********************START OF HEADER********************
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: Set to Partners, an electronic edition
Author: Dudeney, Henry, Mrs., b. 1866
Publisher: William Heinemann
Place published: London
Date: 1913
********************END OF HEADER********************
Set to PartnersAdvert included in front of Dudeney's "Set to Partners"SET TO PARTNERS"A NOVELBY  Mrs. Henry Dudeney
AUTHOR OF "A RUNWAY RING," etc.LONDON: William Heinemann1913copyrightTable of Contents for Dudeney's "Set to Partners"BOOK I A SENSE OF SPELLSCHAPTER IANGELINA lay wide-eyed and candidly listening in the wide bed. She was recovering from a feverish chill and had reached that charming stage of convalescence when you look forward with greed—yet of the most ethereal sort—to the milky luxury of your frequent meals; when any movement of your limbs as you lie in the soft sheets is delicious ease; when the very sounds of the household, muted, and for your sake, are merely music which, sleepily and with a quite regal tolerance, you barely apprehend. She felt to-night, listening to those two maidservants as they sat by the fire, light as air, strong as a strand of silk, smooth as a rose petal: scented too, as roses, for an hour ago Kitty had got her out of bed and given her a hot bath, with a generous foam of the best scented soap. In the Peachey household they used nothing but the most expensive and beautiful soaps. Beautiful, too, was the array of cosmetics upon Grandmamma Peachey's big dressingtable. Things of that kind came easy to them as a family.Angelina's brain as she listened, and as she became more and more piqued, absorbed and amazed, was active. She told herself, lying here quite still and tingling sweetly to her very toes, that to-night, for her, was making history. Never would she be quite the same Angelina Peachey any more after this. For although she was only ten years old she took herself with immense seriousness. Moreover, she understood something of this matter upon which they sat discoursing. She had experience. Only the day before yesterday, coming out of school, Arthur Rogers had squeezed her hand just round the corner of the Close before you turned into Prince Edward Street. There was a beautiful look in his blue eyes when he said:"Angelina, I shall ask my mother to ask you to tea."So she understood, a little, of what they were talking about. When she was older she would understand more. Her mother was always saying this to her in petulant answer to a hundred awkward questions. "When you are older, Angelina, you will understand everything my dear, and now run away."It was provoking to be put off in this fashion, although with a promise of perfect wisdom to come. Yet there was a certain truth in the phrase. Angelina, lying here and not understanding quite what Kitty and the cook were talking about, was prepared to grant this. Already, she knew a great deal.She was, for example, not in the same world, with knowledge, as her sister Blanche, although Blanche was two years older. Yet she cared only for lessons, and you cannot learn the world through them: not the world of the heart which is the sole kingdom that matters. Blanche was clever with sums and a dullard at history—remembering only the dates. Angelina was exactly the reverse.To-night she was glad to have not only the bed, but the room to herself, for Blanche would certainly have destroyed this occasion of delicate knowledge. She would have considered it very wrong to listen. She was no sophist, and by this she missed many things.In addition, Blanche was an uncomfortable bed-fellow, for she turned over and over many times before she fell asleep, and even when she was asleep she very often cried out, waking you with a big jump and making you feel afraid. Everything about Blanche, sleeping or waking, was noisy and uncomfortable to Angelina. It was even ugly; and beyond everything upon this earth she hated ugly things. Blanche was a pretty girl, pink and white; her uncomeliness, for her only sister, lay deeper than this. They had no common foothold. Yet, so far, they were doomed to be together night and day. Angelina felt the fret of this companionship very much, and it really was worth while being ill if it gave you the soft bed all to yourself. She moved, yet cautiously, in her nest of goose-down, feeling spacious, holy and quiet.Those were the days of double beds and of deep feathers, when sisters slept together and married people also. There was no proper family life else. When Angelina, ten years old, lay listening to Kitty and the cook, it was the Vigil of St. Andrew, 1876.The bed in which she lay was of deal, with solid knobs the size of croquet balls at the top of each post. They were short posts and the bed had no hangings, which was rather unusual. The headboard and footboard were thick, and the whole bedstead was painted a pretty, cool, putty colour, with stringings of apple-green paint and, at each corner, true lovers' knots of apple green, finishing with just a point of bright pink, meant for moss-rose bud. The double chest of drawers, which she could see by the faint light of the fire, was painted in the same way, and so was the dressing-table and the big oval mirror which stood on top of it. There was a kind of cumbrous prettiness to the whole idea of this bedroom furniture, and it accorded excellently with the panelled walls, which were also painted putty colour.The room was old and dignified. Damask curtains, also green, and faded by merciful agency of sun and time to just the true shade of apple demanded by the furniture, hung, close drawn, before the high windows. By day, when these damask hangings were looped back by tassels and long cords, the windows stood revealed in short muslin petticoats, very frill, inordinately dainty, although the house stood in the middle of the City of London, and finished at the head by a flashing band of metal.The room expressed the mind of Angelina's mother; for she was a prim, clean woman without a touch of imagination, and yet not unpleasing, in her starved, dry way. All the charm that accrued to her, or, at rare intervals, radiated from her, was quite accidental: just as the harmony of her faded green curtains with her apple-outlined bedroom furniture was accidental. And, to prove how obtuse she was, she had placed in this reposeful room a jug and ewer with maroon stripes and a dreadful yellow flower occurring here and there. The jug and basin, she did not know why, sometimes made Angelina feel sick."Well, I only hope she'll be happy," Cook said, and she had already said this twice before. "Here's her letter. She sounds happy, don't she? She ought to be. He's a grainer by trade, and you know how that pays. That man can grain a door to look like bird's-eye maple. You never saw! It's better than the real wood and it's almost as expensive. Oh yes, her Albert draws good money. What was the bit I read? Oh, it's here, where she says: 'We was married at the registry office off the Marylebone Road and a very enjoyable time we spent.'Me and Albert have got,' " Cook went on reading in droning undertones, " 'a very nice and comfortable home, and I hope and trust that we shall get on in life and prosper, and be able to bring up a family and put by a bit for old age.' ""There's a lot more," she slipped the letter in her pocket, "about a real China tea service what his brother, the sailor, sent. I envies my sister Loo. And this letter makes me think that it wouldn't be bad to settle; not if you could find a steady man that made good money. I couldn't put up with your drinking, out-at-elbows fellow; it's better to be in a good situation by far, and this is one, or it would be if there wasn't such a blessed lot of nagging and squabbling. But I don't know," she leaned forward in her chair and stuck her elbows on her fat knees, "a situation's safe and a man ain't. The master and the missus, their quarrels don't concern you. Sixteen pounds a year and everything found isn't to be lightly cast away. The wages they do go up. When I started out in life you might think yourself lucky to get ten. And even then you had to find your own tea or else take the swillings of their teapot. And that's a thing I never would do."Angelina noiselessly shuffled in her bed, for conversation was taking too practical a turn and she felt intolerant. She was early learning that love cannot continue at high pressure; and certainly there seemed very little true romance to Cook's sister Loo and the prosperous grainer. Was it graining that destroyed it?Before this, Kitty had been talking of love, in her beautiful Irish voice of the South country. She had decked it with faith, draped it with the most touching mysticism that this world knows: for Kitty was Irish and a devout Catholic. It was Kitty saying, or rather cooing, for this was the quality of her enthralling voice:"The last time Patrick wrote to me from Australia it was of big floods he spoke, and I heard not a word more. They must have swept him away, my sweetheart. God rest his soul," which first enchained Angelina and made her listen.She had crossed herself. Angelina had watched. This word "sweetheart," although only dimly she knew it so far, already had for the child a significance. It wore a little nimbus. Cook had also watched Kitty make the devout sign upon her breast; and the big jolly face of this woman who went to chapel regularly on Sundays had expressed contempt, a certain traditional terror of Popery, and, most, a shrewd suspicion. For she did not believe that Kitty's betrothed, who had migrated to Australia fifteen years before, promising to send for her later on, had remained faithful, nor did she give any credence to the theory of floods. He had of course married some other girl and had lacked courage to write like a man and say so. "Just like a man," thought Cook, who distrusted the lot of them: and she may have been both philosopher and seer."Funny sort of floods! A wife and family by now, I'll warrant;" she was thinking and surveying quizzically Kitty's ugly, tender face. What a simpleton the woman was!Kitty was certainly ugly. Angelina, who loved her, was forced to allow this. And it seemed odd to the child that such a beautiful religion as the Catholic religion should have such an uncomely exponent. Yet this, really, proved its perfect triumph. When on Sundays Kitty returned from Mass, she looked glorified; and her expression was victorious almost, yet never quite, over the comicality of an amazing turn-up nose, dusted well with the homeliest of freckles.To Angelina, going to Mass meant invoking some incantation, for in her blood was a sense of spells. She was a funny mixture, by inheritance, of Philosophy and the true Faith. Yet it was an undeniable fact that Grandmamma Peachey, also Irish, also a Catholic and also in the habit of going to Mass upon Sundays and days of obligation, returned more horribly disagreeable than before.Kitty was Grandmamma Peachey's maid, really; yet, by favour only, she attended to Angelina and her sister Blanche now and then. For the Peacheys all lived together, not in amity at all, but in continual warfare of nature, in this stately big house at the corner of St. Paul's Churchyard. There was Grandmamma Peachey with Kitty, and they had the first floor to themselves. Then there was Grandmamma's son, Tim and his wife, who were Angelina's father and mother. There was her elder sister Blanche, and there were the three servants."There was a man," Cook went on, "in a good way of business who regularly pestered my life out to marry him. He really did. But he was a widower, and that doesn't seem the proper thing to start with; not unless you're a widow yourself, which makes everything different, as we know. And he had a grown-up daughter just my age. I thought it over, and I felt I was better as I was. 'Tain't my idea of marriage, that sort of thing. What's yours?"Angelina, wriggling continually, yet with care so as not to be noticed, through this mundane speech of Cook's, now lay still; for she knew that when Kitty spoke you would get something worth listening to; if not for the thing she said, then for the music of the voice which said it. Kitty could endow any sentiment."Mine is it!" she, lifting her sandy head, seemed to laugh in her throat. "To be Pat's wife, what that would have been now! The touch of his little finger was quicksilver. It ran into my shoes. It ran through my heart and trickled through to my immortal soul.""You do talk queer;" the English maid seemed shocked. "Besides, you can't keep that sort of thing up. Look at them two downstairs, the master and missus, I mean;" she lowered her voice and twisted her head towards the painted bed. Angelina lay in it rigid as a little corpse."I'll lay," said Cook more boldly, "that when they was courting they felt as you feel, though they wouldn't say the same things. Heathenish it seems to me—well, wicked if you don't mind my saying so—this mixing up your shoes and your soul and a common thing like quicksilver."She spoke seriously, for constant chapel-going was a serious thing. Kitty, with her Irish humour, twinkled. When she half-closed her little sharp blue eyes like that she looked roguish. Angelina watched the fire play pranks upon her face."The master would have said that and more if he'd found the right woman. I know him," she said. "Isn't he my own countryman?""Good gracious! What a thing to say! The right woman. Well, I never. Ain't he married to her after all? You Papists are a queer lot. You don't seem to know what morals mean.""We are the only ones who understand marriage or morals," Kitty returned superbly. "We know what a big thing it means, getting married. It's heaven or hell. Right woman! How can she be? No faith and——""Well, he's an infidel, come now. And she takes the two children to the Cathedral on Sundays. What more do you want?""And married at a registry office," Kitty proceeded unheeding."Yes, I don't like that, I must say. Why did they do it? People in their position.""Because the master knew that he was missing the whole thing, I tell you. He's been taught the Faith. He'll come back on his death-bed, you see.""I shan't see, no more won't you. He's good for eighty, that man. I've never seen a finer man, and it seems a pity that he should be behind a counter. He isn't often there, that's true; still, it is a shop, after all, although a superior one, and them rolling in money. I went to the Horse Show once; he took me, that widower I was telling you about, for that man couldn't spend enough on me, I assure you, Kitty. Beautiful animals, the horses, and I've never forgotten them. When I look out of the kitchen window and see the master crossing Cheapside to Sweeting's for his eleven o'clock sandwich and glass of stout, his figure reminds me of them; and I regularly go all over, if you know what I mean. The look of his limbs and the way he walks and holds up his head—what, with a horse, you'd call his action. It's his action what takes me."Angelina, through the lengthy enthusiasm of this speech, lay still, yet quite on fire. For, since she was destined by the complexity of her inherited nature always to love one man very much, so her father, Timothy Peachey, was the first of them: once she loved, she never left off; yet she involuntarily widened her borders. Already she was faithful to her nature, and the early unfoldings of all that was going to be had begun. She was a pocket romanticist in very short, stiff skirts; for in those days the frocks of little girls were lined with stiff muslin and flounced to the waist, every flounce having at its edge what was called a French hem. This gave a rolled effect.She loved her father, and for the same reason that the cook loved him, because he was fine to behold. They were captured by his action: it was an equine enslavement. Yet, so far, she had little asides, for although Angelina was serious from first to last, with not a touch of the accustomed coquette, with no caprice and very little humour, she preserved a grave sense of cat-like joy in playing with men. You would never expect it of this beautiful child with the grave face and queer dignity, yet there it was. The small boys with whom she came in contact felt it at once. Had not Arthur Rogers said only a few days ago that his mother should be made to ask her to tea? They knew that this would be difficult, since he had no little sisters; yet it would be accomplished. Their two pairs of eyes had said this when they turned the corner of the Close and went into Prince Edward Street. There was another boy at the school in St. Bartholomew Close to which she and Blanche were sent (for the four Misses Hopkins, who kept it, admitted boys to the age of eleven), and he also had a regard for Angelina. Bluntly, he had avowed it and declared that when he was fifteen he would marry her. She did not care for him, yet he, George Conisbee, was useful. He was more downright than Arthur Rogers, yet lacking his delicate fidelity. Later on, he transferred his allegiance to Louisa Roof, who was a plain, clinging girl, and Angelina suffered very much at this defection: for she never liked to lose her mouse!As for her romantic love for Timothy Peachey, that was deepened because he was so utterly indifferent to her, and of his two girls preferred Blanche. Angelina he distrusted, for she was too much like her grandmother. Blanche was intelligent. She already played chess quite nicely, and could readily absorb the philosophic and scientific tit-bits lie held out. Mr. Peachey's mind, partly by native bent, but more by harsh resolve, was wholly philosophic, and this Irishman, his life soured and misgrown from the first, had purposely put away all mystic and passionate expression: a great deal of which would have been natural to him, as his countrywoman, Kitty, knew. At an early age he flung aside the Faith in which he had been reared, since he was in daily contact with a fragile example of it, and this affected his sense of logic. At an early age, as early as a man could consistently marry, he had allied himself to a plain and a prose woman. He wanted as a wife, and a mother for his children should they come, an entirely different specimen from his own mother. All his young life had been marked by that air of tense, quiet misery which prevails in households when the wife is avowedly unfaithful, either by actual act or by the more subtle treachery of the heart, and where the husband is doggedly enduring and nobly blind.This had been the case with his father and mother, and before he was fifteen he had solemnly decided that he would run no risk of a similar mottled domestic ménage. He must marry, since something told him so: yet it should be to a stolid woman.To-day, he had his widowed mother under his roof. He was courtly to her and he even loved her, as imaginative creatures do sadly love the things that might have been so beautiful and are so marred. Yet he was heartily sorry that Angelina had inherited the beauty and the air of her maternal grandmother. Fortunately he, this he very well knew, would be in his grave long before Angelina made much mischief with the hearts of men. He wouldn't be asked to look on for a second time. So he ignored the child as a rule and, if he broke silence, he scolded her. Once, for a little fault, he even struck her. Yet, stubbornly, she kept on loving this implacable, magnificently built man and weaving veils about him. This is the way in which women of her sort begin. It is happening all the time with a certain type of imaginative little girl who is also very tender and pure. It is for ever being instanced and it is trite—this ideal love of daughter for father. People say impatiently, "Oh, I've heard all this before." Just for once, perhaps, they hardly like to be reminded of what they know so well.It has happened and is happening and will happen again and again—the steady worship of certain little daughters for a father. It will continue to be instanced; unless the world grows in time wholly prose and quite mechanical; unless people forget how to make love and only mate when they must—suppressing a yawn!So far as Angelina was concerned, when her full time came, many years after the Vigil of St. Andrew, 1876, and not in St. Paul's Churchyard or any great town, but deep in the green placidity of a wood; well, when her true time came to love the right man, fully, she traced in him some tender resemblance to her first idol, Timothy Peachey, although they were not alike to ordinary vision. It was just a posture now and then that made likeness—to her eyes, anyway: the turn of a leg, as a man stands at ease; the movement of a hand; the moulding and gesture of thumbs; just how his eyes are set and how his lids lock in repose. In this way, when the time came, did her father and her one love look alike."He'll live to be eighty, that man," repeated Cook, speaking as if she evolved a new theory.Kitty did not answer. She only sat and screwed her blue eyes. Yet now she did not look roguish, and Angelina innocently wondered why. The reason was that Kitty knew the secret of her master's health. His wife knew, his mother knew and she knew. She was perfectly loyal, and she kept this grim reason of just why the rich Peacheys lived above their shop to herself. Always she prayed about it, and sometimes at Mass she would make Timothy Peachey, with his fine body and his poor soul that had gone astray, her special intention. Kitty was a lovely instance of your natural mystic. She was one of those souls that God sends now and then, scattering them as white petals before a warm spring wind, through the airs of all the ages, to convince us, to assure us, to bring us into safety. When Kitty, as she did when she dared, talked to Angelina about the blessed saints, Angelina's heart would flutter first and then be solemnly, blissfully still. She forgot all about her sums, which she could never do and which troubled her intensely; she forgot also Arthur Rogers, George Conisbee and the other little boys who were her mice. For nothing of this was real. The saints were real and all that they implied.People wondered why Mr. Peachey, head of the well-known firm of chemists and druggists, PEACHEY AND BALLES, lived above the shop. There was, to be exact, no Balles now but only Peachey. The last Mr. Balles had died in 1857, but the name was kept because PEACHEY AND BALLES was quite a household phrase, particularly in old-fashioned families. Many wives and mothers, scattered all over the country, would never dream of having a prescription made up unless by Peachey and Balles of the Churchyard.Angelina loved the paternal shop, with its curved steps leading up to the handsome door, with its bowed, small-paned windows where the great coloured bottles burned in fires of green, of amber and of crimson. All her life had been spent in the spacious house above the shop. It had, so people said, stood the Great Fire of London, but this was probably merely a picturesque figment of history, in common with Queen Elizabeth's many progresses, Clarence and his wasteful butt of Malmsey, Rosamund's bower and things of that sort. Angelina knew these legends, for she adored history, and the Kings and Queens were palpitating, living creatures to her still.Grandpapa Peachey had not lived above the shop, but had occupied a big country house at Putney. He drove up to the City every morning, so Angelina was informed, in his own coach and pair, stopping to pay toll upon the bridges. This progress appealed to her imaginative sense, and she for ever regretted that Grandpapa Peachey died before she was born. And never had she seen nor would see his beautiful house at Putney, for it was pulled down and built over. Grandmamma Peachey, when she was in a good temper, which was seldom, would tell you about the row of Lombardy poplars in front of the house. They waved afresh for Angelina, these stricken, quite departed trees. But Grandmamma, in common with the rest of the family, distrusted Angelina for a very good reason of her own. She preferred Blanche, except in moments when Blanche looked like her mother. Then Grandmamma, who had a temper amounting almost to lunacy, would hit out at the child with her stick (she was rheumatic). She would use words that sounded uncommonly like swearing. On these occasions, and they happened not infrequently, Blanche would rush screaming to her mother, and the younger Mrs. Peachey would repair to the elder Mrs. Peachey, and there was a royal row. They were certainly a disjointed household.Yet the old house distilled nothing but a large, gentle dignity. It was calm itself, and Angelina, very young, yet unduly alert of the emotions, had one perfect moment every day. She had, in fact, many perfect moments, yet this one stood out and, for all the years of her life, she remembered it. It was when you came in out of the noisy streets and shut the big front door and went up those shallow stairs of uncarpeted oak, with their carved balustrades. It was a holy quiet that she drank in then; and holiness made some invincible appeal. The contrast between the clatter of the streets and the cool silence of the house was certainly marked; for in those days they had not put down the wood pavement in Cheapside. This came later, and Angelina revelled in the pungent smell of tar: the smell and the thick, blue-black look of it. She thought of a wicked bird with a great wing.She adored the house where she had been born, and had already decided that she must certainly both live and die in it. Nowhere else could her proper fate be fulfilled. She would live here alone with Kitty when all the others were dead. For even her father must die. Yet she would never die, not she, herself, Angelina. When she read the Bible, she seriously pondered upon the possibility of becoming a female Elijah. If God did it once He could do it again. Life was strong in her. The world was wonderful.These large rooms, with panelled walls and rich ceilings; with long narrow windows set in delicate frames, enclosed the immature and silent ardours of her soul and always should.The Peachey household, here in 1876, with their generous domestic mode, their social aloofness (for they knew no other shopkeepers), their intellectuality—Mr. Peachey was intellectual: his wife was a fool and his mother an exhausted coquette—were leading the life of merchants in the eighteenth century. It was lovely to feel, Angelina frequently meditated on this, that several generations of Peacheys had lived here. The business was founded in 1690 and had gone on without a break. Only Grandpapa Peachey had turned his back upon family tradition and gone to live at Putney, in a new house built for him by Malachi Pocock, who was a fashionable architect of that time.Up to Grandpapa's reign, the Peacheys had lived above their shop, and at one time, so Angelina had heard, Peacheys and Balleses had lived there together, dividing the rooms with justice and amity. A certain door which still shut off the two upper floors bore witness to this.She thought of Peachey and Balles quite as a dynasty, and it had lived for generations in this dear, beautiful house. The shop underneath was just a Hall of Justice.So, take it altogether, in spite of frequent squabblings between Grandmamma Peachey and Angelina's mother, there was yet left, in 1876, a certain traditional stateliness to the household—living in such dignified aloofness in the family dwelling and not mixing with other shops. Angelina would have hated that. It was not possible, for all the other tradesmen went home after business hours; the furrier and the other shop that sold lace odds and ends, beautiful handkerchiefs and ribbons; the fishmonger's across the way and the tailor; the man who sold cheap jewellery and the big draper just down the Churchyard. They all went home to their pepper-pot villas exactly as their successors do to-day. They knew nor cared nothing for eighteenth-century tradition; as for Peachey, they were sorry for him, from all they had heard. His wife nagged him.At night it was very quiet in the City, and in summer-time, often Angelina and Blanche would look out from the nursery window—you could just see by screwing your head—and watch the young men at the big wholesale place, who did live above the shop, practising with a fire escape. It was nothing but a long canvas bolster. Blanche longed to dive down it, but the mystery of the thing and its harsh confines terrified Angelina. "I could never stand compression of any sort," she once said.Compression was a new word. Miss Sophy Hopkins had just put her into three-syllable words. She spoke gravely, and she was expressing ultimate truth.Blanche merely said, "You are a silly, Angelina.""And he deserves "—Cook, speaking still, was still aflame for her big, handsome master—" a better, well, a finer woman than he's got. She may be good enough, disagreeable people often are, but she's a skinagalee and not healthy. There's always a heat spot or a regular pimple on that woman's face, in one place or the other."She referred to Angelina's mother, and Angelina lay queerly still. For it is odd to hear your own parents spoken of as just common, very fallible persons."And a temper, Kitty; good gracious, how she nags! A working man would be up with his fist and serve her jolly well right. I heard them rowing the other day and certain things caught my ear. I heard him say to her, and you could tell he was strung up, 'Silence, woman. I won't bear any more. You've been the curse of my life for thirteen years.' "Angelina was trembling now, and the tears stood in her eyes. She did not cry for her mother, because she did not love her. She cried for what, had she been older, she would have expressed as a lost ideal."S—sh, s—sh," cooed Kitty, glancing towards the bed."Bless you, that child's fast asleep. I tell you it's a queer family to take service with. You know that well enough. You've been with them for years. Then there's the old woman. What sort of a marriage was that? I've heard several things."So Grandmamma Peachey was also in process of spoiling. More tears came into Angelina's eyes. They were not lachrymose drops, but burningly dramatic ones. For she was feverishly interested, and she told herself over and over again that, never after to-night, would she be the same careless, innocent Angelina Peachey. As to her mother and her grandmother, she cared little for them. She was not one to disperse herself in general affections."My mistress was once in mortal sin. She has told me," Kitty returned with candid simplicity, "but she has confessed her sins and been absolved. You don't understand that.""No, I don't. Once a bad woman always a bad woman," Cook said, and laughed disagreeably.She got up, adding:"Well, I must go down and look after the supper. You're always on the go.""And I must get my mistress to bed." Kitty stood up too, and she spoke with gentle dignity; but the implied reproof was quite lost upon Cook, who was a downright person, dealing in definite terms.Kitty blew out the candles, hung a wire guard before the fire, and lighted a night-light. As she and Cook went to the door she glanced affectionately at Angelina, who saw her, faintly, through half-closed lids."She won't want anything more, the dear lamb, until nine o'clock, and then I'll give her a cup of arrowroot," said Kitty.Cook had one of her healthy red fists doubled round the putty-painted post at the foot of the bed."What a pretty child she is, ain't she? Looks a regular little queen. You'd never think such a face come out of a shop. And she's as like the old lady as two pins, but only in the face, let us hope. For she's a wicked old cat if ever there was one, and I wouldn't like Miss Angelina to be that sort of woman."Cook spoke with bluntness and warmth. Kitty kept her lips compressed and said nothing. They went out of the room.Angelina lay alone. She had learnt so much. The flickering night-light, standing there upon the washstand in a saucer of water, almost terrified her.Grandmamma Peachey was a wicked woman, and your own father had cursed your own mother. These two facts were hard of digestion, and her little soul was sick.Lying there alone in the bob-about-flicker of night-light and failing fire, she decided that she would never marry any man. This was absolutely final, and directly she was well enough to go back to Miss Hopkins's she would tell Arthur Rogers so. When his mother asked her to tea she wouldn't accept; for this was not fair to him, poor boy. You must be firm, yet always tender; and spare an adorer's feelings if you possibly could.She would not be a nun; the idea of being shut in and kept away, either from sensations, places or people, filled her with terror. It was compression. But she would be for ever virgin. It was really safer; since, if you married, you were disagreeable or wicked; or you were both. The growth of Virtue was clearly impossible in the married soil."If when I grow up men fall in love with me," she reflected, rolling in the deeply delicious feathers, "that's not my fault. But I will warn them first."Then she fell asleep.The next day she was well enough to be dressed after the early dinner, and settled on the horsehair sofa, with plenty of cushions, near the window. There were three tall windows in this room. To-morrow, so her mother said, she would be well enough to go into the drawing-room and have her music lesson. Also she would be fitted for her party frock. The Misses Hopkins in December, just before the breaking up, gave a full dress soirée to pupils and their parents.While Grandmamma Peachey was having her afternoon nap, Kitty brought her sewing and sat with Angelina. At the bottom of Kitty's big workbasket, of wickerwork lined with rose-pink sateen, was a shabby book, and it was her greatest, dearest treasure. Angelina loved it also, for it told you about the blessed saints, who were so consoling. In the middle of darning a stocking or between the darning of a pair of stockings, when you had finished one and forbore to thrust your doubled fist into the heel and the toe of another, Kitty, since Angelina had not been well, would read aloud to her in snatches. Angelina loved this. To listen to the chronicles of beautiful lives, told in a beautiful voice; to lie, high up, and looking out at the gay London street, what could be more delightful! She was dreading the time when she would have to return to school in Bartholomew Close! and not even the naughty, dear idea of Arthur Rogers and his declarations could reconcile her to the prospect. But it would not be until next quarter.She lay amidst the pillows looking in at Kitty and the coolly tinted, lofty room, then out at the moving joyousness of Cheapside. It was a delicious December day, with only a hint of fog; just a pretty pout of an atmosphere and no more. High up in the sky was an elusive amber sun. Angelina had only one wish: that she could see the dome of St. Paul's, for she loved it. She loved too the sound of the bell for service, and it rang, these winter days, just as the bedroom grew consolingly dark and while you waited for the door to open and for Alice, the housemaid, to bring in the tea-tray, all set out with an amplitude of invalid dainties. It was certainly nice to be ill—when you were rapidly getting better!From this window you could not see the dome of St. Paul's, nor could you look down at the narrow jostle of shoppers in the Churchyard. Angelina, instead, looked up Cheapside and, as it was only half-past two, she marked a steady procession of eager women come down. This procession would look odd to-day, as we shall look odd to-morrow. The streets have changed since 1876. To Angelina, short yachting jackets of black velvet, bright, bunchy skirts and little flat hats tilted over the eyes were not only usual, but admirable and abiding. She did not conceive that anything could change. She watched the women, who had come for their Christmas shopping in St. Paul's Churchyard, from the north and the east suburbs. She rejoiced in the green-and-yellow omnibuses, crowded with men upon the box seat and upon the knifeboard tops. Hansoms gave a rakish look, and when office boys ducked right under the very heads of the horses you gave a quick swallow in your throat. Angelina knew' Cheapside so far as the Guildhall. She reverenced Gog and Magog, who struck each quarter of each hour above Sir John Bennett's beautiful shop. Beyond the Bank of England she had never penetrated. Going the other way, she had not been farther than Temple Bar, but sometimes on fine Saturdays, Kitty, if Grandmamma Peachey could do without her, took both Angelina and Blanche for a walk along the Thames Embankment. Once Angelina, with her mother and her music mistress Mrs. Chope, who was her mother's particular female friend, had been taken over London Bridge to a mysterious region which they called the Borough. In a very small shop, to which you descended by steps, her mother bought a pale-blue bonnet with the most lovely feathers. Tips, the milliner had called them. Wearing this bonnet, Mrs. Peachey had gone with her husband to the Derby that year, and the children had been warned not to tell their Grandmamma. You did not tell her more than you could help at any time. It was better.To-day, if Angelina looked from the gay, delightful movement going on down there in Cheapside into the room where she lay, she saw Kitty, with her largely luminous face and her yellow-brown head upon which was pinned a piece of coarse white crochet-work about the size of a man's palm. Servants called these their caps in 1876; and untidy servants dropped them upon the kitchen stairs often enough when they ran up to answer the parlour bell. Alice the housemaid was untidy, and her proneness to this sort of thing gave her mistress an opportunity for frequent nagging. Angelina's mother would nag upon the slightest provocation, just as Grandmamma would fly into a violent temper over nothing at all.Kitty had her cap pinned between two lengthwise sausages of hair. In 1876 they all wore pads quite frankly. The coiffure was not in the least suited to her sweetly sensible countenance, which was at once so ugly and so radiantly devout. Kitty looked a large lay sister. She was daintily darning one of Grandmamma's white stockings when Angelina said imperiously:"Put that down and read to me about the saints. I don't want to hear about St. Ursula, who is my name saint. I don't care for her, although I suppose I ought to. It was dreadful to be martyred, of course, but I don't care for so many little girls. There are twenty-six of us at Miss Hopkins's, and St. Ursula had more.""She protected eleven thousand young virgins," said Kitty, who never doubted anything."Finish reading about St. Cecilia; you began yesterday. She was married, wasn't she?"Angelina's voice betrayed an eagerness, and she was thinking that it would be charming to hear about a married saint who did not nag, who was not, as Cook said last night of Grandmamma Peachey, once a bad woman and always a bad woman; moreover, one whose husband did not curse her. Yet Angelina was not angry with her father for cursing her mother. Nothing that he did could ever make her angry; where she really loved, she preserved this perfect quality. Her love for a man was already worth while, since it was wholly comprehensive."Yes, she was married to St. Valerian;" Kitty showed a certain reserve, and she poked her finger vigorously into the heel of Grandmamma's stocking; it resisted the attack, "but you'd better lay down and have a doze until tea-time. Your little face is quite flushed."She pulled her hand out of the white stocking and just brushed Angelina's cheek with her forefinger. It was roughened and browned with much sewing; yet the caressing sweep of it and the tender smile upon her face rendered it softer than silk. Angelina kissed it."Kitty, you are an old dear," she said. "No, we won't have St. Cecilia, but somebody quite new. I would like a saint that I could take to my heart of hearts; some one I could invoke, don't you call it that? I should like to ask the saints' advice upon every blessed thing.""You couldn't do better, my dearie. It stands to reason that them saints what have had their ups and downs, poor souls, just like us, must know what to advise. You can have your own saint, Miss Angelina.""My very own? And not St. Ursula? For she's too much like Miss Hopkins. One who would take a particular interest in me; and only me, mind.""One who would intercede for you at the throne of God. The prayers of the saints," said Kitty beautifully, and the stocking dropped idly into her big lap, "ascend as incense before the altar.""How lovely!" Angelina let out a sigh of rapture."Of course it is, my lambkin (Kitty had a store of deliciously nonsensical names for you when she chose); "the loveliest thing on earth. When Patrick died, he was my sweetheart, I should have died too if I hadn't invoked St. Agnes.""You said your prayers to her and she helped you?""I asked for her prayers, darling. We don't pray to the saints, not even to the Blessed Virgin Mary. I asked for her prayers, Miss Angelina, and the Lord Jesus, He helped me.""It is lovely," repeated Angelina, "but it does not last.""What doesn't last?" asked Kitty quickly."Oh, religion and the saints and being here alone with you. But while it does last I'll make the most of it. Give me a saint for my very own and be quick. For some one may come in and bother us. Blanche will be back from school, or Mamma may come up, or Grandmamma will ring. Just take the book and read the names out, and I will tell you to stop when I come to the one I want."Kitty obeyed. She was nothing loath, and, apart from her religious fervour, she adored this small girl who, already, was so lovely. Kitty had a greed for beauty. Her eyes, while she took out the book and opened it at the index, were intent upon Angelina's mass of perfectly straight and quite black hair; upon her small face with the thin, high-bridged nose and fine lips, so deeply scarlet; upon the white lids of her large blue eyes. They were pale eyes, very bright and sharp, not languishing a bit—large and bright and beautifully set. Angelina's face, in brief, was already near perfection."I think," she said seriously, "that I must have a woman saint. I would prefer a man, just as I like boys better than girls and naturally."She spoke with conviction. She was always sure, and yet you could hardly call her conceited."You see," she confided, "there are things, or there may be in my later life, which you could not tell so easily to a man. Men, yes, even saints, are more thick-headed."Kitty screwed her little eyes, then her good-tempered mouth widened."Miss Angelina! You are a funny little thing. You don't know what you are talking about.""No, I'm not, a bit: and yes, I do. What I say is perfectly true. When Patrick died, didn't you invoke—is that the right word?—St. Agnes? Begin with the women saints.""Shall I go alphibically?" asked Kitty indulgently. She could just read. Long words outwitted her."No, no. Dodge them and be quick. I shall know at once when I come to the right one.""St. Dorothea, St. Perpetua, St. Eugenia, St. Agnes, St. Catherine, St. Margaret, St. Veronica, St. Mary the Penitent—and not to be confounded with St. Mary of Egypt, St. Prisca, St. Lucy, St.——," read Kitty, in a breathless, muddled patter, as she stumbled bravely over the names of the saints."Wait a bit. St. Mary of Egypt. That's the one. We are learning about Egypt at Miss Hopkins's just now, so it makes her more real. Read about her. What's the page?""292." Kitty gave the number with a certain reluctance.She knew the lives of the saints by heart, and she wished that Angelina had made a more simple choice.She found page 292. "I'll read bits here and there and tell you the rest," she said."Anything you like," Angelina again settled herself in positive enjoyment, "but I've decided on her, and nothing will change me."The room was quiet and warm, yet daintily cool of colour. It was fragrant too; in Angelina's radius, that is. For Kitty had that morning presented her with a bunch of lavender enclosed in a bag of white net and tied at the top with true emerald-green ribbon.That was so exactly like Kitty; she did for you charming, unexpected things. Angelina looked at her; the shabby book in a green calico cover open upon her knee. Next to her father, she loved Kitty, who was so good and so tender. And strangely, not knowing why, she felt pitiful towards her; for she seemed to have missed most things. Her Patrick had been washed away by floods in Australia, and Grandmamma Peachey was hard to live with."Yes, I must have a woman saint, and she shall be St. Mary of Egypt," she said softly. "When Patrick died, Kitty, you did not ask the prayers of St. Jerome—I love that picture of him with a mouse at the side peeping into an empty cup.""That's because he was so self-denying. He thought nothing for himself," said Kitty, looking pleased.She loved Angelina to remember, just as Angelina loved to flaunt her remembrance."Nor St. Theodosius, with his dreadful temper—he ought to be Grandmamma's saint; nor St. John Chrysostom of the Golden Mouth. You chose a woman: St. Agnes. So will I.""It was a woman, St. Barbara, who was Patrick's saint," Kitty's plain face rippled, as it did when she spoke of her lover. "Here is a picture of her," she turned the pages of the book. "She is always in a tower, because she made her father's workmen put three windows into a tower they were building: for Father, Son and Holy Ghost"; Kitty crossed herself."And then her head was cut off, poor thing. I remember. Why was she Patrick's saint?" asked Angelina."Because he was a gunsmith, my poppet, and she is the Patroness of Firearms and against sudden death. I'll never believe that Patrick was drowned by floods without proper preparation, Miss Angelina. Them who devote theirselves to St. Barbara never die impenitent nor without the last Sacraments.""That is beautiful. But don't try to make me change my mind and take St. Barbara instead of St. Mary of Egypt. I hate to change my mind. It is so very despicable. Now who was St. Mary of Egypt, and what did she do and when did she live?""She lived in the sixth century," returned Kitty, reading aloud in her patient, distinct way, "in a desert of Palestine, near the river Jordan, where she bewailed her sins in solitude for many years.""That sounds nice. I should like that."Kitty looked up with a flash of intuition. Her face was unusually intelligent; it was more, for it seemed lighted with prophecy."Would you really, Miss Angelina? Would you rather be an anchoress than get married? St. Mary was what they call an anchoress.""I don't mean to get married, so far as I can see at present, and if I sinned I should like to do penance. What else about my St. Mary?""For seventeen years, and before she went into the desert," continued Kitty, letting her sharp, small eye rove down the pages, and translating at discretion into language that Angelina might understand, "she was a very wicked woman——"Angelina started. Here was another patron saint for Grandmamma Peachey; one who was perhaps more suitable than St. Theodosius with his violent ways!"And one day she saw a large ship all ready to sail and a lot of people going on board. She asked where they were going and they said to Jerusalem, to celebrate the feast o f the true cross. She went with them, and on the voyage," Kitty's caressing voice vibrated, "she was more wicked than ever before. At Jerusalem she joined the crowd o f all the faithful and tried to get into the church, but her attempts to pass the threshold were in vain, and whenever she thought to enter the porch an angel barred the way and drove her back. Then she remembered all her sins and was full of penitence and humbled herself and prayed for help. Then the angel stood aside and St. Mary entered the church of God crawling upon her knees. Thenceforward, she renounced her wicked life, and at a baker's shop close by she bought three little loaves, and then wandered into solitude and never stopped or reposed until she had penetrated into the deserts beyond Jordan, where she remained in severest penance, living on roots and fruits and drinking water only. Her garments dropped away in rags, piecemeal, leaving her unclothed, and she prayed fervently not to be left exposed. Suddenly, her hair grew so long as to form a covering for her whole person; though some say that an angel brought her a garment from heaven. Thus she dwelt in the wilderness in prayer and penance, supported only by her three small loaves which, like the widow's meal, failed her not until after the lapse of forty-seven years she was discovered by a priest named Zosimus. Of him she requested silence and that he would return at the end of a year and bring with him the elements of the most Holy Sacrament, that she might confess and communicate before she was released from earth. Zosimus obeyed her and returned after a year; but not being able to pass Jordan, the penitent, by angels assisted, passed over the water to him, and having received the Sacrament with tears, she desired the priest to leave her once more to her solitude and to return in a year from that time. When he returned, he found her dead, her hands crossed upon her bosom. And he wept greatly, and looking round he saw written in the sand, 'O Father Zosimus, bury the body o f the poor sinner, Mary of Egypt. Give earth to earth and dust to dust for Christ's sake.'"He endeavoured to obey this last command, but being full of years and troubled and weak, his strength failing him, he presently saw a lion, who came out o f a wood and aided him, digging the grave with his paws until the grave was large enough to receive the body of the saint, which, being committed to earth, the lion retired gently, and the old man returned home praising God who had shown mercy to the penitent."Kitty shut the book. She turned round to the sofa and saw Angelina lying back, tears running down her cheeks."Yes, yes," she sobbed, "I will have St. Mary of Egypt.""Well then, my darling, wipe up your pretty eyes. St. Mary of Egypt keeps you from all harm from this hour, Miss Angelina. Here's your handkerchief under the cushion."Angelina, wavering, smiling, looking much touched and quite adorable, wiped her eyes as she was bid and had no sooner done this than the door burst open and Blanche came in like a desert whirlwind. Her cheeks, always pink and perhaps already a little coarse of texture, were flushed to furious purple. Her eyes, vaguely blue, and not in the least like Angelina's, were also full of tears. Her hair, worn in flaxen curls upon her shoulders, was disordered."I shall tell Mamma directly she comes home. She has only gone down the Churchyard with Mrs. Chope to look at the show of those new polonaises in Hitchcock and Williams's window. She will be back directly."Blanche's voice, with every word, rose in fury. It became a peacock scream: and she addressed not those in the room, but somebody upon the stairs.Angelina, with the arrogance of an invalid, said languidly:"What is the matter, Blanche, and don't make such a horrid noise! It may upset me, it may throw me back." She was adaptable in all ways and had already adopted, with perfect triumph, an easy invalid jargon."It may throw you where it likes," responded Blanche readily and glaring; "I tell you, Grandmamma is a beast. I just went up to show her a new book on Geology that Papa gave me, and she hit me right across the arm with her horrible stick. She is a devil," concluded Blanche softly, with a sudden collapse to very gentle venom. "I am sure of it. Look here. There is a regular weal and it won't go down for hours. She caught me by my hair and pulled some out."She shot out her arm. Girls up to ten or twelve wore low-necked dresses and short puffed sleeves in 1876. This chilly fashion was beginning to wane, but the younger Mrs. Peachey was conservative in her ideas of dress. Mrs. Chope, only that afternoon, had found some difficulty in making her take kindly to the idea of a grey homespun polonaise with large mother-of-pearl buttons. Polonaises were to be all the rage, and you really could not, you dared not, ignore them.Blanche's arm was lily white; she was a very fair child. Grandmamma's cruel blow made a bright red ridge along it."Poor little angel!" said Kitty caressingly, and moved forward. But Blanche confronted her like a savage."Go away, Kitty. You are as bad as she is. You are nothing but heathen Papists," she shouted.Angelina, lying back, content to be detached, heard the first stroke of the Cathedral bell for Evensong. She heard also the front door shut. Mamma had come back. Now there would be the usual quarrel downstairs between her and Grandmamma Peachey. Papa would come from his room behind the shop and make peace. He would banter and coax the two of them.Blanche also heard her mother arrive, and she flashed out of the room as she had flashed in. Kitty shut her book of saints. She hid it under a heap of stockings in the basket. Angelina had her eyes shut and more tears were running down her cheeks. She was still weak and Blanche's entrance had been an onslaught. You had been dragged too violently from the piety of the desert.Lying so, she heard the door open again, but gently this time, and lifting her lids she saw Grandmamma Peachey herself.Grandmamma was as cool as a lily and as faintly perfumed. She was that rarity: a perfectly beautiful old woman. Age had just taken her between the tenderest fingers and crumpled her up. It might have been the finest mesh of ancient lace, that network of wrinkles on her pallid, oval countenance. Her dark hair, hardly touched with white, merely the most coquettish dusting, showed at the sides where it hung in little bunches of corkscrew ringlets, kept in place by tortoiseshell sidecombs. On her head was a black lace cap, with heliotrope sprigs of artificial cherry pie. She had a black silk dress, the stiffest, most costly silk you may imagine, worn regally over a crinoline. Black velvet bows went at intervals all down the front of it, from the neck of the tightly fitted bodice to the hem of the skirt, which was banded with black velvet. She had openwork black silk mittens on her beautiful hands, and upon her fingers were several flashing rings. She walked stiffly, and helped herself with an ebony stick. She was actually smiling, just as a child smiles when it is beginning to walk. She appeared urbane and roguish; for it was an achievement, this getting unaided up two flights of stairs.Kitty jumped to her feet with an expression of alarm. She advanced with an air of protection. Grandmamma waved her back:"Keep where you are, my good Kitty. Don't go away. I shall want you in a moment to take me down again. And how is my little Angelina?"She bent over the sofa. Kitty was staring. She seemed almost terrified at the striking likeness between those two faces: one merely caressed by age, the other untouched. Angelina looked into Grandmamma's roguish blue eyes gravely and with coldness. She disliked Blanche, yet Blanche was a sister. She had been smacked and had her hair pulled out for doing nothing."I had to come down and see you, my sweet," said Grandmamma, who was Irish too, and who could be as caressing as Kitty herself when she chose." I wanted to kiss a little face that was like my own. There is nothing, Kitty," she straightened herself and turned to her observant maid, "of that woman about Miss Angelina.""That woman" was Angelina's Mamma."But"—Grandmamma's mood changed suddenly; it always did; she was nothing but a wind-rippled lake: those shadows over her eyes, those trembles at the corner of her mouth!—"I should be just as likely to beat this child if she reminded me of myself too much. Look here, Angelina," she wheeled round, "don't you resemble me too faithfully when you are a woman or I'll come and haunt you as sure as my name's Kathleen Peachey. I should, by right, have had many names," she laughed with a kind of weary craziness, "but it will be Kathleen Peachey they'll carve above my head at the last. I shall lie quiet with my husband—just him."Angelina, frozen with all sorts of feelings, trembling and cold with fright, as a little mouse, lay flat upon her back, with the wadded coverlid close up to her chin. She was upon her guard, for you did not know what Grandmamma might do next. To-day she was evidently under the influence of one of her powders. She took them to make her sleep, and when she woke up her head was funny. Angelina had heard her mother say to Mrs. Chope one day that Grandmamma Peachey was certainly mad. She had once, after a powder, tried to hang herself behind her bedroom door."Come along, I'll take you back to your own rooms, dear," said Kitty, speaking gently, but looking grim.She could do anything she chose with Grandmamma. She was invaluable. Angelina had heard her Papa use this word many times and it impressed her.Kitty had full knowledge, which gave wisdom. Through wakeful nights, or in those moods when conscience tweaks you sharpest, Grandmamma had told Kitty everything. Her maid, perhaps, knew even more of her past life than her father-confessor did. She knew everything and was extra pitiful. Her religion taught her unfailing compassion, and her nature was one which responded to any touch of religion. Kitty was an instrument tuned and stringed for the sweet sounding of the Catholic Faith.She now led Grandmamma Peachey to the door."Don't let that woman," said the old voice, "come near me, or you shall have a month's notice. Stand at the door between her and me when we get downstairs. She won't be up from the drawing-room yet. She's in there with Blanche. Take me away. And you remember, Angelina, what I say. If you are not a good woman when you grow up Grandmamma will haunt you. A ghost," she laughed, showing her teeth, which were false and the only flaw about her, "can do far worse than a rheumatic old woman. Remember that. I be at your sister Blanche with my stick and I pulled her hair till she squeaked, because she's like her wretched, whining mother. You and I are alike," she lifted her stick and shook it towards the sofa and the trembling, white-faced child, "but only to look at. Mind your life isn't like mine. Tell her about my life when she's old enough, Kitty; not for her own sake, but for mine. I want to lie in my grave, and be faithful at last beside poor dear Grandpapa. Angelina, your grandfather was a good man and your grandmother is a bad woman. Remember that when you grow up."She was led away towards the end of this harangue. Kitty, throughout, had kept up a recitative of "there," "there's," and "sh's, sh's, sh's," and "you shouldn't say that's."Angelina, alone, listened to the bell of the Cathedral, listened to angry voices in the room beneath, which was her father and mother's bedroom, and where they were evidently quarrelling at this moment. Presently she listened to steps upon the stairs and along the passages. There was certainly a commotion in the house, and she knew what it meant. Grandmamma had an attack. Those powders upset her badly. Sometimes the doctor had to come."St. Mary of Egypt, pray for us," whispered Angelina brokenly to the pillow and the darkening room.This was her first invocation.CHAPTER IITHE four Misses Hopkins who kept school in St. Bartholomew Close were just as delightfully and erratically out of their period as were Angelina's Papa and Mamma living above the old-fashioned chemist's shop. Every morning Alice the housemaid took the children to school, where they stayed to lunch. She fetched them home again at four o'clock in the afternoon. On some days Alice could not be spared, and then Blanche and Angelina went alone. This gave the chance for digressions by the way: for example, you need not go straight down St. Martin's le Grand, along Aldersgate Street and through St. Bartholomew's Buildings at all. This was the way Alice always went. You could go down Newgate Street and round by Christ's Church, where the figure of the Bluecoat Boy was over the gate. Or you could cross over on to the other side of Aldersgate Street and dive into Maidenhead Court, where there was a sweet-shop. One day there was a funeral at a house in the Court, and Angelina, for the first time in her life and the last, saw that decaying functionary, a mute. He was standing outside the door of the house, holding a tall staff bound with crape, and weepers of crape hung from his tall black hat. She never forgot him; nor did she forget the hearse with its bunches of feathers and the long-tailed funeral horses, feathered also. She and Blanche were late at school that morning. Blanche received Miss Sophia Hopkins's reproof and searching questions with a giggle and a manner of mystery; Angelina was composed and took her punishment—of writing out the "Burial of Sir John Moore"—five times on her slate after school hours, with composure: for, certainly, the mute had been worth it.Or, instead of going down Maidenhead Court to buy sweets, you could go along Aldersgate Street and past that house which had a notice on the wall saying: "SHAKESPEARE DWELT HERE." You came to Barbican. Here there was a shop where they sold dolls who could shut their eyes and squeak "Papa" and "Mamma." Dolls of this kind were new in 1876. Also there was a shop where they sold gold and silver lace; in fact, all the equipments for military and court dress. Angelina was fascinated by it. She was fascinated, too, by the sad mien of a woman, in a faded Paisley shawl and a flat bonnet, who stood at the corner selling oranges. She grew to compare her to St. Mary of Egypt.It was delightful to go to school without Alice the housemaid, and the most charming time that Angelina ever had—since it gave her a chance of exercising power—was one day when there was a new boy at school and Miss Sophia asked her and Blanche to see him home. His father was a dentist in King Edward Street; and the Misses Peachey, so Miss Sophia said, could go home that way quite nicely.Neither Blanche nor Angelina cared for the new boy. They were agreed, for once in a way. His name was Rupert Meech, and he was both furtive and ill-favoured. He looked as if he listened to every word you said. Now he was a new boy, and not yet received into the select company of The Misses Hopkins's Academy. It would be a long time, if ever—it would certainly be the best part of a quarter—before Angelina granted Rupert Meech any of the minor privileges bestowed upon Arthur Rogers and the defaulting George Conisbee. She doubted if she could ever take to him, although, for reasons of diplomacy, she wished to; for he would have further inflamed Arthur and reclaimed George. Already, in her grave way, Angelina was skilful as a coquette, and she experienced all the embryonic flutters of conquest, caprice, intrigue and despair.On the day when she and Blanche were deputed to see the new boy home, she made him walk in front of them; for she and her sister were disposed to be friendly as it happened, and wished to talk what they called secrets. If Rupert Meech showed any disposition to lag behind and make a third at conference, Angelina prodded him neatly in the back with the ferrule of her parasol. It was a hot day when this happened, and she and Blanche were dressed alike: in checked gingham frocks of snuff-brown and little mantles made of tussore silk. These were called burnouses, and they were trimmed with ball fringe. Their parasols were of bottle-green silk, with a pinked frill at the edge and handles that doubled up. They were unduly proud of them. The Peachey girls were always beautifully dressed, thanks to their mother's money and to the instinctive good taste of her close friend, Mrs. Chope, the music mistress.Angelina merely prodded wretched young Meech in the small of the back, but Blanche, who had a touch of clown and hoyden, darted in and picked up a flaxen curl of shavings from the floor of the carpenter's shop at the corner of Great Britain and pinned it rakishly to the ribbon of Rupert's Glengarry cap. The children very often lingered outside the carpenter's shop watching the man in the white paper cap work, listening to his cheerful whistle and to the sound of the saw. His floor was scattered with curls, as if a hundred lovely flaxen heads had fallen. One day he had been cheerfully making a coffin.Angelina watched Rupert Meech as he looked round, the yellow shaving bobbing, and Blanche, giggling, said to him:"Now, don't you dare take that off."His face expressed all the masculine essences; it was devoted and afraid. He was a puny boy who had never been to school before. Up till now his Mamma had taught him his lessons. He was dazzled by the beautiful splendour of Angelina and Blanche. He would have died for them. So he docilely left the carpenter's curl where it was and they continued, a queer enough procession, to go on towards Prince Edward Street.The sisters felt a buoyant sense of power, and Victory for once united them. There was no distracting rivalry; for they did not want Rupert Meech as a possession. He was their mutual butt.When they went to bed that night they lay together in the deep feathers quite amicably and talked the matter over and decided, with smothered bursts of laughter, what they would do with him next time. But there was never any next time, for his Mamma complained to the Misses Hopkins, and a genteel note of remonstrance was sent to Mrs. Peachey. Angelina and Blanche were whipped upon their bare arms until they smarted. They had neither cake nor pudding for a week, and they were told that if such a thing ever happened again they should have nothing but bread and water. Worse than anything else (at least to Angelina), they were called "foolish little girls." She was turned ten, and considered herself nearly grown up. Next quarter she was going into the first class at Miss Hopkins's.Blanche, who had a certain small cunning, which, when she was a woman, would make her a social success, actually managed to turn this unworthy incident of the Meech boy to her own and Angelina's advantage. She cornered her Papa, whose pet she was, and managed to persuade him that if she and Angelina were always allowed to go to school alone they' would behave better, since there would be no novelty in freedom. Mr. Peachey was tickled by her skilful ethics. He was proud of Blanche, although he knew her to be possessed of only half Angelina's brains. He was proud of her and sure of her. She was stolid, as her mother was. There were no backwaters to Blanche. When she grew up she would marry early, turn into an excellent wife and mother, and go to her grave without history. Angelina was altogether different. She was like her grandmother, and she stood for qualities which he dreaded and which he detested—perhaps all the more fervently because he knew that they might so easily have been his own. But he had taken the safe course and allied himself to a peevish fool. His life held nothing more distracting than constant nagging. He told Blanche that they might go to school alone, and he told her mother that he had given the permission. This led to the usual marital squabble, but he was used to that. When he was alone in the dim room full of shelves and bottles that led out from the cheerful shop, he sat staring blankly. Finally, he got a medicine glass and swallowed a certain dose. Grandmamma Peachey was not the only one in the family who knew her panacea and went to it. In her case it was sleeping powders; in her son's it was a drug legitimately prescribed by the doctor to ease pain. Mr. Peachey grinned wryly as he drank. Not only was it bitter; but Knowledge was more bitter. He need not worry about Angelina. He would be dead before she started on her destructive campaign. He wondered what form it would take. She struck him as being at once more fiery and more pure than her grandmother; a finer and more vibrant type altogether. She would be an idealist: that dangerous order of woman who makes the men, and herself, suffer most. Grandmamma Peachey had never suffered at all while she was sinning; her grandchild would suffer clean through. She would get tangled up between good and bad: the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge would have stinging juices from the first. She might end as a nun. Sometimes those women did, and it was best for them. It was the only way of peace for such. Nuns, he thought, were of two orders. There was the born celibate and mystic, such as his mother's maid, Kitty. And there was the other sort. To this company his mother and his Angelina belonged. He could get fond of that child if he let himself go. He knew that she adored him, and that, so far, he stood to her as chief idol. They must have a dominant passion; yet only one at a time!Mr. Peachey sat staring at the bottles and trying to get the crude roughness of the medicine he had swallowed off his palate. Through the door behind him was his pretty, perfumed shop, with the courtly young men assistants moving behind the counter and suavely making up packages with white paper and sealing-wax.As to good and evil, as to the beliefs of nuns and priests, what was that to him? It was all humbug. He had accepted the rationalistic conclusions of the great thinkers of his time. He was up to date. In this year, 1876, he was the fervid exponent of that materialistic Gospel which now is dead as a door nail. It has given place to other things. The old Faith remains. Angelina's Papa was so keen on his philosophy that he would have preached out of doors about it, as people did at that time, but his doctor forbade any excitement.Blanche and Angelina loved to go to school alone. It was freedom; you could linger at any shop you liked. You could spend your money if you had it. You could vary your route, sometimes making it almost wholly solitary, by going round Paternoster Row and through Panyer Alley and then across Newgate Street and by Christ's Church. Or you could cross Cheapside and go down Foster Lane. That was another way. You passed the church of St. Vedast and Foster, where the bell was always ringing for service. People talked a great deal about this church in 1876. Angelina's Mamma said that it was Popish. This, with the other word Papist, she employed with relish. They were an assault upon Grandmamma and her religion. Mrs. Peachey said frequently to Mrs. Chope that she thought it a wife's duty to be of the same religion as her husband. They differed on this matter, since Mr. Chope was a Quaker; and this form of expression made no appeal to his wife. Mrs. Peachey, while pretending to nothing in particular, robustly declared herself Protestant, and taught her children to say their prayers. She had expected some opposition to this from their father, and in her mind, which was nervously combative, she had rehearsed her retorts in the squabble that there would be. But he merely laughed and said that lie liked to see their little white toes sticking out from the edge of their nightgowns. This had been when they were small. Now that they were big they knelt down by themselves, one on each side of the bed with the heavy white quilt.Blanche, in a whispered parrot-patter, hurried over the prayers that had been taught her. Angelina was stirred by wordless upliftings, and every night and every morning she opened her heart for God to fill. It was all very real to Angelina; yet it was astonishingly vague, and the only religion she knew was the bliss that filled her when they sang the anthem at St. Paul's Cathedral on Sunday afternoons, and the tendency to happy tears when Kitty read to her about the blessed saints. She had her own saint now. Many times a day she called upon St. Mary of Egypt.You could go slowly down Aldersgate to school, starting early and getting there a little late. There was so much to see. On St. Valentine's Day you could not tear yourself away from the big stationer's. When Twelfth Night was near, there were the cakes in the confectioner's. And, apart from shops altogether, the streets in themselves were exciting. On Guy Fawkes' Day you saw carts full of Guys going slowly along, and the same thing happened in May, when there were Jack-o'-the-Greens. Down Bull and Mouth Street, they once saw a tumbler spread his carpet and turn somersaults, and on August I, which was Grotto Day (why they never knew), little girls sat at the corners and by the kerbstones with neatly built piles of oyster shells. They kept saying, "Please to remember the Grotto." Angelina gave away a whole sixpence once, and dimly felt that she was making a votive offering.In 1876 the streets were still fanciful, and people did things merely because they were traditional; not exactly for profit, although profit came. To-day w e are laboriously philanthropic, and in place of the delightful Grotto, a Hospital Box is jangled under your nose. Angelina, in the City, when she was only ten; trod upon the fringe of all these pretty things that have now departed.You turned out from Aldersgate Street, up steps and through iron gates on your way to Miss Hopkins's; that is, if you went that way and not by Prince Edward Street. Since the unpleasantness with Rupert Meech they rather eschewed that street. Blanche said, with her uncontrollable giggle, that his Papa might lure them in and pull out all their teeth. In the paved court that you went through after passing the gateway, provision shops were upon either side. There was the fishmonger's with beautiful pink salmon, where, also, they boiled poor lobsters alive. Once, so Blanche declared, she heard them screaming. There were red lobsters; these were dead. There were live black ones, feebly crawling on the marble slab. "They look better when they are dead," said Blanche. Angelina returned with her manner of blissful faith:"Well, of course, after death we do look better."She applied her curious theories of a future life, instilled by Kitty, even to poor lobsters ready for the pot.The fishmonger's was beautiful, but their own fishmonger, Sweeting in Cheapside, was better. He was famous and all the world knew of him, just as all the world knew of Peachey and Balles. Not only did Angelina's Papa go to Sweeting's every day at eleven for stout and a sandwich, but, when they happened to be on good terms, he now and then took his wife to have a fish dinner there. She would describe the courses to Mrs. Chope.As well as the fishmonger's, there was a fruiterer's, and in summertime women sat outside shelling peas. There was also a small shop where you could buy sheets of coloured tissue-paper to make table mats.Angelina remembered it so well when she grew up and when it had passed away. She even remembered that once she had bought an orange of the woman at the corner of Barbican, and had not paid for it. There was not a halfpenny in her pocket as it happened. She had quarrelled with Blanche that morning, so they went their different ways to Miss Hopkins's. She said to the orange woman, "I will pay you to-morrow," but very soon after that Grandmamma Peachey was ill, and in the early morning of St. Valentine's Day she died. That, with the funeral and being fitted for black, put everything else out of your head.When Angelina was a woman, she went one day to look for the orange seller, who had stood at the corner of Barbican and who had reminded her of St. Mary of Egypt. She still stood there, and she seemed to be the only thing that had not changed. Angelina said gravely:"Years ago I bought an orange and didn't pay for it. I forgot. Do you remember? I must pay for it now, and with interest."She gave the woman a shilling and a dazzling smile. St. Mary of Egypt took both apathetically, and when Angelina went on down Barbican (it was to look for the doll shop) she stared after her, with her eyes bolting. She remarked to another orange woman that "the person" was certainly cracked. And she thoughtfully bit the shilling.The great excitement and joy of the whole year was the breaking-up soiré which the Misses Hopkins gave just before Christmas. When Angelina was ill with her little feverish attack she had been afraid she would not be well enough to go, but she recovered completely a couple of weeks before.When the evening came, there was a delicious perturbation in the
Peachey household, and Mrs. Chope, the music mistress, came over to help the
				children dress. She suggested the last
				touches; for she had a genius for
				dress and was mysteriously supposed to have seen "better days"; Angelina wondered what this meant. Her second husband, Chope, was merely a warehouseman at the wholesale place in Cheapside, where the young men practised on summer evenings with a fire escape. But her first husband had been, as she frequently said, lowering her voice and shaking her head, a gentleman. He had lost his money by horse-racing; so now she was just Chope's wife and also housekeeper to the young men in the wholesale shop. She lived at the top of the house: on the south side of Cheapside and a few doors from the furrier's, where the stuffed polar bear was in the window. She had a sunny parlour at the back, with window-boxes full of nasturtiums, musk and canary creeper. For she had lived in the country all her life before her misfortunes came, and in what, again darkly, she described as "her own place." Angelina and Blanche had been with their mother to take tea with Mrs. Chope, although Mrs. Peachey felt this to be a condescension. Mrs. Chope was her great friend and mentor; but to the children she was merely the vehicle for tiresome new pieces. The one mitigation was that she usually gave them dance music, with a picture on the cover. Angelina's new piece was the Just Out Galop, with a picture of newlyhatched golden chickens and a few broken eggshells. Mrs. Chope had lots of music pupils, and she also played sometimes at evening parties. She was received on a semi-friendly footing in houses where Mr. Chope would not have been allowed to show his face.She came across on the night of the soirée to help with their hair: to admire their dresses, and, with tact, to suggest. Mrs. Peachey was sensitive.Blanche's flaxen curls were a joy to behold, but Angelina's hair merely made her mother groan, for it was useless to curl or even to crimp those silky black masses. At the slightest damp they fell out of curl again and merely hung in unworthy straggles upon her bare shoulders. As ill-luck would have it, this was a pouring wet night. You could hear rain dashing vixenishly against the window-panes as you dressed in the warm, big bedroom, where a roaring fire had been lighted."It's no good touching it, not even with the tongs," said Mrs. Peachey to her friend, and she plaited Angelina's hair rather vixenishly into two thick, very long tails, and tied ribbon bows at the end. Mrs. Chope, after a modest pause (the seemly pause of a poor friend), produced a little darling wreath of artificial lilac, dyed coral colour."I remembered that Angelina was going to wear cerise," she said. "So I brought this."She made a crown of it to set upon the black hair, and Angelina, looking in the cheval glass and delighted with herself, at once and for ever forgave Mrs. Chope the many new pieces of music that she had imposed.She was just as much ashamed of her straggly black tails as her mother was: for it seems to be the fate of dark, straight-haired little girls to feverishly envy pink-and-white blondes. She went to bed every night with her hair merely plaited to keep it out of her eyes, but Blanche's head bristled with curl papers. She used to toss about on the pillow trying to find an easy place, and she made a horrid crackling. This was one of her noisy ways. Angelina would say irritably:"Why doesn't Kitty curl your hair in something quiet?"They wore for the soirée this year white frocks of the finest book muslin that money could buy. The skirts were full and flounced to the waist. Angelina had cerise bows and a sash; Blanche had sky-blue. When Mrs. Chope brought out the coral-coloured flower wreath for Angelina, Mrs. Peachey, blushing, for Blanche was her favourite child, just as she was her father's—Angelina coming nowhere, with either of them—went to a drawer of the dressing-table and rummaged about until she found a fillet of imitation turquoises, with a black velvet bow. This she fastened into Blanche's yellow curls.At the last it was suggested that they should go downstairs to Grandmamma's apartments and show themselves off. She would sulk if they did not and snub them if they did. They went with a certain trembling, but she received them graciously. For Angelina, she produced a string of coral beads that accorded excellently with her bright bows and her flower wreath. She kissed her as she fastened it round the thin throat, and, looking at her oddly, said:"You are going to be a pretty thing, some day. I am sorry for that."Blanche looked on. She wore a silver filagree pendant and chain which was her mother's. Grandmamma took no notice of her whatever.When they started off, Angelina hoarded the sweet social sense of that drive in the four-wheeler from St. Paul's Churchyard to St. Bartholomew Close. It was a cold and wretched night, with the rain coming down in torrents. But inside the cab it was beautifully warm, for they had opera cloaks, one blue and one white, lined and trimmed with swansdown. They had hot-water bottles, too, to keep their legs in the openwork stockings and bronze slippers nice and warm. They had also their luxurious atmosphere of crisp muslin frocks and laceedged pocket-handkerchiefs, that were delicately sprinkled with the very best scent. Angelina, sitting still, was inwardly radiant, and she forgot all about St. Mary of Egypt, with her piteous penance and her long privations. Ever since she had taken her for her patron saint she had thought of her almost constantly and petitioned her very often. But St. Mary of Egypt would not understand to-night's joy. They turned the corner into St. Martin's le Grand. The fire escape near Sweeting's shop looked unusually red, and there was a regular tumble of City men and boys going helter-skelter towards the General Post Office to catch the country post. The soirée started at six, and ended at ten.Kitty was in the cab, and when it stopped at the Misses Hopkins, she carried them across the muddy pavements to the bright house so that their bronze shoes should not get dirty. They were big girls, but Kitty was strong. Then she drove back to put Grandmamma Peachey to bed, and she would call for them in another cab at ten. Angelina was sorry for Kitty, who had no fun and whose Patrick had been drowned by floods in Australia.The four Misses Hopkins lived in a dingy house built in the first year of Queen Anne. A staid row of these red houses stood on the east side of the Close in 1876; all of them are swept away now, and even when Angelina was only ten and went there to school ugly new warehouses were springing up. But there was a great deal of peaceful feeling left: a sort of sweet mouldiness of the past. On sunny afternoons when you sat at plain needlework with the four narrow windows open, the distant buzz of City traffic out there in Aldersgate might have been only swarming bees or busy starlings. The "young ladies" did plain needlework every afternoon, sitting in demure rows at long tables. There were three tables, with an observant Miss Hopkins at the head of each one. The Misses Hopkins "fixed" your work for you and made you unpick it if not nicely done. The "young ladies" made nothing but fine underclothing.The fourth Miss Hopkins, although the youngest sister, was really not a Miss Hopkins at all. She was a widow, Mrs. Bauble, and had seen a great deal of sorrow. Angelina had heard Miss Sophia Hopkins say this once to her mother. It was when Mrs. Peachey brought her and Blanche as new girls and was received in the drawing-room by Miss Sophia, who was the moving spirit of the school. The remark made a great impression upon Angelina, and she anxiously studied Mrs. Bauble, who was a massive woman, with a woebegone expression and a large nose which she powdered constantly and badly. Mrs. Bauble taught the little boys in a schoolroom at the back, and to Angelina there was a certain resemblance between her and Mrs. Chope: but the music mistress appeared to have a sorrow merely of the pocket, while Mrs. Bauble's was of the soul.The children were received on the night of the soirée by Miss Sophia and Miss Fanny in the front drawing-room. There were three, one opening out of the other and each one smaller than the one you went through before; so that the last was only a powder closet. The Misses Hopkins kept their beautiful china there. They were the daughters, "orphaned daughters" they were fond of calling themselves, of an army doctor who, when young, had been abroad a great deal and had brought back many beautiful things. When he married, he started a practice in this very house, and here the Misses Hopkins had been born and here they had lived all their lives. When their Mamma and their Papa died, leaving them beautiful china, some curios and very little else, they stayed on in the spacious City house and started an Academy for Young Ladies. Miss Sophia, the eldest, was now over sixty; so that their residence went back a long time. They had seen many changes in the Close, and these they deplored.Angelina was never impressed with the interior. She did not like the old furniture. It was even more shabby than Grandmamma Peachey's. She loved her own drawing-room at home, where they had everything of the latest and best. Spindle-legged chairs covered with needlework; small oval mirrors in faint gilt frames; stacks of Oriental china and a tall Broadwood piano with delicate pillars and carved acanthus foliage made no appeal to her. But to-night everything looked different. A great fire burned in the flashing steel grate, and the Misses Hopkins wore dresses of shot silk, and were quite human in their manner. They were really genial. When Angelina and Blanche entered, making a curtsey at the door, Miss Sophia rustled up and kissed them. She called them by their Christian Dames. In term-time the whole manner of the school was rigidly formal. They were then the Misses Peachey. Every one was called "Miss," both by the mistresses and their fellow-pupils, and on entering the room they were required to make deep curtseys, turning to every Miss Hopkins with a "Good-morning, Miss Sophia"; "Good-morning, Miss Fanny"; "Good-morning, Miss Grace." If they met gloomy Mrs. Bauble on the stairs or in the passages they curtseyed more deeply than ever, for her grim air frightened them, and said, "Good-morning, Mrs. Bauble." You did not call the other young ladies by their Christian names unless you became great friends; for example, Louisa Roof remained "Miss Roof" to Angelina from first to last.After they had been received in the drawing-room, they went with beating hearts upstairs into the schoolroom, which was transformed into a place of freedom and beauty, and from which the sounds of a fiddle and a piano came. Miss Grace, in a brown silk dress with golden stars, and Mrs. Bauble, in stiff black silk and a Honiton fichu, received them at the door.Angelina made her sweeping curtsey and then looked fleetly round her and saw everything at a glance. She saw that Miss Roof has a Prince of Wales's plume of three white ostrich feathers in her head; which was absurd.George Conisbee, looking quite grown up in a fancy waistcoat and a black suit, was talking to her. She was giggling and swinging her head to make the feathers nod. Idiot! But the important thing was, and in fact the only thing of importance, that Angelina saw nothing of Arthur Rogers. Presently Blanche came up looking excited and pink—she had left her sister to talk to her clearest friend, Miss Drummond—and said:"Isn't it awful, Angy? They say that Arthur Rogers has something wrong with his brain; a long word, I can't remember. But he won't live, and his mother is watching by his bedside day and night. It came on quite suddenly, only the day before yesterday."This made the soirée black for Angelina. She did not know before how fond she was of Arthur, and she despised herself because, even through her grief, she was thrilled by a ghoulish sense of drama and was even possessed not so much by the thought of his suffering as to what her own feelings would be if he died. She said passionately to her saint:"St. Mary of Egypt, pray for me. Don't let me be heartless."She was afraid; seeing, so she supposed, a fiendish and hitherto unsuspected quality in her nature.With a vague sense of doing penance and of so purging herself, she danced three times with ill-favoured Rupert Meech. She recognised in him another victim, but it gave her no elation. She was thinking of Arthur Rogers, lying with iced bandages upon his head. Blanche came up again in the middle of the evening and, with lugubrious relish, told her about the bandages; for the Drummonds lived next door to Mrs. Rogers. Rupert Meech squeezed Angelina's hand when they danced, and it was clammy even through his kid glove. At least, she thought so; he was one of those people she never could get used to. He said at last with a regular leer—he was certainly an ill-bred boy:"If I asked my mother to ask you to tea would you come, Miss Peachey?"This was uncanny; it seemed the last outrage. Poor Arthur Rogers, whose brain was gone, had asked her exactly the same thing. But that had been a thrilling moment. They had held hands when he said it; moreover, his nice blue eyes had said a great deal more. Angelina, her own eyes dangerously flashing, surveyed the smirking countenance of the new boy, Rupert Meech:"No, I wouldn't!" she said passionately. "I'd die first, so there! Anything I ate in your house would choke me, Master Meech."She twisted herself away from his arm in the middle of the dance, and went and sat on a form by herself. The forms were arranged all round the room and covered with crimson cushions to look like rout seats.She did not dance any more, and she was enormously relieved when the "Misses Peachey's carriage" was announced. For her heart was broken, and she would never be happy any more.She wondered if it would be possible to wear black for the rest of her life; to begin, say, with a black hair-ribbon. She would like to do this without any one suspecting why she did it, but she knew that her mother would ask awkward questions. She did not expect delicacy of her Mamma.When she and Blanche got home they went straight into the drawing-room. Their father and mother sat there alone together, as they always did in the evenings. There was a prickly air of silent irritation in the room. This expressed it; and Angelina, although she could not put it into words, was always conscious of this air when her father and mother were together. United by the closest human tie, these two were yet far divided.She looked round the drawing-room and its solid elegance consoled her; for she admired very much the big, round table with carved legs and an inlaid top. The cold, imposing ugliness of a marble mantelpiece with pink glass lustres at each end and a gilt clock in the middle struck her as sumptuous; and sumptuous also was the cabinet with glass doors and ormolu ornamentation. Mrs. Peachey had no beautiful china, so the glass doors had fluted curtains of grass-green sarsnet inside. This drawing-room had been redecorated for her when she married. The walls were papered: satiny paper with bunches of most life-like flowers. Flowers also were on the pile carpet. It seemed cruel to tread upon them. A case of wax fruit stood on the top of the china cabinet. It was also most life-like fruit, and there was even a tiny, pearlhandled knife with which to cut it. Those glistening fat grapes made your mouth water.Angelina, in one of her rapid glances, absorbed afresh these well-known and deeply-admired objects. She was fortified by them. Blanche began to talk at once: saying who she had danced with and what she had for supper. It had been a beautiful supper: but, for Angelina, the dainty sandwiches might have been spread with so much sawdust. She had been wretched about Arthur Rogers, and possessed by the imagination of what her incurable grief would be if he died.Mr. Peachey, sitting quietly upon the horsehair sofa, with his head back against one wool antimacassar and another one rolled round his knees, surveyed his girls curiously. He had not seen them before they went to the soirée. He had been lying down, as he often did. Sometimes, so their mother upon these occasions told the children, business affairs exhausted him.She looked up now from the table where she sat filling in a Berlin wool footstool cover with claret colour, and said sharply, through Blanche's patter:"Tim! I do wish you wouldn't twist the antimacassar round your legs like that."She was particular about the antimacassars. In summertime, cotton ones hung over the backs of the chairs, and in winter, as now, there were wool ones, of double Berlin wool and made in shaded colours. They looked, so Angelina thought, beautifully rich."Nonsense! I must keep my knees warm. Come here Angelina. Come at once, when I tell you."She was standing in the middle of the room, perfectly still and quite silent. He had stared from one child to the other. Blanche was so flushed that her cheeks looked coarsened and even painted. That girl was tawdry and utterly cheap; she was like her mother. In this scornful way, he dismissed her, although, hitherto, she had been his pet. Angelina he had scolded or ignored; once—but he was ill then, and he now, with shame, recalled that occasion—he had boxed her ears, although she had done nothing to deserve it.He remembered, and it was clear that she had not forgotten; for when he said "Come here, Angelina," she appeared to cower. Poor little soul, with her fragile loveliness and her curious, proud manner of solitary sorrow—odd in a child! Timothy Peachey hated himself."Come along," he said, and smiled.When he smiled, it wasn't often, all the Irish charm which lay perdu in the man burst through. The husk of him, which was bearing with his arid domestic affairs and trying to stun himself by the application of an even more arid and hopeless philosophy, dropped apart and showed the clean, sweet kernel. Angelina went slowly up, fixing him with her blue eyes. She sat, not speaking, on the sofa. Blanche was saying shrilly to her mother:"I danced every dance. I was much admired. Mamma, I couldn't help hearing people say so. Mrs. Drummond said—there were lots of parents there and I wish you had gone too—'What is the name of that little fairy with the blue sash who is dancing with Basil?'—her boy, Basil Drummond, you know. I couldn't help hearing."Mrs. Peachey, kissing her, said:"S—sh, darling, don't make too much noise. Grandmamma has been ill since you went to the party and we had to send for the doctor. She is asleep now."Timothy Peachey, with a funny gruff sound that might have been a moan, was cuddling Angelina close up to him, and for the first time since she had been small."You are a little dark beauty and a darling," lie said, delicately touching the coral wreath.It had slipped forward and curved above her straight, fine brows that were so black.The caressing charm of his voice—that South Irish voice which was Kitty's too, and also Grandmamma's—allured her. With an intense response to this new tenderness, she put both bare arms deliberately round his neck. There was nothing birdlike and quick about Angelina's gestures, although thoughts flew and eyes darted. In movement, wings kept folded.He wondered what those arms were saying as they tightly clasped him: what asking, what saying!For Angelina's part, those words of his, "You are a little dark beauty and a darling," wiped out every sense of injury, and for ever. She had always adored, and now she canonised him. She superbly swept clean out of recollection everything! For, never, did she do anything by halves. He had not been kind. He had ignored her; looked over her head and beyond her at Blanche. Sometimes, with a more active enmity, he had gibed at her and made her seem ridiculous in her own eyes and in the eyes of other people. Once he had struck her. Many times he had brutally told her to get out of his sight. Certainly he had hated her.But that was gone. Her head was at his cheek. She was tickled and scrubbed by those plentiful whiskers: men were hairy in the 'seventies.They might have stayed there for ever so long; both were oblivious. But Mrs. Peachey said quite crossly:"Come along up to bed, Angelina. You are a great big girl. Don't behave like a baby; besides, your Papa is tired. Why do you let her be so silly, Tim?"Angelina stood up. She kissed him gravely. With equal gravity he returned her kiss.She went up to bed in the wake of her mother and whispering Blanche. When she looked in the long glass of the wardrobe, as Kitty unhooked her frock and untied that beautiful sash with the knotted fringe, she considered that her dark head with the coral-coloured wreath was, beyond compare, lovely. She no longer envied Blanche, and she never would again.Blanche said, when Kitty had gone and the night-light burned faintly and floated in its saucer of water:"I shan't say any prayers to-night. I'm too tired. I'm sure it can't matter for once."She jumped into bed and looked at the shadows which the night-light made upon the walls.They were big girls, but their mother was old-fashioned and still they had a night-light, as if they were babies. Blanche stared glitteringly about her. Her cheeks burned and her head felt luxuriously easy because, to-night, Kitty had not troubled to put it into papers. She was not going to school to-morrow. They had broken up. Presently she said fretfully, "Oh, do come to bed!"For Angelina had been kneeling motionless a long time and looked nothing but a little statue in her long nightgown."You are only showing off," continued Blanche. " Get into bed, can't you? I shall tell Mamma in the morning if you don't come."So Angelina arose from her knees, and, climbing into the high bed, sunk herself into the soothing feathers. She had been bursting with thanksgiving and she could not pray enough. Her father's caress had made her happy, and she thought that, for all her life, she would certainly continue to I,e just as joyful as she felt now. As for Arthur Rogers, she had clean forgotten him. She seemed to stand at the foot of the ladder of life, ready to climb, looking up at stars and sunlight. This was paradoxical, but she had thought of it, and she would neither dismiss nor disturb it. She fell asleep saying "Stars and sunlight." She saw the rungs of her fairy ladder. Life had changed.But the sorrowful thing happened next day. Timothy Peachey was in a state of anguished shyness, and in this he, continued. He more deeply regretted his tender outburst to Angelina than he did the box on the ears that he had given her. Henceforth, her very presence reproached him and she stood, as a feminine thing, for everything that he detested. She was reminiscent of his mother in her worst phases, and he brooded to morbidity upon all the misery of that big house at Putney, where his father had lived and where he had faithfully covered up the faults of a light woman because she was his wife. Timothy Peachey was unhappy in his womankind: in the mother which Nature had bestowed upon him and in the wife to whom, in Puritan self-defence, he had early bound himself.Of his two girls, give him Blanche, with her fresh face, already too deeply pink, and her cheerful barmaid ways! Blanche would be straight. She would be merely vulgar as her mother was. He preferred that. Vulgarity got upon your nerves, perhaps, yet it made no assault upon your soul. He liked what, vaguely, he called "a good woman": meaning those who are stupid and safe.After that revealing night of the soirée he was not unkind to Angelina. He was worse. He glazed himself over and became, to her, a man in a coating of frozen glass. His eyes said "I detest you."Christmas and the winter passed away. The children went to school every day, except sometimes when the fog was too thick for any one to go out unless they were obliged to. Angelina loved the inner yellow warmth of those secluded days, lamps in the house and queer silence; out of doors, slow movement, fitful torches and a sense of the husky whisper. The very bell of the Cathedral was muted. Among other differences in these fog days was the fact that Mr. Peachey did not go across to Sweeting's for his sandwich and stout. His wife was afraid that he would get run over. Curiously, he yielded to her upon this nervous point and stayed rigidly either in the shop or in his little sanctum at the back of it. The shop was warm and softly lighted, and very fragrant. Fog hung in it, as an amber mist. Angelina loved the shop. But she only saw it through peeps in at the door as they went to school or came home. They were never allowed into the shop. She was not even a customer and could not buy a bottle of scent or have a medicine made up.Grandmamma was ill through that winter and they had to keep quiet. It was certainly a serious illness, for the doctor came. Also her confessor, Father Cole, came. Every morning after Angelina had made her stately curtseys at the schoolroom door Miss Sophia would say:"And how is your Grandmamma, Miss Peachey?"Arthur Rogers had not returned to school, but they understood that he was not going to die. One day Miss Drummond told Blanche that he had been allowed to sit up for half an hour, and later on came the bulletin that he was to be moved to the seaside. He would probably, when he got quite strong, go to a school at the seaside: one for delicate boys. The City was bad for him. Angelina heard all this without emotion. She did not care for Arthur any more. She had done with him, and as a sensation he no longer existed. If he had died she would have devoted the rest of her life to his memory. Of this she felt sure. To get better and to go on living was so tame.George Conisbee had also left. His Papa, who was a musician, had got an appointment as organist at a church in Manchester, and the Misses Hopkins were given a quarter's fee in lieu of notice. Miss Roof had letters from George. She used to read them on the sly during school hours, looking across the long table at Angelina in a knowing way. But Angelina did not care, and she told herself that her heart must be dead. There really was not any one in whom she took a particular interest. Now and then she cast a speculative eye upon Basil Drummond, who was one of Mrs. Bauble's pupils and the same age as Arthur Rogers, and better looking; but it was too much trouble to take the initiative, and Basil was a studious

boy, with a very imperfect imagination. As for Rupert Meech, he was at home with mumps and would not return until the half-quarter. The New Year had brought, for Angelina, several changes.

