I returned to Evadne. Her eyes were closed and her forehead contracted.

Every breath of cold air was cutting her lungs like a knife, but she

looked up at me when I took her hand, and smiled. I never knew anybody so

patient and uncomplaining. She was lying on a little iron bedstead, hard

and narrow as a camp bed. The room was bare-looking, the floor being

polished and with only two small rugs, one at the fireplace and one beside

the bed, upon it. It looked like a nun's cell, and there was a certain

suggestion of purity in the sweetness and order of it quite consistent

with the idea; but it was a north room and very cold, Evadne had

unconsciously clasped my hand, and dozed off for a few minutes, holding it

tight, but the cough re-aroused her. When she looked at me again her mind

was wandering. She knew me, but she did not know what she was saying.

"I am so thankful!" she exclaimed. "The peace of mind--the peace of

mind--I cannot tell you what a relief it is!"

Williamson came in on tiptoe and lit the fire, and Evadne's maid followed

him in and stood looking on, half sheepishly and half in defiance. I

noticed now that she was a hard-faced, bold-looking girl, not at all the

sort of person to have about my delicate little lady, and when Mrs.

Williamson arrived, I ordered her out of the room, and never allowed her

to enter it again. During the week she left altogether, and I was

fortunately able to procure a suitable woman to wait upon Mrs. Colquhoun.

She has been with her ever since, by the way.

I felt pretty sure by this time that no nurse had been sent for, and I

therefore despatched one of Colonel Colquhoun's men in a dogcart to

Morningquest to telegraph for one. But she could not arrive before

daylight even by special train, and it had now become a matter of life and

death, and as Mrs. Williamson had no knowledge of nursing to help her good

will, I determined to spend the night beside my patient.

When Colonel Colquhoun came in and found me making myself at home in his

house he expressed himself greatly pleased.

"When I returned this afternoon to see how Mrs. Colquhoun was progressing,

I found that none of my orders had been carried out, and now she is

dangerously ill," I said severely.

"Faith," he replied, changing countenance, "I'm very sorry to hear it, and

I'm afraid I'm to blame, for I was in the deuce of a hurry when I saw you

this morning, and never thought of a word you said from that moment to

this. Now I'm genuinely sorry," he repeated. "Is there nothing I can do?

Mrs. Orton Beg--"

"She's gone abroad for the winter."

"Ah, to be sure!"

"And everybody else is away who would be of any use," I added, "and I

therefore propose, if you have no objection, to stay here to-night

myself."

"You'd oblige me greatly by doing so," he answered earnestly. "I don't

know what there is for dinner, but I shall enjoy it all the more myself

for the pleasure of your company."

He made no special inquiries about his wife's condition, and never went

near her; but as he was in a tolerably advanced state of intoxication

before he retired for the night, it was quite as well, perhaps.

Mrs. Williamson had probably done her day's work before I sent for her,

and, with all the will in the world to wake and watch, she fell fast

asleep before midnight, and I let her sleep. There were only the fires to

be attended to--at least that was all that I could have trusted her to do.

Watching the case, generally, and seizing opportune moments to administer

remedies would not have been in her line at all.

Evadne knew me always, but she lost all count of time.

"You seem to come every day now, doctor," she said once during the night,

"and I _am_ glad to see you!"

For two hours toward dawn, when the temperature is sensibly lower, I gave

my little lady up; but she was better by the time the trained nurse

arrived, and eventually she pulled through--greatly owing, I am sure, to

her own perfect patience. She was always the same all through her illness,

gentle, uncomplaining, grateful for every trifle that was done for her,

and tranquillity herself. My impression was that she enjoyed being ill. I

never saw a symptom of depression the whole time; but when she had quite

recovered, and although, as often happens after a severe illness, when

so-called "trifles" are discovered and checked which would otherwise have

been allowed to run on until they grew serious--although for this reason

she was certainly stronger than she had ever been since I became

acquainted with her, no sooner did she resume her accustomed habits than

that old unsatisfactory something in her, which it was so easy to perceive

but so difficult to define, returned in full force.

I had ceased to be critical, however. Colonel Colquhoun's careless neglect

of her had continued throughout her illness, and I thought I understood.

CHAPTER VI.

I had necessarily seen much of Evadne during her illness, and the intimacy

never again lapsed.

Jealousy was not one of Colonel Colquhoun's vices. He always encouraged

any man to come to the house for whom she showed the slightest preference,

and I have heard him complain of her indifference to admiration.

"She'll dress herself up carefully in the evening to sit at home alone

with me, and go out to a big dinner party in the dowdiest gown she's got,"

he told me once. "She doesn't care a hang whether she's admired or

not--rather objects, if anything, perhaps."

Colonel Colquhoun rubbed his hands here with a certain enjoyment of such

perversity. But I could see that Evadne did not relish the subject. It was

one afternoon at As-You-Like-It. I was tired after a long day and had

dropped in to ask for some tea. Colonel Colquhoun came up to entertain me,

and Evadne went on with her work while we chatted familiarly.

"You were never so civil to any of your admirers, Evadne, as you were to

that great boy in the regiment," Colonel Colquhoun continued, quite blind

to her obvious and natural though silent objection to being made the

subject of conversation--"a young subaltern of ours," he explained to me,

"a big broad-shouldered lad, six feet high, who just worshipped Evadne!"

"Poor boy!" said Evadne, sighing. "He was cruelly butchered in a horribly

fruitless skirmish with his fellow creatures during that last small war. I

was glad I was able to be kind to him. He was always very nice to me."

"Well, there's a reason for everything!" Colonel Colquhoun observed

gallantly.

"Don't you like boys?" Evadne asked, looking up at me. "The ones we have

here at the depôt, when they first come, fresh from the public schools,

are delightful, with their high spirits, and their love affairs; their

pranks, and the something beyond which will make men of them eventually. I

can never see enough of _our_ boys. But Colonel Colquhoun very kindly

lets me have as many of them here as I like."

"Faith, I can't keep them out, for they're all in love with you," said

Colonel Colquhoun.

"And I am in love with them all!" she answered brightly, leaning back in

her chair, and holding up her work to look at it. As she did so, the lower

half of her face was concealed from me, and her eyes were cast down. I

only glanced at her, but, in the act of doing so, I suddenly became aware,

by one of those curious flashes of imperfect recollection which come to us

all at times to torment us, that I had seen her somewhere, before I knew

who she was, in that attitude exactly; but where, or under what

circumstance, I failed to recollect. The impression, however, was

indelible, and haunted me ever afterward.

"Now, there's Diavolo," Colonel Colquhoun continued--the exchange I had

suggested had been effected by this time, and Diavolo was quartered at the

depôt--not exactly to Colonel Colquhoun's delight, perhaps, but he was

very good about it. "Now, there's Diavolo. He tells me to my face that he

was the first to propose to Mrs. Colquhoun, and always meant to marry her,

and means it still. He said to me coaxingly, only last Friday, when I was

coming out of barracks: 'Take me home with you to-day, sir.' And I

answered, pretending to be severe, but pulling his sleeve, you know:

'Indeed I won't. You'll be making love to Mrs. Colquhoun.' And he got very

red, and said quite huffily; 'Well, I think you might let a fellow look at

her.' And of course I had to bring him back with me, and he sat down on

the floor at her feet there, and got on with the most ridiculous nonsense.

You couldn't help laughing! 'I should like to kill you, and carry her

off,' he said, for all the world as if he meant it. And no more harm in

the boy, either, than there is in Evadne herself," Colonel Colquhoun added

good-humouredly.

This is a specimen of the man at his best. Latterly I had seldom seen him

in such a genial mood at home--abroad he brightened up. But in his own

house _now_--for a process of deterioration had been going on ever

since his arrival in Morningquest--his mind was apt to resemble a dark

cave which is transformed diurnally by a single shaft of sunshine which

streams in for a brief space at a certain hour. The happy moment with him

occurred about the time of the tenth brandy-and-soda, as nearly as I could

calculate, and it lasted till the eleventh, when he usually relapsed into

gloom again, and became overcast until the next recurrence of the

phenomena. But whatever his mood was, Evadne humoured it. She responded

always--or tried to--when he was genial; and when he was morose, she was

dumb. I thought her a model wife.

CHAPTER VII.

After her illness Evadne spent much of her time in the west window of the

drawing room at As-You-Like-It with her little work-table beside her,

embroidering. I never saw her reading, and there were no books about the

room; but the work she did was beautiful. She used to have a stand before

her with flowers arranged upon it, and copy them on to some material in

coloured silks direct from nature. She could not draw either with pen or

pencil, or paint with a brush, but she could copy with her needle quite

accurately, and would do a spray of lilies to the life, or in the most

approved conventional manner, if it pleased her. Her not being able to

draw struck me as a curious limitation, and I asked her once if she could

account for it in any way.

"I believe I am an example of how much we owe to early influences," she

answered, laughing; "and probably I have the talent both for drawing and

painting in me, but it remains latent for want of cultivation. My mother

drew and painted beautifully as a girl, but she had given both up before I

was old enough to imitate her, and only copied flowers as I do with her

needle, and I used to watch her at her work until I felt impelled to do

the same. If she had gone on with her drawing I am sure I should have

drawn too; but as it was, I never thought of trying."

"Moral for mothers," I observed: "Keep up your own accomplishments if you

would have your daughters shine."

Evadne was not enough in the fresh air at this time, and she was too much

alone. I ventured once, in my professional capacity, to say that she

should have friends to stay with her occasionally, but she passed the

suggestion off without either accepting or declining it, and then I spoke

to Colonel Colquhoun. He, however, pooh-poohed the idea altogether.

"She's all right," he said. "You don't know her. She always lives like

that; it's her way."

I also counselled regular exercise, and to that she replied: "I _do_

go out. Why, you passed me yourself on the road only the other day."

I certainly had seen her more than once, alone, miles away from home,

walking at the top of her speed, as if impelled by some strong emotion or

inexorable necessity, and I did not like the sign. "One or two hours' walk

regularly every day is what you should take," I told her. "The virtue of

it is in the regularity. If you make a habit of taking a short walk daily

you will have got more sunshine and fresh air, which is what you specially

require, in one year than you will in two if you continue to go out in a

jerky, irregular way. And you must give up covering impossible distances

in feverish haste, as you do now. Walk gently, and make yourself feel that

you have full leisure to walk as long as you like. You will find the

effect tranquillizing. It is a common mistake to make a business of taking

exercise. I am constantly lecturing my patients about it. If you want

exercise to raise your spirits, brace your nerves, and do you good

generally, it must be all pure pleasure without conscious exertion.

Pleasurable moments prolong life."

"Thank you," Evadne answered gently. "I know, of course, that you are

right, and I will do my best to profit by your advice, if it be only to

show you how much I appreciate your kindness. But I must have a scamper

occasionally, a regular _burst_, you know. Please don't stop that!

The indulgence, when I am in the mood, is my pet vice at present."

The great drawing room at As-You-Like-It, which I had mentioned in my

letter to Lady Adeline as containing the one bright spot in that gloomy

abode, was an addition tacked on to the end of the house, and evidently an

afterthought. It was entered by a flight of shallow steps from the hall,

and was above the level of the public road, which ran close past that end

of the house, the grounds and approach being on the other side. It was

lighted by three high narrow windows looking toward the north, and three

more close together looking west, and forming a bay so deep as to be quite

a small room in itself. It almost overhung the high-road, only a tall

holly-hedge being between them, but so near that the topmost twigs of the

holly grew up to the window-sill. It was a quiet road, however, too far

from the town for much traffic, and Evadne could sit there with the

windows open undisturbed, and enjoy the long level prospect of fertile

land, field and fallow, wood and water, that lay before her. She sat in

the centre window, and I think it was from thence that she learnt to

appreciate the charms of a level landscape as you look down upon it, about

which I heard her discourse so eloquently in after days. It was her chosen

corner, and there she sat silent many and many an hour, with busy fingers

and thoughts we could not follow, communing at times with nature, I doubt

not, or with her own heart, and thankful to be still.

