CHAPTER I

HER STORY

"Clare," I said, "I wish that we had brought some better clothes, if

it were only one frock. You look the oddest figure."

And she did. She was lying head to head with me on the thick moss

which clothed one part of the river bank above Breistolen near the

Sogne Fiord. We were staying at Breistolen, but there was no moss

there, nor in all the Sogne district, I often thought, so deep and

soft, and of so dazzling an orange and white and crimson as that

particular patch. It lay quite high upon the hills, and there were

gigantic grey boulders peeping through the moss here and there, very

fit to break your legs if you were careless. Little more than a mile

above us was the watershed, where our river, putting away with

reluctance a first thought of going down the farther slope towards

Bysberg, parted from its twin brother--who was thither bound with

scores upon scores of puny green-backed fishlets--and instead, came

down our side gliding and swishing and swirling faster and faster, and

deeper and wider, and full, too, of red-speckled yellow trout all

half-a-pound apiece, and very good to eat.

But they were not so sweet or toothsome to our girlish tastes as the

tawny-orange cloud-berries which Clare and I were eating as we lay. So

busy was she with the luscious pile we had gathered that I had to wait

for an answer. And then, "Speak for yourself," she said. "I'm sure you

look like a short-coated baby. He is somewhere up the river, too."

Munch, munch, munch!

"Who is, you greedy little chit?"

"Oh, you know," she answered. "Don't you wish you had your grey plush

here, Bab?"

I flung a look of calm disdain at her; but whether it was the berry

juice which stained our faces that took from its effect, or the free

mountain air which father says saps the foundations of despotism, that

made her callous, at any rate she only laughed scornfully and got up

and went down the stream with her rod, leaving me to finish the

cloud-berries, and stare lazily up at the snow patches on the

hillside--which somehow put me in mind of the grey plush--and follow

or not as I liked.

Clare has a wicked story of how I gave in to father, and came to start

without anything but those rough clothes. She says he said--and Jack

Buchanan has told me that lawyers put no faith in anything that he

says she says, or she says he says, which proves how little truth

there is in this--that if Bab took none but her oldest clothes, and

fished all day and had no one to run her errands--he meant Jack and

the others--she might possibly grow an inch in Norway. As if I wanted

to grow an inch! An inch indeed! I am five feet one and a half high,

and father, who puts me an inch shorter, is the worst measurer in the

world. As for Miss Clare, she would give all her inches for my eyes.

So there!

After Clare left it began to be dull and chilly. When I had pictured

to myself how nice it would be to dress for dinner again, and chosen

the frock I would wear upon the first evening, I grew tired of the

snow patches, and started up stream, stumbling and falling into holes,

and clambering over rocks, and only careful to save my rod and my

face. It was no occasion for the grey plush, but I had made up my mind

to reach a pool which lay, I knew, a little above me. I had filched a

yellow-bodied fly from Clare's hat with a view to that particular

place.

Our river--pleased to be so young, I suppose--did the oddest things

hereabouts. It was not a great churning stream of snow water foaming

and milky, such as we had seen in some parts, streams which affected

to be always in flood, and had the look of forcing the rocks asunder

and clearing their paths even while you watched them with your fingers

in your ears. Our river was none of these; still it was swifter than

English rivers are wont to be, and in parts deeper, and transparent as

glass. In one place it would sweep over a ledge and fall wreathed in

spray into a spreading lake of black, rock-bound water. Then it would

narrow again until, where you could almost jump across, it darted

smooth and unbroken down a polished shoot with a swoop like a

swallow's. Out of this it would hurry afresh to brawl along a gravelly

bed, skipping jauntily over first one and then another ridge of stones

that had silted up weir-wise and made as if they would bar the

channel. Under the lee of these there were lovely pools.

To be able to throw into mine, I had to walk out along the ridge on

which the water was shallow, yet deep enough to cover my boots. But I

was well rewarded. The "forellin"--the Norse name for trout, and as

pretty as their girls' wavy fair hair--were rising so merrily that I

hooked and landed one in five minutes, the fly falling from its mouth

as it touched the stones. I hate taking out hooks. I used at one time

to leave the fly in the fish's mouth to be removed by father at the

weighing house; until Clare pricked her tongue at dinner with an

almost new, red tackle, and was so mean as to keep it, though I

remembered what I had done with it, and was certain it was mine--which

was nothing less than dishonest of her.

I had just got back to my place and made a fine cast, when there

came--not the leap, and splash, and tug which announced the

half-pounder--but a deep, rich gurgle as the fly was gently sucked

under, and then a quiet, growing strain upon the line which began to

move away down the pool in a way that made the winch spin again and

filled me with mysterious pleasure. I was not conscious of striking or

of anything but that I had hooked a really good fish; and I clutched

the rod with both hands and set my feet as tightly as I could upon the

slippery gravel. The line moved up and down, and this way and that,

now steadily and as with a purpose, and then again with an eccentric

rush that made the top of the rod spring and bend so that I looked

for it to snap each moment. My hands began to grow numb, and the

landing-net, hitherto an ornament, fell out of my waist-belt and went

I knew not whither. I suppose I must have stepped unwittingly into

deeper water, for I felt that my skirts were afloat, and altogether

things were going dreadfully against me, when the presence of a

reinforcement was announced by a cheery shout from the far side of the

river.

"Keep up your point! Keep up your point!" some one cried briskly.

"That is better!"

The unexpected sound--it was a man's voice--did something to keep up

my heart. But for answer I could only shriek, "I can't! It will

break!" as I watched the top of my rod jigging up and down, very much

in the fashion of Clare performing what she calls a waltz. She dances

as badly as a man.

"No, it will not," he cried bluntly. "Keep it up, and let out a little

line with your fingers when he pulls hardest."

We were forced to shout and scream. The wind had risen and was adding

to the noise of the water. Soon I heard him wading behind me. "Where's

your landing-net?" he asked, with the most provoking coolness.

"Oh, in the pool! Somewhere about. I don't know," I answered, wildly.

What he said to this I could not catch, but it sounded rude. Then he

waded off to fetch, as I guessed, his own net. By the time he reached

me again I was in a sad plight, feet like ice, and hands benumbed,

while the wind, and rain, and hail, which had come down upon us with a

sudden violence, unknown, it is to be hoped, anywhere else, were

mottling my face all kinds of unbecoming colours. But the line was

taut. And wet and cold went for nothing five minutes later, when the

fish lay upon the bank, its prismatic sides slowly turning pale and

dull, and I knelt over it half in pity and half in triumph, but wholly

forgetful of the wind and rain.

"You did that very pluckily, little one," said the on-looker; "but I

am afraid you will suffer for it by-and-by. You must be chilled

through."

Quickly as I looked at him, I only met a good-humoured smile. He did

not mean to be rude. And after all, when I was in such a mess it was

not possible that he could see what I was like. He was wet enough

himself. The rain was streaming from the brim of the soft hat which he

had turned down to shelter his face; it was trickling from his chin,

and turning his shabby Norfolk jacket a darker shade. As for his

hands, they looked red and knuckly, and he had been wading almost to

his waist. But he looked, I don't know why, all the manlier and nicer

for these things, because, perhaps, he cared for them not a whit. What

I looked like myself I dared not think. My skirts were as short as

short could be, and they were soaked; most of my hair was unplaited,

my gloves were split, and my sodden boots were out of shape. I was

forced, too, to shiver and shake with cold, which was provoking, for I

knew that it made me seem half as small again.

"Thank you, I am a little cold, Mr. ----, Mr. ----?" I said gravely,

only my teeth would chatter so that he laughed outright as he took me

up with--

"Herapath. And to whom have I the honour of speaking?"

"I am Miss Guest," I said, miserably. It was too cold to be frigid

with advantage.

"Commonly called Bab, I think," the wretch answered. "The walls of our

hut are not soundproof, you see. But come, the sooner you get back to

dry clothes and the stove, the better, Bab. You can cross the river

just below, and cut off half a mile that way."

"I can't," I said, obstinately. Bab, indeed! How dared he?

"Oh yes, you can," he answered, with intolerable good temper. "You

shall take your rod and I the prey. You cannot be wetter than you are

now."

He had his way, of course, since I did not foresee that at the ford he

would lift me up bodily and carry me over the deeper part without a

pretence of asking leave, or a word of apology. It was done so quickly

that I had no time to remonstrate. Still I was not going to let it

pass, and when I had shaken myself straight again, I said, with all

the haughtiness I could assume, "Don't you think, Mr. Herapath, that

it would have been more--more----"

"Polite to offer to carry you over, child? No, not at all. And now it

will be wiser and warmer for you to run down the hill. Come along!"

And without more ado, while I was still choking with rage, he seized

my hand and set off at a trot, lugging me through the sloppy places

much as I have seen a nurse drag a fractious child down Constitution

Hill. It was not wonderful that I soon lost the little breath his

speech had left me, and was powerless to complain when we reached the

bridge. I could only thank Heaven that there was no sign of Clare. I

think I should have died of mortification if she had seen us come down

the hill hand-in-hand in that ridiculous fashion. But she had gone

home, and at any rate I escaped that degradation.

A wet stool-car and wetter pony were dimly visible on the bridge; to

which, as we came up, a damp urchin creeping from some crevice added

himself. I was pushed in as if I had no will of my own, the gentleman

sprang up beside me, the boy tucked himself away somewhere behind, and

the little "teste" set off at a canter, so deceived by the driver's

excellent imitation of "Pss," the Norse for "Tchk," that in ten

minutes we were at home.

"Well, I never!" Clare said, surveying me from a respectful distance,

when at last I was safe in our room. "I would not be seen in such a

state by a man for all the fish in the sea!"

And she looked so tall, and trim, and neat, that it was the more

provoking. At the moment I was too miserable to answer her; and I had

to find comfort in promising myself, that when we were back in Bolton

Gardens I would see that Fraeulein kept Miss Clare's pretty nose to the

grindstone though it were ever so much her last term, or Jack were

ever so fond of her. Father was in the plot against me, too. What

right had he to thank Mr. Herapath for bringing "his little girl" home

safe? He can be pompous enough at times. I never knew a stout Queen's

Counsel--and he is stout--who was not, any more than a thin one, who

did not contradict. It is in their parents, I believe.

