'Are you a stranger in these parts, or do you know Benet's Park

already?' she said presently to Lucy, who was next her, in a

pleasant, nonchalant way.

'I have never been here before,' said Lucy, dreading somehow the

sound of her own voice; 'but my husband is well acquainted with the

family.'

She was pleased with her own phrase, and began to recover herself.

The lady said no more, however, but leant back and apparently went

to sleep. The tall ladies presently did the same. Lucy's depression

returned as the silence lasted. She supposed that it was

aristocratic not to talk to people till you had been introduced to

them. She hoped she would be introduced when they reached Benet's

Park. Otherwise it would be awkward staying in the same house.

Then she fell into a dream, imagining herself with a maid--ordering

her about deliciously--saying to the handsome footman, 'My maid has

my wraps'--and then with the next jolt of the carriage waking up to

the humdrum and unwelcome reality. And David might be as rich as

anybody! Familiar resentments and cravings stirred in her, and her

drive became even less of a pleasure than before. As for David, he

spent the whole of it in lively conversation with the small dark

man, beside the window.

The carriage paused a moment. Then great gates were swung back and

in they sped, the horses stepping out smartly now that they were

within scent of home. There was a darkness as of thick and lofty

trees, then dim opening stretches of park; lastly a huge house,

mirage-like in the distance, with rows of lighted windows, a

crackling of crisp gravel, the sound of the drag, and a pomp of

opening doors.

'Shall I take your bag, Madam?' said a magnificent person, bending

towards Lucy, as, clinging to her possession, she followed the lady

in green into the outer hall.

'Oh no, thank you! at least, shall I find it again?' said the

frightened Lucy, looking in front of her at the vast hall, with its

tall lamps and statues and innumerable doors.

'It shall be sent upstairs for you, Madam,' said the magnificent

person gravely, and, as Lucy thought, severely.

She submitted, and looked round for David. Oh, where was he?

'This is a fine hall, isn't it?' said the lady in green beside her.

'Bad period--but good of its kind. What on earth do they spoil it

for with those shocking modern portraits?'

Such assurance--combined with such garments--in such a house--it

was nothing short of a miracle!

CHAPTER III

'Now, Lavinia, do be kind to young Mrs. Grieve. She is evidently as

shy as she can be.'

So spoke Lord Driffield, with some annoyance in his voice, as he

looked into his wife's room after dressing for dinner.

'I suppose she can amuse herself like other people,' said Lady

Driffield. She was standing by the fire warming a satin-shoed foot.

'I have told Williams to leave all the houses open to-morrow. And

there's church, and the pictures. The Danbys and the rest of us are

going over to Lady Herbart's for tea.'

A cloud came over Lord Driffield's face. He made some impatient

exclamation, which was muffled by his white beard and moustache,

and walked back to his own room.

Meanwhile Lucy, in another corridor of the great house, was

standing before a long glass, looking herself up and down in a

tumult of excitement and anxiety.

She had just passed through a formidable hour! In a great gallery,

with polished floor, and hung with portraits of ancestral

Driffields, the party from the station had found Lady Driffield,

with five or six other people, who seemed to be already staying in

the house. Though the butler had preceded them, no names but those

of Lady Venetia Danby and Miss Danby had been announced; and when

Lady Driffield, a tall effective-looking woman with a cold eye and

an expressionless voice, said a short 'How do you do?' and extended

a few fingers to David and his wife, no names were mentioned, and

Lucy felt a sudden depressing conviction that no names were needed.

To the mistress of the house they were just two nonentities, to

whom she was to give bed and board for two nights to gratify her

husband's whims; whether their insignificant name happened to be

Grieve, or Tompkins, or Johnson, mattered nothing.

So Lucy had sat down in a subdued state of mind, and was handed tea

by a servant, while the Danbys--Colonel Danby, after his smoke in

the dog-cart, following close on the heels of his wife and

daughter--mixed with the group round the tea-table, and much

chatter, combined with a free use of Christian names, liberal

petting of Lady Driffield's Pomeranian, and an account by Miss

Danby of an accident to herself in the hunting-field, filled up a

half-hour which to one person, at least, had the qualities of a

nightmare. David was talking to the lady in green--to whom, by the

way, Lady Driffield had been distinctly civil. Once he came over to

relieve Lucy from a waterproof which was on her knee, and to get

her some bread and butter. But otherwise no one took any notice of

her, and she fell into a nervous terror lest she should upset her

cup, or drop her teaspoon, or scatter her crumbs on the floor.

Then at last Lord Driffield, who had been absent on some country

business, which his soul loathed, had come in, and with the

cordiality, nay, affection of his greeting to David, and the

kindness of his notice of herself, little Lucy's spirits had risen

at a bound. She felt instinctively that a protector had arrived,

and even the formidable procession upstairs in the wake of Lady

Driffield, when the moment at last arrived for showing the guests

to their rooms, had passed off safely, Lucy throwing out an

agitated 'Thank you!' when Lady Driffield had even gone so far as

to open a door with her own bediamonded hand, which had Mrs.

Grieve's plebeian appellations written in full upon the card

attached to it.

And now? Was the dress nice? Would it do? Unluckily, since Lucy's

rise in the social scale which had marked the last few years, the

sureness of her original taste in dress had somewhat deserted her.

Her natural instinct was for trimness and closeness; but of late

her ideals had been somewhat confused by a new and more important

dressmaker with 'aesthetic' notions, who had been recommended to

her by the good-natured and artistic wife of one of the College

professors. Under the guidance of this expert, she had chosen a

'Watteau _sacque_' from a fashion-plate, not quite daring,

little tradesman's daughter as she felt herself at bottom, to

venture on the undisguised low neck and short sleeves of ordinary

fashionable dress.

She said fretfully to herself that she could see nothing in this

vast room. More and more candles did she light with a trembling

hand, trusting devoutly that no one would come in and discover her

with such an extravagant illumination. Then she tried each of the

two long glasses of the room in turn. Her courage mounted. It

_was_ pretty. The terra-cotta shade was _exquisite,_ and

_no_ one could tell that the satin was cotton-backed. The

flowing sleeves and the pleat from the shoulder gave her dignity,

she was certain; and she had done her hair beautifully. She wished

David would come in and see! But his room was across a little

landing, which, indeed, seemed to be all their own, for it was shut

off from the passage they had entered from by an outer door. There

was, however, more than one door opening on to the landing, and

Lucy was so much afraid of her surroundings that she preferred to

wait till he came.

Meanwhile--what a bedroom! Why, it was more gorgeous than any

drawing-room she had ever entered. Every article of furniture was

of old marqueterie, adapted to modern uses, the appointments of the

writing-table were of solid silver--Lucy had eagerly ascertained

the fact by looking at the 'marks'--and as for the _towels_,

she simply could not have imagined that such things were made! Her

little soul was in a whirl of envy, admiration, pride. What tales

she would have to tell Dora when they got home!

'Are you ready?' said David, opening the door. 'I believe I hear

people going downstairs.'

He came in arrayed in the new dress suit which became him as well

as anything else; for he had a natural dignity which absorbed and

surmounted any novelty of circumstance or setting, and was purely a

matter of character, depending upon a mind familiar with large

interests and launched towards ideal aims. He might be silent,

melancholy, impracticable, but never meanly self-conscious. It had

rarely occurred to anyone to pity or condescend to David Grieve.

Lucy looked at him with uneasy pride. Then she glanced back at her

own reflection in the glass.

'What do you think of it?' she asked him, eagerly.

'Magnificent!' said David, with all the sincerity of

ignorance--wishing, moreover, to make his wife pleased with

herself. 'But oughtn't you to have gloves instead of those things?'

He pointed doubtfully to the mittens on her arms.

'Oh, David, don't say that!' cried Lucy, in despair. 'Miss Helby

said these were the right things. It's to be like an old picture,

don't you understand? And I haven't got any gloves but those I came

in. Oh, don't be so disagreeable!'

She looked ready to cry. Poor David hastened to declare that Miss

Helby must be right, and that it was all very nice. Then they blew

out the candles and ventured forth.

'Lord Driffield says that Canon Aylwin is coming,' said David,

examining some Hollar engravings on the wall of the staircase as

they descended, 'and the Dean of Bradford, who is staying with him.

I shall be glad to see Canon Aylwin.'

His face took a pleased meditative look. He was thinking of Canon

Aylwin's last volume of essays--of their fine scholarship, their

delicate, unique qualities of style. As for Lucy, it seemed to her

that all the principalities and powers of this world were somehow

arraying themselves against her in that terrible drawing-room they

were so soon to enter. She set her teeth, held up her head, and on

they went.

Presently they found themselves approaching a glass door, which

opened into the central hall. Beyond it was a crowd of figures and

a buzz of talk, and at the door stood a tall person in black with

white gloves, holding a silver tray, from which he presented David

with a button-hole. Then, with a manner at once suave and

impersonal, he held open the door, and the husband and wife passed

through.

'Ah, my dear Grieve,' said Lord Driffield, laying his hand on

David's shoulder, 'come here and be introduced to Canon Aylwin. I am

delighted to have caught him for you.'

So David was swept away to the other side of the room, and Lucy was

left forlorn and stranded. It seemed to her an immense party; there

were at least eight or ten fresh faces beyond those she had seen

already. And just as she was looking for a seat into which she

might slip and hide herself, Lady Venetia Danby, who was standing

near, playing with a huge feather fan and talking to a handsome

young man, turned around by chance and, seeing the figure in the

bright-coloured 'Watteau _sacque_,' involuntarily put up her

eyeglass to look at it. Instantly Lucy, conscious of the eyeglass,

and looking hurriedly round on the people near, was certain that

the pleat from the shoulder and the mittens were irretrievably

wrong and conspicuous, and that she had betrayed herself at once by

her dress as an ignoramus and an outsider. Worst of all, the lady

in green was in a _sacque_ too!--a shapeless yellow thing of

the most untutored and detestable make. Mittens also! drawn

laboriously over the hands and arms of an Amazon. Lucy glanced at

Miss Danby beside her, then at a beautiful woman in pale pink

across the room--at their slim waists, the careless _aplomb_

and grace with which the costly stuffs and gleaming jewels were

worn, and the white necks displayed--and sank into a chair

trembling and miserable. That the only person to keep her in

countenance should be that particular person--that they two should

thus fall into a class together, by themselves, cut off from all

the rest--it was too much! Then, by a quick reaction, some of her

natural obstinacy returned upon her. She held herself erect, and

looked steadily round the room.

'Mr. Edwardes--Mrs. Grieve,' said Lady Driffield's impassive voice,

speaking, as it seemed to Lucy, from a great height, as the tall

figure swept past her to introductions more important.

A young man bowed to Lucy, looked at her for a moment, then,

pulling his fair moustache, turned away to speak to Miss Danby,

who, in the absence of more stimulating suitors for her smiles, was

graciously pleased to bestow a few of them on Lord Driffield's new

agent.