On St. Valentine's Day, to her own amazement, for she had been feeling dull and sad for weeks, she woke up early and lay quivering with excitement in the big bed. Blanche was curled like a hedgehog and breathing peacefully at her side. Angelina listened for the postman. When he came, he lingered a long time at the door, and she heard the soft thud upon the mat of several packages. In those days St. Valentine was properly regarded, and his Festival brought you valentines of lace paper and of satin pincushions shaped as hearts: perfumed inside and printed with delightful sentiments. Sometimes, in the more expensive valentines, there was even a tiny bottle of scent or a little locket.Angelina slid out of bed, dug her feet into her warm slippers, and put on her wadded silk dressing-gown. She always had expensive things, for Mrs. Peachey's one delight was to go down -the Churchyard with Mrs. Chope and buy clothing either for herself or her girls.Angelina went downstairs. The house was dim. She held on to the massive hand-rail, which was painted maroon. The delicately twisted balustrades were painted putty-colour. This had been done in the agreeable days when a Peachey and a Balles lived together here in amity. She had heard her father say so; and he added that it was a great pity, since the staircase was oak. He had a taste, rather unusual at that time, for domestic antiquity.There upon the mat was heaped up delight. Angelina, in the strengthening dawn and the bitter cold, sorted out her own valentines from Blanche's. There were nine envelopes and four flat parcels addressed to Miss Angelina Peachey. With delicately exact honour she would not even count Blanche's. Anything not for herself she pushed aside at once, making her mind as much of a blank for numbers as she could.She was going back to bed, with her letters in one hand and the boxes in her looped-together nightgown, when she heard a door shut above. At once she knew it for some eloquent closing, and stood still. She was between the drawing-room floor and the floor above, which was Grandmamma Peachey's. Above this was her father and mother's bedroom and the guest-rooms. But they never had any one come to stay. Both Mr. Peachey and his wife were only children, so that Angelina and Blanche had no cousins. When the Misses Hopkins's young ladies were counting up Christmas-parties and Christmas presents, Angelina and Blanche had suffered some sense of indignity; yes, even Blanche. For it seemed incomplete—it was a social slur upon you—not to have cousins and not to have a breezy Uncle James. Miss Roof bragged of her Uncle James.Angelina heard the door shut and then she heard her father burst out crying. Yes, he was just blubbering, as you might yourself. In fact, thought Angelina, trembling with excitement and lovely motherly compassion for him, you were too big to blubber like that at all. He was just a great baby. For one awful second she imagined that his brain had gone, as Arthur's had threatened to go. It had only been arrested in its flight by iced bandages and utter quiet. They had laid down straw before the Rogerses' house and this had struck her as dramatic. She and Blanche had gone home that way, and walked softly in this straw and looked up at the window of the room where Arthur lay.She heard her father cry. By looking up the staircase she could see him, and she saw her mother too. Both of them wore dressing-gowns. Mrs. Peachey was a meagre woman, and in daytime not even puffed panniers and bell sleeves and her hair done in French puffs saved her from this impression. This morning, in a flat dressing-gown which clung to her in a helpless, hopeless way, the spare ugliness of her body showed relentlessly. Both Angelina, the child, watching, and Timothy Peachey, the man, half-consciously noticing, were aware of this and were diverted from her."She is ugly," thought Angelina viciously, for she did not love her mother in the least, and you could not wonder.Mrs. Peachey would take Angelina's sweets to give them to Blanche, who always gobbled her own things up in a hurry. Once, when the children were much smaller and had been left alone in the nursery, they had played with the fire and Blanche got burned upon the arm. Her mother insisted that Angelina, although two years younger, had either deliberately done this or was, at least, responsible. Diabolically, she heated the handles of the nail scissors in the candle flame and burned Angelia upon the arm. The child never forgot. Nor did she forget that her father had indignantly taken her part. He had said to her mother: "You are a mean devil. If you have a soul at all, it's the size of a monkey nut; yes, and rotten in the shell."She could not remember nearly all the words, but she knew he had been very angry. And he had carried her downstairs in his arms into the room behind the shop, and given her a beautiful little naked baby doll made of pink soap.She looked up at him now. She could see him standing outside Grandmamma Peachey's bedroom door. This was the door that they had shut so softly. He had taken his handkerchief out of his pocket and was frankly wiping his eyes. He looked at her mother, and although Angelina did not know it, he also was thinking "She is ugly."Those flat-hipped women; yes, and flat chested too, how they alienated you! Timothy Peachey, uncontrollably, whimsically, in the midst of his violent grief, was thinking this. He looked at the hair which once was golden and now was mousey brown. What a little she had when the pads were taken out! These blondes! They did not last. He could notice all this; and yet his whole nature was in a tempest not of grief, but of something more harrowing. His mother was dead. To lose a good mother, that is bad enough, and rending enough for any man. But to lose a bad one! To think of all the tenderness of the relationship and of all the poetry that has been woven about it—and then to remember her reckless, faithless youth and middle life—that, and her hopeless old age. He was Catholic as she had been; the Faith was in his blood, although he had forsworn it. Standing here upon the landing; just blubbering, just cynically studying his ugly wife, he thought naturally and devoutly of the Mother of God, who is pattern for all mothers.It was very awful to see a man cry. It turned you to stone. Angelina, until now, had never realised that they ever did cry or could. She hoped that, never, would she see this sight again, for she could not bear it. She crouched upon the stairs so that her parents should not see her. She knew that if her father knew she had seen him cry he would not only never forgive her, but he would not wish to see her again. He would send her away to boarding school. If a man put his wife away he could put away his daughter. She reflected upon this.When she and Blanche were naughty, they were threatened with boarding school. Angelina realised now, but only in a dim way, why her father had been ashamed after the night of the soirée and why he had been so brutal to her ever since. She respected him. Early, the conviction came to her that it is a criminal exposure: this too-frequent showing of your soul. For he had done a great deal more than kiss her. He had betrayed his most guarded reserves. You could only be perfectly frank with the blessed Saints. They fully understood, and you did not feel ashamed afterwards.He had his handkerchief in his hand. Angelina watched him. The landing grew perceptibly lighter. She did hope and pray that they would go upstairs and not come down. If her mother saw her, she would whip her, send her to bed, put her on bread and water. She would impose all the punishments. But Angelina did not care for that; she only wished to spare her father's delicacy. Regally, she dismissed any thought' of her own suffering.He sobbed out, "My mother, my mother. She is dead."He seemed to cast about for comfort, to look for something upon which to pillow his poor head.But Angelina's mother was standing rigid, and her thin face was ghastly to look at. She was pale. Upon her chin was one of those red pimples or heat spots to which Cook weeks back had so rudely alluded. Presently she spoke. It was the cracking of whips."Thank God she is dead. Yes, thank God. I'm sure I've prayed for it. A wicked old wretch, Timothy. I don't care if she was your mother. A woman who wasn't fit to—oh, you know what I mean and I will speak! I don't care. Think what it has been for a respectable wife and mother, a girl who was brought up good, if ever a girl was, to stand the tantrums of a woman like that. As bad as she can be; born bad, some are. I know all about it. You can't stop me. I don't mean to be stopped. I'll have my say, just for this once, if it kills you, yes, kills you. I've had to be so careful, never saying a word, never getting all that I feel off my mind; for fear of killing her and for fear of killing you. But I don't care what it does. I'll say my say this morning."She stamped. She was trembling. Angelina loathed her."You have said it;" he spoke quietly, and he put his handkerchief back into his dressing-gown pocket. His face was calm. It was even affectionate. One noble spasm passed across it. That was all."Yes, I suppose you have suffered with her. We all did," he said thoughtfully. "Come back to bed, there's a dear girl. Kitty"—he looked back at the closed door—" will lay her out and do everything. I am glad that the priest came and confessed her. It means nothing to you, but——""It means less to you, Timothy."Angelina's mother spoke gently too. Her outburst had spent itself. The worst of it was that her outbursts were never really spent. She had by his mother's death (he knew this perfectly well) attained to a new topic for nagging. It would be a deep well; constantly would she draw from it. Such an industrious bucket! He would have very little peace after this."I don't know what anything means to me this morning," he returned. "I shall get my sense of reason back in time. I'm sentimental and maudlin; it takes a lifetime to drive these traditional domestic and religious ideas out of your head, and even then you haven't done it."He was speaking fast. He was declaiming. Angelina did not understand half that he meant, nor could she hear all the words. His wife was standing close up to him with that hard, unheeding look upon her face. She stared at the panel of the closed door; she cast at it the regular vixenish look of the thoroughly virtuous woman.Angelina saw the look, but she did not understand. She was mystified throughout. But certain facts were clear: she loved her father, she hated her mother, and Grandmamma Peachey was dead. Of this last she was glad. How could you help being glad? Grandmamma had been unkind, she had been half mad. Yet she, too, had been charming once or twice. Angelina remembered the string of beads on the night of the soirée. That was a night to make history. So much had happened then.She remained upon the stairs, sitting on her bare legs and looking cautiously up through the twisty banisters. Her father went on talking."It is inevitable. A man only loses his mother once and I repeat, although it means nothing to me and will mean nothing to me when my own time comes, that I'm glad Father Cole gave her the last Sacraments."He looked feebly defiant. Angelina's mother confronted him with a faint smile. How ugly she was and how cruel! She was merciless. That woman was a devil."I hate you!" whispered Angelina, looking up; and she liked to feel that she hissed these words."Let's get back to bed," her father was speaking with a weary toleration. "I'm very cold and you know the doctor says I must not be. We don't want any more trouble in the house just yet.""We want to have a little peace, at last," said Angelina's mother. (If you had not hated her so much, you might have felt, perhaps, sorry for her.) They both moved along the landing. He was speaking again, and now with the most ravishing tenderness and just as he had spoken on the night of the soirée. Angelina could no longer see his face as he went cautiously up the stairs with her thin mother behind him. But she could imagine that he was smiling. He spoke in that beautiful voice which you could not resist, and he said"We don't want to wake the children yet; dear, innocent, happy little souls. Let them sleep as long as they can."They went away. Angelina could no longer see them, but only heard the steady pad of their four feet. She was saved, and they would not find her. She heard their bedroom door shut. Then she stood up, feeling stiff, feeling frightened to death. To slip past Grandmamma Peachey's door was a grisly ordeal, but she accomplished it. As she passed her parents', she heard her mother's fretful sentences inside the room. She was certainly scolding him.The valentines seemed to have grown heavier, as if they also were dead.This morning Angelina had heard a great deal which she did not understand. She had looked through the window of Life and seen a new picture. It was grim.Her own bedroom was warm and quiet. Blanche, looking lovely, all pink and yellow, lay fast asleep still. Angelina, softly turning back the bedclothes, saw the impress of her own body, hollow, at her sister's side. It seemed ghastly, yet why she could not say. She was full of terrors, perceptions and odd ideas.She put her valentines on the chair beside the bed. They did not interest her. They had become trivial. She altered her mind and put them in her top drawer. Getting into bed and lying, straight, beside voluptuously curled up Blanche, she besought her patron saint for the repose of Grandmamma Peachey.When she had exhausted her store of petition, she turned gingerly to look at Blanche. She would have something worth while to tell her sister later on. She would make her eyes start out of her head. This really was something of a secret. She would whisper to Blanche that Grandmamma Peachey was dead. Angelina was enchained by her own feelings as usual. Everything radiated around her and ministered.She fell asleep, for it was still early. When Kitty came in with their hot water, it was broad daylight and there was a high tide of traffic outside. Kitty's eyes were red and she said softly, standing by the bed:"Grandma's dead, my darlings. It is nearly nine o'clock, but you won't go to school to-day."Blanche, directly she was fully awake and had realised, sat up in bed like a clockwork doll. She started crying; for she was a correct little girl and had heard that whenever there was a death in the family you "burst into tears."Angelina was lying still. She looked disdainful. Kitty had spoiled the secret. She had meant to tell Blanche herselfI LETTER TO ST. MARY OF EGYPT	DEAR ST. MARY OF EGYPT,If I write to you, putting things down when I think of them, it seems to bring you near and make you understand better than if I only kneel down and ask your prayers. But I will do that too, of course, at night and in the mornings. Before Kitty went away she gave me three things to keep and to remember her by, because I shall never see her again. She is what they call an enclosed nun, and her life is spent in praying for people who are still out in the world and who are unhappy, or who are sinners and despise the true Faith. This is more useful than feeding or clothing them; but only a saint would understand. I think it is a beautiful idea, to take the sins of other people on your shoulders. It is, Kitty said, following in the steps of the Lord Jesus. There is a long word to describe what the nuns are doing for the world, but I cannot remember, except that it begins with V, and even Kitty, who told me, could not pronounce it properly. But you will know the word, my own dear St. Mary. You are such a comfort to me, because I'm so unhappy and I always shall be. I may keep a bright face before the world, just for pride's sake and because I am a Peachey.Sometimes I think that when I grow up I would like to be a nun like Kitty; but there are things you would rather do first. I said it to Kitty and she seemed shocked; she kissed me and said she felt afraid of me. But you will understand. We had long talks before she went away and after Grandmamma Peachey died.You know, already, what trouble we have had as a family; I have told you when I asked your prayers. Still, I will write it down later on, for it makes it more real. We used to talk a great deal, Kitty and I, because there was no one else for me to talk to. I despise Blanche and hate Mamma. You won't mind me saying so? You know how horrid they are. I said to Kitty that I should be glad to be grown up and that I would get married as soon as ever I could. She was shocked again; sometimes her getting shocked so easily was a nuisance. But her face sparkled and winked, like little drops of water with the sun in them, and she talked of Patrick, who was drowned in Australia. And she made me promise that I would never marry any man unless I felt as she felt about Patrick. She said "You will understand when you grow up, Miss Angelina." Mamma says that. But I understand now. I am not nearly such a baby as she thinks. Besides, I heard her tell Cook once, when I was in bed ill, that the touch of Patrick's little finger was like quicksilver. She said that marriage could be the most lovely thing in the world or it could be the most awful, and that there was no getting out of it once you were in. It was a trap and you kept on biting your tail. So I promised her solemnly that I would be very careful, and I mean to be. I do know a little, dear saint, already; but not so much as you and Kitty. I know that to be with Arthur Rogers made me happy, and the palms of my hands would tingle if I saw him coming; and I know too, that only to touch Master Meech made me feel sick. George Conisbee came between these two boys. I did not like him very much, but I did not hate him. He didn't make me feel crawly if he touched me, but then he didn't make me tingle. He was a betwixt-and-between sort of boy. I told Kitty something about these three, but only a little, not nearly so much as I tell you. I am not shy with you or proud. She said most solemnly that the betwixt-and-between sort of person would never do—not to get married to. So I shall be careful when the time comes; I shall do nothing in a hurry. I mean always to go my own way. But I must get free of Mamma and Blanche as soon as possible.I said to Kitty at the last, on the day that she was going back to Ireland—and her nunnery is in County Kerry, where she comes from—"What would you do if the floods didn't drown Patrick after all, and if he came back and if, somehow, you heard about it? Suppose," I said, "that he planned to get into the nunnery and found you, would you go away with him? Or if he just sent a letter would you run away? "Her face twisted, as if she was taking a powder—you know what it is, St. Mary, when you get to the bowl of the spoon and all the jam is gone. At first she just said "Don't, Miss Angelina." Then when I laughed, for it does seem funny to think of Patrick deceiving all those good nuns and getting Kitty away with him to be his wife, she was very angry. I've never seen her so angry. She shook me, which she had no business to do, and said I was a wicked little thing and that she didn't know what would become of me when I grew up. Kitty was funny in some ways, but she was a regular dear, and oh, I do miss her. What I should do without you I really do not know. If you could be a real, living woman, my St. Mary, and not a lovely shining saint, and come and tuck me in at night and give me a kiss, I should be glad. Sometimes I put my hand out of bed; I stick it out in the dark and pretend that you are holding it. But it only gets cold, and if it touches Blanche's back she kicks me. You can't wonder. Everything seems so much harder to bear now Papa is dead; for you know he only pretended to hate me. Really, in his inside heart he loved me. I feel sure of it. It was the best love.The day he died was dreadful. I told you at the time. He had always had heart disease; for many years, at least. Kitty knew and Grandmamma Peachey and Mamma; and the doctor, of course. Nobody else had the least idea. Blanche and I were kept quite in the dark and never knew that at any moment we might be left fatherless, as we are now. That does not seem fair. He would have attacks of pain without any warning and fall down sometimes. That was why Mamma was never easy if he went out alone, and why she would not let him go across to Sweeting's for his eleven o'clock lunch when there was a fog. But the day he was run over by that hansom cab just outside here, near the statue, it was sunny and bright: quite a spring day. You see he had the pain and fell down, and the horse kicked him in the stomach dreadfully. He lingered for ten days. We didn't have straw outside the house as Arthur Rogers had when he was ill. This made me rather angry, for, of course, I loved my own father better than Arthur Rogers. When Arthur got better I didn't care a bit and I don't care now. I shall never really truly love any other man but my father, so I suppose I shall never get married when I grow up. You, who understand love more than some of the blessed Saints, for Kitty told me so, and I have read about you myself in the book, will sympathise. What a blessing you are to me!He lay there moaning and the doctor kept coming. At the last he sent for Blanche and had her sit on the bed, and kissed her and told her always to be a good girl. He didn't send for me. I sat out on the stairs listening near the door.At the very last he told Mamma to send for Father Cole, and although he was really dying, they quarrelled about that; for Mamma hates all Popish ways and they always quarrelled. But Kitty defied her and sent for the priest. Only my father was dead when he came. But Kitty says he is absolved all right, so that's a comfort.I saw him lying dead. He was in our drawing-room, which is a very beautiful room with lovely things in it, and he was beautiful too. The room was full of white flowers, lots of people sent them, for he was highly respected in the City. Mrs. Chope said that she had never seen a man more handsome in his coffin. There were three coffins, one lead and one they called a shell and one of polished elm. Mamma took us in. She was crying, so was Blanche. I didn't cry—not then, for I can't do things if people expect you to. My mouth felt as if it wanted to laugh. But the next day, when Mamma and Blanche and Mrs. Chope were shut in Grandmamma Peachey's rooms with the dressmaker who came with the ready-made black, I went down myself and looked at him, my poor, handsome dear. I stayed a long time, crying as if my heart would break. I slid aside the lid of the coffin by myself. Kitty found me; if ever you were in any trouble Kitty always came. She was lovely in her ways. It was Wednesday when he died and half-past seven in the morning. I made a vow that for all my life at that time and on that day of the week I would be by myself and pray for his soul. I told Kitty, but she said it was a mistake to make vows unless a priest told you to, and that no vow was binding unless the priest laid it on you and you took it solemnly before the altar. She knows about those things, and she cares for nothing but what she calls Holy Church. I could care for it too, and I do, but I am like you were, and that is why I love you so, and why I tell you everything. I want to live my life first, and sort of taste the world when I grow up. If you said anything like that to Kitty she would look so dreadfully afraid. But you, St. Mary, are different and sometimes I think of you, beautiful as you must have been once, and not old and wasted and nearly naked in the desert, as you are in the picture.We have been in a great muddle since she went away and since Papa died. She went the day after the funeral. Mamma had always disliked her, but Papa wouldn't have her sent away. So Grandmamma Peachey's drawing-room, directly after Grandmamma died, was turned into a sewing-room and Kitty did needlework for us all. She was a most beautiful needlewoman; and she could take a pattern of anything if you just described it to her. And she could trim bonnets better than a milliner. Mrs. Chope, who understands, said to Mamma one day, "That woman is a genius. She would make her fortune." They used to stroll, Mamma and Mrs. Chope, down the Churchyard and notice new fashions in the shop windows, and tell Kitty when they came back.And wasn't it funny, well, funny isn't the word, but wasn't it odd, St. Mary of Egypt, that Mr. Chope should die a week after Papa? Not that they ever knew each other, naturally, for my Papa was the head of PEACHEY AND BALLES, which is a famous business, and poor Chope was only a warehouseman at the wholesale shop. He had something the matter with his chest and went off quite suddenly. So there are two widows, Mamma and Mrs. Chope, going down the Churchyard for a walk in the afternoons. I sit and watch them through the window, and they do look black. Blanche and I have left the Misses Hopkins, because we are going out of town for good.There was a great fuss about our mourning, and I can't tell you what it cost. Our Sunday frocks have crape on the skirts to the knees, and our hats are all crape with just one lovely black silk flower at the side: a quiet flower but expensive. Mamma's bonnet is crape with a long veil at the back, and she dare not go out when there is the least rain or even a mist, else it would go limp. Mrs. Chope has a crape bonnet too, but the tail is not so crisp. Mamma has a little weeny white tucker, and the rest of her is as black as night. She has a veil over her face, with a crape border to the nose. You can just see her nose and her eyes.Mamma has sold the business to our head assistant, Mr. Barber, who was with Papa for many years, and, so I heard Mrs. Chope say, has feathered his nest. I think lie was with Grand papa too; he is quite old. Of course he will keep the name of PEACHEY AND BALLES over the door, because it is so famous. When I grow up and have money of my own I shall buy all my soaps and scents in the shop. I shall have creams for my face, and powders. I shall have all sorts of bottles and jars upon my dressing-table, as Grandmamma had. Mamma is much more simple. She only has a china pot of violet powder to powder the backs of her hands if they get chapped, and then she has a stick of black sort of grease stuff in a case, and she rubs it on her hair to keep it smooth in front. It is very smooth hair in front, and behind she does it in French rolls. Everybody has French rolls. Mrs. Chope has a curl hanging down over her shoulder, at least, she did before she was a widow. I think she is rather glad to be a widow; you see she has been through it before. It is settled that when we leave this house Mrs. Chope will live with us for a time. She will be Mamma's companion and our music mistress, just as she is now. This will be doing her a kindness.Mamma is so glad to get away from the shop, but I am sorry, for I love it. And I love the house and love going up and down stairs. They are beautiful.When I grow up and am rich I shall have a house like this if I can get it; or perhaps Mr. Barber, unless he wants it for his own family, will let me come here. I might have part. I might have Grandmamma Peachey's apartments. I am not afraid of her, and I don't dislike her now she is dead. She was a very pretty old lady. And if I don't marry I must have an establishment of my own.Have you come across Grandmamma yet in the other world? I said this to Kitty, and she burst out laughing, as if the idea tickled her. Kitty had fun sometimes. When she laughed, her eyes crinkled up. She said that it would be many a long day before Grandmamma got into the company of the Saints. I was angry, for it seemed a slur upon our family. But I could never be angry with you. It is so lovely to have a friend, as you are to me. One who could never be unkind or not understand every word. Do you know my thoughts too? I suppose not; and yet I'm not quite sure, Kitty never said. But even if you did, I should like to write to you as I am doing now. And I am using a lot of paper. I bought it myself on the sly, that day I went to school alone when Blanche had a sick headache and Alice couldn't be spared. With all this mourning in the house and two deaths and two funerals, we haven't known which way to turn. And some of the things are to be sold—Mr. Barber is taking over Grandmamma's furniture—and some we take with us when we go.I spent every penny I had in paper, but when I grow up I shall be rich. Papa was rich. He has left most of his money to Mamma, until she dies or unless she gets married again. I heard her tell Mrs. Chope, who said something about its being a shame, and then something more about a young and handsome woman. But that is absurd, for Mamma is as ugly as sin and Blanche will be like her later on. A little while ago I used to admire Blanche; I don't a bit now. She is coarse.When I grow up, I was beginning to tell you, only I think so fast and I put things down as they come, well then, when I grow up I shall be rich. Papa has left me a house. I forget where it is, a long name and a place just out of London. But there are two houses. I am to have one and Blanche is to have the other. Grandpapa Peachey bought them with some of the money he had when he sold his place at Putney.I shall have this house and I shall have money. I will buy what I like and do what I like.Dear St. Mary of Egypt, my own loved saint, this is the last sheet but two of the paper, and I must write small.It is very lonely here in Grandmamma's drawing-room; with all her furniture covered in dust-sheets and with the long kitchen table in the middle of the room, where Kitty used to cut out and sew, after Grandmamma died. Next month we are going to live at the seaside, Mamma and Mrs. Chope and Blanche and I. We may go to boarding school, as weekly boarders, but nothing is settled.In our own drawing-room I can hear Blanche practising. I did my practise directly after dinner. This is just before tea, and they send me up here for an hour alone every day to lie flat on the floor, because I am supposed to be growing round-shouldered. Mamma is very particular about our appearance. I don't wish to be deceitful, oh, you know that, but it is awfully cold lying on the floor, flat. The draught comes under the door. And when it begins to get dark and when the Cathedral bell rings, then you think of those who are dead. So I had to get up and sit on the window seat and write to you, for I felt creepy and I seemed to hear Grandmamma tap her stick. Pray for me, dear saint, and pray for those who are gone, and pray for Kitty.I want when I grow up—and I don't care how soon it is—to be good, if I can, but I mean to be happy. You will help me, so that I can be both.At the beginning of this letter, I told you that Kitty gave me three things to keep for her sake. One was the book of Saints, another was a crucifix, and the last was a pretty box covered all over with shells and with a little looking-glass inside the lid. There is a lock to the box. She had that put on. She bought it at Brighton once when she was down there with Grandmamma Peachey. I never saw prettier shells in my life.She used to keep Patrick's letters in that box; not very many, for you see he was drowned soon after he got to Australia. The day before she left us to go to the nunnery she burned those letters, in front of me, without any fuss—as if they were only bills, or as if they were Blanche's curl papers, which she throws on the fire every morning. You see she had made herself not care for him any more; or, at least, she pretended not to care. I think she was trying to feel that love-making was wicked.I shall fold this letter up small and run my thumb along the creases to keep it flat, and then I shall lock it in the box. The key I shall hide somewhere. I can't think of a safe place yet, but I will.The box shall stand on the mantelpiece in my bedroom. When we go to Brighton, Blanche and I are to have a bedroom each, as we are getting big girls; and it will be a big house too. Above the mantelpiece, I will hang the crucifix, which is beautiful, yet I don't like it so much as the box. It was Grandmamma's, and she left it in her will to Kitty. It is made of tortoise-shell, and the Christ is ivory. He looks so sad and you want to break your heart.You know, I told you at the time, how mad Mamma was at my having the crucifix. She is afraid of it. But I said I would have it. I flew into a regular rage and stamped my foot. No doubt it was wicked, but she is enough to provoke a saint. My own St. Mary, I believe that even you would be angry sometimes if you had to live with her. It would have been dreadful for you if, when you voyaged to the church at Jerusalem, there had been bad-tempered women on board. Sailors are kind and altogether different persons. I shall see plenty when I go to live at the sea. I shall make friends with them and think of you.She gave in. She let me keep my crucifix. She is afraid of me, just as she was of Grandmamma Peachey. It is just as well to know that; although why she is, goodness knows.I suppose I had better go into the middle of the room and lie flat for a bit until the tea-bell rings.I am always your Devoted and Affectionate little Friend,

				

					ANGELINA.BOOK II THE JANNAWAY PERIODCHAPTER III"THAT odd-looking young man has been walking about near the pillar box, up and down, up and down, for nearly half-an-hour," said Mrs. Chope crisply, to Mrs. Peachey. She betrayed a sporting manner.These two ladies were alone in the elegant drawing-room of an old house near the corner of West Street, Brighton. All the furniture which had been in the St. Paul's Churchyard drawing-room and which the little Angelina had reverenced, was here, and there were other things of the latest order: things that, vaguely, Mrs. Peachey called aesthetic. She and Mrs. Chope, inseparable friends and wistfully up-to-date in their ideas, had been affected by the aesthetic movement of the time; without knowing what it meant or why it was. They felt dimly that these new and, to them, rather distasteful theories, concerning furnishing and the way to dress yourself, were doomed to be the fashion. They had seen Patience at the Theatre Royal and they had heard Oscar Wilde lecture at the Pavilion. There was, therefore, more than a hint of sage green in the room, and Mrs. Chope was wearing a dress of the new colour, terra-cotta. It was trimmed with black watered silk, for there was an idea that this new colour wanted toning down with black. Hortense said so, and she was supreme. Terra-cotta, crushed strawberry and dim greens had taken the place of those more robust magentas, deep clarets and courageous violets which Mrs. Chope had once affected; for she was always in the fashion, and she had long emerged from the temporary eclipse of her bereavement. Not only that, but she had recovered from the social slur of this second marriage, and very rarely referred to "poor Chope," but boasted of her first husband, the wealthy and rashly speculative Mr. Mellison.The house in which these two ladies sat was one of those spacious stuccoed ones with beautifully bowed windows, of the Regency time. It was pulled down years ago; for Brighton has altered vastly since the eighteen-eighties. It stood almost on the sea-front and on the east side of the street; it was, in fact, very near where Sweeting's shop afterwards stood. Angelina seemed fated to have a home adjacent to Sweetings, either visibly present or mystically to come! Moreover, there was for her, and had been from the first, a sweet home touch to West Street, for, at stated hours through the day, the bell of St. Paul's rung for service. Sometimes she would go up the tunnel-like passage leading from West Street and kneel at the back in emptiness and gloom through a week-day Evensong. On Sundays she went to St. Bartholomews, the hulking brick church in Ann Street. Mrs. Peachey strongly disapproved of that church, but she had learnt that it was idle to try and control Angelina. Blanche was her girl. So on Sundays, as a family, they parted company: Mrs. Peachey and Blanche went to Holy Trinity, Ship Street, declaring the sermons to be eloquent, Angelina went to Ann Street, and Mrs. Chope went to St. Nicholas. She persisted in speaking of the Vicar of St. Nicholas as the Vicar of Brighton; for this was the old parish church, and when Mrs. Peachey's house was built, in or about the year 1810, West Street was not a place for cheap eating-houses; not a crowded thoroughfare down which the river of trippers flows easily to the sea, but a dignified country road leading to the fields amidst which this parish church stood. Mrs. Chope, who had known Brighton at the time of her first marriage, when she and her husband would drive down in their own carriage and put up at the "Ship," deplored the decay of West Street, and she was so glad that they lived at the corner and practically on the sea-front.Mrs. Chope was a giddy, elderly woman who did nothing but chatter and read Ouida's novels. She only looked forty-five, upon casual glancing, but a close inspection made a bigger total. She had an injudicious habit of reminiscence; odd in a person otherwise so sage. Once when talking of the Crimean War she had said that the winter of 1854 was very mild, "I might have worn muslins, really, and I remember the mugginess of the weather so well, because my dear husband, Mr. Mellison, was laid up with quinsy on the Ash Wednesday."After this revealing remark, Mrs. Peachey said privately to Blanche—to whom she now said most things—"Laura Chope will never see sixty again; yet she wears wonderfully."Mrs. Peachey was barely forty, yet the two women were excellent companions. Mrs. Chope's spirit was about ten years younger than Mrs. Peachey's, whatever their respective parish registers might have betrayed.There are many giddy elderly women with golden hair—Mrs. Chope's was perhaps a touch too yellow, and that, again, was where she failed in perfect prudence—but there could only be one Laura Chope; for she diffused an air not only of personal mystery, but of a really paradoxical vulgarity. When she was in a bad temper, or when she was in a good one and completely off guard she would talk, as Mrs. Peachey to her favourite daughter said, "like a regular fishwife." But Mrs. Peachey had heard or had read somewhere that the old Duchess of Newmarket had sworn like a trooper; so Mrs. Chope's occasional lapse into slang might, after all, be merely a mark of good breeding.Mrs. Chope stood by the window vivaciously watching the young man by the pillar box. Mrs. Peachey was turning over a fashion paper."Blanche ought to wear blue," she said in a worried way, "I don't think that the present fashions are very suitable for dance dresses, but anything would be better than those horrid plain skirts. I do hope they will never come in. I shouldn't feel decent without a front drapery and a back.""We used to wear plain skirts, you know."Mrs. Chope spoke over her shoulder; she was obsessed by that young man across the road."So we did, but then we had crinolines."Yes, I must say I like a crinoline—I think he's going away, and I don't wonder—they are much nicer than the dress improvers we have now. But I tell you what, Emily—now he's come back again—a steel run right round the bottom of the foundation of the skirt keeps it out beautifully from the feet and is excellent for dancing. We might speak about it to Madame Hortense when the girls go for their fitting.""I wish you'd come away from the window and look at these plates," Mrs. Peachey spoke peevishly, "we haven't really settled on trimmings yet, and the Pavilion ball is on Monday week. I don't see how she is to get the things done, myself.""Yes, she will. You trust Hortense," Mrs. Chope spoke abstractedly. "I should like to know who he's waiting for."She was nearly sixty; at least, you would have supposed so from the events that she remembered, although she only looked forty-five. She retained the liveliest interest in dress and flamboyant fiction; she had a keen eye for any flirtation. As to what, in her Cheapside days she used to speak of as "my music," she no longer exercised this talent. Angelina and Blanche were grown up and had finished lessons. Mrs. Peachey assured her of a home, and she had ingeniously hit upon a way of keeping herself in pocket-money. The late Mr. Chope had died without leaving her a penny, but she had a great deal of nice furniture which had belonged to the Mellison family, and when she came with Mrs. Peachey to Brighton they had not been in the West Street house a week before she discovered a dear little cottage to be let in South Street, only round the corner. Its backyard, in fact, was divided by a wall from the fair-sized garden which belonged to Mrs. Peachey. Later on, Mrs. Chope had a door knocked through this wall.It was a pretty cottage in a humble way; just a fisherman's cottage, one unaccountably left standing. It went back to the time when Brighton was a tiny hamlet. There was a neat door in the middle, with a small window on each side. This meant two parlours; a tiny wash-house was behind. There were shutters to the windows and a front garden with a wooden railing. Mrs. Chope rented the cottage at once, taking it on a long lease and at a low rent. She had the shutters and the railings painted what she buoyantly called a "good green." Grass was sown in the patch of garden. She had the inside papered and painted, not according to her own taste, which remained of the 1860's, and would have been expressed in brightly flowered papers with a satin stripe, but according to the new art canons of the day. When it was done she thought it looked dingy, and we have now learned that she was right, but she knew it would appeal to the genteel taste. She was sharp and she had mastered the secret of commercial success. She gave people what they wanted. Then she moved in her good furniture and she imported a few bits of eccentric needlework from the Art Shop in East Street, just to give a home touch. Also she made various domestic changes in the kitchen and elsewhere; these improvements she described generically as "conveniences." Genteel people would have conveniences, even if they went without everything else. So the fisherman's cottage, once primitive enough, was baited with many little artful dodges meant to entrap the genteel. Mrs. Chope made her appeal to this dry section of humanity only, and when she placed the house in the hands of a local agent she was very particular about the tenants that she meant to take. She resolutely refused all children and pet animals generally.She managed to let the cottage nearly all the year round, for it made a strong appeal to the refined yet penurious instincts of spinsters and widows with a small income and with perhaps a valued family servant who would appreciate the "conveniences." The widow of a prominent haberdasher from Worthing occupied it now. She had been recommended to a bracing climate.By her artistic green cottage, Mrs. Chope was not only able to dress herself, but to put by for her old age, since she might outlive Emily Peachey and she expected no mercy either from Blanche or Angelina. The girls did not like her. She remained to them the music mistress. Once Angelina had enraged her so that she had shouted suddenly, "You cheeky little hussy. For two pins I'd smack your face."Mrs. Peachey had been irate and had also been horrified; for her superior friend stood suddenly betrayed as nothing better than a street virago. This was one of Mrs. Chope's lapses. She accounted for it later on—an explanation that was almost an apology—by saying that she had caught slang of the late Mr. Mellison, who had unfortunately associated so much with low people who bred horses.But Mrs. Peachey did not forget, and Angelina henceforth treated her old music mistress, with a contemptuous, rather amused, tolerance. Angelina was very haughty and very hard to manage. It was not a well-assorted household, and it never had been. Mrs. Peachey said frequently to Mrs. Chope, "We shall never have any peace, my dear, until that girl is off our hands."They all wanted Angelina to get married, and she wanted it herself; that is, she wanted anything that would deliver her from them.Mrs. Chope now stood in the window of the West Street house watching the young man who loitered round the pillar box. He was so peculiar looking that lie might be a theatrical, she thought. The drama had a great fascination for her, and she went to the Theatre Royal whenever they were playing anything worth seeing. Usually, she went alone, since Mrs. Peachey did not approve of the theatre either for herself or her girls. She had gone to see Patience and taken them also, because she regarded it in the light of an educational influence.It was a big window and you obtained a beautiful view. This was a November afternoon and the height of the season. Sunset laid a broad red finger across the face of the responsive sea. Along the King's Road passed a procession of carriages, and richly dressed women vibrated along the pavements, moving in a glitter of colour, sun tinging their gowns and faces. The young man was short and thick set. He had a large head and little legs. These legs peeped out from the chocolate-brown coat the wore—coats they then called a Newmarket."It's the most extraordinary thing," said Mrs. Chope, half turning to the sofa, upon which Mrs. Peachey sat rustling the pages of the fashion paper, "but he's so familiar; as if I'd seen him before somewhere. I wish you'd come and look.""How silly you are!" Mrs. Peachey appeared out of temper, yet she arose from the sofa, for Mrs. Chope did as she chose with her. "What on earth do I care for any young man, and I don't see why you should!"She stared through the window, looking across the way at the old inn where, so they said, Charles II had found refuge on his way to France, and away from that to the red pillar box. The young man in the Newmarket coat had taken out his watch. Mrs. Peachey's blue eyes, faded and muddled in colour, coldly virtuous in expression, took fire for a moment—and only a moment."Why, I know who he is," she said, returning to the sofa and her coloured fashion plates. "Fancy you not recognising him, Laura; you, with your sharp eye! It's young Mr. Jannaway; the Honourable Freddy Jannaway. There's a caricature of him in Treacher's window at the bottom of North Street; we looked at it only yesterday on the way to Hortense.""Of course we did. That man! Why, he is so like that wretch, the out-of-work boot-finisher, who murdered the old gentleman on the way to the Devil's Dyke last June that he was twice arrested before they caught the real murderer and very properly hanged him. Anybody else would have taken an action against the police, but Freddy Jannaway was proud of it. He's a perfect fool—these rich young men so often are. It seems a pity, but I suppose Nature knows best, and if you have too much of one thing you generally go short in another. The world couldn't keep its balance else."Mrs. Chope was a philosopher in her light feminine way. She continued to stare at the lingering young man."Fancy my not recognising him! And you did at once. I can't leave this window till I see what happens. They say he is secretly married to Gracie Gooch, the actress." She spoke with a smack, for she relished this."Then he can't be waiting for her. A man doesn't meet his wife at a pillar box. I wish you'd come and tell me what you think of this skirt. It's kilted right up to the waist and then there are little panniers. It would suit Angelina, because she's so tall.""A man when he's married doesn't meet anybody at a pillar box, unless it is his wife. She sees to that. Yes, Angelina would look lovely in panniers.""Anybody would think, to hear you two, that poor Angelina was a donkey," said a blithe, thin voice by the door, and Blanche came in.This was the sort of little joke that Blanche could make. She was a short, plump girl, dressed in the height of fashion, but without distinction. The best efforts of Madame Hortense were wasted on Blanche. From the point of elegance her own shop girls looked more aristocratic. She had along jacket trimmed expensively with bands of brown bear—on collar, cuffs, down the fronts and round the bottom. Her closely kilted skirt, of the sort they called a fishwife, had alternate stripes of brown and amber, so that as she moved it gave a wasp-like effect. Her golden hair was cut short; this was a craze of the moment, and Blanche indulged all crazes. It curled up prettily here and there round a black velvet jockey cap. She had a rather impudent, pretty face, like a fresh, flat rose.Mrs. Chope stared. She was fond of studying these two girls, Blanche and Angelina, from a love making and a novel-reading point of view. Just at present, she was in the middle of Ouida's Friendship. She always had what Mrs. Peachey disdainfully called a "trashy yellow-back" lying about on the drawing-room table. Blanche, she was thinking, would marry soon. Probably she would marry one of the young officers she would meet at the ball. They had managed to get invited to the ball of the 17th Lancers at the Pavilion. This regiment was stationed at the barracks in Lewes Road. She would get married and go to India; the Lancers were ordered there. That would be the very thing for her, with her pertness and her popular qualities. As to Angelina, you could not prophesy, for there did not seem any easy military or AngloIndian touches to her. Angelina was going to be a trouble, to herself and other people. There were, thought Mrs. Chope, two or three yellow-backs to the history of Angelina. You couldn't say what that girl would do or where she would end."A donkey, oh, my dear. I didn't mean that of your sister," said Mrs. Peachey—for she had not even Blanche's elementary idea of humour. "Come and look. Panniers are to be all the fashion, and they suit tall girls so well."Blanche sat down on the sofa and turned over the leaves of the fashion book. Her mother was looking at her with all her heart. There were two fairly strong emotions in Mrs. Peachey's rather diluted composition: she had hated Grandmamma Peachey and she adored her elder daughter. As to her husband, she had been neutral, and the fact of her constantly nagging him proved nothing, for there is a type of quite well meaning and limited woman who nags her husband by instinct; until she loses him."They are rather nice," said Blanche of the panniers, "but I should look a balloon in them. Call Angelina down and see what she thinks."Mrs. Chope, still in the window and with her back to the sofa, said suddenly:"Well, he isn't married to Gracie Gooch, as the papers said. It is a scandalous paper, that thing in the red cover that you will buy Blanche; I wonder it isn't put a stop to.""You always read it, anyhow," Blanche giggled and jumped up to join her."Where is Gracie Gooch, and who isn't she married to?"Gracie Gooch had been the Lady Jane in Patience, and she was getting rather fat for that part. Yet she remained a beautiful woman, and as to-day, in the November sunset, she moved along the glittering pavements of the King's Road, everybody turned to look after her."There she is," Mrs. Chope pointed, "in the long sealskin coat with the band of old gold plush round her turban. Look at her mouth! It's like a piece of string laid crooked across her face. What a mouth! It spoils her. Can you see, Blanche, how she walks with her eyes downcast?""I see," the girl's flat, charming face was close at the window pane. "They say that every time she looks up some unfortunate man falls down dead.""My dear," said Mrs. Peachey from the sofa, where, again, she sat deserted, "what dreadful things you do say.""What man do you mean?" whispered Blanche to Mrs. Chope."The one by the pillar box. He's been hanging about for ever so long. It is the Honourable Freddy Jannaway, and they said he had secretly married Gracie Gooch, but she walked by him without looking up. He didn't turn his head, so they can't be. It is all moonshine.""I know him well by sight; everybody does. He's in the shop window——""Yes, your mother remembered that.""With that lean Russian girl that everybody says is so wicked, and with the man who sells sweets, who is the image of Disraeli, and the old bathing woman, and the musician who conducts the concerts at the Dome and all of them," gabbled Blanche. "He is for ever up and down East Street, and he's awfully taken with Angelina.""Oh, is he," Mrs. Chope's shrewd eyes seemed to click. Now she had hold of something; a yellow-back was realised in life.But Mrs. Peachey from the sofa said sternly:"Blanche!"Her face was hard—yet it was for Angelina."There she is coming downstairs, Mamma. You can ask her yourself. She can't deny it."The door opened again and Angelina came in. Mrs. Chope thought:"What a contrast between two girls! Would anybody ever take them for sisters? One might be the ladies' maid."She grinned to herself at this, and she imagined them as old women. Blanche would grow muddled in colour and feature as her mother was. Angelina would be exactly like her Grandmamma Peachey, and it was a pity she was of such a pronounced nutcracker type. That fine nose and firm chin would nearly meet. But when you were quite an old woman what did it matter?Angelina's hair, contrary to fashion, in supreme disregard of it, was plaited in thick tails and twisted round her head. Such a haughty head and held perhaps too high!"You don't know that man, do you, Angelina?" asked her mother in a deadly way. "Over there by the pillar box. Have you been doing anything disgraceful? Go and look at him.""That is just like you, Mamma; to imply too much," was the sweetly insolent answer, given with a smile. "I don't suppose——""Never mind what you suppose. Go to the window, I say."Mrs. Peachey had a manner of treating her girls as children, although Angelina was eighteen and Blanche two years older. Behind her voice there still ran the ridiculous threat of "you shall be sent to bed if you oppose me."It was less trouble to indulge her; it was better bred, because it saved a scene. Tall Angelina went to the window and she looked at the red pillar box and the young man Three pairs of eyes were focussed. He had now put his watch away and was helplessly sucking the knob of his stick.Angelina burst out laughing; young, sweet laughing, yet with both menace and sophistry in it."Yes," she said quite naturally, "he's waiting for me. Isn't it funny? I didn't dare go out this afternoon. No, to tell the truth, I had not meant to go out this afternoon, because of course I never intended to meet him, but afterwards I forgot about him and have been reading in my room."She spoke as if to make an appointment at a pillar box with a strange young man was the most usual thing in the world for any carefully bred girl."Waiting for you!"Mrs. Peachey's three words, indignantly isolate, seemed to thud from her mouth to the floor."Yes; it's the ugly Jannaway man——""We are well aware of that, thank you.""Don't be so absurdly dignified, Mamma," the girl walked from the window, but her sister and Mrs. Chope still stood there; the young man had attained an even greater importance.Angelina sat down. She smiled indiscriminately on the three of them; the smile that indulges but does not stoop to propitiate; the smile you fling to an inferior."He has bothered my life out lately; Blanche knows that; followed me about, you know. I suppose he thinks me good looking.""You look hideous when you smile like that; yes, and wicked too," snapped her mother, and she was trembling. With every reason, she was alarmed and angered. Angelina provoked all that was bad in the poor woman; that finely contemptuous face aroused in her a proper sense of grievance, and she lived afresh those past years when she had suffered, and without deserving it, all the caprice of wicked old Grandmamma Peachey."So one afternoon in East Street," drawled the girl, still neither shifting her smile nor tempering it, "I let him come up and speak to me. It was what he had been wanting, and it delighted him. I was interested too. He wanted to buy me all sorts of things and at once; most generous. There was a little silver brooch like a bird; that and a filagree bracelet. I could have had both. It was a great temptation. I told him to be at the pillar box to-day at three and there he is. I had to do something to get rid of him."She slightly turned her disdainful head towards the window, where Blanche and Mrs. Chope, listening eagerly, stood. Flaming sunset warmed her cold outlines, and dancing across her face tried to stir its perfect composure."It is past four now. What patience!" she said."Pull down the blinds, Laura," Mrs. Peachey spoke as she could speak now and then to a friend who was also a dependant. "It is nearly dark, thank goodness. Blanche, come away."Angelina laughed again: laughter mingling with the rattle of Venetian blinds as Mrs. Chope obeyed."How you would like to add, Mamma, 'Angelina, bread and water for a week.' But you can't, anymore. I am eighteen.""I can turn you out of doors if you don't behave yourself.""Oh, but you won't. Don't be silly again," she was indulgent and a little weary. "Let me look at the fashions and decide what trimmings I'll have. That's nice."She was on the sofa by her mother, and by good fortune, she indicated the skirt with the panniers. Blanche said, joining them:"That's the very one she thought of for you, wasn't it, Mummy?"Mrs. Chope, reflective and also irate, for the lash of Angelina's arrogance frequently cut into her back also, was watching the three.Presently she also came to the sofa, and they buried alive the memory of the young man at the pillar box with airy dance frock fabrics.Yet Angelina, throughout, maintained her air of elegant scorn: that manner of indulging them all, and yet in her true self being far enough and for ever away. This arrogance might perhaps be delightful to any young man, but it was insufferable to a woman. Mrs. Chope kept biting her lip and tossing her head; Mrs. Peachey's bad-tempered, narrow face contracted.At six o'clock, having settled on the skirt with panniers for Angelina and for one of the perfectly plain ones for Blanche, they separated to dress for dinner. They lived a very elegant life. Mrs. Peachey had the social ambition, and Mrs. Chope had the necessary knowledge; so that they managed excellently and had a regular circle of what Mrs. Peachey called "good people" as friends. She wished to marry her girls well: but, well or ill, certainly Angelina should marry before she was out of her teens.Mrs. Peachey to her intimates, nowadays, spoke of living on her "jointure," and she also referred impressively to her late husband's "chemical and experimental pursuits in science." The memory of the shop in St. Paul's Churchyard she, with Blanche, was trying hard to forget, but Angelina loyally loved it, and she preserved in perfect parity her sense of its atmosphere. A sense of the particular atmosphere, which represented a space of time, was very strong with her, and, just as she remembered that old bow-windowed shop and stately house in St. Paul's Churchyard—with all the feeling for the Misses Hopkins Academy and the sound of the Cathedral bell and the afternoon shoppers streaming down Cheapside—so she knew now that, in later life, she would conserve and idealise the memory of these Brighton days that made her present.There were the sunny mornings in summer-time, although, summer or winter, Brighton airs seemed always sharp and blue. Windows would be wide open, Blanche practising gaily on the grand piano in the drawing-room on the first floor, Mrs. Chope clattering up and down stairs in her high-heeled shoes. Out of doors, there was that feeling of jollity and holiday-making; down on the beach they were tootling The Sailor's Wife the Sailor's Star shall be before they launched the pleasure yacht, the Skylark, which took the trippers out. It was all, to Angelina, a little emotionally naked and, best, she loved the autumn afternoons; as this one had been: when the King's Road was splendid with a sense of furs, of high-stepping carriage-horses and dowagers; when East Street, with its pretty shops, wore a wicked, warm glitter. Afternoons as these made you feel reckless, lawless and a queen.She and Blanche went for a walk alone every day, and as Angelina put her hat on for this constitutional, she was always delighted by the clear pallor of her complexion. She adored herself, not as Angelina Peachey, but as some abstract work of art. She wore a black velvet hat, and round the brim of it curved a sumptuous peacock-coloured feather: the exquisite breast of some tropical bird. Mrs. Chope had produced this and presented it. She had a store of beautiful things which, so she said, had belonged to her mother-in-law, old Mrs. Mellison, who had been a General's wife and a famous Anglo-Indian beauty.As the girls went down East Street these November afternoons in the gathering dusk, idle young men would peer into their charming faces. Freddy Jannaway was not the only one, although he had proved the most daring. They were excellent foils to each other: Blanche with her flaxen curls and bright pink cheeks; with her impudent little air—yet modulated—of the barmaid; Angelina with her cold dignity—of the distant star. Blanche won more easy admiration; for, already, thoughtless men stood in awe of Angelina.These two pretty sisters became very well known to the loafing young men of the time, who meant no particular harm to any one, yet wanted to enjoy themselves—in their own way. Brighton was nothing but a very large village in those days, that is, its total of houses was more than a village, but human feeling was exactly the same. There was the same friendly gossip and innocent scandal that combines to make the charm and the social danger of villages. The Peachey sisters, shopping in East Street of an afternoon, divided honours with other pretty girls behind those white curtains in the milliners' shops, girls of a lower social rank. The young men caught tantalising glimpses of little milliners when the white curtains fluttered and they took a bonnet off the stand for a customer's inspection. After shop hours, they could, if they chose, make closer acquaintance with these girls; for most of them were perfectly willing to be taken on the New Pier or to the Aquarium, particularly on a Saturday evening. Angelina and Blanche, of course, were different: this was a constellation in another firmament; yet the Honourable Freddy Jannaway had essayed to scale the highest heavens.Angelina would remember this life; for she had the nature which transforms the past into perfect poetry: which is restive with the present and distrustful of the future. She would remember, perhaps most, her solitary attendances at the church in Ann Street; for the service reminded her of Kitty and of her own saint, St. Mary of Egypt. She still loved the Saints, but, just now, she was too busy to attend to them. Later on, it might be different. The letter which, years ago, she had written to St. Mary of Egypt was locked away in the childish box covered with bright sea-shells which Kitty had given her. Sometimes she looked at it and strangely smiled.The service at that church thrilled her, and when they sang the Sursum Corda she wanted to shout. There was a particular hymn which they sang as a Processional on Easter Day, beginning, "Come sons and daughters, let us sing." Her feeling, as it had been then, she knew that she would never forget; for it expressed a permanent mood—the mood of her spirit. Still she was in no sense mawkishly religious, nor ever likely to be.When the Peachey household, on that afternoon when the Honourable Freddy Jannaway waited so fruitlessly by the pillar box, separated to dress for dinner, Blanche gravitated naturally to Angelina's room, and Mrs. Peachey went to Mrs. Chope. They each wanted a little chat—some tête-à-tête with a contemporary.Mrs. Peachey said, sitting down at once with what Mrs. Chope called a "flump":"We must get Angelina off our hands. She is becoming more than I can stand.""Yes. She is a bit of a handful," agreed the bosom friend, and she seemed disinclined for anything in the nature of a lengthy talk.She remained standing. The truth was that she objected to take her hair down—or more exactly, take it off—before Mrs. Peachey. When you get to a certain age, there are delicate reserves and gentle hypocrisies even between the best of friends. The knowledge of this and perhaps a certain felinity made Mrs. Peachey say now, and, staring as she spoke, at her friend's corn-tinted tresses:"Don't let me hinder you, my dear; go on with your dressing. I can talk just the same.""There is no hurry, thank you, dear. You haven't started yourself yet and so you won't stay long. Yes, you certainly ought to marry Angelina, if you can. You ought to get her off your hands."They both spoke as if Mrs. Peachey's palms were tarred and Angelina stood for feathers."Once a girl is married, there's an end of her," said Mrs. Peachey—but Mrs. Chope only laughed.This laugh grated on the mother and so did her friend's next words."An end! Very often it is only the beginning; it all depends on the girl.""I'm speaking of good girls, respectable girls—girls properly brought up.""My dear, it doesn't make any difference; it is in the blood. The fact of their being well brought up, well educated and that sort of thing only makes them more dangerous. You ought to know that, if anybody in this world does.""I don't see why," returned Mrs. Peachey stubbornly.She knew that Laura Chope was referring to Grandmamma Peachey and implying that Angelina inherited a dangerous coquetry, but she was not going to admit this. She execrated the memory of her husband's mother, but she proposed to remain loyal to his family."If Angelina was married to some good man," she said, "she would settle down.""She might, for very often those sort of girls make the best wives. Yet she ought to sow her wild oats first. I don't see"—Mrs. Chope's laugh was a touch strident—"why young men should do all the farming and, as a matter of fact, they don't. Look at her with that Jannaway fool this afternoon.""Don't mention it. She ought to be whipped," said poor Mrs. Peachey, whose utter and vinegarish virtue was her dominant trait."She's past whipping, past any control at all. You've got to realise that. I wouldn't worry, if I was you, for, as likely as not, she'll pick up some one at the Pavilion Ball—and I never could do my front hair with any one looking on, so I think you'd better go away."Mrs. Peachey, always docile with Laura, as she went away was assailed by an uncomfortable sense of easy virtue. Sometimes she felt that her friend's ethics of propriety fell far short of her own: in brief, she might be living with an improper person. She shut herself into her own bedroom and got into an evening dress, cut square at the neck. She betrayed an air of gloomy resolve.She would get Angelina off her hands.She was quite used to dressing for dinner. She had adapted herself; yet always under the tutelage of her friend Mrs. Chope. She even said frequently to her girls, and discreetly under her breath, "We should never have lived over the shop remember, but for your dear Papa's health, and be sure you never mention it to any one"; Angelina's smile when her mother said this was always diabolical, and poor Mrs. Peachey would flush, in her spotty way; she invariably conveyed a sense of the suppressed rash.As to her own birth, she presumed to give herself airs upon this, and Angelina was forced to endure them because she was ignorant of the true facts. In plain truth, Mrs. Peachey's father had been a tenant farmer near Hatfield. He was dead years ago, so his daughter felt perfectly safe in saying that his "estate" joined the Marquis of Salisbury's.Blanche, in Angelina's room, was sitting airily upon the bed, swinging her foot in its pointed shoe."What a lark!" she said. "And you never told me about it, Angy.""About what?""Come now! About Freddy Jannaway.""Oh!" Angelina wore her white dressing jacket, and she now took the last hairpins out of her head. Black hair fell in two tails, heavily savage, far below her waist."Oh!" she said again; and said it with a dangerous concentration.Then she wheeled round from the looking-glass and surveyed Blanche's wide pink grin.She was thinking scornfully:"It is like a clock face. It is like a silly full moon!"Blanche was staring, and her wicked little smirk slowly began to die, for she was always afraid of Angelina, and that fine-featured face, made all the whiter by the white garment, was both cruel and distant. Blanche felt like a servant who had taken a liberty."You needn't look as if you meant to hit me with that hair-brush. You did let him come up and speak to you. You can't deny it. And it wasn't proper, it wasn't dignified, it was just like a shop-girl. I don't believe Mamma will ever make a lady of you.""Dignified! What do you know about that? As to being a shop-girl, we do come out of a shop, for all Mamma's airs. And I'm proud of the shop. Can't you see that, in itself, it's a sort of ancestry?""Of course I can't. What nonsense! Tradespeople are not received anywhere. You are common, Angelina." Blanche spoke with a funny reflection of her mother's manner. "But never mind that. What are you going to do about him?""Good gracious! It was nothing; that is, it was just a little impulse." Angelina spoke with disgust and weariness. "I wish you'd go away and dress yourself, Blanche.""So I will in a minute. What an odd girl you are! A little impulse! Why, it is dreadful to give way to impulse, for it lands you in all sorts of places. What will you do when you meet him again? We are sure to see him next time we go down East Street.""I shan't take any notice of him, and if he takes any notice of me I shall threaten to send for a policeman. It sounds coarse, but it is the only way of dealing with these people," said Angelina, with comic royalty."But it isn't fair. You encouraged him and then——""You speak as if I had a duty to him. How absurd! And I do wish you would talk of something else. He isn't worth so much fuss; the man is an idiot. I tell you it was an impulse. It was rather"—her hard, lovely face became faintly roguish: just the most subtle dawn of a smile—"piquant; sort of tickling to my spirit, if you know what I mean.""Of course I don't; speaking of your spirit as if it were the sole of your foot.""Of course you wouldn't. Why do I trouble to talk to you?"Angelina swung urbanely round to the big glass and started unplaiting her thick, black tails.When Angelina looked like that, it meant that she was in the sulks and would not speak again. Blanche knew.She bounced off the bed and went to the door. As she held the handle in her hand, she turned her head on her shoulder and, looking towards that impassive white figure standing before the glass, said:"You couldn't take jewellery, of course, but you might have let him give you some almonds. There is no harm in a box of sweets."Blanche measured Vice and Virtue by the money they cost. There was a shop in East Street where they made a speciality of these toothsome burnt almonds. Angelina might have had a big box for the asking. They could have shared them.Angelina gave a grating laugh, but she did not trouble to speak, and surveying her own face in the glass its fierceness rather surprised her. Sometimes a queer enough girl, some one she did not know, looked out of her own pale eyes and mocked her.The next morning at ten they had an appointment for a fitting with Hortense. She was an Englishwoman, who made no pretence to be French, except that she had converted her surname of Horton into Hortense and called herself a modiste. Mrs. Chope had introduced Mrs. Peachey to the shop, which was a dowdy-seeming one in Pool Valley, very near Brill's Baths. Mrs. Peachey's own instincts would have led her to a more popular shop and one making more show, but Mrs. Chope, who led her by the nose in all things, declared that these dowdy shops represented the acme of exclusiveness; and in this case she was right. Hortense, in her way, was certainly an artist, and she had made race gowns for Mrs. Chope when she was Mrs. Mellison."But we won't mention that," said Mrs. Chope to Mrs. Peachey, with an utter lack of embarrassment on the occasion of their first visit to Hortense, "for I went off owing her a long bill. Mr. Mellison was so very down on his luck that year, poor dear man. It was the year that Bucktoe won the Derby, and he was quite the wrong horse for us. She is old and half blind. She'll never recognise me."Mrs. Peachey was shocked; domestic probity and commercial rectitude were the two gods she knew. But she said nothing, for she never argued with Laura, and she was always impressed by Laura, even in her lapses.They went down North Street, the four of them, in the early sunlight: Mrs. Chope with her massive figure and ridiculously high-heeled shoes which made her walk in a totter, Mrs. Peachey with her genteel air of mincing ill-temper, the two girls a little behind. They stopped at Hannington's, because Mrs. Peachey wanted to look at the new mantles; she was allowed to go to Hannington for outdoor things.In Pool Valley, Hortense herself welcomed them, and this in itself was an honour; for she was a very old woman, with an exclusive clientèle, and only received the best customers. Hers was an exclusive and yet comprehensive connection, since she made for Mrs. Fitton, Lady Langdon and the Honourable Amy Tobitt, who were undoubted aristocrats and very solid, and (in spite of her best efforts) fustily dowdy; also she made for actresses, such as Gracie Gooch and Florence Douglas; and made too, for the notorious Russian, Olga Petrovitch, who was neither aristocrat nor actress and who yet, at this time in the early' eighties, was a very noticeable figure in Brighton life. Just why she was noticeable people hardly knew, and if they suspected they forbore to say.Mrs. Peachey and her girls were excellent customers. Hortense, a bent old woman, with a hooked nose and a small, dramatic eye, herself superintended the fitting to-day. She had been established in Pool Valley more than fifty years, and she was a repository of feminine chronicles for all that time. Blanche considered her a horrid old woman, but Angelina was fascinated. Hortense, for her part, was the slave of Angelina, since she could tell a positive beauty from a merely pretty girl. She was rich with experience: a wise old woman and not over scrupulous.Blanche grimaced and pouted before the long glass; Angelina maintained her stately aloofness; yet within she was jubilant, for she knew that on the night of the ball she would look beautiful, and it was her first ball.Mrs. Peachey was merely sourly receptive, in her usual way; Hortense never reckoned with her until it came to the bill. In truth, Mrs. Peachey was always uneasy when they came to Hortense. She was afraid of meeting Olga Petrovitch in the showroom. That would be bad for Angelina. Mrs. Chope was fertile with suggestions, and they were always good. Between Mrs. Chope and Hortense there prevailed a funny manner, as if each woman stood upon her guard. Hortense said mockingly, and adopting a suggestion, "All Your life you must have had the advantage of a good maid, madame: some one with natural taste."When it was over and the four had been curtseyed and smiled into Pool Valley again; when the shop door was shut and Hortense, leaving business to inferiors, was settled in her own sitting-room, she burst out laughing. It was wheezy merriment, since she was near eighty and decidedly bronchial. Her widowed daughter-in-law, a practical, dull woman who lived with her and managed the business, looked up from the strip of ribbon paper on which she was making calculations for ribbon to ruche round Angelina's panniers. "What's up, mother?" she asked laconically.They dropped all technical jargon, and discarded that elegance of manner designed to impress customers when they were alone."My dear, you haven't any eye or any memory. Don't you remember that woman? I spotted her at once."Hortense left off coughing and sat upright. She looked vigilant and only middle-aged: not a bent old crone any more."What woman? Mrs. Peachey?""No, you dunderhead; Mrs. Chope, as she calls herself. Now come Florrie, you are over fifty and you must remember Mrs. Mellison.""Mellison, Mellison," the daughter-in-law put down her strip of ribbon paper and stared, biting her stump of lead pencil until she broke the point. "Oh yes, a disagreeable old cat, awfully rich, and she lived in Royal Crescent. How I remember that house! I was very young and——""You were my apprentice, and it was before you had the luck to marry my son Archie," said the old woman candidly;"yes, you were sent there with bonnets on approval and always came home feeling sick, because she burned stuff in her rooms that smelt like incense, that old Mellison. She was half mad, and the lady's maid twisted her round her fingers, just as she is twisting Mrs. Peachey now.""You don't mean that——Good gracious!""Yes, that is what I do mean. I knew her at once and she knows that I know her," the old woman chuckled again. "She is very uncomfortable if her eye meets mine, but she needn't trouble. I am too old to rake up scandal, and I don't want to lose a good customer; not only that, but if I did, she would be clever enough to wriggle out of anything that I might say by telling a thumping good lie. She is very clever. I always respected her. She was clever up to a point and then she failed, as the clever ones do. It seems a pity, but I suppose God wants to give the fools a chance." She employed the name of God with easy profanity.Hortense was unscrupulous and pithy; just as Mrs. Chope was. There was a certain likeness between the two."If she'd played her hand out the old woman would have left her half her fortune, perhaps the lot, for she hated her son. But, just as any fool might do, she ran off with him and——""I seem to remember that she did marry him. For fullness you want as much again and half over; the ribbon for those panniers will run into a pretty penny. It's expensive ribbon."The daughter-in-law cared more for the taste of her trade than for the delicate flavour of old scandals."Marry him," Hortense laughed: it was only a bronchial rattle of the throat. "She went off with him, and six months later on I made the trousseau for his bride, who was a Jarvis; one of the banking-house, and the plainest girl I ever pinned a bodice lining to. Such shoulder blades! You could have used them for scissors! It's a funny world! I remember hearing that when his mother died he let his mistress have the furniture and the old woman's wardrobe. I wonder who Chope was and if she married him. I respect that woman; for she carries it off with such a high hand. She's got spirit if you like. And she's lived her life, every minute of it, I'll swear."Hortense glared upon her daughter-in-law, who was spiritless, and who—unforgivable fault—was a daughter-in-law."I'll have my broth," she said, suddenly collapsing into peevish age. "What a time you take to reckon up ribbon, Florence. I used to do all that in my head in my day and I believe I could now. Ring for the broth, I say."As she swallowed the hot broth, warmth, the reflection of youth and the candid joy in scandal, returned to her:"What a lovely girl that dark Peachey one is," she said."Oh mother, do you think so?"