But Lydia in particular could get nothing out of her. It seemed to her

that Felicia looked at her as though she disliked her. And every now and

then the small stranger would try to see herself in the only mirror that

the cottage drawing-room afforded; lengthening out her long, thin neck,

and turning her curly head stealthily from side to side like a swan

preening. Once, when she thought no one was observing her, she took a

carnation from a vase near her--it had been sent over from Duddon that

morning!--and put it in her dress. And the next moment, having pulled off

her glove, she looked with annoyance at her own roughened hand, and then

at Lydia's delicate fingers playing with a paper-knife. Frowning, she

hastily slipped her glove on again.

As soon as Tatham and his mother reappeared, she jumped up with alacrity,

a smile breaking with sudden and sparkled beauty on her pinched face, and

went to stand by Victoria's side, looking up at her with eager docility

and admiration.

Victoria, however, left her, in order to draw Lydia into a corner beside

a farther window.

"I am sorry to say Harry has received a very unsatisfactory letter from

Mr. Faversham."

"May I ask him about it?"

"He wants to tell you. I am carrying Miss Melrose back with me. But Harry

will stay."

Words which cost Victoria a good deal. If what she now believed was the

truth, how monstrous that her Harry should be kept dangling here! Her

pride was all on edge. But Harry ruled her. She could make no move till

his eyes too were opened.

Meanwhile, on all counts, Faversham was the enemy. To that _chasse_ first

and foremost, Victoria vowed herself.

* * * * *

"Well, what do you think of her?" said Tatham, good-humouredly, as he

raised his hat to Felicia and his mother disappearing in the car. "She's

more alive to-day; but you can see she has been literally starved. That

_brute_ Melrose!"

Lydia made some half audible reply, and with a view to prolonging his

_tête-à-tête_ with her, he led her strolling along the road, through a

golden dusk, touched with moonrise. She followed, but all her pleasant

self-confidence with regard to him was gone; she walked beside him,

miserable and self-condemned; a theorist defeated by the incalculable

forces of things. How to begin with him--what line to take--how to undo

her own work--she did not know; her mind was in confusion.

As for him, he was no sooner alone with her than bliss descended on him.

He forgot Faversham and the Melroses. He only wished to talk to her, and

of himself. Surely, so much, "friendship" allowed.

He began, accordingly, to comment eagerly on her letters to him, and his

to her, explaining this, questioning that. Every word showed her afresh

that her letters had been the landmarks of his Scotch weeks, the chief

events of his summer; and every word quickened a new remorse. At last she

could bear it no longer. She broke abruptly on his talk.

"Mayn't I know what's happened at Threlfall? Your mother told me--you had

heard."

He pulled himself together, while many things he would rather have

forgotten rushed back upon him.

"We're no forrader!" he said impatiently. "I don't believe we shall

get a brass farthing out of Melrose, if you ask me; at least without

going to law and making a scandal; partly because he's Melrose, and

that sort--sooner die than climb down, and the rest of it--but mostly--"

He broke off.

"Mostly?" repeated Lydia.

"I don't know whether I'd better go on. Faversham's a friend of yours."

Tatham looked down upon her, his blunt features reddening.

"Not so much a friend that I can't hear the truth about him," said Lydia,

smiling rather faintly. "What do you accuse him of?"

He hesitated a moment; then the inner heat gathered, and flashed out.

Wasn't it best to be frank?--best for her, best for himself?

"Don't you think it looks pretty black?" he asked her, breathing

quick; "there he is, getting round an old man, and plotting for money

he's no right to! Wouldn't you have thought that any decent fellow

would sooner break stones than take the money that ought to have been

that girl's--that at least he'd have said to Melrose 'provide for her

first--your own child--and then do what you like for me.' Wouldn't that

have been the honest thing to do? But I went to him yesterday--told him

the story--he promised to look into it--and to use his influence. We sent

him a statement in proper form, a few hours later. It's horrible what

those two have suffered! And then, to-day--it's too dark for you to

read his precious letter, but if you really don't mind, I'll

tell you the gist of it."

He summarized it--quite fairly--yet with a contempt he did not try to

conceal. The girl at his side, muffled in a blue cloak, with a dark hood

framing the pale gold of the hair, and the delicate curves of the face,

listened in silence. At the end she said:

"Tell me on what grounds you think Mr. Melrose has left his property to

Mr. Faversham?"

"Everybody believes it! My Carlisle lawyers whom I saw this morning are

convinced of it. Melrose is said to have spoken quite frankly about it to

many persons."

"Not very strong evidence on which to condemn a man so utterly as you

condemn him," said Lydia, with sudden emotion. "Think of the difficulty

of his position! May he not be honestly trying to steer his way? And may

not we all be doing our best to make his task impossible, putting the

worst construction--the very worst!--on everything he does?"

There was silence a moment. Tatham and Lydia were looking into each

other's faces; the girl's soul, wounded and fluttering, was in her

eyes. Tatham felt a sudden and choking sense of catastrophe. Their

house of cards had fallen about them, and his stubborn hopes with it.

She, with her high standards, could not possibly defend--could not

possibly plead--for a man who was behaving so shabbily, so dishonourably,

except--for one reason! He leapt indignantly at certainty; although it

was a certainty that tortured him.

"There is evidence enough!" he said, in a changed voice. "I don't

understand how you can stick up for him."

"I don't," she said sadly, "not if it's true. But I don't want to believe

it. Why should one want to believe the worst, you and I, about anybody?"

Tatham kept an explosive silence for a moment, and then broke out

hoarsely:

"Do you remember, we promised we'd be real friends?--we'd be really frank

with each other? I've kept my bargain. Are you keeping it? Isn't there

something you haven't told me!--something I ought to know?"

"No, nothing!" cried Lydia, with sudden energy. "You misunderstand--you

offend me."

She drew her breath quickly. There were angry tears in her eyes, hidden

by the hood.

A gust of passion swept through Tatham, revealing his manhood to itself.

He stopped, caught her hands, and held them fiercely, imprisoned against

his breast. She must needs look up at him; male strength compelled;

they stood motionless a few seconds under the shadows of the trees.

"If there _is_ nothing--if I _do_ misunderstand--if I'm wrong in what I

think--for God's sake listen to me--give me back my promise. I can't--I

can't keep it!"

He stooped and kissed the fingers he held, once, twice, repeatedly; then

turned away, shading his eyes with his hand.

Lydia said, with a little moan:

"Oh, Harry!--we've broken the spell."

Tatham recovered himself with difficulty.

"Can't you--can't you ever care for me?" The voice

was low, the eyes still hidden.

"We oughtn't to have been writing and meeting!" cried Lydia, in despair.

"It was foolish, wrong! I see it now. I ask your pardon. We must say

good-bye, Harry--and--oh!--oh!--I'm so sorry I let you--"

Her voice died away.

In the distance of the lane, a labourer emerged whistling from a gate,

with his dog. Tatham's hands dropped to his sides; they walked on

together as before. The man passed them with a cheerful good-night.

Tatham spoke slowly.

"Yes--perhaps--we'd better not meet. I can't--control myself. And I

should go on offending you."

A chasm seemed to have opened between them. They turned and walked back

to the gate of the cottage. When they reached it, Tatham crushed her hand

again in his.

"Good-bye! If ever I can do anything to serve you--let me know!

Good-bye!--dearest--_dearest_ Lydia." His voice sank and lingered on

the name. The lamp at the gate showed him that her eyes were swimming

in tears.

"You'll forgive me?" she said, imploringly.

He attempted a laugh, which ended in a sound of pain. Then he lifted her

hand again, kissed it, and was gone; running--head down--through the

dimness of the lane.

Meanwhile, wrapped in the warm furs of the motor, Felicia and Lady Tatham

sped toward Duddon.

Felicia was impenetrably silent at first; and Victoria, who never

found it easy to adapt herself to the young, made no effort to rouse

her. Occasionally some passing light showed her the girl's pallid

profile--slightly frowning brow, and pinched lips--against the dark

lining of the car. And once or twice as she saw her thus, she was

startled by the likeness to Melrose.

When they were halfway home, a thin, high voice struck into the silence,

deliberately clear:

"Who is the Signorina Penfold?"

"Her mother is a widow. They have lived here about two years."

"She is not pretty. She is too pale. I do not like that hair," said

Felicia, viciously.

Victoria could not help an unseen smile.

"Everybody here thinks her pretty. She is very clever, and a beautiful

artist," she said, with slight severity.

The gesture beside her was scarcely discernible. But Victoria thought it

was a toss of the head.

"Everybody in Italy can paint. It is as common--as common as

lizards! There are dozens of people in Lucca who can paint--a whole

villa--ceilings, walls--what you like. Nobody thinks anything at all

about them. But Italian girls are very clever also! There were two girls

in Lucca--Marchesine--the best family in Lucca. They got all the prizes

at the Licéo, and then they went to Pisa to the University; and one of

them was a Doctor of Law; and when they came home, all the street in

which they lived and their _palazzo_ were lit up. And they were very

pretty too!"

"And you--did you go to the Licéo, Felicia?"

"No! I had never any education--none, none, _none_! But I could get it,

if I wanted," said the voice, defiantly.

"Of course you could. I have asked your mother to stay with us till

Christmas. You might get some lessons in Carlisle. We could send you in."

Felicia, however, made no response to this at all, and Victoria felt that

her proposal had fallen flat. But, after a minute or two, she heard:

"I should like--to learn--to _ride_!"

Much emphasis on the last word; accompanied by nodding of the fantastic

little head.

"Well, we shall see!" laughed Victoria, indulgently.

"And then--I would go out--with Lord Tatham!" said Felicia. "Oh, but he

is too _divine_ on horseback! There were some Italian cavalry officers at

Lucca. I used to run to the window every time to see them pass by. But he

is nobler--he is handsomer!"

Victoria, taken by surprise, wondered if it would not be well to

administer a little snubbing to compliments so unabashed. She tried. But

Felicia interrupted her:

"Do you not admire him--your son?" she said eagerly, slipping up close to

Victoria. "Can he jump and swim rivers--on his horse--and come down

mountains--on his haunches--like our _cavalleria_? I am certain he can!"

"He can do most things on a horse. When the hunting begins, you will

see," said Victoria, smiling in spite of herself.

"Tell me, please, what is the hunting? And about the shooting, too. Lord

Tatham told me--this afternoon--some ladies shoot. Oh, but I will learn

to shoot! I swear it--yes! Now tell me!"

