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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Marriage à la mode, by Mrs. Humphry Ward
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Marriage à la mode
+
+Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward
+
+Release Date: January 16, 2007 [EBook #20383]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARRIAGE À LA MODE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                            Marriage à la Mode
+
+                           BY MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY FRED PEGRAM
+
+NEW YORK
+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+1909
+
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN
+LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
+COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY MARY AUGUSTA WARD
+PUBLISHED, MAY, 1909
+
+
+
+
+TO L. C. W.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: DAPHNE FLOYD]
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+THIS STORY APPEARED IN ENGLAND UNDER THE TITLE OF "DAPHNE." THE
+PUBLISHERS ARE INDEBTED TO THE PROPRIETORS OF THE "PALL MALL MAGAZINE"
+FOR THEIR PERMISSION TO USE THE DRAWINGS BY MR. FRED PEGRAM.
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+Daphne Floyd
+
+"He caught the hand, he gathered its owner into a pair of strong arms,
+and bending over her, he kissed her"
+
+"In the dead of night Daphne sat up in bed, looking at the face and head
+of her husband beside her on the pillow"
+
+"Her whole being was seething with passionate and revengeful thought"
+
+
+
+
+Marriage à la Mode
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+"A stifling hot day!" General Hobson lifted his hat and mopped his
+forehead indignantly. "What on earth this place can be like in June I
+can't conceive! The tenth of April, and I'll be bound the thermometer's
+somewhere near eighty in the shade. You never find the English climate
+playing you these tricks."
+
+Roger Barnes looked at his uncle with amusement.
+
+"Don't you like heat, Uncle Archie? Ah, but I forgot, it's American
+heat."
+
+"I like a climate you can depend on," said the General, quite conscious
+that he was talking absurdly, yet none the less determined to talk, by
+way of relief to some obscure annoyance. "Here we are sweltering in this
+abominable heat, and in New York last week they had a blizzard, and
+here, even, it was cold enough to give me rheumatism. The climate's
+always in extremes--like the people."
+
+"I'm sorry to find you don't like the States, Uncle Archie."
+
+The young man sat down beside his uncle. They were in the deck saloon of
+a steamer which had left Washington about an hour before for Mount
+Vernon. Through the open doorway to their left they saw a wide expanse
+of river, flowing between banks of spring green, and above it thunderous
+clouds, in a hot blue. The saloon, and the decks outside, held a great
+crowd of passengers, of whom the majority were women.
+
+The tone in which Roger Barnes spoke was good-tempered, but quite
+perfunctory. Any shrewd observer would have seen that whether his uncle
+liked the States or not did not in truth matter to him a whit.
+
+"And I consider all the arrangements for this trip most unsatisfactory,"
+the General continued angrily. "The steamer's too small, the
+landing-place is too small, the crowd getting on board was something
+disgraceful. They'll have a shocking accident one of these days. And
+what on earth are all these women here for--in the middle of the day?
+It's not a holiday."
+
+"I believe it's a teachers' excursion," said young Barnes absently, his
+eyes resting on the rows of young women in white blouses and spring hats
+who sat in close-packed chairs upon the deck--an eager, talkative host.
+
+"H'm--Teachers!" The General's tone was still more pugnacious. "Going to
+learn more lies about us, I suppose, that they may teach them to
+school-children? I was turning over some of their school-books in a shop
+yesterday. Perfectly abominable! It's monstrous what they teach the
+children here about what they're pleased to call their War of
+Independence. All that we did was to ask them to pay something for their
+own protection. What did it matter to us whether they were mopped up by
+the Indians, or the French, or not? 'But if you want us to go to all the
+expense and trouble of protecting you, and putting down those fellows,
+why, hang it,' we said, 'you must pay some of the bill!' That was all
+English Ministers asked; and perfectly right too. And as for the men
+they make such a fuss about, Samuel Adams, and John Adams, and Franklin,
+and all the rest of the crew, I tell you, the stuff they teach American
+school-children about them is a poisoning of the wells! Franklin was a
+man of profligate life, whom I would never have admitted inside my
+doors! And as for the Adamses--intriguers--canting fellows!--both of
+them."
+
+"Well, at least you'll give them George Washington." As he spoke, Barnes
+concealed a yawn, followed immediately afterwards by a look of greater
+alertness, caused by the discovery that a girl sitting not far from the
+doorway in the crowd outside was certainly pretty.
+
+The red-faced, white-haired General paused a moment before replying,
+then broke out: "What George Washington might have been if he had held a
+straight course I am not prepared to say. As it is, I don't hesitate for
+a moment! George Washington was nothing more nor less than a rebel--a
+damned rebel! And what Englishmen mean by joining in the worship of him
+I've never been able to understand."
+
+"I say, uncle, take care," said the young man, looking round him, and
+observing with some relief that they seemed to have the saloon to
+themselves. "These Yankees will stand most things, but----"
+
+"You needn't trouble yourself, Roger," was the testy reply; "I am not in
+the habit of annoying my neighbours. Well now, look here, what I want to
+know is, what is the meaning of this absurd journey of yours?"
+
+The young man's frown increased. He began to poke the floor with his
+stick. "I don't know why you call it absurd?"
+
+"To me it seems both absurd and extravagant," said the other with
+emphasis. "The last thing I heard of you was that Burdon and Co. had
+offered you a place in their office, and that you were prepared to take
+it. When a man has lost his money and becomes dependent upon others, the
+sooner he gets to work the better."
+
+Roger Barnes reddened under the onslaught, and the sulky expression of
+his handsome mouth became more pronounced. "I think my mother and I
+ought to be left to judge for ourselves," he said rather hotly. "We
+haven't asked anybody for money _yet_, Uncle Archie. Burdon and Co. can
+have me in September just as well as now; and my mother wished me to
+make some friends over here who might be useful to me."
+
+"Useful to you. How?"
+
+"I think that's my affair. In this country there are always
+openings--things turning up--chances--you can't get at home."
+
+The General gave a disapproving laugh. "The only chance that'll help
+you, Roger, at present--excuse me if I speak frankly--is the chance of
+regular work. Your poor mother has nothing but her small fixed income,
+and you haven't a farthing to chuck away on what you call chances. Why,
+your passage by the _Lucania_ alone must have cost a pretty penny. I'll
+bet my hat you came first class."
+
+The young man was clearly on the brink of an explosion, but controlled
+himself with an effort. "I paid the winter rate; and mother who knows
+the Cunard people very well, got a reduction. I assure you, Uncle
+Archie, neither mother nor I is a fool, and we know quite well what we
+are about."
+
+As he spoke he raised himself with energy, and looked his companion in
+the face.
+
+The General, surveying him, was mollified, as usual, by nothing in the
+world but the youth's extraordinary good looks. Roger Barnes's good
+looks had been, indeed, from his childhood upward the distinguishing and
+remarkable feature about him. He had been a king among his schoolfellows
+largely because of them, and of the athletic prowess which went with
+them; and while at Oxford he had been cast for the part of Apollo in
+"The Eumenides," Nature having clearly designed him for it in spite of
+the lamentable deficiencies in his Greek scholarship, which gave his
+prompters and trainers so much trouble. Nose, chin, brow, the poising of
+the head on the shoulders, the large blue eyes, lidded and set with a
+Greek perfection, the delicacy of the lean, slightly hollow cheeks,
+combined with the astonishing beauty and strength of the head, crowned
+with ambrosial curls--these possessions, together with others, had so
+far made life an easy and triumphant business for their owner. The
+"others," let it be noted, however, had till now always been present;
+and, chief amongst them, great wealth and an important and popular
+father. The father was recently dead, as the black band on the young
+man's arm still testified, and the wealth had suddenly vanished, wholly
+and completely, in one of the financial calamities of the day. General
+Hobson, contemplating his nephew, and mollified, as we have said, by his
+splendid appearance, kept saying to himself: "He hasn't a farthing but
+what poor Laura allows him; he has the tastes of forty thousand a year;
+a very indifferent education; and what the deuce is he going to do?"
+
+Aloud he said:
+
+"Well, all I know is, I had a deplorable letter last mail from your poor
+mother."
+
+The young man turned his head away, his cigarette still poised at his
+lips. "Yes, I know--mother's awfully down."
+
+"Well, certainly your mother was never meant for a poor woman," said the
+General, with energy. "She takes it uncommonly hard."
+
+Roger, with face still averted, showed no inclination to discuss his
+mother's character on these lines.
+
+"However, she'll get along all right, if you do your duty by her," added
+the General, not without a certain severity.
+
+"I mean to do it, sir." Barnes rose as he spoke. "I should think we're
+getting near Mount Vernon by this time. I'll go and look."
+
+He made his way to the outer deck, the General following. The old
+soldier, as he moved through the crowd of chairs in the wake of his
+nephew, was well aware of the attention excited by the young man. The
+eyes of many damsels were upon him; and, while the girls looked and said
+nothing, their mothers laughed and whispered to each other as the young
+Apollo passed.
+
+Standing at the side of the steamer, the uncle and nephew perceived that
+the river had widened to a still more stately breadth, and that, on the
+southern bank, a white building, high placed, had come into view. The
+excursionists crowded to look, expressing their admiration for the
+natural scene and their sense of its patriotic meaning in a frank,
+enthusiastic chatter, which presently enveloped the General, standing in
+a silent endurance like a rock among the waves.
+
+"Isn't it fine to think of his coming back here to die, so simply, when
+he'd made a nation?" said a young girl--perhaps from Omaha--to her
+companion. "Wasn't it just lovely?"
+
+Her voice, restrained, yet warm with feeling, annoyed General Hobson. He
+moved away, and as they hung over the taffrail he said, with suppressed
+venom to his companion: "Much good it did them to be 'made a nation'!
+Look at their press--look at their corruption--their divorce scandals!"
+
+Barnes laughed, and threw his cigarette-end into the swift brown water.
+
+"Upon my word, Uncle Archie, I can't play up to you. As far as I've
+gone, I like America and the Americans."
+
+"Which means, I suppose, that your mother gave you some introductions to
+rich people in New York, and they entertained you?" said the General
+drily.
+
+"Well, is there any crime in that? I met a lot of uncommonly nice
+people."
+
+"And didn't particularly bless me when I wired to you to come here?"
+
+The young man laughed again and paused a moment before replying.
+
+"I'm always very glad to come and keep you company, Uncle Archie."
+
+The old General reddened a little. Privately, he knew very well that his
+telegram summoning young Barnes from New York had been an act of
+tyranny--mild, elderly tyranny. He was not amusing himself in
+Washington, where he was paying a second visit after an absence of
+twenty years. His English soul was disturbed and affronted by a wholly
+new realization of the strength of America, by the giant forces of the
+young nation, as they are to be felt pulsing in the Federal City. He was
+up in arms for the Old World, wondering sorely and secretly what the New
+might do with her in the times to come, and foreseeing an
+ever-increasing deluge of unlovely things--ideals, principles,
+manners--flowing from this western civilization, under which his own
+gods were already half buried, and would soon be hidden beyond recovery.
+And in this despondency which possessed him, in spite of the attentions
+of Embassies, and luncheons at the White House, he had heard that Roger
+was in New York, and could not resist the temptation to send for him.
+After all, Roger was his heir. Unless the boy flagrantly misbehaved
+himself, he would inherit General Hobson's money and small estate in
+Northamptonshire. Before the death of Roger's father this prospective
+inheritance, indeed, had not counted for very much in the family
+calculations. The General had even felt a shyness in alluding to a
+matter so insignificant in comparison with the general scale on which
+the Barnes family lived. But since the death of Barnes _père_, and the
+complete pecuniary ruin revealed by that event, Roger's expectations
+from his uncle had assumed a new importance. The General was quite aware
+of it. A year before this date he would never have dreamed of summoning
+Roger to attend him at a moment's notice. That he had done so, and that
+Roger had obeyed him, showed how closely even the family relation may
+depend on pecuniary circumstance.
+
+The steamer swung round to the landing-place under the hill of Mount
+Vernon. Again, in disembarkation, there was a crowd and rush which set
+the General's temper on edge. He emerged from it, hot and breathless,
+after haranguing the functionary at the gates on the inadequacy of the
+arrangements and the likelihood of an accident. Then he and Roger strode
+up the steep path, beside beds of blue periwinkles, and under old trees
+just bursting into leaf. A spring sunshine was in the air and on the
+grass, which had already donned its "livelier emerald." The air quivered
+with heat, and the blue dome of sky diffused it. Here and there a
+magnolia in full flower on the green slopes spread its splendour of
+white or pinkish blossom to the sun; the great river, shimmering and
+streaked with light, swept round the hill, and out into a pearly
+distance; and on the height the old pillared house with its flanking
+colonnades stood under the thinly green trees in a sharp light and shade
+which emphasized all its delightful qualities--made, as it were, the
+most of it, in response to the eagerness of the crowd now flowing round
+it.
+
+Half-way up the hill Roger suddenly raised his hat.
+
+"Who is it?" said the General, putting up his eyeglass.
+
+"The girl we met last night and her brother."
+
+"Captain Boyson? So it is. They seem to have a party with them."
+
+The lady whom young Barnes had greeted moved toward the Englishmen,
+followed by her brother.
+
+"I didn't know we were to meet to-day," she said gaily, with a mocking
+look at Roger. "I thought you said you were bored--and going back to New
+York."
+
+Roger was relieved to see that his uncle, engaged in shaking hands with
+the American officer, had not heard this remark. Tact was certainly not
+Miss Boyson's strong point.
+
+"I am sure I never said anything of the kind," he said, looking brazenly
+down upon her; "nothing in the least like it."
+
+"Oh! oh!" the lady protested, with an extravagant archness. "Mrs.
+Phillips, this is Mr. Barnes. We were just talking of him, weren't we?"
+
+An elderly lady, quietly dressed in gray silk, turned, bowed, and looked
+curiously at the Englishman.
+
+"I hear you and Miss Boyson discovered some common friends last night."
+
+"We did, indeed. Miss Boyson posted me up in a lot of the people I have
+been seeing in New York. I am most awfully obliged to her," said Barnes.
+His manner was easy and forthcoming, the manner of one accustomed to
+feel himself welcome and considered.
+
+"I behaved like a walking 'Who's Who,' only I was much more interesting,
+and didn't tell half as many lies," said the girl, in a high penetrating
+voice. "Daphne, let me introduce you to Mr. Barnes. Mr. Barnes--Miss
+Floyd; Mr. Barnes--Mrs. Verrier."
+
+Two ladies beyond Mrs. Phillips made vague inclinations, and young
+Barnes raised his hat. The whole party walked on up the hill. The
+General and Captain Boyson fell into a discussion of some military news
+of the morning. Roger Barnes was mostly occupied with Miss Boyson, who
+had a turn for monopoly; and he could only glance occasionally at the
+two ladies with Mrs. Phillips. But he was conscious that the whole group
+made a distinguished appearance. Among the hundreds of young women
+streaming over the lawn they were clearly marked out by their carriage
+and their clothes--especially their clothes--as belonging to the
+fastidious cosmopolitan class, between whom and the young
+school-teachers from the West, in their white cotton blouses, leathern
+belts, and neat short skirts, the links were few. Miss Floyd, indeed,
+was dressed with great simplicity. A white muslin dress, _à la_ Romney,
+with a rose at the waist, and a black-and-white Romney hat deeply
+shading the face beneath--nothing could have been plainer; yet it was a
+simplicity not to be had for the asking, a calculated, a Parisian
+simplicity; while her companion, Mrs. Verrier, was attired in what the
+fashion-papers would have called a "creation in mauve." And Roger knew
+quite enough about women's dress to be aware that it was a creation that
+meant dollars. She was a tall, dark-eyed, olive-skinned woman, thin
+almost to emaciation: and young Barnes noticed that, while Miss Floyd
+talked much, Mrs. Verrier answered little, and smiled less. She moved
+with a languid step, and looked absently about her. Roger could not make
+up his mind whether she was American or English.
+
+In the house itself the crowd was almost unmanageable. The General's ire
+was roused afresh when he was warned off the front door by the polite
+official on guard, and made to mount a back stair in the midst of a
+panting multitude.
+
+"I really cannot congratulate you on your management of these affairs,"
+he said severely to Captain Boyson, as they stood at last, breathless
+and hustled, on the first-floor landing. "It is most improper, I may say
+dangerous, to admit such a number at once. And, as for seeing the house,
+it is simply impossible. I shall make my way down as soon as possible,
+and go for a walk."
+
+Captain Boyson looked perplexed. General Hobson was a person of
+eminence; Washington had been very civil to him; and the American
+officer felt a kind of host's responsibility.
+
+"Wait a moment; I'll try and find somebody." He disappeared, and the
+party maintained itself with difficulty in a corner of the landing
+against the pressure of a stream of damsels, who crowded to the open
+doors of the rooms, looked through the gratings which bar the entrance
+without obstructing the view, chattered, and moved on. General Hobson
+stood against the wall, a model of angry patience. Cecilia Boyson,
+glancing at him with a laughing eye, said in Roger's ear: "How sad it is
+that your uncle dislikes us so!"
+
+"Us? What do you mean?"
+
+"That he hates America so. Oh, don't say he doesn't, because I've
+watched him, at one, two, three parties. He thinks we're a horrid,
+noisy, vulgar people, with most unpleasant voices, and he thanks God for
+the Atlantic--and hopes he may never see us again."
+
+"Well, of course, if you're so certain about it, there's no good in
+contradicting you. Did you say that lady's name was Floyd? Could I have
+seen her last week in New York?"
+
+"Quite possible. Perhaps you heard something about her?"
+
+"No," said Barnes, after thinking a moment. "I remember--somebody
+pointed her out at the opera."
+
+His companion looked at him with a kind of hard amusement. Cecilia
+Boyson was only five-and-twenty, but there was already something in her
+that foretold the formidable old maid.
+
+"Well, when people begin upon Daphne Floyd," she said, "they generally
+go through with it. Ah! here comes Alfred."
+
+Captain Boyson, pushing his way through the throng, announced to his
+sister and General Hobson that he had found the curator in charge of the
+house, who sent a message by him to the effect that if only the party
+would wait till four o'clock, the official closing hour, he himself
+would have great pleasure in showing them the house when all the
+tourists of the day had taken their departure.
+
+"Then," said Miss Floyd, smiling at the General, "let us go and sit in
+the garden, and feel ourselves aristocratic and superior."
+
+The General's brow smoothed. Voice and smile were alike engaging. Their
+owner was not exactly pretty, but she had very large dark eyes, and a
+small glowing face, set in a profusion of hair. Her neck, the General
+thought, was the slenderest he had ever seen, and the slight round lines
+of her form spoke of youth in its first delicate maturity. He followed
+her obediently, and they were all soon in the garden again, and free of
+the crowd. Miss Floyd led the way across the grass with the General.
+
+"Ah! now you will see the General will begin to like us," said Miss
+Boyson. "Daphne has got him in hand."
+
+Her tone was slightly mocking. Barnes observed the two figures in front
+of them, and remarked that Miss Floyd had a "very--well--a very foreign
+look."
+
+"Not English, you mean?--or American? Well, naturally. Her mother was a
+Spaniard--a South American--from Buenos Ayres. That's why she is so
+dark, and so graceful."
+
+"I never saw a prettier dress," said Barnes, following the slight figure
+with his eyes. "It's so simple."
+
+His companion laughed again. The manner of the laugh puzzled her
+companion, but, just as he was about to put a question, the General and
+the young lady paused in front, to let the rest of the party come up
+with them. Miss Floyd proposed a seat a little way down the slope, where
+they might wait the half-hour appointed.
+
+That half-hour passed quickly for all concerned. In looking back upon it
+afterwards two of the party were conscious that it had all hung upon one
+person. Daphne Floyd sat beside the General, who paid her a
+half-reluctant, half-fascinated attention. Without any apparent effort
+on her part she became indeed the centre of the group who sat or lay on
+the grass. All faces were turned towards her, and presently all ears
+listened for her remarks. Her talk was young and vivacious, nothing
+more. But all she said came, as it were, steeped in personality, a
+personality so energetic, so charged with movement and with action that
+it arrested the spectators--not always agreeably. It was like the
+passage of a train through the darkness, when, for the moment, the
+quietest landscape turns to fire and force.
+
+The comparison suggested itself to Captain Boyson as he lay watching
+her, only to be received with an inward mockery, half bitter, half
+amused. This girl was always awakening in him these violent or desperate
+images. Was it her fault that she possessed those brilliant eyes--eyes,
+as it seemed, of the typical, essential woman?--and that downy brunette
+skin, with the tinge in it of damask red?--and that instinctive art of
+lovely gesture in which her whole being seemed to express itself?
+Boyson, who was not only a rising soldier, but an excellent amateur
+artist, knew every line of the face by heart. He had drawn Miss Daphne
+from the life on several occasions; and from memory scores of times. He
+was not likely to draw her from life any more; and thereby hung a tale.
+As far as he was concerned the train had passed--in flame and
+fury--leaving an echoing silence behind it.
+
+What folly! He turned resolutely to Mrs. Verrier, and tried to discuss
+with her an exhibition of French art recently opened in Washington. In
+vain. After a few sentences, the talk between them dropped, and both he
+and she were once more watching Miss Floyd, and joining in the
+conversation whenever she chose to draw them in.
+
+As for Roger Barnes, he too was steadily subjugated--up to a certain
+point. He was not sure that he liked Miss Floyd, or her conversation.
+She was so much mistress of herself and of the company, that his
+masculine vanity occasionally rebelled. A little flirt!--that gave
+herself airs. It startled his English mind that at twenty--for she could
+be no more--a girl should so take the floor, and hold the stage.
+Sometimes he turned his back upon her--almost; and Cecilia Boyson held
+him. But, if there was too much of the "eternal womanly" in Miss Floyd,
+there was not enough in Cecilia Boyson. He began to discover also that
+she was too clever for him, and was in fact talking down to him. Some of
+the things that she said to him about New York and Washington puzzled
+him extremely. She was, he supposed, intellectual; but the intellectual
+women in England did not talk in the same way. He was equal to them, or
+flattered himself that he was; but Miss Boyson was beyond him. He was
+getting into great difficulties with her, when suddenly Miss Floyd
+addressed him:
+
+"I am sure I saw you in New York, at the opera?"
+
+She bent over to him as she spoke, and lowered her voice. Her look was
+merry, perhaps a little satirical. It put him on his guard.
+
+"Yes, I was there. You were pointed out to me."
+
+"You were with some old friends of mine. I suppose they gave you an
+account of me?"
+
+"They were beginning it; but then Melba began to sing, and some horrid
+people in the next box said 'Hush!'"
+
+She studied him in a laughing silence a moment, her chin on her hand,
+then said:
+
+"That is the worst of the opera; it stops so much interesting
+conversation."
+
+"You don't care for the music?"
+
+"Oh, I am a musician!" she said quickly. "I teach it. But I am like the
+mad King of Bavaria--I want an opera-house to myself."
+
+"You teach it?" he said, in amazement.
+
+She nodded, smiling. At that moment a bell rang. Captain Boyson rose.
+
+"That's the signal for closing. I think we ought to be moving up."
+
+They strolled slowly towards the house, watching the stream of
+excursionists pour out of the house and gardens, and wind down the hill;
+sounds of talk and laughter filled the air, and the western sun touched
+the spring hats and dresses.
+
+"The holidays end to-morrow," said Daphne Floyd demurely, as she walked
+beside young Barnes. And she looked smiling at the crowd of young women,
+as though claiming solidarity with them.
+
+A teacher? A teacher of music?--with that self-confidence--that air as
+though the world belonged to her! The young man was greatly mystified.
+But he reminded himself that he was in a democratic country where all
+men--and especially all women--are equal. Not that the young women now
+streaming to the steamboat were Miss Floyd's equals. The notion was
+absurd. All that appeared to be true was that Miss Floyd, in any
+circumstances, would be, and was, the equal of anybody.
+
+"How charming your friend is!" he said presently to Cecilia Boyson, as
+they lingered on the veranda, waiting for the curator, in a scene now
+deserted. "She tells me she is a teacher of music."
+
+Cecilia Boyson looked at him in amazement, and made him repeat his
+remark. As he did so, his uncle called him, and he turned away. Miss
+Boyson leant against one of the pillars of the veranda, shaking with
+suppressed laughter.
+
+But at that moment the curator, a gentle, gray-haired man, appeared,
+shaking hands with the General, and bowing to the ladies. He gave them a
+little discourse on the house and its history, as they stood on the
+veranda; and private conversation was no longer possible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+A sudden hush had fallen upon Mount Vernon. From the river below came
+the distant sounds of the steamer, which, with its crowds safe on board,
+was now putting off for Washington. But the lawns and paths of the
+house, and the formal garden behind it, and all its simple rooms
+upstairs and down, were now given back to the spring and silence, save
+for this last party of sightseers. The curator, after his preliminary
+lecture on the veranda, took them within; the railings across the doors
+were removed; they wandered in and out as they pleased.
+
+Perhaps, however, there were only two persons among the six now
+following the curator to whom the famous place meant anything more than
+a means of idling away a warm afternoon. General Hobson carried his
+white head proudly through it, saying little or nothing. It was the
+house of a man who had wrenched half a continent from Great Britain; the
+English Tory had no intention whatever of bowing the knee. On the other
+hand, it was the house of a soldier and a gentleman, representing old
+English traditions, tastes, and manners. No modern blatancy, no Yankee
+smartness anywhere. Simplicity and moderate wealth, combined with
+culture--witness the books of the library--with land-owning, a family
+coach, and church on Sundays: these things the Englishman understood.
+Only the slaves, in the picture of Mount Vernon's past, were strange to
+him.
+
+They stood at length in the death-chamber, with its low white bed, and
+its balcony overlooking the river.
+
+"This, ladies, is the room in which General Washington died," said the
+curator, patiently repeating the familiar sentence. "It is, of course,
+on that account sacred to every true American."
+
+He bowed his head instinctively as he spoke. The General looked round
+him in silence. His eye was caught by the old hearth, and by the iron
+plate at the back of it, bearing the letters G. W. and some scroll work.
+There flashed into his mind a vision of the December evening on which
+Washington passed away, the flames flickering in the chimney, the winds
+breathing round the house and over the snow-bound landscape outside, the
+dying man in that white bed, and around him, hovering invisibly, the
+generations of the future.
+
+"He was a traitor to his king and country!" he repeated to himself,
+firmly. Then as his patriotic mind was not disturbed by a sense of
+humour, he added the simple reflection--"But it is, of course, natural
+that Americans should consider him a great man."
+
+The French window beside the bed was thrown open, and these privileged
+guests were invited to step on to the balcony. Daphne Floyd was handed
+out by young Barnes. They hung over the white balustrade together. An
+evening light was on the noble breadth of river; its surface of blue and
+gold gleamed through the boughs of the trees which girdled the house;
+blossoms of wild cherry, of dogwood, and magnolia sparkled amid the
+coverts of young green.
+
+Roger Barnes remarked, with sincerity, as he looked about him, that it
+was a very pretty place, and he was glad he had not missed it. Miss
+Floyd made an absent reply, being in fact occupied in studying the
+speaker. It was, so to speak, the first time she had really observed
+him; and, as they paused on the balcony together, she was suddenly
+possessed by the same impression as that which had mollified the
+General's scolding on board the steamer. He was indeed handsome, the
+young Englishman!--a magnificent figure of a man, in height and breadth
+and general proportions; and in addition, as it seemed to her, possessed
+of an absurd and superfluous beauty of feature. What does a man want
+with such good looks? This was perhaps the girl's first instinctive
+feeling. She was, indeed, a little dazzled by her new companion, now
+that she began to realize him. As compared with the average man in
+Washington or New York, here was an exception--an Apollo!--for she too
+thought of the Sun-god. Miss Floyd could not remember that she had ever
+had to do with an Apollo before; young Barnes, therefore, was so far an
+event, a sensation. In the opera-house she had been vaguely struck by a
+handsome face. But here, in the freedom of outdoor dress and movement,
+he seemed to her a physical king of men; and, at the same time, his easy
+manner--which, however, was neither conceited nor ill-bred--showed him
+conscious of his advantages.
+
+As they chatted on the balcony she put him through his paces a little.
+He had been, it seemed, at Eton and Oxford; and she supposed that he
+belonged to the rich English world. His mother was a Lady Barnes; his
+father, she gathered, was dead; and he was travelling, no doubt, in the
+lordly English way, to get a little knowledge of the barbarians outside,
+before he settled down to his own kingdom, and the ways thereof. She
+envisaged a big Georgian house in a spreading park, like scores that she
+had seen in the course of motoring through England the year before.
+
+Meanwhile, the dear young man was evidently trying to talk to her,
+without too much reference to the gilt gingerbread of this world. He did
+not wish that she should feel herself carried into regions where she was
+not at home, so that his conversation ran amicably on music. Had she
+learned it abroad? He had a cousin who had been trained at Leipsic;
+wasn't teaching it trying sometimes--when people had no ear? Delicious!
+She kept it up, talking with smiles of "my pupils" and "my class," while
+they wandered after the others upstairs to the dark low-roofed room
+above the death-chamber, where Martha Washington spent the last years of
+her life, in order that from the high dormer window she might command
+the tomb on the slope below, where her dead husband lay. The curator
+told the well-known story. Mrs. Verrier, standing beside him, asked some
+questions, showed indeed some animation.
+
+"She shut herself up here? She lived in this garret? That she might
+always see the tomb? That is really true?"
+
+Barnes, who did not remember to have heard her speak before, turned
+at the sound of her voice, and looked at her curiously. She
+wore an expression--bitter or incredulous--which, somehow, amused
+him. As they descended again to the garden he communicated his
+amusement--discreetly--to Miss Floyd.
+
+Did Mrs. Verrier imply that no one who was not a fool could show her
+grief as Mrs. Washington did? That it was, in fact, a sign of being a
+fool to regret your husband?
+
+"Did she say that?" asked Miss Floyd quickly.
+
+"Not like that, of course, but----"
+
+They had now reached the open air again, and found themselves crossing
+the front court to the kitchen-garden. Daphne Floyd did not wait till
+Roger should finish his sentence. She turned on him a face which was
+grave if not reproachful.
+
+"I suppose you know Mrs. Verrier's story?"
+
+"Why, I never saw her before! I hope I haven't said anything I oughtn't
+to have said?"
+
+"Everybody knows it here," said Daphne slowly. "Mrs. Verrier married
+three years ago. She married a Jew--a New Yorker--who had changed his
+name. You know Jews are not in what we call 'society' over here? But
+Madeleine thought she could do it; she was in love with him, and she
+meant to be able to do without society. But she couldn't do without
+society; and presently she began to dine out, and go to parties by
+herself--he urged her to. Then, after a bit, people didn't ask her as
+much as before; she wasn't happy; and her people began to talk to him
+about a divorce--naturally they had been against her marrying him all
+along. He said--as they and she pleased. Then, one night about a year
+ago, he took the train to Niagara--of course it was a very commonplace
+thing to do--and two days afterwards he was found, thrown up by the
+whirlpool; you know, where all the suicides are found!"
+
+Barnes stopped short in front of his companion, his face flushing.
+
+"What a horrible story!" he said, with emphasis.
+
+Miss Floyd nodded.
+
+"Yes, poor Madeleine has never got over it."
+
+The young man still stood riveted.
+
+"Of course Mrs. Verrier herself had nothing to do with the talk about
+divorce?"
+
+Something in his tone roused a combative instinct in his companion. She,
+too, coloured, and drew herself up.
+
+"Why shouldn't she? She was miserable. The marriage had been a great
+mistake."
+
+"And you allow divorce for that?" said the man, wondering. "Oh, of
+course I know every State is different, and some States are worse than
+others. But, somehow, I never came across a case like that--first
+hand--before."
+
+He walked on slowly beside his companion, who held herself a little
+stiffly.
+
+"I don't know why you should talk in that way," she said at last,
+breaking out in a kind of resentment, "as though all our American views
+are wrong! Each nation arranges these things for itself. You have the
+laws that suit you; you must allow us those that suit us."
+
+Barnes paused again, his face expressing a still more complete
+astonishment.
+
+"You say that?" he said. "You!"
+
+"And why not?"
+
+"But--but you are so young!" he said, evidently finding a difficulty in
+putting his impressions. "I beg your pardon--I ought not to talk about
+it at all. But it was so odd that----"
+
+"That I knew anything about Mrs. Verrier's affairs?" said Miss Floyd,
+with a rather uncomfortable laugh. "Well, you see, American girls are
+not like English ones. We don't pretend not to know what everybody
+knows."
+
+"Of course," said Roger hurriedly; "but you wouldn't think it a fair and
+square thing to do?"
+
+"Think what?"
+
+"Why, to marry a man, and then talk of divorcing him because people
+didn't invite you to their parties."
+
+"She was very unhappy," said Daphne stubbornly.
+
+"Well, by Jove!" cried the young man, "she doesn't look very happy now!"
+
+"No," Miss Floyd admitted. "No. There are many people who think she'll
+never get over it."
+
+"Well, I give it up." The Apollo shrugged his handsome shoulders. "You
+say it was she who proposed to divorce him?--yet when the wretched man
+removes himself, then she breaks her heart!"
+
+"Naturally she didn't mean him to do it in that way," said the girl,
+with impatience. "Of course you misunderstood me entirely!--_entirely!_"
+she added with an emphasis which suited with her heightened colour and
+evidently ruffled feelings.
+
+Young Barnes looked at her with embarrassment. What a queer,
+hot-tempered girl! Yet there was something in her which attracted him.
+She was graceful even in her impatience. Her slender neck, and the dark
+head upon it, her little figure in the white muslin, her dainty arms and
+hands--these points in her delighted an honest eye, quite accustomed to
+appraise the charms of women. But, by George! she took herself
+seriously, this little music-teacher. The air of wilful command about
+her, the sharpness with which she had just rebuked him, amazed and
+challenged him.
+
+"I am very sorry if I misunderstood you," he said, a little on his
+dignity; "but I thought you----"
+
+"You thought I sympathized with Mrs. Verrier? So I do; though of course
+I am awfully sorry that such a dreadful thing happened. But you'll find,
+Mr. Barnes, that American girls----" The colour rushed into her small
+olive cheeks. "Well, we know all about the old ideas, and we know also
+too well that there's only one life, and we don't mean to have that one
+spoilt. The old notions of marriage--your English notions," cried the
+girl facing him--"make it tyranny! Why should people stay together when
+they see it's a mistake? We say everybody shall have their chance. And
+not one chance only, but more than one. People find out in marriage what
+they couldn't find out before, and so----"
+
+"You let them chuck it just when they're tired of it?" laughed Barnes.
+"And what about the----"
+
+"The children?" said Miss Floyd calmly. "Well, of course, that has to be
+very carefully considered. But how can it do children any good to live
+in an unhappy home?"
+
+"Had Mrs. Verrier any children?"
+
+"Yes, one little girl."
+
+"I suppose she meant to keep her?"
+
+"Why, of course."
+
+"And the father didn't care?"
+
+"Well, I believe he did," said Daphne unwillingly. "Yes, that was very
+sad. He was quite devoted to her."
+
+"And you think that's all right?" Barnes looked at his companion,
+smiling.
+
+"Well, of course, it was a pity," she said, with fresh impatience; "I
+admit it was a pity. But then, why did she ever marry him? That was the
+horrible mistake."
+
+"I suppose she thought she liked him."
+
+"Oh, it was he who was so desperately in love with her. He plagued her
+into doing it."
+
+"Poor devil!" said Barnes heartily. "All right, we're coming."
+
+The last words were addressed to General Hobson, waving to them from the
+kitchen-garden. They hurried on to join the curator, who took the party
+for a stroll round some of the fields over which George Washington, in
+his early married life, was accustomed to ride in summer and winter
+dawns, inspecting his negroes, his plantation, and his barns. The grass
+in these Southern fields was already high; there were shining
+fruit-trees, blossom-laden, in an orchard copse; and the white dogwood
+glittered in the woods.
+
+For two people to whom the traditions of the place were dear, this quiet
+walk through Washington's land had a charm far beyond that of the
+reconstructed interior of the house. Here were things unaltered and
+unalterable, boundaries, tracks, woods, haunted still by the figure of
+the young master and bridegroom who brought Patsy Curtis there in 1759.
+To the gray-haired curator every foot of them was sacred and familiar;
+he knew these fields and the records of them better than any detail of
+his own personal affairs; for years now he had lived in spirit with
+Washington, through all the hours of the Mount Vernon day; his life was
+ruled by one great ghost, so that everything actual was comparatively
+dim. Boyson too, a fine soldier and a fine intelligence, had a mind
+stored with Washingtoniana. Every now and then he and the curator fell
+back on each other's company. They knew well that the others were not
+worthy of their opportunity; although General Hobson, seeing that most
+of the memories touched belonged to a period before the Revolution,
+obeyed the dictates of politeness, and made amends for his taciturnity
+indoors by a talkative vein outside.
+
+Captain Boyson was not, however, wholly occupied with history or
+reminiscence. He perceived very plainly before the walk was over that
+the General's good-looking nephew and Miss Daphne Floyd were interested
+in each other's conversation. When they joined the party in the garden
+it seemed to him that they had been disputing. Miss Daphne was flushed
+and a little snappish when spoken to; and the young man looked
+embarrassed. But presently he saw that they gravitated to each other,
+and that, whatever chance combination might be formed during the walk,
+it always ended for a time in the flight ahead of the two figures, the
+girl in the rose-coloured sash and the tall handsome youth. Towards the
+end of the walk they became separated from the rest of the party, and
+only arrived at the little station just in time before the cars started.
+On this occasion again, they had been clearly arguing and disagreeing;
+and Daphne had the air of a ruffled bird, her dark eyes glittering, her
+mouth set in the obstinate lines that Boyson knew by heart. But again
+they sat together in the car, and talked and sparred all the way home;
+while Mrs. Verrier, in a corner of the carriage, shut her hollow eyes,
+and laid her thin hands one over the other, and in her purple draperies
+made a picture _à la Mèlisande_ which was not lost upon her companions.
+Boyson's mind registered a good many grim or terse comments, as
+occasionally he found himself watching this lady. Scarcely a year since
+that hideous business at Niagara, and here she was in that extravagant
+dress! He wished his sister would not make a friend of her, and that
+Daphne Floyd saw less of her. Miss Daphne had quite enough bees in her
+own bonnet without adopting Mrs. Verrier's.
+
+Meanwhile, it was the General who, on the return journey, was made to
+serve Miss Boyson's gift for monopoly. She took possession of him in a
+business-like way, inquiring into his engagements in Washington, his
+particular friends, his opinion of the place and the people, with a
+light-handed acuteness which was more than a match for the Englishman's
+instincts of defence. The General did not mean to give himself away; he
+intended, indeed, precisely the contrary; but, after every round of
+conversation Miss Boyson felt herself more and more richly provided with
+materials for satire at the expense of England and the English tourist,
+his invincible conceit, insularity, and condescension. She was a clever
+though tiresome woman; and expressed herself best in letters. She
+promised herself to write a "character" of General Hobson in her next
+letter to an intimate friend, which should be a masterpiece. Then,
+having led him successfully through the _rôle_ of the comic Englishman
+abroad, she repaid him with information. She told him, not without some
+secret amusement at the reprobation it excited, the tragic story of Mrs.
+Verrier. She gave him a full history of her brother's honourable and
+brilliant career; and here let it be said that the _précieuse_ in her
+gave way to the sister, and that she talked with feeling. And finally
+she asked him with a smile whether he admired Miss Floyd. The General,
+who had in fact been observing Miss Floyd and his nephew with some
+little uneasiness during the preceding half-hour, replied guardedly that
+Miss Floyd was pretty and picturesque, and apparently a great talker.
+Was she a native of Washington?
+
+"You never heard of Miss Floyd?--of Daphne Floyd? No? Ah, well!"--and
+she laughed--"I suppose I ought to take it as a compliment, of a kind.
+There are so many rich people now in this queer country of ours that
+even Daphne Floyds don't matter."
+
+"Is Miss Floyd so tremendously rich?"
+
+General Hobson turned a quickened countenance upon her, expressing no
+more than the interest felt by the ordinary man in all societies--more
+strongly, perhaps, at the present day than ever before--in the mere fact
+of money. But Miss Boyson gave it at once a personal meaning, and set
+herself to play on what she scornfully supposed to be the cupidity of
+the Englishman. She produced, indeed, a full and particular account of
+Daphne Floyd's parentage, possessions, and prospects, during which the
+General's countenance represented him with great fidelity. A trace of
+recalcitrance at the beginning--for it was his opinion that Miss Boyson,
+like most American women, talked decidedly too much--gave way to close
+attention, then to astonishment, and finally to a very animated
+observation of Miss Floyd's slender person as she sat a yard or two from
+him on the other side of the car, laughing, frowning, or chattering with
+Roger.
+
+"And that poor child has the management of it all?" he said at last, in
+a tone which did him credit. He himself had lost an only daughter at
+twenty-one, and he held old-fashioned views as to the helplessness of
+women.
+
+But Cecilia Boyson again misunderstood him.
+
+"Oh, yes!" she said, with a cool smile. "Everything is in her own
+hands--everything! Mrs. Phillips would not dare to interfere. Daphne
+always has her own way."
+
+The General said no more. Cecilia Boyson looked out of the window at the
+darkening landscape, thinking with malice of Daphne's dealings with the
+male sex. It had been a Sleeping Beauty story so far. Treasure for the
+winning--a thorn hedge--and slain lovers! The handsome Englishman would
+try it next, no doubt. All young Englishmen, according to her, were on
+the look-out for American heiresses. Music teacher indeed! She would
+have given a good deal to hear the conversation of the uncle and nephew
+when the party broke up.
+
+The General and young Barnes made their farewells at the railway
+station, and took their way on foot to their hotel. Washington was
+steeped in sunset. The White House, as they passed it, glowed amid its
+quiet trees. Lafayette Square, with its fountains and statues, its white
+and pink magnolias, its strolling, chatting crowd, the fronts of the
+houses, the long vistas of tree-lined avenues, the street cars, the
+houses, the motors, all the openings and distances of the beautiful,
+leisurely place--they saw them rosily transfigured under a departing
+sun, which throughout the day had been weaving the quick spells of a
+southern spring.
+
+"Jolly weather!" said Roger, looking about him. "And a very nice
+afternoon. How long are you staying here, Uncle Archie?"
+
+"I ought to be off at the end of the week; and of course you want to get
+back to New York? I say, you seemed to be getting on with that young
+lady?"
+
+The General turned a rather troubled eye upon his companion.
+
+"She wasn't bad fun," said the young man graciously; "but rather an odd
+little thing! We quarrelled about every conceivable subject. And it's
+queer how much that kind of girl seems to go about in America. She goes
+everywhere and knows everything. I wonder how she manages it."
+
+"What kind of girl do you suppose she is?" asked the General, stopping
+suddenly in the middle of Lafayette Square.
+
+"She told me she taught singing," said Roger, in a puzzled voice, "to a
+class of girls in New York."
+
+The General laughed.
+
+"She seems to have made a fool of you, my dear boy. She is one of the
+great heiresses of America."
+
+Roger's face expressed a proper astonishment.
+
+"Oh! that's it, is it? I thought once or twice there was something
+fishy--she was trying it on. Who told you?"
+
+The General retailed his information. Miss Daphne Floyd was the orphan
+daughter of an enormously rich and now deceased lumber-king, of the
+State of Illinois. He had made vast sums by lumbering, and then invested
+in real estate in Chicago and Buffalo, not to speak of a railway or two,
+and had finally left his daughter and only child in possession of a
+fortune generally estimated at more than a million sterling. The money
+was now entirely in the girl's power. Her trustees had been sent about
+their business, though Miss Floyd was pleased occasionally to consult
+them. Mrs. Phillips, her chaperon, had not much influence with her; and
+it was supposed that Mrs. Verrier advised her more than anyone else.
+
+"Good heavens!" was all that young Barnes could find to say when the
+story was told. He walked on absently, flourishing his stick, his face
+working under the stress of amused meditation. At last he brought out:
+
+"You know, Uncle Archie, if you'd heard some of the things Miss Floyd
+was saying to me, your hair would have stood on end."
+
+The General raised his shoulders.
+
+"I dare say. I'm too old-fashioned for America. The sooner I clear out
+the better. Their newspapers make me sick; I hate the hotels--I hate the
+cooking; and there isn't a nation in Europe I don't feel myself more at
+home with."
+
+Roger laughed his clear, good-tempered laugh. "Oh! I don't feel that way
+at all. I get on with them capitally. They're a magnificent people. And,
+as to Miss Floyd, I didn't mean anything bad, of course. Only the ideas
+some of the girls here have, and the way they discuss them--well, it
+beats me!"
+
+"What sort of ideas?"
+
+Roger's handsome brow puckered in the effort to explain. "They don't
+think anything's _settled_, you know, as we do at home. Miss Floyd
+doesn't. They think _they've_ got to settle a lot of things that English
+girls don't trouble about, because they're just told to do 'em, or not
+to do 'em, by the people that look after them!"
+
+"'Everything hatched over again, and hatched different,'" said the
+General, who was an admirer of George Eliot; "that's what they'd like,
+eh? Pooh! That's when they're young. They quiet down, like all the rest
+of the world."
+
+Barnes shook his head. "But they _are_ hatching it over again. You meet
+people here in society you couldn't meet at home. And it's all right.
+The law backs them up."
+
+"You're talking about divorce!" said the General. "Aye! it's astounding!
+The tales one hears in the smoking-room after dinner! In Wyoming,
+apparently, six months' residence, and there you are. You prove a little
+cruelty, the husband makes everything perfectly easy, you say a civil
+good-bye, and the thing's done. Well, they'll pay for it, my dear
+Roger--they'll pay for it. Nobody ever yet trifled with the marriage law
+with impunity."
+
+The energy of the old man's bearing became him.
+
+Through Roger's mind the thought flashed: "Poor dear Uncle Archie! If
+he'd been a New Yorker he'd never have put up with Aunt Lavinia for
+thirty years!"
+
+They turned into their hotel, and ordered dinner in an hour's time.
+Roger found some English letters waiting for him, and carried them off
+to his room. He opened his mother's first. Lady Barnes wrote a large and
+straggling hand, which required many sheets and much postage. It might
+have been observed that her son looked at the sheets for a minute, with
+a certain distaste, before he began upon them. Yet he was deeply
+attached to his mother, and it was from her letters week by week that he
+took his marching orders. If she only wouldn't ride her ideas quite so
+hard; if she would sometimes leave him alone to act for himself!
+
+Here it was again--the old story:
+
+     "Don't suppose I put these things before you on _my_ account. No,
+     indeed; what does it matter what happens to me? It is when I think
+     that you may have to spend your whole life as a clerk in a bank,
+     unless you rouse yourself now--(for you know, my dear Roger, though
+     you have very good wits, you're not as frightfully clever as people
+     have to be nowadays)--that I begin to despair. But that is
+     _entirely_ in your own hands. You have what is far more valuable
+     than cleverness--you have a delightful disposition, and you are one
+     of the handsomest of men. There! of course, I know you wouldn't let
+     me say it to you in your presence; but it's true all the same. Any
+     girl should be proud to marry you. There are plenty of rich girls
+     in America; and if you play your cards properly you will make her
+     and yourself happy. The grammar of that is not quite right, but you
+     understand me. Find a nice girl--of course a _nice_ girl--with a
+     fortune large enough to put you back in your proper sphere; and it
+     doesn't matter about me. You will pay my rent, I dare say, and help
+     me through when I want it; but that's nothing. The point is, that I
+     cannot submit to your career being spoiled through your poor
+     father's mad imprudence. You must retrieve yourself--you _must_.
+     Nobody is anything nowadays in the world without money; you know
+     that as well as I do. And besides, there is another reason. You
+     have got to forget the affair of last spring, to put it entirely
+     behind you, to show that horrid woman who threw you over that you
+     will make your life a success in spite of her. Rouse yourself, my
+     dear Roger, and do your best. I hope by now you have forwarded
+     _all_ my introductions? You have your opportunity, and I must say
+     you will be a great fool if you don't use it. _Do_ use it my dear
+     boy, for my sake. I am a very unhappy woman; but you might, if you
+     would, bring back a little brightness to my life."
+
+After he had read the letter, young Barnes sat for some time in a brown
+study on the edge of his bed. The letter contained only one more
+repetition of counsels that had been dinned into his ears for
+months--almost ever since the financial crash which had followed his
+father's death, and the crash of another sort, concerning himself, which
+had come so quick upon it. His thoughts returned, as they always did at
+some hour of the day or night, to the "horrid woman." Yes, that had hit
+him hard; the lad's heart still throbbed with bitterness as he thought
+of it. He had never felt anything so much; he didn't believe he should
+ever mind anything so much again. "I'm not one of your sentimental
+sort," he thought, half congratulating himself, half in self-contempt.
+But he could not get her out of his head; he wondered if he ever should.
+And it had gone pretty far too. By Jove! that night in the
+orchard!--when she had kissed him, and thrown her arms round his neck!
+And then to write him that letter, when things were at their worst. She
+might have done the thing decently. Have treated a fellow kindly at
+least. Well, of course, it was all done with. Yes, it _was_. Done with!
+
+He got up and began to pace his small room, his hands in his pockets,
+thinking of the night in the orchard. Then gradually the smart lessened,
+and his thoughts passed away to other things. That little Yankee girl
+had really made good sport all the way home. He had not been dull for a
+moment; she had teased and provoked him so. Her eyes, too, were
+wonderfully pretty, and her small, pointed chin, and her witch-like
+imperious ways. Was it her money, the sense that she could do as she
+liked with most people, that made her so domineering and masterful? Very
+likely. On the journey he had put it down just to a natural and very
+surprising impudence. That was when he believed that she was a teacher,
+earning her bread. But the impudence had not prevented him from finding
+it much more amusing to talk to her than to anybody else.
+
+And, on the whole, he thought she had not disliked him, though she had
+said the rudest things to him, and he had retaliated. She had asked him,
+indeed, to join them in an excursion the following day, and to tea at
+the Country Club. He had meant, if possible, to go back to New York on
+the morrow. But perhaps a day or two longer----
+
+So she had a million--the little sprite? She was and would be a
+handful!--with a fortune or without it. And possessed also of the most
+extraordinary opinions. But he thought he would go on the excursion, and
+to the Country Club. He began to fold his mother's letter, and put it
+back into its envelope, while a slight flush mounted in his cheeks, and
+the young mouth that was still so boyish and candid took a stiffer line.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+"Is Miss Floyd at home?"
+
+The questioner was Mrs. Verrier, who had just alighted from her carriage
+at the door of the house in Columbia Avenue inhabited by Miss Floyd and
+her chaperon.
+
+The maid replied that Miss Floyd had not yet returned, but had left a
+message begging Mrs. Verrier to wait for her. The visitor was
+accordingly ushered to the drawing-room on the first floor.
+
+This room, the staircase, the maid, all bore witness to Miss Floyd's
+simplicity--like the Romney dress of Mount Vernon. The colour of the
+walls and the hangings, the lines of the furniture, were all subdued,
+even a little austere. Quiet greens and blues, mingled with white,
+showed the artistic mind; the chairs and sofas were a trifle stiff and
+straight legged; the electric fittings were of a Georgian plainness to
+match the Colonial architecture of the house; the beautiful
+self-coloured carpet was indeed Persian and costly, but it betrayed its
+costliness only to the expert. Altogether, the room, one would have
+said, of any _bourse moyenne_, with an eye for beauty. Fine photographs
+also, of Italian and Dutch pictures, suggested travel, and struck the
+cultivated cosmopolitan note.
+
+Mrs. Verrier looked round it with a smile. It was all as unpretending as
+the maid who ushered her upstairs. Daphne would have no men-servants in
+her employ. What did two ladies want with them, in a democratic country?
+But Mrs. Verrier happened to know that Daphne's maid-servants were just
+as costly in their degree as the drawing-room carpet. Chosen for her in
+London with great care, attracted to Washington by enormous wages, these
+numerous damsels played their part in the general "simplicity" effect;
+but on the whole Mrs. Verrier believed that Daphne's household was
+rather more expensive than that of other rich people who employed men.
+
+She walked through the room, looking absently at the various photographs
+and engravings, till her attention was excited by an easel and a picture
+upon it in the back drawing-room. She went up to it with a muttered
+exclamation.
+
+"So _she_ bought it! Daphne's amazing!"
+
+For what she saw before her was a masterpiece--an excessively costly
+masterpiece--of the Florentine school, smuggled out of Italy, to the
+wrath of the Italian Government, some six months before this date, and
+since then lost to general knowledge. Rumour had given it first to a
+well-known collection at Boston; then to another at Philadelphia; yet
+here it was in the possession of a girl of two-and-twenty of whom the
+great world was just--but only just--beginning to talk.
+
+"How like Daphne!" thought her friend with malice. The "simple" room,
+and the priceless picture carelessly placed in a corner of it, lest any
+one should really suppose that Daphne Floyd was an ordinary mortal.
+
+Mrs. Verrier sat down at last in a chair fronting the picture and let
+herself fall into a reverie. On this occasion she was dressed in black.
+The lace strings of a hat crowned with black ostrich feathers were
+fastened under her chin by a diamond that sparkled in the dim greenish
+light of the drawing-room; the feathers of the hat were unusually large
+and drooping; they curled heavily round the thin neck and long,
+hollow-eyed face, so that its ivory whiteness, its fatigue, its fretful
+beauty were framed in and emphasized by them; her bloodless hands lay
+upon her lap, and the folds of the sweeping dress drawn round her showed
+her slenderness, or rather her emaciation. Two years before this date
+Madeleine Verrier had been a great beauty, and she had never yet
+reconciled herself to physical losses which were but the outward and
+visible sign of losses "far more deeply interfused." As she sat
+apparently absorbed in thought before the picture, she moved, half
+consciously, so that she could no longer see herself in a mirror
+opposite.
+
+Yet her thoughts were in truth much engaged with Daphne and Daphne's
+proceedings. It was now nearly three weeks since Roger Barnes had
+appeared on the horizon. General Hobson had twice postponed his
+departure for England, and was still "enduring hardness" in a Washington
+hotel. Why his nephew should not be allowed to manage his courtship, if
+it was a courtship, for himself, Mrs. Verrier did not understand. There
+was no love lost between herself and the General, and she made much mock
+of him in her talks with Daphne. However, there he was; and she could
+only suppose that he took the situation seriously and felt bound to
+watch it in the interests of the young man's absent mother.
+
+Was it serious? Certainly Daphne had been committing herself a good
+deal. The question was whether she had not been committing herself more
+than the young man had been doing on his side. That was the astonishing
+part of it. Mrs. Verrier could not sufficiently admire the skill with
+which Roger Barnes had so far played his part; could not sufficiently
+ridicule her own lack of insight, which at her first meeting with him
+had pronounced him stupid. Stupid he might be in the sense that it was
+of no use to expect from him the kind of talk on books, pictures, and
+first principles which prevailed in Daphne's circle. But Mrs. Verrier
+thought she had seldom come across a finer sense of tactics than young
+Barnes had so far displayed in his dealings with Daphne. If he went on
+as he had begun, the probability was that he would succeed.
+
+Did she, Madeleine Verrier, wish him to succeed?
+
+Daphne had grown tragically necessary to her, in this world of American
+society--in that section of it, at any rate, in which she desired to
+move, where the widow of Leopold Verrier was always conscious of the
+blowing of a cold and hostile breath. She was not excluded, but she was
+not welcome; she was not ostracized, but she had lost consideration.
+There had been something picturesque and appealing in her husband;
+something unbearably tragic in the manner of his death. She had braved
+it out by staying in America, instead of losing herself in foreign
+towns; and she had thereby proclaimed that she had no guilty sense of
+responsibility, no burden on her conscience; that she had only behaved
+as a thousand other women would have behaved, and without any cruel
+intention at all. But she knew all the same that the spectators of what
+had happened held her for a cruel woman, and that there were many, and
+those the best, who saw her come with distaste and go without regret;
+and it was under that knowledge, in spite of indomitable pride, that her
+beauty had withered in a year.
+
+And at the moment when the smart of what had happened to her--personally
+and socially--was at its keenest; when, after a series of quarrels, she
+had separated herself from the imperious mother who had been her evil
+genius throughout her marriage, she had made friends, unexpectedly,
+owing to a chance meeting at a picture-gallery, with Daphne Floyd. Some
+element in Daphne's nature had attracted and disarmed her. The proud,
+fastidious woman had given the girl her confidence--eagerly,
+indiscriminately. She had poured out upon her all that wild philosophy
+of "rights" which is still struggling in the modern mind with a
+crumbling ethic and a vanishing religion. And she had found in Daphne a
+warm and passionate ally. Daphne was nothing if not "advanced." She
+shrank, as Roger Barnes had perceived, from no question; she had never
+been forbidden, had never forbidden herself, any book that she had a
+fancy to read; and she was as ready to discuss the relative divorce laws
+of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, as the girls of fifty years ago were
+to talk of the fashions, or "Evangeline." In any disputed case,
+moreover, between a man and a woman, Daphne was hotly and instinctively
+on the side of the woman. She had thrown herself, therefore, with ardour
+into the defence of Mrs. Verrier; and for her it was not the wife's
+desertion, but the husband's suicide which had been the cruel and
+indefensible thing. All these various traits and liberalisms had made
+her very dear to Madeleine Verrier.
+
+Now, as that lady sat in her usual drooping attitude, wondering what
+Washington would be like for her when even Daphne Floyd was gone from
+it, the afternoon sun stole through the curtains of the window on the
+street and touched some of the furniture and engravings in the inner
+drawing-room. Suddenly Mrs. Verrier started in her chair. A face had
+emerged thrown out upon the shadows by the sun-finger--the countenance
+of a handsome young Jew, as Rembrandt had once conceived it. Rare and
+high intelligence, melancholy, and premonition:--they were there
+embodied, so long as the apparition lasted.
+
+The effect on Mrs. Verrier was apparently profound. She closed her eyes;
+her lips quivered; she leaned back feebly in her chair, breathing a
+name. The crisis lasted a few minutes, while the momentary vision faded
+and the sun-light crept on. The eyelids unclosed at last, slowly and
+painfully, as though shrinking from what might greet the eyes beneath
+them. But the farther wall was now in deep shade. Mrs. Verrier sat up;
+the emotion which had mastered her like a possession passed away; and
+rising hurriedly, she went back to the front drawing-room. She had
+hardly reached it when Miss Floyd's voice was heard upon the stairs.
+
+Daphne entered the room in what appeared to be a fit of irritation. She
+was scolding the parlour-maid, whose high colour and dignified silence
+proclaimed her both blameless and long-suffering. At the sight of Mrs.
+Verrier Daphne checked herself with an effort and kissed her friend
+rather absently.
+
+"Dear Madeleine!--very good of you to wait. Have they given you tea? I
+suppose not. My household seems to have gone mad this afternoon. Sit
+down. Some tea, Blount, at once."
+
+Mrs. Verrier sank into a corner of the sofa, while Daphne, with an
+"ouf!" of fatigue, took off her hat, and threw herself down at the other
+end, her small feet curled up beneath her. Her half-frowning eyes gave
+the impression that she was still out of temper and on edge.
+
+"Where have you been?" asked her companion quietly.
+
+"Listening to a stuffy debate in the Senate," said Daphne without a
+smile.
+
+"The Senate. What on earth took you there?"
+
+"Well, why shouldn't I go?--why does one do anything? It was just a
+debate--horribly dull--trusts, or something of that kind. But there was
+a man attacking the President--and the place was crowded. Ugh! the heat
+was intolerable!"
+
+"Who took you?"
+
+Daphne named an under-secretary--an agreeable and ambitious man, who had
+been very much in her train during the preceding winter, and until Roger
+Barnes appeared upon the scene.
+
+"I thought until I got your message that you were going to take Mr.
+Barnes motoring up the river."
+
+"Mr. Barnes was engaged." Daphne gave the information tersely, rousing
+herself afterwards to make tea, which appeared at that moment.
+
+"He seems to have been a good deal engaged this week," said Mrs.
+Verrier, when they were alone again.
+
+Daphne made no reply. And Mrs. Verrier, after observing her for a
+moment, resumed:
+
+"I suppose it was the Bostonians?"
+
+"I suppose so. What does it matter?" The tone was dry and sharp.
+
+"Daphne, you goose!" laughed Mrs. Verrier, "I believe this is the very
+first invitation of theirs he has accepted at all. He was written to
+about them by an old friend--his Eton master, or somebody of that sort.
+And as they turned up here on a visit, instead of his having to go and
+look for them at Boston, of course he had to call upon them."
+
+"I dare say. And of course he had to go to tea with them yesterday, and
+he had to take them to Arlington this afternoon! I suppose I'd better
+tell you--we had a quarrel on the subject last night."
+
+"Daphne!--don't, for heaven's sake, make him think himself too
+important!" cried Mrs. Verrier.
+
+Daphne, with both elbows on the table, was slowly crunching a morsel of
+toast in her small white teeth. She had a look of concentrated
+energy--as of a person charged and overcharged with force of some kind,
+impatient to be let loose. Her black eyes sparkled; impetuosity and will
+shone from them; although they showed also rims of fatigue, as if Miss
+Daphne's nights had not of late been all they should be. Mrs. Verrier
+was chiefly struck, however, by the perception that for the first time
+Daphne was not having altogether her own way with the world. Madeleine
+had not observed anything of the same kind in her before. In general she
+was in entire command both of herself and of the men who surrounded her.
+She made a little court out of them, and treated them _en despote_. But
+Roger Barnes had not lent himself to the process; he had not played the
+game properly; and Daphne's sleep had been disturbed for the first time
+in history.
+
+It had been admitted very soon between the two friends--without putting
+it very precisely--that Daphne was interested in Roger Barnes. Mrs.
+Verrier believed that the girl had been originally carried off her feet
+by the young man's superb good looks, and by the natural
+distinction--evident in all societies--which they conferred upon him.
+Then, no doubt, she had been piqued by his good-humoured, easy way--the
+absence of any doubt of himself, of tremor, of insistence. Mrs. Verrier
+said to herself--not altogether shrewdly--that he had no nerves, or no
+heart; and Daphne had not yet come across the genus. Her lovers had
+either possessed too much heart--like Captain Boyson--or a lack of
+coolness, when it really came to the point of grappling with Daphne and
+her millions, as in the case of a dozen she could name. Whereby it had
+come about that Daphne's attention had been first provoked, then
+peremptorily seized by the Englishman; and Mrs. Verrier began now to
+suspect that deeper things were really involved.
+
+Certainly there was a good deal to puzzle the spectator. That the
+English are a fortune-hunting race may be a popular axiom; but it was
+quite possible, after all, that Roger Barnes was not the latest
+illustration of it. It was quite possible, also, that he had a
+sweet-heart at home, some quiet, Quakerish girl who would never wave in
+his face the red flags that Daphne was fond of brandishing. It was
+equally possible that he was merely fooling with Daphne--that he had
+seen girls he liked better in New York, and was simply killing time till
+a sportsman friend of whom he talked should appear on the scene and take
+him off to shoot moose and catch trout in the province of Quebec. Mrs.
+Verrier realized that, for all his lack of subtlety and the higher
+conversation, young Barnes had managed astonishingly to keep his
+counsel. His "simplicity," like Daphne's, seemed to be of a special
+type.
+
+And yet--there was no doubt that he had devoted himself a great deal.
+Washington society had quickly found him out; he had been invited to all
+the most fastidious houses, and was immensely in request for picnics and
+expeditions. But he had contrived, on the whole, to make all these
+opportunities promote the flirtation with Daphne. He had, in fact, been
+enough at her beck and call to make her the envy of a young society with
+whom the splendid Englishman promised to become the rage, and not enough
+to silence or wholly discourage other claimants on his time.
+
+This no doubt accounted for the fact that the two charming Bostonians,
+Mrs. Maddison and her daughter, who had but lately arrived in Washington
+and made acquaintance with Roger Barnes, were still evidently in
+ignorance of what was going on. They were not initiated. They had
+invited young Barnes in the innocence of their hearts, without inviting
+Daphne Floyd, whom they did not previously know. And the young man had
+seen fit to accept their invitation. Hence the jealousy that was clearly
+burning in Daphne, that she was not indeed even trying to hide from the
+shrewd eyes of her friend.
+
+Mrs. Verrier's advice not to make Roger Barnes "too important" had
+called up a flash of colour in the girl's cheeks. But she did not resent
+it in words; rather her silence deepened, till Mrs. Verrier stretched
+out a hand and laughingly turned the small face towards her that she
+might see what was in it.
+
+"Daphne! I really believe you're in love with him!"
+
+"Not at all," said Daphne, her eyelids flickering; "I never know what to
+talk to him about."
+
+"As if that mattered!"
+
+"Elsie Maddison always knows what to talk to him about, and he chatters
+to her the whole time."
+
+Mrs. Verrier paused a moment, then said: "Do you suppose he came to
+America to marry money?"
+
+"I haven't an idea."
+
+"Do you suppose he knows that you--are not exactly a pauper?"
+
+Daphne drew herself away impatiently. "I really don't suppose anything,
+Madeleine. He never talks about money, and I should think he had plenty
+himself."
+
+Mrs. Verrier replied by giving an outline of the financial misfortunes
+of Mr. Barnes _père_, as they had been described to her by another
+English traveller in Washington.
+
+Daphne listened indifferently. "He can't be very poor or he wouldn't
+behave as he does. And he is to inherit the General's property. He told
+me so."
+
+"And it wouldn't matter to you, Daphne, if you did think a man had
+married you for money?"
+
+Daphne had risen, and was pacing the drawing-room floor, her hands
+clasped behind her back. She turned a cloudy face upon her questioner.
+"It would matter a great deal, if I thought it had been only for money.
+But then, I hope I shouldn't have been such a fool as to marry him."
+
+"But you could bear it, if the money counted for something?"
+
+"I'm not an idiot!" said the girl, with energy. "With whom doesn't money
+count for something? Of course a man must take money into
+consideration." There was a curious touch of arrogance in the gesture
+which accompanied the words.
+
+"'How pleasant it is to have money, heigh-ho!--How pleasant it is to
+have money,'" said Mrs. Verrier, quoting, with a laugh. "Yes, I dare
+say, you'd be very reasonable, Daphne, about that kind of thing. But I
+don't think you'd be a comfortable wife, dear, all the same."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"You might allow your husband to spare a little love to your money; you
+would be for killing him if he ever looked at another woman!"
+
+"You mean I should be jealous?" asked Daphne, almost with violence. "You
+are quite right there. I should be very jealous. On that point I should
+'find quarrel in a straw.'"
+
+Her cheeks had flushed a passionate red. The eyes which she had
+inherited from her Spanish grandmother blazed above them. She had become
+suddenly a woman of Andalusia and the South, moved by certain primitive
+forces in the blood.
+
+Madeleine Verrier held out her hands, smiling.
+
+"Come here, little wild cat. I believe you are jealous of Elsie
+Maddison."
+
+Daphne approached her slowly, and slowly dropped into a seat beside her
+friend, her eyes still fixed and splendid. But as she looked into them
+Madeleine Verrier saw them suddenly dimmed.
+
+"Daphne! you _are_ in love with him!"
+
+The girl recovered herself, clenching her small hands. "If I am," she
+said resolutely, "it is strange how like the other thing it is! I don't
+know whether I shall speak to him to-night."
+
+"To-night?" Mrs. Verrier looked a little puzzled.
+
+"At the White House. You're going, of course."
+
+"No, I am not going." The voice was quiet and cold. "I am not asked."
+
+Daphne, vexed with herself, touched her friend's hand caressingly. "It
+will be just a crush, dear. But I promised various people to go."
+
+"And he will be there?"
+
+"I suppose so." Daphne turned her head away, and then sprang up. "Have
+you seen the picture?"
+
+Mrs. Verrier followed her into the inner room, where the girl gave a
+laughing and triumphant account of her acquisition, the agents she had
+employed, the skill with which it had been conveyed out of Italy, the
+wrath of various famous collectors, who had imagined that the fight lay
+between them alone, when they found the prize had been ravished from
+them. Madeleine Verrier was very intelligent, and the contrast, which
+the story brought out, between the girl's fragile youth and the strange
+and passionate sense of power which breathed from her whenever it became
+a question of wealth and the use of it, was at no point lost upon her
+companion.
+
+Daphne would not allow any further talk of Roger Barnes. Her chaperon,
+Mrs. Phillips, presently appeared, and passed through rather a bad
+quarter of an hour while the imperious mistress of the house inquired
+into certain invitations and card-leavings that had not been managed to
+her liking. Then Daphne sat down to write a letter to a Girls' Club in
+New York, of which she was President--where, in fact, she occasionally
+took the Singing Class, with which she had made so much play at her
+first meeting with Roger Barnes. She had to tell them that she had just
+engaged a holiday house for them, to which they might go in instalments
+throughout the summer. She would pay the rent, provide a
+lady-superintendent, and make herself responsible for all but food
+expenses. Her small face relaxed--became quite soft and charming--as she
+wrote.
+
+"But, my dear," cried Mrs. Phillips in dismay, as Daphne handed her the
+letter to read, "you have taken the house on Lake George, and you know
+the girls had all set their hearts on that place in the White
+Mountains!"
+
+Daphne's lips tightened. "Certainly I have taken the house on Lake
+George," she said, as she carefully wiped her pen. "I told them I
+should."
+
+"But, my dear, they are so tired of Lake George! They have been there
+three years running. And you know they subscribe a good deal
+themselves."
+
+"Very well!--then let them do without my help. I have inquired into the
+matter. The house on Lake George is much more suitable than the White
+Mountains farm, and I have written to the agent. The thing's done."
+
+Mrs. Phillips argued a little more, but Daphne was immovable.
+
+Mrs. Verrier, watching the two, reflected, as she had often done before,
+that Mrs. Phillips's post was not particularly enviable. Daphne treated
+her in many ways with great generosity, paid her highly, grudged her no
+luxury, and was always courteous to her in public. But in private
+Daphne's will was law, and she had an abrupt and dictatorial way of
+asserting it that brought the red back into Mrs. Phillips's faded
+cheeks. Mrs. Verrier had often expected her to throw up her post. But
+there was no doubt something in Daphne's personality which made life
+beside her too full of colour to be lightly abandoned.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Daphne presently went upstairs to take off her walking-dress, and Mrs.
+Phillips, with a rather troubled face, began to tidy the confusion of
+letters she had left behind her.
+
+"I dare say the girls won't mind," said Madeleine Verrier, kindly.
+
+Mrs. Phillips started, and her mild lips quivered a little. Daphne's
+charities were for Daphne an amusement; for this gentle, faded woman,
+who bore all the drudgery of them, they were the chief attraction of
+life in Daphne's house. Mrs. Phillips loved the club-girls, and the
+thought of their disappointment pained her.
+
+"I must try and put it to them," was her patient reply.
+
+"Daphne must always have her way," Madeleine went on, smiling. "I wonder
+what she'll do when she marries."
+
+Mrs. Phillips looked up quickly.
+
+"I hope it'll be the right man, Mrs. Verrier. Of course, with anyone
+so--so clever--and so used to managing everything for herself--one would
+be a little anxious."
+
+Mrs. Verrier's expression changed. A kind of
+wildness--fanaticism--invaded it, as of one recalling a mission. "Oh,
+well, nothing is irrevocable nowadays," she said, almost with violence.
+"Still I hope Daphne won't make a mistake."
+
+Mrs. Phillips looked at her companion, at first in astonishment. Then a
+change passed over her face. With a cold excuse she left Mrs. Verrier
+alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+The reception at the White House was being given in honour of the
+delegates to a Peace Congress. The rooms were full without being
+inconveniently crowded and the charming house opened its friendly doors
+to a society more congruous and organic, richer also in the nobler kind
+of variety than America, perhaps, can offer to her guests elsewhere.
+What the opera and international finance are to New York, politics and
+administration are, as we all know, to Washington. And the visitor
+from Europe, conversationally starved for want of what seem to him
+the only topics worth discussing, finds himself within hearing once
+more of ministers, cabinets, embassies, and parliamentary gossip.
+Even General Hobson had come to admit that--especially for the
+middle-aged--Washington parties were extremely agreeable. The young and
+foolish might sigh for the flesh-pots of New York; those on whom "the
+black ox had trodden," who were at all aware what a vast tormenting,
+multitudinous, and headstrong world man has been given to inhabit; those
+who were engaged in governing any part of that world, or meant some day
+to be thus engaged; for them Washington was indispensable, and New York
+a mere entertainment.
+
+Moreover Washington, at this time of the world's history, was the scene
+of one of those episodes--those brisker moments in the human
+comedy--which every now and then revive among us an almost forgotten
+belief in personality, an almost forgotten respect for the mysteries
+behind it. The guests streaming through the White House defiled past a
+man who, in a level and docketed world, appeared to his generation as
+the reincarnation of forces primitive, over-mastering, and heroic. An
+honest Odysseus!--toil-worn and storm-beaten, yet still with the spirit
+and strength, the many devices, of a boy; capable like his prototype in
+one short day of crushing his enemies, upholding his friends, purifying
+his house; and then, with the heat of righteous battle still upon him,
+with its gore, so to speak, still upon his hands, of turning his mind,
+without a pause and without hypocrisy, to things intimate and soft and
+pure--the domestic sweetness of Penelope, the young promise of
+Telemachus. The President stood, a rugged figure, amid the cosmopolitan
+crowd, breasting the modern world, like some ocean headland, yet not
+truly of it, one of the great fighters and workers of mankind, with a
+laugh that pealed above the noise, blue eyes that seemed to pursue some
+converse of their own, and a hand that grasped and cheered, where other
+hands withdrew and repelled. This one man's will had now, for some
+years, made the pivot on which vast issues turned--issues of peace and
+war, of policy embracing the civilized world; and, here, one saw him in
+drawing-rooms, discussing Alaric's campaigns with an Oxford professor,
+or chatting with a young mother about her children.
+
+Beside him, the human waves, as they met and parted, disclosed a woman's
+face, modelled by nature in one of her lightest and deftest moods, a
+trifle detached, humorous also, as though the world's strange sights
+stirred a gentle and kindly mirth behind its sweet composure. The
+dignity of the President's wife was complete, yet it had not
+extinguished the personality it clothed; and where royalty, as the
+European knows it, would have donned its mask and stood on its defence,
+Republican royalty dared to be its amused, confiding, natural self.
+
+All around--the political, diplomatic world of Washington. General
+Hobson, as he passed through it, greeted by what was now a large
+acquaintance, found himself driven once more to the inward
+confession--the grudging confession--as though Providence had not played
+him fair in extorting it--that American politicians were of a vastly
+finer stamp than he had expected to find them. The American press was
+all--he vowed--that fancy had painted it, and more. But, as he looked
+about him at the members of the President's administration--at this
+tall, black-haired man, for instance, with the mild and meditative eye,
+the equal, social or intellectual, of any Foreign Minister that Europe
+might pit against him, or any diplomat that might be sent to handle him;
+or this younger man, sparely built, with the sane, handsome face--son of
+a famous father, modest, amiable, efficient; or this other, of huge bulk
+and height, the sport of caricature, the hope of a party, smiling
+already a presidential smile as he passed, observed and beset, through
+the crowded rooms; or these naval or military men, with their hard
+serviceable looks, and the curt good manners of their kind:--the General
+saw as clearly as anybody else, that America need make no excuses
+whatever for her best men, that she has evolved the leaders she wants,
+and Europe has nothing to teach them.
+
+He could only console himself by the remembrance of a speech, made by a
+well-known man, at a military function which the General had attended as
+a guest of honour the day before. There at last was the real thing! The
+real, Yankee, spread-eagle thing! The General positively hugged the
+thought of it.
+
+"The American soldier," said the speaker, standing among the
+ambassadors, the naval and military _attachés_, of all the European
+nations, "is the superior of all other soldiers in three
+respects--bravery, discipline, intelligence."
+
+_Bravery, discipline, intelligence!_ Just those--the merest trifle! The
+General had found himself chuckling over it in the visions of the night.
+
+Tired at last of these various impressions, acting on a mind not quite
+alert enough to deal with them, the General went in search of his
+nephew. Roger had been absent all day, and the General had left the
+hotel before his return. But the uncle was sure that he would sooner or
+later put in an appearance.
+
+It was of course entirely on Roger's account that this unwilling guest
+of America was her guest still. For three weeks now had the General been
+watching the affair between Roger and Daphne Floyd. It had gone with
+such a rush at first, such a swing and fervour, that the General had
+felt that any day might bring the _dénouement_. It was really impossible
+to desert the lad at such a crisis, especially as Laura was so excitable
+and anxious, and so sure to make her brother pay for it if he failed to
+support her views and ambitions at the right moment. The General
+moreover felt the absolute necessity of getting to know something more
+about Miss Floyd, her character, the details of her fortune and
+antecedents, so that when the great moment came he might be prepared.
+
+But the astonishing thing was that of late the whole affair seemed to
+have come to some stupid hitch! Roger had been behaving like a very cool
+hand--too cool by half in the General's opinion. What the deuce did he
+mean by hanging about these Boston ladies, if his affections were really
+fixed on Miss Daphne?--or his ambitions, which to the uncle seemed
+nearer the truth.
+
+"Well, where is the nephew?" said Cecilia Boyson's voice in his ear.
+
+The General turned. He saw a sharp, though still young face, a thin and
+willowy figure, attired in white silk, a _pince-nez_ on the high-pitched
+nose, and a cool smile. Unconsciously his back stiffened. Miss Boyson
+invariably roused in him a certain masculine antagonism.
+
+"I should be glad if you would tell me," he said, with some formality.
+"There are two or three people here to whom he should be introduced."
+
+"Has he been picnicking with the Maddisons?" The voice was shrill,
+perhaps malicious.
+
+"I believe they took him to Arlington, and somewhere else afterwards."
+
+"Ah," said Cecilia, "there they are."
+
+The General looked towards the door and saw his nephew enter, behind a
+mother and daughter whom, as it seemed to him, their acquaintances in
+the crowd around them greeted with a peculiar cordiality; the mother,
+still young, with a stag-like carriage of the head, a long throat,
+swathed in white tulle, and grizzled hair, on which shone a spray of
+diamonds; the daughter, equally tall and straight, repeating her
+mother's beauty with a bloom and radiance of her own. Innocent and
+happy, with dark eyes and a soft mouth, Miss Maddison dropped a little
+curtsey to the presidential pair, and the room turned to look at her as
+she did so.
+
+"A very sweet-looking girl," said the General warmly. "Her father is, I
+think, a professor."
+
+"He was. He is now just a writer of books. But Elsie was brought up in
+Cambridge. How did Mr. Roger know them?"
+
+"His Eton tutor told him to go and see them."
+
+"I thought Miss Floyd expected him to-day?" said Miss Boyson carelessly,
+adjusting her eyeglass.
+
+"It was a mistake, a misunderstanding," replied the General hurriedly.
+"Miss Floyd's party is put off till next week."
+
+"Daphne is just coming in," said Miss Boyson.
+
+The General turned again. The watchful Cecilia was certain that _he_ was
+not in love with Daphne. But the nephew--the inordinately handsome, and
+by now much-courted young man--what was the real truth about him?
+
+Cecilia recognized--with Mrs. Verrier--that merely to put the question
+involved a certain tribute to young Barnes. He had at any rate done his
+fortune-hunting, if fortune-hunting it were, with decorum.
+
+"Miss Floyd is looking well to-night," remarked the General.
+
+Cecilia did not reply. She and a great part of the room were engaged in
+watching Roger Barnes and Miss Maddison walking together through a space
+which seemed to have been cleared on purpose for them, but was really
+the result of a move towards the supper-room.
+
+"Was there ever such a pair?" said an enthusiastic voice behind the
+General. "Athene and Apollo take the floor!" A gray-haired journalist
+with a small, bewrinkled face, buried in whiskers, and beard, laid a
+hand on the General's arm as he spoke.
+
+The General smiled vaguely. "Do you know Mrs. and Miss Maddison?"
+
+"Rather!" said the little man. "Miss Elsie's a wonder! As pretty and
+soft as they make them, and a Greek scholar besides--took all sorts of
+honours at Radcliffe last year. I've known her from her cradle."
+
+"What a number of your girls go to college!" said the General, but
+ungraciously, in the tones of one who no sooner saw an American custom
+emerging than his instinct was to hit it.
+
+"Yes; it's a feature of our modern life--the life of our women. But not
+the most significant one, by a long way."
+
+The General could not help a look of inquiry.
+
+The journalist's face changed from gay to grave. "The most significant
+thing in American life just now----"
+
+"I know!" interrupted the General. "Your divorce laws!"
+
+The journalist shook his head. "It goes deeper than that. What we're
+looking on at is a complete transformation of the idea of marriage----"
+
+A movement in the crowd bore the speaker away. The General was left
+watching the beautiful pair in the distance. They were apparently quite
+unconscious that they roused any special attention. Laughing and
+chatting like two children, they passed into the supper-room and
+disappeared.
+
+Ten minutes later, in the supper-room, Barnes deserted the two ladies
+with whom he had entered, and went in pursuit of a girl in white, whose
+necklace of star sapphires, set in a Spanish setting of the seventeenth
+century, had at once caught the eye of the judicious. Roger, however,
+knew nothing of jewels, and was only conscious as he approached Miss
+Floyd, first of the mingling in his own mind of something like
+embarrassment with something like defiance, and then, of the glitter in
+the girl's dark eyes.
+
+"I hope you had an interesting debate," he said. "Mrs. Phillips tells me
+you went to the Senate."
+
+Daphne looked him up and down. "Did I?" she said slowly. "I've
+forgotten. Will you move, please? There's someone bringing me an ice."
+And turning her back on Roger, she smiled and beckoned to the
+Under-Secretary, who with a triumphant face was making his way to her
+through the crowd.
+
+Roger coloured hotly. "May I bring Mrs. Maddison?" he said, passing her;
+"she would like to talk to you about a party for next week----"
+
+"Thank you. I am just going home." And with an energetic movement she
+freed herself from him, and was soon in the gayest of talk with the
+Under-Secretary.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The reception broke up some time after midnight, and on the way home
+General Hobson attempted a raid upon his nephew's intentions.
+
+"I don't wish to seem an intrusive person, my dear Roger, but may I ask
+how much longer you mean to stay in Washington?"
+
+The tone was short and the look which accompanied the words not without
+sarcasm. Roger, who had been walking beside his companion, still deeply
+flushed, in complete silence, gave an awkward laugh.
+
+"And as for you, Uncle Archie, I thought you meant to sail a fortnight
+ago. If you've been staying on like this on my account----"
+
+"Don't make a fool either of me or yourself, Roger!" said the General
+hastily, roused at last to speech by the annoyance of the situation. "Of
+course it was on your account that I have stayed on. But what on earth
+it all means, and where your affairs are--I'm hanged if I have the
+glimmer of an idea!"
+
+Roger's smile was perfectly good-humoured.
+
+"I haven't much myself," he said quietly.
+
+"Do you--or do you not--mean to propose to Miss Floyd?" cried the
+General, pausing in the centre of Lafayette Square, now all but
+deserted, and apostrophizing with his umbrella--for the night was soft
+and rainy--the presidential statue above his head.
+
+"Have I given you reason to suppose that I was going to do so?" said
+Roger slowly.
+
+"Given me?--given everybody reason?--of course you have!--a dozen times
+over. I don't like interfering with your affairs, Roger--with any young
+man's affairs--but you must know that you have set Washington talking,
+and it's not fair to a girl--by George it isn't!--when she has given you
+encouragement and you have made her conspicuous, to begin the same
+story, in the same place, immediately, with someone else! As you say, I
+ought to have taken myself off long ago."
+
+"I didn't say anything of the kind," said Roger hotly; "you shouldn't
+put words into my mouth, Uncle Archie. And I really don't see why you
+attack me like this. My tutor particularly asked me, if I came across
+them, to be civil to Mrs. Maddison and her daughter, and I have done
+nothing but pay them the most ordinary attentions."
+
+"When a man is in love he pays no ordinary attentions. He has eyes for
+no one but the lady." The General's umbrella, as it descended from the
+face of Andrew Jackson and rattled on the flagged path, supplied each
+word with emphasis. "However, it is no good talking, and I don't exactly
+know why I should put my old oar in. But the fact is I feel a certain
+responsibility. People here have been uncommonly civil. Well,
+well!--I've wired to-day to ask if there is a berth left in the
+_Venetia_ for Saturday. And you, I suppose"--the inquiry was somewhat
+peremptory--"will be going back to New York?"
+
+"I have no intention of leaving Washington just yet," said Roger, with
+decision.
+
+"And may I ask what you intend to do here?"
+
+Roger laughed. "I really think that's my business. However, you've been
+an awful brick, Uncle Archie, to stay on like this. I assure you, if I
+don't say much, I think it."
+
+By this time they had reached the hotel, the steps and hall of which
+were full of people.
+
+"That's how you put me off." The General's tone was resentful. "And you
+won't give me any idea of the line I am to take with your mother?"
+
+The young man smiled again and waved an evasive hand.
+
+"If you'll only be patient a little longer, Uncle Archie----"
+
+At this point an acquaintance of the General's who was smoking in the
+hall came forward to greet him, and Roger made his escape.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well, what the deuce _do_ I mean to do?" Barnes asked himself the
+question deliberately. He was hanging out of the window, in his bedroom,
+smoking and pondering.
+
+It was a mild and rainy night. Washington was full of the earth and leaf
+odours of the spring, which rose in gusts from its trees and gardens;
+and rugged, swiftly moving clouds disclosed every now and then what
+looked like hurrying stars.
+
+The young man was excited and on edge. Daphne Floyd--and the thought of
+Daphne Floyd--had set his pulses hammering; they challenged in him the
+aggressive, self-assertive, masculine force. The history of the
+preceding three weeks was far from simple. He had first paid a
+determined court to her, conducting it in an orthodox, English,
+conspicuous way. His mother, and her necessities--his own also--imposed
+it on him; and he flung himself into it, setting his teeth. Then, to his
+astonishment, one may almost say to his disconcerting, he found the prey
+all at once, and, as it were, without a struggle, fluttering to his
+lure, and practically within his grasp. There was an evening when
+Daphne's sudden softness, the look in her eyes, the inflection in her
+voice had fairly thrown him off his balance. For the first time he had
+shown a lack of self-command and self-possession. Whereupon, in a flash,
+a new and strange Daphne had developed--imperious, difficult,
+incalculable. The more he gave, the more she claimed. Nor was it mere
+girlish caprice. The young Englishman, invited to a game that he had
+never yet played, felt in it something sinister and bewildering.
+Gropingly, he divined in front of him a future of tyranny on her side,
+of expected submission on his. The Northern character in him, with its
+reserve, its phlegm, its general sanity, began to shrink from the
+Southern elements in her. He became aware of the depths in her nature,
+of things volcanic and primitive, and the English stuff in him recoiled.
+
+So he was to be bitted and bridled, it seemed, in the future. Daphne
+Floyd would have bought him with her dollars, and he would have to pay
+the price.
+
+Something natural and wild in him said No! If he married this girl he
+would be master, in spite of her money. He realized vaguely, at any
+rate, the strength of her will, and the way in which it had been
+tempered and steeled by circumstance. But the perception only roused in
+himself some slumbering tenacities and vehemences of which he had been
+scarcely aware. So that, almost immediately--since there was no glamour
+of passion on his side--he began to resent her small tyrannies, to draw
+in, and draw back. A few quarrels--not ordinary lovers' quarrels, but
+representing a true grapple of personalities--sprang up behind a screen
+of trifles. Daphne was once more rude and provoking, Roger cool and
+apparently indifferent. This was the stage when Mrs. Verrier had become
+an admiring observer of what she supposed to be his "tactics." But she
+knew nothing of the curious little crisis which had preceded them.
+
+Then the Maddisons, mother and daughter, "my tutor's friends," had
+appeared upon the scene--charming people! Of course civilities were due
+to them, and had to be paid them. Next to his mother--and to the girl of
+the orchard--the affections of this youth, who was morally backward and
+immature, but neither callous nor fundamentally selfish, had been
+chiefly given to a certain Eton master, of a type happily not uncommon
+in English public schools. Herbert French had been Roger's earliest and
+best friend. What Roger had owed him at school, only he knew. Since
+school-days they had been constant correspondents, and French's
+influence on his pupil's early manhood had done much, for all Roger's
+laziness and self-indulgence, to keep him from serious lapses.
+
+Neglect any friends of his--and such jolly friends? Rather not! But as
+soon as Daphne had seen Elsie Maddison, and he had begged an afternoon
+to go on an expedition with them, Daphne had become intolerable. She had
+shown her English friend and his acquaintances a manner so insulting and
+provocative, that the young man's blood had boiled.
+
+If he were in love with her--well and good! She might no doubt have
+tamed him by these stripes. But she was no goddess to him; no golden
+cloud enveloped her; he saw her under a common daylight. At the same
+time she attracted him; he was vain of what had seemed his conquest, and
+uneasily exultant in the thought of her immense fortune. "I'll make her
+an excellent husband if she marries me," he said to himself stubbornly;
+"I can, and I will."
+
+But meanwhile how was this first stage to end? At the White House that
+night Daphne had treated him with contumely, and before spectators. He
+must either go or bring her to the point.
+
+He withdrew suddenly from the window, flinging out the end of his
+cigarette. "I'll propose to her to-morrow--and she may either take me or
+leave me!"
+
+He paced up and down his room, conscious of relief and fresh energy. As
+he did so his eyes were drawn to a letter from Herbert French lying on
+the table. He took it up and read it again--smiling over it broadly, in
+a boyish and kindly amusement. "By Jove! he's happy."
+
+Then as he put it down his face darkened. There was something in the
+letter, in its manliness and humour, its unconscious revelation of
+ideals wholly independent of dollars, that made Roger for the moment
+loathe his own position. But he pulled himself together.
+
+"I shall make her a good husband," he repeated, frowning. "She'll have
+nothing to complain of."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the following day a picnic among the woods of the Upper Potomac
+brought together most of the personages in this history. The day was
+beautiful, the woods fragrant with spring leaf and blossom, and the
+stream, swollen with rain, ran seaward in a turbid, rejoicing strength.
+
+The General, having secured his passage home, was in good spirits as far
+as his own affairs were concerned, though still irritable on the score
+of his nephew's. Since the abortive attempt on his confidence of the
+night before, Roger had avoided all private conversation with his uncle;
+and for once the old had to learn patience from the young.
+
+The party was given by the wife of one of the staff of the French
+Embassy--a young Frenchwoman, as gay and frank as her babies, and
+possessed, none the less, of all the social arts of her nation. She had
+taken a shrewd interest in the matter of Daphne Floyd and the
+Englishman. Daphne, according to her, should be promptly married and her
+millions taken care of, and the handsome, broad-shouldered fellow
+impressed the little Frenchwoman's imagination as a proper and capable
+watchdog. She had indeed become aware that something was wrong, but her
+acuteness entirely refused to believe that it had any vital connection
+with the advent of pretty Elsie Maddison. Meanwhile, to please Daphne,
+whom she liked, while conscious of a strong and frequent desire to smite
+her, Madame de Fronsac had invited Mrs. Verrier, treating her with a
+cold and punctilious courtesy that, as applied to any other guest, would
+have seemed an affront.
+
+In vain, however, did the hostess, in vain did other kindly bystanders,
+endeavour to play the game of Daphne Floyd. In the first place Daphne
+herself, though piped unto, refused to dance. She avoided the society of
+Roger Barnes in a pointed and public way, bright colour on her cheeks
+and a wild light in her eyes; the Under-Secretary escorted her and
+carried her wrap. Washington did not know what to think. For owing to
+this conduct of Daphne's, the charming Boston girl, the other _ingénue_
+of the party, fell constantly to the care of young Barnes; and to see
+them stepping along the green ways together, matched almost in height,
+and clearly of the same English ancestry and race, pleased while it
+puzzled the spectators.
+
+The party lunched in a little inn beside the river, and then scattered
+again along woodland paths. Daphne and the Under-Secretary wandered on
+ahead and were some distance from the rest of the party when that
+gentleman suddenly looked at his watch in dismay. An appointment had to
+be kept with the President at a certain hour, and the Under-Secretary's
+wits had been wandering. There was nothing for it but to take a short
+cut through the woods to a local station and make at once for
+Washington.
+
+Daphne quickened his uneasiness and hastened his departure. She assured
+him that the others were close behind, and that nothing could suit her
+better than to rest on a mossy stone that happily presented itself till
+they arrived.
+
+The Under-Secretary, transformed into the anxious and ambitious
+politician, abruptly left her.
+
+Daphne, as soon as he was gone, allowed herself the natural attitude
+that fitted her thoughts. She was furiously in love and torn with
+jealousy; and that love and jealousy could smart so, and cling so, was a
+strange revelation to one accustomed to make a world entirely to her
+liking. Her dark eyes were hollow, her small mouth had lost its colour,
+and she showed that touch of something wasting and withering that
+Theocritan shepherds knew in old Sicilian days. It was as though she had
+defied a god--and the god had avenged himself.
+
+Suddenly he appeared--the teasing divinity--in human shape. There was a
+rustling among the brushwood fringing the river. Roger Barnes emerged
+and made his way up towards her.
+
+"I've been stalking you all this time," he said, breathless, as he
+reached her, "and now at last--I've caught you!"
+
+Daphne rose furiously. "What right have you to stalk me, as you call
+it--to follow me--to speak to me even? I wish to avoid you--and I have
+shown it!"
+
+Roger looked at her. He had thrown down his hat, and she saw him against
+the background of sunny wood, as the magnificent embodiment of its youth
+and force. "And why have you shown it?" There was a warning tremor of
+excitement in his voice. "What have I done? I haven't deserved it! You
+treat me like--like a friend!--and then you drop me like a hot coal.
+You've been awfully unkind to me!"
+
+"I won't discuss it with you," she cried passionately. "You are in my
+way, Mr. Barnes. Let me go back to the others!" And stretching out a
+small hand, she tried to put him aside.
+
+Roger hesitated, but only for a moment. He caught the hand, he gathered
+its owner into a pair of strong arms, and bending over her, he kissed
+her. Daphne, suffocated with anger and emotion, broke from
+him--tottering. Then sinking on the ground beneath a tree, she burst
+into sobbing. Roger, scarlet, with sparkling eyes, dropped on one knee
+beside her.
+
+[Illustration: "He caught the hand, he gathered its owner into a pair of
+strong arms, and bending over her, he kissed her"]
+
+"Daphne, I'm a ruffian! forgive me! you must, Daphne! Look here, I want
+you to marry me. I've nothing to offer you, of course; I'm a poor man,
+and you've all this horrible money! But I--I love you!--and I'll make
+you a good husband, Daphne, that I'll swear. If you'll take me, you
+shall never be sorry for it."
+
+He looked at her again, sorely embarrassed, hating himself, yet inwardly
+sure of her. Her small frame shook with weeping. And presently she
+turned from him and said in a fierce voice:
+
+"Go and tell all that to Elsie Maddison!"
+
+Infinitely relieved, Roger gave a quick, excited laugh.
+
+"She'd soon send me about my business! I should be a day too late for
+the fair, in _that_ quarter. What do you think she and I have been
+talking about all this time, Daphne?"
+
+"I don't care," said Daphne hastily, with face still averted.
+
+"I'm going to tell you, all the same," cried Roger triumphantly, and
+diving into his coat pocket he produced "my tutor's letter." Daphne sat
+immovable, and he had to read it aloud himself. It contained the
+rapturous account of Herbert French's engagement to Miss Maddison, a
+happy event which had taken place in England during the Eton holidays,
+about a month before this date.
+
+"There!" cried the young man as he finished it. "And she's talked about
+nothing all the time, nothing at all--but old Herbert--and how good he
+is--and how good-looking, and the Lord knows what! I got precious sick
+of it, though I think he's a trump, too. Oh, Daphne!--you were a little
+fool!"
+
+"All the same, you have behaved abominably!" Daphne said, still choking.
+
+"No, I haven't," was Roger's firm reply. "It was you who were so cross.
+I couldn't tell you anything. I say! you do know how to stick pins into
+people!"
+
+But he took up her hand and kissed it as he spoke.
+
+Daphne allowed it. Her breast heaved as the storm departed. And she
+looked so charming, so soft, so desirable, as she sat there in her white
+dress, with her great tear-washed eyes and fluttering breath, that the
+youth was really touched and carried off his feet; and the rest of his
+task was quite easy. All the familiar things that had to be said were
+said, and with all the proper emphasis and spirit. He played his part,
+the spring woods played theirs, and Daphne, worn out by emotion and
+conquered by passion, gradually betrayed herself wholly. And so much at
+least may be said to the man's credit that there were certainly moments
+in the half-hour between them when, amid the rush of talk, laughter, and
+caresses, that conscience which he owed so greatly to the exertions of
+"my tutor" pricked him not a little.
+
+After losing themselves deliberately in the woods, they strolled back to
+join the rest of the party. The sounds of conversation were already
+audible through the trees in front of them, when they saw Mrs. Verrier
+coming towards them. She was walking alone and did not perceive them.
+Her eyes were raised and fixed, as though on some sight in front of
+them. The bitterness, the anguish, one might almost call it, of her
+expression, the horror in the eyes, as of one ghost-led, ghost-driven,
+drew an exclamation from Roger.
+
+"There's Mrs. Verrier! Why, how ill she looks!"
+
+Daphne paused, gazed, and shrank. She drew him aside through the trees.
+
+"Let's go another way. Madeleine's often strange." And with a
+superstitious pang she wished that Madeleine Verrier's face had not been
+the first to meet her in this hour of her betrothal.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+THREE YEARS AFTER
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+In the drawing-room at Heston Park two ladies were seated. One was a
+well-preserved woman of fifty, with a large oblong face, good features,
+a double chin, and abundant gray hair arranged in waved _bandeaux_ above
+a forehead which should certainly have implied strength of character,
+and a pair of challenging black eyes. Lady Barnes moved and spoke with
+authority; it was evident that she had been accustomed to do so all her
+life; to trail silk gowns over Persian carpets, to engage expensive
+cooks and rely on expensive butlers, with a strict attention to small
+economies all the time; to impose her will on her household and the
+clergyman of the parish; to give her opinions on books, and expect them
+to be listened to; to abstain from politics as unfeminine, and to make
+up for it by the strongest of views on Church questions. She belonged to
+an English type common throughout all classes--quite harmless and
+tolerable when things go well, but apt to be soured and twisted by
+adversity.
+
+And Lady Barnes, it will be remembered, had known adversity. Not much of
+it, nor for long together; but in her own opinion she had gone through
+"great trials," to the profit of her Christian character. She was quite
+certain, now, that everything had been for the best, and that Providence
+makes no mistakes. But that, perhaps, was because the "trials" had only
+lasted about a year; and then, so far as they were pecuniary, the
+marriage of her son with Miss Daphne Floyd had entirely relieved her of
+them. For Roger now made her a handsome allowance and the chastened
+habits of a most uncomfortable year had been hastily abandoned.
+
+Nevertheless, Lady Barnes's aspect on this autumn afternoon was not
+cheerful, and her companion was endeavouring, with a little kind
+embarrassment, both to soothe an evident irritation and to avoid the
+confidences that Roger's mother seemed eager to pour out. Elsie French,
+whom Washington had known three years before as Elsie Maddison, was in
+that bloom of young married life when all that was lovely in the girl
+seems to be still lingering, while yet love and motherhood have wrought
+once more their old transforming miracle on sense and spirit. In her
+afternoon dress of dainty sprigged silk, with just a touch of austerity
+in the broad muslin collar and cuffs--her curly brown hair simply parted
+on her brow, and gathered classically on a shapely head--her mouth a
+little troubled, her brow a little puckered over Lady Barnes's
+discontents--she was a very gracious vision. Yet behind the gentleness,
+as even Lady Barnes knew, there were qualities and characteristics of a
+singular strength.
+
+Lady Barnes indeed was complaining, and could not be stopped.
+
+"You see, dear Mrs. French," she was saying, in a rapid, lowered voice,
+and with many glances at the door, "the trouble is that Daphne is never
+satisfied. She has some impossible ideal in her mind, and then
+everything must be sacrificed to it. She began with going into ecstasies
+over this dear old house, and now!--there's scarcely a thing in it she
+does not want to change. Poor Edward and I spent thousands upon it, and
+we really flattered ourselves that we had some taste; but it is not good
+enough for Daphne!"
+
+The speaker settled herself in her chair with a slight but emphatic
+clatter of bangles and rustle of skirts.
+
+"It's the ceilings, isn't it?" murmured Elsie French, glancing at the
+heavy decoration, the stucco bosses and pendants above her head which
+had replaced, some twenty years before, a piece of Adam design, sparing
+and felicitous.
+
+"It's everything!" Lady Barnes's tone was now more angry than fretful.
+"I don't, of course, like to say it--but really Daphne's self-confidence
+is too amazing!"
+
+"She does know so much," said Elsie French reflectively. "Doesn't she?"
+
+"Well, if you call it knowing. She can always get some tiresome person,
+whom she calls an 'expert,' to back her up. But I believe in liking what
+you _do_ like, and not being bullied into what you don't like."
+
+"I suppose if one studies these things----" Elsie French began timidly.
+
+"What's the good of studying!" cried Lady Barnes; "one has one's own
+taste, or one hasn't."
+
+Confronted with this form of the Absolute, Elsie French looked
+perplexed; especially as her own artistic sympathies were mainly with
+Daphne. The situation was certainly awkward. At the time of the Barnes's
+financial crash, and Sir Edward Barnes's death, Heston Park, which
+belonged to Lady Barnes, was all that remained to her and her son. A
+park of a hundred acres and a few cottages went with the house; but
+there was no estate to support it, and it had to be let, to provide an
+income for the widow and the boy. Much of the expensive furniture had
+been sold before letting, but enough remained to satisfy the wants of a
+not very exacting tenant.
+
+Lady Barnes had then departed to weep in exile on a pittance of about
+seven hundred a year. But with the marriage of her son to Miss Floyd and
+her millions, the mother's thoughts had turned fondly back to Heston
+Park. It was too big for her, of course; but the young people clearly
+must redeem it, and settle there. And Daphne had been quite amenable.
+The photographs charmed her. The house, she said, was evidently in a
+pure style, and it would be a delight to make it habitable again. The
+tenant, however, had a lease, and refused to turn out until at last
+Daphne had frankly bribed him to go. And now, after three years of
+married life, during which the young couple had rented various "places,"
+besides their house in London and a villa at Tunis, Heston Park had been
+vacated, Daphne and Roger had descended upon it as Lady Barnes's tenants
+at a high rent, intent upon its restoration; and Roger's mother had been
+invited to their councils.
+
+Hence, indeed, these tears. When Daphne first stepped inside the
+ancestral mansion of the Trescoes--such had been Lady Barnes's maiden
+name--she had received a severe shock. The outside, the shell of the
+house--delightful! But inside!--heavens! what taste, what
+decoration--what ruin of a beautiful thing! Half the old mantelpieces
+gone, the ceilings spoiled, the decorations "busy," pretentious,
+overdone, and nothing left to console her but an ugly row of bad Lelys
+and worse Highmores--the most despicable collection of family portraits
+she had ever set eyes upon!
+
+Roger had looked unhappy. "It was father and mother did it," he admitted
+penitently. "But after all, Daphne, you know they _are_ Trescoes!"--this
+with a defensive and protecting glance at the Lelys.
+
+Daphne was sorry for it. Her mouth tightened, and certain lines appeared
+about it which already prophesied what the years would make of the young
+face. Yet it was a pretty mouth--the mouth, above all, of one with no
+doubts at all as to her place and rights in the world. Lady Barnes had
+pronounced it "common" in her secret thoughts before she had known its
+owner six weeks. But the adjective had never yet escaped the "bulwark of
+the teeth." Outwardly the mother and daughter-in-law were still on good
+terms. It was indeed but a week since the son and his wife had
+arrived--with their baby girl--at Heston Park, after a summer of
+yachting and fishing in Norway; since Lady Barnes had journeyed thither
+from London to meet them; and Mr. and Mrs. French had accepted an urgent
+invitation from Roger, quite sufficiently backed by Daphne, to stay for
+a few days with Mr. French's old pupil, before the reopening of Eton.
+
+During that time there had been no open quarrels of any kind; but Elsie
+French was a sensitive creature, and she had been increasingly aware of
+friction and annoyance behind the scenes. And now here was Lady Barnes
+let loose! and Daphne might appear at any moment, before she could be
+re-caged.
+
+"She puts you down so!" cried that lady, making gestures with the
+paper-knife she had just been employing on the pages of a Mudie book.
+"If I tell her that something or other--it doesn't matter what--cost at
+least a great deal of money, she has a way of smiling at you that is
+positively insulting! She doesn't trouble to argue; she begins to laugh,
+and raises her eyebrows. I--I always feel as if she had struck me in the
+face! I know I oughtn't to speak like this; I hadn't meant to do it,
+especially to a country-woman of hers, as you are."
+
+"Am I?" said Elsie, in a puzzled voice.
+
+Lady Barnes opened her eyes in astonishment.
+
+"I meant"--the explanation was hurried--"I thought--Mrs. Barnes was a
+South American? Her mother was Spanish, of course; you see it in
+Daphne."
+
+"Yes; in her wonderful eyes," said Mrs. French warmly; "and her
+grace--isn't she graceful! My husband says she moves like a sea-wave.
+She has given her eyes to the child."
+
+"Ah! and other things too, I'm afraid!" cried Lady Barnes, carried away.
+"But here is the baby."
+
+For the sounds of a childish voice were heard echoing in the domed hall
+outside. Small feet came pattering, and the drawing-room door was burst
+open by Roger Barnes, holding a little girl of nearly two and a half by
+the hand.
+
+Lady Barnes composed herself. It is necessary to smile at children, and
+she endeavoured to satisfy her own sense of it.
+
+"Come in, Beatty; come and kiss granny!" And Lady Barnes held out her
+arms.
+
+But the child stood still, surveyed her grandmother with a pair of
+startling eyes, and then, turning, made a rush for the door. But her
+father was too quick for her. He closed it with a laugh, and stood with
+his back to it. The child did not cry, but, with flaming cheeks, she
+began to beat her father's knees with her small fists.
+
+"Go and kiss granny, darling," said Roger, stroking her dark head.
+
+Beatty turned again, put both her hands behind her, and stood immovable.
+
+"Not kiss granny," she said firmly. "Don't love granny."
+
+"Oh, Beatty"--Mrs. French knelt down beside her--"come and be a good
+little girl, and I'll show you picture-books."
+
+"I not Beatty--I Jemima Ann," said the small thin voice. "Not be a dood
+dirl--do upstairs."
+
+She looked at her father again, and then, evidently perceiving that he
+was not to be moved by force, she changed her tactics. Her delicate,
+elfish face melted into the sweetest smile; she stood on tiptoe, holding
+out to him her tiny arms. With a laugh of irrepressible pride and
+pleasure, Roger stooped to her and lifted her up. She nestled on his
+shoulder--a small Odalisque, dark, lithe, and tawny, beside her
+handsome, fair-skinned father. And Roger's manner of holding and
+caressing her showed the passionate affection with which he regarded
+her.
+
+He again urged her to kiss her grandmother; but the child again shook
+her head. "Then," said he craftily, "father must kiss granny." And he
+began to cross the room.
+
+But Lady Barnes stopped him, not without dignity. "Better not press it,
+Roger: another time."
+
+Barnes laughed, and yielded. He carried the child away, murmuring to
+her, "Naughty, naughty 'ittie girl!"--a remark which Beatty, tucked
+under his ear, and complacently sucking her thumb, received with
+complete indifference.
+
+"There, you see!" said the grandmother, with slightly flushed cheeks, as
+the door closed: "the child has been already taught to dislike me, and
+if Roger had attempted to kiss me, she would probably have struck me."
+
+"Oh, no!" cried Mrs. French. "She is a loving little thing."
+
+"Except when she is jealous," said Lady Barnes, with significance. "I
+told you she has inherited more than her eyes."
+
+Mrs. French rose. She was determined not to discuss her hostess any
+more, and she walked over to the bow window as though to look at the
+prospects of the weather, which had threatened rain. But Roger's mother
+was not to be repressed. Resentment and antagonism, nurtured on a
+hundred small incidents and trifling jars, and, to begin with, a matter
+of temperament, had come at last to speech. And in this charming New
+Englander, the wife of Roger's best friend, sympathetic, tender, with a
+touch in her of the nun and the saint, Lady Barnes could not help trying
+to find a supporter. She was a much weaker person than her square build
+and her double chin would have led the bystander to suppose; and her
+feelings had been hurt.
+
+So that when Mrs. French returned to say that the sun seemed to be
+coming out, her companion, without heeding, went on, with emotion: "It's
+my son I am thinking of, Mrs. French. I know you're safe, and that Roger
+depends upon Mr. French more than upon anyone else in the world, so I
+can't help just saying a word to you about my anxiety. You know, when
+Roger married, I don't think he was much in love--in fact, I'm sure he
+wasn't. But now--it's quite different. Roger has a very soft heart, and
+he's very domestic. He was always the best of sons to me, and as soon as
+he was married he became the best of husbands. He's devoted to Daphne
+now, and you see how he adores the child. But the fact is, there's a
+person in this neighbourhood" (Lady Barnes lowered her voice and looked
+round her)--"I only knew it for certain this morning--who ... well, who
+might make trouble. And Daphne's temper is so passionate and
+uncontrolled that----"
+
+"Dear Lady Barnes, please don't tell me any secrets!" Elsie French
+implored, and laid a restraining hand on the mother's arm, ready,
+indeed, to take up her work and fly. But Lady Barnes's chair stood
+between her and the door, and the occupant of it was substantial.
+
+Laura Barnes hesitated, and in the pause two persons appeared upon the
+garden path outside, coming towards the open windows of the
+drawing-room. One was Mrs. Roger Barnes; the other was a man, remarkably
+tall and slender, with a stoop like that of an overgrown schoolboy,
+silky dark hair and moustache, and pale gray eyes.
+
+"Dr. Lelius!" said Elsie, in astonishment. "Was Daphne expecting him?"
+
+"Who is Dr. Lelius?" asked Lady Barnes, putting up her eyeglass.
+
+Mrs. French explained that he was a South German art-critic, from
+Würzburg, with a great reputation. She had already met him at Eton and
+at Oxford.
+
+"Another expert!" said Lady Barnes with a shrug.
+
+The pair passed the window, absorbed apparently in conversation. Mrs.
+French escaped. Lady Barnes was left to discontent and solitude.
+
+But the solitude was not for long.
+
+When Elsie French descended for tea, an hour later, she was aware, from
+a considerable distance, of people and tumult in the drawing-room.
+Daphne's soprano voice--agreeable, but making its mark always, like its
+owner--could be heard running on. The young mistress of the house seemed
+to be admonishing, instructing, someone. Could it be her mother-in-law?
+
+When Elsie entered, Daphne was walking up and down in excitement.
+
+"One cannot really live with bad pictures because they happen to be
+one's ancestors! We won't do them any harm, mamma! of course not. There
+is a room upstairs where they can be stored--most carefully--and anybody
+who is interested in them can go and look at them. If they had only been
+left as they were painted!--not by Lely, of course, but by some drapery
+man in his studio--_passe encore_! they might have been just bearable.
+But you see some wretched restorer went and daubed them all over a few
+years ago."
+
+"We went to the best man we could find! We took the best advice!" cried
+Lady Barnes, sitting stiff and crimson in a deep arm-chair, opposite the
+luckless row of portraits that Daphne was denouncing.
+
+"I'm sure you did. But then, you see, nobody knew anything at all about
+it in those days. The restorers were all murderers. Ask Dr. Lelius."
+
+Daphne pointed to the stranger, who was leaning against an arm-chair
+beside her in an embarrassed attitude, as though he were endeavouring to
+make the chair a buffer between himself and Lady Barnes.
+
+Dr. Lelius bowed.
+
+"It is a modern art," he said with diffidence, and an accent creditably
+slight--"a quite modern art. We hafe a great man at Würzburg."
+
+"I don't suppose he professes to know anything about English pictures,
+does he?" asked Lady Barnes with scorn.
+
+"Ach!--I do not propose that Mrs. Barnes entrust him wid dese pictures,
+Madame. It is now too late."
+
+And the willowy German looked, with a half-repressed smile, at the row
+of pictures--all staring at the bystander with the same saucer eyes, the
+same wooden arms, and the same brilliance of modern paint and varnish,
+which not even the passage of four years since it was applied had been
+able greatly to subdue.
+
+Lady Barnes lifted shoulders and eyes--a woman's angry protest against
+the tyranny of knowledge.
+
+"All the same, they are my forbears, my kith and kin," she said, with
+emphasis. "But of course Mrs. Barnes is mistress here: I suppose she
+will do as she pleases."
+
+The German stared politely at the carpet. It was now Daphne's turn to
+shrug. She threw herself into a chair, with very red cheeks, one foot
+hanging over the other, and the fingers of her hands, which shone with
+diamonds, tapping the chair impatiently. Her dress of a delicate pink,
+touched here and there with black, her wide black hat, and the eyes
+which glowed from the small pointed face beneath it; the tumbling masses
+of her dark hair as contrasted with her general lightness and
+slenderness; the red of the lips, the whiteness of the hands and brow,
+the dainty irregularity of feature: these things made a Watteau sketch
+of her, all pure colour and lissomeness, with dots and scratches of
+intense black. Daphne was much handsomer than she had been as a girl,
+but also a trifle less refined. All her points were intensified--her
+eyes had more flame; the damask of her cheek was deeper; her grace was
+wilder, her voice a little shriller than of old.
+
+While the uncomfortable silence which the two women had made around them
+still lasted, Roger Barnes appeared on the garden steps.
+
+"Hullo! any tea going?" He came in, without waiting for an answer,
+looked from his mother to Daphne, from Daphne to his mother, and laughed
+uncomfortably.
+
+"Still bothering about those beastly pictures?" he said as he helped
+himself to a cup of tea.
+
+"_Thank_ you, Roger!" said Lady Barnes.
+
+"I didn't mean any harm, mother." He crossed over to her and sat down
+beside her. "I say, Daphne, I've got an idea. Why shouldn't mother have
+them? She's going to take a house, she says. Let's hand them all over to
+her!"
+
+Lady Barnes's lips trembled with indignation. "The Trescoes who were
+born and died in this house, belong here!" The tone of the words showed
+the stab to feeling and self-love. "It would be a sacrilege to move
+them."
+
+"Well then, let's move ourselves!" exclaimed Daphne, springing up. "We
+can let this house again, can't we, Roger?"
+
+"We can, I suppose," said Roger, munching his bread and butter; "but
+we're not going to."
+
+He raised his head and looked quietly at her.
+
+"I think we'd better!" The tone was imperious. Daphne, with her thin
+arms and hands locked behind her, paused beside her husband.
+
+Dr. Lelius, stealthily raising his eyes, observed the two. A strange
+little scene--not English at all. The English, he understood, were a
+phlegmatic people. What had this little Southerner to do among them? And
+what sort of fellow was the husband?
+
+It was evident that some mute coloquy passed between the husband and
+wife--disapproval on his part, attempt to assert authority, defiance, on
+hers. Then the fair-skinned English face, confronting Daphne, wavered
+and weakened, and Roger smiled into the eyes transfixing him.
+
+"Ah!" thought Lelius, "she has him, de poor fool!"
+
+Roger, coming over to his mother, began a murmured conversation. Daphne,
+still breathing quick, consented to talk to Dr. Lelius and Mrs. French.
+Lelius, who travelled widely, had brought her news of some pictures in a
+chateau of the Bourbonnais--pictures that her whole mind was set on
+acquiring. Elsie French noticed the _expertise_ of her talk; the
+intellectual development it implied; the passion of will which
+accompanied it. "To the dollar, all things are possible"--one might have
+phrased it so.
+
+The soft September air came in through the open windows, from a garden
+flooded with western sun. Suddenly through the subdued talk which filled
+the drawing-room--each group in it avoiding the other--the sound of a
+motor arriving made itself heard.
+
+"Heavens! who on earth knows we're here?" said Barnes, looking up.
+
+For they had only been camping a week in the house, far too busy to
+think of neighbours. They sat expectant and annoyed, reproaching each
+other with not having told the butler to say "Not at home." Lady
+Barnes's attitude had in it something else--a little anxiety; but it
+escaped notice. Steps came through the hall, and the butler, throwing
+open the door, announced--
+
+"Mrs. Fairmile."
+
+Roger Barnes sprang to his feet. His mother, with a little gasp, caught
+him by the arm instinctively. There was a general rise and a movement of
+confusion, till the new-comer, advancing, offered her hand to Daphne.
+
+"I am afraid, Mrs. Barnes, I am disturbing you all. The butler told me
+you had only been here a few days. But Lady Barnes and your husband are
+such old friends of mine that, as soon as I heard--through our old
+postmistress, I think--that you had arrived, I thought I might venture."
+
+The charming voice dropped, and the speaker waited, smiling, her eyes
+fixed on Daphne. Daphne had taken her hand in some bewilderment, and was
+now looking at her husband for assistance. It was clear to Elsie French,
+in the background, that Daphne neither knew the lady nor the lady's
+name, and that the visit had taken her entirely by surprise.
+
+Barnes recovered himself quickly. "I had no idea you were in these
+parts," he said, as he brought a chair forward for the visitor, and
+stood beside her a moment.
+
+Lady Barnes, observing him, as she stiffly greeted the new-comer--his
+cool manner, his deepened colour--felt the usual throb of maternal pride
+in him, intensified by alarm and excitement.
+
+"Oh, I am staying a day or two with Duchess Mary," said the new-comer.
+"She is a little older--and no less gouty, poor dear, than she used to
+be. Mrs. Barnes, I have heard a great deal of you--though you mayn't
+know anything about me. Ah! Dr. Lelius?"
+
+The German, bowing awkwardly, yet radiant, came forward to take the hand
+extended to him.
+
+"They did nothing but talk about you at the Louvre, when I was there
+last week," she said, with a little confidential nod. "You have made
+them horribly uncomfortable about some of their things. Isn't it a pity
+to know too much?"
+
+She turned toward Daphne. "I'm afraid that's your case too." She smiled,
+and the smile lit up a face full of delicate lines and wrinkles, which
+no effort had been made to disguise; a tired face, where the eyes spoke
+from caverns of shade, yet with the most appealing and persuasive
+beauty.
+
+"Do you mean about pictures?" said Daphne, a little coldly. "I don't
+know as much as Dr. Lelius."
+
+Humour leaped into the eyes fixed upon her; but Mrs. Fairmile only said:
+"That's not given to the rest of us mortals. But after all, _having's_
+better than knowing. Don't--_don't_ you possess the Vitali Signorelli?"
+
+Her voice was most musical and flattering. Daphne smiled in spite of
+herself. "Yes, we do. It's in London now--waiting till we can find a
+place for it."
+
+"You must let me make a pilgrimage--when it comes. But you know you'd
+find a number of things at Upcott--where I'm staying now--that would
+interest you. I forget whether you've met the Duchess?"
+
+"This is our first week here," said Roger, interposing. "The house has
+been let till now. We came down to see what could be made of it."
+
+His tone was only just civil. His mother, looking on, said to herself
+that he was angry--and with good reason.
+
+But Mrs. Fairmile still smiled.
+
+"Ah! the Lelys!" she cried, raising her hand slightly toward the row of
+portraits on the wall. "The dear impossible things! Are you still
+discussing them--as we used to do?"
+
+Daphne started. "You know this house, then?"
+
+The smile broadened into a laugh of amusement, as Mrs. Fairmile turned
+to Roger's mother.
+
+"Don't I, dear Lady Barnes--don't I know this house?"
+
+Lady Barnes seemed to straighten in her chair. "Well, you were here
+often enough to know it," she said abruptly. "Daphne, Mrs. Fairmile is a
+distant cousin of ours."
+
+"Distant, but quite enough to swear by!" said the visitor, gaily. "Yes,
+Mrs. Barnes, I knew this house very well in old days. It has many
+charming points." She looked round with a face that had suddenly become
+coolly critical, an embodied intelligence.
+
+Daphne, as though divining for the first time a listener worthy of her
+steel, began to talk with some rapidity of the changes she wished to
+make. She talked with an evident desire to show off, to make an
+impression. Mrs. Fairmile listened attentively, occasionally throwing in
+a word of criticism or comment, in the softest, gentlest voice. But
+somehow, whenever she spoke, Daphne felt vaguely irritated. She was
+generally put slightly in the wrong by her visitor, and Mrs. Fairmile's
+extraordinary knowledge of Heston Park, and of everything connected with
+it, was so odd and disconcerting. She had a laughing way, moreover, of
+appealing to Roger Barnes himself to support a recollection or an
+opinion, which presently produced a contraction of Daphne's brows. Who
+was this woman? A cousin--a cousin who knew every inch of the house, and
+seemed to be one of Roger's closest friends? It was really too strange
+that in all these years Roger should never have said a word about her!
+
+The red mounted in Daphne's cheek. She began, moreover, to feel herself
+at a disadvantage to which she was not accustomed. Dr. Lelius,
+meanwhile, turned to Mrs. Fairmile, whenever she was allowed to speak,
+with a joyous yet inarticulate deference he had never shown to his
+hostess. They understood each other at a word or a glance. Beside them
+Daphne, with all her cleverness, soon appeared as a child for whom one
+makes allowances.
+
+A vague anger swelled in her throat. She noticed, too, Roger's silence
+and Lady Barnes's discomfort. There was clearly something here that had
+been kept from her--something to be unravelled!
+
+Suddenly the new-comer rose. Mrs. Fairmile wore a dress of some pale
+gray stuff, cobweb-light and transparent, over a green satin. It had the
+effect of sea-water, and her gray hat, with its pale green wreath,
+framed the golden-gray of her hair. Every one of her few adornments was
+exquisite--so was her grace as she moved. Daphne's pink-and-black
+vivacity beside her seemed a pinchbeck thing.
+
+"Well, now, when will you all come to Upcott?" Mrs. Fairmile said
+graciously, as she shook hands. "The Duchess will be enchanted to see
+you any day, and----"
+
+"Thank you! but we really can't come so far," said a determined voice.
+"We have only a shaky old motor--our new one isn't ready yet--and
+besides, we want all our time for the house."
+
+"You make him work so hard?"
+
+Mrs. Fairmile, laughing, pointed to the speaker. Roger looked up
+involuntarily, and Daphne saw the look.
+
+"Roger has nothing to do," she said, quickly. "Thank you very much: we
+will certainly come. I'll write to you. How many miles did you say it
+was?"
+
+"Oh, nothing for a motor!--twenty-five. We used to think it nothing for
+a ride, didn't we?"
+
+The speaker, who was just passing through the door, turned towards
+Roger, who with Lelius, was escorting her, with a last gesture--gay,
+yet, like all her gestures, charged with a slight yet deliberate
+significance.
+
+They disappeared. Daphne walked to the window, biting her lip.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As she stood there Herbert French came into the room, looking a little
+shy and ill at ease, and behind him three persons, a clergyman in an
+Archdeacon's apron and gaiters, and two ladies. Daphne, perceiving them
+sideways in a mirror to her right, could not repress a gesture and
+muttered sound of annoyance.
+
+French introduced Archdeacon Mountford, his wife and sister. Roger, it
+seemed, had met them in the hall, and sent them in. He himself had been
+carried off on some business by the head keeper.
+
+Daphne turned ungraciously. Her colour was very bright, her eyes a
+little absent and wild. The two ladies, both clad in pale brown stuffs,
+large mushroom hats, and stout country boots, eyed her nervously, and as
+they sat down, at her bidding, they left the Archdeacon--who was the
+vicar of the neighbouring town--to explain, with much amiable
+stammering, that seeing the Duchess's carriage at the front door, as
+they were crossing the park, they presumed that visitors were admitted,
+and had ventured to call.
+
+Daphne received the explanation without any cordiality. She did indeed
+bid the callers sit down, and ordered some fresh tea. But she took no
+pains to entertain them, and if Lady Barnes and Herbert French had not
+come to the rescue, they would have fared but ill. The Archdeacon, in
+fact, did come to grief. For him Mrs. Barnes was just a "foreigner,"
+imported from some unknown and, of course, inferior _milieu_, one who
+had never been "a happy English child," and must therefore be treated
+with indulgence. He endeavoured to talk to her--kindly--about her
+country. A branch of his own family, he informed her, had settled about
+a hundred years before this date in the United States. He gave her, at
+some length, the genealogy of the branch, then of the main stock to
+which he himself belonged, presuming that she was, at any rate,
+acquainted with the name? It was, he said, his strong opinion that
+American women were very "bright." For himself he could not say that he
+even disliked the accent, it was so "quaint." Did Mrs. Barnes know many
+of the American bishops? He himself had met a large number of them at a
+reception at the Church House, but it had really made him quite
+uncomfortable! They wore no official dress, and there was he--a mere
+Archdeacon!--in gaiters. And, of course, no one thought of calling them
+"my lord." It certainly was very curious--to an Englishman. And
+Methodist bishops!--such as he was told America possessed in
+plenty--that was still more curious. One of the Episcopalian bishops,
+however, had preached--in Westminster Abbey--a remarkable sermon, on a
+very sad subject, not perhaps a subject to be discussed in a
+drawing-room--but still----
+
+Suddenly the group on the other side of the room became aware that the
+Archdeacon's amiable prosing had been sharply interrupted--that Daphne,
+not he, was holding the field. A gust of talk arose--Daphne declaiming,
+the Archdeacon, after a first pause of astonishment, changing aspect and
+tone. French, looking across the room, saw the mask of conventional
+amiability stripped from what was really a strong and rather tyrannical
+face. The man's prominent mouth and long upper lip emerged. He drew his
+chair back from Daphne's; he tried once or twice to stop or argue with
+her, and finally he rose abruptly.
+
+"My dear!"--his wife turned hastily--"We must not detain Mrs. Barnes
+longer!"
+
+The two ladies looked at the Archdeacon--the god of their idolatry; then
+at Daphne. Hurriedly, like birds frightened by a shot, they crossed the
+room and just touched their hostess's hand; the Archdeacon, making up
+for their precipitancy by a double dose of dignity, bowed himself out;
+the door closed behind them.
+
+"Daphne!--my dear! what is the matter?" cried Lady Barnes, in dismay.
+
+"He spoke to me impertinently about my country!" said Daphne, turning
+upon her, her black eyes blazing, her cheeks white with excitement.
+
+"The Archdeacon!--he is always so polite!"
+
+"He talked like a fool--about things he doesn't understand!" was
+Daphne's curt reply, as she gathered up her hat and some letters, and
+moved towards the door.
