The next morning, Isabel, after little sleep, rose early and went out

for a walk. She had sat up until eleven, listening to the puzzling jets

of conversation, or watching the Bridge-players, and when she had

finally reached her room, tired and excited, Flora Thangue had come in

for a last cigarette and half an hour of chat. Her first evening in the

new world had had its clouded moments, for it was impossible not to feel

the alien, and the kindness of English people, no matter how deep, is

casual in expression. But on the whole she had felt more girlishly happy

and ebullient than since her sister had gone her own way and left a

heavy burden for young shoulders behind her. In the freedom of a girl in

Europe, no matter how prized, there is much of loneliness in idleness, a

constant attitude of defence, moments of bitter wonder and disgust, and,

to the analytical mind, an encroaching dread of a more normal future

with a chronic canker of discontent.

Isabel had by no means passed her European years in the procession that

winds from the Tiber to the Seine, prostrating itself at each successive

station of architecture or canvas; nor even devoted the major portion of

her time to the investigation of the native, deeply as the varying types

had interested her. Her intellectual ambition, as is often the case with

the American provincial girl, had been even stronger than her desire for

liberty and pleasure, and she had spent several months with the

archaeological society of Rome, read deeply in Italian history and art,

attended lectures at the Sorbonne, and spent nearly a year in Berlin,

Dresden, Munich, and Vienna, studying that modern stronghold of dramatic

literature, the German Theatre.

It had been the living dream of long winter evenings, when she had not

dared to join in the festivities of the other young folk lest her father

should stray beyond her control; he would, when the demon was quiescent,

sit at home if she read to him, and she had learned to read and dream at

the same time. It was only at the beginning of her third year of

liberty, when, in spite of shifting scenes, the entire absence of daily

cares and of heavy responsibilities involving another had given her

longer hours for thought and introspection, that the poisonous doubt of

the use of it all had begun to work in a mind that had lost something of

the ardor of novelty. The eternal interrogations had obtruded themselves

in her unfortunate girlhood, and she had questioned the voiceless

infinite, but angrily, with youth's blind rebellion against the

injustice of life. The anger and rebellion had been comatose in these

years of freedom, but the maturer brain was the more uneasy, at times

appalled. For what was she developing, perfecting herself? She had no

talent, with its constant promises, its occasional triumphs, its

stimulating rivalries, to give zest to life; and there were times when

she envied the student girls in Munich with their absurd "reform dress,"

their cigarettes and beer in cheap restaurants and theatres, their more

than doubtful standards. Although she had her own private faith and

never hesitated to pray for anything she wanted, she was not of those

that can make a career of religion; her mind and temperament were both

too complex, and she was unable to interest herself in creeds and

theologies--and congregations.

Now and again she had considered seriously the study of medicine,

architecture, law, of perfecting herself for criticism of some sort, for

she had spoken with a measure of truth when she had assured Flora that

she had no wish to marry. In her depths she was--had been--romantic and

given to dreaming, but the manifold weaknesses of her father--who had

been one of the most brilliant and accomplished of men, a graduate of

Harvard, and the possessor of many books--and the selfish and tyrannous

exactions which had tempered his enthusiasm for all things feminine, the

caustic tongue and overbearing masculinity of her uncle, who had been as

weak in his way as her father, for he had lost the greater part of his

patrimony on the stock-market, and the charming inconsequence of her

brother-in-law, who loved his family extravagantly and treated them like

poor relations, had not prepared her to idealize the young men she had

met in Rosewater and Europe. She had been sought and attracted more than

once during her years of liberty, but her prejudices and the deep cold

surface of temperament peculiar to American girls of the best class,

lent a fatal clarity of vision; and although she had studied men as

deeply as she dared, the result had but intensified the sombre threat of

the future. It was quite true that she had half-consciously believed

that hope would live again and justify itself in Elton Gwynne, and the

disappointment, at the first glimpse of his portrait, was so crushing

that she had buried her sex under an avalanche of scorn.

But scorn is far more volcanic than glacial and a poor barrier between

sex and judgment. It needed more than that, and more than disillusions

of the second class, no matter how inordinate, to give a girl the cool

reality of poise that had stimulated the curiosity of Miss Thangue; and

this Isabel had encountered, during the most critical period of her

inner life, in the beautiful city by the Isar. The experience had been

so brief and tremendous, the incidents so crowding and tense, the climax

so hideous, that she had been stunned for a time, then emerged into her

present state of tranquil and not unpleasant philosophy--when the

present moment, if it contained distraction, was something to be

grateful for; otherwise, to be borne with until the sure compensation

arrived. The future had neither terror for her nor any surpassing

concern, although all her old impersonal interest in life had revived,

and she was still too young not to be very much like other girls when

circumstances were propitious. And at last she had conceived--or

evolved--a definite purpose.

This morning she was living as eagerly as ever during her first deep

months in Europe. The excitement of the evening still possessed her; she

had held her own, received homage, lived a little chapter in an English

novel; above all, she was young, she was free, she was no longer

unhappy; and she loved the early morning and swift walking.

It was Sunday; the shooting would not begin until the morrow; everybody

except herself, apparently, still slept; the breakfast-hour was

half-past nine. She walked down a long lane behind the lawns and entered

the first of the coverts. There was a drowsy whir of wings--once--that

was all. There was a glint of dancing water in the heavier shades, a

rosy light beyond the farthest of the trees in the little wood where the

delicate pendent leaves hung asleep in the sweet peace. There was not an

expiring echo of her own wild forests here; nor any likeness to the

splendid royal preserves of Germany and Austria, with their ancient

trees, their miles of garnished floor, the sudden glimpse of chamois or

stag standing on a rocky ledge against the sky as if drilled for his

part. These woods had a quality all their own: of Nature in her last

little strongholds, but smiling, serenely triumphant, of tempered heat

without chill, above all, of perfect peace.

Nothing in England had impressed Isabel like this atmosphere of peace

that broods over its fields and lanes, its woods and fells, in the

evening and early morning hours; the atmosphere that makes it seem to be

set to the tune of Wordsworth's verses, and to keep it everlastingly

old-fashioned and out of all relation to its towns. As she left the wood

she saw a big hay-stack, as firm and shapely of outline as a house, not

a loose wisp anywhere. A girl, bareheaded, was driving a cow across a

field. A narrow river moved as slowly as if the world had never

awakened. The road turned to her right and led to an old stone village

with a winding broken street and several oak-trees, a pump, and a long

green bench. It might have been the Deserted Village, for the English

rise far later than the Southern races that have fallen so far behind

them in importance and wealth. Beyond the village, on a rise of ground,

was the church, its square gray tower crumbling down upon its ancient

graves. In the distance were farms, coverts, another village, a gray

spire against the blossoming red of the sky; and over all--peace--peace.

Had anything ever really disturbed it? Would there ever be any change?

England had been devastated to the roots, would be again, no doubt, but

unless it became one vast London, it would brood on into eternity with

the slight defiant smile of a beautiful woman in an enchanted sleep.

"Are you, too, an early bird?"

Isabel flew out of her reverie. Lady Victoria was approaching from a

forking road. She wore a short skirt, leggings, and heavy boots; and she

was bright, fresh, almost rosy from swift walking. "I have gone five

miles already," she said, smiling. "But I believe you were sauntering."

"Only just now--to absorb it all. I, too, can do my five miles an hour,

although Californians are the laziest people in the world about

walking."

"Then if you are up to a sharp trot we'll go to that farthest village.

My land steward has been telling me a painful tale about one of my young

women, and I intend to ask her some embarrassing questions while she is

still too stupid with sleep to lie."

"Your young women? Is all this your estate?"

"It belongs to Strathland, but I have lived here since I married, and

now the place is virtually Jack's. These people have been my particular

charge for thirty years and will continue to be until my son marries.

There are only about a hundred families on the estate altogether, but

they keep one busy."

"I can't imagine you in the working role of the Lady Bountiful. Last

night, at least, if I had written to my friend, Anabel Colton, I should

have devoted pages to your more famous attributes, but I should never

have thought of this."

"Indeed? If one could languish through life in the shell of a mere

beauty that life would be a good deal simpler proposition than it is.

Unfortunately there are complications, and, agreeable or not, one

accepts them as one does enemies, husbands, stupid servants, and all

other mortal thorns. But I am not uninterested in my people here, not by

any means, and they bore me less than going to court and visiting my

father-in-law. I watch them from birth, see that they are properly

clothed and fed, that they go to school as soon as they are old enough,

later that they find a situation here or elsewhere--those that have no

work to do at home. My son gives the young men and women a complete

wardrobe when they start out to win their way in life, and the details

fall on me. It means correspondence, mothers' meetings, and all that

sort of thing. Even during the London season I come down once a month.

Of course it is a bore, but on the whole tradition is rather kind than

otherwise in making life more or less of a routine."