'Whom are we waiting for?' said Miss Danby, looking round her, and

slightly glancing at Lucy.

'Only the Dean, I believe,' said Mr. Edwardes, with a smile. 'I

never knew Dean Manley less than half an hour late in _this_

house.'

A cold shiver ran through Lucy. Then they--she and David--had been

all but the last, had all but kept the whole of this portentous

gathering waiting for them.

In the midst of her new tremor the glass doors were again thrown

open, and in walked the Dean--a short, plain man, with a mirthful

eye, a substantial person, and legs which became his knee-breeches.

'Thirty-five minutes, Dean!' said the handsome youth, who had been

talking to Lady Venetia, as he held up his watch.

'It is a remarkable fact, Reggie,' said the Dean, laying his hand

on the lad's shoulder, 'that your watch has gained persistently ever

since I was first acquainted with you. Ah, well, keep it ahead, my

boy. A diplomatist must be egged on somehow.'

'I thought the one condition of success in that trade was the

patience to do nothing,' said a charming voice. 'Don't interfere

with Reggie's prospects, Dean.'

'Has he got any?' said the Dean, maliciously. 'My dear Mrs.

Wellesdon, you are a "sight for sair een."'

And he pressed the new-comer's hand between both his own, surveying

her the while with a fatherly affection and admiration.

Lucy looked up, a curious envy at her heart. She saw the beautiful

lady in pink, who had come across the room to greet the Dean.

_Was_ she beautiful? Lucy hurriedly asked herself. Perhaps

not, in point of feature, but she held her head so nobly, her

colour was so subtle and lovely, her eye so speaking, and her mouth

so sweet, she carried about with her a preeminence so natural and

human, that beauty was in truth the only word that fitted her. Now,

as the Dean passed on from her to some one else, she glanced down

at the little figure in terra-cotta satin, and, with a kindly

diffident expression, she sat down and began to talk to Lucy.

Marcia Wellesdon was a sorceress, and could win whatever hearts she

pleased. In a few moments she so soothed Lucy's nervousness that

she even beguiled from her some bright and natural talk about the

journey and the house, and Lucy was rapidly beginning to be happy,

when the signal for dinner was given, and a general move began.

At dinner Mr. Edwardes bestowed his conversation for a decent space

of time--say, during the soup and fish--upon Mrs. Grieve. Lucy,

once more ill at ease, tried eagerly to propitiate him by asking

innumerable questions about the family, and the pictures, and the

estate, it being at once evident that he had an intimate knowledge

of all three. But as the family, the pictures, and the estate were

always with him, so to speak, made, indeed, a burden which his

shoulders had some difficulty in carrying, the attractions of this

vein of talk palled on the young agent--who was himself a scion of

good family, with his own social ambitions--before long. He decided

that Mrs. Grieve was pure middle-class, not at all accustomed to

dine in halls of pride, and much agitated by her surroundings. The

type did not interest him. She seemed to be asking him to help her

out of the mire, and as one does not go into society to be

benevolent but to be amused, by the time the first _entree_

was well in he had edged his chair round, and was in animated talk

with pretty little Lady Alice Findlay, the daughter of the

hook-nosed Lord-Lieutenant of the county, who was seated at Lady

Driffield's right hand. Lucy noticed the immediate difference in

tone, the easy variety of topic, compared with her own sense of

difficulty, and her heart swelled with bitterness.

Then, to her horror, she saw that, from inattention and ignorance

of what might be expected, she had allowed the servants to

fill every single wineglass of the four standing at her

right--positively every one. Sherry, claret, hock, champagne--she

was provided with them all. She cast a hurried and guilty eye round

the table. Save for champagne, each lady's glasses stood

immaculately empty, and when Lucy came back to her own collection

she could bear it no longer.

'Mr. Edwardes!' she said hastily, leaning over towards him.

The young man turned abruptly. 'Yes,' he said, looking at her in

some surprise.

'Oh, Mr. Edwardes! can you ask some one to take these wineglasses

away? I didn't want any, and it looks so--so--dreadful!'

The agent thought that Mrs. Grieve was going to cry. As for

himself, his eye twinkled, and he had great difficulty to restrain

a burst of laughter. He called a footman near, and Lucy was soon

relieved of her fourfold incubus.

'Oh, but you must save the champagne!' he said, and, bending his

chair backward, he was about to recall the man, Lucy stopped him.

'Don't--don't, _please_, Mr. Edwardes!' she said, in an agony.

He lifted his eyebrows good-humouredly, and desisted. Then he asked

her if he should give her some water, and when that was done the

episode apparently seemed to him closed, for he turned away again,

and looked out for fresh opportunities with Lady Alice. Lucy,

meanwhile, was left feeling herself even more unsuccessful and more

out of place than before, and ready to sink with vexation. And how

well David was getting on! There he was, between Mrs. Shepton and

the beautiful lady in pink, and he and Mrs. Wellesdon were deep in

conversation, his dark head bent gravely towards her, his face

melting every now and then into laughter or crossed by some vivid

light of assent and pleasure. Lucy's look travelled over the table,

the orchids with which it was covered, the lights, the plate, then

to the Vandykes behind the guests, and the great mirrors in

between--came back to the table, and passed from face to face, till

again it rested upon David. The conviction of her husband's

handsome looks and natural adequacy to this or any world, with

which her survey ended, brought with it a strange mixture of

feelings--half pleasure, half bitterness.

'Are you from this part of the world, may I ask?' said a voice at

her elbow.

She turned, and saw Colonel Danby, who was tired of devoting

himself to the wife of a neighbouring Master of Hounds--a lady with

white hair and white eyelashes, always apparently on the point of

sleep, even at the liveliest dinner-table--and was now inclined to

see what this little provincial might be made of.

'Oh, yes! we are from Manchester,' said Lucy, straightening

herself, and preparing to do her best. 'We live in Manchester--at

least, of course, not _in_ Manchester. No one could do that.'

It was but three years since she had ceased to do it, but new

habits of speech grow apace when it is a matter of social prestige.

She was terribly afraid lest anybody should now think of them as

persons who lived over their shop.

'Ah!--suppose not,' said Colonel Danby, carelessly. 'Land in

Manchester, they tell me now, is almost as costly as it is in

London.'

Whereat Lucy went off at score, delighted to make Manchester

important and to produce her own information. She had an aptitude

for business gossip, and she chatted eagerly about the price that

So-and-So had paid for their new warehouses, and the sum which

report said the Corporation was going to spend on a fine new

street.

'And of course many people don't like it. There's always grumbling

about the rates. But they should have public spirit, shouldn't

they? Are you acquainted with Manchester?' she added, more timidly.

All this time Colonel Danby had been listening with half an ear,

and was much more assiduously trying to make up his mind whether

the little _bourgeoise_ was pretty at all. She had rather a

fine pair of eyes--he supposed she had made that dress in her own

back parlour.

'Manchester? I--oh, I have spent a night at the Queen's Hotel now

and then,' said the Colonel, with a yawn. 'What do you do there? Do

you amuse yourself--eh?'

His smile was not pleasant. He had a florid face, with bad lines

round the eyes and a tyrannous mouth. His physical make had been

magnificent, but reckless living had brought on the penalties of

gout before their time.

Lucy was intimidated by the mixture of familiarity and patronage in

the tone.

'Oh, yes,' she said, hurriedly; 'we get all the best companies from

the London theatres, and there are _very_ good concerts.'

'And that kind of thing amuses you?' said the Colonel, still

examining her with the same cool, fixed glance.

'I like music very much,' stammered Lucy, and then fell silent.

'Do you know all these people here?'

'Oh, dear, no!' she cried, feeling the very question malevolent. 'I

don't know any of them. My husband wishes to lead a very retired

life,' she added, bridling a little, by way of undoing the effect

of her admissions.

'And _you_ don't wish it?'

The disagreeable eyes smiled again.

'Oh! I don't know,' said Lucy.

Colonel Danby reflected that whatever his companion might be, she

was not amusing.

'Have you noticed the gentleman opposite?' he inquired, stifling

another yawn.

Lucy timidly looked across.

'It is--it is the Dean of Bradford, isn't it?'

'Yes; it's a comfort, isn't it, when one can know a man by his

clothes! Do you see what his deanship has had for dinner?'

Lucy ventured another look, and saw that the Dean had in front of

him a plate of biscuits and a glass of water, and that the

condition of his knives and forks showed him to have hitherto

subsisted on this fare alone.

'Is he so very--so very religious?' she said, wondering.

'A-saint in gaiters? Well, I don't know. Probably the saint has

dined at one. Do you feel any inclination to be a saint, Mrs.

Grieve?'

Lucy could neither meet nor parry the banter of his look. She only

blushed.

'I wouldn't attempt it, if I were you,' he said, laughing. 'Those

pretty brown eyes weren't meant for it.'

Lucy suddenly felt as though she had been struck, so free and

cavalier was the tone. Her cheek took a deeper crimson, and she

looked helplessly across at David.

'Little fool!' thought the Colonel. 'But she has certainly some

points.'

At that moment Lady Driffield gave the signal, and, with a

half-ironical bow to his companion, Colonel Danby rose, picked up

her handkerchief for her, and drew his chair aside to let her pass.

Presently Lucy was sitting in a corner of the magnificent green

drawing-room, to which Lady Driffield had carelessly led the way.

In her vague humiliation and unhappiness, she craved that some one

should come and talk to her and be kind to her--even Mrs. Shepton,

who had addressed a few pleasant remarks to her on their way from

the dining-room. But Mrs. Shepton was absorbed by Lady Driffield,

who sat down beside her, and took some trouble to talk. 'Then why

not to me?' was Lucy's instinctive thought. For she realised that

she and Mrs. Shepton were socially not far apart. Yet Lady

Driffield had so far addressed about six words to Mrs. David

Grieve, while she was now bending her aristocratic neck to listen

to Mrs. Shepton, who was talking entirely at her ease, with her arm

round the back of a neighbouring chair, and, as it seemed to Lucy,

about politics.

The rest of the ladies, with the exception of the Master of Hounds'

wife, who sat in a chair by the fire and dozed, were all either old

friends or relations, and they gathered in a group on the Aubusson

rug in front of the fire, chatting merrily about their common

kindred, the visits they had paid, or were to pay, the fate of

their fathers and brothers in the recent election, 'the Duke's'

terrible embarrassments, or 'Sir Alfred's' yachting party to

Norway, of which little Lady Alice gave a sparkling account.

In her chair on the outskirts of the talkers, Lucy sat painfully

turning over the leaves of a costly collection of autographs, which

lay on the table near her. Sometimes she tried to interest herself

in the splendid room, with its hangings of pale flowered silk, its

glass cases, full of historical relics, miniatures, and precious

things, representing the long and brilliant past of the house of

Driffield, the Sir Joshuas and Romneys, which repeated on the walls

the grace and physical perfection of some of the living women

below. But she had too few associations with anything she saw to

care for it, and, indeed, her mind was too wholly given to her own

vague, but overmastering sense of isolation and defeat. If it were

only bedtime!