—the daughter-in-law's voice expressed mild surprise—"the fair one is ever so much prettier, but then I always did admire a blonde.""The fair one! Stick a pin into her next time you fit a lining and you'll see sawdust on your finger. That dark girl, Angelina—don't they call her?—she's made of flesh and blood and fire. I shan't live to see her end, but I should like to.""Yes, you will. She'll get married before long and we shall have the trousseau. They are good customers. We shall have a trousseau for them both I dare say.""The end; that's only the beginning, you idiot. It does seem waste to marry that girl and finish her off. But she won't be finished; she isn't the stuff. Now and again the Almighty makes a joke. He creates a magnificent woman. They've passed through my hands, lots of 'em, goodness knows—and they'll live their life, whether they want to or not. Poor things! Very often they don't want to, but it's got to be. Take the cup away and I'll have a doze. And look here, Florence, the next time I speak of a man's mistress, don't you trouble to pull your mouth down, for it's a trick I dislike."The little eye, still so bright with theatrical fires, glared for a moment upon the daughter-in-law's dull features, and then the crinkled lid drew over.CHAPTER IVTHE Pavilion ball brought to Mrs. Peachey, in due course, all that she wished. It was certainly provocative of handwashing and, maternally speaking, she had in less than six months, washed both hers. The first thing that happened was that Blanche became engaged to Lieutenant Murray—one of the Murrays of Ross-shire, as Mrs. Peachey reminded her Brighton friends. She was so uplifted by the social nature of her girl's engagement that, for the first time, these new Brighton friends began to question her own social foundations.He was the usual young officer of fiction—and as he is so prevalent in fiction, he probably exists to a large extent in living military circles. He was tall and blonde and strictly upright and intensely stupid, except over his profession. He was the usual good sort.Mrs. Chope loved him; probably, if the secrets of hearts were shown, she loved him more than Blanche did. For she was inherently romantic, and he was the facsimile of a Ouida Guardsman. The way Blanche expressed herself, was to say that she was awfully fond of him, that they were very good pals, and that Charlie was always teasing and petting her. He would pull her little baby curls (she was letting her hair grow now, because the fashion for a close crop was waning), and then he would kiss her very candidly and they would both roar with good healthy laughter. It was a most cheerful wooing, and very hopeful for their future.They were to be married in April, and in May they sailed with the Lancer regiment for India. The whole thing was satisfactory and had fallen into place so easily. Over and over again did Mrs. Peachey say to her bosom friend, "Blanche is a girl that any mother may feel proud of."Then she would cry until the chronic rash stood thick upon her cheeks, and then she would wash her face and be dragged off to Madame Hortense, for they nearly lived at the shop in Pool Valley. Blanche's Indian outfit was being made there. Mrs. Peachey, through this time, was very proud, and she bragged so continually that her friends laughed behind her back. But at the same time she was broken-hearted, since she could not bear the idea of losing Blanche. One day she wailed to Laura, "If only it had been Angelina."Mrs. Chope returned ironically:"My dear, it never is the Angelina. I'm glad I had no children, for things always turn out badly for mothers. If Mr. Mellison and I had been blessed with an only daughter, she would have married and gone abroad. But if I had given birth to half-a-dozen, they would all have squatted round me, married or unmarried, and made a Mellison settlement."She spoke gravely, for by this time she had brought herself to believe that she really had been respectably married to Mr. Mellison; instead of having run away with him and been deserted at the end of three months, as impudent servant girls usually are. As for Chope, she dismissed him, both from conversation and thought. He shared this oblivion with other honest men: it is very often the fate of solid worth."Angelina," she added, "will marry right enough. Don't you trouble about that; but I'm not prepared to say that even when she does marry that you've got her off your hands for good."Mrs. Peachey roughened and reddened:"If Angelina marries and then does anything disgraceful she'll never darken my doors again," she said. "Her husband may look after her. I won't."Mrs. Chope, also turning crimson, returned, with a vigorous stamp of her small foot which joggled her whole big body:"Hang it all, mothers like you send girls upon the streets." Her own mother had treated her in this way.There was a telling pause and a boding silence. Mrs. Peachey felt, not for the first time, that she was in most disreputable society. Mrs. Chope considered that she had imperilled her chance of a permanent asylum; and certainly she did not want to be turned out of the Peachey household, and particularly now when it was in such good swing. She was more socially assured than she ever had been."Oh, my dear, I am so sorry. I have shocked you," she said, very sweetly, very musically. She had a good voice. "It is the effect of those early racing stable days; jockeys and bookmakers and all the dreadful people Mr. Mellison would make me receive at our table."Mrs. Peachey was at once appeased, and she was too ignorant of racing life, or indeed of any life, to detect the bizarre note in her bosom friend's apologetic mode."As to Angelina," Mrs. Chope rippled, "she'll marry Freddy Jannaway. She'll be a peeress.""A peeress! Angelina!" Mrs. Peachey's faded eyes threatened to start from their sockets."Well, his father's a lord and he's the only son. It is bound to be. You chew the idea over."Mrs. Peachey chewed as she was bid. The more she masticated, the better she digested, so that, eventually, she quite persuaded herself that Angelina would be a peeress, and she began to treat her with queer, grudging deference. The vulgar nature was impressed and won.Mrs. Chope was masticating also, and she, too, was very nice to Angelina, who stood to be, in due course, the most valuable friend of her life. When Angelina was the Honourable Mrs. Jannaway, Mrs. Chope proposed to be her mentor and elderly friend, and it amused her to reflect upon the fact that, whereas she had begun as the lady's maid of a General's half crazed widow, she might end as the confidante of a peeress. For Angelina would need her. About this time, she brought out of her hidden store of ancient fineries all sorts of trinkets and bits of silk with which to win the girl. And she did win, for Angelina was both baby and savage; she was always attracted by colour and twinkle, and she was completely enamoured of her own beauty. So that the months preceding Blanche's marriage were busy and harmonious months in the West Street house.They saw a great many people; visitors were always coining and going. Lieutenant Murray brought people, not only his female relations who came down to Brighton, staying at the Grand Hotel, to be introduced to Blanche and her mother, but also young men of the regiment. He brought Freddy Jannaway, who turned out to be his particular friend. They had been at Cambridge together, and Freddy was to be his best man.There was no particular harm in the Honourable Freddy Jannaway. He was merely a fool, no more a fool than his friend Charlie Murray; the only difference was that one had a profession to keep him out of mischief, and the other had nothing more particular to do than to get into it. He was in debt, he flirted with barmaids and shop girls and minor actresses, he chose to make himself peculiar by his dress. He was enormously proud of having his caricature in Treacher's shop window. He confounded notoriety with fame. But these were youthful follies, and would pass. He was ugly, but that he could not help, and Mrs. Chope once said meaningly to Angelina:"Ugly men are always the most fascinating, my dear. They are delightful. They know the way.""I suppose they are, and no doubt they do," the girl returned. "I remember learning about John Wilkes. Miss Hopkins said that he was ugly, and had an awful squint. Yet women loved him. I read that—about them loving him—in another book by myself later on; one of Grandmamma's books. It was left in her room after she died."Angelina, speaking, smiled in her superior way. She knew what Mrs. Chope and her mother were driving at through these spring and winter months when they were all so busy preparing for Blanche's wedding, and when Freddy Jannaway came frequently to the West Street house. When Freddy took his moment, as he would, she meant to deal with him in her own way. She supposed that she would marry him, but she would not be coerced. She must marry him; either him or some one else. He was here and he was most desirable. Yes, she supposed she was going to marry him; since to stay on with her mother and Mrs. Chope when Blanche was gone was not for a moment to be considered.She thought it all over deliberately; a deliberation that was grisly in such a young girl. She was both bitter and wooden, and sometimes she looked back, with a lump in her throat that meant crying, if she would let herself cry, to that wise, fine time in St. Paul's Churchyard when Kitty had talked of Patrick and read about the blessed Saints. Sometimes she felt that her own saint, St. Mary of Egypt, must be feeling sad. But she was swept on. There was not one moment when you could turn aside and stay in the desert to think and to pray.She was glad, they were all glad, when the wedding was over and Blanche had sailed. Mrs. Peachey was crushed by her loss, for if this poor, mean woman had one true ingredient in her, it was love for Blanche. So that when, a day or two later, Freddy Jannaway suggested dining out and the theatre afterwards to cheer them all up, she had not the heart to go, although she knew that she was in the most scrubbing stage of getting Angelina off her hands. She stayed at home with the dull headache which had overpowered her since Blanche went, and she allowed Laura to go alone with the young people.Mrs. Chope, always adroit and profoundly interested, managed better than Mrs. Peachey would have done. After the performance—it was the Cloches de Corneville, with Violet Cameron playing—she was clever enough to get lost in the crowd. It was a dark night and a full house.She had done what Jannaway wished her to do. It had occurred to him several times through the evening that he would ask her to do it; would tip her. She always seemed to him the sort of old woman who would take money and do any mortal thing if only you paid her enough. She had her head screwed on the right way. Say she wouldn't take money he could promise her something else; so gaining his point and saving her delicacy."It's no good hanging about for her," he said, gleefully, after an expedition along the pavement, and returning to Angelina, who stood beautiful and queenly supercilious in the vestibule. "I'll get a cab and we'll go back alone. You don't mind?"He sniggered, impudently perhaps. He was in love with Angelina, and he meant in the cab to propose. Yet he never forgot that she had allowed him to come up and speak to her in East Street and, after marriage, if she gave herself any airs, he was the sort of husband who might remind her of it. He knew that in marrying her he was marrying beneath him, just as Murray had married beneath him, although he and his people had been too decent to imply it. His father would be most irate. But he might have done worse. He might have married a barmaid. Angelina was beautiful and looked a regular aristocrat, although her mother and the old Chope woman were a queer enough couple certainly. After they were married he would find out from her who her father had been.This was the lofty tenor of his thought as he got the cab, helped Angelina into it, and they drove slowly homewards. He had tipped the cabman to be slow. His life was made easy by a sliding scale of tips, and the idea was deeply in his head that you could tip anybody; if not with one thing, then with another.Directly they were well started, lie began to make love to her in the usual way, the way he was conversant with; and it is good enough, for the way does not matter and, indeed, it is bound to be trite. The spirit that burns behind matters—and his was a smoky little lamp!He slid his arm round her waist. She remained, if not rigid, at least unbending. But she did, not resist, and her head was turned gently aside. As she looked out through the blurred window at the lighted street her profile was most delicately fine. The young man thought thrillingly that she was like a duchess; like the conventional idea of a duchess; in life, as he knew, they fell in appearance, below the idolatrous popular standard. His father, when he saw his wife, would calm down. And he must make her his wife. He wanted her, and there was no other way—with her! He thought it out simply.With his little arm—for he was small and weak, a poor enough physical specimen—this young man pulled the beautiful body he wanted to him."I love you," he said, "I'm awfully gone on you, Angelina, and you must have seen it. Look here," he gulped and paused, "will you marry me. I say, will you?"This was Angelina's first proposal. The cab was going up North Street. Angelina looked out. Along the deserted pavement, for all the cabs had dissipated, walking with a sort of panther-tread and looking from side to side, went a woman, in a close black satin frock.Angelina slowly turned her head. She looked at him. Contempt in that glance! Nothing more—yet.Contempt! And a certain sophistry! He detected frank calculation.She looked at him. The cab might have been a draper's shop and he a length of ribbon. She was considering the price, and arrogantly taking her time, as you do in a shop."Will I?" she echoed idly. "I wonder if I will."She continued to regard him, and he felt vexed and perturbed. No woman had ever looked at him in this haughty way, and he resented it. Angelina made him feel a mean creature; contemptible and, far worse, comic."Well!" he said, not too delicately, "What do you make of me, my dear?"The cab turned the corner and proceeded down the steepness of West Street. Angelina, not speaking any more, turning again, looked out of the window. She saw only shops and the space of the Quadrant. In those days, years before Queen Victoria's first jubilee, there was no hideous erection of a People's Clock Tower. Vulgarity lay perdu.They were driving down the street and faster. They had passed Duke Street, presently they would pass the Skating Rink; then came South Street and her own home. She must decide now. She was thinking this out and, quite trivially, it worried her to be hustled.Again she surveyed him. She looked barbaric to-night, and it was alien; for there was nothing flaunting about Angelina's type. She wore a red opera cloak. It was positive vermilion, richly embroidered with white; a sumptuous Eastern thing, presented, as so many things were, by firs. Chope. She had brought out from her hoard two of these cloaks; one scarlet and one pale blue. Blanche, as the blonde, had the blue one, but Angelina would have looked better in it; for blue was the colour of her unusually fine eyes.How glittering and hard they were now; staring at this funny little Freddy Jannaway.She said, simply, without the least feeling, for or against:"Yes, I will marry you. I shall be very glad to. It is the best thing in the world for me."It was an admission; yet it conveyed no sense of humility and no gratitude; rather, it was like a handful of small shot flung full in his face. And he winced.But only for a second. In the next he realised that she was already his, to do, already, more or less as he chose with. Also he became aware that the cab was stopping, and looking angrily out, he saw the serene white walls and elegant bowed windows of Angelina's own dwelling. If he wanted a kiss, and he did, would and must, now was the moment to snatch it.He dragged her down, from her lofty height—for she was more tall than most girls, and sat erect—to his own level. He twitched her mouth to his. It was a caress, frank and full, that should have been beautiful, had they both been worthy and had they loved: it held the necessary roughness and desire. But there was neither reverence nor nobility for any thing under heaven in the composition of this spoiled and stunted Freddy Jannaway. As for Angelina, she proposed to sell herself.She had proposed to sell herself, until she felt that mouth upon hers. Then Nature said—No! It was a first kiss and a new world. For a moment she was blinded by revelation, by the glare of it: and then she knew that there could be no bargaining, ever, between her and him. Something in his nature and in hers made it quite impossible. Nature said—No! This kiss had taught her, for perfect innocence has not only its own weapons, but its own unswerving tests. She could never marry him, and she remembered Master Meech in the far away Miss Hopkins days, when she was only a child.She remained calm in her mind, commercial even, almost to the last. But her whole being vibrated, and the length of that kiss seemed longer than life. She supposed that it might have gone on for ever, and that, so, she would have remained in hell; but, the cab stopped and she saw the lighted house, which was her home and her refuge.Her mother and Mrs. Chope stood to her as angels of deliverance.With a wrench she dragged herself free, and with a cry that amounted nearly to a scream she opened the door, flashed across the pavement, up the steps and into the house. The front door banged behind her.She was gone, and her little nonplussed lover sat helpless, sat breathless and subtly assaulted. He felt the prick of this! At first he thought he'd follow her, for girls were queer. He had found out that, although never before had he honourably proposed to make one his wife. But he was on his dignity and—no—let Angelina wait. He would go to-morrow morning. She would come to her senses long before then. He fondly imagined that by to-morrow morning she would be prepared to positively apologise to him. Her mother would make her, for he knew that he was an uncommonly good match for a girl in her rank of life.He told the cabman to drive him to his club, which was the one at the corner of Preston Street.Angelina stumbled up to the drawing-room, treading recklessly on the skirt of her delicate frock.Mrs. Chope and Mrs. Peachey were sitting there; the former had only just arrived, in another cab, and she still wore over her head the costly Spanish lace scarf which had belonged to Mrs. Mellison. Her foot, in a shoe with a heavily jetted toe, was stuck out, and her leg showed half way to her calf. She looked smirking and triumphant; very pleased with herself, immensely absorbed at the prospect of Angelina's engagement. She listened to those quick feet upon the stairs. What a hurry the girl was in. This was hardly like her. There was always about Mrs. Chope that air which, in those times of the 'eighties which are gone, they called "fast." It had been a manner kept in check while she lived in Cheapside as the wife of a warehouseman; she let it float out and flutter now. It was her true banner. In Cheapside, she had gone, inartistically, to the other extreme and been dolorous. She had been like the widowed Mrs. Bauble.Mrs. Peachey was on the sofa, looking her worst. She had an unbecoming headache and her nose was swollen, because she had occupied her lonely evening by crying for Blanche.Upon these two Angelina swooped—but oh, such a broken eagle! For the first time in her life, she was shaken and humbled; debased and afraid. She reached out for tenderness, she wanted healing. She went, by nature, to her mother, not even looking at the other woman. She fell upon her knees and broke into violent, childish weeping. The flaming opera cloak fell—as a pool—at her feet.Mrs. Peachey was amazed, she was, in a sense, alarmed, but the dominant feeling she at once had was the malignant little petty one that it was good to see this insubordinate creature on her knees: for the coarse nature will always love to ride rough-shod over the finer one, never realising that it cannot do it for long.She fell upon her knees and, not hiding her face, she looked into her mother's. Such a contrast between two faces! Mrs. Chope, enjoying it all, she with her love of romance and the drama, watched them, and was in thrall to Angelina, who looked lovely even now.Her mouth was quivering and extra scarlet; it was soft with grief and terror, it was completely changed, and so was her whole expression.For Angelina always looked the beautiful flint, and her face in repose, perfect as it was, might alienate some and provoke in others the most sorrowful pity. You perceived that she had to be broken; broken to pieces, and all her pride taken away, before the shining spirit could show through. Had any one at this time loved her, they would have prayed for her to God, that He would grant her suffering. But no one loved her, so far, nor ever had. Not for many a year would any man pierce to the true, inner woman, the eternal part: find it, cherish it, adore and reverence; hold it as his own for ever.Mrs. Peachey looked vindictive and very well pleased. This tall girl who was invariably impudent now that she was grown up, and who when she was a little mite had remained untouched even when beaten and sent to bed, here she was upon her knees!"Mother!" said Angelina at last.Mrs. Peachey turned:"Well, Angelina! Why are you making all this fuss?""Mother! Be kind to me."She let her head fall, reckless, abased, into her mother's lap.Mechanically, Mrs. Peachey stroked the thick black hair. There was a burning red rose upon it, stuck through the thick plait that made a crown.With Angelina's head in her lap like this she could imagine her a baby again. This impelled her to tenderness; she was the sort of mother, elementary enough, who can be tender to her babies, and indifferent or positively inimical to them when they grow big. She did not differ from a hen.Her hand passed softly over the black hair. Angelina remained still, in a perfect luxury of sobbing. This was the only time in their lives in which the barrier fell between mother and daughter. Mrs. Peachey presently, relentless and unswerving, set it up again—and with extra spikes!"Don't kneel there snivelling like a baby, my dear. Tell us what has happened."There was a silence, unbroken; as if Angelina held her breath. Then she got up, wiped her eyes, and reclaimed herself. She was defiant again and haughty; composed, almost."I'm sorry I made a scene," she said. "I was upset. He asked me to marry him, and I said I would, and then he kissed me. It was too much. I ran out of the cab and away from him."She looked white. Mrs. Chope thought that presently she would faint. She said, in the sweetest way, in her voice that was always sweet:"Sit down, darling. Poor little thing!"To Mrs. Peachey she added, speaking aside:"Angelina ought to have a glass of wine. It has been too much for her, as she says.""A glass of wine! Rubbish," Mrs. Peachey laughed; such a hard laugh, yet her eyes were fixed anxiously on her daughter."You didn't offend him, I hope," she said."Offend him! I don't know, I don't care. Mamma, I won't marry him, I cannot. I didn't realise what it meant until he kissed me. You must get me out of it. You have been married and I thought you'd understand. Cold shivers went all down my back and——"Her eyes closed, but only for a second."Angelina, you are a fool! All this fuss because a man proposes. I never knew anything more immodest. But you always were forward as a little girl, so I'm not surprised."That absurd and dreadful word "forward" restored Angelina; otherwise she might have fainted. But her sense of disgust and her sense of satire came, hand holding hand, to her rescue."I've nothing more to say—not to you," she said pointedly and with piteous pride, "I won't marry him. I cannot. If you refuse to tell him so, then I must. No doubt he will come round to-morrow morning.""You must and shall marry him," Mrs. Peachey had never sounded so savage. "Do you realise, you fool of a girl, that he is an Honourable!""An Honourable!" Angelina whimpered and giggled—she had been saved from swooning, and now was threatened with hysteria, "as if that covered everything!"She looked from her mother to Mrs. Chope, with that broad face and common expression. She thought miserably, "I'd get more sympathy out of her or out of that old monkey Hortense, than out of my own mother."She did not know what made her connect Hortense with Mrs. Chope. She was feeling muddled."If you throw that man over," pursued Mrs. Peachey, "I'll turn you out of doors."She sounded hysterical; for this was more than any mother could be expected to bear. And she was a good mother. Such a chance of getting Angelina off her hands and Angelina sticking fast!"I had forgotten," Angelina seemed to soliloquise; she looked at neither woman but at the jingle-jangleum lustre ornaments upon the marble mantelpiece (remnants of Mrs. Peachey's early married life and no part of the later æsthetic endeavour); "forgotten the way Kitty used to talk about Patrick and——""A common servant girl and her sweetheart. Just like you. Just like your horrible old Grandmamma, who made a regular friend of the creature."Mrs. Peachey had let herself go. She was not only violent with her living daughter, but she renewed her active hate for her dead mother-in-law.Mrs. Chope secretly smiled. Emily had never given herself away like this before; in spite of much judicious pumping she had remained loyal to the Peachey family."And the Saints, my own Saint, St. Mary of Egypt," Angelina went on, speaking childishly, wholly unheeding, and perhaps not even hearing, "I promised Kitty and I have vowed that I won't marry any man upon this earth unless I love him. I had forgotten about it since I grew up. We have been so busy all the time, dressing ourselves and going to parties. Directly he kissed me"—she grew white—" I remembered. I will starve if you like, or I will go out and earn my living, but never will I marry Freddy Jannaway. You must tell him so. I refuse to see him again."She made this speech, and while she was speaking, not looking at her mother, nor at Mrs. Chope, but staring at those glittering ornaments which she had loved when a little girl, she regained her composure and her usual defiant dignity.When she had finished, still not looking at them, she went to the door. They heard her go upstairs, then she paused; then more stairs, and then the smart shutting and locking of her own door. They could hear all this, for it was late and the servants were in bed. The house within, the town outside, they were quiet.She went away, putting a locked door between her and them. They made no attempt to keep her and convince her. Why they did not know.When she paused upon the stairs, it had been to look into her sister's empty bedroom. She stood at the door, sobbing again and feeling very cold—an ague of the spirit. Blanche was married and gone away. She, now, knew all there was to know about this love between a man and a woman which was evidently the supreme thing in life, and yet which was, so far, so repugnant. She longed for Blanche. Perhaps Blanche, married, would have understood.She remembered the way those lovers had kissed—Charlie Murray and her sister, while they were engaged; with a grin to begin and a sheepish little joyful guffaw after! Was that all it had meant to them? Was it either an uncouth jest or a positive torture; this wooing of woman and man?She went on up to her own room, shaken to pieces. She undressed, in haste and muddle, flinging her pretty things about her anyhow. She crept into bed, finding the bed a friend and her only one. She was at once asleep. But before she slept she made something in the nature of a mute yet binding vow. She would, beyond everything else, be strenuous and be pure. That kiss in the cab had tinged all her future relationships to men.When she and her bosom friend were left alone and Angelina was locked away, Mrs. Peachey said, with a nasty sneer—she was courageous for once, yet only for a little while:"A nice thing you did, leaving them alone! It was too sudden and she has no modesty. I ought to have gone to the theatre myself. It was my duty as a mother. Oh, how differently Blanche behaved! Blanche takes after my family; Angelina is Peachey right through.""Blanche!" said Mrs. Chope scornfully.There was a world of contempt and knowledge in her voice, but Mrs. Peachey was too angry to resent this implied attack or even to notice it. She continued:"I shall insist on her marrying him. I will keep my word. If she refuses, out of this house she goes.""Now you listen to me, you look at me, Emily," Mrs. Chope spoke with easy mastery, for she knew that, in the end, she could do as she chose with Mrs. Peachey.She paused. Mrs. Peachey, at the end of the pause, turned her head. She fixed her swollen, hard eyes upon her friend's face."It is no good your talking," she said, with the bluster of the weak-willed, "my mind is made up. The idea of her daring to refuse an Honourable; a man who one day will be a Peer and sit in the House of Lords.""They don't all sit in the House of Lords, but that doesn't matter; it makes no difference to us, whether he does or not. If you make Angelina marry that man she'll do something desperate. I'm sure of it. She'll run away, or worse.""Worse!""She'll murder him or commit suicide one day, when her blood's up. She is equal to anything, that child, once roused. Angelina can be angel or devil when things are strong enough, but she can't be anything between. I know I am right. Do be warned. Don't attempt to force her or you will be sorry."Mrs. Peachey was impressed. Anything like a police court crime was certain to impress her. Laura Chope had known that.Mrs. Peachey was impressed, but all she said was:"What nonsense you talk! How should you know anything about a mother's feelings?""I know a great deal about feelings; I've had them," was the terse return. "You never have. Women of your sort know nothing.""I know enough to feel sure that all this fuss is very coarse, and I wonder at you, I really do. Decent women don't talk about these things; they don't have feelings. You have been married twice and ought to understand.""Angelina isn't decent and I am not." Mrs. Chope laughed, and she looked very scornfully into the narrow face.It suited her to be friends with Emily Peachey, it had always suited her and would, but what a limited fool the woman was, and what an insult to the name of mother! That was the way with these good women. They would sell their girls in marriage blithely enough. They would cast them off relentlessly if they disposed themselves in the other way. Her own mother had been like that. Looking back at her life, from the time when she ran off with young Mr. Mellison until the time, years after, when honest, ignorant Chope made her his wife, she blamed her mother for most things. Her mother had been merciless at the critical stage. Looking at those pages of her life, turned between the exit of Mellison and the advent of Chope, she felt no shame and no remorse, for she had no conscience. She had always loved experience, and sitting here, remembering, she would have had nothing in her past altered. She even felt, sardonically regarding the unsuspecting and most virtuous Mrs. Peachey, proud of her life and satisfied; for, at least, it had been generous."Angelina shall not be made to marry Freddy Jannaway. I'll see him myself to-morrow," she said firmly. "It is no good opposing me, for you know I always have my way.""Yes, you do. I am far too easy.""You will live to be grateful to me. Angelina can do better than Freddy Jannaway; a little miserable, dissipated, round-shouldered fool. I believe myself that he's got a slight curvature; that would not matter if she liked him. But she doesn't, and a woman cannot get over these aversions.""Nonsense! I never heard of them.""You haven't heard of much. Leave him to me. Angelina can do better.""Who is she to marry, I should like to know?" Mrs. Peachey wiped her eyes, and spoke with heavy satire.She had capitulated, and was crying. Laura would get her way as she always did, but it was too bad."I wish that Angelina had never been born," she said. "She will be an old maid, with her picking and choosing. And now that Charlie and Blanche have gone, there will be no more young officers coming to the house. I don't see who she is to marry.""My dear, comfort yourself," her friend spoke indulgently, for she could afford to. "Angelina would marry wherever she was. And you forget that in a couple of weeks I shall have a nice young man in my cottage. Lady Johns has a nephew. It does seem providential that the cottage happened to be empty and that she saw my advertisement when she did. She moves in next week and for six months at least; her nephew is sure to come down and stay. Now we must be getting up to bed. It is nearly one. Don't wake poor little Angelina in the morning. Let her sleep it off.""I shan't go near her," Mrs. Peachey felt under the sofa cushion for her pocket handkerchief. "I wash my hands of her. She is a downright bad girl. It is in her blood.""And I will see Mr. Jannaway when he comes," said Mrs. Chope.They turned out the gas and went softly upstairs. They kissed each other at Mrs. Chope's bedroom door—and when their doors were shut they honestly hated each other, just for once in a way. Their natures could not mix, and the thin coating of affection had worn through. To-morrow judicious Mrs. Chope would touch up the worn places and make their friendship look as good as new.Jannaway came about noon next day, and she received him in the drawing-room. Angelina was not yet awake. Once or twice Mrs. Chope had knocked at the bedroom door and got no answer."One would think that girl had been drugged," she said thoughtfully.The Honourable Freddy Jannaway was not a noble looking object in hard May sunlight and before lunch. Mrs. Chope thought, "I'm not quite sure that I'd marry you myself, you little rat, not even now." Then, remembering splendid Angelina lying asleep upstairs, she positively enjoyed the prospect of the job before her. She took the young man's hand, one of those limp ones, shook it, dropped it, and plunged into her subject without parley."Sit down," she said, and sat down herself; "I am sorry, Mr. Jannaway, but Angelina will not marry you. She doesn't want to see you again. She was dreadfully upset when she came in last night.""Ay!"He was doubled up in a low easy chair set in the big window, with sunlight dancing all over him and brutally revealing him. He was startled out of all breeding and could only deliver himself of a silly ejaculation. She refused him! Incredible!Mrs. Chope urbanely grinned. She was enjoying this, for she was one of the women who had been ill-treated by men."She can't bear the touch of you. That kiss made her feel faint," she told him with pitiless candour. "We are people of the world, Mr. Jannaway, you and I; we are not like Mrs. Peachey—and so you understand what I mean. Angelina can't abide you." She was a countrywoman born.He looked up, blinking in the sunshine that filled the big room.What sort of woman was this? He looked knowing and on the edge of a wink. To Mrs. Chope's indignation he did not seem sorry for his rejection. His face showed relief—for himself; and shame—at himself; and anger—with Angelina, for being so squeamish.How dared she! Other girls had felt like that. But this was the only girl that he had proposed to marry, and, therefore, it was different. He was at one with Mrs. Peachey."Good Lord! "Mrs. Chope laughed in a jolly friendly sort of way; a laugh with a wink in it too. "How are you going to make a marriage of a feeling like that! Enough to make a woman's blood run cold—and a man's too."He could only stare; stare and suck his stick. It was always in his mouth; and he was so moonfaced that you felt he had only recently discarded his thumb for it. He looked a big, ugly baby; a very sophisticated and revolting baby. Mrs. Chope, regarding him, huddled up, thought:"You want a high chair, young man. You haven't grown up yet, for all your silly goings on."She did despise him, and she knew his sort clean through and through. She rejoiced to give him this most condign punishment. Yet it was she who had suggested at the first that Angelina should marry Freddy Jannaway. It had seemed a perfect plan and she had sought to profit by it. But with all her sharpness and all her worldly wisdom, she had not realised how monstrous the idea was until Angelina fell crying at her mother's knee last night. Poor little friendless Angelina! Kneeling there, dropped of all dignity, she had evoked the most tender feelings; and many were left in Mrs. Chope. She had been in the mood then and she was in the mood now, to fight to the death, had it been necessary, for the innocence and the freedom of Angelina. Intrinsically, she was a pure woman; much more pure than her bosom friend, the virtuous Mrs. Peachey."What?" said little Jannaway. "She backs out?"He continued to stare, for she fascinated him. He respected this old woman, and he marvelled at her. He, as he put it, had knocked about a bit and, by Jove, she did let in the light on things. She stated them as they were and without sparing him. He wondered how she ever established herself in this decorous middle-class house as guide and mentor. They were a funny lot, and he was well rid of the affair. He had come to the house with his heart in his boots, for he regretted his proposal in the cab last night. He had been wondering if he could get decently out of it, and he ruefully knew that he had not the wit. Well! This old woman, with the knowing laugh and the neat foot, had done the trick. He looked thoughtfully at her open-work stockings.He felt as if he had been at an auction sale recklessly bidding, and had failed, after all, to catch the auctioneer's eye at the crucial moment. Some other chap would get the goods and he was jolly glad. He wondered how Murray was feeling at marrying into this family. But he was poor and he had gone to India with the girl."I hope I haven't hurt your feelings. I hope you understand," said Mrs. Chope more sweetly.Something in his ugly countenance touched her, and she was soft, to a point, where love-making of any sort, however perverted, was concerned. Did the poor little devil really care for Angelina? His next words assured her that he did not. He had only wanted to buy a rare thing."A man," he said, struggling up from the absurdly low chair, and speaking with ridiculous dignity, "doesn't want to marry a girl who turns to goose flesh if he touches her. No. Thank you all the same."He laughed. It was insulting."Goose flesh! That is it. I knew you'd know. Well, good morning, Mr. Jannaway. Try and forget Angelina.""I shall manage to forget her, don't you worry," he said, turning purple. "I shall clear out of Brighton this afternoon, and be uncommonly glad to go."He went off without any more fuss, without any formal good-bye. And, as he said to himself, walking along the seafront in the sun, he was lucky to get off so easily. He essayed to convince himself that they had tried to entrap him; the respectable Mrs. Peachey and that "rum old card" her friend.He went out of the town that day, and the Brighton of the time missed a familiar figure. Little shop girls looked in vain for him upon the pier.Mrs. Chope, in the bow window, was purple too. For she detected him. He was glad to be free of Angelina.She went upstairs and again knocked at the girl's door. She began to feel anxious."I am getting up," said a cold voice from within. " I shall be down soon. Go away."CHAPTER VIT was fortunate for Angelina that Lady Johns took an instant fancy to her and wished her to go as much as she could to the cottage. She was accustomed to command people. Angelina went; she was only too thankful to go, for her mother, since the Jannaway affair, was in the sulks and barely noticed her. She did not care for her mother, but she shrank from a black, emotional atmosphere. Therefore she went every day to Mrs. Chope's cottage and spent hours with her new friend, Lady Johns. She went through the old garden, shut in by high walls, of her mother's large house, into the flagged back yard of the cottage. Ingenious Mrs. Chope had transformed this back yard into a paved lounge. There were walls all round and with creepers growing on them, fortunately. There was also an old fig tree. She screened the back door, put a rustic bench round the fig tree, and the thing was done.On summer afternoons, this was a perfect summer, Angelina and her new friend Lady Johns would have their tea in this back yard. It made a pleasant place. There were tubs, painted an artistic green and filled with evergreens; the fig tree gave a family look; you could faintly hear the sound of the waves and the moving, sparkling, human life of the busy street beyond the wall.Before very long, Lady Johns, who was lonely, began to think that she really loved this beautiful, queer girl. At first she had distrusted her, yet hardly knowing why. She was a conventional, rigorous woman, and certainly in the society of Horsham and the neighbourhood there were no girls so good-looking, and yet, only by inference, so sophisticated as this mysterious and most alluring Angelina Peachey. She appeared a perfect woman of the world, although why you could not exactly say. It was hard to believe that she was only eighteen, yet she looked, if anything, younger.These two sat together, drank tea together, read together, went for drives and walks together. They developed knowledge and devotion. The summer wore away. Whatever Lady Johns felt for Angelina was returned with generous interest; for the girl had a great deal to give and no one had wanted. She had stood, so to say, at the corner of the marketplace, with her hands full and outstretched for any one to help themselves.Lady Johns had expected to be bored by Brighton. She hated the place at any time, and this was out of the season. The town was full of trippers. She had only consented to come because Antony had declared it would be good for her. No one would have induced her to do this but Antony, and he was not only a doctor, but she was docile with him. Until she came to Brighton, she had believed that he was the only person left for whom she cared. She was one of a large family. They were all dead. She had borne five children and they also died, four as infants, and one, the only daughter, at sixteen. Her husband, General Sir Arthur Johns, was also dead; while he lived, they had been happy. Blow after blow had fallen upon Lady Johns, yet nothing ignominious had ever touched her; so she was not only lofty but sweet. She was neither soured nor narrowed, yet she remained rigid. She had the defects of her many advantages, and it was difficult for her to understand any devious ways of the heart. She was well bred and correct; she exacted the same qualities from her intimates, and she was one of those who would have quite calmly, perhaps even callously, dropped her dearest friend had she offended against the accustomed moral code. Lady Johns made no allowances. She had never been called upon to make allowances.They were all dead: her brothers and sisters, her husband, her little boy children, her only daughter, from whom she had expected so much. They were gone, and the only one of her kin remaining was Antony. He was delicate and could present no clean bill of health to the world. His mother, her sister Maria, died at thirty of consumption, and his father had a stroke of paralysis before he was forty. Lady Johns very often wondered, yet only faintly, since you did not question the ways of Providence, why her own four fine boys had died, one by one and each before he was ten years old, while Maria's wretched little specimen had obstinately lived. Antony had nearly died as a baby; he had left first Rugby and then Cam bridge for reasons of health, and even now, although he was twenty-eight and looked robust enough, he had to take every care of himself. He was a dear, gentle old thing (his aunt thought of him in these terms), but he was not satisfactory to her pride. Although he had good brains, he did not achieve himself. Lady Johns wished for him intellectual distinction; not too marked, of course, nothing approaching to popular fame, which might have derogated from his well-born standard and brought him into contact with queer people, but enough to make him stand out from his fellows. Antony gave promise of no such thing. He was clever, yet he was also desultory and, invariably, he was limp. He was like a man climbing the greasy pole. Very often it looked as if he really would get the leg of mutton, yet, always, he slipped down at the last.His aunt had believed, until she came across Angelina, that he was the only person in the world for whom she cared. There was only enough of her heart left over from so many graves—for him! She had nothing to give other people but polished regard: well bred, graceful enough; yet conveying nothing, costing nothing.But now she began to suspect that her heart was still capacious enough and warm enough and young enough to welcome the living. There was a vacant space for this queer girl to fill if she chose. For you must have a woman friend, and Angelina, young as she was, seemed wise. She would understand anything you chose to confide.Yet she neither liked nor approved of Angelina's people, and she very soon began to scheme to get her away from them. How could you socially approve of mincing Mrs. Peachey or that very loud and garrulous Mrs. Chope?Angelina was a pearl. But—such an oyster shell!When she went in to see Mrs. Peachey, as now and then she did, from good breeding and diplomacy, Lady Johns regarded her almost suspiciously; there were things she could not understand. She said one day, "What a positive beauty your Angelina is!"Her eyes added quite insolently and in such clear print that even Mrs. Peachey could read—and she was no profound scholar at this optical print:"It is almost unbelievable that you should be her mother."Mrs. Peachey remarked, betraying timid anger, for she resented this look and she resented what, generically, she described as Lady Johns's "airs"; yet she did not wish to offend an undoubted aristocrat."Angelina takes after my husband's family. Yes, I suppose she is good-looking, but we have always considered Blanche, my married daughter, Mrs. Charles Murray, to be the beauty."She took the latest photograph of Blanche from the mantelpiece and displayed it with touching pride. Lady Johns gazed unmoved upon the perky, snub features of this tawdry little blonde. Fancy naming her in the same world with Angelina!Mrs. Peachey shot a look at her. She disliked this woman; yet she would remain civil for, again, she saw some prospect of getting Angelina off her hands. Moreover she, as a tenant farmer's daughter, had awe for the landed gentry in her very bones."I hope you find Mrs. Chope's cottage comfortable," she said, sitting down and beginning to pour out the tea—for this was one of the three isolated occasions on which Lady Johns stayed to tea. "It is a queer little place and must amuse you, I'm sure. It does me, for I have always been accustomed to large houses and so have you.""Yes," Lady Johns smiled urbanely, "my house near Horsham is certainly roomy.""Oh, it isn't in the town?""No. Not in the town; about a mile out."She smiled more broadly, for it amused her to think of Leggatt Court being in the town of Horsham—Leggatt Court with its twenty-five bedrooms and sweeping park. The place was not hers. It belonged to her brother and he, being something more lean than bachelor, allowed her the use of it, or, at any rate, the use of it until his marriage. He let her live there and he kept the place up."My house," she said, indulging Mrs. Peachey, who was clearly curious, "belongs to my brother Gerald, and he will never turn me out unless he falls a victim to some pretty girl. He is nearly sixty, and I don't suppose that is likely. But if he did marry I should be homeless."She laughed and looked suddenly uncomfortable. She flushed. Mrs. Peachey was also flushing—what a miserable complexion the woman had! and—how dared she think of such a thing! For Lady Johns knew exactly what Angelina's mother was thinking and the same thought came to her. They met, she and this woman, upon the platform of the feminine instinct for match-making. Each thought:"Suppose he fell in love with Angelina!"Mrs. Peachey was the first to speak."I suppose he won't be running down to see you in your little cot," she said jocosely."Certainly not. I can't imagine Gerald running anywhere. He is a very ponderous, dignified person indeed, and, as a matter of fact, he lives entirely abroad."Lady Johns continued, so that she might observe the effect of this new shot upon Mrs. Peachey:"But my nephew, Dr. Antony ffinch, is coming on Saturday, and I am hoping that he will make a long stay.""That will be more cheerful for you, and you won't want to see so much of Angelina," Mrs. Peachey laughed in a forced way. "I suppose he has a partner to look after his practice?"Lady Johns flushed. This was her sensitive point. Antony showed no signs of settling in his profession and attaining to eminence in it."He hasn't any practice. He has taken his degree of course; he is fully qualified and, indeed, is quite a brilliant man. But, so far, he has only had a locum tenens now and then.""Indeed!"Mrs. Peachey, in her single-word reply, sounded vague; for she was not sure what taking a locum tenens meant. She confounded it with performing an operation. They did such queer things, the doctors, nowadays."You see," Lady Johns continued, deigning to confidence," he has private means and there is no reason why he should set up, for the present, anyhow, as just a general practitioner. A specialist is different." She spoke scornfully of any mere family practice."Very different indeed;" Mrs. Peachey displayed deference and understanding. "I think," she continued, embarking upon confidence also, "that I know something about specialists. My husband was always going to them; and you take five guineas out of your pocket every time. Fortunately we were well to do. But in his case nothing could be done. It was heart disease.""How very sad.""Very. And an exceedingly trying complaint I assure you. He was most touchy to live with."Lady Johns gently stiffened. To speak against the dead was at once to offend against one of her many canons. While her husband was alive she had considered him nearly perfect, and now he was dead she allowed not one of the blessed Saints to even approach him in excellence.She said to Antony when he came down on Saturday:"I have some queer neighbours for you, dear. The people in the large house next door: my landlady, and her friend Mrs. Peachey and the daughter."This she said in an off-hand way. She meant to prove him. She was designing to keep Angelina up her sleeve until the last. At the proper time she would dangle this delicate jewel. She did not want him to marry Angelina; she had not considered the idea, for or against. He was jaded and she wished to stir him. That was all. No man could remain indifferent to Angelina, and it would be better for Antony to flirt, to get his heart broken or even to marry, than for him to remain as he was, sinking into prim bachelor ways.He lived in an old house near the church at Horsham: the part they call Normandy. It had all the dignity and precision of a Cathedral Close, and Antony was beginning to collect blue china and rare silver toys. At twenty-eight this was really laughable. She considered him a mere boy, although she called hint a "gentle old thing.""What do I care for the large house and the landlady's daughter?" he now said, adding, "I should never suppose that you would, but judging by your letters, you've been treating the young person as an equal. I assure you, it is a mistake.""To begin with, she is not the landlady's daughter. The landlady herself is merely a dependent. Angelina Peachey——""Very nice name," ejaculated Antony, "I thought so at once. It looked so nice in your letters, but then you write such a pretty hand."He spoke with graceful indolence; flattering her, indulging her—so long as it was no trouble. He was expert with her at the careless compliment. The attitude of these two towards each other was wholly charming, and wholly unlike the usual feeling which prevails between aunt and nephew. It is a stiff relationship, but Lady Johns and Antony had long ago made it most delightfully plastic. They infused an absolute flavour of romance.It was like Antony to pay a compliment in a voice that was half asleep. The invariable effect of Antony was to gently fatigue you. It was a nice, dozy feeling which you welcomed for a time; more, you revelled in it. Yet Lady Johns was the widow of a man who not only by profession but by nature was every inch a fighter, and she wondered if Antony's wife, should he marry, would end by rebelling against that manner. She would want to fling it off perhaps, as you fling aside bedclothes when you have had your sleep out and the morning sun shines in and the world calls you to all the labour and delight which a waking life gives. Antony was never awake. But, say he ever did marry, it would of course be to some well-bred woman who took her difficulties gracefully, without talking about them. As to her discarding them (by casting the emotional bedclothes off!) this hypothesis simply never occurred nor ever could occur to Lady Johns; she dwelt, in thought and actuality, only with women of rectitude. All others stood without the barrier."Well then," she said to him after her thoughtful pause, "we have been agreed from the first that Angelina Peachey as a name is delightful, but wait until you see her. Antony, she is beautiful.""That makes no appeal to me. You see I'm not beautiful myself. I might resent her."He spoke with a certain rueful indolence, and he expressed a truth. Antony could be jealous."That doesn't matter in a man, and you are not ignoble. I have always admired your profile, Antony.""Very likely. So did I when I was young and cared about these things. Boys care as well as girls, you know. At school I suffered tortures with my full face."He tripped off this strong word "tortures" in his usual languid way."And good as my profile is—or isn't," he proceeded, "I can't present a side-view to the world. It wouldn't be square."We are getting your face into rather a muddle and more out of proportion than Nature intended," she returned with equal lightness, "but it is of Angelina's I wish to talk. No, I will not talk. Wait until you see her.""Yes, I would rather wait."He was sounding bored: not with Lady Johns, but with Angelina. His aunt could never bore him; she was a relative and he loved her. Other people very often did bore him; and this growing attitude of boredom towards the world was making the world bored with him. People did not gravitate to Antony. For his part, he was becoming fond of saying, of this, that, or the other person, "They get on my nerves."He said it far too often. Lady Johns noticed. It was an undesirable trick; it was almost uncouth. It was elderly and intolerant; it was part of the blue china and silver collecting pose. Antony, at twenty-eight, was too absurdly young for any of these things. He was only twenty-eight, yet his attitude was a full forty."Wait if you like," said Lady Johns, "but do let us start clear with her. Remember that she is not the landlady's daughter; and indeed, Mrs. Chope herself is not the usual lodging-house keeper. She only runs this cottage for pinmoney and," she laughed, "it is a cheap and very obvious thing to say, dear boy—but she is getting a regular gross of pins out of me. The rent I pay is absurdly high, but the place suits me and Gravett doesn't grumble."Gravett was her cook, an invaluable woman. She had brought three servants and, adroitly, she had packed them into the fisherman's funny cottage."I have digressed," she said apologetically, "I am afraid I do, and it is a very reprehensible trick. It is modern and slovenly, and I dislike that sort of thing. I am for form and elegance.""Yes," agreed Antony, looking meditatively at his hands. "I know you are and so am I. That makes one of the many bonds between us, dear aunt."He could actually say that cold word "aunt," expressing a gawky relationship, with a soupçon of chivalry, and he looked fondly at his hands, which were beautiful. Certainly beautiful; but frigid and, in a sense, unmanly. You could not imagine them fighting, nor doing any work—the work at a craft which was rough in itself, yet intrinsically dainty—as, say, a skilled smith's work. The very idea of Antony at anything strenuous was laughable, although he was a big shape of a man. Nor could you imagine those white and daintily moulded hands clasping a woman. They showed at their best when he was handling one of his charming silver toys, or making a cup of his palms to hold a cherished saucer of Oriental china. Metal and clay were his heart's darlings."We are devoted to each other, you and I," said Lady Johns, looking hard at him and critically.She was faintly incensed by him; she felt the perverse, feminine desire for roughness in the male creature."But I very often feel," she continued, " the need of a woman—some one to talk to. She would be with me all the time. She would take the place"—her fine, plain face shadowed—" of Bundy. She would grow to mean what Bundy would have meant."Bundy had been the absurd pet name of her only daughter, who died twenty-three years ago."I often think what Bundy would have meant to me," she said; and spoke so finely that the ridiculous name attained some brief nobility while it hung upon her lip."Of course, of course, I understand," returned Antony absently, and with a polite attempt to look compassionate.But he could not, since he was cold. It was not only true that Bundy had died, at sixteen, when he was only five, and that, therefore, he could have no personal regrets for her; it remained that he took no large grasp of life and was insensible to the sublimity of a bereaved woman. He surveyed his quivering aunt with a dead eye."And so I have been thinking," she continued, "that I shall ask this very beautiful Angelina to take Bundy's place.""That is a good idea if you think she would come, and if you could arrange between you what her salary would be.""My dear boy, it would never be upon that basis."Her voice attained severity: for really sometimes Antony did show you a peep into a commercial chamber of his mind. "I said that she was to take the place of Bundy. She would be a daughter. Now do you see?""I see, yes; but I wonder how it would work. Have you asked her about it, sounded her, I mean?""No, not yet. I'm going to,"she spoke more vigorously, for his limpness nettled her into decision.Until this moment her idea of adopting Angelina had been vaporous: just misty, warm dreamings, but now she meant it to be the real thing. She would adopt that girl. She would speak to Mrs. Peachey this very day."Well, do as you like, dear;" he had been standing restlessly at the window and now lounged towards the door. "I think I'll go down the lanes and poke about and look at china.""My dear Antony, you practically live in dirty blue china shops.""They are quite the most interesting spot in Brighton," he told her, his face lighting. "I got a Delft inkstand there on the way from the station. I must show it you. It is in my bag. I'll go up and get it now.""No. Not now.""You don't care about china in the least," he said quite pathetically, "and yet you are surrounded by beautiful specimens at Leggatt Court, and you've even got some nice bits here. Those figures on the mantelpiece are Chelsea. What is she thinking of, the landlady, to leave such things about for the stray tenant to smash?""She is very particular about her tenants and, moreover, she is quite unlike the ordinary landlady. A most perplexing woman altogether. Quite common; no, worse than common. Forgive me Antony, but she really gives the impression of being improper. She is the sort of woman who powders her face, touches up her eyebrows, and wears a purple veil."Antony raised his own eyebrows."You are sure she is only impressionistic? And is she the mother of Bundy the Second?"His second query was tactless; more, it was heartless. Lady Johns flushed with pain."No, no, I told you that the mother is Mrs. Peachey, quite a different person. She is merely genteel, and she might be the keeper of a very superior wardrobe shop.""I prefer the lady with the purple veil," said Antony—and he sounded hearty.It was a tone that his aunt did not recognise. Very rarely did her nephew show an unfamiliar side, yet by instinct she knew that those sides were there and that they might be the strongest sides he had."If I do adopt Angelina," she said rather stiffly, "can I be allowed to take her away at once? Do you, professionally, insist that I should stay at Brighton much longer? I am perfectly well."He looked at her."Yes, I think you are. It was just boredom; that was your malady. Leave if you like. But there is the rent. You've taken the place for ever so long.""I could arrange about the rent. I should pay it, of course;" she gave the pretty light laugh of a woman to whom money always came quite easily and without thought. "Yes," she was becoming increasingly vigorous in her intention; it told in her voice. "I shall certainly adopt Angelina.""It is a risk," her nephew repeated. "You know so little about her, unless you know more than you've told me.""Of course I do. For one thing, we haven't been together an hour, and now you are rushing off to dusty crockery shops. For another thing, Angelina is the most candid darling in the world. She was engaged to be married the other day, and who do you suppose the suitor was?""Don't know, I'm sure.""Why, Freddy Jannaway, of all foolish and undesirable young men," she said.She knew Jannaway's family, in a social way, and she had heard from his sorrowful mother of his many tomfool escapades."That chap!" ejaculated Antony, showing some disgust and it was for the unknown Angelina Peachey, not for silly Jannaway. Already, in his mind, he humourously thought of her as Bundy the Second. He was perhaps blunt, because he was so certainly heartless.Lady Johns nodded."Yes, and she broke it off. She would not tell me why; that is, she did not tell me and I could not ask a leading question. She spoke about the affair with a vigour which I do rather deprecate in a girl. Her mother was angry, but Mrs. Chope took her part.""Mrs. Chope seems a good sort, behind her veil," Antony said flippantly."She is; they very often are."After Lady Johns had said this, she laughed in a vexed way."But I don't know what they are," she added hastily, "I have never come in contact with——""We all know lots of things by intuition. Contact is a clumsy medium of knowledge," Antony told her, and he now took definite steps towards the door."I am going down the lanes to look at the curio shops," he said quite firmly.His aunt watched him go round the corner of the street.He was a magnificent, big shape of a man, with not a touch to betray his sickly heritage. He looked, with his bright blue eyes and tightly curling chestnut hair and beard, more of a sailor than a doctor; except that one is accustomed perhaps to think of sailors as something shorter than Antony ffinch. For he was six feet tall.He was a great big fellow and she loved him dearly. Yet, now, always, she deprecated him. And she was anxious for him. His clothes seemed to hang too loosely about him, as if he were already wasting. She knew that he was not. His shoulders were hunched up and his chest hollowed. Only just a little. No one else would have noticed. She was the only one, and she knew the maladies that he might perhaps have inherited. She was anxious for Antony, and not so much for his physical structure, since delicate men always lived on for ever, as for his moral fibre. Antony was limp, clean through. His very walk showed this. Limp, cold, yet always queerly lovable. This, to Lady Johns, comprised her nephew, Antony ffinch.When he had gone round the corner she looked at the clock and then rang the bell for the parlourmaid who, while she was at Brighton in this reduced establishment, acted as lady's maid also.She got herself dressed for visiting, and although she was only going next door to Mrs. Peachey's, she had rarely been more careful about her veil and her particular ornaments. Everything must be a perfect scheme, yet not too conscious. She took all this trouble, although she knew that Mrs. Peachey had no eyes to see with.When she was ready, she went to the large house next door, and fortuitously, she found Mrs. Peachey and Mrs. Chope in the spacious drawing-room together. Angelina had gone for a walk alone. She would ramble upon the Downs for hours at a time, and it made her mother most uneasy."For you never know what may happen to a girl," she said vaguely, yet with a glance that implied that they all three did know and that knowledge was most horrible. It was a strange look, honestly anxious, yet imbued with a leer.Lady Johns, who never hesitated when her mind was made, plunged into her topic at once; as she put it, "without useless parley," and as Mrs. Chope, listening bolt-eyed, put it, "making no bones about the matter."She said, in brief, that she proposed to adopt Angelina and make a pseudo-daughter of her."I want it," she added, with a nervous laugh, and with her proud glance bent upon Mrs. Peachey's muddled, nervously jerking face, "to be quite a formal arrangement, if you will allow it so. Angelina," she thrilled, "is to be all mine—a daughter."Speaking, she showed a high courage.There were sad cadences in this lofty old room, had there been any one present with ears! For she was thinking of what Bundy might have been. She was the most faithful of mothers.But there was nobody sensitive to cadence. Mrs. Chope and Mrs. Peachey were electrified, and they each had thoughts that were tangible enough. To both belonged the true middle-class mind: which construes every impulse into some tangible advantage. In short, what did Lady Johns intend to make out of this? Just as Mrs. Peachey had said a few minutes back, with reference to Angelina walking alone upon the Downs, "you never know what may happen to a girl," so now she was thinking, "there are strange old women in the world, and a mother cannot be too careful." She looked at her friend, Laura Chope, whose thoughts were much of the same tinge, except that they were perhaps a shade "more aniline. For Mrs. Peachey only surmised the dubious world; Mrs. Chope had moved in it and been of it."Although," Lady Johns continued, in her silvery stream of a voice, "there is no reason why you and Angelina should not meet now and then, it would be only infrequently, dear Mrs. Peachey, and by particular arrangement with me. I feel it due to myself to make this perhaps harsh stipulation, for otherwise I should never feel that the dear child was wholly mine.The primitive woman in Mrs. Peachey boiled up and nearly over!She was dying to say, yet choosing her own words to convey it, "How can the child of my body ever be your child?"A glance at Laura Chope's wary face restrained her. She sat biting her pale and roughened lips. Her whole exterior was harsh and mean, poor woman, yet a fine, maternal fury was raging within her."I am not rich," the haughty voice went smoothly on, "but I could, at my death, provide sufficiently for Angelina.""She has nearly seventy pounds a year in her own right, or will have, when she comes of age, Lady Johns. It is from house property in Bayswater.""Seventy pounds! Well, that is a nice little packet of pin-money, dear Mrs. Peachey. Now, what do you think of my rather daring proposition? And you must forgive me if I have hurt your feelings. Be as angry as you like, only let me have my way, for really I have fallen head over ears in love with your Angelina.""Mrs. Peachey," said Mrs. Chope at once, and staring at Angelina's rigid mother, "is not offended I am sure. Are you, Emily dear?""Not in the least," was the instant nervous answer."But she is naturally rather taken by surprise. Will you allow us, dear Lady Johns, until to-morrow evening to reflect?"Mrs. Chope spoke in her best ninimy-pinimy way, pursing up her long, jolly-looking mouth. Any attempt at propriety made her more suggestively improper than ever.Lady Johns surveyed her coldly. Was it true, that rather apt thing Antony said just now? He had said that you knew more by intuition than knowledge. Intuition just now was saying shocking things to her about warm-hearted, wellmeaning, most irregular Laura Chope."That is only reasonable," was her answer, made icily; and she looked arrogantly through her landlady's broad, red face to the daintily papered wall."I"—she stood up and addressed herself with a changed and warmer manner to Angelina's mother, who sat, stark, upon the sofa—"am quite a poetic person. I dislike, therefore, to dwell upon the prose of this matter, and so, dear Mrs. Peachey, do you, I f eel sure!"She paused and these two women looked hard at each other.Lady Johns betrayed a tender nervousness to attain her end. She looked rapturously maternal, and so, in her lesser way, did Mrs. Peachey. The same wonderful feeling ran through both; they who had been, what Laura Chope, watching, had never been—mothers.They were both agitated and both were suffering, yet, never, could there be any true bond between the two. Mrs. Peachey was inherently both vixenish and suspicious, and Lady Johns, for all her fine sweetness and her generous mould of mind, had been narrowed by fortune. She had been screened. Even in her great sorrows she had, to put it in a homely way, fallen soft. Nothing harsh had ever touched her. Ugliness had hidden its dreadful face. She might have been a fine creature, given poverty and struggle, but as it was she simply showed as a beautiful and rather imperious elderly woman. It was a sheer impossibility for her to step down from her high place and mingle with the mob.Having now given voice to her playful little speech, and finding, as she felt, no polite response in Mrs. Peachey, she advanced gracefully towards the door. When she was near it, she turned round and said:"If you decide to let me have Angelina, send her in to dine with me to-morrow night and I shall understand. We will not again discuss this topic, which is awkward for us both. Later on, your lawyer and mine can settle details. We must, for every one's sake, have matters suitably arranged. If she comes to-morrow night—and do please let her" (the insatiable mother showed here!)—"she will meet my nephew, Antony ffinch. I think they would accord."She stood there looking queenly, yet trembling a little, limbs, features and charming voice. Her veil of costly Chantilly (as Mrs. Chope observed), was flung back over her broad black hat. It framed her sad, keen face. She looked a queen, yet, even more, the most humble of suppliants.Mrs. Peachey was staring at the hat and veil. She thought them singular. Very often Lady Johns, to her mind, wore singular clothes and shabby ornaments. Mrs. Peachey was conservative, and she distrusted that floating veil. It was thick and it looked rusty. When Mrs. Peachey went out, she wore a bit of spotted net that she called a "fall."It was nothing like that intricate Chantilly.Mrs. Chope rustled forward to open the drawing-room door and, herself, escorted the visitor downstairs. She wanted to have a private word with Lady Johns, at the last, in the hall, but the elder woman's firm mouth and jaw drove her into silence. There was something rather terrific about this aristocratic widow who wanted to adopt Angelina. Mrs. Chope, shutting the street door after Lady Johns and hurrying upstairs in her clackety-heeled slippers, inconsequently thought of her old mistress, Mrs. Mellison.That had been an aristocrat too, and how those women did quell you! She wondered how they did it. She would have done it herself had she been able, for it was a trump card in any woman's hand, that regal manner. She was clever enough to know it for a card which she, Laura Chope, would never hold. It was dealt you at the beginning of the game; you did not win it, nor have it given at a later round.Emily Peachey was still sitting upon the sofa, and the rims of her eyes were red."You think you are crying for Angelina," her friend told her abruptly, directly she clattered into the room, "but you are not. You don't care a pin's point for her. It is Blanche you are snivelling for. Put your handkerchief away."Mrs. Peachey put her handkerchief in her pocket at once. She would always obey if you bullied her. She looked at Laura Chope. Their eyes met in a kindred glance. She and Laura stared at each other; they pursed up their mouths, as if they were trying to whistle. They looked uncommonly knowing. You could almost imagine Mrs. Chope laying a waggish finger along her nose."If only Angelina had a father! "whimpered Mrs. Peachey at last."He wouldn't help. He would only hinder. You know that you never let him have his own way. You know, too, that he hated Angelina. You both do. I believe that I'm the only one who really cares——""I won't have my feelings as a mother——""Now don't be silly. You've been dying to get her off your hands. Here is the chance. We mustn't miss it.""But what's that woman up to?" demanded Mrs. Peachey, discarding her feelings as a mother with eloquent promptitude.Mrs. Chope pulled her mouth crooked. She, in a way, ogled. She understood at once all that her friend implied."Be quite easy," she advised; "Lady Johns isn't that sort. I could tell you, at a glance, what any woman is made of. They don't hoodwink me, I can tell you, Emily. And I am too fond of Angelina to let her run any ugly risk. You would have handed her over to that baboon, Freddy Jannaway. You didn't care.""That was a very different thing. She would have been respectably married.""So she will be now.""Very likely, but only to this nephew, who is a paltry doctor. Mr. Jannaway was an Honourable," insisted Mrs. Peachey, speaking with proper awe of the one and dismissing the other as lacking not only a prefix, but even a capital F to his name."I tell you they are a high family;" Mrs. Chope also showed awe: airs of the servants' hall blew upon them both. "It is a wonderful chance for Angelina.""I think it is a piece of impudence. I wonder!" Mrs. Peachey laughed—a bitter, high-pitched tootle of a laugh, "that she didn't offer to buy my child of me.""So she would, if she thought you wanted the money. And you would have closed with her," returned Mrs. Chope with candour. "Now I tell you what I mean to do. I'm going off to-morrow morning early to Horsham to find out all about Leggatt Court and Lady Johns and Dr. Antony ffinch. I'll skin the lot and turn them inside out. It is the easiest thing in the world. A bun and a glass of milk at the best confectioner's in the town will do the trick. Or I may go to a house agent for a list of places to let and have a chat with him. You leave it to me. If that old girl next door at my cottage could only hear me talk!" she laughed heartily. "If she supposed we didn't think her respectable!""Well, we don't know," said Mrs. Peachey doggedly."Yes, we do, but I will go to Horsham. Now mind you sit tight all day to-morrow and don't let Angelina go in to Lady Johns'.""I can't keep her away. She takes no notice of anything I say."Mrs. Chope looked resolute. She looked reflective."To-morrow," she said, in the voice of a woman who meant to be obeyed, "we shall all three leave Brighton directly after breakfast by the same train. I shall go to Horsham, you and Angelina will get out at Shoreham and spend the day there. The churches, there are two, are fine I've heard, and you can walk in the Swiss Gardens. They are as dull as ditch-water in the daytime, but you will have to put up with that.""I would rather have them in the daytime than at night, from all I've heard," said Mrs. Peachey primly.Mrs. Chope laughed; she had danced there many tunes and years ago."There is no harm in them," she
