V.

'TWIXT WILL AND WILL NOT.

I must confess at once that at first, at least, I very much admired the

curate. I am not referring to my admiration of his fine figure--six

feet high and straight as an arrow--nor of his handsome, open,

ingenuous countenance, or his candid blue eye, or his thick curly hair.

No; what won my heart from an early period of my visit to my cousins,

the Poltons, of Poltons Park, was the fervent, undisguised, unashamed,

confident, and altogether matter-of-course manner in which he made love

to Miss Beatrice Queenborough, only daughter and heiress of the wealthy

shipowner, Sir Wagstaff Queenborough, Bart., and Eleanor, his wife. It

was purely the manner of the curate's advances that took my fancy; in

the mere fact of them there was nothing remarkable. For all the men in

the house (and a good many outside) made covert, stealthy, and indirect

steps in the same direction; for Trix (as her friends called her) was,

if not wise, at least pretty and witty, displaying to the material eye

a charming figure, and to the mental a delicate heartlessness--both

attributes which challenge a self-respecting man's best efforts. But

then came the fatal obstacle. From heiresses in reason a gentleman

need neither shrink nor let himself be driven; but when it comes to

something like twenty thousand a year--the reported amount of Trix's

dot--he distrusts his own motives almost as much as the lady's

relatives distrust them for him. We all felt this--Stanton, Rippleby,

and I; and, although I will not swear that we spoke no tender words and

gave no meaning glances, yet we reduced such concessions to natural

weakness to a minimum, not only when Lady Queenborough was by, but at

all times. To say truth, we had no desire to see our scalps affixed to

Miss Trix's pretty belt, nor to have our hearts broken (like that of

the young man in the poem) before she went to Homburg in the autumn.

With the curate it was otherwise. He--Jack Ives, by the way, was his

name--appeared to rush, not only upon his fate, but in the face of all

possibility and of Lady Queenborough. My cousin and hostess, Dora

Polton, was very much distressed about him. She said that he was such

a nice young fellow, and that it was a great pity to see him preparing

such unhappiness for himself. Nay, I happen to know that she spoke very

seriously to Trix, pointing out the wickedness of trifling with him;

whereupon Trix, who maintained a bowing acquaintance with her

conscience, avoided him for a whole afternoon and endangered all Algy

Stanton's prudent resolutions by taking him out in the Canadian canoe.

This demonstration in no way perturbed the curate. He observed that,

as there was nothing better to do, we might as well play billiards, and

proceeded to defeat me in three games of a hundred up (no, it is quite

immaterial whether we played for anything or not), after which he told

Dora that the vicar was taking the evening service--it happened to be

the day when there was one at the parish church--a piece of information

only relevant in so far as it suggested that Mr. Ives could accept an

invitation to dinner if one were proffered him. Dora, very weakly,

rose to the bait. Jack Ives, airily remarking that there was no use in

ceremony among friends, seized the place next to Trix at dinner (her

mother was just opposite) and walked on the terrace after dinner with

her in the moonlight. When the ladies retired he came into the smoking

room, drank a whisky and soda, said that Miss Queenborough was really a

very charming companion, and apologized for leaving us early, on the

ground that his sermon was still unwritten. My good cousin, the

squire, suggested rather grimly that a discourse on the vanity of human

wishes might be appropriate.

"I shall preach," said Mr. Ives thoughtfully, "on the opportunities of

wealth."

This resolution he carried out on the next day but one, that being a

Sunday. I had the pleasure of sitting next to Miss Trix, and I watched

her with some interest as Mr. Ives developed his theme. I will not try

to reproduce the sermon, which would have seemed by no means a bad one

had any of our party been able to ignore the personal application which

we read into it; for its main burden was no other than this--that

wealth should be used by those who were fortunate enough to possess it

(here Trix looked down and fidgeted with her Prayer-book) as a means of

promoting greater union between themselves and the less richly endowed,

and not--as, alas! had too often been the case--as though it were a new

barrier set up between them and their fellow-creatures (here Miss Trix

blushed slightly, and had recourse to her smelling-bottle). "You,"

said the curate, waxing rhetorical as he addressed an imaginary, but

bloated, capitalist, "have no more right to your money than I have. It

is intrusted to you to be shared with me." At this point I heard Lady

Queenborough sniff and Algy Stanton snigger. I stole a glance at Trix

and detected a slight waver in the admirable lines of her mouth.

