CHAPTER XIII

FAITHFUL TO DEATH

The ladies looked at one another. Even in that awful moment, the

becoming, the seemly, the dignified had its claims. The window was

narrow: the ladder--Mary Travers had gone to look at it--was steep: a

little, curious, excited crowd was gathering below. Deane saw their

hesitation. He rushed to the door and cautiously opened it. The thing

was there! Across the very entrance--that villainous oblong case! And

from below came a shriek--it was Madame's voice, and a cry of "Quick!

quick!"

"This," said the General firmly (he had been through the Mutiny), "is

not a time for punctilio. Excuse me," and he lifted Lady Deane in his

stalwart arms and bore her toward the window.

With a distant reminiscence of the ball room, Arthur Laing approached

Miss Bussey, murmuring "May I have the--" and with a mighty effort

swung the good lady from the ground. She clutched his cravat wildly,

crying "Save me!"

Mary Travers was calmness itself. With quiet mien and unfaltering

voice, she laid her hand on Charlie's arm and murmured:

"I am ready, Charlie."

At the same moment John Ashforth, the light of heroism in his eye,

whispered to Dora, "You must trust yourself implicitly to me."

"Quick, quick!" cried Deane, "or it's all up with you. Quick, Ashforth!

Quick, Charlie, quick, man!"

There was one more pause. Mary's hand pressed a little harder. John's

arm was advancing towards Dora's waist. Sir Roger looked on with

apparent impatience.

"Are you never going?" he called. "Must I----"

Suddenly a loud cry rang out. It came from Miss Bellairs.

"Oh, Charlie, save me, save me!" she cried, and then and there flung

herself into his arms.

"My darling!" he whispered loudly, and catching her up made for the

window. As they disappeared through it, Deane softly and swiftly opened

the door and disappeared in his turn. Mary and John were left alone.

Then Mary's composure gave way. Sinking into a chair she cried:

"And I am left! Nobody cares for me. What shall I do?"

In an instant John's strong arm was round her. "I care for you!" he

cried, and raising her almost senseless form, he rushed to the window.

The ladder was gone!

"Gone!" he shrieked. "Where is it?"

There was no answer. The little crowd had gone too.

"We are lost," he said.

Mary opened her eyes.

"Lost!" she echoed.

"Lost! Abandoned--by those who loved--ah, no, no, Mary. In the hour of

danger--then we see the truth!"

Mary's arms clasped him closer.

"Ah, John, John," she said, "we must die together, dear."

John stooped and kissed her.

Suddenly the door was opened and Deane entered. He wore a comically

apologetic look, and carried an oblong metal vessel in his right hand.

"Excuse me," he said. "There's been--er--slight but very natural

mistake. It wasn't--er--exactly dynamite--it's--er--a preserved-peach

tin. That fool Painter----"

"Then we're safe!" cried Mary.

"Yes, thank Heaven," answered Deane fervently.

"Oh, John!" she cried.

Sir Roger, with a smile, retired and closed the door after him.

Downstairs Lady Deane and Miss Bussey, forgetful of their sufferings,

were restoring Madame Painter to her senses; Painter was uncorking a

bottle of champagne for Arthur Laing; Sir Roger Deane was talking in a

low voice and persuasive tones to an imposing representative of the

police. "What passed between them is unknown; possibly only words,

possibly something else; at any rate, after a time, Deane smiled, the

great man smiled responsively, saluted, and disappeared, murmuring

something about Anglais, milords, and drôles. The precise purport of

his reflections could not be distinctly understood by those in the

house, for civility made him inarticulate, but when he was safely

outside he looked at a piece of crisp paper in his hand, then, with his

thumb pointing over his shoulder, he gave an immense shrug, and

exclaimed:

"Mais voilà, un fou!" and to this day he considers Roger Deane the very

type of a maniac.

Mary and John descended. As soon as they appeared Dora jumped up from

her seat and ran towards John, crying, "Oh, Mr. Ashforth!"

While Charlie, advancing more timidly to Mary, murmured: "Forgive me,

but--"

Mary with a slight bow, John with a lift of his hat, both without a

halt or a word, passed through the room, arm-in-arm, and vanished from

Mr. Painter's establishment.

Sir Roger had seized on Laing's champagne and was pouring it out. He

stopped now, and looked at Dora. A sudden gleam of intelligence glanced

from her eyes. Rushing up to him, she whispered, "You did it all? It

was all a hoax?"

He nodded.

"And why?"

"Ask Charlie Ellerton," he answered.

"Oh, but Mr. Ashforth and Mary Travers are so angry!"

"With one another?"

"No, with us."

Sir Roger looked her mercilessly full in the face, regardless of her

blushes.

"That," he observed with emphasis, "is exactly what you wanted, Miss

Bellairs."

Then he turned to the company, holding a full glass in his hand.

"Ladies and gentlemen," said he, "some of us have had a narrow escape.

Whether we shall be glad of it or sorry hereafter, I don't know--do

you, Charlie? But hero's a health to----"

But Dora, glancing apprehensively at the General, whispered, "Not yet!"

"To Dynamite!" said Sir Roger Deane.

POSTSCRIPT

It should be added that a fuller, more graphic, and more sensational

account of the outrage in the Palais-Royal than this pen has been

capable of inscribing will appear, together with much other curious and

enlightening matter, in Lady Deane's next work. The author also takes

occasion in that work--and there is little doubt that the subject was

suggested by the experiences of some of her friends--to discuss the

nature, quality, and duration of the Passion of Love. She concludes--if

it be permissible thus far to anticipate the publication of her

book--that all True Love is absolutely permanent and indestructible,

untried by circumstance and untouched by time; and this opinion is, she

says, indorsed by every woman who has ever been in love. Thus

fortified, the conclusion seems beyond cavil. If, therefore, any

incidents here recorded appear to conflict with it, we must imitate the

discretion of Plato and say, either these persons were not Sons of the

Gods--that is. True Lovers--or they did not do such things.

Unfortunately, however, Lady Deane's proof-sheets were accessible too

late to allow of the title of this story being changed. So it must

stand--"The Wheel of Love;" but if any lady (men are worse than

useless) will save the author's credit by proving that wheels do not go

round, he will be very much obliged--and will offer her every facility.

THE LADY OF THE POOL

CHAPTER I

A FIRM BELIEVER

"I see Mr. Vansittart Merceron's at the Court again, mamma."

"Yes, dear. Lady Merceron told me he was coming. She wanted to consult

him about Charlie."

"She's always consulting him about Charlie, and it never makes any

difference."

Mrs. Bushell looked up from her needlework; her hands were full with

needle and stuff, and a couple of pins protruded from her lips. She

glanced at her daughter, who stood by the window in the bright blaze of

a brilliant sunset, listlessly hitting the blind-cord and its tassel to

and fro.

"The poor boy's very young still," mumbled Mrs. Bushell through her

pins.

"He's twenty-five last month," returned Millicent. "I know, because

there's exactly three years between him and me."

The sinking rays defined Miss Bushell's form with wonderful clearness.

She was very tall, and the severe well-cut cloth gown she wore set off

the stately lines of her figure. She had a great quantity of fair hair

and a handsome face, spoilt somewhat by a slightly excessive breadth

across the cheeks; as her height demanded or excused, her hands and

feet were not small, though well shaped. Would Time have arrested his

march for ever, there would have been small fault to find with Nature's

gifts to Miss Bushell; but, as her mother said, Millie was just what

she had been at twenty-one; and Mrs. Bushell was now extremely stout.

Millie escaped the inference by discrediting her mother's recollection.

The young lady wore her hat, and presently she turned away from the

window, remarking:

"I think I shall go for a stroll. I've had no exercise to-day."

Either inclination, or perhaps that threatening possibility from which

she strove to avert her eyes, made Millie a devotee of active pursuits.

She hunted, she rode, she played lawn-tennis, and, when at the seaside,

golf; when all failed, she walked resolutely four or five miles on the

high-road, swinging along at a healthy pace, and never pausing save to

counsel an old woman or rebuke a truant urchin. On such occasions her

manner (for we may not suppose that her physique aided the impression)

suggested the benevolent yet stern policeman, and the vicar

acknowledged in her an invaluable assistant. By a strange coincidence

she seemed to suit the house she lived in--one of those large white

square dwelling's, devoid of ornament, yet possessing every substantial

merit, and attaining, by virtue of their dimensions and simplicity, an

effect of handsomeness denied to many more tricked-out building's. The

house satisfied; so did Millie, unless the judge were very critical.

"I shall just walk round by the Pool and back," she added as she opened

the door.

"My dear, it's four miles!"

"Well, it's only a little after six, and we don't dine till eight."

Encountering no further opposition than a sigh of admiration--three

hundred yards was the limit of pleasure in a walk to her mother--Millie

Bushell started on her way, dangling a neat ebony stick in her hand,

and setting her feet down with a firm decisive tread. It did not take

her long to cover the two miles between her and her destination.

Leaving the road, she entered the grounds of the Court and, following a

little path which ran steeply down hill, she found herself by the

willows and reeds fringing the edge of the Pool. Opposite to her, on

the higher bank, some seven or eight feet above the water, rose the

temple, a small classical erection, used now, when at all, as a

summer-house, but built to commemorate the sad fate of Agatha Merceron.

The sun had just sunk, and the Pool looked chill and gloomy; the deep

water under the temple was black and still. Millie's robust mind was

not prone to superstition, yet she was rather relieved to think that,

with the sun only just gone, there was a clear hour before Agatha

Merceron would come out of the temple, slowly and fearfully descend the

shallow flight of marble steps, and lay herself down in the water to

die. That happened every evening, according to the legend, an hour

after sunset--every evening, for the last two hundred years, since poor

Agatha, bereft and betrayed, had found the Pool kinder than the world,

and sunk her sorrow and her shame and her beauty there--such shame and

such beauty as had never been before or after in all the generations of

the Mercerons.

"What nonsense it all is!" said Millie aloud. "But I'm afraid Charlie

is silly enough to believe it."

As she spoke her eye fell on a Canadian canoe, which lay at the foot of

the steps. She recognized it as Charlie Merceron's, and, knowing that

approach to the temple from the other side was to be gained only by a

difficult path through a tangled wood, and that the canoe usually lay

under a little shed a few yards from where she stood, she concluded

that Charlie was in the temple. There was nothing surprising in that:

it was a favorite haunt of his. She raised her voice; and called to

him. At first no answer came, and she repeated:

"Charlie! Charlie!"

After a moment of waiting a head was thrust out of a window in the side

of the temple--a head in a straw hat.

"Hullo!" said Charlie; Merceron in tones of startled surprise. Then,

seeing the visitor, he added: "Oh, it's you, Millie! How did you know I

was here?"

"By the canoe, of course."

"Hang the canoe!" muttered Charlie, and his head disappeared. A second

later he came out of the doorway and down the steps. Standing on the

lowest, he shouted--the Pool was about sixty feet across--"What do you

want?"

"How rude you are!" shouted Miss Bushell in reply.

Charlie got into the canoe and began to paddle across. He had just

reached the other side, when Millie screamed:

"Look, look, Charlie!" she cried. "The temple!"

"What?"

"I--I saw something white at the window."

Charlie got out of the canoe; hastily.

"What?" he asked again, walking up to Miss Bushell.

"I declare I saw something white at the window. Oh, Charlie! But it's

all----"

"Bosh? Of course it is. There's nothing in the temple."

"Well, I thought--I wonder you like to be there."

"Why shouldn't I?"