				retorted, "Mr. Mellison and I went
				once for a lark. We went to Cremorne,
				too."The next night Angelina, to whom nothing had been told, went into the cottage and dined with Lady Johns and Antony.When she departed, not going into the street at all, but slipping through the door in the wall to her mother's garden, Lady Johns said pertinently to her nephew:"Well!"It was such a crisp word. She was triumphant. Mrs. Peachey had consented and once more—for Lady Johns—there was a Bundy to adore."She is beautiful; very," said Antony, yet showing less rapture than he would for china.He was a massive man, and although his face was heavily plain, he looked almost handsome to-night. Antony was always at his best in evening dress, and in stately houses or going along stately streets. He showed well, also, in a Cathedral or the cloisters of one. The note he struck was culture. Put Antony ffinch into rough clothes and set him by the yawning hearth of a cottage, and he would have appeared both lout and brute. He was of the type which never for a moment can allow itself to relax, since to relax meant revealing unpleasing truths of character."Yes, isn't she beautiful? And it is settled. She is to be mine."Lady Johns spoke as he would have spoken of a rare blue vase. "But her mother and I," she added, "are saying nothing to her until to-morrow. They are coming to tea with me and the whole thing will be settled. I have already written to Gillespie, Firmin and Scott" (these were her lawyers). "We shall have a proper deed.""You carry it through rigorously," said Antony, smiling, "and she may not pay for the drawing-up of the deed. She will marry of course, and at once I should think.""Oh, will she?" his aunt glanced across at him sharply.He was by the window, looking, as he always did, as if he wanted to get out and run into the intricate twistings of old lanes where the bric-à-brac shops were. She was by the hearth.The window was closely curtained; the hearth was fireless this warm summer night. Yet the position of the two expressed their tendency: she for the home, he for constant acquisition of the rare and inanimate treasure."Yes," he kept on smiling, "I should think she'd marry Uncle Gerald if ever he comes home to England.""No, Antony. I don't propose to be daughterless and homeless in one act of robbery. Although"—again she gave her easy, pretty laugh—"it would hardly be robbery for Gerald to insist upon having his own house. But he is nearly sixty and he had a disappointment, that dreadful affair, and we won't dwell on it.""That is all the more reason why he should fall victim to Miss Peachey—to Bundy. May I call her that?""You may," she barely flinched. "I am going to call her Bundy myself when we are alone.""Old gentlemen of sixty who have been hard hit in youth," continued Antony, "are most vulnerable."He betrayed that air of heartiness and relish which his aunt never liked, and which she could not understand in him. It was a manner which had nothing to do with blue china. And she certainly did not like him to jest about Gerald. It was bad taste, since he knew the facts.CHAPTER VITHERE followed for Lady Johns the five most perfect years in her life. She would have insisted, had the question been put, that her early married time had been more happy, but in reality it was not; for she had borne and lost her children then, and she had been young, unripened. Now it seemed as if she could lose nothing more and, beyond that, as if the lost gifts of the past had been given back, and in perfect form.Angelina, putting her merely as a speculation, was quite successful, and as to her mother and Mrs. Chope, who might have proved difficult, she herself cut this Gordian knot by calmly refusing to see either of them any more. She wrote to her mother at Christmas for the first two years, then, this form of expression, becoming not difficult but impossible, she merely sent a Christmas card: in good taste, the most expensive that the Horsham shops could produce, and not in the least what Mrs. Peachey would have called Popish, and so condemned. Even Lady Johns thought this heartless, and said so. Angelina, with a queer smile, kissed her, saying:"I am not heartless. We have never cared for each other, so why should the fact of her being my mother influence us. Bodily ties are nothing much."In this, as in other matters, Angelina went farther than her guardian. Yet they were tenderly attached, and also, which was more important, they were soothing companions to each other. They never got upon each other's nerves; partly because Lady Johns was quite finically well-bred, and partly because Angelina, beneath her coldness had a well of sweetness. It was a well which she allowed few to draw from, and in those five years of her life, from eighteen to twenty-three, Lady Johns was the only one who ever ventured to lower the bucket.So far, Angelina had been admired and not loved. More than one young man, impeccable in the eyes of the "county," had proposed to her and been rejected. In each case, had the young man of the moment been candid with himself, he would have admitted relief. Angelina was magnificent; you longed to possess her, just for the glory of the thing, but she was too rare for the easy-going hunting young landowner to live comfortably with. She enslaved; yet neither hearts nor heads were broken on her account. Grandmamma Peachey's mantle—of the destructive coquette—might have fallen upon Angelina; yet she wore it invisibly for the present.Antony, absorbed by silver and blue china, watched all this with a certain indolent affection. To his aunt's surprise, he had shown no signs of being in love with Angelina, and as to Gerald, he was still abroad. England, for a reason known to him, to Lady Johns, and one or two more intimates, was not a country that he inclined to. Gerald had been hard hit in England, and he took blows—of that sort—badly.Angelina had been what may be called a cold success with county society, and, as for London, Lady Johns detested it. Two of her little boys had died there. She gave the girl a month or so's gaiety every spring, but they were always glad to get back to Leggatt Court. The large white house with its classic pillars and finely restrained ornament, with its undulating park and spacious apartments, was just the setting for Angelina and her rare air of perpetual snows. Snow with a red sunset nevertheless!Antony had thought of this. He was slow, self indulgent, and, in his emotions, so far, attenuated. Yet he had begun to think seriously of Angelina, and in him, as in her, there might be much to find.It was the Feast of the Annunciation; to Lady Johns a time for religiously attending what she called Morning Service; to many other people merely the day upon which rent is due, and upon which many household removals take place. Walking to church that morning she and Angelina had passed more than one furniture van drawn up outside some desolately open door and smelling dismally of straw and dirty matting. Lady Johns regarded them, and regarded the sorry jumble of furniture, with her fine, amused air, which was not meant to be either snobbish or unkind. It was merely inevitable. She had not known removals of this sort. Domestically, she had remained unruffled. Things had always been done for her, hidden from her and made easy. She had moved through warm airs of perfect grace.She remained in church that morning for Communion, Angelina went in to the town for some shopping, and they arranged to meet outside afterwards.When Lady Johns, uplifted by religion, came along the flagged path from the church porch to the wide street, she saw Antony and Angelina talking at his open door. Those two were her dearest, and she stood still for a second and, unobserved, marking them. The whole scene was leisurely and charming; it suited her high-bred English sense of what life should be, and of what, to her, it always had been. She saw about her romance, good breeding and restrained opulence. The old street, with its dignified houses; gleaming tall lattices without, and lofty panelling within, was far enough removed from those other streets, mean and raw, where the furniture vans had stood this morning. You could not imagine a removal in Normandy. The March sun, a little garish, glittered from the hard, blue sky, and that buoyant wind which some love and others hate, was riding cock-horse through the town. Angelina still wore her winter coat of costly fur—her seventy pounds, from the Bayswater houses, did not go very far towards dressing her in these days! She had a large hat with feathers and a sweeping brim. She looked fashionable, yet not in the fashion and, just as Normandy was removed from the new streets on the outskirts of Horsham, so was Angelina delicately distant from little persons in the town, who looked into the drapers' shops for the latest novelty to wear at Easter.Lady Johns advanced. She watched them, and she found that they were certainly talking with what she conceived to be a new manner. There was, if you put it that way, more body to it than usual. They appeared to have got hold of a living topic. They were awake at last. They were alert. Angelina's face was flushed, and this was rare. Antony looked really stirred. Directly they became aware of her, they shifted their mental attitude, and almost laughingly, as it seemed, they put on the everyday habit of careless, say cousinly, badinage. Lady Johns detected this and was pained. These two kept something hidden away. But her loving sense of beauty was stronger than anything else, and she noticed warmly, as a man would, Angelina's perfection of face and form, and, more, her dignity. At twenty-three she already had, in its most charming expression, what people call a "presence." She was singled out for observance, and would be wherever she went, not so much by her height, although that was considerable, and not so much by her undoubted beauty, but by her easy air of complete distinction. Lady Johns thought of Mrs. Peachey and smiled; she thought of Mrs. Chope and shivered. Had Angelina really come out of such a household? It was very nearly incredible.She looked from the girl to the man, and thought how fine a creature Antony might yet become, he with his big body and pleasantly plain face, if only some circumstance would pull him together. It was a great pity that these two had never fallen in love.They had seen her and they came forward with a flow of easy, affectionate language, meant, as she felt, to disarm her. She looked into Antony's house, as they three stood at the foot of the broad steps leading to the big door. He had the best house in the street, he, a bachelor, drifting, as a straw, upon the stream. Lady Johns thought casually of those little houses in the new streets, where in every one were men and women and lots of children. It seemed, not unfair, she would never have allowed this, for as an idea it was both shallow and democratic. But it did seem a trifle absurd and disproportionate that one man should have so much space and other men so little. That was all. She snipped off social reform at this point.She looked into the beautifully proportioned and panelled hall, with its black and white flagged floor and the fragile tables on which Antony's blue pots stood. There were daffodils with great white trumpets blooming in the house. You could see them through the open windows of the drawing-room on the first floor. Antony might have been a woman, for he did things so well and made such a perfect god of his domestic possessions!"I don't quite like," she said, continuing a thought, and translating it into speech, "the colour you've had the shutters painted."There were heavy wooden outside shutters to the tall windows, and they were painted a rich brown; far enough removed from any artistic shade—he abhorred the merest hint of an "artistic" house. Yet you could never insult them by calling them a coldly venomous chocolate. There was a golden touch of snuff to Antony's carefully chosen new paint."I'm sorry," he said, "for I took a lot of trouble. I thought that this particular shade, with the ivory of the walls, would make of the house a dark-eyed woman.""A dark-eyed woman with the jaundice, my dearest boy. Your walls are not ivory, but yellow. And are you coming back with us to lunch?"Lady Johns, speaking tartly—for Angelina's eyes were blue—looked from one to the other. She hoped that they might now betray themselves. Yet never did she suppose that they kept anything vital away from her. She did not conceive that the foundations of her happy life with Angelina were threatened. When we are happy we assume that we go on for ever. At the most, so she was pleasantly thinking, they were merely plotting a particular birthday present for her, or some impromptu social effect for that occasion. Her birthday would be soon; upon the first of May, which is also the Festival of SS. Philip and James. She was always glad to reflect that they had baptised her Philippa and not just a cheap May, as parents with less correct church training might have done."You will come back, Antony?" she asked him, as he stood irresolute upon his own doorstep.She smiled, yet she sounded tart; for she really did dislike that flabbiness of his. Even now it was Angelina who answered for him. Could not he—at thirty-three—know his own mind?"No," said Angelina firmly, "he won't come to-day. Good-morning, Antony."She threw him a funny nod; so light, that in a lesser girl you might have employed the ridiculous word "saucy." She moved at once, along the pavement. Docilely, hardly knowing why she did, Lady Johns moved too. Antony eloquently watched them pass along, then, smiling, he entered his own house."What are you two plotting?" asked the elder woman of Angelina."I must tell you when we get home. I have wanted to for a long time, but Antony kept putting it off," was the answer.Lady Johns looked startled; she turned round to stare. Angelina met the stare with another; it was frank, tender and concerned."We must go home to lunch, and then you must have your usual afternoon rest," she said. "I shall tell you at teatime. Let us hope that no one will call and interrupt us.""I shall give orders that I am not at home," said Lady Johns, with what may be described as a feeble valiance. She was beginning to feel that something serious was coming."And we will talk of anything else now, please," Angelina was saying, firmly, yet with a quiver in her voice that certainly beseeched you. It provoked all love in Lady Johns."Very well, my dear; just as you wish," was her composed answer, and they turned into the narrow streets of the town.Women were buying daffodils. Lady Johns, in passing, looked at them indulgently. This, to buy flowers for the house, was to her—with furniture vans—one of the inexperienced things. She certainly swam in some other firmament. She surveyed the harried looking ladies who were buying daffodils or peering into the drapers' shops. They were not a pretty set of women. It was absurd, she thought, to boast of the English complexion, for it went to pieces at once. Every face in the street looked pinched with east wind and hard sunlight. Angelina appeared to be the one woman who never had yellow cheeks and a red nose.What a love and a blossom it was! She looked adoringly at her girl. They went on conversing inconsequently as they walked. Through lunch and after lunch they persisted in whipping up small talk into an even higher froth than usual. But Lady Johns looked oddly strained when at last she stood up to retire for her afternoon nap."I'm glad," she said, "that Gerald isn't meaning to come back to England. I should hate to be turned out of this house. It was my home as a child, and I always seem to see Mamma moving about this room."She surveyed the handsomely plenished drawing-room, with the costly furniture of several periods; each piece looking as if it grew along the walls and had never been placed there with a conscious view to effect. These things were inherited and not bought. She looked through the French window at the lawns. They rippled beneath the rough east wind. They looked an intense blue-green. Beyond the lawns were the filmy trees, half clothed. In the park, and beyond everything else, was the charming line, vaporous in distance, of the South Downs."But he would never turn you out unless he got married," said Angelina."That is true; and Gerald will not marry. Did I ever tell you his story?"Asking this, Lady Johns, who had been standing by the door, sat down; and they were both wondering why she chose the present moment for telling another person's story. For were they not both concerned with their own affairs this afternoon? It was not a time for old chronicles. Angelina was longing and dreading to tell; Lady Johns was longing and also, perhaps, dreading to listen. Yes, she was certainly dreading, for a disquieting idea had occurred to her. It came while she sat at lunch; it was at the fish course. Was it possible that the call of nature had reasserted itself after all these years? Did Angelina wish to return to her mother? It would be natural that she should confide in Antony and ask his advice. Lady Johns recalled the fact that they had been a great deal together lately."No, you never told me," said Angelina, listlessly.She sat by the fire, shading her face with a painted screen, which trembled as she held it."Antony hasn't told you?"Oh, no, he never mentioned his Uncle Gerald."That was nice of Antony. Every one knew the story at the time. It was a cause celèbre, my dear, but these things are forgotten in a week, and then some other scandal comes on. It is very dreadful; all these divorce cases, I mean.""I take an interest in them," admitted Angelina, with discouraging promptitude. "The curious thing is that even while you are reading the evidence, you barely absorb the names of the people. It is the play that concerns you, not the actors.""But I wish you would not read those cases. It seems so dreadful for a young girl to know anything of such matters.""But, dearest, I am not so very young.""Yes, you are; but we will say an unmarried woman instead, if you like.""Unmarried women are the very ones who should read, surely. They are the more concerned. They have to learn to steer their ship, and the Divorce Court is their chart."Angelina spoke lightly. Her tone might have been translated flippant; except that "flippant" and "saucy" were not words which could ever comprise her.Lady Johns, sitting by the door and looking unusually perturbed, was plainly shocked. She was of the old school, and she showed it in her next speech."I wish," she said vigorously, "that divorce could be abolished entirely, but I suppose that is too much to hope for in this rationalistic age. I remember hearing my mother quite frequently quote Queen Victoria, who said at the passing of the Divorce Bill, that in future the daily paper would be unfit to be laid upon the family breakfast table. Mamma agreed. She was most happily married; people were in those days.""Only because they were more simple; they asked for less.""But I was happily married, too, and we were not simple," said Lady Johns, who had absorbed the modern failing—of wishing to be considered complex."Oh, no, you were privileged," returned Angelina, and her voice now sounded as if it had been compressed into sympathy and respect. "But tell me about your brother Gerald.""Yes, I will, but I really don't know why I mentioned it at all, and to-day of all days. He was divorced, my dear. It was truly dreadful, Angelina. Such a charming girl; good family, carefully brought up, and the very last woman in the world that you would ever suspect of depravity. But she left him at the end of six weeks. She ran away from this very house, and from that day to this poor Gerald has not only detested Leggatt Court, but even his native country. She went off with a musician, a person of that rank. She had been in love with him, but her poor mother thought, quite naturally, that a suitable marriage would soon cure any nonsense of that sort."Lady Johns spoke calmly of the matron's sane hypothesis. It was her own. She was—with furniture vans and the sixpenny bunch of daffodils bought upon the pavement!—utterly ouside this experience. The idea of any woman falling in love with a person beneath her in rank was even more than immodest; it was incredible.Angelina said frankly, and she looked positively indignant: a queer, new look! (everything, so Lady Johns was thinking wretchedly, was novel to-day and most disturbing):"You can talk like that! And yet you have told me over and over again of your own perfect marriage. You referred to it just now.""Perfect, my dear, perfect.""Then why shouldn't Gerald's bride have been perfectly happy with her music master, had only her mother allowed them to marry at the start.""My dear, dear Angelina, the position is entirely different, and indeed I doubt if he was even a music master; with private pupils, you know. That might have been a little better. But he merely played, I believe—yes, I am certain of it—in some seaside orchestra.""She loved him——" said Angelina.Such an ejaculation! Entirely new to Lady Johns!"You couldn't love such a person. It is comic," she spoke imperiously from her chair by the door. She was very nearly angry."Oh, I agree," Angelina relapsed into languor, "that your sense of humour might suffer, but, fortunately when you are far enough in love, there is no sense of humour. And I never have much at any time."Lady Johns stood up suddenly:"My darling girl," she spoke with implied reproof, "you are talking in quite a new fashion to-day. I hardly understand you, and I certainly do not approve. Perhaps I ought not to have mentioned poor Gerald's affair. I will go and lie down, Angelina. At tea-time you shall tell me your little secret."She turned away—purposely implying that, so far as she proposed to admit, Angelina and Antony would merely confess to some affectionate birthday plotting. She dissimulated, to Angelina, with herself, until the very last.Angelina, left alone, walked first to the window, and then, after allowing a pause long enough for Lady Johns to get safely upstairs and away, went to her own room.Safely in there, she once more walked to a window and looked across the park to the hills. They were far enough away to make you cross with them. They were unreachable. She had the child's sense of fairy-wonder about hills. Upon the other side of hills dwelt the unattainable ideal.From the window she went to a drawer, unlocked it and took out the shell box which Kitty, the parlour-maid, had given her. Inside was the letter written long ago to St. Mary of Egypt. At first she thought she would take this letter out and read it; but she shrank, as we do, from regarding her dead self. She merely held the gay box to her cheek, saying as the shells, cold and smooth, touched her flesh:"St. Mary of Egypt! If I could only believe in you still, and trust you as I did."Her voice was hollow. It rang with disenchantment. She put the box away, locked the drawer, and returning to the window, sat thinking and staring at the coquettishly veiled Downs.When the tea bell rang, she went to the glass and studied her own face with a curious dispassionate glance. It looked anxious and almost haggard, for she was going to wound Lady Johns. The knife was going in so far and the wound might prove fatal. Angelina, for all her cool exterior, shrank from wounding. As she looked at herself in the glass, revelation seemed to show itself, and, faintly, she divined that in the future she might hurt many people: hating to do it, flinching always from the frightful task. Yet the impulse would be sternly imperious. She would each time obey.This prophecy, or something rather like it, she seemed to read in the glass.Then she went singing very softly down the great staircase.She sang when she was stirred, and so in her most tragic moments gave the surface impression of frivolity.She went down the stairs, her feet sinking into the deep carpet. She had become accustomed to wealth; she had absorbed it. But suddenly there came the sharp memory of her childhood in the old City house, and she saw the wide staircase there and smelled the faint perfume of drugs and sweetness that would steal up from the shop.She remembered St. Valentine's day, when she huddled up in her nightgown on those stairs. And she remembered Kitty, who had so adored the dead Patrick. Perhaps Patrick was merely faithless. This cynical theory had accrued to Angelina now that she was grown up. In childhood you were trustful, and the stated fact stood before you sharply outlined.She had promised Kitty and had vowed to St. Mary of Egypt that she would never marry without love. Marriage was a sacrament. It was certainly indissoluble. She had kept that vow, so far. She was meaning to keep it for all her life.She went into the drawing-room. Lady Johns was already there; looking rested, 'yet rigid."Well, Bundy darling, tell me what it is."Lady Johns said this at last; but it was after they had finished their tea. For Angelina, with every reason, was postponing confidence, and Lady Johns subtly dreaded it, since she felt sure that something was meaning to intervene and spoil her perfect life with this dear adopted daughter.She called Angelina—Bundy; and then she looked oddly ashamed; for, in truth, this name was most unsuitable, and through the five years she had rarely employed it. Bundy was an absurd appellation; it was positively doggy, and there was nothing of the curled poodle about Angelina."Yes, I will tell you, I must," she said now, sitting up erect behind the silver equipage—Angelina always poured:"But," she added, showing unusual caprice, "I could do it better out of doors. Such a perfect afternoon! The wind has dropped, and there is only sun. Do you think you would mind walking down to the lake? There is," she laughed, "something that makes easy about water. I should have a flow of talk, just as the water flows, if we went to the lake. Do."She sounded anxious."Very well, my dear." Lady Johns was composed and graceful, but her tone quivered nevertheless, and her face, distinguished and dark, undubitably ugly, seemed to flicker."I will go where you like, Angelina," she added, almost humbly, "only don't keep me in suspense much longer, or I shall begin to feel really anxious. Ring for Simmons to bring me a hat and cloak."They walked through the park to the water and sat down in a little half-draped wood that grew to the edge. Primroses were thickly yellow to the foot, bunches of bright green spike gave a royal promise of bluebells. Upon the water were two white, haughty swans. The whole scene was beautiful, yet perhaps too conscious.It was guarded and elegant, it bestowed all that you had any right to expect, it was a landscape overflowing with accredited satisfaction. Sheltered and lovely, a little circumscribed, it exactly expressed the life setting of Lady Johns. The graceful, indolent swan that swam towards them might have been her token.Angelina said, taking her adopted mother's bare hands."When you were married you were very happy?""Very, very," the proud look the elder woman allowed to drift across the water was mute with pain, yet of the gentlest sort, for Arthur had resolved into a mere heavenly dream; he had been dead so long."And yet you did not have a long engagement? You were married quickly.""We had to be. His regiment was going abroad. I declare," Lady Johns softly laughed, "that Arthur and I barely knew each other. In those days parents were stricter than they are now, and I think they were wiser, for the average marriage was a great success, and nowadays it is more often a modified failure. Arthur and I were never left alone, from the day when he proposed to the day he wedded me."What a daring experiment. Nowadays we haven't the courage."My dear, when a good man loves her, a good woman can settle down."Lady Johns, so to speak, flung down this card upon the table; defying every player at life to challenge it.Angelina looked at her with banter, with scoffing, with wonder. She was thinking, "Oh, these elderly women who have been wives and mothers, and who have been bereft, they know nothing at all." She expressed something of her thought:"Darling," she said, patting the backs of the ringed hands, "you have bloomed under glass. I don't know why on earth you are sitting here in a wild wood now, and with a wild creature.""Nonsense, Bundy, you are not wild."Again Lady Johns employed the silly pet name of her own dead child, and again she looked startled and self-affronted. Angelina, in a queer mood herself, appeared to be impressing it. Moreover, so far, she had confided nothing. She was just delicately playing about with a topic. What was the matter with Angelina to-day? She was peculiar. She was unusual. She assaulted Lady Johns' exact sense of good breeding."But I am wild," she insisted; "more than you know, more than I know myself, and I feel sure that my Grandmamma Peachey must be listening behind some tree and grinning spitefully in the way she often did. I remember. I have told you about her.""Yes," Lady Johns spoke stiffly, and her hands moved beneath Angelina's cool palms. "You have told me everything; at least, I trust that you have."She experienced a scornful shrinking from Angelina's commercial family—fine lady and spoiled woman that she was!"I hated her," pursued Angelina, gazing at the lordly swan who swam up, "yet, just as I know I am like her to look at, so, I'm afraid, I am like her inside.""Afraid!""Well, yes; she wasn't wholly satisfactory, so far as I could understand.""Angelina! Why will you not tell me what you are keeping back? Is it this? Have you at last accepted an offer? I know that Percy Lascelles has asked you twice. But I would rather you married Robert Pole.""I will tell you, but it must be in my own time. When you know, you will be glad. I want, just for a little while, to talk about love-making, and you must indulge me, although I know that you think such analysis indelicate.""I do think that there are certain things we may surmise, but not discuss," said Lady Johns neatly."There I differ. Love has been a study with me on all its sides. It has been a sort of hobby, as china is with Antony. When I was a child at Brighton I used to watch the little couples on the pier or along the sea-front. On Bank Holidays, you know, or upon Sunday afternoons. They interested me. They went along cuddled up close to each other—am I shocking you? Some were coy, some were triumphant, some looked as if love-making really hurt, some were merely friendly—and that was melancholy. It was sinister.""Not at all, my dearest girl. Mutual respect and a friendly feeling should make very good foundation for matrimony.""At the oyster level, perhaps. Forgive me, but I must just talk as I feel to-day," returned Angelina, feverishly."And I never told you why I broke my engagement with Freddy Jannaway. It was hardly an engagement," she shivered. "He proposed to me in the cab and he kissed me in the cab. I bundled out—anyhow; and ran up to Mamma and Mrs. Chope to insist that they should break it off for me."She looked pale. Lady Johns, also pale, was also looking horrified. Any other woman in the world, save Angelina, would have completely alienated her by such frank speaking. But the worst was to come!"The next time a man kissed me," the coolly quivering voice went on, "I shut my eyes. It helps to shut your eyes, until you get used to it. I shut my eyes and I felt—' that is rather nice. You may go on.'"She laughed, hysterically, so Lady Johns was silently insisting. That malady, hysteria, covered so many sins and made so many allowances. It was merciful and all comprehensive. She was old-fashioned enough to have a medicine chest, and she was privately meditating a dose of the febrifuge variety for Angelina at bed-time to-night."That man," Angelina twisted round impressively on the rustic bench where they were sitting by the waters' edge, "was Antony. Now you know what I have been trying to tell you."Antony had kissed her. Antony was going to marry her. Lady Johns sat transfixed.She was transfixed, yet, much more, most uncomfortable. She was outraged by a sense of complete unsuitability. All her ethics were for harmony, and she felt that Angelina was discordantly unworthy of herself to-day. She talked as any little flighty blonde might have done; as her sister Blanche might have done. Lady Johns had taken an intense aversion to Blanche; from everything she had heard, and from the photograph that she had seen. It had always been a relief to her to feel that Mrs. Charles Murray and her husband were safely in India. Any little pert girl might have talked as Angelina was doing. She, who was of a type for coldness and queenly reserves! Lady Johns applauded a frigid woman, if she was also beautiful. Men, so she argued, were the exponents of feeling.She now said, almost helplessly, as if the ornamental water and the swan swam round with her:"You are affianced to Antony?"'I am married to Antony," was the answer; swift, almost sullen."Angelina!""Yes, I knew you would say just that—Angelina! And with a world of pain in it. I have hurt you. I am sorry. Can you wonder that I put off the topic and played about and shocked you and teased you so long?""But—married! I don't comprehend, my dear. You must explain yourself."There was virtuous retreat implied in Lady John's voice, for Angelina's conduct bordered upon the positively irregular. She had very nearly done the unforgivable thing; a secret marriage was perilously near to no marriage at all, in the placidly ordered mind of Lady Johns."I don't comprehend," she repeated, hopelessly floundering in disapproval and perplexity."I am amazed at Antony," she added after a grave pause. "He ought to be ashamed of himself.""For getting married, and to me? I thought you'd be so pleased.""Nonsense, Angelina! You knew I would be angry. A secret marriage. What on earth will people think? What explanation can we give? It is like," Lady Johns flushed a deeper scarlet than her cheek had known for many a year, "the lower classes."Her voice implied more than she would ever have essayed to express in words. There were no words for such a position—as applied to Angelina and to Antony.Her hot blush washed right over her."Why did you do it? "she asked in a voice that wailed. "When did you do it?""Dearest, don't be so distressed. What is it, after all? Just a quiet wedding in place of a noisy one.""Euphemisms don't improve the position. When was it, and why? I insist upon knowing everything.""Well," Angelina seemed to painfully choose her words, " we have imagined for a long time that we were in love, and—oh, it was just this—Antony is shy and I am impulsive, although you would never suppose it. Do you remember that day, just after the New Year, when he took me up to London?""Yes, you said you wanted to see a pantomime. And I believed it. You both deceived me""Not wholly. We did go the pantomime, but we got married first. A special licence, you know, Antony saw to it.""I should imagine that he did;" the wind changed into an entirely different quarter with Lady Johns; she was just a woman, valiant for a woman, and permanently irritated with a weak man.She had always wished Antony to be strong. Perhaps, after all, a secret marriage was a sign of strength. This seemed a problem worth regarding. She would set it out upon the tables of her mind and solve it if she could."You have made me very tired to-day," she said, looking vaguely at the moving, lovely water.Her life was so exquisitely measured, so rhythmically monotonous, that it seemed to her as if she had lived whole agitating weeks since that calm moment when she took Communion this morning at the Parish Church.Her transparent sense of perfect truth was violated. Trust in Angelina, trust in Antony would never be quite the same again. Fate had been kind to her; she had been enabled to breathe continually the clear air of perfect candour. Her code was rigid and pure. It was finely narrow, tapering to a point at Truth. She could make no excuse for any lie, nor for the wan ghosts of lies.Moreover, the woman and the mother in her was cheated of orange blossoms and white satin for her cherished Angelina. She felt more sad than angry. She was childishly pained over this lack of a ceremony."What did you wear?" she asked, plaintively.Angelina nearly laughed. She looked encouraged, she was obtuse. This dear woman had already forgiven them. So far, she had forgiven. But there might come a day and a time when forgiveness was out of the question. Lady Johns had her limits, and she lived up close to them."What did I wear? Let me see, it was a foggy day; silver mist even here and as black as death in London!""What a wedding, Angelina!""But the most correct lovers cannot control the climate. I wore my fur coat and a fur cap. It was a cold day, too," Angelina quaveringly laughed. "I might have been equipped for an Arctic expedition.""And Antony?""You don't want to know what he wore?""No, no," Lady Johns laughed too.She turned on the rustic bench and pulled down Angelina's tall head to her own level. She kissed her solemnly."Oh, my dear, I love you so, and you have pained me. I won't deny that it is a shock and a disillusion. But I must bear it. I must get used to the idea.""But you are glad I married him. You didn't want me to have that bullet-headed Percy Lascelles or Robert Pole, or—Why should I Make them divisible? It is all one body and quite alike. These landed gentlemen go in bundles, just like the wood that town housemaids lay the fire with.""You say such extravagant things to-day, Angelina. They are startling enough to be vulgar. You are unlike yourself. I don't know my girl. I have lost her.""No, no; nonsense. Perhaps I am a little hectic. Were you," Angelina laughed and bitterly, "when you got married?""It was altogether different," said Lady Johns, speaking promptly, with primness and with what sounded like patronage.Angelina knew that, already, she had descended a step in estimation. But she looked out logically, not callously, at the prospect—remote perhaps, yet always there in distance—of stepping down more: of falling or being flung headlong, down the whole flight."Antony should have told me himself. That is just like him, to slide the whole burden on to you. I am angry with him. And where does he get his horrible lassitude from? My sister Maria was a most spirited girl.""But surely he has redeemed himself from lassitude in your eyes?" Angelina spoke lightly, yet you detected already the wife's note—of loyalty and zeal.That was well.Lady Johns, marking it, was mollified."Antony is a knight-errant," the girl added, "and," she swiftly turned her head, "here he comes through the trees.""Did you two arrange this? To bring me out here and tell me? For him to join us?" asked Lady Johns shrewdly.She had large eyes, well opened and bright, beneath finely level brows. Eyes and brows were the arresting points in her plain face. She could quell you with that glance when she chose, and she could infuse a coldness that shrivelled most people. Angelina was never one to shrivel, yet she plainly flinched now."I'm afraid we did," she said contritely. "Don't be cross with Antony. He wanted to tell you at once, but I wouldn't let him do it then. It was only later on that he shrank. And I knew that you would take it better from me. Women understand each other and they have the words."Antony approached. He came up to the bench and stood looking down for a moment at them. He was feeling indulgently—"These two dear women, who mean so much to me."A Frenchman, or any man of a more limpid and theatrical temper, might have dropped upon one knee, kissed their hands, and effectually said so. Antony only looked sheepish—he looked very nearly furtive. His aunt said reprovingly, as if he were a little boy:"Well, Antony!"He returned, almost sullenly, just as Angelina, at one point, had seemed sullen."She has told you?""Yes, Yes," Lady Johns was speaking wearily and looking down.Angelina was very rigid, she stared straight in front of her. The white swan, with no bits of bread in prospect, moved majestically across the water. His stately shadow was reflected in it."I suppose we were foolish; but lovers are supposed to be," Antony said, each word concise and very neat, so that his speech was a newly-clipped hedge. "We all consider," he continued, with the same suave deliberation, "that our own case is a singular one, and with a right to privilege. Egregious, no doubt, yet fairly universal.""But I can't think why in the world you did it?" Lady Johns spoke with heart-rending irritability. "There was no need.""I told you, Mumsie," Angelina never turned her head. "Antony was shy and I was impulsive.""That was it," he repeated the words and he looked fixedly at Angelina's coldly perfect profile. "I was shy and she was impulsive. Given those two qualities, you are bound in the end to get a fusion.""Well!" Lady Johns gathered her cloak around her, "it has been revolutionary for me—and my mind, as you are aware, Antony, is monarchical. It has," she nearly giggled, "disturbed my constitution."She smiled on them; a little wide, a little wintry, perhaps. But her sense of breeding and her aristocratic shrinking from anything like the vulgarity of a scene lent her self-control. She was angry, she was shocked, and, why she did not know, she was vaguely uneasy for Angelina. Feeling all this, she merely strove to save the situation by a bad joke.Why should you be uneasy because Antony had married her? She could not answer this question. She wanted to be alone to think it out. Her head was aching. She was like a child oppressed with some long lesson that it cannot learn. She stood up."I will go back to the house, and I'll go alone," she said. "You must dine here to-night, of course, Antony. Go home to dress and be back a little before eight. Be sure you are punctual; sometimes you are not;" she looked away from him through the half-bare trees with their delicate, leafy suggestions. "I could not bear," she added vigorously, "any little extra touch to-night. If you were late for dinner, if you kept the soup waiting for only ten minutes, I should scream, I should make a positive scene. Days like this"—she looked away from the trees and into the upturned faces of her nephew and his wife—" make one understand the common women, who stand shouting and scolding in little doorways. Their nerves are kept always upon edge, poor creatures."She moved away from them."She is learning things and looking at them," said Angelina, softly. "She has been kept in a scented casket."Her face was tender and ashamed. Antony sat down and very close to her. He also turned his head, and when Lady Johns had become softly enfolded by the trees, he put his arm round Angelina."Did she take it well?" he asked. "She looks forlorn, going away alone. Was it very hard telling, my darling?""It was, very. Telling lies is," was the succinct answer. "And a successful lie hurts more than anything. If they don't believe what you say, then you get angry and grow to imagine that you are telling the truth. That relieves you. It absolves you, in a fashion."Antony's face had not lifted. It still looked sullen. Angelina was pondering. Evidently he was one of those who could caress you and employ the caressing words when he was out of temper."It was not my wish that either of us should be driven to tell lies," he said stiffly. ''I hate the whole thing.""I know you do, clear," she turned on him her suddenly tender face—and it could sweeten to great tenderness. "Blame me for everything, Antony."He had already by implication done this; for his sulky face was saying all the time, "The woman tempted me." This, of Angelina, and their case was most certainly true. Yet he had a tendency to blame."But we can only be staunch to our own ideals," she proceeded, and with the faintest soupçon of priggishness. "Mine is a high standard of marriage. I was not sure, I am not sure yet, whether I love you enough for an indissoluble partnership; something that will last not only in this world, but in the next. Such a golden linking and yet a little ghastly, Antony, don't you think?""I never did think upon this matter, until you forced me to. I took the fact of people getting married for granted," he returned languidly, and his arm pressed her closer.His head inclined to her.His face lifted, he was beginning to feel the magic of her."Don't kiss me now," she said suddenly, and, as he fastidiously felt, bluntly; "I'm not in the mood. We must talk. We must arrange things before we go up to the house for dinner. We must be very careful, Antony. It would kill her if she knew the truth.""The whole thing is hare-brained, dearest, and I can't think why I indulged you.""I can;" Angelina was caustic. "It was your only way of getting me. I will live with you, Antony, and I will pretend before the world to be your wife. I will be your wife in all essentials. But I will not for the present go through any ceremony with you. We must prove ourselves. What would be the good of marrying you and then running away if I met any one——""That you loved better. That is putting it rather low down, isn't it?""Not at all, and not any one that I loved better, but that I loved once and utterly. To-day, I think that I love you and only you. But how can I feel sure? I believe that you do only love once. Kitty used to say of Patrick——""Oh, do spare me the ecstatic opinions of your parlour-maid, my darling.""Now you make me angry, you are talking as Mumsie sometimes does. Kitty was a woman, so am I. No possible difference between us. You two haven't any sense of Humanity.""Not a touch. I think it most destructive.""Only of humour," agreed Angelina. "And perhaps we place too high a value upon that. We have drifted," she laughed, "from the man that some day I may love better than I now love you. How impossible it sounds! Oh no, Antony"—her tongue went suddenly limping, her face was shy—"it could never happen. We are only talking abstractions. Don't be pained."Her wide, pale eyes were fully open. They beseeched and assured."You do pain me all along the line," he said. "Why won't you marry me and be done with it, Angelina? Why live this lie?""To spare ourselves other possible lies and bigger ones and ones that hurt more, in the future;" she hid her face on his shoulder and he held her. "We only want time, to be sure, to find ourselves fully out. It may not take so very long.""Will you, sitting here now, promise me one thing?" Antony was dreamily kissing the heavy, glossy hair—so black It just escaped her ear; stooping to it, curling back from it, flowing at the last into the sea of that great knot at her neck.Promise me," his voice dropped a cadence, "that if we are going to have a child at any time, you'll marry me then—and before. You understand?""Yes," was the answer, yet given not too quickly. "I promise you that—and I understand."There was a thrilling pause. Then she sat up and drew away from him. He held her hand. He looked at her devouringly. She was quite the rarest treasure that, so far, he had collected.Angelina said something of this. Her next words were playful; and to cover confusion:"Are you looking for my marks? But are not sometimes the best bits of china without any mark at all?"They sat on the bench by the stately water; he with his heavily intellectual face and rather wearily drooping lids; his big limbs that knew of athletics nothing—though they should have done; Angelina with her classic profile and startlingly pure contrast of colouring. She was dead whites, and brilliant blues and deepest blacks.They looked calmly aristocratic. They looked conventional; they stood for all the accomplished social facts. Certainly they did not look like a young couple who meant to masquerade before their world as married when they were not married.Angelina was content with the position, since she had imposed it. Antony would never be content. He was a man, he was in love, and he was painfully conventional. Again, there was a free side, coarse if you like, to Antony. There were words which men of the world might, in the future, apply to Angelina, if only they knew the uncomfortable truth. He very nearly wavered in his own respect for Angelina; he was crude enough for that. As for reverencing her, he did not know the meaning of that word as applied to Woman. He only knew that she was extraordinarily good-looking, and that she had aroused in him a dozen feelings that made him wild to possess her. Limp as he was, he could be untiring in the pursuit of the coveted object. He had proved this—with china and with silver toys.He wanted Angelina and he had only half won her. He had her, so to speak, upon approval. Any one at any time might come along and make a higher bid—of the emotions! He made the mistake of supposing that legalised marriage would safeguard him against this. He did not know that the heart is free and fleet, nothing ensures you: not tangible chains; nor the priestly imposition of a lasting vow. You may hold the body, but the soul has flown.He was scheming now upon the rustic bench, looking at this perfect, lovely girl who was already half his; scheming to obtain her—quite! And it was no instinct of valour and cherishing that made him wish this. He wished it for himself, and he wished it for the opinion of the world. He could not bear to think, for the sake of his own respect, that all the words which would presently apply to Angelina should continue fo comprehend her. Blink the fact as you might, she proposed to form one of a sorry enough feminine company. She was, putting it plainly, not going to be his wife. She was only prepared to be his mistress. There was still time to draw back, but he looked at her and could not. Yet he foresaw that the position might be insupportable; if not to her, a least to him. But—he assured himself with this jaunty speculation—the time would come and probably quite soon, when Angelina must capitulate and gladly. She would be his wife. They would go off and have a quiet marriage at some obscure country church. Or they might do it in London, which is so much more obscure. Then they would laugh at their odd beginnings. At least, Angelina would laugh. But he would always feel affronted; he was stiffly correct, and h was also of a certain experience. Angelina had a wild drop in her somewhere; she was lawless and she was completely innocent. She would hug her little secret—feeling it soft at her bosom. But it would always be a hair shirt to him. Now Antony was for fine linen!"When did you tell her that—we did?" he asked at last,and awkwardly."Get married? Oh, I said in London; a special licence and on the day of the pantomime. You remember we arranged this morning, when she was in church, that I should say this.""I know we did, and I hate it.""So do I," agreed Angelina, but more calmly. "It will soon be over and it had to be, since you wanted me."She smiled on him; he smiled eloquently back."I want you," he said with soft meaning. "But how is it all to be arranged? We must be ready with some sort of a programme at the dinner-table to-night.""Of course we must, but it is so simple," was the assured answer he got. "Mumsie and I will go to London. Fortunately, it is just about the time we do go up as a rule to the house in Pont Street.""Uncle Gerald's house," interpolated Antony. "His luckless marriage certainly proved fortunate for his sister Philippa. She hasn't much money of her own.""She told me about that marriage this afternoon. And yet you wonder, with such alarming instances in plenty, that I hesitate."Angelina turned her head to look at him. There was affection in her glance, but also, perhaps, a flick of scorn. Antony inspired these two feelings."And when we get to London," she pursued, "you will join us there, as you usually do. It may be Gerald's house"—the lazy, loving scorn for him increased—"but you also reap the advantage.""I certainly do. Aunt Philippa is most generous, and I am an undeserving pauper. It comes hard on her. She had ambitions for me, and she dimly realises that they are in vain."He spoke without self-reproach, and he added more briskly:"When I come to London, what then? For I want you, Angelina, and you have been putting me off with vague promises, and, forgive me dearest, crack-brained schemes, for many months.""Once you are there, we shall write, all of us, to our different correspondents and announce our approaching marriage, and say that we wish it to be quiet. That is all.""Yes, it sounds easy," Antony spoke dubiously, and he added, "How skilful you are!""Am I? But other thoughts are running through your head. You hate me to tell lies.""Yes; naturally.""But I would gladly tell a little lie to save a larger issue.""That sounds glib enough, my darling girl. It is a silvery, smooth little sentence—and I don't quite know what it means. You are a Jesuit, Angelina. It is merely trite to call you that.""Yes. Poor Jesuits! Now do you understand?"Antony nodded."I think," he said, "that I have learned my lesson, taken my physic—any image you choose. Yet I make a wry face."His mouth was wry now, and his mind more so. Apart from lies, he was vaguely disquieted by Angelina's cool decision, severe logic and passionless sanity. He felt dissatisfied—apart from lies—for it was more subtle than that. Yet he hardly knew why. Had he been a skilled lover and a lover born, which he was not and never would become, he would have known, by her utter lack of the headlong quality, that she was not really his, although she believed herself to be and was prepared, within limits of her own placing, to give herself to him utterly.They thought, sitting here by the lake, watched scornfully by the cold swan, that they held the end of Love, and that, years placidly passing, they would wind at this wonderful coil, and make a golden ball of it, holding it, secure, in their tenderly-clasped hands. Angelina presently said something of this. She expressed their mutual surety."Perhaps I made a mistake in not marrying you, just in the usual way and without fuss. Perhaps I am merely hysterical. Just now I talked to Mumsie in a way that shocked her and startled me. I know that she thought me hysterical, and that may account, after all, for a great deal of fuss that women make. Why are you not strong with me, Antony? Why don't you make me marry you? For I love you. I have never cared for any one else.""Dear one, I have implored you. I implore you now."The words were passionate, yet his hands, suddenly clasping hers, were not compelling. It was merely the wordy, surface violence of a weak man and she felt it. She shook her head."No," she said, tragically. "You have not used the right words that will convince me. Perhaps they are not in you to say."She turned aside her head. Her profile was dreadfully sad."And I won't, no, I won't, marry you," she went on more impetuously, "I would not whatever you said. There are. all the shocks of my early life to shake me. I have told you about them. Grandmamma Peachey, who was a wicked wife, so far as I could understand, and my own mother who was worse—for she was cold and viperish and narrow. I told you about that morning on the stairs—St. Valentine's Day."Antony nodded rather curtly. He wriggled on the seat, in his restless way—the way that meant he was in danger of being bored. To tell the truth, he was rather impatient with youthful reminiscence. He did not love deeply enough to treasure every crumb of his darling's past. His passion did not feverishly demand the whole loaf of life. He wanted to-day's slice and all the other slices that were going to be cut—only this. Again, with Lady Johns, he finically shrank from Angelina's commercial strain, and the dignified shop which she so tenderly poetised, was to him merely a shop. Angelina's father had been what he disdainfully called "a counter-jumper.""Then there was Kitty and the lovely way she worshipped Patrick. That was love if you like. Her sandy face would light up. She was just one wistful radiance when she spoke of Patrick, and I think it quite likely that he was not drowned in the floods at all, but lived to marry some one else. Then there is my vow to St. Mary of Egypt. Do I believe in the Saints?" she asked this question bitterly, of reflected white swan and trembling water. "I don't know. Perhaps I do not believe any more than you do, Antony?""You can't," he said bluntly, "or you would not propose to embark upon a life of what the Church would certainly call mortal sin. Think of that.""I do, and to tell the truth, it doesn't frighten me. I feel that sins have been neatly sorted out into mortal and venial by very godly men of the past who were also very narrow-minded. No, we won't marry. We won't discuss it any more; unless," she threw him a melting look, "you wish me to refuse altogether.""Do I wish that?"He returned that look. They trembled and were shy."Some day, when I love you enough, when you love me enough; when our mutual passion is something marvellous, then we will marry and make a Sacrament of it," said Angelina glowingly. "Our marriage shall be, when it comes, what all marriages ought to be, and so very seldom are. Then"—the scarlet colour went out of her voice, leaving it more wistful and more mysteriously charming—"I shall be happy at last. I never have been yet. I shall have you, I shall have religion, and I shall know"—she let out a quavering small laugh—"that I am neither puzzling nor grieving the blessed Saints. Although I believe that my dear St. Mary of Egypt would understand most things."There's a sense of spells in your blood, and you are an idealist; which means that you will never be happy," said Antony. He was regarding her with a tender, puzzled air. Patronage and protection showed in his manner."A sense of spells. Very likely. And I think you must have said that before, or somebody else did, or perhaps thought of it myself. Anyhow, whatever I do, I can't g away from the Catholic religion. It keeps on softly pulling It will keep on pulling. I'm cold,"she stood up abruptly. "Take me back to the house and then go to Normandy an dress. Don't be late, remember, and be sure you know your lesson."She looked at him and laughed. It was a pretty laugh—proud and low, silvery—with a touch of the bird. Antony thought, for every lover can be fanciful, of blackbirds singing in the early March mornings, long before the mob of sparrows and finches begin. And he thought, too, of that most pensive merry song of them all: the robin singing through an autumn dusk, while the wet leaves fall and October airs are very gentle.She laughed. How beautiful she was and musical! She was a love and she was his—almost. He did not care how many lies she told or what quaint delusions she harboured as to saints and spells. He wanted her. He said, putting his arms round her, kissing her again—for he expressed himself volcanically by sudden, quick kisses that were almost savage, and that came strangely from him."You baffle me, Angelina, all the time. Sometimes you puzzle me, but you never bore me.""I do, now and then;" she spoke gently, letting her head lie upon that broad, sure ledge, his shoulder."Get out of the way of being bored, dear Antony."She spoke anxiously, and not merely for him, but certainly for herself, since Angelina must always hold the personal point of view. Already he, in moments, bored her. Antony could not help it. His atmosphere was heavy, and those who came close enough were enveloped in his density. They felt their way out into more shimmering airs. A girl who knew him very well, Cicely Forbes, a neighbour, once said that Antony was like the Underground Railway: he made you smart and choke and splutter. Those were the days of the sooty Underground.It was a little unkind to Antony and a simile too overweighted. Yet he was certainly not clear air. Lady Johns had suffered with his atmosphere years before, and had specu-lated privately upon the effect it might have on his wife when he got one. Her simile had been different. Cicely Forbes had thought of the Underground Railway: his Aunt Philippa, in a homely way, had imagined sleeping under too many bed-clothes. Whichever way you chose to express it, this was the effect of Antony. He smothered and emasculated you.Angelina, so far, merely felt that he was elderly in his point of view, and she was irritated by his lymphatic manner and his trick of leaving things entirely to her. This was not born of devotion, or she would have adored it—what woman would not? It was merely lassitude. He had his parents to blame, for he had set out upon life with a low enough store of vitality."I shall never be bored when I have you," he said, and sighed.It was a heavy sigh, and his face was sad, just as hers had been a little while back. Sadness, portent, maybe, vaguely enveloped them both.They went through the copse towards the ghost-white house. They could see it through thin trees. The trees, in this wan light, and with their dainty promise of foliage, seemed to wear gowns of prune and silver.He left her at the lighted portico. He looked at her strangely. Dusk and the early spring sweetness of the earth fired them both."Soon," he said, and in a steadier voice than she had ever heard from him, "I shall have you. I shall take you. I'd swim through any sea of lies for that.""Not a sea, the merest brook and clear. We can look at every pretty pebble lying in the bottom," she assured him. "You can't use that harsh word 'lie' for a fiction that hurts nobody, and that is born of conscience. For I declare, Antony, that my conscience is involved."She laughed again—that blackbird-and-robin note of hers.He saw that she was trembling. The magic of the night was on them both. He walked away through the park with her lighted eyes flickering before him, tempting and delighting him. China-blue eyes! But she certainly was more priceless than any china. Yet as he walked, he cooled and he thought of his beautiful porcelain at the house in Normandy. He was going to have both: Oriental china and Angelina.CHAPTER VII"BUT how could it have happened?" Lady Johns was asking her nephew. "Could not you have seen to things and taken proper care of her?"She spoke sorrowfully, with agitation and certainly with rebuke. Her next words expressed this."You as a doctor!" she ejaculated helplessly, and the looked at him with her large, reddened eyes.She had been copiously weeping."That anything should happen to Bundy!" she added in another jerky sentence."My dear Aunt Philippa, nothing has happened to her The child is dead, it was premature. Angelina, although sh has been very near death, is out of danger now. As to my being a doctor," Antony turned gloomily to the window staring down at the deserted, stately street, "I have practically forgotten the fact, and I wish you could. All you hopes, dear," he turned to survey her with the most tender affection, "of me as the world-famed specialist, they must have died long ago. They were premature, they were like my little child. You observe that I fail in all that I essay. A doctor!" he laughed—light enough, yet with a bitter unfathomable undercurrent. "Do you want me to have brass plate upon the door? Or a red lamp over it? Do yo want Angelina's nights broken because I am called out t bring infants, lusty and of the democracy, into the world.""It wouldn't always be infants, nor always of the democracy," she returned, and flung in his wan face a smile a wan."You look tired to death, Antony.""I am, naturally " he said, speaking curtly, and adding, with another unpleasing laugh, "when a man's wife is near death and when his first child after seven years lives just five hours he is—yes, tired."Lady Johns looked at him, standing there, solid, yet shrunken, by the dignified window. That hollow-chested, high-shouldered look of Antony's had increased. She tried to persuade herself that this was simply his awkward carriage. It was the way he held himself. When you had not seen a person for a couple of years, things struck you forcibly. She had been travelling with her brother Gerald in Japan, and she had been, alone, at Gerald's house in Pont Street. Antony's wire saying that Angelina was in danger had found her there, and brought her at once to Horsham. She had driven straight from the station to the house in Normandy. They were in the drawing-room, she and Antony. Angelina lay in the room overhead, and across the floor of that room feet passed softly from time to time.She looked at Antony, who was very dear. She loved him, and was anxious for him, she was disappointed in him, and this made tenderness more tender. Antony was a person of talent; as youth and young man he had more than once promised brilliant things. He flared up, intellectually; then he flickered down. To-day, he was practically out. She did not know whether to ascribe this provoking failure in him to reasons of health, or to something more subtle. It was no manner of use to be angry with him. You could only grieve for him, and, with common sense, put a plaster on your own wounded pride. Antony would never be anything now but a trifler. He was not even a popular and charming trifler. He had no charm. In some queer way, and again you could not say, for sure, whether he did it of design or was just a helpless instance of heredity churlishness, he kept people at arm's length. He was laughed at and disliked. In all the world there were but two