MARIE CORELLI.

July 6th, 1896.

*The Murder of Delicia*

*CHAPTER I*

A flood of warm spring sunshine poured its full radiance from the south

through the large, square lattice-window of Delicia’s study, flashing a

golden smile of recognition on Delicia herself and on all the objects

surrounding her. Gleaming into the yellow cups of a cluster of

daffodils which stood up, proudly erect, out of a quaint, brown vase

from Egypt, it flickered across a pearl-inlaid mandoline that hung

against the wall, as though it were playing an unheard melody in

delicate _tremolo_ on the strings; then, setting a crown of light on

Delicia’s hair, it flung an arrowy beam at the head of Hadrian’s

‘Antinous,’ whose curved marble lips, parted in an inscrutable,

half-mocking smile, seemed about to utter a satire on the ways of women.

Delicia had purchased this particular copy of the original bust in the

British Museum because she imagined it was like her husband. No one

else thought it in the least like him—but she did.

She had all sorts of fancies about this husband of hers—fancies both

pretty and passionate—though she had none about herself. She was only a

worker; one whom certain distinguished noodles on the Press were

accustomed to sneer at from their unintellectual and impecunious

standpoint as ‘a lady novelist’ not meriting the name of ‘author,’ and

who, despite sneers and coarse jesting, was one of the most celebrated

women of her time, as well as one of the wealthiest. The house she

lived in, built from her own designs, furnished with every luxury and

filled with valuable pictures, curios and art-treasures, was one of the

material results of her brilliant brain-work; the perfectly-ordered

_ménage_, the admirably-trained servants, the famous ‘table’ at which

many of London’s most fastidious _gourmets_ had sat and gorged

themselves to repletion, were all owing to her incessant and unwearying

labour. She did everything; she paid everything, from the taxes down to

the wages of the scullery-maid; she managed everything, from the

advantageous disposal of her own manuscripts down to the smallest detail

of taste and elegance connected with the daily serving of her husband’s

dinner. She was never idle, and in all her literary efforts had never

yet failed to score a triumph above her compeers.

As a writer, she stood quite apart from the rank and file of modern

fictionists. Something of the spirit of the Immortals was in her

blood—the spirit that moved Shakespeare, Shelley and Byron to proclaim

truths in the face of a world of lies—some sense of the responsibility

and worth of Literature—and with these emotions existed also the

passionate desire to rouse and exalt her readers to the perception of

the things she herself knew and instinctively felt to be right and just

for all time. The public responded to her voice and clamoured for her

work, and, as a natural result of this, all ambitious and aspiring

publishers were her very humble suppliants. Whatsoever munificent and

glittering ‘terms’ are dreamed of by authors in their wildest

conceptions of a literary El Dorado, were hers to command; and yet she

was neither vain nor greedy. She was, strange to say, though an author

and a ‘celebrity,’ still an unspoilt, womanly woman.

Just when the sunshine crowned her, as the sunshine had a way of doing

at that particular hour of the morning, she was very busy finishing the

last chapter of a book which had occupied all her energies during the

past four months. She wrote rapidly, and the small, well-shaped, white

hand that guided the pen held that dangerous intellectual weapon firmly,

with a close and somewhat defiant grip, suggestive of the manner of a

youthful warrior grasping a light spear and about to hurl it in the face

of a foe. Her very attitude in writing indicated mental force and

health; no ‘literary stoop’ disfigured her supple back and shoulders, no

sign of ‘fag’ or ‘brain-muddle’ clouded the thoughtful yet animated

expression of her features. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks delicately

flushed. She had no idea of her own poetic and unique loveliness, which

was utterly unlike all the various admitted types of beauty in woman.

She scarcely knew that her eyes were of that divinely rare, dark violet

colour which in certain lights looks almost black, that her skin was

white as a snowdrop, or that her hair, in its long, glistening masses of

brown-gold, was a wonder and an envy to countless numbers of her sex who

presented themselves to the shrewdly-grinning gaze of the world with

dyed ‘fronts’ and false ‘back coils.’ She truly never thought of these

things. She had grown to understand, from current ‘smart’ newspaper

talk, that all authoresses, without exception, were bound to be judged

as elderly and plain, even hideous, in the matter of looks, according to

the accepted conventional standard of ‘press’ ethics, and though she was

perfectly aware that she was young, and not as repulsive in her personal

appearance as she ought to be for the profession of letters, she took

very little trouble to assert herself, and made no attempt whatever to

‘show off her points,’ as the slang parlance hath it, though those

‘points’ outnumbered in variety and charm the usual attractions of

attractive women. Admirers of her genius were too dazzled by that

genius to see anything but the glow of the spiritual fire burning about

her like the Delphic flames around Apollo’s priestess, and the dainty

trifles of personality, which are ordinarily all a woman has to boast

of, were in her case lost sight of. Compliments and flatteries, however,

were distasteful to her, except when on rare occasions she received them

from her husband. Then her sweet soul kindled within her into a warm

glow of rapture and gratitude, and she wondered what she had done to

deserve praise from so lordly and perfect a being.

There was something very touching as well as beautiful in the way

Delicia bent her proud intellect and prouder spirit to the will of her

chosen mate. For him, and for him only, she strove to add fresh glory

to the lustre of her name; for him she studied the art of dressing

perfectly, loving best to drape herself in soft white stuffs that clung

in close, artistic folds round her light and lissom figure, and made her

look like a Greuze or a Romney picture; for him she took pains to twist

the rich treasure of her hair in cunning braids and love-locks manifold,

arranging it in a soft cluster on her fair forehead after the fashion of

the ancient Greeks, and scattering here and there one or two delicate

rings about her finely-veined temples, as golden suggestions of kisses

to be pressed thereon. For him she cased her little feet in fascinating

_brodequins_ of deftest Paris make; for him she moved like a sylph and

smiled like an angel; for him she sang, when the evenings fell, old

tender songs of love and home, in her rich, soft contralto; for him

indeed she lived, breathed and—worked. She was the hiving bee—he the

luxurious drone that ate the honey. And it never occurred to him to

consider the position as at all unnatural.

Certainly Delicia loved her work—of that there could be no doubt. She

enjoyed it with every fibre of her being. She relished the keen

competition of the literary arena, where her rivals, burning with

jealousy, endeavoured vainly to emulate her position; and she valued her

fame as the means of bringing her into contact with all the leading men

and women of her day. She was amused at the small spites and envies of

the malicious and unsuccessful, and maintained her philosophical and

classic composure under all the trumpery slights, ignorant censures and

poor scandals put upon her by the less gifted of her own sex. Her

career was one of triumph, and being sane and healthy, she enjoyed that

triumph to the full. But more than triumph, more than fame or the

rewards of fame, more indeed than all things in the world ever devised,

measured or possessed, she loved her husband,—a strange passion for a

woman in these wild days when matrimony is voted ‘out of date’ by

certain theory-mongers, and a ‘nobleman’ can be found ready to give a

money-bribe to any couple of notoriety-hunters who will consent to be

married in church according to the holy ordinance, and who will

afterwards fling a boorish insult in the face of Religion by protesting

publicly against the ceremony. Delicia had been married three years, and

those three years had passed by like three glittering visions of

Paradise, glowing with light, colour, harmony and rapture. Only one

grief had clouded the pageant of her perfect joy, and this was the death

of her child, a tiny mortal of barely two months old, which had, as it

were, dropped out of her arms like a withered blossom slain by sudden

frost. Yet, to Delicia’s dreamy and sensitive temperament, the sadness

of this loss but deepened her adoration for him round whom her brilliant

life twined like a luxurious vine full of blossom and fruit—the strong,

splendid, bold, athletic, masterful creature who was hers—hers only!

For she knew—her own heart told her this—that no other woman shared his

tenderness, and that never, never had his faith to her been shaken by so

much as one unruly thought!

And thus it was that Delicia often said of herself that she was the

happiest woman in the world, and that her blessings were so many and so

various that she was ashamed to pray. ‘For how can I, how dare I ask

God for anything else when I have so much?’ she would inwardly reflect.

‘Rather let me be constant in the giving of thanks for all the joys so

lavishly bestowed upon me, which I so little deserve!’ And she would

work on with redoubled energy, striving after perfection in all she did,

and full of a strange ardour combined with a yet stranger humility. She

never looked upon her work as a trouble, and never envied those of her

own sex whose absolute emptiness of useful occupation enabled them to

fritter away their time in such ‘delightful’ amusements as bicycling,

rinking, skirt-dancing and other methods of man-hunting at present in

vogue among the fair feminine animals whose sole aim of existence is

marriage, and after that—nullity. Her temperament was eminently

practical as well as idealistic, and in the large amounts of money she

annually earned she never lost a penny by rash speculation or foolish

expenditure. Lavish in her hospitalities, she was never ostentatious,

and though perfect in her dress, she was never guilty of the wild and

wicked extravagance to which many women in her position and with her

means would have yielded without taking a moment’s thought. She

carefully considered the needs of the poor, and helped them accordingly,

in secret, and without the petty presumption of placarding her charities

to the world through the medium of a ‘bazaar’ or hypocritical

‘entertainment at the East End.’ She felt the deep truth of the saying,

‘Unto whom much is given, even from him shall much be required,’ and

gave her largesse with liberal tenderness and zeal. On one point alone

did she outrun the measure of prudence in the scattering of her wealth,

and this was in the consideration of her husband. For him nothing was

too good, nothing too luxurious, and any wish he expressed, even by the

merest chance, she immediately set herself, with pride and joy, to

gratify. As a matter of fact, he had not really a penny to call his

own, though his private banking account always showed a conveniently

large surplus, thanks to Delicia’s unfailing care. Wilfred de Tracy

Gifford Carlyon, to give him all his names in full, was an officer in

the Guards, the younger son of a nobleman who had, after a career of

wild extravagance, died a bankrupt. He had no other profession than the

military, and though a man of good blood and distinguished descent, he

was absolutely devoid of all ambition, save a desire to have his surname

pronounced correctly. ‘Car_lee_-on,’ he would say with polite emphasis,

‘not Car-_ly_-on. Our name is an old, historical one, and like many of

its class is spelt one way and pronounced another.’

Now, without ambition, the human organisation becomes rather like a

heavy cart stuck fast in the mud-rut it has made for itself, and it

frequently needs a strong horse to move it and set it jogging on again.