"A very good sermon, didn't you think?" I said to her, as we walked

home.

"Oh, very!" she replied demurely.

"Ah, if we followed all we heard in church!" I sighed.

Miss Trix walked in silence for a few yards. By dint of never becoming

anything else, we had become very good friends; and presently she

remarked, quite confidentially:

"He's very silly, isn't he?"

"Then you ought to snub him," I said severely.

"So I do--sometimes. He's rather amusing, though."

"Of course, if you're prepared to make the sacrifice involved----"

"Oh, what nonsense!"

"Then you've no business to amuse yourself with him."

"Dear, dear! how moral you are!" said Trix.

The next development in the situation was this: My cousin Dora

received a letter from the Marquis of Newhaven, with whom she was

acquainted, praying her to allow him to run down to Poltons for a few

days; he reminded her that she had once given him a general invitation;

if it would not be inconvenient--and so forth. The meaning of this

communication did not, of course, escape my cousin, who had witnessed

the writer's attentions to Trix in the preceding season, nor did it

escape the rest of us (who had talked over the said attentions at the

club) when she told us about it, and announced that Lord Newhaven would

arrive in the middle of the next day. Trix affected dense

unconsciousness; her mother allowed herself a mysterious smile--which,

however, speedily vanished when the curate (he was taking lunch with

us) observed in a cheerful tone:

"Newhaven! Oh, I remember the chap at the House--plowed twice in

Smalls--stumpy fellow, isn't he? Not a bad chap, though, you know,

barring his looks. I'm glad he's coming."

"You won't be soon, young man," Lady Queenborough's angry eye seemed to

say.

"I remember him," pursued Jack; "awfully smitten with a tobacconist's

daughter in the Corn--oh, it's all RIGHT, Lady Queenborough--she

wouldn't look at him."

This quasi apology was called forth by the fact of Lady Queenborough

pushing back her chair and making for the door. It did not at all

appease her to hear of the scorn of the tobacconist's daughter. She

glanced sternly at Jack and disappeared. He turned to Trix and

reminded her--without diffidence and coram populo, as his habit

was--that she had promised him a stroll in the west wood.

What happened on that stroll I do not know; but meeting Miss Trix on

the stairs later in the afternoon, I ventured to remark:

"I hope you broke it to him gently, Miss Queenborough?"

"I don't know what you mean," replied Trix haughtily.

"You were out nearly two hours," said I.

"Were we?" asked Trix, with a start. "Good gracious! Where was mamma,

Mr. Wynne?"

"On the lawn--watch in hand."

Miss Trix went slowly upstairs, and there is not the least doubt that

something serious passed between her and her mother, for both of them

were in the most atrocious of humors that evening. Fortunately, the

curate was not there; he had a Bible class.

The next day Lord Newhaven arrived. I found him on the lawn when I

strolled up, after a spell of letter-writing, about four o'clock. Lawn

tennis was the order of the day, and we were all in flannels.

"Oh, here's Mark!" cried Dora, seeing me. "Now, Mark, you and Mr. Ives

had better play against Trix and Lord Newhaven. That'll make a very

good set."

"No, no, Mrs. Polton," said Jack Ives. "They wouldn't have a chance.

Look here, I'll play with Miss Queenborough against Lord Newhaven and

Wynne."

Newhaven--whose appearance, by the way, though hardly distinguished,

was not quite so unornamental as the curate had led us to

expect--looked slightly displeased, but Jack gave him no time for

remonstrance. He whisked Trix off and began to serve all in a moment.

I had a vision of Lady Queenborough approaching from the house with

face aghast. The set went on; and, owing entirely to Newhaven's absurd

chivalry in sending all the balls to Jack Ives instead of following the

well-known maxim to "pound away at the lady," they beat us. Jack wiped

his brow, strolled up to the tea table with Trix, and remarked in

exultant tones:

"We make a perfect couple, Miss Queenborough; we ought never to be

separated."

