PART II

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Marriage à la Mode

BY MRS. HUMPHRY WARD

ILLUSTRATED BY FRED PEGRAM

NEW YORK

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

1909

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN

LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY MRS. HUMPHRY WARD

COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY MARY AUGUSTA WARD

PUBLISHED, MAY, 1909

TO L. C. W.

[Illustration: DAPHNE FLOYD]

NOTE

THIS STORY APPEARED IN ENGLAND UNDER THE TITLE OF "DAPHNE." THE

PUBLISHERS ARE INDEBTED TO THE PROPRIETORS OF THE "PALL MALL MAGAZINE"

FOR THEIR PERMISSION TO USE THE DRAWINGS BY MR. FRED PEGRAM.

ILLUSTRATIONS

Daphne Floyd

"He caught the hand, he gathered its owner into a pair of strong arms,

and bending over her, he kissed her"

"In the dead of night Daphne sat up in bed, looking at the face and head

of her husband beside her on the pillow"

"Her whole being was seething with passionate and revengeful thought"

Marriage à la Mode

PART I

CHAPTER I

"A stifling hot day!" General Hobson lifted his hat and mopped his

forehead indignantly. "What on earth this place can be like in June I

can't conceive! The tenth of April, and I'll be bound the thermometer's

somewhere near eighty in the shade. You never find the English climate

playing you these tricks."

Roger Barnes looked at his uncle with amusement.

"Don't you like heat, Uncle Archie? Ah, but I forgot, it's American

heat."

"I like a climate you can depend on," said the General, quite conscious

that he was talking absurdly, yet none the less determined to talk, by

way of relief to some obscure annoyance. "Here we are sweltering in this

abominable heat, and in New York last week they had a blizzard, and

here, even, it was cold enough to give me rheumatism. The climate's

always in extremes--like the people."

"I'm sorry to find you don't like the States, Uncle Archie."

The young man sat down beside his uncle. They were in the deck saloon of

a steamer which had left Washington about an hour before for Mount

Vernon. Through the open doorway to their left they saw a wide expanse

of river, flowing between banks of spring green, and above it thunderous

clouds, in a hot blue. The saloon, and the decks outside, held a great

crowd of passengers, of whom the majority were women.

The tone in which Roger Barnes spoke was good-tempered, but quite

perfunctory. Any shrewd observer would have seen that whether his uncle

liked the States or not did not in truth matter to him a whit.

"And I consider all the arrangements for this trip most unsatisfactory,"

the General continued angrily. "The steamer's too small, the

landing-place is too small, the crowd getting on board was something

disgraceful. They'll have a shocking accident one of these days. And

what on earth are all these women here for--in the middle of the day?

It's not a holiday."

"I believe it's a teachers' excursion," said young Barnes absently, his

eyes resting on the rows of young women in white blouses and spring hats

who sat in close-packed chairs upon the deck--an eager, talkative host.

"H'm--Teachers!" The General's tone was still more pugnacious. "Going to

learn more lies about us, I suppose, that they may teach them to

school-children? I was turning over some of their school-books in a shop

yesterday. Perfectly abominable! It's monstrous what they teach the

children here about what they're pleased to call their War of

Independence. All that we did was to ask them to pay something for their

own protection. What did it matter to us whether they were mopped up by

the Indians, or the French, or not? 'But if you want us to go to all the

expense and trouble of protecting you, and putting down those fellows,

why, hang it,' we said, 'you must pay some of the bill!' That was all

English Ministers asked; and perfectly right too. And as for the men

they make such a fuss about, Samuel Adams, and John Adams, and Franklin,

and all the rest of the crew, I tell you, the stuff they teach American

school-children about them is a poisoning of the wells! Franklin was a

man of profligate life, whom I would never have admitted inside my

doors! And as for the Adamses--intriguers--canting fellows!--both of

them."

"Well, at least you'll give them George Washington." As he spoke, Barnes

concealed a yawn, followed immediately afterwards by a look of greater

alertness, caused by the discovery that a girl sitting not far from the

doorway in the crowd outside was certainly pretty.

The red-faced, white-haired General paused a moment before replying,

then broke out: "What George Washington might have been if he had held a

straight course I am not prepared to say. As it is, I don't hesitate for

a moment! George Washington was nothing more nor less than a rebel--a

damned rebel! And what Englishmen mean by joining in the worship of him

I've never been able to understand."

"I say, uncle, take care," said the young man, looking round him, and

observing with some relief that they seemed to have the saloon to

themselves. "These Yankees will stand most things, but----"

"You needn't trouble yourself, Roger," was the testy reply; "I am not in

the habit of annoying my neighbours. Well now, look here, what I want to

know is, what is the meaning of this absurd journey of yours?"

The young man's frown increased. He began to poke the floor with his

stick. "I don't know why you call it absurd?"

"To me it seems both absurd and extravagant," said the other with

emphasis. "The last thing I heard of you was that Burdon and Co. had

offered you a place in their office, and that you were prepared to take

it. When a man has lost his money and becomes dependent upon others, the

sooner he gets to work the better."

Roger Barnes reddened under the onslaught, and the sulky expression of

his handsome mouth became more pronounced. "I think my mother and I

ought to be left to judge for ourselves," he said rather hotly. "We

haven't asked anybody for money _yet_, Uncle Archie. Burdon and Co. can

have me in September just as well as now; and my mother wished me to

make some friends over here who might be useful to me."

"Useful to you. How?"

"I think that's my affair. In this country there are always

openings--things turning up--chances--you can't get at home."

The General gave a disapproving laugh. "The only chance that'll help

you, Roger, at present--excuse me if I speak frankly--is the chance of

regular work. Your poor mother has nothing but her small fixed income,

and you haven't a farthing to chuck away on what you call chances. Why,

your passage by the _Lucania_ alone must have cost a pretty penny. I'll

bet my hat you came first class."

The young man was clearly on the brink of an explosion, but controlled

himself with an effort. "I paid the winter rate; and mother who knows

the Cunard people very well, got a reduction. I assure you, Uncle

Archie, neither mother nor I is a fool, and we know quite well what we

are about."

As he spoke he raised himself with energy, and looked his companion in

the face.

The General, surveying him, was mollified, as usual, by nothing in the

world but the youth's extraordinary good looks. Roger Barnes's good

looks had been, indeed, from his childhood upward the distinguishing and

remarkable feature about him. He had been a king among his schoolfellows

largely because of them, and of the athletic prowess which went with

them; and while at Oxford he had been cast for the part of Apollo in

"The Eumenides," Nature having clearly designed him for it in spite of

the lamentable deficiencies in his Greek scholarship, which gave his

prompters and trainers so much trouble. Nose, chin, brow, the poising of

the head on the shoulders, the large blue eyes, lidded and set with a

Greek perfection, the delicacy of the lean, slightly hollow cheeks,

combined with the astonishing beauty and strength of the head, crowned

with ambrosial curls--these possessions, together with others, had so

far made life an easy and triumphant business for their owner. The

"others," let it be noted, however, had till now always been present;

and, chief amongst them, great wealth and an important and popular

father. The father was recently dead, as the black band on the young

man's arm still testified, and the wealth had suddenly vanished, wholly

and completely, in one of the financial calamities of the day. General

Hobson, contemplating his nephew, and mollified, as we have said, by his

splendid appearance, kept saying to himself: "He hasn't a farthing but

what poor Laura allows him; he has the tastes of forty thousand a year;

a very indifferent education; and what the deuce is he going to do?"

Aloud he said:

"Well, all I know is, I had a deplorable letter last mail from your poor

mother."

The young man turned his head away, his cigarette still poised at his

lips. "Yes, I know--mother's awfully down."

"Well, certainly your mother was never meant for a poor woman," said the

General, with energy. "She takes it uncommonly hard."

Roger, with face still averted, showed no inclination to discuss his

mother's character on these lines.

"However, she'll get along all right, if you do your duty by her," added

the General, not without a certain severity.

"I mean to do it, sir." Barnes rose as he spoke. "I should think we're

getting near Mount Vernon by this time. I'll go and look."

He made his way to the outer deck, the General following. The old

soldier, as he moved through the crowd of chairs in the wake of his

nephew, was well aware of the attention excited by the young man. The

eyes of many damsels were upon him; and, while the girls looked and said

nothing, their mothers laughed and whispered to each other as the young

Apollo passed.

Standing at the side of the steamer, the uncle and nephew perceived that

the river had widened to a still more stately breadth, and that, on the

southern bank, a white building, high placed, had come into view. The

excursionists crowded to look, expressing their admiration for the

natural scene and their sense of its patriotic meaning in a frank,

enthusiastic chatter, which presently enveloped the General, standing in

a silent endurance like a rock among the waves.

"Isn't it fine to think of his coming back here to die, so simply, when

he'd made a nation?" said a young girl--perhaps from Omaha--to her

companion. "Wasn't it just lovely?"

Her voice, restrained, yet warm with feeling, annoyed General Hobson. He

moved away, and as they hung over the taffrail he said, with suppressed

venom to his companion: "Much good it did them to be 'made a nation'!

Look at their press--look at their corruption--their divorce scandals!"

Barnes laughed, and threw his cigarette-end into the swift brown water.

"Upon my word, Uncle Archie, I can't play up to you. As far as I've

gone, I like America and the Americans."

"Which means, I suppose, that your mother gave you some introductions to

rich people in New York, and they entertained you?" said the General

drily.

"Well, is there any crime in that? I met a lot of uncommonly nice

people."

"And didn't particularly bless me when I wired to you to come here?"

The young man laughed again and paused a moment before replying.

"I'm always very glad to come and keep you company, Uncle Archie."

The old General reddened a little. Privately, he knew very well that his

telegram summoning young Barnes from New York had been an act of

tyranny--mild, elderly tyranny. He was not amusing himself in

Washington, where he was paying a second visit after an absence of

twenty years. His English soul was disturbed and affronted by a wholly

new realization of the strength of America, by the giant forces of the

young nation, as they are to be felt pulsing in the Federal City. He was

up in arms for the Old World, wondering sorely and secretly what the New

might do with her in the times to come, and foreseeing an

ever-increasing deluge of unlovely things--ideals, principles,

manners--flowing from this western civilization, under which his own

gods were already half buried, and would soon be hidden beyond recovery.

And in this despondency which possessed him, in spite of the attentions

of Embassies, and luncheons at the White House, he had heard that Roger

was in New York, and could not resist the temptation to send for him.

After all, Roger was his heir. Unless the boy flagrantly misbehaved

himself, he would inherit General Hobson's money and small estate in

Northamptonshire. Before the death of Roger's father this prospective

inheritance, indeed, had not counted for very much in the family

calculations. The General had even felt a shyness in alluding to a

matter so insignificant in comparison with the general scale on which

the Barnes family lived. But since the death of Barnes _père_, and the

complete pecuniary ruin revealed by that event, Roger's expectations

from his uncle had assumed a new importance. The General was quite aware

of it. A year before this date he would never have dreamed of summoning

Roger to attend him at a moment's notice. That he had done so, and that

Roger had obeyed him, showed how closely even the family relation may

depend on pecuniary circumstance.

The steamer swung round to the landing-place under the hill of Mount

Vernon. Again, in disembarkation, there was a crowd and rush which set

the General's temper on edge. He emerged from it, hot and breathless,

after haranguing the functionary at the gates on the inadequacy of the

arrangements and the likelihood of an accident. Then he and Roger strode

up the steep path, beside beds of blue periwinkles, and under old trees

just bursting into leaf. A spring sunshine was in the air and on the

grass, which had already donned its "livelier emerald." The air quivered

with heat, and the blue dome of sky diffused it. Here and there a

magnolia in full flower on the green slopes spread its splendour of

white or pinkish blossom to the sun; the great river, shimmering and

streaked with light, swept round the hill, and out into a pearly

distance; and on the height the old pillared house with its flanking

colonnades stood under the thinly green trees in a sharp light and shade

which emphasized all its delightful qualities--made, as it were, the

most of it, in response to the eagerness of the crowd now flowing round

it.