+
+"About what? My dear Daphne! He could not possibly have meant to offend
+you! Could he, Mr. French?" Lady Barnes turned plaintively towards her
+very uncomfortable companions.
+
+Daphne confronted her.
+
+"If he chooses to think America immoral and degraded because American
+divorce laws are different from the English laws, let him think it!--but
+he has no business to air his views to an American--at a first visit,
+too!" said Daphne passionately, and, drawing herself up, she swept out
+of the room, leaving the others dumfoundered.
+
+"Oh dear! oh dear!" wailed Lady Barnes. "And the Archdeacon is so
+important! Daphne might have been rude to anybody else--but not the
+Archdeacon!"
+
+"How did they manage to get into such a subject--so quickly?" asked
+Elsie in bewilderment.
+
+"I suppose he took it for granted that Daphne agreed with him! All
+decent people do."
+
+Lady Barnes's wrath was evident--so was her indiscretion. Elsie French
+applied herself to soothing her, while Herbert French disappeared into
+the garden with a book. His wife, however, presently observed from the
+drawing-room that he was not reading. He was pacing the lawn, with his
+hands behind him, and his eyes on the grass. The slight, slowly-moving
+figure stood for meditation, and Elsie French knew enough to understand
+that the incidents of the afternoon might well supply any friend of
+Roger Barnes's with food for meditation. Herbert had not been in the
+drawing-room when Mrs. Fairmile was calling, but no doubt he had met her
+in the hall when she was on her way to her carriage.
+
+Meanwhile Daphne, in her own room, was also employed in meditation. She
+had thrown herself, frowning, into a chair beside a window which
+overlooked the park. The landscape had a gentle charm--spreading grass,
+low hills, and scattered woods--under a warm September sun. But it had
+no particular accent, and Daphne thought it both tame and depressing;
+like an English society made up of Archdeacon Mountfords and their
+women-kind! What a futile, irritating man!--and what dull creatures were
+the wife and daughter!--mere echoes of their lord and master. She had
+behaved badly, of course; in a few days she supposed the report of her
+outburst would be all over the place. She did not care. Even for Roger's
+sake she was not going to cringe to these poor provincial standards.
+
+And all the time she knew very well that it was not the Archdeacon and
+his fatuities that were really at fault. The afternoon had been decided
+not by the Mountfords' call, but by that which had preceded it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Mrs. Barnes, however, made no immediate reference to the matter which
+was in truth filling her mind. She avoided her husband and
+mother-in-law, both of whom were clearly anxious to capture her
+attention; and, by way of protecting herself from them, she spent the
+late afternoon in looking through Italian photographs with Dr. Lelius.
+
+But about seven o'clock Roger found her lying on her sofa, her hands
+clasped behind her head--frowning--the lips working.
+
+He came in rather consciously, glancing at his wife in hesitation.
+
+"Are you tired, Daphne?"
+
+"No."
+
+"A penny for your thoughts, then!" He stooped over her and looked into
+her eyes.
+
+Daphne made no reply. She continued to look straight before her.
+
+"What's the matter with you?" he said, at last.
+
+"I'm wondering," said Daphne slowly, "how many more cousins and great
+friends you have, that I know nothing about. I think another time it
+would be civil--just that!--to give me a word of warning."
+
+Roger pulled at his moustache. "I hadn't an idea she was within a
+thousand miles of this place! But, if I had, I couldn't have imagined
+she would have the face to come here!"
+
+"Who is she?" With a sudden movement Daphne turned her eyes upon him.
+
+"Well, there's no good making any bones about it," said the man,
+flushing. "She's a girl I was once engaged to, for a very short time,"
+he added hastily. "It was the week before my father died, and our smash
+came. As soon as it came she threw me over."
+
+Daphne's intense gaze, under the slightly frowning brows, disquieted
+him.
+
+"How long were you engaged to her?"
+
+"Three weeks."
+
+"Had she been staying here before that?"
+
+"Yes--she often stayed here. Daphne! don't look like that! She treated
+me abominably; and before I married you I had come not to care twopence
+about her."
+
+"You did care about her when you proposed to me?"
+
+"No!--not at all! Of course, when I went out to New York I was sore,
+because she had thrown me over."
+
+"And I"--Daphne made a scornful lip--"was the feather-bed to catch you
+as you fell. It never occurred to you that it might have been honourable
+to tell me?"
+
+"Well, I don't know--I never asked you to tell me of your affairs!"
+
+Roger, his hands in his pockets, looked round at her with an awkward
+laugh.
+
+"I told you everything!" was the quick reply--"_everything_."
+
+Roger uncomfortably remembered that so indeed it had been; and moreover
+that he had been a good deal bored at the time by Daphne's confessions.
+
+He had not been enough in love with her--then--to find them of any great
+account. And certainly it had never occurred to him to pay them back in
+kind. What did it matter to her or to anyone that Chloe Morant had made
+a fool of him? His recollection of the fooling, at the time he proposed
+to Daphne, was still so poignant that it would have been impossible to
+speak of it. And within a few months afterwards he had practically
+forgotten it--and Chloe too. Of course he could not see her again, for
+the first time, without being "a bit upset"; mostly, indeed, by the
+boldness--the brazenness--of her behaviour. But his emotions were of no
+tragic strength, and, as Lady Barnes had complained to Mrs. French, he
+was now honestly in love with Daphne and his child.
+
+So that he had nothing but impatience and annoyance for the recollection
+of the visit of the afternoon; and Daphne's attitude distressed him.
+Why, she was as pale as a ghost! His thoughts sent Chloe Fairmile to the
+deuce.
+
+"Look here, dear!" he said, kneeling down suddenly beside his
+wife--"don't you get any nonsense into your head. I'm not the kind of
+fellow who goes philandering after a woman when she's jilted him. I took
+her measure, and after you accepted me I never gave her another thought.
+I forgot her, dear--bag and baggage! Kiss me, Daphne!"
+
+But Daphne still held him at bay.
+
+"How long were you engaged to her?" she repeated.
+
+"I've told you--three weeks!" said the man, reluctantly.
+
+"How long had you known her?"
+
+"A year or two. She was a distant cousin of father's. Her father was
+Governor of Madras, and her mother was dead. She couldn't stand India
+for long together, and she used to stay about with relations. Why she
+took a fancy to me I can't imagine. She's so booky and artistic, and
+that kind of thing, that I never understood half the time what she was
+talking about. Now you're just as clever, you know, darling, but I do
+understand you."
+
+Roger's conscience made a few dim remonstrances. It asked him whether in
+fact, standing on his own qualifications and advantages of quite a
+different kind, he had not always felt himself triumphantly more than a
+match for Chloe and her cleverness. But he paid no heed to them. He was
+engaged in stroking Daphne's fingers and studying the small set face.
+
+"Whom did she marry?" asked Daphne, putting an end to the stroking.
+
+"A fellow in the army--Major Fairmile--a smart, popular sort of chap. He
+was her father's aide-de-camp when they married--just after we did--and
+they've been in India, or Egypt, ever since. They don't get on, and I
+suppose she comes and quarters herself on the old Duchess--as she used
+to on us."
+
+"You seem to know all about her! Yes, I remember now, I've heard people
+speak of her to you. Mrs. Fairmile--Mrs. Fairmile--yes, I remember,"
+said Daphne, in a brooding voice, her cheeks becoming suddenly very red.
+"Your uncle--in town--mentioned her. I didn't take any notice."
+
+"Why should you? She doesn't matter a fig, either to you or to me!"
+
+"It matters to me very much that these people who spoke of her--your
+uncle and the others--knew what I didn't know!" cried Daphne,
+passionately. She stared at Roger, strangely conscious that something
+epoch-making and decisive had happened. Roger had had a secret from her
+all these years--that was what had happened; and now she had discovered
+it. That he _could_ have a secret from her, however, was the real
+discovery. She felt a fierce resentment, and yet a kind of added respect
+for him. All the time he had been the private owner of thoughts and
+recollections that she had no part in, and the fact roused in her tumult
+and bitterness. Nevertheless the disturbance which it produced in her
+sense of property, the shock and anguish of it, brought back something
+of the passion of love she had felt in the first year of their marriage.
+
+During these three years she had more than once shown herself insanely
+jealous for the merest trifles. But Roger had always laughed at her, and
+she had ended by laughing at herself.
+
+Yet all the time he had had this secret. She sat looking at him hard
+with her astonishing eyes; and he grew more and more uneasy.
+
+"Well, some of them knew," he said, answering her last reproach. "And
+they knew that I was jolly well quit of her! I suppose I ought to have
+told you, Daphne--of course I ought--I'm sorry. But the fact was I never
+wanted to think of her again. And I certainly never want to see her
+again! Why, in the name of goodness, did you accept that tea-fight?"
+
+"Because I mean to go."
+
+"Then you'll have to go without me," was the incautious reply.
+
+"Oh, so you're afraid of meeting her! I shall know what to think, if you
+_don't_ go." Daphne sat erect, her hands clasped round her knees.
+
+Roger made a sound of wrath, and threw his cigarette into the fire.
+Then, turning round again to face her, he tried to control himself.
+
+"Look here, Daphne, don't let us quarrel about this. I'll tell you
+everything you want to know--the whole beastly story. But it can't be
+pleasant to me to meet a woman who treated me as she did--and it
+oughtn't to be pleasant to you either. It was like her audacity to come
+this afternoon."
+
+"She simply wants to get hold of you again!" Daphne sprang up as she
+spoke with a violent movement, her face blazing.
+
+"Nonsense! she came out of nothing in the world but curiosity, and
+because she likes making people uncomfortable. She knew very well mother
+and I didn't want her!"
+
+But the more he tried to persuade her the more determined was Daphne to
+pay the promised visit, and that he should pay it with her. He gave way
+at last, and she allowed herself to be soothed and caressed. Then, when
+she seemed to have recovered herself, he gave her a tragic-comic account
+of the three weeks' engagement, and the manner in which it had been
+broken off: caustic enough, one might have thought, to satisfy the most
+unfriendly listener. Daphne heard it all quietly.
+
+Then her maid came, and she donned a tea-gown.
+
+When Roger returned, after dressing, he found her still abstracted.
+
+"I suppose you kissed her?" she said abruptly, as they stood by the fire
+together.
+
+He broke out in laughter and annoyance, and called her a little goose,
+with his arm round her.
+
+But she persisted. "You did kiss her?"
+
+"Well, of course I did! What else is one engaged for?"
+
+"I'm certain she wished for a great deal of kissing!" said Daphne,
+quickly.
+
+Roger was silent. Suddenly there swept through him the memory of the
+scene in the orchard, and with it an admission--wrung, as it were, from
+a wholly unwilling self--that it had remained for him a scene unique and
+unapproached. In that one hour the "muddy vesture" of common feeling and
+desire that closed in his manhood had taken fire and burnt to a pure
+flame, fusing, so it seemed, body and soul. He had not thought of it for
+years, but now that he was made to think of it, the old thrill
+returned--a memory of something heavenly, ecstatic, far transcending the
+common hours and the common earth.
+
+The next moment he had thrown the recollection angrily from him.
+Stooping to his wife, he kissed her warmly. "Look here, Daphne! I wish
+you'd let that woman alone! Have I ever looked at anyone but you, old
+girl, since that day at Mount Vernon?"
+
+Daphne let him hold her close: but all the time, thoughts--ugly
+thoughts--like "little mice stole in and out." The notion of Roger and
+that woman, in the past, engaged--always together, in each other's arms,
+tormented her unendurably.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She did not, however, say a word to Lady Barnes on the subject. The
+morning following Mrs. Fairmile's visit that lady began a rather awkward
+explanation of Chloe Fairmile's place in the family history, and of the
+reasons for Roger's silence and her own. Daphne took it apparently with
+complete indifference, and managed to cut it short in the middle.
+
+Nevertheless she brooded over the whole business; and her resentment
+showed itself, first of all, in a more and more drastic treatment of
+Heston, its pictures, decorations and appointments. Lady Barnes dared
+not oppose her any more. She understood that if she were thwarted, or
+even criticized, Daphne would simply decline to live there, and her own
+link with the place would be once more broken. So she withdrew angrily
+from the scene, and tried not to know what was going on. Meanwhile a
+note of invitation had been addressed to Daphne by the Duchess, and had
+been accepted; Roger had been reminded, at the point of the bayonet,
+that go he must; and Dr. Lelius had transferred himself from Heston to
+Upcott, and the companionship of Mrs. Fairmile.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was the last day of the Frenches' visit. Roger and Herbert French had
+been trying to get a brace or two of partridges on the long-neglected
+and much-poached estate; and on the way home French expressed a hope
+that, now they were to settle at Heston, Roger would take up some of the
+usual duties of the country gentleman. He spoke in the half-jesting way
+characteristic of the modern Mentor. The old didactics have long gone
+out of fashion, and the moralist of to-day, instead of preaching, _ore
+retundo_, must only "hint a fault and hesitate dislike." But, hide it as
+he might, there was an ethical and religious passion in French that
+would out, and was soon indeed to drive him from Eton to a town parish.
+He had been ordained some two years before this date.
+
+It was this inborn pastoral gift, just as real as the literary or
+artistic gifts, and containing the same potentialities of genius as they
+which was leading him to feel a deep anxiety about the Barnes's
+_ménage_. It seemed to him necessary that Daphne should respect her
+husband; and Roger, in a state of complete idleness, was not altogether
+respectable.
+
+So, with much quizzing of him as "the Squire," French tried to goad his
+companion into some of a Squire's duties. "Stand for the County Council,
+old fellow," he said. "Your father was on it, and it'll give you
+something to do."
+
+To his surprise Roger at once acquiesced. He was striding along in cap
+and knickerbockers, his curly hair still thick and golden on his
+temples, his clear skin flushed with exercise, his general physical
+aspect even more splendid than it had been in his first youth. Beside
+him, the slender figure and pleasant irregular face of Herbert French
+would have been altogether effaced and eclipsed but for the Eton
+master's two striking points: prematurely white hair, remarkably thick
+and abundant; and very blue eyes, shy, spiritual and charming.
+
+"I don't mind," Roger was saying, "if you think they'd have me. Beastly
+bore, of course! But one's got to do something for one's keep."
+
+He looked round with a smile, slightly conscious. The position he had
+occupied for some three years, of the idle and penniless husband
+dependent on his wife's dollars, was not, he knew, an exalted one in
+French's eyes.
+
+"Oh! you'll find it quite tolerable," said French. "Roads and schools do
+as well as anything else to break one's teeth on. We shall see you a
+magistrate directly."
+
+Roger laughed. "That would be a good one!--I say, you know, I hope
+Daphne's going to like Heston."
+
+French hoped so too, guardedly.
+
+"I hear the Archdeacon got on her nerves yesterday?"
+
+He looked at his companion with a slight laugh and a shrug.
+
+"That doesn't matter."
+
+"I don't know. He's rather a spiteful old party. And Daphne's accustomed
+to be made a lot of, you know. In London there's always a heap of people
+making up to her--and in Paris, too. She talks uncommon good
+French--learnt it in the convent. I don't understand a word of what they
+talk about--but she's a queen--I can tell you! She doesn't want
+Archdeacons prating at her."
+
+"It'll be all right when she knows the people."
+
+"Of course, mother and I get along here all right. We've got to pick up
+the threads again; but we do know all the people, and we like the old
+place for grandfather's sake, and all the rest of it. But there isn't
+much to amuse Daphne here."
+
+"She'll be doing up the house."
+
+"And offending mother all the time. I say, French, don't you think art's
+an awful nuisance! When I hear Lelius yarning on about _quattro-cento_
+and _cinque-cento_, I could drown myself. No! I suppose you're tarred
+with the same brush." Roger shrugged his shoulders. "Well, I don't care,
+so long as Daphne gets what she wants, and the place suits the child."
+His ruddy countenance took a shade of anxiety.
+
+French inquired what reason there was to suppose that Beatty would not
+thrive perfectly at Heston. Roger could only say that the child had
+seemed to flag a little since their arrival. Appetite not quite so good,
+temper difficult, and so on. Their smart lady-nurse was not quite
+satisfied. "And I've been finding out about doctors here," the young
+father went on, knitting his brows: "blokes, most of them, and such old
+blokes! I wouldn't trust Beatty to one of them. But I've heard of a new
+man at Hereford--awfully good, they say--a wunner! And after all a motor
+would soon run him out!"
+
+He went on talking eagerly about the child, her beauty, her cleverness,
+the plans Daphne had for her bringing up, and so on. No other child ever
+had been, ever could be, so fetching, so "cunning," so lovely, such a
+duck! The Frenches, indeed, possessed a boy of two, reputed handsome.
+Roger wished to show himself indulgent to anything that might be pleaded
+for him. "Dear little fellow!"--of course. But Beatty! Well! it was
+surprising, indeed, that he should find himself the father of such a
+little miracle; he didn't know what he'd done to deserve it. Herbert
+French smiled as he walked.
+
+"Of course, I hope there'll be a boy," said Roger, stopping suddenly to
+look at Heston Park, half a mile off, emerging from the trees. "Daphne
+would like a boy--so should I, and particularly now that we've got the
+old house back again."
+
+He stood and surveyed it. French noticed in the growing manliness of his
+face and bearing the signs of things and forces ancestral, of those
+ghostly hands stretching from the past that in a long settled society
+tend to push a man into his right place and keep him there. The Barnes
+family was tolerable, though not distinguished. Roger's father's great
+temporary success in politics and business had given it a passing
+splendour, now quenched in the tides of failure and disaster which had
+finally overwhelmed his career. Roger evidently did not want to think
+much about his Barnes heritage. But it was clear also that he was proud
+of the Trescoes; that he had fallen back upon them, so to speak. Since
+the fifteenth century there had always been a Trescoe at Heston; and
+Roger had already taken to browsing in county histories and sorting
+family letters. French foresaw a double-barrelled surname before
+long--perhaps, just in time for the advent of the future son and heir
+who was already a personage in the mind, if not yet positively expected.
+
+"My dear fellow, I hope Mrs. Barnes will give you not one son, but
+many!" he said, in answer to his companion's outburst. "They're wanted
+nowadays."
+
+Roger nodded and smiled, and then passed on to discussion of county
+business and county people. He had already, it seemed, informed himself
+to a rather surprising degree. The shrewd, upright county gentleman was
+beginning to emerge, oddly, from the Apollo. The merits and absurdities
+of the type were already there, indeed, _in posse_. How persistent was
+the type, and the instinct! A man of Roger's antecedents might seem to
+swerve from the course; but the smallest favourable variation of
+circumstances, and there he was again on the track, trotting happily
+between the shafts.
+
+"If only the wife plays up!" thought French.
+
+The recollection of Daphne, indeed, emerged simultaneously in both
+minds.
+
+"Daphne, you know, won't be able to stand this all the year round," said
+Roger. "By George, no! not with a wagon-load of Leliuses!" Then, with a
+sudden veer and a flush: "I say, French, do you know what sort of state
+the Fairmile marriage is in by now? I think that lady might have spared
+her call--don't you?"
+
+French kept his eyes on the path. It was the first time, as far as he
+was concerned, that Roger had referred to the incident. Yet the tone of
+the questioner implied a past history. It was to him, indeed, that Roger
+had come, in the first bitterness of his young grief and anger, after
+the "jilting." French had tried to help him, only to find that he was no
+more a match for the lady than the rest of the world.
+
+As to the call and the invitation, he agreed heartily that a person of
+delicacy would have omitted them. The Fairmile marriage, it was
+generally rumoured, had broken down hopelessly.
+
+"Faults on both sides, of course. Fairmile is and always was an
+unscrupulous beggar! He left Eton just as you came, but I remember him
+well."
+
+Roger began a sentence to the effect that if Fairmile had no scruples of
+his own, Chloe would scarcely have taught him any; but he checked
+himself abruptly in the middle, and the two men passed to other topics.
+French began to talk of East London, and the parish he was to have
+there. Roger, indifferent at first, did not remain so. He did not
+profess, indeed, any enthusiasm of humanity; but French found in him new
+curiosities. That children should starve, and slave, and suffer--_that_
+moved him. He was, at any rate, for hanging the parents.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The day of the Upcott visit came, and, in spite of all recalcitrance,
+Roger was made to mount the motor beside his wife. Lady Barnes had
+entirely refused to go, and Mr. and Mrs. French had departed that
+morning for Eton.
+
+As the thing was inevitable, Roger's male philosophy came to his aid.
+Better laugh and have done with it. So that, as he and Daphne sped along
+the autumn lanes, he talked about anything and everything. He expressed,
+for instance, his friendly admiration for Elsie French.
+
+"She's just the wife for old Herbert--and, by George, she's in love with
+him!"
+
+"A great deal too much in love with him!" said Daphne, sharply. The day
+was chilly, with a strong east wind blowing, and Daphne's small figure
+and face were enveloped in a marvellous wrap, compounded in equal
+proportions of Russian sables and white cloth. It had not long arrived
+from Wörth, and Roger had allowed himself some jibes as to its probable
+cost. Daphne's "simplicity," the pose of her girlhood, was in fact
+breaking down in all directions. The arrogant spending instinct had
+gained upon the moderating and self-restraining instinct. The results
+often made Barnes uncomfortable. But he was inarticulate, and easily
+intimidated--by Daphne. With regard to Mrs. French, however, he took up
+the cudgels at once. Why shouldn't Elsie adore her man, if it pleased
+her? Old Herbert was worth it.
+
+Women, said Daphne, should never put themselves wholly in a man's power.
+Moreover, wifely adoration was particularly bad for clergymen, who were
+far too much inclined already to give themselves airs.
+
+"I say! Herbert never gives himself airs!"
+
+"They both did--to me. They have quite different ways from us, and they
+make one feel it. They have family prayers--we don't. They have ascetic
+ideas about bringing up children--I haven't. Elsie would think it
+self-indulgent and abominable to stay in bed to breakfast--I don't. The
+fact is, all her interests and ideals are quite different from mine, and
+I am rather tired of being made to feel inferior."
+
+"Daphne! what rubbish! I'm certain Elsie French never had such an idea
+in her head. She's awfully soft and nice; I never saw a bit of conceit
+in her."
+
+"She's soft outside and steel inside. Well, never mind! we don't get on.
+She's the old America, I'm the new," said Daphne, half frowning, half
+laughing; "and I'm as good as she."
+
+"You're a very good-looking woman, anyway," said Roger, admiring the
+vision of her among the warm browns and shining whites of her wrap.
+"Much better-looking than when I married you." He slipped an arm under
+the cloak and gave her small waist a squeeze.
+
+Daphne turned her eyes upon him. In their black depths his touch had
+roused a passion which was by no means all tenderness. There was in it
+something threatening, something intensely and inordinately possessive.
+"That means that you didn't think me good-looking at all, as compared
+with--Chloe?" she said insistently.
+
+"Really, Daphne!"--Roger withdrew his arm with a rather angry
+laugh--"the way you twist what one says! I declare I won't make you any
+more pretty speeches for an age."
+
+Daphne scarcely replied; but there dawned on her face the
+smile--melting, provocative, intent--which is the natural weapon of such
+a temperament. With a quick movement she nestled to her husband's side,
+and Roger was soon appeased.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The visit which followed always counted in Roger Barnes's memory as the
+first act of the tragedy, the first onset of the evil that engulfed him.
+
+They found the old Duchess, Mrs. Fairmile, and Dr. Lelius, alone. The
+Duchess had been the penniless daughter of an Irish clergyman, married
+_en secondes noces_ for her somewhat queer and stimulating personality,
+by an epicurean duke, who, after having provided the family with a
+sufficient store of dull children by an aristocratic mother, thought
+himself at liberty, in his declining years, to please himself. He had
+left her the dower-house--small but delicately Jacobean--and she was now
+nearly as old as the Duke had been when he married her. She was largely
+made, shapeless, and untidy. Her mannish face and head were tied up in a
+kind of lace coif; she had long since abandoned all thought of a waist;
+and her strong chin rested on an ample bosom.
+
+As soon as Mrs. Barnes was seated near her hostess, Lelius--who had an
+intimate acquaintance, through their pictures, with half the great
+people of Europe--began to observe the Duchess's impressions. Amused
+curiosity, first. Evidently Daphne represented to her one of the queer,
+crude types that modern society is always throwing up on the shores of
+life--like strange beasts from deep-sea soundings.
+
+An American heiress, half Spanish--South-American Spanish--with no doubt
+a dash of Indian; no manners, as Europe understands them; unlimited
+money, and absurd pretensions--so Chloe said--in the matter of art; a
+mixture of the pedant and the _parvenue_; where on earth had young
+Barnes picked her up! It was in some such way, no doubt--so Lelius
+guessed--that the Duchess's thoughts were running.
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Barnes was treated with all possible civility. The
+Duchess inquired into the plans for rebuilding Heston; talked of her own
+recollections of the place, and its owners; hoped that Mrs. Barnes was
+pleased with the neighbourhood; and finally asked the stock question,
+"And how do you like England?"
+
+Daphne looked at her coolly. "Moderately!" she said, with a smile, the
+colour rising in her cheek as she became aware, without looking at them,
+that Roger and Mrs. Fairmile had adjourned to the farther end of the
+large room, leaving her to the Duchess and Lelius.
+
+The small eyes above the Duchess's prominent nose sparkled. "Only
+moderately?" The speaker's tone expressed that she had been for once
+taken by surprise. "I'm extremely sorry we don't please you, Mrs.
+Barnes."
+
+"You see, my expectations were so high."
+
+"Is it the country, or the climate, or the people, that won't do?"
+inquired the Duchess, amused.
+
+"I suppose it would be civil to say the climate," replied Daphne,
+laughing.
+
+Whereupon the Duchess saw that her visitor had made up her mind not to
+be overawed. The great lady summoned Dr. Lelius to her aid, and she, the
+German, and Daphne, kept up a sparring conversation, in which Mrs.
+Barnes, driven on by a secret wrath, showed herself rather noisier than
+Englishwomen generally are. She was a little impertinent, the Duchess
+thought, decidedly aggressive, and not witty enough to carry it off.
+
+Meanwhile, Daphne had instantly perceived that Mrs. Fairmile and Roger
+had disappeared into the conservatory; and though she talked incessantly
+through their absence, she felt each minute of it. When they came back
+for tea, she imagined that Roger looked embarrassed, while Mrs. Fairmile
+was all gaiety, chatting to her companion, her face raised to his, in
+the manner of one joyously renewing an old intimacy. As they slowly
+advanced up the long room, Daphne felt it almost intolerable to watch
+them, and her pulses began to race. _Why_ had she never been told of
+this thing? That was what rankled; and the Southern wildness in her
+blood sent visions of the past and terrors of the future hurrying
+through her brain, even while she went on talking fast and recklessly to
+the Duchess.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At tea-time conversation turned on the various beautiful things which
+the room contained--its Nattiers, its Gobelins, its two _dessus de
+portes_ by Boucher, and its two cabinets, of which one had belonged to
+Beaumarchais and the other to the _Appartement du Dauphin_ at
+Versailles.
+
+Daphne restrained herself for a time, asked questions, and affected no
+special knowledge. Then, at a pause, she lifted a careless hand,
+inquiring whether "the Fragonard sketch" opposite were not the pendant
+of one--she named it--at Berlin.
+
+"Ah-h-h!" said Mrs. Fairmile, with a smiling shake of the head, "how
+clever of you! But that's not a Fragonard. I wish it were. It's an
+unknown. Dr. Lelius has given him a name."
+
+And she and Lelius fell into a discussion of the drawing, that soon left
+Daphne behind. Native taste of the finest, mingled with the training of
+a lifetime, the intimate knowledge of collections of one who had lived
+among them from her childhood--these things had long since given Chloe
+Fairmile a kind of European reputation. Daphne stumbled after her,
+consumed with angry envy, the _précieuse_ in her resenting the easy
+mastery of Mrs. Fairmile, and the wife in her offended by the strange
+beauty, the soft audacities of a woman who had once, it seemed, held
+Roger captive, and would, of course, like to hold him captive again.
+
+She burned in some way to assert herself, the imperious will chafing at
+the slender barrier of self-control. And some malicious god did, in
+fact, send an opportunity.
+
+After tea, when Roger, in spite of efforts to confine himself to the
+Duchess, had been once more drawn into the orbit of Mrs. Fairmile, as
+she sat fingering a cigarette between the two men, and gossiping of
+people and politics, the butler entered, and whispered a message to the
+Duchess.
+
+The mistress of the house laughed. "Chloe! who do you think has called?
+Old Marcus, of South Audley Street. He's been at Brendon House--buying
+up their Romneys, I should think. And as he was passing here, he wished
+to show me something. Shall we have him in?"
+
+"By all means! The last time he was here he offered you four thousand
+pounds for the blue Nattier," said Chloe, with a smile, pointing to the
+picture.
+
+The Duchess gave orders; and an elderly man, with long black hair,
+swarthy complexion, fine eyes, and a peaked forehead, was admitted, and
+greeted by her, Mrs. Fairmile, and Dr. Lelius as an old acquaintance. He
+sat down beside them, was given tea, and presented to Mr. and Mrs.
+Barnes. Daphne, who knew the famous dealer by sight and reputation
+perfectly well, was piqued that he did not recognize her. Yet she well
+remembered having given him an important commission not more than a year
+before her marriage.
+
+As soon as a cup of tea had been dispatched, Marcus came to the
+business. He drew a small leather case out of the bag he had brought
+into the room with him; and the case, being opened, disclosed a small
+but marvellous piece of Sèvres.
+
+"There!" he said, pointing triumphantly to a piece on the Duchess's
+chimney-piece. "Your Grace asked me--oh! ten years ago--and again last
+year--to find you the pair of that. Now--you have it!"
+
+He put the two together, and the effect was great. The Duchess looked at
+it with greed--the greed of the connoisseur. But she shook her head.
+
+"Marcus, I have no money."
+
+"Oh!" He protested, smiling and shrugging his shoulders.
+
+"And I know you want a brigand's price for it."
+
+"Oh, nothing--nothing at all."
+
+The Duchess took it up, and regretfully turned it round and round.
+
+"A thousand, Marcus?" she said, looking up.
+
+He laughed, and would not reply.
+
+"That means more, Marcus: how do you imagine that an old woman like me,
+with only just enough for bread and butter, can waste her money on
+Sèvres?" He grinned. She put it down resolutely. "No! I've got a
+consumptive nephew with a consumptive family. He ought to have been hung
+for marrying, but I've got to send them all to Davos this winter. No, I
+can't, Marcus; I can't--I'm too poor." But her eyes caressed the shining
+thing.
+
+Daphne bent forward. "If the Duchess has _really_ made up her mind, Mr.
+Marcus, I will take it. It would just suit me!"
+
+Marcus started on his chair. "_Pardon, Madame!_" he said, turning
+hastily to look at the slender lady in white, of whom he had as yet
+taken no notice.
+
+"We have the motor. We can take it with us," said Daphne, stretching out
+her hand for it triumphantly.
+
+"Madame," said Marcus, in some agitation, "I have not the honour. The
+price----"
+
+"The price doesn't matter," said Daphne, smiling. "You know me quite
+well, Mr. Marcus. Do you remember selling a Louis Seize cabinet to Miss
+Floyd?"
+
+"Ah!" The dealer was on his feet in a moment, saluting, excusing
+himself. Daphne heard him with graciousness. She was now the centre of
+the situation: she had asserted herself, and her money. Marcus outdid
+himself in homage. Lelius in the background looked on, a sarcastic smile
+hidden by his fair moustache. Mrs. Fairmile, too, smiled; Roger had
+grown rather hot; and the Duchess was frankly annoyed.
+
+"I surrender it to _force majeure_," she said, as Daphne took it from
+her. "Why are we not all Americans?"
+
+And then, leaning back in her chair, she would talk no more. The
+pleasure of the visit, so far as it had ever existed, was at an end.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But before the Barnes motor departed homewards, Mrs. Fairmile had again
+found means to carry Roger Barnes out of sight and hearing into the
+garden. Roger had not been able to avoid it; and Daphne, hugging the
+leather case, had, all the same, to look on.
+
+When they were once more alone together, speeding through the bright
+sunset air, each found the other on edge.
+
+"You were rather rough on the Duchess, Daphne!" Roger protested. "It
+wasn't quite nice, was it, outbidding her like that in her own house?"
+
+Daphne flared up at once, declaring that she wanted no lessons in
+deportment from him or anyone else, and then demanding fiercely what was
+the meaning of his two disappearances with Mrs. Fairmile. Whereupon
+Roger lost his temper still more decidedly, refusing to give any account
+of himself, and the drive passed in a continuous quarrel, which only
+just stopped short, on Daphne's side, of those outrageous and insulting
+things which were burning at the back of her tongue, while she could not
+as yet bring herself to say them.
+
+An unsatisfactory peace was patched up during the evening. But in the
+dead of night Daphne sat up in bed, looking at the face and head of her
+husband beside her on the pillow. He lay peacefully sleeping, the noble
+outline of brow and features still nobler in the dim light which effaced
+all the weaker, emptier touches. Daphne felt rising within her that
+mingled passion of the jealous woman, which is half love, half hate, of
+which she had felt the first stirrings in her early jealousy of Elsie
+Maddison. It was the clutch of something racial and inherited--a
+something which the Northerner hardly knows. She had felt it before on
+one or two occasions, but not with this intensity. The grace of Chloe
+Fairmile haunted her memory, and the perfection, the corrupt perfection
+of her appeal to men, men like Roger.
+
+[Illustration: "In the dead of night Daphne sat up in bed, looking at
+the face and head of her husband beside her on the pillow."]
+
+She must wring from him--she must and would--a much fuller history of
+his engagement. And of those conversations in the garden, too. It stung
+her to recollect that, after all, he had given her no account of them.
+She had been sure they had not been ordinary conversations!--Mrs.
+Fairmile was not the person to waste her time in chit-chat.
+
+A gust of violence swept through her. She had given Roger
+everything--money, ease, amusement. Where would he have been without
+her? And his mother, too?--tiresome, obstructive woman! For the first
+time that veil of the unspoken, that mist of loving illusion which
+preserves all human relations, broke down between Daphne and her
+marriage. Her thoughts dwelt, in a vulgar detail, on the money she had
+settled upon Roger--on his tendencies to extravagance--his
+happy-go-lucky self-confident ways. He would have been a pauper but for
+her; but now that he had her money safe, without a word to her of his
+previous engagement, he and Mrs. Fairmile might do as they pleased. The
+heat and corrosion of this idea spread through her being, and the will
+made no fight against it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+"You're off to the meet?"
+
+"I am. Look at the day!"
+
+Chloe Fairmile, who was standing in her riding-habit at the window of
+the Duchess's morning-room, turned to greet her hostess.
+
+A mild November sun shone on the garden and the woods, and Chloe's
+face--the more exquisite as a rule for its slight, strange
+withering--had caught a freshness from the morning.
+
+The Duchess was embraced, and bore it; she herself never kissed anybody.
+
+"You always look well, my dear, in a habit, and you know it. Tell me
+what I shall do with this invitation."
+
+"From Lady Warton? May I look?"
+
+Chloe took a much blotted and crossed letter from the Duchess's hand.
+
+"What were her governesses about?" said the Duchess, pointing to it.
+"_Really_--the education of our class! Read it!"
+
+     ... "Can I persuade you to come--and bring Mrs. Fairmile--next
+     Tuesday to dinner, to meet Roger Barnes and his wife? I groan at
+     the thought, for I think she is quite one of the most disagreeable
+     little creatures I ever saw. But Warton says I must--a
+     Lord-Lieutenant can't pick and choose!--and people as rich as they
+     are have to be considered. I can't imagine why it is she makes
+     herself so odious. All the Americans I ever knew I have liked
+     particularly. It is, of course, annoying that they have so much
+     money--but Warton says it isn't their fault--it's Protection, or
+     something of the kind. But Mrs. Barnes seems really to wish to
+     trample on us. She told Warton the other day that his
+     tapestries--you know, those we're so proud of--that they were bad
+     Flemish copies of something or other--a set belonging to a horrid
+     friend of hers, I think. Warton was furious. And she's made the
+     people at Brendon love her for ever by insisting that they have now
+     ruined all their pictures without exception, by the way they've had
+     them restored--et cetera, et cetera. She really makes us feel her
+     millions--and her brains--too much. We're paupers, but we're not
+     worms. Then there's the Archdeacon--why should she fall foul of
+     him? He tells Warton that her principles are really shocking. She
+     told him she saw no reason why people should stick to their
+     husbands or wives longer than it pleased them--and that in America
+     nobody did! He doesn't wish Mrs. Mountford to see much of
+     her;--though, really, my dear, I don't think Mrs. M. is likely to
+     give him trouble--do you? And I hear, of course, that she thinks us
+     all dull and stuck-up, and as ignorant as savages. It's so odd she
+     shouldn't even want to be liked!--a young woman in a strange
+     neighbourhood. But she evidently doesn't, a bit. Warton declares
+     she's already tired of Roger--and she's certainly not nice to him.
+     What can be the matter? Anyway, dear Duchess, _do_ come, and help
+     us through."
+
+"What, indeed, can be the matter?" repeated Chloe lightly, as she handed
+back the letter.
+
+"Angela Warton never knows anything. But there's not much need for _you_
+to ask, my dear," said the Duchess quietly.
+
+Mrs. Fairmile turned an astonished face.
+
+"Me?"
+
+The Duchess, more bulky, shapeless and swathed than usual, subsided on a
+chair, and just raised her small but sharp eyes on Mrs. Fairmile.
+
+"What can you mean?" said Chloe, after a moment, in her gayest voice. "I
+can't imagine. And I don't think I'll try."
+
+She stooped and kissed the untidy lady in the chair. The Duchess bore it
+again, but the lines of her mouth, with the strong droop at the corners,
+became a trifle grim. Chloe looked at her, smiled, shook her head. The
+Duchess shook hers, and then they both began to talk of an engagement
+announced that morning in the _Times_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Fairmile was soon riding alone, without a groom--she was an
+excellent horse-woman, and she never gave any unnecessary trouble to her
+friends' servants--through country lanes chequered with pale sun. As for
+the Duchess's attack upon her, Chloe smarted. The Duchess had clearly
+pulled her up, and Chloe was not a person who took it well.
+
+If Roger's American wife was by now wildly jealous of his old _fiancée_,
+whose fault was it? Had not Mrs. Barnes herself thrown them perpetually
+together? Dinners at Upcott!--invitations to Heston!--a resolute
+frequenting of the same festal gatherings with Mrs. Fairmile. None of it
+with Roger's goodwill, or his mother's,--Chloe admitted it. It had been
+the wife's doing--all of it. There had been even--rare occurrences--two
+or three balls in the neighbourhood. Roger hated dancing, but Daphne had
+made him go to them all. Merely that she might display her eyes, her
+diamonds, and her gowns? Not at all. The real psychology of it was
+plain. "She wishes to keep us under observation--to give us
+opportunities--and then torment her husband. Very well then!--_tu l'as
+voulu, Madame!_"
+
+As to the "opportunities," Chloe coolly confessed to herself that she
+had made rather a scandalous use of them. The gossip of the
+neighbourhood had been no doubt a good deal roused; and Daphne, it
+seemed, was discontented. But is it not good for such people to be
+discontented? The money and the arrogance of Roger's wife had provoked
+Roger's former _fiancée_ from the beginning; the money to envy, and the
+arrogance to chastisement. Why not? What is society but a discipline?
+
+As for Roger, who is it says there is a little polygamy in all men?
+Anyway, a man can always--nearly always--keep a corner for the old love,
+if the new love will let him. Roger could, at any rate; "though he is a
+model husband, far better than she deserves, and anybody not a fool
+could manage him."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a day of physical delight, especially for riders. After a warm
+October, the leaves were still thick on the trees; Nature had not yet
+resigned herself to death and sleep. Here and there an oak stood, fully
+green, among the tawny reds and golds of a flaming woodland. The gorse
+was yellow on the commons; and in the damp woody ways through which
+Chloe passed, a few primroses--frail, unseasonable blooms--pushed their
+pale heads through the moss. The scent of the beech-leaves under foot;
+the buffeting of a westerly wind; the pleasant yielding of her light
+frame to the movement of the horse; the glimpses of plain that every
+here and there showed themselves through the trees that girdled the high
+ground or edge along which she rode; the white steam-wreath of a train
+passing, far away, through strata of blue or pearly mist; an old
+windmill black in the middle distance; villages, sheltering among their
+hedges and uplands: a sky, of shadow below widely brooding over earth,
+and of a radiant blue flecked with white cloud above:--all the English
+familiar scene, awoke in Chloe Fairmile a familiar sensuous joy. Life
+was so good--every minute, every ounce of it!--from the Duchess's _chef_
+to these ethereal splendours of autumn--from the warm bath, the
+luxurious bed, and breakfast, she had but lately enjoyed, to these
+artistic memories that ran through her brain, as she glanced from side
+to side, reminded now of Turner, now of DeWint, revelling in the
+complexity of her own being. Her conscience gave her no trouble; it had
+never been more friendly. Her husband and she had come to an
+understanding; they were in truth more than quits. There was to be no
+divorce--and no scandal. She would be very prudent. A man's face rose
+before her that was not the face of her husband, and she
+smiled--indulgently. Yes, life would be interesting when she returned to
+town. She had taken a house in Chester Square from the New Year; and Tom
+was going to Teheran. Meanwhile, she was passing the time.
+
+A thought suddenly occurred to her. Yes, it was quite possible--probable
+even--that she might find Roger at the meet! The place appointed was a
+long way from Heston, but in the old days he had often sent on a fresh
+horse by train to a local station. They had had many a run together over
+the fields now coming into sight. Though certainly if he imagined there
+were the very smallest chance of finding her there, he would give this
+particular meet a wide berth.
+
+Chloe laughed aloud. His resistance--and his weakness--were both so
+amusing. She thought of the skill--the peremptory smiling skill--with
+which she had beguiled him into the garden, on the day when the young
+couple paid their first call at Upcott. First, the low-spoken words at
+the back of the drawing-room, while Mrs. Barnes and the Duchess were
+skirmishing--
+
+"I _must_ speak to you. Something that concerns another
+person--something urgent."
+
+Whereupon, unwilling and rather stern compliance on the man's part--the
+handsome face darkened with most unnecessary frowns. And in the garden,
+the short colloquy between them--"Of course, I see--you haven't forgiven
+me! Never mind! I am doing this for someone else--it's a duty." Then
+abruptly--"You still have three of my letters."
+
+Amusing again--his shock of surprise, his blundering denials! He always
+was the most unmethodical and unbusiness-like of mortals--poor Roger!
+She heard her own voice in reply. "Oh yes, you have. I don't make
+mistakes about such things. Do you remember the letter in which I told
+you about that affair of Theresa Weightman?"
+
+A stare--an astonished admission. Precisely!
+
+"Well, she's in great trouble. Her husband threatens absurdities. She
+has always confided in me--she trusts me, and I can't have that letter
+wandering about the world."
+
+"I certainly sent it back!"
+
+"No--you never sent it back. You have three of mine. And you know how
+careless you are--how you leave things about. I was always on
+tenterhooks. Look again, _please_! You must have some idea where they
+might be."
+
+Perplexity--annoyance!
+
+"When we sold the London house, all papers and documents were sent down
+here. We reserved a room--which was locked up."
+
+"_A la bonne heure!_ Of course--there they are."
+
+But all the same--great unwillingness to search. It was most unlikely he
+would be able to find anything--most unlikely there was anything to
+find. He was sure he had sent back everything. And then a look in the
+fine hazel eyes--like a horse putting back its ears.
+
+All of no avail--against the laughing persistence which insisted on the
+letters. "But I must have them--I really must! It is a horrid tragedy,
+and I told you everything--things I had no business to tell you at all."
+
+On which, at last, a grudging consent to look, followed by a marked
+determination to go back to the drawing-room....
+
+But it was the second _tête-à-tête_ that was really adroit! After
+tea--just a touch on the arm--while the Duchess was showing the Nattiers
+to Mrs. Barnes, and Lelius was holding the lamp. "One moment more!--in
+the conservatory. I have a few things to add." And in that second little
+interview--about nothing, in truth--a mere piece of audacity--the lion's
+claws had been a good deal pared. He had been made to look at her, first
+and foremost; to realize that she was not afraid of him--not one
+bit!--and that he would have to treat her decently. Poor Roger! In a few
+years the girl he had married would be a plain and prickly little
+pedant--ill-bred besides--and he knew it.
+
+As to more recent adventures. If people meet in society, they must be
+civil; and if old friends meet at a dance, there is an institution known
+as "sitting out"; and "sitting out" is nothing if not conversational;
+and conversation--between old friends and cousins--is beguiling, and may
+be lengthy.
+
+The ball at Brendon House--Chloe still felt the triumph of it in her
+veins--still saw the softening in Roger's handsome face, the look of
+lazy pleasure, and the disapproval--or was it the envy?--in the eyes of
+certain county magnates looking on. Since then, no communication between
+Heston and Upcott.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Fairmile was now a couple of miles from the meet. She had struck
+into a great belt of plantations bounding one side of the ducal estate.
+Through it ran a famous green ride, crossed near its beginning by a main
+road. On her right, beyond the thick screen of trees, was the railway,
+and she could hear the occasional rush of a train.
+
+When she reached the cross road, which led from a station, a labourer
+opened the plantation gates for her. As he unlatched the second, she
+perceived a man's figure in front of her.
+
+"Roger!"
+
+A touch of the whip--her horse sprang forward. The man in front looked
+back startled; but she was already beside him.
+
+"You keep up the old habit, like me? What a lovely day!"
+
+Roger Barnes, after a flush of amazement and surprise, greeted her
+coldly: "It is a long way for you to come," he said formally. "Twelve
+miles, isn't it? You're not going to hunt?"
+
+"Oh, no! I only came to look at the hounds and the horses--to remind
+myself of all the good old times. You don't want to remember them, I
+know. Life's gone on for you!"
+
+Roger bent forward to pat the neck of his horse. "It goes on for all of
+us," he said gruffly.
+
+"Ah, well!" She sighed. He looked up and their eyes met. The wind had
+slightly reddened her pale skin: her expression was one of great
+animation, yet of great softness. The grace of the long, slender body in
+the close-fitting habit; of the beautiful head and loosened hair under
+the small, low-crowned beaver hat; the slender hand upon the reins--all
+these various impressions rushed upon Barnes at once, bringing with them
+the fascination of a past happiness, provoking, by contrast, the memory
+of a harassing and irritating present.
+
+"Is Heston getting on?" asked Mrs. Fairmile, smiling.
+
+He frowned involuntarily.
+
+"Oh, I suppose we shall be straight some day;" the tone, however, belied
+the words. "When once the British workman gets in, it's the deuce to get
+him out."
+
+"The old house had such a charm!" said Chloe softly.
+
+Roger made no reply. He rode stiffly beside her, looking straight before
+him. Chloe, observing him without appearing to do anything of the kind,
+asked herself whether the Apollo radiance of him were not already
+somewhat quenched and shorn. A slight thickening of feature--a slight
+coarsening of form--she thought she perceived them. Poor Roger!--had he
+been living too well and idling too flagrantly on these American
+dollars?
+
+Suddenly she bent over and laid a gloved hand on his arm.
+
+"Hadn't it?" she said, in a low voice.
+
+He started. But he neither looked at her nor shook her off.
+
+"What--the house?" was the ungracious reply. "I'm sure I don't know; I
+never thought about it--whether it was pretty or ugly, I mean. It suited
+us, and it amused mother to fiddle about with it."
+
+Mrs. Fairmile withdrew her hand.
+
+"Of course a great deal of it was ugly," she said composedly. "Dear Lady
+Barnes really didn't know. But then we led such a jolly life in it--_we_
+made it!"
+
+She looked at him brightly, only to see in him an angry flash of
+expression. He turned and faced her.
+
+"I'm glad you think it was jolly. My remembrances are not quite so
+pleasant."
+
+She laughed a little--not flinching at all--her face rosy to his
+challenge.
+
+"Oh, yes, they are--or should be. What's the use of blackening the past
+because it couldn't be the present. My dear Roger, if I hadn't--well,
+let's talk plainly!--if I hadn't thrown you over, where would you be
+now? We should be living in West Kensington, and I should be taking
+boarders--or--no!--a country-house, perhaps, with paying guests. You
+would be teaching the cockney idea how to shoot, at half a guinea a day,
+and I should be buying my clothes second-hand through the _Exchange and
+Mart_. Whereas--whereas----"
+
+She bent forward again.
+
+"You are a very rich man--you have a charming wife--a dear little
+girl--you can get into Parliament--travel, speculate, race, anything you
+please. And I did it all!"
+
+"I don't agree with you," he said drily. She laughed again.
+
+"Well, we can't argue it--can we? I only wanted to point out to you the
+plain, bare truth, that there is nothing in the world to prevent our
+being excellent friends again--_now_. But first--and once more--_my
+letters!_"
+
+Her tone was a little peremptory, and Roger's face clouded.
+
+"I found two of them last night, by the merest chance--in an old
+dispatch-box I took to America. They were posted to you on the way
+here."
+
+"Good! But there were three."
+
+"I know--so you said. I could only find two."
+
+"Was the particular letter I mentioned one of them?"
+
+He answered unwillingly.
+
+"No. I searched everywhere. I don't believe I have it."
+
+She shook her head with decision.
+
+"You certainly have it. Please look again."
+
+He broke out with some irritation, insisting that if it had not been
+returned it had been either lost or destroyed. It could matter to no
+one.
+
+Some snaring, entangling instinct--an instinct of the hunter--made her
+persist. She must have it. It was a point of honour. "Poor Theresa is so
+unhappy, so pursued! You saw that odious paragraph last week? I can't
+run the risk!"
+
+With a groan of annoyance, he promised at last that he would look again.
+Then the sparkling eyes changed, the voice softened.
+
+She praised--she rewarded him. By smooth transitions she slipped into
+ordinary talk; of his candidature for the County Council--the points of
+the great horse he rode--the gossip of the neighbourhood--the charms of
+Beatty.
+
+And on this last topic he, too, suddenly found his tongue. The cloud--of
+awkwardness, or of something else not to be analyzed--broke away, and he
+began to talk, and presently to ask questions, with readiness, even with
+eagerness.
+
+Was it right to be so very strict with children?--babies under three?
+Wasn't it ridiculous to expect them not to be naughty or greedy? Why,
+every child wanted as much sweetstuff as it could tuck in! Quite right
+too--doctors said it was good for them. But Miss Farmer----
+
+"Who is Miss Farmer?" inquired Mrs. Fairmile. She was riding close
+beside him--an embodied friendliness--a soft and womanly Chloe, very
+different from the old.
+
+"She's the nurse; my mother found her. She's a lady--by way of--she
+doesn't do any rough work--and I dare say she's the newest thing out.
+But she's too tight a hand for my taste. I say!--what do you think of
+this! She wouldn't let Beattie come down to the drawing-room yesterday,
+because she cried for a sweet! Wasn't that _devilish_!" He brought his
+hand down fiercely on his thigh.
+
+"A Gorgon!" said Mrs. Fairmile, raising her eyebrows. "Any other
+qualifications? French? German?"
+
+"Not a word. Not she! Her people live somewhere near here, I believe."
+Roger looked vaguely round him. "Her father managed a brick-field on
+this estate--some parson or other recommended her to mother."
+
+"And you don't like her?"
+
+"Well, no--I don't! She's not the kind of woman _I_ want." He blurted it
+out, adding hurriedly, "But my wife thinks a lot of her."
+
+Chloe dismissed the topic of the nurse, but still let him run on about
+the child. Amazing!--this development of paternity in the careless,
+handsome youth of three years before. She was amused and bored by it.
+But her permission of it had thawed him--that she saw.
+
+Presently, from the child she led him on to common acquaintance--old
+friends--and talk flowed fast. She made him laugh; and the furrows in
+the young brow disappeared. Now as always they understood each other at
+a word; there was between them the freemasonry of persons sprung from
+the same world and the same tradition; his daily talk with Daphne had
+never this easy, slipping pleasure. Meanwhile the horses sauntered on,
+unconsciously held back; and the magical autumn wood, its lights and
+lines and odours, played upon their senses.
+
+At last Roger with a start perceived a gate in front. He looked at his
+watch, and she saw him redden.
+
+"We shall be late for the meet."
+
+His eyes avoided hers. He gathered up the reins, evidently conscious.
+
+Smiling, she let him open the gate for her, and then as they passed into
+the road, shadowed with over-arching trees, she reined in Whitefoot, and
+bending forward, held out her hand. "Good-bye!"
+
+"You're not coming?"
+
+"I think I've had enough. I'll go home. Good-bye."
+
+It was a relief. In both minds had risen the image of their
+arrival together--amid the crowd of the meet. As he looked at
+her--gratefully--the grace of her movement, the temptation of her eyes,
+the rush of old memories suddenly turned his head. He gripped her hand
+hard for a minute, staring at her.
+
+The road in front of them was quite empty. But fifty yards behind them
+was a small red-brick house buried in trees. As they still paused, hand
+in hand, in front of the gate into the wood, which had failed to swing
+back and remained half open, the garden door of this house unclosed and
+a young woman in a kind of uniform stepped into the road. She perceived
+the two riders--stopped in astonishment--observed them unseen, and
+walked quickly away in the direction of the station.
+
+Roger reached Heston that night only just in time to dress for dinner.
+
+By this time he was in a wholly different mood; angry with himself, and
+full of rueful thought about his wife. Daphne and he had been getting on
+anything but well for some time past. He knew that he had several times
+behaved badly; why, indeed, that very afternoon, had he held Chloe
+Fairmile's hand in the public road, like an idiot? Suppose anyone had
+passed? It was only Daphne's tempers and the discomfort at home that
+made an hour with Chloe so pleasant--and brought the old recollections
+back. He vowed he never thought of her, except when she was there to
+make a fool of him--or plague him about those beastly letters. Whereas
+Daphne--Daphne was always in his mind, and this eclipse into which their
+daily life had passed. He seemed to be always tripping and stumbling,
+like a lame man among loose stones; doing or saying what he did not mean
+to do or say, and tongue-tied when he should have spoken. Daphne's
+jealousy made him ridiculous; he resented it hotly; yet he knew he was
+not altogether blameless.
+
+If only something could be done to make Daphne like Heston and the
+neighbours! But he saw plainly enough that in spite of all the effort
+and money she was pouring out upon the house, it gave her very little
+pleasure in return. Her heart was not in it. And as for the neighbours,
+she had scarcely a good word now for any of them. Jolly!--just as he was
+going to stand for the County Council, with an idea of Parliament later
+on! And as for what _he_ wished--what would be good for _him_--that she
+never seemed to think of. And, really, some of the things she said now
+and then about money--nobody with the spirit of a mouse could stand
+them.
+
+To comfort his worries he went first of all to the nursery, where he
+found the nursery-maid in charge, and the child already asleep. Miss
+Farmer, it appeared, had been enjoying a "day off," and was not expected
+back till late. He knelt down beside the little girl, feeding his eyes
+upon her. She lay with her delicate face pressed into the pillow, the
+small neck visible under the cloud of hair, one hand, the soft palm
+uppermost, on the sheet. He bent down and kissed the hand, glad that the
+sharp-faced nurse was not there to see. The touch of the fragrant skin
+thrilled him with pride and joy; so did the lovely defencelessness of
+the child's sleep. That such a possession should have been given to him,
+to guard and cherish! There was in his mind a passionate vow to guard
+the little thing--aye, with his life-blood; and then a movement of
+laughter at his own heroics. Well!--Daphne might give him sons--but he
+did not suppose any other child could ever be quite the same to him as
+Beatty. He sat in a contented silence, feeding his eyes upon her, as the
+soft breath rose and fell. And as he did so, his temper softened and
+warmed toward Beatty's mother.
+
+A little later he found Daphne in her room, already dressed for dinner.
+He approached her uneasily.
+
+"How tired you look, Daphne! What have you been doing to yourself?"
+
+Daphne stiffly pointed out that she had been standing over the workmen
+all day, there being no one else to stand over them, and of course she
+was tired. Her manner would have provoked him but for the visiting of an
+inward compunction. Instead of showing annoyance he bent down and kissed
+her.
+
+"I'll stay and help to-morrow, if you want me, though you know I'm no
+good. I say, how much more are you going to do to the house?"
+
+Daphne looked at him coldly. She had not returned the kiss. "Of course,
+I know that you don't appreciate in the least what I am doing!"
+
+Roger thrust his hands into his pockets, and walked up and down
+uncomfortably. He thought, in fact, that Daphne was spoiling the dear
+nondescript old place, and he knew that the neighbourhood thought so
+too. Also he particularly disliked the young architect who was
+superintending the works ("a priggish ass," who gave himself abominable
+airs--except to Daphne, whom he slavishly obeyed, and to Miss Farmer,
+with whom Roger had twice caught him gossipping). But he was determined
+not to anger his wife, and he held his tongue.
+
+"I wish, anyway, you wouldn't stick at it so closely," he said
+discontentedly. "Let's go abroad somewhere for Christmas--Nice, or Monte
+Carlo. I am sure you want a change."
+
+"Well, it isn't exactly an enchanting neighbourhood," said Daphne, with
+pinched lips.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry you don't like the people here," said Roger,
+perplexed. "I dare say they're all stupids."
+
+"That wouldn't matter--if they behaved decently," said Daphne, flushing.
+
+"I suppose that means--if I behaved decently!" cried Roger, turning upon
+her.
+
+Daphne faced him, her head in air, her small foot beating the ground, in
+a trick it had.
+
+"Well, I'm not likely to forget the Brendon ball, am I?"
+
+Roger's look changed.
+
+"I meant no harm, and you know I didn't," he said sulkily.
+
+"Oh, no, you only made a laughing-stock of _me_!" Daphne turned on her
+heel. Suddenly she felt herself roughly caught in Roger's arms.
+
+"Daphne, what _is_ the matter? Why can't we be happy together?"
+
+"Ask yourself," she said, trying to extricate herself, and not
+succeeding. "I don't like the people here, and they don't like me. But
+as you seem to enjoy flirting with Mrs. Fairmile, there's one person
+satisfied."
+
+Roger laughed--not agreeably. "I shall soon think, Daphne, that
+somebody's 'put a spell on you,' as my old nurse used to say. I wish I
+knew what I could do to break it."
+
+She lay passive in his arms a moment, and then he felt a shiver run
+through her, and saw that she was crying. He held her close to him,
+kissing and comforting her, while his own eyes were wet. What her
+emotion meant, or his own, he could not have told clearly; but it was a
+moment for both of healing, of impulsive return, the one to the other,
+unspoken penitence on her side, a hidden self-blame on his. She clung to
+him fiercely, courting the pressure of his arms, the warm contact of his
+youth; while, in his inner mind, he renounced with energy the temptress
+Chloe and all her works, vowing to himself that he would give Daphne no
+cause, no pretext even, for jealousy, and would bear it patiently if she
+were still unjust and tormenting.
+
+"Where have you been all day?" said Daphne at last, disengaging herself,
+and brushing the tears away from her eyes--a little angrily, as though
+she were ashamed of them.
+
+"I told you this morning. I had a run with the Stoneshire hounds."
+
+"Whom did you meet there?"
+
+"Oh, various old acquaintances. Nobody amusing." He gave two or three
+names, his conscience pricking him. Somehow, at that moment, it seemed
+impossible to mention Chloe Fairmile.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+About eleven o'clock that night, Daphne and Lady Barnes having just gone
+upstairs, Roger and a local Colonel of Volunteers who was dining and
+spending the night at Heston, were in the smoking-room. Colonel Williams
+had come over to discuss Volunteer prospects in the neighbourhood, and
+had been delighted to find in the grandson of his old friend, Oliver
+Trescoe,--a young fellow whom he and others had too readily regarded as
+given over to luxury and soft living--signs of the old public spirit,
+the traditional manliness of the family. The two men were talking with
+great cordiality, when the sound of a dogcart driving up to the front
+door disturbed them.
+
+"Who on earth?--at this time of night?" said Roger.
+
+The butler, entering with fresh cigarettes, explained that Miss Farmer
+had only just returned, having missed an earlier train.
+
+"Well, I hope to goodness she won't go and disturb Miss Beatty,"
+grumbled Roger; and and then, half to himself, half to his companion, as
+the butler departed--"I don't believe she missed her train; she's one of
+the cool sort--does jolly well what she likes! I say, Colonel, do you
+like 'lady helps'? I don't!"
+
+Half an hour later, Roger, having said good-night to his guest ten
+minutes before, was mounting the stairs on his own way to bed, when he
+heard in the distance the sound of a closing door and the rustle of a
+woman's dress.
+
+Nurse Farmer, he supposed, who had been gossiping with Daphne. His face,
+as the candle shone upon it, expressed annoyance. Vaguely, he resented
+the kind of intimacy which had grown up lately between Daphne and her
+child's nurse. She was not the kind of person to make a friend of; she
+bullied Beatty; and she must be got rid of.
+
+Yet when he entered his wife's room, everything was dark, and Daphne was
+apparently sound asleep. Her face was hidden from him; and he moved on
+tiptoe so as not to disturb her. Evidently it was not she who had been
+gossiping late. His mother, perhaps, with her maid.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+In the course of that night Roger Barnes's fate was decided, while he
+lay, happily sleeping, beside his wife. Daphne, as soon as she heard his
+regular breathing, opened the eyes she had only pretended to close, and
+lay staring into the shadows of the room, in which a nightlight was
+burning. Presently she got up softly, put on a dressing-gown, and went
+to the fire, which she noiselessly replenished; drawing up a chair, she
+sank back into it, her arms folded. The strengthening firelight showed
+her small white face, amid the masses of her dark hair.
+
+Her whole being was seething with passionate and revengeful thought. It
+was as though with violent straining and wrenching the familiar links
+and bulwarks of life were breaking down, and as if amid the wreck of
+them she found herself looking at goblin faces beyond, growing gradually
+used to them, ceasing to be startled by them, finding in them even a
+wild attraction and invitation.
+
+[Illustration: "Her whole being was seething with passionate and
+revengeful thought."]
+
+So Roger had lied to her. Instead of a casual ride, involving a meeting
+with a few old acquaintances, as he had represented to her, he had been
+engaged that day in an assignation with Mrs. Fairmile, arranged
+beforehand, and carefully concealed from his wife. Miss Farmer had seen
+them coming out of a wood together hand in hand! In the public road,
+this!--not even so much respect for appearances as might have dictated
+the most elementary reticence and decency. The case was so clear that it
+sickened her; she shivered with cold and nausea as she lay there by the
+now glowing fire which yet gave her no physical comfort. Probably in the
+past their relation had gone much farther than Roger had ever confessed
+to his wife. Mrs. Fairmile was a woman who would stick at nothing. And
+if Daphne were not already betrayed, she could no longer protect
+herself. The issue was certain. Such women as Chloe Fairmile are not to
+be baulked of what they desire. Good women cannot fight them on equal
+terms. And as to any attempt to keep the affections of a husband who
+could behave in such a way to the wife who had given him her youth,
+herself, and all the resources and facilities of life, Daphne's whole
+being stiffened into mingled anguish and scorn as she renounced the
+contest. Knowing himself the traitor that he was, he could yet hold her,
+kiss her, murmur tender things to her, allow her to cry upon his breast,
+to stammer repentance and humbleness. Cowardly! False! Treacherous! She
+flung out her hands, rigid, before her in the darkness, as though for
+ever putting him away.
+
+Anguish? Yes!--but not of such torturing quality as she could have felt
+a year, six months even, before this date. She was astonished that she
+could bear her life, that he could sit there in the night stillness,
+motionless, holding her breath even, while Roger slept there in the
+shadowed bed. Had this thing happened to her before their arrival at
+Heston, she must have fallen upon Roger in mad grief and passion, ready
+to kill him or herself; must at least have poured out torrents of
+useless words and tears. She could not have sat dumb like this; in
+misery, but quite able to think things out, to envisage all the dark
+possibilities of the future. And not only the future. By a perfectly
+logical diversion her thoughts presently went racing to the past. There
+was, so to speak, a suspension of the immediate crisis, while she
+listened to her own mind--while she watched her own years go by.
+
+It was but rarely that Daphne let her mind run on her own origins. But
+on this winter night, as she sat motionless by the fire, she became
+conscious of a sudden detachment from her most recent self and life--a
+sudden violent turning against both--which naturally threw her back on
+the past, on some reflection upon what she had made of herself, by way
+of guide to what she might still make of herself, if she struck boldly,
+now, while there was yet time, for her own freedom and development.
+
+As to her parents, she never confessed, even to herself, that she owed
+them anything, except, of course, the mere crude wealth that her father
+had left her. Otherwise she was vaguely ashamed of them both. And
+yet!--in her most vital qualities, her love of sensational effect, her
+scorn of half-measures, her quick, relentless imagination, her
+increasing ostentation and extravagance, she was the true child of the
+boastful mercurial Irishman who had married her Spanish mother as part
+of a trade bargain, on a chance visit to Buenos Ayres. For twenty years
+Daniel Floyd had leased and exploited, had ravaged and destroyed, great
+tracts of primæval forest in the northern regions of his adopted state,
+leaving behind him a ruined earth and an impoverished community, but
+building up the while a colossal fortune. He had learnt the arts of
+municipal "bossing" in one of the minor towns of Illinois, and had then
+migrated to Chicago, where for years he was the life and soul of all the
+bolder and more adventurous corruption of the city. A jovial, handsome
+fellow!--with an actor's face, a bright eye, and a slippery hand. Daphne
+had a vivid, and, on the whole, affectionate, remembrance of her father,
+of whom, however, she seldom spoke. The thought of her mother, on the
+other hand, was always unwelcome. It brought back recollections of storm
+and tempest; of wild laughter, and still wilder tears; of gorgeous
+dresses, small feet, and jewelled fingers.
+
+No; her parents had but small place in that dramatic autobiography that
+Daphne was now constructing for herself. She was not their daughter in
+any but the physical sense; she was the daughter of her own works and
+efforts.
+
+She leant forward to the fire, her face propped in her hands, going back
+in thought to her father's death, when she was fifteen; to her three
+years of cloying convent life, and her escape from it, as well as from
+the intriguing relations who would have kept her there; to the clever
+lawyer who had helped to put her in possession of her fortune, and the
+huge sums she had paid him for his services; to her search for
+education, her hungry determination to rise in the world, the friends
+she had made at college, in New York, Philadelphia, Washington. She had
+been influenced by one _milieu_ after another; she had worked hard, now
+at music, now at philosophy; had dabbled in girls' clubs, and gone to
+Socialist meetings, and had been all through driven on by the gadfly of
+an ever-increasing ambition.
+
+Ambition for what! She looked back on this early life with a bitter
+contempt. What had it all come to? Marriage with Roger Barnes!--a hasty
+passion of which she was already ashamed, for a man who was already
+false to her.
+
+What had made her marry him? She did not mince matters with herself in
+her reply. She had married him, influenced by a sudden, gust of physical
+inclination--by that glamour, too, under which she had seen him in
+Washington, a glamour of youth and novelty. If she had seen him first in
+his natural environment she would have been on her guard; she would have
+realized what it meant to marry a man who could help her own ideals and
+ambitions so little. And what, really, had their married life brought
+her? Had she ever been _sure_ of Roger?--had she ever been able to feel
+proud of him, in the company of really distinguished men?--had she not
+been conscious, again and again, when in London, or Paris, or Berlin,
+that he was her inferior, that he spoiled her social and intellectual
+chances? And his tone toward women had always been a low one; no great
+harm in it, perhaps; but it had often wounded and disgusted her.
+
+And then--for climax!--his concealment of the early love affair with
+Chloe Fairmile; his weakness and folly in letting her regain her hold
+upon him; his behaviour at the Brendon ball, the gossip which, as Agnes
+Farmer declared, was all over the neighbourhood, ending in the last
+baseness--the assignation, the lies, the hypocrisy of the afternoon!
+
+Enough!--more than enough! What did she care what the English world
+thought of her? She would free and right herself in her own way, and
+they might hold up what hands they pleased. A passion of wounded vanity,
+of disappointed self-love swept through her. She had looked forward to
+the English country life; she had meant to play a great part in it. But
+three months had been enough to show her the kind of thing--the hopeless
+narrowness and Philistinism of these English back-waters. What did these
+small squires and country clergy know of the real world, the world that
+mattered to _her_, where people had free minds and progressive ideas?
+Her resentment of the _milieu_ in which Roger expected her to live
+subtly swelled and strengthened her wrath against himself; it made the
+soil from which sprang a sudden growth of angry will--violent and
+destructive. There was in her little or none of that affinity with a
+traditional, a parent England, which is present in so many Americans,
+which emerges in them like buried land from the waters. On the contrary,
+the pressure of race and blood in her was not towards, but against; not
+friendly, but hostile. The nearer she came to the English life, the more
+certain forces in her, deeply infused, rose up and made their protest.
+The Celtic and Latin strains that were mingled in her, their natural
+sympathies and repulsions, which had been indistinct in the girl,
+overlaid by the deposits of the current American world, were becoming
+dominant in the woman.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Well, thank goodness, modern life is not as the old! There are ways out.
+
+Midnight had just struck. The night was gusty, the north-west wind made
+fierce attacks on the square, comfortable house. Daphne rose slowly; she
+moved noiselessly across the floor; she stood with her arms behind her
+looking down at the sleeping Roger. Then a thought struck her; she
+reached out a hand to the new number of an American Quarterly which lay,
+with the paper knife in it, on a table beside the bed. She had ordered
+it in a mood of jealous annoyance because of a few pages of art
+criticism in it by Mrs. Fairmile, which impertinently professed to know
+more about the Vitali Signorelli than its present owner did; but she
+remembered also an article on "The Future for Women," which had seemed
+to her a fine, progressive thing. She turned the pages noiselessly--her
+eyes now on the unconscious Roger--now on the book.
+
+     "All forms of contract--in business, education, religion, or
+     law--suffer from the weakness and blindness of the persons making
+     them--the marriage contract as much as any other. The dictates of
+     humanity and common-sense alike show that the latter and most
+     important contract should no more be perpetual than any of the
+     others."
+
+Again:--
+
+     "Any covenant between human beings that fails to produce or promote
+     human happiness, cannot in the nature of things be of any force or
+     authority; it is not only a right but a duty to abolish it."
+
+And a little further:--
+
+     "Womanhood is the great fact of woman's life. Wifehood and
+     motherhood are but incidental relations."
+
+Daphne put down the book. In the dim light, the tension of her slender
+figure, her frowning brow, her locked arms and hands, made of her a
+threatening Fate hovering darkly above the man in his deep, defenceless
+sleep.
+
+She was miserable, consumed with jealous anger. But the temptation of a
+new licence--a lawless law--was in her veins. Have women been trampled
+on, insulted, enslaved?--in America, at least, they may now stand on
+their feet. No need to cringe any more to the insolence and cruelty of
+men. A woman's life may be soiled and broken; but in the great human
+workshop of America it can be repaired. She remembered that in the
+majority of American divorces it is the woman who applies for relief.
+And why not? The average woman, when she marries, knows much less of
+life and the world than the average man. She is more likely--poor
+soul!--to make mistakes.
+
+She drew closer to the bed. All round her glimmered the furniture and
+appointments of a costly room--the silver and tortoise-shell on the
+dressing-table, the long mirrors lining the farther wall, the silk
+hangings of the bed. Luxury, as light and soft as skill and money could
+make it--the room breathed it; and in the midst stood the young creature
+who had designed it, the will within her hardening rapidly to an
+irrevocable purpose.
+
+Yes, she had made a mistake! But she would retrieve it. She would free
+herself. She would no longer put up with Roger, with his neglect and
+deceit--his disagreeable and ungrateful mother--his immoral friends--and
+this dull, soul-deadening English life.
+
+Roger moved and murmured. She retreated a little, still looking at him
+fixedly. Was it the child's name? Perhaps. He dreamed interminably, and
+very often of Beatty. But it did not move her. Beatty, of course, was
+_her_ child. Every child belongs to the mother in a far profounder sense
+than to the father. And he, too, would be free; he would naturally marry
+again.
+
+Case after case of divorce ran through her mind as she stood there; the
+persons and circumstances all well known to her. Other stories also, not
+personally within her ken; the famous scandals of the time, much
+discussed throughout American society. Her wits cleared and steeled. She
+began to see the course that she must follow.
+
+It would all depend upon the lawyers; and a good deal--she faced
+it--upon money. All sorts of technical phrases, vaguely remembered, ran
+through her mind. She would have to recover her American
+citizenship--she and the child. A domicile of six months in South
+Dakota, or in Wyoming--a year in Philadelphia--she began to recall
+information derived of old from Madeleine Verrier, who had, of course,
+been forced to consider all these things, and to weigh alternatives.
+Advice, of course, must be asked of her at once--and sympathy.
+
+Suddenly, on her brooding, there broke a wave of excitement. Life,
+instead of being closed, as in a sense it is, for every married woman,
+was in a moment open and vague again; the doors flung wide to flaming
+heavens. An intoxication of recovered youth and freedom possessed her.
+The sleeping Roger represented things intolerable and outworn. Why
+should a woman of her gifts, of her opportunities, be chained for life
+to this commonplace man, now that her passion was over?--now that she
+knew him for what he was, weak, feather-brained, and vicious? She looked
+at him with a kind of exaltation, spurning him from her path.
+
+But the immediate future!--the practical steps! What kind of evidence
+would she want?--what kind of witnesses? Something more, no doubt, of
+both than she had already. She must wait--temporize--do nothing rashly.
+If it was for Roger's good as well as her own that they should be free
+of each other--and she was fast persuading herself of this--she must,
+for both their sakes, manage the hateful operation without bungling.
+
+What was the alternative? She seemed to ask it of Roger, as she stood
+looking down upon him. Patience?--with a man who could never sympathize
+with her intellectually or artistically?--the relations of married life
+with a husband who made assignations with an old love, under the eyes of
+the whole neighbourhood?--the narrowing, cramping influences of English
+provincial society? No! she was born for other and greater things, and
+she would grasp them. "My first duty is to myself--to my own
+development. We have absolutely no _right_ to sacrifice ourselves--as
+women have been taught to do for thousands of years."
+
+Bewildered by the rhetoric of her own thoughts, Daphne returned to her
+seat by the fire, and sat there wildly dreaming, till once more recalled
+to practical possibilities by the passage of the hours on the clock
+above her.
+
+Miss Farmer? Everything, it seemed, depended on her. But Daphne had no
+doubts of her. Poor girl!--with her poverty-stricken home, her drunken
+father lately dismissed from his post, and her evident inclination
+towards this clever young fellow now employed in the house--Daphne
+rejoiced to think of what money could do, in this case at least; of the
+reward that should be waiting for the girl's devotion when the moment
+came; of the gifts already made, and the gratitude already evoked. No;
+she could be trusted; she had every reason to be true.
+
+Some fitful sleep came to her at last in the morning hours. But when
+Roger awoke, she was half-way through her dressing; and when he first
+saw her, he noticed nothing except that she was paler than usual, and
+confessed to a broken night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But as the day wore on it became plain to everybody at Heston--to Roger
+first and foremost--that something was much amiss. Daphne would not
+leave her sitting-room and her sofa; she complained of headache and
+over-fatigue; would have nothing to say to the men at work on the new
+decoration of the east wing of the house, who were clamouring for
+directions; and would admit nobody but Miss Farmer and her maid. Roger
+forced his way in once, only to be vanquished by the traditional weapons
+of weakness, pallor, and silence. Her face contracted and quivered as
+his step approached her; it was as though he trampled upon her; and he
+left her, awkwardly, on tiptoe, feeling himself as intrusively brutal as
+she clearly meant him to feel.
+
+What on earth was the matter? Some new grievance against him, he
+supposed. After the softening, the quasi-reconciliation of the day
+before, his chagrin and disappointment were great. Impossible she should
+know anything of his ride with Chloe! There was not a soul in that wood;
+and the place was twenty miles from Heston. Again he felt the impulse to
+blurt it all out to her; but was simply repelled and intimidated by this
+porcupine mood in which she had wrapped herself. Better wait at least
+till she was a little more normal again. He went off disconsolately to a
+day's shooting.
+
+Meanwhile, his own particular worry was sharp enough. Chloe had taken
+advantage of their casual _tête-à-tête_, as she had done before on
+several occasions, to claim something of the old relation, instead of
+accepting the new, like a decent woman; and in the face of the
+temptation offered him he had shown a weakness of which not only his
+conscience but his pride was ashamed. He realized perfectly that she had
+been trying during the whole autumn to recover her former hold on him,
+and he also saw clearly and bitterly that he was not strong enough to
+resist her, should he continue to be thrown with her; and not clever
+enough to baffle her, if her will were really set on recapturing him. He
+was afraid of her, and afraid of himself.
+
+What, then, must he do? As he tramped about the wet fields and
+plantations with a keeper and a few beaters after some scattered
+pheasants, he was really, poor fellow! arguing out the riddle of his
+life. What would Herbert French advise him to do?--supposing he could
+put the question plainly to him, which of course was not possible. He
+meant honestly and sincerely to keep straight; to do his duty by Daphne
+and the child. But he was no plaster saint, and he could not afford to
+give Chloe Fairmile too many opportunities. To break at once, to carry
+off Daphne and leave Heston, at least for a time--that was the obviously
+prudent and reasonable course. But in her present mood it was of no use
+for him to propose it, tired as she seemed to be of Heston, and
+disappointed in the neighbours: any plan brought forward by him was
+doomed beforehand. Well then, let him go himself; he had been so unhappy
+during the preceding weeks it would be a jolly relief to turn his back
+on Heston for a time.
+
+But as soon as he had taken his departure, Chloe perhaps would take
+hers; and if so, Daphne's jealousy would be worse than ever. Whatever
+deserts he might place between himself and Mrs. Fairmile, Daphne would
+imagine them together.
+
+Meanwhile, there was that Lilliput bond, that small, chafing
+entanglement, which Chloe had flung round him in her persistence about
+the letters. There was, no doubt, a horrid scandal brewing about Mrs.
+Weightman, Chloe's old friend--a friend of his own, too, in former days.
+Through Chloe's unpardonable indiscretions he knew a great deal more
+about this lady's affairs than he had ever wished to know. And he well
+remembered the letter in question: a letter on which the political life
+or death of one of England's most famous men might easily turn,
+supposing it got out. But the letter was safe enough; not the least
+likely to come into dangerous hands, in spite of Chloe's absurd
+hypotheses. It was somewhere, no doubt, among the boxes in the locked
+room; and who could possibly get hold of it? At the same time he
+realized that as long as he had not found and returned it she would
+still have a certain claim upon him, a certain right to harass him with
+inquiries and confidential interviews, which, as a man of honour, he
+could not altogether deny.
+
+A pheasant got up across a ploughed field where in the mild season the
+young corn was already green. Roger shot, and missed; the bird floated
+gaily down the wind, and the head keeper, in disgust, muttered bad
+language to the underling beside him.
+
+But after that Barnes was twice as cheerful as before. He whistled as he
+walked; his shooting recovered; and by the time the dark fell, keepers
+and beaters were once more his friends.
+
+The fact was that just as he missed the pheasant he had taken his
+resolution, and seen his way. He would have another determined hunt for
+that letter; he would also find and destroy his own letters to
+Chloe--those she had returned to him--which must certainly never fall
+into Daphne's hands; and then he would go away to London or the North,
+to some place whence he could write both to Chloe Fairmile and to his
+wife. Women like Daphne were too quick; they could get out a dozen words
+to your one; but give a man time, and he could express himself. And,
+therewith, a great tenderness and compunction in this man's heart, and a
+steady determination to put things right. For was not Daphne Beatty's
+mother? and was he not in truth very fond of her, if only she would let
+him be?
+
+Now then for the hunt. As he had never destroyed the letters, they must
+exist; but, in the name of mischief, where? He seemed to remember
+thrusting his own letters to Chloe into a desk of his schoolboy days
+which used to stand in his London sitting-room. Very likely some of hers
+might be there too. But the thought of his own had by now become a much
+greater anxiety to him than the wish to placate Chloe. For he was most
+uncomfortably aware that his correspondence with Chloe during their
+short engagement had been of a very different degree of fervour from
+that shown in the letters to Daphne under similar circumstances. As for
+the indelicacy and folly of leaving such documents to chance, he cursed
+it sorely.
+
+How to look? He pondered it. He did not even know which attic it was
+that had been reserved at the time of the letting of Heston, and now
+held some of the old London furniture and papers. Well, he must manage
+it, "burgle" his own house, if necessary. What an absurd situation!
+Should he consult his mother? No; better not.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That evening General Hobson was expected for a couple of nights. On
+going up to dress for dinner, Roger discovered that he had been banished
+to a room on the farther side of the house, where his servant was now
+putting out his clothes. He turned very white, and went straight to his
+wife.
+
+Daphne was on the sofa as before, and received him in silence.
+
+"What's the meaning of this, Daphne?" The tone was quiet, but the
+breathing quick.
+
+She looked at him--bracing herself.
+
+"I must be alone! I had no sleep last night."
+
+"You had neuralgia?"
+
+"I don't know--I had no sleep. I must be alone."
+
+His eyes and hers met.
+
+"For to-night, then," he said briefly. "I don't know what's the matter
+with you, Daphne and I suppose it's no use to ask you. I thought,
+yesterday--but--however, there's no time to talk now. Are you coming
+down to dinner?"
+
+"Not to dinner. I will come down for an hour afterwards."
+
+He went away, and before he had reached his own room, and while the heat
+of his sudden passion still possessed him, it occurred to him that
+Daphne's behaviour might after all prove a godsend. That night he would
+make his search, with no risk of disturbing his wife.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The dinner in the newly decorated dining-room went heavily. Lady Barnes
+had grown of late more and more anxious and depressed. She had long
+ceased to assert herself in Daphne's presence, and one saw her as the
+British matron in adversity, buffeted by forces she did not understand;
+or as some minor despot snuffed out by a stronger.
+
+The General, who had only arrived just in time to dress, inquired in
+astonishment for Daphne, and was told by Roger that his wife was not
+well, but would come down for a little while after dinner. In presence
+of the new splendours of Heston, the General had--in Roger's
+company--very little to say. He made the vague remark that the
+dining-room was "very fine," but he should not have known it again.
+Where was the portrait of Edward, and the full-length of Edward's father
+by Sir Francis Grant? Lady Barnes drew herself up, and said nothing.
+Roger hastily replied that he believed they were now in the passage
+leading to the billiard-room.
+
+"What! that dark corner!" cried the General, looking with both distaste
+and hostility at the famous Signorelli--a full-length nude St.
+Sebastian, bound and pierced--which had replaced them on the dining-room
+wall. Who on earth ever saw such a picture in a dining-room? Roger must
+be a fool to allow it!
+
+Afterwards the General and Lady Barnes wandered through the transformed
+house, in general agreement as to the ugliness and extravagance of
+almost everything that had been done, an agreement that was as balm to
+the harassed spirits of the lady.
+
+"What have they spent?" asked the General, under his breath, as they
+returned to the drawing-room--"thousands and thousands, I should think!
+And there was no need for them to spend a penny. It is a sinful waste,
+and no one should waste money in these days--there are too many
+unemployed!" He drew up his spare person, with a terrier-like shake of
+the head and shoulders, as of one repudiating Mammon and all its works.
+
+"Daphne has simply no idea of the value of money!" Lady Barnes
+complained, also under her breath. They were passing along one of the
+side corridors of the house, and there was no one in sight. But Roger's
+mother was evidently uneasy, as though Daphne might at any moment spring
+from the floor, or emerge from the walls. The General was really sorry
+for her.
+
+"It's like all the rest of them--Americans, I mean," he declared; "they
+haven't our sense of responsibility. I saw plenty of that in the
+States."
+
+Lady Barnes acquiesced. She was always soothed by the General's
+unfaltering views of British superiority.
+
+They found Daphne in the drawing-room--a ghostly Daphne, in white, and
+covered with diamonds. She made a little perfunctory conversation with
+them, avoided all mention of the house, and presently, complaining again
+of headache, went back to her room after barely an hour downstairs.
+
+The General whistled to himself, as he also retired to bed, after
+another and more private conversation with Lady Barnes, and half an
+hour's billiards with a very absent-minded host. By Jove, Laura wanted a
+change! He rejoiced that he was to escort her on the morrow to the
+London house of some cheerful and hospitable relations. Dollars, it
+seemed, were not everything, and he wished to heaven that Roger had been
+content to marry some plain English girl, with, say, a couple of
+thousand a year. Even the frugal General did not see how it could have
+been done on less. Roger no doubt had been a lazy, self-indulgent
+beggar. Yet he seemed a good deal steadier, and more sensible than he
+used to be; in spite of his wife, and the pouring out of dollars. And
+there was no doubt that he had grown perceptibly older. The General felt
+a vague pang of regret, so rare and so compelling had been the quality
+of Roger's early youth, measured at least by physical standards.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The house sank into sleep and silence. Roger, before saying good-night
+to his mother, had let fall a casual question as to the whereabouts of
+the room which still contained the _débris_ of the London house. He
+must, he said, look up two or three things, some share certificates of
+his father's, for instance, that he had been in want of for some time.
+Lady Barnes directed him. At the end of the nursery wing, to the right.
+But in the morning one of the housemaids would show him. Had she the
+key? She produced it, thought no more of it, and went to bed.
+
+He waited in his room till after midnight, then took off his shoes, his
+pride smarting, and emerged. There was one electric light burning in the
+hall below. This gave enough glimmer on the broad open landing for him
+to grope his way by, and he went noiselessly toward the staircase
+leading up to Beatty's rooms. Once, just as he reached it, he thought he
+caught the faint noise of low talking somewhere in the house, an
+indeterminate sound not to be located. But when he paused to listen, it
+had ceased and he supposed it to be only a windy murmur of the night.
+
+He gained the nursery wing. So far, of course, the way was perfectly
+familiar. He rarely passed an evening without going to kiss Beatty in
+her cot. Outside the door of the night-nursery he waited a moment to
+listen. Was she snoozling among her blankets?--the darling! She still
+sucked her thumb, sometimes, poor baby, to send her to sleep, and it was
+another reason for discontent with Miss Farmer that she would make a
+misdemeanour of it. Really, that woman got on his nerves!
+
+Beyond the nursery he had no knowledge whatever of his own house. The
+attics at Heston were large and rambling. He believed the servants were
+all in the other wing, but was not sure; he could only hope that he
+might not stumble on some handmaiden's room by mistake!
+
+A door to the right, at the end of the passage. He tried the key. Thank
+goodness! It turned without too much noise, and he found himself on the
+threshold of a big lumber-room, his candle throwing lines of dusty light
+across it. He closed the door, set down the light, and looked round him
+in despair. The room was crowded with furniture, trunks, and boxes, in
+considerable confusion. It looked as though the men employed to move
+them had piled them there as they pleased; and Roger shrewdly suspected
+that his mother, from whom, in spite of her square and business-like
+appearance, his own indolence was inherited, had shrunk till now from
+the task of disturbing them.
+
+He began to rummage a little. Papers belonging to his father--an endless
+series of them; some in tin boxes marked with the names of various
+companies, mining and other; some in leather cases, reminiscent of
+politics, and labelled "Parliamentary" or "Local Government Board."
+Trunks containing Court suits, yeomanry uniforms, and the like; a medley
+of old account books, photographs, worthless volumes, and broken
+ornaments: all the refuse that our too complex life piles about us was
+represented in the chaos of the room. Roger pulled and pushed as
+cautiously as he could, but making, inevitably, some noise in the
+process. At last! He caught sight of some belongings of his own and was
+soon joyfully detaching the old Eton desk, of which he was in search,
+from a pile of miscellaneous rubbish. In doing so, to his dismay, he
+upset a couple of old cardboard boxes filled with letters, and they fell
+with some clatter. He looked round instinctively at the door; but it was
+shut, and the house was well built, the walls and ceilings reasonably
+sound-proof. The desk was only latched--beastly carelessness, of
+course!--and inside it were three thick piles of letters, and a few
+loose ones below. His own letters to Chloe; and--by George!--the lost
+one!--among the others. He opened it eagerly, ran it through. Yes, the
+very thing! What luck! He laid it carefully aside a moment on a trunk
+near by, and sat with the other letters on his lap.
+
+His fingers played with them. He almost determined to take them down
+unopened, and burn them, as they were, in his own room; but in the end
+he could not resist the temptation to look at them once more. He pulled
+off an india-rubber band from the latest packet, and was soon deep in
+them, at first half ashamed, half contemptuous. Calf love, of course!
+And he had been a precious fool to write such things. Then, presently,
+the headlong passion of them began to affect him, to set his pulses
+swinging. He fell to wondering at his own bygone facility, his own
+powers of expression. How did he ever write such a style! He, who could
+hardly get through a note now without blots and labour. Self-pity grew
+upon him, and self-admiration. By heaven! How could a woman treat a
+man--a man who could write to her like this--as Chloe had treated him!
+
+The old smart revived; or rather, the old indelible impressions of it
+left on nerve and brain.
+
+The letters lay on his knee. He sat brooding: his hands upon the
+packets, his head bowed. One might have thought him a man overcome and
+dissolved by the enervating memories of passion; but in truth, he was
+gradually and steadily reacting against them; resuming, and this time
+finally, as far as Chloe Fairmile was concerned, a man's mastery of
+himself. He thought of her unkindness and cruelty--of the misery he had
+suffered--and now of the reckless caprice with which, during the
+preceding weeks, she had tried to entangle him afresh, with no respect
+for his married life, for his own or Daphne's peace of mind.
+
+He judged her, and therewith, himself. Looking back upon the four years
+since Chloe Fairmile had thrown him over, it seemed to him that, in some
+ways, he had made a good job of his life, and, in others, a bad one. As
+to the money, that was neither here nor there. It had been amusing to
+have so much of it; though of late Daphne's constant reminders that the
+fortune was hers and not his, had been like grit in the mouth. But he
+did not find that boundless wealth had made as much difference to him as
+he had expected. On the other hand, he had been much happier with Daphne
+than he had thought he should be, up to the time of their coming to
+Heston. She wasn't easy to live with, and she had been often, before
+now, ridiculously jealous; but you could not, apparently, live with a
+woman without getting very fond of her--he couldn't--especially if she
+had given you a child; and if Daphne had turned against him now, for a
+bit--well, he could not swear to himself that he had been free from
+blame; and it perhaps served him right for having gone out deliberately
+to the States to marry money--with a wife thrown in--in that shabby sort
+of way.
+
+But, now, to straighten out this coil; to shake himself finally free of
+Chloe, and make Daphne happy again! He vowed to himself that he could
+and would make her happy--just as she had been in their early days
+together. The memory of her lying white and exhausted after child-birth,
+with the little dark head beside her, came across him, and melted him;
+he thought of her with longing and tenderness.
+
+With a deep breath he raised himself on his seat; in the old Greek
+phrase, "the gods breathed courage into his soul"; and as he stretched
+out an indifferent hand toward Chloe's letters on the trunk, Roger
+Barnes had perhaps reached the highest point of his moral history; he
+had become conscious of himself as a moral being choosing good or evil;
+and he had chosen good. It was not so much that his conscience accused
+him greatly with regard to Chloe. For that his normal standards were not
+fine enough. It was rather a kind of "serious call," something akin to
+conversion, or that might have been conversion, which befell him in this
+dusty room, amid the night-silence.
+
+As he took up Chloe's letters he did not notice that the door had
+quietly opened behind him, and that a figure stood on the threshold.
+
+A voice struck into the stillness.
+
+"Roger!"
+
+He turned with a movement that scattered all his own letters on the
+floor. Daphne stood before him--but with the eyes of a mad woman. Her
+hand shook on the handle of the door.
+
+"What are you doing here?" She flung out the question like a blow.
+
+"Hallo, Daphne!--is that you?" He tried to laugh. "I'm only looking up
+some old papers; no joke, in all this rubbish." He pointed to it.
+
+"What old papers?"
+
+"Well, you needn't catechize me!" he said, nettled by her tone, "or not
+in that way, at any rate. I couldn't sleep, and I came up here to look
+for something I wanted. Why did you shut your door on me?"
+
+He looked at her intently, his lips twitching a little. Daphne came
+nearer.
+
+"It must be something you want very badly--something you don't want
+other people to see--something you're ashamed of!--or you wouldn't be
+searching for it at this time of night." She raised her eyes, still with
+the same strange yet flaming quiet, from the littered floor to his face.
+Then suddenly glancing again at the scattered papers--"That's your
+hand-writing!--they're your letters! letters to Mrs. Fairmile!"
+
+"Well, and what do you make of that?" cried Roger, half wroth, half
+inclined to laugh. "If you want to know, they are the letters I wrote to
+Chloe Fairmile; and I, like a careless beast, never destroyed them, and
+they were stuffed away here. I have long meant to get at them and burn
+them, and as you turned me out to-night----"
+
+"What is that letter in your hand?" exclaimed Daphne, interrupting him.
+
+"Oh, that has nothing to do with you--or me----" he said, hastily making
+a movement to put it in his coat pocket. But in a second, Daphne, with a
+cry, had thrown herself upon him, to his intense amazement, wrestling
+with him, in a wild excitement. And as she did so, a thin woman, with
+frightened eyes, in a nurse's dress, came quickly into the room, as
+though Daphne's cry had signalled to her. She was behind Roger, and he
+was not aware of her approach.
+
+"Daphne, don't be such a little fool!" he said indignantly, holding her
+off with one hand, determined not to give her the letter.
+
+Then, all in a moment--without, as it seemed to him, any but the mildest
+defensive action on his part--Daphne stumbled and fell.
+
+"Daphne!--I say!----"
+
+He was stooping over her in great distress to lift her up, when he felt
+himself vehemently put aside by a woman's hand.
+
+"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, sir! Let me go to her."
+
+He turned in bewilderment. "Miss Farmer! What on earth are you doing
+here?"
+
+But in his astonishment he had given way to her, and he fell back pale
+and frowning, while, without replying, she lifted Daphne--who had a cut
+on her forehead and was half fainting--from the ground.
+
+"Don't come near her, sir!" said the nurse, again warding him off. "You
+have done quite enough. Let me attend to her."
+
+"You imagine that was my doing?" said Roger grimly. "Let me assure you
+it was nothing of the kind. And pray, were you listening at the door?"
+
+Miss Farmer vouchsafed no reply. She was half leading, half supporting
+Daphne, who leant against her. As they neared the door, Roger, who had
+been standing dumb again, started forward.
+
+"Let me take her," he said sternly. "Daphne!--send this woman away."
+
+But Daphne only shuddered, and putting out a shaking hand, she waved him
+from her.
+
+"You see in what a state she is!" cried Miss Farmer, with a withering
+look. "If you must speak to her, put it off, sir, at least till
+to-morrow."
+
+Roger drew back. A strange sense of inexplicable disaster rushed upon
+him. He sombrely watched them pass through the door and disappear.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Daphne reached her own room. As the door closed upon them she turned to
+her companion, holding out the handkerchief stained with blood she had
+been pressing to her temple.
+
+"You saw it all?" she said imperiously--"the whole thing?"
+
+"All," said Miss Farmer. "It's a mercy you're not more hurt."
+
+Daphne gave a hysterical laugh.
+
+"It'll just do--I think it'll do! But you'll have to make a good deal
+out of it."
+
+And sinking down by the fire, she burst into a passion of wild tears.
+
+The nurse brought her sal volatile, and washed the small cut above her
+eyebrow.
+
+"It was lucky we heard him," she said triumphantly. "I guessed at once
+he must be looking for something--I knew that room was full of papers."
+
+A knock at the door startled them.
+
+"Never mind." The nurse hurried across the room. "It's locked."
+
+"How is my wife?" said Roger's strong, and as it seemed, threatening
+voice outside.
+
+"She'll be all right, sir, I hope, if you'll leave her to rest. But I
+won't answer for the consequences if she's disturbed any more."
+
+There was a pause, as though of hesitation. Then Roger's step receded.
+
+Daphne pushed her hair back from her face, and sat staring into the
+fire. Everything was decided now. Yet she had rushed upstairs on Miss
+Farmer's information with no definite purpose. She only knew that--once
+again--Roger was hiding something from her--doing something secret and
+disgraceful--and she suddenly resolved to surprise and confront him.
+With a mind still vaguely running on the legal aspects of what she meant
+to do, she had bade the nurse follow her. The rest had been half
+spontaneous, half acting. It had struck her imagination midway how the
+incident could be turned--and used.
+
+She was triumphant; but from sheer excitement she wept and sobbed
+through the greater part of the night.
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+It was a cheerless February day, dark and slaty overhead, dusty below.
+In the East End streets paper and straw, children's curls, girls'
+pinafores and women's skirts were driven back and forward by a bitter
+wind; there was an ugly light on ugly houses, with none of that kind
+trickery of mist or smoke which can lend some grace on normal days even
+to Commercial Street, or to the network of lanes north of the Bethnal
+Green Road. The pitiless wind swept the streets--swept the children and
+the grown-ups out of them into the houses, or any available shelter; and
+in the dark and chilly emptiness of the side roads one might listen in
+fancy for the stealthy returning steps of spirits crueller than Cold,
+more tyrannous than Poverty, coming to seize upon their own.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In one of these side streets stood a house larger than its neighbours,
+in a bit of front garden, with some decrepit rust-bitten-railings
+between it and the road. It was an old dwelling overtaken by the flood
+of tenement houses, which spread north, south, east, and west of it. Its
+walls were no less grimy than its neighbours'; but its windows were
+outlined in cheerful white paint, firelight sparkled through its
+unshuttered panes, and a bright green door with a brass knocker
+completed its pleasant air. There were always children outside the
+Vicarage railings on winter evenings, held there by the spell of the
+green door and the firelight.
+
+Inside the firelit room to the left of the front pathway, two men were
+standing--one of whom had just entered the house.
+
+"My dear Penrose!--how very good of you to come. I know how frightfully
+busy you are."
+
+The man addressed put down his hat and stick, and hastily smoothed back
+some tumbling black hair which interfered with spectacled eyes already
+hampered by short sight. He was a tall, lank, powerful fellow; anyone
+acquainted with the West-country would have known him for one of the
+swarthy, gray-eyed Cornish stock.
+
+"I am pretty busy--but your tale, Herbert, was a startler. If I can help
+you--or Barnes--command me. He is coming this afternoon?"
+
+Herbert French pointed his visitor to a chair.
+
+"Of course. And another man--whom I met casually, in Pall Mall this
+morning--and had half an hour's talk with--an American naval officer--an
+old acquaintance of Elsie's--Captain Boyson--will join us also. I met
+him at Harvard before our wedding, and liked him. He has just come over
+with his sister for a short holiday, and I ran across him."
+
+"Is there any particular point in his joining us?"
+
+Herbert French expounded. Boyson had been an old acquaintance of Mrs.
+Roger Barnes before her marriage. He knew a good deal about the Barnes
+story--"feels, so I gathered, very strongly about it, and on the man's
+side; and when I told him that Roger had just arrived and was coming to
+take counsel with you and me this afternoon, he suddenly asked if he
+might come, too. I was rather taken aback. I told him that we were
+going, of course, to consider the case entirely from the English point
+of view. He still said, 'Let me come; I may be of use to you.' So I
+could only reply it must rest with Roger. They'll show him first into
+the dining-room."
+
+Penrose nodded. "All right, as long as he doesn't mind his national toes
+trampled upon. So these are your new quarters, old fellow?"
+
+His eyes travelled round the small book-lined room, with its shelves of
+poetry, history, and theology; its parish litter; its settle by the
+fire, on which lay a doll and a child's picture-book; back to the figure
+of the new vicar, who stood, pipe in hand, before the hearth, clad in a
+shabby serge suit, his collar alone betraying him. French's white hair
+showed even whiter than of old above the delicately blanched face; from
+his natural slenderness and smallness the East End and its life had by
+now stripped every superfluous ounce; yet, ethereal as his aspect was,
+not one element of the Meredithian trilogy--"flesh," "blood," or
+"spirit"--was lacking in it.
+
+"Yes, we've settled in," he said quietly, as Penrose took stock.
+
+"And you like it?"
+
+"We do."
+
+The phrase was brief; nor did it seem to be going to lead to anything
+more expansive. Penrose smiled.
+
+"Well, now"--he bent forward, with a professional change of
+tone--"before he arrives, where precisely is this unhappy business? I
+gather, by the way, that Barnes has got practically all his legal advice
+from the other side, though the solicitors here have been coöperating?"
+
+French nodded. "I am still rather vague myself. Roger only arrived from
+New York the day before yesterday. His uncle, General Hobson, died a few
+weeks ago, and Roger came rushing home, as I understand, to see if he
+could make any ready money out of his inheritance. Money, in fact, seems
+to be his chief thought."
+
+"Money? What for? Mrs. Barnes's suit was surely settled long ago?"
+
+"Oh, yes--months ago. She got her decree and the custody of the child in
+July."
+
+"Remind me of the details. Barnes refused to plead?"
+
+"Certainly. By the advice of the lawyers on both sides, he refused, as
+an Englishman, to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the Court."
+
+"But he did what he could to stop the thing?"
+
+"Of course. He rushed out after his wife as soon as he could trace where
+she had gone; and he made the most desperate attempts to alter her
+purpose. His letters, as far as I could make them out, were
+heart-rending. I very nearly went over to try and help him, but it was
+impossible to leave my work. Mrs. Barnes refused to see him. She was
+already at Sioux Falls, and had begun the residence necessary to bring
+her within the jurisdiction of the South Dakota Court. Roger, however,
+forced one or two interviews with her--most painful scenes!--but found
+her quite immovable. At the same time she was much annoyed and excited
+by the legal line that he was advised to take; and there was a moment
+when she tried to bribe him to accept the divorce and submit to the
+American court."
+
+"To bribe him! With money?"
+
+"No; with the child. Beatty at first was hidden away, and Roger could
+find no traces of her. But for a few weeks she was sent to stay with a
+Mrs. Verrier at Philadelphia, and Roger was allowed to see her, while
+Mrs. Barnes negotiated. It was a frightful dilemma! If he submitted,
+Mrs. Barnes promised that Beatty should go to him for two months every
+year; if not, and she obtained her decree, and the custody of the child,
+as she was quite confident of doing, he should never--as far as she
+could secure it--see Beatty again. He too, foresaw that she would win
+her suit. He was sorely tempted; but he stood firm. Then before he could
+make up his mind what to do as to the child, the suit came on, Mrs.
+Barnes got her decree, and the custody of the little girl."
+
+"On the ground of 'cruelty,' I understand, and 'indignities'?"
+
+French nodded. His thin cheek flushed.
+
+"And by the help of evidence that any liar could supply!"
+
+"Who were her witnesses?"
+
+"Beatty's nurse--one Agnes Farmer--and a young fellow who had been
+employed on the decorative work at Heston. There were relations between
+these two, and Roger tells me they have married lately, on a partnership
+bought by Mrs. Barnes. While the work was going on at Heston the young
+man used to put up at an inn in the country town, and talk scandal at
+the bar."
+
+"Then there was some local scandal--on the subject of Barnes and Mrs.
+Fairmile?"
+
+"Possibly. Scandal _pour rire_! Not a soul believed that there was
+anything more in it than mischief on the woman's side, and a kind of
+incapacity for dealing with a woman as she deserved, on the man's. Mrs.
+Fairmile has been an _intrigante_ from her cradle. Barnes was at one
+time deeply in love with her. His wife became jealous of her after the
+marriage, and threw them together, by way of getting at the truth, and
+he shilly-shallied with the situation, instead of putting a prompt end
+to it, as of course he ought to have done. He was honestly fond of his
+wife the whole time, and devoted to his home and his child."
+
+"Well, she didn't plead, you say, anything more than 'cruelty' and
+'indignities'. The scandal, such as it was, was no doubt part of the
+'cruelty'?"
+
+French assented.
+
+"And you suspect that money played a great part in the whole
+transaction?"
+
+"I don't _suspect_--the evidence goes a long way beyond that. Mrs.
+Barnes bought the show! I am told there are a thousand ways of doing
+it."
+
+Penrose smoked and pondered.
+
+"Well, then--what happened? I imagine that by this time Barnes had not
+much affection left for his wife?"
+
+"I don't know," said French, hesitating. "I believe the whole thing was
+a great blow to him. He was never passionately in love with her, but he
+was very fond of her in his own way--increasingly fond of her--up to
+that miserable autumn at Heston. However, after the decree, his one
+thought was for Beatty. His whole soul has been wrapped up in that child
+from the first moment she was put into his arms. When he first realized
+that his wife meant to take her from him, Boyson tells me that he seemed
+to lose his head. He was like a person unnerved and bewildered, not
+knowing how to act or where to turn. First of all, he brought an
+action--a writ of _habeas corpus_, I think--to recover his daughter, as
+an English subject. But the fact was he had put it off too long----"
+
+"Naturally," said Penrose, with a shrug. "Not much hope for him--after
+the decree."
+
+"So he discovered, poor old fellow! The action was, of course,
+obstructed and delayed in every way, by the power of Mrs. Barnes's
+millions behind the scenes. His lawyers told him plainly from the
+beginning that he had precious little chance. And presently he found
+himself the object of a press campaign in some of the yellow papers--all
+of it paid for and engineered by his wife. He was held up as the brutal
+fortune-hunting Englishman, who had beguiled an American heiress to
+marry him, had carried her off to England to live upon her money, had
+then insulted her by scandalous flirtations with a lady to whom he had
+formerly been engaged, had shown her constant rudeness and unkindness,
+and had finally, in the course of a quarrel, knocked her down,
+inflicting shock and injury from which she had suffered ever since. Mrs.
+Barnes had happily freed herself from him, but he was now trying to
+bully her through the child--had, it was said, threatened to carry off
+the little girl by violence. Mrs. Barnes went in terror of him. America,
+however, would know how to protect both the mother and the child! You
+can imagine the kind of thing. Well, very soon Roger began to find
+himself a marked man in hotels, followed in the streets, persecuted by
+interviewers; and the stream of lies that found its way even into the
+respectable newspapers about him, his former life, his habits, etc., is
+simply incredible! Unfortunately, he gave some handle----"
+
+French paused a moment.
+
+"Ah!" said Penrose, "I have heard rumours."
+
+French rose and began to pace the room.
+
+"It is a matter I can hardly speak of calmly," he said at last. "The
+night after that first scene between them, the night of her fall--her
+pretended fall, so Roger told me--he went downstairs in his excitement
+and misery, and drank, one way and another, nearly a bottle of brandy, a
+thing he had never done in his life before. But----"
+
+"He has often done it since?"
+
+French raised his shoulders sadly, then added, with some emphasis.
+"Don't, however, suppose the thing worse than it is. Give him a gleam of
+hope and happiness, and he would soon shake it off."
+
+"Well, what came of his action?"
+
+"Nothing--so far. I believe he has ceased to take any interest in it.
+Another line of action altogether was suggested to him. About three
+months ago he made an attempt to kidnap the child, and was foiled. He
+got word that she had been taken to Charlestown, and he went there with
+a couple of private detectives. But Mrs. Barnes was on the alert, and
+when he discovered the villa in which the child had been living, she had
+been removed. It was a bitter shock and disappointment, and when he got
+back to New York in November, in the middle of an epidemic, he was
+struck down by influenza and pneumonia. It went pretty hard with him.
+You will be shocked by his appearance. Ecco! was there ever such a
+story! Do you remember, Penrose, what a magnificent creature he was that
+year he played for Oxford, and you and I watched his innings from the
+pavilion?"
+
+There was a note of emotion in the tone which implied much. Penrose
+assented heartily, remarking, however, that it was a magnificence which
+seemed to have cost him dear, if, as no doubt was the case, it had won
+him his wife.
+
+"But now, with regard to money; you say he wants money. But surely, at
+the time of the marriage, something was settled on him?"
+
+"Certainly, a good deal. But from the moment she left him, and the
+Heston bills were paid, he has never touched a farthing of it, and never
+will."
+
+"So that the General's death was opportune? Well, it's a deplorable
+affair! And I wish I saw any chance of being of use."
+
+French looked up anxiously.
+
+"Because you know," the speaker reluctantly continued, "there's nothing
+to be done. The thing's finished."
+
+"Finished?" French's manner took fire. "And the law can do _nothing_!
+Society can do _nothing_, to help that man either to right himself, or
+to recover his child? Ah!"--he paused to listen--"here he is!"
+
+A cab had drawn up outside. Through the lightly curtained windows the
+two within saw a man descend from it, pay the driver, and walk up the
+flagged passage leading to the front door.
+
+French hurried to greet the new-comer.
+
+"Come in, Roger! Here's George Penrose--as I promised you. Sit down, old
+man. They'll bring us some tea presently."
+
+Roger Barnes looked round him for a moment without replying; then
+murmured something unintelligible, as he shook hands with Penrose, and
+took the chair which French pushed forward. French stood beside him with
+a furrowed brow.
+
+"Well, here we are, Roger!--and if there's anything whatever in this
+horrible affair where an English lawyer can help you, Penrose is your
+man. You know, I expect, what a swell he is? A K. C. after seven
+years--lucky dog!--and last year he was engaged in an Anglo-American
+case not wholly unlike yours--Brown _v._ Brown. So I thought of him as
+the best person among your old friends and mine to come and give us some
+private informal help to-day, before you take any fresh steps--if you do
+take any."
+
+"Awfully good of you both." The speaker, still wrapped in his fur coat,
+sat staring at the carpet, a hand on each of his knees. "Awfully good of
+you," he repeated vaguely.
+
+Penrose observed the new-comer. In some ways Roger Barnes was handsomer
+than ever. His colour, the pink and white of his astonishing complexion,
+was miraculously vivid; his blue eyes were infinitely more arresting
+than of old; and the touch of physical weakness in his aspect, left
+evidently by severe illness, was not only not disfiguring, but a
+positive embellishment. He had been too ruddy in the old days, too
+hearty and splendid--a too obvious and supreme king of men--for our
+fastidious modern eyes. The grief and misfortune which had shorn some of
+his radiance had given a more human spell to what remained. At the same
+time the signs of change were by no means, all of them, easy to read, or
+reassuring to a friend's eye. Were they no more than physical and
+transient?
+
+Penrose was just beginning on the questions which seemed to him
+important, when there was another ring at the front door. French got up
+nervously, with an anxious look at Barnes.
+
+"Roger! I don't know whether you will allow it, but I met an American
+acquaintance of yours to-day, and, subject to your permission, I asked
+him to join our conference."
+
+Roger raised his head--it might have been thought, angrily.
+
+"Who on earth----?"
+
+"Captain Boyson?"
+
+The young man's face changed.
+
+"I don't mind him," he said sombrely. "He's an awfully good sort. He was
+in Philadelphia a few months ago, when I was. He knows all about me. It
+was he and his sister who introduced me to--my wife."
+
+French left the room for a moment, and returned accompanied by a
+fair-haired, straight-shouldered man, whom he introduced to Penrose as
+Captain Boyson.
+
+Roger rose from his chair to shake hands.
+
+"How do you do, Boyson? I've told them you know all about it." He
+dropped back heavily into his seat.
+
+"I thought I might possibly put in a word," said the new-comer, glancing
+from Roger to his friends. "I trust I was not impertinent? But don't let
+me interrupt anything that was going on."
+
+On a plea of chill, Boyson remained standing by the fire, warming his
+hands, looking down upon the other three. Penrose, who belonged to a
+military family, reminded himself, as he glanced at the American, of a
+recent distinguished book on Military Geography by a Captain Alfred
+Boyson. No doubt the same man. A capable face,--the face of the modern
+scientific soldier. It breathed alertness; but also some quality warmer
+and softer. If the general aspect had been shaped and moulded by an
+incessant travail of brain, the humanity of eye and mouth spoke dumbly
+to the humanity of others. The council gathered in the vicarage room
+felt itself strengthened.
+
+Penrose resumed his questioning of Barnes, and the other two listened
+while the whole miserable story of the divorce, in its American aspects,
+unrolled. At first Roger showed a certain apathy and brevity; he might
+have been fulfilling a task in which he took but small interest; even
+the details of chicanery and corruption connected with the trial were
+told without heat; he said nothing bitter of his wife--avoided naming
+her, indeed, as much as possible.
+
+But when the tale was done he threw back his head with sudden animation
+and looked at Boyson.
+
+"Is that about the truth, Boyson? You know."
+
+"Yes, I endorse it," said the American gravely. His face, thin and
+tanned, had flushed while Barnes was speaking.
+
+"And you know what all their papers said of me--what _they_ wished
+people to believe--that I wasn't fit to have charge of Beatty--that I
+should have done her harm?"
+
+His eyes sparkled. He looked almost threateningly at the man whom he
+addressed. Boyson met his gaze quietly.
+
+"I didn't believe it."
+
+There was a pause. Then Roger sprang suddenly to his feet, confronting
+the men round him.
+
+"Look here!" he said impatiently. "I want some money at once--and a good
+lot of it." He brought his fist down heavily on the mantelpiece.
+"There's this place of my uncle's, and I'm dashed if I can get a penny
+out of it! I went to his solicitors this morning. They drove me mad with
+their red-tape nonsense. It will take some time, they say, to get a
+mortgage on it, and meanwhile they don't seem inclined to advance me
+anything, or a hundred or two, perhaps. What's that? I lost my temper,
+and next time I go they'll turn me out, I dare say. But there's the
+truth. It's _money_ I want, and if you can't help me to money it's no
+use talking."
+
+"And when you get the money what'll you do with it?" asked Penrose.
+
+"Pay half a dozen people who can be trusted to help me kidnap Beatty and
+smuggle her over the Canadian frontier. I bungled the thing once. I
+don't mean to bungle it again."
+
+The answer was given slowly, without any bravado, but whatever energy of
+life there was in the speaker had gone into it.
+
+"And there is no other way?" French's voice from the back was troubled.
+
+"Ask him?" Roger pointed to Boyson.
+
+"Is there any legal way, Boyson, in which I can recover the custody and
+companionship of my child?"
+
+Boyson turned away.
+
+"None that I know of--and I have made every possible inquiry."
+
+"And yet," said Barnes, with emphasis, addressing the English barrister,
+"by the law of England I am still Daphne's husband and that child's
+legal guardian?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"And if I could once get her upon ground under the English flag, she
+would be mine again, and no power could take her from me?"
+
+"Except the same private violence that you yourself propose to
+exercise."
+
+"I'd take care of that!" said Roger briefly.
+
+"How do you mean to do it?" asked French, with knit brows. To be sitting
+there in an English vicarage plotting violence against a woman disturbed
+him.
+
+"He and I'll manage it," said the quiet voice of the American officer.
+
+The others stared.
+
+"_You?_" said French. "An officer in active service? It might injure
+your career!"
+
+"I shall risk it."
+
+A charming smile broke on Penrose's meditative face.
+
+"My dear French, this is much more amusing than the law. But I don't
+quite see where _I_ come in." He rose tentatively from his seat.
+
+Boyson, however, did not smile. He looked from one to the other.
+
+"My sister and I introduced Daphne Floyd to Barnes," he said steadily,
+"and it is my country, as I hold,--or a portion of it--that allows these
+villainies. Some day we shall get a great reaction in the States, and
+then the reforms that plenty of us are clamouring for will come about.
+Meanwhile, as of course you know"--he addressed French--"New Yorkers and
+Bostonians suffer almost as much from the abomination that Nevada and
+South Dakota call laws, as Barnes has suffered. Marriage in the Eastern
+States is as sacred as with you--South Carolina allows no divorce at
+all--but with this licence at our gates, no one is safe, and thousands
+of our women, in particular--for the women bring two-thirds of the
+actions--are going to the deuce, simply because they have the
+opportunity of going. And the children--it doesn't bear thinking of!
+Well--no good haranguing! I'm ashamed of my country in this matter--I
+have been for a long time--and I mean to help Barnes out, _coûte que
+coûte_! And as to the money, Barnes, you and I'll discuss that."
+
+Barnes lifted a face that quivered, and he and Boyson exchanged looks.
+
+Penrose glanced at the pair. That imaginative power, combined with the
+power of drudgery, which was in process of making a great lawyer out of
+a Balliol scholar, showed him something typical and dramatic in the two
+figures:--in Boyson, on the one hand, so lithe, serviceable, and
+resolved, a helpful, mercurial man, ashamed of his country in this one
+respect, because he adored her in so many others, penitent and patriot
+in one:--in Barnes, on the other, so heavy, inert, and bewildered, a
+ship-wrecked suppliant as it were, clinging to the knees of that very
+America which had so lightly and irresponsibly wronged him.
+
+It was Penrose who broke the silence.
+
+"Is there any chance of Mrs. Barnes's marrying again?" he asked.
+
+Barnes turned to him.
+
+"Not that I know of."
+
+"There's no one else in the case?"
+
+"I never heard of anyone." Roger gave a short, excited laugh. "What
+she's done, she's done because she was tired of me, not because she was
+in love with anyone else. That was her great score in the divorce
+case--that there was nobody."
+
+Biting and twisting his lip, in a trick that recalled to French the
+beautiful Eton lad, cracking his brains in pupil-room over a bit of
+Latin prose, Roger glanced, frowning, from one to the other of these
+three men who felt for him, whose resentment of the wrong that had been
+done him, whose pity for his calamity showed plainly enough through
+their reticent speech.
+
+His sense, indeed, of their sympathy began to move him, to break down
+his own self-command. No doubt, also, the fatal causes that ultimately
+ruined his will-power were already at work. At any rate, he broke out
+into sudden speech about his case. His complexion, now unhealthily
+delicate, like the complexion of a girl, had flushed deeply. As he spoke
+he looked mainly at French.
+
+"There's lots of things you don't know," he said in a hesitating voice,
+as though appealing to his old friend. And rapidly he told the story of
+Daphne's flight from Heston. Evidently since his return home many
+details that were once obscure had become plain to him; and the three
+listeners could perceive how certain new information had goaded, and
+stung him afresh. He dwelt on the letters which had reached him during
+his first week's absence from home, after the quarrel--letters from
+Daphne and Miss Farmer, which were posted at intervals from Heston by
+their accomplice, the young architect, while the writers of them were
+hurrying across the Atlantic. The servants had been told that Mrs.
+Barnes, Miss Farmer, and the little girl were going to London for a day
+or two, and suspected nothing. "I wrote long letters--lots of them--to
+my wife. I thought I had made everything right--not that there ever had
+been anything wrong, you understand,--seriously. But in some ways I had
+behaved like a fool."
+
+He threw himself back in his chair, pressing his hands on his eyes. The
+listeners sat or stood motionless.
+
+"Well, I might have spared my pains. The letters were returned to me
+from the States. Daphne had arranged it all so cleverly that I was some
+time in tracing her. By the time I had got to Sioux Falls she was
+through a month of her necessary residence. My God!"--his voice dropped,
+became almost inaudible--"if I'd only carried Beatty off _then_!--then
+and there--the frontier wasn't far off--without waiting for anything
+more. But I wouldn't believe that Daphne could persist in such a
+monstrous thing, and, if she did, that any decent country would aid and
+abet her."
+
+Boyson made a movement of protest, as though he could not listen any
+longer in silence.
+
+"I am ashamed to remind you, Barnes,--again--that your case is no worse
+than that of scores of American citizens. We are the first to suffer
+from our own enormities."
+
+"Perhaps," said Barnes absently, "perhaps."
+
+His impulse of speech dropped. He sat, drearily staring into the fire,
+absorbed in recollection.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Penrose had gone. So had Boyson. Roger was sitting by the fire in the
+vicar's study, ministered to by Elsie French and her children. By common
+consent the dismal subject of the day had been put aside. There was an
+attempt to cheer and distract him. The little boy of four was on his
+knee, declaiming the "Owl and the Pussy Cat," while Roger submissively
+turned the pages and pointed to the pictures of that immortal history.
+The little girl of two, curled up on her mother's lap close by, listened
+sleepily, and Elsie, applauding and prompting as a properly regulated
+mother should, was all the time, in spirit, hovering pitifully about her
+guest and his plight. There was in her, as in Boyson, a touch of
+patriotic remorse; and all the pieties of her own being, all the sacred
+memories of her own life, combined to rouse in her indignation and
+sympathy for Herbert's poor friend. The thought of what Daphne Barnes
+had done was to her a monstrosity hardly to be named. She spoke to the
+young man kindly and shyly, as though she feared lest any chance word
+might wound him; she was the symbol, in her young motherliness, of all
+that Daphne had denied and forsaken. "When would America--dear, dear
+America!--see to it that such things were made impossible!"
+
+Roger meanwhile was evidently cheered and braced. The thought of the
+interview to which Boyson had confidentially bidden him on the morrow
+ran warmly in his veins, and the children soothed him. The little boy
+especially, who was just Beatty's age, excited in him a number of
+practical curiosities. How about the last teeth? He actually inserted a
+coaxing and inquiring finger, the babe gravely suffering it. Any trouble
+with them? Beatty had once been very ill with hers, at Philadelphia,
+mostly caused, however, by some beastly, indigestible food that the
+nurse had let her have. And they allowed her to sit up much too late.
+Didn't Mrs. French think seven o'clock was late enough for any child not
+yet four? One couldn't say that Beatty was a very robust child, but
+healthy--oh yes, healthy!--none of your sickly, rickety little things.
+
+The curtains had been closed. The street children, the electric light
+outside, were no longer visible. Roger had begun to talk of departure,
+the baby had fallen fast asleep in her mother's arms, when there was
+another loud ring at the front door.
+
+French, who was expecting the headmaster of his church schools, gathered
+up some papers and left the room. His wife, startled by what seemed an
+exclamation from him in the hall outside, raised her head a moment to
+listen; but the sound of voices--surely a woman's voice?--died abruptly
+away, and the door of the dining-room closed. Roger heard nothing; he
+was laughing and crooning over the boy.
+
+    "The Pobble that lost his toes
+    Had once as many as we."
+
+The door opened. Herbert stood on the threshold beckoning to her. She
+rose in terror, the child in her arms, and went out to him. In a minute
+she reappeared in the doorway, her face ashen-white, and called to the
+little boy. He ran to her, and Roger rose, looking for the hat he had
+put down on entering.
+
+Then French came in, and behind him a lady in black, dishevelled, bathed
+in tears. The vicar hung back. Roger turned in astonishment.
+
+"Mother! You here? Mother!"--he hurried to her--"what's the matter?"
+
+She tottered toward him with outstretched hands.
+
+"Oh Roger, Roger!"
+
+His name died away in a wail as she clasped him.
+
+"What is it, mother?"
+
+"It's Beatty--my son!--my darling Roger!" She put up her hands
+piteously, bending his head down to her. "It's a cable from Washington,
+from that woman, Mrs. Verrier. They did everything, Roger--it was only
+three days--and hopeless always. Yesterday convulsion came on--and this
+morning----" Her head dropped against her son's breast as her voice
+failed her. He put her roughly from him.
+
+"What are you talking of, mother! Do you mean that Beatty has been ill?"
+
+"She died last night. Roger--my darling son--my poor Roger!"
+
+"Died--last night--Beatty?"
+
+French in silence handed him the telegram. Roger disengaged himself and
+walked to the fireplace, standing motionless, with his back to them, for
+a minute, while they held their breaths. Then he began to grope again
+for his hat, without a word.
+
+"Come home with me, Roger!" implored his mother, pursuing him. "We must
+bear it--bear it together. You see--she didn't suffer"--she pointed to
+the message--"the darling!--the darling!"
+
+Her voice lost itself in tears. But Roger brushed her away, as though
+resenting her emotion, and made for the door.
+
+French also put out a hand.
+
+"Roger, dear, dear old fellow! Stay here with us--with your mother.
+Where are you going?"
+
+Roger looked at his watch unsteadily.
+
+"The office will be closed," he said to himself; "but I can put some
+things together."
+
+"Where are you going, Roger?" cried Lady Barnes, pursuing him. Roger
+faced her.
+
+"It's Tuesday. There'll be a White Star boat to-morrow."
+
+"But, Roger, what can you do? She's gone, dear--she's gone. And before
+you can get there--long before--she will be in her grave."
+
+A spasm passed over his face, into which the colour rushed. Without
+another word he wrenched himself from her, opened the front door, and
+ran out into the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+"Was there ever anything so poetic, so suggestive?" said a charming
+voice. "One might make a new Turner out of it--if one just happened to
+be Turner!--to match 'Rain: Steam, and Speed.'"
+
+"What would you call it--'Mist, Light, and Spring'?"
+
+Captain Boyson leant forward, partly to watch the wonderful landscape
+effect through which the train was passing, partly because his young
+wife's profile, her pure cheek and soft hair, were so agreeably seen
+under the mingled light from outside.
+
+They were returning from their wedding journey. Some six weeks before
+this date Boyson had married in Philadelphia a girl coming from one of
+the old Quaker stocks of that town, in whose tender steadfastness of
+character a man inclined both by nature and experience to expect little
+from life had found a happiness that amazed him.
+
+The bridegroom, also, had just been appointed to the Military
+Attachéship at the Berlin Embassy, and the couple were, in fact, on
+their way south to New York and embarkation. But there were still a few
+days left of the honeymoon, of which they had spent the last half in
+Canada, and on this May night they were journeying from Toronto along
+the southern shore of Lake Ontario to the pleasant Canadian hotel which
+overlooks the pageant of Niagara. They had left Toronto in bright
+sunshine, but as they turned the corner of the lake westward, a white
+fog had come creeping over the land as the sunset fell.
+
+But the daylight was still strong, the fog thin; so that it appeared
+rather as a veil of gold, amethyst, and opal, floating over the country,
+now parting altogether, now blotting out the orchards and the fields.
+And into the colour above melted the colour below. For the orchards that
+cover the Hamilton district of Ontario were in bloom, and the snow of
+the pear-trees, the flush of the peach-blossom broke everywhere through
+the warm cloud of pearly mist; while, just as Mrs. Boyson spoke, the
+train had come in sight of the long flashing line of the Welland Canal,
+which wound its way, outlined by huge electric lamps, through the sunset
+and the fog, till the lights died in that northern distance where
+stretched the invisible shore of the great lake. The glittering
+waterway, speaking of the labour and commerce of men, the blossom-laden
+earth, the white approaching mist, the softly falling night:--the
+girl-bride could not tear herself from the spectacle. She sat beside the
+window entranced. But her husband had captured her hand, and into the
+overflowing beauty of nature there stole the thrill of their love.
+
+"All very well!" said Boyson presently. "But a fog at Niagara is no
+joke!"
+
+The night stole on, and the cloud through which they journeyed grew
+denser. Up crept the fog, on stole the night. The lights of the canal
+faded, the orchards sank into darkness, and when the bride and
+bridegroom reached the station on the Canadian side the bride's pleasure
+had become dismay.
