RAYMOND BETHUNE.

Rosamond stared. Raymond Bethune.--So it was he who wrote. She had not

recognised his hand.

Stupidly she sat, stunned. Then the wave gathered, reared itself and

broke upon her, overwhelming, drenching her with waters of irremediable

bitterness! Dead--he was dead--she had lost him. He had suffered hunger

and thirst and fever, and longing for her and anguish of mind, and

doubt; he had been hacked with swords, his beloved body had been dragged

over the rocks, flung bleeding, perhaps still quick, into the swirling

flood. But all this was nothing. All they had worked upon him was

nothing compared with what she, his chosen one, had done! Faithless,

betrayer of his love, what part could Lady Gerardine have with anything

of Harry English? Even Bethune, even that cold, hard man, had been one

with the old stricken mother in loyalty of grief. "He will live in the

hearts of his countrymen." It was his wife who had thrust him away

among the dead, to be forgotten.

"It is we who make our dead dead." For her now he must always be dead.

On earth and in heaven alike she had lost him. What meeting could there

ever be for her and him again, since she had given herself to another

man; since she had willed him dead, in her cowardice; in base

self-indulgence refused her soul to the dear and holy sorrow of his

living memory?

She flung herself face downwards among his papers. No tears came to her

relief, no blessed unconsciousness. For her there was no God; for her

there could be no heaven, naught was left her but the hell of her own

making!

*CHAPTER XV*

Three times since that first fruitless summons to lunch had Aspasia come

to the door of the attic. Twice, with the engaging practicality of her

nature, she had carried up a little tray. She would fain minister to a

mind diseased, with soup or with tea, knowing no better medicine. Each

time, however, her gentle knocking, her coaxing representations through

the keyhole, had produced not the least response. But the girl's ear

had caught the rustling of papers within; and, satisfied that there was

nothing worse than one of her aunt's moods to account for the

persistently closed door and the silence, she had withdrawn with her

offering, more irritated, perhaps, than anxious.

Now, however, as she knocked and rattled at the handle and implored

admittance, there was a double pressure of anxiety upon her; the demands

of unexpected events without, and a new, deathlike stillness within.

"Oh, dear," cried Baby, "what shall I do, what shall I do!"

She thought of summoning Major Bethune to her aid; but shrank, with the

repugnance of some unformed womanly reticence.

"I must get in," she said to herself, desperately; and flung all her

young vigour against the door. To her joy, the socket of the bolt

yielded with unexpected ease. She fell almost headlong into the room,

and then stood aghast. There lay Lady Gerardine, prone on the floor,

among the strewn papers, the flickering candle by her side.

For a second the girl's heart stopped beating. The next moment she could

have cried aloud with joy. Rosamond had not even fainted; but, as she

raised herself and Baby saw the face that was turned to her, the girl

realised that here was hardly an occasion for thanksgiving; and her own

lips, trembling upon a tremendous announcement, were struck silent.

"Oh, my poor darling!" cried she, catching the stricken woman in her

arms, "what is it?"

With a moan, as of physical pain, Rosamond's head dropped on her niece's

shoulder.

"You're cold, you're worn out," said the girl. "Those dreadful letters,

and this place like an ice-house! Aunt Rosamond, darling----" She

chafed the cold hands vigorously as she spoke. "You must be starved,

too. Oh, and I don't know how to tell you! Let me bring you down to

your own room--there's tea waiting for you, and such a fire! Aunt

Rosamond, you must rouse yourself. Here, I'll put these papers by."

The one thing that could stir Rosamond from her torpor of misery was

this.

"Don't touch them," she said. Her toneless voice seemed to come from

depths far distant. She laid her wasted hands over the scattered

sheets, drawing them together to her bosom; and then, on her knees, fell

again into the former state of oblivion of all but her absorbing pain.

Frenzied with impatience and the urgency for action, Baby now blurted

out the news which the sight of Lady Gerardine's drawn countenance

caused her to withhold:

"Runkle's come!"

The woman kneeling half turned her head. A change passed over her rigid

countenance.

"Yes; Runkle's here," went on Baby, ruthlessly, raising her voice as if

speaking to the deaf. "Uncle Arthur is here; he has come over in a

motor--a party of them. Aunt Rosamond, your husband is here."

A long shudder shook the kneeling figure. It was as if life returned to

its work; and, returning, trembled in nausea from the task before it. A

deep sullen colour began to creep into Lady Gerardine's white cheek.

She bent over the gaping box and dropped into it her armful of papers.

Then she looked over her shoulder at Aspasia, and drew down the lid.

"My husband! ... My husband is dead," she said.

The girl's blood ran cold. Had the hidden terror taken shape at last?

The words were mad enough; yet it was the fierce light in Rosamond's

eyes that seemed most to signal danger.

But Aspasia was not timid, and she was not imaginative. And Lady

Gerardine's next action, the cry which escaped her lips, at once pierced

to every tender helpful instinct of the girl's heart, and banished the

paralysing fear.

"Oh, Baby," cried she, springing to her feet and stretching out her arms

in hopeless appeal, "what have I done? What is to become of me?"

Once more Baby's arms were about her. Baby, great in the emergency, was

pouring forth consolation, expostulation, counsel.

"Look here, Aunt Rosamond; it's really only for a little while; you'll

have to show, you know, but they can't stay. Their blessed motor broke

down, or something, and they ought to have been here hours ago. Now they

can only stop for a cup of tea, if they are to get back to-night. You

must just pull yourself together for half an hour--just half an hour,

Aunt Rosamond! Leave me to manage. All you've got to do is to smile a

bit, and let Runkle do the talking. They want us all to go to Melbury

Towers to-morrow, Major Bethune and everybody. That's what they've come

over for."

Lady Gerardine put the girl from her roughly.

"I'm not going there," she said.

"Of course not," said wise Baby, soothing. "But we must put him off

somehow. To-morrow you can be ill or something. Do, Aunt Rosamond,

darling, be sensible. Don't make things harder. For Heaven's sake

don't let us have a row--that would be worse than anything! I know

you're not well enough to stand poor old Runkle just now; it's your dear

nerves. But just for half an hour--for the sake of being free of him.

Oh, Aunt, you used to be so patient! Come, they'll be in upon us in one

minute. Luckily they've all been busy over that machine, pulling its

inside to pieces. Come to your room, now, and have your tea and tidy a

bit. And I'll keep them at bay, till you are ready."

She half dragged, half led Lady Gerardine to the warm shelter of her own

room. She stood over her till the prescribed tea had been taken; then,

hearing the Old Ancient House echo to the footsteps of its unexpected

visitors, she announced her intention of running to look after them.

"I've told Runkle already that you've a beastly headache," she cried,

with her cheerful mendacity. "I won't let him up here, never fear; but

I'll come and fetch you down, when I've started them on Mary's scones.

If you just do your hair a bit--Lord, there goes six o'clock, they can't

stay long, that's one blessing!"

Left to herself, with the stimulating comfort of the tea doing its work

upon her weary frame, Lady Gerardine viewed her position with some

return to calmness. This odious burden that she had laid upon herself,

she must lift it awhile once more; and it should be for the last time.

She who for years had played the hypocrite placidly would play it now

again though the tempest raged within her. For the future she must have

time. Before she could act, she must think. For this present sordid

moment--the child was right--there must be no scandal; above all not

here, in this sacred house of his, where even she, unworthy, had

recognised the presence of the dead.

She sat down before the mirror and shook her long hair loose.

The sound of voices, of laughter, rose confusedly from the drawing-room

below. She set her teeth as the well-known note of Sir Arthur's

insistent bass distinguished itself from the others. How had she

endured it for five years?

Doors were slammed, and then, the light thud of Baby's footsteps

scurrying hither and thither like a rabbit; her calls in the passage

brought a vague smile to Lady Gerardine's lips.

Up to a certain point only is the human organisation capable of pain.

After that comes the respite of numbness. Rosamond was numbed now.

Mind and heart alike refused to face the point of agony; only the most

trivial thoughts could occupy her brain. Idly she pulled the comb

through the warm gold of her hair; idly she weighed which would be the

least effort to her weary limbs, that of twisting up those tresses

herself or rising to ring the bell for Jani.

Presently her eyes wandered to the portrait that hung just over her

dressing-table. She shifted both candlesticks to one side to throw

their light full upon it.

Baby came in as upon the wings of a gust of wind.

"The most dreadful thing," she panted, in a flurried whisper; arrested

herself in her canter across the room, and plunged back to shut the open

door; "my poor, poor darling: they're going to stay the night!"

Lady Gerardine flung apart the girl's arms as if the embrace strangled

her. Their eyes met in the mirror. Then the woman shot a glauce round

the room, a glance so desperate that the other, child as she was, could

not but understand.

"Oh, you're safe--safe for the moment anyhow," she blurted out; "I've

been lying like Old Nick. I said you'd just taken a phenacetin, and

that if you were disturbed now you wouldn't be fit to lift your head all

the evening. But you'll have to come down to dinner; you can get bad

again afterwards, can't you? Runkle's quite injured already. He's been

having such a jolly time lately; he thinks it harder than ever on him

that you should still be ill. And Lady Aspasia----"

"Lady Aspasia," repeated the other, mechanically.

"Yes, that abominable woman with the ridiculous name, she's there! And

Dr. Châtelard; you remember, the pudgy Frenchman? We've got to house

them all somewhere, and to feed them. It's desperate----"

Aspasia checked her speech; for Lady Gerardine had risen from her chair

with an abrupt movement and stood staring blankly into the mirror.

Poor Aspasia had had sufficient experience already of her aunt's moods,

but this singular attitude affected the girl in so unpleasant a fashion

that she felt as if she ought to shake the staring woman, pinch her,

shout at her, do anything to call her out of this deadly torpor!

"Aunt Rosamond," she cried, raising her voice sharply in the hope of

catching the wandering attention, "I've told Sarah about the rooms, and

ordered fires to be lit; and I've seen Mary about the dinner. The poor

Old Ancient House, Runkle's crabbing it already like anything! But

we'll show them it can be hospitable, won't we?"

"Yes," said Rosamond, "yes." The hectic colour deepened on her cheek.

The widened unseeing pupil contracted with a flash of answering light.

"Baby, you're a good child. It shall give the right hospitality--his

house."

Aspasia drew a deep sigh of relief.

"Mary thinks she can have dinner in an hour," she said. "Oh Lord, what

a piece of business! And--and you'll come down, won't you?"

She rubbed her coaxing cheek against her aunt's shoulder.

"Yes. I'll come down."

"I'll dress you," said Baby, her light heart rising buoyantly under what

seemed such clearing skies. She nodded. "Oh, dear, I've such a

desperate lot of things to do! There's the wine." She slapped her

forehead. "I'd forgotten the wine." And the door closed violently

behind her tempestuous petticoat. As a companion to a neurasthenic

patient Miss Cuningham no doubt had her weak points.

* * * * *

Rosamond sank slowly back in her chair; her hand fell inertly before

her.

When the girl returned after an hour's exceeding activity the elder

woman's attitude had not altered by a fraction. But the exigency of

time and social requirements left Aspasia no leisure now to linger over

doubts and fears. Her own cheeks were pink from rapid ablutions; her

crisp hair stood out more vigorously than ever after determined

manipulation. She pealed a bell for Jani, and fell herself upon the

golden mass covering Lady Gerardine's shoulders, her chattering tongue

in full swing:

"Of course, the poor wretches are in their motor garments. (You never

saw anything like Runkle in a pony skin and goggles. He's more motist

than the chauffeur.) So I've only just stuck on a blouse, you see. But

I've determined you shall be beautiful in a tea-gown. Lord, I'd no idea

Lady Aspasia was so tremendous! I want you simply to be beautiful!"

Deft hands twisted and coiled.

"It was Runkle, you know, who broke the motor: he insisted on driving

and jammed them sideways in a gate. He's awfully pleased with himself.

It's Lady Aspasia's motor. She calls Runkle, Arty: what do you think of

that? Ah, here's Jani. Which shall it be--the white and gold? I love

the white and gold, Aunt Rosamond."

"Black--black," said Rosamond.

*CHAPTER XVI*

Sir Arthur came down the shallow oaken stairs, after his necessarily

exiguous toilet, a prey to distinct dudgeon. He had been whirled away

upon this expedition by the impetuosity of Lady Aspasia, somewhat

against his will in the first place. That he, Sir Arthur Gerardine,

should have to come in quest of his wife, instead of the latter

obediently hieing her at his summons, was a breach of the world's

decorum as he understood it personally. That his wife should have a

headache and have partaken of phenacetin coincidently upon his arrival;

that she should evidently (and by a thousand tokens the unwelcome fact

was forced upon him) be still in her uncomfortable hyperæsthetic

neurasthenic state of health was a want of consideration for his

feelings of which no dutiful spouse should have been guilty; and,

moreover, this condition of things was woefully destructive of all

comfort in the connubial state. He positively dared not insist upon

seeing her at once. Absurd as the situation was, he must await her

pleasure; for, with Lady Aspasia present, the danger of fainting fits or

hysterics could not be risked. Not that he wanted to blame Rosamond

unduly, poor thing; but it really was not what he had a right to expect.