Half-way up the hill Roger suddenly raised his hat.

"Who is it?" said the General, putting up his eyeglass.

"The girl we met last night and her brother."

"Captain Boyson? So it is. They seem to have a party with them."

The lady whom young Barnes had greeted moved toward the Englishmen,

followed by her brother.

"I didn't know we were to meet to-day," she said gaily, with a mocking

look at Roger. "I thought you said you were bored--and going back to New

York."

Roger was relieved to see that his uncle, engaged in shaking hands with

the American officer, had not heard this remark. Tact was certainly not

Miss Boyson's strong point.

"I am sure I never said anything of the kind," he said, looking brazenly

down upon her; "nothing in the least like it."

"Oh! oh!" the lady protested, with an extravagant archness. "Mrs.

Phillips, this is Mr. Barnes. We were just talking of him, weren't we?"

An elderly lady, quietly dressed in gray silk, turned, bowed, and looked

curiously at the Englishman.

"I hear you and Miss Boyson discovered some common friends last night."

"We did, indeed. Miss Boyson posted me up in a lot of the people I have

been seeing in New York. I am most awfully obliged to her," said Barnes.

His manner was easy and forthcoming, the manner of one accustomed to

feel himself welcome and considered.

"I behaved like a walking 'Who's Who,' only I was much more interesting,

and didn't tell half as many lies," said the girl, in a high penetrating

voice. "Daphne, let me introduce you to Mr. Barnes. Mr. Barnes--Miss

Floyd; Mr. Barnes--Mrs. Verrier."

Two ladies beyond Mrs. Phillips made vague inclinations, and young

Barnes raised his hat. The whole party walked on up the hill. The

General and Captain Boyson fell into a discussion of some military news

of the morning. Roger Barnes was mostly occupied with Miss Boyson, who

had a turn for monopoly; and he could only glance occasionally at the

two ladies with Mrs. Phillips. But he was conscious that the whole group

made a distinguished appearance. Among the hundreds of young women

streaming over the lawn they were clearly marked out by their carriage

and their clothes--especially their clothes--as belonging to the

fastidious cosmopolitan class, between whom and the young

school-teachers from the West, in their white cotton blouses, leathern

belts, and neat short skirts, the links were few. Miss Floyd, indeed,

was dressed with great simplicity. A white muslin dress, _à la_ Romney,

with a rose at the waist, and a black-and-white Romney hat deeply

shading the face beneath--nothing could have been plainer; yet it was a

simplicity not to be had for the asking, a calculated, a Parisian

simplicity; while her companion, Mrs. Verrier, was attired in what the

fashion-papers would have called a "creation in mauve." And Roger knew

quite enough about women's dress to be aware that it was a creation that

meant dollars. She was a tall, dark-eyed, olive-skinned woman, thin

almost to emaciation: and young Barnes noticed that, while Miss Floyd

talked much, Mrs. Verrier answered little, and smiled less. She moved

with a languid step, and looked absently about her. Roger could not make

up his mind whether she was American or English.

In the house itself the crowd was almost unmanageable. The General's ire

was roused afresh when he was warned off the front door by the polite

official on guard, and made to mount a back stair in the midst of a

panting multitude.

"I really cannot congratulate you on your management of these affairs,"

he said severely to Captain Boyson, as they stood at last, breathless

and hustled, on the first-floor landing. "It is most improper, I may say

dangerous, to admit such a number at once. And, as for seeing the house,

it is simply impossible. I shall make my way down as soon as possible,

and go for a walk."

Captain Boyson looked perplexed. General Hobson was a person of

eminence; Washington had been very civil to him; and the American

officer felt a kind of host's responsibility.

"Wait a moment; I'll try and find somebody." He disappeared, and the

party maintained itself with difficulty in a corner of the landing

against the pressure of a stream of damsels, who crowded to the open

doors of the rooms, looked through the gratings which bar the entrance

without obstructing the view, chattered, and moved on. General Hobson

stood against the wall, a model of angry patience. Cecilia Boyson,

glancing at him with a laughing eye, said in Roger's ear: "How sad it is

that your uncle dislikes us so!"

"Us? What do you mean?"

"That he hates America so. Oh, don't say he doesn't, because I've

watched him, at one, two, three parties. He thinks we're a horrid,

noisy, vulgar people, with most unpleasant voices, and he thanks God for

the Atlantic--and hopes he may never see us again."

"Well, of course, if you're so certain about it, there's no good in

contradicting you. Did you say that lady's name was Floyd? Could I have

seen her last week in New York?"

"Quite possible. Perhaps you heard something about her?"

"No," said Barnes, after thinking a moment. "I remember--somebody

pointed her out at the opera."

His companion looked at him with a kind of hard amusement. Cecilia

Boyson was only five-and-twenty, but there was already something in her

that foretold the formidable old maid.

"Well, when people begin upon Daphne Floyd," she said, "they generally

go through with it. Ah! here comes Alfred."

Captain Boyson, pushing his way through the throng, announced to his

sister and General Hobson that he had found the curator in charge of the

house, who sent a message by him to the effect that if only the party

would wait till four o'clock, the official closing hour, he himself

would have great pleasure in showing them the house when all the

tourists of the day had taken their departure.

"Then," said Miss Floyd, smiling at the General, "let us go and sit in

the garden, and feel ourselves aristocratic and superior."

The General's brow smoothed. Voice and smile were alike engaging. Their

owner was not exactly pretty, but she had very large dark eyes, and a

small glowing face, set in a profusion of hair. Her neck, the General

thought, was the slenderest he had ever seen, and the slight round lines

of her form spoke of youth in its first delicate maturity. He followed

her obediently, and they were all soon in the garden again, and free of

the crowd. Miss Floyd led the way across the grass with the General.

"Ah! now you will see the General will begin to like us," said Miss

Boyson. "Daphne has got him in hand."

Her tone was slightly mocking. Barnes observed the two figures in front

of them, and remarked that Miss Floyd had a "very--well--a very foreign

look."

"Not English, you mean?--or American? Well, naturally. Her mother was a

Spaniard--a South American--from Buenos Ayres. That's why she is so

dark, and so graceful."

"I never saw a prettier dress," said Barnes, following the slight figure

with his eyes. "It's so simple."

His companion laughed again. The manner of the laugh puzzled her

companion, but, just as he was about to put a question, the General and

the young lady paused in front, to let the rest of the party come up

with them. Miss Floyd proposed a seat a little way down the slope, where

they might wait the half-hour appointed.

That half-hour passed quickly for all concerned. In looking back upon it

afterwards two of the party were conscious that it had all hung upon one

person. Daphne Floyd sat beside the General, who paid her a

half-reluctant, half-fascinated attention. Without any apparent effort

on her part she became indeed the centre of the group who sat or lay on

the grass. All faces were turned towards her, and presently all ears

listened for her remarks. Her talk was young and vivacious, nothing

more. But all she said came, as it were, steeped in personality, a

personality so energetic, so charged with movement and with action that

it arrested the spectators--not always agreeably. It was like the

passage of a train through the darkness, when, for the moment, the

quietest landscape turns to fire and force.

The comparison suggested itself to Captain Boyson as he lay watching

her, only to be received with an inward mockery, half bitter, half

amused. This girl was always awakening in him these violent or desperate

images. Was it her fault that she possessed those brilliant eyes--eyes,

as it seemed, of the typical, essential woman?--and that downy brunette

skin, with the tinge in it of damask red?--and that instinctive art of

lovely gesture in which her whole being seemed to express itself?

Boyson, who was not only a rising soldier, but an excellent amateur

artist, knew every line of the face by heart. He had drawn Miss Daphne

from the life on several occasions; and from memory scores of times. He

was not likely to draw her from life any more; and thereby hung a tale.

As far as he was concerned the train had passed--in flame and

fury--leaving an echoing silence behind it.

What folly! He turned resolutely to Mrs. Verrier, and tried to discuss

with her an exhibition of French art recently opened in Washington. In

vain. After a few sentences, the talk between them dropped, and both he

and she were once more watching Miss Floyd, and joining in the

conversation whenever she chose to draw them in.

As for Roger Barnes, he too was steadily subjugated--up to a certain

point. He was not sure that he liked Miss Floyd, or her conversation.

She was so much mistress of herself and of the company, that his

masculine vanity occasionally rebelled. A little flirt!--that gave

herself airs. It startled his English mind that at twenty--for she could

be no more--a girl should so take the floor, and hold the stage.

Sometimes he turned his back upon her--almost; and Cecilia Boyson held

him. But, if there was too much of the "eternal womanly" in Miss Floyd,

there was not enough in Cecilia Boyson. He began to discover also that

she was too clever for him, and was in fact talking down to him. Some of

the things that she said to him about New York and Washington puzzled

him extremely. She was, he supposed, intellectual; but the intellectual

women in England did not talk in the same way. He was equal to them, or

flattered himself that he was; but Miss Boyson was beyond him. He was

getting into great difficulties with her, when suddenly Miss Floyd

addressed him:

"I am sure I saw you in New York, at the opera?"

She bent over to him as she spoke, and lowered her voice. Her look was

merry, perhaps a little satirical. It put him on his guard.

"Yes, I was there. You were pointed out to me."

"You were with some old friends of mine. I suppose they gave you an

account of me?"

"They were beginning it; but then Melba began to sing, and some horrid

people in the next box said 'Hush!'"

She studied him in a laughing silence a moment, her chin on her hand,

then said:

"That is the worst of the opera; it stops so much interesting

conversation."

"You don't care for the music?"

"Oh, I am a musician!" she said quickly. "I teach it. But I am like the

mad King of Bavaria--I want an opera-house to myself."

"You teach it?" he said, in amazement.

She nodded, smiling. At that moment a bell rang. Captain Boyson rose.

"That's the signal for closing. I think we ought to be moving up."

They strolled slowly towards the house, watching the stream of

excursionists pour out of the house and gardens, and wind down the hill;

sounds of talk and laughter filled the air, and the western sun touched

the spring hats and dresses.

"The holidays end to-morrow," said Daphne Floyd demurely, as she walked

beside young Barnes. And she looked smiling at the crowd of young women,

as though claiming solidarity with them.

A teacher? A teacher of music?--with that self-confidence--that air as

though the world belonged to her! The young man was greatly mystified.

But he reminded himself that he was in a democratic country where all

men--and especially all women--are equal. Not that the young women now

streaming to the steamboat were Miss Floyd's equals. The notion was

absurd. All that appeared to be true was that Miss Floyd, in any

circumstances, would be, and was, the equal of anybody.

"How charming your friend is!" he said presently to Cecilia Boyson, as

they lingered on the veranda, waiting for the curator, in a scene now

deserted. "She tells me she is a teacher of music."

Cecilia Boyson looked at him in amazement, and made him repeat his

remark. As he did so, his uncle called him, and he turned away. Miss

Boyson leant against one of the pillars of the veranda, shaking with

suppressed laughter.

But at that moment the curator, a gentle, gray-haired man, appeared,

shaking hands with the General, and bowing to the ladies. He gave them a

little discourse on the house and its history, as they stood on the

veranda; and private conversation was no longer possible.