+
+"Oh, Alfred, we shan't see anything!"
+
+And, indeed, as their carriage made its slow progress along the road
+that skirts the gorge, they seemed to plunge deeper and deeper into the
+fog. A white darkness, as though of impenetrable yet glimmering cloud,
+above and around them; a white abyss beneath them; and issuing from it
+the thunderous voice of wild waters, dim first and distant, but growing
+steadily in volume and terror.
+
+"There are the lights of the bridge!" cried Boyson, "and the towers of
+the aluminum works. But not a vestige of the Falls! Gone! Wiped out! I
+say, darling, this is going to be a disappointment."
+
+Mrs. Boyson, however, was not so sure. The lovely "nocturne" of the
+evening plain had passed into a Vision or Masque of Force that captured
+the mind. High above the gulf rose the towers of the great works,
+transformed by the surging fog and darkness into some piled and castled
+fortress; a fortress of Science held by Intelligence. Lights were in the
+towers, as of genii at their work; lights glimmered here and there on
+the face of the farther cliff, as though to measure the vastness of the
+gorge and of that resounding vacancy towards which they moved. In front,
+the arch of the vast suspension bridge, pricked in light, crossed the
+gulf, from nothingness to nothingness, like that sky bridge on which the
+gods marched to Walhalla. Otherwise, no shape, no landmark; earth and
+heaven had disappeared.
+
+"Here we are at the hotel," said Boyson. "There, my dear,"--he pointed
+ironically--"is the American Fall, and there--is the Canadian! Let me
+introduce you to Niagara!"
+
+They jumped out of the carriage, and while their bags were being carried
+in they ran to the parapeted edge of the cliff in front of the hotel.
+Niagara thundered in their ears; the spray of it beat upon their faces;
+but of the two great Falls immediately in front of them they saw nothing
+whatever. The fog, now cold and clammy, enwrapped them; even the bright
+lights of the hotel, but a stone's throw distant, were barely visible;
+and the carriage still standing at the steps had vanished.
+
+Suddenly, some common impulse born of the moment and the scene--of its
+inhuman ghostliness and grandeur--drew them to each other. Boyson threw
+his arm round his young wife and pressed her to him, kissing her face
+and hair, bedewed by the spray. She clung to him passionately, trembling
+a little, as the roar deafened them and the fog swept round them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As the Boysons lingered in the central hall of the hotel, reading some
+letters which had been handed to them, a lady in black passed along the
+gallery overhead and paused a moment to look at the new arrivals brought
+by the evening train.
+
+As she perceived Captain Boyson there was a quick, startled movement;
+she bent a moment over the staircase, as though to make sure of his
+identity, and then ran along the gallery to a room at the farther end.
+As she opened the door a damp cold air streamed upon her, and the
+thunder of the Falls, with which the hotel is perpetually filled, seemed
+to redouble.
+
+Three large windows opposite to her were, in fact, wide open; the room,
+with its lights dimmed by fog, seemed hung above the abyss.
+
+An invalid couch stood in front of the window, and upon it lay a pale,
+emaciated woman, breathing quickly and feebly. At the sound of the
+closing door, Madeleine Verrier turned.
+
+"Oh, Daphne, I was afraid you had gone out! You do such wild things!"
+
+Daphne Barnes came to the side of the couch.
+
+"Darling, I only went to speak to your maid for a moment. Are you sure
+you can stand all this damp fog?"
+
+As she spoke Daphne took up a fur cloak lying on a chair near, and
+wrapped herself warmly in it.
+
+"I can't breathe when they shut the windows. But it is too cold for
+you."
+
+"Oh, I'm all right in this." Daphne drew the cloak round her.
+
+Inwardly she said to herself, "Shall I tell her the Boysons are here?
+Yes, I must. She is sure to hear it in some way."
+
+So, stooping over the couch, she said:
+
+"Do you know who arrived this evening? The Alfred Boysons. I saw them in
+the hall just now."
+
+"They're on their honeymoon?" asked the faint voice, after a just
+perceptible pause.
+
+Daphne assented. "She seems a pretty little thing."
+
+Madeleine Verrier opened her tired eyes to look at Daphne. Mrs.
+Floyd--as Daphne now called herself--was dressed in deep black. The
+costly gown revealed a figure which had recently become substantial, and
+the face on which the electric light shone had nothing left in it of the
+girl, though Daphne Floyd was not yet thirty. The initial beauty of
+complexion was gone; so was the fleeting prettiness of youth. The eyes
+were as splendid as ever, but combined with the increased paleness of
+the cheeks, the greater prominence and determination of the mouth, and a
+certain austerity in the dressing of the hair, which was now firmly
+drawn back from the temples round which it used to curl, and worn high,
+_à la Marquise_, they expressed a personality--a formidable
+personality--in which self-will was no longer graceful, and power no
+longer magnetic. Madeleine Verrier gazed at her friend in silence. She
+was very grateful to Daphne, often very dependent on her. But there were
+moments when she shrank from her, when she would gladly never have seen
+her again. Daphne was still erect, self-confident, militant; whereas
+Madeleine knew herself vanquished--vanquished both in body and soul.
+
+Certain inner miseries and discomforts had been set vibrating by the
+name of Captain Boyson.
+
+"You won't want to see him or come across him?" she said abruptly.
+
+"Who? Alfred Boyson? I am not afraid of him in the least. He may say
+what he pleases--or think what he pleases. It doesn't matter to me."
+
+"When did you see him last?"
+
+Daphne hesitated a moment. "When he came to ask me for certain things
+which had belonged to Beatty."
+
+"For Roger? I remember. It must have been painful."
+
+"Yes," said Daphne unwillingly, "it was. He was very unfriendly. He
+always has been--since it happened. But I bore him no malice"--the tone
+was firm--"and the interview was short."
+
+"----" The half inaudible word fell like a sigh from Madeleine's lips as
+she closed her eyes again to shut out the light which teased them. And
+presently she added, "Do you ever hear anything now--from England?"
+
+"Just what I might expect to hear--what more than justifies all that I
+did."
+
+Daphne sat rigid on her chair, her hands crossed on her lap. Mrs.
+Verrier did not pursue the conversation.
+
+Outside the fog grew thicker and darker. Even the lights on the bridge
+were now engulfed. Daphne began to shiver in her fur cloak. She put out
+a cold hand and took one of Mrs. Verrier's.
+
+"Dear Madeleine! Indeed, indeed, you ought to let me move you from this
+place. Do let me! There's the house at Stockbridge all ready. And in
+July I could take you to Newport. I must be off next week, for I've
+promised to take the chair at a big meeting at Buffalo on the 29th. But
+I can't bear to leave you behind. We could make the journey quite easy
+for you. That new car of mine is very comfortable."
+
+"I know it is. But, thank you, dear, I like this hotel; and it will be
+summer directly."
+
+Daphne hesitated. A strong protest against "morbidness" was on her lips,
+but she did not speak it. In the mist-filled room even the bright fire,
+the electric lights, had grown strangely dim. Only the roar outside was
+real--terribly, threateningly real. Yet the sound was not so much fierce
+as lamentable; the voice of Nature mourning the eternal flow and
+conflict at the heart of things. Daphne knew well that, mingled with
+this primitive, cosmic voice, there was--for Madeleine Verrier--another;
+a plaintive, human cry, that was drawing the life out of her breast, the
+blood from her veins, like some baneful witchcraft of old. But she dared
+not speak of it; she and the doctor who attended Mrs. Verrier dared no
+longer name the patient's "obsession" even to each other. They had tried
+to combat it, to tear her from this place; with no other result, as it
+seemed, than to hasten the death-process which was upon her. Gently, but
+firmly, she had defied them, and they knew now that she would always
+defy them. For a year past, summer and winter, she had lived in this
+apartment facing the Falls; her nurses found her very patient under the
+incurable disease which had declared itself; Daphne came to stay with
+her when arduous engagements allowed, and Madeleine was always grateful
+and affectionate. But certain topics, and certain advocacies, had
+dropped out of their conversation--not by Daphne's will. There had been
+no spoken recantation; only the prophetess prophesied no more; and of
+late, especially when Daphne was not there--so Mrs. Floyd had
+discovered--a Roman Catholic priest had begun to visit Mrs. Verrier.
+Daphne, moreover, had recently noticed a small crucifix, hidden among
+the folds of the loose black dress which Madeleine commonly wore.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Daphne had changed her dress and dismissed her maid. Although it was
+May, a wood-fire had been lighted in her room to counteract the chilly
+damp of the evening. She hung over it, loth to go back to the
+sitting-room, and plagued by a depression that not even her strong will
+could immediately shake off. She wished the Boysons had not come. She
+supposed that Alfred Boyson would hardly cut her; but she was tolerably
+certain that he would not wish his young wife to become acquainted with
+her. She scorned his disapproval of her; but she smarted under it. It
+combined with Madeleine's strange delusions to put her on the defensive;
+to call out all the fierceness of her pride; to make her feel herself
+the champion of a sound and reasonable view of life as against weakness
+and reaction.
+
+Madeleine's dumb remorse was, indeed, the most paralyzing and baffling
+thing; nothing seemed to be of any avail against it, now that it had
+finally gained the upper hand. There had been dark times, no doubt, in
+the old days in Washington; times when the tragedy of her husband's
+death had overshadowed her. But in the intervals, what courage and
+boldness, what ardour in the declaration of that new Feminist gospel to
+which Daphne had in her own case borne witness! Daphne remembered well
+with what feverish readiness Madeleine had accepted her own pleas after
+her flight from England; how she had defended her against hostile
+criticism, had supported her during the divorce court proceedings, and
+triumphed in their result. "You are unhappy? And he deceived you? Well,
+then, what more do you want? Free yourself, my dear, free yourself! What
+right have you to bear more children to a man who is a liar and a
+shuffler? It is our generation that must suffer, for the liberty of
+those that come after!"
+
+What had changed her? Was it simply the approach of mortal illness, the
+old questioning of "what dreams may come"? Superstition, in fact? As a
+girl she had been mystical and devout; so Daphne had heard.
+
+Or was it the death of little Beatty, to whom she was much attached? She
+had seen something of Roger during that intermediate Philadelphia stage,
+when he and Beatty were allowed to meet at her house; and she had once
+or twice astonished and wounded Daphne at that time by sudden
+expressions of pity for him. It was she who had sent the cable message
+announcing the child's death, wording it as gently as possible, and had
+wept in sending it.
+
+"As if I hadn't suffered too!" cried Daphne's angry thought. And she
+turned to look at the beautiful miniature of Beatty set in pearls that
+stood upon her dressing-table. There was something in the recollection
+of Madeleine's sensibility with regard to the child--as in that of her
+compassion for the father's suffering--that offended Daphne. It seemed a
+reflection upon herself, Beatty's mother, as lacking in softness and
+natural feeling.
+
+On the contrary! She had suffered terribly; but she had thought it her
+duty to bear it with courage, not to let it interfere with the
+development of her life. And as for Roger, was it her fault that he had
+made it impossible for her to keep her promise? That she had been forced
+to separate Beatty from him? And if, as she understood now from various
+English correspondents, it was true that Roger had dropped out of decent
+society, did it not simply prove that she had guessed his character
+aright, and had only saved herself just in time?
+
+It was as though the sudden presence of Captain Boyson under the same
+roof had raised up a shadowy adversary and accuser, with whom she must
+go on thus arguing, and hotly defending herself, in a growing
+excitement. Not that she would ever stoop to argue with Alfred Boyson
+face to face. How could he ever understand the ideals to which she had
+devoted her powers and her money since the break-up of her married life?
+He could merely estimate what she had done in the commonest, vulgarest
+way. Yet who could truthfully charge her with having obtained her
+divorce in order thereby to claim any fresh licence for herself? She
+looked back now with a cool amazement on that sudden rush of passion
+which had swept her into marriage, no less than the jealousy which had
+led her to break with Roger. She was still capable of many kinds of
+violence; but not, probably, of the violence of love. The influence of
+sex and sense upon her had weakened; the influence of ambition had
+increased. As in many women of Southern race, the period of hot blood
+had passed into a period of intrigue and domination. Her wealth gave her
+power, and for that power she lived.
+
+Yes, she was personally desolate, but she had stood firm, and her reward
+lay in the fact that she had gathered round her an army of dependents
+and followers--women especially--to whom her money and her brains were
+indispensable. There on the table lay the plans for a new Women's
+College, on the broadest and most modern lines, to which she was soon to
+devote a large sum of money. The walls should have been up by now but
+for a quarrel with her secretary, who had become much too independent,
+and had had to be peremptorily dismissed at a moment's notice. But the
+plan was a noble one, approved by the highest authorities; and Daphne,
+looking to posterity, anticipated the recognition that she herself might
+never live to see. For the rest she had given herself--with
+reservations--to the Feminist movement. It was not in her nature to give
+herself wholly to anything; and she was instinctively critical of people
+who professed to be her leaders, and programmes to which she was
+expected to subscribe. Wholehearted devotion, which, as she rightly
+said, meant blind devotion, had never been her line; and she had been on
+one or two occasions offensively outspoken on the subject of certain
+leading persons in the movement. She was not, therefore, popular with
+her party, and did not care to be; her pride of money held her apart
+from the rank and file, the college girls, and typists, and journalists
+who filled the Feminist meetings, and often made themselves, in her
+eyes, supremely ridiculous, because of what she considered their silly
+provinciality and lack of knowledge of the world.
+
+Yet, of course, she was a "Feminist"--and particularly associated with
+those persons in the suffrage camp who stood for broad views on marriage
+and divorce. She knew very well that many other persons in the same camp
+held different opinions; and in public or official gatherings was always
+nervously--most people thought arrogantly--on the look-out for affronts.
+Meanwhile, everywhere, or almost everywhere, her money gave her power,
+and her knowledge of it was always sweet to her. There was nothing in
+the world--no cause, no faith--that she could have accepted "as a little
+child." But everywhere, in her own opinion, she stood for Justice;
+justice for women as against the old primæval tyranny of men; justice,
+of course, to the workman, and justice to the rich. No foolish
+Socialism, and no encroaching Trusts! A lucid common sense, so it seemed
+to her, had been her cradle-gift.
+
+And with regard to Art, how much she had been able to do! She had
+generously helped the public collections, and her own small gallery, at
+the house in Newport, was famous throughout England and America. That in
+the course of the preceding year she had found among the signatures,
+extracted from visitors by the custodian in charge, the name of Chloe
+Fairmile, had given her a peculiar satisfaction.
+
+She walked proudly across the room, her head thrown back, every nerve
+tense. Let the ignorant and stupid blame her if they chose. She stood
+absolved. Memory reminded her, moreover, of a great number of kind and
+generous things--private things--that she had done with her money. If
+men like Herbert French, or Alfred Boyson, denounced her, there were
+many persons who felt warmly towards her--and had cause. As she thought
+of them the tears rose in her eyes. Of course she could never make such
+things public.
+
+Outside the fog seemed to be lifting a little. There was a silvery light
+in the southeast, a gleam and radiance over the gorge. If the moon
+struggled through, it would be worth while slipping out after dinner to
+watch its play upon the great spectacle. She was careful to cherish in
+herself an openness to noble impressions and to the high poetry of
+nature and life. And she must not allow herself to be led by the casual
+neighbourhood of the Boysons into weak or unprofitable thought.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Boysons dined at a table, gay with lights and flowers, that should
+have commanded the Falls but for the curtain of fog. Niagara, however,
+might flout them if it pleased; they could do without Niagara. They were
+delighted that the hotel, apparently, contained no one they knew. All
+they wanted was to be together, and alone. But the bride was tired by a
+long day in the train; her smiles began presently to flag, and by nine
+o'clock her husband had insisted on sending her to rest.
+
+After escorting her upstairs Captain Boyson returned to the veranda,
+which was brightly lit up, in order to read some letters that were still
+unopened in his pocket. But before he began upon them he was seized once
+more by the wizardry of the scene. Was that indistinct glimmer in the
+far distance--that intenser white on white--the eternal cloud of spray
+that hangs over the Canadian Fall? If so, the fog was indeed yielding,
+and the full moon behind it would triumph before long. On the other
+hand, he could no longer see the lights of the bridge at all; the
+rolling vapour choked the gorge, and the waiter who brought him his
+coffee drily prophesied that there would not be much change under
+twenty-four hours.
+
+He fell back upon his letters, well pleased to see that one among them
+came from Herbert French, with whom the American officer had maintained
+a warm friendship since the day of a certain consultation in French's
+East-End library. The letter was primarily one of congratulation,
+written with all French's charm and sympathy; but over the last pages of
+it Boyson's face darkened, for they contained a deplorable account of
+the man whom he and French had tried to save.
+
+The concluding passage of the letter ran as follows:
+
+     "You will scarcely wonder after all this that we see him very
+     seldom, and that he no longer gives us his confidence. Yet both
+     Elsie and I feel that he cares for us as much as ever. And, indeed,
+     poor fellow, he himself remains strangely lovable, in spite of what
+     one must--alas!--believe as to his ways of life and the people with
+     whom he associates. There is in him, always, something of what
+     Meyers called 'the imperishable child.' That a man who might have
+     been so easily led to good has been so fatally thrust into evil is
+     one of the abiding sorrows of my life. How can I reproach him for
+     his behaviour? As the law stands, he can never marry; he can never
+     have legitimate children. Under the wrong he has suffered, and, no
+     doubt, in consequence of that illness in New York, when he was
+     badly nursed and cared for--from which, in fact, he has never
+     wholly recovered--his will-power and nerve, which were never very
+     strong, have given way; he broods upon the past perpetually, and on
+     the loss of his child. Our poor Apollo, Boyson, will soon have lost
+     himself wholly, and there is no one to help.
+
+     "Do you ever see or hear anything of that woman? Do you know what
+     has become of her? I see you are to have a Conference on your
+     Divorce Laws--that opinion and indignation are rising. For Heaven's
+     sake, do something! I gather some appalling facts from a recent
+     Washington report. One in twelve of all your marriages dissolved! A
+     man or a woman divorced in one state, and still bound in another!
+     The most trivial causes for the break-up of marriage, accepted and
+     acted upon by corrupt courts, and reform blocked by a phalanx of
+     corrupt interests! Is it all true? An American correspondent of
+     mine--a lady--repeats to me what you once said, that it is the
+     women who bring the majority of the actions. She impresses upon me
+     also the remarkable fact that it is apparently only in a minority
+     of cases that a woman, when she has got rid of her husband, marries
+     someone else. It is not passion, therefore, that dictates many of
+     these actions; no serious cause or feeling, indeed, of any kind;
+     but rather an ever-spreading restlessness and levity, a readiness
+     to tamper with the very foundations of society, for a whim, a
+     nothing!--in the interests, of ten, of what women call their
+     'individuality'! No foolish talk here of being 'members one of
+     another'! We have outgrown all that. The facilities are always
+     there, and the temptation of them. 'The women--especially--who do
+     these things,' she writes me, 'are moral anarchists. One can appeal
+     to nothing; they acknowledge nothing. Transformations infinitely
+     far-reaching and profound are going on among us."
+
+     "'_Appeal to nothing!_' And this said of women, by a woman! It was
+     of _men_ that a Voice said long ago: 'Moses, because of the
+     hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives'--on
+     just such grounds apparently--trivial and cruel pretexts--as your
+     American courts admit. 'But _I_ say unto you!--_I say unto
+     you!_'...
+
+     "Well, I am a Christian priest, incapable, of course, of an
+     unbiassed opinion. My correspondent tries to explain the situation
+     a little by pointing out that your women in America claim to be the
+     superiors of your men, to be more intellectual, better-mannered,
+     more refined. Marriage disappoints or disgusts them, and they
+     impatiently put it aside. They break it up, and seem to pay no
+     penalty. But you and I believe that they will pay it!--that there
+     are divine avenging forces in the very law they tamper with--and
+     that, as a nation, you must either retrace some of the steps taken,
+     or sink in the scale of life.
+
+     "How I run on! And all because my heart is hot within me for the
+     suffering of one man, and the hardness of one woman!"
+
+Boyson raised his eyes. As he did so he saw dimly through the mist the
+figure of a lady, veiled, and wrapped in a fur cloak, crossing the
+farther end of the veranda. He half rose from his seat, with an
+exclamation. She ran down the steps leading to the road and disappeared
+in the fog.
+
+Boyson stood looking after her, his mind in a whirl.
+
+The manager of the hotel came hurriedly out of the same door by which
+Daphne Floyd had emerged, and spoke to a waiter on the veranda, pointing
+in the direction she had taken.
+
+Boyson heard what was said, and came up. A short conversation passed
+between him and the manager. There was a moment's pause on Boyson's
+part; he still held French's letter in his hand. At last, thrusting it
+into his pocket, he hurried to the steps whereby Daphne had left the
+hotel, and pursued her into the cloud outside.
+
+The fog was now rolling back from the gorge, upon the Falls, blotting
+out the transient gleams which had seemed to promise a lifting of the
+veil, leaving nothing around or beneath but the white and thunderous
+abyss.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Daphne's purpose in quitting the hotel had been to find her way up the
+river by the road which runs along the gorge on the Canadian side, from
+the hotel to the Canadian Fall. Thick as the fog still was in the gorge
+she hoped to find some clearer air beyond it. She felt oppressed and
+stifled; and though she had told Madeleine that she was going out in
+search of effects and spectacle, it was in truth the neighbourhood of
+Alfred Boyson which had made her restless.
+
+The road was lit at intervals by electric lamps, but after a time she
+found the passage of it not particularly easy. Some repairs to the
+tramway lines were going on higher up, and she narrowly escaped various
+pitfalls in the shape of trenches and holes in the roadway, very
+insufficiently marked by feeble lamps. But the stir in her blood drove
+her on; so did the strangeness of this white darkness, suffused with
+moonlight, yet in this immediate neighbourhood of the Falls,
+impenetrable. She was impatient to get through it; to breathe an
+unembarrassed air.
+
+The roar at her left hand grew wilder. She had reached a point some
+distance from the hotel, close to the jutting corner, once open, now
+walled and protected, where the traveller approaches nearest to the edge
+of the Canadian Fall. She knew the spot well, and groping for the wall,
+she stood breathless and spray-beaten beside the gulf.
+
+Only a few yards from her the vast sheet of water descended. She could
+see nothing of it, but the wind of its mighty plunge blew back her hair,
+and her mackintosh cloak was soon dripping with the spray. Once, far
+away, above the Falls, she seemed to perceive a few dim lights along the
+bend of the river; perhaps from one of the great power-houses that tame
+to man's service the spirits of the water. Otherwise--nothing! She was
+alone with the perpetual challenge and fascination of the Falls.
+
+As she stood there she was seized by a tragic recollection. It was from
+this spot, so she believed, that Leopold Verrier had thrown himself
+over. The body had been carried down through the rapids, and recovered,
+terribly injured, in the deep eddying pool which the river makes below
+them. He had left no letter or message of any sort behind him. But the
+reasons for his suicide were clearly understood by a large public, whose
+main verdict upon it was the quiet "What else could he do?"
+
+Here, then, on this very spot, he had stood before his leap. Daphne had
+heard him described by various spectators of the marriage. He had been,
+it seemed, a man of sensitive temperament, who should have been an
+artist and was a man of business; a considerable musician, and something
+of a poet; proud of his race and faith and himself irreproachable, yet
+perpetually wounded through his family, which bore a name of ill-repute
+in the New York business world; passionately grateful to his wife for
+having married him, delighting in her beauty and charm, and foolishly,
+abjectly eager to heap upon her and their child everything that wealth
+could buy.
+
+"It was Madeleine's mother who made it hopeless," thought Daphne. "But
+for Mrs. Fanshaw--it might have lasted."
+
+And memory called up Mrs. Fanshaw, the beautifully dressed woman of
+fifty, with her pride of wealth and family, belonging to the strictest
+sect of New York's social _élite_, with her hard, fastidious face, her
+formidable elegance and self-possession. How she had loathed the
+marriage! And with what a harpy-like eagerness had she seized on the
+first signs of Madeleine's discontent and _ennui_; persuaded her to come
+home; prepared the divorce; poisoned public opinion. It was from a last
+interview with Mrs. Fanshaw that Leopold Verrier had gone straight to
+his death. What was it that she had said to him?
+
+Daphne lingered on the question; haunted, too, by other stray
+recollections of the dismal story--the doctor driving by in the early
+morning who had seen the fall; the discovery of the poor broken body;
+Madeleine's blanched stoicism, under the fierce coercion of her mother;
+and that strong, silent, slow-setting tide of public condemnation, which
+in this instance, at least, had avenged a cruel act.
+
+But at this point Daphne ceased to think about her friend. She found
+herself suddenly engaged in a heated self-defence. What comparison could
+there be between her case and Madeleine's?
+
+Fiercely she found herself going through the list of Roger's crimes; his
+idleness, treachery and deceit; his lack of any high ideals; his bad
+influence on the child; his luxurious self-indulgent habits, the lies he
+had told, the insults he had offered her. By now the story had grown to
+a lurid whole in her imagination, based on a few distorted facts, yet
+radically and monstrously untrue. Generally, however, when she dwelt
+upon it, it had power to soothe any smart of conscience, to harden any
+yearning of the heart, supposing she felt any. And by now she had almost
+ceased to feel any.
+
+But to-night she was mysteriously shaken and agitated. As she clung to
+the wall, which alone separated her from the echoing gulf beyond, she
+could not prevent herself from thinking of Roger, Roger as he was when
+Alfred Boyson introduced him to her, when they first married, and she
+had been blissfully happy; happy in the possession of such a god-like
+creature, in the envy of other women, in the belief that he was growing
+more and more truly attached to her.
+
+Her thoughts broke abruptly. "He married me for money!" cried the inward
+voice. Then she felt her cheeks tingling as she remembered her
+conversation with Madeleine on that very subject--how she had justified
+what she was now judging--how plainly she had understood and condoned
+it.
+
+"That was my inexperience! Besides, I knew nothing then of Chloe
+Fairmile. If I had--I should never have done it."
+
+She turned, startled. Steps seemed to be approaching her, of someone as
+yet invisible. Her nerves were all on edge, and she felt suddenly
+frightened. Strangers of all kinds visit and hang about Niagara; she was
+quite alone, known to be the rich Mrs. Floyd; if she were attacked--set
+upon----
+
+The outline of a man's form emerged; she heard her name, or rather the
+name she had renounced.
+
+"I saw you come in this direction, Mrs. Barnes. I knew the road was up
+in some places, and I thought in this fog you would allow me to warn you
+that walking was not very safe."
+
+The voice was Captain Boyson's; and they were now plain to each other as
+they stood a couple of yards apart. The fog, however, was at last
+slightly breaking. There was a gleam over the nearer water; not merely
+the lights, but the span of the bridge had begun to appear.
+
+Daphne composed herself with an effort.
+
+"I am greatly obliged to you," she said in her most freezing manner.
+"But I found no difficulty at all in getting through, and the fog is
+lifting."
+
+With a stiff inclination she turned in the direction of the hotel, but
+Captain Boyson stood in her way. She saw a face embarrassed yet
+resolved.
+
+"Mrs. Barnes, may I speak to you a few minutes?"
+
+Daphne gave a slight laugh.
+
+"I don't see how I can prevent it. So you didn't follow me, Captain
+Boyson, out of mere regard for my personal safety?"
+
+"If I hadn't come myself I should have sent someone," he replied
+quietly. "The hotel people were anxious. But I wished to come myself. I
+confess I had a very strong desire to speak to you."
+
+"There seems to be nothing and no one to interfere with it," said
+Daphne, in a tone of sarcasm. "I should be glad, however, with your
+permission, to turn homeward. I see Mrs. Boyson is here. You are, I
+suppose, on your wedding journey?"
+
+He moved out of her path, said a few conventional words, and they walked
+on. A light wind had risen and the fog was now breaking rapidly. As it
+gave way, the moonlight poured into the breaches that the wind made; the
+vast black-and-silver spectacle, the Falls, the gorge, the town
+opposite, the bridge, the clouds, began to appear in fragments,
+grandiose and fantastical.
+
+Daphne, presently, seeing that Boyson was slow to speak, raised her
+eyebrows and attempted a remark on the scene. Boyson interrupted her
+hurriedly.
+
+"I imagine, Mrs. Barnes, that what I wish to say will seem to you a
+piece of insolence. All the same, for the sake of our former friendship,
+I would ask you to bear with me."
+
+"By all means!"
+
+"I had no idea that you were in the hotel. About half an hour ago, on
+the veranda, I opened an English letter which arrived this evening. The
+news in it gave me great concern. Then I saw you appear, to my
+astonishment, in the distance. I asked the hotel manager if it were
+really you. He was about to send someone after you. An idea occurred to
+me. I saw my opportunity--and I pursued you."
+
+"And here I am, at your mercy!" said Daphne, with sudden sharpness. "You
+have left me no choice. However, I am quite willing."
+
+The voice was familiar yet strange. There was in it the indefinable
+hardening and ageing which seemed to Boyson to have affected the whole
+personality. What had happened to her? As he looked at her in the dim
+light there rushed upon them both the memory of those three weeks by the
+seaside years before, when he had fallen in love with her, and she had
+first trifled with, and then repulsed him.
+
+"I wished to ask you a question, in the name of our old friendship; and
+because I have also become a friend--as you know--of your husband."
+
+He felt, rather than saw, the start of anger in the woman beside him.
+
+"Captain Boyson! I cannot defend myself, but I would ask you to
+recognize ordinary courtesies. I have now no husband."
+
+"Of your husband," he repeated, without hesitation, yet gently. "By the
+law of England at least, which you accepted, and under which you became
+a British subject, you are still the wife of Roger Barnes, and he has
+done nothing whatever to forfeit his right to your wifely care. It is
+indeed of him and of his present state that I beg to be allowed to speak
+to you."
+
+He heard a little laugh beside him--unsteady and hysterical.
+
+"You beg for what you have already taken. I repeat, I am at your mercy.
+An American subject, Captain Boyson, knows nothing of the law of
+England. I have recovered my American citizenship, and the law of my
+country has freed me from a degrading and disastrous marriage!"
+
+"While Roger remains bound? Incapable, at the age of thirty, of marrying
+again, unless he renounces his country--permanently debarred from home
+and children!"
+
+His pulse ran quick. It was a strange adventure, this, to which he had
+committed himself!
+
+"I have nothing to do with English law, nothing whatever! It is unjust,
+monstrous. But that was no reason why I, too, should suffer!"
+
+"No reason for patience? No reason for pity?" said the man's voice,
+betraying emotion at last. "Mrs. Barnes, what do you know of Roger's
+present state?"
+
+"I have no need to know anything."
+
+"It matters nothing to you? Nothing to you that he has lost health, and
+character, and happiness, his child, his home, everything, owing to your
+action?"
+
+"Captain Boyson!" she cried, her composure giving way, "this is
+intolerable, outrageous! It is humiliating that you should even expect
+me to argue with you. Yet," she bit her lip, angry with the agitation
+that would assail her, "for the sake of our friendship to which you
+appeal, I would rather not be angry. What you say is monstrous!" her
+voice shook. "In the first place, I freed myself from a man who married
+me for money."
+
+"One moment! Do you forget that from the day you left him Roger has
+never touched a farthing of your money? That he returned everything to
+you?"
+
+"I had nothing to do with that; it was his own folly."
+
+"Yes, but it throws light upon his character. Would a mere
+fortune-hunter have done it? No, Mrs. Barnes!--that view of Roger does
+not really convince you, you do not really believe it."
+
+She smiled bitterly.
+
+"As it happens, in his letters to me after I left him, he amply
+confessed it."
+
+"Because his wish was to make peace, to throw himself at your feet. He
+accused himself, more than was just. But you do not really think him
+mercenary and greedy, you _know_ that he was neither! Mrs. Barnes, Roger
+is ill and lonely."
+
+"His mode of life accounts for it."
+
+"You mean that he has begun to drink, has fallen into bad company. That
+may be true. I cannot deny it. But consider. A man from whom everything
+is torn at one blow; a man of not very strong character, not accustomed
+to endure hardness.--Does it never occur to you that you took a
+frightful responsibility?"
+
+"I protected myself--and my child."
+
+He breathed deep.
+
+"Or rather--did you murder a life--that God had given you in trust?"
+
+He paused, and she paused also, as though held by the power of his will.
+They were passing along the public garden that borders the road; scents
+of lilac and fresh leaf floated over the damp grass; the moonlight was
+growing in strength, and the majesty of the gorge, the roar of the
+leaping water all seemed to enter into the moral and human scene, to
+accent and deepen it.
+
+Daphne suddenly clung to a seat beside the path, dropped into it.
+
+"Captain Boyson! I--I cannot bear this any longer."
+
+"I will not reproach you any more," he said, quietly. "I beg your
+pardon. The past is irrevocable, but the present is here. The man who
+loved you, the father of your child, is alone, ill, poor, in danger of
+moral ruin, because of what you have done. I ask you to go to his aid.
+But first let me tell you exactly what I have just heard from England."
+He repeated the greater part of French's letter, so far as it concerned
+Roger.
+
+"He has his mother," said Daphne, when he paused, speaking with evident
+physical difficulty.
+
+"Lady Barnes I hear had a paralytic stroke two months ago. She is
+incapable of giving advice or help."
+
+"Of course, I am sorry. But Herbert French----"
+
+"No one but a wife could save him--no one!" he repeated with emphasis.
+
+"I am _not_ his wife!" she insisted faintly. "I released myself by
+American law. He is nothing to me." As she spoke she leant back against
+the seat and closed her eyes. Boyson saw clearly that excitement and
+anger had struck down her nervous power, that she might faint or go into
+hysterics. Yet a man of remarkable courtesy and pitifulness towards
+women was not thereby moved from his purpose. He had his chance; he
+could not relinquish it. Only there was something now in her attitude
+which recalled the young Daphne of years ago; which touched his heart.
+
+He sat down beside her.
+
+"Bear with me, Mrs. Barnes, for a few moments, while I put it as it
+appears to another mind. You became first jealous of Roger, for very
+small reason, then tired of him. Your marriage no longer satisfied
+you--you resolved to be quit of it; so you appealed to laws of which, as
+a nation, we are ashamed, which all that is best among us will, before
+long, rebel against and change. Our State system permits them--America
+suffers. In this case--forgive me if I put it once more as it appears to
+me--they have been used to strike at an Englishman who had absolutely no
+defence, no redress. And now you are free; he remains bound--so long, at
+least, as you form no other tie. Again I ask you, have you ever let
+yourself face what it means to a man of thirty to be cut off from lawful
+marriage and legitimate children? Mrs. Barnes! you know what a man is,
+his strength and his weakness. Are you really willing that Roger should
+sink into degradation in order that you may punish him for some offence
+to your pride or your feeling? It may be too late! He may, as French
+fears, have fallen into some fatal entanglement; it may not be possible
+to restore his health. He may not be able"--he hesitated, then brought
+the words out firmly--"to forgive you. Or again, French's anxieties
+about him may be unfounded. But for God's sake go to him! Once on
+English ground you are his wife again as though nothing had happened.
+For God's sake put every thing aside but the thought of the vow you once
+made to him! Go back! I implore you, go back! I promise you that no
+happiness you have ever felt will be equal to the happiness that step
+would bring you, if only you are permitted to save him."
+
+Daphne was by now shaking from head to foot. The force of feeling which
+impelled him so mastered her that when he gravely took her hand she did
+not withdraw it. She had a strange sense of having at last discovered
+the true self of the quiet, efficient, unpretending man she had known
+for so long and cast so easily aside. There was shock and excitement in
+it, as there is in all trials of strength between a man and a woman. She
+tried to hate and despise him, but she could not achieve it. She longed
+to answer and crush him, but her mind was a blank, her tongue refused
+its office. Surprise, resentment, wounded feeling made a tumult and
+darkness through which she could not find her way.
+
+She rose at last painfully from her seat.
+
+"This conversation must end," she said brokenly. "Captain Boyson, I
+appeal to you as a gentleman, let me go on alone."
+
+He looked at her sadly and stood aside. But as he saw her move
+uncertainly toward a portion of the road where various trenches and pits
+made walking difficult, he darted after her.
+
+"Please!" he said peremptorily, "this bit is unsafe."
+
+He drew her hand within his arm and guided her. As he did so he saw that
+she was crying; no doubt, as he rightly guessed, from shaken nerves and
+wounded pride; for it did not seem to him that she had yielded at all.
+But this time he felt distress and compunction.
+
+"Forgive me!" he said, bending over her. "But think of what I have
+said--I beg of you! Be kind, be merciful!"
+
+She made various attempts to speak, and at last she said, "I bear you no
+malice. But you don't understand me, you never have."
+
+He offered no reply. They had reached the courtyard of the hotel. Daphne
+withdrew her hand. When she reached the steps she preceded him without
+looking back, and was soon lost to sight.
+
+Boyson shook his head, lit a cigar, and spent some time longer pacing up
+and down the veranda. When he went to his wife's room he found her
+asleep, a vision of soft youth and charm. He stood a few moments looking
+down upon her, wondering in himself at what he had done. Yet he knew
+very well that it was the stirring and deepening of his whole being
+produced by love that had impelled him to do it.
+
+Next morning he told his wife.
+
+"Do you suppose I produced _any_ effect?" he asked her anxiously. "If
+she really thinks over what I said, she _must_ be touched! unless she's
+made of flint. I said all the wrong things--but I _did_ rub it in."
+
+"I'm sure you did," said his wife, smiling. Then she looked at him with
+a critical tenderness.
+
+"You dear optimist!" she cried, and slipped her hand into his.
+
+"That means you think I behaved like a fool, and that my appeal won't
+move her in the least?"
+
+The face beside him saddened.
+
+"Dear, dear optimist!" she repeated, and pressed his hand. He urged an
+explanation of her epithet. But she only said, thoughtfully:
+
+"You took a great responsibility!"
+
+"Towards her?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"No--towards him!"
+
+Meanwhile Daphne was watching beside a death-bed. On her return from her
+walk she had been met by the news of fresh and grave symptoms in Mrs.
+Verrier's case. A Boston doctor arrived the following morning. The
+mortal disease which had attacked her about a year before this date had
+entered, so he reported, on its last phase. He talked of a few
+days--possibly hours.
+
+The Boysons departed, having left cards of inquiry and sympathy, of
+which Mrs. Floyd took no notice. Then for Daphne there followed a
+nightmare of waiting and pain. She loved Madeleine Verrier, as far as
+she was capable of love, and she jealously wished to be all in all to
+her in these last hours. She would have liked to feel that it was she
+who had carried her friend through them; who had nobly sustained her in
+the dolorous past. To have been able to feel this would have been as
+balm moreover to a piteously wounded self-love, to a smarting and bitter
+recollection, which would not let her rest.
+
+But in these last days Madeleine escaped her altogether. A thin-faced
+priest arrived, the same who had been visiting the invalid at intervals
+for a month or two. Mrs. Verrier was received into the Roman Catholic
+Church; she made her first confession and communion; she saw her mother
+for a short, final interview, and her little girl; and the physical
+energy required for these acts exhausted her small store. Whenever
+Daphne entered her room Madeleine received her tenderly; but she could
+speak but little, and Daphne felt herself shut out and ignored. What she
+said or thought was no longer, it seemed, of any account. She resented
+and despised Madeleine's surrender to what she held to be a decaying
+superstition; and her haughty manner toward the mild Oratorian whom she
+met occasionally on the stairs, or in the corridor, expressed her
+disapproval. But it was impossible to argue with a dying woman. She
+suffered in silence.
+
+As she sat beside the patient, in the hours of narcotic sleep, when she
+relieved one of the nurses, she went often through times of great
+bitterness. She could not forgive the attack Captain Boyson had made
+upon her; yet she could not forget it. It had so far roused her moral
+sense that it led her to a perpetual brooding over the past, a perpetual
+re-statement of her own position. She was most troubled, often, by
+certain episodes in the past, of which, she supposed Alfred Boyson knew
+least; the corrupt use she had made of her money; the false witnesses
+she had paid for; the bribes she had given. At the time it had seemed to
+her all part of the campaign, in the day's work. She had found herself
+in a _milieu_ that demoralized her; her mind had become like "the dyer's
+hand, subdued to what it worked in." Now, she found herself thinking in
+a sudden terror, "If Alfred Boyson knew so and so!" or, as she looked
+down on Madeleine's dying face, "Could I even tell Madeleine that?" And
+then would come the dreary thought, "I shall never tell her anything any
+more. She is lost to me--even before death."
+
+She tried to avoid thinking of Roger; but the memory of the scene with
+Alfred Boyson did, in truth, bring him constantly before her. An inner
+debate began, from which she could not escape. She grew white and ill
+with it. If she could have rushed away from it, into the full stream of
+life, have thrown herself into meetings and discussion, have resumed her
+place as the admired and flattered head of a particular society, she
+could easily have crushed and silenced the thoughts which tormented her.
+
+But she was held fast. She could not desert Madeleine Verrier in death;
+she could not wrench her own hand from this frail hand which clung to
+it; even though Madeleine had betrayed the common cause, had yielded at
+last to that moral and spiritual cowardice which--as all freethinkers
+know--has spoiled and clouded so many death-beds. Daphne--the skimmer of
+many books--remembered how Renan--_sain et sauf_--had sent a challenge
+to his own end, and defying the possible weakness of age and sickness,
+had demanded to be judged by the convictions of life, and not by the
+terrors of death. She tried to fortify her own mind by the recollection.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first days of June broke radiantly over the great gorge and the
+woods which surround it. One morning, early, between four and five
+o'clock, Daphne came in, to find Madeleine awake and comparatively at
+ease. Yet the preceding twenty-four hours had been terrible, and her
+nurses knew that the end could not be far off.
+
+The invalid had just asked that her couch might be drawn as near to the
+window as possible, and she lay looking towards the dawn, which rose in
+fresh and windless beauty over the town opposite and the white splendour
+of the Falls. The American Fall was still largely in shadow; but the
+light struck on the fresh green of Goat Island and leaped in tongues of
+fire along the edge of the Horseshoe, turning the rapids above it to
+flame and sending shafts into the vast tower of spray that holds the
+centre of the curve. Nature was all youth, glitter and delight; summer
+was rushing on the gorge; the mingling of wood and water was at its
+richest and noblest.
+
+Madeleine turned her face towards the gorge, her wasted hands clasped on
+her breast. She beckoned Daphne with a smile, and Daphne knelt down
+beside her.
+
+"The water!" said the whispering voice; "it was once so terrible. I am
+not afraid--now."
+
+"No, darling. Why should you be?"
+
+"I know now, I shall see him again."
+
+Daphne was silent.
+
+"I hoped it, but I couldn't be certain. That was so awful. Now--I am
+certain."
+
+"Since you became a Catholic?"
+
+She made a sign of assent.
+
+"I couldn't be uncertain--I _couldn't_!" she added with fervour, looking
+strangely at Daphne. And Daphne understood that no voice less positive
+or self-confident than that of Catholicism, no religion less well
+provided with tangible rites and practices, could have lifted from the
+spirit the burden of that remorse which had yet killed the body.
+
+A little later Madeleine drew her down again.
+
+"I couldn't talk, Daphne--I was afraid; but I've written to you, just
+bit by bit, as I had strength. Oh, Daphne----!"
+
+Then voice and strength failed her. Her eyes piteously followed her
+friend for a little, and then closed.
+
+She lingered through the day; and at night when the June starlight was
+on the gorge, she passed away, with the voice of the Falls in her dying
+ears. A tragic beauty--"beauty born of murmuring sound--had passed into
+her face;" and that great plunge of many waters, which had been to her
+in life the symbol of anguish and guilt, had become in some mysterious
+way the comforter of her pain, the friend of her last sleep.
+
+A letter was found for Daphne in the little box beside her bed.
+
+It ran thus:
+
+     DAPHNE, DARLING,--
+
+     "It was I who first taught you that we may follow our own lawless
+     wills, and that marriage is something we may bend or break as we
+     will. But, oh! it is not so. Marriage is mysterious and wonderful;
+     it is the supreme test of men and women. If we wrong it, and
+     despise it, we mutilate the divine in ourselves.
+
+     "Oh, Daphne! it is a small thing to say 'Forgive!' Yet it means the
+     whole world.--
+
+     "And you can still say it to the living. It has been my anguish
+     that I could only say it to the dead.... Daphne, good-bye! I have
+     fought a long, long fight, but God is master--I bless--I adore----"
+
+Daphne sat staring at the letter through a mist of unwilling tears. All
+its phrases, ideas, preconceptions, were unwelcome, unreal to her,
+though she knew they had been real to Madeleine.
+
+Yet the compulsion of the dead was upon her, and of her scene with
+Boyson. What they asked of her--Madeleine and Alfred Boyson--was of
+course out of the question; the mere thought of that humiliating word
+"forgiveness" sent a tingle of passion through her. But was there no
+third course?--something which might prove to all the world how full of
+resource and generosity a woman may be?
+
+She pondered through some sleepless hours; and at last she saw her way
+plain.
+
+Within a week she had left New York for Europe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+The ship on which Daphne travelled had covered about half her course. On
+a certain June evening Mrs. Floyd, walking up and down the promenade
+deck, found her attention divided between two groups of her
+fellow-travellers; one taking exercise on the same deck as herself; the
+other, a family party, on the steerage deck, on which many persons in
+the first class paused to look down with sympathy as they reached the
+dividing rail aft.
+
+The group on the promenade deck consisted of a lady and gentleman, and a
+boy of seven. The elders walked rapidly; holding themselves stiffly
+erect, and showing no sign of acquaintance with anyone on board. The
+child dragged himself wearily along behind them, looking sometimes from
+side to side at the various people passing by, with eyes no less furtive
+than his mother's. She was a tall and handsome woman, with extravagantly
+marine clothes and much false hair. Her companion, a bulky and
+ill-favoured man, glanced superciliously at the ladies in the deck
+chairs, bestowing always a more attentive scrutiny than usual on a very
+pretty girl, who was lying reading midway down, with a white lace scarf
+draped round her beautiful hair and the harmonious oval of her face.
+Daphne, watching him, remembered that she had see him speaking to the
+girl--who was travelling alone--on one or two occasions. For the rest,
+they were a notorious couple. The woman had been twice divorced, after
+misdoings which had richly furnished the newspapers; the man belonged to
+a financial class with which reputable men of business associate no more
+than they are obliged. The ship left them severely alone; and they
+retaliated by a manner clearly meant to say that they didn't care a
+brass farthing for the ship.
+
+The group on the steerage deck was of a very different kind. It was made
+up of a consumptive wife, a young husband and one or two children. The
+wife's malady, recently declared, had led to their being refused
+admission to the States. They had been turned back from the emigrant
+station on Ellis Island, and were now sadly returning to Liverpool. But
+the courage of the young and sweet-faced mother, the devotion of her
+Irish husband, the charm of her dark-eyed children, had roused much
+feeling in an idle ship, ready for emotion. There had been a collection
+for them among the passengers; a Liverpool shipowner, in the first
+class, had promised work to the young man on landing; the mother was to
+be sent to a sanatorium; the children cared for during her absence. The
+family made a kind of nucleus round which whatever humanity--or whatever
+imitation of it--there was on board might gather and crystallize. There
+were other mournful cases indeed to be studied on the steerage deck, but
+none in which misfortune was so attractive.
+
+As she walked up and down, or sat in the tea room catching fragments of
+the conversation round her, Daphne was often secretly angered by the
+public opinion she perceived, favourable in the one case, hostile in the
+other. How ignorant and silly it was--this public opinion. As to
+herself, she was soon aware that a few people on board had identified
+her and communicated their knowledge to others. On the whole, she felt
+herself treated with deference. Her own version of her story was clearly
+accepted, at least by the majority; some showed her an unspoken but
+evident sympathy, while her wealth made her generally interesting. Yet
+there were two or three in whom she felt or fancied a more critical
+attitude; who looked at her coolly, and seemed to avoid her. Bostonian
+Pharisees, no doubt!--ignorant of all those great expansions of the
+female destiny that were going forward.
+
+The fact was--she admitted it--that she was abnormally sensitive. These
+moral judgments, of different sorts, of which she was conscious,
+floating as it were in the life around her, which her mind isolated and
+magnified, found her smarting and sore, and would not let her be. Her
+irritable pride was touched at every turn; she hardly knew why. She was
+not to be judged by anybody; she was her own defender and her own judge.
+If she was no longer a symbolic and sympathetic figure--like that young
+mother among her children--she had her own claims. In the secrecy of the
+mind she fiercely set them out.
+
+The days passed, however, and as she neared the English shores her
+resistance to a pursuing thought became fainter. It was, of course,
+Boyson's astonishing appeal to her that had let loose the Avenging
+Goddesses. She repelled them with scorn; yet all the same they hurtled
+round her. After all, she was no monster. She had done a monstrous thing
+in a sudden brutality of egotism; and a certain crude state of law and
+opinion had helped her to do it, had confused the moral values and
+falsified her conscience. But she was not yet brutalized. Moreover, do
+what she would, she was still in a world governed by law; a world at the
+heart of which broods a power austere and immutable; a power which man
+did not make, which, if he clash with it, grinds him to powder. Its
+manifestations in Daphne's case were slight, but enough. She was not
+happy, that certainly was clear. She did not suppose she ever would be
+happy again. Whatever it was--just, heroic, or the reverse--the action
+by which she had violently changed her life had not been a success,
+estimated by results. No other man had attracted her since she had cast
+Roger off; her youth seemed to be deserting her; she saw herself in the
+glass every morning with discontent, even a kind of terror; she had lost
+her child. And in these suspended hours of the voyage, when life floats
+between sky and sea, amid the infinity of weaves, all that she had been
+doing since the divorce, her public "causes" and triumphs, the
+adulations with which she had been surrounded, began to seem to her
+barren and futile. No, she was not happy; what she had done had not
+answered; and she knew it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One night, a night of calm air and silvery sea, she hung over the ship's
+side, dreaming rather miserably. The ship, aglow with lights, alive with
+movement, with talk, laughter and music, glided on between the stars and
+the unfathomable depths of the mid-Atlantic. Nothing, to north and
+south, between her and the Poles; nothing but a few feet of iron and
+timber between her and the hungry gulfs in which the highest Alp would
+sink from sight. The floating palace, hung by Knowledge above Death,
+just out of Death's reach, suggested to her a number of melancholy
+thoughts and images. A touch of more than Arctic cold stole upon her,
+even through this loveliness of a summer night; she felt desperately
+unhappy and alone.
+
+From the saloon came a sound of singing:
+
+    _"An die Lippen wollt' ich pressen
+      Deine kleine weisse Hand,
+    Und mit Thränen sie benetzen
+      Deine kleine weisse Hand."_
+
+The tears came to her eyes. She remembered that she, too, had once felt
+the surrender and the tenderness of love.
+
+Then she brushed the tears away, angry with herself and determined to
+brood no more. But she looked round her in vain for a companion who
+might distract her. She had made no friends on board, and though she had
+brought with her a secretary and a maid, she kept them both at arm's
+length, and they never offered their society without an invitation.
+
+What was she going to do? And why was she making this journey?
+
+Because the injustice and absurdity of English law had distorted and
+besmirched her own perfectly legitimate action. They had given a handle
+to such harsh critics as Alfred Boyson. But she meant somehow to put
+herself right; and not only herself, but the great cause of woman's
+freedom and independence. No woman, in the better future that is coming,
+shall be forced either by law or opinion to continue the relations of
+marriage with a man she has come to despise. Marriage is merely
+proclaimed love; and if love fails, marriage has no further meaning or
+_raison d'être_; it comes, or should come, automatically to an end. This
+is the first article in the woman's charter, and without it marriage
+itself has neither value nor sanctity. She seemed to hear sentences of
+this sort, in her own voice, echoing about windy halls, producing waves
+of emotion on a sea of strained faces--women's faces, set and pale, like
+that of Madeleine Verrier. She had never actually made such a speech,
+but she felt she would like to have made it.
+
+What was she going to do? No doubt Roger would resent her coming--would
+probably refuse to see her, as she had once refused to see him. Well,
+she must try and act with dignity and common sense; she must try and
+persuade him to recognize her good faith, and to get him to listen to
+what she proposed. She had her plan for Roger's reclamation, and was
+already in love with it. Naturally, she had never meant permanently to
+hurt or injure Roger! She had done it for his good as well as her own.
+Yet even as she put this plea forward in the inner tribunal of
+consciousness, she knew that it was false.
+
+_"You have murdered a life!"_ Well, that was what prejudiced and
+hide-bound persons like Alfred Boyson said, and no doubt always would
+say. She could not help it; but for her own dignity's sake, that moral
+dignity in which she liked to feel herself enwrapped, she would give as
+little excuse for it as possible.
+
+Then, as she stood looking eastward, a strange thought struck her. Once
+on that farther shore and she would be Roger's wife again--an English
+subject, and Roger's wife. How ridiculous, and how intolerable! When
+shall we see some real comity of nations in these matters of
+international marriage and divorce?
+
+She had consulted her lawyers in New York before starting; on Roger's
+situation first of all, but also on her own. Roger, it seemed, might
+take certain legal steps, once he was aware of her being again on
+English ground. But, of course, he would not take them. "It was never me
+he cared for--only Beatty!" she said to herself with a bitter
+perversity. Still the thought of returning within the range of the old
+obligations, the old life, affected her curiously. There were hours,
+especially at night, when she felt shut up with thoughts of Roger and
+Beatty--her husband and her child--just as of old.
+
+How, in the name of justice, was she to blame for Roger's illness? Her
+irritable thoughts made a kind of grievance against him of the attack of
+pneumonia which she was told had injured his health. He must have
+neglected himself in some foolish way. The strongest men are the most
+reckless of themselves. In any case, how was it her fault?
+
+One night she woke up suddenly, in the dawn, her heart beating
+tumultuously. She had been dreaming of her meeting--her possible
+meeting--with Roger. Her face was flushed, her memory confused. She
+could not recall the exact words or incidents of the dream, only that
+Roger had been in some way terrible and terrifying.
+
+And as she sat up in her berth, trying to compose herself, she recalled
+the last time she had seen him at Philadelphia--a painful scene--and his
+last broken words to her, as he turned back from the door to speak
+them:--
+
+"As to Beatty, I hold you responsible! She is my child, no less than
+yours. You shall answer to me! Remember that!"
+
+Answer to him? Beatty was dead--in spite of all that love and science
+could do. Involuntarily she began to weep as she remembered the child's
+last days; the little choked cry, once or twice, for "Daddy!" followed,
+so long as life maintained its struggle, by a childish anger that he did
+not come. And then the silencing of the cry, and the last change and
+settling in the small face, so instinct already with feeling and
+character, so prophetic of the woman to be.
+
+A grief, of course, never to be got over; but for which she, Daphne,
+deserved pity and tenderness, not reproaches. She hardened herself to
+meet the coming trial.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She arrived in London in the first week of July, and her first act was
+to post a letter to Herbert French, addressed to his East-End vicarage,
+a letter formally expressed and merely asking him to give the writer
+"twenty minutes' conversation on a subject of common interest to us
+both." The letter was signed "Daphne Floyd," and a stamped envelope
+addressed to "Mrs. Floyd" was enclosed. By return of post she received a
+letter from a person unknown to her, the curate, apparently, in charge
+of Mr. French's parish. The letter informed her that her own
+communication had not been forwarded, as Mr. French had gone away for a
+holiday after a threat of nervous breakdown in consequence of overwork;
+and business letters and interviews were being spared him as much as
+possible. "He is, however, much better, I am glad to say, and if the
+subject on which you wish to speak to him is really urgent, his present
+address is Prospect House, St. Damian's, Ventnor. But unless it is
+urgent it would be a kindness not to trouble him with it until he
+returns to town, which will not be for another fortnight."
+
+Daphne walked restlessly up and down her hotel sitting-room. Of course
+the matter was urgent. The health of an East-End clergyman--already, it
+appeared, much amended--was not likely to seem of much importance to a
+woman of her temperament, when it stood in the way of her plans.
+
+But she would not write, she would go. She had good reason to suppose
+that Herbert French would not welcome a visit from her; he might indeed
+very easily use his health as an excuse for not seeing her. But she must
+see him.
+
+By mid-day she was already on her way to the Isle of Wight. About five
+o'clock she arrived at Ventnor, where she deposited maid and luggage.
+She then drove out alone to St. Damian's, a village a few miles north,
+through a radiant evening. The twinkling sea was alive with craft of all
+sizes, from the great liner leaving its trail of smoke along the
+horizon, to the white-sailed yachts close upon the land. The woods of
+the Undercliff sank softly to the blues and purple, the silver streaks
+and gorgeous shadows of the sea floor. The lights were broad and rich.
+After a hot day, coolness had come and the air was delightful.
+
+But Daphne sat erect, noticing nothing but the relief of the lowered
+temperature after her hot and tiresome journey. She applied herself
+occasionally to natural beauty, as she applied herself to music or
+literature, but it is not to women of her type that the true passion of
+it--"the soul's bridegroom"--comes. And she was absorbed in thinking how
+she should open her business to Herbert French.
+
+Prospect House turned out to be a detached villa standing in a garden,
+with a broad view of the Channel. Daphne sent her carriage back to the
+inn and climbed the steep drive which led up to the verandaed house. The
+front garden was empty, but voices--voices, it seemed, of children--came
+from behind the house where there was a grove of trees.
+
+"Is Mr. Herbert French at home?" she asked of the maid who answered her
+bell.
+
+The girl looked at her doubtfully.
+
+"Yes, ma'am--but he doesn't see visitors yet. Shall I tell Mrs. French?
+She's in the garden with the children."
+
+"No, thank you," said Daphne, firmly. "It's Mr. French I have come to
+see, and I am sure that he will wish to see me. Will you kindly give him
+my card? I will come in and wait."
+
+And she brushed past the maid, who was intimidated by the visitor's
+fashionable dress and by the drooping feathers of her Paris hat, in
+which the sharp olive-skinned face with its magnificent eyes was
+picturesquely framed. The girl gave way unwillingly, showed Mrs. Floyd
+into a small study looking on the front garden, and left her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Elsie!" cried Herbert French, springing from the low chair in which he
+had been lounging in his shirt-sleeves with a book when the parlour-maid
+found him, "Elsie!"
+
+His wife, who was at the other end of the lawn, playing with the
+children, the boy on her back and a pair of girl twins clinging to her
+skirts, turned in astonishment and hurried back to him.
+
+"Mrs. Floyd?" They both looked at the card in bewilderment. "Who is it?
+Mrs. Floyd?"
+
+Then French's face changed.
+
+"What is this lady like?" he asked peremptorily of the parlour-maid.
+
+"Well, sir, she's a dark lady, dressed very smart----"
+
+"Has she very black eyes?"
+
+"Oh yes, sir!"
+
+"Young?"
+
+The girl promptly replied in the negative, qualifying it a moment
+afterward by a perplexed "Well, I shouldn't say so, sir."
+
+French thought a moment.
+
+"Thank you. I will come in."
+
+He turned to his wife with a rapid question, under his breath. "Where is
+Roger?"
+
+Elsie stared at him, her colour paling.
+
+"Herbert!--it can't--it can't----"
+
+"I suspect it is--Mrs. Barnes," said French slowly. "Help me on with my
+coat, darling. Now then, what shall we do?"
+
+"She can't have come to force herself on him!" cried his wife
+passionately.
+
+"Probably she knows nothing of his being here. Did he go for a walk?"
+
+"Yes, towards Sandown. But he will be back directly."
+
+A quick shade of expression crossed French's face, which his wife knew
+to mean that whenever Roger was out by himself there was cause for
+anxiety. But the familiar trouble was immediately swallowed up in the
+new and pressing one.
+
+"What can that woman have come to say?" he asked, half of himself, half
+of his wife, as he walked slowly back to the house. Elsie had conveyed
+the children to their nurse, and was beside him.
+
+"Perhaps she repents!" The tone was dry and short; it flung a challenge
+to misdoing.
+
+"I doubt it! But Roger?" French stood still, pondering. "Keep him,
+darling--intercept him if you can. If he must see her, I will come out.
+But we mustn't risk a shock."
+
+They consulted a little in low voices. Then French went into the house
+and Elsie came back to her children. She stood thinking, her fine face,
+so open-browed and purely lined, frowning and distressed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"You wished to see me, Mrs. Barnes?"
+
+French had closed the door of the study behind him and stood without
+offering to shake hands with his visitor, coldly regarding her.
+
+Daphne rose from her seat, reddening involuntarily.
+
+"My name is no longer what you once knew it, Mr. French. I sent you my
+card."
+
+French made a slight inclination and pointed to the chair from which she
+had risen.
+
+"Pray sit down. May I know what has brought you here?"
+
+Daphne resumed her seat, her small hands fidgeting on her parasol.
+
+"I wished to come and consult with you, Mr. French. I had heard a
+distressing account of--of Roger, from a friend in America."
+
+"I see," said French, on whom a sudden light dawned. "You met Boyson at
+Niagara--that I knew--and you are here because of what he said to you?"
+
+"Yes, partly." The speaker looked round the room, biting her lip, and
+French observed her for a moment. He remembered the foreign vivacity and
+dash, the wilful grace of her youth, and marvelled at her stiffened,
+pretentious air, her loss of charm. Instinctively the saint in him knew
+from the mere look of her that she had been feeding herself on egotisms
+and falsehoods, and his heart hardened. Daphne resumed:
+
+"If Captain Boyson has given you an account of our interview, Mr.
+French, it was probably a one-sided one. However, that is _not_ the
+point. He _did_ distress me very much by his account, which I gather
+came from you--of--of Roger, and although, of course, it is a very
+awkward matter for me to move in, I still felt impelled for old times'
+sake to come over and see whether I could not help you--and his other
+friends--and, of course, his mother----"
+
+"His mother is out of the question," interrupted French. "She is, I am
+sorry to say, a helpless invalid."
+
+"Is it really as bad as that? I hoped for better news. Then I apply to
+you--to you chiefly. Is there anything that I could do to assist you, or
+others, to----"
+
+"To save him?" French put in the words as she hesitated.
+
+Daphne was silent.
+
+"What is your idea?" asked French, after a moment. "You heard, I
+presume, from Captain Boyson that my wife and I were extremely anxious
+about Roger's ways and habits; that we cannot induce him, or, at any
+rate, we have not yet been able to induce him, to give up drinking; that
+his health is extremely bad, and that we are sometimes afraid that there
+is now some secret in his life of which he is ashamed?"
+
+"Yes," said Daphne, fidgeting with a book on the table. "Yes, that is
+what I heard."
+
+"And you have come to suggest something?"
+
+"Is there no way by which Roger can become as free as I now am!" she
+said suddenly, throwing back her head.
+
+"By which Roger can obtain his divorce from you--and marry again? None,
+in English law."
+
+"But there is--in Colonial law." She began to speak hurriedly and
+urgently. "If Roger were to go to New Zealand, or to Australia, he
+could, after a time, get a divorce for desertion. I know he could--I
+have inquired. It doesn't seem to be certain what effect my action--the
+American decree, I mean--would have in an English colony. My lawyers are
+going into it. But at any rate there is the desertion and then"--she
+grew more eager--"if he married abroad--in the Colony--the marriage
+would be valid. No one could say a word to him when he returned to
+England."
+
+French looked at her in silence. She went on--with the unconscious
+manner of one accustomed to command her world, to be the oracle and
+guide of subordinates:--
+
+"Could we not induce him to go? Could you not? Very likely he would
+refuse to see me; and, of course, he has, most unjustly to me, I think,
+refused to take any money from me. But the money might be provided
+without his knowing where it came from. A young doctor might be sent
+with him--some nice fellow who would keep him amused and look after him.
+At Heston he used to take a great interest in farming. He might take up
+land. I would pay anything--anything! He might suppose it came from some
+friend."
+
+French smiled sadly. His eyes were on the ground. She bent forward.
+
+"I beg of you, Mr. French, not to set yourself against me! Of
+course"--she drew herself up proudly--"I know what you must think of my
+action. Our views are different, irreconcilably different. You probably
+think all divorce wrong. We think, in America, that a marriage which has
+become a burden to either party is no marriage, and ought to cease. But
+that, of course"--she waved a rhetorical hand--"we cannot discuss. I do
+not propose for a moment to discuss it. You must allow me my national
+point of view. But surely we can, putting all that aside, combine to
+help Roger?"
+
+"To marry again?" said French, slowly. "It can't, I fear, be done--what
+you propose--in the time. I doubt whether Roger has two years to live."
+
+Daphne started.
+
+"Roger!--to live?" she repeated, in horror. "What is really the matter?
+Surely nothing more than care and a voyage could set right?"
+
+French shook his head.
+
+"We have been anxious about him for some time. That terrible attack of
+septic pneumonia in New York, as we now know, left the heart injured and
+the lungs weakened. He was badly nursed, and his state of mind at the
+time--his misery and loneliness--left him little chance. Then the
+drinking habit, which he contracted during those wretched months in the
+States, has been of course sorely against him. However, we hoped against
+hope--Elsie and I--till a few weeks ago. Then someone, we don't know
+who, made him go to a specialist, and the verdict is--phthisis; not very
+advanced, but certain and definite. And the general outlook is not
+favourable."
+
+Daphne had grown pale.
+
+"We must send him away!" she said imperiously. "We must! A voyage, a
+good doctor, a dry climate, would save him, of course they would! Why,
+there is nothing necessarily fatal now in phthisis! Nothing! It is
+absurd to talk as though there were."
+
+Again French looked at her in silence. But as she had lost colour, he
+had gained it. His face, which the East End had already stamped, had
+grown rosy, his eyes sparkled.
+
+"Oh, do say something! Tell me what you suggest?" cried Daphne.
+
+"Do you really wish me to tell you what I suggest?"
+
+Daphne waited, her eyes first imploring, then beginning to shrink. He
+bent forward and touched her on the arm.
+
+"Go, Mrs. Barnes, and ask your husband's forgiveness! What will come of
+it I do not know. But you, at least, will have done something to set
+yourself right--with God."
+
+The Christian and the priest had spoken; the low voice in its intensity
+had seemed to ring through the quiet sun-flooded room. Daphne rose,
+trembling with resentment and antagonism.
+
+"It is you, then, Mr. French, who make it impossible for me to
+discuss--to help. I shall have to see if I can find some other means of
+carrying out my purpose."
+
+There was a voice outside. Daphne turned.
+
+"Who is that?"
+
+French ran to the glass door that opened on the veranda, and trying for
+an ordinary tone, waved somebody back who was approaching from without.
+Elsie came quickly round the corner of the house, calling to the
+new-comer.
+
+But Daphne saw who it was and took her own course. She, too, went to the
+window, and, passing French, she stepped into the veranda.
+
+"Roger!"
+
+A man hurried through the dusk. There was an exclamation, a silence. By
+this time French was on the lawn, his wife's quivering hand in his.
+Daphne retreated slowly into the study and Roger Barnes followed her.
+
+"Leave them alone," said French, and putting an arm round his wife he
+led her resolutely away, out of sound and sight.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Barnes stood silent, breathing heavily and leaning on the back of a
+chair. The western light from a side window struck full on him. But
+Daphne, the wave of excitement spent, was not looking at him. She had
+fallen upon a sofa, her face was in her hands.
+
+"What do you want with me?" said Roger at last. Then, in a sudden heat,
+"By God, I never wished to see you again!"
+
+Daphne's muffled voice came through her fingers.
+
+"I know that. You needn't tell me so!"
+
+Roger turned away.
+
+"You'll admit it's an intrusion?" he said fiercely. "I don't see what
+you and I have got to do with each other now."
+
+Daphne struggled for self-control. After all, she had always managed him
+in the old days. She would manage him now.
+
+"Roger--I--I didn't come to discuss the past. That's done with. But--I
+heard things about you--that----"
+
+"You didn't like?" he laughed. "I'm sorry, but I don't see what you have
+to do with them."
+
+Daphne's hand fidgeted with her dress, her eyes still cast down.
+
+"Couldn't we talk without bitterness? Just for ten minutes? It was from
+Captain Boyson that I heard----"
+
+"Oh, Boyson, was that it? And he got his information from French--poor
+old Herbert. Well, it's quite true. I'm no longer fit for your--or
+his--or anybody's society."
+
+He threw himself into an arm-chair, calmly took a cigarette out of a box
+that lay near, and lit it. Daphne at last ventured to look at him. The
+first and dominant impression was of something shrunken and diminished.
+His blue flannel suit hung loose on his shoulders and chest, his
+athlete's limbs. His features had been thinned and graved and scooped by
+fever and broken nights; all the noble line and proportion was still
+there, but for one who had known him of old the effect was no longer
+beautiful but ghastly. Daphne stared at him in dismay.
+
+He on his side observed his visitor, but with a cooler curiosity. Like
+French he noticed the signs of change, the dying down of brilliance and
+of bloom. To go your own way, as Daphne had done, did not seem to
+conduce to a woman's good looks.
+
+At last he threw in a dry interrogation.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I came to try and help you," Daphne broke out, turning her head away,
+"to ask Mr. French what I could do. It made me unhappy----"
+
+"Did it?" He laughed again. "I don't see why. Oh, you needn't trouble
+yourself. Elsie and Herbert are awfully good to me. They're all I want,
+or at any rate," he hesitated a moment, "they're all I _shall_
+want--from now on. Anyway, you know there'd be something grotesque in
+your trying your hand at reforming me."
+
+"I didn't mean anything of the kind!" she protested, stung by his tone.
+"I--I wanted to suggest something practical--some way by which you
+might--release yourself from me--and also recover your health."
+
+"Release myself from you?" he repeated. "That's easier said than done.
+Did you mean to send me to the Colonies--was that your idea?"
+
+His smile was hard to bear. But she went on, choking, yet determined.
+
+"That seems to be the only way--in English law. Why shouldn't you take
+it? The voyage, the new climate, would probably set you up again. You
+need only be away a short time."
+
+He looked at her in silence a moment, fingering his cigarette.
+
+"Thank you," he said at last, "thank you. And I suppose you offered us
+money? You told Herbert you would pay all expenses? Oh, don't be angry!
+I didn't mean anything uncivil. But," he raised himself with energy from
+his lounging position, "at the same time, perhaps you ought to know that
+I would sooner die a thousand times over than take a single silver
+sixpence that belonged to you!"
+
+Their eyes met, his quite calm, hers sparkling with resentment and pain.
+
+"Of course I can't argue with you if you meet me in that tone," she said
+passionately. "But I should have thought----"
+
+"Besides," he interrupted her, "you say it is the only way. You are
+quite mistaken. It is not the only way. As far as freeing me goes, you
+could divorce me to-morrow--here--if you liked. I have been unfaithful
+to you. A strange way of putting it--at the present moment--between you
+and me! But that's how it would appear in the English courts. And as to
+the 'cruelty'--that wouldn't give _you_ any trouble!"
+
+Daphne had flushed deeply. It was only by a great effort that she
+maintained her composure. Her eyes avoided him.
+
+"Mrs. Fairmile?" she said in a low voice.
+
+He threw back his head with a sound of scorn.
+
+"Mrs. Fairmile! You don't mean to tell me, Daphne, to my face, that you
+ever believed any of the lies--forgive the expression--that you, and
+your witnesses, and your lawyers told in the States--that you bribed
+those precious newspapers to tell?"
+
+"Of course I believed it!" she said fiercely. "And as for lies, it was
+you who began them."
+
+"You _believed_ that I had betrayed you with Chloe Fairmile?" He raised
+himself again, fixing his strange deep-set gaze upon her.
+
+"I never said----"
+
+"No! To that length you didn't quite go. I admit it. You were able to
+get your way without it." He sank back in his chair again. "No, my
+remark had nothing to do with Chloe. I have never set eyes on her since
+I left you at Heston. But--there was a girl, a shop-girl, a poor little
+thing, rather pretty. I came across her about six months ago--it doesn't
+matter how. She loves me, she was awfully good to me, a regular little
+brick. Some day I shall tell Herbert all about her--not yet--though, of
+course, he suspects. She'd serve your purpose, if you thought it worth
+while. But you won't----"
+
+"You're--living with her--now?"
+
+"No. I broke with her a fortnight ago, after I'd seen those doctors. She
+made me see them, poor little soul. Then I went to say good-bye to her,
+and she," his voice shook a little, "she took it hard. But it's all
+right. I'm not going to risk her life, or saddle her with a dying man.
+She's with her sister. She'll get over it."
+
+He turned his head towards the window, his eyes pursued the white sails
+on the darkening blue outside.
+
+"It's been a bad business, but it wasn't altogether my fault. I saved
+her from someone else, and she saved me, once or twice, from blowing my
+brains out."
+
+"What did the doctors say to you?" asked Daphne, brusquely, after a
+pause.
+
+"They gave me about two years," he said, indifferently, turning to knock
+off the end of his cigarette. "That doesn't matter." Then, as his eyes
+caught her face, a sudden animation sprang into his. He drew his chair
+nearer to her and threw away his cigarette. "Look here, Daphne, don't
+let's waste time. We shall never see each other again, and there are a
+number of things I want to know. Tell me everything you can remember
+about Beatty that last six months--and about her illness, you
+understand--never mind repeating what you told Boyson, and he told me.
+But there's lots more, there must be. Did she ever ask for me? Boyson
+said you couldn't remember. But you must remember!"
+
+He came closer still, his threatening eyes upon her. And as he did so,
+the dark presence of ruin and death, of things damning and irrevocable,
+which had been hovering over their conversation, approached with
+him--flapped their sombre wings in Daphne's face. She trembled all over.
+
+"Yes," she said, faintly, "she did ask for you."
+
+"Ah!" He gave a cry of delight. "Tell me--tell me at
+once--everything--from the beginning!"
+
+And held by his will, she told him everything--all the piteous story of
+the child's last days--sobbing herself; and for the first time making
+much of the little one's signs of remembering her father, instead of
+minimizing and ignoring them, as she had done in the talk with Boyson.
+It was as though for the first time she were trying to stanch a wound
+instead of widening it.
+
+He listened eagerly. The two heads--the father and mother--drew closer;
+one might have thought them lovers still, united by tender and sacred
+memories.
+
+But at last Roger drew himself away. He rose to his feet.
+
+"I'll forgive you much for that!" he said with a long breath. "Will you
+write it for me some day--all you've told me?"
+
+She made a sign of assent.
+
+"Well, now, you mustn't stay here any longer. I suppose you've got a
+carriage? And we mustn't meet again. There's no object in it. But I'll
+remember that you came."
+
+She looked at him. In her nature the great deeps were breaking up. She
+saw him as she had seen him in her first youth. And, at last, what she
+had done was plain to her.
+
+With a cry she threw herself on the floor beside him. She pressed his
+hand in hers.
+
+"Roger, let me stay! Let me nurse you!" she panted. "I didn't
+understand. Let me be your friend! Let me help! I implore--I implore
+you!"
+
+He hesitated a moment, then he lifted her to her feet decidedly, but not
+unkindly.
+
+"What do you mean?" he said, slowly. "Do you mean that you wish us to be
+husband and wife again? You are, of course, my wife, in the eye of
+English law, at this moment."
+
+"Let me try and help you!" she pleaded again, breaking into bitter
+tears. "I didn't--I didn't understand!"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"You can't help me. I--I'm afraid I couldn't bear it. We mustn't meet.
+It--it's gone too deep."
+
+He thrust his hands into his pockets and walked away to the window. She
+stood helplessly weeping.
+
+When he returned he was quite composed again.
+
+"Don't cry so," he said, calmly. "It's done. We can't help it. And don't
+make yourself too unhappy about me. I've had awful times. When I was ill
+in New York--it was like hell. The pain was devilish, and I wasn't used
+to being alone, and nobody caring a damn, and everybody believing me a
+cad and a bully. But I got over that. It was Beatty's death that hit me
+so hard, and that I wasn't there. It's that, somehow, I can't get
+over--that you did it--that you could have had the heart. It would
+always come between us. No, we're better apart. But I'll tell you
+something to comfort you. I've given up that girl, as I've told you, and
+I've given up drink. Herbert won't believe it, but he'll find it is so.
+And I don't mean to die before my time. I'm going out to Switzerland
+directly. I'll do all the correct things. You see, when a man _knows_
+he's going to die, well," he turned away, "he gets uncommonly curious as
+to what's going to come next."
+
+He walked up and down a few turns. Daphne watched him.
+
+"I'm not pious--I never was. But after all, the religious people profess
+to know something about it, and nobody else does. Just supposing it were
+true?"
+
+He stopped short, looking at her. She understood perfectly that he had
+Beatty in his mind.
+
+"Well, anyhow, I'm going to live decently for the rest of my time--and
+die decently. I'm not going to throw away chances. And don't trouble
+yourself about money. There's enough left to carry me through. Good-bye,
+Daphne!" He held out his hand to her.
+
+She took it, still dumbly weeping. He looked at her with pity.
+
+"Yes, I know, you didn't understand what you were doing. But you see,
+Daphne, marriage is----" he sought rather painfully for his words, "it's
+a big thing. If it doesn't make us, it ruins us; I didn't marry you for
+the best of reasons, but I was very fond of you--honour bright! I loved
+you in my way, I should have loved you more and more. I should have been
+a decent fellow if you'd stuck to me. I had all sorts of plans; you
+might have taught me anything. I was a fool about Chloe Fairmile, but
+there was nothing in it, you know there wasn't. And now it's all rooted
+up and done with. Women like to think such things can be mended, but
+they can't--they can't, indeed. It would be foolish to try."
+
+Daphne sank upon a chair and buried her face in her hands. He drew a
+long and painful breath. "I'm afraid I must go," he said waveringly.
+"I--I can't stand this any longer. Good-bye, Daphne, good-bye."
+
+She only sobbed, as though her life dissolved in grief. He drew near to
+her, and as she wept, hidden from him, he laid his hand a moment on her
+shoulder. Then he took up his hat.
+
+"I'm going now," he said in a low voice. "I shan't come back till you
+have gone."
+
+She heard him cross the room, his steps in the veranda. Outside, in the
+summer dark, a figure came to meet him. French drew Roger's arm into
+his, and the two walked away. The shadows of the wooded lane received
+them.
+
+A woman came quickly into the room.
+
+Elsie French looked down upon the sobbing Daphne, her own eyes full of
+tears, her hands clasped.
+
+"Oh, you poor thing!" she said, under her breath. "You poor thing!" And
+she knelt down beside her and folded her arms round her.
+
+So from the same heart that had felt a passionate pity for the victim,
+compassion flowed out on the transgressor. For where others feel the
+tragedy of suffering, the pure in heart realize with an infinitely
+sharper pain the tragedy of guilt.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+                             BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+
+    Amiel's Journal (translated)
+    Miss Bretherton
+    Robert Elsmere
+    The History of David Grieve
+    Marcella
+    Sir George Tressady
+    Helbeck of Bannisdale
+    Eleanor
+    Lady Rose's Daughter
+    The Marriage of William Ashe
+    Agatha
+    Fenwick's Career
+    Milly and Olly
+    The Testing of Diana Mallory
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Marriage à la mode, by Mrs. Humphry Ward
+
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Marriage à la mode, by Mrs. Humphry Ward
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Marriage à la mode
+
+Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward
+
+Release Date: January 16, 2007 [EBook #20383]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARRIAGE À LA MODE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
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+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<h1>Marriage &agrave; la Mode</h1>
+
+<h2>BY MRS. HUMPHRY WARD</h2>
+
+<h3>ILLUSTRATED BY FRED PEGRAM</h3>
+
+<h4>NEW YORK<br />
+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE &amp; COMPANY<br />
+1909</h4>
+
+<h4>ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN
+LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN</h4>
+
+<h4>COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY MRS. HUMPHRY WARD<br />
+COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY MARY AUGUSTA WARD<br />
+PUBLISHED, MAY, 1909</h4>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>TO L. C. W.</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="frontis" id="frontis"></a>
+<img src="images/frontis.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>DAPHNE FLOYD</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h4>NOTE</h4>
+
+<p>THIS STORY APPEARED IN ENGLAND UNDER THE TITLE OF "DAPHNE." THE
+PUBLISHERS ARE INDEBTED TO THE PROPRIETORS OF THE "PALL MALL MAGAZINE"
+FOR THEIR PERMISSION TO USE THE DRAWINGS BY MR. FRED PEGRAM.</p>
+
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<p>
+<a href="#PART_I">PART I</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#PART_II">PART II</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#PART_III">PART III</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#BY_THE_SAME_AUTHOR">BY THE SAME AUTHOR</a><br />
+</p>
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+
+<p><a href="#frontis">Daphne Floyd</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus1">"He caught the hand, he gathered its owner into a pair of strong arms,
+and bending over her, he kissed her"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus2">"In the dead of night Daphne sat up in bed, looking at the face and head
+of her husband beside her on the pillow"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus3">"Her whole being was seething with passionate and revengeful thought"</a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>Marriage &agrave; la Mode</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_I" id="PART_I"></a>PART I</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+
+<p>"A stifling hot day!" General Hobson lifted his hat and mopped his
+forehead indignantly. "What on earth this place can be like in June I
+can't conceive! The tenth of April, and I'll be bound the thermometer's
+somewhere near eighty in the shade. You never find the English climate
+playing you these tricks."</p>
+
+<p>Roger Barnes looked at his uncle with amusement.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you like heat, Uncle Archie? Ah, but I forgot, it's American
+heat."</p>
+
+<p>"I like a climate you can depend on," said the General, quite conscious
+that he was talking absurdly, yet none the less determined to talk, by
+way of relief to some obscure annoyance. "Here we are sweltering in this
+abominable heat, and in New York last week they had a blizzard, and
+here, even, it was cold enough to give me rheumatism. The climate's
+always in extremes&mdash;like the people."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry to find you don't like the States, Uncle Archie."</p>
+
+<p>The young man sat down beside his uncle. They were in the deck saloon of
+a steamer which had left Washington about an hour before for Mount
+Vernon. Through the open doorway to their left they saw a wide expanse
+of river, flowing between banks of spring green, and above it thunderous
+clouds, in a hot blue. The saloon, and the decks outside, held a great
+crowd of passengers, of whom the majority were women.</p>
+
+<p>The tone in which Roger Barnes spoke was good-tempered, but quite
+perfunctory. Any shrewd observer would have seen that whether his uncle
+liked the States or not did not in truth matter to him a whit.</p>
+
+<p>"And I consider all the arrangements for this trip most unsatisfactory,"
+the General continued angrily. "The steamer's too small, the
+landing-place is too small, the crowd getting on board was something
+disgraceful. They'll have a shocking accident one of these days. And
+what on earth are all these women here for&mdash;in the middle of the day?
+It's not a holiday."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe it's a teachers' excursion," said young Barnes absently, his
+eyes resting on the rows of young women in white blouses and spring hats
+who sat in close-packed chairs upon the deck&mdash;an eager, talkative host.</p>
+
+<p>"H'm&mdash;Teachers!" The General's tone was still more pugnacious. "Going to
+learn more lies about us, I suppose, that they may teach them to
+school-children? I was turning over some of their school-books in a shop
+yesterday. Perfectly abominable! It's monstrous what they teach the
+children here about what they're pleased to call their War of
+Independence. All that we did was to ask them to pay something for their
+own protection. What did it matter to us whether they were mopped up by
+the Indians, or the French, or not? 'But if you want us to go to all the
+expense and trouble of protecting you, and putting down those fellows,
+why, hang it,' we said, 'you must pay some of the bill!' That was all
+English Ministers asked; and perfectly right too. And as for the men
+they make such a fuss about, Samuel Adams, and John Adams, and Franklin,
+and all the rest of the crew, I tell you, the stuff they teach American
+school-children about them is a poisoning of the wells! Franklin was a
+man of profligate life, whom I would never have admitted inside my
+doors! And as for the Adamses&mdash;intriguers&mdash;canting fellows!&mdash;both of
+them."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, at least you'll give them George Washington." As he spoke, Barnes
+concealed a yawn, followed immediately afterwards by a look of greater
+alertness, caused by the discovery that a girl sitting not far from the
+doorway in the crowd outside was certainly pretty.</p>
+
+<p>The red-faced, white-haired General paused a moment before replying,
+then broke out: "What George Washington might have been if he had held a
+straight course I am not prepared to say. As it is, I don't hesitate for
+a moment! George Washington was nothing more nor less than a rebel&mdash;a
+damned rebel! And what Englishmen mean by joining in the worship of him
+I've never been able to understand."</p>
+
+<p>"I say, uncle, take care," said the young man, looking round him, and
+observing with some relief that they seemed to have the saloon to
+themselves. "These Yankees will stand most things, but&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You needn't trouble yourself, Roger," was the testy reply; "I am not in
+the habit of annoying my neighbours. Well now, look here, what I want to
+know is, what is the meaning of this absurd journey of yours?"</p>
+
+<p>The young man's frown increased. He began to poke the floor with his
+stick. "I don't know why you call it absurd?"</p>
+
+<p>"To me it seems both absurd and extravagant," said the other with
+emphasis. "The last thing I heard of you was that Burdon and Co. had
+offered you a place in their office, and that you were prepared to take
+it. When a man has lost his money and becomes dependent upon others, the
+sooner he gets to work the better."</p>
+
+<p>Roger Barnes reddened under the onslaught, and the sulky expression of
+his handsome mouth became more pronounced. "I think my mother and I
+ought to be left to judge for ourselves," he said rather hotly. "We
+haven't asked anybody for money <i>yet</i>, Uncle Archie. Burdon and Co. can
+have me in September just as well as now; and my mother wished me to
+make some friends over here who might be useful to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Useful to you. How?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think that's my affair. In this country there are always
+openings&mdash;things turning up&mdash;chances&mdash;you can't get at home."</p>
+
+<p>The General gave a disapproving laugh. "The only chance that'll help
+you, Roger, at present&mdash;excuse me if I speak frankly&mdash;is the chance of
+regular work. Your poor mother has nothing but her small fixed income,
+and you haven't a farthing to chuck away on what you call chances. Why,
+your passage by the <i>Lucania</i> alone must have cost a pretty penny. I'll
+bet my hat you came first class."</p>
+
+<p>The young man was clearly on the brink of an explosion, but controlled
+himself with an effort. "I paid the winter rate; and mother who knows
+the Cunard people very well, got a reduction. I assure you, Uncle
+Archie, neither mother nor I is a fool, and we know quite well what we
+are about."</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke he raised himself with energy, and looked his companion in
+the face.</p>
+
+<p>The General, surveying him, was mollified, as usual, by nothing in the
+world but the youth's extraordinary good looks. Roger Barnes's good
+looks had been, indeed, from his childhood upward the distinguishing and
+remarkable feature about him. He had been a king among his schoolfellows
+largely because of them, and of the athletic prowess which went with
+them; and while at Oxford he had been cast for the part of Apollo in
+"The Eumenides," Nature having clearly designed him for it in spite of
+the lamentable deficiencies in his Greek scholarship, which gave his
+prompters and trainers so much trouble. Nose, chin, brow, the poising of
+the head on the shoulders, the large blue eyes, lidded and set with a
+Greek perfection, the delicacy of the lean, slightly hollow cheeks,
+combined with the astonishing beauty and strength of the head, crowned
+with ambrosial curls&mdash;these possessions, together with others, had so
+far made life an easy and triumphant business for their owner. The
+"others," let it be noted, however, had till now always been present;
+and, chief amongst them, great wealth and an important and popular
+father. The father was recently dead, as the black band on the young
+man's arm still testified, and the wealth had suddenly vanished, wholly
+and completely, in one of the financial calamities of the day. General
+Hobson, contemplating his nephew, and mollified, as we have said, by his
+splendid appearance, kept saying to himself: "He hasn't a farthing but
+what poor Laura allows him; he has the tastes of forty thousand a year;
+a very indifferent education; and what the deuce is he going to do?"</p>
+
+<p>Aloud he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, all I know is, I had a deplorable letter last mail from your poor
+mother."</p>
+
+<p>The young man turned his head away, his cigarette still poised at his
+lips. "Yes, I know&mdash;mother's awfully down."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, certainly your mother was never meant for a poor woman," said the
+General, with energy. "She takes it uncommonly hard."</p>
+
+<p>Roger, with face still averted, showed no inclination to discuss his
+mother's character on these lines.</p>
+
+<p>"However, she'll get along all right, if you do your duty by her," added
+the General, not without a certain severity.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean to do it, sir." Barnes rose as he spoke. "I should think we're
+getting near Mount Vernon by this time. I'll go and look."</p>
+
+<p>He made his way to the outer deck, the General following. The old
+soldier, as he moved through the crowd of chairs in the wake of his
+nephew, was well aware of the attention excited by the young man. The
+eyes of many damsels were upon him; and, while the girls looked and said
+nothing, their mothers laughed and whispered to each other as the young
+Apollo passed.</p>
+
+<p>Standing at the side of the steamer, the uncle and nephew perceived that
+the river had widened to a still more stately breadth, and that, on the
+southern bank, a white building, high placed, had come into view. The
+excursionists crowded to look, expressing their admiration for the
+natural scene and their sense of its patriotic meaning in a frank,
+enthusiastic chatter, which presently enveloped the General, standing in
+a silent endurance like a rock among the waves.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it fine to think of his coming back here to die, so simply, when
+he'd made a nation?" said a young girl&mdash;perhaps from Omaha&mdash;to her
+companion. "Wasn't it just lovely?"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice, restrained, yet warm with feeling, annoyed General Hobson. He
+moved away, and as they hung over the taffrail he said, with suppressed
+venom to his companion: "Much good it did them to be 'made a nation'!
+Look at their press&mdash;look at their corruption&mdash;their divorce scandals!"</p>
+
+<p>Barnes laughed, and threw his cigarette-end into the swift brown water.</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my word, Uncle Archie, I can't play up to you. As far as I've
+gone, I like America and the Americans."</p>
+
+<p>"Which means, I suppose, that your mother gave you some introductions to
+rich people in New York, and they entertained you?" said the General
+drily.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, is there any crime in that? I met a lot of uncommonly nice
+people."</p>
+
+<p>"And didn't particularly bless me when I wired to you to come here?"</p>
+
+<p>The young man laughed again and paused a moment before replying.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm always very glad to come and keep you company, Uncle Archie."</p>
+
+<p>The old General reddened a little. Privately, he knew very well that his
+telegram summoning young Barnes from New York had been an act of
+tyranny&mdash;mild, elderly tyranny. He was not amusing himself in
+Washington, where he was paying a second visit after an absence of
+twenty years. His English soul was disturbed and affronted by a wholly
+new realization of the strength of America, by the giant forces of the
+young nation, as they are to be felt pulsing in the Federal City. He was
+up in arms for the Old World, wondering sorely and secretly what the New
+might do with her in the times to come, and foreseeing an
+ever-increasing deluge of unlovely things&mdash;ideals, principles,
+manners&mdash;flowing from this western civilization, under which his own
+gods were already half buried, and would soon be hidden beyond recovery.
+And in this despondency which possessed him, in spite of the attentions
+of Embassies, and luncheons at the White House, he had heard that Roger
+was in New York, and could not resist the temptation to send for him.
+After all, Roger was his heir. Unless the boy flagrantly misbehaved
+himself, he would inherit General Hobson's money and small estate in
+Northamptonshire. Before the death of Roger's father this prospective
+inheritance, indeed, had not counted for very much in the family
+calculations. The General had even felt a shyness in alluding to a
+matter so insignificant in comparison with the general scale on which
+the Barnes family lived. But since the death of Barnes <i>p&egrave;re</i>, and the
+complete pecuniary ruin revealed by that event, Roger's expectations
+from his uncle had assumed a new importance. The General was quite aware
+of it. A year before this date he would never have dreamed of summoning
+Roger to attend him at a moment's notice. That he had done so, and that
+Roger had obeyed him, showed how closely even the family relation may
+depend on pecuniary circumstance.</p>
+
+<p>The steamer swung round to the landing-place under the hill of Mount
+Vernon. Again, in disembarkation, there was a crowd and rush which set
+the General's temper on edge. He emerged from it, hot and breathless,
+after haranguing the functionary at the gates on the inadequacy of the
+arrangements and the likelihood of an accident. Then he and Roger strode
+up the steep path, beside beds of blue periwinkles, and under old trees
+just bursting into leaf. A spring sunshine was in the air and on the
+grass, which had already donned its "livelier emerald." The air quivered
+with heat, and the blue dome of sky diffused it. Here and there a
+magnolia in full flower on the green slopes spread its splendour of
+white or pinkish blossom to the sun; the great river, shimmering and
+streaked with light, swept round the hill, and out into a pearly
+distance; and on the height the old pillared house with its flanking
+colonnades stood under the thinly green trees in a sharp light and shade
+which emphasized all its delightful qualities&mdash;made, as it were, the
+most of it, in response to the eagerness of the crowd now flowing round
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Half-way up the hill Roger suddenly raised his hat.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is it?" said the General, putting up his eyeglass.</p>
+
+<p>"The girl we met last night and her brother."</p>
+
+<p>"Captain Boyson? So it is. They seem to have a party with them."</p>
+
+<p>The lady whom young Barnes had greeted moved toward the Englishmen,
+followed by her brother.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't know we were to meet to-day," she said gaily, with a mocking
+look at Roger. "I thought you said you were bored&mdash;and going back to New
+York."</p>
+
+<p>Roger was relieved to see that his uncle, engaged in shaking hands with
+the American officer, had not heard this remark. Tact was certainly not
+Miss Boyson's strong point.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure I never said anything of the kind," he said, looking brazenly
+down upon her; "nothing in the least like it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! oh!" the lady protested, with an extravagant archness. "Mrs.
+Phillips, this is Mr. Barnes. We were just talking of him, weren't we?"</p>
+
+<p>An elderly lady, quietly dressed in gray silk, turned, bowed, and looked
+curiously at the Englishman.</p>
+
+<p>"I hear you and Miss Boyson discovered some common friends last night."</p>
+
+<p>"We did, indeed. Miss Boyson posted me up in a lot of the people I have
+been seeing in New York. I am most awfully obliged to her," said Barnes.
+His manner was easy and forthcoming, the manner of one accustomed to
+feel himself welcome and considered.</p>
+
+<p>"I behaved like a walking 'Who's Who,' only I was much more interesting,
+and didn't tell half as many lies," said the girl, in a high penetrating
+voice. "Daphne, let me introduce you to Mr. Barnes. Mr. Barnes&mdash;Miss
+Floyd; Mr. Barnes&mdash;Mrs. Verrier."</p>
+
+<p>Two ladies beyond Mrs. Phillips made vague inclinations, and young
+Barnes raised his hat. The whole party walked on up the hill. The
+General and Captain Boyson fell into a discussion of some military news
+of the morning. Roger Barnes was mostly occupied with Miss Boyson, who
+had a turn for monopoly; and he could only glance occasionally at the
+two ladies with Mrs. Phillips. But he was conscious that the whole group
+made a distinguished appearance. Among the hundreds of young women
+streaming over the lawn they were clearly marked out by their carriage
+and their clothes&mdash;especially their clothes&mdash;as belonging to the
+fastidious cosmopolitan class, between whom and the young
+school-teachers from the West, in their white cotton blouses, leathern
+belts, and neat short skirts, the links were few. Miss Floyd, indeed,
+was dressed with great simplicity. A white muslin dress, <i>&agrave; la</i> Romney,
+with a rose at the waist, and a black-and-white Romney hat deeply
+shading the face beneath&mdash;nothing could have been plainer; yet it was a
+simplicity not to be had for the asking, a calculated, a Parisian
+simplicity; while her companion, Mrs. Verrier, was attired in what the
+fashion-papers would have called a "creation in mauve." And Roger knew
+quite enough about women's dress to be aware that it was a creation that
+meant dollars. She was a tall, dark-eyed, olive-skinned woman, thin
+almost to emaciation: and young Barnes noticed that, while Miss Floyd
+talked much, Mrs. Verrier answered little, and smiled less. She moved
+with a languid step, and looked absently about her. Roger could not make
+up his mind whether she was American or English.</p>
+
+<p>In the house itself the crowd was almost unmanageable. The General's ire
+was roused afresh when he was warned off the front door by the polite
+official on guard, and made to mount a back stair in the midst of a
+panting multitude.</p>
+
+<p>"I really cannot congratulate you on your management of these affairs,"
+he said severely to Captain Boyson, as they stood at last, breathless
+and hustled, on the first-floor landing. "It is most improper, I may say
+dangerous, to admit such a number at once. And, as for seeing the house,
+it is simply impossible. I shall make my way down as soon as possible,
+and go for a walk."</p>
+
+<p>Captain Boyson looked perplexed. General Hobson was a person of
+eminence; Washington had been very civil to him; and the American
+officer felt a kind of host's responsibility.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a moment; I'll try and find somebody." He disappeared, and the
+party maintained itself with difficulty in a corner of the landing
+against the pressure of a stream of damsels, who crowded to the open
+doors of the rooms, looked through the gratings which bar the entrance
+without obstructing the view, chattered, and moved on. General Hobson
+stood against the wall, a model of angry patience. Cecilia Boyson,
+glancing at him with a laughing eye, said in Roger's ear: "How sad it is
+that your uncle dislikes us so!"</p>
+
+<p>"Us? What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"That he hates America so. Oh, don't say he doesn't, because I've
+watched him, at one, two, three parties. He thinks we're a horrid,
+noisy, vulgar people, with most unpleasant voices, and he thanks God for
+the Atlantic&mdash;and hopes he may never see us again."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, of course, if you're so certain about it, there's no good in
+contradicting you. Did you say that lady's name was Floyd? Could I have
+seen her last week in New York?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite possible. Perhaps you heard something about her?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Barnes, after thinking a moment. "I remember&mdash;somebody
+pointed her out at the opera."</p>
+
+<p>His companion looked at him with a kind of hard amusement. Cecilia
+Boyson was only five-and-twenty, but there was already something in her
+that foretold the formidable old maid.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, when people begin upon Daphne Floyd," she said, "they generally
+go through with it. Ah! here comes Alfred."</p>
+
+<p>Captain Boyson, pushing his way through the throng, announced to his
+sister and General Hobson that he had found the curator in charge of the
+house, who sent a message by him to the effect that if only the party
+would wait till four o'clock, the official closing hour, he himself
+would have great pleasure in showing them the house when all the
+tourists of the day had taken their departure.</p>
+
+<p>"Then," said Miss Floyd, smiling at the General, "let us go and sit in
+the garden, and feel ourselves aristocratic and superior."</p>
+
+<p>The General's brow smoothed. Voice and smile were alike engaging. Their
+owner was not exactly pretty, but she had very large dark eyes, and a
+small glowing face, set in a profusion of hair. Her neck, the General
+thought, was the slenderest he had ever seen, and the slight round lines
+of her form spoke of youth in its first delicate maturity. He followed
+her obediently, and they were all soon in the garden again, and free of
+the crowd. Miss Floyd led the way across the grass with the General.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! now you will see the General will begin to like us," said Miss
+Boyson. "Daphne has got him in hand."</p>
+
+<p>Her tone was slightly mocking. Barnes observed the two figures in front
+of them, and remarked that Miss Floyd had a "very&mdash;well&mdash;a very foreign
+look."</p>
+
+<p>"Not English, you mean?&mdash;or American? Well, naturally. Her mother was a
+Spaniard&mdash;a South American&mdash;from Buenos Ayres. That's why she is so
+dark, and so graceful."</p>
+
+<p>"I never saw a prettier dress," said Barnes, following the slight figure
+with his eyes. "It's so simple."</p>
+
+<p>His companion laughed again. The manner of the laugh puzzled her
+companion, but, just as he was about to put a question, the General and
+the young lady paused in front, to let the rest of the party come up
+with them. Miss Floyd proposed a seat a little way down the slope, where
+they might wait the half-hour appointed.</p>
+
+<p>That half-hour passed quickly for all concerned. In looking back upon it
+afterwards two of the party were conscious that it had all hung upon one
+person. Daphne Floyd sat beside the General, who paid her a
+half-reluctant, half-fascinated attention. Without any apparent effort
+on her part she became indeed the centre of the group who sat or lay on
+the grass. All faces were turned towards her, and presently all ears
+listened for her remarks. Her talk was young and vivacious, nothing
+more. But all she said came, as it were, steeped in personality, a
+personality so energetic, so charged with movement and with action that
+it arrested the spectators&mdash;not always agreeably. It was like the
+passage of a train through the darkness, when, for the moment, the
+quietest landscape turns to fire and force.</p>
+
+<p>The comparison suggested itself to Captain Boyson as he lay watching
+her, only to be received with an inward mockery, half bitter, half
+amused. This girl was always awakening in him these violent or desperate
+images. Was it her fault that she possessed those brilliant eyes&mdash;eyes,
+as it seemed, of the typical, essential woman?&mdash;and that downy brunette
+skin, with the tinge in it of damask red?&mdash;and that instinctive art of
+lovely gesture in which her whole being seemed to express itself?
+Boyson, who was not only a rising soldier, but an excellent amateur
+artist, knew every line of the face by heart. He had drawn Miss Daphne
+from the life on several occasions; and from memory scores of times. He
+was not likely to draw her from life any more; and thereby hung a tale.
+As far as he was concerned the train had passed&mdash;in flame and
+fury&mdash;leaving an echoing silence behind it.</p>
+
+<p>What folly! He turned resolutely to Mrs. Verrier, and tried to discuss
+with her an exhibition of French art recently opened in Washington. In
+vain. After a few sentences, the talk between them dropped, and both he
+and she were once more watching Miss Floyd, and joining in the
+conversation whenever she chose to draw them in.</p>
+
+<p>As for Roger Barnes, he too was steadily subjugated&mdash;up to a certain
+point. He was not sure that he liked Miss Floyd, or her conversation.
+She was so much mistress of herself and of the company, that his
+masculine vanity occasionally rebelled. A little flirt!&mdash;that gave
+herself airs. It startled his English mind that at twenty&mdash;for she could
+be no more&mdash;a girl should so take the floor, and hold the stage.
+Sometimes he turned his back upon her&mdash;almost; and Cecilia Boyson held
+him. But, if there was too much of the "eternal womanly" in Miss Floyd,
+there was not enough in Cecilia Boyson. He began to discover also that
+she was too clever for him, and was in fact talking down to him. Some of
+the things that she said to him about New York and Washington puzzled
+him extremely. She was, he supposed, intellectual; but the intellectual
+women in England did not talk in the same way. He was equal to them, or
+flattered himself that he was; but Miss Boyson was beyond him. He was
+getting into great difficulties with her, when suddenly Miss Floyd
+addressed him:</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure I saw you in New York, at the opera?"</p>
+
+<p>She bent over to him as she spoke, and lowered her voice. Her look was
+merry, perhaps a little satirical. It put him on his guard.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I was there. You were pointed out to me."</p>
+
+<p>"You were with some old friends of mine. I suppose they gave you an
+account of me?"</p>
+
+<p>"They were beginning it; but then Melba began to sing, and some horrid
+people in the next box said 'Hush!'"</p>
+
+<p>She studied him in a laughing silence a moment, her chin on her hand,
+then said:</p>
+
+<p>"That is the worst of the opera; it stops so much interesting
+conversation."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't care for the music?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I am a musician!" she said quickly. "I teach it. But I am like the
+mad King of Bavaria&mdash;I want an opera-house to myself."</p>
+
+<p>"You teach it?" he said, in amazement.</p>
+
+<p>She nodded, smiling. At that moment a bell rang. Captain Boyson rose.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the signal for closing. I think we ought to be moving up."</p>
+
+<p>They strolled slowly towards the house, watching the stream of
+excursionists pour out of the house and gardens, and wind down the hill;
+sounds of talk and laughter filled the air, and the western sun touched
+the spring hats and dresses.</p>
+
+<p>"The holidays end to-morrow," said Daphne Floyd demurely, as she walked
+beside young Barnes. And she looked smiling at the crowd of young women,
+as though claiming solidarity with them.</p>
+
+<p>A teacher? A teacher of music?&mdash;with that self-confidence&mdash;that air as
+though the world belonged to her! The young man was greatly mystified.
+But he reminded himself that he was in a democratic country where all
+men&mdash;and especially all women&mdash;are equal. Not that the young women now
+streaming to the steamboat were Miss Floyd's equals. The notion was
+absurd. All that appeared to be true was that Miss Floyd, in any
+circumstances, would be, and was, the equal of anybody.</p>
+
+<p>"How charming your friend is!" he said presently to Cecilia Boyson, as
+they lingered on the veranda, waiting for the curator, in a scene now
+deserted. "She tells me she is a teacher of music."</p>
+
+<p>Cecilia Boyson looked at him in amazement, and made him repeat his
+remark. As he did so, his uncle called him, and he turned away. Miss
+Boyson leant against one of the pillars of the veranda, shaking with
+suppressed laughter.</p>
+
+<p>But at that moment the curator, a gentle, gray-haired man, appeared,
+shaking hands with the General, and bowing to the ladies. He gave them a
+little discourse on the house and its history, as they stood on the
+veranda; and private conversation was no longer possible.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+
+<p>A sudden hush had fallen upon Mount Vernon. From the river below came
+the distant sounds of the steamer, which, with its crowds safe on board,
+was now putting off for Washington. But the lawns and paths of the
+house, and the formal garden behind it, and all its simple rooms
+upstairs and down, were now given back to the spring and silence, save
+for this last party of sightseers. The curator, after his preliminary
+lecture on the veranda, took them within; the railings across the doors
+were removed; they wandered in and out as they pleased.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps, however, there were only two persons among the six now
+following the curator to whom the famous place meant anything more than
+a means of idling away a warm afternoon. General Hobson carried his
+white head proudly through it, saying little or nothing. It was the
+house of a man who had wrenched half a continent from Great Britain; the
+English Tory had no intention whatever of bowing the knee. On the other
+hand, it was the house of a soldier and a gentleman, representing old
+English traditions, tastes, and manners. No modern blatancy, no Yankee
+smartness anywhere. Simplicity and moderate wealth, combined with
+culture&mdash;witness the books of the library&mdash;with land-owning, a family
+coach, and church on Sundays: these things the Englishman understood.
+Only the slaves, in the picture of Mount Vernon's past, were strange to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>They stood at length in the death-chamber, with its low white bed, and
+its balcony overlooking the river.</p>
+
+<p>"This, ladies, is the room in which General Washington died," said the
+curator, patiently repeating the familiar sentence. "It is, of course,
+on that account sacred to every true American."</p>
+
+<p>He bowed his head instinctively as he spoke. The General looked round
+him in silence. His eye was caught by the old hearth, and by the iron
+plate at the back of it, bearing the letters G. W. and some scroll work.
+There flashed into his mind a vision of the December evening on which
+Washington passed away, the flames flickering in the chimney, the winds
+breathing round the house and over the snow-bound landscape outside, the
+dying man in that white bed, and around him, hovering invisibly, the
+generations of the future.</p>
+
+<p>"He was a traitor to his king and country!" he repeated to himself,
+firmly. Then as his patriotic mind was not disturbed by a sense of
+humour, he added the simple reflection&mdash;"But it is, of course, natural
+that Americans should consider him a great man."</p>
+
+<p>The French window beside the bed was thrown open, and these privileged
+guests were invited to step on to the balcony. Daphne Floyd was handed
+out by young Barnes. They hung over the white balustrade together. An
+evening light was on the noble breadth of river; its surface of blue and
+gold gleamed through the boughs of the trees which girdled the house;
+blossoms of wild cherry, of dogwood, and magnolia sparkled amid the
+coverts of young green.</p>
+
+<p>Roger Barnes remarked, with sincerity, as he looked about him, that it
+was a very pretty place, and he was glad he had not missed it. Miss
+Floyd made an absent reply, being in fact occupied in studying the
+speaker. It was, so to speak, the first time she had really observed
+him; and, as they paused on the balcony together, she was suddenly
+possessed by the same impression as that which had mollified the
+General's scolding on board the steamer. He was indeed handsome, the
+young Englishman!&mdash;a magnificent figure of a man, in height and breadth
+and general proportions; and in addition, as it seemed to her, possessed
+of an absurd and superfluous beauty of feature. What does a man want
+with such good looks? This was perhaps the girl's first instinctive
+feeling. She was, indeed, a little dazzled by her new companion, now
+that she began to realize him. As compared with the average man in
+Washington or New York, here was an exception&mdash;an Apollo!&mdash;for she too
+thought of the Sun-god. Miss Floyd could not remember that she had ever
+had to do with an Apollo before; young Barnes, therefore, was so far an
+event, a sensation. In the opera-house she had been vaguely struck by a
+handsome face. But here, in the freedom of outdoor dress and movement,
+he seemed to her a physical king of men; and, at the same time, his easy
+manner&mdash;which, however, was neither conceited nor ill-bred&mdash;showed him
+conscious of his advantages.</p>
+
+<p>As they chatted on the balcony she put him through his paces a little.
+He had been, it seemed, at Eton and Oxford; and she supposed that he
+belonged to the rich English world. His mother was a Lady Barnes; his
+father, she gathered, was dead; and he was travelling, no doubt, in the
+lordly English way, to get a little knowledge of the barbarians outside,
+before he settled down to his own kingdom, and the ways thereof. She
+envisaged a big Georgian house in a spreading park, like scores that she
+had seen in the course of motoring through England the year before.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the dear young man was evidently trying to talk to her,
+without too much reference to the gilt gingerbread of this world. He did
+not wish that she should feel herself carried into regions where she was
+not at home, so that his conversation ran amicably on music. Had she
+learned it abroad? He had a cousin who had been trained at Leipsic;
+wasn't teaching it trying sometimes&mdash;when people had no ear? Delicious!
+She kept it up, talking with smiles of "my pupils" and "my class," while
+they wandered after the others upstairs to the dark low-roofed room
+above the death-chamber, where Martha Washington spent the last years of
+her life, in order that from the high dormer window she might command
+the tomb on the slope below, where her dead husband lay. The curator
+told the well-known story. Mrs. Verrier, standing beside him, asked some
+questions, showed indeed some animation.</p>
+
+<p>"She shut herself up here? She lived in this garret? That she might
+always see the tomb? That is really true?"</p>
+
+<p>Barnes, who did not remember to have heard her speak before, turned
+at the sound of her voice, and looked at her curiously. She
+wore an expression&mdash;bitter or incredulous&mdash;which, somehow, amused
+him. As they descended again to the garden he communicated his
+amusement&mdash;discreetly&mdash;to Miss Floyd.</p>
+
+<p>Did Mrs. Verrier imply that no one who was not a fool could show her
+grief as Mrs. Washington did? That it was, in fact, a sign of being a
+fool to regret your husband?</p>
+
+<p>"Did she say that?" asked Miss Floyd quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Not like that, of course, but&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>They had now reached the open air again, and found themselves crossing
+the front court to the kitchen-garden. Daphne Floyd did not wait till
+Roger should finish his sentence. She turned on him a face which was
+grave if not reproachful.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you know Mrs. Verrier's story?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I never saw her before! I hope I haven't said anything I oughtn't
+to have said?"</p>
+
+<p>"Everybody knows it here," said Daphne slowly. "Mrs. Verrier married
+three years ago. She married a Jew&mdash;a New Yorker&mdash;who had changed his
+name. You know Jews are not in what we call 'society' over here? But
+Madeleine thought she could do it; she was in love with him, and she
+meant to be able to do without society. But she couldn't do without
+society; and presently she began to dine out, and go to parties by
+herself&mdash;he urged her to. Then, after a bit, people didn't ask her as
+much as before; she wasn't happy; and her people began to talk to him
+about a divorce&mdash;naturally they had been against her marrying him all
+along. He said&mdash;as they and she pleased. Then, one night about a year
+ago, he took the train to Niagara&mdash;of course it was a very commonplace
+thing to do&mdash;and two days afterwards he was found, thrown up by the
+whirlpool; you know, where all the suicides are found!"</p>
+
+<p>Barnes stopped short in front of his companion, his face flushing.</p>
+
+<p>"What a horrible story!" he said, with emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Floyd nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, poor Madeleine has never got over it."</p>
+
+<p>The young man still stood riveted.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course Mrs. Verrier herself had nothing to do with the talk about
+divorce?"</p>
+
+<p>Something in his tone roused a combative instinct in his companion. She,
+too, coloured, and drew herself up.</p>
+
+<p>"Why shouldn't she? She was miserable. The marriage had been a great
+mistake."</p>
+
+<p>"And you allow divorce for that?" said the man, wondering. "Oh, of
+course I know every State is different, and some States are worse than
+others. But, somehow, I never came across a case like that&mdash;first
+hand&mdash;before."</p>
+
+<p>He walked on slowly beside his companion, who held herself a little
+stiffly.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know why you should talk in that way," she said at last,
+breaking out in a kind of resentment, "as though all our American views
+are wrong! Each nation arranges these things for itself. You have the
+laws that suit you; you must allow us those that suit us."</p>
+
+<p>Barnes paused again, his face expressing a still more complete
+astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"You say that?" he said. "You!"</p>
+
+<p>"And why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;but you are so young!" he said, evidently finding a difficulty in
+putting his impressions. "I beg your pardon&mdash;I ought not to talk about
+it at all. But it was so odd that&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That I knew anything about Mrs. Verrier's affairs?" said Miss Floyd,
+with a rather uncomfortable laugh. "Well, you see, American girls are
+not like English ones. We don't pretend not to know what everybody
+knows."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," said Roger hurriedly; "but you wouldn't think it a fair and
+square thing to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Think what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, to marry a man, and then talk of divorcing him because people
+didn't invite you to their parties."</p>
+
+<p>"She was very unhappy," said Daphne stubbornly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, by Jove!" cried the young man, "she doesn't look very happy now!"</p>
+
+<p>"No," Miss Floyd admitted. "No. There are many people who think she'll
+never get over it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I give it up." The Apollo shrugged his handsome shoulders. "You
+say it was she who proposed to divorce him?&mdash;yet when the wretched man
+removes himself, then she breaks her heart!"</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally she didn't mean him to do it in that way," said the girl,
+with impatience. "Of course you misunderstood me entirely!&mdash;<i>entirely!</i>"
+she added with an emphasis which suited with her heightened colour and
+evidently ruffled feelings.</p>
+
+<p>Young Barnes looked at her with embarrassment. What a queer,
+hot-tempered girl! Yet there was something in her which attracted him.
+She was graceful even in her impatience. Her slender neck, and the dark
+head upon it, her little figure in the white muslin, her dainty arms and
+hands&mdash;these points in her delighted an honest eye, quite accustomed to
+appraise the charms of women. But, by George! she took herself
+seriously, this little music-teacher. The air of wilful command about
+her, the sharpness with which she had just rebuked him, amazed and
+challenged him.</p>
+
+<p>"I am very sorry if I misunderstood you," he said, a little on his
+dignity; "but I thought you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You thought I sympathized with Mrs. Verrier? So I do; though of course
+I am awfully sorry that such a dreadful thing happened. But you'll find,
+Mr. Barnes, that American girls&mdash;&mdash;" The colour rushed into her small
+olive cheeks. "Well, we know all about the old ideas, and we know also
+too well that there's only one life, and we don't mean to have that one
+spoilt. The old notions of marriage&mdash;your English notions," cried the
+girl facing him&mdash;"make it tyranny! Why should people stay together when
+they see it's a mistake? We say everybody shall have their chance. And
+not one chance only, but more than one. People find out in marriage what
+they couldn't find out before, and so&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You let them chuck it just when they're tired of it?" laughed Barnes.
+"And what about the&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The children?" said Miss Floyd calmly. "Well, of course, that has to be
+very carefully considered. But how can it do children any good to live
+in an unhappy home?"</p>
+
+<p>"Had Mrs. Verrier any children?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, one little girl."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose she meant to keep her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course."</p>
+
+<p>"And the father didn't care?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I believe he did," said Daphne unwillingly. "Yes, that was very
+sad. He was quite devoted to her."</p>
+
+<p>"And you think that's all right?" Barnes looked at his companion,
+smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, of course, it was a pity," she said, with fresh impatience; "I
+admit it was a pity. But then, why did she ever marry him? That was the
+horrible mistake."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose she thought she liked him."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it was he who was so desperately in love with her. He plagued her
+into doing it."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor devil!" said Barnes heartily. "All right, we're coming."</p>
+
+<p>The last words were addressed to General Hobson, waving to them from the
+kitchen-garden. They hurried on to join the curator, who took the party
+for a stroll round some of the fields over which George Washington, in
+his early married life, was accustomed to ride in summer and winter
+dawns, inspecting his negroes, his plantation, and his barns. The grass
+in these Southern fields was already high; there were shining
+fruit-trees, blossom-laden, in an orchard copse; and the white dogwood
+glittered in the woods.</p>
+
+<p>For two people to whom the traditions of the place were dear, this quiet
+walk through Washington's land had a charm far beyond that of the
+reconstructed interior of the house. Here were things unaltered and
+unalterable, boundaries, tracks, woods, haunted still by the figure of
+the young master and bridegroom who brought Patsy Curtis there in 1759.
+To the gray-haired curator every foot of them was sacred and familiar;
+he knew these fields and the records of them better than any detail of
+his own personal affairs; for years now he had lived in spirit with
+Washington, through all the hours of the Mount Vernon day; his life was
+ruled by one great ghost, so that everything actual was comparatively
+dim. Boyson too, a fine soldier and a fine intelligence, had a mind
+stored with Washingtoniana. Every now and then he and the curator fell
+back on each other's company. They knew well that the others were not
+worthy of their opportunity; although General Hobson, seeing that most
+of the memories touched belonged to a period before the Revolution,
+obeyed the dictates of politeness, and made amends for his taciturnity
+indoors by a talkative vein outside.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Boyson was not, however, wholly occupied with history or
+reminiscence. He perceived very plainly before the walk was over that
+the General's good-looking nephew and Miss Daphne Floyd were interested
+in each other's conversation. When they joined the party in the garden
+it seemed to him that they had been disputing. Miss Daphne was flushed
+and a little snappish when spoken to; and the young man looked
+embarrassed. But presently he saw that they gravitated to each other,
+and that, whatever chance combination might be formed during the walk,
+it always ended for a time in the flight ahead of the two figures, the
+girl in the rose-coloured sash and the tall handsome youth. Towards the
+end of the walk they became separated from the rest of the party, and
+only arrived at the little station just in time before the cars started.
+On this occasion again, they had been clearly arguing and disagreeing;
+and Daphne had the air of a ruffled bird, her dark eyes glittering, her
+mouth set in the obstinate lines that Boyson knew by heart. But again
+they sat together in the car, and talked and sparred all the way home;
+while Mrs. Verrier, in a corner of the carriage, shut her hollow eyes,
+and laid her thin hands one over the other, and in her purple draperies
+made a picture <i>&agrave; la M&egrave;lisande</i> which was not lost upon her companions.
+Boyson's mind registered a good many grim or terse comments, as
+occasionally he found himself watching this lady. Scarcely a year since
+that hideous business at Niagara, and here she was in that extravagant
+dress! He wished his sister would not make a friend of her, and that
+Daphne Floyd saw less of her. Miss Daphne had quite enough bees in her
+own bonnet without adopting Mrs. Verrier's.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, it was the General who, on the return journey, was made to
+serve Miss Boyson's gift for monopoly. She took possession of him in a
+business-like way, inquiring into his engagements in Washington, his
+particular friends, his opinion of the place and the people, with a
+light-handed acuteness which was more than a match for the Englishman's
+instincts of defence. The General did not mean to give himself away; he
+intended, indeed, precisely the contrary; but, after every round of
+conversation Miss Boyson felt herself more and more richly provided with
+materials for satire at the expense of England and the English tourist,
+his invincible conceit, insularity, and condescension. She was a clever
+though tiresome woman; and expressed herself best in letters. She
+promised herself to write a "character" of General Hobson in her next
+letter to an intimate friend, which should be a masterpiece. Then,
+having led him successfully through the <i>r&ocirc;le</i> of the comic Englishman
+abroad, she repaid him with information. She told him, not without some
+secret amusement at the reprobation it excited, the tragic story of Mrs.
+Verrier. She gave him a full history of her brother's honourable and
+brilliant career; and here let it be said that the <i>pr&eacute;cieuse</i> in her
+gave way to the sister, and that she talked with feeling. And finally
+she asked him with a smile whether he admired Miss Floyd. The General,
+who had in fact been observing Miss Floyd and his nephew with some
+little uneasiness during the preceding half-hour, replied guardedly that
+Miss Floyd was pretty and picturesque, and apparently a great talker.
+Was she a native of Washington?</p>
+
+<p>"You never heard of Miss Floyd?&mdash;of Daphne Floyd? No? Ah, well!"&mdash;and
+she laughed&mdash;"I suppose I ought to take it as a compliment, of a kind.
+There are so many rich people now in this queer country of ours that
+even Daphne Floyds don't matter."</p>
+
+<p>"Is Miss Floyd so tremendously rich?"</p>
+
+<p>General Hobson turned a quickened countenance upon her, expressing no
+more than the interest felt by the ordinary man in all societies&mdash;more
+strongly, perhaps, at the present day than ever before&mdash;in the mere fact
+of money. But Miss Boyson gave it at once a personal meaning, and set
+herself to play on what she scornfully supposed to be the cupidity of
+the Englishman. She produced, indeed, a full and particular account of
+Daphne Floyd's parentage, possessions, and prospects, during which the
+General's countenance represented him with great fidelity. A trace of
+recalcitrance at the beginning&mdash;for it was his opinion that Miss Boyson,
+like most American women, talked decidedly too much&mdash;gave way to close
+attention, then to astonishment, and finally to a very animated
+observation of Miss Floyd's slender person as she sat a yard or two from
+him on the other side of the car, laughing, frowning, or chattering with
+Roger.</p>
+
+<p>"And that poor child has the management of it all?" he said at last, in
+a tone which did him credit. He himself had lost an only daughter at
+twenty-one, and he held old-fashioned views as to the helplessness of
+women.</p>
+
+<p>But Cecilia Boyson again misunderstood him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes!" she said, with a cool smile. "Everything is in her own
+hands&mdash;everything! Mrs. Phillips would not dare to interfere. Daphne
+always has her own way."</p>
+
+<p>The General said no more. Cecilia Boyson looked out of the window at the
+darkening landscape, thinking with malice of Daphne's dealings with the
+male sex. It had been a Sleeping Beauty story so far. Treasure for the
+winning&mdash;a thorn hedge&mdash;and slain lovers! The handsome Englishman would
+try it next, no doubt. All young Englishmen, according to her, were on
+the look-out for American heiresses. Music teacher indeed! She would
+have given a good deal to hear the conversation of the uncle and nephew
+when the party broke up.</p>
+
+<p>The General and young Barnes made their farewells at the railway
+station, and took their way on foot to their hotel. Washington was
+steeped in sunset. The White House, as they passed it, glowed amid its
+quiet trees. Lafayette Square, with its fountains and statues, its white
+and pink magnolias, its strolling, chatting crowd, the fronts of the
+houses, the long vistas of tree-lined avenues, the street cars, the
+houses, the motors, all the openings and distances of the beautiful,
+leisurely place&mdash;they saw them rosily transfigured under a departing
+sun, which throughout the day had been weaving the quick spells of a
+southern spring.</p>
+
+<p>"Jolly weather!" said Roger, looking about him. "And a very nice
+afternoon. How long are you staying here, Uncle Archie?"</p>
+
+<p>"I ought to be off at the end of the week; and of course you want to get
+back to New York? I say, you seemed to be getting on with that young
+lady?"</p>
+
+<p>The General turned a rather troubled eye upon his companion.</p>
+
+<p>"She wasn't bad fun," said the young man graciously; "but rather an odd
+little thing! We quarrelled about every conceivable subject. And it's
+queer how much that kind of girl seems to go about in America. She goes
+everywhere and knows everything. I wonder how she manages it."</p>
+
+<p>"What kind of girl do you suppose she is?" asked the General, stopping
+suddenly in the middle of Lafayette Square.</p>
+
+<p>"She told me she taught singing," said Roger, in a puzzled voice, "to a
+class of girls in New York."</p>
+
+<p>The General laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"She seems to have made a fool of you, my dear boy. She is one of the
+great heiresses of America."</p>
+
+<p>Roger's face expressed a proper astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! that's it, is it? I thought once or twice there was something
+fishy&mdash;she was trying it on. Who told you?"</p>
+
+<p>The General retailed his information. Miss Daphne Floyd was the orphan
+daughter of an enormously rich and now deceased lumber-king, of the
+State of Illinois. He had made vast sums by lumbering, and then invested
+in real estate in Chicago and Buffalo, not to speak of a railway or two,
+and had finally left his daughter and only child in possession of a
+fortune generally estimated at more than a million sterling. The money
+was now entirely in the girl's power. Her trustees had been sent about
+their business, though Miss Floyd was pleased occasionally to consult
+them. Mrs. Phillips, her chaperon, had not much influence with her; and
+it was supposed that Mrs. Verrier advised her more than anyone else.</p>
+
+<p>"Good heavens!" was all that young Barnes could find to say when the
+story was told. He walked on absently, flourishing his stick, his face
+working under the stress of amused meditation. At last he brought out:</p>
+
+<p>"You know, Uncle Archie, if you'd heard some of the things Miss Floyd
+was saying to me, your hair would have stood on end."</p>
+
+<p>The General raised his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say. I'm too old-fashioned for America. The sooner I clear out
+the better. Their newspapers make me sick; I hate the hotels&mdash;I hate the
+cooking; and there isn't a nation in Europe I don't feel myself more at
+home with."</p>
+
+<p>Roger laughed his clear, good-tempered laugh. "Oh! I don't feel that way
+at all. I get on with them capitally. They're a magnificent people. And,
+as to Miss Floyd, I didn't mean anything bad, of course. Only the ideas
+some of the girls here have, and the way they discuss them&mdash;well, it
+beats me!"</p>
+
+<p>"What sort of ideas?"</p>
+
+<p>Roger's handsome brow puckered in the effort to explain. "They don't
+think anything's <i>settled</i>, you know, as we do at home. Miss Floyd
+doesn't. They think <i>they've</i> got to settle a lot of things that English
+girls don't trouble about, because they're just told to do 'em, or not
+to do 'em, by the people that look after them!"</p>
+
+<p>"'Everything hatched over again, and hatched different,'" said the
+General, who was an admirer of George Eliot; "that's what they'd like,
+eh? Pooh! That's when they're young. They quiet down, like all the rest
+of the world."</p>
+
+<p>Barnes shook his head. "But they <i>are</i> hatching it over again. You meet
+people here in society you couldn't meet at home. And it's all right.
+The law backs them up."</p>
+
+<p>"You're talking about divorce!" said the General. "Aye! it's astounding!