Mr. Herapath dined with us that evening--if fish and potatoes and

boiled eggs, and sour bread and pancakes, and claret and coffee can be

called a dinner--but nothing I could do, though I made the best of my

wretched frock and was as stiff as Clare herself, could alter his

first impression. It was too bad; he had no eyes! He either could not

or would not see any one but the draggled Bab--fifteen at most and a

very tom-boy--whom he had carried across the river. He styled Clare,

who talked Baedeker to him in her primmest and most precocious way,

Miss Guest; and once at least during the evening he dubbed me plain

Bab. I tried to freeze him with a look then, and father gave him a

taste of his pompous manner, saying coldly that I was older than I

seemed. But it was not a bit of use; I could see that he set it all

down to the grand airs of a spoiled child. If I had put my hair up, it

might have opened his eyes, but Clare teased me about it and I was too

proud for that.

When I asked him if he was fond of dancing, he said good-naturedly, "I

don't visit very much, Miss Bab. I am generally engaged in the

evening."

Here was a chance. I was going to say that that no doubt was the

reason why I had never met him, when father ruthlessly cut me short by

asking, "You are not in the law?"

"No," he replied. "I am in the London Fire Brigade."

I think that we all upon the instant saw him in a helmet sitting at

the door of the fire station by St. Martin's Church. Clare turned

crimson, and his host seemed on a sudden to call his patent to mind.

The moment before I had been as angry as angry could be with our

guest, but I was not going to look on and see him snubbed when he was

dining with us and all. So I rushed into the gap as quickly as

surprise would let me with, "Oh, dear, what fun! Do tell me all about

a fire!"

It made matters--my matters--worse, for I could have cried with

vexation when I read in his face that he had looked for their

astonishment; while the ungrateful fellow set down my eager remark to

childish ignorance.

"Some time I will," he said with a quiet smile _de haut en bas_; "but

I do not often attend one in person. I am the Chief's private

secretary, aide-de-camp, and general factotum."

It turned out that he was the son of a certain Canon Herapath, so that

father lost sight of his patent box altogether, and they set to

discussing Mr. Gladstone, while I slipped off to bed feeling as small

as I ever did in my life and out of temper with everybody. Not for a

long time had I been used to young men talking politics to him, when

they could talk--politics--to me.

Possibly I deserved the week of vexation which followed; but it was

almost more than I could bear. He--Mr. Herapath, of course--was

always on the spot fishing or lounging outside the little white

posting-house, taking walks and meals with us, and seeming heartily to

enjoy father's society. He came with us when we drove to the top of

the pass to get a glimpse of the Sultind peak; and it looked so

brilliantly clear and softly beautiful as it seemed to float, just

tinged with colour, in a far-off atmosphere of its own beyond the

dark ranges of nearer hills, that I began to think at once of the

drawing-room in Bolton Gardens with a cosy fire burning, and afternoon

tea coming up. The tears came to my eyes, and he saw them before I

could turn away from the view; and said to father that he feared his

little girl was tired as well as cold--and so spoiled all my pleasure.

I looked back afterwards as father and I drove down; he was walking

beside Clare's cariole and they were laughing heartily.

And that was the way always. He was such an elder brother to me--a

thing I never had and do not want--that a dozen times a day I set my

teeth together viciously and vowed that if ever we met in London--but

what nonsense that was, because, of course, it mattered nothing to me

what he was thinking, only he had no right to be so rudely familiar.

That was all; but it was quite enough to make me dislike him.

However, a sunny morning in the holidays is a cheerful thing, and when

I strolled down stream with my rod on the day after our expedition, I

felt that I could enjoy myself very nearly as much as I had, before

his coming spoiled our party. I dawdled along, now trying a pool, now

clambering up the hillsides to pick raspberries, and now counting the

magpies that flew across, feeling altogether very placid and good and

contented. I had chosen the lower river because Mr. Herapath usually

fished the upper part, and I would not be ruffled this nice day. So I

was the more vexed when I came upon him fishing; and fishing where he

had no right to be. Father had spoken to him about the danger of it,

and he had as good as said he would not do it again. Yet he was there,

thinking, I daresay, that we should not know. It was a spot where one

bank rose into a cliff, frowning over a deep pool at the foot of some

falls. Close to the cliff the water ran with the speed of a mill race.

But on the far side of this current there was a bit of slack water so

promising that it had tempted some one to devise means to fish it,

which from the top of the cliff was impossible. Just above the water

was a ledge, a foot wide, which might have served only it did not

reach the nearer end of the cliff. However, the foolhardy person had

espied this, and got over the gap by bridging the latter with a bit of

plank, and then had drowned himself or gone away, in either case

leaving his board to tempt others to do likewise.

And there was Mr. Herapath fishing from the ledge. It made me giddy to

look at him. The rock overhung the water so much that he could not

stand upright; the first person who fished there must have learned to

curl himself up from much sleeping in Norwegian beds, which were short

for me. I thought of this as I watched him, and I laughed, and was for

going on. But when I had walked a few yards, meaning to pass round the

rear of the cliff, I began to fancy all sorts of foolish things might

happen. I felt sure that I should have no more peace or pleasure if I

left him there. I hesitated. Yes, I would. I would go down, and ask

him to leave the place; and, of course, he would do it.

I lost no time, but ran down the slope. My way lay over loose shale

mingled with large stones, and it was steep. It is wonderful how

swiftly a thing that cannot be undone is done, and we are left

wishing--oh, so vainly--that we could put the world, and all things in

it, back by a few seconds. I was checking myself near the bottom, when

a big stone on which I stepped moved under me. The shale began to slip

in a mass, and the stone to roll. It was done in a moment. I stayed

myself, that was easy, but the stone took two bounds, jumped sideways,

struck the piece of board which only rested lightly at either end, and

before I could take it in the little bridge plunged end first into the

current, which swept it out of sight in an instant.

He threw up his hands, for he had turned, and we both saw it happen.

He made indeed as if he would try to save it, but that was impossible.

Then, while I cowered in dismay, he waved his arm to me in the

direction of home--again and again. The roar of the falls drowned what

he said, but I guessed his meaning. I could not help him myself, but I

could fetch help. It was three miles to Breistolen, rough rocky ones,

and I doubted whether he could keep his cramped position with that

noise deafening him, and the endless whirling stream before his eyes,

while I was going and coming. But there was no better way; and even as

I wavered, he signalled to me again imperatively. For an instant

everything seemed to go round with me, but it was not the time for

that, and I tried to collect myself, and harden my heart. Up the bank

I went steadily, and once at the top set off at a rim homewards.

I cannot tell how I did it; how I passed over the uneven ground or

whether I went quickly or slowly save by the reckoning father made

afterwards. I only remember one long hurrying scramble; now I panted

uphill, now I ran down, now I was on my face in a hole, breathless and

half-stunned, and now I was up to my knees in water. I slipped and

dropped down places from which I should at other times have shrunk,

and hurt myself so that I bore the marks for months. But I thought

nothing of these things: all my being was spent in hurrying on for his

life, the clamour of every cataract I passed seeming to stop my

heart's beating with fear. So I reached Breistolen and panted over the

bridge and up to the little white house lying so quiet in the

afternoon sunshine, father's stool-car even then at the door ready to

take him to some favorite pool. Somehow I made him understand that

Herapath was in danger, drowning already, for all I knew; and then I

seized a great pole which was leaning against the porch, and climbed

into the car. Father was not slow either; he snatched a coil of rope

from the luggage, and away we went, a man and boy whom he had hastily

called running behind us. We had lost very little time, but so much

may happen in a little time.

We were forced to leave the car a quarter of a mile from the river,

and walk or run the rest of the way. We all ran, even father, as I had

never known him run before. My heart sank at the groan he uttered when

I pointed out the spot. We came to it one by one and we all looked.

The ledge was empty. Mr. Herapath was gone. I suppose I was tired out.

At any rate I could only look at the water in a dazed way, and cry

without much feeling that it was my doing; while the men shouted to

one another in strange hushed voices and searched about for any sign

of his fate--"James Herapath!" So he had written his name only

yesterday in the travellers' book at the posting-house, and I had

sullenly watched him from the window, and then had sneaked to the book

and read it. That was yesterday, and now! Oh, to hear him say "Bab"

once more!

"Bab! Why, Miss Bab, what is the matter?"

Safe and sound! Yes, when I turned he was there, safe, and strong, and

cool, rod in hand, and a smile in his eyes. Just as I had seen him

yesterday, and thought never to see him again; and saying "Bab"

exactly as of old, so that something in my throat--it may have been

anger at his rudeness, but I do not think it was--prevented me

answering a word until all the others came around us, and a babel of

Norse and English, and something that was neither yet both, set in.

"But how is this?" my father objected, when he could be heard, "you

are quite dry, my boy?"

"Dry! Why not, sir? For goodness' sake, what is the matter?"

"The matter! Didn't you fall in, or something of the kind?" father

asked, bewildered by the new aspect of the case.

"It does not look like it, does it? Your daughter gave me a very

uncomfortable start by nearly doing so."

Every one looked at me for an explanation. "How did you manage to get

from the ledge?" I asked feebly. Where was the mistake? I had not

dreamed it.

"From the ledge? Why, by the other end, to be sure. Of course I had to

walk back round the hill; but I did not mind. I was thankful that it

was the plank and not you that fell in."

"I--I thought--you could not get from the ledge," I muttered. The

possibility of getting off at the other end had never occurred to me;

and so I had made such a simpleton of myself. It was too absurd, too

ridiculous. It was no wonder that they all screamed with laughter at

the fool's errand they had come upon, and stamped about and clung to

one another. But, when he laughed too--and he did until the tears came

into his eyes--there was not an ache or pain in my body--and I had cut

my wrist to the bone against a splinter of rock--that hurt me one-half

as much. Surely he might have seen another side to it. But he did not;

and so I managed to hide my bandaged wrist from him, and father drove

me home. There I broke down entirely, and Clare put me to bed, and

petted me, and was very good to me. And when I came down next day,

with an ache in every part of me, he was gone.

"He asked me to tell you," said Clare, not looking up from the fly she

was tying at the window, "that he thought you were the bravest girl he

had ever met."

So he understood now, when others had explained it to him. "No,

Clare," I said coldly, "he did not say that; he said 'the bravest

little girl.'" For indeed, lying upstairs with the window open I had

heard him set off on his long drive to Laerdalsoeren. As for father he

was half-proud and half-ashamed of my foolishness, and wholly at a

loss to think how I could have made the mistake.

"You've generally some common-sense, my dear," he said that day at

dinner, "and how in the world you could have been so ready to fancy

the man was in danger, I--can--not--imagine!"

"Father," Clare put in suddenly, "your elbow is upsetting the salt."

And as I had to move my seat at that moment to avoid the glare of the

stove which was falling on my face, we never thought it out.