The road beneath her was one I had to traverse regularly, and it became a

habit to look up as I drove past. If she were in her accustomed seat she

usually raised her eyes from her work for a moment to smile me a greeting.

Once she was standing up, leaning languidly against the window frame,

twirling a rose in her fingers, but she straightened herself into

momentary energy when she recognized me, and threw the rose at me with

accurate aim. It was the youngest and most familiar thing I had known her

do--an impulse of pure mischief, I thought, for the rose was _La

France_, and the sentiment, as I translated it, was: "You will value it

more than I do!" For she hated the French.

There often occurs and recurs to the mind incessantly a verse or an apt

quotation in connection with some act or event, a haunting definition of

the impression it makes upon us, and Evadne in the wide west window,

bending busily over her work, set my mind on one occasion to a borrowed

measure of words which never failed me from that time forward when I saw

her so engaged:

There she weaves by night and day

A magic web of colour gay.

She has heard a whisper say,

A curse is on her if she stay

To look down to Camelot.

She knows not what the curse may be,

And so she weaveth steadily,

And little other care hath she,

The lady of Shalott.

But where was Camelot? Fountain Towers, just appearing above the tree-tops

to the north, was the only human habitation in sight. I had a powerful

telescope on the highest tower, and one day, in an idle mood, I happened

to be looking through it with no definite purpose, just sweeping it slowly

from point to point of the landscape, when all at once Evadne came into

the field of vision with such startling distinctness that I stepped back

from the glass. She was sitting in her accustomed place, with her work on

her lap, her hands clasped before her, leaning forward looking up in my

direction with an expression in her whole attitude that appealed to me

like a cry for help. The impression was so strong that I ordered my

dogcart out and drove over to As-You-Like-It at once. But I found her

perfectly tranquil when I arrived, with no trace of recent emotion either

in her manner or appearance.

When I went home I had the telescope removed. I had forgotten that we

overlooked that corner of As-You-Like-It.

CHAPTER VIII.

The idea that Evadne was naturally unsociable was pretty general, and

Colonel Colquhoun believed it as much as anybody. I remember being at

As-You-Like-It one afternoon when he rallied her on the subject. He had

stopped me as I was driving past to ask me to look at a horse he was

thinking of buying. The animal was being trotted up and down the approach

by a groom for our inspection when Evadne returned from somewhere, driving

herself.

She pulled up beside us and got out.

"I never see you driving any of your friends about," Colonel Colquhoun

remarked. "You're very unsociable, Evadne."

"Oh, well, you see," she answered slowly, "I like to be alone and think

when I am driving. It worries me to have to talk to people--as a rule."

"Well," he said, glancing at the reeking pony, "if your thoughts went as

fast as Blue Mick seems to have done to-day, you must have got through a

good deal of thinking in the time."

Evadne looked at the pony. "Take him round," she said to the groom; and

then she remarked that it must be tea-time, and asked us both to go in,

and have some.

The air had brought a delicate tinge of colour to her usually pale cheeks,

and she looked bright and bonny as she sat beside the tea-table, taking

off her gloves and chatting, with her hat pushed slightly up from her

forehead. It was an expansive moment with her, one of the rare ones when

she unconsciously revealed something of herself in her conversation.

There were some flowers on the tea-table which I admired.

"Ah!" she said, with a sigh of satisfaction in their beauty; "I derive all

my pleasure in life from things inanimate. An arrangement of deep-toned

marigolds with brown centres in a glass like these, all aglow beneath the

maiden-hair, gives me more pleasure than anything else I can think of at

this moment."

"Not more pleasure than your friends do," I ventured.

"I don't know," she replied. "In the matter of love _surgit amari

aliquid_. Friends disappoint us. But in the contemplation of flowers

all our finer feelings are stimulated and blended, and yet there is no

excess of feeling to end in regrets, or a painful reaction. When the

flowers fade, we cheerfully gather fresh ones. But I hope I do not

undervalue my friends," she broke off. "I only mean to say--when you think

of all the uncertainties of life, of sickness and death, and other things

more dreadful, which overtake our dearest, do what we will to protect them;

and then that worst thing whether it be in ourselves or others: I mean

change--when you think of it all, surely it is well to turn to some

delicate source of delight, like this, for relief--and to forget," and she

curved her slender hand round the flowers caressingly, looking up at me at

the same time as if she were pleading to be allowed to have her own way.

I did not remonstrate with her. I hardly knew the danger then myself of

refusing to suffer.

It was some weeks before I saw her again after that. I had been busy. But

one day, as I was driving into Morningquest, I overtook her on the road,

walking in the same direction. I was in a close carriage, but I pulled the

checkstring as soon as I recognized her, and got out. She turned when she

heard the carriage stop, and seeing me alight came forward and shook

hands. She looked wan and weary.

"Those are fine horses of yours," was her smileless greeting. "How are

you?"

"Have you been having a 'burst'?" I said--she was quite five miles from

home. She looked up and down the road for answer, and affected to laugh,

but I could see that she was not at all in a laughing mood, and also that

she was already over-fatigued. I thought of begging to be allowed to drive

her back, but then it occurred to me that, even if she consented, which

was not likely, as she had a perfect horror of giving trouble, and would

never have been persuaded that I was not going out of my way at the

greatest personal inconvenience merely to pay her a polite attention; but

even if she had consented, she would probably have had to spend the rest

of the day alone in that great west window, with nothing to take her out

of herself, and nothing more enlivening to look at than dreary winter

fields under a sombre sky, and that would not do at all. A better idea,

however, occurred to me.

"I am going to see Mrs. Orton Beg," I said. "She is not very well."

Evadne had been staring blandly at the level landscape, but she turned to

me when I spoke, and some interest came into her eyes.

"Have you seen her lately," I continued.

"N-no," she answered, as if she were considering; "not for some time."

"Come now," I boldly suggested. "It will do her good. I won't talk if you

want to think," I added.

Her face melted into a smile at this, and on seeing her stiffness relax, I

wasted no more time in persuasion, but returned to the carriage and held

the door open for her. She followed me slowly, although she looked as if

she had not quite made up her mind, and got in; but still as if she were

hesitating. Once she was seated, however, I could see that she was not

sorry she had yielded; and presently she acknowledged as much herself.

"I believe I was tired," she said,

"Rest now, then," I answered, taking a paper out of my pocket. She settled

herself more luxuriously in her corner, put her arm in the strap, and

looked out through the open window. The day was mild though murky, the sky

was leaden gray. We rolled through the wintry landscape rapidly--brown

hedgerows, leafless trees, ploughed fields, a crow, two crows, a whole

flock home-returning from their feeding ground; scattered cottages, a

woman at a door looking out with a child in her arms, three boys swinging

on a gate, a man trudging along with a bundle, a labourer trimming a bank;

mist rising in the low-lying meadows; grazing cattle, nibbling sheep;--but

she did not see these things at first, any of them; she was thinking. Then

she began to see, and forgot to think. Then her fatigue wore off, and a

sense of relief, of ease, and of well-being generally, took gradual

possession of her. I could see the change come into her countenance, and

before we had arrived in Morningquest, she had begun to talk to me

cheerfully of her own accord. We had to skirt the old gray walls which

surrounded the palace gardens, and as we did so, she looked up at

them--indifferently at first, but immediately afterward with a sudden

flash of recognition. She said nothing, but I could see she drew herself

together as if she had been hurt.

"Do you go there often?" I asked her.

"No--Edith died there; and then that child," she answered, looking at me

as if she were surprised that I should have thought it likely.

"She shrinks from sorrowful associations and painful sights," I thought.

But I did not know, when I asked the question, that our poor Edith had

been a particular friend of hers.

We stopped the next moment at Mrs. Orton Beg's, and she leant forward to

look at the windows, smiling and brightening again.

I helped her out and followed her to the door, which she opened as if she

were at home there. She waited for me for a moment in the hall till I put

my hat down, and then we went to the drawing room together, and walked in

in the same familiar way.

Mrs. Orton Beg was there with another lady, a stout but very comely

person, handsomely dressed, who seemed to have just risen to take her

leave.

The moment Evadne saw this lady she sprang forward. "_Oh, Mother!_"

she cried, throwing her arms round her neck.

"Evadne--my dear, dear child!" the lady exclaimed, clasping her close and

kissing her, and then, holding her off to look at her. "Why, my child, how

thin you are, and pale, and weak--"

"Oh, mother--I _am_ so glad! I _am_ so glad!" Evadne cried

again, nestling close up to her, and kissing her neck; and then she laid

her head on her bosom and burst into hysterical sobs.

I instantly left the room, and Mrs. Orton Beg followed me.

"They have not met since--just after Evadne's marriage," she explained to

me. "Evadne offended her father, and there still seems to be no hope of a

reconciliation."

"But surely it is cruel to separate mother and child," I exclaimed

indignantly. "He has no right to do that."

"No, and he would not be able to do it with one of us," she answered

bitterly; "but my sister is of a yielding disposition. She is like Mrs.

Beale, one of the old-fashioned 'womanly women,' who thought it their duty

to submit to everything, and make the best of everything, including

injustice, and any other vice it pleased their lords to practise. But for

this weakness of good women the world would be a brighter and better place

by this time. We see the disastrous folly of submitting our reason to the

rule of self-indulgence and self-interest now, however; and, please God,

we shall change all that before I die. He will be a bold man soon who will

dare to have the impertinence to dictate to us as to what we should or

should not do, or think, or say. No one can pretend that the old system of

husband and master has answered well, and it has had a fair trial. Let us

hope that the new method of partnership will be more successful."

"Yes, indeed!" I answered earnestly.

Mrs. Orton Beg looked up in my face, and her own countenance cleared.

"You and Evadne seem to be very good friends," she said. "I am so glad."

Then she looked up at me again, with a curious little smile which I could

not interpret. "Does she remind you of anybody--of anything, ever?" she

asked.

"Why--surely she is like you," I said, seeing a likeness for the first

time.

"Yes," she answered, in a more indifferent tone. "There is a likeness, I

am told."

I tried afterward to think that this explained the haunting half

recollection I seemed to have of something about Evadne; but it did not.

On the contrary, it re-awakened and confirmed the feeling that I had seen

Evadne before I knew who she was, under circumstances which I now failed

to recall.

Thinking she would like to be alone after that interview with her mother,

I left the carriage for her, and walked back to Fountain Towers; and the

state I was in after doing the ten miles warned me that I had been

luxuriating too much in carriages lately, and must begin to practise what

I preached again in the way of exercise, if I did not wish to lay up a fat

and flabby old age for myself.

I made a point of not seeing Evadne for some little time after that event,

so that she might not feel bound to refer to it in case she should shrink

from doing so. But the next time we met, as it happened, I had another

glimpse of her feeling for her friends, which showed me how very much

mistaken I had been in my estimate of the depth of her affections. It was

at As-You-Like-It. I had walked over from Fountain Towers, and dropped in

casually to ask for some tea, and, Colonel Colquhoun arriving at the same

moment from barracks, we went up to the drawing room together, and found

Evadne in her accustomed place, busy with her embroidery as usual. She

shook hands, but said nothing to show that she was aware of the interval

there had been since she saw me last. When she sat down again, however,

she went on with her work, and there was a certain satisfied look in her

face, as if some little wish had been gratified and she was content. I

knew when she took up her work that she liked me to be there, and wanted

me to stay, for she always put it down when visitors she did not care for

called, and made a business of entertaining them. But we had scarcely

settled ourselves to talk when the butler opened the door, and announced

"Mr. Bertram Frayling," and a tall, slender, remarkably handsome young

fellow, with a strong family likeness to Evadne herself, entered with

boyish diffidence, smiling nervously, but looking important, too. Evadne

jumped up impetuously.

"_Bertram_!" she exclaimed, holding out her arms to him. "Why, what a

big fellow you have grown!" she cried, finding she could hardly reach to

his neck to hug him. "And how handsome you are!"