The mysterious appearance not being repeated, Millie's courage returned.

"I thought you believed in the ghost," she said, smiling.

"So I do, but I don't mind it."

"You've never seen it?"

"Supposing I haven't? That doesn't prove it's not true."

"But you're often here at the time?"

"Never," answered Charlie with emphasis. "I always go away before the

time."

"Then you'd better come now. Put the canoe to bed and walk with me."

Charlie Merceron thrust his hands into his pockets and smiled at his

companion. He was tall also, and just able to look down on her.

"No," he said, "I'm not going yet."

"How rude--oh, there it is again, Charlie! I saw it! I'm--I'm

frightened," and her healthy color paled a trifle, as she laid a hand

on Charlie's arm.

"I tell you what," observed Charlie. "If you have fancies of this kind

you'd better not come here any more--not in the evening, at all events.

You know people who think they're going to see things always do see

'em."

"My heart is positively beating," said Miss Bushell. "I--I don't quite

like walking back alone."

"I'll see you as far as the road," Charlie conceded, and with

remarkable promptitude he led the way, turning his head over his

shoulder to remark:

"Really, if you're so nervous, you oughtn't to come here."

"I never will again--not alone, I mean."

Charlie had breasted the hill with such goodwill that they were already

at the road.

"And you're really going back?" she asked.

"Oh, just for a few minutes. I left my book in the temple--I was

reading there. She's not due for half an hour yet, you know."

"What--what happens if you see her?"

"Oh, you die," answered Charlie. "Goodnight;" and with a smile and a

nod he ran down the hill towards the Pool.

Miss Bushell, cavalierly deserted, made her way home at something more

than her usual rate of speed. She had never believed in that nonsense,

but there was certainly something white at that window--something white

that moved. Under the circumstances, Charlie really might have seen her

home, she thought, for the wood-fringed road was gloomy, and dusk

coming on apace. Besides, where was the hardship in being her escort?

Doubtless none, Charlie would have answered, unless a man happened to

have other fish to fry. The pace at which the canoe crossed the Pool

and brought up at its old moorings witnessed that he had no leisure to

spend on Miss Bushell. Leaping out, he ran up the stops into the

temple, crying in a loud whisper:

"She's gone!"

The temple was empty, and Charlie, looking round in vexation, added:

"So has she, by Jingo!"

He sat down disconsolately on the low marble seat that ran round the

little shrine.

There were no signs of the book of which he had spoken to Millie

Bushell. There were no signs of anybody whom he could have meant to

address. Stay! One sign there was: a long hat-pin lay on the floor.

Charlie picked it tip with a sad smile.

"Agatha's," he said to himself.

And yet, as everyone in the neighborhood knew, poor Agatha Merceron

went nightly to her phantom death bareheaded and with golden locks

tossed by the wind. Moreover, the pin was of modern manufacture;

moreover, ghosts do not wear--but there is no need to enter on

debatable ground; the pin was utterly modern.

"Now, if uncle Van," mused Charlie, "came here and saw this--!" He

carefully put the pin in his breast-pocket, and looked at his watch.

It was exactly Agatha Merceron's time; yet Charlie leant back on his

cold marble seat, put his hands in his pockets, and gazed up at the

ceiling with the happiest possible smile on his face. For one steeped

in family legends, worshipping the hapless lady's memory with warm

devotion, and reputed a sincere believer in her ghostly wanderings, he

awaited her coming with marvellous composure. In point of fact he had

forgotten all about her, and there was nothing to prevent her coming,

slipping down the steps, and noiselessly into the water, all unnoticed

by him. His eyes were glued to the ceiling, the smile played on his

lips, his ears were filled with sweet echoes, and his thoughts were far

away. Perhaps the dead lady came and passed unseen. That Charlie did

not see her was ridiculously slight evidence whereon to damn so ancient

and picturesque a legend. He thought the same himself, for that night

at dinner--he came in late for dinner--he maintained the credit of the

story with fierce conviction against Mr. Vansittart Merceron's

scepticism.

CHAPTER II

MISS WALLACE'S FRIEND

In old days the Mercerons had been great folk. They had held the

earldom of Langbury and the barony of Warmley. A failure of direct

descent in the male line extinguished the earldom; the Lady Agatha was

the daughter of the last earl, and would have been Baroness Warmley had

she lived. On her death that title passed to her cousin, and continued

in that branch till the early days of the present century. Then came

another break. The Lord Warmley of that day, a Regency dandy, had a

son, but not one who could inherit his honors, and away went the barony

to a yet younger branch, where, falling a few years later into female

hands, it was merged in a brand-new viscounty, and was now waiting till

chance again should restore it to an independent existence. From the

Mercerons of the Court it was gone for ever, and the blot on their

escutcheon which lost it them was a sore point, from which it behooved

visitors and friends to refrain their tongues. The Regent had, indeed,

with his well-known good nature, offered a baronetcy to hide the stain;

but pride forbade, and the Mercerons now held no titles, save the

modest dignity which Charlie's father, made a K.C.B. for services in

the North-West Provinces, had left behind him to his widow. But the old

house was theirs, and a comfortable remnant of the lands, and the

pictures of the extinct earls and barons, down to him whose sins had

robbed the line of its surviving rank and left it in a position, from

an heraldic point of view, of doubtful respectability. Lady Merceron

felt so acutely on the subject that she banished this last nobleman to

the smoking-room. There was, considering everything, an appropriateness

in that position, and he no longer vexed her eyes as she sat at meat in

the dining room. She had purposed a like banishment for Lady Agatha;

but here Charlie had interceded, and the unhappy beauty hung still

behind his mother's chair and opposite his own. It was just to remember

that but for poor Agatha's fault and fate the present branch might

never have enjoyed the honors at all; so Charlie urged to Lady

Merceron, catching at any excuse for keeping Lady Agatha. Lady

Merceron's way of judging pictures may seem peculiar, but the fact is

that she lacked what is called the sense of historical perspective: she

did not see why our ancestors should be treated so tenderly and

allowed, with a charitable reference to the change in manners,

forgiveness for what no one to-day could hope to win a pardon. Mr.

Vansittart Merceron smiled at his sister-in-law and shrugged his

shoulders; but in vain. To the smoking-room went the wicked Lord

Warmley, and Lady Agatha was remarkably lucky in that she did not

follow him.

Mr. Vansittart, half-brother to the late Sir Victor, and twenty years

younger than he, was a short thick-set man, with a smooth round white

face, and a way of speaking so deliberate and weighty that it imparted

momentousness to nothings and infallibility to nonsense. When he really

had something sensible to say, and that was very fairly often, the

effect was enormous. He was now forty-four, a widower, well off by his

marriage, and a Member of Parliament. Naturally, Lady Merceron relied

much, on his advice, especially in what concerned her son; she was hazy

about the characters and needs of young men, not knowing how they

should be treated or what appealed to them. Amid her haziness, one fact

only stood out clear. To deal with a young man, you wanted a man of the

world. In this capacity Mr. Vansittart had now been sent for to the

Court, the object of his visit being nothing less than the arrangement

and satisfactory settlement of Charlie's future.

Mr. Vansittart approached the future through the present and the past.

"Yon wasted your time at school, you wasted your time at Oxford, you're

wasting your time now," he remarked, when Charlie and he were left

alone after dinner.

Charlie was looking at Lady Agatha's picture. "With a sigh he turned to

his uncle.

"That's all very well," he said tolerantly, "but what is there for me

to do?"

"If you took more interest in country pursuits it might be different.

But you don't hunt, you shoot very seldom----"

"And very badly."

"And not at all well, as you admit. You say you won't become a

magistrate, you show no interest in politics or--or--social questions.

You simply moon about."

Charlie was vividly reminded of a learned judge whom he had once heard

pronouncing sentence of death. His uncle's denunciation seemed to lack

its appropriate conclusion--that he should be hanged by the neck till

he was dead. He was roused to defend himself.

"You're quite wrong, uncle," he said. "I'm working hard. I'm writing a

history of the family."

"A history of the family!" groaned Mr. Vansittart. "Who wants one?

Who'll read one?"

"From an antiquarian point of view--" began Charlie stoutly.

"Of all ways of wasting time, antiquarianism is perhaps the most

futile;" and Mr. Vansittart wiped his mouth with an air of finality.

"Now the Agatha Merceron story," continued Charlie, "is in itself---"

"Perhaps we'd better finish our talk tomorrow. The ladies will, expect

us in the garden."

"All right," said Charlie, with much content. He enjoyed himself more

in the garden, for, while Lady Merceron and her brother in law took

counsel, he strolled through the moonlit shrubberies with Mrs. Marland,

and Mrs. Marland was very sympathetically interested in him and his

pursuits. She was a little eager woman, the very antithesis in body and

mind to Millie Bushell; she had plenty of brains but very little sense,

a good deal of charm but no beauty, and, without any counterbalancing

defect at all, a hearty liking for handsome young men. She had also a

husband in the City.

"Ghost-hunting again to-night, Mr. Merceron?" she asked, glancing up at

Charlie, who was puffing happily at a cigar.

"Yes," he answered, "I'm very regular."

"And did you see anyone?

"I saw Millie Bushell."

"Miss Bushell's hardly ghost-like, is she?"

"We'll," said Charlie meditatively, "I suppose if one was fat oneself

one's ghost would be fat, wouldn't it?"

Mrs. Marland, letting the problem alone, laughed softly.

"Poor Miss Bushell! If she heard you say that! Or if Lady Merceron

heard you!"

"It would hardly surprise my mother to hear that I thought Millie

Bushell plump. She is plump, you know;" and Charlie's eyes expressed a

candid homage to truth.

"Oh, I know what's being arranged for you."

"So do I."

"And you'll do it. Oh, you think you won't, but you will. Men always

end by doing what they're told."

"Does Mr. Marland?"

"He begins by it," laughed his wife.

"Is that why he's not coming till Saturday week?"

"Mr. Merceron! But what was Miss Bushell doing at the Pool? Did she

come to find you?"

"Oh, no; just for a walk."

"Poor girl!"

"Why--it's good for her."

"I didn't mean the walk,"

"I'd blush if there was light enough to make it any use, Mrs. Marland."

"Oh, but I know there's something. You don't go there every evening to

look for a dead lady, Mr. Merceron."

Charlie stopped short, and took his cigar from his mouth.

"What?" he asked, a little abruptly.

"Well, I shall follow you some day, and I shouldn't be surprised if I

met--not Agatha--but----"

"Well?" asked Charlie, with an uncertain smile.

"Why, poor Miss Bushell!"

Charlie laughed and replaced his cigar.

"What are we standing still for?" he said.

"I don't know. You stopped. She'd be such an ideal match for you."

"Then I should never have done for you, Mrs. Marland."

"My dear boy, I was married when you were still in Eton collars."

They had completed the circuit of the garden, and now approached where

Lady Merceron sat, enveloped in a shawl.

"Charlie!" she called. "Here's a letter from Victor Button. He's coming

to-morrow."

"I didn't know you'd asked him," said Charlie, with no sign of pleasure

at the news. Victor had been at school and college with Charlie, and

often, in his holidays, at the Court, for he was Sir Victor's godson.

Yet Charlie did not love him. For the rest, he was very rich, and was

understood to cut something of a figure in London society.

"Mr. Sutton? Oh, I know him," exclaimed Mrs. Marland. "He's charming!"

"Then you shall entertain him," said Charlie. "I resign him."

"I can't think why you're not more pleased to have him here, Charlie,"

remarked Lady Merceron. "He's very popular in London, isn't he,

Vansittart?"