Dora did not ask the curate to dinner that night, but he dropped in

about nine o'clock to ask her opinion as to the hymns on Sunday; and

finding Miss Trix and Newhaven in the small drawing room, he sat down

and talked to them. This was too much for Trix; she had treated him

very kindly and had allowed him to amuse her; but it was impossible to

put up with presumption of that kind. Difficult as it was to

discourage Mr. Ives, she did it, and he went away with a disconsolate,

puzzled expression. At the last moment, however, Trix so far relented

as to express a hope that he was coming to tennis to-morrow, at which

he brightened up a little. I do not wish to be uncharitable--least of

all to a charming young lady---but my opinion is that Miss Trix did not

wish to set the curate altogether adrift. I think, however, that Lady

Queenborough must have spoken again, for when Jack did come to tennis,

Trix treated him with most freezing civility and a hardly disguised

disdain, and devoted herself to Lord Newhaven with as much assiduity as

her mother could wish. We men, over our pipes, expressed the opinion

that Jack Ives' little hour of sunshine was past, and that nothing was

left to us but to look on at the prosperous, uneventful course of Lord

Newhaven's wooing. Trix had had her fun (so Algy Stanton bluntly

phrased it) and would now settle down to business.

"I believe, though," he added, "that she likes the curate a bit, you

know."

During the whole of the next day--Wednesday--Jack Ives kept away; he

had, apparently, accepted the inevitable, and was healing his wounded

heart by a strict attention to his parochial duties. Newhaven remarked

on his absence with an air of relief, and Miss Trix treated it as a

matter of no importance; Lady Queenborough was all smiles; and Dora

Polton restricted herself to exclaiming, as I sat by her at tea, in a

low tone and a propos of nothing in particular, "Oh, well--poor Mr.

Ives!"

But on Thursday there occurred an event, the significance of which

passed at the moment unperceived, but which had, in fact, most

important results. This was no other than the arrival of little Mrs.

Wentworth, an intimate friend of Dora's. Mrs. Wentworth had been left

a widow early in life; she possessed a comfortable competence; she was

not handsome, but she was vivacious, amusing, and, above all,

sympathetic. She sympathized at once with Lady Queenborough in her

maternal anxieties, with Trix on her charming romance, with Newhaven on

his sweet devotedness, with the rest of us in our obvious

desolation--and, after a confidential chat with Dora, she sympathized

most strongly with poor Mr. Ives on his unfortunate attachment. Nothing

would satisfy her, so Dora told me, except the opportunity of plying

Mr. Ives with her soothing balm; and Dora was about to sit down and

write him a note, when he strolled in through the drawing room window,

and announced that his cook's mother was ill, and that he should be

very much obliged if Mrs. Polton would give him some dinner that

evening. Trix and Newhaven happened to enter by the door at the same

moment, and Jack darted up to them, and shook hands with the greatest

effusion. He had evidently buried all unkindness--and with it, we

hoped, his mistaken folly. However that might be, he made no effort to

engross Trix, but took his seat most docilely by his hostess--and she,

of course, introduced him to Mrs. Wentworth. His behavior was, in fact,

so exemplary that even Lady Queenborough relaxed her severity, and

condescended to cross-examine him on the morals and manners of the old

women of the parish. "Oh, the vicar looks after them," said Jack; and

he turned to Mrs. Wentworth again.

There can be no doubt that Mrs. Wentworth had a remarkable power of

sympathy. I took her in to dinner, and she was deep in the subject of

my "noble and inspiring art" before the soup was off the table.

Indeed, I'm sure that my life's ambitions would have been an open book

to her by the time that the joint arrived, had not Jack Ives, who was

sitting on the lady's other side, cut into the conversation just as

Mrs. Wentworth was comparing my early struggles with those of Mr.

