American or English. 

In the house itself the crowd was almost unmanageable. The General's irewas roused afresh when he was warned off the front door by the politeofficial on guard, and made to mount a back stair in the midst of apanting multitude. 

"I really cannot congratulate you on your management of these affairs, "he said severely to Captain Boyson, as they stood at last, breathlessand hustled, on the first-floor landing. "It is most improper, I may saydangerous, to admit such a number at once. And, as for seeing the house, it is simply impossible. I shall make my way down as soon as possible, and go for a walk. "

Captain Boyson looked perplexed. General Hobson was a person ofeminence; Washington had been very civil to him; and the Americanofficer felt a kind of host's responsibility. 

"Wait a moment; I'll try and find somebody. " He disappeared, and theparty maintained itself with difficulty in a corner of the landingagainst the pressure of a stream of damsels, who crowded to the opendoors of the rooms, looked through the gratings which bar the entrancewithout obstructing the view, chattered, and moved on. General Hobsonstood against the wall, a model of angry patience. Cecilia Boyson, glancing at him with a laughing eye, said in Roger's ear: "How sad it isthat your uncle dislikes us so!"

"Us? What do you mean?"

"That he hates America so. Oh, don't say he doesn't, because I'vewatched him, at one, two, three parties. He thinks we're a horrid, noisy, vulgar people, with most unpleasant voices, and he thanks God forthe Atlantic--and hopes he may never see us again. "

"Well, of course, if you're so certain about it, there's no good incontradicting you. Did you say that lady's name was Floyd? Could I haveseen her last week in New York?"

"Quite possible. Perhaps you heard something about her?"

"No, " said Barnes, after thinking a moment. "I remember--somebodypointed her out at the opera. "

His companion looked at him with a kind of hard amusement. CeciliaBoyson was only five-and-twenty, but there was already something in herthat foretold the formidable old maid. 

"Well, when people begin upon Daphne Floyd, " she said, "they generallygo through with it. Ah! here comes Alfred. "

Captain Boyson, pushing his way through the throng, announced to hissister and General Hobson that he had found the curator in charge of thehouse, who sent a message by him to the effect that if only the partywould wait till four o'clock, the official closing hour, he himselfwould have great pleasure in showing them the house when all thetourists of the day had taken their departure. 

"Then, " said Miss Floyd, smiling at the General, "let us go and sit inthe garden, and feel ourselves aristocratic and superior. "

The General's brow smoothed. Voice and smile were alike engaging. Theirowner was not exactly pretty, but she had very large dark eyes, and asmall glowing face, set in a profusion of hair. Her neck, the Generalthought, was the slenderest he had ever seen, and the slight round linesof her form spoke of youth in its first delicate maturity. He followedher obediently, and they were all soon in the garden again, and free ofthe crowd. Miss Floyd led the way across the grass with the General. 

"Ah! now you will see the General will begin to like us, " said MissBoyson. "Daphne has got him in hand. "

Her tone was slightly mocking. Barnes observed the two figures in frontof them, and remarked that Miss Floyd had a "very--well--a very foreignlook. "

"Not English, you mean?--or American? Well, naturally. Her mother was aSpaniard--a South American--from Buenos Ayres. That's why she is sodark, and so graceful. "

"I never saw a prettier dress, " said Barnes, following the slight figurewith his eyes. "It's so simple. "

His companion laughed again. The manner of the laugh puzzled hercompanion, but, just as he was about to put a question, the General andthe young lady paused in front, to let the rest of the party come upwith them. Miss Floyd proposed a seat a little way down the slope, wherethey might wait the half-hour appointed. 

That half-hour passed quickly for all concerned. In looking back upon itafterwards two of the party were conscious that it had all hung upon oneperson. Daphne Floyd sat beside the General, who paid her ahalf-reluctant, half-fascinated attention. Without any apparent efforton her part she became indeed the centre of the group who sat or lay onthe grass. All faces were turned towards her, and presently all earslistened for her remarks. Her talk was young and vivacious, nothingmore. But all she said came, as it were, steeped in personality, apersonality so energetic, so charged with movement and with action thatit arrested the spectators--not always agreeably. It was like thepassage of a train through the darkness, when, for the moment, thequietest landscape turns to fire and force. 

The comparison suggested itself to Captain Boyson as he lay watchingher, only to be received with an inward mockery, half bitter, halfamused. This girl was always awakening in him these violent or desperateimages. Was it her fault that she possessed those brilliant eyes--eyes, as it seemed, of the typical, essential woman?--and that downy brunetteskin, with the tinge in it of damask red?--and that instinctive art oflovely gesture in which her whole being seemed to express itself?Boyson, who was not only a rising soldier, but an excellent amateurartist, knew every line of the face by heart. He had drawn Miss Daphnefrom the life on several occasions; and from memory scores of times. Hewas not likely to draw her from life any more; and thereby hung a tale. As far as he was concerned the train had passed--in flame andfury--leaving an echoing silence behind it. 

What folly! He turned resolutely to Mrs. Verrier, and tried to discusswith her an exhibition of French art recently opened in Washington. Invain. After a few sentences, the talk between them dropped, and both heand she were once more watching Miss Floyd, and joining in theconversation whenever she chose to draw them in. 

As for Roger Barnes, he too was steadily subjugated--up to a certainpoint. He was not sure that he liked Miss Floyd, or her conversation. She was so much mistress of herself and of the company, that hismasculine vanity occasionally rebelled. A little flirt!--that gaveherself airs. It startled his English mind that at twenty--for she couldbe no more--a girl should so take the floor, and hold the stage. Sometimes he turned his back upon her--almost; and Cecilia Boyson heldhim. But, if there was too much of the "eternal womanly" in Miss Floyd, there was not enough in Cecilia Boyson. He began to discover also thatshe was too clever for him, and was in fact talking down to him. Some ofthe things that she said to him about New York and Washington puzzledhim extremely. She was, he supposed, intellectual; but the intellectualwomen in England did not talk in the same way. He was equal to them, orflattered himself that he was; but Miss Boyson was beyond him. He wasgetting into great difficulties with her, when suddenly Miss Floydaddressed him:

"I am sure I saw you in New York, at the opera?"

She bent over to him as she spoke, and lowered her voice. Her look wasmerry, perhaps a little satirical. It put him on his guard. 

"Yes, I was there. You were pointed out to me. "

"You were with some old friends of mine. I suppose they gave you anaccount of me?"

"They were beginning it; but then Melba began to sing, and some horridpeople in the next box said 'Hush!'"

She studied him in a laughing silence a moment, her chin on her hand, then said:

"That is the worst of the opera; it stops so much interestingconversation. "

"You don't care for the music?"

"Oh, I am a musician!" she said quickly. "I teach it. But I am like themad King of Bavaria--I want an opera-house to myself. "

"You teach it?" he said, in amazement. 

She nodded, smiling. At that moment a bell rang. Captain Boyson rose. 

"That's the signal for closing. I think we ought to be moving up. "

They strolled slowly towards the house, watching the stream ofexcursionists pour out of the house and gardens, and wind down the hill;sounds of talk and laughter filled the air, and the western sun touchedthe spring hats and dresses. 

"The holidays end to-morrow, " said Daphne Floyd demurely, as she walkedbeside young Barnes. And she looked smiling at the crowd of young women, as though claiming solidarity with them. 

A teacher? A teacher of music?--with that self-confidence--that air asthough the world belonged to her! The young man was greatly mystified. But he reminded himself that he was in a democratic country where allmen--and especially all women--are equal. Not that the young women nowstreaming to the steamboat were Miss Floyd's equals. The notion wasabsurd. All that appeared to be true was that Miss Floyd, in anycircumstances, would be, and was, the equal of anybody. 

"How charming your friend is!" he said presently to Cecilia Boyson, asthey lingered on the veranda, waiting for the curator, in a scene nowdeserted. "She tells me she is a teacher of music. "

Cecilia Boyson looked at him in amazement, and made him repeat hisremark. As he did so, his uncle called him, and he turned away. MissBoyson leant against one of the pillars of the veranda, shaking withsuppressed laughter. 

But at that moment the curator, a gentle, gray-haired man, appeared, shaking hands with the General, and bowing to the ladies. He gave them alittle discourse on the house and its history, as they stood on theveranda; and private conversation was no longer possible. 

CHAPTER II

A sudden hush had fallen upon Mount Vernon. From the river below camethe distant sounds of the steamer, which, with its crowds safe on board, was now putting off for Washington. But the lawns and paths of thehouse, and the formal garden behind it, and all its simple roomsupstairs and down, were now given back to the spring and silence, savefor this last party of sightseers. The curator, after his preliminarylecture on the veranda, took them within; the railings across the doorswere removed; they wandered in and out as they pleased. 

Perhaps, however, there were only two persons among the six nowfollowing the curator to whom the famous place meant anything more thana means of idling away a warm afternoon. General Hobson carried hiswhite head proudly through it, saying little or nothing. It was thehouse of a man who had wrenched half a continent from Great Britain; theEnglish Tory had no intention whatever of bowing the knee. On the otherhand, it was the house of a soldier and a gentleman, representing oldEnglish traditions, tastes, and manners. No modern blatancy, no Yankeesmartness anywhere. Simplicity and moderate wealth, combined withculture--witness the books of the library--with land-owning, a familycoach, and church on Sundays: these things the Englishman understood. Only the slaves, in the picture of Mount Vernon's past, were strange tohim. 

They stood at length in the death-chamber, with its low white bed, andits balcony overlooking the river. 

"This, ladies, is the room in which General Washington died, " said thecurator, patiently repeating the familiar sentence. "It is, of course, on that account sacred to every true American. "

He bowed his head instinctively as he spoke. The General looked roundhim in silence. His eye was caught by the old hearth, and by the ironplate at the back of it, bearing the letters G. W. And some scroll work. There flashed into his mind a vision of the December evening on whichWashington passed away, the flames flickering in the chimney, the windsbreathing round the house and over the snow-bound landscape outside, thedying man in that white bed, and around him, hovering invisibly, thegenerations of the future. 

"He was a traitor to his king and country!" he repeated to himself, firmly. Then as his patriotic mind was not disturbed by a sense ofhumour, he added the simple reflection--"But it is, of course, naturalthat Americans should consider him a great man. "

The French window beside the bed was thrown open, and these privilegedguests were invited to step on to the balcony. Daphne Floyd was handedout by young Barnes. They hung over the white balustrade together. Anevening light was on the noble breadth of river; its surface of blue andgold gleamed through the boughs of the trees which girdled the house;blossoms of wild cherry, of dogwood, and magnolia sparkled amid thecoverts of young green. 

Roger Barnes remarked, with sincerity, as he looked about him, that itwas a very pretty place, and he was glad he had not missed it. MissFloyd made an absent reply, being in fact occupied in studying thespeaker. It was, so to speak, the first time she had really observedhim; and, as they paused on the balcony together, she was suddenlypossessed by the same impression as that which had mollified theGeneral's scolding on board the steamer. He was indeed handsome, theyoung Englishman!--a magnificent figure of a man, in height and breadthand general proportions; and in addition, as it seemed to her, possessedof an absurd and superfluous beauty of feature. What does a man wantwith such good looks? This was perhaps the girl's first instinctivefeeling. She was, indeed, a little dazzled by her new companion, nowthat she began to realize him. As compared with the average man inWashington or New York, here was an exception--an Apollo!--for she toothought of the Sun-god. Miss Floyd could not remember that she had everhad to do with an Apollo before; young Barnes, therefore, was so far anevent, a sensation. In the opera-house she had been vaguely struck by ahandsome face. But here, in the freedom of outdoor dress and movement, he seemed to her a physical king of men; and, at the same time, his easymanner--which, however, was neither conceited nor ill-bred--showed himconscious of his advantages. 

As they chatted on the balcony she put him through his paces a little. He had been, it seemed, at Eton and Oxford; and she supposed that hebelonged to the rich English world. His mother was a Lady Barnes; hisfather, she gathered, was dead; and he was travelling, no doubt, in thelordly English way, to get a little knowledge of the barbarians outside, before he settled down to his own kingdom, and the ways thereof. Sheenvisaged a big Georgian house in a spreading park, like scores that shehad seen in the course of motoring through England the year before. 

Meanwhile, the dear young man was evidently trying to talk to her, without too much reference to the gilt gingerbread of this world. He didnot wish that she should feel herself carried into regions where she wasnot at home, so that his conversation ran amicably on music. Had shelearned it abroad? He had a cousin who had been trained at Leipsic;wasn't teaching it trying sometimes--when people had no ear? Delicious!She kept it up, talking with smiles of "my pupils" and "my class, " whilethey wandered after the others upstairs to the dark low-roofed roomabove the death-chamber, where Martha Washington spent the last years ofher life, in order that from the high dormer window she might commandthe tomb on the slope below, where her dead husband lay. The curatortold the well-known story. Mrs. Verrier, standing beside him, asked somequestions, showed indeed some animation. 

"She shut herself up here? She lived in this garret? That she mightalways see the tomb? That is really true?"

Barnes, who did not remember to have heard her speak before, turnedat the sound of her voice, and looked at her curiously. Shewore an expression--bitter or incredulous--which, somehow, amusedhim. As they descended again to the garden he communicated hisamusement--discreetly--to Miss Floyd. 

Did Mrs. Verrier imply that no one who was not a fool could show hergrief as Mrs. Washington did? That it was, in fact, a sign of being afool to regret your husband?

"Did she say that?" asked Miss Floyd quickly. 

"Not like that, of course, but----"

They had now reached the open air again, and found themselves crossingthe front court to the kitchen-garden. Daphne Floyd did not wait tillRoger should finish his sentence. She turned on him a face which wasgrave if not reproachful. 

"I suppose you know Mrs. Verrier's story?"

"Why, I never saw her before! I hope I haven't said anything I oughtn'tto have said?"

"Everybody knows it here, " said Daphne slowly. "Mrs. Verrier marriedthree years ago. She married a Jew--a New Yorker--who had changed hisname. You know Jews are not in what we call 'society' over here? ButMadeleine thought she could do it; she was in love with him, and shemeant to be able to do without society. But she couldn't do withoutsociety; and presently she began to dine out, and go to parties byherself--he urged her to. Then, after a bit, people didn't ask her asmuch as before; she wasn't happy; and her people began to talk to himabout a divorce--naturally they had been against her marrying him allalong. He said--as they and she pleased. Then, one night about a yearago, he took the train to Niagara--of course it was a very commonplacething to do--and two days afterwards he was found, thrown up by thewhirlpool; you know, where all the suicides are found!"

Barnes stopped short in front of his companion, his face flushing. 

"What a horrible story!" he said, with emphasis. 

Miss Floyd nodded. 

"Yes, poor Madeleine has never got over it. "

The young man still stood riveted. 

"Of course Mrs. Verrier herself had nothing to do with the talk aboutdivorce?"

Something in his tone roused a combative instinct in his companion. She, too, coloured, and drew herself up. 

"Why shouldn't she? She was miserable. The marriage had been a greatmistake. "

"And you allow divorce for that?" said the man, wondering. "Oh, ofcourse I know every State is different, and some States are worse thanothers. But, somehow, I never came across a case like that--firsthand--before. "

He walked on slowly beside his companion, who held herself a littlestiffly. 

"I don't know why you should talk in that way, " she said at last, breaking out in a kind of resentment, "as though all our American viewsare wrong! Each nation arranges these things for itself. You have thelaws that suit you; you must allow us those that suit us. "

Barnes paused again, his face expressing a still more completeastonishment. 

"You say that?" he said. "You!"

"And why not?"

"But--but you are so young!" he said, evidently finding a difficulty inputting his impressions. "I beg your pardon--I ought not to talk aboutit at all. But it was so odd that----"

"That I knew anything about Mrs. Verrier's affairs?" said Miss Floyd, with a rather uncomfortable laugh. "Well, you see, American girls arenot like English ones. We don't pretend not to know what everybodyknows. "

"Of course, " said Roger hurriedly; "but you wouldn't think it a fair andsquare thing to do?"

"Think what?"

"Why, to marry a man, and then talk of divorcing him because peopledidn't invite you to their parties. "

"She was very unhappy, " said Daphne stubbornly. 

"Well, by Jove!" cried the young man, "she doesn't look very happy now!"

"No, " Miss Floyd admitted. "No. There are many people who think she'llnever get over it. "

"Well, I give it up. " The Apollo shrugged his handsome shoulders. "Yousay it was she who proposed to divorce him?--yet when the wretched manremoves himself, then she breaks her heart!"

"Naturally she didn't mean him to do it in that way, " said the girl, with impatience. "Of course you misunderstood me entirely!--_entirely!_"she added with an emphasis which suited with her heightened colour andevidently ruffled feelings. 

Young Barnes looked at her with embarrassment. What a queer, hot-tempered girl! Yet there was something in her which attracted him. She was graceful even in her impatience. Her slender neck, and the darkhead upon it, her little figure in the white muslin, her dainty arms andhands--these points in her delighted an honest eye, quite accustomed toappraise the charms of women. But, by George! she took herselfseriously, this little music-teacher. The air of wilful command abouther, the sharpness with which she had just rebuked him, amazed andchallenged him. 

"I am very sorry if I misunderstood you, " he said, a little on hisdignity; "but I thought you----"

"You thought I sympathized with Mrs. Verrier? So I do; though of courseI am awfully sorry that such a dreadful thing happened. But you'll find, Mr. Barnes, that American girls----" The colour rushed into her smallolive cheeks. "Well, we know all about the old ideas, and we know alsotoo well that there's only one life, and we don't mean to have that onespoilt. The old notions of marriage--your English notions, " cried thegirl facing him--"make it tyranny! Why should people stay together whenthey see it's a mistake? We say everybody shall have their chance. Andnot one chance only, but more than one. People find out in marriage whatthey couldn't find out before, and so----"

"You let them chuck it just when they're tired of it?" laughed Barnes. "And what about the----"

"The children?" said Miss Floyd calmly. "Well, of course, that has to bevery carefully considered. But how can it do children any good to livein an unhappy home?"

"Had Mrs. Verrier any children?"

"Yes, one little girl. "

"I suppose she meant to keep her?"

"Why, of course. "

"And the father didn't care?"

"Well, I believe he did, " said Daphne unwillingly. "Yes, that was verysad. He was quite devoted to her. "

"And you think that's all right?" Barnes looked at his companion, smiling. 

"Well, of course, it was a pity, " she said, with fresh impatience; "Iadmit it was a pity. But then, why did she ever marry him? That was thehorrible mistake. "

"I suppose she thought she liked him. "

"Oh, it was he who was so desperately in love with her. He plagued herinto doing it. "

"Poor devil!" said Barnes heartily. "All right, we're coming. "

The last words were addressed to General Hobson, waving to them from thekitchen-garden. They hurried on to join the curator, who took the partyfor a stroll round some of the fields over which George Washington, inhis early married life, was accustomed to ride in summer and winterdawns, inspecting his negroes, his plantation, and his barns. The grassin these Southern fields was already high; there were shiningfruit-trees, blossom-laden, in an orchard copse; and the white dogwoodglittered in the woods. 

For two people to whom the traditions of the place were dear, this quietwalk through Washington's land had a charm far beyond that of thereconstructed interior of the house. Here were things unaltered andunalterable, boundaries, tracks, woods, haunted still by the figure ofthe young master and bridegroom who brought Patsy Curtis there in 1759. To the gray-haired curator every foot of them was sacred and familiar;he knew these fields and the records of them better than any detail ofhis own personal affairs; for years now he had lived in spirit withWashington, through all the hours of the Mount Vernon day; his life wasruled by one great ghost, so that everything actual was comparativelydim. Boyson too, a fine soldier and a fine intelligence, had a mindstored with Washingtoniana. Every now and then he and the curator fellback on each other's company. They knew well that the others were notworthy of their opportunity; although General Hobson, seeing that mostof the memories touched belonged to a period before the Revolution, obeyed the dictates of politeness, and made amends for his taciturnityindoors by a talkative vein outside. 

Captain Boyson was not, however, wholly occupied with history orreminiscence. He perceived very plainly before the walk was over thatthe General's good-looking nephew and Miss Daphne Floyd were interestedin each other's conversation. When they joined the party in the gardenit seemed to him that they had been disputing. Miss Daphne was flushedand a little snappish when spoken to; and the young man lookedembarrassed. But presently he saw that they gravitated to each other, and that, whatever chance combination might be formed during the walk, it always ended for a time in the flight ahead of the two figures, thegirl in the rose-coloured sash and the tall handsome youth. Towards theend of the walk they became separated from the rest of the party, andonly arrived at the little station just in time before the cars started. On this occasion again, they had been clearly arguing and disagreeing;and Daphne had the air of a ruffled bird, her dark eyes glittering, hermouth set in the obstinate lines that Boyson knew by heart. But againthey sat together in the car, and talked and sparred all the way home;while Mrs. Verrier, in a corner of the carriage, shut her hollow eyes, and laid her thin hands one over the other, and in her purple draperiesmade a picture _à la Mèlisande_ which was not lost upon her companions. Boyson's mind registered a good many grim or terse comments, asoccasionally he found himself watching this lady. Scarcely a year sincethat hideous business at Niagara, and here she was in that extravagantdress! He wished his sister would not make a friend of her, and thatDaphne Floyd saw less of her. Miss Daphne had quite enough bees in herown bonnet without adopting Mrs. Verrier's. 

Meanwhile, it was the General who, on the return journey, was made toserve Miss Boyson's gift for monopoly. She took possession of him in abusiness-like way, inquiring into his engagements in Washington, hisparticular friends, his opinion of the place and the people, with alight-handed acuteness which was more than a match for the Englishman'sinstincts of defence. The General did not mean to give himself away; heintended, indeed, precisely the contrary; but, after every round ofconversation Miss Boyson felt herself more and more richly provided withmaterials for satire at the expense of England and the English tourist, his invincible conceit, insularity, and condescension. She was a cleverthough tiresome woman; and expressed herself best in letters. Shepromised herself to write a "character" of General Hobson in her nextletter to an intimate friend, which should be a masterpiece. Then, having led him successfully through the _rôle_ of the comic Englishmanabroad, she repaid him with information. She told him, not without somesecret amusement at the reprobation it excited, the tragic story of Mrs. Verrier. She gave him a full history of her brother's honourable andbrilliant career; and here let it be said that the _précieuse_ in hergave way to the sister, and that she talked with feeling. And finallyshe asked him with a smile whether he admired Miss Floyd. The General, who had in fact been observing Miss Floyd and his nephew with somelittle uneasiness during the preceding half-hour, replied guardedly thatMiss Floyd was pretty and picturesque, and apparently a great talker. Was she a native of Washington?

"You never heard of Miss Floyd?--of Daphne Floyd? No? Ah, well!"--andshe laughed--"I suppose I ought to take it as a compliment, of a kind. There are so many rich people now in this queer country of ours thateven Daphne Floyds don't matter. "

"Is Miss Floyd so tremendously rich?"

General Hobson turned a quickened countenance upon her, expressing nomore than the interest felt by the ordinary man in all societies--morestrongly, perhaps, at the present day than ever before--in the mere factof money. But Miss Boyson gave it at once a personal meaning, and setherself to play on what she scornfully supposed to be the cupidity ofthe Englishman. She produced, indeed, a full and particular account ofDaphne Floyd's parentage, possessions, and prospects, during which theGeneral's countenance represented him with great fidelity. A trace ofrecalcitrance at the beginning--for it was his opinion that Miss Boyson, like most American women, talked decidedly too much--gave way to closeattention, then to astonishment, and finally to a very animatedobservation of Miss Floyd's slender person as she sat a yard or two fromhim on the other side of the car, laughing, frowning, or chattering withRoger. 

"And that poor child has the management of it all?" he said at last, ina tone which did him credit. He himself had lost an only daughter attwenty-one, and he held old-fashioned views as to the helplessness ofwomen. 

But Cecilia Boyson again misunderstood him. 

"Oh, yes!" she said, with a cool smile. "Everything is in her ownhands--everything! Mrs. Phillips would not dare to interfere. Daphnealways has her own way. "

The General said no more. Cecilia Boyson looked out of the window at thedarkening landscape, thinking with malice of Daphne's dealings with themale sex. It had been a Sleeping Beauty story so far. Treasure for thewinning--a thorn hedge--and slain lovers! The handsome Englishman wouldtry it next, no doubt. All young Englishmen, according to her, were onthe look-out for American heiresses. Music teacher indeed! She wouldhave given a good deal to hear the conversation of the uncle and nephewwhen the party broke up. 

The General and young Barnes made their farewells at the railwaystation, and took their way on foot to their hotel. Washington wassteeped in sunset. The White House, as they passed it, glowed amid itsquiet trees. Lafayette Square, with its fountains and statues, its whiteand pink magnolias, its strolling, chatting crowd, the fronts of thehouses, the long vistas of tree-lined avenues, the street cars, thehouses, the motors, all the openings and distances of the beautiful, leisurely place--they saw them rosily transfigured under a departingsun, which throughout the day had been weaving the quick spells of asouthern spring. 

"Jolly weather!" said Roger, looking about him. "And a very niceafternoon. How long are you staying here, Uncle Archie?"

"I ought to be off at the end of the week; and of course you want to getback to New York? I say, you seemed to be getting on with that younglady?"

The General turned a rather troubled eye upon his companion. 

"She wasn't bad fun, " said the young man graciously; "but rather an oddlittle thing! We quarrelled about every conceivable subject. And it'squeer how much that kind of girl seems to go about in America. She goeseverywhere and knows everything. I wonder how she manages it. "

"What kind of girl do you suppose she is?" asked the General, stoppingsuddenly in the middle of Lafayette Square. 

"She told me she taught singing, " said Roger, in a puzzled voice, "to aclass of girls in New York. "

The General laughed. 

"She seems to have made a fool of you, my dear boy. She is one of thegreat heiresses of America. "

Roger's face expressed a proper astonishment. 

"Oh! that's it, is it? I thought once or twice there was somethingfishy--she was trying it on. Who told you?"

The General retailed his information. Miss Daphne Floyd was the orphandaughter of an enormously rich and now deceased lumber-king, of theState of Illinois. He had made vast sums by lumbering, and then investedin real estate in Chicago and Buffalo, not to speak of a railway or two, and had finally left his daughter and only child in possession of afortune generally estimated at more than a million sterling. The moneywas now entirely in the girl's power. Her trustees had been sent abouttheir business, though Miss Floyd was pleased occasionally to consultthem. Mrs. Phillips, her chaperon, had not much influence with her; andit was supposed that Mrs. Verrier advised her more than anyone else. 

"Good heavens!" was all that young Barnes could find to say when thestory was told. He walked on absently, flourishing his stick, his faceworking under the stress of amused meditation. At last he brought out:

"You know, Uncle Archie, if you'd heard some of the things Miss Floydwas saying to me, your hair would have stood on end. "

The General raised his shoulders. 

"I dare say. I'm too old-fashioned for America. The sooner I clear outthe better. Their newspapers make me sick; I hate the hotels--I hate thecooking; and there isn't a nation in Europe I don't feel myself more athome with. "

Roger laughed his clear, good-tempered laugh. "Oh! I don't feel that wayat all. I get on with them capitally. They're a magnificent people. And, as to Miss Floyd, I didn't mean anything bad, of course. Only the ideassome of the girls here have, and the way they discuss them--well, itbeats me!"

"What sort of ideas?"

Roger's handsome brow puckered in the effort to explain. "They don'tthink anything's _settled_, you know, as we do at home. Miss Floyddoesn't. They think _they've_ got to settle a lot of things that Englishgirls don't trouble about, because they're just told to do 'em, or notto do 'em, by the people that look after them!"

"'Everything hatched over again, and hatched different, '" said theGeneral, who was an admirer of George Eliot; "that's what they'd like, eh? Pooh! That's when they're young. They quiet down, like all the restof the world. "

Barnes shook his head. "But they _are_ hatching it over again. You meetpeople here in society you couldn't meet at home. And it's all right. The law backs them up. "

"You're talking about divorce!" said the General. "Aye! it's astounding!The tales one hears in the smoking-room after dinner! In Wyoming, apparently, six months' residence, and there you are. You prove a littlecruelty, the husband makes everything perfectly easy, you say a civilgood-bye, and the thing's done. Well, they'll pay for it, my dearRoger--they'll pay for it. Nobody ever yet trifled with the marriage lawwith impunity. "

The energy of the old man's bearing became him. 

Through Roger's mind the thought flashed: "Poor dear Uncle Archie! Ifhe'd been a New Yorker he'd never have put up with Aunt Lavinia forthirty years!"

They turned into their hotel, and ordered dinner in an hour's time. Roger found some English letters waiting for him, and carried them offto his room. He opened his mother's first. Lady Barnes wrote a large andstraggling hand, which required many sheets and much postage. It mighthave been observed that her son looked at the sheets for a minute, witha certain distaste, before he began upon them. Yet he was deeplyattached to his mother, and it was from her letters week by week that hetook his marching orders. If she only wouldn't ride her ideas quite sohard; if she would sometimes leave him alone to act for himself!

Here it was again--the old story:

 "Don't suppose I put these things before you on _my_ account. No, indeed; what does it matter what happens to me? It is when I think that you may have to spend your whole life as a clerk in a bank, unless you rouse yourself now--(for you know, my dear Roger, though you have very good wits, you're not as frightfully clever as people have to be nowadays)--that I begin to despair. But that is _entirely_ in your own hands. You have what is far more valuable than cleverness--you have a delightful disposition, and you are one of the handsomest of men. There! of course, I know you wouldn't let me say it to you in your presence; but it's true all the same. Any girl should be proud to marry you. There are plenty of rich girls in America; and if you play your cards properly you will make her and yourself happy. The grammar of that is not quite right, but you understand me. Find a nice girl--of course a _nice_ girl--with a fortune large enough to put you back in your proper sphere; and it doesn't matter about me. You will pay my rent, I dare say, and help me through when I want it; but that's nothing. The point is, that I cannot submit to your career being spoiled through your poor father's mad imprudence. You must retrieve yourself--you _must_. Nobody is anything nowadays in the world without money; you know that as well as I do. And besides, there is another reason. You have got to forget the affair of last spring, to put it entirely behind you, to show that horrid woman who threw you over that you will make your life a success in spite of her. Rouse yourself, my dear Roger, and do your best. I hope by now you have forwarded _all_ my introductions? You have your opportunity, and I must say you will be a great fool if you don't use it. _Do_ use it my dear boy, for my sake. I am a very unhappy woman; but you might, if you would, bring back a little brightness to my life. "

After he had read the letter, young Barnes sat for some time in a brownstudy on the edge of his bed. The letter contained only one morerepetition of counsels that had been dinned into his ears formonths--almost ever since the financial crash which had followed hisfather's death, and the crash of another sort, concerning himself, whichhad come so quick upon it. His thoughts returned, as they always did atsome hour of the day or night, to the "horrid woman. " Yes, that had hithim hard; the lad's heart still throbbed with bitterness as he thoughtof it. He had never felt anything so much; he didn't believe he shouldever mind anything so much again. "I'm not one of your sentimentalsort, " he thought, half congratulating himself, half in self-contempt. But he could not get her out of his head; he wondered if he ever should. And it had gone pretty far too. By Jove! that night in theorchard!--when she had kissed him, and thrown her arms round his neck!And then to write him that letter, when things were at their worst. Shemight have done the thing decently. Have treated a fellow kindly atleast. Well, of course, it was all done with. Yes, it _was_. Done with!

He got up and began to pace his small room, his hands in his pockets, thinking of the night in the orchard. Then gradually the smart lessened, and his thoughts passed away to other things. That little Yankee girlhad really made good sport all the way home. He had not been dull for amoment; she had teased and provoked him so. Her eyes, too, werewonderfully pretty, and her small, pointed chin, and her witch-likeimperious ways. Was it her money, the sense that she could do as sheliked with most people, that made her so domineering and masterful? Verylikely. On the journey he had put it down just to a natural and verysurprising impudence. That was when he believed that she was a teacher, earning her bread. But the impudence had not prevented him from findingit much more amusing to talk to her than to anybody else. 

And, on the whole, he thought she had not disliked him, though she hadsaid the rudest things to him, and he had retaliated. She had asked him, indeed, to join them in an excursion the following day, and to tea atthe Country Club. He had meant, if possible, to go back to New York onthe morrow. But perhaps a day or two longer----

So she had a million--the little sprite? She was and would be ahandful!--with a fortune or without it. And possessed also of the mostextraordinary opinions. But he thought he would go on the excursion, andto the Country Club. He began to fold his mother's letter, and put itback into its envelope, while a slight flush mounted in his cheeks, andthe young mouth that was still so boyish and candid took a stiffer line. 

CHAPTER III

"Is Miss Floyd at home?"

The questioner was Mrs. Verrier, who had just alighted from her carriageat the door of the house in Columbia Avenue inhabited by Miss Floyd andher chaperon. 

The maid replied that Miss Floyd had not yet returned, but had left amessage begging Mrs. Verrier to wait for her. The visitor wasaccordingly ushered to the drawing-room on the first floor. 

This room, the staircase, the maid, all bore witness to Miss Floyd'ssimplicity--like the Romney dress of Mount Vernon. The colour of thewalls and the hangings, the lines of the furniture, were all subdued, even a little austere. Quiet greens and blues, mingled with white, showed the artistic mind; the chairs and sofas were a trifle stiff andstraight legged; the electric fittings were of a Georgian plainness tomatch the Colonial architecture of the house; the beautifulself-coloured carpet was indeed Persian and costly, but it betrayed itscostliness only to the expert. Altogether, the room, one would havesaid, of any _bourse moyenne_, with an eye for beauty. Fine photographsalso, of Italian and Dutch pictures, suggested travel, and struck thecultivated cosmopolitan note. 

Mrs. Verrier looked round it with a smile. It was all as unpretending asthe maid who ushered her upstairs. Daphne would have no men-servants inher employ. What did two ladies want with them, in a democratic country?But Mrs. Verrier happened to know that Daphne's maid-servants were justas costly in their degree as the drawing-room carpet. Chosen for her inLondon with great care, attracted to Washington by enormous wages, thesenumerous damsels played their part in the general "simplicity" effect;but on the whole Mrs. Verrier believed that Daphne's household wasrather more expensive than that of other rich people who employed men. 

She walked through the room, looking absently at the various photographsand engravings, till her attention was excited by an easel and a pictureupon it in the back drawing-room. She went up to it with a mutteredexclamation. 

"So _she_ bought it! Daphne's amazing!"

For what she saw before her was a masterpiece--an excessively costlymasterpiece--of the Florentine school, smuggled out of Italy, to thewrath of the Italian Government, some six months before this date, andsince then lost to general knowledge. Rumour had given it first to awell-known collection at Boston; then to another at Philadelphia; yethere it was in the possession of a girl of two-and-twenty of whom thegreat world was just--but only just--beginning to talk. 

"How like Daphne!" thought her friend with malice. The "simple" room, and the priceless picture carelessly placed in a corner of it, lest anyone should really suppose that Daphne Floyd was an ordinary mortal. 

Mrs. Verrier sat down at last in a chair fronting the picture and letherself fall into a reverie. On this occasion she was dressed in black. The lace strings of a hat crowned with black ostrich feathers werefastened under her chin by a diamond that sparkled in the dim greenishlight of the drawing-room; the feathers of the hat were unusually largeand drooping; they curled heavily round the thin neck and long, hollow-eyed face, so that its ivory whiteness, its fatigue, its fretfulbeauty were framed in and emphasized by them; her bloodless hands layupon her lap, and the folds of the sweeping dress drawn round her showedher slenderness, or rather her emaciation. Two years before this dateMadeleine Verrier had been a great beauty, and she had never yetreconciled herself to physical losses which were but the outward andvisible sign of losses "far more deeply interfused. " As she satapparently absorbed in thought before the picture, she moved, halfconsciously, so that she could no longer see herself in a mirroropposite. 

Yet her thoughts were in truth much engaged with Daphne and Daphne'sproceedings. It was now nearly three weeks since Roger Barnes hadappeared on the horizon. General Hobson had twice postponed hisdeparture for England, and was still "enduring hardness" in a Washingtonhotel. Why his nephew should not be allowed to manage his courtship, ifit was a courtship, for himself, Mrs. Verrier did not understand. Therewas no love lost between herself and the General, and she made much mockof him in her talks with Daphne. However, there he was; and she couldonly suppose that he took the situation seriously and felt bound towatch it in the interests of the young man's absent mother. 

Was it serious? Certainly Daphne had been committing herself a gooddeal. The question was whether she had not been committing herself morethan the young man had been doing on his side. That was the astonishingpart of it. Mrs. Verrier could not sufficiently admire the skill withwhich Roger Barnes had so far played his part; could not sufficientlyridicule her own lack of insight, which at her first meeting with himhad pronounced him stupid. Stupid he might be in the sense that it wasof no use to expect from him the kind of talk on books, pictures, andfirst principles which prevailed in Daphne's circle. But Mrs. Verrierthought she had seldom come across a finer sense of tactics than youngBarnes had so far displayed in his dealings with Daphne. If he went onas he had begun, the probability was that he would succeed. 

Did she, Madeleine Verrier, wish him to succeed?