CHAPTER II

A sudden hush had fallen upon Mount Vernon. From the river below came

the distant sounds of the steamer, which, with its crowds safe on board,

was now putting off for Washington. But the lawns and paths of the

house, and the formal garden behind it, and all its simple rooms

upstairs and down, were now given back to the spring and silence, save

for this last party of sightseers. The curator, after his preliminary

lecture on the veranda, took them within; the railings across the doors

were removed; they wandered in and out as they pleased.

Perhaps, however, there were only two persons among the six now

following the curator to whom the famous place meant anything more than

a means of idling away a warm afternoon. General Hobson carried his

white head proudly through it, saying little or nothing. It was the

house of a man who had wrenched half a continent from Great Britain; the

English Tory had no intention whatever of bowing the knee. On the other

hand, it was the house of a soldier and a gentleman, representing old

English traditions, tastes, and manners. No modern blatancy, no Yankee

smartness anywhere. Simplicity and moderate wealth, combined with

culture--witness the books of the library--with land-owning, a family

coach, and church on Sundays: these things the Englishman understood.

Only the slaves, in the picture of Mount Vernon's past, were strange to

him.

They stood at length in the death-chamber, with its low white bed, and

its balcony overlooking the river.

"This, ladies, is the room in which General Washington died," said the

curator, patiently repeating the familiar sentence. "It is, of course,

on that account sacred to every true American."

He bowed his head instinctively as he spoke. The General looked round

him in silence. His eye was caught by the old hearth, and by the iron

plate at the back of it, bearing the letters G. W. and some scroll work.

There flashed into his mind a vision of the December evening on which

Washington passed away, the flames flickering in the chimney, the winds

breathing round the house and over the snow-bound landscape outside, the

dying man in that white bed, and around him, hovering invisibly, the

generations of the future.

"He was a traitor to his king and country!" he repeated to himself,

firmly. Then as his patriotic mind was not disturbed by a sense of

humour, he added the simple reflection--"But it is, of course, natural

that Americans should consider him a great man."

The French window beside the bed was thrown open, and these privileged

guests were invited to step on to the balcony. Daphne Floyd was handed

out by young Barnes. They hung over the white balustrade together. An

evening light was on the noble breadth of river; its surface of blue and

gold gleamed through the boughs of the trees which girdled the house;

blossoms of wild cherry, of dogwood, and magnolia sparkled amid the

coverts of young green.

Roger Barnes remarked, with sincerity, as he looked about him, that it

was a very pretty place, and he was glad he had not missed it. Miss

Floyd made an absent reply, being in fact occupied in studying the

speaker. It was, so to speak, the first time she had really observed

him; and, as they paused on the balcony together, she was suddenly

possessed by the same impression as that which had mollified the

General's scolding on board the steamer. He was indeed handsome, the

young Englishman!--a magnificent figure of a man, in height and breadth

and general proportions; and in addition, as it seemed to her, possessed

of an absurd and superfluous beauty of feature. What does a man want

with such good looks? This was perhaps the girl's first instinctive

feeling. She was, indeed, a little dazzled by her new companion, now

that she began to realize him. As compared with the average man in

Washington or New York, here was an exception--an Apollo!--for she too

thought of the Sun-god. Miss Floyd could not remember that she had ever

had to do with an Apollo before; young Barnes, therefore, was so far an

event, a sensation. In the opera-house she had been vaguely struck by a

handsome face. But here, in the freedom of outdoor dress and movement,

he seemed to her a physical king of men; and, at the same time, his easy

manner--which, however, was neither conceited nor ill-bred--showed him

conscious of his advantages.

As they chatted on the balcony she put him through his paces a little.

He had been, it seemed, at Eton and Oxford; and she supposed that he

belonged to the rich English world. His mother was a Lady Barnes; his

father, she gathered, was dead; and he was travelling, no doubt, in the

lordly English way, to get a little knowledge of the barbarians outside,

before he settled down to his own kingdom, and the ways thereof. She

envisaged a big Georgian house in a spreading park, like scores that she

had seen in the course of motoring through England the year before.

Meanwhile, the dear young man was evidently trying to talk to her,

without too much reference to the gilt gingerbread of this world. He did

not wish that she should feel herself carried into regions where she was

not at home, so that his conversation ran amicably on music. Had she

learned it abroad? He had a cousin who had been trained at Leipsic;

wasn't teaching it trying sometimes--when people had no ear? Delicious!

She kept it up, talking with smiles of "my pupils" and "my class," while

they wandered after the others upstairs to the dark low-roofed room

above the death-chamber, where Martha Washington spent the last years of

her life, in order that from the high dormer window she might command

the tomb on the slope below, where her dead husband lay. The curator

told the well-known story. Mrs. Verrier, standing beside him, asked some

questions, showed indeed some animation.

"She shut herself up here? She lived in this garret? That she might

always see the tomb? That is really true?"

Barnes, who did not remember to have heard her speak before, turned

at the sound of her voice, and looked at her curiously. She

wore an expression--bitter or incredulous--which, somehow, amused

him. As they descended again to the garden he communicated his

amusement--discreetly--to Miss Floyd.

Did Mrs. Verrier imply that no one who was not a fool could show her

grief as Mrs. Washington did? That it was, in fact, a sign of being a

fool to regret your husband?

"Did she say that?" asked Miss Floyd quickly.

"Not like that, of course, but----"

They had now reached the open air again, and found themselves crossing

the front court to the kitchen-garden. Daphne Floyd did not wait till

Roger should finish his sentence. She turned on him a face which was

grave if not reproachful.

"I suppose you know Mrs. Verrier's story?"

"Why, I never saw her before! I hope I haven't said anything I oughtn't

to have said?"

"Everybody knows it here," said Daphne slowly. "Mrs. Verrier married

three years ago. She married a Jew--a New Yorker--who had changed his

name. You know Jews are not in what we call 'society' over here? But

Madeleine thought she could do it; she was in love with him, and she

meant to be able to do without society. But she couldn't do without

society; and presently she began to dine out, and go to parties by

herself--he urged her to. Then, after a bit, people didn't ask her as

much as before; she wasn't happy; and her people began to talk to him

about a divorce--naturally they had been against her marrying him all

along. He said--as they and she pleased. Then, one night about a year

ago, he took the train to Niagara--of course it was a very commonplace

thing to do--and two days afterwards he was found, thrown up by the

whirlpool; you know, where all the suicides are found!"

Barnes stopped short in front of his companion, his face flushing.

"What a horrible story!" he said, with emphasis.

Miss Floyd nodded.

"Yes, poor Madeleine has never got over it."

The young man still stood riveted.

"Of course Mrs. Verrier herself had nothing to do with the talk about

divorce?"

Something in his tone roused a combative instinct in his companion. She,

too, coloured, and drew herself up.

"Why shouldn't she? She was miserable. The marriage had been a great

mistake."

"And you allow divorce for that?" said the man, wondering. "Oh, of

course I know every State is different, and some States are worse than

others. But, somehow, I never came across a case like that--first

hand--before."

He walked on slowly beside his companion, who held herself a little

stiffly.

"I don't know why you should talk in that way," she said at last,

breaking out in a kind of resentment, "as though all our American views

are wrong! Each nation arranges these things for itself. You have the

laws that suit you; you must allow us those that suit us."

Barnes paused again, his face expressing a still more complete

astonishment.

"You say that?" he said. "You!"

"And why not?"

"But--but you are so young!" he said, evidently finding a difficulty in

putting his impressions. "I beg your pardon--I ought not to talk about

it at all. But it was so odd that----"

"That I knew anything about Mrs. Verrier's affairs?" said Miss Floyd,

with a rather uncomfortable laugh. "Well, you see, American girls are

not like English ones. We don't pretend not to know what everybody

knows."

"Of course," said Roger hurriedly; "but you wouldn't think it a fair and

square thing to do?"

"Think what?"

"Why, to marry a man, and then talk of divorcing him because people

didn't invite you to their parties."

"She was very unhappy," said Daphne stubbornly.

"Well, by Jove!" cried the young man, "she doesn't look very happy now!"

"No," Miss Floyd admitted. "No. There are many people who think she'll

never get over it."

"Well, I give it up." The Apollo shrugged his handsome shoulders. "You

say it was she who proposed to divorce him?--yet when the wretched man

removes himself, then she breaks her heart!"

"Naturally she didn't mean him to do it in that way," said the girl,

with impatience. "Of course you misunderstood me entirely!--_entirely!_"

she added with an emphasis which suited with her heightened colour and

evidently ruffled feelings.

Young Barnes looked at her with embarrassment. What a queer,

hot-tempered girl! Yet there was something in her which attracted him.

She was graceful even in her impatience. Her slender neck, and the dark

head upon it, her little figure in the white muslin, her dainty arms and

hands--these points in her delighted an honest eye, quite accustomed to

appraise the charms of women. But, by George! she took herself

seriously, this little music-teacher. The air of wilful command about

her, the sharpness with which she had just rebuked him, amazed and

challenged him.

"I am very sorry if I misunderstood you," he said, a little on his

dignity; "but I thought you----"

"You thought I sympathized with Mrs. Verrier? So I do; though of course

I am awfully sorry that such a dreadful thing happened. But you'll find,

Mr. Barnes, that American girls----" The colour rushed into her small

olive cheeks. "Well, we know all about the old ideas, and we know also

too well that there's only one life, and we don't mean to have that one

spoilt. The old notions of marriage--your English notions," cried the

girl facing him--"make it tyranny! Why should people stay together when

they see it's a mistake? We say everybody shall have their chance. And

not one chance only, but more than one. People find out in marriage what

they couldn't find out before, and so----"

"You let them chuck it just when they're tired of it?" laughed Barnes.

"And what about the----"

"The children?" said Miss Floyd calmly. "Well, of course, that has to be

very carefully considered. But how can it do children any good to live

in an unhappy home?"

"Had Mrs. Verrier any children?"

"Yes, one little girl."

"I suppose she meant to keep her?"

"Why, of course."

"And the father didn't care?"

"Well, I believe he did," said Daphne unwillingly. "Yes, that was very

sad. He was quite devoted to her."

"And you think that's all right?" Barnes looked at his companion,

smiling.

"Well, of course, it was a pity," she said, with fresh impatience; "I

admit it was a pity. But then, why did she ever marry him? That was the

horrible mistake."

"I suppose she thought she liked him."

"Oh, it was he who was so desperately in love with her. He plagued her

into doing it."

"Poor devil!" said Barnes heartily. "All right, we're coming."

The last words were addressed to General Hobson, waving to them from the

kitchen-garden. They hurried on to join the curator, who took the party

for a stroll round some of the fields over which George Washington, in

his early married life, was accustomed to ride in summer and winter

dawns, inspecting his negroes, his plantation, and his barns. The grass

in these Southern fields was already high; there were shining

fruit-trees, blossom-laden, in an orchard copse; and the white dogwood

glittered in the woods.

For two people to whom the traditions of the place were dear, this quiet

walk through Washington's land had a charm far beyond that of the

reconstructed interior of the house. Here were things unaltered and

unalterable, boundaries, tracks, woods, haunted still by the figure of

the young master and bridegroom who brought Patsy Curtis there in 1759.

To the gray-haired curator every foot of them was sacred and familiar;

he knew these fields and the records of them better than any detail of

his own personal affairs; for years now he had lived in spirit with

Washington, through all the hours of the Mount Vernon day; his life was

ruled by one great ghost, so that everything actual was comparatively

dim. Boyson too, a fine soldier and a fine intelligence, had a mind

stored with Washingtoniana. Every now and then he and the curator fell

back on each other's company. They knew well that the others were not

worthy of their opportunity; although General Hobson, seeing that most

of the memories touched belonged to a period before the Revolution,

obeyed the dictates of politeness, and made amends for his taciturnity

indoors by a talkative vein outside.