"They say I am just like you," he answered, looking down at her lovingly,

with his arm around her waist. Neither of them took any notice of us.

"This is your birthday, dear," Evadne said. "I have been thinking of you

the whole day long. I always keep all the birthdays. Did you remember

mine?"

"I--don't think I did," he answered honestly. "But this is my twenty-first

birthday, Evadne, and that's how it is I am here. I am my own master from

to-day."

"And the first thing you do with your liberty is to come and see your

sister," said Colonel Colquhoun. "You're made of the right stuff, my boy,"

and he shook hands with him heartily.

Evadne clung with one hand to his shoulder, and pressed her handkerchief

first to this eye and then to that alternately with the other, looking so

glad, however, at the same time, that it was impossible to say whether she

was going to laugh or cry for joy.

"But aren't there rejoicings?" she asked.

"Oh, yes!" he answered. "But I told my father if you were not asked I

should not stay for them. I was determined to see you to-day." He flushed

boyishly as he spoke, and smiled round upon us all again.

"But wasn't he very angry?" Evadne said.

"Yes," her brother answered, twinkling. "The girls got round him, and

tried to persuade him, but they only made him worse, especially when they

all declared that when they came of age they meant to do _something_,

too! He said that he was afflicted with the most obstinate,

ill-conditioned family in the county, and began to row mother as if it

were her fault. But I wouldn't stand that!"

"You were right, Bertram," Evadne exclaimed, clenching her hands. "Now

that you are a man, never let mother be made miserable. Did she know you

were coming?"

"Yes, and was very glad," he answered, "and sent you messages."

But here Colonel Colquhoun and I managed to slip from the room. Evadne

sent her brother back that day to grace the close of the festivities in

his honour, but he returned the following week, and stayed at

As-You-Like-It, and also with me, when he confirmed my first exceedingly

good impression of him. Evadne quite wakened up under his influence, but,

unfortunately for her, he went abroad in a few weeks for a two years' trip

round the world, and, I think, losing him again so soon made it almost

worse for her than if they had never been reunited, especially as another

and irreparable loss came upon her immediately after his departure. This

was the sudden death of her mother, the news of which arrived one day in a

curt note written by her father to Colonel Colquhoun, no previous

intimation of illness having been sent to break the shock of the

announcement. I can never be thankful enough for the happy chance which

brought about that last accidental meeting of Evadne with her mother. But

for that, they would not have seen each other again; and I had the

pleasure of learning eventually that the perfect understanding which they

arrived at during the few hours they spent together on that occasion,

afterward became one of the most comforting recollections of Evadne's

life--"A hallowed memory," as she herself expressed it, "such as it is

very good for us to cherish. Thank Heaven for the opportunity which

renewed and intensified my appreciation of my mother's love and goodness,

so as to make my last impression of her one which must stand out

distinctly forever from the rest, and be always a joyful sorrow to recall.

Do you know what a _joyful_ sorrow is? Ah! something that makes one

feel warm and forgiving in the midst of one's regrets, a delicious feeling;

when it takes possession of you, you cease to be hard and cold and

fierce, and want to do good."

Mrs. Frayling died of a disease for which we have a remedy nowadays--or,

to speak plainly, she died for want of proper treatment. Her husband

gloried in what he called "a rooted objection to new-fangled notions," and

would not send for a modern practitioner even when the case became

serious, preferring to confide it entirely to a very worthy old gentleman

of his own way of thinking, with one qualification, who had attended his

household successfully for twenty-four years, during which time only one

other member of his family had ever been seriously ill, and he also had

died. But I hope and believe that my poor little lady never knew the truth

about her mother's last illness. She was overwhelmed with grief as it was,

and it cut one to the quick to see her, day after day, in her black dress,

sitting alone, pale and still and uncomplaining, her invariable attitude

when she was deeply distressed, and not to be able to say a word or do a

thing to relieve her. As usual at that time of the year, everybody whom

she cared to see at all was away except myself, so that during the

dreariest of the winter months she was shut up with her grief in the most

unwholesome isolation. As the spring returned, however, she began to

revive, and then, suddenly, it appeared to me that she entered upon a new

phase altogether.

CHAPTER IX.

During the first days of our acquaintance Evadne's attitude, whatever

happened, surprised me. I could anticipate her action up to a certain

point, but just the precise thing she would do was the last thing I had

expected; I knew her feeling, in fact, but I was ignorant of the material

it had to work upon, and by means of which it found expression. I had

begun by believing her to be cold and self-sufficing, but even before her

illness I had perceived in her a strange desire for sympathy, and foreseen

that on occasion she would exact it in large measure from anyone she cared

about. It was making much of a cut finger one day that she had led me to

expect she would be exacting in illness, languishing as ladies do, to

excite sympathy; and when the illness came I found I had been right in so

far as I had believed that she would appreciate sympathy, but entirely

wrong about the means she would employ to obtain it. Instead of

languishing, when she found herself really suffering, she pulled herself

together, and bore the trial with heroic calm. As I have said, she never

uttered a complaint; and she had the strength of mind to ignore annoyances

which few people in perfect health could have borne with fortitude.

Certainly her attitude then had excited sympathy, and respect as well. It

was as admirable as it was unexpected.

I had also perceived that she could not bear anything disagreeable. She

seldom showed the least irritability herself, nor would she tolerate it

for a moment in anyone else. Servants who were not always cheerful had to

go, and the kind of people who snap at each other in the bosom of their

families she carefully avoided, turning from them instinctively as she

would have done from any perception revolting to the physical senses; and

that she would fly disgusted from sickening sights or sounds or odours I

never doubted. But here again I was wrong--or rather the evidence was

utterly misleading. I found her one day sitting on the bridge of a little

river that crossed a quiet lane near their house, and got down from my

horse to talk to her, and as we stood looking over the parapet looking

into the stream, the bloated carcase of a dead dog came floating by. She

could only have caught a glimpse of it, for she drew back instantly, but

she looked so pale and nauseated that I had to take her to the house, and

insist upon her having some wine. And I once took her, at her own earnest

request, to visit a children's hospital; but before we had seen a dozen of

the little patients she cried so piteously I was obliged to take her away;

and she could never bear to speak of the place afterward. And lastly, I

had seen how she shrank from going to the palace because of the

association with Edith's terrible death, and the chance of seeing her

poor, repulsive looking little boy there.

Yet when it came to be a question of facing absolute horrors in the

interests of the sufferers, she was the first to volunteer, and she did so

with a quiet determination there was no resisting, and every trace of

inward emotion so carefully obliterated that one might have been forgiven

for supposing her to be altogether callous.

This happened after her mother's death, In the spring, when she had

already begun to revive, and was the first startling symptom she showed of

the new phase of interest and energy upon which I suspected she was

entering. I hoped at the time that the great grief had carried off the

minor ailments of the mind as the great illness did of the body, and that

the change would prove to be for the better eventually, although the first

outcome of it was not the kind of thing I liked at all--for her.

I had not seen her for a week or so when she was ushered one morning into

my consulting room. She had not asked for an appointment, and had been

waiting to take her turn with the other patients.

"Well, what can I do for _you?_" I said. I was somewhat surprised to

see her. "You don't look very ill."

"No, thank goodness," she answered cheerfully; "and I don't mean to be

ill. I have come to be vaccinated."

"Ah. that is wise," I said.

"You have heard, I suppose, that small-pox has broken out in the

barracks?" she said when she was going. "There are fifteen cases, four of

them women, and one a child, and they are going to put them under canvas

on the common, and I shall be obliged to go and see that they are properly

nursed. That is why I am in such a hurry. Military nursing is of the most

primitive kind in times of peace. Our doctor is all that he should be, but

what can he do but prescribe? It takes all his time just to go round and

get through his ordinary duties."

"Did I understand you to say that you are going to look after the

small-pox patients?" I asked politely.

"Yes," she answered defiantly. "I am going to be isolated with them out on

the common. My tent is already pitched. I shall not take small-pox, I

assure you."

"I don't see how you can be so sure," I said.

She gave me one of her most puzzling answers, one of those in which I felt

there was an indication of the something about her which I did not

understand.

"Oh, because it is such a relief!" she said.

"How a relief?" I questioned.

"Oh--I shall not take the disease," she repeated, "and I shall enjoy the

occupation."

But this, I knew, was an evasion. However, I had no time to argue the

point with her just then, so I waited until my consultations were over,

and then went to see Colonel Colquhoun. I thought if he would not forbid

he might at all events persuade her to abandon her rash design. I found

him at his own place, walking about the garden with his hands in his

pockets, and a cigar in his mouth. He was in a facetious mood, the one of

his I most disliked.

"Now, you look quite concerned," he said, with an extra affectation of

brogue, when I had told him my errand. "Sure, she humbugs you, Evadne

does! If you knew her as well as I do, you'd not be troubling yourself

about her so much. I tell you, she'll come to no harm in the world. Now

what do you think were her reasons for going to live in the small-pox

camp?"

"Then she _has_ gone!" I exclaimed.

"Oh, yes, she's gone," he answered. "The grass never has time to grow

under that young woman's feet if she's an idea to carry out, I will say

that for her. But what do you think she said when I asked her why she'd be

going among the small-pox patients? 'Oh,' she said, 'I want to see what

they look like!' And she'd another reason, too. She'll make herself look

like an interesting nurse, you know, and quite enjoy dressing up for the

part."

I felt sure that all this was a horrid perversion of the truth, but I let

it pass.

"You'll not interfere, then?" I persisted.

"Not I, indeed!" he answered. "She never comes commandering it over me,

and I'm not going to meddle with her private affairs, so long as she

doesn't come here bringing infection, that's all."

"But she may catch the disease herself and die of it, or be disfigured for

life," I remonstrated.

"And she might catch her death of cold here in the garden, or be burnt

beyond all recognition by a spark setting fire to her ball-dress the next

time she wears one," he answered philosophically. "When you look at the

chances, now, they're about equal."

He smiled at me complacently when he had said this, and something he saw

in my face inclined him to chuckle, but he suppressed the inclination,

twirling his fair moustache instead, first on one side and then on the

other, rapidly. In his youth he must have been one of those small boys who

delighted to spear a bee with a pin and watch it buzz round. The boy is

pretty sure the bee can't hurt him, but yet half the pleasure of the

performance lies in the fact of its having a sting. It would not have been

convenient for Colonel Colquhoun to quarrel with me, because there had

been certain money transactions between us which left him greatly my

debtor; but he thought me secured by my interest in Evadne, and indulged

himself on every possible occasion in the pleasure of opposing me. Not

that he bore me any ill-will, either. I knew that he would borrow more

money from me at any time in the friendliest way, if he happened to want

it. I was his honey bee, and he was fond of honey; but it delighted him

also to see me buzz.

I was obliged to consider my own patients and keep away from the small-pox

camp during the epidemic, for fear of carrying infection, and consequently

I saw nothing of Evadne, and only heard of her through the military

doctor, for she would not write. His report of her, however, was always

the same at first. She was the life of the camp, bright, cheerful, and

active, never tired apparently, and never disheartened. This went on for

some time, and then, one evening, there came another report. She was just

as cheerful as ever, but looking most awfully done.

At daybreak next morning I drove out to the common, and, leaving my

dogcart outside the camp, went in to look for her. I knew that she was

generally up all night, and was therefore prepared to find her about, and

I met her making her way toward her own tent. She was dressed like a

French _bonne_, in a short dark blue gown made of some washing

material, with a white apron and white cap, and a châtelaine with useful

implements upon it hanging from her girdle, a very suitable costume for

the work; but she wore no wrap of any kind, and the morning air was keen.

I noticed as she walked toward me that her gait was a little uncertain.

Once she put out her hand as if seeking something to grasp, and once she

staggered and stopped. I hastened to her assistance, and saw as I

approached her that she was colourless even to her lips; her eyes were

bright and sunken, with large black circles round them, and the lids were

heavy. I drew her hand through my arm without more formal greeting, and

she grasped it gratefully for a moment, then dropped it and stepped back.