Daphne had grown tragically necessary to her, in this world of Americansociety--in that section of it, at any rate, in which she desired tomove, where the widow of Leopold Verrier was always conscious of theblowing of a cold and hostile breath. She was not excluded, but she wasnot welcome; she was not ostracized, but she had lost consideration. There had been something picturesque and appealing in her husband;something unbearably tragic in the manner of his death. She had bravedit out by staying in America, instead of losing herself in foreigntowns; and she had thereby proclaimed that she had no guilty sense ofresponsibility, no burden on her conscience; that she had only behavedas a thousand other women would have behaved, and without any cruelintention at all. But she knew all the same that the spectators of whathad happened held her for a cruel woman, and that there were many, andthose the best, who saw her come with distaste and go without regret;and it was under that knowledge, in spite of indomitable pride, that herbeauty had withered in a year. 

And at the moment when the smart of what had happened to her--personallyand socially--was at its keenest; when, after a series of quarrels, shehad separated herself from the imperious mother who had been her evilgenius throughout her marriage, she had made friends, unexpectedly, owing to a chance meeting at a picture-gallery, with Daphne Floyd. Someelement in Daphne's nature had attracted and disarmed her. The proud, fastidious woman had given the girl her confidence--eagerly, indiscriminately. She had poured out upon her all that wild philosophyof "rights" which is still struggling in the modern mind with acrumbling ethic and a vanishing religion. And she had found in Daphne awarm and passionate ally. Daphne was nothing if not "advanced. " Sheshrank, as Roger Barnes had perceived, from no question; she had neverbeen forbidden, had never forbidden herself, any book that she had afancy to read; and she was as ready to discuss the relative divorce lawsof Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, as the girls of fifty years ago wereto talk of the fashions, or "Evangeline. " In any disputed case, moreover, between a man and a woman, Daphne was hotly and instinctivelyon the side of the woman. She had thrown herself, therefore, with ardourinto the defence of Mrs. Verrier; and for her it was not the wife'sdesertion, but the husband's suicide which had been the cruel andindefensible thing. All these various traits and liberalisms had madeher very dear to Madeleine Verrier. 

Now, as that lady sat in her usual drooping attitude, wondering whatWashington would be like for her when even Daphne Floyd was gone fromit, the afternoon sun stole through the curtains of the window on thestreet and touched some of the furniture and engravings in the innerdrawing-room. Suddenly Mrs. Verrier started in her chair. A face hademerged thrown out upon the shadows by the sun-finger--the countenanceof a handsome young Jew, as Rembrandt had once conceived it. Rare andhigh intelligence, melancholy, and premonition:--they were thereembodied, so long as the apparition lasted. 

The effect on Mrs. Verrier was apparently profound. She closed her eyes;her lips quivered; she leaned back feebly in her chair, breathing aname. The crisis lasted a few minutes, while the momentary vision fadedand the sun-light crept on. The eyelids unclosed at last, slowly andpainfully, as though shrinking from what might greet the eyes beneaththem. But the farther wall was now in deep shade. Mrs. Verrier sat up;the emotion which had mastered her like a possession passed away; andrising hurriedly, she went back to the front drawing-room. She hadhardly reached it when Miss Floyd's voice was heard upon the stairs. 

Daphne entered the room in what appeared to be a fit of irritation. Shewas scolding the parlour-maid, whose high colour and dignified silenceproclaimed her both blameless and long-suffering. At the sight of Mrs. Verrier Daphne checked herself with an effort and kissed her friendrather absently. 

"Dear Madeleine!--very good of you to wait. Have they given you tea? Isuppose not. My household seems to have gone mad this afternoon. Sitdown. Some tea, Blount, at once. "

Mrs. Verrier sank into a corner of the sofa, while Daphne, with an"ouf!" of fatigue, took off her hat, and threw herself down at the otherend, her small feet curled up beneath her. Her half-frowning eyes gavethe impression that she was still out of temper and on edge. 

"Where have you been?" asked her companion quietly. 

"Listening to a stuffy debate in the Senate, " said Daphne without asmile. 

"The Senate. What on earth took you there?"

"Well, why shouldn't I go?--why does one do anything? It was just adebate--horribly dull--trusts, or something of that kind. But there wasa man attacking the President--and the place was crowded. Ugh! the heatwas intolerable!"

"Who took you?"

Daphne named an under-secretary--an agreeable and ambitious man, who hadbeen very much in her train during the preceding winter, and until RogerBarnes appeared upon the scene. 

"I thought until I got your message that you were going to take Mr. Barnes motoring up the river. "

"Mr. Barnes was engaged. " Daphne gave the information tersely, rousingherself afterwards to make tea, which appeared at that moment. 

"He seems to have been a good deal engaged this week, " said Mrs. Verrier, when they were alone again. 

Daphne made no reply. And Mrs. Verrier, after observing her for amoment, resumed:

"I suppose it was the Bostonians?"

"I suppose so. What does it matter?" The tone was dry and sharp. 

"Daphne, you goose!" laughed Mrs. Verrier, "I believe this is the veryfirst invitation of theirs he has accepted at all. He was written toabout them by an old friend--his Eton master, or somebody of that sort. And as they turned up here on a visit, instead of his having to go andlook for them at Boston, of course he had to call upon them. "

"I dare say. And of course he had to go to tea with them yesterday, andhe had to take them to Arlington this afternoon! I suppose I'd bettertell you--we had a quarrel on the subject last night. "

"Daphne!--don't, for heaven's sake, make him think himself tooimportant!" cried Mrs. Verrier. 

Daphne, with both elbows on the table, was slowly crunching a morsel oftoast in her small white teeth. She had a look of concentratedenergy--as of a person charged and overcharged with force of some kind, impatient to be let loose. Her black eyes sparkled; impetuosity and willshone from them; although they showed also rims of fatigue, as if MissDaphne's nights had not of late been all they should be. Mrs. Verrierwas chiefly struck, however, by the perception that for the first timeDaphne was not having altogether her own way with the world. Madeleinehad not observed anything of the same kind in her before. In general shewas in entire command both of herself and of the men who surrounded her. She made a little court out of them, and treated them _en despote_. ButRoger Barnes had not lent himself to the process; he had not played thegame properly; and Daphne's sleep had been disturbed for the first timein history. 

It had been admitted very soon between the two friends--without puttingit very precisely--that Daphne was interested in Roger Barnes. Mrs. Verrier believed that the girl had been originally carried off her feetby the young man's superb good looks, and by the naturaldistinction--evident in all societies--which they conferred upon him. Then, no doubt, she had been piqued by his good-humoured, easy way--theabsence of any doubt of himself, of tremor, of insistence. Mrs. Verriersaid to herself--not altogether shrewdly--that he had no nerves, or noheart; and Daphne had not yet come across the genus. Her lovers hadeither possessed too much heart--like Captain Boyson--or a lack ofcoolness, when it really came to the point of grappling with Daphne andher millions, as in the case of a dozen she could name. Whereby it hadcome about that Daphne's attention had been first provoked, thenperemptorily seized by the Englishman; and Mrs. Verrier began now tosuspect that deeper things were really involved. 

Certainly there was a good deal to puzzle the spectator. That theEnglish are a fortune-hunting race may be a popular axiom; but it wasquite possible, after all, that Roger Barnes was not the latestillustration of it. It was quite possible, also, that he had asweet-heart at home, some quiet, Quakerish girl who would never wave inhis face the red flags that Daphne was fond of brandishing. It wasequally possible that he was merely fooling with Daphne--that he hadseen girls he liked better in New York, and was simply killing time tilla sportsman friend of whom he talked should appear on the scene and takehim off to shoot moose and catch trout in the province of Quebec. Mrs. Verrier realized that, for all his lack of subtlety and the higherconversation, young Barnes had managed astonishingly to keep hiscounsel. His "simplicity, " like Daphne's, seemed to be of a specialtype. 

And yet--there was no doubt that he had devoted himself a great deal. Washington society had quickly found him out; he had been invited to allthe most fastidious houses, and was immensely in request for picnics andexpeditions. But he had contrived, on the whole, to make all theseopportunities promote the flirtation with Daphne. He had, in fact, beenenough at her beck and call to make her the envy of a young society withwhom the splendid Englishman promised to become the rage, and not enoughto silence or wholly discourage other claimants on his time. 

This no doubt accounted for the fact that the two charming Bostonians, Mrs. Maddison and her daughter, who had but lately arrived in Washingtonand made acquaintance with Roger Barnes, were still evidently inignorance of what was going on. They were not initiated. They hadinvited young Barnes in the innocence of their hearts, without invitingDaphne Floyd, whom they did not previously know. And the young man hadseen fit to accept their invitation. Hence the jealousy that was clearlyburning in Daphne, that she was not indeed even trying to hide from theshrewd eyes of her friend. 

Mrs. Verrier's advice not to make Roger Barnes "too important" hadcalled up a flash of colour in the girl's cheeks. But she did not resentit in words; rather her silence deepened, till Mrs. Verrier stretchedout a hand and laughingly turned the small face towards her that shemight see what was in it. 

"Daphne! I really believe you're in love with him!"

"Not at all, " said Daphne, her eyelids flickering; "I never know what totalk to him about. "

"As if that mattered!"

"Elsie Maddison always knows what to talk to him about, and he chattersto her the whole time. "

Mrs. Verrier paused a moment, then said: "Do you suppose he came toAmerica to marry money?"

"I haven't an idea. "

"Do you suppose he knows that you--are not exactly a pauper?"

Daphne drew herself away impatiently. "I really don't suppose anything, Madeleine. He never talks about money, and I should think he had plentyhimself. "

Mrs. Verrier replied by giving an outline of the financial misfortunesof Mr. Barnes _père_, as they had been described to her by anotherEnglish traveller in Washington. 

Daphne listened indifferently. "He can't be very poor or he wouldn'tbehave as he does. And he is to inherit the General's property. He toldme so. "

"And it wouldn't matter to you, Daphne, if you did think a man hadmarried you for money?"

Daphne had risen, and was pacing the drawing-room floor, her handsclasped behind her back. She turned a cloudy face upon her questioner. "It would matter a great deal, if I thought it had been only for money. But then, I hope I shouldn't have been such a fool as to marry him. "

"But you could bear it, if the money counted for something?"

"I'm not an idiot!" said the girl, with energy. "With whom doesn't moneycount for something? Of course a man must take money intoconsideration. " There was a curious touch of arrogance in the gesturewhich accompanied the words. 

"'How pleasant it is to have money, heigh-ho!--How pleasant it is tohave money, '" said Mrs. Verrier, quoting, with a laugh. "Yes, I daresay, you'd be very reasonable, Daphne, about that kind of thing. But Idon't think you'd be a comfortable wife, dear, all the same. "

"What do you mean?"

"You might allow your husband to spare a little love to your money; youwould be for killing him if he ever looked at another woman!"

"You mean I should be jealous?" asked Daphne, almost with violence. "Youare quite right there. I should be very jealous. On that point I should'find quarrel in a straw. '"

Her cheeks had flushed a passionate red. The eyes which she hadinherited from her Spanish grandmother blazed above them. She had becomesuddenly a woman of Andalusia and the South, moved by certain primitiveforces in the blood. 

Madeleine Verrier held out her hands, smiling. 

"Come here, little wild cat. I believe you are jealous of ElsieMaddison. "

Daphne approached her slowly, and slowly dropped into a seat beside herfriend, her eyes still fixed and splendid. But as she looked into themMadeleine Verrier saw them suddenly dimmed. 

"Daphne! you _are_ in love with him!"

The girl recovered herself, clenching her small hands. "If I am, " shesaid resolutely, "it is strange how like the other thing it is! I don'tknow whether I shall speak to him to-night. "

"To-night?" Mrs. Verrier looked a little puzzled. 

"At the White House. You're going, of course. "

"No, I am not going. " The voice was quiet and cold. "I am not asked. "

Daphne, vexed with herself, touched her friend's hand caressingly. "Itwill be just a crush, dear. But I promised various people to go. "

"And he will be there?"

"I suppose so. " Daphne turned her head away, and then sprang up. "Haveyou seen the picture?"

Mrs. Verrier followed her into the inner room, where the girl gave alaughing and triumphant account of her acquisition, the agents she hademployed, the skill with which it had been conveyed out of Italy, thewrath of various famous collectors, who had imagined that the fight laybetween them alone, when they found the prize had been ravished fromthem. Madeleine Verrier was very intelligent, and the contrast, whichthe story brought out, between the girl's fragile youth and the strangeand passionate sense of power which breathed from her whenever it becamea question of wealth and the use of it, was at no point lost upon hercompanion. 

Daphne would not allow any further talk of Roger Barnes. Her chaperon, Mrs. Phillips, presently appeared, and passed through rather a badquarter of an hour while the imperious mistress of the house inquiredinto certain invitations and card-leavings that had not been managed toher liking. Then Daphne sat down to write a letter to a Girls' Club inNew York, of which she was President--where, in fact, she occasionallytook the Singing Class, with which she had made so much play at herfirst meeting with Roger Barnes. She had to tell them that she had justengaged a holiday house for them, to which they might go in instalmentsthroughout the summer. She would pay the rent, provide alady-superintendent, and make herself responsible for all but foodexpenses. Her small face relaxed--became quite soft and charming--as shewrote. 

"But, my dear, " cried Mrs. Phillips in dismay, as Daphne handed her theletter to read, "you have taken the house on Lake George, and you knowthe girls had all set their hearts on that place in the WhiteMountains!"

Daphne's lips tightened. "Certainly I have taken the house on LakeGeorge, " she said, as she carefully wiped her pen. "I told them Ishould. "

"But, my dear, they are so tired of Lake George! They have been therethree years running. And you know they subscribe a good dealthemselves. "

"Very well!--then let them do without my help. I have inquired into thematter. The house on Lake George is much more suitable than the WhiteMountains farm, and I have written to the agent. The thing's done. "

Mrs. Phillips argued a little more, but Daphne was immovable. 

Mrs. Verrier, watching the two, reflected, as she had often done before, that Mrs. Phillips's post was not particularly enviable. Daphne treatedher in many ways with great generosity, paid her highly, grudged her noluxury, and was always courteous to her in public. But in privateDaphne's will was law, and she had an abrupt and dictatorial way ofasserting it that brought the red back into Mrs. Phillips's fadedcheeks. Mrs. Verrier had often expected her to throw up her post. Butthere was no doubt something in Daphne's personality which made lifebeside her too full of colour to be lightly abandoned. 

 * * * * *

Daphne presently went upstairs to take off her walking-dress, and Mrs. Phillips, with a rather troubled face, began to tidy the confusion ofletters she had left behind her. 

"I dare say the girls won't mind, " said Madeleine Verrier, kindly. 

Mrs. Phillips started, and her mild lips quivered a little. Daphne'scharities were for Daphne an amusement; for this gentle, faded woman, who bore all the drudgery of them, they were the chief attraction oflife in Daphne's house. Mrs. Phillips loved the club-girls, and thethought of their disappointment pained her. 

"I must try and put it to them, " was her patient reply. 

"Daphne must always have her way, " Madeleine went on, smiling. "I wonderwhat she'll do when she marries. "

Mrs. Phillips looked up quickly. 

"I hope it'll be the right man, Mrs. Verrier. Of course, with anyoneso--so clever--and so used to managing everything for herself--one wouldbe a little anxious. "

Mrs. Verrier's expression changed. A kind ofwildness--fanaticism--invaded it, as of one recalling a mission. "Oh, well, nothing is irrevocable nowadays, " she said, almost with violence. "Still I hope Daphne won't make a mistake. "

Mrs. Phillips looked at her companion, at first in astonishment. Then achange passed over her face. With a cold excuse she left Mrs. Verrieralone. 

CHAPTER IV

The reception at the White House was being given in honour of thedelegates to a Peace Congress. The rooms were full without beinginconveniently crowded and the charming house opened its friendly doorsto a society more congruous and organic, richer also in the nobler kindof variety than America, perhaps, can offer to her guests elsewhere. What the opera and international finance are to New York, politics andadministration are, as we all know, to Washington. And the visitorfrom Europe, conversationally starved for want of what seem to himthe only topics worth discussing, finds himself within hearing oncemore of ministers, cabinets, embassies, and parliamentary gossip. Even General Hobson had come to admit that--especially for themiddle-aged--Washington parties were extremely agreeable. The young andfoolish might sigh for the flesh-pots of New York; those on whom "theblack ox had trodden, " who were at all aware what a vast tormenting, multitudinous, and headstrong world man has been given to inhabit; thosewho were engaged in governing any part of that world, or meant some dayto be thus engaged; for them Washington was indispensable, and New Yorka mere entertainment. 

Moreover Washington, at this time of the world's history, was the sceneof one of those episodes--those brisker moments in the humancomedy--which every now and then revive among us an almost forgottenbelief in personality, an almost forgotten respect for the mysteriesbehind it. The guests streaming through the White House defiled past aman who, in a level and docketed world, appeared to his generation asthe reincarnation of forces primitive, over-mastering, and heroic. Anhonest Odysseus!--toil-worn and storm-beaten, yet still with the spiritand strength, the many devices, of a boy; capable like his prototype inone short day of crushing his enemies, upholding his friends, purifyinghis house; and then, with the heat of righteous battle still upon him, with its gore, so to speak, still upon his hands, of turning his mind, without a pause and without hypocrisy, to things intimate and soft andpure--the domestic sweetness of Penelope, the young promise ofTelemachus. The President stood, a rugged figure, amid the cosmopolitancrowd, breasting the modern world, like some ocean headland, yet nottruly of it, one of the great fighters and workers of mankind, with alaugh that pealed above the noise, blue eyes that seemed to pursue someconverse of their own, and a hand that grasped and cheered, where otherhands withdrew and repelled. This one man's will had now, for someyears, made the pivot on which vast issues turned--issues of peace andwar, of policy embracing the civilized world; and, here, one saw him indrawing-rooms, discussing Alaric's campaigns with an Oxford professor, or chatting with a young mother about her children. 

Beside him, the human waves, as they met and parted, disclosed a woman'sface, modelled by nature in one of her lightest and deftest moods, atrifle detached, humorous also, as though the world's strange sightsstirred a gentle and kindly mirth behind its sweet composure. Thedignity of the President's wife was complete, yet it had notextinguished the personality it clothed; and where royalty, as theEuropean knows it, would have donned its mask and stood on its defence, Republican royalty dared to be its amused, confiding, natural self. 

All around--the political, diplomatic world of Washington. GeneralHobson, as he passed through it, greeted by what was now a largeacquaintance, found himself driven once more to the inwardconfession--the grudging confession--as though Providence had not playedhim fair in extorting it--that American politicians were of a vastlyfiner stamp than he had expected to find them. The American press wasall--he vowed--that fancy had painted it, and more. But, as he lookedabout him at the members of the President's administration--at thistall, black-haired man, for instance, with the mild and meditative eye, the equal, social or intellectual, of any Foreign Minister that Europemight pit against him, or any diplomat that might be sent to handle him;or this younger man, sparely built, with the sane, handsome face--son ofa famous father, modest, amiable, efficient; or this other, of huge bulkand height, the sport of caricature, the hope of a party, smilingalready a presidential smile as he passed, observed and beset, throughthe crowded rooms; or these naval or military men, with their hardserviceable looks, and the curt good manners of their kind:--the Generalsaw as clearly as anybody else, that America need make no excuseswhatever for her best men, that she has evolved the leaders she wants, and Europe has nothing to teach them. 

He could only console himself by the remembrance of a speech, made by awell-known man, at a military function which the General had attended asa guest of honour the day before. There at last was the real thing! Thereal, Yankee, spread-eagle thing! The General positively hugged thethought of it. 

"The American soldier, " said the speaker, standing among theambassadors, the naval and military _attachés_, of all the Europeannations, "is the superior of all other soldiers in threerespects--bravery, discipline, intelligence. "

_Bravery, discipline, intelligence!_ Just those--the merest trifle! TheGeneral had found himself chuckling over it in the visions of the night. 

Tired at last of these various impressions, acting on a mind not quitealert enough to deal with them, the General went in search of hisnephew. Roger had been absent all day, and the General had left thehotel before his return. But the uncle was sure that he would sooner orlater put in an appearance. 

It was of course entirely on Roger's account that this unwilling guestof America was her guest still. For three weeks now had the General beenwatching the affair between Roger and Daphne Floyd. It had gone withsuch a rush at first, such a swing and fervour, that the General hadfelt that any day might bring the _dénouement_. It was really impossibleto desert the lad at such a crisis, especially as Laura was so excitableand anxious, and so sure to make her brother pay for it if he failed tosupport her views and ambitions at the right moment. The Generalmoreover felt the absolute necessity of getting to know something moreabout Miss Floyd, her character, the details of her fortune andantecedents, so that when the great moment came he might be prepared. 

But the astonishing thing was that of late the whole affair seemed tohave come to some stupid hitch! Roger had been behaving like a very coolhand--too cool by half in the General's opinion. What the deuce did hemean by hanging about these Boston ladies, if his affections were reallyfixed on Miss Daphne?--or his ambitions, which to the uncle seemednearer the truth. 

"Well, where is the nephew?" said Cecilia Boyson's voice in his ear. 

The General turned. He saw a sharp, though still young face, a thin andwillowy figure, attired in white silk, a _pince-nez_ on the high-pitchednose, and a cool smile. Unconsciously his back stiffened. Miss Boysoninvariably roused in him a certain masculine antagonism. 

"I should be glad if you would tell me, " he said, with some formality. "There are two or three people here to whom he should be introduced. "

"Has he been picnicking with the Maddisons?" The voice was shrill, perhaps malicious. 

"I believe they took him to Arlington, and somewhere else afterwards. "

"Ah, " said Cecilia, "there they are. "

The General looked towards the door and saw his nephew enter, behind amother and daughter whom, as it seemed to him, their acquaintances inthe crowd around them greeted with a peculiar cordiality; the mother, still young, with a stag-like carriage of the head, a long throat, swathed in white tulle, and grizzled hair, on which shone a spray ofdiamonds; the daughter, equally tall and straight, repeating hermother's beauty with a bloom and radiance of her own. Innocent andhappy, with dark eyes and a soft mouth, Miss Maddison dropped a littlecurtsey to the presidential pair, and the room turned to look at her asshe did so. 

"A very sweet-looking girl, " said the General warmly. "Her father is, Ithink, a professor. "

"He was. He is now just a writer of books. But Elsie was brought up inCambridge. How did Mr. Roger know them?"

"His Eton tutor told him to go and see them. "

"I thought Miss Floyd expected him to-day?" said Miss Boyson carelessly, adjusting her eyeglass. 

"It was a mistake, a misunderstanding, " replied the General hurriedly. "Miss Floyd's party is put off till next week. "

"Daphne is just coming in, " said Miss Boyson. 

The General turned again. The watchful Cecilia was certain that _he_ wasnot in love with Daphne. But the nephew--the inordinately handsome, andby now much-courted young man--what was the real truth about him?

Cecilia recognized--with Mrs. Verrier--that merely to put the questioninvolved a certain tribute to young Barnes. He had at any rate done hisfortune-hunting, if fortune-hunting it were, with decorum. 

"Miss Floyd is looking well to-night, " remarked the General. 

Cecilia did not reply. She and a great part of the room were engaged inwatching Roger Barnes and Miss Maddison walking together through a spacewhich seemed to have been cleared on purpose for them, but was reallythe result of a move towards the supper-room. 

"Was there ever such a pair?" said an enthusiastic voice behind theGeneral. "Athene and Apollo take the floor!" A gray-haired journalistwith a small, bewrinkled face, buried in whiskers, and beard, laid ahand on the General's arm as he spoke. 

The General smiled vaguely. "Do you know Mrs. And Miss Maddison?"

"Rather!" said the little man. "Miss Elsie's a wonder! As pretty andsoft as they make them, and a Greek scholar besides--took all sorts ofhonours at Radcliffe last year. I've known her from her cradle. "

"What a number of your girls go to college!" said the General, butungraciously, in the tones of one who no sooner saw an American customemerging than his instinct was to hit it. 

"Yes; it's a feature of our modern life--the life of our women. But notthe most significant one, by a long way. "

The General could not help a look of inquiry. 

The journalist's face changed from gay to grave. "The most significantthing in American life just now----"

"I know!" interrupted the General. "Your divorce laws!"

The journalist shook his head. "It goes deeper than that. What we'relooking on at is a complete transformation of the idea of marriage----"

A movement in the crowd bore the speaker away. The General was leftwatching the beautiful pair in the distance. They were apparently quiteunconscious that they roused any special attention. Laughing andchatting like two children, they passed into the supper-room anddisappeared. 

Ten minutes later, in the supper-room, Barnes deserted the two ladieswith whom he had entered, and went in pursuit of a girl in white, whosenecklace of star sapphires, set in a Spanish setting of the seventeenthcentury, had at once caught the eye of the judicious. Roger, however, knew nothing of jewels, and was only conscious as he approached MissFloyd, first of the mingling in his own mind of something likeembarrassment with something like defiance, and then, of the glitter inthe girl's dark eyes. 

"I hope you had an interesting debate, " he said. "Mrs. Phillips tells meyou went to the Senate. "

Daphne looked him up and down. "Did I?" she said slowly. "I'veforgotten. Will you move, please? There's someone bringing me an ice. "And turning her back on Roger, she smiled and beckoned to theUnder-Secretary, who with a triumphant face was making his way to herthrough the crowd. 

Roger coloured hotly. "May I bring Mrs. Maddison?" he said, passing her;"she would like to talk to you about a party for next week----"

"Thank you. I am just going home. " And with an energetic movement shefreed herself from him, and was soon in the gayest of talk with theUnder-Secretary. 

 * * * * *

The reception broke up some time after midnight, and on the way homeGeneral Hobson attempted a raid upon his nephew's intentions. 

"I don't wish to seem an intrusive person, my dear Roger, but may I askhow much longer you mean to stay in Washington?"

The tone was short and the look which accompanied the words not withoutsarcasm. Roger, who had been walking beside his companion, still deeplyflushed, in complete silence, gave an awkward laugh. 

"And as for you, Uncle Archie, I thought you meant to sail a fortnightago. If you've been staying on like this on my account----"

"Don't make a fool either of me or yourself, Roger!" said the Generalhastily, roused at last to speech by the annoyance of the situation. "Ofcourse it was on your account that I have stayed on. But what on earthit all means, and where your affairs are--I'm hanged if I have theglimmer of an idea!"

Roger's smile was perfectly good-humoured. 

"I haven't much myself, " he said quietly. 

"Do you--or do you not--mean to propose to Miss Floyd?" cried theGeneral, pausing in the centre of Lafayette Square, now all butdeserted, and apostrophizing with his umbrella--for the night was softand rainy--the presidential statue above his head. 

"Have I given you reason to suppose that I was going to do so?" saidRoger slowly. 

"Given me?--given everybody reason?--of course you have!--a dozen timesover. I don't like interfering with your affairs, Roger--with any youngman's affairs--but you must know that you have set Washington talking, and it's not fair to a girl--by George it isn't!--when she has given youencouragement and you have made her conspicuous, to begin the samestory, in the same place, immediately, with someone else! As you say, Iought to have taken myself off long ago. "

"I didn't say anything of the kind, " said Roger hotly; "you shouldn'tput words into my mouth, Uncle Archie. And I really don't see why youattack me like this. My tutor particularly asked me, if I came acrossthem, to be civil to Mrs. Maddison and her daughter, and I have donenothing but pay them the most ordinary attentions. "

"When a man is in love he pays no ordinary attentions. He has eyes forno one but the lady. " The General's umbrella, as it descended from theface of Andrew Jackson and rattled on the flagged path, supplied eachword with emphasis. "However, it is no good talking, and I don't exactlyknow why I should put my old oar in. But the fact is I feel a certainresponsibility. People here have been uncommonly civil. Well, well!--I've wired to-day to ask if there is a berth left in the_Venetia_ for Saturday. And you, I suppose"--the inquiry was somewhatperemptory--"will be going back to New York?"

"I have no intention of leaving Washington just yet, " said Roger, withdecision. 

"And may I ask what you intend to do here?"

Roger laughed. "I really think that's my business. However, you've beenan awful brick, Uncle Archie, to stay on like this. I assure you, if Idon't say much, I think it. "

By this time they had reached the hotel, the steps and hall of whichwere full of people. 

"That's how you put me off. " The General's tone was resentful. "And youwon't give me any idea of the line I am to take with your mother?"

The young man smiled again and waved an evasive hand. 

"If you'll only be patient a little longer, Uncle Archie----"

At this point an acquaintance of the General's who was smoking in thehall came forward to greet him, and Roger made his escape. 

 * * * * *

"Well, what the deuce _do_ I mean to do?" Barnes asked himself thequestion deliberately. He was hanging out of the window, in his bedroom, smoking and pondering. 

It was a mild and rainy night. Washington was full of the earth and leafodours of the spring, which rose in gusts from its trees and gardens;and rugged, swiftly moving clouds disclosed every now and then whatlooked like hurrying stars. 

The young man was excited and on edge. Daphne Floyd--and the thought ofDaphne Floyd--had set his pulses hammering; they challenged in him theaggressive, self-assertive, masculine force. The history of thepreceding three weeks was far from simple. He had first paid adetermined court to her, conducting it in an orthodox, English, conspicuous way. His mother, and her necessities--his own also--imposedit on him; and he flung himself into it, setting his teeth. Then, to hisastonishment, one may almost say to his disconcerting, he found the preyall at once, and, as it were, without a struggle, fluttering to hislure, and practically within his grasp. There was an evening whenDaphne's sudden softness, the look in her eyes, the inflection in hervoice had fairly thrown him off his balance. For the first time he hadshown a lack of self-command and self-possession. Whereupon, in a flash, a new and strange Daphne had developed--imperious, difficult, incalculable. The more he gave, the more she claimed. Nor was it meregirlish caprice. The young Englishman, invited to a game that he hadnever yet played, felt in it something sinister and bewildering. Gropingly, he divined in front of him a future of tyranny on her side, of expected submission on his. The Northern character in him, with itsreserve, its phlegm, its general sanity, began to shrink from theSouthern elements in her. He became aware of the depths in her nature, of things volcanic and primitive, and the English stuff in him recoiled. 

So he was to be bitted and bridled, it seemed, in the future. DaphneFloyd would have bought him with her dollars, and he would have to paythe price. 

Something natural and wild in him said No! If he married this girl hewould be master, in spite of her money. He realized vaguely, at anyrate, the strength of her will, and the way in which it had beentempered and steeled by circumstance. But the perception only roused inhimself some slumbering tenacities and vehemences of which he had beenscarcely aware. So that, almost immediately--since there was no glamourof passion on his side--he began to resent her small tyrannies, to drawin, and draw back. A few quarrels--not ordinary lovers' quarrels, butrepresenting a true grapple of personalities--sprang up behind a screenof trifles. Daphne was once more rude and provoking, Roger cool andapparently indifferent. This was the stage when Mrs. Verrier had becomean admiring observer of what she supposed to be his "tactics. " But sheknew nothing of the curious little crisis which had preceded them. 

Then the Maddisons, mother and daughter, "my tutor's friends, " hadappeared upon the scene--charming people! Of course civilities were dueto them, and had to be paid them. Next to his mother--and to the girl ofthe orchard--the affections of this youth, who was morally backward andimmature, but neither callous nor fundamentally selfish, had beenchiefly given to a certain Eton master, of a type happily not uncommonin English public schools. Herbert French had been Roger's earliest andbest friend. What Roger had owed him at school, only he knew. Sinceschool-days they had been constant correspondents, and French'sinfluence on his pupil's early manhood had done much, for all Roger'slaziness and self-indulgence, to keep him from serious lapses. 

Neglect any friends of his--and such jolly friends? Rather not! But assoon as Daphne had seen Elsie Maddison, and he had begged an afternoonto go on an expedition with them, Daphne had become intolerable. She hadshown her English friend and his acquaintances a manner so insulting andprovocative, that the young man's blood had boiled. 

If he were in love with her--well and good! She might no doubt havetamed him by these stripes. But she was no goddess to him; no goldencloud enveloped her; he saw her under a common daylight. At the sametime she attracted him; he was vain of what had seemed his conquest, anduneasily exultant in the thought of her immense fortune. "I'll make heran excellent husband if she marries me, " he said to himself stubbornly;"I can, and I will. "

But meanwhile how was this first stage to end? At the White House thatnight Daphne had treated him with contumely, and before spectators. Hemust either go or bring her to the point. 

He withdrew suddenly from the window, flinging out the end of hiscigarette. "I'll propose to her to-morrow--and she may either take me orleave me!"

He paced up and down his room, conscious of relief and fresh energy. Ashe did so his eyes were drawn to a letter from Herbert French lying onthe table. He took it up and read it again--smiling over it broadly, ina boyish and kindly amusement. "By Jove! he's happy. "

Then as he put it down his face darkened. There was something in theletter, in its manliness and humour, its unconscious revelation ofideals wholly independent of dollars, that made Roger for the momentloathe his own position. But he pulled himself together. 

"I shall make her a good husband, " he repeated, frowning. "She'll havenothing to complain of. "

 * * * * *

On the following day a picnic among the woods of the Upper Potomacbrought together most of the personages in this history. The day wasbeautiful, the woods fragrant with spring leaf and blossom, and thestream, swollen with rain, ran seaward in a turbid, rejoicing strength. 

The General, having secured his passage home, was in good spirits as faras his own affairs were concerned, though still irritable on the scoreof his nephew's. Since the abortive attempt on his confidence of thenight before, Roger had avoided all private conversation with his uncle;and for once the old had to learn patience from the young. 

The party was given by the wife of one of the staff of the FrenchEmbassy--a young Frenchwoman, as gay and frank as her babies, andpossessed, none the less, of all the social arts of her nation. She hadtaken a shrewd interest in the matter of Daphne Floyd and theEnglishman. Daphne, according to her, should be promptly married and hermillions taken care of, and the handsome, broad-shouldered fellowimpressed the little Frenchwoman's imagination as a proper and capablewatchdog. She had indeed become aware that something was wrong, but heracuteness entirely refused to believe that it had any vital connectionwith the advent of pretty Elsie Maddison. Meanwhile, to please Daphne, whom she liked, while conscious of a strong and frequent desire to smiteher, Madame de Fronsac had invited Mrs. Verrier, treating her with acold and punctilious courtesy that, as applied to any other guest, wouldhave seemed an affront. 

In vain, however, did the hostess, in vain did other kindly bystanders, endeavour to play the game of Daphne Floyd. In the first place Daphneherself, though piped unto, refused to dance. She avoided the society ofRoger Barnes in a pointed and public way, bright colour on her cheeksand a wild light in her eyes; the Under-Secretary escorted her andcarried her wrap. Washington did not know what to think. For owing tothis conduct of Daphne's, the charming Boston girl, the other _ingénue_of the party, fell constantly to the care of young Barnes; and to seethem stepping along the green ways together, matched almost in height, and clearly of the same English ancestry and race, pleased while itpuzzled the spectators. 

The party lunched in a little inn beside the river, and then scatteredagain along woodland paths. Daphne and the Under-Secretary wandered onahead and were some distance from the rest of the party when thatgentleman suddenly looked at his watch in dismay. An appointment had tobe kept with the President at a certain hour, and the Under-Secretary'swits had been wandering. There was nothing for it but to take a shortcut through the woods to a local station and make at once forWashington. 

Daphne quickened his uneasiness and hastened his departure. She assuredhim that the others were close behind, and that nothing could suit herbetter than to rest on a mossy stone that happily presented itself tillthey arrived. 

The Under-Secretary, transformed into the anxious and ambitiouspolitician, abruptly left her. 

Daphne, as soon as he was gone, allowed herself the natural attitudethat fitted her thoughts. She was furiously in love and torn withjealousy; and that love and jealousy could smart so, and cling so, was astrange revelation to one accustomed to make a world entirely to herliking. Her dark eyes were hollow, her small mouth had lost its colour, and she showed that touch of something wasting and withering thatTheocritan shepherds knew in old Sicilian days. It was as though she haddefied a god--and the god had avenged himself. 

Suddenly he appeared--the teasing divinity--in human shape. There was arustling among the brushwood fringing the river. Roger Barnes emergedand made his way up towards her. 

"I've been stalking you all this time, " he said, breathless, as hereached her, "and now at last--I've caught you!"

Daphne rose furiously. "What right have you to stalk me, as you callit--to follow me--to speak to me even? I wish to avoid you--and I haveshown it!"

Roger looked at her. He had thrown down his hat, and she saw him againstthe background of sunny wood, as the magnificent embodiment of its youthand force. "And why have you shown it?" There was a warning tremor ofexcitement in his voice. "What have I done? I haven't deserved it! Youtreat me like--like a friend!--and then you drop me like a hot coal. You've been awfully unkind to me!"

"I won't discuss it with you, " she cried passionately. "You are in myway, Mr. Barnes. Let me go back to the others!" And stretching out asmall hand, she tried to put him aside. 

Roger hesitated, but only for a moment. He caught the hand, he gatheredits owner into a pair of strong arms, and bending over her, he kissedher. Daphne, suffocated with anger and emotion, broke fromhim--tottering. Then sinking on the ground beneath a tree, she burstinto sobbing. Roger, scarlet, with sparkling eyes, dropped on one kneebeside her. 

[Illustration: "He caught the hand, he gathered its owner into a pair ofstrong arms, and bending over her, he kissed her"]

"Daphne, I'm a ruffian! forgive me! you must, Daphne! Look here, I wantyou to marry me. I've nothing to offer you, of course; I'm a poor man, and you've all this horrible money! But I--I love you!--and I'll makeyou a good husband, Daphne, that I'll swear. If you'll take me, youshall never be sorry for it. "

He looked at her again, sorely embarrassed, hating himself, yet inwardlysure of her. Her small frame shook with weeping. And presently sheturned from him and said in a fierce voice:

"Go and tell all that to Elsie Maddison!"

