BOOK III

XIII

When Delorme left Duddon, carrying with him a huge full-length of

Victoria, which must, Victoria felt, entirely cut her off from London

during the ensuing spring and summer--for it was to go into the Academy,

and on no account could she bear to find herself in the same room with

it--he left behind him a cordial invitation to the "little painting girl"

to come and work in his Somersetshire studio--where he was feverishly

busy with a great commission for an American town-hall for the remainder

of August and September. Such invitations were extraordinarily coveted;

and Lydia, "advanced" as she was, should have been jubilant. She accepted

for her art's sake; but no one could have called her jubilant.

Mrs. Penfold, who for some weeks had been in a state of nervous and

rather irritable mystification with regard to Lydia, noticed the fact at

once. She consulted Susy.

"I can't make her out!" said the mother plaintively. "Oh, Susy, do you

know what's been going on? Lydia has been at Duddon at least six times

this last fortnight--and Lord Tatham has been here--and _nothing_

happens. And all the time Lydia keeps telling me she's not in love with

him, and doesn't mean to marry him. But what's _he_ doing?"

Susan was looking dishevelled and highly strung. She had spent the

afternoon in writing the fifth act of a tragedy on Belisarius; and it

was more than a fortnight since Mr. Weston, the young vicar of Dunscale,

had been to call. Her cheeks were sallow; her dark eyes burnt behind

their thick lashes.

"Suppose he's done it?" she said gloomily.

Mrs. Penfold gave a little shriek.

"Done what? What do you mean?"

"He's proposed--and she's said 'No.'"

"Lord Tatham! Oh, Susy!" wailed Mrs. Penfold; "you don't think that?"

"Yes, I do," said Susan, with resolution. "And now she's letting him down

gently."

"And never said a word to you or me! Oh, Susy, she couldn't be so

unkind."

Mrs. Penfold's pink and white countenance, on which age had as yet laid

so light a finger, showed the approach of tears. She and Susy were

sitting in a leafy recess of the garden; Lydia had gone after tea to see

old Dobbs and his daughter.

"That's all this _friendship_ business, she's so full of," said Susy. "If

she'd accepted him, she'd have told us, of course. Now he's plucked as a

lover, and readmitted as a friend. And one doesn't betray a friend's

secrets--even to one's relations. There it is."

"I never heard such nonsense," cried Mrs. Penfold. "I used to try that

kind of thing--making friends with young men. It was no use at all. They

always proposed."

Susan's state of tension--caused by the fact that her Fifth Act had been

a veritable shambles--broke up in laughter. She couldn't help kissing her

mother.

"You're priceless, darling, you really are. I wouldn't say anything to

her about it, if I were you," she added, more seriously. "I shall attack

her, of course, some day."

"But she still goes on seeing him," said Mrs. Penfold, pursuing her own

bewildered thoughts.

"That's her theory. She sees him--they write to each other--they probably

call each other 'Lydia' and 'Harry.'"

"Susy!"

"Why not? Christian names are very common nowadays."

"In my youth if any girl called a young man by his Christian name, it

meant she was engaged to him," said Mrs. Penfold with energy, her look

clearing. "And if they do call each other 'Lydia' and 'Harry' you may say

what you like, Susy, but she will be engaged to him some day--if not now,

in the winter, or some time."

"Well, you may be right. Anyway, don't talk to her, mother. Leave her

alone!"

Mrs. Penfold sighed deeply.

"Just think, Susy, what it would be like"--she dropped her

voice--"'_Countess_ Tatham!'--can't you see her going to the

drawing-room--with her feathers and her tiara? Wouldn't she be

lovely--wouldn't she have the world at her feet? Think what your

father would have said."

"I don't believe those things ever enter Lydia's mind!"

Mrs. Penfold slowly shook her head.

"It isn't human," she said plaintively, "it really isn't." And in a

mournful silence she returned to her embroidery.

Susan invaded her sister's bedroom late that night, and found Lydia

before her looking-glass enveloped in shimmering clouds of hair. The

younger sister sat down on the edge of the bed with her arms folded.

"Why are you so slack about this Delorme plan, Lydia? I don't believe you

want to go."

Lydia turned with a start.

"But of course I want to go! It's the greatest chance. I shall learn a

heap of things."

Susan nodded.

"All the same you don't seem a bit keen."

Lydia fidgeted.

"Well, you see, I admire Mr. Delorme's work as much as ever. But--"

"You don't like Mr. Delorme? The greatest egotist I ever saw," said the

uncompromising Susan, who, as a dramatist, prided herself on a knowledge

of character.

"Ah, but a great, great painter!" cried Lydia. "Don't dissuade me, Susan.

Professionally--I must do it!"

"It's not because Mr. Delorme is an egotist, that you don't want to go

away," said Susan, quietly. "It's for quite a different reason."

"What do you mean?"

"It's because--no, I don't mind if I do make you angry!--it's because

you're so desperately interested in Mr. Faversham."

"Really, Susan!" The cloud of hair was thrown back, and Lydia's face

emerged, the clear, indignant eyes shining in the candlelight.

"Oh, I don't mean that you're in love with him--wish you were! But you're

roping him in--just like Lord Tatham. And as he's the latest, he's the

most--well, exciting!"

Susan with her chin in her hands, and her dusky countenance very much

alive, seemed to be playing her sister with cautious mockery--feeling her

way.

"Dear Susy--I don't know why you're so unkind--and unjust," said Lydia,

after a moment, in the tone of one wounded.

"How am I unkind? You're the practical one of us three. You run us and

take care of us. We know we're stupids compared to you. But really mamma

and I stand aghast at the way in which you manage your love affairs!"

"My love affairs!" cried Lydia, "but I haven't got any!"

"Do you mean to say that Lord Tatham is not in love with you?" said Susan

severely--"that he wouldn't marry you to-morrow if you'd let him?"

Lydia flushed, but her look was neither resentful nor repentant.

"Why should we put it in that way?" she said, ardently. "Isn't it

possible to look at men in some other light than as possible husbands?

Haven't they got hearts and minds--don't they think and feel--just like

us?"

"Oh, no, not like us," said Susan hastily--"never."

Lydia smiled.

"Well, enough like us, anyway. Do you ever think, Susy!" she seized her

sister's wrist and looked her in the eyes--"that there are a million more

women than men in this country? It is evident we can't all be married.

Well, then, I withdraw from the competition! It's demoralizing to women;

and it's worse for men. But I don't intend to confine myself to women

friends."

"They bore you," said Susy sharply; "confess it at once!"

"How unkind of you!" Lydia's protest was almost tearful. "You know I have

at least four"--she recalled their names--"who love me, and I them. But

neither men nor women should live in a world apart. They complete each

other."

"Yes--in marriage," said Susan.

"No!--in a thousand other ways--we hardly dream of yet. Not marriage

only--but comradeship--help--in all the great--impersonal--delightful

things!"

"You look like a prophetess," said Susan, appraising her sister's kindled

beauty, with an artistic eye; "but I should like to know what Lady Tatham

has to say!"

Lydia was silent, her lip quivering a little.

"And I warn you," Susan continued, greatly daring, "that Faversham won't

let you do what you like with him!"

Lydia rose slowly, gathered up her golden veil into one big knot without

speaking, and went on with her preparations for bed.

Susy too uncoiled her small figure and stood up.

"I've told mamma not to bother you," she said

abruptly.

Lydia threw an arm round her tormentor.

"Dear Sue, I don't want to scold, but if you only knew how you spoil

things!"

Susy's eyes twinkled. She let Lydia kiss her, and then walking very

slowly to the door, so as not to have an appearance of being put to

flight, she disappeared.

Lydia was left to think--and think--her eyes on the ground. Never had

life run so warmly and richly; she was amply conscious of it. And what,

pray, in spite of Susy's teasing, had love to say to it? Passion was

ruled out--she held the senses in leash, submissive. Harry Tatham,

indeed, was now writing to her every day; and she to him, less often.

Faversham, too, was writing to her, coming to consult her; and all that a

woman's sympathy, all that mind and spirit could do to help him in his

heavy and solitary task she would do. Toward Tatham she felt with a

tender sisterliness; anxious often; yet confident in herself, and in the

issue. In Faversham's case, it was rather a keen, a romantic curiosity,

to see how a man would quit himself in a great ordeal suddenly thrust

upon him; and a girlish pride that he should turn to her for help.

His first note to her lay there--inside her sketch book. It had reached

her the morning after his interview with Mr. Melrose.

"I didn't find Mr. Melrose in a yielding mood last night. I beg of you

don't expect too much. Please, please be patient, and remember that if I

can do as yet but little, I honestly believe nobody else could do

anything. We must wait and watch--here a step, and there a step. But I

think I may ask you to trust me; and, if you can, suggest to others to do

the same. How much your sympathy helps me I cannot express."

Of course she would be patient. But she was triumphantly certain of

him--and his power. What Susy said to her unwillingness to go south was

partly true. She would have liked to stay and watch the progress of

things on the Melrose estates; to be at hand if Mr. Faversham wanted her.

She thought of Mainstairs--that dying girl--the sickly children--the

helpless old people. Indignant pity gripped her. That surely would be the

first--the very first step; a mere question of weeks--or days. It was so

simple, so obvious! Mr. Melrose would be _shamed_ into action! Mr.

Faversham could not fail there.

But she must go. She had her profession; and she must earn money.

Also--the admission caused her discomfort--the sooner she went, the

sooner would it be possible for Lady Tatham to induce her son to migrate

to the Scotch moor where, as a rule, she and he were always to be found

settled by the first days of August. It was evident that she was anxious

to be gone. Lydia confessed it, sorely, to herself. It seemed to her that

she had been spending some weeks in trying hard to make friends with Lady

Tatham; and she had not succeeded.

"Why won't she talk to me!" she thought; "and I daren't--to her. It would

be so easy to understand each other!"

Three days later, Green Cottage was in the occupation of a Manchester

solicitor, who was paying a rent for it, which put Mrs. Penfold in

high spirits; especially when coupled with the astonishing fact that

Lydia had sold all her three drawings which had been sent to a London

exhibition--also, apparently, to a solicitor. Mrs. Penfold expressed her

surprise to her daughter that the practice of the law should lead both to

a love of scenery and the patronage of the arts; she had been brought up

to think of it as a deadening profession.