In this case, Delicia was the horse; or, to put it more justly, the

high-spirited mare, galloping swiftly along an open road to a destined

end, and scarcely conscious of the cart she drew at such a rattling pace

behind her. How indignant she would have been had she overheard any

profane person using this irreverent cart simile in connection with her

one supremely Beloved! Yet such was the true position of things as

recognised by most people around her; and only he and she were blind to

the disproportionate features of their union; she with the rare and

beautiful blindness of perfect love, he with the common every-day

blindness of male egotism.

That he had exceptional attractions of his own wherewith to captivate

and subdue the fair sex was beyond all question. The qualities of

‘race,’ derived from a long ancestral line of warriors and statesmen,

had blossomed out in him physically if not mentally. He had a fine,

admirably-moulded figure, fit for a Theseus or a Hercules, a handsome

face and a dulcet voice, rich with many gradations of persuasive and

eloquent tone. Armed with these weapons of conquest, he met Delicia at

the moment when her small foot had touched the topmost peak of Fame, and

when all the sharp thorns and icicles of the strange crown wherewith Art

rewards her chosen children were freshly set among her maiden hair.

Society thought her a chilly vestal—shrank from her, indeed, somewhat in

vague fear; for her divine, violet eyes had a straight way of looking

through the cunningly-contrived mask of the social liar, and, like the

‘Rontgen rays,’ taking a full impression of the ugly devil behind it.

Society refused to recognise her ethereal and half elfin type of beauty.

It ‘could see nothing in her.’ She was to it ‘a curious sort of woman,

difficult to get on with,’—and behind her back it said of her the usual

mysterious nothings, such as, ‘Ah! one never knows what those kind of

persons are!’ or, ‘Who _was_ she?’ and, ‘Where does she get her strange

ideas from?’—slobbering its five o’clock tea and munching its watercress

sandwiches over these scrappy suggestions of scandal with a fine relish

only known to the ‘upper class’ matron and the Whitechapel washerwoman.

For however much apart these two feminine potentialities may be in

caste, they are absolutely one in their love of low gossip and slander.

Nevertheless, the dashing Guards officer, who had been flung into an

expensive regiment at the reckless whim of his late father, found

several engaging qualities in Delicia, which appealed to him partly on

account of their rarity, and partly because he, personally, had never

been able to believe any woman capable of possessing them. Perhaps the

first of the various unique characteristics he recognised in her, and

marvelled at, was her total lack of vanity. He had never in all his life

before met a pretty woman who attached so little importance to her own

good looks; and he had certainly never come across a really ‘famous’

personage who wore the laurels of renown so unconsciously and

unassumingly. He had once in his life had the honour of shaking hands

with an exceedingly stout and florid poetess, who spoke in a deep,

masculine voice, and asked him what he thought of her last book, which,

by-the-bye, he had never heard of, and he had also lunched in the

distinguished company of a ‘sexual fictionist,’ a very dirty and

dyspeptic-looking man, who had talked of nothing else but the excellence

and virtue of his own unsavoury productions all through the course of

the meal. But Delicia!—Delicia, the envy of all the struggling,

crowding climbers up Parnassus,—the living embodiment of an almost

phenomenal triumph in art and letters—Delicia said nothing about herself

at all. She assumed no ‘airs of superiority;’ she talked amusing

trifles like other less brilliant and more frivolous people; she was

even patient with the ubiquitous ‘society idiot,’ and drew him out with

a tactful charm which enabled him to display all his most glaring points

to perfection; but when anyone began to praise her gifts of authorship,

or ventured to comment on the wide power and influence she had attained

through her writings, she turned the conversation instantly, without

_brusquerie_ but with a gentle firmness that won for her the involuntary

respect of even the flippant and profane.

This unpretentious conduct of hers, so exceptional in ‘celebrities,’

who, in these days of push-and-scramble have no scruples about giving

themselves what is called in modern parlance ‘any amount of side,’

rather astonished the gallant ‘Beauty Carlyon,’ as he was sometimes

nicknamed by his fellow officers; and, as it is necessary to analyse his

feelings thoroughly, it must also be conceded that another of his

sensations on being introduced to the woman whose opinions and writings

were the talk of London, was one of unmitigated admiration mingled with

envy at the thought of the fortune she had made and was still making.

What!—so slight a creature, whose waist he could span with his two

hands, whose slender neck could be wrung as easily as that of a

singing-bird, and whose head seemed too small for its glistening weight

of gold hair—she, to be the possessor of a name and fame reaching

throughout every part of the British Empire, and far across the wide

Atlantic, and the independent mistress of such wealth as made his

impecunious mouth water! Ten thousand pounds for her last book!—paid

down without a murmur, even before the work was finished!—surely ‘these

be excellent qualities,’ he mused within himself, afterwards falling

into a still more profound reverie when he heard on unimpeachable

authority that the royalties alone on her already-published works

brought her in an income of over five thousand a year. Her first book

had been produced when she was but seventeen, though she had feigned,

when asked, to be several years older, in order to ensure attention from

publishers; and she had gone on steadily rising in the scale of success

till now—when she was twenty-seven, and famous with a fame surpassing

that of all her men contemporaries. No doubt much money had been put by

during those ten triumphal years!

Taking all these matters into consideration, it was not to be wondered

at that the penniless Guardsman thought often and deeply concerning the

possibilities and advantages of Delicia as a wife, and that, during the

time he formed one of the house-party among whose members she was the

most honoured guest, he should seize every opportunity of making himself

agreeable to her. He began to study her from a physical point of view,

and very soon discovered in her a charm which was totally unlike the

ordinary attractiveness of ordinary women. In strict fairness to him,

it must be admitted that his realisation of Delicia’s fine and delicate

nature was due to distinctly sincere feeling on his part, and was not

inspired by any ulterior thought of Mammon. He liked the way she moved;

her suave, soft step and the graceful fold and flow of her garments

pleased him; and once, when she raised her eyes suddenly to his in quick

response to some question, he was startled and thrilled by the glamour

and sweet witchery of those dark purple orbs, sparkling with such light

as can only be kindled from a pure soul’s fire. Gradually he, six feet

of man, nobly proportioned, with a head which might be justly termed

classic, even heroic, though it lacked certain bumps which phrenology

deems desirable for human perfection—fell desperately in love, and here

his condition must be very positively emphasised, lest the slightest

doubt be entertained of it hereafter. To speak poetically, the fever of

love consumed him with extraordinary violence night and day; and the

strongest form of that passion known to men, namely, the covetous greed

of possession, roused him to the employment of all his faculties in the

task of subduing the Dian-like coldness and crystalline composure of

Delicia’s outward-seeming nature to that tenderness and warmth so

eminently desirable in a woman who is, according to the dictum of old

Genesis, meant to be a man’s helpmate, though the antique record does

not say she is to be so far helpful as to support him altogether. Among

the various artful devices Carlyon brought to his somewhat difficult

attack on the ivory castle of a pure, studious and contemplative

maidenhood, were a Beautiful Sullenness,—a Dark Despair,—and a

Passionate Outbreak—the latter he employed at rare intervals only. When

the Beautiful Sullenness was upon him he had a very noble appearance;

the delicate, proud curve of his upper lip was prominent,—his long,

silky lashes, darkly drooping, gave a shadow of stern sweetness to his

eyes; and Delicia, glancing at him timidly, would feel her heart beat

fast, like the fluttering wing of a frightened bird, if he chanced to

raise those eyes from their musing gloom and fix them half-ardently,

half-reproachfully on her face. As for the Dark Despair, the sublimity

of aspect he managed to attain in that particular mood could never be

described in ordinary language; perhaps, in the world’s choicest

galleries of art, one might find such a wronged and suffering greatness

in the countenance of one of the sculptured gods or heroes, but surely

not elsewhere. However, it was the Passionate Outbreak,—the

lightning-like fury and determination of mere manhood, springing forth

despite the man himself, and making havoc of all his preconceived

intentions, that won his cause for him at last. The moment came—the one

moment which, truly speaking, comes but once to any human life; the

pre-ordained, divine moment, brief as the sparkle of foam on a breaking

wave,—the glimpse of Heaven that vanishes almost before we have looked

upon it. It was a night never to be forgotten—by Delicia, at least; a

night when Shakespeare’s elves might have been abroad, playing mischief

with the flowers and scattering wonder-working charms upon the air—a

true ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ which descended, full-visioned in silver

luminance, straight from Paradise for Delicia’s sake. She was, at that

time, the guest of certain ‘great’ people; the kind of ‘great’ who say

they ‘must have a celebrity or two, you know!—they are such queer, dear

things!’ Delicia, as a ‘queer, dear thing,’ was one of the celebrities

thus entertained, and Pablo de Sarasate, also as a ‘queer, dear thing,’

was another. A number of titled and ‘highly-connected’ personages, who

had the merit of being ‘queer’ without being in the least ‘dear,’ made

up the rest of the party. The place they were staying at was a lordly

pile, anciently the ‘summer pleasaunce’ and favourite resort of a great

Norman baron in the days of Richard the Lion-hearted, and the grounds

extending round and about it were of that deep-shadowed, smooth-lawned

and beautifully sylvan character which only the gardens of old, historic

English homes possess. Up and down, between a double hedge of roses,

and under the radiance of a golden harvest moon, Delicia moved slowly

with Carlyon at her side; and from the open drawing-room windows of the

house floated the pure, penetrating voice of Sarasate’s violin.

Something mystic in the air; something subtle in the scent of the roses;

a stray flash of light on the falling drops of the fountain close by,

which perpetually built and unbuilt again its glittering cupola of

spray, or some other little nothing of the hour, brought both man and

woman to a sudden pause,—a conscious pause, in which they each fancied

they could hear their own hearts beating loudly above the music of the

distant violin. And the man,—the elected son of Mars, who had never yet

lifted his manhood to the height of battle, there to confront horror

upon horror, shock upon shock,—now sprang up full-armed in the lists of

love, and, strong with a strength he had hardly been aware of as

existing in himself before, he swiftly and boldly grasped his prize.

‘Delicia!’ he whispered—‘Delicia, I love you!’

There was no audible answer. Sarasate’s violin discoursed suitable

love-passages, and the moon smiled as if she would have spoken, but

Delicia was silent. She had no need of speech—her eyes were

sufficiently eloquent. She felt herself drawn with a passionate force

into her lover’s strong arms, and clasped firmly, even jealously, to his

broad breast; and like a dove, which after long journeyings finds its

home at last, she thought she had found hers, and folding her

spirit-wings, she nestled in and was content.