Mrs. Wellesdon glanced at the solitary figure from time to time,

but Lady Alice had her arm round 'Marcia's' waist, and kept close

hold of her favourite cousin. At last, however, Mrs. Wellesdon drew

the young girl with her to the side of Lucy's chair, and, sitting

down by the stranger, they both tried to entertain her, and to show

her some of the things in the room.

Lucy brightened up at once, and thought them both the most

beautiful and fascinating of human beings. But her good fortune was

soon over, alas! for the gentlemen came in, and the social elements

were once more redistributed. 'Reggie', the young diplomatist,

freshly returned from Berlin, laid hold of his sister Marcia, and

his cousin Lady Alice, and carried them off for a family gossip

into a corner of the room, whence peals of young laughter were soon

to be heard from him and Lady Alice.

Mr. Edwardes and Colonel Danby passed Mrs. Grieve by, in quest of

metal more attractive; Lord Driffield, the Dean, Canon Aylwin, and

David stood absorbed in conversation; while Lady Driffield

transferred her attentions to Mr. Shepton, and the husband of the

lady by the fire walked up to her, insisting, somewhat crossly, on

waking her. Lucy was once more left alone.

'Lavinia, haven't we done our duty to this apartment?' cried Lord

Driffield, impatiently; 'it always puts me on stilts. The library is

ten times more comfortable. I propose an adjournment.'

Lady Driffield shrugged her shoulders, and assented. So the whole

party, Lucy timidly attaching herself to Mrs. Shepton, moved slowly

through a long suite of beautiful rooms, till they reached the

great cedar-fitted library, which was Lord Driffield's paradise.

Here was every book to be desired of the scholar to make him wise,

and every chair to make him comfortable. Lord Driffield went to one

of the bookcases, and took a vellum-bound book, found a passage in

it, and showed it to David Grieve. Canon Aylwin and the Dean

pressed in to look, and they all fell back into the recess of a

great oriel, talking earnestly.

The others passed on into a conservatory beyond the library, where

was a billard-table, and many nooks for conversation amid the

cunning labyrinths of flowers.

Lucy sank into a cane chair, close to a towering mass of arum

lilies, and looked back into the library. Nobody in the

conservatory had any thought for her. They were absorbed in each

other, and a merry game of pyramids had been already organised. So

Lucy watched her husband wistfully.

What a beautiful face was that of Canon Aylwin, with whom he was

talking! She could not take her eyes from its long, thin outlines,

the apostolic white hair, the eager eyes and quivering mouth,

contrasting with the patient courtesy of manner. Yet in her present

soreness and heat, the saintly charm of the old man's figure did

somehow but depress her the more.

A little after ten it became evident that _nothing_ could keep

the lady with the white eyelashes out of bed any longer, so the

billiard-room party broke up, and, with a few gentlemen in

attendance, the ladies streamed into the hall, and possessed

themselves of bedroom candlesticks. The great house seemed to be

alive with talk and laughter as they strolled upstairs, the girls

making dressing-gown appointments in each other's rooms for a

quarter of an hour later.

When Lucy reached her own door she stopped awkwardly. Lady

Driffield walked on, talking to Marcia Wellesdon. But Marcia looked

back:

'Good night, Mrs. Grieve.'

She returned, and pressed Lucy's hand kindly. 'I am afraid you must

be tired,' she said; 'you look so.'

Lady Driffield also shook hands, but, with constitutional

_gaucherie_, she did not second Mrs. Wellesdon's remark; she

stood by silent and stiff.

'Oh, no, thank you,' said Lucy, hurriedly, 'I am quite well.'

When she had disappeared, the other two walked on.

'What a stupid little thing!' said Lady Driffield. 'The husband may

be interesting--Driffield says he is--but I defy anybody to get

anything out of the wife.'

It occurred to Marcia that nobody had been very anxious to make the

attempt. But she only said aloud:

'I'm sure she is very shy. What a pity she wears that kind of

dress! She might be quite pretty in something else.'

Meanwhile Lucy, after shutting the outer door of their little suite

behind her, was overtaken as she opened that leading to her own

room by a sudden gust of wind coming from a back staircase emerging

on to their private passage, which she had not noticed before. The

candle was blown out, and she entered the room in complete

darkness. She groped for the matches, and found the little stand;

but there were none there. She must have used the last in the

making of her great illumination before dinner. After much

hesitation, she at last summoned up courage to ring the bell,

groping her way to it by the help of the light in the passage.

For a long time no one came. Lucy, standing near her own door,

seemed to hear two sounds--the angry beating of her own heart, and

a murmur of far-off talk and jollity, conveyed to her up the

mysterious staircase, which apparently led to some of the servants'

quarters.

Fully five minutes passed; then steps were heard approaching, and a

housemaid appeared. Lucy timidly asked for fresh matches. The girl

said 'Yes, ma'am,' in an off-hand way, looked at Lucy with a

somewhat hostile eye, and vanished.

The minutes passed, but no matches were forthcoming. The whirlpool

of the lower regions, where the fun was growing uproarious, seemed

to have engulfed the messenger. At last Lucy was fain to undress by

the help of a glimmer of light from her door left ajar, and after

many stumbles and fumblings at last crept, tired and wounded, into

bed. This finale seemed to her of a piece with all the rest.

As she lay there in the dark, incident after incident of her

luckless evening coming back upon her, her heart grew hungry for

David. Nay, her craving for him mounted to jealousy and passion.

After all, though he did get on so much better in grand houses than

she did, though they were all kind to him and despised her, he was

_hers_, her very own, and no one should take him from her.

Beautiful Mrs. Wellesdon might talk to him and make friends with

him, but he did not belong to any of them, but to _her_, Lucy.

She pined for the sound of his step--thought of throwing herself

into his arms, and seeking consolation there for the pains of an

habitual self-importance crushed beyond bearing.

But when that step was actually heard outside, her mind veered

in an instant. She had made him come; he would think she had

disgraced him; he had probably noticed nothing, for a certain

absent-mindedness in society had grown upon him of late years. No,

she would hold her peace.

So when David, stepping softly and shading his candle, came in, and

called 'Lucy' under his breath to see whether she might be awake,

Lucy pretended to be sound asleep. He waited a minute, and then

went out to change his coat and go down to the smoking-room.

Poor little Lucy! As she lay there in the dark, the tears

dropping slowly on her embroidered pillow, the issue of all her

mortification was a new and troubled consciousness about her

husband. Why this difference between them? How was it that he

commanded from all who knew him either a warm sympathy or an

involuntary respect, while she--

She had gathered from some scraps of the talk round him which had

reached her that it was just those sides of his life--those

quixotic ideal sides--which were an offence and annoyance to her

that touched other people's imagination, opened their hearts. And

she had worried and teased him all these years! Not since the

beginning. For, looking back, she could well remember the days when

it was still an intoxication that he should have married her, when

she was at once in awe of him and foolishly, proudly, happy. But

there had come a year when David's profits from his business had

amounted to over 2, 000 pounds, and when, thanks to a large loan

pressed upon him by his Unitarian landlord, Mr. Doyle, he had taken

the new premises in Prince's Street. And from that moment Lucy's

horizon had changed, her ambitions had hardened and narrowed; she

had begun to be impatient with her husband, first, that he could

not make her rich faster, then, after their Tantalus gleam of

wealth, that he would put mysterious and provoking obstacles in

the way of their getting rich at all.

She meant to keep awake--to wait for him. But she began to think of

Sandy. _He_ would be glad to see his 'mummy' again! In fancy

she pressed his cheek against her own burning one. He and David

were still alive--still hers--it was all right somehow. Consolation

began to steal upon her, and in ten minutes she was asleep.

CHAPTER IV

When David came in later, he took advantage of Lucy's sleep to sit

up awhile in his own room. He was excited, and any strong

impression, in the practical loneliness of his deepest life, always

now produced the impulse to write.

'_Midnight_.--Lucy is asleep. I hope she has been happy and

they have been kind to her. I saw Mrs. Wellesdon talking to her

after dinner. She must have liked that. But _at_ dinner she

seemed to be sitting silent a good deal.

'What a strange spectacle is this country-house life to anyone

bringing to it a fresh and unaccustomed eye! "After all," said Mrs.

Wellesdon, "you must admit that the best of anything is worth

keeping. And in these country-houses, with all their drawbacks, you

do from time to time get the best of social intercourse, a phase of

social life as gay, complex, and highly finished as it can possibly

be made."

'Certainly this applies to me to-night. When have I enjoyed any

social pleasure so much as my talk with her at dinner? When have I

been conscious of such stimulus, such exhilaration, as the

evening's discussion produced in me? In the one case, Mrs.

Wellesdon taught me what general conversation might be how nimble,

delicate, and pleasure-giving; in the other, there was the joy of

the intellectual wrestle, mingled with a glad respect for one's

opponents. Perhaps nowhere, except on some such ground and in

some such circumstances as these, could a debate so earnest

have taken quite so wholesome a tone, so wide a range. We were

equals--debaters, not controversialists--friends, not rivals--in

the quest for truth.

'Yet what drawbacks! This army of servants--which might be an army

of slaves without a single manly right, so mute, impassive, and

highly trained it is--the breeding of a tyrannous temper in the

men, of a certain contempt for facts and actuality even in the best

of the women. Mrs. Wellesdon poured out her social aspirations to

me. How naive and fanciful they were! They do her credit, but they

will hardly do anyone else much good. And it is evident that they

mark her out in her own circle, that they have brought her easily

admiration and respect, so that she has never been led to test

them, as any one, with the same social interest, living closer to

the average realities and griefs of life, must have been led to

test them.

'The culture, too, of these aristocratic women, when they

are cultured, is so curious. Quite unconsciously and innocently

it takes itself for much more than it is, merely by contrast with

the _milieu_--the _milieu_ of material luxury and complication--in

which it moves.

'But I am ungrateful. What a social power in the best sense such a

woman might become--a woman so sensitively endowed, so nobly

planned!'

David dropped his pen awhile. In the silence of the great house, a

silence broken only by the breathings of a rainy autumn wind

through the trees outside, his thought took that picture-making

intensity which was its peculiar gift. Images of what had been

in his own life, and what might have been--the dream of passion

which had so deeply marked and modified his manhood--Elise, seen

in the clearer light of his richer experience--his married

years--the place of the woman in the common life--on these his mind

brooded, one by one, till gradually the solemn consciousness of

opportunities for ever missed, of failure, of limitation, evoked

another, as solemn, but sweeter and more touching, of human lives

irrevocably dependent on his, of the pathetic unalterable claim of

marriage, the poverty and hopelessness of all self-seeking, the

essential wealth, rich and making rich, of all self-spending. As he

thought of his wife and son a deep tenderness flooded the man's

whole nature. With a long sigh, it was as though he took them both

in his arms, adjusting his strength patiently and gladly to the

familiar weight.