"I forgot," she said, "it seems so natural to see you anywhere. But don't

touch me. I shall infect you."

"I shall have to go home and change in any case," I answered briskly.

"I've been up all night with a poor woman," she said, "and I'm just tired

out. Don't look concerned, though. I shall not take small-pox. My own

illness, you remember, was a blessing in disguise, and I am sure the

absorbing distraction of helping to relieve others--" she stopped short,

looked about her confusedly, and then exclaimed: "It is quite time I went

to bed. I declare I don't know the Hospital Tent from the sandy common,

nor a rabbit running about from a convalescent child, and the whin bushes

are waltzing round me derisively." She swayed a little, recovered herself,

tried to laugh, then threw up her hands, and fell forward into my arms.

I carried her to her tent, guided by one of the men. On the way Dr. James

joined us. We laid her on her bed and looked anxiously for symptoms of the

dreadful disease, but there were none.

"No, you see," Dr. James declared, "it's just what I expected--sheer

exhaustion, and nothing else. But she'd better be got out of this

atmosphere at once."

She was in a semi-unconscious, semi-somnolent state, half syncope, half

sleep, and there was nothing to be gained by rousing her just then, so we

wrapped her up warmly in shawls, sent for my dogcart, and lifted her on

the back seat, where I supported her as best I could, while my man drove

us to As-You-Like-It.

Colonel Golquhoun was not up when we arrived, but I waited to see her

swallow some champagne after she had been put to bed, and in the meantime

the bustle had aroused him. When he learnt the occasion of it, his wrath

knew no bounds. He could not have abused me in choicer language if I had

been one of his own subalterns. But I managed to keep my temper until I

could get a word in, and then I mildly suggested that the best thing he

could do, as he was so afraid of infection, was to give himself leave, and

be off. "Nobody will expect _you_ to stay and look after your wife,"

I said. "You'd better go to town."

It was what he would have done if I had not advised it, but the habit of

opposing me was becoming so inveterate that he changed his mind, and,

rather than act upon a suggestion of mine, ran the risk of living in

barracks until all fear of infection was over.

Happily Evadne suffered from nothing worse than exhaustion, and soon

recovered her strength; but I never could agree with Dr. James about the

merit of her conduct during the epidemic.

CHAPTER X.

It was about this time, that is to say, immediately after the outbreak of

small-pox was over, and in the height of the summer, that Mr. and Lady

Adeline Hamilton-Wells returned from a prolonged absence abroad, and

settled themselves for a few months at Hamilton House. I happened to be in

London when they arrived, and saw them there as they passed through. Lady

Adeline made particular inquiries about Evadne. "I don't think you, any of

you, understand that girl," she said. "She is shy, and should be set

going. She requires to be _induced_ to come forward to do her share

of the work of the world, but, instead of helping her, everybody lets her

alone to mope in luxurious idleness at As-You-Like-It."

"She is never idle," I protested.

"I know what you mean," Lady Adeline answered, "She sits and sews; but

that is idle trifling for a woman of her capacity. She was out of health

and good-for-nothing when I saw her last with Mrs. Orton Beg in Paris, and

therefore I held my peace; but now I mean to take her out of herself, and

show her her mistake,"

"I hope you will be able to do so," I said, and I was not speaking

ironically; but all the same I scarcely expected that she would succeed.

The day after my return home, however, which was only a week later, I

called at Hamilton House, and it seemed to me then that she had already

made a very good beginning. It was a brilliant afternoon, and I had walked

through the fields from Fountain Towers, and found Lady Adeline alone for

the moment, sitting out on the terrace under an awning, somewhat overcome

by the heat.

"You have arrived at an acceptable time, as you always do," she said in

her decided kindly way. "I am enjoying a brief period of repose before the

racket begins again, and I invite you to share it."

"The racket?" I inquired.

"No, the repose," she replied. "Angelica is staying here, and Evadne--"

"Mrs. Colquhoun and racket!" I ejaculated.

"Well, it is difficult to associate the two ideas, I confess," she

answered; "but you will see for yourself. Angelica makes the racket, of

course, but Evadne enjoys it. I went to As-You-Like-It as soon as I could,

without waiting for her to call upon me, and I found her just as you had

led me to expect, all staid propriety and precision, hiding deep dejection

beneath an affectation of calm content--at least, that was my

interpretation of her attitude--and inclined to be stiff with me; but I

approached her as her mother's oldest and dearest friend, and she softened

at once."

"And you brought her here?"

"That is quite the proper word for it," she rejoined. "I just brought her.

I insisted upon her coming. I gave her no choice. And I also asked Colonel

Colquhoun, but he declined. He said he thought Evadne would be all the

better for getting away from home, and I agreed with him. He comes over,

however, occasionally, and they seem to be very good friends. I don't

dislike him at all."

This was said tentatively, but I did not care to discuss Colonel

Colquhoun, and therefore, to change the subject, I asked Lady Adeline how

she found Angelica.

"Very much improved in every way," she answered. "The happiest

understanding has come to exist between herself and her husband since that

dreadful occurrence. They are simply inseparable. She said to me the other

day that her only chance of ever showing to any advantage at all would be

against the quiet background of her husband's unobtrusive goodness. And I

think myself that a great many people would never have believed in her if

he had not. All her faults are so apparent, alas! while the very real and

earnest purpose of her life is so seldom seen."

"She has been working very hard lately, I believe."

"Yes," Lady Adeline answered; "but I am thankful to say she has set up a

private secretary, and who do you think it is? Our dear good Mr. Ellis!"

"I am heartily glad to hear of it," I said, "both for his sake and hers."

"Yes," she agreed. "It did not seem right that he should ever go away from

amongst us, and you know how we all felt the severance after Diavolo went

into the service, and there seemed no help for it, as his occupation was

over. I am afraid, poor fellow, his experiences since he left us have been

anything but happy. All that is over now, however, and it does seem so

natural to have him about again!"

"He must make an admirable secretary," I said.

"Admirable!" she agreed--"in every way, for I don't think Angelica would

ever have got on quite so well with anybody else. He was always able to

make her respect him, and now the habit is confirmed, so that he has more

influence with her for good than almost anybody else--a restraining

influence, you know. Her great fault still is impatience. She thinks

everything should be put right the moment she perceives it to be wrong,

and would raise revolutions if she were not restrained. It is always

difficult to make her believe that evolution if slower is surer. But here

they are."

As Lady Adeline spoke, Angelica, accompanied by Mr. Kilroy and Mr. Ellis,

came out of the plantation to the left of the terrace upon which we were

sitting, and walked across the lawn toward us, while at the same moment

Diavolo and Evadne came round the corner of the house from the opposite

direction and went to meet them. Evadne carried a parasol, but wore

neither hat nor gloves. She looked very happy, listening to Diavolo's

chatter.

Angelica carried a fishing rod, and I thought, as she approached, that I

had never seen a more splendid specimen of hardy, healthy, vigorous young

womanhood.

Evadne looked sickly beside her, and drooping, like a pale and fragile

flower in want of water. The contrast must have struck Lady Adeline also,

for presently she observed: "Evadne was as strong as Angelica once. Do you

suppose her health has been permanently injured by that horrid Maltese

fever?"

"No," I said positively. "If she would give up sewing, and take a fishing

rod, and go out with Angelica in a sensible dress like that, she would be

as strong as ever in six months. But I fancy she would be shocked by the

bare suggestion."

Angelica hugged Diavolo heartily when they met, and then, being the taller

of the two, she put her arm round his neck, and all three strolled slowly

on toward us, Mr. Ellis and Mr. Kilroy having already come up on to the

terrace and sat down. While greeting the two latter I lost sight of the

Heavenly Twins, and when I looked at them again something had evidently

gone wrong. Angelica stood leaning on her rod berating Diavolo, who was

answering with animation, while Evadne looked from one to the other in

amazement, as the strange good child looks at the strange naughty ones.

Whatever the difference was it was soon over, and then they came on again,

talking and walking briskly, followed by four dogs.

"I _am_ vulgar, decidedly, at times," Angelica acknowledged as she

came up the steps. "I shouldn't be half so amusing if I were not." She

held out her hand to me, and then threw herself into the only unoccupied

chair on the terrace, but instantly jumped up again. "I beg your pardon,

Evadne," she said. "These are my society manners. When I am on the

platform or otherwise engaged in _Unwomanly_ pursuits outside the

Sphere, I have to be more considerate."

Some more chairs were brought out, one of which Diavolo placed beside me.

"This is for you," he said to Evadne; "I know you like to be near the

Don." Evadne flushed crimson.

"Did you ever hear that story?" Angelica asked me.

Evadne's embarrassment visibly increased. "Angelica, don't tell it," she

remonstrated; "It isn't fair."

Angelica laughed. "When Evadne first came here," she proceeded, "she sat

next you at dinner one night, and didn't know who you were; but it seems

you made such a profound and favourable impression upon her that afterward

she had the curiosity to ask, when she learnt that you were a doctor. 'A

doctor!' she exclaimed in surprise. 'He is more like a Don than a doctor!'

and you have been 'Don' to her intimates ever since."

"Well, I feel flattered," I said.

"I feel as if I ought to apologise," Evadne began--"only I meant no

disrespect."

"My dear," Angelica interposed, "he is delighted to be distinguished by

you in any way. But, by the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked"--and

Colonel Colquhoun came out on to the terrace through the drawing room

behind us. He shook hands with us all, his wife included, and then sat

down.

"I say, Evadne--" Diavolo began.

"My dear boy," said Lady Adeline, "you mustn't call Mrs. Colquhoun by her

Christian name."

"Christian!" jeered Diavolo. "Now, that _is_ a good one! There's

nothing Christian about Evadne. We looked her up in the dictionary ages

ago, didn't we, Angelica? The name means Well-pleasing-one, as nearly as

possible, and it suits her sometimes. Evadne--classical Evadne--was noted

for her devotion to her husband, and distinguished herself finally on his

funeral pyre--she ex-pyred there."

We all groaned aloud. "It was a somewhat theatrical exit, I confess,"

Diavolo pursued. "But, I say, Angelica, wouldn't it be fun to burn the

colonel, and see Evadne do suttee on his body--only I doubt if she would!"

He turned to Evadne.

"Mrs. Colquhoun," he began ceremoniously; "may I have the honour of

calling you by your heathen name--as in the days beyond recalling?"

"When you are good," she answered.

"Ugh!" he exclaimed. "I should have had more respect for your honesty if

you said 'no' at once. And it is very absurd of you, too, Evadne, because

you know you are going to marry me when Colonel Colquhoun is promoted to

regions of the blest. She would have married me first, only you stole a

march on me, sir," he added, addressing Colonel Colquhoun. "However, I

feel as if something were going to happen _now_, at last! There was a

banshee wailing about my quarters in a minor key, very flat, last night.

She had come all the way from Ireland to warn Colonel Colquhoun, and

mistaken the house, I suppose."

"My dear--"

We all looked round. It was Mr. Hamilton-Wells addressing Lady Adeline in

his most precise manner. He was standing in the open French window just

behind us, tapping one hand with the _pince-nez_ he held in the

other.

"My dear, the cat has five kittens."

"My _dear!_" Lady Adeline exclaimed.

"They have only just arrived and--"

"Never mind them _now_," she cried hurriedly.

"But, my dear, you were anxious to know."

"I don't want to know in the least," she protested.

"But only this morning you said--"

"Oh, that was upstairs," she interrupted.

"What difference does that make?" he wanted to know. "You don't mean to

say you are anxious about the cat when you are upstairs, and not anxious

when you come down?"

Lady Adeline sank back in her chair, and resigned herself to a long

altercation. Before it ended everybody else had disappeared, and I saw no

more of Evadne on that occasion. But during the next few weeks I had many

opportunities of observing the wonderful way she was waking up under the

influence of the Heavenly Twins.