Lydia had gone south; Mrs. Penfold and Susy were paying visits to

relations; and Duddon was closed till the end of September. It was known

that Mr. Melrose had gone off on one of his curio-hunting tours; and the

new agent ruled. A whole countryside, or what was left of it in August,

settled down to watch.

* * * * *

High on the moors of Ross-shire, Lady Tatham too watched. The lodge

filled up with guests, and one charming girl succeeded another, by

Victoria's careful contrivance. None of your painted and powdered

campaigners with minds torn between the desire to "best" a rival, and

the terror of their dressmakers' bills; but the freshest, sweetest,

best-bred young women she could discover among the daughters of her

friends. Tatham was delightful with them all, patiently played golf with

them, taught them to fish, and tramped with them over the moors. And when

they said good-bye, and the motor took them to the station, Victoria

believed that he remembered them just about as much, or as little, as the

"bag" of the last shoot.

Her own feeling was curiously mixed. There were many days when she would

have liked to beat Lydia Penfold, and at all times her pride lay wounded,

bitterly wounded, at the girl's soft hands. When Harry had first confided

in her, she had been certain that no nice girl could long resist him, if

only she, Harry's mother, gave opportunities and held the lists. It would

not be necessary for her to take any active steps. Mere propinquity would

do it. Then, when Tatham stumbled prematurely into his proposal, Victoria

might have intervened to help, but for Lydia's handling of the situation.

She had refused the natural place offered her in Harry's life--the place

of lover and wife. But she had claimed and was now holding a place only

less intimate, only less important; and Victoria felt herself disarmed

and powerless. To try and separate them was to deal a blow at her son of

which she was incapable; and at the same time there was the gnawing

anxiety lest their absurd "friendship" should stand in the way of her

boy's marriage--should "queer the pitch" for the future.

Meanwhile, day by day, Tatham's letters travelled south to Lydia, and

twice a week or thereabout, letters addressed in a clear and beautiful

handwriting arrived by an evening post from the south. And gradually

Victoria became aware of new forces and new growths in her son. "What

does she write to you about?" she had said to him once, with her

half-sarcastic smile. And after a little hesitation--silently, Tatham had

handed over to her the letter of the afternoon. "I'd like you to see it,"

he had said simply. "She makes one think a lot."

And, indeed, it was a remarkable letter, full of poetry but also full of

fun. The humours of Delorme's studio--a play she had seen in London--a

book she had read--the characteristics of a Somersetshire village--the

eager pen ran on without effort, without pretence. But it was the pen of

youth, of feeling, of romance; and it revealed the delicate heart and

mind of a woman. There was a liberal education in it; and Victoria

watched the process at work, sometimes with jealousy, sometimes with

emotion. After all, might it not be a mere stage--and a useful one. She

reserved her judgment, waiting for the time when these two should meet

again, face to face.

September was more than halfway through, when one morning Tatham tossed a

letter to his mother across the breakfast table with the remark:

"I say, mother, the new broom doesn't seem to be sweeping very well!"

The letter was from Undershaw. Tatham--in whom the rural reformer was

steadily developing--kept up a fairly regular correspondence with the

active young doctor, on medical and sanitary matters, connected with

his own estate and the county.

"Matters are going rather oddly in this neighbourhood. I must say I can't

make Faversham out. You remember what an excellent beginning he seemed to

make a couple of months ago. Colonel Barton told me that he had every

hope of him; he was evidently most anxious to purge some at least of Mr.

Melrose's misdeeds; seemed businesslike, conciliatory, etc. Well, I

assure you, he has done almost nothing! It is not really a question of

giving him time. There were certain scandalous things, years old, that he

ought to have put right _at once_--on the nail--or thrown up his post.

The Mainstairs cottages for instance. We are in for another diphtheria

epidemic there. The conditions are simply horrible. Melrose, as before,

will do nothing, and defies anybody else to do anything; says he has

given the tenants notice that he intends to pull the cottages down, and

the people stay in them at their own peril. The local authority can do

nothing; the people say they have nowhere to go, and cling like limpets

to the rock. Melrose could put those sixteen cottages in order for a

couple of thousand pounds, which would be about as much to him as

half-a-crown to me. It is all insane pride and obstinacy--he won't be

dictated to--and the rest. I shall be a land-nationalizer if I hear much

more of Melrose.

"Meanwhile, Faversham will soon come in for his master's hideous

unpopularity, if he can't manage him better. He is looking white and

harassed, and seems to avoid persons like myself who might attack him.

But I gather that he has been trying to come round Melrose by attempting

some reforms behind his back, and probably with his own money. Something,

for instance, was begun at Mainstairs, while Melrose was away in Holland,

after the fresh diphtheria cases broke out. There was an attempt made to

get at the pollutions infecting the water supply, and repairs were begun

on the worst cottage.

"But in the middle Melrose came home, and was, I believe, immediately

informed of what was going on by that low scoundrel Nash who used to

be his factotum, and has shown great jealousy of Faversham since his

appointment. What happened exactly I can't say, but from something old

Dixon said to me the other day--I have been attending him for

rheumatism--I imagine there was a big row between the two men. Why

Faversham didn't throw up there and then, I can't understand. However

there he is still, immersed they tell me in the business of the estate,

but incessantly watched and hampered by Melrose himself, an extraordinary

development in so short a time; and able, apparently, even if he is

willing, which I assume--to do little or nothing to meet the worst

complaints of the tenants. They are beginning to turn against him

furiously.

"Last week the sight of Mainstairs and the horrible suffering there got

on my nerves. I sat down and wrote to Melrose peremptorily demanding a

proper supply of antitoxin at once, at his expense. A post-card from him

arrived, refusing, and bidding me apply to a Socialist government. That

night, however, on arriving at my surgery, I found a splendid supply of

antitoxin, labelled 'for Mainstairs,' without another word. I have reason

to think Faversham had been in Carlisle himself that day to get it; he

must have cleared out the place.

"Next day I saw him in the village. He specially haunts a cottage where

there is a poor girl of eighteen, paralyzed after an attack of diphtheria

last year, and not, I think, long for this world. The new epidemic has

now attacked her younger sister, a pretty child of eight. I doubt whether

we shall save her. Miss Penfold has always been very kind in coming to

visit them. She will be dreadfully sorry.

"Faversham, I believe, has tried to move the whole family. But where are

they to go? The grandfather is a shepherd on a farm near--too old for a

new place. There isn't a vacant cottage in the whole neighbourhood--as

you know; and scores that ought to be built.

"As to the right-of-way business, Melrose's fences are all up again, his

rascally lawyers, Nash at the head, are as busy as bees trumping up his

case; and I can only suppose that he has been forcing Faversham to write

the unscrupulous letters about it that have been appearing in some of the

papers.

"What makes it all rather gruesome is that there are the most persistent

rumours that the young man has been adopted by Melrose, and will probably

be his heir. I can't give you any proofs, but I am certain that all the

people about the Tower believe it. If so, he will no doubt be well paid

for his soul! But sell it he must, or go. I have no doubt he thought he

could manage Melrose. Poor devil!

"The whole thing makes me very sick--I liked him so much while he was my

patient. And I expect you and Lady Tatham will be pretty disappointed

too."

* * * * *

Victoria returned the letter to her son, pointing to the last sentence.

"It depends on what you expected. I never took to the young man."

"Why doesn't he insist--or go!" cried Tatham.

"Apparently Melrose has bought him."

"I say, don't let's believe that till we know!"

When his mother left him, Tatham took his way to the moor, and spent

an uncomfortable hour in rumination. Lydia had spoken of Faversham once

or twice in her early letters from the south; but lately there had been

no references to him at all. Was she disappointed--or too much

interested?--too deeply involved? A vague but gnawing jealousy was

fastening on Tatham day by day; and he had not been able to conceal it

from his mother. Lydia was free--of course she was free! But friends have

their right too. "If she is really going that way, I ought to know,"

thought poor Tatham.

* * * * *

Meanwhile Lydia herself would have been hard put to it to say whither she

was going. But that moral and intellectual landscape which had lain so

clear before her when she left Green Cottage was certainly beginning to

blur; the mists were descending upon it.

She spent the August and September days working feverishly hard in

Delorme's studio, and her evenings in a pleasant society of young

artists, of both sexes, all gathered at the feet of the great man. But

her mind was often far away; and rational theories as to the true

relations between men and women were neither so clear nor so supporting

as they had been.

She had now two intimate men friends; two ardent and devoted

correspondents. Scarcely a day passed that she was not in touch with both

of them. Her knowledge of the male temperament and male ways of looking

at things was increasing fast. So far she had her desire. And in her

correspondence with the two men, she had amply "played up." She had given

herself--her thoughts, feelings, imaginations--to both; in different

ways, and different degrees.

And what was happening? Simply a natural, irresistible discrimination,

which was like the slow inflooding of the tide through the river mouth

it forces. Tatham's letters were all pleasure. Not a word of wooing in

them. He had given his word, and he kept it. But the unveiling of a

character so simple, strong, and honest, to the eyes of this girl of

four-and-twenty, conveyed of itself a tribute that could not but rouse

both gratitude and affection in Lydia. She did her best to reward him;

and so far her "ideas" had worked.

Faversham's letters, on the other hand, from the governing event of the

day, had now become a pain and a distress. The exultant and exuberant

self-confidence of the earlier correspondence, the practical dreams on

paper which had stirred her enthusiasm and delight--they came, it seemed

to her, to a sudden and jarring end, somewhere about the opening of

September. The change was evidently connected with the return of Mr.

Melrose from abroad just at that time. The letters grew rambling,

evasive, contradictory. Doubt and bitterness began to appear in them.

She asked for facts about his work, and they were not given her. Instead

the figure of Melrose rose on the horizon, till he dominated the

correspondence, a harsh and fantastic task-master, to whose will and

conscience it was useless to appeal.