Infinitely relieved, Roger gave a quick, excited laugh. 

"She'd soon send me about my business! I should be a day too late forthe fair, in _that_ quarter. What do you think she and I have beentalking about all this time, Daphne?"

"I don't care, " said Daphne hastily, with face still averted. 

"I'm going to tell you, all the same, " cried Roger triumphantly, anddiving into his coat pocket he produced "my tutor's letter. " Daphne satimmovable, and he had to read it aloud himself. It contained therapturous account of Herbert French's engagement to Miss Maddison, ahappy event which had taken place in England during the Eton holidays, about a month before this date. 

"There!" cried the young man as he finished it. "And she's talked aboutnothing all the time, nothing at all--but old Herbert--and how good heis--and how good-looking, and the Lord knows what! I got precious sickof it, though I think he's a trump, too. Oh, Daphne!--you were a littlefool!"

"All the same, you have behaved abominably!" Daphne said, still choking. 

"No, I haven't, " was Roger's firm reply. "It was you who were so cross. I couldn't tell you anything. I say! you do know how to stick pins intopeople!"

But he took up her hand and kissed it as he spoke. 

Daphne allowed it. Her breast heaved as the storm departed. And shelooked so charming, so soft, so desirable, as she sat there in her whitedress, with her great tear-washed eyes and fluttering breath, that theyouth was really touched and carried off his feet; and the rest of histask was quite easy. All the familiar things that had to be said weresaid, and with all the proper emphasis and spirit. He played his part, the spring woods played theirs, and Daphne, worn out by emotion andconquered by passion, gradually betrayed herself wholly. And so much atleast may be said to the man's credit that there were certainly momentsin the half-hour between them when, amid the rush of talk, laughter, andcaresses, that conscience which he owed so greatly to the exertions of"my tutor" pricked him not a little. 

After losing themselves deliberately in the woods, they strolled back tojoin the rest of the party. The sounds of conversation were alreadyaudible through the trees in front of them, when they saw Mrs. Verriercoming towards them. She was walking alone and did not perceive them. Her eyes were raised and fixed, as though on some sight in front ofthem. The bitterness, the anguish, one might almost call it, of herexpression, the horror in the eyes, as of one ghost-led, ghost-driven, drew an exclamation from Roger. 

"There's Mrs. Verrier! Why, how ill she looks!"

Daphne paused, gazed, and shrank. She drew him aside through the trees. 

"Let's go another way. Madeleine's often strange. " And with asuperstitious pang she wished that Madeleine Verrier's face had not beenthe first to meet her in this hour of her betrothal. 

PART II

THREE YEARS AFTER

CHAPTER V

In the drawing-room at Heston Park two ladies were seated. One was awell-preserved woman of fifty, with a large oblong face, good features, a double chin, and abundant gray hair arranged in waved _bandeaux_ abovea forehead which should certainly have implied strength of character, and a pair of challenging black eyes. Lady Barnes moved and spoke withauthority; it was evident that she had been accustomed to do so all herlife; to trail silk gowns over Persian carpets, to engage expensivecooks and rely on expensive butlers, with a strict attention to smalleconomies all the time; to impose her will on her household and theclergyman of the parish; to give her opinions on books, and expect themto be listened to; to abstain from politics as unfeminine, and to makeup for it by the strongest of views on Church questions. She belonged toan English type common throughout all classes--quite harmless andtolerable when things go well, but apt to be soured and twisted byadversity. 

And Lady Barnes, it will be remembered, had known adversity. Not much ofit, nor for long together; but in her own opinion she had gone through"great trials, " to the profit of her Christian character. She was quitecertain, now, that everything had been for the best, and that Providencemakes no mistakes. But that, perhaps, was because the "trials" had onlylasted about a year; and then, so far as they were pecuniary, themarriage of her son with Miss Daphne Floyd had entirely relieved her ofthem. For Roger now made her a handsome allowance and the chastenedhabits of a most uncomfortable year had been hastily abandoned. 

Nevertheless, Lady Barnes's aspect on this autumn afternoon was notcheerful, and her companion was endeavouring, with a little kindembarrassment, both to soothe an evident irritation and to avoid theconfidences that Roger's mother seemed eager to pour out. Elsie French, whom Washington had known three years before as Elsie Maddison, was inthat bloom of young married life when all that was lovely in the girlseems to be still lingering, while yet love and motherhood have wroughtonce more their old transforming miracle on sense and spirit. In herafternoon dress of dainty sprigged silk, with just a touch of austerityin the broad muslin collar and cuffs--her curly brown hair simply partedon her brow, and gathered classically on a shapely head--her mouth alittle troubled, her brow a little puckered over Lady Barnes'sdiscontents--she was a very gracious vision. Yet behind the gentleness, as even Lady Barnes knew, there were qualities and characteristics of asingular strength. 

Lady Barnes indeed was complaining, and could not be stopped. 

"You see, dear Mrs. French, " she was saying, in a rapid, lowered voice, and with many glances at the door, "the trouble is that Daphne is neversatisfied. She has some impossible ideal in her mind, and theneverything must be sacrificed to it. She began with going into ecstasiesover this dear old house, and now!--there's scarcely a thing in it shedoes not want to change. Poor Edward and I spent thousands upon it, andwe really flattered ourselves that we had some taste; but it is not goodenough for Daphne!"

The speaker settled herself in her chair with a slight but emphaticclatter of bangles and rustle of skirts. 

"It's the ceilings, isn't it?" murmured Elsie French, glancing at theheavy decoration, the stucco bosses and pendants above her head whichhad replaced, some twenty years before, a piece of Adam design, sparingand felicitous. 

"It's everything!" Lady Barnes's tone was now more angry than fretful. "I don't, of course, like to say it--but really Daphne's self-confidenceis too amazing!"

"She does know so much, " said Elsie French reflectively. "Doesn't she?"

"Well, if you call it knowing. She can always get some tiresome person, whom she calls an 'expert, ' to back her up. But I believe in liking whatyou _do_ like, and not being bullied into what you don't like. "

"I suppose if one studies these things----" Elsie French began timidly. 

"What's the good of studying!" cried Lady Barnes; "one has one's owntaste, or one hasn't. "

Confronted with this form of the Absolute, Elsie French lookedperplexed; especially as her own artistic sympathies were mainly withDaphne. The situation was certainly awkward. At the time of the Barnes'sfinancial crash, and Sir Edward Barnes's death, Heston Park, whichbelonged to Lady Barnes, was all that remained to her and her son. Apark of a hundred acres and a few cottages went with the house; butthere was no estate to support it, and it had to be let, to provide anincome for the widow and the boy. Much of the expensive furniture hadbeen sold before letting, but enough remained to satisfy the wants of anot very exacting tenant. 

Lady Barnes had then departed to weep in exile on a pittance of aboutseven hundred a year. But with the marriage of her son to Miss Floyd andher millions, the mother's thoughts had turned fondly back to HestonPark. It was too big for her, of course; but the young people clearlymust redeem it, and settle there. And Daphne had been quite amenable. The photographs charmed her. The house, she said, was evidently in apure style, and it would be a delight to make it habitable again. Thetenant, however, had a lease, and refused to turn out until at lastDaphne had frankly bribed him to go. And now, after three years ofmarried life, during which the young couple had rented various "places, "besides their house in London and a villa at Tunis, Heston Park had beenvacated, Daphne and Roger had descended upon it as Lady Barnes's tenantsat a high rent, intent upon its restoration; and Roger's mother had beeninvited to their councils. 

Hence, indeed, these tears. When Daphne first stepped inside theancestral mansion of the Trescoes--such had been Lady Barnes's maidenname--she had received a severe shock. The outside, the shell of thehouse--delightful! But inside!--heavens! what taste, whatdecoration--what ruin of a beautiful thing! Half the old mantelpiecesgone, the ceilings spoiled, the decorations "busy, " pretentious, overdone, and nothing left to console her but an ugly row of bad Lelysand worse Highmores--the most despicable collection of family portraitsshe had ever set eyes upon!

Roger had looked unhappy. "It was father and mother did it, " he admittedpenitently. "But after all, Daphne, you know they _are_ Trescoes!"--thiswith a defensive and protecting glance at the Lelys. 

Daphne was sorry for it. Her mouth tightened, and certain lines appearedabout it which already prophesied what the years would make of the youngface. Yet it was a pretty mouth--the mouth, above all, of one with nodoubts at all as to her place and rights in the world. Lady Barnes hadpronounced it "common" in her secret thoughts before she had known itsowner six weeks. But the adjective had never yet escaped the "bulwark ofthe teeth. " Outwardly the mother and daughter-in-law were still on goodterms. It was indeed but a week since the son and his wife hadarrived--with their baby girl--at Heston Park, after a summer ofyachting and fishing in Norway; since Lady Barnes had journeyed thitherfrom London to meet them; and Mr. And Mrs. French had accepted an urgentinvitation from Roger, quite sufficiently backed by Daphne, to stay fora few days with Mr. French's old pupil, before the reopening of Eton. 

During that time there had been no open quarrels of any kind; but ElsieFrench was a sensitive creature, and she had been increasingly aware offriction and annoyance behind the scenes. And now here was Lady Barneslet loose! and Daphne might appear at any moment, before she could bere-caged. 

"She puts you down so!" cried that lady, making gestures with thepaper-knife she had just been employing on the pages of a Mudie book. "If I tell her that something or other--it doesn't matter what--cost atleast a great deal of money, she has a way of smiling at you that ispositively insulting! She doesn't trouble to argue; she begins to laugh, and raises her eyebrows. I--I always feel as if she had struck me in theface! I know I oughtn't to speak like this; I hadn't meant to do it, especially to a country-woman of hers, as you are. "

"Am I?" said Elsie, in a puzzled voice. 

Lady Barnes opened her eyes in astonishment. 

"I meant"--the explanation was hurried--"I thought--Mrs. Barnes was aSouth American? Her mother was Spanish, of course; you see it inDaphne. "

"Yes; in her wonderful eyes, " said Mrs. French warmly; "and hergrace--isn't she graceful! My husband says she moves like a sea-wave. She has given her eyes to the child. "

"Ah! and other things too, I'm afraid!" cried Lady Barnes, carried away. "But here is the baby. "

For the sounds of a childish voice were heard echoing in the domed halloutside. Small feet came pattering, and the drawing-room door was burstopen by Roger Barnes, holding a little girl of nearly two and a half bythe hand. 

Lady Barnes composed herself. It is necessary to smile at children, andshe endeavoured to satisfy her own sense of it. 

"Come in, Beatty; come and kiss granny!" And Lady Barnes held out herarms. 

But the child stood still, surveyed her grandmother with a pair ofstartling eyes, and then, turning, made a rush for the door. But herfather was too quick for her. He closed it with a laugh, and stood withhis back to it. The child did not cry, but, with flaming cheeks, shebegan to beat her father's knees with her small fists. 

"Go and kiss granny, darling, " said Roger, stroking her dark head. 

Beatty turned again, put both her hands behind her, and stood immovable. 

"Not kiss granny, " she said firmly. "Don't love granny. "

"Oh, Beatty"--Mrs. French knelt down beside her--"come and be a goodlittle girl, and I'll show you picture-books. "

"I not Beatty--I Jemima Ann, " said the small thin voice. "Not be a dooddirl--do upstairs. "

She looked at her father again, and then, evidently perceiving that hewas not to be moved by force, she changed her tactics. Her delicate, elfish face melted into the sweetest smile; she stood on tiptoe, holdingout to him her tiny arms. With a laugh of irrepressible pride andpleasure, Roger stooped to her and lifted her up. She nestled on hisshoulder--a small Odalisque, dark, lithe, and tawny, beside herhandsome, fair-skinned father. And Roger's manner of holding andcaressing her showed the passionate affection with which he regardedher. 

He again urged her to kiss her grandmother; but the child again shookher head. "Then, " said he craftily, "father must kiss granny. " And hebegan to cross the room. 

But Lady Barnes stopped him, not without dignity. "Better not press it, Roger: another time. "

Barnes laughed, and yielded. He carried the child away, murmuring toher, "Naughty, naughty 'ittie girl!"--a remark which Beatty, tuckedunder his ear, and complacently sucking her thumb, received withcomplete indifference. 

"There, you see!" said the grandmother, with slightly flushed cheeks, asthe door closed: "the child has been already taught to dislike me, andif Roger had attempted to kiss me, she would probably have struck me. "

"Oh, no!" cried Mrs. French. "She is a loving little thing. "

"Except when she is jealous, " said Lady Barnes, with significance. "Itold you she has inherited more than her eyes. "

Mrs. French rose. She was determined not to discuss her hostess anymore, and she walked over to the bow window as though to look at theprospects of the weather, which had threatened rain. But Roger's motherwas not to be repressed. Resentment and antagonism, nurtured on ahundred small incidents and trifling jars, and, to begin with, a matterof temperament, had come at last to speech. And in this charming NewEnglander, the wife of Roger's best friend, sympathetic, tender, with atouch in her of the nun and the saint, Lady Barnes could not help tryingto find a supporter. She was a much weaker person than her square buildand her double chin would have led the bystander to suppose; and herfeelings had been hurt. 

So that when Mrs. French returned to say that the sun seemed to becoming out, her companion, without heeding, went on, with emotion: "It'smy son I am thinking of, Mrs. French. I know you're safe, and that Rogerdepends upon Mr. French more than upon anyone else in the world, so Ican't help just saying a word to you about my anxiety. You know, whenRoger married, I don't think he was much in love--in fact, I'm sure hewasn't. But now--it's quite different. Roger has a very soft heart, andhe's very domestic. He was always the best of sons to me, and as soon ashe was married he became the best of husbands. He's devoted to Daphnenow, and you see how he adores the child. But the fact is, there's aperson in this neighbourhood" (Lady Barnes lowered her voice and lookedround her)--"I only knew it for certain this morning--who ... Well, whomight make trouble. And Daphne's temper is so passionate anduncontrolled that----"

"Dear Lady Barnes, please don't tell me any secrets!" Elsie Frenchimplored, and laid a restraining hand on the mother's arm, ready, indeed, to take up her work and fly. But Lady Barnes's chair stoodbetween her and the door, and the occupant of it was substantial. 

Laura Barnes hesitated, and in the pause two persons appeared upon thegarden path outside, coming towards the open windows of thedrawing-room. One was Mrs. Roger Barnes; the other was a man, remarkablytall and slender, with a stoop like that of an overgrown schoolboy, silky dark hair and moustache, and pale gray eyes. 

"Dr. Lelius!" said Elsie, in astonishment. "Was Daphne expecting him?"

"Who is Dr. Lelius?" asked Lady Barnes, putting up her eyeglass. 

Mrs. French explained that he was a South German art-critic, fromWürzburg, with a great reputation. She had already met him at Eton andat Oxford. 

"Another expert!" said Lady Barnes with a shrug. 

The pair passed the window, absorbed apparently in conversation. Mrs. French escaped. Lady Barnes was left to discontent and solitude. 

But the solitude was not for long. 

When Elsie French descended for tea, an hour later, she was aware, froma considerable distance, of people and tumult in the drawing-room. Daphne's soprano voice--agreeable, but making its mark always, like itsowner--could be heard running on. The young mistress of the house seemedto be admonishing, instructing, someone. Could it be her mother-in-law?

When Elsie entered, Daphne was walking up and down in excitement. 

"One cannot really live with bad pictures because they happen to beone's ancestors! We won't do them any harm, mamma! of course not. Thereis a room upstairs where they can be stored--most carefully--and anybodywho is interested in them can go and look at them. If they had only beenleft as they were painted!--not by Lely, of course, but by some draperyman in his studio--_passe encore_! they might have been just bearable. But you see some wretched restorer went and daubed them all over a fewyears ago. "

"We went to the best man we could find! We took the best advice!" criedLady Barnes, sitting stiff and crimson in a deep arm-chair, opposite theluckless row of portraits that Daphne was denouncing. 

"I'm sure you did. But then, you see, nobody knew anything at all aboutit in those days. The restorers were all murderers. Ask Dr. Lelius. "

Daphne pointed to the stranger, who was leaning against an arm-chairbeside her in an embarrassed attitude, as though he were endeavouring tomake the chair a buffer between himself and Lady Barnes. 

Dr. Lelius bowed. 

"It is a modern art, " he said with diffidence, and an accent creditablyslight--"a quite modern art. We hafe a great man at Würzburg. "

"I don't suppose he professes to know anything about English pictures, does he?" asked Lady Barnes with scorn. 

"Ach!--I do not propose that Mrs. Barnes entrust him wid dese pictures, Madame. It is now too late. "

And the willowy German looked, with a half-repressed smile, at the rowof pictures--all staring at the bystander with the same saucer eyes, thesame wooden arms, and the same brilliance of modern paint and varnish, which not even the passage of four years since it was applied had beenable greatly to subdue. 

Lady Barnes lifted shoulders and eyes--a woman's angry protest againstthe tyranny of knowledge. 

"All the same, they are my forbears, my kith and kin, " she said, withemphasis. "But of course Mrs. Barnes is mistress here: I suppose shewill do as she pleases. "

The German stared politely at the carpet. It was now Daphne's turn toshrug. She threw herself into a chair, with very red cheeks, one foothanging over the other, and the fingers of her hands, which shone withdiamonds, tapping the chair impatiently. Her dress of a delicate pink, touched here and there with black, her wide black hat, and the eyeswhich glowed from the small pointed face beneath it; the tumbling massesof her dark hair as contrasted with her general lightness andslenderness; the red of the lips, the whiteness of the hands and brow, the dainty irregularity of feature: these things made a Watteau sketchof her, all pure colour and lissomeness, with dots and scratches ofintense black. Daphne was much handsomer than she had been as a girl, but also a trifle less refined. All her points were intensified--hereyes had more flame; the damask of her cheek was deeper; her grace waswilder, her voice a little shriller than of old. 

While the uncomfortable silence which the two women had made around themstill lasted, Roger Barnes appeared on the garden steps. 

"Hullo! any tea going?" He came in, without waiting for an answer, looked from his mother to Daphne, from Daphne to his mother, and laugheduncomfortably. 

"Still bothering about those beastly pictures?" he said as he helpedhimself to a cup of tea. 

"_Thank_ you, Roger!" said Lady Barnes. 

"I didn't mean any harm, mother. " He crossed over to her and sat downbeside her. "I say, Daphne, I've got an idea. Why shouldn't mother havethem? She's going to take a house, she says. Let's hand them all over toher!"

Lady Barnes's lips trembled with indignation. "The Trescoes who wereborn and died in this house, belong here!" The tone of the words showedthe stab to feeling and self-love. "It would be a sacrilege to movethem. "

"Well then, let's move ourselves!" exclaimed Daphne, springing up. "Wecan let this house again, can't we, Roger?"

"We can, I suppose, " said Roger, munching his bread and butter; "butwe're not going to. "

He raised his head and looked quietly at her. 

"I think we'd better!" The tone was imperious. Daphne, with her thinarms and hands locked behind her, paused beside her husband. 

Dr. Lelius, stealthily raising his eyes, observed the two. A strangelittle scene--not English at all. The English, he understood, were aphlegmatic people. What had this little Southerner to do among them? Andwhat sort of fellow was the husband?

It was evident that some mute coloquy passed between the husband andwife--disapproval on his part, attempt to assert authority, defiance, onhers. Then the fair-skinned English face, confronting Daphne, waveredand weakened, and Roger smiled into the eyes transfixing him. 

"Ah!" thought Lelius, "she has him, de poor fool!"

Roger, coming over to his mother, began a murmured conversation. Daphne, still breathing quick, consented to talk to Dr. Lelius and Mrs. French. Lelius, who travelled widely, had brought her news of some pictures in achateau of the Bourbonnais--pictures that her whole mind was set onacquiring. Elsie French noticed the _expertise_ of her talk; theintellectual development it implied; the passion of will whichaccompanied it. "To the dollar, all things are possible"--one might havephrased it so. 

The soft September air came in through the open windows, from a gardenflooded with western sun. Suddenly through the subdued talk which filledthe drawing-room--each group in it avoiding the other--the sound of amotor arriving made itself heard. 

"Heavens! who on earth knows we're here?" said Barnes, looking up. 

For they had only been camping a week in the house, far too busy tothink of neighbours. They sat expectant and annoyed, reproaching eachother with not having told the butler to say "Not at home. " LadyBarnes's attitude had in it something else--a little anxiety; but itescaped notice. Steps came through the hall, and the butler, throwingopen the door, announced--

"Mrs. Fairmile. "

Roger Barnes sprang to his feet. His mother, with a little gasp, caughthim by the arm instinctively. There was a general rise and a movement ofconfusion, till the new-comer, advancing, offered her hand to Daphne. 

"I am afraid, Mrs. Barnes, I am disturbing you all. The butler told meyou had only been here a few days. But Lady Barnes and your husband aresuch old friends of mine that, as soon as I heard--through our oldpostmistress, I think--that you had arrived, I thought I might venture. "

The charming voice dropped, and the speaker waited, smiling, her eyesfixed on Daphne. Daphne had taken her hand in some bewilderment, and wasnow looking at her husband for assistance. It was clear to Elsie French, in the background, that Daphne neither knew the lady nor the lady'sname, and that the visit had taken her entirely by surprise. 

Barnes recovered himself quickly. "I had no idea you were in theseparts, " he said, as he brought a chair forward for the visitor, andstood beside her a moment. 

Lady Barnes, observing him, as she stiffly greeted the new-comer--hiscool manner, his deepened colour--felt the usual throb of maternal pridein him, intensified by alarm and excitement. 

"Oh, I am staying a day or two with Duchess Mary, " said the new-comer. "She is a little older--and no less gouty, poor dear, than she used tobe. Mrs. Barnes, I have heard a great deal of you--though you mayn'tknow anything about me. Ah! Dr. Lelius?"

The German, bowing awkwardly, yet radiant, came forward to take the handextended to him. 

"They did nothing but talk about you at the Louvre, when I was therelast week, " she said, with a little confidential nod. "You have madethem horribly uncomfortable about some of their things. Isn't it a pityto know too much?"

She turned toward Daphne. "I'm afraid that's your case too. " She smiled, and the smile lit up a face full of delicate lines and wrinkles, whichno effort had been made to disguise; a tired face, where the eyes spokefrom caverns of shade, yet with the most appealing and persuasivebeauty. 

"Do you mean about pictures?" said Daphne, a little coldly. "I don'tknow as much as Dr. Lelius. "

Humour leaped into the eyes fixed upon her; but Mrs. Fairmile only said:"That's not given to the rest of us mortals. But after all, _having's_better than knowing. Don't--_don't_ you possess the Vitali Signorelli?"

Her voice was most musical and flattering. Daphne smiled in spite ofherself. "Yes, we do. It's in London now--waiting till we can find aplace for it. "

"You must let me make a pilgrimage--when it comes. But you know you'dfind a number of things at Upcott--where I'm staying now--that wouldinterest you. I forget whether you've met the Duchess?"

"This is our first week here, " said Roger, interposing. "The house hasbeen let till now. We came down to see what could be made of it. "

His tone was only just civil. His mother, looking on, said to herselfthat he was angry--and with good reason. 

But Mrs. Fairmile still smiled. 

"Ah! the Lelys!" she cried, raising her hand slightly toward the row ofportraits on the wall. "The dear impossible things! Are you stilldiscussing them--as we used to do?"

Daphne started. "You know this house, then?"

The smile broadened into a laugh of amusement, as Mrs. Fairmile turnedto Roger's mother. 

"Don't I, dear Lady Barnes--don't I know this house?"

Lady Barnes seemed to straighten in her chair. "Well, you were hereoften enough to know it, " she said abruptly. "Daphne, Mrs. Fairmile is adistant cousin of ours. "

"Distant, but quite enough to swear by!" said the visitor, gaily. "Yes, Mrs. Barnes, I knew this house very well in old days. It has manycharming points. " She looked round with a face that had suddenly becomecoolly critical, an embodied intelligence. 

Daphne, as though divining for the first time a listener worthy of hersteel, began to talk with some rapidity of the changes she wished tomake. She talked with an evident desire to show off, to make animpression. Mrs. Fairmile listened attentively, occasionally throwing ina word of criticism or comment, in the softest, gentlest voice. Butsomehow, whenever she spoke, Daphne felt vaguely irritated. She wasgenerally put slightly in the wrong by her visitor, and Mrs. Fairmile'sextraordinary knowledge of Heston Park, and of everything connected withit, was so odd and disconcerting. She had a laughing way, moreover, ofappealing to Roger Barnes himself to support a recollection or anopinion, which presently produced a contraction of Daphne's brows. Whowas this woman? A cousin--a cousin who knew every inch of the house, andseemed to be one of Roger's closest friends? It was really too strangethat in all these years Roger should never have said a word about her!

The red mounted in Daphne's cheek. She began, moreover, to feel herselfat a disadvantage to which she was not accustomed. Dr. Lelius, meanwhile, turned to Mrs. Fairmile, whenever she was allowed to speak, with a joyous yet inarticulate deference he had never shown to hishostess. They understood each other at a word or a glance. Beside themDaphne, with all her cleverness, soon appeared as a child for whom onemakes allowances. 

A vague anger swelled in her throat. She noticed, too, Roger's silenceand Lady Barnes's discomfort. There was clearly something here that hadbeen kept from her--something to be unravelled!

Suddenly the new-comer rose. Mrs. Fairmile wore a dress of some palegray stuff, cobweb-light and transparent, over a green satin. It had theeffect of sea-water, and her gray hat, with its pale green wreath, framed the golden-gray of her hair. Every one of her few adornments wasexquisite--so was her grace as she moved. Daphne's pink-and-blackvivacity beside her seemed a pinchbeck thing. 

"Well, now, when will you all come to Upcott?" Mrs. Fairmile saidgraciously, as she shook hands. "The Duchess will be enchanted to seeyou any day, and----"

"Thank you! but we really can't come so far, " said a determined voice. "We have only a shaky old motor--our new one isn't ready yet--andbesides, we want all our time for the house. "

"You make him work so hard?"

Mrs. Fairmile, laughing, pointed to the speaker. Roger looked upinvoluntarily, and Daphne saw the look. 

"Roger has nothing to do, " she said, quickly. "Thank you very much: wewill certainly come. I'll write to you. How many miles did you say itwas?"

"Oh, nothing for a motor!--twenty-five. We used to think it nothing fora ride, didn't we?"

The speaker, who was just passing through the door, turned towardsRoger, who with Lelius, was escorting her, with a last gesture--gay, yet, like all her gestures, charged with a slight yet deliberatesignificance. 

They disappeared. Daphne walked to the window, biting her lip. 

 * * * * *

As she stood there Herbert French came into the room, looking a littleshy and ill at ease, and behind him three persons, a clergyman in anArchdeacon's apron and gaiters, and two ladies. Daphne, perceiving themsideways in a mirror to her right, could not repress a gesture andmuttered sound of annoyance. 

French introduced Archdeacon Mountford, his wife and sister. Roger, itseemed, had met them in the hall, and sent them in. He himself had beencarried off on some business by the head keeper. 

Daphne turned ungraciously. Her colour was very bright, her eyes alittle absent and wild. The two ladies, both clad in pale brown stuffs, large mushroom hats, and stout country boots, eyed her nervously, and asthey sat down, at her bidding, they left the Archdeacon--who was thevicar of the neighbouring town--to explain, with much amiablestammering, that seeing the Duchess's carriage at the front door, asthey were crossing the park, they presumed that visitors were admitted, and had ventured to call. 

Daphne received the explanation without any cordiality. She did indeedbid the callers sit down, and ordered some fresh tea. But she took nopains to entertain them, and if Lady Barnes and Herbert French had notcome to the rescue, they would have fared but ill. The Archdeacon, infact, did come to grief. For him Mrs. Barnes was just a "foreigner, "imported from some unknown and, of course, inferior _milieu_, one whohad never been "a happy English child, " and must therefore be treatedwith indulgence. He endeavoured to talk to her--kindly--about hercountry. A branch of his own family, he informed her, had settled abouta hundred years before this date in the United States. He gave her, atsome length, the genealogy of the branch, then of the main stock towhich he himself belonged, presuming that she was, at any rate, acquainted with the name? It was, he said, his strong opinion thatAmerican women were very "bright. " For himself he could not say that heeven disliked the accent, it was so "quaint. " Did Mrs. Barnes know manyof the American bishops? He himself had met a large number of them at areception at the Church House, but it had really made him quiteuncomfortable! They wore no official dress, and there was he--a mereArchdeacon!--in gaiters. And, of course, no one thought of calling them"my lord. " It certainly was very curious--to an Englishman. AndMethodist bishops!--such as he was told America possessed inplenty--that was still more curious. One of the Episcopalian bishops, however, had preached--in Westminster Abbey--a remarkable sermon, on avery sad subject, not perhaps a subject to be discussed in adrawing-room--but still----

Suddenly the group on the other side of the room became aware that theArchdeacon's amiable prosing had been sharply interrupted--that Daphne, not he, was holding the field. A gust of talk arose--Daphne declaiming, the Archdeacon, after a first pause of astonishment, changing aspect andtone. French, looking across the room, saw the mask of conventionalamiability stripped from what was really a strong and rather tyrannicalface. The man's prominent mouth and long upper lip emerged. He drew hischair back from Daphne's; he tried once or twice to stop or argue withher, and finally he rose abruptly. 

"My dear!"--his wife turned hastily--"We must not detain Mrs. Barneslonger!"

The two ladies looked at the Archdeacon--the god of their idolatry; thenat Daphne. Hurriedly, like birds frightened by a shot, they crossed theroom and just touched their hostess's hand; the Archdeacon, making upfor their precipitancy by a double dose of dignity, bowed himself out;the door closed behind them. 

"Daphne!--my dear! what is the matter?" cried Lady Barnes, in dismay. 

"He spoke to me impertinently about my country!" said Daphne, turningupon her, her black eyes blazing, her cheeks white with excitement. 

"The Archdeacon!--he is always so polite!"

"He talked like a fool--about things he doesn't understand!" wasDaphne's curt reply, as she gathered up her hat and some letters, andmoved towards the door. 

"About what? My dear Daphne! He could not possibly have meant to offendyou! Could he, Mr. French?" Lady Barnes turned plaintively towards hervery uncomfortable companions. 

Daphne confronted her. 

"If he chooses to think America immoral and degraded because Americandivorce laws are different from the English laws, let him think it!--buthe has no business to air his views to an American--at a first visit, too!" said Daphne passionately, and, drawing herself up, she swept outof the room, leaving the others dumfoundered. 

"Oh dear! oh dear!" wailed Lady Barnes. "And the Archdeacon is soimportant! Daphne might have been rude to anybody else--but not theArchdeacon!"

"How did they manage to get into such a subject--so quickly?" askedElsie in bewilderment. 

"I suppose he took it for granted that Daphne agreed with him! Alldecent people do. "

Lady Barnes's wrath was evident--so was her indiscretion. Elsie Frenchapplied herself to soothing her, while Herbert French disappeared intothe garden with a book. His wife, however, presently observed from thedrawing-room that he was not reading. He was pacing the lawn, with hishands behind him, and his eyes on the grass. The slight, slowly-movingfigure stood for meditation, and Elsie French knew enough to understandthat the incidents of the afternoon might well supply any friend ofRoger Barnes's with food for meditation. Herbert had not been in thedrawing-room when Mrs. Fairmile was calling, but no doubt he had met herin the hall when she was on her way to her carriage. 

Meanwhile Daphne, in her own room, was also employed in meditation. Shehad thrown herself, frowning, into a chair beside a window whichoverlooked the park. The landscape had a gentle charm--spreading grass, low hills, and scattered woods--under a warm September sun. But it hadno particular accent, and Daphne thought it both tame and depressing;like an English society made up of Archdeacon Mountfords and theirwomen-kind! What a futile, irritating man!--and what dull creatures werethe wife and daughter!--mere echoes of their lord and master. She hadbehaved badly, of course; in a few days she supposed the report of heroutburst would be all over the place. She did not care. Even for Roger'ssake she was not going to cringe to these poor provincial standards. 

And all the time she knew very well that it was not the Archdeacon andhis fatuities that were really at fault. The afternoon had been decidednot by the Mountfords' call, but by that which had preceded it. 

CHAPTER VI

Mrs. Barnes, however, made no immediate reference to the matter whichwas in truth filling her mind. She avoided her husband andmother-in-law, both of whom were clearly anxious to capture herattention; and, by way of protecting herself from them, she spent thelate afternoon in looking through Italian photographs with Dr. Lelius. 

But about seven o'clock Roger found her lying on her sofa, her handsclasped behind her head--frowning--the lips working. 

He came in rather consciously, glancing at his wife in hesitation. 

"Are you tired, Daphne?"

"No. "

"A penny for your thoughts, then!" He stooped over her and looked intoher eyes. 

Daphne made no reply. She continued to look straight before her. 

"What's the matter with you?" he said, at last. 

"I'm wondering, " said Daphne slowly, "how many more cousins and greatfriends you have, that I know nothing about. I think another time itwould be civil--just that!--to give me a word of warning. "

Roger pulled at his moustache. "I hadn't an idea she was within athousand miles of this place! But, if I had, I couldn't have imaginedshe would have the face to come here!"

"Who is she?" With a sudden movement Daphne turned her eyes upon him. 

"Well, there's no good making any bones about it, " said the man, flushing. "She's a girl I was once engaged to, for a very short time, "he added hastily. "It was the week before my father died, and our smashcame. As soon as it came she threw me over. "

Daphne's intense gaze, under the slightly frowning brows, disquietedhim. 

"How long were you engaged to her?"

"Three weeks. "

"Had she been staying here before that?"

"Yes--she often stayed here. Daphne! don't look like that! She treatedme abominably; and before I married you I had come not to care twopenceabout her. "

"You did care about her when you proposed to me?"

"No!--not at all! Of course, when I went out to New York I was sore, because she had thrown me over. "

"And I"--Daphne made a scornful lip--"was the feather-bed to catch youas you fell. It never occurred to you that it might have been honourableto tell me?"

"Well, I don't know--I never asked you to tell me of your affairs!"

Roger, his hands in his pockets, looked round at her with an awkwardlaugh. 

"I told you everything!" was the quick reply--"_everything_. "

Roger uncomfortably remembered that so indeed it had been; and moreoverthat he had been a good deal bored at the time by Daphne's confessions. 

He had not been enough in love with her--then--to find them of any greataccount. And certainly it had never occurred to him to pay them back inkind. What did it matter to her or to anyone that Chloe Morant had madea fool of him? His recollection of the fooling, at the time he proposedto Daphne, was still so poignant that it would have been impossible tospeak of it. And within a few months afterwards he had practicallyforgotten it--and Chloe too. Of course he could not see her again, forthe first time, without being "a bit upset"; mostly, indeed, by theboldness--the brazenness--of her behaviour. But his emotions were of notragic strength, and, as Lady Barnes had complained to Mrs. French, hewas now honestly in love with Daphne and his child. 

So that he had nothing but impatience and annoyance for the recollectionof the visit of the afternoon; and Daphne's attitude distressed him. Why, she was as pale as a ghost! His thoughts sent Chloe Fairmile to thedeuce. 

"Look here, dear!" he said, kneeling down suddenly beside hiswife--"don't you get any nonsense into your head. I'm not the kind offellow who goes philandering after a woman when she's jilted him. I tookher measure, and after you accepted me I never gave her another thought. I forgot her, dear--bag and baggage! Kiss me, Daphne!"

But Daphne still held him at bay. 

"How long were you engaged to her?" she repeated. 

"I've told you--three weeks!" said the man, reluctantly. 

"How long had you known her?"

"A year or two. She was a distant cousin of father's. Her father wasGovernor of Madras, and her mother was dead. She couldn't stand Indiafor long together, and she used to stay about with relations. Why shetook a fancy to me I can't imagine. She's so booky and artistic, andthat kind of thing, that I never understood half the time what she wastalking about. Now you're just as clever, you know, darling, but I dounderstand you. "

Roger's conscience made a few dim remonstrances. It asked him whether infact, standing on his own qualifications and advantages of quite adifferent kind, he had not always felt himself triumphantly more than amatch for Chloe and her cleverness. But he paid no heed to them. He wasengaged in stroking Daphne's fingers and studying the small set face. 

"Whom did she marry?" asked Daphne, putting an end to the stroking. 

"A fellow in the army--Major Fairmile--a smart, popular sort of chap. Hewas her father's aide-de-camp when they married--just after we did--andthey've been in India, or Egypt, ever since. They don't get on, and Isuppose she comes and quarters herself on the old Duchess--as she usedto on us. "

"You seem to know all about her! Yes, I remember now, I've heard peoplespeak of her to you. Mrs. Fairmile--Mrs. Fairmile--yes, I remember, "said Daphne, in a brooding voice, her cheeks becoming suddenly very red. "Your uncle--in town--mentioned her. I didn't take any notice. "

"Why should you? She doesn't matter a fig, either to you or to me!"

"It matters to me very much that these people who spoke of her--youruncle and the others--knew what I didn't know!" cried Daphne, passionately. She stared at Roger, strangely conscious that somethingepoch-making and decisive had happened. Roger had had a secret from herall these years--that was what had happened; and now she had discoveredit. That he _could_ have a secret from her, however, was the realdiscovery. She felt a fierce resentment, and yet a kind of added respectfor him. All the time he had been the private owner of thoughts andrecollections that she had no part in, and the fact roused in her tumultand bitterness. Nevertheless the disturbance which it produced in hersense of property, the shock and anguish of it, brought back somethingof the passion of love she had felt in the first year of their marriage. 