They gave her no time for reflection; it was the life of action against

the life of thought, and it suited her.

The ladies frequently made my house the object of an afternoon walk, and

stayed for tea. Lady Adeline declared that the "girls" dragged her over

because they wanted a new victim to torment with their superabundant

animal spirits. The superabundance was all Angelica's, I knew, but still

Evadne was an accomplice, and they neither of them spared me in those

days. They would rob my hot-houses of the best fruits and flowers,

disarrange my books, turn pictures they did not like with their faces to

the wall, drape my statues fantastically, criticise what they called my

absurd bachelor habits, and give me good advice on the subject of marriage;

Lady Adeline sitting by meanwhile, aiding and abetting them with smiles,

although protesting that she would not allow them to make me the butt of

their idle raillery.

Evadne had a passion for the scent of gorse. She crammed pockets, sleeves,

shoes, and the bosom of her dress with the yellow blossoms, and I often

found these fragrant tokens of her presence scattered about my house after

she had been there. Once, when we were all out walking together, she

stopped to pick some from a bush, and as she was putting them into her

bodice she made a remark which gave me pause to ponder.

"You will want to know why I do that, I suppose," she said. "You will be

looking for a motive, for some secret spring of action. The simple fact

that I love the gorse won't satisfy you. You would like to know why I love

it, when I first began to love it, and anything else about it that might

enable you to measure my feeling for it."

This was so exactly what I was in the habit of doing with regard to many

matters that I could not say a word. But what struck me as significant

about the observation was the obvious fact, gathered by inference, that,

while I had been studying her, she also had been studying me, and I had

never suspected it.

She walked on with Angelica after she had spoken, and I dropped behind

with Lady Adeline.

"_Your_ Evadne and Colonel Colquhoun's wife are two very different

people," I said. "The one is a lively girl, the other a sad and bitter

woman."

"Sad, not bitter," Lady Adeline corrected.

"I have heard her say bitter things!" I maintained.

"You may, perhaps, have heard her condemn wrong ones rather too

emphatically," Lady Adeline suggested. "But all this is only a phase. She

is in rather a deep groove at present, but we shall be able to get her out

of it."

"I don't know," I answered dubiously. "I don't think it is that exactly. I

believe there is some kind of warp in her mind, I perceive it, but can

neither define nor account for It yet. It is something morbid that makes

her hold herself aloof. She has never allowed anybody in the neighbourhood

to be intimate with her. Even I, who have seen her oftener than anybody,

never feel that I know her really well--that I could reckon upon what she

would do in an emergency. And I believe that there is something artificial

in her attitude; but why? What is the explanation of all that is unusual

about her?"

Lady Adeline shook her head, and was silent for some seconds, then she

said: "I once had a friend--but her moral nature quite halted. It was

because she had lost her faith in men. A woman who thinks that only women

can be worthy is like a bird with a broken wing. But I don't say that that

is Evadne's case at all. Since she came to us she has seemed to be much

more like one of those marvellous casks of sherry out of which a dozen

different wines are taken. The flavour depends on the doctoring. Here,

under Angelica's influence--why, she has filled your pocket with gorse

blossoms!"

It was true. In taking out my handkerchief, I had just scattered the

flowers, and so discovered that they were there. "Then you give her credit

for less individuality--you think her more at the mercy of her

surroundings than I do," I said.

But before she could answer me, Evadne herself had joined us. I suppose I

was looking grave, for she asked in a playful tone:

"Did he ever frolic, Lady Adeline, this solemn seeming--_Don_? Was he

always in earnest, even on his mother's lap, and occupied with weighty

problems of life and death when other babes were wondering with wide open

eyes at the irresponsible action of their own pink toes?"

Which made me reflect. For if I were in the habit of being a dull bore

myself it was no wonder that I seldom saw her looking lively.

The following week Evadne went home, and as soon as she was settled at

As-You-Like-It, she seemed to relapse once more into her former state of

apathy. I saw her day after day as I passed, sitting sewing in the wide

west window above the holly hedge; and so long as she was left alone she

seemed to be content; but I began to notice at this time that any

interruption at her favourite occupation did not please her. The summer

heat, the scent of flowers streaming through open windows, the song of

birds, the level landscape, here vividly green with the upspringing

aftermath, there crimson and gold where the poppies gleamed amongst the

ripening corn--all such sweet sensuous influences she looked out upon

lovingly, and enjoyed them--so long as she was left alone. On hot

afternoons, Diavolo would go and lie at her feet sometimes, with a cushion

under his head; and him she tolerated; but only, I am sure, because he

always fell asleep.

I had to go to As-You-Like-It one day to transact some business with

Colonel Colquhoun, and when we had done he asked me to go up into the

drawing room with him. "Come, and I'll show you a pretty picture," he

said.

It _was_ a pretty picture. They had both fallen asleep on that

occasion. It was a torrid day outside, but the deep bay where they were

was cool and shady. The windows were wide open, the outside blinds were

drawn down low enough to keep out the glare, but not so far as to hide the

view. Behind Evadne was a stand of flowers and foliage plants. Diavolo was

lying on the floor in his favourite attitude with a black satin cushion

under his head, and was, with his slender figure, refined features, thick,

curly, fair hair, and fine transparent skin, slightly flushed by the heat,

a perfect specimen of adolescent grace and beauty. He looked like a young

lover lying at the feet of his lady. Evadne was sitting in a low easy

chair, with a high back, against which her head was resting. Half her face

was concealed by a fan of white ostrich feathers which she held in her

left hand, and the moment I looked at her the haunting certainty of having

seen her in exactly that position once before recurred to me. She was

looking well that afternoon. Her glossy dark brown hair showed bright as

bronze against the satin background of the chair. She was dressed in a

gown of silver gray cashmere lined with turquoise blue silk, which showed

between the folds; cool colours of the best shade to set off the ivory

whiteness of her skin.

Colonel Colquhoun considered the group meditatively. "She keeps her

looks," he observed in an undertone; "and Diavolo's catching her up."

I looked at him inquiringly.

"She's six or eight years older than he is, you know," he explained; "but

you wouldn't think it now."

I wondered what he had in his mind.

"Times are changing," he proceeded. "Now, when I was a lad, if a lady had

liked me as well as Evadne likes that boy, I'd have taken advantage of her

preference."

"Not if the lady had been of her stamp," I said drily.

"Well, true for you," he acknowledged. "But it isn't the lady only in this

case. It's that young sybarite himself. He's as particular as she is. He

said the other day at mess--it was a guest night, and there was a big

dinner on, and somebody proposed 'Wine and Women' for a toast, but he

wouldn't drink it: 'Oh, spare me,' he said, in that slow way he has,

something like his father's; 'Wine and women, as you take them, are things

as coarse in the way of pleasure as pork and porter are for food.' We

asked him then to give us his own ideas of pleasure; but he said he didn't

think anybody there was educated up to them, even sufficiently to

understand them!--and he wasn't joking altogether, either," Colonel

Colquhoun concluded.

At that same moment Evadne opened her eyes wide, and looked at us a second

before she spoke, but showed no other sign of surprise.

"I am afraid I have been asleep," she said, rising deliberately, and

shaking hands with me across the prostrate Diavolo. "Do sit down."

She sank back into her own chair as she spoke, and fanned a fly from

Diavolo's face. "I never knew anyone sleep so soundly," she said, looking

down at him lovingly. "He rides out here nearly every day when he is not

on duty, simply for his siesta. Angelica is jealous, I believe, because he

will not go to her. He says there is no repose about Angelica, and that it

is only here with me that he finds the dreamful ease he loves."

There was a sound of talking outside just then, and a few minutes later

Angelica herself came in with her father.

"Oh, you _darling!_ you _are_ a pretty boy!" she exclaimed, when

she saw Diavolo, and then she went down on her knees beside him, put her

arms round his neck, pulled him up, and hugged him roughly, an attention

which he immediately resented. "Ah, I thought it was you!" he said,

opening his eyes. "Good-bye, sweet sleep, good-bye!" Then he sat up, and,

turning his back to Evadne, coolly rested himself against her knee. "I

suppose we can have tea now," he said. "There's always something to look

forward to. Papa, dear, touch the bell, to save the Colonel the trouble."

Colonel Colquhoun laughed, and rang it himself good-naturedly.

"Diavolo!" Evadne exclaimed, pushing him away, "I am not going to nurse a

great boy like you."

"Well, Angelica must, then," he said, changing his position so as to lean

against his sister. Angelica laid her hand on his head, and her face

softened. "Evadne _used_ to like to nurse me," he complained. "She's

not nearly so nice since she married. I say, Angelica, do you remember the

wedding breakfast, when we agreed to drink as much champagne as the

bridegroom? I swore I would never get drunk again, and I never have."

"Faith," said Colonel Colquhoun, "there are some who'd like to be able to

say the same thing."

Some dogs had followed Angelica in, and had now to be turned out, because

Evadne would not have dogs indoors. She said she liked a good dog's

character, but could not bear the smell of him.

"And how are the children?" Mr. Hamilton-Wells asked affably, when this

diversion was over.

"There are no children!" Evadne exclaimed in surprise.

"Are there not, indeed. Now, that is singular," he observed. Then he

looked at me as if he were about to say something interesting, but I

hastily interposed. I was afraid he was going to speculate about the

natural history of the phenomenon which had just struck him as being

singular. He knew perfectly well that Evadne had no children, but he was

subject, or affected to be subject, to moments of obliviousness, in which

he was wont to ask embarrassing questions.

"The weather is quite tropical," was the original observation I made. Mr.

Hamilton-Wells felt if the parting of his smooth, straight hair was

exactly in the middle, patted it on either side, then shook back imaginary

ruffles from his long white hands, and interlaced his jewelled fingers on

his lap.

"You were never in the tropics, I think you told me?" he said to Evadne,

with exaggerated preciseness. "Ah! now, I have been, off and on, several

times. The heat is very trying. I knew a lady, the wife of a Colonial

Governor, who used to be so overcome by it that she was obliged to undo

all her things, let them slip to the ground, and step out of them, leaving

them looking like a great cheese. She told me so herself, I assure you,

and she was an exceedingly stout person."

The Heavenly Twins went into convulsions suddenly.

"Is that tea at last?" Evadne asked.

Colonel Colquhoun and I both gladly moved to make room for the servants

who were bringing it in, and the conversation was not resumed until they

had withdrawn. Then Angelica began: "I came to make a last appeal to you,

Evadne. I want to tell you about a poor girl--"

"Oh, don't break this lovely summer silence with tales of woe!" Evadne

exclaimed, interrupting her. "I cannot do anything. Don't ask me. You

harrow my feelings to no purpose. I will not listen. It is not right that

I should be forced to know."

"Well, I think you are making a mistake, Evadne," Angelica replied. "Don't

you think so?" looking at me. "She is sacrificing herself to save herself.

She imagines she can secure her own peace of mind by refusing to know that

there is a weary world of suffering close at hand which she should be

helping to relieve. Suffering for others strengthens our own powers of

endurance; we lose them if we don't exercise them--and that is the way you

are sacrificing yourself to save yourself, Evadne. When some big trouble

of your own, one of those which cannot be denied, comes upon you, it will

crush you. You will have lost the moral muscle you should be exercising

now to keep it in good working order and develop it well for your own use

when you require it. It would not be worse for you to take a stimulant or

a sedative to wind yourself up to an artificially pleasurable state when

at any time you are not naturally cheerful--and that is what a too great

love of peace occasionally ends in."

Evadne waved her ostrich feather fan backward and forward slowly, and

looked out of the window. She would not even listen to this friendly

counsel, and I felt sure she was making a mistake.

I only saw her once again that summer under Lady Adeline's salutary

influence. It was a few days later, and Evadne was in an expansive mood.