CHAPTER II

HIS STORY

I was not dining out much at that time, partly because my acquaintance

in town was limited, and partly because I cared little for it. But

these were pleasant people, the old gentleman witty and amusing, the

children, lively girls, nice to look at and good to talk with. All

three had a holiday flavour about them wholesome to recall in Scotland

Yard; and as I had expected that, playtime over, I should see no more

of them, I was pleased to find that Mr. Guest had not forgotten me,

and pleased also--foreseeing that we should kill our fish over

again--to regard his invitation to dine at a quarter to eight as a

royal command.

But if I took it so, I was wanting in the regal courtesy to match.

What with one delay owing to work which would admit of none, and

another caused by a cabman strange to the ways of town, it was fifteen

minutes after the hour named when I reached Bolton Gardens. A stately

man, so like the Queen's Counsel, that it was plain upon whom the

latter modelled himself, ushered me into the dining-room, where Guest

greeted me kindly, and met my excuses by apologies on his part--for

preferring, I suppose, the comfort of eleven people to mine. Then he

took me down the table, and said, "My daughter," and Miss Guest shook

hands with me and pointed to the chair at her left. I had still, as I

unfolded my napkin, to say, "Clear, if you please," and then I was

free to turn and apologise to her--feeling a little shy, and being, as

I have said, a somewhat infrequent diner out.

I think that I never saw so remarkable a likeness--to her younger

sister--in my life. She might have been little Bab herself, but for

her dress and, of course, some differences. Miss Guest could not be

more than nineteen, in form almost as fairy-like as the little one,

and with the same child-like innocent look in her face. She had the

big, grey eyes, too, that were so charming in Bab; but hers were more

tender and thoughtful, and a thousand times more charming. Her hair

too was brown and wavy; only, instead of hanging loose or in a

pig-tail anywhere and anyhow in a fashion I well remembered, it was

coiled in a coronal on the shapely little head, that looked Greek,

and in its gracious, stately, old-fashioned pose was quite unlike

Bab's. Her dress, of some creamy, gauzy stuff, revealed the prettiest

white throat in the world, and arms decked in pearls, and these, of

course, no more recalled my little fishing mate than the sedate

self-possession and dignity of the girl, as she talked to her other

neighbour, suggested Bab making pancakes and chattering with the

landlady's children in her wonderfully acquired Norse. It was not Bab

in fact: and yet it might have been: an etherealised, queenly womanly

Bab, who presently turned to me--

"Have you quite settled down after your holiday?" she asked, staying

the apologies I was for pouring into her ear.

"I had until this evening, but the sight of your father is like a

breath of fiord air. I hope your sisters are well."

"My sisters?" she murmured wonderingly, her fork half-way to her

pretty mouth and her attitude one of questioning.

"Yes," I said, rather puzzled. "You know they were with your father

when I had the good fortune to meet him. Miss Clare and Bab."

She dropped her fork on the plate with a great clatter.

"Perhaps I should say Miss Clare and Miss Bab."

I really began to feel uncomfortable. Her colour rose, and she looked

me in the face in an odd way as if she resented the inquiry. It was a

relief to me, when, with some show of confusion, she faltered, "Oh,

yes, I beg your pardon, of course they were! How very foolish of me.

They are quite well, thank you," and so was silent again. But I

understood now. Mr. Guest had omitted to mention my name, and she had

taken me for some one else of whose holiday she knew. I gathered from

the aspect of the table and the room that the Guests saw much company,

and it was a very natural mistake, though by the grave look she bent

upon her plate it was clear that the young hostess was taking herself

to task for it: not without, if I might judge from the lurking smile

at the corners of her mouth, a humorous sense of the slip, and perhaps

of the difference between myself and the gentleman whose part I had

been unwittingly supporting. Meanwhile I had a chance of looking at

her unchecked; and thought of Dresden china, she was so dainty.

"You were nearly drowned, or something of the kind, were you not?" she

asked, after an interval during which we had both talked to others.

"Well, not precisely. Your sister fancied I was in danger, and behaved

in the pluckiest manner--so bravely that I can almost feel sorry that

the danger was not real to dignify her heroism."

"That was like her," she answered in a tone just a little scornful.

"You must have thought her a terrible tom-boy."

While she was speaking there came one of those dreadful lulls in the

talk, and Mr. Guest, overhearing, cried, "Who is that you are abusing,

my dear? Let us all share in the sport. If it's Clare, I think I can

name one who is a far worse hoyden upon occasion."

"It is no one of whom you have ever heard, father," she answered,

archly. "It is a person in whom Mr.--Mr. Herapath--" I had murmured my

name as she stumbled--"and I are interested. Now tell me, did you not

think so?" she murmured, leaning the slightest bit towards me, and

opening her eyes as they looked into mine in a way that to a man who

had spent the day in a dusty room in Great Scotland Yard was

sufficiently intoxicating.

"No," I said, lowering my voice in imitation of hers. "No, Miss Guest,

I did not think so at all. I thought your sister a brave little thing,

rather careless as children are, but likely to grow into a charming

girl."

I wondered, marking how she bit her lip and refrained from assent,

whether there might not be something of the shrew about my beautiful

neighbour. Her tone when she spoke of her sister seemed to import no

great goodwill.

"You think so?" she said, after a pause. "Do you know," with a

laughing glance, "that some people think I am like her?"

"Yes," I answered, gravely. "Well, I should be able to judge, who

have seen you both and am not an old friend. And I think you are both

like and unlike. Your sister has beautiful eyes"--she lowered hers

swiftly--"and hair like yours, but her manner and style are different.

I can no more fancy Bab in your place than I can picture you, Miss

Guest, as I saw her for the first time--and on many after occasions,"

I added, laughing as much to cover my own hardihood as at the queer

little figure I conjured up.

"Thank you," she replied--and for some reason she blushed to her ears.

"That, I think, must be enough of compliments for to-night--as you are

not an old friend." And she turned away, leaving me to curse my folly

in saying so much, when our acquaintance was in the bud, and as

susceptible to over-warmth as to a temperature below zero.

A moment later the ladies left us. The flush I had brought to her

cheek lingered, as she swept past me with a wondrous show of dignity

in one so young. Mr. Guest came down and took her place, and we

talked of the "land of berries," and our adventures there, while the

rest--older friends--listened indulgently or struck in from time to

time with their own biggest fish and deadliest flies.

I used to wonder why women like to visit dusty chambers; why, they get

more joy--I am fain to think they do--out of a scrambling tea up three

pairs of stairs in Pump Court, than from the same materials--and

comfort withal--in their own house. I imagine it is for the same

reason that the bachelor finds a charm in a lady's drawing-room, and

there, if anywhere, sees her with a reverent mind. A charm and a

subservience which I felt to the full in the Guests' drawing-room--a

room rich in subdued colours and a cunning blending of luxury and

comfort. Yet it depressed me. I felt myself alone. Mr. Guest had

passed on to others and I stood aside, the sense that I was not of

these people troubling me in a manner as new as it was absurd: for I

had been in the habit of rather despising "society." Miss Guest was at

the piano, the centre of a circle of soft light, which showed up a

keen-faced, close-shaven man leaning over her with the air of one used

to the position. Every one else was so fully engaged that I may have

looked, as well as felt, forlorn; at any rate, meeting her eyes I

could have fancied she was regarding me with amusement--almost with

triumph. It must have been mere fancy, bred of self-consciousness, for

the next moment she beckoned me to her, and said to her cavalier--

"There, Jack, Mr. Herapath is going to talk to me about Norway now, so

that I don't want you any longer. Perhaps you won't mind stepping up

to the schoolroom--Fraeulein and Clare are there--and telling Clare,

that--that--oh, anything."

There is no piece of ill-breeding so bad to my mind as for a man who

is at home in a house to flaunt his favour in the face of other

guests. That young man's manner as he left her, and the smile of

intelligence which passed between them, were such a breach of good

manners as would have ruffled any one. They ruffled me--yes, me,

although it was no concern of mine what she called him, or how he

conducted himself--so that I could do nothing but stand by the piano

and sulk. One bear makes another, you know.

She did not speak; and I, content to watch the slender hands stealing

over the keys, would not, until my eyes fell upon her right wrist. She

had put off her bracelets and so disclosed a scar upon it, something

about which--not its newness--so startled me that I said abruptly,

"That is very strange! Pray tell me how you did it?"

She looked up, saw what I meant, and stopping hastily, put on her

bracelets; to all appearances so vexed by my thoughtless question, and

anxious to hide the mark, that I was quick to add humbly, "I asked

because your sister hurt her wrist in nearly the same place on the day

when she thought I was in trouble. And the coincidence struck me."

"Yes, I remember," she answered, looking at me I thought with a

certain suspicion, as though she were not sure that I was giving the

right motive. "I did this in the same way. By falling, I mean. Isn't

it a hateful disfigurement?"

It was no disfigurement. Even to her, with a woman's love of conquest

it must have seemed anything but a disfigurement--had she known what

the quiet, awkward man at her side was thinking, who stood looking

shyly at it and found no words to contradict her, though she asked him

twice, and thought him stupid enough. A great longing for that soft,

scarred wrist was on me--and Miss Guest had added another to the

number of her slaves. I don't know now why the blemish should have so

touched me any more than I could then guess why, being a commonplace

person, I should fall in love at first sight and feel no surprise at

my condition, but only a half-consciousness that in some former state

of being I had met my love, and read her thoughts, and learned her

moods; and come to know the womanly spirit that looked from her eyes

as well as if she were an old friend. But so vivid was this sensation,

that once or twice, then and afterwards, when I would meet her glance,

another name than hers trembled on my tongue and passed away before I

could shape it into sound.

After an interval, "Are you going to the Goldmace's dance?" she asked.

"No," I answered her, humbly. "I go out so little."

"Indeed?" with an odd smile not too kindly. "I wish--no I don't--that

we could say the same. We are engaged, I think"--she paused, her

attention divided between myself and Boccherini's minuet, the low

strains of which she was sending through the room--"for every

afternoon--this week--except Saturday. By the way, Mr. Herapath--do

you remember what was the name--Bab told me you called her?"

"Bonnie Bab," I answered absently. My thoughts had gone forward to

Saturday. We are always dropping to-day's substance for the shadow of

tomorrow; like the dog--a dog was it not?--in the fable.