These natural feelings of displeasure were heightened by the trifling

deprivations caused by his stranded condition. He could not feel his

usual superb and superior self coming down to dinner in a serge suit,

his feet in heavy outdoor shoes. Then, the poor surroundings, the very

feeling of the noisy oak boards instead of a pile carpet under these

same objectionable soles, offended him at every step. He was ashamed

that Lady Aspasia should find such a "pokey" place. It was by no means a

fit habitation for the wife of Sir Arthur Gerardine.

He had hurried down before the others, impelled by his restless spirit.

The hall was empty. He took a bustling survey. How faded was the strip

of Turkey carpet! God bless his soul, how worm-eaten were those square

oak chests, presses, and cupboards, and how clumsy--only fit for a

cottage! And that portrait, just under the lamp--poor English, he

supposed? A regular daub, anyhow; why, he could see the brush marks! He

wondered Rosamond could have it up.

He opened a door on the right and peeped in. All was dark within. He

was assailed by an odour of tobacco smoke, and sniffed with increasing

discontent. This visit of Bethune's, now, which had prevented Rosamond

from hurrying to his side, was there not something irregular, not to say

... well, fishy about the situation? It was odd, now he came to think

of it, that Rosamond should never have mentioned the identity of her

guest in any of her numerous telegrams, in spite of his repeated

questions. He himself, in the midst of his important social, he might

almost say political engagements (since a member of the Cabinet had been

included in the recent house-party at Melbury Towers), had not had

leisure to examine into it more closely hitherto. But now he flushed to

the roots of the silvering hair, that still curled luxuriantly round his

handsome head, as he recalled Lady Aspasia Melbury's loud laugh and

meaning cry when Baby had performed the necessary introduction upon

their recent arrival: "So you're the excuse!" ... A mere Major of

Guides! A fellow he had never really liked, after all!

Sir Arthur turned on his heel. In thought, he was already rapidly

ascending the stairs, on a voyage of discovery to Rosamond's room.

Nerves or no nerves, there are matters that require immediate attention.

It was intolerable to think that Lady Gerardine, that his wife, should

be guilty of the unpardonable lapse of placing herself--however

unwittingly, of course--into a false position. It never even dawned

upon him--to do him justice--to suspect her of any deeper offence.

As he paused, inflating his chest on the breath of his wrath, some one,

with a quick, clean tread, came running along an outer passage, and

flung open the swing door that led into the hall--flung it back with the

shove of a broad shoulder.

Sir Arthur turned again, and had a moment of amazement before his

fluttered wits remembered the existence of his own particular secretary.

Muhammed Saif-u-din stood filling up the doorway. His red turban nearly

touching the lintel, a crusty bottle in either hand, he was staring at

Sir Arthur, to the full as intently as Sir Arthur stared at him.

"Oh, it's you, is it?" then cried, testily, the mighty historian of the

Northern Provinces. "What the devil is the man doing with the wine,"

thought he, flaming inwardly, "when he ought to be busy on--on my book?"

In his mind's eye Sir Arthur never beheld Muhammed but toiling with pen

and ink upon the great work. "Well," he went on aloud, "I hope you've

got a lot to show me!"

"Excuse, your Excellency," said Muhammed. He drew himself together with

a little effort, stepped across to the open dining-room door, and laid

down his burden. Sir Arthur followed him, hot on the scent of the new

grievance. Upon his word, everybody was off his head! Mohammed's

manner, his secretary's manner, was downright cool--cool!

"I don't think I engaged you for this sort of business, Muhammed," said

he.

Muhammed, with the point of a corkscrew just applied to the first

bottle, paused and looked reflectively at the speaker. Then the points

of his upturned moustaches quivered. He laid down bottle and corkscrew

and made a profound salaam.

"Excuse, Excellency," he said again. His fine bronzed countenance was

subtly afire with some spirit of mocking irony. "There was a fear that

your Excellency should be ill served in this poor house!"

Well, well, this was laudable, of course! Yes, even the babu felt that

here was no fit entertainment for a Lieutenant-Governor. But

nevertheless, intangibly, Sir Arthur found something disquieting in that

smile, in the dark eye that fixed him. Vaguely a sense as of something

mysterious and relentless came upon him. "You never know where to have

them," he thought to himself.

In the pomp of his own palace, surrounded by scores of servitors of his

own magnificence, he had not given a thought, hitherto, to the

possibility of treachery from the Indian subject. There he felt himself

too great a man to be touched; but here, in this desolate house on the

downs! ... A small cold trickle ran down his spine. It was queer that

the creature should have been so eager to come to England! ... But the

next instant the natural man asserted himself. Sir Arthur would

certainly have been no coward even in actual danger; he was far too sure

of himself to entertain idle fears.

"I shall see you to-morrow," he said imperiously, and left the room.

A whirlwind of silks upon the stairs heralded Aspasia. She caught her

uncle by the arm and dragged him into the drawing-room.

"Pray, pray, my dear Aspasia; you are really too impetuous!" cried he,

disengaging himself testily. The familiarity which in India had added a

piquancy to his sense of importance was here a want of tact. "The

country has not improved your manners, my dear," he went on, taking up

his place on the hearthrug and sweeping the room with contemptuous gaze.

"It's high time to get you out of this."

Miss Aspasia's ready lips had already parted upon a smart retort when

the sound of Lady Aspasia's voice, uplifted from without, prevented the

imminent skirmish. Her ladyship was evidently addressing Dr. Châtelard,

for those strident tones were conveying, in highly British accents,

words of what she supposed to be French:

"Drôle petit trou, pensez-vous pas?"

"Ah, but extremely interesting," responded the _globe trotteur_, in his

precise English. He always obstinately answered in English Lady

Aspasia's less perfect but equally obstinate French.

The two entered together, she towering over him, as might a frigate over

a sloop.

Lady Aspasia Melbury was a handsome woman of the "horsey" type. A

favourite, even in royal circles, her praise ran in men's mouths

expressively as "a real good sort." A woman kind to others, with the

ease afforded her by splendid health, unlimited means, and an assured

position. Modern to the very last minute, frank beyond the point of

offence, she might be cited as one of those rare beings to whom life is

almost an absolute success; the more safely, perhaps, because most of

her ideals (if ideals they could be called) were of the most practical

description. Yet life had failed Lady Aspasia upon one point--she had

had one unsatisfied desire; her youth had held a brief romance,

interrupted by a _mariage de raison_; and when her millionaire had left

her free, she had looked, with the confidence of her nature, to the

instant renewal of the broken idyll. But here it was that fate had

played its single scurvy trick upon the woman.

Arthur Gerardine, the once handsome, penniless lad, the now still

handsome, distinguished man, who had remained bachelor all these years

(she had fondly hoped for her sake), had married--a year after her own

widowhood--married, not the ready Lady Aspasia, but a poor unknown widow

out in India. Lady Aspasia's solitary unrealised ideal, then, was Sir

Arthur Gerardine. In what strange nests will not some ideals perch!

And unattainable it seemed likely to remain.

As she now stood, her large, bold eyes roaming quizzically round the

faded room--which seemed to hold her ultra-modern presence with

amazement, to echo her loud laugh with a kind of protest, like a simple

dame of olden times raising mittened hands of rebuke--no one would have

guessed that she was inwardly eaten with impatience to behold her rival,

to know at last the creature who had supplanted her.

"It is, indeed, a poor little place," said Sir Arthur, bustling forward

to advance a chair. "I had no idea it was such a tumble-down old house.

We must get rid of it as soon as possible."

"Ah, but pardon!" interposed Dr. Châtelard. "It is old if you will, Sir

Gerardine, but thereby it is rich. Nowhere else have I so felt the

unpurchasable riches of past time. I am charmed to have come here.

After your gorgeous Melbury, the piquancy of this antique abode of

gentility is to me delicious!"

"Ah, well," said Sir Arthur, magnificently, "I don't say it has not got

a sort of picturesqueness and all that, but it's not what we are

accustomed to in England, you know. Comfort, Châtelard, the land of

comfort, we say. You don't know what it is in your country. But in the

good old days--people did not understand it either, here, you see. Look

at that chair, now. As hard as nails, eh, Lady Aspasia? I dare say a

collector or somebody might like it. What do you say--Chippendale, eh?

Elizabethan? Well, it's all the same thing. It's not my sort, anyhow.

I shall sell it all, bag and baggage."

"Sell the Old Ancient House!" interrupted the younger Aspasia, hotly.

The aggravation her uncle had ever the talent of awakening in her was

now in full force. "I think you'll find there will have to be two words

to that, dear Runkle. Aunt Rosamond's devoted to it."

Sir Arthur inflated his chest.

"My dear Raspasia!" ...

There was concentrated acrimony in his accents. The elder lady scented

storm, and storm was not the atmosphere she liked.

"I declare, Arty," she said, "you made me jump. I thought those stern

tones were directed to me. There are two Aspasias here--Docteur

Châtelard--elle est ma--namesake--appellée après moi, ou comment vous

dites! Come here, namesake, and let's have a look at you."

Aspasia fell on her knees beside the imposing tailor-made figure, and

raised her pretty, pert face--pinker than usual, with a variety of

emotions--for inspection. M. Châtelard put up his eyeglass to look down

benevolently upon her. The English Miss had yet scarcely come under his

microscope; but he quite saw that she would be a fascinating study. He

now thought the contrast between the two Aspasias somewhat cruel.

"Fraîche comme une rose, la petite. Ronde comme une caille, mutine

comine la fauvette--Mais l'autre--oh lala, quelle carcasse!"

The fine lines of Lady Aspasia's anatomy--not inharmonious, but

over-prominent, it must be owned, from the hardening effects of a too

great devotion to sport--appealed not at all to the temperament of the

French critic.

"I don't know what _you_ think of your godparents," Miss Aspasia was

remarking, with the gusto of a well-established grievance, "but I know

what I think ought to be done to mine for giving me such an i-di-o-tic

name."

She rolled her eyes meaningly towards Sir Arthur. Lady Aspasia pinched

the tilted chin not unkindly, while her loud laugh rang out.

"And you won't ever be able to change it, either, that's the worst of

it," she cried. "Thank your stars, anyhow, it can't brand you all your

life, as it does me, like an ugly handle to a fine jug--aha! By the

way, Arty, you'll have to do something to help this poor child to change

the Cuningham, anyhow. She won't do it down here."

"I don't want to change that at all," cried Baby. Her quick ear had

caught the sound of Bethune's tread on the threshold. She jerked her

chin from Lady Aspasia's fingers and jumped to her feet. "I've never

seen any one whose name I thought better worth having than Cuningham

yet."

In her young pride she unconsciously flung an angry glance upon the

newcomer for appearing at just the wrong moment--a glance which Lady

Aspasia caught, and from which she immediately drew conclusions.

These conclusions tallied to a nicety with some others that Lady

Aspasia, not without a certain satisfaction, had been forming of late

regarding the Gerardine _ménage_.

Lady Gerardine had shown an unmistakable disinclination to join her

husband after a long absence; she had suddenly ceased corresponding with

him except by telegram; and in these telegrams the name of the visitor

whose presence was offered as excuse had been unaccountably omitted.

"Poor child," cried the woman of fashion, with her crow of laughter and

the brutal outspokenness of her circle; "she's about tired of playing

chaperon here! Never mind, my dear, your time will come by-and-by. 'Nous

avons changé tout cela,' as M. Châtelard would say; and a jolly good

thing, too. We are only proper in our teens, and after that we can have

a high old time till we are eighty. C'est ce que nous appellons un

score, M. Châtelard."

"I think, Lady Melbury," said M. Châtelard, suavely, "that I should

prefer to watch the high young time."

But, as he spoke, his eye was on Sir Arthur; and from thence it went

with eager curiosity to Bethune. He was rubbing mental hands of glee.

What stroke of superlative fortune had landed him in the very middle, in

the great act, he felt sure, of that drama, the beginning of which he

had noted with such interest in far-off India? The poor, good, trusting

Sir Gerardine, who had ordered his wife to fall in with her lover's

scheme, with such touching--such imbecile--confidence! Ah, but he was

beginning to suspect; he had winced even now at the words of yonder

impossible female. And that other? Why, it was clear that the Major

had encompassed his design--but up to what point? That relentless,

impenetrable mask was as hard to decipher as ever. It could not be said

that he looked like the fortunate lover, but neither did he look like

one who would spare or give way. "It is a nature of granite," thought

the Frenchman, as he watched Bethune's deliberate movements about the

room. "Successful or still plotting, the advent of the husband at this

moment--what a situation! And yet, behold the lover; immovable,

implacable. It will be tragic!"

"She's tired of acting chaperon." Sir Arthur let the words pass because

they were spoken by Lady Aspasia. But they had pierced right through

his armour of self-satisfaction and self-security. The new grievance

became again unpleasantly active.

Rosamond had indubitably been incredibly, reprehensibly foolish. No one

had a right so to neglect the ordinary conventions. He would have to

speak to her very seriously, by-and-by.