She had been spending the day with Lady Adeline, and the two had been for

a drive together, and had overtaken me on the road and picked me up on

their way back to Hamilton House. I had been for a solitary ramble, and

was then returning to work, but Evadne said I must go back to tea with

them: "For your own sake, because it is a shame to waste a summer day in

work--a glorious summer day so evidently sent for our enjoyment."

"The greatest pleasure in life is to be in perfect condition for the work

one loves," I answered; but I was settling myself comfortably in the

carriage as I spoke, such is the consistency of man. But indeed it was not

very difficult to persuade me to idle that afternoon. I had been inclining

that way for weeks, under the influence of the intoxicating heat doubtless;

and presently, when I found myself comfortably seated on the wide stone

terrace outside the great drawing room at Hamilton House, under a shady

awning, looking down upon lawns vividly green and lovely gardens all aglow

with colour and alive with perfume, which is the soul of the flowers, I

yielded sensuous service to the hour, and gave myself up to the enjoyment

of it unreservedly.

Mr. Hamilton-Wells was there, making tea in the precisest manner, and

looking more puritanical than ever. How to reconcile his coldly formal

exterior with the interior from which emanated his choice of subjects in

conversation is a matter which I have not yet had time to study, although

I am convinced that the solution of the problem would prove to be of great

scientific value and importance. I was not in the habit of thinking of him

as either a man or a woman myself, however, but as a specimen of humanity

broadly, and domestically as a husband whom I always suspected of being a

sharp sword of the law, although I had never obtained the slightest

evidence of the fact.

Lady Adeline was lolling in a low cane chair, fatigued by her drive, and

longing aloud for tea; and Evadne was flitting about with her hat in her

hand, laughing and talking more than any of us. She was wearing an art

gown, very becoming to her, and suitable also for such sultry weather, as

Mr. Hamilton-Wells remarked.

"I suppose you are a strong supporter of the æsthetic dress movement," he

said, doubtless alluding to the graceful freedom of her delicate primrose

draperies.

"Not at all," she answered, seating herself on the arm of a chair near

Lady Adeline, and opening her fan gently as she spoke.

I was inspired to ask for more tea just then. Mr. Hamilton-Wells poured it

out and handed it to me. "You take milk," he informed me, "but no sugar."

Then he folded his hands and recommenced. "To return to the original point

of departure," he began, "which was modern dress, if I remember

rightly"--he smiled round upon us all, knowing quite well that he

remembered rightly--"that brings us by an obvious route to another

question of the day; I mean the position of women. How do you regard their

position at this latter end of the nineteenth century, Evadne?"

"I do not regard it at all, if I can help it," she answered incisively.

Mr. Hamilton-Wells dropped his outspread hands upon his knees.

"If I remember rightly," he said, "you take no interest in politics

either. That is quite a phenomenon at this latter end of the nineteenth

century."

"I have my duties--the duties of my social position, you know," she

answered, "and my own little pursuits as well, neither of which I can

neglect for the affairs of the world."

"But are they enough for you?" Lady Adeline ventured.

Evadne glanced up to see what she meant, and then smiled. "The wisdom of

ages is brought to the training of each little girl," she said; "and to

fit her for our position, she is taught that a woman's one object in life

is to be agreeable."

"You mean that a woman of decided opinions is not an agreeable person?"

Lady Adeline asked.

"Decided opinions must always be offensive to those who don't hold them,"

Evadne rejoined.

"A woman must know that the future welfare of her own sex, and the

progress of the world at large, depends upon the action of women now, and

the success attending it," Angelica observed comprehensively.

"Yes, but she knows also that her own comfort and convenience depend

entirely on her neutrality," Evadne answered. "It is not high-minded to be

neutral, I know, when it is put in that way; but a woman who is so becomes

exactly what the average man, taken at his word, would have her be, and he

is, we are assured, the proper person to legislate."

She looked at us all defiantly as she spoke, and furled her fan; and just

at that moment Colonel Colquhoun joined us. He had come to fetch her, and

his entrance gave a new turn to the conversation.

"It has been oppressively hot all day," he observed.

"Yes," Lady Adeline answered, "and I do so long for the mountains in

weather like this."

"Oh, do you?" said Evadne. "Are you subject to the magnet of the

mountains? I am not. I do not want to feel the nothingness of man; I like

to believe in his greatness, in his infinite possibilities. I like to

think of life as a level plain over which we can gallop to some goal--I

don't know what, but something desirable; and the actual landscape pleases

me best so. The great tumbled mountains make me melancholy, they are

always foreboding something untoward, even at the best of times; but the

open spaces, windswept and evident--I love them. I am at home on them. I

can breathe there--I am free."

This was the natural woman at last, in her aspirations unconsciously

showing herself superior to the artificial creature she was trying to be.

"I hate the melancholy mountains," the ever-ready Angelica burst forth. "I

loathe the inconstant sea. The breezy plain for a gallop! It is there that

one feels free!"

Colonel Colquhoun looked at Evadne meditatively, and slowly twisted each

end of his heavy blond moustache. "I haven't seen you riding for some time

now," he said, "and it's a pity, for you've a fine seat on a horse."

I was obliged to make up that night for the time lost in the afternoon,

and the dawn had broken when at last I put my work away. I opened the

study windows wider to salute it. A lark was singing somewhere out of

sight--

Die Lerche, die im augen nicht,

Doch immer in den ohren ist--

and the ripples of undecipherable sound struck some equally inarticulate

chord of sense, and fell full-fraught with association. The breeze,

murmurous amongst the branches, set the leaves rustling like silk attire.

Did I imagine it, or was there really a faint sweet perfume of yellow

gorse in the air? A thrush on a bough below began to flute softly, trying

its tones before it burst forth, giving full voice to its enthusiasm in

one clear call, eloquent of life and love and longing, and all expressed

in just three notes--crotchet, quaver, crotchet and rest--which shortly

shaped themselves to a word in my heart, a word of just three syllables,

the accent being on the penultimate--"E-vad-ne! E-vad-ne!"

Good Heavens!

I roused myself. Not a proper state of mind certainly for a man of my

years and pursuits. Why, how old was I? Thirty-five--not so old in one

way, yet ten years older at least than--stop--sickly sentimentality. "Life

is real, life is earnest," and there must be no dreams of scented gorse,

of posing in daffodil draperies, for me. Must take a holiday and

rest--take my "agreeable ugliness" off (I was amused when the Heavenly

Twins told me their mother talked of my "agreeable ugliness"; but, now,

did I like it? No. I was cynical when I said it) take my "agreeable

ugliness" off to the mountains--"Turn thine eyes unto the mountains"--the

magnet of the mountains. Yes, I felt it. I delighted to do so. I was not

morbid. To the mountains! to the cold which stays corruption, the snows

which are pure, and the eternal silence! By ten o'clock that night I was

well on my way.

CHAPTER XI

I went abroad that year for my holiday, but spent the last week of it in

London on my way home. All the vapours of sentimentality had disappeared

by that time. My nerves had been braced in the Alps, my mind had been

calmed and refreshed by the warm blue Mediterranean, my sense of

comparison emphasized in Egypt, where I perceived anew the law of

mutability, the inevitable law, by the decree of which the human race is

eternal, while we, its constituent atoms, have but a moment of intensity

to blaze and burn out. Perishable life and permanent matter are we, with a

limit that may be prolonged in idea by such circumstances as we can dwell

on with delight, one love-lit day being longer in the record than whole

monotonous years. It is good to live and love, but if we possess the

burden of life unrelieved by the blessing of love, or the hope of it,

well--why despair? Man is matter animated by a series of emotions, the

majority of which are pleasurable. Disappointment ends like success, and

the futile dust of nations offers itself in evidence of the vanity of all

attributes except wisdom, the wisdom that teaches us to accept the

inevitable silently, and endure our moment with equally undemonstrative

acquiescence, whether it comes full fraught with the luxury of living, or

only brings us that which causes us to contemplate of necessity, and

without shrinking, the crowning dignity of death.

I had come back ready for work, and could have cheerfully dispensed with

that week's delay in London; but I had promised it to an old friend, in

failing health, whom I would not disappoint.

The people at Morne, the Kilroys, the Hamilton-Wellses, the Colquhouns,

all my circle of intimate friends, had fallen into the background of my

recollection during my tour abroad; but, now again, when I found myself so

near them, the old habitual interests began to be dominant. I had sent

notes to apologize for not wishing them good-bye before my sudden

departure, but I had not written to any of them or heard from them during

my absence, and did not know where they might all be at the moment; and I

was just wondering one night as I walked toward Piccadilly from the

direction of the Strand--I was just wondering if they were all as I had

left them, if the civil war, as Angelica called it, was being waged as

actively as ever between herself and Evadne upon the all-important

point--and that made me think of Evadne herself. I had banished her name

from my mind for weeks, but now some inexplicable trick of the brain

suddenly set her before me as I oftenest saw her, sitting at work in the

wide west window overlooking the road, and glancing up brightly at the

sound of my horse's hoofs or carriage wheels as I rode or drove past, to

salute me. A lady might wait and watch so at accustomed hours for her

lover; but he would stop, and she would open the window, and lean out with

a flower in her hand for him, and perhaps she would kiss it before she

tossed it to him, and he would catch it and go on his way rejoicing--a

pretty poetical dream and easy of fulfilment, if only one could find the

lady, suitably circumstanced.

I had arrived at Piccadilly Circus by this time, at the turn into Regent

Street where the omnibuses stop, and was delayed for a moment or two by

the casual crowd of loiterers and people struggling for places, and by

those who were alighting from the various vehicles. Not being in any hurry

myself, it amused me to observe the turmoil, the play of human emotion

which appeared distinctly on the faces of those who approached me and were

lost to sight again as soon as seen in the eddy and whirl of the crowd.

There was temper here, and tenderness there; this person was steadily bent

on business, that on pleasure, and one fussy little man escorting his

family somewhere was making the former of the latter. There were two young

lovers alone with their love so far as any outward consciousness of the

crowd was concerned; and there was a young wife silent and sad beside a

neglectful elderly husband. It was the 'buses from the west end I was

watching. One had just moved off toward the Strand, and another pulled up

in its place, and the people began to alight--a fat man first in a frenzy

of haste, a sallow priest whose soul seemed to sicken at the sight of the

seething mass of humanity amongst which he found himself, for he hesitated

perceptibly on the step, like a child in a bathing machine who shrinks

from the water, before he descended and was engulfed in the crowd. A

musician with his instrument in a case, two fat women talking to each

other, a little Cockney work-girl, and her young man, and then--a lady.

There could be no mistake about her social status. The conductor, standing

by the step, recognized it at once, and held out his arm to assist her.

The gaslight flared full upon her face, the expression of which was

somewhat set. She wore no veil, and if she did not court observation, she

certainly did not shun it. She was quietly but richly dressed, and had one

seen her there on foot in the morning, one would have surmised that she

was out shopping, and looked for the carriage which would probably have

been following her; but a lady, striking in appearance and of

distinguished bearing, alighting composedly from an omnibus at Piccadilly

Circus between nine and ten at night, and calmly taking her way alone up

Regent Street was a sight which would have struck one as being anomalous

even if she had been a stranger. But this lady was no stranger to me. I

should have recognized her figure and carriage had her countenance been

concealed. I had turned hot and cold at the first foreshadowing of her

presence, and would fain have found myself mistaken, but there was no

possibility of a doubt. She passed me without haste, and so close that I

could have laid my hand upon her shoulder. But I let her go in sheer

astonishment. What, in the name of all that is inexplicable, was Evadne

doing there alone at that time of night? Such a proceeding was hardly

decent, whatever her excuse, and it was certainly not safe. This last

reflection aroused me, and I started instantly to follow her, intending to

overtake her, and impose my escort upon her. She was out of sight, because

she had turned the corner, but she could not have gone far, and I hurried

headlong after her, nearly upsetting a man who met me face to face as I

doubled into Regent Street. It was Colonel Colquhoun himself, in a joyful

mood evidently, and for once I could have blessed his blinding potations.

He recognized me, but had apparently passed Evadne.