Thus attacked, the formidable Victoria capitulated. She was soon in the

midst of stories of her Harry, from his first pony upward. And she had

not gone far before a tiny hand slipped itself into hers and nestled

there; moving and quivering occasionally, like a wild bird voluntarily

tame. And when the drive ended, Victoria was quite sorry to lose its

lithe softness.

XVI

Victoria very soon perceived that a crisis had come and gone. She had

been accustomed for a while before they went to Scotland to send about

once a week a basket of flowers and fruit from the famous gardens of

Duddon, with her "kind regards" to Mrs. Penfold. The basket was generally

brought into the hall, and Tatham would slip into it the new books or

magazines that seemed to him likely to attract the cottage party. He had

always taken a particular pleasure in the dispatch of the basket, and in

the contrivance of some new offering of which it might be the bearer.

Victoria, on the other hand, though usually a lavish giver, had taken but

a grudging part in the business, and merely to please her son.

On the day following the visit to the cottage, the basket, in obedience

to a standing order, lay in the hall as usual, heaped with a gorgeous

mass of the earliest chrysanthemums. Victoria observed it--with an

unfriendly eye--as she passed through the hall on her way to breakfast.

Harry came up behind her, and she turned to give him her morning kiss.

"Please don't send it," he said abruptly, pointing to the basket. "It

wouldn't be welcome."

She started, but made no reply. They went into breakfast. Victoria gave

the butler directions that the flowers should be sent to the Rectory.

After breakfast she followed Tatham into the library. He stood silent a

while by the window, looking out, his hands in his pockets; she beside

him, leaning her head against his arm.

"It's all over," he said at last; "we decided it last night."

"What's over, dear old boy?"

"I broke our compact--I couldn't help it--and we saw it couldn't go on."

"You--asked her again?"

He nodded. "It's no good. And now it only worries her that I should hang

about. We can't--even be friends. It's all my fault."

"You poor darling!" cried his mother indignantly. "She has played with

you abominably."

He flushed with anger.

"You mustn't say that--you mustn't think it, mother! All these weeks have

been--to the good. They haven't been the real thing. But I shall always

have them--to remember. Now it's done with."

Silence fell upon them again, while their minds went back over the

history of the preceding six months. Victoria felt very bitter. And so,

apparently, in his own way, did he. For he presently said, with a

vehemence which startled her:

"I'd sooner be shot than see her marry that fellow!"

"Ah! you suspect that?"

"It looks like it," he said reluctantly. "And unless I'm much mistaken,

he's a mean cad! But--for her sake--we'll make sure--we'll give him every

chance."

"It is of course possible," said Victoria grudgingly, "that he has

honestly tried to do something for the Melroses."

"I daresay!" said Tatham, with a shrug.

"And it is possible also that if he is the heir, he means to make it up

to Felicia, when he comes into it all."

Tatham laughed.

"To throw her a spare bone? Very likely. But how are we to know that

Melrose won't bind him by all sorts of restrictions? A vindictive

old villain like that will do anything. Then we shall have Faversham

calmly saying, 'Very sorry I can't oblige you! But if I modify the

terms of the will in your favour, I forfeit the estates.' Besides

isn't it monstrous--damnable--that Melrose's daughter should owe to

_charity_--the charity of a fellow who had never heard of Melrose or

Threlfall six months ago--what is her _right_--her plain and simple

right?"

Victoria agreed. All these ancestral ideas of family maintenance, and the

practical rights dependent on family ties, which were implied in Harry's

attitude, were just as real to her as to his simpler mind. Yet she knew

very well that Netta and Felicia Melrose were fast becoming to him the

mere symbols and counters of a struggle that affected him more

intimately, more profoundly than any crusading effort for the legal and

moral rights of a couple of strangers could possibly have done.

Lydia had broken with him, and his hopes were dashed. Why? Because

another man had come upon the scene whose influence upon her was

clear--disastrously clear.

"If he were a decent fellow--I'd go out of her life--without a word. But

he's a thievish intriguer!--and I don't intend to hold my hand till I've

brought him out in his true colours before her and the world. Then--if

she chooses--with her eyes open--let her take him!" It was thus his

mother imagined his thought, and she was not far from the truth. And

meanwhile the sombre changes in the boyish face made her own heart sore.

For they told of an ill heat of blood, and an embittered soul.

At luncheon he sat depressed and silent, doing his duty with an effort to

his mother's guests. Netta also was in the depths. She had lost the power

of rapid recuperation that youth gave to Felicia, and in spite of the

comforts of Threlfall her aspect was scarcely less deplorable than when

she arrived. Moreover she had cried much since the delivery of the

Threlfall letter the day before. Her eyes were red, and her small face

disfigured. Felicia, on the other hand, sat with her nose in the air,

evidently despising her mother's tears, and as sharply observant as ever

of the sights about her--the quietly moving servants, the flowers, and

silver, the strange, nice things to eat. Tatham, absorbed in his own

thoughts, did not perceive how, in addition, she watched the master of

the house; Victoria was uncomfortably aware of it.

After luncheon Tatham took up a Bradshaw lying on a table in the panelled

hall, where they generally drank coffee, and looked up the night mail to

Euston.

"I shall catch it at Carlisle," he said to his mother, book in hand.

"There will be time to hear your report before I go."

She nodded. Her own intention was to start at dusk for Threlfall.

"Why are you going away?" said Felicia suddenly.

He turned to her courteously:

"To try to straighten your affairs!"

"That won't do us any good--to go away." Her voice was shrill, her black

eyes frowned. "We shan't know what to do--by ourselves."

"And it's precisely because I also don't know exactly what to do next,

that I'm going to town. We must get some advice--from the lawyers."

"I hate lawyers!" The girl flushed angrily. "I went to one in Lucca

once--we wanted a paper drawn up. Mamma was ill. I had to go by myself.

He was a brute!"

"Oh, my old lawyer is not a brute," said Tatham, laughing. "He's a jolly

old chap."

"The man in Lucca was a horrid brute!" repeated Felicia. "He wanted to

kiss me! There was a vase of flowers standing on his desk. I threw them

at him. It cut him. I was so glad! His forehead began to bleed, and the

water ran down from his hair. He looked so ugly and silly! I walked all

the way home up the mountains, and when I got home I fainted. We never

went to that man again."

"I should think not!" exclaimed Tatham, with disgust. For the first time

he looked at her attentively. An English girl would not have told him

that story in the same frank, upstanding way. But this little elfish

creature, with her blazing eyes, friendless and penniless in the world,

had probably been exposed to experiences the English girl would know

nothing of. He did not like to think of them. That beast, her father!

He was going away, when Felicia said, her curly head a

little on one side, her tone low and beguiling:

"When you come back, will you teach me to ride? Lady Tatham

said--perhaps--"

Tatham was embarrassed--and bored--by the request.

"I have no doubt we can find you a pony," he said evasively, and taking

up the Bradshaw he walked away.

Felicia stood alone and motionless in the big hall, amid its

Gainsboroughs and Romneys, its splendid cabinets and tapestries, a

childish figure in a blue dress, with crimson cheeks, and compressed

lips. Suddenly she ran up to a mirror on the wall, and looked at herself

vindictively.

"It is because you are so ugly," she said to the image in the glass.

"Ugh, you are so ugly! And yet I can't have yellow hair like that

other girl. If I dyed it, he would know--he would laugh. And she is all

round and soft; but my bones are all sticking out! I might be cut out of

wood. Ah"--her wild smile broke out--"I know what I'll do! I'll drink

_panna_--cream they call it here. Every night at tea they bring in what

would cost a _lira_ in Florence. I'll drink a whole cup of it!--I'll eat

pounds of butter--and lots, lots of pudding--that's what makes English

people fat. I'll be fat too. You'll see!" And she threw a threatening nod

at the scarecrow reflected in the tortoise-shell mirror.

The October evening had fallen when Tatham put his mother into the motor,

and stood, his hands in his pockets--uncomfortable and disapproving--on

the steps of Duddon, watching the bright lights disappearing down the

long avenue. What could she do? He hated to think of her in the old

miser's house, browbeaten and perhaps insulted, when he was not there to

protect her.

However she was gone, on what he was certain would prove a futile errand,

and he turned heavily back into the house.

The head keeper was waiting in the inner hall, in search of orders for a

small "shoot" of neighbours on the morrow, planned some weeks before.

"Arrange it as you like, Thurston!" said Tatham hurriedly, as he came in

sight of the man, a magnificent grizzled fellow in gaiters and a green

uniform. "I don't care where we go."

"I thought perhaps the Colley Wood beat, my lord--"

"Yes, capital. That'll do. I leave it to you. Sorry I can't stay to talk

it over. Good-night!"

"There's a pair of foxes, my lord, in the Nowers spinney that have been

doing a shocking amount of damage lately...."

But the door of the library was already shut. Thurston went away, both

astonished and aggrieved. There were few things he liked better than a

chat with the young fellow whom he had taught to hold a gun; and Tatham

was generally the most accessible of masters and the keenest of

sportsmen, going into every detail of the shooting parties himself, with

an unfailing spirit.

Meanwhile Victoria was speeding eastward in her motor along the Pengarth

road. Darkness was fast rushing on. To her left she saw the spreading

waste of Flitterdale Common, its great stretches of moss livid in the

dusk: and beyond it, westward, the rounded tops and slopes of the range

that runs from Great Dodd to Helvellyn. Presently she made out, in the

distance, looking southward from the high-level road on which the car was

running, the great enclosure of Threlfall Park, on either side of the

river which ran between her and Flitterdale; the dim line of its circling

wall; its scattered woods; and farther on, the square mass of the Tower

itself, black above the trees.

The car stopped at a gate, a dark and empty lodge beside it. The footman

jumped down. Was the gate locked?--and must she go round to Whitebeck,

and make her attack from that side? No, the gate swung open, and in sped

the car.

Victoria sat upright, her mood strung to an intensity which knew no

fears. It was twenty years since she had last seen Edmund Melrose, and it

was thirty years and more since she had rescued her sister from his

grasp, and the duel between herself and him had ended in her final

victory.

