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This text has been proofread but is not guaranteed to be free from errors. Corrections to the original text have been left in place.
Title: Some Men & Women, an electronic edition
Author: Lowndes, Belloc, 1868-1947
Publisher: Hutchinson & Co.
Place published: London:
Date: [1925]
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Front Cover of Belloc Lowndes' Some Men and WomenSOME MEN AND WOMENAdvert in front of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"SOME MEN AND WOMENBY  MRS. BELLOC LOWNDES Author of "The Lodger," "Studies in Wives," Studies in Love and in Terror," etc., etc."Male and Female created He them."Gen. i. 27LONDON:HUTCHINSON & CO.PUBLISHERS PATERNOSTER ROWTable of contents in front of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"THE CALLTHE CALL(I)HELEN ACKERINGTON lay, fully dressed, on her half of the Jacobean four-post bed which had been her present to herself last Christmas. Like almost all the young married women belonging to the having-somehow-profited-by-the-war strata of society, she was now an eager collector of old furniture.It was close on half-past six, and so quite dark on this December evening; but she had not cared to turn up the light.The fashionable nerve-specialist of the moment had told her that she ought to take off her clothes and rest, for at least an hour, between tea and dinner. But after a few days she had given up practising the first part of his prescription. For one thing, it was too much of what she called to herself "a bore "; for another, she was aware that her condition had nothing to do with what the specialist, smiling down into the face of one who was still a delightfully pretty woman, had described as her "flipperty-gibberty, rackety life."Helen knew that she had become what her good-natured, unsuspicious, still affectionate husband called "a bundle of nerves," because she was in a physical and mental condition which caused her to oscillate perpetually between wretchedness and ecstatic happiness.For a long time—though it did not seem a long time when she looked back upon it—there had only been happiness. Such happiness, indeed, as she had not known there could be in this world. And then, gradually, there had come mysterious, disquieting inroads into that security which is everything in love.Now, to-night, she was not only unhappy, but miserably suspicious—and jealous, she knew not of whom or of what. Her only comfort—but it was very real comfort—lay in the fact that her husband was away, absorbed in a disagreeable bit of business in Paris, and that he would not be back for some days. His placid cheerfulness, only sometimes broken of late by his kindly, clumsy concern about her health, jarred on her intolerably.As she lay there in the darkness she asked herself, for the hundredth time in the last three years, why she had remained up to the age of thirty-five knowing nothing of the tremors and the torments, as well as of the deep, tremulous joy, of love? In a sense it was owing to the

obvious fact that she had wasted thirty-five years without having met Douglas Curtin. She was pathetically sure that, had she not met the man she now loved with so absorbing and jealous a passion, at that memorable dance given by her husband's partner at the Savoy Hotel on Armistice night, she would still be what her mother and her two sisters called, in their self-satisfied ignorance, "a good woman."Helen Ackerington was one of those few human beings, so much more fortunate than they know, born on the high small tableland of financial security. Her father—John Wedderburn, of Wedderburn, Joyce, and Wells—had had plenty of money, and so he had had plenty of children. Each of the three well-dowered girls had married early, while the two surviving boys—as their mother, who lived close to them all, enjoying her placid, prosperous, old-fashioned widowhood, still called them—were fathers of families. Lewis, the one they had all loved best—and they were an affectionate, closely united family—had gone down in the battle of Jutland. Lewis had been a born bachelor, though his sisters had chaffingly accused him of having a wife in every port, in those far-off, happy, careless days "before the war."Their brother Lewis remained a noble, an inspiring memory in the Wedderburns' unimaginative, materialistic lives, and Helen, who had been his

favourite sister, threw him a yearning thought as she lay there, trying to prepare herself for what she believed would be a painful interview with the man she loved.She remembered to-night, in every detail, Lewis's last visit to this house.Commander Wedderburn had come to London with dispatches for the Admiralty, and, rushed though he had been, he had managed to see each and all of his brothers and sisters. By great good luck Helen had been alone when he had walked in, looking such a splendid fellow, such a brother to be proud of, in his naval uniform.And now, lying there, her eyes aching with the tears she had shed the night before, she recalled that first moment when her brother had exclaimed, while giving her a mighty hug, "Old girl? You're prettier than ever!"They had spoken of the war, the only thing, then, that people ever talked about—how long ago that seemed. And then, as she had put out her hand to ring for tea, he had jumped up. "No tea for me—I must be off!" She had felt a little hurt. "Why in such a hurry? Mother told me you were staying till to-morrow."Then it was that he had said very quietly the words of which she had so often, often thought, since Douglas Curtin had become her friend, "Someone's been waiting for me since four

o'clock, child. She's got to be home by seven. Two hours of bliss in eight months—not big measure, eh? And perhaps it's the last time—"She, Helen, her eyes still holden, had felt a little shocked, if very much "thrilled," and for a moment at a loss what to answer to her brother's strange confidence.Then Lewis had asked a curious question, "Quite content with your Robert still? The other girls happy? No side tracks, eh?"And she had shaken her head, proudly. "We don't mind a little bit of fun, old boy—but nothing more. I can't even make Robert jealous—I have tried!""How about Lily? I thought James was jealous—sometimes?"She remembered, now, how she had laughed, a real, genuine peal of still girlish laughter, as she had answered, "Never of the right man—and of course there isn't a right man! No, no, we all run straight, Lewis."She wondered if Lewis knew, in the sailors'—in Nelson's—heaven, that she was now running very crooked, and, far from being ashamed, exulted in her crookedness?Helen's excited, troubled mind swung back to its immediate painful problem. Douglas Curtin had said he would come in late this afternoon,

and though he had played her false four times in the last three weeks, something seemed to tell her that he would keep faith to-day.Again she felt consciously, intensely, glad that her husband was away—really away—and that she would be able to have her say out without fear of interruption.Her "say out"? She asked herself painfully how could she make Douglas feel, without angering him, that she was becoming hurt, deeply, terribly hurt, by—what? She could not bear to formulate in words, even to herself, the knowledge that he was neglecting her, beginning—hideous phrase—to be "off her."Then, piteously, she told herself that he was very busy, and that this misery she had of late endured was a jealous fancy bred of her deep feeling. For Helen Ackerington loved Douglas Curtin as only a childless woman loves.Of course they all, and by "all" Helen meant her mother, her sisters, and her sisters-in-law, knew that she and the young barrister were great friends. But her sisters and her sisters-in-law all had platonic admirers, about whom they often chaffed one another. It was, however, a long time since any one of them had chaffed her about her friend. . . .Even so, Lily Burtingale, the sister who was next to her in age, and fonder of her than the

others, had remarked, just a little significantly, only yesterday, "I'm told Mr. Curtin's nickname in the Air Force was 'Douglas, Douglas, tender and untrue.'"Helen had laughed, as if genuinely amused; but the words had cut deep into her heart, and again and again, since she had first heard it, the cruel, mocking phrase had echoed in her ears.How strange it was that none of her people, even dimly, remotely, apprehended the truth! The most any of them supposed was that she was having a foolish flirtation, more foolish perhaps than was quite—quite becoming. Her loving, old-fashioned mother, whose best loved child she was now that Lewis had gone, had once said to her, "Don't you think you are having that Mr. Curtin very often to your house, my dear? I'm told he dines with you almost every day." And she had answered quickly, forcing herself to smile the while, "The poor fellow has hardly any friends in London—and Robert's even fonder of him than I am, mater!"But that had been said a long time ago.The other day, when driving with her mother, she, Helen, had suddenly begun to cry; and the older woman, instead of expressing her concern, had only patted her hand, and the dear comfortable old face had become anxious, troubled, questioning . .. and yet she had asked no question.The Georgian church close by chimed half-past six, and Helen forced herself to face the fact that Douglas Curtin was evidently going to "chuck" again.She suddenly visualized, with a horrid vividness of vision, her prim parlour-maid, Belt, coming up the two long flights of stairs; and she almost heard the tap on the door which would precede the uttering of the words, "Mr. Curtin has telephoned to say, ma'am, that he can't come this evening; he has an important business appointment at a quarter to seven."And then, all at once, her heart gave a leap of joy, for there had fallen on her ears, as if flung up through the still air of the London street, Douglas Curtin's familiar, unmistakable double knock. There was something authoritative, if perhaps just a trifle defiant and self-assertive, in the loud rat-tat-tat. It was the knock of a man sure of himself, who will command, if he has not already won, success.She slid off her bed, turned on the light, and, after pausing for a brief moment before the dim mirror of the small Chippendale dressing-table which was her latest and most prized present to herself, she ran down the one flight of stairs, and was in the drawing-room before she heard the front door open.(2)There was a strain of prudence, of clear good sense, in Helen Ackerington, and so, from the first moment of their closer friendship, she had always exacted, when he came to her husband's house, a certain formality of approach between her lover and herself. And now, as they shook hands in front of the servant who had brought him up, there was a quick, apparently careless, interchange of question and answer. Would he like some late tea—or how about one of the cocktails which were then coming into fashion in her set?But Douglas Curtin, alone among the many men who came and went to that hospitable house, generally had the strength of mind to refuse a cocktail, even after a long hard day's work.To-night he shook his head twice, explaining that he had had tea at the Courts, for, yes, it had been a very busy day, and as for a cocktail, well, no, he didn't feel like having one just now.After what seemed an eternity to one of the three, the parlour-maid left the room. And even then the two waited until there came the distant sound of the shutting of the door which separated the landing, below, from the stairs leading to the basement. But at last he took her closely into his arms, kissing her with more tremulous

emotion, more depth of feeling, than he had shown for a long, long time.Helen was the first to break away, and as she gazed into her lover's keen clear-cut face, and met the direct, now tender, glance of his gleaming, narrow-lidded eyes, the jealous, suspicious pain which had so lately possessed her vanished, leaving her with the delicious sensation of relief and drowsy joy which an anæsthetic brings to one in pain.She felt deeply, consciously, ashamed of the cruel, vengeful thoughts which had filled her heart till a few moments ago.Slowly they moved forward, and, for a while, stood together before the fire, his arm round her shoulder; she silent, happy as she had been in the very early days of their love.Then, no doubt because she had thought so recently of Lewis, there suddenly came across her a feeling as if her dead brother was there, an intensely living, if invisible presence, in that still room. He had been the only one of them all who had any sense of humour, and now she felt as if he was gazing at her with a half-humorous, half-deprecating look, as if reminding her wordlessly of that foolish, confident boast—"We all run straight."So strong was this impression that she actually moved away from Douglas Curtin's side as she

exclaimed, "I wish, Douglas, that you'd known my brother Lewis—""I've often wished I had," he answered. "I've always thought it was the one of all your people with whom I should have got on best."And this was true. In those early rapturous days when everything concerning the woman he loved had been of deep moment to Douglas Curtin, and when he had been repelled, disturbed, by what had seemed to him the commonplace worldliness of those men and women who called her sister, he had liked, and unconsciously clung to, all that he heard of her dead brother. But now, to-night, as he stood there secretly thinking of them all, he told himself what a relief it was to know—as he undoubtedly did know—that none of Helen's "people" really counted in his life.Helen had early decided to see Douglas Curtin her own house, or in his rooms at the Temple, in Fountain Court, rather than with her brothers and sisters. And so, in a sense, he had soon escaped from what had seemed to him the stiflingly dull and decorous if good-natured world, where he had yet found the exciting, lawless, if for a while ideal, passion, which for three years had filled and glorified his whole being.But though, to the people who meant so much to Helen Ackerington, Douglas Curtin had

remained a mere acquaintance, she had worked hard to make all her menfolk help him in his profession, and this, being kindly people, they had willingly done, the task made easy by Curtin's real ability, industry, and what Robert Ackerington called "his gift of the gab." Now he was on the high road to success. In this last twelve months he had made nineteen hundred pounds, and he was already thinking of standing for Parliament.He was wondering uneasily how he could so phrase his next sentence as to make her understand, without hurting her, that he intended to leave before her husband came in with his usual hearty invitation to stop and take dinner with them—when she suddenly moved a little nearer to him."It's such a comfort that Robert's away!""Away?"He could not keep the surprise out of his voice, and it was then that Helen said the only "cattish" thing she did say during that memorable twenty minutes. "We've seen each other so little lately that you don't know anything that's happening to me!"As she saw the face she loved cloud over, and become sullen, she went on, hurriedly, "Robert's gone to Paris about some big contract. He'll be back by the end of the week."There was a pause, and then, "You'll be in town for Christmas, won't you?" she asked, a touch of eager pleading in her voice."I'm booked at my sister's this year."The ready lie slipped easily off his tongue. It was true that he could go to his sister's if he chose to do so, but he hoped to be somewhere very different—this day three weeks."But you'll be back for the New Year? We're having our usual corner table at the Ritz."She was looking at him now with pathetic eyes—the joy, the peace, the spirit of content which had filled her heart seemed to be all ebbing away."Of course I shall," he said hastily, telling himself that the future, even so short a future as that, could look after itself. Helen and her hospitable husband could make a choice among half a dozen lonely men to take his place at the New Year's Day dinner where for three years in succession he had been a welcome guest.He went on, "I've brought you your Christmas present now—"She waited in vain for the "darling" he had not uttered once to-night. And then, gazing up into his now set face, she whispered, "May I find it?"He winced a little. "Put your hand near my heart. You'll find it there—darling."Reassured, she drew a tiny jewel-case from

his breast pocket, and then, suddenly, she did something which touched him queerly.Putting her bright head forward, she laid her cheek on his coat. "You are good to me, dearest," she whispered. Then, opening the jewel-case, she gave a cry of surprise and pleasure."Oh, Douglas," she exclaimed, "you ought not to have got me this—it must have cost a dreadful lot of money!"It was a pear-shaped emerald, one of those curious freak jewels which were a fashion of the moment, and again she exclaimed, "It must have cost a dreadful lot of money!"He grew hotly red. "If you will be so material," he said vexedly, "it cost just about a third of what I made over that case your brother put in my way—"And then it was her turn to feel vexed. Why had he said that? It was as if he were paying her for something.She turned away. ..."You do like it? " he asked, and caught hold of her hand.There was a touch of real, urgent anxiety in the voice with which he asked the commonplace question, for he intended this lovely jewel to be the last gift he would ever make to this poor woman who loved him at once so selflessly and so selfishly."I adore it!" she exclaimed, and, turning, lifted up her face. And then they both moved quickly away the one from the other, for they had heard Belt's light step."Come in!" cried Helen, and the door opened behind them with a long, slithering sound."There's a trunk-call for you, ma'am—I think from Paris.""Say I'm coming at once—don't let them cut us off—"They heard the maid's firm, light steps on the stairs, for she had left the door open behind her. But for once Douglas Curtin forgot the prudence he had been schooled to observe when in this house.He bent forward, and, kissing Helen on the lips, he held her again, closely, to him. "Good-bye, my darling," he said huskily. "I'm going out of town to-morrow—but of course I'll write to you.""Good night, my dear, dear love," she whispered. "Just tell me your address—I shan't forget it." And then she suddenly slipped out of his arms. "Oh dear—that telephone! D'you hear it? I'm afraid I must go and see to it at once."They both ran downstairs, he snatching up his hat, his coat, his stick, in the hall, while she hurried off to her husband's study. As

he swung out of the house, and shut the front door, with something of a slam, behind him, he muttered aloud: "Thank God that's over! Well—well over!"(3)After he had escaped from the house towards which for so long his eager feet had ever been hurrying, Douglas Curtin decided that to-night he would walk, and not drive, as he was wont to do, back to his rooms in the Temple.Of late he had become uneasily aware that increasing prosperity had brought certain unwise changes in his daily way of life. In the days when he had been working at his Bar exams. and later, when eating out his heart as a poor, still briefless barrister, he had been a great walker. But now, when out of doors, he almost lived in taxis, partly because he had plenty of petty cash, and also for the better reason that he had become a busy man.For the first time he had consciously come to feel keenly, fiercely, anxious to stay young. Thirty-four now seemed so infinitely older than nineteen—and he had fallen in love with, and intensely desired to marry, a girl of nineteen. Only a few days ago he had seen Rose Murray talking to an undergraduate, a boy perhaps two years older than herself, and he had felt stung

with what reason alone told him was an utterly unreasonable jealousy.As he walked on, with long, even strides, through the dark streets, putting an ever greater distance between himself and the house he half hoped never to enter again—though that perhaps was asking too much of fate—he began to feel extraordinarily light-hearted, almost what the Scots call "fey."Though nothing had really happened to change what had now become the painful, intolerable situation still existing between himself and Helen Ackerington, Douglas Curtin felt, nevertheless, as if he had taken this evening a great step forward towards the inevitable break. He was going down for the week-end to Rose Murray's people, and he intended to ask her to marry him this next Sunday. If she said "Yes," he would write to Helen from there on Monday morning—before coming back to London.Thrusting away the woman whom he had just left, expelling her, as it were, from out the inner chamber where she had dwelt so long, he began to muse, with a sensation of intense exultant joy, over his coming visit to the Murrays' country home. He had stayed there twice already this autumn, so that he knew all the dear little ways of the quiet, old-fashioned house. He fell into a slower walk as he planned, as he thought

out with lingering delight, what he would do—if only the gods were kind and the weather fine—next Sunday!After luncheon he and Rose would saunter out together, and he would persuade her, as he had done last time he was there, to stay out too late to accompany her parents and her little sisters to what they called "evensong." And if everything went well between them, if the gods again were kind, it was then that he would ask her to marry him.Would she say "Yes" at once? He was not quite sure; there was to it just that touch of delicious half-uncertainty which he would not for worlds have been without. Though she was only a simple girl, and he a shrewd man of the world, Rose Murray had so far baffled him that he could not feel certain whether she really cared enough to say "Yes" now. Though—rapturous, secret knowledge!—he was quite sure, deep in his heart, that he could make her care in time. Helen Ackerington was not the only woman who had loved Douglas Curtin.And then, all at once, the young man began to walk more quickly. There had come over him an overwhelming sense of nearness to Helen—the woman he had so completely, so scornfully, banished from his mind, while the girl he loved had held triumphant possession of everything

that went to make the complicated, sensitive, passionate entity who walked the earth as Douglas Curtin.He found himself suddenly obsessed with the disturbing, distasteful knowledge that very soon, perhaps by next Tuesday, Helen would hold him in bitter, bitter contempt.Ruefully, and with a feeling of discomfiture and pain, he faced the fact that her contempt would be deserved. How many times had he sworn in the days that now seemed so long ago that he would never love any woman but herself? It was because she had believed this, because he had persuaded her that their love, if lawless, would be eternal, that she had thrown aside all the traditions and scruples, it might almost be said all the decencies, of her caste—of that respectable, unimaginative, upper-middle class which is still the moral backbone of old England.He began composing in his mind, not for the first time, the letter he would write to her next Monday morning, if, as deep in his heart he felt sure would be the case, he and Rose Murray were by then engaged.It would be a grateful, tender, humble letter. But it must also be absolutely final. He was quite determined never to see any of "that crowd," as he had long contemptuously termed them to himself, again. Never, that is, after his

wedding day, for of course, though his marriage would naturally be in Rose Murray's little village church, they would all—hateful thought!—have to be asked, and, more distasteful thought still, they would all send him handsome presents.As he walked on ever more and more quickly, memory, guided unwillingly by conscience, brimmed up and over, full of Helen and of their joint past.The Wedderburns were all in "big business," and for three all-important years in his profession their influence had been exercised on his behalf. No wonder he had often said, in those days when he and Helen were so wholly one that each ever passionately desired to tell everything to the other, that he owed his sudden, almost miraculous success at the Bar to the woman he loved! And she, poor soul, would deny it, vehemently answering that everything, or nearly everything, of the successes that had come to her friend was owing to his wonderful brain, to his matchless eloquence! Yet he remembered sorely, now, that sometimes, not often, Helen would change her tone, admitting how happy it made her to know that, thanks to her, he had been set on the road to prosperity and fame.In those far-off days—she had not done it for a long time—Helen would sometimes allude to her lover's possible marriage. "I couldn't

bear it, Douglas, if you were to be caught by one of those horrid, fast, modern girls—but of course I want you to marry some day!" And when she uttered those uncalled for, insincere words her lover would declare, with what had seemed, even to himself, absolute truth, that he would never marry unless, unless Robert—? but that sentence would never be finished.God! How long ago that time—the time of fond, foolish, dangerous disclaimers—seemed to the man now so passionately and, he told himself, so purely, in love with Rose Murray.Yet in a sense he even owed Rose Murray to the Wedderburns—not, thank heaven, in a sufficiently direct sense for Helen ever to know it. The husband of one of Helen's sisters had put a bit of work in his way, and that bit of work had led, by one of those queer little chains of incidents which may mean nothing, and sometimes mean everything, in a human life, straight to Rose Murray and her people.How fortunate it was that the Murrays and the Wedderburns—to say nothing of the Ackeringtons—belonged not only to such different London sets, but to such entirely different social castes! The life his Rose led—the pleasant, happy, intelligent existence of the girls in her quiet world—would seem intolerably dull to Helen, for it meant few theatres, only a little very decorous

dancing, and some nine months of each year spent in a lonely part of Lincolnshire. But the girl he loved was what is termed "well-connected," and Douglas Curtin, being the manner of man he was, could not but be aware that marriage to Rose Murray would improve his position as a prospective Parliamentary candidate.And so it was that as he came within hail of what he still was to call for a little while "home," Helen Ackerington at last receded into what seemed the mists of the past, and he entered in the fragrant garden of the future—a sunny garden, free from mouldering byways and mazes, and filled with the presence of the girl he now worshipped, and to whom he intended to be the most devoted and faithful of lover-husbands.(4)Douglas Curtin put his key into the heavy door of the pleasant chambers which he, or rather a friend of Helen's for him. had discovered to be vacant, two years ago, in Fountain Court.Turning on the electric light, he looked instinctively at the narrow Empire table (a birthday present from Helen) which took up so little space in the tiny lobby, and yet which was so useful that he had sometimes wondered how he had ever done without it.There lay on that table two new briefs. The more the better! Douglas Curtin was a wolf for work; a dependable man, as well as a brilliant advocate.Hanging up his hat and coat, he told himself that he would have a go at these two new briefs and then go out, quite late, for a little supper in a quiet place in Fleet Street where they knew his ways.Then, all at once, he turned sharply round, for the leather door opposite his front door had swung back, and a voice with which he only had pleasant associations, that of a Mrs. Haggard, the pretty young wife of a more or less briefless barrister, called out, "Your telephone's been going like mad, Mr. Curtin. I felt so sorry for the person—whoever it was!"And as she said the word "was," his telephone bell began ringing again, furiously."There it is again! I am glad you're in at last!"He called out, "Thank you for telling me," and hurried through into his bedroom, for the telephone was there, close to his bed.Without even waiting to turn on the electric light, he took up the receiver; but for a while, as so often happens, the bell rang on and on."I'm here! Stop ringing!" he called out, again and again. But the insistent tingling

went on. So at last he hung up the receiver, turned on his reading-lamp, and waited, impatiently.He was just going to leave the room when the bell rang again."So you are in—are you? I have had a time trying to get you!"The telephone operator did not speak unkindly; he and she were quite good, though eternally invisible, friends."I'm so sorry—but aren't you just going off?" he called back; and the familiar, slightly coquettish voice answered, "I'll be gone in a minute, but I promised I'd have a last try. Wait a minute, and I'll get them!"He waited—it seemed a long time—and then he heard a voice so choked, so laden with sobs and tears, that for a moment he could not make out whose voice it was.Then, when there came the words, the question, "Is that you, Douglas?" he knew it, with sudden irritation, for Helen's. Damn it! Would she never leave him alone?Without waiting for an answer, on went the wailing voice, "I thought I'd never get you! You didn't go straight home—did you?""Yes, of course I did," he answered impatiently. "I walked, that's all. What's the matter?"He had never used any term of endearment

over the telephone; she had early decreed that it would be dangerous to do so."Robert's dead."The two words were uttered quietly, tonelessly."What's that?" he called out, in a loud, discordant voice. "I can't hear what you say."And then she repeated the words, speaking this time with a touch of excited emotion, "Robert's dead! He was killed in Paris to-day—run over by a lorry. They took him to the Morgue. He's there now. The hotel people got a telephone call through to me just after you had gone. I couldn't make out what they said for a long time—and then at last I got it. It's frightful! Frightful!"He heard himself echoing her, stupidly, "Frightful! Frightful!"There was a pause—so long a pause that he wondered if she had left the telephone. And then, at last, she spoke again,"Can you possibly go to Paris with me tomorrow morning, Douglas? My brothers are both away. Oh, do say you can!"He hesitated—not very long; hardly more than the fraction of a minute, and then he heard, uttered very low, and in trembling accents, the words,"Perhaps you can't—perhaps you're too busy? Forgive me for having asked you."Slowly he raised his head. There came over him, in that darkened room, a flood of remorseful, poignant, ardent memories. After all, he wasn't an utter cur—?"Of course I'll go with you!" he called out, heartily, feelingly.A deep sense of peace, comfort, security, flooded the broken voice which answered,"I thought you would; I told mother I knew you would. Dearest, don't be shocked, don't be angry with me—I've told mother that we love one another. I think she knew, poor old darling. I think—I think she even understands."THE PHILANDERERTHE PHILANDERER(I)THE stable-yard clock struck seven. Leonard Hardwyke, a fine, upstanding man, looking a good deal younger than his age, which was forty-one, jumped up from his chair. Time he went to see the lady whom he facetiously called his missus.It was Christmas Eve, and to many a cheery house-party gathered together within a motor drive of Allways Place he would have been a welcome addition. But, according to his rather peculiar moral code, it was not fitting for him to be away from his own quiet, shadowed house on either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. Other people might forget what Hardwyke owed to his wife, but he never forgot. At the time of their marriage he had been nearly penniless, and now he was for all practical purposes master of a large fortune.As he was walking to the door of his pleasant study, the telephone bell rang. He turned, took up the receiver, listened for a moment,

then called back in a hearty, jovial tone, "Don't tempt me, Cissie! A good man—and I hope I'm a good man—does not leave his wife alone on Christmas Eve."A slightly pettish voice answered, "What nonsense! You never see her after half-past eight—you told me so yourself, in the days when I used to feel so sorry for you."Though he knew she couldn't see him, he shook his head. "Seriously, my dear, I can't come. You know quite well I would if I could—" There was a tender vibration in his low, caressing voice. Even after he had wearied of a woman Hardwyke always went on being affectionate and courteous, so "Happy Christmas, darling," he murmured.He heard her angry retort, "I won't wish you a happy Christmas, Leonard. You don't deserve one. You are a hypocrite! Going to spend a pleasant evening with Miss Ardleigh, I suppose?"Before he could deny, with real vehemence, that unfair impeachment, Mrs. Langdon hung up the receiver.Though vexed, he felt a little bit touched, too. Cissie Langdon was evidently really disappointed that he couldn't go to her party to-night. Rather nice of her that, considering what old friends they were, and how long it was since—well, since he had made love to her.Still, she had called him a hypocrite, and the word stung. Far from being a hypocrite Hardwyke never even pretended to other women than his wife that he had more than a grateful affection for her. What more could one ask from a man who had married, at twenty-nine, a woman who was forty-three, plain and sickly, and not over good-tempered? It hadn't always been easy, begad! But he had got away with it—and he was happier now than he had been at the beginning of his married life.In those early days, when Jane used to be ridiculously jealous, it had been awkward, and sometimes very tiresome. But by dint of good humour, by showing her the little attentions that all women love, and also by—well, by being exceedingly careful, he had lulled her jealousy to sleep. For years now they had got on together far better than did many married couples of their acquaintance.His own life, too, had become infinitely easier since his wife had subsided into being a regular invalid, living entirely upstairs in her own charming suite of rooms. Oddly enough, she hated doctors, and that, from Hardwyke's point of view, was a good thing. It would have been such a bore if she had always been having treatments and operations, filling the house with their dismal paraphernalia.His mind took a sudden twist. He didn't envy the fellow who married Rosalind Ardleigh. There was a regular little spitfire for you! Extraordinary that his wife had ever taken such a girl for her companion. And still more extraordinary that she had liked her and kept her.And then, as if his thought had brought her, the door opened, and Miss Ardleigh came through it, her ardent glance enveloping him as in a blast of flame.For a moment he felt queerly disconcerted, almost as though he had been caught out doing something he should not do. And yet that was far from being the case. On the contrary, with regard to this young woman he had acted with unusual good sense. Your born philanderer—and Hardwyke was a born philanderer—is very rarely tempted to assume the rôle of a Don Juan, and, when he is so tempted, that instinct of self-preservation, which is the strongest instinct of all, comes to his aid—and turns him from a Don Juan into a Joseph.Not for a long time—indeed, not since early October—had Rosalind Ardleigh sought him out like this, in his own quarters."Mrs. Hardwyke is not feeling well to-night," she said, quietly. "I'm afraid she will not be able to see you.""Then you think it unlikely that she will ask for me to-night?""I feel sure she will not do so."There was a pause, and then, "May I go now?" she asked, with affected humility.He opened the door for her. "Certainly, Miss Ardleigh, and thank you for coming yourself."He shut the door slowly, then went over to the telephone."Cissie? What luck to catch you like this! My wife's not well, and I've just had a message to say she doesn't wish to be disturbed to-night, so I'll come along, if I may, as soon as I've had dinner."He heard the slightly mocking words, "Good business! No, I don't mean that, of course—I'm sorry Mrs. Hardwyke isn't well. But I'm glad you're coming, Len. I hope Miss Ardleigh won't be disappointed!"He went to the fireplace and sat down. Cissie Langdon knew now that she had made a pretty bad shot when she had spoken as if he was going to spend his Christmas Eve with Miss Ardleigh. Still, he wondered, with a touch of uneasiness, how much local gossip lay behind that acrid remark.He and the girl certainly gave no cause for gossip now. His wife's companion lived a life quite apart from his own. She had her own