Clinging to this great and generous protector who thus assumed the

guardianship of her life, she marvelled innocently at her own good

fortune, and asked herself what she had done to deserve such ineffable

happiness. And he? He too, at this particular juncture, may be given

credit for nobler emotions than those which ordinarily swayed him. He

was really very much in love; and Love, for the time being, governed his

nature and made him a less selfish man than usual. When he held Delicia

in his arms, and kissed her dewy lips and fragrant hair for the first

time, he was filled with a strange ecstasy, such as might have moved the

soul of Adam when, on rising from deep sleep, he found embodied Beauty

by his side as ‘help-meet’ through his life for ever. He was conscious

that in Delicia he had won not only a sweet woman, but a rare

intelligence; a spirit far above the average,—a character tempered and

trained to finest issues,—and from day to day he studied the grace of

her form, the fairness of her skin, the lustre of her eyes, with an

ever-deepening intensity of delight which imparted a burning, masterful

ardour to the manner of his wooing, and brought her whole nature into a

half-timid, half-joyous subjection—the kind of subjection which might

impel a great queen to take off her crown and lay it at the feet of some

splendid warrior, in order that he might share her throne and kingdom.

And in this case the splendid warrior was only too ready to accept the

offered sovereignty. Certainly he loved Delicia; loved her with very

real and almost fierce passion,—the passion that leaps up like a tall,

bright flame, and dies down to a dull ember; but he could hardly be

altogether insensible to the advantages he personally gained by loving

her. He could not but exult at the thought that he, with nothing but

his handsome appearance and good birth to recommend him, had won this

woman whose very name was a lode-star of intellectual attraction over

half the habitable globe, and, in the very midst of the ardent caresses

he lavished upon her, he was unable to entirely forget the fortune she

had made, and which she was adding to every day. Then she was charming

in herself, too—lovely, though not at all so according to the accepted

‘music-hall’ standard of height and fleshy prominence; she was more like

the poet’s dream of ‘Kilmeny in Fairyland’ than the ‘beauty’ of

eighteenpenny-photograph fame; but she was, as Carlyon himself said, ‘as

natural as a rose—no paint, no dye, no purchased hair cut from the heads

of female convicts, no sickly perfumes, no padding, nothing in the least

artificial about her.’ And hearing this, his particular ‘chum’ in the

Guards Club said,—

‘Lucky dog! You don’t deserve such a “draw” in the matrimonial

lottery!’

And Carlyon, smiling a superior smile, looked in a conveniently near

mirror, and replied,—

‘Perhaps not! But—’

A flash of the fine eyes, and a touch of the Beautiful Sullenness manner

finished the sentence. It was evident that the gallant officer was not

at all in doubt as to his own value, however much other folks might be

disposed to consider the pecuniary and other advantages of his marriage

as altogether exceeding his merits.

Yet, on the whole, most people, with that idiotic inconsistency which

characterises the general social swarm, actually pitied him when they

heard what was going to happen. They made round eyes of astonishment,

shook their heads and said, ‘Poor Carlyon!’ Why they made round eyes or

shook their heads, they could not themselves have explained, but they

did so. ‘Poor,’ Carlyon certainly was; and his tailor’s bill was an

appalling one. But ‘they,’—the five-o’clock-tea gossips, knew nothing

about the tailor’s bill—that was a private affair,—one of those indecent

commonplaces of life which are more or less offensive to persons of high

distinction, who always find something curiously degrading in paying

their tradesmen. ‘They’ saw Carlyon as he appeared to them—superb of

stature, proud of bearing, and Greekly ‘god-like’ of feature—and that he

was always irreproachably dressed was sufficient for them, though not

for the unpaid tailor who fitted him so admirably. Looking at him in

all his glory, ‘they’ shuddered at the thought that he—this splendid

specimen of manhood—was actually going to marry a—what?

‘A novelist, my dear! just think of it!’ feebly screamed Mrs Tooksey

over her Queen Anne silver teapot. ‘Poor Wilfred Carlyon! Such a

picturesque figure of a man! How awful for him!’

And Mrs Snooksey, grabbing viciously at muffin, chorused, ‘Dreadful,

isn’t it! A female authoress!’—this, with a fine disregard of the fact

that an authoress is generally a female. ‘No doubt steeped in ink and

immorality! Poor Carlyon! _My_ mother knew _his_ father!’

This remark of Mrs Snooksey’s had evidently some profound bearing on the

subject, because everybody looked politely impressed, though no one

could see where the point came in.

‘She’s ugly, of course!’ tittered Miss Spitely, nervously conscious that

once—once, at a ball—Carlyon had picked up her fan, and wishing she had

‘gone in’ for him then. ‘Authoresses always are, aren’t they?’

‘This one isn’t,’ put in the One Man, who through some persecuting fate

always manages to turn up in a jaded and gloomy condition at these kind

of ‘afternoon teas.’ ‘She’s pretty. That’s the worst of it. Of course

she’ll lead Carlyon a devil of a life!’

‘Of course!’ groaned Mrs Snooksey and Mrs Tooksey in melancholy duet.

‘What else can you expect of a—of a public character? Poor, dear

Carlyon! One cannot help feeling sorry for him!’

So on, and in such wise, the jumble of humanity which is called

‘society’ gabbled, sniggered and sneered; nevertheless, despite dismal

head-shakings and dreary forebodings, ‘poor, dear Carlyon’ carried out

his intention, and married Delicia in the presence of one of the most

brilliant assemblages of notabilities ever assembled at a wedding. The

marriage of a Guards officer is always a pretty sight, but when the fame

of Delicia was added to the fame of the regiment, it was no wonder the

affair created a sensation and a flutter in the world of fashionable

news and ladies’ pictorials. Delicia astonished and irritated several

members of her own sex by the extreme simplicity of her dress on the

occasion. She always managed somehow, quite unintentionally, to

astonish and irritate her sweet ‘sisters’ in womanhood, who, forced to

admit her intellectual superiority to themselves, loved her accordingly.

Thus her very wedding garment was an affront to them, being only a

classic gown of softly-draped white silk _crêpe-de-chine_, without any

adornment of either lace or flowers. Then her bridal veil was a

vexatious thing, because it was so unusually becoming—it was made of

white chiffon, and draped her, like a moonlight mist, from head to foot,

a slender chaplet of real orange-blossoms being worn with it. And that

was all—no jewels, no bouquet—she only carried a small ivory prayer-book

with a plain gold cross mounted on the cover. She looked the very

picture of a Greek vestal virgin, but in the eyes of the fashion-plate

makers there was a deplorable lack of millinery about her. What would

God think of it! Could anything be more irreverent than for a woman of

position and fortune to take her marriage-vows before the altar of the

Most High without wearing either a court train or diamonds! And the

bridesmaids made no great ‘show’—they were only little girls, none of

them over ten years of age. There were eight of these small damsels,

clad in blush-pink like human roses, and very sweet they looked

following the lissom, white-veiled form of Delicia as she moved with her

own peculiarly graceful step and ethereal air between the admiring rows

of the selected men of her husband’s regiment, who lined either side of

the chancel in honour of the occasion. The ceremony was brief; but

those who were present somehow felt it to be singularly impressive.

There was a faint suggestion of incongruity in the bridegroom’s

eloquently-pronounced declaration—‘With all my worldly goods I thee

endow,’ which provoked one of his brother officers to profanely whisper

in the ear of a friend, ‘By Jove! I don’t think he’s got anything to

give her but his hair-brushes. They were a present; but most of his

other things are on tick!’

This young gentleman’s unbecoming observations were promptly quashed,

and the holy ordinance was concluded to the crashing strains of

Mendelssohn. A considerably large crowd, moved by feelings of sincere

appreciation for the union of the professions of War and Literature,

waited outside the church to give the bride a cheer as she stepped into

her carriage, and some of them, hustling a little in advance of the

policemen on duty, and peering up towards the entrance of the sacred

edifice, were rewarded by seeing the Most Distinguished Personage in the

realm, smiling his ever-cordial smile, and shaking hands with the fair

‘celebrity’ just wedded. At this sight a deafening noise broke out from

the throats of the honest ‘masses,’ a noise which became almost

tumultuous when the Distinguished Personage walked by the side of the

newly-married pair down the red-carpeted pavement from the church to the

nuptial carriage-door, and lifted his hat again and again to the

‘huzzas’ which greeted him. But the Distinguished Personage did not get

all the applause by any means. Delicia got the most of it, and many of

the crowd pelted her with flowers which they had brought with them for

the purpose. For she was one of the few ‘beloved women’ that at rare

intervals are born to influence nations—so few they are and so precious

in their lives and examples that it is little wonder nations make much

of them when they find them. There were people in the crowd that day

who had wept and smiled over Delicia’s writings, and who had, through

her teaching, grown better, happier and more humane men and women; and

there was a certain loving jealousy in these which grudged that she

should stoop from her lofty height of fame, to marry, like any other

ordinary woman. They would have had her exempt from the common lot, and

yet they all desired her happiness. So in half-gladness, half-regret,

they cheered her and threw roses and lilies at her, for it was the month

of June; and she with her veil thrown back, and the sunshine glinting on

her gold hair, smiled bewitchingly as she bowed right and left to the

clamorous throng of her assembled admirers; then, with her glorious six

feet of husband, she stepped into her carriage and drove away to the

sound of a final cheer. The Distinguished Personage got into his

brougham and departed. The brilliantly-attired guests dispersed slowly,

and with much chatting and gaiety, in their different directions, and

all was over. And the One Man whose earthly lot it was to appear at

various ‘afternoon teas,’ stood under the church portico and muttered

gloomily to an acquaintance,—

‘Fancy that simple-looking creature being actually the famous Delicia

Vaughan! She isn’t in the least like an authoress—she’s only a woman!’

Whereat the acquaintance, whose intellectual resources were somewhat

limited, smiled and murmured,—

‘Oh, well, when it came to that, you know, you couldn’t expect a woman

to be anything else, could you? The idea was certainly that authoresses

should be—well! a sort of no-sex, ha-ha-ha!—plenty of muscle about them,

but scrappy as to figure and doubtful in complexion, with a general air

of spectacled wisdom—yes, ha-ha! Well, if it came to that, you know, it

must be owned Miss Vaughan—beg her pardon!—Mrs Carlyon, was not by any

means up to the required mark. Ha-ha-ha! Graceful little woman, though;

very fascinating—and as for money—whew-w! Beauty Carlyon has fallen on

his feet this time, and no mistake! Ha-ha! Good-morning!’