Then, by a natural reaction, feeling, to escape itself, passed into

speculative reminiscence and meditation of a wholly different kind.

'Our discussion to-night arose from an attack--if anyone so gentle

can be said to attack--made upon me by Canon Aylwin, on the subject

of those "Tracts on the New Testament"--tracts of mine, of which we

have published three, while I have two or three more half done in

my writing-table drawer. He said, with a certain nervous decision,

that he did not wish to discuss the main question, but he would

like to ask me, Could anyone be so sure of supposed critical and

historical fact as to be clear that he was right in proclaiming it,

when the proclamation of it meant the inevitable disturbance in his

fellow-men of conceptions whereon their moral life depended? It was

certain that he could destroy; it was most uncertain, even to

himself, whether he could do anything else, with the best

intentions; and, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, ought not

the certainty of doing a moral mischief to outweigh, with any just

and kindly mind, the much feebler and less solid certainty he may

imagine himself to have attained with regard to certain matters of

history and criticism?

'It was the old question of the rights of "heresy," the function of

the individual in the long history of thought. We fell into sides:

Lord Driffield and I against the Dean and Canon Aylwin. The Dean

did not, indeed, contribute much. He sat with his square powerful

head bent forward, throwing in a shrewd comment here and there,

mainly on the logical course of the argument. But when we came to

the main question, as we inevitably did, he withdrew altogether,

though he listened.

'"No," he said, "no. I am not competent. It has not been my line

in life. I have found more than enough to tax my strength in the

practical administration of the goods of Christ. All such questions

I leave, and must leave, to experts, such experts as"--and he

mentioned the names of some of the leading scholars of the

English Church--"or as my friend here", and he laid his hand

affectionately on Canon Aylwin's knee.

'Strange! He leaves to experts such questions as those of the

independence, authenticity, and trustworthiness of the Gospel

records; of the culture and idiosyncrasies of the first two

centuries as tending to throw light on those records; of the

earliest growth of dogma, as, thanks mainly to German labour, it

may now be exhibited within the New Testament itself. In a Church

of private judgment, he takes all this at second hand, after having

vowed at his ordination "to be diligent in such studies as help to

the knowledge of the Scriptures"!

'Yet a better, a more God-fearing, a more sincere, and, within

certain lines, a more acute man than Dean Manley it would certainly

be difficult to find at the present time within the English Church.

It is an illustration of the dualism in which so many minds tend to

live, divided between two worlds, two standards, two wholly

different modes of thought--the one applied to religion even in its

intellectual aspect, the other applied to all the rest of

existence. Yet--is truth divided?

'To return to Canon Aylwin. I could only meet his reproach, which

he had a special right to make, for he has taken the kindliest

interest in some of the earlier series of our "Workmen's Tracts,"

by going back to some extent to first principles. I endeavoured to

argue the matter on ground more or less common to us both. If both

knowledge and morality have only become possible for man by the

perpetual action of a Divine spirit on his since the dawn of

conscious life; if this action has taken effect in human history,

as, broadly speaking, the Canon would admit, through a free and

constant struggle of opposites, whether in the realm of interest or

the realm of opinion; and if this struggle, perpetually reconciled,

perpetually renewed, is the divinely ordered condition, nay, if you

will, the sacred task of human life,--how can the Christian, who

clings, above all men, to the victory of the Divine in the human,

who, moreover, in the course of his history has affronted and

resisted all possible "authorities" but that of conscience--how

can he lawfully resent the fullest and largest freedom of speech,

employed disinterestedly and in good faith, on the part of his

brother man? The truth must win; and it is only through the free

life of the spirit that she has hitherto prevailed. So much, at

least, the English Churchman must hold.

It comes to this: must there be no movement of thought because the

individual who lives by custom and convention may at least

temporarily suffer? Yet the risks of the individual throughout

nature--so far we were agreed--are the correlative of his freedom

and responsibility.

'"Ah, well," said the dear old man at last, with a change of

expression which went to my heart, so wistful and spiritual it was,

"perhaps I have been faithless; perhaps the Christian minister

would do better to trust the Lord with His own. But before we leave

the subject, let me say, once for all, that I have read all your

tracts, and weighed most carefully all that they contain. The

matter of them bears on what for me has been the study of many

years, and all I can say is that I regard your methods of reasoning

as unsound, and your conclusions as wholly false. I have been a

literary man from my youth as well as a theologian, and I

completely dissent from your literary judgments. I believe that if

you had not been already possessed by a hostile philosophy--which

will allow no space for miracle and revelation--you would not have

arrived at them. I am old and you are young. Let me bear my

testimony while there is time. I have taken a great interest in you

and your work."

'He spoke with the most exquisite courtesy and simplicity, his look

was dignified and heavenly. I felt like kneeling to ask his

blessing, even though he could only give it in the shape of a

prayer for my enlightenment.

'But now, alone with conscience, alone with God, how does the

matter stand? The challenge of such a life and conviction as Canon

Aylwin's is a searching one. It bids one look deep into one's self,

it calls one to truth and soberness. What I seem to see is that he

and I both approach Christianity with a prepossession, with, as he

says, "a philosophy." His is a prepossession in favour of a system

of interference from without, by Divine or maleficent powers, for

their own ends, with the ordinary sequences of nature--which once

covered, one may say, the whole field of human thought and shaped

the whole horizon of humanity. From the beginning of history this

prepossession--which may be regarded in all its phases as an

expression of man's natural impatience to form a working hypothesis

of things--has struggled with the "impulse to know." And slowly,

irrevocably, from age to age--the impulse to know has beaten back

the impulse to imagine, has confined the prepossession of faith

within narrower and narrower limits, till at last it is even

preparing to deny it the guidance of religion, which it has so long

claimed. For the impulse of science, justified by the long wrestle

of centuries, is becoming itself religious,--and there is a new awe

rising on the brow of Knowledge.

'_My_ prepossession--but let the personal pronoun be merely

understood as attaching me to that band of thinkers, "of all

countries, nations, and languages," whose pupil and creature I

am--is simply that of science, of the organised knowledge of the

race. It is drawn from the whole of experience, it governs without

dispute every department of thought, and without it, in fact,

neither Canon Aylwin nor I could think at all.

'Moreover, I humbly believe that I desire the same spiritual goods

as he: holiness, the knowledge of God, the hope of immortality. But

while for him these things are bound up with the maintenance of the

older prepossession, for me there is no such connection at all.

'And again, I seem to see that when this intellect of his, so keen,

so richly stored, approaches the special ground of Christian

thought, it changes in quality. It becomes wholly subordinate to

the affections, to the influences of education and habitual

surroundings. Talk to him of Dante, of the influence of the

barbarian invasions on the culture and development of Europe, of

the Oxford movement, you will find in him an historical sense, a

delicate accuracy of perception, a luminous variety of statement,

which carry you with him into the very heart of the truth. But

discuss with him the critical habits and capacity of those earliest

Christian writers, on whose testimony so much of the Christian

canon depends--ask him to separate the strata of material in the

New Testament, according to their relative historical and ethical

value, under the laws which he would himself apply to any other

literature in the world--invite him to exclude this as legendary

and that as accretion, to distinguish between the original kernel

and that which the fancy or the theology of the earliest hearers

inevitably added--and you will feel that a complete change has come

over the mind. However subtle and precise his arguments may

outwardly look, they are at bottom the arguments of affection, of

the special pleader. He has fenced off the first century from the

rest of knowledge; has invented for all its products alike special

_criteria_ and a special perspective. He cannot handle the New

Testament in the spirit of science, for he approaches it on his

knees. The imaginative habit of a lifetime has decided for him; and

you ask of him what is impossible.

'"An end must come to scepticism somewhere!" he once said in the

course of our talk. "Faith must take her leap--you know as well as

I!--if there is to be faith at all."

'Yes, but _where_--at what point? Is the clergyman who talks

with sincere distress about infidel views of Scripture and preaches

against them, while at the same time he could not possibly give an

intelligible account of the problem of the Synoptic Gospels as it

now presents itself to the best knowledge, or an outline of the

case pressed by science for more than half a century with

increasing force and success against the historical character of

St. John's Gospel--is he justified in making his ignorance the

leaping-point?

'Yet the upshot of all our talk is that I am restless and

oppressed.

'... I sit and think of these nine years since Berkeley and sorrow

first laid hold of me. Berkeley rooted in me the conception of mind

as the independent antecedent of all experience, and none of the

scientific materialism, which so troubles Ancrum that he will

ultimately take refuge from it in Catholicism, affects me. But the

ethical inadequacy of Berkeley became very soon plain to me. I

remember I was going one day through one of the worst slums of

Ancoats, when a passage in his examination of the origin of evil

occurred to me:

'"But we should further consider that the very blemishes and

defects of nature are not without their use, in that _they make

an agreeable sort of variety_, and augment the beauty of the

rest of creation, as shades in a picture serve to set off the

brighter and more enlightened parts."

'I had just done my best to save a little timit scarecrow of a

child, aged about six, from the blows of its brutal father, who had

already given it a black eye--my heart blazed within me,--and from

that moment Berkeley had no spell for me.

'Then came that moment when, after my marriage, haunted as I was by

the perpetual oppression of Manchester's pain and poverty, the

Christian mythology, the Christian theory with all its varied and

beautiful flowerings in human life, had for a time an attraction

for me so strong that Dora naturally hoped everything, and I felt

myself becoming day by day more of an orthodox Christian. What

checked the tendency I can hardly now remember in detail. It was a

converging influence of books and life--no doubt largely helped,

with regard to the details of Christian belief, by the pressure of

the German historical movement, as I became more and more fully

acquainted with it.

'At any rate, St. Damian's gradually came to mean nothing to me,

though I kept, and keep still, a close working friendship with most

of the people there. But I am thankful for that Christian phase. It

enabled me to realise as nothing else could the strength of the

Christian case.

'And since then it has been a long and weary journey through many

paths of knowledge and philosophy, till of late years the new

English phase of Kantian and Hegelian thought, which has been

spreading in our universities, and which is the outlet of men who

can neither hand themselves over to authority, like Newman, nor to

a mere patient nescience in the sphere of metaphysics, like Herbert

Spencer, has come to me with an ever-increasing power of healing

and edification.

'That the spiritual principle in nature and man exists and governs;

that mind cannot be explained out of anything but itself; that the

human consciousness derives from a universal consciousness, and is

thereby capable both of knowledge and of goodness; that the

phenomena and history of conscience are the highest revelation of

God; that we are called to co-operation in a divine work, and in

spite of pain and sin may find ground for an infinite trust,

covering the riddle of the individual lot, in the history and

character of that work in man, so far as it has gone--these things

are deeper and deeper realities to me. They govern my life; they

give me peace; they breathe me hope.

'But the last glow, the certainties, the _vision_, of faith!

Ah! me, I believe that He is there, yet my heart gropes in

darkness. All that is personality, holiness, compassion in us, must

be in Him intensified beyond all thought. Yet I have no familiarity

of prayer. I cannot use the religious language which should be mine

without a sense of unreality. My heart is athirst.