sitting-room, where she even took her meals, and though there had been a time when he had chafed at a state of things which had made it almost impossible for him to see much of Rosalind Ardleigh without the whole household becoming aware of the fact, he was now more than glad that it was difficult for them to meet.Yet how attractive she was! No wonder he had been so strangely and powerfully allured. To-night she had been wearing a dull gold frock on which, stencilled here and there, were blue and green Chinese peacocks—emblems of bad luck. The sheaf-like garment showed every point of her beautiful, slender figure, and from the small opening of the neck rose the proud-looking little, narrow head, crowned with an aureole of dark, curling hair.In the days when he was playing Pygmalion to Rosalind's Galatea, he had told her in all sincerity that she looked like an Egyptian princess, and that her type of loveliness, in this country at any rate, was so rare as to be almost unique.Then his mind reverted to the evening's amusement before him. He had been touched and flattered at the genuine pleasure which he had detected in Cissie Langdon's voice.There is something very pleasant to the average man—and Hardwyke prided himself on being an average man—in the knowledge that he is

thoroughly well liked, not only by his friends, but by a large circle of neighbours. True, when a man is a good fellow, generous and rich, he is very apt to be liked by the people among whom his lot is cast. But Leonard Hardwyke was well aware that he had had to live down strong prejudice.Everyone in this old-fashioned country neighbourhood had fallen into the habit of thinking that Jane Allways—for such had been his wife's peculiar maiden name—was destined to remain for ever unmarried. That this wealthy, ill-tempered spinster lady, a suspicious-natured invalid to boot, should suddenly return from Brighton one spring with a good-looking husband fourteen years younger than herself had been a nine days' wonder; and certain people had looked very much askance, and that for a long time, at Leonard Hardwyke.Now, the trouble was not that people disliked him, but that they liked him a thought too much!Over the shrewd, good-looking face there came a slight smile. The unkind might have called it a fatuous smile—for it was the smile of a man who knows, deep in his heart, that he is almost uncannily attractive to women.And then he grew suddenly grave, for he had remembered, once more, Rosalind Ardleigh. It gave him a touch of discomfort to know that

she was not far away, only on the other side of the house, probably thinking of him with mingled malignity and—well, why not call it "passion"?There came back to him the vivid memory of an occasion when the girl had frightened him badly. It had been on a summer evening, when they had had a secret meeting some way from home. She had suddenly turned on him, exclaiming in wild, despairing accents that, situated in the miserable position in which they found themselves, each loving the other not wisely but too well, the only solution was—suicide. He had wondered, looking down into her lovely almond-shaped eyes, whether the passionate creature could be really English. But he had once met her father, a broken-down old man who had failed in business, and he was certainly English all through.(2)The fun at Paringham Hall was at its height, though some of the older people were beginning to think of the supper which was to be served as soon as the children had been sent off to bed.Because of the children, all sorts of childish games had been played to-night, and now they had come to "Blind Man's Buff." Leonard Hardwyke was the only man over forty in the game, but, as he was in the pink of physical

condition, he had enjoyed every minute of it. And the pleasantest minute of all had been when he had caught the prettiest girl in the room, and, she being nothing loth, had refused for a whole half-minute to let her go!At last the door of the ballroom opened, and there appeared a bevy of smiling white-clad nurses. Behind them stood Glencomb, an old family servant who was on terms of respectful friendship with his master's most popular guest. As he had come into the house this evening Leonard Hardwyke had slipped a big tip into Glencomb's hand. "A happy Christmas" he had exclaimed, and the man had looked at him full of gratified surprise; Mr. Hardwyke indeed deserved his luck in being married to so rich a lady.But while the nurses were cajoling their unwilling little charges to come to bed, the butler's face wore a look of anxiety. He threaded his way quietly among the chairs till he reached the place where Hardwyke was leaning over a pretty woman, murmuring, as was his way, pleasant somethings in her ear. "Mr. Hardwyke," whispered the man, "you are wanted on the telephone."Hardwyke straightened himself. "All right, Glencomb, I'm coming."But, though his face remained unruffled and

smiling, he felt really angry. At one time Rosalind Ardleigh had fallen into the habit of telephoning to him when he was lunching or dining out, and she would take any excuse, however trivial, or at any rate so it had seemed to him. He had told her at last never to telephone unless the matter was really urgent, and of late she had obeyed him.As they were crossing the hall Glencomb said, quietly, "I'm afraid, sir, that you're going to hear bad news."Hardwyke felt startled - nay, more, frightened.Good God! How awful it would be for him if that foolish girl had done anything terrible, irreparable! He had an inconveniently vivid imagination, and now he saw Rosalind Ardleigh stretched out on the floor of her sitting-room - the small automatic pistol which he had once seen in her possession lying by her side. . . .The telephone was in a tiny room leading to the domestic quarters of Paringham Hall, and after the butler had shut the door on him, Hardwyke, taking up the receiver, called out, "What's the matter?"Silence-disconcerting silence.He waited impatiently. And then, just as he was going to try and get through to his house, he heard the question uttered in a woman's voice, "Is that Mr. Hardwyke himself?"His heart stood still, for it was not Rosalind Ardleigh's voice. "Yes, yes—Mr. Hardwyke speaking! Who are you?""I'm Miss Dakin, the parish nurse, Mr. Hardwyke. I'm afraid I'm going to give you a great shock. Mrs. Hardwyke is dead."He was so amazed, so astounded, that the meaning of the words just uttered in that quiet, toneless voice did not carry their full significance to his brain.He said in a dazed voice, "My wife—dead?""She was already dead when I was sent for. It must have been very sudden.""Is Dr. Fenner there?""He is out at a bad case, and they don't expect him back for another hour.""I see. Thank you, Miss Dakin. I'll come home at once, of course."As he went out of the room, it was a comfort to see the butler waiting for him at the end of the passage."You were right, Glencomb. I've had very bad news. Mrs. Hardwyke has died suddenly. I must go home at once. Will you tell Mrs. Langdon?""I feared it was something very serious, sir, from the way the lady spoke. I've sent round for your car, and meanwhile I do hope you'll just

have a little supper—I've got it all ready on a tray for you."There came a lump in Hardwyke's throat. What a good fellow Glencomb was! What good friends he had in every class of life! He put out his hand and clasped the other man's, warmly.And then, standing there in the stone passage, he began to eat the cold chicken and pâté-de-foie-gras mousse which Glencomb had prepared for him. But though a few minutes ago he had felt quite hungry, he could eat very little now. Still, he did manage to finish the half bottle of excellent champagne which Glencomb had also thoughtfully provided.Poor Jane—poor, dear Jane! Well, he had made her as happy as any man could have made her. She had told him so, albeit a little grudgingly, on the occasion of his last birthday, when she had given him a big cheque to buy a new hunter. He remembered, too, that she had remade her will this autumn, in deference to a suggestion of his. Several of the people to whom she had left money in her last will, made at the time of their marriage, had died. . . .In the daylight it takes not much more than a quarter of an hour to reach Allways Place from Paringham Hall, but the chauffeur was

agreeably aware that he had to deal with a master who never cared to take risks. Besides, where was the use of hurrying now? So Hardwyke had a little time for thought as he sat back in his luxurious car.He told himself, as men are apt to tell themselves at such moments, that it's the unexpected which always happens in life. Why, the last time the great London specialist, who was the only doctor his wife would tolerate, had seen her, he had said that he saw no reason why she shouldn't live till eighty! Hardwyke had always supposed that he would outlive her, a reasonable belief as she was fourteen years older than himself, and during the first three or four years of their married life he had sometimes thought of what would happen when she died. But that kind of secret speculation had now been absent from his mind for a long time.Yet how this unexpected event would alter his life. How it would free him from a kind of bondage which he had never allowed to weigh on him, but which he had felt to be there—good God, yes—all the time. Although they would both have denied it, it was, of course, a fact that he had never been free to go away, to do anything that he really wanted to do, without her permission. Poor Jane hadn't asked much of her husband, but he had almost always to be

with her while she ate her lunch, when she drank her afternoon tea, and during her plain little supper.He had grown very fond of Allways Place, the charming Elizabethan manor-house of which he had become master in so curious and romantic a way—Hardwyke always liked to think of his marriage as curious and romantic—but, even so, how glad he would be to get away from it for a while!He suddenly remembered, with a feeling of real gratitude and emotion, that with regard to that recent will of hers his wife had made one very important alteration. In her first will she had put in a clause common enough in men's wills, but uncommon in a woman's will. This was that in the event of his re-marriage he should only have a thousand a year. But she had cut out that clause, leaving him absolutely free, and sole owner of her considerable fortune. He thought, again with emotion, that she needn't have altered that clause. Marry again? Not he! To Leonard Hardwyke's mind a rich bachelor's life is the ideal life.(3)He had thought Miss Ardleigh would meet him at the front door, and he was relieved to see no one there but his wife's old butler, a man whom

it had taken him a long time to win round, but with whom he was now on the very best of terms. Why there were actually tears in the odd fellow's eyes. How touching!"The parish nurse has stayed on, sir," said the man, in a quavering voice. "She thought you might like to see her; she's in the study."Hardwyke felt glad that no word was said as to Miss Ardleigh. He suspected that there had been, among the servants, just a little talk this last summer concerning his friendship with his wife's companion. That sort of person is so apt to suspect evil where no evil exists. Well, the poor girl would soon be quite out of his life. Rosalind Ardleigh would, of course, leave Allways Place immediately after the funeral.He hurried off to his study, and the parish nurse stood up as he came in. Like everyone else in the village, she was on the best of terms with him.As he shook hands, with her he murmured, "This is terribly sudden, Miss Dakin. Somehow I can't believe it even now! I was with Mrs. Hardwyke while she had her tea this afternoon and I thought her then rather better than usual.""Miss Ardleigh says that Mrs. Hardwyke began to feel ill about half-past six, and that

from then she grew worse and worse. I'm sorry, Mr. Hardwyke, that I wasn't sent for before. I might have done something to alleviate her pain.""Had she pain?" he said, startled and very sorry."Yes, I'm afraid she had a good deal of pain. But Miss Ardleigh gave her some morphia pills which Mrs. Hardwyke had had by her for a long time."He said, bewildered, "But I don't understand why she died.""Her heart must have given way."He caught at that. "The big London man we had down some time ago told me her heart was not in good trim."There was a pause, and then Hardwyke said, solicitously, "I do hope you've had some supper, Miss Dakin?"It was that kind of thoughtfulness that made people like the man so much. He was instinctively considerate to every woman that came across his path.
She answered, gratefully, "Yes, indeed, I've had supper, Mr. Hardwyke—and a glass of your wonderful old port as well.""That's right!" he exclaimed. "Have another glass now, before you go out into the cold?" And though she protested, he rang the

bell. "I'm glad old England hasn't gone dry yet, eh?"The parish nurse smiled, for the first time that evening.After he had ordered the wine from the butler, he turned to the nurse again."I suppose poor Miss Ardleigh is worn out, and that you sent her to bed?"Nurse Dakin looked rather surprised."No, I don't think she's gone to bed, Mr. Hardwyke. I'm sure she meant to sit up to see you. She was in here just now, but when we heard the motor she left the room. I wonder where she can be?"And then he realized that the strange girl didn't mean to see him for the first time after his wife's death in the presence of another woman. But if she thought he was going to choose such a moment as this to be sentimental she was mistaken; the idea was revolting—revolting!He poured out a glass of port for the nurse, and then he took her to the front door and put her into his motor as carefully, as courteously, so she said to herself, as if she had been the first lady in the land. . . .Slowly, with lagging steps, he turned back into the house."If Miss Ardleigh has not gone to bed, I should like to see her," he said to the butler;

and then, as if by an afterthought, "Oh, and at the same time Miss Brown might come down."Brown was his wife's maid, and his firm ally."Miss Brown has gone to bed, sir. Miss Ardleigh is already in the study—I saw her go in there just now."Then he had been right? She had been lying in wait for the other woman to leave the house before she saw him.Straightening himself instinctively, he opened the door of the study.His wife's companion was standing by the fire, and her head was bent down, as if she were listening to something. She did not look up as he opened the door and a feeling of keen irritation swept over Leonard Hardwyke. Why couldn't she be ordinary natural? Alas, he knew well enough that she was being absolutely herself; in fact, the one thing about Rosalind Ardleigh that was disconcerting to such a man as himself was that she remained always, first and last, a child of nature.She looked round at him, and he was horrified at the change in her face. It was entirely drained of colour; she looked ghastly. Suddenly he felt ashamed of his unkind thoughts, for she had evidently gone through an awful ordeal."Sit down," he said, kindly, "sit down,

Rosalind. I'm more sorry than I can say that I was out to-night—""It's the first time, Mr. Hardwyke, that I've ever seen anybody die, or even anybody dead," she muttered in a low, shaky voice.And then, still speaking in tremulous tones, she said a curious thing, "I thought she would just lie back and die quietly. But she had such awful pain till we found some old morphia pills. Brown didn't want to give them to her, but they acted very quickly, and were such a comfort! Brown thinks that perhaps they hastened her death?"She looked round her timorously, as if afraid that the walls might hear."I don't think morphia acts in that way at all," he said, shortly. "And, if it did, who could wish anyone to linger on in agony? I have a horror of the modern way of prolonging life a few weeks, a few days, even a few hours.""So have I," she murmured, almost inaudibly.He could see her lips twitching, and felt concerned about her, while yet again irritated. After all, she hadn't cared for her employer; she had actually disliked her.But women are queer creatures! Leonard Hardwyke had all your philanderer's instinctive contempt for the other sex, though at times an

infinite indulgence for, and understanding of, women."Did you arrange for Dr. Fenner to come tonight?" he asked, abruptly. "If so, I will, of course, sit up for him. But you had better go to bed. The parish nurse has told me everything.""I don't see how she can have told you anything, for I didn't send for her till after—after—"He broke in, impatiently, "I quite understand that. But I know enough to tell Dr. Fenner everything that is necessary."The thought of sitting up here with the girl—as he used sometimes to sit up with her after the servants had all gone to bed, in the dangerous, foolish days that now seemed so long ago—was intolerable. And what if Dr. Fenner failed to come to-night, after all?Rosalind got up, like an automaton, and again Hardwyke was frightened by the ghastly look of her face."It was terrible," she said, brokenly. "Her suffering, I mean. And yet how callous people are! Brown thought it quite natural; and even Miss Dakin, when I told her about it, didn't seem to mind very much."He took her cold hand and chafed it."Now, look here, my dear?" he forced her

down into her chair again. "You must try and pull yourself together! I know you've had a very terrible experience, and I'm bitterly sorry that I went out to-night, and that you faced it alone. But you always did your duty by Mrs. Hardwyke, and I'm sure you thought of everything a kind heart, could suggest your doing for her to-night, and—"She interrupted him roughly:"How does it feel to be free?" she asked, looking up into his face.He winced, shocked at the atrociously bad taste of the question."You've often told me yourself," she went on, breathlessly, "that you were bound—not free. Now that you are free, Leonard Hardwyke, how does it feel to be free?"He looked round him nervously. Supposing one of the servants happened to be listening at the door? What a shocking thing to have whispered about him—that he had said he felt bound, not free! And what a fool he had been to say it to his wife's companion—to this hysterical, malicious girl! Hardwyke had said that sort of thing to so many women, but this was the first time that any woman had been so cruel as to taunt him with it."It was wrong of me to say that—very wrong, Miss Ardleigh," he spoke rather louder than

usual. "Every married man is, in a sense, bound. But though you may find it difficult to believe it, I had a very real, indeed a deep, affection for my poor wife.""Had you?" She started up from the chair where he had placed her. "Then, indeed, am I of all women the most miserable!""Don't talk like that," he pleaded, in a low voice—what to herself the unhappy girl called his "old" voice. "You are making me very wretched, Rosalind.""Mr. Hardwyke—"She took a step nearer to him and gazed into his face with so strange and despairing a look that for the first time in his long, selfish life he felt ashamed of having made love to a woman—ashamed, as well as bitterly sorry."Do you still think your wife died a natural death?""Of course I do. She was always an invalid, and her heart was in a bad state. I suppose she must have eaten something to-day at lunch that disagreed with her. Acute pain followed, and her heart gave way.""You really believe that?" The girl looked at him fixedly."What else can I believe?"He was puzzled by her manner. Was she trying to prolong their interview? Was she

afraid of going off to bed? He hardly liked to suggest that she should take one of his poor wife's sleeping draughts, though that would undoubtedly be the wisest thing she could do.Then there fell on his affrighted ears the words, uttered slowly and very distinctly,"I killed Mrs. Hardwyke. I gave her a large dose of antimony. No one else will ever know the truth, but I wish you to know at what a cost you have been made free."Then, her voice rising almost into a scream, she went on, speaking more and more quickly,"It's all very well for you to pretend now that you weren't unhappy—that you were attached to your wife. I know better! I know that you were wretched. But don't be afraid—you'll never see me again after to-morrow. My work here is done. I didn't mean you to know this—no one else will ever know—"He put his hands heavily on her shoulders."I don't believe a word of what you've been saying. You can't frighten me, you silly little fool! How dare you tell me such a wicked, silly, dangerous lie?""Very well—go on believing that she died a natural death! I don't care! she cried, hysterically.Reluctantly he released her from his firm grasp."I—I don't know what to believe," he muttered.There came a curiously malignant look over her pallid face."I'm not like you," she cried passionately. "I haven't had an easy, sheltered life. I've had to think things out for myself, Mr. Hardwyke, and I'm not a bit sorry for what I've done! What upset me was seeing her suffer."And then she repeated the curious phrase he had heard her utter—was it a few minutes, or hours ago?"I thought she would simply lie back and die. You told me yourself, during the short time you really loved me, that her heart might give way at any time—"He was gazing at her with a feeling of growing horror and repulsion. This was surely a nightmare he was living through? But no, it was only too real, and suddenly he became intensely conscious that he must take hold of the situation—that he must act instantly."I order you to confess," he spoke in firm, measured tones, "that what you have just told me is not true. That you said it only—""—only to pay you out for all the unhappiness, the misery, the shame, you have caused me? Very well—have it so!""The shame?" he repeated. "I don't know

what you mean. We have nothing to be ashamed of—far from it."She contradicted him, violently."So you think, no doubt. But I am ashamed—horribly, debasedly ashamed, of having loved such a creature as you. However, as I said just now, I'm going away to-morrow. You'll never be troubled with me any more—"He put up a warning hand, for his quick ears had caught the sound of a car rushing swiftly up the avenue."There's Dr. Fenner!" he exclaimed, and then he took her hand again."I bitterly regret the suffering I have caused you, Rosalind. Still, you shouldn't have done what you did just now. It was a very cruel punishment for my having loved you. Come! Admit that it was?"But her face, now, was the face of a mask, and she wrenched her hand away."You can make Brown get up—if the doctor really wants to hear what went on this evening," she said in a hard voice; and then she left the room.A few moments later Dr. Fenner was shown in, and the two men shook hands in silence."I'm more sorry than I can say that I was out," began the doctor. "That parish nurse of ours is a good soul—she waited up till she heard

me go by, and then she ran out and hailed me. So I've heard it all from her, and I fear, from what she says, that I could have done very little.""I shall never forgive myself," said Leonard Hardwyke, in a broken voice, "for having been out to-night. But I got a message from my poor wife saying that she didn't feel very well, and urging me to accept Mrs. Langdon's invitation. They had a children's party over at Paringham, and I'm awfully fond of the kids, as you know, doctor.""I do, indeed!" The doctor's own children were among Leonard Hardwyke's warm friends and grateful admirers.Dr. Fenner went on, "I'll see the coroner tomorrow, and try and get everything settled as soon as possible."Chill fear suddenly clutched at Leonard Hardwyke's heart."The coroner?" he exclaimed, in a tone which betrayed his discomfiture.The other man raised his eyebrows."I thought you realized," he said, "that there'll have to be an inquest. Mrs. Hardwyke's dislike to members of my profession unfortunately makes it a necessity. We can't avoid it. If only I'd seen her within the last two or three weeks I could have signed the death certificate at once. But I haven't seen Mrs. Hardwyke

since Armstrong came down from London, and that's months ago.""I suppose it is," said Hardwyke, mechanically. "But—but, there won't have to be a post-mortem, will there?""I'm afraid there will, Hardwyke."The doctor looked, as he felt, uncomfortable. It was extraordinary what a dislike even sensible people have to that simple affair."Besides," he added, soothingly, "I'm sure that for your own sake you'd like to know why Mrs. Hardwyke died?""I thought we did know," said the other, in a low voice."We don't know in the least what set up the violent internal inflammation. From what your wife's maid told the parish nurse, it does seem to me a little mysterious.""They gave her some morphia pills," said Hardwyke, in an almost inaudible voice.He felt as if his teeth were chattering, and it was a most disturbing feeling. Was there—could there be—anything in common between antimony and morphia? He was remembering how, one day when they were in the harness-room, he had told Rosalind Ardleigh about the Bravo Mystery, a famous case of poisoning with antimony. It had been recalled to his mind because there, on a shelf of his harness-room,

was a bottle of the perilous stuff, a survival of the days when horses' coats were treated with antimony to make them bright. Fool, fool, fool that he had been!His mind returned to the awful present as he heard the doctor say, "I'm glad of that; morphia was the very best thing they could have given her."While these words were being uttered, a thousand disconnected, questioning thoughts were rushing through Hardwyke's brain. Could he make an appeal here and now to Dr. Fenner? Would the promise of money—of a great deal of money—do any good? Reason answered "No," for Fenner was an honest man—far, far too honest. Then could nothing be done to stop what he now realized was going to happen? Again his clear, acute brain supplied the despairing answer—nothing."If you don't mind, I'll write to the coroner here. Then I'll drop it in his letter-box—it's only a minute out of my way."The doctor walked across to the fine old writing bureau, and Hardwyke, sitting down, stared into the fire. Then, suddenly, he experienced a most peculiar and terrible hallucination.Against the ancient iron fire-back, wrought with the Allways coat of arms, at which he was staring with unseeing eyes, there was gradually

formed a luminous square, across which stretched a platform with a group of men standing on it. Of these men he only recognized Colonel Knox, Governor of the county prison, though there was a clergyman there, and a man who was obviously a doctor. To their left stood two men in uniform—were they warders?—holding a queer-looking, trussed-up, blindfolded figure, who looked at once familiar and unfamiliar. Was it—could it be-himself?He stared on at the mirage-like vision; and, gradually, he saw that behind that curious group of men there rose a square erection of beams. It reminded him absurdly of a large swing which had been his midsummer gift to Dr. Fenner's children.Covering his face with his right hand, he shut his eyes, and when, at last, he looked again, there was nothing there.Agonized, incoherent, disconnected thoughts and questionings—answers to these questionings, sometimes consoling, sometimes hopeless—jostled one another in his excited brain. The one rock to which he clung was his belief in the law of his country. In England there is no such thing as a miscarriage of justice—but then he suddenly remembered the Beck case.Even so, what an infinite comfort to know that he was an absolutely innocent man? But he

forced himself to face the fact that appearances would be terribly—terribly, but surely not absolutely?-against him. His brain marshalled them silently all before him. Even his wife's recent will would provide a motive, coupled with his idiotic, while yet, yes, absolutely innocent, flirtation with Rosalind Ardleigh.Who among all the men he now called his friends—who among the women with whom he had had tender passages—would believe him innocent? Not one? No, not one.Even if Rosalind Ardleigh confessed the truth, who would believe that she was telling the whole truth? All he could hope for and fight for was the horrible thing called "the benefit of the doubt." That would leave him life, but very little else that such a man as himself valued. He had always been dependent—foolishly, extravagantly so—on the good opinion of his fellows.Henceforth, if the best that could befall him came to pass, he would be an Ishmael, a moral leper. Nowhere could he go in the English-speaking, English-reading, world without being pointed at as the man who, though he had escaped punishment—escaped punishment, good God—had been tried for murder, the murder of his rich, unattractive wife, and was probably guilty.There swept over him an intense feeling of

pity for himself, and his eyes began to smart with unshed tears. He told himself that he had done nothing to deserve the horrible thing that was relentlessly coming on him. Indeed, he was a much better man, morally, than many of the men with whom life had brought him in contact. Yet they were free, while he was trapped, as the result of having merely—philandered.He groaned, and the doctor, startled, turned sharply round in his chair.Hardwyke was standing in the middle of the room, his face twitching, his hands, as if unconsciously, clasping and unclasping one another. And then, as he caught the other's look of amazement, he forced himself to smile—and it was a horrible smile."Fenner, I—I want to ask you something in confidence.""Yes, Hardwyke?"The doctor's voice was very cold."Is there anything in common between morphia and antimony?"He tried to say the words lightly, but as soon as they had left his twitching lips he knew that he had failed."Good God! No, man!"And then Dr. Fenner asked, in a low, strained voice, "Is there any antimony in this house?""Yes—no—there may be, in the harness-room."The doctor got up and took a step forward. He laid his hand heavily on the other's shoulder."I'd no right to ask you that question, Hardwyke. I'll forget your answer. But remember that anything you say, from now on, may be used in evidence against you.""GOD HAS MADE MEN SO""GOD HAS MADE MEN SO""Ah, my dear Alexander, God has made men so, once
for all!"
—DOSTOIEVSKY.(I)"I REMEMBER thinking that you would be very much surprised.""Surprised! When Billy came back from the club and said, 'Jenny Carlton has divorced Jack,' you could have knocked me down with a very small feather."Jenny Carlton smiled-a queer little reminiscent smile. In the days that had belonged to her other life, this friend of hers, Rose Grayson, had always talked in that vigorous, literally inaccurate fashion; it had been one of her charms for the over-fastidious, reserved woman Jenny had then been."I was astounded!" went on Mrs. Grayson. "We had both always thought of you and Jack as being-well, an ideal couple."To that Jenny Carlton made no answer. She was sitting a little forward in her garden-chair, her beautiful, still young-looking hands clasped together over her knee, and she was gazing

out abstractedly over the great sweep of blue Mediterranean. For the two friends were sitting in a lovely garden hung between sky and sea half-way up the steep mountain path leading to Roquebrune, and far below, looking like a fat black fly on the white, ribbon-like road, was the shabby automobile which had brought Mrs. Grayson out from Monte Carlo.The visitor stole a look at her hostess, and there came over her a touch of somewhat bitter envy. Jenny Carlton looked scarcely altered in the nine years which had changed her, Rose Grayson, from a young into a middle-aged woman. She wondered if the fair hair under the big Leghorn hat had gone grey. If yes, then one might be sure it would be an attractive, pretty grey, not pepper and salt, like the visitor's own. But then, Mrs. Carlton—as the friend reminded herself a little sorely—led an easy, luxurious life in this delightful little villa set in a perfect climate."When I told Billy that I was coming to see you he sent you all sorts of messages. He always liked you, Jenny, and—and thought you so delightful. He thinks you are one of the few women in the world with a sense of humour."A tinge of pink rose into Mrs. Carlton's pale face; but still she said nothing, and the other blundered on,"He reminded me of that time we all stayed

with you at Fossington, the autumn before the war. How I envied you then—and how I hated going out to India again!"The other woman turned round. "I envied you, Rose—especially I envied you those two nice children. But, yes, I was a very happy woman then, and I had quite settled down to being a childless woman. Besides"—in a lower tone—" Jack took the place of any child I might have had. He was everything to me—everything.""So I thought; and that's why I can't imagine what happened! Jack seemed the last man to—to"—as her friend did not help her out, Mrs. Grayson ended with the words, "to run after low women."Jenny Carlton faced her friend squarely. There came a touch of excitement in her manner. "D'you mean that you didn't understand that ours was a case of 'A divorce has been arranged'?""'A divorce has been arranged!' What do you mean, Jenny?"But even as she asked the question Rose Grayson answered it, mutely, in her own mind. How—how horrid, and yet how obvious! Of course it was Jenny who had liked someone else—not honest, simple-minded Jack. Jenny had always attracted the other sex, for all she had so quiet and demure a manner. She had had

a way in her happy days of suddenly saying funny little things which made men laugh in an amused, tender sort of way.But if she had been the sinner, why was Jenny still "Mrs. Carlton," and living here alone? Again, characteristically, Mrs. Grayson jumped to a wrong conclusion. The man Jenny liked evidently hadn't liked Jenny well enough to marry her. Well? Serve her right!Unconsciously she edged her chair a little away.Jenny Carlton could not see what was passing in the other's mind, but she did feel the sudden lowering in the friendly, if inquisitive and rather vulgar, atmosphere. And she was vaguely hurt, for she led such a lonely, unnatural life, only seeing those of her old friends who forced their presence on her as this old friend had done."Perhaps you would have been braver," she said, slowly. "But I cared so much for Jack that, when it came to the point, I couldn't refuse to do what he felt quite sure would make him happy."Her face quivered and, with an expression of deep pain, she turned and stared again unseeingly over the vast expanse of sea."I don't understand what you mean, Jenny," said Mrs. Grayson uncertainly.Then it had been Jack Carlton's fault after all? She felt ashamed of the suspicions which