"What can your aunt be about, my dear Aspasia?" cried he, impatiently.

"I think I must really go up and bring her down, if you will just direct

me to her room."

That he should have to ask to be directed to his wife's room; that,

having been a couple of hours in the same house, they should not yet

have met--it was preposterous, intolerable, it was most inconsiderate of

Rosamond! It was an abuse of his chivalrous solicitude for her!

"Oh, I'll run up!" cried Baby, anxiously.

"Here is Lady Gerardine herself," said Major Bethune's calm voice. He

stepped to the door and opened it.

*CHAPTER XVII*

Up went Lady Aspasia's eyeglasses. Often had she pictured to herself

the woman who had "cut her out." She vowed she knew the type: "men are

so silly!"--the Simla belle, ill-painted, ill-dyed, with the airs of

importance of the Governor's wife badly grafted upon the second-rate

manners of the Indian officer's widow.

As Rosamond came into the room, her long black draperies trailing, her

radiant head held high, a geranium flush upon cheeks and lips, Lady

Aspasia's glasses fell upon her knees with a click; then she lifted them

quickly to stare afresh. She forgot to rise from her chair; she forgot

even to criticise.

"I'm done for--I'm stumped!" cried the poor sporting lady, in her candid

soul. "It's all u-p! Lord, what a fool I have been!"

Sir Arthur, filling his lungs with a breath of righteous reprehension,

looked; and exhaled it in a puff of triumph. A beautiful creature. By

George, the most beautiful creature he had ever seen! And she was

his--his wife--Lady Gerardine. The old glorious self-satisfaction

rushed back upon him. How well he had chosen, after all! A little

neurasthenia might well be forgiven to one who so superlatively

vindicated his taste. It was a glorious moment, this, of presenting the

shining star of his selection to the poor old flame.

"Sac-à-papier! ... Quand une anglaise se mêle d'être belle, elle ne fait

pas les choses à moitié."

Dr. Châtelard adjusted his spectacles. This was the woman whom the

astute Bethune, under the purple Indian sky, had accused in his hearing

of being cold. Cold? Just heavens--what a bloom, what a flower! Ah!

the answer to that question he had been asking himself with devouring

curiosity ever since his recognition of the manor-house guest, was here

given him without a word. The poor--the poor Sir Gerardine! Here was

what he, Châtelard, with his enormous experience, had securely

predicted. _Voici la conflagration!_

Not a jewel did Rosamond wear; but her soft draperies were strung with

long lines of jet, so that, with each movement, subdued fires seemed to

flash about her. The fever colour in her cheeks, the fever light in her

eyes, lent her usually pale and pensive beauty an unnatural brilliancy.

All in the room were unwittingly struck into immobility, that their

every energy might be given to so rare a sight.

Raymond Bethune flung but one look, then dropped his eyes.

"He is afraid to betray himself," thought the shrewd Châtelard (his own

inquisitive eye was everywhere); for once he was right in the midst of

his wild surmises.

Even Baby stared, open-mouthed.

Rosamond advanced, looked round with unseeing glances. "I am here.

What is wanted of me?" she seemed to ask, vaguely.

"Painted!" cried Lady Aspasia to herself, her gaze fixed hungrily.

"No"--for here Sir Arthur bent to kiss his wife, and the scarlet cheek

turned to him was suddenly blanched--"No. What's the matter with the

creature? She looks as if she were going to faint."

But Lady Aspasia was in no mood to follow the fertile train of thought

suggested by Lady Gerardine's evident emotion under her husband's

caress; her own emotions were for the moment unwontedly acute and

painful. Sir Arthur's fond and proud look at his beautiful consort

struck the old love with a stab. She was not even regretted!

"My dear," said Sir Arthur, one of his wife's cold hands in his, "here

is Lady Aspasia, of whom you have heard so much."

Then Lady Aspasia remembered her manners, and rose to greet her hostess.

As she did so, she caught the reflection both of herself and of Lady

Gerardine side by side in the mirror over the chimney-piece. Both tall

women, their heads were nearly on a level; but between the two faces

what a chasm! How could the old love be regretted? She was not even

regrettable.

The elder woman gave a harsh laugh.

"Awfully glad," she muttered, for once at a loss for words. "She's got

it all," she was saying to herself. "Youth and beauty--and Arty. Poor

Arty; she does not care a snap of her finger for him, and Heaven knows

what's on her conscience!"

"You remember Dr. Châtelard, my love," proceeded Sir Arthur. M.

Châtelard made his preliminary French bow, and respectfully took

possession of Rosamond's icy fingers. While his lips were forming an

elegant little speech of greeting, while he was assuring her ladyship of

his acute sense of privilege at being under her roof, his swift thoughts

were busy on fresh conclusions. He looked down at the pale hand, the

death-like touch of which lay inert in his palm, and up at the hectic

loveliness of the face.

"C'est qu'elle est malade--tres malade même!" he said to himself, with

sudden gravity. "Ah, she is not one to whom sin is easy! The young man

may remember he was warned." And, as he gave his arm to his hostess to

lead her into the dining-room, he was perhaps the only member of the

company to realise that Lady Gerardine had not so far uttered a single

word. "This will end in tragedy," he told himself again; and the ring

of Sir Arthur's laugh, the jovial content of his voice behind him,

struck the Frenchman's ear, mere student of psychology as he was, with

an actual sensation of pain.

As they crossed the hall they passed the figure of the Indian secretary

standing motionless, with folded arms, at the further end. The man

salaamed as they went by, and M. Châtelard felt Lady Gerardine shudder.

"Does the Eastern inspire you with repugnance?" queried he, as they

entered the dining-room.

"With horror," she answered, in a deep, vibrating voice; "with hatred."

The note of her passion was so incongruous to the occasion that the

traveller found nothing to reply.

Once seated at the table, however, he set himself, with tactful

assiduity, to cover a situation which tended to become awkward, not to

say impossible. Fortunately, too, both the Aspasias kept up an almost

violent conversation, and between them Sir Arthur was allowed very

little time for reflection or observation.

Baby had purposely placed a large erection of ferns and flowers in the

centre of the table. Sir Arthur had to peer round if he wanted to catch

his wife's eyes. The four candles, in their red shades, gave but faint

illumination. The dark oak panelling absorbed the side lights. It was

only to Bethune on the one hand, to M. Châtelard on the other, that

Rosamond's persistent mutism, her abstraction, became obtrusive.

"You have, I fear, small appetite, madam," said the Frenchman at last,

with kindly anxiety, unable himself to enjoy the excellent plain fare

provided by old Mary while this lovely dumb creature beside him

shuddered from the food on her plate, much as she had shuddered from the

sight of the Pathan in the hall.

She turned her eyes, unnaturally bright in their haggard setting, slowly

upon him, as if aware that he had spoken, and yet unable to grasp his

meaning.

"You do not eat," he repeated, with more explicitness. On the other side

of him Lady Aspasia, wheeling round from her absorbing conversation with

Sir Arthur, caught the words. She looked curiously at Lady Gerardine.

"We have taken away her appetite," she cried, in her literal French.

"Too bad--and such a good dinner, too! I am ravenous still, in spite of

the scones." And she fell with zest upon the chop before her.

Jealousy might beset her, and angry suspicion of the woman who had

supplanted her, but the business of the moment for Lady Aspasia was

dinner.

"Capital wine," said Sir Arthur. "I had no idea, my dear Rosamond, that

you could give us anything like this." He peered round the

chrysanthemums at her, and received again the agreeable shock of her

beauty in its new garb of colour. "I shall have to visit the cellar

to-morrow. It's quite old wine, 'pon my soul. Châtelard," and he burst

into his ultra-Parisian French, "you maintain a pretty fashion in your

country, which we have given up in ours. Let us clink glasses."

There was a flutter of napkins, an exchange of salutations. M.

Châtelard rose, bowed his close-cropped grey head, and reached over his

brimming glass. When it had touched Sir Arthur's, he turned and held it

out, for the same ceremony, towards Lady Gerardine. Again she merely

lifted her eyes towards him. He sank back on his chair and drank

hastily.

"_Saperlotte_--she looks at one like a suffering dog.... And that fellow

opposite, with his face of marble! He drinks, that one, if he eats as

little as she. And Sir Gerardine, the poor husband, so touching in his

joy of family affection--and the little Miss, so innocent and gay--and

the storm gathering--gathering! I could almost wish myself out of this,

after all. The interest is undeniable, but the situation lacks

comfort!"

"Look," said Aspasia, suddenly, in a low tone to Major Bethune, and

laying her hand on his sleeve; "look, now that the door is open!

Muhammed has been in the hall all the time of dinner. He's listening to

us and watching."

"Muhammed?" echoed Major Bethune, starting slightly. His thoughts had

been fixed so intently upon a painful and tangled speculation that he

had some difficulty in bringing them back to Aspasia and her fears.

"Yes," urged the girl, "Muhammed. Don't you see? There he is." She

dropped her voice still lower. "I do think he's got his eye on Runkle.

Oh, dear, I don't believe I ever knew what it was to be frightened

before I came to this dreadful Old Ancient House!"

Bethune glanced at her paling cheek, and then out through the half-open

door into the hall, where the figure of the Pathan might indeed be

perceived leaning against the staircase post in his former attitude of

composed watchfulness.

"Don't be frightened," said the officer of Guides, smiling, "the Eastern

are as curious as children, for all their grand impassive airs; and this

very fine westernised specimen has come to stare at us, and despise us

in the depths of his soul, which is as savage, no doubt, as that of his

brethren, in spite of his veneer. Besides, Miss Aspasia, he's not

looking at Sir Arthur; he's looking at Lady Gerardine."

"He knows she hates him, perhaps," said Baby, with a fresh chill of

apprehension. "Oh, Major Bethune, you may laugh, but I don't believe

the creature's safe; and I, who thought him quite human when he helped

me with the wine to-night. Fancy, I was down in the dark cellars with

him!"

"Capital pheasants," said Sir Arthur; "capital."

"Lord!" cried Lady Aspasia's shrill voice; "I wish my _chef_ would only

learn to make bread sauce like this."

"I hope there's another bottle up of that excellent wine," resumed the

great man, genially.

"Excellent wine in very truth," echoed M. Châtelard.

Rosamond's soul sickened within her. How they ate and drank! How

nauseating was the clatter of knives and forks, the clink of glasses,

the fumes of wine and roast! Away, away, in the old grey fort, at the

end of endless winding valleys under the snows, one was a-hungered and

a-thirst.

"_We shall have to draw in our belts_," he was saying, making mock, as

strong men will, of his physical pain. "_Only four dozen boxes of

pea-meal and twenty bags of rice left_." ...

"_When men are slowly starved they can bear the hunger ... but thirst is

an active devil_."

Oh, God, the smell of the wine--his wine--to see them drink it,

laughing, while his dear lips in vain were calling out for water!

* * * * *

She felt his anguish burn in her own throat, desiccate her own mouth.

Some one was speaking to her; her dry tongue clicked and could form no

sound. She groped for the glass of water and lifted it to her lips, but

laid it down untouched in a spasm of horror. How could she drink when he

was parched?

"_Rosamond, Rosamond, when will you hold the cup for me?_" She put her

hand to her throat; the room went round with her.

"You are suffering," said Bethune, leaning over to her.

His nature was all unused to introspection. By character and breeding

he was given to hold in scorn all troubles that were not concrete, all

conflicts conducted in those nebulous regions known as the heart or the

soul. His life had been mapped out on positive lines, where right and

wrong were as white and black. But, since his first meeting with Lady

Gerardine, his simple ethics no longer sufficed. Not only did others

discover to him desires, motives, heights and depths undreamed of in his

philosophy, but he had become aware of some such forces in his own

being. Like a man who first suspects within himself the germs of mortal

illness, he had tried to prove their non-existence by denial. But the

pain-life is too strong for human will, and the time comes when the only

fight the will can make against it is that of silent endurance.

As Bethune sat by his hostess to-night, he was feeling, inarticulately,

according to his nature, but acutely, not only the pain of her own

situation as he dimly guessed it, but the actual physical pain of her

suffering, her sick recoil from meat and bread, almost the spasm in her

beautiful throat that would not let her swallow one drop of the water

her fevered lips yearned for.

He spoke at last. Her dumb anguish was more than he could bear.

She inclined her head towards him. Vague at first, he saw understanding

of his speech, consciousness of his presence gather into her glance; and

then, something else--something, the name of which he could not

formulate, even in his own mind, but which turned him cold. Suddenly

she spoke, in so low a voice that the words, like some distilled poison,

seemed, drop by drop, to fall straight from her lips into his heart

only:

"You sit at his table, you drink his wine--you--you who took the

sacrifice of his life for your own--you, who should have died, that

dawn, that he might live!"

What things are these, our conventions of civilisation! There sat

Bethune, in his high white collar, his stiff shirt-front, his trim black

coat, listening to Lady Gerardine's mad words, one hand still on his

fork, with that air of courteous attention which a man should pay to his

hostess' conversation, be it on the subject of the weather or the last

political conundrum.