"I've met him at some very good houses," answered Mr. Vansittart. And

that, he seemed to imply, is better than mere popularity.

"The Bushells were delighted with him last time he was here," continued

Lady Merceron.

"There! A rival for you!" Mrs. Marland whispered.

Charlie laughed cheerfully. Sutton would be no rival of his, he

thought; and if he and Millie liked one another, by all means let them

take one another. A month before he would hardly have dismissed the

question in so summary a fashion, for the habit of regarding Millie as

a possibility and her readiness as a fact had grown strong by the

custom of years, and, far as he was from a passion, he might not have

enjoyed seeing her allegiance transferred to Victor Sutton. Certainly

he would have suffered defeat from that hand with very bad grace. Now,

however, everything was changed.

"Vansittart," said Lady Merceron, "Charlie and I want to consult you

(she often coupled Charlie's hypothetical desire for advice with her

own actual one in appeals to Mr. Vansittart) about Mr. Prime's rent."

"Oh, at the old farm?"

"Yes. He wants another reduction."

"He'll want to be paid for staying there next."

"Well, poor man, he's had to take lodgers this summer--a thing he's

never done before. Charlie, did you know that?"

"Yes," said Charlie, interrupting an animated conversation which he had

started with Mrs. Marland.

"Do you know who they are?" pursued his mother, wandering from Mr.

Prime's rent to the more interesting subject of his lodgers.

"Ladies from London," answered Charlie.

"Rather vague," commented Mr. Vansittart. "Young ladies or old ladies,

Charlie?"

"Why does he want to know?" asked Mrs. Marland; but chaff had about as

much effect on Mr. Vansittart as it would have on an ironclad. He

seemed not to hear, and awaited an answer with a bland smile. In truth,

he thought Mrs. Marland a silly woman.

"Young, I believe," answered Charlie, in a careless tone.

"It's curious I've not seen them about," said Lady Merceron. "I pass

the farm almost every day. Who are they, Charlie?"

"One's a Miss Wallace. She's engaged to Willie Prime."

"To Willie? Fancy!"

"H'm! I think," remarked Mr. Vansittart, "that, from the point of view

of a reduction of rent, these lodgers are a delusion. Of course she

stays with Prime if she's going to many his son."

"Fancy Willie!" reiterated Lady Merceron. "Surely he can't afford to

marry? He's in a bank, you know, Vansittart, and he only gets a hundred

and twenty pounds a year."

"One blessing of the country is that everybody knows his neighbor's

income," observed Mr. Vansittart.

"Perhaps the lady has money," suggested Mrs. Marland. "But, Mr.

Merceron, who's the other lady?"

"A friend of Miss Wallace's, I believe. I don't know her name."

"Oh, they're merely friends of Prime's?" Mr. Vansittart concluded. "If

that's all he bases his claim for a reduction on---"

"Hang it! He might as well have it," interrupted Charlie. "He talks to

me about it for half an hour every time we meet."

"But, my dear Charlie, you have more time than money to waste--at

least, so it seems."

His uncle's sarcasm never affected Charlie's temper.

"I'll turn him on to you, uncle," he replied, "and you can see how you

like it."

"I'll go and call on him tomorrow. You'd better come too, Charlie."

"And then you can see the ladies from London," added Mrs. Marland.

"Perhaps the one who isn't young Mr. Prime's will be interesting."

"Or," said Charlie, "as mostly happens in this woeful world, the one

who is."

"I think the less we see of that sort of person at all, the better,"

observed Lady Merceron, with gentle decision. "They can hardly be quite

what we're accustomed to."

"That sort of person!"

Charlie went to bed with the phrase ringing in his horror-struck ears.

If to be the most beautiful, the most charming, and the most refined,

the daintiest, the wittiest and prettiest, the kindest and the

sweetest, the merriest and most provoking creature in the whole

world--if to be all this were yet not to weigh against being 'that sort

of person'--if it were not, indeed, to outweigh, banish, and obliterate

everything else why, the world was not fit to live in, and he no true

Merceron! For the Merceron men had always pleased themselves.

CHAPTER III

ALL NONSENSE

On the evening of the next day, while the sun was still on the Pool,

and its waters, forgetful of darker moods and bygone tragedies, smiled

under the tickling of darting golden gleams, a girl sat on the broad

lowest step of the temple. She had rolled the sleeves of her white gown

above her elbow, up well-nigh to her shoulder, and, the afternoon being

sultry, from time to time dipped her arms in the water and, taking them

out again, amused herself by watching the bright drops race down to her

rosy fingertips. The sport was good, apparently, for she laughed and

flung back her head so that the stray locks of hair might not spoil her

sight of it. On either side of this lowest step there was a margin of

smooth level grass, and, being unable as she sat to bathe both arms at

once, presently she moved on to the grass and lay down, sinking her

elbows in the pond and leaning her face over the edge of it. The

posture had another advantage she had not thought of, and she laughed

again when she saw her own eyes twinkling at her from the depths. As

she lay there a longing came upon her.

"If I could be sure he wouldn't come I'd dip my feet," she murmured.

As, however, he had come every evening for a fortnight past the fancy

was not to be indulged, and she consoled herself by a deeper dive yet

of her arms and by drooping her head till her nose and the extreme

fringe of her eyelashes were wetted, and the stray locks floated on

either side.

Presently, as she still looked, she saw another shadow on the water,

and exchanged with her image a confidential glance.

"You again?" she asked.

The other shadow nodded.

"Why didn't you come in the canoe?"

"Because people see it."

It struck her that her attitude was unconventional, and by a lithe

complicated movement, whereof Charlie noticed only the elegance and not

the details, she swept round and, sitting, looked up at him.

"I know who she was," she observed.

"She very nearly knew who you were. You oughtn't to have come to the

window."

"She thought I was the ghost."

"You shouldn't reckon on people being foolish."

"Shouldn't I? Yet I reckoned on your coming--or there'd have been some

more of me in the water."

"I wish I were an irregular man," said Charlie.

She was slowly turning down her sleeves, and, ignoring his remark,

said, with a question in her tones:

"Nettie Wallace says that Willie Prime says that everybody says that

you're going to marry that girl."

"I believe it's quite true."

"Oh!" and she looked across the Pool.

"True that everybody says so," added Charlie. "Why do you turn down

your sleeves?"

"How funny I must have looked, sprawling on the bank like that!" she

remarked.

"Awful!" said Charlie, sitting down.

She looked at him with uneasiness in her eye.

"Nothing but an ankle, I swear," he answered.

She blushed and smiled.

"I think you should whistle, or something, as you come."

"Not I," said Charlie, with decision.

Suddenly she turned to him with a serious face, or one that tried to be

serious.

"Why do you come?" she asked.

"Why do I eat?" he returned.

"And yet you were angry the first time."

"Nobody likes to be caught ranting out poetry especially his own."

"I believe you were frightened--you thought I was Agatha. The poetry

was about her, wasn't it?"

"It's not at all a bad poem," observed Charlie.

"You remember I liked it so much that I clapped my hands."

"And I jumped!"

The girl laughed.

"Ah, well," she said, "it's time to go home."

"Oh, dear, no," said Charlie!

"But I've promised to be early, because Willie Prime's coming, and I'm

to be introduced to him."

"Willie Prime can wait. He's got Miss Wallace to comfort him, and I've

got nobody to comfort me."

"Oh, yes. Miss Bushell."

"You know her name?"

"Yes--and yours--your surname, I mean; you told me the other."

"That's more than you've done for me."

"I told you my name was Agatha."

"Ah, but that was a joke. I'd been talking about Agatha Merceron."

"Very well. I'm sorry it doesn't satisfy you. If you won't believe

me--!"

"But your surname?"

"Oh, mine? Why, mine's Brown."

"Brown!" re-echoed Charlie, with a tinge of disappointment in his tone.

"Don't you like it?" asked Miss Agatha Brown with a smile.

"Oh, it will do for the present," laughed Charlie.

"Well, I don't mean to keep it all my life. I've spent to-day, Mr.

Merceron, in spying out your house. Nettie Wallace and I ventured quite

near. It's very pretty."

"Rather dilapidated, I'm afraid."

"What's the time, Mr. Merceron?"

"Half-past six. Oh, by Jove!"

"Well? Afraid of seeing poor Agatha?"

"I should see nobody but you, if you were here. No. I forgot that.

I've got to meet someone at the station at a quarter-past seven."

"Oh, do tell me who?"

"You'd be none the wiser. It's a Mr. Victor Sutton."

"Victor Sutton!" she exclaimed, with a glance at Charlie which passed

unnoticed by him. "Is he a friend of yours?"

"I suppose so. Of my family's, anyhow."

"Good-by. I'm going," she announced.

"You'll be here to-morrow?"

"Yes. For the last time."

She dropped this astounding thunderbolt on Charlie's head as though it

had been the most ordinary remark in the world.

"The last time! Oh, Miss---" No: somehow he could not lay his tongue to

that "Miss Brown."

"I can't spend all my life in Lang Marsh," said she.

"Agatha," he burst out.

"No, no. This is not the last time. Sha'n't we keep that?" she asked,

with a provokingly light-hearted smile.

"You promise to be here to-morrow?"

"Oh, yes."

"I shall have something to say to you then," Charlie announced with a

significant air.

"Oh, you never lack conversation."

"You'll be here at five?"

"Precisely," she answered with mock gravity; "and now I'm gone!"

Charlie took off his straw hat, stretched out his right hand, and took

hers. For a moment she drew back, but he looked very handsome and

gallant as he bowed his head down to her hand, and she checked the

movement.

"Oh, well!" she murmured; she was protesting against any importance

being attached to the incident.

Charlie, having paid his homage, walked, or rather ran, swiftly away.

To begin with, he had none too much time if he was to meet Victor

Sutton; secondly, he was full of a big resolve, and that generally

makes a man walk fast.

The lady pursued a more leisurely progress. Swinging her hat in her

hand, she made her way through the tangled wood back to the high-road,

and turned towards Mr. Prime's farm. She went slowly along, thinking

perhaps of the attractive young fellow she had left behind her,

wondering perhaps why she had promised to meet him again. She did not

know why, for there was sure to happen at that last meeting the one

thing which she did not, she supposed, wish to happen. However, a

promise is a promise. She heard the sound of wheels behind her, and,

turning, found the farmer's spring-cart hard on her heels. The farmer

was driving, and by his side sat a nice-looking girl dressed in the

extreme of fashion. On the back seat was a young man in a very light

suit, with a fine check pattern, and a new pair of brown leather shoes.

The cart pulled up.

"We can make room for ye, Miss," said old Mr. Prime.

Nettie Wallace jumped tip and stood with her foot on the step. Willie

Prime jumped down and effected her transfer to the back seat. Agatha

climbed up beside the farmer and stretched her hand back to greet

Willie. Willie took it rather timidly. He did not quite 'savvy' (as he

expressed it to himself); his fiancée's friend was very simply attired,

infinitely more simply than Nettie herself. Nettie had told him that

her friend was 'off and on'(a vague and rather obscure qualification of

the statement) in the same line as herself--namely, Court and

high-class dressmaking. Yet there was a difference between Nettie and

her friend.

"Anybody else arrived by the train?" asked Agatha.

"A visitor for the Court. A good-looking gentleman, wasn't he, Willie?"

Nettie was an elegant creature and, but for the 'gentleman' and that

slight but ineradicable twang that clings like Nessus' shirt to the

cockney, all effort and all education notwithstanding (it will even

last three generations, and is audible, perhaps, now and then in the

House of Lords), her speech was correct and even dainty in its prim

nicety.