had filled her heart, the more so as she suddenly realized that Jenny Carlton had changed—changed very much indeed. She no longer looked, in spite of her still slender, pretty figure, a young woman."Do you mean," she asked, "that your husband got fond of someone else?""Fond?" Jenny Carlton echoed the word scornfully. "I could have outlived that—for after all he did care for me, and he was, oh! so dependent on me, Rose.""Then what happened? I don't understand.""It's no use trying to understand. I never understood, though at one time I used to think, and think, and think—of nothing else."She got up suddenly from her chair, and stood looking down into the other's surprised face.Why not tell the truth to Rose Grayson? They would probably never meet again after to-day, and the woman after all had shown a kindly feeling in seeking her out in this curious eyrie which she had made so charming, but which she had come almost to hate."You know the set I lived in with my father—the clever London political set? Several men wanted to marry me, but I couldn't bring myself to care for any of them. Then Jack came along and—and, perhaps because he was so unlike them all, he swept me off my feet."Her voice dropped; she waited a moment, then went on irrelevantly, "I remember how happy my father was about it. He had always thought me, well, just a little"—she searched in her own mind for the word she wanted and then found it—"a little high-falutin', and he was so glad that I was marrying an honest, straight-forward country gentleman. Thank God he died before it all happened.""I remember your marriage so well." Rose was trying to be sympathetic. "I had been engaged some time then, and I knew that we should always be poor. How I envied you, Jenny, having all that money, and going to live in that beautiful place!""Yes," said the other, dreamily, "it seemed like a fairy-tale, even to me. We didn't have an ordinary honeymoon. Jack brought me straight to Fossington. I've always felt it to be home. I love every stone of the glorious old house, and every acre of the land belonging to Jack. Sometimes I feel as if I must see it again before I die. If I don't, I feel sure I shall haunt it after I'm dead.""Even now it all seems so incredible, for I thought Jack absolutely devoted to you."Jenny Carlton's blue eyes—they were lovely, full-lidded eyes-narrowed. "You really mean that, Rose?"Mrs. Grayson reddened a little. "If I'm to be quite honest, I thought Jack fonder of you than you were of him.""You were wrong, Rose—wrong! Yet—yes, I, too, thought him entirely devoted to me. Sometimes it was as if he hated to have me out of his sight. He never settled the smallest thing about the place without consulting me.She passed her right hand over her eyes. "I wake in the night now and hear him calling, 'Jenny! Jenny! Where are you?'"She waited a moment, then added in a low reluctant voice, "But in a way it was my fault that things went wrong. I was what in those days was called 'viewy,' and, as the years went on, I felt it to be—oh, it's so difficult to explain.""How d'you mean, 'viewy'?" asked the other.Her friend waited a moment, then she said in a low voice, "A big London doctor told me that it was practically certain that I should never have a child. So, after a while, I suggested to Jack we should be just friends. He didn't seem to mind; he seemed always happy; and we were such pals until—""Until—?" repeated Mrs. Grayson."I wonder if you remember a house called Oldways, which stands back, in the middle of the village."Mrs. Grayson shook her head."Oldways is a nice, comfortable house with a lot of stabling, and belongs, of course, to Jack. And one most unfortunate day for me it was let to a widow—a Mrs. Anstey. She was rather older than I was, a big, jolly sort of woman, who rode splendidly—that I will say for her!""And your husband fell in love with her?""I suppose so, though I knew nothing of it. I actually used to encourage Jack to go and see her. Then I did a foolish thing. I was persuaded to go away for a rest-cure; and when I came home I did feel that something odd had come over Jack. Though even then I suspected nothing. I never should have suspected anything of that kind.""Did you catch them together?" asked Mrs. Grayson, eagerly.Her friend shivered a little. "Oh no, Jack wouldn't have done anything like that. Besides, Mrs. Anstey was out for one thing, and one thing only, the whole time. She meant to marry Jack. She was one of those people who are always in trouble about money.""What a horrible woman!""It was mean of me to say that. I oughtn't to have said that, Rose. I expect she does love him—as far as that sort of woman can love anything apart from herself. After all—Jack is very lovable.""I know what you mean. But"—curiosity getting the better of discretion—"how did you find it out, Jenny, if they didn't give themselves away?""Jack had a great friend called Beau Paulton. And after I had been home about three weeks and felt, as I said just now, that things weren't going quite well between us for the first time since we were married—and we'd been married twelve years—I said to Jack: 'Why not have old Beau down for a bit?' He didn't seem very keen, but once Beau Paulton was there I could see he liked having him, and everything went better. And then—"She stopped suddenly—it was as if she could not go on."What happened, Jenny?""One morning, it was the 13th of March, 1914, I was writing letters in my boudoir upstairs, you remember—the room with that wonderful Chinese paper?"The other nodded. How she had envied Jenny that lovely room!"I heard a knock at the door, and Beau Paulton came in. He said, 'May I lock the door, Jenny? I want to say something to you.' I was a little surprised, nothing more, for he was a queer sort of chap, though a very good fellow. So he locked the door, and then came over to

where I was sitting, and muttered, 'I hate what I'm going to say—but I've got to say it for Jack's sake. Jack's had to go to London, and he wants me to tell you something.'"She waited a moment, then went on painfully, "I did feel frightened then, Rose. I wondered, for one dreadful moment, if Jack had got some awful disease—his father had died of cancer. But when Beau said 'Jack wants you to divorce him. He knows he's a blackguard, poor chap—but he wants to marry Mrs. Anstey,' I honestly thought he'd gone suddenly mad! After all, people do go mad suddenly? But he looked so unhappy, and so, so unmad, that after a bit I saw that what he said must be true. And it was true. Jack had gone, leaving poor Beau—""—to do his dirty work?""Her dirty work The moment Beau began to talk of my consenting to what he called 'an amicable divorce,' I knew it was Mrs. Anstey that I was really up against. I remember Beau saying, 'If you won't do it, she'll make him do a bolt.'""I should have let them bolt," said Mrs. Grayson fiercely."I don't think so, my dear. Not when you'd thought it over—not if you cared, as I cared, for Jack. She managed it all. She's a very clever woman, and she had my poor Jack in

thrall. I never saw him again after he came into my bedroom and kissed me good-morning.""D'you mean the morning of the day his friend told you about her?""Yes, men are queer, aren't they? And Rose? Jack had said something, I mean that morning, which I suppose he hoped would break the fall for me. He made a remark about different ways of loving, and how sometimes a chap couldn't help himself. I was surprised, for that sort of thing wasn't in Jack's ordinary range of ideas. But Beau Paulton was rather a fool about women, and so, when Jack said that curious thing, I took it to mean that Beau had got himself into a worse scrape than usual, and had told Jack about it.""Did you give in at once?""Yes, there seemed nothing else to do. Of course it was arranged for me to bring the divorce case. It was one of the last undefended cases before the war.""It must have made a great deal of talk," said the other, slowly."It would have done—but for the war. Also Mrs. Anstey was very clever about it all. She gave up Oldways—moved lock, stock and barrel. They were married just after that first war Christmas, on the eve of Jack's first going out to Flanders. And she didn't go down to Fossington

for quite a long time. I believe she's very popular there now, and quite liked in the county.""D'you keep in touch with anyone there?""No, I've cut England out of my life. I helped to run a canteen at one of the big Paris stations during the war, and now I don't even take in an English paper."Mrs. Grayson rose from her chair. She had learnt all she wanted to know. "I must be off now," she said, and the other made no effort to detain her.Four hours later Jenny Carlton was sitting in what most people would have described as her very delightful little dining-room. She tried to force herself to eat the delicate fish dish prepared for her by the faithful Frenchwoman who had been with her since she had first gone to France, but somehow she found she couldn't eat to-night. She felt excited, and ill-at-ease; sorry, also, that she had been betrayed into those painful, intimate confidences to a woman who, she now suspected, had only sought her out to satisfy a not too kindly curiosity.Just as she was getting up from the table the telephone bell rang in the hall, and a moment later her maid came and said that the lady who had called this afternoon wanted to speak to Madame for a moment.With a slight frown on her face Jenny went into the hall. "Yes, Rose?" She tried to make her voice sound cordial."My husband thinks—I hope you won't mind—I did think of waiting till to-morrow—"There came so long a pause that Jenny wondered if they had been cut off."'Allo! 'Allo!" she called impatiently. And then she overheard the now familiar voice say aside, in a fretful tone, "I've been cut off. If you think she must be told, Billy, I wish you would tell her."Fear clutched at Jenny's burdened heart. What was it Rose Grayson was afraid to tell her?"I'm here all right. What is it you want to tell me?" she called out."Billy thinks you ought to know that whilst in the hotel reading-room just before dinner, he picked up an old copy of the Field, and that there he found—"There came an abrupt pause, and then the cross aside, "I am telling her; but I must tell her in my own way.""—Something about Jack?" asked Jenny Carlton, desperately."Not exactly, though I suppose I ought to say 'Yes,' for that woman who got hold of him is dead. She was killed out hunting in January.

She took a toss, and landed wrong. There was an account of the accident in the Field, and Billy thought I ought to tell you now, as we've got to go off early to-morrow.""Thank you for having told me." The voice was hard, but quite steady."Would you like me to post you the paper? I'm sure the hotel people would give it me.""No, I don't think I want to see it, but thank you, all the same.""You don't want it? Well, then, good-bye, my dear. I'm afraid I've given you rather a shock, but I say, 'Serve them both right!'"Jenny Carlton hung up the receiver and went into her bedroom. There she sat down in the darkness. What had happened was the one possibility she had not even glanced at, in the far-off days when she still considered possibilities.Towards morning she fell into a heavy sleep, and then all at once it was as if she awoke to hear the old call, the old cry: "Jenny! Jenny? Where are you? I want you." She heard her own voice in eager answer, "'I'm coming, Jack, I'm coming—"And when the woman who was friend as well as servant brought in her breakfast, she said to her, "Josette? I'm going to England to-day. I don't know yet how long I'll be away—I should think about a week."(2)There are two ways of reaching Fossington from the countryside railway station. One is by the high road, the other by a muddy lane. On this late March afternoon Jenny Carlton chose the muddy lane. And, as she walked along in the fast-gathering twilight, her courage began to ebb away. During the weary journey from Monte Carlo, and even during the night she had spent at an hotel in London, she had felt upheld and exalted, but now, what she had come so long a way to do suddenly appeared impossible of achievement.She stayed her footsteps and gazed up into the stormy sky with a feeling of distress, and, yes, shame. Acting on what she now realized had been an impulse bred of desperate loneliness, and the unnatural life she had led for two years, she had done a very foolish thing. How could she have supposed that to force an interview on the man whom she still thought of as her husband could be anything but acutely painful to them both?Still, as she had come here, and as there was no train back to London for two hours, she might surely venture to make her way by the side gate which gave from a field-path straight into the grounds of Fossington Manor, and see

once more the house where she had lived twelve happy years. She was not likely to meet anyone, for already it was twilight, and too late for any gardener to be about.So she walked on, slowly now, for any need for haste had gone, and as she went down the once familiar lane she told herself that Jack was almost certainly away. Mourners who have money, and nothing particular to do, almost always go away after a death. That almost certainty brought with it a sudden lightening of the spirit, coupled with a queer, troubled sense of disappointment.Night comes suddenly on the Riviera, not so in England, and it was still twilight when she found herself in what had been her beautiful, lovingly-cared-for garden. And as she gazed in dismay about her she was taken out of herself, for the wide lawns now looked like ill-tended fields, and the paths were green with weeds.After a while she struck across what had once been a perfectly kept stretch of turf, then she walked quickly on till, against the darkling sky, there rose the familiar outline of the Elizabethan manor house. The servants' quarters alone were lighted up. The master of the house, so much was clear, must be away.She kept to the long grass till she was almost under the walls of the house, and then she

stepped on to the broad, flagged stone path and began walking past the shuttered windows of the delightful living-rooms where she had once spent such happy days.At last she reached the nail-studded, wide oak front door which, in her time, had been almost always open. It was now closed, and she stood before it for some moments, her heart full of poignant sadness.A little way past the front door there was a conservatory which had been built by her husband's mother. Architectural experts considered that it injured the noble facade of the ancient dwelling-house, but Jenny had never allowed it to be taken away, if only because it gave into what had been the sitting-room of the placid, mid-Victorian dame who had been her predecessor.Slowly she walked round the ugly conservatory and then, as she turned the corner, she felt a sudden thrill of mingled fear and joy, for, from what was called the business-room, there was thrown a shaft of bright light. It lay athwart the flagged path, as if barring her way.Hung with old, coloured sporting prints and caricatures, the business-room of Fossington Manor had remained much the same for seventy years. Everything in it was shabby, useful, and comfortable, from the big Turkey carpet

which entirely covered the floor, and which had been moved there from one of the better living rooms some forty years before by Jack Carlton's thrifty mother, to the big writing-table where he always sat each morning when at home.To Jenny Carlton the room was full of intimate associations, for it was there that she and her husband had generally spent part of every day, dealing with what was vaguely called "estate business." And once, when there had been a coal strike, they had spent their evenings there.She told herself, now, that Jack was almost certainly sitting in that brightly lit room, and a passionate desire to see him again, if it were only for a moment, stirred her whole being.Yes! She would, she must, look through the long, uncurtained French window.She stepped forward into the beam of light, and through the glass door she saw Jack Carlton. He was hunched up in the big easy chair on the arm of which she herself had so often lightly sat when still a young woman, in the days when they talked over everything together, and when she could turn him, both in small and in large matters, so easily to her will.He was reading an old, yellow-back novel; but suddenly he put the book down on the table where stood the unshaded electric light

standard, and his hands felt for the pipe he knew was there.Then he turned himself round, and with a pang she saw that his face had altered. In the old days there had been something very simple and guileless in his expression, but now he looked stern and secretive as well as unhappy, and Time, which had dealt so kindly with her, had dealt unkindly with him.Unconscious of what she was doing, she moved forward and pressed her face against the window, her soft travelling hat forming no obstacle.(3)All at once Jack Carlton saw the face pressed against the window, and there came into his eyes an expression of fear. He half rose from his chair, and as he did that, she shrank back, receded out of the beam thrown by the electric light and, turning quickly, began running across the grass. Jack Carlton rushed to the glass door and unlocked it. Stepping out into the cold darkness, he looked eagerly this way and that, though reason told him that the pale face he had seen must surely be a figment of his weary and excited brain. Even so, he, too, began running across the grass, but when he reached a path, he paused

doubtfully. And then, suddenly, he heard the rustle of a woman's dress.Again he began running, this time towards the place whence had come that stuffless sound, and half expecting to see a pair of rustic lovers rise out of the gloom. But on the weed-covered path which led to the field-gate he soon over took but one interloper, and before he caught her up he knew the tall, slight figure to be that of the woman he had once called wife."Jenny?" he called out, "Jenny!"And then she turned, and faced him. "Yes, Jack?"But the voice in which she answered him was very cold; unreasonably he felt not only hurt, but surprised.It was in a gentler tone that she added,"I thought I'd like to come and see the old place once more. I'm only in England for a very few days; I live abroad now."He said in a subdued voice, "Now that you are here, won't you come into the house—just for a little while?" and, as she made no immediate answer, he went on awkwardly, "I mostly sit in the business-room now. A great many of the rooms have been shut up since the war."For a moment she made no answer. Yet, if desperately sad and oppressed, she felt comforted

by the strange meeting. It was as though she and he were laying a menacing, cruel ghost, and she knew that it was well, for both their sakes, that such a ghost should be laid.He said again, and very humbly this time, "Do come in, Jenny."And she answered quietly, "Very well, I will."She thought she knew so exactly what was going to happen. They would go together into that once familiar room, and there they would talk as old friends talk who have not met for long years. And then, at last, he would go and fetch his coat out of the hall, and insist on taking her to the station. They would part outside the station, for the obvious reason that neither would wish to be seen with the other. And then she would go away, and they would never meet again. But always she would be glad, glad that she had come.Only to the very unimaginative do events fall out as they are expected to do. For one thing, and at the time it seemed such a simple, unimportant, if annoying, little thing, a servant had come in, drawn the curtains, put out the light, and shut and locked the window, in the business-room.He said in a low voice, "We can get into the house through the conservatory; the door there is always left unlocked."So, walking side by side, not touching one another, they went round the conservatory, and he stood aside for her to pass through into the damp, dark warmth. And there she slipped on the wet tiles and nearly fell.He caught her in his arms, and having caught her, kept her there for a moment. "Jenny," he whispered, "oh, Jenny!" But though she made no effort to repulse him, it was as if he held a dead woman, and he freed her, suddenly.As they went through into the unused room which had been his mother's sitting-room, she said quickly, "Don't put the lights on, Jack. We can see quite well enough to talk."She sat down on a low, high-backed Victorian chair, and there came over her an extraordinarily vivid recollection of her marriage day. Though it was late afternoon when they had arrived at Fossington, Jack had taken her, at once, all over the great house. And at last he had shown her in here, saying—how well she remembered it!—"And this was my dear mother's own room. I don't suppose you will care to use it, darling? You'll prefer Granny's boudoir, with the old Chinese paper." And now she recalled with a queer, poignant sensation of shame that very decidedly she had told herself, in her conceited love of the beautiful and the rare, that he had guessed rightly; that never would

she care to use this ugly little room filled with mid-Victorian furniture. Yet now she felt a yearning love for it."This room seems just the same," she said, and he answered eagerly, "Yes, just the same. And your sitting-room upstairs is exactly as you left it, Jenny."For a while neither spoke, and she could feel his desperate unease as if it were a living presence. She saw that she must build a bridge for him."Tell me something about the people in the village, Jack. Are the Sherlocks still at the Rectory?"And then she realized that he was no longer standing where he had been, close to her. He had walked across to the window, and was staring out into the darkening night. She waited a moment, and then got up and walked across to his side."Jack," she said slowly, "let us think of one another as friends from now onwards."He did not turn round as he answered, "It's no use, Jenny. We can't be friends. That was the trouble in the old days. Not that I'm trying to find excuses for myself. Beau was right. He always was right about other fellows. I asked him to come here just before he went out to France for the last time. But he wouldn't come. He knew I'd behaved like a blackguard.

But I want you to believe, I want you to understand—" He waited a long moment, then blurted out the words, "It wasn't her fault. It was mine, all mine.""It's no use going back to what's done, and can't be undone," she said under her breath. His allusion to the other woman had stabbed her.And then he turned at last towards her. "I'll tell you something so awfully queer, Jenny. Since it happened—you know what—I've twice thought I saw you in the west corridor. Each time I ran after you and then, when I got quite near you, you—vanished! That was why to-night I didn't think it could be you really."Staring out again into the darkness, he added, "Thank God, I went out to make sure."And then, perhaps because of the heartfelt way in which he uttered that thanksgiving, she began to cry.But there are certain facts which no woman ever forgets—whatever a man may do. Jenny Carlton was aware that in a few moments the dressing bell would ring, so she dried her eyes."I must be going now, Jack. But before I go I want to tell you, for what it's worth, that I'm glad we've met, my dear. I don't want to go back to the past, but I want to tell you that I know what happened was very much my fault.

Beau made me see that—it was during the one talk he and I had together. He didn't say much—hardly anything—but still, I knew that the little he did say was true.""How d'you mean?" he asked with some excitement. "I don't understand what you mean, Jenny.""I mean," she said, steadily, "that it's not only stupid but wrong for a wife to drift into being simply a friend, a pal. That was what I had become to you, and you wanted, very naturally, something more."As she saw that he was about to speak she went on quickly, "Hear me out—for after all, we are friends. You're only fifty-one, Jack, and I hope you won't be angry with me for saying—""What?" he asked, curtly."That I think you've made a mistake in staying on here now."There rose before her that sight of him in the business-room. Again she saw him reading his book, putting it down on the table, reaching out, much as a blind man might have done, for his pipe.Her voice shook a little, but she went on steadily, "Go away, right away, for a year, as you did after your mother died, just before you and I first met.""And then?" he asked fiercely, "what am I to do then?"She felt a little frightened. There was something in his voice so bitter, so stern, so hopeless, above all so different from the voice of the Jack Carlton she had known so long and, in her fashion, loved so well."Then—" she repeated hesitatingly, knowing well what she wanted to say, and yet being afraid to say it."Then I must come back and, I suppose, look out for another wife, one of those girls with short hair who have neither manners, morals, nor heart? I know the sort, for one of those damned young jades was leading Beau a pretty dance just before he was killed; she ruined his last leave."She did not know what to say in answer to this. In the days of their life together Jack had not been apt to suspect even small evil of the people about him, and he had liked girls.The loud, insistent clang of the dressing bell brought a sense of relief, of finality.She said nervously, "There's the dressing bell! I think I had better be going now, Jack. I—I'll write to you, if you'll allow me to do so."She held out her hand, and he took it and held it for what seemed to her a long time. Then,

as he dropped it, "Are you going by the eight-forty train?" he asked in a casual tone."Yes, but I don't walk very quickly, so I shan't have long to wait at the station. I would really rather go now."(It would be dreadful—dreadful—if any of the servants found her here.)"Of course I'm going with you," he said again, in the same matter-of-fact tone. "Will you wait for me a minute?"She answered, hesitatingly, "Very well. But you really needn't bother to come."He walked towards the door, then, turning, came quickly back. "Jenny?""Yes, Jack?""I've your word, haven't I, your word of honour—nay, that's not necessary with you—to stay here till I come back?"And she exclaimed, reproachfully, "Of course I will."(4)When he had shut the door quietly, she sat down again in the Early Victorian low chair and began to think over what they had said to one another.In the old days invariably it had been she who, in her very gentle, high-falutin' way, had always ruled the roost and made Jack do what she

wished. Now it was she who was obeying him. In a way it was a comfort to find that the Jack she had remembered with such pain and longing all these years—had gone. But what had altered him? Was it the war—or was it the woman who was now dead—that had brought that stern, virile look on his face?He was away for what seemed a long time, but at last the door opened, and for a moment she saw his tall, lean figure silhouetted against the now lighted passage. He had a Gladstone bag in his hand—an old pre-war bag she remembered.Swinging the bag with an easy movement from his right hand to his left, he shut the door and came towards her, a little gropingly, seeing nothing. "Just one moment!" he exclaimed, and, striking a match, he opened the door into the conservatory.While they were taking the short cut across the lawn, he said suddenly, "You don't mind my going up to London by this train, Jenny?"She tried to speak naturally. "Of course I don't mind.""May I travel with you?" he asked, "or would you rather I did not?""I should like you to travel with me." There was a touch of the gentle, gay graciousness of manner which had been in the days of her youth perhaps her greatest charm.They walked along silently, and this, too, was new in her knowledge of him. In the days when they had walked so many miles together, Jack had been apt to talk in a desultory way all the time; she always ready with a happy answer. But now he trudged along by her side, saying nothing.At last, when they saw the twinkling lights of the little country station, he broke the silence."I'm going to do what you advise," he said, "I'm going round the world. That was why I was so long. They'll send on my heavy luggage to-morrow."She was so exceedingly surprised that she hardly knew what to answer, but at last she forced herself to say, "I'm glad of that, Jack. I was so afraid you were offended with me for suggesting it.""I offended with you? How could you think such a thing, Jenny?"And she felt the pain, the deep sincerity, in his voice.The station was a primitive place, lighted only with oil lamps, and as she sat down on the one rude bench, he asked hesitatingly, "I suppose you've got a return ticket?"She bent her head. How could he suppose anything else?Then he went into the little booking-office,

and bought his ticket, and she heard the deferential tone of the station-master talking to him. Somehow it gave her pleasure that Jack was still very much the great man here. Perhaps she had been a fool to counsel his going away for a year? After all, Fossington—dear, dear Fossington—was his home, the place where he had duties as well as pleasures.They walked out on to the dark platform, and when the train came in, the station-master opened the door of a first-class smoking carriage."Will you get in here, sir?""Yes, that will do very well."Jack Carlton stood back; he took off his hat, and the lady passenger of whose existence the station-master till that moment had been scarcely aware, stepped up into the comfortable railway carriage, which was so unlike the still war-scarred French railway compartments to which she had now become accustomed.As in a dream, she heard the words, "Shall I lock the door, sir? Then you won't be disturbed," and Jack's quick answer, "Just as you like, Mr. Buckett," and Mr. Buckett did like.As the train started, Jack Carlton took a little white paper parcel out of his pocket."I've brought you something to eat," he said,

abruptly. "You must be hungry by now, Jenny.""Have you had anything, Jack?"He looked at her and smiled. It was the first time he had really smiled at her, and it seemed to turn him again into the old sunny-natured Jack she had loved—and lost."To tell you the truth, Jenny, I had a drink!"Then he asked, abruptly, "Staying at 'Waller's'?""Waller's" was a lodging in Half Moon Street, where they had always stayed during their married life. It was in a tone from which she could not keep a touch of pain that she answered, "Oh, no!" And then she said, "D'you ever stay there now? Are you going there to-night?"He shook his head. "I've not stayed there since—let me see—when were we last there, Jenny? January 'fourteen, wasn't it?"She nodded."Then where are you staying?" he asked."I'm at the Hotel Victoria.""D'you mind my coming there, too, for to-night?"As she made no answer, he said, quickly, "I'll go to the Metropole."Then there fell a silence between them, and at last she said, nervously, "Won't you smoke,

Jack? You were smoking your pipe in the business-room. Have a pipe now!"In the old days, he generally did at once what she suggested he should do. But this time he shook his head, and as only answer told her what she should do."You haven't eaten half enough, Jenny. Do finish these sandwiches. I'm afraid they were made too quickly to be really good."She began doing what he wanted, though there was a painful lump in her throat."Have you got the same servants still?" she asked."No, they're all different, for every one of them left after you'd gone—and I couldn't blame them."When she had come to the last sandwich, she held it out to him. "You eat it, Jack!" In a trembling voice, she added, "just to please me?""To please you," he said, in a low tone, "I would do anything."She had pulled off her gloves to eat her sandwiches, and Jack Carlton, who was now sitting opposite to her, leant forward and took her left hand up in his. There was only her wedding ring on it; the beautiful ruby engagement ring he had given her just twenty years ago she had sold, early in the war, for one of the great French war charities.He bent over the hand he held."I always thought," he said, in a moved voice, "that this was the prettiest hand in the world.""I used to know another hand," she whispered back, "quite as pretty," and then she put out her right hand and laid it on the other.THE ANSWERTHE ANSWERSee this poor shell of flesh,Still warm, but newly emptied of its soul;Could other spirit, loth to quit the world,In pain of parting dash to this resource,Find entrance, find new home, a further span,Another karma in the untenanted frame,And stir the lifeless envelope to life,The same to sight, yet with an alien spiritEarthbound within?Oh, really, my good Sir!Excuse a smile—that's poetry, that's not science!Bless me, what would Professor Poodle say?(I)SYBIL ANCORET hurried along the narrow path close to the dipping edge of the cliffs which gave the Norfolk fishing village its name of Upcliffe. In her white flannel dress she looked like some delicate winged thing borne helplessly along on the strong north wind, which even on this hot July morning gave the air a keen tang.Her heart was full of anguish, of a bitter, resentful agony which yet held a faint glimmer of hope. For the great London specialist who

had come down four days ago had used the words, "Your husband is in great danger, but he has stored up so much health during his thirty years of life that I think it possible he may pull through." But Dr. Green, the local practitioner, had not disguised from his patient's wife that he disagreed with his eminent colleague. He thought Lance Ancoret would die.And this morning, at half-past six, though Mrs. Ancoret's day in her husband's sick-room did not begin till eight, the nurse, after her all-night vigil, had come downstairs to find her already up and dressed. Nurse Blake did not like Mrs. Ancoret, but she had gone off to the empty kitchen, and there made some tea and boiled an egg. As she brought the tray into the pretty sitting-room where the other woman was moving restlessly up and down, she had exclaimed, "Why not go out for an hour's walk, Mrs. Ancoret? You're not getting enough air and exercise. You'll break down if you're not careful—and where would be the good of that?"The real reason why Sybil Ancoret had taken so little air and exercise during these terrible days was owing to her shrinking fear of meeting any of their kindly, inquisitive, pitying neighbours. But this morning she had gone out to escape from Nurse Blake. . . .After passing through the wicket gate which led on to a high stretch of downland above the sea, Mrs. Ancoret began making her way upwards over the short slippery grass, stumbling every now and then, for she had forgotten to take a stick. But she pressed on blindly, on and on, up and up, till at last, when near the summit, she turned and gazed down on the group of dwellings, poor and lowly for the most part, which formed the fishing hamlet.Instinctively she sought out the roof under which that awful struggle between life and death had now been going on for so long. Yes, there was the house, the last of a row of small semi-detached villas between the village and the sea. She and Lance had chosen it because there was a studio in the garden, and they were both painters.During the first winter of their married life, a winter spent in Italy, it had seemed to Sybil Ancoret that life could not hold greater joy, greater love satisfied, than had been hers. But now she knew that she had been wrong. For she had been more joyful, and more loved and loving, in the commonplace little villa which looked like a child's ugly toy from up here, than in those early days of joint shy communion.Her husband, the night before he fell ill, had read to her in the twilight Trench's poem, "The