"Ah, me boy, you here!" he exclaimed, with an assumption of facetious

_bonhomie_ particularly distasteful to me. "All the world lives in

London, I think! It's where you'll always come across anyone you want. Sly

dog! Following a lady, I'll be bound! By Jove! I wouldn't have thought it

of you, Galbraith! But you'll not find anything choice in Regent Street.

Come with me, and I'll introduce you--"

"Excuse me," I interrupted, and hurried away from the brute. How had he

missed Evadne? Perhaps he was looking the other way. But what a position

for her to be in. Supposing he had recognized her, my being so close would

have made it none the better for her. And could I be sure that he had not

seen her? I did not think he was the kind, of man, with all his faults, to

lay a trap even for an enemy whom he suspected; but, still, one never

knows.

Evadne was far ahead by this time, but the places of amusement were still

open, and therefore there were few people in Regent Street. It is not

particularly well lighted, but I was soon near enough to make her out by

her graceful dignified carriage, which contrasted markedly with that of

every other woman and girl I saw. In any other place her bearing would

have struck me as that of a person accustomed to consideration, even if I

had not known her; but here, judging by the confident way she held her

head up, I should have been inclined to set her down either as a most

abandoned person, or as one who was quite unconscious of anything peculiar

in her present proceedings. In another respect, too, she was very unlike

the women and girls who were loitering about the Street, peering up

anxiously into the face of every man they met. Evadne seemed to see no

one, and passed on her way, superbly indifferent to any attention she

might be attracting. The distance between us had lessened considerably,

and I could now have overtaken her easily, but I hesitated. I could not

decide whether it would be better to join her, or merely to keep her in

sight for her own safety. I was inclined to blame her severely for her

recklessness. She had already passed her husband, and might meet half the

depôt, or be recognized by Heaven knows who, before she got to the top of

the street; and, as it was, she was attracting considerable attention.

Scarcely a man met her who did not turn when he had passed, and look after

her; and anyone of these might be an acquaintance. My impulse had been to

insist upon her getting into a hansom, and allowing me to see her safe

home; but it had occurred to me, upon reflection, that I might compromise

her more fatally by being seen with her under such circumstances than

could happen if she went alone.

While I hesitated, a tall thin man with a gray beard, whom I thought I

recognized from photographs seen in shop windows, met her, stared hard as

he passed, stood a minute looking after her and then turned and followed

her. If he were the man I took him to be, he would probably know her, and

my first impression was that he did so, and had recognised her, and been,

like myself, too astonished to speak. If so, he quickly recovered himself,

and, as he evidently intended to address her now, I was half inclined to

resign my responsibility to him. Then I thought that if I joined her also

nothing could be said. Two men of known repute may escort a lady anywhere

and at any time. I quickened my steps, but purposely let him speak first.

Coming up with her from behind, he began in a tone which was more

caressing than respectful. "It is a fine night," he said.

Evadne started visibly, looked at him, and shrank two steps away; but she

answered, in a voice which I could hardly recognise as hers, it was so

high and strident; "I should call it a chilly night," she said.

"Well, yes, perhaps," he answered, "for the time of the year. Are you

going for a walk?"

"I--I don't know," she replied, looking doubtfully on ahead.

She was walking at a pretty rapid rate as it was, and her elderly

interlocutor had some difficulty in keeping up with her.

"Perhaps if we turned down one of these side streets to the left, it would

be quieter, and we could talk," he suggested.

"I don't think I want either to be quiet or to talk," she said, suddenly

recovering her natural voice and tone.

"Well, what do you want, then?" he asked.

She looked up at him, and slackened her speed. "Perhaps, since you are so

good as to trouble yourself about me at all," she said, "I may venture to

ask if you will kindly tell me where in London I am?"

His manner instantly changed. "You are in Regent Street," he answered.

"And that lighted place behind us, where the crowd is--what is that?"

"You must mean Piccadilly Circus."

"And if I walk on what shall I come to?"

"Oxford Street. You don't seem to know London. Don't you live here?"

"I do not live in London."

"You have lost your way, perhaps; can I direct you anywhere?"

"No, thank you," she answered. "I can get into a hansom, you know, when I

am tired of this."

"If I might venture to advise, I should say do so at once," he rejoined,

slightly raising his hat as he spoke, and then he slipped behind her, and

furtively hurried across the street, a considerably perplexed man, I

fancied, and, judging by the way he peered to right and left as he went,

one who was suffering from some sudden dislike to being recognised.

Evadne paid as little heed to his departure as she had done to his

approach. A few steps farther brought her to a stand of hansom cabs. She

hesitated a moment, and then got into one. I took the next, and directed

the driver to follow her, being determined either to see her back to her

friends, or to interfere if I found that she meant to continue her ramble.

Her driver struck into Piccadilly at the next turn, and then drove

steadily west for about half an hour. By that time we had come to a row of

handsome houses, at one of which he stopped, and my man stopped also at an

intelligent distance behind, but Evadne never looked back. She got out and

ascended the steps with the leisurely air peculiar to her. The door was

opened as soon as she rang, and she entered. A moment later a footman came

out on to the pavement and paid the driver, with whom he exchanged a

remark or two. As he returned, the light from the hall streamed out upon

him, and I saw, with a sense of relief which made me realise what the

previous tension had been, that he wore the Hamilton-Wells livery, and

then I recognised the Hamilton-Wells' town house. The driver of the now

empty hansom turned his horse, and walked him slowly back in the direction

from which he had come. The incident was over; but what did it all mean?

The whole thing seemed so purposeless. What had taken her out at all? Was

it some jealous freak? Women have confessed to me that they watch their

husbands habitually. One said she did it for love of excitement: there was

always a risk of being caught, and nothing else ever amused her half so

much. Another declared she did it because she could not afford to employ a

private detective, and she wanted to have evidence always ready in case it

should suit her to part from her husband at any time. Another said she

loved her husband, and it hurt her less to know than to suspect. But I

could not really believe that Evadne would do such a thing for any reason

whatever. She was fearlessly upright and honest about her actions; and her

self-respect would have restrained her if ever an isolated impulse had

impelled her to such a proceeding. But still--

"Will you wait until the lady returns, sir?" the driver asked at last,

peeping down upon me through the trap in the roof. If he had not spoken I

might have sat there half the night, puzzling out the problem. Now,

however, that he had roused me, I determined to leave it for the present,

I remembered my duty to the friend with whom I was staying, and hurried

back, resolving to go to Evadne herself next day, and ask her point blank

to explain. I believed she would do so, for in all that concerned her own

pursuits--the doings of the day--I had always found her almost curiously

frank. After this wise determination, I ought to have been philosopher

enough to sleep upon the matter, but her ladyship's escapade cost me my

night's rest, and took me to her early next morning, in an angry and

irritable mood.

I sent up my card, and Evadne received me at once in Lady Adeline's

boudoir,

"This is an unexpected pleasure," she said. "How did you know I was in

town?"

"I saw you in Regent Street last night," I answered bluntly. "What were

you doing there?"

"What were you doing there yourself?" she said.

The question took me aback completely, and the more so as it was asked

with an unmistakable flash of merriment.

"Answer me my question first," I said. "You could have no business out

alone in London at that time of night, laying yourself open to insult."

"I don't recognise your right to question me at all," she answered,

unabashed.

"I have the right of any gentleman who does his duty when he sees a lady

making--"

"A fool of herself? Thanks," she said, laughing. "The privilege of

protecting a woman, of saving her even in spite of herself from the

effects of her own indiscretion, is one of which a man seldom avails

himself, and I did not understand you at first. Excuse me. But how do you

know I could have no business out at that time of night? Do you imagine

that you know all my duties in life?"

I was bewildered by her confidence--by her levity, I may say, but I

persisted.

"I cannot believe that you had any business or duty which necessitated

your being in a disreputable part of London alone late at night," I said.

"But I hope you will allow me the right of an intimate friend to warn you

if you run risks--in your ignorance."

"Or to reprove me if I do so with my eyes open?" she suggested.

"To ask for an explanation, at all events, if I do not understand what

your motive could be."

"You are very kind," she said. "You want me to excuse myself if I can,

otherwise you will be forced to suspect something unjustifiable."

"That is the literal truth," I answered.

She laughed. "But you have not answered _my_ question," she said.

"What were you doing there yourself?"

"I had been dining at the Charing Cross Hotel with a friend who had just

returned from India," I told her, "and I was walking back to the house of

the friend with whom I am staying. He lives in a street off Piccadilly."

"But what were you doing in Regent Street?"

"Following you."

She laughed again. "Did you see that old man speak to me?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Horrid old creature, is he not? He gave me such a start! Did you

recognise him?"

"Yes."

"I did not at first, but when I did, I thought I would make him useful."

She meditated for a little, then she said; "It did me good."

"What?" I asked.

"That start," she replied. "It quite roused me. But, now, tell me. I

should never have supposed that you had no business anywhere at any time;

why are you not equally charitable?"

I was silent.

"Tell me what you think took me there?"

"An unholy curiosity," I blurted out.

"That is an unholy inspiration which has only just occurred to you, and

you cannot entertain the suspicion for a moment," she said.

This was true.

"But, after all," she pursued, "what business have you to take me to task

like this? It is not a professional matter."

"I don't know that," I answered. This was another inspiration, and it

disconcerted her, for she changed countenance.

"You have a nice opinion of me!" she exclaimed.

"I have the highest opinion of you," I answered, "and nobody knows that

better than yourself. But what am I to think when I find you acting

without any discretion whatever?"

"Think that I am at the mercy of every wayward impulse."

"But I know that you are not," I replied; "and I am unhappy about you.

Will you trust me? Will you explain? Will you let me help you if I can? I

believe there is some trouble at the bottom of this business. Do tell me

all about it?"

"Well, I _will_ explain," she said, still laughing. "I was driving

past, and seeing you there, I thought I would horrify you, so I stopped

the carriage--"

"You got out of an omnibus!" I exclaimed.

"Well, that was my carriage for the time being," she answered, in no way

disconcerted. "You do not expect me to own that I was in an omnibus, do

you?"

"I wish you would be serious for a moment," I remonstrated. "I wish you

would tell me the truth."

"As I always do tell the truth if I tell anything, I think we had better

let the subject drop," she said, with a sigh, as if she were tired of it.

"You mean you cannot tell me?"

"That is what I mean."

I reflected for a moment. "Does Lady Adeline know that you were out last

night?" I asked.

"No," she replied. "She was out herself and I returned before she did.

"Then you have not told her either?"

She shook her head.

"I would really rather you confided in her than in me, if you can."

"Thank you," she answered drily.

"Can you?" I persisted.

"No, I cannot," was the positive rejoinder.

I rose to go. "Forgive my officiousness," I said. "I ventured to hope you

would make use of me, but I am afraid I have been forcing my services upon

you too persistently."

She rose impulsively, and held out both hands to me. "I wish I could thank

you," she said, looking up at me frankly and affectionately. "I wish I

could tell you how much I appreciate your goodness to me, and all your

disinterestedness. I wish I deserved it!" She clasped my hands warmly as

she spoke, then dropped them; and instantly I became conscious of an

indescribable sense of relief; and prepared to depart at once; but she

stopped me again with a word as I opened the door.

"Dr. Galbraith," she began, with another flash of merriment, "tell me, you

_were_ horrified, now, were you not?"

I jammed my hat on my head and left her. I did not mean to slam the door,

but her levity had annoyed me. I fancied her laughing as I descended the

stairs, and wondered at her mood, and yet I was re-assured by it. She

would not have been so merry if there had been anything really wrong, and

it was just possible that the half explanation she had given me and

withdrawn was the true one. She might have been in an omnibus for once for

some quite legitimate reason, and while it waited at Piccadilly Circus she

might have seen me as she had described, and got out in a moment of

mischief to astonish me. If that were her object, she had certainly

succeeded, and it seemed to me more likely than that she should just have

gone and returned for the sake of doing an unusual thing, which was the

only other explanation that occurred to me.