"Ah!" said Agatha.

"His name's Sutton," said Willie; "Mr. Charles--young Mr.

Merceron--told me so when he was talking to me on the platform."

"You know young Mr. Merceron?" asked Agatha.

"Why, they was boys together," interrupted the old farmer, who made

little of the refinements of speech. In his youth no one, from the lord

to the laborer, spoke grammar in the country. "Used to larn to swim

together in the Pool, didn't you, Willie?"

"I must have a dip there to-morrow," cried Willie; and Agatha wondered

what time he would choose. "And I'll take you there, Nettie. Ever been

yet?"

"No. They--they say it's haunted, don't they, Willie?"

"That's nonsense," said Willie. London makes a man sceptical. The old

farmer shook his head and grunted doubtfully. His mother had seen poor

Agatha Merceron; this was before the farmer was born--a little while

before--and the shock had come nigh to being most serious to him. The

whole countryside knew it.

"Why do you call it nonsense, Mr. Prime?" asked Agatha.

"Oh, I don't know, Miss---"

"Miss Brown, Willie," said Nettie.

"Miss Brown. Anyway, we needn't go the time the ghost comes."

"I should certainly avoid that," laughed Agatha.

"We'll go in the morning, Nettie, and I'll have my swim in the evening."

Agatha frowned. It would be particularly inconvenient if Willie Prime

took his swim in the evening.

"Oh, don't, Willie," cried Nettie. "She--she might do you some harm."

Willie was hard to persuade. He was not above liking to appear a

daredevil; and the discussion was still raging when they reached the

farm. The two girls went upstairs to the little rooms which they

occupied. Agatha turned into hers, and Nettie Wallace followed her.

"Your Willie is very nice," said Agatha, sitting on her bed.

Nettie smiled with pleasure.

"And now that you've other company I shall go."

"You're going, Miss?"

"Not Miss."

Nettie laughed.

"I forget sometimes," she said.

"Well, you must remember just over tomorrow. I shall go next day. I

must meet my grandfather in London."

Nettie offered no opposition. On the contrary, she appeared rather

relieved.

"Nettie, did you like Mr. Sutton's looks?" asked Agatha after a pause.

"He's too black and blue for my taste," answered Nettie.

Willie Prime was red and yellow.

"Blue? Oh: you mean his cheeks?"

"Yes. But he's a handsome gentleman all the same; and you should have

seen his luggage! Such a dressing-bag--cost fifty pounds, I daresay."

"Oh, dear, me," said Agatha, "Yes, Nettie, I shall go the day after

to-morrow."

"Mr. Merceron asked to be introduced to me," said Nettie proudly. "And

he asked where you were--he said he'd seen you at the window."

"Did he?" said Agatha negligently; and Nettie, finding the conversation

flag, retired to her own room.

Agatha sat a moment longer on the bed.

"What a very deceitful young man," she exclaimed at last. "I must be a

very strict secret indeed. Well, I suppose I should be."

CHAPTER IV

A CATASTROPHE AT THE POOL

Mr. Vansittart Merceron was not quite sure that Victor Sutton had any

business to call him "Merceron." He was nearly twenty years older than

Victor, and a man of considerable position; nor was he, as some

middle-aged men are, flattered by the implication of

contemporaneousness carried by the mode of address. But it is hard to

give a hint to a man who has no inkling that there is room for one; and

when Mr. Vansittart addressed Victor as 'Mr. Sutton' the latter

graciously told him to "hang the Mister." Reciprocity was inevitable,

and the elder man asked himself, with a sardonic grin, how soon he

would be "Van."

"Coming to bathe, Merceron?" he heard under his window at eight o'clock

the next morning. "We're off to the Pool."

Mr. Vansittart shouted an emphatic negative, and the two young fellows

started off by themselves. Charlie's manner was affected by the

ceremonious courtesy which a well-bred host betrays towards a guest not

very well-beloved, but Victor did not notice this. It seldom occurred

to him that people did not like him.

"Yes," he was saying, "I'm just twenty-nine. I've had my fling,

Charlie, and now I shall get to business."

Charlie was relieved to find that according to this reckoning he had

several more years 'fling' before him.

"Next year," pursued Victor, "I shall marry; then I shall go into

Parliament, and then I shall go ahead."

"I didn't know you were engaged."

"No, I'm not, but I'm going to be. I can please myself, you see; I've

got lots of coin."

"Oh, yes, but can you please the lady?" asked Charlie.

"My dear boy," began Victor, "when you've seen a little more of the

world----

"Here we are," said Charlie. "Why, hullo! Who's that?"

A dripping head and a blowing mouth were visible in the middle of the

Pool.

"Willie Prime by Jove! 'Morning Willie;" and Charlie set about flinging

off his flannels, Victor following his example in a more leisurely

fashion.

Willie Prime was a little puzzled to know how he ought to treat

Charlie. 'Charlie' he had been in very old days--then Master Charlie

(that was Willie's mother's doing)--then Mr. Charles. But now Willie

had set up for himself. He had played billiards with a lord, and

football against the Sybarites, and, incidentally, hobnobbed with quite

great people. It is not very easy to assert a social position when one

has nothing on, and only one's head out of water, but Willie did it.

"Good-morning--er--Merceron," said he.

Victor heard him, and put up his eyeglass in amazement; but he, in his

turn, had only a shirt on, and the hauteur was a failure. Charlie

utterly failed to notice the incident.

"Is it cold?" he shouted.

"Beastly," answered Willie. The man who has got in always tells the man

who is going to get in that it is "beastly cold."

"Here goes!" cried Charlie; and a minute later he was treading water by

Willie's side.

"Miss Wallace all fit?" he asked.

"Thank you, yes, she's all right."

"And her friend?"

"All right, I believe."

"And when is it to be, old fellow?"

"Soon as I get a rise."

"What?" asked the unsophisticated Charlie, who knew the phrase chiefly

in connection with fish.

"A rise of screw, you know."

"Oh, ah, yes--what a fool I am!" and Charlie disappeared beneath the

waves.

When they were all on the bank, drying, Willie, encouraged by not being

discouraged (save by Sutton's silence) in his advances, ventured

further, and asked in a joking tone:

"And aren't you marked off yet? We've been expecting to hear of it for

the last twelve months."

"What do you mean'?"

"Why, you and Miss Bushell."

Charlie struggled through his shirt, and then answered, with his first

touch of distance:

"Nothing in it. People've got no business to gossip."

"It's damned impertinent," observed Victor Sutton in slow and

deliberate tones.

Willie flushed.

"I beg pardon," he said gruffly. "I only repeated what I heard."

"My dear fellow, no harm's done," cried Charlie. "Who was the fool?"

"Well--in fact--my father."

The situation was awkward, but they wisely eluded it by laughter. But a

thought struck Charlie.

"I say, did your father state it as a fact?"

"Oh no; but as a certainty, you know."

"When?"

"Last night at supper."

Charlie's brow clouded. Miss B--that is, Agatha, was certain to have

been at supper. However, all that could be put right in the

evening--that one blessed evening left to him. He looked at Willie and

opened his mouth to speak; but he shut it again. It did not seem to him

that he could question Willie Prime about the lady. She had chosen to

tell him nothing, and her will was his law. But he was yearning to know

what she was and how she came there. He refrained; and this time virtue

really had a reward beyond itself, for Willie would blithely have told

him that she was a dressmaker (he called Nettie, however, the manager

of a Court modiste's business), and that would not have pleased Charlie.

It was all very well for Charlie to count on that blessed evening; but

he reckoned without his host--or rather without his guests.

The Bushells came to lunch, Millie driving her terrified mother in a

lofty gig; and at lunch Millie recounted her vision of Agatha Merceron.

She did not believe it, of course; but it was queer, wasn't it? Victor

Sutton rose to the bait at once.

"We'll investigate it," he cried. "Merceron," (he meant the patient Mr.

Vansittart), "didn't yon once write an article on 'Apparitions' for

_Intellect_?"

"Yes, I proved there were none," answered Mr. Vansittart.

"That's impossible, you know," remarked Mrs. Marland gently.

"We'll put you to the proof this very evening," declared Mr. Sutton.

Charlie started.

"Are you game, Miss Bushell?" continued Victor.

"Ye--yes, if you'll keep quite near me, answered Millie, with a playful

shudder. Charlie reflected how ill playfulness became her, and frowned.

But Millie was pleased to see him frown; she enjoyed showing him that

other men liked to keep quite near to her.

"Then this evening we'll go in a body to the Pool."

"I shall not go," shuddered Mrs. Marland.

"An hour after sunset!"

"Half an hour. She might be early--and we'll stay half an hour after.

We'll give her a fair show."

"Come," thought Charlie. "I shall get an hour with Agatha."

"You'll come, Charlie?" asked Victor.

"Oh, all right," he answered, hiding all signs of vexation. He could

get back by six and join the party. But why was Mrs. Marland looking at

him?

The first step, however, towards getting back is to get there, and

Charlie found this none so easy. After lunch came lawn-tennis, and he

was impressed. Mr. Vansittart played a middle-aged game, and Victor had

found little leisure for this modest sport among his more ambitious

amusements. Charlie had to balance Millie Bushell, and he spent a very

hot and wearying afternoon. They would go on: Victor declared it was

good for him, Uncle Van delighted in a hard game (it appeared to be a

very hard game to him from the number of strokes he missed), and Millie

grew in vigor, ubiquity, and (it must be added) intensity of color as

the hours wore away. It was close on five before Charlie, with a groan,

could throw down his racquet.

"Poor boy!" said Mrs. Marland.

"Charlie, dear," called Lady Merceron, who had been talking comfortably

to Mrs. Bushell in the shade, "come and hand the tea. I'm sure you must

all want some. Millie, my dear, how hot you look!"

"She never will take any care of her complexion, complained Mrs.

Bushell.

"Take care of your stom--your health--and your complexion will take

care of itself," observed Mr. Vansittart.

"Charlie! Where; is the boy?" called Lady Merceron again.

The boy was gone. He was flying as fast as his legs would take him to

the Pool. Where was that cherished interview now? He could hope only

for a few wretched minutes--hardly enough to say good-by once--before

he must hustle--yes, positively hustle--Agatha out of sight. He had

heard that abominable Sutton remark that they might as well start

directly after tea.

He was breathless when he burst through the willows. But there he came

to a sudden, a dead stop, and then drew back into shelter again. There

on the bank, scarcely a dozen feet from it, sat two people--a. young

man with his arm round a young woman's waist. Willie Prime and Nettie

Wallace, "by all that's damnable!" as Sir Peter says! Charlie said

something quite as forcible.

He felt for his watch, but he had left it with his waistcoat on the

lawn. What was the time? Was it going quickly or slowly? Could he

afford to wait, or must he run round to the road and intercept Agatha?

Five minutes passed in vacillation.

"I'll go and stop her," he said, and began a cautious retreat. As he

moved he heard Willie's voice.

"Well, my dear, let's be off," said Willie.

Nettie rose with a sigh of content, adjusted her hat coquettishly, and

smoothed her skirts.

"I'm ready, Willie. It's been beautiful, hasn't it?"

They came towards Charlie. Evidently they intended to regain the road

by the same path as he had chosen. Indeed, from that side of the Pool

there was no choice, unless one clambered round by the muddy bank.

"We must make haste," said Willie. "Father'll want his tea."