Night," and now it was as if she could hear the beloved voice whispering the last lines,
Slow, amid leaves, in silence,Rapt as the holy pray(What Power of Dread around usDoth soul to soul betray?)Flame into flame we trembled,And the world sank away.The gods, envious of two poor mortals' happiness, had stricken Lance down, and now he and she were both being tortured, he tortured physically, she tortured in every way that a woman could be tortured, or so it seemed to her.During the last few days she had felt as if some all-powerful entity were pursuing her with malignant hatred. More than once she had remembered the terrible lines, "The President of the Immortals, in Æschylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess." He had not ended his sport with her, Sybil Ancoret.What irony to think that all this frightful misery had been wrought on poor mortals by the criminal carelessness of one other mortal—the farmer who supplied Upcliffe with milk. There had been many cases of typhoid in the village, but the only serious cases had been Lance Ancoret's and that of a prosperous young business man, named Croft, who owned the house next door to theirs.Sybil was consciously glad that she had never

made the acquaintance of Mrs. Croft. It would have been unendurable to have had to discuss Lance's symptoms from day to day with the pretty, commonplace little woman, with whose appearance, voice, and even character the Ancorets had perforce become intimately acquainted. Unlike Sybil, Lance had always taken a certain humorous interest in the couple next door. Mr. Croft was still passionately in love with Mrs. Croft, and Mrs. Ancoret was sometimes haunted by the feeling that "Jim and his Tessie" were like a dreadful caricature of herself, Sybil, and her Lance.The couple next door had never been taught to restrain their emotions, and as neither of them was good-tempered they occasionally had furious quarrels, followed by periods of silence and of pretended indifference. But the silence never lasted long. Each was very dependent on the other; they were what their neighbours, unwilling eavesdroppers, had once heard Mr. Croft describe as "ripping pals," though each had the curious dislike, common to their kind, of dual solitude.So it was that now friends, and even acquaintances, came and went constantly to 2, Seaview Terrace. Jim Croft had two nurses, so that Mrs. Croft was always free to walk down to the gate with a visitor, there to linger talking

trivialities; while Sybil Ancoret, standing at the open window of her husband's room, next door, would look on, amazed, for she knew that Mr. Croft was very ill, almost, indeed, as ill as Lance.But within the last day or two Tessie Croft's pretty, rather silly little face had grown anxious an pinched-looking, and Sybil had once seen her come out of the house crying bitterly, though, even then, her words to the woman she was taking to the gate had been all of herself. "I don't feel as if I could go on any longer! I wish Jim's sister could come—not that I like her, she's a horrid woman, but she's Jim's twin, and I know I'll be blamed if—if—" She had stopped abruptly, but Sybil knew what that "if" portended, and with an involuntary tremor she had hidden her face in her hands. . . .As she turned her eyes from the group of dwellings at which she had been gazing, her glance rested on certain excavations of a supposed Roman camp on the down, in which she and her husband had taken a keen interest. There surged up in her mind a wave of recollection of the last time they had been there together. For Lance had talked to her then, with an undercurrent of questioning gravity under his whimsical gaiety, concerning tree-worship and other origins of popular religion. The Romans, in his view, had been much more rational in their mytho-

logical beliefs than the moderns had been in that faith which had come so strangely out of Judæa to envelop what was now called Christendom.Last evening the rector of Upcliffe had come, not for the first time, "to inquire," and she had seen him for a moment in the hall. He had said hesitatingly, "Would you mind if—if I ask for prayers for your husband, Mrs. Ancoret?" And, though feeling curiously comforted by the kindness in his voice, she had answered, "I think he would rather not, and I'm sure I would rather not, Mr. Stair. To my mind it would be hypo-critical, for you know how we feel about these things." He had bowed his head, and then, with a piteous, childish longing for sympathy, she had put her hand on his thin arm. "You do understand—I hope you understand?" "I do understand. But I hope you won't mind my praying for you? I realize a little what you are going through." And she had remembered, then, that he and his wife had lost a beloved child. . . .Seven o'clock began to chime from Mr. Stair's church tower. She naturally regarded it as Mr. Stair's tower, for she did not believe in Mr. Stair's God. Her mind swung back again to the whimsical discussion which she and Lance had had the last time they had been up here together. She

remembered how he had also said that every thinking mind must admit the possibility, nay, the probability, of some kind of guidance—not always happy or wise guidance, but guidance of an extra-mundane kind. She had felt at once thrilled and puzzled when he had told her, for the first time, that, yes, he did agree on the whole with the view that there are certain all-powerful Entities who use our strange world as a chess-board, moving the pieces here and there, according to what happens to be their fancy.Now, on this sunny morning, when Nature seemed to mock at her agony, she felt as if what she had taken as a whimsical notion might indeed be true and, sinking down on her knees, her whole soul went up in piteous, wordless supplication to those Immortals in whom Lance had confessed he more than half believed.At last she got up and, digging the heels of her shoes into the slippery turf, slowly made her way down the steep hill-side till she was once more on the cliff path. And then a curious thing happened—there suddenly swept over her a delicious, drowsy feeling of complete serenity. Bewildered, she told herself that it was the deadness to sensation born of utter physical exhaustion.The peculiar comforting sensation did not last, however, for as she turned into the lane where stood the short row of villas, with only a field

between them and the sea, she saw with surprise and sharp displeasure that Nurse Blake and the night nurse from next door were standing gossiping together in the road.The two women suddenly saw her and fell, as she thought, guiltily apart. Mr. Croft's nurse walked away briskly towards the village, but Nurse Blake remained standing in the sunlit road, as if uncertain what to do.A swift premonition of evil came over Sybil Ancoret; she felt, for one wild moment, as if she must turn and flee from the sight of that stiffly starched blue and white figure. But instead she forced herself to hurry on, and then, "Nurse?" she called out, "Nurse!"There was a pause, and then, when the two were face to face, Sybil heard the words, uttered very quietly, "He passed away half an hour ago, Mrs. Ancoret. There was no struggle—you must thank God for that."The speaker gave a quick, furtive look at her late patient's wife. Mrs. Ancoret was so—so queer; so unlike anyone Nurse Blake had ever met with, in her long experience of private nursing; her composure, her shrinking from sympathy, were so unnatural. Surely now she would break down?But the only sign Sybil Ancoret gave of how she had been affected by the nurse's words was

that what little colour she had left her face; and, also, that she put out her hand and groped for the handle of the low iron gate, as if she could not see it.Nurse Blake went on, in a hushed tone, "I had promised to telephone to Dr. Green if any change took place. But I could not make the exchange hear, so I went next door, and got through from there." After a moment's pause, she added, "And poor Mr. Croft is dead, too. He passed away just at the same moment as Mr. Ancoret. Isn't that strange?"But Mrs. Ancoret showed no sign of even having heard this pathetic little piece of news. She did not answer, "Yes, indeed," or, "I'm sorry to hear that," as any—well, any nice, ordinary lady would have done. But for the fact that she was evidently stunned by grief, her silence would have been almost offensive.Side by side the two women who had shared in the losing struggle for Lance Ancoret's life, walked up the path; but when she reached the door of the house, Sybil Ancoret looked round, piteously. "I'm afraid," she whispered. "I feel so horribly afraid, nurse—"Come now, this was better!"If I were you, I'd go into the garden, and just sit down there till the doctor comes," said Nurse Blake soothingly. "There is no need for you

to go indoors now"—The words, "poor dear," trembled on her lips, but she did not utter them.As Sybil was hesitating whether she should follow the well-meant advice, she heard the doctor's car slowing down in the lane. And then she was seized with a sudden horror of herself, of Dr. Green, of Nurse Blake, of everything and everybody left in this desolate world. She longed to cry out, "Don't make me see Dr. Green! Tell him I'd rather be alone just now. And oh! you yourself, nurse, do go away and leave me alone with my husband. The servants will understand. You don't understand—you never have understood."But she said none of these things. Instead, she went through under the leafy pergola leading to the garden, and from there she turned and watched, herself unseen, the meeting between self-important Nurse Blake and Dr. Green. She saw his face—not change exactly, for no doubt he had been expecting Lance to die this morning, though he had thought mercifully to shield her from the knowledge—but stiffen into gravity; and she heard him say, in answer to a word from the nurse, "No sleep at all last night? That will make it much easier. I'll send her down a draught as soon as I get home."And, passionately, the hidden eavesdropper told herself that she would not accept a measure

of drugged oblivion which would only mean waking to agony.Sybil Ancoret had quite made up her mind by now what she meant to do, once the nurse had gone. She would tell her two good, kind servants—they had been so full of loving kindness to her during these terrible weeks—that she was going out for a walk. And then? The tide was high now, so soon they would bring her back, dead as Lance was dead. And she hoped, even while a little ashamed of the sentimentality that prompted the thought, that they would lay her beside her husband, on the wide low bed they two had bought out of an inn at Verona. In any case they would surely be buried together in one grave. And there came over her a certain feeling of comfort in that assurance.While the doctor and the nurse were going in by the front door, Sybil Ancoret instinctively wandered round to the entrance of the kitchen. There, a moment later, Mrs. Pearson, the cook, who had been with them ever since they had returned from their winter honeymoon in Italy, came out and put fat, kind arms round her."Oh, ma'am," she exclaimed. "Oh, ma'am! I am sorry." And smarting, difficult tears came at last into Sybil Ancoret's tired eyes."I knew you would be sorry," she whispered.And then she caught her breath, and, suddenly

looking round her, afraid to be overheard, exclaimed in quick short gasps: "Could you go and tell the doctor that I'd rather not see him just now? Could you also tell nurse that I am very grateful to her for all her kindness, but that I know how tired she must be feeling, and that I'm sure Dr. Green would give her a lift back to the Cottage Hospital? You understand how I feel, dear Mrs. Pearson, don't you?""Indeed, I do, ma'am." She took hold of the unhappy girl's hands—for Sybil Ancoret still looked a girl—and, drawing her into the kitchen, she put her in a chair. "I won't let any of them come near you," she said, firmly.But even as the cook was walking through the little dining-room, Sybil Ancoret started nervously to her feet, for there came the sound of Dr. Green's voice, loud, almost jovial, "Nonsense! Of course I must see her, Mrs. Pearson. I tell you there's been a mistake—the man's alive, alive!"
and the already open kitchen door was flung more widely open."Mrs. Ancoret?"Dr. Green suddenly felt sobered, for his patient's wife was staring at him with a wild, strange look on her pale face.He took hold of her two hands, and held them closely clasped in his own, while he said gravely,"There's been a strange, an amazing, mistake,

Mrs. Ancoret. I can't account for it, for Miss Blake is a most experienced nurse. Mr. Ancoret is alive—not dead. And what's more"—she withdrew her hands from his—"what's more, for the first time for many days, I feel as if there was hope."He saw her set face alter, become suffused with bright colour and then go white; had he not instinctively again put out his hands and caught her, she would have fallen to the ground.Sybil Ancoret sat up in bed and there came a wondering, questioning look on her face. Then it was true—not, as she had thought just now on waking up, a dream? Lance was alive, not dead, for she could hear his dear voice saying something to the nurse upstairs. And another nurse—her nurse—a woman of whom she was half afraid, and at whom she gazed with a secret deep repugnance, was standing, smiling, just within the open door."There now! Are you satisfied, Mrs. Ancoret? I asked nurse to leave the door open. I declare you're just like a little lady love-bird—that's what I shall always call you in my own mind! Some nurses have queerish names for their patients. Well, you're Mrs. Love-bird to me. I've never heard of anyone else having a nervous breakdown from joy!""A nervous breakdown?" she echoed, in a hesitating voice."Dr. Green feared you were going to have a very much worse time than you have had, Mrs. Ancoret," went on the nurse, cheerfully. "He's very pleased, very pleased indeed! And he thinks that in two or three days we'll have you up and about. You wouldn't have a day nurse for your husband, it seems—thought you could look after him yourself? That, if you don't mind my saying so, was very foolish of you. It wore you down; you weren't eating properly, so it didn't need much to thoroughly upset you. Dr. Green was more anxious about you for a day or two, than he was about your good gentleman upstairs, and that's a fact."She waited a moment, but her patient remained silent, and, gathering confidence, she went on,"People don't know the trouble they give by not being sensible. It would have been far better for Mr. Ancoret, as well as for you, if you'd allowed Dr. Green to telegraph to London for a good day nurse. But no, you were determined to nurse your husband yourself as far as you could, and it worried poor Nurse Blake so much that she puts it all down to that—her having made such a strange mistake, I mean."Then she stopped abruptly, for she had seen a

change come over her patient's face—from pale Mrs. Ancoret had suddenly become flushed.Nurse knew she had talked too much. She crossed to a table, poured out a dose from a bottle, and then went up to the bed. "Drink this," she commanded.But the patient shook her head, "I'm all right really, nurse. When do you think they will allow me to see my husband?" she asked, wistfully."I can't say. It all depends on yourself,"—the nurse's tone was not very pleasant. "If you try and eat everything that's given to you, and if you try and get what I call a restful mind, I daresay Dr. Green will let you go upstairs in two or three days. But the truth is you're not yet fit for those steep stairs. Mr. Ancoret is far more fit to come down to you, than you are to go up to him."The tears began stealing down the invalid's face. "I've talked too much, that's what I've done," said the nurse crossly. "I thought you were really better when I came in and found you sitting up and looking about you."Sybil Ancoret made a great effort. It was true that she felt queer, bewilderingly queer. "Then he is really better?" she asked, in a voice which she thought steady and matter of fact."He's getting on wonderfully. I only wish poor Nurse Blake could see him now.""Isn't she here?"The other shook her head. "Gracious, no! She left the day you fell ill, and now the poor thing's very ill herself, very much in the state you were in ten days ago. She did have a shock! She says she'll never get over having made such a mistake."Mrs. Ancoret's lip quivered, remembering with a sort of shrinking terror what the mistake had been.She lay down, trying to recapture the echo of the deep voice she had heard with such a feeling of intense, almost ecstatic, joy. There was something which she longed to know, and yet which she, somehow, shrank from asking."Nurse," she said, in a low, hesitating voice, "I want to ask you a question.""Yes, Mrs. Ancoret. But I won't promise to answer it, you know!"That was nurse's idea of fun."Has Mr. Ancoret asked for me at all?"Nurse hesitated, and her smile-that tiresome, perpetual smile of hers—left her round face for a moment. At last she answered, "I couldn't say, I'm sure."Only that morning Lance Ancoret's nurse had said to her, "Isn't it strange that he never

has asked for his wife?" And she, Mrs. Ancoret's nurse, had replied, "I expect he only thinks of himself."(2)It was mid-August now, and Sybil Ancoret lay back, feeling what poor mortals are so seldom permitted to feel, utterly at peace. The two long garden chairs had been put on the tiny front lawn in full view of the road, but there were very few passers-by at any time, and the only sound which broke the deep quietude was the soothing, unending murmur of the sea. The house next door was shut up, for the newly widowed Mrs. Croft had gone away for a change.Here, the nurses had left yesterday, and all that had happened during those weeks of both physical and mental disturbance and pain was already becoming a blurred memory. She, Sybil, and he, Lance, had both come back to life, but her illness had been simply the result, so the doctor said, of shock.As yet husband and wife had scarcely met, though Lance had been allowed to sit by her side for an hour yesterday. But the nurses had been coming in and out of the room all the time, and all he had done had been to hold her hand and stroke it. The gossamer caress had moved her, for Lance was so reserved that, in the old days,

he would not even have held her hand in front of anybody; yet, when his nurse had walked in without knocking and she, Sybil, had made as if to withdraw her hand, he had gripped it only the more strongly, and there had swept over her an almost irresistible desire to cry. She had not let the happy tears come, for she knew that if she "gave way," it would only mean that her tiresome nurse would stay on for another day or two.But now—it really did seem almost too good to be true—they were at last alone together, and their life of intense, blissful communion was again in being. True, Dr. Green had warned her yesterday that her husband was still far from strong. "You will find his memory somewhat affected," he had observed. "In a sense Mr. Ancoret is not yet himself, and so you must feel no surprise if he is petulant or unreasonable."Petulant or unreasonable? Sybil had smiled at the words. No doubt his nurse, like hers, had been enough to try the patience of even—Lance.The French window opened behind her, and she turned with an eager, welcoming, and yes, shy smile. Somehow this beginning again of love and life made her feel as she had felt six years ago, on her marriage day.But it was the middle-aged parlour-maid, Jane, who stepped out on to the lawn."The master is asking for his brown jacket,

ma'am. But I've told him I can't remember his having the kind of jacket he wants to put on. He's awfully put about—"The woman looked flurried and uncomfortable. Her face bore an expression Sybil had never seen there before—one of resentment and ill-temper. Jane's mistress told herself that, after all, Jane had had a very hard time the last few weeks. She must talk to cook—cook, whom nothing ever upset—and see if Jane could have a holiday."I think Mr. Ancoret must mean that light brown jacket he used to wear last summer."The maid's face cleared. "Why, yes, I do believe he meant that one. But he seemed to speak so rough, and it flustered me, ma'am.""Mr. Ancoret is not well yet," said Sybil soothingly."He seems so different from what he used to be," the maid muttered, as she went back into the house.Sybil sighed. Jane's half complaint had been such a little thing—nothing really—but somehow it had damped her joy, taken away that wonderful feeling of peace. She closed her eyes, and then she gave a sudden stifled cry, for Lance had crept quietly over the grass, bent over her, and kissed her full on the mouth.She blushed like a girl, realized that he was going to kiss her again, and telling herself that anyone might come down the road any moment,

exclaimed, "Lie down, my dearest! The doctor said you were to lie down as much as you could in the sun and air—""He didn't say I wasn't to kiss my own wife, eh?"There was a touch of surliness in the beloved voice, and she looked at him distressed.Jane was right. Lance, as a result of his illness, had changed. But she, herself, was changed too. She felt nervous, apprehensive she scarcely knew of what. In the old days there was nothing she could not have said to Lance. But now, suddenly recalling a word of the doctor's, a word that had seemed to her so very unnecessary, and yet the meaning of which must, she now felt, be somehow conveyed to Lance—she found herself unable to say it. But they would both come right very soon, and she, Sybil, mustn't feel upset.Her husband was now lying down on the other garden chair, a little to her left, and she was tensely conscious of every line of his long body—the envelope of the rare and whimsically delightful soul she knew so well."I'm glad you found the brown jacket, after all," she said at last."I didn't find it," he answered, shortly. "This thing isn't what I meant. But as it was brought to me, I put it on.""Jane was quite upset about it. I think the poor soul is very tired; she needs a holiday."He turned and with a swift, almost sly glance, "Couldn't we send her away, and get someone else—?"For a moment, Sybil could not think what he meant. Then, "D'you mean send Jane away for good?"She could not keep the surprise she felt out of her voice. Lance had always liked the worthy woman so much! They had even had little secret jokes about her. She was so intensely conventional, respectable, conscientious.He reddened under her look and then, almost as if he were forcing himself to speak, he exclaimed, "Just as you like, darling. But it seems to me that we might do with someone a bit brighter, a bit younger"—with a disarming smile he added, "a bit prettier too.""I see."But she did not see, for to her—and she would have thought to Lance also—Jane seemed to have become part of their joint lives.She lowered her voice, nervously afraid lest Jane should overhear this discussion."Give me a little while," she said, "and I'll look out for someone else. But you know it isn't easy to get a good house-parlour-maid."In spite of herself her voice trembled, for she was still very weak.Lance jumped off his garden chair and, kneeling

on the grass by her side, he put his arms round her."I'm a brute!" he exclaimed, "I'd no business to suggest such a thing. Forgive me, sweetheart. . . .""I've nothing to forgive," she said, in a low voice."I've something to forgive myself. After all, it wouldn't be playing the game at all to send old Jane away—"She had never before heard Lance use the common expression "playing the game," but it did state the case, exactly.She looked at him with a feeling of profound tenderness, realizing that Dr. Green was a wiser man than she had taken him to be. It was true that Lance had been affected, curiously affected, by the ordeal to which his soul and body had been exposed. For the moment, at any rate, he was very unlike his old self. She could no more have imagined the Lance with whom she had lived those six cloudless years saying such a thing as he had said about their good servant than—imagination failed to supply a simile. Yet how quickly he had caught himself up, ashamed of the unkind, almost unseemly, suggestion he had made.After all, there was something in race. Men of the same race, however different they may be,

have certain things in common. She told herself, with a little conscious feeling of pride, that no foreigner would have said that thing about not "playing the game." A foreigner might have felt it, but he wouldn't have put it that way. . . .It was odd indeed that Lance had put it that way, for he had a sort of horror of slang, and a contempt for what he and she, when talking to one another, called clichés.She moved nearer to him and laid her cheek on his. After all, if he didn't mind the passers-by, why should she? He put his arm round her, and again their lips met. There was a puzzled look on his face, and at last he said in a low voice,"I feel as if everything was beginning again. I feel, darling, as if I were wooing you afresh!"And that gave her a chance of saying what she had thought she could not bring herself to say."You mean," she whispered back, "as if we were engaged again—not married?"He nodded, and she went on, "Beloved?—I want to tell you—that, just for a little while, we ought to behave as if we were engaged, not married."She looked at him  anxiously. In the old days he had always been so quick, he had always understood everything she said to him with half a word. She was not sure that he would now. But he had understood."Is this Dr. Green's idea?" he asked, abruptly, and she faltered out the one word, "Yes."His face clouded. "All right," he said. "I quite understand."(3)The long summer days wore themselves away, but Sybil made no headway. Again and again during those days that, instead of flying past as they had been wont to fly past, had dragged leadenly along, she felt as if she was at odds with the world, and, what was far worse, at odds with Lance.No wonder that often, kind as he was, he displayed irritation at her waywardness. Such a little thing would sometimes upset, if not one, then the other. Yesterday it had been less than nothing—the cause, a book of verse by a new poet which an old friend had sent her. She had read a few lines aloud—"Aren't they good?"—to hear him answer, "I can't make head or tail of them!" He had seen that she was hurt, and then he had exclaimed, "Darling, bear with me—I'm not clever, like you!"Now sometimes in the old days—ah! but in such a different way—Lance had protested, "I'm not as clever as you are,"—and she had laughed, knowing well that it was quite untrue.This time she had said sorely, "It's nothing

to do with cleverness. But sometimes I feel as if we no longer cared for the same things," and to her secret amazement he had retorted, "I don't think that men and women do care for the same things—as a rule."He had said that trite yet, as applied to her and to him, astounding thing, lightly, good-humouredly, and she had not known what to answer.To-day, after having moved about restlessly doing nothing for a while—he never went into the studio now—Lance asked, "D'you feel up to a little walk?"She didn't—but nevertheless she assented eagerly; and, though she still felt oddly weak, as they passed out of their little gate she told herself that a walk might do her good, and calm her aching heart.But when he was for taking the turning which led towards the cliff path, she put her hand on his arm, "Don't let's go that way, Lance. I went there just before I fell ill—the day you had your crisis. I don't want to go there now. Let's go straight on—"So they sauntered on, he chattering idly, as he had fallen into the way of doing since his illness, along the narrowing country road.At last they came to the cornfield beyond which lay the fine old church of Upcliffe, and

what has been described as the prettiest churchyard in England; and there, by the stile leading into the cornfield, Lance stopped her in his turn."Let's go to the left—inland, darling. For—for—I'd rather not see the new-made graves."There was a note of mingled horror and of fear in his voice, and there came over her a sudden sensation of acute discomfort. Had Lance heard of the strange thing that had happened—how he had been taken for dead, while yet alive?She murmured, "I think we'd better turn round and go home, for I feel so tired."But Lance stood stock still."How many did die?" he asked, in a muffled voice."Only two—Mrs. Watkins' little girl, and Mr. Croft next door.""Only two, you say? But there were very nearly three—eh, Sybil?"And then, all at once, he stretched out his arms above his head with an exultant gesture. "God! how good it is to be alive!"His triumphant cry frightened her. In the old days it had been she who had been full of vitality, and of that extraordinary intensity of feeling which made her inner life so rich in joy, so sensitive to pain.There now came over her a sudden recollection of something one of their fellow-students had

said, at the art school where they had first met."Ancoret? Oh, he's a slack chap!"Of course it hadn't been true then, and it had never become true. But whatever of truth there had been in the spiteful words was gone—gone. Since his illness, Lance had become almost oppressively energetic and buoyant.They went on, inland, till they found themselves opposite the club-house of the local golf club, and there Lance stayed his steps.Suddenly it was as if Sybil saw into her companion's mind."Why shouldn't you take up golf?" she asked.He looked round quickly. "D'you mean that?""Of course I do," she tried to smile. "A great many clever people seem to spend the whole of their spare time playing golf.""To tell you the truth, I've been longing to join the club ever since I got well again. But I thought you wouldn't like it, darling."He looked at her with the half-puzzled look of fear lest he was going to say the wrong thing which now often came over his face, and which always made her shrink within herself."You thought I wouldn't like you to join the golf club? But I always like you to do everything you want to do—indeed, indeed I do.""Do you?"He came nearer, and put his arm round her shoulder, "I thought you thought golf a stupid game?""I never said so," she answered, quickly, remembering the day he had last said so—was it six months, or a lifetime, ago?"Then that's all right!" he exclaimed, heartily, and he went on, "I have to confess, darling, that I talked to the secretary about it the other day, but he said—" and again she saw that curious look of discomfort on his face."Yes," she responded, encouragingly. "What did the secretary say, Lance?""He said you'd once told him that neither of us cared for games at all. But that isn't true of me now, at any rate.""I remember quite well, when we were engaged, seeing you play tennis," she cried, quickly. "You played awfully well!"He turned to her delighted. "Did I? It all seems so long ago.""It is long ago." She nearly added, "æons and æons ago," but she checked herself.Early the next afternoon Sybil went upstairs for her daily rest. Before lying down, she walked across to her dressing-table and gazed intently at herself. What was it that made

her look so unlike the Sybil of, say, three months ago?Suddenly she saw the answer written there, in her looking-glass. It was her expression which had altered, and which made her look, what indeed she felt, another woman. All the brightness, the mischievous gaiety, which had made her irregular face so charming, had died out of it.She turned away quickly and went over to the window, and then a queer thing happened. There flashed into her face the smile—mischievous, kindly, humorously questioning—of the Sybil Ancoret of long ago. It had been brought there by the sight of Lance talking animatedly to Mrs. Croft, over the low hedge which divided the two front gardens.How like Lance to speak to the poor little widow! He had always been so much more kind and tolerant to ordinary, commonplace people than she, Sybil, could ever force herself to be. And he must have just said something funny, for Mrs. Croft, who looked very pretty in her thin black dress, was laughing merrily.Sybil had a good sleep that afternoon, and as she came down to tea, she felt like her old self again, in happy, close communion with Lance.It was such a delicious feeling—as one might feel who, having been an exile, comes home."Well," she exclaimed, "how is poor Mrs.

Croft? I'm glad you spoke to her, dearest. Coming back to that empty house must have been very sad.""She says she's dreadfully lonely. And what d'you think she asked my advice about?"There came a broad, boyish smile over Lance's face."Ah! that's not a thing I could ever guess!""She wanted to know if we'd be shocked if she got someone in to play a game of tennis with her this evening. She says she feels so much at a loose end—""I hope you said we shouldn't be shocked?""Of course I did."Again there came over his face that pathetic, half-puzzled look of fear, and he went on, hesitatingly,"I told her I felt sure you wouldn't mind my going in after supper and having a game with her myself." Then, gathering courage, "Of course, I said I hadn't played for years, and that I didn't know whether I should be able to get on at all—""I'm sure you'll get on very well," she said, cordially. "It's only a matter of practice with any game."And from then on it seemed to Sybil Ancoret that her husband and Mrs. Croft were always

playing some game together, either tennis—he had soon recovered his form—or a round of golf on the funny little nine-hole course.Once she awoke in the night to hear her own voice asking of her soul, "Why am I not jealous of Mrs. Croft? Another wife would be."And then she felt deeply ashamed. Jealous of Lance? The thought was monstrous. Neither the Lance of before his illness, nor the Lance of to-day, was of the make of man to cause his wife to be jealous. It was simply that Mrs. Croft supplied him with something that he now needed, and that she, Sybil, now lacked. Often, watching the two together, she told herself that in that sort of way she and Lance could never be playfellows. They had been lovers in the old days, lovers and happy fellow-travellers on the road of life; ordinary comrades they could not be. And humbly, sadly, she told herself that she was to blame for this, for he would often look at her as if trying to divine her thoughts, her wishes, as a faithful dog looks at his master.What filled her with a secret and ever-growing dismay was the knowledge that now she preferred Lance in any mood except the tender mood. She suspected—nay, deep in her heart she knew—that he had become aware of that, to her the greatest, if the least acknowledged, fact of their new relationship. As far as was possible she

never faced that probing pain and fear for, when Lance was not actually in her presence, it seemed to her incredible that he and she should no longer be on the same emotional plane—that they should be afraid, as it were, of one another.And then, one early August night, it was upon her—the looming, menacing shape which she had known to be lying in wait for her, if not to-day, then to-morrow, if not to-morrow then at some time which, however long delayed, would be always too soon for her.Lance had been out of the house from early morning, playing golf with one of the summer visitors who had been introduced to him by Mrs. Croft. Then there had come from him, at one o'clock, an awkwardly expressed note saying that he would not be home to lunch, as his new friend had asked him to join in a motor picnic. So Sybil had spent the afternoon in the studio, trying to paint.While changing her frock for dinner, she heard a car stop next door, and looking out, she saw Lance, two other men, and Mrs. Croft, get out of it. Then there rose on the still air Mrs. Croft's shrill voice, "Come in, all of you—and I'll mix you each a cocktail!" And Sybil was vaguely glad to hear Lance call back, "Not for me, thank you; I'm late as it is."It had been, so he told her joyously during dinner, a wonderful expedition—and again she felt in him that disconcerting touch of enthusiasm so easily evoked in the man who remains a grown-up boy. Listening indulgently, she told herself that Dr. Green was right; Lance's illness had altered not his body, but his brain; not only his brain, but his mind. And the pity of it was that while her perceptions had become sharpened, his had become blunted.In the old days he would have known without being told that she and Mrs. Croft had, and could have, nothing in common, but to-night he ended the account of his day with the words, wistfully uttered, "I wish you liked her better, Sybil. She likes you so much.""I do like her," she forced herself to say, while sorely tempted to add, "There is nothing in her either to like or dislike—from  my point of view." But she held the words back, shocked at her own lack of charity, of kindness, and of good fellowship.Apologetically he said, "I know she's not 'highbrow' like you, but she's really a good little sort."What an extraordinary expression for Lance to use! But then he was mixing now daily, hourly, with the sort of people with whom that kind of language is habitual.As they got up from the table he exclaimed, "It's a splendid evening. Would you care to come out for a walk, darling? I feel so cramped after those hours and hours in that fellow's car!"A few moments later they were out in the twilight together, and this evening she made no effort to stop him when he chose the solitary cliff path.Suddenly he took her arm; and the gesture moved her. In old days they had often walked like this, his arm tucked through hers."D'you feel you can go up on the down to-night?" he asked. And she said at once, "Of course I can. I'm not a bit tired."He gave her his stick, and soon they began walking slowly up the grassy slopes, while she remembered the morning when she had last been there. And suddenly there floated into her mind a terrible and cynical warning which she had heard as a girl—" Beware of the curse of an answered prayer."She sighed, a long unconscious sigh, and Lance turned to her, startled. "What's the matter?" he asked.As she said nothing for a moment, he went on "Darling? Darling! What can be the matter?"He put his arms round her, closely, and she remained still, shivering a little, her whole body in revolt against those strong enfolding arms.For the first time in their joint lives she consciously lied to him."I suppose we went up a little too fast just now. I seemed to feel a sudden stitch in my side. I'm all right now."If only he would withdraw those hard, gripping arms! But he still held her; and so violent was her sense of repulsion that a faint, sick feeling swept over her."Really all right?" he asked, urgently.She whispered back, "Yes, Lance. Why not?""I only wish I knew why not," and there was anger as well as pain in his voice. "Sometimes I feel, Sybil, as if you and I hardly knew one another at all—" his voice had become pitiful, wistful, and his grip of her slackened.She muttered in a strangled voice, "We've both gone through a great ordeal, Lance.""But it's all over now, isn't it? You feel all right again, don't you?"He was gazing down into her upturned face, and slowly he withdrew his arms from about her.With a sensation of almost sobbing relief, she forced out the words, "I feel perfectly well—physically.""Thank God for that!"And again he put his arms round her and,