Even had M. Châtelard adjusted his spectacles for a piercing look at the

hero of his drama at that particular moment, he would have read nothing

on the lean saturnine countenance. Yet had it not been for the

conventions of society, how would not Raymond Bethune have answered

Rosamond Gerardine? With what madness leaping to hers; with what

passion, down on his knees! ... "Scorn me, for I deserve your scorn. I

cast myself and my worthless life before you. Crush me into the dust if

you will, only let me feel as I die the print of your foot upon me. Oh,

you--most beautiful!"

"I think," said M. Châtelard, rising abruptly, "that Lady Gerardine is

ill."

She was leaning back, deathly white, save for two hectic spots on each

cheekbone which heightened the ghastliness of her look.

Poor Sir Arthur! It was too bad! Just as he was beginning to feel so

comfortable, in spite of the pokey little place, so connubially

satisfied.

"Tut, tut!" he cried, as he fussily made his way round the table. "I

had hoped we had left all this in India."

Baby warded off his approach with a pointed elbow.

"Keep away, for goodness' sake, Runkle," she cried sharply. "She's

faint; she wants air, that's all. Come with me, darling."

But, with unexpected strength, Lady Gerardine rose abruptly from her

chair and pushed the faithful child on one side.

"I am not faint," she said. "I am not faint; I am sick. Oh ... to see

you all eat and drink!" She swept the circle with her eyes; her last

glance resting upon Bethune. Then, with a beating heart, he knew what

it was, this new nameless thing he had never seen before in her soft

eyes--it was hatred.

Her light draperies, weighted with their embroideries, swung against the

chairs and the panelling of the narrow room as she hurried out from

among them, head erect--scorn, abhorrence, in the very wind of her swift

passage.

With a sudden dilation of the eye, Muhammed Saif-u-din watched her come.

He checked a forward movement towards her, and drew himself up sharply.

But as she passed him he bent his supple frame and bowed deep--deep.

Suddenly aware of him, she started fiercely from the proximity.

"Out of my sight," she exclaimed, with a hoarse, deep cry, "son of

treachery; his blood is still upon your hands!"

The tread of her foot, curiously heavy, resounded, measured, all up the

oaken stairs.

Muhammed shot one eager glance after the retreating figure, then turned

abruptly and plunged into the side passage.

In the dining-room a dead little silence had fallen. Even Aspasia dared

not follow her aunt. Consternation sat upon every countenance; the eye

of each guest was instinctively dropped, as if dreading to betray a

thought. Dr. Châtelard drew his brow together with professional

gravity.

"Insane--the poor, beautiful lady?" he asked himself. "Here is a

solution, _par exemple_, that even I could not have foretold!"

"I'm afraid Lady Gerardine has found our surprise party a little

overwhelming," cried Lady Aspasia at last, with her harsh laugh.

Young Aspasia began to sidle towards the door. Sir Arthur, rousing

himself from his painful astonishment, arrested her in the act.

"No, my dear Aspasia," said he, not without dignity; "you remain here

and entertain our guests. I will see to your aunt. You are right, Lady

Aspasia, it was inconsiderate of me to take my wife by surprise in this

way. The poor girl is quite overwrought. Never fear, my dear," he went

on, again addressing his niece, in answer to her last feeble objection,

"I shall find my way, the house is not so large. Une neurasthénie, mon

cher Châtelard, compliquée d'hyperésthésie," he added, with his seraphic

smile. "I do not know if your experience has brought any such cases

under your notice, but, of course, you know they require careful

handling."

Sir Arthur might have been a fool, and a pompous one, but long

traditions leave their stamp, even on unworthy material. You may be a

bad specimen of porcelain, but porcelain will remain refined clay. Grand

seigneur in breeding, if in nothing more, he carried off the situation

with due regard to his guests and due regard to English reserve, as well

as a better man. Nevertheless, no situation could be imagined more

galling, perhaps, to his particular temperament. His hand on the door

knob, he made them a courtly little bow, and left the room.

"Overwrought!" commented Lady Aspasia, dilating her nostrils, with an

expression that made her long-featured face look more equine than ever.

"Some people would call it 'high strikes'; and, if you ask me, I think

the 'high strikes' in this case are sheer temper."

Baby sat down, looking sick and faint herself.

"The fat's in the fire, now," said she, in a desperate whisper to

Bethune.

The man made no response, but taking a nut from the dish before him,

seemed exclusively interested in the task of cracking it between his

fingers.

"Neurasthenia is, I fear, sadly on the increase," said M. Châtelard, in

a non-committal manner to Lady Aspasia.

The latter laughed again.

"Neurasnonsense and hyperfiddlesticks! Poor Arty--with his careful

handling! Careful handling. I should carefully handle the water-jug."

She flung an irate and contemptuous look at Bethune, who was absorbed in

his nut-cracking. What sordid hole-and-corner business had this

two-penny-halfpenny Indian officer been concocting with the

Lieutenant-Governor's wife to account for these tantrums?

"So ill-bred," said the lady of birth to herself. "When people make

these slips, at least they should have the decency not to parade them!"

*CHAPTER XVIII*

Sir Arthur had, as he foretold, little difficulty in finding his wife's

room; indeed, her door had been left open, and she stood directly in his

line of vision as he came upstairs. A lighted candle aloft in her hand,

she seemed to be examining a picture that hung on the panel immediately

above her dressing-table.

He came in quickly, with his short consequential step, and closed the

door behind him. At the sound of the clicking lock she wheeled round,

still holding the candle above her head. The light played upon the

outstanding aureole of her hair, caught on one side the scarlet oval of

her cheek, the gleam of her teeth between lips, open as upon amazement.

Her rapid breathing shook her as she stood; and the darkling brilliancy

of her jet-flecked robe ran all about, and up and down the long lines of

her limbs, as if she had been clothed in black fires.

"You said you were sick," he exclaimed tartly, "and I find you looking

at a picture."

She made no reply, but stood, still holding up her light, shimmering and

quivering, a thing of such extraordinary vividness and beauty, out of

the half-darkness of the room, that in admiration he felt his righteous

wrath once more slip from him.

"Really, my dear Rosamond," he went on, in mollified tones, "you should

try and have a little more self-control. I cannot imagine what Lady

Aspasia must think of you. I declare any one might have thought--I

don't know what they might not have thought," concluded Sir Arthur,

somewhat lamely.

Rosamond put down the candlestick on the table beside her, then stood

clasping her hands tightly together, her head bent in the attitude of a

chidden child. She was making a strong effort after her vanishing

sanity. It was, perhaps, the old instinctive dread of violent emotion,

or the realisation that here was the crisis at last, hitherto so

deliberately thrust from her thoughts, that braced her to meet the

moment. It may have been, after all, the fact that it was Sir Arthur the

taskmaster, not Sir Arthur the fond husband, that stood before her.

However it might be, something of the sweet reasonableness that had made

her so acceptable a consort to the Lieutenant-Governor all these years

did, in truth, seem to come back to her. She answered, very gently:

"Indeed, I owe you all an apology. You will explain it to the others,

will you not? I am really ill."

Ill; tut, tut! What was she feeling? Was she sick; had she a pain; had

she a cough? He lit another candle to look at her. Had she taken her

temperature. Where was the thermometer?

With an unutterable failing of the heart, the atmosphere of her whole

life as Lady Gerardine seemed suddenly to close round her once more; the

intolerable solicitude, the tyrannic fondness, the perpetual,

ineluctable watchfulness, how had she endured it? But she must be calm.

What was it Baby had said? "Anything would be better than a scandal."

These holy walls, this consecrate house--oh, no, they should never echo

the wranglings of her most unholy union!

Sir Arthur was turning over the trinkets on her dressing-table. Where

was the thermometer?

She did not know.

Not know where the thermometer was!

"I don't think I've got one," said Lady Gerardine, faintly. "But it's

not fever; it's not that! Indeed, I only want rest----"

He turned, in real indignation and surprise.

"Not got one?"

"Perhaps if you were to ask Aspasia----" The suggestion was coupled

with a wild look at the door.

Sir Arthur laughed, not very pleasantly. One would almost have thought

she wanted to get rid of him. Women were certainly incomprehensible

creatures.

"You have not mislaid your pulse, I take it."

She retreated from his touch till she could retreat no further; then,

brought up by the wall, slid both her hands behind her.

"I'm not ill in that way. You know I always did hate being fussed

about. Aspasia told you I had a headache. It is true, I have a

headache. I only want to be alone; I only want to sleep."

Sir Arthur stood surveying her. Poor gentleman; his mind was generally

in a compact and neatly labelled condition, quite ready with an adequate

theory for each event of life. But to-night it was as if some one had

been making hay in the tidy compartments. His ideas were positively

jumbled. Scarcely did he seem to have a proper hold of one when the

next would send him off at a tangent. He had come upstairs to make his

wife feel how grievously she had offended his idea of decorum, and had

immediately lost himself in admiration of her appearance. And now, once

more, in the very midst of his real anxiety about her health, he found

himself abjectly remarking what an extraordinarily beautiful woman she

was.

"I'm not so sure," he said suddenly, half fondly, half irritably, "that

those red cheeks are a very good sign."

He put out a finger and stroked the velvet outline. She closed her eyes

and set her teeth, nerving herself against the agony of the caress.

"I left a white rose," he went on, with elaborate gallantry; "I find a

red one. My dear, your cheeks are certainly very hot."

That voice from the past, to which Rosamond's ears had been so acutely

attuned these days, suddenly took up the words: "_My white rose, my red,

red rose!_" As the sailor feels the raft break beneath him, she felt

the last shreds of her self-control giving way under the stress of seas

of passion and terror. She looked round desperately; almost, she

thought, that man--that intruder--must have heard the dear voice also.

Oh, sacrilege to have him standing there!

"Will you not leave me?" she cried, with a burst of pleading. "I must

rest. You were always kind to me--will you not leave me now? Indeed, I

am in pain."

"My darling!" he exclaimed, in genuine concern.

That flush was unnatural, it was evident. She had wasted away, too. He

could see that. She who used to have such a noble, full throat; and her

breathing came all too quick.

"Come, my darling," he went on, "let me see you to bed myself. No one,

you know, can look after you as I do. I should not have trusted you

away from me all this time. Come, come, we must let this hair down to

ease the poor head--your golden hair, Rosamond. It is not the first time

I have unbound it--eh, my love?"

"Your golden hair, Rosamond..." whispered the voice in her heart. What

sort of a woman was she that another should dare use these sacred words

of love to her? She fixed her piteous eyes upon Sir Arthur, as if, by

the sheer intensity of dread, she could keep him from her. But he

stretched out his arms.

She shrank, flattening herself against the wall, one arm raised across

her brow as though to protect her hair.

"One would almost think you were shy--afraid of me," said he, jocularly,

while his embrace hovered over her.

"Once there was fear of me in your eyes..."

"Don't touch me!" she shrieked. "Oh, your horrible hands!"

There fell instantly between them the silence of the irremediable deed.

Rosamond had at last torn across the interwoven fabric of their two

lives; the ugly rending sound of the parting hung in the air. These

gaping edges no seam could ever join again. To the woman came a fierce

realisation of freedom, a sweeping anger at the petty shackles that had

held her so long.

Sir Arthur stepped back, his arms falling by his side. He, poor man,

felt as if the good old world, of which he was such an ornament, had

ceased to be solid beneath his feet.

"Rosamond!"

"What are you doing here?" she cried, in a panting whisper. "What do

you want with me? How dare you come into this room?"

"Rosamond!"

"Go!" she bade him, pointing to the door. "In the name of God, leave

me. Merciful Heavens ... to follow me here! Have you not a spark of

human feeling left in you? Is it not bad enough, is it not terrible,

hideous, that you should be in this house at all?" She caught him by

the arm, pushing him like a frenzied creature. "Go!"

"Are you mad?" he furiously exclaimed.

Upon the very words he stopped abruptly and stared at her. A horrible

suspicion of their truth flashed upon him. Could it be possible, could

fate dare to play so horrible a trick on him? Was the wife of Sir

Arthur Gerardine actually going out of her mind? He felt his hair rise.

A dampness gathered cold on his forehead.

She stood, with outflung arm, motionless, save for her rapid breathing.

"If you're really ill," he faltered now, seeking for his handkerchief

and mopping his face with flurried hand. The tail of his apprehensive

eye upon her, he was, in his mind, rapidly concocting that telegram to

the family physician in London which should be despatched at the

earliest possible moment, and bring him--and also a mental

specialist--to the manor-house by the first possible train. "Most

urgent, serious anxiety." The Lieutenant-Governor muttered the words to

himself. He belonged to that type of fond family man who, at the first

hint of a possibly insane member in the home circle, has no other idea

than the immediate shutting up and putting away of the dangerous dear

one.

Dimly, through the storm and stress in which her soul was struggling,

there came to Rosamond some perception of the pathetic figure presented

by Sir Arthur in his sudden trouble. The well-worn cloak of

self-complacency was rudely torn from him. His was the flurry of the

man on the wrong side of life who has neither the elasticity of youth

nor the true dignity of age to help him meet an unexpected blow. Her

hand dropped by her side. He had been kind to her, after his own

fashion; generous, too, and trusting. She sank back against the bed with

a moan.