How dim they seemed, those far-off days!--when for some two or three

years, either in London or in Paris, where her father was Ambassador, she

had been in frequent contact with a group of young men--of young

"bloods"--conspicuous in family and wealth, among whom Edmund Melrose was

the reckless leader of a dare-devil set. She thought of a famous picture

of the young Beckford, by Lawrence, to which Melrose on the younger

side of forty had been frequently compared. The same romantic beauty of

feature, the same liquid depth of eye, the same splendid carriage; and,

combined with these, the same insolence and selfishness. There had been

in Victoria's earlier youth moments when to see him enter a ballroom was

to feel her head swim with excitement; when to carry him off from a rival

was a passionate delight; when she coveted his praise, and dreaded his

sarcasm. And yet--it was perfectly true what she had said to Harry. She

had never been in love with him. The imagination of an "unlessoned girl"

had been fired; but when the glamour in which it had wrapped the man had

been torn away by the disclosure of some ugly facts concerning him; when

she broke with him in disgust, and induced others to break with him; it

was not her feelings, not her heart, which had suffered.

Nevertheless, so complex a thing is a woman, that as Victoria Tatham drew

nearer to the Tower, and to Melrose, she felt herself strangely melting

toward him--a prey to pity and the tears of things. She alone in this

countryside had been a witness of his meteor like youth; she alone could

set it beside his sordid and dishonoured age.

What did she hope to do with him? The plight of his wife and daughter had

roused her strongest and most indignant sympathy. The cry of wrong or

injustice had always found her fiercely responsive. Whatever an outsider

could do to help Melrose's local victims she had done, not once but many

times. Her mind was permanently in revolt against him, both as a man and

a landlord. She had watched and judged him for years. Yet, now that

yet another of his misdeeds was to bring her again into personal contact

with him, her pulse quickened; some memory of the old ascendency

survived.

It was a still and frosty evening. As the motor drew up in the walled

enclosure before the Tower, the noise of its brakes echoed through the

profound silence in which the Tower was wrapped. No sign of life in the

dark front; no ray of light anywhere from its shuttered windows.

Yet, to her astonishment, as she alighted, and before she had rung the

bell, the front door was thrown open, and Dixon with a couple of dogs at

his heels ran down the steps.

At sight however of the veiled and cloaked lady who had descended from

the motor, the old man stopped short, evidently surprised. With an

exclamation Victoria did not catch, he retreated to the threshold of the

house.

She mounted rapidly, not noticing that a telegraph boy on a bicycle had

come wheeling into the forecourt behind her.

"Is Mr. Melrose at home?"

As she threw back her veil, Dixon stared at her in dumb amazement. Then

she suddenly perceived behind him a tall figure advancing. She made a few

steps forward through the dimly lighted hall, and found herself within a

foot of Edmund Melrose himself.

He gave a start--checked himself--and stood staring at her. He wore

spectacles, and was leaning on a stick. She had a quick impression of

physical weakness and decay.

Without any visible embarrassment she held out her hand.

"I am lucky to have found you at home, Mr. Melrose. Will you give me

twenty minutes' conversation on some important business?"

"Excuse me!" he said with a profound bow, and a motion of the left

hand toward the stick on which he supported himself--"or rather my

infirmities."

Victoria's hand dropped.

His glittering eyes surveyed her. Dixon approached him holding out a

telegram.

"Allow me," said Melrose, as he tore open the envelope and perused

the message. "Ah! I thought so! You were mistaken, Lady Tatham--for

another visitor--one of those foreign fellows who waste so much of

my time--coming to see a few little things of mine. Shut the door,

Dixon--the man has missed his train. Now, Lady Tatham!--you have some

business to discuss with me. Kindly step this way."

He turned toward the gallery. Victoria followed, and Dixon was left in

the hall, staring after them in a helpless astonishment.

The gallery lit by hanging lamps made a swift impression of splendid

space and colour on Lady Tatham as she passed through it in Melrose's

wake. He led the way without a word, till he reached the door of his own

room.

She passed into the panelled library which has been already described in

the course of this narrative. On this October evening, however, its

aspect was not that generally presented by Melrose's "den." Its ordinary

hugger-mugger had been cleared away--pushed back into corners and out of

sight. But on the splendid French bureau, and on various other tables and

cabinets of scarcely less beauty, there stood ranged in careful order

a wealth of glorious things. The light of a blazing fire, and of many

lamps played on some fifty or sixty dishes and vases from the great days

of Italian majolica--specimens of Gubbio, Faenza, Caffagiolo, of the

rarest and costliest quality. The room glowed and sparkled with colour.

The gold of Italian sunshine, the azure of Italian skies, the purple of

Italian grapes seemed to have been poured into it, and to have taken

shape in these lustrous ewers and plaques, in their glistering greens and

yellows, their pale opalescence, their superb orange and blue. While as a

background to the show, a couple of curtains--Venetian cut-velvet of the

seventeenth century, of faded but still gorgeous blue and rose--had been

hung over a tall screen.

"What marvellous things!" cried Victoria, throwing up her hands and

forgetting everything else for the moment but the pleasure of a trained

eye.

Melrose smiled.

"Pray take that chair!" he said, with exaggerated deference. "Your

visits are rare, Lady Tatham! Is it--twenty years? I regret I have no

drawing-room in which to receive you. But Mr. Faversham and I talk of

furnishing it before long. You are, I believe, acquainted with Mr.

Faversham?"

He waved his hand, and suddenly Victoria became aware of another person

in the room. Faversham standing tall and silent, amid the show of

majolica, bowed to her formally, and Victoria slightly acknowledged the

greeting. It seemed to her that Melrose's foraging eyes travelled

maliciously between her and the agent.

"Mr. Faversham and I only unpacked a great part of this stuff yesterday,"

said Melrose, with much apparent good humour. "It has been shut up in one

of the north rooms ever since a sale in Paris at which I bought most of

the pieces. Crockett wished to see it" (he named the most famous American

collector of the day). "He shall see it. I understand he will be here

to-morrow, having missed his train to-day. He will come no doubt with his

check-book. It amuses me to lead these fellows on, and then bid them good

morning. They have the most infernal assumptions. One has to teach them

that an Englishman is a match for any American!"

Victoria sat passive. Faversham took up a pile of letters and moved

toward the door. As he opened it, he turned and his eyes met Victoria's.

She wavered a moment under the passionate and haughty resentment they

seemed to express, no doubt a reflection of the reply to his letter sent

him by Harry that morning. Then the door shut and she was alone with

Melrose.

That gentleman leant back in his chair observing her. He wore the curious

cloaklike garment of thin black stuff, in which for some years past he

had been accustomed to dress when indoors; and the skullcap on his

silvery white hair gave added force to the still splendid head and

aquiline features. A kind of mocking satisfaction seemed to flicker

through the wrinkled face; and the general aspect of the man was still

formidable indeed. And yet it was the phantom of a man that she beheld.

He had paled to the diaphanous whiteness of the Catholic ascetic; his

hand shook upon his stick; the folds of the cloak barely concealed the

emaciation of his body. Victoria, gazing at him, seemed to perceive

strange intimations and presages, and, in the deep harsh eyes, a spirit

at bay.

She began quietly, bending forward:

"Mr. Melrose, I have come to speak to you on behalf of your wife."

"So I imagined. I should not allow any one else, Lady Tatham, to address

me on the subject."

"Thank you. I resolved--as you see--to appeal once more to our old--"

"Friendship?" he suggested.

"Yes--friendship," she repeated, slowly. "It might have been called

so--once."

"Long ago! So long ago that--I do not see how anything practical can come

of appealing to it," he said, pointedly. "Moreover, the manner in which

the friendship was trampled on--by you--not once, but twice, not only

destroyed it, but--if I may say so--replaced it."

His hollow eyes burned upon her. Wrapped in his cloak, his white hair

gleamimg amid the wonderful ewers and dishes, he had the aspect of some

wizard or alchemist, of whom a woman might ask poison for her rival, or a

philter for her lover. Victoria, fascinated, was held partly by the

apparition before her, partly by an image--a visualization in the mind.

She saw the ballroom in that splendid house, now the British Embassy in

Paris, and once the home of Pauline Borghese. She saw herself in white, a

wreath of forget-me-nots in her hair. She has just heard, and from a

woman friend, a story of lust and cruelty in which Edmund Melrose was the

principal actor. He comes to claim her for a dance; she dismisses him, in

public, with a manner and in words that scathe--that brand. She sees his

look of rage, as of one struck in the face--she feels again the shudder

passing through her--a shudder of release, horror passing into

thanksgiving.

But--what long tracts of life since then!--what happiness for her!--what

decay and degeneracy for him! A pang of sheer pity, not so much for him

as for the human lot, shot through her, as she realized afresh to what

evening of life he had come, from what a morning.

At any rate her manner in reply showed no resentment of his tone.

"All these things are dead for both of us," she said quietly.

He interrupted her.

"You are right--or partly right. Edith is dead--that makes it easier for

you and me to meet."

"Yes. Edith is dead," she said, with sudden emotion. "And in her last

days she spoke to me kindly of you."

He made no comment. She resumed:

"I desire, if I can--and if you will allow me--to recall to you the years

when we were cousins and friends together--blotting out all that has

happened since. If you remember--twenty years ago, when you and your wife

arrived to settle here, I then came to ask you to bury the feud between

us, and to let us meet again at least as neighbours and acquaintances.

You refused. Then came the breakdown of your marriage. I was honestly

sorry for it."

He smiled. She was quite conscious of the mockery in the smile; but she

persevered.

"And now, for many years, I have not known--nobody here has known,

whether your wife was alive or dead. Suddenly, a few days ago, she and

your daughter arrived at Duddon, to ask me to help them."

"Precisely. To make use of you, in order to bring pressure to bear on me!

I do not mean to lend myself to the proceeding!"

Victoria flushed.

"In attempting to influence me, Mrs. Melrose, I assure you, had no weapon

whatever but her story. And to look at her was to see that it was true.

She admits--most penitently--that she was wrong to leave you--"

"And to rob me! You forget that."

Victoria threw back her head. He remembered that scornful gesture in her

youth.

"What did that matter to you? In this house!"

She looked round the room, with its contents.

"It did matter to me," he said stubbornly. "My collections are the only

satisfaction left to me--by you, Lady Tatham--and others. They are to me

in the place of children. I love my bronzes--and my marbles--as you--I

suppose--love your son. It sounds incredible to you, no doubt"--the sneer

was audible--"but it is so."

"Even if it were so--it is twenty years ago. You have replaced what you

lost a hundred times."