straining her to him, his lips sought her soft, quivering mouth, while she, alas, lay inertly in his arms."After all, we're man and wife—" he muttered. "You love me still, or—or have you changed, Sybil?"She faltered out the words, "I have not changed, but I have been very ill, Lance." And she forced herself to add, "You have been very patient with me—love."And sombrely he answered, "I have tried to be."Hand in hand they turned and walked down the steep descent, and all the way he remained silent.This was so unlike this new Lance of whom she was now horribly afraid, that she felt vaguely comforted. Making a great, a conscious effort, she forced herself back into her old feeling of utter trustfulness, of being, as it were, completely merged in him."Beloved," she said softly, "do you remember those lines you read to me the night before you fell ill?"He stayed his steps. "No, I don't remember them, Sybil. You see, I'm not like you—I'm not a poetic chap."And there swept over her again that mortal chill—the feeling that he was a stranger.When near the turning which led to their house, they passed a bench on which lay a young man clasping a girl in his arms.Lance dropped Sybil's hand, and put his hand heavily on her shoulder. "Like us," he said, thickly, "like us, sweetheart."She told herself wildly that she had become unhuman—that it was she, not he, who had changed. Lance had always been more kindly than she had been to any manifestation of ordinary human nature; but now he had become—she did not know how to put it to herself, for she would not say more earthy, while she, unhappy woman that she was, had become what he in the old days had laughingly sometimes accused her of being—unreasonably ethereal. But that, she told herself confusedly, was not only unreasonable, but wickedly selfish, for it was true that Lance had been very patient with her. True, also, as he had reminded her so sorely, that she was his wife. . . .(4)After her husband had shut the door of her bedroom the next morning, Sybil waited till she heard him go downstairs before she got up herself. And even then, after she was quite ready, she stood for a moment on the tiny landing—in no hurry to begin the day.Suddenly she heard his voice coming up from the dining-room, "It's going to be even finer to-day than it was yesterday."He was speaking to Jane, now just back from her holiday.Before his illness, though on excellent terms with the servants, Lance Ancoret, being then a silent man, seldom spoke to Jane, unless he had occasion to do so. Now, when there was no one else to listen, he would keep up a stream of small-talk even with Jane.Slowly Sybil went down the steep stairs, and at last, when she came into the dining-room, he exclaimed, "A splendid day—going to be as fine a day as it was yesterday."She answered, gently, "Yes, indeed it is, Lance. Will you be golfing this morning?""I've a match on at ten. I do wish you'd try and learn to play. Couldn't you, darling?"There was in his voice that curious edge of irritation to which she could not become accustomed.She was pouring out a cup of coffee and so, for a moment, remained silent."I think you'd like it better than glooming about here with nothing to do," he went on, "After all, one can't read all day—"She nearly answered, "We used to paint a great deal," but instead she said, "I think you're

right, dear. I've made up my mind to learn golf, and you shall teach me."He was so surprised that for once he remained silent.Her inner self—that self which says so many strange things to each one of us at times, whispered, "He will like to remember that I said that.""Since you've begun to talk about the game so much," she went on, "I've often felt as if I might take to it, after all."She smiled at him, and Sybil Ancoret had a very pretty smile.He put out his hand, and laid it over hers."That's right," he said, heartily. "Mrs. Croft will be so pleased—""And I've also been thinking, Lance, that I will try and make real friends with Mrs. Croft. I do like her, you know."And before he uttered them she knew, oddly enough, the words he was going to say."She's a ripping pal," he exclaimed.On her lips there trembled the words, "Don't you remember our once hearing her husband say that of her?" But she did not utter those words aloud."How about your taking your first lesson to-day?" he asked." I can't do that, unluckily, for Dr. Green has

got a Frenchman in the Cottage Hospital, who can't speak a word of English, and I promised to go there this morning."She added, after a moment's pause, "I think of going by the shore.""Then you mustn't be late starting. Someone was caught by the tide the other day—and only just managed to escape."She looked at him a little strangely. "D'you remember that day four years ago when we were caught—you and I, Lance?""Were we?" He looked puzzled."I was so frightened—so terribly frightened—but you were so calm, Lance, so brave.""Was I?" He looked boyishly pleased."It's funny I should forget such a thing as that. Luckily I remember everything that happens now, don't I?""Yes, yes, indeed you do," she said, quickly, "and Dr. Green says you will soon be quite all right.""Finished?"She started. Before his illness Lance would never have shot out at her a word like that. It hadn't been his way. He had always been exceedingly, perhaps absurdly, courteous, in the little ways of everyday life.As they went into their sitting-room, he said rather anxiously, "If you're really going by the

shore you ought to be off at latest in half an hour, Sybil."She felt queerly light-hearted, almost as she used to feel, say, a year ago. "I've plenty of time to walk with you to the club house, Lance.""You have if we go off now." He waited a moment, "As a matter of fact, I'm calling for Mrs. Croft," he said, smiling, "so you can start making friends with her right away."She smiled back at him. "I don't think I'll begin doing that quite so early in the morning. But I'll write her a note and ask her to come to dinner with us to-night."Unobservant though he had become, he did see suddenly that she looked tired and wan, and his heart swelled with tenderness."Sybil!" he exclaimed. "You look tired, my darling. Take a car back from Lowcliffe. Why not have one from here—if it comes to that?""Perhaps I'll take the charabanc."There were tears in her eyes now, and, of her own accord, she went up to him, and laid her head against his breast. She liked the feel of the coat he was wearing—it was an old tweed coat, and she remembered the day they had chosen it together on one of their rare visits to London.As if he could see something of what was in her heart, there came over him a feeling of slight

misgiving. "You do love me, don't you, Sybil?" he whispered.She murmured back, "What a silly question! But you must give me time, Lance. I was very ill, too, though not for so long as you were—""I know that," he said. "And, oh, Sybil, I feel as if I've been a brute. . . ."She was kissing his old coat now—giving it what years ago Lance had once called "little fairy kisses.""You see, I love you so much," he said, painfully. "You do know that now, don't you, my darling?""Of course I know it; I've always known it—"She straightened herself. "And now, Lance, you must go, or you'll be late for Mrs. Croft. I'm sure she's waiting for you."From the open window she watched him going out into the road, and then in through the gate next door.Mrs. Croft was waiting for him, close to her front door, and Sybil heard him call out as he sprinted up the path, "A splendid day. Every bit as fine a day as it was yesterday, eh?" and the shrill voice cried back, "Yes, indeed."Sybil did not wait to see them come down the path together. Instead, she turned and went over to her pretty writing-table.She and Lance had bought that table three years ago, at an auction which had been held in one of the old country houses inland. They had been afraid that it would be sold for far more than they could afford to give—and even so, it had been a great extravagance, for it had cost twenty-three pounds, though a dealer had later offered them forty for it. But two days ago Lance, looking at her treasure with a touch of dissatisfaction, had exclaimed, "That table looks a bit shabby. We ought to have it done up."As she sat down, she remembered that remark of his, and she wished she could take the little table with her where she was going.Scarce pausing for a second, she wrote, Dear Mrs. Croft,—It would give us great pleasure if you would come in to-night, and share our very informal dinner. I expect my husband will have told you that I am going to take up golf. I'm quite looking forward to it.Yours sincerely,SYBIL ANCORET.And then she put down her pen and stared at what she had just written. Could she have put down those words—she, Sybil Ancoret? Three months ago the idea of writing such a note would have seemed grotesque, outrageous. But then, three months ago she had been quite a different woman from the woman she was now.She took up a book and tried to read, and then, about eleven, she went into the kitchen."Anything you would like me to order at Lowcliffe, Mrs. Pearson?""You'll have to hurry if you're going to take the charabanc, ma'am. You've only got five minutes to get to the post office.""I can do it in three, easily. I think I'll bring back a lobster from Lowcliffe. Mrs. Croft will probably come in to dinner, and you know how fond Mr. Ancoret has become of hot lobster done in the way you learnt to do it at the Carlton, in your days of glory. By the way, will you ask Jane to take this note in to next door, after I'm gone?""All right, ma'am. But hurry along, do, or you'll miss that charabanc—"After she had shut the kitchen door, Sybil did not obey her dear old cook. She did not hurry. Slowly, deliberately, she put on her outdoor shoes, her little loose coat, and her hat. But, once out of doors, she walked to the village at what was for her a great pace, and she even went right into the post office, there to hear with concern that the charabanc had gone full two minutes ago.Then she turned back again, towards the sea; and the postmaster testified, later, that it had never occurred to him to warn Mrs. Ancoret, because he thought that she must surely know how dangerous it was to try and get to Lowcliffe by the shore way, when the tide was running in.THE GUN ROOMTHE GUN ROOM(I)LADY GRENDON leant forward and tapped on the sheet of glass between herself and the chauffeur. The car slowed down and came to a dead stop in the middle of the old stone bridge.It was from the bridge that more than one great water-colour painter of the Early English School had painted the beautiful little town of Grendon Regis and its famous castle. Lady Grendon was not given to quoting Scripture, but involuntarily she murmured, "A city set on a hill." And it was in a most intimate sense her city, for, as one of her only child's trustees had said to her yesterday, there was scarcely a house in Grendon Regis which she had not improved or beautified, and there was not a paving-stone in even the humblest alley which she had not trodden many times since she had

first come to the castle as a bride nineteen years ago.Yet she was still, at forty-three, a beautiful woman—far too beautiful and attractive, most

people would have thought, to devote herself, as she had elected to do during the whole of her widowhood, to the management of her daughter's property.There were some in her own high little world who would have told you that Katharine Grendon was a hard woman, far more concerned with the material things of life than with any form of the ideal. Yet it may be doubted if any one of her critics would have felt, as she was feeling now, the tranquil loveliness of the scene.Lady Grendon had reason for her soft, perceptive, mood to-day. It was delightful to come home after as long an absence as seven weeks; and she had been moved by the pleasure everyone at the little station, which lay a mile beyond the town, had shown at seeing her again. She was a woman who always knew exactly what she wanted, and who made her plans accordingly, and so she had written to her young daughter and said that she would prefer not to be met by her.But there was one person she had made sure would be at the station, and she had been at once relieved and surprised when she had become aware that there he was not.As the train had steamed in, she had stood by the carriage door, her eyes sweeping the platform. But she sought in vain for the tall, spare figure

of Jim Varley, the still young-looking man who, partly because he had an attractive personality, and even more because he occupied the position of agent to the great Grendon property, had become a personage in the neighbourhood. For the first time since he had been invalided home from Flanders in 1917, Captain Varley had not been at the station to receive Lady Grendon and make himself useful in the many little ways that a man can make himself useful on such an occasion.In the old days Jim Varley's absence would have angered as well as surprised her, but to-day she had felt a definite sense of relief. For though she had resolved that it should not be so, the thought of an interview which she intended to have with Captain Varley the next morning had shadowed Lady Grendon's home-coming, and during her long journey home it had filled her mind even to the exclusion of the joy she felt at her coming reunion with her darling Kitty. How glad she was now to remember that, excellent friends as she and Captain Varley had always been outwardly, and strongly as she had always upheld his somewhat weak authority—for it was she who had been master, not he—she had always seen to it that there should be due distance kept between herself, the widowed mistress of Grendon Castle, and her daughter's

agent. This had been an easy matter, for Varley, whatever his faults—and he had many faults—was of his employer's class, the last man, therefore, to presume on his position.But then, as she now reminded herself with a touch of acrid bitterness, the agent could afford to ape humility, considering that, pleasantly formal though their relationship might be in public, they had been, in secret, passionate lovers. She felt assured, however, that not one of the many human beings in whose lives she and Captain Varley necessarily played a considerable part had even dimly suspected their intimate relationship. Nay, more, by one of those strange ironies with which human life is threaded, she, the exemplar and heroine of the feminine half of High Grendon, had always enjoyed an almost unnatural immunity from the kind of gossip which ordinarily surrounds a beautiful, a wealthy, and a lonely widow.Lord Grendon had been twenty-six years older than herself, and during her short married life she had been pursued, aye, and hotly pursued. But to those years she could look back with unruffled brow, and with even a certain feeling of pride, for she had been a kind, as well as a faithful, wife to the man who had loved her with a deep, selfless, and indulgent love.What, then, had made her do that which she

now so bitterly regretted, and which she would have given years of her life to be able to blot out? She had never been blind to Jim Varley's faults. She had early discovered him to be idle, pleasure-loving, and, though instinctively clever in the management of men—a most valuable asset in an agent—yet wholly lacking in that which is called character.She remembered, now, that at the end of his first six months at Grendon Regis she had actually decided that Varley must be "chucked." But even then she had felt in the young man something so compellingly alluring to a certain side of her nature that she had hesitated and so—been lost.During the dreary weeks she had just spent in a nursing home she had tried to persuade herself that the war had been responsible for what she now plainly acknowledged to herself had been an ignominious fall. That Jim Varley was going into mortal peril had been at the time an excuse at which her proud heart had clutched with desperate eagerness. But, deep in that proud heart, she knew that had there been no war, had life pursued its usual even tenor, she must have yielded—not so much to his eager importunity as because she was thirsting for love satisfied, the one thing her full, successful life had never brought her.There had been short, sharp quarrels, and long-drawn-out, delicious reconciliations during their years of secret passion. Once, at least, she had been bitterly jealous, and jealousy had brought with it an intolerable feeling of shame, for its object was the wife of a local vet., and the girl, before her marriage, had been a mannequin where she, Lady Grendon, bought her clothes. . . .As a girl, when staying in a country house, she had overheard a man, alluding to a certain notorious intrigue, observe, "My father used to say that those sort of affairs always end in cabs and tears!" She remembered those absurd words, now that her intrigue was about to end—not, thank God, in any pitiable way, but decently, and in order.When going through London she had spent an afternoon with her daughter's trustees. And quietly, composedly, she had told the two men, who she knew heartily liked and respected her, that she thought the time had come to make a change with regard to Captain Varley. Kitty would be eighteen this May, ready to see, and be seen by, the world in which she was bound to play a part as her father's daughter and as a great heiress. She, the mother, would be absorbed in the girl's "coming out," and so would not be able to give the time and thought she had hitherto given to the estate.What she wanted now, and what she thought the trustees might find for her, was a responsible man of business for the agency. But she had pointed out that seven years is a long time out of a man's life, and that her little Kitty could well afford to be generous. That being so, she had suggested that Captain Varley should be given four thousand pounds, or, as an alternative, an annuity. The trustees, though somewhat taken aback, had agreed, the more readily that she had expressed her willingness to bind herself, in the unlikely event of her daughter's not honouring the bond three years from now, to take over an obligation which she was well able to afford.And now the knowledge that she must tell Jim Varley to-morrow that he was going to be "chucked" was casting a cloud over her happy home-coming. Yet there was one comfort, albeit a cold comfort. Lady Grendon was well aware—for she was a woman who always faced up to the realities of life—that Varley no longer loved her. But she also believed that her strong, compelling personality had become part of the warp and woof of his life, and that, though his first feeling might be one of relief at the ending of what must have been at times a difficult and even a humiliating situation, he would in the long run miss her far, far more than she would miss him.Impatiently she tapped the window in front of her again, and the car leaped forward. But as it sped up the steep, narrow street leading to the castle gate, Lady Grendon's mind dwelt with ever increasing discomfort on the man who had for so long been her secret lover.Luckily, one of his pals—and Varley was a man of many pals—had offered to take him on a big shooting expedition this coming autumn. She would advise him strongly to accept his friend's offer, and she would further tell him that on his return home, he would, if he was a wise man, marry a girl with a little money.There came a strange look over her face, as she imagined herself welcoming "Captain and Mrs. Varley" to wherever she might then be living in dowager state. For, in spite of her intention to show her child the world, and show the world her child, she believed that her little Kitty's fate was already decided. Over the other side of their wide valley was a stronghold almost as ancient and as great as Grendon Castle, and there, twenty-two years ago, had been born a boy whom Lady Grendon had watched grow up. It was this young man, Laurence Marlingham, whom she had early decided on as Kitty's future husband. Kitty was a delicate, sensitive girl, only fitted for the tenderest, most kindly, and most faithful handling.So far the gods had been kind. Laurence was already boyishly in love with his pretty, gentle neighbour, and Kitty—? The mother could not help suspecting that Kitty was aware of his feeling and, in a measure, returned it. But there was plenty of time—Laurence was still at Oxford, Kitty was not yet eighteen. Let them both see something of the world before they settled down.It was a happy woman, in spite of the one dark shadow on her heart, who drove through the great gate, and so up to the wide porch of Grendon Castle, there to be welcomed in the good, old-fashioned, feudal way, by the upper servants of the big household. And again it was a relief to see—as she saw at once—that Captain Varley was not there. His absence added a touch of delicious serenity to her joy in the eager, almost ecstatic, welcome of the fair-haired girl who stood poised on the lower step ready to leap into her mother's arms.(2)"Mummy? Darling, darling Mummy—"The two were alone together in Lady Grendon's own sitting-room upstairs. Save for the firelight they were in darkness, and the girl had slipped off the low chair where she had been sitting, and was now kneeling on the floor.The mother felt profoundly moved by that yearning cry of love; she bent over her child, and put her arm round the slender shoulders."Dearest," she whispered, "we are going to be so happy, you and I—so happy."Kitty's only response was that of pressing yet closer to her mother's knee, and perhaps because Lady Grendon had always been distrustful of what she called "being sentimental," she went on, more lightly, "What larks we'll have, my precious pet!"The girl fell back, still on her knees. She was now staring into the glowing fire, and after a moment's pause, her left hand sought and found her mother's right hand, and held it tightly."Mummy," she whispered, childishly, "I want to tell you something."A feeling of half-apprehension ran through the mother's heart."Yes," she said, leaning forward, "what is it, my darling?"Kitty made no immediate answer to the tender questioning; she only went on staring into the glowing mass of coal."Well, my dear?""I'm so dreadfully afraid that you may be displeased about what I want to tell you," she faltered out."Come! Try and remember a time when I

have been really displeased with you?" There was a touch of pain in the full, melodious voice.What could the child mean? Had she become engaged to Laurence Marlingham? If so, Miss Mills, the old governess who had been looking after the girl all this time, ought to have seen that something was going on. But even if the two young people had come to an understanding, there was nothing that she, Kitty's mother, could say against it. And yet she would have liked her darling to see something of the world and of other men, before binding herself even to so good and so suitable a young fellow as this lifelong friend and neighbour."Surely you know that nothing you could say or do would touch my love for you, dearest?" she added, in a tone almost of remonstrance.The girl turned round quickly, and this time she put her arms round her mother's neck."I know that," she whispered. "You and I love one another far too much for anything really to come between us. But, Mummy—" and again she stopped short."Come, Kitty, out with it."There was a pause, and then desperately the girl, withdrawing herself from her mother's arms, exclaimed,"I love Jim Varley, and he loves me!""Jim Varley?"The name was echoed, if questioningly, yet with scarcely an inflection of surprise. Yet her daughter's avowal had had a curious physical effect on Lady Grendon; it had made her feel faint and suddenly dizzy. She wondered if she could have heard aright."Of course, I know he's older than I am—"Hardly knowing that she said the words aloud, Lady Grendon murmured, "More than double your age, Kitty.""Even that isn't very old, Mummy!"The agonized listener told herself that this was true, for Jim Varley was not yet forty, though very near it.She was gradually coming back to reality, for the full force of the horrible blow was becoming spent, though she still felt shaken with impotent anger and amazement. But she kept a tight hold on herself, while seeking, like a trapped creature, a way out of the ignoble and frightful situation."Then you're not angry, Mummy? You do understand?" There was a pitiful tone of relief in Kitty's voice."I do understand, my pet, and I'm not angry. But I can't help being very much surprised. And I'm old-fashioned enough to think that Captain Varley ought to have spoken to me first; for you're so young, my precious love, so very,

very young—" and the mother's voice broke suddenly."I know I am, Mummy; and if you," she gave a nervous little laugh, "had cut up rough, I was quite prepared to wait till I was twenty-one. You know what I'm like? I can't help it. Nothing would ever change me."And the mother knew that this was true. There was a curious streak of obstinacy in the fragile-looking, sensitive-natured girl—of obstinacy, and a pathetic, blind loyalty."He did talk of writing to you; but we both thought it would be a shame to upset you during your cure."There came a bitter curve over Lady Grendon's beautiful mouth. She could almost hear Jim Varley's drawling, tender voice saying, "I know we ought to write to your mother, darling; but we'd better wait till she's well again. We can't expect her to be pleased that you should want to marry a penniless chap like me."Captain Varley had always been fond, too fond, of describing himself as "a penniless chap."And then Kitty gave a kind of cry. "I'm so happy, Mummy—so very, very happy! I've felt so dreadfully frightened the last few days. I was so afraid that you'd be angry with me, and try to break our engagement—and Jim's so proud."A look of unutterable contempt flashed across Lady Grendon's face. That cur, proud? But all she said was, "Poor little girl, who didn't know how much her mother loved her!"She was rocking Kitty in her arms now, feeling as if the child was a baby again."After all," she murmured, "it's happiness that matters in this world, my dear; and if Jim Varley can make you happy—?" and then she stopped, choked by the lying words.For a while they remained cheek to cheek, heart to heart, and then Lady Grendon gently released herself."I think you will agree, dearest, that it will be better to say nothing for a while. After all, you're not yet eighteen, and your trustees have great powers, you know, right up to when you're five-and-twenty."Eagerly the girl responded, "I know that, and I can answer for Jim. He was so afraid that you'd think he had taken a dishonourable advantage. But he didn't, Mummy—indeed, indeed, he didn't!""I'm sorry for Laurence Marlingham," observed Lady Grendon, slowly.Kitty reddened, and then she said, uncomfortably, "I don't think you need be.""Lately I've sometimes thought that you liked him, Kitty—and I know that he cares for you.""I'm afraid he does, a little. But he's never made love to me—"There ran a tremor through Lady Grendon's heart. She was remembering how Jim Varley made love. Sometimes, in the old days, she had admitted to herself that it was all he did know how to do—well. Then also came the blinding perception that if this monstrous marriage took place, Varley would soon be making love to Kitty's friends, to the pretty, smart young women who would be always coming and going to this noble old house, once he were master here.She came back, as if from far away, to what the girl was saying."And then, darling Mum, marrying Laurence Marlingham would have been so dull! It would have been doing just what people would have expected me to do—it would have been called 'so suitable!'"Slowly, and with no answering smile, the mother reasoned, "Yet, my dear, very often the suitable thing is the happy thing—in the long run.""But don't you see," and there came a note of excitement in the fresh young voice, "that if I'd married Laurence, I should never have known what love, real love, meant! After all, a woman wants to love, not only to be loved—"Lady Grendon told herself that Varley had done his work well. But she also told herself

that he had forgotten in his reckoning her deep, almost savagely protective, love for her only child.She felt calmer now, for she knew what she was going to do to stop this marriage, and she had even, during that interchange of words concerning Laurence Marlingham, carefully thought out a way to carry out her plan. At the same time she faced the fact that she might have to wait for what would seem a long time before achieving her purpose, and, also, that during the time of waiting, there would be a difficult, almost an impossible, part for her to play.She stood up, and as she did so, she lifted Kitty to her feet; then she put her hand on the girl's arm."Listen, my dear. We've got to be sensible about this—you and I.""Yes, indeed, Mummy!"The beloved voice was full of eager, and wholly submissive, acquiescence."And I'm sure," the mother went on in a measured tone, "that Captain Varley—" she corrected herself, "I mean Jim"—the girl gave her hand a grateful pressure—" will be sensible too. We've got to make people realize that your marriage will not be, as marriages go, so very strange, after all.""It won't seem as strange as perhaps you think, Mum," cried the girl. "Jim's tremen-

dously popular! I never realized how popular he was till you went away this time. Why, there was scarcely a day he couldn't have gone out to lunch or dinner—even in this dull neighbourhood."Kitty's mother was recalling the way the two great men of business who were her daughter's trustees had spoken yesterday of this man who now believed he was going to marry her daughter. One of them had laughed with a kind of contemptuous tolerance. "Calls himself 'Captain' Varley now, does he?" And she, a little nettled, had said quickly, "He did very well in the war.""It's nearly time to dress, my darling." She added hesitatingly, "I suppose you would like to have him in to dinner?"But to her intense relief the girl exclaimed, "Oh, no, Mum! I'd far rather you and I were alone to-night. Besides, he's had his dinner by now. He said he might be going to Dr. Turner, for bridge.""One word more, Kitty"—there came a touch of solemnity into the mother's voice."Yes, darling Mum?""Never, never doubt again that I shall always entirely sympathize with you, in joy or in sorrow my child."Tears welled up into Kitty's eyes. "I know

that," she murmured. "You've been a wonderful, wonderful mother to me." And then, touchingly, she added, "I'm the happiest girl in the world to-night. It was Jim who made me feel so nervous. But, oh, he does so admire you, Mum! I wish you could have heard him talking about you yesterday—""What did he say?" asked Lady Grendon in a hard voice."He said, Mummy," Kitty gave a little chuckle of girlish amusement, "'I'm a bit afraid of her ladyship—you know we all are—but I've never known such a wonderful woman!'""It was generous of him to say that," said her mother, drily, "for I've often had occasion to call him over the coals."She felt Kitty wince."I suppose you have, Mum; but he's been a very good agent, hasn't he?""Yes—as agents go."The contemptuous words cut like a whip, and the girl looked not only surprised, but troubled. Lady Grendon bit her lip. How could she have been such a fool?"Darling," she said tenderly, "one can't have it all ways. If Jim Varley had been what people call a good agent, he'd have been a hard man of business—not at all the sort of fellow with whom my pet could have fallen in love."She was rewarded by the girl's confident, happy tone—"That's true, Mummy, of course! You always understand.""Kitty?""Yes, Mummy?""I would rather you didn't write to Jim to-night; it won't hurt him to be in suspense just for one night more. I don't want anyone in the house to know, or to suspect—yet."She added, with a note of anxiety in her steady voice, "No one does know or suspect-do they, my darling?""I don't think so, Mummy." The answer was given a little awkwardly. "Miss Mills is such an old goose, and she thought she had a cold most of the time you've been away. It's lucky she felt well enough to travel this morning!"Lady Grendon said nothing. She was telling herself what a fool she had been to trust the stupid old governess with her treasure.Kitty waited a moment, and then, more easily, she added, "I'm sure Jim will quite agree with you as to keeping our engagement private till everything is settled—I mean with the trustees, and so on."After her daughter had gone Lady Grendon bent down and looked at her watch. It was a

quarter to eight. Dinner would be at half-past eight, so she had plenty of time to do that which had to be done at the first opportunity.She went through into her bedroom, and turned on the electric light. It was a charming octagon room, and everything in it was yellow, from the embroidered hangings of the high four-post bed to the splendid old Chinese carpet. Lord Grendon had been a man of taste, and it was he who had arranged this room for his lovely auburn-haired wife twenty years ago.Having shot the bolt in the door she had just come through, she went rapidly into her bathroom, and tried the outer door there. It was locked, for her maid had already filled the bath.Moving slowly, now, Lady Grendon came back into her bedroom, and, walking over to the dressing-table, gazed searchingly at herself in the carved wood gilt mirror.Strange! She looked just as she always looked; a little stern, maybe, but there was no sign on her still exquisitely moulded face of the frightful convulsion which had just shaken her to the depth of her being.She sat down and took off her shoes. Then she went over to a shadowed part of the room where, close to the bed, and as if cut out of the panelled wall, was a narrow slip of a door.This almost invisible door opened on to a

winding stair leading straight down into a large hall-like apartment called the gun-room, where, in the last years of his life, Lord Grendon had chosen to spend a great deal of his spare time. Since his death the winding stair had fallen into disuse, and no one in the vast house was aware that the door which led to it from her ladyship's bedroom was now ever opened. And it was true that the little gilt key had never been turned by her save to admit one human being.As Lady Grendon stood by the door, a curious look came over her face. She was thinking that she need not have feared, as she had feared while on the bridge, that she would hear to-night the low, long-familiar, knock on the other side of that door.She turned the key, pushed the door back, and in her stockinged feet went carefully down the steep turning stair till, standing in a shadowed recess, she saw before her in the luminous semi-darkness of an early spring evening, the high vaulted chamber called the gun-room.Here and there, on the stone floor, stood stark figures in armour, and, just opposite the opening where she now stood was a huge blue ironbound chest which, according to tradition, had been left at the castle by mischance during a mediæval royal progress. Above the chest hung a gun-rack.She stepped down and walked noiselessly across the room, and then she lifted down the gun which lay on the lowest rack.Quickly, deftly, she loaded it, and then carefully put it back into its place, ready for use when God should see fit to deliver her enemy into her strong, though small and delicate-looking hands.For a few moments she stood, absorbed in bitter musing, for to her, as perhaps also to her child—her soul sickened at the suspicion—this great room was full of poignant, passionate memories. The fact that the servants were strictly forbidden to use it as a passage to the agent's quarters had made it by far the safest place for her to meet, in the old far-away days, the man who had become her lover. There was still a writing-table there which, nominally at least, had been set apart for Varley's use. . . .She retraced her steps across the stone floor, and was already half-way up the winding staircase, when there fell on her ears the sound of a door opening. She knew it was the door which led from the agent's quarters into the gun-room.In the darkness her face lit up with quick, fierce joy. The opportunity for which she had thought she might have to wait a long time had come now, and it only remained for her to turn it to account.She turned and slid down the few steps to see, herself completely hidden, Jim Varley's tall, lean figure moving slowly down the centre of the long room.Now was her chance—and such a chance as might never come her way again.Swiftly she sped across to the gun rack and, lifting down the loaded gun, she stood in the black shadow of the old chest, waiting.Varley stayed his footsteps, and peered forward, uncertainly. As he began moving again more quickly down the room, she came out and stood right in his path, close to the door which led into the castle.When close to her he stopped, and then, suddenly, she saw, in the dim light, recognition flash into his eyes. She could even feel the mighty effort he was making to keep himself in hand—to appear easy, unconcerned. A nervous, half-mocking grin came over his face; he evidently believed she had come there to upbraid him.He did not see what she was holding in her hand. Taking careful, steady aim, she touched the trigger. As if simultaneously with the flash and report, Varley staggered, turned half round, and fell heavily to the ground.Instinctively she raised her head and listened intently, knowing well that this was her moment of danger.But there came no movement—no sound of the hurried opening and shutting of doors. At this time of the evening the servants were all engaged on their various duties far from this side of the castle.After a moment's thought and rapid calculation, she stooped and laid the gun down at a certain angle on the stone floor, close to the piteous, sprawling thing which had been Jim Varley.When she stepped back into her brilliantly lighted bedroom she found herself, to her half-shamed surprise, trembling. . . . Opening her dressing-case, she saw that, though it had been unpacked, her maid had left the tiny flask of brandy undisturbed in its pocket, and for the first time in her life she unscrewed the top of the flask and drank a mouthful of the reviving spirit. Then she put her hands carefully all over her tweed coat and, also, felt her narrow skirt. She was too much of a sportswoman not to know the peculiar, gluey, feel of blood. But both coat and skirt were dry.After slowly undressing herself, she put on a dressing-gown and went into her bathroom. The water was still very hot. Then she had been only a short time away? It had seemed an eternity to her.(3)When the head housemaid came in to light the fire the next morning, Lady Grendon was lying back, wide awake, under the great yellow canopy of her broad bed."Good morning, Lucy!" she called out, cheerily. "I'm glad to see you again."Instead of the face of subdued horror she had half expected to be turned towards her, she only saw the kindly, smiling countenance of the old servant who could remember the first time her ladyship had slept in that bed."Why, my lady, you do look well.""Aye, and I feel well, too, Lucy. It's as if four or five years had slipped off me, and that's a delightful feeling!""That it must be, my lady." And then the woman said slowly, "We're all very glad to have your ladyship back. The castle seems funny, somehow, without your ladyship."Lady Grendon was touched. Her nerves must be more shaken than she had thought, for tears welled up into her eyes, and so she said,"I think I'll breakfast in bed to-day—I've been treated like an invalid for what seems a long time now."When her breakfast came, she forced herself