"I am to blame, all through, from the beginning," she said hopelessly.

"I have sinned against myself, against you, against him," she faltered;

and laid her left hand on the old carven bedpost to steady herself. Her

head dropped sideways against her shoulder. "If I could set you free,"

she murmured.

Sir Arthur turned sharply upon her, one suspicion chased by another.

This was coherent enough. There was meaning in this--too much! A

purple flush mounted to his face; the veins in his forehead swelled.

"I was content to go on," pursued the woman, in the same vague tones of

plaint. "Remember, it was you who insisted. Before you curse me,

always remember that. I wanted to dream my life away--why, else, should

I ever have listened to you? But you would not let me dream. You

thrust my fate upon me--you and that man. What chance had I of escape

between you both? you and that man!"

From purple, Sir Arthur's face grew ashen grey. That smiling, genial,

handsome face became a positive mask--lips drawn back from the teeth,

pupils narrowed to vindictive pin-points of fury. He drew near to her

in silence, his head thrust forward, his twitching hands clutching the

lapels of his coat on either side.

You and that man--that man, Bethune!

Through the buzzing in his ears there came once again the echo of Lady

Aspasia's laugh, her meaning words: "So you were the excuse." And again

the gibe: "Aspasia is tired of playing chaperon!"

Mad? Would God it had been madness! This was a confession. His wife,

Lady Gerardine, the consort of the Lieutenant-Governor, had had a low

intrigue with an obscure Indian officer, a fellow of no standing, of no

importance--Bethune! As Sir Arthur drew near her, silent through the

very inadequacy of language, his eye fell upon the pale hand clasping

the bedpost. There, upon the third finger, flashed the tiny gems of an

unknown ring--a miserable, paltry thing. (Sir Arthur was a creature of

detail, even at such a moment.) It was the last straw. He gripped her

by the wrist, brutally.

"Whose ring is that?" he sputtered.

The physical pain of his clutch did her good--roused her, with a sense

of relief, to face his onslaught. She was glad that he should be angry,

that his countenance should be distorted and ugly. In such a mood as

this she could meet him and feel strong. It was the broken-down,

trembling, aged Sir Arthur she could not meet.

"Whose ring?" he repeated, and shook her as he held her.

She straightened herself, and with her free hand swept a gesture of

pride towards the portrait on the wall. Far away was she, in the depth

of her grand passion, from the sordid speculations of his mind.

"What!" he shouted, dropped her hand, and ran to the dressing-table,

flinging a candle on high to stare. "Why--why!" he stammered, putting

down the light. "Pooh, what nonsense is this? You can't put me off

like this now. That--why, that's poor English!"

"And I," she cried, walking up to him, "I am Mrs. English. Oh, that was

the mistake! You thought I was Lady Gerardine. I never was. You took

a dream woman and thought she was your wife. I never was your wife. I

am his--his only. Now you understand, do you not?"

Poor Sir Arthur! In proportion as her exaltation mounted, his heat of

anger fell away. His bewilderment grew, and his perturbation. For a

moment or two he tried to cling to his conviction of her guilt. We are

always anxious to vindicate ourselves when we are moved to great wrath;

and the more unjust we have been the more loth are we to give up our

suspicions. But with these eyes of flame upon him, with these accents

of passion in his ears, even he could not maintain his damning judgment.

The first hypothesis, that of insanity, came back to him in full force.

Then arose a mitigated suggestion. A man of desultory reading, he had a

smattering of many subjects. He had heard of that form of mental

trouble called auto-suggestion--_idée fixe_. He looked round the room.

By George, there was another portrait of poor English! And, as he

lived, a photograph of him on the chimney-piece. He had passed one on

the stairs. And now he remembered the daub in the hall. He drew a long

breath. This little damp hole of a place, with the fellow's head

staring down at one from every corner--yes, that was it--it had been too

much for her in her nervous state of health. The next words she spoke

brought confirmation:

"Do not think I blame you! I know--I know. It is my own cowardice, my

own baseness of soul that has brought it all upon me. And now it is too

late. His papers, his letters, too late they came to me. I am

lost--lost!"

She put her hands to her forehead, and reeled. He caught her in his

arms.

Those dashed papers! How obstinate she had been about them! He had

known it would be too much for her; he had even been ready to take the

burden upon himself.

"There, there, Rosamond!" She faintly struggled against his supporting

embrace, every inch of her flesh shuddering from his touch. Oh, that

voice from the past: "_There are things a man cannot contemplate in his

living body; things the flesh rebels against. The dead will be quiet._"

The dead ... but he was not dead. Perhaps now he was looking on them!

The horror of the thought paralysed her, as the snake paralyses the

bird. Yet, if she had had a knife in her hand she might, in that

madness of nausea, have struck it into the breast against which she was

clasped.

"Sir James was certainly right," thought Sir Arthur, tightening his grip

upon her waist with one hand, while he patted her shrinking shoulder

with the other. "What Rosamond wants, poor girl, is soothing."

She wrenched herself free suddenly, with unexpected strength. Sir

Arthur staggered. Then she turned upon him a countenance of such livid

vindictive menace and at the same time such torture that, speechless, he

recoiled before her.

At the door he muttered something about sending up Aspasia; but it was

closed upon him and locked before the words were formulated. He

listened awhile. From within came, at first, a faint swish as of her

moving draperies, and then a heavy silence.

"She looked at me," said the unhappy husband to himself; "she looked at

me as if she could murder me!"

He shook his head, and began once more to concoct his telegram as he

slowly walked downstairs.

*CHAPTER XIX*

Lady Aspasia and M. Châtelard were seated one on each side of the

fireplace, fairly monopolising the benefits of the situation. Although

the thought of Sir Arthur, upstairs with his young wife--no doubt

coaxing the insolent beauty into a better temper--was no very agreeable

one to her, Lady Aspasia, with the good-humoured, material philosophy of

her kind, made the best of what fate left her. She toasted her

well-formed, well-shod foot at the blaze; found that the old-fashioned

winged armchair (with the help of a cushion) was as comfortable as any

modern copy if not more so, and that M. Châtelard was undoubtedly an

entertaining companion. He had seen curious things on his travels, and

he could tell of them with a French spice. By a series of jerks the two

drew ever closer together; finally blocking the hearth. Their voices

were lowered by imperceptible degrees; their heads inclined towards each

other. Lady Aspasia's laugh rang loud and often; and presently, by a

tacit agreement in which the conversation gained enormously, each

relapsed into the native tongue.

"Upon my word," said Lady Aspasia to herself; "I'll send in his name for

my royal party."

M. Châtelard, pouring forth a whispered flow of language, with a pause

on the delicate point, and a quiet chuckle after the ready listener had

had time to seize it and ring her hearty, unreserved tribute of

appreciation, was privately making little notes for future publication,

with all the traveller's joy of discovery. "Et il y en a encore qui

croient que les Anglaises sont guindées! Un esprit tout

Rabelaisien--cette dame! Allons, l'age Victorien est bien mort et

enterré!"

Miss Aspasia, who some time back had been told, with a flap of Lady

Aspasia's hand, "not to listen, little girl," sat, highly disapproving,

at the further end of the room. Bethune, whose existence the great lady

now elected to ignore, had taken a chair at a little distance from the

girl. A monosyllabic conversation began between them and dropped. He

asked her for some music, and she tartly refused with a reproachful

look. She wondered at him. Did he not know her aunt's head was bad?

He didn't know? Well, he might have seen that she was ill! To this he

made no answer, and thereafter they spoke no more. The man had a talent

for taciturnity, but the effort of Baby's silence seemed to bristle.

She sat very erect. Her mouth pursed, her nostrils dilated, her eyes

widely opened, her arched eyebrows more arched than ever. The tittering,

the whispering, the laughter, the meaning wriggles of the two backs as

they leant towards each other before the hearth, irritated her beyond

endurance.

"M. Châtelard," she suddenly cried, in fluent French, with her _enfant

terrible_ directness, "do tell me--I don't want to be rude; but why do

you cut your hair so close to your head? Isn't it very cold this

weather?"

"Alas, Mademoiselle," said he, turning round; his alertness of courtesy

was ingrain; "I do not dare to show to the world that my head is quite

white."

"You think it looks better pink?" said Baby, innocently.

"Pink!" said M. Châtelard, a little disconcerted, passing his hand over

his cropped pate. "Is it possible?" Then, sparkling: "Pink? I had no

idea that Lady Melbury had so made me blush!"

"Oh, blush!" cried Lady Aspasia, her momentary displeasure with the pert

schoolgirl lost in a yell of delight at M. Châtelard's readiness; "It's

well that my blushing days are over!"

"Oh, Milady!" And they put their heads together again.

Young Aspasia pinched in her rosy lips so tight that they made the most

absurd button of a mouth ever seen. Bethune, who had listened with

immovable gravity to this sally, betraying indeed no sign of having

heard it, save for the rolling of an icy eye towards M. Châtelard, now

let his glance rest upon her. The hard muscles of his face began to

soften.

He had been slowly making up his mind during the whole of the evening,

and now he had decided. He would leave the manor-house on the morrow,

and cut himself once and for ever apart from its inmates. But, the devil

was in it that, in the midst of the most intolerable mental trouble he

had ever endured, he should have once and again this absurd unreasonable

feeling that if he were to carry away with him this pretty Aspasia, this

fluffy, pouting, pert, bird-like thing, it would be sweet! Something

like the blessedness of a peep of blue in a sky of lurid clouds, a ray

of sunshine across a barren moor, a snowdrop in bleak winter. The

feeling had no sense in it. He was a prey to as strong a passion as

ever possessed a man; and he not only despised himself, hated himself

for his passion, but was conscious that by the object of it he was held

a thing of scorn. More than this, she, who thus in spite of reason

filled his thoughts, was suffering, and he could not lift a finger to

help her. The whole source of her suffering was only vaguely understood

by him; but he knew that her husband's presence had nearly driven her to

desperation. It was acute torture to him now to think of Sir Arthur in

his wife's room; and yet ... haunted by these unworthy degrading

thoughts of one who should have been twice sacred to him, he found

himself longing to take Aspasia to his breast--bright-eyed Aspasia,

pecking, twittering, fluttering like an angry dove, withal so soft, so

warm, so true! His inconsequent heart seemed to cry out for the comfort

of her.

Sir Arthur opened the door and looked in.

"Pray, pray," said he, inserting an arm, after his head, to wave back

the confidential couple who with a great scraping of chairs had risen to

their feet, "do not let me disturb any one. I am only looking for

Aspasia."

"Oh Lord!" said Aspasia, under her voice, alarm springing to her eyes.

"I'm here, Runkle."

"Can you spare me a few minutes' private conversation, my dear Aspasia?"

His tone was very solemn. He was conscious of the hush that had fallen

upon the room, conscious of the perturbed looks that were fixed upon

him, conscious of his own countenance of trouble. But it was not

without a gloomy self-approval that, given circumstances the most woeful

that could perhaps be imagined, he realised there were few who could

negotiate them like himself.

Aspasia went reluctantly to her uncle's summons. Her heart was heavy

with anxiety concerning Rosamond. In her constitutional distrust of

whatever course of action Sir Arthur might take it into his head to

adopt, she had an oppressive sensation that most of the responsibility

of affairs rested upon her own young shoulders.

"Lord," thought the girl to herself, as her lagging feet took her across

the drawing-room; "if one could only just shut up Runkle in a box for

six months, there might be some hope of things settling down."

Sir Arthur beckoned her towards the little study, where, through the

half-opened door, a ruddy light showed that the room had now been made

ready for the smokers. His air of portentous gloom so exasperated Baby

that she had to relieve her feelings by childish kicks at the mats in

the hall as she passed.

"I presume that we shall be undisturbed here for the present," said Sir

Arthur. He pushed open the door and started back with an irritated

exclamation: "Confound that fellow, he's like a night moth!"

Between the fire and the lamplight, Muhammed Saif-u-din stood facing

them. It seemed as if he had been pacing the little space, and had

wheeled round at the sound of their approach. Baby's heart gave a wild

throb, and then stood still. The Indian had certainly been very

restless all the evening. Sir Arthur Gerardine's arrival seemed to have

excited him in a singular manner, and there could be no mistaking now

the straight, vindictive look that the secretary fixed upon his master.

She was minded of a splendid black panther she had seen at an Indian

village fair, not so very long ago.--The beast had been padding the

narrow limits of its cage backwards and forwards until she had drawn

close to admire it, when it had stopped and fixed her with its

eyes--just such a gaze (she told herself, shivering) as that which

Muhammed fixed on Sir Arthur; a gaze as concentrated as unfathomably

savage. "Him very bad beast," had said the showman, grinning at

her.--"Him dreaming of drinking Missie Sahib's blood."

* * * * *

Sir Arthur's grating voice rang out angrily in a brief phrase of

Hindustani. The Pathan unfolded his arms, made a gesture with one hand,

and left the room without speaking. In that gesture Baby nervously read

the meaning: I can bide my time.