During these three years she had more than once shown herself insanelyjealous for the merest trifles. But Roger had always laughed at her, andshe had ended by laughing at herself. 

Yet all the time he had had this secret. She sat looking at him hardwith her astonishing eyes; and he grew more and more uneasy. 

"Well, some of them knew, " he said, answering her last reproach. "Andthey knew that I was jolly well quit of her! I suppose I ought to havetold you, Daphne--of course I ought--I'm sorry. But the fact was I neverwanted to think of her again. And I certainly never want to see heragain! Why, in the name of goodness, did you accept that tea-fight?"

"Because I mean to go. "

"Then you'll have to go without me, " was the incautious reply. 

"Oh, so you're afraid of meeting her! I shall know what to think, if you_don't_ go. " Daphne sat erect, her hands clasped round her knees. 

Roger made a sound of wrath, and threw his cigarette into the fire. Then, turning round again to face her, he tried to control himself. 

"Look here, Daphne, don't let us quarrel about this. I'll tell youeverything you want to know--the whole beastly story. But it can't bepleasant to me to meet a woman who treated me as she did--and itoughtn't to be pleasant to you either. It was like her audacity to comethis afternoon. "

"She simply wants to get hold of you again!" Daphne sprang up as shespoke with a violent movement, her face blazing. 

"Nonsense! she came out of nothing in the world but curiosity, andbecause she likes making people uncomfortable. She knew very well motherand I didn't want her!"

But the more he tried to persuade her the more determined was Daphne topay the promised visit, and that he should pay it with her. He gave wayat last, and she allowed herself to be soothed and caressed. Then, whenshe seemed to have recovered herself, he gave her a tragic-comic accountof the three weeks' engagement, and the manner in which it had beenbroken off: caustic enough, one might have thought, to satisfy the mostunfriendly listener. Daphne heard it all quietly. 

Then her maid came, and she donned a tea-gown. 

When Roger returned, after dressing, he found her still abstracted. 

"I suppose you kissed her?" she said abruptly, as they stood by the firetogether. 

He broke out in laughter and annoyance, and called her a little goose, with his arm round her. 

But she persisted. "You did kiss her?"

"Well, of course I did! What else is one engaged for?"

"I'm certain she wished for a great deal of kissing!" said Daphne, quickly. 

Roger was silent. Suddenly there swept through him the memory of thescene in the orchard, and with it an admission--wrung, as it were, froma wholly unwilling self--that it had remained for him a scene unique andunapproached. In that one hour the "muddy vesture" of common feeling anddesire that closed in his manhood had taken fire and burnt to a pureflame, fusing, so it seemed, body and soul. He had not thought of it foryears, but now that he was made to think of it, the old thrillreturned--a memory of something heavenly, ecstatic, far transcending thecommon hours and the common earth. 

The next moment he had thrown the recollection angrily from him. Stooping to his wife, he kissed her warmly. "Look here, Daphne! I wishyou'd let that woman alone! Have I ever looked at anyone but you, oldgirl, since that day at Mount Vernon?"

Daphne let him hold her close: but all the time, thoughts--uglythoughts--like "little mice stole in and out. " The notion of Roger andthat woman, in the past, engaged--always together, in each other's arms, tormented her unendurably. 

 * * * * *

She did not, however, say a word to Lady Barnes on the subject. Themorning following Mrs. Fairmile's visit that lady began a rather awkwardexplanation of Chloe Fairmile's place in the family history, and of thereasons for Roger's silence and her own. Daphne took it apparently withcomplete indifference, and managed to cut it short in the middle. 

Nevertheless she brooded over the whole business; and her resentmentshowed itself, first of all, in a more and more drastic treatment ofHeston, its pictures, decorations and appointments. Lady Barnes darednot oppose her any more. She understood that if she were thwarted, oreven criticized, Daphne would simply decline to live there, and her ownlink with the place would be once more broken. So she withdrew angrilyfrom the scene, and tried not to know what was going on. Meanwhile anote of invitation had been addressed to Daphne by the Duchess, and hadbeen accepted; Roger had been reminded, at the point of the bayonet, that go he must; and Dr. Lelius had transferred himself from Heston toUpcott, and the companionship of Mrs. Fairmile. 

 * * * * *

It was the last day of the Frenches' visit. Roger and Herbert French hadbeen trying to get a brace or two of partridges on the long-neglectedand much-poached estate; and on the way home French expressed a hopethat, now they were to settle at Heston, Roger would take up some of theusual duties of the country gentleman. He spoke in the half-jesting waycharacteristic of the modern Mentor. The old didactics have long goneout of fashion, and the moralist of to-day, instead of preaching, _oreretundo_, must only "hint a fault and hesitate dislike. " But, hide it ashe might, there was an ethical and religious passion in French thatwould out, and was soon indeed to drive him from Eton to a town parish. He had been ordained some two years before this date. 

It was this inborn pastoral gift, just as real as the literary orartistic gifts, and containing the same potentialities of genius as theywhich was leading him to feel a deep anxiety about the Barnes's_ménage_. It seemed to him necessary that Daphne should respect herhusband; and Roger, in a state of complete idleness, was not altogetherrespectable. 

So, with much quizzing of him as "the Squire, " French tried to goad hiscompanion into some of a Squire's duties. "Stand for the County Council, old fellow, " he said. "Your father was on it, and it'll give yousomething to do. "

To his surprise Roger at once acquiesced. He was striding along in capand knickerbockers, his curly hair still thick and golden on histemples, his clear skin flushed with exercise, his general physicalaspect even more splendid than it had been in his first youth. Besidehim, the slender figure and pleasant irregular face of Herbert Frenchwould have been altogether effaced and eclipsed but for the Etonmaster's two striking points: prematurely white hair, remarkably thickand abundant; and very blue eyes, shy, spiritual and charming. 

"I don't mind, " Roger was saying, "if you think they'd have me. Beastlybore, of course! But one's got to do something for one's keep. "

He looked round with a smile, slightly conscious. The position he hadoccupied for some three years, of the idle and penniless husbanddependent on his wife's dollars, was not, he knew, an exalted one inFrench's eyes. 

"Oh! you'll find it quite tolerable, " said French. "Roads and schools doas well as anything else to break one's teeth on. We shall see you amagistrate directly. "

Roger laughed. "That would be a good one!--I say, you know, I hopeDaphne's going to like Heston. "

French hoped so too, guardedly. 

"I hear the Archdeacon got on her nerves yesterday?"

He looked at his companion with a slight laugh and a shrug. 

"That doesn't matter. "

"I don't know. He's rather a spiteful old party. And Daphne's accustomedto be made a lot of, you know. In London there's always a heap of peoplemaking up to her--and in Paris, too. She talks uncommon goodFrench--learnt it in the convent. I don't understand a word of what theytalk about--but she's a queen--I can tell you! She doesn't wantArchdeacons prating at her. "

"It'll be all right when she knows the people. "

"Of course, mother and I get along here all right. We've got to pick upthe threads again; but we do know all the people, and we like the oldplace for grandfather's sake, and all the rest of it. But there isn'tmuch to amuse Daphne here. "

"She'll be doing up the house. "

"And offending mother all the time. I say, French, don't you think art'san awful nuisance! When I hear Lelius yarning on about _quattro-cento_and _cinque-cento_, I could drown myself. No! I suppose you're tarredwith the same brush. " Roger shrugged his shoulders. "Well, I don't care, so long as Daphne gets what she wants, and the place suits the child. "His ruddy countenance took a shade of anxiety. 

French inquired what reason there was to suppose that Beatty would notthrive perfectly at Heston. Roger could only say that the child hadseemed to flag a little since their arrival. Appetite not quite so good, temper difficult, and so on. Their smart lady-nurse was not quitesatisfied. "And I've been finding out about doctors here, " the youngfather went on, knitting his brows: "blokes, most of them, and such oldblokes! I wouldn't trust Beatty to one of them. But I've heard of a newman at Hereford--awfully good, they say--a wunner! And after all a motorwould soon run him out!"

He went on talking eagerly about the child, her beauty, her cleverness, the plans Daphne had for her bringing up, and so on. No other child everhad been, ever could be, so fetching, so "cunning, " so lovely, such aduck! The Frenches, indeed, possessed a boy of two, reputed handsome. Roger wished to show himself indulgent to anything that might be pleadedfor him. "Dear little fellow!"--of course. But Beatty! Well! it wassurprising, indeed, that he should find himself the father of such alittle miracle; he didn't know what he'd done to deserve it. HerbertFrench smiled as he walked. 

"Of course, I hope there'll be a boy, " said Roger, stopping suddenly tolook at Heston Park, half a mile off, emerging from the trees. "Daphnewould like a boy--so should I, and particularly now that we've got theold house back again. "

He stood and surveyed it. French noticed in the growing manliness of hisface and bearing the signs of things and forces ancestral, of thoseghostly hands stretching from the past that in a long settled societytend to push a man into his right place and keep him there. The Barnesfamily was tolerable, though not distinguished. Roger's father's greattemporary success in politics and business had given it a passingsplendour, now quenched in the tides of failure and disaster which hadfinally overwhelmed his career. Roger evidently did not want to thinkmuch about his Barnes heritage. But it was clear also that he was proudof the Trescoes; that he had fallen back upon them, so to speak. Sincethe fifteenth century there had always been a Trescoe at Heston; andRoger had already taken to browsing in county histories and sortingfamily letters. French foresaw a double-barrelled surname beforelong--perhaps, just in time for the advent of the future son and heirwho was already a personage in the mind, if not yet positively expected. 

"My dear fellow, I hope Mrs. Barnes will give you not one son, butmany!" he said, in answer to his companion's outburst. "They're wantednowadays. "

Roger nodded and smiled, and then passed on to discussion of countybusiness and county people. He had already, it seemed, informed himselfto a rather surprising degree. The shrewd, upright county gentleman wasbeginning to emerge, oddly, from the Apollo. The merits and absurditiesof the type were already there, indeed, _in posse_. How persistent wasthe type, and the instinct! A man of Roger's antecedents might seem toswerve from the course; but the smallest favourable variation ofcircumstances, and there he was again on the track, trotting happilybetween the shafts. 

"If only the wife plays up!" thought French. 

The recollection of Daphne, indeed, emerged simultaneously in bothminds. 

"Daphne, you know, won't be able to stand this all the year round, " saidRoger. "By George, no! not with a wagon-load of Leliuses!" Then, with asudden veer and a flush: "I say, French, do you know what sort of statethe Fairmile marriage is in by now? I think that lady might have sparedher call--don't you?"

French kept his eyes on the path. It was the first time, as far as hewas concerned, that Roger had referred to the incident. Yet the tone ofthe questioner implied a past history. It was to him, indeed, that Rogerhad come, in the first bitterness of his young grief and anger, afterthe "jilting. " French had tried to help him, only to find that he was nomore a match for the lady than the rest of the world. 

As to the call and the invitation, he agreed heartily that a person ofdelicacy would have omitted them. The Fairmile marriage, it wasgenerally rumoured, had broken down hopelessly. 

"Faults on both sides, of course. Fairmile is and always was anunscrupulous beggar! He left Eton just as you came, but I remember himwell. "

Roger began a sentence to the effect that if Fairmile had no scruples ofhis own, Chloe would scarcely have taught him any; but he checkedhimself abruptly in the middle, and the two men passed to other topics. French began to talk of East London, and the parish he was to havethere. Roger, indifferent at first, did not remain so. He did notprofess, indeed, any enthusiasm of humanity; but French found in him newcuriosities. That children should starve, and slave, and suffer--_that_moved him. He was, at any rate, for hanging the parents. 

 * * * * *

The day of the Upcott visit came, and, in spite of all recalcitrance, Roger was made to mount the motor beside his wife. Lady Barnes hadentirely refused to go, and Mr. And Mrs. French had departed thatmorning for Eton. 

As the thing was inevitable, Roger's male philosophy came to his aid. Better laugh and have done with it. So that, as he and Daphne sped alongthe autumn lanes, he talked about anything and everything. He expressed, for instance, his friendly admiration for Elsie French. 

"She's just the wife for old Herbert--and, by George, she's in love withhim!"

"A great deal too much in love with him!" said Daphne, sharply. The daywas chilly, with a strong east wind blowing, and Daphne's small figureand face were enveloped in a marvellous wrap, compounded in equalproportions of Russian sables and white cloth. It had not long arrivedfrom Wörth, and Roger had allowed himself some jibes as to its probablecost. Daphne's "simplicity, " the pose of her girlhood, was in factbreaking down in all directions. The arrogant spending instinct hadgained upon the moderating and self-restraining instinct. The resultsoften made Barnes uncomfortable. But he was inarticulate, and easilyintimidated--by Daphne. With regard to Mrs. French, however, he took upthe cudgels at once. Why shouldn't Elsie adore her man, if it pleasedher? Old Herbert was worth it. 

Women, said Daphne, should never put themselves wholly in a man's power. Moreover, wifely adoration was particularly bad for clergymen, who werefar too much inclined already to give themselves airs. 

"I say! Herbert never gives himself airs!"

"They both did--to me. They have quite different ways from us, and theymake one feel it. They have family prayers--we don't. They have asceticideas about bringing up children--I haven't. Elsie would think itself-indulgent and abominable to stay in bed to breakfast--I don't. Thefact is, all her interests and ideals are quite different from mine, andI am rather tired of being made to feel inferior. "

"Daphne! what rubbish! I'm certain Elsie French never had such an ideain her head. She's awfully soft and nice; I never saw a bit of conceitin her. "

"She's soft outside and steel inside. Well, never mind! we don't get on. She's the old America, I'm the new, " said Daphne, half frowning, halflaughing; "and I'm as good as she. "

"You're a very good-looking woman, anyway, " said Roger, admiring thevision of her among the warm browns and shining whites of her wrap. "Much better-looking than when I married you. " He slipped an arm underthe cloak and gave her small waist a squeeze. 

Daphne turned her eyes upon him. In their black depths his touch hadroused a passion which was by no means all tenderness. There was in itsomething threatening, something intensely and inordinately possessive. "That means that you didn't think me good-looking at all, as comparedwith--Chloe?" she said insistently. 

"Really, Daphne!"--Roger withdrew his arm with a rather angrylaugh--"the way you twist what one says! I declare I won't make you anymore pretty speeches for an age. "

Daphne scarcely replied; but there dawned on her face thesmile--melting, provocative, intent--which is the natural weapon of sucha temperament. With a quick movement she nestled to her husband's side, and Roger was soon appeased. 

 * * * * *

The visit which followed always counted in Roger Barnes's memory as thefirst act of the tragedy, the first onset of the evil that engulfed him. 

They found the old Duchess, Mrs. Fairmile, and Dr. Lelius, alone. TheDuchess had been the penniless daughter of an Irish clergyman, married_en secondes noces_ for her somewhat queer and stimulating personality, by an epicurean duke, who, after having provided the family with asufficient store of dull children by an aristocratic mother, thoughthimself at liberty, in his declining years, to please himself. He hadleft her the dower-house--small but delicately Jacobean--and she was nownearly as old as the Duke had been when he married her. She was largelymade, shapeless, and untidy. Her mannish face and head were tied up in akind of lace coif; she had long since abandoned all thought of a waist;and her strong chin rested on an ample bosom. 

As soon as Mrs. Barnes was seated near her hostess, Lelius--who had anintimate acquaintance, through their pictures, with half the greatpeople of Europe--began to observe the Duchess's impressions. Amusedcuriosity, first. Evidently Daphne represented to her one of the queer, crude types that modern society is always throwing up on the shores oflife--like strange beasts from deep-sea soundings. 

An American heiress, half Spanish--South-American Spanish--with no doubta dash of Indian; no manners, as Europe understands them; unlimitedmoney, and absurd pretensions--so Chloe said--in the matter of art; amixture of the pedant and the _parvenue_; where on earth had youngBarnes picked her up! It was in some such way, no doubt--so Leliusguessed--that the Duchess's thoughts were running. 

Meanwhile Mrs. Barnes was treated with all possible civility. TheDuchess inquired into the plans for rebuilding Heston; talked of her ownrecollections of the place, and its owners; hoped that Mrs. Barnes waspleased with the neighbourhood; and finally asked the stock question, "And how do you like England?"

Daphne looked at her coolly. "Moderately!" she said, with a smile, thecolour rising in her cheek as she became aware, without looking at them, that Roger and Mrs. Fairmile had adjourned to the farther end of thelarge room, leaving her to the Duchess and Lelius. 

The small eyes above the Duchess's prominent nose sparkled. "Onlymoderately?" The speaker's tone expressed that she had been for oncetaken by surprise. "I'm extremely sorry we don't please you, Mrs. Barnes. "

"You see, my expectations were so high. "

"Is it the country, or the climate, or the people, that won't do?"inquired the Duchess, amused. 

"I suppose it would be civil to say the climate, " replied Daphne, laughing. 

Whereupon the Duchess saw that her visitor had made up her mind not tobe overawed. The great lady summoned Dr. Lelius to her aid, and she, theGerman, and Daphne, kept up a sparring conversation, in which Mrs. Barnes, driven on by a secret wrath, showed herself rather noisier thanEnglishwomen generally are. She was a little impertinent, the Duchessthought, decidedly aggressive, and not witty enough to carry it off. 

Meanwhile, Daphne had instantly perceived that Mrs. Fairmile and Rogerhad disappeared into the conservatory; and though she talked incessantlythrough their absence, she felt each minute of it. When they came backfor tea, she imagined that Roger looked embarrassed, while Mrs. Fairmilewas all gaiety, chatting to her companion, her face raised to his, inthe manner of one joyously renewing an old intimacy. As they slowlyadvanced up the long room, Daphne felt it almost intolerable to watchthem, and her pulses began to race. _Why_ had she never been told ofthis thing? That was what rankled; and the Southern wildness in herblood sent visions of the past and terrors of the future hurryingthrough her brain, even while she went on talking fast and recklessly tothe Duchess. 

 * * * * *

At tea-time conversation turned on the various beautiful things whichthe room contained--its Nattiers, its Gobelins, its two _dessus deportes_ by Boucher, and its two cabinets, of which one had belonged toBeaumarchais and the other to the _Appartement du Dauphin_ atVersailles. 

Daphne restrained herself for a time, asked questions, and affected nospecial knowledge. Then, at a pause, she lifted a careless hand, inquiring whether "the Fragonard sketch" opposite were not the pendantof one--she named it--at Berlin. 

"Ah-h-h!" said Mrs. Fairmile, with a smiling shake of the head, "howclever of you! But that's not a Fragonard. I wish it were. It's anunknown. Dr. Lelius has given him a name. "

And she and Lelius fell into a discussion of the drawing, that soon leftDaphne behind. Native taste of the finest, mingled with the training ofa lifetime, the intimate knowledge of collections of one who had livedamong them from her childhood--these things had long since given ChloeFairmile a kind of European reputation. Daphne stumbled after her, consumed with angry envy, the _précieuse_ in her resenting the easymastery of Mrs. Fairmile, and the wife in her offended by the strangebeauty, the soft audacities of a woman who had once, it seemed, heldRoger captive, and would, of course, like to hold him captive again. 

She burned in some way to assert herself, the imperious will chafing atthe slender barrier of self-control. And some malicious god did, infact, send an opportunity. 

After tea, when Roger, in spite of efforts to confine himself to theDuchess, had been once more drawn into the orbit of Mrs. Fairmile, asshe sat fingering a cigarette between the two men, and gossiping ofpeople and politics, the butler entered, and whispered a message to theDuchess. 

The mistress of the house laughed. "Chloe! who do you think has called?Old Marcus, of South Audley Street. He's been at Brendon House--buyingup their Romneys, I should think. And as he was passing here, he wishedto show me something. Shall we have him in?"

"By all means! The last time he was here he offered you four thousandpounds for the blue Nattier, " said Chloe, with a smile, pointing to thepicture. 

The Duchess gave orders; and an elderly man, with long black hair, swarthy complexion, fine eyes, and a peaked forehead, was admitted, andgreeted by her, Mrs. Fairmile, and Dr. Lelius as an old acquaintance. Hesat down beside them, was given tea, and presented to Mr. And Mrs. Barnes. Daphne, who knew the famous dealer by sight and reputationperfectly well, was piqued that he did not recognize her. Yet she wellremembered having given him an important commission not more than a yearbefore her marriage. 

As soon as a cup of tea had been dispatched, Marcus came to thebusiness. He drew a small leather case out of the bag he had broughtinto the room with him; and the case, being opened, disclosed a smallbut marvellous piece of Sèvres. 

"There!" he said, pointing triumphantly to a piece on the Duchess'schimney-piece. "Your Grace asked me--oh! ten years ago--and again lastyear--to find you the pair of that. Now--you have it!"

He put the two together, and the effect was great. The Duchess looked atit with greed--the greed of the connoisseur. But she shook her head. 

"Marcus, I have no money. "

"Oh!" He protested, smiling and shrugging his shoulders. 

"And I know you want a brigand's price for it. "

"Oh, nothing--nothing at all. "

The Duchess took it up, and regretfully turned it round and round. 

"A thousand, Marcus?" she said, looking up. 

He laughed, and would not reply. 

"That means more, Marcus: how do you imagine that an old woman like me, with only just enough for bread and butter, can waste her money onSèvres?" He grinned. She put it down resolutely. "No! I've got aconsumptive nephew with a consumptive family. He ought to have been hungfor marrying, but I've got to send them all to Davos this winter. No, Ican't, Marcus; I can't--I'm too poor. " But her eyes caressed the shiningthing. 

Daphne bent forward. "If the Duchess has _really_ made up her mind, Mr. Marcus, I will take it. It would just suit me!"

Marcus started on his chair. "_Pardon, Madame!_" he said, turninghastily to look at the slender lady in white, of whom he had as yettaken no notice. 

"We have the motor. We can take it with us, " said Daphne, stretching outher hand for it triumphantly. 

"Madame, " said Marcus, in some agitation, "I have not the honour. Theprice----"

"The price doesn't matter, " said Daphne, smiling. "You know me quitewell, Mr. Marcus. Do you remember selling a Louis Seize cabinet to MissFloyd?"

"Ah!" The dealer was on his feet in a moment, saluting, excusinghimself. Daphne heard him with graciousness. She was now the centre ofthe situation: she had asserted herself, and her money. Marcus outdidhimself in homage. Lelius in the background looked on, a sarcastic smilehidden by his fair moustache. Mrs. Fairmile, too, smiled; Roger hadgrown rather hot; and the Duchess was frankly annoyed. 

"I surrender it to _force majeure_, " she said, as Daphne took it fromher. "Why are we not all Americans?"

And then, leaning back in her chair, she would talk no more. Thepleasure of the visit, so far as it had ever existed, was at an end. 

 * * * * *

But before the Barnes motor departed homewards, Mrs. Fairmile had againfound means to carry Roger Barnes out of sight and hearing into thegarden. Roger had not been able to avoid it; and Daphne, hugging theleather case, had, all the same, to look on. 

When they were once more alone together, speeding through the brightsunset air, each found the other on edge. 

"You were rather rough on the Duchess, Daphne!" Roger protested. "Itwasn't quite nice, was it, outbidding her like that in her own house?"

Daphne flared up at once, declaring that she wanted no lessons indeportment from him or anyone else, and then demanding fiercely what wasthe meaning of his two disappearances with Mrs. Fairmile. WhereuponRoger lost his temper still more decidedly, refusing to give any accountof himself, and the drive passed in a continuous quarrel, which onlyjust stopped short, on Daphne's side, of those outrageous and insultingthings which were burning at the back of her tongue, while she could notas yet bring herself to say them. 

An unsatisfactory peace was patched up during the evening. But in thedead of night Daphne sat up in bed, looking at the face and head of herhusband beside her on the pillow. He lay peacefully sleeping, the nobleoutline of brow and features still nobler in the dim light which effacedall the weaker, emptier touches. Daphne felt rising within her thatmingled passion of the jealous woman, which is half love, half hate, ofwhich she had felt the first stirrings in her early jealousy of ElsieMaddison. It was the clutch of something racial and inherited--asomething which the Northerner hardly knows. She had felt it before onone or two occasions, but not with this intensity. The grace of ChloeFairmile haunted her memory, and the perfection, the corrupt perfectionof her appeal to men, men like Roger. 

[Illustration: "In the dead of night Daphne sat up in bed, looking atthe face and head of her husband beside her on the pillow. "]

She must wring from him--she must and would--a much fuller history ofhis engagement. And of those conversations in the garden, too. It stungher to recollect that, after all, he had given her no account of them. She had been sure they had not been ordinary conversations!--Mrs. Fairmile was not the person to waste her time in chit-chat. 

A gust of violence swept through her. She had given Rogereverything--money, ease, amusement. Where would he have been withouther? And his mother, too?--tiresome, obstructive woman! For the firsttime that veil of the unspoken, that mist of loving illusion whichpreserves all human relations, broke down between Daphne and hermarriage. Her thoughts dwelt, in a vulgar detail, on the money she hadsettled upon Roger--on his tendencies to extravagance--hishappy-go-lucky self-confident ways. He would have been a pauper but forher; but now that he had her money safe, without a word to her of hisprevious engagement, he and Mrs. Fairmile might do as they pleased. Theheat and corrosion of this idea spread through her being, and the willmade no fight against it. 

CHAPTER VII

"You're off to the meet?"

"I am. Look at the day!"

Chloe Fairmile, who was standing in her riding-habit at the window ofthe Duchess's morning-room, turned to greet her hostess. 

A mild November sun shone on the garden and the woods, and Chloe'sface--the more exquisite as a rule for its slight, strangewithering--had caught a freshness from the morning. 

The Duchess was embraced, and bore it; she herself never kissed anybody. 

"You always look well, my dear, in a habit, and you know it. Tell mewhat I shall do with this invitation. "

"From Lady Warton? May I look?"

Chloe took a much blotted and crossed letter from the Duchess's hand. 

"What were her governesses about?" said the Duchess, pointing to it. "_Really_--the education of our class! Read it!"

 ... "Can I persuade you to come--and bring Mrs. Fairmile--next Tuesday to dinner, to meet Roger Barnes and his wife? I groan at the thought, for I think she is quite one of the most disagreeable little creatures I ever saw. But Warton says I must--a Lord-Lieutenant can't pick and choose!--and people as rich as they are have to be considered. I can't imagine why it is she makes herself so odious. All the Americans I ever knew I have liked particularly. It is, of course, annoying that they have so much money--but Warton says it isn't their fault--it's Protection, or something of the kind. But Mrs. Barnes seems really to wish to trample on us. She told Warton the other day that his tapestries--you know, those we're so proud of--that they were bad Flemish copies of something or other--a set belonging to a horrid friend of hers, I think. Warton was furious. And she's made the people at Brendon love her for ever by insisting that they have now ruined all their pictures without exception, by the way they've had them restored--et cetera, et cetera. She really makes us feel her millions--and her brains--too much. We're paupers, but we're not worms. Then there's the Archdeacon--why should she fall foul of him? He tells Warton that her principles are really shocking. She told him she saw no reason why people should stick to their husbands or wives longer than it pleased them--and that in America nobody did! He doesn't wish Mrs. Mountford to see much of her;--though, really, my dear, I don't think Mrs. M. Is likely to give him trouble--do you? And I hear, of course, that she thinks us all dull and stuck-up, and as ignorant as savages. It's so odd she shouldn't even want to be liked!--a young woman in a strange neighbourhood. But she evidently doesn't, a bit. Warton declares she's already tired of Roger--and she's certainly not nice to him. What can be the matter? Anyway, dear Duchess, _do_ come, and help us through. "

"What, indeed, can be the matter?" repeated Chloe lightly, as she handedback the letter. 

"Angela Warton never knows anything. But there's not much need for _you_to ask, my dear, " said the Duchess quietly. 

Mrs. Fairmile turned an astonished face. 

"Me?"

The Duchess, more bulky, shapeless and swathed than usual, subsided on achair, and just raised her small but sharp eyes on Mrs. Fairmile. 

"What can you mean?" said Chloe, after a moment, in her gayest voice. "Ican't imagine. And I don't think I'll try. "

She stooped and kissed the untidy lady in the chair. The Duchess bore itagain, but the lines of her mouth, with the strong droop at the corners, became a trifle grim. Chloe looked at her, smiled, shook her head. TheDuchess shook hers, and then they both began to talk of an engagementannounced that morning in the _Times_. 

 * * * * *

Mrs. Fairmile was soon riding alone, without a groom--she was anexcellent horse-woman, and she never gave any unnecessary trouble to herfriends' servants--through country lanes chequered with pale sun. As forthe Duchess's attack upon her, Chloe smarted. The Duchess had clearlypulled her up, and Chloe was not a person who took it well. 

If Roger's American wife was by now wildly jealous of his old _fiancée_, whose fault was it? Had not Mrs. Barnes herself thrown them perpetuallytogether? Dinners at Upcott!--invitations to Heston!--a resolutefrequenting of the same festal gatherings with Mrs. Fairmile. None of itwith Roger's goodwill, or his mother's, --Chloe admitted it. It had beenthe wife's doing--all of it. There had been even--rare occurrences--twoor three balls in the neighbourhood. Roger hated dancing, but Daphne hadmade him go to them all. Merely that she might display her eyes, herdiamonds, and her gowns? Not at all. The real psychology of it wasplain. "She wishes to keep us under observation--to give usopportunities--and then torment her husband. Very well then!--_tu l'asvoulu, Madame!_"

As to the "opportunities, " Chloe coolly confessed to herself that shehad made rather a scandalous use of them. The gossip of theneighbourhood had been no doubt a good deal roused; and Daphne, itseemed, was discontented. But is it not good for such people to bediscontented? The money and the arrogance of Roger's wife had provokedRoger's former _fiancée_ from the beginning; the money to envy, and thearrogance to chastisement. Why not? What is society but a discipline?

As for Roger, who is it says there is a little polygamy in all men?Anyway, a man can always--nearly always--keep a corner for the old love, if the new love will let him. Roger could, at any rate; "though he is amodel husband, far better than she deserves, and anybody not a foolcould manage him. "

 * * * * *

It was a day of physical delight, especially for riders. After a warmOctober, the leaves were still thick on the trees; Nature had not yetresigned herself to death and sleep. Here and there an oak stood, fullygreen, among the tawny reds and golds of a flaming woodland. The gorsewas yellow on the commons; and in the damp woody ways through whichChloe passed, a few primroses--frail, unseasonable blooms--pushed theirpale heads through the moss. The scent of the beech-leaves under foot;the buffeting of a westerly wind; the pleasant yielding of her lightframe to the movement of the horse; the glimpses of plain that everyhere and there showed themselves through the trees that girdled the highground or edge along which she rode; the white steam-wreath of a trainpassing, far away, through strata of blue or pearly mist; an oldwindmill black in the middle distance; villages, sheltering among theirhedges and uplands: a sky, of shadow below widely brooding over earth, and of a radiant blue flecked with white cloud above:--all the Englishfamiliar scene, awoke in Chloe Fairmile a familiar sensuous joy. Lifewas so good--every minute, every ounce of it!--from the Duchess's _chef_to these ethereal splendours of autumn--from the warm bath, theluxurious bed, and breakfast, she had but lately enjoyed, to theseartistic memories that ran through her brain, as she glanced from sideto side, reminded now of Turner, now of DeWint, revelling in thecomplexity of her own being. Her conscience gave her no trouble; it hadnever been more friendly. Her husband and she had come to anunderstanding; they were in truth more than quits. There was to be nodivorce--and no scandal. She would be very prudent. A man's face rosebefore her that was not the face of her husband, and shesmiled--indulgently. Yes, life would be interesting when she returned totown. She had taken a house in Chester Square from the New Year; and Tomwas going to Teheran. Meanwhile, she was passing the time. 

A thought suddenly occurred to her. Yes, it was quite possible--probableeven--that she might find Roger at the meet! The place appointed was along way from Heston, but in the old days he had often sent on a freshhorse by train to a local station. They had had many a run together overthe fields now coming into sight. Though certainly if he imagined therewere the very smallest chance of finding her there, he would give thisparticular meet a wide berth. 

Chloe laughed aloud. His resistance--and his weakness--were both soamusing. She thought of the skill--the peremptory smiling skill--withwhich she had beguiled him into the garden, on the day when the youngcouple paid their first call at Upcott. First, the low-spoken words atthe back of the drawing-room, while Mrs. Barnes and the Duchess wereskirmishing--

"I _must_ speak to you. Something that concerns anotherperson--something urgent. "

Whereupon, unwilling and rather stern compliance on the man's part--thehandsome face darkened with most unnecessary frowns. And in the garden, the short colloquy between them--"Of course, I see--you haven't forgivenme! Never mind! I am doing this for someone else--it's a duty. " Thenabruptly--"You still have three of my letters. "

Amusing again--his shock of surprise, his blundering denials! He alwayswas the most unmethodical and unbusiness-like of mortals--poor Roger!She heard her own voice in reply. "Oh yes, you have. I don't makemistakes about such things. Do you remember the letter in which I toldyou about that affair of Theresa Weightman?"

A stare--an astonished admission. Precisely!

"Well, she's in great trouble. Her husband threatens absurdities. Shehas always confided in me--she trusts me, and I can't have that letterwandering about the world. "

"I certainly sent it back!"

"No--you never sent it back. You have three of mine. And you know howcareless you are--how you leave things about. I was always ontenterhooks. Look again, _please_! You must have some idea where theymight be. "

Perplexity--annoyance!

"When we sold the London house, all papers and documents were sent downhere. We reserved a room--which was locked up. "

"_A la bonne heure!_ Of course--there they are. "

But all the same--great unwillingness to search. It was most unlikely hewould be able to find anything--most unlikely there was anything tofind. He was sure he had sent back everything. And then a look in thefine hazel eyes--like a horse putting back its ears. 

All of no avail--against the laughing persistence which insisted on theletters. "But I must have them--I really must! It is a horrid tragedy, and I told you everything--things I had no business to tell you at all. "

On which, at last, a grudging consent to look, followed by a markeddetermination to go back to the drawing-room.... 

But it was the second _tête-à-tête_ that was really adroit! Aftertea--just a touch on the arm--while the Duchess was showing the Nattiersto Mrs. Barnes, and Lelius was holding the lamp. "One moment more!--inthe conservatory. I have a few things to add. " And in that second littleinterview--about nothing, in truth--a mere piece of audacity--the lion'sclaws had been a good deal pared. He had been made to look at her, firstand foremost; to realize that she was not afraid of him--not onebit!--and that he would have to treat her decently. Poor Roger! In a fewyears the girl he had married would be a plain and prickly littlepedant--ill-bred besides--and he knew it. 

As to more recent adventures. If people meet in society, they must becivil; and if old friends meet at a dance, there is an institution knownas "sitting out"; and "sitting out" is nothing if not conversational;and conversation--between old friends and cousins--is beguiling, and maybe lengthy. 

The ball at Brendon House--Chloe still felt the triumph of it in herveins--still saw the softening in Roger's handsome face, the look oflazy pleasure, and the disapproval--or was it the envy?--in the eyes ofcertain county magnates looking on. Since then, no communication betweenHeston and Upcott. 

 * * * * *

Mrs. Fairmile was now a couple of miles from the meet. She had struckinto a great belt of plantations bounding one side of the ducal estate. Through it ran a famous green ride, crossed near its beginning by a mainroad. On her right, beyond the thick screen of trees, was the railway, and she could hear the occasional rush of a train. 

When she reached the cross road, which led from a station, a laboureropened the plantation gates for her. As he unlatched the second, sheperceived a man's figure in front of her. 

"Roger!"

A touch of the whip--her horse sprang forward. The man in front lookedback startled; but she was already beside him. 

"You keep up the old habit, like me? What a lovely day!"

Roger Barnes, after a flush of amazement and surprise, greeted hercoldly: "It is a long way for you to come, " he said formally. "Twelvemiles, isn't it? You're not going to hunt?"

"Oh, no! I only came to look at the hounds and the horses--to remindmyself of all the good old times. You don't want to remember them, Iknow. Life's gone on for you!"

Roger bent forward to pat the neck of his horse. "It goes on for all ofus, " he said gruffly. 

"Ah, well!" She sighed. He looked up and their eyes met. The wind hadslightly reddened her pale skin: her expression was one of greatanimation, yet of great softness. The grace of the long, slender body inthe close-fitting habit; of the beautiful head and loosened hair underthe small, low-crowned beaver hat; the slender hand upon the reins--allthese various impressions rushed upon Barnes at once, bringing with themthe fascination of a past happiness, provoking, by contrast, the memoryof a harassing and irritating present. 

"Is Heston getting on?" asked Mrs. Fairmile, smiling. 

He frowned involuntarily. 

"Oh, I suppose we shall be straight some day;" the tone, however, beliedthe words. "When once the British workman gets in, it's the deuce to gethim out. "

"The old house had such a charm!" said Chloe softly. 

Roger made no reply. He rode stiffly beside her, looking straight beforehim. Chloe, observing him without appearing to do anything of the kind, asked herself whether the Apollo radiance of him were not alreadysomewhat quenched and shorn. A slight thickening of feature--a slightcoarsening of form--she thought she perceived them. Poor Roger!--had hebeen living too well and idling too flagrantly on these Americandollars?