Carlyle. After this intervention of Jack's I had not a chance. I ate

my dinner without the sauce of sympathy, substituting for it a certain

amusement which I derived from studying the face of Miss Trix

Queenborough, who was placed on the opposite side of the table. And if

Trix did look now and again at Mrs. Wentworth and Jack Ives, I cannot

say that her conduct was unnatural. To tell the truth, Jack was so

obviously delighted with his new friend that it was quite

pleasant--and, as I say, under the circumstances, rather amusing--to

watch them. We felt that the squire was justified in having a hit at

Jack when Jack said, in the smoking room, that he found himself rather

at a loss for a subject for his next sermon.

"What do you say," suggested my cousin, puffing at his pipe, "to taking

constancy as your text?"

Jack considered the idea for a moment, but then he shook his head.

"No. I think," he said reflectively, "that I shall preach on the power

of sympathy."

That sermon afforded me--I must confess it, at the risk of seeming

frivolous--very great entertainment. Again I secured a place by Miss

Trix--on her left, Newhaven being on her right, and her face was worth

study when Jack Ives gave us a most eloquent description of the

wonderful gift in question. It was, he said, the essence and the crown

of true womanliness, and it showed itself--well, to put it quite

plainly, it showed itself, according to Jack Ives, in exactly that sort

of manner and bearing which so honorably and gracefully distinguished

Mrs. Wentworth. The lady was not, of course, named, but she was

clearly indicated. "Your gift, your precious gift," cried the curate,

apostrophizing the impersonation of sympathy, "is given to you, not for

your profit, but for mine. It is yours, but it is a trust to be used

for me. It is yours, in fact, to share with me." At this climax,

which must have struck upon her ear with a certain familiarity, Miss

Trix Queenborough, notwithstanding the place and occasion, tossed her

pretty head and whispered to me, "What horrid stuff!"

In the ensuing week Jack Ives was our constant companion; the continued

illness of his servant's mother left him stranded, and Dora's kind

heart at once offered him the hospitality of her roof. For my part I

was glad, for the little drama which now began was not without its

interest. It was a pleasant change to see Jack genially polite to Trix

Queenborough, but quite indifferent to her presence or absence, and

content to allow her to take Newhaven for her partner at tennis as

often as she pleased. He himself was often an absentee from our games.

Mrs. Wentworth did not play, and Jack would sit under the trees with

her, or take her out in the canoe. What Trix thought I did not know,

but it is a fact that she treated poor Newhaven like dirt beneath her

feet, and that Lady Queenborough's face began to lose its transiently

pleasant expression. I had a vague idea that a retribution was working

itself out, and disposed myself to see the process with all the

complacency induced by the spectacle of others receiving punishment for

their sins.

A little scene which occurred after lunch one day was significant. I

was sitting on the terrace, ready booted and breeched, waiting for my

horse to be brought round. Trix came out and sat down by me.

"Where's Newhaven?" I asked.

"Oh, I don't always want Lord Newhaven!" she exclaimed petulantly. "I

sent him off for a walk--I'm going out in the Canadian canoe with Mr.

Ives."

"Oh, you are, are you?" said I, smiling. As I spoke, Jack Ives ran up

to us.

"I say, Miss Queenborough," he cried, "I've just got your message

saying you'd let me take you on the lake."

"Is it a great bore?" asked Trix, with a glance--a glance that meant

mischief.

"I should like it awfully, of course," said Jack; "but the fact is I've

promised to take Mrs. Wentworth--before I got your message, you know."

Trix drew herself up.

"Of course, if Mrs. Wentworth----" she began.

"I'm very sorry," said Jack.

Then Miss Queenborough, forgetting--as I hope--or choosing to disregard

my presence, leaned forward and asked, in her most coaxing tones:

"Don't you ever forget a promise, Mr. Ives?"

Jack looked at her. I suppose her dainty prettiness struck him afresh,

for he wavered and hesitated.

"She's gone upstairs," pursued the tempter, "and we shall be safe away

before she comes down again."

Jack shuffled with one foot on the gravel.

"I tell you what," he said; "I'll ask her if she minds me taking you

for a little while before I----"

I believe he really thought that he had hit upon a compromise

satisfactory to all parties. If so, he was speedily undeceived. Trix

flushed red and answered angrily:

"Pray don't trouble. I don't want to go."

"Perhaps afterward you might," suggested the curate, but now rather

timidly.