+The tales one hears in the smoking-room after dinner! In Wyoming,
+apparently, six months' residence, and there you are. You prove a little
+cruelty, the husband makes everything perfectly easy, you say a civil
+good-bye, and the thing's done. Well, they'll pay for it, my dear
+Roger&mdash;they'll pay for it. Nobody ever yet trifled with the marriage law
+with impunity."</p>
+
+<p>The energy of the old man's bearing became him.</p>
+
+<p>Through Roger's mind the thought flashed: "Poor dear Uncle Archie! If
+he'd been a New Yorker he'd never have put up with Aunt Lavinia for
+thirty years!"</p>
+
+<p>They turned into their hotel, and ordered dinner in an hour's time.
+Roger found some English letters waiting for him, and carried them off
+to his room. He opened his mother's first. Lady Barnes wrote a large and
+straggling hand, which required many sheets and much postage. It might
+have been observed that her son looked at the sheets for a minute, with
+a certain distaste, before he began upon them. Yet he was deeply
+attached to his mother, and it was from her letters week by week that he
+took his marching orders. If she only wouldn't ride her ideas quite so
+hard; if she would sometimes leave him alone to act for himself!</p>
+
+<p>Here it was again&mdash;the old story:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Don't suppose I put these things before you on <i>my</i> account. No,
+indeed; what does it matter what happens to me? It is when I think
+that you may have to spend your whole life as a clerk in a bank,
+unless you rouse yourself now&mdash;(for you know, my dear Roger, though
+you have very good wits, you're not as frightfully clever as people
+have to be nowadays)&mdash;that I begin to despair. But that is
+<i>entirely</i> in your own hands. You have what is far more valuable
+than cleverness&mdash;you have a delightful disposition, and you are one
+of the handsomest of men. There! of course, I know you wouldn't let
+me say it to you in your presence; but it's true all the same. Any
+girl should be proud to marry you. There are plenty of rich girls
+in America; and if you play your cards properly you will make her
+and yourself happy. The grammar of that is not quite right, but you
+understand me. Find a nice girl&mdash;of course a <i>nice</i> girl&mdash;with a
+fortune large enough to put you back in your proper sphere; and it
+doesn't matter about me. You will pay my rent, I dare say, and help
+me through when I want it; but that's nothing. The point is, that I
+cannot submit to your career being spoiled through your poor
+father's mad imprudence. You must retrieve yourself&mdash;you <i>must</i>.
+Nobody is anything nowadays in the world without money; you know
+that as well as I do. And besides, there is another reason. You
+have got to forget the affair of last spring, to put it entirely
+behind you, to show that horrid woman who threw you over that you
+will make your life a success in spite of her. Rouse yourself, my
+dear Roger, and do your best. I hope by now you have forwarded
+<i>all</i> my introductions? You have your opportunity, and I must say
+you will be a great fool if you don't use it. <i>Do</i> use it my dear
+boy, for my sake. I am a very unhappy woman; but you might, if you
+would, bring back a little brightness to my life."</p></div>
+
+<p>After he had read the letter, young Barnes sat for some time in a brown
+study on the edge of his bed. The letter contained only one more
+repetition of counsels that had been dinned into his ears for
+months&mdash;almost ever since the financial crash which had followed his
+father's death, and the crash of another sort, concerning himself, which
+had come so quick upon it. His thoughts returned, as they always did at
+some hour of the day or night, to the "horrid woman." Yes, that had hit
+him hard; the lad's heart still throbbed with bitterness as he thought
+of it. He had never felt anything so much; he didn't believe he should
+ever mind anything so much again. "I'm not one of your sentimental
+sort," he thought, half congratulating himself, half in self-contempt.
+But he could not get her out of his head; he wondered if he ever should.
+And it had gone pretty far too. By Jove! that night in the
+orchard!&mdash;when she had kissed him, and thrown her arms round his neck!
+And then to write him that letter, when things were at their worst. She
+might have done the thing decently. Have treated a fellow kindly at
+least. Well, of course, it was all done with. Yes, it <i>was</i>. Done with!</p>
+
+<p>He got up and began to pace his small room, his hands in his pockets,
+thinking of the night in the orchard. Then gradually the smart lessened,
+and his thoughts passed away to other things. That little Yankee girl
+had really made good sport all the way home. He had not been dull for a
+moment; she had teased and provoked him so. Her eyes, too, were
+wonderfully pretty, and her small, pointed chin, and her witch-like
+imperious ways. Was it her money, the sense that she could do as she
+liked with most people, that made her so domineering and masterful? Very
+likely. On the journey he had put it down just to a natural and very
+surprising impudence. That was when he believed that she was a teacher,
+earning her bread. But the impudence had not prevented him from finding
+it much more amusing to talk to her than to anybody else.</p>
+
+<p>And, on the whole, he thought she had not disliked him, though she had
+said the rudest things to him, and he had retaliated. She had asked him,
+indeed, to join them in an excursion the following day, and to tea at
+the Country Club. He had meant, if possible, to go back to New York on
+the morrow. But perhaps a day or two longer&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>So she had a million&mdash;the little sprite? She was and would be a
+handful!&mdash;with a fortune or without it. And possessed also of the most
+extraordinary opinions. But he thought he would go on the excursion, and
+to the Country Club. He began to fold his mother's letter, and put it
+back into its envelope, while a slight flush mounted in his cheeks, and
+the young mouth that was still so boyish and candid took a stiffer line.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+
+<p>"Is Miss Floyd at home?"</p>
+
+<p>The questioner was Mrs. Verrier, who had just alighted from her carriage
+at the door of the house in Columbia Avenue inhabited by Miss Floyd and
+her chaperon.</p>
+
+<p>The maid replied that Miss Floyd had not yet returned, but had left a
+message begging Mrs. Verrier to wait for her. The visitor was
+accordingly ushered to the drawing-room on the first floor.</p>
+
+<p>This room, the staircase, the maid, all bore witness to Miss Floyd's
+simplicity&mdash;like the Romney dress of Mount Vernon. The colour of the
+walls and the hangings, the lines of the furniture, were all subdued,
+even a little austere. Quiet greens and blues, mingled with white,
+showed the artistic mind; the chairs and sofas were a trifle stiff and
+straight legged; the electric fittings were of a Georgian plainness to
+match the Colonial architecture of the house; the beautiful
+self-coloured carpet was indeed Persian and costly, but it betrayed its
+costliness only to the expert. Altogether, the room, one would have
+said, of any <i>bourse moyenne</i>, with an eye for beauty. Fine photographs
+also, of Italian and Dutch pictures, suggested travel, and struck the
+cultivated cosmopolitan note.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Verrier looked round it with a smile. It was all as unpretending as
+the maid who ushered her upstairs. Daphne would have no men-servants in
+her employ. What did two ladies want with them, in a democratic country?
+But Mrs. Verrier happened to know that Daphne's maid-servants were just
+as costly in their degree as the drawing-room carpet. Chosen for her in
+London with great care, attracted to Washington by enormous wages, these
+numerous damsels played their part in the general "simplicity" effect;
+but on the whole Mrs. Verrier believed that Daphne's household was
+rather more expensive than that of other rich people who employed men.</p>
+
+<p>She walked through the room, looking absently at the various photographs
+and engravings, till her attention was excited by an easel and a picture
+upon it in the back drawing-room. She went up to it with a muttered
+exclamation.</p>
+
+<p>"So <i>she</i> bought it! Daphne's amazing!"</p>
+
+<p>For what she saw before her was a masterpiece&mdash;an excessively costly
+masterpiece&mdash;of the Florentine school, smuggled out of Italy, to the
+wrath of the Italian Government, some six months before this date, and
+since then lost to general knowledge. Rumour had given it first to a
+well-known collection at Boston; then to another at Philadelphia; yet
+here it was in the possession of a girl of two-and-twenty of whom the
+great world was just&mdash;but only just&mdash;beginning to talk.</p>
+
+<p>"How like Daphne!" thought her friend with malice. The "simple" room,
+and the priceless picture carelessly placed in a corner of it, lest any
+one should really suppose that Daphne Floyd was an ordinary mortal.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Verrier sat down at last in a chair fronting the picture and let
+herself fall into a reverie. On this occasion she was dressed in black.
+The lace strings of a hat crowned with black ostrich feathers were
+fastened under her chin by a diamond that sparkled in the dim greenish
+light of the drawing-room; the feathers of the hat were unusually large
+and drooping; they curled heavily round the thin neck and long,
+hollow-eyed face, so that its ivory whiteness, its fatigue, its fretful
+beauty were framed in and emphasized by them; her bloodless hands lay
+upon her lap, and the folds of the sweeping dress drawn round her showed
+her slenderness, or rather her emaciation. Two years before this date
+Madeleine Verrier had been a great beauty, and she had never yet
+reconciled herself to physical losses which were but the outward and
+visible sign of losses "far more deeply interfused." As she sat
+apparently absorbed in thought before the picture, she moved, half
+consciously, so that she could no longer see herself in a mirror
+opposite.</p>
+
+<p>Yet her thoughts were in truth much engaged with Daphne and Daphne's
+proceedings. It was now nearly three weeks since Roger Barnes had
+appeared on the horizon. General Hobson had twice postponed his
+departure for England, and was still "enduring hardness" in a Washington
+hotel. Why his nephew should not be allowed to manage his courtship, if
+it was a courtship, for himself, Mrs. Verrier did not understand. There
+was no love lost between herself and the General, and she made much mock
+of him in her talks with Daphne. However, there he was; and she could
+only suppose that he took the situation seriously and felt bound to
+watch it in the interests of the young man's absent mother.</p>
+
+<p>Was it serious? Certainly Daphne had been committing herself a good
+deal. The question was whether she had not been committing herself more
+than the young man had been doing on his side. That was the astonishing
+part of it. Mrs. Verrier could not sufficiently admire the skill with
+which Roger Barnes had so far played his part; could not sufficiently
+ridicule her own lack of insight, which at her first meeting with him
+had pronounced him stupid. Stupid he might be in the sense that it was
+of no use to expect from him the kind of talk on books, pictures, and
+first principles which prevailed in Daphne's circle. But Mrs. Verrier
+thought she had seldom come across a finer sense of tactics than young
+Barnes had so far displayed in his dealings with Daphne. If he went on
+as he had begun, the probability was that he would succeed.</p>
+
+<p>Did she, Madeleine Verrier, wish him to succeed?</p>
+
+<p>Daphne had grown tragically necessary to her, in this world of American
+society&mdash;in that section of it, at any rate, in which she desired to
+move, where the widow of Leopold Verrier was always conscious of the
+blowing of a cold and hostile breath. She was not excluded, but she was
+not welcome; she was not ostracized, but she had lost consideration.
+There had been something picturesque and appealing in her husband;
+something unbearably tragic in the manner of his death. She had braved
+it out by staying in America, instead of losing herself in foreign
+towns; and she had thereby proclaimed that she had no guilty sense of
+responsibility, no burden on her conscience; that she had only behaved
+as a thousand other women would have behaved, and without any cruel
+intention at all. But she knew all the same that the spectators of what
+had happened held her for a cruel woman, and that there were many, and
+those the best, who saw her come with distaste and go without regret;
+and it was under that knowledge, in spite of indomitable pride, that her
+beauty had withered in a year.</p>
+
+<p>And at the moment when the smart of what had happened to her&mdash;personally
+and socially&mdash;was at its keenest; when, after a series of quarrels, she
+had separated herself from the imperious mother who had been her evil
+genius throughout her marriage, she had made friends, unexpectedly,
+owing to a chance meeting at a picture-gallery, with Daphne Floyd. Some
+element in Daphne's nature had attracted and disarmed her. The proud,
+fastidious woman had given the girl her confidence&mdash;eagerly,
+indiscriminately. She had poured out upon her all that wild philosophy
+of "rights" which is still struggling in the modern mind with a
+crumbling ethic and a vanishing religion. And she had found in Daphne a
+warm and passionate ally. Daphne was nothing if not "advanced." She
+shrank, as Roger Barnes had perceived, from no question; she had never
+been forbidden, had never forbidden herself, any book that she had a
+fancy to read; and she was as ready to discuss the relative divorce laws
+of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, as the girls of fifty years ago were
+to talk of the fashions, or "Evangeline." In any disputed case,
+moreover, between a man and a woman, Daphne was hotly and instinctively
+on the side of the woman. She had thrown herself, therefore, with ardour
+into the defence of Mrs. Verrier; and for her it was not the wife's
+desertion, but the husband's suicide which had been the cruel and
+indefensible thing. All these various traits and liberalisms had made
+her very dear to Madeleine Verrier.</p>
+
+<p>Now, as that lady sat in her usual drooping attitude, wondering what
+Washington would be like for her when even Daphne Floyd was gone from
+it, the afternoon sun stole through the curtains of the window on the
+street and touched some of the furniture and engravings in the inner
+drawing-room. Suddenly Mrs. Verrier started in her chair. A face had
+emerged thrown out upon the shadows by the sun-finger&mdash;the countenance
+of a handsome young Jew, as Rembrandt had once conceived it. Rare and
+high intelligence, melancholy, and premonition:&mdash;they were there
+embodied, so long as the apparition lasted.</p>
+
+<p>The effect on Mrs. Verrier was apparently profound. She closed her eyes;
+her lips quivered; she leaned back feebly in her chair, breathing a
+name. The crisis lasted a few minutes, while the momentary vision faded
+and the sun-light crept on. The eyelids unclosed at last, slowly and
+painfully, as though shrinking from what might greet the eyes beneath
+them. But the farther wall was now in deep shade. Mrs. Verrier sat up;
+the emotion which had mastered her like a possession passed away; and
+rising hurriedly, she went back to the front drawing-room. She had
+hardly reached it when Miss Floyd's voice was heard upon the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne entered the room in what appeared to be a fit of irritation. She
+was scolding the parlour-maid, whose high colour and dignified silence
+proclaimed her both blameless and long-suffering. At the sight of Mrs.
+Verrier Daphne checked herself with an effort and kissed her friend
+rather absently.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Madeleine!&mdash;very good of you to wait. Have they given you tea? I
+suppose not. My household seems to have gone mad this afternoon. Sit
+down. Some tea, Blount, at once."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Verrier sank into a corner of the sofa, while Daphne, with an
+"ouf!" of fatigue, took off her hat, and threw herself down at the other
+end, her small feet curled up beneath her. Her half-frowning eyes gave
+the impression that she was still out of temper and on edge.</p>
+
+<p>"Where have you been?" asked her companion quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Listening to a stuffy debate in the Senate," said Daphne without a
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>"The Senate. What on earth took you there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, why shouldn't I go?&mdash;why does one do anything? It was just a
+debate&mdash;horribly dull&mdash;trusts, or something of that kind. But there was
+a man attacking the President&mdash;and the place was crowded. Ugh! the heat
+was intolerable!"</p>
+
+<p>"Who took you?"</p>
+
+<p>Daphne named an under-secretary&mdash;an agreeable and ambitious man, who had
+been very much in her train during the preceding winter, and until Roger
+Barnes appeared upon the scene.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought until I got your message that you were going to take Mr.
+Barnes motoring up the river."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Barnes was engaged." Daphne gave the information tersely, rousing
+herself afterwards to make tea, which appeared at that moment.</p>
+
+<p>"He seems to have been a good deal engaged this week," said Mrs.
+Verrier, when they were alone again.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne made no reply. And Mrs. Verrier, after observing her for a
+moment, resumed:</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose it was the Bostonians?"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose so. What does it matter?" The tone was dry and sharp.</p>
+
+<p>"Daphne, you goose!" laughed Mrs. Verrier, "I believe this is the very
+first invitation of theirs he has accepted at all. He was written to
+about them by an old friend&mdash;his Eton master, or somebody of that sort.
+And as they turned up here on a visit, instead of his having to go and
+look for them at Boston, of course he had to call upon them."</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say. And of course he had to go to tea with them yesterday, and
+he had to take them to Arlington this afternoon! I suppose I'd better
+tell you&mdash;we had a quarrel on the subject last night."</p>
+
+<p>"Daphne!&mdash;don't, for heaven's sake, make him think himself too
+important!" cried Mrs. Verrier.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne, with both elbows on the table, was slowly crunching a morsel of
+toast in her small white teeth. She had a look of concentrated
+energy&mdash;as of a person charged and overcharged with force of some kind,
+impatient to be let loose. Her black eyes sparkled; impetuosity and will
+shone from them; although they showed also rims of fatigue, as if Miss
+Daphne's nights had not of late been all they should be. Mrs. Verrier
+was chiefly struck, however, by the perception that for the first time
+Daphne was not having altogether her own way with the world. Madeleine
+had not observed anything of the same kind in her before. In general she
+was in entire command both of herself and of the men who surrounded her.
+She made a little court out of them, and treated them <i>en despote</i>. But
+Roger Barnes had not lent himself to the process; he had not played the
+game properly; and Daphne's sleep had been disturbed for the first time
+in history.</p>
+
+<p>It had been admitted very soon between the two friends&mdash;without putting
+it very precisely&mdash;that Daphne was interested in Roger Barnes. Mrs.
+Verrier believed that the girl had been originally carried off her feet
+by the young man's superb good looks, and by the natural
+distinction&mdash;evident in all societies&mdash;which they conferred upon him.
+Then, no doubt, she had been piqued by his good-humoured, easy way&mdash;the
+absence of any doubt of himself, of tremor, of insistence. Mrs. Verrier
+said to herself&mdash;not altogether shrewdly&mdash;that he had no nerves, or no
+heart; and Daphne had not yet come across the genus. Her lovers had
+either possessed too much heart&mdash;like Captain Boyson&mdash;or a lack of
+coolness, when it really came to the point of grappling with Daphne and
+her millions, as in the case of a dozen she could name. Whereby it had
+come about that Daphne's attention had been first provoked, then
+peremptorily seized by the Englishman; and Mrs. Verrier began now to
+suspect that deeper things were really involved.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly there was a good deal to puzzle the spectator. That the
+English are a fortune-hunting race may be a popular axiom; but it was
+quite possible, after all, that Roger Barnes was not the latest
+illustration of it. It was quite possible, also, that he had a
+sweet-heart at home, some quiet, Quakerish girl who would never wave in
+his face the red flags that Daphne was fond of brandishing. It was
+equally possible that he was merely fooling with Daphne&mdash;that he had
+seen girls he liked better in New York, and was simply killing time till
+a sportsman friend of whom he talked should appear on the scene and take
+him off to shoot moose and catch trout in the province of Quebec. Mrs.
+Verrier realized that, for all his lack of subtlety and the higher
+conversation, young Barnes had managed astonishingly to keep his
+counsel. His "simplicity," like Daphne's, seemed to be of a special
+type.</p>
+
+<p>And yet&mdash;there was no doubt that he had devoted himself a great deal.
+Washington society had quickly found him out; he had been invited to all
+the most fastidious houses, and was immensely in request for picnics and
+expeditions. But he had contrived, on the whole, to make all these
+opportunities promote the flirtation with Daphne. He had, in fact, been
+enough at her beck and call to make her the envy of a young society with
+whom the splendid Englishman promised to become the rage, and not enough
+to silence or wholly discourage other claimants on his time.</p>
+
+<p>This no doubt accounted for the fact that the two charming Bostonians,
+Mrs. Maddison and her daughter, who had but lately arrived in Washington
+and made acquaintance with Roger Barnes, were still evidently in
+ignorance of what was going on. They were not initiated. They had
+invited young Barnes in the innocence of their hearts, without inviting
+Daphne Floyd, whom they did not previously know. And the young man had
+seen fit to accept their invitation. Hence the jealousy that was clearly
+burning in Daphne, that she was not indeed even trying to hide from the
+shrewd eyes of her friend.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Verrier's advice not to make Roger Barnes "too important" had
+called up a flash of colour in the girl's cheeks. But she did not resent
+it in words; rather her silence deepened, till Mrs. Verrier stretched
+out a hand and laughingly turned the small face towards her that she
+might see what was in it.</p>
+
+<p>"Daphne! I really believe you're in love with him!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all," said Daphne, her eyelids flickering; "I never know what to
+talk to him about."</p>
+
+<p>"As if that mattered!"</p>
+
+<p>"Elsie Maddison always knows what to talk to him about, and he chatters
+to her the whole time."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Verrier paused a moment, then said: "Do you suppose he came to
+America to marry money?"</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't an idea."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you suppose he knows that you&mdash;are not exactly a pauper?"</p>
+
+<p>Daphne drew herself away impatiently. "I really don't suppose anything,
+Madeleine. He never talks about money, and I should think he had plenty
+himself."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Verrier replied by giving an outline of the financial misfortunes
+of Mr. Barnes <i>p&egrave;re</i>, as they had been described to her by another
+English traveller in Washington.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne listened indifferently. "He can't be very poor or he wouldn't
+behave as he does. And he is to inherit the General's property. He told
+me so."</p>
+
+<p>"And it wouldn't matter to you, Daphne, if you did think a man had
+married you for money?"</p>
+
+<p>Daphne had risen, and was pacing the drawing-room floor, her hands
+clasped behind her back. She turned a cloudy face upon her questioner.
+"It would matter a great deal, if I thought it had been only for money.
+But then, I hope I shouldn't have been such a fool as to marry him."</p>
+
+<p>"But you could bear it, if the money counted for something?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not an idiot!" said the girl, with energy. "With whom doesn't money
+count for something? Of course a man must take money into
+consideration." There was a curious touch of arrogance in the gesture
+which accompanied the words.</p>
+
+<p>"'How pleasant it is to have money, heigh-ho!&mdash;How pleasant it is to
+have money,'" said Mrs. Verrier, quoting, with a laugh. "Yes, I dare
+say, you'd be very reasonable, Daphne, about that kind of thing. But I
+don't think you'd be a comfortable wife, dear, all the same."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"You might allow your husband to spare a little love to your money; you
+would be for killing him if he ever looked at another woman!"</p>
+
+<p>"You mean I should be jealous?" asked Daphne, almost with violence. "You
+are quite right there. I should be very jealous. On that point I should
+'find quarrel in a straw.'"</p>
+
+<p>Her cheeks had flushed a passionate red. The eyes which she had
+inherited from her Spanish grandmother blazed above them. She had become
+suddenly a woman of Andalusia and the South, moved by certain primitive
+forces in the blood.</p>
+
+<p>Madeleine Verrier held out her hands, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"Come here, little wild cat. I believe you are jealous of Elsie
+Maddison."</p>
+
+<p>Daphne approached her slowly, and slowly dropped into a seat beside her
+friend, her eyes still fixed and splendid. But as she looked into them
+Madeleine Verrier saw them suddenly dimmed.</p>
+
+<p>"Daphne! you <i>are</i> in love with him!"</p>
+
+<p>The girl recovered herself, clenching her small hands. "If I am," she
+said resolutely, "it is strange how like the other thing it is! I don't
+know whether I shall speak to him to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"To-night?" Mrs. Verrier looked a little puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>"At the White House. You're going, of course."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I am not going." The voice was quiet and cold. "I am not asked."</p>
+
+<p>Daphne, vexed with herself, touched her friend's hand caressingly. "It
+will be just a crush, dear. But I promised various people to go."</p>
+
+<p>"And he will be there?"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose so." Daphne turned her head away, and then sprang up. "Have
+you seen the picture?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Verrier followed her into the inner room, where the girl gave a
+laughing and triumphant account of her acquisition, the agents she had
+employed, the skill with which it had been conveyed out of Italy, the
+wrath of various famous collectors, who had imagined that the fight lay
+between them alone, when they found the prize had been ravished from
+them. Madeleine Verrier was very intelligent, and the contrast, which
+the story brought out, between the girl's fragile youth and the strange
+and passionate sense of power which breathed from her whenever it became
+a question of wealth and the use of it, was at no point lost upon her
+companion.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne would not allow any further talk of Roger Barnes. Her chaperon,
+Mrs. Phillips, presently appeared, and passed through rather a bad
+quarter of an hour while the imperious mistress of the house inquired
+into certain invitations and card-leavings that had not been managed to
+her liking. Then Daphne sat down to write a letter to a Girls' Club in
+New York, of which she was President&mdash;where, in fact, she occasionally
+took the Singing Class, with which she had made so much play at her
+first meeting with Roger Barnes. She had to tell them that she had just
+engaged a holiday house for them, to which they might go in instalments
+throughout the summer. She would pay the rent, provide a
+lady-superintendent, and make herself responsible for all but food
+expenses. Her small face relaxed&mdash;became quite soft and charming&mdash;as she
+wrote.</p>
+
+<p>"But, my dear," cried Mrs. Phillips in dismay, as Daphne handed her the
+letter to read, "you have taken the house on Lake George, and you know
+the girls had all set their hearts on that place in the White
+Mountains!"</p>
+
+<p>Daphne's lips tightened. "Certainly I have taken the house on Lake
+George," she said, as she carefully wiped her pen. "I told them I
+should."</p>
+
+<p>"But, my dear, they are so tired of Lake George! They have been there
+three years running. And you know they subscribe a good deal
+themselves."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well!&mdash;then let them do without my help. I have inquired into the
+matter. The house on Lake George is much more suitable than the White
+Mountains farm, and I have written to the agent. The thing's done."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Phillips argued a little more, but Daphne was immovable.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Verrier, watching the two, reflected, as she had often done before,
+that Mrs. Phillips's post was not particularly enviable. Daphne treated
+her in many ways with great generosity, paid her highly, grudged her no
+luxury, and was always courteous to her in public. But in private
+Daphne's will was law, and she had an abrupt and dictatorial way of
+asserting it that brought the red back into Mrs. Phillips's faded
+cheeks. Mrs. Verrier had often expected her to throw up her post. But
+there was no doubt something in Daphne's personality which made life
+beside her too full of colour to be lightly abandoned.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Daphne presently went upstairs to take off her walking-dress, and Mrs.
+Phillips, with a rather troubled face, began to tidy the confusion of
+letters she had left behind her.</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say the girls won't mind," said Madeleine Verrier, kindly.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Phillips started, and her mild lips quivered a little. Daphne's
+charities were for Daphne an amusement; for this gentle, faded woman,
+who bore all the drudgery of them, they were the chief attraction of
+life in Daphne's house. Mrs. Phillips loved the club-girls, and the
+thought of their disappointment pained her.</p>
+
+<p>"I must try and put it to them," was her patient reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Daphne must always have her way," Madeleine went on, smiling. "I wonder
+what she'll do when she marries."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Phillips looked up quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope it'll be the right man, Mrs. Verrier. Of course, with anyone
+so&mdash;so clever&mdash;and so used to managing everything for herself&mdash;one would
+be a little anxious."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Verrier's expression changed. A kind of
+wildness&mdash;fanaticism&mdash;invaded it, as of one recalling a mission. "Oh,
+well, nothing is irrevocable nowadays," she said, almost with violence.
+"Still I hope Daphne won't make a mistake."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Phillips looked at her companion, at first in astonishment. Then a
+change passed over her face. With a cold excuse she left Mrs. Verrier
+alone.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+
+<p>The reception at the White House was being given in honour of the
+delegates to a Peace Congress. The rooms were full without being
+inconveniently crowded and the charming house opened its friendly doors
+to a society more congruous and organic, richer also in the nobler kind
+of variety than America, perhaps, can offer to her guests elsewhere.
+What the opera and international finance are to New York, politics and
+administration are, as we all know, to Washington. And the visitor
+from Europe, conversationally starved for want of what seem to him
+the only topics worth discussing, finds himself within hearing once
+more of ministers, cabinets, embassies, and parliamentary gossip.
+Even General Hobson had come to admit that&mdash;especially for the
+middle-aged&mdash;Washington parties were extremely agreeable. The young and
+foolish might sigh for the flesh-pots of New York; those on whom "the
+black ox had trodden," who were at all aware what a vast tormenting,
+multitudinous, and headstrong world man has been given to inhabit; those
+who were engaged in governing any part of that world, or meant some day
+to be thus engaged; for them Washington was indispensable, and New York
+a mere entertainment.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover Washington, at this time of the world's history, was the scene
+of one of those episodes&mdash;those brisker moments in the human
+comedy&mdash;which every now and then revive among us an almost forgotten
+belief in personality, an almost forgotten respect for the mysteries
+behind it. The guests streaming through the White House defiled past a
+man who, in a level and docketed world, appeared to his generation as
+the reincarnation of forces primitive, over-mastering, and heroic. An
+honest Odysseus!&mdash;toil-worn and storm-beaten, yet still with the spirit
+and strength, the many devices, of a boy; capable like his prototype in
+one short day of crushing his enemies, upholding his friends, purifying
+his house; and then, with the heat of righteous battle still upon him,
+with its gore, so to speak, still upon his hands, of turning his mind,
+without a pause and without hypocrisy, to things intimate and soft and
+pure&mdash;the domestic sweetness of Penelope, the young promise of
+Telemachus. The President stood, a rugged figure, amid the cosmopolitan
+crowd, breasting the modern world, like some ocean headland, yet not
+truly of it, one of the great fighters and workers of mankind, with a
+laugh that pealed above the noise, blue eyes that seemed to pursue some
+converse of their own, and a hand that grasped and cheered, where other
+hands withdrew and repelled. This one man's will had now, for some
+years, made the pivot on which vast issues turned&mdash;issues of peace and
+war, of policy embracing the civilized world; and, here, one saw him in
+drawing-rooms, discussing Alaric's campaigns with an Oxford professor,
+or chatting with a young mother about her children.</p>
+
+<p>Beside him, the human waves, as they met and parted, disclosed a woman's
+face, modelled by nature in one of her lightest and deftest moods, a
+trifle detached, humorous also, as though the world's strange sights
+stirred a gentle and kindly mirth behind its sweet composure. The
+dignity of the President's wife was complete, yet it had not
+extinguished the personality it clothed; and where royalty, as the
+European knows it, would have donned its mask and stood on its defence,
+Republican royalty dared to be its amused, confiding, natural self.</p>
+
+<p>All around&mdash;the political, diplomatic world of Washington. General
+Hobson, as he passed through it, greeted by what was now a large
+acquaintance, found himself driven once more to the inward
+confession&mdash;the grudging confession&mdash;as though Providence had not played
+him fair in extorting it&mdash;that American politicians were of a vastly
+finer stamp than he had expected to find them. The American press was
+all&mdash;he vowed&mdash;that fancy had painted it, and more. But, as he looked
+about him at the members of the President's administration&mdash;at this
+tall, black-haired man, for instance, with the mild and meditative eye,
+the equal, social or intellectual, of any Foreign Minister that Europe
+might pit against him, or any diplomat that might be sent to handle him;
+or this younger man, sparely built, with the sane, handsome face&mdash;son of
+a famous father, modest, amiable, efficient; or this other, of huge bulk
+and height, the sport of caricature, the hope of a party, smiling
+already a presidential smile as he passed, observed and beset, through
+the crowded rooms; or these naval or military men, with their hard
+serviceable looks, and the curt good manners of their kind:&mdash;the General
+saw as clearly as anybody else, that America need make no excuses
+whatever for her best men, that she has evolved the leaders she wants,
+and Europe has nothing to teach them.</p>
+
+<p>He could only console himself by the remembrance of a speech, made by a
+well-known man, at a military function which the General had attended as
+a guest of honour the day before. There at last was the real thing! The
+real, Yankee, spread-eagle thing! The General positively hugged the
+thought of it.</p>
+
+<p>"The American soldier," said the speaker, standing among the
+ambassadors, the naval and military <i>attach&eacute;s</i>, of all the European
+nations, "is the superior of all other soldiers in three
+respects&mdash;bravery, discipline, intelligence."</p>
+
+<p><i>Bravery, discipline, intelligence!</i> Just those&mdash;the merest trifle! The
+General had found himself chuckling over it in the visions of the night.</p>
+
+<p>Tired at last of these various impressions, acting on a mind not quite
+alert enough to deal with them, the General went in search of his
+nephew. Roger had been absent all day, and the General had left the
+hotel before his return. But the uncle was sure that he would sooner or
+later put in an appearance.</p>
+
+<p>It was of course entirely on Roger's account that this unwilling guest
+of America was her guest still. For three weeks now had the General been
+watching the affair between Roger and Daphne Floyd. It had gone with
+such a rush at first, such a swing and fervour, that the General had
+felt that any day might bring the <i>d&eacute;nouement</i>. It was really impossible
+to desert the lad at such a crisis, especially as Laura was so excitable
+and anxious, and so sure to make her brother pay for it if he failed to
+support her views and ambitions at the right moment. The General
+moreover felt the absolute necessity of getting to know something more
+about Miss Floyd, her character, the details of her fortune and
+antecedents, so that when the great moment came he might be prepared.</p>
+
+<p>But the astonishing thing was that of late the whole affair seemed to
+have come to some stupid hitch! Roger had been behaving like a very cool
+hand&mdash;too cool by half in the General's opinion. What the deuce did he
+mean by hanging about these Boston ladies, if his affections were really
+fixed on Miss Daphne?&mdash;or his ambitions, which to the uncle seemed
+nearer the truth.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, where is the nephew?" said Cecilia Boyson's voice in his ear.</p>
+
+<p>The General turned. He saw a sharp, though still young face, a thin and
+willowy figure, attired in white silk, a <i>pince-nez</i> on the high-pitched
+nose, and a cool smile. Unconsciously his back stiffened. Miss Boyson
+invariably roused in him a certain masculine antagonism.</p>
+
+<p>"I should be glad if you would tell me," he said, with some formality.
+"There are two or three people here to whom he should be introduced."</p>
+
+<p>"Has he been picnicking with the Maddisons?" The voice was shrill,
+perhaps malicious.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe they took him to Arlington, and somewhere else afterwards."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," said Cecilia, "there they are."</p>
+
+<p>The General looked towards the door and saw his nephew enter, behind a
+mother and daughter whom, as it seemed to him, their acquaintances in
+the crowd around them greeted with a peculiar cordiality; the mother,
+still young, with a stag-like carriage of the head, a long throat,
+swathed in white tulle, and grizzled hair, on which shone a spray of
+diamonds; the daughter, equally tall and straight, repeating her
+mother's beauty with a bloom and radiance of her own. Innocent and
+happy, with dark eyes and a soft mouth, Miss Maddison dropped a little
+curtsey to the presidential pair, and the room turned to look at her as
+she did so.</p>
+
+<p>"A very sweet-looking girl," said the General warmly. "Her father is, I
+think, a professor."</p>
+
+<p>"He was. He is now just a writer of books. But Elsie was brought up in
+Cambridge. How did Mr. Roger know them?"</p>
+
+<p>"His Eton tutor told him to go and see them."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought Miss Floyd expected him to-day?" said Miss Boyson carelessly,
+adjusting her eyeglass.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a mistake, a misunderstanding," replied the General hurriedly.
+"Miss Floyd's party is put off till next week."</p>
+
+<p>"Daphne is just coming in," said Miss Boyson.</p>
+
+<p>The General turned again. The watchful Cecilia was certain that <i>he</i> was
+not in love with Daphne. But the nephew&mdash;the inordinately handsome, and
+by now much-courted young man&mdash;what was the real truth about him?</p>
+
+<p>Cecilia recognized&mdash;with Mrs. Verrier&mdash;that merely to put the question
+involved a certain tribute to young Barnes. He had at any rate done his
+fortune-hunting, if fortune-hunting it were, with decorum.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Floyd is looking well to-night," remarked the General.</p>
+
+<p>Cecilia did not reply. She and a great part of the room were engaged in
+watching Roger Barnes and Miss Maddison walking together through a space
+which seemed to have been cleared on purpose for them, but was really
+the result of a move towards the supper-room.</p>
+
+<p>"Was there ever such a pair?" said an enthusiastic voice behind the
+General. "Athene and Apollo take the floor!" A gray-haired journalist
+with a small, bewrinkled face, buried in whiskers, and beard, laid a
+hand on the General's arm as he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>The General smiled vaguely. "Do you know Mrs. and Miss Maddison?"</p>
+
+<p>"Rather!" said the little man. "Miss Elsie's a wonder! As pretty and
+soft as they make them, and a Greek scholar besides&mdash;took all sorts of
+honours at Radcliffe last year. I've known her from her cradle."</p>
+
+<p>"What a number of your girls go to college!" said the General, but
+ungraciously, in the tones of one who no sooner saw an American custom
+emerging than his instinct was to hit it.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; it's a feature of our modern life&mdash;the life of our women. But not
+the most significant one, by a long way."</p>
+
+<p>The General could not help a look of inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>The journalist's face changed from gay to grave. "The most significant
+thing in American life just now&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I know!" interrupted the General. "Your divorce laws!"</p>
+
+<p>The journalist shook his head. "It goes deeper than that. What we're
+looking on at is a complete transformation of the idea of marriage&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A movement in the crowd bore the speaker away. The General was left
+watching the beautiful pair in the distance. They were apparently quite
+unconscious that they roused any special attention. Laughing and
+chatting like two children, they passed into the supper-room and
+disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Ten minutes later, in the supper-room, Barnes deserted the two ladies
+with whom he had entered, and went in pursuit of a girl in white, whose
+necklace of star sapphires, set in a Spanish setting of the seventeenth
+century, had at once caught the eye of the judicious. Roger, however,
+knew nothing of jewels, and was only conscious as he approached Miss
+Floyd, first of the mingling in his own mind of something like
+embarrassment with something like defiance, and then, of the glitter in
+the girl's dark eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you had an interesting debate," he said. "Mrs. Phillips tells me
+you went to the Senate."</p>
+
+<p>Daphne looked him up and down. "Did I?" she said slowly. "I've
+forgotten. Will you move, please? There's someone bringing me an ice."
+And turning her back on Roger, she smiled and beckoned to the
+Under-Secretary, who with a triumphant face was making his way to her
+through the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>Roger coloured hotly. "May I bring Mrs. Maddison?" he said, passing her;
+"she would like to talk to you about a party for next week&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you. I am just going home." And with an energetic movement she
+freed herself from him, and was soon in the gayest of talk with the
+Under-Secretary.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The reception broke up some time after midnight, and on the way home
+General Hobson attempted a raid upon his nephew's intentions.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't wish to seem an intrusive person, my dear Roger, but may I ask
+how much longer you mean to stay in Washington?"</p>
+
+<p>The tone was short and the look which accompanied the words not without
+sarcasm. Roger, who had been walking beside his companion, still deeply
+flushed, in complete silence, gave an awkward laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"And as for you, Uncle Archie, I thought you meant to sail a fortnight
+ago. If you've been staying on like this on my account&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't make a fool either of me or yourself, Roger!" said the General
+hastily, roused at last to speech by the annoyance of the situation. "Of
+course it was on your account that I have stayed on. But what on earth
+it all means, and where your affairs are&mdash;I'm hanged if I have the
+glimmer of an idea!"</p>
+
+<p>Roger's smile was perfectly good-humoured.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't much myself," he said quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you&mdash;or do you not&mdash;mean to propose to Miss Floyd?" cried the
+General, pausing in the centre of Lafayette Square, now all but
+deserted, and apostrophizing with his umbrella&mdash;for the night was soft
+and rainy&mdash;the presidential statue above his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Have I given you reason to suppose that I was going to do so?" said
+Roger slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"Given me?&mdash;given everybody reason?&mdash;of course you have!&mdash;a dozen times
+over. I don't like interfering with your affairs, Roger&mdash;with any young
+man's affairs&mdash;but you must know that you have set Washington talking,
+and it's not fair to a girl&mdash;by George it isn't!&mdash;when she has given you
+encouragement and you have made her conspicuous, to begin the same
+story, in the same place, immediately, with someone else! As you say, I
+ought to have taken myself off long ago."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't say anything of the kind," said Roger hotly; "you shouldn't
+put words into my mouth, Uncle Archie. And I really don't see why you
+attack me like this. My tutor particularly asked me, if I came across
+them, to be civil to Mrs. Maddison and her daughter, and I have done
+nothing but pay them the most ordinary attentions."</p>
+
+<p>"When a man is in love he pays no ordinary attentions. He has eyes for
+no one but the lady." The General's umbrella, as it descended from the
+face of Andrew Jackson and rattled on the flagged path, supplied each
+word with emphasis. "However, it is no good talking, and I don't exactly
+know why I should put my old oar in. But the fact is I feel a certain
+responsibility. People here have been uncommonly civil. Well,
+well!&mdash;I've wired to-day to ask if there is a berth left in the
+<i>Venetia</i> for Saturday. And you, I suppose"&mdash;the inquiry was somewhat
+peremptory&mdash;"will be going back to New York?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have no intention of leaving Washington just yet," said Roger, with
+decision.</p>
+
+<p>"And may I ask what you intend to do here?"</p>
+
+<p>Roger laughed. "I really think that's my business. However, you've been
+an awful brick, Uncle Archie, to stay on like this. I assure you, if I
+don't say much, I think it."</p>
+
+<p>By this time they had reached the hotel, the steps and hall of which
+were full of people.</p>
+
+<p>"That's how you put me off." The General's tone was resentful. "And you
+won't give me any idea of the line I am to take with your mother?"</p>
+
+<p>The young man smiled again and waved an evasive hand.</p>
+
+<p>"If you'll only be patient a little longer, Uncle Archie&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>At this point an acquaintance of the General's who was smoking in the
+hall came forward to greet him, and Roger made his escape.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"Well, what the deuce <i>do</i> I mean to do?" Barnes asked himself the
+question deliberately. He was hanging out of the window, in his bedroom,
+smoking and pondering.</p>
+
+<p>It was a mild and rainy night. Washington was full of the earth and leaf
+odours of the spring, which rose in gusts from its trees and gardens;
+and rugged, swiftly moving clouds disclosed every now and then what
+looked like hurrying stars.</p>
+
+<p>The young man was excited and on edge. Daphne Floyd&mdash;and the thought of
+Daphne Floyd&mdash;had set his pulses hammering; they challenged in him the
+aggressive, self-assertive, masculine force. The history of the
+preceding three weeks was far from simple. He had first paid a
+determined court to her, conducting it in an orthodox, English,
+conspicuous way. His mother, and her necessities&mdash;his own also&mdash;imposed
+it on him; and he flung himself into it, setting his teeth. Then, to his
+astonishment, one may almost say to his disconcerting, he found the prey
+all at once, and, as it were, without a struggle, fluttering to his
+lure, and practically within his grasp. There was an evening when
+Daphne's sudden softness, the look in her eyes, the inflection in her
+voice had fairly thrown him off his balance. For the first time he had
+shown a lack of self-command and self-possession. Whereupon, in a flash,
+a new and strange Daphne had developed&mdash;imperious, difficult,
+incalculable. The more he gave, the more she claimed. Nor was it mere
+girlish caprice. The young Englishman, invited to a game that he had
+never yet played, felt in it something sinister and bewildering.
+Gropingly, he divined in front of him a future of tyranny on her side,
+of expected submission on his. The Northern character in him, with its
+reserve, its phlegm, its general sanity, began to shrink from the
+Southern elements in her. He became aware of the depths in her nature,
+of things volcanic and primitive, and the English stuff in him recoiled.</p>
+
+<p>So he was to be bitted and bridled, it seemed, in the future. Daphne
+Floyd would have bought him with her dollars, and he would have to pay
+the price.</p>
+
+<p>Something natural and wild in him said No! If he married this girl he
+would be master, in spite of her money. He realized vaguely, at any
+rate, the strength of her will, and the way in which it had been
+tempered and steeled by circumstance. But the perception only roused in
+himself some slumbering tenacities and vehemences of which he had been
+scarcely aware. So that, almost immediately&mdash;since there was no glamour
+of passion on his side&mdash;he began to resent her small tyrannies, to draw
+in, and draw back. A few quarrels&mdash;not ordinary lovers' quarrels, but
+representing a true grapple of personalities&mdash;sprang up behind a screen
+of trifles. Daphne was once more rude and provoking, Roger cool and
+apparently indifferent. This was the stage when Mrs. Verrier had become
+an admiring observer of what she supposed to be his "tactics." But she
+knew nothing of the curious little crisis which had preceded them.</p>
+
+<p>Then the Maddisons, mother and daughter, "my tutor's friends," had
+appeared upon the scene&mdash;charming people! Of course civilities were due
+to them, and had to be paid them. Next to his mother&mdash;and to the girl of
+the orchard&mdash;the affections of this youth, who was morally backward and
+immature, but neither callous nor fundamentally selfish, had been
+chiefly given to a certain Eton master, of a type happily not uncommon
+in English public schools. Herbert French had been Roger's earliest and
+best friend. What Roger had owed him at school, only he knew. Since
+school-days they had been constant correspondents, and French's
+influence on his pupil's early manhood had done much, for all Roger's
+laziness and self-indulgence, to keep him from serious lapses.</p>
+
+<p>Neglect any friends of his&mdash;and such jolly friends? Rather not! But as
+soon as Daphne had seen Elsie Maddison, and he had begged an afternoon
+to go on an expedition with them, Daphne had become intolerable. She had
+shown her English friend and his acquaintances a manner so insulting and
+provocative, that the young man's blood had boiled.</p>
+
+<p>If he were in love with her&mdash;well and good! She might no doubt have
+tamed him by these stripes. But she was no goddess to him; no golden
+cloud enveloped her; he saw her under a common daylight. At the same
+time she attracted him; he was vain of what had seemed his conquest, and
+uneasily exultant in the thought of her immense fortune. "I'll make her
+an excellent husband if she marries me," he said to himself stubbornly;
+"I can, and I will."</p>
+
+<p>But meanwhile how was this first stage to end? At the White House that
+night Daphne had treated him with contumely, and before spectators. He
+must either go or bring her to the point.</p>
+
+<p>He withdrew suddenly from the window, flinging out the end of his
+cigarette. "I'll propose to her to-morrow&mdash;and she may either take me or
+leave me!"</p>
+
+<p>He paced up and down his room, conscious of relief and fresh energy. As
+he did so his eyes were drawn to a letter from Herbert French lying on
+the table. He took it up and read it again&mdash;smiling over it broadly, in
+a boyish and kindly amusement. "By Jove! he's happy."</p>
+
+<p>Then as he put it down his face darkened. There was something in the
+letter, in its manliness and humour, its unconscious revelation of
+ideals wholly independent of dollars, that made Roger for the moment
+loathe his own position. But he pulled himself together.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall make her a good husband," he repeated, frowning. "She'll have
+nothing to complain of."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>On the following day a picnic among the woods of the Upper Potomac
+brought together most of the personages in this history. The day was
+beautiful, the woods fragrant with spring leaf and blossom, and the
+stream, swollen with rain, ran seaward in a turbid, rejoicing strength.</p>
+
+<p>The General, having secured his passage home, was in good spirits as far
+as his own affairs were concerned, though still irritable on the score
+of his nephew's. Since the abortive attempt on his confidence of the
+night before, Roger had avoided all private conversation with his uncle;
+and for once the old had to learn patience from the young.</p>
+
+<p>The party was given by the wife of one of the staff of the French
+Embassy&mdash;a young Frenchwoman, as gay and frank as her babies, and
+possessed, none the less, of all the social arts of her nation. She had
+taken a shrewd interest in the matter of Daphne Floyd and the
+Englishman. Daphne, according to her, should be promptly married and her
+millions taken care of, and the handsome, broad-shouldered fellow
+impressed the little Frenchwoman's imagination as a proper and capable
+watchdog. She had indeed become aware that something was wrong, but her
+acuteness entirely refused to believe that it had any vital connection
+with the advent of pretty Elsie Maddison. Meanwhile, to please Daphne,
+whom she liked, while conscious of a strong and frequent desire to smite
+her, Madame de Fronsac had invited Mrs. Verrier, treating her with a
+cold and punctilious courtesy that, as applied to any other guest, would
+have seemed an affront.</p>
+
+<p>In vain, however, did the hostess, in vain did other kindly bystanders,
+endeavour to play the game of Daphne Floyd. In the first place Daphne
+herself, though piped unto, refused to dance. She avoided the society of
+Roger Barnes in a pointed and public way, bright colour on her cheeks
+and a wild light in her eyes; the Under-Secretary escorted her and
+carried her wrap. Washington did not know what to think. For owing to
+this conduct of Daphne's, the charming Boston girl, the other <i>ing&eacute;nue</i>
+of the party, fell constantly to the care of young Barnes; and to see
+them stepping along the green ways together, matched almost in height,
+and clearly of the same English ancestry and race, pleased while it
+puzzled the spectators.</p>
+
+<p>The party lunched in a little inn beside the river, and then scattered
+again along woodland paths. Daphne and the Under-Secretary wandered on
+ahead and were some distance from the rest of the party when that
+gentleman suddenly looked at his watch in dismay. An appointment had to
+be kept with the President at a certain hour, and the Under-Secretary's
+wits had been wandering. There was nothing for it but to take a short
+cut through the woods to a local station and make at once for
+Washington.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne quickened his uneasiness and hastened his departure. She assured
+him that the others were close behind, and that nothing could suit her
+better than to rest on a mossy stone that happily presented itself till
+they arrived.</p>
+
+<p>The Under-Secretary, transformed into the anxious and ambitious
+politician, abruptly left her.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne, as soon as he was gone, allowed herself the natural attitude
+that fitted her thoughts. She was furiously in love and torn with
+jealousy; and that love and jealousy could smart so, and cling so, was a
+strange revelation to one accustomed to make a world entirely to her
+liking. Her dark eyes were hollow, her small mouth had lost its colour,
+and she showed that touch of something wasting and withering that
+Theocritan shepherds knew in old Sicilian days. It was as though she had
+defied a god&mdash;and the god had avenged himself.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he appeared&mdash;the teasing divinity&mdash;in human shape. There was a
+rustling among the brushwood fringing the river. Roger Barnes emerged
+and made his way up towards her.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been stalking you all this time," he said, breathless, as he
+reached her, "and now at last&mdash;I've caught you!"</p>
+
+<p>Daphne rose furiously. "What right have you to stalk me, as you call
+it&mdash;to follow me&mdash;to speak to me even? I wish to avoid you&mdash;and I have
+shown it!"</p>
+
+<p>Roger looked at her. He had thrown down his hat, and she saw him against
+the background of sunny wood, as the magnificent embodiment of its youth
+and force. "And why have you shown it?" There was a warning tremor of
+excitement in his voice. "What have I done? I haven't deserved it! You
+treat me like&mdash;like a friend!&mdash;and then you drop me like a hot coal.
+You've been awfully unkind to me!"</p>
+
+<p>"I won't discuss it with you," she cried passionately. "You are in my
+way, Mr. Barnes. Let me go back to the others!" And stretching out a
+small hand, she tried to put him aside.</p>
+
+<p>Roger hesitated, but only for a moment. He caught the hand, he gathered
+its owner into a pair of strong arms, and bending over her, he kissed
+her. Daphne, suffocated with anger and emotion, broke from
+him&mdash;tottering. Then sinking on the ground beneath a tree, she burst
+into sobbing. Roger, scarlet, with sparkling eyes, dropped on one knee
+beside her.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus1" id="illus1"></a>
+<img src="images/illus1.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"He caught the hand, he gathered its owner into a pair of
+strong arms, and bending over her, he kissed her"</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<p>"Daphne, I'm a ruffian! forgive me! you must, Daphne! Look here, I want
+you to marry me. I've nothing to offer you, of course; I'm a poor man,
+and you've all this horrible money! But I&mdash;I love you!&mdash;and I'll make
+you a good husband, Daphne, that I'll swear. If you'll take me, you
+shall never be sorry for it."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her again, sorely embarrassed, hating himself, yet inwardly
+sure of her. Her small frame shook with weeping. And presently she
+turned from him and said in a fierce voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Go and tell all that to Elsie Maddison!"</p>
+
+<p>Infinitely relieved, Roger gave a quick, excited laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"She'd soon send me about my business! I should be a day too late for
+the fair, in <i>that</i> quarter. What do you think she and I have been
+talking about all this time, Daphne?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care," said Daphne hastily, with face still averted.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to tell you, all the same," cried Roger triumphantly, and
+diving into his coat pocket he produced "my tutor's letter." Daphne sat
+immovable, and he had to read it aloud himself. It contained the
+rapturous account of Herbert French's engagement to Miss Maddison, a
+happy event which had taken place in England during the Eton holidays,
+about a month before this date.</p>
+
+<p>"There!" cried the young man as he finished it. "And she's talked about
+nothing all the time, nothing at all&mdash;but old Herbert&mdash;and how good he
+is&mdash;and how good-looking, and the Lord knows what! I got precious sick
+of it, though I think he's a trump, too. Oh, Daphne!&mdash;you were a little
+fool!"</p>
+
+<p>"All the same, you have behaved abominably!" Daphne said, still choking.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I haven't," was Roger's firm reply. "It was you who were so cross.
+I couldn't tell you anything. I say! you do know how to stick pins into
+people!"</p>
+
+<p>But he took up her hand and kissed it as he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne allowed it. Her breast heaved as the storm departed. And she
+looked so charming, so soft, so desirable, as she sat there in her white
+dress, with her great tear-washed eyes and fluttering breath, that the
+youth was really touched and carried off his feet; and the rest of his
+task was quite easy. All the familiar things that had to be said were
+said, and with all the proper emphasis and spirit. He played his part,
+the spring woods played theirs, and Daphne, worn out by emotion and
+conquered by passion, gradually betrayed herself wholly. And so much at
+least may be said to the man's credit that there were certainly moments
+in the half-hour between them when, amid the rush of talk, laughter, and
+caresses, that conscience which he owed so greatly to the exertions of
+"my tutor" pricked him not a little.</p>
+
+<p>After losing themselves deliberately in the woods, they strolled back to
+join the rest of the party. The sounds of conversation were already
+audible through the trees in front of them, when they saw Mrs. Verrier
+coming towards them. She was walking alone and did not perceive them.
+Her eyes were raised and fixed, as though on some sight in front of
+them. The bitterness, the anguish, one might almost call it, of her
+expression, the horror in the eyes, as of one ghost-led, ghost-driven,
+drew an exclamation from Roger.</p>
+
+<p>"There's Mrs. Verrier! Why, how ill she looks!"</p>
+
+<p>Daphne paused, gazed, and shrank. She drew him aside through the trees.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's go another way. Madeleine's often strange." And with a
+superstitious pang she wished that Madeleine Verrier's face had not been
+the first to meet her in this hour of her betrothal.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_II" id="PART_II"></a>PART II</h2>
+
+<h3>THREE YEARS AFTER</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+
+<p>In the drawing-room at Heston Park two ladies were seated. One was a
+well-preserved woman of fifty, with a large oblong face, good features,
+a double chin, and abundant gray hair arranged in waved <i>bandeaux</i> above
+a forehead which should certainly have implied strength of character,
+and a pair of challenging black eyes. Lady Barnes moved and spoke with
+authority; it was evident that she had been accustomed to do so all her
+life; to trail silk gowns over Persian carpets, to engage expensive
+cooks and rely on expensive butlers, with a strict attention to small
+economies all the time; to impose her will on her household and the
+clergyman of the parish; to give her opinions on books, and expect them
+to be listened to; to abstain from politics as unfeminine, and to make
+up for it by the strongest of views on Church questions. She belonged to
+an English type common throughout all classes&mdash;quite harmless and
+tolerable when things go well, but apt to be soured and twisted by
+adversity.</p>
+
+<p>And Lady Barnes, it will be remembered, had known adversity. Not much of
+it, nor for long together; but in her own opinion she had gone through
+"great trials," to the profit of her Christian character. She was quite
+certain, now, that everything had been for the best, and that Providence
+makes no mistakes. But that, perhaps, was because the "trials" had only
+lasted about a year; and then, so far as they were pecuniary, the
+marriage of her son with Miss Daphne Floyd had entirely relieved her of
+them. For Roger now made her a handsome allowance and the chastened
+habits of a most uncomfortable year had been hastily abandoned.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, Lady Barnes's aspect on this autumn afternoon was not
+cheerful, and her companion was endeavouring, with a little kind
+embarrassment, both to soothe an evident irritation and to avoid the
+confidences that Roger's mother seemed eager to pour out. Elsie French,
+whom Washington had known three years before as Elsie Maddison, was in
+that bloom of young married life when all that was lovely in the girl
+seems to be still lingering, while yet love and motherhood have wrought
+once more their old transforming miracle on sense and spirit. In her
+afternoon dress of dainty sprigged silk, with just a touch of austerity
+in the broad muslin collar and cuffs&mdash;her curly brown hair simply parted
+on her brow, and gathered classically on a shapely head&mdash;her mouth a
+little troubled, her brow a little puckered over Lady Barnes's
+discontents&mdash;she was a very gracious vision. Yet behind the gentleness,
+as even Lady Barnes knew, there were qualities and characteristics of a
+singular strength.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Barnes indeed was complaining, and could not be stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, dear Mrs. French," she was saying, in a rapid, lowered voice,
+and with many glances at the door, "the trouble is that Daphne is never
+satisfied. She has some impossible ideal in her mind, and then
+everything must be sacrificed to it. She began with going into ecstasies
+over this dear old house, and now!&mdash;there's scarcely a thing in it she
+does not want to change. Poor Edward and I spent thousands upon it, and
+we really flattered ourselves that we had some taste; but it is not good
+enough for Daphne!"</p>
+
+<p>The speaker settled herself in her chair with a slight but emphatic
+clatter of bangles and rustle of skirts.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the ceilings, isn't it?" murmured Elsie French, glancing at the
+heavy decoration, the stucco bosses and pendants above her head which
+had replaced, some twenty years before, a piece of Adam design, sparing
+and felicitous.</p>
+
+<p>"It's everything!" Lady Barnes's tone was now more angry than fretful.
+"I don't, of course, like to say it&mdash;but really Daphne's self-confidence
+is too amazing!"</p>
+
+<p>"She does know so much," said Elsie French reflectively. "Doesn't she?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if you call it knowing. She can always get some tiresome person,
+whom she calls an 'expert,' to back her up. But I believe in liking what
+you <i>do</i> like, and not being bullied into what you don't like."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose if one studies these things&mdash;&mdash;" Elsie French began timidly.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the good of studying!" cried Lady Barnes; "one has one's own
+taste, or one hasn't."</p>
+
+<p>Confronted with this form of the Absolute, Elsie French looked
+perplexed; especially as her own artistic sympathies were mainly with
+Daphne. The situation was certainly awkward. At the time of the Barnes's
+financial crash, and Sir Edward Barnes's death, Heston Park, which
+belonged to Lady Barnes, was all that remained to her and her son. A
+park of a hundred acres and a few cottages went with the house; but
+there was no estate to support it, and it had to be let, to provide an
+income for the widow and the boy. Much of the expensive furniture had
+been sold before letting, but enough remained to satisfy the wants of a
+not very exacting tenant.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Barnes had then departed to weep in exile on a pittance of about
+seven hundred a year. But with the marriage of her son to Miss Floyd and
+her millions, the mother's thoughts had turned fondly back to Heston
+Park. It was too big for her, of course; but the young people clearly
+must redeem it, and settle there. And Daphne had been quite amenable.
+The photographs charmed her. The house, she said, was evidently in a
+pure style, and it would be a delight to make it habitable again. The
+tenant, however, had a lease, and refused to turn out until at last
+Daphne had frankly bribed him to go. And now, after three years of
+married life, during which the young couple had rented various "places,"
+besides their house in London and a villa at Tunis, Heston Park had been
+vacated, Daphne and Roger had descended upon it as Lady Barnes's tenants
+at a high rent, intent upon its restoration; and Roger's mother had been
+invited to their councils.</p>
+
+<p>Hence, indeed, these tears. When Daphne first stepped inside the
+ancestral mansion of the Trescoes&mdash;such had been Lady Barnes's maiden
+name&mdash;she had received a severe shock. The outside, the shell of the
+house&mdash;delightful! But inside!&mdash;heavens! what taste, what
+decoration&mdash;what ruin of a beautiful thing! Half the old mantelpieces
+gone, the ceilings spoiled, the decorations "busy," pretentious,
+overdone, and nothing left to console her but an ugly row of bad Lelys
+and worse Highmores&mdash;the most despicable collection of family portraits
+she had ever set eyes upon!</p>
+
+<p>Roger had looked unhappy. "It was father and mother did it," he admitted
+penitently. "But after all, Daphne, you know they <i>are</i> Trescoes!"&mdash;this
+with a defensive and protecting glance at the Lelys.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne was sorry for it. Her mouth tightened, and certain lines appeared
+about it which already prophesied what the years would make of the young
+face. Yet it was a pretty mouth&mdash;the mouth, above all, of one with no
+doubts at all as to her place and rights in the world. Lady Barnes had
+pronounced it "common" in her secret thoughts before she had known its
+owner six weeks. But the adjective had never yet escaped the "bulwark of
+the teeth." Outwardly the mother and daughter-in-law were still on good
+terms. It was indeed but a week since the son and his wife had
+arrived&mdash;with their baby girl&mdash;at Heston Park, after a summer of
+yachting and fishing in Norway; since Lady Barnes had journeyed thither
+from London to meet them; and Mr. and Mrs. French had accepted an urgent
+invitation from Roger, quite sufficiently backed by Daphne, to stay for
+a few days with Mr. French's old pupil, before the reopening of Eton.</p>
+
+<p>During that time there had been no open quarrels of any kind; but Elsie
+French was a sensitive creature, and she had been increasingly aware of
+friction and annoyance behind the scenes. And now here was Lady Barnes
+let loose! and Daphne might appear at any moment, before she could be
+re-caged.</p>
+
+<p>"She puts you down so!" cried that lady, making gestures with the
+paper-knife she had just been employing on the pages of a Mudie book.
+"If I tell her that something or other&mdash;it doesn't matter what&mdash;cost at
+least a great deal of money, she has a way of smiling at you that is
+positively insulting! She doesn't trouble to argue; she begins to laugh,
+and raises her eyebrows. I&mdash;I always feel as if she had struck me in the
+face! I know I oughtn't to speak like this; I hadn't meant to do it,
+especially to a country-woman of hers, as you are."</p>
+
+<p>"Am I?" said Elsie, in a puzzled voice.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Barnes opened her eyes in astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"I meant"&mdash;the explanation was hurried&mdash;"I thought&mdash;Mrs. Barnes was a
+South American? Her mother was Spanish, of course; you see it in
+Daphne."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; in her wonderful eyes," said Mrs. French warmly; "and her
+grace&mdash;isn't she graceful! My husband says she moves like a sea-wave.
+She has given her eyes to the child."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! and other things too, I'm afraid!" cried Lady Barnes, carried away.
+"But here is the baby."</p>
+
+<p>For the sounds of a childish voice were heard echoing in the domed hall
+outside. Small feet came pattering, and the drawing-room door was burst
+open by Roger Barnes, holding a little girl of nearly two and a half by
+the hand.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Barnes composed herself. It is necessary to smile at children, and
+she endeavoured to satisfy her own sense of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in, Beatty; come and kiss granny!" And Lady Barnes held out her
+arms.</p>
+
+<p>But the child stood still, surveyed her grandmother with a pair of
+startling eyes, and then, turning, made a rush for the door. But her
+father was too quick for her. He closed it with a laugh, and stood with
+his back to it. The child did not cry, but, with flaming cheeks, she
+began to beat her father's knees with her small fists.</p>
+
+<p>"Go and kiss granny, darling," said Roger, stroking her dark head.</p>
+
+<p>Beatty turned again, put both her hands behind her, and stood immovable.</p>
+
+<p>"Not kiss granny," she said firmly. "Don't love granny."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Beatty"&mdash;Mrs. French knelt down beside her&mdash;"come and be a good
+little girl, and I'll show you picture-books."</p>
+
+<p>"I not Beatty&mdash;I Jemima Ann," said the small thin voice. "Not be a dood
+dirl&mdash;do upstairs."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at her father again, and then, evidently perceiving that he
+was not to be moved by force, she changed her tactics. Her delicate,
+elfish face melted into the sweetest smile; she stood on tiptoe, holding
+out to him her tiny arms. With a laugh of irrepressible pride and
+pleasure, Roger stooped to her and lifted her up. She nestled on his
+shoulder&mdash;a small Odalisque, dark, lithe, and tawny, beside her
+handsome, fair-skinned father. And Roger's manner of holding and
+caressing her showed the passionate affection with which he regarded
+her.</p>
+
+<p>He again urged her to kiss her grandmother; but the child again shook
+her head. "Then," said he craftily, "father must kiss granny." And he
+began to cross the room.</p>
+
+<p>But Lady Barnes stopped him, not without dignity. "Better not press it,
+Roger: another time."</p>
+
+<p>Barnes laughed, and yielded. He carried the child away, murmuring to
+her, "Naughty, naughty 'ittie girl!"&mdash;a remark which Beatty, tucked
+under his ear, and complacently sucking her thumb, received with
+complete indifference.</p>
+
+<p>"There, you see!" said the grandmother, with slightly flushed cheeks, as
+the door closed: "the child has been already taught to dislike me, and
+if Roger had attempted to kiss me, she would probably have struck me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no!" cried Mrs. French. "She is a loving little thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Except when she is jealous," said Lady Barnes, with significance. "I
+told you she has inherited more than her eyes."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. French rose. She was determined not to discuss her hostess any
+more, and she walked over to the bow window as though to look at the
+prospects of the weather, which had threatened rain. But Roger's mother
+was not to be repressed. Resentment and antagonism, nurtured on a
+hundred small incidents and trifling jars, and, to begin with, a matter
+of temperament, had come at last to speech. And in this charming New
+Englander, the wife of Roger's best friend, sympathetic, tender, with a
+touch in her of the nun and the saint, Lady Barnes could not help trying
+to find a supporter. She was a much weaker person than her square build
+and her double chin would have led the bystander to suppose; and her
+feelings had been hurt.</p>
+
+<p>So that when Mrs. French returned to say that the sun seemed to be
+coming out, her companion, without heeding, went on, with emotion: "It's
+my son I am thinking of, Mrs. French. I know you're safe, and that Roger
+depends upon Mr. French more than upon anyone else in the world, so I
+can't help just saying a word to you about my anxiety. You know, when
+Roger married, I don't think he was much in love&mdash;in fact, I'm sure he
+wasn't. But now&mdash;it's quite different. Roger has a very soft heart, and
+he's very domestic. He was always the best of sons to me, and as soon as
+he was married he became the best of husbands. He's devoted to Daphne
+now, and you see how he adores the child. But the fact is, there's a
+person in this neighbourhood" (Lady Barnes lowered her voice and looked
+round her)&mdash;"I only knew it for certain this morning&mdash;who ... well, who
+might make trouble. And Daphne's temper is so passionate and
+uncontrolled that&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Lady Barnes, please don't tell me any secrets!" Elsie French
+implored, and laid a restraining hand on the mother's arm, ready,
+indeed, to take up her work and fly. But Lady Barnes's chair stood
+between her and the door, and the occupant of it was substantial.</p>
+
+<p>Laura Barnes hesitated, and in the pause two persons appeared upon the
+garden path outside, coming towards the open windows of the
+drawing-room. One was Mrs. Roger Barnes; the other was a man, remarkably
+tall and slender, with a stoop like that of an overgrown schoolboy,
+silky dark hair and moustache, and pale gray eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Lelius!" said Elsie, in astonishment. "Was Daphne expecting him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who is Dr. Lelius?" asked Lady Barnes, putting up her eyeglass.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. French explained that he was a South German art-critic, from
+W&uuml;rzburg, with a great reputation. She had already met him at Eton and
+at Oxford.</p>
+
+<p>"Another expert!" said Lady Barnes with a shrug.</p>
+
+<p>The pair passed the window, absorbed apparently in conversation. Mrs.
+French escaped. Lady Barnes was left to discontent and solitude.</p>
+
+<p>But the solitude was not for long.</p>
+
+<p>When Elsie French descended for tea, an hour later, she was aware, from
+a considerable distance, of people and tumult in the drawing-room.
+Daphne's soprano voice&mdash;agreeable, but making its mark always, like its
+owner&mdash;could be heard running on. The young mistress of the house seemed
+to be admonishing, instructing, someone. Could it be her mother-in-law?</p>
+
+<p>When Elsie entered, Daphne was walking up and down in excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"One cannot really live with bad pictures because they happen to be
+one's ancestors! We won't do them any harm, mamma! of course not. There
+is a room upstairs where they can be stored&mdash;most carefully&mdash;and anybody
+who is interested in them can go and look at them. If they had only been
+left as they were painted!&mdash;not by Lely, of course, but by some drapery
+man in his studio&mdash;<i>passe encore</i>! they might have been just bearable.
+But you see some wretched restorer went and daubed them all over a few
+years ago."</p>
+
+<p>"We went to the best man we could find! We took the best advice!" cried
+Lady Barnes, sitting stiff and crimson in a deep arm-chair, opposite the
+luckless row of portraits that Daphne was denouncing.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure you did. But then, you see, nobody knew anything at all about
+it in those days. The restorers were all murderers. Ask Dr. Lelius."</p>
+
+<p>Daphne pointed to the stranger, who was leaning against an arm-chair
+beside her in an embarrassed attitude, as though he were endeavouring to
+make the chair a buffer between himself and Lady Barnes.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Lelius bowed.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a modern art," he said with diffidence, and an accent creditably
+slight&mdash;"a quite modern art. We hafe a great man at W&uuml;rzburg."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't suppose he professes to know anything about English pictures,
+does he?" asked Lady Barnes with scorn.</p>
+
+<p>"Ach!&mdash;I do not propose that Mrs. Barnes entrust him wid dese pictures,
+Madame. It is now too late."</p>
+
+<p>And the willowy German looked, with a half-repressed smile, at the row
+of pictures&mdash;all staring at the bystander with the same saucer eyes, the
+same wooden arms, and the same brilliance of modern paint and varnish,
+which not even the passage of four years since it was applied had been
+able greatly to subdue.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Barnes lifted shoulders and eyes&mdash;a woman's angry protest against
+the tyranny of knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>"All the same, they are my forbears, my kith and kin," she said, with
+emphasis. "But of course Mrs. Barnes is mistress here: I suppose she
+will do as she pleases."</p>
+
+<p>The German stared politely at the carpet. It was now Daphne's turn to
+shrug. She threw herself into a chair, with very red cheeks, one foot
+hanging over the other, and the fingers of her hands, which shone with
+diamonds, tapping the chair impatiently. Her dress of a delicate pink,
+touched here and there with black, her wide black hat, and the eyes
+which glowed from the small pointed face beneath it; the tumbling masses
+of her dark hair as contrasted with her general lightness and
+slenderness; the red of the lips, the whiteness of the hands and brow,
+the dainty irregularity of feature: these things made a Watteau sketch
+of her, all pure colour and lissomeness, with dots and scratches of
+intense black. Daphne was much handsomer than she had been as a girl,
+but also a trifle less refined. All her points were intensified&mdash;her
+eyes had more flame; the damask of her cheek was deeper; her grace was
+wilder, her voice a little shriller than of old.</p>
+
+<p>While the uncomfortable silence which the two women had made around them
+still lasted, Roger Barnes appeared on the garden steps.</p>
+
+<p>"Hullo! any tea going?" He came in, without waiting for an answer,
+looked from his mother to Daphne, from Daphne to his mother, and laughed
+uncomfortably.</p>
+
+<p>"Still bothering about those beastly pictures?" he said as he helped
+himself to a cup of tea.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Thank</i> you, Roger!" said Lady Barnes.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't mean any harm, mother." He crossed over to her and sat down
+beside her. "I say, Daphne, I've got an idea. Why shouldn't mother have
+them? She's going to take a house, she says. Let's hand them all over to
+her!"</p>
+
+<p>Lady Barnes's lips trembled with indignation. "The Trescoes who were
+born and died in this house, belong here!" The tone of the words showed
+the stab to feeling and self-love. "It would be a sacrilege to move
+them."</p>
+
+<p>"Well then, let's move ourselves!" exclaimed Daphne, springing up. "We
+can let this house again, can't we, Roger?"</p>
+
+<p>"We can, I suppose," said Roger, munching his bread and butter; "but
+we're not going to."</p>
+
+<p>He raised his head and looked quietly at her.</p>
+
+<p>"I think we'd better!" The tone was imperious. Daphne, with her thin
+arms and hands locked behind her, paused beside her husband.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Lelius, stealthily raising his eyes, observed the two. A strange
+little scene&mdash;not English at all. The English, he understood, were a
+phlegmatic people. What had this little Southerner to do among them? And
+what sort of fellow was the husband?</p>
+
+<p>It was evident that some mute coloquy passed between the husband and
+wife&mdash;disapproval on his part, attempt to assert authority, defiance, on
+hers. Then the fair-skinned English face, confronting Daphne, wavered
+and weakened, and Roger smiled into the eyes transfixing him.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" thought Lelius, "she has him, de poor fool!"</p>
+
+<p>Roger, coming over to his mother, began a murmured conversation. Daphne,
+still breathing quick, consented to talk to Dr. Lelius and Mrs. French.
+Lelius, who travelled widely, had brought her news of some pictures in a
+chateau of the Bourbonnais&mdash;pictures that her whole mind was set on
+acquiring. Elsie French noticed the <i>expertise</i> of her talk; the
+intellectual development it implied; the passion of will which
+accompanied it. "To the dollar, all things are possible"&mdash;one might have
+phrased it so.</p>
+
+<p>The soft September air came in through the open windows, from a garden
+flooded with western sun. Suddenly through the subdued talk which filled
+the drawing-room&mdash;each group in it avoiding the other&mdash;the sound of a
+motor arriving made itself heard.</p>
+
+<p>"Heavens! who on earth knows we're here?" said Barnes, looking up.</p>
+
+<p>For they had only been camping a week in the house, far too busy to
+think of neighbours. They sat expectant and annoyed, reproaching each
+other with not having told the butler to say "Not at home." Lady
+Barnes's attitude had in it something else&mdash;a little anxiety; but it
+escaped notice. Steps came through the hall, and the butler, throwing
+open the door, announced&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Fairmile."</p>
+
+<p>Roger Barnes sprang to his feet. His mother, with a little gasp, caught
+him by the arm instinctively. There was a general rise and a movement of
+confusion, till the new-comer, advancing, offered her hand to Daphne.</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid, Mrs. Barnes, I am disturbing you all. The butler told me
+you had only been here a few days. But Lady Barnes and your husband are
+such old friends of mine that, as soon as I heard&mdash;through our old
+postmistress, I think&mdash;that you had arrived, I thought I might venture."</p>
+
+<p>The charming voice dropped, and the speaker waited, smiling, her eyes
+fixed on Daphne. Daphne had taken her hand in some bewilderment, and was
+now looking at her husband for assistance. It was clear to Elsie French,
+in the background, that Daphne neither knew the lady nor the lady's
+name, and that the visit had taken her entirely by surprise.</p>
+
+<p>Barnes recovered himself quickly. "I had no idea you were in these
+parts," he said, as he brought a chair forward for the visitor, and
+stood beside her a moment.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Barnes, observing him, as she stiffly greeted the new-comer&mdash;his
+cool manner, his deepened colour&mdash;felt the usual throb of maternal pride
+in him, intensified by alarm and excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I am staying a day or two with Duchess Mary," said the new-comer.
+"She is a little older&mdash;and no less gouty, poor dear, than she used to
+be. Mrs. Barnes, I have heard a great deal of you&mdash;though you mayn't
+know anything about me. Ah! Dr. Lelius?"</p>
+
+<p>The German, bowing awkwardly, yet radiant, came forward to take the hand
+extended to him.</p>
+
+<p>"They did nothing but talk about you at the Louvre, when I was there
+last week," she said, with a little confidential nod. "You have made
+them horribly uncomfortable about some of their things. Isn't it a pity
+to know too much?"</p>
+
+<p>She turned toward Daphne. "I'm afraid that's your case too." She smiled,
+and the smile lit up a face full of delicate lines and wrinkles, which
+no effort had been made to disguise; a tired face, where the eyes spoke
+from caverns of shade, yet with the most appealing and persuasive
+beauty.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean about pictures?" said Daphne, a little coldly. "I don't
+know as much as Dr. Lelius."</p>
+
+<p>Humour leaped into the eyes fixed upon her; but Mrs. Fairmile only said:
+"That's not given to the rest of us mortals. But after all, <i>having's</i>
+better than knowing. Don't&mdash;<i>don't</i> you possess the Vitali Signorelli?"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice was most musical and flattering. Daphne smiled in spite of
+herself. "Yes, we do. It's in London now&mdash;waiting till we can find a
+place for it."</p>
+
+<p>"You must let me make a pilgrimage&mdash;when it comes. But you know you'd
+find a number of things at Upcott&mdash;where I'm staying now&mdash;that would
+interest you. I forget whether you've met the Duchess?"</p>
+
+<p>"This is our first week here," said Roger, interposing. "The house has
+been let till now. We came down to see what could be made of it."</p>
+
+<p>His tone was only just civil. His mother, looking on, said to herself
+that he was angry&mdash;and with good reason.</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Fairmile still smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! the Lelys!" she cried, raising her hand slightly toward the row of
+portraits on the wall. "The dear impossible things! Are you still
+discussing them&mdash;as we used to do?"</p>
+
+<p>Daphne started. "You know this house, then?"</p>
+
+<p>The smile broadened into a laugh of amusement, as Mrs. Fairmile turned
+to Roger's mother.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't I, dear Lady Barnes&mdash;don't I know this house?"</p>
+
+<p>Lady Barnes seemed to straighten in her chair. "Well, you were here
+often enough to know it," she said abruptly. "Daphne, Mrs. Fairmile is a
+distant cousin of ours."</p>
+
+<p>"Distant, but quite enough to swear by!" said the visitor, gaily. "Yes,
+Mrs. Barnes, I knew this house very well in old days. It has many
+charming points." She looked round with a face that had suddenly become
+coolly critical, an embodied intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne, as though divining for the first time a listener worthy of her
+steel, began to talk with some rapidity of the changes she wished to
+make. She talked with an evident desire to show off, to make an
+impression. Mrs. Fairmile listened attentively, occasionally throwing in
+a word of criticism or comment, in the softest, gentlest voice. But
+somehow, whenever she spoke, Daphne felt vaguely irritated. She was
+generally put slightly in the wrong by her visitor, and Mrs. Fairmile's
+extraordinary knowledge of Heston Park, and of everything connected with
+it, was so odd and disconcerting. She had a laughing way, moreover, of
+appealing to Roger Barnes himself to support a recollection or an
+opinion, which presently produced a contraction of Daphne's brows. Who
+was this woman? A cousin&mdash;a cousin who knew every inch of the house, and
+seemed to be one of Roger's closest friends? It was really too strange
+that in all these years Roger should never have said a word about her!</p>
+
+<p>The red mounted in Daphne's cheek. She began, moreover, to feel herself
+at a disadvantage to which she was not accustomed. Dr. Lelius,
+meanwhile, turned to Mrs. Fairmile, whenever she was allowed to speak,
+with a joyous yet inarticulate deference he had never shown to his
+hostess. They understood each other at a word or a glance. Beside them
+Daphne, with all her cleverness, soon appeared as a child for whom one
+makes allowances.</p>
+
+<p>A vague anger swelled in her throat. She noticed, too, Roger's silence
+and Lady Barnes's discomfort. There was clearly something here that had
+been kept from her&mdash;something to be unravelled!</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the new-comer rose. Mrs. Fairmile wore a dress of some pale
+gray stuff, cobweb-light and transparent, over a green satin. It had the
+effect of sea-water, and her gray hat, with its pale green wreath,
+framed the golden-gray of her hair. Every one of her few adornments was
+exquisite&mdash;so was her grace as she moved. Daphne's pink-and-black
+vivacity beside her seemed a pinchbeck thing.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, when will you all come to Upcott?" Mrs. Fairmile said
+graciously, as she shook hands. "The Duchess will be enchanted to see
+you any day, and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you! but we really can't come so far," said a determined voice.
+"We have only a shaky old motor&mdash;our new one isn't ready yet&mdash;and
+besides, we want all our time for the house."</p>
+
+<p>"You make him work so hard?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fairmile, laughing, pointed to the speaker. Roger looked up
+involuntarily, and Daphne saw the look.</p>
+
+<p>"Roger has nothing to do," she said, quickly. "Thank you very much: we
+will certainly come. I'll write to you. How many miles did you say it
+was?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, nothing for a motor!&mdash;twenty-five. We used to think it nothing for
+a ride, didn't we?"</p>
+
+<p>The speaker, who was just passing through the door, turned towards
+Roger, who with Lelius, was escorting her, with a last gesture&mdash;gay,
+yet, like all her gestures, charged with a slight yet deliberate
+significance.</p>
+
+<p>They disappeared. Daphne walked to the window, biting her lip.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>As she stood there Herbert French came into the room, looking a little
+shy and ill at ease, and behind him three persons, a clergyman in an
+Archdeacon's apron and gaiters, and two ladies. Daphne, perceiving them
+sideways in a mirror to her right, could not repress a gesture and
+muttered sound of annoyance.</p>
+
+<p>French introduced Archdeacon Mountford, his wife and sister. Roger, it
+seemed, had met them in the hall, and sent them in. He himself had been
+carried off on some business by the head keeper.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne turned ungraciously. Her colour was very bright, her eyes a
+little absent and wild. The two ladies, both clad in pale brown stuffs,
+large mushroom hats, and stout country boots, eyed her nervously, and as
+they sat down, at her bidding, they left the Archdeacon&mdash;who was the
+vicar of the neighbouring town&mdash;to explain, with much amiable
+stammering, that seeing the Duchess's carriage at the front door, as
+they were crossing the park, they presumed that visitors were admitted,
+and had ventured to call.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne received the explanation without any cordiality. She did indeed
+bid the callers sit down, and ordered some fresh tea. But she took no
+pains to entertain them, and if Lady Barnes and Herbert French had not
+come to the rescue, they would have fared but ill. The Archdeacon, in
+fact, did come to grief. For him Mrs. Barnes was just a "foreigner,"
+imported from some unknown and, of course, inferior <i>milieu</i>, one who
+had never been "a happy English child," and must therefore be treated
+with indulgence. He endeavoured to talk to her&mdash;kindly&mdash;about her
+country. A branch of his own family, he informed her, had settled about
+a hundred years before this date in the United States. He gave her, at
+some length, the genealogy of the branch, then of the main stock to
+which he himself belonged, presuming that she was, at any rate,
+acquainted with the name? It was, he said, his strong opinion that
+American women were very "bright." For himself he could not say that he
+even disliked the accent, it was so "quaint." Did Mrs. Barnes know many
+of the American bishops? He himself had met a large number of them at a
+reception at the Church House, but it had really made him quite
+uncomfortable! They wore no official dress, and there was he&mdash;a mere
+Archdeacon!&mdash;in gaiters. And, of course, no one thought of calling them
+"my lord." It certainly was very curious&mdash;to an Englishman. And
+Methodist bishops!&mdash;such as he was told America possessed in
+plenty&mdash;that was still more curious. One of the Episcopalian bishops,
+however, had preached&mdash;in Westminster Abbey&mdash;a remarkable sermon, on a
+very sad subject, not perhaps a subject to be discussed in a
+drawing-room&mdash;but still&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the group on the other side of the room became aware that the
+Archdeacon's amiable prosing had been sharply interrupted&mdash;that Daphne,
+not he, was holding the field. A gust of talk arose&mdash;Daphne declaiming,
+the Archdeacon, after a first pause of astonishment, changing aspect and
+tone. French, looking across the room, saw the mask of conventional
+amiability stripped from what was really a strong and rather tyrannical
+face. The man's prominent mouth and long upper lip emerged. He drew his
+chair back from Daphne's; he tried once or twice to stop or argue with
+her, and finally he rose abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear!"&mdash;his wife turned hastily&mdash;"We must not detain Mrs. Barnes
+longer!"</p>
+
+<p>The two ladies looked at the Archdeacon&mdash;the god of their idolatry; then
+at Daphne. Hurriedly, like birds frightened by a shot, they crossed the
+room and just touched their hostess's hand; the Archdeacon, making up
+for their precipitancy by a double dose of dignity, bowed himself out;
+the door closed behind them.</p>
+
+<p>"Daphne!&mdash;my dear! what is the matter?" cried Lady Barnes, in dismay.</p>
+
+<p>"He spoke to me impertinently about my country!" said Daphne, turning
+upon her, her black eyes blazing, her cheeks white with excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"The Archdeacon!&mdash;he is always so polite!"</p>
+
+<p>"He talked like a fool&mdash;about things he doesn't understand!" was
+Daphne's curt reply, as she gathered up her hat and some letters, and
+moved towards the door.</p>
+
+<p>"About what? My dear Daphne! He could not possibly have meant to offend
+you! Could he, Mr. French?" Lady Barnes turned plaintively towards her
+very uncomfortable companions.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne confronted her.</p>
+
+<p>"If he chooses to think America immoral and degraded because American
+divorce laws are different from the English laws, let him think it!&mdash;but
+he has no business to air his views to an American&mdash;at a first visit,
+too!" said Daphne passionately, and, drawing herself up, she swept out
+of the room, leaving the others dumfoundered.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh dear! oh dear!" wailed Lady Barnes. "And the Archdeacon is so
+important! Daphne might have been rude to anybody else&mdash;but not the
+Archdeacon!"</p>
+
+<p>"How did they manage to get into such a subject&mdash;so quickly?" asked
+Elsie in bewilderment.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose he took it for granted that Daphne agreed with him! All
+decent people do."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Barnes's wrath was evident&mdash;so was her indiscretion. Elsie French
+applied herself to soothing her, while Herbert French disappeared into
+the garden with a book. His wife, however, presently observed from the
+drawing-room that he was not reading. He was pacing the lawn, with his
+hands behind him, and his eyes on the grass. The slight, slowly-moving
+figure stood for meditation, and Elsie French knew enough to understand
+that the incidents of the afternoon might well supply any friend of
+Roger Barnes's with food for meditation. Herbert had not been in the
+drawing-room when Mrs. Fairmile was calling, but no doubt he had met her
+in the hall when she was on her way to her carriage.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Daphne, in her own room, was also employed in meditation. She
+had thrown herself, frowning, into a chair beside a window which
+overlooked the park. The landscape had a gentle charm&mdash;spreading grass,
+low hills, and scattered woods&mdash;under a warm September sun. But it had
+no particular accent, and Daphne thought it both tame and depressing;
+like an English society made up of Archdeacon Mountfords and their
+women-kind! What a futile, irritating man!&mdash;and what dull creatures were
+the wife and daughter!&mdash;mere echoes of their lord and master. She had
+behaved badly, of course; in a few days she supposed the report of her
+outburst would be all over the place. She did not care. Even for Roger's
+sake she was not going to cringe to these poor provincial standards.</p>
+
+<p>And all the time she knew very well that it was not the Archdeacon and
+his fatuities that were really at fault. The afternoon had been decided
+not by the Mountfords' call, but by that which had preceded it.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+
+<p>Mrs. Barnes, however, made no immediate reference to the matter which
+was in truth filling her mind. She avoided her husband and
+mother-in-law, both of whom were clearly anxious to capture her
+attention; and, by way of protecting herself from them, she spent the
+late afternoon in looking through Italian photographs with Dr. Lelius.</p>
+
+<p>But about seven o'clock Roger found her lying on her sofa, her hands
+clasped behind her head&mdash;frowning&mdash;the lips working.</p>
+
+<p>He came in rather consciously, glancing at his wife in hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you tired, Daphne?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"A penny for your thoughts, then!" He stooped over her and looked into
+her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne made no reply. She continued to look straight before her.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter with you?" he said, at last.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm wondering," said Daphne slowly, "how many more cousins and great
+friends you have, that I know nothing about. I think another time it
+would be civil&mdash;just that!&mdash;to give me a word of warning."</p>
+
+<p>Roger pulled at his moustache. "I hadn't an idea she was within a
+thousand miles of this place! But, if I had, I couldn't have imagined
+she would have the face to come here!"</p>
+
+<p>"Who is she?" With a sudden movement Daphne turned her eyes upon him.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, there's no good making any bones about it," said the man,
+flushing. "She's a girl I was once engaged to, for a very short time,"
+he added hastily. "It was the week before my father died, and our smash
+came. As soon as it came she threw me over."</p>
+
+<p>Daphne's intense gaze, under the slightly frowning brows, disquieted
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"How long were you engaged to her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Three weeks."</p>
+
+<p>"Had she been staying here before that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;she often stayed here. Daphne! don't look like that! She treated
+me abominably; and before I married you I had come not to care twopence
+about her."</p>
+
+<p>"You did care about her when you proposed to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"No!&mdash;not at all! Of course, when I went out to New York I was sore,
+because she had thrown me over."</p>
+
+<p>"And I"&mdash;Daphne made a scornful lip&mdash;"was the feather-bed to catch you
+as you fell. It never occurred to you that it might have been honourable
+to tell me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't know&mdash;I never asked you to tell me of your affairs!"</p>
+
+<p>Roger, his hands in his pockets, looked round at her with an awkward
+laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"I told you everything!" was the quick reply&mdash;"<i>everything</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Roger uncomfortably remembered that so indeed it had been; and moreover
+that he had been a good deal bored at the time by Daphne's confessions.</p>
+
+<p>He had not been enough in love with her&mdash;then&mdash;to find them of any great
+account. And certainly it had never occurred to him to pay them back in
+kind. What did it matter to her or to anyone that Chloe Morant had made
+a fool of him? His recollection of the fooling, at the time he proposed
+to Daphne, was still so poignant that it would have been impossible to
+speak of it. And within a few months afterwards he had practically
+forgotten it&mdash;and Chloe too. Of course he could not see her again, for
+the first time, without being "a bit upset"; mostly, indeed, by the
+boldness&mdash;the brazenness&mdash;of her behaviour. But his emotions were of no
+tragic strength, and, as Lady Barnes had complained to Mrs. French, he
+was now honestly in love with Daphne and his child.</p>
+
+<p>So that he had nothing but impatience and annoyance for the recollection
+of the visit of the afternoon; and Daphne's attitude distressed him.
+Why, she was as pale as a ghost! His thoughts sent Chloe Fairmile to the
+deuce.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, dear!" he said, kneeling down suddenly beside his
+wife&mdash;"don't you get any nonsense into your head. I'm not the kind of
+fellow who goes philandering after a woman when she's jilted him. I took
+her measure, and after you accepted me I never gave her another thought.
+I forgot her, dear&mdash;bag and baggage! Kiss me, Daphne!"</p>
+
+<p>But Daphne still held him at bay.</p>
+
+<p>"How long were you engaged to her?" she repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"I've told you&mdash;three weeks!" said the man, reluctantly.</p>
+
+<p>"How long had you known her?"</p>
+
+<p>"A year or two. She was a distant cousin of father's. Her father was
+Governor of Madras, and her mother was dead. She couldn't stand India
+for long together, and she used to stay about with relations. Why she
+took a fancy to me I can't imagine. She's so booky and artistic, and
+that kind of thing, that I never understood half the time what she was
+talking about. Now you're just as clever, you know, darling, but I do
+understand you."</p>
+
+<p>Roger's conscience made a few dim remonstrances. It asked him whether in
+fact, standing on his own qualifications and advantages of quite a
+different kind, he had not always felt himself triumphantly more than a
+match for Chloe and her cleverness. But he paid no heed to them. He was
+engaged in stroking Daphne's fingers and studying the small set face.</p>
+
+<p>"Whom did she marry?" asked Daphne, putting an end to the stroking.</p>
+
+<p>"A fellow in the army&mdash;Major Fairmile&mdash;a smart, popular sort of chap. He
+was her father's aide-de-camp when they married&mdash;just after we did&mdash;and
+they've been in India, or Egypt, ever since. They don't get on, and I
+suppose she comes and quarters herself on the old Duchess&mdash;as she used
+to on us."</p>
+
+<p>"You seem to know all about her! Yes, I remember now, I've heard people
+speak of her to you. Mrs. Fairmile&mdash;Mrs. Fairmile&mdash;yes, I remember,"
+said Daphne, in a brooding voice, her cheeks becoming suddenly very red.
+"Your uncle&mdash;in town&mdash;mentioned her. I didn't take any notice."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should you? She doesn't matter a fig, either to you or to me!"</p>
+
+<p>"It matters to me very much that these people who spoke of her&mdash;your
+uncle and the others&mdash;knew what I didn't know!" cried Daphne,
+passionately. She stared at Roger, strangely conscious that something
+epoch-making and decisive had happened. Roger had had a secret from her
+all these years&mdash;that was what had happened; and now she had discovered
+it. That he <i>could</i> have a secret from her, however, was the real
+discovery. She felt a fierce resentment, and yet a kind of added respect
+for him. All the time he had been the private owner of thoughts and
+recollections that she had no part in, and the fact roused in her tumult
+and bitterness. Nevertheless the disturbance which it produced in her
+sense of property, the shock and anguish of it, brought back something
+of the passion of love she had felt in the first year of their marriage.</p>
+
+<p>During these three years she had more than once shown herself insanely
+jealous for the merest trifles. But Roger had always laughed at her, and
+she had ended by laughing at herself.</p>
+
+<p>Yet all the time he had had this secret. She sat looking at him hard
+with her astonishing eyes; and he grew more and more uneasy.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, some of them knew," he said, answering her last reproach. "And
+they knew that I was jolly well quit of her! I suppose I ought to have
+told you, Daphne&mdash;of course I ought&mdash;I'm sorry. But the fact was I never
+wanted to think of her again. And I certainly never want to see her
+again! Why, in the name of goodness, did you accept that tea-fight?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I mean to go."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you'll have to go without me," was the incautious reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, so you're afraid of meeting her! I shall know what to think, if you
+<i>don't</i> go." Daphne sat erect, her hands clasped round her knees.</p>
+
+<p>Roger made a sound of wrath, and threw his cigarette into the fire.
+Then, turning round again to face her, he tried to control himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, Daphne, don't let us quarrel about this. I'll tell you
+everything you want to know&mdash;the whole beastly story. But it can't be
+pleasant to me to meet a woman who treated me as she did&mdash;and it
+oughtn't to be pleasant to you either. It was like her audacity to come
+this afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>"She simply wants to get hold of you again!" Daphne sprang up as she
+spoke with a violent movement, her face blazing.</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense! she came out of nothing in the world but curiosity, and
+because she likes making people uncomfortable. She knew very well mother
+and I didn't want her!"</p>
+
+<p>But the more he tried to persuade her the more determined was Daphne to
+pay the promised visit, and that he should pay it with her. He gave way
+at last, and she allowed herself to be soothed and caressed. Then, when
+she seemed to have recovered herself, he gave her a tragic-comic account
+of the three weeks' engagement, and the manner in which it had been
+broken off: caustic enough, one might have thought, to satisfy the most
+unfriendly listener. Daphne heard it all quietly.</p>
+
+<p>Then her maid came, and she donned a tea-gown.</p>
+
+<p>When Roger returned, after dressing, he found her still abstracted.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you kissed her?" she said abruptly, as they stood by the fire
+together.</p>
+
+<p>He broke out in laughter and annoyance, and called her a little goose,
+with his arm round her.</p>
+
+<p>But she persisted. "You did kiss her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, of course I did! What else is one engaged for?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm certain she wished for a great deal of kissing!" said Daphne,
+quickly.</p>
+
+<p>Roger was silent. Suddenly there swept through him the memory of the
+scene in the orchard, and with it an admission&mdash;wrung, as it were, from
+a wholly unwilling self&mdash;that it had remained for him a scene unique and
+unapproached. In that one hour the "muddy vesture" of common feeling and
+desire that closed in his manhood had taken fire and burnt to a pure
+flame, fusing, so it seemed, body and soul. He had not thought of it for
+years, but now that he was made to think of it, the old thrill
+returned&mdash;a memory of something heavenly, ecstatic, far transcending the
+common hours and the common earth.</p>
+
+<p>The next moment he had thrown the recollection angrily from him.
+Stooping to his wife, he kissed her warmly. "Look here, Daphne! I wish
+you'd let that woman alone! Have I ever looked at anyone but you, old
+girl, since that day at Mount Vernon?"</p>
+
+<p>Daphne let him hold her close: but all the time, thoughts&mdash;ugly
+thoughts&mdash;like "little mice stole in and out." The notion of Roger and
+that woman, in the past, engaged&mdash;always together, in each other's arms,
+tormented her unendurably.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>She did not, however, say a word to Lady Barnes on the subject. The
+morning following Mrs. Fairmile's visit that lady began a rather awkward
+explanation of Chloe Fairmile's place in the family history, and of the
+reasons for Roger's silence and her own. Daphne took it apparently with
+complete indifference, and managed to cut it short in the middle.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless she brooded over the whole business; and her resentment
+showed itself, first of all, in a more and more drastic treatment of
+Heston, its pictures, decorations and appointments. Lady Barnes dared
+not oppose her any more. She understood that if she were thwarted, or
+even criticized, Daphne would simply decline to live there, and her own
+link with the place would be once more broken. So she withdrew angrily
+from the scene, and tried not to know what was going on. Meanwhile a
+note of invitation had been addressed to Daphne by the Duchess, and had
+been accepted; Roger had been reminded, at the point of the bayonet,
+that go he must; and Dr. Lelius had transferred himself from Heston to
+Upcott, and the companionship of Mrs. Fairmile.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It was the last day of the Frenches' visit. Roger and Herbert French had
+been trying to get a brace or two of partridges on the long-neglected
+and much-poached estate; and on the way home French expressed a hope
+that, now they were to settle at Heston, Roger would take up some of the
+usual duties of the country gentleman. He spoke in the half-jesting way
+characteristic of the modern Mentor. The old didactics have long gone
+out of fashion, and the moralist of to-day, instead of preaching, <i>ore
+retundo</i>, must only "hint a fault and hesitate dislike." But, hide it as
+he might, there was an ethical and religious passion in French that
+would out, and was soon indeed to drive him from Eton to a town parish.
+He had been ordained some two years before this date.</p>
+
+<p>It was this inborn pastoral gift, just as real as the literary or
+artistic gifts, and containing the same potentialities of genius as they
+which was leading him to feel a deep anxiety about the Barnes's
+<i>m&eacute;nage</i>. It seemed to him necessary that Daphne should respect her
+husband; and Roger, in a state of complete idleness, was not altogether
+respectable.</p>
+
+<p>So, with much quizzing of him as "the Squire," French tried to goad his
+companion into some of a Squire's duties. "Stand for the County Council,
+old fellow," he said. "Your father was on it, and it'll give you
+something to do."</p>
+
+<p>To his surprise Roger at once acquiesced. He was striding along in cap
+and knickerbockers, his curly hair still thick and golden on his
+temples, his clear skin flushed with exercise, his general physical
+aspect even more splendid than it had been in his first youth. Beside
+him, the slender figure and pleasant irregular face of Herbert French
+would have been altogether effaced and eclipsed but for the Eton
+master's two striking points: prematurely white hair, remarkably thick
+and abundant; and very blue eyes, shy, spiritual and charming.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mind," Roger was saying, "if you think they'd have me. Beastly
+bore, of course! But one's got to do something for one's keep."</p>
+
+<p>He looked round with a smile, slightly conscious. The position he had
+occupied for some three years, of the idle and penniless husband
+dependent on his wife's dollars, was not, he knew, an exalted one in
+French's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! you'll find it quite tolerable," said French. "Roads and schools do
+as well as anything else to break one's teeth on. We shall see you a
+magistrate directly."</p>
+
+<p>Roger laughed. "That would be a good one!&mdash;I say, you know, I hope
+Daphne's going to like Heston."</p>
+
+<p>French hoped so too, guardedly.</p>
+
+<p>"I hear the Archdeacon got on her nerves yesterday?"</p>
+
+<p>He looked at his companion with a slight laugh and a shrug.</p>
+
+<p>"That doesn't matter."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. He's rather a spiteful old party. And Daphne's accustomed
+to be made a lot of, you know. In London there's always a heap of people
+making up to her&mdash;and in Paris, too. She talks uncommon good
+French&mdash;learnt it in the convent. I don't understand a word of what they
+talk about&mdash;but she's a queen&mdash;I can tell you! She doesn't want
+Archdeacons prating at her."</p>
+
+<p>"It'll be all right when she knows the people."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, mother and I get along here all right. We've got to pick up
+the threads again; but we do know all the people, and we like the old
+place for grandfather's sake, and all the rest of it. But there isn't
+much to amuse Daphne here."</p>
+
+<p>"She'll be doing up the house."</p>
+
+<p>"And offending mother all the time. I say, French, don't you think art's
+an awful nuisance! When I hear Lelius yarning on about <i>quattro-cento</i>
+and <i>cinque-cento</i>, I could drown myself. No! I suppose you're tarred
+with the same brush." Roger shrugged his shoulders. "Well, I don't care,
+so long as Daphne gets what she wants, and the place suits the child."
+His ruddy countenance took a shade of anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>French inquired what reason there was to suppose that Beatty would not
+thrive perfectly at Heston. Roger could only say that the child had
+seemed to flag a little since their arrival. Appetite not quite so good,
+temper difficult, and so on. Their smart lady-nurse was not quite
+satisfied. "And I've been finding out about doctors here," the young
+father went on, knitting his brows: "blokes, most of them, and such old
+blokes! I wouldn't trust Beatty to one of them. But I've heard of a new
+man at Hereford&mdash;awfully good, they say&mdash;a wunner! And after all a motor
+would soon run him out!"</p>
+
+<p>He went on talking eagerly about the child, her beauty, her cleverness,
+the plans Daphne had for her bringing up, and so on. No other child ever
+had been, ever could be, so fetching, so "cunning," so lovely, such a
+duck! The Frenches, indeed, possessed a boy of two, reputed handsome.
+Roger wished to show himself indulgent to anything that might be pleaded
+for him. "Dear little fellow!"&mdash;of course. But Beatty! Well! it was
+surprising, indeed, that he should find himself the father of such a
+little miracle; he didn't know what he'd done to deserve it. Herbert
+French smiled as he walked.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, I hope there'll be a boy," said Roger, stopping suddenly to
+look at Heston Park, half a mile off, emerging from the trees. "Daphne
+would like a boy&mdash;so should I, and particularly now that we've got the
+old house back again."</p>
+
+<p>He stood and surveyed it. French noticed in the growing manliness of his
+face and bearing the signs of things and forces ancestral, of those
+ghostly hands stretching from the past that in a long settled society
+tend to push a man into his right place and keep him there. The Barnes
+family was tolerable, though not distinguished. Roger's father's great
+temporary success in politics and business had given it a passing
+splendour, now quenched in the tides of failure and disaster which had
+finally overwhelmed his career. Roger evidently did not want to think
+much about his Barnes heritage. But it was clear also that he was proud
+of the Trescoes; that he had fallen back upon them, so to speak. Since
+the fifteenth century there had always been a Trescoe at Heston; and
+Roger had already taken to browsing in county histories and sorting
+family letters. French foresaw a double-barrelled surname before
+long&mdash;perhaps, just in time for the advent of the future son and heir
+who was already a personage in the mind, if not yet positively expected.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow, I hope Mrs. Barnes will give you not one son, but
+many!" he said, in answer to his companion's outburst. "They're wanted
+nowadays."</p>
+
+<p>Roger nodded and smiled, and then passed on to discussion of county
+business and county people. He had already, it seemed, informed himself
+to a rather surprising degree. The shrewd, upright county gentleman was
+beginning to emerge, oddly, from the Apollo. The merits and absurdities
+of the type were already there, indeed, <i>in posse</i>. How persistent was
+the type, and the instinct! A man of Roger's antecedents might seem to
+swerve from the course; but the smallest favourable variation of
+circumstances, and there he was again on the track, trotting happily
+between the shafts.</p>
+
+<p>"If only the wife plays up!" thought French.</p>
+
+<p>The recollection of Daphne, indeed, emerged simultaneously in both
+minds.</p>
+
+<p>"Daphne, you know, won't be able to stand this all the year round," said
+Roger. "By George, no! not with a wagon-load of Leliuses!" Then, with a
+sudden veer and a flush: "I say, French, do you know what sort of state
+the Fairmile marriage is in by now? I think that lady might have spared
+her call&mdash;don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>French kept his eyes on the path. It was the first time, as far as he
+was concerned, that Roger had referred to the incident. Yet the tone of
+the questioner implied a past history. It was to him, indeed, that Roger
+had come, in the first bitterness of his young grief and anger, after
+the "jilting." French had tried to help him, only to find that he was no
+more a match for the lady than the rest of the world.</p>
+
+<p>As to the call and the invitation, he agreed heartily that a person of
+delicacy would have omitted them. The Fairmile marriage, it was
+generally rumoured, had broken down hopelessly.</p>
+
+<p>"Faults on both sides, of course. Fairmile is and always was an
+unscrupulous beggar! He left Eton just as you came, but I remember him
+well."</p>
+
+<p>Roger began a sentence to the effect that if Fairmile had no scruples of
+his own, Chloe would scarcely have taught him any; but he checked
+himself abruptly in the middle, and the two men passed to other topics.
+French began to talk of East London, and the parish he was to have
+there. Roger, indifferent at first, did not remain so. He did not
+profess, indeed, any enthusiasm of humanity; but French found in him new
+curiosities. That children should starve, and slave, and suffer&mdash;<i>that</i>
+moved him. He was, at any rate, for hanging the parents.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The day of the Upcott visit came, and, in spite of all recalcitrance,
+Roger was made to mount the motor beside his wife. Lady Barnes had
+entirely refused to go, and Mr. and Mrs. French had departed that
+morning for Eton.</p>
+
+<p>As the thing was inevitable, Roger's male philosophy came to his aid.
+Better laugh and have done with it. So that, as he and Daphne sped along
+the autumn lanes, he talked about anything and everything. He expressed,
+for instance, his friendly admiration for Elsie French.</p>
+
+<p>"She's just the wife for old Herbert&mdash;and, by George, she's in love with
+him!"</p>
+
+<p>"A great deal too much in love with him!" said Daphne, sharply. The day
+was chilly, with a strong east wind blowing, and Daphne's small figure
+and face were enveloped in a marvellous wrap, compounded in equal
+proportions of Russian sables and white cloth. It had not long arrived
+from W&ouml;rth, and Roger had allowed himself some jibes as to its probable
+cost. Daphne's "simplicity," the pose of her girlhood, was in fact
+breaking down in all directions. The arrogant spending instinct had
+gained upon the moderating and self-restraining instinct. The results
+often made Barnes uncomfortable. But he was inarticulate, and easily
+intimidated&mdash;by Daphne. With regard to Mrs. French, however, he took up
+the cudgels at once. Why shouldn't Elsie adore her man, if it pleased
+her? Old Herbert was worth it.</p>
+
+<p>Women, said Daphne, should never put themselves wholly in a man's power.
+Moreover, wifely adoration was particularly bad for clergymen, who were
+far too much inclined already to give themselves airs.</p>
+
+<p>"I say! Herbert never gives himself airs!"</p>
+
+<p>"They both did&mdash;to me. They have quite different ways from us, and they
+make one feel it. They have family prayers&mdash;we don't. They have ascetic
+ideas about bringing up children&mdash;I haven't. Elsie would think it
+self-indulgent and abominable to stay in bed to breakfast&mdash;I don't. The
+fact is, all her interests and ideals are quite different from mine, and
+I am rather tired of being made to feel inferior."</p>
+
+<p>"Daphne! what rubbish! I'm certain Elsie French never had such an idea
+in her head. She's awfully soft and nice; I never saw a bit of conceit
+in her."</p>
+
+<p>"She's soft outside and steel inside. Well, never mind! we don't get on.
+She's the old America, I'm the new," said Daphne, half frowning, half
+laughing; "and I'm as good as she."</p>
+
+<p>"You're a very good-looking woman, anyway," said Roger, admiring the
+vision of her among the warm browns and shining whites of her wrap.
+"Much better-looking than when I married you." He slipped an arm under
+the cloak and gave her small waist a squeeze.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne turned her eyes upon him. In their black depths his touch had
+roused a passion which was by no means all tenderness. There was in it
+something threatening, something intensely and inordinately possessive.
+"That means that you didn't think me good-looking at all, as compared
+with&mdash;Chloe?" she said insistently.</p>
+
+<p>"Really, Daphne!"&mdash;Roger withdrew his arm with a rather angry
+laugh&mdash;"the way you twist what one says! I declare I won't make you any
+more pretty speeches for an age."</p>
+
+<p>Daphne scarcely replied; but there dawned on her face the
+smile&mdash;melting, provocative, intent&mdash;which is the natural weapon of such
+a temperament. With a quick movement she nestled to her husband's side,
+and Roger was soon appeased.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The visit which followed always counted in Roger Barnes's memory as the
+first act of the tragedy, the first onset of the evil that engulfed him.</p>
+
+<p>They found the old Duchess, Mrs. Fairmile, and Dr. Lelius, alone. The
+Duchess had been the penniless daughter of an Irish clergyman, married
+<i>en secondes noces</i> for her somewhat queer and stimulating personality,
+by an epicurean duke, who, after having provided the family with a
+sufficient store of dull children by an aristocratic mother, thought
+himself at liberty, in his declining years, to please himself. He had
+left her the dower-house&mdash;small but delicately Jacobean&mdash;and she was now
+nearly as old as the Duke had been when he married her. She was largely
+made, shapeless, and untidy. Her mannish face and head were tied up in a
+kind of lace coif; she had long since abandoned all thought of a waist;
+and her strong chin rested on an ample bosom.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as Mrs. Barnes was seated near her hostess, Lelius&mdash;who had an
+intimate acquaintance, through their pictures, with half the great
+people of Europe&mdash;began to observe the Duchess's impressions. Amused
+curiosity, first. Evidently Daphne represented to her one of the queer,
+crude types that modern society is always throwing up on the shores of
+life&mdash;like strange beasts from deep-sea soundings.</p>
+
+<p>An American heiress, half Spanish&mdash;South-American Spanish&mdash;with no doubt
+a dash of Indian; no manners, as Europe understands them; unlimited
+money, and absurd pretensions&mdash;so Chloe said&mdash;in the matter of art; a
+mixture of the pedant and the <i>parvenue</i>; where on earth had young
+Barnes picked her up! It was in some such way, no doubt&mdash;so Lelius
+guessed&mdash;that the Duchess's thoughts were running.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Mrs. Barnes was treated with all possible civility. The
+Duchess inquired into the plans for rebuilding Heston; talked of her own
+recollections of the place, and its owners; hoped that Mrs. Barnes was
+pleased with the neighbourhood; and finally asked the stock question,
+"And how do you like England?"</p>
+
+<p>Daphne looked at her coolly. "Moderately!" she said, with a smile, the
+colour rising in her cheek as she became aware, without looking at them,
+that Roger and Mrs. Fairmile had adjourned to the farther end of the
+large room, leaving her to the Duchess and Lelius.</p>
+
+<p>The small eyes above the Duchess's prominent nose sparkled. "Only
+moderately?" The speaker's tone expressed that she had been for once
+taken by surprise. "I'm extremely sorry we don't please you, Mrs.
+Barnes."</p>
+
+<p>"You see, my expectations were so high."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it the country, or the climate, or the people, that won't do?"
+inquired the Duchess, amused.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose it would be civil to say the climate," replied Daphne,
+laughing.</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon the Duchess saw that her visitor had made up her mind not to
+be overawed. The great lady summoned Dr. Lelius to her aid, and she, the
+German, and Daphne, kept up a sparring conversation, in which Mrs.
+Barnes, driven on by a secret wrath, showed herself rather noisier than
+Englishwomen generally are. She was a little impertinent, the Duchess
+thought, decidedly aggressive, and not witty enough to carry it off.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Daphne had instantly perceived that Mrs. Fairmile and Roger
+had disappeared into the conservatory; and though she talked incessantly
+through their absence, she felt each minute of it. When they came back
+for tea, she imagined that Roger looked embarrassed, while Mrs. Fairmile
+was all gaiety, chatting to her companion, her face raised to his, in
+the manner of one joyously renewing an old intimacy. As they slowly
+advanced up the long room, Daphne felt it almost intolerable to watch
+them, and her pulses began to race. <i>Why</i> had she never been told of
+this thing? That was what rankled; and the Southern wildness in her
+blood sent visions of the past and terrors of the future hurrying
+through her brain, even while she went on talking fast and recklessly to
+the Duchess.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>At tea-time conversation turned on the various beautiful things which
+the room contained&mdash;its Nattiers, its Gobelins, its two <i>dessus de
+portes</i> by Boucher, and its two cabinets, of which one had belonged to
+Beaumarchais and the other to the <i>Appartement du Dauphin</i> at
+Versailles.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne restrained herself for a time, asked questions, and affected no
+special knowledge. Then, at a pause, she lifted a careless hand,
+inquiring whether "the Fragonard sketch" opposite were not the pendant
+of one&mdash;she named it&mdash;at Berlin.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah-h-h!" said Mrs. Fairmile, with a smiling shake of the head, "how
+clever of you! But that's not a Fragonard. I wish it were. It's an
+unknown. Dr. Lelius has given him a name."</p>
+
+<p>And she and Lelius fell into a discussion of the drawing, that soon left
+Daphne behind. Native taste of the finest, mingled with the training of
+a lifetime, the intimate knowledge of collections of one who had lived
+among them from her childhood&mdash;these things had long since given Chloe
+Fairmile a kind of European reputation. Daphne stumbled after her,
+consumed with angry envy, the <i>pr&eacute;cieuse</i> in her resenting the easy
+mastery of Mrs. Fairmile, and the wife in her offended by the strange
+beauty, the soft audacities of a woman who had once, it seemed, held
+Roger captive, and would, of course, like to hold him captive again.</p>
+
+<p>She burned in some way to assert herself, the imperious will chafing at
+the slender barrier of self-control. And some malicious god did, in
+fact, send an opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>After tea, when Roger, in spite of efforts to confine himself to the
+Duchess, had been once more drawn into the orbit of Mrs. Fairmile, as
+she sat fingering a cigarette between the two men, and gossiping of
+people and politics, the butler entered, and whispered a message to the
+Duchess.</p>
+
+<p>The mistress of the house laughed. "Chloe! who do you think has called?
+Old Marcus, of South Audley Street. He's been at Brendon House&mdash;buying
+up their Romneys, I should think. And as he was passing here, he wished
+to show me something. Shall we have him in?"</p>
+
+<p>"By all means! The last time he was here he offered you four thousand
+pounds for the blue Nattier," said Chloe, with a smile, pointing to the
+picture.</p>
+
+<p>The Duchess gave orders; and an elderly man, with long black hair,
+swarthy complexion, fine eyes, and a peaked forehead, was admitted, and
+greeted by her, Mrs. Fairmile, and Dr. Lelius as an old acquaintance. He
+sat down beside them, was given tea, and presented to Mr. and Mrs.
+Barnes. Daphne, who knew the famous dealer by sight and reputation
+perfectly well, was piqued that he did not recognize her. Yet she well
+remembered having given him an important commission not more than a year
+before her marriage.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as a cup of tea had been dispatched, Marcus came to the
+business. He drew a small leather case out of the bag he had brought
+into the room with him; and the case, being opened, disclosed a small
+but marvellous piece of S&egrave;vres.</p>
+
+<p>"There!" he said, pointing triumphantly to a piece on the Duchess's
+chimney-piece. "Your Grace asked me&mdash;oh! ten years ago&mdash;and again last
+year&mdash;to find you the pair of that. Now&mdash;you have it!"</p>
+
+<p>He put the two together, and the effect was great. The Duchess looked at
+it with greed&mdash;the greed of the connoisseur. But she shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Marcus, I have no money."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" He protested, smiling and shrugging his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"And I know you want a brigand's price for it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, nothing&mdash;nothing at all."</p>
+
+<p>The Duchess took it up, and regretfully turned it round and round.</p>
+
+<p>"A thousand, Marcus?" she said, looking up.</p>
+
+<p>He laughed, and would not reply.</p>
+
+<p>"That means more, Marcus: how do you imagine that an old woman like me,
+with only just enough for bread and butter, can waste her money on
+S&egrave;vres?" He grinned. She put it down resolutely. "No! I've got a
+consumptive nephew with a consumptive family. He ought to have been hung
+for marrying, but I've got to send them all to Davos this winter. No, I
+can't, Marcus; I can't&mdash;I'm too poor." But her eyes caressed the shining
+thing.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne bent forward. "If the Duchess has <i>really</i> made up her mind, Mr.
+Marcus, I will take it. It would just suit me!"</p>
+
+<p>Marcus started on his chair. "<i>Pardon, Madame!</i>" he said, turning
+hastily to look at the slender lady in white, of whom he had as yet
+taken no notice.</p>
+
+<p>"We have the motor. We can take it with us," said Daphne, stretching out
+her hand for it triumphantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Madame," said Marcus, in some agitation, "I have not the honour. The
+price&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The price doesn't matter," said Daphne, smiling. "You know me quite
+well, Mr. Marcus. Do you remember selling a Louis Seize cabinet to Miss
+Floyd?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" The dealer was on his feet in a moment, saluting, excusing
+himself. Daphne heard him with graciousness. She was now the centre of
+the situation: she had asserted herself, and her money. Marcus outdid
+himself in homage. Lelius in the background looked on, a sarcastic smile
+hidden by his fair moustache. Mrs. Fairmile, too, smiled; Roger had
+grown rather hot; and the Duchess was frankly annoyed.</p>
+
+<p>"I surrender it to <i>force majeure</i>," she said, as Daphne took it from
+her. "Why are we not all Americans?"</p>
+
+<p>And then, leaning back in her chair, she would talk no more. The
+pleasure of the visit, so far as it had ever existed, was at an end.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>But before the Barnes motor departed homewards, Mrs. Fairmile had again
+found means to carry Roger Barnes out of sight and hearing into the
+garden. Roger had not been able to avoid it; and Daphne, hugging the
+leather case, had, all the same, to look on.</p>
+
+<p>When they were once more alone together, speeding through the bright
+sunset air, each found the other on edge.</p>
+
+<p>"You were rather rough on the Duchess, Daphne!" Roger protested. "It
+wasn't quite nice, was it, outbidding her like that in her own house?"</p>
+
+<p>Daphne flared up at once, declaring that she wanted no lessons in
+deportment from him or anyone else, and then demanding fiercely what was
+the meaning of his two disappearances with Mrs. Fairmile. Whereupon
+Roger lost his temper still more decidedly, refusing to give any account
+of himself, and the drive passed in a continuous quarrel, which only
+just stopped short, on Daphne's side, of those outrageous and insulting
+things which were burning at the back of her tongue, while she could not
+as yet bring herself to say them.</p>
+
+<p>An unsatisfactory peace was patched up during the evening. But in the
+dead of night Daphne sat up in bed, looking at the face and head of her
+husband beside her on the pillow. He lay peacefully sleeping, the noble
+outline of brow and features still nobler in the dim light which effaced
+all the weaker, emptier touches. Daphne felt rising within her that
+mingled passion of the jealous woman, which is half love, half hate, of
+which she had felt the first stirrings in her early jealousy of Elsie
+Maddison. It was the clutch of something racial and inherited&mdash;a
+something which the Northerner hardly knows. She had felt it before on
+one or two occasions, but not with this intensity. The grace of Chloe
+Fairmile haunted her memory, and the perfection, the corrupt perfection
+of her appeal to men, men like Roger.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus2" id="illus2"></a>
+<img src="images/illus2.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"In the dead of night Daphne sat up in bed, looking at
+the face and head of her husband beside her on the pillow."</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>She must wring from him&mdash;she must and would&mdash;a much fuller history of
+his engagement. And of those conversations in the garden, too. It stung
+her to recollect that, after all, he had given her no account of them.
+She had been sure they had not been ordinary conversations!&mdash;Mrs.
+Fairmile was not the person to waste her time in chit-chat.</p>
+
+<p>A gust of violence swept through her. She had given Roger
+everything&mdash;money, ease, amusement. Where would he have been without
+her? And his mother, too?&mdash;tiresome, obstructive woman! For the first
+time that veil of the unspoken, that mist of loving illusion which
+preserves all human relations, broke down between Daphne and her
+marriage. Her thoughts dwelt, in a vulgar detail, on the money she had
+settled upon Roger&mdash;on his tendencies to extravagance&mdash;his
+happy-go-lucky self-confident ways. He would have been a pauper but for
+her; but now that he had her money safe, without a word to her of his
+previous engagement, he and Mrs. Fairmile might do as they pleased. The
+heat and corrosion of this idea spread through her being, and the will
+made no fight against it.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+
+<p>"You're off to the meet?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am. Look at the day!"</p>
+
+<p>Chloe Fairmile, who was standing in her riding-habit at the window of
+the Duchess's morning-room, turned to greet her hostess.</p>
+
+<p>A mild November sun shone on the garden and the woods, and Chloe's
+face&mdash;the more exquisite as a rule for its slight, strange
+withering&mdash;had caught a freshness from the morning.</p>
+
+<p>The Duchess was embraced, and bore it; she herself never kissed anybody.</p>
+
+<p>"You always look well, my dear, in a habit, and you know it. Tell me
+what I shall do with this invitation."</p>
+
+<p>"From Lady Warton? May I look?"</p>
+
+<p>Chloe took a much blotted and crossed letter from the Duchess's hand.</p>
+
+<p>"What were her governesses about?" said the Duchess, pointing to it.
+"<i>Really</i>&mdash;the education of our class! Read it!"</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>... "Can I persuade you to come&mdash;and bring Mrs. Fairmile&mdash;next
+Tuesday to dinner, to meet Roger Barnes and his wife? I groan at
+the thought, for I think she is quite one of the most disagreeable
+little creatures I ever saw. But Warton says I must&mdash;a
+Lord-Lieutenant can't pick and choose!&mdash;and people as rich as they
+are have to be considered. I can't imagine why it is she makes
+herself so odious. All the Americans I ever knew I have liked
+particularly. It is, of course, annoying that they have so much
+money&mdash;but Warton says it isn't their fault&mdash;it's Protection, or
+something of the kind. But Mrs. Barnes seems really to wish to
+trample on us. She told Warton the other day that his
+tapestries&mdash;you know, those we're so proud of&mdash;that they were bad
+Flemish copies of something or other&mdash;a set belonging to a horrid
+friend of hers, I think. Warton was furious. And she's made the
+people at Brendon love her for ever by insisting that they have now
+ruined all their pictures without exception, by the way they've had
+them restored&mdash;et cetera, et cetera. She really makes us feel her
+millions&mdash;and her brains&mdash;too much. We're paupers, but we're not
+worms. Then there's the Archdeacon&mdash;why should she fall foul of
+him? He tells Warton that her principles are really shocking. She
+told him she saw no reason why people should stick to their
+husbands or wives longer than it pleased them&mdash;and that in America
+nobody did! He doesn't wish Mrs. Mountford to see much of
+her;&mdash;though, really, my dear, I don't think Mrs. M. is likely to
+give him trouble&mdash;do you? And I hear, of course, that she thinks us
+all dull and stuck-up, and as ignorant as savages. It's so odd she
+shouldn't even want to be liked!&mdash;a young woman in a strange
+neighbourhood. But she evidently doesn't, a bit. Warton declares
+she's already tired of Roger&mdash;and she's certainly not nice to him.
+What can be the matter? Anyway, dear Duchess, <i>do</i> come, and help
+us through."</p></div>
+
+<p>"What, indeed, can be the matter?" repeated Chloe lightly, as she handed
+back the letter.</p>
+
+<p>"Angela Warton never knows anything. But there's not much need for <i>you</i>
+to ask, my dear," said the Duchess quietly.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fairmile turned an astonished face.</p>
+
+<p>"Me?"</p>
+
+<p>The Duchess, more bulky, shapeless and swathed than usual, subsided on a
+chair, and just raised her small but sharp eyes on Mrs. Fairmile.</p>
+
+<p>"What can you mean?" said Chloe, after a moment, in her gayest voice. "I
+can't imagine. And I don't think I'll try."</p>
+
+<p>She stooped and kissed the untidy lady in the chair. The Duchess bore it
+again, but the lines of her mouth, with the strong droop at the corners,
+became a trifle grim. Chloe looked at her, smiled, shook her head. The
+Duchess shook hers, and then they both began to talk of an engagement
+announced that morning in the <i>Times</i>.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Mrs. Fairmile was soon riding alone, without a groom&mdash;she was an
+excellent horse-woman, and she never gave any unnecessary trouble to her
+friends' servants&mdash;through country lanes chequered with pale sun. As for
+the Duchess's attack upon her, Chloe smarted. The Duchess had clearly
+pulled her up, and Chloe was not a person who took it well.</p>
+
+<p>If Roger's American wife was by now wildly jealous of his old <i>fianc&eacute;e</i>,
+whose fault was it? Had not Mrs. Barnes herself thrown them perpetually
+together? Dinners at Upcott!&mdash;invitations to Heston!&mdash;a resolute
+frequenting of the same festal gatherings with Mrs. Fairmile. None of it
+with Roger's goodwill, or his mother's,&mdash;Chloe admitted it. It had been
+the wife's doing&mdash;all of it. There had been even&mdash;rare occurrences&mdash;two
+or three balls in the neighbourhood. Roger hated dancing, but Daphne had
+made him go to them all. Merely that she might display her eyes, her
+diamonds, and her gowns? Not at all. The real psychology of it was
+plain. "She wishes to keep us under observation&mdash;to give us
+opportunities&mdash;and then torment her husband. Very well then!&mdash;<i>tu l'as
+voulu, Madame!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>As to the "opportunities," Chloe coolly confessed to herself that she
+had made rather a scandalous use of them. The gossip of the
+neighbourhood had been no doubt a good deal roused; and Daphne, it
+seemed, was discontented. But is it not good for such people to be
+discontented? The money and the arrogance of Roger's wife had provoked
+Roger's former <i>fianc&eacute;e</i> from the beginning; the money to envy, and the
+arrogance to chastisement. Why not? What is society but a discipline?</p>
+
+<p>As for Roger, who is it says there is a little polygamy in all men?