"I have never replaced it. And it is now out of my reach--in the Berlin

Museum--bought by that fellow Jensen, their head man, who goes nosing

like a hound all over Europe--and is always poaching in my preserves."

Victoria looked at him in puzzled amazement. Was this mad, this childish

bitterness, a pose?--or was there really some breakdown of the once

powerful brain? She began again--less confidently.

"I have told you--I repeat--how sorry she is--how fully she admits she

was wrong. But just consider how she has paid for it! Your allowance to

her--you must let me speak plainly--could not keep her and her child

decently. Her family have been unfortunate; she has had to keep them as

well as herself. And the end of it is that she--and your child--your own

child--have come pretty near to starvation."

He sat immovable. But Victoria rose to her task. Her veil thrown back

from the pale austerity of her beauty, she poured out the story of Netta

and Felicia, from a heart sincerely touched. The sordid years in

Florence, the death of Netta's mother, the bankruptcy of her father, the

bitter struggle amid the Apuan Alps to keep themselves and their wretched

invalid alive--she described them, as they had been told to her, not

rhetorically, for neither she nor Netta Melrose was capable of rhetoric,

but with the touches and plain details that bring conviction.

"They have been _hungry_--for the peasants' food. Your wife and child

have had to be content day after day with a handful of bread and a

_salata_ gathered from the roadside; while every franc they could earn

was spent upon a sick man. Mrs. Melrose is a shadow. I suspect incurable

illness. Your little daughter arrived fainting and emaciated at my house.

But with a few days' rest and proper food she has revived. She is young.

She has not suffered irreparably. One sees what a lovely little creature

she might be--and how full of vivacity and charm. Mr. Melrose--you would

be proud of her! She is like you--like what you were, in your youth. When

I think of what other people would give for such a daughter! Can you

possibly deny yourself the pleasure of taking her back into your life?"

"Very easily! Your sentimentalism will resent it; I assure you,

nevertheless, that it would give me no pleasure whatever."

"Ah, but consider it again," she pleaded, earnestly. "You do not know

what you are refusing--how much, and how little. All that is asked is

that you should acknowledge them--provide for them. Let them stay here a

few weeks in the year--what could it matter to you in this immense

house?--or if that is impossible, at least give your wife a proper

allowance--you would spend it three times over in a day on things like

these"--her eye glanced toward a superb ewer and dish, of _verre

églomisée_, standing between her and Melrose--"and let your daughter take

her place as your heiress! She ought to marry early--and marry

brilliantly. And later--perhaps--in her children--"

Melrose stood up.

"I shall not follow you into these dreams," he said fiercely. "She is not

my heiress--and she never will be. The whole of my property"--he spoke

with hammered emphasis--"will pass at my death to my friend and agent and

adopted son--Claude Faversham."

He spoke with an excitement his physical state no longer allowed him to

conceal. At last--he was defeating this woman who had once defeated him;

he was denying and scorning her, as she had once denied and scorned him.

That her cause was an impersonal and an unselfish one made no difference.

He knew the strength of her character and her sympathies. It was sweet to

him to refuse her something she desired. She had never yet given him the

opportunity! In the twenty years since they had last faced each other, he

was perfectly conscious that he had lost mentally, morally, physically;

whereas she--his enemy--bore about with her, even in her changed beauty,

the signs of a life lived fruitfully--a life that had been worth while.

His bitter perception of it, his hidden consciousness that he had

probably but a short time, a couple of years at most, to live, only

increased his satisfaction in the "No"--the contemptuous and final "No!"

that he had opposed, and would oppose, to her impertinent interference

with his affairs.

Victoria sat regarding him silently, as he walked to the

mantelpiece, rearranged a few silver objects standing upon it, and

then turned--confronting her again.

"You have made Mr. Faversham your heir?" she asked him after a pause.

"I have. And I shall take good care that he does nothing with my property

when he inherits it so as to undo my wishes with regard to it."

"That is to say--you will not even allow him to make--himself--provision

for your wife and daughter?"

"Beyond what was indicated in the letter to your son? No! certainly not.

I shall take measures against anything of the sort."

Victoria rose.

"And he accepts your condition--your bequest to him, on these terms?"

Melrose smiled.

"Certainly. Why not?"

"I am sorry for Mr. Faversham!" said Victoria, in a different voice, the

colour sparkling on her cheek.

"Because you think there will be a public opinion against him--that he

will be boycotted in this precious county? Make yourself easy, Lady

Tatham. A fortune such as he will inherit provides an easy cure for such

wounds."

Victoria's self-control began to break down.

"I venture to think he will not find it so," she said, with quickened

breath. "In these days it is not so simple to defy the common

conscience--as it once was. I fear indeed that Mr. Faversham has already

lost the respect of decent men!"

"By becoming my agent?"

"Your tool--for actions--cruel, inhuman things--degrading to both you and

him."

She had failed. She knew it! And all that remained was to speak the truth

to him, to defy and denounce him.

Melrose surveyed her.

"The ejectment order has been served at Mainstairs to-day, I believe; and

the police have at last plucked up their courage to turn those shiftless

people out. There, too, I understand, Lady Tatham, you have been

meddling."

"I have been trying to undo some of your wrong-doing," she said, with

emotion. "And now--before I go--you shall not prevent me from saying that

I regard it perhaps as your last and worst crime to have perverted the

conscience of this young man! He has been well thought of till now: a

decent fellow sprung from decent people. You are making an outcast--a

pariah of him. And you think _money_ will compensate him! When you and I

knew each other, Edmund"--the name slipped out--"you had a _mind_--one of

the shrewdest I ever knew. I appeal to that. It is not so much now that

you are wicked or cruel--you are playing the _fool_! And you are teaching

this young man to do the same."

She stood confronting him, holding herself tensely erect--a pale,

imperious figure--the embodiment of all the higher ideals and traditions

of the class to which they both belonged.

In her agitation she had dropped her glove. Melrose picked it up.

"On that I think, Lady Tatham, we will say farewell. I regret I have not

been able to oblige you. My wife comes from a needy class--accustomed to

manage on a little. My daughter has not been brought up to luxury. Had

she remained with me, of course, the case would have been different. But

you will find they will do very well on what I have provided for them. I

advise you not to waste your pity. And as for Mr. Faversham, he will take

good care of himself. He frames excellently. And I hope before long to

see him married--to a very suitable young lady."

They remained looking at each other, for a few seconds, in silence. Then

Victoria said quietly, with a forward step:

"I bid you good evening."

He stood at the door, his fingers on the handle, his eyes glittering and

malicious.

"I should have liked to have shown you some of my little collections,"

he said, smiling. "That _verre églomisée_, for instance"--he pointed to

it--"it's magnificent, though rather decadent. They have nothing like it

in London or Paris. Really--you must go?"

He threw the door open, bowing profoundly.

"Dixon!"

A voice responded from the farther end of the corridor.

"Tell her ladyship's car to come round. Excuse my coming to the door,

Lady Tatham. I am an old man."

The car sped once more through the gloom of the park. Victoria sat with

hands locked on her knee, possessed by the after tremors of battle.

In Melrose's inhuman will there was something demonic, which appalled.

The impotence of justice, of compassion, in the presence of certain

shameless and insolent forces of the human spirit--the lesson goes deep!

Victoria quivered under it.

But there were other elements besides in her tumult of feeling. The tone,

the taunting look, with which Melrose had spoken of Faversham's possible

marriage--did he, did all the world know, that Harry had been played with

and jilted? For that, in plain English, was what it came to. Her heart

burnt with anger--with a desire to punish.

The car passed out of the lodge gates. Its brilliant lamps under the

trees seemed to strike into the very heart of night. And suddenly, in the

midst of the light they made, two figures emerged, an old man carrying a

sack, a youth beside him, with a gun over his shoulder.

They were the Brands--father, and younger son. Victoria bent forward with

a hasty gesture of greeting. But they never turned to look at the motor.

They passed out of the darkness, and into the darkness again, their

frowning, unlovely faces, their ragged clothes and stooping gait,

illuminated for an instant.

Victoria had tried that very week, at her son's instance, to try and

persuade the father to take a small farm on the Duddon estate, Tatham

offering to lend him capital. And Brand had refused. Independence,

responsibility, could no longer be faced by a spirit so crushed. "I

darena' my lady," he had said to her. "I'm worth nobbut my weekly wage. I

canna' tak' risks--no more. Thank yo' kindly; but yo' mun let us be!"

XVII

On the morning following her vain interview with Melrose, Victoria,

sorely conscious of defeat, conveyed the news of it to the depressed and

disprited Netta.

They were in Victoria's sitting-room. Netta sat, a lamentable figure, on

the edge of the sofa, twisting her disfigured hands, her black eyes

glancing restlessly about her. Ever since she had read Faversham's letter

to Tatham she had been an altered being. The threats as to her father,

which it contained, seemed to have withered her afresh. All that small

and desperate flicker of hope in which she had arrived had died away, and

her determination with it. Her consent to Victoria's interview with

Melrose had been only obtained from her with difficulty. And now she was

all for retreat--precipitate retreat.

"It's no use. I was a fool to come. We must go back. I always told

Felicia it would be no use. We'd better not have come. I'll not have papa

tormented!"

While she was speaking a footman entered, bringing a telegram for

Victoria. It was from Tatham in London.

"Have just seen lawyers. They are of opinion we could not fail in

application for proper allowance and provision for both mother and

daughter. Hope you will persuade Mrs. Melrose to let us begin proceedings

at once. Very sorry for your telegram this morning, but only what I

expected."

Victoria read the message to her guest, and then did her best to urge

boldness--an immediate stroke. But Netta shook her head despairingly. She

could not and would not have her father harassed. Mr. Melrose would do

anything--bribe anybody--to get his way. They would have the police

coming, and dragging her father to prison. It was not to be thought of.

Victoria tried gently to investigate what skeleton might be lying in the

Smeath closet, whereof Mr. Melrose possessed such very useful

information. But Netta held her tongue. "Papa had been very unfortunate,

and the Government would like to put him in prison if they could. Edmund

had been always so cruel to him." Beyond this Victoria could not get.

But the determination of the frail, faded woman was unshakable, although

she glanced nervously at her daughter from time to time, as if much more

in dread of her opinion than of Victoria's.

Felicia, who had listened in silence to the conversation between her

mother and Victoria, turned round from the window in which she was

staring, as soon as Lady Tatham seemed to be finally worsted.

"Mother, you promised to stay here till Christmas!"