"Oh, yes, Bonnie Bab," she murmured softly. "Poor Bab!" and suddenly

she cut short Boccherini's music and our chat by striking a terrific

discord and laughing at my start of discomfiture. Every one took it as

a signal to leave. They all seemed to be going to meet her next day,

or the day after that. They engaged her for dances, and made up a

party for the play, and tossed to and fro a score of laughing

catch-words, that were beyond my comprehension. They all did this,

except myself.

And yet I went away with something before me--the call upon Saturday

afternoon. Quite unreasonably I fancied that I should see her alone.

And so when the day came and I stood outside the opening door of the

drawing-room, and heard voices and laughter behind it, I was hurt and

aggrieved beyond measure. There was a party, and a merry one,

assembled; who were playing at some game as it seemed to me, for I

caught sight of Clare whipping off an impromptu bandage from her eyes,

and striving by her stiffest air to give the lie to a pair of flushed

cheeks. The close-shaven man was there, and two men of his kind, and a

German governess, and a very old lady in a wheel-chair, who was called

"grandmamma," and Miss Guest herself looking, in the prettiest dress

of silvery plush, as bright and fair and graceful as I had been

picturing her each hour since we parted.

She dropped me a stately courtesy. "Will you be blindfold, or will you

play the part of Miss Carolina Wilhelmina Amelia Skeggs, Mr. Herapath,

while I say 'Fudge!' or will you burn nuts and play games with this

gentleman--he is neighbour Flamborough? You will join us, won't you?

Clare does not so misbehave every day, only it is a wet afternoon and

so cold and wretched, and we did not think there would be any more

callers--and tea will be up in five minutes."

She did not think there would be any more callers! Something in her

smile belied the words and taught me that she had thought--she had

known--that there would be one more caller--one who would burn nuts

and play games with her, though Rome itself were afire, and Tooley

Street and the Mile End Road to boot.

It was a simple game, and not likely, one would say, to afford much

risk of that burning of the fingers, which gave a zest to the Vicar of

Wakefield's nuts. One sat in the middle blindfolded, while the rest

disguised their own or assumed each other's voices, and spoke one by

one some gibe or quip at his expense. When he succeeded in naming the

speaker, the detected satirist put on the poke, and in his turn heard

things good--if he had a conceit of himself--for his soul's health.

The _role_ presently fell to me, and proved a heavy one, because I was

not so familiar with the others' voices as were the rest; and Miss

Guest--whose faintest tones I thought I should know--had a wondrous

knack of cheating me, now taking off Clare's voice, and now--after the

door had been opened to admit the tea--her father's. So I failed again

and again to earn my relief. But when a voice behind me cried with

well-feigned eagerness--

"How nice! Do tell me all about a fire!"--then, though no fresh

creaking of the door had reached me, nor warning been given of an

addition to the players, I had no doubt who spoke, but exclaimed at

once, "That is Bab! Now I cry you mercy. I am right this time. That

was Bab!"

I looked for a burst of applause such as had before attended a good

thrust home, but none came. On the contrary, with my words so odd a

silence fell upon the room that it was clear that something was wrong.

And I pulled off my handkerchief in haste, repeating, "That was Bab, I

am sure."

But if it was, I could not see her. And what had come over them all?

Jack's face wore a provoking smile, and his friends were bent upon

sniggering. Clare looked startled, and grandmamma gently titillated,

while Miss Guest, who had risen and turned away towards the windows,

seemed to be annoyed with some one. What was the matter?

"I beg every one's pardon by anticipation," I said, looking round in a

bewildered way; "but have I said anything wrong?"

"Oh, dear no," cried the fellow they called Jack, with a familiarity

that was in the worst taste--as if I had meant to apologise to him!

"Most natural thing in the world!"

"Jack, how dare you?" Miss Guest exclaimed, stamping her foot.

"Well, it seemed all right. It sounded natural, I am sure. Well done,

I thought."

"Oh, you are unbearable! Why don't you say something, Clare? Mr.

Herapath, I am sure that you did not know that my name was Barbara."

"Certainly not," I cried. "What a strange thing!"

"But it is, and that is why grandmamma is looking shocked, and Mr.

Buchanan is wearing threadbare the friend's privilege of being rude. I

forgive you if you will make allowance for him. And you shall come off

the stool of repentance and have your tea first, since you are the

greatest stranger. It is a stupid game after all!"

She would hear no apologies from me. And when I would have asked why

her sister bore the same name, and so excused myself, she was intent

upon tea-making, and the few moments I could with decency add to my

call gave me no opportunity. I blush to think how I eked them out; by

what subservience to Clare, by what a slavish anxiety to help Jack to

muffins--each piece I hoped might choke him! How slow I was to find

hat and gloves, calling to mind with terrible vividness, as I turned

my back upon the circle, that again and again in my experience an

acquaintance begun by a dinner had ended with the consequent call. And

so I should have gone--it might have been so here--but the door-handle

was stiff, and Miss Guest came to my aid, as I fumbled with it. "We

are always at home on Saturdays, if you like to call, Mr. Herapath,"

she murmured carelessly--and I found myself in the street.

So carelessly she had said it that, with a sudden change of feeling, I

vowed I would not call. Why should I? Why should I worry myself with

the sight of other fellows parading their favour? With the babble of

that society chit-chat, which I had often scorned, and--still scorned,

and had no part or concern in. They were not people to suit me, or do

me good. I would not go, I said, and I repeated it firmly on Monday

and Tuesday; on Wednesday I so far modified it that I thought at some

distant time I would leave a card--to avoid discourtesy. On Friday I

preferred an earlier date as wiser and more polite, and on Saturday I

walked shame-faced down the street and knocked and rang, and went

upstairs--to taste a pleasant misery. Yes, and on the next Saturday

too, and the next, and the next; and that one when we all went to the

theatre, and that other one when Mr. Guest kept me to dinner. Ay, and

on other days that were not Saturdays, among which two stand high out

of the waters of forgetfulness--high days indeed--days like twin

pillars of Hercules, through which I thought to reach, as did the

seamen of old, I knew not what treasures of unknown lands stretching

away under the setting sun. First that Wednesday on which I found

Barbara Guest alone and blurted out that I had the audacity to wish to

make her my wife; and then heard, before I had well--or badly--told my

tale, the wheels of grandmamma's chair outside.

"Hush!" the girl said, her face turned from me. "Hush, Mr. Herapath.

You don't know me, indeed. You have seen so little of me. Please say

nothing more about it. You are under a delusion."

"It is no delusion that I love you, Barbara!" I cried.

"It is!" she repeated, freeing her hand. "There, if you will not take

an answer--come--come at three to-morrow. But mind, I promise you

nothing--I promise nothing," she added feverishly. And she fled from

the room, leaving me to talk to grandmamma as best, and escape as

quickly, as I might.

I longed for a great fire that evening, and failing one, I tired

myself by tramping unknown streets of the East End, striving to teach

myself that any trouble to-morrow might bring was but a shadow, a

sentiment, a thing not to be mentioned in the same breath with the

want and toil of which I caught glimpses up each street and lane that

opened to right and left. In the main, I failed; but the effort did me

good, sending me home tired out, to sleep as soundly as if I were

going to be hanged next day, and not--which is a very different

thing--to be put upon my trial.

"I will tell Miss Guest you are here, sir," the man said. I looked at

all the little things in the room which I had come to know well--her

work-basket, the music upon the piano, the table-easel, her

photograph. And I wondered if I were to see them no more, or if they

were to become a part of my everyday life. Then I heard her come in,

and turned quickly, feeling that I should learn my fate from her

greeting.

"Bab!" The word was wrung from me perforce. And then we stood and

looked at one another, she with a strange pride and defiance in her

eyes, though her cheek was dark with blushes, and I with wonder and

perplexity in mine. Wonder and perplexity that grew into a conviction,

a certainty that the girl standing before me in the short-skirted

brown dress with tangled hair and loose neck-ribbon was the Bab I had

known in Norway; and yet that the eyes--I could not mistake them now,

no matter what unaccustomed look they might wear--were Barbara

Guest's!

"Miss Guest--Barbara," I stammered, grappling with the truth, "why

have you played this trick upon me?"

"It is Miss Guest and Barbara now," she cried, with a mocking

courtesy. "Do you remember, Mr. Herapath, when it was Bab? When you

treated me as a toy, and a plaything, with which you might be as

intimate as you liked; and hurt my feelings--yes, it is weak to

confess it, I know--day by day, and hour by hour?"

"But surely, that is forgiven now?" I said, dazed by an attack so

sudden and so bitter. "It is atonement enough that I am at your feet

now!"

"You are not," she retorted. "Don't say you have offered love to me,

who am the same with the child you teased at Breistolen. You have

fallen in love with my fine clothes, and my pearls and my maid's work!

not with me. You have fancied the girl you saw other men make much of.

But you have not loved the woman who might have prized that which Miss

Guest has never learned to value."

"How old are you?" I said, hoarsely.

"Nineteen!" she snapped out. And then for a moment we were both

silent.

"I begin to understand now," I answered as soon as I could conquer

something in my throat. "Long ago when I hardly knew you, I hurt your

woman's pride; and since that you have plotted----"

"No, you have tricked yourself!"

"And schemed to bring me to your feet that you might have the pleasure

of trampling on me. Miss Guest, your triumph is more complete than

you are able to understand. I loved you this morning above all the

world--as my own life--as every hope I had. See, I tell you this that

you may have a moment's keener pleasure when I am gone."

"Don't! Don't!" she cried, throwing herself into a chair and covering

her face.

"You have won a man's heart and cast it aside to gratify an old pique.

You may rest content now, for there is nothing wanting to your

vengeance. You have given me as much pain as a woman, the vainest and

the most heartless, can give a man. Good-bye."

With that I was leaving her, fighting my own pain and passion, so that

the little hands she raised as though they could ward off my words

were nothing to me. I felt a savage delight in seeing that I could

hurt her, which deadened my own grief. The victory was not all with

her lying there sobbing. Only where was my hat? Let me get my hat and

go. Let me escape from this room wherein every trifle upon which my

eye rested awoke some memory that was a pang. Let me get away, and

have done with it all.

Where was the hat? I had brought it up. I could not go without it. It

must be under her chair by all that was unlucky, for it was nowhere

else. I could not stand and wait, and so I had to go up to her, with

cold words of apology upon my lips, and being close to her and seeing

on her wrist, half hidden by fallen hair, the scar she had brought

home from Norway, I don't know how it was that I fell on my knees by

her and cried--

"Oh, Bab, I love you so! Let us part friends."

For a moment, silence. Then she whispered, her hand in mine, "Why did

you not say Bab to begin? I told you only that Miss Guest had not

learned to value your love."