women who loved him. Other women were either afraid of him or irritated by him. To men lie was merely a big, effeminate boor. They could not understand his passion for blue china; and he dusted it himself."But what," thought this sad woman, reflecting and suffering, "was worldly success after all?" It might be the best thing possible for Antony to just live here calmly in this beautiful house with his almost too perfect Angelina. It might be his safety.Lady Johns could never speak or feel too highly of Angelina.She had loved her as an adopted daughter; as a second and more haughty Bundy. As her nephew's wife, she reverenced her. More than once she had softly twitted her concerning that scene and conversation by the lake in March, soon after the secret marriage."Do you remember how extravagantly you talked about marriage that day, my darling, and how, in a sense, you were afraid of it? But you have found that it is simple enough, and that for women to be happy is the easiest thing possible. It really takes a great deal of exertion to be tragic."Lady Johns had expressed this in various forms, modified or amplified, through seven years of uneventful matrimony.Angelina would look at her strangely and kiss her without answering a word."When the heart is full," thought Lady Johns, who never speculated concerning Angelina; "words are out of the question." And she loved the proper reticence in woman. About Bundy you never need trouble to speculate. She was clear as crystal, she was a simple element, God bless her. It was only Antony who caused you anxiety; who perplexed and cheated you. For he was morbid. Angelina glowed with sheer common sense.Antony's marriage was perfect—yet with two drawbacks. There had been no children, and he had won over his wife to his own deplorably rationalistic attitude of mind. He prevailed on her to do as he did, and give up all church-going.Lady Johns regretted this. She prayed about it earnestly, for she was pious. Her ideas of religion being clear cut, sh thought it likely that the insensibility of this couple to religion had mysteriously provoked the present misfortune Putting it as a woman of the masses might have done, Lads Johns firmly believed that this premature child—and after seven years—was "a judgment" on them. By this method sharp in mercy, they would be led to Faith."Was it baptized, the poor little thing?" she now asked. Antony returned, looking oddly tender, looking romantic."Yes, Angelina would have it. This was the first thing she wanted to know when everything was over. I shall always recall her faint voice. It floated from the bed. There is, I've told her so a hundred times, a sense of spells with Angelina. I sent across for one of the curates at once—it was Helmsley, and he came. He lived—the little chap, the baby—nearly an hour afterwards. We baptized him after her father—Timothy."I'm thankful beyond words that you sent for Mr. Helmsley," said Lady Johns. "Dear little creature, and a boy too! You both wanted a boy. How hard it is, Antony." The loving tears welled into her eyes again."It is inevitable—with me," he returned.He looked plaintive and sullen. There was also in his bright eyes, so nicely blue, a queer, strained look. She had observed it before, and it startled her. Not a new look—to her; but merely new as seen in Antony. Her brother-in-law, his father, and poor Maria's husband, had often looked like that. Her heart sank."I think," she said, "that when all this is over, and when Angelina is strong again, that you must travel. Horsham is a dead place for two young people.""We are not young and I shan't leave Normandy. I can't afford it.""We can always afford what we want, and if necessary I could help you. You will think me a revolutionary, Antony, but——""You revolutionary!"He laughed. It was suddenly a great, happy laugh; an outdoor, healthy laugh.She looked at his big body and clear skin. She was reassured. In a way, she rubbed her eyes. There was nothing wrong with Antony. He was sound as a bell. He merely wanted stirring up. When Angelina was about again she would speak to her seriously. Antony must be dug out of this finicky porcelain and silver life."But I am revolutionary—when it comes to you and your affairs," she insisted; "and I think I should really be delighted to know that this house with everything in it was burned to the ground. You would get the insurance money, and you——"No, I shouldn't. I'm not insured.""What! With all this valuable stuff? Your capital is in it.""Very likely. But I don't believe in precaution. I'm not insured, and I don't mean to be; neither my life nor my contemptible crockery."She detected the note of rancour. He was most sensitive about his passion for collecting. The truth was, he had go into a rut. He was narrow minded.How she longed to put her shoulder to it and get the wheel out and speed the cart off into new country!"But, my dearest boy, it is madness," she said, and was both shocked and alarmed.Not to be insured was almost as bad as not going to church. Her mind, so simply faithful, when it came to the accepted things, was in a perfect whirl."You have spent hundreds, perhaps I ought to say thousands," she said, looking at him with immense concern. "Why, you can insure against everything nowadays, and think that to a poor man it is most necessary. You are poor. I can't think how you manage. Angelina is a excellent housekeeper, of course.""She is perfect. You and I are agreed upon that, dear Aunt. As to insurance, don't try to convince me, for, flatly, I won't. And you know that I have a nasty temper when roused. It is in the ffinch blood; that brutal, mad touch.""Not mad, nonsense!""Yes, mad. I shouldn't wonder."He sat down, toying with a charming silver ship that stood upon the slim table in the window recess. His big face, plain, yet with the fine profile, was dogged and bored. He was getting weary even of his Aunt Philippa, and, sensitively, she felt this."I won't worry you," she said mildly, "I only, just as a last word, my dear boy, implore you to think.""I do more than that," he looked up rather humorously, "I go round the house at night and rake out every fire. Since Angelina has been upstairs—it was the night before last—I found that some little devil, a girl they've got in to help the other two, had left a bundle of sticks in the kitchen fender and a can of paraffin close by. She is of your view; that fire would help me. But I shot her out of the house before nine o'clock next morning.""I'm glad you did. Temporary servants are always a menace to any household, It is just this, Antony." Lady johns was tenacious, "there may be in the future other little children. You must begin to think of that now. A new prospect is opened up. How are they to be provided for? I think that now, when objets d'art fetch really fabulous prices, is your time to sell. You could invest the money. Why," she broke off, "there is a carriage stopping outside. Who is it? Look out of the window. I think it would have been wise to put straw down, myself. Angelina must be kept quiet.""The very thing, the first thing, that Mrs. Peachey said when she came.""Of course you had to send for her," Lady Johns looked annoyed nevertheless, "and I shall have to meet her later on. But I do dislike the woman. I resent her. Where is she now?""In bed and asleep. She was awfully good, she is a born nurse. She was up all night.""Was she? I can hardly forgive her for getting here before me. But I was out to dinner—with the Jannaways; you know that Freddy, a perfect Simple Simon, is married? When I got back to Pont Street it was too late to start.""It is Robert Pole outside," said Antony from the window, "Cicely Forbes is driving him in one of her spidery dog-carts. So Jannaway is married, is he? What a lot of attention Angelina already, although she isn't thirty, has attracted. And she was in love with little boys—she's told me so—before she was ten."He looked jealous; a smouldering fire, but it might flare up."She was engaged to Jannaway. Lascelles wanted her and——""Not only Percy Lascelles, but one or two other most eligible men," said Lady Johns proudly."I know that. Bob Pole, for one. He's coming in, and so is Cicely. I suppose they heard that you were here. I suppose that silly Freddy has married an actress, by the way?""No, he hasn't, although one expected it. She is twenty years older than he, and the sedate widow of a banker. The name escapes me. A sensible woman, who will keep him steady. Already, he is getting stout. I don't think Cicely need have come in. What a noise they seem to be making on the stairs."She turned her stately head towards the door, prepared to receive Cicely, that very sporting young lady, in her thick boots, with the suitable air of reproach. This was a house of sickness.Lady Johns was a stickler for perfect proportion.She arose when the drawing-room door opened and advanced a few steps. She showed an air of hush."I think," she said, in reproving undertones and before any greeting, "that we had better go downstairs, all of us, to the morning-room. Angelina must have perfect quiet, and voices do carry even in these splendidly built old houses."She smiled at Cicely, with the most delicate hint. The smile said, "Your voice, my dear, is more strident than most."But an arrow of this sort would never pierce Cicely's hide. She was an excellent young woman for workaday purposes. She was coarse and cheerful; to-day she appeared a touch more coarsely cheerful than usual. Something had happened to Cicely. Antony was irritably wondering what it could be—he resented the intrusion of these people. Lady Johns was thinking serenely, "I suppose Robert means to marry her at last.""All right," said Cicely, laughing, and then clapping her hand in the thick driving glove to her red mouth. "We'll go where you like."So they all proceeded down the stairs to Angelina's morning room, on the ground floor at the back. It looked on to the square, formally disposed garden."We haven't, at Leggatt Court," said Lady Johns, gazing out, "box edgings to approach yours, Antony.""A jolly good hiding-place for slugs," said Cicely. " Poor old Angelina! What a facer for her-and for you," she flung a broad, sympathetic smile full into Antony's sulky face. "How is she? Feeling rotten?""Out of danger now, thank you," he returned coldly."We were driving by," Robert Pole spoke and he looked embarrassed, "so we thought we'd look in and ask how she was and also tell you our own bit of news."He laughed; a nice, sheepish laugh. He stared thoughtfully at Angelina's work basket. It was open as she had left it. An end of lawn hung out. Lady Johns watched him. She knew that the sight of that basket stirred him. She understood Robert, and she had always been sorry for him. If ever a simple man had loved a coldly wayward woman, he had faithfully worshipped Angelina. And, although she was lost to him, he had remained single for seven years after her marriage.She said, putting her assumption into words, and looking at him affectionately, "I suppose you are going to marry, Cicely?""That's hit the bull's eye," chuckled this young lady, answering for him. "We came to tell you, didn't we, Bob?"She was a handsome girl, splendidly healthy, and of the build that you may call "fine" or "coarse" according to the feminine standard you set. Her thick, red lips invariably affronted Antony and, distastefully, he described her solid-looking brown eyes as "juicy." Also she had what he described as a "revolting" trick of slang. Moreover, she could hit off you and your foibles in a neat phrase; and this never endears a woman to a sensitive man."Yes, spliced," she was saying to Lady Johns simply; and the cheap word came from a full heart: it became a womanly utterance. It was common knowledge in Horsham society that Cicely Forbes had been in love with Robert Pole for years. She had never attempted to conceal this, and she did not now. She spoke out, to the visible embarrassment of the two men and the disdain of Lady Johns."I'll bet," she laughed good-humouredly, and flung at her betrothed a warm, frank glance, "that Bob has got over his hopeless love for Angelina at last. If he hadn't, he would never have proposed to me, would you, old boy? And I didn't shilly-shally, you know. He threw the handkerchief. I picked it up and wiped my nose with it. That was only yesterday.""You are neophytes; we must expect a little exuberance," said the elder woman coolly.Cicely laughed."Yes, but I am shocking you all the same," she returned frankly. "I don't believe he ever would have done it, only he thought that my mare was running away with me, and he happened to be——""I was riding by," said Robert Pole, who was breezy too, "and there was Cicely in a shell of a cart with scarlet wheels——""No, canary wheels," she interrupted, screaming him down in her jolly way. "Somebody said the other day of my dog-carts that I must change the wheels, button on fresh ones, as some people do with their silk petticoats. Rather decent wasn't it? I roared. But I don't wear a petticoat."She looked at Lady Johns and then, striding forward, frankly hugged her."Your face shows double disgust," she said, and nearly whimpered. She was between mirth and tears. She had wanted Bob Pole since she was a little thing, and now he had asked her to marry him. They were going to have a jolly good time together.Lady Johns had known them both since they were children. She understood what the girl was feeling. She felt glad for her. Cicely to-day was probing as deeply into the heart of Life as she ever would."I hope you will be happy, my dear, both of you," she turned round to smile inclusively at Robert. "In fact, I feel sure that you will.""And I never finished telling you," Cicely stepped back, suddenly and brusquely ashamed of her emotional outburst."He looked as if he meant to try and stop the mare and upset the whole boiling. So I yelled out, "Don't be an ass. My wrists are as strong as iron." And off we dashed, me and Molly, she is a little hot devil, all past your park gates and half-way to the town, Lady Johns. When she did stop there was Bob—and shall I tell her what you said, Bob?""I don't suppose you care to know," Pole's eye was twinkling. "It is all too unromantic for you, Lady Johns. I said that I'd be hanged if she should risk her life like that any more, and I asked her if she'd like double harness; that sort of foolery."Antony was fiddling at the mantelpiece with one of his womanish bits of china, Lady Johns was thinking that Angelina must have suffered a great deal if Robert Pole, in his frequent proposals to her, had spoken and looked and laughed like that. It was honest enough, but it was yokelish.She concluded that he had about enough intelligence to vary his similes. So perhaps Angelina had not suffered."We shall be married quite soon," he said. " Directly Julius comes home, that is. I should like old Jubs to be my best man."Antony carefully set his pot upon the shelf."Is Julius coming back?" he asked. "Why?""Bit of a holiday," returned Pole carelessly. "The climate out there is awfully stiff, you know. No wonder they pay them such a good screw.""I suppose that Julius is saving?" asked Lady Johns, and she asked pointedly.She wanted to impress upon Antony the fact that other men were both politic and frugal; yes, even bachelors.Robert laughed."Not a penny so far," he said. "Julius is one of those chaps to let money slip through his fingers. I don't know what he does with it. There is nothing to show. He hasn't even got china and stuff, as you have," he spoke to Antony civilly, yet with the unconscious scorn of the out door man for the collector and the student."But he has been out There for years," persisted Lady Johns."Yes, years. And then he gets a holiday and goes off and spends what he's earned, I suppose. Anyhow, he said when he wrote the other day that he hadn't saved a stiver. The only thing is, that he's got such a jolly good post that he could always in five or six years save enough to grub along with for the rest of his life. He must; he'll have to. He's a younger brother, and when the governor dies there won't be a sixpence for him. We're mortgaged, you know, right up. It's lucky for me," he grinned affectionately at his recently betrothed, "that Cicely's got tin.""Plenty for you; nothing for Julius. Don't like him," said that young lady curtly."My dear!" Lady Johns was easily shocked, "of course you won't, as Robert's wife, provide for his brother Julius. And now I am going to send you both away. I only came down from town an hour ago. I must have a little rest after lunch, and at tea-time Antony thinks I might be able to see Bundy just for five minutes."When they were gone Antony, with a gesture of shrinking, said, "What a pair! And they will people the world with other pairs.""They are honest enough young people, my dear boy, and I feel sure they will be happy. I am very glad," she spoke with emphasis, "that Robert Pole is settling down. It hardly seemed decorous that he should remain single.""You mean that he was one of Angelina's many victims?""Yes, something like that.""And no doubt Julius will be another."Lady Johns laughed."Julius! Nobody would fall in love with him. I mean," she added, "that he would fall in love with nobody. He was very ugly as a little boy. Don't you remember?""I remember. Thick lips, small eyes set high and close together. A dark skin, so no doubt the African sun has made him a regular negro, and so perfected him," said Antony kindly. "Good gracious!" he turned round with a queer, helpless gesture to his aunt—a childlike and lovable lifting of the brows. "How can any man make love to Cicely Forbes? She knocks you down at once; a sledge-hammer in each hand—either slang or some idiotic metaphor. Robert in the end will murder her. We shall have a bucolic tragedy. You'll see.""Antony! Don't be so horrible."Saying this, she actually shivered. The idea of any violating of the Decalogue by a well-born person was singularly shocking to Lady Johns.Definite vices were for the lower, or the queer, artistic classes; never for the landed gentry. This was her ideal, but a daily reading of the newspaper frequently disturbed it!"Cicely," she said generously, "is more unpleasantly slangy than usual to-day, just because she is so happy. Poor girl! It has really been painful to watch her very palpable devotion to Robert. Cicely is certainly—you must forgive me also sinking to simile, dearest, and a homely one—too unlaced in her speech and her emotions. She is always to me like an excursion trip to Brighton in July: noisy blue water, boats going out, the band playing, the beach crowded, little children crying and wives nagging their husbands."Antony stared."What on earth do you know, darling, of an excursion trip to Brighton," he asked, with vague tenderness."What short memory!" she bantered him. "Did you not send me to Brighton for my health in the very middle of the summer, and has it not changed your life and mine? All those terrible persons, the trippers, poor things, used to stream down West Street to the sea. I believe they left London at five o'clock in the morning, or something like that. Angelina and I used to watch them from the window of Mrs. Chope's cottage. Is she still with Mrs. Peachey, Antony, that woman?""I suppose so," he appeared to retreat. "I have hardly spoken to Mrs. Peachey since she came into the house. Ours was not a painful, but a gauche meeting. I had to be civil, but I found nothing to say. It is an unusual position, and I dislike the unusual. I shall be glad when she goes away. All this domestic drama is distinctly boring. I want Angelina back and our settled life."He spoke with a faint sense of grievance against Angelina.Lady Johns noticed it, and she was not exactly angry. Men were like that. They were for your fair weather days. She recalled, digging below various strata in her memory, that, upon their honeymoon, her own blessed, perfect husband had sulked half the day because she had a nervous headache and could not ride with him. They were creatures for sunshine, these men. In any distress you needed a woman."What beautiful furniture she had—Mrs. Chope, I mean," said Antony, looking out at his small Dutch-like garden with its mellow, high walls of narrow bricks. " Wonder where she got it! The simple stateliness of her bits of Sheraton! I can see those chairs and tables now. There was a settee covered with a thickish blue brocade that had faded to a golden-silver. None of it looked like Mrs. Chope.""There was certainly a mystery about her," said Lady Johns shortly—she could never bring herself to approve of voluble Mrs. Chope."I think I see plain sailing for Cicely and Robert," she added, turning the topic."You always do. When old Lady Usher married that pretty granddaughter of hers to a man of sixty-seven, you were hopeful.""Poor little Jean!" Lady Johns spoke placidly. "She was happy enough, yet she was barely eighteen. He only lived three years you see, and of course she is happier as a widow. But a woman when she is well bred can accustom herself to anything.""There was another old man, a parson——""Oh, you mean Archdeacon Usk. Yes, that was rather distressing," admitted Lady Johns. "Mary was only nineteen, and his third wife. Don't you remember how disgusted his daughters were! I think the Archdeacon showed bad taste. The daughters went off and started a shop; something elegant; ladies do, nowadays, but it always seems to me most peculiar. Mary looked cheerful enough, and when he died she married that nice curate. You know, Antony—what was his name? That handsome clergyman with the extreme views. They have a living in Dorsetshire somewhere. He will never get preferment. He is too peculiar.""You mean Duffield. He wasn't a bad chap. But your ethics of marriage"—Antony lounged away from the window—"turn me cold. I prefer"—darkness strode across his face—"Angelina's."Lady Johns laughed indulgently."Darling Bundy!" she said, "before she married she was like many girls, very high-falutin and ultra-romantic in her ideas. But she is beautifully correct now and a model wife. When I die, Antony"—she became chameleon in subject, as now and then she could—"I shall leave every penny not to you, but to your wife. Yes, Angelina shall have it. I don't trust your commercial instincts. You have shaken me very much over this insurance affair."Antony laughed. It was grating. No mirth was in it. "You won't," he said, and quite with the manner of making a feeble play upon words. "You won't leave the money to my wife."He was looking wretched and ill-tempered. His aunt wondered that money could so affect Antony, since he never seemed to care for it."I shall," she said firmly. "If you had it, you might buy china and then not insure it. How do I know? There will not, Antony, be so much to leave, for I am a poor woman; although I look so rich to the world. I owe nearly everything to my brother's generosity——" Her face changed."Do you know?" she asked in a new voice, pausing and then eloquently proceeding, "how Gerald proposes to leave his money?""I never thought about it. To you I suppose. Or is there an heir?""For the estate, yes, of course. Your cousin Jack. You would not remember him. He is a soldier, in Burmah, I believe. But everything that he can will away Gerald is leaving to Lucy for her children. Isn't that noble? I could never do it if I were a man.""Fine! No. He is a fool. Do you mean to tell me that he is leaving to his divorced wife, for her children by another man, his fortune."Lady Johns nodded."It touched me when he told me," she said with a fine, quiet simplicity."It doesn't touch me in the least," Antony looked queerly violent. "In his place I would like to see her starve. If he is so fond of her why did he divorce her?""Because she loved the music man and always had. He married her at once you know, directly the decree was made absolute. I hear they are very happy, but bitterly poor. She is many years younger than Gerald. To me of course she will always be Gerald's wife. It is impossible that she should be any one else's. Her mother made the marriage and it turned out ill. She is to be pitied, I suppose.""It wasn't one of your happy instances," sneered Antony.His aunt saw that, for no apparent reason, he was in one of his horrid tempers."Ah, well!" she smiled vaguely, "one must have failures now and then. Lucy perhaps was not of simple enough material. When a girl is simple her mother can twist her into any shape for any man: as the milliner twists a hat. It turns out quite well as a rule. But there are always fallacies and always failures in life. For example, I was reading the other day of what they called that 'absurd creation, the strong, silent man.' You find him in novels, now and then. But I have found him in life. Gerald is one. You can't live comfortably with these men, as a wife, that is, but that they are very often marvellous."Antony allowed her to continue. He merely smiled at her. He was getting more smilingly heavy and more moody every day. She was sorry for Angelina.While she was feeling this and while she was racking her head for solution—for the something that must be done to lift and lighten, cheer and sweeten Antony—there was a sound outside, the door opened, and Mrs. Peachy, as she herself would have put it, "looked in."To "look in" exactly described her entry; for her deprecating head bobbed itself round the door before the rest of her.Lady Johns turned graciously, and the dislike upon her face was swiftly kaleidoscopic. It gave way to the warm colours of a civil welcome."My dear Mrs. Peachey," she held out her hand, " after all these years, this is indeed a sad meeting, is it not? How do you find our dear Bun—Angelina?"Mrs. Peachey was flushed with recent sleep; which pretty phrase only means that she was more unpleasantly rash-like than usual. She was also, by implication, aggressive, as the social inferior is. Antony, plainly disliking her and never troubling, either now or at any time, to conceal his dislike, made a gruff nose in his throat, which you may translate as clearing it, and lounged to the door."I shall see you both at lunch. That is in half an hour," he said curtly to his aunt, and he left her alone with Mrs. Peachey.Mrs. Peachey looked relieved, for she wished to talk, as woman to woman, of the lying-in room. Moreover, Antony ffinch was a surly, cold-blooded beast. Lady Johns daintily shrank. She hated physical things, and she knew that people of this kind must talk of their bodies, since they had no soul to speak of."I can't say that I approve of the nurse," began Mrs. Peachey in her fretful voice. "She allows Angelina to lie in a through draught—door and window open. Such things were unheard of when I had my confinements."She appeared to seek for confidences from Lady Johns upon this topic, but her only answer was a feeble:"It is July and very oppressive. I always find Horsham oppressive in the summer, and I can never understand why my nephew stays here all the year round.""Now I'm with you;" Mrs. Peachey, granted an opening, looked animated and more at ease. "I never talk to servants, naturally; I know their place and my own far too well. I've been accustomed to them all my life. Still, Cook did say that her mistress hadn't had a change of air since I don't know when. That is not good for any young couple."She concluded impressively. There were, so she wished to imply, dark possibilities to this sentence: a stationary marriage must be sinister."If Angelina had been for a run to the seaside, say, every year; if she had even come to stay at Brighton with us for a bit, her constitution would have been very different, Lady Johns.""But her constitution is splendid, I assure you. Remember that you have not seen her for many years. She has changed.""That she certainly has;" the other's voice was far from pleasant; it was, so Lady Johns was haughtily reflecting, quite insufferable. "It is really coming to something when a young wife does not give her own mother her confidence in her condition. Mr. ffinch's wire was a surprise to me. It was a shock.""I am sorry, and I am sure that my nephew would not wish to give pain. But you must remember that I adopted Angelina years ago, and that almost since she was a child I have been her mother.""A child! Excuse me, but she was a woman grown. She had already received attentions from one gentleman."Lady Johns flinched. She found herself in a different world and with alien phrasing. It was, by implication, coarse."It is a very unfortunate affair: about the poor baby I mean," she said hurriedly. "Did you see it?""Yes, I saw it, Lady Johns. A fine boy—considering, you know," Mrs. Peachey dropped her voice, "that it was premature. Now that was a thing which, had I been with my daughter, never could have happened. I should have watched her. No doubt she was reckless over exercise, gadding about here and there. She should have kept her legs up a great deal. I was always advised to do that.""Did Angelina herself see the child?" asked Lady Johns steadily.She sat upright, and the unfading smile upon her mouth was glassily cold. This lean, wiry woman with the nasal voice and the funnily fashionable clothes, was goading her to nervous frenzy."She did; and it was enough to bring tears to a stone. I wish you could have seen her.""I wish I could have been here earlier, I do indeed," returned Lady Johns earnestly. But, as I explained to my nephew, I was at a dinner-party and came home too late to start last night.""I was at home," Mrs. Peachey laughed—she relieved her feelings now and then by laughter than was akin to a crow. "We are home-keeping people, and it is an easy run up to Horsham from Brighton. Yes"—her narrow face worked with real feeling—" the monthly nurse put the poor little soul into her arms for a moment. She was lying on her back with all her beautiful hair spread out upon the pillow. I always took great pains with my two girls' hair when they were children. She looked down at him and then she looked across the room at me and said to me:"'You can't see very much, mother, when you lie like this looking down.'—The woman took him away, poor lamb, and he died very soon after. That is all my poor girl knows of being a mother. Though between you and me I don't think Angelina cared much. She only seemed as if she did, because she is so nice looking."Mrs. Peachey nevertheless wiped her eyes. So did Lady Johns. They seemed not only to meet but to combine through this speech. They were melted if Angelina remained hard.It was fortunate that the lunch-bell rang, or there might have been a democratic display of emotion. Lady Johns hated this. The rule of her life was to prefer to be considered shallow, trivial, cold, or anything so long as she was not dubbed emotional."I shall be getting back soon after lunch," said Mrs. Peachey. "Three-thirty the train was, and I mustn't miss it. A gentleman," she smirked, "meets me at the terminus.""At Brighton? Oh yes—but must you go to-day?""Certainly I must!" the aggressive note was rarely absent. "Angelina doesn't want me, and even if she did she has very little claim upon me. She has not behaved as a daughter should. I must say it. What is a paltry Christmas card to a mother's heart?""Very little, indeed."Lady Johns assenting, moving slowly towards the door, appeared relieved and faintly amused."And I am shortly intending"—Mrs. Peachey's smirk became dangerous; she again converged towards the intimate confidence—"to settle again. My first marriage with Angelina's Papa, Lady Johns, was far from happy. He was an odd man: an irritable and unhealthy man. And his mother was a regular old terror. She lived with us.""Indeed!""Now with my second there will be no question of a mother-in-law, naturally. He is elderly, say sixty, a very sensible age. He is an auctioneer: one of the most prominent in the town. I have disposed of the lease of my house, and we have taken a beautiful new place at Hurstpierpoint. That is such an easy run into Brighton for business gentlemen.""I suppose so. Will you go first, Mrs. Peachey? Mr. ffinch dislikes to be kept waiting at lunch.""The men are all alike in that," laughed Angelina's mother.She was becoming at ease and fluent. She appeared better tempered."But I am sacrificing a great deal," she continued, as they went across the flagged hall. "My first husband left my money most unfairly, and I lose a large part of my income.""Does it revert to Angelina?""Oh dear no." Mrs. Peachey's brief, sharp laugh said plainly, "Don't you think so!""Neither of my children get a penny, but both are well provided for. I have done my duty to my two girls. The money goes to a—well, a scientific friend of Mr. Peachey's; a"—she paused; it was a positive flounder—" a coadjutor," she triumphantly concluded. "You remember that I told you he was all for chemical experiments?"Lady Johns merely reiterated her bland, ridiculous "indeed." For she took no interest in Mrs. Peachey's husband, past or yet to be. It was merely shocking to her to admit, as she must, that this alarmingly vulgar person, this funny, ugly, little shrew, was Angelina's mother.Mrs. Peachey remarked, looking approvingly round at panelled walls and chastely decorated ceiling:"What a very handsome entry this is! You'd never think it from the outside."CHAPTER VIIIANGELINA looked hungrily round the dining-room. Hunger, putting it mentally, was her own word for her emotional state. Certainly she was not hungry, in the usual way. Antony, since her illness, had furbished up his medical manner and prescribed tonics in order that she should have a better appetite. She flagged.She had been content enough with her life at the house in Normandy and with him, until the advent of the poor baby. It had lived a few hours, and she, helpless in the bed, had only for a moment or so girdled the tragic bundle in her arms and looked into the queer face. Yet he had accomplished something for his mother—this sprite-like child of such a woefully short stay upon earth. He had enlightened and dissatisfied her. He had not disenchanted, since there had never been any veil of magic to tear away. But he had given her a throb of the heart: he had hinted at what the life of wife and mother might be. Before he made his brief, tempestuous entry, she had been lulled by a scheme of measured elegance, and if, as she capriciously said to Antony, their alliance was not ideal enough to consecrate by a marriage ceremony, it had sufficed. She had considered that it would last out their life. It was, to all intents and purposes, a permanent union. But now she was restless. She appeared to be merely waiting.And she bestowed scant attention upon her neighbour at the dinner-table, who happened to be Robert Pole's father.He admired Mrs. ffinch immensely, did this old gentleman. He had admired her as Miss Peachey, and except for the accidental fact of having a wife, he would have wooed her himself. He bluntly considered his son Bob a fool not to have won her, and he looked disapprovingly down the table from Angelina, with her cloud-like pallor and haughty airs, to Cicely Forbes, who seemed to be all noisy laughter and rough elbows. The elder Pole was an old gentleman of odd idealisms.You did not except such a quality in the country squire. Robert had said many times to Angelina in the past:"The dear old governor is a queer card, and Julius takes after him. It seems odd to think of Julius grilling abroad out there and bossing niggers; for he's a romantic chap."Angelina's listless glance comprised those things that she had been accustomed to since she was eighteen, and now she was nearly thirty-one. She had sat through so many parties in this sumptuously furnished dining-room; at first as Lady Johns' ward, and, for the last seven years, as Antony's wife. Now and then the playful impropriety of the position had vaguely tickled her. For she was not Antony's wife, and she now began to realise that she had never meant to be. She looked across the table at Antony, handsome in his evening dress; for he could look handsome, and he could also look both ugly and coarse. She looked at Lady Johns, who was invariably very plain and composedly elegant. Nothing could ruffle her, since nothing ever had. Even through her sorrows she had walked upon a crimson carpet.Then there were the neighbours: people she knew so well. They were incapable of giving a new impression. You waited in vain for the galvanic shock.She looked at Cicely, who resembled a peasant; in that she could not be happy without looking horrid. She was laughing too widely. Her eyes, snapping yet languishing, sought Robert's too often. And the outdoor life she led was unbecoming; east winds and hot suns seemed to have burned and bitten through her very clothing. That bare neck and those bare arms were not only red, they were scaly. She looked well as a horsewoman; as belle in full toilette she was grotesque.Looking down the long table, Angelina saw men who in the past had made love to her: Percy Lascelles with his knowing air—since despairing of lawful love it was rumoured that he took upon him more elastic bonds! There were the others—one or two—but their presence really conveyed no more to her than the menservants standing behind their chairs. Everything was much too accustomed. It was effete. Those menservants had been with Lady Johns for years.Certainly, this she admitted to herself, she was waiting for a sensation, and what should it be? She was neither thrilled nor self-reproachful. She was merely watchful. She remained mild.Old Mr. Pole said:"It is too bad of Julius to be late. He had to go to London but he promised his mother he'd return in good time. I want you to see him. Queer boy, a dear boy, Julius, Mrs. ffinch."He spoke with complacence, as you do of a child who resembles you. His next words emphasised this:"Just like me as a young man; not a touch of his mother. Robert is her boy."When you have made a lean marriage, you resent the strain of your partner to show itself in the children. Mysteriously, the elder Pole was feeling this, and he was looking at Angelina's arched profile, and regretting not only that Robert did not win her, but that she had made herself impossible for Julius by marrying that prosy muff, Antony ffinch. There was no getting her into the family!"Ah, here he comes!" he said a moment later. "Now have a stare. But nothing to look at, mind you, nothing to look at. Julius is ugly. So am I. He has quality, and when I was a young man I fancied myself as a character with quality."He looked at his favourite son. With the air of a culprit, he smiled at him, and nobody else was smiling. Lady Johns was visibly annoyed by a late arrival, and the guests took on the tinge of their hostess."I am very sorry," said Julius, ostensibly to Lady Johns, but really to his mother. He was frightened of her.She was an imposing dowager, and when she was angry (Cicely had said this!) you imagined an enraged feline tail swelling and lashing beneath her skirts.Her future mother-in-law was the only person of whom Cicely stood slightly in awe; and her very impertinences were said in undertones. Mrs. Pole combined the person and mien of a Roman empress with a mid-Victorian tendency to hysteria.When Julius had said that he was sorry, he sat down in place appointed. It was opposite Angelina. She was from the first attracted: by his voice and by a lovingly humble intonation.There was nothing cumbrous about Julius, nor was there ever any bluster. There was ease and airiness. With a twinge, Angelina had already realised that he was directly opposed to Antony, and there sprung the source of her interest! He had the quality of humility, which is the most charming of qualities if rightly understood. Most of us, just swimming upon the surface of human understanding call humility cringing. We pull down the most luminous of Christian qualities to our own murky level.First his voice and next his figure drew her and diverted her. Last came his face. The set of a shoulder as he sat opposite, the turn of a leg as he came into the room, made more demand than either features or expression.He was short, thick-set and swarthy, and—again differing from Antony—he wore evening clothes badly: she divined what Antony would say of this. As he had lately returned from a dark land, thickly peopled with what his brother Bob inclusively described as "niggers," he clearly shrank from social things, evidently finding them thin to sharpness; this dinner-party, neighbourly as it was, nevertheless had a razor edge for him; it was a blade reaching to his bone!Angelina was thinking this, or part of it; for her brain became eloquent. She was conscious of an air of command about this clumsy-looking, short, dark man, Julius Pole. It was simply worn, yet constantly, and, becoming agonisingly personal in her reflections, she considered that this man would never allow her to sway him as she swayed Antony. Julius Pole showed a manner, of knowing just what he wanted and going straight for it without much emotional palaver. He would be, in any sort of fight—a love-fight or otherwise—merely a bull at a gate. He would perceive the one thing and go blindly for that, treading down all obstacles—or being slain by them. Before any sign of strength and of unfailing resolve she must capitulate, since she had been wearied by inherent weakness of character; choked by it, held captive by it. At the end of seven years, Angelina was exhausted by being forever compelled to decide, in simple matters or grave, for Antony. She had not suspected that she was exhausted or even a little tired until Julius Pole came in and sat at the table—until, looking casually across it, their eyes met. His were dark and beady: not much in the way of eyes—to the world!When dinner was over, she was' stirred by the fact that he came into the drawing-room before the other men. This filled her with queer delight and cunning. Before long, he came over to where she was sitting: and she knew that she had been merely waiting for him to come, just as he, without doubt, had been scheming to come. They were both conscious of bewildering intrigue. Yet there was not any guilt in it. From the first moment of meeting there was never anything tentative about Angelina's relation with Julius Pole; just as never throughout their whole conjunction could there be any roughness. It was perfect. Common words of condemnation could not touch it.He sat down by her. They did not see the road that stretched before them; the long road that bitterly they must tread. Had they seen, it could have made no difference. He sat beside her on one of those well-stuffed and slightly grotesque double settees. They disposed themselves slightly sideways, shoulder inclining to shoulder. Such seats have gone out of fashion, but Lady Johns had nothing but hereditary furniture. Regally, she moved above the zone of mere fashion. Had Gerald's bride ever reigned in this house, the drawing-room would have been vastly different. Lady Johns, living wistfully and draped by veils of the past, was merely a ruler by proxy.Julius Pole sat by Angelina, in her skimpy, shining silk skirt of unassailable fashion: just as dandies of the 'fifties and 'sixties, men with side-whiskers, had sat beside women in swimming tarlatan and swelling crinolines. Certainly, a curl from Angelina's shoulder should have inclined modestly to his: for they held the secrets of modest victory, those belles of the past! As it was, her lovely black hair was plaited high. It twined about her head and crowned it.She was cool. He loved that. Emotional coolness, to him, became climatic—and inexpressibly soothing. He had been baked dry for years by foreign suns."So you are Antony's wife?" he said, smiling. "I never thought that he would marry anything warmer than a Nankin bowl."Neither smile nor words were usual; nor were they pleasing; in the correct social sense. There was, perhaps, an implied sneer at Antony. Yet Julius had charm, and you knew, instinctively, that there was nothing mean or ugly in him. He might imply unkindness, he might do dastardly acts: yet you acquitted him.Ugly to look at! Oh, certainly! Angelina was admitting this. She looked at the little eyes and domed head. Already that head was getting slightly bald."I have been married," she said, smiling back and speaking with an implied enigma of tone and glance and twist of the mouth, "seven years to Antony."She said this weightily, and why she never knew. She appeared to lay it down as an indisputable proposition: a sort of settled scientific fact that no amount of investigation could ever disprove. She was Antony's wife. Her heart was beating very oddly. It had not beat so fast since the night of the soirée at Miss Hopkins's, when she was a child. Blanche had come up to her then, across the lighted, dancing-room, to say that Arthur Rogers was dying."Antony and I," Julius continued, "used to fight. We always should fight. Even now, to-night, I mean, we politely fell out because I would not talk shop and tell him about my job abroad. I hate to talk about that. I am on a holiday, and want to forget my hard labour. Perhaps that is the reason, no, it was only part of the reason, why I got over here to you in this corner as soon as I could. I felt soothingly certain that you would not ask me to make landscape pictures for you, give you local colour—that sort of thing."He smiled again. He had one good point, and that was a set of white teeth. Yet they were not good enough to look like false ones, nor had they that square shape and flashing whiteness which reminds you of an animal."It was just," he pursued, as Angelina sat refreshingly silent, "that I have been in a hot place, overlooking black men, getting very tired of it, being paid highly for my trouble—and rightly, for the climate kills most men. I wish people would not ask so many questions. My dear mother over-whelmed me on the very day that I landed. I said to her"—his black eyes twinkled and danced upon the burned plain of his face—" 'dear mother, don't ask too intimately. You may regret it. I have simply come home to buy smart outfits for my wives. I shall take in Paris on my way back.' She half-believed it. She threatened hysteria, and we are afraid of that: for it wrecks family life, and family life is a trump card. People at Horsham, now that I return after so many years, seem to have a fearful thirst for information. Some of them knew me as a little boy, and take what they benevolently call 'an interest' in me.""I shan't ask you even the name of the place from which you come," said Angelina.Her eyes, bright, but very cold—a coldness made by pale colour and sharp black pupil—looked straight in front of her, comprising the rich room, dotted elegantly with politely grouped women. Old Mrs. Pole was regarding her frigidly. She had never approved of Angelina. How could a mother approve of any woman who, repeatedly, had refused to marry her son? And Robert was a thousand times better looking and far better off than that flabby, effeminate Antony ffinch, to whom she had chosen to ally herself."I feel sure you will not, and neither will Antony; once I have convinced him that we have no rare china in the place I come from," said Julius. "I'm fond of Antony, although we fought as boys and spar as men. As boys we fell out because I bragged of our direct descent as a family from the great Cardinal.""An assault; Cardinals are never family men," said Angelina flippantly.As she spoke, she seemed to see Kitty the parlourmaid's ugly face, and seemed to hear her talking of Patrick and talking of marriage and warning her, the little listening absorbed girl, of its sanctity and its seriousness. Kitty had made a lasting impression.The time for Kitty, as a memory; the time for St. Mary of Egypt, as an influence, seemed to be now. They were renewed. Angelina stood upon a new shore. It was firm. Clean and lovely white sands had this new land! Hitherto, so she chose to picture it, your feet had sunk in. Sands had been treacherous. That shore she once trod with Antony: the sea had swallowed it up!"Family men! No, never," Julius laughed, and then over each face passed a look of self-disapproval; for, rigidly, they felt that banter was not for them, either to-night or at any time. They were committed to the completely serious. They experienced the awe-inspiring and helpless feeling of being dragged along by the hand. Fate is a harsh nursemaid."Antony," Julius continued, "bragged of being a ffinch—evidently holding to the pious opinion that two small letters more than equal one large one. I told him then, I told him again-to-night, when he chose to twit me with Cardinal Pole, that I believe the small letters signify merely some swagger freak on the part of an ancestor. He traces clear and with unfailing little ff's to his great-grandfather. I have heard of ffaringdons and ffoulkeses, but never of ffinches."Then he and she laughed; clearly and together; for, always, they would be in unison.How can you explain these instinctive harmonies? Certainly you can never bring discord into such perfect natural melody!"ffinches, ffoulkeses, ffaringdons! It is an aviary," said Angelina.The drawing-room door, down there at the other end of the great room, opened, and the rest of the men came in.She singled out Antony at once. He looked handsome—yes, a very solidly built and handsome stranger!Antony came over to them. He looked brighter than usual; more urbane and less bored. This return of Julius from a distant land seemed to have infused life. Lady Johns noticed this, for she loved Antony and was uneasy for him. Angelina, in a mood to notice, observed also the brief cloud of positive jealousy which crossed his plain face as he advanced. It sailed fast and away, that cloud! Chased by a perfect east wind of more genial emotions, it was probably seen by no one. But she knew him, and that look conveyed to her his thought, which was: "What were they talking about? Were they daring to discuss me?"Antony was jealous and suspicious; his was an unhappy nature, and in perpetual conflict; for he could never settle down to the completely ignoble, nor could he rise clear above it.He pulled a chair up to the settee and asked Julius how long he would be in England."Six months and more," was the glad answer. "I shall see October through. That's my pet month of them all.""We must go about a bit, if you have leisure," Antony said, and he added with a quiver of rapture in his voice—that abstract quiver which is peculiar to the collector:"There is a sale up in Derbyshire the week after next. I have a catalogue. It is quite a small place, a cottage, but they have apparently some wonderful silver lustre. Can't think how it got there. Silver lustre"—he was looking his most pleasing and best—"is my strongest magnet, for, in a sense, it is china and metal in one to me. I collect both."He regarded Angelina"Supposing Pole can go," he said, "would you like to come too? We could have a regular little spree," he laughed his nice laugh—for he had two laughs. "It is a long way, but we could spend the night at some inn and get back to Horsham next day."His glance, from one to the other, was oddly appealing. Angelina uncannily felt that his affectionate eyes were saying to her in particular, "I am doing this for you." She felt more fond of him than she had done for ever so long. She admired him more. She was proud of this big man with the bright blue eyes and curling, warmly brown beard. Yet he was no longer hers, nor was she his. Her heart had begun to ache—the long, dull ache that must last for years."I should like that," said Julius. "Let me know the day and I'll keep it open."He did not look at Angelina. She sat helpless and amazingly stirred upon the settee: beside Julius and with Antony bending forward in the chair until his knee possessively brushed at her skirt. Although they did not know it themselves, these two were beginning to fight for her. Already, she felt the contemptuous fine pity of the complex women for such a mere brute struggle. It had got to be, however. She knew that by instinct. And she was not triumphant. She frantically deplored."It is the 17th of May; this is the third week of April," Antony was saying.He looked at his watch and stared down the room, suddenly betraying that restless manner of wanting to get away—the manner that Angelina knew so well, and was so weary with; the manner that made Lady Johns, with her knowledge and her deep affection, afraid for him."I think," he said, standing up, "that Aunt Philippa won't mind a bit if we slip off a little before the rest. Come along, Angelina."His attitude was apparently firm; masculine and decisive—but this was merely surface and his next words revealed it, "Shall we go?" he asked her, and looked moodily down at the seat of the chair from which he had risen."Yes, if you like, dear," was the meltingly gentle answer. And she arose at once.She could not be too touchingly tender towards Antony, for—in all the essentials—she had betrayed him. Her heart was flown already."You come too," he said to Julius, quite impetuously. "Drive back with us and see my china. Don't say you'll come to-morrow, for I want to show you to-night. It is quite early.""I should like to come," said Julius.They all three went as softly as they could to Lady Johns, bade her farewell and slipped out. Angelina whispered as she went: "Antony is keen to show Mr. Pole the blue china. We won't disappoint him."The elder woman, kissing her, whispered back:"Darling, not for worlds. It is so nice to see Antony keen at all."They laughed: as women laugh when they love a man.Lady Johns caught Angelina's wrist as she moved, adding, caressingly:"You are looking more beautiful than ever, but dreadfully pale. It is your first little social function since you were ill. Has it tired you?""Not a bit. Come and see me to-morrow," was the answer. Angelina spoke more crisply than usual, and she looked almost wildly across the macaw brilliance of the big room, with its well-bred, calm airs, its great gilded mirrors and splashes of silk frocks. Inside of herself she was saying forlornly, "I am only passing through all this."And really it seemed so; but whether she would, of her own volition, quit the cage, or whether the other macaws would peck her out of it, with screamings and savage dartings, because she had transgressed the canons of life, she could not feel sure. It did not matter yet. She was not going to enrage them yet.She was silent as they drove back in the closed warm carriage to Normandy. Antony was talking with animation. Julius did not say much.The April night had a lovely moon. when the carriage stopped Antony opened the door and said:"Thank Heaven that horrible east wind has gone. It has been blowing for a week. I hate the spring, perhaps because my mother was consumptive."He pulled up the silk handkerchief round his neck."She, poor thing, hated the bright sun and bitter wind, with every reason."Angelina was the last to get out. She remained motionless for a fraction of time, framed by the open door, and regarding with sheer delight the moon-flooded street, with its wide flagged pavements and stately houses terminating at the church. Behind was peaceful water, with the moon enfolded to its bosom. She looked out at the church and the water, then up at the pear tree in their own garden. It was in full bloom and was a great tree. Because you associated pear blossom in your mind with a background of leaden storm sky, it was superlatively lovely to-night to see moonlight behind blossom. She was happy while she looked at all of this; just wavering on the carriage step while the two men stood ready for her upon the clear pavement She forgot, in this sweet draught of Nature, the other draught that she must drink: of perplexity and many pains. Looking at the moon and the snowy, laden pear tree, looking at the church and the exquisite green water of the stream behind it, she was living her last moment of peace. A return to the past was impossible. She was violently awake and all in vain was any wooing to re-capture that drowsiness of the past seven years. She looked from Julius to Antony, and she resented Antony. She wished him away. This was a new feeling. The wild desire came—to be alone in the whole world with Julius. It was the first of many feelings that she must learn. She trod the road of Knowledge to-night; taking her first staggering, stumbling steps."Come along," said Antony. "What is it, Angelina? Why do you stand there?""I was looking at the moon, and I've got tangled up in my skirt," she returned foolishly, and laughed in quite a silly way.She put out her hand. It was Julius who took it, and looking at him in the moonshine she found him certainly ugly, yet strangely attractive. When he touched her she forgot that there were any other men.He helped her out, and, more eloquent than any polite helping, was that mysterious, instinctive pull of his hand to hers.They looked at each other. Angelina was trembling as she crossed the pavement. Antony took out his latch-key and they all three filed into the beautiful house, with its beautiful possessions.She said at the foot of the stairs:"I am going straight up to bed. I'm dead tired."She spoke with a piteous falter and stared down at the checked paving of the hall. She lifted her lids to look at neither of them. Antony lightly kissed her cheek. He seemed relieved."Yes, you get up to bed," he said. "I was afraid a dinner party would be too much for you. I said so."She put out her hand to Julius, and he shook it."Good-night, Mr. Pole," she said coldly, and he returned with grave indifference:"Good-night, Mrs. ffinch."As Angelina went upstairs she heard them go along to Antony's study, she heard him say, with an air of confidence, with the husband's air:"She is not very strong just yet."She could imagine him shaking his head as he spoke, and looking eloquent. She resented it all.She went upstairs to their bedroom and shut the door. The room was warmly luxurious, the fire burning in a low, sweet blaze, nothing but a handful of dull, scarlet blossom. Warm light fell upon the Davenport ware on the washstand, for Antony was thorough clean through, and in all the bed-rooms they had beautiful blue ware of enchanting shapes and for daily use; a perfect orgie of the bandy and the gently bowed! Angelina stared at the wide lips of her blue jugs, at a roomy soap dish with a domed cover, at shallow trays for tooth brushes; all of it printed in that tender old blue, which somehow to-day we can never hope to repeat.She presently transferred her blank gaze to her dressing-table, which was strewn with things of silver and carved ivory. Antony delighted to pick up trifles that were mellow with age and costly to get. He would travel far, simply for an old box in which Angelina might keep pins.After a time she took off her evening frock and filmy petticoat, hanging them up in the wardrobe thoughtfully, and wondering how long she would have such eclectic things. Although Antony's income was small,Lady Johns always saw to it that her adopted child was exquisitely dressed. Angelina was her French doll.Angelina now, to-night, was feeling that the craft of her social life was rocking and might be wrecked; she would find herself upon the shoals of penury. It was really absurd! And all because you had met a man who magnetised you. She put on her dressing-gown and slowly unplaited the gleaming tails of her black hair. When Julius Pole had gone back to—wherever it was!—then she would marry Antony, and put every lawless fancy aside. She was afraid of herself, and she wished that Julius would go back to-morrow to—was it Penang? Had not Robert said Penang? She sat brushing her amazing black hair as it fell, a vestment of sheer satin, to her knees. She thought of Robert and Cicely. They were blunt, and, consequently, would be blest. Simplicity of nature, shallowness, if you like; that was a woman's safeguard, and perhaps a man's. Her sister Blanche was happy also. There had never been a shadow of any sort between her and Charles Murray. Blanche wrote letters bubbling with merry vulgarities. She was coming home soon to put her three children into the care of some English lady, to be educated.Angelina must have sat brushing her hair for nearly an hour. The fire went out, and Antony started when he came in and found her still sitting there. He stood watching the rhythmic movement of that brush with the carved ivory back. He delighted in its fine, yellowed complexities.Angelina had not even heard him come in. The look of sullen suspicion, always ready to cross his face, crossed it now, and banging the door behind him, he asked:"Why are you not in bed? It is more than an hour since you came upstairs.""Is it?" she smiled at him abstractedly, pushed the hair from her eyes and let the brush fall into her lap. "I've been thinking.""Who of?""Lots of people. Robert and Cicely.""Robert? You've been wondering if he's got over it.""Got over being in love with me? What nonsense, Antony. He never took it to heart. I only hurt his pride by refusing him and," her head moved arrogantly, "I should never have any compassion for people who were hurt through their pride. Robert did not care. He merely admired me.""Plenty of men have.""Plenty. And you," Angelina laughed, hesitated and then, rising, kissed his sullen face upon the cheek, " have admired me too. I wonder if you have ever got beyond admiration. If I were ugly and coarse or crippled or blind, would you care as much?""My dear girl," he looked more amiable, for caresses were rare from her, "I never thought of anything so horrible. Don't talk of being crippled or paralysed. It frightens me. Who else have you been thinking of?""Of my sister Blanche," Angelina parted her hair and started to plait it into one great tail for the night. "She will be home in a few weeks, and I suppose she will want to stay here. You don't mind?""No good minding. She is your sister, and must come. But she'll bore me.""She won't make you ashamed. She is not impossible, as Mamma is. I can take Blanche about and introduce her. Mamma flays you alive by her gentilities.""Angelina!" he hated Mrs. Peachey, yet, nevertheless, he was inconsequently shocked. "How can you speak of your own mother like that? Sometimes I think you have no heart. Sometimes I am afraid that you are as cold as you look. In that case," his mouth dropped at the corners and he looked childish, silly almost, "I shall have a hard time if anything happens. If I get ill or a pauper, I mean. If I have a stroke, as my father did.""I'm not a bit heartless, Antony. I am merely logical, and I've said that so often to you that I stand in danger of becoming a perfect parrot. You never have courage to go far enough. You detest my mother, and quite naturally; yet you won't admit it. If you are ill or a pauper, though why you should be I can't see, it would make me all the more fond of you. I need," she sighed, "sadness and tragedy to bring out my best points. Do believe that. Trust me, my dear."She looked at him; the big, bright-eyed man standing there with his broad, hunched-up shoulders and slightly sunk chest. She was thinking that if, suddenly, he had some grave illness, that would mean their salvation; for she would at once dismiss Julius Pole both from consideration and memory. She would devote herself to Antony; marry him and rejoice in renunciation. Tradition was strong with her. She had not known until to-night how strong it was, and, already, it was becoming a component part of her torture. With Antony she had seven years of tradition; those calm years, a little turgid, constantly greyed over by his morbidity. Yet already she was beginning to romanticise them, since they were sailing out of sight. She remembered now, with queer, quick anguish, that when Antony saw her, lying in that very bed behind them, at their first meeting after the birth and the death of their child, he had burst into tears. He had cried, she had not; for to do the expected things was hard with her. They seemed comic. Mrs. Peachey had also cried when she came, and cried copiously. She had said to her daughter, who lay dry-eyed and smiling:"My dear, I must say it, even now, when you are in such trouble. You were always cold-hearted, from a child, Angelina. And now you are a woman, you don't seem to care a bit."She finished plaiting her hair, tossed the tail over her shoulder, and leaning forward, spreading her knees gently and holding out her hands, she seemed to implore this man, who was, to all intent, her husband, and had been for seven unbroken years. Mutely, she was asking him to hold her tight and keep her. But she knew that he could not. The lassitude of Antony would prevent him here.She was looking more fragile and more lovely than he had ever seen her. She was only so recently recovered from all her sickness and sadness. Since she had borne a child she had become ennobled, and her expression, still cold, was certainly more responsive.Perhaps Angelina had a heart, and was human after all. He had never believed it, and one of his most frequent utterances to her through these seven years had been, "You are a nun." She had been to him merely one more beautiful possession. Delight in her had remained abstract.He said this about the nun, pettishly, for there was a very human strain in Antony, some might have called it a coarse strain. Without doubt she starved him, for never did she betray any demonstrativeness. He had hungered for it since the Antony that Angelina knew, and that his Aunt Philippa knew, was not the whole of the man. He was hardly as cold as his china.He looked at Angelina now as she sat, seeming soft and appealing, in the chair. He dropped down on his knees and girdled hers with his two big hands:"Why won't you marry me?" he asked brokenly. "Why didn't you keep your promise and marry me before the child was born?"He put his head into her lap. She sat looking down at the brightly curling chestnut hair. After a pause, after making what was certainly an effort, she touched that hair. Her eyes, looking at the wall, were blank."Marry you! I can't," she said, in a muffled way—and desperately she hoped that he would not lift his face and look into hers. For she was certain it told tales."The moment is past, or it hasn't come," she went on swiftly, "I do not know which. You should have forced me, Antony, at the first. Why didn't you? A woman expects that of a man. Never leave decision to a woman. Never demand it. That's the highest cruelty. We wreck ourselves and you.""Thank you," he was speaking with the stiff pride that really amused her, and that, emphatically, belittled him. "I don't care to force any woman. And it is rather mean to lay all blame for this discredit at my door.""Before the child was born; that was the time," said Angelina. "You should have taken me then. But you were cruel instead. I can't forget."She laughed unhappily."Now that it is dead," she continued, "there is no reason for marriage; I certainly refuse. The very death of the child seems to prove the flaw in our relation. The very fact that we had no children—oh——" she broke off and switched up her hands to her face, "why don't you stop me, for I am talking at random. You know how afraid I am of emotions.""It has never been any good for me to try and influence you," he said, sounding wretched and touching her heart almost beyond bearing."You will always go your own way, Angelina, you will be your own worst enemy. I have always known it."His head was still lying weakly upon her lap; the bright head of this big man."My darling," he spoke more tempestuously than she had ever heard him speak, "the day will come when I can't save you, when I can do no more.""Save me! Do no more!"Angelina knew not how or where they were drifting: together, yet divided, they seemed to be sailing into some terrifying future. Antony had a gift of prophesy. To-night he saw visions, and, translating them to her, through his passionate voice and prone head, he brought fear to them. For the first time she saw him break through his limpness and gentleness. He discarded his mildly sullen temper. She was in terror of him, and certainly she respected him. As to loving him, wholly and utterly—ah, that was too late: even if the chance, for him, had ever been.After she had echoed his wild words—and they could have no meaning—she sat staring at that chestnut head, her white hands maternally touched his curling hair: she remembered with a bitter touch of reminiscence, the red-gold tendrils of hair on that little head which they had laid so swiftly in its coffin.They sat stiffly silent for some eloquent while, until at last Antony lifted his face and looked at her. She saw an expression which she did not understand—his Aunt Philippa with her heavy burden of family tradition would have understood at once and shuddered. Lady Johns knew what her sister Maria had suffered with Antony's father.Angelina stared at this man, who had been in essence for seven years her husband. She saw a distraught face looking up from her warm lap. She felt terror, not at Antony, but for him. She was filled with a sense of horror, perplexity and mystery. Those darkened blue eyes held whole histories of dumb pain. She could not imagine what lay behind them. She only knew that it was a look she could never hope to forget, and her heart, which beneath its cold wrapping was more tender than most, ached for him, lying there at her feet as he was, and fast in the grip of some strange mood, some nameless agony. She did not tremble, as Lady Johns might have done, for his reason. Antony's aunt had never trusted the sanity of his father. She was certainly afraid of some hereditary taint, and she could not feel sure what form it would take. This dread she had kept to herself, and it made one of the several vague burdens she bore.Even while Angelina, transfixed and in sympathetic agony, was staring, Antony's face changed, and it really seemed as if some tangible mist cleared from his eyes, leaving them peaceful and protected by the proper control which we all have to safeguard our secrets of the soul."I'm a miserable chap," he said, starting up. Awkwardly, his long legs getting in the way, he scrambled to his feet."I was a sullen little boy—Pole and I were talking of that to-night—and I'm a morbid man. But never mind me and my moods. How do you like Julius Pole? Be quick.""Mr. Pole!" with the woman's involuntary artfulness she composed her mouth and chilled her glance. "I hardly know him. He isn't," she picked at the folds of her white dressing-gown, re-arranging her lap, "unusual in any way, is he?""I think he is," Antony was standing languidly by the dressing-table fingering his loved ivory toys. " For one thing he has unusual capacity. That's a splendid position he's got. The only drawback is, he was saying that to-night, it doesn't carry a pension. But then he only has himself to provide for.""Until he marries."When Angelina said this, her voice, to her, sounded a long way off, and she looked at Antony with apprehension. But he had observed nothing. He was regarding the back glass, and rapturously tracing the carved ivory with his gloating forefinger."Don't suppose he will marry," he returned lightly. " He's not a man to strike you that way, somehow. I shouldn't suppose women would care for him. But he ought to save, and he tells me he doesn't. He gets so bored by the life with these beastly black chaps that he goes off now and then, to the nearest civilisation, and gambles, just because he must have some excitement. And he always loses; that's the trouble. He was telling me about it to-night while I showed him the Spode. He has about as much respect for china as a bull."Antony spoke indulgently and with sweetness. He was disposed to be tolerant with Julius. His next words expressed this:"But he's a nice fellow, thoroughly nice, and he doesn't get on my nerves. That will be a nice trip into Derbyshire. You'll come?""I'll come," said Angelina, trying not to sound impressive and staring hard."He hasn't saved a penny piece," Antony put the glass down and wheeled round quickly; he looked at Angelina's white face: she had leaned her head back upon the cushion:"I am keeping you up too long," he said. "I'll go.""There's no hurry. Why hasn't he saved?""I told you just now—gambling. He's a fool, but I suppose we all are in one way or the other. My aunt was scolding me while you were ill, because I'm not insured, and if the china got burnt, there goes my capital.""You ought to be. I've said so many times. I'm glad that Mumsie rated you.""She made no impression. I don't mean to do it. But she was seriously angry, nevertheless, and she is going to leave her money to you when she dies; to me, not sixpence. She is leaving it to my wife."He came brusquely across to the low chair where Angelina half lay, her head flung back, her feet stretched out."You know what that means?" he asked her, laughing uncomfortably. "You are not my wife, so neither of us will get a penny. You must marry me, Angelina."She returned haughtily, and in her most icy way—by Jove, and she could be cold, thought Antony, whipping himself into fury:"That would never make me marry you. It would be a sale, not a ceremony. There is quite another name for that sort of bargain."The contemptuous words, the haughty gesture of her hand, the fine curl of her lip—all that infernal arrogance of hers!—it enraged him.For who was she? He, unworthily, conned over in his mind, those words—of the vulgar—that might comprise her. There were ugly names, upon the world's lip, for Angelina. did the world know.He was so angry with her that he could have called her anything. She beat into him the certain fact of his own inferiority. Yes, that was it, his point of view in these matters lay below hers."Some day," he said icily, and with the ugliest sneer she had seen, "I may refuse to marry you. The day may come when you will cringe to me."