Suddenly she bent over and laid a gloved hand on his arm. 

"Hadn't it?" she said, in a low voice. 

He started. But he neither looked at her nor shook her off. 

"What--the house?" was the ungracious reply. "I'm sure I don't know; Inever thought about it--whether it was pretty or ugly, I mean. It suitedus, and it amused mother to fiddle about with it. "

Mrs. Fairmile withdrew her hand. 

"Of course a great deal of it was ugly, " she said composedly. "Dear LadyBarnes really didn't know. But then we led such a jolly life in it--_we_made it!"

She looked at him brightly, only to see in him an angry flash ofexpression. He turned and faced her. 

"I'm glad you think it was jolly. My remembrances are not quite sopleasant. "

She laughed a little--not flinching at all--her face rosy to hischallenge. 

"Oh, yes, they are--or should be. What's the use of blackening the pastbecause it couldn't be the present. My dear Roger, if I hadn't--well, let's talk plainly!--if I hadn't thrown you over, where would you benow? We should be living in West Kensington, and I should be takingboarders--or--no!--a country-house, perhaps, with paying guests. Youwould be teaching the cockney idea how to shoot, at half a guinea a day, and I should be buying my clothes second-hand through the _Exchange andMart_. Whereas--whereas----"

She bent forward again. 

"You are a very rich man--you have a charming wife--a dear littlegirl--you can get into Parliament--travel, speculate, race, anything youplease. And I did it all!"

"I don't agree with you, " he said drily. She laughed again. 

"Well, we can't argue it--can we? I only wanted to point out to you theplain, bare truth, that there is nothing in the world to prevent ourbeing excellent friends again--_now_. But first--and once more--_myletters!_"

Her tone was a little peremptory, and Roger's face clouded. 

"I found two of them last night, by the merest chance--in an olddispatch-box I took to America. They were posted to you on the wayhere. "

"Good! But there were three. "

"I know--so you said. I could only find two. "

"Was the particular letter I mentioned one of them?"

He answered unwillingly. 

"No. I searched everywhere. I don't believe I have it. "

She shook her head with decision. 

"You certainly have it. Please look again. "

He broke out with some irritation, insisting that if it had not beenreturned it had been either lost or destroyed. It could matter to noone. 

Some snaring, entangling instinct--an instinct of the hunter--made herpersist. She must have it. It was a point of honour. "Poor Theresa is sounhappy, so pursued! You saw that odious paragraph last week? I can'trun the risk!"

With a groan of annoyance, he promised at last that he would look again. Then the sparkling eyes changed, the voice softened. 

She praised--she rewarded him. By smooth transitions she slipped intoordinary talk; of his candidature for the County Council--the points ofthe great horse he rode--the gossip of the neighbourhood--the charms ofBeatty. 

And on this last topic he, too, suddenly found his tongue. The cloud--ofawkwardness, or of something else not to be analyzed--broke away, and hebegan to talk, and presently to ask questions, with readiness, even witheagerness. 

Was it right to be so very strict with children?--babies under three?Wasn't it ridiculous to expect them not to be naughty or greedy? Why, every child wanted as much sweetstuff as it could tuck in! Quite righttoo--doctors said it was good for them. But Miss Farmer----

"Who is Miss Farmer?" inquired Mrs. Fairmile. She was riding closebeside him--an embodied friendliness--a soft and womanly Chloe, verydifferent from the old. 

"She's the nurse; my mother found her. She's a lady--by way of--shedoesn't do any rough work--and I dare say she's the newest thing out. But she's too tight a hand for my taste. I say!--what do you think ofthis! She wouldn't let Beattie come down to the drawing-room yesterday, because she cried for a sweet! Wasn't that _devilish_!" He brought hishand down fiercely on his thigh. 

"A Gorgon!" said Mrs. Fairmile, raising her eyebrows. "Any otherqualifications? French? German?"

"Not a word. Not she! Her people live somewhere near here, I believe. "Roger looked vaguely round him. "Her father managed a brick-field onthis estate--some parson or other recommended her to mother. "

"And you don't like her?"

"Well, no--I don't! She's not the kind of woman _I_ want. " He blurted itout, adding hurriedly, "But my wife thinks a lot of her. "

Chloe dismissed the topic of the nurse, but still let him run on aboutthe child. Amazing!--this development of paternity in the careless, handsome youth of three years before. She was amused and bored by it. But her permission of it had thawed him--that she saw. 

Presently, from the child she led him on to common acquaintance--oldfriends--and talk flowed fast. She made him laugh; and the furrows inthe young brow disappeared. Now as always they understood each other ata word; there was between them the freemasonry of persons sprung fromthe same world and the same tradition; his daily talk with Daphne hadnever this easy, slipping pleasure. Meanwhile the horses sauntered on, unconsciously held back; and the magical autumn wood, its lights andlines and odours, played upon their senses. 

At last Roger with a start perceived a gate in front. He looked at hiswatch, and she saw him redden. 

"We shall be late for the meet. "

His eyes avoided hers. He gathered up the reins, evidently conscious. 

Smiling, she let him open the gate for her, and then as they passed intothe road, shadowed with over-arching trees, she reined in Whitefoot, andbending forward, held out her hand. "Good-bye!"

"You're not coming?"

"I think I've had enough. I'll go home. Good-bye. "

It was a relief. In both minds had risen the image of theirarrival together--amid the crowd of the meet. As he looked ather--gratefully--the grace of her movement, the temptation of her eyes, the rush of old memories suddenly turned his head. He gripped her handhard for a minute, staring at her. 

The road in front of them was quite empty. But fifty yards behind themwas a small red-brick house buried in trees. As they still paused, handin hand, in front of the gate into the wood, which had failed to swingback and remained half open, the garden door of this house unclosed anda young woman in a kind of uniform stepped into the road. She perceivedthe two riders--stopped in astonishment--observed them unseen, andwalked quickly away in the direction of the station. 

Roger reached Heston that night only just in time to dress for dinner. 

By this time he was in a wholly different mood; angry with himself, andfull of rueful thought about his wife. Daphne and he had been getting onanything but well for some time past. He knew that he had several timesbehaved badly; why, indeed, that very afternoon, had he held ChloeFairmile's hand in the public road, like an idiot? Suppose anyone hadpassed? It was only Daphne's tempers and the discomfort at home thatmade an hour with Chloe so pleasant--and brought the old recollectionsback. He vowed he never thought of her, except when she was there tomake a fool of him--or plague him about those beastly letters. WhereasDaphne--Daphne was always in his mind, and this eclipse into which theirdaily life had passed. He seemed to be always tripping and stumbling, like a lame man among loose stones; doing or saying what he did not meanto do or say, and tongue-tied when he should have spoken. Daphne'sjealousy made him ridiculous; he resented it hotly; yet he knew he wasnot altogether blameless. 

If only something could be done to make Daphne like Heston and theneighbours! But he saw plainly enough that in spite of all the effortand money she was pouring out upon the house, it gave her very littlepleasure in return. Her heart was not in it. And as for the neighbours, she had scarcely a good word now for any of them. Jolly!--just as he wasgoing to stand for the County Council, with an idea of Parliament lateron! And as for what _he_ wished--what would be good for _him_--that shenever seemed to think of. And, really, some of the things she said nowand then about money--nobody with the spirit of a mouse could standthem. 

To comfort his worries he went first of all to the nursery, where hefound the nursery-maid in charge, and the child already asleep. MissFarmer, it appeared, had been enjoying a "day off, " and was not expectedback till late. He knelt down beside the little girl, feeding his eyesupon her. She lay with her delicate face pressed into the pillow, thesmall neck visible under the cloud of hair, one hand, the soft palmuppermost, on the sheet. He bent down and kissed the hand, glad that thesharp-faced nurse was not there to see. The touch of the fragrant skinthrilled him with pride and joy; so did the lovely defencelessness ofthe child's sleep. That such a possession should have been given to him, to guard and cherish! There was in his mind a passionate vow to guardthe little thing--aye, with his life-blood; and then a movement oflaughter at his own heroics. Well!--Daphne might give him sons--but hedid not suppose any other child could ever be quite the same to him asBeatty. He sat in a contented silence, feeding his eyes upon her, as thesoft breath rose and fell. And as he did so, his temper softened andwarmed toward Beatty's mother. 

A little later he found Daphne in her room, already dressed for dinner. He approached her uneasily. 

"How tired you look, Daphne! What have you been doing to yourself?"

Daphne stiffly pointed out that she had been standing over the workmenall day, there being no one else to stand over them, and of course shewas tired. Her manner would have provoked him but for the visiting of aninward compunction. Instead of showing annoyance he bent down and kissedher. 

"I'll stay and help to-morrow, if you want me, though you know I'm nogood. I say, how much more are you going to do to the house?"

Daphne looked at him coldly. She had not returned the kiss. "Of course, I know that you don't appreciate in the least what I am doing!"

Roger thrust his hands into his pockets, and walked up and downuncomfortably. He thought, in fact, that Daphne was spoiling the dearnondescript old place, and he knew that the neighbourhood thought sotoo. Also he particularly disliked the young architect who wassuperintending the works ("a priggish ass, " who gave himself abominableairs--except to Daphne, whom he slavishly obeyed, and to Miss Farmer, with whom Roger had twice caught him gossipping). But he was determinednot to anger his wife, and he held his tongue. 

"I wish, anyway, you wouldn't stick at it so closely, " he saiddiscontentedly. "Let's go abroad somewhere for Christmas--Nice, or MonteCarlo. I am sure you want a change. "

"Well, it isn't exactly an enchanting neighbourhood, " said Daphne, withpinched lips. 

"I'm awfully sorry you don't like the people here, " said Roger, perplexed. "I dare say they're all stupids. "

"That wouldn't matter--if they behaved decently, " said Daphne, flushing. 

"I suppose that means--if I behaved decently!" cried Roger, turning uponher. 

Daphne faced him, her head in air, her small foot beating the ground, ina trick it had. 

"Well, I'm not likely to forget the Brendon ball, am I?"

Roger's look changed. 

"I meant no harm, and you know I didn't, " he said sulkily. 

"Oh, no, you only made a laughing-stock of _me_!" Daphne turned on herheel. Suddenly she felt herself roughly caught in Roger's arms. 

"Daphne, what _is_ the matter? Why can't we be happy together?"

"Ask yourself, " she said, trying to extricate herself, and notsucceeding. "I don't like the people here, and they don't like me. Butas you seem to enjoy flirting with Mrs. Fairmile, there's one personsatisfied. "

Roger laughed--not agreeably. "I shall soon think, Daphne, thatsomebody's 'put a spell on you, ' as my old nurse used to say. I wish Iknew what I could do to break it. "

She lay passive in his arms a moment, and then he felt a shiver runthrough her, and saw that she was crying. He held her close to him, kissing and comforting her, while his own eyes were wet. What heremotion meant, or his own, he could not have told clearly; but it was amoment for both of healing, of impulsive return, the one to the other, unspoken penitence on her side, a hidden self-blame on his. She clung tohim fiercely, courting the pressure of his arms, the warm contact of hisyouth; while, in his inner mind, he renounced with energy the temptressChloe and all her works, vowing to himself that he would give Daphne nocause, no pretext even, for jealousy, and would bear it patiently if shewere still unjust and tormenting. 

"Where have you been all day?" said Daphne at last, disengaging herself, and brushing the tears away from her eyes--a little angrily, as thoughshe were ashamed of them. 

"I told you this morning. I had a run with the Stoneshire hounds. "

"Whom did you meet there?"

"Oh, various old acquaintances. Nobody amusing. " He gave two or threenames, his conscience pricking him. Somehow, at that moment, it seemedimpossible to mention Chloe Fairmile. 

 * * * * *

About eleven o'clock that night, Daphne and Lady Barnes having just goneupstairs, Roger and a local Colonel of Volunteers who was dining andspending the night at Heston, were in the smoking-room. Colonel Williamshad come over to discuss Volunteer prospects in the neighbourhood, andhad been delighted to find in the grandson of his old friend, OliverTrescoe, --a young fellow whom he and others had too readily regarded asgiven over to luxury and soft living--signs of the old public spirit, the traditional manliness of the family. The two men were talking withgreat cordiality, when the sound of a dogcart driving up to the frontdoor disturbed them. 

"Who on earth?--at this time of night?" said Roger. 

The butler, entering with fresh cigarettes, explained that Miss Farmerhad only just returned, having missed an earlier train. 

"Well, I hope to goodness she won't go and disturb Miss Beatty, "grumbled Roger; and and then, half to himself, half to his companion, asthe butler departed--"I don't believe she missed her train; she's one ofthe cool sort--does jolly well what she likes! I say, Colonel, do youlike 'lady helps'? I don't!"

Half an hour later, Roger, having said good-night to his guest tenminutes before, was mounting the stairs on his own way to bed, when heheard in the distance the sound of a closing door and the rustle of awoman's dress. 

Nurse Farmer, he supposed, who had been gossiping with Daphne. His face, as the candle shone upon it, expressed annoyance. Vaguely, he resentedthe kind of intimacy which had grown up lately between Daphne and herchild's nurse. She was not the kind of person to make a friend of; shebullied Beatty; and she must be got rid of. 

Yet when he entered his wife's room, everything was dark, and Daphne wasapparently sound asleep. Her face was hidden from him; and he moved ontiptoe so as not to disturb her. Evidently it was not she who had beengossiping late. His mother, perhaps, with her maid. 

CHAPTER VIII

In the course of that night Roger Barnes's fate was decided, while helay, happily sleeping, beside his wife. Daphne, as soon as she heard hisregular breathing, opened the eyes she had only pretended to close, andlay staring into the shadows of the room, in which a nightlight wasburning. Presently she got up softly, put on a dressing-gown, and wentto the fire, which she noiselessly replenished; drawing up a chair, shesank back into it, her arms folded. The strengthening firelight showedher small white face, amid the masses of her dark hair. 

Her whole being was seething with passionate and revengeful thought. Itwas as though with violent straining and wrenching the familiar linksand bulwarks of life were breaking down, and as if amid the wreck ofthem she found herself looking at goblin faces beyond, growing graduallyused to them, ceasing to be startled by them, finding in them even awild attraction and invitation. 

[Illustration: "Her whole being was seething with passionate andrevengeful thought. "]

So Roger had lied to her. Instead of a casual ride, involving a meetingwith a few old acquaintances, as he had represented to her, he had beenengaged that day in an assignation with Mrs. Fairmile, arrangedbeforehand, and carefully concealed from his wife. Miss Farmer had seenthem coming out of a wood together hand in hand! In the public road, this!--not even so much respect for appearances as might have dictatedthe most elementary reticence and decency. The case was so clear that itsickened her; she shivered with cold and nausea as she lay there by thenow glowing fire which yet gave her no physical comfort. Probably in thepast their relation had gone much farther than Roger had ever confessedto his wife. Mrs. Fairmile was a woman who would stick at nothing. Andif Daphne were not already betrayed, she could no longer protectherself. The issue was certain. Such women as Chloe Fairmile are not tobe baulked of what they desire. Good women cannot fight them on equalterms. And as to any attempt to keep the affections of a husband whocould behave in such a way to the wife who had given him her youth, herself, and all the resources and facilities of life, Daphne's wholebeing stiffened into mingled anguish and scorn as she renounced thecontest. Knowing himself the traitor that he was, he could yet hold her, kiss her, murmur tender things to her, allow her to cry upon his breast, to stammer repentance and humbleness. Cowardly! False! Treacherous! Sheflung out her hands, rigid, before her in the darkness, as though forever putting him away. 

Anguish? Yes!--but not of such torturing quality as she could have felta year, six months even, before this date. She was astonished that shecould bear her life, that he could sit there in the night stillness, motionless, holding her breath even, while Roger slept there in theshadowed bed. Had this thing happened to her before their arrival atHeston, she must have fallen upon Roger in mad grief and passion, readyto kill him or herself; must at least have poured out torrents ofuseless words and tears. She could not have sat dumb like this; inmisery, but quite able to think things out, to envisage all the darkpossibilities of the future. And not only the future. By a perfectlylogical diversion her thoughts presently went racing to the past. Therewas, so to speak, a suspension of the immediate crisis, while shelistened to her own mind--while she watched her own years go by. 

It was but rarely that Daphne let her mind run on her own origins. Buton this winter night, as she sat motionless by the fire, she becameconscious of a sudden detachment from her most recent self and life--asudden violent turning against both--which naturally threw her back onthe past, on some reflection upon what she had made of herself, by wayof guide to what she might still make of herself, if she struck boldly, now, while there was yet time, for her own freedom and development. 

As to her parents, she never confessed, even to herself, that she owedthem anything, except, of course, the mere crude wealth that her fatherhad left her. Otherwise she was vaguely ashamed of them both. Andyet!--in her most vital qualities, her love of sensational effect, herscorn of half-measures, her quick, relentless imagination, herincreasing ostentation and extravagance, she was the true child of theboastful mercurial Irishman who had married her Spanish mother as partof a trade bargain, on a chance visit to Buenos Ayres. For twenty yearsDaniel Floyd had leased and exploited, had ravaged and destroyed, greattracts of primæval forest in the northern regions of his adopted state, leaving behind him a ruined earth and an impoverished community, butbuilding up the while a colossal fortune. He had learnt the arts ofmunicipal "bossing" in one of the minor towns of Illinois, and had thenmigrated to Chicago, where for years he was the life and soul of all thebolder and more adventurous corruption of the city. A jovial, handsomefellow!--with an actor's face, a bright eye, and a slippery hand. Daphnehad a vivid, and, on the whole, affectionate, remembrance of her father, of whom, however, she seldom spoke. The thought of her mother, on theother hand, was always unwelcome. It brought back recollections of stormand tempest; of wild laughter, and still wilder tears; of gorgeousdresses, small feet, and jewelled fingers. 

No; her parents had but small place in that dramatic autobiography thatDaphne was now constructing for herself. She was not their daughter inany but the physical sense; she was the daughter of her own works andefforts. 

She leant forward to the fire, her face propped in her hands, going backin thought to her father's death, when she was fifteen; to her threeyears of cloying convent life, and her escape from it, as well as fromthe intriguing relations who would have kept her there; to the cleverlawyer who had helped to put her in possession of her fortune, and thehuge sums she had paid him for his services; to her search foreducation, her hungry determination to rise in the world, the friendsshe had made at college, in New York, Philadelphia, Washington. She hadbeen influenced by one _milieu_ after another; she had worked hard, nowat music, now at philosophy; had dabbled in girls' clubs, and gone toSocialist meetings, and had been all through driven on by the gadfly ofan ever-increasing ambition. 

Ambition for what! She looked back on this early life with a bittercontempt. What had it all come to? Marriage with Roger Barnes!--a hastypassion of which she was already ashamed, for a man who was alreadyfalse to her. 

What had made her marry him? She did not mince matters with herself inher reply. She had married him, influenced by a sudden, gust of physicalinclination--by that glamour, too, under which she had seen him inWashington, a glamour of youth and novelty. If she had seen him first inhis natural environment she would have been on her guard; she would haverealized what it meant to marry a man who could help her own ideals andambitions so little. And what, really, had their married life broughther? Had she ever been _sure_ of Roger?--had she ever been able to feelproud of him, in the company of really distinguished men?--had she notbeen conscious, again and again, when in London, or Paris, or Berlin, that he was her inferior, that he spoiled her social and intellectualchances? And his tone toward women had always been a low one; no greatharm in it, perhaps; but it had often wounded and disgusted her. 

And then--for climax!--his concealment of the early love affair withChloe Fairmile; his weakness and folly in letting her regain her holdupon him; his behaviour at the Brendon ball, the gossip which, as AgnesFarmer declared, was all over the neighbourhood, ending in the lastbaseness--the assignation, the lies, the hypocrisy of the afternoon!

Enough!--more than enough! What did she care what the English worldthought of her? She would free and right herself in her own way, andthey might hold up what hands they pleased. A passion of wounded vanity, of disappointed self-love swept through her. She had looked forward tothe English country life; she had meant to play a great part in it. Butthree months had been enough to show her the kind of thing--the hopelessnarrowness and Philistinism of these English back-waters. What did thesesmall squires and country clergy know of the real world, the world thatmattered to _her_, where people had free minds and progressive ideas?Her resentment of the _milieu_ in which Roger expected her to livesubtly swelled and strengthened her wrath against himself; it made thesoil from which sprang a sudden growth of angry will--violent anddestructive. There was in her little or none of that affinity with atraditional, a parent England, which is present in so many Americans, which emerges in them like buried land from the waters. On the contrary, the pressure of race and blood in her was not towards, but against; notfriendly, but hostile. The nearer she came to the English life, the morecertain forces in her, deeply infused, rose up and made their protest. The Celtic and Latin strains that were mingled in her, their naturalsympathies and repulsions, which had been indistinct in the girl, overlaid by the deposits of the current American world, were becomingdominant in the woman. 

 * * * * *

Well, thank goodness, modern life is not as the old! There are ways out. 

Midnight had just struck. The night was gusty, the north-west wind madefierce attacks on the square, comfortable house. Daphne rose slowly; shemoved noiselessly across the floor; she stood with her arms behind herlooking down at the sleeping Roger. Then a thought struck her; shereached out a hand to the new number of an American Quarterly which lay, with the paper knife in it, on a table beside the bed. She had orderedit in a mood of jealous annoyance because of a few pages of artcriticism in it by Mrs. Fairmile, which impertinently professed to knowmore about the Vitali Signorelli than its present owner did; but sheremembered also an article on "The Future for Women, " which had seemedto her a fine, progressive thing. She turned the pages noiselessly--hereyes now on the unconscious Roger--now on the book. 

 "All forms of contract--in business, education, religion, or law--suffer from the weakness and blindness of the persons making them--the marriage contract as much as any other. The dictates of humanity and common-sense alike show that the latter and most important contract should no more be perpetual than any of the others. "

Again:--

 "Any covenant between human beings that fails to produce or promote human happiness, cannot in the nature of things be of any force or authority; it is not only a right but a duty to abolish it. "

And a little further:--

 "Womanhood is the great fact of woman's life. Wifehood and motherhood are but incidental relations. "

Daphne put down the book. In the dim light, the tension of her slenderfigure, her frowning brow, her locked arms and hands, made of her athreatening Fate hovering darkly above the man in his deep, defencelesssleep. 

She was miserable, consumed with jealous anger. But the temptation of anew licence--a lawless law--was in her veins. Have women been trampledon, insulted, enslaved?--in America, at least, they may now stand ontheir feet. No need to cringe any more to the insolence and cruelty ofmen. A woman's life may be soiled and broken; but in the great humanworkshop of America it can be repaired. She remembered that in themajority of American divorces it is the woman who applies for relief. And why not? The average woman, when she marries, knows much less oflife and the world than the average man. She is more likely--poorsoul!--to make mistakes. 

She drew closer to the bed. All round her glimmered the furniture andappointments of a costly room--the silver and tortoise-shell on thedressing-table, the long mirrors lining the farther wall, the silkhangings of the bed. Luxury, as light and soft as skill and money couldmake it--the room breathed it; and in the midst stood the young creaturewho had designed it, the will within her hardening rapidly to anirrevocable purpose. 

Yes, she had made a mistake! But she would retrieve it. She would freeherself. She would no longer put up with Roger, with his neglect anddeceit--his disagreeable and ungrateful mother--his immoral friends--andthis dull, soul-deadening English life. 

Roger moved and murmured. She retreated a little, still looking at himfixedly. Was it the child's name? Perhaps. He dreamed interminably, andvery often of Beatty. But it did not move her. Beatty, of course, was_her_ child. Every child belongs to the mother in a far profounder sensethan to the father. And he, too, would be free; he would naturally marryagain. 

Case after case of divorce ran through her mind as she stood there; thepersons and circumstances all well known to her. Other stories also, notpersonally within her ken; the famous scandals of the time, muchdiscussed throughout American society. Her wits cleared and steeled. Shebegan to see the course that she must follow. 

It would all depend upon the lawyers; and a good deal--she facedit--upon money. All sorts of technical phrases, vaguely remembered, ranthrough her mind. She would have to recover her Americancitizenship--she and the child. A domicile of six months in SouthDakota, or in Wyoming--a year in Philadelphia--she began to recallinformation derived of old from Madeleine Verrier, who had, of course, been forced to consider all these things, and to weigh alternatives. Advice, of course, must be asked of her at once--and sympathy. 

Suddenly, on her brooding, there broke a wave of excitement. Life, instead of being closed, as in a sense it is, for every married woman, was in a moment open and vague again; the doors flung wide to flamingheavens. An intoxication of recovered youth and freedom possessed her. The sleeping Roger represented things intolerable and outworn. Whyshould a woman of her gifts, of her opportunities, be chained for lifeto this commonplace man, now that her passion was over?--now that sheknew him for what he was, weak, feather-brained, and vicious? She lookedat him with a kind of exaltation, spurning him from her path. 

But the immediate future!--the practical steps! What kind of evidencewould she want?--what kind of witnesses? Something more, no doubt, ofboth than she had already. She must wait--temporize--do nothing rashly. If it was for Roger's good as well as her own that they should be freeof each other--and she was fast persuading herself of this--she must, for both their sakes, manage the hateful operation without bungling. 

What was the alternative? She seemed to ask it of Roger, as she stoodlooking down upon him. Patience?--with a man who could never sympathizewith her intellectually or artistically?--the relations of married lifewith a husband who made assignations with an old love, under the eyes ofthe whole neighbourhood?--the narrowing, cramping influences of Englishprovincial society? No! she was born for other and greater things, andshe would grasp them. "My first duty is to myself--to my owndevelopment. We have absolutely no _right_ to sacrifice ourselves--aswomen have been taught to do for thousands of years. "

Bewildered by the rhetoric of her own thoughts, Daphne returned to herseat by the fire, and sat there wildly dreaming, till once more recalledto practical possibilities by the passage of the hours on the clockabove her. 

Miss Farmer? Everything, it seemed, depended on her. But Daphne had nodoubts of her. Poor girl!--with her poverty-stricken home, her drunkenfather lately dismissed from his post, and her evident inclinationtowards this clever young fellow now employed in the house--Daphnerejoiced to think of what money could do, in this case at least; of thereward that should be waiting for the girl's devotion when the momentcame; of the gifts already made, and the gratitude already evoked. No;she could be trusted; she had every reason to be true. 

Some fitful sleep came to her at last in the morning hours. But whenRoger awoke, she was half-way through her dressing; and when he firstsaw her, he noticed nothing except that she was paler than usual, andconfessed to a broken night. 

 * * * * *

But as the day wore on it became plain to everybody at Heston--to Rogerfirst and foremost--that something was much amiss. Daphne would notleave her sitting-room and her sofa; she complained of headache andover-fatigue; would have nothing to say to the men at work on the newdecoration of the east wing of the house, who were clamouring fordirections; and would admit nobody but Miss Farmer and her maid. Rogerforced his way in once, only to be vanquished by the traditional weaponsof weakness, pallor, and silence. Her face contracted and quivered ashis step approached her; it was as though he trampled upon her; and heleft her, awkwardly, on tiptoe, feeling himself as intrusively brutal asshe clearly meant him to feel. 

What on earth was the matter? Some new grievance against him, hesupposed. After the softening, the quasi-reconciliation of the daybefore, his chagrin and disappointment were great. Impossible she shouldknow anything of his ride with Chloe! There was not a soul in that wood;and the place was twenty miles from Heston. Again he felt the impulse toblurt it all out to her; but was simply repelled and intimidated by thisporcupine mood in which she had wrapped herself. Better wait at leasttill she was a little more normal again. He went off disconsolately to aday's shooting. 

Meanwhile, his own particular worry was sharp enough. Chloe had takenadvantage of their casual _tête-à-tête_, as she had done before onseveral occasions, to claim something of the old relation, instead ofaccepting the new, like a decent woman; and in the face of thetemptation offered him he had shown a weakness of which not only hisconscience but his pride was ashamed. He realized perfectly that she hadbeen trying during the whole autumn to recover her former hold on him, and he also saw clearly and bitterly that he was not strong enough toresist her, should he continue to be thrown with her; and not cleverenough to baffle her, if her will were really set on recapturing him. Hewas afraid of her, and afraid of himself. 

What, then, must he do? As he tramped about the wet fields andplantations with a keeper and a few beaters after some scatteredpheasants, he was really, poor fellow! arguing out the riddle of hislife. What would Herbert French advise him to do?--supposing he couldput the question plainly to him, which of course was not possible. Hemeant honestly and sincerely to keep straight; to do his duty by Daphneand the child. But he was no plaster saint, and he could not afford togive Chloe Fairmile too many opportunities. To break at once, to carryoff Daphne and leave Heston, at least for a time--that was the obviouslyprudent and reasonable course. But in her present mood it was of no usefor him to propose it, tired as she seemed to be of Heston, anddisappointed in the neighbours: any plan brought forward by him wasdoomed beforehand. Well then, let him go himself; he had been so unhappyduring the preceding weeks it would be a jolly relief to turn his backon Heston for a time. 

But as soon as he had taken his departure, Chloe perhaps would takehers; and if so, Daphne's jealousy would be worse than ever. Whateverdeserts he might place between himself and Mrs. Fairmile, Daphne wouldimagine them together. 

Meanwhile, there was that Lilliput bond, that small, chafingentanglement, which Chloe had flung round him in her persistence aboutthe letters. There was, no doubt, a horrid scandal brewing about Mrs. Weightman, Chloe's old friend--a friend of his own, too, in former days. Through Chloe's unpardonable indiscretions he knew a great deal moreabout this lady's affairs than he had ever wished to know. And he wellremembered the letter in question: a letter on which the political lifeor death of one of England's most famous men might easily turn, supposing it got out. But the letter was safe enough; not the leastlikely to come into dangerous hands, in spite of Chloe's absurdhypotheses. It was somewhere, no doubt, among the boxes in the lockedroom; and who could possibly get hold of it? At the same time herealized that as long as he had not found and returned it she wouldstill have a certain claim upon him, a certain right to harass him withinquiries and confidential interviews, which, as a man of honour, hecould not altogether deny. 

A pheasant got up across a ploughed field where in the mild season theyoung corn was already green. Roger shot, and missed; the bird floatedgaily down the wind, and the head keeper, in disgust, muttered badlanguage to the underling beside him. 

But after that Barnes was twice as cheerful as before. He whistled as hewalked; his shooting recovered; and by the time the dark fell, keepersand beaters were once more his friends. 

The fact was that just as he missed the pheasant he had taken hisresolution, and seen his way. He would have another determined hunt forthat letter; he would also find and destroy his own letters toChloe--those she had returned to him--which must certainly never fallinto Daphne's hands; and then he would go away to London or the North, to some place whence he could write both to Chloe Fairmile and to hiswife. Women like Daphne were too quick; they could get out a dozen wordsto your one; but give a man time, and he could express himself. And, therewith, a great tenderness and compunction in this man's heart, and asteady determination to put things right. For was not Daphne Beatty'smother? and was he not in truth very fond of her, if only she would lethim be?

Now then for the hunt. As he had never destroyed the letters, they mustexist; but, in the name of mischief, where? He seemed to rememberthrusting his own letters to Chloe into a desk of his schoolboy dayswhich used to stand in his London sitting-room. Very likely some of hersmight be there too. But the thought of his own had by now become a muchgreater anxiety to him than the wish to placate Chloe. For he was mostuncomfortably aware that his correspondence with Chloe during theirshort engagement had been of a very different degree of fervour fromthat shown in the letters to Daphne under similar circumstances. As forthe indelicacy and folly of leaving such documents to chance, he cursedit sorely. 

How to look? He pondered it. He did not even know which attic it wasthat had been reserved at the time of the letting of Heston, and nowheld some of the old London furniture and papers. Well, he must manageit, "burgle" his own house, if necessary. What an absurd situation!Should he consult his mother? No; better not. 

 * * * * *

That evening General Hobson was expected for a couple of nights. Ongoing up to dress for dinner, Roger discovered that he had been banishedto a room on the farther side of the house, where his servant was nowputting out his clothes. He turned very white, and went straight to hiswife. 

Daphne was on the sofa as before, and received him in silence. 

"What's the meaning of this, Daphne?" The tone was quiet, but thebreathing quick. 

She looked at him--bracing herself. 

"I must be alone! I had no sleep last night. "

"You had neuralgia?"

"I don't know--I had no sleep. I must be alone. "

His eyes and hers met. 

"For to-night, then, " he said briefly. "I don't know what's the matterwith you, Daphne and I suppose it's no use to ask you. I thought, yesterday--but--however, there's no time to talk now. Are you comingdown to dinner?"

"Not to dinner. I will come down for an hour afterwards. "

He went away, and before he had reached his own room, and while the heatof his sudden passion still possessed him, it occurred to him thatDaphne's behaviour might after all prove a godsend. That night he wouldmake his search, with no risk of disturbing his wife. 

 * * * * *

The dinner in the newly decorated dining-room went heavily. Lady Barneshad grown of late more and more anxious and depressed. She had longceased to assert herself in Daphne's presence, and one saw her as theBritish matron in adversity, buffeted by forces she did not understand;or as some minor despot snuffed out by a stronger. 

The General, who had only arrived just in time to dress, inquired inastonishment for Daphne, and was told by Roger that his wife was notwell, but would come down for a little while after dinner. In presenceof the new splendours of Heston, the General had--in Roger'scompany--very little to say. He made the vague remark that thedining-room was "very fine, " but he should not have known it again. Where was the portrait of Edward, and the full-length of Edward's fatherby Sir Francis Grant? Lady Barnes drew herself up, and said nothing. Roger hastily replied that he believed they were now in the passageleading to the billiard-room. 

"What! that dark corner!" cried the General, looking with both distasteand hostility at the famous Signorelli--a full-length nude St. Sebastian, bound and pierced--which had replaced them on the dining-roomwall. Who on earth ever saw such a picture in a dining-room? Roger mustbe a fool to allow it!

Afterwards the General and Lady Barnes wandered through the transformedhouse, in general agreement as to the ugliness and extravagance ofalmost everything that had been done, an agreement that was as balm tothe harassed spirits of the lady. 

"What have they spent?" asked the General, under his breath, as theyreturned to the drawing-room--"thousands and thousands, I should think!And there was no need for them to spend a penny. It is a sinful waste, and no one should waste money in these days--there are too manyunemployed!" He drew up his spare person, with a terrier-like shake ofthe head and shoulders, as of one repudiating Mammon and all its works. 

"Daphne has simply no idea of the value of money!" Lady Barnescomplained, also under her breath. They were passing along one of theside corridors of the house, and there was no one in sight. But Roger'smother was evidently uneasy, as though Daphne might at any moment springfrom the floor, or emerge from the walls. The General was really sorryfor her. 

"It's like all the rest of them--Americans, I mean, " he declared; "theyhaven't our sense of responsibility. I saw plenty of that in theStates. "

Lady Barnes acquiesced. She was always soothed by the General'sunfaltering views of British superiority. 

They found Daphne in the drawing-room--a ghostly Daphne, in white, andcovered with diamonds. She made a little perfunctory conversation withthem, avoided all mention of the house, and presently, complaining againof headache, went back to her room after barely an hour downstairs. 

The General whistled to himself, as he also retired to bed, afteranother and more private conversation with Lady Barnes, and half anhour's billiards with a very absent-minded host. By Jove, Laura wanted achange! He rejoiced that he was to escort her on the morrow to theLondon house of some cheerful and hospitable relations. Dollars, itseemed, were not everything, and he wished to heaven that Roger had beencontent to marry some plain English girl, with, say, a couple ofthousand a year. Even the frugal General did not see how it could havebeen done on less. Roger no doubt had been a lazy, self-indulgentbeggar. Yet he seemed a good deal steadier, and more sensible than heused to be; in spite of his wife, and the pouring out of dollars. Andthere was no doubt that he had grown perceptibly older. The General felta vague pang of regret, so rare and so compelling had been the qualityof Roger's early youth, measured at least by physical standards. 

 * * * * *

The house sank into sleep and silence. Roger, before saying good-nightto his mother, had let fall a casual question as to the whereabouts ofthe room which still contained the _débris_ of the London house. Hemust, he said, look up two or three things, some share certificates ofhis father's, for instance, that he had been in want of for some time. Lady Barnes directed him. At the end of the nursery wing, to the right. But in the morning one of the housemaids would show him. Had she thekey? She produced it, thought no more of it, and went to bed. 

He waited in his room till after midnight, then took off his shoes, hispride smarting, and emerged. There was one electric light burning in thehall below. This gave enough glimmer on the broad open landing for himto grope his way by, and he went noiselessly toward the staircaseleading up to Beatty's rooms. Once, just as he reached it, he thought hecaught the faint noise of low talking somewhere in the house, anindeterminate sound not to be located. But when he paused to listen, ithad ceased and he supposed it to be only a windy murmur of the night. 

He gained the nursery wing. So far, of course, the way was perfectlyfamiliar. He rarely passed an evening without going to kiss Beatty inher cot. Outside the door of the night-nursery he waited a moment tolisten. Was she snoozling among her blankets?--the darling! She stillsucked her thumb, sometimes, poor baby, to send her to sleep, and it wasanother reason for discontent with Miss Farmer that she would make amisdemeanour of it. Really, that woman got on his nerves!

Beyond the nursery he had no knowledge whatever of his own house. Theattics at Heston were large and rambling. He believed the servants wereall in the other wing, but was not sure; he could only hope that hemight not stumble on some handmaiden's room by mistake!