"And Bab?" I murmured, my brain in a whirl.

"She learned long ago, poor girl!"

The fair, tear-stained face of my tyrant looked into mine for a

moment, and then came quite naturally to its resting-place.

"Now," she said, when I was leaving, "you may have your hat, sir."

"I believe," I replied, "that you sat upon this chair on purpose."

And Bab blushed. I believe she did.

GERALD

GERALD

I have friends who tell me that they seldom walk the streets of London

without wondering what is passing behind the house-fronts; without

picturing a comedy here, a love-scene there, and behind the dingy cane

blinds a something ill-defined, a something odd and _bizarre_. They

experience--if you believe them--a sense of loneliness out in the

street, an impatience of the sameness of all these many houses, their

dull bricks and discreet windows, and a longing that some one would

step out and ask them to enter and see the play.

Well, I have never felt any of these things; but as I was passing

through Fitzhardinge Square about half-past ten o'clock one evening in

last July, after dining, if I remember rightly, in Baker Street,

something happened to me which I fancy may be of interest to such

people.

I was passing through the square from north to south, and to avoid a

small crowd, which some reception had drawn together, I left the

pavement and struck across the road to the path round the oval garden;

which, by the way, contains a few of the finest trees in London. This

part was in deep shadow, so that when I presently emerged from it and

recrossed the road to the pavement near the top of Fitzhardinge

Street, I had an advantage over persons on the pavement. They were

under the lamps, while I, coming from the shadow under the trees, was

invisible.

The door of the house immediately in front of me as I crossed was

open, and standing at it was an elderly man-servant out of livery, who

looked up and down the pavement by turns. It was his air of furtive

anxiety that drew my attention to him. He was not like a man looking

for a cab, or waiting for his sweetheart; and I had my eye upon him as

I stepped upon the pavement beside him. My surprise was great when he

uttered an exclamation of dismay at sight of me, and made as if he

would retreat; while his face, in the full glare of the light, grew so

pale and terror-stricken that he might before have been completely at

his ease. I was astonished and instinctively stood, returning his

gaze; for perhaps twenty seconds we remained so, he speechless, and

his hands fallen by his side. Then, before I could move on, he cried,

"Oh! Mr. George! Oh! Mr. George!" in a tone that rang in the stillness

more like a wail than an ordinary cry.

My name, my surname I mean, is George. For a moment I took the address

to myself, forgetting that the man was a stranger; and my heart began

to beat more quickly with fear of what might have happened. "What is

it?" I exclaimed. "What is it?" and I pulled from the lower part of my

face the silk muffler I was wearing. The evening was close, but I had

been suffering from a sore throat.

He came nearer and peered more closely at me and I dismissed my fear;

for I could see the discovery of his mistake dawning upon him. His

pallid face, on which the pallor was the more noticeable, seeing that

his plump features were those of a man with whom the world went well,

regained some of its lost colour, and a sigh of relief passed his

lips. But this feeling was only momentary. The joy of escape from

whatever blow he had thought imminent gave place to his previous state

of expectancy of something.

"You took me for another person," I said, preparing to pass on. At

that moment I could have sworn--I would have given one hundred to one

twice over--that he was going to say yes. To my immense astonishment,

he did not. With a visible effort he said "No!"

"Eh! What?" I exclaimed. I had taken a step or two.

"No, sir."

"Then what is it?" I said. "What do you want, my good fellow?"

Watching his shuffling indeterminate manner I wondered if he were

sane. His next answer reassured me. There was an almost desperate

deliberation in his manner. "My master wishes to see you, sir," was

what he said, "if you will kindly walk in for five minutes."

I should have replied, "Who is your master?" if I had been wise; or

cried, "Nonsense!" and gone my way. But often the mind when it is

spurred by an emergency over-runs the more obvious course to adopt a

worse. It was possible that one of my intimates had taken the house,

and said in his butler's presence that he wished to see me. Thinking

of that I answered, "Are you sure? Have you not made a mistake, my

man?"

With a sullenness that was new in him, he said, No, he had not. Would

I please to walk in? He stepped forward as he spoke, and induced me by

a kind of urgency to enter the house, taking from me with the ease of

a trained servant my hat, coat, and muffler. Finding himself in the

course of his duties he gained composure; while I, being thus treated,

lost my sense of the strangeness of the proceeding, and only awoke to

a full consciousness of my position when he had shut the door behind

us and was putting up the chain.

Then I confess I looked round, alarmed at my easiness. But I found the

hall spacious, lofty, and dark-panelled, the ordinary hall of an old

London house. The big fireplace was filled with plants in flower.

There were rugs on the floor and a number of chairs with painted

crests on the backs, and in a corner was an old sedan chair, its poles

upright against the wall.

No other servants were visible. But apart from this all was in order,

all was quiet, and the notion of violence was manifestly absurd.

At the same time the affair seemed of the strangest. Why should the

butler in charge of a well-arranged and handsome house--the house of

an ordinary wealthy gentleman--why should he hang about the open

doorway as if anxious to feel the presence of his kind? Why should he

show the excitement, even the terror, which I had witnessed? Why

should he introduce a stranger?

I had reached this point when he led the way upstairs. The staircase

was wide, the steps were low and broad. On either side at the head of

the flight stood a Venus of white Parian marble. They were not common

reproductions, and I paused. I could see beyond them a Hercules and a

Meleager, and delicately tinted draperies and ottomans that under the

light of a silver hanging-lamp--a gem from Malta--changed a mere lobby

to a fairies' nook. The sight filled me with a certain suspicion;

which was dispelled, however, when my hand rested for an instant upon

the pedestal that supported one of the statues. The cold touch of the

marble was enough. The pillars were not of composite; as they

certainly would have been in a gaming-house, or worse.

Three steps carried me across the lobby to a curtained doorway by

which the servant was waiting. I saw that the "shakes" were upon him

again. His impatience was so ill-concealed that I was not surprised,

though I was taken aback, when he dropped the mask. As I passed

him--it being now too late for me to retreat undiscovered, if the room

were occupied--he laid a trembling hand on my arm and thrust his face

close to mine. "Ask how he is!" he whispered, trembling. "Say

anything, no matter what, sir! Only, for the love of Heaven, stay five

minutes!"

He gave me a gentle push as he spoke--pleasant all this!--and

announced in a loud quavering voice, "Mr. George!"--which was true

enough. I found myself walking round a screen at the same time that

something in the room, a long dimly-lighted room, fell with a brisk

rattling sound. This was followed by the scuffling noise of a person,

still hidden from me by the screen, rising to his feet.

Next moment I was face to face with two men. One, a handsome elderly

gentleman, who wore grey moustaches and would have seemed in place at

a service club, was still seated. He regarded me with a perfectly

unmoved face, as if my entrance at that hour were the commonest

incident of his life. The other had risen and stood looking at me

askance. He was five-and-twenty years younger than his companion and

he was as good-looking in a different way. But his face was white and,

unless I was mistaken, was distorted by the same terror--ay, and a

darker terror than that which I had surprised in the servant's

features; it was the face of one in a desperate strait. He looked as a

man looks who has put all he has in the world upon an outsider--and

done it twice. In that quiet drawing-room by the side of his placid

companion, with nothing in their surroundings to account for his

emotion, his panic-stricken face shocked me inexpressibly.

They were in evening dress; and between them was a chess-table, its

men in disorder. Almost touching this was another small table bearing

a tray of Apollinaris water and spirits. On this the young man was

resting one hand as if but for its support he would have fallen.

To add one more fact; I had never seen either of them in my life.

Or wait; could that be true? If so, I must be dreaming. For the elder

man broke the silence by addressing me in a quiet ordinary tone that

matched his face. "Sit down, George," he said, "don't stand there. I

did not expect you this evening." He held out his hand, without rising

from his chair, and I advanced and shook it in silence. "I thought you

were in Liverpool. How are you?" he continued.

"Very well, I thank you," I muttered mechanically.

"Not very well, I should say," he retorted. "You are as hoarse as a

raven. You have a bad cold. It is nothing worse, my boy, is it?" with

anxiety.

"No, a throat cough; nothing else," I murmured, resigning myself to

this astonishing reception--this evident concern for my welfare on the

part of a man whom I had never seen in my life.

"That is well!" he answered cheerily. Not only did my presence cause

him no surprise. It gave him, without doubt, pleasure!

It was otherwise with his companion. He had made no advances to me,

spoken no word, scarcely altered his position. His eyes he had never

taken from me. Yet there was a change in him. He had discovered his

mistake, as the butler had discovered his. The terror was gone from

his face, and a malevolence not much more pleasant to witness had

taken its place. Why this did not break out in an active form was part

of the mystery given to me to solve. I could only surmise from glances

which he cast from time to time towards the door, and from the

occasional creaking of a board in that direction, that his

self-restraint had to do with my friend the butler. The inconsequences

of dreamland ran through it all. Why the elder man remained in error;

why the younger with that passion on his face was tongue-tied; why the

great house was so still; why the servant should have mixed me up with

the business at all--these were questions as unanswerable, one as the

other.

And the fog in my mind grew denser when the old gentleman turned from

me as if my presence were a usual thing, and rapped the table before

him. "Now, Gerald!" he cried in sharp tones, "have you put those

pieces back? Good heavens! I am glad that I have not nerves like

yours! Don't remember the squares, boy? Here, give them to me!" With a

hasty gesture of his hand, something like a mesmeric pass over the

board, he sat down the half-dozen pieces with a rapid tap! tap! tap!

which made it abundantly clear that he, at any rate, had no doubt of

their various positions.

"You will not mind sitting by until we have finished the game?" he

continued, speaking to me, in a voice more genial than that which he

had used to Gerald. "I suppose you are anxious to talk to me about

your letter, George?" he went on when I did not answer. "The fact is

that I have not read the enclosure. Barnes, as usual, read the outer

letter, in which you said the matter was private and of grave

importance; and I intended to go to Laura to-morrow, as you suggested,

and get her to read the other to me. Now you have returned so soon, I

am glad that I did not trouble her."

"Just so, sir," I said, listening with all my ears; and wondering.

"Well, I hope there is nothing very bad the matter, my boy?" he

replied. "However--Gerald! it is your move! Ten minutes more of such

play as your brother's, and I shall be at your service."