With this, he and the One Man nodded to each other and went in opposite

directions. The verger of the church came out, glowered suspiciously at

stragglers, picked up a few bridal flowers from the red carpet, and shut

the church gates. There had been a wedding, he said condescendingly to

one or two nursemaids who had just arrived breathlessly on the scene,

wheeling perambulators in front of them, but it was over; the company

had gone home. The Distinguished Personage had gone home too. Thus

there was nothing to see, and nothing to wait for. Depart, disappointed

nursemaids! The vow that binds two in one—that ties Intellect to Folly,

Purity to Sensuality, Unselfishness to Egotism—has been taken before the

Eternal; and, so far as we can tell, the Eternal has accepted it. There

is nothing more to be said or done—the sacrifice is completed.

All this had happened three years ago, yet Delicia, writing peacefully

as usual in the quiet seclusion of her study, remembered every incident

of her wedding as though it were only yesterday. Happiness had made the

time fly on swift wings, and her dream of love had as yet lost nothing

of its heavenly glamour. Her marriage had caused no very perceptible

change in her fortunes—she worked a little harder and more incessantly,

that was all. Her husband deserved all the luxuries and enjoyments of

life that she could give him—so she considered—and she was determined he

should never have to complain of her lack of energy. Her fame steadily

increased—she was at the very head and front of her profession—people

came from far and near to have the privilege of seeing her and speaking

with her, if only for a few minutes. But popular admiration was nothing

to her, and she attached no importance whatever to the daily tributes

she received, from all parts of the world, testifying to her genius and

the influence her writings had upon the minds of thousands. Such things

passed her by as the merest idle wind of rumour, and all her interests

were concentrated on her work—first, for the work’s own sake, and next,

that she might be a continual glory and exhaustless gold mine to her

husband.

Certainly Carlyon had nothing to desire or to complain of in his

destiny. A crowned king might have envied him; unweighted with care, no

debts, no difficulties, a perpetual balance at his banker’s, a luxurious

home, arranged not only with all the skill that wealth can command, but

also with the artistic taste that only brains can supply; a lovely wife

whose brilliant endowments were the talk of two continents, and last,

but not least, the complete unfettered enjoyment of his own way and

will. Delicia never played the domestic tyrant over him; he was free to

do as he liked, go where he would and see whom he chose. She never

catechised him as to the nature of his occupations or amusements, and

he, on his part, was wise enough to draw a line between a certain ‘fast

set’ he personally favoured, and the kind of people he introduced to

her, knowing well enough that were he to commit the folly of bringing

some ‘shady’ character within his wife’s circle of acquaintance, it

would be only once that the presence of such a person would be tolerated

by her. For she had very quick perceptions; and though her disposition

was gentleness itself, she was firmly planted in rectitude, and managed

to withdraw herself so quietly and cleverly from any contact with social

swindlers and vulgar _nouveaux riches_, that they never had the ghost of

a chance to gain the smallest footing with her. Unable to obtain

admittance to her house, they took refuge in scandal, and invented lies

and slanders concerning her, all of which fell flat owing to her frankly

open life of domestic peace and contentment. Sneers and false rumours

were inserted about her in the journals; she ignored them, and quietly

lived them down, till finally the worst thing anyone could find to say

of her was that she was ‘idiotically in love’ with her own husband.

‘She’s a perfect fool about him!’ exclaimed the Tookseys and Snookseys,

angrily. ‘Everybody knows Paul Valdis is madly in love with her. It’s

only she who never seems to see it!’ ‘Perhaps she does not approve of

the French fashion of having a lover as well as a husband,’ suggested a

Casual Caller of the male sex. ‘Though it is now _la mode_ in England,

she may not like it. Besides, Paul Valdis has been “madly in love,” as

you call it, a great many times!’

The Tookseys and Snookseys sighed, shivered, rolled up their eyes and

shrugged their shoulders. They were old and ugly and yellow of skin; but

their hearts had a few lively pulsations of evil left in them still, and

they envied and marvelled at the luck of a woman—a literary female, too,

good heavens! to think of it!—who not only had the handsomest man in

town for a husband, but who could also have the next handsomest—Paul

Valdis, the great actor—for a lover, if she but ‘dropped the

handkerchief.’

And while ‘society’ thus talked, Delicia worked, coining money for her

husband to spend as he listed. She reserved her household expenses, and

took a moderate share of her earnings for her own dress, but all the

rest was his. He drove ‘tandem’ in the Row with two of the most superb

horses ever seen in that fashionable thoroughfare. In the early spring

mornings he was seen cantering up and down on a magnificent Arab, which

for breed and action was the envy of princes. He had his own

four-in-hand coach, which he drove to Ranelagh, Hurlingham, and the

various race meetings of the year, with a party of ‘select’ people on

top—the kind of ‘select’ whom Delicia never knew or cared to know,

consisting of actresses, betting men, ‘swells about town,’ and a

sprinkling of titled dames, who had frankly thrown over their husbands

in order to drink brandy privately, and play the female Don Juan

publicly. Occasionally a ‘candid friend,’ moved by a laudable desire to

make mischief between husband and wife, would arrive, full-armed at all

points with gossip, and would casually remark to Delicia,—

‘Oh, by the way, I saw your husband at Ranelagh the other day

with—well!—some _rather_ odd people!’ To which Delicia would reply

tranquilly, ‘Did you? I hope he was amusing himself.’ Then with a

straight, half-disdainful look of her violet eyes at the intruding

meddler, she would add, ‘I know what you mean, of course! But it is a

man’s privilege to entertain himself in his own fashion, even with “odd”

people if he likes. “Odd” people are always infinitely diverting, owing

to their never being able to recognise their own abnormal absurdity.

And I never play spy on my husband. I consider a wife who condescends

to become a detective as the most contemptible of creatures living.’

Whereupon the ‘candid friend,’ vexed and baffled, would retire behind an

entrenchment of generalities, and afterwards, at ‘afternoons’ and social

gatherings, would publicly opine that, ‘It was most probable Mrs Carlyon

was carrying on a little game of her own, as she seemed so indifferent

to her husband’s goings-on. She was a deep one, oh, yes! very deep!

She knew a thing or two!—and perhaps, who could tell?—Paul Valdis had

his own reasons for specially “fixing” her with his dark, passionate

eyes whenever she appeared in her box at the theatre where he was

playing the chief character in an English version of “Ernani.”’

It was true enough that Delicia was hardly ever seen at the places her

husband most frequented, but this happened because he was fond of racing

and she was not. She disliked the senseless, selfish and avaricious

side of life so glaringly presented at the favourite ‘turf’ resorts of

the ‘swagger’ set, and said so openly.

‘It makes me think badly of everybody,’ she declared once to her

husband, when he had languidly suggested her ‘turning up’ at the Oaks.

‘I begin to wonder what was the use of Christ dying on the cross to

redeem such greedy, foolish folk. I don’t want to despise my

fellow-creatures, but I’m obliged to do it when I go to a race. So it’s

better I should stay at home and write, and try to think of them all as

well as I can.’

And she did stay at home very contentedly; and when he was absent with a

party of his own particular ‘friends,’ dispensing to them the elegant

luncheon and champagne which her work had paid for, she was either busy

with some fresh piece of literary labour, or else taking her sweet

presence into the houses of the poor and suffering, and bringing relief,

hope and cheerfulness, wherever she went. And on the morning when the

sunshine placed a crown on her head, and hurled a javelin of light full

in the cold eyes of the marble Antinous, she was in one of her

brightest, most radiant moods, satisfied with her lot, grateful for the

blessings which she considered were so numerous, and as unconscious as

ever that there was anything upside down in the arrangement which had

resulted in her being obliged to ‘love, honour, obey,’ keep, and clothe,

six feet of beautiful man, by her own unassisted toil, while the said

six feet of beautiful man did nothing but enjoy himself.

The quaint ‘Empire’ clock, shaped as a world, with a little god of love

pointing to the hours numbered on its surface, chimed two from its

golden bracket on the wall before she laid down her pen for the day.

Then, rising, she stretched her fair, rounded arms above her head, and

smiled at the daffodils in the vase close by—bright flowers which seemed

fully conscious of the sunshine in that smile. Anon, she moved into the

deep embrasure of her wide lattice window, where, stretched out at full

length, lay a huge dog of the St Bernard breed, winking lazily with one

honest brown eye at the sunbeams that danced about him.

‘Oh, Spartan, you lazy fellow!’ she said, putting her small foot on his

rough, brown body, ‘aren’t you ashamed of yourself?’

Spartan sighed, and considered the question for a moment, then raised

his noble head and kissed the point of his mistress’s broidered shoe.

‘It’s lunch-time, Spartan,’ continued Delicia, stooping down to pat him

tenderly. ‘Will master be home to luncheon, or not, Spartan? I’m afraid

not, old boy. What do you think about it?’

This inquiry roused Spartan to an attitude of attention. He got up, sat

on his big haunches, and yawned profoundly; then he appeared to

meditate, conveying into his fine physiognomy an expression of deep

calculation that was almost human.

‘No, Spartan,’ went on Delicia, dropping on one knee and putting her arm

round him, ‘we mustn’t expect it. We generally lunch alone, and we’ll

go and get what the gods have provided for us in the dining-room, at

once—shall we?’

But Spartan suddenly pricked his long ears, and rose in all his

lion-like majesty, erect on his four handsome legs; then he gave one

deep bark, turning his eyes deferentially on his mistress as one who

should say, ‘Excuse me, but I hear something which compels my

attention.’

Delicia, her hand on the dog’s neck, listened intently; her breath came

and went, then she smiled, and a lovely light irradiated her face as the

velvet _portière_ of her study door was hastily pushed aside, and her

husband, looking the very incarnation of manly beauty in his becoming

riding-gear, entered abruptly.

‘Why, Will, how delightful!’ she exclaimed, advancing to meet him, ‘you

hardly ever come home to lunch. This is a treat!’

She clung to him and kissed him. He held her round the waist a moment,

gazing at her with the involuntary admiration her grace and intelligence

always roused in him, and thinking for the hundredth time how curious it

was that she should be so entirely different to other women. Then,

releasing her, he drew off his gloves, threw them down, and glanced at

the papers which strewed her writing-table.

‘Finished the book?’ he queried, with a smile.

‘Yes, all but the last few sentences,’ she replied. ‘They require

careful thinking out. It doesn’t do to end with a platitude.’

‘Most books end so,’ he said carelessly. ‘But yours are always

exceptions to the rule. People are never tired of asking me how you do

it. One fellow to-day said he was sure I helped you to write the strong

parts.’

Delicia smiled a little.

‘And what did you say?’

‘Why, of course I said I didn’t—couldn’t write a line to save my life!’

he responded, with a laugh. ‘But you know what men are! They never can

bring themselves to believe in the reality of a woman’s genius.’

The musing smile still lingered on Delicia’s face.

‘Genius is a big thing,’ she said. ‘I do not assume to possess it. But

it is curious to see how very many quite ungifted men announce their own

claims to it, while indignantly denying all possibility of its endowment

to women. However, one must have patience; it will take some time to

break men of their old savagery. For centuries they treated women as

slaves and cattle; it may take other centuries before they learn to

treat them as their equals.’

Carlyon looked at her, half-wonderingly, half-doubtfully.

‘They won’t give them full academic honours yet,’ he said, ‘which I

think is disgracefully unfair. And the Government won’t give them

titles of honour in their own right for their services in Science, Art

or Literature, which they ought to have, in my opinion. And this brings

me round to the news which sent me galloping home to-day as soon as I

heard it. Delicia, I can give you a title this morning!’

She raised her eyebrows a little.

‘Are you joking, Will?’

‘Not a bit of it. You’ve heard me speak of my brother Guy, Lord

Carlyon?’

She nodded.

‘Well, when my father died a bankrupt, of course Guy had what he could

get out of the general wreck, which was very little, together with the

title. The title was no use to him, he having no means to keep it up.

He went off to Africa, gold-hunting, under an assumed name, to try and

make money out there—and—and now he’s dead of fever. I can’t pretend to

be very sorry, for I never saw much of him after we left school, and he

was my senior by five years. Anyhow, he’s gone—and so—in fact—I’m Lord

Carlyon!’

He made such a whimsical attempt to appear indifferent to the honour of

being a lord, while all the time it was evident he was swelling with the

importance of it, that Delicia laughed outright, and her violet eyes

flashed with fun as she dropped him a demure curtsey.

‘My lord, allow me to congratulate your lordship!’ she said. ‘By my

halidame, good my lord, I am your lordship’s very humble servant!’

He looked a trifle vexed.

‘Don’t be nonsensical, Delicia!’ he urged. ‘You know I never expected

it. I always thought Guy would have married. If he had, and a son had

been born to him, of course that son would have had the title. But he

remained a bachelor to the end of his days, and so the luck has fallen

to me. Aren’t you rather pleased about it? It’s a nice thing for you,

at any rate.’

Delicia gave him a bright glance of humorous surprise.

‘A nice thing for me? My dear boy, do you really think so? Do you

really and truly imagine I care about a title tacked on to my name? Not

a bit of it! It will only attract a few extra snobs round me at

parties, that’s all. And to my public I am always Delicia Vaughan; they

won’t even give me the benefit of _your_ name, Will, because somehow

they prefer the one by which they knew and loved me first.’

A faint suggestion of the Beautiful Sullenness manner clouded Carlyon’s

face.

‘Oh, of course, you swear by your public!’ he said, a trifle crossly.

‘But whatever you may think of it, I’m glad the title has come my way.

It’s a good thing—it gives me a _status_.’

She was silent, and stood quietly beside him, stroking Spartan’s head.

Not a thought of the _status_ she herself gave her husband by her

world-wide fame crossed her mind, and the reproach that might have

leaped to the lips of a less loving woman than she was—namely, that the

position she had won by her own brilliant intellect far outweighed any

trumpery title of heritage—never once occurred to her brain. But all

the same, something in the composed grace of her attitude conveyed the

impression of that fact to Carlyon silently, and with subtle force; for

he was conscious of a sudden sense of smallness and inward shame.

‘Yet after all,’ she said presently, with a playful air, ‘it isn’t as if

you were a brewer, you know! So many brewers and building contractors

become lords nowadays, that somehow I always connect the peerage with

Beer and Bricks. I suppose it’s very wrong, but I can’t help it. And

it will seem odd to me at first to associate you with the two B’s—you

are so different to the usual type.’

He smiled,—well pleased to see her eyes resting upon him with the tender

admiration to which he had become accustomed.

‘Is luncheon ready?’ he asked, after a brief pause, during which he was

satisfied that he looked his best and that she was fully aware of it.

‘Yes; let us go down and partake thereof,’ she answered gaily. ‘Will

you tell the servants, or shall I?’

‘Tell the servants what?’ he demanded, with a slight frown.

She turned her pretty head over her shoulder laughingly.

‘Why, to call you for the future “My Lord,” or “m’lud.” Which shall it

be?’

She looked charmingly provocative; his momentary ill-humour passed, and

he flung an arm round her waist and kissed her.

‘Whichever you please,’ he said. ‘Anyway you are, as you always have

been, “my” lady!’

*CHAPTER II*

Delicia was perfectly right when she said that her new distinction would

draw ‘extra snobs’ around her. A handle to one’s name invariably

attracts all the social ‘runaways,’—in the same fashion that mischievous

street-boys are attracted to bang at a particularly ornate and

glittering door-knocker and then scamper off in hiding before any

servant has time to answer the false summons. People who are of old and

good family themselves think nothing of titles, but those who have

neither good birth, breeding nor education, attach a vast amount of

importance to these placards of rank, and can never refrain from an

awe-stricken expression of countenance when introduced to a duke, or

with-hold the regulation ‘royalty-dip’ when in the presence of some

foreign ‘princess,’ who, as a matter of fact, has no right to ‘royalty’

honours at all. Delicia had met a great many such small dignitaries, but

she never curtsied to any of them, whereat their petty vanity was

wounded, and they thought, ‘These authors have bad manners.’ She read

their thoughts and smiled, but did not care. She reserved her

salutations for Royalty itself, not for the imitation of it. And now

that she was a ‘ladyship,’ she obtained a good deal of amusement out of

the study of character among her various ‘friends’ who envied and

grudged her the trumpery honour. The Tookseys and Snookseys of society

could scarcely contain themselves for spite when they learned that for

the future they would have to speak of the ‘female authoress’ as Lady

Carlyon. The Casual Caller and the One Man began to allude to her as

‘Delicia, Lady Carlyon,’ rolling the sweet, quaint name of ‘Delicia’ on

their tongues with a keener sense of enjoyment than usual in its

delicate flavour, thereby driving the Tookseys and Snookseys into a more

feverish condition then ever. Paul Valdis heard the news suddenly, when

he was dressing for his part as Ernani, on an evening when Royalty had

announced its ‘gracious’ intention of being present to see him do it.

And there would appear to have been something not altogether incorrect

in the rumour that he was ‘madly in love’ with Delicia, for he turned

very white and lost command of his usual equable temper in an

altercation with his ‘dresser,’ whom he dismissed abruptly with

something like an oath.

‘“Lady” Carlyon!’ he said to himself, staring at his own classic face

and brilliant, dark eyes in the little mirror which dominated his

‘make-up’ table. ‘And I no more than mime!—stage-puppet and plaything

of the public! Wait, though! I am something more! I am a MAN!—in heart

and soul and feeling! a man, which my “Lord” Carlyon is not!’

And he played that night, not for Royalty, which clapped its lavender

kid gloves at him in as much enthusiastic approval as Royalty ever

shows, but for her new ‘ladyship,’ who sat in a box overlooking the

stage, dressed in pure white with a knot of lilies at her bosom,

dreamily unconscious that Ernani was anything but Ernani, or that Valdis

was putting his own fiery soul into Victor Hugo’s dummy, and making it

live, breathe and burn with a passionate ardour never equalled on the

stage, and of which she, Delicia, was the chief inspiration.

Delicia was, in very truth, curiously unconscious of the excitement and

unrest she always managed to create around herself unintentionally. Her

strong individuality was to blame, but she was as unaware of the

singular influence she exerted as a rose is unaware of the fragrance its

sheds. Everything she did was watched and commented upon—her manners,

her dress, her gestures, the very turn of her head, and the slow, supple

movements of her body. And society was for ever on the lookout for a

glance, a sigh, a word which might indicate the ‘dropping of the

handkerchief’ to Paul Valdis. But the closest espionage failed to

discover anything compromising in Delicia’s way of life or daily

conduct. This caused the fury of the Tookseys and Snookseys to rage

unabatedly, while, so far as Delicia herself was concerned, she had no

thought beyond the usual two subjects which absorbed her existence—her

work and her husband. Her title made no sort of difference to her in

herself—‘Delicia Vaughan’ was still the charmed name wherewith she

‘drew’ her public, many of whom scarcely glanced at the ‘Lady Carlyon’

printed in small type between brackets, underneath the more famous

appellation on the title-pages of all her books. And in her own mind

she was more amused than edified by the flunkey-like attention shown to

her ‘ladyship’ honours.

‘How nice for you,’ said a female acquaintance to her on one of her

visiting days, ‘to have a title! Such a distinction for literature,

isn’t it?’

‘Not at all!’ answered Delicia, tranquilly, ‘It is a distinction for the

title to have literature attached to it!’

The female acquaintance started violently.

‘Dear me!’ and she tittered; ‘You really—er—excuse me! seem to have a

very good opinion of yourself!’

Delicia’s delicate brows drew together in a proud line.

‘You mistake,’ she said; ‘I have no good opinion of myself at all, but I

have of Literature. Perhaps you will more clearly understand what I

mean if I remind you that there have been several Lord Byrons, but

Literature makes it impossible to universally recognise more than one.

Literature can add honour to the peerage, but the peerage can never add

honour to Literature—not, at any rate, to what _I_ understand as

Literature.’

‘And what is your definition of Literature, Lady Carlyon, may I ask?’

inquired a deferential listener to the conversation.

‘Power!’ replied Delicia, closing her small, white hand slowly and

firmly, as though she held the sceptre of an empire in its grasp. ‘The

power to make men and women think, hope and achieve; the power to draw

tears from the eyes, smiles from the lips of thousands; the power to

make tyrants tremble, and unseat false judges in authority; the power to

strip hypocrisy of its seeming fair disguise, and to brand liars with

their name writ large for all the world to see!’

The female acquaintance got up, disturbed in her mind. She did not like

the look of Delicia’s violet eyes which flashed like straight shafts of

light deep into the dark recesses of her soul.

‘I must be going,’ she murmured. ‘So sorry! It’s quite delightful to

hear you talk, Lady Carlyon, you are so very eloquent!—but I have

another call to make—he-he-he!—good afternoon!’

But the Deferential Listener lingered, strangely moved.

‘I wish there were more writers who felt as you do, Lady Carlyon!’ he

said gently. ‘I knew you first as Delicia Vaughan, and loved your

books—’

‘I hope you will try and love them still,’ she said simply. ‘There is

no difference, I assure you, between Delicia Vaughan and Lady Carlyon;

they are, and always will be, the same working woman!’

She gave him her hand in parting; he stooped low, kissed it and went.

Left alone with the great dog, Spartan, she sat looking musingly up at

the glossy, spreading leaves of the giant palm that towered up to the

ceiling from a painted Sèvres vase in the middle of her drawing-room,

and almost for the first time in her life a faint shadow of trouble and

uneasiness clouded her bright nature.

‘How I do hate humbug!’ she thought. ‘It seems to me that I have had to

put up with so much more of it lately than I ever had before; it’s this

wretched title, I suppose. I wish I could dispense with it altogether;

it does not please me, though it pleases Will. He is so good-natured

that he does not seem able to distinguish between friends, and others

who are mere toadies. It would be a good thing for me if I had the same

unsuspecting disposition; but, most unfortunately, I see things as they

are—not as they appear to be.’

And this was true. She did see things clearly and comprehensively

always;—except in one direction. There she was totally blind. But in

her blindness lay all her happiness, and though the rose-coloured veil

of illusion was wearing thin, no rent had yet been made in it.

It was her ‘at home’ day, and she sat waiting resignedly for the callers

who usually flocked to her between five and six in the afternoon. The

two people who had come and gone, namely, the Female Acquaintance and

the Deferential Listener, had been chance visitors out of the ordinary

run. And it was only half-past four when a loud ring at the bell made

Spartan growl and look to his mistress for orders to bite, if necessary.

‘Quiet, Spartan!’ said Delicia, gently. ‘We are “at home” to-day, you

know! You mustn’t bark at anybody.’

Spartan rolled his eyes discontentedly. He hated ‘at home’ days, and he

went off in a far corner of the drawing-room, where there was a

convenient bear-skin rug to lie on; there he curled himself up to sleep.

Meanwhile the visitor who had rung the bell so violently was

announced—‘Mrs Lefroy,’—and Delicia rose, with a slightly weary and

vexed air, as a handsome woman, over-dressed and over-powdered, entered

the room; her white teeth bared to view in the English ‘society smile.’

‘My dear!’ she exclaimed, ‘how delightful you look, and what a perfectly

lovely room! I have seen it often before, of course, and yet it seems

to me always lovelier! And you, too!—what a _sweet_ gown! Oh, my dear,

I have such fun to tell you; I know you didn’t expect to see me! I got

away from the Riviera much sooner than I thought I should. All my money

went at Monte Carlo in the most frightfully rapid way, and so I came

back to town—one can have larks in town as well as anywhere else,

without the temptation of that dear, wicked, fascinating Casino! And,

my dear, nothing is talked of but your book; everybody’s waiting for it

with the greatest impatience—it’s finished, isn’t it? In the hands of

the publishers! How delightful! And, of course, you have got loads of

money for it? How nice for you, and for that glorious-looking husband

of yours! And you are looking so well! No tea, dearest, thank you! Oh,

I really must take off my cloak a moment—thanks! Is there anyone else

coming to-day? Oh, of course, you always have _crowds_! That is why I

want to tell you what fun we had last night; Lord Carlyon never expected

we should see him, you know!’

Delicia looked up from the tea tray whither she had moved on the impulse

of hospitality. She had not spoken; she knew Mrs Lefroy of old, and was

aware that it was better to let her have her talk out.

‘Of course,’ went on Mrs Lefroy, ‘you have heard of Marina, the new

dancer—the girl who appears on the stage like a hooded cobra, and

gradually winds herself out of her serpent-skin into a woman with

scarcely any clothes on, and dances about among a lot of little snakes

of fire, done with electricity? The one that all the men are going mad

over, on account of her wonderful legs?’

Delicia, with a slight movement, more of regret than offence, nodded.

‘Well, we were having supper at the Savoy last night, and what do you

think, my dear!’ And here Mrs Lefroy clasped her well-gloved hands

together in a kind of slander-mongering ecstasy. ‘Who should come in

and sit down at the very next table, but Lord Carlyon and this very

Marina!’

Delicia turned round slowly, her eyes shining, and a smile on her mouth.

‘Well?’ she said.

Mrs Lefroy’s nose reddened through the powder, and she tossed her head.

‘Well? Is that all you say—well? I should certainly find some more

forcible observation than that, if I heard of _my_ husband taking the

Marina to supper at the Savoy!’

‘Would you?’ said Delicia, smiling. ‘But then, you see, I am not you,

and your husband is not my husband. There’s all the difference!

Besides, men are free to amuse themselves in their own way, provided

they wrong no one by doing so.’

‘With “creatures” like Marina?’ inquired Mrs Lefroy, with a wide smile.

‘Really, my dear, you are extremely tolerant! Do you know that even

Paul Valdis, an actor—and you wouldn’t think he was particular—would not

be seen with the Cobra person!’

‘Mr Valdis chooses his own associates, no doubt, to please his own

taste,’ said Delicia, quietly. ‘It is nothing to me whether he would be

seen with the Cobra person, as you call her, or whether he would not.

If my husband likes to talk to her, there must be something clever about

her, and something nice, too, I should imagine. All dancers are not

demons.’

‘My poor Delicia!’ exclaimed Mrs Lefroy. ‘Really, you are too

unsuspicious and sweet for anything! If you would only let me open your

eyes a little—’

‘The Duke and Duchess of Mortlands,’ announced the maid-in-waiting at

this juncture; and the conversation was broken off for the reception of

a very stately old lady and a very jolly old gentleman. The old

gentleman took a cup of tea, and bowed so often to Delicia over it that

he spilt some drops of tea down his waistcoat, while his portly spouse

spread cake-crumbs profusely over the broad expanse known to dressmakers

and tailors as the ‘bust measurement.’ They were charming old people,

though untidy; and being of an immensely ancient family, their ancestors

having had something to do with the Battle of Crecy, they admired

Delicia for herself and her brilliant gifts alone, even to the

forgetting of her married name occasionally, and to the calling of her

‘Miss Vaughan,’ for which slip they instantly apologised. Numbers of

people now began to arrive, and Delicia’s drawing-rooms were soon full.

A famous Swedish cantatrice came among others, and in her own pleasant

way offered to sing a ‘Mountain Melody’ of her native land. Her rich

voice was still pealing through the air when there was a slight stir and

excitement among the silent listeners to the music, and Paul Valdis

entered unannounced. He stood near the door till the song that was

being sung had ended, then he advanced towards Delicia, who greeted him

with her usual simple grace, and showed no more effusion towards him

than she had shown to the old duke who had spilt his tea. He was pale

and somewhat absent-minded; though he talked generalities with several

people present, much as he disliked talking generalities. Now and then

he became gloomy and curt of speech, and at such moments, Mrs Lefroy,

watching him, felt that she would have given worlds to stay on and hide

herself somewhere behind a curtain that she might see how he was going

to comport himself after the gabbling crowd had gone. But she had

already stayed more than an hour—she would get no more chance of talking

to Delicia—she was obliged to go home and dress for a dinner-party that

evening; so finally she reluctantly made the best of a bad business, and

glided up to her hostess to say good-bye.

‘So sorry to be going!’ she murmured. ‘I really wish I could have a few

minutes’ private talk with you! But you are such a busy woman!’

‘Yes, I am!’ agreed Delicia, smiling. ‘However, opportunities for

talking scandal always turn up sometime or other—don’t you find it so?’

Mrs Lefroy was not quite proof against this delicate home-thrust. She

felt distinctly angry. But there was no time to show it. She forced a

smile and went—determining within herself that some day she would shake

the classic composure of the ‘female authoress’ to its very foundations,

and make of her a trembling, weak, jealous woman like many others whom

she knew who were blessed with husbands like Lord Carlyon.

Gradually the ‘after-tea’ crowd dispersed, and Delicia was left alone

with only one remaining visitor—Paul Valdis. The dog Spartan rose from

the corner where he had lain peacefully retired from view during the

crush of visitors, and advancing majestically, with wagging tail, laid a

big head caressingly on the actor’s knee. Valdis patted him and spoke

out his thought involuntarily.

‘One, at least, out of your many friends, is honest, Lady Carlyon,’ he

said.

Delicia, somewhat fatigued with the business of receiving her guests,

had seated herself in a low arm-chair, her head leaning back on a

cushion, and now she looked round, slightly smiling. ‘You mean Spartan?’

she said, ‘or yourself?’

‘I mean Spartan,’ he replied, with a touch of passion; ‘A dog may be

honest without offence to the world in general, but a man must never be

honest, unless he wishes to be considered a fool or a madman, or both.’

She regarded him intently for a moment. Her artistic eye quickly took

note of the attractive points of his face and figure, and, with the

perception of a student of character, she appreciated the firm and manly

lines of the well-shaped hand that rested on Spartan’s head, but it was

with the admiration which she would have given to a fine picture more

readily than to a living being. Something, however, troubled her as she

looked, for she saw that he was suppressing some strong emotion in her

presence, and her first thought was that the English version of ‘Ernani’

was going to prove a failure.

‘You speak bitterly, Mr Valdis,’ she said, after a pause, ‘and yet you

ought not to do so, considering the brilliancy of your position and your

immense popularity.’

‘Does a brilliant position and immense popularity satisfy a man, do you

think?’ he asked, not looking at her, but keeping his gaze on the honest

brown eyes of Spartan, who, with the quaint conceit of a handsome dog

who knows his own value, went on wagging his tail, under the impression

that the conversation was addressed to him alone. ‘Though I suppose it

ought to satisfy an actor, who, by some folks, is considered hardly a

man at all. But if we talk of position and popularity, you far

outbalance me in honours—and are you satisfied?’

‘Perfectly!’ and Delicia smiled full into his eyes; ‘I should, indeed,

be ungrateful if I were not.’

He made a slight movement of impatience.

‘Ungrateful! How strange that word sounds from your lips! Why use it

at all? You are surely the last person on earth who should speak of

gratitude, for you owe no one anything. You have worked for your

fame,—worked harder than anyone I know,—and you have won it; you have

given out the treasures of your genius to the public, and they reward

you by their love and honour; it is a natural sequence of cause and

effect. There is no reason why you should be grateful for what is

merely the just recognition of your worth.’

‘You think not?’ said Delicia, still smiling. ‘Ah, but I cannot quite

agree with you! You see there have been so many who have toiled for

fame and never won it,—so many who have poured out the “treasures of

their genius,” to quote your own words, on a totally unappreciative

world which has never recognised them till long after they are dead.

And that is why I consider one cannot be too grateful for a little

kindness from one’s fellow-creatures while one is living; though, if you

ask the Press people, they will tell you it’s a very bad sign of your

quality as an author if you succeed. The only proofs of true genius

are, never to sell one’s books at all, die burdened with debts and

difficulties, and leave your name and fame to be glorified by a

posterity whom you will never know!’

Valdis laughed; and Delicia, her eyes sparkling with fun, rose from her

chair and took up a newspaper from one of the side tables close by.

‘Listen!’ she said. ‘This appears in yesterday’s _Morning Chanticleer_,

_apropos_ of your humble servant—“The rampant lady-novelist, known as

Delicia Vaughan, is at it again. Not content with having married

‘Beauty’ Carlyon of the Guards, who has just stepped into his deceased

brother’s titled shoes and is now Lord Carlyon, she is about to issue a

scathing book on the manners and morals of the present age, written, no

doubt, in the usual hysterical style affected by female _poseurs_ in

literature, whose works appeal chiefly to residents up Brixton and

Clapham way. We regret that ‘Lady’ Carlyon does not see the necessity

of ‘assuming dignity,’ even if she hath it not, on her elevation,

through her husband, to the circles of the ‘upper ten.’” There, what do

you think of that?’ she asked gaily, as she flung the journal down.

Valdis had risen, and stood confronting her with frowning brow and

flashing eyes. ‘Think of it!’ he said angrily, ‘Why, that I should like

to horse-whip the dirty blackguard who wrote it!’

Delicia looked up at him in genuine amazement.

‘Dear me!’ she exclaimed playfully. ‘But why so fierce, friend Ernani?

This is nothing—nothing at all to what the papers generally say of me.

I don’t mind it in the least; it rather amuses me, on the whole.’

‘But don’t you see how they mistake the position?’ exclaimed Valdis,

impetuously. ‘Don’t you see that they are giving your husband all the

honour of elevation to the circles of the upper ten; as if you were not

there already by the merit of your genius alone! What would Lord

Carlyon be without you, even were he twenty times a lord! He owes

everything to you, and to your brain-work; he is nothing in himself, and

less than nothing! There,—I have gone too far!’

Delicia stood very still; her face was pale, and her beautiful eyes were

cold in their shining as the gleam of stars in frosty weather.

‘Yes, you have gone too far, Mr Valdis,’ she said, ‘and I am sorry—for

we were friends.’

She laid the slightest little emphasis on the word ‘were,’ and the

strong heart of the man who loved her sank heavily with a forlorn sense

of misery. But the inward rage that consumed him to think that she—the

patient, loving woman, who coined wealth by her own unassisted work,

while her husband spent the money and amused himself with her

earnings—should be publicly sneered at as a nothing, and her worser-half

toadied and flattered as if he were a Yankee millionaire in his own

right, was stronger than the personal passion he entertained for her,

and his manful resentment of the position could not be repressed.

‘I am sorry too, Lady Carlyon,’ he said hoarsely, avoiding her gaze,

‘for I do not feel I can retract anything I have said.’

There was a silence. Delicia was deeply displeased; yet with her

displeasure there was mingled a vague sense of uneasiness and fear. She

found it difficult to maintain her self-possession; there was something

in the defiant look and attitude of Valdis that almost moved her to give

way to a sudden, undignified outburst of anger. She was tempted to cry

out to him, ‘What is it you are hiding from me? There is something—tell

me all you know!’

But she bit her lips hard, and laid her hand on Spartan’s collar to

somewhat conceal its trembling. Thus standing, she bent her head with

grave grace and courtesy.

‘Good-bye, Mr Valdis!’

He started, and looked at her half imploringly. The simple words were

his dismissal, and he knew it. Because he had, in that unguarded

moment, spoken a word in dispraise of the glorious six feet of husband,

the doors of Delicia’s house would henceforth be closed to him, and the

fair presence of Delicia herself would be denied to his sight. It was a

blow—but he was a man, and he took his punishment manfully.

‘Good-bye, Lady Carlyon,’ he said. ‘I deserve little consideration at

your hands, but I will ask you not to condemn me altogether as a

discourteous churl and boor, till—till you know a few things of which

you are now happily ignorant. Were I a selfish man, I should wish you

to be enlightened speedily concerning these matters; but being, God

knows! your true friend’—here his voice trembled—‘I pray you may remain

a long time yet in the purest paradise known on earth—the paradise of a

loving soul’s illusion. My hand shall not destroy one blossom in your

fairy garden! In old days of chivalry, beautiful and beloved women had

champions to defend their honour and renown, and fight for them if

needful; and though the old days are no longer with us, chivalry is not

quite dead, so that if ever you need a champion—heavens! what am I

saying? No wonder you look scornful! Lady Delicia Carlyon to need the

championship of an actor! The thing is manifestly absurd! You, in your

position, can help me by your influence, but I can do nothing to help

you—if by chance you should ever need help. I am talking wildly, and

deepening my offences in your eyes; perhaps, however, you will think

better of me some day. And so good-bye again—I cannot ask you to

forgive me. If ever you desire to see me once more, I will come at your

command—but not till then.’

Inflexibly she stood, without offering him her hand in farewell. But he

desperately caught that hand, and kissed it with the ardour of an Ernani

and Romeo intermingled, then he turned and left the room. Delicia

listened to his retreating footsteps as he descended the stairs and

passed into the hall below, then she heard the street door close. A

great sigh of relief broke from her lips; he was gone,—this impertinent

actor who had presumed to say that her husband was ‘nothing, and less

than nothing’—he was gone, and he would probably never come back. She

looked down at Spartan, and found the dog’s eyes were turned up to hers

in inquiring wonder and sadness. As plainly as any animal could speak

by mere expression, he was saying,—

‘What is the matter with Valdis? He is a friend of mine, and why have

you driven him away?’

‘Spartan, dear,’ she said, drawing him towards her, ‘he is a very

conceited man, and he says unkind things about our dear master, and we

do not intend to let him come near us any more! These great actors

always get spoilt, and think they are lords almighty, and presume to

pass judgment on much better men than themselves. Paul Valdis is being

so run after and so ridiculously flattered that he will soon become

quite unbearable.’

Spartan sighed profoundly; he was not entirely satisfied in his canine

mind. He gave one or two longing and wistful glances towards the door,

but his wandering thoughts were quickly recalled to his immediate

surroundings by the feeling of something warm and wet dropping on his

head. It was a tear,—a bright tear, fallen from the beautiful eyes of

his mistress,—and in anxious haste he pressed his rough body close

against her with a mute caress of inquiring sympathy. In very truth

Delicia was crying,—quietly and in a secret way, as though ashamed to

acknowledge her emotion even to herself. As a rule, she liked to be

able to give a reason for her feelings, but on this occasion she found

it impossible to make any analysis of the cause of her tears. Yet they

fell fast, and she wiped them away quickly with a little filmy

handkerchief as fine as a cobweb, which Spartan, moved by a sudden

desire to provide her with some harmless distraction from melancholy,

made uncouth attempts to secure as a plaything. He succeeded so far in

his clumsy gambols as to bring the flicker of a smile on her face at

last, whereat he rejoiced exceedingly, and wagged his tail with a

violence that threatened to entirely dislocate that useful member. In a

few minutes she was quite herself again, and when her husband returned

to dinner, met him with the usual beautiful composure that always

distinguished her bearing, though there was an air of thoughtful resolve

about her which accentuated the delicate lines of her features and made

her look more intellectually classic than ever. When she took her seat

at table that evening, her statuesque serenity, combined with her fair

face, steadfast eyes, and rich hair knotted loosely at the back of her

well-shaped head, gave her so much the aspect of something far superior

to the ordinary run of mortal women, that Carlyon, fresh from a game of

baccarat, where he had lost over three hundred pounds in a couple of

hours, was conscious of a smarting sense of undefinable annoyance.

‘I wish you could keep our name out of the papers,’ he said suddenly,

when dessert was placed before them, and the servants had withdrawn; ‘it

is most annoying to me to see it constantly cropping up in all manner of

vulgar society paragraphs.’

She looked at him steadfastly.

‘You used not to mind it so much,’ she answered, ‘but I am sorry you are

vexed. I wish I could remedy the evil, but unfortunately I am quite

powerless. When one is a public character, the newspapers will have

their fling; it cannot possibly be helped; but if one is leading an

honest life in the world, and has no disgraceful secrets to hide, what

does it matter after all?’

‘I think it matters a great deal,’ he grumbled, as he carefully skinned

the fine peach on his plate, and commenced to appreciate its flavour. ‘I

hate to have my movements forestalled and advertised by the Press. And,

as far as you are concerned, I am sure I heartily wish you were not a

public character.’

She opened her eyes a little.

‘Do you? Since when? Since you became Lord Carlyon? My dear boy, if a

trumpery little handle to your name is going to make you ashamed of your

wife’s reputation as an author, I think it’s a great pity you ever

succeeded to the title.’

‘Oh, I know you don’t care a bit about it,’ he said, keeping his gaze on

the juicy peach; ‘but other people appreciate it.’

‘What other people?’ queried Delicia, laughing. ‘The droll little units

that call themselves “society?” I daresay they do appreciate it—they

have got nothing else to think or talk about but “he” and “she” and “we”

and “they.” And yet poor old Mortlands, who was here this afternoon,

forgot all about this same wonderful title many times, and kept on

calling me “Miss Vaughan.” Then he apologised, and said in extenuation,

that to add a “ladyship” to my name was “to gild refined gold and paint

the lily.” That quotation has often been used before under similar

circumstances, but he gave it quite a new flavour of gallantry.’

‘The Mortlands family dates back to about the same period as ours,’ said

Carlyon, musingly.