"I'm going out with Lord Newhaven," said she. And she added, in an

access of uncontrollable annoyance. "Go, please go. I--I don't want

you."

Jack sheered off, with a look of puzzled shamefacedness. He

disappeared into the house. Nothing passed between Miss Trix and

myself. A moment later Newhaven came out.

"Why, Miss Queenborough," said he, in apparent surprise, "Ives is going

with Mrs. Wentworth in the canoe!"

In an instant I saw what she had done. In rash presumption she had

told Newhaven that she was going with the curate--and now the curate

had refused to take her--and Ives had met him in search of Mrs.

Wentworth. What could she do? Well, she rose--or fell--to the

occasion. In the coldest of voices she said:

"I thought you'd gone for your walk."

"I was just starting," he answered apologetically, "when I met Ives.

But, as you weren't going with him----" He paused, an inquiring look

in his eyes. He was evidently asking himself why she had not gone with

the curate.

"I'd rather be left alone, if you don't mind," said she. And then,

flushing red again, she added. "I changed my mind and refused to go

with Mr. Ives. So he went off to get Mrs. Wentworth instead."

I started. Newhaven looked at her for an instant, and then turned on

his heel. She turned to me, quick as lightning, and with her face all

aflame.

"If you tell, I'll never speak to you again," she whispered.

After this there was silence for some minutes.

"Well?" she said, without looking at me.

"I have no remark to offer, Miss Queenborough," I returned.

"I suppose that was a lie, wasn't it?" she asked defiantly.

"It's not my business to say what it was," was my discreet answer.

"I know what you're thinking."

"I was thinking," said I, "which I would rather be--the man you will

marry, or the man you would like----"

"How dare you! It's not true. Oh Mr. Wynne, indeed it's not true!"

Whether it were true or not I did not know. But if it had been, Miss

Trix Queenborough might have been expected to act very much in the way

in which she proceeded to act: that is to say, to be extravagantly

attentive to Lord Newhaven when Jack Ives was present, and markedly

neglectful of him in the curate's absence. It also fitted in very well

with the theory which I had ventured to hint that her bearing toward

Mrs. Wentworth was distinguished by a stately civility, and her remarks

about that lady by a superfluity of laudation; for if these be not two

distinguishing marks of rivalry in the well-bred, I must go back to my

favorite books and learn from them--more folly. And if Trix's manners

were all that they should be, praise no less high must be accorded to

Mrs. Wentworth's; she attained an altitude of admirable unconsciousness

and conducted her flirtation (the poverty of language forces me to the

word, but it is over-flippant) with the curate in a staid,

quasi-maternal way. She called him a delightful boy, and said that she

was intensely interested in all his aims and hopes.

"What does she want?" I asked Dora despairingly. "She can't want to

marry him." I was referring to Trix Queenborough, not to Mrs.

Wentworth.

"Good gracious, no!" answered Dora, irritably. "It's simple jealousy.

She won't let the poor boy alone till he's in love with her again.

It's a horrible shame!"

"Oh, well, he has great recuperative power," said I.

"She'd better be careful, though. It's a very dangerous game. How do

you suppose Lord Newhaven likes it?"

Accident gave me that very day a hint how little Lord Newhaven liked

it, and a glimpse of the risk Miss Trix was running. Entering the

library suddenly, I heard Newhaven's voice raised above his ordinary

tones.

"I won't stand it!" he was declaring. "I never know how she'll treat

me from one minute to the next."

My entrance, of course, stopped the conversation very abruptly.

Newhaven had come to a stand in the middle of the room, and Lady

Queenborough sat on the sofa, a formidable frown on her brow.

Withdrawing myself as rapidly as possible, I argued the probability of

a severe lecture for Miss Trix, ending in a command to try her noble

suitor's patience no longer. I hope all this happened, for I, not

seeing why Mrs. Wentworth should monopolize the grace of sympathy, took

the liberty of extending mine to Newhaven. He was certainly in love

with Trix, not with her money, and the treatment he underwent must have

been as trying to his feelings as it was galling to his pride.