to eat heartily, knowing that she would need all her strength for the difficult day that lay before her.But first, taking a paper pad from a table by her bed, she hastily scribbled a note in pencil. Then she folded the piece of paper over and wrote on the flap, "Captain Varley." She had never put into an envelope any of the frequent notes she had occasion to write to the agent. It had been one of her pet economies, as well as a precaution against silly gossip. This morning she unfolded the note and read over, carefully, what she had written.Tuesday morning.DEAR CAPTAIN VARLEY,I should be so pleased if you could come over and see me about eleven. I've had a wonderful time away, and I feel quite a different woman!Yours sincerely,
KATHARINE GRENDON.She rang for her maid. "Would you ask John to take this across at once to Captain Varley?""Yes, my lady.""And Radlett? I suppose a fire has been lit in the business room? If not, will you have it lit now, for Captain Varley will come over and see me, there, at eleven. Will you also tell Miss Kitty that I should like to see her for a minute?"She looked up into the woman's eyes. Had there been any gossip downstairs about the agent and his young mistress? But she saw nothing written on the stolid face, and she made up her mind that there had been no gossip.When Kitty ran in to her mother's room, "Mummy!" she cried. "Oh! Mummy, isn't it a splendid day?""Yes, my darling, and a happy day, I hope, for us all. I've sent a note across to Captain Varley—Jim, I mean!—to come over at eleven. I'd have made it ten, dear, for your sake, but you know our friend has never been a very early riser.""He's better now, indeed he is!""I'm sure you'll make him better, my darling. You make everybody round you better—even you poor old mother!"And then Lady Grendon, hearing quick, agitated footsteps, suddenly leapt up in bed. It was her one moment of betrayal.The door which gave into the sitting-room opened, and the housekeeper came through it."Oh, my lady—" and then the old woman stopped short, and, more quietly, she asked, "May I speak to you alone for a minute, my lady?""Certainly, Mrs. Lynn. Run along, my

darling," and obediently Kitty went out of the room."What's the matter? Come now, don't look so upset—I shan't be angry."But it was with an hysterical cry that Mrs. Lynn, coming close up to the bedside, exclaimed, "Something dreadful has happened, my lady! The poor Captain—he's shot, my lady. Half his head blown off—in the gun-room! Mr. Vaughan says he must have taken one of the guns off the rack, not knowing it was loaded. Mr. Vaughan has telephoned for Dr. Turner.""What an awful thing! I'll come down now, at once—"Lady Grendon sprang out of bed, thrust her feet into her slippers, caught up her dressing-gown, and wrapped it round her.She looked pale—pale and shocked, but calm. Mrs. Lynn told herself that her ladyship was a hard woman."I don't want Miss Kitty to hear this dreadful thing by chance, for she was so fond of Captain Varley. Can I trust you to prevent her being told until I tell her?""Indeed you can, my lady."The butler was waiting at the foot of the staircase. For a moment he and his mistress looked at one another without speaking."It's a horrible sight, my lady," he said in a

quavering voice. "I don't think your ladyship ought to go in there—if I may make so bold as to advise.""Perhaps you are right, Vaughan. At any rate, I'll stop here till Dr. Turner comes."She waited a moment, and then said slowly, "I hope you haven't moved anything in the gun-room? One ought never to touch"—with a certain effort she brought out the words—"a body, till the police have seen it."The old man looked a little uncomfortable."John and I did just move the poor Captain a little way. But we didn't touch the gun, my lady. That's just where it must have fallen from his hand. We only moved him because it was so awkward—why, one could hardly open the door!""Which door?" she asked. "D'you mean our door, or the door of his own quarters?""Our door, my lady. The Captain must have gone into the gun-room just after his dinner, and taken the gun out of the rack which hangs by the chest, without knowing it was loaded. We shall have to find out who loaded that gun—not that anyone will ever own up to it now."Then they heard the doctor's motor, and mistress and man went together into the great hall. Lady Grendon had lived through these moments, again and again, during the long hours of the night.Dr. Turner took her hand. "This is a shocking thing," he said, soberly. "But only the other day I had to do with a tragedy of very much the same kind—a boy playing with a gun, not knowing it was loaded. But no one would have thought such a thing possible of Varley!"As she remained silent, he went on, "Why, we were more than half expecting him to come in for a game of bridge last evening."Lady Grendon murmured, in a low, shaken voice, "Will you go into the gun-room, and then come back and see me? Meanwhile I must go and break this awful news to my poor girl. She was so fond of Captain Varley. Why, he's been here"—she hesitated a moment—"since Kitty was ten years old!"She looked into the doctor's kind, shrewd face, steeling herself to see some touch of secret knowledge or suspicion, if not of herself, then of her child, if not of her child, then of herself. But his glance was frank and direct. He knew or suspected nothing.With real feeling he exclaimed, "To think that the poor fellow went through the worst of the war, to end like this—"As Dr. Turner went with the butler to the gun-room, Lady Grendon turned to face what she knew was the hardest task that remained to be accomplished.With slow lagging steps she made her way to what was still called the schoolroom.Kitty had finished her breakfast, and was sitting on the window seat, a rapt expression on her fair little face. And it was that happy, ecstatic look that seemed to pierce the mother's heart, casting out of her mind all the phrases she had so carefully prepared, and drawing from her an involuntary, gasping cry of pain.The girl leapt up, terrified."Mummy! What is it? What's happened?""Jim's dead. He was found—shot. In the gun-room. An accident." And then she clutched at what the doctor had said, "To think he went through the worst of the war, to end like this—"She was sobbing now, the tears raining down her cheeks, her face convulsed, disfigured—and it was Kitty who remained quiet and collected, and who, at last, putting her arms round her mother, whispered,"Don't be so sorry for me, Mummy. I will be brave, I can bear it, as I've got you left—"ONE MAN'S WAYONE MAN'S WAY(I)WITH a quick turn of the hand, which he hoped had been unobserved by his clever, sharp-eyed old mother, Gerald Maynard glanced at his watch. He had been with her just over half an hour, so now he felt he could go.As he bent down and kissed her, the old lady looked up into his sensible, unimaginative face. Her son was neither handsome nor plain, but he was in good physical condition, and looked well pleased with himself and the world he lived in.She said, affectionately, "It was good of you to come, my dear, the more so that I know you must be terribly busy just before such a journey.""Oh, that's nothing," he answered, a little awkwardly. And then he added, with the directness which formed an essential part of his nature, "I've told Nelly that she's to make a point of coming to see you once a week while I'm away."His mother stayed on her lips the words, "I wish you hadn't done that." Instead she

said, "Why don't you take Nelly with you this time?""Take Nelly with me to Buenos Ayres? What on earth for?""For the pleasure of being together," she rapped out.It was in a very firm tone that he answered, "No, mother, I shouldn't think of taking her on such a trip. It's entirely business this time. Besides, she's going to Scotland.""You used to take her everywhere with you—when you were first married."He looked rather startled at this, but quickly his face cleared."There weren't the children then," he explained. "I don't think we ought both to be so far from them."There was a look in his mother's face which made him feel that she had not said all she meant to say. Yet, unlike most mothers-in-law, old Mrs. Maynard seldom talked to her son about his wife."I have thought for some time that you are making a mistake, Gerald, in not taking Nelly more into your life. She's a clever woman, and what interests you should interest her."He was so much surprised at her words that all unconsciously he put his hat back on the chair from which he had taken it up."Look here, mother—what d'you mean? Surely you wouldn't have me bore my wife with what happens in the office? Dad never did that with you.""That's all you know about it! Sometimes we used to talk for hours, in the night, about things that were troubling him. But then, I know that you never are troubled—in the way that your poor father used to be."He felt a little vexed."I assure you I have my business worries just as much as other people."She answered, irrelevantly, "Let me see, you were thirty-one when you married, Nelly was nineteen, and now—""Now," he said, shortly, "I'm forty-one and she's twenty-nine. We married in 1912.""She still looks very young."He smiled, a satisfied smile."I think she does. Only yesterday I told her that I considered her still the nicest-looking girl of my acquaintance!""That's a delightful thing for a woman to hear her husband say after they have been married over ten years," she observed."Well, I think she was pleased—all the more because she knew it was my honest opinion, and not just a compliment." And he went on in a stronger tone, "Oh, yes, mother, we're

really a very happy couple. Needless to say, I never deny her anything.""You're a generous man, my dear. And most people would say that Nelly's a very lucky woman to be your wife. Still, woman does not live by luxury alone. You don't seem to see much of one another."He was hurt, and showed it."Indeed we do! Why, we're dining alone together this very evening—"She put out her hand, and he took it a thought reluctantly."Forgive your old mother, my dear! I don't often interfere. But the last time Nelly was here she looked far from well, and—"  There trembled on her lips the words "far from happy," but, instead, she ended with "in need of a change.""She'll have a change, in Scotland," and he let drop his mother's hand."How is Captain Ogilvy?" she asked. "D'you still see a great deal of him?""Funny you should mention Gill! I'm going to see him now, this afternoon. He's sticking so hard to his job that he's too busy to go out much.""His job?" repeated the old lady. "I thought that since Captain Ogilvy had left the Army he was a completely idle man.""Gill wouldn't thank you for calling him that! Still, he's always been a lily of the field—for all that he's a Scotsman. But it takes all sorts to make a world, mother."Maynard's face softened as his mind reverted to the long ago days when his one close man friend, Ronald Ogilvy, had been his fag at school, but somehow had always made him, Maynard, do things for him, instead of its being the other way about.As he again took up his hat and walked to the door, there was a look at once anxious and slightly satirical in his mother's still bright eyes.Ought she to have said more? She remembered the French proverb, "In doubt abstain." She was aware that her son belonged to the type of man who goes through life with his eyes holden. He had been born to good fortune, good health and good character; and his only break-away from convention had been when he had fallen passionately in love with the very lovely girl, the daughter of an unsuccessful stockbroker, who was now his wife.Old Mrs. Maynard wondered whether her son still remembered the one probing talk concerning human life they had ever had together. It had been late one evening, when he had suddenly told her that he intended to ask Nelly Bell to become his wife.She had opened what had been to them both a painful conversation with the words:"I fear you are going to make a mistake, my boy, and it's best to say so before it is too late. I know that there is a great deal that is good in Nelly's nature. She has a sense of duty, and she is very patient with that tiresome father of hers, but she's too pretty for my taste, and you and she have nothing really in common."Of course her words had had no effect on him at all; and she now told herself that she had been so far wrong in that her son and his wife did seem to get on very well together.During the war Nelly Maynard had not only really worked hard, making artificial fingers for the wounded, but she had also gone out a great deal. Gerald Maynard had made a second fortune, besides being among those men of business who were mysteriously considered indispensable at home.But since the end of the war Nelly had steadied down. She was an excellent mother to her two little girls, and certainly made her husband very comfortable. Outwardly all was well. Still, to old Mrs. Maynard's thinking there had long been a cloud in her prosperous son's blue sky, though he was blandly unaware of it.(2)As Gerald Maynard walked away from his mother's house, he felt what he very seldom did feel—slightly confused and puzzled. He was not a clever man—though he would have been very much surprised had anyone told him so—but he knew the way his mother's mind worked. He felt sure that she had had some reason for suggesting that he should take his wife with him on this tiresome business trip to South America.The very fact that his mother said so little, and interfered not at all in their married life, gave the clever old woman a kind of hidden power. He had felt its influence over him to-day.All the same, that he should take Nelly to Buenos Ayres was, he told himself, an absurd suggestion, and one for which his wife certainly would not have thanked his mother. There had been a time in their joint lives when he had thought his pretty Nelly went out far too much. But now it seemed to him that she went out too little, and this was odd, as they had a large circle of friends, and appeared to be always making new acquaintances, as prosperous, happily-married folk are apt to do.This very day she had refused to go out into the country with some people who had made up a cheery motoring party. And he had been

surprised when she had said, "I've promised the children to take them into the square garden this afternoon. You can come to us there, after you've been to see your mother."They were not often so domestic as that!Though he had said they were going to have a Darby and Joan dinner this evening, Maynard intended to ask his friend, Captain Ogilvy, to come and take potluck with them. But as to his appointment with dear old Gill this afternoon he had said nothing to his wife, for Gill, to his surprise, had asked him to keep the fact that they were going to meet to himself.Captain Ogilvy's present job—one found him by Gerald Maynard—was that of "runner" for a big stockbroker, and, thanks to Maynard, he had been able to introduce some very valuable business to his firm. Even so, the amount he earned in commissions was not enough to keep him in decent comfort, and now this good friend wondered whether the pal whom he had never failed yet was going to ask if he could find him still another job?Being one of those men who never spend money unnecessarily on themselves, he got on to the top of an omnibus, and, as he went towards that part of the town which constitutes the clubman's London, he told himself, not for the first time, that Gill was a fool to prefer one uncomfortable 

little room off St. James's Street, instead of nice diggings in a less fashionable quarter. Of course Gill had a good excuse. Men like dear old Gill always have. His club—one of the most exclusive in the world—was just round the corner from that horrid little room, and he practically lived at his club.And then, all at once, Maynard asked himself why Gill had not suggested their meeting at his club. Did that mean that his friend was determined to run no risk of interruption? Last time they had lunched together there, Gill had been fetched three times to the telephone.There had been moments when Gerald Maynard had rather envied his friend the easy-going, sunny nature which enabled him to be always happily lazy. Not that Ogilvy had been lazy in the war. He had done splendidly in Flanders, winning a bar to his Military Cross by a deed of valour which in any other war would have got him the V.C.Maynard was walking quickly down the narrow, shadowed street where Captain Ogilvy dwelt in what would have been called, in any other part of London, a somewhat sordid lodging-house, when he ran right into the man he was going to see."You're a bit late, old man. Besides, I

didn't see why you should have the trouble of climbing up to my attic. Let's turn into the Green Park."Maynard was not observant, but for once affection sharpened his perceptions. He realized that Ogilvy felt awkward and ill at ease—very unlike his usual self.They hastened on, in silence, till they reached one of the little passages leading into the park.Almost at once they had the luck to find an empty bench."Well, Gill? What's the trouble now, eh?""I hope you won't think it a trouble, old man. But, but—to put it shortly—" and then Ogilvy stopped dead.Maynard laughed. "Out with it, Gill!""I'm going to be married.""Going to be married?"The other could not keep the dismay, almost the horror he felt, out of his voice. A foolish marriage was about the only form of trouble out of which Gill had kept, so far. And it was wonderful that he had done so, for he was very attractive to women, and on his side—well, of course he liked them too.Before Maynard's own marriage there had been a time when that steady young man had spent quite a considerable amount of his leisure listening to the recital of Gill's love affairs, happy

and otherwise. He told himself quickly that this foolish business, out of which he felt he must make a big effort to extricate his friend, was, of course, the real reason why they had seen so little of Gill lately. It was a relief to know that, for he had felt a bit hurt, and so had Nelly—though she had nearly snapped his head off when he had said something of the sort a few days ago.And now his old pal was looking at him with a queer, half-deprecating, half humorous look on his handsome face."I'm waiting for you to congratulate me, old man!" As Maynard remained silent, he added quietly, "It will be in The Times to-morrow morning.""In The Times to-morrow morning? Then d'you mean you're marrying—?"The other at once saw what had been in his friend's mind, and, not unnaturally, he felt vexed."Did you think I was going to marry a barmaid?" he asked.Gerald Maynard shook his head, but he felt utterly bewildered.So it wasn't a girl who would need any charitable explanations? But then if, as was obviously the case, Gill was going to marry what Maynard to himself vaguely designated as "a nice girl," how was it that they had heard nothing of it?

Why had Gill not brought her along to see Nelly?"Of course I congratulate you—" he said hesitatingly, and then, seeing the other's look of disappointment, he ended with sudden warmth, "—with all my heart, Gill! I hope she's got a little oof, eh?"The younger man reddened under his tan."Well, yes, she has," he said, slowly. "How could I marry her otherwise?"Maynard smiled. He had all your Englishman's reluctant admiration of Scotch good sense; but he had never credited his friend with much of it."I suppose Nelly knows something about it?" he said, smiling.Now Gill and Nelly had become great friends during the last half of the war, but before that time Maynard had had the uncomfortable impression that his young wife and his oldest friend did not hit it off somehow.Captain Ogilvy did not answer the half-question for quite a long time. He began making elaborate designs on the path with the point of his walking-stick, and then, at last, "Well, no," he said. "Nelly doesn't know anything about it—yet. You see, I've been in a damned awkward position, Gerry. My girl's father is John Tallbridge—""Tallbridge! You don't mean the thread man?""Yes, she's his only child.""My word! You have done well for yourself."There came a touch of unconscious respect, almost awe, in Maynard's voice. Whatever else he knew or did not know, he knew the value of money."Now you see how I was situated, Gerry? The truth is—dash it! I don't know how to tell even you. But Phyllis (her name's Phyllis) took a sort of a fancy to me."Maynard laughed—it was a kind, almost a tender laugh.Ogilvy went on, gravely, almost apologetically, "We met at a theatre party about three months ago, and after supper I drove her home, to a palace in Belgrave Square. She asked me to come and see them. But I didn't go, Gerry, though I would have done—if they'd been just ordinary people. Then I got an invitation from her mother—the old lady's probably sorry now that she sent it. So I did go, and now we're going to be married."Maynard turned and looked at his friend. Somehow he felt just a little bit concerned. He remembered the wild feeling of triumph and exultation which had swept over him when

penniless Nelly Bell had said, "Yes," after what had been an ardent, passionate, and at first unsuccessful, wooing. Gill did not look as happy as he ought to look, surely?"And now," the other went on, still making those elaborate arabesques on the dry earth of the path on which their feet rested, "I want you to make my peace with Nelly, old man. I'm afraid she'll feel awfully offended that I've said nothing to her about all this. But how could I? It was only really settled two days ago. You're the first person I've told."Maynard was touched and pleased that dear old Gill had told him this wonderful news first."I'm afraid Nelly will be a bit vexed," he said easily. "D'you mean you've never even dropped her a hint?"The other answered gravely, "Not the smallest hint. I was in a damned difficult position. I liked the girl, the girl liked me, but—"Maynard felt relieved to hear the strong, honest voice in which his old pal said the words, "I liked the girl.""—I wasn't going into a family which took me for a fortune-hunter. However, though I don't think they're mighty pleased, they've been very decent about it, and her old dad, at least, pretends that he's all for love and the

world well lost. The mother's a bit more worldly.""Well, you are a fortunate man!"Without answering, the fortunate man began again drawing those stupid arabesques on the path in front of him.Maynard was telling himself that he ought to feel much more glad than he did feel, for after all, it was an almost incredible stroke of luck for Gill, and, incidentally, a bit of luck for himself, too, if it came to that!He couldn't help realizing that Gill would now be taken off his hands for good. No brother could have given him more trouble than this dear old pal of his had done. Not that he had for a moment grudged the trouble. Ogilvy had been the one romantic figure in his prosperous, commonplace life—otherwise he could never have done all he had done for him, both before the war and after the war. During the war Gill had been, so to speak, on his own, and had been a great success. But it was the only part of his grown-up life of which that could be said. And now? How wonderful!The other was reading, perhaps, some of his old friend's thoughts for, "You can't be more surprised about it than I am myself," he said, in a rather flat tone. "But you ought to be glad—-if only for your own sake, Gerry!

I have been an old man of the sea to you, haven't I?"And then he laughed ruefully, while Maynard could not help feeling a touch of remorse. He had no desire to pursue that line of country."I'll go along and tell Nelly at once," he said, getting up. "All women love a love affair; she'll forgive you fast enough when she's heard all about it!"But in spite of his brave words he felt pretty certain that Nelly would not forgive Gill quite so quickly as Gill and he were now both pretending to one another."I tell you what, old chap? You come along to dinner to-night, and we'll crack a bottle of champagne! I suppose we mustn't ask you to bring 'her' too, eh?"The other answered quickly, "She'd come like a shot—but she's out of town. D'you really think I'd better come to-night, Gerry?""Of course I do," and he added, jokingly, "After all, you'll have to make it up with Nelly some time, so you'd best make it up to-day, before the sun's had time to go down upon her wrath.""I won't take any chances! If I hear nothing before a quarter to eight, I'll go round to the club. If it's all right—you just telephone."It occurred to Maynard that Gill was making

a curious amount of fuss about to-night's dinner. But the important thing was Gill's engagement. Maynard longed to tell this extraordinary, this amazing piece of news to his wife, and so, though it was only half-past six, and he had had no exercise to speak of all day, he made up his mind to take a taxi.Everything that concerned the man from whom he had just parted did concern himself and Nelly very nearly, after all. Gill had been best man at their wedding; and there had been times, since the war, when he had been so hard up that he had lived in their house for weeks at a time—as a brother might have done. It was all that which had made him, Maynard, feel sore at what had appeared Gill's unaccountable neglect of them during the last few months.Well, it was good to feel that that neglect was now explained, and in such a comfortable, natural manner. Even if Nelly, being a woman, would not understand, he understood the awkward position in which poor old Gill had been placed. Damn it all, a gentleman keeps it to himself when a girl obviously likes him, as this girl had obviously liked Gill! Gill, whatever his peculiarities, had always been, right through, in warp and woof, a gentleman.As the two men parted in Piccadilly, Gill

reminded his friend of the arrangement about telephoning, and then, without waiting to see Maynard into his taxi, Fortune's favourite began slowly retracing his steps. He felt thoroughly wretched, and—what, oddly enough, he very seldom had felt in his thirty-nine years of easy-going life—ashamed. He hoped with all his heart that his telephone bell would not ring, and that he would not be compelled to spend a miserable, hypocritical evening between those two people who, in their different ways, had both been such wonderful friends to him.(3)Passing through the gate which his wife had left ajar for him, Maynard walked quickly into the enclosure which formed the centre of the quiet square where they had lived ever since their marriage ten years ago.Nelly was sitting on a bench, staring straight before her, though a book lay open on her lap. The children were a few yards off, playing "Tip and Run."He saw them all before they saw him, and, as he came nearer to his wife, she being still unaware of his approach, he told himself, with mingled anxiety and surprise, that his mother had been right Nelly did look as if she wanted

a change. She looked ill, and, to his uneasy astonishment, sad.She got up and came quickly towards him, but now she was smiling, and the face which had looked so pinched and wan, was again young and bright. Had he been mistaken a moment ago—unconsciously influenced by his determined old mother? He began to think so."Your mother kept you a long time!" she exclaimed."I wasn't long with mother, for I had a mysterious appointment with a friend of ours. Guess who's going to be married?"The colour rushed into her face; then it drifted away, leaving her very pale."I think I know," she said, slowly."Mother said to-day that you were a clever woman, and if you've guessed that, then you're very clever indeed, my dear! I'll give you three guesses. Now then—""I think it's Captain Ogilvy.""Right!" he cried.But how odd of her to call old Gill by that formal title—to him of all people."I've suspected that there was something of the kind going on for some time," she went on in a low voice.She had turned, and was walking back to the bench. He followed her eagerly."I wish you'd said so, Nelly. I must say, I've been feeling rather hurt, not to say surprised, at the funny way he's gone on lately.""How d'you mean—funny?" she asked coldly."Never coming near us—never taking you out—refusing our invitations—""I was not aware that we had invited him much lately."And then she cried out in what to himself, only to himself, he called her cross voice, "Children? Come at once. It's late! Time for bed!"He asked disappointedly, "Don't you want to know who the girl is?""I suppose I do, though we're not likely to see much of them after they are married.""I hope we shall," he contradicted, vigorously. "She's a very nice girl, Nelly!"And then, at last, she did look at him with a touch of eagerness in her manner."Anyone we know?" she asked.He shook his head, smiling.The two little girls came running up, and as they all began walking towards the gate, Nelly said suddenly, "Well, Gerry? You haven't told me the name of that lucky girl.""You've heard of Tallbridge?""You mean the sewing-cotton millionaire? What about him?" she asked, listlessly."Gill is going to marry Phyllis Tallbridge, and she's an only child!"To his disappointment she remained silent for a moment. Then she said, in a bitter tone, "So he's selling himself?""Indeed he's not!" exclaimed Maynard, hotly. "Gill's tremendously in love.""Is he?"There trembled on her lips the words, "I suppose as much in love with her as I was with you, when we married," and for one terrible moment she thought she had uttered these words aloud.Then, glancing sideways affrightedly at her husband's good-humoured face, she saw that they had only been uttered in her sore, burdened heart.They had crossed the roadway by now, and the little girls were skipping about on the pavement."Children," she called  out, sharply, "I shan't take you out again, if you can't behave properly.""I don't see why you should be so cross with the poor little things," he said in a low voice.And then she put her hand on his arm. " I'm sorry, Gerry. The truth is I've had an awful head all this afternoon. I expect there's going to be thunder."She looked very pale now—pale, tired, and fragile."Poor old girl," he said, kindly, "you oughtn't to have gone out to that hot garden. The children would have been all right indoors. I had thought of 'phoning Gill to come along to dinner, but I don't suppose you feel up to that, eh?"She hesitated for quite a long time, and then, "I'm afraid I don't, to-night." With sudden suspicion she added, "He's not expecting to be asked, is he?"Maynard shook his head—a happy compromise, or so he felt, between the truth and a lie. If he had told the truth, Nelly would certainly have made an effort—a quite unnecessary effort—to entertain their lucky friend to-night.He opened the front door with his latchkey, and the two little girls ran upstairs. They were good, obedient children, more like their father than their mother, both in appearance and in character."You do look bad," he said, suddenly. "Wouldn't you like to go to bed now?""No, not yet," she answered. "I can sit up to dinner all right.""We'll have a pint of champagne and drink to Gill's happiness, eh?"He felt quite stirred, as well as a bit senti-

mental, this evening. Funny of Nelly to take such great news so quietly.He watched his wife go upstairs. As a rule she ran upstairs, but now she was going up slowly, wearily. Again he told himself that his mother was right. Nelly looked very far from well. Luckily Scotland always did her good.Turning into the room that was called his study, but where he spent very little of his brief leisure, he went over to the telephone. Before he could speak came the words, "That you, Gerry?" And then the eager question, "How did she take my news?""Quite all right! As a matter of fact, she thought there was something of the sort on. Women are cleverer than men about that sort of thing, old man.""Then does she want me to come to-night?""She'd like you to come, of course, but she's got an awful head, so I didn't let her know what we had settled.""I'm glad of that. I'd really rather come another evening, for I've got a lot of letters to write. So long!"All the time he was dressing for dinner Maynard's mind was still full of Gill and of his old pal's extraordinary good fortune. He wished he had suggested to Nelly that she should go

to bed, while he had Gill over to dine with him alone. But it was too late now.He went downstairs, and was pleased to see that his wife looked surprisingly better. Wonderful what a little powder, a little rouge, a little lip-stick, will do with a woman! When Nelly had begun using these aids to beauty he had felt quite shocked, as well as surprised, but he had soon got over that."You look all right now, darling.""I do feel better," she smiled at him bravely."I wonder if you could binge yourself up to writing poor old Gill a little line of congrats? He was rather worried lest you should be offended with him."She had already begun walking across to her writing-table, but now she stopped, and without turning round said tartly, "Why should he think such a thing as that?""Why, even I felt he might have given us a hint."After a minute or two she got up and held out a small sheet of notepaper. "Will that do?" she asked.He took it from her and read,DEAR GILL,—Gerry has told me your great news. Hearty congratulations. I could write reams—but I've got a bad headache.Yours ever,NELLY MAYNARD.She might have made it a little more affectionate, he thought, with a touch of disappointment. But no doubt she was still vexed that Gill had been so shy, as well as sly, about his coming engagement."I wonder if you'd address the envelope?" she said. "I've such a headache to-night that I can hardly see!""Of course I will. And look here, hadn't you better go to bed after all?""Well," she answered, "perhaps I had."He kissed her with real tenderness. "Gill will be a lucky fellow if he has half as good a wife As I've got," he whispered.And then it was as if she suddenly crumpled up in his arms. She
muttered, "I feel so queer, Gerry. Hold me—hold me!" and she fainted.(4)When Maynard first sat down to breakfast the next morning he felt so worried about his wife that he told himself he could not eat anything. But the mushroom omelette was done to a turn, and the iced melon was so delicious, that he ended by making a very good meal. Nelly always took special trouble over her husband's breakfast, for she knew that as a rule he only had a very light lunch.And now there came over him a rush of almost