"Wouldn't you miss it if your son married?" Isabel wondered if this

woman had really given her the impression of tragic secrets, unlimited

capacities for both license and arrogance. In this early morning

freshness there was hardly a suggestion of the woman of the world,

barely of the great lady; and in the rich tones of her voice there was a

genuine note of interest in her poor.

"Oh, I should always keep an eye on them; young wives have so many

distractions. If I had to give them up--yes, of course it would mean a

vacancy in my collection of habits; one side of me clings strongly to

traditions and duty. The other--well, I'd like to be a free-lance in the

world for a while--although," she added, with a sharp intonation, "I

don't suppose I should stay away from Jack very long. It is a great

relief to have a vital interest in life outside one's self. You, of

course, are not old enough to have discovered that; and, indeed, I am

not always so sure that it is possible."

Isabel did not ask her if she would not be jealous of the wife who must,

if he loved her, take the greater part of all that her "Jack" had to

give; she divined in this many-sided woman a quality in her attitude

towards her son with which ordinary maternal affection had little in

common. Her fine eyes flashed with pride at the mention of his name, and

it was more than evident that he was her deep and abiding interest; but

this keen and curious young student of life had never seen any one less

maternal. Lady Victoria's attitude, indeed, might as reasonably be that

of a proud sister or wife. When he was beside her she looked almost

commonplace in her content. The moment he passed out of her sight some

phase of individuality promptly lit its torch. Last night Isabel had

seen her stand for half an hour as motionless as some ivory female

Colossus, only her eyes burning down with slow voluptuous fire upon an

adoring little Frenchman. She had looked like a Messalina petrified with

the complications and commonness of the modern world; possibly with the

burden of years, Isabel had added, in girlish intolerance of the wiles

of which youth is independent. She had been far from falling under her

spell, although not wholly repelled by the glimpse of this worst side of

a woman far too complex to be judged off-hand. This morning she liked

her suddenly and warmly, and, with the lightning of instinct, divined

why she worshipped her son and still was willing to have him marry and

swing aside into an orbit of his own. All she needed was a certain

amount of his society, opportunities to work for him, the assurance of

his success and happiness. He was a refuge from herself; in his

imperious demands her memory slept, her depths were stagnant. But Isabel

was still too young, in spite of her own experience, more than dimly to

apprehend the older woman's attitude, and the innumerable and various

acts and sufferings, disenchantments and contacts that had led up to it.

Victoria seemed to her the most rounded mortal she had met, and yet with

an insistent terror in the depths of her riven and courageous soul, the

terror of the complete, the final disillusion. Between that moment and

her too exhaustive knowledge of life stood the magnetic figure of her

son, safeguarding, almost hypnotizing her. She was as incapable of

jealousy as of aching vanity in the fact of a son whom the world was

never permitted to forget. She had done with little things, and Isabel,

with young curiosity, wondered in what convulsion the last of them had

gone down.

Lady Victoria, unconscious of the analytical mind groping to conclusions

beside her, was revolving the midnight comments of Flora Thangue, and

her own impressions of this American relative whose sudden advent, taken

in connection with her eighteenth century beauty and undecipherable

quality, wrought the impression of a symbolic figure swimming out of

space. Lady Victoria was far too indifferent to analyze the problems of

any woman's soul, but she was keenly alive to the vital suggestion of

power in the girl, and of the strong will and intellect, the command

over every faculty, evidenced in the strong line of the jaw, the stern

noble profile, the calm searching gaze so difficult to sustain. None

knew better than Victoria the value and rarity of a free and courageous

soul. Such a woman must, when more fully developed, throw the whole

weight of her character into the scales balancing for the few whom she

recognized as equals and accepted as friends. If she had had "some

smashing love affair," as the more romantic Flora suggested, so much

the better.

She said, with a perfectly simulated impulsiveness:

"Of course you understand that I meant what I said last evening. And not

merely a week; you must pay us a long visit, if it won't bore you. But

the house will rarely be empty now that the shooting has begun, and

there is always something going on in the neighborhood. Later comes the

hunting, and I am sure you ride."

"Oh yes, I ride! I have spent about half my life on a horse. I want to

stay more than I can tell you, but before long I must go home. The same

safe old bank that has charge of your ranches looks after my small

affairs, and I have a man on the farm that has been in the family for

forty years; otherwise I should never have dared to leave my precious

chickens; but Mr. Colton writes me that Mac is failing, and before the

rainy season commences I must look into things myself."

"Chickens?" said Lady Victoria, much amused. "Do you raise chickens?"

"Rather; and not in the back yard, neither. I have about a thousand of

the most beautiful snow-white Leghorns with blood-red combs you ever

saw; and I have incubators, runs, colony-houses, and all the rest of it.

They are raised on the strictest scientific principles and yield me the

greater part of my income. That is the reason I feel obliged to

return--if Mac is no longer able--or willing--to get up at night. One

must not neglect the chicks--the little ones. I doubt if real babies are

more trouble. I don't mind telling you that I have resolved to make a

fortune out of chickens, if only that I may be able to live as I should

in San Francisco. But I must go back and do the greater part of the work

myself."

"Make a fortune--out of chickens! How odd that sounds! Not in the least

romantic, but rather the more interesting for that. But why don't you

let your ranch for dairy and grazing purposes, as we do? They bring us

in a very good income--have done, so far."

"There are about nineteen thousand acres in Lumalitas, and some forty

thousand in the southern ranch. I possess exactly three hundred and

thirty-two, forty-five of which are marsh. You have now nearly the whole

of the original grants, for as my father and uncle sold or mortgaged

portions--and could not pay--your agents bought in. You may remember."

"There is seldom any correspondence. Mr. Colton has always had a free

hand--yes--I do recall--vaguely. So I am profiting at your expense. I am

afraid that must seem unjust to you."

"Not in the least. I did not choose my paternal relatives, but I long

since accepted them with philosophy. I am thankful to have anything. Why

don't you go to California and look at your property?--live on it for a

few years? You could make far more out of it if you ran it yourself. The

lease of Lumalitas must expire very soon. I do wish you would come and

pay me a visit, and--Mr.--what on earth am I to call him?"

"Jack, of course," said Lady Victoria, warmly, although she would have

been swift to resent the liberty had the new relative been so

indiscreet.

"I never could manage Jack--never! I can't feel, see him, as Jack. I

think Cousin Elton will do."

"Quite so. I shouldn't wonder at all if we went. Jack is rather keen on

American politics, knows his Bryce--I suppose it is in the blood. He

even takes in an American Review. I have always rather wanted to visit

California, and started for it once upon a time--on my wedding journey.

But we were entertained so delightfully in New York and Washington that

before we realized what an American summer meant it was too hot to cross

the continent, and we accepted an invitation to the Adirondacks,

intending to return to England in the course of a month. But Arthur

broke his leg, and by the time he was well again it was not safe for me

to travel. So we rented a place in Virginia, where there was good sport,

and there Jack was born. Here we are. Rest under that tree while I

interview the erring maiden."

VII

Isabel sat on the bench under an ancient oak for half an hour or more,

but took no note of the time. In rural America one always seems to hear

the whir of distant machinery and responds to its tensity in the depths

of some nerve centre; but in England's open the tendency is to dream

away the hours, the nerves as blunt as in the tropics; unless, indeed,

one happens to be so astir within that one rebels in responding, and

conceives of ultimate hatred for this incompassionate arrogant peace of

England.

Isabel had been roused from her mood of unreasoning content by her

contact with the older woman, but for a few moments her thoughts waved

to and fro in that large tranquillity like pendent moss in a gentle

breeze. There was a stir of life in the little village; a window was

thrown open; a man came out to the pump and filled a bucket with water;

a child cried for its breakfast; the birds were singing in the trees.

But they barely rippled the calm. Isabel's eyes dwelt absently upon a

white line along a distant hill-top, made, no doubt, by Caesar's troops;

for she had heard that the mosaic floors of Roman houses had been

discovered under one of the fields in the neighborhood. This

information, imparted by Lord Hexam's cousin, Mrs. Throfton, a lady

interested in neither Bridge nor gossip, had not excited her as it might

have done before her archaeological experience at headquarters, but she

was glad to recall it now, for that white road, sharply insistent in the

surrounding green, was one of the perceptible vincula of history.

It was all old--old--old; an illimitable backward vista. And she was as

new, as out of tune with it as the motorcar flashing like a lost and

distracted comet along that hill-top in a cloud of historied dust: she

with her problems, her egoisms, the fateful independence of the modern

girl. In a fashion she was one of the chosen of earth, but she doubted

if the women who had toiled in these villages, or in centuries past had

lived their lives in the mansions of their indubious lords, had not had

greater compensations than she. Unbroken monotony and a saving sense of

the inevitable must in time create for the soul something of the

illimitable horizon of the vast level spaces of the earth.

And she? At twenty-five she had lost her old habit of staring with

veiled eyes into some sweet ambiguous future, her girlish intensity of

emotion. But her theories, in general, were sound, and she had ticketed

even her minor experiences. She knew that character was the most

significant of all individual forces, and that if developed in strict

adjustment to the highest demands of society, dragging strength out of

the powers of the universe, were it not inborn, the book of one's

objective future at least need never be closed prematurely by those

inexorable social forces, which, whatever the weak spots on the surface

of life, invariably place a man in the end according to his deserts. She

had seen her father, with all his advantages of birth and talents, and

early importance in the community, gradually shunned, shelved, dismissed

from the daily life of steadier if less gifted men, almost unknown to

the young generation. He had clung to certain strict notions of honor

through it all, however, and at his death the county had experienced a

spasm of remorse and attended his funeral; the sermon had been eloquent

with masterly omissions, and even the newspaper that had vilified him in

his days of political influence came out with an obituary, which, when

included in some future county history, would give to posterity quite as

good an impression of him as he deserved.

And James Otis had had his virtues. One of his claims to redemption

survived in his daughter. He had reared her in the strict principles and

precepts of his New England ancestors, many of which are generally more

useful in the life of a man. This early instillation, taken in

connection with himself as a commanding illustration in subcontraries,

had given Isabel a directness of vision invaluable to a girl in no haste

to place her life in stronger hands. Whatever her dissatisfactions and

disillusions, her road lay along the upper reaches; the second rate, the

failures from birth, the criminal classes, far below. Her start in life

was indefectible, and she knew that did the necessity arise to-morrow

she could support herself and ask no quarter.

Perhaps, she mused, she would be happier in the necessity, for the

problem of roof and bread is an abiding substitute for the problem of

what to do with one's life. But she had never known an anxious moment

regarding the bare necessities, and although there was something

pleasantly stimulating in the prospect of making a fortune and being

able to live as she wished in the city of her birth--the only object for

which she retained any passion in her affections--she smiled somewhat

cynically at the modest outlook.

Environments like the present were uplifting, almost deindividualizing,

and there had been a time when she had known seconds in the face of

nature's surprises that were distinct spiritual experiences. She

believed they would return when she was in her own land once more, and

Europe a book of fading memories. Her love of beauty at least was as

keen as ever, and now that Europe was off her mind, leaving the proper

sense of surfeit behind it, no doubt she would have a sense of actually

beginning life when the time came to take an active part in it, and she

assumed a position of some importance in her own community. She was far

too sensible for ingratitude, and fully appreciated the gifts that life

had so liberally dealt her. And she fully believed in work as the

universal panacea. The mere thought of a busy future brought a glow to

her heart. She rose with a smile as Lady Victoria emerged from the

cottage at the upper end of the village.

Lady Victoria was not smiling. Her brows were drawn, and she looked

angry and contemptuous.

"The little idiot!" she exclaimed, as they started briskly for home.

"This is the first failure I have had in ten years. That is one of my

boasts. And I took particular pains with that girl. Now Jack will have

the agreeable task of coercing the man into marrying her, for it appears

that his ardor has cooled."

Her brow cleared in a few moments, but she seemed to have had enough of

conversation, and it was evident that words for words' sake, or as a

flimsy chain between signposts of genuine interest, had no place in her

social rubric. Isabel, who was equally indifferent, strode along beside

her without so much as a comment, and so confirmed the good impression

she had made on her mettlesome relative. As they approached the house,

Lady Victoria turned to her with a smile that brought sweetness to her

eyes rather than any one of her more dazzling qualities.

"I am generally in my boudoir at five," she said. "Come in this

afternoon for a chat before tea, if you have nothing better to do. Now

run and get ready for breakfast."

VIII

Whether or not Mr. Gwynne had made up his mind to follow his mother's

advice and employ a new weapon in his siege of Mrs. Kaye, or whether,

like common mortals, he was subject to the natural impulses of youth,

the most novel of the guests of Capheaton found herself on his right in

the informality of breakfast, and the object of his solicitude. He

fetched her bacon and toast from the sideboard, and when he discovered

that she did not like cream in her tea, carried her cup back to his

mother and waited for the more pungent substitute. And then he actually

made an effort to entertain her. There was a flicker of surprised

amusement in the neighborhood, but Isabel accepted his attentions as a

matter of course, assuming that the young gentleman felt refreshed after

a night's rest in his own bed, or had awakened to a sense of her

importance as a member of his family. It was not until she caught Mrs.

Kaye's eye and read a contemptuous power to retaliate, that she

experienced a certain zest in the situation. With the magnetism of

intelligent interest in her own eyes, she turned to Gwynne with a

question that betrayed a flattering acquaintance with one of his less

popular books, then hung upon the monologue of which he promptly

delivered himself. It was characteristic that he either contributed

little to the conversation or monopolized it; and he reflected, as he

talked of the personal experience which led up to the episode of her

interest, that he had never before gazed into eyes at once so lovely and

so fine. He disliked American girls, partly because they had shown no

disposition to join the ranks of those that lived to spoil him, partly

because he believed them to be shallow and cold. Some of the married

women had attracted him, but not before they had lived long enough to

develop the stronger qualities of the older races; he had his ideals and

was not easily satisfied. He was deeply in love with Mrs. Kaye, for her

brilliant subtle mind and powerful appeal to his passions had blinded

him to her defects, and he was convinced that his heart had travelled to

its predestined goal. Nevertheless, he decided that his new cousin, if

as cold as the rest of her youthful compatriots, was worth cultivating

for her intelligence and obvious talent for good-comradeship.

But in a moment a subject was started that entirely diverted his mind

and upset the lively tenor of the breakfast-table.

"Where is Lorcutt?" asked some one, abruptly, referring to a brother of

Lord Brathland, who had lost heavily and cheerfully at Bridge the night

before.

Isabel's eyes happened to have wandered to the face of the man opposite.

To her surprise it became livid. He turned instantly to Gwynne, however,

and said: "I should have told you--I quite forgot--he asked me to make

his excuses. He got a telegram--bad news--Bratty is dead."

Involuntarily Isabel glanced at Mrs. Kaye; Flora had hinted to her of

the lady's designs. That face for once was ghastly and unmasked, but the

eyes were not glittering with grief.

"Impossible!" she cried, sharply. "Lord Brathland? Why--I saw him only

two days ago, in London. He was as well as possible."

The others barely noticed her. Their astonished eyes were fixed on the

first speaker, Captain Ormond, who was sitting very erect, as if to

receive the questions fired at him as a brave man faces the hiss of lead

on the field.

"I know little," he replied; "except that Brathland was suddenly

attacked by appendicitis two nights ago and that an operation was

immediately performed--"

"Friday night!" cried Mrs. Kaye. "Why he spent an hour with me that

afternoon, and was to dine with Lord Zeal and Lord Raglin and half a

dozen other men that night--they all came up to London to talk over one

of Sir Cadge Vanneck's mines. Why--I remember you were to be there.

Surely Lord Brathland was well then?"

"He was looking very seedy when he came in. I happened to sit next to

him--told him he ought to go home. Finally he got so bad he decided

that he would, and as he left the table he fainted. Several of us saw

him to bed. He said he didn't want his family fidgeting him, and the

surgeon said he would be all right in a few days. I thought he was out

of danger when I came down last night, so said nothing about it to

Harold."

"Was he taken home?" asked Gwynne, whose eyes had never left Ormond's

face.

"No--to Raglin's room up-stairs. The dinner was at the Club."

"I cannot understand why his family was not summoned at the last!"

exclaimed Lady Victoria.

"Well, there's only the old duke and Harold, you see. Dick is out in

Africa. I suppose they didn't want to agitate the duke until the last

moment and couldn't find Harold until this morning. Besides, Raglin was

with him, and he is a relative, at least. It is awfully sudden. I have

been upset ever since Harold woke me up this morning and told me; and

hated to speak of it."

"Who was the surgeon?" asked Gwynne.

"Ballast."

"Ballast? Who is he? Why not one of the big men, in heaven's name?"

cried Mrs. Kaye.

"Well--they were all out of town--naturally enough at this time of year.

We had to take what we could get. No doubt Lester or Masten was

telegraphed for later. I--all of us--left the affair in Raglin's hands."

The company broke into general comment, and under cover of the confusion

Isabel distinctly heard Gwynne demand:

"What's up your sleeve, Ormond?"

And the response: "For God's sake, old chap, don't ask!"

IX

Gwynne had never recognized the contingency of a serious rival in the

affections of the woman he had elected to mate, and had he heard of the

late Lord Brathland's attentions it would not have occurred to him that

Mrs. Kaye could weigh a prospective dukedom against the reflected

glories of his own career. He intended to be prime-minister before he

was forty, and older and soberer heads shared his confidence. It was

true that Mrs. Kaye was an emphatic Conservative--scorning even the

compromise of Liberal-Unionism--and that so far he had been unable to

convert her; but he did not take any woman's political convictions very

seriously, knowing that they commonly owed their inspiration to social

ambition, a desire for a career, or to marital comradeship. The latter

he made no doubt would operate in his own case as soon as the lady gave

him the opportunity to demand it as his right; and his sharp political

discussions with her were among the spiciest of his experiences. She

rarely expressed herself in every-day language; and although it had

crossed his mind that epigrammatic matrimony might grow oppressive, he

had reminded himself that her speech was but a part of a too cultivated

individuality and would be unable to endure the strain of daily

intercourse. Although he had in his composition little of the femininity

that gives a certain type of man a sympathetic comprehension of women,

his Celtic blood imparted a subtle understanding of their foibles of

which he was but half aware. More than once this subconscious

penetration had induced a speedy recovery from misplaced affections; but

the toils of Julia Kaye, who piqued, allured, repelled, dazzled, now and

again snubbed every one else for his sake, bound him helpless. He was

grateful for his mother's abetment, although it somewhat surprised him;

but his mother was the woman of whom he had the least comprehension.

So far Mrs. Kaye had ignored his several proposals, but of this he

thought nothing. He would have cared little for a woman to be had for

the asking; and he rather welcomed any treatment that stirred the

somewhat sluggish surfaces of his nature.

He had determined, however, to force a definite answer from her during

this visit, and although he was far too courteous a host to embarrass a

guest, he knew that were Mrs. Kaye deliberately to grant him a private

interview he should be at liberty to press his suit.

Immediately after the hour in the smoking-room that followed breakfast,

he started in search of her; but although many of the women were

scattered throughout the lower rooms, reading, writing, gossiping, he

saw nothing of his inamorata. Flora Thangue happened to be standing

alone, and he went up to her impulsively.

"Do you know if Julia has gone to church?" he asked, without

circumlocution.

"She went to her room directly after breakfast. I fancy she is rather

cut up over Lord Brathland's death," replied the astute Miss Thangue.

"Of course; we all are--poor Bratty! He was rather a bounder, but it is

natural to recall his virtues. Flora, go and tell her I want her to come

for a walk. I can't go to her room myself, and I don't care to send a

servant."

Miss Thangue reflected. Probably this was the most favorable moment for

a repulse that he could have chosen. She was sincerely fond of him and

distrusted Mrs. Kaye as much as she disliked her.

"Very well," she said. "I will see what I can do."

Mrs. Kaye admitted her promptly and presented an unstained front,

although her color was lower than usual. She was a woman of too much

natural and acquired poise to remain askew under any shock. But she had

experienced an hour of mixed emotions in which a confused and wondering

sense of defeat was paramount. It had left her a little aghast, for

although she had met with the inevitable snubs in her upward course, she

rarely permitted them to agitate her memory in these days when she had

grown to believe herself one of the spoiled favorites of destiny; and

her fibres were by no means sensitive. But this sudden blow was a

reminder that fate had been capricious to spoiled darlings before. She

had stood almost motionless before the window from the moment she had

entered her room until Miss Thangue knocked at the door, and by that

time she had repoised herself and set her heavy mouth in a hard line as

she reflected upon her own will as a factor in any game with life.

"Jack wants you to go for a walk," announced Miss Thangue, who saw no

occasion for subtlety.

"That means he intends to propose again," said Mrs. Kaye, in her

carefully modulated voice. "I don't know that I care about it. I have

letters to write."

"Why not get it over? You could compel him to believe, if you chose,

that you have no intention of marrying him, and it would be rather a

kindness; he has so much else to think about, and he certainly should

have a free mind before the opening of Parliament. If you really did

Jack any harm," she added, deliberately, "Vicky would never forgive

you--nor a good many others."

"I wouldn't do him any harm for the world," said Mrs. Kaye, casting down

her eyes and looking very young and innocent. "But I should hate to give

him up. After all, there is no one half so interesting. Well, I'll go

down and have it over."

A few moments later she joined Gwynne at the foot of the staircase, and

they went out to the woods. She looked her best in a smart walking-frock

of white tweed, and a red toque; for the tailor costume modifies where

the elaborate accentuates.

Her brilliant eyes melted as Brathland's name was mentioned; naturally

at once.

"What a dreadful--shocking thing!" she cried. "I do not realize it at

all. Poor dear, we were such friends--and I saw him only a few hours

before. Have you heard anything more?"

"Ormond ran off to town directly after breakfast--as if he were afraid

of being asked too many questions. I have an idea that he kept the cat

in the bag. I saw my cousin Zeal yesterday, and thought he looked as if

he had something besides his health on his mind."

"Why?" asked Mrs. Kaye, startled. "What else could it be?"

"Well, Bratty was rather a flasher," said Gwynne, innocently. "The

dinner may not have been at the Club at all, and there is a little

chorus-girl that engaged the fickle Bratty's affections for a time, and

proclaimed her desire for vengeance from the house-tops when he

transferred himself to a rival at the Adelphi. She is a Neapolitan, and

that sort may carry a stiletto even in prosaic old London. Or perhaps

poor Bratty was despatched with the carving-knife. No wonder he didn't

want his family. But whatever it was, he has paid the penalty himself,

poor chap, and no doubt the matter will be hushed up."

"How disgusting! I don't want to think of human slums on this heavenly

Sunday morning."

"Nor to be proposed to, I suppose?"

"I don't mind, Jack dear."

She looked girlish and very piquant. Jack took her hand. She did not

withdraw it, and they walked silently in the shadowed quiet of the wood.

His heart beat almost audibly. Never before had she given him such

definite encouragement. He could think of nothing to say that would not

sound banal to this woman of the ready tongue. But agitation unlocks

wayward fancies and sends them scurrying inopportunely across the very

foreground of the mind. The vagrant hope that she would not accept him

in an epigram restored his balance, and he turned to her with his

habitual air of confidence, albeit his eyes and mouth were restless.

"I want an answer to-day," he said, boldly. "And there is only one

answer I will take. I have let you play with me, as that seemed to be

your caprice, and I love caprice in a woman. But there is an end to

everything and I want to marry before Parliament meets."

"And you never thought I would not marry you?" she asked, in some

wonder.

"I have never faced the possibility of failure in my life. And you are

as much to me as my career. I cannot imagine life without either."

He suddenly put his hand under her chin and lifted her face; she was of

tiny stature and this disadvantage in the presence of man was not the

least subtle of her charms. "Say yes quickly," he cried, and the

strength of his will and passion vibrated to her through the medium he

had established. But she pouted and drew back.

"Perhaps I want a career of my own. You would swallow me whole."

"You could become the most powerful woman in the Liberal party--have a

salon and all the rest of it."

"I happen to be a Conservative."

"What has that to do with it? Or politics with love, for that matter?

Tell me that you love me. That is all I care about."

"It is only during the engagement that love is all. Marriage is the

great public school of life; the passions fall meekly into their proper

place--beside the prosaic appetites, the objective demands; somewhat

below the faculties that distinguish the higher kingdom."

"Indeed? Well, I am sanguine enough to believe that we would prove the

exception. I hardly dare think of it!" he burst out. "For God's sake

keep your epigrams for other people and be a woman pure and simple."

She looked both as she permitted her full red mouth to tremble and his

arms to take sudden possession of her.

X

In the large liberty of an English country-house Isabel might have found

the long morning tedious had she been of a more sociable habit. Lady

Victoria, Mrs. Throfton, and Lady Cecilia Spence went to church; all

three, as great ladies, having a dutiful eye to the edification of

humbler folk. Flora Thangue spent the greater part of the morning

writing letters for her hostess, the men fled to the golf-links, and the

rest of the women not engaged in vehement political discussion, or

Bridge, were striding across country. Isabel, tempted by the charmingly

fitted writing-table in her room, although an indolent correspondent,

wrote a long and amply descriptive letter to her sister, which her

brother-in-law, being more than usually hard up at the moment of its

arrival, transposed into fiction and illustrated delightfully for a

local newspaper. Then she roamed about looking at the pictures, testing

her European education by discovering for herself the Lelys and Mores,

the Hoppners, Ketels, Holbeins, Knellers, Dahls, and Romneys. She had a

quick instinct for the best in all things, but cared less for pictures

than for other treasures of the past: marbles, the architecture in old

streets, hard brown schlosses on their lonely heights, the Gothic spaces

of cathedrals, the high and fervent imaginations, immortal yet nameless,

in the carvings on stone; the jewelled facades of Orvieto and Siena,

the romantic grandeur of the Alhambra.

She opened a door at the back of the central hall and found herself in a

pillared corridor with a door at either end. Both rooms were open, and

as a blue cloud hung about the entrance to the left, she turned to what

proved to be the library of Capheaton. It was a square light apartment,

with the orthodox number of books, but with so many desks and

writing-tables that it looked more like the business corner of the

mansion. Here, indeed, as Isabel was to learn, Lady Victoria held daily

conference with her housekeeper and stewards, interviewed the women of

the tenantry, and those active and philanthropic ladies of every

district that aspire to carry the burdens of others. Here Gwynne kept

his Blue Books and thought out his speeches, but it was not a favorite

room with the guests.

Isabel had found many books scattered about the house, solid and

flippant, old and new, but nothing by her host. She rightly assumed that

his works would be disposed for posterity in the family library, and

found them on a shelf above one of the large orderly tables. As a matter

of fact she had read but two of his books, and she selected another at

random and carried it to a comfortable chair by the window. The work was

an exposition of conditions in one of the South African colonies,

containing much criticism that had been defined by the Conservative

press as youthful impertinence, but surprisingly sound to the

unprejudiced. What had impressed Isabel in his other books and claimed

her admiration anew was his maturity of thought and style; she saw that

this volume had been published when he was twenty-four, written,

doubtless, when he was a year or two younger. She felt a vague pity for

a man that seemed to have had no youth. Since his graduation from

Balliol in a blaze of glory he had worked unceasingly, for he appeared

to have found little of ordinary recreation in travel. She wondered if

he would take his youth in his bald-headed season, like the self-made

American millionaire.

His style, pure, lucid, virile, distinguished, might have been the

outcome of midnight travail, or, like his eloquence on the platform, a

direct flight from the quickened brain. It certainly bore no resemblance

to his amputated table talk. But in a moment she dismissed her

speculations, for she had discovered a quality, overlooked before, but

arresting in the recent light of his cold arrogance and haughty

self-confidence. Behind his strict regard for facts and the keen insight

and large grasp of his subject, which, without his evident care for the

graces, would have distinguished his work from the dry report of equally

conscientious but less gifted men, was the lonely play of a really lofty

imagination, and a noble human sympathy. As she read on, this warm

full-blooded quality, tempered always by reason, grew more and more

visible to her alert sense; and when the fires in his mind blazed forth

into a revelation of a passionate love of beauty, both in nature and in

human character, Isabel realized what such a man's power over his

audience must be; when this second self, so effectually concealed,

suddenly burst into being.

"It is too bad a woman would have to live with the other!" she thought,

as she raised her eyes and saw Gwynne emerge from the woods with Mrs.

Kaye. "I cannot say that I envy her."

"By Jove, they have an engaged look!"

Isabel turned with a start, but greeted Lord Hexam with a smile. He was

as yet her one satisfactory experience of the young English nobleman,

whom, like most American girls, she had unconsciously foreshadowed in

doublet and hose. Hexam was quite six feet, with a fine military

carriage; he had been in the Guards and had not left the army until

after two years of active service; his blue eyes were both honest and

intelligent, and he was generally clean cut and highly bred.

He drew up a chair beside Isabel and reflected that she was even

handsomer than he had thought, with the sunlight warming the ivory

whiteness of her skin, although it contracted the mobile pupils of her

eyes; and that little black moles when rightly placed were more

attractive than he had thought possible. They gave a sort of daring

unconscious eighteenth-century coquetry to what was otherwise a somewhat

severe style of beauty. But he was a man for whom a woman's hair had a

peculiar fascination, and while they were uttering commonplaces at

random his eyes wandered to the soft yet massive coils encircling

Isabel's shapely head, and lingered there.

"Pardon me!" he said, boyishly. "But I always thought--don't you

know?--that hair like that was only in novels and poems and that sort of

thing. Is it all your own?" he asked, with sudden suspicion.

"You would think so if you had to carry it for a day. I should have had

it cut off long ago if it had happened to be coarse hair. It is an

inherited evil of which I am too vain to rid myself. The early Spanish

women of my family all had hair that touched the ground when they stood

up. I have an old sketch of a back view of three of them taken side by

side; you see nothing but billows of fine silky hair. But I have put it

out of sight, as it looks rather like an advertisement for a famous hair

restorer."

"I'd give a lot to see yours down. It's wonderful--wonderful!"

"Well, I have promised a private view to some of the women. If Lady

Victoria thinks it quite proper perhaps I'll admit you."

"I'll ask her for a card directly she comes home. Let it be this

afternoon just after tea."

"I wonder if they really are engaged," said Isabel, who had been told

that Englishmen never paid compliments, and was growing embarrassed

under the round-eyed scrutiny. Gwynne and Mrs. Kaye had paused by a

sundial.

"Who? Oh yes, I should think so, although there was some talk that poor

Bratty--but no doubt that was mere rumor, or Mrs. Kaye wouldn't be on

with Jack like that. By Jove, he is engaged. I never saw him look

so--so--well, I hardly know what."

"Do you approve of the match?"

"If my consent is asked I shall give them my blessing. He is the salt of

the earth, although a bit lumpy now and then; and she is such a jolly

little thing, full of genuine affection--just the wife for Jack."

"You believe in her, then?" Isabel wondered, as many another has done,

at the miasma that seems to rise and dim a man's perceptive faculties

when he is called upon to estimate the worth of a fascinating woman.

"Rather! Don't you?"

"She struck me as being one of the few people without a redeeming

virtue. To be sure that has a distinction of its own."

"Oh!" He wondered if so handsome a girl shared the common rancor of her

age and sex against charming young widows.

"And the worst mannered," continued Isabel, who knew exactly what he

thought. "And plebeian in her marrow. I wish my cousin had chosen Miss

Thangue or any one else."

"But he couldn't marry Flora," said the literal young nobleman. "She

hasn't a penny, and is the friend of all our mothers. But I'm sorry

you've such a bad opinion of Mrs. Kaye. She's tremendously popular with

us. I'm not one of her circle--retinue would be more like it; but I've

always thought her the brightest little thing going, and I'm sure she

wouldn't harm a fly."

"I'm sure she would do nothing so little worth her while. Well, there is

no need for your eyes to be opened; but I wish that my cousin's might

be. I suppose that you have the same faith in him that so many

others--himself included--seem to have."

"Rather!--You are a most critical person. Haven't you?"

"I think I have. In fact I am sure of it. That is the reason I have been

wishing he were an American."

He laughed boyishly. "That is a good one! But we need him over here. You

haven't the slightest idea how much. We get into a blue funk every time

Zeal takes a cold on his chest. To quote Mrs. Kaye, 'A Liberal peer is

as useful as a fifth wheel to a coach, and as ornamental as whitewash.'

Clever, ain't it?"

"I think people are touchingly easy to satisfy! I have been treated to

several of Mrs. Kaye's epigrams and heard as many more quoted. It seems

to me that nothing could be easier than the manufacture of that popular

superfluity."

"Perhaps--with time to think them out beforehand. Anyhow, it's rather

jolly to hear things you can remember."

"I should be the last to deny her cleverness," said Isabel, dryly. But

being by no means desirous that he should find her too acid, she dropped

her eyes for a moment, then raised two dazzling wells of innocence. "I

am tired of the subject of my cousin and Mrs. Kaye," she murmured. "Are

you as ambitious as Jack?"

"No use." He stared helplessly down into the blue flood. "There is no

escape from the 'Peers' for me, although my father, I am happy to say,

is as healthy as I am. But after the brain cells become brittle--one

never knows. I too am a Liberal, and am getting in all the good work of

which I am capable while there is yet time. I don't go as far as

Jack--don't want to see the 'Peers' chucked. I have a strong reverence

for traditions, and no taste whatever for democracy--that would be too

long a step. And I think a man should be content to be useful, do the

best he can, in his own class; and be loyal to that class whatever

happens. Of course I understand Jack's point of view, because I

understand him so well, and know that he would be the most maimed and

wretched man on earth in the Upper House; but personally, I think one

should be prepared to accept inherited responsibilities."

And then, as they were both young, and mutually attracted, they found

many subjects of common interest to keep them in the library until the

gong summoned them to luncheon.

XI

Flora Thangue, after luncheon, took Isabel out in a pony cart, and

although too loyal to gossip intimately about her patrons, incidentally

directed a search-light into certain of their recesses; a light that was

to prove useful to Isabel in her future intercourse with them, although

it did not in the least prepare her for an experience that awaited her

later in the day. Miss Thangue's mind was occupied at first with the

obvious engagement of Gwynne and Mrs. Kaye.

"That woman was born to upset calculations!" she exclaimed. "Yonder is

the castle of the dukes of Arcot. We are going over to a party to-morrow

night. It really looks like a castle with all those gray battlements and

towers, doesn't it? We don't call every tuppeny-hapenny villa inhabited

by a nobleman a 'castle' as they do in Germany and Austria. Well--that

clever little panther! I'd like to pack her into one of her own epigrams

and bury her alive. I _know_ she was as good as engaged to Brathland.

Now, having decided that, all things considered, Jack is the best match

going--for everybody believes Lord Zeal to be worse than he is--well!

there is something appalling in a woman who can adjust herself as

quickly as that; whose caprices, sentiments, passions, all natural

impulses, are completely controlled by her reason. I wish Vicky saw

through her; she has so much influence over Jack, and such deadly

powers of ridicule. But Vicky, like all spoiled women of the world, is

as much the victim of the subtle flatterer as any man, and Julia Kaye

has managed her beautifully. She considered Jack for a bit before she

was sure of Brathland. Vicky's real reason for indorsing Julia

Kaye--between us--is because she believes her to be one of that small

and select band that can hold a man on all his various sides, and she

wants to avoid the probability of an absorbing and possibly tragic

liaison--like Parnell's, for instance--which might interfere with,

perhaps ruin, Jack's career. That is all very well, as far as it goes,

but I believe Julia Kaye to be so entirely selfish that when Jack finds

her out he will sicken of life. I have had the best of opportunities to

study women, and I have brought Jack up--I had the honor to be the

highly idealized heroine of his calf-love, and have been more or less in

his confidence ever since. In certain ways I understand him better than

his mother does, for she has seen too much of the worst side of men, and

is at heart too _blasee_ to have much respect for or knowledge of their

spiritual side; and if I have ever had any maternal spasms in my

virtuous spinsterhood they have been over Jack. Can't you help us out?"

she asked, turning suddenly to the stranger, to whom she was powerfully

attracted. "Are you as indifferent as you look?"

"I have no idea! But although I should not in the least object to be

cast for a part in this domestic drama, I don't care for it at the price

of too much 'Jack.' To attempt to cut out Mrs. Kaye I should need a

little genuine enthusiasm; and frankly, your beloved prodigy does not

inspire it. I like Lord Hexam far better."

"Oh, Jimmy! He's a fine fellow, but only a type."

"He hasn't a rampant ego, if that is what you mean. And for every-day

purposes--" She shrugged her shoulders. "I could endure and even be

deeply interested in Elton Gwynne if he happened to be my brother and I

could hook my finger in his destiny; but in any other capacity--no,

thank you!"

"Are you going to marry Jimmy?"

"I did not even know he was not already married. Do you see nothing in a

man but a husband over here? If I ever do marry it will not be before I

am forty."

"That is rather long--if you see much of the world meanwhile! And Jimmy,

although there is not much money in the family--about twenty thousand a

year--would be a very good match. He will be Earl of Hembolt--a fine old

title."

"You assume that such a plum may be pulled by the first comer."

"Rather not! But you Americans have such a way with you! What is more to

the point, I never saw him so bowled over."

"Well," said Isabel, imperturbably, "I will think of it. This English

country and these wonderful old houses, with their inimitable

atmosphere, appeal to me very strongly. I have more the feeling of being

at home here than I had even in Spain, where I have roots. And socially

and picturesquely, there is nothing to compare with the position of an

English noblewoman."

Flora turned her eyes frankly to the classic profile beside her. Isabel

had removed her hat, and, framed in the heavy coils of her hair, her

features impressed the anxious observer as even more Roman than early

American; although had she but reflected she would have remembered that

the type of the Caesars had its last stronghold in the United States of

the eighteenth century. Isabel looked like a very young Roman matron,

but her resemblance to the stately effigies in the galleries of Florence

and Rome, strong in virtue or vice, was so striking that once more Flora

longed for her support. A woman with such capabilities would be wasted

in the role of a mere countess--but as the wife of an aspiring Liberal

statesman! She devoutly wished that the American had arrived six months

earlier, or that Brathland still lived.

But she was a very tactful person and was about to drop the subject,

when Isabel slowly turned her eyes. They looked so much like steel that

for the moment they seemed to have lost their blue.

"I have made up my mind to do something to prevent this marriage," she

announced. "I do not know what, as yet. I shall be guided by events."

And Flora devoutly kissed her, then gossipped pleasantly about the other

guests and the people in the neighborhood. Isabel was curious to know

something of the duchess she was to meet on the morrow.

"Does she really look like a duchess?" she asked, so innocently that

Flora laughed and forgot the Roman-American profile, and the fateful

eyes that had given her an uncomfortable sensation a moment before.

"Well--yes--she does--rather. It is the fashion in these days not to--to

be smart above all things, excessively democratic, animated, unaffected,

clever. But our duchess here is rather old-fashioned, very lofty of head

and expression. She has a look of floating from peak to peak, and

although passee is still a beauty. To be honest, she is hideously dull,

but as good a creature as ever lived, and all that the ideal duchess

should be--so high-minded that she has never suspected the larkiest of

her friends."

"Well, I am glad she looks the role. I have artistic cravings."

They drove for an hour through the beautiful quiet green country, past

many old stone villages that might have been the direct sequence of the

cave era. An automobile skimmed past and the pony sat down on its

haunches. Isabel had a glimpse of a delicate high-bred face set like a

panel in a parted curtain.

"That is the duchess," said Miss Thangue. "She wouldn't wear goggles for

the world, and only gets into an automobile occasionally to please the

duke. There is nothing old-fashioned about him."

"She looks as if her name ought to be Lucy," said Isabel, to whom the

pure empty face had appeared like a vision from some former dull

existence, and left behind it an echo of insupportable ennui.

XII

Isabel had looked forward all day to the promised talk with the somewhat

formidable relative for whom, however, she had conceived one of those

enthusiasms peculiar to her age and sex. Her wardrobe was barren of the

costly afternoon gowns smart women affect, but she put on an organdie,

billowy with many ruffles, that consorted with the season, at least.

Blue cornflowers were scattered over the white transparent surface, and

she possessed no more becoming frock. Had she been on her way to a tryst

with Lord Hexam she would have thrust a rose in her hair, accentuated

the smallness of her waist with a blue ribbon, the whiteness of her

throat with a line of black velvet; but she had the instinct of dress,

which teaches, among many things, that self-consciousness in external

adornment provokes amusement in other women.

She had not the least idea where to find Lady Victoria's boudoir,

although a casual reference by Flora Thangue suggested that it was on

the bedroom floor. She lost herself in the interminable corridors and

finally ran into Elton Gwynne.

"Your mother expects me--where is her boudoir?" she asked.

He was at peace with the world, and answered, good-naturedly: "I'll

pilot you. Her rooms are over on the other side."

"You look as if you should be congratulated about something," she said,

demurely. "There are all sorts of rumors flying about."

She had half-expected to be snubbed, but he was not in the humor to snub

anybody. "You can congratulate me!" he said, emphatically. "The most

wonderful woman in the world has promised to marry me."

"I hope you will be happy," said Isabel, conventionally. She resented

his sudden drop from his pedestal, for he looked sentimental and

somewhat sheepish. Still, her youth warmed to his in spite of herself,

and again he noticed with a passing surprise that her eyes were both

lovely and intellectual. He was hardly aware that coincidentally his

Julia's eyes met his mental vision with a glance somewhat too hard and

brilliant, but he caught Isabel's hand and gave it a little shake.

"Thank you!" he exclaimed. "That was said as if you jolly well meant it.

There are my mother's rooms."

He went off whistling, and Isabel raised her hand and looked at it

meditatively; his own had been unexpectedly warm and magnetic. She had

imagined that his grasp would be cold and loose.

He had indicated a private corridor, and she entered it and approached a

door ajar. There was no response to her knock, but as she was expected,

and Lady Victoria no doubt was still dressing, she pushed open the door

and entered. The room was empty, but Isabel was instantly impressed with

its reflection of an individuality, although of a side that had

attracted her least. Here was none of the old-time stiffness of

Capheaton, and there was a conspicuous absence of dead masters and their

pupils. It was not a large room. The walls were covered with a Japanese

gold paper to within four feet of the floor where it was met by a

tapestry of Indian cashmeres, and from it was separated by a narrow

shelf set thick with photographs in silver frames, and with odd and

exquisite bibelots. On the walls were artists' sketches, and two or

three canvases of the Impressionist and Secessionist schools, expressive

of the ardent temperaments of their creators. In the place of honor was

a painting of Salambo in the folds of her python.

There were several deep chairs and a mighty divan covered with

gold-colored cushions and a tiger-skin, whose mate was on the floor. The

gloom of the afternoon was excluded by heavy gold-colored curtains, and

the only, but quite sufficient light, filtered through an opalescent

globe upheld by a twisted bronze female of the modern Munich school,

that looked like nothing so much as Alice elongating in Wonderland.

Isabel suddenly felt herself and her organdie absurdly out of place in

this room with its enchantress atmosphere. She wished that Lady Victoria

had made the appointment for the library, which was equally in tune with

another side of her.

She was even meditating a retreat, inexplicably embarrassed, when an

inner door opened and Lady Victoria entered. She wore a tea-gown of a

sort, black and yellow, open over the soft lace of a chemisette,

although a dog-collar of tiny golden sequins clasped her throat. In her

hair a golden butterfly trembled, and in that light she would have

looked little older than her guest had it not been for the expression of

her face. It was this expression that arrested Isabel even more than the

toilette, as she moved towards the divan without a word of greeting. It

looked as if it had been put on with the costume, both intended to

express a mood of the wearer: which might have been that of a tigress

whose ferocity was slowly awakening with the approach of the victim. The

black eyes were heavy with the lust of conquest, the points of the mouth

turned up more sharply than usual; there was an insatiable vanity in the

commanding poise of her head. She was as little like the woman of the

morning as the sun is like the midnight, and Isabel experienced a

positive terror of her.

Feeling sixteen and very foolish, she sank to the edge of a chair and

muttered something about the charm of the room. Then, as Lady Victoria,

who had arranged herself among the shining pillows, continued to stare

at her with absolutely no change of expression, it dawned upon her that

she had not been expected but that some one else was. With too little

presence of mind left to retire gracefully and too much pride to appear

to have ventured into the cave of Venus unasked, she managed to

articulate her gratitude for the invitation of the morning.

"Oh!" Lady Victoria's eyebrows expressed a flicker of intelligence. "I

hope you have managed not to bore yourself."

Isabel plunged into an account of her drive, to which Lady Victoria, who

had lit a long Russian cigarette, paid no attention whatever. Her

expression was still petrified, except that she might have had the scent

of blood in her slightly dilating nostrils.

Suddenly the slow flame in her eyes burned upward, and Isabel, her head

fairly jerking about, saw that a man had entered and was advancing

rapidly across the room, his heavy eyes wide with admiration. It was the

Frenchman whom Lady Victoria had honored with so much of her attention

the evening before.

He raised to his lips the pointed fingers negligently extended, and

murmured something to which Lady Victoria replied in French as pure and

fluent as his own; and in a low rich voice, with not an echo in it of

her habitual abruptness or haughty languor.

The Frenchman accepted a cigarette and a low chair opposite the divan,

whose golden cushions seemed subtly to embrace the yielding flexible

figure against them. Neither took the slightest notice of the third

person beyond a muttered introduction and acknowledgment, and as the man

embarked on a soft torrent of speech, bearing the burden of his

beatitude in at last meeting the only Englishwoman whose fame in Paris

was as great as among her native fogs, Isabel rose and retreated with

what dignity she could summon. Then Lady Victoria, seeing that she was

rid of her, and courteous under all her idiosyncrasies, rose with a long

motion of repressed energy and accompanied her to the door, her hand

resting lightly against the crisp organdie belt.

"Will you pour out the tea for me?" she asked, sweetly. "I doubt if I go

down."

No small part of her dangerous fascination lay in her sincerity. She

really liked Isabel, although it was characteristic of her that she did

not in the least care at what conclusions that puzzled young woman might

arrive in a more solitary meditation.

When Isabel found herself in the long cool corridor, set thick with

gentle landscapes, and hunting squires, and dames haughty and humble,

she drew a long breath of relief, as if she had escaped from a jungle.

But she felt oddly wounded in her self-love, young and silly. She had

thought herself old in the last three years, tremendously modern. What

did she know? The easy morals of students in France and Germany had

repelled her at first, but she had ended by accepting them as a matter

of course, and had rather plumed herself upon her accumulating grains

and blends of human nature. She felt a rush of contempt for their

crudity. What children they were with their simple unmorality of

artists, as ignorant of the real world as babes in a wood!

When she reached her own room she astonished herself by bursting into a

passion of tears. It was some time before she understood what had

induced it. It was not that the illusions of youth had received a hard

blow, for many of them had disappeared long since in Paris, when she had

supported an American girl of decent family but too much liberty through

the most desperate experience that a young woman, alone and friendless

in a foreign city, well could have. The girl had died cursing all men

and the folly of women, and after Isabel had buried her and the leading

cause of her repentance, she returned to her lonely flat in a state of

disillusion and disgust which seemed to encase her by no means

susceptible heart in a triple panoply. This state of mind had lasted for

at least three months. And there was little of which she had not

abstract knowledge, nor had she lived a quarter of a century to learn

for the first time of the license which the world permits to women so

highly placed that they have come to believe themselves above all laws.

But all her experience and abstract knowledge counted for nothing, and

she had for the first time a sudden and complete appreciation of the

evil of the world and of its odd association with even the higher

virtues; of the fact that in the upper walks of life the balance was

more nearly even than on planes where there existed scantier

opportunities for development. There was no question that Victoria

Gwynne was made on a magnificent plan, as capable of heroism, no doubt,

as any of the salient women of history. She was an ornament in her

world, useful, sympathetic, the author of much good, a devoted and

inspiring mother. And yet there was no more question that this Frenchman

was the last of a long line of favored adorers than that Victoria, for

all her individualities, was but a type of her kind: a kind that was

sufficiently distinct from the hundreds of wholly estimable women that

were proud to know her, or accepted her as a matter of course.

And even these good women? Had they not the same passions, the same

inclinations in the secrecies of their souls? What was the determining

cause of their indisputable virtue? A happy marriage? Too many children?

Timidity? Absence of temptation? Or were they merely orthodox through a

more uneven balancing of their qualities, the animal in abeyance? For

this very reason were they not frequently narrow, unsympathetic,

unuseful--unless, indeed, they were of the few who, with the mighty

temptations of the Victoria Gwynnes, were mightier still in their

fidelity to some inner and cherished ideal. This lofty ideal of

womanhood Isabel had unconsciously set up in her soul, and the sudden

conviction of its imperfection was, after all, the reason of her sudden

despair. For the soul with its immemorial and often incommunicable

knowledge may have its moments of terror while the mind wonders.

And she was disheartened at the sense of insignificance and

mortification inspired by this contact with a side of life, as real and

consequent as motherhood or government, instead of feeling merely

repelled, infinitely superior in her unstained maidenhood. She had no

wish to emulate, but neither did she relish feeling provincial, a chit,

an outsider. Her youthful vanity had its way in a mind too speculative,

intelligent, observant, merely to be shocked. Her memory reverted to

experiences that had made her feel as much older than the ordinary girl

as she now felt at sea. What was she, Isabel Otis, after all? She felt a

mere assortment of fluids, which might or might not crystallize into

some such being as she had dimly apprehended, or into something quite

commonplace; realized with a shock that her own deep personal experience

had left her less definitely moulded than she had imagined.

She rose impatiently and bathed her eyes before ringing for the maid to

lace her for dinner--it was long past tea-time. "Perhaps I had better

marry Lord Hexam and have ten children," she thought. "That sort of

existence has kept more women up to the correct standard than anything

else except poverty."

XIII

"And is this really your first big party?" asked Hexam, wonderingly.

"The first! The first! And I am twenty-five! Just think of it! Of course

I have been to students' balls, and little parties in Rosewater. But a

function--never before."

"This is hardly a function--parties even in the big political

country-houses are more or less informal."

"Informal! The jewels fairly blind my provincial eyes. And this is a

real castle!"

"Oh yes, it is a castle," he said, laughing outright. "I suppose you

have read up its record?" he added, teasingly. "You industrious and

curious Americans know a lot more about us than we know about

ourselves."

"Of course I know the history of this castle. I haven't the least doubt

you know every word of it yourself. I have already learned that the

English are not nearly so vacant-minded as, in their curious pride, they

would have one believe."

She threw back her head, half-closing her eyes in the ecstasy of her new

experience. The dancing was in the picture-gallery, an immense room, in

which there were many dark paintings of the old Italian and Spanish

schools, besides the presentments of innumerable Arcots by the usual

popular masters of the Dutch and English. The ceiling was of stone and

vaulted, but set thick with electric lights, blazing down from their

great height like the crystal stars of the tropics. It had seemed to

Isabel that after entering the castle she had walked for ten minutes

before reaching this room, where as brilliant a company was disporting

itself as she was likely to look upon in England. The Duke of Arcot was

an energetic Conservative and a member of the present cabinet, but his

social attentions were ever directed to the prominent and interesting of

whatever party or creed. As he found a particular zest in being

surrounded by smart, bright and pretty women, the parties at the castle,

and at Arcot House in London, were seldom surpassed in either brilliancy

or interest. And as his rent-roll was abnormal, there was no sign of

dilapidation within the gray walls and towers of the ancient castle, but

much comfort and luxury against a background of countless treasures

accumulated throughout the centuries. He had taken an immediate fancy to

Isabel and promised to show her the lower rooms as soon as she tired of

dancing.

Hexam watched her with an amused indulgence that in no wise tempered his

mounting admiration. She was radiant. Her blue eyes were shining and

almost black, her cheeks flooded with a delicate pink. She wore a gown

of white tulle upon whose floating surface were a few dark-blue lilies.

The masses of her black hair were piled on her head in the fashion of

her Californian grandmothers, and confined by a high Spanish comb of

gold and tortoise-shell. Her only other jewel was a long string of Baja

California pearls that had glistened on warm white necks in many an old

California ballroom before ever an American had crossed the threshold of

Arcot Castle. They had been given by Concha Argueello, when she assumed

the gray habit of the Third Order of the Franciscan nuns, to the wife of

her brother Santiago and so had come down to Isabel.

And to-night this descendant of that powerful clan, unimaginable in her

modern complexities to their simple minds, was receiving homage in the

ballroom of one of the greatest houses in Europe. For there was no

question, even in the minds of the young married women, who carry all

before them in English society, that the American girl had created a

furore among the men. Isabel had confided to the duke, who had lunched

that day at Capheaton, and to Hexam, her haunting fear of being a

wall-flower, and both had vowed that she should have no lack of partners

at her first English ball. But to Hexam's disgust, at least, their

solicitude came to an untimely end, and he was able to secure but two

waltzes and a square dance. The duke had spoken for the cotillon, which

he had no intention of dancing. He was a most estimable person, but he

never ignored an opportunity to talk with a new and interesting woman.

Isabel could hardly have failed to be a belle that night, for her spirit

was pitched to a height of joy and triumph that charged her whole being

with a powerful magnetism. Possibly with a presentiment that it was to

be an isolated experience, she abandoned herself recklessly to the mere

delight of living, her will imperious for the fulness of one of the

dearest of girlhood's ideals. She was one of those women, cast, as she

well knew, for tragic and dramatic contacts with life, but Nature in

compensation had granted her a certain wildness of spirit that sprang

spontaneously to meet the pleasure, trifling or great, of the mere

present; no matter for how long a period, or how hard, its wings had

been smitten.

So she danced, and talked far more than was her wont, surpassing herself

in every way, and no more interested in poor Hexam than in twenty

others. He took her in to supper, however, and after three hours of

dancing she was glad to rest and be sheltered by his determined bulk,

planted squarely before her corner. She knew that she had a coronet very

close to her footstool, and that this brilliant night might be but the

prologue to a lifetime of the only society in the world worth while, but

she was not conscious of any desire beyond the brimming cup of the

moment. Moreover, she had never so thoroughly enjoyed being a girl, and

love-making would have bored her grievously.

The duke claimed her, and after a desultory tour of the great

reception-rooms and an infinite number of little cabinets, containing

some of the most valuable of the Japanese and Indian treasures, he led

her to the library, a luxurious room conducive to rapid friendship.

With that amiable desire, peculiar to the kindly Englishman, to gratify

the ingenuous curiosity of the American, he produced a huge leather

volume containing the various patents of nobility that marked the upward

evolution of his house from a barony in some remote period of the

world's history to the present dukedom, and the royal letters that had

accompanied them. It was something he never would have dreamed of doing

for a stranger of his own country, or of any state in Europe, but the

English humor Americans that please them much as they would engaging

children; and Isabel's eyes sparkled with so lively an intelligence that

the duke fancied she had literary intentions and might one day find

such information useful. He even showed her his complicated

coat-of-arms, which included a bend sinister, for he had royal blood in

his veins; and this slanting rod interested Isabel as deeply as the moat

under the window. She was even more interested in the duke's attitude;

it was evident that he felt no more vanity in his royal descent than

deprecation of its irregular cause and enduring emblem. It was, and that

was the end of it; but he had quite enough imagination to appreciate the

effect of so picturesque an incident in family history upon the mind of

the young republican.

"The best we can do is to descend irrelevantly from Washington,

Hamilton, or Jefferson," said Isabel. "Only we have not yet reached the

stage where we dare to acknowledge it on our coat-of-arms. The illusions

of the American youth must be preserved. Even the fact that one of our

Presidents was a son of Aaron Burr is still to be read only in the great

volume of unwritten history. My father was a sort of walking edition of

that work."

"That is new to me!" The duke was quite famous as a student of history,

and took a personal interest in America, having been over twice in

search of big game. He asked her many questions; but his interest in the

general subject was as nothing to the enthusiasm she aroused by a chance

allusion to the chicken-ranch. The duke was agricultural above all

things; he had a model estate bristling with scientific improvement. He

was enchanted at Isabel's picture of her wire-enclosed "runs" and yards

containing industrious chickens of all ages, engaged, however

innocently, in the pursuit of wealth. Isabel, when she chose, could

invest any subject with glamour, and her account, delivered in tones

notably accelerated, of the snow-white, red-crowned flocks, their

aristocratic little white mansions, the luxurious nurseries for the

"chicks," and the astonishing and costly banquets with which they were

daily regaled, was so lively that the duke vowed he would raise Leghorns

forthwith. He asked her so many practical questions, taking copious

notes, and inevitably embracing California ranch life in its entirety,

in his thirst for knowledge, that Isabel had no more dancing that night;

but she made an enduring impression upon the eminently practical mind of

her host.

It was quite two hours after supper, and Isabel was beginning to reflect

with some humor upon the brevity of all illusions, when Hexam and Miss

Thangue appeared simultaneously and announced that the Capheaton guests

were leaving. Hexam looked sulky and suspicious. Flora was smiling.

"For the first time--" she murmured.

Isabel and the duke laughed outright, and then shook hands warmly.

"When I go home we can correspond," she said to him, "and I will tell

you all the new kinks. We are always improving."

"The duke looked positively rejuvenated," said Hexam, spitefully, as

they walked down the corridor. "Have you discovered the elixir of life

in California, and promised him the prescription."

"No," said Isabel, demurely. "I have merely been initiating him into the

mysteries of raising Leghorns."

Hexam looked stupefied, but Miss Thangue burst into a merry peal of

laughter.

"Isabel!" she exclaimed. "I begin to suspect you are a minx!"

And Isabel laughed, too, in sheer excess of animal spirits and gratified

vanity. She had excellent cause to remember the ebullition, for it was

some time before she laughed again.

The duchess, with her light sweet smile, her old-fashioned

Book-of-Beauty style, a certain affectation of shabbiness in her

black-and-silver gown, looked a more indispensable part of the picture

than any of her guests, as she stood in the middle of the great

drawing-room with a group of her more intimate friends. Among them was

Lady Victoria, more normal of mood this evening, sufficiently gracious,

superbly indifferent, although she had held her court as usual.

She tapped Isabel lightly on the cheek with her fan. "You were quite the

rage," she said. "I never should have forgiven you if you had not been."

And Isabel had not the slightest doubt of her sincerity.

The duchess, in the immensity of her castle, did not pretend to keep an

eye on any one, and would have been the last to suspect that Miss Otis

had inspired her husband with a sudden passion for chickens. She shook

hands approvingly with the young American and asked her to come over

informally to luncheon on the morrow.

"Is your head turning?" asked Miss Thangue, as they drove home. "You

must reap the results of your success; it would be a pity not to. After

a few weeks here with Vicky you must go on a round of visits and then

have a season in London."

"It would be glorious!" exclaimed Isabel, in whom problems were

moribund. "I certainly believe I shall."

She was in the second of the carriages to reach Capheaton, and Gwynne,

who was still standing on the steps, helped her down, and asked her

pleasantly if she had enjoyed herself.

"I had such a good time I know I sha'n't sleep a wink for twenty-four

hours. I believe I'll go to the library and get a book of yours I began

on Sunday--only--" She hesitated. A talk with this enigmatical cousin

would be a proper climax to the triumphs of the night. She raised her

eyes, full of flattering appeal. "There are one or two points I did not

quite understand--I have hesitated to go on--"

He too was wakeful, and rose to the bait promptly. "Suppose you give me

an hour by the empty hearth. Will you? Well, go on ahead and I'll follow

in a moment--after I see that the men have all they want in the

smoking-room."

In the depths of the most independent woman's soul is a lingering taint

of servility to the lordly male, and in Isabel it warmed into subtle

life under the flattering response of this illustrious specimen. She

fairly sailed towards the library, wondering if any of the famous

old-time California belles, Concha Argueello, Chonita Iturbe y Moncada,

with their caballeros flinging gold and silver at their feet, Nina

Randolph and Chonita Hathaway and Helena Belmont, with their pugnacious

"courts," had ever felt as exultant as she. That last moment, as she

stepped lightly over the threshold of the library, was a sort of climax

to the intoxication of youth.

And then she stopped short, stifling a cry of terror. The library,

except for the wandering moonshine, was unlit, but a ray fell directly

across a shadowy figure in the depths of a chair, half-way down the

room. It was a relaxed figure, the head fallen on the chest; the arms

were hanging limply over the sides of the chair, the hands ghastly in

the moonlight. At the rustle of skirts the figure slowly raised its

head, and the eyes of a man, haunted rather than haunting, looked out of

a drawn and livid face. But the movement was not followed by speech, and

Isabel stood, stiff with horror, convinced that she was in the presence

of the Capheaton ghost. Of course, like all old manor-houses, it had

one, and she was too imaginative not to accept with her nerves if not

with her intelligence this ugly proof of a restless domain beyond the

grave. But her petrifaction was mercifully brief. There was a quick step

behind her, and then an exclamation of horror as Gwynne shot past and

caught the lugubrious visitant by the shoulder.

"Good God, Zeal!" he cried, and his voice shook. "What is it, old man?

You look--you look--"

The man in the chair rose slowly and drew a long breath, which seemed to

infuse him with life again.

"I probably look much as I feel," he said, grimly. "I'm about to go on a

journey, and if you can give me a few minutes--"

He paused and looked with cold politeness at Isabel. She waited for no

further formalities, but shaken with the sure foreboding of calamity,

turned and fled the room.