"Dearest," she answered placably, "you know that I am never influenced by melodrama. And we do seem to be melodramatic to-night. I would rather talk of money than of what you would call morals."Those pale, bright eyes of hers were gentle; her voice was gentle also; and both were aloof. They were superior. They stung him, where they essayed to appease."Money's a most uncomfortable topic, Angelina, I assure you," he said. "Have you never realised how hard up we are? Most of my capital is tied up in china, and I can't stop buying.""I know;" she was looking not only grave, but alertly business-like. "If you would only sell! With your knowledge and your enthusiasm you could buy and sell and make a profit. We should be richer instead of poorer.""Sell!" his mouth curled and he went back to the delicate ivory on the dressing-table. "Can't. It isn't in my blood.""It is in mine, as you imply.""My dear girl, forgive me. I didn't mean to be discourteous.""I don't see why you should mind being truthful. And you know that I am proud of my shop. When I went to London last time, I went to St. Paul's Churchyard—it seemed so far away from everywhere. Yet once I believed it almost the whole of London. I went to look at my dear shop. It is not altered. Papa's name is still over the door. I went in and bought some face cream. Mr. Barber served me. He did not know me.""I should hope he didn't.""You are very like Mamma, Antony," she said, with indifference and yet disdain.Antony, at this, opened his mouth to emit his satirical "Thank you, Angelina," but Angelina, dismissing comment with a quick movement of the hand, flowed on:"She would think it low-born of me to go back to the shop. She does not even know that I have told you there is one. She adheres to the fiction of Papa's scientific pursuits and chemical experiments. Mrs. Chope thought of all that; she is clever, the Chope. I went to Evensong at the Cathedral afterwards. I thought of Kitty and of my saint, St. Mary of Egypt. It all came back."She was looking at him wistfully, wishing to share her past with him. But Antony did not love her that way:"I may be a fool," he said, with a quick turn of the topic, "but I did a good thing the other day with what money I have got left. I put it into a South African mine. Lascelles put me up to it.""Lascelles!" she looked disturbed. "I don't care for Percy Lascelles, for he has no principle.""Do you propose a pun on your former admirer?""Principle! Interest! Yes, that isn't bad—because it is so bad; as the good pun should be, Antony. But why do you harp upon my admirer, and why were you influenced by him? He is not to be trusted. Has he put any money in himself?""My good child, he is one of the directors. I took Pole into my confidence just now, and he seems to think it is all right. He went so far as to say he'd put money in himself if he had any. I am to get eight per cent., Angelina. That, with what Aunt Philippa does, will enable us to live. This is a big house and an expensive garden, but I couldn't bear to leave Normandy, could you?"Angelina started."I love Normandy," she said, after a pause.After another pause, she added:"I am very tired to-night. Go away, now.""Yes, I will go away as I always do when you have done with me," he retorted, and coming over, kissed her.It was an icy caress. His face, again, was dark. She watched him go. He only went through into the dressingroom, where he had a bed, but he locked the door between them. This he had done before, and it signalised an odd mood. She knew that mood. She had too much dignity, and too much common sense ever to comment upon this. In the past it had hurt her; it had suggested a definite sundering, and had chilled her. When she realised, as now she did, that to-night it was a positive relief to hear him turn that lock so coldly, she clapped her hands up to her face and strangled her crying, still-born.Yes, already, it had come to that. She was rejoiced to be parted from Antony.She heard him undressing, clumping about, flinging his things down, opening and shutting drawers.This already, to hear him in there so close, seemed indecorous—for was he not a stranger!She was cold and weary. Hurriedly, noiselessly, she got ready for bed; longing to hug the darkness and so be utterly alone. She craved for the solitude that only darkness gives you.She was feeling actually faint, and the tears ran down her cheeks. Her legs trembled when she walked.She was heart-broken, for she knew that she stood upon some awful edge of her life; she was going to hurt Antony. It would be irremediable, and yet she could not help it.She could feel Julius Pole's fingers round her wrists as he helped her from the carriage in the bright moonlight. That had been to her a new birth. She did not pause to wonder at what he was feeling at this moment, for instinctively she knew that he was feeling very much as she did: more victorious perhaps, and not tearful—for that was the way of a man. He was not suffering; it was to the woman, all the suffering! So far, he would be merely uplifted.Already, there were no half shades in their relation. They knew each other hardly at all, and yet there was perfect, most soothing knowledge. So this was being mated. This was finding your mate. It was primitive and it was inexorable. Yet it was too late. For did not Antony lie there just through the wall, and was he not, on other nights, sleeping by her side?She knew that Antony loved her, or, putting it more exactly, that he needed her. He blindly adored her: he worshipped and punished. She was his fetish, and this was the key to their relation. He came to her simply and as a savage, in all his troubles and in his too infrequent joys. When things were right he hung votive offerings about her. When things were wrong he banged her head against a tree or he flung her from him. He might fling her away in a pet, but he very soon wanted to pick her up again. If she deserted Antony she would deprive him of everything; she was all that he had—of the real and the ideal. She was his pride and his religion. She was his most costly and most rare possession. She was not more than blue china, perhaps, but she was the most precious piece in the collection. His reputation was staked upon her.Putting him either as savage with a fetish or as cultivated man with an elegant hobby, she was essentially necessary. Health, his modicum of happiness, perhaps even his life and sanity, depended on her. She knew this, and knew it without vanity or palliation; for she always went straight through to the heart of a circumstance.Antony's fate hung upon her action. It was a terrific responsibility. When she was in bed and lying straight; feeling very cold, she allowed herself to float out from the sheer horror of all this and lave herself in the stream of Julius Pole's preference.It would never be necessary for him to say he loved her. Yet she knew that the intoxicating moment of confession must come. He, when he loved—ah, but he did already!—would love her for her intrinsic self. He would search to the soul of her and take that.Antony only loved her for the delight she gave. The hold she had upon him was dependant upon her beauty and her brains. Of her eternal part he knew nothing. Women divine and endure everything before the time comes. They die a thousand deaths. She smiled to herself in the dark; an anguished enough twist of the lip! One of these men, and perhaps both of them, were already asleep: these men for whom she suffered and would continue to suffer.She saw the dawn come. She was in sharpest conflict, for she knew, in a sense, what the future held. Details she could not see; only Time could fill in the canvas; but the composition of this dramatic picture—her coming life—she already knew.She lay there cold and weak, and, as it seemed, permanently awake. She was trying to persuade herself that when choice came, then she would choose correctly and as the world wished. Every woman, riven of heart, supposes this. She thinks that she can choose and that her choice shall be what the world calls honour.When the day for choosing comes, the great day of the last wrestling, the classic day of final choice, then it is that Love wins. The woman is pulled, and a righteous victory, to the strongest side! When the time came for Angelina, she knew that she would choose the man who provoked in her; the sweetest and the best.She was still awake at seven in the morning when Antony, fully dressed and haggard, looked in:"I have slept badly," he said shortly; coming to her, as he invariably did, in everything."Have you had a good night? Are you coming down to breakfast?""Yes, I shall come down, of course," she returned with a cheerfulness which deceived him, because he was mournfully absorbed in himself.Nevertheless, her voice was emphatically ghastly.When he went away she arose and dressed; feeling tremulous and anticipant.CHAPTER IXANGELINA was feeling irritably that she had not a word to say to Blanche. She did not even hate her as, when they were children, she often had. To hate would have been better; for that, at least, was active. To be bored to death was desolation; it was a wasting of your life. Admitting this, she would have six weeks cut sheer out of her existence, for it was settled that Blanche, with her three little girls, should stay at Normandy six weeks. At the end of this time she was handing them over to two maiden ladies at Bedford, who would mother them and teach them while they were little things, and, when they were old enough, send them daily to College."It is very dreadful to be parted from them," Blanche was saying to Angelina, "but I had to choose between them and Charlie; no Anglo-Indian woman can keep her children and her husband."She sighed expansively."When they get big enough, they will come back to us in India, and they will marry early, of course. I think that Phillida will be a beauty, don't you? She is fair, like me. Helen is an odd-looking monkey. Those big eyes are just your eyes, Angelina, and she may turn out all right. Plain children very often do. Don't you remember"—her level voice and obtuse expression seemed to buzz and stare in the spacious, faintly-scented drawing-room—"what a queer little kid you were? It was me that everybody admired. I remember the married Miss Hopkins—Mrs. Bauble—twisting my curls round her finger." Blanche regarded herself complacently in the long mirror set between the long windows. "Some people might say, now, that you were the better looking of us two."Angelina said passively, divining that some answer was expected, "They are dear little girls." But she had no real heart for children. Her passion was for herself and for men. It always would be, and she hoarded the memory of her own baby merely as a poetic fragment. Blanche presently spoke of it."How sad, Angelina, that you have no children; and after nearly eight years, too. How unfortunate that your little boy died. Why was it? Didn't the nurse manage well?""I think so. Everybody managed well, but I did not." Angelina spoke indifferently.She sat by one of the windows, and she was looking out at Normandy—looking down at the flagged, tree-shadowed pavement. There was no indifference in her glance, but a certain marked, expectant rapture. Blanche did not understand, yet she detected. She looked sulky, for she divined that Angelina was bored by her; and this is knowledge that never can be palatable. Yet she intended to stay her full time at Normandy, since it suited her. Antony ffinch was a nasty, sneering beast, but she saw very little of him—Antony saw to that! Angelina was her own flesh and blood, so, naturally, she was fond of her. Lady Johns was quite civil, and Leggatt Court was a lovely house to have the run of. Moreover, Lady Johns lent Angelina a carriage whenever she wanted it, or you could have, for the asking, a pony-cart for the children. Blanche had written gushingly to "dear old Charly-Warly" that she was in clover."What are you staring at?" she demanded, coming briskly to the window. She had been lying on the sofa, as she did after lunch. Blanche had grown fat."Nothing. Go and lie down again, dear." Angelina's voice, meant to soothe, was sharp, in spite of herself. "I was only watching the pretty patterns that the leaves make in the sunlight.""What a baby you are! Fancy noticing that." Blanche returned to her cushions. "I thought"—she laughed not very pleasantly—"that you were on the look-out for Mr. Pole. He seems to live at the house. I wonder that Antony stands it. My hubby wouldn't. He's awfully jealous, but I like a man to be jealous. It shows he sets a value on you.""Mr. Pole comes to talk to Antony, dear Blanche.""Of course he does; they always do. I've seen so much of that kind of thing in India. The officers' wives are awful." Blanche looked as if she meant to be shockingly confidential, and she continued:"One woman I know, a captain's wife, kept another officer's photo under her pillow. Just fancy! Disgusting! The whole regiment was talking about it and laughing at her; for you know what men are when they get together. A lot of young fellows, too! Talk of women's scandal! It is nothing to the officers' mess."Angelina did not answer. She was staring at the street. She was absorbed, so she said, by shadows. Blanche looked spiteful. Angelina was both cold-hearted and stupid. She had always been cold, but when she was a girl at the Misses Hopkins' she had done her lessons well. She had promised to be bright."And you three are going to that sale, aren't you?" she persisted; "I do call that queer. If it is to buy china why does Antony want you? And if it is to have a little giddy-go-round why does he want Mr. Pole?""It seems natural enough to us," her sister said flatly."We are not Anglo-Indians. I hope you won't be dull while I'm gone Blanche; that is the only thing.""Bless the child," Blanche giggled, "I shall be all right. I've settled to see a good bit of Cicely Forbes. What a jolly girl she is! Full of go. I was like that when we were at Brighton. Do you remember the dear old Brighton days? I loved a lark, and you were always mooning—except that time when you fooled Freddy Jannaway. You know he's married? He wrote to Charlie.""Yes. He is a friend, or rather his mother is a friend of Lady Johns.""It was awful when I went to see Mamma," groaned Blanche. "Are you ever going?""Not if I can possibly help it.""What a queer old girl you are! Don't look so fierce. I don't suppose she wants you. I was always the pet. It is a vulgar house, Angelina, that place at Hurstpierpoint, and that man she's married isn't even a gentleman. He looks rather distinguished; auctioneers and those sort of half-and-half people often do. But when he speaks, he's got a shocking Cockney accent, it quite gives him away. She married him in an awful hurry, just as if she were a young girl. And she has made great sacrifices. She has lost nearly all her money; it goes to Mr. Barber."At the end of the sentence, Blanche dropped her voice and looked timidly at the closed door; it was dangerous to refer, even in the most distant way, to the paternal shop. She had never told Charlie."Papa made practically no provision for us," she continued. "He must have been a queer man. I think we were a queer lot, and I'm glad to be married and out of the family, aren't you? Charlie's people have always been swells and so have Antony's. How lucky you were to get adopted. It must be nice to be able to go back into your pedigree without grazing your nose against a shop window. Why do you let me do all the talking, Angelina? Why are you so mum?""I love to hear you talk, dearest Blanche," said the dispassionate voice from the open window, " and that last bit about grazing your nose was delightful.""I don't think it was bad." Blanche's own pretty little snub nose wrinkled with delight at the compliment. "But about money, Angy. We shan't have a penny except the £7o a year we have already got, until Mamma dies. And even then it won't be much, now she has married the auctioneer. Papa"—her voice dropped again—"put the shop before his own flesh and blood. He must have been queer. But you can't wonder when you think of Grandmamma Peachey. She was a bad lot. Mamma told me. She hasn't told another single soul; not even Mrs. Chope. I went to see her too when I ran over to Brighton. She's mad with rage because Mamma has married; for she's turned out of house and home. She is in the cottage, living on twopence, and she's gone all to pieces in her looks. She's a regular rag-picker and looks a hundred. I suppose she can't afford the money for the paints and things. I'm certain"—Blanche sniggered, yet her eyes widened with horror—"that she isn't proper. She looks it; improper, you know—I mean that she was a bad lot once. She is thinking of selling her valuable furniture and sinking it, with a little more that she has saved, into an annuity. It must be awful to feel that your future is unsafe. I'm all right and so are you. Charlie will have his pension and I suppose Antony has ample means. It looks as if he had. You've a lovely home, but there's too much china and silver and things like that. It's really rather like a curio shop, don't you think?""Antony loves to have it so," said Angelina, and her voice was quietly final."You do let him have his own way. Haven't you a will of your own? You give in to him in everything, and yet as a girl you were so high-spirited. Mamma could do nothing with you. Do you think, Angelina, that he'll accept the position Charlie could get for him? It would be splendid. It would do him all the good in the world. He is, if you don't mind my saying so, awfully heavy. He would bore me if I saw too much of him. Just to travel about with this young Rajah, with all expenses paid! It's the chance of a lifetime, and Charlie's influence could get him the job. They'll take any doctor that Charlie recommends. Do you think Antony will?"Blanche looked keen. She had a business instinct and hated to see good things wasted.Angelina twisted from the window, showing animation and interest."I hope he will," she said. "I am trying to persuade him, and Mumsie is trying too. I should like him to go."Her voice was deeply earnest."It would be money in his pocket too." Blanche impatiently thumped her silk pillow and settled her curly, yellow head. "I don't want to offend you, Angelina, but his off-hand manner does put my back up. It is such a splendid chance of seeing the world, and for nothing. All expenses, and first-class, paid. To travel about with an Indian prince for three months! Thousands would jump at it. Of course you'll miss him, but when he comes back it will be jolly. You'll have a second honeymoon.""I think he'll go," said Angelina.She had turned back to the window. Julius Pole came slowly up the street. She lifted her hand as he, passing below, looked up. It was a signal. After a moment's pause, through which her heart plunged wildly, she said casually to Blanche:"You generally have a nap about this time. I am going down to Antony."She moved to the door. She kept her bright eyes fixed on that big, blonde body on the sofa. Blanche was decidedly buxom. She retreated from her own vehement feeling. She did not know where it was leading her. If Blanche had tried to stop her, or if she had suggested coming down also—well, it almost seemed as if she would strangle Blanche in order to keep her out of the way! To strangle Blanche! That was too extreme an idea and too vulgarly sensational altogether. She laughed at herself for the thought as she ran, on feet that were soft and fleet, light and timid—the feet of a mouse—downstairs.Yet certainly she knew already that nothing and no one should come, even for a moment, between her and Julius Pole.Antony was sitting in his study alone. It was not a bookish place, for where books should have been upon the shelves stood his blue china. The dainty tables, some of them glass-topped and all of them slim, that were ranged against the walls, gave a touch of effeminacy to the chamber. Angelina paused upon the threshold to absorb the lovely effect of delicate silver and mellowed blue. That man, so moody in the chair by the table, was too clumsy a touch.He had the newspaper before him, but he was not reading. Behind him, on the wall, was a row of handsomely bound medical books. He never opened them. People forgot that he was a doctor, and he certainly ignored the fact himself.That flabby look of his carefully kept hands, that downward pull of his mouth, how well she knew those signs! Once they had evoked anxiety, now she felt impatience. Yet her face, as she advanced, was pinched by concern and remorse.She shut the door, sat down, and said to him lightly:"I had to come away from Blanche. She talks incessantly. She's a piano-organ played too fast."Speaking, her head sensitively inclined towards the door. She was listening.Antony looked up. He smiled at her in the weary, fond way she knew: his smile of this unhappy mood!"Your sister is like all sorts of things," he said scornfully."She is a protoplasm—a lump of jelly floating on the top of a rainwater tub. When, for mercy's sake, is the six weeks up?""Not yet. Poor Blanche! We must endure it. She is really so good-natured, and I hate myself because I hate her. She is my sister.""Yes," Antony adopted his air of propriety, "it is dreadful not to love your own people. There is no doubt you are unnatural.""I am," she was listening so acutely that she feared lest he should notice. "Yes, unnatural, heartless—all of it."She laughed, adding:"But I really came down to talk to you about this Indian offer. You must accept it."Antony looked at her."It means leaving you alone for three months," he said slowly, "but you don't mind that."As he said this there was a knock at the front door, then feet coming across the flagged hall. Angelina faltered up from her chair, then sat promptly down."It is Mr. Pole," she said with a fine, high carelessness.The door opened and Pole came in."My wife already knows your footstep," said Antony, greeting him.There was an emphasis upon that word "wife.""I am grateful to Mrs. ffinch for granting me some measure of individuality," said Julius stiffly, and as if he had learned this sentence as the safe thing to say.He shook hands with Angelina. They could not be natural. He was quivering; she was trembling. She let her eyes fall beneath the scrutiny of his."I want you, Mr. Pole," she said in a gabbling, bright way that copied Blanche, "to persuade Antony to travel about with Charlie Murray's rich young Rajah. They are both on board ship now and will soon be in England. Antony has only to lift his finger. Just think, Antony"—she leaned towards him, spreading her curved hands and half-bared arms upon the table—"what it would mean to you; travelling about Europe. Think of the art treasures.""I do—and of my empty pockets. The Rajah"—he spoke to Pole—"does not pay a penny. He simply clears all expenses. And he's delicate, this Indian, and may be a nuisance. That is why they insist upon a medical man.""It is a good way of getting a holiday, isn't it? If I were a doctor I'd take it."Julius, answering, blinked and turned from the window. His eyes were sensitive."Oh, no doubt I shall go. I will talk to Murray when I see him. What will you do, Angelina, while I'm away?""Mumsie wants me to shut up this house and stay with her. We might let the house, Antony, and make some money.""Not if I know it!" He spoke violently. "Let the house! With all my treasures in it! You are always thinking of money-making.""There is shop-keeper in my blood," she said quietly, and, smiling, twisted the rings on her fingers."I shall go, bless you. Don't be afraid." Antony adopted a tone of rough humour, he hunched his broad shoulders and hollowed his chest. "Now let us talk of the sale. That is what you came for, isn't it, Pole? We go on Thursday. What time shall we start?"His face cleared. He pulled out the time-table and looking up quickly at Angelina, perhaps to intercept a glance; he said:"You'd better not stay here any longer. I'm going to smoke a pipe, and you hate my tobacco."She stood up instantly. Julius, near the door, opened it for her. He, who had been so fluent on the night of the dinner-party when first they met, had not a word to-day. They were dumb to each other so far. Silence, with its wonderful fabric, wove veils of silver and of gold to hang between these fated two. They were living through the veiled phase, as lovers do. They were content, since they knew that the day would come when, violently, all veils would be fluttered away: torn into radiant fragments, cast forth to float in the sun. They would be left naked of the spirit: and not ashamed, but very glad.The three of them arrived late at night in the Derbyshire village where the sale was to be held. They put up at the inn. Angelina and Antony had a big room, with a four-post bed and dour, woollen hangings; Julius went past their door and up a ladder-like stair to a bachelor room. It was an humble inn. Angelina heard him go. She did not wish it. She resented it, and, again, she was afraid of herself: for she could not see the way she trod.Julius went up that stair before Antony came in to her. She was alone in the low-pitched grim country room, with its vast, fat bed. She was half-undressed and sitting at the toilet-table with her black head unbound. Suddenly she dropped it and, sinking her face into her hands, sobbed in a stealthy way. She was rapturous and afraid. For seven years she had lived with Antony and been, as it were, his wife. But she was more stirred than any maiden when she heard the feet of that man going upstairs.Antony was cross next morning; because he was so visibly excited. Everything got upon his nerves. He had passed a bad night because there was a carillon peal at the church opposite. Did not Angelina hear it? Oh! she heard nothing. Had not Julius heard it? Come, now! He was as bad. Antony wished that they had not settled to stay a second night.After breakfast they started off in the warm May mist. It was half a mile to the cottage where the sale was, and the short cut to it lay through the wood. The lovely mist was metallic; it was like blurred white metal: dim, yet not wet as the sea mist is, and leaving no tonic salt upon your lip. It was joyous and gently voluptuous; it was silver, yet with the subtlest hint of pure gold. Without a doubt it was dangerous. The little way along the road, before you came to the wood, ran between orchards. Grass was ultra-green, the white trees bowed themselves with blossom. Julius gave one magic look at Angelina, and her eyes responded. They were seeing together all the tender marvel of this. It was their own delight, for Antony was walking slowly and with the catalogue open in his hand. He was marking the particular lots that he meant to bid for.They came to the cottage where the sale was going to be, and all the poor furniture was stacked in a cramped, untidy garden. It was a new, yellow cottage, and the furniture was new. A few women were walking about, treading down the garden and holding up sheets and blankets to the light, spying out holes, stealthily poking in their fingers at the worn places. Angelina looked disgusted, and Julius seemed amazed, but Antony hopefully walked all round to the house until he came upon a kitchen table, upon which was stacked the china. He handled it dotingly, piece by piece, and he said to Julius in an awed voice:"Some of this is rare, and I must have it at any price. I can't think how it got here. Yes, I must have it."His voice trembled.I've never seen so much silver lustre, and all of it perfectly genuine and without a flaw. It is one of the romances of a sale—that it should be here, with all this!"Disdainfully he indicated, waving the open catalogue about, the poor bedding and coarse furniture.People were staring at the trio and staring most at Angelina, with her cold face, so sharply, whitely beautiful. She was dressed in what, to them, was a wonderful way. For this was an obscure village."There are no dealers here yet," whispered Antony, "but there will be. They will come in shoals unless they are fools. I'm sorry that it is such a fine morning, confound it."He scowled at the innocently radiant sunshine, and at all the smiling trees.Two red spots high upon his cheeks made his blue eyes almost madly brilliant. He was in the hold of the only enthusiasm he knew. He would have a tremendous reaction. Angelina knew that. When he had bought the china, for of course he meant to have it; when he had arranged it and looked at it and gloated over it for a few days, then he would be aghast at the money he had spent and for which he could see no return. For he would starve rather than sell it.He was touching it, piece by piece, his fingers sensitively twitching."The blue isn't up to much," he said thoughtfully, "but I may as well have that too.""When does the sale begin?" asked Julius. "We can't stand about for hours. Shall we come back later on?"Antony turned on him incredulously:"Go away! Come back!" he said. "My dear fellow!"He looked at Angelina. She smiled at him in that soft, kind way that very often he resented; for it looked as if she patronised him. But she merely meant that she understood.He surveyed all her high beauty and the arrogant, careful finish of the clothes she wore."You will ruin everything," he said peevishly. "People will think that I am made of money when they see you and realise that you belong to me or"—he shot a look at Pole—"to one of us. Dealers will run things up. I shall either lose or be ruined. Why on earth couldn't you be shabby just for once, Angelina?""Dearest, these are my very oldest clothes. I am sorry.""Are they? It is the way you hold your head or something. Well, anyhow, you must go away before the sale begins. Take her away, Pole. I wish you would. Can't you two go and sit in the wood? Take the luncheon-basket. Fortunately"—he turned over his catalogue—"the china comes fairly early. I'll join you when I've got what I want. Save me something to eat."He turned away. The sharp hunch of his big shoulder was sufficient dismissal. It said more than many words. Angelina, speaking to Pole, but not looking at him, said:"We must go away. He does not want us. Look at him! He has already forgotten us."Antony had pushed through the people. He had taken up his position. He was sitting patiently upon a tub turned upside down, in a corner of the garden and away from the china. Porters were moving about. They brought a chair and stood it upon a table as a rostrum for the auctioneer. The people began to gather eloquently together. A motorcar stopped at the mean gate, first one and presently another. Antony regarded them savagely.Julius Pole and Angelina walked away. They went from the road and the house and the people into the wood, casting a last look back.They saw drifting blossom and a carpet of crassly green grass. This was their last impression of the open world.Within the wood, stretching wide, was a glade. It was wholly blue and oppressively fragrant. Above were the freshly-decked trees; below, here, for their feet and their noses, were bluebells.It was a wonderful sight; a surpassing richness coyly hidden. Angelina involuntarily stretched her hand. Julius caught and held it captive."I never saw anything like this," she said faintly. "What a show of bluebells! We did not come this way with Antony. We have taken a different path. I hope he will find us when the sale is over. Such blue! Better than his!"She laughed hysterically."Oh, blue china! Bother!" returned Julius.He had been staring with dark, fierce fire in his eyes at the bluebells. Suddenly he switched Angelina to him, and wordless—and for the first time—she was in his arms: speechless, their lips met and clung. Silence, sweetness, the birds above, the swaying blossoms: all of this drove them mad, and confession was inevitable.He held her. She knew at last what it was to be prisoned in a strong embrace. It was riotous, reckless—ruinous as like as not. But there were no half measures.She knew now what it was to be kissed."My darling," he spouted, "we are alone. The world is ours and our life. Such a world! Such perfume! Stronger than any wine! I'm glad, yes, glad I've kissed you! glad that you know I love you. Do you know? I wonder! Will you ever know how dear you are to me and have been from the first? All that you touch or come near is precious, and the moments when I am away are simply marking time for our next meeting. Didn't you guess why I came to Normandy so often? Most dear one, I was compelled to: against prudence, against honour, against it all. I was driven on. I could not help it. Lovers never can. Darling, this is love, and only two out of ten thousand really find it."His head fell sideways to her shoulder, and he was silent.She put up one bare hand and touched him."Dearest, you meet me half-way. You know what I want you to do," he muttered confusedly. "Ours is a love without language."Almost without conscious volition he drew her down and they sat against a great beech trunk. The lovely blue flower that had made their scented destruction spired up all around them. Angelina said, turning her head right away and withdrawing herself:"It was these, the bluebells, that made you kiss me." There was shyness in her voice, the inevitable maidenly confusion and strangeness, but there was no remorse; there was no touch of the stealthy and the ugly. Hers was a manner of honourable wooing. Julius, by now aware and knowing that he had made love to a wife—and his friend's wife—was sensible of this, and mystified. He began to wonder. He put his thought into rueful words. He looked miserable and ashamed. The great, big, natural joy of declaration ebbed in its tide with him. She was Antony's wife and he had kissed her. He had sinned against his highest code. Yet to kiss her! What was that? What would it mean to light people and a light feeling? It would mean little or nothing. It would be merely foolish and ugly, cheap and. unworthy; a common jest of which you would be ashamed—and there might be mutual distaste and tacit avoidance afterwards. But he loved Angelina, and he had never loved a woman before. She loved him. Nature, from the first, had urged them on to this. Yet the fact remained that she was Antony's wife."I am ashamed. Forgive me, my dear, my own. But oh, I love you and always shall! Every beat of my heart is a caress to you and must be," he said.He stared gloomily down that glade of surpassing blue; to him, the wood had grown dark: and not only dark but painfully confused. He rubbed his eyes, and, apart from Angelina, he felt anxious, for, latterly, his eyes had troubled him. They played pranks. He was so anxious that he had said not a word to anybody, for it was too deep a dread to cackle about. He had gone to an oculist, who made light of his terrors and told him to come again later on."There is nothing to forgive," said Angelina, speaking coldly, "I am not Antony's wife."Julius knew her so well, by instinctive harmony, that her cold voice merely expressed to him the underlying fire. Her coating of ice had been beautifully transparent to him from the first; he saw the rosy flames below. He knew the true woman of her: passionate, tender and generous. But her actual words he could not pretend to fathom."Not Antony's wife!" he repeated.She was almost amused by the implied sensitive retreat in his voice. These men were so illogical. Julius seemed actually affronted. He was shocked. She remembered her many talks with Antony before their union, when he was urging her to marry him in the usual way. Antony had no religious belief, he participated in the easy agnosticism of his period. Yet when it came to getting married he talked as a Catholic would have talked. He confused sociology with idealism.Julius already had failed her half-way. These men did. He would not follow out either his acts or his opinions to their inevitable conclusion. In this way, he and Antony were identical."And so," she continued smoothly, "your loving me breaks no link for it is understood between me and Antony that our relation depends entirely upon what may happen to either of us.""You make me rub my eyes," said Julius, and he said it almost comically.Moreover, he rubbed his eyes to clear them; for they went on playing tricks, and he considered that perhaps those masses of softly swaying flowers beneath and those intricate tracings of boughs above might dazzle and confuse quite normal sight. He tried to persuade himself."I've talked it over and argued it so much with Antony," Angelina said, and started picking the flowers round her to make into a bunch, "that to tell it again seems trite. Yet you do not know, of course, so I must explain. I would not marry him because I felt I did not love him enough. To me marriage should be beautiful and indissoluble; not only of the body and the visible bond, but of the heart.""Yes, it would have been that if I had married you. We know it," said Julius.He was staring at the lovely profile, and, reverently this time, with a gesture of muted, pathetic passion, he prisoned that restless hand as it was picking bluebells. He stilled it in his own. Angelina looked round, and her eyes were full of sudden tears. Julius also appeared sad: so, already, there had come into their poor love for each other that tragedy which seems to be the necessary part.She went on picking, snapping the flowers, throwing them into her lap."You see," she proceeded, with a manner of weary narrative, "grandmother was a Catholic and so was her maid Kitty, who talked to me about the Saints and beautiful beliefs. I absorbed it all; it is in me, Julius, this sense of a mystic religion. It will absorb me in the end."She said his name for the first time, with supreme tenderness yet with no fluttering note of novelty, since their love, although fresh told, was never new. It was instinctive and readily acceptable. There was all to express, yet nothing to learn."When I was about seventeen I was engaged, but only for a few minutes really, to Freddy Jannaway. Your people know him and so does Lady Johns. He was a friend, too, of Charles Murray, my sister Blanche's husband. When he kissed me it was horrible, horrible," she dragged her hand away from Julius and half-flung herself into the bluebells, crushing them. "I made a sort of vow then to my Patron Saint that I would never marry anybody unless I loved him utterly. Well, you see"—she shrugged; he knew and adored that dismissing gesture—"I loved Antony, yet not enough. He wore me out by asking me so often, and other men asked me too, and Lady Johns, although she said nothing, implied that every young woman ought to marry. All that is nearly eight years ago, and Antony has constantly bothered me to get married but I would not, although I had promised him I would if we had a child. Something kept me back. I could not quite understand it myself. But now I know," she turned to him her suffused face. "It was because you, my fate, my joy were coming." She laughed and leaned to him.Then he took her in his arms again and they sat breathless, in the breathless wood, while Antony, only a few yards away, was bidding for the cold, blue china.They did not think of Antony. They sat silent. The luncheon-basket, mundane enough, yet not to be ignored, was cast at Angelina's side. Pole said at last, half-laughingly:"I know that you are hungry;" he reached for it. "Even queens eat, and so perhaps do angels. You are both. Certainly you looked a queen in the cottage garden. You were radiant, you pierced that cloud of work-a-day women."He opened the basket and looked up at the trees:"That clean, young green drives me mad," he said, and, over the delicate food that had been packed for them at the inn, sandwiches and fruit, he kissed her.They caressed, they laughed; yet their eyes were furtive; for they knew that pain for everybody was well upon the way. They sat capriciously eating their lunch under the gentle, swelling branches of the beech. At every sound of a twig at every note of a bird, they looked at each other: first with terror and then with reprieve. They expected Antony to come back and they dreaded him. Angelina said abruptly:"You can't meet Antony. The three of us! It is impossible.""My dear, yes, I've been thinking that. But how can I go?""Leave it to me;" she spoke with a tired scorn of herself; "the woman always tells the lies in these cases. Go away, Julius. Leave it to me. I will tell one lie, but I won't keep on telling them. I can't. If you stay, if you and Antony meet again, I, know exactly what will happen. We shall sink into intrigue.""Our delicate love; new, yet ageless and indestructible—no, we couldn't endure that! You are right. I will go."He looked at his watch; Angelina, with a kindred practicality, shut the lunch-basket. In each case, hands twitched and fumbled."ffinch can't be back yet, for that china he's after is a late lot. I will go in half an hour: our last half-hour for the present, and I won't make love to you all the time, my darling. We will talk what the world calls sense, and the world"—Julius frowned into the artless wealth of those blue flowers which his feet down-pressed—"would call me a villain. Although you are not legally married to him—I can't quite grasp it yet, however—you are in honour his wife. I have diverted you, stolen you away. But there are times when a man must thieve. I shall walk out of this wood as you wish; the odium and the ingenuity of the reason given I leave to you. But it is the last time, that I swear, that you shall drop to any deception. I shall write to you once at Normandy and tell you where I am. Write back and say where and when you'll join me, sweetest. Then our true life begins. For"—he indulged in a petulant gesture—"what has my life been so far? A younger son, chucked out to make his own position. Bob will have the money and there won't be much. My brother Robert wanted to marry you, by the way, and that seems odd. I've been out in that beastly climate looking after blacks, making money hard and spending it like a fool; imperilling my health. But I've got a few hundreds saved, and when that's gone I must look round for some job at home. We'll go to Brittany, love of my heart, to begin with."She was looking at him, in a transfixed, rapt stare. Those eyes of hers were according subtly with the blossoms all about. She loved him. This was love, and the first time. It was a stupendous fact, and she could not absorb it yet. She was thinking quaintly of the several little boys and big ones in whom, throughout her life, she had been interested and who had made love to her. So far this topic, of Love, she found more interesting than any other, and, although she was enamoured of Julius, possessed by him, she could pause to dissect. She could maintain the cold pose and be abstract. She thought of them all: from Arthur Rogers and Master Meech to Robert Pole and Antony. There had been Freddy Jannaway, too, and that had been active repulsion, just as this was a forceful impetus. Antony came midway; she had endured him, she had been sorry for him. She was fond of him still. She had affection and regret. But what was that? It seemed as if her love for Timothy Peachey had been the foreshowing of her love for Julius Pole.She looked at him, half-lying as he was in the sharply green grass and the deeply blue flower of the wild hyacinths. An ugly, small, dark man, with a funny trick of blinking his eyes! The world would sum him so; she did, too, for she could see as the world saw when she chose. But he was everything to her; he comprised all that she had wanted. He would rest her and satisfy her, enrich and comprise her. To live with him, to be his wife, that was life. She looked beyond this wood and beyond this native land of England to the other land, across the blue Channel, which should mark the beginning of their true existence.He jumped up:"I'm going," he said, and stood over her looking her master. She knew he was already, if he cared to maintain the office. It was mastery that she had longed for, this eight years and more, yet hardly knowing the nature of her longing. She wished Julius always to appear as he did now, the tender conqueror. With her gift of penetration, which brought her constant sadness, since it made her see sharp and showed the inevitable imperfection of all earthly states, she knew that he would not. He would end by merely adoring and not vanquishing. He was her master, yes, she knew that; yet he would refuse to take the whip and judiciously use it. These men were beguiling, each in his way. But they were weak And devious; circumstance would always make her lead where she only asked to follow.Stooping, he gripped her wrists and pulled her easily to her feet. He was strong. This delighted her."My own!" He enfolded her. "Is it possible," he said, with his lips at her neck, "that yesterday I had not kissed you at all in actuality. In spirit our lips met before they looked, my dearest dear."After kissing, he took her round the waist as if she were a cherished doll and he a careful little girl. He set her beautifully under the beech tree, with a gay air implying "Stay still till I come back."And he did say:"I should like you to sit, so, not varying, until I came and picked you up again and tried to put you in my pocket. But you are so regally tall. Not really taller than I am myself, yet looking it. It is the consummate evil and humbug of a woman's petticoats that lessens man. I defy you to prove an extra half-inch. We will measure some day when I get you again, when I have you for ever and all to myself, with time to play pranks."He lifted her shaking, cold hand and kissed it."I can't think," he said, "where I get these courtly airs; to kiss your hand quite à la Watteau, to say these neatly, worshipful things to you and find the pretty love-words all at once. I suppose it is a language and a pose which lies within each one of us, only waiting the chance to come out. Darling Angelina, good-bye. This is our last"—he kissed between the widely opened eyes. "I will write to you. And you'll come to me? That's a promise. But why do I seek to bind up where there has never been a fracture?""I'll come to you, yes; when Antony goes away with the young Rajah," said Angelina stupidly, and leaning her head at the trunk of the beech tree. She could not see him clearly—she was crying. She was stirred, delighted, newborn and in tremor. She found the woman's natural refuge, tears! Julius, for his part, saw his divinity both dimmed and fugitive. Going out of the wood and into the sane sunlight he rubbed his eyes gain.He walked back to the inn where last night they had slept, all three. The carillon! Hadn't he heard it also and turned about in his narrow bed!Angelina was sitting in her usual way, aloof, friendly, passive, when Antony came into the wood. For his part, he looked both fretful and jubilant. She read that look; he had bought the china—yet paid the price. She would hear a great deal in the brief future that was left to them, of unpaid bills, duns and the rest. He said, regarding her with what may be called a fond scowl, a disapproving preference:"Sometimes I get tired of your too-perfect features. I'd rather have a snub nose and a crooked mouth—if they'd change about a bit. Where's Julius?"She returned, with a forced smile and a fixed stare:"Gone—and to London I think. A telegraph boy met him as we were walking towards the wood. He took the next train back.""But how could any telegram reach him? Nobody knew where he was.""He is in constant touch with certain business people in London. He told me so. He wired to them last night after we arrived.""Did he? Yes, come to think of it, he did go for a prowl alone before supper." Antony looked puzzled and yet assured; he added:"What a queer, secretive fellow he is, and I don't call it quite friendly. He ought not to go off when we are on a holiday. He breaks up the affair. I should like to get back to Horsham to-night.""I would rather if we can. Sit down and have some lunch while I look up the trains.""Got a time-table with you? Was that for me, or Pole?"Antony took the sandwiches she unpacked, and between hungry bites he grumbled on:"It was hardly worth coming here, for you can't pick up any bargains. I foresee the time when collectors won't have a chance; the dealers miss nothing. We were the usual crew, one or two fellows like me, then a bunch of dealers, then the village people, and then the usual queer lot of women, ladies some of them, who attend sales and never seem to buy a blessed thing. They sit close up to the auctioneer; mark the prices in their catalogues, and eat their lunch between whiles. Can we get back?"He watched her turn the leaves of the time-table."No"—she spoke after a pause for investigation—"the trains don't fit. I'm sorry, perhaps more than you are.""I'm not surprised at that," he grinned queerly. "Don't look so angry, Angelina. Let me have my rather elementary form of humour.""Dearest Antony, I am not angry. Just now, you were wishing my face would change."She spoke with placid tenderness, and she knew that this manner, of courtesy, would be her prevailing manner now.When he came into the wood, when she looked up at him, she had been instantly burned to a real pain, by a flame of distaste. She resented their past and wished to disclaim it. She resented the claim, not legal yet certainly honourable, which this man still had upon her. He always would have a claim, for she was of the nature to observe it. She was more faithful to him and more enchained than most wives are to legal husbands, for she was sensitive and scrupulous. Already, although Pole's caresses hung upon her lip and set their seal between her eyes, she knew that the future held little but sadness."I'm a grumpy brute, my dear girl," Antony spoke penitently, "but you'll soon be rid of me. I did not tell you before we left home, for I wanted to have this little holiday—a perfect trip, but Julius has spoilt it, confound him! I have settled up with the Indian. I wrote to Charles Murray and I had his answer just before we came off yesterday. I start in three weeks and for three months at least. It may be longer. I am not sure that I won't, afterwards, take up my profession seriously, for I'm sick of living upon a woman. It amounts to that almost. Aunt Philippa finances us heavily.""In three weeks," echoed Angelina-and the wood danced before her eyes, twirling its blue and green skirts.She knew that those eyes were glad. She rejoiced, for she would be going to Julius and giving herself to him entirely. Just as, shyly, she had turned her head away from him, so now, cautiously, she turned it from Antony. But he put his hands on her shoulders and drew her round."Are you sorry?" he asked.That grim expression came into his eyes: the look that she had seen in their bedroom on that night when she first met Julius. Something that Lady Johns had once said returned to her now: "Don't cross or upset Antony whatever you do, my dear, for he cannot bear it."She had spoken with emphasis and cryptically. She had implied, "I won't answer for the consequences if you do upset him.""No"—Angelina was looking at him steadily—"I am glad, because it will give you a new interest. Shall we go back to the inn? You look fagged. Sales always excite you too much. Is the china nice?"She stood up."Oh, it's all right. It isn't china I want, but you.""You've had me, seven years.""No I haven't; not for seven minutes, or you'd have married me."He moved forward, and, she at his side, they passed through the magic of the wood. But it had all turned moody; it was dark. That was Antony's way—to infuse an all-comprehensive despair. Angelina thought:"He is exhausting me. It is not fair that one human being should drag so hard at another."Yet she was patiently smiling and patiently replying to his ejaculatory grumbles of curio dealers and of Pole.She was carrying the empty luncheon basket. Antony never noticed that. It was not his way to notice. He absorbed, yet gave nothing. They returned in a mood, unexpressed, of mental dislocation. When they got to the inn, Antony locked himself in his bedroom on the score of a headache. This was feminine and just like him. Angelina kept fighting that devilish resentment against him which was rising, a lava flood and destructive in her soul. She was afraid of herself. She felt alone in the world, and a great sinner. With a passion of desire that was at once grievous and sweet, she projected herself in spirit to that time when she would be at peace in Brittany with Julius.She, looked to him and to love for salvation, and all the while she cynically knew that this could never be. Contentment, for her, lay not along that road. No man could give it, not even Julius.Antony, although he had a headache—what a puling complaint for a great big man!—was pacing nervously overhead. She sat alone in the low-pitched parlour of the inn. Geraniums were on the window-ledge. The furniture was of that pleasing ugliness, half-ancient and half a forlorn attempt at the modern, which distinguishes old country inns.She was longing to get home to the dignified house which, very soon, she meant to barter.This deceit, this telling of lies, was horrible. It was better for them all three that Antony should know the truth at once.He had no right to be angry. He would be inconsistent if he betrayed pain: yet she knew that you cannot safeguard yourself against wounds of the heart by any coldly prepared system of philosophy. The love of man and woman is never on a business basis.When Antony came down, he sat by her side in the dusk. The big man, she could see him in shadow, dimmed and yet magnified, seemed to be imploring: seemed to ask her for constancy. They were both subtly distraught, and the cruel airs of her proposed declaration pinched and withered them. Angelina could have flung herself weeping upon his breast. He said strangely and after a long silence"Would you mind if I slept to-night in that room which Julius had? My head aches abominably. Up there I might not hear the carillon so much, for doesn't his room face the other way?"Yes, sleep there," she said softly, and, dilating her nose, she drew in all the scents of the country garden. Those tall May tulips nodded like mad in the south-west breeze.She heard Antony go upstairs, just as only last night she had listened to Julius. When he shut his door she experienced a throb of complete and joyful freedom. She was her own to dispose herself as she chose.CHAPTER X"I THOUGHT at first," Angelina was saying steadily, "that I would write to you, and tell you about it, after you went away. But that seemed cowardly. I'm not that—a coward. And I purposely waited until Blanche left us."She stood by the high, narrow fireplace in the panelled drawing-room of their house in Normandy. It was a dismantled room. Dust sheets were over the furniture, china was packed away, the curtains, of stiff damask, presented by Lady Johns when Antony (as she believed) got married, were turned up and tucked into calico bags.The windows were open, sounds from the town came in, and sounds from the playing fields near the river. Antony was standing upon the other side of the fireplace. He had been smoking, but the cigarette fell from his limp hand. He could only stare at Angelina's face, which was so correctly lovely, and—at least to him—so incorrigibly cold. She did not care. She had no heart for any man. As for Julius! His day to be discarded would come. He said so, putting it with bitter extravagance:"You'll go off with him. But you won't marry him, any more than you have married me. Your sort of woman never decently marries one man and sticks to him, as decent women do. You belong to the other order—to live with one man, two men, or three; or Heaven knows how many. I don't presume to count. You would break, the hearts of the lot in the end as you are breaking mine. Do you realise the sort of woman you are, Angelina'?""I don't realise much to-day, but I know that the women you call decent, as opposed to me, are generally merely insipid. They have neither courage nor desire.""That is neat and you are clever, but it leaves me unmoved, unconvinced. I'm a plain man, and I've been tired for a long time of our discreditable connection."He saw her wince and this rejoiced him, for his pride was cut to the quick and he was merciless. She dared to desert him. Everybody would know.He was feeling vindictive. He was furious and relentless. Yet, although his words were violent, he was calm of face and gesture. His bright, large eyes were even kind. He appeared as a respectable man whose canons of law and order were disturbed. He was a victim of discreditable caprice.Angelina was relieved that he could take her admission of love for Julius with restraint and without visible heroics. So long as he contented himself with merely condemning her, without a paroxysm of sullen rage or without appealing to her pity, she could endure it. She could respect him and feel hopeful for his future. He would get over this, he would grow to forget her. She did not see beneath the danger of restraint which, in a nature such as Antony's, could never be anything but a seeming. He had been restrained and thwarted all his life, despite himself, and through the flaw of his nature. The results of this accumulated within him. By and by there would be an explosion, bodily or mental. But Angelina took things as she saw them. And she had no true knowledge of Antony.That cold face of hers, so dispassionate, so airily haughty! It maddened him, yet his voice continued at a jog trot."You won't marry him. You don't mean," he laughed, " to be Mrs. Julius Pole, any more than you have been Mrs. Antony ffinch. You'll remain Angelina Peachey. On your death-bed you had better marry the last one, whoever it is orange peel in your hair—being long past the age for blossom."He crossed the room and shut the window, muttering, "I can't stand all that racket outside. It gets on my nerves.""If I don't marry him," a passing quiver quite distorted her beauty, but it was so brief that Antony never even saw it, "it will be for your sake. Don't think me extravagant. I know I sound like a fool, and that what I say is laughable. Yet I feel it all so solemnly. I mean that to really marry him would cut off my last chance of doing anything for you if you were ill or wanted me. I'm an idealist; I have no common sense. I'm of no use. I suppose I'm a curse really, and yet"—the quiver came again; it blanched and twisted her features—"I wouldn't hurt a single soul if I could help it.""Curse idealism! It makes all the mischief. What's the use of it, Angelina? Do for goodness' sake marry one of us, and be done with it. Look here! If I get a licence will you marry me, and stick to me? We could get it over without any one being the wiser before I sail, and," his conclusion was quite playfully grim, "I should have enough time over to punch Julius Pole's head."She nearly laughed, she nearly ran to him. This was so blunt and plain, so resolute and so utterly unlike Antony. Drearily she thought, "If only he could have talked like this before Julius loved me."It was too late now. Antony could never lock the stable door until the horse was gone. She said so to him, with regretful passion."You decide too late. I'm lost to you, Antony. Our life together is over. It is like," she glanced round the room, "insuring the china. You'll take out a policy when the house is burned down?""You know very little of business," he spoke stupidly, "I couldn't."He was regarding her face, the eyes down dropped, the mouth, at last, trembling with true feeling. It was lost to him, all that beauty. Let another man have it—so long as he could keep it!"You are making me suffer," he went on, "but the time will come when you'll suffer yourself, and if not in this world, then in the next.""Do you suppose I haven't suffered from the very first moment that I met Julius? It has been conflict all through, and will be.""Well, go off with him, and as soon as you like. That is the only consistent thing to do. The next time that you and I meet it will be before the judgment seat of God."Antony spoke in a matter-of-fact way; he might have referred to the Marble Arch."You are inconsistent," Angelina told him. "You have always said you don't believe in God. I do, and that makes me unhappy, for I never know whether I am doing right or wrong.""You would know, if you'd keep to the line of action which all decent people have declared to be the right one. But you are so devilishly proud; you will be a law to yourself, and you'll end on the rocks. You'll be wrecked, dissolute, disgraced. As to what I believe," Antony seemed to collapse, and then quickly controlled himself, "it doesn't matter. But I think I'm learning that conventionality stands for righteousness. The social code is religion. I ought to have observed it years ago. I ought either to have married you or left you alone. If we'd gone through the usual ceremony over there," he pointed through the windows towards the church, "things would have panned out better. A white satin frock for you; a frock coat, light trousers and a button-hole for me; confetti and spring flowers flung at our feet—all that would have assured' us. By now," he looked vague and drearily sad; he looked grimly frivolous, "we should have settled down into the comfortably commonplace. We should have had children; jolly, noisy little beggars. I should have had to work hard to keep them in shoes and schooling. But we've spoiled and missed; at least, I have. And I always shall. As for you, I can't see the end of anything; but it's a botch for us both. I can't do any more."He turned away; desolation described in his very back. Angelina said, with her first thrilling note of tragedy:"My heart is breaking. I shall always love you, do believe that. You will always have your place.""I never liked a crowd," he said, shrugging those sharp broad shoulders of his."Don't be flippant; oh, my dear, be sorry for me, as I'm immensely sorry for you."She stood still. The tears ran down her cheeks. Antony came and solemnly took her hands."Do you really mean that you love him best? Is it true? Or are you simply in a bad dream, from which it is my duty to wake you? For you are an odd woman, Angelina, and you want protecting from yourself. I've always known it."She looked up. The instant tenderness on her face—and not for him—convinced Antony, alienated and broke him. She saw his pain in his eyes."I'm sorry," she said faintly. "My face told tales.""It told more than your tongue ever would. I won't try to keep you." He walked back to the window.There he stood, looking out. She surveyed him with dramatic eyes.That broad, dejected back, that big head, the very pose of which suggested the utter breaking up of the man's life, made her frantically pitiful for him—yet it was no mere simple feeling of remorse, for the whole position was too laboriously diffuse. She had not loved him and betrayed him in the usual way of the guilty woman. There was not a single shallow in the still pool of her whole nature.She was longing to do, as in the past she had so often done, enfold that poor gloomy head in her warm arms. She yearned to embosom him. But it was impossible; the last caress had passed between them. She loved Julius and had never really loved any one else. He fulfilled her. Yet the instinctive naturalness and delight of her passion for him did not destroy her exquisitely mournful feeling for Antony. They—to her—never cut across each other, those two men. They never could or would. In a way, she wanted both. She said after a long pause:"Shall I go away?"He returned after an equal pause:"Yes, go away. I can't bear it."Indeed he could not. He was feeling this as he miserably looked down at the placid, flagged pavement of Normandy. Angelina's face had expressed whole volumes, and he knew now that another man had aroused a feeling which he had failed to arouse. Another man in a few months had done what he had failed to do in as many—in more—years. Another man had played upon that cold heart and charmed it into music.It was hard to forgive; as to recovery, that was impossible. Yet he was not so angry with Julius as with Angelina. He blamed her for everything. She was magnetic and did what she chose.He heard her move, in a lagging way, across the room towards the door. Her feet actually shuffled—this graceful woman! The sound got upon his nerves.He called her sharply back;"Angelina!""Yes."She said this, and he could feel—he would not look—that she came up to him. She was close behind."Don't touch me, don't expect me to turn round," he said, in a nervous, fretful agony. "But there are some things we must talk about and decide. Where are you going when you leave here?""To Brittany.""With him?""Yes, to——""Never mind the name of the place. You didn't suppose I'd call," he laughed like a madman—it was really a horrible cackle; animal and threatening."You have," he went on, "saved yourself all through. You've got it all arranged. Has he been writing to you? And to my house?""He only wrote once. As to my arranging things, have I not always settled and arranged?""Oh, I've no doubt you'll stage-manage us both beautifully, but never mind that. I repeat, Angelina, that you have played your own hand from the first, and you will. You refused to marry me, yet you saved your name to the world. If I tell people the truth now, they will all blame me. They will call me your betrayer. I shall be blamed and laughed at. I suppose I must keep up this farce of your really being my wife, but then certain people, such as Lascelles, will ask why I don't divorce you? I can't," his voice broke," do anything. You even have the effrontery to tell me where you are going to with him.""Dear Antony, you asked me.""I asked you, I asked you! Very likely I did. But a man doesn't expect an answer to every question.""I had better go," she said, and he heard her feet behind him again. "I am sorry, but I can't help all this. I have struggled and—well, it is hopeless.""No," Antony after silence spoke more moderately; he seemed to reclaim and confine himself. "I don't suppose you can. None of us can help anything. These things are settled from the first, for us. It is according to the verdict.Whatever happens in the end, to you, to me, to Pole, we can't help it. God knows what the future does hold. I rather wish I knew what the end of the three would be. I can't believe," he half turned round, then turned back with quite a feminine flounce, "that when you go out of that door it will be good-bye between you and me. We have been man and wife for eight years. It has been man and wife. Hang ceremonies! And now you are going away. Everything falls from me, I lose and fail."Leaning forward, he pressed his forehead against the cool glass of the long window."For God's sake give me another chance, Angelina."She stood trembling. The glad memory of Julius and that kiss in the wood cut across her agony. It all seemed far off, childish and light. Yet she knew that she would work through this appalling darkness into the light of that. Julius would again kiss her. He would be hers and she would be his. It was idle to strive against the position."You must let me go, my dear," her voice quavered. "Don't try to keep me. It would not last.""Oh, go—yes. Why don't you? You'll have a delirious honeymoon, no doubt, but you'll suffer after.""I see nothing but suffering upon my horizon, Antony, and I've a long vision."She sobbed:"It will serve me right," she concluded in a more commonplace voice. "I must go away. This is killing us both, and it does no good.""Wait a moment. You realise, no doubt, that this will kill Aunt Philippa. Never mind me; you haven't minded. But think of her.""I do think, but, again, I can't help it, I can't stop. I must sort of sweep on, I can't study anybody. Do you suppose I haven't thought of Mumsie? But she is no real influence. There is only, only—oh, why do you make me stand here and nearly say things that will hurt you horribly?""Have you told her anything?""Of course not. I could not. I leave it to you. Tell her what you like after I am gone. Or tell her nothing. Why need she know? Why can't we manufacture some little plot?Let her think I'm with you and the young Rajah. Yes, that is it," her flat, miserable voice lifted now that she was dealing with a living, creative idea. "She may think that I have gone to London shopping for a day or two, and will join you at Southampton. You go on Saturday anyhow, and this is Wednesday. She doesn't know the Rajah. She will credit him with any caprice. It will seem quite natural that I go too. Shall I write a note? Yes, let me. I do want to save Mumsie as long as I can.""You can tell as many lies as you like, and you seem to be fairly adept," said Antony, in a surly way, "but I shan't support them. Lies have never been in my line, although for your sake, to please and to possess you, I've lived a lie for eight years. I shall tell the truth to everybody directly your back is turned. Don't look to me to save you from scandal or to keep your good name.""You are right," her voice fell into the level again." She would find out in the end, and that would hurt her more."She went to the door and turned the handle. Antony felt that she stood there for a second, regarding him, dwelling upon all the charming domestic plenishings which had been hers for so long. Perhaps he dolefully hoped—and almost prayed—that these might hold her where he could not. She had been a queen in this spacious, fair house for eight years. She was walking out of it without, so he fully believed, a single pang.Antony had persistently called her a nun—since he had failed to rouse her. He now called her a sensualist.She turned the handle. She said to him steadily:"I leave here at half-past four."As she said it, the mellow church clock chimed the quarter to. She stood still, framed in the door. Her proud, agonised eyes darted swiftly all over the room, marking everything. She had loved it. She was leaving it. Through that moment, structure—the pretty proportions of the place, expressing dignity, permanence and rectitude—tried to charm and hold her. Cajoling, too, were the blue pots and jugs and dishes; the lovely silver candlesticks and silver toys. Most of this was locked away; it stood in cabinets behind glass doors of delicate tracery.Last, her glance dwelt upon that dark, big body by the window, blocking the happy light. She tried to speak, but her mouth was suddenly dry. She faltered through the open door and shut it after her. She wavered across the landing to the stairs and sat upon the bottom step to recover herself. She had looked her last at Antony.It was heart-rending, it was destructive; to her soul, to his. She wondered if all the other women who went off suffered in this way.And you had to go. You could not stop. Departure was inevitable. Something pulled you. She went up to her bedroom; to finish packing and put on her hat.Antony was sprawling in a big chair by the cold summerdecked hearth when, two hours later, Lady Johns came in. It was one of those high-backed old chairs with wings. They make for effective attitudes, and they demand that you should sit upright. They express the age, of restraint and grace, in which they were made. Antony, however, slouched as much as the construction allowed. He was sitting sideways, with his long legs sticking out. He stared vacantly at the bright bars of the delicate steel grate, and at an earthen pot full of rambler roses, which only yesterday he had seen Angelina stand upon the hearthstone."What does it mean, Antony? They tell me that Angelina has gone, and with lots of luggage. Have you forgotten, did she forget, that you were to dine with me to-night?"He looked at his aunt blankly. Then his eyes cleared and gladdened. He was immensely pleased to see her. For hours, ever since Angelina left him (he stood at the window watching the cab drive, top heavy, down street) he had remained, stricken, in this big chair to which he afterwards wandered. The plain face of his Aunt Philippa was such an extraordinary comfort after Angelina's perfect beauty. You could, putting it absurdly, rest upon that face. You could trust those steady eyes; good, honest, doggy eyes under nicely arched brows—and this was all the beauty that Lady Johns could boast. He was soothed by her pose of homely dignity. He knew also that her point of view upon all things was a final one. She never speculated nor experimented. She was content to take her philosophy of life from the experience of those who had passed through the world before her. This sort of woman would never let a man down as he, cruelly, devilishly, had been let down to-day. Antony was feeling this. He said, at the end of a minute, through which minute Lady Johns patiently waited, looking composed, yet standing rather rigidly in the middle of the room:"I am half inclined to say what Angelina suggested I should say. Shall I? No—I won't. Yes—I will."He spoke jerkily. That was a funny grin upon his face. She sat suddenly down and near to him, upon a short settee."My dearest Antony, what does all this mean? Do tell me the truth and as briefly as you can, for you must realise that I am anxious. Have you two quarrelled? But that is impossible. You are a model pair."She was taking off her gloves deliberately, straightening the fingers and looking reflectively at her delicate hands as she bared them."We haven't quarrelled. There would be remedy in that. She has gone off with Julius Pole. She wanted me, at the last, to pretend to you that there was some new arrangement, and that she was to travel with me and this confounded Rajah. She wanted to screen herself as long as she could. But I've told lies enough. You must have the truth, dear, much as it hurts you. She has gone to live with Julius Pole.""Bundy! Impossible.""Why doesn't your tongue say what your eyes are saying?" asked Antony, acutely. "You think that I am mad or that I've been drinking. Neither, I assure you. And do," he sounded like a child about to cry, "speak with your lips only. I've had quite enough this afternoon of tell-tale, dumb expressions of the eye from Angelina. Yes! She has gone.""It is really true? You mean it? You are not in a bad dream?" she gasped."The very thing I asked Angelina. I thought she might be in a bad dream, and that I might wake her up before she took to sleep-walking. But it is a grim, wide-awake fact, dear Aunt Philippa. She loves Julius, that is, she has a mad passion for him. She has always been a sensualist, but she had not, until now, found the supreme object."He spoke calmly and without spite. He fully believed what he said.Lady Johns grew instantly hard around the mouth. Antony was bluntly showing forth a side of human nature, which, although she did not dispute it, she chose to ignore. Sensualism was a quality peculiar to low-bred or degenerate people. This, she insisted, did not approach correct society. That particular -expression, " a sensualist," had never comprised any one, man or woman, with whom she had come in contact. Antony had applied it to Bundy; his own wife and her adopted daughter.She shivered and looked ashamed, just as if she sat in bodily nakedness upon the settee."There must be some mistake," she said faintly, and stared at him.It was a piercing glance; she sought for the tokens of heredity. She half believed that the moment she had dreaded, of her nephew's mental collapse, had come. It would not have surprised her exceedingly had Angelina walked calmly into the room. She very much wished that Angelina would; then they could have taken loving counsel together over him. For the present, she simply could not believe that her darling, her,almost daughter, had put herself outside the pale of honourable women, and had become a person to whom you would not speak, of whom you would not speak, and of whom you would not even think if you could help it. The idea was incredible."There is no mistake, and I am perfectly sane, perfectly sober," Antony said.He spoke piteously, adding"Do for goodness' sake believe me. Isn't it hard enough for me as it is, dearest, without your penetrating glances of the mental expert!"Lady Johns caught hold of both his hands and squeezed them. They were very cold, there was a certain limp pathos about the faint pressure he returned. She was warm with affection, family and personal, she began to bristle for the family dignity, and yet, through it all, she was impatient with Antony, as so very often she was.Why had he not been a man, and strong? She looked at the inert figure and fine head. That big fellow! Why had he not put a stop to all this before it was too late? Women expected the men of the family to save it, at any cost, from scandal. There would be a divorce, as there had been in poor Gerald's case. She had a very pregnant letter from her brother Gerald in her pocket. She had come to Normandy to discuss it with Antony and his wife."I believe you," she said, "I take what you say quite literally. Angelina has eloped with Julius Pole. Is that it?"Antony nodded."They are going to Brittany," he said."But I can't," she was actually betrayed into a hectic gesture; it scattered, yet only for a second, her restful constitutional calm, "although I believe it, quite comprehend. Julius is so charming, and Angelina is so unimpeachable. She is charming too. Neither of them is that sort of person.""It very often is that sort of person," Antony said. "One thing goes with the other; the animal attraction and the——""We won't discuss that, if you please, dear Antony. What are you going to do? Divorce her?""I was waiting for that question. Every one will ask me that," his face grew violent." No, I shan't divorce her. I shall do nothing. On Saturday I sail off with the Rajah for three months, and after that I don't see a step. If I ever come back to England I shall take up my profession seriously. This affair, after all," he set back his shoulders—they were becoming chronically hunched by long habit—"may