Gerald made a hurried move, the piece rattling upon the board as if he

had been playing the castanets. His father made him take it back. I

sat watching the two in wonder and silence. What did it all mean? Why

should Barnes--now behind the screen listening--have read the outer

letter? Why must Laura be employed to read the inner? Why could not

this cultivated and refined gentleman before me read his--Ah! That

much was disclosed. A mere turn of the hand did it. He had made

another of those passes over the board, and I learned from it what an

ordinary examination would not have detected. He, the old soldier with

the placid face and light blue eyes, was blind! Quite blind!

I began to see more clearly now. And from this moment I took up, in my

own mind, a different position. Possibly the servant who had impelled

me into the middle of the scene had had good reasons for doing so, as

I began to discern. But with a clue to the labyrinth in my hand I

could no longer move passively. I must act for myself. For a while I

sat still and made no sign. But my suspicions were presently

confirmed. The elder man more than once scolded his opponent for

playing slowly; in one of the intervals caused by his opponent's

indecision he took from an inside pocket of his waistcoat a small

packet.

"You had better take your letter, George," he said. "If there are

originals in it, they will be more safe with you than with me. You can

tell me all about it, now you are here. Gerald will leave us

presently."

He held the papers towards me. To take them was to take an active part

in the imposture, and I hesitated, my hand half outstretched. But my

eyes fell at the critical instant upon Master Gerald's face, and my

scruples took themselves off. He was eyeing the packet with an intense

greed, with a trembling longing--a very itching of the fingers, to

fall upon the prey--that put an end to my doubts. I took the papers.

With a quiet, but I think a significant, look in his direction, I

placed them in the breast-pocket of my coat. I had no safer receptacle

about me, or into that they would have gone.

"Very well, sir," I said. "There is no particular hurry. I think the

matter will keep, as things now are, until to-morrow."

"So much the better. You ought not to be out with such a cold, my

boy," he continued. "You will find a decanter of the Scotch whisky you

gave me last Christmas on the tray. Will you have some with hot water

and a lemon? The servants are all at the theatre--Gerald begged a

holiday for them--but Barnes will get you the things in a minute."

"Thank you; I won't trouble him. I will take some with cold water," I

replied, thinking I should gain in this way what I wanted--time to

think; five minutes to myself, while they played.

But I was out in my reckoning. "I will have mine also now," he said.

"Will you mix it, Gerald?"

Gerald jumped up to do it with tolerable alacrity. I sat still,

preferring to help myself, when he should have attended to his

father--if his father it was. I felt more easy now that I had those

papers in my pocket. The more I thought of it, the more certain I

became that they were the object of whatever deviltry was on foot; and

that possession of them gave me the whip-hand. My young gentleman

might snarl and show his teeth, but the prize had escaped him.

Perhaps I was a little too confident; a little too contemptuous of my

opponent; a little too proud of the firmness with which I had taken at

one and the same time the responsibility and the whip-hand. A creak of

the board behind the screen roused me from my thoughts. It fell upon

my ear trumpet-tongued: it contained, I know not what note of warning.

I glanced up with a conviction that I was napping, and looked

instinctively towards the young man. He was busy at the tray, his back

to me. Relieved of my fear of something--perhaps a desperate attack

upon my pocket, I was removing my eyes, when I caught sight of his

reflection in a small mirror beyond him.

What was he busy about? Nothing. Absolutely nothing, at the moment. He

was standing motionless--I could fancy him breathless also--a

listening expression on his face; which seemed to me to have faded to

a greyish tinge. His left hand was clasping a half-filled tumbler; the

other was at his waistcoat pocket. So he stood during perhaps a

second, a small lamp upon the tray before him illumining his handsome

figure; then his eyes, glancing up, met the reflection of mine in the

mirror. Swiftly as thought could pass from brain to limb, the hand

which had been resting in the pocket flashed with a clatter among the

glasses; and turning as quickly, he brought one of the latter to the

chess-table, and set it down unsteadily.

What had I seen! Actually nothing. Just what Gerald had been doing.

Yet my heart was going as many strokes to the minute as a losing crew.

I rose abruptly.

"Wait a moment, sir," I said, as the elder man laid his hand upon the

glass, "I don't think that Gerald has mixed this quite as you like

it."

He had already lifted it to his lips. I looked from him to Gerald. The

young man's colour, though he faced me hardily, shifted, and he seemed

to be swallowing a succession of oversized fives-balls. But his eyes

met mine in a vicious kind of smile that was not without its gleam of

triumph. I was persuaded that all was right before his father said so.

"Perhaps you have mixed for me?" I suggested pleasantly.

"No!" he answered in sullen defiance. He filled a glass with

something--perhaps it was water--and drank it, his back towards me. He

had not spoken so much as a single word to me before.

The blind man's ear recognized the tone. "I wish you boys would agree

better," he said wearily. "Gerald, go to bed. I would as soon play

chess with an idiot from Earlswood. Generally you can play the game if

you are good for nothing else; but since your brother came in, you

have not made a move which any one save an imbecile would make. Go to

bed, boy! Go to bed!"

I had stepped to the table while he spoke. One of the glasses was

full. I lifted it with seeming unconcern to my nose. There was whisky

in it as well as water. Then _had_ Gerald mixed for me? At any rate, I

put the tumbler aside, and helped myself afresh. When I set the glass

down--and empty, my mind was made up.

"Gerald does not seem inclined to move, sir," I said quietly, "so I

will. I will call in the morning and discuss that matter, if it will

suit you. To-night I feel inclined to get to bed early."

"Quite right, my boy. I would ask you to take a bed here instead of

turning out, but I suppose that Laura will be expecting you. Come in

to-morrow morning. Shall Barnes call a cab for you?"

"I think I will walk," I answered, shaking the proffered hand. "By the

way, sir," I added, "have you heard who is the new Home Secretary?"

"Yes, Henry Matthews," he replied. "Gerald told me. He had heard it at

the club."

"It is to be hoped that he will have no womanish scruples about

capital punishment," I said as if I were incidentally considering the

appointment. And with that last shot at Mr. Gerald--he turned green, I

thought, a colour which does not go well with a black moustache--I

walked out of the room, which looked so peaceful, so cosy, so softly

lighted, I went downstairs. I hoped that I had paralysed the young

fellow, and might leave the house without molestation.

But as I gained the foot of the stairs he tapped me on the shoulder. I

saw then, looking at him, that I had mistaken my man. Every trace of

the defiance which had marked his manner upstairs was gone. His face

was still pale, but it wore a smile as we confronted one another under

the hall lamp. "I have not the pleasure of knowing you, but let me

thank you for your help," he said in a low voice, yet with a kind of

frank spontaneity. "Barnes' idea of bringing you in was a splendid

one, and I am greatly obliged to you."

"Don't mention it," I answered, proceeding with my preparations for

going out, as if he were not there. Although I must confess that this

complete change in him exercised my mind no little.

"I feel so sure that we may rely upon your discretion," he went on,

ignoring my tone, "that I need say nothing about that. Of course, we

owe you an explanation, but as the cold is yours and not my brother's,

you will not mind if I read you the riddle to-morrow instead of

keeping you from your bed to-night?"

"It will do equally well--indeed better," I said, putting on my

overcoat, and buttoning it across my chest, while I affected to be

looking with curiosity at the sedan chair.

He pointed to the place where the packet lay. "You are forgetting the

papers," he reminded me. His tone almost compelled the answer, "To be

sure!"

But I had made up my mind, and I answered instead, "Not at all. They

are quite safe, thank you!"

"But you don't--I beg your pardon----" He opened his eyes very wide as

he spoke, as if some new light were beginning to shine upon his mind

and he could scarcely believe its revelations. "You don't mean that

you are going to take those papers away with you?"

"Certainly."

"My dear sir!" he remonstrated earnestly. "This is preposterous. Pray

forgive me the reminder, but those papers, as my father gave you to

understand, are private papers, which he supposed himself to be

handing to my brother George."

"Just so!" was all I said. And I took a step towards the door.

"You mean to take them?" he asked seriously.

"I do; unless you can explain the part I have played this evening. And

also make it clear to me that you have a right to the possession of

the papers."

"Confound it! If I must do so to-night, I must!" he said reluctantly.

"I trust to your honour, sir, to keep the explanation secret." I

bowed, and he went on: "My elder brother and I are in business

together. Lately we have had losses which have crippled us so severely

that a day or two ago we decided to disclose them to Sir Charles and

ask his help. George did so yesterday by letter, giving certain notes

of our liabilities. You ask why he did not make such a statement by

word of mouth? Because he had to go to Liverpool at a moment's notice

to make a last effort to arrange the matter. As for me," with a

curious grimace, "my father would as soon discuss business with his

dog! Sooner!"

"Well?" I said. He had paused, and was nicking the blossoms off the

geraniums in the fireplace with his pocket-handkerchief, looking

moodily at his work the while. I cannot remember noticing the

handkerchief, yet I can see it now. It had a red border, and was

heavily scented with white rose. "Well?"

"Well," he continued, with a visible effort, "my father has been

ailing, and this morning his doctor made him see Bristowe. He is an

authority on heart-disease, as you know; and his opinion is," he added

in a lower voice and with some emotion, "that even a slight shock may

prove fatal."

I began to feel hot and uncomfortable. What was I to think? The packet

was becoming as lead in my pocket.

"Of course," he resumed more briskly, "that threw our difficulties

into the shade; and my first impulse was to get these papers from him.

All day I have been trying in vain to effect it. I took Barnes, who is

an old servant, into my confidence, but we could think of no plan. My

father, like many people who have lost their sight, is jealous, and I

was at my wits' end when Barnes brought you up. Your likeness," he

added, looking at me reflectively, "to George put the idea into

my head, I fancy. Yes, it must have been so. When I heard you

announced--for a moment I thought that you were George."

"And you called up a look of the warmest welcome," I put in.

He coloured, but answered immediately, "I was afraid that he would

assume that the governor had read his letter, and blurt out something.

Good lord! if you knew the funk in which I have been all the evening

lest my father should ask me to read the letter!" He gathered up his

handkerchief with a sigh, and wiped his forehead.

"I could see it very plainly," I answered, going slowly over what he

had told me. To tell the truth, I was in no slight quandary what I

should do, or what I should believe. Was this really the key to it

all? Dared I doubt it? or that that which I had constructed was a

mare's nest--the mere framework of a mare's nest? For the life of me I

could not tell!

"Well, sir?" he said, looking up with an offended air. "Is there

anything else I can explain? or will you have the kindness to return

my property to me now?"

"There is one thing, about which I should like to ask a question," I

said.

"Ask on," he replied; and I wondered whether there was not a little

too much of bravado in the tone of sufferance he assumed.