‘As ours? Say as yours, my dear lord!’ returned Delicia, gaily, ‘for I

am sure I do not know where the Vaughans come from. I must go down to

the Heralds’ College and see if I cannot persuade someone in authority

there to pick me out an ancestor who did great deeds before the Carlyons

ever existed! Ancestral glory is such a question with you now, Will,

that I almost wish I were the daughter of a Chicago pork-packer.’

‘Why?’ asked Carlyon, a trifle gloomily.

‘Why, because I could at any rate get up a past “Pilgrim Father” if

necessary. A present-day reputation is evidently not sufficient for

you.’

‘I think the old days were best,’ he said curtly.

‘Yes? When the men kept the women within four walls, as cows are kept

in byres, and gave them just the amount of food they thought they

deserved, and beat them if they were rebellious? Well, perhaps those

times were pleasant, but I am afraid I should never have appreciated

them. I prefer to see things advancing—as they are—and I like a

civilisation which includes the education of women as well as of men.’

‘Things are advancing a great deal too quickly, in my opinion,’ said

Carlyon, languidly, pouring out a glass of the choice claret beside him.

‘I should be inclined to vote for a little less rapid progress, in

regard to women.’

‘Yet only the other day you were saying what a shame it was that women

could not win full academic honours like men; and you even said that

they ought to be given titles, in reward for their services to Science,

Art and Literature,’ said Delicia. ‘What has made you change your

opinion?’

He did not look up at her, but absently played with the crumbs on the

table-cloth.

‘Well, I am not sure that it is the correct thing for women to appear

very prominently in public,’ he said.

A momentary contraction of Delicia’s fine brows showed that a touch of

impatience ruffled her humour. But she restrained herself, and said

with perfect composure,—

‘I am afraid I don’t quite follow your meaning, unless, perhaps, your

words apply to the new dancer, La Marina?’

He gave a violent start, and with a sudden movement of his hand upset

his wine glass. Delicia watched the red wine staining the satiny

whiteness of the damask table-cloth without any exclamation or sign of

annoyance. Her heart was beating fast, because through her drooping

lashes she saw her husband’s face, and read there an expression that was

strange and new to her.

‘Oh, I know what has happened,’ he said fiercely, and with almost an

oath, as he strove to wipe off the drops of Chateau Lafite that soiled

his cuff as well as the table-cloth. ‘That woman Lefroy has been here

telling tales and making mischief! I saw her, with her crew of social

rowdies, at the Savoy the other night....’

‘And she saw you!’ interpolated Delicia, smiling.

‘Well, what if she did?’ he snapped out irritably. ‘I was introduced to

La Marina by Prince Golitzberg—you know that German fellow—and he asked

me to take her off his hands. He had promised her a supper at the

Savoy, and at the last moment he was sent for to go to his wife, who was

seized with sudden illness. I could not refuse to oblige him; he’s a

decent sort of chap. Then, of course, as luck would have it, in comes

that spoil-sport of a Lefroy and makes all this rumpus!’

‘My dear Will!’ expostulated Delicia, in gentle amazement, ‘what are you

talking about? Where is the rumpus? What has Mrs Lefroy done? She

simply mentioned to me to-day that she had seen you at the Savoy with

this Marina, and there the matter ended, and, as far as I am concerned,

there it will for ever end.’

‘That is all nonsense!’ said Carlyon, still wiping his cuff. ‘You know

you are put out, or you wouldn’t look at me in the way you do!’

Delicia laughed.

‘What way am I looking?’ she demanded merrily. ‘Pray, my dear boy,

don’t be so conceited as to imagine I mind your taking the Marina, or

any amount of Marinas, to supper at the Savoy, if that kind of thing

amuses you! Surely you don’t suppose that I bring myself into

comparison with “ladies” of Marina’s class, or that I could be jealous

of such persons? I am afraid you do not know me yet, Will, though we

have spent such happy years together! You have neither fathomed the

depth of my love, nor taken the measure of my pride! Besides,—I trust

you!’ She paused. Then rising from the table, she handed him the

little silver box containing his cigars. ‘Smoke off your petulance,

dear boy!’ she said, ‘and join me upstairs when you are ready. We go to

the Premier’s reception to-night, remember.’

Her hand rested for a moment on his shoulder with a caressing touch;

anon, humming a little tune under her breath, and followed by Spartan,

who never let her go out of his sight for a moment if he could help it,

she left the room. Ascending the staircase, she stopped on the

threshold of her study and looked in with a vague air, as though the

place had suddenly grown unfamiliar. There, immediately facing her,

smiled the pictured lineaments of Shakespeare, that immortal friend of

man; her favourite books greeted her with all the silent yet persuasive

eloquence of their well-known and deeply-honoured titles; the electric

lights, fitted up to represent small stars in the ceiling, were not

turned on, and only the young moon peered glimmeringly through the

lattice window, shedding a pale lustre on the marble features of the

‘Antinous.’ Standing quite still, she gazed at all these well-known

objects of her daily surroundings with a curious sense of strangeness,

Spartan staring up wonderingly at her the while.

‘What is it that is wrong with me?’ she mused. ‘Why do I feel as if I

were suddenly thrust out of my usual peace, and made to take a part in

the common and mean disputes of petty-minded men and women?’

She waited another minute, then apparently conquering whatever emotion

was at work within her, she pressed the ivory handle which diffused

light on all visible things, and entered the room with a quiet step and

a half-penitent look, as of regret for having given offence to some

invisible spirit-monitor.

‘Oh, you dear, dear friends!’ she said, approaching the bookshelves, and

softly apostrophising the volumes ranged there as if they were sentient

personages, ‘I am afraid I do not consult you half enough! You are

always with me, ready to give me the soundest advice on any subject

under the sun; advice founded on sage experience, too! Tell me

something now, out of your stores of wisdom, to stop this foolish little

aching at my heart—this irritating, selfish, suspicious trouble which is

quite unworthy of me, as it is unworthy of anyone who has had the high

privilege of learning great lessons from such teachers as you are! It

is not as if I were a woman whose sole ideas of life are centred on

dress and domesticity, or one of those unhappy, self-tormenting

creatures who cannot exist without admiration and flattery; I am, I

think and hope, differently constituted, and mean to try for great

things, even if I never succeed in attaining them. But in trying for

greatness, one must not descend to littleness—save me from this danger,

my dear old-world comrades, if you can, for to-night I am totally unlike

myself. There are thoughts in my brain that might have excited

Xantippe, but which should never trouble Delicia, if to herself Delicia

prove but true!’

And she raised her eyes, half smiling, to the meditative countenance of

Shakespeare. ‘Excellent and “divine Williams,” you must excuse me for

fitting your patriotic line on England to my unworthy needs; but why

_would_ you make yourself so eminently quotable?’ She paused, then took

up a book lying on her desk. ‘Here is an excellent doctor for a sick,

petulant child such as I am—Marcus Aurelius. What will you say to me,

wise pagan? Let me see,’ and opening a page at random, her eyes fell on

the words, ‘Do not suppose you are hurt, and your complaint ceases.

Cease your complaint and you are not hurt.’

She laughed, and her face began to light up with all its usual

animation.

‘Excellent Emperor! What a wholesome thrashing you give me! Anything

more?’ And she turned over a few pages, and came upon one of the

imperial moralist’s most coolly-dictatorial assertions. ‘What an easy

matter it is to stem the current of your imagination, to discharge a

troublesome or improper thought, and at once return to a state of calm!’

‘I don’t know about that, Marcus,’ she said. ‘It is not exactly an

“easy” matter to stem the current of imagination, but certainly it’s

worth trying;’ and she read on, ‘To-day I rushed clear out of

misfortune, or rather, I threw misfortune from me; for, to speak the

truth, it was not outside, and never came any nearer than my own fancy.’

She closed the book smilingly—the beautiful equanimity of her

disposition was completely restored. She left her pretty writing den,

bidding Spartan remain there on guard—a mandate he was accustomed to,

and which he obeyed instantly, though with a deep sigh, his mistress’s

‘evenings out’ being the chief trouble of his otherwise enviable

existence. Delicia, meantime, went to dress for the Premier’s reception,

and soon slipped into the robe she had had designed for herself by a

famous firm of Indian embroiderers;—a garment of softest white satin,

adorned with gold and silver thread, and pearls thickly intertwined, so

as to present the appearance of a mass of finely-wrought jewels. A

single star of diamonds glittered in her hair, and she carried a fan of

natural lilies, tied with white ribbon. Thus attired, she joined her

husband, who stood ready and waiting for her in the drawing-room. He

glanced up at her somewhat shamefacedly.

‘You look your very best this evening, Delicia,’ he said.

She made him a sweeping curtsey, and smiled.

‘My lord, your favouring praise doth overwhelm me!’ she answered. ‘Is

it not meet and right that I should so appear as to be deemed worthy of

the house of Carlyon!’

He put his arm round her waist and drew her to him. It was curious, he

thought, how fresh her beauty seemed! And how the men in his ‘set’

would have burst into a loud guffaw of coarse laughter if any of them

had thought that such was his opinion of his wife’s charm—his own wife,

to whom he had been fast wedded for over three years! According to the

rules of ‘modern’ morality, one ought in three years to have had enough

of one’s lawful wife, and find a suitable ‘soul’ wherewith to claim

‘affinity.’

‘Delicia,’ he said, playing idly with the lilies of her fan, ‘I am sorry

you were vexed about the Marina woman—’

She interrupted him by laying her little white-gloved fingers on his

lips.

‘Vexed? Oh, no, Will, not vexed. Why should I be? Pray don’t let us

talk about it any more; I have almost forgotten the incident. Come!

It’s time we started!’

And in response to the oddly penitent, half-sullen manner of the

‘naughty boy’ he chose to assume, she kissed him. Whereupon he tried

that one special method of his, which had given him the victory in his

wooing of her, the Passionate Outbreak; and murmuring in his rich voice

that she was always the ‘one woman in the world,’ the ‘angel of his

life,’ and altogether the very crown and summit of sweet perfection, he

folded her in his arms with all a lover’s fervour. And she, clinging to

him, forgot her doubts and fears, forgot the austere observations of

Marcus Aurelius, forgot the triumphs of her own intellectual career,

forgot everything, in fact, but that she was the blindly-adoring devotee

of a six-foot Guardsman, whom she had herself set up as a ‘god’ on the

throne of the Ideal, and whom she worshipped through such a roseate

cloud of sweet self-abnegation that she was unable to perceive how poor

a fetish her idol was after all—made of nothing but the very commonest

clay!

*CHAPTER III*