If they made haste they would be close on his heels. Charlie shrank

back behind a willow and let them go by; then, quick as thought, rushed

to his canoe and paddled across--up the steps and into the temple he

rushed. She wasn't there! Fate is too hard for the best of us

sometimes. Charlie sat down and, stretching out his legs, stared

gloomily at his toes.

Thus he must have sat nearly ten minutes, when a head was put round the

Corinthian pilaster of the doorway.

"Poor boy! Am I very late?"

Charlie leapt up and forward, breathlessly blurting out joy tempered by

uneasiness.

Agatha gathered the difficulty of the position.

"Well," said she, smiling, "I must disappear, and you must go back to

your friends."

"No," said Charlie. "I must talk to you."

"But they may come any moment."

"I don't care!"

"Oh, but I do. Charlie, what's the matter? Oh, didn't I ever call you

'Charlie' before? Well, Charlie, if you love me (yes, I know!) you'll

not let these people see me."

"All right! Come along. I'll take you to the road and come back.

Hullo! What's that?"

"It's them!" exclaimed the lady.

It was. The pair dived back into the temple. On the opposite bank stood

Millie Bushell, Mr. Vansittart, and Victor Sutton.

"Hullo, there, Charlie, you thief!" cried Victor. "Bring that canoe

over here. Miss Bushell wants to get to the temple."

"Hush! Don't move!" whispered Agatha.

"But they know I'm here; they see that confounded canoe."

"Charlie! Charlie!" was shouted across in three voices.

"What the devil--," muttered Charlie.

"They mustn't see me," urged Agatha.

Victor Sutton's voice rose clear and distinct,

"I'll unearth him!" he cried. "I know the way round. You wait here with

Miss Bushell, Merceron."

"Oh, he's coming round!"

"I must chance it," said Charlie, and he came out of hiding. A cry

greeted him. Victor was already started, but stopped. Charlie embarked

and shot across.

"You villain! You gave us the slip," cried Uncle Van.

Miss Bushell began quietly to embark. Uncle Van followed her example.

"Oh, Mr. Merceron, you'll sink us!" cried Millie.

Charlie sat glum and silent. The situation beat him completely.

Uncle Van drew back. Millie seized the paddle and propelled the canoe

out from the bank.

"You come round with me, Merceron," called Sutton, and the two men

turned to the path. "No," added Victor. "Look here, we can climb round

here," and he pointed to the bank. There was a little narrow muddy

track, but it was enough.

The canoe was half-way across; the two men--Victor leading at a good

pace--were half-way round. Charlie glanced at the window of the temple

and caught a fleeting glance of a despairing face. "If you love me,

they mustn't see me!"

"Here, give me the paddle!" he exclaimed, and reached forward for it.

"No, I can do it," answered Millie, lifting the instrument out of his

reach.

Charlie stepped forward--rather, he jumped forward, as a man jumps over

a ditch. There was a shriek from Millie; the canoe swayed, tottered,

and upset. In a confused mass, Millie Bushell and Charlie were hurled

into the water. Victor and Uncle Van, hardly five yards from the steps,

turned in amazement.

"Help! help!" screamed Millie.

"Help!" echoed Charlie. "I can't hold her up. Victor, come and help me!

Uncle Van, come along!"

"The devil!" murmured Uncle Van,

"Quick, quick!" called Charlie; and Victor, with a vexed laugh, peeled

off his coat and jumped in. Mr. Vansittart stood with a puzzled air.

Then a happy thought struck him. He turned and trotted back the way he

had come. He would get a rope!

As he went, as Victor reached the stragglers in the water, a slim

figure in white, with a smile on her face, stole cautiously from the

temple and disappeared in the wood behind. Charlie saw her go, but he

held poor Millie's head remorselessly tight towards the other bank.

And that was the last he saw of the Lady of the Pool.

Millie Bushell landed, her dripping clothes clinging round her. Victor

was shivering, for the evening had turned chilly. Uncle Van had a bit

of rope from the boat-shed in his hand, and a doubtful smile on his

face.

"We'd best get Miss Bushel home," he suggested, and they started in

gloomy procession. Charlie, in remorse, gave Millie his arm.

"Oh, how could you?" she murmured piteously. She was cold, she was wet,

and she was sure that she looked frightful.

I--I didn't do it on purpose, "Charlie blurted out eagerly.

"On purpose! Well, I suppose not," she exclaimed, bewildered. Charlie

flushed. Victor shot a swift glance at him.

Half-way home they met Mrs. Marland and the whole affair had to be

explained to her. Charlie essayed the task.

"Still, I don't see how you managed to upset the canoe," observed Mrs.

Marland.

"No more do I," said Victor Sutton. Charlie gave it up.

"I'm so sorry, Millie," he whispered. "You must try to forgive me."

So, once again, the coast was left clear for Agatha Merceron, if she

came that night. But, whether she did or not, the other Agatha came no

more, and Charlie's great resolve went unfulfilled. Yet the next

evening he went: alone to the temple, and he found, lying on the floor,

a little handkerchief trimmed with lace and embroidered with the name

of "Agatha." This he put in his pocket, thanking heaven that his

desperate manoeuvre had kept the shrine inviolate the day before.

"Poor Millie!" said he. "But then I had to do it."

"I hear," remarked Lady Merceron a few days later, "that one of Mr.

Prime's friends has left him--not Willie's young lady--the other."

"Has she?" asked Charlie.

No one pursued the subject, and, after a moment's pause, Mrs. Marland,

who was sitting next to Charlie, asked him in a low voice whether he

had been to the Pool that evening--.

"No," answered Charlie. "I don't go every night."

"Oh, poor dear Miss Bushell!" laughed Mrs. Marland; and, when Charlie

looked inquiringly at her, she shook her head.

"You see, I know something of young men," she explained.

CHAPTER V

AN UNFORESEEN CASE

"I wish to goodness," remarked the Reverend Sigismund Taylor rubbing

the bridge of his nose with a corner of the Manual, "that the Vicar had

never introduced auricular confession. It may be in accordance with the

practice of the Primitive Church, but--one does meet with such very

curious cases. There's nothing the least like it, in the Manual."

He opened the book and searched its pages over again. No, the case had

not been foreseen. It must be included in those which were "left to the

discretion of the priest."

"It's a poor Manual," said Mr. Taylor, throwing it down and putting his

hands in the pocket of his cassock. "Poor girl! She was quite

distressed, too. I must have something to tell her when she comes next

week."

Mr. Taylor had, in face of the difficulty, taken time to consider, and

the penitent had gone away in suspense. To represent oneself as a

dressmaker--well, there was nothing very outrageous in that; it was

unbecoming, but venial, to tell sundry fibs by way of supporting the

assumed character--the Manual was equal to that; but the rest of the

disclosure was the crux. Wrong, no doubt, was the conduct--but how

wrong? That made all the difference. And then there followed another

question: What ought to be done? She had asked for advice about that

also, and, although such counsel was not strictly incumbent on him, he

felt that he ought not to refuse it. Altogether he was puzzled. At

eight-and-twenty one cannot be ready for everything; yet she had

implored him to consult nobody else, and decide for her himself. "I've

such trust in you," she had said, wiping away an incipient teardrop;

and, although Mr. Taylor told her that the individual was nothing and

the Office everything, he had been rather gratified. Thinking that a

turn in the open air might clear his brain and enable him better to

grapple with this very thorny question, he changed his cassock for a

long tailed coat, put on his wide awake, and, leaving the precincts of

St. Edward Confessor, struck across Park Lane and along the Row. He

passed several people he knew, both men and women: Mrs. Marland was

there, attended by two young men, and, a little farther on, he saw old

Lord Thrapston tottering along on his stick. Lord Thrapston hated a

parson, and scowled at poor Mr. Taylor as he went by. Mr. Taylor shrank

from meeting his eye, and hurried along till he reached the Serpentine,

where he stood still for a few minutes, drinking in the fresh breeze.

But the breeze could not blow his puzzle out of his brain. Was it a

crime, or merely an escapade? What had she said to the young man? What

had her feelings been or become towards the young man? Moreover, what

had she caused the young man's feelings to be for her? When he came to

think it over, Mr. Taylor discovered, with a shock of surprise, that on

all these distinctly material points the confession had been singularly

incomplete. He was ashamed of this, for, of course, it was his business

to make the confession full and exhaustive. He could only plead that,

at the moment, it had seemed thorough and candid--an unreserved

revelation. Yet those points did, as a fact, remain obscure.

"I wish I knew a little more about human nature," sighed Mr. Taylor: he

was thinking of one division of human nature, and it is likely enough

that he knew next to nothing of it.

A hand clapped him on the shoulder, and, with a start, he turned round.

A tall young man, in a new frock-coat and a faultless hat, stood by

him, smiling at him.

"What, Charlie, old fellow!" cried Taylor; "where do you spring from?"

Charlie explained that he was up in town for a month or two.

"It's splendid to meet you first day! I was going to look you up," he

said.

Sigismund Taylor and Charlie had been intimate friends at Oxford,

although Charlie was, as time counts there, very considerably the

junior. For the last two or three years they had hardly met.

"But what are you up for?"

"Oh, well, you see, my uncle wants me to get called to the Bar, or

something, so I ran tip to have a look into it."

"Will that take a month?"

"Look here, old fellow, I've got nothing else to do--I don't see why I

shouldn't stretch it to three months. Besides, I want to spend some

time with my ancestors."

"With your ancestors?"

"In the British Museum: I'm writing a book about them. Queer lot some

of them were, too. Of course I'm specially interested in Agatha

Merceron; but I suppose you never heard of her."

Mr. Taylor confessed his ignorance, and Charlie, taking his arm, walked

him up and down the bank, while he talked on his pet subject. Agatha

Merceron was always interesting, and just now anything about the Pool

was interesting; for there was one reason for his visit to London which

he had not disclosed. Nettie Wallace had, when he met her one day,

incautiously dropped a word which seemed to imply that the other Agatha

was often in London. Nettie tried to recall her words; but the mischief

was done, and Charlie became more than ever convinced that he would

grow rusty if he stayed always at Langbury Court. In fact, he could

suffer it no longer, and to town he went.

For a long while Sigismund Taylor listened with no more than average

interest to Charlie's story, but it chanced that one word caught his

notice.

"She comes out of the temple," said Charlie, in the voice of hushed

reverence with which he was wont to talk of the unhappy lady.

"Out of where?" asked Mr. Taylor.

"The temple. Oh, I forgot, the temple is--" and Charlie gave a

description which need not be repeated.

Temple! temple! Where had he heard of a temple lately? Mr. Taylor

cudgelled his brains. Why--why--yes, she had spoken of a temple. She

said they met in a temple. It was a strange coincidence: the word had

struck him at the time. But then everybody knows that, at a certain

period, it was common enough to put up these little classical erections

as a memorial or merely as an ornament to pleasure-grounds. It must be

a mere coincidence. But--Mr. Taylor stopped short.

"What's up?" asked Charlie, who had finished his narrative, and was now

studying the faces of the ladies who rode past.

"Nothing," answered Mr. Taylor.

And really it was not much--taken by itself, entirely unworthy of

notice; even taken in conjunction with the temple, of no real

significance, that he could see. Still, it was a whimsical thing that,

as had just struck him, Charlie's spectre should be named Agatha. But

it came; to nothing: how could the name of Charlie's spectre have

anything to do with that of his penitent?

Presently Charlie, too, fell into silence. He beat his stick moodily

against his leg and looked glum and absent.