The voice was imperious. Felicia's manner to her mother indeed was often

of an unfilial sharpness, and Victoria was already meditating some gentle

discipline on the point.

"Oh, no, Felicia!" said Netta, helplessly, "not till Christmas." Then,

remembering herself, she turned toward her hostess: "It's so kind of you,

I'm sure."

"Yes, till Christmas!" repeated Felicia. "You know grandpapa's no worse.

You know," the girl flushed suddenly a bright crimson, "Lord Tatham sent

him money--and he's quite comfortable. _I_ am not going home just yet! I

am not going back to Italy--till--I have seen my father!"

She faced round upon Victoria and her mother, her hands on her hips, her

breath fluttering.

"Felicia!" cried her mother, "you can't. I tell you--you can't! I should

never allow it!"

"Yes, you would, mother! What are you afraid of? He can't kill me. It's

ridiculous. I must see my father. I will! He is getting old--he may die.

I will see him before I leave England. I don't care whether he gives us

the money or not!"

Victoria's bright eyes showed her sympathy; though she did not interfere.

But Netta shrank into herself.

"You are always such a wilful child, Felicia! You mustn't do anything

without my leave. You'll kill me if you do."

And ashen-pale, she got up and left the room. Victoria glanced at

Felicia.

"Don't do anything against your mother's will," she said gently. "You are

too young to decide these things for yourself. But, if you can, persuade

her to follow Lord Tatham's advice. He is most anxious to help you in the

best way. And he does not believe that Mr. Melrose could hurt your

grandfather."

Felicia shook her curly head, frowning.

"One cannot persuade mother--one cannot. She is obstinate--oh, so

obstinate! If it were me, I would do anything Lord Tatham asked

me!--anything in the world."

She stood with her hands behind her back, her slight figure drawn up, her

look glowing.

Victoria bent over her embroidery, smiling a little, unseen, and, in

truth, not ill pleased. Yet there was something disturbing in these

occasional outbursts. For the little Southerner's own sake, one must take

care they led to nothing serious. For really--quite apart from any other

consideration--Harry never took the smallest notice of her. And who could

know better than his mother that his thoughts were still held, still

tormented by the vision of Lydia?

Felicia slipped out of a glass door that led to the columned veranda

outside. Victoria, mindful of the girl's delicate look, hurried after her

with a fur wrap. Felicia gratefully but absently kissed her hand, and

Victoria left her to her own thoughts.

It was a sunny day, and although November was well in, there was almost

an Italian warmth in this southern loggia where roses were still

blooming. Felicia walked up and down, her gaze wandering over the

mountain landscape to the south--the spreading flanks and slopes of

the high fells, scarlet with withered fern, and capped with new-fallen

snow. Through the distant landscape she perceived the line of the stream

which ran under Flitterdale Common with its high cliff-banks, and hanging

woods, now dressed in the last richness of autumn. That distant wall of

trees--behind it, she knew, was Threlfall Tower. Her father--her unkind,

miserly father, who hated both her and her mother--lived there.

How far was it? A long way! But she would get there somehow.

"It is my right to see my father!" she said to herself passionately;

adding with a laugh which swept away heroics, "After all, he might take a

fancy to me in these clothes!"

And she looked down complacently on the pretty tailor-made skirt and

the new shoes that showed beneath Victoria's fur cloak. In less than

a fortnight her own ambition and the devotion of Victoria's maid,

Hesketh, only too delighted to dress somebody so eager to be dressed, for

whom the mere operations of the toilette possessed a kind of religious

joy, on whom, moreover, "clothes" in the proper and civilized sense of

the word, sat so amazingly well--had turned the forlorn little drudge

into a figure more than creditable to the pains lavished upon her.

Felicia aimed high. The thought and trouble which the young lady had

spent, since her arrival, on her hair, her hands, and the minor points of

English manners, not to mention the padding and plumping of her small

person--which in spite of all her efforts, however, remained of a most

sylphlike slimness--by a generous diet of cream and butter, only she and

Hesketh knew. Victoria guessed, and felt a new and most womanish pleasure

in the details of her transformation. She realized, poignantly, how

pleasant it would have been to dress and spoil a daughter.

All the more, as Felicia, after a first eager grasping at pretty things,

as a child holds out covetous hands for toys and sweets, had shown sudden

scruples, an unexpected and pretty recoil.

"Don't give me so many things!" she had said, almost with a stamp, the

sudden, astonishing tears in her great eyes; when, after the first week,

the new clothes began to shower upon her. "I can't help wanting them! I

adore them! But I won't be a beggar--no! You will think we only came here

for this--to get things out of you. We didn't--we _didn't_.'"

"My dear, won't you give me the pleasure?" Victoria had said,

shamefacedly, putting out a hand to stroke the girl's hair. Whereupon

Felicia had thrown herself impulsively on her knees, with her arms round

the speaker, and there had been a mingled moment of laughter and emotion

which had left Victoria very much astonished at herself, and given

Hesketh a free hand. Victoria's solitary pursuits, the awkward or stately

reserve of her ordinary manner, were deplorably interfered with, indeed,

by the advent of this lovely, neglected child, who on her side had fallen

passionately in love with Victoria at first sight and seemed to be now

rarely happy out of her company.

After which digression we may return for a moment to Felicia on the

loggia, admiring her new shoes.

From that passing ecstasy, she emerged resolved.

"We will stay here till Christmas--and--"

But on the rest of her purpose she shut her small lips firmly. Before

she turned indoors, however, she gave some attention to the course of a

white road in the middle distance, on which she had travelled with Lord

Tatham the day he had taken her to Green Cottage. The cottage where the

yellow-haired girl lived lay beyond that nearer hill. Ah! but nobody

spoke of that yellow-haired girl now. Nobody sent flowers or books.

Nobody so much as mentioned her name. It was strange--but singularly

pleasing. Felicia raised herself triumphantly on tiptoe, as though she

would peer over the hill into the cottage; and so see for herself how the

Signorina Penfold took this sudden and complete neglect.

Tatham returned from London the following day, bringing Cyril Boden--who

was again on the sick list--with him.

He arrived full of plans for the discomfiture of Melrose, only to be

brought up irrevocably against the stubborn resolve which Netta, wrapped

in an irritable and tearful melancholy, opposed to them all. She would

not hear of the legal proceedings he urged upon her; and it was only on

an assurance that nothing could or would be done without her consent,

coupled with a good report of her father, that she at last consented to

stay at Duddon till the New Year, so that further ways of helping her

might be discussed.

Felicia, when the thing was settled, danced about Victoria's room, kissed

her mother and ran off at once, with Victoria's permission, to ask the

old coachman who ruled the Duddon stables to give her riding-lessons.

Victoria noticed that she carefully avoided consulting Tatham in any way

about her lessons. Indeed the earlier, half-childish, half-audacious

efforts she had made to attract his attention entirely ceased about this

time.

And he, as soon as it was evident that Mrs. Melrose would not take

his advice, and that legal proceedings must be renounced, felt a

natural slackening of interest in his mother's guests. He was perfectly

kind and polite to them but Netta's cowardice disgusted him; and it was a

personal disappointment to be thus balked of that public campaign against

Melrose's enormities which would have satisfied the just and long-baffled

feelings of a whole county; and--incidentally--would surely have unmasked

a greedy and unscrupulous adventurer.

Meanwhile the whole story of Mrs. Melrose and her daughter had spread

rapidly through the neighbourhood. The local papers, now teeming with

attacks on Melrose, and the management of the Melrose property, had

fastened with avidity on the news of their arrival. "Mrs. Edmund Melrose

and her daughter, after an absence of twenty years have arrived in

Cumbria. They are now staying at Duddon Castle with Countess Tatham. Mr.

Claude Faversham is at Threlfall Tower." These few sentences served as

symbols of a dramatic situation which was being discussed in every house

of the district, in the farms and cottages no less eagerly than by the

Andovers and the Bartons. The heiress of Threlfall was not dead! After

twenty years she and her mother had returned to claim their rights from

the Ogre; and Duddon Castle, the headquarters of all that was powerful

and respected in the county, had taken up their cause. Meanwhile the

little heiress had been, it seemed, supplanted. Claude Faversham was in

possession at Threlfall, and was being treated as the heir. Mr. Melrose

had flatly refused even to see his wife and daughter whom he had left in

poverty and starvation for twenty years.

Upon these facts the twin spirit of romance and hatred swooped

vulturelike. Any story of inheritance, especially when charm and youth

are mixed up with it, kindles the popular mind. It was soon known that

Miss Melrose was pretty, and small; though, said report, worn to a

skeleton by paternal ill-usage. Romance likes its heroines small. The

countryside adopted the unconscious Felicia, and promptly married her to

Harry Tatham. What could be more appropriate? Duddon could afford to risk

a dowry; and what maiden in distress could wish for a better Perseus than

the splendid young man who was the general favourite of the

neighbourhood?

As to the hatred of Melrose which gave zest to the tale of his daughter,

it was becoming a fury. The whole Mainstairs village had now been

ejected, by the help of a large body of police requisitioned from

Carlisle for the purpose. Of the able-bodied, some had migrated to the

neighbouring towns, some were camped on Duddon land, in some wood and

iron huts hastily run up for their accommodation. And thus a village

which might be traced in Doomsday Book had been wiped out. For the sick

Tatham had offered a vacant farmhouse as a hospital; and Victoria, Mrs.

Andover, and other ladies had furnished and equipped it. Some twenty

cases of enteric and diphtheria, were housed there, a few of them doomed

beyond hope. Melrose had been peremptorily asked for a subscription to

the fund raised, and had replied in his own handwriting that owing to the

heavy expenses he had been put to by the behaviour of his Mainstairs

tenants, as reported to him by his agent, Mr. Faversham, he must

respectfully decline. The letter was published in the two local papers

with appropriate comments, and a week later an indignation meeting to

protest against the state of the Threlfall property, and to petition the

Local Government Board to hold an inquiry on the spot, was held in

Carlisle, with Tatham in the chair. And everywhere the public indignation

which could not get at Melrose, who now, except for railway journeys,

never showed himself outside the wall of his park, was beginning to fall

upon the "adventurer" who was his tool and accomplice, and had become the

supplanter of his young and helpless daughter. Men who four months before

had been eager to welcome Faversham to his new office now passed him in

the street without recognition. At the County Club to which he had been

easily elected, Colonel Barton proposing him, he was conspicuously cut by

Barton himself, Squire Andover and many others following suit. "An

impostor, and a cad!" said Barton fiercely to Undershaw. "He took me

in--and I can't forgive him. He is doing all Melrose's dirty work for

him, better than Melrose could do it himself. His letters, for instance,

to our Council Committee about the allotments we are trying to get out of

the old villain have been devilish clever, and devilish impudent! Melrose

couldn't have written them. And now this business of the girl!--and the

fortune!--sickening!"