Captain Boyson was not, however, wholly occupied with history or

reminiscence. He perceived very plainly before the walk was over that

the General's good-looking nephew and Miss Daphne Floyd were interested

in each other's conversation. When they joined the party in the garden

it seemed to him that they had been disputing. Miss Daphne was flushed

and a little snappish when spoken to; and the young man looked

embarrassed. But presently he saw that they gravitated to each other,

and that, whatever chance combination might be formed during the walk,

it always ended for a time in the flight ahead of the two figures, the

girl in the rose-coloured sash and the tall handsome youth. Towards the

end of the walk they became separated from the rest of the party, and

only arrived at the little station just in time before the cars started.

On this occasion again, they had been clearly arguing and disagreeing;

and Daphne had the air of a ruffled bird, her dark eyes glittering, her

mouth set in the obstinate lines that Boyson knew by heart. But again

they sat together in the car, and talked and sparred all the way home;

while Mrs. Verrier, in a corner of the carriage, shut her hollow eyes,

and laid her thin hands one over the other, and in her purple draperies

made a picture _à la Mèlisande_ which was not lost upon her companions.

Boyson's mind registered a good many grim or terse comments, as

occasionally he found himself watching this lady. Scarcely a year since

that hideous business at Niagara, and here she was in that extravagant

dress! He wished his sister would not make a friend of her, and that

Daphne Floyd saw less of her. Miss Daphne had quite enough bees in her

own bonnet without adopting Mrs. Verrier's.

Meanwhile, it was the General who, on the return journey, was made to

serve Miss Boyson's gift for monopoly. She took possession of him in a

business-like way, inquiring into his engagements in Washington, his

particular friends, his opinion of the place and the people, with a

light-handed acuteness which was more than a match for the Englishman's

instincts of defence. The General did not mean to give himself away; he

intended, indeed, precisely the contrary; but, after every round of

conversation Miss Boyson felt herself more and more richly provided with

materials for satire at the expense of England and the English tourist,

his invincible conceit, insularity, and condescension. She was a clever

though tiresome woman; and expressed herself best in letters. She

promised herself to write a "character" of General Hobson in her next

letter to an intimate friend, which should be a masterpiece. Then,

having led him successfully through the _rôle_ of the comic Englishman

abroad, she repaid him with information. She told him, not without some

secret amusement at the reprobation it excited, the tragic story of Mrs.

Verrier. She gave him a full history of her brother's honourable and

brilliant career; and here let it be said that the _précieuse_ in her

gave way to the sister, and that she talked with feeling. And finally

she asked him with a smile whether he admired Miss Floyd. The General,

who had in fact been observing Miss Floyd and his nephew with some

little uneasiness during the preceding half-hour, replied guardedly that

Miss Floyd was pretty and picturesque, and apparently a great talker.

Was she a native of Washington?

"You never heard of Miss Floyd?--of Daphne Floyd? No? Ah, well!"--and

she laughed--"I suppose I ought to take it as a compliment, of a kind.

There are so many rich people now in this queer country of ours that

even Daphne Floyds don't matter."

"Is Miss Floyd so tremendously rich?"

General Hobson turned a quickened countenance upon her, expressing no

more than the interest felt by the ordinary man in all societies--more

strongly, perhaps, at the present day than ever before--in the mere fact

of money. But Miss Boyson gave it at once a personal meaning, and set

herself to play on what she scornfully supposed to be the cupidity of

the Englishman. She produced, indeed, a full and particular account of

Daphne Floyd's parentage, possessions, and prospects, during which the

General's countenance represented him with great fidelity. A trace of

recalcitrance at the beginning--for it was his opinion that Miss Boyson,

like most American women, talked decidedly too much--gave way to close

attention, then to astonishment, and finally to a very animated

observation of Miss Floyd's slender person as she sat a yard or two from

him on the other side of the car, laughing, frowning, or chattering with

Roger.

"And that poor child has the management of it all?" he said at last, in

a tone which did him credit. He himself had lost an only daughter at

twenty-one, and he held old-fashioned views as to the helplessness of

women.

But Cecilia Boyson again misunderstood him.

"Oh, yes!" she said, with a cool smile. "Everything is in her own

hands--everything! Mrs. Phillips would not dare to interfere. Daphne

always has her own way."

The General said no more. Cecilia Boyson looked out of the window at the

darkening landscape, thinking with malice of Daphne's dealings with the

male sex. It had been a Sleeping Beauty story so far. Treasure for the

winning--a thorn hedge--and slain lovers! The handsome Englishman would

try it next, no doubt. All young Englishmen, according to her, were on

the look-out for American heiresses. Music teacher indeed! She would

have given a good deal to hear the conversation of the uncle and nephew

when the party broke up.

The General and young Barnes made their farewells at the railway

station, and took their way on foot to their hotel. Washington was

steeped in sunset. The White House, as they passed it, glowed amid its

quiet trees. Lafayette Square, with its fountains and statues, its white

and pink magnolias, its strolling, chatting crowd, the fronts of the

houses, the long vistas of tree-lined avenues, the street cars, the

houses, the motors, all the openings and distances of the beautiful,

leisurely place--they saw them rosily transfigured under a departing

sun, which throughout the day had been weaving the quick spells of a

southern spring.

"Jolly weather!" said Roger, looking about him. "And a very nice

afternoon. How long are you staying here, Uncle Archie?"

"I ought to be off at the end of the week; and of course you want to get

back to New York? I say, you seemed to be getting on with that young

lady?"

The General turned a rather troubled eye upon his companion.

"She wasn't bad fun," said the young man graciously; "but rather an odd

little thing! We quarrelled about every conceivable subject. And it's

queer how much that kind of girl seems to go about in America. She goes

everywhere and knows everything. I wonder how she manages it."

"What kind of girl do you suppose she is?" asked the General, stopping

suddenly in the middle of Lafayette Square.

"She told me she taught singing," said Roger, in a puzzled voice, "to a

class of girls in New York."

The General laughed.

"She seems to have made a fool of you, my dear boy. She is one of the

great heiresses of America."

Roger's face expressed a proper astonishment.

"Oh! that's it, is it? I thought once or twice there was something

fishy--she was trying it on. Who told you?"

The General retailed his information. Miss Daphne Floyd was the orphan

daughter of an enormously rich and now deceased lumber-king, of the

State of Illinois. He had made vast sums by lumbering, and then invested

in real estate in Chicago and Buffalo, not to speak of a railway or two,

and had finally left his daughter and only child in possession of a

fortune generally estimated at more than a million sterling. The money

was now entirely in the girl's power. Her trustees had been sent about

their business, though Miss Floyd was pleased occasionally to consult

them. Mrs. Phillips, her chaperon, had not much influence with her; and

it was supposed that Mrs. Verrier advised her more than anyone else.

"Good heavens!" was all that young Barnes could find to say when the

story was told. He walked on absently, flourishing his stick, his face

working under the stress of amused meditation. At last he brought out:

"You know, Uncle Archie, if you'd heard some of the things Miss Floyd

was saying to me, your hair would have stood on end."

The General raised his shoulders.

"I dare say. I'm too old-fashioned for America. The sooner I clear out

the better. Their newspapers make me sick; I hate the hotels--I hate the

cooking; and there isn't a nation in Europe I don't feel myself more at

home with."

Roger laughed his clear, good-tempered laugh. "Oh! I don't feel that way

at all. I get on with them capitally. They're a magnificent people. And,

as to Miss Floyd, I didn't mean anything bad, of course. Only the ideas

some of the girls here have, and the way they discuss them--well, it

beats me!"

"What sort of ideas?"

Roger's handsome brow puckered in the effort to explain. "They don't

think anything's _settled_, you know, as we do at home. Miss Floyd

doesn't. They think _they've_ got to settle a lot of things that English

girls don't trouble about, because they're just told to do 'em, or not

to do 'em, by the people that look after them!"

"'Everything hatched over again, and hatched different,'" said the

General, who was an admirer of George Eliot; "that's what they'd like,

eh? Pooh! That's when they're young. They quiet down, like all the rest

of the world."

Barnes shook his head. "But they _are_ hatching it over again. You meet

people here in society you couldn't meet at home. And it's all right.

The law backs them up."

"You're talking about divorce!" said the General. "Aye! it's astounding!

The tales one hears in the smoking-room after dinner! In Wyoming,

apparently, six months' residence, and there you are. You prove a little

cruelty, the husband makes everything perfectly easy, you say a civil

good-bye, and the thing's done. Well, they'll pay for it, my dear

Roger--they'll pay for it. Nobody ever yet trifled with the marriage law

with impunity."

The energy of the old man's bearing became him.

Through Roger's mind the thought flashed: "Poor dear Uncle Archie! If

he'd been a New Yorker he'd never have put up with Aunt Lavinia for

thirty years!"

They turned into their hotel, and ordered dinner in an hour's time.

Roger found some English letters waiting for him, and carried them off

to his room. He opened his mother's first. Lady Barnes wrote a large and

straggling hand, which required many sheets and much postage. It might

have been observed that her son looked at the sheets for a minute, with

a certain distaste, before he began upon them. Yet he was deeply

attached to his mother, and it was from her letters week by week that he

took his marching orders. If she only wouldn't ride her ideas quite so

hard; if she would sometimes leave him alone to act for himself!

Here it was again--the old story:

"Don't suppose I put these things before you on _my_ account. No,

indeed; what does it matter what happens to me? It is when I think

that you may have to spend your whole life as a clerk in a bank,

unless you rouse yourself now--(for you know, my dear Roger, though

you have very good wits, you're not as frightfully clever as people

have to be nowadays)--that I begin to despair. But that is

_entirely_ in your own hands. You have what is far more valuable

than cleverness--you have a delightful disposition, and you are one

of the handsomest of men. There! of course, I know you wouldn't let

me say it to you in your presence; but it's true all the same. Any

girl should be proud to marry you. There are plenty of rich girls

in America; and if you play your cards properly you will make her

and yourself happy. The grammar of that is not quite right, but you

understand me. Find a nice girl--of course a _nice_ girl--with a

fortune large enough to put you back in your proper sphere; and it

doesn't matter about me. You will pay my rent, I dare say, and help

me through when I want it; but that's nothing. The point is, that I

cannot submit to your career being spoiled through your poor

father's mad imprudence. You must retrieve yourself--you _must_.

Nobody is anything nowadays in the world without money; you know

that as well as I do. And besides, there is another reason. You

have got to forget the affair of last spring, to put it entirely

behind you, to show that horrid woman who threw you over that you

will make your life a success in spite of her. Rouse yourself, my

dear Roger, and do your best. I hope by now you have forwarded

_all_ my introductions? You have your opportunity, and I must say

you will be a great fool if you don't use it. _Do_ use it my dear

boy, for my sake. I am a very unhappy woman; but you might, if you

would, bring back a little brightness to my life."

After he had read the letter, young Barnes sat for some time in a brown

study on the edge of his bed. The letter contained only one more

repetition of counsels that had been dinned into his ears for

months--almost ever since the financial crash which had followed his

father's death, and the crash of another sort, concerning himself, which

had come so quick upon it. His thoughts returned, as they always did at

some hour of the day or night, to the "horrid woman." Yes, that had hit

him hard; the lad's heart still throbbed with bitterness as he thought

of it. He had never felt anything so much; he didn't believe he should

ever mind anything so much again. "I'm not one of your sentimental

sort," he thought, half congratulating himself, half in self-contempt.

But he could not get her out of his head; he wondered if he ever should.

And it had gone pretty far too. By Jove! that night in the

orchard!--when she had kissed him, and thrown her arms round his neck!

And then to write him that letter, when things were at their worst. She

might have done the thing decently. Have treated a fellow kindly at

least. Well, of course, it was all done with. Yes, it _was_. Done with!