When two months of this double correspondence had gone by, and in the

absence of Lydia's usual friends and correspondents from the Pengarth

neighbourhood, no other information from the north had arrived to

supplement Faversham's letters, Susy, who was in the Tyrol with a friend,

might have drawn ample "copy," from her sister's condition, had she

witnessed it. Lydia was most clearly unhappy. She was desperately

interested, and full of pity; yet apparently powerless to help. There

was a tug at her heart, a grip on her thoughts, which increased

perpetually. Faversham wrote to her often like a guilty man; why, she

could not imagine. The appeal of his letters to her had begun to shake

her nerves, to haunt her nights. She longed for the October day when

Green Cottage would be free from its tenants, and she once more on the

spot.

With the second week of October, Lady Tatham returned to Duddon. Tatham

would have been with her, but that he was detained, grumbling, by a

political demonstration at Newcastle. Never had he felt political

speech-making so tedious. But for a foolish promise to talk drivel to a

crowd of people who knew even less about the subject than he, he might

have been spending the evening with Lydia. For the strangers in Green

Cottage had departed, and Lydia was again within his reach.

The return to Duddon after an absence had never lost its freshness for

Victoria. Woman of fifty as she was, she was still a bundle of passions,

in the intellectual and poetic sense. The sight of her own fells and

streams, the sound of the Cumbrian "aa's," and "oo's," the scurrying of

the sheep among the fern, the breath of the wind in the Glendarra woods,

the scent of moss and heather--these things rilled her with just the same

thrills and gushes of delight as in her youth. Such thrills and gushes

were for her own use only; she never offered them for inspection by other

people.

She had no sooner looked at her letters, and chatted with her

housekeeper, on the day of her return, than clothed in her oldest gown

and thickest shoes, she went out wandering by herself through the October

dusk; ravished by the colour in which autumn had been wrapping the

Cumbrian earth since she had beheld it last; the purples and golds and

amethysts, the touches of emerald green, the fringes of blue and purple

mist; by the familiar music of the streams, which is not as the Scotch

music; and the scents of the hills, which are not as the scents of the

Highlands. Yet all the time she was thinking of Harry and Lydia Penfold;

trying to plan the winter, and what she was to do.

It was dark, with a rising moon when she got back to Duddon. The butler,

an old servant, was watching for her in the hall. She noticed disturbance

in his manner.

"There are two ladies, my lady, in the drawing-room."

"Two ladies!--Hurst!" The tone was reproachful. Victoria did not always

suffer her neighbours gladly, and Hurst knew her ways. The first evening

at home was sacred.

"I could not help it, my lady. I told them you were out, and might not be

in till dark. They said they must see you--they had come from Italy--and

it was most important."

"From Italy!" repeated Victoria, wondering--"who on earth--Did they give

their name?"

"No, my lady, they said you'd know them quite well."

Victoria hurried on to the drawing-room. Two figures rose as she entered

the room, which was only lit by the firelight; and then stood motionless.

Victoria advanced bewildered.

"Will you kindly tell me your names?"

"Don't you remember me, Lady Tatham?" said a low, excited voice.

Victoria turned on an electric switch close to her hand, and the room was

suddenly in a blaze of light. She looked in scrutinizing astonishment at

the figure in dingy black, standing before her, and at a girl, looking

about sixteen--deathly pale--who seemed to be leaning on a chair in the

background.

That strange, triangular face, with the sharp chin, and the abnormal

eyes--where, in what dim past, had she seen it before? For some seconds

memory wrestled. Then, old and new came together; and she recognized her

visitor.

"Mrs. Melrose!" she said, in incredulous amazement. The woman in black

came nearer, and spoke brokenly--the bitter emotion beneath gradually

forcing its way.

"I am in great distress--I don't know what to do. My daughter and I are

starving--and I remembered you'd come to see me--that once--at Threlfall.

I knew all about you. I've asked English people often. I thought perhaps

you'd help me--you'd tell me how to make my husband do something for

me--for me--and for his daughter! Look at her"--Netta paused and

pointed--"she's ill--she's dropping. We had to hurry through from Lucca.

We couldn't afford to stop on the way. We sold everything we had; some

people collected a hundred francs for us; and we just managed to buy our

tickets. Felicia didn't want to come, but I made her. I couldn't see her

die before my eyes. We've starved for months. We've parted with

everything, and I've written to Mr. Melrose again and again. He's never

answered--till a few weeks ago, and he said if we troubled him again

he'd stop the money. He's a bad, bad man."

Shaking, her teeth chattering, her hands clenched at her side, the

forlorn creature stared at Victoria. She was not old, but she was a

wreck; a withered, emaciated wreck of the woman Victoria had once seen

twenty years before.

Victoria, laying a gentle hand upon her, drew an armchair forward.

"Sit down, please, and rest. You shall have food directly. I will have

rooms got ready. And this is your daughter?"

She went up to the girl who stood shivering like her mother, and

speechless. But her proud black eyes met Victoria's with a passion in

them that seemed to resent a touch, a look. "She ought to be lovely!"

thought Victoria; "she is--if one could feed and dress her."

"You poor child! Come and lie down."

She took hold of the girl and guided her to a sofa. When they reached it,

the little creature fell half fainting upon it. But she controlled

herself by an astonishing effort, thanked Victoria in Italian, and

curling herself up in a corner she closed her eyes. The white profile on

the dark sofa cushion was of a most delicate perfection, and as Victoria

helped to remove her hat she saw a small dark head covered with short

curls like a boy's.

Netta Melrose looked round the beautiful room, its pictures, its deep

sofas and chairs, its bright fire, and then at the figures of Victoria

and the housekeeper in the distance. Victoria was giving her orders. The

tears were on Netta's cheeks. Yet she had the vague, ineffable feeling of

one just drawn from the waves. She had done right. She had saved herself

and Felicia.

Food was brought, and wine. They were coaxed to eat, warmed and

comforted. Then Victoria took them up through the broad, scented passages

of the beautiful house to rooms that had been got ready for them.

"Don't talk any more to-night. You shall tell me everything to-morrow. My

maid will help you. I will come back presently to see you have everything

you want."

Felicia, frowning, wished to unpack their small hand-bag, with its shabby

contents, for herself. But she was too feeble, and the maid, in spite of

what seemed to the two forlorn ones her fine clothes and fine ways, was

kind and tactful. Victoria's wardrobe was soon laid under contribution;

beautiful linen, and soft silken things she possessed but seldom wore,

were brought out for her destitute guests.

Victoria came in to say good-night. Netta looked at the stately woman,

the hair just beginning to be gray, the strong face with its story of

fastidious thought, of refined and sheltered living.

"You're awfully good to us. It's twenty years!--" Her voice failed her.

"Twenty years--yes, indeed! since I drove over to see you that time! Your

daughter was a little toddling thing."

"We've had such a life--these last few years--oh, such an awful

life! My old father's still alive--but would be better if he were dead.

My mother depended on us entirely--she's dead. But I'll explain

everything--everything."

It was clear, however, that till sleep had knit up the ravelled nerves of

the poor lady, no coherent conversation was possible. Victoria hastened

to depart.

"To-morrow you shall tell me all about yourself. My son will be home

to-morrow. We will consult him and see what can be done."

Mother and daughter were left alone. Felicia rose feebly to go to her own

room, which adjoined her mother's. She was wearing a dressing-gown of

embroidered silk--pale blue, and shimmering--which Victoria's maid had

wrapped her in, after the child's travelling clothes, thread-bare and

mud-stained, had been taken off. The girl's tiny neck and wrists emerged

from it, her little head, and her face from which weariness and distress

had robbed all natural bloom. What she was wearing, or how she looked,

she did not know and did not care. But her mother, in whom dress had been

for years a passion never to be indulged, was suddenly--though all her

exhaustion--enchanted with her daughter's appearance.

"Oh, Felicia, you look so nice!"

She took up the silk of the dressing-gown and passed it through her

fingers covetously; then her tired eyes ran over the room, the white bed

standing ready, the dressing-table with its silver ornaments and flowers,

the chintz-covered sofas and chairs.

"Why shouldn't we be rich too?" she said angrily. "Your father is richer

than the Tathams. It's a wicked, wicked shame!"

Felicia put her hand to her head.

"Oh, do let me go to bed," she said in Italian.

Netta put her arm round her, supporting her. Presently they passed a

portrait on the wall, an enlarged photograph of a boy in cricketing

dress.

Underneath it was written:

"_Harry. Eton Eleven. July 189---_."

Felicia for the first time showed a gleam of interest. She stopped to

look at the picture.

"Who is it?"

"It must be her son, Lord Tatham."

The girl's sunken eyes seemed to drink in the pleasant image of the

English boy.

"Shall we see him?"

"Of course. To-morrow. Now come to bed!"

Felicia's head was no sooner on the pillow than she plunged into sleep.

Netta, on the other hand, was for a long time sleepless. The luxury of

the bed and the room was inexpressibly delightful and reviving to her.

Recollections of a small bare house in the Apuan Alps above Lucca, and of

all that she and Felicia had endured there, ran through her mind, mingled

with visions of Threlfall as she had known it of old, its choked

passages--the locked room from which she had stolen the Hermes--the

great table in Edmund's room with its litter of bric-à-brac--Edmund

himself....

She trembled; alternately desperate, and full of fears. The thought that

Melrose was only a few miles from her--that she was going to face and

brave him after all these years--turned her cold with terror. And yet

misery had made her reckless.

"He _shall_ provide for us!" She gathered up her weak soul into this

supreme resolve. How wise she had been to follow the sudden impulse which

had bade her appeal to the Tathams! Were they not her kinsfolk by

marriage?

They knew what Edmund was! They were kind and powerful. They would

protect her, and take up her cause. Edmund was now an old man. If he

died, who else had a right to his money but she and Felicia? Oh! Lady

Tatham would help them; she'd see them righted! Cradled in that hope,

Netta Melrose at last fell asleep.

XIV

Tatham arrived at Duddon by the earliest possible train on the following

morning.

On crossing the hall he perceived in the distance a very slight thin

girl, dressed in black, coming out of his mother's sitting-room. When she

saw him she turned hurriedly to the stairs and ran up, only pausing once

on the first landing to flash upon him a singularly white face, lit by

singularly black eyes. Then she disappeared.

"Who is that lady?" he asked of Hurst in astonishment.