+Anyway, a man can always&mdash;nearly always&mdash;keep a corner for the old love,
+if the new love will let him. Roger could, at any rate; "though he is a
+model husband, far better than she deserves, and anybody not a fool
+could manage him."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It was a day of physical delight, especially for riders. After a warm
+October, the leaves were still thick on the trees; Nature had not yet
+resigned herself to death and sleep. Here and there an oak stood, fully
+green, among the tawny reds and golds of a flaming woodland. The gorse
+was yellow on the commons; and in the damp woody ways through which
+Chloe passed, a few primroses&mdash;frail, unseasonable blooms&mdash;pushed their
+pale heads through the moss. The scent of the beech-leaves under foot;
+the buffeting of a westerly wind; the pleasant yielding of her light
+frame to the movement of the horse; the glimpses of plain that every
+here and there showed themselves through the trees that girdled the high
+ground or edge along which she rode; the white steam-wreath of a train
+passing, far away, through strata of blue or pearly mist; an old
+windmill black in the middle distance; villages, sheltering among their
+hedges and uplands: a sky, of shadow below widely brooding over earth,
+and of a radiant blue flecked with white cloud above:&mdash;all the English
+familiar scene, awoke in Chloe Fairmile a familiar sensuous joy. Life
+was so good&mdash;every minute, every ounce of it!&mdash;from the Duchess's <i>chef</i>
+to these ethereal splendours of autumn&mdash;from the warm bath, the
+luxurious bed, and breakfast, she had but lately enjoyed, to these
+artistic memories that ran through her brain, as she glanced from side
+to side, reminded now of Turner, now of DeWint, revelling in the
+complexity of her own being. Her conscience gave her no trouble; it had
+never been more friendly. Her husband and she had come to an
+understanding; they were in truth more than quits. There was to be no
+divorce&mdash;and no scandal. She would be very prudent. A man's face rose
+before her that was not the face of her husband, and she
+smiled&mdash;indulgently. Yes, life would be interesting when she returned to
+town. She had taken a house in Chester Square from the New Year; and Tom
+was going to Teheran. Meanwhile, she was passing the time.</p>
+
+<p>A thought suddenly occurred to her. Yes, it was quite possible&mdash;probable
+even&mdash;that she might find Roger at the meet! The place appointed was a
+long way from Heston, but in the old days he had often sent on a fresh
+horse by train to a local station. They had had many a run together over
+the fields now coming into sight. Though certainly if he imagined there
+were the very smallest chance of finding her there, he would give this
+particular meet a wide berth.</p>
+
+<p>Chloe laughed aloud. His resistance&mdash;and his weakness&mdash;were both so
+amusing. She thought of the skill&mdash;the peremptory smiling skill&mdash;with
+which she had beguiled him into the garden, on the day when the young
+couple paid their first call at Upcott. First, the low-spoken words at
+the back of the drawing-room, while Mrs. Barnes and the Duchess were
+skirmishing&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>must</i> speak to you. Something that concerns another
+person&mdash;something urgent."</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon, unwilling and rather stern compliance on the man's part&mdash;the
+handsome face darkened with most unnecessary frowns. And in the garden,
+the short colloquy between them&mdash;"Of course, I see&mdash;you haven't forgiven
+me! Never mind! I am doing this for someone else&mdash;it's a duty." Then
+abruptly&mdash;"You still have three of my letters."</p>
+
+<p>Amusing again&mdash;his shock of surprise, his blundering denials! He always
+was the most unmethodical and unbusiness-like of mortals&mdash;poor Roger!
+She heard her own voice in reply. "Oh yes, you have. I don't make
+mistakes about such things. Do you remember the letter in which I told
+you about that affair of Theresa Weightman?"</p>
+
+<p>A stare&mdash;an astonished admission. Precisely!</p>
+
+<p>"Well, she's in great trouble. Her husband threatens absurdities. She
+has always confided in me&mdash;she trusts me, and I can't have that letter
+wandering about the world."</p>
+
+<p>"I certainly sent it back!"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;you never sent it back. You have three of mine. And you know how
+careless you are&mdash;how you leave things about. I was always on
+tenterhooks. Look again, <i>please</i>! You must have some idea where they
+might be."</p>
+
+<p>Perplexity&mdash;annoyance!</p>
+
+<p>"When we sold the London house, all papers and documents were sent down
+here. We reserved a room&mdash;which was locked up."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>A la bonne heure!</i> Of course&mdash;there they are."</p>
+
+<p>But all the same&mdash;great unwillingness to search. It was most unlikely he
+would be able to find anything&mdash;most unlikely there was anything to
+find. He was sure he had sent back everything. And then a look in the
+fine hazel eyes&mdash;like a horse putting back its ears.</p>
+
+<p>All of no avail&mdash;against the laughing persistence which insisted on the
+letters. "But I must have them&mdash;I really must! It is a horrid tragedy,
+and I told you everything&mdash;things I had no business to tell you at all."</p>
+
+<p>On which, at last, a grudging consent to look, followed by a marked
+determination to go back to the drawing-room....</p>
+
+<p>But it was the second <i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te</i> that was really adroit! After
+tea&mdash;just a touch on the arm&mdash;while the Duchess was showing the Nattiers
+to Mrs. Barnes, and Lelius was holding the lamp. "One moment more!&mdash;in
+the conservatory. I have a few things to add." And in that second little
+interview&mdash;about nothing, in truth&mdash;a mere piece of audacity&mdash;the lion's
+claws had been a good deal pared. He had been made to look at her, first
+and foremost; to realize that she was not afraid of him&mdash;not one
+bit!&mdash;and that he would have to treat her decently. Poor Roger! In a few
+years the girl he had married would be a plain and prickly little
+pedant&mdash;ill-bred besides&mdash;and he knew it.</p>
+
+<p>As to more recent adventures. If people meet in society, they must be
+civil; and if old friends meet at a dance, there is an institution known
+as "sitting out"; and "sitting out" is nothing if not conversational;
+and conversation&mdash;between old friends and cousins&mdash;is beguiling, and may
+be lengthy.</p>
+
+<p>The ball at Brendon House&mdash;Chloe still felt the triumph of it in her
+veins&mdash;still saw the softening in Roger's handsome face, the look of
+lazy pleasure, and the disapproval&mdash;or was it the envy?&mdash;in the eyes of
+certain county magnates looking on. Since then, no communication between
+Heston and Upcott.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Mrs. Fairmile was now a couple of miles from the meet. She had struck
+into a great belt of plantations bounding one side of the ducal estate.
+Through it ran a famous green ride, crossed near its beginning by a main
+road. On her right, beyond the thick screen of trees, was the railway,
+and she could hear the occasional rush of a train.</p>
+
+<p>When she reached the cross road, which led from a station, a labourer
+opened the plantation gates for her. As he unlatched the second, she
+perceived a man's figure in front of her.</p>
+
+<p>"Roger!"</p>
+
+<p>A touch of the whip&mdash;her horse sprang forward. The man in front looked
+back startled; but she was already beside him.</p>
+
+<p>"You keep up the old habit, like me? What a lovely day!"</p>
+
+<p>Roger Barnes, after a flush of amazement and surprise, greeted her
+coldly: "It is a long way for you to come," he said formally. "Twelve
+miles, isn't it? You're not going to hunt?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no! I only came to look at the hounds and the horses&mdash;to remind
+myself of all the good old times. You don't want to remember them, I
+know. Life's gone on for you!"</p>
+
+<p>Roger bent forward to pat the neck of his horse. "It goes on for all of
+us," he said gruffly.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, well!" She sighed. He looked up and their eyes met. The wind had
+slightly reddened her pale skin: her expression was one of great
+animation, yet of great softness. The grace of the long, slender body in
+the close-fitting habit; of the beautiful head and loosened hair under
+the small, low-crowned beaver hat; the slender hand upon the reins&mdash;all
+these various impressions rushed upon Barnes at once, bringing with them
+the fascination of a past happiness, provoking, by contrast, the memory
+of a harassing and irritating present.</p>
+
+<p>"Is Heston getting on?" asked Mrs. Fairmile, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>He frowned involuntarily.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I suppose we shall be straight some day;" the tone, however, belied
+the words. "When once the British workman gets in, it's the deuce to get
+him out."</p>
+
+<p>"The old house had such a charm!" said Chloe softly.</p>
+
+<p>Roger made no reply. He rode stiffly beside her, looking straight before
+him. Chloe, observing him without appearing to do anything of the kind,
+asked herself whether the Apollo radiance of him were not already
+somewhat quenched and shorn. A slight thickening of feature&mdash;a slight
+coarsening of form&mdash;she thought she perceived them. Poor Roger!&mdash;had he
+been living too well and idling too flagrantly on these American
+dollars?</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she bent over and laid a gloved hand on his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Hadn't it?" she said, in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>He started. But he neither looked at her nor shook her off.</p>
+
+<p>"What&mdash;the house?" was the ungracious reply. "I'm sure I don't know; I
+never thought about it&mdash;whether it was pretty or ugly, I mean. It suited
+us, and it amused mother to fiddle about with it."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fairmile withdrew her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course a great deal of it was ugly," she said composedly. "Dear Lady
+Barnes really didn't know. But then we led such a jolly life in it&mdash;<i>we</i>
+made it!"</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him brightly, only to see in him an angry flash of
+expression. He turned and faced her.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad you think it was jolly. My remembrances are not quite so
+pleasant."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed a little&mdash;not flinching at all&mdash;her face rosy to his
+challenge.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, they are&mdash;or should be. What's the use of blackening the past
+because it couldn't be the present. My dear Roger, if I hadn't&mdash;well,
+let's talk plainly!&mdash;if I hadn't thrown you over, where would you be
+now? We should be living in West Kensington, and I should be taking
+boarders&mdash;or&mdash;no!&mdash;a country-house, perhaps, with paying guests. You
+would be teaching the cockney idea how to shoot, at half a guinea a day,
+and I should be buying my clothes second-hand through the <i>Exchange and
+Mart</i>. Whereas&mdash;whereas&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She bent forward again.</p>
+
+<p>"You are a very rich man&mdash;you have a charming wife&mdash;a dear little
+girl&mdash;you can get into Parliament&mdash;travel, speculate, race, anything you
+please. And I did it all!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't agree with you," he said drily. She laughed again.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we can't argue it&mdash;can we? I only wanted to point out to you the
+plain, bare truth, that there is nothing in the world to prevent our
+being excellent friends again&mdash;<i>now</i>. But first&mdash;and once more&mdash;<i>my
+letters!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Her tone was a little peremptory, and Roger's face clouded.</p>
+
+<p>"I found two of them last night, by the merest chance&mdash;in an old
+dispatch-box I took to America. They were posted to you on the way
+here."</p>
+
+<p>"Good! But there were three."</p>
+
+<p>"I know&mdash;so you said. I could only find two."</p>
+
+<p>"Was the particular letter I mentioned one of them?"</p>
+
+<p>He answered unwillingly.</p>
+
+<p>"No. I searched everywhere. I don't believe I have it."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head with decision.</p>
+
+<p>"You certainly have it. Please look again."</p>
+
+<p>He broke out with some irritation, insisting that if it had not been
+returned it had been either lost or destroyed. It could matter to no
+one.</p>
+
+<p>Some snaring, entangling instinct&mdash;an instinct of the hunter&mdash;made her
+persist. She must have it. It was a point of honour. "Poor Theresa is so
+unhappy, so pursued! You saw that odious paragraph last week? I can't
+run the risk!"</p>
+
+<p>With a groan of annoyance, he promised at last that he would look again.
+Then the sparkling eyes changed, the voice softened.</p>
+
+<p>She praised&mdash;she rewarded him. By smooth transitions she slipped into
+ordinary talk; of his candidature for the County Council&mdash;the points of
+the great horse he rode&mdash;the gossip of the neighbourhood&mdash;the charms of
+Beatty.</p>
+
+<p>And on this last topic he, too, suddenly found his tongue. The cloud&mdash;of
+awkwardness, or of something else not to be analyzed&mdash;broke away, and he
+began to talk, and presently to ask questions, with readiness, even with
+eagerness.</p>
+
+<p>Was it right to be so very strict with children?&mdash;babies under three?
+Wasn't it ridiculous to expect them not to be naughty or greedy? Why,
+every child wanted as much sweetstuff as it could tuck in! Quite right
+too&mdash;doctors said it was good for them. But Miss Farmer&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Who is Miss Farmer?" inquired Mrs. Fairmile. She was riding close
+beside him&mdash;an embodied friendliness&mdash;a soft and womanly Chloe, very
+different from the old.</p>
+
+<p>"She's the nurse; my mother found her. She's a lady&mdash;by way of&mdash;she
+doesn't do any rough work&mdash;and I dare say she's the newest thing out.
+But she's too tight a hand for my taste. I say!&mdash;what do you think of
+this! She wouldn't let Beattie come down to the drawing-room yesterday,
+because she cried for a sweet! Wasn't that <i>devilish</i>!" He brought his
+hand down fiercely on his thigh.</p>
+
+<p>"A Gorgon!" said Mrs. Fairmile, raising her eyebrows. "Any other
+qualifications? French? German?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a word. Not she! Her people live somewhere near here, I believe."
+Roger looked vaguely round him. "Her father managed a brick-field on
+this estate&mdash;some parson or other recommended her to mother."</p>
+
+<p>"And you don't like her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, no&mdash;I don't! She's not the kind of woman <i>I</i> want." He blurted it
+out, adding hurriedly, "But my wife thinks a lot of her."</p>
+
+<p>Chloe dismissed the topic of the nurse, but still let him run on about
+the child. Amazing!&mdash;this development of paternity in the careless,
+handsome youth of three years before. She was amused and bored by it.
+But her permission of it had thawed him&mdash;that she saw.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, from the child she led him on to common acquaintance&mdash;old
+friends&mdash;and talk flowed fast. She made him laugh; and the furrows in
+the young brow disappeared. Now as always they understood each other at
+a word; there was between them the freemasonry of persons sprung from
+the same world and the same tradition; his daily talk with Daphne had
+never this easy, slipping pleasure. Meanwhile the horses sauntered on,
+unconsciously held back; and the magical autumn wood, its lights and
+lines and odours, played upon their senses.</p>
+
+<p>At last Roger with a start perceived a gate in front. He looked at his
+watch, and she saw him redden.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall be late for the meet."</p>
+
+<p>His eyes avoided hers. He gathered up the reins, evidently conscious.</p>
+
+<p>Smiling, she let him open the gate for her, and then as they passed into
+the road, shadowed with over-arching trees, she reined in Whitefoot, and
+bending forward, held out her hand. "Good-bye!"</p>
+
+<p>"You're not coming?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think I've had enough. I'll go home. Good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>It was a relief. In both minds had risen the image of their
+arrival together&mdash;amid the crowd of the meet. As he looked at
+her&mdash;gratefully&mdash;the grace of her movement, the temptation of her eyes,
+the rush of old memories suddenly turned his head. He gripped her hand
+hard for a minute, staring at her.</p>
+
+<p>The road in front of them was quite empty. But fifty yards behind them
+was a small red-brick house buried in trees. As they still paused, hand
+in hand, in front of the gate into the wood, which had failed to swing
+back and remained half open, the garden door of this house unclosed and
+a young woman in a kind of uniform stepped into the road. She perceived
+the two riders&mdash;stopped in astonishment&mdash;observed them unseen, and
+walked quickly away in the direction of the station.</p>
+
+<p>Roger reached Heston that night only just in time to dress for dinner.</p>
+
+<p>By this time he was in a wholly different mood; angry with himself, and
+full of rueful thought about his wife. Daphne and he had been getting on
+anything but well for some time past. He knew that he had several times
+behaved badly; why, indeed, that very afternoon, had he held Chloe
+Fairmile's hand in the public road, like an idiot? Suppose anyone had
+passed? It was only Daphne's tempers and the discomfort at home that
+made an hour with Chloe so pleasant&mdash;and brought the old recollections
+back. He vowed he never thought of her, except when she was there to
+make a fool of him&mdash;or plague him about those beastly letters. Whereas
+Daphne&mdash;Daphne was always in his mind, and this eclipse into which their
+daily life had passed. He seemed to be always tripping and stumbling,
+like a lame man among loose stones; doing or saying what he did not mean
+to do or say, and tongue-tied when he should have spoken. Daphne's
+jealousy made him ridiculous; he resented it hotly; yet he knew he was
+not altogether blameless.</p>
+
+<p>If only something could be done to make Daphne like Heston and the
+neighbours! But he saw plainly enough that in spite of all the effort
+and money she was pouring out upon the house, it gave her very little
+pleasure in return. Her heart was not in it. And as for the neighbours,
+she had scarcely a good word now for any of them. Jolly!&mdash;just as he was
+going to stand for the County Council, with an idea of Parliament later
+on! And as for what <i>he</i> wished&mdash;what would be good for <i>him</i>&mdash;that she
+never seemed to think of. And, really, some of the things she said now
+and then about money&mdash;nobody with the spirit of a mouse could stand
+them.</p>
+
+<p>To comfort his worries he went first of all to the nursery, where he
+found the nursery-maid in charge, and the child already asleep. Miss
+Farmer, it appeared, had been enjoying a "day off," and was not expected
+back till late. He knelt down beside the little girl, feeding his eyes
+upon her. She lay with her delicate face pressed into the pillow, the
+small neck visible under the cloud of hair, one hand, the soft palm
+uppermost, on the sheet. He bent down and kissed the hand, glad that the
+sharp-faced nurse was not there to see. The touch of the fragrant skin
+thrilled him with pride and joy; so did the lovely defencelessness of
+the child's sleep. That such a possession should have been given to him,
+to guard and cherish! There was in his mind a passionate vow to guard
+the little thing&mdash;aye, with his life-blood; and then a movement of
+laughter at his own heroics. Well!&mdash;Daphne might give him sons&mdash;but he
+did not suppose any other child could ever be quite the same to him as
+Beatty. He sat in a contented silence, feeding his eyes upon her, as the
+soft breath rose and fell. And as he did so, his temper softened and
+warmed toward Beatty's mother.</p>
+
+<p>A little later he found Daphne in her room, already dressed for dinner.
+He approached her uneasily.</p>
+
+<p>"How tired you look, Daphne! What have you been doing to yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>Daphne stiffly pointed out that she had been standing over the workmen
+all day, there being no one else to stand over them, and of course she
+was tired. Her manner would have provoked him but for the visiting of an
+inward compunction. Instead of showing annoyance he bent down and kissed
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll stay and help to-morrow, if you want me, though you know I'm no
+good. I say, how much more are you going to do to the house?"</p>
+
+<p>Daphne looked at him coldly. She had not returned the kiss. "Of course,
+I know that you don't appreciate in the least what I am doing!"</p>
+
+<p>Roger thrust his hands into his pockets, and walked up and down
+uncomfortably. He thought, in fact, that Daphne was spoiling the dear
+nondescript old place, and he knew that the neighbourhood thought so
+too. Also he particularly disliked the young architect who was
+superintending the works ("a priggish ass," who gave himself abominable
+airs&mdash;except to Daphne, whom he slavishly obeyed, and to Miss Farmer,
+with whom Roger had twice caught him gossipping). But he was determined
+not to anger his wife, and he held his tongue.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish, anyway, you wouldn't stick at it so closely," he said
+discontentedly. "Let's go abroad somewhere for Christmas&mdash;Nice, or Monte
+Carlo. I am sure you want a change."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it isn't exactly an enchanting neighbourhood," said Daphne, with
+pinched lips.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm awfully sorry you don't like the people here," said Roger,
+perplexed. "I dare say they're all stupids."</p>
+
+<p>"That wouldn't matter&mdash;if they behaved decently," said Daphne, flushing.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose that means&mdash;if I behaved decently!" cried Roger, turning upon
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne faced him, her head in air, her small foot beating the ground, in
+a trick it had.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm not likely to forget the Brendon ball, am I?"</p>
+
+<p>Roger's look changed.</p>
+
+<p>"I meant no harm, and you know I didn't," he said sulkily.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, you only made a laughing-stock of <i>me</i>!" Daphne turned on her
+heel. Suddenly she felt herself roughly caught in Roger's arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Daphne, what <i>is</i> the matter? Why can't we be happy together?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ask yourself," she said, trying to extricate herself, and not
+succeeding. "I don't like the people here, and they don't like me. But
+as you seem to enjoy flirting with Mrs. Fairmile, there's one person
+satisfied."</p>
+
+<p>Roger laughed&mdash;not agreeably. "I shall soon think, Daphne, that
+somebody's 'put a spell on you,' as my old nurse used to say. I wish I
+knew what I could do to break it."</p>
+
+<p>She lay passive in his arms a moment, and then he felt a shiver run
+through her, and saw that she was crying. He held her close to him,
+kissing and comforting her, while his own eyes were wet. What her
+emotion meant, or his own, he could not have told clearly; but it was a
+moment for both of healing, of impulsive return, the one to the other,
+unspoken penitence on her side, a hidden self-blame on his. She clung to
+him fiercely, courting the pressure of his arms, the warm contact of his
+youth; while, in his inner mind, he renounced with energy the temptress
+Chloe and all her works, vowing to himself that he would give Daphne no
+cause, no pretext even, for jealousy, and would bear it patiently if she
+were still unjust and tormenting.</p>
+
+<p>"Where have you been all day?" said Daphne at last, disengaging herself,
+and brushing the tears away from her eyes&mdash;a little angrily, as though
+she were ashamed of them.</p>
+
+<p>"I told you this morning. I had a run with the Stoneshire hounds."</p>
+
+<p>"Whom did you meet there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, various old acquaintances. Nobody amusing." He gave two or three
+names, his conscience pricking him. Somehow, at that moment, it seemed
+impossible to mention Chloe Fairmile.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>About eleven o'clock that night, Daphne and Lady Barnes having just gone
+upstairs, Roger and a local Colonel of Volunteers who was dining and
+spending the night at Heston, were in the smoking-room. Colonel Williams
+had come over to discuss Volunteer prospects in the neighbourhood, and
+had been delighted to find in the grandson of his old friend, Oliver
+Trescoe,&mdash;a young fellow whom he and others had too readily regarded as
+given over to luxury and soft living&mdash;signs of the old public spirit,
+the traditional manliness of the family. The two men were talking with
+great cordiality, when the sound of a dogcart driving up to the front
+door disturbed them.</p>
+
+<p>"Who on earth?&mdash;at this time of night?" said Roger.</p>
+
+<p>The butler, entering with fresh cigarettes, explained that Miss Farmer
+had only just returned, having missed an earlier train.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I hope to goodness she won't go and disturb Miss Beatty,"
+grumbled Roger; and and then, half to himself, half to his companion, as
+the butler departed&mdash;"I don't believe she missed her train; she's one of
+the cool sort&mdash;does jolly well what she likes! I say, Colonel, do you
+like 'lady helps'? I don't!"</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour later, Roger, having said good-night to his guest ten
+minutes before, was mounting the stairs on his own way to bed, when he
+heard in the distance the sound of a closing door and the rustle of a
+woman's dress.</p>
+
+<p>Nurse Farmer, he supposed, who had been gossiping with Daphne. His face,
+as the candle shone upon it, expressed annoyance. Vaguely, he resented
+the kind of intimacy which had grown up lately between Daphne and her
+child's nurse. She was not the kind of person to make a friend of; she
+bullied Beatty; and she must be got rid of.</p>
+
+<p>Yet when he entered his wife's room, everything was dark, and Daphne was
+apparently sound asleep. Her face was hidden from him; and he moved on
+tiptoe so as not to disturb her. Evidently it was not she who had been
+gossiping late. His mother, perhaps, with her maid.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>In the course of that night Roger Barnes's fate was decided, while he
+lay, happily sleeping, beside his wife. Daphne, as soon as she heard his
+regular breathing, opened the eyes she had only pretended to close, and
+lay staring into the shadows of the room, in which a nightlight was
+burning. Presently she got up softly, put on a dressing-gown, and went
+to the fire, which she noiselessly replenished; drawing up a chair, she
+sank back into it, her arms folded. The strengthening firelight showed
+her small white face, amid the masses of her dark hair.</p>
+
+<p>Her whole being was seething with passionate and revengeful thought. It
+was as though with violent straining and wrenching the familiar links
+and bulwarks of life were breaking down, and as if amid the wreck of
+them she found herself looking at goblin faces beyond, growing gradually
+used to them, ceasing to be startled by them, finding in them even a
+wild attraction and invitation.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus3" id="illus3"></a>
+<img src="images/illus3.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<h3>"Her whole being was seething with passionate and
+revengeful thought."</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<p>So Roger had lied to her. Instead of a casual ride, involving a meeting
+with a few old acquaintances, as he had represented to her, he had been
+engaged that day in an assignation with Mrs. Fairmile, arranged
+beforehand, and carefully concealed from his wife. Miss Farmer had seen
+them coming out of a wood together hand in hand! In the public road,
+this!&mdash;not even so much respect for appearances as might have dictated
+the most elementary reticence and decency. The case was so clear that it
+sickened her; she shivered with cold and nausea as she lay there by the
+now glowing fire which yet gave her no physical comfort. Probably in the
+past their relation had gone much farther than Roger had ever confessed
+to his wife. Mrs. Fairmile was a woman who would stick at nothing. And
+if Daphne were not already betrayed, she could no longer protect
+herself. The issue was certain. Such women as Chloe Fairmile are not to
+be baulked of what they desire. Good women cannot fight them on equal
+terms. And as to any attempt to keep the affections of a husband who
+could behave in such a way to the wife who had given him her youth,
+herself, and all the resources and facilities of life, Daphne's whole
+being stiffened into mingled anguish and scorn as she renounced the
+contest. Knowing himself the traitor that he was, he could yet hold her,
+kiss her, murmur tender things to her, allow her to cry upon his breast,
+to stammer repentance and humbleness. Cowardly! False! Treacherous! She
+flung out her hands, rigid, before her in the darkness, as though for
+ever putting him away.</p>
+
+<p>Anguish? Yes!&mdash;but not of such torturing quality as she could have felt
+a year, six months even, before this date. She was astonished that she
+could bear her life, that he could sit there in the night stillness,
+motionless, holding her breath even, while Roger slept there in the
+shadowed bed. Had this thing happened to her before their arrival at
+Heston, she must have fallen upon Roger in mad grief and passion, ready
+to kill him or herself; must at least have poured out torrents of
+useless words and tears. She could not have sat dumb like this; in
+misery, but quite able to think things out, to envisage all the dark
+possibilities of the future. And not only the future. By a perfectly
+logical diversion her thoughts presently went racing to the past. There
+was, so to speak, a suspension of the immediate crisis, while she
+listened to her own mind&mdash;while she watched her own years go by.</p>
+
+<p>It was but rarely that Daphne let her mind run on her own origins. But
+on this winter night, as she sat motionless by the fire, she became
+conscious of a sudden detachment from her most recent self and life&mdash;a
+sudden violent turning against both&mdash;which naturally threw her back on
+the past, on some reflection upon what she had made of herself, by way
+of guide to what she might still make of herself, if she struck boldly,
+now, while there was yet time, for her own freedom and development.</p>
+
+<p>As to her parents, she never confessed, even to herself, that she owed
+them anything, except, of course, the mere crude wealth that her father
+had left her. Otherwise she was vaguely ashamed of them both. And
+yet!&mdash;in her most vital qualities, her love of sensational effect, her
+scorn of half-measures, her quick, relentless imagination, her
+increasing ostentation and extravagance, she was the true child of the
+boastful mercurial Irishman who had married her Spanish mother as part
+of a trade bargain, on a chance visit to Buenos Ayres. For twenty years
+Daniel Floyd had leased and exploited, had ravaged and destroyed, great
+tracts of prim&aelig;val forest in the northern regions of his adopted state,
+leaving behind him a ruined earth and an impoverished community, but
+building up the while a colossal fortune. He had learnt the arts of
+municipal "bossing" in one of the minor towns of Illinois, and had then
+migrated to Chicago, where for years he was the life and soul of all the
+bolder and more adventurous corruption of the city. A jovial, handsome
+fellow!&mdash;with an actor's face, a bright eye, and a slippery hand. Daphne
+had a vivid, and, on the whole, affectionate, remembrance of her father,
+of whom, however, she seldom spoke. The thought of her mother, on the
+other hand, was always unwelcome. It brought back recollections of storm
+and tempest; of wild laughter, and still wilder tears; of gorgeous
+dresses, small feet, and jewelled fingers.</p>
+
+<p>No; her parents had but small place in that dramatic autobiography that
+Daphne was now constructing for herself. She was not their daughter in
+any but the physical sense; she was the daughter of her own works and
+efforts.</p>
+
+<p>She leant forward to the fire, her face propped in her hands, going back
+in thought to her father's death, when she was fifteen; to her three
+years of cloying convent life, and her escape from it, as well as from
+the intriguing relations who would have kept her there; to the clever
+lawyer who had helped to put her in possession of her fortune, and the
+huge sums she had paid him for his services; to her search for
+education, her hungry determination to rise in the world, the friends
+she had made at college, in New York, Philadelphia, Washington. She had
+been influenced by one <i>milieu</i> after another; she had worked hard, now
+at music, now at philosophy; had dabbled in girls' clubs, and gone to
+Socialist meetings, and had been all through driven on by the gadfly of
+an ever-increasing ambition.</p>
+
+<p>Ambition for what! She looked back on this early life with a bitter
+contempt. What had it all come to? Marriage with Roger Barnes!&mdash;a hasty
+passion of which she was already ashamed, for a man who was already
+false to her.</p>
+
+<p>What had made her marry him? She did not mince matters with herself in
+her reply. She had married him, influenced by a sudden, gust of physical
+inclination&mdash;by that glamour, too, under which she had seen him in
+Washington, a glamour of youth and novelty. If she had seen him first in
+his natural environment she would have been on her guard; she would have
+realized what it meant to marry a man who could help her own ideals and
+ambitions so little. And what, really, had their married life brought
+her? Had she ever been <i>sure</i> of Roger?&mdash;had she ever been able to feel
+proud of him, in the company of really distinguished men?&mdash;had she not
+been conscious, again and again, when in London, or Paris, or Berlin,
+that he was her inferior, that he spoiled her social and intellectual
+chances? And his tone toward women had always been a low one; no great
+harm in it, perhaps; but it had often wounded and disgusted her.</p>
+
+<p>And then&mdash;for climax!&mdash;his concealment of the early love affair with
+Chloe Fairmile; his weakness and folly in letting her regain her hold
+upon him; his behaviour at the Brendon ball, the gossip which, as Agnes
+Farmer declared, was all over the neighbourhood, ending in the last
+baseness&mdash;the assignation, the lies, the hypocrisy of the afternoon!</p>
+
+<p>Enough!&mdash;more than enough! What did she care what the English world
+thought of her? She would free and right herself in her own way, and
+they might hold up what hands they pleased. A passion of wounded vanity,
+of disappointed self-love swept through her. She had looked forward to
+the English country life; she had meant to play a great part in it. But
+three months had been enough to show her the kind of thing&mdash;the hopeless
+narrowness and Philistinism of these English back-waters. What did these
+small squires and country clergy know of the real world, the world that
+mattered to <i>her</i>, where people had free minds and progressive ideas?
+Her resentment of the <i>milieu</i> in which Roger expected her to live
+subtly swelled and strengthened her wrath against himself; it made the
+soil from which sprang a sudden growth of angry will&mdash;violent and
+destructive. There was in her little or none of that affinity with a
+traditional, a parent England, which is present in so many Americans,
+which emerges in them like buried land from the waters. On the contrary,
+the pressure of race and blood in her was not towards, but against; not
+friendly, but hostile. The nearer she came to the English life, the more
+certain forces in her, deeply infused, rose up and made their protest.
+The Celtic and Latin strains that were mingled in her, their natural
+sympathies and repulsions, which had been indistinct in the girl,
+overlaid by the deposits of the current American world, were becoming
+dominant in the woman.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Well, thank goodness, modern life is not as the old! There are ways out.</p>
+
+<p>Midnight had just struck. The night was gusty, the north-west wind made
+fierce attacks on the square, comfortable house. Daphne rose slowly; she
+moved noiselessly across the floor; she stood with her arms behind her
+looking down at the sleeping Roger. Then a thought struck her; she
+reached out a hand to the new number of an American Quarterly which lay,
+with the paper knife in it, on a table beside the bed. She had ordered
+it in a mood of jealous annoyance because of a few pages of art
+criticism in it by Mrs. Fairmile, which impertinently professed to know
+more about the Vitali Signorelli than its present owner did; but she
+remembered also an article on "The Future for Women," which had seemed
+to her a fine, progressive thing. She turned the pages noiselessly&mdash;her
+eyes now on the unconscious Roger&mdash;now on the book.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"All forms of contract&mdash;in business, education, religion, or
+law&mdash;suffer from the weakness and blindness of the persons making
+them&mdash;the marriage contract as much as any other. The dictates of
+humanity and common-sense alike show that the latter and most
+important contract should no more be perpetual than any of the
+others."</p></div>
+
+<p>Again:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Any covenant between human beings that fails to produce or promote
+human happiness, cannot in the nature of things be of any force or
+authority; it is not only a right but a duty to abolish it."</p></div>
+
+<p>And a little further:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Womanhood is the great fact of woman's life. Wifehood and
+motherhood are but incidental relations."</p></div>
+
+<p>Daphne put down the book. In the dim light, the tension of her slender
+figure, her frowning brow, her locked arms and hands, made of her a
+threatening Fate hovering darkly above the man in his deep, defenceless
+sleep.</p>
+
+<p>She was miserable, consumed with jealous anger. But the temptation of a
+new licence&mdash;a lawless law&mdash;was in her veins. Have women been trampled
+on, insulted, enslaved?&mdash;in America, at least, they may now stand on
+their feet. No need to cringe any more to the insolence and cruelty of
+men. A woman's life may be soiled and broken; but in the great human
+workshop of America it can be repaired. She remembered that in the
+majority of American divorces it is the woman who applies for relief.
+And why not? The average woman, when she marries, knows much less of
+life and the world than the average man. She is more likely&mdash;poor
+soul!&mdash;to make mistakes.</p>
+
+<p>She drew closer to the bed. All round her glimmered the furniture and
+appointments of a costly room&mdash;the silver and tortoise-shell on the
+dressing-table, the long mirrors lining the farther wall, the silk
+hangings of the bed. Luxury, as light and soft as skill and money could
+make it&mdash;the room breathed it; and in the midst stood the young creature
+who had designed it, the will within her hardening rapidly to an
+irrevocable purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, she had made a mistake! But she would retrieve it. She would free
+herself. She would no longer put up with Roger, with his neglect and
+deceit&mdash;his disagreeable and ungrateful mother&mdash;his immoral friends&mdash;and
+this dull, soul-deadening English life.</p>
+
+<p>Roger moved and murmured. She retreated a little, still looking at him
+fixedly. Was it the child's name? Perhaps. He dreamed interminably, and
+very often of Beatty. But it did not move her. Beatty, of course, was
+<i>her</i> child. Every child belongs to the mother in a far profounder sense
+than to the father. And he, too, would be free; he would naturally marry
+again.</p>
+
+<p>Case after case of divorce ran through her mind as she stood there; the
+persons and circumstances all well known to her. Other stories also, not
+personally within her ken; the famous scandals of the time, much
+discussed throughout American society. Her wits cleared and steeled. She
+began to see the course that she must follow.</p>
+
+<p>It would all depend upon the lawyers; and a good deal&mdash;she faced
+it&mdash;upon money. All sorts of technical phrases, vaguely remembered, ran
+through her mind. She would have to recover her American
+citizenship&mdash;she and the child. A domicile of six months in South
+Dakota, or in Wyoming&mdash;a year in Philadelphia&mdash;she began to recall
+information derived of old from Madeleine Verrier, who had, of course,
+been forced to consider all these things, and to weigh alternatives.
+Advice, of course, must be asked of her at once&mdash;and sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, on her brooding, there broke a wave of excitement. Life,
+instead of being closed, as in a sense it is, for every married woman,
+was in a moment open and vague again; the doors flung wide to flaming
+heavens. An intoxication of recovered youth and freedom possessed her.
+The sleeping Roger represented things intolerable and outworn. Why
+should a woman of her gifts, of her opportunities, be chained for life
+to this commonplace man, now that her passion was over?&mdash;now that she
+knew him for what he was, weak, feather-brained, and vicious? She looked
+at him with a kind of exaltation, spurning him from her path.</p>
+
+<p>But the immediate future!&mdash;the practical steps! What kind of evidence
+would she want?&mdash;what kind of witnesses? Something more, no doubt, of
+both than she had already. She must wait&mdash;temporize&mdash;do nothing rashly.
+If it was for Roger's good as well as her own that they should be free
+of each other&mdash;and she was fast persuading herself of this&mdash;she must,
+for both their sakes, manage the hateful operation without bungling.</p>
+
+<p>What was the alternative? She seemed to ask it of Roger, as she stood
+looking down upon him. Patience?&mdash;with a man who could never sympathize
+with her intellectually or artistically?&mdash;the relations of married life
+with a husband who made assignations with an old love, under the eyes of
+the whole neighbourhood?&mdash;the narrowing, cramping influences of English
+provincial society? No! she was born for other and greater things, and
+she would grasp them. "My first duty is to myself&mdash;to my own
+development. We have absolutely no <i>right</i> to sacrifice ourselves&mdash;as
+women have been taught to do for thousands of years."</p>
+
+<p>Bewildered by the rhetoric of her own thoughts, Daphne returned to her
+seat by the fire, and sat there wildly dreaming, till once more recalled
+to practical possibilities by the passage of the hours on the clock
+above her.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Farmer? Everything, it seemed, depended on her. But Daphne had no
+doubts of her. Poor girl!&mdash;with her poverty-stricken home, her drunken
+father lately dismissed from his post, and her evident inclination
+towards this clever young fellow now employed in the house&mdash;Daphne
+rejoiced to think of what money could do, in this case at least; of the
+reward that should be waiting for the girl's devotion when the moment
+came; of the gifts already made, and the gratitude already evoked. No;
+she could be trusted; she had every reason to be true.</p>
+
+<p>Some fitful sleep came to her at last in the morning hours. But when
+Roger awoke, she was half-way through her dressing; and when he first
+saw her, he noticed nothing except that she was paler than usual, and
+confessed to a broken night.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>But as the day wore on it became plain to everybody at Heston&mdash;to Roger
+first and foremost&mdash;that something was much amiss. Daphne would not
+leave her sitting-room and her sofa; she complained of headache and
+over-fatigue; would have nothing to say to the men at work on the new
+decoration of the east wing of the house, who were clamouring for
+directions; and would admit nobody but Miss Farmer and her maid. Roger
+forced his way in once, only to be vanquished by the traditional weapons
+of weakness, pallor, and silence. Her face contracted and quivered as
+his step approached her; it was as though he trampled upon her; and he
+left her, awkwardly, on tiptoe, feeling himself as intrusively brutal as
+she clearly meant him to feel.</p>
+
+<p>What on earth was the matter? Some new grievance against him, he
+supposed. After the softening, the quasi-reconciliation of the day
+before, his chagrin and disappointment were great. Impossible she should
+know anything of his ride with Chloe! There was not a soul in that wood;
+and the place was twenty miles from Heston. Again he felt the impulse to
+blurt it all out to her; but was simply repelled and intimidated by this
+porcupine mood in which she had wrapped herself. Better wait at least
+till she was a little more normal again. He went off disconsolately to a
+day's shooting.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, his own particular worry was sharp enough. Chloe had taken
+advantage of their casual <i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te</i>, as she had done before on
+several occasions, to claim something of the old relation, instead of
+accepting the new, like a decent woman; and in the face of the
+temptation offered him he had shown a weakness of which not only his
+conscience but his pride was ashamed. He realized perfectly that she had
+been trying during the whole autumn to recover her former hold on him,
+and he also saw clearly and bitterly that he was not strong enough to
+resist her, should he continue to be thrown with her; and not clever
+enough to baffle her, if her will were really set on recapturing him. He
+was afraid of her, and afraid of himself.</p>
+
+<p>What, then, must he do? As he tramped about the wet fields and
+plantations with a keeper and a few beaters after some scattered
+pheasants, he was really, poor fellow! arguing out the riddle of his
+life. What would Herbert French advise him to do?&mdash;supposing he could
+put the question plainly to him, which of course was not possible. He
+meant honestly and sincerely to keep straight; to do his duty by Daphne
+and the child. But he was no plaster saint, and he could not afford to
+give Chloe Fairmile too many opportunities. To break at once, to carry
+off Daphne and leave Heston, at least for a time&mdash;that was the obviously
+prudent and reasonable course. But in her present mood it was of no use
+for him to propose it, tired as she seemed to be of Heston, and
+disappointed in the neighbours: any plan brought forward by him was
+doomed beforehand. Well then, let him go himself; he had been so unhappy
+during the preceding weeks it would be a jolly relief to turn his back
+on Heston for a time.</p>
+
+<p>But as soon as he had taken his departure, Chloe perhaps would take
+hers; and if so, Daphne's jealousy would be worse than ever. Whatever
+deserts he might place between himself and Mrs. Fairmile, Daphne would
+imagine them together.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, there was that Lilliput bond, that small, chafing
+entanglement, which Chloe had flung round him in her persistence about
+the letters. There was, no doubt, a horrid scandal brewing about Mrs.
+Weightman, Chloe's old friend&mdash;a friend of his own, too, in former days.
+Through Chloe's unpardonable indiscretions he knew a great deal more
+about this lady's affairs than he had ever wished to know. And he well
+remembered the letter in question: a letter on which the political life
+or death of one of England's most famous men might easily turn,
+supposing it got out. But the letter was safe enough; not the least
+likely to come into dangerous hands, in spite of Chloe's absurd
+hypotheses. It was somewhere, no doubt, among the boxes in the locked
+room; and who could possibly get hold of it? At the same time he
+realized that as long as he had not found and returned it she would
+still have a certain claim upon him, a certain right to harass him with
+inquiries and confidential interviews, which, as a man of honour, he
+could not altogether deny.</p>
+
+<p>A pheasant got up across a ploughed field where in the mild season the
+young corn was already green. Roger shot, and missed; the bird floated
+gaily down the wind, and the head keeper, in disgust, muttered bad
+language to the underling beside him.</p>
+
+<p>But after that Barnes was twice as cheerful as before. He whistled as he
+walked; his shooting recovered; and by the time the dark fell, keepers
+and beaters were once more his friends.</p>
+
+<p>The fact was that just as he missed the pheasant he had taken his
+resolution, and seen his way. He would have another determined hunt for
+that letter; he would also find and destroy his own letters to
+Chloe&mdash;those she had returned to him&mdash;which must certainly never fall
+into Daphne's hands; and then he would go away to London or the North,
+to some place whence he could write both to Chloe Fairmile and to his
+wife. Women like Daphne were too quick; they could get out a dozen words
+to your one; but give a man time, and he could express himself. And,
+therewith, a great tenderness and compunction in this man's heart, and a
+steady determination to put things right. For was not Daphne Beatty's
+mother? and was he not in truth very fond of her, if only she would let
+him be?</p>
+
+<p>Now then for the hunt. As he had never destroyed the letters, they must
+exist; but, in the name of mischief, where? He seemed to remember
+thrusting his own letters to Chloe into a desk of his schoolboy days
+which used to stand in his London sitting-room. Very likely some of hers
+might be there too. But the thought of his own had by now become a much
+greater anxiety to him than the wish to placate Chloe. For he was most
+uncomfortably aware that his correspondence with Chloe during their
+short engagement had been of a very different degree of fervour from
+that shown in the letters to Daphne under similar circumstances. As for
+the indelicacy and folly of leaving such documents to chance, he cursed
+it sorely.</p>
+
+<p>How to look? He pondered it. He did not even know which attic it was
+that had been reserved at the time of the letting of Heston, and now
+held some of the old London furniture and papers. Well, he must manage
+it, "burgle" his own house, if necessary. What an absurd situation!
+Should he consult his mother? No; better not.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>That evening General Hobson was expected for a couple of nights. On
+going up to dress for dinner, Roger discovered that he had been banished
+to a room on the farther side of the house, where his servant was now
+putting out his clothes. He turned very white, and went straight to his
+wife.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne was on the sofa as before, and received him in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the meaning of this, Daphne?" The tone was quiet, but the
+breathing quick.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him&mdash;bracing herself.</p>
+
+<p>"I must be alone! I had no sleep last night."</p>
+
+<p>"You had neuralgia?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know&mdash;I had no sleep. I must be alone."</p>
+
+<p>His eyes and hers met.</p>
+
+<p>"For to-night, then," he said briefly. "I don't know what's the matter
+with you, Daphne and I suppose it's no use to ask you. I thought,
+yesterday&mdash;but&mdash;however, there's no time to talk now. Are you coming
+down to dinner?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not to dinner. I will come down for an hour afterwards."</p>
+
+<p>He went away, and before he had reached his own room, and while the heat
+of his sudden passion still possessed him, it occurred to him that
+Daphne's behaviour might after all prove a godsend. That night he would
+make his search, with no risk of disturbing his wife.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The dinner in the newly decorated dining-room went heavily. Lady Barnes
+had grown of late more and more anxious and depressed. She had long
+ceased to assert herself in Daphne's presence, and one saw her as the
+British matron in adversity, buffeted by forces she did not understand;
+or as some minor despot snuffed out by a stronger.</p>
+
+<p>The General, who had only arrived just in time to dress, inquired in
+astonishment for Daphne, and was told by Roger that his wife was not
+well, but would come down for a little while after dinner. In presence
+of the new splendours of Heston, the General had&mdash;in Roger's
+company&mdash;very little to say. He made the vague remark that the
+dining-room was "very fine," but he should not have known it again.
+Where was the portrait of Edward, and the full-length of Edward's father
+by Sir Francis Grant? Lady Barnes drew herself up, and said nothing.
+Roger hastily replied that he believed they were now in the passage
+leading to the billiard-room.</p>
+
+<p>"What! that dark corner!" cried the General, looking with both distaste
+and hostility at the famous Signorelli&mdash;a full-length nude St.
+Sebastian, bound and pierced&mdash;which had replaced them on the dining-room
+wall. Who on earth ever saw such a picture in a dining-room? Roger must
+be a fool to allow it!</p>
+
+<p>Afterwards the General and Lady Barnes wandered through the transformed
+house, in general agreement as to the ugliness and extravagance of
+almost everything that had been done, an agreement that was as balm to
+the harassed spirits of the lady.</p>
+
+<p>"What have they spent?" asked the General, under his breath, as they
+returned to the drawing-room&mdash;"thousands and thousands, I should think!
+And there was no need for them to spend a penny. It is a sinful waste,
+and no one should waste money in these days&mdash;there are too many
+unemployed!" He drew up his spare person, with a terrier-like shake of
+the head and shoulders, as of one repudiating Mammon and all its works.</p>
+
+<p>"Daphne has simply no idea of the value of money!" Lady Barnes
+complained, also under her breath. They were passing along one of the
+side corridors of the house, and there was no one in sight. But Roger's
+mother was evidently uneasy, as though Daphne might at any moment spring
+from the floor, or emerge from the walls. The General was really sorry
+for her.</p>
+
+<p>"It's like all the rest of them&mdash;Americans, I mean," he declared; "they
+haven't our sense of responsibility. I saw plenty of that in the
+States."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Barnes acquiesced. She was always soothed by the General's
+unfaltering views of British superiority.</p>
+
+<p>They found Daphne in the drawing-room&mdash;a ghostly Daphne, in white, and
+covered with diamonds. She made a little perfunctory conversation with
+them, avoided all mention of the house, and presently, complaining again
+of headache, went back to her room after barely an hour downstairs.</p>
+
+<p>The General whistled to himself, as he also retired to bed, after
+another and more private conversation with Lady Barnes, and half an
+hour's billiards with a very absent-minded host. By Jove, Laura wanted a
+change! He rejoiced that he was to escort her on the morrow to the
+London house of some cheerful and hospitable relations. Dollars, it
+seemed, were not everything, and he wished to heaven that Roger had been
+content to marry some plain English girl, with, say, a couple of
+thousand a year. Even the frugal General did not see how it could have
+been done on less. Roger no doubt had been a lazy, self-indulgent
+beggar. Yet he seemed a good deal steadier, and more sensible than he
+used to be; in spite of his wife, and the pouring out of dollars. And
+there was no doubt that he had grown perceptibly older. The General felt
+a vague pang of regret, so rare and so compelling had been the quality
+of Roger's early youth, measured at least by physical standards.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The house sank into sleep and silence. Roger, before saying good-night
+to his mother, had let fall a casual question as to the whereabouts of
+the room which still contained the <i>d&eacute;bris</i> of the London house. He
+must, he said, look up two or three things, some share certificates of
+his father's, for instance, that he had been in want of for some time.
+Lady Barnes directed him. At the end of the nursery wing, to the right.
+But in the morning one of the housemaids would show him. Had she the
+key? She produced it, thought no more of it, and went to bed.</p>
+
+<p>He waited in his room till after midnight, then took off his shoes, his
+pride smarting, and emerged. There was one electric light burning in the
+hall below. This gave enough glimmer on the broad open landing for him
+to grope his way by, and he went noiselessly toward the staircase
+leading up to Beatty's rooms. Once, just as he reached it, he thought he
+caught the faint noise of low talking somewhere in the house, an
+indeterminate sound not to be located. But when he paused to listen, it
+had ceased and he supposed it to be only a windy murmur of the night.</p>
+
+<p>He gained the nursery wing. So far, of course, the way was perfectly
+familiar. He rarely passed an evening without going to kiss Beatty in
+her cot. Outside the door of the night-nursery he waited a moment to
+listen. Was she snoozling among her blankets?&mdash;the darling! She still
+sucked her thumb, sometimes, poor baby, to send her to sleep, and it was
+another reason for discontent with Miss Farmer that she would make a
+misdemeanour of it. Really, that woman got on his nerves!</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the nursery he had no knowledge whatever of his own house. The
+attics at Heston were large and rambling. He believed the servants were
+all in the other wing, but was not sure; he could only hope that he
+might not stumble on some handmaiden's room by mistake!</p>
+
+<p>A door to the right, at the end of the passage. He tried the key. Thank
+goodness! It turned without too much noise, and he found himself on the
+threshold of a big lumber-room, his candle throwing lines of dusty light
+across it. He closed the door, set down the light, and looked round him
+in despair. The room was crowded with furniture, trunks, and boxes, in
+considerable confusion. It looked as though the men employed to move
+them had piled them there as they pleased; and Roger shrewdly suspected
+that his mother, from whom, in spite of her square and business-like
+appearance, his own indolence was inherited, had shrunk till now from
+the task of disturbing them.</p>
+
+<p>He began to rummage a little. Papers belonging to his father&mdash;an endless
+series of them; some in tin boxes marked with the names of various
+companies, mining and other; some in leather cases, reminiscent of
+politics, and labelled "Parliamentary" or "Local Government Board."
+Trunks containing Court suits, yeomanry uniforms, and the like; a medley
+of old account books, photographs, worthless volumes, and broken
+ornaments: all the refuse that our too complex life piles about us was
+represented in the chaos of the room. Roger pulled and pushed as
+cautiously as he could, but making, inevitably, some noise in the
+process. At last! He caught sight of some belongings of his own and was
+soon joyfully detaching the old Eton desk, of which he was in search,
+from a pile of miscellaneous rubbish. In doing so, to his dismay, he
+upset a couple of old cardboard boxes filled with letters, and they fell
+with some clatter. He looked round instinctively at the door; but it was
+shut, and the house was well built, the walls and ceilings reasonably
+sound-proof. The desk was only latched&mdash;beastly carelessness, of
+course!&mdash;and inside it were three thick piles of letters, and a few
+loose ones below. His own letters to Chloe; and&mdash;by George!&mdash;the lost
+one!&mdash;among the others. He opened it eagerly, ran it through. Yes, the
+very thing! What luck! He laid it carefully aside a moment on a trunk
+near by, and sat with the other letters on his lap.</p>
+
+<p>His fingers played with them. He almost determined to take them down
+unopened, and burn them, as they were, in his own room; but in the end
+he could not resist the temptation to look at them once more. He pulled
+off an india-rubber band from the latest packet, and was soon deep in
+them, at first half ashamed, half contemptuous. Calf love, of course!
+And he had been a precious fool to write such things. Then, presently,
+the headlong passion of them began to affect him, to set his pulses
+swinging. He fell to wondering at his own bygone facility, his own
+powers of expression. How did he ever write such a style! He, who could
+hardly get through a note now without blots and labour. Self-pity grew
+upon him, and self-admiration. By heaven! How could a woman treat a
+man&mdash;a man who could write to her like this&mdash;as Chloe had treated him!</p>
+
+<p>The old smart revived; or rather, the old indelible impressions of it
+left on nerve and brain.</p>
+
+<p>The letters lay on his knee. He sat brooding: his hands upon the
+packets, his head bowed. One might have thought him a man overcome and
+dissolved by the enervating memories of passion; but in truth, he was
+gradually and steadily reacting against them; resuming, and this time
+finally, as far as Chloe Fairmile was concerned, a man's mastery of
+himself. He thought of her unkindness and cruelty&mdash;of the misery he had
+suffered&mdash;and now of the reckless caprice with which, during the
+preceding weeks, she had tried to entangle him afresh, with no respect
+for his married life, for his own or Daphne's peace of mind.</p>
+
+<p>He judged her, and therewith, himself. Looking back upon the four years
+since Chloe Fairmile had thrown him over, it seemed to him that, in some
+ways, he had made a good job of his life, and, in others, a bad one. As
+to the money, that was neither here nor there. It had been amusing to
+have so much of it; though of late Daphne's constant reminders that the
+fortune was hers and not his, had been like grit in the mouth. But he
+did not find that boundless wealth had made as much difference to him as
+he had expected. On the other hand, he had been much happier with Daphne
+than he had thought he should be, up to the time of their coming to
+Heston. She wasn't easy to live with, and she had been often, before
+now, ridiculously jealous; but you could not, apparently, live with a
+woman without getting very fond of her&mdash;he couldn't&mdash;especially if she
+had given you a child; and if Daphne had turned against him now, for a
+bit&mdash;well, he could not swear to himself that he had been free from
+blame; and it perhaps served him right for having gone out deliberately
+to the States to marry money&mdash;with a wife thrown in&mdash;in that shabby sort
+of way.</p>
+
+<p>But, now, to straighten out this coil; to shake himself finally free of
+Chloe, and make Daphne happy again! He vowed to himself that he could
+and would make her happy&mdash;just as she had been in their early days
+together. The memory of her lying white and exhausted after child-birth,
+with the little dark head beside her, came across him, and melted him;
+he thought of her with longing and tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>With a deep breath he raised himself on his seat; in the old Greek
+phrase, "the gods breathed courage into his soul"; and as he stretched
+out an indifferent hand toward Chloe's letters on the trunk, Roger
+Barnes had perhaps reached the highest point of his moral history; he
+had become conscious of himself as a moral being choosing good or evil;
+and he had chosen good. It was not so much that his conscience accused
+him greatly with regard to Chloe. For that his normal standards were not
+fine enough. It was rather a kind of "serious call," something akin to
+conversion, or that might have been conversion, which befell him in this
+dusty room, amid the night-silence.</p>
+
+<p>As he took up Chloe's letters he did not notice that the door had
+quietly opened behind him, and that a figure stood on the threshold.</p>
+
+<p>A voice struck into the stillness.</p>
+
+<p>"Roger!"</p>
+
+<p>He turned with a movement that scattered all his own letters on the
+floor. Daphne stood before him&mdash;but with the eyes of a mad woman. Her
+hand shook on the handle of the door.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you doing here?" She flung out the question like a blow.</p>
+
+<p>"Hallo, Daphne!&mdash;is that you?" He tried to laugh. "I'm only looking up
+some old papers; no joke, in all this rubbish." He pointed to it.</p>
+
+<p>"What old papers?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you needn't catechize me!" he said, nettled by her tone, "or not
+in that way, at any rate. I couldn't sleep, and I came up here to look
+for something I wanted. Why did you shut your door on me?"</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her intently, his lips twitching a little. Daphne came
+nearer.</p>
+
+<p>"It must be something you want very badly&mdash;something you don't want
+other people to see&mdash;something you're ashamed of!&mdash;or you wouldn't be
+searching for it at this time of night." She raised her eyes, still with
+the same strange yet flaming quiet, from the littered floor to his face.
+Then suddenly glancing again at the scattered papers&mdash;"That's your
+hand-writing!&mdash;they're your letters! letters to Mrs. Fairmile!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, and what do you make of that?" cried Roger, half wroth, half
+inclined to laugh. "If you want to know, they are the letters I wrote to
+Chloe Fairmile; and I, like a careless beast, never destroyed them, and
+they were stuffed away here. I have long meant to get at them and burn
+them, and as you turned me out to-night&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What is that letter in your hand?" exclaimed Daphne, interrupting him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that has nothing to do with you&mdash;or me&mdash;&mdash;" he said, hastily making
+a movement to put it in his coat pocket. But in a second, Daphne, with a
+cry, had thrown herself upon him, to his intense amazement, wrestling
+with him, in a wild excitement. And as she did so, a thin woman, with
+frightened eyes, in a nurse's dress, came quickly into the room, as
+though Daphne's cry had signalled to her. She was behind Roger, and he
+was not aware of her approach.</p>
+
+<p>"Daphne, don't be such a little fool!" he said indignantly, holding her
+off with one hand, determined not to give her the letter.</p>
+
+<p>Then, all in a moment&mdash;without, as it seemed to him, any but the mildest
+defensive action on his part&mdash;Daphne stumbled and fell.</p>
+
+<p>"Daphne!&mdash;I say!&mdash;--"</p>
+
+<p>He was stooping over her in great distress to lift her up, when he felt
+himself vehemently put aside by a woman's hand.</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, sir! Let me go to her."</p>
+
+<p>He turned in bewilderment. "Miss Farmer! What on earth are you doing
+here?"</p>
+
+<p>But in his astonishment he had given way to her, and he fell back pale
+and frowning, while, without replying, she lifted Daphne&mdash;who had a cut
+on her forehead and was half fainting&mdash;from the ground.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't come near her, sir!" said the nurse, again warding him off. "You
+have done quite enough. Let me attend to her."</p>
+
+<p>"You imagine that was my doing?" said Roger grimly. "Let me assure you
+it was nothing of the kind. And pray, were you listening at the door?"</p>
+
+<p>Miss Farmer vouchsafed no reply. She was half leading, half supporting
+Daphne, who leant against her. As they neared the door, Roger, who had
+been standing dumb again, started forward.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me take her," he said sternly. "Daphne!&mdash;send this woman away."</p>
+
+<p>But Daphne only shuddered, and putting out a shaking hand, she waved him
+from her.</p>
+
+<p>"You see in what a state she is!" cried Miss Farmer, with a withering
+look. "If you must speak to her, put it off, sir, at least till
+to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>Roger drew back. A strange sense of inexplicable disaster rushed upon
+him. He sombrely watched them pass through the door and disappear.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Daphne reached her own room. As the door closed upon them she turned to
+her companion, holding out the handkerchief stained with blood she had
+been pressing to her temple.</p>
+
+<p>"You saw it all?" she said imperiously&mdash;"the whole thing?"</p>
+
+<p>"All," said Miss Farmer. "It's a mercy you're not more hurt."</p>
+
+<p>Daphne gave a hysterical laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"It'll just do&mdash;I think it'll do! But you'll have to make a good deal
+out of it."</p>
+
+<p>And sinking down by the fire, she burst into a passion of wild tears.</p>
+
+<p>The nurse brought her sal volatile, and washed the small cut above her
+eyebrow.</p>
+
+<p>"It was lucky we heard him," she said triumphantly. "I guessed at once
+he must be looking for something&mdash;I knew that room was full of papers."</p>
+
+<p>A knock at the door startled them.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind." The nurse hurried across the room. "It's locked."</p>
+
+<p>"How is my wife?" said Roger's strong, and as it seemed, threatening
+voice outside.</p>
+
+<p>"She'll be all right, sir, I hope, if you'll leave her to rest. But I
+won't answer for the consequences if she's disturbed any more."</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause, as though of hesitation. Then Roger's step receded.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne pushed her hair back from her face, and sat staring into the
+fire. Everything was decided now. Yet she had rushed upstairs on Miss
+Farmer's information with no definite purpose. She only knew that&mdash;once
+again&mdash;Roger was hiding something from her&mdash;doing something secret and
+disgraceful&mdash;and she suddenly resolved to surprise and confront him.
+With a mind still vaguely running on the legal aspects of what she meant
+to do, she had bade the nurse follow her. The rest had been half
+spontaneous, half acting. It had struck her imagination midway how the
+incident could be turned&mdash;and used.</p>
+
+<p>She was triumphant; but from sheer excitement she wept and sobbed
+through the greater part of the night.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_III" id="PART_III"></a>PART III</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was a cheerless February day, dark and slaty overhead, dusty below.
+In the East End streets paper and straw, children's curls, girls'
+pinafores and women's skirts were driven back and forward by a bitter
+wind; there was an ugly light on ugly houses, with none of that kind
+trickery of mist or smoke which can lend some grace on normal days even
+to Commercial Street, or to the network of lanes north of the Bethnal
+Green Road. The pitiless wind swept the streets&mdash;swept the children and
+the grown-ups out of them into the houses, or any available shelter; and
+in the dark and chilly emptiness of the side roads one might listen in
+fancy for the stealthy returning steps of spirits crueller than Cold,
+more tyrannous than Poverty, coming to seize upon their own.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>In one of these side streets stood a house larger than its neighbours,
+in a bit of front garden, with some decrepit rust-bitten-railings
+between it and the road. It was an old dwelling overtaken by the flood
+of tenement houses, which spread north, south, east, and west of it. Its
+walls were no less grimy than its neighbours'; but its windows were
+outlined in cheerful white paint, firelight sparkled through its
+unshuttered panes, and a bright green door with a brass knocker
+completed its pleasant air. There were always children outside the
+Vicarage railings on winter evenings, held there by the spell of the
+green door and the firelight.</p>
+
+<p>Inside the firelit room to the left of the front pathway, two men were
+standing&mdash;one of whom had just entered the house.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Penrose!&mdash;how very good of you to come. I know how frightfully
+busy you are."</p>
+
+<p>The man addressed put down his hat and stick, and hastily smoothed back
+some tumbling black hair which interfered with spectacled eyes already
+hampered by short sight. He was a tall, lank, powerful fellow; anyone
+acquainted with the West-country would have known him for one of the
+swarthy, gray-eyed Cornish stock.</p>
+
+<p>"I am pretty busy&mdash;but your tale, Herbert, was a startler. If I can help
+you&mdash;or Barnes&mdash;command me. He is coming this afternoon?"</p>
+
+<p>Herbert French pointed his visitor to a chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. And another man&mdash;whom I met casually, in Pall Mall this
+morning&mdash;and had half an hour's talk with&mdash;an American naval officer&mdash;an
+old acquaintance of Elsie's&mdash;Captain Boyson&mdash;will join us also. I met
+him at Harvard before our wedding, and liked him. He has just come over
+with his sister for a short holiday, and I ran across him."</p>
+
+<p>"Is there any particular point in his joining us?"</p>
+
+<p>Herbert French expounded. Boyson had been an old acquaintance of Mrs.
+Roger Barnes before her marriage. He knew a good deal about the Barnes
+story&mdash;"feels, so I gathered, very strongly about it, and on the man's
+side; and when I told him that Roger had just arrived and was coming to
+take counsel with you and me this afternoon, he suddenly asked if he
+might come, too. I was rather taken aback. I told him that we were
+going, of course, to consider the case entirely from the English point
+of view. He still said, 'Let me come; I may be of use to you.' So I
+could only reply it must rest with Roger. They'll show him first into
+the dining-room."</p>
+
+<p>Penrose nodded. "All right, as long as he doesn't mind his national toes
+trampled upon. So these are your new quarters, old fellow?"</p>
+
+<p>His eyes travelled round the small book-lined room, with its shelves of
+poetry, history, and theology; its parish litter; its settle by the
+fire, on which lay a doll and a child's picture-book; back to the figure
+of the new vicar, who stood, pipe in hand, before the hearth, clad in a
+shabby serge suit, his collar alone betraying him. French's white hair
+showed even whiter than of old above the delicately blanched face; from
+his natural slenderness and smallness the East End and its life had by
+now stripped every superfluous ounce; yet, ethereal as his aspect was,
+not one element of the Meredithian trilogy&mdash;"flesh," "blood," or
+"spirit"&mdash;was lacking in it.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we've settled in," he said quietly, as Penrose took stock.</p>
+
+<p>"And you like it?"</p>
+
+<p>"We do."</p>
+
+<p>The phrase was brief; nor did it seem to be going to lead to anything
+more expansive. Penrose smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now"&mdash;he bent forward, with a professional change of
+tone&mdash;"before he arrives, where precisely is this unhappy business? I
+gather, by the way, that Barnes has got practically all his legal advice
+from the other side, though the solicitors here have been co&ouml;perating?"</p>
+
+<p>French nodded. "I am still rather vague myself. Roger only arrived from
+New York the day before yesterday. His uncle, General Hobson, died a few
+weeks ago, and Roger came rushing home, as I understand, to see if he
+could make any ready money out of his inheritance. Money, in fact, seems
+to be his chief thought."</p>
+
+<p>"Money? What for? Mrs. Barnes's suit was surely settled long ago?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes&mdash;months ago. She got her decree and the custody of the child in
+July."</p>
+
+<p>"Remind me of the details. Barnes refused to plead?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly. By the advice of the lawyers on both sides, he refused, as
+an Englishman, to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the Court."</p>
+
+<p>"But he did what he could to stop the thing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. He rushed out after his wife as soon as he could trace where
+she had gone; and he made the most desperate attempts to alter her
+purpose. His letters, as far as I could make them out, were
+heart-rending. I very nearly went over to try and help him, but it was
+impossible to leave my work. Mrs. Barnes refused to see him. She was
+already at Sioux Falls, and had begun the residence necessary to bring
+her within the jurisdiction of the South Dakota Court. Roger, however,
+forced one or two interviews with her&mdash;most painful scenes!&mdash;but found
+her quite immovable. At the same time she was much annoyed and excited
+by the legal line that he was advised to take; and there was a moment
+when she tried to bribe him to accept the divorce and submit to the
+American court."</p>
+
+<p>"To bribe him! With money?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; with the child. Beatty at first was hidden away, and Roger could
+find no traces of her. But for a few weeks she was sent to stay with a
+Mrs. Verrier at Philadelphia, and Roger was allowed to see her, while
+Mrs. Barnes negotiated. It was a frightful dilemma! If he submitted,
+Mrs. Barnes promised that Beatty should go to him for two months every
+year; if not, and she obtained her decree, and the custody of the child,
+as she was quite confident of doing, he should never&mdash;as far as she
+could secure it&mdash;see Beatty again. He too, foresaw that she would win
+her suit. He was sorely tempted; but he stood firm. Then before he could
+make up his mind what to do as to the child, the suit came on, Mrs.
+Barnes got her decree, and the custody of the little girl."</p>
+
+<p>"On the ground of 'cruelty,' I understand, and 'indignities'?"</p>
+
+<p>French nodded. His thin cheek flushed.</p>
+
+<p>"And by the help of evidence that any liar could supply!"</p>
+
+<p>"Who were her witnesses?"</p>
+
+<p>"Beatty's nurse&mdash;one Agnes Farmer&mdash;and a young fellow who had been
+employed on the decorative work at Heston. There were relations between
+these two, and Roger tells me they have married lately, on a partnership
+bought by Mrs. Barnes. While the work was going on at Heston the young
+man used to put up at an inn in the country town, and talk scandal at
+the bar."</p>
+
+<p>"Then there was some local scandal&mdash;on the subject of Barnes and Mrs.
+Fairmile?"</p>
+
+<p>"Possibly. Scandal <i>pour rire</i>! Not a soul believed that there was
+anything more in it than mischief on the woman's side, and a kind of
+incapacity for dealing with a woman as she deserved, on the man's. Mrs.
+Fairmile has been an <i>intrigante</i> from her cradle. Barnes was at one
+time deeply in love with her. His wife became jealous of her after the
+marriage, and threw them together, by way of getting at the truth, and
+he shilly-shallied with the situation, instead of putting a prompt end
+to it, as of course he ought to have done. He was honestly fond of his
+wife the whole time, and devoted to his home and his child."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, she didn't plead, you say, anything more than 'cruelty' and
+'indignities'. The scandal, such as it was, was no doubt part of the
+'cruelty'?"</p>
+
+<p>French assented.</p>
+
+<p>"And you suspect that money played a great part in the whole
+transaction?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't <i>suspect</i>&mdash;the evidence goes a long way beyond that. Mrs.
+Barnes bought the show! I am told there are a thousand ways of doing
+it."</p>
+
+<p>Penrose smoked and pondered.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then&mdash;what happened? I imagine that by this time Barnes had not
+much affection left for his wife?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," said French, hesitating. "I believe the whole thing was
+a great blow to him. He was never passionately in love with her, but he
+was very fond of her in his own way&mdash;increasingly fond of her&mdash;up to
+that miserable autumn at Heston. However, after the decree, his one
+thought was for Beatty. His whole soul has been wrapped up in that child
+from the first moment she was put into his arms. When he first realized
+that his wife meant to take her from him, Boyson tells me that he seemed
+to lose his head. He was like a person unnerved and bewildered, not
+knowing how to act or where to turn. First of all, he brought an
+action&mdash;a writ of <i>habeas corpus</i>, I think&mdash;to recover his daughter, as
+an English subject. But the fact was he had put it off too long&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally," said Penrose, with a shrug. "Not much hope for him&mdash;after
+the decree."</p>
+
+<p>"So he discovered, poor old fellow! The action was, of course,
+obstructed and delayed in every way, by the power of Mrs. Barnes's
+millions behind the scenes. His lawyers told him plainly from the
+beginning that he had precious little chance. And presently he found
+himself the object of a press campaign in some of the yellow papers&mdash;all
+of it paid for and engineered by his wife. He was held up as the brutal
+fortune-hunting Englishman, who had beguiled an American heiress to
+marry him, had carried her off to England to live upon her money, had
+then insulted her by scandalous flirtations with a lady to whom he had
+formerly been engaged, had shown her constant rudeness and unkindness,
+and had finally, in the course of a quarrel, knocked her down,
+inflicting shock and injury from which she had suffered ever since. Mrs.
+Barnes had happily freed herself from him, but he was now trying to
+bully her through the child&mdash;had, it was said, threatened to carry off
+the little girl by violence. Mrs. Barnes went in terror of him. America,
+however, would know how to protect both the mother and the child! You
+can imagine the kind of thing. Well, very soon Roger began to find
+himself a marked man in hotels, followed in the streets, persecuted by
+interviewers; and the stream of lies that found its way even into the
+respectable newspapers about him, his former life, his habits, etc., is
+simply incredible! Unfortunately, he gave some handle&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>French paused a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" said Penrose, "I have heard rumours."</p>
+
+<p>French rose and began to pace the room.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a matter I can hardly speak of calmly," he said at last. "The
+night after that first scene between them, the night of her fall&mdash;her
+pretended fall, so Roger told me&mdash;he went downstairs in his excitement
+and misery, and drank, one way and another, nearly a bottle of brandy, a
+thing he had never done in his life before. But&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"He has often done it since?"</p>
+
+<p>French raised his shoulders sadly, then added, with some emphasis.
+"Don't, however, suppose the thing worse than it is. Give him a gleam of
+hope and happiness, and he would soon shake it off."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what came of his action?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing&mdash;so far. I believe he has ceased to take any interest in it.
+Another line of action altogether was suggested to him. About three
+months ago he made an attempt to kidnap the child, and was foiled. He
+got word that she had been taken to Charlestown, and he went there with
+a couple of private detectives. But Mrs. Barnes was on the alert, and
+when he discovered the villa in which the child had been living, she had
+been removed. It was a bitter shock and disappointment, and when he got
+back to New York in November, in the middle of an epidemic, he was
+struck down by influenza and pneumonia. It went pretty hard with him.
+You will be shocked by his appearance. Ecco! was there ever such a
+story! Do you remember, Penrose, what a magnificent creature he was that
+year he played for Oxford, and you and I watched his innings from the
+pavilion?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a note of emotion in the tone which implied much. Penrose
+assented heartily, remarking, however, that it was a magnificence which
+seemed to have cost him dear, if, as no doubt was the case, it had won
+him his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"But now, with regard to money; you say he wants money. But surely, at
+the time of the marriage, something was settled on him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, a good deal. But from the moment she left him, and the
+Heston bills were paid, he has never touched a farthing of it, and never
+will."</p>
+
+<p>"So that the General's death was opportune? Well, it's a deplorable
+affair! And I wish I saw any chance of being of use."</p>
+
+<p>French looked up anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Because you know," the speaker reluctantly continued, "there's nothing
+to be done. The thing's finished."</p>
+
+<p>"Finished?" French's manner took fire. "And the law can do <i>nothing</i>!
+Society can do <i>nothing</i>, to help that man either to right himself, or
+to recover his child? Ah!"&mdash;he paused to listen&mdash;"here he is!"</p>
+
+<p>A cab had drawn up outside. Through the lightly curtained windows the
+two within saw a man descend from it, pay the driver, and walk up the
+flagged passage leading to the front door.</p>
+
+<p>French hurried to greet the new-comer.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in, Roger! Here's George Penrose&mdash;as I promised you. Sit down, old
+man. They'll bring us some tea presently."</p>
+
+<p>Roger Barnes looked round him for a moment without replying; then
+murmured something unintelligible, as he shook hands with Penrose, and
+took the chair which French pushed forward. French stood beside him with
+a furrowed brow.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, here we are, Roger!&mdash;and if there's anything whatever in this
+horrible affair where an English lawyer can help you, Penrose is your
+man. You know, I expect, what a swell he is? A K. C. after seven
+years&mdash;lucky dog!&mdash;and last year he was engaged in an Anglo-American
+case not wholly unlike yours&mdash;Brown <i>v.</i> Brown. So I thought of him as
+the best person among your old friends and mine to come and give us some
+private informal help to-day, before you take any fresh steps&mdash;if you do
+take any."</p>
+
+<p>"Awfully good of you both." The speaker, still wrapped in his fur coat,
+sat staring at the carpet, a hand on each of his knees. "Awfully good of
+you," he repeated vaguely.</p>
+
+<p>Penrose observed the new-comer. In some ways Roger Barnes was handsomer
+than ever. His colour, the pink and white of his astonishing complexion,
+was miraculously vivid; his blue eyes were infinitely more arresting
+than of old; and the touch of physical weakness in his aspect, left
+evidently by severe illness, was not only not disfiguring, but a
+positive embellishment. He had been too ruddy in the old days, too
+hearty and splendid&mdash;a too obvious and supreme king of men&mdash;for our
+fastidious modern eyes. The grief and misfortune which had shorn some of
+his radiance had given a more human spell to what remained. At the same
+time the signs of change were by no means, all of them, easy to read, or
+reassuring to a friend's eye. Were they no more than physical and
+transient?</p>
+
+<p>Penrose was just beginning on the questions which seemed to him
+important, when there was another ring at the front door. French got up
+nervously, with an anxious look at Barnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Roger! I don't know whether you will allow it, but I met an American
+acquaintance of yours to-day, and, subject to your permission, I asked
+him to join our conference."</p>
+
+<p>Roger raised his head&mdash;it might have been thought, angrily.</p>
+
+<p>"Who on earth&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Captain Boyson?"</p>
+
+<p>The young man's face changed.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mind him," he said sombrely. "He's an awfully good sort. He was
+in Philadelphia a few months ago, when I was. He knows all about me. It
+was he and his sister who introduced me to&mdash;my wife."</p>
+
+<p>French left the room for a moment, and returned accompanied by a
+fair-haired, straight-shouldered man, whom he introduced to Penrose as
+Captain Boyson.</p>
+
+<p>Roger rose from his chair to shake hands.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you do, Boyson? I've told them you know all about it." He
+dropped back heavily into his seat.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought I might possibly put in a word," said the new-comer, glancing
+from Roger to his friends. "I trust I was not impertinent? But don't let
+me interrupt anything that was going on."</p>
+
+<p>On a plea of chill, Boyson remained standing by the fire, warming his
+hands, looking down upon the other three. Penrose, who belonged to a
+military family, reminded himself, as he glanced at the American, of a
+recent distinguished book on Military Geography by a Captain Alfred
+Boyson. No doubt the same man. A capable face,&mdash;the face of the modern
+scientific soldier. It breathed alertness; but also some quality warmer
+and softer. If the general aspect had been shaped and moulded by an
+incessant travail of brain, the humanity of eye and mouth spoke dumbly
+to the humanity of others. The council gathered in the vicarage room
+felt itself strengthened.</p>
+
+<p>Penrose resumed his questioning of Barnes, and the other two listened
+while the whole miserable story of the divorce, in its American aspects,
+unrolled. At first Roger showed a certain apathy and brevity; he might
+have been fulfilling a task in which he took but small interest; even
+the details of chicanery and corruption connected with the trial were
+told without heat; he said nothing bitter of his wife&mdash;avoided naming
+her, indeed, as much as possible.</p>
+
+<p>But when the tale was done he threw back his head with sudden animation
+and looked at Boyson.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that about the truth, Boyson? You know."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I endorse it," said the American gravely. His face, thin and
+tanned, had flushed while Barnes was speaking.</p>
+
+<p>"And you know what all their papers said of me&mdash;what <i>they</i> wished
+people to believe&mdash;that I wasn't fit to have charge of Beatty&mdash;that I
+should have done her harm?"</p>
+
+<p>His eyes sparkled. He looked almost threateningly at the man whom he
+addressed. Boyson met his gaze quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't believe it."</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause. Then Roger sprang suddenly to his feet, confronting
+the men round him.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here!" he said impatiently. "I want some money at once&mdash;and a good
+lot of it." He brought his fist down heavily on the mantelpiece.
+"There's this place of my uncle's, and I'm dashed if I can get a penny
+out of it! I went to his solicitors this morning. They drove me mad with
+their red-tape nonsense. It will take some time, they say, to get a
+mortgage on it, and meanwhile they don't seem inclined to advance me
+anything, or a hundred or two, perhaps. What's that? I lost my temper,
+and next time I go they'll turn me out, I dare say. But there's the
+truth. It's <i>money</i> I want, and if you can't help me to money it's no
+use talking."</p>
+
+<p>"And when you get the money what'll you do with it?" asked Penrose.</p>
+
+<p>"Pay half a dozen people who can be trusted to help me kidnap Beatty and
+smuggle her over the Canadian frontier. I bungled the thing once. I
+don't mean to bungle it again."</p>
+
+<p>The answer was given slowly, without any bravado, but whatever energy of
+life there was in the speaker had gone into it.</p>
+
+<p>"And there is no other way?" French's voice from the back was troubled.</p>
+
+<p>"Ask him?" Roger pointed to Boyson.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there any legal way, Boyson, in which I can recover the custody and
+companionship of my child?"</p>
+
+<p>Boyson turned away.</p>
+
+<p>"None that I know of&mdash;and I have made every possible inquiry."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet," said Barnes, with emphasis, addressing the English barrister,
+"by the law of England I am still Daphne's husband and that child's
+legal guardian?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly."</p>
+
+<p>"And if I could once get her upon ground under the English flag, she
+would be mine again, and no power could take her from me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Except the same private violence that you yourself propose to
+exercise."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd take care of that!" said Roger briefly.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you mean to do it?" asked French, with knit brows. To be sitting
+there in an English vicarage plotting violence against a woman disturbed
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"He and I'll manage it," said the quiet voice of the American officer.</p>
+
+<p>The others stared.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>You?</i>" said French. "An officer in active service? It might injure
+your career!"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall risk it."</p>
+
+<p>A charming smile broke on Penrose's meditative face.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear French, this is much more amusing than the law. But I don't
+quite see where <i>I</i> come in." He rose tentatively from his seat.</p>
+
+<p>Boyson, however, did not smile. He looked from one to the other.</p>
+
+<p>"My sister and I introduced Daphne Floyd to Barnes," he said steadily,
+"and it is my country, as I hold,&mdash;or a portion of it&mdash;that allows these
+villainies. Some day we shall get a great reaction in the States, and
+then the reforms that plenty of us are clamouring for will come about.
+Meanwhile, as of course you know"&mdash;he addressed French&mdash;"New Yorkers and
+Bostonians suffer almost as much from the abomination that Nevada and
+South Dakota call laws, as Barnes has suffered. Marriage in the Eastern
+States is as sacred as with you&mdash;South Carolina allows no divorce at
+all&mdash;but with this licence at our gates, no one is safe, and thousands
+of our women, in particular&mdash;for the women bring two-thirds of the
+actions&mdash;are going to the deuce, simply because they have the
+opportunity of going. And the children&mdash;it doesn't bear thinking of!
+Well&mdash;no good haranguing! I'm ashamed of my country in this matter&mdash;I
+have been for a long time&mdash;and I mean to help Barnes out, <i>co&ucirc;te que
+co&ucirc;te</i>! And as to the money, Barnes, you and I'll discuss that."</p>
+
+<p>Barnes lifted a face that quivered, and he and Boyson exchanged looks.</p>
+
+<p>Penrose glanced at the pair. That imaginative power, combined with the
+power of drudgery, which was in process of making a great lawyer out of
+a Balliol scholar, showed him something typical and dramatic in the two
+figures:&mdash;in Boyson, on the one hand, so lithe, serviceable, and
+resolved, a helpful, mercurial man, ashamed of his country in this one
+respect, because he adored her in so many others, penitent and patriot
+in one:&mdash;in Barnes, on the other, so heavy, inert, and bewildered, a
+ship-wrecked suppliant as it were, clinging to the knees of that very
+America which had so lightly and irresponsibly wronged him.</p>
+
+<p>It was Penrose who broke the silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there any chance of Mrs. Barnes's marrying again?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Barnes turned to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Not that I know of."</p>
+
+<p>"There's no one else in the case?"</p>
+
+<p>"I never heard of anyone." Roger gave a short, excited laugh. "What
+she's done, she's done because she was tired of me, not because she was
+in love with anyone else. That was her great score in the divorce
+case&mdash;that there was nobody."</p>
+
+<p>Biting and twisting his lip, in a trick that recalled to French the
+beautiful Eton lad, cracking his brains in pupil-room over a bit of
+Latin prose, Roger glanced, frowning, from one to the other of these
+three men who felt for him, whose resentment of the wrong that had been
+done him, whose pity for his calamity showed plainly enough through
+their reticent speech.</p>
+
+<p>His sense, indeed, of their sympathy began to move him, to break down
+his own self-command. No doubt, also, the fatal causes that ultimately
+ruined his will-power were already at work. At any rate, he broke out
+into sudden speech about his case. His complexion, now unhealthily
+delicate, like the complexion of a girl, had flushed deeply. As he spoke
+he looked mainly at French.</p>
+
+<p>"There's lots of things you don't know," he said in a hesitating voice,
+as though appealing to his old friend. And rapidly he told the story of
+Daphne's flight from Heston. Evidently since his return home many
+details that were once obscure had become plain to him; and the three
+listeners could perceive how certain new information had goaded, and
+stung him afresh. He dwelt on the letters which had reached him during
+his first week's absence from home, after the quarrel&mdash;letters from
+Daphne and Miss Farmer, which were posted at intervals from Heston by
+their accomplice, the young architect, while the writers of them were
+hurrying across the Atlantic. The servants had been told that Mrs.
+Barnes, Miss Farmer, and the little girl were going to London for a day
+or two, and suspected nothing. "I wrote long letters&mdash;lots of them&mdash;to
+my wife. I thought I had made everything right&mdash;not that there ever had
+been anything wrong, you understand,&mdash;seriously. But in some ways I had
+behaved like a fool."</p>
+
+<p>He threw himself back in his chair, pressing his hands on his eyes. The
+listeners sat or stood motionless.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I might have spared my pains. The letters were returned to me
+from the States. Daphne had arranged it all so cleverly that I was some
+time in tracing her. By the time I had got to Sioux Falls she was
+through a month of her necessary residence. My God!"&mdash;his voice dropped,
+became almost inaudible&mdash;"if I'd only carried Beatty off <i>then</i>!&mdash;then
+and there&mdash;the frontier wasn't far off&mdash;without waiting for anything
+more. But I wouldn't believe that Daphne could persist in such a
+monstrous thing, and, if she did, that any decent country would aid and
+abet her."</p>
+
+<p>Boyson made a movement of protest, as though he could not listen any
+longer in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"I am ashamed to remind you, Barnes,&mdash;again&mdash;that your case is no worse
+than that of scores of American citizens. We are the first to suffer
+from our own enormities."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," said Barnes absently, "perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>His impulse of speech dropped. He sat, drearily staring into the fire,
+absorbed in recollection.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Penrose had gone. So had Boyson. Roger was sitting by the fire in the
+vicar's study, ministered to by Elsie French and her children. By common
+consent the dismal subject of the day had been put aside. There was an
+attempt to cheer and distract him. The little boy of four was on his
+knee, declaiming the "Owl and the Pussy Cat," while Roger submissively
+turned the pages and pointed to the pictures of that immortal history.
+The little girl of two, curled up on her mother's lap close by, listened
+sleepily, and Elsie, applauding and prompting as a properly regulated
+mother should, was all the time, in spirit, hovering pitifully about her
+guest and his plight. There was in her, as in Boyson, a touch of
+patriotic remorse; and all the pieties of her own being, all the sacred
+memories of her own life, combined to rouse in her indignation and
+sympathy for Herbert's poor friend. The thought of what Daphne Barnes
+had done was to her a monstrosity hardly to be named. She spoke to the
+young man kindly and shyly, as though she feared lest any chance word
+might wound him; she was the symbol, in her young motherliness, of all
+that Daphne had denied and forsaken. "When would America&mdash;dear, dear
+America!&mdash;see to it that such things were made impossible!"</p>
+
+<p>Roger meanwhile was evidently cheered and braced. The thought of the
+interview to which Boyson had confidentially bidden him on the morrow
+ran warmly in his veins, and the children soothed him. The little boy
+especially, who was just Beatty's age, excited in him a number of
+practical curiosities. How about the last teeth? He actually inserted a
+coaxing and inquiring finger, the babe gravely suffering it. Any trouble
+with them? Beatty had once been very ill with hers, at Philadelphia,
+mostly caused, however, by some beastly, indigestible food that the
+nurse had let her have. And they allowed her to sit up much too late.
+Didn't Mrs. French think seven o'clock was late enough for any child not
+yet four? One couldn't say that Beatty was a very robust child, but
+healthy&mdash;oh yes, healthy!&mdash;none of your sickly, rickety little things.</p>
+
+<p>The curtains had been closed. The street children, the electric light
+outside, were no longer visible. Roger had begun to talk of departure,
+the baby had fallen fast asleep in her mother's arms, when there was
+another loud ring at the front door.</p>
+
+<p>French, who was expecting the headmaster of his church schools, gathered
+up some papers and left the room. His wife, startled by what seemed an
+exclamation from him in the hall outside, raised her head a moment to
+listen; but the sound of voices&mdash;surely a woman's voice?&mdash;died abruptly
+away, and the door of the dining-room closed. Roger heard nothing; he
+was laughing and crooning over the boy.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The Pobble that lost his toes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had once as many as we."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The door opened. Herbert stood on the threshold beckoning to her. She
+rose in terror, the child in her arms, and went out to him. In a minute
+she reappeared in the doorway, her face ashen-white, and called to the
+little boy. He ran to her, and Roger rose, looking for the hat he had
+put down on entering.</p>
+
+<p>Then French came in, and behind him a lady in black, dishevelled, bathed
+in tears. The vicar hung back. Roger turned in astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother! You here? Mother!"&mdash;he hurried to her&mdash;"what's the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>She tottered toward him with outstretched hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh Roger, Roger!"</p>
+
+<p>His name died away in a wail as she clasped him.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's Beatty&mdash;my son!&mdash;my darling Roger!" She put up her hands
+piteously, bending his head down to her. "It's a cable from Washington,
+from that woman, Mrs. Verrier. They did everything, Roger&mdash;it was only
+three days&mdash;and hopeless always. Yesterday convulsion came on&mdash;and this
+morning&mdash;&mdash;" Her head dropped against her son's breast as her voice
+failed her. He put her roughly from him.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you talking of, mother! Do you mean that Beatty has been ill?"</p>
+
+<p>"She died last night. Roger&mdash;my darling son&mdash;my poor Roger!"</p>
+
+<p>"Died&mdash;last night&mdash;Beatty?"</p>
+
+<p>French in silence handed him the telegram. Roger disengaged himself and
+walked to the fireplace, standing motionless, with his back to them, for
+a minute, while they held their breaths. Then he began to grope again
+for his hat, without a word.</p>
+
+<p>"Come home with me, Roger!" implored his mother, pursuing him. "We must
+bear it&mdash;bear it together. You see&mdash;she didn't suffer"&mdash;she pointed to
+the message&mdash;"the darling!&mdash;the darling!"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice lost itself in tears. But Roger brushed her away, as though
+resenting her emotion, and made for the door.</p>
+
+<p>French also put out a hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Roger, dear, dear old fellow! Stay here with us&mdash;with your mother.
+Where are you going?"</p>
+
+<p>Roger looked at his watch unsteadily.</p>
+
+<p>"The office will be closed," he said to himself; "but I can put some
+things together."</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you going, Roger?" cried Lady Barnes, pursuing him. Roger
+faced her.</p>
+
+<p>"It's Tuesday. There'll be a White Star boat to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Roger, what can you do? She's gone, dear&mdash;she's gone. And before
+you can get there&mdash;long before&mdash;she will be in her grave."</p>
+
+<p>A spasm passed over his face, into which the colour rushed. Without
+another word he wrenched himself from her, opened the front door, and
+ran out into the night.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+
+<p>"Was there ever anything so poetic, so suggestive?" said a charming
+voice. "One might make a new Turner out of it&mdash;if one just happened to
+be Turner!&mdash;to match 'Rain: Steam, and Speed.'"</p>
+
+<p>"What would you call it&mdash;'Mist, Light, and Spring'?"</p>
+
+<p>Captain Boyson leant forward, partly to watch the wonderful landscape
+effect through which the train was passing, partly because his young
+wife's profile, her pure cheek and soft hair, were so agreeably seen
+under the mingled light from outside.</p>
+
+<p>They were returning from their wedding journey. Some six weeks before
+this date Boyson had married in Philadelphia a girl coming from one of
+the old Quaker stocks of that town, in whose tender steadfastness of
+character a man inclined both by nature and experience to expect little
+from life had found a happiness that amazed him.</p>
+
+<p>The bridegroom, also, had just been appointed to the Military
+Attach&eacute;ship at the Berlin Embassy, and the couple were, in fact, on
+their way south to New York and embarkation. But there were still a few
+days left of the honeymoon, of which they had spent the last half in
+Canada, and on this May night they were journeying from Toronto along
+the southern shore of Lake Ontario to the pleasant Canadian hotel which
+overlooks the pageant of Niagara. They had left Toronto in bright
+sunshine, but as they turned the corner of the lake westward, a white
+fog had come creeping over the land as the sunset fell.</p>
+
+<p>But the daylight was still strong, the fog thin; so that it appeared
+rather as a veil of gold, amethyst, and opal, floating over the country,
+now parting altogether, now blotting out the orchards and the fields.
+And into the colour above melted the colour below. For the orchards that
+cover the Hamilton district of Ontario were in bloom, and the snow of
+the pear-trees, the flush of the peach-blossom broke everywhere through
+the warm cloud of pearly mist; while, just as Mrs. Boyson spoke, the
+train had come in sight of the long flashing line of the Welland Canal,
+which wound its way, outlined by huge electric lamps, through the sunset
+and the fog, till the lights died in that northern distance where
+stretched the invisible shore of the great lake. The glittering
+waterway, speaking of the labour and commerce of men, the blossom-laden
+earth, the white approaching mist, the softly falling night:&mdash;the
+girl-bride could not tear herself from the spectacle. She sat beside the
+window entranced. But her husband had captured her hand, and into the
+overflowing beauty of nature there stole the thrill of their love.</p>
+
+<p>"All very well!" said Boyson presently. "But a fog at Niagara is no
+joke!"</p>
+
+<p>The night stole on, and the cloud through which they journeyed grew
+denser. Up crept the fog, on stole the night. The lights of the canal
+faded, the orchards sank into darkness, and when the bride and
+bridegroom reached the station on the Canadian side the bride's pleasure
+had become dismay.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Alfred, we shan't see anything!"</p>
+
+<p>And, indeed, as their carriage made its slow progress along the road
+that skirts the gorge, they seemed to plunge deeper and deeper into the
+fog. A white darkness, as though of impenetrable yet glimmering cloud,
+above and around them; a white abyss beneath them; and issuing from it
+the thunderous voice of wild waters, dim first and distant, but growing
+steadily in volume and terror.</p>
+
+<p>"There are the lights of the bridge!" cried Boyson, "and the towers of
+the aluminum works. But not a vestige of the Falls! Gone! Wiped out! I
+say, darling, this is going to be a disappointment."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Boyson, however, was not so sure. The lovely "nocturne" of the
+evening plain had passed into a Vision or Masque of Force that captured
+the mind. High above the gulf rose the towers of the great works,
+transformed by the surging fog and darkness into some piled and castled
+fortress; a fortress of Science held by Intelligence. Lights were in the
+towers, as of genii at their work; lights glimmered here and there on
+the face of the farther cliff, as though to measure the vastness of the
+gorge and of that resounding vacancy towards which they moved. In front,
+the arch of the vast suspension bridge, pricked in light, crossed the
+gulf, from nothingness to nothingness, like that sky bridge on which the
+gods marched to Walhalla. Otherwise, no shape, no landmark; earth and
+heaven had disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>"Here we are at the hotel," said Boyson. "There, my dear,"&mdash;he pointed
+ironically&mdash;"is the American Fall, and there&mdash;is the Canadian! Let me
+introduce you to Niagara!"</p>
+
+<p>They jumped out of the carriage, and while their bags were being carried
+in they ran to the parapeted edge of the cliff in front of the hotel.
+Niagara thundered in their ears; the spray of it beat upon their faces;
+but of the two great Falls immediately in front of them they saw nothing
+whatever. The fog, now cold and clammy, enwrapped them; even the bright
+lights of the hotel, but a stone's throw distant, were barely visible;
+and the carriage still standing at the steps had vanished.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, some common impulse born of the moment and the scene&mdash;of its
+inhuman ghostliness and grandeur&mdash;drew them to each other. Boyson threw
+his arm round his young wife and pressed her to him, kissing her face
+and hair, bedewed by the spray. She clung to him passionately, trembling
+a little, as the roar deafened them and the fog swept round them.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>As the Boysons lingered in the central hall of the hotel, reading some
+letters which had been handed to them, a lady in black passed along the
+gallery overhead and paused a moment to look at the new arrivals brought
+by the evening train.</p>
+
+<p>As she perceived Captain Boyson there was a quick, startled movement;
+she bent a moment over the staircase, as though to make sure of his
+identity, and then ran along the gallery to a room at the farther end.
+As she opened the door a damp cold air streamed upon her, and the
+thunder of the Falls, with which the hotel is perpetually filled, seemed
+to redouble.</p>
+
+<p>Three large windows opposite to her were, in fact, wide open; the room,
+with its lights dimmed by fog, seemed hung above the abyss.</p>
+
+<p>An invalid couch stood in front of the window, and upon it lay a pale,
+emaciated woman, breathing quickly and feebly. At the sound of the
+closing door, Madeleine Verrier turned.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Daphne, I was afraid you had gone out! You do such wild things!"</p>
+
+<p>Daphne Barnes came to the side of the couch.</p>
+
+<p>"Darling, I only went to speak to your maid for a moment. Are you sure
+you can stand all this damp fog?"</p>
+
+<p>As she spoke Daphne took up a fur cloak lying on a chair near, and
+wrapped herself warmly in it.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't breathe when they shut the windows. But it is too cold for
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm all right in this." Daphne drew the cloak round her.</p>
+
+<p>Inwardly she said to herself, "Shall I tell her the Boysons are here?
+Yes, I must. She is sure to hear it in some way."</p>
+
+<p>So, stooping over the couch, she said:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know who arrived this evening? The Alfred Boysons. I saw them in
+the hall just now."</p>
+
+<p>"They're on their honeymoon?" asked the faint voice, after a just
+perceptible pause.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne assented. "She seems a pretty little thing."</p>
+
+<p>Madeleine Verrier opened her tired eyes to look at Daphne. Mrs.
+Floyd&mdash;as Daphne now called herself&mdash;was dressed in deep black. The
+costly gown revealed a figure which had recently become substantial, and
+the face on which the electric light shone had nothing left in it of the
+girl, though Daphne Floyd was not yet thirty. The initial beauty of
+complexion was gone; so was the fleeting prettiness of youth. The eyes
+were as splendid as ever, but combined with the increased paleness of
+the cheeks, the greater prominence and determination of the mouth, and a
+certain austerity in the dressing of the hair, which was now firmly
+drawn back from the temples round which it used to curl, and worn high,
+<i>&agrave; la Marquise</i>, they expressed a personality&mdash;a formidable
+personality&mdash;in which self-will was no longer graceful, and power no
+longer magnetic. Madeleine Verrier gazed at her friend in silence. She
+was very grateful to Daphne, often very dependent on her. But there were
+moments when she shrank from her, when she would gladly never have seen
+her again. Daphne was still erect, self-confident, militant; whereas
+Madeleine knew herself vanquished&mdash;vanquished both in body and soul.</p>
+
+<p>Certain inner miseries and discomforts had been set vibrating by the
+name of Captain Boyson.</p>
+
+<p>"You won't want to see him or come across him?" she said abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"Who? Alfred Boyson? I am not afraid of him in the least. He may say
+what he pleases&mdash;or think what he pleases. It doesn't matter to me."</p>
+
+<p>"When did you see him last?"</p>
+
+<p>Daphne hesitated a moment. "When he came to ask me for certain things
+which had belonged to Beatty."</p>
+
+<p>"For Roger? I remember. It must have been painful."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Daphne unwillingly, "it was. He was very unfriendly. He
+always has been&mdash;since it happened. But I bore him no malice"&mdash;the tone
+was firm&mdash;"and the interview was short."</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;&mdash;" The half inaudible word fell like a sigh from Madeleine's lips as
+she closed her eyes again to shut out the light which teased them. And
+presently she added, "Do you ever hear anything now&mdash;from England?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just what I might expect to hear&mdash;what more than justifies all that I
+did."</p>
+
+<p>Daphne sat rigid on her chair, her hands crossed on her lap. Mrs.
+Verrier did not pursue the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>Outside the fog grew thicker and darker. Even the lights on the bridge
+were now engulfed. Daphne began to shiver in her fur cloak. She put out
+a cold hand and took one of Mrs. Verrier's.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Madeleine! Indeed, indeed, you ought to let me move you from this
+place. Do let me! There's the house at Stockbridge all ready. And in
+July I could take you to Newport. I must be off next week, for I've
+promised to take the chair at a big meeting at Buffalo on the 29th. But
+I can't bear to leave you behind. We could make the journey quite easy
+for you. That new car of mine is very comfortable."</p>
+
+<p>"I know it is. But, thank you, dear, I like this hotel; and it will be
+summer directly."</p>
+
+<p>Daphne hesitated. A strong protest against "morbidness" was on her lips,
+but she did not speak it. In the mist-filled room even the bright fire,
+the electric lights, had grown strangely dim. Only the roar outside was
+real&mdash;terribly, threateningly real. Yet the sound was not so much fierce
+as lamentable; the voice of Nature mourning the eternal flow and
+conflict at the heart of things. Daphne knew well that, mingled with
+this primitive, cosmic voice, there was&mdash;for Madeleine Verrier&mdash;another;
+a plaintive, human cry, that was drawing the life out of her breast, the
+blood from her veins, like some baneful witchcraft of old. But she dared
+not speak of it; she and the doctor who attended Mrs. Verrier dared no
+longer name the patient's "obsession" even to each other. They had tried
+to combat it, to tear her from this place; with no other result, as it
+seemed, than to hasten the death-process which was upon her. Gently, but
+firmly, she had defied them, and they knew now that she would always
+defy them. For a year past, summer and winter, she had lived in this
+apartment facing the Falls; her nurses found her very patient under the
+incurable disease which had declared itself; Daphne came to stay with
+her when arduous engagements allowed, and Madeleine was always grateful
+and affectionate. But certain topics, and certain advocacies, had
+dropped out of their conversation&mdash;not by Daphne's will. There had been
+no spoken recantation; only the prophetess prophesied no more; and of
+late, especially when Daphne was not there&mdash;so Mrs. Floyd had
+discovered&mdash;a Roman Catholic priest had begun to visit Mrs. Verrier.
+Daphne, moreover, had recently noticed a small crucifix, hidden among
+the folds of the loose black dress which Madeleine commonly wore.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Daphne had changed her dress and dismissed her maid. Although it was
+May, a wood-fire had been lighted in her room to counteract the chilly
+damp of the evening. She hung over it, loth to go back to the
+sitting-room, and plagued by a depression that not even her strong will
+could immediately shake off. She wished the Boysons had not come. She
+supposed that Alfred Boyson would hardly cut her; but she was tolerably
+certain that he would not wish his young wife to become acquainted with
+her. She scorned his disapproval of her; but she smarted under it. It
+combined with Madeleine's strange delusions to put her on the defensive;
+to call out all the fierceness of her pride; to make her feel herself
+the champion of a sound and reasonable view of life as against weakness
+and reaction.</p>
+
+<p>Madeleine's dumb remorse was, indeed, the most paralyzing and baffling
+thing; nothing seemed to be of any avail against it, now that it had
+finally gained the upper hand. There had been dark times, no doubt, in
+the old days in Washington; times when the tragedy of her husband's
+death had overshadowed her. But in the intervals, what courage and
+boldness, what ardour in the declaration of that new Feminist gospel to
+which Daphne had in her own case borne witness! Daphne remembered well
+with what feverish readiness Madeleine had accepted her own pleas after
+her flight from England; how she had defended her against hostile
+criticism, had supported her during the divorce court proceedings, and
+triumphed in their result. "You are unhappy? And he deceived you? Well,
+then, what more do you want? Free yourself, my dear, free yourself! What
+right have you to bear more children to a man who is a liar and a
+shuffler? It is our generation that must suffer, for the liberty of
+those that come after!"</p>
+
+<p>What had changed her? Was it simply the approach of mortal illness, the
+old questioning of "what dreams may come"? Superstition, in fact? As a
+girl she had been mystical and devout; so Daphne had heard.</p>
+
+<p>Or was it the death of little Beatty, to whom she was much attached? She
+had seen something of Roger during that intermediate Philadelphia stage,
+when he and Beatty were allowed to meet at her house; and she had once
+or twice astonished and wounded Daphne at that time by sudden
+expressions of pity for him. It was she who had sent the cable message
+announcing the child's death, wording it as gently as possible, and had
+wept in sending it.</p>
+
+<p>"As if I hadn't suffered too!" cried Daphne's angry thought. And she
+turned to look at the beautiful miniature of Beatty set in pearls that
+stood upon her dressing-table. There was something in the recollection
+of Madeleine's sensibility with regard to the child&mdash;as in that of her
+compassion for the father's suffering&mdash;that offended Daphne. It seemed a
+reflection upon herself, Beatty's mother, as lacking in softness and
+natural feeling.</p>
+
+<p>On the contrary! She had suffered terribly; but she had thought it her
+duty to bear it with courage, not to let it interfere with the
+development of her life. And as for Roger, was it her fault that he had
+made it impossible for her to keep her promise? That she had been forced
+to separate Beatty from him? And if, as she understood now from various
+English correspondents, it was true that Roger had dropped out of decent
+society, did it not simply prove that she had guessed his character
+aright, and had only saved herself just in time?</p>
+
+<p>It was as though the sudden presence of Captain Boyson under the same
+roof had raised up a shadowy adversary and accuser, with whom she must
+go on thus arguing, and hotly defending herself, in a growing
+excitement. Not that she would ever stoop to argue with Alfred Boyson
+face to face. How could he ever understand the ideals to which she had
+devoted her powers and her money since the break-up of her married life?
+He could merely estimate what she had done in the commonest, vulgarest
+way. Yet who could truthfully charge her with having obtained her
+divorce in order thereby to claim any fresh licence for herself? She
+looked back now with a cool amazement on that sudden rush of passion
+which had swept her into marriage, no less than the jealousy which had
+led her to break with Roger. She was still capable of many kinds of
+violence; but not, probably, of the violence of love. The influence of
+sex and sense upon her had weakened; the influence of ambition had
+increased. As in many women of Southern race, the period of hot blood
+had passed into a period of intrigue and domination. Her wealth gave her
+power, and for that power she lived.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, she was personally desolate, but she had stood firm, and her reward
+lay in the fact that she had gathered round her an army of dependents
+and followers&mdash;women especially&mdash;to whom her money and her brains were
+indispensable. There on the table lay the plans for a new Women's
+College, on the broadest and most modern lines, to which she was soon to
+devote a large sum of money. The walls should have been up by now but
+for a quarrel with her secretary, who had become much too independent,
+and had had to be peremptorily dismissed at a moment's notice. But the
+plan was a noble one, approved by the highest authorities; and Daphne,
+looking to posterity, anticipated the recognition that she herself might
+never live to see. For the rest she had given herself&mdash;with
+reservations&mdash;to the Feminist movement. It was not in her nature to give
+herself wholly to anything; and she was instinctively critical of people
+who professed to be her leaders, and programmes to which she was
+expected to subscribe. Wholehearted devotion, which, as she rightly
+said, meant blind devotion, had never been her line; and she had been on
+one or two occasions offensively outspoken on the subject of certain
+leading persons in the movement. She was not, therefore, popular with
+her party, and did not care to be; her pride of money held her apart
+from the rank and file, the college girls, and typists, and journalists
+who filled the Feminist meetings, and often made themselves, in her
+eyes, supremely ridiculous, because of what she considered their silly
+provinciality and lack of knowledge of the world.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, of course, she was a "Feminist"&mdash;and particularly associated with
+those persons in the suffrage camp who stood for broad views on marriage
+and divorce. She knew very well that many other persons in the same camp
+held different opinions; and in public or official gatherings was always
+nervously&mdash;most people thought arrogantly&mdash;on the look-out for affronts.
+Meanwhile, everywhere, or almost everywhere, her money gave her power,
+and her knowledge of it was always sweet to her. There was nothing in
+the world&mdash;no cause, no faith&mdash;that she could have accepted "as a little
+child." But everywhere, in her own opinion, she stood for Justice;
+justice for women as against the old prim&aelig;val tyranny of men; justice,
+of course, to the workman, and justice to the rich. No foolish
+Socialism, and no encroaching Trusts! A lucid common sense, so it seemed
+to her, had been her cradle-gift.</p>
+
+<p>And with regard to Art, how much she had been able to do! She had
+generously helped the public collections, and her own small gallery, at
+the house in Newport, was famous throughout England and America. That in
+the course of the preceding year she had found among the signatures,
+extracted from visitors by the custodian in charge, the name of Chloe
+Fairmile, had given her a peculiar satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>She walked proudly across the room, her head thrown back, every nerve
+tense. Let the ignorant and stupid blame her if they chose. She stood
+absolved. Memory reminded her, moreover, of a great number of kind and
+generous things&mdash;private things&mdash;that she had done with her money. If
+men like Herbert French, or Alfred Boyson, denounced her, there were
+many persons who felt warmly towards her&mdash;and had cause. As she thought
+of them the tears rose in her eyes. Of course she could never make such
+things public.</p>
+
+<p>Outside the fog seemed to be lifting a little. There was a silvery light
+in the southeast, a gleam and radiance over the gorge. If the moon
+struggled through, it would be worth while slipping out after dinner to
+watch its play upon the great spectacle. She was careful to cherish in
+herself an openness to noble impressions and to the high poetry of
+nature and life. And she must not allow herself to be led by the casual
+neighbourhood of the Boysons into weak or unprofitable thought.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The Boysons dined at a table, gay with lights and flowers, that should
+have commanded the Falls but for the curtain of fog. Niagara, however,
+might flout them if it pleased; they could do without Niagara. They were
+delighted that the hotel, apparently, contained no one they knew. All
+they wanted was to be together, and alone. But the bride was tired by a
+long day in the train; her smiles began presently to flag, and by nine
+o'clock her husband had insisted on sending her to rest.</p>
+
+<p>After escorting her upstairs Captain Boyson returned to the veranda,
+which was brightly lit up, in order to read some letters that were still
+unopened in his pocket. But before he began upon them he was seized once
+more by the wizardry of the scene. Was that indistinct glimmer in the
+far distance&mdash;that intenser white on white&mdash;the eternal cloud of spray
+that hangs over the Canadian Fall? If so, the fog was indeed yielding,
+and the full moon behind it would triumph before long. On the other
+hand, he could no longer see the lights of the bridge at all; the
+rolling vapour choked the gorge, and the waiter who brought him his
+coffee drily prophesied that there would not be much change under
+twenty-four hours.</p>
+
+<p>He fell back upon his letters, well pleased to see that one among them
+came from Herbert French, with whom the American officer had maintained
+a warm friendship since the day of a certain consultation in French's
+East-End library. The letter was primarily one of congratulation,
+written with all French's charm and sympathy; but over the last pages of
+it Boyson's face darkened, for they contained a deplorable account of
+the man whom he and French had tried to save.</p>
+
+<p>The concluding passage of the letter ran as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"You will scarcely wonder after all this that we see him very
+seldom, and that he no longer gives us his confidence. Yet both
+Elsie and I feel that he cares for us as much as ever. And, indeed,
+poor fellow, he himself remains strangely lovable, in spite of what
+one must&mdash;alas!&mdash;believe as to his ways of life and the people with
+whom he associates. There is in him, always, something of what
+Meyers called 'the imperishable child.' That a man who might have
+been so easily led to good has been so fatally thrust into evil is
+one of the abiding sorrows of my life. How can I reproach him for
+his behaviour? As the law stands, he can never marry; he can never
+have legitimate children. Under the wrong he has suffered, and, no
+doubt, in consequence of that illness in New York, when he was
+badly nursed and cared for&mdash;from which, in fact, he has never
+wholly recovered&mdash;his will-power and nerve, which were never very
+strong, have given way; he broods upon the past perpetually, and on
+the loss of his child. Our poor Apollo, Boyson, will soon have lost
+himself wholly, and there is no one to help.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you ever see or hear anything of that woman? Do you know what
+has become of her? I see you are to have a Conference on your
+Divorce Laws&mdash;that opinion and indignation are rising. For Heaven's
+sake, do something! I gather some appalling facts from a recent
+Washington report. One in twelve of all your marriages dissolved! A
+man or a woman divorced in one state, and still bound in another!
+The most trivial causes for the break-up of marriage, accepted and
+acted upon by corrupt courts, and reform blocked by a phalanx of
+corrupt interests! Is it all true? An American correspondent of
+mine&mdash;a lady&mdash;repeats to me what you once said, that it is the
+women who bring the majority of the actions. She impresses upon me
+also the remarkable fact that it is apparently only in a minority
+of cases that a woman, when she has got rid of her husband, marries
+someone else. It is not passion, therefore, that dictates many of
+these actions; no serious cause or feeling, indeed, of any kind;
+but rather an ever-spreading restlessness and levity, a readiness
+to tamper with the very foundations of society, for a whim, a
+nothing!&mdash;in the interests, of ten, of what women call their
+'individuality'! No foolish talk here of being 'members one of
+another'! We have outgrown all that. The facilities are always
+there, and the temptation of them. 'The women&mdash;especially&mdash;who do
+these things,' she writes me, 'are moral anarchists. One can appeal
+to nothing; they acknowledge nothing. Transformations infinitely
+far-reaching and profound are going on among us."</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Appeal to nothing!</i>' And this said of women, by a woman! It was
+of <i>men</i> that a Voice said long ago: 'Moses, because of the
+hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives'&mdash;on
+just such grounds apparently&mdash;trivial and cruel pretexts&mdash;as your
+American courts admit. 'But <i>I</i> say unto you!&mdash;<i>I say unto
+you!</i>'...</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I am a Christian priest, incapable, of course, of an
+unbiassed opinion. My correspondent tries to explain the situation
+a little by pointing out that your women in America claim to be the
+superiors of your men, to be more intellectual, better-mannered,
+more refined. Marriage disappoints or disgusts them, and they
+impatiently put it aside. They break it up, and seem to pay no
+penalty. But you and I believe that they will pay it!&mdash;that there
+are divine avenging forces in the very law they tamper with&mdash;and
+that, as a nation, you must either retrace some of the steps taken,
+or sink in the scale of life.</p>
+
+<p>"How I run on! And all because my heart is hot within me for the
+suffering of one man, and the hardness of one woman!"</p></div>
+
+<p>Boyson raised his eyes. As he did so he saw dimly through the mist the
+figure of a lady, veiled, and wrapped in a fur cloak, crossing the
+farther end of the veranda. He half rose from his seat, with an
+exclamation. She ran down the steps leading to the road and disappeared
+in the fog.</p>
+
+<p>Boyson stood looking after her, his mind in a whirl.</p>
+
+<p>The manager of the hotel came hurriedly out of the same door by which
+Daphne Floyd had emerged, and spoke to a waiter on the veranda, pointing
+in the direction she had taken.</p>
+
+<p>Boyson heard what was said, and came up. A short conversation passed
+between him and the manager. There was a moment's pause on Boyson's
+part; he still held French's letter in his hand. At last, thrusting it
+into his pocket, he hurried to the steps whereby Daphne had left the
+hotel, and pursued her into the cloud outside.</p>
+
+<p>The fog was now rolling back from the gorge, upon the Falls, blotting
+out the transient gleams which had seemed to promise a lifting of the
+veil, leaving nothing around or beneath but the white and thunderous
+abyss.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+
+<p>Daphne's purpose in quitting the hotel had been to find her way up the
+river by the road which runs along the gorge on the Canadian side, from
+the hotel to the Canadian Fall. Thick as the fog still was in the gorge
+she hoped to find some clearer air beyond it. She felt oppressed and
+stifled; and though she had told Madeleine that she was going out in
+search of effects and spectacle, it was in truth the neighbourhood of
+Alfred Boyson which had made her restless.</p>
+
+<p>The road was lit at intervals by electric lamps, but after a time she
+found the passage of it not particularly easy. Some repairs to the
+tramway lines were going on higher up, and she narrowly escaped various
+pitfalls in the shape of trenches and holes in the roadway, very
+insufficiently marked by feeble lamps. But the stir in her blood drove
+her on; so did the strangeness of this white darkness, suffused with
+moonlight, yet in this immediate neighbourhood of the Falls,
+impenetrable. She was impatient to get through it; to breathe an
+unembarrassed air.</p>
+
+<p>The roar at her left hand grew wilder. She had reached a point some
+distance from the hotel, close to the jutting corner, once open, now
+walled and protected, where the traveller approaches nearest to the edge
+of the Canadian Fall. She knew the spot well, and groping for the wall,
+she stood breathless and spray-beaten beside the gulf.</p>
+
+<p>Only a few yards from her the vast sheet of water descended. She could
+see nothing of it, but the wind of its mighty plunge blew back her hair,
+and her mackintosh cloak was soon dripping with the spray. Once, far
+away, above the Falls, she seemed to perceive a few dim lights along the
+bend of the river; perhaps from one of the great power-houses that tame
+to man's service the spirits of the water. Otherwise&mdash;nothing! She was
+alone with the perpetual challenge and fascination of the Falls.</p>
+
+<p>As she stood there she was seized by a tragic recollection. It was from
+this spot, so she believed, that Leopold Verrier had thrown himself
+over. The body had been carried down through the rapids, and recovered,
+terribly injured, in the deep eddying pool which the river makes below
+them. He had left no letter or message of any sort behind him. But the
+reasons for his suicide were clearly understood by a large public, whose
+main verdict upon it was the quiet "What else could he do?"</p>
+
+<p>Here, then, on this very spot, he had stood before his leap. Daphne had
+heard him described by various spectators of the marriage. He had been,
+it seemed, a man of sensitive temperament, who should have been an
+artist and was a man of business; a considerable musician, and something
+of a poet; proud of his race and faith and himself irreproachable, yet
+perpetually wounded through his family, which bore a name of ill-repute
+in the New York business world; passionately grateful to his wife for
+having married him, delighting in her beauty and charm, and foolishly,
+abjectly eager to heap upon her and their child everything that wealth
+could buy.</p>
+
+<p>"It was Madeleine's mother who made it hopeless," thought Daphne. "But
+for Mrs. Fanshaw&mdash;it might have lasted."</p>
+
+<p>And memory called up Mrs. Fanshaw, the beautifully dressed woman of
+fifty, with her pride of wealth and family, belonging to the strictest
+sect of New York's social <i>&eacute;lite</i>, with her hard, fastidious face, her
+formidable elegance and self-possession. How she had loathed the
+marriage! And with what a harpy-like eagerness had she seized on the
+first signs of Madeleine's discontent and <i>ennui</i>; persuaded her to come
+home; prepared the divorce; poisoned public opinion. It was from a last
+interview with Mrs. Fanshaw that Leopold Verrier had gone straight to
+his death. What was it that she had said to him?</p>
+
+<p>Daphne lingered on the question; haunted, too, by other stray
+recollections of the dismal story&mdash;the doctor driving by in the early
+morning who had seen the fall; the discovery of the poor broken body;
+Madeleine's blanched stoicism, under the fierce coercion of her mother;
+and that strong, silent, slow-setting tide of public condemnation, which
+in this instance, at least, had avenged a cruel act.</p>
+
+<p>But at this point Daphne ceased to think about her friend. She found
+herself suddenly engaged in a heated self-defence. What comparison could
+there be between her case and Madeleine's?</p>
+
+<p>Fiercely she found herself going through the list of Roger's crimes; his
+idleness, treachery and deceit; his lack of any high ideals; his bad
+influence on the child; his luxurious self-indulgent habits, the lies he
+had told, the insults he had offered her. By now the story had grown to
+a lurid whole in her imagination, based on a few distorted facts, yet
+radically and monstrously untrue. Generally, however, when she dwelt
+upon it, it had power to soothe any smart of conscience, to harden any
+yearning of the heart, supposing she felt any. And by now she had almost
+ceased to feel any.</p>
+
+<p>But to-night she was mysteriously shaken and agitated. As she clung to
+the wall, which alone separated her from the echoing gulf beyond, she
+could not prevent herself from thinking of Roger, Roger as he was when
+Alfred Boyson introduced him to her, when they first married, and she
+had been blissfully happy; happy in the possession of such a god-like
+creature, in the envy of other women, in the belief that he was growing
+more and more truly attached to her.</p>
+
+<p>Her thoughts broke abruptly. "He married me for money!" cried the inward
+voice. Then she felt her cheeks tingling as she remembered her
+conversation with Madeleine on that very subject&mdash;how she had justified
+what she was now judging&mdash;how plainly she had understood and condoned
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"That was my inexperience! Besides, I knew nothing then of Chloe
+Fairmile. If I had&mdash;I should never have done it."</p>
+
+<p>She turned, startled. Steps seemed to be approaching her, of someone as
+yet invisible. Her nerves were all on edge, and she felt suddenly
+frightened. Strangers of all kinds visit and hang about Niagara; she was
+quite alone, known to be the rich Mrs. Floyd; if she were attacked&mdash;set
+upon&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The outline of a man's form emerged; she heard her name, or rather the
+name she had renounced.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw you come in this direction, Mrs. Barnes. I knew the road was up
+in some places, and I thought in this fog you would allow me to warn you
+that walking was not very safe."</p>
+
+<p>The voice was Captain Boyson's; and they were now plain to each other as
+they stood a couple of yards apart. The fog, however, was at last
+slightly breaking. There was a gleam over the nearer water; not merely
+the lights, but the span of the bridge had begun to appear.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne composed herself with an effort.</p>
+
+<p>"I am greatly obliged to you," she said in her most freezing manner.
+"But I found no difficulty at all in getting through, and the fog is
+lifting."</p>
+
+<p>With a stiff inclination she turned in the direction of the hotel, but
+Captain Boyson stood in her way. She saw a face embarrassed yet
+resolved.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Barnes, may I speak to you a few minutes?"</p>
+
+<p>Daphne gave a slight laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see how I can prevent it. So you didn't follow me, Captain
+Boyson, out of mere regard for my personal safety?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I hadn't come myself I should have sent someone," he replied
+quietly. "The hotel people were anxious. But I wished to come myself. I
+confess I had a very strong desire to speak to you."</p>
+
+<p>"There seems to be nothing and no one to interfere with it," said
+Daphne, in a tone of sarcasm. "I should be glad, however, with your
+permission, to turn homeward. I see Mrs. Boyson is here. You are, I
+suppose, on your wedding journey?"</p>
+
+<p>He moved out of her path, said a few conventional words, and they walked
+on. A light wind had risen and the fog was now breaking rapidly. As it
+gave way, the moonlight poured into the breaches that the wind made; the
+vast black-and-silver spectacle, the Falls, the gorge, the town
+opposite, the bridge, the clouds, began to appear in fragments,
+grandiose and fantastical.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne, presently, seeing that Boyson was slow to speak, raised her
+eyebrows and attempted a remark on the scene. Boyson interrupted her
+hurriedly.</p>
+
+<p>"I imagine, Mrs. Barnes, that what I wish to say will seem to you a
+piece of insolence. All the same, for the sake of our former friendship,
+I would ask you to bear with me."</p>
+
+<p>"By all means!"</p>
+
+<p>"I had no idea that you were in the hotel. About half an hour ago, on
+the veranda, I opened an English letter which arrived this evening. The
+news in it gave me great concern. Then I saw you appear, to my
+astonishment, in the distance. I asked the hotel manager if it were
+really you. He was about to send someone after you. An idea occurred to
+me. I saw my opportunity&mdash;and I pursued you."</p>
+
+<p>"And here I am, at your mercy!" said Daphne, with sudden sharpness. "You
+have left me no choice. However, I am quite willing."</p>
+
+<p>The voice was familiar yet strange. There was in it the indefinable
+hardening and ageing which seemed to Boyson to have affected the whole
+personality. What had happened to her? As he looked at her in the dim
+light there rushed upon them both the memory of those three weeks by the
+seaside years before, when he had fallen in love with her, and she had
+first trifled with, and then repulsed him.</p>
+
+<p>"I wished to ask you a question, in the name of our old friendship; and
+because I have also become a friend&mdash;as you know&mdash;of your husband."</p>
+
+<p>He felt, rather than saw, the start of anger in the woman beside him.</p>
+
+<p>"Captain Boyson! I cannot defend myself, but I would ask you to
+recognize ordinary courtesies. I have now no husband."</p>
+
+<p>"Of your husband," he repeated, without hesitation, yet gently. "By the
+law of England at least, which you accepted, and under which you became
+a British subject, you are still the wife of Roger Barnes, and he has
+done nothing whatever to forfeit his right to your wifely care. It is
+indeed of him and of his present state that I beg to be allowed to speak
+to you."</p>
+
+<p>He heard a little laugh beside him&mdash;unsteady and hysterical.</p>
+
+<p>"You beg for what you have already taken. I repeat, I am at your mercy.
+An American subject, Captain Boyson, knows nothing of the law of
+England. I have recovered my American citizenship, and the law of my
+country has freed me from a degrading and disastrous marriage!"</p>
+
+<p>"While Roger remains bound? Incapable, at the age of thirty, of marrying
+again, unless he renounces his country&mdash;permanently debarred from home
+and children!"</p>
+
+<p>His pulse ran quick. It was a strange adventure, this, to which he had
+committed himself!</p>
+
+<p>"I have nothing to do with English law, nothing whatever! It is unjust,
+monstrous. But that was no reason why I, too, should suffer!"</p>
+
+<p>"No reason for patience? No reason for pity?" said the man's voice,
+betraying emotion at last. "Mrs. Barnes, what do you know of Roger's
+present state?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have no need to know anything."</p>
+
+<p>"It matters nothing to you? Nothing to you that he has lost health, and
+character, and happiness, his child, his home, everything, owing to your
+action?"</p>
+
+<p>"Captain Boyson!" she cried, her composure giving way, "this is
+intolerable, outrageous! It is humiliating that you should even expect
+me to argue with you. Yet," she bit her lip, angry with the agitation
+that would assail her, "for the sake of our friendship to which you
+appeal, I would rather not be angry. What you say is monstrous!" her
+voice shook. "In the first place, I freed myself from a man who married
+me for money."</p>
+
+<p>"One moment! Do you forget that from the day you left him Roger has
+never touched a farthing of your money? That he returned everything to
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I had nothing to do with that; it was his own folly."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but it throws light upon his character. Would a mere
+fortune-hunter have done it? No, Mrs. Barnes!&mdash;that view of Roger does
+not really convince you, you do not really believe it."</p>
+
+<p>She smiled bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>"As it happens, in his letters to me after I left him, he amply
+confessed it."</p>
+
+<p>"Because his wish was to make peace, to throw himself at your feet. He
+accused himself, more than was just. But you do not really think him
+mercenary and greedy, you <i>know</i> that he was neither! Mrs. Barnes, Roger
+is ill and lonely."</p>
+
+<p>"His mode of life accounts for it."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean that he has begun to drink, has fallen into bad company. That
+may be true. I cannot deny it. But consider. A man from whom everything
+is torn at one blow; a man of not very strong character, not accustomed
+to endure hardness.&mdash;Does it never occur to you that you took a
+frightful responsibility?"</p>
+
+<p>"I protected myself&mdash;and my child."</p>
+
+<p>He breathed deep.</p>
+
+<p>"Or rather&mdash;did you murder a life&mdash;that God had given you in trust?"</p>
+
+<p>He paused, and she paused also, as though held by the power of his will.
+They were passing along the public garden that borders the road; scents
+of lilac and fresh leaf floated over the damp grass; the moonlight was
+growing in strength, and the majesty of the gorge, the roar of the
+leaping water all seemed to enter into the moral and human scene, to
+accent and deepen it.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne suddenly clung to a seat beside the path, dropped into it.</p>
+
+<p>"Captain Boyson! I&mdash;I cannot bear this any longer."</p>
+
+<p>"I will not reproach you any more," he said, quietly. "I beg your
+pardon. The past is irrevocable, but the present is here. The man who
+loved you, the father of your child, is alone, ill, poor, in danger of
+moral ruin, because of what you have done. I ask you to go to his aid.
+But first let me tell you exactly what I have just heard from England."