"Ah, well," he said at last, "poor Agatha was hardly used: she paid

part of the debt we owe woman."

Mr. Taylor raised his brows and smiled at this gloomily misogynistic

sentiment. He had the perception to grasp in a moment what it

indicated. His young friend was, or had lately been, or thought he was

likely to be, a lover, and an unhappy one. But he did not press

Charlie. Confessions were no luxury to him.

Presently they began to walk back, and Charlie, saying he had to dine

with Victor Button, made an appointment to see Taylor again, and left

him, striking across the Row. Taylor strolled on, and, finding Mrs.

Marland still in her seat, sat down by her. She was surprised and

pleased to hear that Charlie was in town.

"I left him at home in deep dumps. You've never been to Langbury Court,

have you?"

Taylor shook his head.

"Such a sweet old place! But, of course, rather dull for a young man,

with nobody hut his mother and just one or two slow country neighbors."

"Oh, a run 'll do him good."

"Yes; he was quite moped;" and Mrs. Marland glanced at her companion.

She wanted only a very little encouragement to impart her suspicions to

him. It must, in justice to Mrs. Marland, be remembered that she had

always found the simplest explanation of Charlie's devotion to the Pool

hard to accept, and the most elaborate demonstration of how a Canadian

canoe may be upset unconvincing.

"You're a great friend of his, aren't you?" pursued Mrs. Marland. "So I

suppose there's no harm in mentioning my suspicions to you. Indeed, I

daresay you could be of use to him--I mean, persuade him to be wise.

I'm afraid, Mr. Taylor, that he is in some entanglement."

"Dear, dear!" murmured Mr. Taylor.

"Oh, I've no positive proof, but I fear so--and a very undesirable

entanglement, too, with someone quite beneath him. Yes, I think I had

better tell you about it."

Mr. Taylor sat silent and, save for a start or two, motionless while

his companion detailed her circumstantial evidence. Whether it was

enough to prove Mrs. Marland's case or not--whether, that is, it is

inconceivable that a young man should go to any place fourteen evenings

running, and upset a friend of his youth out of a canoe, except there

be a lady involved, is perhaps doubtful; but it was more than enough to

show Mr. Sigismund Taylor that the confession he had listened to was

based upon fact, and that Charlie Merceron was the other party to those

stolen interviews, into whose exact degree of heinousness he was now

inquiring. This knowledge caused Mr. Taylor to feel that he was in an

awkward position.

"Now," asked Mrs. Marland, "candidly, Mr. Taylor, can you suppose

anything else than that our friend Charlie was carrying on a very

pronounced flirtation with this dressmaker?"

"Dressmaker?"

"Her friend was, and I believe she was too. Something of the kind,

anyhow."

"You--you never saw the--the other person?"

"No; she kept out of the way. That looks bad, doesn't it? No doubt she

was a tawdry vulgar creature. But a man never notices that!"

At this moment two people were seen approaching. One of them was a man

of middle height and perhaps five-and-thirty years of age; he was stout

and thick-built; he had a fat face with bulging cheeks; his eyes were

rather like a frog's; he leant very much forward as he walked, and

swayed gently from side to side with a rolling swagger; and as his body

rolled, his eye rolled too, and he looked this way and that with a

jovial leer and a smile of contentment and amusement on his face. The

smile and the merry eye redeemed his appearance from blank ugliness,

but neither of them indicated a spiritual or exalted mind.

By his side walked a girl, dressed, as Mrs. Marland enviously admitted,

as really very few women in London could dress, and wearing, in virtue

perhaps of the dress, perhaps of other more precious gifts, an air of

assured perfection and dainty disdain. She was listening to her

companion's conversation, and did not notice Sigismund Taylor, with

whom she was well acquainted.

"Dear me, who are those, I wonder?" exclaimed Mrs. Marland. "She's very

distinguée."

"It's Miss Glyn," answered he.

"What--Miss Agatha, Glyn?"

"Yes," he replied, wondering whether that little coincidence as to the

'Agatha' would suggest itself to anyone else.

"Lord Thrapston's granddaughter?"

"Yes."

"Horrid old man, isn't he?"

"I know him very slightly."

"And the man--who's he?"

"Mr. Calder Wentworth."

"To be sure. Why, they're engaged, aren't they? I saw it in the paper."

"I'm sure I don't know," said Mr. Taylor, in a voice more troubled than

the matter seemed to require. "I saw it in the paper too."

"He's no beauty, at any rate; but he's a great match, I suppose?"

"Oh, perhaps it isn't true."

"You speak as if you wished it wasn't. I've heard about Mr. Wentworth

from Victor Sutton--you know who I mean?" and Mrs. Marland proceeded to

give some particulars of Calder Wentworth's career.

Meanwhile that gentleman himself was telling Agatha Glyn a very

humorous story. Agatha did not laugh. Suddenly she interrupted him.

"Why don't you ask me more about it?"

"I thought you'd tell me if you wanted me to know," he answered.

"You are the most insufferable man. Don't you care in the least what I

do or where I go?"

"Got perfect confidence in you," said Calder politely.

"I don't deserve it."

"Oh, I daresay not; but it's so much more comfortable for me."

"I disappeared--simply disappeared--for a fortnight; and you've never

asked where I went, or what I did, or--or anything."

"Haven't I? Where did you go?"

"I can't tell you."

"There, you see! What the dickens was the good of my asking?"

"If you knew what I did I suppose you'd never speak to me again."

"All right. Keep it dark then, please."

"For one tiling, I met--No, I won't."

"I never asked you to, you know."

They walked on a little way in silence.

"Met young Sutton at lunch," observed Calder. "He's been rusticating

with some relations of old Van Merceron's. They've got a nice place

apparently."

"I particularly dislike Mr. Sutton."

"All right. He sha'n't come when we're married. Eh? What?"

"I didn't speak," said Miss Glyn, who had certainly done something.

"Beg pardon," smiled Calder. "Victor told me rather a joke. It appears

there's a young Merceron, and the usual rustic beauty, don't you

know--forget the name--but a fat girl, Victor said, and awfully gone on

young Merceron. Well, there's a pond or something----"

"How long will this story last?" asked Miss Glyn with a tragic air.

"It's an uncommon amusing one," protested Calder. "He upset her in the

pond, and----"

"Do you mind finishing it some other time?"

"Oh, all right. Thought it'd interest you."

"It doesn't."

"Never knew such a girl! No sense of humor!" commented Calder, with a

shake of his head and a backward roll of his eye towards his companion.

But it makes such a difference whether a story is new to the hearer.

CHAPTER VI

THERE WAS SOMEBODY

Two worlds and half a dozen industries had conspired to shower gold on

Calder Wentworth's head. There was land in the family, brought by his

grandmother; there was finance on the paternal side (whence came a

Portuguese title, carefully eschewed by Calder); there had been a

London street, half a watering-place, a South African mine, and the

better part of an American railway. The street and the watering-place

remained; the mine and the railway had been sold at the top of the

market. About the same time the family name became Wentworth--it had

been Stripes, which was felt to be absurd--and the family itself began

to take an exalted place in society. The rise was the easier because,

when old Mr. Stripes-Wentworth died, young Mr. Calder S. Wentworth

became the only representative; and a rich young bachelor can rise

lightly to heights inaccessible to the feet of less happily situated

folk. It seemed part of Providence's benevolence that when Lady

Forteville asked how many 'Stripes women' there were, the answer could

be 'None'; whereupon the countess at once invited Mr. Calder Wentworth

to dinner. Calder went, and rolled his frog's eyes with much amusement

when the lady asked him to what Wentworths he belonged, for, as he

observed to Miss Glyn, whom he had the pleasure of escorting, his

Wentworths were an entirely new brand, and Lady Forteville knew it as

well as if she had read the letters patent and invented the

coat-of-arms.

"Mr. Wentworth--Mr. Merceron," said Victor Sutton, with a wave of his

hand.

"I believe I know an uncle of yours--an uncommon clever fellow," said

Calder, unfolding his napkin and glancing round the dining-room of the

Themis Club.

"Oh, Uncle Van? Yes, we consider him our----"

"Leading article? Quite so. I've heard a bit about you too--something

about a canoe, eh?"

Charlie looked somewhat disturbed.

"Oughtn't Sutton to have told me? Well, it's too late now because I've

told half a dozen fellows."

"But there's nothing to tell."

"Well, I told it to old Thrapston--you don't know him, do you?

Cunningest old boy in London. Upon my honor, you know, I shouldn't like

to be like old Thrapston, not when I was getting old, you know. He's

too----"

"Well, what did he say?" asked Victor.

"He said what you never had the sense to see, my boy; but I expect Mr.

Merceron won't be obliged to me for repeating it."

"I should like to hear it," said Charlie, with necessary politeness.

"Well, it's not me, its old Thrapston; and if you say it's wrong, I'll

believe yon. Old Thrapston--hang it, Victor, that old man ought to be

hanged! Why, only the other day I saw him----"

"Do stick to the point," groaned Victor.

"All right. Well, he said, 'I'll lay a guinea there was a'--and he

winked his sinful old eye, you know, for all the world like a

what-d'ye-call-it in a cathedral one of those hideous--I say, what is

the word, Victor? I saw 'em when Agatha took me--beg pardon, Merceron?"

Was the world full of Agathas? If so, it would be well not to start

whenever one was mentioned. Charlie recovered himself.

"I think you must mean a gargoyle," he said, wondering who this Agatha

might be.

"Of course I do. Fancy forgetting that! Gargoyle, of course. Well, old

Thrapston said, 'I'll lay a guinea there was a woman in that dashed

summer house, Calder, my boy.'"

Victor Button's eyes lighted with a gleam,

"Well, I'm hanged if I ever thought of that! Charlie, you held us all!"

"Bosh!" said Charlie Merceron. "There was no one there."

"All right. But there ought to have been, you know--to give interest to

the position."

"Honor bright, Charlie?" asked Victor Sutton.

"Shut up, Sutton," interposed Calder, "He's not in the Divorce Court,

Let's change the subject."

Charlie was in a difficulty, but the better course seemed to be to

allow the subject to be changed, in spite of the wink that accompanied

Calder's suggestion.

"All right," said Victor. "How is Miss Glyn, Wentworth?"

"Oh, she's all right. She's been in the country for a bit, but she's

back now."

"And when is the happy event to be?"

Calder laid down his knife and fork and remarked deliberately:

"I haven't, my dear boy, the least idea."

"I should hurry her up," laughed Sutton.

"I'd just like--now I should just like to put you in my shoes for half

an hour, and see you hurry up Agatha."

"She couldn't eat me."

"Eat you? No, but she'd flatten you out so that you'd go under that

door and leave room for the jolly draught there is all the same."

Sutton laughed complacently.

"Well, you're a patient man," he observed. "For my part, I like a thing

to be off or on."

It came to Charlie Merceron almost as a surprise to find that Victor's

impudence--he could call it by no other name--was not reserved for his

juniors or for young men from the country; but Calder took it quite

good-humoredly, contenting himself with observing, "Well, it was very

soon off in your case, wasn't it, old fellow?"

Sutton flushed.

"I've told you before that that's not true," he said angrily.

Calder laughed.

"All right, all right. We used to think, once upon a time, Merceron,

you know, that old Victor here was a bit smitten himself; but he hasn't

drugged my champagne yet, so of course, as he says, it was all a

mistake."