"Her ladyship expects you, my lord," replied Hurst evasively, throwing

open the door of the morning-room. Victoria was disclosed; pacing up and

down, her hands in the pockets of her tweed jacket. Tatham saw at once

that something had happened.

She put her hands on his shoulders, kissed him, and delivered her news.

She did so with a peculiar and secret zest. To watch how he took the

fresh experiences of life, and to be exultantly proud and sure of him the

while, was all part of her adoration of him.

"Melrose's wife and daughter! Great Scot! So they're not dead?" Tatham

stood amazed.

"He seems to have done his best to kill them. They're starved--and

destitute. But here they are."

"And why in the name of fortune do they come to us?"

"We are cousins, my dear--and I saw her twenty years ago. It isn't a bad

move. Indeed the foolish woman might have come before."

"But what on earth can we do for them?"

The young man sat down bewildered, while his mother told the story,

piecing it together from the rambling though copious narrative, which she

had gathered that morning from Netta in her bed, where she had been

forced to remain, at least for breakfast.

After her flight, Melrose's fugitive wife had settled down with her child

in Florence, under the wing of her own family. But they were a shiftless,

importunate crew, and, in the course of years, every one of them came

more or less visibly to grief. Her sisters married men of the same

dubious world as themselves, and were always in difficulties. Netta's

eldest brother got into trouble with the bank where he was employed, and

another brother, as a deserter from the army, had to make his escape to

South America. The father, Robert Smeath, had found it more and more

difficult to earn anything on which to keep his belongings, and as a

picture dealer seemed to have fallen into bad odour with the Italian

authorities, for reasons of which Netta could give no account.

"And how much do you think Mr. Melrose allowed his wife and child?" asked

Victoria, her eyes sparkling. "_Eighty pounds a year_!--on which in the

end the whole family seem to have lived. Finally, the mother died, and

Mr. Smeath got into some scrape or other--I naturally avoided the

particulars--which involved pledging half Mrs. Melrose's allowance for

five years. And on the rest--forty pounds--she and her daughter, and her

old father have been trying to live for the last two. You never heard

such a story! They found a small half-ruined villa in the mountains north

of Pisa, and there they somehow existed. They couldn't afford nursing or

doctoring for the old father; they were half starved; the mother and

daughter have both actually worked in the vineyards; and, of course, they

had no servant. You should see the poor woman's hands! Then she began to

write to her husband. No reply--for eighteen months, no reply--till just

lately, an intimation from the Florentine bank, that if any more similar

letters were addressed to Mr. Melrose the allowance would be stopped."

"Old fiend!" cried Tatham, "now we'll get at him!"

Victoria went on to describe how, at last, an English family who had

taken one of the old villas on the Luccan Alps for the summer had come

across the forlorn trio. They were scandalized by the story, and they

had impressed on Mrs. Melrose that she and her daughter had a legal

right to suitable maintenance from her husband. Urged by them--and

starvation--Netta had at last plucked up courage. The old father was left

in the charge of a _contadino_ family, a small loan was raised for them

to which the English visitors contributed, and the mother and daughter

started for home.

"But without us, or some one else to help her," said Victoria, "she would

never--never!--get through the business. Her terror of Melrose is a

perfect disease. She shakes if you mention his name. That was what made

her think of me--and that visit I paid her. Poor thing! she was rather

pretty then. But it was plain enough what their relations were. Well,

now, Harry, it's for you to say. But my blood's up! I suggest we see this

thing through!"

The door slowly opened as she spoke, and two small figures came in

silently, closing it behind them. There they stood, a story in

themselves; Netta, with the bearing and the dress of a shabby little

housekeeper; the girl ghastly thin, her shoulder-blades cutting her

flimsy dress, blue shadows in all the hollows of the face, but with

extraordinary pride of bearing, and extraordinary possibilities of beauty

in the modelling of her delicate features, and splendid melancholy eyes.

Tatham could not help staring at her. She was indeed the disinherited

princess.

Then he walked up to them, and shook hands with boyish heartiness.

"I say, you do look pumped out! But don't you worry too much. My mother

and I'll see what can be done. We'll set the lawyers on, if there's

nothing else. It's a beastly shame, anyway! But now, you take it easy.

We'll look after you. Sit down, won't you? Mother's chairs are the most

comfortable in the house!"

He installed them; and then at once took the serious, business air,

which still gave his mother a pleasure which was half amusement. Felicia,

sitting in a corner behind her mother's sofa, could not take her eyes

from him. The tall, fair English youth, six foot two, and splendidly

developed, the pink of health, modesty, and kindly courtesy, was

different from all other beings that had ever swum into her view. She

watched him close and furtively--his features, his dress, his gestures;

comparing the living man in her mind with the photograph upstairs, and so

absorbed in her study of him that she scarcely heard a word of the

triangular discussion going on between her mother, Tatham, and Victoria.

The whole time she was drinking in impressions, as of a god-like

creature, all beneficence.

After an hour's cross-examination of the poor, shrinking Netta, Tatham's

blood too was up; he was eager for the fray. To attack Melrose was a joy;

made none the less keen by the reflection that to help these two helpless

ones was a duty. Lydia's approval, Lydia's sympathy were certain; he

kindled the more.

"All right!" he said, rising. "Now I think we are agreed on the first

step. Faversham is our man. I must see Faversham at once, and set him to

work! If I find him, I will report the result to you, Mrs. Melrose--so

far--by luncheon time."

He departed, to ring up the Threlfall office in Pengarth and inquire

whether Faversham could be seen there. Victoria left the room with him.

"Have you forgotten these rumours of which Undershaw wrote you?"

"What, as to Faversham? No, I have not forgotten them. But I shan't take

any notice of them. He can't accept anything for himself till these two

have got their due! What right has he to Melrose's property at all?"

said the young man indignantly.

* * * * *

The mother and son had scarcely left the room when Netta turned to her

daughter with trembling lips.

"I haven't"--half whispering--"told them anything about the Hermes!"

"It was no theft!" said Felicia passionately. "I would tell anybody!"

Netta was silent, her face working with unspoken fear. Suddenly, Felicia

said in her foreign English, pronounced with a slight effort, and very

precisely:

"That is a very beautiful young man!"

Netta was startled.

"Lord Tatham? Not at all, Felicia. He is very nice, but I do not even

call him good-looking."

"He is a very beautiful young man," repeated Felicia with emphasis, "and

I am going to marry him!"

"Felicia! for heaven's sake--do not show your mad ways here!" cried

Netta, white with new alarm.

For the first time for many, many days Felicia smiled. She got up and

went to a glass that hung on the wall. Taking one of the sidecombs from

her curls, she began to pull them out, winding them round her tiny

fingers, making more of them, and patting them back into place, till her

head was one silky mass of ripples. Then she looked at herself.

"I must have a new dress at once!" she said peremptorily.

"I don't know where you'll get it!" cried Netta--"you foolish child!"

"The young man will give it me." And still before the glass, she gave a

little bound, like a kitten. Then she ran back to her mother, took

Netta's face in her hands, dashed a kiss at it, and subsided, weak and

gasping, on to a sofa. When Victoria reappeared Felicia was motionless

as before, but there was a first streak of colour in her thin, cheeks,

and a queer brightness in her eyes.

Faversham was sitting in his Pengarth office, turning over the morning's

post. He had just ridden in from the Tower. Before him lay a telephone

message taken down for him by his clerk, before his arrival:

"Lord Tatham will be at Mr. Faversham's office by 12:30. He wishes to

speak to Mr. Faversham on important business."

Something, no doubt, to do with the right-of-way proceedings to which

Tatham was a party; or, possibly, with a County Council notice which had

roused Melrose to fury, to the effect that some Threlfall land would be

taken compulsorily for allotments under a recent Act, if the land were

not provided by arrangement.

"Perfectly reasonable! And every complaint that Tatham will make--if he

has come to complain--will be perfectly reasonable. And I shall have to

tell him to go to the devil!"

He sat pen in hand, staring at the paper on his desk, his mind divided

between a bitter disgust with his day's work and the consciousness of a

deep central resolve, which that disgust did not affect, and would not be

allowed to affect. He was looking harassed, pale, and perceptibly older.

No doubt his general health had not yet fully recovered from his

accident. But those who disliked in him a certain natural haughtiness,

said that he had now more "side on" than ever.

A bell below warned him of Tatham's arrival. He hurriedly took out papers

from various drawers, and arranged them on the office table. They related

to the matter on which he thought Tatham might wish to confer with him.

His door opened.

"Hullo, Faversham! Hope you're quite strong," said the incomer.

"All right, thank you." The two men shook hands. "You've been doing

Scotland as usual?"

"Two months of it. Beastly few birds. Not at all sorry to come back.

Well, now--I've got something very surprising to talk to you about. I

say"--he looked round him--"we shan't be disturbed?"

Faversham rose, gave a telephone order and resumed his seat.

"Who do you think we've got staying at Duddon?"

"I haven't an idea. Have a cigarette?"

"Thanks. Has Melrose ever talked to you about his wife and daughter?"

Faversham stared, took a whiff at his cigarette, and put it down.

"Are you her to tell me anything about them?"

"They are staying at Duddon at this moment," said Tatham, watching his

effect; "arrived last night--penniless and starving."

Faversham flushed.

"You're sure they are the right people?" he said after a pause.

Tatham laughed.

"My mother remembers Mrs. Melrose twenty years ago; and the daughter, if

it weren't that she's little more than skin and bone, would be the image

of Melrose--on a tiny scale. Now, look here! this is their story."

The young man settled down to it, telling it just as it had been told to

him, until toward the end a tolerably hot indignation forced its way, and

he used some strong language with regard to Melrose, under which

Faversham sat silent.

"I've no doubt he's told you the same lies he's told everybody else!"

exclaimed Tatham, after waiting a little for comments that were slow in

coming.

"I was quite aware they were alive," said Faversham, slowly.

"You were, by Jove!"

"And I have already appealed to Melrose to behave reasonably toward

them."