'And can religion possibly _depend_ upon a long process of

thought? How few can think their way to Him--perhaps none, indeed,

by the logical intellect alone. He reveals himself to the simple.

_Speak to me, to me also, O my Father!_'

Sunday morning broke fresh and golden after a wet night. Lucy lay

still in the early dawn, thinking of the day that had to be faced,

feeling more cheerful, however, with the refreshment of sleep, and

inclined to hope that she might have got over the worst, and that

better things might be in store for her.

So that when David said to her, 'You poor little person, did they

eat you up last night--Lady Driffield and her set?' she only

answered evasively that Mrs. Wellesdon had been nice, but that Lady

Driffield had very bad manners, and she was sure everybody thought

so.

To which David heartily assented. Then Lucy put her question:

'Did you think, when you looked at me last night at dinner, that

I--that I looked nice?' she said, flushing, yet driven on by an

inward smart.

'Of course I did!' David declared. 'Perhaps you should hold yourself

up a little more. The women here are so astonishingly straight and

tall, like young poplars.'

'Mrs. Wellesdon especially,' Lucy reflected, with a pang.

'But you thought I--had done my hair nicely?' she said desperately.

'Very! And it was the prettiest hair there!' he said, smoothing

back the golden brown curls from her temple.

His compliment so delighted her that she dressed and prepared to

descend to breakfast with a light heart. She was not often now so

happily susceptible to a word of praise from him; she was more

exacting than she had once been, but since her acquaintance with

Lady Driffield she had been brought low!

And her evil fortune returned upon her, alas, at breakfast, and

throughout the day. Breakfast, indeed, seemed to her a more

formidable meal than any. For people straggled in, and the ultimate

arrangement of the table seemed entirely to depend upon the

personal attractiveness of individuals, upon whether they annexed

or repelled new-comers. Lucy found herself at one time alone and

shivering in the close neighbourhood of Lady Driffield, who was

intrenched behind the tea-urn, and after giving her guest a finger,

had, Lucy believed, spoken once to her, expressing a desire for

scones. The meal itself, with its elaborate cakes and meats and

fruits, intimidated Lucy even more than the dinner had done. The

breach between it and any small housekeeping was more complete. She

felt that she was eating like a schoolgirl; she devoured her toast

dry, out of sheer inability to ask for butter; and, sitting for the

most part isolated in the unpopular--that is to say, the Lady

Driffield--quarter of the table, went generally half-starved.

As for David, he, with Lord Driffield, Mrs. Wellesdon, Lady Alice,

Reggie, and Mrs. Shepton for company at the other end, had on the

whole an excellent time. There was, however, one uncomfortable

moment of friction between him and Colonel Danby, who had strolled

in last of all, with the vicious look of a man who has not had the

good night to which he considered himself entitled, and must

somehow wreak it on the world.

Just before he entered, Lady Driffield, looking round to see that

the servants had departed, had languidly started the question:

'Does one talk to one's maid? Do you, Marcia, talk to your maid?

How can anyone ever find anything to say to one's maid?'

The topic proved unexpectedly interesting. Both Marcia Wellesdon

and Lady Alice declared that their maids were their bosom friends.

Lady Driffield shrugged her shoulders, then looked at Mrs. Grieve,

who had sat silent, opened her mouth to speak, recollected herself,

and said nothing. At that moment Colonel Danby entered.

'I say, Danby!' called the young attache, Marcia's brother, 'do you

talk to your valet?'

'Talk to my valet!' said the Colonel, putting up his eyeglass to

look at the dishes on the side table--he spoke with suavity, but

there was an ominous pucker in the brow--'what should I do that

for? I don't pay the fellow for his conversation, I presume, but to

button my boots, and precious badly he does it too. I don't even

know what his elegant surname is. "Thomas," or "James," or "William"

is enough peg for me to hang my orders on. I generally christen

them fresh when they come to me.'

Little Lady Alice looked indignant. Lucy caught her husband's face,

and saw it suddenly pale, as it easily did under a quick emotion.

He was thinking of the valet he had seen at the station standing by

the Danbys' luggage--a dark, anxious-looking man, whose likeness to

one of the compositors in his own office--a young fellow for whom

he had a particular friendship--had attracted his notice.

'Why do you suppose he puts up with you--your servant?' he said,

bending across to Colonel Danby. He smiled a little, but his eyes

betrayed him.

'Puts up with me!' Colonel Danby lifted his brows, regarding David

with an indescribable air of insolent surprise. 'Because I make it

worth his while in pounds, shillings, and pence; that's all.'

And he put down his pheasant _salmi_ with a clatter, while his

wife handed him bread and other propitiations.

'Probably because he has a mother or sister,' said David, slowly.'

We trust a good deal to the patience of our "masters."'

The Colonel stopped his wife's attentions with an angry hand. But

just as he was about to launch a reply more congruous with his gout

and his contempt for 'Driffield's low-life friends' than with the

amenities of ordinary society, and while Lady Venetia was slowly

and severely studying David through her eyeglass, Lord Driffield

threw himself into the breach with a nervous story of some

favourite 'man' of his own, and the storm blew over.

Lady Driffield, indeed, who herself disliked Colonel Danby, as one

overbearing person dislikes another, and only invited him because

Lady Venetia was her cousin and an old friend, was rather pleased

with David's outbreak. After breakfast she graciously asked him if

she should show him the picture gallery.

But David was still seething with wrath, and looked at Vandeveldes

and De Hoochs and Rembrandts with a distracted eye. Once, indeed,

in a little alcove of the gallery hung with English portraits, he

woke to a start of interest.

'Imagine that that should be Gray!' he said, pointing to a

picture--well known to him through engraving--of a little man in a

bob wig, with a turned-up nose and a button chin, and a general air

of eager servility. '_Gray_,--one of our greatest poets!' He

stood wondering, feeling it impossible to fit the dignity of Gray's

verse to the insignificance of Gray's outer man.

'Oh, Gray--a great poet, you think? I don't agree with you. I have

always thought the "Night Thoughts" very dull,' said Lady

Driffield, sweeping along to the next picture, in a sublime

unconsciousness. David smiled--a flash of mirth that cleared his

whole look--and was himself again. Moreover he was soon taken

possession of by Lord Driffield, and the two disappeared for a

happy morning spent between the library and the woods.

Meanwhile Lucy went to church, and had the bliss of feeling that

she made one too many in the omnibus, and that, squeeze herself as

small as she might, she was still crushing Miss Danby's new

dress--a fact of which both mother and daughter were clearly aware.

Looking back upon it, Lucy could not remember that for her there

had been any conversation going or coming; but it is quite possible

that her memory of Benet's Park was even more pronounced than in

reality.

David and Lord Driffield came in when lunch was half over, and

afterwards there was a general strolling into the garden.

'Are you all right?' said David to his wife, taking her arm

affectionately.

'Oh yes, thank you,' she said hurriedly, perceiving that Reggio

Calvert was coming up to her. 'I'm all right. Don't take my arm,

David. It looks so odd.'

And she turned delightedly to talk to the young diplomatist, who

had the kindliness and charm of his race, and devoted himself to

her very prettily for a while, though they had great difficulty in

finding topics, and he was coming finally to the end of his

resources when Lady Driffield announced that 'the carriage would be

round in half an hour.'

'Goodness gracious! then I must write some letters first,' he said,

with the importance of the budding ambassador, and ran into the

house.

The others seemed to melt away--David and Canon Aylwin strolling

off together--and soon Lucy found herself alone. She sat down in a

seat round which curved a yew hedge, and whence there was a

somewhat wide view over a bare, hilly country, with suggestions

everywhere of factory life in the hollows, till on the southwest it

rose and melted into the Derbyshire moors. Autumn--late autumn--was

on all the reddening woods and in the cool sunshine; but there was

a bright border of sunflowers and dahlias near, which no frost had

yet touched, and the gaiety both of the flowers and of the clear

blue distance forbade as yet any thought of winter.

Lucy's absent and discontented eye saw neither flowers nor

distance; but it was perforce arrested before long by the figure of

Mrs. Shepton, who came round the corner of the yew hedge.

'Have they gone?' said that lady.

'Who?' said Lucy, startled. 'I heard a carriage drive off just now,

I think.'

'Ah! then they _are_ gone. Lady Driffield has carried off all

her friends--except Mrs. Wellesdon, who, I believe, is lying down

with a headache--to tea at Sir Wilfrid Herbart's. You see the house

there'--and she pointed to a dim, white patch among woods, about

five miles off. 'It is not very civil of a hostess, perhaps, to

leave her guests in this way. But Lady Driffield is Lady Driffield.'

Mrs. Shepton laughed, and threw back the flapping green gauze veil

with which she generally shrouded a freckled and serviceable

complexion, in no particular danger, one would have thought, of

spoiling.

Lucy instinctively looked round to see how near they were to the

house, and whether there were any windows open.

'It must be very difficult, I should think, to be--to be friends

with Lady Driffield.'

She looked up at Mrs. Shepton with the childish air of one both

hungry for gossip and conscious of the naughtiness of it.

Mrs. Shepton laughed again. She had never seen anyone behave worse,

she reflected, than Lady Driffield to this little Manchester

person, who might be uninteresting, but was quite inoffensive.

'Friends! I should think so. An armed neutrality is all that pays

with Lady Driffield. I have been here many times, and I can now

keep her in order perfectly. You see, Lady Driffield has a brother

whom she happens to be fond of--everybody has some soft place--and

this brother is a Liberal member down in our West Riding part of

the world. And my husband is the editor of a paper that possesses a

great deal of political influence in the brother's constituency. We

have backed him up through this election. He is not a bad fellow at

all, though about as much of a Liberal at heart as this hedge,' and

Mrs. Shepton struck it lightly with the parasol she carried. 'My

husband thinks we got him in--by the skin of his teeth. So Lady

Driffield asks us periodically, and behaves herself, more or less.

My husband likes Lord Driffield. So do I; and an occasional descent

upon country houses amuses me. It especially entertains me to make

Lady Driffield talk politics.'

'She must be very Conservative,' said Lucy, heartily. Conservatism

stood in her mind for the selfish exclusiveness of big people. Her

father had always been a bitter Radical.

'Oh dear no--not at all! Lady Driffield believes herself an

advanced Liberal; that is the comedy of it. _Liberals!_' cried

Mrs. Shepton, with a sudden bitterness, which transformed the

broad, plain, sleepy face. 'I should like to set her to work for a

year in one of those mills down there. She might have some politics

worth having by the end of it.'

Lucy looked at her in amazement. Why, the mill people were very

happy--most of them.

'Ah well!' said Mrs. Shepton, recovering herself, 'what we have to

do--we intelligent middle class--for the next generation or two, is

to _drive_ these aristocrats. Then it will be seen what is to

be done with them finally. Well, Mrs. Grieve, we must amuse

ourselves. _Au revoir!_ My husband has some writing to do, and

I must go and help him.'