+He repeated the greater part of French's letter, so far as it concerned
+Roger.</p>
+
+<p>"He has his mother," said Daphne, when he paused, speaking with evident
+physical difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>"Lady Barnes I hear had a paralytic stroke two months ago. She is
+incapable of giving advice or help."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, I am sorry. But Herbert French&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No one but a wife could save him&mdash;no one!" he repeated with emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>"I am <i>not</i> his wife!" she insisted faintly. "I released myself by
+American law. He is nothing to me." As she spoke she leant back against
+the seat and closed her eyes. Boyson saw clearly that excitement and
+anger had struck down her nervous power, that she might faint or go into
+hysterics. Yet a man of remarkable courtesy and pitifulness towards
+women was not thereby moved from his purpose. He had his chance; he
+could not relinquish it. Only there was something now in her attitude
+which recalled the young Daphne of years ago; which touched his heart.</p>
+
+<p>He sat down beside her.</p>
+
+<p>"Bear with me, Mrs. Barnes, for a few moments, while I put it as it
+appears to another mind. You became first jealous of Roger, for very
+small reason, then tired of him. Your marriage no longer satisfied
+you&mdash;you resolved to be quit of it; so you appealed to laws of which, as
+a nation, we are ashamed, which all that is best among us will, before
+long, rebel against and change. Our State system permits them&mdash;America
+suffers. In this case&mdash;forgive me if I put it once more as it appears to
+me&mdash;they have been used to strike at an Englishman who had absolutely no
+defence, no redress. And now you are free; he remains bound&mdash;so long, at
+least, as you form no other tie. Again I ask you, have you ever let
+yourself face what it means to a man of thirty to be cut off from lawful
+marriage and legitimate children? Mrs. Barnes! you know what a man is,
+his strength and his weakness. Are you really willing that Roger should
+sink into degradation in order that you may punish him for some offence
+to your pride or your feeling? It may be too late! He may, as French
+fears, have fallen into some fatal entanglement; it may not be possible
+to restore his health. He may not be able"&mdash;he hesitated, then brought
+the words out firmly&mdash;"to forgive you. Or again, French's anxieties
+about him may be unfounded. But for God's sake go to him! Once on
+English ground you are his wife again as though nothing had happened.
+For God's sake put every thing aside but the thought of the vow you once
+made to him! Go back! I implore you, go back! I promise you that no
+happiness you have ever felt will be equal to the happiness that step
+would bring you, if only you are permitted to save him."</p>
+
+<p>Daphne was by now shaking from head to foot. The force of feeling which
+impelled him so mastered her that when he gravely took her hand she did
+not withdraw it. She had a strange sense of having at last discovered
+the true self of the quiet, efficient, unpretending man she had known
+for so long and cast so easily aside. There was shock and excitement in
+it, as there is in all trials of strength between a man and a woman. She
+tried to hate and despise him, but she could not achieve it. She longed
+to answer and crush him, but her mind was a blank, her tongue refused
+its office. Surprise, resentment, wounded feeling made a tumult and
+darkness through which she could not find her way.</p>
+
+<p>She rose at last painfully from her seat.</p>
+
+<p>"This conversation must end," she said brokenly. "Captain Boyson, I
+appeal to you as a gentleman, let me go on alone."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her sadly and stood aside. But as he saw her move
+uncertainly toward a portion of the road where various trenches and pits
+made walking difficult, he darted after her.</p>
+
+<p>"Please!" he said peremptorily, "this bit is unsafe."</p>
+
+<p>He drew her hand within his arm and guided her. As he did so he saw that
+she was crying; no doubt, as he rightly guessed, from shaken nerves and
+wounded pride; for it did not seem to him that she had yielded at all.
+But this time he felt distress and compunction.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me!" he said, bending over her. "But think of what I have
+said&mdash;I beg of you! Be kind, be merciful!"</p>
+
+<p>She made various attempts to speak, and at last she said, "I bear you no
+malice. But you don't understand me, you never have."</p>
+
+<p>He offered no reply. They had reached the courtyard of the hotel. Daphne
+withdrew her hand. When she reached the steps she preceded him without
+looking back, and was soon lost to sight.</p>
+
+<p>Boyson shook his head, lit a cigar, and spent some time longer pacing up
+and down the veranda. When he went to his wife's room he found her
+asleep, a vision of soft youth and charm. He stood a few moments looking
+down upon her, wondering in himself at what he had done. Yet he knew
+very well that it was the stirring and deepening of his whole being
+produced by love that had impelled him to do it.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning he told his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you suppose I produced <i>any</i> effect?" he asked her anxiously. "If
+she really thinks over what I said, she <i>must</i> be touched! unless she's
+made of flint. I said all the wrong things&mdash;but I <i>did</i> rub it in."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure you did," said his wife, smiling. Then she looked at him with
+a critical tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>"You dear optimist!" she cried, and slipped her hand into his.</p>
+
+<p>"That means you think I behaved like a fool, and that my appeal won't
+move her in the least?"</p>
+
+<p>The face beside him saddened.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear, dear optimist!" she repeated, and pressed his hand. He urged an
+explanation of her epithet. But she only said, thoughtfully:</p>
+
+<p>"You took a great responsibility!"</p>
+
+<p>"Towards her?"</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;towards him!"</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Daphne was watching beside a death-bed. On her return from her
+walk she had been met by the news of fresh and grave symptoms in Mrs.
+Verrier's case. A Boston doctor arrived the following morning. The
+mortal disease which had attacked her about a year before this date had
+entered, so he reported, on its last phase. He talked of a few
+days&mdash;possibly hours.</p>
+
+<p>The Boysons departed, having left cards of inquiry and sympathy, of
+which Mrs. Floyd took no notice. Then for Daphne there followed a
+nightmare of waiting and pain. She loved Madeleine Verrier, as far as
+she was capable of love, and she jealously wished to be all in all to
+her in these last hours. She would have liked to feel that it was she
+who had carried her friend through them; who had nobly sustained her in
+the dolorous past. To have been able to feel this would have been as
+balm moreover to a piteously wounded self-love, to a smarting and bitter
+recollection, which would not let her rest.</p>
+
+<p>But in these last days Madeleine escaped her altogether. A thin-faced
+priest arrived, the same who had been visiting the invalid at intervals
+for a month or two. Mrs. Verrier was received into the Roman Catholic
+Church; she made her first confession and communion; she saw her mother
+for a short, final interview, and her little girl; and the physical
+energy required for these acts exhausted her small store. Whenever
+Daphne entered her room Madeleine received her tenderly; but she could
+speak but little, and Daphne felt herself shut out and ignored. What she
+said or thought was no longer, it seemed, of any account. She resented
+and despised Madeleine's surrender to what she held to be a decaying
+superstition; and her haughty manner toward the mild Oratorian whom she
+met occasionally on the stairs, or in the corridor, expressed her
+disapproval. But it was impossible to argue with a dying woman. She
+suffered in silence.</p>
+
+<p>As she sat beside the patient, in the hours of narcotic sleep, when she
+relieved one of the nurses, she went often through times of great
+bitterness. She could not forgive the attack Captain Boyson had made
+upon her; yet she could not forget it. It had so far roused her moral
+sense that it led her to a perpetual brooding over the past, a perpetual
+re-statement of her own position. She was most troubled, often, by
+certain episodes in the past, of which, she supposed Alfred Boyson knew
+least; the corrupt use she had made of her money; the false witnesses
+she had paid for; the bribes she had given. At the time it had seemed to
+her all part of the campaign, in the day's work. She had found herself
+in a <i>milieu</i> that demoralized her; her mind had become like "the dyer's
+hand, subdued to what it worked in." Now, she found herself thinking in
+a sudden terror, "If Alfred Boyson knew so and so!" or, as she looked
+down on Madeleine's dying face, "Could I even tell Madeleine that?" And
+then would come the dreary thought, "I shall never tell her anything any
+more. She is lost to me&mdash;even before death."</p>
+
+<p>She tried to avoid thinking of Roger; but the memory of the scene with
+Alfred Boyson did, in truth, bring him constantly before her. An inner
+debate began, from which she could not escape. She grew white and ill
+with it. If she could have rushed away from it, into the full stream of
+life, have thrown herself into meetings and discussion, have resumed her
+place as the admired and flattered head of a particular society, she
+could easily have crushed and silenced the thoughts which tormented her.</p>
+
+<p>But she was held fast. She could not desert Madeleine Verrier in death;
+she could not wrench her own hand from this frail hand which clung to
+it; even though Madeleine had betrayed the common cause, had yielded at
+last to that moral and spiritual cowardice which&mdash;as all freethinkers
+know&mdash;has spoiled and clouded so many death-beds. Daphne&mdash;the skimmer of
+many books&mdash;remembered how Renan&mdash;<i>sain et sauf</i>&mdash;had sent a challenge
+to his own end, and defying the possible weakness of age and sickness,
+had demanded to be judged by the convictions of life, and not by the
+terrors of death. She tried to fortify her own mind by the recollection.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The first days of June broke radiantly over the great gorge and the
+woods which surround it. One morning, early, between four and five
+o'clock, Daphne came in, to find Madeleine awake and comparatively at
+ease. Yet the preceding twenty-four hours had been terrible, and her
+nurses knew that the end could not be far off.</p>
+
+<p>The invalid had just asked that her couch might be drawn as near to the
+window as possible, and she lay looking towards the dawn, which rose in
+fresh and windless beauty over the town opposite and the white splendour
+of the Falls. The American Fall was still largely in shadow; but the
+light struck on the fresh green of Goat Island and leaped in tongues of
+fire along the edge of the Horseshoe, turning the rapids above it to
+flame and sending shafts into the vast tower of spray that holds the
+centre of the curve. Nature was all youth, glitter and delight; summer
+was rushing on the gorge; the mingling of wood and water was at its
+richest and noblest.</p>
+
+<p>Madeleine turned her face towards the gorge, her wasted hands clasped on
+her breast. She beckoned Daphne with a smile, and Daphne knelt down
+beside her.</p>
+
+<p>"The water!" said the whispering voice; "it was once so terrible. I am
+not afraid&mdash;now."</p>
+
+<p>"No, darling. Why should you be?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know now, I shall see him again."</p>
+
+<p>Daphne was silent.</p>
+
+<p>"I hoped it, but I couldn't be certain. That was so awful. Now&mdash;I am
+certain."</p>
+
+<p>"Since you became a Catholic?"</p>
+
+<p>She made a sign of assent.</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't be uncertain&mdash;I <i>couldn't</i>!" she added with fervour, looking
+strangely at Daphne. And Daphne understood that no voice less positive
+or self-confident than that of Catholicism, no religion less well
+provided with tangible rites and practices, could have lifted from the
+spirit the burden of that remorse which had yet killed the body.</p>
+
+<p>A little later Madeleine drew her down again.</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't talk, Daphne&mdash;I was afraid; but I've written to you, just
+bit by bit, as I had strength. Oh, Daphne&mdash;&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>Then voice and strength failed her. Her eyes piteously followed her
+friend for a little, and then closed.</p>
+
+<p>She lingered through the day; and at night when the June starlight was
+on the gorge, she passed away, with the voice of the Falls in her dying
+ears. A tragic beauty&mdash;"beauty born of murmuring sound&mdash;had passed into
+her face;" and that great plunge of many waters, which had been to her
+in life the symbol of anguish and guilt, had become in some mysterious
+way the comforter of her pain, the friend of her last sleep.</p>
+
+<p>A letter was found for Daphne in the little box beside her bed.</p>
+
+<p>It ran thus:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Daphne, Darling</span>,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It was I who first taught you that we may follow our own lawless
+wills, and that marriage is something we may bend or break as we
+will. But, oh! it is not so. Marriage is mysterious and wonderful;
+it is the supreme test of men and women. If we wrong it, and
+despise it, we mutilate the divine in ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Daphne! it is a small thing to say 'Forgive!' Yet it means the
+whole world.&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"And you can still say it to the living. It has been my anguish
+that I could only say it to the dead.... Daphne, good-bye! I have
+fought a long, long fight, but God is master&mdash;I bless&mdash;I adore&mdash;&mdash;"</p></div>
+
+<p>Daphne sat staring at the letter through a mist of unwilling tears. All
+its phrases, ideas, preconceptions, were unwelcome, unreal to her,
+though she knew they had been real to Madeleine.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the compulsion of the dead was upon her, and of her scene with
+Boyson. What they asked of her&mdash;Madeleine and Alfred Boyson&mdash;was of
+course out of the question; the mere thought of that humiliating word
+"forgiveness" sent a tingle of passion through her. But was there no
+third course?&mdash;something which might prove to all the world how full of
+resource and generosity a woman may be?</p>
+
+<p>She pondered through some sleepless hours; and at last she saw her way
+plain.</p>
+
+<p>Within a week she had left New York for Europe.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+
+<p>The ship on which Daphne travelled had covered about half her course. On
+a certain June evening Mrs. Floyd, walking up and down the promenade
+deck, found her attention divided between two groups of her
+fellow-travellers; one taking exercise on the same deck as herself; the
+other, a family party, on the steerage deck, on which many persons in
+the first class paused to look down with sympathy as they reached the
+dividing rail aft.</p>
+
+<p>The group on the promenade deck consisted of a lady and gentleman, and a
+boy of seven. The elders walked rapidly; holding themselves stiffly
+erect, and showing no sign of acquaintance with anyone on board. The
+child dragged himself wearily along behind them, looking sometimes from
+side to side at the various people passing by, with eyes no less furtive
+than his mother's. She was a tall and handsome woman, with extravagantly
+marine clothes and much false hair. Her companion, a bulky and
+ill-favoured man, glanced superciliously at the ladies in the deck
+chairs, bestowing always a more attentive scrutiny than usual on a very
+pretty girl, who was lying reading midway down, with a white lace scarf
+draped round her beautiful hair and the harmonious oval of her face.
+Daphne, watching him, remembered that she had see him speaking to the
+girl&mdash;who was travelling alone&mdash;on one or two occasions. For the rest,
+they were a notorious couple. The woman had been twice divorced, after
+misdoings which had richly furnished the newspapers; the man belonged to
+a financial class with which reputable men of business associate no more
+than they are obliged. The ship left them severely alone; and they
+retaliated by a manner clearly meant to say that they didn't care a
+brass farthing for the ship.</p>
+
+<p>The group on the steerage deck was of a very different kind. It was made
+up of a consumptive wife, a young husband and one or two children. The
+wife's malady, recently declared, had led to their being refused
+admission to the States. They had been turned back from the emigrant
+station on Ellis Island, and were now sadly returning to Liverpool. But
+the courage of the young and sweet-faced mother, the devotion of her
+Irish husband, the charm of her dark-eyed children, had roused much
+feeling in an idle ship, ready for emotion. There had been a collection
+for them among the passengers; a Liverpool shipowner, in the first
+class, had promised work to the young man on landing; the mother was to
+be sent to a sanatorium; the children cared for during her absence. The
+family made a kind of nucleus round which whatever humanity&mdash;or whatever
+imitation of it&mdash;there was on board might gather and crystallize. There
+were other mournful cases indeed to be studied on the steerage deck, but
+none in which misfortune was so attractive.</p>
+
+<p>As she walked up and down, or sat in the tea room catching fragments of
+the conversation round her, Daphne was often secretly angered by the
+public opinion she perceived, favourable in the one case, hostile in the
+other. How ignorant and silly it was&mdash;this public opinion. As to
+herself, she was soon aware that a few people on board had identified
+her and communicated their knowledge to others. On the whole, she felt
+herself treated with deference. Her own version of her story was clearly
+accepted, at least by the majority; some showed her an unspoken but
+evident sympathy, while her wealth made her generally interesting. Yet
+there were two or three in whom she felt or fancied a more critical
+attitude; who looked at her coolly, and seemed to avoid her. Bostonian
+Pharisees, no doubt!&mdash;ignorant of all those great expansions of the
+female destiny that were going forward.</p>
+
+<p>The fact was&mdash;she admitted it&mdash;that she was abnormally sensitive. These
+moral judgments, of different sorts, of which she was conscious,
+floating as it were in the life around her, which her mind isolated and
+magnified, found her smarting and sore, and would not let her be. Her
+irritable pride was touched at every turn; she hardly knew why. She was
+not to be judged by anybody; she was her own defender and her own judge.
+If she was no longer a symbolic and sympathetic figure&mdash;like that young
+mother among her children&mdash;she had her own claims. In the secrecy of the
+mind she fiercely set them out.</p>
+
+<p>The days passed, however, and as she neared the English shores her
+resistance to a pursuing thought became fainter. It was, of course,
+Boyson's astonishing appeal to her that had let loose the Avenging
+Goddesses. She repelled them with scorn; yet all the same they hurtled
+round her. After all, she was no monster. She had done a monstrous thing
+in a sudden brutality of egotism; and a certain crude state of law and
+opinion had helped her to do it, had confused the moral values and
+falsified her conscience. But she was not yet brutalized. Moreover, do
+what she would, she was still in a world governed by law; a world at the
+heart of which broods a power austere and immutable; a power which man
+did not make, which, if he clash with it, grinds him to powder. Its
+manifestations in Daphne's case were slight, but enough. She was not
+happy, that certainly was clear. She did not suppose she ever would be
+happy again. Whatever it was&mdash;just, heroic, or the reverse&mdash;the action
+by which she had violently changed her life had not been a success,
+estimated by results. No other man had attracted her since she had cast
+Roger off; her youth seemed to be deserting her; she saw herself in the
+glass every morning with discontent, even a kind of terror; she had lost
+her child. And in these suspended hours of the voyage, when life floats
+between sky and sea, amid the infinity of weaves, all that she had been
+doing since the divorce, her public "causes" and triumphs, the
+adulations with which she had been surrounded, began to seem to her
+barren and futile. No, she was not happy; what she had done had not
+answered; and she knew it.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>One night, a night of calm air and silvery sea, she hung over the ship's
+side, dreaming rather miserably. The ship, aglow with lights, alive with
+movement, with talk, laughter and music, glided on between the stars and
+the unfathomable depths of the mid-Atlantic. Nothing, to north and
+south, between her and the Poles; nothing but a few feet of iron and
+timber between her and the hungry gulfs in which the highest Alp would
+sink from sight. The floating palace, hung by Knowledge above Death,
+just out of Death's reach, suggested to her a number of melancholy
+thoughts and images. A touch of more than Arctic cold stole upon her,
+even through this loveliness of a summer night; she felt desperately
+unhappy and alone.</p>
+
+<p>From the saloon came a sound of singing:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>"An die Lippen wollt' ich pressen</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>Deine kleine weisse Hand,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Und mit Thr&auml;nen sie benetzen</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>Deine kleine weisse Hand."</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The tears came to her eyes. She remembered that she, too, had once felt
+the surrender and the tenderness of love.</p>
+
+<p>Then she brushed the tears away, angry with herself and determined to
+brood no more. But she looked round her in vain for a companion who
+might distract her. She had made no friends on board, and though she had
+brought with her a secretary and a maid, she kept them both at arm's
+length, and they never offered their society without an invitation.</p>
+
+<p>What was she going to do? And why was she making this journey?</p>
+
+<p>Because the injustice and absurdity of English law had distorted and
+besmirched her own perfectly legitimate action. They had given a handle
+to such harsh critics as Alfred Boyson. But she meant somehow to put
+herself right; and not only herself, but the great cause of woman's
+freedom and independence. No woman, in the better future that is coming,
+shall be forced either by law or opinion to continue the relations of
+marriage with a man she has come to despise. Marriage is merely
+proclaimed love; and if love fails, marriage has no further meaning or
+<i>raison d'&ecirc;tre</i>; it comes, or should come, automatically to an end. This
+is the first article in the woman's charter, and without it marriage
+itself has neither value nor sanctity. She seemed to hear sentences of
+this sort, in her own voice, echoing about windy halls, producing waves
+of emotion on a sea of strained faces&mdash;women's faces, set and pale, like
+that of Madeleine Verrier. She had never actually made such a speech,
+but she felt she would like to have made it.</p>
+
+<p>What was she going to do? No doubt Roger would resent her coming&mdash;would
+probably refuse to see her, as she had once refused to see him. Well,
+she must try and act with dignity and common sense; she must try and
+persuade him to recognize her good faith, and to get him to listen to
+what she proposed. She had her plan for Roger's reclamation, and was
+already in love with it. Naturally, she had never meant permanently to
+hurt or injure Roger! She had done it for his good as well as her own.
+Yet even as she put this plea forward in the inner tribunal of
+consciousness, she knew that it was false.</p>
+
+<p><i>"You have murdered a life!"</i> Well, that was what prejudiced and
+hide-bound persons like Alfred Boyson said, and no doubt always would
+say. She could not help it; but for her own dignity's sake, that moral
+dignity in which she liked to feel herself enwrapped, she would give as
+little excuse for it as possible.</p>
+
+<p>Then, as she stood looking eastward, a strange thought struck her. Once
+on that farther shore and she would be Roger's wife again&mdash;an English
+subject, and Roger's wife. How ridiculous, and how intolerable! When
+shall we see some real comity of nations in these matters of
+international marriage and divorce?</p>
+
+<p>She had consulted her lawyers in New York before starting; on Roger's
+situation first of all, but also on her own. Roger, it seemed, might
+take certain legal steps, once he was aware of her being again on
+English ground. But, of course, he would not take them. "It was never me
+he cared for&mdash;only Beatty!" she said to herself with a bitter
+perversity. Still the thought of returning within the range of the old
+obligations, the old life, affected her curiously. There were hours,
+especially at night, when she felt shut up with thoughts of Roger and
+Beatty&mdash;her husband and her child&mdash;just as of old.</p>
+
+<p>How, in the name of justice, was she to blame for Roger's illness? Her
+irritable thoughts made a kind of grievance against him of the attack of
+pneumonia which she was told had injured his health. He must have
+neglected himself in some foolish way. The strongest men are the most
+reckless of themselves. In any case, how was it her fault?</p>
+
+<p>One night she woke up suddenly, in the dawn, her heart beating
+tumultuously. She had been dreaming of her meeting&mdash;her possible
+meeting&mdash;with Roger. Her face was flushed, her memory confused. She
+could not recall the exact words or incidents of the dream, only that
+Roger had been in some way terrible and terrifying.</p>
+
+<p>And as she sat up in her berth, trying to compose herself, she recalled
+the last time she had seen him at Philadelphia&mdash;a painful scene&mdash;and his
+last broken words to her, as he turned back from the door to speak
+them:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"As to Beatty, I hold you responsible! She is my child, no less than
+yours. You shall answer to me! Remember that!"</p>
+
+<p>Answer to him? Beatty was dead&mdash;in spite of all that love and science
+could do. Involuntarily she began to weep as she remembered the child's
+last days; the little choked cry, once or twice, for "Daddy!" followed,
+so long as life maintained its struggle, by a childish anger that he did
+not come. And then the silencing of the cry, and the last change and
+settling in the small face, so instinct already with feeling and
+character, so prophetic of the woman to be.</p>
+
+<p>A grief, of course, never to be got over; but for which she, Daphne,
+deserved pity and tenderness, not reproaches. She hardened herself to
+meet the coming trial.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>She arrived in London in the first week of July, and her first act was
+to post a letter to Herbert French, addressed to his East-End vicarage,
+a letter formally expressed and merely asking him to give the writer
+"twenty minutes' conversation on a subject of common interest to us
+both." The letter was signed "Daphne Floyd," and a stamped envelope
+addressed to "Mrs. Floyd" was enclosed. By return of post she received a
+letter from a person unknown to her, the curate, apparently, in charge
+of Mr. French's parish. The letter informed her that her own
+communication had not been forwarded, as Mr. French had gone away for a
+holiday after a threat of nervous breakdown in consequence of overwork;
+and business letters and interviews were being spared him as much as
+possible. "He is, however, much better, I am glad to say, and if the
+subject on which you wish to speak to him is really urgent, his present
+address is Prospect House, St. Damian's, Ventnor. But unless it is
+urgent it would be a kindness not to trouble him with it until he
+returns to town, which will not be for another fortnight."</p>
+
+<p>Daphne walked restlessly up and down her hotel sitting-room. Of course
+the matter was urgent. The health of an East-End clergyman&mdash;already, it
+appeared, much amended&mdash;was not likely to seem of much importance to a
+woman of her temperament, when it stood in the way of her plans.</p>
+
+<p>But she would not write, she would go. She had good reason to suppose
+that Herbert French would not welcome a visit from her; he might indeed
+very easily use his health as an excuse for not seeing her. But she must
+see him.</p>
+
+<p>By mid-day she was already on her way to the Isle of Wight. About five
+o'clock she arrived at Ventnor, where she deposited maid and luggage.
+She then drove out alone to St. Damian's, a village a few miles north,
+through a radiant evening. The twinkling sea was alive with craft of all
+sizes, from the great liner leaving its trail of smoke along the
+horizon, to the white-sailed yachts close upon the land. The woods of
+the Undercliff sank softly to the blues and purple, the silver streaks
+and gorgeous shadows of the sea floor. The lights were broad and rich.
+After a hot day, coolness had come and the air was delightful.</p>
+
+<p>But Daphne sat erect, noticing nothing but the relief of the lowered
+temperature after her hot and tiresome journey. She applied herself
+occasionally to natural beauty, as she applied herself to music or
+literature, but it is not to women of her type that the true passion of
+it&mdash;"the soul's bridegroom"&mdash;comes. And she was absorbed in thinking how
+she should open her business to Herbert French.</p>
+
+<p>Prospect House turned out to be a detached villa standing in a garden,
+with a broad view of the Channel. Daphne sent her carriage back to the
+inn and climbed the steep drive which led up to the verandaed house. The
+front garden was empty, but voices&mdash;voices, it seemed, of children&mdash;came
+from behind the house where there was a grove of trees.</p>
+
+<p>"Is Mr. Herbert French at home?" she asked of the maid who answered her
+bell.</p>
+
+<p>The girl looked at her doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'am&mdash;but he doesn't see visitors yet. Shall I tell Mrs. French?
+She's in the garden with the children."</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you," said Daphne, firmly. "It's Mr. French I have come to
+see, and I am sure that he will wish to see me. Will you kindly give him
+my card? I will come in and wait."</p>
+
+<p>And she brushed past the maid, who was intimidated by the visitor's
+fashionable dress and by the drooping feathers of her Paris hat, in
+which the sharp olive-skinned face with its magnificent eyes was
+picturesquely framed. The girl gave way unwillingly, showed Mrs. Floyd
+into a small study looking on the front garden, and left her.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"Elsie!" cried Herbert French, springing from the low chair in which he
+had been lounging in his shirt-sleeves with a book when the parlour-maid
+found him, "Elsie!"</p>
+
+<p>His wife, who was at the other end of the lawn, playing with the
+children, the boy on her back and a pair of girl twins clinging to her
+skirts, turned in astonishment and hurried back to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Floyd?" They both looked at the card in bewilderment. "Who is it?
+Mrs. Floyd?"</p>
+
+<p>Then French's face changed.</p>
+
+<p>"What is this lady like?" he asked peremptorily of the parlour-maid.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, she's a dark lady, dressed very smart&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Has she very black eyes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, sir!"</p>
+
+<p>"Young?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl promptly replied in the negative, qualifying it a moment
+afterward by a perplexed "Well, I shouldn't say so, sir."</p>
+
+<p>French thought a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you. I will come in."</p>
+
+<p>He turned to his wife with a rapid question, under his breath. "Where is
+Roger?"</p>
+
+<p>Elsie stared at him, her colour paling.</p>
+
+<p>"Herbert!&mdash;it can't&mdash;it can't&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I suspect it is&mdash;Mrs. Barnes," said French slowly. "Help me on with my
+coat, darling. Now then, what shall we do?"</p>
+
+<p>"She can't have come to force herself on him!" cried his wife
+passionately.</p>
+
+<p>"Probably she knows nothing of his being here. Did he go for a walk?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, towards Sandown. But he will be back directly."</p>
+
+<p>A quick shade of expression crossed French's face, which his wife knew
+to mean that whenever Roger was out by himself there was cause for
+anxiety. But the familiar trouble was immediately swallowed up in the
+new and pressing one.</p>
+
+<p>"What can that woman have come to say?" he asked, half of himself, half
+of his wife, as he walked slowly back to the house. Elsie had conveyed
+the children to their nurse, and was beside him.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps she repents!" The tone was dry and short; it flung a challenge
+to misdoing.</p>
+
+<p>"I doubt it! But Roger?" French stood still, pondering. "Keep him,
+darling&mdash;intercept him if you can. If he must see her, I will come out.
+But we mustn't risk a shock."</p>
+
+<p>They consulted a little in low voices. Then French went into the house
+and Elsie came back to her children. She stood thinking, her fine face,
+so open-browed and purely lined, frowning and distressed.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"You wished to see me, Mrs. Barnes?"</p>
+
+<p>French had closed the door of the study behind him and stood without
+offering to shake hands with his visitor, coldly regarding her.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne rose from her seat, reddening involuntarily.</p>
+
+<p>"My name is no longer what you once knew it, Mr. French. I sent you my
+card."</p>
+
+<p>French made a slight inclination and pointed to the chair from which she
+had risen.</p>
+
+<p>"Pray sit down. May I know what has brought you here?"</p>
+
+<p>Daphne resumed her seat, her small hands fidgeting on her parasol.</p>
+
+<p>"I wished to come and consult with you, Mr. French. I had heard a
+distressing account of&mdash;of Roger, from a friend in America."</p>
+
+<p>"I see," said French, on whom a sudden light dawned. "You met Boyson at
+Niagara&mdash;that I knew&mdash;and you are here because of what he said to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, partly." The speaker looked round the room, biting her lip, and
+French observed her for a moment. He remembered the foreign vivacity and
+dash, the wilful grace of her youth, and marvelled at her stiffened,
+pretentious air, her loss of charm. Instinctively the saint in him knew
+from the mere look of her that she had been feeding herself on egotisms
+and falsehoods, and his heart hardened. Daphne resumed:</p>
+
+<p>"If Captain Boyson has given you an account of our interview, Mr.
+French, it was probably a one-sided one. However, that is <i>not</i> the
+point. He <i>did</i> distress me very much by his account, which I gather
+came from you&mdash;of&mdash;of Roger, and although, of course, it is a very
+awkward matter for me to move in, I still felt impelled for old times'
+sake to come over and see whether I could not help you&mdash;and his other
+friends&mdash;and, of course, his mother&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"His mother is out of the question," interrupted French. "She is, I am
+sorry to say, a helpless invalid."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it really as bad as that? I hoped for better news. Then I apply to
+you&mdash;to you chiefly. Is there anything that I could do to assist you, or
+others, to&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"To save him?" French put in the words as she hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne was silent.</p>
+
+<p>"What is your idea?" asked French, after a moment. "You heard, I
+presume, from Captain Boyson that my wife and I were extremely anxious
+about Roger's ways and habits; that we cannot induce him, or, at any
+rate, we have not yet been able to induce him, to give up drinking; that
+his health is extremely bad, and that we are sometimes afraid that there
+is now some secret in his life of which he is ashamed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Daphne, fidgeting with a book on the table. "Yes, that is
+what I heard."</p>
+
+<p>"And you have come to suggest something?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is there no way by which Roger can become as free as I now am!" she
+said suddenly, throwing back her head.</p>
+
+<p>"By which Roger can obtain his divorce from you&mdash;and marry again? None,
+in English law."</p>
+
+<p>"But there is&mdash;in Colonial law." She began to speak hurriedly and
+urgently. "If Roger were to go to New Zealand, or to Australia, he
+could, after a time, get a divorce for desertion. I know he could&mdash;I
+have inquired. It doesn't seem to be certain what effect my action&mdash;the
+American decree, I mean&mdash;would have in an English colony. My lawyers are
+going into it. But at any rate there is the desertion and then"&mdash;she
+grew more eager&mdash;"if he married abroad&mdash;in the Colony&mdash;the marriage
+would be valid. No one could say a word to him when he returned to
+England."</p>
+
+<p>French looked at her in silence. She went on&mdash;with the unconscious
+manner of one accustomed to command her world, to be the oracle and
+guide of subordinates:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Could we not induce him to go? Could you not? Very likely he would
+refuse to see me; and, of course, he has, most unjustly to me, I think,
+refused to take any money from me. But the money might be provided
+without his knowing where it came from. A young doctor might be sent
+with him&mdash;some nice fellow who would keep him amused and look after him.
+At Heston he used to take a great interest in farming. He might take up
+land. I would pay anything&mdash;anything! He might suppose it came from some
+friend."</p>
+
+<p>French smiled sadly. His eyes were on the ground. She bent forward.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg of you, Mr. French, not to set yourself against me! Of
+course"&mdash;she drew herself up proudly&mdash;"I know what you must think of my
+action. Our views are different, irreconcilably different. You probably
+think all divorce wrong. We think, in America, that a marriage which has
+become a burden to either party is no marriage, and ought to cease. But
+that, of course"&mdash;she waved a rhetorical hand&mdash;"we cannot discuss. I do
+not propose for a moment to discuss it. You must allow me my national
+point of view. But surely we can, putting all that aside, combine to
+help Roger?"</p>
+
+<p>"To marry again?" said French, slowly. "It can't, I fear, be done&mdash;what
+you propose&mdash;in the time. I doubt whether Roger has two years to live."</p>
+
+<p>Daphne started.</p>
+
+<p>"Roger!&mdash;to live?" she repeated, in horror. "What is really the matter?
+Surely nothing more than care and a voyage could set right?"</p>
+
+<p>French shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"We have been anxious about him for some time. That terrible attack of
+septic pneumonia in New York, as we now know, left the heart injured and
+the lungs weakened. He was badly nursed, and his state of mind at the
+time&mdash;his misery and loneliness&mdash;left him little chance. Then the
+drinking habit, which he contracted during those wretched months in the
+States, has been of course sorely against him. However, we hoped against
+hope&mdash;Elsie and I&mdash;till a few weeks ago. Then someone, we don't know
+who, made him go to a specialist, and the verdict is&mdash;phthisis; not very
+advanced, but certain and definite. And the general outlook is not
+favourable."</p>
+
+<p>Daphne had grown pale.</p>
+
+<p>"We must send him away!" she said imperiously. "We must! A voyage, a
+good doctor, a dry climate, would save him, of course they would! Why,
+there is nothing necessarily fatal now in phthisis! Nothing! It is
+absurd to talk as though there were."</p>
+
+<p>Again French looked at her in silence. But as she had lost colour, he
+had gained it. His face, which the East End had already stamped, had
+grown rosy, his eyes sparkled.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, do say something! Tell me what you suggest?" cried Daphne.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you really wish me to tell you what I suggest?"</p>
+
+<p>Daphne waited, her eyes first imploring, then beginning to shrink. He
+bent forward and touched her on the arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Go, Mrs. Barnes, and ask your husband's forgiveness! What will come of
+it I do not know. But you, at least, will have done something to set
+yourself right&mdash;with God."</p>
+
+<p>The Christian and the priest had spoken; the low voice in its intensity
+had seemed to ring through the quiet sun-flooded room. Daphne rose,
+trembling with resentment and antagonism.</p>
+
+<p>"It is you, then, Mr. French, who make it impossible for me to
+discuss&mdash;to help. I shall have to see if I can find some other means of
+carrying out my purpose."</p>
+
+<p>There was a voice outside. Daphne turned.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is that?"</p>
+
+<p>French ran to the glass door that opened on the veranda, and trying for
+an ordinary tone, waved somebody back who was approaching from without.
+Elsie came quickly round the corner of the house, calling to the
+new-comer.</p>
+
+<p>But Daphne saw who it was and took her own course. She, too, went to the
+window, and, passing French, she stepped into the veranda.</p>
+
+<p>"Roger!"</p>
+
+<p>A man hurried through the dusk. There was an exclamation, a silence. By
+this time French was on the lawn, his wife's quivering hand in his.
+Daphne retreated slowly into the study and Roger Barnes followed her.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave them alone," said French, and putting an arm round his wife he
+led her resolutely away, out of sound and sight.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Barnes stood silent, breathing heavily and leaning on the back of a
+chair. The western light from a side window struck full on him. But
+Daphne, the wave of excitement spent, was not looking at him. She had
+fallen upon a sofa, her face was in her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want with me?" said Roger at last. Then, in a sudden heat,
+"By God, I never wished to see you again!"</p>
+
+<p>Daphne's muffled voice came through her fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"I know that. You needn't tell me so!"</p>
+
+<p>Roger turned away.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll admit it's an intrusion?" he said fiercely. "I don't see what
+you and I have got to do with each other now."</p>
+
+<p>Daphne struggled for self-control. After all, she had always managed him
+in the old days. She would manage him now.</p>
+
+<p>"Roger&mdash;I&mdash;I didn't come to discuss the past. That's done with. But&mdash;I
+heard things about you&mdash;that&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't like?" he laughed. "I'm sorry, but I don't see what you have
+to do with them."</p>
+
+<p>Daphne's hand fidgeted with her dress, her eyes still cast down.</p>
+
+<p>"Couldn't we talk without bitterness? Just for ten minutes? It was from
+Captain Boyson that I heard&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Boyson, was that it? And he got his information from French&mdash;poor
+old Herbert. Well, it's quite true. I'm no longer fit for your&mdash;or
+his&mdash;or anybody's society."</p>
+
+<p>He threw himself into an arm-chair, calmly took a cigarette out of a box
+that lay near, and lit it. Daphne at last ventured to look at him. The
+first and dominant impression was of something shrunken and diminished.
+His blue flannel suit hung loose on his shoulders and chest, his
+athlete's limbs. His features had been thinned and graved and scooped by
+fever and broken nights; all the noble line and proportion was still
+there, but for one who had known him of old the effect was no longer
+beautiful but ghastly. Daphne stared at him in dismay.</p>
+
+<p>He on his side observed his visitor, but with a cooler curiosity. Like
+French he noticed the signs of change, the dying down of brilliance and
+of bloom. To go your own way, as Daphne had done, did not seem to
+conduce to a woman's good looks.</p>
+
+<p>At last he threw in a dry interrogation.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"I came to try and help you," Daphne broke out, turning her head away,
+"to ask Mr. French what I could do. It made me unhappy&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Did it?" He laughed again. "I don't see why. Oh, you needn't trouble
+yourself. Elsie and Herbert are awfully good to me. They're all I want,
+or at any rate," he hesitated a moment, "they're all I <i>shall</i>
+want&mdash;from now on. Anyway, you know there'd be something grotesque in
+your trying your hand at reforming me."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't mean anything of the kind!" she protested, stung by his tone.
+"I&mdash;I wanted to suggest something practical&mdash;some way by which you
+might&mdash;release yourself from me&mdash;and also recover your health."</p>
+
+<p>"Release myself from you?" he repeated. "That's easier said than done.
+Did you mean to send me to the Colonies&mdash;was that your idea?"</p>
+
+<p>His smile was hard to bear. But she went on, choking, yet determined.</p>
+
+<p>"That seems to be the only way&mdash;in English law. Why shouldn't you take
+it? The voyage, the new climate, would probably set you up again. You
+need only be away a short time."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her in silence a moment, fingering his cigarette.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," he said at last, "thank you. And I suppose you offered us
+money? You told Herbert you would pay all expenses? Oh, don't be angry!
+I didn't mean anything uncivil. But," he raised himself with energy from
+his lounging position, "at the same time, perhaps you ought to know that
+I would sooner die a thousand times over than take a single silver
+sixpence that belonged to you!"</p>
+
+<p>Their eyes met, his quite calm, hers sparkling with resentment and pain.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I can't argue with you if you meet me in that tone," she said
+passionately. "But I should have thought&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Besides," he interrupted her, "you say it is the only way. You are
+quite mistaken. It is not the only way. As far as freeing me goes, you
+could divorce me to-morrow&mdash;here&mdash;if you liked. I have been unfaithful
+to you. A strange way of putting it&mdash;at the present moment&mdash;between you
+and me! But that's how it would appear in the English courts. And as to
+the 'cruelty'&mdash;that wouldn't give <i>you</i> any trouble!"</p>
+
+<p>Daphne had flushed deeply. It was only by a great effort that she
+maintained her composure. Her eyes avoided him.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Fairmile?" she said in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>He threw back his head with a sound of scorn.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Fairmile! You don't mean to tell me, Daphne, to my face, that you
+ever believed any of the lies&mdash;forgive the expression&mdash;that you, and
+your witnesses, and your lawyers told in the States&mdash;that you bribed
+those precious newspapers to tell?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I believed it!" she said fiercely. "And as for lies, it was
+you who began them."</p>
+
+<p>"You <i>believed</i> that I had betrayed you with Chloe Fairmile?" He raised
+himself again, fixing his strange deep-set gaze upon her.</p>
+
+<p>"I never said&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No! To that length you didn't quite go. I admit it. You were able to
+get your way without it." He sank back in his chair again. "No, my
+remark had nothing to do with Chloe. I have never set eyes on her since
+I left you at Heston. But&mdash;there was a girl, a shop-girl, a poor little
+thing, rather pretty. I came across her about six months ago&mdash;it doesn't
+matter how. She loves me, she was awfully good to me, a regular little
+brick. Some day I shall tell Herbert all about her&mdash;not yet&mdash;though, of
+course, he suspects. She'd serve your purpose, if you thought it worth
+while. But you won't&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You're&mdash;living with her&mdash;now?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I broke with her a fortnight ago, after I'd seen those doctors. She
+made me see them, poor little soul. Then I went to say good-bye to her,
+and she," his voice shook a little, "she took it hard. But it's all
+right. I'm not going to risk her life, or saddle her with a dying man.
+She's with her sister. She'll get over it."</p>
+
+<p>He turned his head towards the window, his eyes pursued the white sails
+on the darkening blue outside.</p>
+
+<p>"It's been a bad business, but it wasn't altogether my fault. I saved
+her from someone else, and she saved me, once or twice, from blowing my
+brains out."</p>
+
+<p>"What did the doctors say to you?" asked Daphne, brusquely, after a
+pause.</p>
+
+<p>"They gave me about two years," he said, indifferently, turning to knock
+off the end of his cigarette. "That doesn't matter." Then, as his eyes
+caught her face, a sudden animation sprang into his. He drew his chair
+nearer to her and threw away his cigarette. "Look here, Daphne, don't
+let's waste time. We shall never see each other again, and there are a
+number of things I want to know. Tell me everything you can remember
+about Beatty that last six months&mdash;and about her illness, you
+understand&mdash;never mind repeating what you told Boyson, and he told me.
+But there's lots more, there must be. Did she ever ask for me? Boyson
+said you couldn't remember. But you must remember!"</p>
+
+<p>He came closer still, his threatening eyes upon her. And as he did so,
+the dark presence of ruin and death, of things damning and irrevocable,
+which had been hovering over their conversation, approached with
+him&mdash;flapped their sombre wings in Daphne's face. She trembled all over.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said, faintly, "she did ask for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" He gave a cry of delight. "Tell me&mdash;tell me at
+once&mdash;everything&mdash;from the beginning!"</p>
+
+<p>And held by his will, she told him everything&mdash;all the piteous story of
+the child's last days&mdash;sobbing herself; and for the first time making
+much of the little one's signs of remembering her father, instead of
+minimizing and ignoring them, as she had done in the talk with Boyson.
+It was as though for the first time she were trying to stanch a wound
+instead of widening it.</p>
+
+<p>He listened eagerly. The two heads&mdash;the father and mother&mdash;drew closer;
+one might have thought them lovers still, united by tender and sacred
+memories.</p>
+
+<p>But at last Roger drew himself away. He rose to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll forgive you much for that!" he said with a long breath. "Will you
+write it for me some day&mdash;all you've told me?"</p>
+
+<p>She made a sign of assent.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, you mustn't stay here any longer. I suppose you've got a
+carriage? And we mustn't meet again. There's no object in it. But I'll
+remember that you came."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him. In her nature the great deeps were breaking up. She
+saw him as she had seen him in her first youth. And, at last, what she
+had done was plain to her.</p>
+
+<p>With a cry she threw herself on the floor beside him. She pressed his
+hand in hers.</p>
+
+<p>"Roger, let me stay! Let me nurse you!" she panted. "I didn't
+understand. Let me be your friend! Let me help! I implore&mdash;I implore
+you!"</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated a moment, then he lifted her to her feet decidedly, but not
+unkindly.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" he said, slowly. "Do you mean that you wish us to be
+husband and wife again? You are, of course, my wife, in the eye of
+English law, at this moment."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me try and help you!" she pleaded again, breaking into bitter
+tears. "I didn't&mdash;I didn't understand!"</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't help me. I&mdash;I'm afraid I couldn't bear it. We mustn't meet.
+It&mdash;it's gone too deep."</p>
+
+<p>He thrust his hands into his pockets and walked away to the window. She
+stood helplessly weeping.</p>
+
+<p>When he returned he was quite composed again.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't cry so," he said, calmly. "It's done. We can't help it. And don't
+make yourself too unhappy about me. I've had awful times. When I was ill
+in New York&mdash;it was like hell. The pain was devilish, and I wasn't used
+to being alone, and nobody caring a damn, and everybody believing me a
+cad and a bully. But I got over that. It was Beatty's death that hit me
+so hard, and that I wasn't there. It's that, somehow, I can't get
+over&mdash;that you did it&mdash;that you could have had the heart. It would
+always come between us. No, we're better apart. But I'll tell you
+something to comfort you. I've given up that girl, as I've told you, and
+I've given up drink. Herbert won't believe it, but he'll find it is so.
+And I don't mean to die before my time. I'm going out to Switzerland
+directly. I'll do all the correct things. You see, when a man <i>knows</i>
+he's going to die, well," he turned away, "he gets uncommonly curious as
+to what's going to come next."</p>
+
+<p>He walked up and down a few turns. Daphne watched him.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not pious&mdash;I never was. But after all, the religious people profess
+to know something about it, and nobody else does. Just supposing it were
+true?"</p>
+
+<p>He stopped short, looking at her. She understood perfectly that he had
+Beatty in his mind.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, anyhow, I'm going to live decently for the rest of my time&mdash;and
+die decently. I'm not going to throw away chances. And don't trouble
+yourself about money. There's enough left to carry me through. Good-bye,
+Daphne!" He held out his hand to her.</p>
+
+<p>She took it, still dumbly weeping. He looked at her with pity.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know, you didn't understand what you were doing. But you see,
+Daphne, marriage is&mdash;&mdash;" he sought rather painfully for his words, "it's
+a big thing. If it doesn't make us, it ruins us; I didn't marry you for
+the best of reasons, but I was very fond of you&mdash;honour bright! I loved
+you in my way, I should have loved you more and more. I should have been
+a decent fellow if you'd stuck to me. I had all sorts of plans; you
+might have taught me anything. I was a fool about Chloe Fairmile, but
+there was nothing in it, you know there wasn't. And now it's all rooted
+up and done with. Women like to think such things can be mended, but
+they can't&mdash;they can't, indeed. It would be foolish to try."</p>
+
+<p>Daphne sank upon a chair and buried her face in her hands. He drew a
+long and painful breath. "I'm afraid I must go," he said waveringly.
+"I&mdash;I can't stand this any longer. Good-bye, Daphne, good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>She only sobbed, as though her life dissolved in grief. He drew near to
+her, and as she wept, hidden from him, he laid his hand a moment on her
+shoulder. Then he took up his hat.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going now," he said in a low voice. "I shan't come back till you
+have gone."</p>
+
+<p>She heard him cross the room, his steps in the veranda. Outside, in the
+summer dark, a figure came to meet him. French drew Roger's arm into
+his, and the two walked away. The shadows of the wooded lane received
+them.</p>
+
+<p>A woman came quickly into the room.</p>
+
+<p>Elsie French looked down upon the sobbing Daphne, her own eyes full of
+tears, her hands clasped.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you poor thing!" she said, under her breath. "You poor thing!" And
+she knelt down beside her and folded her arms round her.</p>
+
+<p>So from the same heart that had felt a passionate pity for the victim,
+compassion flowed out on the transgressor. For where others feel the
+tragedy of suffering, the pure in heart realize with an infinitely
+sharper pain the tragedy of guilt.</p>
+
+
+<p>THE END</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="BY_THE_SAME_AUTHOR" id="BY_THE_SAME_AUTHOR"></a>BY THE SAME AUTHOR</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Amiel's Journal (translated)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Miss Bretherton<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Robert Elsmere<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The History of David Grieve<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Marcella<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sir George Tressady<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Helbeck of Bannisdale<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Eleanor<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lady Rose's Daughter<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Marriage of William Ashe<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Agatha<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fenwick's Career<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Milly and Olly<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Testing of Diana Mallory<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Marriage à la mode, by Mrs. Humphry Ward
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Marriage a la mode, by Mrs. Humphry Ward
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Marriage a la mode
+
+Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward
+
+Release Date: January 16, 2007 [EBook #20383]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARRIAGE A LA MODE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                            Marriage a la Mode
+
+                           BY MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY FRED PEGRAM
+
+NEW YORK
+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+1909
+
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN
+LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
+COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY MARY AUGUSTA WARD
+PUBLISHED, MAY, 1909
+
+
+
+
+TO L. C. W.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: DAPHNE FLOYD]
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+THIS STORY APPEARED IN ENGLAND UNDER THE TITLE OF "DAPHNE." THE
+PUBLISHERS ARE INDEBTED TO THE PROPRIETORS OF THE "PALL MALL MAGAZINE"
+FOR THEIR PERMISSION TO USE THE DRAWINGS BY MR. FRED PEGRAM.
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+Daphne Floyd
+
+"He caught the hand, he gathered its owner into a pair of strong arms,
+and bending over her, he kissed her"
+
+"In the dead of night Daphne sat up in bed, looking at the face and head
+of her husband beside her on the pillow"
+
+"Her whole being was seething with passionate and revengeful thought"
+
+
+
+
+Marriage a la Mode
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+"A stifling hot day!" General Hobson lifted his hat and mopped his
+forehead indignantly. "What on earth this place can be like in June I
+can't conceive! The tenth of April, and I'll be bound the thermometer's
+somewhere near eighty in the shade. You never find the English climate
+playing you these tricks."
+
+Roger Barnes looked at his uncle with amusement.
+
+"Don't you like heat, Uncle Archie? Ah, but I forgot, it's American
+heat."
+
+"I like a climate you can depend on," said the General, quite conscious
+that he was talking absurdly, yet none the less determined to talk, by
+way of relief to some obscure annoyance. "Here we are sweltering in this
+abominable heat, and in New York last week they had a blizzard, and
+here, even, it was cold enough to give me rheumatism. The climate's
+always in extremes--like the people."
+
+"I'm sorry to find you don't like the States, Uncle Archie."
+
+The young man sat down beside his uncle. They were in the deck saloon of
+a steamer which had left Washington about an hour before for Mount
+Vernon. Through the open doorway to their left they saw a wide expanse
+of river, flowing between banks of spring green, and above it thunderous
+clouds, in a hot blue. The saloon, and the decks outside, held a great
+crowd of passengers, of whom the majority were women.
+
+The tone in which Roger Barnes spoke was good-tempered, but quite
+perfunctory. Any shrewd observer would have seen that whether his uncle
+liked the States or not did not in truth matter to him a whit.
+
+"And I consider all the arrangements for this trip most unsatisfactory,"
+the General continued angrily. "The steamer's too small, the
+landing-place is too small, the crowd getting on board was something
+disgraceful. They'll have a shocking accident one of these days. And
+what on earth are all these women here for--in the middle of the day?
+It's not a holiday."
+
+"I believe it's a teachers' excursion," said young Barnes absently, his
+eyes resting on the rows of young women in white blouses and spring hats
+who sat in close-packed chairs upon the deck--an eager, talkative host.
+
+"H'm--Teachers!" The General's tone was still more pugnacious. "Going to
+learn more lies about us, I suppose, that they may teach them to
+school-children? I was turning over some of their school-books in a shop
+yesterday. Perfectly abominable! It's monstrous what they teach the
+children here about what they're pleased to call their War of
+Independence. All that we did was to ask them to pay something for their
+own protection. What did it matter to us whether they were mopped up by
+the Indians, or the French, or not? 'But if you want us to go to all the
+expense and trouble of protecting you, and putting down those fellows,
+why, hang it,' we said, 'you must pay some of the bill!' That was all
+English Ministers asked; and perfectly right too. And as for the men
+they make such a fuss about, Samuel Adams, and John Adams, and Franklin,
+and all the rest of the crew, I tell you, the stuff they teach American
+school-children about them is a poisoning of the wells! Franklin was a
+man of profligate life, whom I would never have admitted inside my
+doors! And as for the Adamses--intriguers--canting fellows!--both of
+them."
+
+"Well, at least you'll give them George Washington." As he spoke, Barnes
+concealed a yawn, followed immediately afterwards by a look of greater
+alertness, caused by the discovery that a girl sitting not far from the
+doorway in the crowd outside was certainly pretty.
+
+The red-faced, white-haired General paused a moment before replying,
+then broke out: "What George Washington might have been if he had held a
+straight course I am not prepared to say. As it is, I don't hesitate for
+a moment! George Washington was nothing more nor less than a rebel--a
+damned rebel! And what Englishmen mean by joining in the worship of him
+I've never been able to understand."
+
+"I say, uncle, take care," said the young man, looking round him, and
+observing with some relief that they seemed to have the saloon to
+themselves. "These Yankees will stand most things, but----"
+
+"You needn't trouble yourself, Roger," was the testy reply; "I am not in
+the habit of annoying my neighbours. Well now, look here, what I want to
+know is, what is the meaning of this absurd journey of yours?"
+
+The young man's frown increased. He began to poke the floor with his
+stick. "I don't know why you call it absurd?"
+
+"To me it seems both absurd and extravagant," said the other with
+emphasis. "The last thing I heard of you was that Burdon and Co. had
+offered you a place in their office, and that you were prepared to take
+it. When a man has lost his money and becomes dependent upon others, the
+sooner he gets to work the better."
+
+Roger Barnes reddened under the onslaught, and the sulky expression of
+his handsome mouth became more pronounced. "I think my mother and I
+ought to be left to judge for ourselves," he said rather hotly. "We
+haven't asked anybody for money _yet_, Uncle Archie. Burdon and Co. can
+have me in September just as well as now; and my mother wished me to
+make some friends over here who might be useful to me."
+
+"Useful to you. How?"
+
+"I think that's my affair. In this country there are always
+openings--things turning up--chances--you can't get at home."
+
+The General gave a disapproving laugh. "The only chance that'll help
+you, Roger, at present--excuse me if I speak frankly--is the chance of
+regular work. Your poor mother has nothing but her small fixed income,
+and you haven't a farthing to chuck away on what you call chances. Why,
+your passage by the _Lucania_ alone must have cost a pretty penny. I'll
+bet my hat you came first class."
+
+The young man was clearly on the brink of an explosion, but controlled
+himself with an effort. "I paid the winter rate; and mother who knows
+the Cunard people very well, got a reduction. I assure you, Uncle
+Archie, neither mother nor I is a fool, and we know quite well what we
+are about."
+
+As he spoke he raised himself with energy, and looked his companion in
+the face.
+
+The General, surveying him, was mollified, as usual, by nothing in the
+world but the youth's extraordinary good looks. Roger Barnes's good
+looks had been, indeed, from his childhood upward the distinguishing and
+remarkable feature about him. He had been a king among his schoolfellows
+largely because of them, and of the athletic prowess which went with
+them; and while at Oxford he had been cast for the part of Apollo in
+"The Eumenides," Nature having clearly designed him for it in spite of
+the lamentable deficiencies in his Greek scholarship, which gave his
+prompters and trainers so much trouble. Nose, chin, brow, the poising of
+the head on the shoulders, the large blue eyes, lidded and set with a
+Greek perfection, the delicacy of the lean, slightly hollow cheeks,
+combined with the astonishing beauty and strength of the head, crowned
+with ambrosial curls--these possessions, together with others, had so
+far made life an easy and triumphant business for their owner. The
+"others," let it be noted, however, had till now always been present;
+and, chief amongst them, great wealth and an important and popular
+father. The father was recently dead, as the black band on the young
+man's arm still testified, and the wealth had suddenly vanished, wholly
+and completely, in one of the financial calamities of the day. General
+Hobson, contemplating his nephew, and mollified, as we have said, by his
+splendid appearance, kept saying to himself: "He hasn't a farthing but
+what poor Laura allows him; he has the tastes of forty thousand a year;
+a very indifferent education; and what the deuce is he going to do?"
+
+Aloud he said:
+
+"Well, all I know is, I had a deplorable letter last mail from your poor
+mother."
+
+The young man turned his head away, his cigarette still poised at his
+lips. "Yes, I know--mother's awfully down."
+
+"Well, certainly your mother was never meant for a poor woman," said the
+General, with energy. "She takes it uncommonly hard."
+
+Roger, with face still averted, showed no inclination to discuss his
+mother's character on these lines.
+
+"However, she'll get along all right, if you do your duty by her," added
+the General, not without a certain severity.
+
+"I mean to do it, sir." Barnes rose as he spoke. "I should think we're
+getting near Mount Vernon by this time. I'll go and look."
+
+He made his way to the outer deck, the General following. The old
+soldier, as he moved through the crowd of chairs in the wake of his
+nephew, was well aware of the attention excited by the young man. The
+eyes of many damsels were upon him; and, while the girls looked and said
+nothing, their mothers laughed and whispered to each other as the young
+Apollo passed.
+
+Standing at the side of the steamer, the uncle and nephew perceived that
+the river had widened to a still more stately breadth, and that, on the
+southern bank, a white building, high placed, had come into view. The
+excursionists crowded to look, expressing their admiration for the
+natural scene and their sense of its patriotic meaning in a frank,
+enthusiastic chatter, which presently enveloped the General, standing in
+a silent endurance like a rock among the waves.
+
+"Isn't it fine to think of his coming back here to die, so simply, when
+he'd made a nation?" said a young girl--perhaps from Omaha--to her
+companion. "Wasn't it just lovely?"
+
+Her voice, restrained, yet warm with feeling, annoyed General Hobson. He
+moved away, and as they hung over the taffrail he said, with suppressed
+venom to his companion: "Much good it did them to be 'made a nation'!
+Look at their press--look at their corruption--their divorce scandals!"
+
+Barnes laughed, and threw his cigarette-end into the swift brown water.
+
+"Upon my word, Uncle Archie, I can't play up to you. As far as I've
+gone, I like America and the Americans."
+
+"Which means, I suppose, that your mother gave you some introductions to
+rich people in New York, and they entertained you?" said the General
+drily.
+
+"Well, is there any crime in that? I met a lot of uncommonly nice
+people."
+
+"And didn't particularly bless me when I wired to you to come here?"
+
+The young man laughed again and paused a moment before replying.
+
+"I'm always very glad to come and keep you company, Uncle Archie."
+
+The old General reddened a little. Privately, he knew very well that his
+telegram summoning young Barnes from New York had been an act of
+tyranny--mild, elderly tyranny. He was not amusing himself in
+Washington, where he was paying a second visit after an absence of
+twenty years. His English soul was disturbed and affronted by a wholly
+new realization of the strength of America, by the giant forces of the
+young nation, as they are to be felt pulsing in the Federal City. He was
+up in arms for the Old World, wondering sorely and secretly what the New
+might do with her in the times to come, and foreseeing an
+ever-increasing deluge of unlovely things--ideals, principles,
+manners--flowing from this western civilization, under which his own
+gods were already half buried, and would soon be hidden beyond recovery.
+And in this despondency which possessed him, in spite of the attentions
+of Embassies, and luncheons at the White House, he had heard that Roger
+was in New York, and could not resist the temptation to send for him.
+After all, Roger was his heir. Unless the boy flagrantly misbehaved
+himself, he would inherit General Hobson's money and small estate in
+Northamptonshire. Before the death of Roger's father this prospective
+inheritance, indeed, had not counted for very much in the family
+calculations. The General had even felt a shyness in alluding to a
+matter so insignificant in comparison with the general scale on which
+the Barnes family lived. But since the death of Barnes _pere_, and the
+complete pecuniary ruin revealed by that event, Roger's expectations
+from his uncle had assumed a new importance. The General was quite aware
+of it. A year before this date he would never have dreamed of summoning
+Roger to attend him at a moment's notice. That he had done so, and that
+Roger had obeyed him, showed how closely even the family relation may
+depend on pecuniary circumstance.
+
+The steamer swung round to the landing-place under the hill of Mount
+Vernon. Again, in disembarkation, there was a crowd and rush which set
+the General's temper on edge. He emerged from it, hot and breathless,
+after haranguing the functionary at the gates on the inadequacy of the
+arrangements and the likelihood of an accident. Then he and Roger strode
+up the steep path, beside beds of blue periwinkles, and under old trees
+just bursting into leaf. A spring sunshine was in the air and on the
+grass, which had already donned its "livelier emerald." The air quivered
+with heat, and the blue dome of sky diffused it. Here and there a
+magnolia in full flower on the green slopes spread its splendour of
+white or pinkish blossom to the sun; the great river, shimmering and
+streaked with light, swept round the hill, and out into a pearly
+distance; and on the height the old pillared house with its flanking
+colonnades stood under the thinly green trees in a sharp light and shade
+which emphasized all its delightful qualities--made, as it were, the
+most of it, in response to the eagerness of the crowd now flowing round
+it.
+
+Half-way up the hill Roger suddenly raised his hat.
+
+"Who is it?" said the General, putting up his eyeglass.
+
+"The girl we met last night and her brother."
+
+"Captain Boyson? So it is. They seem to have a party with them."
+
+The lady whom young Barnes had greeted moved toward the Englishmen,
+followed by her brother.
+
+"I didn't know we were to meet to-day," she said gaily, with a mocking
+look at Roger. "I thought you said you were bored--and going back to New
+York."
+
+Roger was relieved to see that his uncle, engaged in shaking hands with
+the American officer, had not heard this remark. Tact was certainly not
+Miss Boyson's strong point.
+
+"I am sure I never said anything of the kind," he said, looking brazenly
+down upon her; "nothing in the least like it."
+
+"Oh! oh!" the lady protested, with an extravagant archness. "Mrs.
+Phillips, this is Mr. Barnes. We were just talking of him, weren't we?"
+
+An elderly lady, quietly dressed in gray silk, turned, bowed, and looked
+curiously at the Englishman.
+
+"I hear you and Miss Boyson discovered some common friends last night."
+
+"We did, indeed. Miss Boyson posted me up in a lot of the people I have
+been seeing in New York. I am most awfully obliged to her," said Barnes.
+His manner was easy and forthcoming, the manner of one accustomed to
+feel himself welcome and considered.
+
+"I behaved like a walking 'Who's Who,' only I was much more interesting,
+and didn't tell half as many lies," said the girl, in a high penetrating
+voice. "Daphne, let me introduce you to Mr. Barnes. Mr. Barnes--Miss
+Floyd; Mr. Barnes--Mrs. Verrier."
+
+Two ladies beyond Mrs. Phillips made vague inclinations, and young
+Barnes raised his hat. The whole party walked on up the hill. The
+General and Captain Boyson fell into a discussion of some military news
+of the morning. Roger Barnes was mostly occupied with Miss Boyson, who
+had a turn for monopoly; and he could only glance occasionally at the
+two ladies with Mrs. Phillips. But he was conscious that the whole group
+made a distinguished appearance. Among the hundreds of young women
+streaming over the lawn they were clearly marked out by their carriage
+and their clothes--especially their clothes--as belonging to the
+fastidious cosmopolitan class, between whom and the young
+school-teachers from the West, in their white cotton blouses, leathern
+belts, and neat short skirts, the links were few. Miss Floyd, indeed,
+was dressed with great simplicity. A white muslin dress, _a la_ Romney,
+with a rose at the waist, and a black-and-white Romney hat deeply
+shading the face beneath--nothing could have been plainer; yet it was a
+simplicity not to be had for the asking, a calculated, a Parisian
+simplicity; while her companion, Mrs. Verrier, was attired in what the
+fashion-papers would have called a "creation in mauve." And Roger knew
+quite enough about women's dress to be aware that it was a creation that
+meant dollars. She was a tall, dark-eyed, olive-skinned woman, thin
+almost to emaciation: and young Barnes noticed that, while Miss Floyd
+talked much, Mrs. Verrier answered little, and smiled less. She moved
+with a languid step, and looked absently about her. Roger could not make
+up his mind whether she was American or English.
+
+In the house itself the crowd was almost unmanageable. The General's ire
+was roused afresh when he was warned off the front door by the polite
+official on guard, and made to mount a back stair in the midst of a
+panting multitude.
+
+"I really cannot congratulate you on your management of these affairs,"
+he said severely to Captain Boyson, as they stood at last, breathless
+and hustled, on the first-floor landing. "It is most improper, I may say
+dangerous, to admit such a number at once. And, as for seeing the house,
+it is simply impossible. I shall make my way down as soon as possible,
+and go for a walk."
+
+Captain Boyson looked perplexed. General Hobson was a person of
+eminence; Washington had been very civil to him; and the American
+officer felt a kind of host's responsibility.
+
+"Wait a moment; I'll try and find somebody." He disappeared, and the
+party maintained itself with difficulty in a corner of the landing
+against the pressure of a stream of damsels, who crowded to the open
+doors of the rooms, looked through the gratings which bar the entrance
+without obstructing the view, chattered, and moved on. General Hobson
+stood against the wall, a model of angry patience. Cecilia Boyson,
+glancing at him with a laughing eye, said in Roger's ear: "How sad it is
+that your uncle dislikes us so!"
+
+"Us? What do you mean?"
+
+"That he hates America so. Oh, don't say he doesn't, because I've
+watched him, at one, two, three parties. He thinks we're a horrid,
+noisy, vulgar people, with most unpleasant voices, and he thanks God for
+the Atlantic--and hopes he may never see us again."
+
+"Well, of course, if you're so certain about it, there's no good in
+contradicting you. Did you say that lady's name was Floyd? Could I have
+seen her last week in New York?"
+
+"Quite possible. Perhaps you heard something about her?"
+
+"No," said Barnes, after thinking a moment. "I remember--somebody
+pointed her out at the opera."
+
+His companion looked at him with a kind of hard amusement. Cecilia
+Boyson was only five-and-twenty, but there was already something in her
+that foretold the formidable old maid.
+
+"Well, when people begin upon Daphne Floyd," she said, "they generally
+go through with it. Ah! here comes Alfred."
+
+Captain Boyson, pushing his way through the throng, announced to his
+sister and General Hobson that he had found the curator in charge of the
+house, who sent a message by him to the effect that if only the party
+would wait till four o'clock, the official closing hour, he himself
+would have great pleasure in showing them the house when all the
+tourists of the day had taken their departure.
+
+"Then," said Miss Floyd, smiling at the General, "let us go and sit in
+the garden, and feel ourselves aristocratic and superior."
+
+The General's brow smoothed. Voice and smile were alike engaging. Their
+owner was not exactly pretty, but she had very large dark eyes, and a
+small glowing face, set in a profusion of hair. Her neck, the General
+thought, was the slenderest he had ever seen, and the slight round lines
+of her form spoke of youth in its first delicate maturity. He followed
+her obediently, and they were all soon in the garden again, and free of
+the crowd. Miss Floyd led the way across the grass with the General.
+
+"Ah! now you will see the General will begin to like us," said Miss
+Boyson. "Daphne has got him in hand."
+
+Her tone was slightly mocking. Barnes observed the two figures in front
+of them, and remarked that Miss Floyd had a "very--well--a very foreign
+look."
+
+"Not English, you mean?--or American? Well, naturally. Her mother was a
+Spaniard--a South American--from Buenos Ayres. That's why she is so
+dark, and so graceful."
+
+"I never saw a prettier dress," said Barnes, following the slight figure
+with his eyes. "It's so simple."
+
+His companion laughed again. The manner of the laugh puzzled her
+companion, but, just as he was about to put a question, the General and
+the young lady paused in front, to let the rest of the party come up
+with them. Miss Floyd proposed a seat a little way down the slope, where
+they might wait the half-hour appointed.
+
+That half-hour passed quickly for all concerned. In looking back upon it
+afterwards two of the party were conscious that it had all hung upon one
+person. Daphne Floyd sat beside the General, who paid her a
+half-reluctant, half-fascinated attention. Without any apparent effort
+on her part she became indeed the centre of the group who sat or lay on
+the grass. All faces were turned towards her, and presently all ears
+listened for her remarks. Her talk was young and vivacious, nothing
+more. But all she said came, as it were, steeped in personality, a
+personality so energetic, so charged with movement and with action that
+it arrested the spectators--not always agreeably. It was like the
+passage of a train through the darkness, when, for the moment, the
+quietest landscape turns to fire and force.
+
+The comparison suggested itself to Captain Boyson as he lay watching
+her, only to be received with an inward mockery, half bitter, half
+amused. This girl was always awakening in him these violent or desperate
+images. Was it her fault that she possessed those brilliant eyes--eyes,
+as it seemed, of the typical, essential woman?--and that downy brunette
+skin, with the tinge in it of damask red?--and that instinctive art of
+lovely gesture in which her whole being seemed to express itself?
+Boyson, who was not only a rising soldier, but an excellent amateur
+artist, knew every line of the face by heart. He had drawn Miss Daphne
+from the life on several occasions; and from memory scores of times. He
+was not likely to draw her from life any more; and thereby hung a tale.
+As far as he was concerned the train had passed--in flame and
+fury--leaving an echoing silence behind it.
+
+What folly! He turned resolutely to Mrs. Verrier, and tried to discuss
+with her an exhibition of French art recently opened in Washington. In
+vain. After a few sentences, the talk between them dropped, and both he
+and she were once more watching Miss Floyd, and joining in the
+conversation whenever she chose to draw them in.
+
+As for Roger Barnes, he too was steadily subjugated--up to a certain
+point. He was not sure that he liked Miss Floyd, or her conversation.
+She was so much mistress of herself and of the company, that his
+masculine vanity occasionally rebelled. A little flirt!--that gave
+herself airs. It startled his English mind that at twenty--for she could
+be no more--a girl should so take the floor, and hold the stage.
+Sometimes he turned his back upon her--almost; and Cecilia Boyson held
+him. But, if there was too much of the "eternal womanly" in Miss Floyd,
+there was not enough in Cecilia Boyson. He began to discover also that
+she was too clever for him, and was in fact talking down to him. Some of
+the things that she said to him about New York and Washington puzzled
+him extremely. She was, he supposed, intellectual; but the intellectual
+women in England did not talk in the same way. He was equal to them, or
+flattered himself that he was; but Miss Boyson was beyond him. He was
+getting into great difficulties with her, when suddenly Miss Floyd
+addressed him:
+
+"I am sure I saw you in New York, at the opera?"
+
+She bent over to him as she spoke, and lowered her voice. Her look was
+merry, perhaps a little satirical. It put him on his guard.
+
+"Yes, I was there. You were pointed out to me."
+
+"You were with some old friends of mine. I suppose they gave you an
+account of me?"
+
+"They were beginning it; but then Melba began to sing, and some horrid
+people in the next box said 'Hush!'"
+
+She studied him in a laughing silence a moment, her chin on her hand,
+then said:
+
+"That is the worst of the opera; it stops so much interesting
+conversation."
+
+"You don't care for the music?"
+
+"Oh, I am a musician!" she said quickly. "I teach it. But I am like the
+mad King of Bavaria--I want an opera-house to myself."
+
+"You teach it?" he said, in amazement.
+
+She nodded, smiling. At that moment a bell rang. Captain Boyson rose.
+
+"That's the signal for closing. I think we ought to be moving up."
+
+They strolled slowly towards the house, watching the stream of
+excursionists pour out of the house and gardens, and wind down the hill;
+sounds of talk and laughter filled the air, and the western sun touched
+the spring hats and dresses.
+
+"The holidays end to-morrow," said Daphne Floyd demurely, as she walked
+beside young Barnes. And she looked smiling at the crowd of young women,
+as though claiming solidarity with them.
+
+A teacher? A teacher of music?--with that self-confidence--that air as
+though the world belonged to her! The young man was greatly mystified.
+But he reminded himself that he was in a democratic country where all
+men--and especially all women--are equal. Not that the young women now
+streaming to the steamboat were Miss Floyd's equals. The notion was
+absurd. All that appeared to be true was that Miss Floyd, in any
+circumstances, would be, and was, the equal of anybody.
+
+"How charming your friend is!" he said presently to Cecilia Boyson, as
+they lingered on the veranda, waiting for the curator, in a scene now
+deserted. "She tells me she is a teacher of music."
+
+Cecilia Boyson looked at him in amazement, and made him repeat his
+remark. As he did so, his uncle called him, and he turned away. Miss
+Boyson leant against one of the pillars of the veranda, shaking with
+suppressed laughter.
+
+But at that moment the curator, a gentle, gray-haired man, appeared,
+shaking hands with the General, and bowing to the ladies. He gave them a
+little discourse on the house and its history, as they stood on the
+veranda; and private conversation was no longer possible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+A sudden hush had fallen upon Mount Vernon. From the river below came
+the distant sounds of the steamer, which, with its crowds safe on board,
+was now putting off for Washington. But the lawns and paths of the
+house, and the formal garden behind it, and all its simple rooms
+upstairs and down, were now given back to the spring and silence, save
+for this last party of sightseers. The curator, after his preliminary
+lecture on the veranda, took them within; the railings across the doors
+were removed; they wandered in and out as they pleased.
+
+Perhaps, however, there were only two persons among the six now
+following the curator to whom the famous place meant anything more than
+a means of idling away a warm afternoon. General Hobson carried his
+white head proudly through it, saying little or nothing. It was the
+house of a man who had wrenched half a continent from Great Britain; the
+English Tory had no intention whatever of bowing the knee. On the other
+hand, it was the house of a soldier and a gentleman, representing old
+English traditions, tastes, and manners. No modern blatancy, no Yankee
+smartness anywhere. Simplicity and moderate wealth, combined with
+culture--witness the books of the library--with land-owning, a family
+coach, and church on Sundays: these things the Englishman understood.
+Only the slaves, in the picture of Mount Vernon's past, were strange to
+him.
+
+They stood at length in the death-chamber, with its low white bed, and
+its balcony overlooking the river.
+
+"This, ladies, is the room in which General Washington died," said the
+curator, patiently repeating the familiar sentence. "It is, of course,
+on that account sacred to every true American."
+
+He bowed his head instinctively as he spoke. The General looked round
+him in silence. His eye was caught by the old hearth, and by the iron
+plate at the back of it, bearing the letters G. W. and some scroll work.
+There flashed into his mind a vision of the December evening on which
+Washington passed away, the flames flickering in the chimney, the winds
+breathing round the house and over the snow-bound landscape outside, the
+dying man in that white bed, and around him, hovering invisibly, the
+generations of the future.
+
+"He was a traitor to his king and country!" he repeated to himself,
+firmly. Then as his patriotic mind was not disturbed by a sense of
+humour, he added the simple reflection--"But it is, of course, natural
+that Americans should consider him a great man."
+
+The French window beside the bed was thrown open, and these privileged
+guests were invited to step on to the balcony. Daphne Floyd was handed
+out by young Barnes. They hung over the white balustrade together. An
+evening light was on the noble breadth of river; its surface of blue and
+gold gleamed through the boughs of the trees which girdled the house;
+blossoms of wild cherry, of dogwood, and magnolia sparkled amid the
+coverts of young green.
+
+Roger Barnes remarked, with sincerity, as he looked about him, that it
+was a very pretty place, and he was glad he had not missed it. Miss
+Floyd made an absent reply, being in fact occupied in studying the
+speaker. It was, so to speak, the first time she had really observed
+him; and, as they paused on the balcony together, she was suddenly
+possessed by the same impression as that which had mollified the
+General's scolding on board the steamer. He was indeed handsome, the
+young Englishman!--a magnificent figure of a man, in height and breadth
+and general proportions; and in addition, as it seemed to her, possessed
+of an absurd and superfluous beauty of feature. What does a man want
+with such good looks? This was perhaps the girl's first instinctive
+feeling. She was, indeed, a little dazzled by her new companion, now
+that she began to realize him. As compared with the average man in
+Washington or New York, here was an exception--an Apollo!--for she too
+thought of the Sun-god. Miss Floyd could not remember that she had ever
+had to do with an Apollo before; young Barnes, therefore, was so far an
+event, a sensation. In the opera-house she had been vaguely struck by a
+handsome face. But here, in the freedom of outdoor dress and movement,
+he seemed to her a physical king of men; and, at the same time, his easy
+manner--which, however, was neither conceited nor ill-bred--showed him
+conscious of his advantages.
+
+As they chatted on the balcony she put him through his paces a little.
+He had been, it seemed, at Eton and Oxford; and she supposed that he
+belonged to the rich English world. His mother was a Lady Barnes; his
+father, she gathered, was dead; and he was travelling, no doubt, in the
+lordly English way, to get a little knowledge of the barbarians outside,
+before he settled down to his own kingdom, and the ways thereof. She
+envisaged a big Georgian house in a spreading park, like scores that she
+had seen in the course of motoring through England the year before.
+
+Meanwhile, the dear young man was evidently trying to talk to her,
+without too much reference to the gilt gingerbread of this world. He did
+not wish that she should feel herself carried into regions where she was
+not at home, so that his conversation ran amicably on music. Had she
+learned it abroad? He had a cousin who had been trained at Leipsic;
+wasn't teaching it trying sometimes--when people had no ear? Delicious!
+She kept it up, talking with smiles of "my pupils" and "my class," while
+they wandered after the others upstairs to the dark low-roofed room
+above the death-chamber, where Martha Washington spent the last years of
+her life, in order that from the high dormer window she might command
+the tomb on the slope below, where her dead husband lay. The curator
+told the well-known story. Mrs. Verrier, standing beside him, asked some
+questions, showed indeed some animation.
+
+"She shut herself up here? She lived in this garret? That she might
+always see the tomb? That is really true?"
+
+Barnes, who did not remember to have heard her speak before, turned
+at the sound of her voice, and looked at her curiously. She
+wore an expression--bitter or incredulous--which, somehow, amused
+him. As they descended again to the garden he communicated his
+amusement--discreetly--to Miss Floyd.
+
+Did Mrs. Verrier imply that no one who was not a fool could show her
+grief as Mrs. Washington did? That it was, in fact, a sign of being a
+fool to regret your husband?
+
+"Did she say that?" asked Miss Floyd quickly.
+
+"Not like that, of course, but----"
+
+They had now reached the open air again, and found themselves crossing
+the front court to the kitchen-garden. Daphne Floyd did not wait till
+Roger should finish his sentence. She turned on him a face which was
+grave if not reproachful.
+
+"I suppose you know Mrs. Verrier's story?"
+
+"Why, I never saw her before! I hope I haven't said anything I oughtn't
+to have said?"
+
+"Everybody knows it here," said Daphne slowly. "Mrs. Verrier married
+three years ago. She married a Jew--a New Yorker--who had changed his
+name. You know Jews are not in what we call 'society' over here? But
+Madeleine thought she could do it; she was in love with him, and she
+meant to be able to do without society. But she couldn't do without
+society; and presently she began to dine out, and go to parties by
+herself--he urged her to. Then, after a bit, people didn't ask her as
+much as before; she wasn't happy; and her people began to talk to him
+about a divorce--naturally they had been against her marrying him all
+along. He said--as they and she pleased. Then, one night about a year
+ago, he took the train to Niagara--of course it was a very commonplace
+thing to do--and two days afterwards he was found, thrown up by the
+whirlpool; you know, where all the suicides are found!"
+
+Barnes stopped short in front of his companion, his face flushing.
+
+"What a horrible story!" he said, with emphasis.
+
+Miss Floyd nodded.
+
+"Yes, poor Madeleine has never got over it."
+
+The young man still stood riveted.
+
+"Of course Mrs. Verrier herself had nothing to do with the talk about
+divorce?"
+
+Something in his tone roused a combative instinct in his companion. She,
+too, coloured, and drew herself up.
+
+"Why shouldn't she? She was miserable. The marriage had been a great
+mistake."
+
+"And you allow divorce for that?" said the man, wondering. "Oh, of
+course I know every State is different, and some States are worse than
+others. But, somehow, I never came across a case like that--first
+hand--before."
+
+He walked on slowly beside his companion, who held herself a little
+stiffly.
+
+"I don't know why you should talk in that way," she said at last,
+breaking out in a kind of resentment, "as though all our American views
+are wrong! Each nation arranges these things for itself. You have the
+laws that suit you; you must allow us those that suit us."
+
+Barnes paused again, his face expressing a still more complete
+astonishment.
+
+"You say that?" he said. "You!"
+
+"And why not?"
+
+"But--but you are so young!" he said, evidently finding a difficulty in
+putting his impressions. "I beg your pardon--I ought not to talk about
+it at all. But it was so odd that----"
+
+"That I knew anything about Mrs. Verrier's affairs?" said Miss Floyd,
+with a rather uncomfortable laugh. "Well, you see, American girls are
+not like English ones. We don't pretend not to know what everybody
+knows."
+
+"Of course," said Roger hurriedly; "but you wouldn't think it a fair and
+square thing to do?"
+
+"Think what?"
+
+"Why, to marry a man, and then talk of divorcing him because people
+didn't invite you to their parties."
+
+"She was very unhappy," said Daphne stubbornly.
+
+"Well, by Jove!" cried the young man, "she doesn't look very happy now!"
+
+"No," Miss Floyd admitted. "No. There are many people who think she'll
+never get over it."
+
+"Well, I give it up." The Apollo shrugged his handsome shoulders. "You
+say it was she who proposed to divorce him?--yet when the wretched man
+removes himself, then she breaks her heart!"
+
+"Naturally she didn't mean him to do it in that way," said the girl,
+with impatience. "Of course you misunderstood me entirely!--_entirely!_"
+she added with an emphasis which suited with her heightened colour and
+evidently ruffled feelings.
+
+Young Barnes looked at her with embarrassment. What a queer,
+hot-tempered girl! Yet there was something in her which attracted him.
+She was graceful even in her impatience. Her slender neck, and the dark
+head upon it, her little figure in the white muslin, her dainty arms and
+hands--these points in her delighted an honest eye, quite accustomed to
+appraise the charms of women. But, by George! she took herself
+seriously, this little music-teacher. The air of wilful command about
+her, the sharpness with which she had just rebuked him, amazed and
+challenged him.
+
+"I am very sorry if I misunderstood you," he said, a little on his
+dignity; "but I thought you----"
+
+"You thought I sympathized with Mrs. Verrier? So I do; though of course
+I am awfully sorry that such a dreadful thing happened. But you'll find,
+Mr. Barnes, that American girls----" The colour rushed into her small
+olive cheeks. "Well, we know all about the old ideas, and we know also
+too well that there's only one life, and we don't mean to have that one
+spoilt. The old notions of marriage--your English notions," cried the
+girl facing him--"make it tyranny! Why should people stay together when
+they see it's a mistake? We say everybody shall have their chance. And
+not one chance only, but more than one. People find out in marriage what
+they couldn't find out before, and so----"
+
+"You let them chuck it just when they're tired of it?" laughed Barnes.
+"And what about the----"
+
+"The children?" said Miss Floyd calmly. "Well, of course, that has to be
+very carefully considered. But how can it do children any good to live
+in an unhappy home?"
+
+"Had Mrs. Verrier any children?"
+
+"Yes, one little girl."
+
+"I suppose she meant to keep her?"
+
+"Why, of course."
+
+"And the father didn't care?"
+
+"Well, I believe he did," said Daphne unwillingly. "Yes, that was very
+sad. He was quite devoted to her."
+
+"And you think that's all right?" Barnes looked at his companion,
+smiling.
+
+"Well, of course, it was a pity," she said, with fresh impatience; "I
+admit it was a pity. But then, why did she ever marry him? That was the
+horrible mistake."
+
+"I suppose she thought she liked him."
+
+"Oh, it was he who was so desperately in love with her. He plagued her
+into doing it."
+
+"Poor devil!" said Barnes heartily. "All right, we're coming."
+
+The last words were addressed to General Hobson, waving to them from the
+kitchen-garden. They hurried on to join the curator, who took the party
+for a stroll round some of the fields over which George Washington, in
+his early married life, was accustomed to ride in summer and winter
+dawns, inspecting his negroes, his plantation, and his barns. The grass
+in these Southern fields was already high; there were shining
+fruit-trees, blossom-laden, in an orchard copse; and the white dogwood
+glittered in the woods.
+
+For two people to whom the traditions of the place were dear, this quiet
+walk through Washington's land had a charm far beyond that of the
+reconstructed interior of the house. Here were things unaltered and
+unalterable, boundaries, tracks, woods, haunted still by the figure of
+the young master and bridegroom who brought Patsy Curtis there in 1759.
+To the gray-haired curator every foot of them was sacred and familiar;
+he knew these fields and the records of them better than any detail of
+his own personal affairs; for years now he had lived in spirit with
+Washington, through all the hours of the Mount Vernon day; his life was
+ruled by one great ghost, so that everything actual was comparatively
+dim. Boyson too, a fine soldier and a fine intelligence, had a mind
+stored with Washingtoniana. Every now and then he and the curator fell
+back on each other's company. They knew well that the others were not
+worthy of their opportunity; although General Hobson, seeing that most
+of the memories touched belonged to a period before the Revolution,
+obeyed the dictates of politeness, and made amends for his taciturnity
+indoors by a talkative vein outside.
+
+Captain Boyson was not, however, wholly occupied with history or
+reminiscence. He perceived very plainly before the walk was over that
+the General's good-looking nephew and Miss Daphne Floyd were interested
+in each other's conversation. When they joined the party in the garden
+it seemed to him that they had been disputing. Miss Daphne was flushed
+and a little snappish when spoken to; and the young man looked
+embarrassed. But presently he saw that they gravitated to each other,
+and that, whatever chance combination might be formed during the walk,
+it always ended for a time in the flight ahead of the two figures, the
+girl in the rose-coloured sash and the tall handsome youth. Towards the
+end of the walk they became separated from the rest of the party, and
+only arrived at the little station just in time before the cars started.
+On this occasion again, they had been clearly arguing and disagreeing;
+and Daphne had the air of a ruffled bird, her dark eyes glittering, her
+mouth set in the obstinate lines that Boyson knew by heart. But again
+they sat together in the car, and talked and sparred all the way home;
+while Mrs. Verrier, in a corner of the carriage, shut her hollow eyes,
+and laid her thin hands one over the other, and in her purple draperies
+made a picture _a la Melisande_ which was not lost upon her companions.
+Boyson's mind registered a good many grim or terse comments, as
+occasionally he found himself watching this lady. Scarcely a year since
+that hideous business at Niagara, and here she was in that extravagant
+dress! He wished his sister would not make a friend of her, and that
+Daphne Floyd saw less of her. Miss Daphne had quite enough bees in her
+own bonnet without adopting Mrs. Verrier's.
+
+Meanwhile, it was the General who, on the return journey, was made to
+serve Miss Boyson's gift for monopoly. She took possession of him in a
+business-like way, inquiring into his engagements in Washington, his
+particular friends, his opinion of the place and the people, with a
+light-handed acuteness which was more than a match for the Englishman's
+instincts of defence. The General did not mean to give himself away; he
+intended, indeed, precisely the contrary; but, after every round of
+conversation Miss Boyson felt herself more and more richly provided with
+materials for satire at the expense of England and the English tourist,
+his invincible conceit, insularity, and condescension. She was a clever
+though tiresome woman; and expressed herself best in letters. She
+promised herself to write a "character" of General Hobson in her next
+letter to an intimate friend, which should be a masterpiece. Then,
+having led him successfully through the _role_ of the comic Englishman
+abroad, she repaid him with information. She told him, not without some
+secret amusement at the reprobation it excited, the tragic story of Mrs.
+Verrier. She gave him a full history of her brother's honourable and
+brilliant career; and here let it be said that the _precieuse_ in her
+gave way to the sister, and that she talked with feeling. And finally
+she asked him with a smile whether he admired Miss Floyd. The General,
+who had in fact been observing Miss Floyd and his nephew with some
+little uneasiness during the preceding half-hour, replied guardedly that
+Miss Floyd was pretty and picturesque, and apparently a great talker.
+Was she a native of Washington?
+
+"You never heard of Miss Floyd?--of Daphne Floyd? No? Ah, well!"--and
+she laughed--"I suppose I ought to take it as a compliment, of a kind.
+There are so many rich people now in this queer country of ours that
+even Daphne Floyds don't matter."
+
+"Is Miss Floyd so tremendously rich?"
+
+General Hobson turned a quickened countenance upon her, expressing no
+more than the interest felt by the ordinary man in all societies--more
+strongly, perhaps, at the present day than ever before--in the mere fact
+of money. But Miss Boyson gave it at once a personal meaning, and set
+herself to play on what she scornfully supposed to be the cupidity of
+the Englishman. She produced, indeed, a full and particular account of
+Daphne Floyd's parentage, possessions, and prospects, during which the
+General's countenance represented him with great fidelity. A trace of
+recalcitrance at the beginning--for it was his opinion that Miss Boyson,
+like most American women, talked decidedly too much--gave way to close
+attention, then to astonishment, and finally to a very animated
+observation of Miss Floyd's slender person as she sat a yard or two from
+him on the other side of the car, laughing, frowning, or chattering with
+Roger.
+
+"And that poor child has the management of it all?" he said at last, in
+a tone which did him credit. He himself had lost an only daughter at
+twenty-one, and he held old-fashioned views as to the helplessness of
+women.
+
+But Cecilia Boyson again misunderstood him.
+
+"Oh, yes!" she said, with a cool smile. "Everything is in her own
+hands--everything! Mrs. Phillips would not dare to interfere. Daphne
+always has her own way."
+
+The General said no more. Cecilia Boyson looked out of the window at the
+darkening landscape, thinking with malice of Daphne's dealings with the
+male sex. It had been a Sleeping Beauty story so far. Treasure for the
+winning--a thorn hedge--and slain lovers! The handsome Englishman would
+try it next, no doubt. All young Englishmen, according to her, were on
+the look-out for American heiresses. Music teacher indeed! She would
+have given a good deal to hear the conversation of the uncle and nephew
+when the party broke up.
+
+The General and young Barnes made their farewells at the railway
+station, and took their way on foot to their hotel. Washington was
+steeped in sunset. The White House, as they passed it, glowed amid its
+quiet trees. Lafayette Square, with its fountains and statues, its white
+and pink magnolias, its strolling, chatting crowd, the fronts of the
+houses, the long vistas of tree-lined avenues, the street cars, the
+houses, the motors, all the openings and distances of the beautiful,
+leisurely place--they saw them rosily transfigured under a departing
+sun, which throughout the day had been weaving the quick spells of a
+southern spring.
+
+"Jolly weather!" said Roger, looking about him. "And a very nice
+afternoon. How long are you staying here, Uncle Archie?"
+
+"I ought to be off at the end of the week; and of course you want to get
+back to New York? I say, you seemed to be getting on with that young
+lady?"
+
+The General turned a rather troubled eye upon his companion.
+
+"She wasn't bad fun," said the young man graciously; "but rather an odd
+little thing! We quarrelled about every conceivable subject. And it's
+queer how much that kind of girl seems to go about in America. She goes
+everywhere and knows everything. I wonder how she manages it."
+
+"What kind of girl do you suppose she is?" asked the General, stopping
+suddenly in the middle of Lafayette Square.
+
+"She told me she taught singing," said Roger, in a puzzled voice, "to a
+class of girls in New York."
+
+The General laughed.
+
+"She seems to have made a fool of you, my dear boy. She is one of the
+great heiresses of America."
+
+Roger's face expressed a proper astonishment.
+
+"Oh! that's it, is it? I thought once or twice there was something
+fishy--she was trying it on. Who told you?"
+
+The General retailed his information. Miss Daphne Floyd was the orphan
+daughter of an enormously rich and now deceased lumber-king, of the
+State of Illinois. He had made vast sums by lumbering, and then invested
+in real estate in Chicago and Buffalo, not to speak of a railway or two,
+and had finally left his daughter and only child in possession of a
+fortune generally estimated at more than a million sterling. The money
+was now entirely in the girl's power. Her trustees had been sent about
+their business, though Miss Floyd was pleased occasionally to consult
+them. Mrs. Phillips, her chaperon, had not much influence with her; and
+it was supposed that Mrs. Verrier advised her more than anyone else.
+
+"Good heavens!" was all that young Barnes could find to say when the
+story was told. He walked on absently, flourishing his stick, his face
+working under the stress of amused meditation. At last he brought out:
+
+"You know, Uncle Archie, if you'd heard some of the things Miss Floyd
+was saying to me, your hair would have stood on end."
+
+The General raised his shoulders.
+
+"I dare say. I'm too old-fashioned for America. The sooner I clear out
+the better. Their newspapers make me sick; I hate the hotels--I hate the
+cooking; and there isn't a nation in Europe I don't feel myself more at
+home with."
+
+Roger laughed his clear, good-tempered laugh. "Oh! I don't feel that way
+at all. I get on with them capitally. They're a magnificent people. And,
+as to Miss Floyd, I didn't mean anything bad, of course. Only the ideas
+some of the girls here have, and the way they discuss them--well, it
+beats me!"
+
+"What sort of ideas?"
+
+Roger's handsome brow puckered in the effort to explain. "They don't
+think anything's _settled_, you know, as we do at home. Miss Floyd
+doesn't. They think _they've_ got to settle a lot of things that English
+girls don't trouble about, because they're just told to do 'em, or not
+to do 'em, by the people that look after them!"
+
+"'Everything hatched over again, and hatched different,'" said the
+General, who was an admirer of George Eliot; "that's what they'd like,
+eh? Pooh! That's when they're young. They quiet down, like all the rest
+of the world."
+
+Barnes shook his head. "But they _are_ hatching it over again. You meet
+people here in society you couldn't meet at home. And it's all right.
+The law backs them up."
+
+"You're talking about divorce!" said the General. "Aye! it's astounding!
+The tales one hears in the smoking-room after dinner! In Wyoming,
+apparently, six months' residence, and there you are. You prove a little
+cruelty, the husband makes everything perfectly easy, you say a civil
+good-bye, and the thing's done. Well, they'll pay for it, my dear
+Roger--they'll pay for it. Nobody ever yet trifled with the marriage law
+with impunity."
+
+The energy of the old man's bearing became him.
+
+Through Roger's mind the thought flashed: "Poor dear Uncle Archie! If
+he'd been a New Yorker he'd never have put up with Aunt Lavinia for
+thirty years!"
+
+They turned into their hotel, and ordered dinner in an hour's time.
+Roger found some English letters waiting for him, and carried them off
+to his room. He opened his mother's first. Lady Barnes wrote a large and
+straggling hand, which required many sheets and much postage. It might
+have been observed that her son looked at the sheets for a minute, with
+a certain distaste, before he began upon them. Yet he was deeply
+attached to his mother, and it was from her letters week by week that he
+took his marching orders. If she only wouldn't ride her ideas quite so
+hard; if she would sometimes leave him alone to act for himself!
+
+Here it was again--the old story:
+
+     "Don't suppose I put these things before you on _my_ account. No,
+     indeed; what does it matter what happens to me? It is when I think
+     that you may have to spend your whole life as a clerk in a bank,
+     unless you rouse yourself now--(for you know, my dear Roger, though
+     you have very good wits, you're not as frightfully clever as people
+     have to be nowadays)--that I begin to despair. But that is
+     _entirely_ in your own hands. You have what is far more valuable
+     than cleverness--you have a delightful disposition, and you are one
+     of the handsomest of men. There! of course, I know you wouldn't let
+     me say it to you in your presence; but it's true all the same. Any
+     girl should be proud to marry you. There are plenty of rich girls
+     in America; and if you play your cards properly you will make her
+     and yourself happy. The grammar of that is not quite right, but you
+     understand me. Find a nice girl--of course a _nice_ girl--with a
+     fortune large enough to put you back in your proper sphere; and it
+     doesn't matter about me. You will pay my rent, I dare say, and help
+     me through when I want it; but that's nothing. The point is, that I
+     cannot submit to your career being spoiled through your poor
+     father's mad imprudence. You must retrieve yourself--you _must_.
+     Nobody is anything nowadays in the world without money; you know
+     that as well as I do. And besides, there is another reason. You
+     have got to forget the affair of last spring, to put it entirely
+     behind you, to show that horrid woman who threw you over that you
+     will make your life a success in spite of her. Rouse yourself, my
+     dear Roger, and do your best. I hope by now you have forwarded
+     _all_ my introductions? You have your opportunity, and I must say
+     you will be a great fool if you don't use it. _Do_ use it my dear
+     boy, for my sake. I am a very unhappy woman; but you might, if you
+     would, bring back a little brightness to my life."
+
+After he had read the letter, young Barnes sat for some time in a brown
+study on the edge of his bed. The letter contained only one more
+repetition of counsels that had been dinned into his ears for
+months--almost ever since the financial crash which had followed his
+father's death, and the crash of another sort, concerning himself, which
+had come so quick upon it. His thoughts returned, as they always did at
+some hour of the day or night, to the "horrid woman." Yes, that had hit
+him hard; the lad's heart still throbbed with bitterness as he thought
+of it. He had never felt anything so much; he didn't believe he should
+ever mind anything so much again. "I'm not one of your sentimental
+sort," he thought, half congratulating himself, half in self-contempt.
+But he could not get her out of his head; he wondered if he ever should.
+And it had gone pretty far too. By Jove! that night in the
+orchard!--when she had kissed him, and thrown her arms round his neck!
+And then to write him that letter, when things were at their worst. She
+might have done the thing decently. Have treated a fellow kindly at
+least. Well, of course, it was all done with. Yes, it _was_. Done with!
+
+He got up and began to pace his small room, his hands in his pockets,
+thinking of the night in the orchard. Then gradually the smart lessened,
+and his thoughts passed away to other things. That little Yankee girl
+had really made good sport all the way home. He had not been dull for a
+moment; she had teased and provoked him so. Her eyes, too, were
+wonderfully pretty, and her small, pointed chin, and her witch-like
+imperious ways. Was it her money, the sense that she could do as she
+liked with most people, that made her so domineering and masterful? Very
+likely. On the journey he had put it down just to a natural and very
+surprising impudence. That was when he believed that she was a teacher,
+earning her bread. But the impudence had not prevented him from finding
+it much more amusing to talk to her than to anybody else.
+
+And, on the whole, he thought she had not disliked him, though she had
+said the rudest things to him, and he had retaliated. She had asked him,
+indeed, to join them in an excursion the following day, and to tea at
+the Country Club. He had meant, if possible, to go back to New York on
+the morrow. But perhaps a day or two longer----
+
+So she had a million--the little sprite? She was and would be a
+handful!--with a fortune or without it. And possessed also of the most
+extraordinary opinions. But he thought he would go on the excursion, and
+to the Country Club. He began to fold his mother's letter, and put it
+back into its envelope, while a slight flush mounted in his cheeks, and
+the young mouth that was still so boyish and candid took a stiffer line.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+"Is Miss Floyd at home?"
+
+The questioner was Mrs. Verrier, who had just alighted from her carriage
+at the door of the house in Columbia Avenue inhabited by Miss Floyd and
+her chaperon.
+
+The maid replied that Miss Floyd had not yet returned, but had left a
+message begging Mrs. Verrier to wait for her. The visitor was
+accordingly ushered to the drawing-room on the first floor.
+
+This room, the staircase, the maid, all bore witness to Miss Floyd's
+simplicity--like the Romney dress of Mount Vernon. The colour of the
+walls and the hangings, the lines of the furniture, were all subdued,
+even a little austere. Quiet greens and blues, mingled with white,
+showed the artistic mind; the chairs and sofas were a trifle stiff and
+straight legged; the electric fittings were of a Georgian plainness to
+match the Colonial architecture of the house; the beautiful
+self-coloured carpet was indeed Persian and costly, but it betrayed its
+costliness only to the expert. Altogether, the room, one would have
+said, of any _bourse moyenne_, with an eye for beauty. Fine photographs
+also, of Italian and Dutch pictures, suggested travel, and struck the
+cultivated cosmopolitan note.
+
+Mrs. Verrier looked round it with a smile. It was all as unpretending as
+the maid who ushered her upstairs. Daphne would have no men-servants in
+her employ. What did two ladies want with them, in a democratic country?
+But Mrs. Verrier happened to know that Daphne's maid-servants were just
+as costly in their degree as the drawing-room carpet. Chosen for her in
+London with great care, attracted to Washington by enormous wages, these
+numerous damsels played their part in the general "simplicity" effect;
+but on the whole Mrs. Verrier believed that Daphne's household was
+rather more expensive than that of other rich people who employed men.
+
+She walked through the room, looking absently at the various photographs
+and engravings, till her attention was excited by an easel and a picture
+upon it in the back drawing-room. She went up to it with a muttered
+exclamation.
+
+"So _she_ bought it! Daphne's amazing!"
+
+For what she saw before her was a masterpiece--an excessively costly
+masterpiece--of the Florentine school, smuggled out of Italy, to the
+wrath of the Italian Government, some six months before this date, and
+since then lost to general knowledge. Rumour had given it first to a
+well-known collection at Boston; then to another at Philadelphia; yet
+here it was in the possession of a girl of two-and-twenty of whom the
+great world was just--but only just--beginning to talk.
+
+"How like Daphne!" thought her friend with malice. The "simple" room,
+and the priceless picture carelessly placed in a corner of it, lest any
+one should really suppose that Daphne Floyd was an ordinary mortal.
+
+Mrs. Verrier sat down at last in a chair fronting the picture and let
+herself fall into a reverie. On this occasion she was dressed in black.
+The lace strings of a hat crowned with black ostrich feathers were
+fastened under her chin by a diamond that sparkled in the dim greenish
+light of the drawing-room; the feathers of the hat were unusually large
+and drooping; they curled heavily round the thin neck and long,
+hollow-eyed face, so that its ivory whiteness, its fatigue, its fretful
+beauty were framed in and emphasized by them; her bloodless hands lay
+upon her lap, and the folds of the sweeping dress drawn round her showed
+her slenderness, or rather her emaciation. Two years before this date
+Madeleine Verrier had been a great beauty, and she had never yet
+reconciled herself to physical losses which were but the outward and
+visible sign of losses "far more deeply interfused." As she sat
+apparently absorbed in thought before the picture, she moved, half
+consciously, so that she could no longer see herself in a mirror
+opposite.
+
+Yet her thoughts were in truth much engaged with Daphne and Daphne's
+proceedings. It was now nearly three weeks since Roger Barnes had
+appeared on the horizon. General Hobson had twice postponed his
+departure for England, and was still "enduring hardness" in a Washington
+hotel. Why his nephew should not be allowed to manage his courtship, if
+it was a courtship, for himself, Mrs. Verrier did not understand. There
+was no love lost between herself and the General, and she made much mock
+of him in her talks with Daphne. However, there he was; and she could
+only suppose that he took the situation seriously and felt bound to
+watch it in the interests of the young man's absent mother.
+
+Was it serious? Certainly Daphne had been committing herself a good
+deal. The question was whether she had not been committing herself more
+than the young man had been doing on his side. That was the astonishing
+part of it. Mrs. Verrier could not sufficiently admire the skill with
+which Roger Barnes had so far played his part; could not sufficiently
+ridicule her own lack of insight, which at her first meeting with him
+had pronounced him stupid. Stupid he might be in the sense that it was
+of no use to expect from him the kind of talk on books, pictures, and
+first principles which prevailed in Daphne's circle. But Mrs. Verrier
+thought she had seldom come across a finer sense of tactics than young
+Barnes had so far displayed in his dealings with Daphne. If he went on
+as he had begun, the probability was that he would succeed.
+
+Did she, Madeleine Verrier, wish him to succeed?
+
+Daphne had grown tragically necessary to her, in this world of American
+society--in that section of it, at any rate, in which she desired to
+move, where the widow of Leopold Verrier was always conscious of the
+blowing of a cold and hostile breath. She was not excluded, but she was
+not welcome; she was not ostracized, but she had lost consideration.
+There had been something picturesque and appealing in her husband;
+something unbearably tragic in the manner of his death. She had braved
+it out by staying in America, instead of losing herself in foreign
+towns; and she had thereby proclaimed that she had no guilty sense of
+responsibility, no burden on her conscience; that she had only behaved
+as a thousand other women would have behaved, and without any cruel
+intention at all. But she knew all the same that the spectators of what
+had happened held her for a cruel woman, and that there were many, and
+those the best, who saw her come with distaste and go without regret;
+and it was under that knowledge, in spite of indomitable pride, that her
+beauty had withered in a year.
+
+And at the moment when the smart of what had happened to her--personally
+and socially--was at its keenest; when, after a series of quarrels, she
+had separated herself from the imperious mother who had been her evil
+genius throughout her marriage, she had made friends, unexpectedly,
+owing to a chance meeting at a picture-gallery, with Daphne Floyd. Some
+element in Daphne's nature had attracted and disarmed her. The proud,
+fastidious woman had given the girl her confidence--eagerly,
+indiscriminately. She had poured out upon her all that wild philosophy
+of "rights" which is still struggling in the modern mind with a
+crumbling ethic and a vanishing religion. And she had found in Daphne a
+warm and passionate ally. Daphne was nothing if not "advanced." She
+shrank, as Roger Barnes had perceived, from no question; she had never
+been forbidden, had never forbidden herself, any book that she had a
+fancy to read; and she was as ready to discuss the relative divorce laws
+of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, as the girls of fifty years ago were
+to talk of the fashions, or "Evangeline." In any disputed case,
+moreover, between a man and a woman, Daphne was hotly and instinctively
+on the side of the woman. She had thrown herself, therefore, with ardour
+into the defence of Mrs. Verrier; and for her it was not the wife's
+desertion, but the husband's suicide which had been the cruel and
+indefensible thing. All these various traits and liberalisms had made
+her very dear to Madeleine Verrier.
+
+Now, as that lady sat in her usual drooping attitude, wondering what
+Washington would be like for her when even Daphne Floyd was gone from
+it, the afternoon sun stole through the curtains of the window on the
+street and touched some of the furniture and engravings in the inner
+drawing-room. Suddenly Mrs. Verrier started in her chair. A face had
+emerged thrown out upon the shadows by the sun-finger--the countenance
+of a handsome young Jew, as Rembrandt had once conceived it. Rare and
+high intelligence, melancholy, and premonition:--they were there
+embodied, so long as the apparition lasted.
+
+The effect on Mrs. Verrier was apparently profound. She closed her eyes;
+her lips quivered; she leaned back feebly in her chair, breathing a
+name. The crisis lasted a few minutes, while the momentary vision faded
+and the sun-light crept on. The eyelids unclosed at last, slowly and
+painfully, as though shrinking from what might greet the eyes beneath
+them. But the farther wall was now in deep shade. Mrs. Verrier sat up;
+the emotion which had mastered her like a possession passed away; and
+rising hurriedly, she went back to the front drawing-room. She had
+hardly reached it when Miss Floyd's voice was heard upon the stairs.
+
+Daphne entered the room in what appeared to be a fit of irritation. She
+was scolding the parlour-maid, whose high colour and dignified silence
+proclaimed her both blameless and long-suffering. At the sight of Mrs.
+Verrier Daphne checked herself with an effort and kissed her friend
+rather absently.
+
+"Dear Madeleine!--very good of you to wait. Have they given you tea? I
+suppose not. My household seems to have gone mad this afternoon. Sit
+down. Some tea, Blount, at once."
+
+Mrs. Verrier sank into a corner of the sofa, while Daphne, with an
+"ouf!" of fatigue, took off her hat, and threw herself down at the other
+end, her small feet curled up beneath her. Her half-frowning eyes gave
+the impression that she was still out of temper and on edge.
+
+"Where have you been?" asked her companion quietly.
+
+"Listening to a stuffy debate in the Senate," said Daphne without a
+smile.
+
+"The Senate. What on earth took you there?"
+
+"Well, why shouldn't I go?--why does one do anything? It was just a
+debate--horribly dull--trusts, or something of that kind. But there was
+a man attacking the President--and the place was crowded. Ugh! the heat
+was intolerable!"
+
+"Who took you?"
+
+Daphne named an under-secretary--an agreeable and ambitious man, who had
+been very much in her train during the preceding winter, and until Roger
+Barnes appeared upon the scene.
+
+"I thought until I got your message that you were going to take Mr.
+Barnes motoring up the river."
+
+"Mr. Barnes was engaged." Daphne gave the information tersely, rousing
+herself afterwards to make tea, which appeared at that moment.
+
+"He seems to have been a good deal engaged this week," said Mrs.
+Verrier, when they were alone again.
+
+Daphne made no reply. And Mrs. Verrier, after observing her for a
+moment, resumed:
+
+"I suppose it was the Bostonians?"
+
+"I suppose so. What does it matter?" The tone was dry and sharp.
+
+"Daphne, you goose!" laughed Mrs. Verrier, "I believe this is the very
+first invitation of theirs he has accepted at all. He was written to
+about them by an old friend--his Eton master, or somebody of that sort.
+And as they turned up here on a visit, instead of his having to go and
+look for them at Boston, of course he had to call upon them."
+
+"I dare say. And of course he had to go to tea with them yesterday, and
+he had to take them to Arlington this afternoon! I suppose I'd better
+tell you--we had a quarrel on the subject last night."
+
+"Daphne!--don't, for heaven's sake, make him think himself too
+important!" cried Mrs. Verrier.
+
+Daphne, with both elbows on the table, was slowly crunching a morsel of
+toast in her small white teeth. She had a look of concentrated
+energy--as of a person charged and overcharged with force of some kind,
+impatient to be let loose. Her black eyes sparkled; impetuosity and will
+shone from them; although they showed also rims of fatigue, as if Miss
+Daphne's nights had not of late been all they should be. Mrs. Verrier
+was chiefly struck, however, by the perception that for the first time
+Daphne was not having altogether her own way with the world. Madeleine
+had not observed anything of the same kind in her before. In general she
+was in entire command both of herself and of the men who surrounded her.
+She made a little court out of them, and treated them _en despote_. But
+Roger Barnes had not lent himself to the process; he had not played the
+game properly; and Daphne's sleep had been disturbed for the first time
+in history.
+
+It had been admitted very soon between the two friends--without putting
+it very precisely--that Daphne was interested in Roger Barnes. Mrs.
+Verrier believed that the girl had been originally carried off her feet
+by the young man's superb good looks, and by the natural
+distinction--evident in all societies--which they conferred upon him.
+Then, no doubt, she had been piqued by his good-humoured, easy way--the
+absence of any doubt of himself, of tremor, of insistence. Mrs. Verrier
+said to herself--not altogether shrewdly--that he had no nerves, or no
+heart; and Daphne had not yet come across the genus. Her lovers had
+either possessed too much heart--like Captain Boyson--or a lack of
+coolness, when it really came to the point of grappling with Daphne and
+her millions, as in the case of a dozen she could name. Whereby it had
+come about that Daphne's attention had been first provoked, then
+peremptorily seized by the Englishman; and Mrs. Verrier began now to
+suspect that deeper things were really involved.
+
+Certainly there was a good deal to puzzle the spectator. That the
+English are a fortune-hunting race may be a popular axiom; but it was
+quite possible, after all, that Roger Barnes was not the latest
+illustration of it. It was quite possible, also, that he had a
+sweet-heart at home, some quiet, Quakerish girl who would never wave in
+his face the red flags that Daphne was fond of brandishing. It was
+equally possible that he was merely fooling with Daphne--that he had
+seen girls he liked better in New York, and was simply killing time till
+a sportsman friend of whom he talked should appear on the scene and take
+him off to shoot moose and catch trout in the province of Quebec. Mrs.
+Verrier realized that, for all his lack of subtlety and the higher
+conversation, young Barnes had managed astonishingly to keep his
+counsel. His "simplicity," like Daphne's, seemed to be of a special
+type.
+
+And yet--there was no doubt that he had devoted himself a great deal.
+Washington society had quickly found him out; he had been invited to all
+the most fastidious houses, and was immensely in request for picnics and
+expeditions. But he had contrived, on the whole, to make all these
+opportunities promote the flirtation with Daphne. He had, in fact, been
+enough at her beck and call to make her the envy of a young society with
+whom the splendid Englishman promised to become the rage, and not enough
+to silence or wholly discourage other claimants on his time.
+
+This no doubt accounted for the fact that the two charming Bostonians,
+Mrs. Maddison and her daughter, who had but lately arrived in Washington
+and made acquaintance with Roger Barnes, were still evidently in
+ignorance of what was going on. They were not initiated. They had
+invited young Barnes in the innocence of their hearts, without inviting
+Daphne Floyd, whom they did not previously know. And the young man had
+seen fit to accept their invitation. Hence the jealousy that was clearly
+burning in Daphne, that she was not indeed even trying to hide from the
+shrewd eyes of her friend.
+
+Mrs. Verrier's advice not to make Roger Barnes "too important" had
+called up a flash of colour in the girl's cheeks. But she did not resent
+it in words; rather her silence deepened, till Mrs. Verrier stretched
+out a hand and laughingly turned the small face towards her that she
+might see what was in it.
+
+"Daphne! I really believe you're in love with him!"
+
+"Not at all," said Daphne, her eyelids flickering; "I never know what to
+talk to him about."
+
+"As if that mattered!"
+
+"Elsie Maddison always knows what to talk to him about, and he chatters
+to her the whole time."
+
+Mrs. Verrier paused a moment, then said: "Do you suppose he came to
+America to marry money?"
+
+"I haven't an idea."
+
+"Do you suppose he knows that you--are not exactly a pauper?"
+
+Daphne drew herself away impatiently. "I really don't suppose anything,
+Madeleine. He never talks about money, and I should think he had plenty
+himself."
+
+Mrs. Verrier replied by giving an outline of the financial misfortunes
+of Mr. Barnes _pere_, as they had been described to her by another
+English traveller in Washington.
+
+Daphne listened indifferently. "He can't be very poor or he wouldn't
+behave as he does. And he is to inherit the General's property. He told
+me so."
+
+"And it wouldn't matter to you, Daphne, if you did think a man had
+married you for money?"
+
+Daphne had risen, and was pacing the drawing-room floor, her hands
+clasped behind her back. She turned a cloudy face upon her questioner.
+"It would matter a great deal, if I thought it had been only for money.
+But then, I hope I shouldn't have been such a fool as to marry him."
+
+"But you could bear it, if the money counted for something?"
+
+"I'm not an idiot!" said the girl, with energy. "With whom doesn't money
+count for something? Of course a man must take money into
+consideration." There was a curious touch of arrogance in the gesture
+which accompanied the words.
+
+"'How pleasant it is to have money, heigh-ho!--How pleasant it is to
+have money,'" said Mrs. Verrier, quoting, with a laugh. "Yes, I dare
+say, you'd be very reasonable, Daphne, about that kind of thing. But I
+don't think you'd be a comfortable wife, dear, all the same."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"You might allow your husband to spare a little love to your money; you
+would be for killing him if he ever looked at another woman!"
+
+"You mean I should be jealous?" asked Daphne, almost with violence. "You
+are quite right there. I should be very jealous. On that point I should
+'find quarrel in a straw.'"
+
+Her cheeks had flushed a passionate red. The eyes which she had
+inherited from her Spanish grandmother blazed above them. She had become
+suddenly a woman of Andalusia and the South, moved by certain primitive
+forces in the blood.
+
+Madeleine Verrier held out her hands, smiling.
+
+"Come here, little wild cat. I believe you are jealous of Elsie
+Maddison."
+
+Daphne approached her slowly, and slowly dropped into a seat beside her
+friend, her eyes still fixed and splendid. But as she looked into them
+Madeleine Verrier saw them suddenly dimmed.
+
+"Daphne! you _are_ in love with him!"
+
+The girl recovered herself, clenching her small hands. "If I am," she
+said resolutely, "it is strange how like the other thing it is! I don't
+know whether I shall speak to him to-night."
+
+"To-night?" Mrs. Verrier looked a little puzzled.
+
+"At the White House. You're going, of course."
+
+"No, I am not going." The voice was quiet and cold. "I am not asked."
+
+Daphne, vexed with herself, touched her friend's hand caressingly. "It
+will be just a crush, dear. But I promised various people to go."
+
+"And he will be there?"
+
+"I suppose so." Daphne turned her head away, and then sprang up. "Have
+you seen the picture?"
+
+Mrs. Verrier followed her into the inner room, where the girl gave a
+laughing and triumphant account of her acquisition, the agents she had
+employed, the skill with which it had been conveyed out of Italy, the
+wrath of various famous collectors, who had imagined that the fight lay
+between them alone, when they found the prize had been ravished from
+them. Madeleine Verrier was very intelligent, and the contrast, which
+the story brought out, between the girl's fragile youth and the strange
+and passionate sense of power which breathed from her whenever it became
+a question of wealth and the use of it, was at no point lost upon her
+companion.
+
+Daphne would not allow any further talk of Roger Barnes. Her chaperon,
+Mrs. Phillips, presently appeared, and passed through rather a bad
+quarter of an hour while the imperious mistress of the house inquired
+into certain invitations and card-leavings that had not been managed to
+her liking. Then Daphne sat down to write a letter to a Girls' Club in
+New York, of which she was President--where, in fact, she occasionally
+took the Singing Class, with which she had made so much play at her
+first meeting with Roger Barnes. She had to tell them that she had just
+engaged a holiday house for them, to which they might go in instalments
+throughout the summer. She would pay the rent, provide a
+lady-superintendent, and make herself responsible for all but food
+expenses. Her small face relaxed--became quite soft and charming--as she
+wrote.
+
+"But, my dear," cried Mrs. Phillips in dismay, as Daphne handed her the
+letter to read, "you have taken the house on Lake George, and you know
+the girls had all set their hearts on that place in the White
+Mountains!"
+
+Daphne's lips tightened. "Certainly I have taken the house on Lake
+George," she said, as she carefully wiped her pen. "I told them I
+should."
+
+"But, my dear, they are so tired of Lake George! They have been there
+three years running. And you know they subscribe a good deal
+themselves."
+
+"Very well!--then let them do without my help. I have inquired into the
+matter. The house on Lake George is much more suitable than the White
+Mountains farm, and I have written to the agent. The thing's done."
+
+Mrs. Phillips argued a little more, but Daphne was immovable.
+
+Mrs. Verrier, watching the two, reflected, as she had often done before,
+that Mrs. Phillips's post was not particularly enviable. Daphne treated
+her in many ways with great generosity, paid her highly, grudged her no
+luxury, and was always courteous to her in public. But in private
+Daphne's will was law, and she had an abrupt and dictatorial way of
+asserting it that brought the red back into Mrs. Phillips's faded
+cheeks. Mrs. Verrier had often expected her to throw up her post. But
+there was no doubt something in Daphne's personality which made life
+beside her too full of colour to be lightly abandoned.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Daphne presently went upstairs to take off her walking-dress, and Mrs.
+Phillips, with a rather troubled face, began to tidy the confusion of
+letters she had left behind her.
+
+"I dare say the girls won't mind," said Madeleine Verrier, kindly.
+
+Mrs. Phillips started, and her mild lips quivered a little. Daphne's
+charities were for Daphne an amusement; for this gentle, faded woman,
+who bore all the drudgery of them, they were the chief attraction of
+life in Daphne's house. Mrs. Phillips loved the club-girls, and the
+thought of their disappointment pained her.
+
+"I must try and put it to them," was her patient reply.
+
+"Daphne must always have her way," Madeleine went on, smiling. "I wonder
+what she'll do when she marries."
+
+Mrs. Phillips looked up quickly.
+
+"I hope it'll be the right man, Mrs. Verrier. Of course, with anyone
+so--so clever--and so used to managing everything for herself--one would
+be a little anxious."
+
+Mrs. Verrier's expression changed. A kind of
+wildness--fanaticism--invaded it, as of one recalling a mission. "Oh,
+well, nothing is irrevocable nowadays," she said, almost with violence.
+"Still I hope Daphne won't make a mistake."
+
+Mrs. Phillips looked at her companion, at first in astonishment. Then a
+change passed over her face. With a cold excuse she left Mrs. Verrier
+alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+The reception at the White House was being given in honour of the
+delegates to a Peace Congress. The rooms were full without being
+inconveniently crowded and the charming house opened its friendly doors
+to a society more congruous and organic, richer also in the nobler kind
+of variety than America, perhaps, can offer to her guests elsewhere.
+What the opera and international finance are to New York, politics and
+administration are, as we all know, to Washington. And the visitor
+from Europe, conversationally starved for want of what seem to him
+the only topics worth discussing, finds himself within hearing once
+more of ministers, cabinets, embassies, and parliamentary gossip.
+Even General Hobson had come to admit that--especially for the
+middle-aged--Washington parties were extremely agreeable. The young and
+foolish might sigh for the flesh-pots of New York; those on whom "the
+black ox had trodden," who were at all aware what a vast tormenting,
+multitudinous, and headstrong world man has been given to inhabit; those
+who were engaged in governing any part of that world, or meant some day
+to be thus engaged; for them Washington was indispensable, and New York
+a mere entertainment.
+
+Moreover Washington, at this time of the world's history, was the scene
+of one of those episodes--those brisker moments in the human
+comedy--which every now and then revive among us an almost forgotten
+belief in personality, an almost forgotten respect for the mysteries
+behind it. The guests streaming through the White House defiled past a
+man who, in a level and docketed world, appeared to his generation as
+the reincarnation of forces primitive, over-mastering, and heroic. An
+honest Odysseus!--toil-worn and storm-beaten, yet still with the spirit
+and strength, the many devices, of a boy; capable like his prototype in
+one short day of crushing his enemies, upholding his friends, purifying
+his house; and then, with the heat of righteous battle still upon him,
+with its gore, so to speak, still upon his hands, of turning his mind,
+without a pause and without hypocrisy, to things intimate and soft and
+pure--the domestic sweetness of Penelope, the young promise of
+Telemachus. The President stood, a rugged figure, amid the cosmopolitan
+crowd, breasting the modern world, like some ocean headland, yet not
+truly of it, one of the great fighters and workers of mankind, with a
+laugh that pealed above the noise, blue eyes that seemed to pursue some
+converse of their own, and a hand that grasped and cheered, where other
+hands withdrew and repelled. This one man's will had now, for some
+years, made the pivot on which vast issues turned--issues of peace and
+war, of policy embracing the civilized world; and, here, one saw him in
+drawing-rooms, discussing Alaric's campaigns with an Oxford professor,
+or chatting with a young mother about her children.
+
+Beside him, the human waves, as they met and parted, disclosed a woman's
+face, modelled by nature in one of her lightest and deftest moods, a
+trifle detached, humorous also, as though the world's strange sights
+stirred a gentle and kindly mirth behind its sweet composure. The
+dignity of the President's wife was complete, yet it had not
+extinguished the personality it clothed; and where royalty, as the
+European knows it, would have donned its mask and stood on its defence,
+Republican royalty dared to be its amused, confiding, natural self.
+
+All around--the political, diplomatic world of Washington. General
+Hobson, as he passed through it, greeted by what was now a large
+acquaintance, found himself driven once more to the inward
+confession--the grudging confession--as though Providence had not played
+him fair in extorting it--that American politicians were of a vastly
+finer stamp than he had expected to find them. The American press was
+all--he vowed--that fancy had painted it, and more. But, as he looked
+about him at the members of the President's administration--at this
+tall, black-haired man, for instance, with the mild and meditative eye,
+the equal, social or intellectual, of any Foreign Minister that Europe
+might pit against him, or any diplomat that might be sent to handle him;
+or this younger man, sparely built, with the sane, handsome face--son of
+a famous father, modest, amiable, efficient; or this other, of huge bulk
+and height, the sport of caricature, the hope of a party, smiling
+already a presidential smile as he passed, observed and beset, through
+the crowded rooms; or these naval or military men, with their hard
+serviceable looks, and the curt good manners of their kind:--the General
+saw as clearly as anybody else, that America need make no excuses
+whatever for her best men, that she has evolved the leaders she wants,
+and Europe has nothing to teach them.
+
+He could only console himself by the remembrance of a speech, made by a
+well-known man, at a military function which the General had attended as
+a guest of honour the day before. There at last was the real thing! The
+real, Yankee, spread-eagle thing! The General positively hugged the
+thought of it.
+
+"The American soldier," said the speaker, standing among the
+ambassadors, the naval and military _attaches_, of all the European
+nations, "is the superior of all other soldiers in three
+respects--bravery, discipline, intelligence."
+
+_Bravery, discipline, intelligence!_ Just those--the merest trifle! The
+General had found himself chuckling over it in the visions of the night.
+
+Tired at last of these various impressions, acting on a mind not quite
+alert enough to deal with them, the General went in search of his
+nephew. Roger had been absent all day, and the General had left the
+hotel before his return. But the uncle was sure that he would sooner or
+later put in an appearance.
+
+It was of course entirely on Roger's account that this unwilling guest
+of America was her guest still. For three weeks now had the General been
+watching the affair between Roger and Daphne Floyd. It had gone with
+such a rush at first, such a swing and fervour, that the General had
+felt that any day might bring the _denouement_. It was really impossible
+to desert the lad at such a crisis, especially as Laura was so excitable
+and anxious, and so sure to make her brother pay for it if he failed to
+support her views and ambitions at the right moment. The General
+moreover felt the absolute necessity of getting to know something more
+about Miss Floyd, her character, the details of her fortune and
+antecedents, so that when the great moment came he might be prepared.
+
+But the astonishing thing was that of late the whole affair seemed to
+have come to some stupid hitch! Roger had been behaving like a very cool
+hand--too cool by half in the General's opinion. What the deuce did he
+mean by hanging about these Boston ladies, if his affections were really
+fixed on Miss Daphne?--or his ambitions, which to the uncle seemed
+nearer the truth.
+
+"Well, where is the nephew?" said Cecilia Boyson's voice in his ear.
+
+The General turned. He saw a sharp, though still young face, a thin and
+willowy figure, attired in white silk, a _pince-nez_ on the high-pitched
+nose, and a cool smile. Unconsciously his back stiffened. Miss Boyson
+invariably roused in him a certain masculine antagonism.
+
+"I should be glad if you would tell me," he said, with some formality.
+"There are two or three people here to whom he should be introduced."
+
+"Has he been picnicking with the Maddisons?" The voice was shrill,
+perhaps malicious.
+
+"I believe they took him to Arlington, and somewhere else afterwards."
+
+"Ah," said Cecilia, "there they are."
+
+The General looked towards the door and saw his nephew enter, behind a
+mother and daughter whom, as it seemed to him, their acquaintances in
+the crowd around them greeted with a peculiar cordiality; the mother,
+still young, with a stag-like carriage of the head, a long throat,
+swathed in white tulle, and grizzled hair, on which shone a spray of
+diamonds; the daughter, equally tall and straight, repeating her
+mother's beauty with a bloom and radiance of her own. Innocent and
+happy, with dark eyes and a soft mouth, Miss Maddison dropped a little
+curtsey to the presidential pair, and the room turned to look at her as
+she did so.
+
+"A very sweet-looking girl," said the General warmly. "Her father is, I
+think, a professor."
+
+"He was. He is now just a writer of books. But Elsie was brought up in
+Cambridge. How did Mr. Roger know them?"
+
+"His Eton tutor told him to go and see them."
+
+"I thought Miss Floyd expected him to-day?" said Miss Boyson carelessly,
+adjusting her eyeglass.
+
+"It was a mistake, a misunderstanding," replied the General hurriedly.
+"Miss Floyd's party is put off till next week."
+
+"Daphne is just coming in," said Miss Boyson.