"Reasonably! Good heavens!" Tatham had flushed in his turn. "A man is

bound to behave rather more than 'reasonably'--toward his daughter,

anyway--I don't care what the mother had done. I tell you the girl's a

real beauty, or will be, when she's properly fed and dressed. She's a

girl anybody might be proud of. And there he's been wallowing in wealth,

while his child has been starving. And threatening to stop their wretched

allowance! Well, you know as well as I, what public opinion will be, if

these facts get about. Public opinion is pretty strong already. But, by

George, when this is added to the rest! Can't you persuade him to behave

himself before it all gets into the papers? It will get into them of

course. There the poor things are, and we mean to stand by them. There

must be a proper provision for the wife--that the courts can get out of

him. And as to the girl--why, she is his heiress!--and ought to be

acknowledged as such."

Tatham turned suddenly, as he spoke, and fixed a pair of very straight

blue eyes on his companion.

"Mr. Melrose is not bound to make her his heir," said Faversham quietly.

"Not bound! I daresay. But who else is there? He's not very likely to

leave it to any of _us_," said Tatham with a grin. "And he's not the kind

of gentleman to be endowing missions. Who is there?" he repeated.

"Mr. Melrose will please himself," said Faversham, coldly. "Of that we

may be sure. Now then--what is it exactly that these ladies have come to

ask?" he continued, in a sharp businesslike tone. "You are aware of

course that Mrs. Melrose left her husband of her own free will--without

any provocation?"

"You won't get a judge to believe that very easily--in the case of

Melrose! Anyway she's done nothing criminal. And she's willing, poor

wretch! to go back to him. But if not, she asks for a maintenance

allowance, suitable to his wealth and position, and that the daughter

should be provided for. _You_ can't surely refuse to support us so far?"

Tatham had insensibly stiffened in his chair. His manner which at first,

though not exactly cordial, had still been that of the college friend and

contemporary, had unconsciously, in the course of the conversation,

assumed a certain tone of authority, as though there spoke through him

the force of a settled and traditional society, of which he knew himself

to be one of the natural chiefs.

To Faversham, full of a secret bitterness, this second manner of Tatham's

was merely arrogance. His own pride rose against it, and what he felt it

implied. Not a sign of that confidence in the new agent which had been so

freely expressed at Duddon a couple of months before! His detractors had

no doubt been at work with this jolly, stupid fellow, whom everybody

liked. He would have to fight for himself. Well, he would fight!

"I shall certainly support any just claim," he said, as Tatham rose, "but

I warn you that Mr. Melrose is ill--he is very irritable--and Mrs.

Melrose had better not attempt to spring any surprises on him. If she

will write me a letter, I will see that it gets to Mr. Melrose, and I

will do my best for her."

"No one could ask you to do any more," said Tatham heartily, repenting

himself a little. "They will be with us for the present. Mrs. Melrose

shall write you a full statement and you will reply to Duddon?"

"By all means."

"There are a good many other things," said Tatham--uncertainly--as

he lingered, hat in hand--"that you and I might discuss--Mainstairs, for

instance! I ought to tell you that my mother has just sent two nurses

there. The condition of things is simply appalling."

Faversham straightened his tall figure.

"Mainstairs is a deadlock. Mr. Melrose won't repair the cottages. He

intends to pull them down. He has given the people notice, and he is

receiving no rent. They won't go. I suppose the next step will be to

apply for an ejectment order. Meanwhile the people stay at their own

peril. There you have the whole thing."

"I hear the children are dying like flies."

"I can do nothing," said Faversham.

Again a shock of antagonism passed through the two men. "Yes, you can!"

thought Tatham; "you can resign your fat post, and your expectations, and

put the screw on the old man, that's what you could do." Aloud he said:

"A couple of thousand pounds, according to Undershaw, would do the job.

If you succeed in forcing them out, where are they to go?"

"That's not our affair."

Tatham caught up his hat and stick, and abruptly departed; reflecting

indeed when he reached the street, that he had not been the most

diplomatic of ambassadors on Mrs. Melrose's behalf.

Faversham, after some ten minutes of motionless reflection, heavily

returned to his papers, ordering his horse to be ready in half an hour.

He forced himself to write some ordinary business letters, and to eat

some lunch, and immediately after he started on horseback to find his way

through the October lanes to the village of Mainstairs.

A man more harassed, and yet more resolved, it would have been difficult

to find. For six weeks now he had been wading deeper and deeper into a

moral quagmire from which he saw no issue at all--except indeed by the

death of Edmund Melrose! That event would solve all difficulties.

For some time now he had been convinced, not only that the mother and

daughter were living, but that there had been some recent communication

between them and Melrose. Various trifling incidents and cryptic sayings

of the old man, not now so much on his guard as formerly, had led

Faversham to this conclusion. He realized that he himself had been

haunted of late by the constant expectation that they might turn up.

Well, now they had turned up. Was he at once to make way for them, as

Tatham clearly took for granted?--to advise Melrose to tear up his newly

made will, and gracefully surrender his expectations as Melrose's heir to

this girl of twenty-one? By no means!

What is the claim of birth in such a case, if you come to that? Look at

it straight in the face. A child is born to a certain father; is then

torn from that father against his will, and brought up for twenty years

out of his reach. What claim has that child, when mature, upon the

father--beyond, of course, a claim for reasonable provision--unless

he chooses to acknowledge a further obligation? None whatever. The father

has lived his life, and accumulated his fortune, without the child's

help, without the child's affection or tendance. His possessions are

morally and legally his own, to deal with as he pleases.

In the course of life, other human beings become connected with him,

attached to him, and he to them. Natural claims must be considered and

decently satisfied--agreed! But for the disposal of a man's

superfluities, of such a fortune as Melrose's, there is no law--there

ought to be no law; and the English character, as distinct from the

French, has decided that there shall be no law. "If his liking, or his

caprice even," thought Faversham passionately, "chooses to make me his

heir, he has every right to give, and I to accept. I am a stranger to

him; so, in all but the physical sense, is his daughter. But I am not a

stranger to English life. My upbringing and experience--even such as they

are--are better qualifications than hers. What can a girl of twenty,

partly Italian, brought up away from England, hardly speaking her

father's tongue, do for this English estate, compared to what I could

do--with a free hand, and a million to draw on? Whom do I wrong by

accepting what a miraculous chance has brought me--by standing by it--by

fighting for it? No one--justly considered. And I will fight for

it--though a hundred Tathams call me adventurer!"

So much for the root determination of the man; the result of weeks of

excited brooding over wealth, and what can be done with wealth, amid

increasing difficulties and problems from all sides.

His determination indeed did not protect him from the attacks of

conscience; of certain moral instincts and prepossessions, that is,

natural to a man of his birth and environment.

The mind, however, replied to them glibly enough. "I shall do the just

and reasonable thing! As I promised Tatham, I shall look into the story

of these two women, and if it is what it professes to be, I shall press

Melrose to provide for them."

Conscience objected: "If he refuses?"

"They can enforce their claim legally, and I shall make him realize it."

"Can you?" said Conscience. "Have you any hold upon him at all?"

A flood of humiliation, indeed, rushed in upon him, as he recalled his

effort, while Melrose was away in August, to make at least some temporary

improvement in the condition of the Mainstairs cottages--secretly--out of

his own money--by the help of the cottagers themselves. The attempt had

been reported to Melrose by that spying little beast, Nash, and

peremptorily stopped by telegram--"Kindly leave my property alone. It is

not yours to meddle with."

And that most abominable scene, after Melrose's return to the Tower!

Faversham could never think of it without shame and disgust. Ten times

had he been on the point of dashing down his papers at Melrose's feet,

and turning his back on the old madman, and his house, forever. It was,

of course, the thought of the gifts he had already accepted, and of that

vast heritage waiting for him when Melrose should be in his grave, which

had restrained him--that alone; no cynic could put it more nakedly than

did Faversham's own thoughts. He was tied and bound by his own actions,

and his own desires; he had submitted--grovelled to a tyrant; and he knew

well enough that from that day he had been a lesser and a meaner man.

But--no silly exaggeration! He straightened himself in his saddle. He was

doing plenty of good work elsewhere, work with which Melrose did not

trouble himself to interfere; work which would gradually tell upon the

condition and happiness of the estate. Put that against the other. Men

are not plaster saints--or, still less, live ones, with the power of

miracle; but struggling creatures of flesh and blood, who do, not what

they will, but what they can.

And suddenly he seemed once more to be writing to Lydia Penfold. How

often he had written to her during these two months! He recalled the joy

of the earlier correspondence, in which he had been his natural self,

pleading, arguing, planning; showing all the eagerness--the sincere

eagerness--there was in him, to make a decent job of his agency, to stand

well with his new neighbours--above all with "one slight girl."

And her letters to him--sweet, frank, intelligent, sympathetic--they had

been his founts of refreshing, his manna by the way. Until that fatal

night, when Melrose had crushed in him all that foolish optimism and

self-conceit with which he had entered into the original bargain! Since

then, he knew well that his letters had chilled and disappointed her;

they had been the letters of a slave.

And now this awful business at Mainstairs! Bessie Dobbs, the girl of

eighteen--Lydia's friend--who had been slowly dying since the diphtheria

epidemic of the year before, was dead at last, after much suffering; and

he did not expect to find the child of eight, her little sister, still

alive. There were nearly a score of other cases, and there were three

children down with scarlet fever, besides some terrible attacks of

blood-poisoning--one after childbirth--due probably to some form of the

scarlet fever infection, acting on persons weakened by the long effect of

filthy conditions. What would Lydia say, when she knew--when she came?

From her latest letter it was not clear to him on what day she would

reach home. After making his inspection he would ride on to Green Cottage

and inquire. He dreaded to meet her; and yet he was eager to defend

himself; his mind was already rehearsing all that he would say.

A long lane, shaded by heavy trees, made an abrupt turning, and he saw

before him the Mainstairs village--one straggling street of wretched

houses, mostly thatched, and built of "clay-lump," whitewashed. In a

county of prosperous farming, and good landlords, where cottages had

been largely rebuilt during the preceding century, this miserable

village, with various other hamlets and almost all the cottages attached

to farms on the Melrose estate, were the scandal of the countryside.

Roofs that let in rain and wind, clay floors, a subsoil soaked in every

possible abomination, bedrooms "more like dens for wild animals than

sleeping-places for men and women," to quote a recent Government report,

and a polluted water supply!--what more could reckless human living,

aided by human carelessness and cruelty, have done to make a hell of

natural beauty?