My sympathy was not premature, for Miss Trix's fascinations, which were

indubitably great, began to have their effect. The scene about the

canoe was re-enacted, but with a different denouement. This time the

promise was forgotten, and the widow forsaken. Then Mrs. Wentworth put

on her armor. We had, in fact, reached this very absurd situation,

that these two ladies were contending for the favors of, or the

domination over, such an obscure, poverty-stricken, hopelessly

ineligible person as the curate of Poltons undoubtedly was. The

position seemed to me then, and still seems, to indicate some

remarkable qualities in that young man.

At last Newhaven made a move. At breakfast, on Wednesday morning, he

announced that, reluctant as he should be to leave Poltons Park, he was

due at his aunt's place, in Kent, on Saturday evening, and must,

therefore, make his arrangements to leave by noon on that day. The

significance was apparent. Had he come down to breakfast with "Now or

Never!" stamped in fiery letters across his brow, it would have been

more obtrusive, indeed, but not a whit plainer. We all looked down at

our plates, except Jack Ives. He flung one glance (I saw it out of the

corner of my left eye) at Newhaven, another at Trix; then he remarked

kindly:

"We shall be uncommonly sorry to lose you, Newhaven."

Events began to happen now, and I will tell them as well as I am able,

supplementing my own knowledge by what I learned afterward from

Dora--she having learned it from the actors in the scene. In spite of

the solemn warning conveyed in Newhaven's intimation, Trix, greatly

daring, went off immediately after lunch for what she described as "a

long ramble" with Mr. Ives. There was, indeed, the excuse of an old

woman at the end of the ramble, and Trix provided Jack with a small

basket of comforts for the useful old body; but the ramble was, we

felt, the thing, and I was much annoyed at not being able to accompany

the walkers in the cloak of darkness or other invisible contrivance.

The ramble consumed three hours--full measure. Indeed, it was

half-past six before Trix, alone, walked up the drive. Newhaven, a

solitary figure, paced up and down the terrace fronting the drive.

Trix came on, her head thrown back and a steady smile on her lips. She

saw Newhaven; he stood looking at her for a moment with what she

afterward described as an indescribable smile on his face, but not, as

Dora understood from her, by any means a pleasant one. Yet, if not

pleasant, there is not the least doubt in the world that it was highly

significant, for she cried out nervously: "Why are you looking at me

like that? What's the matter?"

Newhaven, still saying nothing, turned his back on her, and made as if

he would walk into the house and leave her there, ignored, discarded,

done with. She, realizing the crisis which had come, forgetting

everything except the imminent danger of losing him once for all,

without time for long explanation or any round-about seductions, ran

forward, laying her hand on his arm and blurting out:

"But I've refused him."

I do not know what Newhaven thinks now, but I sometimes doubt whether

he would not have been wiser to shake off the detaining hand, and

pursue his lonely way, first into the house, and ultimately to his

aunt's. But (to say nothing of the twenty thousand a year, which,

after all, and be you as romantic as you may please to be, is not a

thing to be sneezed at) Trix's face, its mingled eagerness and shame,

its flushed cheeks and shining eyes, the piquancy of its unwonted

humility, overcame him. He stopped dead.

"I--I was obliged to give him an--an opportunity," said Miss Trix,

having the grace to stumble a little in her speech. "And--and it's all

your fault."

The war was thus, by happy audacity, carried into Newhaven's own

quarters.

"My fault!" he exclaimed. "My fault that you walk all day with that

curate!"

Then Miss Trix--and let no irrelevant considerations mar the

appreciation of fine acting--dropped her eyes and murmured softly:

"I--I was so terribly afraid of seeming to expect YOU."

Wherewith she (and not he) ran away lightly up the stairs, turning just

one glance downward as she reached the landing. Newhaven was looking up

from below with an "enchanted" smile--the word is Trix's own; I should

probably have used a different one.

Was then the curate of Poltons utterly defeated--brought to his knees,

only to be spurned? It seemed so; and he came down to dinner that

night with a subdued and melancholy expression. Trix, on the other

hand, was brilliant and talkative to the last degree, and the gayety

spread from her all around the table, leaving untouched only the

rejected lover and Mrs. Wentworth; for the last named lady, true to her

distinguishing quality, had begun to talk to poor Jack Ives in low,

soothing tones.