"Runkle," she cried, catching her breath, "how could you bring that

dreadful man over from India? I'm sure it's not safe. Even Major

Bethune--and he's lived all his life among them, you know--thinks he's

mysterious. Oh, do, do be careful!"

"Aspasia," said Sir Arthur, severely, "I am surprised at you. I have

other matters, matters of far other moment on my mind, I can tell you.

What nonsense is this? The fellow there doesn't know his place, I grant

you. I've just told him so. You saw how he quailed. He's devoured

with curiosity, that's all. And, indeed," Sir Arthur sighed, "there are

strange things taking place in this house. He may well be curious."

"Oh, Runkle, I don't think it's that; he's not the ordinary type of

Indian, I'm convinced. He's got some purpose here."

"Pooh, nonsense, my dear Aspasia! Purpose? Ridiculous! I should hope I

know how to deal with the creatures by this time. Don't you begin this

sort of nerve business, too--I shall begin to think," said poor Sir

Arthur, running a distracted hand through his grey curls, "that there's

something about this pestilent place that's driving everybody crazy."

Again he caught himself up with a deep sigh on the last word. "I shall

give Master Muhammed his lesson to-morrow. I don't require to be taught

how to manage the cattle--under the heel, my dear, under the heel!

To-night----" He paused. "Aspasia," he lowered his voice: "I am

addressing you in the utmost confidence, relying upon your good sense

and judgment. Listen to me calmly and answer me with truth absolute.

Have you ever noticed any symptom in your poor aunt...?"

He had leant forward to drop these words mysteriously into her ear; now

he straightened himself, shook his head, and tapped his forehead.

"Uncle Arthur...!" gasped the girl, her pretty round face suddenly

pinched and small, her eyes abnormally large. What, indeed, were such

trivial speculations as a Pathan's possible yearning for Sir Arthur's

blood to so hideous a suggestion as this? Here was her own hidden terror

of all these weeks voiced calmly, judicially; in acknowledgment of,

almost in resignation to, an accomplished fact.

"You can't mean----" she stammered.

"My dear," said Sir Arthur, with melancholy triumph, "I am in very

serious anxiety. Your aunt's manner to-night, the things she has said

to me just now, her actions, her looks--I can only explain them,

heartrending as it is to me to have to admit it, in one way."

"Poor Aunt has got neurasthenia," faltered the unhappy Baby.

"My dear Aspasia," said Sir Arthur; "may it be only that! I pray it may

be only that. But the affair is too serious. I shall have the best

professional advice to-morrow, the first mental specialist in England."

"What!" screamed Aspasia, suddenly scarlet to the roots of her hair;

"you're never going to get a horrid mad doctor for poor darling Aunt

Rosamond?"

"My dear Aspasia!" ejaculated he, beating down the sound of her crude

words with his hands. "It is my duty, Aspasia, to get the best advice,

the best treatment, at the earliest possible opportunity. And it is

your duty," he said, fixing his eyes sternly upon her, "to tell me

everything that can conduce to a better knowledge of her state."

Rivulets of cold water ran down Aspasia's back. She felt a sudden, awful

premonition of relentless fate closing about her; of the cruelty of

human beings to each other; something of the terror of the ignorant

patient in the surgical ward.

"What would they want to do with Aunt Rosamond?" she faltered.

Sir Arthur shook his head again.

"Sometimes the only chance is a temporary retreat--temporary, we must

hope and trust."

"You mean," she shrieked, and advanced on him with her small fists

clenched; "shut up Aunt Rosamond, shut her up---- Never! You wicked,

horrible old fool! What should you shut her up for? She's not mad.

She's no more mad than I am. Why should you call her mad, just because

she turned sick at the sight of you all guzzling dinner?"

"Hush, hush!" he cried.

"I don't care who hears me," she retorted, in the same high tones of

sobbing indignation. "You _were_ guzzling. Your nasty old Lady Aspasia

positively gobbled, and so did that disgusting Frenchman with the pink

head. I suppose she's mad because she told you the truth for once,

upstairs? I'm glad. If some one had told you the truth before, it

would have been better for everybody."

Upon which cryptic utterance she flung herself from the room, but popped

in her head again for a last shot:

"Of course, if the doctor asks me why poor Aunt ever married you, I

shan't quite know what to say--it's the only queer symptom she's ever

shown, to my knowledge."

Sir Arthur sank into the armchair, speechless. Presently he sought for

his handkerchief, and, with an exhausted hand, passed it across his

beaded forehead. The ring of Lady Aspasia's laugh floated across the

hall through the door which the girl had left ajar. The sound of that

cheery, heart-whole mirth, the thought of that comfortable, healthy,

everyday, high-born woman heightened the sense of his own utter

dejection. Had he not made an irremediable mistake after all?

Meanwhile Aspasia, with an unreasoning sense that she could not too soon

be at Rosamond's side to protect her, took the oak stairs at a canter,

pausing merely at the first landing to choke down the sobs with which

her breast was bursting.

"I only hope and trust Muhammed will be quick about it, and stick Runkle

to-night," she said to herself, mopping her eyes fiercely, her

pocket-handkerchief tightly rolled into a ball.

At her aunt's door she met Jani, who checked the headlong approach with

brown finger on lip and long-drawn: "Hush!"

* * * * *

In the drawing-room Raymond Bethune, a bad third, heard the ring of

Aspasia's voice and the hammer of her flying heels on the stairs, and

realised, with keen disappointment, that she was not coming back. He

had been longing for the instant of her return for a twofold reason--his

devouring anxiety concerning Lady Gerardine, and the desire to exchange

a few last quiet parting words with the girl herself, since he intended

to walk out of the Old Ancient House, unobtrusively, with the coming

day.

As the patter of little feet died away, however, he rose stiffly from

his neglected corner, and, approaching the jocular pair by the fireside,

looked down at them with a sort of dignified awkwardness until they

would vouchsafe some consciousness of his approach.

The Frenchman, after struggling for a minute between his courtesy to the

lady, who went on pouring a country-house story into his ear, and what

was due to the patiently waiting gentleman, at last laid a warning

finger on Lady Aspasia's wrist.

"Je crois que Monsieur désire nous parler," he said engagingly.

"Oh," cried the mistress of Melbury Towers, and gave an insolent

half-turn of her smooth head, a half-twist of her handsome eyes in the

direction of Bethune, as an indication that he might say his say and

have done with it.

"I thought I'd bid you good night," said the man, stolidly.

"Comment, mon cher major," cried the polite Châtelard, springing to his

feet, "already?"

"I'm going in the morning," went on Bethune, in the same level tones;

"I've got to pack." His words and glance were fixed on the indifferent

lady. "I think you were kind enough to say something about my coming to

Melbury Towers for Christmas. I am sorry I can't accept."

Lady Aspasia's eyebrows were raised a fraction of a line.

"So sorry," she said cheerfully. "I'm sure Sir Arthur would have liked

to see more of you."

She did not offer him her hand, or turn her glance upon him. He bowed

in the direction of her pronounced profile, and turned to find himself

effusively seized by the globe-trotter.

"Comment, cher major," cried the latter in tones of unaffected

disappointment; "you leave to-morrow? And I who had so much pleasure in

the renewing of our acquaintance. It is not possible we part thus."

"Que diable," the psychologist was saying to himself, "c'est comme ça

que l'on arrange ces petites affaires-là en Angleterre? Le mari arrive,

vous trouve en tête-à-tête, et l'amant part. Voilà tout. C'est inouï!

Je m'attendais, je l'avoue, à un dénouement plus palpitant. Mais malgré

tout..." Bethune had gone, without a word. The door was closed. M.

Châtelard was resuming his seat: "N'y-a-t'il pas, quand même, quelque

chose de fort intéressant dans cette simple solution?--oui, un caractère

exclusivement Britannique dans cette simplicité; comme qui dirait un

vestige, au milieu du désordre même, de la vertu puritaine qui tenait si

fort aux apparences, de cette horreur du shocking si profondément

enracinée dans l'Anglo-Saxon?"

As he raised his musing eye, he found Lady Aspasia's bright grey orb

fixed upon him with a world of meaning.

*CHAPTER XX*

"Hush!" said Jani, "Missie Sahib ill. Must not be disturbed."

"Is she in bed?" whispered Aspasia. "Don't be a stupid, Jani. I shan't

do her any harm."

With her hand on the door handle, Jani shook her head till the monstrous

gold ear-rings waggled against her cheeks.

"Missie Sahib, no more disturbed to-night," she repeated emphatically.

Her opaque eyes were fixed with triumphant resentment upon Aspasia's

countenance. Aspasia, the off-hand young lady, who flouted old Jani's

vested right, who had taken upon herself to do Lady Gerardine's hair

this very night, must learn that her presence was not always desirable.

"Who is there?" cried Rosamond's voice, high and strained, from within.

"I can see no one. Jani, you must let no one in."

"There, missie," said the old woman.

Aspasia pushed the claw-like hand ruthlessly from the door knob.

"It is I, Aunt Rosamond," said she, tapping the panels with soft

consolatory palms. "You'll let me in, darling, won't you? I'll do

police, too, never fear, and better than Jani."

"Oh, you! Come in," bade the voice within, faintly, but with an

unmistakable accent of relief.

Aspasia made a face at Jani, but passed in with something less than her

usual flounce. Lady Gerardine was seated before the fire in her white

dressing-gown, her arms hanging, her hair loose about her. Jani had

evidently been interrupted in the act of brushing by the sound of the

approaching footsteps, and had flown to her sentry post.

"Stay outside, Jani. Lock the door, Baby."

Lady Gerardine just turned her head sufficiently to give these orders,

then relapsed into her brooding attitude, her eyes hard, dry, encircled,

fixed unseeingly upon the fire, her face livid, save for the burning

spot on either cheekbone. Aspasia, aghast, stopped a second to survey

her.

"She does look very ill," she thought hopelessly. "Worse than ill." And

her heart contracted.

"Darling," she said, approaching timidly, "just let me plait this dear

hair, and then you must get to bed."

"I wish it were shrivelled on my head!" said Lady Gerardine, staring

before her, and sending out her words, it seemed, as aimlessly as her

glance. "It is accursed."

"Aunt Rosamond, what are you saying!"

"Harry loved it. It was his hair, his golden hair, and that other man

has put his horrible touch upon it."

"There's no doubt of it," said Baby to herself, as with the gentlest of

touches she gathered the long strands together, "though I'll never admit

it to any one; darling Aunt Rosamond is mad. Those dreadful letters,

the poor dead husband, and the horrid old living one have driven her mad

between them! They shan't shut her up, though, not while I live, not

while I can fight."

The child had no fear in her heart for herself. How could any one, she

thought with a great gush of compassion, have fear of this poor,

desolate, beautiful creature? She finished the plait, while the figure

before her maintained its sinister immobility. Then she leaned forward

and slipped her arms round it in a close embrace.

"My angel, how cold you are! Only your cheeks are hot--hot."

"Don't kiss me," said Lady Gerardine. "You don't know what defilement

you are holding."

"Dear Aunt, come to bed."

"I was his, his consecrate--body and soul, and I gave myself to

another."

"Oh, Aunt Rosamond," cried the girl, with a sudden upspringing of tears,

as a glimmering realisation of the other's anguished mind broke, upon

her. "He is a happy spirit. He understands."

"It is you who cannot understand," angrily answered the woman. "Even in

life he wrote: 'my flesh rebels against the thought.' It was the worst

sting of death to him. And I never knew. Now I have lost him, I am

lost."

Baby took the nerveless hands in hers, and chafed them while her tears

rolled slowly.

"Pray to God, dearest," she whispered. "He will help you."

Rosamond drew away her hand with a great cry.

"God? There is no God!"

"Oh, Aunt!"

"Yes--there is, there is--a God of unsparing justice. Only a God could

be so merciless and so just. It is just, it is just. I have sinned

irremediably. I am punished for ever. What can you--you child, you

child, what can you know of my sin?"

"I know this," cried Baby, kneeling down and gathering the cowering form

to her strong embrace; "that you are ill, that you don't know what

you're saying. But God is mercy," sobbed Aspasia, very reverently--she

was shy of her religion, and spoke low, even amid her tears; "I know

that God is mercy, and that those who are with Him must be merciful

too."

"Do you cry for me?" said Lady Gerardine, a sort of wonder in her weary

tones, as the wet cheeks were pressed against her face. "I cannot cry

for myself. I am beyond tears."

With this, she suffered herself to be helped to rise, and made a feeble

movement towards the bed. But at the sound of a closing door beneath,

of steps on the stairs, she started violently and clutched the girl's

arm.

"You will not let anybody in.... Nobody must come into my

room--Aspasia--Aspasia!"

"No, no! The door is locked. Darling, don't be so frightened; how your

teeth chatter! Aunt, I promise you shall be left in peace. I will

watch. Can't you trust me? They'd better not!" she added convincingly,

if vaguely.