After dinner the three separated. Victor had to go to a party. Calder

Wentworth proposed to Charlie that they should take a stroll together

with a view to seeing whether, when they came opposite to the door of a

music-hall, they would 'feel like' dropping in to see part of the

entertainment. Charlie agreed, and, having lit their cigars, they set

out. He found his now friend amusing, and Calder, for his part, took a

liking for Charlie, largely on account of his good looks; like many

plain people, he was extremely sensitive to the influence of beauty in

women and men alike.

"I say, old fellow," he said, pressing Charlie's arm as if he had known

him all his life, "there was somebody in that summer-house, eh?"

Charlie turned with a smile and a blush. He felt confidential.

"Yes, there was, only Victor----"

"Oh, I know. I nearly break his head whenever he mentions any girl I

like."

"You know what he'd have thought--and it wasn't anything like that

really."

"Who was she, then?"

"I--I don't know."

"Oh, I don't mean her name, of course. But what was she?"

"I don't know."

"Where did she come from?"

"London, I believe."

"Oh! I say, that's a queer go, Merceron."

"I don't know what to think about it. She's simply vanished," said poor

Charlie, and no one should wonder if his voice faltered a little.

Calder Wentworth laughed at many things, but he did not laugh now at

Charlie Merceron. Indeed he looked unusually grave.

"I should drop it," he remarked. "It don't look--well--healthy."

"Ah, you've never seen her," said Charlie.

"No, and I tell you what--it won't be a bad thing if you don't see her

again."

"Why?"

"Because you're just in the state of mind to marry her."

"And why shouldn't I?"

Mr. Wentworth made no answer, and they walked on till they readied

Piccadilly Circus. Then Charlie suddenly darted forward.

"Hullo, what's up?" cried Calder, following him.

Charlie was talking eagerly to a very smart young lady who had just got

down from an omnibus.

"By Jove! he can't have found, her!" thought Calder.

It was not the unknown, but her friend Nettie Wallace, whom Charlie's

quick eye had discerned; and the next moment Willie Prime made his

appearance. Charlie received them both almost with enthusiasm, and the

news from Lang Marsh was asked and given. Calder drew near, and Charlie

presented his friends to one another with the intent that he might get

a word with Nettie while Calder engrossed her fiances attention.

"Have--have you heard from Miss Brown lately?" he was just beginning,

when Calder, who had been looking steadily at Nettie, burst out:

"Hullo, I say, Miss Wallace, we've met before, haven't we? You know me,

don't you?"

Nettie laughed.

"Oh, yes, I know you, sir. You're---"

She paused abruptly, and glanced from Charlie to Calder, and back from

Calder to Charlie. Then she blushed very red indeed.

"Well, who am I?"

"I--I saw you at--at Miss Glyn's, Mr. Wentworth."

"'Course you did--that's it;" and, looking curiously at the girl's

flushed face, he added: "Don't be afraid to mention Miss Glyn; Mr.

Merceron knows all about it."

"All about it, does he, sir?" cried Nettie. "Well, I'm glad of that. I

haven't been easy in my mind ever since."

Calder's conformation of eye enabled him to express much surprise by

facial expression, and at this moment he used his power to the full.

"Awfully kind of you, Miss Wallace," said he, "but I don't see where

your responsibility comes in. Ever since what?"

Nettie shot a glance of inquiry at Charlie, but here too she met only

bewilderment.

"Does he know that Miss Glyn is---" she began.

"Engaged to me? Certainly."

"Oh!"

Willie stood by in silence. He had never heard of this Miss Glyn.

Charlie, puzzled as he was, was too intent on Miss Brown to spend much

time wondering why Miss Glyn's affairs should have been a trouble to

Nettie.

"You'll let me know if you hear about her, won't you?" he asked in a

low voice.

Nettie gave up the hope of understanding. She shook her head.

"I'll ask her, if I see her, whether she wishes it," she whispered

back; and, with a hasty good-night, she seized Willie's arm and hurried

him off. Charlie was left alone with Calder.

"What the deuce did she mean?" asked Calder.

"I don't know," answered Charlie.

"Where did you meet her?"

"Oh, down at home. The fellow she was with is a son of a tenant of

ours; she's going to marry him."

"She's a nice little girl, but I'm hanged if I know what she meant."

And, as the one was thinking exclusively of Agatha Glyn, and the other

spared a thought for no one but Agatha Brown, they did not arrive at an

explanation.

One result, however, that chance encounter had. The next morning Miss

Agatha Glyn received a letter in the following terms:

"Madam:--I hope you will excuse me intruding, but I think you would

wish to know that Mr. Charles Merceron is in London, and that I met him

this evening with Mr. Wentworth. As you informed me that you had passed

Mr. Merceron on the road two or three times during your visit to Lang

Marsh, I think you may wish to be informed of the above. I may add that

Mr. Merceron is aware that you are engaged to Mr. Wentworth, but I

could not make out how far he was aware of what happened at Lang Marsh.

I think he does not know it. Of course you will know whether Mr.

Wentworth is aware of your visit there. I should be much obliged if you

would be so kind as to tell me what to say if I meet the gentlemen

again. Mr. Merceron is very pressing in asking me for news of you. I am

to be married in a fortnight from the present date, and I am, Madam,

yours respectfully, Nettie Wallace."

"In London, and with Calder!" exclaimed Agatha Glyn. "Oh dear! oh dear!

oh dear! What is to be done? I wish I'd never gone near the wretched

place!"

Then she took up the letter and reread it.

"He and I mustn't meet, that's all," she said.

Then she slowly tore the letter into very small pieces and put them in

the waste-paper basket.

"Calder has no idea where I was," she said, and she sat down by the

window and looked out over the Park for nearly ten minutes.

"Ah, well! I should like to see him just once again. Dear old Pool."

said she.

Then she suddenly began to laugh--an action only to be excused in one

in her position, and burdened with her sins, by the fact of her having

at the moment a peculiarly vivid vision of Millie Bushell going head

first out of a canoe.

CHAPTER VII

THE INEVITABLE MEETING

The first Viscount Thrapston had been an eminent public character, and

the second a respectable private person; the third had been neither.

And yet there was some good in the third. He had loved his only son

with a fondness rare to find; and for ten whole years, while the young

man was between seventeen and twenty-seven, the old lord lived, for his

sake, a life open to no reproach. Then the son died, leaving a lately

married wife and a baby-girl, and Lord Thrapston, deprived at once of

hope and of restraint, returned to his old courses, till age came upon

him and drove him from practice into reminiscence. Mrs. Glyn had

outlived her husband fifteen years and then followed him, fairly

snubbed to death, some said, by her formidable father-in-law. The

daughter was of sterner stuff, and early discovered for herself that

nothing worse than a scowl or a snarl was to be feared. On her, indeed,

descended a relic of that tenderness her father had enjoyed, and Agatha

used to the full the advantages it gave her. She knew her own

importance. It is not every girl who will be a peeress in her own

right, and she amused her grandfather by calmly informing him that it

was not on the whole a subject for regret that she had not been a boy.

"You see," said she, "we get rid of the new viscounty, and it's much

better to be Warmley than Thrapston."

The fact that she was some day to be 'Warmley' was the mainspring of

that hairbrained jaunt to Lang Marsh in company with Nettie Wallace.

Nettie was the daughter of Lord Thrapston's housekeeper, and the two

girls had been intimate in youth, much as Charlie Merceron and Willie

Prime had been at the Court; and when Nettie, scorning servitude, set

up in life for herself, Agatha gave her her custom and did not withdraw

her friendship. In return, she received an allegiance which refused

none of her behests, and a regard which abolished all formality between

them, except when Nettie got a pen in her hand and set herself to

compose a polite letter. The expedition was, of course, to see the

Court--the old home of the Warmleys, for which Agatha felt a

sentimental attraction. She had told herself that some day, if she were

rich (and, Lord Thrapston not being rich, she must have had some other

resource in her mind), she would buy back Langbury Court and get rid of

the Mercerons altogether. There were only a widow and a boy, she had

heard, and they should have their price. So she went to the Court in

the business-like mood of a possible purchaser (Calder could afford

anything), as well as in the romantic mood of a girl escaped from

every-day surroundings and plunging into a past full of interest to

her. Had not she also read of Agatha Merceron? And in this mixed mood

she remained till one evening at the Pool she had met 'the boy', when

the mood became more mixed still. She dared not now look back on the

struggles she had gone through before her meeting with the boy became

first a daily event, and then the daily event. She had indulged herself

for once. It was not to last; but for once it was overpoweringly sweet

to be gazed at by eyes that did not remind her of a frog's, and to see

swiftly darting towards her a lithe straight figure crowned with a head

that (so she said) reminded her of Lord Byron's. But alas! alas! why

had nobody told her that the boy was like that before she went? Why did

her grandfather take no care of her? Why did Calder never show any

interest in what she did? Why, in fine, was everybody so cruel as to

let her do exactly what she liked, and thereby get into a scrape like

this?

One thing was certain. If that boy were in London, she must avoid him.

They must never meet. It was nonsense for Mr. Sigismund Taylor to talk

of making a. clean breast of it--of a dignified apology to Charlie,

coupled with a no less dignified intimation that their acquaintance

must be regarded as closed. Mr. Taylor knew nothing of the world. He

even wanted her to tell Calder! No. She was truly and properly

penitent, and she hoped that she received all he said in that line in a

right spirit; but when it came to a question of expediency, she would

rather have Mrs. Blunt's advice than that of a thousand Mr. Taylors. So

she wrote to Mrs. Blunt and asked herself to lunch, and Mrs. Blunt,

being an accomplished painstaking hostess, and having no reason to

suppose that her young friend desired a confidential interview, at once

cast about for some one whom Agatha would like to meet. She did not ask

Calder Wentworth--she was not so commonplace as that--but she invited

Victor Sutton, and, delighting in a happy flash of inspiration, she

added Mr. Vansittart Merceron. The families were connected in some way,

she knew, and Agatha certainly ought to know Mr. Merceron.

Accordingly, when Agatha arrived, she found Victor, and she had not

been there five minutes before the butler, throwing open the door,

announced "Mr. Merceron."

Uncle Van had reached that state of body when he took his time over

stairs, and between the announcement and his entrance there was time

for Agatha to exclaim, quite audibly, "Oh!"

"What's the matter, dear?" asked Mrs. Blunt; but Uncle Van's entrance

forbade a reply, and left Agatha blushing but relieved.

Was she never to hear the end of that awful story? It might be natural

that, her hereditary connection with the Mercerons being disclosed, Mr.

Vansittart should discourse of Langbury Court, of the Pool, and of

Agatha Merceron; but was it necessary that Victor Sutton should chime

in with the whole history of the canoe and Miss Bushell, or joke with

Mr. Merceron about his nephew's 'assignations'? The whole topic seemed

in bad taste, and she wondered that Mrs. Blunt did not discourage it.

But what horrible creatures men were! Did they really think it

impossible for a girl to like to talk to a man for an hour or so in the

evening without----?

"You must let me bring my nephew to meet Miss Glyn," said Uncle Van

graciously to his hostess. "She is so interested in the family history

that she and Charlie would get on like wildfire. He's mad about it."

"In fact," sniggered Victor (Miss Glyn always detested that man), "so

interested that, as you hear, he went to meet Agatha Merceron every

evening for a fortnight!"

"You'll be delighted to meet him, won't you, Agatha? We must arrange a

day," said Mrs. Blunt.

"Calder knows him," added Victor.

"He's an idle young dog," said Uncle Van, "but a nice fellow. A little

flighty and fanciful, as boys will be, but no harm in him. You mustn't

attach too much importance to our chaff about his meetings at the Pool,

Miss Glyn; we don't mean any harm."