"He is a queer chap," said Undershaw thoughtfully. "I've been as mad with

him as anybody--but somehow--don't know. Suppose we wait a bit. Melrose's

life is a bad one."

But Barton refused to wait, and went off storming.

The facts, he vowed, were more than enough.

The weeks passed on. Duddon knew no longer what Green Cottage was

doing. Victoria, at any rate, was ignorant, and forbore to ask--by

word of mouth; though her thoughts were one long interrogation on the

subject of Lydia, both as to the present and the past. Was she still in

correspondence with Faversham, as Victoria now understood from Tatham she

had been all the summer? Was she still defending him? Perhaps engaged to

him? For a fair-minded and sensible woman, Victoria fell into strange

bogs of prejudice and injustice in the course of these ponderings.

In her drives and walks at this time, Victoria generally avoided the

neighbourhood of the cottage. But one afternoon at the very end of

October, she overtook--walking--a slight, muffled figure in the Whitebeck

road, and recognized Susy Penfold. A constrained greeting passed between

them, and Lady Tatham learnt that Lydia was away--had been away, indeed,

since the day following her last interview with Harry. The very next

morning she and her mother had been summoned to London by the grave

illness of Mrs. Penfold's elder sister. And there they were still; though

Lydia was expected home shortly.

Victoria walked on, with relieved feelings, she scarcely knew why. At any

rate there had been no personal contact between Faversham and a charming

though foolish girl, during these weeks of popular indignation.

By what shabby arts had the mean and grasping fellow now installed at

Threlfall ever succeeded in obtaining a hold over a being so refined, so

fastidious and--to all appearances--so high-minded, as Lydia Penfold?

To refuse Harry and decline on Claude Faversham! Victoria acknowledged

indeed a certain pseudo-Byronic charm in the man. She could not forget

the handsome head as she had seen it last at the door of Melrose's

library; or the melodramatic black and white of the face, of the small,

peaked beard, the dark brows, pale lantern cheeks, and heavy-lidded eyes.

All the picturesque adventurers of the world betray something, she

thought, of a common stamp.

At last one evening, when Tatham was away on county business, and Felicia

had gone to bed, Victoria suddenly unburdened herself to Cyril Boden, as

they sat one on either side of a November fire, while a southwesterly

gale from the high fells blustered and raged outside.

Boden was the confessor of a good many people. Not that he was by any

means an orthodox Christian; his ascetic ways had very little to do with

any accepted form of doctrine. But there was in him the natural priestly

power, which the priest by ordination may have or miss. It was because

men and women realized in himself the presence of a travailing,

questioning, suffering soul, together with an iron self-repression, that

those who suffered and questioned came to him, and threw themselves upon

him; often getting more buffeting than balm for their pains; but always

conscious of some mysterious attractions in him, as of one who, like Sir

Boris, had seen the Grail, but might never tell of the vision.

Victoria was truly attached to him. He had been with her during the days

of her husband's sudden illness and death; he had advised her with regard

to the passing difficulties of Tatham's school and college days and

pointed a way for her through many perplexities of her own. Duddon was as

much of a home to him, as he probably possessed in the world. When he had

worn himself out with some one or other of the many causes he pursued in

South London, working with a sombre passion which had in it very little

of the mystical joy or hope which sustain others in similar efforts; when

he had scarcely a coat to his back, or a shoe to his feet; when his

doctor began to talk of tuberculin tests and the high Alps; then he would

wire to Duddon, and come and vegetate under Victoria's wing, for just as

many weeks as were necessary to send him back to London restored to a

certain physical standard. To watch Harry Tatham's wholesome, kindly,

prosperous life, untroubled by any of the nightmares that weighed upon

his own, was an unfailing pleasure to a weary man. He loved both Harry

and his mother. Nevertheless, as soon as he arrived, both felt him the

gadfly in the house. His mind was nothing if not critical. And

undoubtedly the sight of easy wealth was an irritation to him. He

struggled against it; but sometimes it would out.

As he sat this evening crouched over the fire, his hands spread to

the blaze, he looked more frail than usual; a fact which perhaps,

half-consciously, affected Victoria and drew out her confidence. His

dress suit, primevally old, would scarcely, she reflected, hold together

another winter. But how it was to be replaced had already cost her and

Harry much thought. There was nobody more personally, fanatically proud

than Boden toward his well-to-do friends. His clothes indeed were a

matter of tender anxiety in the Duddon household, and Tatham's valet

and Victoria's maids did him many small services, some of which he repaid

with a smile and a word--priceless to the recipient; and some he was

never aware of. When his visits to Duddon first began, the contents of

his Gladstone bag used to provide merriment in the servants' hall, and

legend said that a young footman had once dared to be insolent to him.

Had any one ventured the same conduct now he would have been sent to

Coventry by every servant in the house.

It was to this austere, incalculable, yet always attractive listener,

that Victoria told the story of Harry and Lydia, of the Faversham

adventure, and the Melrose inheritance. If she wanted advice, a little

moral guidance for herself--and indeed she did want it--she did not get

any; but of comment there was plenty.

"That's the girl I saw here last time," mused Boden, nursing his

knee--"lovely creature--with some mind in her face. So she's refused

Harry--and Duddon?"

"Which no doubt will commend her to you!" said Victoria, not without a

certain bristling of her feathers.

"It does," said Boden quietly. "Upon my word, it was a fine thing to do."

"Just because we happen to be rich?" Victoria's eyelids fluttered a

little.

"No! but because it throws a little light on what we choose to call the

soul. It brings one back to a faint belief in the existence of the thing.

Here is one of the great fortunes, and one of the splendid houses of the

world, and a little painting girl who makes a few pounds by her drawings

says 'No, thank you!' when they are laid at her feet--because--of a

little trifle called love which she can't bring to the bargain. I confess

that bucks one up. 'The day-star doth his beams restore.'"

He took up the tongs, and began absently to rebuild the fire. Victoria

waited on his remarks with heightened colour.

"Of course I'm sorry for Harry," he said, after a moment, with his queer

smile. "I saw there was something wrong when I arrived. But it's

salutary--very salutary! Hasn't he had everything in the world he wanted

from his cradle? And isn't it as certain as anything can be that he'll

find some other charming girl, who'll faint with joy, when he asks her,

and give you all the grandchildren you want? And meanwhile we have this

bit of the heroic--this defiance of a miry world, cropping up--to help us

out of our mud-holes. I'm awfully sorry for Harry--but I take off my hat

to the girl."

Victoria's expression became sarcastic.

"Who will ultimately marry," she said, "according to _my_ interpretation

of the business, a first-class adventurer--possessed of a million of

money--stolen from its proper owners."

"I don't believe it. I've seen her! But, upon my word, what a queer

parable it all is! Shall I tell you how it shapes itself to me?" He

looked, tongs in hand, at Victoria, his greenish eyes all alive. "I see

you all--you, Harry, Faversham, and Melrose, Miss Lydia--grouped round a

central point. The point is wealth. You are all in different relations to

wealth. You and Harry are indifferent to wealth, because you have always

had it. It has come to you without toiling and spinning--can you imagine

being without it?--but it has not spoilt you. You sit loose to it;

because you have never _struggled_ for it. But I doubt whether the

Recording Angel, when it comes to reckoning up, will give you very high

marks for your indifference! Dear friend!"--he put out a sudden hand

and touched Victoria's--"bear with me! There's one thing you'll hear, if

any one does, at the last day--'I was a stranger and ye took me in.'" His

eyes shone upon her.

After which, he resumed in his former tone: "Then take Melrose. He too is

determined by his relation to wealth. Wealth has just ruined him--burnt

him up--made out of him so much refuse for the nether fires. Faversham

again! Wealth, the crucial, deciding factor! The testing with him is

still going on. He seems, from your account, to be coming out badly. And

lastly, the girl--who, like you, is indifferent to wealth, but for

different reasons; who probably hates and shrinks from it; like a wild

bird that fears the cage. You, my dear lady--you and Harry--have got so

used to wealth, its trammels no longer gall you. You carry the weight of

it, as the horse of the Middle Ages carried his trappings; it's second

nature. And you can enjoy, you can move, you can feel, in spite of it.

You have risked your soul, without knowing it; but you have kept your

soul! This girl, I take it, is afraid to risk her soul. She is not in

love with Harry--worse luck for Harry!--she is in love--remember I have

talked to her a little!--with something she calls beauty, with liberty,

with an unfettered course for the spirit, with all the lovely,

intangible, priceless _best_, which the world holds for its true lovers.

Wealth grasping at that best has a way of killing it--as the child kills

the butterfly. _That's_ what she's afraid of. As to Faversham"--he got up

from his seat, and with his thumbs in his waistcoat began to pace the

room--"Faversham no doubt is in a bad way. He's on the road to damnation.

Melrose of course is damned and done with. But Faversham? I reserve

judgment. If he's in love with that girl, and she with him--I can't make

out, however, that you have much reason to think it--but suppose he is,

she'll have the handling of him. Shan't we back her?"

He turned with vivacity to his hostess.

Victoria laughed indignantly.

"You may if you like. The odds are too doubtful for me."

"That's because you're Harry's mother!" he said with his sly, but most

winning, smile. "Well--there's the parable--writ large. _Mammon!_--how

you get it--how you use it--whether you dominate it--or it dominates

you. Whether it is the greater curse, or the greater blessing to men--it

was the question in Christ's day--it's the question now. But it has never

been put with such intensity, as to this generation! As to your

particular version of the parable--I wait to see! The tale's not through

yet."

XVIII

A few days later, Lady Tatham received a letter, which she opened with

some agitation. It was from Lydia in London:

"DEAR LADY TATHAM:

"I have waited some weeks before writing to you, partly because, as Susy

I hear has told you, I have been busy nursing my mother's sister, but

still more because my heart failed me--again and again.