After dinner Trix was not visible; but the door of the little boudoir

beyond stood half-open, and very soon Newhaven edged his way through.

Almost at the same moment Jack Ives and Mrs. Wentworth passed out of

the window and began to walk up and down the gravel. Nobody but myself

appeared to notice these remarkable occurrences, but I watched them

with keen interest. Half an hour passed, and then there smote on my

watchful ear the sound of a low laugh from the boudoir. It was

followed almost immediately by a stranger sound from the gravel walk.

Then, all in a moment, two things happened. The boudoir door opened,

and Trix, followed by Newhaven, came in, smiling; from the window

entered Jack Ives and Mrs. Wentworth. My eyes were on the curate. He

gave one sudden, comprehending glance toward the other couple; then he

took the widow's hand, led her up to Dora, and said, in low yet

penetrating tones.

"Will you wish us joy, Mrs. Polton?"

The squire, Rippleby, and Algy Stanton were round them in an instant.

I kept my place, watching now the face of Trix Queenborough. She

turned first flaming red, then very pale. I saw her turn to Newhaven

and speak one or two urgent, imperative words to him. Then, drawing

herself up to her full height, she crossed the room to where the group

was assembled round Mrs. Wentworth and Jack Ives.

"What's the matter? What are you saying?" she asked.

Mrs. Wentworth's eyes were modestly cast down, but a smile played round

her mouth. No one spoke for a moment. Then Jack Ives said:

"Mrs. Wentworth has promised to be my wife, Miss Queenborough."

For a moment, hardly perceptible, Trix hesitated; then, with the most

winning, touching, sweetest smile in the world, she said:

"So you took my advice, and our afternoon walk was not wasted, after

all?"

Mrs. Polton is not used to these fine flights of diplomacy; she had

heard before dinner something of what had actually happened in the

afternoon; and the simple woman positively jumped. Jack Ives met

Trix's scornful eyes full and square.

"Not at all wasted," said he, with a smile. "Not only has it shown me

where my true happiness lies, but it has also given me a juster idea of

the value and sincerity of your regard for me, Miss Queenborough."

"It is as real, Mr. Ives, as it is sincere," said she.

"It is like yourself, Miss Queenborough," said he, with a little bow;

and he turned from her and began to talk to his fiancee.

Trix Queenborough moved slowly toward where I sat. Newhaven was

watching her from where he stood alone on the other side of the room.

"And have you no news for us?" I asked in low tones.

"Thank you," she said haughtily; "I don't care that mine should be a

pendent to the great tidings about the little widow and curate."

After a moment's pause she went on:

"He lost no time, did he? He was wise to secure her before what

happened this afternoon could leak out. Nobody can tell her now."

"This afternoon?"

"He asked me to marry him this afternoon."

"And you refused?"

"Yes."

"Well, his behavior is in outrageously bad taste, but----"

She laid a hand on my arm, and said in calm, level tones.

"I refused him because I dared not have him; but I told him I cared for

him, and he said he loved me. And I let him kiss me. Good-night, Mr.

Wynne."

I sat still and silent. Newhaven came across to us. Trix put up her

hand and caught him by the sleeve.

"Fred," she said, "my dear, honest old Fred; you love me, don't you?"

Newhaven, much embarrassed and surprised, looked at me in alarm. But

her hand was in his now, and her eyes imploring him.

"I should rather think I did, my dear," said he.

I really hope that Lord and Lady Newhaven will not be very unhappy,

while Mrs. Ives quite worships her husband, and is convinced that she

eclipsed the brilliant and wealthy Miss Queenborough.

Perhaps she did--perhaps not.

There are, as I have said, great qualities in the curate of Poltons,

but I have not quite made up my mind precisely what they are. I ought,

however, to say that Dora takes a more favorable view of him and a less

lenient view of Trix than I.

That is perhaps natural. Besides, Dora does not know the precise

manner in which the curate was refused. By the way, he preached next

Sunday on the text, "The children of this world are wiser in their

generation than the children of light."