He got up and began to pace his small room, his hands in his pockets,

thinking of the night in the orchard. Then gradually the smart lessened,

and his thoughts passed away to other things. That little Yankee girl

had really made good sport all the way home. He had not been dull for a

moment; she had teased and provoked him so. Her eyes, too, were

wonderfully pretty, and her small, pointed chin, and her witch-like

imperious ways. Was it her money, the sense that she could do as she

liked with most people, that made her so domineering and masterful? Very

likely. On the journey he had put it down just to a natural and very

surprising impudence. That was when he believed that she was a teacher,

earning her bread. But the impudence had not prevented him from finding

it much more amusing to talk to her than to anybody else.

And, on the whole, he thought she had not disliked him, though she had

said the rudest things to him, and he had retaliated. She had asked him,

indeed, to join them in an excursion the following day, and to tea at

the Country Club. He had meant, if possible, to go back to New York on

the morrow. But perhaps a day or two longer----

So she had a million--the little sprite? She was and would be a

handful!--with a fortune or without it. And possessed also of the most

extraordinary opinions. But he thought he would go on the excursion, and

to the Country Club. He began to fold his mother's letter, and put it

back into its envelope, while a slight flush mounted in his cheeks, and

the young mouth that was still so boyish and candid took a stiffer line.

CHAPTER III

"Is Miss Floyd at home?"

The questioner was Mrs. Verrier, who had just alighted from her carriage

at the door of the house in Columbia Avenue inhabited by Miss Floyd and

her chaperon.

The maid replied that Miss Floyd had not yet returned, but had left a

message begging Mrs. Verrier to wait for her. The visitor was

accordingly ushered to the drawing-room on the first floor.

This room, the staircase, the maid, all bore witness to Miss Floyd's

simplicity--like the Romney dress of Mount Vernon. The colour of the

walls and the hangings, the lines of the furniture, were all subdued,

even a little austere. Quiet greens and blues, mingled with white,

showed the artistic mind; the chairs and sofas were a trifle stiff and

straight legged; the electric fittings were of a Georgian plainness to

match the Colonial architecture of the house; the beautiful

self-coloured carpet was indeed Persian and costly, but it betrayed its

costliness only to the expert. Altogether, the room, one would have

said, of any _bourse moyenne_, with an eye for beauty. Fine photographs

also, of Italian and Dutch pictures, suggested travel, and struck the

cultivated cosmopolitan note.

Mrs. Verrier looked round it with a smile. It was all as unpretending as

the maid who ushered her upstairs. Daphne would have no men-servants in

her employ. What did two ladies want with them, in a democratic country?

But Mrs. Verrier happened to know that Daphne's maid-servants were just

as costly in their degree as the drawing-room carpet. Chosen for her in

London with great care, attracted to Washington by enormous wages, these

numerous damsels played their part in the general "simplicity" effect;

but on the whole Mrs. Verrier believed that Daphne's household was

rather more expensive than that of other rich people who employed men.

She walked through the room, looking absently at the various photographs

and engravings, till her attention was excited by an easel and a picture

upon it in the back drawing-room. She went up to it with a muttered

exclamation.

"So _she_ bought it! Daphne's amazing!"

For what she saw before her was a masterpiece--an excessively costly

masterpiece--of the Florentine school, smuggled out of Italy, to the

wrath of the Italian Government, some six months before this date, and

since then lost to general knowledge. Rumour had given it first to a

well-known collection at Boston; then to another at Philadelphia; yet

here it was in the possession of a girl of two-and-twenty of whom the

great world was just--but only just--beginning to talk.

"How like Daphne!" thought her friend with malice. The "simple" room,

and the priceless picture carelessly placed in a corner of it, lest any

one should really suppose that Daphne Floyd was an ordinary mortal.

Mrs. Verrier sat down at last in a chair fronting the picture and let

herself fall into a reverie. On this occasion she was dressed in black.

The lace strings of a hat crowned with black ostrich feathers were

fastened under her chin by a diamond that sparkled in the dim greenish

light of the drawing-room; the feathers of the hat were unusually large

and drooping; they curled heavily round the thin neck and long,

hollow-eyed face, so that its ivory whiteness, its fatigue, its fretful

beauty were framed in and emphasized by them; her bloodless hands lay

upon her lap, and the folds of the sweeping dress drawn round her showed

her slenderness, or rather her emaciation. Two years before this date

Madeleine Verrier had been a great beauty, and she had never yet

reconciled herself to physical losses which were but the outward and

visible sign of losses "far more deeply interfused." As she sat

apparently absorbed in thought before the picture, she moved, half

consciously, so that she could no longer see herself in a mirror

opposite.

Yet her thoughts were in truth much engaged with Daphne and Daphne's

proceedings. It was now nearly three weeks since Roger Barnes had

appeared on the horizon. General Hobson had twice postponed his

departure for England, and was still "enduring hardness" in a Washington

hotel. Why his nephew should not be allowed to manage his courtship, if

it was a courtship, for himself, Mrs. Verrier did not understand. There

was no love lost between herself and the General, and she made much mock

of him in her talks with Daphne. However, there he was; and she could

only suppose that he took the situation seriously and felt bound to

watch it in the interests of the young man's absent mother.

Was it serious? Certainly Daphne had been committing herself a good

deal. The question was whether she had not been committing herself more

than the young man had been doing on his side. That was the astonishing

part of it. Mrs. Verrier could not sufficiently admire the skill with

which Roger Barnes had so far played his part; could not sufficiently

ridicule her own lack of insight, which at her first meeting with him

had pronounced him stupid. Stupid he might be in the sense that it was

of no use to expect from him the kind of talk on books, pictures, and

first principles which prevailed in Daphne's circle. But Mrs. Verrier

thought she had seldom come across a finer sense of tactics than young

Barnes had so far displayed in his dealings with Daphne. If he went on

as he had begun, the probability was that he would succeed.

Did she, Madeleine Verrier, wish him to succeed?

Daphne had grown tragically necessary to her, in this world of American

society--in that section of it, at any rate, in which she desired to

move, where the widow of Leopold Verrier was always conscious of the

blowing of a cold and hostile breath. She was not excluded, but she was

not welcome; she was not ostracized, but she had lost consideration.

There had been something picturesque and appealing in her husband;

something unbearably tragic in the manner of his death. She had braved

it out by staying in America, instead of losing herself in foreign

towns; and she had thereby proclaimed that she had no guilty sense of

responsibility, no burden on her conscience; that she had only behaved

as a thousand other women would have behaved, and without any cruel

intention at all. But she knew all the same that the spectators of what

had happened held her for a cruel woman, and that there were many, and

those the best, who saw her come with distaste and go without regret;

and it was under that knowledge, in spite of indomitable pride, that her

beauty had withered in a year.

And at the moment when the smart of what had happened to her--personally

and socially--was at its keenest; when, after a series of quarrels, she

had separated herself from the imperious mother who had been her evil

genius throughout her marriage, she had made friends, unexpectedly,

owing to a chance meeting at a picture-gallery, with Daphne Floyd. Some

element in Daphne's nature had attracted and disarmed her. The proud,

fastidious woman had given the girl her confidence--eagerly,

indiscriminately. She had poured out upon her all that wild philosophy

of "rights" which is still struggling in the modern mind with a

crumbling ethic and a vanishing religion. And she had found in Daphne a

warm and passionate ally. Daphne was nothing if not "advanced." She

shrank, as Roger Barnes had perceived, from no question; she had never

been forbidden, had never forbidden herself, any book that she had a

fancy to read; and she was as ready to discuss the relative divorce laws

of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, as the girls of fifty years ago were

to talk of the fashions, or "Evangeline." In any disputed case,

moreover, between a man and a woman, Daphne was hotly and instinctively

on the side of the woman. She had thrown herself, therefore, with ardour

into the defence of Mrs. Verrier; and for her it was not the wife's

desertion, but the husband's suicide which had been the cruel and

indefensible thing. All these various traits and liberalisms had made

her very dear to Madeleine Verrier.

Now, as that lady sat in her usual drooping attitude, wondering what

Washington would be like for her when even Daphne Floyd was gone from

it, the afternoon sun stole through the curtains of the window on the

street and touched some of the furniture and engravings in the inner

drawing-room. Suddenly Mrs. Verrier started in her chair. A face had

emerged thrown out upon the shadows by the sun-finger--the countenance

of a handsome young Jew, as Rembrandt had once conceived it. Rare and

high intelligence, melancholy, and premonition:--they were there

embodied, so long as the apparition lasted.

The effect on Mrs. Verrier was apparently profound. She closed her eyes;

her lips quivered; she leaned back feebly in her chair, breathing a

name. The crisis lasted a few minutes, while the momentary vision faded

and the sun-light crept on. The eyelids unclosed at last, slowly and

painfully, as though shrinking from what might greet the eyes beneath

them. But the farther wall was now in deep shade. Mrs. Verrier sat up;

the emotion which had mastered her like a possession passed away; and

rising hurriedly, she went back to the front drawing-room. She had

hardly reached it when Miss Floyd's voice was heard upon the stairs.

Daphne entered the room in what appeared to be a fit of irritation. She

was scolding the parlour-maid, whose high colour and dignified silence

proclaimed her both blameless and long-suffering. At the sight of Mrs.

Verrier Daphne checked herself with an effort and kissed her friend

rather absently.

"Dear Madeleine!--very good of you to wait. Have they given you tea? I

suppose not. My household seems to have gone mad this afternoon. Sit

down. Some tea, Blount, at once."

Mrs. Verrier sank into a corner of the sofa, while Daphne, with an

"ouf!" of fatigue, took off her hat, and threw herself down at the other

end, her small feet curled up beneath her. Her half-frowning eyes gave

the impression that she was still out of temper and on edge.

"Where have you been?" asked her companion quietly.

"Listening to a stuffy debate in the Senate," said Daphne without a

smile.

"The Senate. What on earth took you there?"

"Well, why shouldn't I go?--why does one do anything? It was just a

debate--horribly dull--trusts, or something of that kind. But there was

a man attacking the President--and the place was crowded. Ugh! the heat

was intolerable!"

"Who took you?"

Daphne named an under-secretary--an agreeable and ambitious man, who had

been very much in her train during the preceding winter, and until Roger

Barnes appeared upon the scene.

"I thought until I got your message that you were going to take Mr.

Barnes motoring up the river."

"Mr. Barnes was engaged." Daphne gave the information tersely, rousing

herself afterwards to make tea, which appeared at that moment.

"He seems to have been a good deal engaged this week," said Mrs.

Verrier, when they were alone again.

Daphne made no reply. And Mrs. Verrier, after observing her for a

moment, resumed:

"I suppose it was the Bostonians?"

"I suppose so. What does it matter?" The tone was dry and sharp.

"Daphne, you goose!" laughed Mrs. Verrier, "I believe this is the very

first invitation of theirs he has accepted at all. He was written to

about them by an old friend--his Eton master, or somebody of that sort.

And as they turned up here on a visit, instead of his having to go and

look for them at Boston, of course he had to call upon them."

"I dare say. And of course he had to go to tea with them yesterday, and

he had to take them to Arlington this afternoon! I suppose I'd better

tell you--we had a quarrel on the subject last night."

"Daphne!--don't, for heaven's sake, make him think himself too

important!" cried Mrs. Verrier.

Daphne, with both elbows on the table, was slowly crunching a morsel of

toast in her small white teeth. She had a look of concentrated

energy--as of a person charged and overcharged with force of some kind,

impatient to be let loose. Her black eyes sparkled; impetuosity and will

shone from them; although they showed also rims of fatigue, as if Miss

Daphne's nights had not of late been all they should be. Mrs. Verrier

was chiefly struck, however, by the perception that for the first time

Daphne was not having altogether her own way with the world. Madeleine

had not observed anything of the same kind in her before. In general she

was in entire command both of herself and of the men who surrounded her.