I saw Lady Adeline before I left the house, and found that Colonel

Colquhoun was not staying with them, nor did she seem to know that he had

been in town.

CHAPTER XII.

A cruel misfortune robbed me of a near relation at this time, and added

the rank of baronet, with a considerable increase of fortune, to my other

responsibilities. The increase of fortune was welcome in one way, as it

enabled me to enlarge a small private hospital which I had established on

my Fountain Towers estate, for the benefit of poor patients. Attending to

these, and to the buildings which were at once put in progress, was the

one absorbing interest of my life at that time.

During the next three months I only called once on Evadne, and that was a

mere formal visit which I felt in duty bound to pay her. I did not drive

past the house, either, oftener than I could help, but when I was obliged

to go that way I saw her, sitting sewing in her accustomed place, and she

would smile and bow to me--brightly at first, but after a time with a

wistful, weary expression, or I fancied so. It was of necessity a hurried

glimpse that I had, although my horse would slacken his speed of his own

accord as we approached the holly hedge that bounded her bower; but I

began to be uneasily aware of a change in her appearance. I might be

mistaken, but I certainly thought her eyes looked unnaturally large, as if

her cheeks had fallen away, and the little patient face was paler. In the

early summer, when she was well, she had been wont to flush upon the least

occasion, but now her colour did not vary, and I suspected that she was

again shutting herself up too much. Mrs. Orton Beg was at Fraylingay,

Diavolo was keeping his grandfather company at Morne, the Kilroys were in

town, the Hamilton-Wellses had gone to Egypt, and Colonel Colquhoun had

taken two months' leave and gone abroad also, so that she had no one near

her for whom she had any special regard. Colonel Colquhoun had called on

me before he left, and told me he was sure Evadne would hope to see a good

deal of me during his absence, and he wished I would look after

her--professionally, I inferred, and of course I was always prepared to do

so. But, so far, she had not required my services, happily, and for the

rest--well, my time was fully occupied, and I found it did not suit me to

go to As-You-Like-It. When I noticed the change in her appearance,

however, I began to think I would look in some day, just to see how she

really was, but before I could carry out the half formed intention she

came to me. It was during my consulting hours, and I was sitting at my

writing table, seeing my patients in rotation, when her name was

announced. She sauntered in in her usual leisurely way, shook hands with

me, and then subsided into the easy-chair on my right, which was placed

facing the window for my patients to occupy.

"I have a cold," she said, "and a pain under my right clavicle, and the

posterior lobe of my brain--oh, dear, I have forgotten it all!" she broke

off, laughing. "How _shall_ I make you understand?"

"You are in excellent spirits," I observed, "if you are not in very good

health."

"No, believe me," she answered. "The pleasure of seeing you again

enlivened me for a moment; but I am really rather down."

I had been considering her attentively from a professional point of view

while she was speaking, and saw that this was true. The brightness which

animated her when she entered faded immediately, and then I saw that her

face was thin and pale and anxious in expression. Her eyes wandered

somewhat restlessly; her attitude betokened weakness. She had a little

worrying cough, and her pulse was unequal.

"What have you been doing with yourself lately?" I asked, turning to my

writing table and taking up a pen, when I had ascertained this last fact.

"Dreaming," she said.

The answer struck me. "Dreaming," I repeated to myself, and then aloud to

her, while I affected to write. "Dreaming?" I said. "What about, for

example?"

"Oh! the Arabian Nights, the whole thousand and one of them, would not be

long enough to tell you," she replied. "I think my dreams have lasted

longer already."

"Are you speaking of day-dreams?" I asked.

"Yes."

"You imagine things as you sit at work, perhaps!"

"Yes." She spoke languidly, and evidently attached no special significance

either to my questions or her own answers, which was what I wished. "Yes,

that is my best time. While I work, I live in a world of my own creating;

in a beautiful happy dream--at least it was so once," she added, with a

sigh.

"I have heard you say you did not care to read fiction. You prefer to make

your own stories, is that the reason?"

"I suppose so," she said; "but I never thought of it before."

"And you never write these imaginings?"

"Oh, no! That would be impossible. It is in the tones of voices as I hear

them; in the expression of faces as I see them; in the subtle,

indescribable perception of the significance of events, and their intimate

relation to each other and influence on the lives of my dream friends that

the whole charm lies. Such impressions are too delicate for reproduction,

even if I had the mind to try. Describing them would be as coarse a

proceeding as eating a flower after inhaling its perfume."

"Did I understand you to say that this is the habit of years? Has your

inner life been composed of dreams ever since you were a child?"

"No," she replied, "I don't think as a child I was at all imaginative. I

liked to learn, and when I was not learning I lived an active, outdoor

life."

"Ah! Then you have acquired the habit since you grew up?"

"Yes. It came on by degrees. I used to think of how things might be

different; that was the way it began. I tried to work out schemes of life

in my head, as I would do a game of chess; not schemes of life for myself,

you know, but such as should save other people from being very miserable.

I wanted to do some good in the world,"--she paused here to choose her

words--"and that kind of thought naturally resolves itself into action,

but before the impulse to act came upon me I had made it impossible for

myself to do anything, so that when it came I was obliged to resist it,

and then, instead of reading and reflecting, I took to sewing for a

sedative, and turned the trick of thinking how things might be different

into another channel."

She was unconsciously telling me the history of her married life, showing

me a lonely woman gradually losing her mental health for want of active

occupation and a wholesome share of the work of the world to take her out

of herself. To a certain extent, then, I had been right in my judgment of

her character. Her disposition was practical, not contemplative; but she

had been forced into the latter attitude, and the consequence was,

perhaps--well, it might be a diseased state of the mind; but that I had

yet to ascertain.

"And are you happy in your dreams?" I inquired.

"I was," she said; "but my dreams are not what they used to be."

"How?" I asked.

"At first they were pleasant," she answered. "When I sat alone at work, it

was my happiest time. I was master of my dreams then, and let none but

pleasant shapes present themselves. But by degrees--I don't know how--I

began to be intoxicated. My imagination ran away with me. Instead of

indulging in a daydream now and then, when I liked, all my life became

absorbed in delicious imaginings, whether I would or not. Working,

walking, driving; in church; anywhere and at any time, when I could be

alone a moment, I lived in my world apart. If people spoke to me, I awoke

and answered them; but real life was a dull thing to offer, and the

daylight very dim, compared with the movement and brightness of the land I

lived in--while I was master of my dreams."

"Then you did not remain master of them always?"

"No. By degrees they mastered me; and now I am their puppet, and they are

demons that torment me. When I awake in the morning, I wonder what the

haunting thought for the day will be; and before I have finished dressing

it is upon me as a rule. At first it was not incessant, but now the

trouble in my head is awful."

I thought so! But she had said enough for the present. The confession was

ingenuously made, and evidently without intention. I merely asked a few

more questions about her general health, and then sent her home to nurse

her cold, promising to call and see how it was the next day.

When I opened my case book to make a note of her visit and a brief summary

of the symptoms she had described and betrayed, I hesitated a moment about

the diagnosis, and finally decided to write provisionally for my guidance,

or rather by way of prognosis, the one word, "Hysteria!"

CHAPTER XIII.

Next day I found that Evadne's cold was decidedly worse, and as the

weather was severe I ordered her to stay in her own rooms.

"Am I going to be ill?" she asked.

"No," I answered, pooh-poohing the notion.

"Doctor, you dash my hopes!" she said. "I am always happy when I am ill.

It _is_ such a relief."

I had heard her use the phrase twice before, but it was only now that I

saw her meaning. Physical suffering was evidently a relief from the mental

misery, and this proved that the trouble was of longer standing than I had

at first suspected. She had used the same expression, I remembered, when I

first attended her, during that severe attack of pneumonia.

Colonel Colquhoun had returned, she told me, but I did not see him that

day, as he was out. Next morning, however, I came earlier on purpose, and

encountered him in the hall. He was not in uniform, I was thankful to see,

for he was very apt to assume his orderly room manners therewith, and they

were decidedly objectionable to the average civilian, whatever military

men might think of them.

"Ah, how do you do?" he said. "So you've been having honours thrust upon

you? Well, I congratulate you, I'm sure, sincerely, in so far as they are

a pleasure to you; but I condole with you from the bottom of my heart for

your loss. I'm afraid Mrs. Colquhoun is giving you more trouble. Now,

don't say the trouble's a pleasure, for I'll not believe a word of it,

with all you have to occupy you."

"It is no pleasure to see her ill," I answered. "How is she to-day?"

"On my word I can't tell you, because I haven't seen her. I haven't the

_entrée_ to her private apartments. But come and see my new horse,"

he broke off--he was in an exceedingly good humour--"I got him in Ireland,

and I'm inclined to think him a beauty, but I'd like to have your opinion.

It's worth having."

The horse was like Colonel Colquhoun himself, showy; one of those high

steppers that put their feet down where they lift them up almost, and get

over no ground at all to speak of. Having occupied, without compunction,

in inspecting this animal, half an hour of the time he considered too

precious to be wasted on his wife, Colonel Colquhoun summoned Evadne's

maid to show me upstairs, and cheerfully went his way.

But that remark of his about the _entrée_ to his wife's apartments

had made an impression. I was in duty bound to follow up any clue to the

cause of her present state of mind, and here was perhaps a morbid symptom.

"Why have you quarrelled with your husband?" I asked in my most

matter-of-course tone, as soon as I was seated, and had heard about her

cold.

"I have not quarrelled with my husband," she answered, evidently

surprised.

"Then what does he mean by saying that he hasn't the _entrée_ to your

private apartments?"

"I am sure he made no complaint about that," she answered tranquilly.

This was true. He had merely mentioned the fact casually, and not as a

thing that affected his comfort or happiness in any way.

"Colonel Colquhoun and I are better friends now, if anything, than we have

ever been," she added of her own accord, with inquiry in her eyes, as if

she wanted to know what could have made me think otherwise.

I should have said myself that they were excellent friends, but what

precisely did "friends" mean? I scented something anomalous here. However,

it was not a point that I considered it advisable to pursue. I had

ascertained that there was no morbid feeling in the matter, and that was

all that I required to know. I only paid her a short visit that morning,

and did not return for two days; but I had been thinking seriously about

her case in the interval, and carefully prepared to inquire into it

particularly; and an evident increase of languor and depression gave me a

good opening.

"Tell me how you are to-day," I began. "Any trouble?"

"The worry in my head is awful!" she exclaimed. "Let me go downstairs. I

am better there."

She was essentially a child of light and air and movement, requiring

sunshine indoors as well as out to keep her in health. An Italian proverb

says where the sun does not come, the doctor does, and this had been only

too true in her case. It was pure animal instinct which had made the west

window of the drawing room her favourite place. Nature, animal and

vegetable, is under an imperative law to seek the sun, and she had

unconsciously obeyed it for her own good. But she required more than that

transient gleam in the western window; a sun bath daily, when it could be

had, is what I should have prescribed for her; and from her next remark I

judged that she had discovered for herself the harm which the deprivation

of light was doing her.

"I can see the sun all day long beyond the shadow of the house," she

continued, "but I want to feel it, too. I would like it to shine on me in

the early morning, and wake me up and warm me. There is no heat so

grateful; and I only feel half alive in these dark, damp rooms. I never

had bronchitis or was delicate at all in any way until we came here. Let

me go down, won't you?"

"Well, as your cold is so much better, you may go downstairs if you like.

But you mustn't go out," I answered. "How are you going to amuse

yourself?"

"Oh!"--she looked around the room as if in search of something--"I don't

know exactly. Work, I suppose."

"You don't read much?"

"No, not now," she answered, leaning forward with her hands clasped on her

lap, and looking dreamily into the fire.

"Does that mean that you used to read once?" I pursued, "You have plenty

of books here."

She looked toward the well-filled cases, "Yes," she said, "old friends, I

seldom open any of them now."