"Why do you carry"--I went on, raising my eyes to his, and pausing on

the word--"that little medicament--you know what I mean--in your

waistcoat pocket?"

He flinched. "I don't quite--quite understand," he began to stammer.

Then he changed his tone and went on rapidly, "No! I will be frank

with you, Mr. Mr.----"

"George," I said.

"Ah, indeed?" a trifle surprised, "Mr. George! Well, it is something

Bristowe gave me this morning to administer to my father--without his

knowledge, if possible--should he grow excited. I did not think that

you had seen it."

Nor had I. I had only inferred its presence. But having inferred

rightly, I was inclined to trust my inference farther. Moreover, while

he gave this explanation his breath came and went so quickly that my

former suspicions returned. I was ready for him when he said--

"Now I will trouble you, if you please, for those papers?"

"I cannot give them to you," I replied, point blank.

"You cannot give them to me?" he repeated.

"No. Moreover the packet is sealed. I do not see, on second thoughts,

what harm I can do you--now that the packet is out of your father's

hands--by keeping it until to-morrow, when I will return it to your

brother, from whom it came."

"He will not be in London," he answered doggedly. He stepped between

me and the door with looks which I did not like. At the same time I

felt that some allowance must be made for a man treated in this way.

"I am sorry," I said, "but I cannot do what you ask. I will do this,

however. If you think the delay of importance, and will give me your

brother's address in Liverpool, I will undertake to post the letters

to him at once."

He considered the offer, eyeing me the while with the same disfavour

which he had exhibited in the drawing-room. At last he said

slowly--

"If you will do that?"

"I will," I repeated. "I will do it immediately."

He gave me the direction--"George Ritherdon, at the London and

North-Western Hotel, Liverpool," and in return I gave him my own name

and address. Then I parted from him, with a civil good night on either

side--and little liking--the clocks striking midnight, and the

servants coming in as I passed into the cool darkness of the square.

Late as it was, I went straight to my club, determined that, as I had

assumed the responsibility, there should be no laches on my part.

There I placed the packet, together with a short note explaining how

it came into my possession, in an outer envelope, and dropped the

whole, duly directed and stamped, into the nearest pillar-box. I could

not register it at that hour, and rather than wait until next morning,

I omitted the precaution, merely requesting Mr. Ritherdon to

acknowledge its receipt.

Some days passed during which it may be imagined that I thought no

little about my odd experience. It was the story of the Lady and the

Tiger over again. I had the choice of two alternatives--at least. I

might either believe the young fellow's story, which certainly had the

merit of explaining in a fairly probable manner an occurrence which

did not lend itself freely to explanation. Or I might disbelieve his

story, plausible in its very strangeness as it was, in favour of my

own vague suspicions. Which was I to do?

I set out by preferring the former alternative. This, notwithstanding

that I had to some extent committed myself by withholding the papers.

But with each day that passed without bringing an answer from

Liverpool, I leaned more and more to the other side. I began to pin my

faith to the tiger, adding each morning a point to the odds in the

animal's favour. So it went on until ten days had passed.

Then a little out of curiosity, but more, I declare, because I thought

it the right thing to do, I resolved to seek out George Ritherdon. I

had no difficulty in learning where he could be found. I turned up the

firm of Ritherdon Brothers (George and Gerald), cotton-spinners and

India merchants, in the first directory I consulted. And about noon

the next day I called at their place of business, and sent in my

card to the senior partner. I waited five minutes--curiously scanned

by the porter, who without doubt saw a likeness between me and his

employer--and then I was admitted to the latter's room.

He was a tall man with a fair beard, not a whit like Gerald, and yet

tolerably good-looking; if I say more I shall seem to be describing

myself. I fancied him to be balder about the temples, however, and

greyer and more careworn than the man I am in the habit of seeing in

my shaving-glass. His eyes, too, had a hard look, and he seemed to be

in ill-health. All these things I took in later. At the time I only

noticed his clothes. "So the old gentleman is dead," I thought, "and

the young one's tale was true after all!" George Ritherdon was in deep

mourning.

"I wrote to you," I began, taking the seat to which he pointed, "about

a fortnight ago."

He looked at my card, which he held in his hand.

"I think not," he said slowly.

"Yes," I repeated. "You were then at the London and North-Western

Hotel, at Liverpool."

He was stepping to his writing-table, but he stopped. "I was in

Liverpool," he answered in a different tone, "but I was not at that

hotel. You are thinking of my brother, are you not?"

"No," I said. "It was your brother who told me you were there."

"Perhaps you had better explain," he suggested, speaking in the weary

tone of one returning to a painful matter, "what was the subject of

your letter. I have been through a great trouble lately, and this may

well have been overlooked."

I said I would, and as briefly as possible I told the story of my

strange visit in Fitzhardinge Square. He was much moved, walking up

and down the room as he listened, and giving vent to occasional

exclamations, until I came to the arrangement I had made with his

brother. Then he raised his hand as one might do in pain.

"Enough!" he said. "Barnes told me a rambling tale of some stranger. I

understand it all now."

"So do I, I think!" I replied dryly. "Your brother went to Liverpool,

and received the papers in your name?"

He murmured what I took for "Yes." But he did not utter a single word

of acknowledgment to me, or of reprobation of his brother's deceit. I

thought some such word should have been spoken; and I let my feelings

carry me away. "Let me tell you," I said, warmly, "that your brother is

a----"

"Hush!" he said, holding up his hand. "He is dead."

"Dead!" I repeated, shocked and amazed.

"Have you not seen it in the papers? It is in all the papers," he said

wearily. "He committed suicide--God forgive me for it!--at Liverpool,

at the hotel you have named, and the day after you saw him."

And so it was. He had committed some serious forgery--he had always

been wild, though his father, slow to see it, had only lately closed

his purse to him--and the forged signatures had come into his

brother's power. He had cheated his brother before. There had long

been bad blood between them, the one being as cold, business-like, and

masterful as the other was idle and jealous.

"I told him," the elder said to me, shading his eyes with his hand,

"that I should let him be prosecuted--that I would not protect or

shelter him. The threat nearly drove him mad; and while it was hanging

over him, I wrote to disclose the matter to Sir Charles. Gerald

thought his last chance lay in recovering this letter unread. The

proofs against him destroyed, he might laugh at me. His first attempt

failed; then he planned with Barnes' cognisance to get possession of

the packet by drugging my father. Barnes' courage deserted him at the

last; he called you in, and--you know the rest."

"But," I said softly, "your brother did get the letter--at Liverpool."

George Ritherdon groaned. "Yes," he said, "he did. But the proofs were

not in it. After writing the outside letter I changed my mind and

withheld them, explaining my reasons within. He found his plot was in

vain; and it was under the shock of this disappointment--the packet

lay before him, re-sealed and directed to me--that he--that he did it.

Poor Gerald!"

"Poor Gerald!" I said. What else remained to be said?

It may be a survival of superstition, yet, when I dine in Baker Street

now, I take some care to go home by any other route than that which

leads through Fitzhardinge Square.

JOANNA'S BRACELET

JOANNA'S BRACELET

On a morning early in the spring of last year, two men stood leaning

against the mantelpiece of a room in one of the Government offices.

The taller of the two--he who was at home in the room--was a slim,

well-dressed man, wearing his hair parted in the middle, and a diamond

pin in the sailor knot of his tie. He had his frock-coat open, and his

thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat. The attitude denoted

complacency, and the man was complacent.

"Well, the funny part of it is," he said lightly, his shoulders

pressed against the mantelpiece, "that I am dining at the Burton

Smiths' this evening!"

"Ah?" his companion answered, looking at him with eyes of envy. "And

so you will see her?"

"Of course. She is to come to them to-day. But they do not know of our

engagement yet, and as she does not want to blurt it out the moment

she arrives--why, for this evening, it is a secret. Still I thought I

would tell you."

He stepped away as he spoke, to straighten a red morocco-covered

despatch-box, which stood on the table behind him. It bore, in

addition to the flaunting gilt capitals "I.O.," a modest plate with

the name "Ernest Wibberley"--his name.

The other waited until he resumed his place. Then, holding out his

hand, "Well, I am glad you told me, old boy," he said. "I congratulate

you most heartily, believe me."

"Thank you, Jack," Wibberley replied. "I knew you would. I rather feel

myself that 'Fate cannot harm me. I have dined to-day.'"

"Happy dog!" said Jack; and presently he took himself off.

The Burton Smiths, of whom we've heard them speak, are tolerably well

known in London. Burton Smith himself is a barrister with money and

many relations--Irish landlords, Scotch members, Indian judges, and

the like. His wife is young, gracious, and fond of society. Their

drawing-rooms, though on the topmost flat of Onslow Mansions--rooms

with sloping ceilings and a dozen quaint nooks and corners--are seldom

empty during the regulation hours.

This particular dinner-party had been planned with some care. "Lady

Linacre will come, no doubt," Mrs. Burton Smith had said one day at

breakfast, conning a list she held in her hand; "and Mr. May."

But Burton Smith objected to May. "He will talk about nothing but

India," he protested, "and the superiority of Calcutta to London. A

little of these Bombay ducks goes a long way, my dear."

"Well, James," Mrs. Burton Smith replied placidly--the Hon. Vereker

May is a son of Lord Hawthorn--"he will take me in, and I do not mind.

Only I must have Mr. Wibberley on the other side to make conversation

and keep me alive. Let me see--that will be three. And Joanna

Burton--she comes that afternoon--four. Do you know, James, when we

were at Rothley for Christmas I thought there was something between

your cousin and Mr. Wibberley?"

"Then, for goodness' sake, do not let them sit together!" Burton Smith

cried, "or they will talk to one another and to no one else."

"Very well," Mrs. Smith assented. "They shall sit facing one another,

and Mr. Wibberley shall take in Mrs. Galantine. She will be sure to

flirt with him, and we can watch Joanna's face. I shall soon see if

there is anything between them."

Mr. Wibberley was a young man of some importance, if only in his

capacity of private secretary to a Minister. He had a thousand

acquaintances, and two friends--perhaps three. He might be something

some day--was bound to be. He dressed well, looked well, and talked

well. He was a little presumptuous, perhaps a trifle conceited; but

women like these things in young men, and he had tact. At any rate, he

had never yet found himself in a place too strait for him.

This evening as he dressed for dinner--as he brushed his hair, or

paused to smile at some reflection--his own, but not in the glass--he

was in his happiest mood. Everything seemed to be going well with him.

He had no presentiment of evil. He was going to a house where he was

appreciated. Mrs. Burton Smith was a great ally of his. And then there

would be, as we know, some one else. Happy man!