Over the village rose the low shoulder of a grassy fell, its patches of

golden fern glistening under the October sunshine; great sycamores, with

their rounded masses of leaf, hung above the dilapidated roofs, as though

Nature herself tried to shelter the beings for whom men had no care; the

thatched slopes were green with moss and weed; and the blue smoke wreaths

that rose from the chimneys, together with the few flowers that gleamed

in the gardens, the picturesque irregularity of the houses, and the

general setting of wood and distant mountain, made of the poisoned

village a "subject," on which a wandering artist, who had set up his

canvas at the corner of the road, was at the moment, indeed, hard at

work. There might be death in those houses; but out of the beauty which

sunshine strikes from ruin, a man, honestly in search of a few pounds,

was making what he could.

To Faversham's overstrung mind the whole scene was as the blood-stained

palace of the Atreidae to the agonized vision of Cassandra. He saw it

steeped in death--death upon death--and dreaded of what new "murder" he

might hear as soon as he approached the houses. For what was it but

murder? His conscience, arguing with itself, did not dispute the word.

Had Melrose, out of his immense income, spent a couple of thousand pounds

on the village at any time during the preceding years, a score of deaths

would have been saved, and the physical degeneracy of a whole population

would have been prevented.

* * * * *

Heavens! that light figure in Dobbs's garden, talking with the old

shepherd--his heart leapt and then sickened. It was Lydia.

A poignant fear stirred in him. He gave his horse a touch of the whip,

and was at her side.

"Miss Penfold!--you oughtn't to be here! For heaven's sake go home!"

Lydia, who in the absorption of her talk with the shepherd had not

heard his approach, turned with a start. Her face was one of passionate

grief--there were tears on her cheek.

"Oh, Mr. Faversham--"

"The child?" he asked, as he dismounted.

"She died--last night."

"Aye, an' there's another doon--t' li'le boy--t' three-year-old," said

old Dobbs sharply, straightening himself on his stick, at sight of the

agent.

"The nurses are here?" said Faversham after a pause.

"Aye," said the shepherd, turning toward his cottage, "but they can do

nowt. The childer are marked for deein afore they're sick." And he walked

away, his inner mind shaken with a passion that forbade him to stay and

talk with Melrose's agent.

Two or three labourers who were lounging in front of their houses came

slowly toward the agent. It was evident that there was unemployment as

well as disease in the village, and that the neighbouring farms, where

there were young children, were cutting themselves off, as much as they

could, from the Mainstairs infection, by dismissing the Mainstairs men.

Faversham meanwhile again implored Lydia to go home. "This whole place

reeks with infection. You ought not to be here."

"They say that nothing has been done!"

Her tone was quiet, but her look pierced.

"I tried. It was impossible. The only thing that could be done was that

the people should go. They are under notice. Every single person is here

in defiance of the law. The police will have to be called in."

"And where are we to goa, sir!" cried one of the men who had come up.

"Theer's noa house to be had nearer than Pengarth--yo' know that

yoursen--an' how are we to be waakin' fower mile to our work i' t'

mornin', an' fower mile back i' t' evening? Why, we havena got t'

strength! It isna exactly a health resort--yo' ken--Mainstairs!"

"I'll tell yo' where soom on us might goa, Muster Faversham," said

another older man, removing the pipe he had been stolidly smoking;

"theer's two farmhouses o' Melrose's, within half a mile o' this

place--shut oop--noabody there. They're big houses--yan o' them wor an'

owd manor-house, years agone. A body might put oop five or six families

in 'em at a pinch. Thattens might dëa for a beginnin'; while soom o'

these houses were coomin' doon."

Lydia turned eagerly to Faversham.

"_Couldn't_ that be done--some of the families with young children that

are not yet attacked?" Her eyes hung on him.

He shook his head. He had already proposed something of the sort to

Melrose. It had been vetoed.

The men watched him. At last one of them--a lanky youth, with a frowning,

ironic expression and famous as a heckler at public meetings--said with

slow emphasis:

"There'll coom a day i' this coontry, mates, when men as treat poor foak

like Muster Melrose, 'ull be pulled off t' backs of oos an' our like. And

may aa live to see 't!"

"Aye! aye!" came in deep assent from the others, as they turned away. But

one white and sickly fellow looked back to say:

"An' it's a graat pity for a yoong mon like you, sir, to be doin' Muster

Melrose's dirty work--taakin' o' the police--as though yo' had 'em oop

your sleeve!"

"Haven't I done what I could for you?" cried Faversham, stung by the

reproach, and its effect on Lydia's face.

"Aye--mebbe--but it's nowt to boast on." The man, middle aged but

prematurely old, stood still, trembling from head to foot. "My babe as

wor born yesterday, deed this mornin'; an' they say t' wife 'ull lig

beside it afore night."

There was a sombre silence. Faversham broke it. "I must see the nurses,"

he said to Lydia; "but again, I beg of you to go! I will send you news."

"I will wait for you. Don't be afraid. I won't go indoors."

He went round the houses, watched by the people, as they stood at their

doors. He himself was paying two nurses, and now Lady Tatham had sent two

more. He satisfied himself that they had all the stores which Undershaw

had ordered; he left a donation of money with one of them, and then he

returned to Lydia.

They walked together in silence; while a boy from the village led

Faversham's horse some distance in the rear. All that Faversham had meant

to say had dropped away from him. His planned defence of himself could

find no voice.

"You too blame me?" he said, at last, hoarsely.

She shook her head sadly.

"I don't know what to think. But when we last met--you were so hopeful--"

"Yes--like a fool. But what can you do--with a madman."

"Can you bear--to be still in his employ?"

She looked up, her beautiful eyes bright and challenging.

"Mainstairs is not the whole estate. If I'm powerless here--I'm not

elsewhere--"

She was silent. He turned upon her.

"If _you_ are to misunderstand and mistrust me--then indeed I shall lose

heart!"

The feeling, one might almost say the anguish, in his dark, commanding

face moved her strangely. Condemnation and pity--aye, and something else

than pity--struggled within her. For the first time Lydia began to know

herself. She was strangely shaken.

"I will try--and understand," she said in a voice that trembled.

"All my power of doing anything depends on it!" he said, passionately. "I

can say truly that things would have been infinitely worse if I had not

been here. And I have worked like a horse to better them--before you

came."

She was silent. His appeal to her as to his judge hurt her poignantly.

Yet what could she do or say? Her natural longing was to console; but

where were the elements of consolation? _Could_ anything be worse than

what she had seen and heard?

The mingled emotion which silenced her, warned her not to continue the

conversation. She perceived the opening of a side-lane leading back to

the river and the Keswick road.

"This is my best way, I think," she said, pausing, and holding out her

hand. "The pony-cart is waiting for me at Whitebeck."

He looked at her in distress, yet also in anger. A friend might surely

have stood by him more cordially, believed in him more simply.

"You are at home again? I may come and see you."

"Please! We shall want to hear."

Her tone was embarrassed. They parted almost coldly.

Lydia walked quickly home, down a sloping lane from which the ravines of

Blencathra, edge behind edge, chasm beyond chasm, were to be seen against

the sunset, and all the intermediate landscape--wood, and stubble, and

ferny slope--steeped in stormy majesties of light. But for once the quick

artist sense was shut against Nature's spectacles. She walked in a blind

anguish of self-knowledge and self-scorn. She who had plumed herself on

the poised mind, the mastered senses!

She moaned to herself.

"Why didn't he tell me--warn me! To sell himself to that man--to act for

him--defend him--apologize for him--and for those awful, awful things! An

agent must."

And she thought of some indignant talk of Undershaw, which she had heard

that morning.

Her moral self was full of repulsion; her heart was torn. Friend? She

owned her weakness, and despised it. Turning aside, she leant a while

against a gate, hiding her face from the glory of the evening. Week by

week--she knew it now!--through that frank interchange of mind with mind,

of heart with heart, represented by that earlier correspondence, still

more perhaps through the checks and disappointments of its later phases,

Claude Faversham had made his way into the citadel.

The puny defences she had built about the freedom of her maiden life and

will lay in ruins. Her theories were scattered like the autumn leaves

that were scuddering over the fields. His voice, the very roughened

bitterness of it; his eyes, with their peremptory challenge, their sore

accusingness; the very contradictions of the man's personality, now

delightful, now repellent, and, breathing through them all, the passion

she must needs divine--of these various impressions, small and great, she

was the struggling captive. Serenity, peace were gone.

Meanwhile, as Faversham rode toward the Tower, absorbed at one moment in

a misery of longing, and the next in a heat of self-defence, perhaps the

strongest feeling that finally emerged was one of dismay that her

abrupt leave-taking had prevented him from telling her of that other

matter of which Tatham's visit had informed him. She must hear of it

immediately, and from those who would judge and perhaps denounce him.

Nevertheless, as he dismounted at the Tower, neither the burden of

Mainstairs, nor the fear of Lydia's disapproval, nor the agitation of the

news from Duddon, had moved him one jot from his purpose. A man surely is

a coward and a weakling, he thought, who cannot grasp the "skirts of

happy chance," while they are there for the grasping; cannot take what

the gods offer, while they offer it, lest they withdraw it forever.

Yet, suppose, that by his own act, he raised a moral barrier between

himself and Lydia Penfold which such a personality would never permit

itself to pass?

His vanity, a touch of natural cynicism, refused, in the end, to let him

believe it. His hope lay in a frank wrestle with her, a frank attack upon

her intelligence. He promised himself to attempt it without delay.

XV

The day following the interview between Tatham and Faversham was a day of

expectation for the inmates of Duddon. On the evening before, Tatham with

much toil had extracted a more or less, coherent statement from Netta

Melrose, persuading her to throw it into the form of an appeal to her

husband. "If we can't do anything by reasoning, why then we must try

pressure," he had said to her, in his suavest County Council manner; "but

we won't talk law to begin with." The statement when finished and written

out in Netta's childish hand was sent by messenger, late in the evening,

within a covering letter to Faversham, written by Tatham.