She waved her hand and disappeared, sweeping her green and yellow

skirts behind her with an air as though Benet's Park were already a

seminary for the correction of the great.

Lucy sat on pondering till she felt dull and cold, and decided to

go in. On finding her way back she passed round a side of the house

which she had not yet seen. It was the oldest part of the building,

and the windows, which were mullioned and narrow, and at some

height from the ground, looked out upon a small bowling-green,

closely walled in from the rest of the gardens and the park by a

thick screen of trees. She lingered along the path looking at a few

late roses which were still blooming in this sheltered spot against

the wall of the house, when she was startled by the sound of her

own name, and, looking up, she saw that there was an open window

above her. The temptation was too great. She held her breath and

listened.

'Lord Driffield says he married her when he was quite young, that

accounts for it.' Was not the voice Lady Alice's? 'But it is a pity

that she is not more equal to him. I never saw a more striking

face, did you? Yet Lord Driffield says he is not as good-looking as

he promised to be as a boy. I wish we had been there last night

after dinner, Marcia! They say he gave Colonel Danby such a

dressing about some workmen's question. Colonel Danby was laying

down the law about strikes in his usual way--he _is_ an odious

creature!--and wishing that the Government would just send an

infantry regiment into the middle of the Yorkshire miners that are

on strike now, when Mr. Grieve fired up. And everybody backed him.

Reggie told me it was splendid; he never saw a better shindy. It is

a pity about her. Everybody says he might have a great career if he

pleased. And she can't be any companion to him.--Now, Marcia, you

know your head _is_ better, so don't say it isn't! Why, I have

used a whole bottle of eau de Cologne on you.'

So chattered pretty, kindly Lady Alice, sitting with her back to

the window beside Marcia Wellesdon. Lucy stood still a moment,

could not hear what Mrs. Wellesdon said languidly in answer, then

crept on, her lip quivering.

From then till long after the dark had fallen she was quite alone.

David, coming back from a long walk, and tea at the agent's house

on the further edge of the estate, found his wife lying on her bed,

and the stars beginning to look in upon her through the unshuttered

windows.

'Why, Lucy! aren't you well, dear?' he said, hurrying up to her.

'Oh yes, very well, thank you' she said, in a constrained voice.

'My head aches rather.'

'Who has been looking after you?' he said, instantly reproaching

himself for the enjoyment of his own afternoon.

'I have been here since three o'clock.'

'And nobody gave you any tea?' he asked, flushing.

'No, I went down, but there was nobody in the drawing-room. I

suppose the footman thought nobody was in.'

'Where was Lady Driffield?'

'Oh! she and most of them went out to tea--to a house a good way

off.'

Lucy's tone was dreariness itself. David sat still, his breath

coming quickly. Then suddenly Lucy turned round and drew him down

to her passionately.

'When can we get home? Is there an early train?'

Then David understood. He took her in his arms, and she broke down

and cried, sobbing out a catalogue of griefs that was only half

coherent. But he saw at once that she had been neglected and

slighted, nay more, that she had been somehow wounded to the quick.

His clasped hand trembled on his knee. This was hospitality! He had

gauged Lady Driffield well.

'An early train?' he said, with frowning decision. 'Yes, of course.

There is to be an eight o'clock breakfast for those who want to get

off. We shall be home by a little after nine. Cheer up, darling. I

will look after you to-night--and think of Sandy to-morrow!'

He laid his cheek tenderly against hers, full of a passion of

resentment and pity. As for her, the feeling with which she clung

to him was more like the feeling she had first shown him on the

Wakely moors, than anything she had known since.

'Sandy! why don't you say good morning, sir?' said David next

morning, standing on the threshold of his own study, with Lucy just

behind. His face was beaming with the pleasures of home.

Sandy, who was lying curled up in David's arm-chair, looked

sleepily at his parents. His thumb was tightly wedged in his mouth,

and with the other he held pressed against him a hideous rag doll,

which had been presented to him in his cradle.

'Jane's asleep,' he said, just removing his thumb for the purpose,

and then putting it back again.

'Heartless villain!' said David, taking possession of both him and

Jane. 'And do you mean to say you aren't glad to see Daddy and

Mammy?'

'Zes--but Sandy's _so_ fond of childwen,' said Sandy, cuddling

Jane up complacently, and subsiding into his father's arms.

Husband and wife laughed into each other's eyes. Then Lucy knelt

down to tie the child's shoe, and David, first kissing the boy,

bent forward and laid another kiss on the mother's hair.

CHAPTER V

'An exciting post,' said David to Lucy one morning as she entered

the dining-room for breakfast. 'Louie proposes to bring her little

girl over to see us, and Ancrum will be home to-night!'

'Louie!' repeated Mrs. Grieve, standing still in her amazement.

'What do you mean?'

It was certainly unexpected. David had not heard from Louie for

more than six months; his remittances to her, however, were at all

times so casually acknowledged that he had taken no particular

notice; and he and she had not met for two years and more--since

that visit to Paris, in fact, recorded in his journal.

'It is quite true,' said David; 'it seems to be one of her sudden

schemes. I don't see any particular reason for it. She says she

must "put matters before" me, and that Cecile wants a change. I

don't see that a change to Manchester in February is likely to help

the poor child much. No, it must mean more money. We must make up

our minds to that,' said David with a little sad smile, looking at

his wife.

'David! I don't see that you're called to do it at all!' cried

Lucy. 'Why, you've done much more for her than anybody else would

have done! What they do with the money I can't think--dreadful

people!'

She began to pour out the tea with vehemence and an angry lip. She

had always in her mind that vision of Louie, as she had seen her

for the first and only time in her life, marching up Market Place

in the 'loud' hat and the black and scarlet dress, stared at and

staring. Nor had she ever lost her earliest impression of strong

dislike which had come upon her immediately afterwards, when Louie

and Reuben had mounted to Dora's sitting-room, and she, Lucy, had

angrily told the quick-fingered, bold-eyed girl who claimed to be

David Grieve's sister not to touch Dora's work. Nay, every year

since had but intensified it, especially since their income had

ceased to expand rapidly, and the drain of the Montjoies' allowance

had been more plainly felt. She might have begun to feel a little

ashamed of herself that she was able to give her husband so little

sympathy in his determination to share his gains with his

co-workers. She was quite clear that she was right in resenting the

wasting of his money on such worthless people as the Montjoies. It

was disgusting that they should sponge upon them so--and with

hardly a 'thank you' all the time. Oh dear, no!--Louie took

everything as her right, and had once abused David through four

pages because his cheque had been two days late.

David received his wife's remarks in a meditative silence. He

devoted himself a while to Sandy, who was eating porridge at his

right hand, and tended with great regularity to bestow on his

pinafore what was meant for his mouth. At last he said, pushing the

letter over to Lucy:

'You had better read it, Lucy. She talks of coming next week.'

Lucy read it with mounting wrath. It was the outcome of a fit of

characteristic violence. Louie declared that she could stand her

life no longer; that she was coming over to put things before

David; and if he couldn't help her, she and her child would just go

out and beg. She understood from an old Manchester acquaintance

whom she had met in the Rue de Rivoli about Christmas-time that

David was doing very well with his business. She wished him joy of

it. If he was prosperous, it was more than she was. Nobody ever

seemed to trouble their heads about her.

'Well, I never!' said Lucy, positively choked. 'Why, it's not much

more than a month since you sent her that last cheque. And now I

know you'll be saying you can't afford yourself a new great-coat.

It's disgraceful! They'll suck you dry, those kind of people, if

you let them.'

She had taken no pains so far to curb her language for the sake of

her husband's feelings. But as she gave vent to the last acid

phrase she felt a sudden compunction. For David was looking

straight before him into vacancy, with a painful intensity in the

eyes, and a curious droop and contraction of the mouth. Why did he

so often worry himself about Louie? _He_ had done all he

could, anyway.

She got up and went over to him with his tea. He woke up from his

absorption and thanked her.

'Is it right?'

'Just right!' he said, tasting it. 'All the same, Lucy, it would be

really nice of you to be kind to her and poor little Cecile. It

won't be easy for either of us having Louie here.'

He began to cut up his bread with sudden haste, then, pausing

again, he went on in a low voice. 'But if one leaves a task like

that undone it makes a sore spot, a fester in the mind.'

She went back to the place in silence.

'What day is it to be?' she said presently. Certainly they both

looked dejected.

'The 16th, isn't it? I wonder who the Manchester acquaintance was.

He must have given a rose-coloured account. We aren't so rich as

all that, are we, wife?'

He glanced at her with a charming half-apprehensive smile, which

made his face young again. Lucy looked ready to cry.

'I know you'll get out of buying that coat,' she said with energy,

as though referring to an already familiar topic of discussion

between them.

'No, I won't,' said David cheerfully. 'I'll buy it before Louie

comes, if that will please you. Oh, we shall do, dear! I've had a

real good turn at the shop this last month. Things will look better

this quarter's end, you'll see.'

'Why, I thought you'd been so busy in the printing office,' she

said, a good deal cheered, however, by his remark.

'So we have. But John's a brick, and doesn't care how much he does.

And the number of men who take a personal interest in the house,

who do their utmost to forward work, and to prevent waste and

scamping, is growing fast. When once we get the apprentices' school

into full working order, we shall see.'

David gave himself a great stretch; and then, thrusting his hands

deep into his pockets, stood by the fire enjoying it and his dreams

together.

'Has it begun?' said Lucy. Her tone was not particularly cordial;

but anyone who knew them well would perhaps have reflected that six

months before he would have neither made his remark, nor she have

asked her question.

'Yes--what?' he said with a start. 'Oh, the school! It has begun

tentatively. Six of our best men give in rotation two hours a day

to it at the time when work and the machines are slackest. And we

have one or two teachers from outside. Twenty-three boys have

entered. I have begun to pay them a penny a day for attendance.'

His face lit up with merriment as though he anticipated her

remonstrance.

'David, how foolish! If you coax them like that they won't care a

bit about it.'

'Well, the experiment has been tried by a great French firm,' he

said, 'and it did well. It is really a slight addition to wages, and

pays the firm in the end. You should see the little fellows hustle

up for their money. I pay it them every month.'

'And it all comes out of _your_ pocket--that, of course, I

needn't ask,' said Lucy. But her sarcasm was not bitter, and she

had a motherly eye the while to the way in which Sandy was stuffing

himself with his bread and jam.

'Well,' he said, laughing and making no attempt to excuse himself,

'but I tell you, madam, you will do better this year. I positively

must make some money out of the shop for you and myself too. So I

have been going at it like twenty horses, and we've sent out a

splendid catalogue.'

'Oh, I say, David!' said Lucy, dismayed, 'you're not going to take

the shop-money too to spend on the printing?'

'I won't take anything that will leave you denuded,' he said

affectionately; 'and whenever I want anything I'll tell you all

about it--if you like.'