"Lady Linacre," said his hostess, as she introduced him to a stout

personage with white hair, a double chin, and diamonds. Wibberley

bowed, making up his mind that the dowager was one of those ladies

with strong prejudices, who drag their skirts together if you prove to

be a Home Ruler, and leave the room if you mention Sir Charles Dilke.

"Mr. May, you have met before," Mrs. Smith continued; "and you know

Miss Burton, I think?"

He murmured assent, while she--Joanna--shook hands with him frankly

and with the ghost of a smile, perhaps. He played his part well, for a

moment; but halted in his sentence as it flashed across his mind that

this was their first meeting since she had said "Yes." He recovered

from his momentary embarrassment, however, before even Mrs. Burton

Smith could note it, and promptly offered Mrs. Galantine his arm.

She was an old friend of his--as friends go in society. He had taken

her in to dinner half a dozen times. "Who is that girl?" she asked,

when they were seated; and she raised her glasses and stared through

them at her _vis-a-vis_. "I declare she would be pretty if her nose

were not so short."

He seized the excuse to put up his glass too, and take a long look.

"It is rather short," he admitted, gazing with a whimsical sense of

propriety at the deficient organ. "But some people like short noses,

you know, Mrs. Galantine."

"Ah! And theatres in August!" she replied incredulously. "And

drawing-room games! But, seriously, she would be pretty if it were not

for that."

"Would she?" he questioned. "Well, I think she would, do you know?"

And certainly Joanna was pretty, though her forehead was too large,

and her nose too small, and her lips too full. For her eyes were

bright and her complexion perfect, and her face told of wit, and good

temper, and freshness. She had beautiful arms, too, for a chit of

nineteen. Mrs. Galantine said nothing about the arms--not out of

modesty, but because her own did not form one of her strong points.

Wibberley, however, was thinking of them, and whether a bracelet he

had by him would fit them. He saw Joanna wore a bracelet--a sketchy

gold thing. He considered whether he should take it for a pattern, or

whether it might not be more pleasant to measure the wrist for

himself.

But Mrs. Galantine returned to the charge. "She is a cousin, is she

not?" she asked, speaking so loudly that Joanna looked across and

smiled. "I have never met her before. Tell me all about her."

Tell her all about her! Wibberley gasped. He saw a difficulty in

telling "all about her," the more as the general conversation was not

brisk, and Joanna must bear a part. For an instant, indeed, his

presence of mind failed him, and he cast an appalled glance round the

table. Then he bent to his task. "Mrs. Galantine," he murmured

sweetly, "pray--pray beware of becoming a potato!"

The lady dropped her knife and fork with a clatter. "A potato, Mr.

Wibberley? What do you mean?"

"What I say," he answered simply. "You see my plate? It is a picture.

You have there the manly beef, and the feminine peas, so young, so

tender! And the potato! The potato is the confidante. It is insipid.

Do you not agree with me?"

"Bravo, Mr. Wibberley! But am I to apply your parable?" she spoke

sharply, glancing across the table, with her fork uplifted, and a pea

upon it. "Am I to be the potato?"

"The choice is with you," he replied gallantly. "Shall it be the

potato? or the peas?"

Mrs. Burton Smith, seeing him absorbed in his companion, was

puzzled. Look as she might at Joanna, she saw no sign of jealousy or

self-consciousness. Joanna seemed to be getting on perfectly with her

partner; to be enjoying herself to the full, and to be as much

interested as any one at table. Mrs. Burton Smith sighed. She had the

instinct of matchmaking. And she saw clearly now that there was

nothing between the two; that if there had been any philandering

at Rothley neither of the young people had put out a hand--or a

heart--beyond recovery.

But this success of Wibberley's with Mrs. Galantine had its

consequences. After the ladies had withdrawn he grew a trifle

presumptuous. By ill-luck, the Hon. Vereker May had reached that

period of the evening when India--as seen through the glasses of his

memory--was accustomed to put on its rosiest tints; and the two facing

one another fell to debating on a subject of which the returned

Civilian had seen much and thought little, and the private secretary

had read more and thought not at all. They were therefore on a par as

to information, and what the younger man lacked in obstinacy he made

up in readiness. It was in vain the Nabob blustered, asserted,

contradicted--finally grew sulky, silent, stertorous. Wibberley pushed

his triumph, and soon paid dearly for it.

It happened that he was the last to enter the drawing-room. The

evening was chilly, and the ladies had grouped themselves about the

fire, protected from assault, by a couple of gipsy-tables bearing

shaded lamps. The incomers, one by one, passed through these

outworks--all but Wibberley. He cast a glance of comic despair at

Joanna, who was by the fireplace in the heart of the citadel; then,

resigning himself to separation, he took a low chair by one of the

tables, and began to turn over the books which lay on the latter.

There were but half a dozen. He scanned them all, and then his eyes

fell on a bracelet which lay beside them; a sketchy gold bracelet,

with one big boss--Joanna's.

He looked at the party--himself sitting a little aside, as we have

said. They were none of them facing his way. They were discussing a

photograph on the overmantel, a photograph of children. He extended

his hand and covered the bracelet. He would take it for a pattern, and

to-morrow Joanna should ransom it. He tried, as his fingers closed on

it, to catch her eye. He would fain have seen her face change and her

colour rise. It would have added to the charm which the boyish,

foolish act had for him, if she had been privy to it--yet unable to

prevent it.

But she would not look; and he was obliged to be content with his

plunder. He slid the gold trifle deftly under the fringe of the table,

and clasped it round his arm--not a lusty arm--thrusting it as high as

it would go that no movement of his shirt-cuff might disclose it. He

had a keen sense of the ridiculous, and he would not for the world

that any besides Joanna should see the act: that doddering old fossil

May, for instance, who, however, was safe enough--standing on the rug

with his back turned, and his slow mind forming an opinion on the

photograph.

Then--or within a few minutes, at any rate--Wibberley began to find

the party dull. He saw no chance of a private word with Joanna. Lady

Linacre, his nearest neighbour, was prosing on to Mrs. Burton Smith,

his next nearest. And he himself, after shining at dinner, had fallen

into the background. Hang it, he would go! It was ten o'clock.

He rose, and was stooping across the table, murmuring his excuses to

Mrs. Burton Smith, when Lady Linacre uttered an exclamation. He was

leaning across her between her head and the lamp, and he fancied he

had touched her head-dress. "Pray pardon me, Lady Linacre!" he cried

gaily. "I am just going--I have to leave early. So the encroachment

will be but for a moment."

"It is not that," the old lady replied. "But where is my bracelet?"

She was feeling about the table as she spoke, shifting with her white,

podgy hands the volumes that lay on it.

No one on the instant took in the situation. Mrs. Burton Smith had

risen, and was listening to Wibberley. The others were talking. But

Lady Linacre was used to attention; and when she spoke again her voice

was shrill, and almost indecently loud. "Where is my bracelet?" she

repeated. "The one with the Agra diamond that I was showing you, Mrs.

Burton Smith. It was here a moment ago, and it is gone! It is gone!"

Wibberley was still speaking to his hostess. He heard the old lady's

words, but did not at once apply them. He finished his leave-taking at

his leisure, and only as he turned recollected himself, and said, with

polite solicitude, "What is it, Lady Linacre? Have you dropped

something? Can I find it for you?"

He stooped as he spoke; and she drew her skirt aside, and both peered

at the floor, while there was a chorus from those sitting nearest of,

"What is it, Lady Linacre? Dear Lady Linacre, what have you lost?"

"My Agra diamond!" she replied, her head quivering, her fingers

groping about her dress.

"No?" some one said in surprise. "Why, it was here a moment ago. I saw

it in your hand."

The old lady held up her wrists. "See!" she said fussily, "I have not

got it!"

"But are you sure it is not in your lap?" Burton Smith suggested. Lady

Linacre had rather an ample lap. By this time the attention of the

whole party had been drawn to the loss, and one or two of the most

prudent were looking uncomfortable.

"No," she answered; "I am quite sure that I placed it on the table by

my side. I am sure I saw it there. I was going to put it on when the

gentlemen came in, and I laid it down for a minute, and--it is gone!"

She was quite clear about it, and looked at Wibberley for

confirmation. The table stood between them. She thought he must have

seen it; Mrs. Burton Smith being the only other person close to the

table.

Burton Smith saw the look. "I say, Wibberley," he said, appealing to

him, half in fun, half in earnest, "you have not hidden it for a joke,

have you?"

"I? Certainly not!"

To this day Ernest Wibberley wonders when he made the disagreeable

discovery of what he had done--that he had taken the wrong bracelet!

It was not at once. It was not until the aggrieved owner had twice

proclaimed her loss that he felt himself redden, and awoke to the

consciousness that the bracelet was on his arm. Even then, if he had

had presence of mind, he might have extricated himself. He might have

said, "By Jove! I think I slipped it on my wrist in pure absence of

mind," or, he might have made some other excuse for his possession of

it--an excuse which would have passed muster, though one or two might

have thought him odd. But time was everything; and he hesitated. He

hated to seem odd, even to one or two; he thought that presently he

might find some chance of restoring the bracelet. So he hesitated,

peering at the carpet, and the golden opportunity passed. Then each

moment made the avowal more difficult, and less ordinary; until, when

his host appealed to him--"If you have hidden it for a joke, old

fellow, out with it!"--madness overcame him, and he answered as he

did.

He looked up, indeed, with well acted surprise, and said his "I?

Certainly not!" somewhat peremptorily.

Half a dozen of the guests were peering stupidly about as if they

expected to find the lost article in a flower-vase, or within the

globe of a lamp. Presently their hostess stayed these explorations.

"Wait a moment!" she said abruptly, raising her head. "I have it!"

"Well?"

"John must have moved it when he brought in the tea. That must be it.

Ring the bell, James, and we will ask him."

It was done. John came in, and the question was put to him.

"Yes, sir," he said readily; "I saw a bracelet. On the table by the

lamp." He indicated the table near Lady Linacre.

"Did you move it?"

"Move it, sir?" the man repeated, surprised by the question, the

silence, and the strained faces turned to him. "No, sir; certainly

not. I saw it when I was handing the tea to--to Mr. Wibberley, I think

it was."

"Ah, very well," his master answered. "That is all. You may go."

It was not possible to doubt the man's face and manner. But when he

had left the room, an uncomfortable silence ensued. "It is very

strange," Burton Smith said, looking from one to another, and then,

for the twentieth time, he groped under the table.