Agatha tried to smile, but the attempt was not a brilliant success.

She stammered that she would be delighted to meet Mr. Charles Merceron,

swearing in her heart that she would sooner start for Tierra del Fuego.

But her confession to Mrs. Blunt would save her, if only these odious

men would go. They had had their coffee, and their liqueurs, and their

cigarettes. What more, in Heaven's name, could even a man want to

propitiate the god of his idolatry?

Apparently the guests themselves became aware that they were

trespassing, for Uncle Van, turning to his hostess with his blandest

smile, remarked, "I hope we're not staying too long. The fact is, my

dear Mrs. Blunt, you're always so kind that we took the liberty of

telling Calder Wentworth to call for us here. He ought to have come by

now."

Mrs. Blunt declared that she would be offended if they thought of going

before Calder came. Agatha rose in despair: the confession must be put

off. She held out her hand to her hostess. At this moment the door-bell

rang.

"That's him," said Victor.

"Sit down again for a minute, dear," urged Mrs. Blunt.

There was renewed hope for the confession. Agatha sat down. But hardly

had she done so before the strangest presentiment came over her. She

heard the door below open and shut, and it was borne in upon her mind

that two men had entered. How she guessed it, she could not tell, but,

as she sat there, she had no doubt at all that Charlie Merceron had

come with Calder Went worth. Escape was impossible, but she walked

across to the window and stood there, with her back to the door.

"Mr. Wentworth!" she heard, and then, cutting the servant short, came

Calder's voice.

"I took the liberty---" he began: and she did not know how he went on,

for her head was swimming.

"Agatha! Agatha, dear!" called Mrs. Blunt.

Perforce she turned, passing her hand quickly across her brow. Yes! It

was so. There he stood by Calder's side, and Calder was saying, "My

dear Agatha, this is Charlie Merceron."

She would not look at Charlie. She moved slowly forward, her eyes fixed

on Calder, and bowed with a little set smile. Luckily people pay slight

attention to one another's expressions on social occasions, or they

must all have noticed her agitation. As it was, only Calder Wentworth

looked curiously at her before he turned aside to shake hands with

Uncle Van.

Then she felt Charlie Merceron coining nearer, and, a second later, she

heard his voice.

"Is it possible that it's you?" he asked, in a low tone.

Then she looked at him. His face was pale and his eyes eagerly

straining to read what might be in hers.

"Hush!" she whispered. "Yes. Hush! hush!"

"But--but he told me your name was Glyn?"

"Yes."

"And he says you're engaged to him."

Agatha clasped her hands, and Calder's voice broke in, between them:

"Come along, Merceron, we're waiting for you."

"They've got into antiquities already," smiled Mrs. Blunt. "You must

come again, Mr. Merceron, and meet Miss Glyn. Mustn't he, Agatha?"

Agatha threw one glance at him.

"If he will," she said.

Charlie pulled himself together, muttered something appropriate, and

shuffled out tinder his uncle's wing. Mr. Vansittart was surprised to

find him a trifle confused and awkward in society.

Outside the house, Charlie ranged up beside Calder "Wentworth, leaving

Uncle Van and Sutton together.

"Well, what do you think of her?" asked Calder.

Charlie gave no opinion. He asked just one question:

"How long have you been engaged to her?"

"How long? Oh, let's see. About--yes, just about a year. I never knew

that there was a sort of connection between you and her--sort of

relationship, you know. I ain't strong on the Peerage."

"A sort of connection!" There was that in more senses than the one

Calder had been told of by Uncle Van. There was a connection that poor

Charlie thought Heaven itself had tied on those summer evenings by the

Pool, which to strengthen and confirm forever he had sallied from his

home, like a knight in search of his mistress the world over in olden

days. And he found her--such as this girl must be! Stay! He did not

know all yet. Perhaps she had been forced into a bond she hated. He

knew that happened. Did not stories tell of it, and moralists declaim

against it? This man--this creature, Calder Wentworth--was buying her

with his money, forcing himself on her, brutally capturing her. Of

course! How could he have doubted her? Charlie dropped Calder's arm as

though it had been made of red-hot iron.

"Hullo!" exclaimed that worthy fellow, unconscious of offence.

Charlie stopped short. "I can't come," he said. "I--I've remembered an

engagement;" and without more he turned away and shot out of sight

round the nearest corner.

"Well, I'm hanged!" said Calder Wentworth, and, with a puzzled frown,

he joined his other friends.

CHAPTER VIII

THE MORAL OF IT

Left alone with Mrs. Blunt, Agatha sank into the nearest chair.

"A very handsome young man, isn't he?" asked the good lady, pushing a

chair back into its place. "He'll be an acquisition, I think."

Agatha made no answer, and Mrs. Blunt, glancing at her, found her

devouring the carpet with a stony stare.

"What on earth's the matter, child?"

"I'm the wretchedest wickedest girl alive," declared Agatha.

"Good gracious!"

"Mrs. Blunt, who do you think was in the summer-house when Mr. Merceron

went there?"

"My dear, are you ill? You jump about so from subject to subject."

"It's all one subject, Mrs. Blunt. There was a girl there."

"Well, my dear, and if there was? Boys will be boys; and I'm sure there

was no harm."

"No harm! Oh!"

"Agatha, are you crazy?" demanded Mrs. Blunt, with an access of

sternness.

"Could I fancy," pursued Agatha, in despairing playfulness mimicking

Uncle Van's manner, "how Miss Bushell looked, and how Victor looked,

and how everybody looked? Could I fancy it? Why, I was there!"

"There! Where?"

"Why, in that wretched little temple. I was the girl, Mrs. Blunt.

I--I--I was the milkmaid, as Mr. Sutton says. I was the country wench!

Oh dear! oh dear! oh dear!"

Mrs. Blunt, knowing her sex, held out a bottle of salts.

"I'm not mad," said Agatha.

"You're nearly hysterical."

Agatha took a long sniff.

"I think I can tell you now," she said more calmly. "But was ever a

girl in such an awful position before?"

It is needless to repeat what Mrs. Blunt said. Her censures will have

been long ago anticipated by every right-thinking person, and if she

softened them down a little more than strict justice allowed, it must

have been because Agatha was an old favorite of hers, and Lord

Thrapston an old antipathy. Upon her word, she always wondered that the

poor child, brought up by that horrid old man, was not twice as bad as

she was.

"But what am I to do about them?" cried Agatha.

'Them' evidently meant Calder and Charlie.

"Do! Why, there's nothing to do. You must just apologize to Mr.

Merceron, and tell him that an end had better be put--"

"Oh, I know--Mr. Taylor said that; but, Mrs. Blunt, I don't want an end

to be put to our acquaintance. I like him very very much. Oh, and he

thinks me horrid! Oh!"

"Take another sniff," advised Mrs. Blunt, "Of course, if Mr. Merceron

is willing to let bygones be bygones, and just be an acquaintance----"

"Oh, but I know he won't. If you knew Charlie

"Knew who, Agatha?"

"Mr. Merceron," said Agatha, in a very humble voice. "If you knew him

at all, you'd know he wouldn't do that."

"Then you must send him about his business. Oh, yes, I know. You've

treated him atrociously, but Calder Wentworth must be considered first;

that is, if you care two straws for the poor fellow, which I begin to

doubt."

"Oh, I do, Mrs. Blunt!"

"Agatha, you shameless girl, which of these men---?"

"Don't talk as if there were a dozen of them, dear Mrs. Blunt. There

are only two."

"One too many."

"Yes, I know. You--you see I'm--I'm accustomed to Calder."

"Oh, are you?"

"Yes. Don't be unkind, Mrs. Blunt. And then Charlie was something so

new--such a charming change--that----"

"Upon my word, you might be your grandfather. Talk about heredity, and

Ibsen, and all that!"

"Can't you help me, dear Mrs. Blunt?"

"I can't give you two husbands, if that's what you want. There, child,

don't cry. Never mind me. Have another sniff."

"I shall go home," said Agatha. "Perhaps grandpapa may be able to

advise me."

"Your grandfather! Gracious goodness, girl, you're never going to tell

him?"

"Yes, I shall. Grandpapa's had a lot of experience: he says so."

"I should think he had!" whispered Mrs. Blunt with uplifted hands.

"Good-by, Mrs. Blunt. You don't know how unhappy I am. Thanks, yes, a

hansom, please. Mrs. Blunt, are you going to ask Mr. Merceron here

again?"

Mrs. Blunt's toleration was exhausted.

"Be off with you!" she said sternly, pointing a forefinger at the door.

By great good fortune Agatha found Lord Thrapston at home. Drawing a

footstool beside his chair, she sat down. Her agitation was past, and

she wore a gravely business like air.

"Grandpapa," she began, "I have got something to tell you."

"Go ahead, my dear," said the old gentleman, stroking her golden hair.

Her father had curls like that when he was a boy.

"Something dreadful I've done, you know. But you won't be very angry,

will you?"

"We'll see."

"You oughtn't to be, because you're not very good yourself, are you?"

and she first glanced up into his burnt-out old eyes and then pressed

her lips on his knotted lean old hand.

"Aggy," said he, "I expect you play the deuce with the young fellows,

don't you?"

Agatha laughed softly, but a frown succeeded.

"That's just it," she said. "Now, you're to listen and not interrupt,

or I shall never be able to manage it. And you're not to look at me,

grandpapa."

The narrative--that thrice-told tale--began. As the comments of Mr.

Taylor and Mrs. Blunt were omitted, those of Lord Thrapston may well

receive like treatment, more especially as they tended not to

edification; but before his granddaughter had finished her story the

old man had sworn softly four times and chuckled audibly twice.

"I knew there was a girl in that temple, soon as Calder told me," said

he.

"But you didn't know who it was. Oh, and Calder doesn't?"

"Not he. Well, you've made a pretty little fool of yourself, missie.

What are you going to do now?"

"That's what you've got to tell me."

"I? Oh, I dare say. No, no; you got into the scrape and you can get out

of it. And---" He suddenly recollected his duties. "Look here, Agatha,

I must--hang it, Agatha, I shouldn't be doing my duty as--as a

grandfather if I didn't say that it's a monstrous disgraceful thing of

you to have done. Yes, d----d disgraceful;" and he took a pinch of

snuff with an air of severe virtue.

"Yes, dear; but you shouldn't swear, should you?"

Lord Thrapston felt that he had spoilt the moral effect of his reproof,

and, without dwelling further on that aspect of the subject, he

addressed his mind to the more practical question. The outcome,

different as the source was, was the same old verdict.

"We must tell Calder, my dear. It isn't right to keep him in the dark."

"I can't tell him. Why must he be told?"

"Well," said Lord Thrapston, "it's just possible, Aggy, that he may

have something to say to it, isn't it?"

"I don't mind what he says," declared Agatha.

"Eh? Why, I thought you were so fond of him."

"So I am."

"And as you're going to marry him

"I never said I was going to marry him. I only said he might be engaged

to me, if he liked."

"Oho! So this young Merceron----"

"Not at all, grandpapa. Oh, I do wish somebody would help me!"

Lord Thrapston rose from his seat.

"You must do what you like," he said. "I'm going to tell Calder."

"Oh, why?"

"Because," he answered, "I'm a man of honor."

Before the impressive invocation of her grandfather's one religion,

Agatha's opposition collapsed.

"I suppose he must be told," she admitted mournfully. "I expect he'll

never speak to me again, and I'm sure Mr. Merceron won't;" and she sat

on the footstool, the picture of dejection.