Tatham afterward devoted himself till nearly midnight to composing a

letter to Lydia. He had unaccountably missed her that afternoon, for when

he arrived at the cottage from Pengarth she was out, and neither Mrs.

Penfold nor Susy knew where she was. In fact she was at Mainstairs, and

with Faversham. She had mistaken a phrase in Tatham's note of the

morning, and did not expect him till later. He had waited an hour for

her, under the soft patter of Mrs. Penfold's embarrassed conversation;

and had then ridden home, sorely disappointed, but never for one instant

blaming the beloved.

But later, in the night silence, he poured out to her all his budget: the

arrival of the Melroses; their story; his interview with Faversham; and

his plans for helping them to their rights. To a "friend" it was only

allowed, besides, to give restrained expression to his rapturous joy in

being near her again, and his disappointment of the afternoon. He thought

over every word, as he wrote it down, his eyes sometimes a little dim in

the lamp-light. The very reserve imposed upon him did but strengthen his

passion. Nor could young hopes believe in ultimate defeat.

At the same time, the thought of Faversham held the background of his

mind. Though by now he himself cordially disliked Faversham, he was quite

aware of the attraction the new agent's proud and melancholy personality

might have for women. He had seen it working in Lydia's case, and he had

been uncomfortably aware at one time of the frequent references to

Faversham in Lydia's letters. It was evident that Faversham had pushed

the acquaintance with the Penfolds as far as he could; that he was

Lydia's familiar correspondent, and constantly appealing for help to her

knowledge of the country folk. An excellent road to intimacy, as Tatham

uneasily admitted, considering Lydia's love for the people of the dales,

and her passionate sympathy with the victims of Melrose's ill-deeds.

Ah! but the very causes which had been throwing her into an intimacy with

Faversham must surely now be chilling and drawing her back? Tatham, the

young reformer, felt an honest indignation with the failure of Claude

Faversham to do the obvious and necessary work he had promised to do.

Tatham, the lover, knew very well that if he had come back to find

Faversham the hero of the piece, with a grateful countryside at his feet,

his own jealous anxiety would have been even greater than it was. For it

was great, argue with himself as he might. A dread for which he could not

account often overshadowed him. It was caused perhaps by his constant

memory of Faversham and Lydia on the terrace at Threlfall--of the two

faces turned to each other--of the sudden fusion as it were of the two

personalities in a common rush of memories, interests, and sympathies, in

which he himself had no part....

He put up his letter on the stroke of midnight, and then walked his room

a while longer, struggling with himself and the passion of his desire;

praying that he might win her. Finally he took a well-worn Bible from a

locked drawer, and read some verses from the Gospel of St. John, quieting

himself. He never went to sleep without reading either a psalm or some

portion of the New Testament. The influence of his Eton tutor had made

him a Christian of a simple and convinced type; and his mother's

agnosticism had never affected him. But he and she never talked of

religion.

Nothing arrived from Threlfall the following day during the morning.

After luncheon, Victoria announced her intention of going to call on the

Penfolds.

"You can follow me there in the motor," she said to her son; "and if any

news comes, bring it on."

They were in the drawing-room. Netta, white and silent, was stretched on

the sofa, where Victoria had just spread a shawl over her. Felicia

appeared to be turning over an illustrated paper, but was in reality

watching the mother and son out of the corners of her eyes. Everything

that was said containing a mention of the Penfolds struck in her an

attentive ear. The casual conversation of the house had shown her already

that there were three ladies--two of them young--who were living not far

from Duddon, and were objects of interest to both Lady Tatham and her

son. Flowers were sent them, and new books. They were not relations; and

not quite ordinary acquaintances. All this had excited a furious

curiosity in Felicia. She wished--was determined indeed--to see these

ladies for herself.

"You will hardly want to go out," said Victoria gently, standing by

Netta's sofa, and looking down with kind eyes on the weary woman lying

there.

Netta shook her head; then putting out her hand she took Victoria's and

pressed it. Victoria understood that she was waiting feverishly for the

answer from Threlfall, and could do nothing and think of nothing till it

arrived.

"And your daughter?" She looked round for Felicia.

"I wish to drive in a motor," said Felicia, rising and speaking with a

decision which amused Victoria. Pending the arrival from London of some

winter costumes on approval, Victoria's maid had arranged for the little

Italian a picturesque dress of dark blue silk, from a gown of her

mistress', by which the emaciation of the girl's small frame was somewhat

disguised; while the beauty of the material, and of the delicate

embroideries on the collar and sleeves, strangely heightened the grace of

her curly head, and the effect of her astonishing eyes, so liquidly

bright, in a face too slight for them.

In forty-eight hours, even, of comfort and cosseting her elfish thinness

had become a shade less ghastly; and the self-possession which had

emerged from the state of collapse in which she had arrived amazed

Victoria. A week before, so it appeared, she had been earning a franc

a day in the vineyard of a friendly _contadino_. And already one might

have thought her bred in castles. She was not abashed or bewildered by

the luxuries of Duddon, as Netta clearly was. Rather, she seemed to seize

greedily and by a natural instinct upon all that came her way--motors,

pretty frocks, warm baths in luxurious bathrooms, and the attentions of

Victoria's maid. Victoria believed that she had grasped the whole

situation with regard to Threlfall. She was quite aware, it seemed, of

the magnitude of her father's wealth; of all that hung upon her own

chances of inheritance; and of the value, to her cause and her mother's,

of the support of Duddon. Her likeness to her father came out hour by

hour, and there were moments when the tiny creature carried herself like

a Melrose in miniature.

Victoria's advent was awaited at Green Cottage, she having telephoned to

Mrs. Penfold in the morning, with something of a flutter. Her visits

there had not been frequent; and this was the first time she had called

since Tatham's proposal to Lydia. That event had never been avowed by

Lydia, as we have seen, even to her mother; Lydia and Victoria had never

exchanged a word on the subject. But Lydia was aware of the shrewd

guessing of her family, and she did not suppose for one moment that Lady

Tatham was ignorant of anything that had happened.

Mrs. Penfold, scarcely kept in order by Susy, was in much agitation. She

felt terribly guilty. Lady Tatham must think them all monsters of

ingratitude, and she wondered how she could be so kind as to come and see

them at all. She became at last so incoherent and tearful that Lydia

prepared for the worst, while Susy, the professed psychologist, revelled

in the prospect of new "notes."

But when Victoria arrived, entering the cottage drawing-room with her

fine mannish face, her stately bearing, and her shabby clothes, the news

she brought seized at once on Mrs. Penfold's wandering wits, and for the

moment held them fast. For Victoria, whose secret object was to discover,

if she could, any facts about Lydia's doings and feelings during the

interval of separation, that might throw light upon her Harry's

predicament, made it cunningly appear that she had come expressly to tell

her neighbours of the startling event which was now agitating Duddon, as

it would soon be agitating the countryside.

Mrs. Penfold--steeped in long years of three-decker fiction--sat

entranced. The cast-off and ill-treated wife returning to the scene of

her misery--with the heiress!--grown up--and beautiful: she saw it all;

she threw it all into the moulds dear to the sentimentalist. Victoria

demurred to the adjective "beautiful"; suggesting "pretty--when we have

fed her!" But Mrs. Penfold, with soft, shining eyes, already beheld the

mother and child weeping at the knees of the Ogre, the softening of the

Ogre's heart, the opening of the grim Tower to its rightful heiress, the

happy ending, the marriage gown in the distance.

"For suppose!"--she turned gayly to her daughters for sympathy--"suppose

she were to marry Mr. Faversham! And then Mr. Melrose can have a stroke,

and everything will come right!"

Lydia and Susy smiled dutifully. Victoria sat silent. Her silence checked

Mrs. Penfold's flow, and brought her back, bewildered to realities; to

the sad remembrance of Lydia's astonishing and inscrutable behaviour.

Whereupon her manner and conversation became so dishevelled, in her

effort to propitiate Lady Tatham without betraying either herself or

Lydia, that the situation grew quickly unbearable.

"May I see your garden?" said Victoria abruptly to Lydia. Lydia rose with

alacrity, opened the glass door into the garden, and by a motion of the

lips only visible to Susy appealed to her to keep their mother indoors.

A misty October sun reigned over the garden. The river ran sparkling

through the valley, and on the farther side the slopes and jutting crags

of the Helvellyn range showed ghostly through the sunlit haze.'

A few absent-minded praises were given to the phloxes and the begonias.

Then Victoria said, turning a penetrating eye on Lydia:

"You heard from Harry of the Melroses' arrival?"

"Yes--this morning."

Bright colour rushed into Lydia's cheeks. Tatham's letter of that

morning, the longest perhaps ever written by a man who detested

letter-writing, had touched her profoundly, caused her an agonized

searching of conscience. Did Lady Tatham blame and detest her? Her

manner was certainly cool. The girl's heart swelled as she walked along

beside her guest.

"Everything depends on Mr. Faversham," said Victoria. "You are a friend

of his?" She took the garden chair that Lydia offered her.

"Yes; we have all come to know him pretty well."

Lydia's face, as she sat on the grass at Lady Tatham's feet, looking

toward the fells, was scarcely visible to her companion. Victoria could

only admire the beauty of the girl's hair, as the wind played with it,

and the grace of her young form.

"I am afraid he is disappointing all his friends," she said gravely.

"Is it his fault?" exclaimed Lydia. "Mr. Melrose must be mad!"

"I wonder if that excuses Mr. Faversham?"

"It's horrible for him!" said Lydia in a low, smothered voice. "He

_wants_ to put things right?"

It was on the tip of Victoria's tongue to say, "Does he too write to you

every day?" but she refrained.

"If he really wants to put things right, why has he done nothing all

these seven weeks?" she asked severely. "I saw Colonel Barton this

morning. He and Mr. Andover are in despair. They felt such confidence in

Mr. Faversham. The state of the Mainstairs village is too terrible!

Everybody is crying out. The Carlisle papers this week are full of it.

But there are scores of other things almost as bad. Mr. Faversham rushes

about--here, there, and everywhere--but with no result, they tell us, as

far as any of the real grievances are concerned. Mr. Melrose seems to be

infatuated about him personally; will give him everything he wants; and

pays no attention whatever to his advice. And you know the latest

report?"

"No." Lydia's face was bent over the grass, as she tried to aid a

bumble-bee which was lying on its back.

"It is generally believed that Mr. Melrose has made him his heir."

Lydia lifted a face of amazement, at first touched strangely with relief.

"Then--surely--he will be able to do what he wants!"

"On the contrary. His silence has been bought--that's what people say.

Mr. Melrose has bribed him to do his work, and defend his iniquities."

"_Oh!_ Is that fair?" The humble-bee was so hastily poked on to his legs

that he tumbled over again.

"Well, now, we shall test him!" said Victoria quietly. "We shall see what

he does with regard to Mrs. Melrose and her daughter. Harry will have

told you how he went to him yesterday. We had a telephone message this

morning to say that a letter would reach us this afternoon from Mr.

Faversham. Harry will bring it on here; and I asked him to bring Felicia

Melrose with him in the car. We thought you would be interested to see

her."

There was a pause. At last Lydia said slowly:

"How will you test Mr. Faversham? I don't understand."

"Unless the man is an adventurer," said Victoria, straightening her

shoulders, "he will, of course, do his best to put this girl--who is the

rightful heiress--into her proper place. What business has he with Mr.

Melrose's estates?"

Lady Tatham spoke with imperious energy.

Lydia's eyes showed an almost equal animation.

"May he not share with her? Aren't they immense?"

"At present he takes everything--so they say. It looks ugly. A complete

stranger--worming himself in a few weeks or months into an old man's

confidence--and carrying off the inheritance from a pair of helpless

women! And making himself meanwhile the tool of a tyrant!--aiding and

abetting him in all his oppressions!"

"Oh, Lady Tatham! no, no!" cried Lydia--the cry seemed wrung from

her--"I--we--have only known Mr. Faversham this short time--but _how_

can one believe--"

She paused, her eyes under their vividly marked eyebrows painfully

searching the face of her companion.

Victoria said to herself, "Heavens!--she _is_ in love with him--and she

is letting Harry sit up at nights to write to her!"

Her mother's heart beat fast with anger. But she held herself in hand.

"Well; as I have said, we shall soon be able to test him," she repeated,

coldly; "we shall soon know what to think. His letter will show whether

he is a man with feeling and conscience--a gentleman--or an adventurer!"

There was silence. Lydia was thinking passionately of Mainstairs and

of the deep tones of a man's voice--"If _you_ condemn and misunderstand

me--then indeed I shall lose heart!"

A humming sound could be heard in the far distance.

"Here they are," said Lady Tatham rising. Victoria's half-masculine

beauty had never been so formidable as it was this afternoon. Deep in her

heart, she carried both pity for Harry, and scorn for this foolish girl

walking beside her, who could not recognize her good fortune when it

cried out to her.

They hastened back to the drawing-room; and at the same moment Tatham and

Felicia walked in.

Felicia advanced with perfect self-command, her small face flushed with

pink by the motion of the car. In addition to the blue frock, Victoria's

maid had now provided her with a short cape of black silk, and a wide

straw hat, to which the girl herself had given a kind of tilt, a touch of

audacity, in keeping with all the rest of her personality.

As she came in, she glanced round the room with her uncannily large

eyes--her mother's eyes--taking in all the company. She dropped a little

curtsey to Mrs. Penfold, in whom the excitement of this sudden appearance

of Melrose's daughter had produced sheer and simple dumbness. She allowed

her hand to be shaken by Lydia and Susy, looking sharply at the former;

while Susy looked sharply at her. Then she subsided into a corner by Lady

Tatham. It was evident that she regarded herself as under that lady's

particular protection.

"Well?" said Lady Tatham in an eager aside to her son. She read his

aspect as that of a man preoccupied.

Tatham shrugged his shoulders with a glance at Felicia. Victoria

whispered to Lydia: "Will you tell your mother I want to speak a few

words to Harry on business?"

Mother and son passed into the garden together.

"A declaration of war!" said Tatham, as he handed a letter to her. "I

propose to instruct our solicitors at once."

Victoria read hastily. The writing was Faversham's. But the mind

expressed was Melrose's. Victoria read him in every line. She believed

the letter to have been simply dictated.

"DEAR LORD TATHAM:

"I have laid Mrs. Melrose's statement before Mr. Melrose. I regret to say

that he sees no cause to modify the arrangements made years ago with

regard to his wife, except that, in consideration of the fact that Miss

Melrose is now grown up, he will add £20 yearly to Mrs. Melrose's

allowance, making it £100 a year. Provision will be made for the

continuance of this allowance to Mrs. Melrose till her death, and

afterward to the daughter for her lifetime; _on condition that_ Mr.

Melrose is not further molested in any way. Otherwise Mr. Melrose

acknowledges and will acknowledge no claim upon him whatever.

"I am to add that if Mrs. Melrose is in difficulties, it is entirely

owing to the dishonest rapacity of her family who have been living upon

her. Mr. Melrose is well acquainted with both the past and recent history

of Mr. Robert Smeath, who made a tool of Mrs. Melrose in the matter of a

disgraceful theft of a valuable bronze from Mr. Melrose's collection--"

"The Hermes!" cried Victoria. "She has never said one word to me about

it."

"Miss Melrose has been telling me the story," said Tatham, smiling at the

recollection. "By George, that's a rum little girl! She glories in it.

But she says her mother has been consumed with remorse ever since. Go

on."

"And if any attempt is made to blackmail or coerce Mr. Melrose, he will

be obliged, much against his will, to draw the attention of the Italian

police to certain matters relating to Mr. Smeath, of which he has the

evidence in his possession. He warns Mrs. Melrose that her father's

career cannot possibly bear examination.

"I regret that my reply cannot be more satisfactory to you.

"Believe me,

"Yours faithfully,

"CLAUDE FAVERSHAM."

Victoria had turned pale.

"How _abominable_! Why, her father is bedridden and dying!"

"So I told Faversham--like a fool. For it only--apparently--gives Melrose

a greater power of putting on the screw. Well, now look here--here's

something else." He drew another letter from his pocket, and handed it to

her.

Victoria unfolded a second note from Faversham--marked "confidential,"

and written in evident agitation.

"MY DEAR TATHAM:

"I am powerless. Let me implore you to keep Mrs. Melrose quiet! Privately

a great deal may be done for her. If she will only trust herself to me,

in my private capacity, I will see that she is properly supplied for the

future. But she will simply bring disaster on herself if she attempts to

force Melrose. She--and you--know what he is. I beg of you to be

guided--and to guide her--as I advise."

"An attempt, you see, to buy us off," said Tatham scornfully. "I propose

to take the night train from Pengarth this evening, and consult old

Fledhow to-morrow morning."

"Old Fledhow," _alias_ James Morton Fledhow, solicitor, head of one of

that small group of firms which, between them, have the great estates of

England in their pigeon-holes, had been the legal adviser of the Tatham

family for two generations. Precipitation is not the badge of his tribe;

but Victoria threw herself upon this very natural and youthful impulse,

before even it could reach "old Fledhow."

"My dear Harry, be cautious! What did Mrs. Melrose say? Of course you

showed her the letter?"

Tatham candidly admitted that he hardly knew what Mrs. Melrose had said.

The letter had thrown her into a great state of agitation, and she had

cried a good deal. "Poor pápa, poor pápa!" pronounced with the accent on

the first syllable, seemed to have been all that she had been able to

articulate.

"You know, Harry, there may be a great deal in it?" Victoria's

countenance showed her doubts.

"In the threat about her father? Pure bluff, mother!--absolute bluff! As

for the bronze--a wife can't steal from her husband. And under these

circumstances!--I should like to see a British jury that would touch

her!"

"But she admits that half the proceeds went to her father."

"Twenty years ago?" Tatham's shrug was magnificent. "I tell you he'll get

no change out of that!"

"But he hints at other things?"

"Bluff again! Why the man's helpless in his bed!"

"I suppose even dying can be made more unpleasant by the police," said

Victoria. She pondered, walking thoughtfully beside a rather thwarted and

impatient youth, eager to play the champion of the distressed in his own

way; and that, possibly, from more motives than one. Suddenly her face

cleared.

"I will go myself!" she said, laying her hand on her son's arm.

"Mother!"

"Yes! I'll go myself. Leave it to me, Harry. I will drive over to

Threlfall to-morrow evening--quite alone and without notice. I had some

influence with him once," she said, with her eyes on the ground.

Tatham protested warmly. The smallest allusion to any early relation

between his mother and Melrose was almost intolerable to him. But Lady

Tatham fought for her idea. She pointed out again that Melrose might very

well have some information that could be used with ghastly effect even

upon a dying man; that Netta was much attached to her father, and would

probably not make up her mind to any drastic step whatever in face of

Melrose's threats.

"I don't so much care about Mrs. Melrose," exclaimed Tatham. "We can

give her money, and make her comfortable, if it comes to that. But

it's the girl--and the hideous injustice of that fellow there--that

Faversham--ousting her from her rights--getting the old man into his

power--boning his property--and then writing hypocritical notes like

that!"

He stood before her, flushed and excited; a broad-shouldered avenger of

the sex, such as any distressed maiden might have been glad to light

upon. But again Victoria was aware that the case was not as simple as it

sounded. However, she was no less angry than he. Mother and son were on

the brink of making common cause against a grasping impostor; who was not

to be allowed to go off--either with money that did not belong to him, or

with angelic sympathies that still less belonged to him. Meanwhile on

this point, whatever may have been in their minds, they said on this

occasion not a word. Victoria pressed her plan. And in the end Tatham

most reluctantly consented that she should endeavour to force a surprise

interview with Melrose the following day.

They returned to the little drawing-room where Felicia Melrose, it

seemed, had been giving the Penfolds a difficult half hour. For as soon

as the Tathams had stepped into the garden, she had become entirely

monosyllabic; after a drive from Duddon at Harry Tatham's side, during

which, greatly to her host's surprise, she had suddenly and unexpectedly

found her tongue, talking, in a torrent of questions, all the way,

insatiably.

Mrs. Penfold, on her side, could do little but stare at "the heiress of

Threlfall." Susy, studying her with shining eyes, tried to make her talk,

to little purpose.