He looked at her significantly. She did not answer for a minute,

then she said:

'Don't you want me to give those boys a treat some time?'

'Yes, when the weather gets more decent, if it ever does. We must

give them a day on the moors--take them to Clough End perhaps. Oh,

look here!' he exclaimed with a sudden change of tone, 'let us ask

Uncle Reuben to come and spend the day to see Louie!'

'Why, he won't leave _her_,' said Lucy.

'Who? Aunt Hannah? Oh yes, he will. It's wonderful what she can do

now. I saw her in November, you remember, when I went to see

Margaret. It's a resurrection. Poor Uncle Reuben!'

'What do you mean?' said Lucy, startled.

'Well,' said David slowly, with a half tender, half humorous twist

of the lip, 'he can't understand it. He prayed so many years, and it

made no difference. Then came a new doctor, and with electricity

and rubbing it was all done. Oh yes, Uncle Reuben would like to see

Louie. And I want to show him that boy there!'

He nodded at Sandy, who sat staring open-mouthed and open-eyed at

his parents, a large piece of bread and jam slipping slowly down

his throat.

'David, you're silly,' said Lucy. But she went to stand by him at

the fire, and slipped her hand inside his arm. 'I suppose she and

Cecile had better have the front room,' she went on slowly.

'Yes, that would be the most cheerful.'

Then they were silent a little, he leaning his head lightly against

hers.

'Well, I must go,' he said, rousing himself; 'I shall just catch the

train. Send a line to Ancrum, there's a dear, to say I will go and

see him to-night. Four months! I am afraid he has been very bad.'

Lucy stood by the fire a little, lost in many contradictory

feelings. There was in her a strange sense as of some long strain

slowly giving way, the quiet melting of some old hardness. Ever

since that autumn time when, after their return from Benet's Park,

her husband's chivalry and delicacy of feeling had given back to

her the self-respect and healed the self-love which had been so

rudely hurt, there had been a certain readjustment of Lucy's nature

going on below the little commonplaces and vanities and affections

of her life which she herself would never have been able to

explain. It implied the gradual abandonment of certain ambitions,

the relinquishment bit by bit of an arid and fruitless effort.

She would stand and sigh sometimes--long, regretful sighs like a

child--for she knew not what. But David would have his way, and it

was no good; and she loved him and Sandy.

But she owed no love to Louie Montjoie! It was a relief to her

now--an escape from an invading sweetness of which her little heart

was almost afraid--to sit down and plan how she would protect David

from that grasping woman and her unspeakable husband.

'David, my dear fellow!' said Ancrum's weak voice. He rose with

difficulty from his seat by the fire. The room was the same little

lodging-house sitting-room in Mortimer Road, where David years

before had poured out his boyish account of himself. Neither

chiffonnier, nor pictures, nor antimacassars had changed at all;

the bustling landlady was still loud and vigorous. But Ancrum

was a shadow.

'You are better?' David said, holding his hand in both his.

'Oh yes, better for a time. Not for long, thank God!'

David looked at him with painful emotion. Several times during

these eight years had he seen Ancrum emerge from these mysterious

crises of his, a broken and shattered man, whom only the force of a

superhuman will could drag back to life and work. But he had never

yet seen him so beaten down, so bloodless, so emaciated as this.

Lung mischief had declared itself more than a year before this

date, and had clearly made progress during this last attack of

melancholia. He thought to himself that his old friend could not

have long to live.

'Has Williams been to see you?' he asked, naming a doctor whom

Ancrum had long known and trusted.

'Oh yes! He can do nothing. He tells me to give in and go to the

south. But there is a little work left in me still. I wanted my

boys. I grew to pine for my boys--up there.'

'Up there' meant that house in Scotland where lived the friends

bound to him by such tragic memories of help asked and rendered in

a man's worst extremity, that he could never speak of them when he

was living his ordinary life in Manchester, passionately as he

loved them.

They chatted a little about the boys, some of whom David had been

keeping an eye on. Five or six of them, indeed, were in his

printing-office, and learning in the apprentices' school he had

just started.

But in the middle of their talk, with a sudden change of look,

Ancrum stooped forward and laid his hand on David's.

'A little more, Davy--I have just to get a _little_ worse--and

_she_ will come to me.'

David was not sure that he understood. Ancrum had only spoken of

his wife once since the night when, led on by sympathy and emotion,

he had met David's young confession by the story of his own fate.

She was still teaching at Glasgow so far as David knew, where she

was liked and respected.

'Yes, Davy--when I have come to the end of my tether--when I can do no

more but die--I shall call--and she will come. It has so far killed us

to be together--more than a few hours in the year. But when life is all

over for me--she will be kind--and I shall be able to forget it all. Oh,

the hours I have sat here thinking--thinking--and _gnashing my teeth!_

My boys think me a kind, gentle, harmless creature, Davy. They little

know the passions I have carried within me--passions of hate and

bitterness--outcries against God and man. But there has been One with me

through the storms'--his voice sank--'aye! and I have gone to Him again

and again with the old cry--_Master!--Master!--carest Thou not that we

perish?_'

His drawn grey face worked and he mastered himself with difficulty.

David held his hand firm and close in a silence which carried with it a

love and sympathy not to be expressed.

'Let me just say this to you, Davy,' Ancrum went on presently,

'before we shut the door on this kind of talk--for when a man has

got a few things to do and very little strength to do 'em with, he

must not waste himself. You may hear any day that I have been

received into the Catholic Church, or you may only hear it when I

am dying. One way or the other, you _will_ hear it. It has

been strange to go about all these years among my Unitarian and

dissenting friends and to know that this would be the inevitable

end of it. I have struggled alone for peace and certainty. I cannot

get them for myself. There is an august, an inconceivable

possibility which makes my heart stand still when I think of it,

that the Catholic Church may verily have them to give, as she says

she has. I am weak--I shall submit--I shall throw myself upon her

breast at last.'

'But why not now,' said David, tenderly, 'if it would give you

comfort?'

Ancrum did not answer at once; he sat rubbing his hands restlessly

over the fire.

'I don't know--I don't know,' he said at last. 'I have told you what

the end will be, Davy. But the will still flutters--flutters--in my

poor breast, like a caged thing.'

Then that beautiful half-wild smile of his lit up the face.

'Bear with me, you strong man! What have you been doing with

yourself? How many more courts have you been pulling down? And how

much more of poor Madam Lucy's money have you been throwing out of

window?'

He took up his old tone, half bantering, half affectionate, and

teased David out of the history of the last six months. While he

sat listening he reflected once more, as he had so often reflected,

upon the difference between the reality of David Grieve's life as

it was and his, Ancrum's, former imaginations of what it would be.

A rapid rise to wealth and a new social status, removal to London,

a great public career, a personality, and an influence conspicuous

in the eyes of England--all these things he had once dreamed of as

belonging to the natural order of David's development. What he had

actually witnessed had been the struggle of a hidden life to

realise certain ideal aims under conditions of familiar difficulty

and limitation, the dying down of that initial brilliance and

passion to succeed, into a wrestle of conscience as sensitive as it

was profound, as tenacious as it was scrupulous. He had watched an

unsatisfactory marriage, had realised the silent resolve of the

north-countryman to stand by his own people, of the man sprung from

the poor to cling to the poor: he had become familiar with the

veins of melancholy by which both character and life were crossed.

That glittering prince of circumstance as he had once foreseen him,

was still enshrined in memory and fancy; but the real man was knit

to the cripple's inmost heart.

Another observer, perhaps, might have wondered at Ancrum's sense of

difference and disillusion. For David after all had made a mark. As

he sat talking to Ancrum of the new buildings behind the

printing-office where he now employed from two to three hundred

men, of the ups and downs of his profit-sharing experiences, of

this apprentices' school for the sons of members of the 'house,'

imitated from one of the same kind founded by a great French

printing firm, and the object just now of a passionate energy of

work on David's part--or as he diverged into the history of an

important trade dispute in Manchester, where he had been appointed

arbitrator by the unanimous voice of both sides--as he told these

things, it was not doubtful even for Ancrum that his power and

consideration were spreading in his own town.

But, substantially, Ancrum was right. Hard labour and natural gift

had secured their harvest; but that vivid personal element in

success which captivates and excites the bystander seemed, in

David's case, to have been replaced by something austere, which

pointed attention and sympathy rather to the man's work than to

himself. When he was young there had been intoxication for such a

spectator as Ancrum in the magical rapidity and ease with which he

seized opportunity and beat down difficulty. Now that he was

mature, he was but one patient toiler the more at the eternal

puzzles of our humanity.

Ancrum let him talk awhile. He had always felt a certain interest

in David's schemes, though they were not of a quality and sort with

which a mind like his naturally concerned itself. But his interest

now could not hold out so long as once it could.

'Ah, that will do--that will do, dear fellow!' he said,

interrupting and touching David's hand with apologetic affection.

'I seem to feel your pulse beating 150 to the minute, and it tires

me so I can't bear myself. Gossip to me. How is Sandy?'

David laughed, and had as usual a new batch of 'Sandiana' to

produce. Then he talked of Louie's coming and of the invitation

which had been sent to Reuben Grieve.

'I shall come and sit in a corner and look at _her_,' said

Ancrum, nodding at Louie's name. 'What sort of a life has she been

leading all these years? Neither you nor I can much imagine. But

what beauty it used to be! How will John stand seeing her again?'

David smiled, but did not think it would affect John very greatly.

He was absorbed in the business of Grieve & Co., and no less round,

roseate, and trusty than he had always been.

'Well, good night--good night!' said Ancrum, and seemed to be

looking at the clock uneasily. 'Come again, Davy, and I dare say I

shall struggle up to you.'

At that moment the door opened, and, in spite of a hasty shout from

Ancrum, which she did not or would not understand, Mrs. Elsley, his

landlady, came into the room, bearing his supper. She put down the

tray, seemed to invite David's attention to it by her indignant

look, and flounced out again like one bursting with forbidden

speech.

'Ancrum, this is absurd!' cried David, pointing to the tea and

morsel of dry bread which were to provide this shrunken invalid

with his evening meal. 'You _can't_ live on this stuff now, you

know--you want something more tempting and more nourishing. Do be

rational!'

Ancrum sprang up, hobbled with unusual alacrity across the room,

and, laying hold of David, made a feint of ejecting his visitor.

'You get along and leave me to my wittles!' he said with the smile

of a schoolboy; 'I don't spy on you when you're at your meals.'

David crossed his arms.

'I shall have to send Lucy down every morning to housekeep with

Mrs. Elsley,' he said firmly.

'Now, David, hold your tongue! I couldn't eat anything else if I

tried. And there are two boys down with typhoid in Friar's

Yard--drat 'em!--and scarcely a rag on 'em: don't you understand?

And besides, David, if _she_ comes, I shall want a pound or

two, you see?'

He did not look at his visitor's face nor let his own be seen. He

simply pushed David through the door and shut it.