be the making of me. Angelina has been an irritating influence. She seemed to destroy by her very presence my active faculty.""You must not say that, Antony. Be just, even in your injury and pain. It was a very happy marriage.""It was not," he insisted, "and surely I ought to know. I was always hungry. Do you understand?""I don't think it helpful to discuss the emotional subtleties of any marriage," she said stiffly."Still, you may as well understand," persisted Antony. "It was always hit and miss between us. She would talk when I wanted to be silent; that sort of thing. We had a different standard of delights. Very often Angelina got in my way. That won't happen again, and it is a comfort."He looked at Lady Johns; it was a pleading, obstinate glance. She smiled softly back at him; all her deep affection was in that return glance of hers. She said nothing. As if he were a poor little timid boy, afraid of the dark, or of any nursery bogey, she patted his hands, which still she was holding.She said nothing more to stop, divert, or restrain him. He must be allowed to express and relieve himself, whatever he said. She perceived this. Perfect candour might be his only safety, and she must listen."When I was reading the newspaper one day a few years back (you see how I remember), she came and shoved a rose under my nose and said that one rose was worth all the politics on earth. I was angry; it tickled and. irritated me.""I might have been angry too," Lady Johns agreed; "for I dislike freakish impulse, and it doesn't sound like Bundy."This pet name, Bundy; silly, and with such delightful tradition, slipped out, despite her. She tightened her lips. Never would she employ that name again. Angelina, already out of consideration, must be put clean out of recollection also."It was not like her. You are quite right. Yet now and again she did these capricious things. Perhaps that was her real nature; and her life with me was a pose. There are plenty of roses about now. She may pick them for Pole."Antony, saying this, shot out his foot and kicked over the earthen pot of ramblers."Oh, Antony," Lady Johns was domestic at once. "What a pity! Such a mess! Ring for them to clear it up.""Indeed I won't. It is only clean water after all, and I'm going off on Saturday. Let it dry in. Do you really suppose that I want to see a servant with her sleekly impudent face just now? No doubt they are already talking me over downstairs. No doubt they know a great deal more about Pole's love-making than I do.""My dear boy, I do implore you——""Let me say what I've got to say, darling," his fingers closed round hers, asking for tenderness. "I won't again. Those roses remind me of her, you know. Everything will until I get out of the country. She knew I loved white roses, and one day after I'd been a brute, for I was very often, she put on my study table just two; the very biggest that the garden grew, and the tiniest Scotch rose she could find. Wasn't that gracious?"His expression lifted, and he looked positively handsome."It was pretty, but, dearest Antony, it doesn't help to remember those things now. If she has gone, if you don't mean to try and reclaim her, then forget that she exists. What did you do with the roses?""Threw them away. She never knew I kissed them. She never knew, and never will know how I love her.""But you've lost her that way. You threw them aside? It was fatal.""No doubt. But I couldn't help that, or many things that I did. There's a kink in me somewhere. Julius will never throw away, and he'll keep her consequently. Yet only for a little longer than I have kept her, not for good. She is incapable of constancy. She is not inherently virtuous, and never has been.""You are shocking and puzzling me beyond any expression. I must say it, Antony.""I know I am, and I'm not through yet, unfortunately."When he said this, he looked covert, and he was thinking that he would tell his Aunt Philippa everything. She should know the lot. She should know that Angelina had never been his wife at all. Meanwhile, Lady Johns was saying, with such perfect faith in the fact of his marriage:"I think that, for her own sake, you must divorce her. If she really loves Mr. Pole, the only restitution that he can make is to marry her. But are you sure that you are right, Antony? Have they really gone away together? I never was for a moment aware of anything wrong in their relationship, and I saw them frequently.""Must I keep reiterating that I am sure? They fell in love from the first moment; if you can call such a very elementary impulse by the name of love. I saw it. They never threw dust in my eyes."Lady Johns flinched afresh. Antony spoke with disgustful calm. And he was perfectly sincere. He saw no psychology in the emotions of Angelina and Julius. Perhaps he was right. The inevitable impulse to mate is the first note that true love sounds; all the finished orchestral music, properly scored, comes afterwards."When we three went to Derbyshire, that marked the climax," he continued. "I sent them away from the sale. You remember that I went to buy china. Angelina's appearance would have sent the bidding up. I distrusted that wood when I saw them walk into it. He kissed her there. She has told me everything. She was baldly candid; never has Angelina spared my feelings. There were things I would have chosen not to know. Then he had the decency or the cowardice, whichever you like, to feel he couldn't meet me, and he went off, leaving her to make the excuse. I found her in the wood alone, and she had it pat. She said he'd been wired for from London.""He is in London. His brother Robert told me so. That's true. He is coming down for the wedding, next week.""No, he won't. Do not for a moment believe that. Tell Cicely so from me."Antony gave his grating laugh:"When we came home," he said, "she talked about him in her sleep. Isn't that enough for any husband?"When he said the word husband, he laughed more than ever.Lady Johns said, rising and trying to pull him up from the chair:"You must not stay here alone. Come back with me. It is all most stupendously disgraceful; it breaks up your life and mine, my dear."She looked deadly pale and woefully stricken. But all her softness was for him. She had dismissed Angelina. She would without scruple dismiss any one who offended against the fixed canons.She had lost Angelina. Her own daughter she had lost by death, and her adopted one by the more heartrending method of disgrace. Henceforth, there was but one Bundy in her mind, and she lay in the grave. She had died at sixteen."No, I won't come," he resisted her. "There are things to be done here, before I go for good. I must stay here until Saturday."He looked round the room at his treasures; the choicest of them were prisoned behind the glass doors of beautiful cabinets. Lady Johns looked too."Angelina could leave all this——" she murmured incredulously."Leave it! Like a shot! Not a single look back," snapped Antony. "I hope the place will be all right while I am gone. I've got, Angelina got, a very reliable woman as caretaker. She is a widow with one daughter: a queerlooking creature and an epileptic.""The widow! That will never do.""No, the daughter. It doesn't matter, the mother will look after her. She is a very careful woman, most trustworthy and with the highest references. Angelina got her through old Mrs. Pole.""Oh, well, if Madeline Pole recommends her she must be excellent," said Lady Johns, with approval and acerbity. She respected Madeline Pole and disliked her intensely.The tension of her plain, high-bred face relaxed a little. She was relieved at the matter-of-fact turn which the conversation had suddenly taken.To her, all emotion was ill-bred."When I return, for of course I must return," Antony said, "I shall sell all this by auction and leave off buying. That will give me capital, which I'm greatly in need of. I shall, as I said, take up my profession. You may yet," he looked wistful, "live to feel proud of me.""Dear, dearest boy," Lady Johns flushed warmly, "don't you think there may yet be a hope of getting Angelina back before it is too late? You understand what I mean? Go after her, Antony, now; many a man has gone after his wife and saved her, in spite of herself. I will," she hesitated perceptibly, and then continued, "forgive her this fault. I will look after her until you come home. Yes," she was certainly pondering, and her face expressed a just woman's outrage at another's lapse. "I think I can promise you that."Antony said, looking at her steadily: an undeviating, queer look, as she uncomfortably felt:"What would be the good of that, if she no longer wants me? What right have I, if she loves Julius?""Every right. You are her husband.""But if she doesn't want me? If she wants another man?""I simply cannot discuss the matter on such a plane," his aunt said vigorously. "To me such ethics are unpalatable and altogether too modern. She is your wife, and you have the sole claim. Everything else is sin.""If she were my wife I should hardly agree with you, but as she isn't——""Antony! What do you mean? I really feel to-day as if both you and I were losing our senses. It is all too distracting.""I am very sorry. I warned you that the truth would hurt. No, she is not my wife. She never would marry me. When the child was coming I certainly thought that she would; I had her promise for that, from the first."He was rambling on, not looking at his aunt, but with his head turned back to the empty fireplace, and his eyes regarding the cunning intricacies of the Queen Anne grate. Lady Johns sat bolt upright and trying hard to convince herself that she was quite incredulous of all this. Yet she knew that Antony was telling her the plain, the brutal facts of the case."But one day," he continued, "I was in a bad temper, and I suppose that I nagged and bullied her past endurance. It was just before her illness. She threatened to leave me. She reminded me that she had a perfect right to do it at any time. She rubbed in the unpalatable fact that I had no claim. That was understood from the first. It formed our basis. I struck her—nothing much—I boxed her ears. I said' why the devil don't you go?' After that, she would never hear of marriage.""You struck her! And at that time! You swore at her!""Yes," Antony merely shrugged. "I told you," he turned round, looking wretched and most appealing, "that I was a bad lot. You have never seemed to believe it. There are things in me that are hidden from you.""She never said a word to me!" breathed Lady Johns. "She never even hinted that you had insulted her; yes—and almost beyond forgiveness.""She wouldn't. She was perfectly loyal to me so long as she remained with me. She was splendid in many ways. And she will be loyal, she will be splendid, to Julius: so long as she stays! When she is through with him, as she is through with me, she will leave him, without a single pang, and perhaps for somebody else. Angelina always finds the flaw. I don't think anything would finally content and hold her.""But you must explain more fully, if you please, Antony," Lady Johns' voice came from the polar. "Why did you not marry her? I understand that she isn't your wife, and never has been? Is she really only your——""Yes, that's it. Any word you like to use; the mildest or the most severe. All of them would express her. I tell you that I implored her to marry me, and she wouldn't. She talked a lot of fudge about not loving me enough. She, is full of strained ideas.""So you took advantage of her, you——""My dear Aunt Philippa, she was not the village maid, nor I the wicked squire.""It was exactly the same, Antony, neither more nor less. I don't discriminate, and I am heartily ashamed of you both. I see nothing to choose between you. I dismiss you, equally, from my heart. I shall try to forget you. I shall do my best."She stood up. Her sad voice was inflexible. Antony knew that she meant what she said. It might break her heart to keep her word in its entirety; yet keep it she most certainly would. If Philippa Johns were on leer death-bed she would not send either for Antony or Angelina. They were beyond the pale."I have a letter from my brother Gerald in my pocket," she said. "It is a beautiful letter, and I wanted to read it to you both. But that is out of the question."Her voice, her attitude, her little gesture of the hand, as she said this, signalled a calm and an utter casting off. She did not sound angry. She was mild and cold. She found the whole thing very simple. For her there could never be any argument over this matter of sex; no argument, no compromise, no palliation. People were married or they were not. If they were not married, you could not possibly know them."My brother has sold Leggatt Court and also the town house, Antony. He does not feel, in view of the tragic circumstances of his life, that he could bear any return to England. He has taken a villa in Sicily, and asks me to join him, and to make my permanent home with him. I shall do this. We shall live and die out there, a couple of utterly disillusioned people, certainly. You will not hear from me again. Goodbye."She walked to the door and went out, not even looking at him.Antony watched her go, as he had watched Angelina go. When he heard the street door shut he went gently to the window, and again he pressed his brow to the cold glass. Lady Johns turned up the street towards the church. He knew she would. He watched her slip through the porch and out of sight. Then he returned to the high-backed chair by the dead hearth and the overturned pot of roses.The bell was ringing for Evensong. He heard it. She would go in there and pray. She would not justify herself, since she saw no need for justification. She would soothe herself. There, in the pew, she would be like a bird upon a bough. She would smooth her disturbed feathers. That was all. He knew that it would never, for the rest of her life, occur to her that there could be any case either for him or for Angelina. Yet she was not pitiless. She was merely narrow.She was kneeling in the church as he surmised, and thinking only of her own heart, with its intolerable dull ache.Life had failed her, as it had failed Gerald.But she was certainly comforted and assured by the decorous airs of this large church. There were about half-a-dozen women in the Lady Chapel, where the priest was saying the Office. She kneeled at the back in the main aisle and little by little, phrase by phrase, the unfailing philosophy of the Psalms steadied her.To-night, the 27th day of the month, the Psalms were unusually soothing. They seemed to fit her case. They usually do; this fitness to the particular case is the charm, the secret and the cunning of the Psalms. Very seldom do they fail to fit."Turn our captivity, O Lord, as the rivers in the south," intoned the priest up there in the Lady Chapel."They that sow in tears, shall reap in joy," murmured Philippa Johns alone, at the back of the church.When he, so to speak, rang back at her the golden bell of the next verse, she was refreshingly weeping."He that now goeth on his way weeping and beareth good seed, shall doubtless come again with joy, and bring his sheaves with him."When Lady Johns, the service over, walked down Normandy she once more felt a gentlewoman: of good birth and high instincts. She was reinstated in her own opinion. Antony's revelation, Angelina's flight, had flung her headlong from the pedestal upon which (as it were), she had breathed since she was born. For only the accredited facts of sorrow and of drama had touched her. All her emotions had been duly docketed. You may say that every feeling she had felt had first been presented at Court. There was simply no space in her map of life for the truly discreditable.As she walked down Normandy, she did nut look across the road at that fine house where Antony and Angelina had lived for more than seven years in sin. No wonder that they never went to church. She understood that now; she understood many things that had faintly perplexed her from time to time. She could now comprehend Antony's odd manner on that day when she had told him she would leave her money to his wife.His wife! Neither of them would get a penny from her. She was not vindictive in the least, as, walking down Normandy, she reflected upon this. She was merely what she would have called logical. Poor logic! A quality which we all bend and twist about. The three of them, at this juncture, were considering themselves logical: Antony left alone in that house over there, Angelina on her tumultuous way to Julius, Lady Johns in her stately passage from the church.They should not have a penny. Let Gerald be quixotic if he chose, and give half his fortune to his divorced wife and her children. Gerald had always been peculiar. He had always been dangerously liberal in his ideas. When they settled down in Sicily she must make one rule and beg him to observe it. He must not talk to her about his former wife. Lady Johns pensively hoped that there would be a good English church not far from their villa. The services of the English church, restrained and sonorous, perfectly sincere, and, touching at times a very high level of saintliness, made a strong appeal to her nature, which was correct and luminous. Certainly this was the form of Catholic expression for her, and no other.She walked down Normandy thinking of Gerald and of Sicily, dismissing Antony and Angelina. She was possessed by a certain fine, disdainful weariness of life. This is very often the attitude of the refined mind in middle age. Life had failed her. Those that she had loved were mostly dead, and some, here was the bitterness and the disenchantment, were worse than dead.She was a tender-hearted woman. Yet beyond this and far out-weighing her other qualities, was Respectability. She abode by the shrinking, undeviating ethics of her grandmother. Morally, socially, and politically, she was merely her grandmother over again. You stood or fell according to your literal observance of the ten commandments. Mystic interpretation she did not admit, for it merely muddled the mind. It was casuistry, called by another name.She still loved Angelina. She still loved Antony. She looked forward, with a certain broken-hearted eagerness, to meeting them in the next world. But they had turned into people that, in this world, you did not meet. You could not. They had become impossible.She moved in her gracious way down street. Antony, again at the window, watched.CHAPTER XI"I'M glad I brought you here. To show you everything I saw as a child, to have nothing left unexpressed; that's what I want all the time," Julius was saying.He and Angelina sat upon a flat beach of coarse shingle. There were no shells, and there was not much in the way of seaweed. Behind were no cliffs, but only flat and mead-like sand stretching to a line of hills. There was nothing to enchain the matter-of-fact mind. They were cutting hay in those meadows behind. You got the smell of the sea and the smell of the land together."We came here every year as children," Julius continued, "and it hasn't changed a bit. There is nothing, thank goodness, to occupy the cheerful tripper. He can do nothing when he gets here, so he never comes again. My mother swears by the air, and every July and August saw us on this beach. When my brother Bob was trying for hours to hit a particular post of a particular breakwater by shying pebbles, I was sitting there"—he jerked his head towards the land—" on the piles of timber which were always ready to make more breakwaters. We passed a heap just now, on the way down the lane. Nothing has changed."He took Angelina's hand."I suppose," he continued, searching her beauty in his hungry, worshipping way, "that I must have been dreaming of you although I did not know it. Certainly I was a morbid chap and, properly speaking, wanted shaking first and dosing after. Can't you see me, Angelina? A little sallow boy in spectacles, with a fixed frown and a lower lip stuck well out?""Did you wear spectacles?"She had been looking along the coast-line towards Brighton. Suddenly, she turned. Their eyes met. It was a glance of accomplished love and beautiful harmony. In hers there was also a sadness which, always, she strove to hide. In his, there was a certain anxiety, which had nothing to do with her. So they both, sitting here in the sun and loving deeply, as they did, and being together, as they were and would be, had a skeleton and kept it close in hiding. For nothing grisly should touch their perfect passion. Each from the first moment had secretly decided this. Each had lived from day to day, taking the perfection afforded and neither daring nor caring to look along the broken line of their future. For they never lost their haunting sense of the temporary. It was three months since Angelina left Antony. She had been in Brittany with Julius, and now they had returned to England and were staying in this seaside hamlet, about twenty miles from Brighton. It was one of those sweet places that nobody has heard of, and it was happy in possessing no popular features."Yes"—a shadow crossed him, quivered his ugliness—a pleasing ugliness, however (for Julius would always be oddly charming)—" and I may again, for all I know. Sometimes this eye jumps about a bit." He put his hand up."I was glad," he continued, "to leave Brighton. There was an awful chalky glare. And yet I wanted to see the places where you had been as a child. I want to see everything while I can.""I must take you to St. Paul's Churchyard. Then you will know me right through from the first.""You shall. I'll buy something—a shaving brush—at your shop."They laughed. Their hands were lying, clasped, upon the warm shingle. They sat looking out to sea. It was a little baby sea to-day, and so chalky that it seemed a wide bed of softly moving pearl."This perfect coast! this delicious picture which hardly anybody sees, or has eyes to see with!" Julius screwed his eyes to see it better. "I should like to live here with you always. Shall we? There are plenty of solemn old houses, inland a bit, to be had if we looked about us. I know them. I remember them. Built of flint, so beautifully aged that it has lost every hint of harshness. A garden with a high flint wall all round. Would you like that, if I could get a job that would fit in and allow us to live so far from London? Flint walls with wistaria against them blooming naked in the spring.I seem to remember a house like that. I must have seen one about here when I was a small boy."He looked at her intently. "When I come back and we are married," he said, "then we'll find just such a house—the job must and shall fit in—and live there happy ever after. It shall be like a German fairy tale, our life."She said:"When we are married! I wonder!"She spoke with a quietly provoking coquetry: yet underlying was the deeper sense of a more awed speculation."I don't," he told her robustly. "I must and we will. You want commanding, my darling one. I shall go so"—he held up his hand in the air and snapped his fingers. "All your fantastic theories between my finger and thumb, Angelina, directly I come back from London.""Must you go?""Love, I must. But I won't stay longer than I can help. Business"—he seemed to boggle at the word—"must be looked after. We spent a fair sum in Brittany; money has a way of slipping through my fingers, and I must get a job. I'm glad I'm not going abroad again. That nightmare's over. England is so sweet that even to be over there in Brittany"—he nodded to the calm Channel—" was a sort of exile. Yet we were happy. Have I made you happy?""Completely."She was looking at him. Face and voice were utterly serene.They were in the lovely mid-stage of their relation to each other. The first sweet fury and headlong impetus was past, the inevitable tragedy had not yet showed its roughly scored face.They were girdled by complete beauty and only sometimes did they, each in secret, vaguely distrust the future. They seemed to tread all the while upon quicksand.The tide went far out. The cooing of those little waves became faint. Smell from the hayfields was more warmly insistent, and the great sun dropped along the placid bosom of the August sky."We'll get back." Julius jumped up and gave her his hand. "It must be nearly supper-time, and to-morrow I start early. I wish I hadn't got to go. Why must I?"He spoke wistfully: as a little boy about to be punished."You'll write?""Of course. I'll write at once.""And you won't be gone many days?""I can't say; but not an hour more than I can help. I must see—a—business—man. Angelina"—his voice seemed to wail, and after one glance along the quite deserted beach he pulled her into his arms, as they were standing there, outlined sharp against sky and sea—"do you suppose I'd go at all if I could help it?""I know you wouldn't. "She tried to speak sensibly, yet the shadow of parting covered them both in. "And after all we are making a great fuss over a mere business interview.""Yes, only a business interview. " Yet his face, and he turned it away, was queerly troubled. It was mysterious. It was dreadfully afraid.He kissed her, then put her from him with a gesture which expressed despair, and silently they went up the shingle. Wet sand behind them was tender rose, and rose-coloured also were the little sand-banks along the top of which tamarisks waved,softly."The morbid kid I told you about, with the spectacles," Julius said, scorning his small dead self, "watched every mood of those tamarisks. They were mutable and for ever alluring. I was in love with the lot—and yet they were but one lady: that lady," he laughed, "you, my sweetest.""When we are married, when we live here, in our house of stout and gentle flint, the house I'm going to find, we will come to the sea and I'll show you every mood of the tamarisks and every curl of every wave. I remember that one day I lay on the beach alone for hours; I slipped off from the rest. The tide was high, that day—and warm; it was a south-west gale. Spray drifted in a constant silver shower into the tamarisks, and my spectacles got so blurred. I was living in my own fairyland. You can do it: with spectacles, some imagination and a steady, salt spray."He stooped down, picked up a bit of seaweed, pink and cream. He carried it in his hand."Am I too fanciful a fool for you? Do you get weary, Angelina—or giddy? I suppose I won't always bubble; but it's the first joy of getting you—of finding love and the true meaning of life. It's the joy also of getting away from my confoundedly arid occupation out there."He pointed contemptuously to the Channel and beyond."I paid the penalty of being a youngster with no definite idea. They used to ask me, as grown-ups do, what I wanted to be when I was a man. I never knew. So they shipped me off to that berth with the rubber people. It was got by influence, and was a good berth. Nobody knew what I suffered. I suppose the governor did a bit. For we are alike and he always half understood. I'm sorry," he looked sad, "that I've alienated him.""Yes!" Angelina pressed nearer. "I know his letter pained you.""It did. It was a thorough casting off; and we loved each other in our grim, rather English way. For I only spout to you. I think aloud all the time, and it is such a blessed letting forth of the spirit.""Yes, isn't it?" her glance responded, "and, Julius, although I don't talk so fast as you do——""You couldn't, dear. We should be love-birds making Babel.""Yet, just by being with you, I seem to say all I've wanted to, without much speaking."They stood looking at the rose-red, little sand-cliffs and the far-stretching, rose-red sands with their pearl fringe that was the sea."We have been happy," Angelina sounded delicately afraid, "whatever happens. Nothing can take away this three months that we have had.""My dear!" his robust voice seemed to try violently to assure both his own soul and hers. "What should take it away? Who dare? And remember, we are only at the beginning. So far"—his defiant laugh rang out—"we've only had the scraping of the fiddles. We are tuning up for the lovely melody of our married life together. Years of it. Just peace and rapture."His ugly brown face with the setting sun on it was wild as he looked on her pallor: on that perfect poise of the head and proud curl of the thin lip.She looked so icy and so unconquerably cold. He knew, how indubitably he knew, that she could be warmer than those crimson sands."I know, yes; peace and rapture, Julius. But we leave such a trail of slaughter behind. That sand to me to-night"—it was rarely that she spoke fancifully; she left that to him,is——""I know what you are going to say—blood. But it isn't. And if it were; well, even then. Love will have its way.""That is why I rather shrink from love. Yet only"—her complete tenderness illumined her face—"because we have hurt so many. Your father——""He,after all, may understand a great deal more than he chooses to admit. I'm his son, and he has handed on a lot of himself.""Your mother——""Poor mother!" Julius sounded lighter,"but she really is a dear old dragon. I'm sorry for him, because of her. I've darkened the family life. She will make everybody suffer for what she would call my misdeed.""There is Lady Johns——""She is better in Sicily, Angelina. She is disenchanted and so is her brother. They have been for years. They are probably a great comfort to each other, and far happier, although they would not admit it, than they ever have been.""And there is Antony. You never seem to feel any remorse about that.""I don't. He had his chance."Angelina walked on as he gave his answer. This was the first time that Antony's name had been mentioned. From afar off, wherever he was at this moment, he imposed the weight of his nature upon them—and properly so. For they had won no right to unbroken happiness. Angelina, dimly, had felt this from the first. Julius felt nothing of it, so far. He was masculine, and he was wonderfully in love.Up the lane as they walked, yellow hay was tangled in the squat thorn-bushes.Julius, to turn the uncomfortable topic, spoke of May trees as they would be soon, aflame with berries."I shall be back by then," he said.His voice came through the dusk."Before then!" Angelina's voice, responding, rang with tender concern for him, and only him.Julius was feeling this triumphantly. He had no remorse, no pity for Antony. He was an unbroken colt of the emotions. He loved Angelina, and he had her for his own. Let the world rock! This, so far, was his philosophy. And naked enough. Fate would adorn and deck it soon."Yes, yes, long before," he said soothingly. "Turn back, darling, look behind you, stand still a moment for our last look at the sea. Isn't it beautiful—the satin texture of slow wave and wet shore? I'm glad that dramatic crimson sun has left off."He put his arm round her when they went on. That was the beauty of this place. There never was a soul to watch you make love. You could be rustic if you liked, at any time: positive, without nervous social shades."I shall start early to-morrow," he said. "I shan't wake you.""But I want to see you off.""No, no, don't do anything so sane, so sweetly matter-of-fact. You are not made, to my view of you, for anything mundane."His voice was bitter. He had seen her doing useful things for Antony: for Antony she had fetched and carried. Julius was one to make a goddess of the woman he adored, yet never a fetish.They were staying at a prim small house of yellow brick, fancifully clean both inside and out, and kept by a woman who had been a cook in good families. She had retired upon her savings and now took summer lodgers. Hers was one of the few new houses in the hamlet. Any attempt to make this place popular had so far mercifully failed.Julius and Angelina went indoors to their delicately served supper. After supper, grim silence fell upon them, and sentences were thrillingly staccato and unrelated. They were glad when the evening was over. They were nearly bored.Julius repeated at the last, "I shall not wake you in the morning."But Angelina was awake when, soon after six, he stooped across the bed at the last, and silently kissed her good-bye. She lay still and he believed her asleep. She had that perfect love for him which foregoes its own desires. She stealthily watched him as he went to the door, and never had the outlines of him been more magnetically dear. He had instilled into that stolen, speechless embrace all their unexpressed yet perpetual sadness. He laid the shadow of this upon her white pillow.She had allowed him the last luxury of silent adoration and wistful departure. His lips had pressed what he considered a sleeping cheek. As she watched him go, the implied tragedy of his pose struck at her heart and she longed to rush from the bed and to him: longed to prison him, hold him fast and keep him, hobble his two feet together with her warm arms.She fell asleep. When she awoke, it was with that cold sense of pure terror which we feel upon the morning of a day following death in the house.After breakfast, she went down to the sea in the sun. She had been lying on the warm shingle for over an hour when she heard steps and sat up. Breakwaters here were built close together, so that the beach was divided into narrow strips. They approximated to the arcade. Angelina looked up and saw another woman standing near. From each throat came a cry of surprise and embarrassment. This was Cicely Forbes, or Cicely Pole as she now was.There was, on her part, the merest pause, instinctive in the respectable woman. Then she came to Angelina and sat down. There was something of positive drollery in her query."Well?"Angelina returned, with no drollery at all, and with utter barrenness of idea."Well?"Cicely burst out laughing."This is funny," she said. "There isn't room to turn in the world; that's about the bottom of it. We heard that you and Julius were in Brittany."Linking Angelina openly with Julius, she slightly stiffened."We were in Brittany." Angelina's voice was cold and intensely weary."Then Bob and I have been following you round. We've just come from Brittany. I am staying at Brighton now with Mrs. Pole. She has been ill. Julius has a precious lot to answer for. Tell him so. Where is he?""Gone to London.""What for?""Business."Cicely screwed up her hearty red mouth. "I suppose so. He'll have to get at some sort of grind. He won't get a penny from his father, and he can't take you back to live with niggers. The climate nearly killed him. I don't believe from what Bob let drop once that Julius will make old bones. You two have made a hash of things. Why did you do it, Angelina? I never thought you were that kind.""Why do people—do it? Why did you marry Robert?""That's different."Cicely looked almost as outraged as her mother-in-law might have done."Antony," she proceeded, "has been such a brick. He would do anything, still, to save a scandal. Why don't you go back to him when he returns to England?""He isn't back yet, then?""No, but he will be in a week or two. I hear now and then from Blanche. Captain Murray has forbidden her to speak of you.""Charlie Murray! Has he?""Yes, and you don't seem to care about any of the lot. What's up? Have you and Julius had a row already."Angelina said forlornly:"No, we haven't had a row.""Well, he's gone to London"—Cicely sounded impressive—"and now's your chance. In your place, I should cut and run. I should scuttle back; Antony'll have you. Not one in ten thousand would. Bob says"—Cicely sounded proud—"that he'd shoot any man who interfered with his wife. He'd get the sympathy of any British jury."Angelina was listening. She was looking at Cicely's healthy, obtuse face."And Bob," continued this young matron generously, "speaks with feeling, for he was awfully gone on you himself. He is sorry for you, and he says that his brother Julius is a cad. I can't understand Julius, and I can't understand you. There can be no respect between you, and without respect there is no true love——"She spoke as if the idea of her failing to understand any one was hard to grasp."Julius," she continued, "is queer. He isn't like the rest of the family. He'll chuck you in the end, Angelina. They always do. I don't see why they shouldn't. You'd better go back to Antony. He can't.""Can't what?""Chuck you; not if he takes you back, and I'm sure he would.""I can't go!" Angelina stood up suddenly, she looked vacantly round her: yellow of the shingle, blue of the sea.This was a brilliantly optimistic August morning. She was feeling dim and weak, beyond all, yearningly alone. She experienced the feeling which is the almost constant portion of the woman who is loved by two men and protected by neither. Cicely also stood up and, in the sunshine, they were upright: close together and confronting. Angelina showed shrinking. Cicely perceived this, and thought it natural enough; for Angelina was no longer respectable. She spoke her thought; she had no thoughts which were not instantly translated into hearty speech."Not many of your women-friends would speak to you at all, but I am broad-minded. Mrs. Pole said to me yesterday: 'If ever you should meet Angelina, mind you cut her dead.' ""Why didn't you?""Because I'm younger than she is, and because I've got a heart and she's got a block of fishmonger's ice. She's an old cat, but I put up with her for Bob's sake. He's a jolly good sort."She squeezed Angelina's hand and giggled uncomfortably."Do go back to Antony," she said. "You'll go to the

devil if you don't. Women always do; and you are so jolly good looking. The men will never leave you alone, and once you've given an opening to one——Don't you see"——Cicely blushed violently—"what I'm driving at?""Of course I do. But you don't understand.""I do understand. I'm married; we both are. So there is no difference. If Antony would divorce you that would be another pair of shoes. But he won't. You could marry Julius, and most people would know you. The very strict ones might make a wry face, but you could do without them. They are making divorce so jolly easy that in six months' time you forget who was the guilty one and who the innocent. It's a regular mix up. Can't say I like it"—Cicely wrinkled her nose—"but Antony won't divorce you; there's the rub. He and Charlie Murray had a regular row about it. Blanche wrote and told me. The Murrays think that it is the only thing to do. Yet Antony won't. Poor old chap! I never cottoned to him, but I do admire him now."She looked good-tempered and friendly, and honestly puzzled."I can't think," she said, "what on earth you see in Julius?""What does anybody see in anybody?" asked Angelina. She started walking towards the land. Cicely clumped at her side."I won't go beyond the beach with you," she said; "Mrs. Pole is sitting in the churchyard waiting for me. We drove over from Brighton. She used to bring the kids here when they were young. She was talking of coming here to stay.""She'd better not. Julius and I are staying on for some weeks, unless his business interferes.""But what can he do for a living? What's his game? Hasn't he told you?""No. His plans are vague. We have discussed nothing. But I feel sure that he will find something. Julius never fails."Angelina's note was warmer; she was betrayed into something approaching confidence and avowal. Cicely looked at her shrewdly with those honest, intelligent eyes behind which nothing was lying. Cicely's goods were all in the window."How do you know he won't fail you? How can you trust him?" she asked candidly. "Don't be hurt, old girl, at what I'm going to say, but when a man has ruined one woman, he very often doesn't stop. Julius"—her clear voice sounded disgust—" is a rotter. Bob's going to knock him down if he comes across him. He doesn't care if it's a police-court affair. Bob "—she looked uncomfortably at Angelina's set face—" would do Antony's dirty work for him. He'd rather enjoy the job."She put out her bare hand: a hard, brown paw that was always playing games."Think over what I say, Angelina. Cut and run. Give Julius the slip before he gets sick of you. They've always had enough in time—those sort of men."She savoured her coarseness with a sage look.Angelina looked at her blankly. She left her hand lying in the hard, brown palm until Cicely dropped it, saying: Mrs. Pole may get tired of the tombstones and come down to the sea. There would be a shindy if you two met. I must get back to her. Give me a start up the lane, in case she's coming down it."She gave a last look of bewildered affection at that thin, wild face, and then went striding off: a well-developed, thickset and sun-tanned young woman. She was wholly healthy, utterly unimaginative and intensely complacent. She was saturated with slang—her very thoughts were in slang. She was utterly shallow and absolutely happy.Angelina sat upon the white breakwater and watched her go. Life was not going to give Cicely any trouble at all. She would die at the same stage of emotional development in which she was born. She had been in love with Robert before she married him. Now that she had married him, being in love was heartily out of the question, and he was just a jolly good sort. If he died first, she would, after some decent interval for mourning, marry any man who offered, and who was sufficiently like him; for the Cicely's of the world never wish for a new phase; they propose to continue the old. Whatever happened, she would be content and active and noisy. She would go to her grave stolidly wondering what half the heartaches of the world were all about. People—Cicely might express it so—were "silly." They had no "control."Angelina, on the breakwater, was swept by disgust and despair. As waves these moods broke over her: the romantic colour of her idyllic life with Julius this last three months was soaked through and washed pale by the brine of these two feelings: disgust, despair. She flinched from Cicely's code, being fully aware that it was merely the code of the common world. It would never comprise Julius. Yet her despair was born of this code. She felt an outcast. This fact was rudely thrust in her face.Yet there was a grim humour in the affair. Cicely, in counselling her to "chuck" Julius and return to Antony, had been gloriously unaware that she was not Antony's wife.She was no man's wife. So far, she seemed merely to have developed the fatal quality of making a fool of herself.She went up the lane in the sun, listening to that cradlesong rhythm of the sea. When she reached the lodgings she found a telegram from Julius. He was in London and would write that night. She went to bed early, feeling desolate and oddly afraid. Yet she knew that his dear letter in the morning would not only reassure, but reinstate her. There was no one on this earth but Julius.It was in the nature of a knell to go down to breakfast next day and find no letter. He had missed the post. That was quite understandable, and she tried to persuade herself of it. But Cicely had skinned her alive and she smarted all over. She sat by the window, afraid to go out for fear of meeting Cicely again. The thought of the sea nearly drew her forth, and then, quizzically, she considered that although salt was good for the usual wounds, it was altogether too drastic as a remedy for hers. She was light headed with misery, perplexity and perhaps some subtle distrust. Cicely's awful word "respect," that word so often upon the lip of the conventionally virtuous—it is the text of every sermon that the Pharisee preaches—obsessed her. If Julius had lost respect for himself, he had also lost it for her. They were lost souls and must come to some speedy ruin.None of these feelings had torn at her through the seven years of her life with Antony. She was not married to him either; yet the world had not suspected, and—still more cogent reason—she had not loved Antony. She loved Julius, and, in consequence, every dramatic force was at work within her.About noon there was a small bustle at the little gate and she looked down the path. She had been by the window, listlessly regarding her spread out hands and smiling cynically at that finger with the wedding-ring. There should be two, or none!Out in the road was a cab. The driver got down from the box and opened the gate, which squeaked miserably as the new iron gates of villas do.Angelina stood up. She was rigid and frightened out of her life, for she thought this was Mrs. Pole and Cicely. They had come to protest and condemn; they sought to influence for her own good. Where was the use, when her mind was made! She would fly anywhere away from these two women. She stared through the shut window. This morning she had been so wretched that she had withdrawn from sweet air and the sound of the sea. She sought for silence and would have preferred dark to daylight.The cab door opened and a stout woman, closely wrapped, got out with difficulty. She was followed by a hospital nurse carrying invalid bundles. Angelina's collapse into the nearest chair was like the falling of a house of cards. This woman was fat and old. Even through her wrappings she distilled some air of the hopelessly common. Mrs. Pole was lean and distinguished.She listened to the door knocker and to the landlady's feet along the passage. The door shut, the cab waited. This was some one come to look at the drawing-room floor. So far, she and Julius had been the only lodgers.She settled back into leer hopeless attitude and drifted towards drearily speculative thought of leer own affairs.She was startled afresh by the slow opening of the door and the sound of a voice, certainly familiar, saying, in the genteel tone that, for state occasions, is vestment to vulgarity:"Mrs. Julius Pole is a friend of mine. What a very strange coincidence!"Angelina turned and saw, in the frame of the door, and backed by the landlady and the nurse, her mother's friend, and her own music mistress, Mrs. Chope."My dear Angelina," the ponderous lady bore down upon her, without scruple or warning. She kissed her soundly,"This is a bit of luck for me."Her caress fell upon Angelina's cheek as Cicely's respectable platitudes had struck upon her heart. It glanced off, yet, left some scratch. Angelina began to feel herself submerged by the commonplace and the undesirable. Julius with his poetic worship, unconsciously braggadocio, went farther out of sight. He thinned to vanishment. Here, by the sea, you must take a salt image, and she thought of him as a ship that became enshrouded in cold mists. She no longer perceived the brilliant rose shade of his swelling sails.Mrs. Chope was holding her hands, and, in a silly jocular way, shaking them up and down. She said, speaking to the landlady:"Light a fire in my settin'-room, Mrs. Bridger."To the nurse she added:"Unpack our things and lay out my tea gown."Angelina was amazed into utter silence. One thing was happening on top of the other in feverish confusion. She had yet to learn that the coincident in life is always crowded. Mrs. Chope spoke of a "settin'-room" and told the nurse to lay out her tea gown. These words and this accent revived the Brighton life of long ago; so that Antony, in company with Julius, dipped over the edge of the horizon. They sailed in twin ships and probably in amity. Angelina's face expressed docility and dislike. She had reverted to the manner of her girlish days.Mrs. Chope pulled her along to the horsehair sofa and they at down."Well, I never, Angy," she said in a voice of boisterous affection. "That I should find you here, of all one-eyed places. The woman was recommended to me by a lady friend as a very good cook, for I've been ill," she wheezed and grew red, "I'm ordered to a quiet place, with sea air.""There is sea air at Brighton," said Angelina, speaking in a voice that felt its words."Yes, of course, but too bracing for me, so I let my cottage and a good let—what a godsend that cottage has been!—and drove over here to look at the rooms. When the woman said that there was only a young married couple, Mr. and Mrs. Julius Pole, on the dining-room floor, I nearly had a fit. You must tell me about it. I'm dying to know. I've thought of you so often, my dear. I nearly wrote."She squeezed Angelina's hand significantly and from her sunken eyes shot a faded leer. She spoke with vivacity and relish. She looked an aged woman and horrible.She looked very ill. Angelina regarded the same brightly golden hair, the same tiny feet in pointed shoes and fanciful stockings; the same powdered face—powder lay, blue, in the shallows of those fallen cheeks! She had the same sweet voice and jolly melodious laugh, the same repellant air of a past impropriety, the same unquenchable vulgar good nature.Angelina sat upon the sofa looking just a girl; quelled and perhaps oddly fascinated."Yes, you can trust me, "Mrs. Chope's ancient eyelids showed a true wink of comprehension; "but what made you runaway from your husband? That is always a mistake, Angelina. And Mr. flinch won't divorce you. I never liked the man. I always knew him for one of the cold-blooded, spiteful sort. I should like to see a photo of your second choice, Mr. Pole. Your mother says he is as ugly as sin. Blanche told her so."The smell of Mrs. Chope's patchouli, for she had kept faithful to this eloquent perfume, the sight of her powder, and the sound of her painful breathing were arousing in Angelina some wild futile alarm. She seemed to be feeling through absolute darkness of soul for Julius and his clear, clean poetry of expression. It would have purged and redeemed her."How came you to know?" she asked in a low, queer voice.Mrs. Chope's laugh ran, a cascade of piano notes high in the treble, round the room."Everybody knows, and everybody is pitying Mr. flinch. He holds the trump cards; the husband does. But I never judge any woman, for who is to know what goes on between married 



noble. Yet only for a moment did she remain upon this pedestal. The next, she fell!"Now tell me all the little ins and outs of your affair," she said, sidling closer. "It's better than a novel. I always knew there was something spicy in you, and I shan't live to read the last chapter."Looking hard at Angelina she seemed to turn over pages. Her eyes moved fast."You are a handsome girl," she said. " I hope you'll fall upon your feet. I think you will. Some do. I did. Even now, with the little I've saved, and with the rent I'm getting for the cottage, there is enough to pay for my keep and my nurse and to give me a decent funeral. I was going to sell up everything and buy an annuity. I'm glad I didn't, now we've met. I shall leave my furniture to you, Angelina, for we are of the same kidney and the time may come when you'll want it."She was ghastly and appealing; ghastly in that coarsened face, with its shadowed eyes and loosely pouched cheeks, appealing, in her obvious affection, in her loneliness and flippancy, in her near approach to death.Angelina could only sit silent, looking softer and sometimes slightly moving her fingers in some compassionate gesture. Mrs. Chope's hold upon her hands grew desperate. She was clinging to what, so unexpectedly, she had found."You've heard," she said, "that Freddy Jannaway has come into his title? That makes your mother more bitter than ever. She won't see that there are some men a woman can't——""Don't let us talk about him," interrupted Angelina."We won't, or I shall make you sick of men, and what's the good of that at your age! When you are as old as I am, or when you get ill as I am, you'll find that they don't matter to a woman. Not one of them is worth what we go through to get them. Remember that, Angelina. You'll think of it often, my dear, years after I'm gone. Yet," she laughed—shattered the crazy sound, painful, yet still in a way musical, shattered Angelina—" we can't help ourselves. All sorts of things are waiting round the corner for you, I'll bet."She was growing whiter. How ghastly that true pallor looked against the powder!"You have talked too much." Angelina slipped her hands from their capture and went to the bell. "I'll ring for the nurse.""Yes do, dear. I am done for. But I shall be better after a dose. When's Mr. Pole coming back?""I don't know. He is away on important business."Mrs. Chope looked shrewdly across the room. She seemed half fainting, yet warning and affectionate caution shone in her dim glance."I wouldn't let him out of my sight too often, dear. You've got no hold on him. And a man that once plays a shabby trick will play it twice."Angelina wanted to scream out."stop! Cicely said that too."Fortunately the nurse came in.She was once more left alone; feeling sullied and permanently shaken. The dual interview of the morning, with Cicely, with Mrs. Chope, had affected her feeling for Julius. It was, if not imperilled, at least diverted. She had that queer longing which women do experience—of wishing to be utterly free from men.The prospect of loneliness made its first appeal. The promptings of a celibate life stirred within her. She was actually perturbed at the prospect of a letter from Julius. He would re-arouse her.II LETTER TO ST. MARY OF EGYPT	DEAR ST. MARY OF EGYPT,To you I can talk and find my tongue. Usually, I do not. There was once a time, before I pretended to get married to Antony, when I talked to him and to Mumsie, until I was distrustful; and I could see by the way they looked at me that they also distrusted and considered I was feverish. In the years that came afterwards, those seven quiet years; unrippled, stagnant perhaps, it was Antony who talked—if either of us did. He had fits of sullen eloquence; speech torn from him. I never fathomed him.Julius, through the blessed, beautiful three months that we were together, poured words over me in a flood of silver. It was delicate, white, and gleaming. How it flashed! Worship well drawn out! Julius is a poet. He is also an anachronism: not of his own time.Now they are both gone. I am alone; silence covers me fold upon fold; dim and pale, as the robe of some Eastern, begging priest. This robe I wear and ask no other any more. Why do people pity lonely women? I am exaltedly happy!I sit here writing to you in this small house near the sea. Words gather in my head, making companies. They pass in military procession through the narrow defile of the pen. They mass themselves upon this paper, showing a great army. To tell you everything; all the facts that have been, all the feelings I have felt—it is the biggest relief that my soul knows. It is prayer, in a sense, and yet, I hardly know, sitting here to-day, if I even believe in your existence, to say nothing of your powers. Once I believed so utterly. Antony spoke of my sense of spells. Perhaps Belief has gone, perhaps it never was, perhaps—again I theorise—it may be just lying perdu, gathering strength for a last effect. It may, in the end, softly impress me to some convent. Would I find rest there? Did you, in the desert, find rest? St. Mary of Egypt, when I was a child, I loved you and trusted in you, I showed you my little heart. Can you read it now?Just now I opened the box that Kitty gave me long ago and I read the letter that I wrote you then. A fever to write to you again came over me, so here I sit in the November day, alone. I can see the desperately waving tamarisk trees and the great blue waves when I look out of the window. There is a gale blowing. This morning I went down to the sea. Sun was shining, the tide was right up and the south-west wind filled me with hope, with colour, and a sense of life—the life between a man and a woman when they love. I remembered Julius; the things he had said, his gestures, his caresses. And I picked a bouquet, tamarisk branches and seaweed, pink and cream. How he would have loved it! But as to sending it, I do not even know where to find him, nor do I know if he wants it. I lay on the low sand bank, face downwards, propping it on my palms, and looking out to sea; down through the wild branches, down through the waving grass at the water beneath.I walked back here and changed my dress and went to Mrs. Chope's funeral. The nurse and I went—nobody else. And to-night the nurse returns to the Nursing Home in Brighton which she came from. I shall be here alone.Mrs. Chope and I were together a great deal towards the last; my affection for her and my disgust for her seemed to grow side by side. They were twins and exactly of the same height. She was a wise woman and corrupt; those words express her. There was something pitiful about her, yet there was nothing fine, and I am glad she is dead, for that underlying coarseness would have spoiled her for me in the end.She talked incessantly of Antony and of Julius. She knew about them, because I had told her. She was absorbed by my story. I was the last novel that she read—and she died before she got to the last chapter. That was her main regret in dying, and she was fascinated by my future, making different endings for me. She was infinitely more interested than I am, for something in me—my sense of drama, my sense of spells (what is it?) has dropped down dead. It is lying to-day in a deeper grave than Mrs. Chope's.She would say to me more than once, and every day, "you will live on to be an old woman." If she was right, and if I do live on to be old, it is a bleak prospect. I shall be alone. This I have decided, for men get between your body and your soul. Yet does there lie for me, beyond this, and while I am still upon earth, some calmly righteous life, the life for which I am destined, a life that shall approximate to yours in the desert! Perhaps my phase, of loving men, of belonging to men, was the fiery novitiate. Perhaps I am merely at the beginning. When I have cast out what is the Grandmamma Peachey part of me, I shall, for the first time, be a wholly happy woman, because I shall be a good one.Mrs. Chope said:"There is no peace for you, Angelina, until one of those men, or, better, both of those men, die. And they will; for the woman lives on."She said this, and, poor soul, she had lived on and knew what she was talking about. Her experiences were certainly ghastly. In her case, more than two men lay dead. I don't think that she remembered any of them, nor did she care; in fact, I doubt if she discriminated between one and the other. They amalgamated in her mind. They became simply one Idea, and to herself she had ceased to be an improper woman, but was only an ineffably weary one.Did you, St. Mary, so long ago in the desert at the last, regard men in this way: as she regarded them—as I am beginning to?They seem to pass through your life, leaving no vital mark, giving no perfect satisfaction.As I came up from the sea this morning in the sweet, high gale, foam was blowing, blossom-wise. It drifted and flew across the green fields among the calm cows. The sky was so blue and the air so clear that May trees in their last burning glory were better than ever they had been. I thought of Julius, who had spoken of the May trees in berry. He is not here to see them. Yet I hardly regretted that; for the beauty of the world seemed to be the one thing my heart wanted. Men tear you to pieces. I elect to keep quiet.Yet I cannot complain. And, as I wrote that word "complain," you see I make a blot upon the paper; it is as if the pen laughed cynically at me with my immense egoism! Neither Antony nor Julius write to me. I am withdrawn and perhaps forgotten. Yet, if they did write, I know exactly what each letter would be: Antony vituperative, coarse and certainly brutal; Julius adoring, with almost too much worship, with perhaps too many words—and yet at the back of both letters would merely be that male craving to possess and enslave. They haven't got very far, these men. I sit here writing and feeling very superior. Did you? Alone in the desert so long, you must have thought things out as I am thinking now. Yet we were different; for you had a definite religion, and with me, so far, it is merely speculative. That shifts the point of view entirely. You, perhaps, were merely ashamed of your much experience.The other day, when I was extra lonely and when I was feeling positively sick by long association with Mrs. Chope, I went to Brighton, to spiritually wash myself.I went to the big church, St. Bartholomew's, where I used to go as a girl and before there was a Freddy Jannaway. I date things from then; I make a Jannaway Period; for he woke me up and warned me, with a kiss. He made me see that your body is your own as well as your soul. It is ethereal, in equal part, and no vow can wholly solidify it: not the vow of the law, not even the vow of love—if you outgrow love. The ideal of what a marriage should be, which Kitty had impressed upon me, was beaten into me by that silly Jannaway. It flowed with my blood and became part of me. Except for him, I might have married Antony or Percy Lascelles or Robert Pole, and I should certainly have married Julius. For he was the love of my life, yet, even with him, I felt afraid of any permanent tie: not because I was coarse, but because Kitty had made me too fine. You will believe that, although Antony never will and Julius could never understand.I do not want either of those men. I must belong to myself. I love them both and yet love neither. I love myself, and, beyond myself, that vague extraordinary ideal which you loved and which is the Catholic religion. Yet I have not reached the point that you reached and perhaps I never shall.I went to St. Bartholomew's the other day, as I said. The priest was in the church at the altar. He was an old, humpy-backed, bottle-nosed man, yet undeniably fine. It was a Martyr's Festival, and he wore rose-coloured vestments. An old sacristan moved about the body of the church as I kneeled there. Light was falling upon his polished, grey-fringed head, and upon the shiny seat and elbows of his shabby cassock.Why do I tell you this? Why do I find my tongue and talk to you, as I never have before, as I never shall again!When I look at all this paper scattered round me, this long, long letter to you, I hardly recognise either the writing or the words. I am beside myself. No doubt these queer moods come to people who are in conflict.When Mass was over I waited in the church and spoke to the sacristan. He sent the funny-looking old priest to me and I made my confession. I told him everything; all that I am telling you and more, all that I shall presently tell you. Yet he never touched me, he left me unimpressed, and, kneeling there, I was merely studying him, I was in no way penitent. I remained outside his mood. I could see that he was interested in my story and anxious for my soul. Yet he was illogical, as they are. He was a man and I am weary. He asked me if my life with Antony had not been one long penance., because I was not married to him. How could it be? Antony believed nothing, and I—I believed in myself. My faith in myself is undeviating, my conceit consummate.I came out of the church cold, amused perhaps. Am I a devil with no heart? Or am I just a victim of my nature?All those who have gone to build me up and make me, Grandmamma Peachey and the rest, they must be faintly laughing at me, as I laughed at the old priest; with his bibulous cheeks and his lovely old eves—Faith shining clear in them.He said I was to return to Antony and ask, what he called, the ''blessing of the church upon our union." I was to marry Antony. I told him, however, that I loved Julius, if I loved at all. He was stern and plainly shocked. He spoke of Julius as a "person who incited me to sin."With that point of view I cannot join issue. Perhaps the day will come when I shall.And, again, the pen laughs! For how can I marry any one? Antony does not write and will not. Why should he? Julius has disappeared. He went to London upon business—so he said. Perhaps, even at the time, I hardly believed this, for between us is some queer tradition of distrust.He wrote a week afterwards begging me to believe in him, insisting that he would return to me here, but saying that, for a reason which later on I would know, he could not write for six weeks.That six weeks is past. Not a whisper of him comes. He is hurdled off from me. I look at the wattled walls which they build round the sheep in the fields about here. I am a sheep, a silly sheep, and alone. I am a silly sheep because I have followed two shepherds. I cannot see over the hurdle which Julius has put up. And I am glad to be away, forever, from te emasculating influence of men. They exhaust you, they steal away your life; it becomes theirs and there is nothing left for yourself. They smother you with flowers or with bitter herbs. I have had both.I feel that in his letter Julius lied to me, just as, after he had kissed me in the wood on the day of the Derbyshire sale, I lied for him to Antony. He went safely away. I stayed behind to tell lies. They were smooth and clever; I despise myself and marvel at myself sometimes; and certainly the Angelina that the world knows and that I myself know is not the woman who sits here writing. St. Mary of Egypt, you draw out of me a quality whose existence I did not suspect. It was my suggestion that Julius should go out of the wood that day, that I should stay; yet he should never have indulged me. The man who is a perfect mate would guide the woman. We need rule. I doubt if, even yet, I have found my true mate. If I have not, then I hope I never shall; for there has been complexity enough. A woman does not know how much Vice and how much Virtue she has still left in her; as a sex, we seem inexhaustible.There was a tincture of falsity between Julius and me from the first—so all the liquid is bitter! I love him entirely, so far as I can love. I trust him not at all. I would rather trust Antony with his lumbering home truths. He only said pretty things to his Aunt Philippa. Antony was tact-less, he was selfish and unsparing. Yet he told the truth. It seems trivial, and yet I often sit and merely wonder who is darning Antony's socks and looking after his linen. All my suffering and perplexity thins to just that—who darns his socks and sees that his shirts are aired! He was so helpless. It was a quality sometimes irritating but more often lovable; in such a great, big fellow. With Julius I had no such tradition—for how can you sit and darn socks in a rose-coloured cloud? Julius wove me all about with heavenly worship; he bound my hands. There was nothing domestic. It seemed, while I was with him, that his adoration was all—comprehensive. There was nothing for either of us, behind or before, but our great instinctive love. I was feeling this through the cool agony of my last talk with Antony in the house at Normandy, when I cast him off and left him. The dear dignity of that house! I think of it—and then I look round at the grotesquely papered walls of this room where I sit alone.When Julius left me, Cicely Pole, by her ghastly vulgarities, dragged everything down: stars were lying in the dust! She said to me of Julius, "he'll chuck you. I should cut and run." These words I cannot forget. We stood upon the beach together, and her face was good-humoured, coarsely contemptuous, and prettily snub-nosed. She is like thousands of other women. I wonder if it pays to defy this commonplace horde or if indeed you dare defy them.I looked down from the altitude of all my faithlessness and failing and of my secret anguish; my glance fell to her complacent face, it beat at the fast-shut door of her shallow eye.She has nothing behind that door. She and Mrs. Chope sandwiched me between two vulgarities; they were alike although they were so different. One is dead and one is gone away, and I have only you; to whom I confide, to whom I nearly pray. And yet I cannot feel sure if you are simply a charming shadow or a strong and still living personality.Suddenly—as suddenly as I began to write—so the impulse to write leaves me.I haven't a word more, and looking over these sheets they seem silly. If I had a fire I would burn them, but down here it is mild, and in the autumn you never need a fire until the late afternoon. The landlady will light my fire when she lays the cloth for my dinner, and by that time I shall have changed my mind. Whenever she comes into the room she gossips and I answer at random. She is upset because there has been a death in her house.I shall lock this letter away with the one I wrote to you when I was a child, and, although I hardly believe in you, I shall write here at the bottom,"St. Mary of Egypt pray for me."ANGELINA PEACHEY.BOOK III THE CHINA SHOPCHAPTER XIIWHEN the letter was done an extra flatness overpowered Angelina. She never, normally, had an excess of speech, and St. Mary of Egypt from afar, from that land, pensive yet flashing, where Saints dwelt for ever, had in one mood vitalised and silenced her. It was an effort to reply even at random to the politely suspicious remarks of the landlady when she laid the cloth for dinner. This landlady was beginning to wonder why Julius did not return, and why no letters came for or from him. His absence and his silence had exceeded the terms of a young married tiff. But for the fact that her weekly bill was paid punctually she might, already, have looked askance at Angelina. But it did not suit her to be rigorous. Here was a winter lodger. There were things she could not understand. Why, for instance, had Mrs. Pole, who was a lady born and bred (this any one could see with half an eye), allowed that woman Mrs. Chope to kiss her and call her Angy. The trained nurse and the landlady had talked this over more than once.When Angelina went to bed the south-west gale had spent itself, and rain was splashing outside. It was a wild rain; she put her head out of the window and snuffed up the salt of the sea.Next day was fair and warm, so roguishly blue that it might have been June, and not November.She went after breakfast to the beach. This she did every day, and the various moods of the Channel were her only companions. They made society. She was dulled and calm; wordless, without much imagination, without any humour. She was at peace, and felt that this sort of thing could comfortably go on for ever. She asked no change, nor sought any larger ripple than those out at sea. She went and sat upon the shingle in the sun, drinking deep the salty draughts of perfect consolation which each wave dribbled out. It was a very baby sea this morning: beloved consoling sea, and more to her than any man had been! It was so smooth that it had a look of silvered oil upon the surface. A few miles inland, over the fertile flats, hills were filmy. Tamarisk trees fringing the golden beach were just little green wraiths.It approached you, this perfect beauty of land and sea; it lifted you, cradled and soothed you. She was irate with a man who came galloping along the stretch of sand upon a bright brown horse. He gave too definite a touch of colour. He spoke of activities; he was riotously masculine in his appearance. When he flashed out of sight, leaving the scene demurely feminine once more, Angelina leaned her shoulder at the white breakwater and was nearly asleep. The sound of surf, as the tide receded, the sound of larks as they sprang in the green fields, made lullaby.If the tide had been coining in instead of going out, if it had lifted her up, she would hardly have resisted. She was exhausted by the eloquence of the day before; and, if she had a tangible feeling left, it was shame of that letter lying in Kitty's gay shell-box. She was in that sedative mood which overtakes lonely women who have been loved. They grow withered of heart in this mood.Feet on the shingle aroused her as once they had before, and, looking up, there, again, was Cicely, and this time in deep mourning."Good luck!" she said glibly. "I've found you. I told Bob I should."Angelina stood up. She was blinking."Where is Robert?" she asked shamefacedly. "I don't want to see him.""He isn't keen on seeing you," was Cicely's dry answer. "I left him at Horsham. I bet him half-a-crown you were still here, and he bet five bob you weren't. He swore you'd gone off again with Julius. He said he knew you well enough for that."She sat on the top of the breakwater in the sun, swinging her foot nervously."Sit down, and pull yourself together, Angelina. I've got something to say."Angelina sat down. She moved like a big child; moved in a stately, stupid way."You look a regular owl," said Cicely. "Buck up."Angelina said, staring at her black dress:"Is Julius dead? Have you come to tell me that?" Her pale eyes still looked sleepy."Julius! Didn't I say Bob thought you were off with him? Haven't heard of him. Wouldn't wear black for him. Didn't he come back? Then he did chuck you?""Chuck! Oh, I don't know," Angelina was vague.Cicely shook her arm. "Look here, don't be mooney any more. What's up? Julius is a bad lot. There isn't any doubt of it. Where did all his money go else, for gambling isn't the only thing a man can do. Forget him. You've lost your good name through him.""Then he isn't dead. Who is?""His mother. I'm jolly glad. I believe Bob is, only he's too decent to say so. She never got over the shock of you going off with Julius. He was her son, so she felt to blame. She didn't care for him, and she hated you; what she couldn't swallow was being in the wrong. Her son was a rotter. When the house in Normandy got burnt down——""Burnt down! Our house?""Antony's house," said Cicely markedly. "I came to tell you that, and something else; you'll jump and wriggle."There was a look of rough compassion on her hard face."My hook's got to go through your gills," she continued, staring out to sea, "yet I'll land you in the right basket, old girl.""Is our house burned with all the china?""Antony has lost his house and china. Some was saved, but precious little. The caretaker had an epileptic daughter, and left her alone. I suppose the fool set light to it out of mischief. They are only monkeys and mad monkeys, these people with fits. My mother-in-law recommended that caretaker to you; there was the rub. She had botched again, once with Julius, once with the epileptic. And she had always been in the right. She'd been a model. People came to her for advice and they took it. She went to bed the day the house was burned. She died a fortnight afterwards. There's an urn on the family vault, and it ought to be made of blue china."Cicely laughed. She was sorry for Angelina, and more sorry for Antony; yet she was glad to be rid of her very weighty mother-in-law. Antony's fire had helped."What did Antony do?" asked Angelina.She still looked dull, yet, slowly, the memory of that house in Normandy was waking her up. She began, once more, to suffer. She recalled the graceful dignity of it, and recalled her seven years there. Perhaps she was, for the first time, half regretting that Julius Pole had come. Would it have been better to have missed that love, so magic and so brief? Would it have been better to be, in reality, Mrs. Antony ffinch? She felt as she had felt before:"I make a fool of myself; I have that fatal faculty."Cicely was looking at her.She said impressively: "I'm not done yet. Listen, Angelina. Don't stare so, and don't let your face go to bits. There'll be plenty of real blubbering later on. Antony's had a stroke. He's paralysed. The doctors don't give any hope of a recovery.""Antony is paralysed!""Yes, your husband. Go and nurse Antony; that's your job. Stick to it. Be a respectable married woman again, and think yourself jolly lucky to get the chance. Some don't.""Who has been nursing him?"Angelina sounded suspicious."Trained nurses, so far. But he hasn't got much money, poor chap. He hadn't even insured the china. What a fool! Did you know? There was nothing much in that Rajah business, no pickings. I've been staying in London. We thought once that he was dying, and I wanted to wire to you, but Bob wouldn't.""You've been with Antony? You had the control and the decision? It was in your power to send for me or to keep me away? How dared you, Cicely?"Angelina flashed up, then flickered down. She hung her proud head, she looked woebegone, cringing almost. Then she added, in melancholy tones:"I haven't any right to go to him. He won't see me Yet I would do anything in this world but one thing. I can't forget Julius.""Remember Julius as much as you like, although he isn't worth it. But keep him off your tongue and out of your eyes. You won't be the only wife, by a long chalk, who plays that game," said Cicely, with some intuition."He won't see me, and I haven't any right. You don't understand. Didn't Antony tell you anything?""About Julius? All the world knew that; our world. But if Antony chooses to take you back that's nobody's business but his own.""He won't see me," repeated Angelina, desolately."He says he won't," confirmed Cicely. "He must say that, for even if he's paralysed, poor beggar, he must keep up a pose of being proud. That's a man all over. He said the sight of you would kill him.""So it would. I know Antony.""Fudge! If you'd known him you'd never have chucked him. I can't understand women who want two men," Cicely was coarsely sympathetic; tears glittered in her flat eyes."He's violent about you, so he loves you still, Angelina. I've been sitting with him every day and——""It wasn't your place to sit with him.""Then come and sit with him yourself.""But if I go, and if I kill him?"Angelina stood up; she was swaying in the sun."I won't rile you by saying you're going to faint, for that's almost as bad as being an epileptic," said Cicely grimly. "Come and pack your bag. I've got a motor waiting. I hired it at the station. You can be in London early this afternoon if we catch the express. Suppose you do kill Antony, poor devil, it may be a jolly good job for him. I don't see what he's got to live for. He's a log. He always will be." She impatiently wiped her eyes."When two women get together, they're bound to make fools of themselves," she grunted, and glanced at Angelina's dry face."She'll cry buckets by and by, if she hasn't already," thought Cicely. "And serve her right. She deserves it."