A door to the right, at the end of the passage. He tried the key. Thankgoodness! It turned without too much noise, and he found himself on thethreshold of a big lumber-room, his candle throwing lines of dusty lightacross it. He closed the door, set down the light, and looked round himin despair. The room was crowded with furniture, trunks, and boxes, inconsiderable confusion. It looked as though the men employed to movethem had piled them there as they pleased; and Roger shrewdly suspectedthat his mother, from whom, in spite of her square and business-likeappearance, his own indolence was inherited, had shrunk till now fromthe task of disturbing them. 

He began to rummage a little. Papers belonging to his father--an endlessseries of them; some in tin boxes marked with the names of variouscompanies, mining and other; some in leather cases, reminiscent ofpolitics, and labelled "Parliamentary" or "Local Government Board. "Trunks containing Court suits, yeomanry uniforms, and the like; a medleyof old account books, photographs, worthless volumes, and brokenornaments: all the refuse that our too complex life piles about us wasrepresented in the chaos of the room. Roger pulled and pushed ascautiously as he could, but making, inevitably, some noise in theprocess. At last! He caught sight of some belongings of his own and wassoon joyfully detaching the old Eton desk, of which he was in search, from a pile of miscellaneous rubbish. In doing so, to his dismay, heupset a couple of old cardboard boxes filled with letters, and they fellwith some clatter. He looked round instinctively at the door; but it wasshut, and the house was well built, the walls and ceilings reasonablysound-proof. The desk was only latched--beastly carelessness, ofcourse!--and inside it were three thick piles of letters, and a fewloose ones below. His own letters to Chloe; and--by George!--the lostone!--among the others. He opened it eagerly, ran it through. Yes, thevery thing! What luck! He laid it carefully aside a moment on a trunknear by, and sat with the other letters on his lap. 

His fingers played with them. He almost determined to take them downunopened, and burn them, as they were, in his own room; but in the endhe could not resist the temptation to look at them once more. He pulledoff an india-rubber band from the latest packet, and was soon deep inthem, at first half ashamed, half contemptuous. Calf love, of course!And he had been a precious fool to write such things. Then, presently, the headlong passion of them began to affect him, to set his pulsesswinging. He fell to wondering at his own bygone facility, his ownpowers of expression. How did he ever write such a style! He, who couldhardly get through a note now without blots and labour. Self-pity grewupon him, and self-admiration. By heaven! How could a woman treat aman--a man who could write to her like this--as Chloe had treated him!

The old smart revived; or rather, the old indelible impressions of itleft on nerve and brain. 

The letters lay on his knee. He sat brooding: his hands upon thepackets, his head bowed. One might have thought him a man overcome anddissolved by the enervating memories of passion; but in truth, he wasgradually and steadily reacting against them; resuming, and this timefinally, as far as Chloe Fairmile was concerned, a man's mastery ofhimself. He thought of her unkindness and cruelty--of the misery he hadsuffered--and now of the reckless caprice with which, during thepreceding weeks, she had tried to entangle him afresh, with no respectfor his married life, for his own or Daphne's peace of mind. 

He judged her, and therewith, himself. Looking back upon the four yearssince Chloe Fairmile had thrown him over, it seemed to him that, in someways, he had made a good job of his life, and, in others, a bad one. Asto the money, that was neither here nor there. It had been amusing tohave so much of it; though of late Daphne's constant reminders that thefortune was hers and not his, had been like grit in the mouth. But hedid not find that boundless wealth had made as much difference to him ashe had expected. On the other hand, he had been much happier with Daphnethan he had thought he should be, up to the time of their coming toHeston. She wasn't easy to live with, and she had been often, beforenow, ridiculously jealous; but you could not, apparently, live with awoman without getting very fond of her--he couldn't--especially if shehad given you a child; and if Daphne had turned against him now, for abit--well, he could not swear to himself that he had been free fromblame; and it perhaps served him right for having gone out deliberatelyto the States to marry money--with a wife thrown in--in that shabby sortof way. 

But, now, to straighten out this coil; to shake himself finally free ofChloe, and make Daphne happy again! He vowed to himself that he couldand would make her happy--just as she had been in their early daystogether. The memory of her lying white and exhausted after child-birth, with the little dark head beside her, came across him, and melted him;he thought of her with longing and tenderness. 

With a deep breath he raised himself on his seat; in the old Greekphrase, "the gods breathed courage into his soul"; and as he stretchedout an indifferent hand toward Chloe's letters on the trunk, RogerBarnes had perhaps reached the highest point of his moral history; hehad become conscious of himself as a moral being choosing good or evil;and he had chosen good. It was not so much that his conscience accusedhim greatly with regard to Chloe. For that his normal standards were notfine enough. It was rather a kind of "serious call, " something akin toconversion, or that might have been conversion, which befell him in thisdusty room, amid the night-silence. 

As he took up Chloe's letters he did not notice that the door hadquietly opened behind him, and that a figure stood on the threshold. 

A voice struck into the stillness. 

"Roger!"

He turned with a movement that scattered all his own letters on thefloor. Daphne stood before him--but with the eyes of a mad woman. Herhand shook on the handle of the door. 

"What are you doing here?" She flung out the question like a blow. 

"Hallo, Daphne!--is that you?" He tried to laugh. "I'm only looking upsome old papers; no joke, in all this rubbish. " He pointed to it. 

"What old papers?"

"Well, you needn't catechize me!" he said, nettled by her tone, "or notin that way, at any rate. I couldn't sleep, and I came up here to lookfor something I wanted. Why did you shut your door on me?"

He looked at her intently, his lips twitching a little. Daphne camenearer. 

"It must be something you want very badly--something you don't wantother people to see--something you're ashamed of!--or you wouldn't besearching for it at this time of night. " She raised her eyes, still withthe same strange yet flaming quiet, from the littered floor to his face. Then suddenly glancing again at the scattered papers--"That's yourhand-writing!--they're your letters! letters to Mrs. Fairmile!"

"Well, and what do you make of that?" cried Roger, half wroth, halfinclined to laugh. "If you want to know, they are the letters I wrote toChloe Fairmile; and I, like a careless beast, never destroyed them, andthey were stuffed away here. I have long meant to get at them and burnthem, and as you turned me out to-night----"

"What is that letter in your hand?" exclaimed Daphne, interrupting him. 

"Oh, that has nothing to do with you--or me----" he said, hastily makinga movement to put it in his coat pocket. But in a second, Daphne, with acry, had thrown herself upon him, to his intense amazement, wrestlingwith him, in a wild excitement. And as she did so, a thin woman, withfrightened eyes, in a nurse's dress, came quickly into the room, asthough Daphne's cry had signalled to her. She was behind Roger, and hewas not aware of her approach. 

"Daphne, don't be such a little fool!" he said indignantly, holding heroff with one hand, determined not to give her the letter. 

Then, all in a moment--without, as it seemed to him, any but the mildestdefensive action on his part--Daphne stumbled and fell. 

"Daphne!--I say!----"

He was stooping over her in great distress to lift her up, when he felthimself vehemently put aside by a woman's hand. 

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, sir! Let me go to her. "

He turned in bewilderment. "Miss Farmer! What on earth are you doinghere?"

But in his astonishment he had given way to her, and he fell back paleand frowning, while, without replying, she lifted Daphne--who had a cuton her forehead and was half fainting--from the ground. 

"Don't come near her, sir!" said the nurse, again warding him off. "Youhave done quite enough. Let me attend to her. "

"You imagine that was my doing?" said Roger grimly. "Let me assure youit was nothing of the kind. And pray, were you listening at the door?"

Miss Farmer vouchsafed no reply. She was half leading, half supportingDaphne, who leant against her. As they neared the door, Roger, who hadbeen standing dumb again, started forward. 

"Let me take her, " he said sternly. "Daphne!--send this woman away. "

But Daphne only shuddered, and putting out a shaking hand, she waved himfrom her. 

"You see in what a state she is!" cried Miss Farmer, with a witheringlook. "If you must speak to her, put it off, sir, at least tillto-morrow. "

Roger drew back. A strange sense of inexplicable disaster rushed uponhim. He sombrely watched them pass through the door and disappear. 

 * * * * *

Daphne reached her own room. As the door closed upon them she turned toher companion, holding out the handkerchief stained with blood she hadbeen pressing to her temple. 

"You saw it all?" she said imperiously--"the whole thing?"

"All, " said Miss Farmer. "It's a mercy you're not more hurt. "

Daphne gave a hysterical laugh. 

"It'll just do--I think it'll do! But you'll have to make a good dealout of it. "

And sinking down by the fire, she burst into a passion of wild tears. 

The nurse brought her sal volatile, and washed the small cut above hereyebrow. 

"It was lucky we heard him, " she said triumphantly. "I guessed at oncehe must be looking for something--I knew that room was full of papers. "

A knock at the door startled them. 

"Never mind. " The nurse hurried across the room. "It's locked. "

"How is my wife?" said Roger's strong, and as it seemed, threateningvoice outside. 

"She'll be all right, sir, I hope, if you'll leave her to rest. But Iwon't answer for the consequences if she's disturbed any more. "

There was a pause, as though of hesitation. Then Roger's step receded. 

Daphne pushed her hair back from her face, and sat staring into thefire. Everything was decided now. Yet she had rushed upstairs on MissFarmer's information with no definite purpose. She only knew that--onceagain--Roger was hiding something from her--doing something secret anddisgraceful--and she suddenly resolved to surprise and confront him. With a mind still vaguely running on the legal aspects of what she meantto do, she had bade the nurse follow her. The rest had been halfspontaneous, half acting. It had struck her imagination midway how theincident could be turned--and used. 

She was triumphant; but from sheer excitement she wept and sobbedthrough the greater part of the night. 

PART III

CHAPTER IX

It was a cheerless February day, dark and slaty overhead, dusty below. In the East End streets paper and straw, children's curls, girls'pinafores and women's skirts were driven back and forward by a bitterwind; there was an ugly light on ugly houses, with none of that kindtrickery of mist or smoke which can lend some grace on normal days evento Commercial Street, or to the network of lanes north of the BethnalGreen Road. The pitiless wind swept the streets--swept the children andthe grown-ups out of them into the houses, or any available shelter; andin the dark and chilly emptiness of the side roads one might listen infancy for the stealthy returning steps of spirits crueller than Cold, more tyrannous than Poverty, coming to seize upon their own. 

 * * * * *

In one of these side streets stood a house larger than its neighbours, in a bit of front garden, with some decrepit rust-bitten-railingsbetween it and the road. It was an old dwelling overtaken by the floodof tenement houses, which spread north, south, east, and west of it. Itswalls were no less grimy than its neighbours'; but its windows wereoutlined in cheerful white paint, firelight sparkled through itsunshuttered panes, and a bright green door with a brass knockercompleted its pleasant air. There were always children outside theVicarage railings on winter evenings, held there by the spell of thegreen door and the firelight. 

Inside the firelit room to the left of the front pathway, two men werestanding--one of whom had just entered the house. 

"My dear Penrose!--how very good of you to come. I know how frightfullybusy you are. "

The man addressed put down his hat and stick, and hastily smoothed backsome tumbling black hair which interfered with spectacled eyes alreadyhampered by short sight. He was a tall, lank, powerful fellow; anyoneacquainted with the West-country would have known him for one of theswarthy, gray-eyed Cornish stock. 

"I am pretty busy--but your tale, Herbert, was a startler. If I can helpyou--or Barnes--command me. He is coming this afternoon?"

Herbert French pointed his visitor to a chair. 

"Of course. And another man--whom I met casually, in Pall Mall thismorning--and had half an hour's talk with--an American naval officer--anold acquaintance of Elsie's--Captain Boyson--will join us also. I methim at Harvard before our wedding, and liked him. He has just come overwith his sister for a short holiday, and I ran across him. "

"Is there any particular point in his joining us?"

Herbert French expounded. Boyson had been an old acquaintance of Mrs. Roger Barnes before her marriage. He knew a good deal about the Barnesstory--"feels, so I gathered, very strongly about it, and on the man'sside; and when I told him that Roger had just arrived and was coming totake counsel with you and me this afternoon, he suddenly asked if hemight come, too. I was rather taken aback. I told him that we weregoing, of course, to consider the case entirely from the English pointof view. He still said, 'Let me come; I may be of use to you. ' So Icould only reply it must rest with Roger. They'll show him first intothe dining-room. "

Penrose nodded. "All right, as long as he doesn't mind his national toestrampled upon. So these are your new quarters, old fellow?"

His eyes travelled round the small book-lined room, with its shelves ofpoetry, history, and theology; its parish litter; its settle by thefire, on which lay a doll and a child's picture-book; back to the figureof the new vicar, who stood, pipe in hand, before the hearth, clad in ashabby serge suit, his collar alone betraying him. French's white hairshowed even whiter than of old above the delicately blanched face; fromhis natural slenderness and smallness the East End and its life had bynow stripped every superfluous ounce; yet, ethereal as his aspect was, not one element of the Meredithian trilogy--"flesh, " "blood, " or"spirit"--was lacking in it. 

"Yes, we've settled in, " he said quietly, as Penrose took stock. 

"And you like it?"

"We do. "

The phrase was brief; nor did it seem to be going to lead to anythingmore expansive. Penrose smiled. 

"Well, now"--he bent forward, with a professional change oftone--"before he arrives, where precisely is this unhappy business? Igather, by the way, that Barnes has got practically all his legal advicefrom the other side, though the solicitors here have been coöperating?"

French nodded. "I am still rather vague myself. Roger only arrived fromNew York the day before yesterday. His uncle, General Hobson, died a fewweeks ago, and Roger came rushing home, as I understand, to see if hecould make any ready money out of his inheritance. Money, in fact, seemsto be his chief thought. "

"Money? What for? Mrs. Barnes's suit was surely settled long ago?"

"Oh, yes--months ago. She got her decree and the custody of the child inJuly. "

"Remind me of the details. Barnes refused to plead?"

"Certainly. By the advice of the lawyers on both sides, he refused, asan Englishman, to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the Court. "

"But he did what he could to stop the thing?"

"Of course. He rushed out after his wife as soon as he could trace whereshe had gone; and he made the most desperate attempts to alter herpurpose. His letters, as far as I could make them out, wereheart-rending. I very nearly went over to try and help him, but it wasimpossible to leave my work. Mrs. Barnes refused to see him. She wasalready at Sioux Falls, and had begun the residence necessary to bringher within the jurisdiction of the South Dakota Court. Roger, however, forced one or two interviews with her--most painful scenes!--but foundher quite immovable. At the same time she was much annoyed and excitedby the legal line that he was advised to take; and there was a momentwhen she tried to bribe him to accept the divorce and submit to theAmerican court. "

"To bribe him! With money?"

"No; with the child. Beatty at first was hidden away, and Roger couldfind no traces of her. But for a few weeks she was sent to stay with aMrs. Verrier at Philadelphia, and Roger was allowed to see her, whileMrs. Barnes negotiated. It was a frightful dilemma! If he submitted, Mrs. Barnes promised that Beatty should go to him for two months everyyear; if not, and she obtained her decree, and the custody of the child, as she was quite confident of doing, he should never--as far as shecould secure it--see Beatty again. He too, foresaw that she would winher suit. He was sorely tempted; but he stood firm. Then before he couldmake up his mind what to do as to the child, the suit came on, Mrs. Barnes got her decree, and the custody of the little girl. "

"On the ground of 'cruelty, ' I understand, and 'indignities'?"

French nodded. His thin cheek flushed. 

"And by the help of evidence that any liar could supply!"

"Who were her witnesses?"

"Beatty's nurse--one Agnes Farmer--and a young fellow who had beenemployed on the decorative work at Heston. There were relations betweenthese two, and Roger tells me they have married lately, on a partnershipbought by Mrs. Barnes. While the work was going on at Heston the youngman used to put up at an inn in the country town, and talk scandal atthe bar. "

"Then there was some local scandal--on the subject of Barnes and Mrs. Fairmile?"

"Possibly. Scandal _pour rire_! Not a soul believed that there wasanything more in it than mischief on the woman's side, and a kind ofincapacity for dealing with a woman as she deserved, on the man's. Mrs. Fairmile has been an _intrigante_ from her cradle. Barnes was at onetime deeply in love with her. His wife became jealous of her after themarriage, and threw them together, by way of getting at the truth, andhe shilly-shallied with the situation, instead of putting a prompt endto it, as of course he ought to have done. He was honestly fond of hiswife the whole time, and devoted to his home and his child. "

"Well, she didn't plead, you say, anything more than 'cruelty' and'indignities'. The scandal, such as it was, was no doubt part of the'cruelty'?"

French assented. 

"And you suspect that money played a great part in the wholetransaction?"

"I don't _suspect_--the evidence goes a long way beyond that. Mrs. Barnes bought the show! I am told there are a thousand ways of doingit. "

Penrose smoked and pondered. 

"Well, then--what happened? I imagine that by this time Barnes had notmuch affection left for his wife?"

"I don't know, " said French, hesitating. "I believe the whole thing wasa great blow to him. He was never passionately in love with her, but hewas very fond of her in his own way--increasingly fond of her--up tothat miserable autumn at Heston. However, after the decree, his onethought was for Beatty. His whole soul has been wrapped up in that childfrom the first moment she was put into his arms. When he first realizedthat his wife meant to take her from him, Boyson tells me that he seemedto lose his head. He was like a person unnerved and bewildered, notknowing how to act or where to turn. First of all, he brought anaction--a writ of _habeas corpus_, I think--to recover his daughter, asan English subject. But the fact was he had put it off too long----"

"Naturally, " said Penrose, with a shrug. "Not much hope for him--afterthe decree. "

"So he discovered, poor old fellow! The action was, of course, obstructed and delayed in every way, by the power of Mrs. Barnes'smillions behind the scenes. His lawyers told him plainly from thebeginning that he had precious little chance. And presently he foundhimself the object of a press campaign in some of the yellow papers--allof it paid for and engineered by his wife. He was held up as the brutalfortune-hunting Englishman, who had beguiled an American heiress tomarry him, had carried her off to England to live upon her money, hadthen insulted her by scandalous flirtations with a lady to whom he hadformerly been engaged, had shown her constant rudeness and unkindness, and had finally, in the course of a quarrel, knocked her down, inflicting shock and injury from which she had suffered ever since. Mrs. Barnes had happily freed herself from him, but he was now trying tobully her through the child--had, it was said, threatened to carry offthe little girl by violence. Mrs. Barnes went in terror of him. America, however, would know how to protect both the mother and the child! Youcan imagine the kind of thing. Well, very soon Roger began to findhimself a marked man in hotels, followed in the streets, persecuted byinterviewers; and the stream of lies that found its way even into therespectable newspapers about him, his former life, his habits, etc. , issimply incredible! Unfortunately, he gave some handle----"

French paused a moment. 

"Ah!" said Penrose, "I have heard rumours. "

French rose and began to pace the room. 

"It is a matter I can hardly speak of calmly, " he said at last. "Thenight after that first scene between them, the night of her fall--herpretended fall, so Roger told me--he went downstairs in his excitementand misery, and drank, one way and another, nearly a bottle of brandy, athing he had never done in his life before. But----"

"He has often done it since?"

French raised his shoulders sadly, then added, with some emphasis. "Don't, however, suppose the thing worse than it is. Give him a gleam ofhope and happiness, and he would soon shake it off. "

"Well, what came of his action?"

"Nothing--so far. I believe he has ceased to take any interest in it. Another line of action altogether was suggested to him. About threemonths ago he made an attempt to kidnap the child, and was foiled. Hegot word that she had been taken to Charlestown, and he went there witha couple of private detectives. But Mrs. Barnes was on the alert, andwhen he discovered the villa in which the child had been living, she hadbeen removed. It was a bitter shock and disappointment, and when he gotback to New York in November, in the middle of an epidemic, he wasstruck down by influenza and pneumonia. It went pretty hard with him. You will be shocked by his appearance. Ecco! was there ever such astory! Do you remember, Penrose, what a magnificent creature he was thatyear he played for Oxford, and you and I watched his innings from thepavilion?"

There was a note of emotion in the tone which implied much. Penroseassented heartily, remarking, however, that it was a magnificence whichseemed to have cost him dear, if, as no doubt was the case, it had wonhim his wife. 

"But now, with regard to money; you say he wants money. But surely, atthe time of the marriage, something was settled on him?"

"Certainly, a good deal. But from the moment she left him, and theHeston bills were paid, he has never touched a farthing of it, and neverwill. "

"So that the General's death was opportune? Well, it's a deplorableaffair! And I wish I saw any chance of being of use. "

French looked up anxiously. 

"Because you know, " the speaker reluctantly continued, "there's nothingto be done. The thing's finished. "

"Finished?" French's manner took fire. "And the law can do _nothing_!Society can do _nothing_, to help that man either to right himself, orto recover his child? Ah!"--he paused to listen--"here he is!"

A cab had drawn up outside. Through the lightly curtained windows thetwo within saw a man descend from it, pay the driver, and walk up theflagged passage leading to the front door. 

French hurried to greet the new-comer. 

"Come in, Roger! Here's George Penrose--as I promised you. Sit down, oldman. They'll bring us some tea presently. "

Roger Barnes looked round him for a moment without replying; thenmurmured something unintelligible, as he shook hands with Penrose, andtook the chair which French pushed forward. French stood beside him witha furrowed brow. 

"Well, here we are, Roger!--and if there's anything whatever in thishorrible affair where an English lawyer can help you, Penrose is yourman. You know, I expect, what a swell he is? A K. C. After sevenyears--lucky dog!--and last year he was engaged in an Anglo-Americancase not wholly unlike yours--Brown _v. _ Brown. So I thought of him asthe best person among your old friends and mine to come and give us someprivate informal help to-day, before you take any fresh steps--if you dotake any. "

"Awfully good of you both. " The speaker, still wrapped in his fur coat, sat staring at the carpet, a hand on each of his knees. "Awfully good ofyou, " he repeated vaguely. 

Penrose observed the new-comer. In some ways Roger Barnes was handsomerthan ever. His colour, the pink and white of his astonishing complexion, was miraculously vivid; his blue eyes were infinitely more arrestingthan of old; and the touch of physical weakness in his aspect, leftevidently by severe illness, was not only not disfiguring, but apositive embellishment. He had been too ruddy in the old days, toohearty and splendid--a too obvious and supreme king of men--for ourfastidious modern eyes. The grief and misfortune which had shorn some ofhis radiance had given a more human spell to what remained. At the sametime the signs of change were by no means, all of them, easy to read, orreassuring to a friend's eye. Were they no more than physical andtransient?

Penrose was just beginning on the questions which seemed to himimportant, when there was another ring at the front door. French got upnervously, with an anxious look at Barnes. 

"Roger! I don't know whether you will allow it, but I met an Americanacquaintance of yours to-day, and, subject to your permission, I askedhim to join our conference. "

Roger raised his head--it might have been thought, angrily. 

"Who on earth----?"

"Captain Boyson?"

The young man's face changed. 

"I don't mind him, " he said sombrely. "He's an awfully good sort. He wasin Philadelphia a few months ago, when I was. He knows all about me. Itwas he and his sister who introduced me to--my wife. "

French left the room for a moment, and returned accompanied by afair-haired, straight-shouldered man, whom he introduced to Penrose asCaptain Boyson. 

Roger rose from his chair to shake hands. 

"How do you do, Boyson? I've told them you know all about it. " Hedropped back heavily into his seat. 

"I thought I might possibly put in a word, " said the new-comer, glancingfrom Roger to his friends. "I trust I was not impertinent? But don't letme interrupt anything that was going on. "

On a plea of chill, Boyson remained standing by the fire, warming hishands, looking down upon the other three. Penrose, who belonged to amilitary family, reminded himself, as he glanced at the American, of arecent distinguished book on Military Geography by a Captain AlfredBoyson. No doubt the same man. A capable face, --the face of the modernscientific soldier. It breathed alertness; but also some quality warmerand softer. If the general aspect had been shaped and moulded by anincessant travail of brain, the humanity of eye and mouth spoke dumblyto the humanity of others. The council gathered in the vicarage roomfelt itself strengthened. 

Penrose resumed his questioning of Barnes, and the other two listenedwhile the whole miserable story of the divorce, in its American aspects, unrolled. At first Roger showed a certain apathy and brevity; he mighthave been fulfilling a task in which he took but small interest; eventhe details of chicanery and corruption connected with the trial weretold without heat; he said nothing bitter of his wife--avoided namingher, indeed, as much as possible. 

But when the tale was done he threw back his head with sudden animationand looked at Boyson. 

"Is that about the truth, Boyson? You know. "

"Yes, I endorse it, " said the American gravely. His face, thin andtanned, had flushed while Barnes was speaking. 

"And you know what all their papers said of me--what _they_ wishedpeople to believe--that I wasn't fit to have charge of Beatty--that Ishould have done her harm?"

His eyes sparkled. He looked almost threateningly at the man whom headdressed. Boyson met his gaze quietly. 

"I didn't believe it. "

There was a pause. Then Roger sprang suddenly to his feet, confrontingthe men round him. 

"Look here!" he said impatiently. "I want some money at once--and a goodlot of it. " He brought his fist down heavily on the mantelpiece. "There's this place of my uncle's, and I'm dashed if I can get a pennyout of it! I went to his solicitors this morning. They drove me mad withtheir red-tape nonsense. It will take some time, they say, to get amortgage on it, and meanwhile they don't seem inclined to advance meanything, or a hundred or two, perhaps. What's that? I lost my temper, and next time I go they'll turn me out, I dare say. But there's thetruth. It's _money_ I want, and if you can't help me to money it's nouse talking. "

"And when you get the money what'll you do with it?" asked Penrose. 

"Pay half a dozen people who can be trusted to help me kidnap Beatty andsmuggle her over the Canadian frontier. I bungled the thing once. Idon't mean to bungle it again. "

The answer was given slowly, without any bravado, but whatever energy oflife there was in the speaker had gone into it. 

"And there is no other way?" French's voice from the back was troubled. 

"Ask him?" Roger pointed to Boyson. 

"Is there any legal way, Boyson, in which I can recover the custody andcompanionship of my child?"

Boyson turned away. 

"None that I know of--and I have made every possible inquiry. "

"And yet, " said Barnes, with emphasis, addressing the English barrister, "by the law of England I am still Daphne's husband and that child'slegal guardian?"

"Certainly. "

"And if I could once get her upon ground under the English flag, shewould be mine again, and no power could take her from me?"

"Except the same private violence that you yourself propose toexercise. "

"I'd take care of that!" said Roger briefly. 

"How do you mean to do it?" asked French, with knit brows. To be sittingthere in an English vicarage plotting violence against a woman disturbedhim. 

"He and I'll manage it, " said the quiet voice of the American officer. 

The others stared. 

"_You?_" said French. "An officer in active service? It might injureyour career!"

"I shall risk it. "

A charming smile broke on Penrose's meditative face. 

"My dear French, this is much more amusing than the law. But I don'tquite see where _I_ come in. " He rose tentatively from his seat. 

Boyson, however, did not smile. He looked from one to the other. 

"My sister and I introduced Daphne Floyd to Barnes, " he said steadily, "and it is my country, as I hold, --or a portion of it--that allows thesevillainies. Some day we shall get a great reaction in the States, andthen the reforms that plenty of us are clamouring for will come about. Meanwhile, as of course you know"--he addressed French--"New Yorkers andBostonians suffer almost as much from the abomination that Nevada andSouth Dakota call laws, as Barnes has suffered. Marriage in the EasternStates is as sacred as with you--South Carolina allows no divorce atall--but with this licence at our gates, no one is safe, and thousandsof our women, in particular--for the women bring two-thirds of theactions--are going to the deuce, simply because they have theopportunity of going. And the children--it doesn't bear thinking of!Well--no good haranguing! I'm ashamed of my country in this matter--Ihave been for a long time--and I mean to help Barnes out, _coûte quecoûte_! And as to the money, Barnes, you and I'll discuss that. "

Barnes lifted a face that quivered, and he and Boyson exchanged looks. 

Penrose glanced at the pair. That imaginative power, combined with thepower of drudgery, which was in process of making a great lawyer out ofa Balliol scholar, showed him something typical and dramatic in the twofigures:--in Boyson, on the one hand, so lithe, serviceable, andresolved, a helpful, mercurial man, ashamed of his country in this onerespect, because he adored her in so many others, penitent and patriotin one:--in Barnes, on the other, so heavy, inert, and bewildered, aship-wrecked suppliant as it were, clinging to the knees of that veryAmerica which had so lightly and irresponsibly wronged him. 

It was Penrose who broke the silence. 

"Is there any chance of Mrs. Barnes's marrying again?" he asked. 

Barnes turned to him. 

"Not that I know of. "

"There's no one else in the case?"

"I never heard of anyone. " Roger gave a short, excited laugh. "Whatshe's done, she's done because she was tired of me, not because she wasin love with anyone else. That was her great score in the divorcecase--that there was nobody. "

Biting and twisting his lip, in a trick that recalled to French thebeautiful Eton lad, cracking his brains in pupil-room over a bit ofLatin prose, Roger glanced, frowning, from one to the other of thesethree men who felt for him, whose resentment of the wrong that had beendone him, whose pity for his calamity showed plainly enough throughtheir reticent speech. 

His sense, indeed, of their sympathy began to move him, to break downhis own self-command. No doubt, also, the fatal causes that ultimatelyruined his will-power were already at work. At any rate, he broke outinto sudden speech about his case. His complexion, now unhealthilydelicate, like the complexion of a girl, had flushed deeply. As he spokehe looked mainly at French. 

"There's lots of things you don't know, " he said in a hesitating voice, as though appealing to his old friend. And rapidly he told the story ofDaphne's flight from Heston. Evidently since his return home manydetails that were once obscure had become plain to him; and the threelisteners could perceive how certain new information had goaded, andstung him afresh. He dwelt on the letters which had reached him duringhis first week's absence from home, after the quarrel--letters fromDaphne and Miss Farmer, which were posted at intervals from Heston bytheir accomplice, the young architect, while the writers of them werehurrying across the Atlantic. The servants had been told that Mrs. Barnes, Miss Farmer, and the little girl were going to London for a dayor two, and suspected nothing. "I wrote long letters--lots of them--tomy wife. I thought I had made everything right--not that there ever hadbeen anything wrong, you understand, --seriously. But in some ways I hadbehaved like a fool. "

He threw himself back in his chair, pressing his hands on his eyes. Thelisteners sat or stood motionless. 

"Well, I might have spared my pains. The letters were returned to mefrom the States. Daphne had arranged it all so cleverly that I was sometime in tracing her. By the time I had got to Sioux Falls she wasthrough a month of her necessary residence. My God!"--his voice dropped, became almost inaudible--"if I'd only carried Beatty off _then_!--thenand there--the frontier wasn't far off--without waiting for anythingmore. But I wouldn't believe that Daphne could persist in such amonstrous thing, and, if she did, that any decent country would aid andabet her. "

Boyson made a movement of protest, as though he could not listen anylonger in silence. 

"I am ashamed to remind you, Barnes, --again--that your case is no worsethan that of scores of American citizens. We are the first to sufferfrom our own enormities. "

"Perhaps, " said Barnes absently, "perhaps. "

His impulse of speech dropped. He sat, drearily staring into the fire, absorbed in recollection. 

 * * * * *

Penrose had gone. So had Boyson. Roger was sitting by the fire in thevicar's study, ministered to by Elsie French and her children. By commonconsent the dismal subject of the day had been put aside. There was anattempt to cheer and distract him. The little boy of four was on hisknee, declaiming the "Owl and the Pussy Cat, " while Roger submissivelyturned the pages and pointed to the pictures of that immortal history. The little girl of two, curled up on her mother's lap close by, listenedsleepily, and Elsie, applauding and prompting as a properly regulatedmother should, was all the time, in spirit, hovering pitifully about herguest and his plight. There was in her, as in Boyson, a touch ofpatriotic remorse; and all the pieties of her own being, all the sacredmemories of her own life, combined to rouse in her indignation andsympathy for Herbert's poor friend. The thought of what Daphne Barneshad done was to her a monstrosity hardly to be named. She spoke to theyoung man kindly and shyly, as though she feared lest any chance wordmight wound him; she was the symbol, in her young motherliness, of allthat Daphne had denied and forsaken. "When would America--dear, dearAmerica!--see to it that such things were made impossible!"

Roger meanwhile was evidently cheered and braced. The thought of theinterview to which Boyson had confidentially bidden him on the morrowran warmly in his veins, and the children soothed him. The little boyespecially, who was just Beatty's age, excited in him a number ofpractical curiosities. How about the last teeth? He actually inserted acoaxing and inquiring finger, the babe gravely suffering it. Any troublewith them? Beatty had once been very ill with hers, at Philadelphia, mostly caused, however, by some beastly, indigestible food that thenurse had let her have. And they allowed her to sit up much too late. Didn't Mrs. French think seven o'clock was late enough for any child notyet four? One couldn't say that Beatty was a very robust child, buthealthy--oh yes, healthy!--none of your sickly, rickety little things. 

The curtains had been closed. The street children, the electric lightoutside, were no longer visible. Roger had begun to talk of departure, the baby had fallen fast asleep in her mother's arms, when there wasanother loud ring at the front door. 

French, who was expecting the headmaster of his church schools, gatheredup some papers and left the room. His wife, startled by what seemed anexclamation from him in the hall outside, raised her head a moment tolisten; but the sound of voices--surely a woman's voice?--died abruptlyaway, and the door of the dining-room closed. Roger heard nothing; hewas laughing and crooning over the boy. 

 "The Pobble that lost his toes Had once as many as we. "

The door opened. Herbert stood on the threshold beckoning to her. Sherose in terror, the child in her arms, and went out to him. In a minuteshe reappeared in the doorway, her face ashen-white, and called to thelittle boy. He ran to her, and Roger rose, looking for the hat he hadput down on entering. 

Then French came in, and behind him a lady in black, dishevelled, bathedin tears. The vicar hung back. Roger turned in astonishment. 

"Mother! You here? Mother!"--he hurried to her--"what's the matter?"

She tottered toward him with outstretched hands. 

"Oh Roger, Roger!"

His name died away in a wail as she clasped him. 

"What is it, mother?"

"It's Beatty--my son!--my darling Roger!" She put up her handspiteously, bending his head down to her. "It's a cable from Washington, from that woman, Mrs. Verrier. They did everything, Roger--it was onlythree days--and hopeless always. Yesterday convulsion came on--and thismorning----" Her head dropped against her son's breast as her voicefailed her. He put her roughly from him. 

"What are you talking of, mother! Do you mean that Beatty has been ill?"

"She died last night. Roger--my darling son--my poor Roger!"

"Died--last night--Beatty?"

French in silence handed him the telegram. Roger disengaged himself andwalked to the fireplace, standing motionless, with his back to them, fora minute, while they held their breaths. Then he began to grope againfor his hat, without a word. 

"Come home with me, Roger!" implored his mother, pursuing him. "We mustbear it--bear it together. You see--she didn't suffer"--she pointed tothe message--"the darling!--the darling!"

Her voice lost itself in tears. But Roger brushed her away, as thoughresenting her emotion, and made for the door. 

French also put out a hand. 

"Roger, dear, dear old fellow! Stay here with us--with your mother. Where are you going?"

Roger looked at his watch unsteadily. 

"The office will be closed, " he said to himself; "but I can put somethings together. "

"Where are you going, Roger?" cried Lady Barnes, pursuing him. Rogerfaced her. 

"It's Tuesday. There'll be a White Star boat to-morrow. "

"But, Roger, what can you do? She's gone, dear--she's gone. And beforeyou can get there--long before--she will be in her grave. "

A spasm passed over his face, into which the colour rushed. Withoutanother word he wrenched himself from her, opened the front door, andran out into the night. 

CHAPTER X

"Was there ever anything so poetic, so suggestive?" said a charmingvoice. "One might make a new Turner out of it--if one just happened tobe Turner!--to match 'Rain: Steam, and Speed. '"

"What would you call it--'Mist, Light, and Spring'?"

Captain Boyson leant forward, partly to watch the wonderful landscapeeffect through which the train was passing, partly because his youngwife's profile, her pure cheek and soft hair, were so agreeably seenunder the mingled light from outside. 

They were returning from their wedding journey. Some six weeks beforethis date Boyson had married in Philadelphia a girl coming from one ofthe old Quaker stocks of that town, in whose tender steadfastness ofcharacter a man inclined both by nature and experience to expect littlefrom life had found a happiness that amazed him. 

The bridegroom, also, had just been appointed to the MilitaryAttachéship at the Berlin Embassy, and the couple were, in fact, ontheir way south to New York and embarkation. But there were still a fewdays left of the honeymoon, of which they had spent the last half inCanada, and on this May night they were journeying from Toronto alongthe southern shore of Lake Ontario to the pleasant Canadian hotel whichoverlooks the pageant of Niagara. They had left Toronto in brightsunshine, but as they turned the corner of the lake westward, a whitefog had come creeping over the land as the sunset fell. 

But the daylight was still strong, the fog thin; so that it appearedrather as a veil of gold, amethyst, and opal, floating over the country, now parting altogether, now blotting out the orchards and the fields. And into the colour above melted the colour below. For the orchards thatcover the Hamilton district of Ontario were in bloom, and the snow ofthe pear-trees, the flush of the peach-blossom broke everywhere throughthe warm cloud of pearly mist; while, just as Mrs. Boyson spoke, thetrain had come in sight of the long flashing line of the Welland Canal, which wound its way, outlined by huge electric lamps, through the sunsetand the fog, till the lights died in that northern distance wherestretched the invisible shore of the great lake. The glitteringwaterway, speaking of the labour and commerce of men, the blossom-ladenearth, the white approaching mist, the softly falling night:--thegirl-bride could not tear herself from the spectacle. She sat beside thewindow entranced. But her husband had captured her hand, and into theoverflowing beauty of nature there stole the thrill of their love. 

"All very well!" said Boyson presently. "But a fog at Niagara is nojoke!"

The night stole on, and the cloud through which they journeyed grewdenser. Up crept the fog, on stole the night. The lights of the canalfaded, the orchards sank into darkness, and when the bride andbridegroom reached the station on the Canadian side the bride's pleasurehad become dismay. 

"Oh, Alfred, we shan't see anything!"

And, indeed, as their carriage made its slow progress along the roadthat skirts the gorge, they seemed to plunge deeper and deeper into thefog. A white darkness, as though of impenetrable yet glimmering cloud, above and around them; a white abyss beneath them; and issuing from itthe thunderous voice of wild waters, dim first and distant, but growingsteadily in volume and terror. 

"There are the lights of the bridge!" cried Boyson, "and the towers ofthe aluminum works. But not a vestige of the Falls! Gone! Wiped out! Isay, darling, this is going to be a disappointment. "

Mrs. Boyson, however, was not so sure. The lovely "nocturne" of theevening plain had passed into a Vision or Masque of Force that capturedthe mind. High above the gulf rose the towers of the great works, transformed by the surging fog and darkness into some piled and castledfortress; a fortress of Science held by Intelligence. Lights were in thetowers, as of genii at their work; lights glimmered here and there onthe face of the farther cliff, as though to measure the vastness of thegorge and of that resounding vacancy towards which they moved. In front, the arch of the vast suspension bridge, pricked in light, crossed thegulf, from nothingness to nothingness, like that sky bridge on which thegods marched to Walhalla. Otherwise, no shape, no landmark; earth andheaven had disappeared. 

"Here we are at the hotel, " said Boyson. "There, my dear, "--he pointedironically--"is the American Fall, and there--is the Canadian! Let meintroduce you to Niagara!"

They jumped out of the carriage, and while their bags were being carriedin they ran to the parapeted edge of the cliff in front of the hotel. Niagara thundered in their ears; the spray of it beat upon their faces;but of the two great Falls immediately in front of them they saw nothingwhatever. The fog, now cold and clammy, enwrapped them; even the brightlights of the hotel, but a stone's throw distant, were barely visible;and the carriage still standing at the steps had vanished. 

Suddenly, some common impulse born of the moment and the scene--of itsinhuman ghostliness and grandeur--drew them to each other. Boyson threwhis arm round his young wife and pressed her to him, kissing her faceand hair, bedewed by the spray. She clung to him passionately, tremblinga little, as the roar deafened them and the fog swept round them. 

 * * * * *

As the Boysons lingered in the central hall of the hotel, reading someletters which had been handed to them, a lady in black passed along thegallery overhead and paused a moment to look at the new arrivals broughtby the evening train. 

As she perceived Captain Boyson there was a quick, startled movement;she bent a moment over the staircase, as though to make sure of hisidentity, and then ran along the gallery to a room at the farther end. As she opened the door a damp cold air streamed upon her, and thethunder of the Falls, with which the hotel is perpetually filled, seemedto redouble. 

Three large windows opposite to her were, in fact, wide open; the room, with its lights dimmed by fog, seemed hung above the abyss. 

An invalid couch stood in front of the window, and upon it lay a pale, emaciated woman, breathing quickly and feebly. At the sound of theclosing door, Madeleine Verrier turned. 

"Oh, Daphne, I was afraid you had gone out! You do such wild things!"

Daphne Barnes came to the side of the couch. 

"Darling, I only went to speak to your maid for a moment. Are you sureyou can stand all this damp fog?"

As she spoke Daphne took up a fur cloak lying on a chair near, andwrapped herself warmly in it. 

"I can't breathe when they shut the windows. But it is too cold foryou. "

"Oh, I'm all right in this. " Daphne drew the cloak round her. 

Inwardly she said to herself, "Shall I tell her the Boysons are here?Yes, I must. She is sure to hear it in some way. "

So, stooping over the couch, she said:

"Do you know who arrived this evening? The Alfred Boysons. I saw them inthe hall just now. "

"They're on their honeymoon?" asked the faint voice, after a justperceptible pause. 

Daphne assented. "She seems a pretty little thing. "

Madeleine Verrier opened her tired eyes to look at Daphne. Mrs. Floyd--as Daphne now called herself--was dressed in deep black. Thecostly gown revealed a figure which had recently become substantial, andthe face on which the electric light shone had nothing left in it of thegirl, though Daphne Floyd was not yet thirty. The initial beauty ofcomplexion was gone; so was the fleeting prettiness of youth. The eyeswere as splendid as ever, but combined with the increased paleness ofthe cheeks, the greater prominence and determination of the mouth, and acertain austerity in the dressing of the hair, which was now firmlydrawn back from the temples round which it used to curl, and worn high, _à la Marquise_, they expressed a personality--a formidablepersonality--in which self-will was no longer graceful, and power nolonger magnetic. Madeleine Verrier gazed at her friend in silence. Shewas very grateful to Daphne, often very dependent on her. But there weremoments when she shrank from her, when she would gladly never have seenher again. Daphne was still erect, self-confident, militant; whereasMadeleine knew herself vanquished--vanquished both in body and soul. 

Certain inner miseries and discomforts had been set vibrating by thename of Captain Boyson. 

"You won't want to see him or come across him?" she said abruptly. 

"Who? Alfred Boyson? I am not afraid of him in the least. He may saywhat he pleases--or think what he pleases. It doesn't matter to me. "

"When did you see him last?"

Daphne hesitated a moment. "When he came to ask me for certain thingswhich had belonged to Beatty. "

"For Roger? I remember. It must have been painful. "

"Yes, " said Daphne unwillingly, "it was. He was very unfriendly. Healways has been--since it happened. But I bore him no malice"--the tonewas firm--"and the interview was short. "

"----" The half inaudible word fell like a sigh from Madeleine's lips asshe closed her eyes again to shut out the light which teased them. Andpresently she added, "Do you ever hear anything now--from England?"

"Just what I might expect to hear--what more than justifies all that Idid. "

Daphne sat rigid on her chair, her hands crossed on her lap. Mrs. Verrier did not pursue the conversation. 

Outside the fog grew thicker and darker. Even the lights on the bridgewere now engulfed. Daphne began to shiver in her fur cloak. She put outa cold hand and took one of Mrs. Verrier's. 

"Dear Madeleine! Indeed, indeed, you ought to let me move you from thisplace. Do let me! There's the house at Stockbridge all ready. And inJuly I could take you to Newport. I must be off next week, for I'vepromised to take the chair at a big meeting at Buffalo on the 29th. ButI can't bear to leave you behind. We could make the journey quite easyfor you. That new car of mine is very comfortable. "

"I know it is. But, thank you, dear, I like this hotel; and it will besummer directly. "

Daphne hesitated. A strong protest against "morbidness" was on her lips, but she did not speak it. In the mist-filled room even the bright fire, the electric lights, had grown strangely dim. Only the roar outside wasreal--terribly, threateningly real. Yet the sound was not so much fierceas lamentable; the voice of Nature mourning the eternal flow andconflict at the heart of things. Daphne knew well that, mingled withthis primitive, cosmic voice, there was--for Madeleine Verrier--another;a plaintive, human cry, that was drawing the life out of her breast, theblood from her veins, like some baneful witchcraft of old. But she darednot speak of it; she and the doctor who attended Mrs. Verrier dared nolonger name the patient's "obsession" even to each other. They had triedto combat it, to tear her from this place; with no other result, as itseemed, than to hasten the death-process which was upon her. Gently, butfirmly, she had defied them, and they knew now that she would alwaysdefy them. For a year past, summer and winter, she had lived in thisapartment facing the Falls; her nurses found her very patient under theincurable disease which had declared itself; Daphne came to stay withher when arduous engagements allowed, and Madeleine was always gratefuland affectionate. But certain topics, and certain advocacies, haddropped out of their conversation--not by Daphne's will. There had beenno spoken recantation; only the prophetess prophesied no more; and oflate, especially when Daphne was not there--so Mrs. Floyd haddiscovered--a Roman Catholic priest had begun to visit Mrs. Verrier. Daphne, moreover, had recently noticed a small crucifix, hidden amongthe folds of the loose black dress which Madeleine commonly wore. 

 * * * * *

Daphne had changed her dress and dismissed her maid. Although it wasMay, a wood-fire had been lighted in her room to counteract the chillydamp of the evening. She hung over it, loth to go back to thesitting-room, and plagued by a depression that not even her strong willcould immediately shake off. She wished the Boysons had not come. Shesupposed that Alfred Boyson would hardly cut her; but she was tolerablycertain that he would not wish his young wife to become acquainted withher. She scorned his disapproval of her; but she smarted under it. Itcombined with Madeleine's strange delusions to put her on the defensive;to call out all the fierceness of her pride; to make her feel herselfthe champion of a sound and reasonable view of life as against weaknessand reaction. 

Madeleine's dumb remorse was, indeed, the most paralyzing and bafflingthing; nothing seemed to be of any avail against it, now that it hadfinally gained the upper hand. There had been dark times, no doubt, inthe old days in Washington; times when the tragedy of her husband'sdeath had overshadowed her. But in the intervals, what courage andboldness, what ardour in the declaration of that new Feminist gospel towhich Daphne had in her own case borne witness! Daphne remembered wellwith what feverish readiness Madeleine had accepted her own pleas afterher flight from England; how she had defended her against hostilecriticism, had supported her during the divorce court proceedings, andtriumphed in their result. "You are unhappy? And he deceived you? Well, then, what more do you want? Free yourself, my dear, free yourself! Whatright have you to bear more children to a man who is a liar and ashuffler? It is our generation that must suffer, for the liberty ofthose that come after!"

What had changed her? Was it simply the approach of mortal illness, theold questioning of "what dreams may come"? Superstition, in fact? As agirl she had been mystical and devout; so Daphne had heard. 

Or was it the death of little Beatty, to whom she was much attached? Shehad seen something of Roger during that intermediate Philadelphia stage, when he and Beatty were allowed to meet at her house; and she had onceor twice astonished and wounded Daphne at that time by suddenexpressions of pity for him. It was she who had sent the cable messageannouncing the child's death, wording it as gently as possible, and hadwept in sending it. 

"As if I hadn't suffered too!" cried Daphne's angry thought. And sheturned to look at the beautiful miniature of Beatty set in pearls thatstood upon her dressing-table. There was something in the recollectionof Madeleine's sensibility with regard to the child--as in that of hercompassion for the father's suffering--that offended Daphne. It seemed areflection upon herself, Beatty's mother, as lacking in softness andnatural feeling. 

On the contrary! She had suffered terribly; but she had thought it herduty to bear it with courage, not to let it interfere with thedevelopment of her life. And as for Roger, was it her fault that he hadmade it impossible for her to keep her promise? That she had been forcedto separate Beatty from him? And if, as she understood now from variousEnglish correspondents, it was true that Roger had dropped out of decentsociety, did it not simply prove that she had guessed his characteraright, and had only saved herself just in time?

It was as though the sudden presence of Captain Boyson under the sameroof had raised up a shadowy adversary and accuser, with whom she mustgo on thus arguing, and hotly defending herself, in a growingexcitement. Not that she would ever stoop to argue with Alfred Boysonface to face. How could he ever understand the ideals to which she haddevoted her powers and her money since the break-up of her married life?He could merely estimate what she had done in the commonest, vulgarestway. Yet who could truthfully charge her with having obtained herdivorce in order thereby to claim any fresh licence for herself? Shelooked back now with a cool amazement on that sudden rush of passionwhich had swept her into marriage, no less than the jealousy which hadled her to break with Roger. She was still capable of many kinds ofviolence; but not, probably, of the violence of love. The influence ofsex and sense upon her had weakened; the influence of ambition hadincreased. As in many women of Southern race, the period of hot bloodhad passed into a period of intrigue and domination. Her wealth gave herpower, and for that power she lived. 

Yes, she was personally desolate, but she had stood firm, and her rewardlay in the fact that she had gathered round her an army of dependentsand followers--women especially--to whom her money and her brains wereindispensable. There on the table lay the plans for a new Women'sCollege, on the broadest and most modern lines, to which she was soon todevote a large sum of money. The walls should have been up by now butfor a quarrel with her secretary, who had become much too independent, and had had to be peremptorily dismissed at a moment's notice. But theplan was a noble one, approved by the highest authorities; and Daphne, looking to posterity, anticipated the recognition that she herself mightnever live to see. For the rest she had given herself--withreservations--to the Feminist movement. It was not in her nature to giveherself wholly to anything; and she was instinctively critical of peoplewho professed to be her leaders, and programmes to which she wasexpected to subscribe. Wholehearted devotion, which, as she rightlysaid, meant blind devotion, had never been her line; and she had been onone or two occasions offensively outspoken on the subject of certainleading persons in the movement. She was not, therefore, popular withher party, and did not care to be; her pride of money held her apartfrom the rank and file, the college girls, and typists, and journalistswho filled the Feminist meetings, and often made themselves, in hereyes, supremely ridiculous, because of what she considered their sillyprovinciality and lack of knowledge of the world. 

Yet, of course, she was a "Feminist"--and particularly associated withthose persons in the suffrage camp who stood for broad views on marriageand divorce. She knew very well that many other persons in the same campheld different opinions; and in public or official gatherings was alwaysnervously--most people thought arrogantly--on the look-out for affronts. Meanwhile, everywhere, or almost everywhere, her money gave her power, and her knowledge of it was always sweet to her. There was nothing inthe world--no cause, no faith--that she could have accepted "as a littlechild. " But everywhere, in her own opinion, she stood for Justice;justice for women as against the old primæval tyranny of men; justice, of course, to the workman, and justice to the rich. No foolishSocialism, and no encroaching Trusts! A lucid common sense, so it seemedto her, had been her cradle-gift. 

And with regard to Art, how much she had been able to do! She hadgenerously helped the public collections, and her own small gallery, atthe house in Newport, was famous throughout England and America. That inthe course of the preceding year she had found among the signatures, extracted from visitors by the custodian in charge, the name of ChloeFairmile, had given her a peculiar satisfaction. 

She walked proudly across the room, her head thrown back, every nervetense. Let the ignorant and stupid blame her if they chose. She stoodabsolved. Memory reminded her, moreover, of a great number of kind andgenerous things--private things--that she had done with her money. Ifmen like Herbert French, or Alfred Boyson, denounced her, there weremany persons who felt warmly towards her--and had cause. As she thoughtof them the tears rose in her eyes. Of course she could never make suchthings public. 

Outside the fog seemed to be lifting a little. There was a silvery lightin the southeast, a gleam and radiance over the gorge. If the moonstruggled through, it would be worth while slipping out after dinner towatch its play upon the great spectacle. She was careful to cherish inherself an openness to noble impressions and to the high poetry ofnature and life. And she must not allow herself to be led by the casualneighbourhood of the Boysons into weak or unprofitable thought. 

 * * * * *

The Boysons dined at a table, gay with lights and flowers, that shouldhave commanded the Falls but for the curtain of fog. Niagara, however, might flout them if it pleased; they could do without Niagara. They weredelighted that the hotel, apparently, contained no one they knew. Allthey wanted was to be together, and alone. But the bride was tired by along day in the train; her smiles began presently to flag, and by nineo'clock her husband had insisted on sending her to rest. 

After escorting her upstairs Captain Boyson returned to the veranda, which was brightly lit up, in order to read some letters that were stillunopened in his pocket. But before he began upon them he was seized oncemore by the wizardry of the scene. Was that indistinct glimmer in thefar distance--that intenser white on white--the eternal cloud of spraythat hangs over the Canadian Fall? If so, the fog was indeed yielding, and the full moon behind it would triumph before long. On the otherhand, he could no longer see the lights of the bridge at all; therolling vapour choked the gorge, and the waiter who brought him hiscoffee drily prophesied that there would not be much change undertwenty-four hours. 

He fell back upon his letters, well pleased to see that one among themcame from Herbert French, with whom the American officer had maintaineda warm friendship since the day of a certain consultation in French'sEast-End library. The letter was primarily one of congratulation, written with all French's charm and sympathy; but over the last pages ofit Boyson's face darkened, for they contained a deplorable account ofthe man whom he and French had tried to save. 

The concluding passage of the letter ran as follows:

 "You will scarcely wonder after all this that we see him very seldom, and that he no longer gives us his confidence. Yet both Elsie and I feel that he cares for us as much as ever. And, indeed, poor fellow, he himself remains strangely lovable, in spite of what one must--alas!--believe as to his ways of life and the people with whom he associates. There is in him, always, something of what Meyers called 'the imperishable child. ' That a man who might have been so easily led to good has been so fatally thrust into evil is one of the abiding sorrows of my life. How can I reproach him for his behaviour? As the law stands, he can never marry; he can never have legitimate children. Under the wrong he has suffered, and, no doubt, in consequence of that illness in New York, when he was badly nursed and cared for--from which, in fact, he has never wholly recovered--his will-power and nerve, which were never very strong, have given way; he broods upon the past perpetually, and on the loss of his child. Our poor Apollo, Boyson, will soon have lost himself wholly, and there is no one to help. 

 "Do you ever see or hear anything of that woman? Do you know what has become of her? I see you are to have a Conference on your Divorce Laws--that opinion and indignation are rising. For Heaven's sake, do something! I gather some appalling facts from a recent Washington report. One in twelve of all your marriages dissolved! A man or a woman divorced in one state, and still bound in another! The most trivial causes for the break-up of marriage, accepted and acted upon by corrupt courts, and reform blocked by a phalanx of corrupt interests! Is it all true? An American correspondent of mine--a lady--repeats to me what you once said, that it is the women who bring the majority of the actions. She impresses upon me also the remarkable fact that it is apparently only in a minority of cases that a woman, when she has got rid of her husband, marries someone else. It is not passion, therefore, that dictates many of these actions; no serious cause or feeling, indeed, of any kind; but rather an ever-spreading restlessness and levity, a readiness to tamper with the very foundations of society, for a whim, a nothing!--in the interests, of ten, of what women call their 'individuality'! No foolish talk here of being 'members one of another'! We have outgrown all that. The facilities are always there, and the temptation of them. 'The women--especially--who do these things, ' she writes me, 'are moral anarchists. One can appeal to nothing; they acknowledge nothing. Transformations infinitely far-reaching and profound are going on among us. "

 "'_Appeal to nothing!_' And this said of women, by a woman! It was of _men_ that a Voice said long ago: 'Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives'--on just such grounds apparently--trivial and cruel pretexts--as your American courts admit. 'But _I_ say unto you!--_I say unto you!_'... 

 "Well, I am a Christian priest, incapable, of course, of an unbiassed opinion. My correspondent tries to explain the situation a little by pointing out that your women in America claim to be the superiors of your men, to be more intellectual, better-mannered, more refined. Marriage disappoints or disgusts them, and they impatiently put it aside. They break it up, and seem to pay no penalty. But you and I believe that they will pay it!--that there are divine avenging forces in the very law they tamper with--and that, as a nation, you must either retrace some of the steps taken, or sink in the scale of life. 

 "How I run on! And all because my heart is hot within me for the suffering of one man, and the hardness of one woman!"

Boyson raised his eyes. As he did so he saw dimly through the mist thefigure of a lady, veiled, and wrapped in a fur cloak, crossing thefarther end of the veranda. He half rose from his seat, with anexclamation. She ran down the steps leading to the road and disappearedin the fog. 

Boyson stood looking after her, his mind in a whirl. 

The manager of the hotel came hurriedly out of the same door by whichDaphne Floyd had emerged, and spoke to a waiter on the veranda, pointingin the direction she had taken. 

Boyson heard what was said, and came up. A short conversation passedbetween him and the manager. There was a moment's pause on Boyson'spart; he still held French's letter in his hand. At last, thrusting itinto his pocket, he hurried to the steps whereby Daphne had left thehotel, and pursued her into the cloud outside. 

The fog was now rolling back from the gorge, upon the Falls, blottingout the transient gleams which had seemed to promise a lifting of theveil, leaving nothing around or beneath but the white and thunderousabyss. 

CHAPTER XI

Daphne's purpose in quitting the hotel had been to find her way up theriver by the road which runs along the gorge on the Canadian side, fromthe hotel to the Canadian Fall. Thick as the fog still was in the gorgeshe hoped to find some clearer air beyond it. She felt oppressed andstifled; and though she had told Madeleine that she was going out insearch of effects and spectacle, it was in truth the neighbourhood ofAlfred Boyson which had made her restless. 

The road was lit at intervals by electric lamps, but after a time shefound the passage of it not particularly easy. Some repairs to thetramway lines were going on higher up, and she narrowly escaped variouspitfalls in the shape of trenches and holes in the roadway, veryinsufficiently marked by feeble lamps. But the stir in her blood droveher on; so did the strangeness of this white darkness, suffused withmoonlight, yet in this immediate neighbourhood of the Falls, impenetrable. She was impatient to get through it; to breathe anunembarrassed air. 

The roar at her left hand grew wilder. She had reached a point somedistance from the hotel, close to the jutting corner, once open, nowwalled and protected, where the traveller approaches nearest to the edgeof the Canadian Fall. She knew the spot well, and groping for the wall, she stood breathless and spray-beaten beside the gulf. 

Only a few yards from her the vast sheet of water descended. She couldsee nothing of it, but the wind of its mighty plunge blew back her hair, and her mackintosh cloak was soon dripping with the spray. Once, faraway, above the Falls, she seemed to perceive a few dim lights along thebend of the river; perhaps from one of the great power-houses that tameto man's service the spirits of the water. Otherwise--nothing! She wasalone with the perpetual challenge and fascination of the Falls. 

As she stood there she was seized by a tragic recollection. It was fromthis spot, so she believed, that Leopold Verrier had thrown himselfover. The body had been carried down through the rapids, and recovered, terribly injured, in the deep eddying pool which the river makes belowthem. He had left no letter or message of any sort behind him. But thereasons for his suicide were clearly understood by a large public, whosemain verdict upon it was the quiet "What else could he do?"

Here, then, on this very spot, he had stood before his leap. Daphne hadheard him described by various spectators of the marriage. He had been, it seemed, a man of sensitive temperament, who should have been anartist and was a man of business; a considerable musician, and somethingof a poet; proud of his race and faith and himself irreproachable, yetperpetually wounded through his family, which bore a name of ill-reputein the New York business world; passionately grateful to his wife forhaving married him, delighting in her beauty and charm, and foolishly, abjectly eager to heap upon her and their child everything that wealthcould buy. 

"It was Madeleine's mother who made it hopeless, " thought Daphne. "Butfor Mrs. Fanshaw--it might have lasted. "

And memory called up Mrs. Fanshaw, the beautifully dressed woman offifty, with her pride of wealth and family, belonging to the strictestsect of New York's social _élite_, with her hard, fastidious face, herformidable elegance and self-possession. How she had loathed themarriage! And with what a harpy-like eagerness had she seized on thefirst signs of Madeleine's discontent and _ennui_; persuaded her to comehome; prepared the divorce; poisoned public opinion. It was from a lastinterview with Mrs. Fanshaw that Leopold Verrier had gone straight tohis death. What was it that she had said to him?

Daphne lingered on the question; haunted, too, by other strayrecollections of the dismal story--the doctor driving by in the earlymorning who had seen the fall; the discovery of the poor broken body;Madeleine's blanched stoicism, under the fierce coercion of her mother;and that strong, silent, slow-setting tide of public condemnation, whichin this instance, at least, had avenged a cruel act. 

But at this point Daphne ceased to think about her friend. She foundherself suddenly engaged in a heated self-defence. What comparison couldthere be between her case and Madeleine's?

Fiercely she found herself going through the list of Roger's crimes; hisidleness, treachery and deceit; his lack of any high ideals; his badinfluence on the child; his luxurious self-indulgent habits, the lies hehad told, the insults he had offered her. By now the story had grown toa lurid whole in her imagination, based on a few distorted facts, yetradically and monstrously untrue. Generally, however, when she dweltupon it, it had power to soothe any smart of conscience, to harden anyyearning of the heart, supposing she felt any. And by now she had almostceased to feel any. 

But to-night she was mysteriously shaken and agitated. As she clung tothe wall, which alone separated her from the echoing gulf beyond, shecould not prevent herself from thinking of Roger, Roger as he was whenAlfred Boyson introduced him to her, when they first married, and shehad been blissfully happy; happy in the possession of such a god-likecreature, in the envy of other women, in the belief that he was growingmore and more truly attached to her. 

Her thoughts broke abruptly. "He married me for money!" cried the inwardvoice. Then she felt her cheeks tingling as she remembered herconversation with Madeleine on that very subject--how she had justifiedwhat she was now judging--how plainly she had understood and condonedit. 

"That was my inexperience! Besides, I knew nothing then of ChloeFairmile. If I had--I should never have done it. "

She turned, startled. Steps seemed to be approaching her, of someone asyet invisible. Her nerves were all on edge, and she felt suddenlyfrightened. Strangers of all kinds visit and hang about Niagara; she wasquite alone, known to be the rich Mrs. Floyd; if she were attacked--setupon----

The outline of a man's form emerged; she heard her name, or rather thename she had renounced. 

"I saw you come in this direction, Mrs. Barnes. I knew the road was upin some places, and I thought in this fog you would allow me to warn youthat walking was not very safe. "

The voice was Captain Boyson's; and they were now plain to each other asthey stood a couple of yards apart. The fog, however, was at lastslightly breaking. There was a gleam over the nearer water; not merelythe lights, but the span of the bridge had begun to appear. 

Daphne composed herself with an effort. 

"I am greatly obliged to you, " she said in her most freezing manner. "But I found no difficulty at all in getting through, and the fog islifting. "

With a stiff inclination she turned in the direction of the hotel, butCaptain Boyson stood in her way. She saw a face embarrassed yetresolved. 

"Mrs. Barnes, may I speak to you a few minutes?"

Daphne gave a slight laugh. 

"I don't see how I can prevent it. So you didn't follow me, CaptainBoyson, out of mere regard for my personal safety?"

"If I hadn't come myself I should have sent someone, " he repliedquietly. "The hotel people were anxious. But I wished to come myself. Iconfess I had a very strong desire to speak to you. "

"There seems to be nothing and no one to interfere with it, " saidDaphne, in a tone of sarcasm. "I should be glad, however, with yourpermission, to turn homeward. I see Mrs. Boyson is here. You are, Isuppose, on your wedding journey?"

He moved out of her path, said a few conventional words, and they walkedon. A light wind had risen and the fog was now breaking rapidly. As itgave way, the moonlight poured into the breaches that the wind made; thevast black-and-silver spectacle, the Falls, the gorge, the townopposite, the bridge, the clouds, began to appear in fragments, grandiose and fantastical. 

Daphne, presently, seeing that Boyson was slow to speak, raised hereyebrows and attempted a remark on the scene. Boyson interrupted herhurriedly. 

"I imagine, Mrs. Barnes, that what I wish to say will seem to you apiece of insolence. All the same, for the sake of our former friendship, I would ask you to bear with me. "

"By all means!"

"I had no idea that you were in the hotel. About half an hour ago, onthe veranda, I opened an English letter which arrived this evening. Thenews in it gave me great concern. Then I saw you appear, to myastonishment, in the distance. I asked the hotel manager if it werereally you. He was about to send someone after you. An idea occurred tome. I saw my opportunity--and I pursued you. "

"And here I am, at your mercy!" said Daphne, with sudden sharpness. "Youhave left me no choice. However, I am quite willing. "

The voice was familiar yet strange. There was in it the indefinablehardening and ageing which seemed to Boyson to have affected the wholepersonality. What had happened to her? As he looked at her in the dimlight there rushed upon them both the memory of those three weeks by theseaside years before, when he had fallen in love with her, and she hadfirst trifled with, and then repulsed him. 

"I wished to ask you a question, in the name of our old friendship; andbecause I have also become a friend--as you know--of your husband. "

He felt, rather than saw, the start of anger in the woman beside him. 

"Captain Boyson! I cannot defend myself, but I would ask you torecognize ordinary courtesies. I have now no husband. "

"Of your husband, " he repeated, without hesitation, yet gently. "By thelaw of England at least, which you accepted, and under which you becamea British subject, you are still the wife of Roger Barnes, and he hasdone nothing whatever to forfeit his right to your wifely care. It isindeed of him and of his present state that I beg to be allowed to speakto you. "

He heard a little laugh beside him--unsteady and hysterical. 

"You beg for what you have already taken. I repeat, I am at your mercy. An American subject, Captain Boyson, knows nothing of the law ofEngland. I have recovered my American citizenship, and the law of mycountry has freed me from a degrading and disastrous marriage!"

"While Roger remains bound? Incapable, at the age of thirty, of marryingagain, unless he renounces his country--permanently debarred from homeand children!"

His pulse ran quick. It was a strange adventure, this, to which he hadcommitted himself!

"I have nothing to do with English law, nothing whatever! It is unjust, monstrous. But that was no reason why I, too, should suffer!"

"No reason for patience? No reason for pity?" said the man's voice, betraying emotion at last. "Mrs. Barnes, what do you know of Roger'spresent state?"

"I have no need to know anything. "

"It matters nothing to you? Nothing to you that he has lost health, andcharacter, and happiness, his child, his home, everything, owing to youraction?"

"Captain Boyson!" she cried, her composure giving way, "this isintolerable, outrageous! It is humiliating that you should even expectme to argue with you. Yet, " she bit her lip, angry with the agitationthat would assail her, "for the sake of our friendship to which youappeal, I would rather not be angry. What you say is monstrous!" hervoice shook. "In the first place, I freed myself from a man who marriedme for money. "

"One moment! Do you forget that from the day you left him Roger hasnever touched a farthing of your money? That he returned everything toyou?"

"I had nothing to do with that; it was his own folly. "

"Yes, but it throws light upon his character. Would a merefortune-hunter have done it? No, Mrs. Barnes!--that view of Roger doesnot really convince you, you do not really believe it. "

She smiled bitterly. 

"As it happens, in his letters to me after I left him, he amplyconfessed it. "

"Because his wish was to make peace, to throw himself at your feet. Heaccused himself, more than was just. But you do not really think himmercenary and greedy, you _know_ that he was neither! Mrs. Barnes, Rogeris ill and lonely. "

"His mode of life accounts for it. "

"You mean that he has begun to drink, has fallen into bad company. Thatmay be true. I cannot deny it. But consider. A man from whom everythingis torn at one blow; a man of not very strong character, not accustomedto endure hardness. --Does it never occur to you that you took afrightful responsibility?"

"I protected myself--and my child. "

He breathed deep. 

"Or rather--did you murder a life--that God had given you in trust?"

He paused, and she paused also, as though held by the power of his will. They were passing along the public garden that borders the road; scentsof lilac and fresh leaf floated over the damp grass; the moonlight wasgrowing in strength, and the majesty of the gorge, the roar of theleaping water all seemed to enter into the moral and human scene, toaccent and deepen it. 

Daphne suddenly clung to a seat beside the path, dropped into it. 

"Captain Boyson! I--I cannot bear this any longer. "

"I will not reproach you any more, " he said, quietly. "I beg yourpardon. The past is irrevocable, but the present is here. The man wholoved you, the father of your child, is alone, ill, poor, in danger ofmoral ruin, because of what you have done. I ask you to go to his aid. But first let me tell you exactly what I have just heard from England. "He repeated the greater part of French's letter, so far as it concernedRoger. 

"He has his mother, " said Daphne, when he paused, speaking with evidentphysical difficulty. 

"Lady Barnes I hear had a paralytic stroke two months ago. She isincapable of giving advice or help. "

"Of course, I am sorry. But Herbert French----"

"No one but a wife could save him--no one!" he repeated with emphasis. 

"I am _not_ his wife!" she insisted faintly. "I released myself byAmerican law. He is nothing to me. " As she spoke she leant back againstthe seat and closed her eyes. Boyson saw clearly that excitement andanger had struck down her nervous power, that she might faint or go intohysterics. Yet a man of remarkable courtesy and pitifulness towardswomen was not thereby moved from his purpose. He had his chance; hecould not relinquish it. Only there was something now in her attitudewhich recalled the young Daphne of years ago; which touched his heart. 

He sat down beside her. 

"Bear with me, Mrs. Barnes, for a few moments, while I put it as itappears to another mind. You became first jealous of Roger, for verysmall reason, then tired of him. Your marriage no longer satisfiedyou--you resolved to be quit of it; so you appealed to laws of which, asa nation, we are ashamed, which all that is best among us will, beforelong, rebel against and change. Our State system permits them--Americasuffers. In this case--forgive me if I put it once more as it appears tome--they have been used to strike at an Englishman who had absolutely nodefence, no redress. And now you are free; he remains bound--so long, atleast, as you form no other tie. Again I ask you, have you ever letyourself face what it means to a man of thirty to be cut off from lawfulmarriage and legitimate children? Mrs. Barnes! you know what a man is, his strength and his weakness. Are you really willing that Roger shouldsink into degradation in order that you may punish him for some offenceto your pride or your feeling? It may be too late! He may, as Frenchfears, have fallen into some fatal entanglement; it may not be possibleto restore his health. He may not be able"--he hesitated, then broughtthe words out firmly--"to forgive you. Or again, French's anxietiesabout him may be unfounded. But for God's sake go to him! Once onEnglish ground you are his wife again as though nothing had happened. For God's sake put every thing aside but the thought of the vow you oncemade to him! Go back! I implore you, go back! I promise you that nohappiness you have ever felt will be equal to the happiness that stepwould bring you, if only you are permitted to save him. "

Daphne was by now shaking from head to foot. The force of feeling whichimpelled him so mastered her that when he gravely took her hand she didnot withdraw it. She had a strange sense of having at last discoveredthe true self of the quiet, efficient, unpretending man she had knownfor so long and cast so easily aside. There was shock and excitement init, as there is in all trials of strength between a man and a woman. Shetried to hate and despise him, but she could not achieve it. She longedto answer and crush him, but her mind was a blank, her tongue refusedits office. Surprise, resentment, wounded feeling made a tumult anddarkness through which she could not find her way. 

She rose at last painfully from her seat. 

"This conversation must end, " she said brokenly. "Captain Boyson, Iappeal to you as a gentleman, let me go on alone. "

He looked at her sadly and stood aside. But as he saw her moveuncertainly toward a portion of the road where various trenches and pitsmade walking difficult, he darted after her. 

"Please!" he said peremptorily, "this bit is unsafe. "

He drew her hand within his arm and guided her. As he did so he saw thatshe was crying; no doubt, as he rightly guessed, from shaken nerves andwounded pride; for it did not seem to him that she had yielded at all. But this time he felt distress and compunction. 

"Forgive me!" he said, bending over her. "But think of what I havesaid--I beg of you! Be kind, be merciful!"

She made various attempts to speak, and at last she said, "I bear you nomalice. But you don't understand me, you never have. "

He offered no reply. They had reached the courtyard of the hotel. Daphnewithdrew her hand. When she reached the steps she preceded him withoutlooking back, and was soon lost to sight. 

Boyson shook his head, lit a cigar, and spent some time longer pacing upand down the veranda. When he went to his wife's room he found herasleep, a vision of soft youth and charm. He stood a few moments lookingdown upon her, wondering in himself at what he had done. Yet he knewvery well that it was the stirring and deepening of his whole beingproduced by love that had impelled him to do it. 

Next morning he told his wife. 

"Do you suppose I produced _any_ effect?" he asked her anxiously. "Ifshe really thinks over what I said, she _must_ be touched! unless she'smade of flint. I said all the wrong things--but I _did_ rub it in. "

"I'm sure you did, " said his wife, smiling. Then she looked at him witha critical tenderness. 

"You dear optimist!" she cried, and slipped her hand into his. 

"That means you think I behaved like a fool, and that my appeal won'tmove her in the least?"

The face beside him saddened. 

"Dear, dear optimist!" she repeated, and pressed his hand. He urged anexplanation of her epithet. But she only said, thoughtfully:

"You took a great responsibility!"

"Towards her?"

She shook her head. 

"No--towards him!"

Meanwhile Daphne was watching beside a death-bed. On her return from herwalk she had been met by the news of fresh and grave symptoms in Mrs. Verrier's case. A Boston doctor arrived the following morning. Themortal disease which had attacked her about a year before this date hadentered, so he reported, on its last phase. He talked of a fewdays--possibly hours. 

The Boysons departed, having left cards of inquiry and sympathy, ofwhich Mrs. Floyd took no notice. Then for Daphne there followed anightmare of waiting and pain. She loved Madeleine Verrier, as far asshe was capable of love, and she jealously wished to be all in all toher in these last hours. She would have liked to feel that it was shewho had carried her friend through them; who had nobly sustained her inthe dolorous past. To have been able to feel this would have been asbalm moreover to a piteously wounded self-love, to a smarting and bitterrecollection, which would not let her rest. 

But in these last days Madeleine escaped her altogether. A thin-facedpriest arrived, the same who had been visiting the invalid at intervalsfor a month or two. Mrs. Verrier was received into the Roman CatholicChurch; she made her first confession and communion; she saw her motherfor a short, final interview, and her little girl; and the physicalenergy required for these acts exhausted her small store. WheneverDaphne entered her room Madeleine received her tenderly; but she couldspeak but little, and Daphne felt herself shut out and ignored. What shesaid or thought was no longer, it seemed, of any account. She resentedand despised Madeleine's surrender to what she held to be a decayingsuperstition; and her haughty manner toward the mild Oratorian whom shemet occasionally on the stairs, or in the corridor, expressed herdisapproval. But it was impossible to argue with a dying woman. Shesuffered in silence. 

As she sat beside the patient, in the hours of narcotic sleep, when sherelieved one of the nurses, she went often through times of greatbitterness. She could not forgive the attack Captain Boyson had madeupon her; yet she could not forget it. It had so far roused her moralsense that it led her to a perpetual brooding over the past, a perpetualre-statement of her own position. She was most troubled, often, bycertain episodes in the past, of which, she supposed Alfred Boyson knewleast; the corrupt use she had made of her money; the false witnessesshe had paid for; the bribes she had given. At the time it had seemed toher all part of the campaign, in the day's work. She had found herselfin a _milieu_ that demoralized her; her mind had become like "the dyer'shand, subdued to what it worked in. " Now, she found herself thinking ina sudden terror, "If Alfred Boyson knew so and so!" or, as she lookeddown on Madeleine's dying face, "Could I even tell Madeleine that?" Andthen would come the dreary thought, "I shall never tell her anything anymore. She is lost to me--even before death. "

She tried to avoid thinking of Roger; but the memory of the scene withAlfred Boyson did, in truth, bring him constantly before her. An innerdebate began, from which she could not escape. She grew white and illwith it. If she could have rushed away from it, into the full stream oflife, have thrown herself into meetings and discussion, have resumed herplace as the admired and flattered head of a particular society, shecould easily have crushed and silenced the thoughts which tormented her. 

But she was held fast. She could not desert Madeleine Verrier in death;she could not wrench her own hand from this frail hand which clung toit; even though Madeleine had betrayed the common cause, had yielded atlast to that moral and spiritual cowardice which--as all freethinkersknow--has spoiled and clouded so many death-beds. Daphne--the skimmer ofmany books--remembered how Renan--_sain et sauf_--had sent a challengeto his own end, and defying the possible weakness of age and sickness, had demanded to be judged by the convictions of life, and not by theterrors of death. She tried to fortify her own mind by the recollection. 

 * * * * *

The first days of June broke radiantly over the great gorge and thewoods which surround it. One morning, early, between four and fiveo'clock, Daphne came in, to find Madeleine awake and comparatively atease. Yet the preceding twenty-four hours had been terrible, and hernurses knew that the end could not be far off. 

The invalid had just asked that her couch might be drawn as near to thewindow as possible, and she lay looking towards the dawn, which rose infresh and windless beauty over the town opposite and the white splendourof the Falls. The American Fall was still largely in shadow; but thelight struck on the fresh green of Goat Island and leaped in tongues offire along the edge of the Horseshoe, turning the rapids above it toflame and sending shafts into the vast tower of spray that holds thecentre of the curve. Nature was all youth, glitter and delight; summerwas rushing on the gorge; the mingling of wood and water was at itsrichest and noblest. 

Madeleine turned her face towards the gorge, her wasted hands clasped onher breast. She beckoned Daphne with a smile, and Daphne knelt downbeside her. 

"The water!" said the whispering voice; "it was once so terrible. I amnot afraid--now. "

"No, darling. Why should you be?"

"I know now, I shall see him again. "

Daphne was silent. 

"I hoped it, but I couldn't be certain. That was so awful. Now--I amcertain. "

"Since you became a Catholic?"

She made a sign of assent. 

"I couldn't be uncertain--I _couldn't_!" she added with fervour, lookingstrangely at Daphne. And Daphne understood that no voice less positiveor self-confident than that of Catholicism, no religion less wellprovided with tangible rites and practices, could have lifted from thespirit the burden of that remorse which had yet killed the body. 

A little later Madeleine drew her down again. 

"I couldn't talk, Daphne--I was afraid; but I've written to you, justbit by bit, as I had strength. Oh, Daphne----!"

Then voice and strength failed her. Her eyes piteously followed herfriend for a little, and then closed. 

She lingered through the day; and at night when the June starlight wason the gorge, she passed away, with the voice of the Falls in her dyingears. A tragic beauty--"beauty born of murmuring sound--had passed intoher face;" and that great plunge of many waters, which had been to herin life the symbol of anguish and guilt, had become in some mysteriousway the comforter of her pain, the friend of her last sleep. 

A letter was found for Daphne in the little box beside her bed. 

It ran thus:

 DAPHNE, DARLING, --

 "It was I who first taught you that we may follow our own lawless wills, and that marriage is something we may bend or break as we will. But, oh! it is not so. Marriage is mysterious and wonderful; it is the supreme test of men and women. If we wrong it, and despise it, we mutilate the divine in ourselves. 

 "Oh, Daphne! it is a small thing to say 'Forgive!' Yet it means the whole world. --

 "And you can still say it to the living. It has been my anguish that I could only say it to the dead.... Daphne, good-bye! I have fought a long, long fight, but God is master--I bless--I adore----"

Daphne sat staring at the letter through a mist of unwilling tears. Allits phrases, ideas, preconceptions, were unwelcome, unreal to her, though she knew they had been real to Madeleine. 

Yet the compulsion of the dead was upon her, and of her scene withBoyson. What they asked of her--Madeleine and Alfred Boyson--was ofcourse out of the question; the mere thought of that humiliating word"forgiveness" sent a tingle of passion through her. But was there nothird course?--something which might prove to all the world how full ofresource and generosity a woman may be?

She pondered through some sleepless hours; and at last she saw her wayplain. 

Within a week she had left New York for Europe. 

CHAPTER XII

The ship on which Daphne travelled had covered about half her course. Ona certain June evening Mrs. Floyd, walking up and down the promenadedeck, found her attention divided between two groups of herfellow-travellers; one taking exercise on the same deck as herself; theother, a family party, on the steerage deck, on which many persons inthe first class paused to look down with sympathy as they reached thedividing rail aft. 

The group on the promenade deck consisted of a lady and gentleman, and aboy of seven. The elders walked rapidly; holding themselves stifflyerect, and showing no sign of acquaintance with anyone on board. Thechild dragged himself wearily along behind them, looking sometimes fromside to side at the various people passing by, with eyes no less furtivethan his mother's. She was a tall and handsome woman, with extravagantlymarine clothes and much false hair. Her companion, a bulky andill-favoured man, glanced superciliously at the ladies in the deckchairs, bestowing always a more attentive scrutiny than usual on a verypretty girl, who was lying reading midway down, with a white lace scarfdraped round her beautiful hair and the harmonious oval of her face. Daphne, watching him, remembered that she had see him speaking to thegirl--who was travelling alone--on one or two occasions. For the rest, they were a notorious couple. The woman had been twice divorced, aftermisdoings which had richly furnished the newspapers; the man belonged toa financial class with which reputable men of business associate no morethan they are obliged. The ship left them severely alone; and theyretaliated by a manner clearly meant to say that they didn't care abrass farthing for the ship. 

The group on the steerage deck was of a very different kind. It was madeup of a consumptive wife, a young husband and one or two children. Thewife's malady, recently declared, had led to their being refusedadmission to the States. They had been turned back from the emigrantstation on Ellis Island, and were now sadly returning to Liverpool. Butthe courage of the young and sweet-faced mother, the devotion of herIrish husband, the charm of her dark-eyed children, had roused muchfeeling in an idle ship, ready for emotion. There had been a collectionfor them among the passengers; a Liverpool shipowner, in the firstclass, had promised work to the young man on landing; the mother was tobe sent to a sanatorium; the children cared for during her absence. Thefamily made a kind of nucleus round which whatever humanity--or whateverimitation of it--there was on board might gather and crystallize. Therewere other mournful cases indeed to be studied on the steerage deck, butnone in which misfortune was so attractive. 

As she walked up and down, or sat in the tea room catching fragments ofthe conversation round her, Daphne was often secretly angered by thepublic opinion she perceived, favourable in the one case, hostile in theother. How ignorant and silly it was--this public opinion. As toherself, she was soon aware that a few people on board had identifiedher and communicated their knowledge to others. On the whole, she feltherself treated with deference. Her own version of her story was clearlyaccepted, at least by the majority; some showed her an unspoken butevident sympathy, while her wealth made her generally interesting. Yetthere were two or three in whom she felt or fancied a more criticalattitude; who looked at her coolly, and seemed to avoid her. BostonianPharisees, no doubt!--ignorant of all those great expansions of thefemale destiny that were going forward. 

The fact was--she admitted it--that she was abnormally sensitive. Thesemoral judgments, of different sorts, of which she was conscious, floating as it were in the life around her, which her mind isolated andmagnified, found her smarting and sore, and would not let her be. Herirritable pride was touched at every turn; she hardly knew why. She wasnot to be judged by anybody; she was her own defender and her own judge. If she was no longer a symbolic and sympathetic figure--like that youngmother among her children--she had her own claims. In the secrecy of themind she fiercely set them out. 

The days passed, however, and as she neared the English shores herresistance to a pursuing thought became fainter. It was, of course, Boyson's astonishing appeal to her that had let loose the AvengingGoddesses. She repelled them with scorn; yet all the same they hurtledround her. After all, she was no monster. She had done a monstrous thingin a sudden brutality of egotism; and a certain crude state of law andopinion had helped her to do it, had confused the moral values andfalsified her conscience. But she was not yet brutalized. Moreover, dowhat she would, she was still in a world governed by law; a world at theheart of which broods a power austere and immutable; a power which mandid not make, which, if he clash with it, grinds him to powder. Itsmanifestations in Daphne's case were slight, but enough. She was nothappy, that certainly was clear. She did not suppose she ever would behappy again. Whatever it was--just, heroic, or the reverse--the actionby which she had violently changed her life had not been a success, estimated by results. No other man had attracted her since she had castRoger off; her youth seemed to be deserting her; she saw herself in theglass every morning with discontent, even a kind of terror; she had losther child. And in these suspended hours of the voyage, when life floatsbetween sky and sea, amid the infinity of weaves, all that she had beendoing since the divorce, her public "causes" and triumphs, theadulations with which she had been surrounded, began to seem to herbarren and futile. No, she was not happy; what she had done had notanswered; and she knew it. 

 * * * * *

One night, a night of calm air and silvery sea, she hung over the ship'sside, dreaming rather miserably. The ship, aglow with lights, alive withmovement, with talk, laughter and music, glided on between the stars andthe unfathomable depths of the mid-Atlantic. Nothing, to north andsouth, between her and the Poles; nothing but a few feet of iron andtimber between her and the hungry gulfs in which the highest Alp wouldsink from sight. The floating palace, hung by Knowledge above Death, just out of Death's reach, suggested to her a number of melancholythoughts and images. A touch of more than Arctic cold stole upon her, even through this loveliness of a summer night; she felt desperatelyunhappy and alone. 

From the saloon came a sound of singing:

 _"An die Lippen wollt' ich pressen Deine kleine weisse Hand, Und mit Thränen sie benetzen Deine kleine weisse Hand. "_

The tears came to her eyes. She remembered that she, too, had once feltthe surrender and the tenderness of love. 

Then she brushed the tears away, angry with herself and determined tobrood no more. But she looked round her in vain for a companion whomight distract her. She had made no friends on board, and though she hadbrought with her a secretary and a maid, she kept them both at arm'slength, and they never offered their society without an invitation. 

What was she going to do? And why was she making this journey?

Because the injustice and absurdity of English law had distorted andbesmirched her own perfectly legitimate action. They had given a handleto such harsh critics as Alfred Boyson. But she meant somehow to putherself right; and not only herself, but the great cause of woman'sfreedom and independence. No woman, in the better future that is coming, shall be forced either by law or opinion to continue the relations ofmarriage with a man she has come to despise. Marriage is merelyproclaimed love; and if love fails, marriage has no further meaning or_raison d'être_; it comes, or should come, automatically to an end. Thisis the first article in the woman's charter, and without it marriageitself has neither value nor sanctity. She seemed to hear sentences ofthis sort, in her own voice, echoing about windy halls, producing wavesof emotion on a sea of strained faces--women's faces, set and pale, likethat of Madeleine Verrier. She had never actually made such a speech, but she felt she would like to have made it. 

What was she going to do? No doubt Roger would resent her coming--wouldprobably refuse to see her, as she had once refused to see him. Well, she must try and act with dignity and common sense; she must try andpersuade him to recognize her good faith, and to get him to listen towhat she proposed. She had her plan for Roger's reclamation, and wasalready in love with it. Naturally, she had never meant permanently tohurt or injure Roger! She had done it for his good as well as her own. Yet even as she put this plea forward in the inner tribunal ofconsciousness, she knew that it was false. 

_"You have murdered a life!"_ Well, that was what prejudiced andhide-bound persons like Alfred Boyson said, and no doubt always wouldsay. She could not help it; but for her own dignity's sake, that moraldignity in which she liked to feel herself enwrapped, she would give aslittle excuse for it as possible. 

Then, as she stood looking eastward, a strange thought struck her. Onceon that farther shore and she would be Roger's wife again--an Englishsubject, and Roger's wife. How ridiculous, and how intolerable! Whenshall we see some real comity of nations in these matters ofinternational marriage and divorce?

She had consulted her lawyers in New York before starting; on Roger'ssituation first of all, but also on her own. Roger, it seemed, mighttake certain legal steps, once he was aware of her being again onEnglish ground. But, of course, he would not take them. "It was never mehe cared for--only Beatty!" she said to herself with a bitterperversity. Still the thought of returning within the range of the oldobligations, the old life, affected her curiously. There were hours, especially at night, when she felt shut up with thoughts of Roger andBeatty--her husband and her child--just as of old. 

How, in the name of justice, was she to blame for Roger's illness? Herirritable thoughts made a kind of grievance against him of the attack ofpneumonia which she was told had injured his health. He must haveneglected himself in some foolish way. The strongest men are the mostreckless of themselves. In any case, how was it her fault?

One night she woke up suddenly, in the dawn, her heart beatingtumultuously. She had been dreaming of her meeting--her possiblemeeting--with Roger. Her face was flushed, her memory confused. Shecould not recall the exact words or incidents of the dream, only thatRoger had been in some way terrible and terrifying. 

And as she sat up in her berth, trying to compose herself, she recalledthe last time she had seen him at Philadelphia--a painful scene--and hislast broken words to her, as he turned back from the door to speakthem:--

"As to Beatty, I hold you responsible! She is my child, no less thanyours. You shall answer to me! Remember that!"

Answer to him? Beatty was dead--in spite of all that love and sciencecould do. Involuntarily she began to weep as she remembered the child'slast days; the little choked cry, once or twice, for "Daddy!" followed, so long as life maintained its struggle, by a childish anger that he didnot come. And then the silencing of the cry, and the last change andsettling in the small face, so instinct already with feeling andcharacter, so prophetic of the woman to be. 

A grief, of course, never to be got over; but for which she, Daphne, deserved pity and tenderness, not reproaches. She hardened herself tomeet the coming trial. 

 * * * * *

She arrived in London in the first week of July, and her first act wasto post a letter to Herbert French, addressed to his East-End vicarage, a letter formally expressed and merely asking him to give the writer"twenty minutes' conversation on a subject of common interest to usboth. " The letter was signed "Daphne Floyd, " and a stamped envelopeaddressed to "Mrs. Floyd" was enclosed. By return of post she received aletter from a person unknown to her, the curate, apparently, in chargeof Mr. French's parish. The letter informed her that her owncommunication had not been forwarded, as Mr. French had gone away for aholiday after a threat of nervous breakdown in consequence of overwork;and business letters and interviews were being spared him as much aspossible. "He is, however, much better, I am glad to say, and if thesubject on which you wish to speak to him is really urgent, his presentaddress is Prospect House, St. Damian's, Ventnor. But unless it isurgent it would be a kindness not to trouble him with it until hereturns to town, which will not be for another fortnight. "

Daphne walked restlessly up and down her hotel sitting-room. Of coursethe matter was urgent. The health of an East-End clergyman--already, itappeared, much amended--was not likely to seem of much importance to awoman of her temperament, when it stood in the way of her plans. 

But she would not write, she would go. She had good reason to supposethat Herbert French would not welcome a visit from her; he might indeedvery easily use his health as an excuse for not seeing her. But she mustsee him. 

By mid-day she was already on her way to the Isle of Wight. About fiveo'clock she arrived at Ventnor, where she deposited maid and luggage. She then drove out alone to St. Damian's, a village a few miles north, through a radiant evening. The twinkling sea was alive with craft of allsizes, from the great liner leaving its trail of smoke along thehorizon, to the white-sailed yachts close upon the land. The woods ofthe Undercliff sank softly to the blues and purple, the silver streaksand gorgeous shadows of the sea floor. The lights were broad and rich. After a hot day, coolness had come and the air was delightful. 

But Daphne sat erect, noticing nothing but the relief of the loweredtemperature after her hot and tiresome journey. She applied herselfoccasionally to natural beauty, as she applied herself to music orliterature, but it is not to women of her type that the true passion ofit--"the soul's bridegroom"--comes. And she was absorbed in thinking howshe should open her business to Herbert French. 

Prospect House turned out to be a detached villa standing in a garden, with a broad view of the Channel. Daphne sent her carriage back to theinn and climbed the steep drive which led up to the verandaed house. Thefront garden was empty, but voices--voices, it seemed, of children--camefrom behind the house where there was a grove of trees. 

"Is Mr. Herbert French at home?" she asked of the maid who answered herbell. 

The girl looked at her doubtfully. 

"Yes, ma'am--but he doesn't see visitors yet. Shall I tell Mrs. French?She's in the garden with the children. "

"No, thank you, " said Daphne, firmly. "It's Mr. French I have come tosee, and I am sure that he will wish to see me. Will you kindly give himmy card? I will come in and wait. "

And she brushed past the maid, who was intimidated by the visitor'sfashionable dress and by the drooping feathers of her Paris hat, inwhich the sharp olive-skinned face with its magnificent eyes waspicturesquely framed. The girl gave way unwillingly, showed Mrs. Floydinto a small study looking on the front garden, and left her. 

 * * * * *

"Elsie!" cried Herbert French, springing from the low chair in which hehad been lounging in his shirt-sleeves with a book when the parlour-maidfound him, "Elsie!"

His wife, who was at the other end of the lawn, playing with thechildren, the boy on her back and a pair of girl twins clinging to herskirts, turned in astonishment and hurried back to him. 

"Mrs. Floyd?" They both looked at the card in bewilderment. "Who is it?Mrs. Floyd?"

Then French's face changed. 

"What is this lady like?" he asked peremptorily of the parlour-maid. 

"Well, sir, she's a dark lady, dressed very smart----"

"Has she very black eyes?"

"Oh yes, sir!"

"Young?"

The girl promptly replied in the negative, qualifying it a momentafterward by a perplexed "Well, I shouldn't say so, sir. "

French thought a moment. 

"Thank you. I will come in. "

He turned to his wife with a rapid question, under his breath. "Where isRoger?"

Elsie stared at him, her colour paling. 

"Herbert!--it can't--it can't----"

"I suspect it is--Mrs. Barnes, " said French slowly. "Help me on with mycoat, darling. Now then, what shall we do?"

"She can't have come to force herself on him!" cried his wifepassionately. 

"Probably she knows nothing of his being here. Did he go for a walk?"

"Yes, towards Sandown. But he will be back directly. "

A quick shade of expression crossed French's face, which his wife knewto mean that whenever Roger was out by himself there was cause foranxiety. But the familiar trouble was immediately swallowed up in thenew and pressing one. 

"What can that woman have come to say?" he asked, half of himself, halfof his wife, as he walked slowly back to the house. Elsie had conveyedthe children to their nurse, and was beside him. 

"Perhaps she repents!" The tone was dry and short; it flung a challengeto misdoing. 

"I doubt it! But Roger?" French stood still, pondering. "Keep him, darling--intercept him if you can. If he must see her, I will come out. But we mustn't risk a shock. "

They consulted a little in low voices. Then French went into the houseand Elsie came back to her children. She stood thinking, her fine face, so open-browed and purely lined, frowning and distressed. 

 * * * * *

"You wished to see me, Mrs. Barnes?"

French had closed the door of the study behind him and stood withoutoffering to shake hands with his visitor, coldly regarding her. 

Daphne rose from her seat, reddening involuntarily. 

"My name is no longer what you once knew it, Mr. French. I sent you mycard. "

French made a slight inclination and pointed to the chair from which shehad risen. 

"Pray sit down. May I know what has brought you here?"

Daphne resumed her seat, her small hands fidgeting on her parasol. 

"I wished to come and consult with you, Mr. French. I had heard adistressing account of--of Roger, from a friend in America. "

"I see, " said French, on whom a sudden light dawned. "You met Boyson atNiagara--that I knew--and you are here because of what he said to you?"

"Yes, partly. " The speaker looked round the room, biting her lip, andFrench observed her for a moment. He remembered the foreign vivacity anddash, the wilful grace of her youth, and marvelled at her stiffened, pretentious air, her loss of charm. Instinctively the saint in him knewfrom the mere look of her that she had been feeding herself on egotismsand falsehoods, and his heart hardened. Daphne resumed:

"If Captain Boyson has given you an account of our interview, Mr. French, it was probably a one-sided one. However, that is _not_ thepoint. He _did_ distress me very much by his account, which I gathercame from you--of--of Roger, and although, of course, it is a veryawkward matter for me to move in, I still felt impelled for old times'sake to come over and see whether I could not help you--and his otherfriends--and, of course, his mother----"

"His mother is out of the question, " interrupted French. "She is, I amsorry to say, a helpless invalid. "

"Is it really as bad as that? I hoped for better news. Then I apply toyou--to you chiefly. Is there anything that I could do to assist you, orothers, to----"

"To save him?" French put in the words as she hesitated. 

Daphne was silent. 

"What is your idea?" asked French, after a moment. "You heard, Ipresume, from Captain Boyson that my wife and I were extremely anxiousabout Roger's ways and habits; that we cannot induce him, or, at anyrate, we have not yet been able to induce him, to give up drinking; thathis health is extremely bad, and that we are sometimes afraid that thereis now some secret in his life of which he is ashamed?"

"Yes, " said Daphne, fidgeting with a book on the table. "Yes, that iswhat I heard. "

"And you have come to suggest something?"

"Is there no way by which Roger can become as free as I now am!" shesaid suddenly, throwing back her head. 

"By which Roger can obtain his divorce from you--and marry again? None, in English law. "

"But there is--in Colonial law. " She began to speak hurriedly andurgently. "If Roger were to go to New Zealand, or to Australia, hecould, after a time, get a divorce for desertion. I know he could--Ihave inquired. It doesn't seem to be certain what effect my action--theAmerican decree, I mean--would have in an English colony. My lawyers aregoing into it. But at any rate there is the desertion and then"--shegrew more eager--"if he married abroad--in the Colony--the marriagewould be valid. No one could say a word to him when he returned toEngland. "

French looked at her in silence. She went on--with the unconsciousmanner of one accustomed to command her world, to be the oracle andguide of subordinates:--

"Could we not induce him to go? Could you not? Very likely he wouldrefuse to see me; and, of course, he has, most unjustly to me, I think, refused to take any money from me. But the money might be providedwithout his knowing where it came from. A young doctor might be sentwith him--some nice fellow who would keep him amused and look after him. At Heston he used to take a great interest in farming. He might take upland. I would pay anything--anything! He might suppose it came from somefriend. "

French smiled sadly. His eyes were on the ground. She bent forward. 

"I beg of you, Mr. French, not to set yourself against me! Ofcourse"--she drew herself up proudly--"I know what you must think of myaction. Our views are different, irreconcilably different. You probablythink all divorce wrong. We think, in America, that a marriage which hasbecome a burden to either party is no marriage, and ought to cease. Butthat, of course"--she waved a rhetorical hand--"we cannot discuss. I donot propose for a moment to discuss it. You must allow me my nationalpoint of view. But surely we can, putting all that aside, combine tohelp Roger?"

"To marry again?" said French, slowly. "It can't, I fear, be done--whatyou propose--in the time. I doubt whether Roger has two years to live. "

Daphne started. 

"Roger!--to live?" she repeated, in horror. "What is really the matter?Surely nothing more than care and a voyage could set right?"

French shook his head. 

"We have been anxious about him for some time. That terrible attack ofseptic pneumonia in New York, as we now know, left the heart injured andthe lungs weakened. He was badly nursed, and his state of mind at thetime--his misery and loneliness--left him little chance. Then thedrinking habit, which he contracted during those wretched months in theStates, has been of course sorely against him. However, we hoped againsthope--Elsie and I--till a few weeks ago. Then someone, we don't knowwho, made him go to a specialist, and the verdict is--phthisis; not veryadvanced, but certain and definite. And the general outlook is notfavourable. "

Daphne had grown pale. 

"We must send him away!" she said imperiously. "We must! A voyage, agood doctor, a dry climate, would save him, of course they would! Why, there is nothing necessarily fatal now in phthisis! Nothing! It isabsurd to talk as though there were. "

Again French looked at her in silence. But as she had lost colour, hehad gained it. His face, which the East End had already stamped, hadgrown rosy, his eyes sparkled. 

"Oh, do say something! Tell me what you suggest?" cried Daphne. 

"Do you really wish me to tell you what I suggest?"

Daphne waited, her eyes first imploring, then beginning to shrink. Hebent forward and touched her on the arm. 

"Go, Mrs. Barnes, and ask your husband's forgiveness! What will come ofit I do not know. But you, at least, will have done something to setyourself right--with God. "

The Christian and the priest had spoken; the low voice in its intensityhad seemed to ring through the quiet sun-flooded room. Daphne rose, trembling with resentment and antagonism. 

"It is you, then, Mr. French, who make it impossible for me todiscuss--to help. I shall have to see if I can find some other means ofcarrying out my purpose. "

There was a voice outside. Daphne turned. 

"Who is that?"

French ran to the glass door that opened on the veranda, and trying foran ordinary tone, waved somebody back who was approaching from without. Elsie came quickly round the corner of the house, calling to thenew-comer. 

But Daphne saw who it was and took her own course. She, too, went to thewindow, and, passing French, she stepped into the veranda. 

"Roger!"

A man hurried through the dusk. There was an exclamation, a silence. Bythis time French was on the lawn, his wife's quivering hand in his. Daphne retreated slowly into the study and Roger Barnes followed her. 

"Leave them alone, " said French, and putting an arm round his wife heled her resolutely away, out of sound and sight. 

 * * * * *

Barnes stood silent, breathing heavily and leaning on the back of achair. The western light from a side window struck full on him. ButDaphne, the wave of excitement spent, was not looking at him. She hadfallen upon a sofa, her face was in her hands. 

"What do you want with me?" said Roger at last. Then, in a sudden heat, "By God, I never wished to see you again!"

Daphne's muffled voice came through her fingers. 

"I know that. You needn't tell me so!"

Roger turned away. 

"You'll admit it's an intrusion?" he said fiercely. "I don't see whatyou and I have got to do with each other now. "

Daphne struggled for self-control. After all, she had always managed himin the old days. She would manage him now. 

"Roger--I--I didn't come to discuss the past. That's done with. But--Iheard things about you--that----"

"You didn't like?" he laughed. "I'm sorry, but I don't see what you haveto do with them. "

Daphne's hand fidgeted with her dress, her eyes still cast down. 

"Couldn't we talk without bitterness? Just for ten minutes? It was fromCaptain Boyson that I heard----"

"Oh, Boyson, was that it? And he got his information from French--poorold Herbert. Well, it's quite true. I'm no longer fit for your--orhis--or anybody's society. "

He threw himself into an arm-chair, calmly took a cigarette out of a boxthat lay near, and lit it. Daphne at last ventured to look at him. Thefirst and dominant impression was of something shrunken and diminished. His blue flannel suit hung loose on his shoulders and chest, hisathlete's limbs. His features had been thinned and graved and scooped byfever and broken nights; all the noble line and proportion was stillthere, but for one who had known him of old the effect was no longerbeautiful but ghastly. Daphne stared at him in dismay. 

He on his side observed his visitor, but with a cooler curiosity. LikeFrench he noticed the signs of change, the dying down of brilliance andof bloom. To go your own way, as Daphne had done, did not seem toconduce to a woman's good looks. 

At last he threw in a dry interrogation. 

"Well?"

"I came to try and help you, " Daphne broke out, turning her head away, "to ask Mr. French what I could do. It made me unhappy----"

"Did it?" He laughed again. "I don't see why. Oh, you needn't troubleyourself. Elsie and Herbert are awfully good to me. They're all I want, or at any rate, " he hesitated a moment, "they're all I _shall_want--from now on. Anyway, you know there'd be something grotesque inyour trying your hand at reforming me. "

"I didn't mean anything of the kind!" she protested, stung by his tone. "I--I wanted to suggest something practical--some way by which youmight--release yourself from me--and also recover your health. "

"Release myself from you?" he repeated. "That's easier said than done. Did you mean to send me to the Colonies--was that your idea?"

His smile was hard to bear. But she went on, choking, yet determined. 

"That seems to be the only way--in English law. Why shouldn't you takeit? The voyage, the new climate, would probably set you up again. Youneed only be away a short time. "

He looked at her in silence a moment, fingering his cigarette. 

"Thank you, " he said at last, "thank you. And I suppose you offered usmoney? You told Herbert you would pay all expenses? Oh, don't be angry!I didn't mean anything uncivil. But, " he raised himself with energy fromhis lounging position, "at the same time, perhaps you ought to know thatI would sooner die a thousand times over than take a single silversixpence that belonged to you!"

Their eyes met, his quite calm, hers sparkling with resentment and pain. 

"Of course I can't argue with you if you meet me in that tone, " she saidpassionately. "But I should have thought----"

"Besides, " he interrupted her, "you say it is the only way. You arequite mistaken. It is not the only way. As far as freeing me goes, youcould divorce me to-morrow--here--if you liked. I have been unfaithfulto you. A strange way of putting it--at the present moment--between youand me! But that's how it would appear in the English courts. And as tothe 'cruelty'--that wouldn't give _you_ any trouble!"

Daphne had flushed deeply. It was only by a great effort that shemaintained her composure. Her eyes avoided him. 

"Mrs. Fairmile?" she said in a low voice. 

He threw back his head with a sound of scorn. 

"Mrs. Fairmile! You don't mean to tell me, Daphne, to my face, that youever believed any of the lies--forgive the expression--that you, andyour witnesses, and your lawyers told in the States--that you bribedthose precious newspapers to tell?"

"Of course I believed it!" she said fiercely. "And as for lies, it wasyou who began them. "

"You _believed_ that I had betrayed you with Chloe Fairmile?" He raisedhimself again, fixing his strange deep-set gaze upon her. 

"I never said----"

"No! To that length you didn't quite go. I admit it. You were able toget your way without it. " He sank back in his chair again. "No, myremark had nothing to do with Chloe. I have never set eyes on her sinceI left you at Heston. But--there was a girl, a shop-girl, a poor littlething, rather pretty. I came across her about six months ago--it doesn'tmatter how. She loves me, she was awfully good to me, a regular littlebrick. Some day I shall tell Herbert all about her--not yet--though, ofcourse, he suspects. She'd serve your purpose, if you thought it worthwhile. But you won't----"

"You're--living with her--now?"

"No. I broke with her a fortnight ago, after I'd seen those doctors. Shemade me see them, poor little soul. Then I went to say good-bye to her, and she, " his voice shook a little, "she took it hard. But it's allright. I'm not going to risk her life, or saddle her with a dying man. She's with her sister. She'll get over it. "

He turned his head towards the window, his eyes pursued the white sailson the darkening blue outside. 

"It's been a bad business, but it wasn't altogether my fault. I savedher from someone else, and she saved me, once or twice, from blowing mybrains out. "

"What did the doctors say to you?" asked Daphne, brusquely, after apause. 

"They gave me about two years, " he said, indifferently, turning to knockoff the end of his cigarette. "That doesn't matter. " Then, as his eyescaught her face, a sudden animation sprang into his. He drew his chairnearer to her and threw away his cigarette. "Look here, Daphne, don'tlet's waste time. We shall never see each other again, and there are anumber of things I want to know. Tell me everything you can rememberabout Beatty that last six months--and about her illness, youunderstand--never mind repeating what you told Boyson, and he told me. But there's lots more, there must be. Did she ever ask for me? Boysonsaid you couldn't remember. But you must remember!"

He came closer still, his threatening eyes upon her. And as he did so, the dark presence of ruin and death, of things damning and irrevocable, which had been hovering over their conversation, approached withhim--flapped their sombre wings in Daphne's face. She trembled all over. 

"Yes, " she said, faintly, "she did ask for you. "

"Ah!" He gave a cry of delight. "Tell me--tell me atonce--everything--from the beginning!"

And held by his will, she told him everything--all the piteous story ofthe child's last days--sobbing herself; and for the first time makingmuch of the little one's signs of remembering her father, instead ofminimizing and ignoring them, as she had done in the talk with Boyson. It was as though for the first time she were trying to stanch a woundinstead of widening it. 

He listened eagerly. The two heads--the father and mother--drew closer;one might have thought them lovers still, united by tender and sacredmemories. 

But at last Roger drew himself away. He rose to his feet. 

"I'll forgive you much for that!" he said with a long breath. "Will youwrite it for me some day--all you've told me?"

She made a sign of assent. 

"Well, now, you mustn't stay here any longer. I suppose you've got acarriage? And we mustn't meet again. There's no object in it. But I'llremember that you came. "

She looked at him. In her nature the great deeps were breaking up. Shesaw him as she had seen him in her first youth. And, at last, what shehad done was plain to her. 

With a cry she threw herself on the floor beside him. She pressed hishand in hers. 

"Roger, let me stay! Let me nurse you!" she panted. "I didn'tunderstand. Let me be your friend! Let me help! I implore--I imploreyou!"

He hesitated a moment, then he lifted her to her feet decidedly, but notunkindly. 

"What do you mean?" he said, slowly. "Do you mean that you wish us to behusband and wife again? You are, of course, my wife, in the eye ofEnglish law, at this moment. "

"Let me try and help you!" she pleaded again, breaking into bittertears. "I didn't--I didn't understand!"

He shook his head. 

"You can't help me. I--I'm afraid I couldn't bear it. We mustn't meet. It--it's gone too deep. "

He thrust his hands into his pockets and walked away to the window. Shestood helplessly weeping. 

When he returned he was quite composed again. 

"Don't cry so, " he said, calmly. "It's done. We can't help it. And don'tmake yourself too unhappy about me. I've had awful times. When I was illin New York--it was like hell. The pain was devilish, and I wasn't usedto being alone, and nobody caring a damn, and everybody believing me acad and a bully. But I got over that. It was Beatty's death that hit meso hard, and that I wasn't there. It's that, somehow, I can't getover--that you did it--that you could have had the heart. It wouldalways come between us. No, we're better apart. But I'll tell yousomething to comfort you. I've given up that girl, as I've told you, andI've given up drink. Herbert won't believe it, but he'll find it is so. And I don't mean to die before my time. I'm going out to Switzerlanddirectly. I'll do all the correct things. You see, when a man _knows_he's going to die, well, " he turned away, "he gets uncommonly curious asto what's going to come next. "

He walked up and down a few turns. Daphne watched him. 

"I'm not pious--I never was. But after all, the religious people professto know something about it, and nobody else does. Just supposing it weretrue?"

He stopped short, looking at her. She understood perfectly that he hadBeatty in his mind. 

"Well, anyhow, I'm going to live decently for the rest of my time--anddie decently. I'm not going to throw away chances. And don't troubleyourself about money. There's enough left to carry me through. Good-bye, Daphne!" He held out his hand to her. 

She took it, still dumbly weeping. He looked at her with pity. 

"Yes, I know, you didn't understand what you were doing. But you see, Daphne, marriage is----" he sought rather painfully for his words, "it'sa big thing. If it doesn't make us, it ruins us; I didn't marry you forthe best of reasons, but I was very fond of you--honour bright! I lovedyou in my way, I should have loved you more and more. I should have beena decent fellow if you'd stuck to me. I had all sorts of plans; youmight have taught me anything. I was a fool about Chloe Fairmile, butthere was nothing in it, you know there wasn't. And now it's all rootedup and done with. Women like to think such things can be mended, butthey can't--they can't, indeed. It would be foolish to try. "

Daphne sank upon a chair and buried her face in her hands. He drew along and painful breath. "I'm afraid I must go, " he said waveringly. "I--I can't stand this any longer. Good-bye, Daphne, good-bye. "

She only sobbed, as though her life dissolved in grief. He drew near toher, and as she wept, hidden from him, he laid his hand a moment on hershoulder. Then he took up his hat. 

"I'm going now, " he said in a low voice. "I shan't come back till youhave gone. "

She heard him cross the room, his steps in the veranda. Outside, in thesummer dark, a figure came to meet him. French drew Roger's arm intohis, and the two walked away. The shadows of the wooded lane receivedthem. 

A woman came quickly into the room. 

Elsie French looked down upon the sobbing Daphne, her own eyes full oftears, her hands clasped. 

"Oh, you poor thing!" she said, under her breath. "You poor thing!" Andshe knelt down beside her and folded her arms round her. 

So from the same heart that had felt a passionate pity for the victim, compassion flowed out on the transgressor. For where others feel thetragedy of suffering, the pure in heart realize with an infinitelysharper pain the tragedy of guilt. 

THE END

 * * * * *

 BY THE SAME AUTHOR

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