'Sandy, they're just come!' cried Lucy in some excitement, hugging

the child to her by way of a last pleasant experience before the

advent of her sister-in-law. Then she put the child down on the

sofa and went out to meet the new-comers.

Sandy sucked a meditative thumb, putting his face to the window,

and surveyed the arrival which was going on in the front garden.

There was a great deal of noise and talking; the lady in the grey

cloak was scolding the cabman, and 'Daddy' was taking her bags and

parcels from her, and trying to make her come in. On the steps

stood a little girl looking frightened and tired. Sandy twisted his

head round and studied her carefully. But he showed no signs of

running out to meet her. She might be nice, or she might be nasty.

Sandy had a cautious philosophical way with him towards novelties.

He remained perfectly still with his cheek pressed against the

glass.

The door opened. In came Louie, with Lucy looking already flushed

and angry behind her, and David, last of all, holding Cecile by the

hand.

Louie was in the midst of denunciations of the cabman, who had,

according to her, absorbed into his system, or handed over to an

accomplice on the way, a bandbox which had _certainly_ been

put in at St. Pancras, and which contained Cecile's best hat. She

was red and furious, and David felt himself as much attacked as the

cabman, for to the best of his ability he had transferred them and

their packages, at the Midland station, from the train to the cab.

In the midst of her tirade, however, she suddenly stopped short and

looked round the room she had just entered--Lucy's low comfortable

sitting-room, with David's books overflowing into every nook and

corner, the tea-table spread, and the big fire which Lucy had been

nervously feeding during her time of waiting for the travellers.

'Well, you've got a fire, anyway,' she said, brusquely. 'I thought

you'd have a bigger house than this by now.'

'Oh, thank you, it's quite big enough!' cried Lucy, going to the

tea-table and holding herself very straight. '_Quite_ big

enough for anything _we_ want! Will you take your tea?'

Louie threw herself into an armchair and looked about her.

'Where's the little boy?' she inquired.

'I'm here,' said a small solemn voice from behind the sofa, 'but I'm

not _your_ boy.'

And Sandy, discovered with his back to the window, replaced the

thumb which he had removed to make the remark, and went on staring

with portentous gravity at the new-comers. Cecile had nervously

disengaged herself from David and was standing by her mother.

'Why, he's small for his age!' exclaimed Louie; 'I'm sure he's small

for his age. Why, he's nearly five!'

'Come here, Sandy,' said David, 'and let your aunt and cousin look

at you.'

Sandy reluctantly sidled across the room so as to keep as far as

possible from his aunt and cousin, and fastened on his father's

hand. He and the little girl looked at one another.

'Go and kiss her,' said David.

Sandy most unwillingly allowed himself to be put forward. Cecile

with a little patronising woman-of-the-world air stooped and kissed

him first on one cheek and then on the other. Louie only looked at

him. Her black eyes--no less marvellous than of yore, although now

the brilliancy of them owed something to art as well as nature, as

Lucy at once perceived--stared him up and down, taking stock

minutely.

'He's well made,' she said grudgingly, 'and his colour isn't bad.

Cecile, take your hat off.'

The child obeyed, and the mother with hasty fingers pulled her hair

forward here, and put it back there. 'Look at the thickness of it,'

she said, proudly pointing it out to David. 'They'd have given me

two guineas for it in the Rue de la Paix the other day. Why didn't

that child have your hair, I wonder?' she added, nodding towards

Sandy.

'Because he preferred his mother's, I suppose,' said David, smiling

at Lucy, and wondering through his discomfort what Sandy could

possibly be doing with his coat-tail. He seemed to be elaborately

scrubbing his face with it.

'What are you doing with my coat, villain?' he said, lifting his

son in his arms.

Sandy found his father's ear, and with infinite precaution

whispered vindictively into it:

'I've wiped _them_ kisses off anyhow.'

David suppressed him, and devoted himself to the travellers and

their tea.

Every now and then he took a quiet look at his sister. Louie was in

some ways more beautiful than ever. She carried herself

magnificently, and as she sat at the tea-table--restless

always--she fell unconsciously into one fine attitude after

another, no doubt because of her long practice as a sculptor's

model. All the girl's awkwardness had disappeared; she had the

insolent ease which goes with tried and conscious power. But with

the angularity and thinness of first youth had gone also that wild

and startling radiance which Montjoie had caught and fixed in the

Maenad statue--the one enduring work of a ruined talent, now to be

found in the Luxembourg by anyone who cares to look for it. Her

beauty was less original; it had taken throughout the second-rate

Parisian stamp; she had the townswoman's pallor, as compared with

the moorland red and white of her youth; and round the eyes and

mouth in a full daylight were already to be seen the lines which

grave the history of passionate and selfish living.

But if her beauty was less original, it was infinitely more

finished. Lucy beside her stumbled among the cups, and grew more

and more self-conscious; she had felt much the same at Benet's Park

beside Lady Venetia Danby; only here there was a strong personal

animosity and disapproval fighting with the disagreeable sense of

being outshone.

She left almost all the talk to her husband, and employed herself

in looking after Cecile. David, who had left his work with

difficulty to meet his sister, did his best to keep her going on

indifferent subjects, wondering the while what it was that she had

come all this way to say to him, and perfectly aware that her sharp

eyes were in every place, taking a depreciatory inventory of his

property, his household, and his circumstances.

Suddenly Louie said something to Cecile in violent French. It was

to the effect that she was to hold herself up and not stoop like an

idiot.

The child, who was shyly eating her tea, flushed all over, and drew

herself up with painful alacrity. Louie went on with a loud account

of the civility shown her by some gentlemen on the Paris boat and

on the journey from Dover. In the middle of it she stopped short,

her eye flamed, she bent forward with the rapidity of a cat that

springs, and slapped Cecile smartly on the right cheek.

'I was watching you!' she cried. 'Are you never going to obey me--do

you think I am going to drag a hunchback about with me?'

Both David and Lucy started forward. Cecile dropped her bread and

butter and began to cry in a loud, shrill voice, hitting out

meanwhile at her mother with her tiny hands in a frenzy of rage and

fear. Sandy, frightened out of his wits, set up a loud howl also,

till his mother caught him up and carried him away.

'Louie, the child is tired out!' said David, trying to quiet Cecile

and dry her tears. 'What was that for?'

Louie's chest heaved.

'Because she won't do what I tell her,' she said fiercely. 'What am

I to do with her when she grows up? Who'll ever look at her twice?'

She scowled at the child who had taken refuge on David's knee, then

with a sudden change of expression she held out her arms, and said

imperiously:

'Give her to me.'

David relinquished her, and the mother took the little trembling

creature on her knee.

'Be quiet then,' she said to her roughly, always in French, 'I

didn't hurt you. There! _Veux-tu du gateau_?'

She cut some with eager fingers and held it to Cecile's lips. The

child turned away, silently refusing it, the tears rolling down her

cheeks. The mother devoured her with eyes of remorse and adoration,

while her face was still red with anger.

'_Dis-moi_, you don't feel anything?' she said, kissing her

hungrily. 'Are you tired? Shall I carry you upstairs and put you on

the bed to rest?'

And she did carry her up, not allowing David to touch her. When

they were at last safe in their own room, David came down to his

study and threw himself into his chair in the dark with a groan.

CHAPTER VI

Louie and her child entered the sitting-room together when the bell

rang for supper-tea. Louie had put on a high red silk dress of a

brilliant, almost scarlet, tone, which showed her arms from the

elbows and was very slightly clouded here and there with black;

Cecile crept beside her, a little pale shadow, in a white muslin

frock, adorned, however, as Lucy's vigilant eyes immediately

perceived, with some very dainty and expensive embroidery. The

mother's dress reminded her of that in which she first saw Louie

Grieve; so did her splendid and reckless carriage; so did the wild

play of her black eyes, always on the watch for opportunities of

explosion and offence. How did they get their dresses? Who paid for

them? And now they had come over to beg for more! Lucy could hardly

keep a civil tongue in her head at all, as her sister-in-law swept

round the room making strong and, to the mistress of the house,

cutting remarks on the difference between 'Manchester dirt' and

the brightness and cleanliness of Paris. Why, she lorded it over

them as though the place belonged to her! 'And she is just a

pauper--living on what we give her!' thought Lucy to herself with

exasperation.

After supper, at which Louie behaved with the same indefinable

insolence--whether as regarded the food or the china, or the shaky

moderator lamp, a relic from David's earliest bachelor days, which

only he could coax into satisfactory burning--Lucy made the move,

and said to her with cold constraint:

'Will you come into the drawing-room?--David has a pipe in the

study after dinner.'

'I want to speak to David,' said Louie, pushing back her chair with

noisy decision. 'I'll go with him. He can smoke as much as he

likes--I'm used to it.'

'Well, then, come into my study,' said David, trying to speak

cheerfully. 'Lucy will look after Cecile.'

To Louie's evident triumph Cecile made difficulties about going

with her aunt, but was at last persuaded by the prospect of seeing

Sandy in bed. She had already shown signs in her curious frightened

way of a considerable interest in Sandy.

Then David led the way to the study. He put his sister into his

armchair and stood pipe in hand beside her, looking down upon her.

In his heart there was the passionate self-accusing sense that he

could not feel pity, or affection, or remorse for the past when she

was there; every look and word roused in him the old irritation,

the old wish to master her, he had known so often in his youth. Yet

he drew himself together, striving to do his best.

Well, now, look here,' said Louie defiantly, 'I want some money.'

'So I supposed,' he said quietly, lighting his pipe.

Louie reddened.

'Well, and if I do want it,' she said, breathing quickly, 'I've a

right to want it. You chose to waste all that money--all my

money--on that marrying business, and you must take the

consequence. I look upon it this way--you promised to put my money

into your trade and give me a fair share of your profits. Then you

chucked it away--you made me spend it all, and now, of course, I'm

to have nothing to say to your profits. Oh dear, no! It's a trifle

that I'm a pauper and you're rolling in money compared to me

anyway. Oh! it doesn't matter nothing to nobody--not at all! All

the same you couldn't have made the start you did--not those few

months I was with you--without my money. Why can't you confess it,

I want to know--and behave more handsome to me now--instead of

leaving me in that state that I haven't a franc to bless myself

with!'

She threw herself back in her chair, with one arm flung behind her

head. David stared at her tongue-tied for a while by sheer

amazement.

'I gave you everything I had,' he said, at last, with a slow

distinctness,' all your money, and all my own too. When I came back

here, I had my new stock, it is true, but it was much of it unpaid

for. My first struggle was to get my neck out of debt.'

He paused, shrinking with a kind of sick repulsion from the memory

of that bygone year of shattered nerves and anguished effort.

Deliberately he let thought and speech of it drop. Louie was the

last person in the world to whom he could talk of it.

'I built up my business again,' he resumed, 'by degrees. Mr. Doyle

lent me money--it was on that capital I first began to thrive. From

the very beginning, even in the very year when I handed over to you

all our father's money--I sent you more. And every year since--you

know as well as I do--'