+
+The General turned again. The watchful Cecilia was certain that _he_ was
+not in love with Daphne. But the nephew--the inordinately handsome, and
+by now much-courted young man--what was the real truth about him?
+
+Cecilia recognized--with Mrs. Verrier--that merely to put the question
+involved a certain tribute to young Barnes. He had at any rate done his
+fortune-hunting, if fortune-hunting it were, with decorum.
+
+"Miss Floyd is looking well to-night," remarked the General.
+
+Cecilia did not reply. She and a great part of the room were engaged in
+watching Roger Barnes and Miss Maddison walking together through a space
+which seemed to have been cleared on purpose for them, but was really
+the result of a move towards the supper-room.
+
+"Was there ever such a pair?" said an enthusiastic voice behind the
+General. "Athene and Apollo take the floor!" A gray-haired journalist
+with a small, bewrinkled face, buried in whiskers, and beard, laid a
+hand on the General's arm as he spoke.
+
+The General smiled vaguely. "Do you know Mrs. and Miss Maddison?"
+
+"Rather!" said the little man. "Miss Elsie's a wonder! As pretty and
+soft as they make them, and a Greek scholar besides--took all sorts of
+honours at Radcliffe last year. I've known her from her cradle."
+
+"What a number of your girls go to college!" said the General, but
+ungraciously, in the tones of one who no sooner saw an American custom
+emerging than his instinct was to hit it.
+
+"Yes; it's a feature of our modern life--the life of our women. But not
+the most significant one, by a long way."
+
+The General could not help a look of inquiry.
+
+The journalist's face changed from gay to grave. "The most significant
+thing in American life just now----"
+
+"I know!" interrupted the General. "Your divorce laws!"
+
+The journalist shook his head. "It goes deeper than that. What we're
+looking on at is a complete transformation of the idea of marriage----"
+
+A movement in the crowd bore the speaker away. The General was left
+watching the beautiful pair in the distance. They were apparently quite
+unconscious that they roused any special attention. Laughing and
+chatting like two children, they passed into the supper-room and
+disappeared.
+
+Ten minutes later, in the supper-room, Barnes deserted the two ladies
+with whom he had entered, and went in pursuit of a girl in white, whose
+necklace of star sapphires, set in a Spanish setting of the seventeenth
+century, had at once caught the eye of the judicious. Roger, however,
+knew nothing of jewels, and was only conscious as he approached Miss
+Floyd, first of the mingling in his own mind of something like
+embarrassment with something like defiance, and then, of the glitter in
+the girl's dark eyes.
+
+"I hope you had an interesting debate," he said. "Mrs. Phillips tells me
+you went to the Senate."
+
+Daphne looked him up and down. "Did I?" she said slowly. "I've
+forgotten. Will you move, please? There's someone bringing me an ice."
+And turning her back on Roger, she smiled and beckoned to the
+Under-Secretary, who with a triumphant face was making his way to her
+through the crowd.
+
+Roger coloured hotly. "May I bring Mrs. Maddison?" he said, passing her;
+"she would like to talk to you about a party for next week----"
+
+"Thank you. I am just going home." And with an energetic movement she
+freed herself from him, and was soon in the gayest of talk with the
+Under-Secretary.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The reception broke up some time after midnight, and on the way home
+General Hobson attempted a raid upon his nephew's intentions.
+
+"I don't wish to seem an intrusive person, my dear Roger, but may I ask
+how much longer you mean to stay in Washington?"
+
+The tone was short and the look which accompanied the words not without
+sarcasm. Roger, who had been walking beside his companion, still deeply
+flushed, in complete silence, gave an awkward laugh.
+
+"And as for you, Uncle Archie, I thought you meant to sail a fortnight
+ago. If you've been staying on like this on my account----"
+
+"Don't make a fool either of me or yourself, Roger!" said the General
+hastily, roused at last to speech by the annoyance of the situation. "Of
+course it was on your account that I have stayed on. But what on earth
+it all means, and where your affairs are--I'm hanged if I have the
+glimmer of an idea!"
+
+Roger's smile was perfectly good-humoured.
+
+"I haven't much myself," he said quietly.
+
+"Do you--or do you not--mean to propose to Miss Floyd?" cried the
+General, pausing in the centre of Lafayette Square, now all but
+deserted, and apostrophizing with his umbrella--for the night was soft
+and rainy--the presidential statue above his head.
+
+"Have I given you reason to suppose that I was going to do so?" said
+Roger slowly.
+
+"Given me?--given everybody reason?--of course you have!--a dozen times
+over. I don't like interfering with your affairs, Roger--with any young
+man's affairs--but you must know that you have set Washington talking,
+and it's not fair to a girl--by George it isn't!--when she has given you
+encouragement and you have made her conspicuous, to begin the same
+story, in the same place, immediately, with someone else! As you say, I
+ought to have taken myself off long ago."
+
+"I didn't say anything of the kind," said Roger hotly; "you shouldn't
+put words into my mouth, Uncle Archie. And I really don't see why you
+attack me like this. My tutor particularly asked me, if I came across
+them, to be civil to Mrs. Maddison and her daughter, and I have done
+nothing but pay them the most ordinary attentions."
+
+"When a man is in love he pays no ordinary attentions. He has eyes for
+no one but the lady." The General's umbrella, as it descended from the
+face of Andrew Jackson and rattled on the flagged path, supplied each
+word with emphasis. "However, it is no good talking, and I don't exactly
+know why I should put my old oar in. But the fact is I feel a certain
+responsibility. People here have been uncommonly civil. Well,
+well!--I've wired to-day to ask if there is a berth left in the
+_Venetia_ for Saturday. And you, I suppose"--the inquiry was somewhat
+peremptory--"will be going back to New York?"
+
+"I have no intention of leaving Washington just yet," said Roger, with
+decision.
+
+"And may I ask what you intend to do here?"
+
+Roger laughed. "I really think that's my business. However, you've been
+an awful brick, Uncle Archie, to stay on like this. I assure you, if I
+don't say much, I think it."
+
+By this time they had reached the hotel, the steps and hall of which
+were full of people.
+
+"That's how you put me off." The General's tone was resentful. "And you
+won't give me any idea of the line I am to take with your mother?"
+
+The young man smiled again and waved an evasive hand.
+
+"If you'll only be patient a little longer, Uncle Archie----"
+
+At this point an acquaintance of the General's who was smoking in the
+hall came forward to greet him, and Roger made his escape.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well, what the deuce _do_ I mean to do?" Barnes asked himself the
+question deliberately. He was hanging out of the window, in his bedroom,
+smoking and pondering.
+
+It was a mild and rainy night. Washington was full of the earth and leaf
+odours of the spring, which rose in gusts from its trees and gardens;
+and rugged, swiftly moving clouds disclosed every now and then what
+looked like hurrying stars.
+
+The young man was excited and on edge. Daphne Floyd--and the thought of
+Daphne Floyd--had set his pulses hammering; they challenged in him the
+aggressive, self-assertive, masculine force. The history of the
+preceding three weeks was far from simple. He had first paid a
+determined court to her, conducting it in an orthodox, English,
+conspicuous way. His mother, and her necessities--his own also--imposed
+it on him; and he flung himself into it, setting his teeth. Then, to his
+astonishment, one may almost say to his disconcerting, he found the prey
+all at once, and, as it were, without a struggle, fluttering to his
+lure, and practically within his grasp. There was an evening when
+Daphne's sudden softness, the look in her eyes, the inflection in her
+voice had fairly thrown him off his balance. For the first time he had
+shown a lack of self-command and self-possession. Whereupon, in a flash,
+a new and strange Daphne had developed--imperious, difficult,
+incalculable. The more he gave, the more she claimed. Nor was it mere
+girlish caprice. The young Englishman, invited to a game that he had
+never yet played, felt in it something sinister and bewildering.
+Gropingly, he divined in front of him a future of tyranny on her side,
+of expected submission on his. The Northern character in him, with its
+reserve, its phlegm, its general sanity, began to shrink from the
+Southern elements in her. He became aware of the depths in her nature,
+of things volcanic and primitive, and the English stuff in him recoiled.
+
+So he was to be bitted and bridled, it seemed, in the future. Daphne
+Floyd would have bought him with her dollars, and he would have to pay
+the price.
+
+Something natural and wild in him said No! If he married this girl he
+would be master, in spite of her money. He realized vaguely, at any
+rate, the strength of her will, and the way in which it had been
+tempered and steeled by circumstance. But the perception only roused in
+himself some slumbering tenacities and vehemences of which he had been
+scarcely aware. So that, almost immediately--since there was no glamour
+of passion on his side--he began to resent her small tyrannies, to draw
+in, and draw back. A few quarrels--not ordinary lovers' quarrels, but
+representing a true grapple of personalities--sprang up behind a screen
+of trifles. Daphne was once more rude and provoking, Roger cool and
+apparently indifferent. This was the stage when Mrs. Verrier had become
+an admiring observer of what she supposed to be his "tactics." But she
+knew nothing of the curious little crisis which had preceded them.
+
+Then the Maddisons, mother and daughter, "my tutor's friends," had
+appeared upon the scene--charming people! Of course civilities were due
+to them, and had to be paid them. Next to his mother--and to the girl of
+the orchard--the affections of this youth, who was morally backward and
+immature, but neither callous nor fundamentally selfish, had been
+chiefly given to a certain Eton master, of a type happily not uncommon
+in English public schools. Herbert French had been Roger's earliest and
+best friend. What Roger had owed him at school, only he knew. Since
+school-days they had been constant correspondents, and French's
+influence on his pupil's early manhood had done much, for all Roger's
+laziness and self-indulgence, to keep him from serious lapses.
+
+Neglect any friends of his--and such jolly friends? Rather not! But as
+soon as Daphne had seen Elsie Maddison, and he had begged an afternoon
+to go on an expedition with them, Daphne had become intolerable. She had
+shown her English friend and his acquaintances a manner so insulting and
+provocative, that the young man's blood had boiled.
+
+If he were in love with her--well and good! She might no doubt have
+tamed him by these stripes. But she was no goddess to him; no golden
+cloud enveloped her; he saw her under a common daylight. At the same
+time she attracted him; he was vain of what had seemed his conquest, and
+uneasily exultant in the thought of her immense fortune. "I'll make her
+an excellent husband if she marries me," he said to himself stubbornly;
+"I can, and I will."
+
+But meanwhile how was this first stage to end? At the White House that
+night Daphne had treated him with contumely, and before spectators. He
+must either go or bring her to the point.
+
+He withdrew suddenly from the window, flinging out the end of his
+cigarette. "I'll propose to her to-morrow--and she may either take me or
+leave me!"
+
+He paced up and down his room, conscious of relief and fresh energy. As
+he did so his eyes were drawn to a letter from Herbert French lying on
+the table. He took it up and read it again--smiling over it broadly, in
+a boyish and kindly amusement. "By Jove! he's happy."
+
+Then as he put it down his face darkened. There was something in the
+letter, in its manliness and humour, its unconscious revelation of
+ideals wholly independent of dollars, that made Roger for the moment
+loathe his own position. But he pulled himself together.
+
+"I shall make her a good husband," he repeated, frowning. "She'll have
+nothing to complain of."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the following day a picnic among the woods of the Upper Potomac
+brought together most of the personages in this history. The day was
+beautiful, the woods fragrant with spring leaf and blossom, and the
+stream, swollen with rain, ran seaward in a turbid, rejoicing strength.
+
+The General, having secured his passage home, was in good spirits as far
+as his own affairs were concerned, though still irritable on the score
+of his nephew's. Since the abortive attempt on his confidence of the
+night before, Roger had avoided all private conversation with his uncle;
+and for once the old had to learn patience from the young.
+
+The party was given by the wife of one of the staff of the French
+Embassy--a young Frenchwoman, as gay and frank as her babies, and
+possessed, none the less, of all the social arts of her nation. She had
+taken a shrewd interest in the matter of Daphne Floyd and the
+Englishman. Daphne, according to her, should be promptly married and her
+millions taken care of, and the handsome, broad-shouldered fellow
+impressed the little Frenchwoman's imagination as a proper and capable
+watchdog. She had indeed become aware that something was wrong, but her
+acuteness entirely refused to believe that it had any vital connection
+with the advent of pretty Elsie Maddison. Meanwhile, to please Daphne,
+whom she liked, while conscious of a strong and frequent desire to smite
+her, Madame de Fronsac had invited Mrs. Verrier, treating her with a
+cold and punctilious courtesy that, as applied to any other guest, would
+have seemed an affront.
+
+In vain, however, did the hostess, in vain did other kindly bystanders,
+endeavour to play the game of Daphne Floyd. In the first place Daphne
+herself, though piped unto, refused to dance. She avoided the society of
+Roger Barnes in a pointed and public way, bright colour on her cheeks
+and a wild light in her eyes; the Under-Secretary escorted her and
+carried her wrap. Washington did not know what to think. For owing to
+this conduct of Daphne's, the charming Boston girl, the other _ingenue_
+of the party, fell constantly to the care of young Barnes; and to see
+them stepping along the green ways together, matched almost in height,
+and clearly of the same English ancestry and race, pleased while it
+puzzled the spectators.
+
+The party lunched in a little inn beside the river, and then scattered
+again along woodland paths. Daphne and the Under-Secretary wandered on
+ahead and were some distance from the rest of the party when that
+gentleman suddenly looked at his watch in dismay. An appointment had to
+be kept with the President at a certain hour, and the Under-Secretary's
+wits had been wandering. There was nothing for it but to take a short
+cut through the woods to a local station and make at once for
+Washington.
+
+Daphne quickened his uneasiness and hastened his departure. She assured
+him that the others were close behind, and that nothing could suit her
+better than to rest on a mossy stone that happily presented itself till
+they arrived.
+
+The Under-Secretary, transformed into the anxious and ambitious
+politician, abruptly left her.
+
+Daphne, as soon as he was gone, allowed herself the natural attitude
+that fitted her thoughts. She was furiously in love and torn with
+jealousy; and that love and jealousy could smart so, and cling so, was a
+strange revelation to one accustomed to make a world entirely to her
+liking. Her dark eyes were hollow, her small mouth had lost its colour,
+and she showed that touch of something wasting and withering that
+Theocritan shepherds knew in old Sicilian days. It was as though she had
+defied a god--and the god had avenged himself.
+
+Suddenly he appeared--the teasing divinity--in human shape. There was a
+rustling among the brushwood fringing the river. Roger Barnes emerged
+and made his way up towards her.
+
+"I've been stalking you all this time," he said, breathless, as he
+reached her, "and now at last--I've caught you!"
+
+Daphne rose furiously. "What right have you to stalk me, as you call
+it--to follow me--to speak to me even? I wish to avoid you--and I have
+shown it!"
+
+Roger looked at her. He had thrown down his hat, and she saw him against
+the background of sunny wood, as the magnificent embodiment of its youth
+and force. "And why have you shown it?" There was a warning tremor of
+excitement in his voice. "What have I done? I haven't deserved it! You
+treat me like--like a friend!--and then you drop me like a hot coal.
+You've been awfully unkind to me!"
+
+"I won't discuss it with you," she cried passionately. "You are in my
+way, Mr. Barnes. Let me go back to the others!" And stretching out a
+small hand, she tried to put him aside.
+
+Roger hesitated, but only for a moment. He caught the hand, he gathered
+its owner into a pair of strong arms, and bending over her, he kissed
+her. Daphne, suffocated with anger and emotion, broke from
+him--tottering. Then sinking on the ground beneath a tree, she burst
+into sobbing. Roger, scarlet, with sparkling eyes, dropped on one knee
+beside her.
+
+[Illustration: "He caught the hand, he gathered its owner into a pair of
+strong arms, and bending over her, he kissed her"]
+
+"Daphne, I'm a ruffian! forgive me! you must, Daphne! Look here, I want
+you to marry me. I've nothing to offer you, of course; I'm a poor man,
+and you've all this horrible money! But I--I love you!--and I'll make
+you a good husband, Daphne, that I'll swear. If you'll take me, you
+shall never be sorry for it."
+
+He looked at her again, sorely embarrassed, hating himself, yet inwardly
+sure of her. Her small frame shook with weeping. And presently she
+turned from him and said in a fierce voice:
+
+"Go and tell all that to Elsie Maddison!"
+
+Infinitely relieved, Roger gave a quick, excited laugh.
+
+"She'd soon send me about my business! I should be a day too late for
+the fair, in _that_ quarter. What do you think she and I have been
+talking about all this time, Daphne?"
+
+"I don't care," said Daphne hastily, with face still averted.
+
+"I'm going to tell you, all the same," cried Roger triumphantly, and
+diving into his coat pocket he produced "my tutor's letter." Daphne sat
+immovable, and he had to read it aloud himself. It contained the
+rapturous account of Herbert French's engagement to Miss Maddison, a
+happy event which had taken place in England during the Eton holidays,
+about a month before this date.
+
+"There!" cried the young man as he finished it. "And she's talked about
+nothing all the time, nothing at all--but old Herbert--and how good he
+is--and how good-looking, and the Lord knows what! I got precious sick
+of it, though I think he's a trump, too. Oh, Daphne!--you were a little
+fool!"
+
+"All the same, you have behaved abominably!" Daphne said, still choking.
+
+"No, I haven't," was Roger's firm reply. "It was you who were so cross.
+I couldn't tell you anything. I say! you do know how to stick pins into
+people!"
+
+But he took up her hand and kissed it as he spoke.
+
+Daphne allowed it. Her breast heaved as the storm departed. And she
+looked so charming, so soft, so desirable, as she sat there in her white
+dress, with her great tear-washed eyes and fluttering breath, that the
+youth was really touched and carried off his feet; and the rest of his
+task was quite easy. All the familiar things that had to be said were
+said, and with all the proper emphasis and spirit. He played his part,
+the spring woods played theirs, and Daphne, worn out by emotion and
+conquered by passion, gradually betrayed herself wholly. And so much at
+least may be said to the man's credit that there were certainly moments
+in the half-hour between them when, amid the rush of talk, laughter, and
+caresses, that conscience which he owed so greatly to the exertions of
+"my tutor" pricked him not a little.
+
+After losing themselves deliberately in the woods, they strolled back to
+join the rest of the party. The sounds of conversation were already
+audible through the trees in front of them, when they saw Mrs. Verrier
+coming towards them. She was walking alone and did not perceive them.
+Her eyes were raised and fixed, as though on some sight in front of
+them. The bitterness, the anguish, one might almost call it, of her
+expression, the horror in the eyes, as of one ghost-led, ghost-driven,
+drew an exclamation from Roger.
+
+"There's Mrs. Verrier! Why, how ill she looks!"
+
+Daphne paused, gazed, and shrank. She drew him aside through the trees.
+
+"Let's go another way. Madeleine's often strange." And with a
+superstitious pang she wished that Madeleine Verrier's face had not been
+the first to meet her in this hour of her betrothal.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+THREE YEARS AFTER
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+In the drawing-room at Heston Park two ladies were seated. One was a
+well-preserved woman of fifty, with a large oblong face, good features,
+a double chin, and abundant gray hair arranged in waved _bandeaux_ above
+a forehead which should certainly have implied strength of character,
+and a pair of challenging black eyes. Lady Barnes moved and spoke with
+authority; it was evident that she had been accustomed to do so all her
+life; to trail silk gowns over Persian carpets, to engage expensive
+cooks and rely on expensive butlers, with a strict attention to small
+economies all the time; to impose her will on her household and the
+clergyman of the parish; to give her opinions on books, and expect them
+to be listened to; to abstain from politics as unfeminine, and to make
+up for it by the strongest of views on Church questions. She belonged to
+an English type common throughout all classes--quite harmless and
+tolerable when things go well, but apt to be soured and twisted by
+adversity.
+
+And Lady Barnes, it will be remembered, had known adversity. Not much of
+it, nor for long together; but in her own opinion she had gone through
+"great trials," to the profit of her Christian character. She was quite
+certain, now, that everything had been for the best, and that Providence
+makes no mistakes. But that, perhaps, was because the "trials" had only
+lasted about a year; and then, so far as they were pecuniary, the
+marriage of her son with Miss Daphne Floyd had entirely relieved her of
+them. For Roger now made her a handsome allowance and the chastened
+habits of a most uncomfortable year had been hastily abandoned.
+
+Nevertheless, Lady Barnes's aspect on this autumn afternoon was not
+cheerful, and her companion was endeavouring, with a little kind
+embarrassment, both to soothe an evident irritation and to avoid the
+confidences that Roger's mother seemed eager to pour out. Elsie French,
+whom Washington had known three years before as Elsie Maddison, was in
+that bloom of young married life when all that was lovely in the girl
+seems to be still lingering, while yet love and motherhood have wrought
+once more their old transforming miracle on sense and spirit. In her
+afternoon dress of dainty sprigged silk, with just a touch of austerity
+in the broad muslin collar and cuffs--her curly brown hair simply parted
+on her brow, and gathered classically on a shapely head--her mouth a
+little troubled, her brow a little puckered over Lady Barnes's
+discontents--she was a very gracious vision. Yet behind the gentleness,
+as even Lady Barnes knew, there were qualities and characteristics of a
+singular strength.
+
+Lady Barnes indeed was complaining, and could not be stopped.
+
+"You see, dear Mrs. French," she was saying, in a rapid, lowered voice,
+and with many glances at the door, "the trouble is that Daphne is never
+satisfied. She has some impossible ideal in her mind, and then
+everything must be sacrificed to it. She began with going into ecstasies
+over this dear old house, and now!--there's scarcely a thing in it she
+does not want to change. Poor Edward and I spent thousands upon it, and
+we really flattered ourselves that we had some taste; but it is not good
+enough for Daphne!"
+
+The speaker settled herself in her chair with a slight but emphatic
+clatter of bangles and rustle of skirts.
+
+"It's the ceilings, isn't it?" murmured Elsie French, glancing at the
+heavy decoration, the stucco bosses and pendants above her head which
+had replaced, some twenty years before, a piece of Adam design, sparing
+and felicitous.
+
+"It's everything!" Lady Barnes's tone was now more angry than fretful.
+"I don't, of course, like to say it--but really Daphne's self-confidence
+is too amazing!"
+
+"She does know so much," said Elsie French reflectively. "Doesn't she?"
+
+"Well, if you call it knowing. She can always get some tiresome person,
+whom she calls an 'expert,' to back her up. But I believe in liking what
+you _do_ like, and not being bullied into what you don't like."
+
+"I suppose if one studies these things----" Elsie French began timidly.
+
+"What's the good of studying!" cried Lady Barnes; "one has one's own
+taste, or one hasn't."
+
+Confronted with this form of the Absolute, Elsie French looked
+perplexed; especially as her own artistic sympathies were mainly with
+Daphne. The situation was certainly awkward. At the time of the Barnes's
+financial crash, and Sir Edward Barnes's death, Heston Park, which
+belonged to Lady Barnes, was all that remained to her and her son. A
+park of a hundred acres and a few cottages went with the house; but
+there was no estate to support it, and it had to be let, to provide an
+income for the widow and the boy. Much of the expensive furniture had
+been sold before letting, but enough remained to satisfy the wants of a
+not very exacting tenant.
+
+Lady Barnes had then departed to weep in exile on a pittance of about
+seven hundred a year. But with the marriage of her son to Miss Floyd and
+her millions, the mother's thoughts had turned fondly back to Heston
+Park. It was too big for her, of course; but the young people clearly
+must redeem it, and settle there. And Daphne had been quite amenable.
+The photographs charmed her. The house, she said, was evidently in a
+pure style, and it would be a delight to make it habitable again. The
+tenant, however, had a lease, and refused to turn out until at last
+Daphne had frankly bribed him to go. And now, after three years of
+married life, during which the young couple had rented various "places,"
+besides their house in London and a villa at Tunis, Heston Park had been
+vacated, Daphne and Roger had descended upon it as Lady Barnes's tenants
+at a high rent, intent upon its restoration; and Roger's mother had been
+invited to their councils.
+
+Hence, indeed, these tears. When Daphne first stepped inside the
+ancestral mansion of the Trescoes--such had been Lady Barnes's maiden
+name--she had received a severe shock. The outside, the shell of the
+house--delightful! But inside!--heavens! what taste, what
+decoration--what ruin of a beautiful thing! Half the old mantelpieces
+gone, the ceilings spoiled, the decorations "busy," pretentious,
+overdone, and nothing left to console her but an ugly row of bad Lelys
+and worse Highmores--the most despicable collection of family portraits
+she had ever set eyes upon!
+
+Roger had looked unhappy. "It was father and mother did it," he admitted
+penitently. "But after all, Daphne, you know they _are_ Trescoes!"--this
+with a defensive and protecting glance at the Lelys.
+
+Daphne was sorry for it. Her mouth tightened, and certain lines appeared
+about it which already prophesied what the years would make of the young
+face. Yet it was a pretty mouth--the mouth, above all, of one with no
+doubts at all as to her place and rights in the world. Lady Barnes had
+pronounced it "common" in her secret thoughts before she had known its
+owner six weeks. But the adjective had never yet escaped the "bulwark of
+the teeth." Outwardly the mother and daughter-in-law were still on good
+terms. It was indeed but a week since the son and his wife had
+arrived--with their baby girl--at Heston Park, after a summer of
+yachting and fishing in Norway; since Lady Barnes had journeyed thither
+from London to meet them; and Mr. and Mrs. French had accepted an urgent
+invitation from Roger, quite sufficiently backed by Daphne, to stay for
+a few days with Mr. French's old pupil, before the reopening of Eton.
+
+During that time there had been no open quarrels of any kind; but Elsie
+French was a sensitive creature, and she had been increasingly aware of
+friction and annoyance behind the scenes. And now here was Lady Barnes
+let loose! and Daphne might appear at any moment, before she could be
+re-caged.
+
+"She puts you down so!" cried that lady, making gestures with the
+paper-knife she had just been employing on the pages of a Mudie book.
+"If I tell her that something or other--it doesn't matter what--cost at
+least a great deal of money, she has a way of smiling at you that is
+positively insulting! She doesn't trouble to argue; she begins to laugh,
+and raises her eyebrows. I--I always feel as if she had struck me in the
+face! I know I oughtn't to speak like this; I hadn't meant to do it,
+especially to a country-woman of hers, as you are."
+
+"Am I?" said Elsie, in a puzzled voice.
+
+Lady Barnes opened her eyes in astonishment.
+
+"I meant"--the explanation was hurried--"I thought--Mrs. Barnes was a
+South American? Her mother was Spanish, of course; you see it in
+Daphne."
+
+"Yes; in her wonderful eyes," said Mrs. French warmly; "and her
+grace--isn't she graceful! My husband says she moves like a sea-wave.
+She has given her eyes to the child."
+
+"Ah! and other things too, I'm afraid!" cried Lady Barnes, carried away.
+"But here is the baby."
+
+For the sounds of a childish voice were heard echoing in the domed hall
+outside. Small feet came pattering, and the drawing-room door was burst
+open by Roger Barnes, holding a little girl of nearly two and a half by
+the hand.
+
+Lady Barnes composed herself. It is necessary to smile at children, and
+she endeavoured to satisfy her own sense of it.
+
+"Come in, Beatty; come and kiss granny!" And Lady Barnes held out her
+arms.
+
+But the child stood still, surveyed her grandmother with a pair of
+startling eyes, and then, turning, made a rush for the door. But her
+father was too quick for her. He closed it with a laugh, and stood with
+his back to it. The child did not cry, but, with flaming cheeks, she
+began to beat her father's knees with her small fists.
+
+"Go and kiss granny, darling," said Roger, stroking her dark head.
+
+Beatty turned again, put both her hands behind her, and stood immovable.
+
+"Not kiss granny," she said firmly. "Don't love granny."
+
+"Oh, Beatty"--Mrs. French knelt down beside her--"come and be a good
+little girl, and I'll show you picture-books."
+
+"I not Beatty--I Jemima Ann," said the small thin voice. "Not be a dood
+dirl--do upstairs."
+
+She looked at her father again, and then, evidently perceiving that he
+was not to be moved by force, she changed her tactics. Her delicate,
+elfish face melted into the sweetest smile; she stood on tiptoe, holding
+out to him her tiny arms. With a laugh of irrepressible pride and
+pleasure, Roger stooped to her and lifted her up. She nestled on his
+shoulder--a small Odalisque, dark, lithe, and tawny, beside her
+handsome, fair-skinned father. And Roger's manner of holding and
+caressing her showed the passionate affection with which he regarded
+her.
+
+He again urged her to kiss her grandmother; but the child again shook
+her head. "Then," said he craftily, "father must kiss granny." And he
+began to cross the room.
+
+But Lady Barnes stopped him, not without dignity. "Better not press it,
+Roger: another time."
+
+Barnes laughed, and yielded. He carried the child away, murmuring to
+her, "Naughty, naughty 'ittie girl!"--a remark which Beatty, tucked
+under his ear, and complacently sucking her thumb, received with
+complete indifference.
+
+"There, you see!" said the grandmother, with slightly flushed cheeks, as
+the door closed: "the child has been already taught to dislike me, and
+if Roger had attempted to kiss me, she would probably have struck me."
+
+"Oh, no!" cried Mrs. French. "She is a loving little thing."
+
+"Except when she is jealous," said Lady Barnes, with significance. "I
+told you she has inherited more than her eyes."
+
+Mrs. French rose. She was determined not to discuss her hostess any
+more, and she walked over to the bow window as though to look at the
+prospects of the weather, which had threatened rain. But Roger's mother
+was not to be repressed. Resentment and antagonism, nurtured on a
+hundred small incidents and trifling jars, and, to begin with, a matter
+of temperament, had come at last to speech. And in this charming New
+Englander, the wife of Roger's best friend, sympathetic, tender, with a
+touch in her of the nun and the saint, Lady Barnes could not help trying
+to find a supporter. She was a much weaker person than her square build
+and her double chin would have led the bystander to suppose; and her
+feelings had been hurt.
+
+So that when Mrs. French returned to say that the sun seemed to be
+coming out, her companion, without heeding, went on, with emotion: "It's
+my son I am thinking of, Mrs. French. I know you're safe, and that Roger
+depends upon Mr. French more than upon anyone else in the world, so I
+can't help just saying a word to you about my anxiety. You know, when
+Roger married, I don't think he was much in love--in fact, I'm sure he
+wasn't. But now--it's quite different. Roger has a very soft heart, and
+he's very domestic. He was always the best of sons to me, and as soon as
+he was married he became the best of husbands. He's devoted to Daphne
+now, and you see how he adores the child. But the fact is, there's a
+person in this neighbourhood" (Lady Barnes lowered her voice and looked
+round her)--"I only knew it for certain this morning--who ... well, who
+might make trouble. And Daphne's temper is so passionate and
+uncontrolled that----"
+
+"Dear Lady Barnes, please don't tell me any secrets!" Elsie French
+implored, and laid a restraining hand on the mother's arm, ready,
+indeed, to take up her work and fly. But Lady Barnes's chair stood
+between her and the door, and the occupant of it was substantial.
+
+Laura Barnes hesitated, and in the pause two persons appeared upon the
+garden path outside, coming towards the open windows of the
+drawing-room. One was Mrs. Roger Barnes; the other was a man, remarkably
+tall and slender, with a stoop like that of an overgrown schoolboy,
+silky dark hair and moustache, and pale gray eyes.
+
+"Dr. Lelius!" said Elsie, in astonishment. "Was Daphne expecting him?"
+
+"Who is Dr. Lelius?" asked Lady Barnes, putting up her eyeglass.
+
+Mrs. French explained that he was a South German art-critic, from
+Wuerzburg, with a great reputation. She had already met him at Eton and
+at Oxford.
+
+"Another expert!" said Lady Barnes with a shrug.
+
+The pair passed the window, absorbed apparently in conversation. Mrs.
+French escaped. Lady Barnes was left to discontent and solitude.
+
+But the solitude was not for long.
+
+When Elsie French descended for tea, an hour later, she was aware, from
+a considerable distance, of people and tumult in the drawing-room.
+Daphne's soprano voice--agreeable, but making its mark always, like its
+owner--could be heard running on. The young mistress of the house seemed
+to be admonishing, instructing, someone. Could it be her mother-in-law?
+
+When Elsie entered, Daphne was walking up and down in excitement.
+
+"One cannot really live with bad pictures because they happen to be
+one's ancestors! We won't do them any harm, mamma! of course not. There
+is a room upstairs where they can be stored--most carefully--and anybody
+who is interested in them can go and look at them. If they had only been
+left as they were painted!--not by Lely, of course, but by some drapery
+man in his studio--_passe encore_! they might have been just bearable.
+But you see some wretched restorer went and daubed them all over a few
+years ago."
+
+"We went to the best man we could find! We took the best advice!" cried
+Lady Barnes, sitting stiff and crimson in a deep arm-chair, opposite the
+luckless row of portraits that Daphne was denouncing.
+
+"I'm sure you did. But then, you see, nobody knew anything at all about
+it in those days. The restorers were all murderers. Ask Dr. Lelius."
+
+Daphne pointed to the stranger, who was leaning against an arm-chair
+beside her in an embarrassed attitude, as though he were endeavouring to
+make the chair a buffer between himself and Lady Barnes.
+
+Dr. Lelius bowed.
+
+"It is a modern art," he said with diffidence, and an accent creditably
+slight--"a quite modern art. We hafe a great man at Wuerzburg."
+
+"I don't suppose he professes to know anything about English pictures,
+does he?" asked Lady Barnes with scorn.
+
+"Ach!--I do not propose that Mrs. Barnes entrust him wid dese pictures,
+Madame. It is now too late."
+
+And the willowy German looked, with a half-repressed smile, at the row
+of pictures--all staring at the bystander with the same saucer eyes, the
+same wooden arms, and the same brilliance of modern paint and varnish,
+which not even the passage of four years since it was applied had been
+able greatly to subdue.
+
+Lady Barnes lifted shoulders and eyes--a woman's angry protest against
+the tyranny of knowledge.
+
+"All the same, they are my forbears, my kith and kin," she said, with
+emphasis. "But of course Mrs. Barnes is mistress here: I suppose she
+will do as she pleases."
+
+The German stared politely at the carpet. It was now Daphne's turn to
+shrug. She threw herself into a chair, with very red cheeks, one foot
+hanging over the other, and the fingers of her hands, which shone with
+diamonds, tapping the chair impatiently. Her dress of a delicate pink,
+touched here and there with black, her wide black hat, and the eyes
+which glowed from the small pointed face beneath it; the tumbling masses
+of her dark hair as contrasted with her general lightness and
+slenderness; the red of the lips, the whiteness of the hands and brow,
+the dainty irregularity of feature: these things made a Watteau sketch
+of her, all pure colour and lissomeness, with dots and scratches of
+intense black. Daphne was much handsomer than she had been as a girl,
+but also a trifle less refined. All her points were intensified--her
+eyes had more flame; the damask of her cheek was deeper; her grace was
+wilder, her voice a little shriller than of old.
+
+While the uncomfortable silence which the two women had made around them
+still lasted, Roger Barnes appeared on the garden steps.
+
+"Hullo! any tea going?" He came in, without waiting for an answer,
+looked from his mother to Daphne, from Daphne to his mother, and laughed
+uncomfortably.
+
+"Still bothering about those beastly pictures?" he said as he helped
+himself to a cup of tea.
+
+"_Thank_ you, Roger!" said Lady Barnes.
+
+"I didn't mean any harm, mother." He crossed over to her and sat down
+beside her. "I say, Daphne, I've got an idea. Why shouldn't mother have
+them? She's going to take a house, she says. Let's hand them all over to
+her!"
+
+Lady Barnes's lips trembled with indignation. "The Trescoes who were
+born and died in this house, belong here!" The tone of the words showed
+the stab to feeling and self-love. "It would be a sacrilege to move
+them."
+
+"Well then, let's move ourselves!" exclaimed Daphne, springing up. "We
+can let this house again, can't we, Roger?"
+
+"We can, I suppose," said Roger, munching his bread and butter; "but
+we're not going to."
+
+He raised his head and looked quietly at her.
+
+"I think we'd better!" The tone was imperious. Daphne, with her thin
+arms and hands locked behind her, paused beside her husband.
+
+Dr. Lelius, stealthily raising his eyes, observed the two. A strange
+little scene--not English at all. The English, he understood, were a
+phlegmatic people. What had this little Southerner to do among them? And
+what sort of fellow was the husband?
+
+It was evident that some mute coloquy passed between the husband and
+wife--disapproval on his part, attempt to assert authority, defiance, on
+hers. Then the fair-skinned English face, confronting Daphne, wavered
+and weakened, and Roger smiled into the eyes transfixing him.
+
+"Ah!" thought Lelius, "she has him, de poor fool!"
+
+Roger, coming over to his mother, began a murmured conversation. Daphne,
+still breathing quick, consented to talk to Dr. Lelius and Mrs. French.
+Lelius, who travelled widely, had brought her news of some pictures in a
+chateau of the Bourbonnais--pictures that her whole mind was set on
+acquiring. Elsie French noticed the _expertise_ of her talk; the
+intellectual development it implied; the passion of will which
+accompanied it. "To the dollar, all things are possible"--one might have
+phrased it so.
+
+The soft September air came in through the open windows, from a garden
+flooded with western sun. Suddenly through the subdued talk which filled
+the drawing-room--each group in it avoiding the other--the sound of a
+motor arriving made itself heard.
+
+"Heavens! who on earth knows we're here?" said Barnes, looking up.
+
+For they had only been camping a week in the house, far too busy to
+think of neighbours. They sat expectant and annoyed, reproaching each
+other with not having told the butler to say "Not at home." Lady
+Barnes's attitude had in it something else--a little anxiety; but it
+escaped notice. Steps came through the hall, and the butler, throwing
+open the door, announced--
+
+"Mrs. Fairmile."
+
+Roger Barnes sprang to his feet. His mother, with a little gasp, caught
+him by the arm instinctively. There was a general rise and a movement of
+confusion, till the new-comer, advancing, offered her hand to Daphne.
+
+"I am afraid, Mrs. Barnes, I am disturbing you all. The butler told me
+you had only been here a few days. But Lady Barnes and your husband are
+such old friends of mine that, as soon as I heard--through our old
+postmistress, I think--that you had arrived, I thought I might venture."
+
+The charming voice dropped, and the speaker waited, smiling, her eyes
+fixed on Daphne. Daphne had taken her hand in some bewilderment, and was
+now looking at her husband for assistance. It was clear to Elsie French,
+in the background, that Daphne neither knew the lady nor the lady's
+name, and that the visit had taken her entirely by surprise.
+
+Barnes recovered himself quickly. "I had no idea you were in these
+parts," he said, as he brought a chair forward for the visitor, and
+stood beside her a moment.
+
+Lady Barnes, observing him, as she stiffly greeted the new-comer--his
+cool manner, his deepened colour--felt the usual throb of maternal pride
+in him, intensified by alarm and excitement.
+
+"Oh, I am staying a day or two with Duchess Mary," said the new-comer.
+"She is a little older--and no less gouty, poor dear, than she used to
+be. Mrs. Barnes, I have heard a great deal of you--though you mayn't
+know anything about me. Ah! Dr. Lelius?"
+
+The German, bowing awkwardly, yet radiant, came forward to take the hand
+extended to him.
+
+"They did nothing but talk about you at the Louvre, when I was there
+last week," she said, with a little confidential nod. "You have made
+them horribly uncomfortable about some of their things. Isn't it a pity
+to know too much?"
+
+She turned toward Daphne. "I'm afraid that's your case too." She smiled,
+and the smile lit up a face full of delicate lines and wrinkles, which
+no effort had been made to disguise; a tired face, where the eyes spoke
+from caverns of shade, yet with the most appealing and persuasive
+beauty.
+
+"Do you mean about pictures?" said Daphne, a little coldly. "I don't
+know as much as Dr. Lelius."
+
+Humour leaped into the eyes fixed upon her; but Mrs. Fairmile only said:
+"That's not given to the rest of us mortals. But after all, _having's_
+better than knowing. Don't--_don't_ you possess the Vitali Signorelli?"
+
+Her voice was most musical and flattering. Daphne smiled in spite of
+herself. "Yes, we do. It's in London now--waiting till we can find a
+place for it."
+
+"You must let me make a pilgrimage--when it comes. But you know you'd
+find a number of things at Upcott--where I'm staying now--that would
+interest you. I forget whether you've met the Duchess?"
+
+"This is our first week here," said Roger, interposing. "The house has
+been let till now. We came down to see what could be made of it."
+
+His tone was only just civil. His mother, looking on, said to herself
+that he was angry--and with good reason.
+
+But Mrs. Fairmile still smiled.
+
+"Ah! the Lelys!" she cried, raising her hand slightly toward the row of
+portraits on the wall. "The dear impossible things! Are you still
+discussing them--as we used to do?"
+
+Daphne started. "You know this house, then?"
+
+The smile broadened into a laugh of amusement, as Mrs. Fairmile turned
+to Roger's mother.
+
+"Don't I, dear Lady Barnes--don't I know this house?"
+
+Lady Barnes seemed to straighten in her chair. "Well, you were here
+often enough to know it," she said abruptly. "Daphne, Mrs. Fairmile is a
+distant cousin of ours."
+
+"Distant, but quite enough to swear by!" said the visitor, gaily. "Yes,
+Mrs. Barnes, I knew this house very well in old days. It has many
+charming points." She looked round with a face that had suddenly become
+coolly critical, an embodied intelligence.
+
+Daphne, as though divining for the first time a listener worthy of her
+steel, began to talk with some rapidity of the changes she wished to
+make. She talked with an evident desire to show off, to make an
+impression. Mrs. Fairmile listened attentively, occasionally throwing in
+a word of criticism or comment, in the softest, gentlest voice. But
+somehow, whenever she spoke, Daphne felt vaguely irritated. She was
+generally put slightly in the wrong by her visitor, and Mrs. Fairmile's
+extraordinary knowledge of Heston Park, and of everything connected with
+it, was so odd and disconcerting. She had a laughing way, moreover, of
+appealing to Roger Barnes himself to support a recollection or an
+opinion, which presently produced a contraction of Daphne's brows. Who
+was this woman? A cousin--a cousin who knew every inch of the house, and
+seemed to be one of Roger's closest friends? It was really too strange
+that in all these years Roger should never have said a word about her!
+
+The red mounted in Daphne's cheek. She began, moreover, to feel herself
+at a disadvantage to which she was not accustomed. Dr. Lelius,
+meanwhile, turned to Mrs. Fairmile, whenever she was allowed to speak,
+with a joyous yet inarticulate deference he had never shown to his
+hostess. They understood each other at a word or a glance. Beside them
+Daphne, with all her cleverness, soon appeared as a child for whom one
+makes allowances.
+
+A vague anger swelled in her throat. She noticed, too, Roger's silence
+and Lady Barnes's discomfort. There was clearly something here that had
+been kept from her--something to be unravelled!
+
+Suddenly the new-comer rose. Mrs. Fairmile wore a dress of some pale
+gray stuff, cobweb-light and transparent, over a green satin. It had the
+effect of sea-water, and her gray hat, with its pale green wreath,
+framed the golden-gray of her hair. Every one of her few adornments was
+exquisite--so was her grace as she moved. Daphne's pink-and-black
+vivacity beside her seemed a pinchbeck thing.
+
+"Well, now, when will you all come to Upcott?" Mrs. Fairmile said
+graciously, as she shook hands. "The Duchess will be enchanted to see
+you any day, and----"
+
+"Thank you! but we really can't come so far," said a determined voice.
+"We have only a shaky old motor--our new one isn't ready yet--and
+besides, we want all our time for the house."
+
+"You make him work so hard?"
+
+Mrs. Fairmile, laughing, pointed to the speaker. Roger looked up
+involuntarily, and Daphne saw the look.
+
+"Roger has nothing to do," she said, quickly. "Thank you very much: we
+will certainly come. I'll write to you. How many miles did you say it
+was?"
+
+"Oh, nothing for a motor!--twenty-five. We used to think it nothing for
+a ride, didn't we?"
+
+The speaker, who was just passing through the door, turned towards
+Roger, who with Lelius, was escorting her, with a last gesture--gay,
+yet, like all her gestures, charged with a slight yet deliberate
+significance.
+
+They disappeared. Daphne walked to the window, biting her lip.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As she stood there Herbert French came into the room, looking a little
+shy and ill at ease, and behind him three persons, a clergyman in an
+Archdeacon's apron and gaiters, and two ladies. Daphne, perceiving them
+sideways in a mirror to her right, could not repress a gesture and
+muttered sound of annoyance.
+
+French introduced Archdeacon Mountford, his wife and sister. Roger, it
+seemed, had met them in the hall, and sent them in. He himself had been
+carried off on some business by the head keeper.
+
+Daphne turned ungraciously. Her colour was very bright, her eyes a
+little absent and wild. The two ladies, both clad in pale brown stuffs,
+large mushroom hats, and stout country boots, eyed her nervously, and as
+they sat down, at her bidding, they left the Archdeacon--who was the
+vicar of the neighbouring town--to explain, with much amiable
+stammering, that seeing the Duchess's carriage at the front door, as
+they were crossing the park, they presumed that visitors were admitted,
+and had ventured to call.
+
+Daphne received the explanation without any cordiality. She did indeed
+bid the callers sit down, and ordered some fresh tea. But she took no
+pains to entertain them, and if Lady Barnes and Herbert French had not
+come to the rescue, they would have fared but ill. The Archdeacon, in
+fact, did come to grief. For him Mrs. Barnes was just a "foreigner,"
+imported from some unknown and, of course, inferior _milieu_, one who
+had never been "a happy English child," and must therefore be treated
+with indulgence. He endeavoured to talk to her--kindly--about her
+country. A branch of his own family, he informed her, had settled about
+a hundred years before this date in the United States. He gave her, at
+some length, the genealogy of the branch, then of the main stock to
+which he himself belonged, presuming that she was, at any rate,
+acquainted with the name? It was, he said, his strong opinion that
+American women were very "bright." For himself he could not say that he
+even disliked the accent, it was so "quaint." Did Mrs. Barnes know many
+of the American bishops? He himself had met a large number of them at a
+reception at the Church House, but it had really made him quite
+uncomfortable! They wore no official dress, and there was he--a mere
+Archdeacon!--in gaiters. And, of course, no one thought of calling them
+"my lord." It certainly was very curious--to an Englishman. And
+Methodist bishops!--such as he was told America possessed in
+plenty--that was still more curious. One of the Episcopalian bishops,
+however, had preached--in Westminster Abbey--a remarkable sermon, on a
+very sad subject, not perhaps a subject to be discussed in a
+drawing-room--but still----
+
+Suddenly the group on the other side of the room became aware that the
+Archdeacon's amiable prosing had been sharply interrupted--that Daphne,
+not he, was holding the field. A gust of talk arose--Daphne declaiming,
+the Archdeacon, after a first pause of astonishment, changing aspect and
+tone. French, looking across the room, saw the mask of conventional
+amiability stripped from what was really a strong and rather tyrannical
+face. The man's prominent mouth and long upper lip emerged. He drew his
+chair back from Daphne's; he tried once or twice to stop or argue with
+her, and finally he rose abruptly.
+
+"My dear!"--his wife turned hastily--"We must not detain Mrs. Barnes
+longer!"
+
+The two ladies looked at the Archdeacon--the god of their idolatry; then
+at Daphne. Hurriedly, like birds frightened by a shot, they crossed the
+room and just touched their hostess's hand; the Archdeacon, making up
+for their precipitancy by a double dose of dignity, bowed himself out;
+the door closed behind them.
+
+"Daphne!--my dear! what is the matter?" cried Lady Barnes, in dismay.
+
+"He spoke to me impertinently about my country!" said Daphne, turning
+upon her, her black eyes blazing, her cheeks white with excitement.
+
+"The Archdeacon!--he is always so polite!"
+
+"He talked like a fool--about things he doesn't understand!" was
+Daphne's curt reply, as she gathered up her hat and some letters, and
+moved towards the door.
+
+"About what? My dear Daphne! He could not possibly have meant to offend
+you! Could he, Mr. French?" Lady Barnes turned plaintively towards her
+very uncomfortable companions.
+
+Daphne confronted her.
+
+"If he chooses to think America immoral and degraded because American
+divorce laws are different from the English laws, let him think it!--but
+he has no business to air his views to an American--at a first visit,
+too!" said Daphne passionately, and, drawing herself up, she swept out
+of the room, leaving the others dumfoundered.
+
+"Oh dear! oh dear!" wailed Lady Barnes. "And the Archdeacon is so
+important! Daphne might have been rude to anybody else--but not the
+Archdeacon!"
+
+"How did they manage to get into such a subject--so quickly?" asked
+Elsie in bewilderment.
+
+"I suppose he took it for granted that Daphne agreed with him! All
+decent people do."
+
+Lady Barnes's wrath was evident--so was her indiscretion. Elsie French
+applied herself to soothing her, while Herbert French disappeared into
+the garden with a book. His wife, however, presently observed from the
+drawing-room that he was not reading. He was pacing the lawn, with his
+hands behind him, and his eyes on the grass. The slight, slowly-moving
+figure stood for meditation, and Elsie French knew enough to understand
+that the incidents of the afternoon might well supply any friend of
+Roger Barnes's with food for meditation. Herbert had not been in the
+drawing-room when Mrs. Fairmile was calling, but no doubt he had met her
+in the hall when she was on her way to her carriage.
+
+Meanwhile Daphne, in her own room, was also employed in meditation. She
+had thrown herself, frowning, into a chair beside a window which
+overlooked the park. The landscape had a gentle charm--spreading grass,
+low hills, and scattered woods--under a warm September sun. But it had
+no particular accent, and Daphne thought it both tame and depressing;
+like an English society made up of Archdeacon Mountfords and their
+women-kind! What a futile, irritating man!--and what dull creatures were
+the wife and daughter!--mere echoes of their lord and master. She had
+behaved badly, of course; in a few days she supposed the report of her
+outburst would be all over the place. She did not care. Even for Roger's
+sake she was not going to cringe to these poor provincial standards.
+
+And all the time she knew very well that it was not the Archdeacon and
+his fatuities that were really at fault. The afternoon had been decided
+not by the Mountfords' call, but by that which had preceded it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Mrs. Barnes, however, made no immediate reference to the matter which
+was in truth filling her mind. She avoided her husband and
+mother-in-law, both of whom were clearly anxious to capture her
+attention; and, by way of protecting herself from them, she spent the
+late afternoon in looking through Italian photographs with Dr. Lelius.
+
+But about seven o'clock Roger found her lying on her sofa, her hands
+clasped behind her head--frowning--the lips working.
+
+He came in rather consciously, glancing at his wife in hesitation.
+
+"Are you tired, Daphne?"
+
+"No."
+
+"A penny for your thoughts, then!" He stooped over her and looked into
+her eyes.
+
+Daphne made no reply. She continued to look straight before her.
+
+"What's the matter with you?" he said, at last.
+
+"I'm wondering," said Daphne slowly, "how many more cousins and great
+friends you have, that I know nothing about. I think another time it
+would be civil--just that!--to give me a word of warning."
+
+Roger pulled at his moustache. "I hadn't an idea she was within a
+thousand miles of this place! But, if I had, I couldn't have imagined
+she would have the face to come here!"
+
+"Who is she?" With a sudden movement Daphne turned her eyes upon him.
+
+"Well, there's no good making any bones about it," said the man,
+flushing. "She's a girl I was once engaged to, for a very short time,"
+he added hastily. "It was the week before my father died, and our smash
+came. As soon as it came she threw me over."
+
+Daphne's intense gaze, under the slightly frowning brows, disquieted
+him.
+
+"How long were you engaged to her?"
+
+"Three weeks."
+
+"Had she been staying here before that?"
+
+"Yes--she often stayed here. Daphne! don't look like that! She treated
+me abominably; and before I married you I had come not to care twopence
+about her."
+
+"You did care about her when you proposed to me?"
+
+"No!--not at all! Of course, when I went out to New York I was sore,
+because she had thrown me over."
+
+"And I"--Daphne made a scornful lip--"was the feather-bed to catch you
+as you fell. It never occurred to you that it might have been honourable
+to tell me?"
+
+"Well, I don't know--I never asked you to tell me of your affairs!"
+
+Roger, his hands in his pockets, looked round at her with an awkward
+laugh.
+
+"I told you everything!" was the quick reply--"_everything_."
+
+Roger uncomfortably remembered that so indeed it had been; and moreover
+that he had been a good deal bored at the time by Daphne's confessions.
+
+He had not been enough in love with her--then--to find them of any great
+account. And certainly it had never occurred to him to pay them back in
+kind. What did it matter to her or to anyone that Chloe Morant had made
+a fool of him? His recollection of the fooling, at the time he proposed
+to Daphne, was still so poignant that it would have been impossible to
+speak of it. And within a few months afterwards he had practically
+forgotten it--and Chloe too. Of course he could not see her again, for
+the first time, without being "a bit upset"; mostly, indeed, by the
+boldness--the brazenness--of her behaviour. But his emotions were of no
+tragic strength, and, as Lady Barnes had complained to Mrs. French, he
+was now honestly in love with Daphne and his child.
+
+So that he had nothing but impatience and annoyance for the recollection
+of the visit of the afternoon; and Daphne's attitude distressed him.
+Why, she was as pale as a ghost! His thoughts sent Chloe Fairmile to the
+deuce.
+
+"Look here, dear!" he said, kneeling down suddenly beside his
+wife--"don't you get any nonsense into your head. I'm not the kind of
+fellow who goes philandering after a woman when she's jilted him. I took
+her measure, and after you accepted me I never gave her another thought.
+I forgot her, dear--bag and baggage! Kiss me, Daphne!"
+
+But Daphne still held him at bay.
+
+"How long were you engaged to her?" she repeated.
+
+"I've told you--three weeks!" said the man, reluctantly.
+
+"How long had you known her?"
+
+"A year or two. She was a distant cousin of father's. Her father was
+Governor of Madras, and her mother was dead. She couldn't stand India
+for long together, and she used to stay about with relations. Why she
+took a fancy to me I can't imagine. She's so booky and artistic, and
+that kind of thing, that I never understood half the time what she was
+talking about. Now you're just as clever, you know, darling, but I do
+understand you."
+
+Roger's conscience made a few dim remonstrances. It asked him whether in
+fact, standing on his own qualifications and advantages of quite a
+different kind, he had not always felt himself triumphantly more than a
+match for Chloe and her cleverness. But he paid no heed to them. He was
+engaged in stroking Daphne's fingers and studying the small set face.
+
+"Whom did she marry?" asked Daphne, putting an end to the stroking.
+
+"A fellow in the army--Major Fairmile--a smart, popular sort of chap. He
+was her father's aide-de-camp when they married--just after we did--and
+they've been in India, or Egypt, ever since. They don't get on, and I
+suppose she comes and quarters herself on the old Duchess--as she used
+to on us."
+
+"You seem to know all about her! Yes, I remember now, I've heard people
+speak of her to you. Mrs. Fairmile--Mrs. Fairmile--yes, I remember,"
+said Daphne, in a brooding voice, her cheeks becoming suddenly very red.
+"Your uncle--in town--mentioned her. I didn't take any notice."
+
+"Why should you? She doesn't matter a fig, either to you or to me!"
+
+"It matters to me very much that these people who spoke of her--your
+uncle and the others--knew what I didn't know!" cried Daphne,
+passionately. She stared at Roger, strangely conscious that something
+epoch-making and decisive had happened. Roger had had a secret from her
+all these years--that was what had happened; and now she had discovered
+it. That he _could_ have a secret from her, however, was the real
+discovery. She felt a fierce resentment, and yet a kind of added respect
+for him. All the time he had been the private owner of thoughts and
+recollections that she had no part in, and the fact roused in her tumult
+and bitterness. Nevertheless the disturbance which it produced in her
+sense of property, the shock and anguish of it, brought back something
+of the passion of love she had felt in the first year of their marriage.
+
+During these three years she had more than once shown herself insanely
+jealous for the merest trifles. But Roger had always laughed at her, and
+she had ended by laughing at herself.
+
+Yet all the time he had had this secret. She sat looking at him hard
+with her astonishing eyes; and he grew more and more uneasy.
+
+"Well, some of them knew," he said, answering her last reproach. "And
+they knew that I was jolly well quit of her! I suppose I ought to have
+told you, Daphne--of course I ought--I'm sorry. But the fact was I never
+wanted to think of her again. And I certainly never want to see her
+again! Why, in the name of goodness, did you accept that tea-fight?"
+
+"Because I mean to go."
+
+"Then you'll have to go without me," was the incautious reply.
+
+"Oh, so you're afraid of meeting her! I shall know what to think, if you
+_don't_ go." Daphne sat erect, her hands clasped round her knees.
+
+Roger made a sound of wrath, and threw his cigarette into the fire.
+Then, turning round again to face her, he tried to control himself.
+
+"Look here, Daphne, don't let us quarrel about this. I'll tell you
+everything you want to know--the whole beastly story. But it can't be
+pleasant to me to meet a woman who treated me as she did--and it
+oughtn't to be pleasant to you either. It was like her audacity to come
+this afternoon."
+
+"She simply wants to get hold of you again!" Daphne sprang up as she
+spoke with a violent movement, her face blazing.
+
+"Nonsense! she came out of nothing in the world but curiosity, and
+because she likes making people uncomfortable. She knew very well mother
+and I didn't want her!"
+
+But the more he tried to persuade her the more determined was Daphne to
+pay the promised visit, and that he should pay it with her. He gave way
+at last, and she allowed herself to be soothed and caressed. Then, when
+she seemed to have recovered herself, he gave her a tragic-comic account
+of the three weeks' engagement, and the manner in which it had been
+broken off: caustic enough, one might have thought, to satisfy the most
+unfriendly listener. Daphne heard it all quietly.
+
+Then her maid came, and she donned a tea-gown.
+
+When Roger returned, after dressing, he found her still abstracted.
+
+"I suppose you kissed her?" she said abruptly, as they stood by the fire
+together.
+
+He broke out in laughter and annoyance, and called her a little goose,
+with his arm round her.
+
+But she persisted. "You did kiss her?"
+
+"Well, of course I did! What else is one engaged for?"
+
+"I'm certain she wished for a great deal of kissing!" said Daphne,
+quickly.
+
+Roger was silent. Suddenly there swept through him the memory of the
+scene in the orchard, and with it an admission--wrung, as it were, from
+a wholly unwilling self--that it had remained for him a scene unique and
+unapproached. In that one hour the "muddy vesture" of common feeling and
+desire that closed in his manhood had taken fire and burnt to a pure
+flame, fusing, so it seemed, body and soul. He had not thought of it for
+years, but now that he was made to think of it, the old thrill
+returned--a memory of something heavenly, ecstatic, far transcending the
+common hours and the common earth.
+
+The next moment he had thrown the recollection angrily from him.
+Stooping to his wife, he kissed her warmly. "Look here, Daphne! I wish
+you'd let that woman alone! Have I ever looked at anyone but you, old
+girl, since that day at Mount Vernon?"
+
+Daphne let him hold her close: but all the time, thoughts--ugly
+thoughts--like "little mice stole in and out." The notion of Roger and
+that woman, in the past, engaged--always together, in each other's arms,
+tormented her unendurably.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She did not, however, say a word to Lady Barnes on the subject. The
+morning following Mrs. Fairmile's visit that lady began a rather awkward
+explanation of Chloe Fairmile's place in the family history, and of the
+reasons for Roger's silence and her own. Daphne took it apparently with
+complete indifference, and managed to cut it short in the middle.
+
+Nevertheless she brooded over the whole business; and her resentment
+showed itself, first of all, in a more and more drastic treatment of
+Heston, its pictures, decorations and appointments. Lady Barnes dared
+not oppose her any more. She understood that if she were thwarted, or
+even criticized, Daphne would simply decline to live there, and her own
+link with the place would be once more broken. So she withdrew angrily
+from the scene, and tried not to know what was going on. Meanwhile a
+note of invitation had been addressed to Daphne by the Duchess, and had
+been accepted; Roger had been reminded, at the point of the bayonet,
+that go he must; and Dr. Lelius had transferred himself from Heston to
+Upcott, and the companionship of Mrs. Fairmile.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was the last day of the Frenches' visit. Roger and Herbert French had
+been trying to get a brace or two of partridges on the long-neglected
+and much-poached estate; and on the way home French expressed a hope
+that, now they were to settle at Heston, Roger would take up some of the
+usual duties of the country gentleman. He spoke in the half-jesting way
+characteristic of the modern Mentor. The old didactics have long gone
+out of fashion, and the moralist of to-day, instead of preaching, _ore
+retundo_, must only "hint a fault and hesitate dislike." But, hide it as
+he might, there was an ethical and religious passion in French that
+would out, and was soon indeed to drive him from Eton to a town parish.
+He had been ordained some two years before this date.
+
+It was this inborn pastoral gift, just as real as the literary or
+artistic gifts, and containing the same potentialities of genius as they
+which was leading him to feel a deep anxiety about the Barnes's
+_menage_. It seemed to him necessary that Daphne should respect her
+husband; and Roger, in a state of complete idleness, was not altogether
+respectable.
+
+So, with much quizzing of him as "the Squire," French tried to goad his
+companion into some of a Squire's duties. "Stand for the County Council,
+old fellow," he said. "Your father was on it, and it'll give you
+something to do."
+
+To his surprise Roger at once acquiesced. He was striding along in cap
+and knickerbockers, his curly hair still thick and golden on his
+temples, his clear skin flushed with exercise, his general physical
+aspect even more splendid than it had been in his first youth. Beside
+him, the slender figure and pleasant irregular face of Herbert French
+would have been altogether effaced and eclipsed but for the Eton
+master's two striking points: prematurely white hair, remarkably thick
+and abundant; and very blue eyes, shy, spiritual and charming.
+
+"I don't mind," Roger was saying, "if you think they'd have me. Beastly
+bore, of course! But one's got to do something for one's keep."
+
+He looked round with a smile, slightly conscious. The position he had
+occupied for some three years, of the idle and penniless husband
+dependent on his wife's dollars, was not, he knew, an exalted one in
+French's eyes.
+
+"Oh! you'll find it quite tolerable," said French. "Roads and schools do
+as well as anything else to break one's teeth on. We shall see you a
+magistrate directly."
+
+Roger laughed. "That would be a good one!--I say, you know, I hope
+Daphne's going to like Heston."
+
+French hoped so too, guardedly.
+
+"I hear the Archdeacon got on her nerves yesterday?"
+
+He looked at his companion with a slight laugh and a shrug.
+
+"That doesn't matter."
+
+"I don't know. He's rather a spiteful old party. And Daphne's accustomed
+to be made a lot of, you know. In London there's always a heap of people
+making up to her--and in Paris, too. She talks uncommon good
+French--learnt it in the convent. I don't understand a word of what they
+talk about--but she's a queen--I can tell you! She doesn't want
+Archdeacons prating at her."
+
+"It'll be all right when she knows the people."
+
+"Of course, mother and I get along here all right. We've got to pick up
+the threads again; but we do know all the people, and we like the old
+place for grandfather's sake, and all the rest of it. But there isn't
+much to amuse Daphne here."
+
+"She'll be doing up the house."
+
+"And offending mother all the time. I say, French, don't you think art's
+an awful nuisance! When I hear Lelius yarning on about _quattro-cento_
+and _cinque-cento_, I could drown myself. No! I suppose you're tarred
+with the same brush." Roger shrugged his shoulders. "Well, I don't care,
+so long as Daphne gets what she wants, and the place suits the child."
+His ruddy countenance took a shade of anxiety.
+
+French inquired what reason there was to suppose that Beatty would not
+thrive perfectly at Heston. Roger could only say that the child had
+seemed to flag a little since their arrival. Appetite not quite so good,
+temper difficult, and so on. Their smart lady-nurse was not quite
+satisfied. "And I've been finding out about doctors here," the young
+father went on, knitting his brows: "blokes, most of them, and such old
+blokes! I wouldn't trust Beatty to one of them. But I've heard of a new
+man at Hereford--awfully good, they say--a wunner! And after all a motor
+would soon run him out!"
+
+He went on talking eagerly about the child, her beauty, her cleverness,
+the plans Daphne had for her bringing up, and so on. No other child ever
+had been, ever could be, so fetching, so "cunning," so lovely, such a
+duck! The Frenches, indeed, possessed a boy of two, reputed handsome.
+Roger wished to show himself indulgent to anything that might be pleaded
+for him. "Dear little fellow!"--of course. But Beatty! Well! it was
+surprising, indeed, that he should find himself the father of such a
+little miracle; he didn't know what he'd done to deserve it. Herbert
+French smiled as he walked.
+
+"Of course, I hope there'll be a boy," said Roger, stopping suddenly to
+look at Heston Park, half a mile off, emerging from the trees. "Daphne
+would like a boy--so should I, and particularly now that we've got the
+old house back again."
+
+He stood and surveyed it. French noticed in the growing manliness of his
+face and bearing the signs of things and forces ancestral, of those
+ghostly hands stretching from the past that in a long settled society
+tend to push a man into his right place and keep him there. The Barnes
+family was tolerable, though not distinguished. Roger's father's great
+temporary success in politics and business had given it a passing
+splendour, now quenched in the tides of failure and disaster which had
+finally overwhelmed his career. Roger evidently did not want to think
+much about his Barnes heritage. But it was clear also that he was proud
+of the Trescoes; that he had fallen back upon them, so to speak. Since
+the fifteenth century there had always been a Trescoe at Heston; and
+Roger had already taken to browsing in county histories and sorting
+family letters. French foresaw a double-barrelled surname before
+long--perhaps, just in time for the advent of the future son and heir
+who was already a personage in the mind, if not yet positively expected.
+
+"My dear fellow, I hope Mrs. Barnes will give you not one son, but
+many!" he said, in answer to his companion's outburst. "They're wanted
+nowadays."
+
+Roger nodded and smiled, and then passed on to discussion of county
+business and county people. He had already, it seemed, informed himself
+to a rather surprising degree. The shrewd, upright county gentleman was
+beginning to emerge, oddly, from the Apollo. The merits and absurdities
+of the type were already there, indeed, _in posse_. How persistent was
+the type, and the instinct! A man of Roger's antecedents might seem to
+swerve from the course; but the smallest favourable variation of
+circumstances, and there he was again on the track, trotting happily
+between the shafts.
+
+"If only the wife plays up!" thought French.
+
+The recollection of Daphne, indeed, emerged simultaneously in both
+minds.
+
+"Daphne, you know, won't be able to stand this all the year round," said
+Roger. "By George, no! not with a wagon-load of Leliuses!" Then, with a
+sudden veer and a flush: "I say, French, do you know what sort of state
+the Fairmile marriage is in by now? I think that lady might have spared
+her call--don't you?"
+
+French kept his eyes on the path. It was the first time, as far as he
+was concerned, that Roger had referred to the incident. Yet the tone of
+the questioner implied a past history. It was to him, indeed, that Roger
+had come, in the first bitterness of his young grief and anger, after
+the "jilting." French had tried to help him, only to find that he was no
+more a match for the lady than the rest of the world.
+
+As to the call and the invitation, he agreed heartily that a person of
+delicacy would have omitted them. The Fairmile marriage, it was
+generally rumoured, had broken down hopelessly.
+
+"Faults on both sides, of course. Fairmile is and always was an
+unscrupulous beggar! He left Eton just as you came, but I remember him
+well."
+
+Roger began a sentence to the effect that if Fairmile had no scruples of
+his own, Chloe would scarcely have taught him any; but he checked
+himself abruptly in the middle, and the two men passed to other topics.
+French began to talk of East London, and the parish he was to have
+there. Roger, indifferent at first, did not remain so. He did not
+profess, indeed, any enthusiasm of humanity; but French found in him new
+curiosities. That children should starve, and slave, and suffer--_that_
+moved him. He was, at any rate, for hanging the parents.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The day of the Upcott visit came, and, in spite of all recalcitrance,
+Roger was made to mount the motor beside his wife. Lady Barnes had
+entirely refused to go, and Mr. and Mrs. French had departed that
+morning for Eton.
+
+As the thing was inevitable, Roger's male philosophy came to his aid.
+Better laugh and have done with it. So that, as he and Daphne sped along
+the autumn lanes, he talked about anything and everything. He expressed,
+for instance, his friendly admiration for Elsie French.
+
+"She's just the wife for old Herbert--and, by George, she's in love with
+him!"
+
+"A great deal too much in love with him!" said Daphne, sharply. The day
+was chilly, with a strong east wind blowing, and Daphne's small figure
+and face were enveloped in a marvellous wrap, compounded in equal
+proportions of Russian sables and white cloth. It had not long arrived
+from Woerth, and Roger had allowed himself some jibes as to its probable
+cost. Daphne's "simplicity," the pose of her girlhood, was in fact
+breaking down in all directions. The arrogant spending instinct had
+gained upon the moderating and self-restraining instinct. The results
+often made Barnes uncomfortable. But he was inarticulate, and easily
+intimidated--by Daphne. With regard to Mrs. French, however, he took up
+the cudgels at once. Why shouldn't Elsie adore her man, if it pleased
+her? Old Herbert was worth it.
+
+Women, said Daphne, should never put themselves wholly in a man's power.
+Moreover, wifely adoration was particularly bad for clergymen, who were
+far too much inclined already to give themselves airs.
+
+"I say! Herbert never gives himself airs!"
+
+"They both did--to me. They have quite different ways from us, and they
+make one feel it. They have family prayers--we don't. They have ascetic
+ideas about bringing up children--I haven't. Elsie would think it
+self-indulgent and abominable to stay in bed to breakfast--I don't. The
+fact is, all her interests and ideals are quite different from mine, and
+I am rather tired of being made to feel inferior."
+
+"Daphne! what rubbish! I'm certain Elsie French never had such an idea
+in her head. She's awfully soft and nice; I never saw a bit of conceit
+in her."
+
+"She's soft outside and steel inside. Well, never mind! we don't get on.
+She's the old America, I'm the new," said Daphne, half frowning, half
+laughing; "and I'm as good as she."
+
+"You're a very good-looking woman, anyway," said Roger, admiring the
+vision of her among the warm browns and shining whites of her wrap.
+"Much better-looking than when I married you." He slipped an arm under
+the cloak and gave her small waist a squeeze.
+
+Daphne turned her eyes upon him. In their black depths his touch had
+roused a passion which was by no means all tenderness. There was in it
+something threatening, something intensely and inordinately possessive.
+"That means that you didn't think me good-looking at all, as compared
+with--Chloe?" she said insistently.
+
+"Really, Daphne!"--Roger withdrew his arm with a rather angry
+laugh--"the way you twist what one says! I declare I won't make you any
+more pretty speeches for an age."
+
+Daphne scarcely replied; but there dawned on her face the
+smile--melting, provocative, intent--which is the natural weapon of such
+a temperament. With a quick movement she nestled to her husband's side,
+and Roger was soon appeased.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The visit which followed always counted in Roger Barnes's memory as the
+first act of the tragedy, the first onset of the evil that engulfed him.
+
+They found the old Duchess, Mrs. Fairmile, and Dr. Lelius, alone. The
+Duchess had been the penniless daughter of an Irish clergyman, married
+_en secondes noces_ for her somewhat queer and stimulating personality,
+by an epicurean duke, who, after having provided the family with a
+sufficient store of dull children by an aristocratic mother, thought
+himself at liberty, in his declining years, to please himself. He had
+left her the dower-house--small but delicately Jacobean--and she was now
+nearly as old as the Duke had been when he married her. She was largely
+made, shapeless, and untidy. Her mannish face and head were tied up in a
+kind of lace coif; she had long since abandoned all thought of a waist;
+and her strong chin rested on an ample bosom.
+
+As soon as Mrs. Barnes was seated near her hostess, Lelius--who had an
+intimate acquaintance, through their pictures, with half the great
+people of Europe--began to observe the Duchess's impressions. Amused
+curiosity, first. Evidently Daphne represented to her one of the queer,
+crude types that modern society is always throwing up on the shores of
+life--like strange beasts from deep-sea soundings.
+
+An American heiress, half Spanish--South-American Spanish--with no doubt
+a dash of Indian; no manners, as Europe understands them; unlimited
+money, and absurd pretensions--so Chloe said--in the matter of art; a
+mixture of the pedant and the _parvenue_; where on earth had young
+Barnes picked her up! It was in some such way, no doubt--so Lelius
+guessed--that the Duchess's thoughts were running.
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Barnes was treated with all possible civility. The
+Duchess inquired into the plans for rebuilding Heston; talked of her own
+recollections of the place, and its owners; hoped that Mrs. Barnes was
+pleased with the neighbourhood; and finally asked the stock question,
+"And how do you like England?"
+
+Daphne looked at her coolly. "Moderately!" she said, with a smile, the
+colour rising in her cheek as she became aware, without looking at them,
+that Roger and Mrs. Fairmile had adjourned to the farther end of the
+large room, leaving her to the Duchess and Lelius.
+
+The small eyes above the Duchess's prominent nose sparkled. "Only
+moderately?" The speaker's tone expressed that she had been for once
+taken by surprise. "I'm extremely sorry we don't please you, Mrs.
+Barnes."
+
+"You see, my expectations were so high."
+
+"Is it the country, or the climate, or the people, that won't do?"
+inquired the Duchess, amused.
+
+"I suppose it would be civil to say the climate," replied Daphne,
+laughing.
+
+Whereupon the Duchess saw that her visitor had made up her mind not to
+be overawed. The great lady summoned Dr. Lelius to her aid, and she, the
+German, and Daphne, kept up a sparring conversation, in which Mrs.
+Barnes, driven on by a secret wrath, showed herself rather noisier than
+Englishwomen generally are. She was a little impertinent, the Duchess
+thought, decidedly aggressive, and not witty enough to carry it off.
+
+Meanwhile, Daphne had instantly perceived that Mrs. Fairmile and Roger
+had disappeared into the conservatory; and though she talked incessantly
+through their absence, she felt each minute of it. When they came back
+for tea, she imagined that Roger looked embarrassed, while Mrs. Fairmile
+was all gaiety, chatting to her companion, her face raised to his, in
+the manner of one joyously renewing an old intimacy. As they slowly
+advanced up the long room, Daphne felt it almost intolerable to watch
+them, and her pulses began to race. _Why_ had she never been told of
+this thing? That was what rankled; and the Southern wildness in her
+blood sent visions of the past and terrors of the future hurrying
+through her brain, even while she went on talking fast and recklessly to
+the Duchess.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At tea-time conversation turned on the various beautiful things which
+the room contained--its Nattiers, its Gobelins, its two _dessus de
+portes_ by Boucher, and its two cabinets, of which one had belonged to
+Beaumarchais and the other to the _Appartement du Dauphin_ at
+Versailles.
+
+Daphne restrained herself for a time, asked questions, and affected no
+special knowledge. Then, at a pause, she lifted a careless hand,
+inquiring whether "the Fragonard sketch" opposite were not the pendant
+of one--she named it--at Berlin.
+
+"Ah-h-h!" said Mrs. Fairmile, with a smiling shake of the head, "how
+clever of you! But that's not a Fragonard. I wish it were. It's an
+unknown. Dr. Lelius has given him a name."
+
+And she and Lelius fell into a discussion of the drawing, that soon left
+Daphne behind. Native taste of the finest, mingled with the training of
+a lifetime, the intimate knowledge of collections of one who had lived
+among them from her childhood--these things had long since given Chloe
+Fairmile a kind of European reputation. Daphne stumbled after her,
+consumed with angry envy, the _precieuse_ in her resenting the easy
+mastery of Mrs. Fairmile, and the wife in her offended by the strange
+beauty, the soft audacities of a woman who had once, it seemed, held
+Roger captive, and would, of course, like to hold him captive again.
+
+She burned in some way to assert herself, the imperious will chafing at
+the slender barrier of self-control. And some malicious god did, in
+fact, send an opportunity.
+
+After tea, when Roger, in spite of efforts to confine himself to the
+Duchess, had been once more drawn into the orbit of Mrs. Fairmile, as
+she sat fingering a cigarette between the two men, and gossiping of
+people and politics, the butler entered, and whispered a message to the
+Duchess.
+
+The mistress of the house laughed. "Chloe! who do you think has called?
+Old Marcus, of South Audley Street. He's been at Brendon House--buying
+up their Romneys, I should think. And as he was passing here, he wished
+to show me something. Shall we have him in?"
+
+"By all means! The last time he was here he offered you four thousand
+pounds for the blue Nattier," said Chloe, with a smile, pointing to the
+picture.
+
+The Duchess gave orders; and an elderly man, with long black hair,
+swarthy complexion, fine eyes, and a peaked forehead, was admitted, and
+greeted by her, Mrs. Fairmile, and Dr. Lelius as an old acquaintance. He
+sat down beside them, was given tea, and presented to Mr. and Mrs.
+Barnes. Daphne, who knew the famous dealer by sight and reputation
+perfectly well, was piqued that he did not recognize her. Yet she well
+remembered having given him an important commission not more than a year
+before her marriage.
+
+As soon as a cup of tea had been dispatched, Marcus came to the
+business. He drew a small leather case out of the bag he had brought
+into the room with him; and the case, being opened, disclosed a small
+but marvellous piece of Sevres.
+
+"There!" he said, pointing triumphantly to a piece on the Duchess's
+chimney-piece. "Your Grace asked me--oh! ten years ago--and again last
+year--to find you the pair of that. Now--you have it!"
+
+He put the two together, and the effect was great. The Duchess looked at
+it with greed--the greed of the connoisseur. But she shook her head.
+
+"Marcus, I have no money."
+
+"Oh!" He protested, smiling and shrugging his shoulders.
+
+"And I know you want a brigand's price for it."
+
+"Oh, nothing--nothing at all."
+
+The Duchess took it up, and regretfully turned it round and round.
+
+"A thousand, Marcus?" she said, looking up.
+
+He laughed, and would not reply.
+
+"That means more, Marcus: how do you imagine that an old woman like me,
+with only just enough for bread and butter, can waste her money on
+Sevres?" He grinned. She put it down resolutely. "No! I've got a
+consumptive nephew with a consumptive family. He ought to have been hung
+for marrying, but I've got to send them all to Davos this winter. No, I
+can't, Marcus; I can't--I'm too poor." But her eyes caressed the shining
+thing.
+
+Daphne bent forward. "If the Duchess has _really_ made up her mind, Mr.
+Marcus, I will take it. It would just suit me!"
+
+Marcus started on his chair. "_Pardon, Madame!_" he said, turning
+hastily to look at the slender lady in white, of whom he had as yet
+taken no notice.
+
+"We have the motor. We can take it with us," said Daphne, stretching out
+her hand for it triumphantly.
+
+"Madame," said Marcus, in some agitation, "I have not the honour. The
+price----"
+
+"The price doesn't matter," said Daphne, smiling. "You know me quite
+well, Mr. Marcus. Do you remember selling a Louis Seize cabinet to Miss
+Floyd?"
+
+"Ah!" The dealer was on his feet in a moment, saluting, excusing
+himself. Daphne heard him with graciousness. She was now the centre of
+the situation: she had asserted herself, and her money. Marcus outdid
+himself in homage. Lelius in the background looked on, a sarcastic smile
+hidden by his fair moustache. Mrs. Fairmile, too, smiled; Roger had
+grown rather hot; and the Duchess was frankly annoyed.
+
+"I surrender it to _force majeure_," she said, as Daphne took it from
+her. "Why are we not all Americans?"
+
+And then, leaning back in her chair, she would talk no more. The
+pleasure of the visit, so far as it had ever existed, was at an end.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But before the Barnes motor departed homewards, Mrs. Fairmile had again
+found means to carry Roger Barnes out of sight and hearing into the
+garden. Roger had not been able to avoid it; and Daphne, hugging the
+leather case, had, all the same, to look on.
+
+When they were once more alone together, speeding through the bright
+sunset air, each found the other on edge.
+
+"You were rather rough on the Duchess, Daphne!" Roger protested. "It
+wasn't quite nice, was it, outbidding her like that in her own house?"
+
+Daphne flared up at once, declaring that she wanted no lessons in
+deportment from him or anyone else, and then demanding fiercely what was
+the meaning of his two disappearances with Mrs. Fairmile. Whereupon
+Roger lost his temper still more decidedly, refusing to give any account
+of himself, and the drive passed in a continuous quarrel, which only
+just stopped short, on Daphne's side, of those outrageous and insulting
+things which were burning at the back of her tongue, while she could not
+as yet bring herself to say them.
+
+An unsatisfactory peace was patched up during the evening. But in the
+dead of night Daphne sat up in bed, looking at the face and head of her
+husband beside her on the pillow. He lay peacefully sleeping, the noble
+outline of brow and features still nobler in the dim light which effaced
+all the weaker, emptier touches. Daphne felt rising within her that
+mingled passion of the jealous woman, which is half love, half hate, of
+which she had felt the first stirrings in her early jealousy of Elsie
+Maddison. It was the clutch of something racial and inherited--a
+something which the Northerner hardly knows. She had felt it before on
+one or two occasions, but not with this intensity. The grace of Chloe
+Fairmile haunted her memory, and the perfection, the corrupt perfection
+of her appeal to men, men like Roger.
+
+[Illustration: "In the dead of night Daphne sat up in bed, looking at
+the face and head of her husband beside her on the pillow."]
+
+She must wring from him--she must and would--a much fuller history of
+his engagement. And of those conversations in the garden, too. It stung
+her to recollect that, after all, he had given her no account of them.
+She had been sure they had not been ordinary conversations!--Mrs.
+Fairmile was not the person to waste her time in chit-chat.
+
+A gust of violence swept through her. She had given Roger
+everything--money, ease, amusement. Where would he have been without
+her? And his mother, too?--tiresome, obstructive woman! For the first
+time that veil of the unspoken, that mist of loving illusion which
+preserves all human relations, broke down between Daphne and her
+marriage. Her thoughts dwelt, in a vulgar detail, on the money she had
+settled upon Roger--on his tendencies to extravagance--his
+happy-go-lucky self-confident ways. He would have been a pauper but for
+her; but now that he had her money safe, without a word to her of his
+previous engagement, he and Mrs. Fairmile might do as they pleased. The
+heat and corrosion of this idea spread through her being, and the will
+made no fight against it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+"You're off to the meet?"
+
+"I am. Look at the day!"
+
+Chloe Fairmile, who was standing in her riding-habit at the window of
+the Duchess's morning-room, turned to greet her hostess.
+
+A mild November sun shone on the garden and the woods, and Chloe's
+face--the more exquisite as a rule for its slight, strange
+withering--had caught a freshness from the morning.
+
+The Duchess was embraced, and bore it; she herself never kissed anybody.
+
+"You always look well, my dear, in a habit, and you know it. Tell me
+what I shall do with this invitation."
+
+"From Lady Warton? May I look?"
+
+Chloe took a much blotted and crossed letter from the Duchess's hand.
+
+"What were her governesses about?" said the Duchess, pointing to it.
+"_Really_--the education of our class! Read it!"
+
+     ... "Can I persuade you to come--and bring Mrs. Fairmile--next
+     Tuesday to dinner, to meet Roger Barnes and his wife? I groan at
+     the thought, for I think she is quite one of the most disagreeable
+     little creatures I ever saw. But Warton says I must--a
+     Lord-Lieutenant can't pick and choose!--and people as rich as they
+     are have to be considered. I can't imagine why it is she makes
+     herself so odious. All the Americans I ever knew I have liked
+     particularly. It is, of course, annoying that they have so much
+     money--but Warton says it isn't their fault--it's Protection, or
+     something of the kind. But Mrs. Barnes seems really to wish to
+     trample on us. She told Warton the other day that his
+     tapestries--you know, those we're so proud of--that they were bad
+     Flemish copies of something or other--a set belonging to a horrid
+     friend of hers, I think. Warton was furious. And she's made the
+     people at Brendon love her for ever by insisting that they have now
+     ruined all their pictures without exception, by the way they've had
+     them restored--et cetera, et cetera. She really makes us feel her
+     millions--and her brains--too much. We're paupers, but we're not
+     worms. Then there's the Archdeacon--why should she fall foul of
+     him? He tells Warton that her principles are really shocking. She
+     told him she saw no reason why people should stick to their
+     husbands or wives longer than it pleased them--and that in America
+     nobody did! He doesn't wish Mrs. Mountford to see much of
+     her;--though, really, my dear, I don't think Mrs. M. is likely to
+     give him trouble--do you? And I hear, of course, that she thinks us
+     all dull and stuck-up, and as ignorant as savages. It's so odd she
+     shouldn't even want to be liked!--a young woman in a strange
+     neighbourhood. But she evidently doesn't, a bit. Warton declares
+     she's already tired of Roger--and she's certainly not nice to him.
+     What can be the matter? Anyway, dear Duchess, _do_ come, and help
+     us through."
+
+"What, indeed, can be the matter?" repeated Chloe lightly, as she handed
+back the letter.
+
+"Angela Warton never knows anything. But there's not much need for _you_
+to ask, my dear," said the Duchess quietly.
+
+Mrs. Fairmile turned an astonished face.
+
+"Me?"
+
+The Duchess, more bulky, shapeless and swathed than usual, subsided on a
+chair, and just raised her small but sharp eyes on Mrs. Fairmile.
+
+"What can you mean?" said Chloe, after a moment, in her gayest voice. "I
+can't imagine. And I don't think I'll try."
+
+She stooped and kissed the untidy lady in the chair. The Duchess bore it
+again, but the lines of her mouth, with the strong droop at the corners,
+became a trifle grim. Chloe looked at her, smiled, shook her head. The
+Duchess shook hers, and then they both began to talk of an engagement
+announced that morning in the _Times_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Fairmile was soon riding alone, without a groom--she was an
+excellent horse-woman, and she never gave any unnecessary trouble to her
+friends' servants--through country lanes chequered with pale sun. As for
+the Duchess's attack upon her, Chloe smarted. The Duchess had clearly
+pulled her up, and Chloe was not a person who took it well.
+
+If Roger's American wife was by now wildly jealous of his old _fiancee_,
+whose fault was it? Had not Mrs. Barnes herself thrown them perpetually
+together? Dinners at Upcott!--invitations to Heston!--a resolute
+frequenting of the same festal gatherings with Mrs. Fairmile. None of it
+with Roger's goodwill, or his mother's,--Chloe admitted it. It had been
+the wife's doing--all of it. There had been even--rare occurrences--two
+or three balls in the neighbourhood. Roger hated dancing, but Daphne had
+made him go to them all. Merely that she might display her eyes, her
+diamonds, and her gowns? Not at all. The real psychology of it was
+plain. "She wishes to keep us under observation--to give us
+opportunities--and then torment her husband. Very well then!--_tu l'as
+voulu, Madame!_"
+
+As to the "opportunities," Chloe coolly confessed to herself that she
+had made rather a scandalous use of them. The gossip of the
+neighbourhood had been no doubt a good deal roused; and Daphne, it
+seemed, was discontented. But is it not good for such people to be
+discontented? The money and the arrogance of Roger's wife had provoked
+Roger's former _fiancee_ from the beginning; the money to envy, and the
+arrogance to chastisement. Why not? What is society but a discipline?
+
+As for Roger, who is it says there is a little polygamy in all men?
+Anyway, a man can always--nearly always--keep a corner for the old love,
+if the new love will let him. Roger could, at any rate; "though he is a
+model husband, far better than she deserves, and anybody not a fool
+could manage him."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a day of physical delight, especially for riders. After a warm
+October, the leaves were still thick on the trees; Nature had not yet
+resigned herself to death and sleep. Here and there an oak stood, fully
+green, among the tawny reds and golds of a flaming woodland. The gorse
+was yellow on the commons; and in the damp woody ways through which
+Chloe passed, a few primroses--frail, unseasonable blooms--pushed their
+pale heads through the moss. The scent of the beech-leaves under foot;
+the buffeting of a westerly wind; the pleasant yielding of her light
+frame to the movement of the horse; the glimpses of plain that every
+here and there showed themselves through the trees that girdled the high
+ground or edge along which she rode; the white steam-wreath of a train
+passing, far away, through strata of blue or pearly mist; an old
+windmill black in the middle distance; villages, sheltering among their
+hedges and uplands: a sky, of shadow below widely brooding over earth,
+and of a radiant blue flecked with white cloud above:--all the English
+familiar scene, awoke in Chloe Fairmile a familiar sensuous joy. Life
+was so good--every minute, every ounce of it!--from the Duchess's _chef_
+to these ethereal splendours of autumn--from the warm bath, the
+luxurious bed, and breakfast, she had but lately enjoyed, to these
+artistic memories that ran through her brain, as she glanced from side
+to side, reminded now of Turner, now of DeWint, revelling in the
+complexity of her own being. Her conscience gave her no trouble; it had
+never been more friendly. Her husband and she had come to an
+understanding; they were in truth more than quits. There was to be no
+divorce--and no scandal. She would be very prudent. A man's face rose
+before her that was not the face of her husband, and she
+smiled--indulgently. Yes, life would be interesting when she returned to
+town. She had taken a house in Chester Square from the New Year; and Tom
+was going to Teheran. Meanwhile, she was passing the time.
+
+A thought suddenly occurred to her. Yes, it was quite possible--probable
+even--that she might find Roger at the meet! The place appointed was a
+long way from Heston, but in the old days he had often sent on a fresh
+horse by train to a local station. They had had many a run together over
+the fields now coming into sight. Though certainly if he imagined there
+were the very smallest chance of finding her there, he would give this
+particular meet a wide berth.
+
+Chloe laughed aloud. His resistance--and his weakness--were both so
+amusing. She thought of the skill--the peremptory smiling skill--with
+which she had beguiled him into the garden, on the day when the young
+couple paid their first call at Upcott. First, the low-spoken words at
+the back of the drawing-room, while Mrs. Barnes and the Duchess were
+skirmishing--
+
+"I _must_ speak to you. Something that concerns another
+person--something urgent."
+
+Whereupon, unwilling and rather stern compliance on the man's part--the
+handsome face darkened with most unnecessary frowns. And in the garden,
+the short colloquy between them--"Of course, I see--you haven't forgiven
+me! Never mind! I am doing this for someone else--it's a duty." Then
+abruptly--"You still have three of my letters."
+
+Amusing again--his shock of surprise, his blundering denials! He always
+was the most unmethodical and unbusiness-like of mortals--poor Roger!
+She heard her own voice in reply. "Oh yes, you have. I don't make
+mistakes about such things. Do you remember the letter in which I told
+you about that affair of Theresa Weightman?"
+
+A stare--an astonished admission. Precisely!
+
+"Well, she's in great trouble. Her husband threatens absurdities. She
+has always confided in me--she trusts me, and I can't have that letter
+wandering about the world."
+
+"I certainly sent it back!"
+
+"No--you never sent it back. You have three of mine. And you know how
+careless you are--how you leave things about. I was always on
+tenterhooks. Look again, _please_! You must have some idea where they
+might be."
+
+Perplexity--annoyance!
+
+"When we sold the London house, all papers and documents were sent down
+here. We reserved a room--which was locked up."
+
+"_A la bonne heure!_ Of course--there they are."
+
+But all the same--great unwillingness to search. It was most unlikely he
+would be able to find anything--most unlikely there was anything to
+find. He was sure he had sent back everything. And then a look in the
+fine hazel eyes--like a horse putting back its ears.
+
+All of no avail--against the laughing persistence which insisted on the
+letters. "But I must have them--I really must! It is a horrid tragedy,
+and I told you everything--things I had no business to tell you at all."
+
+On which, at last, a grudging consent to look, followed by a marked
+determination to go back to the drawing-room....
+
+But it was the second _tete-a-tete_ that was really adroit! After
+tea--just a touch on the arm--while the Duchess was showing the Nattiers
+to Mrs. Barnes, and Lelius was holding the lamp. "One moment more!--in
+the conservatory. I have a few things to add." And in that second little
+interview--about nothing, in truth--a mere piece of audacity--the lion's
+claws had been a good deal pared. He had been made to look at her, first
+and foremost; to realize that she was not afraid of him--not one
+bit!--and that he would have to treat her decently. Poor Roger! In a few
+years the girl he had married would be a plain and prickly little
+pedant--ill-bred besides--and he knew it.
+
+As to more recent adventures. If people meet in society, they must be
+civil; and if old friends meet at a dance, there is an institution known
+as "sitting out"; and "sitting out" is nothing if not conversational;
+and conversation--between old friends and cousins--is beguiling, and may
+be lengthy.
+
+The ball at Brendon House--Chloe still felt the triumph of it in her
+veins--still saw the softening in Roger's handsome face, the look of
+lazy pleasure, and the disapproval--or was it the envy?--in the eyes of
+certain county magnates looking on. Since then, no communication between
+Heston and Upcott.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Fairmile was now a couple of miles from the meet. She had struck
+into a great belt of plantations bounding one side of the ducal estate.
+Through it ran a famous green ride, crossed near its beginning by a main
+road. On her right, beyond the thick screen of trees, was the railway,
+and she could hear the occasional rush of a train.
+
+When she reached the cross road, which led from a station, a labourer
+opened the plantation gates for her. As he unlatched the second, she
+perceived a man's figure in front of her.
+
+"Roger!"
+
+A touch of the whip--her horse sprang forward. The man in front looked
+back startled; but she was already beside him.
+
+"You keep up the old habit, like me? What a lovely day!"
+
+Roger Barnes, after a flush of amazement and surprise, greeted her
+coldly: "It is a long way for you to come," he said formally. "Twelve
+miles, isn't it? You're not going to hunt?"
+
+"Oh, no! I only came to look at the hounds and the horses--to remind
+myself of all the good old times. You don't want to remember them, I
+know. Life's gone on for you!"
+
+Roger bent forward to pat the neck of his horse. "It goes on for all of
+us," he said gruffly.
+
+"Ah, well!" She sighed. He looked up and their eyes met. The wind had
+slightly reddened her pale skin: her expression was one of great
+animation, yet of great softness. The grace of the long, slender body in
+the close-fitting habit; of the beautiful head and loosened hair under
+the small, low-crowned beaver hat; the slender hand upon the reins--all
+these various impressions rushed upon Barnes at once, bringing with them
+the fascination of a past happiness, provoking, by contrast, the memory
+of a harassing and irritating present.
+
+"Is Heston getting on?" asked Mrs. Fairmile, smiling.
+
+He frowned involuntarily.
+
+"Oh, I suppose we shall be straight some day;" the tone, however, belied
+the words. "When once the British workman gets in, it's the deuce to get
+him out."
+
+"The old house had such a charm!" said Chloe softly.
+
+Roger made no reply. He rode stiffly beside her, looking straight before
+him. Chloe, observing him without appearing to do anything of the kind,
+asked herself whether the Apollo radiance of him were not already
+somewhat quenched and shorn. A slight thickening of feature--a slight
+coarsening of form--she thought she perceived them. Poor Roger!--had he
+been living too well and idling too flagrantly on these American
+dollars?
+
+Suddenly she bent over and laid a gloved hand on his arm.
+
+"Hadn't it?" she said, in a low voice.
+
+He started. But he neither looked at her nor shook her off.
+
+"What--the house?" was the ungracious reply. "I'm sure I don't know; I
+never thought about it--whether it was pretty or ugly, I mean. It suited
+us, and it amused mother to fiddle about with it."
+
+Mrs. Fairmile withdrew her hand.
+
+"Of course a great deal of it was ugly," she said composedly. "Dear Lady
+Barnes really didn't know. But then we led such a jolly life in it--_we_
+made it!"
+
+She looked at him brightly, only to see in him an angry flash of
+expression. He turned and faced her.
+
+"I'm glad you think it was jolly. My remembrances are not quite so
+pleasant."
+
+She laughed a little--not flinching at all--her face rosy to his
+challenge.
+
+"Oh, yes, they are--or should be. What's the use of blackening the past
+because it couldn't be the present. My dear Roger, if I hadn't--well,
+let's talk plainly!--if I hadn't thrown you over, where would you be
+now? We should be living in West Kensington, and I should be taking
+boarders--or--no!--a country-house, perhaps, with paying guests. You
+would be teaching the cockney idea how to shoot, at half a guinea a day,
+and I should be buying my clothes second-hand through the _Exchange and
+Mart_. Whereas--whereas----"
+
+She bent forward again.
+
+"You are a very rich man--you have a charming wife--a dear little
+girl--you can get into Parliament--travel, speculate, race, anything you
+please. And I did it all!"
+
+"I don't agree with you," he said drily. She laughed again.
+
+"Well, we can't argue it--can we? I only wanted to point out to you the
+plain, bare truth, that there is nothing in the world to prevent our
+being excellent friends again--_now_. But first--and once more--_my
+letters!_"
+
+Her tone was a little peremptory, and Roger's face clouded.
+
+"I found two of them last night, by the merest chance--in an old
+dispatch-box I took to America. They were posted to you on the way
+here."
+
+"Good! But there were three."
+
+"I know--so you said. I could only find two."
+
+"Was the particular letter I mentioned one of them?"
+
+He answered unwillingly.
+
+"No. I searched everywhere. I don't believe I have it."
+
+She shook her head with decision.
+
+"You certainly have it. Please look again."
+
+He broke out with some irritation, insisting that if it had not been
+returned it had been either lost or destroyed. It could matter to no
+one.
+
+Some snaring, entangling instinct--an instinct of the hunter--made her
+persist. She must have it. It was a point of honour. "Poor Theresa is so
+unhappy, so pursued! You saw that odious paragraph last week? I can't
+run the risk!"
+
+With a groan of annoyance, he promised at last that he would look again.
+Then the sparkling eyes changed, the voice softened.
+
+She praised--she rewarded him. By smooth transitions she slipped into
+ordinary talk; of his candidature for the County Council--the points of
+the great horse he rode--the gossip of the neighbourhood--the charms of
+Beatty.
+
+And on this last topic he, too, suddenly found his tongue. The cloud--of
+awkwardness, or of something else not to be analyzed--broke away, and he
+began to talk, and presently to ask questions, with readiness, even with
+eagerness.
+
+Was it right to be so very strict with children?--babies under three?
+Wasn't it ridiculous to expect them not to be naughty or greedy? Why,
+every child wanted as much sweetstuff as it could tuck in! Quite right
+too--doctors said it was good for them. But Miss Farmer----
+
+"Who is Miss Farmer?" inquired Mrs. Fairmile. She was riding close
+beside him--an embodied friendliness--a soft and womanly Chloe, very
+different from the old.
+
+"She's the nurse; my mother found her. She's a lady--by way of--she
+doesn't do any rough work--and I dare say she's the newest thing out.
+But she's too tight a hand for my taste. I say!--what do you think of
+this! She wouldn't let Beattie come down to the drawing-room yesterday,
+because she cried for a sweet! Wasn't that _devilish_!" He brought his
+hand down fiercely on his thigh.
+
+"A Gorgon!" said Mrs. Fairmile, raising her eyebrows. "Any other
+qualifications? French? German?"
+
+"Not a word. Not she! Her people live somewhere near here, I believe."
+Roger looked vaguely round him. "Her father managed a brick-field on
+this estate--some parson or other recommended her to mother."
+
+"And you don't like her?"
+
+"Well, no--I don't! She's not the kind of woman _I_ want." He blurted it
+out, adding hurriedly, "But my wife thinks a lot of her."
+
+Chloe dismissed the topic of the nurse, but still let him run on about
+the child. Amazing!--this development of paternity in the careless,
+handsome youth of three years before. She was amused and bored by it.
+But her permission of it had thawed him--that she saw.
+
+Presently, from the child she led him on to common acquaintance--old
+friends--and talk flowed fast. She made him laugh; and the furrows in
+the young brow disappeared. Now as always they understood each other at
+a word; there was between them the freemasonry of persons sprung from
+the same world and the same tradition; his daily talk with Daphne had
+never this easy, slipping pleasure. Meanwhile the horses sauntered on,
+unconsciously held back; and the magical autumn wood, its lights and
+lines and odours, played upon their senses.
+
+At last Roger with a start perceived a gate in front. He looked at his
+watch, and she saw him redden.
+
+"We shall be late for the meet."
+
+His eyes avoided hers. He gathered up the reins, evidently conscious.
+
+Smiling, she let him open the gate for her, and then as they passed into
+the road, shadowed with over-arching trees, she reined in Whitefoot, and
+bending forward, held out her hand. "Good-bye!"
+
+"You're not coming?"
+
+"I think I've had enough. I'll go home. Good-bye."
+
+It was a relief. In both minds had risen the image of their
+arrival together--amid the crowd of the meet. As he looked at
+her--gratefully--the grace of her movement, the temptation of her eyes,
+the rush of old memories suddenly turned his head. He gripped her hand
+hard for a minute, staring at her.
+
+The road in front of them was quite empty. But fifty yards behind them
+was a small red-brick house buried in trees. As they still paused, hand
+in hand, in front of the gate into the wood, which had failed to swing
+back and remained half open, the garden door of this house unclosed and
+a young woman in a kind of uniform stepped into the road. She perceived
+the two riders--stopped in astonishment--observed them unseen, and
+walked quickly away in the direction of the station.
+
+Roger reached Heston that night only just in time to dress for dinner.
+
+By this time he was in a wholly different mood; angry with himself, and
+full of rueful thought about his wife. Daphne and he had been getting on
+anything but well for some time past. He knew that he had several times
+behaved badly; why, indeed, that very afternoon, had he held Chloe
+Fairmile's hand in the public road, like an idiot? Suppose anyone had
+passed? It was only Daphne's tempers and the discomfort at home that
+made an hour with Chloe so pleasant--and brought the old recollections
+back. He vowed he never thought of her, except when she was there to
+make a fool of him--or plague him about those beastly letters. Whereas
+Daphne--Daphne was always in his mind, and this eclipse into which their
+daily life had passed. He seemed to be always tripping and stumbling,
+like a lame man among loose stones; doing or saying what he did not mean
+to do or say, and tongue-tied when he should have spoken. Daphne's
+jealousy made him ridiculous; he resented it hotly; yet he knew he was
+not altogether blameless.
+
+If only something could be done to make Daphne like Heston and the
+neighbours! But he saw plainly enough that in spite of all the effort
+and money she was pouring out upon the house, it gave her very little
+pleasure in return. Her heart was not in it. And as for the neighbours,
+she had scarcely a good word now for any of them. Jolly!--just as he was
+going to stand for the County Council, with an idea of Parliament later
+on! And as for what _he_ wished--what would be good for _him_--that she
+never seemed to think of. And, really, some of the things she said now
+and then about money--nobody with the spirit of a mouse could stand
+them.
+
+To comfort his worries he went first of all to the nursery, where he
+found the nursery-maid in charge, and the child already asleep. Miss
+Farmer, it appeared, had been enjoying a "day off," and was not expected
+back till late. He knelt down beside the little girl, feeding his eyes
+upon her. She lay with her delicate face pressed into the pillow, the
+small neck visible under the cloud of hair, one hand, the soft palm
+uppermost, on the sheet. He bent down and kissed the hand, glad that the
+sharp-faced nurse was not there to see. The touch of the fragrant skin
+thrilled him with pride and joy; so did the lovely defencelessness of
+the child's sleep. That such a possession should have been given to him,
+to guard and cherish! There was in his mind a passionate vow to guard
+the little thing--aye, with his life-blood; and then a movement of
+laughter at his own heroics. Well!--Daphne might give him sons--but he
+did not suppose any other child could ever be quite the same to him as
+Beatty. He sat in a contented silence, feeding his eyes upon her, as the
+soft breath rose and fell. And as he did so, his temper softened and
+warmed toward Beatty's mother.
+
+A little later he found Daphne in her room, already dressed for dinner.
+He approached her uneasily.
+
+"How tired you look, Daphne! What have you been doing to yourself?"
+
+Daphne stiffly pointed out that she had been standing over the workmen
+all day, there being no one else to stand over them, and of course she
+was tired. Her manner would have provoked him but for the visiting of an
+inward compunction. Instead of showing annoyance he bent down and kissed
+her.
+
+"I'll stay and help to-morrow, if you want me, though you know I'm no
+good. I say, how much more are you going to do to the house?"
+
+Daphne looked at him coldly. She had not returned the kiss. "Of course,
+I know that you don't appreciate in the least what I am doing!"
+
+Roger thrust his hands into his pockets, and walked up and down
+uncomfortably. He thought, in fact, that Daphne was spoiling the dear
+nondescript old place, and he knew that the neighbourhood thought so
+too. Also he particularly disliked the young architect who was
+superintending the works ("a priggish ass," who gave himself abominable
+airs--except to Daphne, whom he slavishly obeyed, and to Miss Farmer,
+with whom Roger had twice caught him gossipping). But he was determined
+not to anger his wife, and he held his tongue.
+
+"I wish, anyway, you wouldn't stick at it so closely," he said
+discontentedly. "Let's go abroad somewhere for Christmas--Nice, or Monte
+Carlo. I am sure you want a change."
+
+"Well, it isn't exactly an enchanting neighbourhood," said Daphne, with
+pinched lips.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry you don't like the people here," said Roger,
+perplexed. "I dare say they're all stupids."
+
+"That wouldn't matter--if they behaved decently," said Daphne, flushing.
+
+"I suppose that means--if I behaved decently!" cried Roger, turning upon
+her.
+
+Daphne faced him, her head in air, her small foot beating the ground, in
+a trick it had.
+
+"Well, I'm not likely to forget the Brendon ball, am I?"
+
+Roger's look changed.
+
+"I meant no harm, and you know I didn't," he said sulkily.
+
+"Oh, no, you only made a laughing-stock of _me_!" Daphne turned on her
+heel. Suddenly she felt herself roughly caught in Roger's arms.
+
+"Daphne, what _is_ the matter? Why can't we be happy together?"
+
+"Ask yourself," she said, trying to extricate herself, and not
+succeeding. "I don't like the people here, and they don't like me. But
+as you seem to enjoy flirting with Mrs. Fairmile, there's one person
+satisfied."
+
+Roger laughed--not agreeably. "I shall soon think, Daphne, that
+somebody's 'put a spell on you,' as my old nurse used to say. I wish I
+knew what I could do to break it."
+
+She lay passive in his arms a moment, and then he felt a shiver run
+through her, and saw that she was crying. He held her close to him,
+kissing and comforting her, while his own eyes were wet. What her
+emotion meant, or his own, he could not have told clearly; but it was a
+moment for both of healing, of impulsive return, the one to the other,
+unspoken penitence on her side, a hidden self-blame on his. She clung to
+him fiercely, courting the pressure of his arms, the warm contact of his
+youth; while, in his inner mind, he renounced with energy the temptress
+Chloe and all her works, vowing to himself that he would give Daphne no
+cause, no pretext even, for jealousy, and would bear it patiently if she
+were still unjust and tormenting.
+
+"Where have you been all day?" said Daphne at last, disengaging herself,
+and brushing the tears away from her eyes--a little angrily, as though
+she were ashamed of them.
+
+"I told you this morning. I had a run with the Stoneshire hounds."
+
+"Whom did you meet there?"
+
+"Oh, various old acquaintances. Nobody amusing." He gave two or three
+names, his conscience pricking him. Somehow, at that moment, it seemed
+impossible to mention Chloe Fairmile.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+About eleven o'clock that night, Daphne and Lady Barnes having just gone
+upstairs, Roger and a local Colonel of Volunteers who was dining and
+spending the night at Heston, were in the smoking-room. Colonel Williams
+had come over to discuss Volunteer prospects in the neighbourhood, and
+had been delighted to find in the grandson of his old friend, Oliver
+Trescoe,--a young fellow whom he and others had too readily regarded as
+given over to luxury and soft living--signs of the old public spirit,
+the traditional manliness of the family. The two men were talking with
+great cordiality, when the sound of a dogcart driving up to the front
+door disturbed them.
+
+"Who on earth?--at this time of night?" said Roger.
+
+The butler, entering with fresh cigarettes, explained that Miss Farmer
+had only just returned, having missed an earlier train.
+
+"Well, I hope to goodness she won't go and disturb Miss Beatty,"
+grumbled Roger; and and then, half to himself, half to his companion, as
+the butler departed--"I don't believe she missed her train; she's one of
+the cool sort--does jolly well what she likes! I say, Colonel, do you
+like 'lady helps'? I don't!"
+
+Half an hour later, Roger, having said good-night to his guest ten
+minutes before, was mounting the stairs on his own way to bed, when he
+heard in the distance the sound of a closing door and the rustle of a
+woman's dress.
+
+Nurse Farmer, he supposed, who had been gossiping with Daphne. His face,
+as the candle shone upon it, expressed annoyance. Vaguely, he resented
+the kind of intimacy which had grown up lately between Daphne and her
+child's nurse. She was not the kind of person to make a friend of; she
+bullied Beatty; and she must be got rid of.
+
+Yet when he entered his wife's room, everything was dark, and Daphne was
+apparently sound asleep. Her face was hidden from him; and he moved on
+tiptoe so as not to disturb her. Evidently it was not she who had been
+gossiping late. His mother, perhaps, with her maid.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+In the course of that night Roger Barnes's fate was decided, while he
+lay, happily sleeping, beside his wife. Daphne, as soon as she heard his
+regular breathing, opened the eyes she had only pretended to close, and
+lay staring into the shadows of the room, in which a nightlight was
+burning. Presently she got up softly, put on a dressing-gown, and went
+to the fire, which she noiselessly replenished; drawing up a chair, she
+sank back into it, her arms folded. The strengthening firelight showed
+her small white face, amid the masses of her dark hair.
+
+Her whole being was seething with passionate and revengeful thought. It
+was as though with violent straining and wrenching the familiar links
+and bulwarks of life were breaking down, and as if amid the wreck of
+them she found herself looking at goblin faces beyond, growing gradually
+used to them, ceasing to be startled by them, finding in them even a
+wild attraction and invitation.
+
+[Illustration: "Her whole being was seething with passionate and
+revengeful thought."]
+
+So Roger had lied to her. Instead of a casual ride, involving a meeting
+with a few old acquaintances, as he had represented to her, he had been
+engaged that day in an assignation with Mrs. Fairmile, arranged
+beforehand, and carefully concealed from his wife. Miss Farmer had seen
+them coming out of a wood together hand in hand! In the public road,
+this!--not even so much respect for appearances as might have dictated
+the most elementary reticence and decency. The case was so clear that it
+sickened her; she shivered with cold and nausea as she lay there by the
+now glowing fire which yet gave her no physical comfort. Probably in the
+past their relation had gone much farther than Roger had ever confessed
+to his wife. Mrs. Fairmile was a woman who would stick at nothing. And
+if Daphne were not already betrayed, she could no longer protect
+herself. The issue was certain. Such women as Chloe Fairmile are not to
+be baulked of what they desire. Good women cannot fight them on equal
+terms. And as to any attempt to keep the affections of a husband who
+could behave in such a way to the wife who had given him her youth,
+herself, and all the resources and facilities of life, Daphne's whole
+being stiffened into mingled anguish and scorn as she renounced the
+contest. Knowing himself the traitor that he was, he could yet hold her,
+kiss her, murmur tender things to her, allow her to cry upon his breast,
+to stammer repentance and humbleness. Cowardly! False! Treacherous! She
+flung out her hands, rigid, before her in the darkness, as though for
+ever putting him away.
+
+Anguish? Yes!--but not of such torturing quality as she could have felt
+a year, six months even, before this date. She was astonished that she
+could bear her life, that he could sit there in the night stillness,
+motionless, holding her breath even, while Roger slept there in the
+shadowed bed. Had this thing happened to her before their arrival at
+Heston, she must have fallen upon Roger in mad grief and passion, ready
+to kill him or herself; must at least have poured out torrents of
+useless words and tears. She could not have sat dumb like this; in
+misery, but quite able to think things out, to envisage all the dark
+possibilities of the future. And not only the future. By a perfectly
+logical diversion her thoughts presently went racing to the past. There
+was, so to speak, a suspension of the immediate crisis, while she
+listened to her own mind--while she watched her own years go by.
+
+It was but rarely that Daphne let her mind run on her own origins. But
+on this winter night, as she sat motionless by the fire, she became
+conscious of a sudden detachment from her most recent self and life--a
+sudden violent turning against both--which naturally threw her back on
+the past, on some reflection upon what she had made of herself, by way
+of guide to what she might still make of herself, if she struck boldly,
+now, while there was yet time, for her own freedom and development.
+
+As to her parents, she never confessed, even to herself, that she owed
+them anything, except, of course, the mere crude wealth that her father
+had left her. Otherwise she was vaguely ashamed of them both. And
+yet!--in her most vital qualities, her love of sensational effect, her
+scorn of half-measures, her quick, relentless imagination, her
+increasing ostentation and extravagance, she was the true child of the
+boastful mercurial Irishman who had married her Spanish mother as part
+of a trade bargain, on a chance visit to Buenos Ayres. For twenty years
+Daniel Floyd had leased and exploited, had ravaged and destroyed, great
+tracts of primaeval forest in the northern regions of his adopted state,
+leaving behind him a ruined earth and an impoverished community, but
+building up the while a colossal fortune. He had learnt the arts of
+municipal "bossing" in one of the minor towns of Illinois, and had then
+migrated to Chicago, where for years he was the life and soul of all the
+bolder and more adventurous corruption of the city. A jovial, handsome
+fellow!--with an actor's face, a bright eye, and a slippery hand. Daphne
+had a vivid, and, on the whole, affectionate, remembrance of her father,
+of whom, however, she seldom spoke. The thought of her mother, on the
+other hand, was always unwelcome. It brought back recollections of storm
+and tempest; of wild laughter, and still wilder tears; of gorgeous
+dresses, small feet, and jewelled fingers.
+
+No; her parents had but small place in that dramatic autobiography that
+Daphne was now constructing for herself. She was not their daughter in
+any but the physical sense; she was the daughter of her own works and
+efforts.
+
+She leant forward to the fire, her face propped in her hands, going back
+in thought to her father's death, when she was fifteen; to her three
+years of cloying convent life, and her escape from it, as well as from
+the intriguing relations who would have kept her there; to the clever
+lawyer who had helped to put her in possession of her fortune, and the
+huge sums she had paid him for his services; to her search for
+education, her hungry determination to rise in the world, the friends
+she had made at college, in New York, Philadelphia, Washington. She had
+been influenced by one _milieu_ after another; she had worked hard, now
+at music, now at philosophy; had dabbled in girls' clubs, and gone to
+Socialist meetings, and had been all through driven on by the gadfly of
+an ever-increasing ambition.
+
+Ambition for what! She looked back on this early life with a bitter
+contempt. What had it all come to? Marriage with Roger Barnes!--a hasty
+passion of which she was already ashamed, for a man who was already
+false to her.
+
+What had made her marry him? She did not mince matters with herself in
+her reply. She had married him, influenced by a sudden, gust of physical
+inclination--by that glamour, too, under which she had seen him in
+Washington, a glamour of youth and novelty. If she had seen him first in
+his natural environment she would have been on her guard; she would have
+realized what it meant to marry a man who could help her own ideals and
+ambitions so little. And what, really, had their married life brought
+her? Had she ever been _sure_ of Roger?--had she ever been able to feel
+proud of him, in the company of really distinguished men?--had she not
+been conscious, again and again, when in London, or Paris, or Berlin,
+that he was her inferior, that he spoiled her social and intellectual
+chances? And his tone toward women had always been a low one; no great
+harm in it, perhaps; but it had often wounded and disgusted her.
+
+And then--for climax!--his concealment of the early love affair with
+Chloe Fairmile; his weakness and folly in letting her regain her hold
+upon him; his behaviour at the Brendon ball, the gossip which, as Agnes
+Farmer declared, was all over the neighbourhood, ending in the last
+baseness--the assignation, the lies, the hypocrisy of the afternoon!
+
+Enough!--more than enough! What did she care what the English world
+thought of her? She would free and right herself in her own way, and
+they might hold up what hands they pleased. A passion of wounded vanity,
+of disappointed self-love swept through her. She had looked forward to
+the English country life; she had meant to play a great part in it. But
+three months had been enough to show her the kind of thing--the hopeless
+narrowness and Philistinism of these English back-waters. What did these
+small squires and country clergy know of the real world, the world that
+mattered to _her_, where people had free minds and progressive ideas?
+Her resentment of the _milieu_ in which Roger expected her to live
+subtly swelled and strengthened her wrath against himself; it made the
+soil from which sprang a sudden growth of angry will--violent and
+destructive. There was in her little or none of that affinity with a
+traditional, a parent England, which is present in so many Americans,
+which emerges in them like buried land from the waters. On the contrary,
+the pressure of race and blood in her was not towards, but against; not
+friendly, but hostile. The nearer she came to the English life, the more
+certain forces in her, deeply infused, rose up and made their protest.
+The Celtic and Latin strains that were mingled in her, their natural
+sympathies and repulsions, which had been indistinct in the girl,
+overlaid by the deposits of the current American world, were becoming
+dominant in the woman.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Well, thank goodness, modern life is not as the old! There are ways out.
+
+Midnight had just struck. The night was gusty, the north-west wind made
+fierce attacks on the square, comfortable house. Daphne rose slowly; she
+moved noiselessly across the floor; she stood with her arms behind her
+looking down at the sleeping Roger. Then a thought struck her; she
+reached out a hand to the new number of an American Quarterly which lay,
+with the paper knife in it, on a table beside the bed. She had ordered
+it in a mood of jealous annoyance because of a few pages of art
+criticism in it by Mrs. Fairmile, which impertinently professed to know
+more about the Vitali Signorelli than its present owner did; but she
+remembered also an article on "The Future for Women," which had seemed
+to her a fine, progressive thing. She turned the pages noiselessly--her
+eyes now on the unconscious Roger--now on the book.
+
+     "All forms of contract--in business, education, religion, or
+     law--suffer from the weakness and blindness of the persons making
+     them--the marriage contract as much as any other. The dictates of
+     humanity and common-sense alike show that the latter and most
+     important contract should no more be perpetual than any of the
+     others."
+
+Again:--
+
+     "Any covenant between human beings that fails to produce or promote
+     human happiness, cannot in the nature of things be of any force or
+     authority; it is not only a right but a duty to abolish it."
+
+And a little further:--
+
+     "Womanhood is the great fact of woman's life. Wifehood and
+     motherhood are but incidental relations."
+
+Daphne put down the book. In the dim light, the tension of her slender
+figure, her frowning brow, her locked arms and hands, made of her a
+threatening Fate hovering darkly above the man in his deep, defenceless
+sleep.
+
+She was miserable, consumed with jealous anger. But the temptation of a
+new licence--a lawless law--was in her veins. Have women been trampled
+on, insulted, enslaved?--in America, at least, they may now stand on
+their feet. No need to cringe any more to the insolence and cruelty of
+men. A woman's life may be soiled and broken; but in the great human
+workshop of America it can be repaired. She remembered that in the
+majority of American divorces it is the woman who applies for relief.
+And why not? The average woman, when she marries, knows much less of
+life and the world than the average man. She is more likely--poor
+soul!--to make mistakes.
+
+She drew closer to the bed. All round her glimmered the furniture and
+appointments of a costly room--the silver and tortoise-shell on the
+dressing-table, the long mirrors lining the farther wall, the silk
+hangings of the bed. Luxury, as light and soft as skill and money could
+make it--the room breathed it; and in the midst stood the young creature
+who had designed it, the will within her hardening rapidly to an
+irrevocable purpose.
+
+Yes, she had made a mistake! But she would retrieve it. She would free
+herself. She would no longer put up with Roger, with his neglect and
+deceit--his disagreeable and ungrateful mother--his immoral friends--and
+this dull, soul-deadening English life.
+
+Roger moved and murmured. She retreated a little, still looking at him
+fixedly. Was it the child's name? Perhaps. He dreamed interminably, and
+very often of Beatty. But it did not move her. Beatty, of course, was
+_her_ child. Every child belongs to the mother in a far profounder sense
+than to the father. And he, too, would be free; he would naturally marry
+again.
+
+Case after case of divorce ran through her mind as she stood there; the
+persons and circumstances all well known to her. Other stories also, not
+personally within her ken; the famous scandals of the time, much
+discussed throughout American society. Her wits cleared and steeled. She
+began to see the course that she must follow.
+
+It would all depend upon the lawyers; and a good deal--she faced
+it--upon money. All sorts of technical phrases, vaguely remembered, ran
+through her mind. She would have to recover her American
+citizenship--she and the child. A domicile of six months in South
+Dakota, or in Wyoming--a year in Philadelphia--she began to recall
+information derived of old from Madeleine Verrier, who had, of course,
+been forced to consider all these things, and to weigh alternatives.
+Advice, of course, must be asked of her at once--and sympathy.
+
+Suddenly, on her brooding, there broke a wave of excitement. Life,
+instead of being closed, as in a sense it is, for every married woman,
+was in a moment open and vague again; the doors flung wide to flaming
+heavens. An intoxication of recovered youth and freedom possessed her.
+The sleeping Roger represented things intolerable and outworn. Why
+should a woman of her gifts, of her opportunities, be chained for life
+to this commonplace man, now that her passion was over?--now that she
+knew him for what he was, weak, feather-brained, and vicious? She looked
+at him with a kind of exaltation, spurning him from her path.
+
+But the immediate future!--the practical steps! What kind of evidence
+would she want?--what kind of witnesses? Something more, no doubt, of
+both than she had already. She must wait--temporize--do nothing rashly.
+If it was for Roger's good as well as her own that they should be free
+of each other--and she was fast persuading herself of this--she must,
+for both their sakes, manage the hateful operation without bungling.
+
+What was the alternative? She seemed to ask it of Roger, as she stood
+looking down upon him. Patience?--with a man who could never sympathize
+with her intellectually or artistically?--the relations of married life
+with a husband who made assignations with an old love, under the eyes of
+the whole neighbourhood?--the narrowing, cramping influences of English
+provincial society? No! she was born for other and greater things, and
+she would grasp them. "My first duty is to myself--to my own
+development. We have absolutely no _right_ to sacrifice ourselves--as
+women have been taught to do for thousands of years."
+
+Bewildered by the rhetoric of her own thoughts, Daphne returned to her
+seat by the fire, and sat there wildly dreaming, till once more recalled
+to practical possibilities by the passage of the hours on the clock
+above her.
+
+Miss Farmer? Everything, it seemed, depended on her. But Daphne had no
+doubts of her. Poor girl!--with her poverty-stricken home, her drunken
+father lately dismissed from his post, and her evident inclination
+towards this clever young fellow now employed in the house--Daphne
+rejoiced to think of what money could do, in this case at least; of the
+reward that should be waiting for the girl's devotion when the moment
+came; of the gifts already made, and the gratitude already evoked. No;
+she could be trusted; she had every reason to be true.
+
+Some fitful sleep came to her at last in the morning hours. But when
+Roger awoke, she was half-way through her dressing; and when he first
+saw her, he noticed nothing except that she was paler than usual, and
+confessed to a broken night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But as the day wore on it became plain to everybody at Heston--to Roger
+first and foremost--that something was much amiss. Daphne would not
+leave her sitting-room and her sofa; she complained of headache and
+over-fatigue; would have nothing to say to the men at work on the new
+decoration of the east wing of the house, who were clamouring for
+directions; and would admit nobody but Miss Farmer and her maid. Roger
+forced his way in once, only to be vanquished by the traditional weapons
+of weakness, pallor, and silence. Her face contracted and quivered as
+his step approached her; it was as though he trampled upon her; and he
+left her, awkwardly, on tiptoe, feeling himself as intrusively brutal as
+she clearly meant him to feel.
+
+What on earth was the matter? Some new grievance against him, he
+supposed. After the softening, the quasi-reconciliation of the day
+before, his chagrin and disappointment were great. Impossible she should
+know anything of his ride with Chloe! There was not a soul in that wood;
+and the place was twenty miles from Heston. Again he felt the impulse to
+blurt it all out to her; but was simply repelled and intimidated by this
+porcupine mood in which she had wrapped herself. Better wait at least
+till she was a little more normal again. He went off disconsolately to a
+day's shooting.
+
+Meanwhile, his own particular worry was sharp enough. Chloe had taken
+advantage of their casual _tete-a-tete_, as she had done before on
+several occasions, to claim something of the old relation, instead of
+accepting the new, like a decent woman; and in the face of the
+temptation offered him he had shown a weakness of which not only his
+conscience but his pride was ashamed. He realized perfectly that she had
+been trying during the whole autumn to recover her former hold on him,
+and he also saw clearly and bitterly that he was not strong enough to
+resist her, should he continue to be thrown with her; and not clever
+enough to baffle her, if her will were really set on recapturing him. He
+was afraid of her, and afraid of himself.
+
+What, then, must he do? As he tramped about the wet fields and
+plantations with a keeper and a few beaters after some scattered
+pheasants, he was really, poor fellow! arguing out the riddle of his
+life. What would Herbert French advise him to do?--supposing he could
+put the question plainly to him, which of course was not possible. He
+meant honestly and sincerely to keep straight; to do his duty by Daphne
+and the child. But he was no plaster saint, and he could not afford to
+give Chloe Fairmile too many opportunities. To break at once, to carry
+off Daphne and leave Heston, at least for a time--that was the obviously
+prudent and reasonable course. But in her present mood it was of no use
+for him to propose it, tired as she seemed to be of Heston, and
+disappointed in the neighbours: any plan brought forward by him was
+doomed beforehand. Well then, let him go himself; he had been so unhappy
+during the preceding weeks it would be a jolly relief to turn his back
+on Heston for a time.
+
+But as soon as he had taken his departure, Chloe perhaps would take
+hers; and if so, Daphne's jealousy would be worse than ever. Whatever
+deserts he might place between himself and Mrs. Fairmile, Daphne would
+imagine them together.
+
+Meanwhile, there was that Lilliput bond, that small, chafing
+entanglement, which Chloe had flung round him in her persistence about
+the letters. There was, no doubt, a horrid scandal brewing about Mrs.
+Weightman, Chloe's old friend--a friend of his own, too, in former days.
+Through Chloe's unpardonable indiscretions he knew a great deal more
+about this lady's affairs than he had ever wished to know. And he well
+remembered the letter in question: a letter on which the political life
+or death of one of England's most famous men might easily turn,
+supposing it got out. But the letter was safe enough; not the least
+likely to come into dangerous hands, in spite of Chloe's absurd
+hypotheses. It was somewhere, no doubt, among the boxes in the locked
+room; and who could possibly get hold of it? At the same time he
+realized that as long as he had not found and returned it she would
+still have a certain claim upon him, a certain right to harass him with
+inquiries and confidential interviews, which, as a man of honour, he
+could not altogether deny.
+
+A pheasant got up across a ploughed field where in the mild season the
+young corn was already green. Roger shot, and missed; the bird floated
+gaily down the wind, and the head keeper, in disgust, muttered bad
+language to the underling beside him.
+
+But after that Barnes was twice as cheerful as before. He whistled as he
+walked; his shooting recovered; and by the time the dark fell, keepers
+and beaters were once more his friends.