"And yet I feel I ought to write--partly in justice to myself--partly to

ask you to forgive the pain I fear I may have caused you. I know--for he

has told me--that Lord Tatham never concealed from you all that has

passed between us; and so I feel sure that you know what happened about a

month ago, when we agreed that it would be wiser not to meet again for

the present.

"I don't exactly want to defend myself. It still seems to me true that,

in the future, men and women will find it much more possible to be

comrades and friends, without any thought of falling in love or marrying,

than they do now; and that it will be a good thing for both. And if it

is true, are not some of us justified in making experiments now? Lord

Tatham I know will have told you I was quite frank from the beginning. I

did not wish to marry; but I meant to be a very true friend; and I wanted

to be allowed to love you both, as one loves one's friends, and to share

your life a little. And the thing I most wished was that Lord Tatham

should marry--some one quite different from myself.

"So we agreed that we would write, and share each other's feelings and

thoughts as far as we could. And I hoped that any other idea with regard

to me would soon pass out of Lord Tatham's mind. I did--most sincerely;

and I think he believes that I did. How good and dear he always was to

me!--how much I have learnt from him! And yet I am afraid it was all very

blind, and ill-considered--perhaps very selfish--on my part. I did not

understand what harm I _might_ do; though I hope with all my heart--and

believe--that I have not done anything irreparable. It is very hard

for me to regret it; because all my life I shall be the richer and the

wiser for having known so good a man; one so true, so unselfish, so

high-minded. Women so rarely come to know men, except in marriage, or

through books; and your son's character has sweetened and ennobled whole

sides of life for me--forever.

"But if--in return--I have given him pain--and you, who love him! I was

always afraid of you--but I would have done anything in the world to

serve you. Will you let me have a little word--just to tell me that you

forgive, and understand. I ask it with a very sore heart--full, full of

gratitude to him and to you, for all your goodness."

* * * * *

Victoria was oddly affected by this letter. It both touched and angered

her. She was touched by what it said, deeply touched; and angered by what

it omitted. And yet how could the writer have said anything more!--or

anything else! Victoria admitted that her thoughts had run far beyond

what she knew--in any true sense--or had any right to conjecture.

Nevertheless the fact in her belief remained a fact, that but for

Faversham and some disastrous influence he had gained over her almost at

once, Harry would have had his chance with Lydia Penfold. As it was, she

had been allowing Harry to offer her his most intimate thoughts and

feelings, while she was actually falling in love with his inferior. This

was what enraged Victoria. Whatever Cyril Boden might say, it seemed to

her maternal jealousy something equivalent to the betrayal of a sacred

confidence.

Yet clearly she could not say so to Lydia Penfold--nor could Lydia

confess it! She wrote as follows:

"MY DEAR MISS PENFOLD:

"It was very kind of you to write to me, I am sure you meant no harm,

and I do not pretend to judge another person's conduct by what I might

myself have thought wisest or best. But I think we all have to learn

that the deepest feelings in life are very sensitive, and very

incalculable things; and that the old traditions and conventions

respecting them have probably much more to say for themselves than we

like to admit--especially in our youth. Men and women in middle life may

have true and intimate friendships without any thought of marriage. I

doubt whether this is possible for young people, though I know it is the

fashion nowadays to behave as though it were. And especially is it

difficult--or impossible--where there has been any thought of love--on

either side. For love is the great, unmanageable, explosive thing, which

cannot be tamed down, at a word, into friendship--not in youth at any

rate. The attempt to treat it as a negligible quantity can only bring

suffering and misunderstanding.

"But I must not preach to you like this. I am sure you know--now--that

what I say has truth in it. Thank you again for the feeling that dictated

your letter. Harry is very well and very busy. We hoped to go to London

before Christmas, but this most difficult and unhappy affair of Mrs.

Melrose and her daughter detains us. Whether we shall obtain justice for

them in the end I do not know. At present the adverse influences are very

strong--and the indignation of all decent people seems to make no

difference. Mr. Faversham's position is indeed difficult to understand.

"Please remember me kindly to your mother and sister. Next year I hope we

shall be able to meet as usual. But for the present, as you and Harry

have agreed, it is better not."

* * * * *

Victoria was extremely dissatisfied with this letter when she had done

it. But she knew very well that Harry would have resented a single harsh

word from her toward the misguided Lydia; and she did not know how better

to convey the warning that burnt on her lips with regard to Faversham.

* * * * *

Lydia received Victoria's letter on the day of her return to the cottage.

Her mother remained in London.

Susy welcomed her sister affectionately, but with the sidelong looks of

the observer. Ever since the evening of Lady Tatham's visit when Lydia

had come back with white face and red eyes from her walk with Harry

Tatham, and when the following night had been broken for Susy by the

sound of her sister's weeping in the room next to her, it had been

recognized by the family that the Tatham affair had ended in disaster,

and that Duddon was henceforth closed to them. Lydia told her mother

enough to plunge that poor lady into even greater wonder than before at

the hopeless divergence of young people to-day from the ways and customs

of their grandmothers; and then begged piteously that nothing more might

be said to her. Mrs. Penfold cried and kissed her; and for many days

tears fell on the maternal knitting needles, as the fading vision of

Lydia, in a countess' coronet, curtesying to her sovereign, floated

mockingly through the maternal mind. To Susy Lydia was a little more

explicit; but she showed herself so sunk in grief and self-abasement,

that Susy had not the heart for either probing or sarcasm. It was not a

broken heart, but a sore conscience--a warm, natural penitence, that she

beheld. Lydia was not yet "splendid," and Susy could not make anything

tragic out of her.

At least, on what appeared. And not even Susy's impatience could

penetrate beyond appearance. She longed to say, "Enough of the Tatham

affair--now let us come to business. How do you stand with Claude

Faversham?" A number of small indications pointed her subtly,

irresistibly in that direction. But the strength of Lydia's personality

stood guard over her secret--if she had one.

All Susy could do was to give Lydia the gossip of the neighbourhood,

which she did--copiously, including the "cutting" of Faversham at the

County Club, by Colonel Barton and others. Lydia said nothing.

In the course of the evening, however, a letter arrived for Lydia,

brought by messenger from Threlfall Tower. Lydia was alone in the

sitting-room; Susy was writing upstairs. The letter ran:

"I hear you have returned to-day. May I come and see you to-morrow

afternoon--late?"

To which Lydia replied in her firmest handwriting, "Come by all means. I

shall be here between five and six to-morrow." After which she went about

with head erect and shining eyes, like one who has secretly received and

accepted a challenge. She was going to sift this matter for herself.

Since a hurried note reporting the latest news of the Mainstairs victims,

which had reached her from Faversham on the morning of her departure for

London, she had heard nothing from him; and during her weeks of nursing

in a darkened room, she had sounded the dim and perilous ways of her own

heart as best she could.

She spent the following day in sketching the Helvellyn range, still

radiant under its first snow-cap; sitting warmly sheltered on a southern

side of a wall, within sound of the same stream beside which she and

Faversham had met for the first time in the spring, amid the splendid

light and colour of the May sunset.

And now it was already winter. The fell-sides were red with withered

fern; their round or craggy tops showed white against a steely sky; down

the withered copses by the stream, the north wind swept; a golden oak

showered its dead leaf upon her. Gray walls, purple fells, the brown and

silver of the stream, all the mountain detail that she loved--she drew it

passionately into her soul. Nature and art--why had she been so faithless

to them--she "the earth's unwearied lover?" She was miserably, ironically

conscious of her weakness; of the gap between her spring and her autumn.

On her return, she told Susy quietly of her expected visitor. Susy raised

her eyebrows.

"I shall give him tea," said Susan, "just to save the proprieties with

Sarah." Sarah was the house parlour-maid. "But _then_ you won't need to

give me hints."

Susy had departed. Lydia and Faversham sat opposite each other in the

little drawing-room.

Lydia's first impression on seeing him had been one of dismay. He looked

much older; and a certain remoteness, a cold and nervous manner seemed to

have taken the place of the responsive ease she remembered. It began to

cost her an effort to remember the emotion of their last meeting in the

Mainstairs lane.

But when they were alone together, he drew a long breath, and leaning

forward over the table before them, his face propped on his hand, he

looked at her earnestly.

"I wonder what you have been hearing about me?"

Lydia made a brave effort, and told him. She repeated to him

the gist of what Susan had reported the night before, putting it

lightly--apologetically--as though statements so extravagant had only

to be made to be disproved. His mind meanwhile was divided between

strained attention, and irrepressible delight in the spectacle of Lydia

enthroned in her mother's chair, of the pale golden hair rippling back

from the broad forehead, and the clear eyes beneath the thin dark arch of

the brows, so delicately traced on the white skin; of all the play of

gesture and expression that made up her beauty. Existence for him during

these weeks of her absence had largely meant expectation of this moment.

He had discounted all that she would probably say to him; his replies

were ready.

And she no sooner paused than he began an eager and considered defence of

himself. A defence which, as he explained, he had intended to make weeks

before. He had called the very day after their hurried departure for

London; and having missed them, had then decided to wait till they could

talk face to face. _Le papier est bête!_ "I had too much to say!"

Well, when he had said it, to what did it amount? He claimed the right to

tell the whole story; and began therefore by tracing the steps by which

he had become necessary to Melrose; by describing his astonishment when

the offer of the agency was made to him; and the sudden rush of plans and

hopes for the future. Then, by a swift and effective digression he

sketched the character of Melrose, as he had come to know it; the

ferocity of the old man's will; his mad obstinacy, in which there was

always a touch of fantastic imagination; and those alternations of

solitude and excitement, with the inevitable, accompanying defiance of

all laws of health, physical and moral, which for years had made up his

life.

"Let us remember that he is undoubtedly a sick man. He will tell me

nothing of what his doctors say to him. But I put two and two together. I

don't believe he can possibly live long. A year or two at most; perhaps

much less. When I accepted the agency, I confess I thought his physical

weakness would oblige him to put the whole management of the estate into

my hands. It has not been so. The mind, the will are iron, whatever the

physical weakness may be. He conceives himself as a rock in the Socialist

torrent, bound to oppose reforms, and concessions, and innovations, just

because they are asked of him by a revolutionary society. He reckons that

his life will last out his resistance--his successful resistance--and

that he will go down with the flag flying. So that he takes an insane

pleasure in disappointing and thwarting the public opinion about him. For

it _is_ insane--remember that! The moral state, the moral judgments, are

all abnormal; the will and the brain are, so far as his main pursuits are

concerned, still superb."