They walked up the beach together and into the lane. Angelina was thinking of the composed and fragrant house in Normandy. She was thinking of big Antony stretched helpless upon some strange bed. She could see him, looking heavy, looking sulky.Cicely, noting that fine mouth of many compressed agonies, was thinking that it paid a woman to keep straight. The price for playing pranks was two high: putting chastity only at that!She did not envy Angelina. If Antony died she would never forgive herself, and if he lived, he would lead her a dog's life. Cicely was sorry for Antony ffinch, yet she saw through him. There was a touch of the bully there. He would make a pretty little hell for Angelina.She had been a confounded fool and Julius was a scamp.She was sorry for Angelina and disgusted with her. Once things were arranged; when she had returned to Antony and had been forgiven, Cicely did not wish to see either of them. She sincerely wished that they would not settle near Horsham, for, socially, that would be most uncomfortable.

It was no good blinking at an unsavoury fact. Angelina had gone off the lines. Once a woman did that you could never feel the same again. You would not feel sure of her. And how about your own husband?They reached the yellow lodging-house at the end of the lane. Cicely's hired motor was throbbing at the open gate."Just pitch a few things into a bag," she said heartily, "and we'll be off."Half an hour later they were in the express for Victoria.Cicely took Angelina to the Nursing Home where Antony lay helpless. She and Robert had been generous; for the present they were paying all charges. But Cicely said nothing of this.She left Angelina at the door, and at the last she gripped her hand."Don't you play the giddy goat," she said. "It doesn't do to be a bad woman. Nobody can afford it. Julius ought to hang himself."She went off down the sunny street; this was a sweet day even in London. She was glad to have done what she could to reclaim Angelina, but she was also glad to get away; her blunt words merely expressed her conviction. Angelina was bad. She met Bob at Piccadilly Circus in time for a cup of tea—at a bright place with a band. They took the next train to Horsham. Bob kept patting her knee in the taxi as they glided to Victoria."You are an old dear," he said fervently, and said it more than once.This, nowadays, was his way of wooing. He had forgotten his finer mood: when he was impassioned by Angelina. He was ashamed of having been in love with her, for she was queer. Lady Johns had adopted her, yet nobody knew who her grandfather was. Her father had been a man of science. He was satisfied with Cicely. He said to her when they were in the train:"Did you tell Angelina that Percy Lascelles had diddled Antony out of what money he had left?""No. I forgot. Antony will tell her."Cicely sounded sleepy; she had travelled a great deal to-day. They had a compartment to themselves. She put her head on Bob's shoulder: not sentimentally at all, but because it was comfortable."What the deuce will they do?" he speculated. "They won't have a penny.""Antony may still have a little, and Angelina's got £70 a year."Suppose it's £150 at the best. A couple can't live on that.""Antonv may die," returned Cicely. "That would be the best thing. Then Angelina could marry Julius. It would all be respectable, and they could live down the past.""Umph!" said his brother, staring at the Surrey Hills."We don't stop at Dorking, Cissy, so you needn't move."There was silence for some time; she was half asleep. Then Pole said:"What a blessed muddle some people do make of things. I wonder why. If Antony gets better, shall we ask them down?""Good gracious, no! Think how people would talk. They might cut Angelina. You've done all you can, Bob. They must look after themselves. You've made yourself responsible at the Nursing Home for six weeks. That gives them time to turn round."She tucked her head more snugly into his shoulder, and her strident voice became dim as she continued:"You can't help them with money after that. Antony would take it; he wouldn't care a cent so long as he got it. He'd forget to ask where it came from. But Angelina is proud.""Dash it! She wasn't too proud to go off with Ju——""Duffer!" she put up her paw and patted his mouth, "that is nothing to do with her pocket. And shut up, I want a snooze."She dropped off, she even snored a little. Pole put his arm tight round her. He sat thinking what a decent thing a happy marriage was. In their case everything was propitious. Cicely was a trump and she had a little tin.The lofty room where Antony lay was vague with filtered sunlight. This, with the hum of the street outside, made Angelina dizzy as she stood within the open door. The nurse had shut it, and she announced mechanically as she went away:"Mrs. ffinch, sir."Cicely had stipulated for this, she had declared it better that Antony should not be prepared. Perhaps in her heart of hearts she half hoped that the shock would kill Antony, and so be done with it. For he was certainly in the way.Yet these are thoughts which women of the ostrich breed do not put into words. They merely feel them and they piously pray against them on Sunday mornings.Antony was lying flat and he was set high in the bed. He did not move. Angelina realised with horror that perhaps he could not.She felt as if she had always known that this would be; this was the secret of the shadow which overhung the house in Normandy, and the secret of that petulant " people get on my nerves" of his. He had been doomed, the horror of this was astir in him. Antony had never been as other men were. His churlishness, those queer, mad glances of his, those weakly, violent moods; beyond everything, his limpness and his failure to make a career—all were allowed for and accounted for by this awful fact—he was paralysed. He came of an effete stock. Angelina knew now by intuition all that Lady Johns had known for years as fact. Her intense terror for him, her superb compassion and her keen remorse, made up a feeling which, so she believed, was the strongest that she had ever known, or could know. Other facts and other people were wiped out. Her own stock of psychological ideas for the last few weeks, how cheap they were beside this grim reality! That life by the sea alone—fanciful! The three months with Julius—childish, a fairy tale! Here was a live tragedy, here was hard work left to do. She found an absorbing occupation: something apart from imagination. It was definite and crude. She had got to nurse Antony. She must nurse him and work for him, since they were almost beggars. There was no time for embroidering ideas about your own feelings.All this tore through her brain in the second or so while she stared at him, and before she went slowly forward; it was an effort to push through that queer mist of heaviness which always enveloped Antony.When she got to the bed she fell down beside it and stretched out her hands, sobbing. She only said his name:"Antony, Antony."He turned sullenly to look at her and his face, appearing more massive than ever and yet queerly faded, darkened. He marked the proud, forlorn quiver of her face."Why did they let you in?" he asked in a brutally insulting way." "You haven't any right to come, no more than any woman in the street."He spoke with difficulty and he expressed everything."Nobody else has any right at all. There is only me—for you."She snatched his hand; she wildly fondled it."Oh, my dear," she sobbed, "my dear. Antony, don't you think that this, to find you so, drives everything else and everybody else clean out of my head? I only remember our seven years together in Normandy. It all comes back. It blots out the rest. I can see it. I can see us moving about it.""Yes, and it's gone," said Antony in his new, guttural way."I know. Cicely told me. But we are here. I'll never leave you again. I swear that. You are the one man in the world."Never had he known her so vehement, so enwrapped. Never once, in seven years and more, had she let herself go. Never before had lie seen that light in her eyes. And now it was all too late.The cloud lifted from him. That beautiful white hand of his, the hand she knew and which always remained strange, held hers now with more intensity than it had ever shown. In this big, dim room, with its air of pillows and weakness and its faint smell of medicines, they climbed to a plateau which through seven years of mating they had not reached.Anything like marriage was forever over. Angelina knew that, but Antony's heart, even now in his calamity, beat with a true bridegroom throb."You mean this," he asked solemnly. "You are not deceiving me again? I am the one man, mind. How"—he dropped to wailing—"can I trust you, Angelina?""Trust me!" the tears ran down her cheeks; "there is only you.""That is true? Your oath for that? You'll marry me when I get better? You'll be my wife, really my wife; without a thought of anybody else? Only in that way can the memory of that damned hour—our last—in Normandy, be wiped out. Look"—he was wailing again—"what you've brought me to! And yet I forgive you."He was flushed. That look in his brightly blue eye she distrusted.She looked at that great man upon the bed: a shallow form, and the wreck of Antony. Spokes of sunlight pierced the blind and settled at his chestnut beard, making it warm. He was almost handsome—for one who could love him.She patted the white, strange hand."When you get better we will settle what we'll do," she said steadily. "I will never leave you. I swear that. Didn't I say so just now?""You did. But how can I believe you. Where is he?""Julius! He went away."Antony burst out laughing: the ugliest laughter of his life."I might have guessed that. They always go away. But I didn't. So you come crawling back."He was hopeless. She began steadily to fight, as so often she had fought, against the problem of their nature.They were inherently divergent, and about Antony there was always a manner of staginess. The real man she had not known. The harmony of a perfect companionship she had lost for ever. With the zeal of a housemaid using a broom she swept Julius Pole out of her head, and, turning full to the bed upon which Antony lay, she answered him softly: "I came because Cicely fetched me. She knew where I was, at a place by the sea in Sussex. She had seen me there before. She said that you were paralysed and that Normandy was burned down. I would not have come if you had been well and prosperous, for I didn't wish to have anything more to do with men. I was happy as I was. I did not wish to even dream of men."She said this simply, seeming anxious that Antony should know the facts. She imposed her own calm upon him, and he asked quite civilly:"Did she also tell you that I had lost the money Percy Lascelles got me to invest? All my capital is gone!""She did not tell me. I never trusted Lascelles. I said so to you at the time.""That is feminine. It recalls our life in Normandy—married domesticity," said Antony, gibing again. "I told you so, I told you so. Every wife says that—and I almost welcome it. Are you going to be my wife?""We'll talk about that later on. After seven years, nearly eight, there is no great hurry."She smiled on him, perhaps caustically; he thought he detected that superior curl of the thin lip which he had always hated. Anyway, her brief fire of just now had died down. It was out; had that been a last flicker. Yet why should he regret? And who was he to demand fire of any woman now? Yet no other man should have it.He half turned himself and lay looking at her in a sombre way. It broke her heart. She laid her hands on his. They sat regarding each other in the yearning manner of a man and a woman who have very little hope left."I've only got, in all the world a few bits of china and a few bits of furniture," he muttered. "It is stored for the present. By the usual irony, they managed to save from the fire my most indifferent stuff; early-Victorian rubbish—you'd think twice before you burned it.""People are beginning to collect furniture like that," said Angelina luminously. "Let me think. Don't talk. I have an idea.""What idea?""Never mind. Later on you shall know. In Normandy, if I suggested anything you never approved."When she said this she reflected privately that his constant flabbiness would weaken, if it could, any scheme. And she had one. It had come in a flash; it was so clear and shining that she believed it to be Heaven sent. She had an inward delight in this sudden scheme, and she kept saying to herself with secret jubilation, "Why not, why not?" She thought that she saw Fortune.This idea, properly carried out, would certainly pay. The situation was already saved.Antony lay watching the intelligent workings of her face. He watched contemptuously. It was new to mark that business sharpness upon Angelina. She had been so composed and proud, so aloof from detail.She sat thinking; he lay watching. Without her effort they must in future nearly starve."Better run me into some Home for Incurables. We have friends with influence and it could be managed. Then you could go back to Pole."He laughed again. Angelina called out keenly: "Don't, don't. I am forgetting him. Be as kind to me as you can and I will do what I can for you." The lofty disdain of her face scorched him."Pretty bargaining, certainly! But I'm not in a state to oppose anything. What is your idea?""I must get it into shape. Wait a little while."She studied Antony's greyed skin and then swept a glance round the room."Don't you have a drink or—or anything?" she asked helplessly. She was no nurse."Yes, barley water. In that jug with a cover. Get it. I ought to have had it half an hour ago. Why didn't the nurse come?"He spoke with the fixed and grandiose pettishness of a permanent invalid. Angelina poured out the barley water and brought it to the bed. She slipped her arm under his head as he drank. All of this seemed to be in a dream; at any moment she felt that she might wake and find herself flat upon the yellow shingle, sung to by the sea."Shove the pillow down my back," said Antony. "Wipe my mouth, for I can't do it myself. You don't seem to care."He looked at her searchingly—at her composure and her striking beauty. Tragedy had left her untouched."But I do care.""You don't ask how it happened or—or—anything," he said, cobbling up his words."You will tell me about it by and by, and about the Rajah and your travelling," she said with a stretched smile, and putting the empty glass on the round table near. She sat on the end of the bed. Antony's lightened expression showed that this pleased him."We shall have a great deal to tell each other," she added."Yes; and some things not to be told," he gurgled back. His brilliant eyes glared."There is something you do not know. Mrs. Chope is dead. She has left me her furniture. You remember Mrs. Chope?""I remember!" he sounded disgusted. "Have you got her lovely mahogany? And there was some china.""Yes, it is all mine. I must go to Brighton and see after it. The cottage is let, but only by the month. I could turn the people out.""Do you mean that we will go there?""I didn't mean that.""But the sea air would do me good," he whimpered.She saw from time to time how shattered he was—mind and body.She returned tenderly, as you'd speak to a child:"Yes, you shall have sea air directly you can be moved, but not, perhaps, at that cottage. Brighton is too noisy.""Are you going to stay with me here until I can be moved? You've sworn not to leave me, remember that."He sounded threatening; his bright glance beseeching."I'll only leave you for a day or two, just while I go to Brighton and look after the cottage, and make up my mind what is best to be done. It is all part of my plan, and you shall know directly it is in working order. Do you think they could give me a bed here to-night? I'll start early to-morrow.""No doubt they could, if you can pay. I can't!" Antony sounded crazy. "Pole is standing treat for this.""I'll pay of course."She got up from the bed. This sick man and this sick room, this gaunt atmosphere, were smothering her. She must get out in clean air to think and recover."You ought to go to sleep, Antony," she said. "I'll ring for the nurse and then I'll go for a little walk.""Where are you going? St. Paul's Churchyard?""My shop! I hadn't thought of it.""You don't care where it is so long as it is away from me, my dear," Antony said forlornly. "I always bored you. I got upon your nerves, as other people got on mine. Do you think I didn't see it?"He rolled his head sleepily and his lids, which had become wrinkled, drew over his piercing eyes. With his head flung back, the chestnut beard peaked and the eyes hidden, he looked an old man. So flat as he was, such a rigid outline under the bedclothing—well, he might have been already dead!Angelina shuddered. When the nurse came in she slipped out. Antony had not moved.CHAPTER XIIIANGELINA went back next morning to the small house by the sea where she and Julius had lodged, where she, alone, after his desertion, had fumbled about for her own soul, and nearly found it.The November weather was still charming; nothing had changed in twenty-four hours, and she found this surprising: when we are dramatic we multiply days without scruple. She felt that she had been away for many weeks. Larks were singing, seeded thistles were looking like scalloped silver cups. They were religious. They were chalices.The landlady asked if she had seen Mr. Pole. A letter had come for him. It was propped up on the sitting-room mantelpiece, and was merely a circular. Angelina stared at the address on the envelope, and certainly that was a funny name! To her it was of many-mingled letters; it was Pole and flinch; it was Julius and Antony, Esq. There was, perhaps, a touch of the ribald and the farcical in her relations with these two men.She sat down to her tea, eating and drinking fast, so that she might go and lie by the little waves. It was warm enough to stay there for hours. Oh, wonderful climate and wonderful scene! Her heart ached. She had wished to stay here for ever and alone. But that blessed pause was over. No contemplative life for her yet.She thought of Antony lying upstairs in that tall London house through these marvellous days of late autumn. She thought of Julius—and she did not know where he was or with whom. This—with whom! It barely stirred her to any jealousy. She could keep cold, so long as he kept away.Next day she went to Brighton and got permission from Mrs. Chope's tenant to go over the cottage. Her mother's house was now let out in apartment floors. She looked inertly at those staring while bills propped against the glass on the drawing-room floor. It was another Angelina Peachey who had lived there long ago.Certainly Mrs. Chope's delicate mahogany and fragile china was a possession to be grateful for. Angelina looked at it with a business eye. She was playing a new part: that of the sternly practical woman. She meant to sell it, and in her own way. When she left the cottage she walked for hours about Brighton, and staying longest in those old crooked lanes behind the post office, where Antony had once bought china.There was no opening left in Brighton for buying and selling. She went on to Worthing; this was on her way back to what in her heart she called fondly "her own sea."Worthing was a place of no imagination. It was materially minded and without tradition. She ran along by a loop line to Littlehampton, and liked that better. Then she went to Bognor, and liked it less than Worthing. Chichester, the last likely place left, she already knew. The choice lay plainly between Littlehampton and Chichester. One of these places must see her life with Antony. They would settle down, she would carry out her scheme, one year would succeed another. This would make life. She had spent a practical day, and she forgot her agony at Antony's plight. She even lost that dull aching of the heart which stood for Julius.She decided that she would spend the next day in Chichester, returning to London, if possible, the same night. Otherwise Antony would fret and wonder. She did not propose to cause him a single pang more. He had suffered enough. They had all suffered. She was thinking distantly of Julius as she walked down the beloved lane to the lodging-house. She was wondering why even a circular had come for him. Fairyland had gone very far away, and it was a realm not to be dwelt upon; however, she still permitted herself to cherish some of his exquisite acts and words. Yet it had become odd—indelicate almost—to think of herself as the worshipped woman.When the landlady opened the door it was at once plain that something had happened. She was haggard and openeyed, she seemed almost to block the way. She seemed to fluff out and spread herself—she was a regular hen guarding chickens.The kitchen was opposite the front door, and Angelina, looking along the narrow, coffin-like passage of this mean house, saw a strange man having tea there."Mr. Pole's come back!" said the landlady in an awful whisper, and jerking her head frantically towards the sittingroom door, which was shut. "Did you know, ma'am?"She put her face close to Angelina's; had any man been there to see he would have said:"What a mighty contrast between two women." Indeed, the man in the kitchen felt something of this. One was all ethereal quiver: amazement mixed with terrified delights; the other was sharp, with a sense of crude drama. The landlady had got hold of something tangible."Why didn't you tell me, ma'am?" she asked insolently. It wasn't fair to give anyone such a shock. How would you like it?""That Mr. Pole was coming back? I didn't know. Go away. Let me pass." Angelina, faint with joy, pushed her hands against the woman's shoulders, trundled her aside. Julius was near. He had returned. Other people were just so many articles of impediment; they were merely furniture.She opened the sitting-room door, leaving the landlady staring. She shut it smartly behind her.Julius was sitting by the open window, and before she even looked at him in detail, she was conscious of some monumental change in the man. The cherished outlines of his head and limbs, the gesture of that hand doubled on his knee, she absorbed instantly, yet added to this was the something else, the new and awful ingredient.He was ugly and brown and little, just as he had been. He was dear. He was familiar. He was regained. No shadow hung between them, not even an explanation seemed necessary. But there was something else. Angelina observed, and she felt that the world cracked under her. That head inclined—acutely listening! What did it mean? His head was turned away from her, and he seemed, poor thing, to be looking out to sea while he sat waiting. He must have heard her enter, yet, obstinately, he remained motionless, inclining to her a mere shoulder.Angelina, on tiptoe, as if he were asleep, went close. She took with immense tenderness that dear head in her two hands. She drew it round to look at her. She knew already what had happened. Knowledge was born. The glance she met was mutely blank.Julius was blind.The one ridiculous word which came to her mind, and which very nearly spurted from her white dry lip, was "comic."Yes, it seemed comic, merely that. After seven years of torpor in Normandy—years which now she knew for merely a time of endurance and of vague waiting for the real lover—drama toppled upon drama. Her tragedy, the tragedy of all three of them, seemed almost vulgar in its plenitude. Certainly it was comic. Just as she shut her mouth hard to keep this foolish word back, prevent it from speech, so she controlled that dangerous bubble in her breast, which was hysteria.There was no time now, there never would be any time, for passive emotion. Her life must be devoted to intrigue and industry; intrigue first—to do what she could for both men; industry after—to work for them, to earn their bread. She seemed to know that Julius, with Antony, was utterly beggared. His first words said it:"Love of my life, sweet of heart; I am back. I could not help it, Angelina. I am stone blind and a pauper."She drew that blank head to her breast. Tears from those sightless eyes splashed on her delicate blouse.Language for a long time utterly failed them, and the room throbbed with pain. Yet even through this silence and despite his plight, Julius imposed the dazzling quality of his presence. Angelina felt the rapt gladness, which, never, could she account for. Just to be with him; that was enough. He was nothing but a meteor in her firmament, but when he rushed across her sky he flooded it with his own light. He put out all the others. Antony was dimmed. He was not dismissed; she would keep leer word with him; yet, dear heaven, here was the man that she loved. The pressure of that blind head to her breast became convulsive. Presently she softly settled it against the back of the roomy arm-chair in which Julius sat. She slipped to the floor between his knees and sobbed. His hands found her black hair, and his fingers moved in it."Darling," he said—and even his voice seemed blank—"can you forgive me for going away? Can you forgive me for coming back."He laughed desolately. Antony also had laughed as he lay in the bed: yet what a difference between those two travesties of mirth!"Don't talk of forgiveness, Julius; we could never offend. Why didn't you tell me? If I had known it might have made all the difference."She was thinking of Antony. Perhaps if she had known only so recently as the day before yesterday that Julius was blind and a beggar, she might have refused to go to Antony. She might have kept herself sacred to the one big claim that one man had. Now she was doomed to split compassion in twain.Her head was against his knee, his hand caressed her, running delicately to the nape of her neck. Once he stooped and softly kissed her hair: already he had the almost uncanny, intuitive sense of the blind, and, feeling her retreat, he said at once:"Do I repel you? I don't see why I shouldn't—an imperfect, bungled thing. Get me into a Home for the Blind, Angelina. Come and see me on visiting days."Antony had said much the same thing about himself. Yes, the position was certainly comic. Angelina smiled in the midst of her secret torture. Such a spasm of the mouth! There was no one now to see."Repel me! No, never," her voice thrilled. " But the moment seems too awful for love-making. The moments always will be; that is what I feel.""Dear! I utterly understand, and indeed this side of love—just kissing—is the first thing to go when trouble comes.Julius spoke wearily."I'd better," he continued, "tell you exactly what has happened. From the first moment I kept something from you. It was such a strong terror that I dared not speak of it. Before ever I met you, Angelina, my eyes had troubled me, and I went to a big swell in London. He told me to go to him again later,""That was the business you went on?""Yes; keep the lash out of your voice.""My very clear, I wasn't lashing.""Bear with my nerves, sweetest, be prepared for them. When you can't see you imagine everything. I shall get used to it. I shall grow a new hide. At present I can't feel sure that even my face looks clean.""You went to the oculist that day you left me?""Yes—and what a day! It was my last of sight; for you can't call the sights of London seeing. I walked away from you through a cloud of clear larks—and is a cloud clear? How they sang! I can hear it! But never mind." He laughed, and this time almost happily. Angelina looked at the sightless, smiling face. His sunny nature would triumph; it would be his salvation. And she would be his eyes; not one mood of the sky or of the sea should escape him. He shouldn't lose a single waving of the tamarisk trees. She would translate to him all and everything. Of tamarisk trees he began to speak."Sun-riddled spray," he said, "floated in a faint mist between the sea and the half-bare tamarisks that morning when I went to the oculist."He said there must be an operation at once, and he gave me hope of sight. I suppose he was just bucking me up; oh no! I suppose he did hope or he wouldn't have done it, would he?"His voice was flat again. He seemed to feel about with it, just as he felt with his scrupulously sensitive hands."And the next that I knew, I was blind; that's all, Angelina. How could I claim you? How could I impose a blind beggar on you, my dear? I lay in the dark and thought about it. I said to myself:" 'Let her go back to ffinch and marry him. God bless her. Let her think me false. That's better for her.' I was only too thankful that you had not married me. Don't cry, darling, for it hurts me more than anything."He moved his hand and gripped her shoulder."No, I won't cry," she said, and kept perfectly still."So I stayed where I was; it was comfortable, but the price was high, and I knew I couldn't stay for ever.""Where was it?""Harley Street."Angelina nearly jumped. Antony was in Harley Place at this moment. When she went to Antony, Julius had been very near."I'd spent nearly all my money, and I thought I'd put an end to things. That's easy enough, and I never wanted courage—of that kind. I was the other sort of coward. Bob and my father rubbed that in. I stole you from Antony.""You never wrote to Robert?""I never wrote to a soul. I meant to slip out. I came down here to the sea. I thought I'd have a last look at you. A look! Did you hear what I said? Darling, darling"—he bent, enfolding her rapturously, but she remained rigid—"I shall never look at your face again.""You won't see it grow old. Such as I had you keep." Her voice tried to sound gay."Dear heart, when I pull you to me, as I did just now, why do you stiffen your back in the savage little way that babies do? I've seen young blackamoors at it.""I didn't know my back stiffened. But I don't want you to kiss me. It is childish; you said something of the sort yourself just now. Dear, dearest one—don't, don't! Let me go.""Oh, but I can't let you go. Come here. Angelina, you are slipping away from me. It is cruel. And I can't see."There was an impressive pause, and all that she suffered through it he would never know: however much you talk and however freely confess, the man never knows the full total of your pain.Angelina struggled with herself, wrestled—and lost. His mutely tender face, with that new heart-breaking expression of searching, made her rush to him, and their mouths met.Later, she slipped to the floor again, and between his knees. Her face was rent, and her eyes were wilder than ever they had been. She let her head fall, she held both his hands and said eloquently:"We are going to be together for ever, but—I can't say it, I can't explain. Dear Julius—no kissing. Do you understand?""Perfectly. And I agree. We will put it away—just childish toys we once had and rejoiced in. Our love is now at a nobler and a more abstract level. Is that what you mean?""Yes, yes!" she was relieved and eager. You say all that I feel.""There would even be a certain artistic impropriety in our making tangible love," he concluded quaintly.He sighed, yet with less depth than she had marked in other sighs of his. And she knew, from this moment, that Julius could dismiss what he called "tangible love" more easily than she could.She, of the three, was still at full tide. Julius and Antony had ebbed.The landlady knocked at the door. Angelina never troubled to move. Little correctitudes no longer touch you when your sorrow is big. She merely turned and said:"Yes, bring in supper, Mrs. Bridger. And get the small bedroom, at the back of mine, ready for Mr. Pole."Julius gave a jerk of the knee. Her shoulder was touching it, and this movement of his ran through her body. He was jarred. They both were."And my man," he said. "Is there a room for him? He can't get back to London to-night.""That can be easily managed, sir."The landlady stared. Those insolently curious eyes! Angelina was valiant. People would always stare at him, her poor love! That rugged brown face and black glasses, that head, altogether too massive upon a slight man, would attract attention. She shrank proudly for Julius. He would be a curiosity. People would gape. Trippers would gape, say she settled in Littlehampton. And he had such a fine scorn of trippers. He riddled the Commonplace mind With satire. But he would not know. He could not see. No glance could ever inflame him.They would be a curious trio; he, she, Antony. Again she shrank. They would be peculiar, and she hated it. Yet she knew that the life-tragedy which they would share and which would be but one tragedy—that was big enough, in all con-science, to beat off the puny attacks of the popular mind. They would move through the world and disregard it.When she was with one man she felt piercing remorse for her treatment of the other. The day before yesterday, when she sobbed by Antony's bed, the plaintive shadow of Julius had, just for a moment, slid between them. Now, at the feet of Julius, she was torn with sharp sorrow for Antony. He was lying alone to-night upon that high bed.He could not move. Julius could not see. Was there ever such a position? Comic! Yes: there was the word.The landlady went away. Presently there came from the kitchen sounds of cutlery. She was coming back to lay the cloth."After supper will you take me to the sea?" asked Julius."The sea—yes. But it will break our hearts. We were happy—and——"She began to cry."For the love of God, don't, Angelina! Let me keep calm. Can't my man take me upstairs to that room at the back, so that I may wash and change my coat for supper?""Yes, dearest—yes."Lightly, with eloquence, she kissed the back of his hands, her lips just brushing."I like you to do that. It's a toy we may keep," he said, sounding happier and standing up. "I must send him away to-morrow. I must learn to dress myself.""No, no. Keep him for the present.""But, darling girl, I haven't any money. Just enough to buy a dog, perhaps, or a—what are those wheezy instruments that blind men play?""Julius! Don't! Now, it is you who hurt me. I have money.""Nonsense, dear; you only have your poor little seventy, and perhaps a hundred or so still left in the bank. Is there a hundred, Angelina?""I expect so. But I'm sure we shan't want money," she returned evasively. " Here he comes. Let him take you upstairs, and after supper we will go to the beach. There's a moon coming up. See?""Darling, I——""You can't. Of course not. Julius! Am I always going to be clumsy? Again I have hurt you.""You've never hurt me, sweet; you couldn't."His man came into the room and led him away.When at last they went out, the moon was high and clear, throwing a strong green light. Angelina, timidly and very lightly, gave Julius her hand. He groped about for it, and then, speaking in a choked, ashamed way, said:"That isn't enough. I'm not used to it all yet. Give me your arm, let me lean at your shoulder; I feel almost as if I were the woman and you the man—I sort of want your arm round my waist."He laughed, adding:"My thick-set waist! How absurd it is."She did not speak, being conscious that no sentence she could voice would be without a quiver. She put her hand through his arm and pulled him vigorously to her; so, linked, and fingers reaching to touch, they went down the beloved lane once more. They were indeed together, but in cruelly changed circumstance. He said:"You must tell me how everything looks. I rely upon you for that in the future. Be my eyes, dear heart; be to me everything.""Yes, everything," she returned solemnly—and the words fought through her frightened thoughts.For was not Antony lying helpless upon his bed up there in Harley Street, and expecting her back!"The trees," she said, "are bare. Branches make a thick pattern against the green sky."He sighed. "How beautiful bare trees can be. I remember that when I was abroad, where everything that grew seemed evergreen, I longed, with a sulky longing, for the naked delicacy of winter branches. We are coming to the sea. I can smell it; and, by the smell and by the sound, the tide is far out.""Very far out," said Angelina blankly.She kept letting go of speech. She turned to look at him. His outlines had always been dear, but now they were touching beyond any endurance. His every line pathetically said " blind man." There had always been some untranslatable lofty simplicity about the look of this ugly, small, brown Julius; yet perhaps in the past she only had seen it. But now it was plain to the world, and he would be appealingly singular in his appearance. She could imagine people in the future turning round to look after him and pity him when he was led by."Yes, very far out," he repeated ponderingly. I can see the wide, ghosty stretch of pale sand, and then the long string—a necklace—of gold and green water. Angelina—doesn't the moon up there look like the calm eye of a cat? I mean a black cat: one of those with staring, sad eyes—malevolent and yet pathetic. Those sort of animals, the straight-tailed, short-coated black cats have always fascinated me. They seem devils, and yet devils despite themselves. They have some memory that goes behind their fall from grace. Do I talk absurdly? You know I always talked, and you always listened. I suppose that will be our way.""What it means to me to hear you talk again! " she said, and a cruel sob burst out."You are crying. Don't, Angelina.""No, I won't, I won't. Be very careful here, and lean hard on my arm. We are coming to the shingle.""Yes," he nodded, and put out his hand as if to feel. "Just about here is the end of the lane, and now, is it now? the sweet tamarisks wave about us. We are passing through a world of fans.""It is now, and—be careful—don't you remember that the shingle is very big at the beginning of the beach?""I remember everything; " he was leaning at her shoulder, and gripping her fingers in a queer, frightened way, "big shingle first, and then the small, and then the line of sand. Lead me out to the very edge of it all, my sweet one. Dear, darling Angelina, I have only you left."Something very like a sob came from his throat now, and her heart, adoring him, stood still in its agony.They went across the sands."I can see it all," Julius said more gaily. "Little crabs hurrying home in the moonlight, after an evening at the club."Angelina laughed convulsively."How dear you are to me, Julius! And you've come back.""Yes, I've come back. I suppose I ought not to have done, but there it is. Life is still too sweet, while you draw breath, anyway, for me to die. We are near the water now. Let's stand still and listen. The surf! Isn't it heavenly? This song sang round my bed in London while I lay on it blind. I lay listening to the sea; it remained in my ears, that echo of it, all those weeks. And how can I say I was blind when every moment I saw your face!"They stood in silence, leaning close. The little waves broke, the moon shone steadily, and in the air there wasn't one pinch of autumn. It was all serenely gracious, it was sweetly uncaring. Angelina looked about her and found everything heartless. Julius stood absolutely still, his head back on his throat, the moon not sparing his lined, uncomely face. The moon didn't care a bit. He said at last:"Take me back. Can't we sit in the shelter of the breakwater, as we did in the summer?""Yes, for a little while. It is warm enough; the wind is from the west. We'll get the other side."Speaking, Angelina looked towards Littlehampton, and she wondered if that or Chichester would be their home of the future. To-morrow should decide. They settled upon fine shingle, and with the ghost white breakwater keeping the west wind away.She said, while their hands kept tight, tight grip, and his blind face was turned adoringly towards hers:"I must leave you to-morrow for a few days, perhaps for a week.""Why?" he gave a galvanic jump upon the little stones."I can't tell you. Don't ask; but you'll know later. Will you trust me, Julius?"He looked away towards Littlehampton, but with his face close up against the white wood of the breakwater. The blank closeness of that face to the breakwater, the way that, unconsciously, he nearly grated his poor nose against it, nearly drove her mad. He was blind. These helpless movements made her realise."Must you go? I'm—I'm afraid," he gulped at last, and turning right away, yet holding tight to her hand. " You see, I haven't got used to it. I'm a coward—but—well, there it is!""I must go, but I'll come back, and as soon as ever I can. I'll never leave you any more afterwards. My word for that.""Darling," Julius turned swiftly round, he ducked awkwardly, and with a fumbling movement let his head fall upon her lap. "I trust you. Never have you broken your word to me, and I know you never will."Angelina's hands apathetically moved down the side of his face—and it looked, in the moonlight, so appallingly drawn, that lean, brown face of his. She was remembering that time when Antony's head had fallen into her lap so desolately in their bedroom at the house in Normandy. That had been on the night when she first met Julius, and had, already, been stirred by him. Already, although she had not realised it, her life in Normandy with Antony, as his wife, had been determined. It was over, it lay dead. Perhaps Antony, psychically, had felt this and suffered. She could again see his brightly curling chestnut hair and the noble shape of his massive head: the implied power, the expressed weakness."I trust you," Julius was saying now, "as you trusted me."She had another pang, for she remembered her confession regarding men to St. Mary of Egypt. That maidenly pause, that sense of a permanent retreat from all wooing, which she had felt while she lived alone by the sea, seemed already to be a phase far away. Her blood was rather racing now as she sat in a magic girdle of the moon near Julius. And her heart was in a double beat for, loving him, she yet remembered Antony. By and by that woman—of the letter to the Saint—would become her real and only self. This attitude of mind—of retreat from men—should be her mental and her spiritual goal; as it is of all finely passionate women in the end.Reproach to her heart remained. Julius was trusting her. She had not trusted him.He lifted his head from her lap, he dragged himself up, and, putting out both arms, felt for her. When he found her, he drew her, unresisting, down. With one long sob, mutual, dim, they were enfolded. Angelina's wet face, grown wild, lay in the tenderly crooked alley of his arm: so she was blind, as he was blind.Beyond the belt of sand the cynical sea kept singing.CHAPTER XIVIT was one of the oldest houses in Littlehampton, away from the town, in a narrow street of dignified, bow-windowed dwellings. It was like one of the old streets in Brighton, going towards Kemp Town, and that was one reason—of many—why Angelina liked it. She was a creature of touching allegiances. It was a corner house, and the bottom part had been turned into a shop many years ago. Outside she had hung a sign, brightly painted and swinging from a wrought iron arm. Over the shop was painted her own name:"ANGELINA PEACHEY. DEALER IN CHINA AND CURIOS."She had lived here five years, she had settled down, and, in a way, was contented. As for the shop, she could hardly help loving a bow-windowed, little-paned place, which reminded her so strongly of the shop in St. Paul's Churchyard. The interior was filled with beautiful things, such as, when she lived in Normandy as Antony's wife, she had been the proud mistress of. Sometimes the fact that nowadays she bought these things and sold them, in order to get a living, seemed merely accidental. She had turned into an excellent business woman, with an absolute genius for bartering. She attended auction sales all over Sussex and beyond. She bought judiciously and sold at a handsome profit. Even Antony, disposed to criticise, was bound to admit this.Antony was sort of propped and put together in his specially constructed chair in the room above the shop. The bowwindow commanded a view of the sea. This was a winter day, with a high wind and a snarling rain. The tide was far out, and the wet, grey, trembling sand seemed to him like the sensitive hide of a great animal. He turned his glance inland and towards the east. He saw the sails of the mill near Rustington, and he knew that, a mile or two beyond that, stretched the bit of beach where Angelina and Julius had loved, through that time when he had been deserted by one and betrayed by the other.He looked into the room and towards the fire. Julius was sitting by it in a chair, not indeed specially constructed, but extremely comfortable and suited to an invalid. What a pair of lovers they were nowadays, for a beautiful woman! Antony's eyes, brightly blue and sharp to see, became gently blank, as they regarded the blind man. There had been a time when, as he sat, helpless, and staring at Julius in this room, his eyes had darkened with pure venom. How he had itched and chafed and fretted in those days to get up from his chair and just choke that little blind scoundrel sitting by the fire. There was generally a fire, for they were both cold. Hate, however, was over. Antony did not exactly love Julius, yet certainly he no longer hated him. He did not even resent him. He had no very definite feeling left for any one. He began to talk:"I suppose," he said, "that Angelina will be back soon. Wonder if she'll buy anything much. It was a good catalogue. Whatever is worth while she'll get, we may be sure of that."He chuckled."She has a diabolical cleverness in buying and selling. It is in her blood. Her trading side we profit by."He instilled a scoffing patronage into this. Julius, sitting motionless and with the patient, waiting air of the blind, darkly flushed."I loathe her to go to sales," he said vigorously. "Good God! What an end for such a grand creature! We can't help it, yet it breaks me up."His head dropped, chin sinking into breast."Fancy Angelina amidst a crowd of rag-picking vultures," he continued."It is natural to her, for see how well she does it," returned Antony coolly. "Success is the proof. I muddled. I didn't even insure my stuff, yet some of this is mine."His restless, brilliant eyes went round the room, looking at the few bits of china, at one good cabinet, and a couple of fine chairs. These things would never be sold. They had been saved from the fire at the house in Normandy."I was able to help her at the start by my knowledge," he said. "With that, and by her inheritance from Mrs. Chope, to make a nucleus of stock, she was able to start business. Angelina is never grateful, she is always cold. Of course I would never consent to have my name up over a shop—fancy a ffinch as a shopkeeper! Yet it would have been graceful in her to suggest it. ffinch and Peachey would have sounded well."He was in his most detestable mood. Julius could only writhe, say nothing, and charitably suppose that this was one of Antony's bad days. He suffered pain. These two men, each disabled, were developing a certain invalid sympathy. It was a quality apart from their feeling for and their tradition with Angelina.They heard feet upon the stairs. Julius started and warmed. Antony hardened his face. Yet he looked eager; for this was Angelina, and he wanted to know all about the sale. And he wanted to see the things she had bought. He hoped that she had them with her.He had never lost his collecting ardour, and it hurt him bitterly that certain cherished things she had picked up from time to time should ever come to be sold.She came in, dowdily dressed, looking handsome, but a little hard and fagged. Her first glance shot, fleetly—and yet with the air of taking a stolen aim—towards Julius. Antony saw; he missed nothing. Yet he was not jealous. Why should either of them be jealous, since she belonged to neither! Moreover, when men are blind or paralysed, what on earth do they want with a wife!Antony argued in this way, and never had he got to the soul of Angelina, nor near the heart of a real Love. This, at least, was what she would always believe of him.She sat down in the middle of the big room and between the two, selecting her spot with a certain deliberation; as if attitude had been painfully considered and decided upon in many poignant secret hours of thought.She sat with a manner of stolid weariness, taking off her gloves. The room was growing dark, on this short winter day. Antony could no longer see the sulky tremble of that grey sand. Julius had his blind face turned wistfully towards Angelina, and, by his very silence, seemed to be trying to impel her nearer."You've got back early," said Antony.His voice had the grating quality that got upon Angelina's nerves when she was tired. It occurred to her, as she tried to conceal her bodily flinching, that Antony never nowadays complained that people got upon his nerves; he had become dryly philosophical, and seemed to divest himself of most human impressions."Yes," she said, "it was a short sale, and the things I wanted came early.""You got them? That Worcester tea-service? And the pewter stuff, a Queen Anne coffee set they called it in the catalogue. Was it any good?""It was beautiful," Angelina laughed; a mirthless, commercial sound, and queer from her throat—to Julius, who was acutely listening, and who remembered other laughs of other days and finer moods."But," she added, "it had been electro-plated by some fool. It didn't even get a bid. The Worcester went for very little. I'm having it packed and sent with the furniture.""What furniture?""Nothing much. Six of those rush-seated, ladder-back chairs. I can always sell those at a good price; in fact, two customers have commissioned me for a set. Then there was a barometer; rather nice, and it went for half a guinea. I've never fathomed the mysteries of a sale. It was a long time before anybody even troubled to bid; yet I can always sell barometers. There are some things," a certain indolent bitterness showed in her voice, " that simple people with a rage for what they call the antique must have.""I know." Antony interrupting, sounded more grating than before, yet he was looking at her admiringly. "A grandfather clock, a warming-pan, a barometer and rushbottomed chairs. You've done well, then, to-day. What's in that parcel?""A tambour scarf." She unrolled it and fluttered it out; a length of filmy muslin, delicately worked, darned beautifully here and there, grown yellow with lying by."But that wasn't in the catalogue. Bring it here." She took it to Antony."You won't have any difficulty with that," he said."Not a bit; in fact Mrs. Chant will buy it. I will write to her to-night. I must carefully think out what price to ask. Wonder how much she would go to? She is enthusiastic, and she knows nothing."Angelina stood with her handsome head on one side, looking sharply reflective, and with a mocking smile upon her mouth. Julius could not see her, but he could hear, and he could imagine the bitterness of that smile. He turned towards the fire, shivering petulantly. His mouth drew down to an expression of disgust and intense hopelessness. The sad sea outside was not so sad as he. Antony, who could see Angelina, and who no longer rejoiced in her beauty, was looking at her masses of hair and thinking casually, when he saw the white streaks in it:"How black it was once; black, burnished, almost blue—a bird's wing. It made her white skin look delicately uncanny."He said nothing of this. Why talk! Then, again, there always was blind Julius sitting by the fire."I got it in an odd way." Angelina took the scarf from him and carefully folded it. "You know my way of poking about, and always with an eye to business.""I know you've got an inherited sharpness.""That is it, no doubt." She was equable—yet she did not miss that angry jump which helpless Julius gave. "I got into conversation with the old woman's nurse. The things sold belonged to a rich spinster. She was nearly ninety, and she was conservative; a miser for hoarding up old clothes; a collector of personal odds and ends."Angelina was eloquent and impassive."We had a long talk, the nurse and I. She has been left the wardrobe. I am to go and see her next week, and make her an offer for the lot. I shall get lace of all sorts, embroidered shawls, pelerines, night-caps, old poke bonnets, funny parasols of seventy years ago—all sorts of treasures. I shall make on that deal. You look tired, Antony. Have you been in pain to-day?""No, thanks." He sounded almost blithe. "I'm getting so numb that soon I shall feel nothing at all."He looked out of the window at the darkening day, at the sea whose movement was becoming invisible. Angelina's glance followed his. Julius, at their silence, turned round, and his blank face was convulsively shown. A cushion from his chair fell to the floor. Angelina moved to pick it up, walking stiffly, because she knew that Antony watched. She was always nervous of provoking his jealousy; but she need not have troubled, for he felt none. Yet to torture her and to torture Julius had become his mild diversion. He did not do it very much, did not spend himself upon it. All his energies were modified.Before she reached Julius, a little bell rang in the room. It was the one from the shop, which summoned her to any particular customer with whom the assistants could not deal. Hers was a flourishing concern. She had three assistants at the counter, and in her workshop, where the furniture which she bought was renovated, she had skilled men. On Antony's good days he had himself taken to that shop, so that he could criticise and advise. The men welcomed him; they were enthusiasts, and his judgment was good. As a connoisseur Antony was faultless. Angelina had certainly done things on a grand scale. She had succeeded."There is the bell, I must go." She sounded full of common sense, as she always was upon business matters.She tucked the fallen cushion in at Julius's neck. His head rested against it, and, falling back in this way, the lines of suffering about his mouth, and running upwards and downwards from the corners of his sightless eyes, were emphasised. He touched Angelina's hand as it withdrew from the cushion."Are you wet?" he whispered. "Hasn't it been raining hard to-day?"He felt along her sleeve."Yes, but I had a waterproof. I kept dry," she said coldly.The whole thing was a pose and unreal. She knew it. They longed to pelt each other with bright-hued, fragrant flowers: the words of worship which they had once gathered together and dispersed.Angelina's face, which he would never see again, evinced, as he touched her, a glorious change. She flushed, she was generous and soft. The look of commerce and haggling died out, and her pale eyes blazed with the beautiful fires which Julius had once rejoiced in. That was five years ago, and just a mile or two away along the coast. Tamarisks waved there; in the dark light and the cold wind this afternoon, breakwaters would look ghostly. Angelina turned towards the window. Antony was staring out, she saw his sharp, wide shoulder, the fine outline of his great head, and the tip of his curling, bright beard. To-day, in the pinched January dusk, no man marked her loveliness and her still living desire.Antony, who had never seen, was passively gazing at the fast-shrouding Channel, Julius was blind.With one swift, fully conscious spasm of real pain, she jerked her face back into its normal expression of positive business. She went to the door, and not only her expression, but her very footfall sobered. She seemed middle-aged. Antony asked, turning to look at her:"Who do you suppose is in the shop? Why do they want you? Can't we have tea?""Yes, quite soon. I won't be a minute longer than I can help. Perhaps it is Lady Beale about the banner screen. They told me, as I came through the shop, that she called this morning and said she would come back with a friend at half-past three. I expect she'll buy it, Antony. What shall I ask?""Ten pounds," he said, with a scornful grin."She won't pay that. It isn't a very good pole, and the work on the banner is coarse; Berlin wool-work in its dregs.""I know," he nodded, "the late samplers are like that too. Yet these idiots never perceive. Tell her it is early-Victorian tent stitch. She'll believe you, and she's rich. Make it guineas, not pounds. The thing is worth thirty shillings at the outside."He laughed as Angelina went out of the room."She'll get it," he said to Julius. "You see how clever she is! No other dealer would have had the wit to get hold of that nurse at the sale. I wish she hadn't folded the tambour scarf up and put it out of my reach. I can't move and you can't see."Julius did not speak. He was huddled by the fire. The back of his head expressed every bitterness. Antony could guess that he was suffering, and felt glad. Was it not naturalto feel glad? He was still man enough for that. Yet, by and by, he would not be; for every morning when he woke he fancied himself more numb than he had been the day before: numb of limb and dulled of soul."She didn't even make the mistake when she started of having young lady assistants in art pinafores," he continued."That would have been fatal. You don't want the air of a fancy workshop. Collectors would have sheered off—I should have done in my day. Angelina, down there, has everything strong and masculine, yet a woman's brain controls. She is really marvellous, and I never expected it of her, did you? In the old days, I mean.""Don't know what I expected," said Julius absently.Antony looked at him, sitting so mute over there; mute and mum he always was; not by any means a gay companion."It is queer," he said. "You hardly ever talk; I do the talking. Yet in the old days I was curmudgeon and you were chatterbox.""My tongue went out with my eyes," said Julius."I suppose you talk to Angelina?" Antony asked pointedly."Yes," the blind face flickered instantly, "we talk.""When you go for walks by the sea and I sit in the workshop watching the men? Don't think I mind her taking you for walks. I don't. For what, my dear fellow, is she to us any more—a nurse to both, a wife to neither? We each wished in our turn to quell, possess and enslave her, but she has slipped through our fingers and we are left sexless, you and I.""That's true enough." Julius leaned forward, peaking his face towards the window "to-day we are at the mercy of her bountiful affection and her perfect, cold tenderness."They both believed her cold, because they had become so cold themselves."She is confoundedly clever, she gets her own way. I believe that this is what she would have chosen from the first if she could have seen the future; not exactly to have me paralysed and you blind, but, nevertheless, to get her own way with us both."Antony, speaking and snapping, looked gloomily out of the window; he could now see nothing but blurred outlines.Julius crept to the fire. Something had come to a full stop with Julius, for he did not talk. He, who had been a macaw, now brooded as an owl."Angelina," said Antony cuttingly, after silence, " is heartless. If you would only believe that of her you would no longer suffer. It is an inherited coldness, a constant passing on of the heart, so that faithfulness, as it is generally known to women, she simply does not understand. She would stare if you called her an artist, yet she has all the inherent fickleness of one. Angelina, old fellow, would have left you in the end as she left me.""I don't agree; but what is the good of dwelling on it?" asked Julius, sounding stupid.Yet, again, He turned from the fire and shot his face nearer to Antony's chair, seeming to feel for direction."We may as well talk about it, for it is our main subject, and will be," Antony said. "We may all three live together twenty years longer. What a farcical trio! The position can't change for you and me; yet it is rather speculative to imagine that she will remain as she is.""I won't hear her attacked.""She isn't; only dissected, and I have every right to do it. If one of us died she would, yet only from duty, marry the other. Yet I am sure that, already, she barely sorts us out in her head as separate entities. We are merely one Idea. We are Love—to her. We are no longer two inimical individualities; Antony ffinch and Julius Pole; men who hated each other. We've lost even that."Antony ceased. He turned from the window and sat looking through the dusk and the firelight at that blank countenance across the hearth."See how she juggled to get us here, under one roof, dependent upon one bounty, at the beginning," he broke out again. "It was a ticklish business, yet she carried it through. Angelina will go far. If we both die before her, and I suppose we shall, she will make some grand marriage, she will be ultraconventional. Or she may be religious and renounce the world. Impossible to say.""How the devil do you know what she'll do?" Julius, asking this, seemed about to spring from his chair, then, remembering, dropped back. His out-flung hand and tilted head expressed a groan."You are feeling, for once in a way," Antony studied him, "as I felt all the time when first she brought us here. You felt nothing then; for you were new to the long darkness, and you were stunned. We have changed places. Nowadays it is I who am strong and voluble; you are the weak churl. Being always with you, as I am doomed to be, I constantly see myself as I was in Normandy. The curious thing is that I am only strong in my emotions now—when it is too late. That is the jest of life; things come too late. If I could have felt towards Angelina all the violence which I felt for you when first we found ourselves imprisoned here together, I should have kept her. Strength is the one thing her kind of woman will have. Angelina has never found it. She's had a bully and she's had a slave, but she's never had the man who will be master and comrade. See how wise I am getting to be, with so much time for thinking. Yet, when first we came here, I didn't want to think, but to act. I would have killed you if I could have got at you. I couldn't, and it was maddening. I wanted to howl like a wild beast. There you sat, blind and small, waiting to be choked—and you deserved it. I couldn't move an inch."Julius said impassively:"I couldn't have escaped you. Perhaps I did deserve it. I hadn't learnt to be deft. I was hideously afraid of failing over things. Now I can dress myself and go up and downstairs."He spoke transparently, as a child speaks, and he seemed gently gay because he had learned to do things."You can grovel about under tables and find a footstool for Angelina. I can't even do that, but I don't want to. You are welcome to any joy you can get. I don't hate you any more," said Antony, and he sounded transparent too.It was hard to believe them grown men—Antony, indeed, was well over forty. They sounded like children, and they might have been two small boys sitting on the floor, gravely discussing some game.Yet the timbre of Antony's voice when next he spoke was fully masculine:"After all," he said, "what did you have of her through those few months? Just a mad love-time, just a few blistering kisses. I had the sane, domestic living, the long, unbroken days and nights, the little marriedy squabbles. All of it is dear to dwell upon. My dreams are richer than yours. They are more healthy and virtuous."Julius turned to the fire, and its light played upon freshsprung agonies in his grey face. He was remembering.He began after a long time:"That day when we three went to the sale in Derbyshire——""I remember, yet perhaps with less delicious reason for memory.""Never mind that." Julius sounded sharply beseeching. "She was such a queen of beauty that you sent her away. She would have spoiled the thing; she was a jewel in a mudpie.""That sounds rather like Julius as he used to be. Yes, I sent her away; into a wood with you. I can see her, I shall always see her as she was then. Do you suppose I forget? Yet I choose to picture her as she is now, going about alone to sales, jostling with frowsy people, nodding to oily dealers—as an equal.""I tell you, Antony, it is all too horrible. That beautiful, rare woman! And we sit here, we live upon her."The blind man sounded in some hopeless frenzy."We sit here, true; yet she does better at the sales than we should, and she has the sense nowadays not to look what you call rare. That is part of her commercial equipment, to look commonplace, I mean. Her good looks she can't help, but she wears serviceable clothes; poor-cut and dingy shades: it pays to look shabby.""She was all glory and glamour that day in Derbyshire," said Julius, with a tremble in his voice. "Do you remember how they stared—the other women?""Console yourself. I don't suppose they stare now, and as to the men, she has useful business relations with the lot. They are all so keen upon a bargain that I doubt if her good looks even count. They may not notice. Remember that Angelina is merely one of them. She is a dealer. Look here, Julius"—Antony's face flushed and then fell heavily—"if we allowed ourselves to think too much we should go mad. This house would turn into a lunatic asylum; we should all smash china and each other."He laughed dreadfully."It isn't pleasant living on the woman you've loved," he said more softly, and Julius sensitively felt that the fine head had fallen. "What else can we do? We haven't a penny. When I wrote to my Aunt Philippa she never answered the letter.""When Bob wrote to me, saying our father was dead and without leaving me a penny, I never answered that," returned Julius. "If I must be dependent let it be upon Angelina.""We've all three come to a pretty pass." Antony's voice now appeared to travel; so he was perhaps looking round the room. "You spoke just now of the Derbyshire sale. What pots and pipkins I had in those days! What delicate cabinets! I can see the inlay of those cabinets now: ivory some and silver others. Then I had an ebony one; gorgeous. My chairs and tables! Their dear, bandy legs! Angelina, nowadays, talks correctly of 'cabriole legs.' She's picked up all the patter. You and she between you have lost me Normandy, for I don't count the epileptic idiot who put a match to the place. If Angelina had married me when our child was born, everything would have gone well. And that's another thing," his voice rang. "Remember that we had a child, she and I. It is all gone. We have lost everything, the three of us. I think of Normandy and the stateliness of all that was mine. Then I look round this room. I have one cabinet—by no means my best—two chairs and a couple of Nankin jars left. The rest of the furniture is solid enough and harmless enough. You'd think twice before you burned it. I said that to Angelina while I was lying in Harley Street. I said it of the few bits of stuff saved from my fire. I repeat myself; perhaps you have noticed that. It is a speedy token of general decay to repeat yourself."He left off talking and there was silence. Then he added, in a grating voice:"Dwell on the humour of our situation and leave pathos alone. Whenever you do get a sharp feeling, dismiss it instantly as sentimental. Be flippant, for all of this is merely a jest. We are walking through the figure of a dance. Think of it in that way. If I could move, if you could see, we'd set to partners, old chap."The door opened suddenly and Angelina came in. She shut it after her briskly, yet softly: with no eagerness, but merely her judicious air of business, which was sometimes strange even to Antony, and which would have broken Julius's heart could lie have seen. She looked sedate and completely obsessed by the spirit of commerce. Not even glancing towards the chair by the fire and the tender, blind face that turned instantly towards her, she advanced to Antony, saying crisply—rapping out every word:"She has bought the banner screen. Ten pounds, she would not rise to guineas. And she wants to see the tambour scarf. I shall not trouble to save it for Mrs. Chant. Also I have told her that I have been offered the old lady's wardrobe. She will come to see it when I've got it here.""That's good." Antony looked at her intently. "It was a good sale for us."The one I went to this morning? Yes. They do vary. I must go down into the shop again."She hastily picked up the tambour scarf."Do you remember that one we went to in Derbyshire, Angelina?" Antony asked this, and his blue eyes winked and slittered on her composed, pale face. She was looking weary in the hard winter light. The squalid life was telling on her, and, indeed, apart from her commercial days, what did any one know of her nights? She might suffer agonies when she lay alone in the dark. Probably the three of them did, and, subtly, this would wear them out one by one.Antony was thinking this and staring at her. He was waiting for her answer. Her pause tantalised him. She said, turning as she spoke:"But I never go so far as Derbyshire to any sale. I wonder what I'd better ask for the scarf?"Antony could not pierce that quiet composure. Perhaps she did not, since she was in her business mood, even remember that sale, nor remember the wood.Yet he observed that she refrained to look at Julius. Standing at the open door, seeming grey, she added:"Lady Beale and her friend will keep me a long time, so don't wait tea. Ring for it at once. I would rather have mine in my own room later on. I'm tired."She slipped out. Antony remained mischievously pondering, and he was devising new tests and tortures. Angelina had lost a great deal of her delicacy. She had grown old enough and had suffered enough to have her beauty swayed by moods. He thought that, standing by the door just now, she had looked merely commercial and quite middle-aged. Once she had been like some splendid star: she had been unassailable in her radiating loveliness.He thought of the house at Horsham, and thought of Leggatt Court, with its stately gardens and its stately mistress. He regretted his Aunt Philippa, but he had alienated her beyond remedy. He looked contemptuously across the room at Julius in the big chair. He was settled far back in that chair, and perhaps lie was asleep. They both dropped off sometimes out of sheer boredom.Angelina was also losing her perception. Was it possible that she had forgotten the sale in Derbyshire? She could never forget; no doubt she still deliriously dwelt upon it in her hidden moments. It had become her remedy for much, that memory. Oh, he knew! Yet when she was possessed by the idea of buying and selling she forgot everything. The spirit of barter in her was remarkably strong, and perhaps this instinct—to trade—was her dominant instinct after all.Yet! Had she forgotten! Or did she, standing there by the door just now, merely bluff? He could not be sure, and the uncertainty teased him. As for caring! What the dickens did he care nowadays either for sales or for the sitting in a wood that came after sales!IIILETTER TO ST. MARY OF EGYPTST. MARY OF EGYPT,WHEN, as a child, I wrote my first letter, my belief in you was young and splendid, when I wrote my second, perhaps I did not believe at all; this afternoon I sit here writing, and, dear Saint, I do not know! Yet there is around me that sense of loving, brooding and protection. It emanates from you, and I feel that you are really you; that, perhaps, you are very near me now, and that, without doubt, you understand. So then! Well, I do believe in you and in all that belief implies.I sit, this winter afternoon, in a room at the back of my shop writing by candlelight. There is a glass upper half to the door, and if I look through I see rich furniture, stacked thick. How deeply in my heart I hate it all. It is so dreary going to sales, to buy and sell, to haggle and plot and plan; I never get any delight in it as Antony still does. When I come home, when I show him new things, his face lights up, and that is the only time that it ever does. It hurts him more to lose those things that I first buy and then sell than it hurt him years ago to lose me. He is usually heavy, he grows more haggard, grey lights lie in the deepening furrows of his face. My compassion for Antony is the strongest and the most constant feeling that I have left. Because I cannot love him, because I never did, there is distilled for him a finer feeling than Julius ever had.Yet Julius is the man that I have loved, he is the man I love still. He is my man. When he was blind and came back I gave myself to him once and entirely, for his slightest touch is a caress comprising all caresses. I was sorry afterwards, yet penitence has no place with Julius.He stands by himself and he always will, whether he lives or dies. He is delicately distinguished from all others. He is part of the mysterious sea, he is one with tamarisk trees and golden shingle. He is meteoric and has always been. My life with him was magically rapt, and, in a sense, it still is. Sometimes, when he is strong enough, we walk by the sea towards Rustington. We go as far as the mill, and I look beyond towards the beach where we loved. He holds my hand tight and I tell him how the sea is looking. As I gave him my heart long ago, so I give hint my eyes now. I feel with a wild throb of the pulse that if once we went beyond the mill, if we returned to that bit of beach which is ours, then we should stay there for ever. I could not forget Antony, yet I might again ignore him. I should be tangled up in golden veils, so how could my feet ever get back to Littlehampton and this sane shop?When the tide is out you could walk along the sands for miles, and we should come, Julius and I, to the pretty places where we sat together. It all looks lonely and most heavenly wild, it certainly beckons me. I said this to him, for I can talk to him and write to you; otherwise I am silent and certainly practical. Julius smiled rather vaguely, distantly, perhaps, and he leaned at my shoulder. There was patience on his poor face. I saw tenderness, understanding—and no desire. Of the three, I am the only one left with primitive desire, and still there is strong in me a sense of life, oh, and such a definite longing. Do you understand, St. Mary of Egypt? Of course you do. It stills me to sit here and write to you, to say to you one thing that I cannot say even to Julius. For he and Antony move through a twilight of the emotions; they are placable, they are almost brotherly. No sharp sunlight of a conflict beats upon either of them any more, otherwise this position could not be. Their dead amity breaks my heart. Yet, do I regret? Do I look back to those days of leaping fire with Julius?How eloquent I am when I sit down and write to you, and how candid. The words that tumble out, perhaps they come from you and not from me; perhaps they express the things that you felt and suffered. Is it that? Am I, after centuries, merely a reflection of you, my Saint and my Friend?I stand with Julius by the sea, I describe to him exactly how the beach looks and how the sky looks, with the sails of the mill against it; I watch his patient face—no passion on it any more, but an inexpressible tenderness. His great love makes me humble. I long for him to pull my hand, not clutch at it in that helpless, timid way that lie still has after years of blindness. But he never does and he never will; nevertheless I am glad that he has not asked me to take him along those sands. Perhaps this proves that he is half afraid to go. He also may feel, if only in a diluted way, that there might for us be no return.This love between a man and a woman, how complex it is—and not merely a matter of getting married and living happy ever after. That may be, but there is more than that. When we all three get to heaven—for of course I devoutly believe in heaven and in you—Julius and Antony and I will laugh out loud. We shall say of all these things, "Do you remember?" We shall pelt each other with agonising incidents: yet we shall be free of pain. We shall be amazed when we find how large Love is, for it will have grown in a hundred ways that we cannot even dream of yet. Here we clutch at only a little corner. In heaven we will feel all this and say all this and laugh and be gay; but meanwhile we are upon earth and I am a woman, strong and not old. Very often I wish—it is such sharp wishing and it hurts—that Julius would pull me along those pretty sands to the bit of the beach which is ours.I feel this, however, less than I did, for as we become older we are certainly more elaborate, and the straight, brutal course is no longer for us. Only the very young or the utterly brutal take what they themselves want and leave the rest. You even waver as to what you do want. I find that already.I sometimes stand at the open door of that room upstairs where Antony and Julius sit: Antony by the window, Julius by the fire. They are up there now and having their tea without me, for to-night, degraded by the sale, as I always am by sales, I felt I must be alone. I felt that I could not, for once in a way, endure our ghastly travesty of family life. And Antony spoke of the Derbyshire sale.What am I to those two men any more? And once I meant so much. What shall I ever be? Sometimes I am possessed by a sense of adventure; that is the Grandmamma Peachey side of me, and it seems diabolical. I feel that I may live long after they are dead, and that the real fruition of my living is still to come. It stands beyond and without any influence either of Antony or Julius. For I am only thirty-five, and I am like the little girl in the poem that Blanche and I learnt at Miss Hopkins's. I "feel my life in every limb." This is my sense of joyful adventure.I stand, as I said, at the door of the room where they sit, and I study them. Antony has grown handsome, there is a calculated dignity to his pose as he sits in his cripple's chair. It is most impressive. Julius has lost what looks he ever had, but I love him, and he is Julius. So what is there to say? That domed, dark head, growing bald and getting grey, those little, sightless eyes, those neat, small limbs, they may express an ugly man to the world; to me there is magic in every outline, and all his movements flash. It sounds childish to say this, but you will understand, as I do. Without doubt you felt the same—and not perhaps towards one man only: there, to me, is the flaw in Love. It can be too diffusive. What does it really mean—this Love?This house where we all three live, and where I so ingeniously trade and earn our bread, is built of flint stone, with warm chimneys and window-framings of mellow, red brick. In just such a house Julius plotted that we should live our married life. In such a house as this, yet farther inland and away from a town, I should have been his wife and borne his children. The very irony of this strikes at my sense of humour now and then. Yet I haven't much humour, that is true; Antony says no humour at all—but he is always wrong, with me. We are fundamentally diverse.I begin to feel that words are running out, that the spell is broken, that you understand completely, that no more needs to be said. So I shall, my Saint, put away this letter in the shell box with the other two, and I will not write to you again; unless they die, those two dear men. Then my sense of adventure will not only awake, but take action, and there will be new sides to show. For certainly no jeweller ever cut a precious stone so cunningly as God Himself cuts a woman's heart.When I sign a letter to you next, if ever I sign, will it again beANGELINA PEACHEYRichard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay.