BOOK II

I

No one can possibly imagine the unpleasantness of a honey-moon until

they have tried it. It is no wonder one is told nothing at all

about it. Even to keep my word and obey grandmamma I could never

have undertaken it if I had had an idea what it would be like.

Really, girls' dreams are the silliest things in the world. I can't

help staring at all the married people I see about. "You--poor

wretches!--have gone through this," I say to myself; and then I wonder

and wonder that they can smile and look gay. I long to ask them when

the calmness and indifference set in; how long I shall have to wait

before I can really profit by grandmamma's lesson of the caterpillar.

It was useful for the _fiançailles_, but it has not comforted me much

since my wedding.

In old-fashioned books, when the heroine comes to anything exciting,

or when the situation is too difficult for the author to describe,

there is always a row of stars. It seems to mean a jump, a break to be

filled up as each person pleases. I feel I must leave this part of my

life marked with this row of stars.

It is two weeks now since I wrote my name Ambrosine de Calincourt

Athelstan for the last time, two weeks since I walked down the

rose-strewn guillotine steps on Augustus's arm, two weeks since

he--Ah, no! I will never look back at that. Let these hideous two

weeks sink into the abyss of oblivion!

It hardly seems possible that in fifteen days one could so completely

alter one's views and notions of life. I cannot look at anything with

the same eyes. It is all very well for people to talk philosophy, but

it is difficult to be philosophical when one's every sense is being

continually _froissé_. I feel sometimes that I could commit murder,

and I do not know when I shall be able to take the Marquis's advice to

remain placid and shut my eyes and try to get what good out of life I

can.

Augustus as a husband is extremely unpleasant. I hate the way his

hair is brushed--there always seems to be a lock sticking up in the

back; I hate the way he ties his ties; I hate everything he says and

does. I keep saying to myself when I hear him coming, "remember the

caterpillar, caterpillar, caterpillar." And once in the beginning,

when I was screwing up my eyes not to see, he got quite close before I

knew and he heard me saying it aloud.

He bounced away, thinking I meant there was one crawling on him, and

then he got quite cross.

"There are no caterpillars here, Ambrosine. How silly you are!" he

said.

He revels in being at once recognized as a bridegroom. He has

dreadfully familiar ways and catches hold of my arm in public, making

us both perfectly ridiculous. He has insisted upon buying me numbers

of gorgeous garments for my outer covering, but when I ventured to

order some very fine other things he grumbled at the cost.

"I don't mind your getting clothes that will show the money I've put

into them," he explained, "but I'm bothered if I'll encourage useless

extravagance in this way."

At the play he never understands more than a few words, but is always

asking me to explain what it means when there is anything interesting,

so I miss most of it myself from having to talk, and some of the

French plays are really very funny, I find, and have opened my eyes

a great deal, and I--even I--could laugh if I were left in peace to

listen a little.

Augustus is furiously angry, too, when the Frenchmen look at me. I

never thought I could even notice the gaze of strangers, but I am

ashamed to say that last night it quite pleased me.

We were dining at Paillard's, and two really nice-looking Frenchmen

had the next table. They looked at me, and Augustus glared at them and

fussed the waiters more than usual, and wanted to hurry me as much

as possible to get away; so I asked for other dishes and peaches and

nectarines and things out of season. At last, when I had dawdled quite

an extra half-hour, it came to an end, and the usual sums on the

margin of the bill began--Augustus adds up every item to see no sou

has been overcharged. At this point I looked up and caught one of

the Frenchmen's eye. Of course I glanced away at once, but there was

such a gleam of fun in his that I nearly smiled. Then, suddenly the

recollection came upon me that this creature, this thing sitting

opposite me, belonged to me. I have his name, he is my husband. I must

not laugh with others at his odious ways. After that I was glad to

creep away.

I am worried about grandmamma. She has not written; there only came a

small note from the Marquis. I am sure she must be very ill, if not

already dead. I cannot grieve; I almost feel as if I wished it so.

Augustus as a grandson-in-law would sting her fine senses unbearably.

He blusters continually, and his airs of proprietorship _envers moi_

would irritate her; besides, she would always have the idea that she

is cheating me by remaining alive, that, after all, my marriage was

not a necessity if she is still there to keep me. Oh, dear grandmamma!

if I could save you a moment's sorrow you know I would. When I said

good-bye to her she held me close and kissed me. "Ambrosine," she

said, "I shall have started upon my journey before you come back;

you must not grieve or be sad. My last advice to you, my child, is

to remember life is full of compensations, as you will find. Try to

see the bright and gay side of things, and, above all, do not be

dramatic."

She was always cheerful, grandmamma, but if I could just see her again

to tell her I will, indeed I will, try to follow her advice! Hush!

here is Augustus; I hear his clumsy footsteps. He has a telegram.

Alas! alas! My fears are true--grandmamma died this morning. Oh! I

cannot write, the tears make everything a mist.

* * * * *

It is late July and I am at Ledstone as its nominal mistress--I say

nominal, for Augustus's mother reigns, as she always did.

The sorrow of grandmamma's death, the feeling that nothing can matter

in the world now, has kept me from caring or asserting myself in any

way. I feel numb. I seem to be a person listening from some gallery

when they all speak around me, and that the Ambrosine who answers

placidly is an automaton who moves by clockwork.

Shall I ever wake again? I sit night after night in my mother-in-law's

"budwar," the crimson-satin chairs staring at me, the wedding-cake

ornament with its silver leaves glittering in the electric light; I

sit there listening vaguely to her admonitions and endless prattle

of Augustus's perfections. I have now heard every incident of his

childhood: what ailments he had, what medicines suited him best, when

he cut all those superfluous teeth of his.

One little trait appears to have been considered a sign of great

astuteness and infantine perception. His fond parents--the late Mr.

Gurrage was alive then--gave him a new threepenny bit each week to

give to a barrel-organ man who played before the house at Bournemouth.

Augustus at the age of two invariably changed it on the stairs with

the butler for two pennies and two halfpennies, keeping one penny

halfpenny for himself.

"Me dear"--my mother-in-law always completes this story with this

sentence--"Mr. Gurrage said to me, 'Mark my word, Mary Jane, the boy

will get on!'"

In the class of my _belle famille_, mourning is fortunately a matter

of such importance that the wearing of crêpe for grandmamma has been

allowed to be sufficient reason for abandoning the wedding rejoicings.

Dear grandmamma! it would please you to know your death had done me

even this service. I am encouraged to grieve, especially in public.

Mrs. Gurrage herself put on black, and her face beamed all over with

enjoyable tears the first Sunday we rustled into the family pew stiff

with crêpe and hangings of woe. They gave grandmamma what Miss Hoad--I

mean Amelia--called a "proper funeral."

And so all is done--even the Marquis has gone back to France, and only

Roy is left.

There is something in his brown eyes of sympathy which I cannot bear;

the lump keeps coming in my throat. Kind dog, you are my friend.

Next week Lady Tilchester will have returned to Harley, and soon

Augustus and I are to go and pay a three days' visit there.

Once what joy this thought would have caused me--I was going to say

when I was young!--I shall be twenty next October, but I feel as if

I must be at least fifty years old.

Augustus is not a gay companion. He has a sulky temper; he is often

offended with me for no reason, and then a day or so afterwards will

be horribly affectionate, and give me a present to make up for it. I

can never get accustomed to his calling me Ambrosine--it always jars,

as if one suddenly heard a shopman taking this liberty. It is equally

unpleasant as "little woman" or "dearie," both of which besprinkle all

his sentences. He has not a mind that makes it possible to have any

conversation with him. He told me to-day that I was the stupidest cold

statue of a woman he had ever met, and then he shook me until I felt

giddy, and kissed me until I could not see. After a scene of this kind

I feel too limp to move. I creep out into the garden and hide with Roy

in a clump of laurel bushes, where there is a neglected sun-dial that

was once the centre of the old garden, and left there when the new

shrubbery was planted; there is about six feet bare space around it,

and no one ever comes there, so I am safe.

Sometimes from my hiding-place I hear Augustus calling me, but I never

answer, and yesterday I caught sight of him through the bushes biting

his nails with annoyance; he could not think where I had disappeared

to. It comforted me to sit there and make faces at him like a

gutter-child.

I have never had the courage to go back to the cottage. It is just as

it was, with all grandmamma's dear old things in it, waiting for me to

decide where I will have them put. Hephzibah has married her grocer's

man, and lives there as caretaker.

I suppose some day I shall have to go down and settle things, but I

feel as if it would be desecration to bring the Sèvres and miniatures

and the Louis XV. _bergère_ here to hobnob with the new productions

from Tottenham Court Road.

Augustus is having some rooms arranged for me, so that I, too, shall

have a "budwar" for myself. He has not consulted my taste; it is all

to be a surprise. And an army of workmen are still in the house, and

I have caught glimpses of brilliant, new, gilt chairs and terra-cotta

and buffish brocade (I loathe those colors) being carried up.

"Then I'll be able to have you more to myself in the evening," said

Augustus. "The drawing-rooms are too big and the mater's budwar is too

small, and you hate my den, so I hope this will please you."

I said "Thank you," without enthusiasm. I would prefer the company

of my mother-in-law or Amelia to being more alone with Augustus. The

crimson-satin chairs are so uncomfortable that now he leaves us almost

directly after dinner to lounge in his "den," and I have to go there

and say good-night to him. The place smells of stale smoke, some

particularly strong, common tobacco he will have in a pipe. He gets

into a soiled, old, blue smoking-coat, and sits there reading the

comic papers, huddled in a deep arm-chair, a whiskey-and-soda mixed

ready by his side. He is generally half-asleep when I get there. I do

not stay five minutes if I can help it; it is not agreeable, the smell

of whiskey.

There are so few books in the house. The first instalment of my

handsome "allowance" will soon be paid me, and then I will have books

of my own. I shall feel like a servant receiving the first month's

wages in a new place--a miserable beginner of a servant who has never

been "out" before. I feel I have earned them, though--earned them with

hard work.

Just this last month numbers of people have been to call on me. They

left only cards at first, because of my "sad loss," but we often are

at home now when they come.

My mother-in-law's visiting-list is a large one, and comprises the

whole of the "villa" people from Tilchester as well as the county

families. With the former she is deliciously patronizingly friendly;

they are all "me dears," and they talk about their servants and

ailments and babies, mixed with the doings of Lady Tilchester--they

always speak of her as the "Marchioness of Tilchester." They are at

home when we return the visits sometimes, too, and this kind of thing

happens: our gorgeous prune-and-scarlet footman condescendingly walks

up their paths and thumps loudly at their well-cleaned brass knocker,

and presses their electric bell. A jaunty lump of a parlor-maid in

a fluster at the sight of so much grandeur says "At home" (some of

them have "days"), and we are ushered into a narrow hall and so to a

drawing-room. They seem always to be papered with buff-and-mustard

papers and to have "pongee" sofa-cushions with frills. There is often

tennis going on on the neat lawn beyond, and we see visions of large,

pink-faced girls and callow youths taking exercise. The hostess gushes

at us: "Dear Mrs. Gurrage, so good of you to come--and this is Mrs.

Gussie?" (Yes, I am called Mrs. Gussie, Oh! grandmamma, do you hear?)

We sit down.

I have no intention of freezing people, but they are hideously ill

at ease with me, and say all kinds of foolishnesses from sheer

nervousness.

The worst happened last week, when one particularly motherly, blooming

solicitor's wife, after recounting to us in full detail the arrival of

her first grandchild, hoped Mrs. Gurrage would soon be in her happy

position!

Merciful Providence, I pray--that--never!

The county people are not so often at home, but when they are it is

hardly more interesting. There do not seem to be many attractive

people among them. They are stiff, and it is my mother-in-law who is

sometimes ill at ease, though she gushes and blusters as usual. The

conversation here is of societies, the Girls' Friendly Society, the

Cottage Hospital, the movements of the Church, the continuance of the

war, the fear the rest of the Tilchester Yeomanry will volunteer;

and now and then the hostess warms up, if there is a question of a

subscription, to her own pet hobby. Their houses are for the most part

tasteless, too; they seem to live in a respectable _borné_ world of

daily duties and sleep. Of the three really big houses within driving

distance, one is shut up, one is inhabited for a month or two in the

autumn, and the third is let to a successful oil merchant to whom

Augustus and my mother-in-law have a great objection, but I can see no

difference between oil and carpets. I have seen the man, and he is a

weazly looking little rat who drives good horses.

I wonder what has become of my kinsman, Antony Thornhirst. He came

with Lady Tilchester to the wedding. I saw his strange eyes looking at

me as I walked down the aisle on Augustus's arm. His face was the only

one I realized in the crowd. We did not speak; indeed, he never was

near me afterwards until I got into the carriage. I wonder if he will

be at Harley--I wonder!

Augustus wishes me to be "very smart" for this visit; he tells me I

am to take all my best clothes and "cut the others out." It really

grieves him that my garments should be black. He suggested to his

mother that she had better lend me some of the "family jewels" to

augment my own large store, but fortunately Mrs. Gurrage is of a

tenacious disposition and likes to keep her own belongings to herself,

so I shall be spared the experience of the park-paling tiara sitting

upon my brow. Such things being unsuitable to be worn at dinner I fear

would have little influence upon Augustus; I am trembling even now at

what I may be forced to glitter in.

We are to drive over to Harley late in the afternoon.

II

In spite of Augustus--in spite of everything--I suddenly feel as if I

had become alive again here at Harley!

The whole place pleases me. It is an old Georgian house, with long

wings stretching right and left, and from a large salon in the centre

the other reception-rooms open.

Lady Tilchester is so kind, and makes one feel perfectly at home. A

number of people were assembled upon the croquet lawn and in the great

tent playing bridge when we arrived, and as no one seems to introduce

any one it has taken me two whole days to find out people's names.

Some of them, indeed, I have not grasped yet! It does seem a strange

custom. Either it is because every one in this set is supposed to be

acquainted with the other, and strangers are things that do not count,

or that meeting under one roof constitutes an introduction. I have not

yet found out which it is.

Anyway, it makes things dull at first. Augustus found it "deuced

unpleasant," he told me, as, instead of remaining quiet until he knew

his ground, he proceeded to commit a series of _bêtises_.

The first afternoon I subsided into a low chair, and a gruff-looking

man handed me some tea, and patted and talked to a bob-tailed

sheep-dog that was near.

I don't know if he expected me to answer for the dog, and so make

a conversation. He was disappointed, however, if so, as I remained

silent. Presently I discovered he was our host.

Lady Tilchester was busy being gushed at by Augustus. A little woman

with light hair came and sat down at the other side of me. She looks

like a young, fluffy chicken, and has a lisp and an infantile voice,

and wears numbers of trinkets, and her name, "Babykins," spelled in a

brooch of diamonds. I should not like to be called "Babykins," and I

wonder why one should want strangers to read one's name printed upon

one's chest.

Everything of hers is marked with that. Chain bracelets with

"Babykins" in sapphires and diamonds. On her handkerchief, which she

plays with, "Babykins" again stares at you. Even the corner of her

chemise, which shows through her transparent blouse, has "Babykins"

embroidered on it. It is no wonder even the young men never call her

anything else.

You have the first impression that you are talking to a child,

but afterwards you are surprised to find what a lot of grown-up,

scandalous things she has said.

She was very agreeable to me, and gave me to understand she was so

interested to make my acquaintance, as Lady Tilchester had told her so

much about me.

"You come from Yorkshire, don't you?" she said; "and your husband has

that wonderful breed of black pigs, hasn't he?"

"No," I said, "we live only sixteen miles off."

"Oh, of course! How stupid of me! You are quite another person, I

see," and she laughed. "But the pig farmers are coming, and I am so

anxious to meet them, as I have a perfect mania for piglets myself. I

want to start a new sort, and I hoped you could tell me about them."

"I am so sorry," I said. "I wish I could help you, but I do not

believe--except casually in the village--that I have ever seen a pig;

they must be delightful companions."

"Yes, indeed! I have large families of the fat white ones, and really

the babies are most engaging, and the very image of my step-children.

I always tell my husband it seems like eating Alice or Laura when he

insists upon having suckling-pig for luncheon. I suppose one would

not mind eating one's step-children, though--would one? What do you

think?"

Her great, blue eyes looked at me pathetically.

I tried to consider seriously the problem of the consumption of

possible step-children; it was too difficult for me.

"I quite hoped to make it pay," she continued--"keeping prize pigs, I

mean; we are so frightfully poor. But I am away so much I fear it does

not do very well. You play bridge, of course?"

This did not seem to have much to do with the pigs.

"No, I do not play."

"You don't play bridge? How on earth do you get through the day?"

"I really do not know."

"Oh, you must learn at once. I can give you the address of a woman in

London who goes out for five pounds an afternoon and who would teach

you in three or four lessons. It does seem funny, your not playing."

I said "Yes."

She did not appear to want many answers from me after this, but

prattled on about people and the world in general, and before half an

hour was over I was left with the impression that society is chiefly

composed of people living upon an agreeable and amusing ground

somewhere at the borderland of the divorce court.

"So tiresome of the husbands!" she concluded. "Before the war

they used to be the most docile creatures; as long as they got a

percentage, and the wives did not worry at their own little affairs,

all went smoothly. Now, since going out there and fighting, they have

come back giving themselves great airs, and talking about wounded

honor, and ridiculous things of that sort that one reads of in early

Victorian books. One does not know where it will end."

She yawned a little after this, and Lord Tilchester shuffled up and

sat down in the corner of the sofa near her. He has the manner of an

awkward school-boy.

"You are taking away every one's character, as usual, I suppose,

Babykins," he chuckled. "What will Mrs. Gurrage think of it all, I

wonder?"

Lady Tilchester interrupted further conversation by carrying me off

to see the garden. She is the most fascinating personality I have yet

met. There is something like the sun's rays about her--you feel warmed

and comforted when she is near. She looks so great and noble, and

above all common things, one cannot help wondering why she married

Lord Tilchester, who is quite ordinary. When she talks, every one

listens. Her voice is like golden bells, and she never says stupid

things that mean nothing. We had half an hour in the glorious garden,

and she made me feel that life was a fair thing, and that even I

should find bits to smile over. How great to have a nature like this,

that one's very presence does good to other human beings!

"There are a lot of tiresome people here, I am afraid," she said, at

last; "but I wanted you to come to the first party we had after our

return, so you must try and not be bored. You shall sit next Mr. Budge

to-night; he will be obliged to take in Lady Lambourne, but I will put

you on the other side. He will amuse you; he is the cleverest man I

know."

"Mr. Budge is a politician, is he not?" I asked. "I think I have heard

his name."

"That is delightful," she laughed, "Poor Mr. Budge! He--and, indeed,

many of us in England--fancies there is no other name to be heard. He

has a fault, though. He writes sentimental poetry which is complete

rubbish, and he prides himself upon it far more than upon his splendid

powers of oratory or wonderful organization capacities."

"What a strange side for a great man to have!" I said. "Sentimental

poetry--it seems so childish, does it not?"

"We all have our weaknesses, I suppose," and she smiled. "We should be

very dull if we left nothing for our friends to criticise."

"_Si nous n'avions point de défauts nous ne prendrions pas tant de

plaisir à en remarquer dans les autres!_" I quoted.

After a while we went back to the house.

Augustus and I got down at half-past eight for dinner, as grandmamma

had always told me that punctuality is a part of politeness, but only

one or two men were standing by the huge wood-fire that burns all the

time in the open fireplace in the salon where we assembled.

We did not know any of their names, and I suppose they did not know

ours. We stared at one another, and they went on talking again, all

about the war. Augustus joined in. He is dreadfully uneasy in case the

rest of the Tilchester Yeomanry may volunteer at last to go out, and

was anxious to hear their views of the possibility. I sat down upon a

fat-pillowed sofa, one of those nice kind that puff out again slowly

when you get up, and make you feel at rest any way you sit.

A short man with a funny face came and sat beside me.

"What a wonderful lady, to be so punctual!" he said. "You evidently

don't know the house. We shall be lucky if we get dinner at nine

o'clock."

"Why did you come down, then," I asked, "since you are acquainted with

the ways?"

"On the off chance, and because a bad habit of youth sticks to me, and

I can't help being on time."

"I am finding it absurd to have acquired habits in youth; they are all

being upset," I said.

He had such a cheery face, in spite of being so ugly, it seemed quite

easy to talk to him. We chatted lightly until some one called out:

"Billy, do ring and ask if we can have a biscuit and a glass of

sherry, to keep us up until we get dinner."

At that moment--it was nearly nine--more people strolled in, two women

with their husbands, and several odd pairs--the last among the single

people quite the loveliest creature I have ever seen. She does not

know how to walk, her lips were almost magenta with some stuff on

them, but her eyes flashed round at every one, and there seemed to be

a flutter among the men by the fireplace.

Augustus dropped his jaw with admiration. She had on a bright purple

dress and numbers of jewels. I feel sure he was saying to himself that

she was a "stunner." She did not look at all vulgar, however, only

wicked and attractive and delightful.

"Darling Letitia," she pleaded, to a stiff-looking old woman sitting

bolt-upright under a lamp, "don't glare at me so. I am not the last

to-night; there are still Babykins and Margaret and several others to

come."

"Oh, Lord, how hungry I am!" announced Mr. Budge, in a loud voice. I

recognized him now from his picture being so often in the papers.

Then, from a door at the other end, in tripped Babykins, and close

behind her Lord Tilchester, and, last of all, when the clock had

struck nine-fifteen, and even the funny-faced man next me had

exhausted all his conversation, the door at the north end of the salon

opened, and serenely, like a lovely ship, our beautiful hostess sailed

towards us.

"So sorry to be a little late," she said, calmly. "Tilchester, as you

have, of course, told every one whom they are to take in, we may as

well start."

Lord Tilchester had been sitting in the window-seat with Babykins, and

had completely forgotten this duty, I suppose. He got up guiltily and

fumbled for a paper in his pocket.

"Oh, don't let us wait for that," said Mr. Budge, gruffly. "Come, Lady

Tilchester, I shall take you and lead the way," and he gave her his

arm.

She laughed and took it.

"Very well," she said.

Every one scrambled for the people they wanted or knew best; and so

it happened that I found myself standing staring at a pale young man

with weak blue eyes and a wonderfully well-tied tie, the last of the

company.

He held out his arm nervously, and we finally got to the dining-room

and found two seats.

It was not until dinner was almost over that I found out he was the

Duke of Myrlshire, and ought to have taken in Lady Tilchester.

Augustus had placed himself next the purple lady, and his face grew

a gray mauve with excitement at her gracious glances.

My ducal partner was unattractive. He had a squeaky voice and a

nervous manner, but said some _entreprenant_ things in a way which

made me understand he is accustomed to be listened to with patience,

not to say pleasure.

He told me he was grateful to Mr. Budge for his move, as he had been

admiring me since the moment we arrived, and had determined, directly

the _mêlée_ began, to secure me if possible.

"Er--you don't look like an Englishwoman," he said, "and it is a nice

change. My eye is wearied with them; their outlines are all exactly

alike."

He further informed me that Paris was the only place to live in, and

that the English as a nation were crude in their vices.

"They make such a noise about everything here," he added. "One cannot

do a thing that it is not put the wrong way up in the halfpenny

papers."

"The penalty of greatness," I said, laughing. "They don't worry at

all, for instance, about what I am doing."

"Then they show extremely bad taste," he said, with a look of frank

admiration.

Before the women swept in a body from the room, I understood that his

object in life would henceforth be to make me sensible of his great

worth and charm. All these masterful, forward sentiments sounded so

comic, expressing themselves in his squeaky voice, I could not help

smiling. He became radiant. He did not guess in the least what amused

me.

Although the salon is immense, the ten or twelve women all crowded

around the fireplace. It was a damp, chilly evening.

They all seemed to know one another very well, and called each other

by their Christian names, so until Babykins again gave me some

information I did not realize who people were.

The purple lady is Lady Grenellen; her husband is at the war. She is

most attractive. She sat on a big sofa and smoked cigarettes rapidly

in a little amber holder. She must have got through at least three or

four of them before the men came in.

Lady Tilchester and two other women were deep in South-African news,

the rest talked about books and their clothes, but Babykins and

Letitia exchanged views upon the scandal of the time.

"In my day," Letitia said, "it sometimes happened that men made love

and ran away with a woman because they found they liked her better

than anything else in the world. It was a great sin, but their passion

was mixed with respect, and the elopement constituted the wedding

ceremony. Now you remain on at home until you are found out, and then

the husband takes a gratuity and the matter is hushed up, and probably

the lover passes on to your best friend, an added feather in his cap."

"Dear Lady Lambourne, how severe you are!" chirped Babykins.

"And you really should not use that little word 'you.' Of course,

you don't mean any of us, but it sounds unkind and might be

misunderstood--especially," she added, in a whisper to me, "as that

is the exact case of Cordelia Grenellen."

Letitia (Lady Lambourne) has a distinct voice and decided opinions.

She continued, as though no interruption had taken place:

"If the matter was only for love, too, I should still have nothing

to say; but it is so often for a string of pearls, or some new

carriage-horses."

"But, surely, it is more logical to have that reason than no reason at

all, like the case of your poor cousin. I understood that was sheer

foolishness, and Lord Edam did not even pretend to care for her."

Lady Lambourne looked daggers and remained speechless. "What

scandalous things you are all saying," laughed Lady Grenellen from her

sofa. "Letitia, you are sitting there and being epigrammatic, just

like the people in those unreal society plays they had last year. We

are all perfectly contented and happy if you would let us alone."

"One cannot but deplore the change," said Lady Lambourne.

"Personally, I am delighted with everything as it is," cooed Babykins.

"Life must be much pleasanter now than in your day, dear Lady

Lambourne; such a fuss and pretending, and such hypocrites you must

all have been--as, of course, human nature was the same then, and

since the beginning of time. We have always eaten and drank too rich

food and wine in our class and have not had enough to do, so we can't

help being as we are, can we?"

"Babykins, you silly darling, as if what we eat makes any difference!"

said Lady Grenellen, puffing her cigarette-smoke into cloudy rings in

the neatest way.

"Of course it does, Cordelia! Food makes all the difference, you know.

I have kept those white pigs for four years and I know all about it."

Babykins has the most pathetic blue eyes, and her childish voice is

arresting. Lady Grenellen went into a fit of laughter.

"You are perfectly mad about those horrid pigs!" she told her.

Lady Lambourne interrupted again, in a dignified voice. "Human nature

was _not_ the same in my day--as you call it--Mrs. Parton-Mills" (thus

she discovered to me Babykins' name). "We lived much more simply, and

enjoyed our pleasures and did our duties, and stayed at home more."

"And I expect you were frightfully bored, Letitia, darling," said Lady

Grenellen, "and that is why you never stay at home now."

It seemed to me quite wonderful how they could be so disrespectful to

this elderly lady, but she did not seem at all offended.

"You are incorrigible, Cordelia," was all she said, and she laughed.

"You had no bridge, and it must have been exactly like it still is

when I stay with Edward's relations in Scotland," Babykins continued.

"As we arrive there I feel 'goose-flesh' on my arms, with the

stiffness and decorum of everything. We chat about the weather at tea,

and no one ever says a word they really think; and we play idiotic,

childish games of cards for love in the evening; and it is all feeble

and wearisome, and the guests are always looking at the clock."

Lady Tilchester came and joined us; it seemed a breath of fresh

sunlight illuminating the scene.

"You appear all to be talking scandal," she said.

Imperceptibly the conversation changed, and we were discussing the war

news when the double doors of the dining-room opened.

Augustus looked very flushed in the face and unattractive as he came

towards us, but Lady Grenellen moved her skirts and made room for him

on her sofa. She smiled at him divinely, and was perfectly lovely to

him--as friendly and caressing as if he were an equal. It perfectly

astonished me. I could not talk and joke familiarly that with Augustus

any more than if he were one of the footmen. And she is a viscountess,

and must at least know what a gentleman is.

Half the party moved off to play bridge in one of the drawing-rooms;

the rest arranged themselves comfortably, two and two. Lady Tilchester

and Mr. Budge wandered into the music-room, and I, who had not

stirred, found myself almost alone by the fireplace with the Duke.

He proceeded to say a number of things to me that astonished me

greatly. I should not have understood them all had I not been to those

plays in Paris.

I suppose he was beginning to make love to me--if this is what is

called making love. His personality is not attractive, so it did not

touch me at all, and I am only able to look upon men now through eyes

which see coarse brutes. Perhaps they may be really nice, some of

them, but as I look at them one after another, the thought always

comes, how revolting could they appear in the eyes of their wives?

This is not nice of me, and I am sure grandmamma would reprove me for

it.

III

Next day, Sunday, some of us went to church. Augustus insisted upon my

going. He thought it would be a good opportunity of showing I was in

Lady Tilchester's company, although what it could have mattered to the

Harley villagers I do not know.

He himself stayed behind with Lady Grenellen, he said, to take her for

a walk in the woods.

After lunch every one seemed to play bridge but Lady Tilchester and I

and her politician and the weak-eyed Duke. We climbed the hill to the

ruins of the old castle and there sat until tea-time.

"Isn't it a bore for me I shall have to marry an heiress?" the Duke

said, pathetically. "Marriage is the most tiresome ennui at any time,

but to be forced through sheer beggary to take some ugly woman you

don't like and don't want is cruel hard luck, is it not?"

"Yes," I said, feelingly.

He was melted by the sympathy in my voice.

"You are a delicious woman; you seem to understand one directly.

People have got into the way of thinking it is no hardship to have to

do these things for the sake of one's title, but I can see you are

sympathetic."

"Yes, indeed!" I said.

"Cordelia Grenellen is arranging it for me. I have not seen her yet--I

mean the heiress."

"If I were a man I think I should keep my freedom and--and--work," I

faltered.

He looked at me, perfectly astonished.

"But what can I do?" he asked. "Only go into the city, and that is

quite played out now. I have no head for business, and it would seem

to me to be rather mean just to trade upon my name to get unsuspecting

people to take shares in concerns; whereas if I marry an heiress it is

a square game--I at least give her some return for her money."

"There is a great deal in what you say," I agreed.

"I told Cordelia--she is a cousin of mine, you know--I told her I

would not have a very ugly one, and I should prefer that she should be

a good, healthy brewer's daughter. Our family is over-well bred. You

see, if you are going to sacrifice yourself to keep up your name,

you may as well choose some one that will be of some ultimate use to

it. Now we want a strain of thick red blood in our veins; ours is a

great deal too blue. We are becoming reedy shaped, and more or less

idiotic."

He said all this quite gravely. He had evidently studied the

subject, and as I looked at him I felt he was perfectly right. If he

represented the type of his race, it had certainly grown effete.

"I won't have an American," he continued. "They are intellectual

companions before marriage, and they are generally so agreeable you

don't notice how nervous and restless they are really, but I would not

contemplate one as a wife. I must have a solid English cow-woman."

He stretched himself by my side and began pulling a bit of grass to

pieces. His hands look transparent, and he has the most beautifully

shaped filbert nails; his ears, on the contrary, are not perfect, but

stick out like a monkey's.

"You see, I should always live my own life," he went on, lazily. "I

worship the beautiful. The pagans' highest expression of beauty which

moved the world was in sculpture--cold and pure marble of divine form.

That awakened their emotions; one reads they had a number of emotions.

The Renaissance people, to take a medium time, expressed themselves by

painting glorious colors on flat canvas; they also had emotions. Those

two arts now are more or less dead. At any rate, they have ceased to

influence masses of people. Our great expression is music. We are

moved by music. It gives us emotions _en bloc_--all of us--some by

the tune of 'Tommy Atkins,' and others by Wagner. Well, all these

three--sculpture, painting, and music--give me pleasure, but I should

not want my cow duchess to understand any of them. I should want her

to have numbers of chubby children and to fulfil her social duties,

and never have to go into a rest-cure, or have a longing for

sympathy."

I said a few "yeses" and "reallys" during this long speech, and he

continued, like a mill grinding coffee:

"It don't do to over-breed. You are bound to turn out some _toqués_

if not altogether idiotic, and then my sense of beauty is outraged by

the freaks that happen in our shapes--you should see my two sisters,

the plainest women in England. Now you give me joy to look at. You are

quite beautiful, you know. I never saw any one with a nose as straight

and finely cut as yours. Why do you keep putting your parasol so that

I cannot see it?"

"One uses a parasol to keep off the sun, which is hot. Would you wish

me to get a sunstroke to oblige you?" And I put down my parasol still

lower.

"You are selfish!" in an aggrieved voice.

"Of course."

"And not the least ashamed of it!"

"Not the least."

He moved his position deliberately so that he came to my other side,

where the sun was not.

"I learned a certain amount of manoeuvring in South Africa, where I

went for a month or two," he said. "I hope this side of your face will

be as pretty. People always have a better and a worse side."

I laughed. It was too hot to circumvent him again, and his looking at

me could not hurt me.

"This is even prettier," he said, presently. "Where did you hide

yourself, that we none of us ever saw you before you married?"

"I lived rather near here for a little while."

"Now you look sad again. I never watched any one's face so much. Yours

is not like other people's; you look like a cameo, you know."

"Tell me about the people here," I said. "They are all strangers to

me."

"But I would much rather talk about you."

"That does not interest me; you said I was selfish, so you do what I

wish."

"What can I tell you of them? They are like all companies--dull and

amusing, mixed. They are a fair specimen of most people one meets in

the _monde où l'on s'amuse_. My cousin Lady Grenellen is perhaps the

most interesting among them, as she had the most histories."

"Histories?"

"Yes; her career has been one of riding for a series of falls, and

escaping even a peck."

"She is very lovely."

"Oh yes, Cordelia is good-looking enough," he said, as though there

was considerably more to add.

I did not continue the subject further. We talked of books, the war,

and various other things, and by-and-by our hostess called to us from

the higher level of the old drawbridge where she was sitting.

"We must be descending for some tea," she said, and started on with

her politician.

When we got back, Augustus was swinging Lady Grenellen in a lovely

Louis XV. _balançoire_, fixed up between two elm-trees; she put one

foot out, and looked so lovely and radiant!

Augustus had the expression of one of those negro pages Thackeray drew

in _The Virginians_--a mixture of pride and self-complacency--a he

held the red silk ropes.

Tea was so merry! No one was witty like grandmamma and the Marquis,

but every one was in a good temper and it was gay.

The party was rather more punctual at dinner on Sunday night, and Lady

Tilchester had arranged, as she meant to the night before, that I

should sit next her politician. Mr. Budge and Mrs. Gurrage--the names

went well together!

I do not know anything about politics, but he is what I suppose must

be a Radical, as he preaches home rule for Ireland, and equal rights

for all mankind, and an apologetic tone to other nations, and a

general dividing up of all one's _biens_. But they say he has a

splendid house in Grosvenor Square, and a flat in Paris, and never

asks any but the smartest titled people to his big pheasant shoot in

Suffolk.

He was delightful at dinner, anyway, and made me laugh. His voice is

clear, with just the faintest touch of Irish in it. And he sparred

with Lady Tilchester across me.

She is the greatest _grande dame_ one could meet, and a Tory to the

backbone in politics, but her manner to the servants is not nearly so

haughty as Mr. Budge's.

I do not like his hands; I cannot say why; they are neither big nor

ill-shapen, but there is something fat and feminine about the fingers.

I dare say, underneath, he could be like Augustus.

Lady Tilchester is devoted to him, and he has the greatest admiration

and respect for her. Their conversation is most interesting.

Some of the other men are very nice, and several of them almost come

up to grandmamma's criterion of the perfect male--that he should "look

like a man and behave like a gentleman."

The women are very smartly dressed all the time, but they do not show

a great sense of the fitness of things. Only Lady Grenellen and Lady

Tilchester are always adorable and attractive in anything and in any

way.

I believe they do not love one another very much, although they are

quite friendly; one somehow can see it in their eyes.

The Tilchester boy, who is thirteen, has just gone to Eton, but will

soon be home for the holidays; the little girl is at the sea. So I

have not seen either of them.

The whole house here is so beautifully done; there is no fuss, and

everything is exactly where one wants to find it. I shall be sorry

when we leave.

Just as we had begun luncheon to-day, Sir Antony Thornhirst came in,

and, after a casual greeting to every one, sat down near me.

He seems quite at home here, and as if he were accustomed to turning

up unannounced in this way.

I felt such a queer, quick beating in my heart. I suppose because

among all these strangers he was some one I knew before.

"So you decided not to cut the Gordian knot," he said, presently, as

if we were continuing the discussion of some argument we had had a

moment before.

He bridged in an instant the great gulf since my wedding. This _sang

froid_ stupefied me. I found nothing to say.

He continued:

"Do you know, I have heard since that to give any one a knife cuts

friendship, and brings bad luck and separation, and numbers of

dreadful things. So you and I are now declared enemies, I suppose.

Shall we go and throw the little ill-omen in the lake after lunch?"

"No; I will not part with my knife; I find it very useful," I said,

in a _bête_ way.

"Antony," called out Lord Tilchester, "you have arrived in the nick of

time to save Babykins from turning into a hospital nurse. She thinks

the costume becoming, and threatens to leave us for the wounded

heroes. Cannot you restrain her?"

"How?" asked Sir Antony, helping himself to some chicken curry.

"Really excellent curry your chef makes, Tilchester."

"Don't tell him about it, Reggie," lisped Mrs. Parton-Mills. "The

unfeeling creature is only thinking of his food."

"You seem to have all the qualities for an ideal convalescent nurse,"

said Sir Antony, with an air of detaching himself with difficulty from

the contemplation of the curry.

"And those qualities are--?" asked Lord Tilchester.

"Principally stimulating," and he selected a special chutney from the

various kinds a footman was handing.

"What do you mean?" demanded Babykins, pouting.

"Exactly what you do," and he looked at her, smiling in a way I should

have said was insolent had it been I who was concerned.

"But I want to go and help the poor dear fellows, and to cheer them

and make their time pleasanter."

"I said you would be an ideal convalescent nurse. But what would

become of the pigs?"

"Oh, Edward could look after them. I think too little attention has

been paid to the poor boys who are getting well. I could read to them

and write their letters home for them," and she looked pathetically

sympathetic.

"Hubble-bubble, toil and trouble," quoted Sir Antony.

"Who for?" laughed Lord Tilchester, in his rough, gruff way.

"The recipients of the letters, who would certainly receive them in

the wrong envelopes," said Sir Antony. "I think, Tilchester, you had

better persuade Babykins to stay in England, for the sake of the peace

of many respectable and innocent families."

"How wicked you are to me," flashed Babykins.

"Just what you deserve," chuckled Lord Tilchester.

"What tiresome nonsense these people talk," said Sir Antony, calmly,

to me. "You and I were in the middle of an interesting problem

discussion, were we not? And now I have lost the thread."

"It does not in the least matter," I said.

The Duke, who was on the other side of me, did not care to be left

out, and persistently talked to me for the rest of lunch.

Sir Antony consumed his with the appreciation of a connoisseur. It

appeared to be the only thing which interested him.

Babykins, from the other side, did her utmost to engage him in a war

of wits, but he remained calm, with the air of a placid lion.

When we got outside in the great tent he came up to me.

"I am going to take you for a walk," he said--"a nice, cool walk in

the woods. Will you get your parasol?"

The Duke was at that moment fetching it for me from the hall table,

where I had left it.

"I do not know what we shall do to-day," I said, "I believe I am going

to play croquet."

"Oh no, you are not. It is much too hot, and you must see the woods.

They are historical, and--Here, take this parasol and let us start."

This last hurriedly, as the Duke was seen returning with mine.

I cannot say why I allowed myself to be dragged off like this. My

natural impulse has always been to do the opposite thing when ordered

by any one but grandmamma. But here I found myself walking meekly

beside my kinsman down a yew-bordered path, holding a mauve silk

parasol over my head which did not belong to me.

We did not speak until we got quite to the end, where there is a

quaint fountain, the centre of four _allées_ of clipped yews.

My heart still continued to beat in a quick, tiresome manner.

"You look changed, Comtesse," Sir Antony said. "Your little face is

pale. Do you remember the night we danced together? It was round and

rosy then. Is it a hundred years ago?"

There is a something in his voice which is alluring. The mocking sound

goes out of it now and then, and when it does one feels as if one must

listen. Oh, but listen with both one's ears!

"Yes, it is a hundred years ago," I said.

"I was so sorry to hear of your grandmother's death," he continued. "I

wanted to tell you how I felt for you, but I was away in Norway, and

have only just returned. Did you think I was unkind?"

"No, I never thought at all. Grandmamma was glad to die. I knew she

could not live, but it came suddenly at the end."

"What a splendid personality! How I wish I had seen more of her! I

generally manage to seize the occasion, but fate kept you and her

beyond my reach. Why did we not all meet this time last year?"

"Oh, do not talk of that!" I cried. I felt I could not bear to

hear any more. "I am trying to forget, and to find life full of

compensations. Grandmamma and the Marquis promised me that I should."

He looked at me, stopped in the path, and bent down to a level with my

face. His eyes seemed as if they could see right through my mind then,

as on another occasion in our lives.

"Dear little white Comtesse!" he said. Almost the same words.

An emotion that is new to me happened. It was as if my heart beat in

my throat.

"We are dawdling by this fountain," I said. "Where are the woods?"

After that we were gay. He told me of many things. I seemed to see a

clear picture of the world as he talked--a light and pleasant world,

where no one was so foolish as to care for anything seriously.

One felt a donkey, to worry or grieve when the sun shone and the birds

sang!

How I enjoyed myself!

"Has Babykins chirped at you yet?" he asked, presently. "She is very

dangerous when she chirps."

"I do not like her," I said.

"Oh, you will presently. We all love Babykins. She acts as a sort of

moral mosquito in a big party. She flies around stinging every one,

and then we compare our bites and tear and scratch the irritated

places together. You will meet her everywhere--she is the only person

Tilchester takes a serious interest in."

"Are you staying here," I asked, "or did you only drive over?"

"I sent for my servant to bring my things, and I shall stay now I find

you. You always seem to forget we are cousins, and that people ought

to take an interest in their relations!"

"Tell me about your house--Dane Mount it is called, is it not?" I

asked, presently. We had been silent for a moment, walking down a

shady path, great pine-trees on each side.

"No, I won't tell you about it; you must come over there some day and

stop with me for a night or so. You ought to see the home of your

ancestors, you know. Promise me you will when I come back from

Scotland!"

We had gone deep into the wood by now. It was quite dusky. The thick

trees met overhead, and only an occasional sunbeam penetrated through.

I felt stupid. The words did not come so easily as when I am with the

Duke.

"How silent you are, Comtesse!"

"Is it not time to go back?" I said, stupidly.

"No, not nearly time. I want you to tell me all about yourself--where

you lived, and all that happened until you flashed into my life at

the Tilchester ball. See, we will sit down on this log of wood and be

quite comfortable."

We sat down.

"Now begin, Comtesse: 'Once upon a time, when I was a little girl, I

came from--where?'"

"Do you really want to hear the family history?" I asked.

"Yes."

I told him an outline of things and how grandmamma and I had lived

at the cottage, and of all her wise sayings, and about the Marquis

and Roy and Hephzibah, and the simple things of my long-ago past.

It seemed as if I was speaking of some other person, so changed has

all my outlook on life and things become since I went to Paris with

Augustus.

"And now we come to the day we met in the lane," he said. "You were

not even engaged then, were you?"

"Oh no! Grandmamma had never had a fainting-fit; she would have found

the idea too dreadful at that time." I stopped suddenly, realizing

what I had said. I could not tell him how and why I had married

Augustus; he must think what he pleased.

He evidently thought a good deal, by the look in his eyes. I wish--I

wish when he looks it did not make my heart beat so; it is foolish and

uncomfortable.

"What a fool I was not to come with the automobile the night before

your wedding and carry you off to Gretna Green," he said, in a voice

that might have been mocking or serious, I could not tell which.

"Tell me, Comtesse, if I had tapped at your window, would you have

looked out and come with me?"

"There was a bad thunder-storm, if I recollect. We should have got

wet," I laughed, in a hollow way. He could not know how he was hurting

me; he should not see, at all events.

"You would have been very dear to take to Gretna Green," he continued.

"I should have loved to watch your wise, sweet eyes changing all

expressions as morning dawned and you found yourself away from them

all--away from Augustus."

I did not answer. I drew hieroglyphics with the point of the mauve

parasol in the soft moss beneath our feet.

"Why don't you speak, Comtesse?"

"There is nothing to say--I am married--and you did not tap at the

window--and let us go back to the house."

IV

The last evening at Harley is one of the things I shall not want to

recall. Augustus got drunk--yes, it is almost too dreadful to write

even. I had not realized up to this that gentlemen (of course I do not

mean that word literally, as applied to Augustus, but I mean people

with money and a respectable position)--I never realized that they got

drunk. I thought it was only common men in the street.

It struck me he was making a great noise at dinner, but as he was

sitting on the same side of the table as I was I could not see. When

the men joined us afterwards it came upon me as a thunder-clap. His

face was a deep heliotrope, and he walked unsteadily--not really

lurching about, but rather as if the furniture was in the way.

One or two of the men seemed very much amused, especially when he went

and pushed himself into the sofa where Lady Grenellen was sitting and

threw his arm along the back behind her head. I felt frozen. I could

not have risen from my chair for a few moments. She, however, did not

seem to mind at all; she merely laughed continuously behind her fan,

the men helping her to ridicule Augustus.

For me it was an hour of deep humiliation. It required all my

self-control to go on talking to Babykins as if nothing had happened.

The Duke came over and joined us. He drew a low chair and sat down so

that I could not see the hilarious sofa-party.

I have not the least idea what he said or what any of us said. The

guffaws of laughter in Augustus's thick voice was all I was conscious

of.

Sir Antony Thornhirst, who had stopped to speak to Lady Tilchester

by the billiard-room door, now came over to us. He stood by me for a

moment, then crossed to Lady Grenellen.

"They are wanting you to play bridge in the blue drawing-room," he

said.

She rose quite reluctantly, still overcome with mirth. Augustus tried

to get up, too, but stumbled back into the sofa.

Then, with infinite tact, my kinsman attracted his attention, said

some thrilling thing about the war, and, as Lady Grenellen moved off

and Augustus made another ineffectual attempt to rise and follow her,

Sir Antony sat down in her vacant place and for half an hour conversed

with my husband. Oh, I force myself to write the words "my husband."

It is to keep the hideous fact in remembrance, otherwise I might let

myself express aloud the loathing and contempt I feel for him.

Sir Antony had never before taken the least notice of him beyond the

most casual politeness, and now, from the scraps of conversation that

my preternaturally sharpened ears could catch, he seemed to be trying

his best to interest and retain Augustus beside him. Gradually the

whole company dispersed into the different drawing-rooms as usual, and

I followed the rest to look at the bridge.

As I was passing the sofa, where the two men were sitting, Augustus

seized hold of my dress.

"Don't look so damned haughty, little woman," he hiccoughed. "Er--I'm

all right--give me a kiss--"

"As I was going to tell you," interrupted Sir Antony, "I heard for a

fact that the rest of the Tilchester Yeomanry that have escaped so

long are going to volunteer to go out, after all."

Augustus dropped my dress. His face got paler. This information seemed

to sober him for an instant, and in that blessed interval I got away

and into the blue drawing-room. Lady Tilchester was not playing

bridge, and she sat down in the window-seat beside me. It was a lovely

night, and the windows were wide open.

She is the most delightful companion. I am beginning to know her a

little and to realize how much there is to know.

To-night she was more than usually fascinating. It seemed as if

she wished to make me forget everything but the pleasure in our

conversation. She has a vast knowledge of books, and has even read all

the French classics that grandmamma loved. We talked of many things,

and, among them, gardens. She told me that I must make a new garden

at Ledstone, and I would find it an immense interest; and she spoke

so kindly of Mrs. Gurrage, and said how charitable she was and

good-hearted, and then delicately, and as if it had no bearing upon

the Gurrage case, hinted that in these days money was the only thing

needed to make an agreeable society for one's self, and that in the

future I must have plenty of amusement.

Insensibly my heart became lightened.

She talked to me of grandmamma, too, and drew me into telling her

things about our past. She was interested in grandmamma's strange

bringing-up of me, so different, she said, to the English girls of the

present day.

"And is it that, I wonder, which has turned you into almost as great a

cynic as Antony Thornhirst? He is the greatest I know."

"But can one be a cynic if one has so kind a heart?" I asked.

She looked at me quickly with a strange look.

"How have you discovered that so soon? Most people would not credit

him with having any heart at all," she said. "You know with all his

immense prestige and popularity people are a little afraid of him. I

think one would sum up the impression of Antony as a man who never in

all his life has been, or will be, called 'Tony.'"

Her voice was retrospecting.

"You have known him very long?" I questioned.

"Ever since I married, fourteen years ago. I remember I saw him

first at my wedding. He and Tilchester had, of course, been old

friends, always living so near each other. We are exactly the same

age--thirty-four, both of us. Growing old, you see!" She laughed

softly, then she continued:

"Antony was never like other men exactly. He is original, and

extraordinarily well read--only casually one would never guess it. He

wastes his life rather, though. I wish he would go into Parliament. He

has a habit of rushing off on long travels. Some years ago he went off

suddenly and was away for ages and ages--about five years, I think.

Then he stayed at Dane Mount for a while, and then, when the war first

began, he went out there, and has only been home a year."

"He never speaks of himself nor what he does, I notice."

"No; that is just his charm. I should like you to see Dane Mount. It

is far nicer than this, and he has wonderful taste. It is the most

comfortable house I know. He has delightful parties there when the

shooting begins."

"It would interest me to see it, because grandpapa came from there," I

said.

"Of course, you are cousins, in a way. You don't know how interested

Antony was in you that night after the Tilchester Yeomanry ball. He

came and sat in my sitting-room and talked to me about you, and then

it was he put two and two together and discovered you were related. I

had heard that evening about your grandmother and you living at the

cottage, and was able to give him some information. I don't think he

realized when you met that you were connected, did he?"

"No, not at all."

"A friend of mine and I were sitting by the fire, having said

good-night to the rest of the party--do you remember what a cold May

night it was? Antony came in and joined us. We all had admired you

so. I recollect this is one of the things he said: 'I met an

eighteenth-century marquise to-night.'"

"Yes, he called me that."

"He is so very hard to please. The ordinary women, like Babykins

and Cordelia Grenellen, don't understand his subtle wit. They are

generally in love with him, though. Cordelia was madly _éprise_ last

autumn; but he is as indifferent as possible, and does not trouble

himself about any of them. He is reported to have said once that it

had taken him five years to degrade himself sufficiently to be able

to enjoy the society of modern women. He is a wonderful cynic!"

"The Duke gave me to understand that no man of the world was ever

without some affair," I said.

"Well, I suppose it is true more or less, but Antony is always the

person who holds the cheek, hardly even complacently--generally with

perfect indifference. I have never known him, for years, put himself

out an inch for any woman."

I don't know why, but this conversation interested me deeply.

Just then some one came and joined us at the window, and Lady

Tilchester had to rise and talk with her other guests; but before she

moved off she put her hand on my arm and said, as if she had only then

remembered it:

"Oh, the housekeeper let me know just now that some soot had fallen in

your chimney. I do hope you won't mind sleeping in a tiny bedroom off

mine, just for to-night. We were so afraid the smell would keep you

awake. Your maid has moved your things."

Dear and kind lady! I will never forget your goodness to me nor cease

to love you.

* * * * *

It was pouring rain as we drove home next day.

Augustus and I only met as we were ready to get into the carriage. I

had breakfasted in my room.

His face was the color of putty, and he had that look in his eyes

which, I remember, long ago I used to say appeared as if he had not

had enough sleep. His expression was sulky and morose, and I was

thankful when at last we started.

The guests were catching all sorts of trains. There were casual

good-byes. Lady Tilchester was not down, and no one occupied

themselves much with any one.

Lady Grenellen left just before us. She did not take the least notice

of me, but she talked in a caressing way to Augustus, and I heard him

say:

"Now, you won't forget! It is a bargain!" in the most _empressé_

voice, as he pulled his head out of the carriage-window.

For the first mile or two of our journey neither of us spoke. Augustus

lit a cigarette and smoked in a nervous way, and kept opening and

shutting the window.

Then he swore at me. I will not say the words he used, but the

sentence ended with a demand why I sat there looking like a "stuck

pig."

I told him quietly that if he spoke to me like that I would not reply

at all.

He got very angry and said he would have none of that nonsense; that

I seemed to forget that I was his wife, and that he could do as he

pleased with me.

"No, you cannot," I said. "I will not be spoken to like that."

"You'll be spoken to just as I jolly well please," was his refined

reply. "Sitting there like a white wax doll, and giving yourself the

airs of a duchess!"

I did not answer.

"A deaf and dumb doll, too," he said, with an oath.

He then asked where I had been all night, and what I had meant by

daring to stay away from him.

I remained perfectly silent, which, I fear, was infinitely provoking,

but I could not stoop to bandy words with him.

He began to bluster, and loaded me with every coarse abuse and a

tremendous justification of himself and his behavior of the night

before. I had not mentioned the subject or accused him of anything,

but he assured me he had not been the least drunk and that my

haughtiness was enough to drive any man mad.

When at least ten minutes of this torrent had spent itself a little, I

said the whole subject was so disagreeable to me and discreditable to

him that he had better not talk of it and I would try and forget it.

Grandmamma often told me how her grandfather, the husband of Ambrosine

Eustasie, had refused to fight with a man of low birth who had

insulted him, but had sent one of his valets to throw the creature

into the street, because in those days a gentleman only crossed swords

with his equals. I now understood his feelings. I could not quarrel

with Augustus, the whole situation was so impossible.

I tried to tell myself that it did not in the least matter what he

said and did. Then, as he continued abusing me, I repeated a bit of

Béranger to myself, and so grew unconscious, at last, of the words

he was saying.

Silence came eventually, and then, after a while, in quite a humble

voice, Augustus said:

"I say, little woman--er--you won't tell the mater--er--will you?"

Something touched me in his face--his common, unpleasant face. The

bluster was gone and there was a piteousness in it. I felt a slight

lump in my throat.

"Oh no; do not fear," I said.

Then he called me an angel and kissed me many times, and that was the

worst of all.

Oh! When the year is up, will the "monotonous complacency" have set

in?

V

The days are flying by. October has almost come, and the damp and the

falling leaves. It will soon be time for Mrs. Gurrage to depart for

Bournemouth.

Augustus is in a continual ferment, as the report that the rest of

the Tilchester Yeomanry are going to volunteer for active service has

cropped up frequently, and, while he likes the uniform and what he

considers the prestige of belonging to such a corps, he has no ardor

for using his weapons against the Boers.

I have tried very hard to take an interest in the matter, but the

numbness has returned. The oppression of the surroundings at Ledstone

cramps my spirit.

We have had several "parties"--batches of Gurrage relations--one or

two really awful people. And some days ago I was bidden to write and

invite the guests for the first big partridge drive.

"The mater will be gone to Bournemouth," Augustus said, "and you'll

have to stand on your own legs."

Matrimony has not cured him of his habit of using horrid phrases.

He has often been very rude to me lately, and has taken to going more

frequently to town for the day, and stays away for a night or two

sometimes.

These seem to me as holidays, and I have never thought of asking him

where he has been, although he comes back with an apologetic air of a

guilty school-boy which ought to excite my jealousy, I feel sure.

During these absences his mother looks uneasy and has once or twice

asked me if I know where he is.

My books have come--quantities of books!--and I spend hours in my

boudoir, never lifting my eyes from the pages to be distracted by the

glaring, mustard-brocade walls around me.

Mrs. Gurrage treats me with respect. There is a gradual but complete

change in her manner to me, from what cause I do not know. I am

invariably polite to her and consider all her wishes, and she often

tells me she is very proud of me; but all trace of the familiarity she

exercised towards me in the beginning has disappeared.

I am sorry for her, as she is deeply anxious, also, about this

question of the Yeomanry going to the war.

Augustus is still her idol.

Perhaps I am wicked to be so indifferent to them all. Perhaps it is

not enough just to submit and to have gentle manners. I ought to

display interest; but I cannot--oh, I cannot.

It is the very small things that jar upon me--their sordid views upon

no matter what question--the importance they attach to trifles.

Sometimes in the afternoons, after tea, Amelia reads the _Family

Herald_ to Mrs. Gurrage.

"A comfort it was to me in my young days, my dear," she often tells

me.

The delinquencies of the house-maids are discussed at dinner, the

smallest piece of gossip in Tilchester society.

I cannot, try as I will, remember the people's different names, or

whom Miss Jones is engaged to, or whom Miss Brown. Quantities of these

people come out to tea, and those afternoons are difficult to bear. I

feel very tired when evening comes, after having had to sit there and

hear them talk. Their very phraseology is as of a different world.

Augustus has not been drunk since the night at Harley, but often I

think his eyes look as if he had had too much to drink, and it is on

these occasions he is rude to me.

I believe in his heart he is very fond of me still, but his habit of

bullying and blustering often conceals it.

He continually accuses me of being a cold statue, and regrets that

he has married a lump of ice. And when I ask him in what way I could

please him better, he says I must love him.

"I told you before we were married that I never should, but I would

be civil to you," I said to him at last, exasperated beyond all

endurance. "You agreed to the bargain, and I do my best to keep it.

I never disobey you or cross you in a single thing. What have you to

complain of?"

"Everything!" he said, in a fury, thumping the table so hard that

a little Dresden-china figure fell down and broke into pieces on

the parquet floor. "Everything! Your great eyes are always sad. You

never take the least interest in anything about any of us. You are

docile--yes; and obedient--yes; and when I hold you in my arms I might

be holding a stuffed doll for all the response you make. And when I

kiss you, you shudder!"

He walked up and down the room excitedly.

"Oh, we have all noticed it!" he continued. "You are polite, and

quiet, and--and--damned cold! Does Amelia ever let herself go before

you? Never! The mater herself feels it. You are as different to any of

us as if you came from Mars!"

"But you knew that always. You used to tell me that was what you

liked about me," I said, wearily. "I cannot change my nature any more

than--than Amelia can hers."

"Why not, pray?"

"Have you never thought," I said, driven at last to defend myself,

"that there may be a side in the question for me also? I feel it as

badly as you do--your all being different to me."

He stopped in his angry walk and looked at me. This idea was one of

complete newness to him.

"Well, you'd better get out of it and change, for we sha'n't," he

said, at last. "You owe everything to me. You would have been in the

gutter now if I had not had the generosity to marry you."

I did not answer, but I suppose my eyes spoke, for he came close up to

me and shook his fist in my face.

"I'll break that proud spirit of yours--see if I don't!" he

roared--"daring to look at me like that! What good are you to me, I

should like to know? You do not have a child, and, of all things, I

want an heir!"

A low growl came from the hearth-rug, where Roy had been lying, and

the dear dog rose and came to my side. I was afraid he would fly at

Augustus, shaking his fist as if he was going to strike me. I put my

hand on Roy's soft, black head and held his collar.

In a moment Augustus turned round and rushed to the door.

"I'll have that dog poisoned," he said, as he fled from the room.

I took up a volume of La Rochefoucauld, which was lying on the table

near--grandmamma's copy--and I chanced to open it at this maxim:

"_On n'est jamais si heureux ni si malheureux qu'on s'imagine._"

About happiness I do not know, but for the rest--well, I must tell

myself that to feel miserable is only foolish imagination, when I have

a fire, and food, and a diamond necklace, and three yards of pearls,

and a carriage with prune-and-scarlet servants, and a boudoir with

mustard-silk walls, and--and numbers of other things.

Roy put his nose into my hand.

"Why did we not go on the long journey with grandmamma?" I said

to him. And then I remembered that it is ridiculous to be morbid

and dramatic, and so I rang for my maid--a dour Scotchwoman whom

I like--and told her to bring my out-door things here to the

boudoir-fire. And soon Roy and I were a mile from the house.

Lady Tilchester has been in Scotland almost ever since we spent our

four days at Harley. When she comes back I shall ask her if she will

come over here. She may help me to awake.

I am sure if any one could read what I have written, they would say

that poor Augustus had a great deal to put up with in having a wife

like me. Probably, from his point of view, I am thoroughly tiresome

and irritating. I do not exonerate myself.

* * * * *

After a brisk walk I felt better, and by lunch-time was able to come

back to the house and behave as usual. Augustus, I found, had gone to

London.

Mrs. Gurrage was uneasy. She dropped her h's once or twice, a sure

sign, with her, of perturbation and excitement.

When the servants had left the room she said to Amelia:

"Quite time you were off with that basket for Mary Higginson."

And Amelia took the hint meekly and got up from her seat, leaving a

pear unfinished.

"Shut the door now, and don't stand loitering there!" my mother-in-law

further commanded.

Amelia is a poor relation, and has often to put up with unfinished

manners.

"Look here, my dear," Mrs. Gurrage said, when she felt sure we were

alone, "I don't like it--and that's flat!"

"What do you not like?" I said, respectfully.

"Gussie's goings-on! If you tried to coax him more he would not be

forever rushin' up to London to see that viscountess of his. I wonder

you don't show no spark of jealousy. Law! I'd have scratched her eyes

out had she interfered between me and Mr. Gurrage as she is doing

between you two, even if she was a duchess!"

"I do not understand," I said.

"Well, you must have your eyes glued shut," Mrs. Gurrage continued,

emphatically. "That Lady Grenellen, I mean. A nice viscountess she is,

lookin' after other people's husbands! Why, you can't never have even

glanced at the letters Gussie's got from her!"

"Oh, but _of course_ not!"

"Well, I have. My suspicions began to be aroused directly after you

got back from Harley. I caught sight of a coronet on the envelope"

(Mrs. Gurrage pronounces it "envellup"), "and I said to myself,

there's something queer in that, Gussie never sayin' a word--he as

would be so proud of a letter with a crown on it."

"Yes," I said. I felt sorry for her, she was so agitated. All the

veneer knowledge of grammar had left her, and she spoke with a broad,

natural accent.

"The next one that came--and never a word from him made me sure--so,

I thought to myself, I'll make certain, and I opened the bag myself

with my key for a few mornings--I came down early before him on

purpose--and soon I sees another gold crown and great, sprawly

writin'. The kettle was singing. It took me no time to get the gum

unstuck, and--well there! My dear, you never did! I blush to think of

it. The hussy! She was thankin' him for a diamond bracelet. Now I know

my son Gussie well enough to know he did not give her that bracelet

for nothing. Then she said as how he might come on Tuesday to see her,

as she would be passin' through London and would be at her town-house

for the day."

"But please don't tell me--it--oh, one ought never to read other

people's letters!" I exclaimed.

Mrs. Gurrage flushed scarlet.

"There! That's just you--your high and mighty sentiments! And why,

pray, shouldn't a mother watch over her son, even if his wife has not

the spirit to?"

I did not answer.

"There! It's been so from the first. I thought you'd have been proud

and glad to marry my Gussie--you, as poor as a rat! I don't set

no store by our wealth--the Lord's doin', and Mr. Gurrage takin'

advantage of the opportunities, his partener dyin' youngish--but I

liked the idea of your bein' high-born, and I was frightened about

Gussie's lookin' at that girl at the Ledstone Arms. And you seemed

good and quiet and well-brought-up. And Gussie just doted on you. You

ought to have jumped at him, but you and your grandma were that proud!

All the time you were engaged you were as haughty as if you were

honorin' _him_, instead of his honorin' you! Since you've been my

daughter-in-law, I have no cause to complain of you, only it's the

feelin', and your settin' quiet and far away, when a flesh-and-blood

woman would have clawed that viscountess's hair! Gussie'd never have

been after her if you'd show'd a little more affection. You're not a

bad-lookin' woman yourself if you wasn't so white."

"Do let us understand each other," I said. "I told your son from the

first that I did not care for him. My grandmother was old and dying.

We had no relations to depend upon. I should have been left, as

Augustus was unchivalrous enough to tell me this morning, 'in the

gutter.' These reasons seemed strong enough to my grandmother to make

her deem it expedient that I should marry some one. There was no time

to choose--I had never dreamed in my life of disobeying her. She told

me to marry Augustus. This situation was fully explained to him, and

he understood and kept us to the bargain. I have endeavored in every

way to fulfil my side, but in it I never contemplated a supervision

of his letters."

"Oh, indeed! And why couldn't you love him, pray? A finer young man

doesn't live for miles round," Mrs. Gurrage said, with great offence.

The other questions seemed in abeyance for the moment.

"We cannot force our likes and dislikes," I said.

"Well, you are married now, and part and parcel of him, and a wife's

duty is to keep her own husband from hussies--viscountesses or no they

can call themselves."

"What do you wish me to do?"

"Why, tax him with it when he comes home to-night. Let him see you

know and won't stand it. It's all your fault for not lovin' him, and

your duty now's to keep him in the path of virtue."

"May I say you informed me of his behavior? Because how otherwise

could I account for my knowledge? He would know I should never have

thought of opening or looking at his letters myself."

Mrs. Gurrage was not the least ashamed of having done this, to me,

most dishonorable thing. She could not see the matter from my point

of view.

I remember grandmamma once told me that servants and people of the

lower classes always think it is their right to read any one's letters

they come across, so I suppose my mother-in-law cannot help her

standard of honor being different to ours.

"You mustn't make mischief between my boy and me," she said. "You must

invent something--think of some other way."

"But I cannot tell a lie about it. I shall say you have received

disquieting information; I will not say how. Otherwise, I will not

speak to him at all about it."

Mrs. Gurrage burst into tears.

"There--it's breakin' my heart!" she sobbed, "and you don't care a

brass farthing!"

"Of course I care," I said, feebly.

* * * * *

Oh, grandmamma! For once you must have been wrong, and it would have

been better for me to have worked in the gutter! I wonder if you felt

that at the end. But we had given our word. Augustus held us to it,

and no Calincourt had ever broken his word.

By the afternoon post came a letter from Sir Antony Thornhirst. He had

returned from Scotland, he said, and hoped we would soon pay him our

promised visit.

It was a short note, dry and to the point, with nothing in it

unnecessary in the way of words. I do not know why I read it over

several times. His writing gave me comfort. I felt as if there was

some one human who would understand things.

* * * * *

When I was dressing for dinner, Augustus returned. He shuffled into

the room without knocking, while McGreggor was brushing my hair.

He seemed to have forgotten the scene of the morning, and was in a

most amiable mood. He had brought me a new muff chain, in wonderfully

good taste; he could never have chosen it himself. It is so difficult

to thank people for things when you would like to throw them in the

fire rather than receive them.

However, I did my best.

McGreggor felt it her duty to leave the room. Would this be a good

opportunity to get over what I had promised my mother-in-law to say

to Augustus? Oh, it was an ugly moment.

I told him, as simply as I could, that his mother was worried about

him, fearing he had contracted a dangerous friendship with Lady

Grenellen, and that I hoped he would make her mind at ease upon the

subject.

He came over to me and seized my wrists. There was an air of conscious

pride in his face. He was not displeased that this gallantry could be

attributed to him.

"It's all your fault if I do look at any one else," he blustered;

"and, anyway, a man of the world must have a little amusement, with

such a dull, stuck-up wife at home as I have got. Cordelia is a darned

sight higher rank than you are, and yet she does not give herself your

mighty airs."

"Oh, do not think it matters to me," I said, as calmly as I could,

"only it worries your mother, who spoke to me about it."

"If I thought you cared it would be different," Augustus said,

delighted to grasp at this excuse.

"No, it would be just the same, only in that case it would grieve me,

and I should suffer, whereas now--" I left the sentence unfinished, I

do not know why.

"Now you don't care what I do or whether I am dead or alive--that is

what you mean, I see," he said, dropping my wrists and walking towards

the door.

"Augustus!" I called to him, and he came back. "Listen. You swore at

me this morning. You were very rude to me, and you spend the day in

London with another woman, and return bringing me a present. I have

done my best not to resent these insults, but I warn you I will not

stand any more."

He became cringing.

"Who's been telling the mater these stories about me?" he asked.

"There's not a word of truth in them. It is a queer thing if a man

may not speak to a woman without people making mischief about it!"

"That is between you and your mother. All I would like to know is

that you will not swear at me in future and will treat me with more

civility."

I felt I could not continue the subject of his "friendship" with Lady

Grenellen. The whole matter seemed so low.

"Well, you are a brick, after all, not to kick up a row," Augustus

said. "So let us kiss and be friends again, and I am sorry if I was

nasty this morning. There! little woman, you need not be jealous," and

he patted my hand, and then began twisting the long waves of my hair

in and out of his thick fingers.

"What is a fellow to do when a woman falls in love with him?" he

continued, with self-conscious complacency. "He can't be a bear to

her, even though he is married, eh?"

"No, it is only to his wife he can be the bear," I said.

Of course, I ought to have been very jealous and angry, I am sure, but

I could not feel the least emotion. I only longed to wrench my hair

out of his hands, and to tell him that he might speak to and make love

to whom he pleased so long as he left me alone and in peace.

He then became more affectionate, telling me I was the most beautiful

woman he had ever seen, and that I had "stunning hair" and various

other charms, and if only I would not be a lump of ice he would never

leave me!

I could not say, as I felt, "But that is the one thing I should like

you to do," so I said nothing, and, as soon as I could get near the

bell unperceived, rang for McGreggor again, and put an end to the

scene.

VI

Next morning at breakfast Augustus said: "As Farrington has

refused for the 15th, you had better write and ask that fellow

Thornhirst--your cousin. They tell me he is a capital shot, and I

want my birds killed this year."

The year before, apparently, the party had been composed of

indifferent marksmen, and the head keeper had spoken rather

sarcastically upon the subject.

Augustus, when not bullying them, stands in great awe of his servants.

"I am afraid, with only this short notice, there is little chance of

Sir Antony being disengaged," I remarked.

I somehow felt as if I did not want him to come to Ledstone. He would

be so ridiculously out of place here.

"A keen shot would throw over any invitation he had had previously

for such a chance as my two best days," Augustus replied, pompously,

helping himself to a second kidney and smearing it with mustard. "You

just write this morning, and ask him to wire reply."

"Very well," I said, reluctantly. He would certainly be engaged though

I need not fear, "I had a note from yesterday, saying he had returned

from Scotland, and asking us to go over soon and pay our promised

visit to dine and sleep."

"There! I'll bet he was fishing for an invitation to this shoot,"

said Augustus, triumphantly. And, not content with the mustard he had

already plastered the kidney with, he shook pepper over it, heaping it

up upon his knife first and agitating that implement with his fork to

make the pepper fall evenly. I do not know why these details of the

way he eats should irritate me so.

"Now, mind you catch the early post," he continued, "and tell him who

the party are."

At fifteen minutes to eleven I found myself still staring irresolutely

at the sheet of note-paper lying before me on the writing-table in my

boudoir. It had the date written, and "Dear Sir Antony." The rest was

a blank.

The little, brand-new Dresden clock on the mantel-piece chimed the

three-quarters. The post leaves at eleven. I took up the pen and

dashed at it.

"Eight guns are going to shoot partridges here on the 15th of October,

and Augustus will be very pleased if you will make the ninth,"

I wrote. Could anything be more _bête_? "Please wire reply, and

believe me, yours sincerely--" I hesitated again. Must I sign myself

"Ambrosine de Calincourt Gurrage"? The strangest reluctance came over

me.

It has always been a disagreeable moment when I have had to write

"Gurrage," but never so disagreeable as now.

"A. de C.G.," I began. No, initials would not do--"urrage," I added,

and the distance between the "G" and the "u" showed, I am afraid, that

there was something unnatural about my signature.

"No one would accept such a stupid invitation as that," I said to

myself, hopefully, as I folded the sheet and put it in the envelope.

But by ten o'clock next day a telegram was handed to me:

Very pleased to come on 15th. Many thanks.--ANTONY THORNHIRST.

So he will see the stuffed bears, and the negro figures, and the

Tottenham Court Road Louis XV. drawing-rooms, after all, whether I

wish it or no!

_Whether I wish it or no!_

Augustus was delighted--not so much at the acceptance of this guest,

but his own wonderful prehension.

"There! I told you he'd jump at it," he said.

* * * * *

For several days after this a good deal of my time was taken up by

my mother-in-law's advice and directions as to how I should rule the

house during her absence at Bournemouth, where she would be until she

returned to spend Christmas with us.

It was a great wrench, one could see, to Mrs. Gurrage to relinquish

even for this short two months her rule at Ledstone. But she was in so

good a temper with me for what she considered I had done in bringing

Augustus back "to the path of duty" (we have heard no more of Lady

Grenellen) that she bestowed upon me her sceptre with a good grace.

At last the day came when Amelia, carrying the parrot, followed her

into the brougham.

Augustus had preceded them to the station, and with infinite fuss of

maids and footman, and stray card-board boxes, and final directions,

the whole party disappeared down the drive, and I was left standing

on the red-granite steps.

A sudden sense of exaltation came over me.

I was alone for the first time since my wedding!

It would be evening before Augustus could return from seeing them

off in London.

There was almost one whole day. What should I do? Where should I go?

Roy even barked with pleasure.

As I turned back into the house, the butler informed me

Hephzibah--Mrs. Prodgers--was waiting to see me.

Dear old nurse! She comes up rarely. She is radiantly happy with her

grocer's man, and I think it grieves her to see me.

To-day it was to tell me that she had an accident with one of the

Sèvres cups, a chip having appeared in the handle.

She almost cried over it.

"Oh! If madam could know!" she said; then, "I dearly wish you would

come back just to see how I have kept things," she added.

"Oh, Hephzibah, I will some day, but do not ask me yet! I--I should

so miss grandmamma."

"You--you're happy, Miss Ambrosine?" she faltered, timidly. "Madam

always knew best, you know. But I had a dream last night of your

father, and he shook his fist at us--right there."

"Papa!" I felt startled. Our settled conviction had been so long that

he was dead. "You dreamed of papa? Oh! Hephzibah, if he should still

be alive!" I cried.

"There, there," she said, uneasily. "It is too late, anyway, my deary,

but he'll understand that we could none of us stand against madam--if

he should come back, ever. He--he--won't blame us."

I did not ask her what he should blame us for--her, poor soul! for

having been unable to keep me with her, free; me for having submitted

to the mutilation of my own life. Would papa blame us for this?

Kind, awkward, abrupt papa!

Hephzibah glanced round the room. It is the first time she had been

in my boudoir since it was finished.

"Why won't you have up some of your things?" she said, at last. "It

don't look like you, this grand place."

"No, it is not very like me, is it? But you see everything is changed,

and they would not do mixed, the old and the new. I am a new person."

I sighed. "See--this book is the only thing I brought with me, besides

the miniature of my great-great-grandmother," and I took up La

Rochefoucauld tenderly.

"It don't feel like home," said Hephzibah, and then she suddenly burst

into tears.

"Oh, my deary!" she sobbed, "And you so beautiful, and pale, and

proud, and never saying a word, and they are none of them fit to black

your boots."

"Oh, hush, hush, Hephzibah!" I said.

My voice calmed her. She looked round as though afraid that grandmamma

would come in and scold her for crying.

"There! I am an old fool!" she whimpered. "But it is being so happy

myself and knowing what real love is that makes me cry."

This picture of my dear old nurse as the heroine of a real love story

was so pathetically comic that a lump, half tears, half laughter, rose

in my own throat.

"I _am_ so glad you are happy, Hephzibah," I said, unsteadily. "And of

course I am happy, too. Come--I will show you the beautiful chain Mr.

Gurrage gave me lately, and a set of new rings, a ruby, a sapphire, a

diamond, each stone as big as a peanut."

Hephzibah had not lived with grandmamma for years without acquiring a

certain tact. She spoke no more of things that could emotion us, and

soon we parted, smiling grimly at each other.

But the sense of exaltation was gone.

I could fly a little, like a bird round a large aviary. The bars were

there beyond.

VII

It was odious weather, the afternoon of the 15th. Our eight guns had

arrived in time for tea, some with wives, some without--one with a

playful, giddy daughter. Men predominated.

There were some two or three decent people from the county round. The

remainder, commercial connections, friends of the past.

One terrible woman, with parted, plastered hair and an aggressive

voice and rustling silks, dominated the conversation. She is the wife

of the brother of the late Mr. Gurrage's partner who "died youngish."

This couple come apparently every year to the best partridge drive.

"Dodd" is their name.

Mrs. Dodd was extremely ill at ease among the other ladies, but was

determined to let them know that she considered herself their superior

in every way.

At the moment when she was recounting, in a strident voice, the

shortcomings of one of her local neighbors, the butler announced:

"Sir Antony Thornhirst."

Our ninth gun had arrived.

"So good of you to ask me," he said, as he shook hands, and his voice

sounded like smooth velvet after the others. And for a minute there

was a singing in my ears.

"Jolly glad to see you," Augustus blustered. "What beastly weather!

You motored over, I suppose?"

Sir Antony sat down by me.

I remembered the ways he would be accustomed to and did not introduce

him to any one.

He had exchanged casual "How do you do's" with the neighbors he knew.

I poured him out some tea.

"I don't drink it," he said, "but give me some, and sugar, and cream,

and anything that will take time to put in."

I laughed.

"It is very long since we met at Harley, and I began to think you were

going to forget me again, Comtesse!"

"Is that why you came here?"

"Yes--and because they tell me your keeper can show at least a hundred

and fifty brace of partridges each day!"

"Augustus was right, then."

"What about?"

"He said you would come because of the number of the birds. I--I--felt

sure you would be engaged."

"Your note was not cordial nor cousinly, and I was engaged, but the

attraction of the game, as Mr. Gurrage says, decided me."

His smile had never looked so mocking nor his eyes so kind.

"Might I trouble you for a second cup, please, Mrs. Gussie?" the

female Dodd interrupted, loudly, from half across the room, "Mr.

McCormack is taking it over to you. And a little stronger this

time, please. I don't care for this new-fangled taste for weak

tea--dish-water, I call it--only fit for the jaded digestions of

worn-out worldly women."

"Who owns this fog-horn?" my kinsman whispered. "Will it come out

shooting to-morrow? The game-book record will be considerably lower

if so!"

"It won't shoot; it will only lunch," I whispered back.

Somehow, my spirits had risen. I loved to sit and laugh there

with--Antony. (I think of him as Antony, now we are cousins, I must

remember.)

I poured out the blackest tea I could, and inadvertently put a lump

of sugar into it. I am afraid I was not attending.

Mr. McCormack, a big, burly youth, with a red face and fearfully

nervous manners, stood first on one foot, then on the other, while he

waited for the cup, which, eventually, he took back to Mrs. Dodd.

All this time Antony was sitting talking to me in his delightfully

lazy way, quite undisturbed by any one else in the room. He has

exactly grandmamma's manner of finding a general company simply

furniture.

He was just telling an amusing story of the house in Scotland he

had come from, when an explosion happened at the other side of

the fireplace. Loud coughing and choking, mixed with a clatter of

teaspoons and china--and, amid a terrified silence, the fog-horn

exclaimed:

"Surely, Mrs. Gussie, I told you plain enough that sugar in my tea

makes me sick."

I apologized as well as I could, and repaired my want of attention,

and then I felt my other guests must claim me, so I whispered to

Antony:

"Do go and talk to Lady Wakely, please. You are preventing me from

doing my duty! I am listening to you instead."

"Virtuous Comtesse!"

But he rose, and crossed over to the fat wife of the member for this

division, and soon her face beamed with smiles.

I soothed Mr. McCormack, who somehow felt the sugar had been his

fault.

Augustus mollified the fog-horn Dodd, and peace was restored all

around.

It is a long time between tea and dinner when the days are growing

short. It was only half-past six when every excuse for lingering over

the teacups had expired.

What on earth could one do with this ill-assorted company for a whole

hour?

Augustus, with a desire to be extremely smart, had commanded dinner at

half-past eight.

Mercifully, the decent people and some of the men played bridge, and

were soon engaged at one or two tables. Augustus, who is growing fond

of the game, made one of the fourth, thus leaving five of our guests

hanging upon my hands.

"Shall I show you your rooms? Perhaps you would like to rest before

dinner," I said to the ladies, who were good enough to assent, with

the exception of Mrs. Dodd, who snorted at the idea of resting.

"Wullie," she said to Mr. Dodd. She had evidently picked up the

Scotch pronunciation of his name from him, a quiet, red-haired man

originally from Glasgow. He was hovering in the direction of one of

the bridge-tables. "Wullie, don't let me see you playing that game of

cards. There are letters to be written to Martha and my mother. Come

with me," she commanded.

Mr. Dodd obeyed, and they retired to the library together.

They are evidently quite at home here, and did not need any attention

from me.

Antony Thornhirst was the only other guest unemployed, and he

immediately rose and went to write letters in the hall, he said.

He had refused to play bridge on account of this important

correspondence.

So at last I got the two women off to their rooms, and was standing

irresolutely for a second, glancing over the balustrade after closing

the last door, when my kinsman looked up.

"Comtesse," he called, softly, "won't you come down and tell me when

the post goes?"

I descended the stairs. He was standing at the bottom by one of the

negro figures when I reached the last step.

"Have you not some quiet corner where we might sit and talk of our

ancestors?" he asked, with a comic look in his cat's eyes. "This place

is so draughty, and I am afraid of the bears! And we should disturb

that loving couple in the library and the bridge-players in the

drawing-room. Have you no suggestions for my comfort? I am one of your

guests, too, you know!"

"There is Mrs. Gurrage's boudoir, that has straight-up, padded chairs

and crimson satin, and there is my own, that is mustard yellow. Which

could you bear best before dinner?" I said, laughing.

"Oh! the yellow--mustard is stimulating and will give me an appetite."

So we walked up the stairs again together and he followed me down the

thickly carpeted passage to my highly gilded shrine.

For the first time since I have owned it, I felt sorry I had been too

numb to make it nice. The house-maids arrange it in the morning, and

there it stays, a monument of the English upholsterer's idea of a

Louis XV. boudoir.

As I told Hephzibah, the little copy of La Rochefoucauld and the

miniature of Ambrosine Eustasie are the only things of mine--my

own--that are here, besides all my new books, of course.

I sat down in the straight-backed sofa. It has terra-cotta and buff

tulips running over the mustard brocade. The gilt part runs into your

back.

Antony sat at the other end.

A very fat, rich cushion of "school of art" embroidery, with frills,

fell between us. We looked up at the same moment and our eyes met, and

we both laughed.

"You remind me of a picture I bought last year," Antony said. "It

was a little pastel by La Tour, and the last owner had framed it in

a brand-new, brilliant gilt Florentine frame."

Suddenly, as he spoke, a sense of shame came over me. I felt how wrong

I had been to laugh with him about this--my home. It is because, after

all these months, I cannot realize that Ledstone is my home that I

have been capable of committing this bad taste.

I felt my cheeks getting red and I looked down.

"I--I like bright colors," I said, defiantly. "They are cheerful

and--and--"

"Sweet Comtesse!" interrupted Antony, in his mocking tone, which does

not anger me. "Tell me about your books."

He got up lazily, and began reading the titles of a heap on the table

beyond.

"What strange books for a little girl! Who on earth recommended you

these?"

"No one. I knew nothing at all about modern books, so I just sent for

all and any I saw in the advertisements in the papers. Most of them

are great rubbish, it seems to me, but there are one or two I like."

He did not speak for a few moments.

"All on philosophy! You ought to read novels at your age."

"I did get some in the beginning, but they seemed all untrue and

mawkish, or sad and dramatic, and the heroines did such silly things,

and the men were mostly brutes, so I have given them up. Unless I see

the advertisement of a thrilling burglary or mystery story, I read

those. They are not true, either, and one knows it, but they make one

forget when it rains."

"All women profess to have a little taste for philosophy and

beautifully bound Marcus Aureliuses, and _Maximes_, and love

poems--clever little scraps covered in exquisite bindings. And one out

of a thousand understands what the letter-press is about. I am weary

of seeing the same on every boudoir-table, and yet some of them are

delightful books in themselves. You have none of these, I see."

He picked up the La Rochefoucauld.

"Yes, here is one, but this is an old edition." He turned to the

title-leaf and read the date, then looked at the cover. It is bound

in brown leather and has the same arms and coronet upon it that my

chatelaine has--the arms of Ambrosine Eustasie de Calincourt and an

"A. E. de C." entwined, all tooled in faded gold.

"The arms on my knife!" Antony said, pulling it from his

waistcoat-pocket and comparing them.

"My knife," I said.

"Tell me all about her--A.E. de C.," he commanded, seating himself

on the sofa again.

"She was my great-great-grandmother, and was guillotined. See--I

will show you her miniature," and I took it from its case on the

writing-table. I have had a leather covering made to keep safe the

old, paste frame. It has doors that shut, and I don't let her look

too much at the mustard-yellow walls, my pretty ancestress.

"What an extraordinary likeness!" Antony exclaimed, as he looked

at it. "Are you sure I am not dreaming and you are not your own

great-great-grandmother?"

"No, I am myself. But I am supposed to be like her, though."

"It is the very image of you. She has your air and carriage of the

head, and--and--" he looked at it very carefully under the electric

light which sprouts from a twisted bunch of brass lilies on the wall,

their stalks suggesting a modern Louis XV. nightmare.

"And what?"

"Well, never mind. Now I want to hear her story." And we both sat down

again for the third time on the tulip-sofa.

I told him the history just as I had told him the outline of my life

the day in the Harley woods. Only, as then I felt I was speaking of

another person, now I seemed to be talking of myself when I came to

the part of walking up the guillotine steps.

"And so they cut her head off--poor little lady!" said Antony, when I

had finished, and he looked straight into my eyes.

The pillow of art-needlework and frills had fallen to the floor--even

it could not remain comfortably on the hard seat! There was nothing

between us on the sofa.

Antony leaned forward, close to me. His voice was strangely moved.

"Comtesse!" he began, when McGreggor knocked at the door.

"Mr. Gurrage is calling you, ma'am," she said, in her heavy, Scotch

voice, "and he seems in a hurry, ma'am."

"Ambrosine!" echoed impatiently in the hall.

"Why, it must be dressing-time!" said Antony, calmly, looking at his

watch. "I must not keep you," and he quietly left the room as Augustus

burst in from my bedroom door.

"Where on earth have you been?" he said, crossly. "That Dodd woman

has been driving us all mad! Willie Dodd came and joined us at bridge

and took McCormack's place, and the old she-tike came after him and

chattered like a monkey until she got him away. Where were you that

you did not look after her?"

"I was here, in my sitting-room, talking to Sir Antony Thornhirst," I

said, almost laughing. The picture of Mrs. Dodd at the bridge-table

amused me to think of. Augustus saw me smiling, and he looked less

ruffled.

"She is an old wretch," he said. "I wish I had not to ask Willie Dodd

every year, but business is business, and I'll trouble you to be civil

to them. We will weed out the whole of this lot, gradually, now. The

mater will go off to Bournemouth at this time of the year, and so,

by-and-by, we can have nothing but smart people."

The evening passed in an endless, boring round. This sort of company

does not adapt itself as the people at Harley did. With my best

endeavors to be a good hostess, the uneasiness of my guests prevented

me from making them feel comfortable or at home.

Mrs. Dodd's impertinence would have been insupportable if it had not

been so funny.

She complained of most things--the draughts, the inconvenience of the

hours of the train departures, and so on.

She was gorgeously dressed and hung with diamonds. Without being

exceptionally stout, everything is so tight and pushed-up that she

seems to come straight out from her chin in a kind of platform, where

the diamonds lose themselves in a narrow, perpendicular depression in

the middle.

Antony sat next me at dinner, at one side; on the other was old Sir

Samuel Wakely. Mr. Dodd on his left hand had Miss Springle, the

playful, giddy daughter of one of the guns.

She chaffed him all the time, much to the annoyance of his life's

partner, who was sitting opposite, and who, owing to an erection of

flowers, was unable to quite see what was going on.

"Yes," we heard Mr. Dodd say, at last, "I nearly bought it in Paris at

the Exhibition. Eh! but it was a beautiful statue!"

"I like statues," said Miss Springle.

"Well, she was just a perfect specimen of a woman, but Missus Dodd

wouldna let me purchase her, because the puir thing wasna dressed. I

didna think it could matter in marble."

"What's that you are saying about Mrs. Dodd?" demanded that lady from

across the table, dodging the chrysanthemums.

"I was telling Miss Springle, my dear, of the statue of 'Innocence' I

wanted to buy at the Exhibition at Paris," replied Mr. Dodd, meekly,

"and that you wouldna let me on account of the scanty clothing."

"Innocence, indeed!" snorted Mrs. Dodd. "Pretty names they give things

over there! And her clothing scant, you call it, Wullie? Why, you are

stretching a point to the verge of untruth to call it clothing at

all--a scarf of muslin and a couple of doves! Anyhow, I'll have it

known I'll not have a naked woman in my drawing-room, in marble or

flesh!"

The conversation of the whole table was paralyzed by her voice. My eye

caught Antony's, and we both laughed.

"There, there, my dear, don't be even suggesting such things," said

Mr. Dodd, soothingly.

"La! Mrs. Dodd, you make me blush," giggled Miss Springle.

I wondered what Antony thought of it all, and whether he had ever been

among such people before. His face betrayed nothing after he laughed

with me, and he seemed to be quietly enjoying his dinner, which,

fortunately, was good.

It was only for a few minutes before we all said good-night that we

spoke together alone.

"Shall you be down to breakfast, Comtesse?" he asked me.

"Oh yes," I said, "These people would never understand. They would

think I was being deliberately rude if I breakfasted in my room."

"At nine o'clock, then?"

"Yes."

"Lend me your La Rochefoucauld to read to-night?" he asked.

"With pleasure. I will have it sent to your room."

"No, let me get it from your mustard boudoir myself. I shall be coming

up, probably, to change into a smoking-coat, and my room is down that

way, you know."

"Very well."

So we said good-night.

Half an hour afterwards, I was standing by my sitting-room fire when

Antony came into the room. He leaned on the mantel-piece beside me and

looked down into my face.

"When will you come over to Dane Mount, Comtesse? I want to show you

_my_ great-great-grandmother. She was yours, too, by-the-way," he

said.

"When will you ask us?"

"In about a fortnight. I have to run about Norfolk until then. Will

you come some time near the 4th of November?"

"I shall have to ask Augustus, but I dare say we can."

He frowned slightly at the mention of Augustus.

"Of course. Well, I will not have a party, only some one to talk

to--your husband. The ancestors won't interest him, probably."

"Oh! Do ask Lady Tilchester," I said. "I love her."

He bent down suddenly to look at the Dresden clock.

"No, I don't think so. She will be entertaining herself just then," he

said, "and probably could not get away. But leave it to me, I promise

to arrange that Augustus shall not be bored."

He picked up La Rochefoucauld and opened it.

"I see you have marked some of the _maximes_."

"No. Grandmamma and the Marquis must have done that. Look, they are

all of the most witty and cynical that are pencilled. I can hear them

talking when I read them. That is just how they spoke to one another."

He read aloud:

"'_C'est une grande folie de vouloir être sage tout seul_!' Don't

be '_sage tout seul_,' Comtesse. Let me keep you company in your

_sagesse_," he said.

I looked up at him. His eyes were full of a quizzical smile. There

is something in the way his head is set, a distinction, an air of

command. It infinitely pleases me. I felt--I know not what!

"Now I will say good-night. I am tired, and it is getting late," I

said.

"Good-night, Comtesse," and he walked to the door. "I shall be down

at nine o'clock."

And so we parted.

VIII

On the morrow it had cleared up and flashes of blue sky were

appearing. Augustus and Mr. McCormack had both had too much to drink

the night before, at dinner, and were looking, and no doubt feeling,

mixed and ill-tempered.

The morning was long after the shooters had gone. It seemed as if one

o'clock, when we were to start for the lunch, would never come.

Miss Springle had some passages-at-arms with Mrs. Dodd. They had all

been down to breakfast but Lady Wakely and another woman, who were

accustomed to the ways of the world.

I had never seen any shooting before. The whole thing was new to me.

Augustus had insisted upon selecting what he considered a suitable

costume for me. We had been up to London several times together to try

it on, and, on the whole, though a little _outre_ in its checks, it is

not unbecoming.

"Do you shoot, yourself, Mrs. Gussie?" Mrs. Dodd asked, when we

assembled in the hall, ready to start.

"No; do you?" I replied.

"Of course not! The idea! But, seeing your skirt so very short, I

should have guessed you were a sportswoman and killed the birds

yourself!" and she sniffed ominously.

"Do birds get killed with a skirt?" Miss Springle asked, pertly. She

hates Mrs. Dodd. They were neighbors In Liverpool, originally. "I

thought you had to shoot at them?"

Mrs. Dodd snorted.

"You will get awfully muddy, Mrs. Dodd, in your long cashmere," Miss

Springle continued. "And Mr. Dodd told me, when I met him coming

from the bath this morning, to be sure not to wear any colors--they

frighten the birds. I am certain he will object to that yellow

paradise-plume in your hat."

Mrs. Dodd looked ready to fight.

"Mr. Dodd had better talk to me about my hat!" she said, growing

purple in the face. "I call all these modern sporting-costumes

indecent, and when I was a girl I should have been whipped for coming

out shooting in the things you have got on, Miss Springle!"

"Really! you don't say so!" said Miss Springle, innocently, "Why, I

never heard they shot birds in Liverpool, Mrs. Dodd."

I interfered. The expression of my elder guest's face was becoming

apoplectic.

"Let us get into the brake," I said.

Lady Wakely sat next me.

"Very unpleasant person, Mrs. Dodd," she whispered, wheezily, as we

drove off, "She is here every year. My dear, you are good-natured to

put up with her."

Lunch was laid out in the barn of one of the farm-houses. Augustus had

given orders that it should be of the most sumptuous description, and

the chef had done marvels.

The table looked like a wedding-breakfast when we got there, with

flowers and printed menus.

The sportsmen were not long in making their appearance. It was

a rather warm day, and Mr. McCormack and Mr. Dodd, who were not

accustomed to much exercise, I suppose, without ceremony mopped

their heads.

Antony, who was walking behind, with Sir Samuel Wakely, appeared such

an astonishingly cool contrast to them. His coat did not look new, but

as if it had seen service. Only everything fitted and hung right, and

he walks with an ease and grace that would have pleased grandmamma.

Augustus had a thunderous expression on his face. So had Wilks, the

head keeper. Later, I gathered there had been a great quantity of

birds, but the commercial friends had not been very successful in

their destruction. In fact, Mr. Dodd had only secured two brace,

besides one of the beaters in the shoulder, and a dog.

Antony sat by me.

"Dangerous work, shooting," he said, smiling, as he looked at the

menu. "What is your average list of killed in a pheasant battue?"

"What--what kind of killed?" I asked, laughing.

"Guests or beaters or dogs--anything but the birds."

"Cutlets ha la ravigotte or 'ommard ha lamerican, Sir Antony?" the

voice of the first footman sounded in our ears.

"Oh--er--get me a little Irish stew or some cold beef," said Antony,

plaintively, still with the menu in his hand.

"We've no--Irish stew--except what is prepared for the beaters, Sir

Antony," said James, apologetically. He had come from a ducal house

and knew the world. "Shall I get you some of that, Sir Antony?"

"No, don't mind." Then, turning to me, "What are you eating,

Comtesse?" he asked. "I will have some of that."

"It is truffled partridge in aspic," I said, disagreeably. "You can

pick out the truffles if you are afraid of them."

"Truffled partridge, then," he said to James, resignedly, and when

it came he deliberately ate the truffles first.

"Hock, claret, Burgundy, or champagne, Sir Antony?" demanded the

butler.

"Oh--er--I will have the whole four!"

His face had the most comical expression of chastened resignation as

he glanced at me.

Griggson poured out bumpers in the four glasses.

"I shall now shoot like your friend from Liverpool," said Antony, "and

if I kill your husband and most of the guests I cannot be blamed for

it," and he drank down the hock.

"Don't be so foolish," I said, laughing, in spite of having pretended

to be annoyed with him.

"I would drink anything rather than incur your displeasure," he said,

with great humility, as he took up the claret. "Must I eat everything

on the menu, too?"

I appeared not to hear, and turned to Mr. Dodd, who was on my other

side, his usually pale face still crimson with walking so fast and

this feast of Lucullus he was partaking of.

"I had bad luck this morning, Mrs. Gussie," he said, in a humble

voice. "I am sorry about that man and dog, and I am afraid the

gentleman on your right must have got a pellet also--eh, sir?" and

he addressed Antony.