She made a little court out of them, and treated them _en despote_. But

Roger Barnes had not lent himself to the process; he had not played the

game properly; and Daphne's sleep had been disturbed for the first time

in history.

It had been admitted very soon between the two friends--without putting

it very precisely--that Daphne was interested in Roger Barnes. Mrs.

Verrier believed that the girl had been originally carried off her feet

by the young man's superb good looks, and by the natural

distinction--evident in all societies--which they conferred upon him.

Then, no doubt, she had been piqued by his good-humoured, easy way--the

absence of any doubt of himself, of tremor, of insistence. Mrs. Verrier

said to herself--not altogether shrewdly--that he had no nerves, or no

heart; and Daphne had not yet come across the genus. Her lovers had

either possessed too much heart--like Captain Boyson--or a lack of

coolness, when it really came to the point of grappling with Daphne and

her millions, as in the case of a dozen she could name. Whereby it had

come about that Daphne's attention had been first provoked, then

peremptorily seized by the Englishman; and Mrs. Verrier began now to

suspect that deeper things were really involved.

Certainly there was a good deal to puzzle the spectator. That the

English are a fortune-hunting race may be a popular axiom; but it was

quite possible, after all, that Roger Barnes was not the latest

illustration of it. It was quite possible, also, that he had a

sweet-heart at home, some quiet, Quakerish girl who would never wave in

his face the red flags that Daphne was fond of brandishing. It was

equally possible that he was merely fooling with Daphne--that he had

seen girls he liked better in New York, and was simply killing time till

a sportsman friend of whom he talked should appear on the scene and take

him off to shoot moose and catch trout in the province of Quebec. Mrs.

Verrier realized that, for all his lack of subtlety and the higher

conversation, young Barnes had managed astonishingly to keep his

counsel. His "simplicity," like Daphne's, seemed to be of a special

type.

And yet--there was no doubt that he had devoted himself a great deal.

Washington society had quickly found him out; he had been invited to all

the most fastidious houses, and was immensely in request for picnics and

expeditions. But he had contrived, on the whole, to make all these

opportunities promote the flirtation with Daphne. He had, in fact, been

enough at her beck and call to make her the envy of a young society with

whom the splendid Englishman promised to become the rage, and not enough

to silence or wholly discourage other claimants on his time.

This no doubt accounted for the fact that the two charming Bostonians,

Mrs. Maddison and her daughter, who had but lately arrived in Washington

and made acquaintance with Roger Barnes, were still evidently in

ignorance of what was going on. They were not initiated. They had

invited young Barnes in the innocence of their hearts, without inviting

Daphne Floyd, whom they did not previously know. And the young man had

seen fit to accept their invitation. Hence the jealousy that was clearly

burning in Daphne, that she was not indeed even trying to hide from the

shrewd eyes of her friend.

Mrs. Verrier's advice not to make Roger Barnes "too important" had

called up a flash of colour in the girl's cheeks. But she did not resent

it in words; rather her silence deepened, till Mrs. Verrier stretched

out a hand and laughingly turned the small face towards her that she

might see what was in it.

"Daphne! I really believe you're in love with him!"

"Not at all," said Daphne, her eyelids flickering; "I never know what to

talk to him about."

"As if that mattered!"

"Elsie Maddison always knows what to talk to him about, and he chatters

to her the whole time."

Mrs. Verrier paused a moment, then said: "Do you suppose he came to

America to marry money?"

"I haven't an idea."

"Do you suppose he knows that you--are not exactly a pauper?"

Daphne drew herself away impatiently. "I really don't suppose anything,

Madeleine. He never talks about money, and I should think he had plenty

himself."

Mrs. Verrier replied by giving an outline of the financial misfortunes

of Mr. Barnes _père_, as they had been described to her by another

English traveller in Washington.

Daphne listened indifferently. "He can't be very poor or he wouldn't

behave as he does. And he is to inherit the General's property. He told

me so."

"And it wouldn't matter to you, Daphne, if you did think a man had

married you for money?"

Daphne had risen, and was pacing the drawing-room floor, her hands

clasped behind her back. She turned a cloudy face upon her questioner.

"It would matter a great deal, if I thought it had been only for money.

But then, I hope I shouldn't have been such a fool as to marry him."

"But you could bear it, if the money counted for something?"

"I'm not an idiot!" said the girl, with energy. "With whom doesn't money

count for something? Of course a man must take money into

consideration." There was a curious touch of arrogance in the gesture

which accompanied the words.

"'How pleasant it is to have money, heigh-ho!--How pleasant it is to

have money,'" said Mrs. Verrier, quoting, with a laugh. "Yes, I dare

say, you'd be very reasonable, Daphne, about that kind of thing. But I

don't think you'd be a comfortable wife, dear, all the same."

"What do you mean?"

"You might allow your husband to spare a little love to your money; you

would be for killing him if he ever looked at another woman!"

"You mean I should be jealous?" asked Daphne, almost with violence. "You

are quite right there. I should be very jealous. On that point I should

'find quarrel in a straw.'"

Her cheeks had flushed a passionate red. The eyes which she had

inherited from her Spanish grandmother blazed above them. She had become

suddenly a woman of Andalusia and the South, moved by certain primitive

forces in the blood.

Madeleine Verrier held out her hands, smiling.

"Come here, little wild cat. I believe you are jealous of Elsie

Maddison."

Daphne approached her slowly, and slowly dropped into a seat beside her

friend, her eyes still fixed and splendid. But as she looked into them

Madeleine Verrier saw them suddenly dimmed.

"Daphne! you _are_ in love with him!"

The girl recovered herself, clenching her small hands. "If I am," she

said resolutely, "it is strange how like the other thing it is! I don't

know whether I shall speak to him to-night."

"To-night?" Mrs. Verrier looked a little puzzled.

"At the White House. You're going, of course."

"No, I am not going." The voice was quiet and cold. "I am not asked."

Daphne, vexed with herself, touched her friend's hand caressingly. "It

will be just a crush, dear. But I promised various people to go."

"And he will be there?"

"I suppose so." Daphne turned her head away, and then sprang up. "Have

you seen the picture?"

Mrs. Verrier followed her into the inner room, where the girl gave a

laughing and triumphant account of her acquisition, the agents she had

employed, the skill with which it had been conveyed out of Italy, the

wrath of various famous collectors, who had imagined that the fight lay

between them alone, when they found the prize had been ravished from

them. Madeleine Verrier was very intelligent, and the contrast, which

the story brought out, between the girl's fragile youth and the strange

and passionate sense of power which breathed from her whenever it became

a question of wealth and the use of it, was at no point lost upon her

companion.

Daphne would not allow any further talk of Roger Barnes. Her chaperon,

Mrs. Phillips, presently appeared, and passed through rather a bad

quarter of an hour while the imperious mistress of the house inquired

into certain invitations and card-leavings that had not been managed to

her liking. Then Daphne sat down to write a letter to a Girls' Club in

New York, of which she was President--where, in fact, she occasionally

took the Singing Class, with which she had made so much play at her

first meeting with Roger Barnes. She had to tell them that she had just

engaged a holiday house for them, to which they might go in instalments

throughout the summer. She would pay the rent, provide a

lady-superintendent, and make herself responsible for all but food

expenses. Her small face relaxed--became quite soft and charming--as she

wrote.

"But, my dear," cried Mrs. Phillips in dismay, as Daphne handed her the

letter to read, "you have taken the house on Lake George, and you know

the girls had all set their hearts on that place in the White

Mountains!"

Daphne's lips tightened. "Certainly I have taken the house on Lake

George," she said, as she carefully wiped her pen. "I told them I

should."

"But, my dear, they are so tired of Lake George! They have been there

three years running. And you know they subscribe a good deal

themselves."

"Very well!--then let them do without my help. I have inquired into the

matter. The house on Lake George is much more suitable than the White

Mountains farm, and I have written to the agent. The thing's done."

Mrs. Phillips argued a little more, but Daphne was immovable.

Mrs. Verrier, watching the two, reflected, as she had often done before,

that Mrs. Phillips's post was not particularly enviable. Daphne treated

her in many ways with great generosity, paid her highly, grudged her no

luxury, and was always courteous to her in public. But in private

Daphne's will was law, and she had an abrupt and dictatorial way of

asserting it that brought the red back into Mrs. Phillips's faded

cheeks. Mrs. Verrier had often expected her to throw up her post. But

there was no doubt something in Daphne's personality which made life

beside her too full of colour to be lightly abandoned.

* * * * *

Daphne presently went upstairs to take off her walking-dress, and Mrs.

Phillips, with a rather troubled face, began to tidy the confusion of

letters she had left behind her.

"I dare say the girls won't mind," said Madeleine Verrier, kindly.

Mrs. Phillips started, and her mild lips quivered a little. Daphne's

charities were for Daphne an amusement; for this gentle, faded woman,

who bore all the drudgery of them, they were the chief attraction of

life in Daphne's house. Mrs. Phillips loved the club-girls, and the

thought of their disappointment pained her.

"I must try and put it to them," was her patient reply.

"Daphne must always have her way," Madeleine went on, smiling. "I wonder

what she'll do when she marries."

Mrs. Phillips looked up quickly.

"I hope it'll be the right man, Mrs. Verrier. Of course, with anyone

so--so clever--and so used to managing everything for herself--one would

be a little anxious."

Mrs. Verrier's expression changed. A kind of

wildness--fanaticism--invaded it, as of one recalling a mission. "Oh,

well, nothing is irrevocable nowadays," she said, almost with violence.

"Still I hope Daphne won't make a mistake."

Mrs. Phillips looked at her companion, at first in astonishment. Then a

change passed over her face. With a cold excuse she left Mrs. Verrier

alone.

CHAPTER IV

The reception at the White House was being given in honour of the

delegates to a Peace Congress. The rooms were full without being

inconveniently crowded and the charming house opened its friendly doors

to a society more congruous and organic, richer also in the nobler kind

of variety than America, perhaps, can offer to her guests elsewhere.

What the opera and international finance are to New York, politics and

administration are, as we all know, to Washington. And the visitor

from Europe, conversationally starved for want of what seem to him

the only topics worth discussing, finds himself within hearing once

more of ministers, cabinets, embassies, and parliamentary gossip.

Even General Hobson had come to admit that--especially for the

middle-aged--Washington parties were extremely agreeable. The young and

foolish might sigh for the flesh-pots of New York; those on whom "the

black ox had trodden," who were at all aware what a vast tormenting,

multitudinous, and headstrong world man has been given to inhabit; those

who were engaged in governing any part of that world, or meant some day

to be thus engaged; for them Washington was indispensable, and New York

a mere entertainment.

Moreover Washington, at this time of the world's history, was the scene

of one of those episodes--those brisker moments in the human

comedy--which every now and then revive among us an almost forgotten

belief in personality, an almost forgotten respect for the mysteries

behind it. The guests streaming through the White House defiled past a

man who, in a level and docketed world, appeared to his generation as

the reincarnation of forces primitive, over-mastering, and heroic. An

honest Odysseus!--toil-worn and storm-beaten, yet still with the spirit

and strength, the many devices, of a boy; capable like his prototype in

one short day of crushing his enemies, upholding his friends, purifying

his house; and then, with the heat of righteous battle still upon him,

with its gore, so to speak, still upon his hands, of turning his mind,

without a pause and without hypocrisy, to things intimate and soft and

pure--the domestic sweetness of Penelope, the young promise of

Telemachus. The President stood, a rugged figure, amid the cosmopolitan

crowd, breasting the modern world, like some ocean headland, yet not

truly of it, one of the great fighters and workers of mankind, with a

laugh that pealed above the noise, blue eyes that seemed to pursue some

converse of their own, and a hand that grasped and cheered, where other

hands withdrew and repelled. This one man's will had now, for some

years, made the pivot on which vast issues turned--issues of peace and

war, of policy embracing the civilized world; and, here, one saw him in

drawing-rooms, discussing Alaric's campaigns with an Oxford professor,

or chatting with a young mother about her children.

Beside him, the human waves, as they met and parted, disclosed a woman's

face, modelled by nature in one of her lightest and deftest moods, a

trifle detached, humorous also, as though the world's strange sights

stirred a gentle and kindly mirth behind its sweet composure. The

dignity of the President's wife was complete, yet it had not

extinguished the personality it clothed; and where royalty, as the

European knows it, would have donned its mask and stood on its defence,

Republican royalty dared to be its amused, confiding, natural self.

All around--the political, diplomatic world of Washington. General

Hobson, as he passed through it, greeted by what was now a large

acquaintance, found himself driven once more to the inward

confession--the grudging confession--as though Providence had not played

him fair in extorting it--that American politicians were of a vastly

finer stamp than he had expected to find them. The American press was

all--he vowed--that fancy had painted it, and more. But, as he looked

about him at the members of the President's administration--at this

tall, black-haired man, for instance, with the mild and meditative eye,

the equal, social or intellectual, of any Foreign Minister that Europe

might pit against him, or any diplomat that might be sent to handle him;

or this younger man, sparely built, with the sane, handsome face--son of

a famous father, modest, amiable, efficient; or this other, of huge bulk

and height, the sport of caricature, the hope of a party, smiling

already a presidential smile as he passed, observed and beset, through

the crowded rooms; or these naval or military men, with their hard

serviceable looks, and the curt good manners of their kind:--the General

saw as clearly as anybody else, that America need make no excuses

whatever for her best men, that she has evolved the leaders she wants,

and Europe has nothing to teach them.

He could only console himself by the remembrance of a speech, made by a

well-known man, at a military function which the General had attended as

a guest of honour the day before. There at last was the real thing! The

real, Yankee, spread-eagle thing! The General positively hugged the

thought of it.

"The American soldier," said the speaker, standing among the

ambassadors, the naval and military _attachés_, of all the European

nations, "is the superior of all other soldiers in three

respects--bravery, discipline, intelligence."

_Bravery, discipline, intelligence!_ Just those--the merest trifle! The

General had found himself chuckling over it in the visions of the night.

Tired at last of these various impressions, acting on a mind not quite

alert enough to deal with them, the General went in search of his

nephew. Roger had been absent all day, and the General had left the

hotel before his return. But the uncle was sure that he would sooner or

later put in an appearance.

It was of course entirely on Roger's account that this unwilling guest

of America was her guest still. For three weeks now had the General been

watching the affair between Roger and Daphne Floyd. It had gone with

such a rush at first, such a swing and fervour, that the General had

felt that any day might bring the _dénouement_. It was really impossible

to desert the lad at such a crisis, especially as Laura was so excitable

and anxious, and so sure to make her brother pay for it if he failed to

support her views and ambitions at the right moment. The General

moreover felt the absolute necessity of getting to know something more

about Miss Floyd, her character, the details of her fortune and

antecedents, so that when the great moment came he might be prepared.

But the astonishing thing was that of late the whole affair seemed to

have come to some stupid hitch! Roger had been behaving like a very cool

hand--too cool by half in the General's opinion. What the deuce did he

mean by hanging about these Boston ladies, if his affections were really

fixed on Miss Daphne?--or his ambitions, which to the uncle seemed

nearer the truth.

"Well, where is the nephew?" said Cecilia Boyson's voice in his ear.

The General turned. He saw a sharp, though still young face, a thin and

willowy figure, attired in white silk, a _pince-nez_ on the high-pitched

nose, and a cool smile. Unconsciously his back stiffened. Miss Boyson

invariably roused in him a certain masculine antagonism.

"I should be glad if you would tell me," he said, with some formality.

"There are two or three people here to whom he should be introduced."

"Has he been picnicking with the Maddisons?" The voice was shrill,

perhaps malicious.

"I believe they took him to Arlington, and somewhere else afterwards."

"Ah," said Cecilia, "there they are."

The General looked towards the door and saw his nephew enter, behind a

mother and daughter whom, as it seemed to him, their acquaintances in

the crowd around them greeted with a peculiar cordiality; the mother,

still young, with a stag-like carriage of the head, a long throat,

swathed in white tulle, and grizzled hair, on which shone a spray of

diamonds; the daughter, equally tall and straight, repeating her

mother's beauty with a bloom and radiance of her own. Innocent and

happy, with dark eyes and a soft mouth, Miss Maddison dropped a little

curtsey to the presidential pair, and the room turned to look at her as

she did so.

"A very sweet-looking girl," said the General warmly. "Her father is, I

think, a professor."

"He was. He is now just a writer of books. But Elsie was brought up in

Cambridge. How did Mr. Roger know them?"

"His Eton tutor told him to go and see them."

"I thought Miss Floyd expected him to-day?" said Miss Boyson carelessly,

adjusting her eyeglass.

"It was a mistake, a misunderstanding," replied the General hurriedly.

"Miss Floyd's party is put off till next week."

"Daphne is just coming in," said Miss Boyson.

The General turned again. The watchful Cecilia was certain that _he_ was

not in love with Daphne. But the nephew--the inordinately handsome, and

by now much-courted young man--what was the real truth about him?

Cecilia recognized--with Mrs. Verrier--that merely to put the question

involved a certain tribute to young Barnes. He had at any rate done his

fortune-hunting, if fortune-hunting it were, with decorum.

"Miss Floyd is looking well to-night," remarked the General.

Cecilia did not reply. She and a great part of the room were engaged in

watching Roger Barnes and Miss Maddison walking together through a space

which seemed to have been cleared on purpose for them, but was really

the result of a move towards the supper-room.

"Was there ever such a pair?" said an enthusiastic voice behind the

General. "Athene and Apollo take the floor!" A gray-haired journalist

with a small, bewrinkled face, buried in whiskers, and beard, laid a

hand on the General's arm as he spoke.

The General smiled vaguely. "Do you know Mrs. and Miss Maddison?"

"Rather!" said the little man. "Miss Elsie's a wonder! As pretty and

soft as they make them, and a Greek scholar besides--took all sorts of

honours at Radcliffe last year. I've known her from her cradle."

"What a number of your girls go to college!" said the General, but

ungraciously, in the tones of one who no sooner saw an American custom

emerging than his instinct was to hit it.

"Yes; it's a feature of our modern life--the life of our women. But not

the most significant one, by a long way."

The General could not help a look of inquiry.

The journalist's face changed from gay to grave. "The most significant

thing in American life just now----"

"I know!" interrupted the General. "Your divorce laws!"

The journalist shook his head. "It goes deeper than that. What we're

looking on at is a complete transformation of the idea of marriage----"

A movement in the crowd bore the speaker away. The General was left

watching the beautiful pair in the distance. They were apparently quite

unconscious that they roused any special attention. Laughing and

chatting like two children, they passed into the supper-room and

disappeared.

Ten minutes later, in the supper-room, Barnes deserted the two ladies

with whom he had entered, and went in pursuit of a girl in white, whose

necklace of star sapphires, set in a Spanish setting of the seventeenth

century, had at once caught the eye of the judicious. Roger, however,

knew nothing of jewels, and was only conscious as he approached Miss

Floyd, first of the mingling in his own mind of something like

embarrassment with something like defiance, and then, of the glitter in

the girl's dark eyes.

"I hope you had an interesting debate," he said. "Mrs. Phillips tells me

you went to the Senate."

Daphne looked him up and down. "Did I?" she said slowly. "I've

forgotten. Will you move, please? There's someone bringing me an ice."

And turning her back on Roger, she smiled and beckoned to the

Under-Secretary, who with a triumphant face was making his way to her

through the crowd.

Roger coloured hotly. "May I bring Mrs. Maddison?" he said, passing her;

"she would like to talk to you about a party for next week----"

"Thank you. I am just going home." And with an energetic movement she

freed herself from him, and was soon in the gayest of talk with the

Under-Secretary.

* * * * *

The reception broke up some time after midnight, and on the way home

General Hobson attempted a raid upon his nephew's intentions.

"I don't wish to seem an intrusive person, my dear Roger, but may I ask

how much longer you mean to stay in Washington?"

The tone was short and the look which accompanied the words not without

sarcasm. Roger, who had been walking beside his companion, still deeply

flushed, in complete silence, gave an awkward laugh.

"And as for you, Uncle Archie, I thought you meant to sail a fortnight

ago. If you've been staying on like this on my account----"

"Don't make a fool either of me or yourself, Roger!" said the General

hastily, roused at last to speech by the annoyance of the situation. "Of

course it was on your account that I have stayed on. But what on earth

it all means, and where your affairs are--I'm hanged if I have the

glimmer of an idea!"

Roger's smile was perfectly good-humoured.

"I haven't much myself," he said quietly.

"Do you--or do you not--mean to propose to Miss Floyd?" cried the

General, pausing in the centre of Lafayette Square, now all but

deserted, and apostrophizing with his umbrella--for the night was soft

and rainy--the presidential statue above his head.

"Have I given you reason to suppose that I was going to do so?" said

Roger slowly.

"Given me?--given everybody reason?--of course you have!--a dozen times

over. I don't like interfering with your affairs, Roger--with any young

man's affairs--but you must know that you have set Washington talking,

and it's not fair to a girl--by George it isn't!--when she has given you

encouragement and you have made her conspicuous, to begin the same

story, in the same place, immediately, with someone else! As you say, I

ought to have taken myself off long ago."

"I didn't say anything of the kind," said Roger hotly; "you shouldn't

put words into my mouth, Uncle Archie. And I really don't see why you

attack me like this. My tutor particularly asked me, if I came across

them, to be civil to Mrs. Maddison and her daughter, and I have done

nothing but pay them the most ordinary attentions."

"When a man is in love he pays no ordinary attentions. He has eyes for

no one but the lady." The General's umbrella, as it descended from the

face of Andrew Jackson and rattled on the flagged path, supplied each

word with emphasis. "However, it is no good talking, and I don't exactly

know why I should put my old oar in. But the fact is I feel a certain

responsibility. People here have been uncommonly civil. Well,

well!--I've wired to-day to ask if there is a berth left in the

_Venetia_ for Saturday. And you, I suppose"--the inquiry was somewhat

peremptory--"will be going back to New York?"

"I have no intention of leaving Washington just yet," said Roger, with

decision.

"And may I ask what you intend to do here?"

Roger laughed. "I really think that's my business. However, you've been

an awful brick, Uncle Archie, to stay on like this. I assure you, if I

don't say much, I think it."

By this time they had reached the hotel, the steps and hall of which

were full of people.

"That's how you put me off." The General's tone was resentful. "And you

won't give me any idea of the line I am to take with your mother?"

The young man smiled again and waved an evasive hand.

"If you'll only be patient a little longer, Uncle Archie----"

At this point an acquaintance of the General's who was smoking in the

hall came forward to greet him, and Roger made his escape.

* * * * *

"Well, what the deuce _do_ I mean to do?" Barnes asked himself the

question deliberately. He was hanging out of the window, in his bedroom,

smoking and pondering.

It was a mild and rainy night. Washington was full of the earth and leaf

odours of the spring, which rose in gusts from its trees and gardens;

and rugged, swiftly moving clouds disclosed every now and then what

looked like hurrying stars.

The young man was excited and on edge. Daphne Floyd--and the thought of

Daphne Floyd--had set his pulses hammering; they challenged in him the

aggressive, self-assertive, masculine force. The history of the

preceding three weeks was far from simple. He had first paid a

determined court to her, conducting it in an orthodox, English,

conspicuous way. His mother, and her necessities--his own also--imposed

it on him; and he flung himself into it, setting his teeth. Then, to his

astonishment, one may almost say to his disconcerting, he found the prey

all at once, and, as it were, without a struggle, fluttering to his

lure, and practically within his grasp. There was an evening when

Daphne's sudden softness, the look in her eyes, the inflection in her

voice had fairly thrown him off his balance. For the first time he had

shown a lack of self-command and self-possession. Whereupon, in a flash,

a new and strange Daphne had developed--imperious, difficult,

incalculable. The more he gave, the more she claimed. Nor was it mere

girlish caprice. The young Englishman, invited to a game that he had

never yet played, felt in it something sinister and bewildering.

Gropingly, he divined in front of him a future of tyranny on her side,

of expected submission on his. The Northern character in him, with its

reserve, its phlegm, its general sanity, began to shrink from the

Southern elements in her. He became aware of the depths in her nature,

of things volcanic and primitive, and the English stuff in him recoiled.

So he was to be bitted and bridled, it seemed, in the future. Daphne

Floyd would have bought him with her dollars, and he would have to pay

the price.

Something natural and wild in him said No! If he married this girl he

would be master, in spite of her money. He realized vaguely, at any

rate, the strength of her will, and the way in which it had been

tempered and steeled by circumstance. But the perception only roused in

himself some slumbering tenacities and vehemences of which he had been

scarcely aware. So that, almost immediately--since there was no glamour

of passion on his side--he began to resent her small tyrannies, to draw

in, and draw back. A few quarrels--not ordinary lovers' quarrels, but

representing a true grapple of personalities--sprang up behind a screen

of trifles. Daphne was once more rude and provoking, Roger cool and

apparently indifferent. This was the stage when Mrs. Verrier had become

an admiring observer of what she supposed to be his "tactics." But she

knew nothing of the curious little crisis which had preceded them.

Then the Maddisons, mother and daughter, "my tutor's friends," had

appeared upon the scene--charming people! Of course civilities were due

to them, and had to be paid them. Next to his mother--and to the girl of

the orchard--the affections of this youth, who was morally backward and

immature, but neither callous nor fundamentally selfish, had been

chiefly given to a certain Eton master, of a type happily not uncommon

in English public schools. Herbert French had been Roger's earliest and

best friend. What Roger had owed him at school, only he knew. Since

school-days they had been constant correspondents, and French's

influence on his pupil's early manhood had done much, for all Roger's

laziness and self-indulgence, to keep him from serious lapses.

Neglect any friends of his--and such jolly friends? Rather not! But as

soon as Daphne had seen Elsie Maddison, and he had begged an afternoon

to go on an expedition with them, Daphne had become intolerable. She had

shown her English friend and his acquaintances a manner so insulting and

provocative, that the young man's blood had boiled.

If he were in love with her--well and good! She might no doubt have

tamed him by these stripes. But she was no goddess to him; no golden

cloud enveloped her; he saw her under a common daylight. At the same

time she attracted him; he was vain of what had seemed his conquest, and

uneasily exultant in the thought of her immense fortune. "I'll make her

an excellent husband if she marries me," he said to himself stubbornly;

"I can, and I will."

But meanwhile how was this first stage to end? At the White House that

night Daphne had treated him with contumely, and before spectators. He

must either go or bring her to the point.

He withdrew suddenly from the window, flinging out the end of his

cigarette. "I'll propose to her to-morrow--and she may either take me or

leave me!"

He paced up and down his room, conscious of relief and fresh energy. As

he did so his eyes were drawn to a letter from Herbert French lying on

the table. He took it up and read it again--smiling over it broadly, in

a boyish and kindly amusement. "By Jove! he's happy."

Then as he put it down his face darkened. There was something in the

letter, in its manliness and humour, its unconscious revelation of

ideals wholly independent of dollars, that made Roger for the moment

loathe his own position. But he pulled himself together.

"I shall make her a good husband," he repeated, frowning. "She'll have

nothing to complain of."

* * * * *

On the following day a picnic among the woods of the Upper Potomac

brought together most of the personages in this history. The day was

beautiful, the woods fragrant with spring leaf and blossom, and the

stream, swollen with rain, ran seaward in a turbid, rejoicing strength.

The General, having secured his passage home, was in good spirits as far

as his own affairs were concerned, though still irritable on the score

of his nephew's. Since the abortive attempt on his confidence of the

night before, Roger had avoided all private conversation with his uncle;

and for once the old had to learn patience from the young.

The party was given by the wife of one of the staff of the French

Embassy--a young Frenchwoman, as gay and frank as her babies, and

possessed, none the less, of all the social arts of her nation. She had

taken a shrewd interest in the matter of Daphne Floyd and the

Englishman. Daphne, according to her, should be promptly married and her

millions taken care of, and the handsome, broad-shouldered fellow

impressed the little Frenchwoman's imagination as a proper and capable

watchdog. She had indeed become aware that something was wrong, but her

acuteness entirely refused to believe that it had any vital connection

with the advent of pretty Elsie Maddison. Meanwhile, to please Daphne,

whom she liked, while conscious of a strong and frequent desire to smite

her, Madame de Fronsac had invited Mrs. Verrier, treating her with a

cold and punctilious courtesy that, as applied to any other guest, would

have seemed an affront.

In vain, however, did the hostess, in vain did other kindly bystanders,

endeavour to play the game of Daphne Floyd. In the first place Daphne

herself, though piped unto, refused to dance. She avoided the society of

Roger Barnes in a pointed and public way, bright colour on her cheeks

and a wild light in her eyes; the Under-Secretary escorted her and

carried her wrap. Washington did not know what to think. For owing to

this conduct of Daphne's, the charming Boston girl, the other _ingénue_

of the party, fell constantly to the care of young Barnes; and to see

them stepping along the green ways together, matched almost in height,

and clearly of the same English ancestry and race, pleased while it

puzzled the spectators.

The party lunched in a little inn beside the river, and then scattered

again along woodland paths. Daphne and the Under-Secretary wandered on

ahead and were some distance from the rest of the party when that

gentleman suddenly looked at his watch in dismay. An appointment had to

be kept with the President at a certain hour, and the Under-Secretary's

wits had been wandering. There was nothing for it but to take a short

cut through the woods to a local station and make at once for

Washington.

Daphne quickened his uneasiness and hastened his departure. She assured

him that the others were close behind, and that nothing could suit her

better than to rest on a mossy stone that happily presented itself till

they arrived.

The Under-Secretary, transformed into the anxious and ambitious

politician, abruptly left her.

Daphne, as soon as he was gone, allowed herself the natural attitude

that fitted her thoughts. She was furiously in love and torn with

jealousy; and that love and jealousy could smart so, and cling so, was a

strange revelation to one accustomed to make a world entirely to her

liking. Her dark eyes were hollow, her small mouth had lost its colour,

and she showed that touch of something wasting and withering that

Theocritan shepherds knew in old Sicilian days. It was as though she had

defied a god--and the god had avenged himself.

Suddenly he appeared--the teasing divinity--in human shape. There was a

rustling among the brushwood fringing the river. Roger Barnes emerged

and made his way up towards her.

"I've been stalking you all this time," he said, breathless, as he

reached her, "and now at last--I've caught you!"

Daphne rose furiously. "What right have you to stalk me, as you call

it--to follow me--to speak to me even? I wish to avoid you--and I have

shown it!"

Roger looked at her. He had thrown down his hat, and she saw him against

the background of sunny wood, as the magnificent embodiment of its youth

and force. "And why have you shown it?" There was a warning tremor of

excitement in his voice. "What have I done? I haven't deserved it! You

treat me like--like a friend!--and then you drop me like a hot coal.

You've been awfully unkind to me!"

"I won't discuss it with you," she cried passionately. "You are in my

way, Mr. Barnes. Let me go back to the others!" And stretching out a

small hand, she tried to put him aside.

Roger hesitated, but only for a moment. He caught the hand, he gathered

its owner into a pair of strong arms, and bending over her, he kissed

her. Daphne, suffocated with anger and emotion, broke from

him--tottering. Then sinking on the ground beneath a tree, she burst

into sobbing. Roger, scarlet, with sparkling eyes, dropped on one knee

beside her.

[Illustration: "He caught the hand, he gathered its owner into a pair of

strong arms, and bending over her, he kissed her"]

"Daphne, I'm a ruffian! forgive me! you must, Daphne! Look here, I want

you to marry me. I've nothing to offer you, of course; I'm a poor man,

and you've all this horrible money! But I--I love you!--and I'll make

you a good husband, Daphne, that I'll swear. If you'll take me, you

shall never be sorry for it."

He looked at her again, sorely embarrassed, hating himself, yet inwardly

sure of her. Her small frame shook with weeping. And presently she

turned from him and said in a fierce voice:

"Go and tell all that to Elsie Maddison!"

Infinitely relieved, Roger gave a quick, excited laugh.

"She'd soon send me about my business! I should be a day too late for

the fair, in _that_ quarter. What do you think she and I have been

talking about all this time, Daphne?"

"I don't care," said Daphne hastily, with face still averted.

"I'm going to tell you, all the same," cried Roger triumphantly, and

diving into his coat pocket he produced "my tutor's letter." Daphne sat

immovable, and he had to read it aloud himself. It contained the

rapturous account of Herbert French's engagement to Miss Maddison, a

happy event which had taken place in England during the Eton holidays,

about a month before this date.

"There!" cried the young man as he finished it. "And she's talked about

nothing all the time, nothing at all--but old Herbert--and how good he

is--and how good-looking, and the Lord knows what! I got precious sick

of it, though I think he's a trump, too. Oh, Daphne!--you were a little

fool!"

"All the same, you have behaved abominably!" Daphne said, still choking.

"No, I haven't," was Roger's firm reply. "It was you who were so cross.

I couldn't tell you anything. I say! you do know how to stick pins into

people!"

But he took up her hand and kissed it as he spoke.

Daphne allowed it. Her breast heaved as the storm departed. And she

looked so charming, so soft, so desirable, as she sat there in her white

dress, with her great tear-washed eyes and fluttering breath, that the

youth was really touched and carried off his feet; and the rest of his

task was quite easy. All the familiar things that had to be said were

said, and with all the proper emphasis and spirit. He played his part,

the spring woods played theirs, and Daphne, worn out by emotion and

conquered by passion, gradually betrayed herself wholly. And so much at

least may be said to the man's credit that there were certainly moments

in the half-hour between them when, amid the rush of talk, laughter, and

caresses, that conscience which he owed so greatly to the exertions of

"my tutor" pricked him not a little.

After losing themselves deliberately in the woods, they strolled back to

join the rest of the party. The sounds of conversation were already

audible through the trees in front of them, when they saw Mrs. Verrier

coming towards them. She was walking alone and did not perceive them.

Her eyes were raised and fixed, as though on some sight in front of

them. The bitterness, the anguish, one might almost call it, of her

expression, the horror in the eyes, as of one ghost-led, ghost-driven,

drew an exclamation from Roger.

"There's Mrs. Verrier! Why, how ill she looks!"

Daphne paused, gazed, and shrank. She drew him aside through the trees.

"Let's go another way. Madeleine's often strange." And with a

superstitious pang she wished that Madeleine Verrier's face had not been

the first to meet her in this hour of her betrothal.

PART II

THREE YEARS AFTER