He paused. Her gaze--half-shrinking--was fixed on the face so near to

her; on the profound and resolute changes which had passed over the

features which when she first saw them had still the flexibility of

youth. The very curls and black hair lying piled above the forehead

in which there were already two distinct transverse lines, seemed to have

grown harsher and stronger.

"This, of course, is what I discovered as soon as I had taken the agency.

I did not know my man when I accepted. I began to know him, as soon as we

really came to business. I found him opposed to all reform--incapable

even of decent humanity. Very well! Was I to throw up?"

His eyes pierced into hers. Lydia could only murmur: "Go on."

"Suppose I had thrown up!--what would have happened? The estate would

have sunk, more and more lamentably, into the power of a certain low

attorney who has been Melrose's instrument in all his worst doings for

years--and of a pair of corrupt clerks in the local office. Who would

have gained? Not a soul! On the contrary, much would have been lost.

Heaven knows I have been able to do little enough. But I have done

something!--I have done _something_!--that is what people forget."

He looked at her passionately; a distress rising in his eyes, which he

could not hide. Was it her silence--the absence of any cheering,

approving sound from her?

She lifted her hand, and let it drop.

"Mainstairs!" she said. It was just breathed--a cry of pain.

"Yes--Mainstairs! I know--let us tackle Mainstairs. Mainstairs is a

horror--a tragedy. If I had been allowed, I should have set the whole

thing right a couple of months ago; I should have re-housed some of the

people, closed some of the cottages, repaired others. Mr. Melrose stopped

everything. There again--what good could I do by throwing up? I had

plenty of humdrum work elsewhere that was not being interfered with--work

that will tell in the long run. I left Mainstairs to Melrose; the

responsibility was his, not mine. I went on with what I was doing. He and

the police--thank heaven!--cleared the place."

"And in the clearing, Mr. Melrose, they say, never lifted a finger to

help--did not even give money," said Lydia in the same low, restrained

voice, as she looked away from her guest into the fire. "And one sits

thinking--of all the _dead_--that might have been saved!"

His frowning distress was evident.

"Do I not feel it as much as any one?" he said, with emotion. "I was

helpless!"

There was silence. Then Lydia turned sharply toward him.

"Mr. Faversham! Is it true that Mr. Melrose has made you his heir?"

His face changed.

"Yes--it is true."

"And he has refused to make any provision for his wife and daughter?"

"He has. And more than that"--he looked at her with a defiant

candour--"he has tried to bind me in his will to do nothing for them."

"And you have allowed it?"

"I shall soon get round that," he said, scornfully. "There are a thousand

ways. Such restrictions are not worth the paper they are written on."

"And meanwhile they are living on charity? And Mr. Melrose, as you say,

may last some years. I saw Mrs. Melrose pass this morning in a carriage.

She looked like a dying woman."

"I have done my best," he said doggedly. "I have argued--and entreated.

To no avail!"

"But you are taking the money"--the quiet intensity of the tone affected

him strangely--"the money, that should be theirs--the money which has

been wrung--partly--from this wretched estate. You are accepting gifts

and benefits from a man you must loathe and despise!"

She was trembling all over. Her eyes avoided his as she sat downcast; her

head bent under the weight of her own words.

There was silence. But a silence that spoke. For what was in truth the

meaning of this interview--of his pleading--and her agonized, reluctant

judgment? No ordinary acquaintance, no ordinary friendship could have

brought it about. Things unspoken, feelings sprung from the flying seeds

of love, falling invisible on yielding soil, and growing up a man knoweth

not how--at once troubled and united them. The fear of separation had

grown, step by step, with the sense of attraction and of yearning. It was

because their hearts reached out to each other that they dreaded so to

find some impassable gulf between them.

He mastered himself with difficulty.

"That is one way of putting it. Now let me put it my way. I am a man who

has had few chances in life--and great ambitions--which I have never had

the smallest means of satisfying. I may be the mere intriguer that Tatham

and his mother evidently think me. But I am inclined to believe in

myself. Most men are. I feel that I have never had my opportunity. What

is this wealth that is offered me, but an opportunity? There never was so

much to be done with wealth--so much sheer _living_ to be got out of it,

as there is to-day. Luxury and self-indulgence are the mere abuse of

wealth. Wealth means everything nowadays that a man is most justified

in desiring!--supposing he has the brains to use it. That at any rate is

my belief. It always has been my belief. Trust me--that is all I ask of

my friends. Give me time. If Mr. Melrose were to die soon--immediately--I

should be able all the quicker to put everything to rights. But if his

death is delayed a year or two--my life indeed will be a dog's life"--he

spoke with sudden emotion--"but the people on the estate will not be the

worse, but the better, for my being there; and in the end the power will

come to me--and I shall use it. So long as Melrose lives his wife and

daughter can get nothing out of him, whether I am there or not. His

obstinacy is immovable, as Lady Tatham has found, and when he dies, their

interests will be safe with me."

Lydia had grown very pale. The man before her seemed to her Faversham,

yet not Faversham. Some other personality, compounded of all those ugly,

sophistic things that lurk in every human character, seemed to be

wrestling with, obscuring the real man.

"And the years till this stage comes to an end?" she asked

him. "When every day you have to do what you feel to be

wrong?--to obey--to be at the beck and call of such a man as Mr.

Melrose?--hateful--cruel--tyrannical!--when you must silence all

that is generous and noble--"

Her voice failed her.

Faversham's lips tightened. They remained looking at each other. Then

Faversham rose suddenly. He stooped over her. She heard his voice, hoarse

and broken in her ears:

"Lydia--I love you!--I _love you_--with all my heart!--and all my

strength! Don't, for God's sake, let us make believe with each other!

And--I believe," he added, after a moment, in a lower tone, "I

believe--that you love me!"

His attitude, his manner were masterful--violent. She trembled under it.

He tried to take her hand.

"Speak to me!" he said, peremptorily. "Oh, my darling--speak to me! I

only ask you to trust to me--to be guided by me--"

She withdrew her hand. He could see her heart fluttering under the soft

curves of the breast.

"I can't--I can't!"

The words were said with anguish. She covered her face with her hands.

"Because I won't do what you wish? What is it you wish?"

They had come to the deciding moment.

She looked up, recovering self-control, her heart rushing to her lips.

"Give it up!" she said, stretching out her hands to him, her head thrown

back, all her delicate beauty one prayer. "Don't touch this money! It is

stained--it is corrupt. You lose your honour in taking it--and honour--is

life. What does money matter? The great things that make one happy have

nothing to do with money. They can be had for so little! And if one loses

them--honour and self-respect--and a clear conscience--how can _money_

make up! If I were to marry you--and we had to live on Mr. Melrose's

money--everything in life would be poisoned for me. I should always see

the faces--of those dead people--whom I loved. I should hear their

voices--accusing. We should be in slavery--slavery to a bad man--and our

souls would die--"

Her voice dropped--drowned in the passion of its own entreaty.

Faversham pressed her hands, released them, and slowly straightened

himself to his full height, as he stood beside her on the hearthrug.

A vision rose and spread through the mind. In place of the little

sitting-room, the modest home of refined women living on a slender

income, he saw the great gallery at Threlfall with its wonderful

contents, and the series of marvellous rooms he had now examined and set

in order. Vividly, impressively the great house presented itself to him

in memory, in all its recovered grace and splendour; a treasury of art,

destined to be a place of pilgrimage for all who adore that lovely record

of itself in things subtle and exquisite which the human spirit has

written on time. Often lately he had wrung permission from Melrose to

take an English or foreign visitor through some of the rooms. He had

watched their enthusiasm and their ardour. And mingled with such

experience, there had been now for months the intoxicating sense that

everything in that marvellous house was potentially his--Claude

Faversham's, and would all some day come into his hands, the hands of a

man specially prepared by education and early circumstance to enjoy, to

appreciate.

And the estate. As in a map, he saw its green spreading acres, its

multitude of farms, its possessions of all kind, spoilt and neglected by

one man's caprice, but easily to be restored by the prudent care of his

successor. He realized himself in the future as its owner; the inevitable

place that it would give him in the political and social affairs of the

north. And the estate was not all. Behind the estate lay the great

untrammelled fortune drawn from quite other sources of wealth; how great

he was only now beginning to know.

A great sigh shook him--a sigh of decision. What he had been listening to

had been the quixotism of a tender heart, ignorant of life and affairs,

and all the wider possibilities open to man's will. He could not yield.

In time she must be the one to yield. And she would yield. Let him wait,

and be patient. There were many ways in which to propitiate, to work upon

her.

He looked down upon her gravely, his dark pointed face quivering a

little. Instinctively she drew back. Her expression changed.

"I can't do that." His voice was low but firm. "I feel the call to me.

And after all, Melrose has claims on me. To me, personally, his

generosity--has been incredible. He is old--and ill. I must stay by him."

Her mind cried out, "Yes--but on your own terms, not his!"

But she did not say it. Her pride came to her aid. She sprang up, a

glittering animation flashing back into her face, transforming its

softness, its tenderness.

"I understand--I quite understand. Thank you for being so plain--and

bearing with my--strange ideas. Now--I don't think we can be of any

further use to each other--though--" she clasped her hands

involuntarily--"I shall always hope and pray--"

She did not finish. He broke into a cry.

"Lydia! you send me away?"

"I don't accept your conditions--nor you mine. There is no more to be

said."

He looked at her sombrely, remorse struggling with his will. But also

anger--the anger of a naturally arrogant temperament--that he should find

her so resistant.

"If you loved me--"

"Ah--no," she shook her head fiercely, the bright tears in her eyes;

"don't let's talk of love! That has nothing to say to it."

She turned, and took up a piece of embroidery lying on a table near. He

accepted the indication, turning very white. But still he lingered.

"Is there nothing I could say that would alter your mind?"

"I am afraid--nothing."

She gave him her hand. He scarcely dared to press it; she had become

suddenly so strong, so hostile. Her light beauty had turned as it were to

fire; one saw the flame of the spirit.

A tumult of thoughts and regrets rushed through him. But things

inexorable held him. With a long, lingering look at her, he turned and

went.

A little later, Susy entering timidly found Lydia sitting alone in a room

that was nearly dark. Some instinct guided her. She came in, took a stool

beside her sister, and leant her head against Lydia's knee. Lydia said

nothing, but their hands joined, and for long they sat in the firelight,

the only sounds, Lydia's stifled sobbing, and the soft crackling of a

dying flame.