painful affection for the dear little woman who lay ill upstairs. He told himself that of late he had not thought of Nelly half so much as he ought to have done. He had not realized what an extraordinarily lucky fellow he was in having such a wife! Of course she had her peculiarities—he would not call them faults, at least not this morning—but she was a rare mixture of prettiness, of cleverness, and of right-down good sense.Their kind and trusted friend, Dr. Malleson, when he had been sent for all in a hurry last night, had thought Nelly suffering from some kind of shock—apparently because she was so cold, and had such a poor pulse. He had asked, "Has she had a lift accident, for instance—the sort of thing when nothing happens, but when one thinks one is going to be killed?"Of course it was possible that Nelly had had such an experience. Her husband had known her to be oddly secretive about little things. But somehow he felt quite sure she would have told him about such a thing as a lift accident!Malleson had talked vaguely of a rest cure, of a far more thorough change of thought and place than Scotland. Well, some friends of theirs were going to Venice and Nelly could go with them if she really felt up to it.As for Maynard, he had made up his mind to postpone his trip to South America—not for long, but just for a week, at any rate.He got up from the breakfast table feeling rather at a loose end. It was too early to telephone to the shipping people about his postponed passage. And then, suddenly, he heard the postman's step on the pavement outside.A loud rat-tat-tat might wake Nelly. She was still sound asleep, and sleep was, so the doctor had said, what she wanted more than anything else.Almost running out of the room, he opened his front door and took the letters from the postman."Mrs. Maynard is not well," he said, with an unconscious desire for sympathy, "so I wanted to avoid the double knock."Maynard shut the door quietly, and then he walked along to his little-used study.He sat down, and began looking over the envelopes he held in his hand. Seven of them were addressed to Nelly, and two to himself. Among Nelly's letters was one from Gill.Gill hadn't been very sympathetic about Nelly's headache last night, but he would be sorry to hear that she was really ill in bed. Still, she would probably be quite well enough in a few

days to see him and his girl. And then a broad smile came over Gerald Maynard's face. He really could not get used to the idea of his impecunious pal's wonderful luck!Again he glanced at the envelopes addressed to his wife. They never had opened each other's letters. Very early in their married life—in fact, on their honeymoon—Nelly had pointed out that it was not a fair thing to do by one's correspondents.  But this was a special case. Dr. Malleson had been particularly anxious that she should not be worried with anything.So, after a moment's hesitation, he opened the top one of Nelly's letters. It was a friendly note from a certain Lady Swinley, with whom they had lately become acquainted, saying that if Mrs. Maynard was going north she would be so pleased to have her for a few days. But might she know as soon as possible? That was a letter which should be answered at once. How lucky that he had opened it!The next letter was Gill's. He told himself that he had better open that, too, as it would almost certainly contain some suggestion for bringing Miss Tallbridge to see them.He opened the envelope. What a tremendously long letter! Written, too, on some kind of cheap writing paper, not on Gill's usual smart club notepaper. Had Gill made a mistake and

mixed up two envelopes, putting some memoranda in this one, and the letter to Nelly in the other? And then he saw that, no, that could not be the case, for his eyes had caught the name "Nell" halfway through the first sentence:—Thursday afternoon.I have just said good-bye to Gerry, and though I suppose you won't believe it, Nell, my heart is full of you. I don't know what to say. I know there is nothing that I can say which would alter the fact that I'm behaving like a beast in not telling you myself what I have asked Gerry to tell you. But I was too great a coward.It's eight years ago to-day—I wonder if you remember it as well as I do?—when I came home on leave for the second time, and you allowed me to tell you that I loved you—and that I would always love you. I don't know that you'll believe me, but I swear before God that for eight years I have never looked at any other woman. I have been faithful, in word and deed, to our love—our wonderful love.Even now, I'm only half true to that poor girl who cares for me. I'm a cur to tell you this—but I tell it you because I feel I must. Of course I know you will say there's no reason why the eight years should not have become ten, twelve, twenty. At one time I thought so, too. But women are stronger than men. For one thing you never seemed to mind about Gerry. It was enough for you, as you have said to me so many times, that you did "sing for your supper" where he was concerned, by being a good mother to his children, and by making him so comfortable.But I ask you, for the first time, remember, though God knows it's always been in my mind, to think of me and Gerry. No man ever had such a friend as he has been to me, and yet here have I been playing the devil of a havoc with his life—if he only knew it.And now there's one last thing I want you to believe, Nell. It's this, and I swear it's true. I'd made up my

mind to chuck everything, and go out to East Africa if this last job of mine (which was got me, like all my other jobs, by Gerry) failed, as I felt sure it would fail.Try to think kindly of me, dear, and remember that for eight years you've had whatever there was of me to have—heart, mind, soul and body—they've all been yours. For your sake I've felt like a cur every time I've been with Gerry, and it hasn't been a pleasant feeling. You've never felt like that, although I know you're very fond of poor old Gerry in a way, and so you ought to be, for he loves you dearly.For the last time I signI. L. Y.Maynard stared down at the three unfamiliar initials, and then, all at once, he realized that they stood for "I Love You."There came a knock at the door."Come in," he called out, harshly.It was Brodie, his wife's prim, efficient maid."Mrs. Maynard is awake now, sir, and would like to see you.""Tell her I'll be up in a moment," he said, folding over the letter he was reading with an instinctive movement.He went over to the fireplace, tore across the four large pages he held in his hands again and again, and, striking a match, set fire to them.After having watched them burn he took up those of his wife's letters which were still unopened, together with the letter of Lady Swinley, and began walking up the long staircase.On the half landing he stopped, telling himself

that he must think what to say and do. He must make a plan. And then, all at once he saw, with blinding clearness, that no plan was needed. There could be no plan. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, that he could say or do. It was as though he had come up against a blank wall.As he opened the door of his wife's bedroom, with an intense feeling of relief he saw that Nelly was not alone. The children were propped up on her bed, a little girl on each side of her, and she was smiling—actually smiling."I'm ashamed of having given you such a fright, you poor old thing," she said, brightly. "But I'm all right now—and I'm going to get up.""Indeed you're not!"His voice, to himself, sounded very strange."Oh, yes, I am!"And her voice was the voice Nelly used when she meant to have her own way."You must wait till Dr. Malleson has seen you, at any rate."With a quick look of annoyance she exclaimed, "You needn't have sent for him last night. What did he say about me?""He said you had been upset by the heat; that you were run down generally; and that you needed an absolute change."He told himself bitterly that they were both engaged in a horrible game of make-believe. Well, if she could keep it up, he supposed he could too.The children's nurse opened the door. "Breakfast ready!" she called out, and the little girls kissed their mother and ran off.Maynard had been standing awkwardly by his wife's bed, and now she pulled him down close to her."I'm tired," she said, wearily, and the tears began to run down her cheeks.He slipped his arm  round her. "I'm so sorry, Nelly." And indeed it was true that he was sorry, miserably, wretchedly sorry, for them both.She clung to him. "The truth is," she whispered, "I'm hurt about Gill. I don't think he's behaved at all well to us. You've been so awfully kind to him, Gerry.""We have both been kind to him," he said in a hard voice.A terrible struggle was going on in his heart. There is a type of crime—what the French, if a brave yet an hysterical people, call a crime passionel—which had always struck Maynard as almost ludicrous. He understood it now. He would have given all the remaining years of his

life to have been able to kill Gill, swiftly, secretly, treacherously.He moved a little away from his wife. But she pulled his arm round her again, and very, very slowly, as if scarcely conscious of what he was doing, he gathered her closely to him."What we have both got to do is to forget him, my dear. As you said last night, we're not likely to see much of him after he's married.""I never thought he was like that.""Neither did I," he said sombrely."I suppose it would be a great bore to take me with you on this trip of yours? I couldn't have a bigger change than that—could I?""Of course I'll take you." He added painfully, "But the boot's on the other leg; I've always known that I bored you, Nelly."And then she began crying again."No, no!" she exclaimed. "You have always been good to me, Gerry," and she pressed up closer to him."Come, come! We mustn't get sentimental. Look at all these letters, Nelly."He threw the envelopes he held in his free hand on the counterpane."I opened one; it's from Lady Swinley, asking you to break your journey to Scotland and stay with her near Perth. Would you like me to open the others?"He saw her glance over them."No," she said, "I think I had rather open them myself. Were these the only letters for me?""Seven"—he caught himself up—"six letters are surely enough, you greedy little thing! I only had two.""Did Gill write to you?" she asked, suddenly.He shook his head. "No, why should he? We had it all out yesterday. After I've telephoned about your passage, I'll send him a line to say we're off on Saturday.""Don't tell him I'm  not well," she said quickly, and he reassured her. "Of course I won't.""I expect he'll be married before we come back.""I hope he will," he said grimly.And then the colour rushed into her face as she exclaimed, "Gerry! How    about a wedding present? I must get him a really nice wedding present from us both before we start.""Don't you worry about that. I'll send him a handsome cheque with our best wishes for his happiness—to reach him after we've gone.""I wonder if he will like that," she said, hesitatingly."If he doesn't like it, he will have to lump it," he answered, shortly.And, being the manner of man he was, Gerald Maynard was surprised, the next time he went through his pass-book, to find that the handsome cheque he had made out in the name of Captain Ogilvy had not been cashed."I GOES BY THE FACE""I GOES BY THE FACE"(I)"I GOES by the face," said Mrs. Pilley, mildly yet firmly.Though she was no longer a young woman, she was rarely in a public place without some lonely man glancing at her with interest; she looked so wholesome, as well as mild and kind. But there was a streak of firmness in her nature. Mrs. Pilley always knew what she wanted, and she generally managed to secure what she did want."D'you mean you know nothing at all about this Mr. Brown? Don't he ever talk about himself?" asked Mrs. Waller, inquisitively."I can't bear the kind of fellow that never keeps his mouth shut," said Mrs. Pilley. "The sort that's always talking, talking, talking—"Unfortunately Mr. Waller was that kind of fellow, and Mrs. Waller felt slightly annoyed."No one can say that I'm one to stick myself into other people's private affairs," she said, cautiously, "but still, my advice to you, Polly

—if I gave it, that is—would be, don't you be over-free with this fine gentleman of yours, for all he lives next door. You've already admitted that he wears a wig—and there are a lot of queer characters about just now. You're a lonely woman, and you've a snug little fortune—if you'll excuse my mentioning it.""That may be true—but 'twould be news to most people.""Stuff and nonsense, my dear! Your living in this nice little house makes it clear as daylight that you've got a tidy bit of money.""Mr. Brown's house is the very spit of mine," observed Mrs. Pilley. "For the matter of that, the furniture in there is a good bit better than anything I've got in here. That's a fact.""So you goes in and out there already?""My gracious no, Maria! I went over the house when Mr. Brown's aunt lay dying, poor soul, and I was invited to do so by her housekeeper."To herself she was saying, "Glad I've said so little to her—nasty, suspicious thing!""Well, I'll be trotting now," said Mrs. Waller at last, "and don't you forget to-morrow, three o'clock, by the post office in Parliament Street—'tis just a step from  New Scotland Yard. But I've told Ben we'll only come if it's fine."Mrs. Waller got up slowly out of her easy-

chair, and looked with a touch of envy round the cosy little sitting-room. Though she was truly attached to Mr. Waller, she yet keenly realized all the practical advantages of prosperous widowhood. Polly Pilley didn't know when she was well off. But there! In that quiet, sly, proper sort of way some women have, Polly had always liked men, and what was stranger, men had always liked Polly Pilley. . . .Mrs. Pilley shut the front door on her old friend with a feeling of relief. She was even a little sorry they were to meet again so soon; but Mrs. Waller had a godson, a clever young chap in the police force, and he was going to take them over the criminal museum at New Scotland Yard. Mrs. Pilley had quite looked forward to the expedition, but now she felt half sorry to be accepting a favour from her. Maria Waller had always been one of your inquisitive sort. But, as Mrs. Pilley reminded herself with a feeling of relief, that sort often learn less than do other people, for the reason that those about them just see to it that they don't find out much.As she began washing up the tea-things, for she only had a woman in for three mornings a week, she thought of what a funny thing life is—and of how little we poor human beings really know of one another. Not that that is anything to grieve about, with the world full of heavier

matters. There was one passage in Mrs. Pilley's own past life which Mrs. Waller had never come within a hundred miles of suspecting—not even when they had first met, when the Pilleys had only been married, really married, if you take my meaning, a very few months. Then she reminded herself, by no means for the first time, that after all Adam and Eve hadn't been really married. . . .Mrs. Pilley dismissed these disturbing memories and thoughts, and came back to the present.It was true that she knew very little about the pleasant-spoken, still good-looking, elderly man who had become her next-door neighbour six months ago. She really knew nothing about him except that when his aunt, Miss Brown, had died without leaving a will, he had come into the lease of the house next door as well as into a nice little bit of money. Yet he had never been to see Miss Brown while she was alive, and, stranger still, Miss Brown had never mentioned the fact that she had a nephew to the maid-companion who had lived with her for near on thirty years. Mr. Brown had given this person two hundred pounds, which was kind of him considering that he had no money of his own, apart from this wonderful windfall. So at least Mrs. Pilley understood from something he had once said to her.Mr. Brown lived quite alone, did his own housework and cooking, and never entertained even a male visitor. So they were both, while living under the same semi-detached roof, lonely people, and if Mrs. Pilley felt more lonely than usual this evening, it was owing to the fact that she had seen nothing of her neighbour since yesterday morning.She put away the clean tea-things, and went up the short flight of stairs which led to the only other storey of her tiny house. And then, feeling just a little ashamed of herself, she went into the room behind her own front bedroom. From the French window there, she could see not only her own trim garden, consisting of a narrow lawn with a path along it, and a border in which, late in May, were always planted out a row of red geraniums, but also Mr. Brown's garden.In the old days when Miss Brown was alive, the garden next door had formed a shocking contrast to Mrs. Pilley's own tidy-looking piece of ground. But by now an amazing transformation had taken place. Mr. Brown had actually dug the whole garden over, and already, at any rate to the eye of faith, there was a pretty lawn bounded by a herbaceous border, and, beyond that, again, a tiny rosery consisting of small diamond-shaped beds. Even that was

not all, for the border which in the old days had been the only thing in common between the two gardens now blazed with yellow daffodils and gaily striped tulips.Of late Mrs. Pilley would often go up to that empty back room and, gazing down, observe her next-door neighbour working either at his herbaceous border or in his rose-garden. At the sound of the opening of the French window, Mr. Brown would look up and smile, and it generally ended in Mrs. Pilley going downstairs again, and having a little talk with him over the low garden wall. The first time this had happened, quite a long time ago now, Mrs. Pilley had passed the first remark. It is a curious fact—conventional belief to the contrary—that it generally is the lady, and not the gentleman, who in such a case makes the first step towards acquaintance.But this evening, though it was the close of a beautiful spring day, the next-door garden had a very deserted look. Mrs. Pilley felt slightly uneasy, and as she stood by the now open window it seemed to her that all at once she heard a voice saying, "Mrs. Pilley? My dear Mrs. Pilley—"And yet she knew that it was impossible for her to hear anything said in one of the rooms next door. This peculiar occurrence brought back to her how, after Mr. Pilley's death, she seemed,

now and again, to hear his voice calling "Polly? Where are you, my dear? Polly! I want you!" But it was two years since she had heard that phantom, yearning cry.Feeling oppressed, and even more lonely than before, she wandered off into her bedroom, and as she opened the door she suddenly recalled the dark winter morning when, standing within the moon-shaped bow of her old-fashioned window, she had seen into part of the brightly lit room next door, and caught a glimpse of her neighbour shaving himself.Her neighbour? For a moment she had not thought it could be Mr. Brown—and she had been so astonished, so taken aback, that it was with difficulty she had suppressed a cry. Instead of the shrewd-looking, benign countenance under what she had only half suspected might be a dark brown wig, she had seen under a fringe of sparse white hair, a grave, almost tragic face, worn, sad, and oh! so old.And yet, oddly enough, that glimpse of the real Mr. Brown had evoked in Mrs. Pilley a queer feeling of tenderness towards him. But this only when they were apart. For when, after this astonishing revelation, she saw her next-door neighbour in his daily habit as he lived, that is, in his well-cut, carefully-brushed clothes, and wearing his glossy, dark brown wig,

she simply could not think of him as being the man she had seen on that winter morning; instead she experienced the pleasant sensation that he was there, big, strong, and kind, to help her, timorous, lonely Polly Pilley.But this evening, as twilight fell, Mrs. Pilley visioned Mr. Brown as he looked without his wig, and lying ill, maybe, in that fine four-poster bedstead just the other side of the wall, wherein his disagreeable old aunt had lain dying for so long.That vision gave her courage to do that which she had thought of doing, on and off, all day, and which she had half hoped Maria Waller would advise her to do.Slowly she stepped over to her substantial mahogany early-Victorian wardrobe, and out of one of the three deep drawers she took her bonnet. She still wore a bonnet, mindful of the days when she had looked so very pretty, in what was then called a princess bonnet, because of the dear Princess of Wales. Mr. Pilley had called it alluring, but that was before they were married—she wouldn't have allowed him  to use such a word afterwards.She then opened another drawer, in the same hesitating, deliberate way, and lifted out of it a black shawl embroidered here and there with little nosegays of coloured flowers. That shawl

had been brought from Spain by Mr. Pilley a matter of thirty years ago—not long before she had actually become Mrs. Pilley. At the time she had only pretended to like it, for of course shawls were regarded as dowdy things then. But now they were so much the rage that lately there had actually been given a grand ball at which every lady had worn a shawl, and a Spanish shawl too, if the lady had the good luck to possess one!She put on the bonnet in front of her cheval-glass, and then she carefully arranged the graceful shawl over her shoulders, and pinned it across her breast with a small gold brooch. But after she had dressed herself up she felt so nervous that she very nearly forgot the bag in which was her front door key. Fancy if she had shut herself out!As she opened the iron gate which gave from her little front garden on to the pavement, she looked up and down what was now, at eight o'clock, a solitary thoroughfare, for her house was on one of the steep roads that lead up to Hampstead. And, as she stood on the side-path, she told herself that, come to think of it, had there been hundreds of passers-by, not one of them would have felt the slightest interest in what she, Polly Pilley, was about to do.That sudden perception all but brought the

tears to her eyes, and it made her mind roam backward, as it were, to the days of her young womanhood. Her parents had both died when she was a little child, and so there had never been anyone to mind really what she did do.She knew now that this was the real reason why there had been that particular passage in her life of which no one, thank God! except the late Mr. Pilley and herself, had ever known, and to which Mr. Pilley had never referred during their twenty-seven years of placid married life till—and well she remembered it—the day before he died.He had been wandering, ever so far back into the past. And all at once he cried out in a strong voice, "I did a good day's work for myself when I made up my mind to marry you, Polly." And the nurse, a silly body whom the doctor had insisted on their having for that last week, had said, soothingly, "Yes, indeed, Mr. Pilley," and he had answered, pettishly, "You don't know what I mean."Funny that she, Polly Pilley, should remember that now, when she was on her way to see what ailed Mr. Brown.After tiptoeing up the path next door, wondering the while at what she called in her own mind her forwardness, Mrs. Pilley pulled Mr. Brown's old-fashioned bell. She heard it ring,

on and on eerily, through the house. But nothing happened, and so, after waiting a full five minutes, she stepped back, halfway down the little path, and gazed at the shrouded windows.Mr. Brown must be away. Funny that she hadn't thought of that obvious explanation before. And then there crept into her heart just a little hurt feeling. It seemed strange of him not to have told her, the more so that she had confided to him how far more comfortable she felt, now there was a man next door.Then her face cleared. Why, of course—what a silly she was! Mr. Brown hadn't wanted her to feel uncomfortable—that was why he hadn't said he was going away. But just as this agreeable explanation suggested itself to her, the lower half of the upstairs window was drawn up a little way, and a voice called down, in a hoarse whisper, "Who's there? Who rang my bell?""It's I—Mrs. Pilley," she called back."Mrs. Pilley?" There was unmistakable relief, and yes, a touch of eager welcome in the voice. "I've got a bad cold. But if you wait a minute I'll come downstairs."She waited just the time she calculated it would take him to put on his wig before there came the sound of his firm, manly step coming

down the passage. She heard him stop to light the gas, and then the door was unbolted."Come in, do!" he exclaimed—in such a very different voice from that in which he had addressed her, not knowing who she was, from his room upstairs. Also she saw with interest that he was wearing a handsome Paisley dressing-gown. The late Mr. Pilley had possessed nothing half so fine, but then he was a careful man—a lawyer, too."I'd have liked your first visit to my little cot to have been on a sunny day, instead of in the evening, like this," said Mr. Brown, gallantly. "Excuse my going on in front of you, but I want to light the gas fire in my sitting-room."And then at last her host said what Mrs. Pilley would have expected such a gentleman as Mr. Brown to say right away. "You must forgive my costume, but the truth is I've just got out of bed. I've been laid up."Soon they were both sitting down, one on each side of the gas fire. Under his wig, Mr. Brown's face looked thin and wan, and she wondered whether he had had any proper food during the day. She longed to ask him what he had had for supper, and as if he could see into her mind he said suddenly, "I'm no good at invalid food. You would have laughed if you'd seen me

trying to make some beef-tea yesterday! I went exactly by my cookery book, but somehow the result was awful—""You must let me make you some to-morrow," she murmured, gently. "Mr. Pilley was very fond of my beef-tea."And then he began to cough and cough and cough. When he had quite finished, Mrs. Pilley got up."Look here," she said, decidedly, "I've got something in my place that will do you good. Give me your door-key and I'll go and get it."She wasn't gone much more than five minutes altogether, but it seemed longer than that to the weary, ailing man.She came back holding a jug, and an old-fashioned cut-glass tumbler, in her hand."Now then—you just drink this up, Mr. Brown! It can't do you any harm, and it may put some strength into you.""What is it?" he asked, hesitatingly."A new-laid egg beaten up in milk, with just a thimbleful of brandy in it—good old brandy, mind you. Mr. Pilley would never have anything but the best in his home."She was pouring out the frothy mixture, and as he drank it, lonely Mr. Brown's heart grew very soft to his kind neighbour."Mrs. Pilley," he exclaimed, with a touch of solemnity, "you won't think me over-familiar if I say that I think Mr. Pilley must have been one of the most fortunate of men?""I reckon I was fortunate, too," she said, in a low voice. "Mr. Pilley was a good, kind, steady husband, and I think you will take my meaning, Mr. Brown, when I say that he was of a superior class to me, being head clerk—same as a partner nearly—with Fowler, Burt and Fowler. Young Mr. Fowler sends me a big box of chocolates every Christmas, even now.""Mr. Pilley honoured himself when he married
you," said Mr. Brown, earnestly. "For the matter of that, Mrs. Pilley, I daresay you think I'm a foolish, sentimental sort of old bloke, but to my mind the best man that ever stepped isn't worthy of even the most ordinary woman—and you are no ordinary woman, if I may make so bold as to say so."Mrs. Pilley's heart began to beat—absurd at her time of life, she told herself confusedly.She got up. "Now, don't come near the front door, Mr. Brown. You just go straight up to bed. There's enough in that jug for twice more, if you're careful. I should take half a glass if you wake in the night, and then half a glass more in the morning. And if you don't mind

trusting me with a latchkey, I'll leave the beef-tea on your hall table in the morning. I'm going out to-morrow afternoon, but when I come back I'll just walk in and see how you are. I wouldn't go out into the garden—not if I was you.""Thank you, dear friend."He was holding her soft, plump little hand in his as if he couldn't bear to let it go."You don't mind my calling you 'dear friend'?" he murmured."Of course not. It's always seemed to me since I first knew you that we was bound to be friends or enemies—living next door to one another.""Next door seems very far away to a lonely chap like me," said Mr. Brown, humbly; and then again he began to cough, though, even then, he went on holding her hand."Talking's the very worst thing for you!" exclaimed Mrs. Pilley, and then she gently, but firmly, withdrew her hand from that strong clasp, reminding herself of a saying she had heard when she was a girl, but to which she hadn't always given, maybe, quite enough heed. That saying was, "'Tis man's part to try, and woman's to deny."(2)At exactly three o'clock the next day Mrs. Pilley stood by the post office in Parliament Street, Westminster.She felt absurdly light-hearted—quite like being young again, so she put it, with a rueful little smile, to herself. But something so very curious and unexpected had happened this morning.When she had gone in next door with the beef-tea, she had found an envelope, addressed to herself, on the narrow hall-table, and though the note contained therein had been very short, there had been in it a sentence which had moved and, yes, surprised her very much. That sentence was, "I hope you feel like me that the most beautiful words in the Marriage Service are that matrimony was ordained for the mutual society, health and comfort that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.'"That peculiar, unexpected, and, in a sense, uncalled-for quotation, had made her feel so shy that she had slipped back through Mr. Brown's front door without calling out to him, as she had said she would do; and during her long omnibus journey to Westminster she had thought of nothing else, feeling, as she expressed it to

herself, all of a twitter, and wondering what would happen when she and Mr. Brown next met."Hullo, Peter Grievous! So there you are, and here we are!"It was Maria Waller's holiday voice. In everyday life she was far more of a Peter Grievous than Polly Pilley ever had been or ever could be.Both women, as they passed through the great arch leading to New Scotland Yard, felt proud of their stalwart young escort, and Mrs. Pilley tried to forget Mr. Brown, and give herself up to the present. But when they stepped out of the big lift into a big airy corridor, she felt just a little bit disappointed. Somehow she had expected New Scotland Yard to be more awe-inspiring and gloomy.Passing a half-open door, young Ben stopped and said, "Before taking you into our museum, I'd just like you to glance in here, auntie. This is where thousands upon thousands of men's and women's finger-tip records are kept. When once the impression of a chap's finger-tips is filed away here, there's not much chance for him, should he do anything silly again—if you take my meaning.""Not a cheerful thought for the poor fellow who knows he's got his finger-tips in there," observed Mrs. Pilley, thoughtfully.She had begun to feel that there was, after all, something oppressive and awe-inspiring in the great, airy building.At that moment an official drew near; he had seen Mrs. Waller before, and so he began to talk to her out there, in the passage."How about it? Care to go in and look?" asked young Ben to Mrs. Pilley.She stepped through the half-open door, and then suddenly she stopped short, while a fearful thrill of mingled horror and astonishment seemed to go through her like a streak of lightning, leaving her feeling dumb and faint.On the bare wall to the left of the door were fixed two small unmounted photographs. One was that of a worn-looking man with scanty white hair and hollow, tragic eyes; the other that of a good-looking, elderly man in a frock-coat, Gladstone collar, high hat, and—a flower in his buttonhole."You'd never guess those two photos to be one and the same individual, eh?""They never are!"She answered as in a dream—or was it a nightmare?"Here's our fine gentleman as he fancies himself, and here he is as God made him—after he's been caught," went on Ben Waller, in a tone of enjoyment."Is he in prison now?"Mrs. Pilley wondered hazily what made her ask that lying question."Bless you, no! That's him as he is now;" and he pointed to the photograph of the prosperous, nay, one might almost say debonnair-looking, man.She said nothing, only stared dumbly at the shiny little photographs, while he went on, "That old chap's had a most extraordinary history—"Mrs. Pilley echoed mechanically. "An extraordinary history, Mr. Ben?""You'll hardly believe it when I tell you that though there are forty-one convictions against him, he's leading quite a proper, respectable life! Yet the old chap's spent more than a third of his life in prison—all the same."She tried to say something, but no words would come."About a year ago," went on young Ben, "this fine gentleman—we'll call him Smith, as I mustn't give you his real name—had a rare bit of luck. He was brought up before a very soft-hearted gentleman at the London Sessions. Being an educated man, Smith explained as how he'd never had a chance since the day he'd first been convicted. Quoted Scripture, too, as if he'd been an archbishop. And what was more to the purpose, of course, he pointed out that if

he'd had the luck to be born a bit later he'd have benefited under The First Offenders' Act, and as likely as not gone straight ever after, as he came of decent folk. Well! He was actually released on probation as 'tis called.""Meaning as how if he goes on all right, nothing more will be done to him?" asked Mrs. Pilley.She felt as if her legs were made of cotton-wool."Exactly. Strange to relate, the old man's luck was in seemingly, for just after that, so I've been told, he had a bit of money left him, and settled down respectable."The gentleman who was apparently in charge of this sinister room now came forward, and was duly introduced to Mrs. Pilley.Young Ben moved respectfully away, and Mrs. Pilley, in her great distress, looked up pleadingly into the kind, intelligent face of the man addressing her."I've  been   hearing  about  those  two photos—" in spite of herself her voice shook."A strange story, isn't it?"In a soft, pitying voice she pleaded, "It seems a shame to have the poor chap stuck up like that—now that he's leading a good life!"He looked a little surprised. "I think you're right there, Mrs.—?""—Pilley," she said, "Mrs. Pilley." And

some touch of ardent supplication may have gone from her troubled heart to his, for suddenly he turned and, detaching the two little prints from the wall, he tore them across and across again."'There, but for the grace of God,'—eh, Mrs. Pilley?"She looked at him bewildered. "I—I don't understand, sir," she faltered."Ah, well! I don't suppose you do."He was so used to dealing with the records of the wicked that it was quite pleasant to meet someone so obviously good as this gentle, kind little body. So taken was he with her that he actually left his room and accompanied the party right into the Black Museum and, after young Waller had been explaining some of the more gruesome exhibits there, it was this stranger who saw that there was something amiss with Mrs. Pilley."Look here," he said, authoritatively, "this place upsets you, eh?" He smiled at her kindly."I'll take you to a quiet room where you can have a cup of tea, Mrs. Pilley. The others can join you when they've finished—""I think I'd rather go straight home," she said, faintly.Mrs. Waller naturally felt vexed at this partial break-up of her party; and, after the two had gone, she observed tartly, "Never seen anyone

like Polly for the men! A regular 'gentleman's beauty,' as my poor dear mother used to call her sort—"Mrs. Pilley's new friend felt disappointed that she still refused his proffered cup of tea; but when they reached the lift, she seemed so much better that to her relief he did not offer to go down with her in it. In reality she still felt as if she was walking in a dream—and yet it was a terribly real and substantial dream.She made her way, a little uncertainly, into Parliament Street, and there she did something she had never done in her life before—that is, she signalled to a taxi. Having a very exaggerated notion of the cost, as well as the danger, of this mode of conveyance, she very nearly asked the man—the "shover" as she knew he was called—what his fare would be. But she lacked the courage to do so. Besides, she had plenty of money—a great deal of silver in her purse, in addition to, well! more notes than she would have liked you or me to know, in her petticoat pocket, for she never left any money in her empty little house."Drive very slowly and carefully," she instructed the driver, "for I am very nervous, owing to a shock I had some time ago."The man nodded. He knew her sort. They were generally good for a generous tip, and so