The long convulsive shudders continued even after Baby had coaxed her to

bed, and piled the bedclothes over her. She sat a long while by the

sick woman, still rubbing the bloodless fingers, speaking soothingly

from time to time. But Rosamond herself spoke no more.

At last silence fell upon the Old Ancient House. Steps ceased to resound

along the echoing oak. Doors were definitely closed; even Lady

Aspasia's pervading voice seemed to be hushed for the night. Then Lady

Gerardine suddenly turned to her niece with something of her old gentle

look:

"Go to bed, my child," she said. "Sleep, at least while you can. Your

little face looks tired!"

"I'll sleep here with you, if you'll have me," said Aspasia, kissing the

hand she held.

"No, no," said the other. "I must be alone. I shall have Jani, she

will watch. Good night."

Poor healthy Baby was in truth ready to tumble over with fatigue, and

had found her head, to her own fierce displeasure, nodding portentously

from time to time. She went forth with the uncertain gait of the

sleep-drunken, but paused at the door to give Jani minute and repeated

instructions, which the latter, vividly alert, received with undisguised

scorn. With much satisfaction the ayah re-entered her mistress' room,

and locked the door upon her drowsy rival.

*CHAPTER XXI*

Aspasia awoke from a heavy dreamless sleep with a sense of panic. Her

heart was beating violently. She sat up in bed, listening eagerly,

through the hammering of her pulses.

It is the nature of such old haunted places as Saltwoods that they

impress you with their stillness by day and their stirring by night.

Then the old boards creak as if to the tread of forgotten steps; old

echoes answer to voices long silent; there is a rustle down the narrow

passages as of garments the very texture of which is forgotten; there

are sighs in the night airs, and little cold blasts wandering round

corners, even on the stillest night. You tell yourself that it is the

crumbling brick and wood work setting ever a little more towards

destruction; but it seems rather as if the years-laden habitation had

acquired a sentient being of its own; that when, like the aged, it lies

wakeful in the night, the memories of the past come back to it; that it

laments, with sighs, lost life, lost mirth, lost dignity.

But Baby would at no time, have had, in her practical young mind, room

for such fancies as these; and now, the very real well-grounded fears

which were strong upon her lent every stealthy creak about her a hideous

material significance, every sighing breath the echo of a present

tragedy.

Supposing Muhammed were really to creep into the Runkle's room--Sir

Arthur might not have locked his door. It is all very well, in a fit of

rage, to wish an irritating relative disposed of; it is a very different

thing to wake in the middle of the night and think of the murderer at

his work. Poor old Runkle...! Or, suppose Lady Gerardine were to do

herself a mischief, were to ... there are ideas to which one cannot bear

to give concrete shape, even in one's own imagination.

The girl lit a candle, sprang out of bed, and huddled on a

dressing-gown. How foolish, how selfish, how wicked she had been to

leave the fevered woman alone with Jani--Jani, the most helpless and

unreasoning of human beings!

The old house might have been in league with the evil passions it housed

that night, so loudly did it seem to protest against Aspasia's

interference.

Heard any one ever door so groan on its hinges, ever boards so complain

under tread of light foot? What menacing shadows leapt from every

corner! It was enough to scare any less courageous heart from its

purpose. But on went Baby, down the little stairs, past Lady Aspasia's

door (the creature snored--it was quite what Baby expected of her);

round the corner of the passage, past Sir Arthur's little room. What a

dead silence in there! She was afraid to listen to the suggestion, and

scurried by, past M. Châtelard's room. Her aunt's door at last in sight.

Baby stopped with a great start, her heart in her mouth, the candle

almost dropping from her grasp--what was that black thing lying at such

sinister length across the threshold? A heap of clothes? ... Jani?

No--diminutive Jani could never spread to such bulk. Then what?

The thing moved slowly, reared itself to its knees, turned a wild black

head, a wild black-bearded face, fierce eyes, towards Aspasia; then

rose, with a spring.

Aspasia, in her mind, flung the light from her and ran into the

darkness, shrieking: "The Panther, the Panther!" But Aspasia, in the

flesh, stood rooted to the spot, in a paralysis of terror, unable to

move a muscle.

The thing came close to her on its noiseless feet. And she saw that the

panther was Muhammed. This was no surprise; she had known it.

But, under his dishevelled locks, from out of the barbaric wings of his

beard, the savage being's face was gazing upon her--as it gradually

filtered to her panic-stricken mind--with no sort of savageness; rather,

indeed, a gentle, a pathetic anxiety.

"Miss Cuningham..." said the Pathan.

To her bewildered ears it was the voice of no Pathan that spoke, but the

high-bred accents of an English gentleman. The girl rubbed her eyes

with her left hand. ("Wake up, Aspasia, wake up. You are still asleep,

and in the middle of some ridiculous dream!")

"Miss Cuningham," pursued the dream-creature that was panther and

Pathan, and yet looked and spoke like one of her own sober kin; "are you

going to her?"

"I was going," answered the girl, abandoning herself to her dream. Then

she began suddenly to tremble, and with knees giving way beneath her,

advanced uncertainly towards the door, all her energies bent on reaching

safety within. But he, with an outflung gesture of prayer, cried to

her, in that low English voice that was so amazing, yet which, in spite

of its incongruity, soothed her frantic fear.

"In pity, stop one second. Do you hear how she is crying within? Tell

me, what is her trouble?" And, as Baby fell from amazement to

amazement, as even in dreams one falls, and could find no thought, much

less words for answer, he went on in his pleading undertone: "Is the old

man not good to her? Oh, do not stop to wonder why I should ask you!

Answer me, in the name of God, as one fellow-creature to another: Whom,

or what, is she mourning for?"

Aspasia saw how, between the sweep of his moustache and the great fans

of his beard, the man's lips quivered as he spoke: she felt his haggard

eyes imploring, compelling; and she made answer, as she was bidden, "as

one fellow-creature to another," with a solemnity which she herself was

scarce aware of:

"She is mourning for her dead husband."

When she had spoken, Baby had a vision so swift that she had hardly time

to seize it, of Muhammed's eyes lightening upon her with an

extraordinary illumination. The next instant he had dropped his lids.

Then he turned and, running, left her; and she heard the crazy boards

creak, the stairs groan under his flying unshod feet.

Utter chaos possessed her thoughts as she turned the handle of the

locked door and gently knocked, calling upon Jani; the fantastic terrors

of her inexplicable experience, and the sounds of Rosamond's moans and

sobs within driving her to urgency. As still in a sort of nightmare she

found herself repeating her own phrase to the Pathan, and an odd speech

of her aunt's, as if in answer to it: "She is mourning for her dead

husband.... He is not really dead, Baby...."

Here an idea so extraordinary, so utterly impossible, suddenly tapped at

her brain that, added to all the rest, a new fear of her own self came

upon her.

"I think I am going mad, too," said the poor child to herself. "Jani,

Jani," she cried louder, "let me in!"

And Jani, hearing, did so--this time, it seemed, with alacrity.

The candles on Lady Gerardine's dressing-table had been lit, and the

portrait on the panel was in full illumination.

Rosamond was crouching in bed, her head on her knees, her hair in long

strands about her. She did not move upon Aspasia's entrance; she did

not seem to have heard it. Now and again a moan escaped her.

"Why did you not call me?" cried the girl, turning angrily upon Jani.

The ayah shook her head, her face was wrinkled into a thousand lines of

dismay. She made a helpless gesture with both hands.

"Has she been like that all night?" asked Aspasia.

"All night," answered Jani, adding apologetically: "quieter now."

"Quiet!" echoed Baby.

Quiet! It was indeed this very quietude of suffering that terrified

her. From such an extremity of pain she felt herself separated by all

her own young vitality as from death itself. Here the science of her

heart failed her. This inert woman, moaning like a suffering animal,

seemed something horribly different from her beautiful aunt. Baby dared

not touch her; she could not even find a word for her.

"Speak to her, you, Jani," she whispered.

Jani obediently approached the bed and, bending towards her mistress,

poured forth a flood of Hindustani. Failing to make an impression, she

seized the clasped hands in her claw-like grip and shook them.

Then Rosamond raised her head and turned a vacant look. Her face was

drawn beyond recognition; Baby saw a slow tear gather and roll down into

the open mouth. Anything more forlorn, more hopeless, the girl thought

she had never beheld. As the golden head drooped once more into its

broken attitude, Baby, her own tears springing scalding to her eyes,

turned determinedly to Jani:

"I will get old Mary," she cried; and, seizing her candle again,

pattered from the room, all her previous terrors swallowed up in the

single huge anxiety. Instinctively Aspasia felt that if Lady Gerardine's

reason, nay, her life itself, were to be saved, help must be

forthcoming. And the only help she could think of was that of the

mystic sorrow-experienced old servant of the family.

Old Mary, whose spirit seemed already a dweller of those regions where

from the point of view of the eternal nothing finite can surprise, was

soon ready at Aspasia's summons.

"Yes, Miss Cuningham, I'll come. Eh, the poor lady! Don't you fret

yourself, miss, she's in God's hands."

The very sight of her, so promptly robed in her everyday black with the

white cap tied under her chin, and the familiar little shawl over her

shoulders, was enough to inspire confidence. Baby's tremors were

calming down into hopefulness when they entered Lady Gerardine's room

together.

"Eh, the poor lady," cried old Mary again, after one glance at the bed.

Then she approached, and took her mistress' hands into hers: "My Lady,"

she said, "what ails you?"

If anything could have called Rosamond back from her deep slough of

despond it was this appellation from lips that had hitherto so sweetly

acknowledged her only as widow. The voice and words pierced to her

brain. She reared her head quickly.

"Why do you call me that?"

"My Lady!"

The arrival of Sir Arthur Gerardine had made a distinct impression upon

the housekeeper's half-dreaming mind. Lady Gerardine wrenched her hands

from the withered clasp, and clapped them over her ears.

"My Lady! my Lady!" she cried wildly, "I am not Lady Gerardine, I never

was Lady Gerardine; I am Mrs. English, Mrs. English. Don't you know

it?--you of all women!"

"Ma'am!" ejaculated old Mary, while Aspasia nipped her arm, with warning

fingers.

"Oh, Mary," wailed Rosamond, and broke into a storm of sobs, "do you

think he will ever understand, do you think he will ever forgive me?

Oh, Mary, you who have felt his presence here, ask him--ask him if he

will forgive me!"

Now Mary hardly needed Aspasia's agitated whispers; she had understood.

Her blue eyes became illumined.

"In God's heaven," she said solemnly, "where dwell the happy spirits who

have entered into life, all is peace and understanding--there is no need

to forgive. Eh, Ma'am," she went on, while Rosamond stifled her sobs to

hang upon her words, "do you think these poor things of earth can hurt

those that have gone before? In heaven there is no marriage or giving

in marriage!"

A moment Rosamond stared with blazing eyes; then she struck at the woman

with both hands.

"How dare you!" she cried hoarsely. "How dare you! Out of my sight! I

want none of your God who can make such cruel laws, none of your heaven

that can hold such coldness. Oh, Harry, Harry, Harry! Somewhere you

are. Hear me--come to me. Come!"

Fiercely, as if madness were indeed upon her, she flung her glance from

one to the other of the helpless watchers.

"I must see him! Send old Mary away, she is keeping him from me. Send

her away. Harry, Harry, come to me. Tell me you forgive me... Jani,

your people can raise the dead, they say. Call him back to me. By your

gods or your devils call his spirit to me. Jani, will you let your

child die and not help her?"

The fluent Hindustani of her childhood rushed back to her lips.

Aspasia, after having huddled old Mary out of sight, stood, feeling

again as if one hideous dream had been succeeded by another still more

hideous; feeling, while the unknown cry rang out, and the dear voice

grew hoarse and feeble, more abjectly useless herself than in her

teeming energy she could ever have thought possible. All at once the

ayah, who had listened at first bewildered, then with an air of darkling

attention, suddenly interrupted the failing accents of her mistress by a

few harsh words.

Rosamond fell back upon her pillows with a sigh of exhaustion. The

Hindoo turned, and went stealthily from the room, and Aspasia sank into

a chair; her limbs would no longer support her.

Rosamond lay very still, almost like death, the girl thought, her

eyelids only half closed over her dulled eyes. Never had minutes seemed

so interminable; never silence so charged with boding sounds, as during

this span of expectation. Never would Aspasia know whether it were

hours or minutes that she sat, expecting she knew not what.

At length the shuffling tread of the ayah sounded without the door, and

Jani entered. She had thrown a long white veil over her head, and

between her hands she held the chafing-dish in which she was wont to

cook her own food. The glimmer of the hot charcoal shone fitfully on

her dark intent face. A thrill of superstitious terror ran through

Aspasia.

"Jani," she cried, catching at the woman's veil, "what are you going to

do?" She thought the black eyes were lit with an evil spark as they

looked back at her:

"Do my Missie Sahib's will," whispered Jani.

Baby gave a shivering cry.

"Oh--but, Jani, no one can call back the dead!"

Jani was crouching before the hearth. Without replying, she set her

little tripod, and balanced the earthen pan on the top of it. In this

lay divers herbs and other substances unknown to the watcher. A fine

blue fume, with an aromatic odour, began to rise in the room.