+
+The fact was that just as he missed the pheasant he had taken his
+resolution, and seen his way. He would have another determined hunt for
+that letter; he would also find and destroy his own letters to
+Chloe--those she had returned to him--which must certainly never fall
+into Daphne's hands; and then he would go away to London or the North,
+to some place whence he could write both to Chloe Fairmile and to his
+wife. Women like Daphne were too quick; they could get out a dozen words
+to your one; but give a man time, and he could express himself. And,
+therewith, a great tenderness and compunction in this man's heart, and a
+steady determination to put things right. For was not Daphne Beatty's
+mother? and was he not in truth very fond of her, if only she would let
+him be?
+
+Now then for the hunt. As he had never destroyed the letters, they must
+exist; but, in the name of mischief, where? He seemed to remember
+thrusting his own letters to Chloe into a desk of his schoolboy days
+which used to stand in his London sitting-room. Very likely some of hers
+might be there too. But the thought of his own had by now become a much
+greater anxiety to him than the wish to placate Chloe. For he was most
+uncomfortably aware that his correspondence with Chloe during their
+short engagement had been of a very different degree of fervour from
+that shown in the letters to Daphne under similar circumstances. As for
+the indelicacy and folly of leaving such documents to chance, he cursed
+it sorely.
+
+How to look? He pondered it. He did not even know which attic it was
+that had been reserved at the time of the letting of Heston, and now
+held some of the old London furniture and papers. Well, he must manage
+it, "burgle" his own house, if necessary. What an absurd situation!
+Should he consult his mother? No; better not.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That evening General Hobson was expected for a couple of nights. On
+going up to dress for dinner, Roger discovered that he had been banished
+to a room on the farther side of the house, where his servant was now
+putting out his clothes. He turned very white, and went straight to his
+wife.
+
+Daphne was on the sofa as before, and received him in silence.
+
+"What's the meaning of this, Daphne?" The tone was quiet, but the
+breathing quick.
+
+She looked at him--bracing herself.
+
+"I must be alone! I had no sleep last night."
+
+"You had neuralgia?"
+
+"I don't know--I had no sleep. I must be alone."
+
+His eyes and hers met.
+
+"For to-night, then," he said briefly. "I don't know what's the matter
+with you, Daphne and I suppose it's no use to ask you. I thought,
+yesterday--but--however, there's no time to talk now. Are you coming
+down to dinner?"
+
+"Not to dinner. I will come down for an hour afterwards."
+
+He went away, and before he had reached his own room, and while the heat
+of his sudden passion still possessed him, it occurred to him that
+Daphne's behaviour might after all prove a godsend. That night he would
+make his search, with no risk of disturbing his wife.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The dinner in the newly decorated dining-room went heavily. Lady Barnes
+had grown of late more and more anxious and depressed. She had long
+ceased to assert herself in Daphne's presence, and one saw her as the
+British matron in adversity, buffeted by forces she did not understand;
+or as some minor despot snuffed out by a stronger.
+
+The General, who had only arrived just in time to dress, inquired in
+astonishment for Daphne, and was told by Roger that his wife was not
+well, but would come down for a little while after dinner. In presence
+of the new splendours of Heston, the General had--in Roger's
+company--very little to say. He made the vague remark that the
+dining-room was "very fine," but he should not have known it again.
+Where was the portrait of Edward, and the full-length of Edward's father
+by Sir Francis Grant? Lady Barnes drew herself up, and said nothing.
+Roger hastily replied that he believed they were now in the passage
+leading to the billiard-room.
+
+"What! that dark corner!" cried the General, looking with both distaste
+and hostility at the famous Signorelli--a full-length nude St.
+Sebastian, bound and pierced--which had replaced them on the dining-room
+wall. Who on earth ever saw such a picture in a dining-room? Roger must
+be a fool to allow it!
+
+Afterwards the General and Lady Barnes wandered through the transformed
+house, in general agreement as to the ugliness and extravagance of
+almost everything that had been done, an agreement that was as balm to
+the harassed spirits of the lady.
+
+"What have they spent?" asked the General, under his breath, as they
+returned to the drawing-room--"thousands and thousands, I should think!
+And there was no need for them to spend a penny. It is a sinful waste,
+and no one should waste money in these days--there are too many
+unemployed!" He drew up his spare person, with a terrier-like shake of
+the head and shoulders, as of one repudiating Mammon and all its works.
+
+"Daphne has simply no idea of the value of money!" Lady Barnes
+complained, also under her breath. They were passing along one of the
+side corridors of the house, and there was no one in sight. But Roger's
+mother was evidently uneasy, as though Daphne might at any moment spring
+from the floor, or emerge from the walls. The General was really sorry
+for her.
+
+"It's like all the rest of them--Americans, I mean," he declared; "they
+haven't our sense of responsibility. I saw plenty of that in the
+States."
+
+Lady Barnes acquiesced. She was always soothed by the General's
+unfaltering views of British superiority.
+
+They found Daphne in the drawing-room--a ghostly Daphne, in white, and
+covered with diamonds. She made a little perfunctory conversation with
+them, avoided all mention of the house, and presently, complaining again
+of headache, went back to her room after barely an hour downstairs.
+
+The General whistled to himself, as he also retired to bed, after
+another and more private conversation with Lady Barnes, and half an
+hour's billiards with a very absent-minded host. By Jove, Laura wanted a
+change! He rejoiced that he was to escort her on the morrow to the
+London house of some cheerful and hospitable relations. Dollars, it
+seemed, were not everything, and he wished to heaven that Roger had been
+content to marry some plain English girl, with, say, a couple of
+thousand a year. Even the frugal General did not see how it could have
+been done on less. Roger no doubt had been a lazy, self-indulgent
+beggar. Yet he seemed a good deal steadier, and more sensible than he
+used to be; in spite of his wife, and the pouring out of dollars. And
+there was no doubt that he had grown perceptibly older. The General felt
+a vague pang of regret, so rare and so compelling had been the quality
+of Roger's early youth, measured at least by physical standards.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The house sank into sleep and silence. Roger, before saying good-night
+to his mother, had let fall a casual question as to the whereabouts of
+the room which still contained the _debris_ of the London house. He
+must, he said, look up two or three things, some share certificates of
+his father's, for instance, that he had been in want of for some time.
+Lady Barnes directed him. At the end of the nursery wing, to the right.
+But in the morning one of the housemaids would show him. Had she the
+key? She produced it, thought no more of it, and went to bed.
+
+He waited in his room till after midnight, then took off his shoes, his
+pride smarting, and emerged. There was one electric light burning in the
+hall below. This gave enough glimmer on the broad open landing for him
+to grope his way by, and he went noiselessly toward the staircase
+leading up to Beatty's rooms. Once, just as he reached it, he thought he
+caught the faint noise of low talking somewhere in the house, an
+indeterminate sound not to be located. But when he paused to listen, it
+had ceased and he supposed it to be only a windy murmur of the night.
+
+He gained the nursery wing. So far, of course, the way was perfectly
+familiar. He rarely passed an evening without going to kiss Beatty in
+her cot. Outside the door of the night-nursery he waited a moment to
+listen. Was she snoozling among her blankets?--the darling! She still
+sucked her thumb, sometimes, poor baby, to send her to sleep, and it was
+another reason for discontent with Miss Farmer that she would make a
+misdemeanour of it. Really, that woman got on his nerves!
+
+Beyond the nursery he had no knowledge whatever of his own house. The
+attics at Heston were large and rambling. He believed the servants were
+all in the other wing, but was not sure; he could only hope that he
+might not stumble on some handmaiden's room by mistake!
+
+A door to the right, at the end of the passage. He tried the key. Thank
+goodness! It turned without too much noise, and he found himself on the
+threshold of a big lumber-room, his candle throwing lines of dusty light
+across it. He closed the door, set down the light, and looked round him
+in despair. The room was crowded with furniture, trunks, and boxes, in
+considerable confusion. It looked as though the men employed to move
+them had piled them there as they pleased; and Roger shrewdly suspected
+that his mother, from whom, in spite of her square and business-like
+appearance, his own indolence was inherited, had shrunk till now from
+the task of disturbing them.
+
+He began to rummage a little. Papers belonging to his father--an endless
+series of them; some in tin boxes marked with the names of various
+companies, mining and other; some in leather cases, reminiscent of
+politics, and labelled "Parliamentary" or "Local Government Board."
+Trunks containing Court suits, yeomanry uniforms, and the like; a medley
+of old account books, photographs, worthless volumes, and broken
+ornaments: all the refuse that our too complex life piles about us was
+represented in the chaos of the room. Roger pulled and pushed as
+cautiously as he could, but making, inevitably, some noise in the
+process. At last! He caught sight of some belongings of his own and was
+soon joyfully detaching the old Eton desk, of which he was in search,
+from a pile of miscellaneous rubbish. In doing so, to his dismay, he
+upset a couple of old cardboard boxes filled with letters, and they fell
+with some clatter. He looked round instinctively at the door; but it was
+shut, and the house was well built, the walls and ceilings reasonably
+sound-proof. The desk was only latched--beastly carelessness, of
+course!--and inside it were three thick piles of letters, and a few
+loose ones below. His own letters to Chloe; and--by George!--the lost
+one!--among the others. He opened it eagerly, ran it through. Yes, the
+very thing! What luck! He laid it carefully aside a moment on a trunk
+near by, and sat with the other letters on his lap.
+
+His fingers played with them. He almost determined to take them down
+unopened, and burn them, as they were, in his own room; but in the end
+he could not resist the temptation to look at them once more. He pulled
+off an india-rubber band from the latest packet, and was soon deep in
+them, at first half ashamed, half contemptuous. Calf love, of course!
+And he had been a precious fool to write such things. Then, presently,
+the headlong passion of them began to affect him, to set his pulses
+swinging. He fell to wondering at his own bygone facility, his own
+powers of expression. How did he ever write such a style! He, who could
+hardly get through a note now without blots and labour. Self-pity grew
+upon him, and self-admiration. By heaven! How could a woman treat a
+man--a man who could write to her like this--as Chloe had treated him!
+
+The old smart revived; or rather, the old indelible impressions of it
+left on nerve and brain.
+
+The letters lay on his knee. He sat brooding: his hands upon the
+packets, his head bowed. One might have thought him a man overcome and
+dissolved by the enervating memories of passion; but in truth, he was
+gradually and steadily reacting against them; resuming, and this time
+finally, as far as Chloe Fairmile was concerned, a man's mastery of
+himself. He thought of her unkindness and cruelty--of the misery he had
+suffered--and now of the reckless caprice with which, during the
+preceding weeks, she had tried to entangle him afresh, with no respect
+for his married life, for his own or Daphne's peace of mind.
+
+He judged her, and therewith, himself. Looking back upon the four years
+since Chloe Fairmile had thrown him over, it seemed to him that, in some
+ways, he had made a good job of his life, and, in others, a bad one. As
+to the money, that was neither here nor there. It had been amusing to
+have so much of it; though of late Daphne's constant reminders that the
+fortune was hers and not his, had been like grit in the mouth. But he
+did not find that boundless wealth had made as much difference to him as
+he had expected. On the other hand, he had been much happier with Daphne
+than he had thought he should be, up to the time of their coming to
+Heston. She wasn't easy to live with, and she had been often, before
+now, ridiculously jealous; but you could not, apparently, live with a
+woman without getting very fond of her--he couldn't--especially if she
+had given you a child; and if Daphne had turned against him now, for a
+bit--well, he could not swear to himself that he had been free from
+blame; and it perhaps served him right for having gone out deliberately
+to the States to marry money--with a wife thrown in--in that shabby sort
+of way.
+
+But, now, to straighten out this coil; to shake himself finally free of
+Chloe, and make Daphne happy again! He vowed to himself that he could
+and would make her happy--just as she had been in their early days
+together. The memory of her lying white and exhausted after child-birth,
+with the little dark head beside her, came across him, and melted him;
+he thought of her with longing and tenderness.
+
+With a deep breath he raised himself on his seat; in the old Greek
+phrase, "the gods breathed courage into his soul"; and as he stretched
+out an indifferent hand toward Chloe's letters on the trunk, Roger
+Barnes had perhaps reached the highest point of his moral history; he
+had become conscious of himself as a moral being choosing good or evil;
+and he had chosen good. It was not so much that his conscience accused
+him greatly with regard to Chloe. For that his normal standards were not
+fine enough. It was rather a kind of "serious call," something akin to
+conversion, or that might have been conversion, which befell him in this
+dusty room, amid the night-silence.
+
+As he took up Chloe's letters he did not notice that the door had
+quietly opened behind him, and that a figure stood on the threshold.
+
+A voice struck into the stillness.
+
+"Roger!"
+
+He turned with a movement that scattered all his own letters on the
+floor. Daphne stood before him--but with the eyes of a mad woman. Her
+hand shook on the handle of the door.
+
+"What are you doing here?" She flung out the question like a blow.
+
+"Hallo, Daphne!--is that you?" He tried to laugh. "I'm only looking up
+some old papers; no joke, in all this rubbish." He pointed to it.
+
+"What old papers?"
+
+"Well, you needn't catechize me!" he said, nettled by her tone, "or not
+in that way, at any rate. I couldn't sleep, and I came up here to look
+for something I wanted. Why did you shut your door on me?"
+
+He looked at her intently, his lips twitching a little. Daphne came
+nearer.
+
+"It must be something you want very badly--something you don't want
+other people to see--something you're ashamed of!--or you wouldn't be
+searching for it at this time of night." She raised her eyes, still with
+the same strange yet flaming quiet, from the littered floor to his face.
+Then suddenly glancing again at the scattered papers--"That's your
+hand-writing!--they're your letters! letters to Mrs. Fairmile!"
+
+"Well, and what do you make of that?" cried Roger, half wroth, half
+inclined to laugh. "If you want to know, they are the letters I wrote to
+Chloe Fairmile; and I, like a careless beast, never destroyed them, and
+they were stuffed away here. I have long meant to get at them and burn
+them, and as you turned me out to-night----"
+
+"What is that letter in your hand?" exclaimed Daphne, interrupting him.
+
+"Oh, that has nothing to do with you--or me----" he said, hastily making
+a movement to put it in his coat pocket. But in a second, Daphne, with a
+cry, had thrown herself upon him, to his intense amazement, wrestling
+with him, in a wild excitement. And as she did so, a thin woman, with
+frightened eyes, in a nurse's dress, came quickly into the room, as
+though Daphne's cry had signalled to her. She was behind Roger, and he
+was not aware of her approach.
+
+"Daphne, don't be such a little fool!" he said indignantly, holding her
+off with one hand, determined not to give her the letter.
+
+Then, all in a moment--without, as it seemed to him, any but the mildest
+defensive action on his part--Daphne stumbled and fell.
+
+"Daphne!--I say!----"
+
+He was stooping over her in great distress to lift her up, when he felt
+himself vehemently put aside by a woman's hand.
+
+"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, sir! Let me go to her."
+
+He turned in bewilderment. "Miss Farmer! What on earth are you doing
+here?"
+
+But in his astonishment he had given way to her, and he fell back pale
+and frowning, while, without replying, she lifted Daphne--who had a cut
+on her forehead and was half fainting--from the ground.
+
+"Don't come near her, sir!" said the nurse, again warding him off. "You
+have done quite enough. Let me attend to her."
+
+"You imagine that was my doing?" said Roger grimly. "Let me assure you
+it was nothing of the kind. And pray, were you listening at the door?"
+
+Miss Farmer vouchsafed no reply. She was half leading, half supporting
+Daphne, who leant against her. As they neared the door, Roger, who had
+been standing dumb again, started forward.
+
+"Let me take her," he said sternly. "Daphne!--send this woman away."
+
+But Daphne only shuddered, and putting out a shaking hand, she waved him
+from her.
+
+"You see in what a state she is!" cried Miss Farmer, with a withering
+look. "If you must speak to her, put it off, sir, at least till
+to-morrow."
+
+Roger drew back. A strange sense of inexplicable disaster rushed upon
+him. He sombrely watched them pass through the door and disappear.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Daphne reached her own room. As the door closed upon them she turned to
+her companion, holding out the handkerchief stained with blood she had
+been pressing to her temple.
+
+"You saw it all?" she said imperiously--"the whole thing?"
+
+"All," said Miss Farmer. "It's a mercy you're not more hurt."
+
+Daphne gave a hysterical laugh.
+
+"It'll just do--I think it'll do! But you'll have to make a good deal
+out of it."
+
+And sinking down by the fire, she burst into a passion of wild tears.
+
+The nurse brought her sal volatile, and washed the small cut above her
+eyebrow.
+
+"It was lucky we heard him," she said triumphantly. "I guessed at once
+he must be looking for something--I knew that room was full of papers."
+
+A knock at the door startled them.
+
+"Never mind." The nurse hurried across the room. "It's locked."
+
+"How is my wife?" said Roger's strong, and as it seemed, threatening
+voice outside.
+
+"She'll be all right, sir, I hope, if you'll leave her to rest. But I
+won't answer for the consequences if she's disturbed any more."
+
+There was a pause, as though of hesitation. Then Roger's step receded.
+
+Daphne pushed her hair back from her face, and sat staring into the
+fire. Everything was decided now. Yet she had rushed upstairs on Miss
+Farmer's information with no definite purpose. She only knew that--once
+again--Roger was hiding something from her--doing something secret and
+disgraceful--and she suddenly resolved to surprise and confront him.
+With a mind still vaguely running on the legal aspects of what she meant
+to do, she had bade the nurse follow her. The rest had been half
+spontaneous, half acting. It had struck her imagination midway how the
+incident could be turned--and used.
+
+She was triumphant; but from sheer excitement she wept and sobbed
+through the greater part of the night.
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+It was a cheerless February day, dark and slaty overhead, dusty below.
+In the East End streets paper and straw, children's curls, girls'
+pinafores and women's skirts were driven back and forward by a bitter
+wind; there was an ugly light on ugly houses, with none of that kind
+trickery of mist or smoke which can lend some grace on normal days even
+to Commercial Street, or to the network of lanes north of the Bethnal
+Green Road. The pitiless wind swept the streets--swept the children and
+the grown-ups out of them into the houses, or any available shelter; and
+in the dark and chilly emptiness of the side roads one might listen in
+fancy for the stealthy returning steps of spirits crueller than Cold,
+more tyrannous than Poverty, coming to seize upon their own.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In one of these side streets stood a house larger than its neighbours,
+in a bit of front garden, with some decrepit rust-bitten-railings
+between it and the road. It was an old dwelling overtaken by the flood
+of tenement houses, which spread north, south, east, and west of it. Its
+walls were no less grimy than its neighbours'; but its windows were
+outlined in cheerful white paint, firelight sparkled through its
+unshuttered panes, and a bright green door with a brass knocker
+completed its pleasant air. There were always children outside the
+Vicarage railings on winter evenings, held there by the spell of the
+green door and the firelight.
+
+Inside the firelit room to the left of the front pathway, two men were
+standing--one of whom had just entered the house.
+
+"My dear Penrose!--how very good of you to come. I know how frightfully
+busy you are."
+
+The man addressed put down his hat and stick, and hastily smoothed back
+some tumbling black hair which interfered with spectacled eyes already
+hampered by short sight. He was a tall, lank, powerful fellow; anyone
+acquainted with the West-country would have known him for one of the
+swarthy, gray-eyed Cornish stock.
+
+"I am pretty busy--but your tale, Herbert, was a startler. If I can help
+you--or Barnes--command me. He is coming this afternoon?"
+
+Herbert French pointed his visitor to a chair.
+
+"Of course. And another man--whom I met casually, in Pall Mall this
+morning--and had half an hour's talk with--an American naval officer--an
+old acquaintance of Elsie's--Captain Boyson--will join us also. I met
+him at Harvard before our wedding, and liked him. He has just come over
+with his sister for a short holiday, and I ran across him."
+
+"Is there any particular point in his joining us?"
+
+Herbert French expounded. Boyson had been an old acquaintance of Mrs.
+Roger Barnes before her marriage. He knew a good deal about the Barnes
+story--"feels, so I gathered, very strongly about it, and on the man's
+side; and when I told him that Roger had just arrived and was coming to
+take counsel with you and me this afternoon, he suddenly asked if he
+might come, too. I was rather taken aback. I told him that we were
+going, of course, to consider the case entirely from the English point
+of view. He still said, 'Let me come; I may be of use to you.' So I
+could only reply it must rest with Roger. They'll show him first into
+the dining-room."
+
+Penrose nodded. "All right, as long as he doesn't mind his national toes
+trampled upon. So these are your new quarters, old fellow?"
+
+His eyes travelled round the small book-lined room, with its shelves of
+poetry, history, and theology; its parish litter; its settle by the
+fire, on which lay a doll and a child's picture-book; back to the figure
+of the new vicar, who stood, pipe in hand, before the hearth, clad in a
+shabby serge suit, his collar alone betraying him. French's white hair
+showed even whiter than of old above the delicately blanched face; from
+his natural slenderness and smallness the East End and its life had by
+now stripped every superfluous ounce; yet, ethereal as his aspect was,
+not one element of the Meredithian trilogy--"flesh," "blood," or
+"spirit"--was lacking in it.
+
+"Yes, we've settled in," he said quietly, as Penrose took stock.
+
+"And you like it?"
+
+"We do."
+
+The phrase was brief; nor did it seem to be going to lead to anything
+more expansive. Penrose smiled.
+
+"Well, now"--he bent forward, with a professional change of
+tone--"before he arrives, where precisely is this unhappy business? I
+gather, by the way, that Barnes has got practically all his legal advice
+from the other side, though the solicitors here have been cooeperating?"
+
+French nodded. "I am still rather vague myself. Roger only arrived from
+New York the day before yesterday. His uncle, General Hobson, died a few
+weeks ago, and Roger came rushing home, as I understand, to see if he
+could make any ready money out of his inheritance. Money, in fact, seems
+to be his chief thought."
+
+"Money? What for? Mrs. Barnes's suit was surely settled long ago?"
+
+"Oh, yes--months ago. She got her decree and the custody of the child in
+July."
+
+"Remind me of the details. Barnes refused to plead?"
+
+"Certainly. By the advice of the lawyers on both sides, he refused, as
+an Englishman, to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the Court."
+
+"But he did what he could to stop the thing?"
+
+"Of course. He rushed out after his wife as soon as he could trace where
+she had gone; and he made the most desperate attempts to alter her
+purpose. His letters, as far as I could make them out, were
+heart-rending. I very nearly went over to try and help him, but it was
+impossible to leave my work. Mrs. Barnes refused to see him. She was
+already at Sioux Falls, and had begun the residence necessary to bring
+her within the jurisdiction of the South Dakota Court. Roger, however,
+forced one or two interviews with her--most painful scenes!--but found
+her quite immovable. At the same time she was much annoyed and excited
+by the legal line that he was advised to take; and there was a moment
+when she tried to bribe him to accept the divorce and submit to the
+American court."
+
+"To bribe him! With money?"
+
+"No; with the child. Beatty at first was hidden away, and Roger could
+find no traces of her. But for a few weeks she was sent to stay with a
+Mrs. Verrier at Philadelphia, and Roger was allowed to see her, while
+Mrs. Barnes negotiated. It was a frightful dilemma! If he submitted,
+Mrs. Barnes promised that Beatty should go to him for two months every
+year; if not, and she obtained her decree, and the custody of the child,
+as she was quite confident of doing, he should never--as far as she
+could secure it--see Beatty again. He too, foresaw that she would win
+her suit. He was sorely tempted; but he stood firm. Then before he could
+make up his mind what to do as to the child, the suit came on, Mrs.
+Barnes got her decree, and the custody of the little girl."
+
+"On the ground of 'cruelty,' I understand, and 'indignities'?"
+
+French nodded. His thin cheek flushed.
+
+"And by the help of evidence that any liar could supply!"
+
+"Who were her witnesses?"
+
+"Beatty's nurse--one Agnes Farmer--and a young fellow who had been
+employed on the decorative work at Heston. There were relations between
+these two, and Roger tells me they have married lately, on a partnership
+bought by Mrs. Barnes. While the work was going on at Heston the young
+man used to put up at an inn in the country town, and talk scandal at
+the bar."
+
+"Then there was some local scandal--on the subject of Barnes and Mrs.
+Fairmile?"
+
+"Possibly. Scandal _pour rire_! Not a soul believed that there was
+anything more in it than mischief on the woman's side, and a kind of
+incapacity for dealing with a woman as she deserved, on the man's. Mrs.
+Fairmile has been an _intrigante_ from her cradle. Barnes was at one
+time deeply in love with her. His wife became jealous of her after the
+marriage, and threw them together, by way of getting at the truth, and
+he shilly-shallied with the situation, instead of putting a prompt end
+to it, as of course he ought to have done. He was honestly fond of his
+wife the whole time, and devoted to his home and his child."
+
+"Well, she didn't plead, you say, anything more than 'cruelty' and
+'indignities'. The scandal, such as it was, was no doubt part of the
+'cruelty'?"
+
+French assented.
+
+"And you suspect that money played a great part in the whole
+transaction?"
+
+"I don't _suspect_--the evidence goes a long way beyond that. Mrs.
+Barnes bought the show! I am told there are a thousand ways of doing
+it."
+
+Penrose smoked and pondered.
+
+"Well, then--what happened? I imagine that by this time Barnes had not
+much affection left for his wife?"
+
+"I don't know," said French, hesitating. "I believe the whole thing was
+a great blow to him. He was never passionately in love with her, but he
+was very fond of her in his own way--increasingly fond of her--up to
+that miserable autumn at Heston. However, after the decree, his one
+thought was for Beatty. His whole soul has been wrapped up in that child
+from the first moment she was put into his arms. When he first realized
+that his wife meant to take her from him, Boyson tells me that he seemed
+to lose his head. He was like a person unnerved and bewildered, not
+knowing how to act or where to turn. First of all, he brought an
+action--a writ of _habeas corpus_, I think--to recover his daughter, as
+an English subject. But the fact was he had put it off too long----"
+
+"Naturally," said Penrose, with a shrug. "Not much hope for him--after
+the decree."
+
+"So he discovered, poor old fellow! The action was, of course,
+obstructed and delayed in every way, by the power of Mrs. Barnes's
+millions behind the scenes. His lawyers told him plainly from the
+beginning that he had precious little chance. And presently he found
+himself the object of a press campaign in some of the yellow papers--all
+of it paid for and engineered by his wife. He was held up as the brutal
+fortune-hunting Englishman, who had beguiled an American heiress to
+marry him, had carried her off to England to live upon her money, had
+then insulted her by scandalous flirtations with a lady to whom he had
+formerly been engaged, had shown her constant rudeness and unkindness,
+and had finally, in the course of a quarrel, knocked her down,
+inflicting shock and injury from which she had suffered ever since. Mrs.
+Barnes had happily freed herself from him, but he was now trying to
+bully her through the child--had, it was said, threatened to carry off
+the little girl by violence. Mrs. Barnes went in terror of him. America,
+however, would know how to protect both the mother and the child! You
+can imagine the kind of thing. Well, very soon Roger began to find
+himself a marked man in hotels, followed in the streets, persecuted by
+interviewers; and the stream of lies that found its way even into the
+respectable newspapers about him, his former life, his habits, etc., is
+simply incredible! Unfortunately, he gave some handle----"
+
+French paused a moment.
+
+"Ah!" said Penrose, "I have heard rumours."
+
+French rose and began to pace the room.
+
+"It is a matter I can hardly speak of calmly," he said at last. "The
+night after that first scene between them, the night of her fall--her
+pretended fall, so Roger told me--he went downstairs in his excitement
+and misery, and drank, one way and another, nearly a bottle of brandy, a
+thing he had never done in his life before. But----"
+
+"He has often done it since?"
+
+French raised his shoulders sadly, then added, with some emphasis.
+"Don't, however, suppose the thing worse than it is. Give him a gleam of
+hope and happiness, and he would soon shake it off."
+
+"Well, what came of his action?"
+
+"Nothing--so far. I believe he has ceased to take any interest in it.
+Another line of action altogether was suggested to him. About three
+months ago he made an attempt to kidnap the child, and was foiled. He
+got word that she had been taken to Charlestown, and he went there with
+a couple of private detectives. But Mrs. Barnes was on the alert, and
+when he discovered the villa in which the child had been living, she had
+been removed. It was a bitter shock and disappointment, and when he got
+back to New York in November, in the middle of an epidemic, he was
+struck down by influenza and pneumonia. It went pretty hard with him.
+You will be shocked by his appearance. Ecco! was there ever such a
+story! Do you remember, Penrose, what a magnificent creature he was that
+year he played for Oxford, and you and I watched his innings from the
+pavilion?"
+
+There was a note of emotion in the tone which implied much. Penrose
+assented heartily, remarking, however, that it was a magnificence which
+seemed to have cost him dear, if, as no doubt was the case, it had won
+him his wife.
+
+"But now, with regard to money; you say he wants money. But surely, at
+the time of the marriage, something was settled on him?"
+
+"Certainly, a good deal. But from the moment she left him, and the
+Heston bills were paid, he has never touched a farthing of it, and never
+will."
+
+"So that the General's death was opportune? Well, it's a deplorable
+affair! And I wish I saw any chance of being of use."
+
+French looked up anxiously.
+
+"Because you know," the speaker reluctantly continued, "there's nothing
+to be done. The thing's finished."
+
+"Finished?" French's manner took fire. "And the law can do _nothing_!
+Society can do _nothing_, to help that man either to right himself, or
+to recover his child? Ah!"--he paused to listen--"here he is!"
+
+A cab had drawn up outside. Through the lightly curtained windows the
+two within saw a man descend from it, pay the driver, and walk up the
+flagged passage leading to the front door.
+
+French hurried to greet the new-comer.
+
+"Come in, Roger! Here's George Penrose--as I promised you. Sit down, old
+man. They'll bring us some tea presently."
+
+Roger Barnes looked round him for a moment without replying; then
+murmured something unintelligible, as he shook hands with Penrose, and
+took the chair which French pushed forward. French stood beside him with
+a furrowed brow.
+
+"Well, here we are, Roger!--and if there's anything whatever in this
+horrible affair where an English lawyer can help you, Penrose is your
+man. You know, I expect, what a swell he is? A K. C. after seven
+years--lucky dog!--and last year he was engaged in an Anglo-American
+case not wholly unlike yours--Brown _v._ Brown. So I thought of him as
+the best person among your old friends and mine to come and give us some
+private informal help to-day, before you take any fresh steps--if you do
+take any."
+
+"Awfully good of you both." The speaker, still wrapped in his fur coat,
+sat staring at the carpet, a hand on each of his knees. "Awfully good of
+you," he repeated vaguely.
+
+Penrose observed the new-comer. In some ways Roger Barnes was handsomer
+than ever. His colour, the pink and white of his astonishing complexion,
+was miraculously vivid; his blue eyes were infinitely more arresting
+than of old; and the touch of physical weakness in his aspect, left
+evidently by severe illness, was not only not disfiguring, but a
+positive embellishment. He had been too ruddy in the old days, too
+hearty and splendid--a too obvious and supreme king of men--for our
+fastidious modern eyes. The grief and misfortune which had shorn some of
+his radiance had given a more human spell to what remained. At the same
+time the signs of change were by no means, all of them, easy to read, or
+reassuring to a friend's eye. Were they no more than physical and
+transient?
+
+Penrose was just beginning on the questions which seemed to him
+important, when there was another ring at the front door. French got up
+nervously, with an anxious look at Barnes.
+
+"Roger! I don't know whether you will allow it, but I met an American
+acquaintance of yours to-day, and, subject to your permission, I asked
+him to join our conference."
+
+Roger raised his head--it might have been thought, angrily.
+
+"Who on earth----?"
+
+"Captain Boyson?"
+
+The young man's face changed.
+
+"I don't mind him," he said sombrely. "He's an awfully good sort. He was
+in Philadelphia a few months ago, when I was. He knows all about me. It
+was he and his sister who introduced me to--my wife."
+
+French left the room for a moment, and returned accompanied by a
+fair-haired, straight-shouldered man, whom he introduced to Penrose as
+Captain Boyson.
+
+Roger rose from his chair to shake hands.
+
+"How do you do, Boyson? I've told them you know all about it." He
+dropped back heavily into his seat.
+
+"I thought I might possibly put in a word," said the new-comer, glancing
+from Roger to his friends. "I trust I was not impertinent? But don't let
+me interrupt anything that was going on."
+
+On a plea of chill, Boyson remained standing by the fire, warming his
+hands, looking down upon the other three. Penrose, who belonged to a
+military family, reminded himself, as he glanced at the American, of a
+recent distinguished book on Military Geography by a Captain Alfred
+Boyson. No doubt the same man. A capable face,--the face of the modern
+scientific soldier. It breathed alertness; but also some quality warmer
+and softer. If the general aspect had been shaped and moulded by an
+incessant travail of brain, the humanity of eye and mouth spoke dumbly
+to the humanity of others. The council gathered in the vicarage room
+felt itself strengthened.
+
+Penrose resumed his questioning of Barnes, and the other two listened
+while the whole miserable story of the divorce, in its American aspects,
+unrolled. At first Roger showed a certain apathy and brevity; he might
+have been fulfilling a task in which he took but small interest; even
+the details of chicanery and corruption connected with the trial were
+told without heat; he said nothing bitter of his wife--avoided naming
+her, indeed, as much as possible.
+
+But when the tale was done he threw back his head with sudden animation
+and looked at Boyson.
+
+"Is that about the truth, Boyson? You know."
+
+"Yes, I endorse it," said the American gravely. His face, thin and
+tanned, had flushed while Barnes was speaking.
+
+"And you know what all their papers said of me--what _they_ wished
+people to believe--that I wasn't fit to have charge of Beatty--that I
+should have done her harm?"
+
+His eyes sparkled. He looked almost threateningly at the man whom he
+addressed. Boyson met his gaze quietly.
+
+"I didn't believe it."
+
+There was a pause. Then Roger sprang suddenly to his feet, confronting
+the men round him.
+
+"Look here!" he said impatiently. "I want some money at once--and a good
+lot of it." He brought his fist down heavily on the mantelpiece.
+"There's this place of my uncle's, and I'm dashed if I can get a penny
+out of it! I went to his solicitors this morning. They drove me mad with
+their red-tape nonsense. It will take some time, they say, to get a
+mortgage on it, and meanwhile they don't seem inclined to advance me
+anything, or a hundred or two, perhaps. What's that? I lost my temper,
+and next time I go they'll turn me out, I dare say. But there's the
+truth. It's _money_ I want, and if you can't help me to money it's no
+use talking."
+
+"And when you get the money what'll you do with it?" asked Penrose.
+
+"Pay half a dozen people who can be trusted to help me kidnap Beatty and
+smuggle her over the Canadian frontier. I bungled the thing once. I
+don't mean to bungle it again."
+
+The answer was given slowly, without any bravado, but whatever energy of
+life there was in the speaker had gone into it.
+
+"And there is no other way?" French's voice from the back was troubled.
+
+"Ask him?" Roger pointed to Boyson.
+
+"Is there any legal way, Boyson, in which I can recover the custody and
+companionship of my child?"
+
+Boyson turned away.
+
+"None that I know of--and I have made every possible inquiry."
+
+"And yet," said Barnes, with emphasis, addressing the English barrister,
+"by the law of England I am still Daphne's husband and that child's
+legal guardian?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"And if I could once get her upon ground under the English flag, she
+would be mine again, and no power could take her from me?"
+
+"Except the same private violence that you yourself propose to
+exercise."
+
+"I'd take care of that!" said Roger briefly.
+
+"How do you mean to do it?" asked French, with knit brows. To be sitting
+there in an English vicarage plotting violence against a woman disturbed
+him.
+
+"He and I'll manage it," said the quiet voice of the American officer.
+
+The others stared.
+
+"_You?_" said French. "An officer in active service? It might injure
+your career!"
+
+"I shall risk it."
+
+A charming smile broke on Penrose's meditative face.
+
+"My dear French, this is much more amusing than the law. But I don't
+quite see where _I_ come in." He rose tentatively from his seat.
+
+Boyson, however, did not smile. He looked from one to the other.
+
+"My sister and I introduced Daphne Floyd to Barnes," he said steadily,
+"and it is my country, as I hold,--or a portion of it--that allows these
+villainies. Some day we shall get a great reaction in the States, and
+then the reforms that plenty of us are clamouring for will come about.
+Meanwhile, as of course you know"--he addressed French--"New Yorkers and
+Bostonians suffer almost as much from the abomination that Nevada and
+South Dakota call laws, as Barnes has suffered. Marriage in the Eastern
+States is as sacred as with you--South Carolina allows no divorce at
+all--but with this licence at our gates, no one is safe, and thousands
+of our women, in particular--for the women bring two-thirds of the
+actions--are going to the deuce, simply because they have the
+opportunity of going. And the children--it doesn't bear thinking of!
+Well--no good haranguing! I'm ashamed of my country in this matter--I
+have been for a long time--and I mean to help Barnes out, _coute que
+coute_! And as to the money, Barnes, you and I'll discuss that."
+
+Barnes lifted a face that quivered, and he and Boyson exchanged looks.
+
+Penrose glanced at the pair. That imaginative power, combined with the
+power of drudgery, which was in process of making a great lawyer out of
+a Balliol scholar, showed him something typical and dramatic in the two
+figures:--in Boyson, on the one hand, so lithe, serviceable, and
+resolved, a helpful, mercurial man, ashamed of his country in this one
+respect, because he adored her in so many others, penitent and patriot
+in one:--in Barnes, on the other, so heavy, inert, and bewildered, a
+ship-wrecked suppliant as it were, clinging to the knees of that very
+America which had so lightly and irresponsibly wronged him.
+
+It was Penrose who broke the silence.
+
+"Is there any chance of Mrs. Barnes's marrying again?" he asked.
+
+Barnes turned to him.
+
+"Not that I know of."
+
+"There's no one else in the case?"
+
+"I never heard of anyone." Roger gave a short, excited laugh. "What
+she's done, she's done because she was tired of me, not because she was
+in love with anyone else. That was her great score in the divorce
+case--that there was nobody."
+
+Biting and twisting his lip, in a trick that recalled to French the
+beautiful Eton lad, cracking his brains in pupil-room over a bit of
+Latin prose, Roger glanced, frowning, from one to the other of these
+three men who felt for him, whose resentment of the wrong that had been
+done him, whose pity for his calamity showed plainly enough through
+their reticent speech.
+
+His sense, indeed, of their sympathy began to move him, to break down
+his own self-command. No doubt, also, the fatal causes that ultimately
+ruined his will-power were already at work. At any rate, he broke out
+into sudden speech about his case. His complexion, now unhealthily
+delicate, like the complexion of a girl, had flushed deeply. As he spoke
+he looked mainly at French.
+
+"There's lots of things you don't know," he said in a hesitating voice,
+as though appealing to his old friend. And rapidly he told the story of
+Daphne's flight from Heston. Evidently since his return home many
+details that were once obscure had become plain to him; and the three
+listeners could perceive how certain new information had goaded, and
+stung him afresh. He dwelt on the letters which had reached him during
+his first week's absence from home, after the quarrel--letters from
+Daphne and Miss Farmer, which were posted at intervals from Heston by
+their accomplice, the young architect, while the writers of them were
+hurrying across the Atlantic. The servants had been told that Mrs.
+Barnes, Miss Farmer, and the little girl were going to London for a day
+or two, and suspected nothing. "I wrote long letters--lots of them--to
+my wife. I thought I had made everything right--not that there ever had
+been anything wrong, you understand,--seriously. But in some ways I had
+behaved like a fool."
+
+He threw himself back in his chair, pressing his hands on his eyes. The
+listeners sat or stood motionless.
+
+"Well, I might have spared my pains. The letters were returned to me
+from the States. Daphne had arranged it all so cleverly that I was some
+time in tracing her. By the time I had got to Sioux Falls she was
+through a month of her necessary residence. My God!"--his voice dropped,
+became almost inaudible--"if I'd only carried Beatty off _then_!--then
+and there--the frontier wasn't far off--without waiting for anything
+more. But I wouldn't believe that Daphne could persist in such a
+monstrous thing, and, if she did, that any decent country would aid and
+abet her."
+
+Boyson made a movement of protest, as though he could not listen any
+longer in silence.
+
+"I am ashamed to remind you, Barnes,--again--that your case is no worse
+than that of scores of American citizens. We are the first to suffer
+from our own enormities."
+
+"Perhaps," said Barnes absently, "perhaps."
+
+His impulse of speech dropped. He sat, drearily staring into the fire,
+absorbed in recollection.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Penrose had gone. So had Boyson. Roger was sitting by the fire in the
+vicar's study, ministered to by Elsie French and her children. By common
+consent the dismal subject of the day had been put aside. There was an
+attempt to cheer and distract him. The little boy of four was on his
+knee, declaiming the "Owl and the Pussy Cat," while Roger submissively
+turned the pages and pointed to the pictures of that immortal history.
+The little girl of two, curled up on her mother's lap close by, listened
+sleepily, and Elsie, applauding and prompting as a properly regulated
+mother should, was all the time, in spirit, hovering pitifully about her
+guest and his plight. There was in her, as in Boyson, a touch of
+patriotic remorse; and all the pieties of her own being, all the sacred
+memories of her own life, combined to rouse in her indignation and
+sympathy for Herbert's poor friend. The thought of what Daphne Barnes
+had done was to her a monstrosity hardly to be named. She spoke to the
+young man kindly and shyly, as though she feared lest any chance word
+might wound him; she was the symbol, in her young motherliness, of all
+that Daphne had denied and forsaken. "When would America--dear, dear
+America!--see to it that such things were made impossible!"
+
+Roger meanwhile was evidently cheered and braced. The thought of the
+interview to which Boyson had confidentially bidden him on the morrow
+ran warmly in his veins, and the children soothed him. The little boy
+especially, who was just Beatty's age, excited in him a number of
+practical curiosities. How about the last teeth? He actually inserted a
+coaxing and inquiring finger, the babe gravely suffering it. Any trouble
+with them? Beatty had once been very ill with hers, at Philadelphia,
+mostly caused, however, by some beastly, indigestible food that the
+nurse had let her have. And they allowed her to sit up much too late.
+Didn't Mrs. French think seven o'clock was late enough for any child not
+yet four? One couldn't say that Beatty was a very robust child, but
+healthy--oh yes, healthy!--none of your sickly, rickety little things.
+
+The curtains had been closed. The street children, the electric light
+outside, were no longer visible. Roger had begun to talk of departure,
+the baby had fallen fast asleep in her mother's arms, when there was
+another loud ring at the front door.
+
+French, who was expecting the headmaster of his church schools, gathered
+up some papers and left the room. His wife, startled by what seemed an
+exclamation from him in the hall outside, raised her head a moment to
+listen; but the sound of voices--surely a woman's voice?--died abruptly
+away, and the door of the dining-room closed. Roger heard nothing; he
+was laughing and crooning over the boy.
+
+    "The Pobble that lost his toes
+    Had once as many as we."
+
+The door opened. Herbert stood on the threshold beckoning to her. She
+rose in terror, the child in her arms, and went out to him. In a minute
+she reappeared in the doorway, her face ashen-white, and called to the
+little boy. He ran to her, and Roger rose, looking for the hat he had
+put down on entering.
+
+Then French came in, and behind him a lady in black, dishevelled, bathed
+in tears. The vicar hung back. Roger turned in astonishment.
+
+"Mother! You here? Mother!"--he hurried to her--"what's the matter?"
+
+She tottered toward him with outstretched hands.
+
+"Oh Roger, Roger!"
+
+His name died away in a wail as she clasped him.
+
+"What is it, mother?"
+
+"It's Beatty--my son!--my darling Roger!" She put up her hands
+piteously, bending his head down to her. "It's a cable from Washington,
+from that woman, Mrs. Verrier. They did everything, Roger--it was only
+three days--and hopeless always. Yesterday convulsion came on--and this
+morning----" Her head dropped against her son's breast as her voice
+failed her. He put her roughly from him.
+
+"What are you talking of, mother! Do you mean that Beatty has been ill?"
+
+"She died last night. Roger--my darling son--my poor Roger!"
+
+"Died--last night--Beatty?"
+
+French in silence handed him the telegram. Roger disengaged himself and
+walked to the fireplace, standing motionless, with his back to them, for
+a minute, while they held their breaths. Then he began to grope again
+for his hat, without a word.
+
+"Come home with me, Roger!" implored his mother, pursuing him. "We must
+bear it--bear it together. You see--she didn't suffer"--she pointed to
+the message--"the darling!--the darling!"
+
+Her voice lost itself in tears. But Roger brushed her away, as though
+resenting her emotion, and made for the door.
+
+French also put out a hand.
+
+"Roger, dear, dear old fellow! Stay here with us--with your mother.
+Where are you going?"
+
+Roger looked at his watch unsteadily.
+
+"The office will be closed," he said to himself; "but I can put some
+things together."
+
+"Where are you going, Roger?" cried Lady Barnes, pursuing him. Roger
+faced her.
+
+"It's Tuesday. There'll be a White Star boat to-morrow."
+
+"But, Roger, what can you do? She's gone, dear--she's gone. And before
+you can get there--long before--she will be in her grave."
+
+A spasm passed over his face, into which the colour rushed. Without
+another word he wrenched himself from her, opened the front door, and
+ran out into the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+"Was there ever anything so poetic, so suggestive?" said a charming
+voice. "One might make a new Turner out of it--if one just happened to
+be Turner!--to match 'Rain: Steam, and Speed.'"
+
+"What would you call it--'Mist, Light, and Spring'?"
+
+Captain Boyson leant forward, partly to watch the wonderful landscape
+effect through which the train was passing, partly because his young
+wife's profile, her pure cheek and soft hair, were so agreeably seen
+under the mingled light from outside.
+
+They were returning from their wedding journey. Some six weeks before
+this date Boyson had married in Philadelphia a girl coming from one of
+the old Quaker stocks of that town, in whose tender steadfastness of
+character a man inclined both by nature and experience to expect little
+from life had found a happiness that amazed him.
+
+The bridegroom, also, had just been appointed to the Military
+Attacheship at the Berlin Embassy, and the couple were, in fact, on
+their way south to New York and embarkation. But there were still a few
+days left of the honeymoon, of which they had spent the last half in
+Canada, and on this May night they were journeying from Toronto along
+the southern shore of Lake Ontario to the pleasant Canadian hotel which
+overlooks the pageant of Niagara. They had left Toronto in bright
+sunshine, but as they turned the corner of the lake westward, a white
+fog had come creeping over the land as the sunset fell.
+
+But the daylight was still strong, the fog thin; so that it appeared
+rather as a veil of gold, amethyst, and opal, floating over the country,
+now parting altogether, now blotting out the orchards and the fields.
+And into the colour above melted the colour below. For the orchards that
+cover the Hamilton district of Ontario were in bloom, and the snow of
+the pear-trees, the flush of the peach-blossom broke everywhere through
+the warm cloud of pearly mist; while, just as Mrs. Boyson spoke, the
+train had come in sight of the long flashing line of the Welland Canal,
+which wound its way, outlined by huge electric lamps, through the sunset
+and the fog, till the lights died in that northern distance where
+stretched the invisible shore of the great lake. The glittering
+waterway, speaking of the labour and commerce of men, the blossom-laden
+earth, the white approaching mist, the softly falling night:--the
+girl-bride could not tear herself from the spectacle. She sat beside the
+window entranced. But her husband had captured her hand, and into the
+overflowing beauty of nature there stole the thrill of their love.
+
+"All very well!" said Boyson presently. "But a fog at Niagara is no
+joke!"
+
+The night stole on, and the cloud through which they journeyed grew
+denser. Up crept the fog, on stole the night. The lights of the canal
+faded, the orchards sank into darkness, and when the bride and
+bridegroom reached the station on the Canadian side the bride's pleasure
+had become dismay.
+
+"Oh, Alfred, we shan't see anything!"
+
+And, indeed, as their carriage made its slow progress along the road
+that skirts the gorge, they seemed to plunge deeper and deeper into the
+fog. A white darkness, as though of impenetrable yet glimmering cloud,
+above and around them; a white abyss beneath them; and issuing from it
+the thunderous voice of wild waters, dim first and distant, but growing
+steadily in volume and terror.
+
+"There are the lights of the bridge!" cried Boyson, "and the towers of
+the aluminum works. But not a vestige of the Falls! Gone! Wiped out! I
+say, darling, this is going to be a disappointment."
+
+Mrs. Boyson, however, was not so sure. The lovely "nocturne" of the
+evening plain had passed into a Vision or Masque of Force that captured
+the mind. High above the gulf rose the towers of the great works,
+transformed by the surging fog and darkness into some piled and castled
+fortress; a fortress of Science held by Intelligence. Lights were in the
+towers, as of genii at their work; lights glimmered here and there on
+the face of the farther cliff, as though to measure the vastness of the
+gorge and of that resounding vacancy towards which they moved. In front,
+the arch of the vast suspension bridge, pricked in light, crossed the
+gulf, from nothingness to nothingness, like that sky bridge on which the
+gods marched to Walhalla. Otherwise, no shape, no landmark; earth and
+heaven had disappeared.
+
+"Here we are at the hotel," said Boyson. "There, my dear,"--he pointed
+ironically--"is the American Fall, and there--is the Canadian! Let me
+introduce you to Niagara!"
+
+They jumped out of the carriage, and while their bags were being carried
+in they ran to the parapeted edge of the cliff in front of the hotel.
+Niagara thundered in their ears; the spray of it beat upon their faces;
+but of the two great Falls immediately in front of them they saw nothing
+whatever. The fog, now cold and clammy, enwrapped them; even the bright
+lights of the hotel, but a stone's throw distant, were barely visible;
+and the carriage still standing at the steps had vanished.
+
+Suddenly, some common impulse born of the moment and the scene--of its
+inhuman ghostliness and grandeur--drew them to each other. Boyson threw
+his arm round his young wife and pressed her to him, kissing her face
+and hair, bedewed by the spray. She clung to him passionately, trembling
+a little, as the roar deafened them and the fog swept round them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As the Boysons lingered in the central hall of the hotel, reading some
+letters which had been handed to them, a lady in black passed along the
+gallery overhead and paused a moment to look at the new arrivals brought
+by the evening train.
+
+As she perceived Captain Boyson there was a quick, startled movement;
+she bent a moment over the staircase, as though to make sure of his
+identity, and then ran along the gallery to a room at the farther end.
+As she opened the door a damp cold air streamed upon her, and the
+thunder of the Falls, with which the hotel is perpetually filled, seemed
+to redouble.
+
+Three large windows opposite to her were, in fact, wide open; the room,
+with its lights dimmed by fog, seemed hung above the abyss.
+
+An invalid couch stood in front of the window, and upon it lay a pale,
+emaciated woman, breathing quickly and feebly. At the sound of the
+closing door, Madeleine Verrier turned.
+
+"Oh, Daphne, I was afraid you had gone out! You do such wild things!"
+
+Daphne Barnes came to the side of the couch.
+
+"Darling, I only went to speak to your maid for a moment. Are you sure
+you can stand all this damp fog?"
+
+As she spoke Daphne took up a fur cloak lying on a chair near, and
+wrapped herself warmly in it.
+
+"I can't breathe when they shut the windows. But it is too cold for
+you."
+
+"Oh, I'm all right in this." Daphne drew the cloak round her.
+
+Inwardly she said to herself, "Shall I tell her the Boysons are here?
+Yes, I must. She is sure to hear it in some way."
+
+So, stooping over the couch, she said:
+
+"Do you know who arrived this evening? The Alfred Boysons. I saw them in
+the hall just now."
+
+"They're on their honeymoon?" asked the faint voice, after a just
+perceptible pause.
+
+Daphne assented. "She seems a pretty little thing."
+
+Madeleine Verrier opened her tired eyes to look at Daphne. Mrs.
+Floyd--as Daphne now called herself--was dressed in deep black. The
+costly gown revealed a figure which had recently become substantial, and
+the face on which the electric light shone had nothing left in it of the
+girl, though Daphne Floyd was not yet thirty. The initial beauty of
+complexion was gone; so was the fleeting prettiness of youth. The eyes
+were as splendid as ever, but combined with the increased paleness of
+the cheeks, the greater prominence and determination of the mouth, and a
+certain austerity in the dressing of the hair, which was now firmly
+drawn back from the temples round which it used to curl, and worn high,
+_a la Marquise_, they expressed a personality--a formidable
+personality--in which self-will was no longer graceful, and power no
+longer magnetic. Madeleine Verrier gazed at her friend in silence. She
+was very grateful to Daphne, often very dependent on her. But there were
+moments when she shrank from her, when she would gladly never have seen
+her again. Daphne was still erect, self-confident, militant; whereas
+Madeleine knew herself vanquished--vanquished both in body and soul.
+
+Certain inner miseries and discomforts had been set vibrating by the
+name of Captain Boyson.
+
+"You won't want to see him or come across him?" she said abruptly.
+
+"Who? Alfred Boyson? I am not afraid of him in the least. He may say
+what he pleases--or think what he pleases. It doesn't matter to me."
+
+"When did you see him last?"
+
+Daphne hesitated a moment. "When he came to ask me for certain things
+which had belonged to Beatty."
+
+"For Roger? I remember. It must have been painful."
+
+"Yes," said Daphne unwillingly, "it was. He was very unfriendly. He
+always has been--since it happened. But I bore him no malice"--the tone
+was firm--"and the interview was short."
+
+"----" The half inaudible word fell like a sigh from Madeleine's lips as
+she closed her eyes again to shut out the light which teased them. And
+presently she added, "Do you ever hear anything now--from England?"
+
+"Just what I might expect to hear--what more than justifies all that I
+did."
+
+Daphne sat rigid on her chair, her hands crossed on her lap. Mrs.
+Verrier did not pursue the conversation.
+
+Outside the fog grew thicker and darker. Even the lights on the bridge
+were now engulfed. Daphne began to shiver in her fur cloak. She put out
+a cold hand and took one of Mrs. Verrier's.
+
+"Dear Madeleine! Indeed, indeed, you ought to let me move you from this
+place. Do let me! There's the house at Stockbridge all ready. And in
+July I could take you to Newport. I must be off next week, for I've
+promised to take the chair at a big meeting at Buffalo on the 29th. But
+I can't bear to leave you behind. We could make the journey quite easy
+for you. That new car of mine is very comfortable."
+
+"I know it is. But, thank you, dear, I like this hotel; and it will be
+summer directly."
+
+Daphne hesitated. A strong protest against "morbidness" was on her lips,
+but she did not speak it. In the mist-filled room even the bright fire,
+the electric lights, had grown strangely dim. Only the roar outside was
+real--terribly, threateningly real. Yet the sound was not so much fierce
+as lamentable; the voice of Nature mourning the eternal flow and
+conflict at the heart of things. Daphne knew well that, mingled with
+this primitive, cosmic voice, there was--for Madeleine Verrier--another;
+a plaintive, human cry, that was drawing the life out of her breast, the
+blood from her veins, like some baneful witchcraft of old. But she dared
+not speak of it; she and the doctor who attended Mrs. Verrier dared no
+longer name the patient's "obsession" even to each other. They had tried
+to combat it, to tear her from this place; with no other result, as it
+seemed, than to hasten the death-process which was upon her. Gently, but
+firmly, she had defied them, and they knew now that she would always
+defy them. For a year past, summer and winter, she had lived in this
+apartment facing the Falls; her nurses found her very patient under the
+incurable disease which had declared itself; Daphne came to stay with
+her when arduous engagements allowed, and Madeleine was always grateful
+and affectionate. But certain topics, and certain advocacies, had
+dropped out of their conversation--not by Daphne's will. There had been
+no spoken recantation; only the prophetess prophesied no more; and of
+late, especially when Daphne was not there--so Mrs. Floyd had
+discovered--a Roman Catholic priest had begun to visit Mrs. Verrier.
+Daphne, moreover, had recently noticed a small crucifix, hidden among
+the folds of the loose black dress which Madeleine commonly wore.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Daphne had changed her dress and dismissed her maid. Although it was
+May, a wood-fire had been lighted in her room to counteract the chilly
+damp of the evening. She hung over it, loth to go back to the
+sitting-room, and plagued by a depression that not even her strong will
+could immediately shake off. She wished the Boysons had not come. She
+supposed that Alfred Boyson would hardly cut her; but she was tolerably
+certain that he would not wish his young wife to become acquainted with
+her. She scorned his disapproval of her; but she smarted under it. It
+combined with Madeleine's strange delusions to put her on the defensive;
+to call out all the fierceness of her pride; to make her feel herself
+the champion of a sound and reasonable view of life as against weakness
+and reaction.
+
+Madeleine's dumb remorse was, indeed, the most paralyzing and baffling
+thing; nothing seemed to be of any avail against it, now that it had
+finally gained the upper hand. There had been dark times, no doubt, in
+the old days in Washington; times when the tragedy of her husband's
+death had overshadowed her. But in the intervals, what courage and
+boldness, what ardour in the declaration of that new Feminist gospel to
+which Daphne had in her own case borne witness! Daphne remembered well
+with what feverish readiness Madeleine had accepted her own pleas after
+her flight from England; how she had defended her against hostile
+criticism, had supported her during the divorce court proceedings, and
+triumphed in their result. "You are unhappy? And he deceived you? Well,
+then, what more do you want? Free yourself, my dear, free yourself! What
+right have you to bear more children to a man who is a liar and a
+shuffler? It is our generation that must suffer, for the liberty of
+those that come after!"
+
+What had changed her? Was it simply the approach of mortal illness, the
+old questioning of "what dreams may come"? Superstition, in fact? As a
+girl she had been mystical and devout; so Daphne had heard.
+
+Or was it the death of little Beatty, to whom she was much attached? She
+had seen something of Roger during that intermediate Philadelphia stage,
+when he and Beatty were allowed to meet at her house; and she had once
+or twice astonished and wounded Daphne at that time by sudden
+expressions of pity for him. It was she who had sent the cable message
+announcing the child's death, wording it as gently as possible, and had
+wept in sending it.
+
+"As if I hadn't suffered too!" cried Daphne's angry thought. And she
+turned to look at the beautiful miniature of Beatty set in pearls that
+stood upon her dressing-table. There was something in the recollection
+of Madeleine's sensibility with regard to the child--as in that of her
+compassion for the father's suffering--that offended Daphne. It seemed a
+reflection upon herself, Beatty's mother, as lacking in softness and
+natural feeling.
+
+On the contrary! She had suffered terribly; but she had thought it her
+duty to bear it with courage, not to let it interfere with the
+development of her life. And as for Roger, was it her fault that he had
+made it impossible for her to keep her promise? That she had been forced
+to separate Beatty from him? And if, as she understood now from various
+English correspondents, it was true that Roger had dropped out of decent
+society, did it not simply prove that she had guessed his character
+aright, and had only saved herself just in time?
+
+It was as though the sudden presence of Captain Boyson under the same
+roof had raised up a shadowy adversary and accuser, with whom she must
+go on thus arguing, and hotly defending herself, in a growing
+excitement. Not that she would ever stoop to argue with Alfred Boyson
+face to face. How could he ever understand the ideals to which she had
+devoted her powers and her money since the break-up of her married life?
+He could merely estimate what she had done in the commonest, vulgarest
+way. Yet who could truthfully charge her with having obtained her
+divorce in order thereby to claim any fresh licence for herself? She
+looked back now with a cool amazement on that sudden rush of passion
+which had swept her into marriage, no less than the jealousy which had
+led her to break with Roger. She was still capable of many kinds of
+violence; but not, probably, of the violence of love. The influence of
+sex and sense upon her had weakened; the influence of ambition had
+increased. As in many women of Southern race, the period of hot blood
+had passed into a period of intrigue and domination. Her wealth gave her
+power, and for that power she lived.
+
+Yes, she was personally desolate, but she had stood firm, and her reward
+lay in the fact that she had gathered round her an army of dependents
+and followers--women especially--to whom her money and her brains were
+indispensable. There on the table lay the plans for a new Women's
+College, on the broadest and most modern lines, to which she was soon to
+devote a large sum of money. The walls should have been up by now but
+for a quarrel with her secretary, who had become much too independent,
+and had had to be peremptorily dismissed at a moment's notice. But the
+plan was a noble one, approved by the highest authorities; and Daphne,
+looking to posterity, anticipated the recognition that she herself might
+never live to see. For the rest she had given herself--with
+reservations--to the Feminist movement. It was not in her nature to give
+herself wholly to anything; and she was instinctively critical of people
+who professed to be her leaders, and programmes to which she was
+expected to subscribe. Wholehearted devotion, which, as she rightly
+said, meant blind devotion, had never been her line; and she had been on
+one or two occasions offensively outspoken on the subject of certain
+leading persons in the movement. She was not, therefore, popular with
+her party, and did not care to be; her pride of money held her apart
+from the rank and file, the college girls, and typists, and journalists
+who filled the Feminist meetings, and often made themselves, in her
+eyes, supremely ridiculous, because of what she considered their silly
+provinciality and lack of knowledge of the world.
+
+Yet, of course, she was a "Feminist"--and particularly associated with
+those persons in the suffrage camp who stood for broad views on marriage
+and divorce. She knew very well that many other persons in the same camp
+held different opinions; and in public or official gatherings was always
+nervously--most people thought arrogantly--on the look-out for affronts.
+Meanwhile, everywhere, or almost everywhere, her money gave her power,
+and her knowledge of it was always sweet to her. There was nothing in
+the world--no cause, no faith--that she could have accepted "as a little
+child." But everywhere, in her own opinion, she stood for Justice;
+justice for women as against the old primaeval tyranny of men; justice,
+of course, to the workman, and justice to the rich. No foolish
+Socialism, and no encroaching Trusts! A lucid common sense, so it seemed
+to her, had been her cradle-gift.
+
+And with regard to Art, how much she had been able to do! She had
+generously helped the public collections, and her own small gallery, at
+the house in Newport, was famous throughout England and America. That in
+the course of the preceding year she had found among the signatures,
+extracted from visitors by the custodian in charge, the name of Chloe
+Fairmile, had given her a peculiar satisfaction.
+
+She walked proudly across the room, her head thrown back, every nerve
+tense. Let the ignorant and stupid blame her if they chose. She stood
+absolved. Memory reminded her, moreover, of a great number of kind and
+generous things--private things--that she had done with her money. If
+men like Herbert French, or Alfred Boyson, denounced her, there were
+many persons who felt warmly towards her--and had cause. As she thought
+of them the tears rose in her eyes. Of course she could never make such
+things public.
+
+Outside the fog seemed to be lifting a little. There was a silvery light
+in the southeast, a gleam and radiance over the gorge. If the moon
+struggled through, it would be worth while slipping out after dinner to
+watch its play upon the great spectacle. She was careful to cherish in
+herself an openness to noble impressions and to the high poetry of
+nature and life. And she must not allow herself to be led by the casual
+neighbourhood of the Boysons into weak or unprofitable thought.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Boysons dined at a table, gay with lights and flowers, that should
+have commanded the Falls but for the curtain of fog. Niagara, however,
+might flout them if it pleased; they could do without Niagara. They were
+delighted that the hotel, apparently, contained no one they knew. All
+they wanted was to be together, and alone. But the bride was tired by a
+long day in the train; her smiles began presently to flag, and by nine
+o'clock her husband had insisted on sending her to rest.
+
+After escorting her upstairs Captain Boyson returned to the veranda,
+which was brightly lit up, in order to read some letters that were still
+unopened in his pocket. But before he began upon them he was seized once
+more by the wizardry of the scene. Was that indistinct glimmer in the
+far distance--that intenser white on white--the eternal cloud of spray
+that hangs over the Canadian Fall? If so, the fog was indeed yielding,
+and the full moon behind it would triumph before long. On the other
+hand, he could no longer see the lights of the bridge at all; the
+rolling vapour choked the gorge, and the waiter who brought him his
+coffee drily prophesied that there would not be much change under
+twenty-four hours.
+
+He fell back upon his letters, well pleased to see that one among them
+came from Herbert French, with whom the American officer had maintained
+a warm friendship since the day of a certain consultation in French's
+East-End library. The letter was primarily one of congratulation,
+written with all French's charm and sympathy; but over the last pages of
+it Boyson's face darkened, for they contained a deplorable account of
+the man whom he and French had tried to save.
+
+The concluding passage of the letter ran as follows:
+
+     "You will scarcely wonder after all this that we see him very
+     seldom, and that he no longer gives us his confidence. Yet both
+     Elsie and I feel that he cares for us as much as ever. And, indeed,
+     poor fellow, he himself remains strangely lovable, in spite of what
+     one must--alas!--believe as to his ways of life and the people with
+     whom he associates. There is in him, always, something of what
+     Meyers called 'the imperishable child.' That a man who might have
+     been so easily led to good has been so fatally thrust into evil is
+     one of the abiding sorrows of my life. How can I reproach him for
+     his behaviour? As the law stands, he can never marry; he can never
+     have legitimate children. Under the wrong he has suffered, and, no
+     doubt, in consequence of that illness in New York, when he was
+     badly nursed and cared for--from which, in fact, he has never
+     wholly recovered--his will-power and nerve, which were never very
+     strong, have given way; he broods upon the past perpetually, and on
+     the loss of his child. Our poor Apollo, Boyson, will soon have lost
+     himself wholly, and there is no one to help.
+
+     "Do you ever see or hear anything of that woman? Do you know what
+     has become of her? I see you are to have a Conference on your
+     Divorce Laws--that opinion and indignation are rising. For Heaven's
+     sake, do something! I gather some appalling facts from a recent
+     Washington report. One in twelve of all your marriages dissolved! A
+     man or a woman divorced in one state, and still bound in another!
+     The most trivial causes for the break-up of marriage, accepted and
+     acted upon by corrupt courts, and reform blocked by a phalanx of
+     corrupt interests! Is it all true? An American correspondent of
+     mine--a lady--repeats to me what you once said, that it is the
+     women who bring the majority of the actions. She impresses upon me
+     also the remarkable fact that it is apparently only in a minority
+     of cases that a woman, when she has got rid of her husband, marries
+     someone else. It is not passion, therefore, that dictates many of
+     these actions; no serious cause or feeling, indeed, of any kind;
+     but rather an ever-spreading restlessness and levity, a readiness
+     to tamper with the very foundations of society, for a whim, a
+     nothing!--in the interests, of ten, of what women call their
+     'individuality'! No foolish talk here of being 'members one of
+     another'! We have outgrown all that. The facilities are always
+     there, and the temptation of them. 'The women--especially--who do
+     these things,' she writes me, 'are moral anarchists. One can appeal
+     to nothing; they acknowledge nothing. Transformations infinitely
+     far-reaching and profound are going on among us."
+
+     "'_Appeal to nothing!_' And this said of women, by a woman! It was
+     of _men_ that a Voice said long ago: 'Moses, because of the
+     hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives'--on
+     just such grounds apparently--trivial and cruel pretexts--as your
+     American courts admit. 'But _I_ say unto you!--_I say unto
+     you!_'...
+
+     "Well, I am a Christian priest, incapable, of course, of an
+     unbiassed opinion. My correspondent tries to explain the situation
+     a little by pointing out that your women in America claim to be the
+     superiors of your men, to be more intellectual, better-mannered,
+     more refined. Marriage disappoints or disgusts them, and they
+     impatiently put it aside. They break it up, and seem to pay no
+     penalty. But you and I believe that they will pay it!--that there
+     are divine avenging forces in the very law they tamper with--and
+     that, as a nation, you must either retrace some of the steps taken,
+     or sink in the scale of life.
+
+     "How I run on! And all because my heart is hot within me for the
+     suffering of one man, and the hardness of one woman!"
+
+Boyson raised his eyes. As he did so he saw dimly through the mist the
+figure of a lady, veiled, and wrapped in a fur cloak, crossing the
+farther end of the veranda. He half rose from his seat, with an
+exclamation. She ran down the steps leading to the road and disappeared
+in the fog.
+
+Boyson stood looking after her, his mind in a whirl.
+
+The manager of the hotel came hurriedly out of the same door by which
+Daphne Floyd had emerged, and spoke to a waiter on the veranda, pointing
+in the direction she had taken.
+
+Boyson heard what was said, and came up. A short conversation passed
+between him and the manager. There was a moment's pause on Boyson's
+part; he still held French's letter in his hand. At last, thrusting it
+into his pocket, he hurried to the steps whereby Daphne had left the
+hotel, and pursued her into the cloud outside.
+
+The fog was now rolling back from the gorge, upon the Falls, blotting
+out the transient gleams which had seemed to promise a lifting of the
+veil, leaving nothing around or beneath but the white and thunderous
+abyss.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Daphne's purpose in quitting the hotel had been to find her way up the
+river by the road which runs along the gorge on the Canadian side, from
+the hotel to the Canadian Fall. Thick as the fog still was in the gorge
+she hoped to find some clearer air beyond it. She felt oppressed and
+stifled; and though she had told Madeleine that she was going out in
+search of effects and spectacle, it was in truth the neighbourhood of
+Alfred Boyson which had made her restless.
+
+The road was lit at intervals by electric lamps, but after a time she
+found the passage of it not particularly easy. Some repairs to the
+tramway lines were going on higher up, and she narrowly escaped various
+pitfalls in the shape of trenches and holes in the roadway, very
+insufficiently marked by feeble lamps. But the stir in her blood drove
+her on; so did the strangeness of this white darkness, suffused with
+moonlight, yet in this immediate neighbourhood of the Falls,
+impenetrable. She was impatient to get through it; to breathe an
+unembarrassed air.
+
+The roar at her left hand grew wilder. She had reached a point some
+distance from the hotel, close to the jutting corner, once open, now
+walled and protected, where the traveller approaches nearest to the edge
+of the Canadian Fall. She knew the spot well, and groping for the wall,
+she stood breathless and spray-beaten beside the gulf.
+
+Only a few yards from her the vast sheet of water descended. She could
+see nothing of it, but the wind of its mighty plunge blew back her hair,
+and her mackintosh cloak was soon dripping with the spray. Once, far
+away, above the Falls, she seemed to perceive a few dim lights along the
+bend of the river; perhaps from one of the great power-houses that tame
+to man's service the spirits of the water. Otherwise--nothing! She was
+alone with the perpetual challenge and fascination of the Falls.
+
+As she stood there she was seized by a tragic recollection. It was from
+this spot, so she believed, that Leopold Verrier had thrown himself
+over. The body had been carried down through the rapids, and recovered,
+terribly injured, in the deep eddying pool which the river makes below
+them. He had left no letter or message of any sort behind him. But the
+reasons for his suicide were clearly understood by a large public, whose
+main verdict upon it was the quiet "What else could he do?"
+
+Here, then, on this very spot, he had stood before his leap. Daphne had
+heard him described by various spectators of the marriage. He had been,
+it seemed, a man of sensitive temperament, who should have been an
+artist and was a man of business; a considerable musician, and something
+of a poet; proud of his race and faith and himself irreproachable, yet
+perpetually wounded through his family, which bore a name of ill-repute
+in the New York business world; passionately grateful to his wife for
+having married him, delighting in her beauty and charm, and foolishly,
+abjectly eager to heap upon her and their child everything that wealth
+could buy.
+
+"It was Madeleine's mother who made it hopeless," thought Daphne. "But
+for Mrs. Fanshaw--it might have lasted."
+
+And memory called up Mrs. Fanshaw, the beautifully dressed woman of
+fifty, with her pride of wealth and family, belonging to the strictest
+sect of New York's social _elite_, with her hard, fastidious face, her
+formidable elegance and self-possession. How she had loathed the
+marriage! And with what a harpy-like eagerness had she seized on the
+first signs of Madeleine's discontent and _ennui_; persuaded her to come
+home; prepared the divorce; poisoned public opinion. It was from a last
+interview with Mrs. Fanshaw that Leopold Verrier had gone straight to
+his death. What was it that she had said to him?
+
+Daphne lingered on the question; haunted, too, by other stray
+recollections of the dismal story--the doctor driving by in the early
+morning who had seen the fall; the discovery of the poor broken body;
+Madeleine's blanched stoicism, under the fierce coercion of her mother;
+and that strong, silent, slow-setting tide of public condemnation, which
+in this instance, at least, had avenged a cruel act.
+
+But at this point Daphne ceased to think about her friend. She found
+herself suddenly engaged in a heated self-defence. What comparison could
+there be between her case and Madeleine's?
+
+Fiercely she found herself going through the list of Roger's crimes; his
+idleness, treachery and deceit; his lack of any high ideals; his bad
+influence on the child; his luxurious self-indulgent habits, the lies he
+had told, the insults he had offered her. By now the story had grown to
+a lurid whole in her imagination, based on a few distorted facts, yet
+radically and monstrously untrue. Generally, however, when she dwelt
+upon it, it had power to soothe any smart of conscience, to harden any
+yearning of the heart, supposing she felt any. And by now she had almost
+ceased to feel any.
+
+But to-night she was mysteriously shaken and agitated. As she clung to
+the wall, which alone separated her from the echoing gulf beyond, she
+could not prevent herself from thinking of Roger, Roger as he was when
+Alfred Boyson introduced him to her, when they first married, and she
+had been blissfully happy; happy in the possession of such a god-like
+creature, in the envy of other women, in the belief that he was growing
+more and more truly attached to her.
+
+Her thoughts broke abruptly. "He married me for money!" cried the inward
+voice. Then she felt her cheeks tingling as she remembered her
+conversation with Madeleine on that very subject--how she had justified
+what she was now judging--how plainly she had understood and condoned
+it.
+
+"That was my inexperience! Besides, I knew nothing then of Chloe
+Fairmile. If I had--I should never have done it."
+
+She turned, startled. Steps seemed to be approaching her, of someone as
+yet invisible. Her nerves were all on edge, and she felt suddenly
+frightened. Strangers of all kinds visit and hang about Niagara; she was
+quite alone, known to be the rich Mrs. Floyd; if she were attacked--set
+upon----
+
+The outline of a man's form emerged; she heard her name, or rather the
+name she had renounced.
+
+"I saw you come in this direction, Mrs. Barnes. I knew the road was up
+in some places, and I thought in this fog you would allow me to warn you
+that walking was not very safe."
+
+The voice was Captain Boyson's; and they were now plain to each other as
+they stood a couple of yards apart. The fog, however, was at last
+slightly breaking. There was a gleam over the nearer water; not merely
+the lights, but the span of the bridge had begun to appear.
+
+Daphne composed herself with an effort.
+
+"I am greatly obliged to you," she said in her most freezing manner.
+"But I found no difficulty at all in getting through, and the fog is
+lifting."
+
+With a stiff inclination she turned in the direction of the hotel, but
+Captain Boyson stood in her way. She saw a face embarrassed yet
+resolved.
+
+"Mrs. Barnes, may I speak to you a few minutes?"
+
+Daphne gave a slight laugh.
+
+"I don't see how I can prevent it. So you didn't follow me, Captain
+Boyson, out of mere regard for my personal safety?"
+
+"If I hadn't come myself I should have sent someone," he replied
+quietly. "The hotel people were anxious. But I wished to come myself. I
+confess I had a very strong desire to speak to you."
+
+"There seems to be nothing and no one to interfere with it," said
+Daphne, in a tone of sarcasm. "I should be glad, however, with your
+permission, to turn homeward. I see Mrs. Boyson is here. You are, I
+suppose, on your wedding journey?"
+
+He moved out of her path, said a few conventional words, and they walked
+on. A light wind had risen and the fog was now breaking rapidly. As it
+gave way, the moonlight poured into the breaches that the wind made; the
+vast black-and-silver spectacle, the Falls, the gorge, the town
+opposite, the bridge, the clouds, began to appear in fragments,
+grandiose and fantastical.
+
+Daphne, presently, seeing that Boyson was slow to speak, raised her
+eyebrows and attempted a remark on the scene. Boyson interrupted her
+hurriedly.
+
+"I imagine, Mrs. Barnes, that what I wish to say will seem to you a
+piece of insolence. All the same, for the sake of our former friendship,
+I would ask you to bear with me."
+
+"By all means!"
+
+"I had no idea that you were in the hotel. About half an hour ago, on
+the veranda, I opened an English letter which arrived this evening. The
+news in it gave me great concern. Then I saw you appear, to my
+astonishment, in the distance. I asked the hotel manager if it were
+really you. He was about to send someone after you. An idea occurred to
+me. I saw my opportunity--and I pursued you."
+
+"And here I am, at your mercy!" said Daphne, with sudden sharpness. "You
+have left me no choice. However, I am quite willing."
+
+The voice was familiar yet strange. There was in it the indefinable
+hardening and ageing which seemed to Boyson to have affected the whole
+personality. What had happened to her? As he looked at her in the dim
+light there rushed upon them both the memory of those three weeks by the
+seaside years before, when he had fallen in love with her, and she had
+first trifled with, and then repulsed him.
+
+"I wished to ask you a question, in the name of our old friendship; and
+because I have also become a friend--as you know--of your husband."
+
+He felt, rather than saw, the start of anger in the woman beside him.
+
+"Captain Boyson! I cannot defend myself, but I would ask you to
+recognize ordinary courtesies. I have now no husband."
+
+"Of your husband," he repeated, without hesitation, yet gently. "By the
+law of England at least, which you accepted, and under which you became
+a British subject, you are still the wife of Roger Barnes, and he has
+done nothing whatever to forfeit his right to your wifely care. It is
+indeed of him and of his present state that I beg to be allowed to speak
+to you."
+
+He heard a little laugh beside him--unsteady and hysterical.
+
+"You beg for what you have already taken. I repeat, I am at your mercy.
+An American subject, Captain Boyson, knows nothing of the law of
+England. I have recovered my American citizenship, and the law of my
+country has freed me from a degrading and disastrous marriage!"
+
+"While Roger remains bound? Incapable, at the age of thirty, of marrying
+again, unless he renounces his country--permanently debarred from home
+and children!"
+
+His pulse ran quick. It was a strange adventure, this, to which he had
+committed himself!
+
+"I have nothing to do with English law, nothing whatever! It is unjust,
+monstrous. But that was no reason why I, too, should suffer!"
+
+"No reason for patience? No reason for pity?" said the man's voice,
+betraying emotion at last. "Mrs. Barnes, what do you know of Roger's
+present state?"
+
+"I have no need to know anything."
+
+"It matters nothing to you? Nothing to you that he has lost health, and
+character, and happiness, his child, his home, everything, owing to your
+action?"
+
+"Captain Boyson!" she cried, her composure giving way, "this is
+intolerable, outrageous! It is humiliating that you should even expect
+me to argue with you. Yet," she bit her lip, angry with the agitation
+that would assail her, "for the sake of our friendship to which you
+appeal, I would rather not be angry. What you say is monstrous!" her
+voice shook. "In the first place, I freed myself from a man who married
+me for money."
+
+"One moment! Do you forget that from the day you left him Roger has
+never touched a farthing of your money? That he returned everything to
+you?"
+
+"I had nothing to do with that; it was his own folly."
+
+"Yes, but it throws light upon his character. Would a mere
+fortune-hunter have done it? No, Mrs. Barnes!--that view of Roger does
+not really convince you, you do not really believe it."
+
+She smiled bitterly.
+
+"As it happens, in his letters to me after I left him, he amply
+confessed it."
+
+"Because his wish was to make peace, to throw himself at your feet. He
+accused himself, more than was just. But you do not really think him
+mercenary and greedy, you _know_ that he was neither! Mrs. Barnes, Roger
+is ill and lonely."
+
+"His mode of life accounts for it."
+
+"You mean that he has begun to drink, has fallen into bad company. That
+may be true. I cannot deny it. But consider. A man from whom everything
+is torn at one blow; a man of not very strong character, not accustomed
+to endure hardness.--Does it never occur to you that you took a
+frightful responsibility?"
+
+"I protected myself--and my child."
+
+He breathed deep.
+
+"Or rather--did you murder a life--that God had given you in trust?"
+
+He paused, and she paused also, as though held by the power of his will.
+They were passing along the public garden that borders the road; scents
+of lilac and fresh leaf floated over the damp grass; the moonlight was
+growing in strength, and the majesty of the gorge, the roar of the
+leaping water all seemed to enter into the moral and human scene, to
+accent and deepen it.
+
+Daphne suddenly clung to a seat beside the path, dropped into it.
+
+"Captain Boyson! I--I cannot bear this any longer."
+
+"I will not reproach you any more," he said, quietly. "I beg your
+pardon. The past is irrevocable, but the present is here. The man who
+loved you, the father of your child, is alone, ill, poor, in danger of
+moral ruin, because of what you have done. I ask you to go to his aid.
+But first let me tell you exactly what I have just heard from England."
+He repeated the greater part of French's letter, so far as it concerned
+Roger.
+
+"He has his mother," said Daphne, when he paused, speaking with evident
+physical difficulty.
+
+"Lady Barnes I hear had a paralytic stroke two months ago. She is
+incapable of giving advice or help."
+
+"Of course, I am sorry. But Herbert French----"
+
+"No one but a wife could save him--no one!" he repeated with emphasis.
+
+"I am _not_ his wife!" she insisted faintly. "I released myself by
+American law. He is nothing to me." As she spoke she leant back against
+the seat and closed her eyes. Boyson saw clearly that excitement and
+anger had struck down her nervous power, that she might faint or go into
+hysterics. Yet a man of remarkable courtesy and pitifulness towards
+women was not thereby moved from his purpose. He had his chance; he
+could not relinquish it. Only there was something now in her attitude
+which recalled the young Daphne of years ago; which touched his heart.
+
+He sat down beside her.
+
+"Bear with me, Mrs. Barnes, for a few moments, while I put it as it
+appears to another mind. You became first jealous of Roger, for very
+small reason, then tired of him. Your marriage no longer satisfied
+you--you resolved to be quit of it; so you appealed to laws of which, as
+a nation, we are ashamed, which all that is best among us will, before
+long, rebel against and change. Our State system permits them--America
+suffers. In this case--forgive me if I put it once more as it appears to
+me--they have been used to strike at an Englishman who had absolutely no
+defence, no redress. And now you are free; he remains bound--so long, at
+least, as you form no other tie. Again I ask you, have you ever let
+yourself face what it means to a man of thirty to be cut off from lawful
+marriage and legitimate children? Mrs. Barnes! you know what a man is,
+his strength and his weakness. Are you really willing that Roger should
+sink into degradation in order that you may punish him for some offence
+to your pride or your feeling? It may be too late! He may, as French
+fears, have fallen into some fatal entanglement; it may not be possible
+to restore his health. He may not be able"--he hesitated, then brought
+the words out firmly--"to forgive you. Or again, French's anxieties
+about him may be unfounded. But for God's sake go to him! Once on
+English ground you are his wife again as though nothing had happened.
+For God's sake put every thing aside but the thought of the vow you once
+made to him! Go back! I implore you, go back! I promise you that no
+happiness you have ever felt will be equal to the happiness that step
+would bring you, if only you are permitted to save him."
+
+Daphne was by now shaking from head to foot. The force of feeling which
+impelled him so mastered her that when he gravely took her hand she did
+not withdraw it. She had a strange sense of having at last discovered
+the true self of the quiet, efficient, unpretending man she had known
+for so long and cast so easily aside. There was shock and excitement in
+it, as there is in all trials of strength between a man and a woman. She
+tried to hate and despise him, but she could not achieve it. She longed
+to answer and crush him, but her mind was a blank, her tongue refused
+its office. Surprise, resentment, wounded feeling made a tumult and
+darkness through which she could not find her way.
+
+She rose at last painfully from her seat.
+
+"This conversation must end," she said brokenly. "Captain Boyson, I
+appeal to you as a gentleman, let me go on alone."
+
+He looked at her sadly and stood aside. But as he saw her move
+uncertainly toward a portion of the road where various trenches and pits
+made walking difficult, he darted after her.
+
+"Please!" he said peremptorily, "this bit is unsafe."
+
+He drew her hand within his arm and guided her. As he did so he saw that
+she was crying; no doubt, as he rightly guessed, from shaken nerves and
+wounded pride; for it did not seem to him that she had yielded at all.
+But this time he felt distress and compunction.
+
+"Forgive me!" he said, bending over her. "But think of what I have
+said--I beg of you! Be kind, be merciful!"
+
+She made various attempts to speak, and at last she said, "I bear you no
+malice. But you don't understand me, you never have."
+
+He offered no reply. They had reached the courtyard of the hotel. Daphne
+withdrew her hand. When she reached the steps she preceded him without
+looking back, and was soon lost to sight.
+
+Boyson shook his head, lit a cigar, and spent some time longer pacing up
+and down the veranda. When he went to his wife's room he found her
+asleep, a vision of soft youth and charm. He stood a few moments looking
+down upon her, wondering in himself at what he had done. Yet he knew
+very well that it was the stirring and deepening of his whole being
+produced by love that had impelled him to do it.
+
+Next morning he told his wife.
+
+"Do you suppose I produced _any_ effect?" he asked her anxiously. "If
+she really thinks over what I said, she _must_ be touched! unless she's
+made of flint. I said all the wrong things--but I _did_ rub it in."
+
+"I'm sure you did," said his wife, smiling. Then she looked at him with
+a critical tenderness.
+
+"You dear optimist!" she cried, and slipped her hand into his.
+
+"That means you think I behaved like a fool, and that my appeal won't
+move her in the least?"
+
+The face beside him saddened.
+
+"Dear, dear optimist!" she repeated, and pressed his hand. He urged an
+explanation of her epithet. But she only said, thoughtfully:
+
+"You took a great responsibility!"
+
+"Towards her?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"No--towards him!"
+
+Meanwhile Daphne was watching beside a death-bed. On her return from her
+walk she had been met by the news of fresh and grave symptoms in Mrs.
+Verrier's case. A Boston doctor arrived the following morning. The
+mortal disease which had attacked her about a year before this date had
+entered, so he reported, on its last phase. He talked of a few
+days--possibly hours.
+
+The Boysons departed, having left cards of inquiry and sympathy, of
+which Mrs. Floyd took no notice. Then for Daphne there followed a
+nightmare of waiting and pain. She loved Madeleine Verrier, as far as
+she was capable of love, and she jealously wished to be all in all to
+her in these last hours. She would have liked to feel that it was she
+who had carried her friend through them; who had nobly sustained her in
+the dolorous past. To have been able to feel this would have been as
+balm moreover to a piteously wounded self-love, to a smarting and bitter
+recollection, which would not let her rest.
+
+But in these last days Madeleine escaped her altogether. A thin-faced
+priest arrived, the same who had been visiting the invalid at intervals
+for a month or two. Mrs. Verrier was received into the Roman Catholic
+Church; she made her first confession and communion; she saw her mother
+for a short, final interview, and her little girl; and the physical
+energy required for these acts exhausted her small store. Whenever
+Daphne entered her room Madeleine received her tenderly; but she could
+speak but little, and Daphne felt herself shut out and ignored. What she
+said or thought was no longer, it seemed, of any account. She resented
+and despised Madeleine's surrender to what she held to be a decaying
+superstition; and her haughty manner toward the mild Oratorian whom she
+met occasionally on the stairs, or in the corridor, expressed her
+disapproval. But it was impossible to argue with a dying woman. She
+suffered in silence.
+
+As she sat beside the patient, in the hours of narcotic sleep, when she
+relieved one of the nurses, she went often through times of great
+bitterness. She could not forgive the attack Captain Boyson had made
+upon her; yet she could not forget it. It had so far roused her moral
+sense that it led her to a perpetual brooding over the past, a perpetual
+re-statement of her own position. She was most troubled, often, by
+certain episodes in the past, of which, she supposed Alfred Boyson knew
+least; the corrupt use she had made of her money; the false witnesses
+she had paid for; the bribes she had given. At the time it had seemed to
+her all part of the campaign, in the day's work. She had found herself
+in a _milieu_ that demoralized her; her mind had become like "the dyer's
+hand, subdued to what it worked in." Now, she found herself thinking in
+a sudden terror, "If Alfred Boyson knew so and so!" or, as she looked
+down on Madeleine's dying face, "Could I even tell Madeleine that?" And
+then would come the dreary thought, "I shall never tell her anything any
+more. She is lost to me--even before death."
+
+She tried to avoid thinking of Roger; but the memory of the scene with
+Alfred Boyson did, in truth, bring him constantly before her. An inner
+debate began, from which she could not escape. She grew white and ill
+with it. If she could have rushed away from it, into the full stream of
+life, have thrown herself into meetings and discussion, have resumed her
+place as the admired and flattered head of a particular society, she
+could easily have crushed and silenced the thoughts which tormented her.
+
+But she was held fast. She could not desert Madeleine Verrier in death;
+she could not wrench her own hand from this frail hand which clung to
+it; even though Madeleine had betrayed the common cause, had yielded at
+last to that moral and spiritual cowardice which--as all freethinkers
+know--has spoiled and clouded so many death-beds. Daphne--the skimmer of
+many books--remembered how Renan--_sain et sauf_--had sent a challenge
+to his own end, and defying the possible weakness of age and sickness,
+had demanded to be judged by the convictions of life, and not by the
+terrors of death. She tried to fortify her own mind by the recollection.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first days of June broke radiantly over the great gorge and the
+woods which surround it. One morning, early, between four and five
+o'clock, Daphne came in, to find Madeleine awake and comparatively at
+ease. Yet the preceding twenty-four hours had been terrible, and her
+nurses knew that the end could not be far off.
+
+The invalid had just asked that her couch might be drawn as near to the
+window as possible, and she lay looking towards the dawn, which rose in
+fresh and windless beauty over the town opposite and the white splendour
+of the Falls. The American Fall was still largely in shadow; but the
+light struck on the fresh green of Goat Island and leaped in tongues of
+fire along the edge of the Horseshoe, turning the rapids above it to
+flame and sending shafts into the vast tower of spray that holds the
+centre of the curve. Nature was all youth, glitter and delight; summer
+was rushing on the gorge; the mingling of wood and water was at its
+richest and noblest.
+
+Madeleine turned her face towards the gorge, her wasted hands clasped on
+her breast. She beckoned Daphne with a smile, and Daphne knelt down
+beside her.
+
+"The water!" said the whispering voice; "it was once so terrible. I am
+not afraid--now."
+
+"No, darling. Why should you be?"
+
+"I know now, I shall see him again."
+
+Daphne was silent.
+
+"I hoped it, but I couldn't be certain. That was so awful. Now--I am
+certain."
+
+"Since you became a Catholic?"
+
+She made a sign of assent.
+
+"I couldn't be uncertain--I _couldn't_!" she added with fervour, looking
+strangely at Daphne. And Daphne understood that no voice less positive
+or self-confident than that of Catholicism, no religion less well
+provided with tangible rites and practices, could have lifted from the
+spirit the burden of that remorse which had yet killed the body.
+
+A little later Madeleine drew her down again.
+
+"I couldn't talk, Daphne--I was afraid; but I've written to you, just
+bit by bit, as I had strength. Oh, Daphne----!"
+
+Then voice and strength failed her. Her eyes piteously followed her
+friend for a little, and then closed.
+
+She lingered through the day; and at night when the June starlight was
+on the gorge, she passed away, with the voice of the Falls in her dying
+ears. A tragic beauty--"beauty born of murmuring sound--had passed into
+her face;" and that great plunge of many waters, which had been to her
+in life the symbol of anguish and guilt, had become in some mysterious
+way the comforter of her pain, the friend of her last sleep.
+
+A letter was found for Daphne in the little box beside her bed.
+
+It ran thus:
+
+     DAPHNE, DARLING,--
+
+     "It was I who first taught you that we may follow our own lawless
+     wills, and that marriage is something we may bend or break as we
+     will. But, oh! it is not so. Marriage is mysterious and wonderful;
+     it is the supreme test of men and women. If we wrong it, and
+     despise it, we mutilate the divine in ourselves.
+
+     "Oh, Daphne! it is a small thing to say 'Forgive!' Yet it means the
+     whole world.--
+
+     "And you can still say it to the living. It has been my anguish
+     that I could only say it to the dead.... Daphne, good-bye! I have
+     fought a long, long fight, but God is master--I bless--I adore----"
+
+Daphne sat staring at the letter through a mist of unwilling tears. All
+its phrases, ideas, preconceptions, were unwelcome, unreal to her,
+though she knew they had been real to Madeleine.
+
+Yet the compulsion of the dead was upon her, and of her scene with
+Boyson. What they asked of her--Madeleine and Alfred Boyson--was of
+course out of the question; the mere thought of that humiliating word
+"forgiveness" sent a tingle of passion through her. But was there no
+third course?--something which might prove to all the world how full of
+resource and generosity a woman may be?
+
+She pondered through some sleepless hours; and at last she saw her way
+plain.
+
+Within a week she had left New York for Europe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+The ship on which Daphne travelled had covered about half her course. On
+a certain June evening Mrs. Floyd, walking up and down the promenade
+deck, found her attention divided between two groups of her
+fellow-travellers; one taking exercise on the same deck as herself; the
+other, a family party, on the steerage deck, on which many persons in
+the first class paused to look down with sympathy as they reached the
+dividing rail aft.
+
+The group on the promenade deck consisted of a lady and gentleman, and a
+boy of seven. The elders walked rapidly; holding themselves stiffly
+erect, and showing no sign of acquaintance with anyone on board. The
+child dragged himself wearily along behind them, looking sometimes from
+side to side at the various people passing by, with eyes no less furtive
+than his mother's. She was a tall and handsome woman, with extravagantly
+marine clothes and much false hair. Her companion, a bulky and
+ill-favoured man, glanced superciliously at the ladies in the deck
+chairs, bestowing always a more attentive scrutiny than usual on a very
+pretty girl, who was lying reading midway down, with a white lace scarf
+draped round her beautiful hair and the harmonious oval of her face.
+Daphne, watching him, remembered that she had see him speaking to the
+girl--who was travelling alone--on one or two occasions. For the rest,
+they were a notorious couple. The woman had been twice divorced, after
+misdoings which had richly furnished the newspapers; the man belonged to
+a financial class with which reputable men of business associate no more
+than they are obliged. The ship left them severely alone; and they
+retaliated by a manner clearly meant to say that they didn't care a
+brass farthing for the ship.
+
+The group on the steerage deck was of a very different kind. It was made
+up of a consumptive wife, a young husband and one or two children. The
+wife's malady, recently declared, had led to their being refused
+admission to the States. They had been turned back from the emigrant
+station on Ellis Island, and were now sadly returning to Liverpool. But
+the courage of the young and sweet-faced mother, the devotion of her
+Irish husband, the charm of her dark-eyed children, had roused much
+feeling in an idle ship, ready for emotion. There had been a collection
+for them among the passengers; a Liverpool shipowner, in the first
+class, had promised work to the young man on landing; the mother was to
+be sent to a sanatorium; the children cared for during her absence. The
+family made a kind of nucleus round which whatever humanity--or whatever
+imitation of it--there was on board might gather and crystallize. There
+were other mournful cases indeed to be studied on the steerage deck, but
+none in which misfortune was so attractive.
+
+As she walked up and down, or sat in the tea room catching fragments of
+the conversation round her, Daphne was often secretly angered by the
+public opinion she perceived, favourable in the one case, hostile in the
+other. How ignorant and silly it was--this public opinion. As to
+herself, she was soon aware that a few people on board had identified
+her and communicated their knowledge to others. On the whole, she felt
+herself treated with deference. Her own version of her story was clearly
+accepted, at least by the majority; some showed her an unspoken but
+evident sympathy, while her wealth made her generally interesting. Yet
+there were two or three in whom she felt or fancied a more critical
+attitude; who looked at her coolly, and seemed to avoid her. Bostonian
+Pharisees, no doubt!--ignorant of all those great expansions of the
+female destiny that were going forward.
+
+The fact was--she admitted it--that she was abnormally sensitive. These
+moral judgments, of different sorts, of which she was conscious,
+floating as it were in the life around her, which her mind isolated and
+magnified, found her smarting and sore, and would not let her be. Her
+irritable pride was touched at every turn; she hardly knew why. She was
+not to be judged by anybody; she was her own defender and her own judge.
+If she was no longer a symbolic and sympathetic figure--like that young
+mother among her children--she had her own claims. In the secrecy of the
+mind she fiercely set them out.
+
+The days passed, however, and as she neared the English shores her
+resistance to a pursuing thought became fainter. It was, of course,
+Boyson's astonishing appeal to her that had let loose the Avenging
+Goddesses. She repelled them with scorn; yet all the same they hurtled
+round her. After all, she was no monster. She had done a monstrous thing
+in a sudden brutality of egotism; and a certain crude state of law and
+opinion had helped her to do it, had confused the moral values and
+falsified her conscience. But she was not yet brutalized. Moreover, do
+what she would, she was still in a world governed by law; a world at the
+heart of which broods a power austere and immutable; a power which man
+did not make, which, if he clash with it, grinds him to powder. Its
+manifestations in Daphne's case were slight, but enough. She was not
+happy, that certainly was clear. She did not suppose she ever would be
+happy again. Whatever it was--just, heroic, or the reverse--the action
+by which she had violently changed her life had not been a success,
+estimated by results. No other man had attracted her since she had cast
+Roger off; her youth seemed to be deserting her; she saw herself in the
+glass every morning with discontent, even a kind of terror; she had lost
+her child. And in these suspended hours of the voyage, when life floats
+between sky and sea, amid the infinity of weaves, all that she had been
+doing since the divorce, her public "causes" and triumphs, the
+adulations with which she had been surrounded, began to seem to her
+barren and futile. No, she was not happy; what she had done had not
+answered; and she knew it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One night, a night of calm air and silvery sea, she hung over the ship's
+side, dreaming rather miserably. The ship, aglow with lights, alive with
+movement, with talk, laughter and music, glided on between the stars and
+the unfathomable depths of the mid-Atlantic. Nothing, to north and
+south, between her and the Poles; nothing but a few feet of iron and
+timber between her and the hungry gulfs in which the highest Alp would
+sink from sight. The floating palace, hung by Knowledge above Death,
+just out of Death's reach, suggested to her a number of melancholy
+thoughts and images. A touch of more than Arctic cold stole upon her,
+even through this loveliness of a summer night; she felt desperately
+unhappy and alone.
+
+From the saloon came a sound of singing:
+
+    _"An die Lippen wollt' ich pressen
+      Deine kleine weisse Hand,
+    Und mit Thraenen sie benetzen
+      Deine kleine weisse Hand."_
+
+The tears came to her eyes. She remembered that she, too, had once felt
+the surrender and the tenderness of love.
+
+Then she brushed the tears away, angry with herself and determined to
+brood no more. But she looked round her in vain for a companion who
+might distract her. She had made no friends on board, and though she had
+brought with her a secretary and a maid, she kept them both at arm's
+length, and they never offered their society without an invitation.
+
+What was she going to do? And why was she making this journey?
+
+Because the injustice and absurdity of English law had distorted and
+besmirched her own perfectly legitimate action. They had given a handle
+to such harsh critics as Alfred Boyson. But she meant somehow to put
+herself right; and not only herself, but the great cause of woman's
+freedom and independence. No woman, in the better future that is coming,
+shall be forced either by law or opinion to continue the relations of
+marriage with a man she has come to despise. Marriage is merely
+proclaimed love; and if love fails, marriage has no further meaning or
+_raison d'etre_; it comes, or should come, automatically to an end. This
+is the first article in the woman's charter, and without it marriage
+itself has neither value nor sanctity. She seemed to hear sentences of
+this sort, in her own voice, echoing about windy halls, producing waves
+of emotion on a sea of strained faces--women's faces, set and pale, like
+that of Madeleine Verrier. She had never actually made such a speech,
+but she felt she would like to have made it.
+
+What was she going to do? No doubt Roger would resent her coming--would
+probably refuse to see her, as she had once refused to see him. Well,
+she must try and act with dignity and common sense; she must try and
+persuade him to recognize her good faith, and to get him to listen to
+what she proposed. She had her plan for Roger's reclamation, and was
+already in love with it. Naturally, she had never meant permanently to
+hurt or injure Roger! She had done it for his good as well as her own.
+Yet even as she put this plea forward in the inner tribunal of
+consciousness, she knew that it was false.
+
+_"You have murdered a life!"_ Well, that was what prejudiced and
+hide-bound persons like Alfred Boyson said, and no doubt always would
+say. She could not help it; but for her own dignity's sake, that moral
+dignity in which she liked to feel herself enwrapped, she would give as
+little excuse for it as possible.
+
+Then, as she stood looking eastward, a strange thought struck her. Once
+on that farther shore and she would be Roger's wife again--an English
+subject, and Roger's wife. How ridiculous, and how intolerable! When
+shall we see some real comity of nations in these matters of
+international marriage and divorce?
+
+She had consulted her lawyers in New York before starting; on Roger's
+situation first of all, but also on her own. Roger, it seemed, might
+take certain legal steps, once he was aware of her being again on
+English ground. But, of course, he would not take them. "It was never me
+he cared for--only Beatty!" she said to herself with a bitter
+perversity. Still the thought of returning within the range of the old
+obligations, the old life, affected her curiously. There were hours,
+especially at night, when she felt shut up with thoughts of Roger and
+Beatty--her husband and her child--just as of old.
+
+How, in the name of justice, was she to blame for Roger's illness? Her
+irritable thoughts made a kind of grievance against him of the attack of
+pneumonia which she was told had injured his health. He must have
+neglected himself in some foolish way. The strongest men are the most
+reckless of themselves. In any case, how was it her fault?
+
+One night she woke up suddenly, in the dawn, her heart beating
+tumultuously. She had been dreaming of her meeting--her possible
+meeting--with Roger. Her face was flushed, her memory confused. She
+could not recall the exact words or incidents of the dream, only that
+Roger had been in some way terrible and terrifying.
+
+And as she sat up in her berth, trying to compose herself, she recalled
+the last time she had seen him at Philadelphia--a painful scene--and his
+last broken words to her, as he turned back from the door to speak
+them:--
+
+"As to Beatty, I hold you responsible! She is my child, no less than
+yours. You shall answer to me! Remember that!"
+
+Answer to him? Beatty was dead--in spite of all that love and science
+could do. Involuntarily she began to weep as she remembered the child's
+last days; the little choked cry, once or twice, for "Daddy!" followed,
+so long as life maintained its struggle, by a childish anger that he did
+not come. And then the silencing of the cry, and the last change and
+settling in the small face, so instinct already with feeling and
+character, so prophetic of the woman to be.
+
+A grief, of course, never to be got over; but for which she, Daphne,
+deserved pity and tenderness, not reproaches. She hardened herself to
+meet the coming trial.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She arrived in London in the first week of July, and her first act was
+to post a letter to Herbert French, addressed to his East-End vicarage,
+a letter formally expressed and merely asking him to give the writer
+"twenty minutes' conversation on a subject of common interest to us
+both." The letter was signed "Daphne Floyd," and a stamped envelope
+addressed to "Mrs. Floyd" was enclosed. By return of post she received a
+letter from a person unknown to her, the curate, apparently, in charge
+of Mr. French's parish. The letter informed her that her own
+communication had not been forwarded, as Mr. French had gone away for a
+holiday after a threat of nervous breakdown in consequence of overwork;
+and business letters and interviews were being spared him as much as
+possible. "He is, however, much better, I am glad to say, and if the
+subject on which you wish to speak to him is really urgent, his present
+address is Prospect House, St. Damian's, Ventnor. But unless it is
+urgent it would be a kindness not to trouble him with it until he
+returns to town, which will not be for another fortnight."
+
+Daphne walked restlessly up and down her hotel sitting-room. Of course
+the matter was urgent. The health of an East-End clergyman--already, it
+appeared, much amended--was not likely to seem of much importance to a
+woman of her temperament, when it stood in the way of her plans.
+
+But she would not write, she would go. She had good reason to suppose
+that Herbert French would not welcome a visit from her; he might indeed
+very easily use his health as an excuse for not seeing her. But she must
+see him.
+
+By mid-day she was already on her way to the Isle of Wight. About five
+o'clock she arrived at Ventnor, where she deposited maid and luggage.
+She then drove out alone to St. Damian's, a village a few miles north,
+through a radiant evening. The twinkling sea was alive with craft of all
+sizes, from the great liner leaving its trail of smoke along the
+horizon, to the white-sailed yachts close upon the land. The woods of
+the Undercliff sank softly to the blues and purple, the silver streaks
+and gorgeous shadows of the sea floor. The lights were broad and rich.
+After a hot day, coolness had come and the air was delightful.
+
+But Daphne sat erect, noticing nothing but the relief of the lowered
+temperature after her hot and tiresome journey. She applied herself
+occasionally to natural beauty, as she applied herself to music or
+literature, but it is not to women of her type that the true passion of
+it--"the soul's bridegroom"--comes. And she was absorbed in thinking how
+she should open her business to Herbert French.
+
+Prospect House turned out to be a detached villa standing in a garden,
+with a broad view of the Channel. Daphne sent her carriage back to the
+inn and climbed the steep drive which led up to the verandaed house. The
+front garden was empty, but voices--voices, it seemed, of children--came
+from behind the house where there was a grove of trees.
+
+"Is Mr. Herbert French at home?" she asked of the maid who answered her
+bell.
+
+The girl looked at her doubtfully.
+
+"Yes, ma'am--but he doesn't see visitors yet. Shall I tell Mrs. French?
+She's in the garden with the children."
+
+"No, thank you," said Daphne, firmly. "It's Mr. French I have come to
+see, and I am sure that he will wish to see me. Will you kindly give him
+my card? I will come in and wait."
+
+And she brushed past the maid, who was intimidated by the visitor's
+fashionable dress and by the drooping feathers of her Paris hat, in
+which the sharp olive-skinned face with its magnificent eyes was
+picturesquely framed. The girl gave way unwillingly, showed Mrs. Floyd
+into a small study looking on the front garden, and left her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Elsie!" cried Herbert French, springing from the low chair in which he
+had been lounging in his shirt-sleeves with a book when the parlour-maid
+found him, "Elsie!"
+
+His wife, who was at the other end of the lawn, playing with the
+children, the boy on her back and a pair of girl twins clinging to her
+skirts, turned in astonishment and hurried back to him.
+
+"Mrs. Floyd?" They both looked at the card in bewilderment. "Who is it?
+Mrs. Floyd?"
+
+Then French's face changed.
+
+"What is this lady like?" he asked peremptorily of the parlour-maid.
+
+"Well, sir, she's a dark lady, dressed very smart----"
+
+"Has she very black eyes?"
+
+"Oh yes, sir!"
+
+"Young?"
+
+The girl promptly replied in the negative, qualifying it a moment
+afterward by a perplexed "Well, I shouldn't say so, sir."
+
+French thought a moment.
+
+"Thank you. I will come in."
+
+He turned to his wife with a rapid question, under his breath. "Where is
+Roger?"
+
+Elsie stared at him, her colour paling.
+
+"Herbert!--it can't--it can't----"
+
+"I suspect it is--Mrs. Barnes," said French slowly. "Help me on with my
+coat, darling. Now then, what shall we do?"
+
+"She can't have come to force herself on him!" cried his wife
+passionately.
+
+"Probably she knows nothing of his being here. Did he go for a walk?"
+
+"Yes, towards Sandown. But he will be back directly."
+
+A quick shade of expression crossed French's face, which his wife knew
+to mean that whenever Roger was out by himself there was cause for
+anxiety. But the familiar trouble was immediately swallowed up in the
+new and pressing one.
+
+"What can that woman have come to say?" he asked, half of himself, half
+of his wife, as he walked slowly back to the house. Elsie had conveyed
+the children to their nurse, and was beside him.
+
+"Perhaps she repents!" The tone was dry and short; it flung a challenge
+to misdoing.
+
+"I doubt it! But Roger?" French stood still, pondering. "Keep him,
+darling--intercept him if you can. If he must see her, I will come out.
+But we mustn't risk a shock."
+
+They consulted a little in low voices. Then French went into the house
+and Elsie came back to her children. She stood thinking, her fine face,
+so open-browed and purely lined, frowning and distressed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"You wished to see me, Mrs. Barnes?"
+
+French had closed the door of the study behind him and stood without
+offering to shake hands with his visitor, coldly regarding her.
+
+Daphne rose from her seat, reddening involuntarily.
+
+"My name is no longer what you once knew it, Mr. French. I sent you my
+card."
+
+French made a slight inclination and pointed to the chair from which she
+had risen.
+
+"Pray sit down. May I know what has brought you here?"
+
+Daphne resumed her seat, her small hands fidgeting on her parasol.
+
+"I wished to come and consult with you, Mr. French. I had heard a
+distressing account of--of Roger, from a friend in America."
+
+"I see," said French, on whom a sudden light dawned. "You met Boyson at
+Niagara--that I knew--and you are here because of what he said to you?"
+
+"Yes, partly." The speaker looked round the room, biting her lip, and
+French observed her for a moment. He remembered the foreign vivacity and
+dash, the wilful grace of her youth, and marvelled at her stiffened,
+pretentious air, her loss of charm. Instinctively the saint in him knew
+from the mere look of her that she had been feeding herself on egotisms
+and falsehoods, and his heart hardened. Daphne resumed:
+
+"If Captain Boyson has given you an account of our interview, Mr.
+French, it was probably a one-sided one. However, that is _not_ the
+point. He _did_ distress me very much by his account, which I gather
+came from you--of--of Roger, and although, of course, it is a very
+awkward matter for me to move in, I still felt impelled for old times'
+sake to come over and see whether I could not help you--and his other
+friends--and, of course, his mother----"
+
+"His mother is out of the question," interrupted French. "She is, I am
+sorry to say, a helpless invalid."
+
+"Is it really as bad as that? I hoped for better news. Then I apply to
+you--to you chiefly. Is there anything that I could do to assist you, or
+others, to----"
+
+"To save him?" French put in the words as she hesitated.
+
+Daphne was silent.
+
+"What is your idea?" asked French, after a moment. "You heard, I
+presume, from Captain Boyson that my wife and I were extremely anxious
+about Roger's ways and habits; that we cannot induce him, or, at any
+rate, we have not yet been able to induce him, to give up drinking; that
+his health is extremely bad, and that we are sometimes afraid that there
+is now some secret in his life of which he is ashamed?"
+
+"Yes," said Daphne, fidgeting with a book on the table. "Yes, that is
+what I heard."
+
+"And you have come to suggest something?"
+
+"Is there no way by which Roger can become as free as I now am!" she
+said suddenly, throwing back her head.
+
+"By which Roger can obtain his divorce from you--and marry again? None,
+in English law."
+
+"But there is--in Colonial law." She began to speak hurriedly and
+urgently. "If Roger were to go to New Zealand, or to Australia, he
+could, after a time, get a divorce for desertion. I know he could--I
+have inquired. It doesn't seem to be certain what effect my action--the
+American decree, I mean--would have in an English colony. My lawyers are
+going into it. But at any rate there is the desertion and then"--she
+grew more eager--"if he married abroad--in the Colony--the marriage
+would be valid. No one could say a word to him when he returned to
+England."
+
+French looked at her in silence. She went on--with the unconscious
+manner of one accustomed to command her world, to be the oracle and
+guide of subordinates:--
+
+"Could we not induce him to go? Could you not? Very likely he would
+refuse to see me; and, of course, he has, most unjustly to me, I think,
+refused to take any money from me. But the money might be provided
+without his knowing where it came from. A young doctor might be sent
+with him--some nice fellow who would keep him amused and look after him.
+At Heston he used to take a great interest in farming. He might take up
+land. I would pay anything--anything! He might suppose it came from some
+friend."
+
+French smiled sadly. His eyes were on the ground. She bent forward.
+
+"I beg of you, Mr. French, not to set yourself against me! Of
+course"--she drew herself up proudly--"I know what you must think of my
+action. Our views are different, irreconcilably different. You probably
+think all divorce wrong. We think, in America, that a marriage which has
+become a burden to either party is no marriage, and ought to cease. But
+that, of course"--she waved a rhetorical hand--"we cannot discuss. I do
+not propose for a moment to discuss it. You must allow me my national
+point of view. But surely we can, putting all that aside, combine to
+help Roger?"
+
+"To marry again?" said French, slowly. "It can't, I fear, be done--what
+you propose--in the time. I doubt whether Roger has two years to live."
+
+Daphne started.
+
+"Roger!--to live?" she repeated, in horror. "What is really the matter?
+Surely nothing more than care and a voyage could set right?"
+
+French shook his head.
+
+"We have been anxious about him for some time. That terrible attack of
+septic pneumonia in New York, as we now know, left the heart injured and
+the lungs weakened. He was badly nursed, and his state of mind at the
+time--his misery and loneliness--left him little chance. Then the
+drinking habit, which he contracted during those wretched months in the
+States, has been of course sorely against him. However, we hoped against
+hope--Elsie and I--till a few weeks ago. Then someone, we don't know
+who, made him go to a specialist, and the verdict is--phthisis; not very
+advanced, but certain and definite. And the general outlook is not
+favourable."
+
+Daphne had grown pale.
+
+"We must send him away!" she said imperiously. "We must! A voyage, a
+good doctor, a dry climate, would save him, of course they would! Why,
+there is nothing necessarily fatal now in phthisis! Nothing! It is
+absurd to talk as though there were."
+
+Again French looked at her in silence. But as she had lost colour, he
+had gained it. His face, which the East End had already stamped, had
+grown rosy, his eyes sparkled.
+
+"Oh, do say something! Tell me what you suggest?" cried Daphne.
+
+"Do you really wish me to tell you what I suggest?"
+
+Daphne waited, her eyes first imploring, then beginning to shrink. He
+bent forward and touched her on the arm.
+
+"Go, Mrs. Barnes, and ask your husband's forgiveness! What will come of
+it I do not know. But you, at least, will have done something to set
+yourself right--with God."
+
+The Christian and the priest had spoken; the low voice in its intensity
+had seemed to ring through the quiet sun-flooded room. Daphne rose,
+trembling with resentment and antagonism.
+
+"It is you, then, Mr. French, who make it impossible for me to
+discuss--to help. I shall have to see if I can find some other means of
+carrying out my purpose."
+
+There was a voice outside. Daphne turned.
+
+"Who is that?"
+
+French ran to the glass door that opened on the veranda, and trying for
+an ordinary tone, waved somebody back who was approaching from without.
+Elsie came quickly round the corner of the house, calling to the
+new-comer.
+
+But Daphne saw who it was and took her own course. She, too, went to the
+window, and, passing French, she stepped into the veranda.
+
+"Roger!"
+
+A man hurried through the dusk. There was an exclamation, a silence. By
+this time French was on the lawn, his wife's quivering hand in his.
+Daphne retreated slowly into the study and Roger Barnes followed her.
+
+"Leave them alone," said French, and putting an arm round his wife he
+led her resolutely away, out of sound and sight.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Barnes stood silent, breathing heavily and leaning on the back of a
+chair. The western light from a side window struck full on him. But
+Daphne, the wave of excitement spent, was not looking at him. She had
+fallen upon a sofa, her face was in her hands.
+
+"What do you want with me?" said Roger at last. Then, in a sudden heat,
+"By God, I never wished to see you again!"
+
+Daphne's muffled voice came through her fingers.
+
+"I know that. You needn't tell me so!"
+
+Roger turned away.
+
+"You'll admit it's an intrusion?" he said fiercely. "I don't see what
+you and I have got to do with each other now."
+
+Daphne struggled for self-control. After all, she had always managed him
+in the old days. She would manage him now.
+
+"Roger--I--I didn't come to discuss the past. That's done with. But--I
+heard things about you--that----"
+
+"You didn't like?" he laughed. "I'm sorry, but I don't see what you have
+to do with them."
+
+Daphne's hand fidgeted with her dress, her eyes still cast down.
+
+"Couldn't we talk without bitterness? Just for ten minutes? It was from
+Captain Boyson that I heard----"
+
+"Oh, Boyson, was that it? And he got his information from French--poor
+old Herbert. Well, it's quite true. I'm no longer fit for your--or
+his--or anybody's society."
+
+He threw himself into an arm-chair, calmly took a cigarette out of a box
+that lay near, and lit it. Daphne at last ventured to look at him. The
+first and dominant impression was of something shrunken and diminished.
+His blue flannel suit hung loose on his shoulders and chest, his
+athlete's limbs. His features had been thinned and graved and scooped by
+fever and broken nights; all the noble line and proportion was still
+there, but for one who had known him of old the effect was no longer
+beautiful but ghastly. Daphne stared at him in dismay.
+
+He on his side observed his visitor, but with a cooler curiosity. Like
+French he noticed the signs of change, the dying down of brilliance and
+of bloom. To go your own way, as Daphne had done, did not seem to
+conduce to a woman's good looks.
+
+At last he threw in a dry interrogation.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I came to try and help you," Daphne broke out, turning her head away,
+"to ask Mr. French what I could do. It made me unhappy----"
+
+"Did it?" He laughed again. "I don't see why. Oh, you needn't trouble
+yourself. Elsie and Herbert are awfully good to me. They're all I want,
+or at any rate," he hesitated a moment, "they're all I _shall_
+want--from now on. Anyway, you know there'd be something grotesque in
+your trying your hand at reforming me."
+
+"I didn't mean anything of the kind!" she protested, stung by his tone.
+"I--I wanted to suggest something practical--some way by which you
+might--release yourself from me--and also recover your health."
+
+"Release myself from you?" he repeated. "That's easier said than done.
+Did you mean to send me to the Colonies--was that your idea?"
+
+His smile was hard to bear. But she went on, choking, yet determined.
+
+"That seems to be the only way--in English law. Why shouldn't you take
+it? The voyage, the new climate, would probably set you up again. You
+need only be away a short time."
+
+He looked at her in silence a moment, fingering his cigarette.
+
+"Thank you," he said at last, "thank you. And I suppose you offered us
+money? You told Herbert you would pay all expenses? Oh, don't be angry!
+I didn't mean anything uncivil. But," he raised himself with energy from
+his lounging position, "at the same time, perhaps you ought to know that
+I would sooner die a thousand times over than take a single silver
+sixpence that belonged to you!"
+
+Their eyes met, his quite calm, hers sparkling with resentment and pain.
+
+"Of course I can't argue with you if you meet me in that tone," she said
+passionately. "But I should have thought----"
+
+"Besides," he interrupted her, "you say it is the only way. You are
+quite mistaken. It is not the only way. As far as freeing me goes, you
+could divorce me to-morrow--here--if you liked. I have been unfaithful
+to you. A strange way of putting it--at the present moment--between you
+and me! But that's how it would appear in the English courts. And as to
+the 'cruelty'--that wouldn't give _you_ any trouble!"
+
+Daphne had flushed deeply. It was only by a great effort that she
+maintained her composure. Her eyes avoided him.
+
+"Mrs. Fairmile?" she said in a low voice.
+
+He threw back his head with a sound of scorn.
+
+"Mrs. Fairmile! You don't mean to tell me, Daphne, to my face, that you
+ever believed any of the lies--forgive the expression--that you, and
+your witnesses, and your lawyers told in the States--that you bribed
+those precious newspapers to tell?"
+
+"Of course I believed it!" she said fiercely. "And as for lies, it was
+you who began them."
+
+"You _believed_ that I had betrayed you with Chloe Fairmile?" He raised
+himself again, fixing his strange deep-set gaze upon her.
+
+"I never said----"
+
+"No! To that length you didn't quite go. I admit it. You were able to
+get your way without it." He sank back in his chair again. "No, my
+remark had nothing to do with Chloe. I have never set eyes on her since
+I left you at Heston. But--there was a girl, a shop-girl, a poor little
+thing, rather pretty. I came across her about six months ago--it doesn't
+matter how. She loves me, she was awfully good to me, a regular little
+brick. Some day I shall tell Herbert all about her--not yet--though, of
+course, he suspects. She'd serve your purpose, if you thought it worth
+while. But you won't----"
+
+"You're--living with her--now?"
+
+"No. I broke with her a fortnight ago, after I'd seen those doctors. She
+made me see them, poor little soul. Then I went to say good-bye to her,
+and she," his voice shook a little, "she took it hard. But it's all
+right. I'm not going to risk her life, or saddle her with a dying man.
+She's with her sister. She'll get over it."
+
+He turned his head towards the window, his eyes pursued the white sails
+on the darkening blue outside.
+
+"It's been a bad business, but it wasn't altogether my fault. I saved
+her from someone else, and she saved me, once or twice, from blowing my
+brains out."
+
+"What did the doctors say to you?" asked Daphne, brusquely, after a
+pause.
+
+"They gave me about two years," he said, indifferently, turning to knock
+off the end of his cigarette. "That doesn't matter." Then, as his eyes
+caught her face, a sudden animation sprang into his. He drew his chair
+nearer to her and threw away his cigarette. "Look here, Daphne, don't
+let's waste time. We shall never see each other again, and there are a
+number of things I want to know. Tell me everything you can remember
+about Beatty that last six months--and about her illness, you
+understand--never mind repeating what you told Boyson, and he told me.
+But there's lots more, there must be. Did she ever ask for me? Boyson
+said you couldn't remember. But you must remember!"
+
+He came closer still, his threatening eyes upon her. And as he did so,
+the dark presence of ruin and death, of things damning and irrevocable,
+which had been hovering over their conversation, approached with
+him--flapped their sombre wings in Daphne's face. She trembled all over.
+
+"Yes," she said, faintly, "she did ask for you."
+
+"Ah!" He gave a cry of delight. "Tell me--tell me at
+once--everything--from the beginning!"
+
+And held by his will, she told him everything--all the piteous story of
+the child's last days--sobbing herself; and for the first time making
+much of the little one's signs of remembering her father, instead of
+minimizing and ignoring them, as she had done in the talk with Boyson.
+It was as though for the first time she were trying to stanch a wound
+instead of widening it.
+
+He listened eagerly. The two heads--the father and mother--drew closer;
+one might have thought them lovers still, united by tender and sacred
+memories.
+
+But at last Roger drew himself away. He rose to his feet.
+
+"I'll forgive you much for that!" he said with a long breath. "Will you
+write it for me some day--all you've told me?"
+
+She made a sign of assent.
+
+"Well, now, you mustn't stay here any longer. I suppose you've got a
+carriage? And we mustn't meet again. There's no object in it. But I'll
+remember that you came."
+
+She looked at him. In her nature the great deeps were breaking up. She
+saw him as she had seen him in her first youth. And, at last, what she
+had done was plain to her.
+
+With a cry she threw herself on the floor beside him. She pressed his
+hand in hers.
+
+"Roger, let me stay! Let me nurse you!" she panted. "I didn't
+understand. Let me be your friend! Let me help! I implore--I implore
+you!"
+
+He hesitated a moment, then he lifted her to her feet decidedly, but not
+unkindly.
+
+"What do you mean?" he said, slowly. "Do you mean that you wish us to be
+husband and wife again? You are, of course, my wife, in the eye of
+English law, at this moment."
+
+"Let me try and help you!" she pleaded again, breaking into bitter
+tears. "I didn't--I didn't understand!"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"You can't help me. I--I'm afraid I couldn't bear it. We mustn't meet.
+It--it's gone too deep."
+
+He thrust his hands into his pockets and walked away to the window. She
+stood helplessly weeping.
+
+When he returned he was quite composed again.
+
+"Don't cry so," he said, calmly. "It's done. We can't help it. And don't
+make yourself too unhappy about me. I've had awful times. When I was ill
+in New York--it was like hell. The pain was devilish, and I wasn't used
+to being alone, and nobody caring a damn, and everybody believing me a
+cad and a bully. But I got over that. It was Beatty's death that hit me
+so hard, and that I wasn't there. It's that, somehow, I can't get
+over--that you did it--that you could have had the heart. It would
+always come between us. No, we're better apart. But I'll tell you
+something to comfort you. I've given up that girl, as I've told you, and
+I've given up drink. Herbert won't believe it, but he'll find it is so.
+And I don't mean to die before my time. I'm going out to Switzerland
+directly. I'll do all the correct things. You see, when a man _knows_
+he's going to die, well," he turned away, "he gets uncommonly curious as
+to what's going to come next."
+
+He walked up and down a few turns. Daphne watched him.
+
+"I'm not pious--I never was. But after all, the religious people profess
+to know something about it, and nobody else does. Just supposing it were
+true?"
+
+He stopped short, looking at her. She understood perfectly that he had
+Beatty in his mind.
+
+"Well, anyhow, I'm going to live decently for the rest of my time--and
+die decently. I'm not going to throw away chances. And don't trouble
+yourself about money. There's enough left to carry me through. Good-bye,
+Daphne!" He held out his hand to her.
+
+She took it, still dumbly weeping. He looked at her with pity.
+
+"Yes, I know, you didn't understand what you were doing. But you see,
+Daphne, marriage is----" he sought rather painfully for his words, "it's
+a big thing. If it doesn't make us, it ruins us; I didn't marry you for
+the best of reasons, but I was very fond of you--honour bright! I loved
+you in my way, I should have loved you more and more. I should have been
+a decent fellow if you'd stuck to me. I had all sorts of plans; you
+might have taught me anything. I was a fool about Chloe Fairmile, but
+there was nothing in it, you know there wasn't. And now it's all rooted
+up and done with. Women like to think such things can be mended, but
+they can't--they can't, indeed. It would be foolish to try."
+
+Daphne sank upon a chair and buried her face in her hands. He drew a
+long and painful breath. "I'm afraid I must go," he said waveringly.
+"I--I can't stand this any longer. Good-bye, Daphne, good-bye."
+
+She only sobbed, as though her life dissolved in grief. He drew near to
+her, and as she wept, hidden from him, he laid his hand a moment on her
+shoulder. Then he took up his hat.
+
+"I'm going now," he said in a low voice. "I shan't come back till you
+have gone."
+
+She heard him cross the room, his steps in the veranda. Outside, in the
+summer dark, a figure came to meet him. French drew Roger's arm into
+his, and the two walked away. The shadows of the wooded lane received
+them.
+
+A woman came quickly into the room.
+
+Elsie French looked down upon the sobbing Daphne, her own eyes full of
+tears, her hands clasped.
+
+"Oh, you poor thing!" she said, under her breath. "You poor thing!" And
+she knelt down beside her and folded her arms round her.
+
+So from the same heart that had felt a passionate pity for the victim,
+compassion flowed out on the transgressor. For where others feel the
+tragedy of suffering, the pure in heart realize with an infinitely
+sharper pain the tragedy of guilt.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+                             BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+
+    Amiel's Journal (translated)
+    Miss Bretherton
+    Robert Elsmere
+    The History of David Grieve
+    Marcella
+    Sir George Tressady
+    Helbeck of Bannisdale
+    Eleanor
+    Lady Rose's Daughter
+    The Marriage of William Ashe
+    Agatha
+    Fenwick's Career
+    Milly and Olly
+    The Testing of Diana Mallory
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Marriage a la mode, by Mrs. Humphry Ward
+
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