he drove slowly. But she seemed to be home in an astonishingly little time, "almost as bad as if I'd flown," she said to herself.She waited for quite a long time after getting into the house before going out again. And even then, after she had gone up the path to Mr. Brown's front door, though she held Mr. Brown's latch-key in her hand, somehow she felt as if she didn't care to use it. So at last she knocked—a timid little knock.Mr. Brown must have been waiting in the passage, for at once the door opened, and she saw that there was a garnished, festive look about the house—there was actually a nosegay of daffodils and tulips in the hall, and a bigger nosegay in the little sitting-room into which he ushered her."Why, you've been out?" she exclaimed. "You should never have done that!"But as she looked up into his now smiling face, she felt suddenly glad that Mr. Brown had not put one of those gay flowers into the buttonhole of his coat."Have you been far this afternoon?" he asked.The colour rushed into her face. "I've been to see what they calls the Cenotaph," she answered evasively."Nine years ago," said Mr. Brown, slowly. "God! what wouldn't I have given to have

been a young chap! There's some that runs down the war, Mrs. Pilley, but it gave many a man a second chance, aye, and a third and a fourth chance. . . .""That's true," she answered, in a low, troubled voice."Why, there came a time—though they didn't talk about it—when they emptied the prisons.""I knows that!" she cried eagerly. "I saw a picture in my Sunday paper of a young chap who'd once been in prison for robbery with violence—and he'd gone and won the Victoria Cross!" She added, pitifully, "But they didn't put in his picture till after he was killed. . . ."Mr. Brown went and stood by the window. From there, without looking round, he observed, "I hope, Mrs. Pilley, that you weren't offended by what I put in the letter I left for you this morning?""Offended?" she repeated, gazing at his broad back, "why should I be offended, Mr. Brown?""It was meant for more than met the eye," he muttered.And then, all at once, he turned round. "I wouldn't like you to think me a better chap than I am, Mrs. Pilley. But neither do I want to go burrowing into my past, so to speak.""I wouldn't ask of any gentleman to do that," she answered, almost in a whisper. And then, after a little pause, she murmured, "Few people come to our time of life without having done something they'd rather not remember, Mr. Brown. I've always been one for letting bygones be bygones.""'The past is past—the future is my own,'" he said, solemnly. "That's what a very good chap, though a parson, once recited to me."He waited a moment, then, "I want you to let my future be yours, Mrs. Pilley. Though it may greatly surprise you to hear it, this is the first time in my long life I've ever asked any lady to be my wife. There's my hand on it!"He held out his strong, well-kept hand, and all at once Mrs. Pilley caught herself wondering what Mr. Brown's finger-tips looked like. She also saw, as in a mirage, the city church where she had triumphantly—it had seemed a great triumph at the time—led Mr. Pilley to the altar.She shivered a little; then, slowly, from under her black shawl embroidered with gay posies of flowers, her soft little hand crept out. . . .THE DUCHESS'S STORYTHE DUCHESS'S STORY(I)"DON'T they look happy?" said the Duchess in a low voice. But it was with gloomy, frowning eyes that the Duke, from the end of the long, book-lined room where they always sat now after dinner, contemplated his daughter and her lover, sitting in the firelight hand in hand."From what I can make out, he's no private means at all. He spent the little money he had on two contested elections—""How romantic of him!" whispered the Duchess."What are they to live on? You've not thought of that!""Bread-and-cheese and kisses—""And a lot of good that will do them," growled the Duke."And then there'll be what you'll be made to allow them," she went on, lightly."I know I'm old-fashioned," he said, a trifle pompously, "but in my time, Laura, a man was supposed to support his wife."This time she turned on him in the half-light, and, putting her hands on his breast, looked up into his face."Oh, what a story!" she exclaimed.He seemed so surprised that the Duchess began to laugh. Still, she did not think it an opportune moment to remind him that she herself had been a great heiress."I can never make you remember that we have nine children," he said; but, even so, he pinched her cheek. It was still a very soft cheek."I think I've far more reason to remember it than you have," she whispered, in a curious tone.He looked at her puzzled. Perhaps one reason why the Duke was so happy with his Duchess was because she was still always surprising him by the odd things she said. Now she added suddenly something which he did understand, and which touched him. She lifted herself up on her toes and whispered in his ear,"But they're such good children, such pretty children, and such clever children—that I often wish they'd all been twins!""And what are these remarkable children of yours doing now?" he asked. It was his way always to speak of the children as if they were her children, as if his interest in them was, well?—-purely platonic."Robin has lighted up the keep with Bengal

lights, and then they're going to dance the New Year in.""I won't have that!" he said sharply. "It's Sunday as well as New Year's Eve. I've always told you, Laura, that I won't have the town shocked. It's up to us to set a good example."When the Duke spoke in that voice the Duchess knew she must stop what she called "funning.""Very well, they shan't dance, poor little things! We'll collect round the fire and tell stories till it's time to open the door and let the New Year in." She waited a moment, and then added, hesitatingly, "I think it's time they heard the queer tale of Great-Aunt Lavinia. I wonder if you remember that it happened seventy years ago to-night?""God bless my soul—so it did!" exclaimed the Duke. "But hadn't we better let bygones be bygones, my dearest?""Lavvy's sure to hear of it some day. It's a wonder some tiresome old gossip hasn't spoken of it to her already—f only because of her having the same name.""I was always against her being called Lavinia," the Duke grumbled; "I was for calling her Laura.""And then there would have been 'old

Laura' and 'young Laura.' I shouldn't have liked that at all!" exclaimed the Duchess."'Old Laura'? 'Young Laura'? What are you talking about? I don't understand what you mean!""You will, if you think a bit—"And he did think a bit, but, "I wouldn't mind it so much if he wasn't such a Radical and such an awful prig," he observed irrelevantly; and again his eyes became fixed on the two young people sitting in the firelight."A prig makes by far the best husband," said the Duchess, soberly."Is that what you've found—eh?" and he squeezed the little plump hand she had slipped into his."I haven't had enough experience of the other sort to be a real judge," she answered."I'm off to bed. No queer old tales for me!"He began walking quickly down the long room. She ran after him and touched his arm. "James! James! That isn't the way to bed—?""I know it isn't; I'm only just going to give them my blessing—surely you don't object to that?"But when he reached the pool of light round the great log fire, and when he saw the young couple get up, perhaps a thought reluctantly,

and stand before him, he became, as was his way, tongue-tied; and his son-in-law elect wondered, deep in his heart, why such a clever, amusing person as the Duchess had ever married the Duke. Being a very serious-minded young man, he could not help fearing that it was just because the Duke was a duke, and the suspicion pained him, for he was becoming, in spite of himself, very fond of his future mother-in-law."I'm afraid that I'm interrupting a very interesting conversation," said the Duke, at last."We were talking about education." His daughter smiled, rather mischievously. She wasn't a bit afraid of her father."Education?" The Duke looked puzzled. When he had been courting the Duchess, they had talked of very different things—or, rather, she had, for he had been as shy with her then as he was now with other people.And then the Duchess took a hand. "Gerald is very much interested," she observed, "in this new Education Bill. He has even helped to draft it.""People are too much educated nowadays," said the Duke, stoutly. "Look at me! I had practically no education, and yet I've got on quite well without it?""But you, James, are such an extraordinary man. You are one of those queer exceptions

that somehow prove a rule," said the Duchess, soothingly.Her son-in-law elect hoped that his face was not betraying the pain he felt at the thought that any woman should have to flatter a husband so grossly in order to put him in a good humour. He was surprised when this particular husband turned round and observed, rather crossly, "That may have been true once, my dear, but it's no longer true now, and well you know it!"And then the Duke kissed his daughter. "Well, good night and God bless you," he said, solemnly. Making an effort over himself, he pressed, quite warmly for him, the hand of the "Radical prig," who, he felt, had stolen his dear little clever Lavvy, and then he turned away.The Duchess put her hand through the Duke's arm, and went with him half-way down the long room. Then she gave a little skip, and kissed the end of his long nose."After all, if it wasn't for Lavvy's engagement we should have had a large party here now," she murmured, "and you wouldn't have liked that!""Rather an expensive solitude," he answered, drily. "Like burning down the house to roast a pig."Over by the fire, Gerald Arbuthnot, hearing the Duchess's sudden joyous peal of laughter, began to think that she must be really fond of the Duke to laugh like that at anything such a dull man could possibly have said. Lady Lavinia's lover knew very little of her sort of people, but he had supposed that, on the whole, they were less fond of one another than were ordinary married couples. He was beginning to revise that view, as well as some other of his opinions."I wonder what your mother meant, just now, darling," he said, hesitatingly. "I mean about your father proving a rule?"The girl looked a little surprised. "Oh, she was only funning!""But what did he mean?""He meant that, whatever may have been the case once, dukes don't matter now any more than dustmen," she answered.It was odd that her dear, brilliant Gerald hadn't understood that. Though she was very much in love with him, Lady Lavinia was beginning to wonder whether Gerald, able as he was—quite the ablest of the younger men in the House of Commons—was exactly quick at the up-take, as her mother would have put it.(2)"I don't feel as if I could tell you a ghost story to-night.  But I will tell you a very strange, mysterious tale, and one connected with this house, and with ourselves."There was a touch of solemnity in the voice of the Duchess. She looked round her young audience, and her glance rested for a moment on the one she still felt to be a stranger for all that he would soon be her son-in-law-"a poor thing, but mine own," as she had more than once had occasion to remind herself when he had said something that had irritated her.Suddenly, the youngest of the company, little Lady Mary, who was five years old and a clever inquisitive child, asked, as was not unusual with her, what her mother felt to be a somewhat inconvenient question."Does father know the story?""Of course he does! Why, he told it me on our honeymoon, just after we had arrived here! But we have very seldom spoken of it since. So I think that perhaps it would be just as well if you didn't say anything to him about the sad, curious little tale. Though it concerns a person who died long ago, and though it all happened long before your father was born, when you have

heard it you will understand why he still feels
sensitive about it."The Duchess felt the sudden increase of interest all round the circle, and a boy's voice exclaimed, "Oh, mother, tell us the story quick—quick!"She looked round her doubtfully. What had made her feel to-night as if she must tell these young creatures that mysterious, piteous tale of far away and long ago? Perhaps because a day or two since, when turning over some old family letters which she had since destroyed, at her husband's wish, she had come across several poignant allusions to the story."You all know the picture in the dining-room which hangs just above where I sit?""You mean the portrait," interposed her eldest son, "of the duke who was called Old Magnifico?""Yes—of your great-grandfather. He was born the year that Marie Antoinette was executed; so now will any of you tell me what his age must have been just seventy years ago to-day?"Under his breath, the one of her children who was most like his mother whispered: "Is this a disguised history lesson? If so, I'm off to bed!"But he did not stir, and she went on,"As you are all so hopelessly ignorant, I may as well tell you at once that Old Magnifico was

sixty-one at the time my story opens, and that he had three children—two sons, and a daughter who was much younger than her brothers, and who was the apple of his eye.""Just like Lavvy and father," said a small voice."She was christened Lavinia Charlotte, and she was a lovely, poetic, dreamy-looking creature—""Not a bit like our Lavvy," commented the same small voice."Hush!" said his mother—then she went on, "Old Magnifico—not that we should have called him old nowadays—was a very proud man. He did not consider any of the young people who lived in this neighbourhood good enough to associate with the Lady Lavinia as he always called her in his letters to her governess. So the girl led a curious, and, we should now think, a most unnatural existence. She was only seen in the town on Sunday, when she was taken to church in a closed carriage.""She must have had a very poor-spirited mother," observed Lady Lavvy, slowly."Her mother, pretty Duchess Charlotte, whose portrait by Gainsborough is in my sitting-room, had died five days after she was born, my dear, and she was brought up by an old governess called Miss Tubb. And it's clear that Miss Tubb

was terrified of the Duke, and that poor Lavinia was very much afraid of Miss Tubb. But there was one person of whom your great-aunt Lavinia was really fond. This was her French maid, Adèle Bontemps, who was only a few years older than herself. The two were allowed to walk about, as much as Adèle's young lady cared to do, in the park—but nowhere else.""That must have been very dull!" exclaimed little Lady Mary, indignantly."Old Magnifico liked pomp and power," went on the Duchess, "so that he was much gratified when he was asked to go on a special mission to St. Petersburg. By that time his daughter was eighteen, and might very well have gone with him. One of her aunts also wanted to have her in London. But the Duke would not hear of it, and he arranged that she should go on living down here with Miss Tubb, till he came back from Russia."Off he went in great state and splendour, and from wherever he and his suite stayed on the way he wrote his daughter an affectionate, pompous letter. Meanwhile, the poor girl led an unnaturally dull, secluded life, reading serious books with Miss Tubb, and going long walks in the park with Adèle Bontemps. They would be out for hours and hours, and later it became known that sometimes, during that hot, dry

summer, they forded the river which forms, as you know, one of the boundaries of the park.""I wonder why they did that," observed Lady Lavvy; "there's nothing to do, or to see, even now, on the other side of the river.""In those days there lived on the other side of the river a young Scotch shepherd whom the Duke had brought south from Ardvilly, and with this shepherd it is supposed that Adèle Bontemps fell in love. Be that as it may, the three of them—the young lady from the castle, her French maid, and the young shepherd—were seen once or twice together by certain of the townspeople who had roamed out that way."Old Magnifico came back from Russia just before Christmas, and he posted down here in all haste, full of joy at the thought of seeing his beloved Lavinia again. But on Christmas Day he and his daughter had a quarrel—no one ever knew the reason why. It must have been a very serious quarrel, for during the whole week that followed she stayed upstairs in her bedroom and the sitting-room next to it—your rooms, Lavvy. During those days she was virtually a prisoner, even her food being taken in to her there by Miss Tubb. As for the maid, Adèle Bontemps, she was sent away in disgrace, the Duke's own man taking her to Southampton, and putting her, or so he declared, on the packet for France.""What a curious thing," mused the latter-day Lady Lavinia."It had long been arranged," went on the Duchess, "that a party of the Duke's political friends should come here on New Year's Eve for a few days' shooting, and when they arrived they found the Duke's daughter, looking very pale and wan, ready to receive them.""New Year's Eve? Just like to-day then!" exclaimed the eldest son of the house, Lord Ardvilly.The Duchess bent her head. "Seventy years ago to-night, after dinner was over, the whole party gathered together in what we now call the small hall, just outside this room, prepared to let the New Year in."The Duchess waited a moment, and she heard her eldest daughter explaining to Gerald Arbuthnot, "In the old days of which mother is talking, the door of what we now call the small hall was the main entrance to the castle. That is why we always let the New Year in there.""The clock struck twelve," continued the Duchess, "the front door, as it was then, was thrown open, everyone wished everyone else a happy New Year, and then some of those present noticed that Lady Lavinia was not there, and—she was ever seen again!"Gerald Arbuthnot leant forward eagerly. "Did anyone see her go through the open door into the night, Duchess?""No one saw her go out, and no one noticed when she left the hall. As a matter of fact, she was not really missed till the next morning. Her father evidently believed that, still feeling the terrible weight of his displeasure, she had slipped away to bed, unwilling to go through the jollification of seeing the New Year in. The majority of the guests only just knew her by sight, and the new maid had been told that she need not sit up. So it was not till the next day that the girl was known to have disappeared—and the moment of her disappearance has always remained a mystery."The Duchess looked round at the young faces turned towards her. She detected in most of them a slight touch of disappointment; they had hoped for something more thrilling than a mere disappearance. But Lady Lavvy looked interested and excited, and Gerald Arbuthnot again leant forward eagerly, "Did she leave no word—no note?" he asked.The Duchess hesitated before answering, and then,"It has always been my belief," she said, with a touch of reluctance, "that she did leave a letter for her father. But he never acknow-

ledged that she had done so, while showing, at any rate during the first three or four days which followed her disappearance, a strange unwillingness to have her really searched for. Once the fact of her disappearance had been published abroad, however, the search was prosecuted in every possible way, all over the three kingdoms, and even on the Continent. I was looking last week through a packet of letters from the poor girl's aunt, and in one of them there is a hint that some people believed she had not gone very far, and that she was hidden comparatively close to her old home—that is, near here."I once talked to Dr. Wakefield's grandmother about it all, and she told me that her own father had organized a force of fifty men who had beaten every bush, not only in the park, but on all the wide downs which surround the country side of the park. One obvious theory was that she had wandered out, been killed, and her body hidden, for the sake of the jewels she wore on the night of her disappearance; not that those jewels were what we should now consider of much value.""And no trace of her was ever found? How very, very extraordinary!" exclaimed Gerald Arbuthnot. He did not approve of an unsolved mystery."When the Duke told me the pitiful tale,"—the Duchess was addressing the young man now, for she felt that he alone of her audience was still absorbed in her story, "he showed me a curious little handbill which was, it seems, distributed by the thousand, and in which Lady Lavinia was described—her name and rank not being given."She got up and went and unlocked a drawer in the writing-table at which she often sat and wrote her letters. Then she came back and held out to her daughter's lover a small, shabby square of yellow paper.ONE THOUSAND POUNDS REWARD.The above reward will be given for information concerning a young woman who disappeared last New Year's Eve in Sussex. She is fair, with long pale-golden hair; her eyes are blue, her mouth is small—she has all her teeth. The top of one of her fingers is missing. Speaks in a low, clear voice, but with a slight lisp.  When last seen was wearing a white flounced muslin dress and a white, silk-fringed shawl. May be wearing a pale-blue plush bonnet with white ruching. Any information concerning her present whereabouts, dead or alive, married or single, should be sent to Messrs. J. P. Downing and Sons, 10, Chancery
Lane, London."The top of one of her fingers missing?" exclaimed the young man."Yes, the top of the third finger of her left hand had been bitten off by a savage dog, when she was a child.""I suppose there were many false clues—if only because of the reward?"The Duchess told herself that it was nice of Gerald to be so interested. It made her feel as if he was becoming one of the family—at last."Hundreds of people came forward in the hope of getting the reward. But no trace of her was ever found, and, at the end of the year, poor Old Magnifico and his sons went into mourning, and an announcement of Lady Lavinia's death was published in the London papers. But it was widely believed that this had only been done to stop idle gossip.""What a strange, strange story," muttered the young man.Lady Lavvy crept close up to her mother."Mother," she whispered. "Mother? I want to ask you something.""Yes, my dear?""What became of the shepherd?"The Duchess looked round. The children had melted away—the younger ones were playing hide-and-seek at the other end of the long library, and her eldest son and Gerald Arbuthnot had just begun talking, apart."The shepherd," she whispered back in a very low voice, "disappeared about the same time. Some thought he'd gone to France after the maid—some, I fancy, thought otherwise."(3)The Duchess got up. "Children! Children? It's ten minutes to twelve; we must go into the small hall!"Her future son-in-law was the first to obey her call, and together they went through from the library into the beautiful vaulted chamber, at one end of which was the huge, iron-studded door which Gerald Arbuthnot had never seen open."Now that we're so poor, and living entirely this side of the castle, I think it would be a very sensible thing to go back to the old entrance," observed the Duchess. "It would be far more convenient for us, but, alas! not so convenient for the servants, so I suppose we shall have to stick to the grand entrance for ever and ever."He said solemnly, "Wouldn't that be a pity?"She answered his thought. "To give in to the servants? But they're our masters, after all, though very kind masters, and—"He interrupted—it was a way he had, and a way which the Duchess found very tiresome. "The rising tide of democracy—" he began.She cut him short, with a slight toss of the head.  "Oh, no, Mr. Ar—I mean Gerald—it's

nothing to do with the rising tide of democracy. Why, my own grandmother, in her day the most autocratic old woman in the three kingdoms, was terribly afraid of her maid. In fact, her maid was supposed to be the only person of whom she had ever been afraid—and she had had three husbands!"And then silence fell upon them all till the clock in the bell-tower began to strike. When that happened, Lord Ardvilly together with Lady Lavvy's lover, walked to the great iron-studded door, undid the heavy bolts, and turned the big key.It all took a little longer than they expected, and the last stroke of twelve had fallen on the still air when the door swung slowly back, admitting a rush of icy wind. The Duchess drew her beautiful Spanish shawl more closely round her, and suddenly told herself how nice it is to be young, really young! For her children had all rushed forward, and were peering out eagerly, while her eldest son had actually stepped through on to the frozen snow. She could no longer see him. He was engulfed in the darkness.For a moment the Duchess's heart stood still. Supposing he were to disappear now, for ever! What would happen to the happy House of Life in which she dwelt so securely? She visualized, with terrible vividness, the scene of

seventy years ago, when another party had been gathered here seeing the New Year in.It was with a queer feeling of relief that she saw her darling, a slender, good-looking boy of nineteen, emerge from the blackness outside. For a moment he stood silent on what had been for hundreds of years the threshold of his home; and then he put up his hand."Mother!" he called out. "There's someone lying outside, on the snow. I think it's a child who must have lost her way coming across the park to night. Arbuthnot, will you help me bring her in?"The Duchess ran out through the open door, and her children followed her—and then someone struck a match.Making a dark patch on the frozen snow, lay huddled up a piteous little figure. And while the two young men were lifting it up, the Duchess hastened into the library, and rang the bell. Then she sent off one of her little boys for the old nurse who had now been for many years one of the props of her great household.Coming back into the hall she heard Gerald Arbuthnot saying in his decided tone, "We must put her down flat on the floor. That's always the best place for anyone who has fainted."When this had been done they all drew near,

to see that the unbidden guest was no child, but a tiny old woman, clad in workhouse dress.The Duchess knelt down on the stone flags and bent over the still, stark figure lying there. The shrunken face, framed in a round, old-fashioned quilted bonnet, had about it a certain austere dignity."Poor, poor old thing! How can she have got so far out of her way?" she murmured pitifully.Then she rose from her knees. "Do go, somebody, and hurry Nanna and Denham—"But before anyone could obey her, the small hall was suddenly filled with men and maids, and they all stood round, mingled in one common humanity, while the nurse tried to force a few drops of the Duke's liqueur brandy between the blue lips of the old woman lying on the floor."I wonder where she comes from, Denham?" the Duchess turned to the butler, always her friend in need."I expect from Manningford Workhouse, your Grace. They let out the old people now and again to see their friends. She must have been trying for that short cut across the park and then, deceived by the snow, lost her way."At last the nurse stood up; she turned to her mistress. "She's dead, your Grace," she said

in a low voice. "Not a doubt of it! It's bitter cold to-night, and the poor soul may have been lying there for hours."The Duchess was looking with a perplexed feeling of doubt down into the small, wrinkled face. She told herself that Nanna, with all her knowledge, was very old-fashioned. They have wonderful new ways, nowadays, of bringing people back from apparent death.She turned to the butler again, "Will you telephone and say that I shall be very much obliged if Dr. Wakefield could make it convenient to come here as soon as possible."The Duchess went back to the group still standing awestruck round the  still figure stretched on the floor of the hall. "Children! You must all go off to bed quietly now, and you must only sing 'Old Lang Syne' in your hearts, to-night."And then she turned to her eldest son. "I should like you and Gerald to carry her to the bed in the Queen's Room. It's the nearest bedroom to here. Besides," her eyes filled with tears, "I should not like to feel any dead woman so poor that we, at any rate, should not do her reverence."Her son bent forward; impulsively he kissed his mother. He had been too young to play any part in the war, and this was the first time

he had seen death. He was deeply moved—far more moved than anything in his quiet manner showed.He looked round for his future brother-in-law. That composed young man was in a corner, talking to Lady Lavvy."Arbuthnot? My mother would like us to put this poor old woman into a bedroom that's very seldom used now. It's close by—just through the library."There trembled on Gerald Arbuthnot's lips the words, "Oh, but no one ought to move a body till the doctor comes."But, somehow, he did not utter them. Instead, he helped the younger man to lift that which lay there at their feet, looking so light, so small, and yet, even to him, so awe-inspiring.It was a slow-moving procession which went down the long library, and so through a broad corridor beyond, into which opened what was called "The Queen's Room," because Queen Victoria had slept there no fewer than seven times during her long reign."And now," said the Duchess, "I wish everyone to go to bed, except Denham. He will have to wait up for Dr. Wakefield, of course, and so must I."After they had all trooped off, she sat on in the library till she heard firm, quick steps echoing

through the hall which had seen so strange and sad a scene so short a time ago."Well, Duchess? This is a sad affair! Denham tells me that the poor old woman is dead, or, at any rate, that your nurse says so?"The three of them, the butler, the doctor, and the Duchess, went to the Queen's Room. The doctor bent down over the great canopied bed. . . ."There's nothing to be done!" he declared at last, straightening himself.The butler had slipped away unobtrusively and, for a few moments, the two that remained there stood silently looking down at the stray, aged remnant of humanity.It was the man who spoke first."I will arrange for her to be taken away to the mortuary to-morrow morning.""But I would far rather she were left here! I can't bear the thought of the poor little creature being put in a mortuary. After all, she came here, to us, for shelter. . . ."Dr. Wakefield looked a little surprised. He had known the Duchess a good many years, he was truly attached to her, and he had never once thought of her as being what he called to himself "foolishly sentimental.""There will have to be an inquest," he observed, rather drily."But it could be held here—in the castle, I mean?""It could be—certainly. But would the Duke like that?""The Duke always likes what I like," she said, a little stiffly. And Dr. Wakefield felt, what he very seldom had occasion to feel—snubbed.He bent down again over the great bed. "I see she wears a wedding ring," he observed; and then, in a tone of surprise, he added, "Why, the top of her wedding finger is off. What an extraordinary thing!"The Duchess gave a sharp cry. It was clear that her nerves had been thoroughly upset by the sad end to her day."Are you sure?" she exclaimed in an agitated voice—"sure, Dr. Wakefield?""Sure?" He looked round at her, puzzled. "Do you mean, am I sure that she is dead, Duchess? I haven't a doubt of it.""I don't mean that. I mean are you sure about her finger—about the top of it being off?""Perfectly sure. Would you like to see for yourself? There is nothing repugnant about it—I should judge it to have been cut off a great many years ago."And then, with the tears rolling down her face, the Duchess, too, bent down over the great bed

and looked at the pathetic little stump circled by a worn wedding-ring."How strange," she murmured at last—"how very, very strange!" and there came a perplexed, undecided expression over her face."Must there really be an inquest?" she asked, suddenly."I'm afraid there must; though, of course, it's obvious enough what happened. The poor old soul—she must have been very, very old, by the way—lost her way when going across the park, and her death was due to the cold and exposure.""I feel sure that the Duke will wish her to be buried in the Old Churchyard—in our enclosure, I mean. I know that he would not like her—any more than I should—to be put in a pauper's grave."Dr. Wakefield felt more and more surprised. He told himself that there was no accounting for the vagaries of women—or, perhaps one ought to say, for the vagaries of duchesses. This Duchess and he were good, as well as old, friends, and he remembered with what courage and resignation she had taken the one great trouble of her married life—the death of a little daughter of eighteen months. She had felt the loss most bitterly, yet she had been extremely unselfish and brave. Perhaps what had happened to-night had brought that sad time back to her mind? But surely,

not even to humour his wife, would the Duke allow this poor old pauper to be buried in that portion of what was called the Old Churchyard where his ancestors were buried."I will see the coroner to-morrow," he said, soothingly, "and arrange for the inquest to be held here. Perhaps you would like me also to speak to the undertaker. I take it you would like just a plain coffin—""Yes," she said in a low voice, "quite a plain coffin. It has always shocked me that anyone could want anything else."She walked back with him through the now dark and silent house, and, though Denham was in attendance, she herself saw the doctor into his two-seater. "Thank you very much," she murmured, "and a very Happy New Year to you, my dear, kind friend."About ten o'clock the next morning the Duchess was told that Dr. Wakefield wished to speak to her Grace on the telephone. She was with the Duke when she received the message, and he saw that she looked worried, undecided, uncomfortable."Would you rather I went?" he asked, very gently for him. "Hadn't I better speak to him, my darling?"She shook her head. "No, you'd better keep out of it all. Besides, you hate the telephone!""I thought you would like to know something more about that poor old woman," Dr. Wakefield began—"though it's only a very short page from 'the simple annals of the poor.' The Master of Manningford Workhouse says that she and her husband—a very dour Scot, named MacAndrew—settled here some twenty-five years ago. Until before the war they lived in a singularly lonely place—a two-roomed cottage at the top of the second down. There seems no doubt that they had saved some money, though they were reduced to sore straits before the old man's death. She lived on for a while all by herself, and people—I mean the people of her own class—were very kind and generous to her, as they so often are to one another. And then, when during the war the food question became acute, one of her cronies persuaded her to go into the workhouse. She became a great favourite there, it seems. Like so many Scotswomen of that type, she was well educated, and she used to read to the other old people. She gave her age when she came in as seventy-five, but the Master thinks she was a good deal older than that. He suspects she was close on, or even over, ninety when she died. Lately her mind had been going a little, and that perhaps accounts for her having wandered into the park, which was really quite out of her way for Manningford. I have arranged

for the inquest to take place to-morrow at twelve. Do you still wish it to be held in the castle?""Certainly I do," came the quiet answer, "for the Duke and I both feel that we should not like her to be moved more than must be.""And about the funeral?" the doctor went on. "I suggest that the funeral shall follow on the inquest as soon as possible. How about the day after to-morrow—early in the morning? Do you still wish her to be buried in the Enclosure?"Again she said, "Certainly we do. And—Dr. Wakefield?""Yes, Duchess?""Don't let the funeral be too early. We shall all go to it, and I'm sure the upper servants will want to go, too."He did not allow the surprise he felt to appear in his voice. "Then shall I say about eleven o'clock on Wednesday?""Yes, that will do very well. And, doctor? One word more—""Yes," he called back. "Yes?""What was her Christian name?""Her Christian name? It was Charlotte, a rather unusual one for a person of her class. Charlotte MacAndrew was the name under which she was admitted to Manningford Workhouse."Two days later, Gerald Arbuthnot, while

following the old pauper woman's plain oak coffin up the stone paths of the Old Churchyard, perceived that the grave had been prepared very near the grand tomb of that duke who had been known to his contemporaries as Old Magnifico. The world does move, after all, he reflected, for was he not now witnessing an example—albeit in a most unexpected place—of the true brotherhood of man?Printed at The Chapel River Press, Kingston, Surrey.Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"Advert included in back of Lowndes's "Some Men and Women"