Suddenly Jani looked up from her manipulations and spoke again. It was

a belated answer to the girl's expostulation.

"Who knows," said she, in her slow difficult English, "where the spirits

dwell, or how close they live to us? I will pray my gods! And you,

Missie Sahib, pray yours, pray hard that she may have her wish."

The aromatic steam rose and circled. Jani drew a bag from her bosom and

began to shake its contents over the pan.

"See, missie, see," she went on, her eyes fixed, "this is the good

medicine. Behold, Missie Sahib shall dream, and in her dream, she shall

be happy." She folded her hands, rocked herself backwards and forwards,

low croonings and mutterings escaping from her lips. Now, like her who

soothes a babe to rest, now with a passionate hypnotic fervour as before

one of her own world-old shrines. Once she called sharply to Aspasia

again:

"Pray, pray!"

Then Aspasia folded her hands, and obediently began to pray. Her first

thought was to plead that she and her aunt be protected against what

evil might be called into being by these unholy Eastern doings. She

heard Rosamond turn in the bed, and saw dreamily, through the floating

mists, that she was lying with her eyes fixed on the burning charcoal.

Then the girl's thoughts began to wander. She would find herself

earnestly petitioning for something, wanting something; and suddenly

become aware that she knew not what it was. From where she sat the

illumined portrait of Harry English looked down upon her: as once before

in the dusk, it now, through the vapours, began to assume airs of life;

seemed to smile, to frown. The lips quivered; then, she told herself,

they spoke; the very words were ringing in her ears.

"In God's name, tell me, who is she mourning for?" It was no longer a

picture, it was a living presence. Baby's eyelids drooped; her ideas

grew less and less coherent. Finally it was the merest wisps of

consciousness that floated through her brain. The old house seemed to

hold its breath as in expectation. The stillness seemed to become

palpable.

Presently, through her stupor, she felt herself called by a moaning

voice and made painful clutches towards consciousness. She knew that

Rosamond wanted her and struggled bravely in spirit to break the bonds

that held the body.

"Oh," pleaded the voice, "he is dead indeed, and it is I who have made

him dead: Harry--Harry!"

* * * * *

All at once Aspasia found herself awake--a blast of cold air had rushed

into the drowsy secret atmosphere. The door had been flung open and one

had entered--a man who came with quick clean tread, whose face was pale,

as if indeed risen from the dead, but whose eyes shone with a wonderful

light of life.

The woman in the bed reared herself up with outflung arms, and, as he

who entered went straight to her, she cast herself upon his breast with

a great cry.

"Oh, Harry, Harry, Harry!"

Such a cry had the walls of the manor-house surely never held before.

It might have been the voice of all the anguish and all the ecstasies it

had known these centuries. It rang round the old walls; every echo took

it up and answered it, as if they had been waiting for it.

*BOOK III*

*CHAPTER I*

Bethune had soon packed his simple baggage; then he went straight to

bed, setting his will upon sleep, against thought.

But what mind perturbed can command repose? Every ugly demon of disquiet

that his situation could breed took form and sat beside him on the

narrow bed. Three there were of a special torment. One with the eyes of

hatred that Lady Gerardine had fixed upon him that evening. A twin

demon that for ever repeated in his ear: "You should have died, that he

might live." And a third, whose face was veiled, whose immutable hand

pointed towards the empty sandy desert of the future.

When at last, far on in the watches of the night, sleep did fall upon

him, it was in trouble and confusion of mind--a dream-struggle with

fate, more painful even than the reality.

He was back in the midst of the siege--one of the starving,

thirst-plagued, harassed garrison. They were hard pressed, piling

sandbags on a newly defiladed rampart, but his men were a leaden weight

upon him. He could not stir them to activity; when he tried to shout

orders or expostulation, he could bring forth nothing but a whisper.

Always the barricades melted away beneath his touch, his very rifle

twisted like wax when he handled it, and then there sprang into the

breach Muhammed Saif-u-din, one of an endless chain of leaping

swordsmen: and Muhammed stood with folded arms smiling at him

ironically.

Once again the siege. They were going to bury Vane. A file of little

Goorkhas were picking the grave, and he was working at it too with the

shot whistling overhead. Never was grave so hard to dig. They toiled,

it seemed to him, for years, and still the stones rolled back into the

hole and all was to begin again. Then suddenly it was ready: they were

lowering the stiff figure, rolled in a cerement of tent canvas, into the

shallow ditch. And a flap of the cloth fell back from over the face of

the dead. It was not the face of Vane, but the face of Harry English.

Then, with the awful knowledge of the dreamer, Bethune knew that Harry

was not dead. But when he tried to call out to the others to stop,

again he had no voice. He saw a little brown Goorkha twist the cloth

over the livid countenance. They began shovelling the stony earth upon

his friend; and while he felt in his own lungs the suffocation of him

that is buried alive, a voice said in his ear: "What is it to you? You,

who should have died that he might live!"

The suffocation continued so intense as to drown in physical torture

even the workings of the over-active brain. Then, out of the blank,

dream-consciousness struggled back to him. And again it was the siege.

He was on his hard and narrow couch; it was the middle of the night,

there was a great anxious rumour about him; sentries were calling; the

enemy were upon them. In spite of anguished struggle, Bethune remained

bound, hand and foot, while never had his spirit been more vividly

awake. He could hear the running footsteps of the men in the passages,

the thud, thud of the soft-shod Easterns. He could hear some one break

into his room, hear himself called: "Raymond, Raymond!" And with the

curious double personality of the sleeper, he told himself that it was

years since any one had called him by that name--long and forlorn years

of solitary life.

"Raymond!" called the voice, and the red light as of a torch burned

through his closed eyelids. "Wake, Raymond!"

He knew who it was. It was Harry; his comrade who wanted him in the

danger. What shame to be sleeping at such a moment!

Bethune wrenched himself from his pillow and sat upright. The room was

full of light to his dazzled eyes; and the voice, the voice of Harry

English, was still ringing in his ears.

Muhammed Saif-u-din, who had been bending over the bed, one hand on the

sleeper's shoulder, withdrew his touch and straightened himself. In his

left hand he held a candle. The light flickered upon his dense black

beard. But he was turbanless, and the tossed crisp hair was boyishly

loose over his brow. His eyes were fixed upon Bethune, and Bethune

stared back. Then Muhammed spoke:

"Raymond," he said.

For a moment that was heavier in the scales of time than most hours of

men's lives, the two plunged their gaze into each other.

"My God," said Bethune, in a whisper then, "you!"

A dream! Another dream of torture! Nay, no dream this time; he was

awake. The unbelievable had happened. The grave had yawned and given

out a living man. Harry English was alive. He had come back from the

bourne whence no traveller returns, to claim his own--to claim his wife.

As in a sudden vision, more vivid than any of his troubled fancies had

been to-night, Bethune saw them in each other's arms, and was himself

stabbed through and through by daggers of fire--he, the man whose misery

it was to love his friend's wife! ...

The dead had heard her call. He could see it all now, with horrible

lucidity. All was clear to him. He himself had brought Lady Gerardine,

the forgetful, back to the memory of her love. She had called, and

Harry had come--from death.

And here he stood, Harry English, looking into his friend's eyes,

reading his friend's soul. Suddenly Bethune grew cold to the marrow.

He would have given everything he had, his life by inches, to be able at

that instant to veil those tell-tale eyes of his. But in vain; he could

not drop the lids between them. At last, with a short laugh, Harry

English turned away and released him, and Bethune covered his face with

his hands.

Oh life, more cruel than death! These two had been closer than

brothers; it was eternity itself that was giving them back to each

other. And thus did they meet!

"Bethune," said he that had been the Pathan, in brief decided accents

which once again whirled Raymond back to the hours when all had hung

upon their leader in the crucial emergency, "there is no time for

explanation. Every moment just now is precious. I must have this beard

off--I want scissors, razors." As he spoke he tore his long coat from

his back; he caught up the razors on the dressing-table with impatient

hands. "Scissors, man, scissors! And for the Lord's sake, give me some

more light!"

Bethune sprang out of bed as if he had indeed gone back to that past of

which he had been dreaming and his commanding officer had called upon

his services.

No stranger scene had ever been enacted within the narrow limits of this

antique room, nor one more fraught with vital significance: though here,

perchance, life had been born, and from here, surely, life had departed.

A silence as heavy as the last doom lay between the comrades; and every

second as it passed was ticked off, it seemed, by Bethune's heart.

Death they had faced together often--it was at the test of life that

friendship had faltered.

Swiftly the glossy wings of the Pathan's beard fell under the snipping

blades. And when he had exhausted what aid he could render, Bethune sat

on the edge of the bed and watched the passing of Saif-u-din and the

rising of Harry English from the dead.

There was one moment of outward triviality which yet, to the looker-on,

was charged with a pain almost beyond bearing; it was when English, with

the lather white upon his chin and cheek, turned quickly round upon him

with hands outstretched for a towel. How often had not he seen his

comrade thus, in the old days, when they had lived together, marched

together, laughed and fought and suffered together, and he had been so

happy!

The shaving accomplished, Captain English bent forward to the mirror and

occupied himself with minute care in trimming and combing the flaunting,

upturned moustache of the Pathan back to the old sober limits. There

was not a quiver in the strong busy hands.

Vaguely Bethune, in the chaos of his thoughts, wondered how he could

ever have believed this man dead. Such as he did not die, so long as

they were wanted in life.

Then it was Harry English, indeed, that looked round. If Bethune's

brain had had room for any doubt, the doubt must have died at that

instant. Harry English, pallid, where for years the Eastern beard had

grown so close--almost as with the pallor of the cheek upon which the

earth has lain--worn, not so much by these same years as by a devouring

impatience sternly held: but the old leader nevertheless, with such a

light in his dark eyes as had been wont to kindle there when he called

his men into the heart of the fight.

He spoke suddenly, abruptly; and the other found once more the

exorbitant situation heightened rather than lowered by the very

triviality of the words that marked it:

"I suppose," he said, "that you can lend me a coat. Where is it? In

your bag?"

He could not wait for his companion to draw his wits together. In a

couple of movements the whole contents of the portmanteau were on the

floor, and his arm was already in the sleeve of a shooting-jacket.

This urgency of haste, under strong control though it was, awoke an

answering fever in Bethune's veins. Oh, there was no need of words to

make him understand! When he thought of her to whom the husband was

hastening, his own heart beat to madness.

In two steps Harry was at the door, when Bethune, with an inarticulate

sound, flung himself before him, stretching out his arms. So poignantly

familiar did the old comrade look in the shabby shooting-jacket that his

heart was all dissolved within him for ruth and tenderness.

A second English fixed his friend with cold and steel-bright glance,

inquiring: then his face relaxed.

"Not now, Raymond," said he, put him on one side with quick but kindly

touch, and was gone.

*CHAPTER II*

"The Captain Sahib! the Captain Sahib!" cried Jani in shrill tones; and

prostrated herself before the brazier, her face on the floor.

"Does she think she has called him from the dead?" wondered Baby. Her

thoughts danced in a mist; she would have liked to have caught one and

clung to it, but they kept whirling beyond all control. She sat as if

tied to her chair, staring stupidly at the two who held each other

clasped so close--at the black head bent upon the golden head. Then she

saw how the grip of Rosamond's hands relaxed; how the whole clinging

figure fell inertly, while he--man or ghost--seemed to let it slip from

him as though in surprise.

He turned his head and looked at Aspasia. There was indeed, something

unearthly about his countenance; in the ashen pallor on cheek and chin,

in contrast to the bronze of the rest of the face, which seemed still to

hold the touch of that Indian sun under which he had died. His eyes

burnt with fierce light in their dark hollows. Aspasia felt that she

ought to shudder with terror, that the situation, at least, ought to be

one of desperate interest, but she was only conscious of a numb

curiosity. She sat and stared. Then her gaze wandered from the

mysterious presence to the figure lying on the bed. She saw the sharp

outline of Rosamond's chin upturned, and thought, without the least

emotion, that perhaps her aunt was dead. The very gold of the hair

seemed lifeless, turning to ash. That cry still ringing in her ears

must have been a death-cry. It had been as the cry of a soul that is

passing.

She watched the man lay his hand on the still forehead, saw him look

sharply about him and inhale the air with deep breath.

Suddenly, in two great strides, he was across the room. There was a

noise of tearing curtains and jingling glass; and Aspasia found herself

inhaling icy breaths of air in gasps. Heavily, with a sob of pain, she

woke from her stupor. She seemed to be drawing this delicious coldness

into herself as if it were new life. The man passed before her once

again. He was holding Jani's tripod high in his hands. A trail of

aromatic vapour swept against her face; and, as she involuntarily

breathed it, she had a nauseating sense of suffocation, and the

vanishing stupor returned upon her momentarily, like the shadow of some

huge bird's wings. With an effort she turned her eyes, saw the man

hoist the brazier in his hands and hurl it through the open window, saw

the charcoal scattered apart like a shower of falling stars, heard a

crash without. Then she knew it was no ghost.