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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar;
+Mrs. Temperly, by Henry James
+
+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: A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly
+
+Author: Henry James
+
+Release Date: May 17, 2008 [EBook #25500]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LONDON LIFE ET AL. ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Martin Pettit and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A LONDON LIFE
+
+AND OTHER TALES
+
+
+[Illustration: Publisher's logo]
+
+
+A LONDON LIFE
+
+THE PATAGONIA
+
+THE LIAR
+
+MRS. TEMPERLY
+
+BY
+
+HENRY JAMES
+
+London
+MACMILLAN AND CO.
+AND NEW YORK
+1889
+
+
+COPYRIGHT 1889
+
+_BY_
+
+HENRY JAMES
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                  PAGE
+
+A LONDON LIFE        1
+
+THE PATAGONIA      159
+
+THE LIAR           241
+
+MRS. TEMPERLY      317
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+The last of the following four Tales originally appeared under a
+different name.
+
+
+
+
+A LONDON LIFE
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+It was raining, apparently, but she didn't mind--she would put on stout
+shoes and walk over to Plash. She was restless and so fidgety that it
+was a pain; there were strange voices that frightened her--they threw
+out the ugliest intimations--in the empty rooms at home. She would see
+old Mrs. Berrington, whom she liked because she was so simple, and old
+Lady Davenant, who was staying with her and who was interesting for
+reasons with which simplicity had nothing to do. Then she would come
+back to the children's tea--she liked even better the last half-hour in
+the schoolroom, with the bread and butter, the candles and the red fire,
+the little spasms of confidence of Miss Steet the nursery-governess, and
+the society of Scratch and Parson (their nicknames would have made you
+think they were dogs) her small, magnificent nephews, whose flesh was so
+firm yet so soft and their eyes so charming when they listened to
+stories. Plash was the dower-house and about a mile and a half, through
+the park, from Mellows. It was not raining after all, though it had
+been; there was only a grayness in the air, covering all the strong,
+rich green, and a pleasant damp, earthy smell, and the walks were smooth
+and hard, so that the expedition was not arduous.
+
+The girl had been in England more than a year, but there were some
+satisfactions she had not got used to yet nor ceased to enjoy, and one
+of these was the accessibility, the convenience of the country. Within
+the lodge-gates or without them it seemed all alike a park--it was all
+so intensely 'property.' The very name of Plash, which was quaint and
+old, had not lost its effect upon her, nor had it become indifferent to
+her that the place was a dower-house--the little red-walled, ivied
+asylum to which old Mrs. Berrington had retired when, on his father's
+death, her son came into the estates. Laura Wing thought very ill of the
+custom of the expropriation of the widow in the evening of her days,
+when honour and abundance should attend her more than ever; but her
+condemnation of this wrong forgot itself when so many of the
+consequences looked right--barring a little dampness: which was the fate
+sooner or later of most of her unfavourable judgments of English
+institutions. Iniquities in such a country somehow always made pictures;
+and there had been dower-houses in the novels, mainly of fashionable
+life, on which her later childhood was fed. The iniquity did not as a
+general thing prevent these retreats from being occupied by old ladies
+with wonderful reminiscences and rare voices, whose reverses had not
+deprived them of a great deal of becoming hereditary lace. In the park,
+half-way, suddenly, Laura stopped, with a pain--a moral pang--that
+almost took away her breath; she looked at the misty glades and the
+dear old beeches (so familiar they were now and loved as much as if she
+owned them); they seemed in their unlighted December bareness conscious
+of all the trouble, and they made her conscious of all the change. A
+year ago she knew nothing, and now she knew almost everything; and the
+worst of her knowledge (or at least the worst of the fears she had
+raised upon it) had come to her in that beautiful place, where
+everything was so full of peace and purity, of the air of happy
+submission to immemorial law. The place was the same but her eyes were
+different: they had seen such sad, bad things in so short a time. Yes,
+the time was short and everything was strange. Laura Wing was too uneasy
+even to sigh, and as she walked on she lightened her tread almost as if
+she were going on tiptoe.
+
+At Plash the house seemed to shine in the wet air--the tone of the
+mottled red walls and the limited but perfect lawn to be the work of an
+artist's brush. Lady Davenant was in the drawing-room, in a low chair by
+one of the windows, reading the second volume of a novel. There was the
+same look of crisp chintz, of fresh flowers wherever flowers could be
+put, of a wall-paper that was in the bad taste of years before, but had
+been kept so that no more money should be spent, and was almost covered
+over with amateurish drawings and superior engravings, framed in narrow
+gilt with large margins. The room had its bright, durable, sociable air,
+the air that Laura Wing liked in so many English things--that of being
+meant for daily life, for long periods, for uses of high decency. But
+more than ever to-day was it incongruous that such an habitation, with
+its chintzes and its British poets, its well-worn carpets and domestic
+art--the whole aspect so unmeretricious and sincere--should have to do
+with lives that were not right. Of course however it had to do only
+indirectly, and the wrong life was not old Mrs. Berrington's nor yet
+Lady Davenant's. If Selina and Selina's doings were not an implication
+of such an interior any more than it was for them an explication, this
+was because she had come from so far off, was a foreign element
+altogether. Yet it was there she had found her occasion, all the
+influences that had altered her so (her sister had a theory that she was
+metamorphosed, that when she was young she seemed born for innocence) if
+not at Plash at least at Mellows, for the two places after all had ever
+so much in common, and there were rooms at the great house that looked
+remarkably like Mrs. Berrington's parlour.
+
+Lady Davenant always had a head-dress of a peculiar style, original and
+appropriate--a sort of white veil or cape which came in a point to the
+place on her forehead where her smooth hair began to show and then
+covered her shoulders. It was always exquisitely fresh and was partly
+the reason why she struck the girl rather as a fine portrait than as a
+living person. And yet she was full of life, old as she was, and had
+been made finer, sharper and more delicate, by nearly eighty years of
+it. It was the hand of a master that Laura seemed to see in her face,
+the witty expression of which shone like a lamp through the ground-glass
+of her good breeding; nature was always an artist, but not so much of an
+artist as that. Infinite knowledge the girl attributed to her, and that
+was why she liked her a little fearfully. Lady Davenant was not as a
+general thing fond of the young or of invalids; but she made an
+exception as regards youth for the little girl from America, the sister
+of the daughter-in-law of her dearest friend. She took an interest in
+Laura partly perhaps to make up for the tepidity with which she regarded
+Selina. At all events she had assumed the general responsibility of
+providing her with a husband. She pretended to care equally little for
+persons suffering from other forms of misfortune, but she was capable of
+finding excuses for them when they had been sufficiently to blame. She
+expected a great deal of attention, always wore gloves in the house and
+never had anything in her hand but a book. She neither embroidered nor
+wrote--only read and talked. She had no special conversation for girls
+but generally addressed them in the same manner that she found effective
+with her contemporaries. Laura Wing regarded this as an honour, but very
+often she didn't know what the old lady meant and was ashamed to ask
+her. Once in a while Lady Davenant was ashamed to tell. Mrs. Berrington
+had gone to a cottage to see an old woman who was ill--an old woman who
+had been in her service for years, in the old days. Unlike her friend
+she was fond of young people and invalids, but she was less interesting
+to Laura, except that it was a sort of fascination to wonder how she
+could have such abysses of placidity. She had long cheeks and kind eyes
+and was devoted to birds; somehow she always made Laura think secretly
+of a tablet of fine white soap--nothing else was so smooth and clean.
+
+'And what's going on _chez vous_--who is there and what are they
+doing?' Lady Davenant asked, after the first greetings.
+
+'There isn't any one but me--and the children--and the governess.'
+
+'What, no party--no private theatricals? How do you live?'
+
+'Oh, it doesn't take so much to keep me going,' said Laura. 'I believe
+there were some people coming on Saturday, but they have been put off,
+or they can't come. Selina has gone to London.'
+
+'And what has she gone to London for?'
+
+'Oh, I don't know--she has so many things to do.'
+
+'And where is Mr. Berrington?'
+
+'He has been away somewhere; but I believe he is coming back
+to-morrow--or next day.'
+
+'Or the day after?' said Lady Davenant. 'And do they never go away
+together?' she continued after a pause.
+
+'Yes, sometimes--but they don't come back together.'
+
+'Do you mean they quarrel on the way?'
+
+'I don't know what they do, Lady Davenant--I don't understand,' Laura
+Wing replied, with an unguarded tremor in her voice. 'I don't think they
+are very happy.'
+
+'Then they ought to be ashamed of themselves. They have got everything
+so comfortable--what more do they want?'
+
+'Yes, and the children are such dears!'
+
+'Certainly--charming. And is she a good person, the present governess?
+Does she look after them properly?'
+
+'Yes--she seems very good--it's a blessing. But I think she's unhappy
+too.'
+
+'Bless us, what a house! Does she want some one to make love to her?'
+
+'No, but she wants Selina to see--to appreciate,' said the young girl.
+
+'And doesn't she appreciate--when she leaves them that way quite to the
+young woman?'
+
+'Miss Steet thinks she doesn't notice how they come on--she is never
+there.'
+
+'And has she wept and told you so? You know they are always crying,
+governesses--whatever line you take. You shouldn't draw them out too
+much--they are always looking for a chance. She ought to be thankful to
+be let alone. You mustn't be too sympathetic--it's mostly wasted,' the
+old lady went on.
+
+'Oh, I'm not--I assure you I'm not,' said Laura Wing. 'On the contrary,
+I see so much about me that I don't sympathise with.'
+
+'Well, you mustn't be an impertinent little American either!' her
+interlocutress exclaimed. Laura sat with her for half an hour and the
+conversation took a turn through the affairs of Plash and through Lady
+Davenant's own, which were visits in prospect and ideas suggested more
+or less directly by them as well as by the books she had been reading, a
+heterogeneous pile on a table near her, all of them new and clean, from
+a circulating library in London. The old woman had ideas and Laura liked
+them, though they often struck her as very sharp and hard, because at
+Mellows she had no diet of that sort. There had never been an idea in
+the house, since she came at least, and there was wonderfully little
+reading. Lady Davenant still went from country-house to country-house
+all winter, as she had done all her life, and when Laura asked her she
+told her the places and the people she probably should find at each of
+them. Such an enumeration was much less interesting to the girl than it
+would have been a year before: she herself had now seen a great many
+places and people and the freshness of her curiosity was gone. But she
+still cared for Lady Davenant's descriptions and judgments, because they
+were the thing in her life which (when she met the old woman from time
+to time) most represented talk--the rare sort of talk that was not mere
+chaff. That was what she had dreamed of before she came to England, but
+in Selina's set the dream had not come true. In Selina's set people only
+harried each other from morning till night with extravagant
+accusations--it was all a kind of horse-play of false charges. When Lady
+Davenant was accusatory it was within the limits of perfect
+verisimilitude.
+
+Laura waited for Mrs. Berrington to come in but she failed to appear, so
+that the girl gathered her waterproof together with an intention of
+departure. But she was secretly reluctant, because she had walked over
+to Plash with a vague hope that some soothing hand would be laid upon
+her pain. If there was no comfort at the dower-house she knew not where
+to look for it, for there was certainly none at home--not even with Miss
+Steet and the children. It was not Lady Davenant's leading
+characteristic that she was comforting, and Laura had not aspired to be
+coaxed or coddled into forgetfulness: she wanted rather to be taught a
+certain fortitude--how to live and hold up one's head even while knowing
+that things were very bad. A brazen indifference--it was not exactly
+that that she wished to acquire; but were there not some sorts of
+indifference that were philosophic and noble? Could Lady Davenant not
+teach them, if she should take the trouble? The girl remembered to have
+heard that there had been years before some disagreeable occurrences in
+_her_ family; it was not a race in which the ladies inveterately turned
+out well. Yet who to-day had the stamp of honour and credit--of a past
+which was either no one's business or was part and parcel of a fair
+public record--and carried it so much as a matter of course? She herself
+had been a good woman and that was the only thing that told in the long
+run. It was Laura's own idea to be a good woman and that this would make
+it an advantage for Lady Davenant to show her how not to feel too much.
+As regards feeling enough, that was a branch in which she had no need to
+take lessons.
+
+The old woman liked cutting new books, a task she never remitted to her
+maid, and while her young visitor sat there she went through the greater
+part of a volume with the paper-knife. She didn't proceed very
+fast--there was a kind of patient, awkward fumbling of her aged hands;
+but as she passed her knife into the last leaf she said abruptly--'And
+how is your sister going on? She's very light!' Lady Davenant added
+before Laura had time to reply.
+
+'Oh, Lady Davenant!' the girl exclaimed, vaguely, slowly, vexed with
+herself as soon as she had spoken for having uttered the words as a
+protest, whereas she wished to draw her companion out. To correct this
+impression she threw back her waterproof.
+
+'Have you ever spoken to her?' the old woman asked.
+
+'Spoken to her?'
+
+'About her behaviour. I daresay you haven't--you Americans have such a
+lot of false delicacy. I daresay Selina wouldn't speak to you if you
+were in her place (excuse the supposition!) and yet she is capable----'
+But Lady Davenant paused, preferring not to say of what young Mrs.
+Berrington was capable. 'It's a bad house for a girl.'
+
+'It only gives me a horror,' said Laura, pausing in turn.
+
+'A horror of your sister? That's not what one should aim at. You ought
+to get married--and the sooner the better. My dear child, I have
+neglected you dreadfully.'
+
+'I am much obliged to you, but if you think marriage looks to me happy!'
+the girl exclaimed, laughing without hilarity.
+
+'Make it happy for some one else and you will be happy enough yourself.
+You ought to get out of your situation.'
+
+Laura Wing was silent a moment, though this was not a new reflection to
+her. 'Do you mean that I should leave Selina altogether? I feel as if I
+should abandon her--as if I should be a coward.'
+
+'Oh, my dear, it isn't the business of little girls to serve as
+parachutes to fly-away wives! That's why if you haven't spoken to her
+you needn't take the trouble at this time of day. Let her go--let her
+go!'
+
+'Let her go?' Laura repeated, staring.
+
+Her companion gave her a sharper glance. 'Let her stay, then! Only get
+out of the house. You can come to me, you know, whenever you like. I
+don't know another girl I would say that to.'
+
+'Oh, Lady Davenant,' Laura began again, but she only got as far as
+this; in a moment she had covered her face with her hands--she had burst
+into tears.
+
+'Ah my dear, don't cry or I shall take back my invitation! It would
+never do if you were to _larmoyer_. If I have offended you by the way I
+have spoken of Selina I think you are too sensitive. We shouldn't feel
+more for people than they feel for themselves. She has no tears, I'm
+sure.'
+
+'Oh, she has, she has!' cried the girl, sobbing with an odd effect as
+she put forth this pretension for her sister.
+
+'Then she's worse than I thought. I don't mind them so much when they
+are merry but I hate them when they are sentimental.'
+
+'She's so changed--so changed!' Laura Wing went on.
+
+'Never, never, my dear: _c'est de naissance_.'
+
+'You never knew my mother,' returned the girl; 'when I think of
+mother----' The words failed her while she sobbed.
+
+'I daresay she was very nice,' said Lady Davenant gently. 'It would take
+that to account for you: such women as Selina are always easily enough
+accounted for. I didn't mean it was inherited--for that sort of thing
+skips about. I daresay there was some improper ancestress--except that
+you Americans don't seem to have ancestresses.'
+
+Laura gave no sign of having heard these observations; she was occupied
+in brushing away her tears. 'Everything is so changed--you don't know,'
+she remarked in a moment. 'Nothing could have been happier--nothing
+could have been sweeter. And now to be so dependent--so helpless--so
+poor!'
+
+'Have you nothing at all?' asked Lady Davenant, with simplicity.
+
+'Only enough to pay for my clothes.'
+
+'That's a good deal, for a girl. You are uncommonly dressy, you know.'
+
+'I'm sorry I seem so. That's just the way I don't want to look.'
+
+'You Americans can't help it; you "wear" your very features and your
+eyes look as if they had just been sent home. But I confess you are not
+so smart as Selina.'
+
+'Yes, isn't she splendid?' Laura exclaimed, with proud inconsequence.
+'And the worse she is the better she looks.'
+
+'Oh my child, if the bad women looked as bad as they are----! It's only
+the good ones who can afford that,' the old lady murmured.
+
+'It was the last thing I ever thought of--that I should be ashamed,'
+said Laura.
+
+'Oh, keep your shame till you have more to do with it. It's like lending
+your umbrella--when you have only one.'
+
+'If anything were to happen--publicly--I should die, I should die!' the
+girl exclaimed passionately and with a motion that carried her to her
+feet. This time she settled herself for departure. Lady Davenant's
+admonition rather frightened than sustained her.
+
+The old woman leaned back in her chair, looking up at her. 'It would be
+very bad, I daresay. But it wouldn't prevent me from taking you in.'
+
+Laura Wing returned her look, with eyes slightly distended, musing.
+'Think of having to come to that!'
+
+Lady Davenant burst out laughing. 'Yes, yes, you must come; you are so
+original!'
+
+'I don't mean that I don't feel your kindness,' the girl broke out,
+blushing. 'But to be only protected--always protected: is that a life?'
+
+'Most women are only too thankful and I am bound to say I think you are
+_difficile_.' Lady Davenant used a good many French words, in the
+old-fashioned manner and with a pronunciation not perfectly pure: when
+she did so she reminded Laura Wing of Mrs. Gore's novels. 'But you shall
+be better protected than even by me. _Nous verrons cela._ Only you must
+stop crying--this isn't a crying country.'
+
+'No, one must have courage here. It takes courage to marry for such a
+reason.'
+
+'Any reason is good enough that keeps a woman from being an old maid.
+Besides, you will like him.'
+
+'He must like me first,' said the girl, with a sad smile.
+
+'There's the American again! It isn't necessary. You are too proud--you
+expect too much.'
+
+'I'm proud for what I am--that's very certain. But I don't expect
+anything,' Laura Wing declared. 'That's the only form my pride takes.
+Please give my love to Mrs. Berrington. I am so sorry--so sorry,' she
+went on, to change the talk from the subject of her marrying. She wanted
+to marry but she wanted also not to want it and, above all, not to
+appear to. She lingered in the room, moving about a little; the place
+was always so pleasant to her that to go away--to return to her own
+barren home--had the effect of forfeiting a sort of privilege of
+sanctuary. The afternoon had faded but the lamps had been brought in,
+the smell of flowers was in the air and the old house of Plash seemed to
+recognise the hour that suited it best. The quiet old lady in the
+firelight, encompassed with the symbolic security of chintz and
+water-colour, gave her a sudden vision of how blessed it would be to
+jump all the middle dangers of life and have arrived at the end, safely,
+sensibly, with a cap and gloves and consideration and memories. 'And,
+Lady Davenant, what does _she_ think?' she asked abruptly, stopping
+short and referring to Mrs. Berrington.
+
+'Think? Bless your soul, she doesn't do that! If she did, the things she
+says would be unpardonable.'
+
+'The things she says?'
+
+'That's what makes them so beautiful--that they are not spoiled by
+preparation. You could never think of them _for_ her.' The girl smiled
+at this description of the dearest friend of her interlocutress, but she
+wondered a little what Lady Davenant would say to visitors about _her_
+if she should accept a refuge under her roof. Her speech was after all a
+flattering proof of confidence. 'She wishes it had been you--I happen to
+know that,' said the old woman.
+
+'It had been me?'
+
+'That Lionel had taken a fancy to.'
+
+'I wouldn't have married him,' Laura rejoined, after a moment.
+
+'Don't say that or you will make me think it won't be easy to help you.
+I shall depend upon you not to refuse anything so good.'
+
+'I don't call him good. If he were good his wife would be better.'
+
+'Very likely; and if you had married him _he_ would be better, and
+that's more to the purpose. Lionel is as idiotic as a comic song, but
+you have cleverness for two.'
+
+'And you have it for fifty, dear Lady Davenant. Never, never--I shall
+never marry a man I can't respect!' Laura Wing exclaimed.
+
+She had come a little nearer her old friend and taken her hand; her
+companion held her a moment and with the other hand pushed aside one of
+the flaps of the waterproof. 'And what is it your clothing costs you?'
+asked Lady Davenant, looking at the dress underneath and not giving any
+heed to this declaration.
+
+'I don't exactly know: it takes almost everything that is sent me from
+America. But that is dreadfully little--only a few pounds. I am a
+wonderful manager. Besides,' the girl added, 'Selina wants one to be
+dressed.'
+
+'And doesn't she pay any of your bills?'
+
+'Why, she gives me everything--food, shelter, carriages.'
+
+'Does she never give you money?'
+
+'I wouldn't take it,' said the girl. 'They need everything they
+have--their life is tremendously expensive.'
+
+'That I'll warrant!' cried the old woman. 'It was a most beautiful
+property, but I don't know what has become of it now. _Ce n'est pas pour
+vous blesser_, but the hole you Americans _can_ make----'
+
+Laura interrupted immediately, holding up her head; Lady Davenant had
+dropped her hand and she had receded a step. 'Selina brought Lionel a
+very considerable fortune and every penny of it was paid.'
+
+'Yes, I know it was; Mrs. Berrington told me it was most satisfactory.
+That's not always the case with the fortunes you young ladies are
+supposed to bring!' the old lady added, smiling.
+
+The girl looked over her head a moment. 'Why do your men marry for
+money?'
+
+'Why indeed, my dear? And before your troubles what used your father to
+give you for your personal expenses?'
+
+'He gave us everything we asked--we had no particular allowance.'
+
+'And I daresay you asked for everything?' said Lady Davenant.
+
+'No doubt we were very dressy, as you say.'
+
+'No wonder he went bankrupt--for he did, didn't he?'
+
+'He had dreadful reverses but he only sacrificed himself--he protected
+others.'
+
+'Well, I know nothing about these things and I only ask _pour me
+renseigner_,' Mrs. Berrington's guest went on. 'And after their reverses
+your father and mother lived I think only a short time?'
+
+Laura Wing had covered herself again with her mantle; her eyes were now
+bent upon the ground and, standing there before her companion with her
+umbrella and her air of momentary submission and self-control, she might
+very well have been a young person in reduced circumstances applying for
+a place. 'It was short enough but it seemed--some parts of it--terribly
+long and painful. My poor father--my dear father,' the girl went on. But
+her voice trembled and she checked herself.
+
+'I feel as if I were cross-questioning you, which God forbid!' said Lady
+Davenant. 'But there is one thing I should really like to know. Did
+Lionel and his wife, when you were poor, come freely to your
+assistance?'
+
+'They sent us money repeatedly--it was _her_ money of course. It was
+almost all we had.'
+
+'And if you have been poor and know what poverty is tell me this: has it
+made you afraid to marry a poor man?'
+
+It seemed to Lady Davenant that in answer to this her young friend
+looked at her strangely; and then the old woman heard her say something
+that had not quite the heroic ring she expected. 'I am afraid of so many
+things to-day that I don't know where my fears end.'
+
+'I have no patience with the highstrung way you take things. But I have
+to know, you know.'
+
+'Oh, don't try to know any more shames--any more horrors!' the girl
+wailed with sudden passion, turning away.
+
+Her companion got up, drew her round again and kissed her. 'I think you
+would fidget me,' she remarked as she released her. Then, as if this
+were too cheerless a leave-taking, she added in a gayer tone, as Laura
+had her hand on the door: 'Mind what I tell you, my dear; let her go!'
+It was to this that the girl's lesson in philosophy reduced itself, she
+reflected, as she walked back to Mellows in the rain, which had now come
+on, through the darkening park.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+The children were still at tea and poor Miss Steet sat between them,
+consoling herself with strong cups, crunching melancholy morsels of
+toast and dropping an absent gaze on her little companions as they
+exchanged small, loud remarks. She always sighed when Laura came in--it
+was her way of expressing appreciation of the visit--and she was the one
+person whom the girl frequently saw who seemed to her more unhappy than
+herself. But Laura envied her--she thought her position had more dignity
+than that of her employer's dependent sister. Miss Steet had related her
+life to the children's pretty young aunt and this personage knew that
+though it had had painful elements nothing so disagreeable had ever
+befallen her or was likely to befall her as the odious possibility of
+her sister's making a scandal. She had two sisters (Laura knew all about
+them) and one of them was married to a clergyman in Staffordshire (a
+very ugly part) and had seven children and four hundred a year; while
+the other, the eldest, was enormously stout and filled (it was a good
+deal of a squeeze) a position as matron in an orphanage at Liverpool.
+Neither of them seemed destined to go into the English divorce-court,
+and such a circumstance on the part of one's near relations struck
+Laura as in itself almost sufficient to constitute happiness. Miss Steet
+never lived in a state of nervous anxiety--everything about her was
+respectable. She made the girl almost angry sometimes, by her drooping,
+martyr-like air: Laura was near breaking out at her with, 'Dear me, what
+have you got to complain of? Don't you earn your living like an honest
+girl and are you obliged to see things going on about you that you
+hate?'
+
+But she could not say things like that to her, because she had promised
+Selina, who made a great point of this, that she would never be too
+familiar with her. Selina was not without her ideas of decorum--very far
+from it indeed; only she erected them in such queer places. She was not
+familiar with her children's governess; she was not even familiar with
+the children themselves. That was why after all it was impossible to
+address much of a remonstrance to Miss Steet when she sat as if she were
+tied to the stake and the fagots were being lighted. If martyrs in this
+situation had tea and cold meat served them they would strikingly have
+resembled the provoking young woman in the schoolroom at Mellows. Laura
+could not have denied that it was natural she should have liked it
+better if Mrs. Berrington would _sometimes_ just look in and give a sign
+that she was pleased with her system; but poor Miss Steet only knew by
+the servants or by Laura whether Mrs. Berrington were at home or not:
+she was for the most part not, and the governess had a way of silently
+intimating (it was the manner she put her head on one side when she
+looked at Scratch and Parson--of course _she_ called them Geordie and
+Ferdy) that she was immensely handicapped and even that they were.
+Perhaps they were, though they certainly showed it little in their
+appearance and manner, and Laura was at least sure that if Selina had
+been perpetually dropping in Miss Steet would have taken that discomfort
+even more tragically. The sight of this young woman's either real or
+fancied wrongs did not diminish her conviction that she herself would
+have found courage to become a governess. She would have had to teach
+very young children, for she believed she was too ignorant for higher
+flights. But Selina would never have consented to that--she would have
+considered it a disgrace or even worse--a _pose_. Laura had proposed to
+her six months before that she should dispense with a paid governess and
+suffer _her_ to take charge of the little boys: in that way she should
+not feel so completely dependent--she should be doing something in
+return. 'And pray what would happen when you came to dinner? Who would
+look after them then?' Mrs. Berrington had demanded, with a very shocked
+air. Laura had replied that perhaps it was not absolutely necessary that
+she should come to dinner--she could dine early, with the children; and
+that if her presence in the drawing-room should be required the children
+had their nurse--and what did they have their nurse for? Selina looked
+at her as if she was deplorably superficial and told her that they had
+their nurse to dress them and look after their clothes--did she wish the
+poor little ducks to go in rags? She had her own ideas of thoroughness
+and when Laura hinted that after all at that hour the children were in
+bed she declared that even when they were asleep she desired the
+governess to be at hand--that was the way a mother felt who really took
+an interest. Selina was wonderfully thorough; she said something about
+the evening hours in the quiet schoolroom being the proper time for the
+governess to 'get up' the children's lessons for the next day. Laura
+Wing was conscious of her own ignorance; nevertheless she presumed to
+believe that she could have taught Geordie and Ferdy the alphabet
+without anticipatory nocturnal researches. She wondered what her sister
+supposed Miss Steet taught them--whether she had a cheap theory that
+they were in Latin and algebra.
+
+The governess's evening hours in the quiet schoolroom would have suited
+Laura well--so at least she believed; by touches of her own she would
+make the place even prettier than it was already, and in the winter
+nights, near the bright fire, she would get through a delightful course
+of reading. There was the question of a new piano (the old one was
+pretty bad--Miss Steet had a finger!) and perhaps she should have to ask
+Selina for that--but it would be all. The schoolroom at Mellows was not
+a charmless place and the girl often wished that she might have spent
+her own early years in so dear a scene. It was a sort of panelled
+parlour, in a wing, and looked out on the great cushiony lawns and a
+part of the terrace where the peacocks used most to spread their tails.
+There were quaint old maps on the wall, and 'collections'--birds and
+shells--under glass cases, and there was a wonderful pictured screen
+which old Mrs. Berrington had made when Lionel was young out of
+primitive woodcuts illustrative of nursery-tales. The place was a
+setting for rosy childhood, and Laura believed her sister never knew
+how delightful Scratch and Parson looked there. Old Mrs. Berrington had
+known in the case of Lionel--it had all been arranged for him. That was
+the story told by ever so many other things in the house, which betrayed
+the full perception of a comfortable, liberal, deeply domestic effect,
+addressed to eternities of possession, characteristic thirty years
+before of the unquestioned and unquestioning old lady whose sofas and
+'corners' (she had perhaps been the first person in England to have
+corners) demonstrated the most of her cleverness.
+
+Laura Wing envied English children, the boys at least, and even her own
+chubby nephews, in spite of the cloud that hung over them; but she had
+already noted the incongruity that appeared to-day between Lionel
+Berrington at thirty-five and the influences that had surrounded his
+younger years. She did not dislike her brother-in-law, though she
+admired him scantily, and she pitied him; but she marvelled at the waste
+involved in some human institutions (the English country gentry for
+instance) when she perceived that it had taken so much to produce so
+little. The sweet old wainscoted parlour, the view of the garden that
+reminded her of scenes in Shakespeare's comedies, all that was exquisite
+in the home of his forefathers--what visible reference was there to
+these fine things in poor Lionel's stable-stamped composition? When she
+came in this evening and saw his small sons making competitive noises in
+their mugs (Miss Steet checked this impropriety on her entrance) she
+asked herself what _they_ would have to show twenty years later for the
+frame that made them just then a picture. Would they be wonderfully ripe
+and noble, the perfection of human culture? The contrast was before her
+again, the sense of the same curious duplicity (in the literal meaning
+of the word) that she had felt at Plash--the way the genius of such an
+old house was all peace and decorum and the spirit that prevailed there,
+outside of the schoolroom, was contentious and impure. She had often
+been struck with it before--with that perfection of machinery which can
+still at certain times make English life go on of itself with a stately
+rhythm long after there is corruption within it.
+
+She had half a purpose of asking Miss Steet to dine with her that
+evening downstairs, so absurd did it seem to her that two young women
+who had so much in common (enough at least for that) should sit feeding
+alone at opposite ends of the big empty house, melancholy on such a
+night. She would not have cared just now whether Selina did think such a
+course familiar: she indulged sometimes in a kind of angry humility,
+placing herself near to those who were laborious and sordid. But when
+she observed how much cold meat the governess had already consumed she
+felt that it would be a vain form to propose to her another repast. She
+sat down with her and presently, in the firelight, the two children had
+placed themselves in position for a story. They were dressed like the
+mariners of England and they smelt of the ablutions to which they had
+been condemned before tea and the odour of which was but partly overlaid
+by that of bread and butter. Scratch wanted an old story and Parson a
+new, and they exchanged from side to side a good many powerful
+arguments. While they were so engaged Miss Steet narrated at her
+visitor's invitation the walk she had taken with them and revealed that
+she had been thinking for a long time of asking Mrs. Berrington--if she
+only had an opportunity--whether she should approve of her giving them a
+few elementary notions of botany. But the opportunity had not come--she
+had had the idea for a long time past. She was rather fond of the study
+herself; she had gone into it a little--she seemed to intimate that
+there had been times when she extracted a needed comfort from it. Laura
+suggested that botany might be a little dry for such young children in
+winter, from text-books--that the better way would be perhaps to wait
+till the spring and show them out of doors, in the garden, some of the
+peculiarities of plants. To this Miss Steet rejoined that her idea had
+been to teach some of the general facts slowly--it would take a long
+time--and then they would be all ready for the spring. She spoke of the
+spring as if it would not arrive for a terribly long time. She had hoped
+to lay the question before Mrs. Berrington that week--but was it not
+already Thursday? Laura said, 'Oh yes, you had better do anything with
+the children that will keep them profitably occupied;' she came very
+near saying anything that would occupy the governess herself.
+
+She had rather a dread of new stories--it took the little boys so long
+to get initiated and the first steps were so terribly bestrewn with
+questions. Receptive silence, broken only by an occasional rectification
+on the part of the listener, never descended until after the tale had
+been told a dozen times. The matter was settled for 'Riquet with the
+Tuft,' but on this occasion the girl's heart was not much in the
+entertainment. The children stood on either side of her, leaning against
+her, and she had an arm round each; their little bodies were thick and
+strong and their voices had the quality of silver bells. Their mother
+had certainly gone too far; but there was nevertheless a limit to the
+tenderness one could feel for the neglected, compromised bairns. It was
+difficult to take a sentimental view of them--they would never take such
+a view of themselves. Geordie would grow up to be a master-hand at polo
+and care more for that pastime than for anything in life, and Ferdy
+perhaps would develop into 'the best shot in England.' Laura felt these
+possibilities stirring within them; they were in the things they said to
+her, in the things they said to each other. At any rate they would never
+reflect upon anything in the world. They contradicted each other on a
+question of ancestral history to which their attention apparently had
+been drawn by their nurse, whose people had been tenants for
+generations. Their grandfather had had the hounds for fifteen
+years--Ferdy maintained that he had always had them. Geordie ridiculed
+this idea, like a man of the world; he had had them till he went into
+volunteering--then he had got up a magnificent regiment, he had spent
+thousands of pounds on it. Ferdy was of the opinion that this was wasted
+money--he himself intended to have a real regiment, to be a colonel in
+the Guards. Geordie looked as if he thought that a superficial ambition
+and could see beyond it; his own most definite view was that he would
+have back the hounds. He didn't see why papa didn't have them--unless it
+was because he wouldn't take the trouble.
+
+'I know--it's because mamma is an American!' Ferdy announced, with
+confidence.
+
+'And what has that to do with it?' asked Laura.
+
+'Mamma spends so much money--there isn't any more for anything!'
+
+This startling speech elicited an alarmed protest from Miss Steet; she
+blushed and assured Laura that she couldn't imagine where the child
+could have picked up such an extraordinary idea. 'I'll look into it--you
+may be sure I'll look into it,' she said; while Laura told Ferdy that he
+must never, never, never, under any circumstances, either utter or
+listen to a word that should be wanting in respect to his mother.
+
+'If any one should say anything against any of my people I would give
+him a good one!' Geordie shouted, with his hands in his little blue
+pockets.
+
+'I'd hit him in the eye!' cried Ferdy, with cheerful inconsequence.
+
+'Perhaps you don't care to come to dinner at half-past seven,' the girl
+said to Miss Steet; 'but I should be very glad--I'm all alone.'
+
+'Thank you so much. All alone, really?' murmured the governess.
+
+'Why don't you get married? then you wouldn't be alone,' Geordie
+interposed, with ingenuity.
+
+'Children, you are really too dreadful this evening!' Miss Steet
+exclaimed.
+
+'I shan't get married--I want to have the hounds,' proclaimed Geordie,
+who had apparently been much struck with his brother's explanation.
+
+'I will come down afterwards, about half-past eight, if you will allow
+me,' said Miss Steet, looking conscious and responsible.
+
+'Very well--perhaps we can have some music; we will try something
+together.'
+
+'Oh, music--_we_ don't go in for music!' said Geordie, with clear
+superiority; and while he spoke Laura saw Miss Steet get up suddenly,
+looking even less alleviated than usual. The door of the room had been
+pushed open and Lionel Berrington stood there. He had his hat on and a
+cigar in his mouth and his face was red, which was its common condition.
+He took off his hat as he came into the room, but he did not stop
+smoking and he turned a little redder than before. There were several
+ways in which his sister-in-law often wished he had been very different,
+but she had never disliked him for a certain boyish shyness that was in
+him, which came out in his dealings with almost all women. The governess
+of his children made him uncomfortable and Laura had already noticed
+that he had the same effect upon Miss Steet. He was fond of his
+children, but he saw them hardly more frequently than their mother and
+they never knew whether he were at home or away. Indeed his goings and
+comings were so frequent that Laura herself scarcely knew: it was an
+accident that on this occasion his absence had been marked for her.
+Selina had had her reasons for wishing not to go up to town while her
+husband was still at Mellows, and she cherished the irritating belief
+that he stayed at home on purpose to watch her--to keep her from going
+away. It was her theory that she herself was perpetually at home--that
+few women were more domestic, more glued to the fireside and absorbed in
+the duties belonging to it; and unreasonable as she was she recognised
+the fact that for her to establish this theory she must make her
+husband sometimes see her at Mellows. It was not enough for her to
+maintain that he would see her if he were sometimes there himself.
+Therefore she disliked to be caught in the crude fact of absence--to go
+away under his nose; what she preferred was to take the next train after
+his own and return an hour or two before him. She managed this often
+with great ability, in spite of her not being able to be sure when he
+_would_ return. Of late however she had ceased to take so much trouble,
+and Laura, by no desire of the girl's own, was enough in the confidence
+of her impatiences and perversities to know that for her to have wished
+(four days before the moment I write of) to put him on a wrong scent--or
+to keep him at least off the right one--she must have had something more
+dreadful than usual in her head. This was why the girl had been so
+nervous and why the sense of an impending catastrophe, which had lately
+gathered strength in her mind, was at present almost intolerably
+pressing: she knew how little Selina could afford to be more dreadful
+than usual.
+
+Lionel startled her by turning up in that unexpected way, though she
+could not have told herself when it would have been natural to expect
+him. This attitude, at Mellows, was left to the servants, most of them
+inscrutable and incommunicative and erect in a wisdom that was founded
+upon telegrams--you couldn't speak to the butler but he pulled one out
+of his pocket. It was a house of telegrams; they crossed each other a
+dozen times an hour, coming and going, and Selina in particular lived in
+a cloud of them. Laura had but vague ideas as to what they were all
+about; once in a while, when they fell under her eyes, she either failed
+to understand them or judged them to be about horses. There were an
+immense number of horses, in one way and another, in Mrs. Berrington's
+life. Then she had so many friends, who were always rushing about like
+herself and making appointments and putting them off and wanting to know
+if she were going to certain places or whether she would go if they did
+or whether she would come up to town and dine and 'do a theatre.' There
+were also a good many theatres in the existence of this busy lady. Laura
+remembered how fond their poor father had been of telegraphing, but it
+was never about the theatre: at all events she tried to give her sister
+the benefit or the excuse of heredity. Selina had her own opinions,
+which were superior to this--she once remarked to Laura that it was
+idiotic for a woman to write--to telegraph was the only way not to get
+into trouble. If doing so sufficed to keep a lady out of it Mrs.
+Berrington's life should have flowed like the rivers of Eden.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Laura, as soon as her brother-in-law had been in the room a moment, had
+a particular fear; she had seen him twice noticeably under the influence
+of liquor; she had not liked it at all and now there were some of the
+same signs. She was afraid the children would discover them, or at any
+rate Miss Steet, and she felt the importance of not letting him stay in
+the room. She thought it almost a sign that he should have come there at
+all--he was so rare an apparition. He looked at her very hard, smiling
+as if to say, 'No, no, I'm not--not if you think it!' She perceived with
+relief in a moment that he was not very bad, and liquor disposed him
+apparently to tenderness, for he indulged in an interminable kissing of
+Geordie and Ferdy, during which Miss Steet turned away delicately,
+looking out of the window. The little boys asked him no questions to
+celebrate his return--they only announced that they were going to learn
+botany, to which he replied: 'Are you, really? Why, I never did,' and
+looked askance at the governess, blushing as if to express the hope that
+she would let him off from carrying that subject further. To Laura and
+to Miss Steet he was amiably explanatory, though his explanations were
+not quite coherent. He had come back an hour before--he was going to
+spend the night--he had driven over from Churton--he was thinking of
+taking the last train up to town. Was Laura dining at home? Was any one
+coming? He should enjoy a quiet dinner awfully.
+
+'Certainly I'm alone,' said the girl. 'I suppose you know Selina is
+away.'
+
+'Oh yes--I know where Selina is!' And Lionel Berrington looked round,
+smiling at every one present, including Scratch and Parson. He stopped
+while he continued to smile and Laura wondered what he was so much
+pleased at. She preferred not to ask--she was sure it was something that
+wouldn't give _her_ pleasure; but after waiting a moment her
+brother-in-law went on: 'Selina's in Paris, my dear; that's where Selina
+is!'
+
+'In Paris?' Laura repeated.
+
+'Yes, in Paris, my dear--God bless her! Where else do you suppose?
+Geordie my boy, where should _you_ think your mummy would naturally be?'
+
+'Oh, I don't know,' said Geordie, who had no reply ready that would
+express affectingly the desolation of the nursery. 'If I were mummy I'd
+travel.'
+
+'Well now that's your mummy's idea--she has gone to travel,' returned
+the father. 'Were you ever in Paris, Miss Steet?'
+
+Miss Steet gave a nervous laugh and said No, but she had been to
+Boulogne; while to her added confusion Ferdy announced that he knew
+where Paris was--it was in America. 'No, it ain't--it's in Scotland!'
+cried Geordie; and Laura asked Lionel how he knew--whether his wife had
+written to him.
+
+'Written to me? when did she ever write to me? No, I saw a fellow in
+town this morning who saw her there--at breakfast yesterday. He came
+over last night. That's how I know my wife's in Paris. You can't have
+better proof than that!'
+
+'I suppose it's a very pleasant season there,' the governess murmured,
+as if from a sense of duty, in a distant, discomfortable tone.
+
+'I daresay it's very pleasant indeed--I daresay it's awfully amusing!'
+laughed Mr. Berrington. 'Shouldn't you like to run over with me for a
+few days, Laura--just to have a go at the theatres? I don't see why we
+should always be moping at home. We'll take Miss Steet and the children
+and give mummy a pleasant surprise. Now who do you suppose she was with,
+in Paris--who do you suppose she was seen with?'
+
+Laura had turned pale, she looked at him hard, imploringly, in the eyes:
+there was a name she was terribly afraid he would mention. 'Oh sir, in
+that case we had better go and get ready!' Miss Steet quavered, betwixt
+a laugh and a groan, in a spasm of discretion; and before Laura knew it
+she had gathered Geordie and Ferdy together and swept them out of the
+room. The door closed behind her with a very quick softness and Lionel
+remained a moment staring at it.
+
+'I say, what does she mean?--ain't that damned impertinent?' he
+stammered. 'What did she think I was going to say? Does she suppose I
+would say any harm before--before _her_? Dash it, does she suppose I
+would give away my wife to the servants?' Then he added, 'And I wouldn't
+say any harm before you, Laura. You are too good and too nice and I like
+you too much!'
+
+'Won't you come downstairs? won't you have some tea?' the girl asked,
+uneasily.
+
+'No, no, I want to stay here--I like this place,' he replied, very
+gently and reasoningly. 'It's a deuced nice place--it's an awfully jolly
+room. It used to be this way--always--when I was a little chap. I was a
+rough one, my dear; I wasn't a pretty little lamb like that pair. I
+think it's because you look after them--that's what makes 'em so sweet.
+The one in my time--what was her name? I think it was Bald or Bold--I
+rather think she found me a handful. I used to kick her shins--I was
+decidedly vicious. And do _you_ see it's kept so well, Laura?' he went
+on, looking round him. ''Pon my soul, it's the prettiest room in the
+house. What does she want to go to Paris for when she has got such a
+charming house? Now can you answer me that, Laura?'
+
+'I suppose she has gone to get some clothes: her dressmaker lives in
+Paris, you know.'
+
+'Dressmaker? Clothes? Why, she has got whole rooms full of them. Hasn't
+she got whole rooms full of them?'
+
+'Speaking of clothes I must go and change mine,' said Laura. 'I have
+been out in the rain--I have been to Plash--I'm decidedly damp.'
+
+'Oh, you have been to Plash? You have seen my mother? I hope she's in
+very good health.' But before the girl could reply to this he went on:
+'Now, I want you to guess who she's in Paris with. Motcomb saw them
+together--at that place, what's his name? close to the Madeleine.' And
+as Laura was silent, not wishing at all to guess, he continued--'It's
+the ruin of any woman, you know; I can't think what she has got in her
+head.' Still Laura said nothing, and as he had hold of her arm, she
+having turned away, she led him this time out of the room. She had a
+horror of the name, the name that was in her mind and that was
+apparently on his lips, though his tone was so singular, so
+contemplative. 'My dear girl, she's with Lady Ringrose--what do you say
+to that?' he exclaimed, as they passed along the corridor to the
+staircase.
+
+'With Lady Ringrose?'
+
+'They went over on Tuesday--they are knocking about there alone.'
+
+'I don't know Lady Ringrose,' Laura said, infinitely relieved that the
+name was not the one she had feared. Lionel leaned on her arm as they
+went downstairs.
+
+'I rather hope not--I promise you she has never put her foot in this
+house! If Selina expects to bring her here I should like half an hour's
+notice; yes, half an hour would do. She might as well be seen with----'
+And Lionel Berrington checked himself. 'She has had at least fifty----'
+And again he stopped short. 'You must pull me up, you know, if I say
+anything you don't like!'
+
+'I don't understand you--let me alone, please!' the girl broke out,
+disengaging herself with an effort from his arm. She hurried down the
+rest of the steps and left him there looking after her, and as she went
+she heard him give an irrelevant laugh.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+She determined not to go to dinner--she wished for that day not to meet
+him again. He would drink more--he would be worse--she didn't know what
+he might say. Besides she was too angry--not with him but with
+Selina--and in addition to being angry she was sick. She knew who Lady
+Ringrose was; she knew so many things to-day that when she was
+younger--and only a little--she had not expected ever to know. Her eyes
+had been opened very wide in England and certainly they had been opened
+to Lady Ringrose. She had heard what she had done and perhaps a good
+deal more, and it was not very different from what she had heard of
+other women. She knew Selina had been to her house; she had an
+impression that her ladyship had been to Selina's, in London, though she
+herself had not seen her there. But she had not known they were so
+intimate as that--that Selina would rush over to Paris with her. What
+they had gone to Paris for was not necessarily criminal; there were a
+hundred reasons, familiar to ladies who were fond of change, of
+movement, of the theatres and of new bonnets; but nevertheless it was
+the fact of this little excursion quite as much as the companion that
+excited Laura's disgust.
+
+She was not ready to say that the companion was any worse, though
+Lionel appeared to think so, than twenty other women who were her
+sister's intimates and whom she herself had seen in London, in Grosvenor
+Place, and even under the motherly old beeches at Mellows. But she
+thought it unpleasant and base in Selina to go abroad that way, like a
+commercial traveller, capriciously, clandestinely, without giving
+notice, when she had left her to understand that she was simply spending
+three or four days in town. It was bad taste and bad form, it was
+_cabotin_ and had the mark of Selina's complete, irremediable
+frivolity--the worst accusation (Laura tried to cling to that opinion)
+that she laid herself open to. Of course frivolity that was never
+ashamed of itself was like a neglected cold--you could die of it morally
+as well as of anything else. Laura knew this and it was why she was
+inexpressibly vexed with her sister. She hoped she should get a letter
+from Selina the next morning (Mrs. Berrington would show at least that
+remnant of propriety) which would give her a chance to despatch her an
+answer that was already writing itself in her brain. It scarcely
+diminished Laura's eagerness for such an opportunity that she had a
+vision of Selina's showing her letter, laughing, across the table, at
+the place near the Madeleine, to Lady Ringrose (who would be
+painted--Selina herself, to do her justice, was not yet) while the
+French waiters, in white aprons, contemplated _ces dames_. It was new
+work for our young lady to judge of these shades--the gradations, the
+probabilities of license, and of the side of the line on which, or
+rather how far on the wrong side, Lady Ringrose was situated.
+
+A quarter of an hour before dinner Lionel sent word to her room that
+she was to sit down without him--he had a headache and wouldn't appear.
+This was an unexpected grace and it simplified the position for Laura;
+so that, smoothing her ruffles, she betook herself to the table. Before
+doing this however she went back to the schoolroom and told Miss Steet
+she must contribute her company. She took the governess (the little boys
+were in bed) downstairs with her and made her sit opposite, thinking she
+would be a safeguard if Lionel were to change his mind. Miss Steet was
+more frightened than herself--she was a very shrinking bulwark. The
+dinner was dull and the conversation rare; the governess ate three
+olives and looked at the figures on the spoons. Laura had more than ever
+her sense of impending calamity; a draught of misfortune seemed to blow
+through the house; it chilled her feet under her chair. The letter she
+had in her head went out like a flame in the wind and her only thought
+now was to telegraph to Selina the first thing in the morning, in quite
+different words. She scarcely spoke to Miss Steet and there was very
+little the governess could say to her: she had already related her
+history so often. After dinner she carried her companion into the
+drawing-room, by the arm, and they sat down to the piano together. They
+played duets for an hour, mechanically, violently; Laura had no idea
+what the music was--she only knew that their playing was execrable. In
+spite of this--'That's a very nice thing, that last,' she heard a vague
+voice say, behind her, at the end; and she became aware that her
+brother-in-law had joined them again.
+
+Miss Steet was pusillanimous--she retreated on the spot, though Lionel
+had already forgotten that he was angry at the scandalous way she had
+carried off the children from the schoolroom. Laura would have gone too
+if Lionel had not told her that he had something very particular to say
+to her. That made her want to go more, but she had to listen to him when
+he expressed the hope that she hadn't taken offence at anything he had
+said before. He didn't strike her as tipsy now; he had slept it off or
+got rid of it and she saw no traces of his headache. He was still
+conspicuously cheerful, as if he had got some good news and were very
+much encouraged. She knew the news he had got and she might have
+thought, in view of his manner, that it could not really have seemed to
+him so bad as he had pretended to think it. It was not the first time
+however that she had seen him pleased that he had a case against his
+wife, and she was to learn on this occasion how extreme a satisfaction
+he could take in his wrongs. She would not sit down again; she only
+lingered by the fire, pretending to warm her feet, and he walked to and
+fro in the long room, where the lamp-light to-night was limited,
+stepping on certain figures of the carpet as if his triumph were alloyed
+with hesitation.
+
+'I never know how to talk to you--you are so beastly clever,' he said.
+'I can't treat you like a little girl in a pinafore--and yet of course
+you are only a young lady. You're so deuced good--that makes it worse,'
+he went on, stopping in front of her with his hands in his pockets and
+the air he himself had of being a good-natured but dissipated boy; with
+his small stature, his smooth, fat, suffused face, his round, watery,
+light-coloured eyes and his hair growing in curious infantile rings. He
+had lost one of his front teeth and always wore a stiff white scarf,
+with a pin representing some symbol of the turf or the chase. 'I don't
+see why _she_ couldn't have been a little more like you. If I could have
+had a shot at you first!'
+
+'I don't care for any compliments at my sister's expense,' Laura said,
+with some majesty.
+
+'Oh I say, Laura, don't put on so many frills, as Selina says. You know
+what your sister is as well as I do!' They stood looking at each other a
+moment and he appeared to see something in her face which led him to
+add--'You know, at any rate, how little we hit it off.'
+
+'I know you don't love each other--it's too dreadful.'
+
+'Love each other? she hates me as she'd hate a hump on her back. She'd
+do me any devilish turn she could. There isn't a feeling of loathing
+that she doesn't have for me! She'd like to stamp on me and hear me
+crack, like a black beetle, and she never opens her mouth but she
+insults me.' Lionel Berrington delivered himself of these assertions
+without violence, without passion or the sting of a new discovery; there
+was a familiar gaiety in his trivial little tone and he had the air of
+being so sure of what he said that he did not need to exaggerate in
+order to prove enough.
+
+'Oh, Lionel!' the girl murmured, turning pale. 'Is that the particular
+thing you wished to say to me?'
+
+'And you can't say it's my fault--you won't pretend to do that, will
+you?' he went on. 'Ain't I quiet, ain't I kind, don't I go steady?
+Haven't I given her every blessed thing she has ever asked for?'
+
+'You haven't given her an example!' Laura replied, with spirit. 'You
+don't care for anything in the wide world but to amuse yourself, from
+the beginning of the year to the end. No more does she--and perhaps it's
+even worse in a woman. You are both as selfish as you can live, with
+nothing in your head or your heart but your vulgar pleasure, incapable
+of a concession, incapable of a sacrifice!' She at least spoke with
+passion; something that had been pent up in her soul broke out and it
+gave her relief, almost a momentary joy.
+
+It made Lionel Berrington stare; he coloured, but after a moment he
+threw back his head with laughter. 'Don't you call me kind when I stand
+here and take all that? If I'm so keen for my pleasure what pleasure do
+_you_ give me? Look at the way I take it, Laura. You ought to do me
+justice. Haven't I sacrificed my home? and what more can a man do?'
+
+'I don't think you care any more for your home than Selina does. And
+it's so sacred and so beautiful, God forgive you! You are all blind and
+senseless and heartless and I don't know what poison is in your veins.
+There is a curse on you and there will be a judgment!' the girl went on,
+glowing like a young prophetess.
+
+'What do you want me to do? Do you want me to stay at home and read the
+Bible?' her companion demanded with an effect of profanity, confronted
+with her deep seriousness.
+
+'It wouldn't do you any harm, once in a while.'
+
+'There will be a judgment on _her_--that's very sure, and I know where
+it will be delivered,' said Lionel Berrington, indulging in a visible
+approach to a wink. 'Have I done the half to her she has done to me? I
+won't say the half but the hundredth part? Answer me truly, my dear!'
+
+'I don't know what she has done to you,' said Laura, impatiently.
+
+'That's exactly what I want to tell you. But it's difficult. I'll bet
+you five pounds she's doing it now!'
+
+'You are too unable to make yourself respected,' the girl remarked, not
+shrinking now from the enjoyment of an advantage--that of feeling
+herself superior and taking her opportunity.
+
+Her brother-in-law seemed to feel for the moment the prick of this
+observation. 'What has such a piece of nasty boldness as that to do with
+respect? She's the first that ever defied me!' exclaimed the young man,
+whose aspect somehow scarcely confirmed this pretension. 'You know all
+about her--don't make believe you don't,' he continued in another tone.
+'You see everything--you're one of the sharp ones. There's no use
+beating about the bush, Laura--you've lived in this precious house and
+you're not so green as that comes to. Besides, you're so good yourself
+that you needn't give a shriek if one is obliged to say what one means.
+Why didn't you grow up a little sooner? Then, over there in New York, it
+would certainly have been you I would have made up to. _You_ would have
+respected me--eh? now don't say you wouldn't.' He rambled on, turning
+about the room again, partly like a person whose sequences were
+naturally slow but also a little as if, though he knew what he had in
+mind, there were still a scruple attached to it that he was trying to
+rub off.
+
+'I take it that isn't what I must sit up to listen to, Lionel, is it?'
+Laura said, wearily.
+
+'Why, you don't want to go to bed at nine o'clock, do you? That's all
+rot, of course. But I want you to help me.'
+
+'To help you--how?'
+
+'I'll tell you--but you must give me my head. I don't know what I said
+to you before dinner--I had had too many brandy and sodas. Perhaps I was
+too free; if I was I beg your pardon. I made the governess bolt--very
+proper in the superintendent of one's children. Do you suppose they saw
+anything? I shouldn't care for that. I did take half a dozen or so; I
+was thirsty and I was awfully gratified.'
+
+'You have little enough to gratify you.'
+
+'Now that's just where you are wrong. I don't know when I've fancied
+anything so much as what I told you.'
+
+'What you told me?'
+
+'About her being in Paris. I hope she'll stay a month!'
+
+'I don't understand you,' Laura said.
+
+'Are you very sure, Laura? My dear, it suits my book! Now you know
+yourself he's not the first.'
+
+Laura was silent; his round eyes were fixed on her face and she saw
+something she had not seen before--a little shining point which on
+Lionel's part might represent an idea, but which made his expression
+conscious as well as eager. 'He?' she presently asked. 'Whom are you
+speaking of?'
+
+'Why, of Charley Crispin, G----' And Lionel Berrington accompanied this
+name with a startling imprecation.
+
+'What has he to do----?'
+
+'He has everything to do. Isn't he with her there?'
+
+'How should I know? You said Lady Ringrose.'
+
+'Lady Ringrose is a mere blind--and a devilish poor one at that. I'm
+sorry to have to say it to you, but he's her lover. I mean Selina's. And
+he ain't the first.'
+
+There was another short silence while they stood opposed, and then Laura
+asked--and the question was unexpected--'Why do you call him Charley?'
+
+'Doesn't he call me Lion, like all the rest?' said her brother-in-law,
+staring.
+
+'You're the most extraordinary people. I suppose you have a certain
+amount of proof before you say such things to me?'
+
+'Proof, I've oceans of proof! And not only about Crispin, but about
+Deepmere.'
+
+'And pray who is Deepmere?'
+
+'Did you never hear of Lord Deepmere? He has gone to India. That was
+before you came. I don't say all this for my pleasure, Laura,' Mr.
+Berrington added.
+
+'Don't you, indeed?' asked the girl with a singular laugh. 'I thought
+you were so glad.'
+
+'I'm glad to know it but I'm not glad to tell it. When I say I'm glad to
+know it I mean I'm glad to be fixed at last. Oh, I've got the tip! It's
+all open country now and I know just how to go. I've gone into it most
+extensively; there's nothing you can't find out to-day--if you go to the
+right place. I've--I've----' He hesitated a moment, then went on: 'Well,
+it's no matter what I've done. I know where I am and it's a great
+comfort. She's up a tree, if ever a woman was. Now we'll see who's a
+beetle and who's a toad!' Lionel Berrington concluded, gaily, with some
+incongruity of metaphor.
+
+'It's not true--it's not true--it's not true,' Laura said, slowly.
+
+'That's just what she'll say--though that's not the way she'll say it.
+Oh, if she could get off by your saying it for her!--for you, my dear,
+would be believed.'
+
+'Get off--what do you mean?' the girl demanded, with a coldness she
+failed to feel, for she was tingling all over with shame and rage.
+
+'Why, what do you suppose I'm talking about? I'm going to haul her up
+and to have it out.'
+
+'You're going to make a scandal?'
+
+'_Make_ it? Bless my soul, it isn't me! And I should think it was made
+enough. I'm going to appeal to the laws of my country--that's what I'm
+going to do. She pretends I'm stopped, whatever she does. But that's all
+gammon--I ain't!'
+
+'I understand--but you won't do anything so horrible,' said Laura, very
+gently.
+
+'Horrible as you please, but less so than going on in this way; I
+haven't told you the fiftieth part--you will easily understand that I
+can't. They are not nice things to say to a girl like you--especially
+about Deepmere, if you didn't know it. But when they happen you've got
+to look at them, haven't you? That's the way I look at it.'
+
+'It's not true--it's not true--it's not true,' Laura Wing repeated, in
+the same way, slowly shaking her head.
+
+'Of course you stand up for your sister--but that's just what I wanted
+to say to you, that you ought to have some pity for _me_ and some sense
+of justice. Haven't I always been nice to you? Have you ever had so much
+as a nasty word from me?'
+
+This appeal touched the girl; she had eaten her brother-in-law's bread
+for months, she had had the use of all the luxuries with which he was
+surrounded, and to herself personally she had never known him anything
+but good-natured. She made no direct response however; she only
+said--'Be quiet, be quiet and leave her to me. I will answer for her.'
+
+'Answer for her--what do you mean?'
+
+'She shall be better--she shall be reasonable--there shall be no more
+talk of these horrors. Leave her to me--let me go away with her
+somewhere.'
+
+'Go away with her? I wouldn't let you come within a mile of her, if you
+were _my_ sister!'
+
+'Oh, shame, shame!' cried Laura Wing, turning away from him.
+
+She hurried to the door of the room, but he stopped her before she
+reached it. He got his back to it, he barred her way and she had to
+stand there and hear him. 'I haven't said what I wanted--for I told you
+that I wanted you to help me. I ain't cruel--I ain't insulting--you
+can't make out that against me; I'm sure you know in your heart that
+I've swallowed what would sicken most men. Therefore I will say that you
+ought to be fair. You're too clever not to be; _you_ can't pretend to
+swallow----' He paused a moment and went on, and she saw it was his
+idea--an idea very simple and bold. He wanted her to side with him--to
+watch for him--to help him to get his divorce. He forbore to say that
+she owed him as much for the hospitality and protection she had in her
+poverty enjoyed, but she was sure that was in his heart. 'Of course
+she's your sister, but when one's sister's a perfect bad 'un there's no
+law to force one to jump into the mud to save her. It _is_ mud, my dear,
+and mud up to your neck. You had much better think of her children--you
+had much better stop in _my_ boat.'
+
+'Do you ask me to help you with evidence against her?' the girl
+murmured. She had stood there passive, waiting while he talked, covering
+her face with her hands, which she parted a little, looking at him.
+
+He hesitated a moment. 'I ask you not to deny what you have seen--what
+you feel to be true.'
+
+'Then of the abominations of which you say you have proof, you haven't
+proof.'
+
+'Why haven't I proof?'
+
+'If you want _me_ to come forward!'
+
+'I shall go into court with a strong case. You may do what you like. But
+I give you notice and I expect you not to forget that I have given it.
+Don't forget--because you'll be asked--that I have told you to-night
+where she is and with whom she is and what measures I intend to take.'
+
+'Be asked--be asked?' the girl repeated.
+
+'Why, of course you'll be cross-examined.'
+
+'Oh, mother, mother!' cried Laura Wing. Her hands were over her face
+again and as Lionel Berrington, opening the door, let her pass, she
+burst into tears. He looked after her, distressed, compunctious,
+half-ashamed, and he exclaimed to himself--'The bloody brute, the bloody
+brute!' But the words had reference to his wife.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+'And are you telling me the perfect truth when you say that Captain
+Crispin was not there?'
+
+'The perfect truth?' Mrs. Berrington straightened herself to her height,
+threw back her head and measured her interlocutress up and down; it is
+to be surmised that this was one of the many ways in which she knew she
+looked very handsome indeed. Her interlocutress was her sister, and even
+in a discussion with a person long since initiated she was not incapable
+of feeling that her beauty was a new advantage. On this occasion she had
+at first the air of depending upon it mainly to produce an effect upon
+Laura; then, after an instant's reflection, she determined to arrive at
+her result in another way. She exchanged her expression of scorn (of
+resentment at her veracity's being impugned) for a look of gentle
+amusement; she smiled patiently, as if she remembered that of course
+Laura couldn't understand of what an impertinence she had been guilty.
+There was a quickness of perception and lightness of hand which, to her
+sense, her American sister had never acquired: the girl's earnest,
+almost barbarous probity blinded her to the importance of certain
+pleasant little forms. 'My poor child, the things you do say! One
+doesn't put a question about the perfect truth in a manner that implies
+that a person is telling a perfect lie. However, as it's only you, I
+don't mind satisfying your clumsy curiosity. I haven't the least idea
+whether Captain Crispin was there or not. I know nothing of his
+movements and he doesn't keep me informed--why should he, poor man?--of
+his whereabouts. He was not there for me--isn't that all that need
+interest you? As far as I was concerned he might have been at the North
+Pole. I neither saw him nor heard of him. I didn't see the end of his
+nose!' Selina continued, still with her wiser, tolerant brightness,
+looking straight into her sister's eyes. Her own were clear and lovely
+and she was but little less handsome than if she had been proud and
+freezing. Laura wondered at her more and more; stupefied suspense was
+now almost the girl's constant state of mind.
+
+Mrs. Berrington had come back from Paris the day before but had not
+proceeded to Mellows the same night, though there was more than one
+train she might have taken. Neither had she gone to the house in
+Grosvenor Place but had spent the night at an hotel. Her husband was
+absent again; he was supposed to be in Grosvenor Place, so that they had
+not yet met. Little as she was a woman to admit that she had been in the
+wrong she was known to have granted later that at this moment she had
+made a mistake in not going straight to her own house. It had given
+Lionel a degree of advantage, made it appear perhaps a little that she
+had a bad conscience and was afraid to face him. But she had had her
+reasons for putting up at an hotel, and she thought it unnecessary to
+express them very definitely. She came home by a morning train, the
+second day, and arrived before luncheon, of which meal she partook in
+the company of her sister and in that of Miss Steet and the children,
+sent for in honour of the occasion. After luncheon she let the governess
+go but kept Scratch and Parson--kept them on ever so long in the
+morning-room where she remained; longer than she had ever kept them
+before. Laura was conscious that she ought to have been pleased at this,
+but there was a perversity even in Selina's manner of doing right; for
+she wished immensely now to see her alone--she had something so serious
+to say to her. Selina hugged her children repeatedly, encouraging their
+sallies; she laughed extravagantly at the artlessness of their remarks,
+so that at table Miss Steet was quite abashed by her unusual high
+spirits. Laura was unable to question her about Captain Crispin and Lady
+Ringrose while Geordie and Ferdy were there: they would not understand,
+of course, but names were always reflected in their limpid little minds
+and they gave forth the image later--often in the most extraordinary
+connections. It was as if Selina knew what she was waiting for and were
+determined to make her wait. The girl wished her to go to her room, that
+she might follow her there. But Selina showed no disposition to retire,
+and one could never entertain the idea for her, on any occasion, that it
+would be suitable that she should change her dress. The dress she
+wore--whatever it was--was too becoming to her, and to the moment, for
+that. Laura noticed how the very folds of her garment told that she had
+been to Paris; she had spent only a week there but the mark of her
+_couturière_ was all over her: it was simply to confer with this great
+artist that, from her own account, she had crossed the Channel. The
+signs of the conference were so conspicuous that it was as if she had
+said, 'Don't you see the proof that it was for nothing but _chiffons_?'
+She walked up and down the room with Geordie in her arms, in an access
+of maternal tenderness; he was much too big to nestle gracefully in her
+bosom, but that only made her seem younger, more flexible, fairer in her
+tall, strong slimness. Her distinguished figure bent itself hither and
+thither, but always in perfect freedom, as she romped with her children;
+and there was another moment, when she came slowly down the room,
+holding one of them in each hand and singing to them while they looked
+up at her beauty, charmed and listening and a little surprised at such
+new ways--a moment when she might have passed for some grave, antique
+statue of a young matron, or even for a picture of Saint Cecilia. This
+morning, more than ever, Laura was struck with her air of youth, the
+inextinguishable freshness that would have made any one exclaim at her
+being the mother of such bouncing little boys. Laura had always admired
+her, thought her the prettiest woman in London, the beauty with the
+finest points; and now these points were so vivid (especially her
+finished slenderness and the grace, the natural elegance of every
+turn--the fall of her shoulders had never looked so perfect) that the
+girl almost detested them: they appeared to her a kind of advertisement
+of danger and even of shame.
+
+Miss Steet at last came back for the children, and as soon as she had
+taken them away Selina observed that she would go over to Plash--just
+as she was: she rang for her hat and jacket and for the carriage. Laura
+could see that she would not give her just yet the advantage of a
+retreat to her room. The hat and jacket were quickly brought, but after
+they were put on Selina kept her maid in the drawing-room, talking to
+her a long time, telling her elaborately what she wished done with the
+things she had brought from Paris. Before the maid departed the carriage
+was announced, and the servant, leaving the door of the room open,
+hovered within earshot. Laura then, losing patience, turned out the maid
+and closed the door; she stood before her sister, who was prepared for
+her drive. Then she asked her abruptly, fiercely, but colouring with her
+question, whether Captain Crispin had been in Paris. We have heard Mrs.
+Berrington's answer, with which her strenuous sister was imperfectly
+satisfied; a fact the perception of which it doubtless was that led
+Selina to break out, with a greater show of indignation: 'I never heard
+of such extraordinary ideas for a girl to have, and such extraordinary
+things for a girl to talk about! My dear, you have acquired a
+freedom--you have emancipated yourself from conventionality--and I
+suppose I must congratulate you.' Laura only stood there, with her eyes
+fixed, without answering the sally, and Selina went on, with another
+change of tone: 'And pray if he _was_ there, what is there so monstrous?
+Hasn't it happened that he is in London when I am there? Why is it then
+so awful that he should be in Paris?'
+
+'Awful, awful, too awful,' murmured Laura, with intense gravity, still
+looking at her--looking all the more fixedly that she knew how little
+Selina liked it.
+
+'My dear, you do indulge in a style of innuendo, for a respectable
+young woman!' Mrs. Berrington exclaimed, with an angry laugh. 'You have
+ideas that when I was a girl----' She paused, and her sister saw that
+she had not the assurance to finish her sentence on that particular
+note.
+
+'Don't talk about my innuendoes and my ideas--you might remember those
+in which I have heard you indulge! Ideas? what ideas did I ever have
+before I came here?' Laura Wing asked, with a trembling voice. 'Don't
+pretend to be shocked, Selina; that's too cheap a defence. You have said
+things to me--if you choose to talk of freedom! What is the talk of your
+house and what does one hear if one lives with you? I don't care what I
+hear now (it's all odious and there's little choice and my sweet
+sensibility has gone God knows where!) and I'm very glad if you
+understand that I don't care what I say. If one talks about your
+affairs, my dear, one mustn't be too particular!' the girl continued,
+with a flash of passion.
+
+Mrs. Berrington buried her face in her hands. 'Merciful powers, to be
+insulted, to be covered with outrage, by one's wretched little sister!'
+she moaned.
+
+'I think you should be thankful there is one human being--however
+wretched--who cares enough for you to care about the truth in what
+concerns you,' Laura said. 'Selina, Selina--are you hideously deceiving
+us?'
+
+'Us?' Selina repeated, with a singular laugh. 'Whom do you mean by us?'
+
+Laura Wing hesitated; she had asked herself whether it would be best she
+should let her sister know the dreadful scene she had had with Lionel;
+but she had not, in her mind, settled that point. However, it was
+settled now in an instant. 'I don't mean your friends--those of them
+that I have seen. I don't think _they_ care a straw--I have never seen
+such people. But last week Lionel spoke to me--he told me he _knew_ it,
+as a certainty.'
+
+'Lionel spoke to you?' said Mrs. Berrington, holding up her head with a
+stare. 'And what is it that he knows?'
+
+'That Captain Crispin was in Paris and that you were with him. He
+believes you went there to meet him.'
+
+'He said this to _you_?'
+
+'Yes, and much more--I don't know why I should make a secret of it.'
+
+'The disgusting beast!' Selina exclaimed slowly, solemnly. 'He enjoys
+the right--the legal right--to pour forth his vileness upon _me_; but
+when he is so lost to every feeling as to begin to talk to you in such a
+way----!' And Mrs. Berrington paused, in the extremity of her
+reprobation.
+
+'Oh, it was not his talk that shocked me--it was his believing it,' the
+girl replied. 'That, I confess, made an impression on me.'
+
+'Did it indeed? I'm infinitely obliged to you! You are a tender, loving
+little sister.'
+
+'Yes, I am, if it's tender to have cried about you--all these days--till
+I'm blind and sick!' Laura replied. 'I hope you are prepared to meet
+him. His mind is quite made up to apply for a divorce.'
+
+Laura's voice almost failed her as she said this--it was the first time
+that in talking with Selina she had uttered that horrible word. She had
+heard it however, often enough on the lips of others; it had been
+bandied lightly enough in her presence under those somewhat austere
+ceilings of Mellows, of which the admired decorations and mouldings, in
+the taste of the middle of the last century, all in delicate plaster and
+reminding her of Wedgewood pottery, consisted of slim festoons, urns and
+trophies and knotted ribbons, so many symbols of domestic affection and
+irrevocable union. Selina herself had flashed it at her with light
+superiority, as if it were some precious jewel kept in reserve, which
+she could convert at any moment into specie, so that it would constitute
+a happy provision for her future. The idea--associated with her own
+point of view--was apparently too familiar to Mrs. Berrington to be the
+cause of her changing colour; it struck her indeed, as presented by
+Laura, in a ludicrous light, for her pretty eyes expanded a moment and
+she smiled pityingly. 'Well, you are a poor dear innocent, after all.
+Lionel would be about as able to divorce me--even if I were the most
+abandoned of my sex--as he would be to write a leader in the _Times_.'
+
+'I know nothing about that,' said Laura.
+
+'So I perceive--as I also perceive that you must have shut your eyes
+very tight. Should you like to know a few of the reasons--heaven forbid
+I should attempt to go over them all; there are millions!--why his hands
+are tied?'
+
+'Not in the least.'
+
+'Should you like to know that his own life is too base for words and
+that his impudence in talking about me would be sickening if it weren't
+grotesque?' Selina went on, with increasing emotion. 'Should you like me
+to tell you to what he has stooped--to the very gutter--and the
+charming history of his relations with----'
+
+'No, I don't want you to tell me anything of the sort,' Laura
+interrupted. 'Especially as you were just now so pained by the license
+of my own allusions.'
+
+'You listen to him then--but it suits your purpose not to listen to me!'
+
+'Oh, Selina, Selina!' the girl almost shrieked, turning away.
+
+'Where have your eyes been, or your senses, or your powers of
+observation? You can be clever enough when it suits you!' Mrs.
+Berrington continued, throwing off another ripple of derision. 'And now
+perhaps, as the carriage is waiting, you will let me go about my
+duties.'
+
+Laura turned again and stopped her, holding her arm as she passed toward
+the door. 'Will you swear--will you swear by everything that is most
+sacred?'
+
+'Will I swear what?' And now she thought Selina visibly blanched.
+
+'That you didn't lay eyes on Captain Crispin in Paris.'
+
+Mrs. Berrington hesitated, but only for an instant. 'You are really too
+odious, but as you are pinching me to death I will swear, to get away
+from you. I never laid eyes on him.'
+
+The organs of vision which Mrs. Berrington was ready solemnly to declare
+that she had not misapplied were, as her sister looked into them, an
+abyss of indefinite prettiness. The girl had sounded them before without
+discovering a conscience at the bottom of them, and they had never
+helped any one to find out anything about their possessor except that
+she was one of the beauties of London. Even while Selina spoke Laura had
+a cold, horrible sense of not believing her, and at the same time a
+desire, colder still, to extract a reiteration of the pledge. Was it the
+asseveration of her innocence that she wished her to repeat, or only the
+attestation of her falsity? One way or the other it seemed to her that
+this would settle something, and she went on inexorably--'By our dear
+mother's memory--by our poor father's?'
+
+'By my mother's, by my father's,' said Mrs. Berrington, 'and by that of
+any other member of the family you like!' Laura let her go; she had not
+been pinching her, as Selina described the pressure, but had clung to
+her with insistent hands. As she opened the door Selina said, in a
+changed voice: 'I suppose it's no use to ask you if you care to drive to
+Plash.'
+
+'No, thank you, I don't care--I shall take a walk.'
+
+'I suppose, from that, that your friend Lady Davenant has gone.'
+
+'No, I think she is still there.'
+
+'That's a bore!' Selina exclaimed, as she went off.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Laura Wing hastened to her room to prepare herself for her walk; but
+when she reached it she simply fell on her knees, shuddering, beside her
+bed. She buried her face in the soft counterpane of wadded silk; she
+remained there a long time, with a kind of aversion to lifting it again
+to the day. It burned with horror and there was coolness in the smooth
+glaze of the silk. It seemed to her that she had been concerned in a
+hideous transaction, and her uppermost feeling was, strangely enough,
+that she was ashamed--not of her sister but of herself. She did not
+believe her--that was at the bottom of everything, and she had made her
+lie, she had brought out her perjury, she had associated it with the
+sacred images of the dead. She took no walk, she remained in her room,
+and quite late, towards six o'clock, she heard on the gravel, outside of
+her windows, the wheels of the carriage bringing back Mrs. Berrington.
+She had evidently been elsewhere as well as to Plash; no doubt she had
+been to the vicarage--she was capable even of that. She could pay
+'duty-visits,' like that (she called at the vicarage about three times a
+year), and she could go and be nice to her mother-in-law with her fresh
+lips still fresher for the lie she had just told. For it was as definite
+as an aching nerve to Laura that she did not believe her, and if she did
+not believe her the words she had spoken were a lie. It was the lie, the
+lie to _her_ and which she had dragged out of her that seemed to the
+girl the ugliest thing. If she had admitted her folly, if she had
+explained, attenuated, sophisticated, there would have been a difference
+in her favour; but now she was bad because she was hard. She had a
+surface of polished metal. And she could make plans and calculate, she
+could act and do things for a particular effect. She could go straight
+to old Mrs. Berrington and to the parson's wife and his many daughters
+(just as she had kept the children after luncheon, on purpose, so long)
+because that looked innocent and domestic and denoted a mind without a
+feather's weight upon it.
+
+A servant came to the young lady's door to tell her that tea was ready;
+and on her asking who else was below (for she had heard the wheels of a
+second vehicle just after Selina's return), she learned that Lionel had
+come back. At this news she requested that some tea should be brought to
+her room--she determined not to go to dinner. When the dinner-hour came
+she sent down word that she had a headache, that she was going to bed.
+She wondered whether Selina would come to her (she could forget
+disagreeable scenes amazingly); but her fervent hope that she would stay
+away was gratified. Indeed she would have another call upon her
+attention if her meeting with her husband was half as much of a
+concussion as was to have been expected. Laura had found herself
+listening hard, after knowing that her brother-in-law was in the house:
+she half expected to hear indications of violence--loud cries or the
+sound of a scuffle. It was a matter of course to her that some dreadful
+scene had not been slow to take place, something that discretion should
+keep her out of even if she had not been too sick. She did not go to
+bed--partly because she didn't know what might happen in the house. But
+she was restless also for herself: things had reached a point when it
+seemed to her that she must make up her mind. She left her candles
+unlighted--she sat up till the small hours, in the glow of the fire.
+What had been settled by her scene with Selina was that worse things
+were to come (looking into her fire, as the night went on, she had a
+rare prevision of the catastrophe that hung over the house), and she
+considered, or tried to consider, what it would be best for her, in
+anticipation, to do. The first thing was to take flight.
+
+It may be related without delay that Laura Wing did not take flight and
+that though the circumstance detracts from the interest that should be
+felt in her character she did not even make up her mind. That was not so
+easy when action had to ensue. At the same time she had not the excuse
+of a conviction that by not acting--that is by not withdrawing from her
+brother-in-law's roof--she should be able to hold Selina up to her duty,
+to drag her back into the straight path. The hopes connected with that
+project were now a phase that she had left behind her; she had not
+to-day an illusion about her sister large enough to cover a sixpence.
+She had passed through the period of superstition, which had lasted the
+longest--the time when it seemed to her, as at first, a kind of
+profanity to doubt of Selina and judge her, the elder sister whose
+beauty and success she had ever been proud of and who carried herself,
+though with the most good-natured fraternisings, as one native to an
+upper air. She had called herself in moments of early penitence for
+irrepressible suspicion a little presumptuous prig: so strange did it
+seem to her at first, the impulse of criticism in regard to her bright
+protectress. But the revolution was over and she had a desolate, lonely
+freedom which struck her as not the most cynical thing in the world only
+because Selina's behaviour was more so. She supposed she should learn,
+though she was afraid of the knowledge, what had passed between that
+lady and her husband while her vigil ached itself away. But it appeared
+to her the next day, to her surprise, that nothing was changed in the
+situation save that Selina knew at present how much more she was
+suspected. As this had not a chastening effect upon Mrs. Berrington
+nothing had been gained by Laura's appeal to her. Whatever Lionel had
+said to his wife he said nothing to Laura: he left her at perfect
+liberty to forget the subject he had opened up to her so luminously.
+This was very characteristic of his good-nature; it had come over him
+that after all she wouldn't like it, and if the free use of the gray
+ponies could make up to her for the shock she might order them every day
+in the week and banish the unpleasant episode from her mind.
+
+Laura ordered the gray ponies very often: she drove herself all over the
+country. She visited not only the neighbouring but the distant poor, and
+she never went out without stopping for one of the vicar's fresh
+daughters. Mellows was now half the time full of visitors and when it
+was not its master and mistress were staying with their friends either
+together or singly. Sometimes (almost always when she was asked) Laura
+Wing accompanied her sister and on two or three occasions she paid an
+independent visit. Selina had often told her that she wished her to have
+her own friends, so that the girl now felt a great desire to show her
+that she had them. She had arrived at no decision whatever; she had
+embraced in intention no particular course. She drifted on, shutting her
+eyes, averting her head and, as it seemed to herself, hardening her
+heart. This admission will doubtless suggest to the reader that she was
+a weak, inconsequent, spasmodic young person, with a standard not
+really, or at any rate not continuously, high; and I have no desire that
+she shall appear anything but what she was. It must even be related of
+her that since she could not escape and live in lodgings and paint fans
+(there were reasons why this combination was impossible) she determined
+to try and be happy in the given circumstances--to float in shallow,
+turbid water. She gave up the attempt to understand the cynical _modus
+vivendi_ at which her companions seemed to have arrived; she knew it was
+not final but it served them sufficiently for the time; and if it served
+them why should it not serve her, the dependent, impecunious, tolerated
+little sister, representative of the class whom it behoved above all to
+mind their own business? The time was coming round when they would all
+move up to town, and there, in the crowd, with the added movement, the
+strain would be less and indifference easier.
+
+Whatever Lionel had said to his wife that evening she had found
+something to say to him: that Laura could see, though not so much from
+any change in the simple expression of his little red face and in the
+vain bustle of his existence as from the grand manner in which Selina
+now carried herself. She was 'smarter' than ever and her waist was
+smaller and her back straighter and the fall of her shoulders finer; her
+long eyes were more oddly charming and the extreme detachment of her
+elbows from her sides conduced still more to the exhibition of her
+beautiful arms. So she floated, with a serenity not disturbed by a
+general tardiness, through the interminable succession of her
+engagements. Her photographs were not to be purchased in the Burlington
+Arcade--she had kept out of that; but she looked more than ever as they
+would have represented her if they had been obtainable there. There were
+times when Laura thought her brother-in-law's formless desistence too
+frivolous for nature: it even gave her a sense of deeper dangers. It was
+as if he had been digging away in the dark and they would all tumble
+into the hole. It happened to her to ask herself whether the things he
+had said to her the afternoon he fell upon her in the schoolroom had not
+all been a clumsy practical joke, a crude desire to scare, that of a
+schoolboy playing with a sheet in the dark; or else brandy and soda,
+which came to the same thing. However this might be she was obliged to
+recognise that the impression of brandy and soda had not again been
+given her. More striking still however was Selina's capacity to recover
+from shocks and condone imputations; she kissed again--kissed
+Laura--without tears, and proposed problems connected with the
+rearrangement of trimmings and of the flowers at dinner, as
+candidly--as earnestly--as if there had never been an intenser question
+between them. Captain Crispin was not mentioned; much less of course, so
+far as Laura was concerned, was he seen. But Lady Ringrose appeared; she
+came down for two days, during an absence of Lionel's. Laura, to her
+surprise, found her no such Jezebel but a clever little woman with a
+single eye-glass and short hair who had read Lecky and could give her
+useful hints about water-colours: a reconciliation that encouraged the
+girl, for this was the direction in which it now seemed to her best that
+she herself should grow.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+In Grosvenor Place, on Sunday afternoon, during the first weeks of the
+season, Mrs. Berrington was usually at home: this indeed was the only
+time when a visitor who had not made an appointment could hope to be
+admitted to her presence. Very few hours in the twenty-four did she
+spend in her own house. Gentlemen calling on these occasions rarely
+found her sister: Mrs. Berrington had the field to herself. It was
+understood between the pair that Laura should take this time for going
+to see her old women: it was in that manner that Selina qualified the
+girl's independent social resources. The old women however were not a
+dozen in number; they consisted mainly of Lady Davenant and the elder
+Mrs. Berrington, who had a house in Portman Street. Lady Davenant lived
+at Queen's Gate and also was usually at home of a Sunday afternoon: her
+visitors were not all men, like Selina Berrington's, and Laura's
+maidenly bonnet was not a false note in her drawing-room. Selina liked
+her sister, naturally enough, to make herself useful, but of late,
+somehow, they had grown rarer, the occasions that depended in any degree
+upon her aid, and she had never been much appealed to--though it would
+have seemed natural she should be--on behalf of the weekly chorus of
+gentlemen. It came to be recognised on Selina's part that nature had
+dedicated her more to the relief of old women than to that of young men.
+Laura had a distinct sense of interfering with the free interchange of
+anecdote and pleasantry that went on at her sister's fireside: the
+anecdotes were mostly such an immense secret that they could not be told
+fairly if she were there, and she had their privacy on her conscience.
+There was an exception however; when Selina expected Americans she
+naturally asked her to stay at home: not apparently so much because
+their conversation would be good for her as because hers would be good
+for them.
+
+One Sunday, about the middle of May, Laura Wing prepared herself to go
+and see Lady Davenant, who had made a long absence from town at Easter
+but would now have returned. The weather was charming, she had from the
+first established her right to tread the London streets alone (if she
+was a poor girl she could have the detachment as well as the
+helplessness of it) and she promised herself the pleasure of a walk
+along the park, where the new grass was bright. A moment before she
+quitted the house her sister sent for her to the drawing-room; the
+servant gave her a note scrawled in pencil: 'That man from New York is
+here--Mr. Wendover, who brought me the introduction the other day from
+the Schoolings. He's rather a dose--you must positively come down and
+talk to him. Take him out with you if you can.' The description was not
+alluring, but Selina had never made a request of her to which the girl
+had not instantly responded: it seemed to her she was there for that.
+She joined the circle in the drawing-room and found that it consisted
+of five persons, one of whom was Lady Ringrose. Lady Ringrose was at all
+times and in all places a fitful apparition; she had described herself
+to Laura during her visit at Mellows as 'a bird on the branch.' She had
+no fixed habit of receiving on Sunday, she was in and out as she liked,
+and she was one of the few specimens of her sex who, in Grosvenor Place,
+ever turned up, as she said, on the occasions to which I allude. Of the
+three gentlemen two were known to Laura; she could have told you at
+least that the big one with the red hair was in the Guards and the other
+in the Rifles; the latter looked like a rosy child and as if he ought to
+be sent up to play with Geordie and Ferdy: his social nickname indeed
+was the Baby. Selina's admirers were of all ages--they ranged from
+infants to octogenarians.
+
+She introduced the third gentleman to her sister; a tall, fair, slender
+young man who suggested that he had made a mistake in the shade of his
+tight, perpendicular coat, ordering it of too heavenly a blue. This
+added however to the candour of his appearance, and if he was a dose, as
+Selina had described him, he could only operate beneficently. There were
+moments when Laura's heart rather yearned towards her countrymen, and
+now, though she was preoccupied and a little disappointed at having been
+detained, she tried to like Mr. Wendover, whom her sister had compared
+invidiously, as it seemed to her, with her other companions. It struck
+her that his surface at least was as glossy as theirs. The Baby, whom
+she remembered to have heard spoken of as a dangerous flirt, was in
+conversation with Lady Ringrose and the guardsman with Mrs. Berrington;
+so she did her best to entertain the American visitor, as to whom any
+one could easily see (she thought) that he had brought a letter of
+introduction--he wished so to maintain the credit of those who had given
+it to him. Laura scarcely knew these people, American friends of her
+sister who had spent a period of festivity in London and gone back
+across the sea before her own advent; but Mr. Wendover gave her all
+possible information about them. He lingered upon them, returned to
+them, corrected statements he had made at first, discoursed upon them
+earnestly and exhaustively. He seemed to fear to leave them, lest he
+should find nothing again so good, and he indulged in a parallel that
+was almost elaborate between Miss Fanny and Miss Katie. Selina told her
+sister afterwards that she had overheard him--that he talked of them as
+if he had been a nursemaid; upon which Laura defended the young man even
+to extravagance. She reminded her sister that people in London were
+always saying Lady Mary and Lady Susan: why then shouldn't Americans use
+the Christian name, with the humbler prefix with which they had to
+content themselves? There had been a time when Mrs. Berrington had been
+happy enough to be Miss Lina, even though she was the elder sister; and
+the girl liked to think there were still old friends--friends of the
+family, at home, for whom, even should she live to sixty years of
+spinsterhood, she would never be anything but Miss Laura. This was as
+good as Donna Anna or Donna Elvira: English people could never call
+people as other people did, for fear of resembling the servants.
+
+Mr. Wendover was very attentive, as well as communicative; however his
+letter might be regarded in Grosvenor Place he evidently took it very
+seriously himself; but his eyes wandered considerably, none the less, to
+the other side of the room, and Laura felt that though he had often seen
+persons like her before (not that he betrayed this too crudely) he had
+never seen any one like Lady Ringrose. His glance rested also on Mrs.
+Berrington, who, to do her justice, abstained from showing, by the way
+she returned it, that she wished her sister to get him out of the room.
+Her smile was particularly pretty on Sunday afternoons and he was
+welcome to enjoy it as a part of the decoration of the place. Whether or
+no the young man should prove interesting he was at any rate interested;
+indeed she afterwards learned that what Selina deprecated in him was the
+fact that he would eventually display a fatiguing intensity of
+observation. He would be one of the sort who noticed all kinds of little
+things--things she never saw or heard of--in the newspapers or in
+society, and would call upon her (a dreadful prospect) to explain or
+even to defend them. She had not come there to explain England to the
+Americans; the more particularly as her life had been a burden to her
+during the first years of her marriage through her having to explain
+America to the English. As for defending England to her countrymen she
+had much rather defend it _from_ them: there were too many--too many for
+those who were already there. This was the class she wished to
+spare--she didn't care about the English. They could obtain an eye for
+an eye and a cutlet for a cutlet by going over there; which she had no
+desire to do--not for all the cutlets in Christendom!
+
+When Mr. Wendover and Laura had at last cut loose from the Schoolings
+he let her know confidentially that he had come over really to see
+London; he had time, that year; he didn't know when he should have it
+again (if ever, as he said) and he had made up his mind that this was
+about the best use he could make of four months and a half. He had heard
+so much of it; it was talked of so much to-day; a man felt as if he
+ought to know something about it. Laura wished the others could hear
+this--that England was coming up, was making her way at last to a place
+among the topics of societies more universal. She thought Mr. Wendover
+after all remarkably like an Englishman, in spite of his saying that he
+believed she had resided in London quite a time. He talked a great deal
+about things being characteristic, and wanted to know, lowering his
+voice to make the inquiry, whether Lady Ringrose were not particularly
+so. He had heard of her very often, he said; and he observed that it was
+very interesting to see her: he could not have used a different tone if
+he had been speaking of the prime minister or the laureate. Laura was
+ignorant of what he had heard of Lady Ringrose; she doubted whether it
+could be the same as what she had heard from her brother-in-law: if this
+had been the case he never would have mentioned it. She foresaw that his
+friends in London would have a good deal to do in the way of telling him
+whether this or that were characteristic or not; he would go about in
+much the same way that English travellers did in America, fixing his
+attention mainly on society (he let Laura know that this was especially
+what he wished to go into) and neglecting the antiquities and sights,
+quite as if he failed to believe in their importance. He would ask
+questions it was impossible to answer; as to whether for instance
+society were very different in the two countries. If you said yes you
+gave a wrong impression and if you said no you didn't give a right one:
+that was the kind of thing that Selina had suffered from. Laura found
+her new acquaintance, on the present occasion and later, more
+philosophically analytic of his impressions than those of her countrymen
+she had hitherto encountered in her new home: the latter, in regard to
+such impressions, usually exhibited either a profane levity or a
+tendency to mawkish idealism.
+
+Mrs. Berrington called out at last to Laura that she must not stay if
+she had prepared herself to go out: whereupon the girl, having nodded
+and smiled good-bye at the other members of the circle, took a more
+formal leave of Mr. Wendover--expressed the hope, as an American girl
+does in such a case, that they should see him again. Selina asked him to
+come and dine three days later; which was as much as to say that
+relations might be suspended till then. Mr. Wendover took it so, and
+having accepted the invitation he departed at the same time as Laura. He
+passed out of the house with her and in the street she asked him which
+way he was going. He was too tender, but she liked him; he appeared not
+to deal in chaff and that was a change that relieved her--she had so
+often had to pay out that coin when she felt wretchedly poor. She hoped
+he would ask her leave to go with her the way she was going--and this
+not on particular but on general grounds. It would be American, it
+would remind her of old times; she should like him to be as American as
+that. There was no reason for her taking so quick an interest in his
+nature, inasmuch as she had not fallen under his spell; but there were
+moments when she felt a whimsical desire to be reminded of the way
+people felt and acted at home. Mr. Wendover did not disappoint her, and
+the bright chocolate-coloured vista of the Fifth Avenue seemed to surge
+before her as he said, 'May I have the pleasure of making my direction
+the same as yours?' and moved round, systematically, to take his place
+between her and the curbstone. She had never walked much with young men
+in America (she had been brought up in the new school, the school of
+attendant maids and the avoidance of certain streets) and she had very
+often done so in England, in the country; yet, as at the top of
+Grosvenor Place she crossed over to the park, proposing they should take
+that way, the breath of her native land was in her nostrils. It was
+certainly only an American who could have the tension of Mr. Wendover;
+his solemnity almost made her laugh, just as her eyes grew dull when
+people 'slanged' each other hilariously in her sister's house; but at
+the same time he gave her a feeling of high respectability. It would be
+respectable still if she were to go on with him indefinitely--if she
+never were to come home at all. He asked her after a while, as they
+went, whether he had violated the custom of the English in offering her
+his company; whether in that country a gentleman might walk with a young
+lady--the first time he saw her--not because their roads lay together
+but for the sake of the walk.
+
+'Why should it matter to me whether it is the custom of the English? I
+am not English,' said Laura Wing. Then her companion explained that he
+only wanted a general guidance--that with her (she was so kind) he had
+not the sense of having taken a liberty. The point was simply--and
+rather comprehensively and strenuously he began to set forth the point.
+Laura interrupted him; she said she didn't care about it and he almost
+irritated her by telling her she was kind. She was, but she was not
+pleased at its being recognised so soon; and he was still too
+importunate when he asked her whether she continued to go by American
+usage, didn't find that if one lived there one had to conform in a great
+many ways to the English. She was weary of the perpetual comparison, for
+she not only heard it from others--she heard it a great deal from
+herself. She held that there were certain differences you felt, if you
+belonged to one or the other nation, and that was the end of it: there
+was no use trying to express them. Those you _could_ express were not
+real or not important ones and were not worth talking about. Mr.
+Wendover asked her if she liked English society and if it were superior
+to American; also if the tone were very high in London. She thought his
+questions 'academic'--the term she used to see applied in the _Times_ to
+certain speeches in Parliament. Bending his long leanness over her (she
+had never seen a man whose material presence was so insubstantial, so
+unoppressive) and walking almost sidewise, to give her a proper
+attention, he struck her as innocent, as incapable of guessing that she
+had had a certain observation of life. They were talking about totally
+different things: English society, as he asked her judgment upon it and
+she had happened to see it, was an affair that he didn't suspect. If
+she were to give him that judgment it would be more than he doubtless
+bargained for; but she would do it not to make him open his eyes--only
+to relieve herself. She had thought of that before in regard to two or
+three persons she had met--of the satisfaction of breaking out with some
+of her feelings. It would make little difference whether the person
+understood her or not; the one who should do so best would be far from
+understanding everything. 'I want to get out of it, please--out of the
+set I live in, the one I have tumbled into through my sister, the people
+you saw just now. There are thousands of people in London who are
+different from that and ever so much nicer; but I don't see them, I
+don't know how to get at them; and after all, poor dear man, what power
+have you to help me?' That was in the last analysis the gist of what she
+had to say.
+
+Mr. Wendover asked her about Selina in the tone of a person who thought
+Mrs. Berrington a very important phenomenon, and that by itself was
+irritating to Laura Wing. Important--gracious goodness, no! She might
+have to live with her, to hold her tongue about her; but at least she
+was not bound to exaggerate her significance. The young man forbore
+decorously to make use of the expression, but she could see that he
+supposed Selina to be a professional beauty and she guessed that as this
+product had not yet been domesticated in the western world the desire to
+behold it, after having read so much about it, had been one of the
+motives of Mr. Wendover's pilgrimage. Mrs. Schooling, who must have been
+a goose, had told him that Mrs. Berrington, though transplanted, was
+the finest flower of a rich, ripe society and as clever and virtuous as
+she was beautiful. Meanwhile Laura knew what Selina thought of Fanny
+Schooling and her incurable provinciality. 'Now was that a good example
+of London talk--what I heard (I only heard a little of it, but the
+conversation was more general before you came in) in your sister's
+drawing-room? I don't mean literary, intellectual talk--I suppose there
+are special places to hear that; I mean--I mean----' Mr. Wendover went
+on with a deliberation which gave his companion an opportunity to
+interrupt him. They had arrived at Lady Davenant's door and she cut his
+meaning short. A fancy had taken her, on the spot, and the fact that it
+was whimsical seemed only to recommend it.
+
+'If you want to hear London talk there will be some very good going on
+in here,' she said. 'If you would like to come in with me----?'
+
+'Oh, you are very kind--I should be delighted,' replied Mr. Wendover,
+endeavouring to emulate her own more rapid processes. They stepped into
+the porch and the young man, anticipating his companion, lifted the
+knocker and gave a postman's rap. She laughed at him for this and he
+looked bewildered; the idea of taking him in with her had become
+agreeably exhilarating. Their acquaintance, in that moment, took a long
+jump. She explained to him who Lady Davenant was and that if he was in
+search of the characteristic it would be a pity he shouldn't know her;
+and then she added, before he could put the question:
+
+'And what I am doing is _not_ in the least usual. No, it is not the
+custom for young ladies here to take strange gentlemen off to call on
+their friends the first time they see them.'
+
+'So that Lady Davenant will think it rather extraordinary?' Mr. Wendover
+eagerly inquired; not as if that idea frightened him, but so that his
+observation on this point should also be well founded. He had entered
+into Laura's proposal with complete serenity.
+
+'Oh, most extraordinary!' said Laura, as they went in. The old lady
+however concealed such surprise as she may have felt, and greeted Mr.
+Wendover as if he were any one of fifty familiars. She took him
+altogether for granted and asked him no questions about his arrival, his
+departure, his hotel or his business in England. He noticed, as he
+afterwards confided to Laura, her omission of these forms; but he was
+not wounded by it--he only made a mark against it as an illustration of
+the difference between English and American manners: in New York people
+always asked the arriving stranger the first thing about the steamer and
+the hotel. Mr. Wendover appeared greatly impressed with Lady Davenant's
+antiquity, though he confessed to his companion on a subsequent occasion
+that he thought her a little flippant, a little frivolous even for her
+years. 'Oh yes,' said the girl, on that occasion, 'I have no doubt that
+you considered she talked too much, for one so old. In America old
+ladies sit silent and listen to the young.' Mr. Wendover stared a little
+and replied to this that with her--with Laura Wing--it was impossible to
+tell which side she was on, the American or the English: sometimes she
+seemed to take one, sometimes the other. At any rate, he added, smiling,
+with regard to the other great division it was easy to see--she was on
+the side of the old. 'Of course I am,' she said; 'when one _is_ old!'
+And then he inquired, according to his wont, if she were thought so in
+England; to which she answered that it was England that had made her so.
+
+Lady Davenant's bright drawing-room was filled with mementoes and
+especially with a collection of portraits of distinguished people,
+mainly fine old prints with signatures, an array of precious autographs.
+'Oh, it's a cemetery,' she said, when the young man asked her some
+question about one of the pictures; 'they are my contemporaries, they
+are all dead and those things are the tombstones, with the inscriptions.
+I'm the grave-digger, I look after the place and try to keep it a little
+tidy. I have dug my own little hole,' she went on, to Laura, 'and when
+you are sent for you must come and put me in.' This evocation of
+mortality led Mr. Wendover to ask her if she had known Charles Lamb; at
+which she stared for an instant, replying: 'Dear me, no--one didn't meet
+him.'
+
+'Oh, I meant to say Lord Byron,' said Mr. Wendover.
+
+'Bless me, yes; I was in love with him. But he didn't notice me,
+fortunately--we were so many. He was very nice-looking but he was very
+vulgar.' Lady Davenant talked to Laura as if Mr. Wendover had not been
+there; or rather as if his interests and knowledge were identical with
+hers. Before they went away the young man asked her if she had known
+Garrick and she replied: 'Oh, dear, no, we didn't have them in our
+houses, in those days.'
+
+'He must have been dead long before you were born!' Laura exclaimed.
+
+'I daresay; but one used to hear of him.'
+
+'I think I meant Edmund Kean,' said Mr. Wendover.
+
+'You make little mistakes of a century or two,' Laura Wing remarked,
+laughing. She felt now as if she had known Mr. Wendover a long time.
+
+'Oh, he was very clever,' said Lady Davenant.
+
+'Very magnetic, I suppose,' Mr. Wendover went on.
+
+'What's that? I believe he used to get tipsy.'
+
+'Perhaps you don't use that expression in England?' Laura's companion
+inquired.
+
+'Oh, I daresay we do, if it's American; we talk American now. You seem
+very good-natured people, but such a jargon as you _do_ speak!'
+
+'I like _your_ way, Lady Davenant,' said Mr. Wendover, benevolently,
+smiling.
+
+'You might do worse,' cried the old woman; and then she added: 'Please
+go out!' They were taking leave of her but she kept Laura's hand and,
+for the young man, nodded with decision at the open door. 'Now, wouldn't
+_he_ do?' she asked, after Mr. Wendover had passed into the hall.
+
+'Do for what?'
+
+'For a husband, of course.'
+
+'For a husband--for whom?'
+
+'Why--for me,' said Lady Davenant.
+
+'I don't know--I think he might tire you.'
+
+'Oh--if he's tiresome!' the old lady continued, smiling at the girl.
+
+'I think he is very good,' said Laura.
+
+'Well then, he'll do.'
+
+'Ah, perhaps _you_ won't!' Laura exclaimed, smiling back at her and
+turning away.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+She was of a serious turn by nature and unlike many serious people she
+made no particular study of the art of being gay. Had her circumstances
+been different she might have done so, but she lived in a merry house
+(heaven save the mark! as she used to say) and therefore was not driven
+to amuse herself for conscience sake. The diversions she sought were of
+a serious cast and she liked those best which showed most the note of
+difference from Selina's interests and Lionel's. She felt that she was
+most divergent when she attempted to cultivate her mind, and it was a
+branch of such cultivation to visit the curiosities, the antiquities,
+the monuments of London. She was fond of the Abbey and the British
+Museum--she had extended her researches as far as the Tower. She read
+the works of Mr. John Timbs and made notes of the old corners of history
+that had not yet been abolished--the houses in which great men had lived
+and died. She planned a general tour of inspection of the ancient
+churches of the City and a pilgrimage to the queer places commemorated
+by Dickens. It must be added that though her intentions were great her
+adventures had as yet been small. She had wanted for opportunity and
+independence; people had other things to do than to go with her, so that
+it was not till she had been some time in the country and till a good
+while after she had begun to go out alone that she entered upon the
+privilege of visiting public institutions by herself. There were some
+aspects of London that frightened her, but there were certain spots,
+such as the Poets' Corner in the Abbey or the room of the Elgin marbles,
+where she liked better to be alone than not to have the right companion.
+At the time Mr. Wendover presented himself in Grosvenor Place she had
+begun to put in, as they said, a museum or something of that sort
+whenever she had a chance. Besides her idea that such places were
+sources of knowledge (it is to be feared that the poor girl's notions of
+knowledge were at once conventional and crude) they were also occasions
+for detachment, an escape from worrying thoughts. She forgot Selina and
+she 'qualified' herself a little--though for what she hardly knew.
+
+The day Mr. Wendover dined in Grosvenor Place they talked about St.
+Paul's, which he expressed a desire to see, wishing to get some idea of
+the great past, as he said, in England as well as of the present. Laura
+mentioned that she had spent half an hour the summer before in the big
+black temple on Ludgate Hill; whereupon he asked her if he might
+entertain the hope that--if it were not disagreeable to her to go
+again--she would serve as his guide there. She had taken him to see Lady
+Davenant, who was so remarkable and worth a long journey, and now he
+should like to pay her back--to show _her_ something. The difficulty
+would be that there was probably nothing she had not seen; but if she
+could think of anything he was completely at her service. They sat
+together at dinner and she told him she would think of something before
+the repast was over. A little while later she let him know that a
+charming place had occurred to her--a place to which she was afraid to
+go alone and where she should be grateful for a protector: she would
+tell him more about it afterwards. It was then settled between them that
+on a certain afternoon of the same week they would go to St. Paul's
+together, extending their ramble as much further as they had time. Laura
+lowered her voice for this discussion, as if the range of allusion had
+had a kind of impropriety. She was now still more of the mind that Mr.
+Wendover was a good young man--he had such worthy eyes. His principal
+defect was that he treated all subjects as if they were equally
+important; but that was perhaps better than treating them with equal
+levity. If one took an interest in him one might not despair of teaching
+him to discriminate.
+
+Laura said nothing at first to her sister about her appointment with
+him: the feelings with which she regarded Selina were not such as to
+make it easy for her to talk over matters of conduct, as it were, with
+this votary of pleasure at any price, or at any rate to report her
+arrangements to her as one would do to a person of fine judgment. All
+the same, as she had a horror of positively hiding anything (Selina
+herself did that enough for two) it was her purpose to mention at
+luncheon on the day of the event that she had agreed to accompany Mr.
+Wendover to St. Paul's. It so happened however that Mrs. Berrington was
+not at home at this repast; Laura partook of it in the company of Miss
+Steet and her young charges. It very often happened now that the
+sisters failed to meet in the morning, for Selina remained very late in
+her room and there had been a considerable intermission of the girl's
+earlier custom of visiting her there. It was Selina's habit to send
+forth from this fragrant sanctuary little hieroglyphic notes in which
+she expressed her wishes or gave her directions for the day. On the
+morning I speak of her maid put into Laura's hand one of these
+communications, which contained the words: 'Please be sure and replace
+me with the children at lunch--I meant to give them that hour to-day.
+But I have a frantic appeal from Lady Watermouth; she is worse and
+beseeches me to come to her, so I rush for the 12.30 train.' These lines
+required no answer and Laura had no questions to ask about Lady
+Watermouth. She knew she was tiresomely ill, in exile, condemned to
+forego the diversions of the season and calling out to her friends, in a
+house she had taken for three months at Weybridge (for a certain
+particular air) where Selina had already been to see her. Selina's
+devotion to her appeared commendable--she had her so much on her mind.
+Laura had observed in her sister in relation to other persons and
+objects these sudden intensities of charity, and she had said to
+herself, watching them--'Is it because she is bad?--does she want to
+make up for it somehow and to buy herself off from the penalties?'
+
+Mr. Wendover called for his _cicerone_ and they agreed to go in a
+romantic, Bohemian manner (the young man was very docile and
+appreciative about this), walking the short distance to the Victoria
+station and taking the mysterious underground railway. In the carriage
+she anticipated the inquiry that she figured to herself he presently
+would make and said, laughing: 'No, no, this is very exceptional; if we
+were both English--and both what we are, otherwise--we wouldn't do
+this.'
+
+'And if only one of us were English?'
+
+'It would depend upon which one.'
+
+'Well, say me.'
+
+'Oh, in that case I certainly--on so short an acquaintance--would not go
+sight-seeing with you.'
+
+'Well, I am glad I'm American,' said Mr. Wendover, sitting opposite to
+her.
+
+'Yes, you may thank your fate. It's much simpler,' Laura added.
+
+'Oh, you spoil it!' the young man exclaimed--a speech of which she took
+no notice but which made her think him brighter, as they used to say at
+home. He was brighter still after they had descended from the train at
+the Temple station (they had meant to go on to Blackfriars, but they
+jumped out on seeing the sign of the Temple, fired with the thought of
+visiting that institution too) and got admission to the old garden of
+the Benchers, which lies beside the foggy, crowded river, and looked at
+the tombs of the crusaders in the low Romanesque church, with the
+cross-legged figures sleeping so close to the eternal uproar, and
+lingered in the flagged, homely courts of brick, with their
+much-lettered door-posts, their dull old windows and atmosphere of
+consultation--lingered to talk of Johnson and Goldsmith and to remark
+how London opened one's eyes to Dickens; and he was brightest of all
+when they stood in the high, bare cathedral, which suggested a dirty
+whiteness, saying it was fine but wondering why it was not finer and
+letting a glance as cold as the dusty, colourless glass fall upon
+epitaphs that seemed to make most of the defunct bores even in death.
+Mr. Wendover was decorous but he was increasingly gay, and these
+qualities appeared in him in spite of the fact that St. Paul's was
+rather a disappointment. Then they felt the advantage of having the
+other place--the one Laura had had in mind at dinner--to fall back upon:
+that perhaps would prove a compensation. They entered a hansom now (they
+had to come to that, though they had walked also from the Temple to St.
+Paul's) and drove to Lincoln's Inn Fields, Laura making the reflection
+as they went that it was really a charm to roam about London under valid
+protection--such a mixture of freedom and safety--and that perhaps she
+had been unjust, ungenerous to her sister. A good-natured, positively
+charitable doubt came into her mind--a doubt that Selina might have the
+benefit of. What she liked in her present undertaking was the element of
+the _imprévu_ that it contained, and perhaps it was simply the same
+happy sense of getting the laws of London--once in a way--off her back
+that had led Selina to go over to Paris to ramble about with Captain
+Crispin. Possibly they had done nothing worse than go together to the
+Invalides and Notre Dame; and if any one were to meet _her_ driving that
+way, so far from home, with Mr. Wendover--Laura, mentally, did not
+finish her sentence, overtaken as she was by the reflection that she had
+fallen again into her old assumption (she had been in and out of it a
+hundred times), that Mrs. Berrington _had_ met Captain Crispin--the idea
+she so passionately repudiated. She at least would never deny that she
+had spent the afternoon with Mr. Wendover: she would simply say that he
+was an American and had brought a letter of introduction.
+
+The cab stopped at the Soane Museum, which Laura Wing had always wanted
+to see, a compatriot having once told her that it was one of the most
+curious things in London and one of the least known. While Mr. Wendover
+was discharging the vehicle she looked over the important old-fashioned
+square (which led her to say to herself that London was endlessly big
+and one would never know all the places that made it up) and saw a great
+bank of cloud hanging above it--a definite portent of a summer storm.
+'We are going to have thunder; you had better keep the cab,' she said;
+upon which her companion told the man to wait, so that they should not
+afterwards, in the wet, have to walk for another conveyance. The
+heterogeneous objects collected by the late Sir John Soane are arranged
+in a fine old dwelling-house, and the place gives one the impression of
+a sort of Saturday afternoon of one's youth--a long, rummaging visit,
+under indulgent care, to some eccentric and rather alarming old
+travelled person. Our young friends wandered from room to room and
+thought everything queer and some few objects interesting; Mr. Wendover
+said it would be a very good place to find a thing you couldn't find
+anywhere else--it illustrated the prudent virtue of keeping. They took
+note of the sarcophagi and pagodas, the artless old maps and medals.
+They admired the fine Hogarths; there were uncanny, unexpected objects
+that Laura edged away from, that she would have preferred not to be in
+the room with. They had been there half an hour--it had grown much
+darker--when they heard a tremendous peal of thunder and became aware
+that the storm had broken. They watched it a while from the upper
+windows--a violent June shower, with quick sheets of lightning and a
+rainfall that danced on the pavements. They took it sociably, they
+lingered at the window, inhaling the odour of the fresh wet that
+splashed over the sultry town. They would have to wait till it had
+passed, and they resigned themselves serenely to this idea, repeating
+very often that it would pass very soon. One of the keepers told them
+that there were other rooms to see--that there were very interesting
+things in the basement. They made their way down--it grew much darker
+and they heard a great deal of thunder--and entered a part of the house
+which presented itself to Laura as a series of dim, irregular
+vaults--passages and little narrow avenues--encumbered with strange
+vague things, obscured for the time but some of which had a wicked,
+startling look, so that she wondered how the keepers could stay there.
+'It's very fearful--it looks like a cave of idols!' she said to her
+companion; and then she added--'Just look there--is that a person or a
+thing?' As she spoke they drew nearer to the object of her reference--a
+figure in the middle of a small vista of curiosities, a figure which
+answered her question by uttering a short shriek as they approached. The
+immediate cause of this cry was apparently a vivid flash of lightning,
+which penetrated into the room and illuminated both Laura's face and
+that of the mysterious person. Our young lady recognised her sister, as
+Mrs. Berrington had evidently recognised her. 'Why, Selina!' broke from
+her lips before she had time to check the words. At the same moment the
+figure turned quickly away, and then Laura saw that it was accompanied
+by another, that of a tall gentleman with a light beard which shone in
+the dusk. The two persons retreated together--dodged out of sight, as it
+were, disappearing in the gloom or in the labyrinth of the objects
+exhibited. The whole encounter was but the business of an instant.
+
+'Was it Mrs. Berrington?' Mr. Wendover asked with interest while Laura
+stood staring.
+
+'Oh no, I only thought it was at first,' she managed to reply, very
+quickly. She had recognised the gentleman--he had the fine fair beard of
+Captain Crispin--and her heart seemed to her to jump up and down. She
+was glad her companion could not see her face, and yet she wanted to get
+out, to rush up the stairs, where he would see it again, to escape from
+the place. She wished not to be there with _them_--she was overwhelmed
+with a sudden horror. 'She has lied--she has lied again--she has
+lied!'--that was the rhythm to which her thought began to dance. She
+took a few steps one way and then another: she was afraid of running
+against the dreadful pair again. She remarked to her companion that it
+was time they should go off, and then when he showed her the way back to
+the staircase she pleaded that she had not half seen the things. She
+pretended suddenly to a deep interest in them, and lingered there
+roaming and prying about. She was flurried still more by the thought
+that he would have seen her flurry, and she wondered whether he believed
+the woman who had shrieked and rushed away was _not_ Selina. If she was
+not Selina why had she shrieked? and if she was Selina what would Mr.
+Wendover think of her behaviour, and of her own, and of the strange
+accident of their meeting? What must she herself think of that? so
+astonishing it was that in the immensity of London so infinitesimally
+small a chance should have got itself enacted. What a queer place to
+come to--for people like them! They would get away as soon as possible,
+of that she could be sure; and she would wait a little to give them
+time.
+
+Mr. Wendover made no further remark--that was a relief; though his
+silence itself seemed to show that he was mystified. They went upstairs
+again and on reaching the door found to their surprise that their cab
+had disappeared--a circumstance the more singular as the man had not
+been paid. The rain was still coming down, though with less violence,
+and the square had been cleared of vehicles by the sudden storm. The
+doorkeeper, perceiving the dismay of our friends, explained that the cab
+had been taken up by another lady and another gentleman who had gone out
+a few minutes before; and when they inquired how he had been induced to
+depart without the money they owed him the reply was that there
+evidently had been a discussion (he hadn't heard it, but the lady seemed
+in a fearful hurry) and the gentleman had told him that they would make
+it all up to him and give him a lot more into the bargain. The
+doorkeeper hazarded the candid surmise that the cabby would make ten
+shillings by the job. But there were plenty more cabs; there would be
+one up in a minute and the rain moreover was going to stop. 'Well, that
+_is_ sharp practice!' said Mr. Wendover. He made no further allusion to
+the identity of the lady.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+The rain did stop while they stood there, and a brace of hansoms was not
+slow to appear. Laura told her companion that he must put her into
+one--she could go home alone: she had taken up enough of his time. He
+deprecated this course very respectfully; urged that he had it on his
+conscience to deliver her at her own door; but she sprang into the cab
+and closed the apron with a movement that was a sharp prohibition. She
+wanted to get away from him--it would be too awkward, the long,
+pottering drive back. Her hansom started off while Mr. Wendover, smiling
+sadly, lifted his hat. It was not very comfortable, even without him;
+especially as before she had gone a quarter of a mile she felt that her
+action had been too marked--she wished she had let him come. His
+puzzled, innocent air of wondering what was the matter annoyed her; and
+she was in the absurd situation of being angry at a desistence which she
+would have been still angrier if he had been guiltless of. It would have
+comforted her (because it would seem to share her burden) and yet it
+would have covered her with shame if he had guessed that what she saw
+was wrong. It would not occur to him that there was a scandal so near
+her, because he thought with no great promptitude of such things; and
+yet, since there was--but since there was after all Laura scarcely knew
+what attitude would sit upon him most gracefully. As to what he might be
+prepared to suspect by having heard what Selina's reputation was in
+London, of that Laura was unable to judge, not knowing what was said,
+because of course it was not said to _her_. Lionel would undertake to
+give her the benefit of this any moment she would allow him, but how in
+the world could _he_ know either, for how could things be said to him?
+Then, in the rattle of the hansom, passing through streets for which the
+girl had no eyes, 'She has lied, she has lied, she has lied!' kept
+repeating itself. Why had she written and signed that wanton falsehood
+about her going down to Lady Watermouth? How could she have gone to Lady
+Watermouth's when she was making so very different and so extraordinary
+a use of the hours she had announced her intention of spending there?
+What had been the need of that misrepresentation and why did she lie
+before she was driven to it?
+
+It was because she was false altogether and deception came out of her
+with her breath; she was so depraved that it was easier to her to
+fabricate than to let it alone. Laura would not have asked her to give
+an account of her day, but she would ask her now. She shuddered at one
+moment, as she found herself saying--even in silence--such things of her
+sister, and the next she sat staring out of the front of the cab at the
+stiff problem presented by Selina's turning up with the partner of her
+guilt at the Soane Museum, of all places in the world. The girl shifted
+this fact about in various ways, to account for it--not unconscious as
+she did so that it was a pretty exercise of ingenuity for a nice girl.
+Plainly, it was a rare accident: if it had been their plan to spend the
+day together the Soane Museum had not been in the original programme.
+They had been near it, they had been on foot and they had rushed in to
+take refuge from the rain. But how did they come to be near it and above
+all to be on foot? How could Selina do anything so reckless from her own
+point of view as to walk about the town--even an out-of-the-way part of
+it--with her suspected lover? Laura Wing felt the want of proper
+knowledge to explain such anomalies. It was too little clear to her
+where ladies went and how they proceeded when they consorted with
+gentlemen in regard to their meetings with whom they had to lie. She
+knew nothing of where Captain Crispin lived; very possibly--for she
+vaguely remembered having heard Selina say of him that he was very
+poor--he had chambers in that part of the town, and they were either
+going to them or coming from them. If Selina had neglected to take her
+way in a four-wheeler with the glasses up it was through some chance
+that would not seem natural till it was explained, like that of their
+having darted into a public institution. Then no doubt it would hang
+together with the rest only too well. The explanation most exact would
+probably be that the pair had snatched a walk together (in the course of
+a day of many edifying episodes) for the 'lark' of it, and for the sake
+of the walk had taken the risk, which in that part of London, so
+detached from all gentility, had appeared to them small. The last thing
+Selina could have expected was to meet her sister in such a strange
+corner--her sister with a young man of her own!
+
+She was dining out that night with both Selina and Lionel--a conjunction
+that was rather rare. She was by no means always invited with them, and
+Selina constantly went without her husband. Appearances, however,
+sometimes got a sop thrown them; three or four times a month Lionel and
+she entered the brougham together like people who still had forms, who
+still said 'my dear.' This was to be one of those occasions, and Mrs.
+Berrington's young unmarried sister was included in the invitation. When
+Laura reached home she learned, on inquiry, that Selina had not yet come
+in, and she went straight to her own room. If her sister had been there
+she would have gone to hers instead--she would have cried out to her as
+soon as she had closed the door: 'Oh, stop, stop--in God's name, stop
+before you go any further, before exposure and ruin and shame come down
+and bury us!' That was what was in the air--the vulgarest disgrace, and
+the girl, harder now than ever about her sister, was conscious of a more
+passionate desire to save herself. But Selina's absence made the
+difference that during the next hour a certain chill fell upon this
+impulse from other feelings: she found suddenly that she was late and
+she began to dress. They were to go together after dinner to a couple of
+balls; a diversion which struck her as ghastly for people who carried
+such horrors in their breasts. Ghastly was the idea of the drive of
+husband, wife and sister in pursuit of pleasure, with falsity and
+detection and hate between them. Selina's maid came to her door to tell
+her that she was in the carriage--an extraordinary piece of punctuality,
+which made her wonder, as Selina was always dreadfully late for
+everything. Laura went down as quickly as she could, passed through the
+open door, where the servants were grouped in the foolish majesty of
+their superfluous attendance, and through the file of dingy gazers who
+had paused at the sight of the carpet across the pavement and the
+waiting carriage, in which Selina sat in pure white splendour. Mrs.
+Berrington had a tiara on her head and a proud patience in her face, as
+if her sister were really a sore trial. As soon as the girl had taken
+her place she said to the footman: 'Is Mr. Berrington there?'--to which
+the man replied: 'No ma'am, not yet.' It was not new to Laura that if
+there was any one later as a general thing than Selina it was Selina's
+husband. 'Then he must take a hansom. Go on.' The footman mounted and
+they rolled away.
+
+There were several different things that had been present to Laura's
+mind during the last couple of hours as destined to mark--one or the
+other--this present encounter with her sister; but the words Selina
+spoke the moment the brougham began to move were of course exactly those
+she had not foreseen. She had considered that she might take this tone
+or that tone or even no tone at all; she was quite prepared for her
+presenting a face of blankness to any form of interrogation and saying,
+'What on earth are you talking about?' It was in short conceivable to
+her that Selina would deny absolutely that she had been in the museum,
+that they had stood face to face and that she had fled in confusion. She
+was capable of explaining the incident by an idiotic error on Laura's
+part, by her having seized on another person, by her seeing Captain
+Crispin in every bush; though doubtless she would be taxed (of course
+she would say _that_ was the woman's own affair) to supply a reason for
+the embarrassment of the other lady. But she was not prepared for
+Selina's breaking out with: 'Will you be so good as to inform me if you
+are engaged to be married to Mr. Wendover?'
+
+'Engaged to him? I have seen him but three times.'
+
+'And is that what you usually do with gentlemen you have seen three
+times?'
+
+'Are you talking about my having gone with him to see some sights? I see
+nothing wrong in that. To begin with you see what he is. One might go
+with him anywhere. Then he brought us an introduction--we have to do
+something for him. Moreover you threw him upon me the moment he
+came--you asked me to take charge of him.'
+
+'I didn't ask you to be indecent! If Lionel were to know it he wouldn't
+tolerate it, so long as you live with us.'
+
+Laura was silent a moment. 'I shall not live with you long.' The
+sisters, side by side, with their heads turned, looked at each other, a
+deep crimson leaping into Laura's face. 'I wouldn't have believed
+it--that you are so bad,' she said. 'You are horrible!' She saw that
+Selina had not taken up the idea of denying--she judged that would be
+hopeless: the recognition on either side had been too sharp. She looked
+radiantly handsome, especially with the strange new expression that
+Laura's last word brought into her eyes. This expression seemed to the
+girl to show her more of Selina morally than she had ever yet
+seen--something of the full extent and the miserable limit.
+
+'It's different for a married woman, especially when she's married to a
+cad. It's in a girl that such things are odious--scouring London with
+strange men. I am not bound to explain to you--there would be too many
+things to say. I have my reasons--I have my conscience. It was the
+oddest of all things, our meeting in that place--I know that as well as
+you,' Selina went on, with her wonderful affected clearness; 'but it was
+not your finding me that was out of the way; it was my finding you--with
+your remarkable escort! That was incredible. I pretended not to
+recognise you, so that the gentleman who was with me shouldn't see you,
+shouldn't know you. He questioned me and I repudiated you. You may thank
+me for saving you! You had better wear a veil next time--one never knows
+what may happen. I met an acquaintance at Lady Watermouth's and he came
+up to town with me. He happened to talk about old prints; I told him how
+I have collected them and we spoke of the bother one has about the
+frames. He insisted on my going with him to that place--from
+Waterloo--to see such an excellent model.'
+
+Laura had turned her face to the window of the carriage again; they were
+spinning along Park Lane, passing in the quick flash of other vehicles
+an endless succession of ladies with 'dressed' heads, of gentlemen in
+white neckties. 'Why, I thought your frames were all so pretty!' Laura
+murmured. Then she added: 'I suppose it was your eagerness to save your
+companion the shock of seeing me--in my dishonour--that led you to steal
+our cab.'
+
+'Your cab?'
+
+'Your delicacy was expensive for you!'
+
+'You don't mean you were knocking about in _cabs_ with him!' Selina
+cried.
+
+'Of course I know that you don't really think a word of what you say
+about me,' Laura went on; 'though I don't know that that makes your
+saying it a bit less unspeakably base.'
+
+The brougham pulled up in Park Lane and Mrs. Berrington bent herself to
+have a view through the front glass. 'We are there, but there are two
+other carriages,' she remarked, for all answer. 'Ah, there are the
+Collingwoods.'
+
+'Where are you going--where are you going--where are you going?' Laura
+broke out.
+
+The carriage moved on, to set them down, and while the footman was
+getting off the box Selina said: 'I don't pretend to be better than
+other women, but you do!' And being on the side of the house she quickly
+stepped out and carried her crowned brilliancy through the
+long-lingering daylight and into the open portals.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+What do you intend to do? You will grant that I have a right to ask you
+that.'
+
+'To do? I shall do as I have always done--not so badly, as it seems to
+me.'
+
+This colloquy took place in Mrs. Berrington's room, in the early morning
+hours, after Selina's return from the entertainment to which reference
+was last made. Her sister came home before her--she found herself
+incapable of 'going on' when Selina quitted the house in Park Lane at
+which they had dined. Mrs. Berrington had the night still before her,
+and she stepped into her carriage with her usual air of graceful
+resignation to a brilliant lot. She had taken the precaution, however,
+to provide herself with a defence, against a little sister bristling
+with righteousness, in the person of Mrs. Collingwood, to whom she
+offered a lift, as they were bent upon the same business and Mr.
+Collingwood had a use of his own for his brougham. The Collingwoods were
+a happy pair who could discuss such a divergence before their friends
+candidly, amicably, with a great many 'My loves' and 'Not for the
+worlds.' Lionel Berrington disappeared after dinner, without holding any
+communication with his wife, and Laura expected to find that he had
+taken the carriage, to repay her in kind for her having driven off from
+Grosvenor Place without him. But it was not new to the girl that he
+really spared his wife more than she spared him; not so much perhaps
+because he wouldn't do the 'nastiest' thing as because he couldn't.
+Selina could always be nastier. There was ever a whimsicality in her
+actions: if two or three hours before it had been her fancy to keep a
+third person out of the carriage she had now her reasons for bringing
+such a person in. Laura knew that she would not only pretend, but would
+really believe, that her vindication of her conduct on their way to
+dinner had been powerful and that she had won a brilliant victory. What
+need, therefore, to thresh out further a subject that she had chopped
+into atoms? Laura Wing, however, had needs of her own, and her remaining
+in the carriage when the footman next opened the door was intimately
+connected with them.
+
+'I don't care to go in,' she said to her sister. 'If you will allow me
+to be driven home and send back the carriage for you, that's what I
+shall like best.'
+
+Selina stared and Laura knew what she would have said if she could have
+spoken her thought. 'Oh, you are furious that I haven't given you a
+chance to fly at me again, and you must take it out in sulks!' These
+were the ideas--ideas of 'fury' and sulks--into which Selina could
+translate feelings that sprang from the pure depths of one's conscience.
+Mrs. Collingwood protested--she said it was a shame that Laura shouldn't
+go in and enjoy herself when she looked so lovely. 'Doesn't she look
+lovely?' She appealed to Mrs. Berrington. 'Bless us, what's the use of
+being pretty? Now, if she had _my_ face!'
+
+'I think she looks rather cross,' said Selina, getting out with her
+friend and leaving her sister to her own inventions. Laura had a vision,
+as the carriage drove away again, of what her situation would have been,
+or her peace of mind, if Selina and Lionel had been good, attached
+people like the Collingwoods, and at the same time of the singularity of
+a good woman's being ready to accept favours from a person as to whose
+behaviour she had the lights that must have come to the lady in question
+in regard to Selina. She accepted favours herself and she only wanted to
+be good: that was oppressively true; but if she had not been Selina's
+sister she would never drive in her carriage. That conviction was strong
+in the girl as this vehicle conveyed her to Grosvenor Place; but it was
+not in its nature consoling. The prevision of disgrace was now so vivid
+to her that it seemed to her that if it had not already overtaken them
+she had only to thank the loose, mysterious, rather ignoble tolerance of
+people like Mrs. Collingwood. There were plenty of that species, even
+among the good; perhaps indeed exposure and dishonour would begin only
+when the bad had got hold of the facts. Would the bad be most horrified
+and do most to spread the scandal? There were, in any event, plenty of
+them too.
+
+Laura sat up for her sister that night, with that nice question to help
+her to torment herself--whether if she was hard and merciless in judging
+Selina it would be with the bad too that she would associate herself.
+Was she all wrong after all--was she cruel by being too rigid? Was Mrs.
+Collingwood's attitude the right one and ought she only to propose to
+herself to 'allow' more and more, and to allow ever, and to smooth
+things down by gentleness, by sympathy, by not looking at them too hard?
+It was not the first time that the just measure of things seemed to slip
+from her hands as she became conscious of possible, or rather of very
+actual, differences of standard and usage. On this occasion Geordie and
+Ferdy asserted themselves, by the mere force of lying asleep upstairs in
+their little cribs, as on the whole the proper measure. Laura went into
+the nursery to look at them when she came home--it was her habit almost
+any night--and yearned over them as mothers and maids do alike over the
+pillow of rosy childhood. They were an antidote to all casuistry; for
+Selina to forget _them_--that was the beginning and the end of shame.
+She came back to the library, where she should best hear the sound of
+her sister's return; the hours passed as she sat there, without bringing
+round this event. Carriages came and went all night; the soft shock of
+swift hoofs was on the wooden roadway long after the summer dawn grew
+fair--till it was merged in the rumble of the awakening day. Lionel had
+not come in when she returned, and he continued absent, to Laura's
+satisfaction; for if she wanted not to miss Selina she had no desire at
+present to have to tell her brother-in-law why she was sitting up. She
+prayed Selina might arrive first: then she would have more time to think
+of something that harassed her particularly--the question of whether she
+ought to tell Lionel that she had seen her in a far-away corner of the
+town with Captain Crispin. Almost impossible as she found it now to feel
+any tenderness for her, she yet detested the idea of bearing witness
+against her: notwithstanding which it appeared to her that she could
+make up her mind to do this if there were a chance of its preventing the
+last scandal--a catastrophe to which she saw her sister rushing
+straight. That Selina was capable at a given moment of going off with
+her lover, and capable of it precisely because it was the greatest
+ineptitude as well as the greatest wickedness--there was a voice of
+prophecy, of warning, to this effect in the silent, empty house. If
+repeating to Lionel what she had seen would contribute to prevent
+anything, or to stave off the danger, was it not her duty to denounce
+his wife, flesh and blood of her own as she was, to his further
+reprobation? This point was not intolerably difficult to determine, as
+she sat there waiting, only because even what was righteous in that
+reprobation could not present itself to her as fruitful or efficient.
+What could Lionel frustrate, after all, and what intelligent or
+authoritative step was he capable of taking? Mixed with all that now
+haunted her was her consciousness of what his own absence at such an
+hour represented in the way of the unedifying. He might be at some
+sporting club or he might be anywhere else; at any rate he was not where
+he ought to be at three o'clock in the morning. Such the husband such
+the wife, she said to herself; and she felt that Selina would have a
+kind of advantage, which she grudged her, if she should come in and say:
+'And where is _he_, please--where is he, the exalted being on whose
+behalf you have undertaken to preach so much better than he himself
+practises?'
+
+But still Selina failed to come in--even to take that advantage; yet in
+proportion as her waiting was useless did the girl find it impossible to
+go to bed. A new fear had seized her, the fear that she would never come
+back at all--that they were already in the presence of the dreaded
+catastrophe. This made her so nervous that she paced about the lower
+rooms, listening to every sound, roaming till she was tired. She knew it
+was absurd, the image of Selina taking flight in a ball-dress; but she
+said to herself that she might very well have sent other clothes away,
+in advance, somewhere (Laura had her own ripe views about the maid); and
+at any rate, for herself, that was the fate she had to expect, if not
+that night then some other one soon, and it was all the same: to sit
+counting the hours till a hope was given up and a hideous certainty
+remained. She had fallen into such a state of apprehension that when at
+last she heard a carriage stop at the door she was almost happy, in
+spite of her prevision of how disgusted her sister would be to find her.
+They met in the hall--Laura went out as she heard the opening of the
+door, Selina stopped short, seeing her, but said nothing--on account
+apparently of the presence of the sleepy footman. Then she moved
+straight to the stairs, where she paused again, asking the footman if
+Mr. Berrington had come in.
+
+'Not yet, ma'am,' the footman answered.
+
+'Ah!' said Mrs. Berrington, dramatically, and ascended the stairs.
+
+'I have sat up on purpose--I want particularly to speak to you,' Laura
+remarked, following her.
+
+'Ah!' Selina repeated, more superior still. She went fast, almost as if
+she wished to get to her room before her sister could overtake her. But
+the girl was close behind her, she passed into the room with her. Laura
+closed the door; then she told her that she had found it impossible to
+go to bed without asking her what she intended to do.
+
+'Your behaviour is too monstrous!' Selina flashed out. 'What on earth do
+you wish to make the servants suppose?'
+
+'Oh, the servants--in _this_ house; as if one could put any idea into
+their heads that is not there already!' Laura thought. But she said
+nothing of this--she only repeated her question: aware that she was
+exasperating to her sister but also aware that she could not be anything
+else. Mrs. Berrington, whose maid, having outlived surprises, had gone
+to rest, began to divest herself of some of her ornaments, and it was
+not till after a moment, during which she stood before the glass, that
+she made that answer about doing as she had always done. To this Laura
+rejoined that she ought to put herself in her place enough to feel how
+important it was to _her_ to know what was likely to happen, so that she
+might take time by the forelock and think of her own situation. If
+anything should happen she would infinitely rather be out of it--be as
+far away as possible. Therefore she must take her measures.
+
+It was in the mirror that they looked at each other--in the strange,
+candle-lighted duplication of the scene that their eyes met. Selina drew
+the diamonds out of her hair, and in this occupation, for a minute, she
+was silent. Presently she asked: 'What are you talking about--what do
+you allude to as happening?'
+
+'Why, it seems to me that there is nothing left for you but to go away
+with him. If there is a prospect of that insanity----' But here Laura
+stopped; something so unexpected was taking place in Selina's
+countenance--the movement that precedes a sudden gush of tears. Mrs.
+Berrington dashed down the glittering pins she had detached from her
+tresses, and the next moment she had flung herself into an armchair and
+was weeping profusely, extravagantly. Laura forbore to go to her; she
+made no motion to soothe or reassure her, she only stood and watched her
+tears and wondered what they signified. Somehow even the slight
+refreshment she felt at having affected her in that particular and, as
+it had lately come to seem, improbable way did not suggest to her that
+they were precious symptoms. Since she had come to disbelieve her word
+so completely there was nothing precious about Selina any more. But she
+continued for some moments to cry passionately, and while this lasted
+Laura remained silent. At last from the midst of her sobs Selina broke
+out, 'Go away, go away--leave me alone!'
+
+'Of course I infuriate you,' said the girl; 'but how can I see you rush
+to your ruin--to that of all of us--without holding on to you and
+dragging you back?'
+
+'Oh, you don't understand anything about anything!' Selina wailed, with
+her beautiful hair tumbling all over her.
+
+'I certainly don't understand how you can give such a tremendous handle
+to Lionel.'
+
+At the mention of her husband's name Selina always gave a bound, and she
+sprang up now, shaking back her dense braids. 'I give him no handle and
+you don't know what you are talking about! I know what I am doing and
+what becomes me, and I don't care if I do. He is welcome to all the
+handles in the world, for all that he can do with them!'
+
+'In the name of common pity think of your children!' said Laura.
+
+'Have I ever thought of anything else? Have you sat up all night to have
+the pleasure of accusing me of cruelty? Are there sweeter or more
+delightful children in the world, and isn't that a little my merit,
+pray?' Selina went on, sweeping away her tears. 'Who has made them what
+they are, pray?--is it their lovely father? Perhaps you'll say it's you!
+Certainly you have been nice to them, but you must remember that you
+only came here the other day. Isn't it only for them that I am trying to
+keep myself alive?'
+
+This formula struck Laura Wing as grotesque, so that she replied with a
+laugh which betrayed too much her impression, 'Die for them--that would
+be better!'
+
+Her sister, at this, looked at her with an extraordinary cold gravity.
+'Don't interfere between me and my children. And for God's sake cease to
+harry me!'
+
+Laura turned away: she said to herself that, given that intensity of
+silliness, of course the worst would come. She felt sick and helpless,
+and, practically, she had got the certitude she both wanted and dreaded.
+'I don't know what has become of your mind,' she murmured; and she went
+to the door. But before she reached it Selina had flung herself upon her
+in one of her strange but, as she felt, really not encouraging
+revulsions. Her arms were about her, she clung to her, she covered
+Laura with the tears that had again begun to flow. She besought her to
+save her, to stay with her, to help her against herself, against _him_,
+against Lionel, against everything--to forgive her also all the horrid
+things she had said to her. Mrs. Berrington melted, liquefied, and the
+room was deluged with her repentance, her desolation, her confession,
+her promises and the articles of apparel which were detached from her by
+the high tide of her agitation. Laura remained with her for an hour, and
+before they separated the culpable woman had taken a tremendous
+vow--kneeling before her sister with her head in her lap--never again,
+as long as she lived, to consent to see Captain Crispin or to address a
+word to him, spoken or written. The girl went terribly tired to bed.
+
+A month afterwards she lunched with Lady Davenant, whom she had not seen
+since the day she took Mr. Wendover to call upon her. The old woman had
+found herself obliged to entertain a small company, and as she disliked
+set parties she sent Laura a request for sympathy and assistance. She
+had disencumbered herself, at the end of so many years, of the burden of
+hospitality; but every now and then she invited people, in order to
+prove that she was not too old. Laura suspected her of choosing stupid
+ones on purpose to prove it better--to show that she could submit not
+only to the extraordinary but, what was much more difficult, to the
+usual. But when they had been properly fed she encouraged them to
+disperse; on this occasion as the party broke up Laura was the only
+person she asked to stay. She wished to know in the first place why she
+had not been to see her for so long, and in the second how that young
+man had behaved--the one she had brought that Sunday. Lady Davenant
+didn't remember his name, though he had been so good-natured, as she
+said, since then, as to leave a card. If he had behaved well that was a
+very good reason for the girl's neglect and Laura need give no other.
+Laura herself would not have behaved well if at such a time she had been
+running after old women. There was nothing, in general, that the girl
+liked less than being spoken of, off-hand, as a marriageable
+article--being planned and arranged for in this particular. It made too
+light of her independence, and though in general such inventions passed
+for benevolence they had always seemed to her to contain at bottom an
+impertinence--as if people could be moved about like a game of chequers.
+There was a liberty in the way Lady Davenant's imagination disposed of
+her (with such an _insouciance_ of her own preferences), but she forgave
+that, because after all this old friend was not obliged to think of her
+at all.
+
+'I knew that you were almost always out of town now, on Sundays--and so
+have we been,' Laura said. 'And then I have been a great deal with my
+sister--more than before.'
+
+'More than before what?'
+
+'Well, a kind of estrangement we had, about a certain matter.'
+
+'And now you have made it all up?'
+
+'Well, we have been able to talk of it (we couldn't before--without
+painful scenes), and that has cleared the air. We have gone about
+together a good deal,' Laura went on. 'She has wanted me constantly with
+her.'
+
+'That's very nice. And where has she taken you?' asked the old lady.
+
+'Oh, it's I who have taken her, rather.' And Laura hesitated.
+
+'Where do you mean?--to say her prayers?'
+
+'Well, to some concerts--and to the National Gallery.'
+
+Lady Davenant laughed, disrespectfully, at this, and the girl watched
+her with a mournful face. 'My dear child, you are too delightful! You
+are trying to reform her? by Beethoven and Bach, by Rubens and Titian?'
+
+'She is very intelligent, about music and pictures--she has excellent
+ideas,' said Laura.
+
+'And you have been trying to draw them out? that is very commendable.'
+
+'I think you are laughing at me, but I don't care,' the girl declared,
+smiling faintly.
+
+'Because you have a consciousness of success?--in what do they call
+it?--the attempt to raise her tone? You have been trying to wind her up,
+and you _have_ raised her tone?'
+
+'Oh, Lady Davenant, I don't know and I don't understand!' Laura broke
+out. 'I don't understand anything any more--I have given up trying.'
+
+'That's what I recommended you to do last winter. Don't you remember
+that day at Plash?'
+
+'You told me to let her go,' said Laura.
+
+'And evidently you haven't taken my advice.'
+
+'How can I--how can I?'
+
+'Of course, how can you? And meanwhile if she doesn't go it's so much
+gained. But even if she should, won't that nice young man remain?' Lady
+Davenant inquired. 'I hope very much Selina hasn't taken you altogether
+away from him.'
+
+Laura was silent a moment; then she returned: 'What nice young man would
+ever look at me, if anything bad should happen?'
+
+'I would never look at _him_ if he should let that prevent him!' the old
+woman cried. 'It isn't for your sister he loves you, I suppose; is it?'
+
+'He doesn't love me at all.'
+
+'Ah, then he does?' Lady Davenant demanded, with some eagerness, laying
+her hand on the girl's arm. Laura sat near her on her sofa and looked at
+her, for all answer to this, with an expression of which the sadness
+appeared to strike the old woman freshly. 'Doesn't he come to the
+house--doesn't he say anything?' she continued, with a voice of
+kindness.
+
+'He comes to the house--very often.'
+
+'And don't you like him?'
+
+'Yes, very much--more than I did at first.'
+
+'Well, as you liked him at first well enough to bring him straight to
+see me, I suppose that means that now you are immensely pleased with
+him.'
+
+'He's a gentleman,' said Laura.
+
+'So he seems to me. But why then doesn't he speak out?'
+
+'Perhaps that's the very reason! Seriously,' the girl added, 'I don't
+know what he comes to the house for.'
+
+'Is he in love with your sister?'
+
+'I sometimes think so.'
+
+'And does she encourage him?'
+
+'She detests him.'
+
+'Oh, then, I like him! I shall immediately write to him to come and see
+me: I shall appoint an hour and give him a piece of my mind.'
+
+'If I believed that, I should kill myself,' said Laura.
+
+'You may believe what you like; but I wish you didn't show your feelings
+so in your eyes. They might be those of a poor widow with fifteen
+children. When I was young I managed to be happy, whatever occurred; and
+I am sure I looked so.'
+
+'Oh yes, Lady Davenant--for you it was different. You were safe, in so
+many ways,' Laura said. 'And you were surrounded with consideration.'
+
+'I don't know; some of us were very wild, and exceedingly ill thought
+of, and I didn't cry about it. However, there are natures and natures.
+If you will come and stay with me to-morrow I will take you in.'
+
+'You know how kind I think you, but I have promised Selina not to leave
+her.'
+
+'Well, then, if she keeps you she must at least go straight!' cried the
+old woman, with some asperity. Laura made no answer to this and Lady
+Davenant asked, after a moment: 'And what is Lionel doing?'
+
+'I don't know--he is very quiet.'
+
+'Doesn't it please him--his wife's improvement?' The girl got up;
+apparently she was made uncomfortable by the ironical effect, if not by
+the ironical intention, of this question. Her old friend was kind but
+she was penetrating; her very next words pierced further. 'Of course if
+you are really protecting her I can't count upon you': a remark not
+adapted to enliven Laura, who would have liked immensely to transfer
+herself to Queen's Gate and had her very private ideas as to the
+efficacy of her protection. Lady Davenant kissed her and then suddenly
+said--'Oh, by the way, his address; you must tell me that.'
+
+'His address?'
+
+'The young man's whom you brought here. But it's no matter,' the old
+woman added; 'the butler will have entered it--from his card.'
+
+'Lady Davenant, you won't do anything so loathsome!' the girl cried,
+seizing her hand.
+
+'Why is it loathsome, if he comes so often? It's rubbish, his caring for
+Selina--a married woman--when you are there.'
+
+'Why is it rubbish--when so many other people do?'
+
+'Oh, well, he is different--I could see that; or if he isn't he ought to
+be!'
+
+'He likes to observe--he came here to take notes,' said the girl. 'And
+he thinks Selina a very interesting London specimen.'
+
+'In spite of her dislike of him?'
+
+'Oh, he doesn't know that!' Laura exclaimed.
+
+'Why not? he isn't a fool.'
+
+'Oh, I have made it seem----' But here Laura stopped; her colour had
+risen.
+
+Lady Davenant stared an instant. 'Made it seem that she inclines to him?
+Mercy, to do that how fond of him you must be!' An observation which had
+the effect of driving the girl straight out of the house.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+On one of the last days of June Mrs. Berrington showed her sister a note
+she had received from 'your dear friend,' as she called him, Mr.
+Wendover. This was the manner in which she usually designated him, but
+she had naturally, in the present phase of her relations with Laura,
+never indulged in any renewal of the eminently perverse insinuations by
+means of which she had attempted, after the incident at the Soane
+Museum, to throw dust in her eyes. Mr. Wendover proposed to Mrs.
+Berrington that she and her sister should honour with their presence a
+box he had obtained for the opera three nights later--an occasion of
+high curiosity, the first appearance of a young American singer of whom
+considerable things were expected. Laura left it to Selina to decide
+whether they should accept this invitation, and Selina proved to be of
+two or three differing minds. First she said it wouldn't be convenient
+to her to go, and she wrote to the young man to this effect. Then, on
+second thoughts, she considered she might very well go, and telegraphed
+an acceptance. Later she saw reason to regret her acceptance and
+communicated this circumstance to her sister, who remarked that it was
+still not too late to change. Selina left her in ignorance till the
+next day as to whether she had retracted; then she told her that she had
+let the matter stand--they would go. To this Laura replied that she was
+glad--for Mr. Wendover. 'And for yourself,' Selina said, leaving the
+girl to wonder why every one (this universality was represented by Mrs.
+Lionel Berrington and Lady Davenant) had taken up the idea that she
+entertained a passion for her compatriot. She was clearly conscious that
+this was not the case; though she was glad her esteem for him had not
+yet suffered the disturbance of her seeing reason to believe that Lady
+Davenant had already meddled, according to her terrible threat. Laura
+was surprised to learn afterwards that Selina had, in London parlance,
+'thrown over' a dinner in order to make the evening at the opera fit in.
+The dinner would have made her too late, and she didn't care about it:
+she wanted to hear the whole opera.
+
+The sisters dined together alone, without any question of Lionel, and on
+alighting at Covent Garden found Mr. Wendover awaiting them in the
+portico. His box proved commodious and comfortable, and Selina was
+gracious to him: she thanked him for his consideration in not stuffing
+it full of people. He assured her that he expected but one other
+inmate--a gentleman of a shrinking disposition, who would take up no
+room. The gentleman came in after the first act; he was introduced to
+the ladies as Mr. Booker, of Baltimore. He knew a great deal about the
+young lady they had come to listen to, and he was not so shrinking but
+that he attempted to impart a portion of his knowledge even while she
+was singing. Before the second act was over Laura perceived Lady
+Ringrose in a box on the other side of the house, accompanied by a lady
+unknown to her. There was apparently another person in the box, behind
+the two ladies, whom they turned round from time to time to talk with.
+Laura made no observation about Lady Ringrose to her sister, and she
+noticed that Selina never resorted to the glass to look at her. That
+Mrs. Berrington had not failed to see her, however, was proved by the
+fact that at the end of the second act (the opera was Meyerbeer's
+_Huguenots_) she suddenly said, turning to Mr. Wendover: 'I hope you
+won't mind very much if I go for a short time to sit with a friend on
+the other side of the house.' She smiled with all her sweetness as she
+announced this intention, and had the benefit of the fact that an
+apologetic expression is highly becoming to a pretty woman. But she
+abstained from looking at her sister, and the latter, after a wondering
+glance at her, looked at Mr. Wendover. She saw that he was
+disappointed--even slightly wounded: he had taken some trouble to get
+his box and it had been no small pleasure to him to see it graced by the
+presence of a celebrated beauty. Now his situation collapsed if the
+celebrated beauty were going to transfer her light to another quarter.
+Laura was unable to imagine what had come into her sister's head--to
+make her so inconsiderate, so rude. Selina tried to perform her act of
+defection in a soothing, conciliating way, so far as appealing eyebeams
+went; but she gave no particular reason for her escapade, withheld the
+name of the friends in question and betrayed no consciousness that it
+was not usual for ladies to roam about the lobbies. Laura asked her no
+question, but she said to her, after an hesitation: 'You won't be long,
+surely. You know you oughtn't to leave me here.' Selina took no notice
+of this--excused herself in no way to the girl. Mr. Wendover only
+exclaimed, smiling in reference to Laura's last remark: 'Oh, so far as
+leaving you here goes----!' In spite of his great defect (and it was his
+only one, that she could see) of having only an ascending scale of
+seriousness, she judged him interestedly enough to feel a real pleasure
+in noticing that though he was annoyed at Selina's going away and not
+saying that she would come back soon, he conducted himself as a
+gentleman should, submitted respectfully, gallantly, to her wish. He
+suggested that her friends might perhaps, instead, be induced to come to
+his box, but when she had objected, 'Oh, you see, there are too many,'
+he put her shawl on her shoulders, opened the box, offered her his arm.
+While this was going on Laura saw Lady Ringrose studying them with her
+glass. Selina refused Mr. Wendover's arm; she said, 'Oh no, you stay
+with _her_--I daresay _he'll_ take me:' and she gazed inspiringly at Mr.
+Booker. Selina never mentioned a name when the pronoun would do. Mr.
+Booker of course sprang to the service required and led her away, with
+an injunction from his friend to bring her back promptly. As they went
+off Laura heard Selina say to her companion--and she knew Mr. Wendover
+could also hear it--'Nothing would have induced me to leave her alone
+with _you_!' She thought this a very extraordinary speech--she thought
+it even vulgar; especially considering that she had never seen the
+young man till half an hour before and since then had not exchanged
+twenty words with him. It came to their ears so distinctly that Laura
+was moved to notice it by exclaiming, with a laugh: 'Poor Mr. Booker,
+what does she suppose I would do to him?'
+
+'Oh, it's for you she's afraid,' said Mr. Wendover.
+
+Laura went on, after a moment: 'She oughtn't to have left me alone with
+you, either.'
+
+'Oh yes, she ought--after all!' the young man returned.
+
+The girl had uttered these words from no desire to say something
+flirtatious, but because they simply expressed a part of the judgment
+she passed, mentally, on Selina's behaviour. She had a sense of
+wrong--of being made light of; for Mrs. Berrington certainly knew that
+honourable women didn't (for the appearance of the thing) arrange to
+leave their unmarried sister sitting alone, publicly, at the playhouse,
+with a couple of young men--the couple that there would be as soon as
+Mr. Booker should come back. It displeased her that the people in the
+opposite box, the people Selina had joined, should see her exhibited in
+this light. She drew the curtain of the box a little, she moved a little
+more behind it, and she heard her companion utter a vague appealing,
+protecting sigh, which seemed to express his sense (her own corresponded
+with it) that the glory of the occasion had somehow suddenly departed.
+At the end of some minutes she perceived among Lady Ringrose and her
+companions a movement which appeared to denote that Selina had come in.
+The two ladies in front turned round--something went on at the back of
+the box. 'She's there,' Laura said, indicating the place; but Mrs.
+Berrington did not show herself--she remained masked by the others.
+Neither was Mr. Booker visible; he had not, seemingly, been persuaded to
+remain, and indeed Laura could see that there would not have been room
+for him. Mr. Wendover observed, ruefully, that as Mrs. Berrington
+evidently could see nothing at all from where she had gone she had
+exchanged a very good place for a very bad one. 'I can't imagine--I
+can't imagine----' said the girl; but she paused, losing herself in
+reflections and wonderments, in conjectures that soon became anxieties.
+Suspicion of Selina was now so rooted in her heart that it could make
+her unhappy even when it pointed nowhere, and by the end of half an hour
+she felt how little her fears had really been lulled since that scene of
+dishevelment and contrition in the early dawn.
+
+The opera resumed its course, but Mr. Booker did not come back. The
+American singer trilled and warbled, executed remarkable flights, and
+there was much applause, every symptom of success; but Laura became more
+and more unaware of the music--she had no eyes but for Lady Ringrose and
+her friend. She watched them earnestly--she tried to sound with her
+glass the curtained dimness behind them. Their attention was all for the
+stage and they gave no present sign of having any fellow-listeners.
+These others had either gone away or were leaving them very much to
+themselves. Laura was unable to guess any particular motive on her
+sister's part, but the conviction grew within her that she had not put
+such an affront on Mr. Wendover simply in order to have a little chat
+with Lady Ringrose. There was something else, there was some one else,
+in the affair; and when once the girl's idea had become as definite as
+that it took but little longer to associate itself with the image of
+Captain Crispin. This image made her draw back further behind her
+curtain, because it brought the blood to her face; and if she coloured
+for shame she coloured also for anger. Captain Crispin was there, in the
+opposite box; those horrible women concealed him (she forgot how
+harmless and well-read Lady Ringrose had appeared to her that time at
+Mellows); they had lent themselves to this abominable proceeding. Selina
+was nestling there in safety with him, by their favour, and she had had
+the baseness to lay an honest girl, the most loyal, the most unselfish
+of sisters, under contribution to the same end. Laura crimsoned with the
+sense that she had been, unsuspectingly, part of a scheme, that she was
+being used as the two women opposite were used, but that she had been
+outraged into the bargain, inasmuch as she was not, like them, a
+conscious accomplice and not a person to be given away in that manner
+before hundreds of people. It came back to her how bad Selina had been
+the day of the business in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and how in spite of
+intervening comedies the woman who had then found such words of injury
+would be sure to break out in a new spot with a new weapon. Accordingly,
+while the pure music filled the place and the rich picture of the stage
+glowed beneath it, Laura found herself face to face with the strange
+inference that the evil of Selina's nature made her wish--since she had
+given herself to it--to bring her sister to her own colour by putting an
+appearance of 'fastness' upon her. The girl said to herself that she
+would have succeeded, in the cynical view of London; and to her troubled
+spirit the immense theatre had a myriad eyes, eyes that she knew, eyes
+that would know her, that would see her sitting there with a strange
+young man. She had recognised many faces already and her imagination
+quickly multiplied them. However, after she had burned a while with this
+particular revolt she ceased to think of herself and of what, as
+regarded herself, Selina had intended: all her thought went to the mere
+calculation of Mrs. Berrington's return. As she did not return, and
+still did not, Laura felt a sharp constriction of the heart. She knew
+not what she feared--she knew not what she supposed. She was so nervous
+(as she had been the night she waited, till morning, for her sister to
+re-enter the house in Grosvenor Place) that when Mr. Wendover
+occasionally made a remark to her she failed to understand him, was
+unable to answer him. Fortunately he made very few; he was
+preoccupied--either wondering also what Selina was 'up to' or, more
+probably, simply absorbed in the music. What she _had_ comprehended,
+however, was that when at three different moments she had said,
+restlessly, 'Why doesn't Mr. Booker come back?' he replied, 'Oh, there's
+plenty of time--we are very comfortable.' These words she was conscious
+of; she particularly noted them and they interwove themselves with her
+restlessness. She also noted, in her tension, that after her third
+inquiry Mr. Wendover said something about looking up his friend, if she
+didn't mind being left alone a moment. He quitted the box and during
+this interval Laura tried more than ever to see with her glass what had
+become of her sister. But it was as if the ladies opposite had arranged
+themselves, had arranged their curtains, on purpose to frustrate such an
+attempt: it was impossible to her even to assure herself of what she had
+begun to suspect, that Selina was now not with them. If she was not with
+them where in the world had she gone? As the moments elapsed, before Mr.
+Wendover's return, she went to the door of the box and stood watching
+the lobby, for the chance that he would bring back the absentee.
+Presently she saw him coming alone, and something in the expression of
+his face made her step out into the lobby to meet him. He was smiling,
+but he looked embarrassed and strange, especially when he saw her
+standing there as if she wished to leave the place.
+
+'I hope you don't want to go,' he said, holding the door for her to pass
+back into the box.
+
+'Where are they--where are they?' she demanded, remaining in the
+corridor.
+
+'I saw our friend--he has found a place in the stalls, near the door by
+which you go into them--just here under us.'
+
+'And does he like that better?'
+
+Mr. Wendover's smile became perfunctory as he looked down at her. 'Mrs.
+Berrington has made such an amusing request of him.'
+
+'An amusing request?'
+
+'She made him promise not to come back.'
+
+'Made him promise----?' Laura stared.
+
+'She asked him--as a particular favour to her--not to join us again. And
+he said he wouldn't.'
+
+'Ah, the monster!' Laura exclaimed, blushing crimson.
+
+'Do you mean poor Mr. Booker?' Mr. Wendover asked. 'Of course he had to
+assure her that the wish of so lovely a lady was law. But he doesn't
+understand!' laughed the young man.
+
+'No more do I. And where is the lovely lady?' said Laura, trying to
+recover herself.
+
+'He hasn't the least idea.'
+
+'Isn't she with Lady Ringrose?'
+
+'If you like I will go and see.'
+
+Laura hesitated, looking down the curved lobby, where there was nothing
+to see but the little numbered doors of the boxes. They were alone in
+the lamplit bareness; the _finale_ of the act was ringing and booming
+behind them. In a moment she said: 'I'm afraid I must trouble you to put
+me into a cab.'
+
+'Ah, you won't see the rest? _Do_ stay--what difference does it make?'
+And her companion still held open the door of the box. Her eyes met his,
+in which it seemed to her that as well as in his voice there was
+conscious sympathy, entreaty, vindication, tenderness. Then she gazed
+into the vulgar corridor again; something said to her that if she should
+return she would be taking the most important step of her life. She
+considered this, and while she did so a great burst of applause filled
+the place as the curtain fell. 'See what we are losing! And the last act
+is so fine,' said Mr. Wendover. She returned to her seat and he closed
+the door of the box behind them.
+
+Then, in this little upholstered receptacle which was so public and yet
+so private, Laura Wing passed through the strangest moments she had
+known. An indication of their strangeness is that when she presently
+perceived that while she was in the lobby Lady Ringrose and her
+companion had quite disappeared, she observed the circumstance without
+an exclamation, holding herself silent. Their box was empty, but Laura
+looked at it without in the least feeling this to be a sign that Selina
+would now come round. She would never come round again, nor would she
+have gone home from the opera. That was by this time absolutely definite
+to the girl, who had first been hot and now was cold with the sense of
+what Selina's injunction to poor Mr. Booker exactly meant. It was worthy
+of her, for it was simply a vicious little kick as she took her flight.
+Grosvenor Place would not shelter her that night and would never shelter
+her more: that was the reason she tried to spatter her sister with the
+mud into which she herself had jumped. She would not have dared to treat
+her in such a fashion if they had had a prospect of meeting again. The
+strangest part of this remarkable juncture was that what ministered most
+to our young lady's suppressed emotion was not the tremendous reflection
+that this time Selina had really 'bolted' and that on the morrow all
+London would know it: all that had taken the glare of certainty (and a
+very hideous hue it was), whereas the chill that had fallen upon the
+girl now was that of a mystery which waited to be cleared up. Her heart
+was full of suspense--suspense of which she returned the pressure,
+trying to twist it into expectation. There was a certain chance in life
+that sat there beside her, but it would go for ever if it should not
+move nearer that night; and she listened, she watched, for it to move. I
+need not inform the reader that this chance presented itself in the
+person of Mr. Wendover, who more than any one she knew had it in his
+hand to transmute her detestable position. To-morrow he would know, and
+would think sufficiently little of a young person of _that_ breed:
+therefore it could only be a question of his speaking on the spot. That
+was what she had come back into the box for--to give him his
+opportunity. It was open to her to think he had asked for it--adding
+everything together.
+
+The poor girl added, added, deep in her heart, while she said nothing.
+The music was not there now, to keep them silent; yet he remained quiet,
+even as she did, and that for some minutes was a part of her addition.
+She felt as if she were running a race with failure and shame; she would
+get in first if she should get in before the degradation of the morrow.
+But this was not very far off, and every minute brought it nearer. It
+would be there in fact, virtually, that night, if Mr. Wendover should
+begin to realise the brutality of Selina's not turning up at all. The
+comfort had been, hitherto, that he didn't realise brutalities. There
+were certain violins that emitted tentative sounds in the orchestra;
+they shortened the time and made her uneasier--fixed her idea that he
+could lift her out of her mire if he would. It didn't appear to prove
+that he would, his also observing Lady Ringrose's empty box without
+making an encouraging comment upon it. Laura waited for him to remark
+that her sister obviously would turn up now; but no such words fell from
+his lips. He must either like Selina's being away or judge it damningly,
+and in either case why didn't he speak? If he had nothing to say, why
+_had_ he said, why had he done, what did he mean----? But the girl's
+inward challenge to him lost itself in a mist of faintness; she was
+screwing herself up to a purpose of her own, and it hurt almost to
+anguish, and the whole place, around her, was a blur and swim, through
+which she heard the tuning of fiddles. Before she knew it she had said
+to him, 'Why have you come so often?'
+
+'So often? To see you, do you mean?'
+
+'To see _me_--it was for that? Why have you come?' she went on. He was
+evidently surprised, and his surprise gave her a point of anger, a
+desire almost that her words should hurt him, lash him. She spoke low,
+but she heard herself, and she thought that if what she said sounded to
+_him_ in the same way----! 'You have come very often--too often, too
+often!'
+
+He coloured, he looked frightened, he was, clearly, extremely startled.
+'Why, you have been so kind, so delightful,' he stammered.
+
+'Yes, of course, and so have you! Did you come for Selina? She is
+married, you know, and devoted to her husband.' A single minute had
+sufficed to show the girl that her companion was quite unprepared for
+her question, that he was distinctly not in love with her and was face
+to face with a situation entirely new. The effect of this perception was
+to make her say wilder things.
+
+'Why, what is more natural, when one likes people, than to come often?
+Perhaps I have bored you--with our American way,' said Mr. Wendover.
+
+'And is it because you like me that you have kept me here?' Laura asked.
+She got up, leaning against the side of the box; she had pulled the
+curtain far forward and was out of sight of the house.
+
+He rose, but more slowly; he had got over his first confusion. He
+smiled at her, but his smile was dreadful. 'Can you have any doubt as to
+what I have come for? It's a pleasure to me that you have liked me well
+enough to ask.'
+
+For an instant she thought he was coming nearer to her, but he didn't:
+he stood there twirling his gloves. Then an unspeakable shame and
+horror--horror of herself, of him, of everything--came over her, and she
+sank into a chair at the back of the box, with averted eyes, trying to
+get further into her corner. 'Leave me, leave me, go away!' she said, in
+the lowest tone that he could hear. The whole house seemed to her to be
+listening to her, pressing into the box.
+
+'Leave you alone--in this place--when I love you? I can't do
+that--indeed I can't.'
+
+'You don't love me--and you torture me by staying!' Laura went on, in a
+convulsed voice. 'For God's sake go away and don't speak to me, don't
+let me see you or hear of you again!'
+
+Mr. Wendover still stood there, exceedingly agitated, as well he might
+be, by this inconceivable scene. Unaccustomed feelings possessed him and
+they moved him in different directions. Her command that he should take
+himself off was passionate, yet he attempted to resist, to speak. How
+would she get home--would she see him to-morrow--would she let him wait
+for her outside? To this Laura only replied: 'Oh dear, oh dear, if you
+would only go!' and at the same instant she sprang up, gathering her
+cloak around her as if to escape from him, to rush away herself. He
+checked this movement, however, clapping on his hat and holding the
+door. One moment more he looked at her--her own eyes were closed; then
+he exclaimed, pitifully, 'Oh Miss Wing, oh Miss Wing!' and stepped out
+of the box.
+
+When he had gone she collapsed into one of the chairs again and sat
+there with her face buried in a fold of her mantle. For many minutes she
+was perfectly still--she was ashamed even to move. The one thing that
+could have justified her, blown away the dishonour of her monstrous
+overture, would have been, on his side, the quick response of
+unmistakable passion. It had not come, and she had nothing left but to
+loathe herself. She did so, violently, for a long time, in the dark
+corner of the box, and she felt that he loathed her too. 'I love
+you!'--how pitifully the poor little make-believe words had quavered out
+and how much disgust they must have represented! 'Poor man--poor man!'
+Laura Wing suddenly found herself murmuring: compassion filled her mind
+at the sense of the way she had used him. At the same moment a flare of
+music broke out: the last act of the opera had begun and she had sprung
+up and quitted the box.
+
+The passages were empty and she made her way without trouble. She
+descended to the vestibule; there was no one to stare at her and her
+only fear was that Mr. Wendover would be there. But he was not,
+apparently, and she saw that she should be able to go away quickly.
+Selina would have taken the carriage--she could be sure of that; or if
+she hadn't it wouldn't have come back yet; besides, she couldn't
+possibly wait there so long as while it was called. She was in the act
+of asking one of the attendants, in the portico, to get her a cab, when
+some one hurried up to her from behind, overtaking her--a gentleman in
+whom, turning round, she recognised Mr. Booker. He looked almost as
+bewildered as Mr. Wendover, and his appearance disconcerted her almost
+as much as that of his friend would have done. 'Oh, are you going away,
+alone? What must you think of me?' this young man exclaimed; and he
+began to tell her something about her sister and to ask her at the same
+time if he might not go with her--help her in some way. He made no
+inquiry about Mr. Wendover, and she afterwards judged that that
+distracted gentleman had sought him out and sent him to her assistance;
+also that he himself was at that moment watching them from behind some
+column. He would have been hateful if he had shown himself; yet (in this
+later meditation) there was a voice in her heart which commended his
+delicacy. He effaced himself to look after her--he provided for her
+departure by proxy.
+
+'A cab, a cab--that's all I want!' she said to Mr. Booker; and she
+almost pushed him out of the place with the wave of the hand with which
+she indicated her need. He rushed off to call one, and a minute
+afterwards the messenger whom she had already despatched rattled up in a
+hansom. She quickly got into it, and as she rolled away she saw Mr.
+Booker returning in all haste with another. She gave a passionate
+moan--this common confusion seemed to add a grotesqueness to her
+predicament.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+The next day, at five o'clock, she drove to Queen's Gate, turning to
+Lady Davenant in her distress in order to turn somewhere. Her old friend
+was at home and by extreme good fortune alone; looking up from her book,
+in her place by the window, she gave the girl as she came in a sharp
+glance over her glasses. This glance was acquisitive; she said nothing,
+but laying down her book stretched out her two gloved hands. Laura took
+them and she drew her down toward her, so that the girl sunk on her
+knees and in a moment hid her face, sobbing, in the old woman's lap.
+There was nothing said for some time: Lady Davenant only pressed her
+tenderly--stroked her with her hands. 'Is it very bad?' she asked at
+last. Then Laura got up, saying as she took a seat, 'Have you heard of
+it and do people know it?'
+
+'I haven't heard anything. Is it very bad?' Lady Davenant repeated.
+
+'We don't know where Selina is--and her maid's gone.'
+
+Lady Davenant looked at her visitor a moment. 'Lord, what an ass!' she
+then ejaculated, putting the paper-knife into her book to keep her
+place. 'And whom has she persuaded to take her--Charles Crispin?' she
+added.
+
+'We suppose--we suppose----' said Laura.
+
+'And he's another,' interrupted the old woman. 'And who
+supposes--Geordie and Ferdy?'
+
+'I don't know; it's all black darkness!'
+
+'My dear, it's a blessing, and now you can live in peace.'
+
+'In peace!' cried Laura; 'with my wretched sister leading such a life?'
+
+'Oh, my dear, I daresay it will be very comfortable; I am sorry to say
+anything in favour of such doings, but it very often is. Don't worry;
+you take her too hard. Has she gone abroad?' the old lady continued. 'I
+daresay she has gone to some pretty, amusing place.'
+
+'I don't know anything about it. I only know she is gone. I was with her
+last evening and she left me without a word.'
+
+'Well, that was better. I hate 'em when they make parting scenes: it's
+too mawkish!'
+
+'Lionel has people watching them,' said the girl; 'agents, detectives, I
+don't know what. He has had them for a long time; I didn't know it.'
+
+'Do you mean you would have told her if you had? What is the use of
+detectives now? Isn't he rid of her?'
+
+'Oh, I don't know, he's as bad as she; he talks too horribly--he wants
+every one to know it,' Laura groaned.
+
+'And has he told his mother?'
+
+'I suppose so: he rushed off to see her at noon. She'll be overwhelmed.'
+
+'Overwhelmed? Not a bit of it!' cried Lady Davenant, almost gaily.
+'When did anything in the world overwhelm her and what do you take her
+for? She'll only make some delightful odd speech. As for people knowing
+it,' she added, 'they'll know it whether he wants them or not. My poor
+child, how long do you expect to make believe?'
+
+'Lionel expects some news to-night,' Laura said. 'As soon as I know
+where she is I shall start.'
+
+'Start for where?'
+
+'To go to her--to do something.'
+
+'Something preposterous, my dear. Do you expect to bring her back?'
+
+'He won't take her in,' said Laura, with her dried, dismal eyes. 'He
+wants his divorce--it's too hideous!'
+
+'Well, as she wants hers what is simpler?'
+
+'Yes, she wants hers. Lionel swears by all the gods she can't get it.'
+
+'Bless me, won't one do?' Lady Davenant asked. 'We shall have some
+pretty reading.'
+
+'It's awful, awful, awful!' murmured Laura.
+
+'Yes, they oughtn't to be allowed to publish them. I wonder if we
+couldn't stop that. At any rate he had better be quiet: tell him to come
+and see me.'
+
+'You won't influence him; he's dreadful against her. Such a house as it
+is to-day!'
+
+'Well, my dear, naturally.'
+
+'Yes, but it's terrible for me: it's all more sickening than I can
+bear.'
+
+'My dear child, come and stay with me,' said the old woman, gently.
+
+'Oh, I can't desert her; I can't abandon her!'
+
+'Desert--abandon? What a way to put it! Hasn't she abandoned you?'
+
+'She has no heart--she's too base!' said the girl. Her face was white
+and the tears now began to rise to her eyes again.
+
+Lady Davenant got up and came and sat on the sofa beside her: she put
+her arms round her and the two women embraced. 'Your room is all ready,'
+the old lady remarked. And then she said, 'When did she leave you? When
+did you see her last?'
+
+'Oh, in the strangest, maddest, crudest way, the way most insulting to
+me. We went to the opera together and she left me there with a
+gentleman. We know nothing about her since.'
+
+'With a gentleman?'
+
+'With Mr. Wendover--that American, and something too dreadful happened.'
+
+'Dear me, did he kiss you?' asked Lady Davenant.
+
+Laura got up quickly, turning away. 'Good-bye, I'm going, I'm going!'
+And in reply to an irritated, protesting exclamation from her companion
+she went on, 'Anywhere--anywhere to get away!'
+
+'To get away from your American?'
+
+'I asked him to marry me!' The girl turned round with her tragic face.
+
+'He oughtn't to have left that to you.'
+
+'I knew this horror was coming and it took possession of me, there in
+the box, from one moment to the other--the idea of making sure of some
+other life, some protection, some respectability. First I thought he
+liked me, he had behaved as if he did. And I like him, he is a very good
+man. So I asked him, I couldn't help it, it was too hideous--I offered
+myself!' Laura spoke as if she were telling that she had stabbed him,
+standing there with dilated eyes.
+
+Lady Davenant got up again and went to her; drawing off her glove she
+felt her cheek with the back of her hand. 'You are ill, you are in a
+fever. I'm sure that whatever you said it was very charming.'
+
+'Yes, I am ill,' said Laura.
+
+'Upon my honour you shan't go home, you shall go straight to bed. And
+what did he say to you?'
+
+'Oh, it was too miserable!' cried the girl, pressing her face again into
+her companion's kerchief. 'I was all, all mistaken; he had never
+thought!'
+
+'Why the deuce then did he run about that way after you? He was a brute
+to say it!'
+
+'He didn't say it and he never ran about. He behaved like a perfect
+gentleman.'
+
+'I've no patience--I wish I had seen him that time!' Lady Davenant
+declared.
+
+'Yes, that would have been nice! You'll never see him; if he _is_ a
+gentleman he'll rush away.'
+
+'Bless me, what a rushing away!' murmured the old woman. Then passing
+her arm round Laura she added, 'You'll please to come upstairs with me.'
+
+Half an hour later she had some conversation with her butler which led
+to his consulting a little register into which it was his law to
+transcribe with great neatness, from their cards, the addresses of new
+visitors. This volume, kept in the drawer of the hall table, revealed
+the fact that Mr. Wendover was staying in George Street, Hanover Square.
+'Get into a cab immediately and tell him to come and see me this
+evening,' Lady Davenant said. 'Make him understand that it interests him
+very nearly, so that no matter what his engagements may be he must give
+them up. Go quickly and you'll just find him: he'll be sure to be at
+home to dress for dinner.' She had calculated justly, for a few minutes
+before ten o'clock the door of her drawing-room was thrown open and Mr.
+Wendover was announced.
+
+'Sit there,' said the old lady; 'no, not that one, nearer to me. We must
+talk low. My dear sir, I won't bite you!'
+
+'Oh, this is very comfortable,' Mr. Wendover replied vaguely, smiling
+through his visible anxiety. It was no more than natural that he should
+wonder what Laura Wing's peremptory friend wanted of him at that hour of
+the night; but nothing could exceed the gallantry of his attempt to
+conceal the symptoms of alarm.
+
+'You ought to have come before, you know,' Lady Davenant went on. 'I
+have wanted to see you more than once.'
+
+'I have been dining out--I hurried away. This was the first possible
+moment, I assure you.'
+
+'I too was dining out and I stopped at home on purpose to see you. But I
+didn't mean to-night, for you have done very well. I was quite intending
+to send for you--the other day. But something put it out of my head.
+Besides, I knew she wouldn't like it.'
+
+'Why, Lady Davenant, I made a point of calling, ever so long ago--after
+that day!' the young man exclaimed, not reassured, or at any rate not
+enlightened.
+
+'I daresay you did--but you mustn't justify yourself; that's just what
+I don't want; it isn't what I sent for you for. I have something very
+particular to say to you, but it's very difficult. Voyons un peu!'
+
+The old woman reflected a little, with her eyes on his face, which had
+grown more grave as she went on; its expression intimated that he failed
+as yet to understand her and that he at least was not exactly trifling.
+Lady Davenant's musings apparently helped her little, if she was looking
+for an artful approach; for they ended in her saying abruptly, 'I wonder
+if you know what a capital girl she is.'
+
+'Do you mean--do you mean----?' stammered Mr. Wendover, pausing as if he
+had given her no right not to allow him to conceive alternatives.
+
+'Yes, I do mean. She's upstairs, in bed.'
+
+'Upstairs in bed!' The young man stared.
+
+'Don't be afraid--I'm not going to send for her!' laughed his hostess;
+'her being here, after all, has nothing to do with it, except that she
+_did_ come--yes, certainly, she did come. But my keeping her--that was
+my doing. My maid has gone to Grosvenor Place to get her things and let
+them know that she will stay here for the present. Now am I clear?'
+
+'Not in the least,' said Mr. Wendover, almost sternly.
+
+Lady Davenant, however, was not of a composition to suspect him of
+sternness or to care very much if she did, and she went on, with her
+quick discursiveness: 'Well, we must be patient; we shall work it out
+together. I was afraid you would go away, that's why I lost no time.
+Above all I want you to understand that she has not the least idea that
+I have sent for you, and you must promise me never, never, never to let
+her know. She would be monstrous angry. It is quite my own idea--I have
+taken the responsibility. I know very little about you of course, but
+she has spoken to me well of you. Besides, I am very clever about
+people, and I liked you that day, though you seemed to think I was a
+hundred and eighty.'
+
+'You do me great honour,' Mr. Wendover rejoined.
+
+'I'm glad you're pleased! You must be if I tell you that I like you now
+even better. I see what you are, except for the question of fortune. It
+doesn't perhaps matter much, but have you any money? I mean have you a
+fine income?'
+
+'No, indeed I haven't!' And the young man laughed in his bewilderment.
+'I have very little money indeed.'
+
+'Well, I daresay you have as much as I. Besides, that would be a proof
+she is not mercenary.'
+
+'You haven't in the least made it plain whom you are talking about,'
+said Mr. Wendover. 'I have no right to assume anything.'
+
+'Are you afraid of betraying her? I am more devoted to her even than I
+want you to be. She has told me what happened between you last
+night--what she said to you at the opera. That's what I want to talk to
+you about.'
+
+'She was very strange,' the young man remarked.
+
+'I am not so sure that she was strange. However, you are welcome to
+think it, for goodness knows she says so herself. She is overwhelmed
+with horror at her own words; she is absolutely distracted and
+prostrate.'
+
+Mr. Wendover was silent a moment. 'I assured her that I admire
+her--beyond every one. I was most kind to her.'
+
+'Did you say it in that tone? You should have thrown yourself at her
+feet! From the moment you didn't--surely you understand women well
+enough to know.'
+
+'You must remember where we were--in a public place, with very little
+room for throwing!' Mr. Wendover exclaimed.
+
+'Ah, so far from blaming you she says your behaviour was perfect. It's
+only I who want to have it out with you,' Lady Davenant pursued. 'She's
+so clever, so charming, so good and so unhappy.'
+
+'When I said just now she was strange, I meant only in the way she
+turned against me.'
+
+'She turned against you?'
+
+'She told me she hoped she should never see me again.'
+
+'And you, should you like to see her?'
+
+'Not now--not now!' Mr. Wendover exclaimed, eagerly.
+
+'I don't mean now, I'm not such a fool as that. I mean some day or
+other, when she has stopped accusing herself, if she ever does.'
+
+'Ah, Lady Davenant, you must leave that to me,' the young man returned,
+after a moment's hesitation.
+
+'Don't be afraid to tell me I'm meddling with what doesn't concern me,'
+said his hostess. 'Of course I know I'm meddling; I sent for you here to
+meddle. Who wouldn't, for that creature? She makes one melt.'
+
+'I'm exceedingly sorry for her. I don't know what she thinks she said.'
+
+'Well, that she asked you why you came so often to Grosvenor Place. I
+don't see anything so awful in that, if you did go.'
+
+'Yes, I went very often. I liked to go.'
+
+'Now, that's exactly where I wish to prevent a misconception,' said Lady
+Davenant. 'If you liked to go you had a reason for liking, and Laura
+Wing was the reason, wasn't she?'
+
+'I thought her charming, and I think her so now more than ever.'
+
+'Then you are a dear good man. Vous faisiez votre cour, in short.'
+
+Mr. Wendover made no immediate response: the two sat looking at each
+other. 'It isn't easy for me to talk of these things,' he said at last;
+'but if you mean that I wished to ask her to be my wife I am bound to
+tell you that I had no such intention.'
+
+'Ah, then I'm at sea. You thought her charming and you went to see her
+every day. What then did you wish?'
+
+'I didn't go every day. Moreover I think you have a very different idea
+in this country of what constitutes--well, what constitutes making love.
+A man commits himself much sooner.'
+
+'Oh, I don't know what _your_ odd ways may be!' Lady Davenant exclaimed,
+with a shade of irritation.
+
+'Yes, but I was justified in supposing that those ladies did: they at
+least are American.'
+
+'"They," my dear sir! For heaven's sake don't mix up that nasty Selina
+with it!'
+
+'Why not, if I admired her too? I do extremely, and I thought the house
+most interesting.'
+
+'Mercy on us, if that's your idea of a nice house! But I don't know--I
+have always kept out of it,' Lady Davenant added, checking herself. Then
+she went on, 'If you are so fond of Mrs. Berrington I am sorry to inform
+you that she is absolutely good-for-nothing.'
+
+'Good-for-nothing?'
+
+'Nothing to speak of! I have been thinking whether I would tell you, and
+I have decided to do so because I take it that your learning it for
+yourself would be a matter of but a very short time. Selina has bolted,
+as they say.'
+
+'Bolted?' Mr. Wendover repeated.
+
+'I don't know what you call it in America.'
+
+'In America we don't do it.'
+
+'Ah, well, if they stay, as they do usually abroad, that's better. I
+suppose you didn't think her capable of behaving herself, did you?'
+
+'Do you mean she has left her husband--with some one else?'
+
+'Neither more nor less; with a fellow named Crispin. It appears it all
+came off last evening, and she had her own reasons for doing it in the
+most offensive way--publicly, clumsily, with the vulgarest bravado.
+Laura has told me what took place, and you must permit me to express my
+surprise at your not having divined the miserable business.'
+
+'I saw something was wrong, but I didn't understand. I'm afraid I'm not
+very quick at these things.'
+
+'Your state is the more gracious; but certainly you are not quick if you
+could call there so often and not see through Selina.'
+
+'Mr. Crispin, whoever he is, was never there,' said the young man.
+
+'Oh, she was a clever hussy!' his companion rejoined.
+
+'I knew she was fond of amusement, but that's what I liked to see. I
+wanted to see a house of that sort.'
+
+'Fond of amusement is a very pretty phrase!' said Lady Davenant,
+laughing at the simplicity with which her visitor accounted for his
+assiduity. 'And did Laura Wing seem to you in her place in a house of
+that sort?'
+
+'Why, it was natural she should be with her sister, and she always
+struck me as very gay.'
+
+'That was your enlivening effect! And did she strike you as very gay
+last night, with this scandal hanging over her?'
+
+'She didn't talk much,' said Mr. Wendover.
+
+'She knew it was coming--she felt it, she saw it, and that's what makes
+her sick now, that at _such_ a time she should have challenged you, when
+she felt herself about to be associated (in people's minds, of course)
+with such a vile business. In people's minds and in yours--when you
+should know what had happened.'
+
+'Ah, Miss Wing isn't associated----' said Mr. Wendover. He spoke slowly,
+but he rose to his feet with a nervous movement that was not lost upon
+his companion: she noted it indeed with a certain inward sense of
+triumph. She was very deep, but she had never been so deep as when she
+made up her mind to mention the scandal of the house of Berrington to
+her visitor and intimated to him that Laura Wing regarded herself as
+near enough to it to receive from it a personal stain. 'I'm extremely
+sorry to hear of Mrs. Berrington's misconduct,' he continued gravely,
+standing before her. 'And I am no less obliged to you for your
+interest.'
+
+'Don't mention it,' she said, getting up too and smiling. 'I mean my
+interest. As for the other matter, it will all come out. Lionel will
+haul her up.'
+
+'Dear me, how dreadful!'
+
+'Yes, dreadful enough. But don't betray me.'
+
+'Betray you?' he repeated, as if his thoughts had gone astray a moment.
+
+'I mean to the girl. Think of her shame!'
+
+'Her shame?' Mr. Wendover said, in the same way.
+
+'It seemed to her, with what was becoming so clear to her, that an
+honest man might save her from it, might give her his name and his faith
+and help her to traverse the bad place. She exaggerates the badness of
+it, the stigma of her relationship. Good heavens, at that rate where
+would some of us be? But those are her ideas, they are absolutely
+sincere, and they had possession of her at the opera. She had a sense of
+being lost and was in a real agony to be rescued. She saw before her a
+kind gentleman who had seemed--who had certainly seemed----' And Lady
+Davenant, with her fine old face lighted by her bright sagacity and her
+eyes on Mr. Wendover's, paused, lingering on this word. 'Of course she
+must have been in a state of nerves.'
+
+'I am very sorry for her,' said Mr. Wendover, with his gravity that
+committed him to nothing.
+
+'So am I! And of course if you were not in love with her you weren't,
+were you?'
+
+'I must bid you good-bye, I am leaving London.' That was the only
+answer Lady Davenant got to her inquiry.
+
+'Good-bye then. She is the nicest girl I know. But once more, mind you
+don't let her suspect!'
+
+'How can I let her suspect anything when I shall never see her again?'
+
+'Oh, don't say that,' said Lady Davenant, very gently.
+
+'She drove me away from her with a kind of ferocity.'
+
+'Oh, gammon!' cried the old woman.
+
+'I'm going home,' he said, looking at her with his hand on the door.
+
+'Well, it's the best place for you. And for her too!' she added as he
+went out. She was not sure that the last words reached him.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+Laura Wing was sharply ill for three days, but on the fourth she made up
+her mind she was better, though this was not the opinion of Lady
+Davenant, who would not hear of her getting up. The remedy she urged was
+lying still and yet lying still; but this specific the girl found
+well-nigh intolerable--it was a form of relief that only ministered to
+fever. She assured her friend that it killed her to do nothing: to which
+her friend replied by asking her what she had a fancy to do. Laura had
+her idea and held it tight, but there was no use in producing it before
+Lady Davenant, who would have knocked it to pieces. On the afternoon of
+the first day Lionel Berrington came, and though his intention was
+honest he brought no healing. Hearing she was ill he wanted to look
+after her--he wanted to take her back to Grosvenor Place and make her
+comfortable: he spoke as if he had every convenience for producing that
+condition, though he confessed there was a little bar to it in his own
+case. This impediment was the 'cheeky' aspect of Miss Steet, who went
+sniffing about as if she knew a lot, if she should only condescend to
+tell it. He saw more of the children now; 'I'm going to have 'em in
+every day, poor little devils,' he said; and he spoke as if the
+discipline of suffering had already begun for him and a kind of holy
+change had taken place in his life. Nothing had been said yet in the
+house, of course, as Laura knew, about Selina's disappearance, in the
+way of treating it as irregular; but the servants pretended so hard not
+to be aware of anything in particular that they were like pickpockets
+looking with unnatural interest the other way after they have cribbed a
+fellow's watch. To a certainty, in a day or two, the governess would
+give him warning: she would come and tell him she couldn't stay in such
+a place, and he would tell her, in return, that she was a little donkey
+for not knowing that the place was much more respectable now than it had
+ever been.
+
+This information Selina's husband imparted to Lady Davenant, to whom he
+discoursed with infinite candour and humour, taking a highly
+philosophical view of his position and declaring that it suited him down
+to the ground. His wife couldn't have pleased him better if she had done
+it on purpose; he knew where she had been every hour since she quitted
+Laura at the opera--he knew where she was at that moment and he was
+expecting to find another telegram on his return to Grosvenor Place. So
+if it suited _her_ it was all right, wasn't it? and the whole thing
+would go as straight as a shot. Lady Davenant took him up to see Laura,
+though she viewed their meeting with extreme disfavour, the girl being
+in no state for talking. In general Laura had little enough mind for it,
+but she insisted on seeing Lionel: she declared that if this were not
+allowed her she would go after him, ill as she was--she would dress
+herself and drive to his house. She dressed herself now, after a
+fashion; she got upon a sofa to receive him. Lady Davenant left him
+alone with her for twenty minutes, at the end of which she returned to
+take him away. This interview was not fortifying to the girl, whose
+idea--the idea of which I have said that she was tenacious--was to go
+after her sister, to take possession of her, cling to her and bring her
+back. Lionel, of course, wouldn't hear of taking her back, nor would
+Selina presumably hear of coming; but this made no difference in Laura's
+heroic plan. She would work it, she would compass it, she would go down
+on her knees, she would find the eloquence of angels, she would achieve
+miracles. At any rate it made her frantic not to try, especially as even
+in fruitless action she should escape from herself--an object of which
+her horror was not yet extinguished.
+
+As she lay there through inexorably conscious hours the picture of that
+hideous moment in the box alternated with the vision of her sister's
+guilty flight. She wanted to fly, herself--to go off and keep going for
+ever. Lionel was fussily kind to her and he didn't abuse Selina--he
+didn't tell her again how that lady's behaviour suited his book. He
+simply resisted, with a little exasperating, dogged grin, her pitiful
+appeal for knowledge of her sister's whereabouts. He knew what she
+wanted it for and he wouldn't help her in any such game. If she would
+promise, solemnly, to be quiet, he would tell her when she got better,
+but he wouldn't lend her a hand to make a fool of herself. Her work was
+cut out for her--she was to stay and mind the children: if she was so
+keen to do her duty she needn't go further than that for it. He talked a
+great deal about the children and figured himself as pressing the
+little deserted darlings to his bosom. He was not a comedian, and she
+could see that he really believed he was going to be better and purer
+now. Laura said she was sure Selina would make an attempt to get
+them--or at least one of them; and he replied, grimly, 'Yes, my dear,
+she had better try!' The girl was so angry with him, in her hot, tossing
+weakness, for refusing to tell her even whether the desperate pair had
+crossed the Channel, that she was guilty of the immorality of regretting
+that the difference in badness between husband and wife was so distinct
+(for it was distinct, she could see that) as he made his dry little
+remark about Selina's trying. He told her he had already seen his
+solicitor, the clever Mr. Smallshaw, and she said she didn't care.
+
+On the fourth day of her absence from Grosvenor Place she got up, at an
+hour when she was alone (in the afternoon, rather late), and prepared
+herself to go out. Lady Davenant had admitted in the morning that she
+was better, and fortunately she had not the complication of being
+subject to a medical opinion, having absolutely refused to see a doctor.
+Her old friend had been obliged to go out--she had scarcely quitted her
+before--and Laura had requested the hovering, rustling lady's-maid to
+leave her alone: she assured her she was doing beautifully. Laura had no
+plan except to leave London that night; she had a moral certainty that
+Selina had gone to the Continent. She had always done so whenever she
+had a chance, and what chance had ever been larger than the present? The
+Continent was fearfully vague, but she would deal sharply with
+Lionel--she would show him she had a right to knowledge. He would
+certainly be in town; he would be in a complacent bustle with his
+lawyers. She had told him that she didn't believe he had yet gone to
+them, but in her heart she believed it perfectly. If he didn't satisfy
+her she would go to Lady Ringrose, odious as it would be to her to ask a
+favour of this depraved creature: unless indeed Lady Ringrose had joined
+the little party to France, as on the occasion of Selina's last journey
+thither. On her way downstairs she met one of the footmen, of whom she
+made the request that he would call her a cab as quickly as
+possible--she was obliged to go out for half an hour. He expressed the
+respectful hope that she was better and she replied that she was
+perfectly well--he would please tell her ladyship when she came in. To
+this the footman rejoined that her ladyship _had_ come in--she had
+returned five minutes before and had gone to her room. 'Miss Frothingham
+told her you were asleep, Miss,' said the man, 'and her ladyship said it
+was a blessing and you were not to be disturbed.'
+
+'Very good, I will see her,' Laura remarked, with dissimulation: 'only
+please let me have my cab.'
+
+The footman went downstairs and she stood there listening; presently she
+heard the house-door close--he had gone out on his errand. Then she
+descended very softly--she prayed he might not be long. The door of the
+drawing-room stood open as she passed it, and she paused before it,
+thinking she heard sounds in the lower hall. They appeared to subside
+and then she found herself faint--she was terribly impatient for her
+cab. Partly to sit down till it came (there was a seat on the landing,
+but another servant might come up or down and see her), and partly to
+look, at the front window, whether it were not coming, she went for a
+moment into the drawing-room. She stood at the window, but the footman
+was slow; then she sank upon a chair--she felt very weak. Just after she
+had done so she became aware of steps on the stairs and she got up
+quickly, supposing that her messenger had returned, though she had not
+heard wheels. What she saw was not the footman she had sent out, but the
+expansive person of the butler, followed apparently by a visitor. This
+functionary ushered the visitor in with the remark that he would call
+her ladyship, and before she knew it she was face to face with Mr.
+Wendover. At the same moment she heard a cab drive up, while Mr.
+Wendover instantly closed the door.
+
+'Don't turn me away; do see me--do see me!' he said. 'I asked for Lady
+Davenant--they told me she was at home. But it was you I wanted, and I
+wanted her to help me. I was going away--but I couldn't. You look very
+ill--do listen to me! You don't understand--I will explain everything.
+Ah, how ill you look!' the young man cried, as the climax of this
+sudden, soft, distressed appeal. Laura, for all answer, tried to push
+past him, but the result of this movement was that she found herself
+enclosed in his arms. He stopped her, but she disengaged herself, she
+got her hand upon the door. He was leaning against it, so she couldn't
+open it, and as she stood there panting she shut her eyes, so as not to
+see him. 'If you would let me tell you what I think--I would do anything
+in the world for you!' he went on.
+
+'Let me go--you persecute me!' the girl cried, pulling at the handle.
+
+'You don't do me justice--you are too cruel!' Mr. Wendover persisted.
+
+'Let me go--let me go!' she only repeated, with her high, quavering,
+distracted note; and as he moved a little she got the door open. But he
+followed her out: would she see him that night? Where was she going?
+might he not go with her? would she see him to-morrow?
+
+'Never, never, never!' she flung at him as she hurried away. The butler
+was on the stairs, descending from above; so he checked himself, letting
+her go. Laura passed out of the house and flew into her cab with
+extraordinary speed, for Mr. Wendover heard the wheels bear her away
+while the servant was saying to him in measured accents that her
+ladyship would come down immediately.
+
+Lionel was at home, in Grosvenor Place: she burst into the library and
+found him playing papa. Geordie and Ferdy were sporting around him, the
+presence of Miss Steet had been dispensed with, and he was holding his
+younger son by the stomach, horizontally, between his legs, while the
+child made little sprawling movements which were apparently intended to
+represent the act of swimming. Geordie stood impatient on the brink of
+the imaginary stream, protesting that it was his turn now, and as soon
+as he saw his aunt he rushed at her with the request that she would take
+him up in the same fashion. She was struck with the superficiality of
+their childhood; they appeared to have no sense that she had been away
+and no care that she had been ill. But Lionel made up for this; he
+greeted her with affectionate jollity, said it was a good job she had
+come back, and remarked to the children that they would have great
+larks now that auntie was home again. Ferdy asked if she had been with
+mummy, but didn't wait for an answer, and she observed that they put no
+question about their mother and made no further allusion to her while
+they remained in the room. She wondered whether their father had
+enjoined upon them not to mention her, and reflected that even if he had
+such a command would not have been efficacious. It added to the ugliness
+of Selina's flight that even her children didn't miss her, and to the
+dreariness, somehow, to Laura's sense, of the whole situation that one
+could neither spend tears on the mother and wife, because she was not
+worth it, nor sentimentalise about the little boys, because they didn't
+inspire it. 'Well, you do look seedy--I'm bound to say that!' Lionel
+exclaimed; and he recommended strongly a glass of port, while Ferdy, not
+seizing this reference, suggested that daddy should take her by the
+waistband and teach her to 'strike out.' He represented himself in the
+act of drowning, but Laura interrupted this entertainment, when the
+servant answered the bell (Lionel having rung for the port), by
+requesting that the children should be conveyed to Miss Steet. 'Tell her
+she must never go away again,' Lionel said to Geordie, as the butler
+took him by the hand; but the only touching consequence of this
+injunction was that the child piped back to his father, over his
+shoulder, 'Well, you mustn't either, you know!'
+
+'You must tell me or I'll kill myself--I give you my word!' Laura said
+to her brother-in-law, with unnecessary violence, as soon as they had
+left the room.
+
+'I say, I say,' he rejoined, 'you _are_ a wilful one! What do you want
+to threaten me for? Don't you know me well enough to know that ain't the
+way? That's the tone Selina used to take. Surely you don't want to begin
+and imitate her!' She only sat there, looking at him, while he leaned
+against the chimney-piece smoking a short cigar. There was a silence,
+during which she felt the heat of a certain irrational anger at the
+thought that a little ignorant, red-faced jockey should have the luck to
+be in the right as against her flesh and blood. She considered him
+helplessly, with something in her eyes that had never been there
+before--something that, apparently, after a moment, made an impression
+on him. Afterwards, however, she saw very well that it was not her
+threat that had moved him, and even at the moment she had a sense, from
+the way he looked back at her, that this was in no manner the first time
+a baffled woman had told him that she would kill herself. He had always
+accepted his kinship with her, but even in her trouble it was part of
+her consciousness that he now lumped her with a mixed group of female
+figures, a little wavering and dim, who were associated in his memory
+with 'scenes,' with importunities and bothers. It is apt to be the
+disadvantage of women, on occasions of measuring their strength with
+men, that they may perceive that the man has a larger experience and
+that they themselves are a part of it. It is doubtless as a provision
+against such emergencies that nature has opened to them operations of
+the mind that are independent of experience. Laura felt the dishonour of
+her race the more that her brother-in-law seemed so gay and bright about
+it: he had an air of positive prosperity, as if his misfortune had
+turned into that. It came to her that he really liked the idea of the
+public _éclaircissement_--the fresh occupation, the bustle and
+importance and celebrity of it. That was sufficiently incredible, but as
+she was on the wrong side it was also humiliating. Besides, higher
+spirits always suggest finer wisdom, and such an attribute on Lionel's
+part was most humiliating of all. 'I haven't the least objection at
+present to telling you what you want to know. I shall have made my
+little arrangements very soon and you will be subpoenaed.'
+
+'Subpoenaed?' the girl repeated, mechanically.
+
+'You will be called as a witness on my side.'
+
+'On your side.'
+
+'Of course you're on my side, ain't you?'
+
+'Can they force me to come?' asked Laura, in answer to this.
+
+'No, they can't force you, if you leave the country.'
+
+'That's exactly what I want to do.'
+
+'That will be idiotic,' said Lionel, 'and very bad for your sister. If
+you don't help me you ought at least to help her.'
+
+She sat a moment with her eyes on the ground. 'Where is she--where is
+she?' she then asked.
+
+'They are at Brussels, at the Hôtel de Flandres. They appear to like it
+very much.'
+
+'Are you telling me the truth?'
+
+'Lord, my dear child, _I_ don't lie!' Lionel exclaimed. 'You'll make a
+jolly mistake if you go to her,' he added. 'If you have seen her with
+him how can you speak for her?'
+
+'I won't see her with him.'
+
+'That's all very well, but he'll take care of that. Of course if you're
+ready for perjury----!' Lionel exclaimed.
+
+'I'm ready for anything.'
+
+'Well, I've been kind to you, my dear,' he continued, smoking, with his
+chin in the air.
+
+'Certainly you have been kind to me.'
+
+'If you want to defend her you had better keep away from her,' said
+Lionel. 'Besides for yourself, it won't be the best thing in the
+world--to be known to have been in it.'
+
+'I don't care about myself,' the girl returned, musingly.
+
+'Don't you care about the children, that you are so ready to throw them
+over? For you would, my dear, you know. If you go to Brussels you never
+come back here--you never cross this threshold--you never touch them
+again!'
+
+Laura appeared to listen to this last declaration, but she made no reply
+to it; she only exclaimed after a moment, with a certain impatience,
+'Oh, the children will do anyway!' Then she added passionately, 'You
+_won't_, Lionel; in mercy's name tell me that you won't!'
+
+'I won't what?'
+
+'Do the awful thing you say.'
+
+'Divorce her? The devil I won't!'
+
+'Then why do you speak of the children--if you have no pity for them?'
+
+Lionel stared an instant. 'I thought you said yourself that they would
+do anyway!'
+
+Laura bent her head, resting it on the back of her hand, on the leathern
+arm of the sofa. So she remained, while Lionel stood smoking; but at
+last, to leave the room, she got up with an effort that was a physical
+pain. He came to her, to detain her, with a little good intention that
+had no felicity for her, trying to take her hand persuasively. 'Dear old
+girl, don't try and behave just as _she_ did! If you'll stay quietly
+here I won't call you, I give you my honour I won't; there! You want to
+see the doctor--that's the fellow you want to see. And what good will it
+do you, even if you bring her home in pink paper? Do you candidly
+suppose I'll ever look at her--except across the court-room?'
+
+'I must, I must, I must!' Laura cried, jerking herself away from him and
+reaching the door.
+
+'Well then, good-bye,' he said, in the sternest tone she had ever heard
+him use.
+
+She made no answer, she only escaped. She locked herself in her room;
+she remained there an hour. At the end of this time she came out and
+went to the door of the schoolroom, where she asked Miss Steet to be so
+good as to come and speak to her. The governess followed her to her
+apartment and there Laura took her partly into her confidence. There
+were things she wanted to do before going, and she was too weak to act
+without assistance. She didn't want it from the servants, if only Miss
+Steet would learn from them whether Mr. Berrington were dining at home.
+Laura told her that her sister was ill and she was hurrying to join her
+abroad. It had to be mentioned, that way, that Mrs. Berrington had left
+the country, though of course there was no spoken recognition between
+the two women of the reasons for which she had done so. There was only a
+tacit hypocritical assumption that she was on a visit to friends and
+that there had been nothing queer about her departure. Laura knew that
+Miss Steet knew the truth, and the governess knew that she knew it.
+This young woman lent a hand, very confusedly, to the girl's
+preparations; she ventured not to be sympathetic, as that would point
+too much to badness, but she succeeded perfectly in being dismal. She
+suggested that Laura was ill herself, but Laura replied that this was no
+matter when her sister was so much worse. She elicited the fact that Mr.
+Berrington was dining out--the butler believed with his mother--but she
+was of no use when it came to finding in the 'Bradshaw' which she
+brought up from the hall the hour of the night-boat to Ostend. Laura
+found it herself; it was conveniently late, and it was a gain to her
+that she was very near the Victoria station, where she would take the
+train for Dover. The governess wanted to go to the station with her, but
+the girl would not listen to this--she would only allow her to see that
+she had a cab. Laura let her help her still further; she sent her down
+to talk to Lady Davenant's maid when that personage arrived in Grosvenor
+Place to inquire, from her mistress, what in the world had become of
+poor Miss Wing. The maid intimated, Miss Steet said on her return, that
+her ladyship would have come herself, only she was too angry. She was
+very bad indeed. It was an indication of this that she had sent back her
+young friend's dressing-case and her clothes. Laura also borrowed money
+from the governess--she had too little in her pocket. The latter
+brightened up as the preparations advanced; she had never before been
+concerned in a flurried night-episode, with an unavowed clandestine
+side; the very imprudence of it (for a sick girl alone) was romantic,
+and before Laura had gone down to the cab she began to say that foreign
+life must be fascinating and to make wistful reflections. She saw that
+the coast was clear, in the nursery--that the children were asleep, for
+their aunt to come in. She kissed Ferdy while her companion pressed her
+lips upon Geordie, and Geordie while Laura hung for a moment over Ferdy.
+At the door of the cab she tried to make her take more money, and our
+heroine had an odd sense that if the vehicle had not rolled away she
+would have thrust into her hand a keepsake for Captain Crispin.
+
+A quarter of an hour later Laura sat in the corner of a
+railway-carriage, muffled in her cloak (the July evening was fresh, as
+it so often is in London--fresh enough to add to her sombre thoughts the
+suggestion of the wind in the Channel), waiting in a vain torment of
+nervousness for the train to set itself in motion. Her nervousness
+itself had led her to come too early to the station, and it seemed to
+her that she had already waited long. A lady and a gentleman had taken
+their place in the carriage (it was not yet the moment for the outward
+crowd of tourists) and had left their appurtenances there while they
+strolled up and down the platform. The long English twilight was still
+in the air, but there was dusk under the grimy arch of the station and
+Laura flattered herself that the off-corner of the carriage she had
+chosen was in shadow. This, however, apparently did not prevent her from
+being recognised by a gentleman who stopped at the door, looking in,
+with the movement of a person who was going from carriage to carriage.
+As soon as he saw her he stepped quickly in, and the next moment Mr.
+Wendover was seated on the edge of the place beside her, leaning toward
+her, speaking to her low, with clasped hands. She fell back in her seat,
+closing her eyes again. He barred the way out of the compartment.
+
+'I have followed you here--I saw Miss Steet--I want to implore you not
+to go! Don't, don't! I know what you're doing. Don't go, I beseech you.
+I saw Lady Davenant, I wanted to ask her to help me, I could bear it no
+longer. I have thought of you, night and day, these four days. Lady
+Davenant has told me things, and I entreat you not to go!'
+
+Laura opened her eyes (there was something in his voice, in his pressing
+nearness), and looked at him a moment: it was the first time she had
+done so since the first of those detestable moments in the box at Covent
+Garden. She had never spoken to him of Selina in any but an honourable
+sense. Now she said, 'I'm going to my sister.'
+
+'I know it, and I wish unspeakably you would give it up--it isn't
+good--it's a great mistake. Stay here and let me talk to you.'
+
+The girl raised herself, she stood up in the carriage. Mr. Wendover did
+the same; Laura saw that the lady and gentleman outside were now
+standing near the door. 'What have you to say? It's my own business!'
+she returned, between her teeth. 'Go out, go out, go out!'
+
+'Do you suppose I would speak if I didn't care--do you suppose I would
+care if I didn't love you?' the young man murmured, close to her face.
+
+'What is there to care about? Because people will know it and talk? If
+it's bad it's the right thing for me! If I don't go to her where else
+shall I go?'
+
+'Come to me, dearest, dearest!' Mr. Wendover went on. 'You are ill, you
+are mad! I love you--I assure you I do!'
+
+She pushed him away with her hands. 'If you follow me I will jump off
+the boat!'
+
+'Take your places, take your places!' cried the guard, on the platform.
+Mr. Wendover had to slip out, the lady and gentleman were coming in.
+Laura huddled herself into her corner again and presently the train drew
+away.
+
+Mr. Wendover did not get into another compartment; he went back that
+evening to Queen's Gate. He knew how interested his old friend there, as
+he now considered her, would be to hear what Laura had undertaken
+(though, as he learned, on entering her drawing-room again, she had
+already heard of it from her maid), and he felt the necessity to tell
+her once more how her words of four days before had fructified in his
+heart, what a strange, ineffaceable impression she had made upon him: to
+tell her in short and to repeat it over and over, that he had taken the
+most extraordinary fancy----! Lady Davenant was tremendously vexed at
+the girl's perversity, but she counselled him patience, a long,
+persistent patience. A week later she heard from Laura Wing, from
+Antwerp, that she was sailing to America from that port--a letter
+containing no mention whatever of Selina or of the reception she had
+found at Brussels. To America Mr. Wendover followed his young compatriot
+(that at least she had no right to forbid), and there, for the moment,
+he has had a chance to practise the humble virtue recommended by Lady
+Davenant. He knows she has no money and that she is staying with some
+distant relatives in Virginia; a situation that he--perhaps too
+superficially--figures as unspeakably dreary. He knows further that Lady
+Davenant has sent her fifty pounds, and he himself has ideas of
+transmitting funds, not directly to Virginia but by the roundabout road
+of Queen's Gate. Now, however, that Lionel Berrington's deplorable suit
+is coming on he reflects with some satisfaction that the Court of
+Probate and Divorce is far from the banks of the Rappahannock.
+'Berrington _versus_ Berrington and Others' is coming on--but these are
+matters of the present hour.
+
+
+
+
+THE PATAGONIA
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+The houses were dark in the August night and the perspective of Beacon
+Street, with its double chain of lamps, was a foreshortened desert. The
+club on the hill alone, from its semi-cylindrical front, projected a
+glow upon the dusky vagueness of the Common, and as I passed it I heard
+in the hot stillness the click of a pair of billiard balls. As 'every
+one' was out of town perhaps the servants, in the extravagance of their
+leisure, were profaning the tables. The heat was insufferable and I
+thought with joy of the morrow, of the deck of the steamer, the
+freshening breeze, the sense of getting out to sea. I was even glad of
+what I had learned in the afternoon at the office of the company--that
+at the eleventh hour an old ship with a lower standard of speed had been
+put on in place of the vessel in which I had taken my passage. America
+was roasting, England might very well be stuffy, and a slow passage
+(which at that season of the year would probably also be a fine one) was
+a guarantee of ten or twelve days of fresh air.
+
+I strolled down the hill without meeting a creature, though I could see
+through the palings of the Common that that recreative expanse was
+peopled with dim forms. I remembered Mrs. Nettlepoint's house--she lived
+in those days (they are not so distant, but there have been changes) on
+the water-side, a little way beyond the spot at which the Public Garden
+terminates; and I reflected that like myself she would be spending the
+night in Boston if it were true that, as had been mentioned to me a few
+days before at Mount Desert, she was to embark on the morrow for
+Liverpool. I presently saw this appearance confirmed by a light above
+her door and in two or three of her windows, and I determined to ask for
+her, having nothing to do till bedtime. I had come out simply to pass an
+hour, leaving my hotel to the blaze of its gas and the perspiration of
+its porters; but it occurred to me that my old friend might very well
+not know of the substitution of the _Patagonia_ for the _Scandinavia_,
+so that it would be an act of consideration to prepare her mind.
+Besides, I could offer to help her, to look after her in the morning:
+lone women are grateful for support in taking ship for far countries.
+
+As I stood on her doorstep I remembered that as she had a son she might
+not after all be so lone; yet at the same time it was present to me that
+Jasper Nettlepoint was not quite a young man to lean upon, having (as I
+at least supposed) a life of his own and tastes and habits which had
+long since drawn him away from the maternal side. If he did happen just
+now to be at home my solicitude would of course seem officious; for in
+his many wanderings--I believed he had roamed all over the globe--he
+would certainly have learned how to manage. None the less I was very
+glad to show Mrs. Nettlepoint I thought of her. With my long absence I
+had lost sight of her; but I had liked her of old; she had been a close
+friend of my sisters; and I had in regard to her that sense which is
+pleasant to those who, in general, have grown strange or detached--the
+feeling that she at least knew all about me. I could trust her at any
+time to tell people what a respectable person I was. Perhaps I was
+conscious of how little I deserved this indulgence when it came over me
+that for years I had not communicated with her. The measure of this
+neglect was given by my vagueness of mind about her son. However, I
+really belonged nowadays to a different generation: I was more the old
+lady's contemporary than Jasper's.
+
+Mrs. Nettlepoint was at home: I found her in her back drawing-room,
+where the wide windows opened upon the water. The room was dusky--it was
+too hot for lamps--and she sat slowly moving her fan and looking out on
+the little arm of the sea which is so pretty at night, reflecting the
+lights of Cambridgeport and Charlestown. I supposed she was musing upon
+the loved ones she was to leave behind, her married daughters, her
+grandchildren; but she struck a note more specifically Bostonian as she
+said to me, pointing with her fan to the Back Bay--'I shall see nothing
+more charming than that over there, you know!' She made me very welcome,
+but her son had told her about the _Patagonia_, for which she was sorry,
+as this would mean a longer voyage. She was a poor creature on shipboard
+and mainly confined to her cabin, even in weather extravagantly termed
+fine--as if any weather could be fine at sea.
+
+'Ah, then your son's going with you?' I asked.
+
+'Here he comes, he will tell you for himself much better than I am able
+to do.'
+
+Jasper Nettlepoint came into the room at that moment, dressed in white
+flannel and carrying a large fan.
+
+'Well, my dear, have you decided?' his mother continued, with some irony
+in her tone. 'He hasn't yet made up his mind, and we sail at ten
+o'clock!'
+
+'What does it matter, when my things are put up?' said the young man.
+'There is no crowd at this moment; there will be cabins to spare. I'm
+waiting for a telegram--that will settle it. I just walked up to the
+club to see if it was come--they'll send it there because they think the
+house is closed. Not yet, but I shall go back in twenty minutes.'
+
+'Mercy, how you rush about in this temperature!' his mother exclaimed,
+while I reflected that it was perhaps _his_ billiard-balls I had heard
+ten minutes before. I was sure he was fond of billiards.
+
+'Rush? not in the least. I take it uncommonly easy.'
+
+'Ah, I'm bound to say you do,' Mrs. Nettlepoint exclaimed,
+inconsequently. I divined that there was a certain tension between the
+pair and a want of consideration on the young man's part, arising
+perhaps from selfishness. His mother was nervous, in suspense, wanting
+to be at rest as to whether she should have his company on the voyage or
+be obliged to make it alone. But as he stood there smiling and slowly
+moving his fan he struck me somehow as a person on whom this fact would
+not sit very heavily. He was of the type of those whom other people
+worry about, not of those who worry about other people. Tall and
+strong, he had a handsome face, with a round head and close-curling
+hair; the whites of his eyes and the enamel of his teeth, under his
+brown moustache, gleamed vaguely in the lights of the Back Bay. I made
+out that he was sunburnt, as if he lived much in the open air, and that
+he looked intelligent but also slightly brutal, though not in a morose
+way. His brutality, if he had any, was bright and finished. I had to
+tell him who I was, but even then I saw that he failed to place me and
+that my explanations gave me in his mind no great identity or at any
+rate no great importance. I foresaw that he would in intercourse make me
+feel sometimes very young and sometimes very old. He mentioned, as if to
+show his mother that he might safely be left to his own devices, that he
+had once started from London to Bombay at three-quarters of an hour's
+notice.
+
+'Yes, and it must have been pleasant for the people you were with!'
+
+'Oh, the people I was with----!' he rejoined; and his tone appeared to
+signify that such people would always have to come off as they could. He
+asked if there were no cold drinks in the house, no lemonade, no iced
+syrups; in such weather something of that sort ought always to be kept
+going. When his mother remarked that surely at the club they _were_
+going he went on, 'Oh, yes, I had various things there; but you know I
+have walked down the hill since. One should have something at either
+end. May I ring and see?' He rang while Mrs. Nettlepoint observed that
+with the people they had in the house--an establishment reduced
+naturally at such a moment to its simplest expression (they were
+burning-up candle-ends and there were no luxuries) she would not answer
+for the service. The matter ended in the old lady's going out of the
+room in quest of syrup with the female domestic who had appeared in
+response to the bell and in whom Jasper's appeal aroused no visible
+intelligence.
+
+She remained away some time and I talked with her son, who was sociable
+but desultory and kept moving about the room, always with his fan, as if
+he were impatient. Sometimes he seated himself for an instant on the
+window-sill, and then I saw that he was in fact very good-looking; a
+fine brown, clean young athlete. He never told me on what special
+contingency his decision depended; he only alluded familiarly to an
+expected telegram, and I perceived that he was probably not addicted to
+copious explanations. His mother's absence was an indication that when
+it was a question of gratifying him she had grown used to spare no
+pains, and I fancied her rummaging in some close storeroom, among old
+preserve-pots, while the dull maid-servant held the candle awry. I know
+not whether this same vision was in his own eyes; at all events it did
+not prevent him from saying suddenly, as he looked at his watch, that I
+must excuse him, as he had to go back to the club. He would return in
+half an hour--or in less. He walked away and I sat there alone,
+conscious, in the dark, dismantled, simplified room, in the deep silence
+that rests on American towns during the hot season (there was now and
+then a far cry or a plash in the water, and at intervals the tinkle of
+the bells of the horse-cars on the long bridge, slow in the suffocating
+night), of the strange influence, half sweet, half sad, that abides in
+houses uninhabited or about to become so--in places muffled and
+bereaved, where the unheeded sofas and patient belittered tables seem to
+know (like the disconcerted dogs) that it is the eve of a journey.
+
+After a while I heard the sound of voices, of steps, the rustle of
+dresses, and I looked round, supposing these things to be the sign of
+the return of Mrs. Nettlepoint and her handmaiden, bearing the
+refreshment prepared for her son. What I saw however was two other
+female forms, visitors just admitted apparently, who were ushered into
+the room. They were not announced--the servant turned her back on them
+and rambled off to our hostess. They came forward in a wavering,
+tentative, unintroduced way--partly, I could see, because the place was
+dark and partly because their visit was in its nature experimental, a
+stretch of confidence. One of the ladies was stout and the other was
+slim, and I perceived in a moment that one was talkative and the other
+silent. I made out further that one was elderly and the other young and
+that the fact that they were so unlike did not prevent their being
+mother and daughter. Mrs. Nettlepoint reappeared in a very few minutes,
+but the interval had sufficed to establish a communication (really
+copious for the occasion) between the strangers and the unknown
+gentleman whom they found in possession, hat and stick in hand. This was
+not my doing (for what had I to go upon?) and still less was it the
+doing of the person whom I supposed and whom I indeed quickly and
+definitely learned to be the daughter. She spoke but once--when her
+companion informed me that she was going out to Europe the next day to
+be married. Then she said, 'Oh, mother!' protestingly, in a tone which
+struck me in the darkness as doubly strange, exciting my curiosity to
+see her face.
+
+It had taken her mother but a moment to come to that and to other things
+besides, after I had explained that I myself was waiting for Mrs.
+Nettlepoint, who would doubtless soon come back.
+
+'Well, she won't know me--I guess she hasn't ever heard much about me,'
+the good lady said; 'but I have come from Mrs. Allen and I guess that
+will make it all right. I presume you know Mrs. Allen?'
+
+I was unacquainted with this influential personage, but I assented
+vaguely to the proposition. Mrs. Allen's emissary was good-humoured and
+familiar, but rather appealing than insistent (she remarked that if her
+friend _had_ found time to come in the afternoon--she had so much to do,
+being just up for the day, that she couldn't be sure--it would be all
+right); and somehow even before she mentioned Merrimac Avenue (they had
+come all the way from there) my imagination had associated her with that
+indefinite social limbo known to the properly-constituted Boston mind as
+the South End--a nebulous region which condenses here and there into a
+pretty face, in which the daughters are an 'improvement' on the mothers
+and are sometimes acquainted with gentlemen resident in more
+distinguished districts of the New England capital--gentlemen whose
+wives and sisters in turn are not acquainted with them.
+
+When at last Mrs. Nettlepoint came in, accompanied by candles and by a
+tray laden with glasses of coloured fluid which emitted a cool tinkling,
+I was in a position to officiate as master of the ceremonies, to
+introduce Mrs. Mavis and Miss Grace Mavis, to represent that Mrs. Allen
+had recommended them--nay, had urged them--to come that way, informally,
+and had been prevented only by the pressure of occupations so
+characteristic of her (especially when she was up from Mattapoisett just
+for a few hours' shopping) from herself calling in the course of the day
+to explain who they were and what was the favour they had to ask of Mrs.
+Nettlepoint. Good-natured women understand each other even when divided
+by the line of topographical fashion, and our hostess had quickly
+mastered the main facts: Mrs. Allen's visit in the morning in Merrimac
+Avenue to talk of Mrs. Amber's great idea, the classes at the public
+schools in vacation (she was interested with an equal charity to that of
+Mrs. Mavis--even in such weather!--in those of the South End) for games
+and exercises and music, to keep the poor unoccupied children out of the
+streets; then the revelation that it had suddenly been settled almost
+from one hour to the other that Grace should sail for Liverpool, Mr.
+Porterfield at last being ready. He was taking a little holiday; his
+mother was with him, they had come over from Paris to see some of the
+celebrated old buildings in England, and he had telegraphed to say that
+if Grace would start right off they would just finish it up and be
+married. It often happened that when things had dragged on that way for
+years they were all huddled up at the end. Of course in such a case she,
+Mrs. Mavis, had had to fly round. Her daughter's passage was taken, but
+it seemed too dreadful that she should make her journey all alone, the
+first time she had ever been at sea, without any companion or escort.
+_She_ couldn't go--Mr. Mavis was too sick: she hadn't even been able to
+get him off to the seaside.
+
+'Well, Mrs. Nettlepoint is going in that ship,' Mrs. Allen had said; and
+she had represented that nothing was simpler than to put the girl in her
+charge. When Mrs. Mavis had replied that that was all very well but that
+she didn't know the lady, Mrs. Allen had declared that that didn't make
+a speck of difference, for Mrs. Nettlepoint was kind enough for
+anything. It was easy enough to know her, if that was all the trouble.
+All Mrs. Mavis would have to do would be to go up to her the next
+morning when she took her daughter to the ship (she would see her there
+on the deck with her party) and tell her what she wanted. Mrs.
+Nettlepoint had daughters herself and she would easily understand. Very
+likely she would even look after Grace a little on the other side, in
+such a queer situation, going out alone to the gentleman she was engaged
+to; she would just help her to turn round before she was married. Mr.
+Porterfield seemed to think they wouldn't wait long, once she was there:
+they would have it right over at the American consul's. Mrs. Allen had
+said it would perhaps be better still to go and see Mrs. Nettlepoint
+beforehand, that day, to tell her what they wanted: then they wouldn't
+seem to spring it on her just as she was leaving. She herself (Mrs.
+Allen) would call and say a word for them if she could save ten minutes
+before catching her train. If she hadn't come it was because she hadn't
+saved her ten minutes; but she had made them feel that they must come
+all the same. Mrs. Mavis liked that better, because on the ship in the
+morning there would be such a confusion. She didn't think her daughter
+would be any trouble--conscientiously she didn't. It was just to have
+some one to speak to her and not sally forth like a servant-girl going
+to a situation.
+
+'I see, I am to act as a sort of bridesmaid and to give her away,' said
+Mrs. Nettlepoint. She was in fact kind enough for anything and she
+showed on this occasion that it was easy enough to know her. There is
+nothing more tiresome than complications at sea, but she accepted
+without a protest the burden of the young lady's dependence and allowed
+her, as Mrs. Mavis said, to hook herself on. She evidently had the habit
+of patience, and her reception of her visitors' story reminded me afresh
+(I was reminded of it whenever I returned to my native land) that my
+dear compatriots are the people in the world who most freely take mutual
+accommodation for granted. They have always had to help themselves, and
+by a magnanimous extension they confound helping each other with that.
+In no country are there fewer forms and more reciprocities.
+
+It was doubtless not singular that the ladies from Merrimac Avenue
+should not feel that they were importunate: what was striking was that
+Mrs. Nettlepoint did not appear to suspect it. However, she would in any
+case have thought it inhuman to show that--though I could see that under
+the surface she was amused at everything the lady from the South End
+took for granted. I know not whether the attitude of the younger visitor
+added or not to the merit of her good-nature. Mr. Porterfield's intended
+took no part in her mother's appeal, scarcely spoke, sat looking at the
+Back Bay and the lights on the long bridge. She declined the lemonade
+and the other mixtures which, at Mrs. Nettlepoint's request, I offered
+her, while her mother partook freely of everything and I reflected (for
+I as freely consumed the reviving liquid) that Mr. Jasper had better
+hurry back if he wished to profit by the refreshment prepared for him.
+
+Was the effect of the young woman's reserve ungracious, or was it only
+natural that in her particular situation she should not have a flow of
+compliment at her command? I noticed that Mrs. Nettlepoint looked at her
+often, and certainly though she was undemonstrative Miss Mavis was
+interesting. The candle-light enabled me to see that if she was not in
+the very first flower of her youth she was still a handsome girl. Her
+eyes and hair were dark, her face was pale and she held up her head as
+if, with its thick braids, it were an appurtenance she was not ashamed
+of. If her mother was excellent and common she was not common (not
+flagrantly so) and perhaps not excellent. At all events she would not
+be, in appearance at least, a dreary appendage, and (in the case of a
+person 'hooking on') that was always something gained. Is it because
+something of a romantic or pathetic interest usually attaches to a good
+creature who has been the victim of a 'long engagement' that this young
+lady made an impression on me from the first--favoured as I had been so
+quickly with this glimpse of her history? Certainly she made no positive
+appeal; she only held her tongue and smiled, and her smile corrected
+whatever suggestion might have forced itself upon me that the spirit was
+dead--the spirit of that promise of which she found herself doomed to
+carry out the letter.
+
+What corrected it less, I must add, was an odd recollection which
+gathered vividness as I listened to it--a mental association which the
+name of Mr. Porterfield had evoked. Surely I had a personal impression,
+over-smeared and confused, of the gentleman who was waiting at
+Liverpool, or who would be, for Mrs. Nettlepoint's _protégée_. I had met
+him, known him, some time, somewhere, somehow, in Europe. Was he not
+studying something--very hard--somewhere, probably in Paris, ten years
+before, and did he not make extraordinarily neat drawings, linear and
+architectural? Didn't he go to a _table d'hôte_, at two francs
+twenty-five, in the Rue Bonaparte, which I then frequented, and didn't
+he wear spectacles and a Scotch plaid arranged in a manner which seemed
+to say, 'I have trustworthy information that that is the way they do it
+in the Highlands'? Was he not exemplary and very poor, so that I
+supposed he had no overcoat and his tartan was what he slept under at
+night? Was he not working very hard still, and wouldn't he be in the
+natural course, not yet satisfied that he knew enough to launch out? He
+would be a man of long preparations--Miss Mavis's white face seemed to
+speak to one of that. It appeared to me that if I had been in love with
+her I should not have needed to lay such a train to marry her.
+Architecture was his line and he was a pupil of the École des Beaux
+Arts. This reminiscence grew so much more vivid with me that at the end
+of ten minutes I had a curious sense of knowing--by implication--a good
+deal about the young lady.
+
+Even after it was settled that Mrs. Nettlepoint would do everything for
+her that she could her mother sat a little, sipping her syrup and
+telling how 'low' Mr. Mavis had been. At this period the girl's silence
+struck me as still more conscious, partly perhaps because she deprecated
+her mother's loquacity (she was enough of an 'improvement' to measure
+that) and partly because she was too full of pain at the idea of leaving
+her infirm, her perhaps dying father. I divined that they were poor and
+that she would take out a very small purse for her trousseau. Moreover
+for Mr. Porterfield to make up the sum his own case would have had to
+change. If he had enriched himself by the successful practice of his
+profession I had not encountered the buildings he had reared--his
+reputation had not come to my ears.
+
+Mrs. Nettlepoint notified her new friends that she was a very inactive
+person at sea: she was prepared to suffer to the full with Miss Mavis,
+but she was not prepared to walk with her, to struggle with her, to
+accompany her to the table. To this the girl replied that she would
+trouble her little, she was sure: she had a belief that she should prove
+a wretched sailor and spend the voyage on her back. Her mother scoffed
+at this picture, prophesying perfect weather and a lovely time, and I
+said that if I might be trusted, as a tame old bachelor fairly
+sea-seasoned, I should be delighted to give the new member of our party
+an arm or any other countenance whenever she should require it. Both the
+ladies thanked me for this (taking my description only too literally),
+and the elder one declared that we were evidently going to be such a
+sociable group that it was too bad to have to stay at home. She inquired
+of Mrs. Nettlepoint if there were any one else--if she were to be
+accompanied by some of her family; and when our hostess mentioned her
+son--there was a chance of his embarking but (wasn't it absurd?) he had
+not decided yet, she rejoined with extraordinary candour--'Oh dear, I do
+hope he'll go: that would be so pleasant for Grace.'
+
+Somehow the words made me think of poor Mr. Porterfield's tartan,
+especially as Jasper Nettlepoint strolled in again at that moment. His
+mother instantly challenged him: it was ten o'clock; had he by chance
+made up his great mind? Apparently he failed to hear her, being in the
+first place surprised at the strange ladies and then struck with the
+fact that one of them was not strange. The young man, after a slight
+hesitation, greeted Miss Mavis with a handshake and an 'Oh, good
+evening, how do you do?' He did not utter her name, and I could see that
+he had forgotten it; but she immediately pronounced his, availing
+herself of an American girl's discretion to introduce him to her mother.
+
+'Well, you might have told me you knew him all this time!' Mrs. Mavis
+exclaimed. Then smiling at Mrs. Nettlepoint she added, 'It would have
+saved me a worry, an acquaintance already begun.'
+
+'Ah, my son's acquaintances----!' Mrs. Nettlepoint murmured.
+
+'Yes, and my daughter's too!' cried Mrs. Mavis, jovially. 'Mrs. Allen
+didn't tell us _you_ were going,' she continued, to the young man.
+
+'She would have been clever if she had been able to!' Mrs. Nettlepoint
+ejaculated.
+
+'Dear mother, I have my telegram,' Jasper remarked, looking at Grace
+Mavis.
+
+'I know you very little,' the girl said, returning his observation.
+
+'I've danced with you at some ball--for some sufferers by something or
+other.'
+
+'I think it was an inundation,' she replied, smiling. 'But it was a long
+time ago--and I haven't seen you since.'
+
+'I have been in far countries--to my loss. I should have said it was for
+a big fire.'
+
+'It was at the Horticultural Hall. I didn't remember your name,' said
+Grace Mavis.
+
+'That is very unkind of you, when I recall vividly that you had a pink
+dress.'
+
+'Oh, I remember that dress--you looked lovely in it!' Mrs. Mavis broke
+out. 'You must get another just like it--on the other side.'
+
+'Yes, your daughter looked charming in it,' said Jasper Nettlepoint.
+Then he added, to the girl--'Yet you mentioned my name to your mother.'
+
+'It came back to me--seeing you here. I had no idea this was your home.'
+
+'Well, I confess it isn't, much. Oh, there are some drinks!' Jasper went
+on, approaching the tray and its glasses.
+
+'Indeed there are and quite delicious,' Mrs. Mavis declared.
+
+'Won't you have another then?--a pink one, like your daughter's gown.'
+
+'With pleasure, sir. Oh, do see them over,' Mrs. Mavis continued,
+accepting from the young man's hand a third tumbler.
+
+'My mother and that gentleman? Surely they can take care of themselves,'
+said Jasper Nettlepoint.
+
+'But my daughter--she has a claim as an old friend.'
+
+'Jasper, what does your telegram say?' his mother interposed.
+
+He gave no heed to her question: he stood there with his glass in his
+hand, looking from Mrs. Mavis to Miss Grace.
+
+'Ah, leave her to me, madam; I'm quite competent,' I said to Mrs. Mavis.
+
+Then the young man looked at me. The next minute he asked of the young
+lady--'Do you mean you are going to Europe?'
+
+'Yes, to-morrow; in the same ship as your mother.'
+
+'That's what we've come here for, to see all about it,' said Mrs. Mavis.
+
+'My son, take pity on me and tell me what light your telegram throws,'
+Mrs. Nettlepoint went on.
+
+'I will, dearest, when I've quenched my thirst.' And Jasper slowly
+drained his glass.
+
+'Well, you're worse than Gracie,' Mrs. Mavis commented. 'She was first
+one thing and then the other--but only about up to three o'clock
+yesterday.'
+
+'Excuse me--won't you take something?' Jasper inquired of Gracie; who
+however declined, as if to make up for her mother's copious
+_consommation_. I made privately the reflection that the two ladies
+ought to take leave, the question of Mrs. Nettlepoint's goodwill being
+so satisfactorily settled and the meeting of the morrow at the ship so
+near at hand; and I went so far as to judge that their protracted stay,
+with their hostess visibly in a fidget, was a sign of a want of
+breeding. Miss Grace after all then was not such an improvement on her
+mother, for she easily might have taken the initiative of departure, in
+spite of Mrs. Mavis's imbibing her glass of syrup in little interspaced
+sips, as if to make it last as long as possible. I watched the girl with
+an increasing curiosity; I could not help asking myself a question or
+two about her and even perceiving already (in a dim and general way)
+that there were some complications in her position. Was it not a
+complication that she should have wished to remain long enough to
+assuage a certain suspense, to learn whether or no Jasper were going to
+sail? Had not something particular passed between them on the occasion
+or at the period to which they had covertly alluded, and did she really
+not know that her mother was bringing her to _his_ mother's, though she
+apparently had thought it well not to mention the circumstance? Such
+things were complications on the part of a young lady betrothed to that
+curious cross-barred phantom of a Mr. Porterfield. But I am bound to add
+that she gave me no further warrant for suspecting them than by the
+simple fact of her encouraging her mother, by her immobility, to linger.
+Somehow I had a sense that _she_ knew better. I got up myself to go, but
+Mrs. Nettlepoint detained me after seeing that my movement would not be
+taken as a hint, and I perceived she wished me not to leave my
+fellow-visitors on her hands. Jasper complained of the closeness of the
+room, said that it was not a night to sit in a room--one ought to be out
+in the air, under the sky. He denounced the windows that overlooked the
+water for not opening upon a balcony or a terrace, until his mother,
+whom he had not yet satisfied about his telegram, reminded him that
+there was a beautiful balcony in front, with room for a dozen people.
+She assured him we would go and sit there if it would please him.
+
+'It will be nice and cool to-morrow, when we steam into the great
+ocean,' said Miss Mavis, expressing with more vivacity than she had yet
+thrown into any of her utterances my own thought of half an hour before.
+Mrs. Nettlepoint replied that it would probably be freezing cold, and
+her son murmured that he would go and try the drawing-room balcony and
+report upon it. Just as he was turning away he said, smiling, to Miss
+Mavis--'Won't you come with me and see if it's pleasant?'
+
+'Oh, well, we had better not stay all night!' her mother exclaimed, but
+without moving. The girl moved, after a moment's hesitation; she rose
+and accompanied Jasper into the other room. I observed that her slim
+tallness showed to advantage as she walked and that she looked well as
+she passed, with her head thrown back, into the darkness of the other
+part of the house. There was something rather marked, rather surprising
+(I scarcely knew why, for the act was simple enough) in her doing so,
+and perhaps it was our sense of this that held the rest of us somewhat
+stiffly silent as she remained away. I was waiting for Mrs. Mavis to go,
+so that I myself might go; and Mrs. Nettlepoint was waiting for her to
+go so that I might not. This doubtless made the young lady's absence
+appear to us longer than it really was--it was probably very brief. Her
+mother moreover, I think, had a vague consciousness of embarrassment.
+Jasper Nettlepoint presently returned to the back drawing-room to get a
+glass of syrup for his companion, and he took occasion to remark that it
+was lovely on the balcony: one really got some air, the breeze was from
+that quarter. I remembered, as he went away with his tinkling tumbler,
+that from _my_ hand, a few minutes before, Miss Mavis had not been
+willing to accept this innocent offering. A little later Mrs.
+Nettlepoint said--'Well, if it's so pleasant there we had better go
+ourselves.' So we passed to the front and in the other room met the two
+young people coming in from the balcony. I wondered in the light of
+subsequent events exactly how long they had been sitting there together.
+(There were three or four cane chairs which had been placed there for
+the summer.) If it had been but five minutes, that only made subsequent
+events more curious. 'We must go, mother,' Miss Mavis immediately said;
+and a moment later, with a little renewal of chatter as to our general
+meeting on the ship, the visitors had taken leave. Jasper went down with
+them to the door and as soon as they had gone out Mrs. Nettlepoint
+exclaimed--'Ah, but she'll be a bore--she'll be a bore!'
+
+'Not through talking too much--surely.'
+
+'An affectation of silence is as bad. I hate that particular _pose_;
+it's coming up very much now; an imitation of the English, like
+everything else. A girl who tries to be statuesque at sea--that will act
+on one's nerves!'
+
+'I don't know what she tries to be, but she succeeds in being very
+handsome.'
+
+'So much the better for you. I'll leave her to you, for I shall be shut
+up. I like her being placed under my "care."'
+
+'She will be under Jasper's,' I remarked.
+
+'Ah, he won't go--I want it too much.'
+
+'I have an idea he will go.'
+
+'Why didn't he tell me so then--when he came in?'
+
+'He was diverted by Miss Mavis--a beautiful unexpected girl sitting
+there.'
+
+'Diverted from his mother--trembling for his decision?'
+
+'She's an old friend; it was a meeting after a long separation.'
+
+'Yes, such a lot of them as he knows!' said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
+
+'Such a lot of them?'
+
+'He has so many female friends--in the most varied circles.'
+
+'Well, we can close round her then--for I on my side knew, or used to
+know, her young man.'
+
+'Her young man?'
+
+'The _fiancé_, the intended, the one she is going out to. He can't by
+the way be very young now.'
+
+'How odd it sounds!' said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
+
+I was going to reply that it was not odd if you knew Mr. Porterfield,
+but I reflected that that perhaps only made it odder. I told my
+companion briefly who he was--that I had met him in the old days in
+Paris, when I believed for a fleeting hour that I could learn to paint,
+when I lived with the _jeunesse des écoles_, and her comment on this was
+simply--'Well, he had better have come out for her!'
+
+'Perhaps so. She looked to me as she sat there as if she might change
+her mind at the last moment.'
+
+'About her marriage?'
+
+'About sailing. But she won't change now.'
+
+Jasper came back, and his mother instantly challenged him. 'Well, _are_
+you going?'
+
+'Yes, I shall go,' he said, smiling. 'I have got my telegram.'
+
+'Oh, your telegram!' I ventured to exclaim. 'That charming girl is your
+telegram.'
+
+He gave me a look, but in the dusk I could not make out very well what
+it conveyed. Then he bent over his mother, kissing her. 'My news isn't
+particularly satisfactory. I am going for _you_.'
+
+'Oh, you humbug!' she rejoined. But of course she was delighted.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+People usually spend the first hours of a voyage in squeezing themselves
+into their cabins, taking their little precautions, either so excessive
+or so inadequate, wondering how they can pass so many days in such a
+hole and asking idiotic questions of the stewards, who appear in
+comparison such men of the world. My own initiations were rapid, as
+became an old sailor, and so it seemed were Miss Mavis's, for when I
+mounted to the deck at the end of half an hour I found her there alone,
+in the stern of the ship, looking back at the dwindling continent. It
+dwindled very fast for so big a place. I accosted her, having had no
+conversation with her amid the crowd of leave-takers and the muddle of
+farewells before we put off; we talked a little about the boat, our
+fellow-passengers and our prospects, and then I said--'I think you
+mentioned last night a name I know--that of Mr. Porterfield.'
+
+'Oh no, I never uttered it,' she replied, smiling at me through her
+closely-drawn veil.
+
+'Then it was your mother.'
+
+'Very likely it was my mother.' And she continued to smile, as if I
+ought to have known the difference.
+
+'I venture to allude to him because I have an idea I used to know him,'
+I went on.
+
+'Oh, I see.' Beyond this remark she manifested no interest in my having
+known him.
+
+'That is if it's the same one.' It seemed to me it would be silly to say
+nothing more; so I added 'My Mr. Porterfield was called David.'
+
+'Well, so is ours.' 'Ours' struck me as clever.
+
+'I suppose I shall see him again if he is to meet you at Liverpool,' I
+continued.
+
+'Well, it will be bad if he doesn't.'
+
+It was too soon for me to have the idea that it would be bad if he did:
+that only came later. So I remarked that I had not seen him for so many
+years that it was very possible I should not know him.'
+
+'Well, I have not seen him for a great many years, but I expect I shall
+know him all the same.'
+
+'Oh, with you it's different,' I rejoined, smiling at her. 'Hasn't he
+been back since those days?'
+
+'I don't know what days you mean.'
+
+'When I knew him in Paris--ages ago. He was a pupil of the École des
+Beaux Arts. He was studying architecture.'
+
+'Well, he is studying it still,' said Grace Mavis.
+
+'Hasn't he learned it yet?'
+
+'I don't know what he has learned. I shall see.' Then she added:
+'Architecture is very difficult and he is tremendously thorough.'
+
+'Oh, yes, I remember that. He was an admirable worker. But he must have
+become quite a foreigner, if it's so many years since he has been at
+home.'
+
+'Oh, he is not changeable. If he were changeable----' But here my
+interlocutress paused. I suspect she had been going to say that if he
+were changeable he would have given her up long ago. After an instant
+she went on: 'He wouldn't have stuck so to his profession. You can't
+make much by it.'
+
+'You can't make much?'
+
+'It doesn't make you rich.'
+
+'Oh, of course you have got to practise it--and to practise it long.'
+
+'Yes--so Mr. Porterfield says.'
+
+Something in the way she uttered these words made me laugh--they were so
+serene an implication that the gentleman in question did not live up to
+his principles. But I checked myself, asking my companion if she
+expected to remain in Europe long--to live there.
+
+'Well, it will be a good while if it takes me as long to come back as it
+has taken me to go out.'
+
+'And I think your mother said last night that it was your first visit.'
+
+Miss Mavis looked at me a moment. 'Didn't mother talk!'
+
+'It was all very interesting.'
+
+She continued to look at me. 'You don't think that.'
+
+'What have I to gain by saying it if I don't?'
+
+'Oh, men have always something to gain.'
+
+'You make me feel a terrible failure, then! I hope at any rate that it
+gives you pleasure--the idea of seeing foreign lands.'
+
+'Mercy--I should think so.'
+
+'It's a pity our ship is not one of the fast ones, if you are
+impatient.'
+
+She was silent a moment; then she exclaimed, 'Oh, I guess it will be
+fast enough!'
+
+That evening I went in to see Mrs. Nettlepoint and sat on her sea-trunk,
+which was pulled out from under the berth to accommodate me. It was nine
+o'clock but not quite dark, as our northward course had already taken us
+into the latitude of the longer days. She had made her nest admirably
+and lay upon her sofa in a becoming dressing-gown and cap, resting from
+her labours. It was her regular practice to spend the voyage in her
+cabin, which smelt good (such was the refinement of her art), and she
+had a secret peculiar to herself for keeping her port open without
+shipping seas. She hated what she called the mess of the ship and the
+idea, if she should go above, of meeting stewards with plates of
+supererogatory food. She professed to be content with her situation (we
+promised to lend each other books and I assured her familiarly that I
+should be in and out of her room a dozen times a day), and pitied me for
+having to mingle in society. She judged this to be a limited privilege,
+for on the deck before we left the wharf she had taken a view of our
+fellow-passengers.
+
+'Oh, I'm an inveterate, almost a professional observer,' I replied, 'and
+with that vice I am as well occupied as an old woman in the sun with her
+knitting. It puts it in my power, in any situation, to _see_ things. I
+shall see them even here and I shall come down very often and tell you
+about them. You are not interested to-day, but you will be to-morrow,
+for a ship is a great school of gossip. You won't believe the number of
+researches and problems you will be engaged in by the middle of the
+voyage.'
+
+'I? Never in the world--lying here with my nose in a book and never
+seeing anything.'
+
+'You will participate at second hand. You will see through my eyes, hang
+upon my lips, take sides, feel passions, all sorts of sympathies and
+indignations. I have an idea that your young lady is the person on board
+who will interest me most.'
+
+'Mine, indeed! She has not been near me since we left the dock.'
+
+'Well, she is very curious.'
+
+'You have such cold-blooded terms,' Mrs. Nettlepoint murmured. '_Elle ne
+sait pas se conduire_; she ought to have come to ask about me.'
+
+'Yes, since you are under her care,' I said, smiling. 'As for her not
+knowing how to behave--well, that's exactly what we shall see.'
+
+'You will, but not I! I wash my hands of her.'
+
+'Don't say that--don't say that.'
+
+Mrs. Nettlepoint looked at me a moment. 'Why do you speak so solemnly?'
+
+In return I considered her. 'I will tell you before we land. And have
+you seen much of your son?'
+
+'Oh yes, he has come in several times. He seems very much pleased. He
+has got a cabin to himself.'
+
+'That's great luck,' I said, 'but I have an idea he is always in luck. I
+was sure I should have to offer him the second berth in my room.'
+
+'And you wouldn't have enjoyed that, because you don't like him,' Mrs.
+Nettlepoint took upon herself to say.
+
+'What put that into your head?'
+
+'It isn't in my head--it's in my heart, my _coeur de mère_. We guess
+those things. You think he's selfish--I could see it last night.'
+
+'Dear lady,' I said, 'I have no general ideas about him at all. He is
+just one of the phenomena I am going to observe. He seems to me a very
+fine young man. However,' I added, 'since you have mentioned last night
+I will admit that I thought he rather tantalised you. He played with
+your suspense.'
+
+'Why, he came at the last just to please me,' said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
+
+I was silent a moment. 'Are you sure it was for your sake?'
+
+'Ah, perhaps it was for yours!'
+
+'When he went out on the balcony with that girl perhaps she asked him to
+come,' I continued.
+
+'Perhaps she did. But why should he do everything she asks him?'
+
+'I don't know yet, but perhaps I shall know later. Not that he will tell
+me--for he will never tell me anything: he is not one of those who
+tell.'
+
+'If she didn't ask him, what you say is a great wrong to her,' said Mrs.
+Nettlepoint.
+
+'Yes, if she didn't. But you say that to protect Jasper, not to protect
+her,' I continued, smiling.
+
+'You _are_ cold-blooded--it's uncanny!' my companion exclaimed.
+
+'Ah, this is nothing yet! Wait a while--you'll see. At sea in general
+I'm awful--I pass the limits. If I have outraged her in thought I will
+jump overboard. There are ways of asking (a man doesn't need to tell a
+woman that) without the crude words.'
+
+'I don't know what you suppose between them,' said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
+
+'Nothing but what was visible on the surface. It transpired, as the
+newspapers say, that they were old friends.'
+
+'He met her at some promiscuous party--I asked him about it afterwards.
+She is not a person he could ever think of seriously.'
+
+'That's exactly what I believe.'
+
+'You don't observe--you imagine,' Mrs. Nettlepoint pursued.' How do you
+reconcile her laying a trap for Jasper with her going out to Liverpool
+on an errand of love?'
+
+'I don't for an instant suppose she laid a trap; I believe she acted on
+the impulse of the moment. She is going out to Liverpool on an errand of
+marriage; that is not necessarily the same thing as an errand of love,
+especially for one who happens to have had a personal impression of the
+gentleman she is engaged to.'
+
+'Well, there are certain decencies which in such a situation the most
+abandoned of her sex would still observe. You apparently judge her
+capable--on no evidence--of violating them.'
+
+'Ah, you don't understand the shades of things,' I rejoined. 'Decencies
+and violations--there is no need for such heavy artillery! I can
+perfectly imagine that without the least immodesty she should have said
+to Jasper on the balcony, in fact if not in words--"I'm in dreadful
+spirits, but if you come I shall feel better, and that will be pleasant
+for you too."'
+
+'And why is she in dreadful spirits?'
+
+'She isn't!' I replied, laughing.
+
+'What is she doing?'
+
+'She is walking with your son.'
+
+Mrs. Nettlepoint said nothing for a moment; then she broke out,
+inconsequently--'Ah, she's horrid!'
+
+'No, she's charming!' I protested.
+
+'You mean she's "curious"?'
+
+'Well, for me it's the same thing!'
+
+This led my friend of course to declare once more that I was
+cold-blooded. On the afternoon of the morrow we had another talk, and
+she told me that in the morning Miss Mavis had paid her a long visit.
+She knew nothing about anything, but her intentions were good and she
+was evidently in her own eyes conscientious and decorous. And Mrs.
+Nettlepoint concluded these remarks with the exclamation 'Poor young
+thing!'
+
+'You think she is a good deal to be pitied, then?'
+
+'Well, her story sounds dreary--she told me a great deal of it. She fell
+to talking little by little and went from one thing to another. She's in
+that situation when a girl _must_ open herself--to some woman.'
+
+'Hasn't she got Jasper?' I inquired.
+
+'He isn't a woman. You strike me as jealous of him,' my companion added.
+
+'I daresay _he_ thinks so--or will before the end. Ah no--ah no!' And I
+asked Mrs. Nettlepoint if our young lady struck her as a flirt. She gave
+me no answer, but went on to remark that it was odd and interesting to
+her to see the way a girl like Grace Mavis resembled the girls of the
+kind she herself knew better, the girls of 'society,' at the same time
+that she differed from them; and the way the differences and
+resemblances were mixed up, so that on certain questions you couldn't
+tell where you would find her. You would think she would feel as you did
+because you had found her feeling so, and then suddenly, in regard to
+some other matter (which was yet quite the same) she would be terribly
+wanting. Mrs. Nettlepoint proceeded to observe (to such idle
+speculations does the vanity of a sea-voyage give encouragement) that
+she wondered whether it were better to be an ordinary girl very well
+brought up or an extraordinary girl not brought up at all.
+
+'Oh, I go in for the extraordinary girl under all circumstances.'
+
+'It is true that if you are _very_ well brought up you are not
+ordinary,' said Mrs. Nettlepoint, smelling her strong salts. 'You are a
+lady, at any rate. _C'est toujours ça._'
+
+'And Miss Mavis isn't one--is that what you mean?'
+
+'Well--you have seen her mother.'
+
+'Yes, but I think your contention would be that among such people the
+mother doesn't count.'
+
+'Precisely; and that's bad.'
+
+'I see what you mean. But isn't it rather hard? If your mother doesn't
+know anything it is better you should be independent of her, and yet if
+you are that constitutes a bad note.' I added that Mrs. Mavis had
+appeared to count sufficiently two nights before. She had said and done
+everything she wanted, while the girl sat silent and respectful. Grace's
+attitude (so far as her mother was concerned) had been eminently decent.
+
+'Yes, but she couldn't bear it,' said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
+
+'Ah, if you know it I may confess that she has told me as much.'
+
+Mrs. Nettlepoint stared. 'Told you? There's one of the things they do!'
+
+'Well, it was only a word. Won't you let me know whether you think she's
+a flirt?'
+
+'Find out for yourself, since you pretend to study folks.'
+
+'Oh, your judgment would probably not at all determine mine. It's in
+regard to yourself that I ask it.'
+
+'In regard to myself?'
+
+'To see the length of maternal immorality.'
+
+Mrs. Nettlepoint continued to repeat my words. 'Maternal immorality?'
+
+'You desire your son to have every possible distraction on his voyage,
+and if you can make up your mind in the sense I refer to that will make
+it all right. He will have no responsibility.'
+
+'Heavens, how you analyse! I haven't in the least your passion for
+making up my mind.'
+
+'Then if you chance it you'll be more immoral still.'
+
+'Your reasoning is strange,' said the poor lady; 'when it was you who
+tried to put it into my head yesterday that she had asked him to come.'
+
+'Yes, but in good faith.'
+
+'How do you mean in good faith?'
+
+'Why, as girls of that sort do. Their allowance and measure in such
+matters is much larger than that of young ladies who have been, as you
+say, _very_ well brought up; and yet I am not sure that on the whole I
+don't think them the more innocent. Miss Mavis is engaged, and she's to
+be married next week, but it's an old, old story, and there's no more
+romance in it than if she were going to be photographed. So her usual
+life goes on, and her usual life consists (and that of ces demoiselles
+in general) in having plenty of gentlemen's society. Having it I mean
+without having any harm from it.'
+
+'Well, if there is no harm from it what are you talking about and why
+am I immoral?'
+
+I hesitated, laughing. 'I retract--you are sane and clear. I am sure she
+thinks there won't be any harm,' I added. 'That's the great point.'
+
+'The great point?'
+
+'I mean, to be settled.'
+
+'Mercy, we are not trying them! How can _we_ settle it?'
+
+'I mean of course in our minds. There will be nothing more interesting
+for the next ten days for our minds to exercise themselves upon.'
+
+'They will get very tired of it,' said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
+
+'No, no, because the interest will increase and the plot will thicken.
+It can't help it.' She looked at me as if she thought me slightly
+Mephistophelean, and I went on--'So she told you everything in her life
+was dreary?'
+
+'Not everything but most things. And she didn't tell me so much as I
+guessed it. She'll tell me more the next time. She will behave properly
+now about coming in to see me; I told her she ought to.'
+
+'I am glad of that,' I said. 'Keep her with you as much as possible.'
+
+'I don't follow you much,' Mrs. Nettlepoint replied, 'but so far as I do
+I don't think your remarks are in very good taste.'
+
+'I'm too excited, I lose my head, cold-blooded as you think me. Doesn't
+she like Mr. Porterfield?'
+
+'Yes, that's the worst of it.'
+
+'The worst of it?'
+
+'He's so good--there's no fault to be found with him. Otherwise she
+would have thrown it all up. It has dragged on since she was eighteen:
+she became engaged to him before he went abroad to study. It was one of
+those childish muddles which parents in America might prevent so much
+more than they do. The thing is to insist on one's daughter's waiting,
+on the engagement's being long; and then after you have got that started
+to take it on every occasion as little seriously as possible--to make it
+die out. You can easily tire it out. However, Mr. Porterfield has taken
+it seriously for some years. He has done his part to keep it alive. She
+says he adores her.'
+
+'His part? Surely his part would have been to marry her by this time.'
+
+'He has absolutely no money.'
+
+'He ought to have got some, in seven years.'
+
+'So I think she thinks. There are some sorts of poverty that are
+contemptible. But he has a little more now. That's why he won't wait any
+longer. His mother has come out, she has something--a little--and she is
+able to help him. She will live with them and bear some of the expenses,
+and after her death the son will have what there is.'
+
+'How old is she?' I asked, cynically.
+
+'I haven't the least idea. But it doesn't sound very inspiring. He has
+not been to America since he first went out.'
+
+'That's an odd way of adoring her.'
+
+'I made that objection mentally, but I didn't express it to her. She met
+it indeed a little by telling me that he had had other chances to
+marry.'
+
+'That surprises me,' I remarked. 'And did she say that _she_ had had?'
+
+'No, and that's one of the things I thought nice in her; for she must
+have had. She didn't try to make out that he had spoiled her life. She
+has three other sisters and there is very little money at home. She has
+tried to make money; she has written little things and painted little
+things, but her talent is apparently not in that direction. Her father
+has had a long illness and has lost his place--he was in receipt of a
+salary in connection with some waterworks--and one of her sisters has
+lately become a widow, with children and without means. And so as in
+fact she never has married any one else, whatever opportunities she may
+have encountered, she appears to have just made up her mind to go out to
+Mr. Porterfield as the least of her evils. But it isn't very amusing.'
+
+'That only makes it the more honourable. She will go through with it,
+whatever it costs, rather than disappoint him after he has waited so
+long. It is true,' I continued, 'that when a woman acts from a sense of
+honour----'
+
+'Well, when she does?' said Mrs. Nettlepoint, for I hesitated
+perceptibly.
+
+'It is so extravagant a course that some one has to pay for it.'
+
+'You are very impertinent. We all have to pay for each other, all the
+while; and for each other's virtues as well as vices.'
+
+'That's precisely why I shall be sorry for Mr. Porterfield when she
+steps off the ship with her little bill. I mean with her teeth
+clenched.'
+
+'Her teeth are not in the least clenched. She is in perfect
+good-humour.'
+
+'Well, we must try and keep her so,' I said. 'You must take care that
+Jasper neglects nothing.'
+
+I know not what reflection this innocent pleasantry of mine provoked on
+the good lady's part; the upshot of them at all events was to make her
+say--'Well, I never asked her to come; I'm very glad of that. It is all
+their own doing.'
+
+'Their own--you mean Jasper's and hers?'
+
+'No indeed. I mean her mother's and Mrs. Allen's; the girl's too of
+course. They put themselves upon us.'
+
+'Oh yes, I can testify to that. Therefore I'm glad too. We should have
+missed it, I think.'
+
+'How seriously you take it!' Mrs. Nettlepoint exclaimed.
+
+'Ah, wait a few days!' I replied, getting up to leave her.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+The _Patagonia_ was slow, but she was spacious and comfortable, and
+there was a kind of motherly decency in her long, nursing rock and her
+rustling, old-fashioned gait. It was as if she wished not to present
+herself in port with the splashed eagerness of a young creature. We were
+not numerous enough to squeeze each other and yet we were not too few to
+entertain--with that familiarity and relief which figures and objects
+acquire on the great bare field of the ocean, beneath the great bright
+glass of the sky. I had never liked the sea so much before, indeed I had
+never liked it at all; but now I had a revelation of how, in a midsummer
+mood, it could please. It was darkly and magnificently blue and
+imperturbably quiet--save for the great regular swell of its
+heart-beats, the pulse of its life, and there grew to be something so
+agreeable in the sense of floating there in infinite isolation and
+leisure that it was a positive satisfaction the _Patagonia_ was not a
+racer. One had never thought of the sea as the great place of safety,
+but now it came over one that there is no place so safe from the land.
+When it does not give you trouble it takes it away--takes away letters
+and telegrams and newspapers and visits and duties and efforts, all the
+complications, all the superfluities and superstitions that we have
+stuffed into our terrene life. The simple absence of the post, when the
+particular conditions enable you to enjoy the great fact by which it is
+produced, becomes in itself a kind of bliss, and the clean stage of the
+deck shows you a play that amuses, the personal drama of the voyage, the
+movement and interaction, in the strong sea-light, of figures that end
+by representing something--something moreover of which the interest is
+never, even in its keenness, too great to suffer you to go to sleep. I,
+at any rate, dozed a great deal, lying on my rug with a French novel,
+and when I opened my eyes I generally saw Jasper Nettlepoint passing
+with his mother's _protégée_ on his arm. Somehow at these moments,
+between sleeping and waking, I had an inconsequent sense that they were
+a part of the French novel. Perhaps this was because I had fallen into
+the trick, at the start, of regarding Grace Mavis almost as a married
+woman, which, as every one knows, is the necessary status of the heroine
+of such a work. Every revolution of our engine at any rate would
+contribute to the effect of making her one.
+
+In the saloon, at meals, my neighbour on the right was a certain little
+Mrs. Peck, a very short and very round person whose head was enveloped
+in a 'cloud' (a cloud of dirty white wool) and who promptly let me know
+that she was going to Europe for the education of her children. I had
+already perceived (an hour after we left the dock) that some energetic
+step was required in their interest, but as we were not in Europe yet
+the business could not be said to have begun. The four little Pecks, in
+the enjoyment of untrammelled leisure, swarmed about the ship as if
+they had been pirates boarding her, and their mother was as powerless to
+check their license as if she had been gagged and stowed away in the
+hold. They were especially to be trusted to run between the legs of the
+stewards when these attendants arrived with bowls of soup for the
+languid ladies. Their mother was too busy recounting to her
+fellow-passengers how many years Miss Mavis had been engaged. In the
+blank of a marine existence things that are nobody's business very soon
+become everybody's, and this was just one of those facts that are
+propagated with a mysterious and ridiculous rapidity. The whisper that
+carries them is very small, in the great scale of things, of air and
+space and progress, but it is also very safe, for there is no
+compression, no sounding-board, to make speakers responsible. And then
+repetition at sea is somehow not repetition; monotony is in the air, the
+mind is flat and everything recurs--the bells, the meals, the stewards'
+faces, the romp of children, the walk, the clothes, the very shoes and
+buttons of passengers taking their exercise. These things grow at last
+so insipid that, in comparison, revelations as to the personal history
+of one's companions have a taste, even when one cares little about the
+people.
+
+Jasper Nettlepoint sat on my left hand when he was not upstairs seeing
+that Miss Mavis had her repast comfortably on deck. His mother's place
+would have been next mine had she shown herself, and then that of the
+young lady under her care. The two ladies, in other words, would have
+been between us, Jasper marking the limit of the party on that side.
+Miss Mavis was present at luncheon the first day, but dinner passed
+without her coming in, and when it was half over Jasper remarked that he
+would go up and look after her.
+
+'Isn't that young lady coming--the one who was here to lunch?' Mrs. Peck
+asked of me as he left the saloon.
+
+'Apparently not. My friend tells me she doesn't like the saloon.'
+
+'You don't mean to say she's sick, do you?'
+
+'Oh no, not in this weather. But she likes to be above.'
+
+'And is that gentleman gone up to her?'
+
+'Yes, she's under his mother's care.'
+
+'And is his mother up there, too?' asked Mrs. Peck, whose processes were
+homely and direct.
+
+'No, she remains in her cabin. People have different tastes. Perhaps
+that's one reason why Miss Mavis doesn't come to table,' I added--'her
+chaperon not being able to accompany her.'
+
+'Her chaperon?'
+
+'Mrs. Nettlepoint--the lady under whose protection she is.'
+
+'Protection?' Mrs. Peck stared at me a moment, moving some valued morsel
+in her mouth; then she exclaimed, familiarly, 'Pshaw!' I was struck with
+this and I was on the point of asking her what she meant by it when she
+continued: 'Are we not going to see Mrs. Nettlepoint?'
+
+'I am afraid not. She vows that she won't stir from her sofa.'
+
+'Pshaw!' said Mrs. Peck again. 'That's quite a disappointment.'
+
+'Do you know her then?'
+
+'No, but I know all about her.' Then my companion added--'You don't
+meant to say she's any relation?'
+
+'Do you mean to me?'
+
+'No, to Grace Mavis.'
+
+'None at all. They are very new friends, as I happen to know. Then you
+are acquainted with our young lady?' I had not noticed that any
+recognition passed between them at luncheon.
+
+'Is she yours too?' asked Mrs. Peck, smiling at me.
+
+'Ah, when people are in the same boat--literally--they belong a little
+to each other.'
+
+'That's so,' said Mrs. Peck. 'I don't know Miss Mavis but I know all
+about her--I live opposite to her on Merrimac Avenue. I don't know
+whether you know that part.'
+
+'Oh yes--it's very beautiful.'
+
+The consequence of this remark was another 'Pshaw!' But Mrs. Peck went
+on--'When you've lived opposite to people like that for a long time you
+feel as if you were acquainted. But she didn't take it up to-day; she
+didn't speak to me. She knows who I am as well as she knows her own
+mother.'
+
+'You had better speak to her first--she's shy,' I remarked.
+
+'Shy? Why she's nearly thirty years old. I suppose you know where she's
+going.'
+
+'Oh yes--we all take an interest in that.'
+
+'That young man, I suppose, particularly.'
+
+'That young man?'
+
+'The handsome one, who sits there. Didn't you tell me he is Mrs.
+Nettlepoint's son?'
+
+'Oh yes; he acts as her deputy. No doubt he does all he can to carry out
+her function.'
+
+Mrs. Peck was silent a moment. I had spoken jocosely, but she received
+my pleasantry with a serious face. 'Well, she might let him eat his
+dinner in peace!' she presently exclaimed.
+
+'Oh, he'll come back!' I said, glancing at his place. The repast
+continued and when it was finished I screwed my chair round to leave the
+table. Mrs. Peck performed the same movement and we quitted the saloon
+together. Outside of it was a kind of vestibule, with several seats,
+from which you could descend to the lower cabins or mount to the
+promenade-deck. Mrs. Peck appeared to hesitate as to her course and then
+solved the problem by going neither way. She dropped upon one of the
+benches and looked up at me.
+
+'I thought you said he would come back.'
+
+'Young Nettlepoint? I see he didn't. Miss Mavis then has given him half
+of her dinner.'
+
+'It's very kind of her! She has been engaged for ages.'
+
+'Yes, but that will soon be over.'
+
+'So I suppose--as quick as we land. Every one knows it on Merrimac
+Avenue. Every one there takes a great interest in it.'
+
+'Ah, of course, a girl like that: she has many friends.'
+
+'I mean even people who don't know her.'
+
+'I see,' I went on: 'she is so handsome that she attracts attention,
+people enter into her affairs.'
+
+'She _used_ to be pretty, but I can't say I think she's anything
+remarkable to-day. Anyhow, if she attracts attention she ought to be all
+the more careful what she does. You had better tell her that.'
+
+'Oh, it's none of my business!' I replied, leaving Mrs. Peck and going
+above. The exclamation, I confess, was not perfectly in accordance with
+my feeling, or rather my feeling was not perfectly in harmony with the
+exclamation. The very first thing I did on reaching the deck was to
+notice that Miss Mavis was pacing it on Jasper Nettlepoint's arm and
+that whatever beauty she might have lost, according to Mrs. Peck's
+insinuation, she still kept enough to make one's eyes follow her. She
+had put on a sort of crimson hood, which was very becoming to her and
+which she wore for the rest of the voyage. She walked very well, with
+long steps, and I remember that at this moment the ocean had a gentle
+evening swell which made the great ship dip slowly, rhythmically, giving
+a movement that was graceful to graceful pedestrians and a more awkward
+one to the awkward. It was the loveliest hour of a fine day, the clear
+early evening, with the glow of the sunset in the air and a purple
+colour in the sea. I always thought that the waters ploughed by the
+Homeric heroes must have looked like that. I perceived on that
+particular occasion moreover that Grace Mavis would for the rest of the
+voyage be the most visible thing on the ship; the figure that would
+count most in the composition of groups. She couldn't help it, poor
+girl; nature had made her conspicuous--important, as the painters say.
+She paid for it by the exposure it brought with it--the danger that
+people would, as I had said to Mrs. Peck, enter into her affairs.
+
+Jasper Nettlepoint went down at certain times to see his mother, and I
+watched for one of these occasions (on the third day out) and took
+advantage of it to go and sit by Miss Mavis. She wore a blue veil drawn
+tightly over her face, so that if the smile with which she greeted me
+was dim I could account for it partly by that.
+
+'Well, we are getting on--we are getting on,' I said, cheerfully,
+looking at the friendly, twinkling sea.
+
+'Are we going very fast?'
+
+'Not fast, but steadily. _Ohne Hast, ohne Rast_--do you know German?'
+
+'Well, I've studied it--some.'
+
+'It will be useful to you over there when you travel.'
+
+'Well yes, if we do. But I don't suppose we shall much. Mr. Nettlepoint
+says we ought,' my interlocutress added in a moment.
+
+'Ah, of course _he_ thinks so. He has been all over the world.'
+
+'Yes, he has described some of the places. That's what I should like. I
+didn't know I should like it so much.'
+
+'Like what so much?'
+
+'Going on this way. I could go on for ever, for ever and ever.'
+
+'Ah, you know it's not always like this,' I rejoined.
+
+'Well, it's better than Boston.'
+
+'It isn't so good as Paris,' I said, smiling.
+
+'Oh, I know all about Paris. There is no freshness in that. I feel as if
+I had been there.'
+
+'You mean you have heard so much about it?'
+
+'Oh yes, nothing else for ten years.'
+
+I had come to talk with Miss Mavis because she was attractive, but I had
+been rather conscious of the absence of a good topic, not feeling at
+liberty to revert to Mr. Porterfield. She had not encouraged me, when I
+spoke to her as we were leaving Boston, to go on with the history of my
+acquaintance with this gentleman; and yet now, unexpectedly, she
+appeared to imply (it was doubtless one of the disparities mentioned by
+Mrs. Nettlepoint) that he might be glanced at without indelicacy.
+
+'I see, you mean by letters,' I remarked.
+
+'I shan't live in a good part. I know enough to know that,' she went on.
+
+'Dear young lady, there are no bad parts,' I answered, reassuringly.
+
+'Why, Mr. Nettlepoint says it's horrid.'
+
+'It's horrid?'
+
+'Up there in the Batignolles. It's worse than Merrimac Avenue.'
+
+'Worse--in what way?'
+
+'Why, even less where the nice people live.'
+
+'He oughtn't to say that,' I returned. 'Don't you call Mr. Porterfield a
+nice person?' I ventured to subjoin.
+
+'Oh, it doesn't make any difference.' She rested her eyes on me a moment
+through her veil, the texture of which gave them a suffused prettiness.
+'Do you know him very well?' she asked.
+
+'Mr. Porterfield?'
+
+'No, Mr. Nettlepoint.'
+
+'Ah, very little. He's a good deal younger than I.'
+
+She was silent a moment; after which she said: 'He's younger than me,
+too.' I know not what drollery there was in this but it was unexpected
+and it made me laugh. Neither do I know whether Miss Mavis took offence
+at my laughter, though I remember thinking at the moment with
+compunction that it had brought a certain colour to her cheek. At all
+events she got up, gathering her shawl and her books into her arm. 'I'm
+going down--I'm tired.'
+
+'Tired of me, I'm afraid.'
+
+'No, not yet.'
+
+'I'm like you,' I pursued. 'I should like it to go on and on.'
+
+She had begun to walk along the deck to the companion-way and I went
+with her. 'Oh, no, I shouldn't, after all!'
+
+I had taken her shawl from her to carry it, but at the top of the steps
+that led down to the cabins I had to give it back. 'Your mother would be
+glad if she could know,' I observed as we parted.
+
+'If she could know?'
+
+'How well you are getting on. And that good Mrs. Allen.'
+
+'Oh, mother, mother! She made me come, she pushed me off.' And almost as
+if not to say more she went quickly below.
+
+I paid Mrs. Nettlepoint a morning visit after luncheon and another in
+the evening, before she 'turned in.' That same day, in the evening, she
+said to me suddenly, 'Do you know what I have done? I have asked
+Jasper.'
+
+'Asked him what?'
+
+'Why, if _she_ asked him, you know.'
+
+'I don't understand.'
+
+'You do perfectly. If that girl really asked him--on the balcony--to
+sail with us.'
+
+'My dear friend, do you suppose that if she did he would tell you?'
+
+'That's just what he says. But he says she didn't.'
+
+'And do you consider the statement valuable?' I asked, laughing out.
+'You had better ask Miss Gracie herself.'
+
+Mrs. Nettlepoint stared. 'I couldn't do that.'
+
+'Incomparable friend, I am only joking. What does it signify now?'
+
+'I thought you thought everything signified. You were so full of
+signification!'
+
+'Yes, but we are farther out now, and somehow in mid-ocean everything
+becomes absolute.'
+
+'What else _can_ he do with decency?' Mrs. Nettlepoint went on. 'If, as
+my son, he were never to speak to her it would be very rude and you
+would think that stranger still. Then _you_ would do what he does, and
+where would be the difference?'
+
+'How do you know what he does? I haven't mentioned him for twenty-four
+hours.'
+
+'Why, she told me herself: she came in this afternoon.'
+
+'What an odd thing to tell you!' I exclaimed.
+
+'Not as she says it. She says he's full of attention, perfectly
+devoted--looks after her all the while. She seems to want me to know it,
+so that I may commend him for it.'
+
+'That's charming; it shows her good conscience.'
+
+'Yes, or her great cleverness.'
+
+Something in the tone in which Mrs. Nettlepoint said this caused me to
+exclaim in real surprise, 'Why, what do you suppose she has in her
+mind?'
+
+'To get hold of him, to make him go so far that he can't retreat, to
+marry him, perhaps.'
+
+'To marry him? And what will she do with Mr. Porterfield?'
+
+'She'll ask me just to explain to him--or perhaps you.'
+
+'Yes, as an old friend!' I replied, laughing. But I asked more
+seriously, 'Do you see Jasper caught like that?'
+
+'Well, he's only a boy--he's younger at least than she.'
+
+'Precisely; she regards him as a child.'
+
+'As a child?'
+
+'She remarked to me herself to-day that he is so much younger.'
+
+Mrs. Nettlepoint stared. 'Does she talk of it with you? That shows she
+has a plan, that she has thought it over!'
+
+I have sufficiently betrayed that I deemed Grace Mavis a singular girl,
+but I was far from judging her capable of laying a trap for our young
+companion. Moreover my reading of Jasper was not in the least that he
+was catchable--could be made to do a thing if he didn't want to do it.
+Of course it was not impossible that he might be inclined, that he might
+take it (or already have taken it) into his head to marry Miss Mavis;
+but to believe this I should require still more proof than his always
+being with her. He wanted at most to marry her for the voyage. 'If you
+have questioned him perhaps you have tried to make him feel
+responsible,' I said to his mother.
+
+'A little, but it's very difficult. Interference makes him perverse. One
+has to go gently. Besides, it's too absurd--think of her age. If she
+can't take care of herself!' cried Mrs. Nettlepoint.
+
+'Yes, let us keep thinking of her age, though it's not so prodigious.
+And if things get very bad you have one resource left,' I added.
+
+'What is that?'
+
+'You can go upstairs.'
+
+'Ah, never, never! If it takes that to save her she must be lost.
+Besides, what good would it do? If I were to go up she could come down
+here.'
+
+'Yes, but you could keep Jasper with you.'
+
+'Could I?' Mrs. Nettlepoint demanded, in the manner of a woman who knew
+her son.
+
+In the saloon the next day, after dinner, over the red cloth of the
+tables, beneath the swinging lamps and the racks of tumblers, decanters
+and wine-glasses, we sat down to whist, Mrs. Peck, among others, taking
+a hand in the game. She played very badly and talked too much, and when
+the rubber was over assuaged her discomfiture (though not mine--we had
+been partners) with a Welsh rabbit and a tumbler of something hot. We
+had done with the cards, but while she waited for this refreshment she
+sat with her elbows on the table shuffling a pack.
+
+'She hasn't spoken to me yet--she won't do it,' she remarked in a
+moment.
+
+'Is it possible there is any one on the ship who hasn't spoken to you?'
+
+'Not that girl--she knows too well!' Mrs. Peck looked round our little
+circle with a smile of intelligence--she had familiar, communicative
+eyes. Several of our company had assembled, according to the wont, the
+last thing in the evening, of those who are cheerful at sea, for the
+consumption of grilled sardines and devilled bones.
+
+'What then does she know?'
+
+'Oh, she knows that I know.'
+
+'Well, we know what Mrs. Peck knows,' one of the ladies of the group
+observed to me, with an air of privilege.
+
+'Well, you wouldn't know if I hadn't told you--from the way she acts,'
+said Mrs. Peck, with a small laugh.
+
+'She is going out to a gentleman who lives over there--he's waiting
+there to marry her,' the other lady went on, in the tone of authentic
+information. I remember that her name was Mrs. Gotch and that her mouth
+looked always as if she were whistling.
+
+'Oh, he knows--I've told him,' said Mrs. Peck.
+
+'Well, I presume every one knows,' Mrs. Gotch reflected.
+
+'Dear madam, is it every one's business?' I asked.
+
+'Why, don't you think it's a peculiar way to act?' Mrs. Gotch was
+evidently surprised at my little protest.
+
+'Why, it's right there--straight in front of you, like a play at the
+theatre--as if you had paid to see it,' said Mrs. Peck. 'If you don't
+call it public----!'
+
+'Aren't you mixing things up? What do you call public?'
+
+'Why, the way they go on. They are up there now.'
+
+'They cuddle up there half the night,' said Mrs. Gotch. 'I don't know
+when they come down. Any hour you like--when all the lights are out they
+are up there still.'
+
+'Oh, you can't tire them out. They don't want relief--like the watch!'
+laughed one of the gentlemen.
+
+'Well, if they enjoy each other's society what's the harm?' another
+asked. 'They'd do just the same on land.'
+
+'They wouldn't do it on the public streets, I suppose,' said Mrs. Peck.
+'And they wouldn't do it if Mr. Porterfield was round!'
+
+'Isn't that just where your confusion comes in?' I inquired. 'It's
+public enough that Miss Mavis and Mr. Nettlepoint are always together,
+but it isn't in the least public that she is going to be married.'
+
+'Why, how can you say--when the very sailors know it! The captain knows
+it and all the officers know it; they see them there--especially at
+night, when they're sailing the ship.'
+
+'I thought there was some rule----' said Mrs. Gotch.
+
+'Well, there is--that you've got to behave yourself,' Mrs. Peck
+rejoined. 'So the captain told me--he said they have some rule. He said
+they have to have, when people are too demonstrative.'
+
+'Too demonstrative?'
+
+'When they attract so much attention.'
+
+'Ah, it's we who attract the attention--by talking about what doesn't
+concern us and about what we really don't know,' I ventured to declare.
+
+'She said the captain said he would tell on her as soon as we arrive,'
+Mrs. Gotch interposed.
+
+'_She_ said----?' I repeated, bewildered.
+
+'Well, he did say so, that he would think it his duty to inform Mr.
+Porterfield, when he comes on to meet her--if they keep it up in the
+same way,' said Mrs. Peck.
+
+'Oh, they'll keep it up, don't you fear!' one of the gentlemen
+exclaimed.
+
+'Dear madam, the captain is laughing at you.'
+
+'No, he ain't--he's right down scandalised. He says he regards us all
+as a real family and wants the family to be properly behaved.' I could
+see Mrs. Peck was irritated by my controversial tone: she challenged me
+with considerable spirit. 'How can you say I don't know it when all the
+street knows it and has known it for years--for years and years?' She
+spoke as if the girl had been engaged at least for twenty. 'What is she
+going out for, if not to marry him?'
+
+'Perhaps she is going to see how he looks,' suggested one of the
+gentlemen.
+
+'He'd look queer--if he knew.'
+
+'Well, I guess he'll know,' said Mrs. Gotch.
+
+'She'd tell him herself--she wouldn't be afraid,' the gentleman went on.
+
+'Well, she might as well kill him. He'll jump overboard.'
+
+'Jump overboard?' cried Mrs. Gotch, as if she hoped then that Mr.
+Porterfield would be told.
+
+'He has just been waiting for this--for years,' said Mrs. Peck.
+
+'Do you happen to know him?' I inquired.
+
+Mrs. Peck hesitated a moment. 'No, but I know a lady who does. Are you
+going up?'
+
+I had risen from my place--I had not ordered supper. 'I'm going to take
+a turn before going to bed.'
+
+'Well then, you'll see!'
+
+Outside the saloon I hesitated, for Mrs. Peck's admonition made me feel
+for a moment that if I ascended to the deck I should have entered in a
+manner into her little conspiracy. But the night was so warm and
+splendid that I had been intending to smoke a cigar in the air before
+going below, and I did not see why I should deprive myself of this
+pleasure in order to seem not to mind Mrs. Peck. I went up and saw a few
+figures sitting or moving about in the darkness. The ocean looked black
+and small, as it is apt to do at night, and the long mass of the ship,
+with its vague dim wings, seemed to take up a great part of it. There
+were more stars than one saw on land and the heavens struck one more
+than ever as larger than the earth. Grace Mavis and her companion were
+not, so far as I perceived at first, among the few passengers who were
+lingering late, and I was glad, because I hated to hear her talked about
+in the manner of the gossips I had left at supper. I wished there had
+been some way to prevent it, but I could think of no way but to
+recommend her privately to change her habits. That would be a very
+delicate business, and perhaps it would be better to begin with Jasper,
+though that would be delicate too. At any rate one might let him know,
+in a friendly spirit, to how much remark he exposed the young
+lady--leaving this revelation to work its way upon him. Unfortunately I
+could not altogether believe that the pair were unconscious of the
+observation and the opinion of the passengers. They were not a boy and a
+girl; they had a certain social perspective in their eye. I was not very
+clear as to the details of that behaviour which had made them (according
+to the version of my good friends in the saloon) a scandal to the ship,
+for though I looked at them a good deal I evidently had not looked at
+them so continuously and so hungrily as Mrs. Peck. Nevertheless the
+probability was that they knew what was thought of them--what naturally
+would be--and simply didn't care. That made Miss Mavis out rather
+cynical and even a little immodest; and yet, somehow, if she had such
+qualities I did not dislike her for them. I don't know what strange,
+secret excuses I found for her. I presently indeed encountered a need
+for them on the spot, for just as I was on the point of going below
+again, after several restless turns and (within the limit where smoking
+was allowed) as many puffs at a cigar as I cared for, I became aware
+that a couple of figures were seated behind one of the lifeboats that
+rested on the deck. They were so placed as to be visible only to a
+person going close to the rail and peering a little sidewise. I don't
+think I peered, but as I stood a moment beside the rail my eye was
+attracted by a dusky object which protruded beyond the boat and which,
+as I saw at a second glance, was the tail of a lady's dress. I bent
+forward an instant, but even then I saw very little more; that scarcely
+mattered, however, for I took for granted on the spot that the persons
+concealed in so snug a corner were Jasper Nettlepoint and Mr.
+Porterfield's intended. Concealed was the word, and I thought it a real
+pity; there was bad taste in it. I immediately turned away and the next
+moment I found myself face to face with the captain of the ship. I had
+already had some conversation with him (he had been so good as to invite
+me, as he had invited Mrs. Nettlepoint and her son and the young lady
+travelling with them, and also Mrs. Peck, to sit at his table) and had
+observed with pleasure that he had the art, not universal on the
+Atlantic liners, of mingling urbanity with seamanship.
+
+'They don't waste much time--your friends in there,' he said, nodding
+in the direction in which he had seen me looking.
+
+'Ah well, they haven't much to lose.'
+
+'That's what I mean. I'm told _she_ hasn't.'
+
+I wanted to say something exculpatory but I scarcely knew what note to
+strike. I could only look vaguely about me at the starry darkness and
+the sea that seemed to sleep. 'Well, with these splendid nights, this
+perfection of weather, people are beguiled into late hours.'
+
+'Yes. We want a nice little blow,' the captain said.
+
+'A nice little blow?'
+
+'That would clear the decks!'
+
+The captain was rather dry and he went about his business. He had made
+me uneasy and instead of going below I walked a few steps more. The
+other walkers dropped off pair by pair (they were all men) till at last
+I was alone. Then, after a little, I quitted the field. Jasper and his
+companion were still behind their lifeboat. Personally I greatly
+preferred good weather, but as I went down I found myself vaguely
+wishing, in the interest of I scarcely knew what, unless of decorum,
+that we might have half a gale.
+
+Miss Mavis turned out, in sea-phrase, early; for the next morning I saw
+her come up only a little while after I had finished my breakfast, a
+ceremony over which I contrived not to dawdle. She was alone and Jasper
+Nettlepoint, by a rare accident, was not on deck to help her. I went to
+meet her (she was encumbered as usual with her shawl, her sun-umbrella
+and a book) and laid my hands on her chair, placing it near the stern of
+the ship, where she liked best to be. But I proposed to her to walk a
+little before she sat down and she took my arm after I had put her
+accessories into the chair. The deck was clear at that hour and the
+morning light was gay; one got a sort of exhilarated impression of fair
+conditions and an absence of hindrance. I forget what we spoke of first,
+but it was because I felt these things pleasantly, and not to torment my
+companion nor to test her, that I could not help exclaiming cheerfully,
+after a moment, as I have mentioned having done the first day, 'Well, we
+are getting on, we are getting on!'
+
+'Oh yes, I count every hour.'
+
+'The last days always go quicker,' I said, 'and the last hours----'
+
+'Well, the last hours?' she asked; for I had instinctively checked
+myself.
+
+'Oh, one is so glad then that it is almost the same as if one had
+arrived. But we ought to be grateful when the elements have been so kind
+to us,' I added. 'I hope you will have enjoyed the voyage.'
+
+She hesitated a moment, then she said, 'Yes, much more than I expected.'
+
+'Did you think it would be very bad?'
+
+'Horrible, horrible!'
+
+The tone of these words was strange but I had not much time to reflect
+upon it, for turning round at that moment I saw Jasper Nettlepoint come
+towards us. He was separated from us by the expanse of the white deck
+and I could not help looking at him from head to foot as he drew nearer.
+I know not what rendered me on this occasion particularly sensitive to
+the impression, but it seemed to me that I saw him as I had never seen
+him before--saw him inside and out, in the intense sea-light, in his
+personal, his moral totality. It was a quick, vivid revelation; if it
+only lasted a moment it had a simplifying, certifying effect. He was
+intrinsically a pleasing apparition, with his handsome young face and a
+certain absence of compromise in his personal arrangements which, more
+than any one I have ever seen, he managed to exhibit on shipboard. He
+had none of the appearance of wearing out old clothes that usually
+prevails there, but dressed straight, as I heard some one say. This gave
+him a practical, successful air, as of a young man who would come best
+out of any predicament. I expected to feel my companion's hand loosen
+itself on my arm, as indication that now she must go to him, and was
+almost surprised she did not drop me. We stopped as we met and Jasper
+bade us a friendly good-morning. Of course the remark was not slow to be
+made that we had another lovely day, which led him to exclaim, in the
+manner of one to whom criticism came easily, 'Yes, but with this sort of
+thing consider what one of the others would do!'
+
+'One of the other ships?'
+
+'We should be there now, or at any rate to-morrow.'
+
+'Well then, I'm glad it isn't one of the others,' I said, smiling at the
+young lady on my arm. My remark offered her a chance to say something
+appreciative and gave him one even more; but neither Jasper nor Grace
+Mavis took advantage of the opportunity. What they did do, I perceived,
+was to look at each other for an instant; after which Miss Mavis turned
+her eyes silently to the sea. She made no movement and uttered no word,
+contriving to give me the sense that she had all at once become
+perfectly passive, that she somehow declined responsibility. We remained
+standing there with Jasper in front of us, and if the touch of her arm
+did not suggest that I should give her up, neither did it intimate that
+we had better pass on. I had no idea of giving her up, albeit one of the
+things that I seemed to discover just then in Jasper's physiognomy was
+an imperturbable implication that she was his property. His eye met mine
+for a moment, and it was exactly as if he had said to me, 'I know what
+you think, but I don't care a rap.' What I really thought was that he
+was selfish beyond the limits: that was the substance of my little
+revelation. Youth is almost always selfish, just as it is almost always
+conceited, and, after all, when it is combined with health and good
+parts, good looks and good spirits, it has a right to be, and I easily
+forgive it if it be really youth. Still it is a question of degree, and
+what stuck out of Jasper Nettlepoint (if one felt that sort of thing)
+was that his egotism had a hardness, his love of his own way an avidity.
+These elements were jaunty and prosperous, they were accustomed to
+triumph. He was fond, very fond, of women; they were necessary to him
+and that was in his type; but he was not in the least in love with Grace
+Mavis. Among the reflections I quickly made this was the one that was
+most to the point. There was a degree of awkwardness, after a minute, in
+the way we were planted there, though the apprehension of it was
+doubtless not in the least with him.
+
+'How is your mother this morning?' I asked.
+
+'You had better go down and see.'
+
+'Not till Miss Mavis is tired of me.'
+
+She said nothing to this and I made her walk again. For some minutes she
+remained silent; then, rather unexpectedly, she began: 'I've seen you
+talking to that lady who sits at our table--the one who has so many
+children.'
+
+'Mrs. Peck? Oh yes, I have talked with her.'
+
+'Do you know her very well?'
+
+'Only as one knows people at sea. An acquaintance makes itself. It
+doesn't mean very much.'
+
+'She doesn't speak to me--she might if she wanted.'
+
+'That's just what she says of you--that you might speak to her.'
+
+'Oh, if she's waiting for that----!' said my companion, with a laugh.
+Then she added--'She lives in our street, nearly opposite.'
+
+'Precisely. That's the reason why she thinks you might speak; she has
+seen you so often and seems to know so much about you.'
+
+'What does she know about me?'
+
+'Ah, you must ask her--I can't tell you!'
+
+'I don't care what she knows,' said my young lady. After a moment she
+went on--'She must have seen that I'm not very sociable.' And
+then--'What are you laughing at?'
+
+My laughter was for an instant irrepressible--there was something so
+droll in the way she had said that.
+
+'Well, you are not sociable and yet you are. Mrs. Peck is, at any rate,
+and thought that ought to make it easy for you to enter into
+conversation with her.'
+
+'Oh, I don't care for her conversation--I know what it amounts to.' I
+made no rejoinder--I scarcely knew what rejoinder to make--and the girl
+went on, 'I know what she thinks and I know what she says.' Still I was
+silent, but the next moment I saw that my delicacy had been wasted, for
+Miss Mavis asked, 'Does she make out that she knows Mr. Porterfield?'
+
+'No, she only says that she knows a lady who knows him.'
+
+'Yes, I know--Mrs. Jeremie. Mrs. Jeremie's an idiot!' I was not in a
+position to controvert this, and presently my young lady said she would
+sit down. I left her in her chair--I saw that she preferred it--and
+wandered to a distance. A few minutes later I met Jasper again, and he
+stopped of his own accord and said to me--
+
+'We shall be in about six in the evening, on the eleventh day--they
+promise it.'
+
+'If nothing happens, of course.'
+
+'Well, what's going to happen?'
+
+'That's just what I'm wondering!' And I turned away and went below with
+the foolish but innocent satisfaction of thinking that I had mystified
+him.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+'I don't know what to do, and you must help me,' Mrs. Nettlepoint said
+to me that evening, as soon as I went in to see her.
+
+'I'll do what I can--but what's the matter?'
+
+'She has been crying here and going on--she has quite upset me.'
+
+'Crying? She doesn't look like that.'
+
+'Exactly, and that's what startled me. She came in to see me this
+afternoon, as she has done before, and we talked about the weather and
+the run of the ship and the manners of the stewardess and little
+commonplaces like that, and then suddenly, in the midst of it, as she
+sat there, _à propos_ of nothing, she burst into tears. I asked her what
+ailed her and tried to comfort her, but she didn't explain; she only
+said it was nothing, the effect of the sea, of leaving home. I asked her
+if it had anything to do with her prospects, with her marriage; whether
+she found as that drew near that her heart was not in it; I told her
+that she mustn't be nervous, that I could enter into that--in short I
+said what I could. All that she replied was that she _was_ nervous, very
+nervous, but that it was already over; and then she jumped up and kissed
+me and went away. Does she look as if she had been crying?' Mrs.
+Nettlepoint asked.
+
+'How can I tell, when she never quits that horrid veil? It's as if she
+were ashamed to show her face.'
+
+'She's keeping it for Liverpool. But I don't like such incidents,' said
+Mrs. Nettlepoint. 'I shall go upstairs.'
+
+'And is that where you want me to help you?'
+
+'Oh, your arm and that sort of thing, yes. But something more. I feel as
+if something were going to happen.'
+
+'That's exactly what I said to Jasper this morning.'
+
+'And what did he say?'
+
+'He only looked innocent, as if he thought I meant a fog or a storm.'
+
+'Heaven forbid--it isn't that! I shall never be good-natured again,'
+Mrs. Nettlepoint went on; 'never have a girl put upon me that way. You
+always pay for it, there are always tiresome complications. What I am
+afraid of is after we get there. She'll throw up her engagement; there
+will be dreadful scenes; I shall be mixed up with them and have to look
+after her and keep her with me. I shall have to stay there with her till
+she can be sent back, or even take her up to London. _Voyez-vous ça?_'
+
+I listened respectfully to this and then I said: 'You are afraid of your
+son.'
+
+'Afraid of him?'
+
+'There are things you might say to him--and with your manner; because
+you have one when you choose.'
+
+'Very likely, but what is my manner to his? Besides, I have said
+everything to him. That is I have said the great thing, that he is
+making her immensely talked about.'
+
+'And of course in answer to that he has asked you how you know, and you
+have told him I have told you.'
+
+'I had to; and he says it's none of your business.'
+
+'I wish he would say that to my face.'
+
+'He'll do so perfectly, if you give him a chance. That's where you can
+help me. Quarrel with him--he's rather good at a quarrel, and that will
+divert him and draw him off.'
+
+'Then I'm ready to discuss the matter with him for the rest of the
+voyage.'
+
+'Very well; I count on you. But he'll ask you, as he asks me, what the
+deuce you want him to do.'
+
+'To go to bed,' I replied, laughing.
+
+'Oh, it isn't a joke.'
+
+'That's exactly what I told you at first.'
+
+'Yes, but don't exult; I hate people who exult. Jasper wants to know why
+he should mind her being talked about if she doesn't mind it herself.'
+
+'I'll tell him why,' I replied; and Mrs. Nettlepoint said she should be
+exceedingly obliged to me and repeated that she would come upstairs.
+
+I looked for Jasper above that same evening, but circumstances did not
+favour my quest. I found him--that is I discovered that he was again
+ensconced behind the lifeboat with Miss Mavis; but there was a needless
+violence in breaking into their communion, and I put off our interview
+till the next day. Then I took the first opportunity, at breakfast, to
+make sure of it. He was in the saloon when I went in and was preparing
+to leave the table; but I stopped him and asked if he would give me a
+quarter of an hour on deck a little later--there was something
+particular I wanted to say to him. He said, 'Oh yes, if you like,' with
+just a visible surprise, but no look of an uncomfortable consciousness.
+When I had finished my breakfast I found him smoking on the forward-deck
+and I immediately began: 'I am going to say something that you won't at
+all like; to ask you a question that you will think impertinent.'
+
+'Impertinent? that's bad.'
+
+'I am a good deal older than you and I am a friend--of many years--of
+your mother. There's nothing I like less than to be meddlesome, but I
+think these things give me a certain right--a sort of privilege. For the
+rest, my inquiry will speak for itself.'
+
+'Why so many preliminaries?' the young man asked, smiling.
+
+We looked into each other's eyes a moment. What indeed was his mother's
+manner--her best manner--compared with his? 'Are you prepared to be
+responsible?'
+
+'To you?'
+
+'Dear no--to the young lady herself. I am speaking of course of Miss
+Mavis.'
+
+'Ah yes, my mother tells me you have her greatly on your mind.'
+
+'So has your mother herself--now.'
+
+'She is so good as to say so--to oblige you.'
+
+'She would oblige me a great deal more by reassuring me. I am aware that
+you know I have told her that Miss Mavis is greatly talked about.'
+
+'Yes, but what on earth does it matter?'
+
+'It matters as a sign.'
+
+'A sign of what?'
+
+'That she is in a false position.'
+
+Jasper puffed his cigar, with his eyes on the horizon. 'I don't know
+whether it's _your_ business, what you are attempting to discuss; but it
+really appears to me it is none of mine. What have I to do with the
+tattle with which a pack of old women console themselves for not being
+sea-sick?'
+
+'Do you call it tattle that Miss Mavis is in love with you?'
+
+'Drivelling.'
+
+'Then you are very ungrateful. The tattle of a pack of old women has
+this importance, that she suspects or knows that it exists, and that
+nice girls are for the most part very sensitive to that sort of thing.
+To be prepared not to heed it in this case she must have a reason, and
+the reason must be the one I have taken the liberty to call your
+attention to.'
+
+'In love with me in six days, just like that?' said Jasper, smoking.
+
+'There is no accounting for tastes, and six days at sea are equivalent
+to sixty on land. I don't want to make you too proud. Of course if you
+recognise your responsibility it's all right and I have nothing to say.'
+
+'I don't see what you mean,' Jasper went on.
+
+'Surely you ought to have thought of that by this time. She's engaged to
+be married and the gentleman she is engaged to is to meet her at
+Liverpool. The whole ship knows it (I didn't tell them!) and the whole
+ship is watching her. It's impertinent if you like, just as I am, but we
+make a little world here together and we can't blink its conditions.
+What I ask you is whether you are prepared to allow her to give up the
+gentleman I have just mentioned for your sake.'
+
+'For my sake?'
+
+'To marry her if she breaks with him.'
+
+Jasper turned his eyes from the horizon to my own, and I found a strange
+expression in them. 'Has Miss Mavis commissioned you to make this
+inquiry?'
+
+'Never in the world.'
+
+'Well then, I don't understand it.'
+
+'It isn't from another I make it. Let it come from yourself--_to_
+yourself.'
+
+'Lord, you must think I lead myself a life! That's a question the young
+lady may put to me any moment that it pleases her.'
+
+'Let me then express the hope that she will. But what will you answer?'
+
+'My dear sir, it seems to me that in spite of all the titles you have
+enumerated you have no reason to expect I will tell you.' He turned away
+and I exclaimed, sincerely, 'Poor girl!' At this he faced me again and,
+looking at me from head to foot, demanded: 'What is it you want me to
+do?'
+
+'I told your mother that you ought to go to bed.'
+
+'You had better do that yourself!'
+
+This time he walked off, and I reflected rather dolefully that the only
+clear result of my experiment would probably have been to make it vivid
+to him that she was in love with him. Mrs. Nettlepoint came up as she
+had announced, but the day was half over: it was nearly three o'clock.
+She was accompanied by her son, who established her on deck, arranged
+her chair and her shawls, saw that she was protected from sun and wind,
+and for an hour was very properly attentive. While this went on Grace
+Mavis was not visible, nor did she reappear during the whole afternoon.
+I had not observed that she had as yet been absent from the deck for so
+long a period. Jasper went away, but he came back at intervals to see
+how his mother got on, and when she asked him where Miss Mavis was he
+said he had not the least idea. I sat with Mrs. Nettlepoint at her
+particular request: she told me she knew that if I left her Mrs. Peck
+and Mrs. Gotch would come to speak to her. She was flurried and fatigued
+at having to make an effort, and I think that Grace Mavis's choosing
+this occasion for retirement suggested to her a little that she had been
+made a fool of. She remarked that the girl's not being there showed her
+complete want of breeding and that she was really very good to have put
+herself out for her so; she was a common creature and that was the end
+of it. I could see that Mrs. Nettlepoint's advent quickened the
+speculative activity of the other ladies; they watched her from the
+opposite side of the deck, keeping their eyes fixed on her very much as
+the man at the wheel kept his on the course of the ship. Mrs. Peck
+plainly meditated an approach, and it was from this danger that Mrs.
+Nettlepoint averted her face.
+
+'It's just as we said,' she remarked to me as we sat there. 'It is like
+the bucket in the well. When I come up that girl goes down.'
+
+'Yes, but you've succeeded, since Jasper remains here.'
+
+'Remains? I don't see him.'
+
+'He comes and goes--it's the same thing.'
+
+'He goes more than he comes. But _n'en parlons plus_; I haven't gained
+anything. I don't admire the sea at all--what is it but a magnified
+water-tank? I shan't come up again.'
+
+'I have an idea she'll stay in her cabin now,' I said. 'She tells me
+she has one to herself.' Mrs. Nettlepoint replied that she might do as
+she liked, and I repeated to her the little conversation I had had with
+Jasper.
+
+She listened with interest, but 'Marry her? mercy!' she exclaimed. 'I
+like the manner in which you give my son away.'
+
+'You wouldn't accept that.'
+
+'Never in the world.'
+
+'Then I don't understand your position.'
+
+'Good heavens, I have none! It isn't a position to be bored to death.'
+
+'You wouldn't accept it even in the case I put to him--that of her
+believing she had been encouraged to throw over poor Porterfield?'
+
+'Not even--not even. Who knows what she believes?'
+
+'Then you do exactly what I said you would--you show me a fine example
+of maternal immorality.'
+
+'Maternal fiddlesticks! It was she began it.'
+
+'Then why did you come up to-day?'
+
+'To keep you quiet.'
+
+Mrs. Nettlepoint's dinner was served on deck, but I went into the
+saloon. Jasper was there but not Grace Mavis, as I had half expected. I
+asked him what had become of her, if she were ill (he must have thought
+I had an ignoble pertinacity), and he replied that he knew nothing
+whatever about her. Mrs. Peck talked to me about Mrs. Nettlepoint and
+said it had been a great interest to her to see her; only it was a pity
+she didn't seem more sociable. To this I replied that she had to beg to
+be excused--she was not well.
+
+'You don't mean to say she's sick, on this pond?'
+
+'No, she's unwell in another way.'
+
+'I guess I know the way!' Mrs. Peck laughed. And then she added, 'I
+suppose she came up to look after her charge.'
+
+'Her charge?'
+
+'Why, Miss Mavis. We've talked enough about that.'
+
+'Quite enough. I don't know what that had to do with it. Miss Mavis
+hasn't been there to-day.'
+
+'Oh, it goes on all the same.'
+
+'It goes on?'
+
+'Well, it's too late.'
+
+'Too late?'
+
+'Well, you'll see. There'll be a row.'
+
+This was not comforting, but I did not repeat it above. Mrs. Nettlepoint
+returned early to her cabin, professing herself much tired. I know not
+what 'went on,' but Grace Mavis continued not to show. I went in late,
+to bid Mrs. Nettlepoint good-night, and learned from her that the girl
+had not been to her. She had sent the stewardess to her room for news,
+to see if she were ill and needed assistance, and the stewardess came
+back with the information that she was not there. I went above after
+this; the night was not quite so fair and the deck was almost empty. In
+a moment Jasper Nettlepoint and our young lady moved past me together.
+'I hope you are better!' I called after her; and she replied, over her
+shoulder--
+
+'Oh, yes, I had a headache; but the air now does me good!'
+
+I went down again--I was the only person there but they, and I wished to
+not appear to be watching them--and returning to Mrs. Nettlepoint's
+room found (her door was open into the little passage) that she was
+still sitting up.
+
+'She's all right!' I said. 'She's on the deck with Jasper.'
+
+The old lady looked up at me from her book. 'I didn't know you called
+that all right.'
+
+'Well, it's better than something else.'
+
+'Something else?'
+
+'Something I was a little afraid of.' Mrs. Nettlepoint continued to look
+at me; she asked me what that was. 'I'll tell you when we are ashore,' I
+said.
+
+The next day I went to see her, at the usual hour of my morning visit,
+and found her in considerable agitation. 'The scenes have begun,' she
+said; 'you know I told you I shouldn't get through without them! You
+made me nervous last night--I haven't the least idea what you meant; but
+you made me nervous. She came in to see me an hour ago, and I had the
+courage to say to her, "I don't know why I shouldn't tell you frankly
+that I have been scolding my son about you." Of course she asked me what
+I meant by that, and I said--"It seems to me he drags you about the ship
+too much, for a girl in your position. He has the air of not remembering
+that you belong to some one else. There is a kind of want of taste and
+even of want of respect in it." That produced an explosion; she became
+very violent.'
+
+'Do you mean angry?'
+
+'Not exactly angry, but very hot and excited--at my presuming to think
+her relations with my son were not the simplest in the world. I might
+scold him as much as I liked--that was between ourselves; but she didn't
+see why I should tell her that I had done so. Did I think she allowed
+him to treat her with disrespect? That idea was not very complimentary
+to her! He had treated her better and been kinder to her than most other
+people--there were very few on the ship that hadn't been insulting. She
+should be glad enough when she got off it, to her own people, to some
+one whom no one would have a right to say anything about. What was there
+in her position that was not perfectly natural? What was the idea of
+making a fuss about her position? Did I mean that she took it too
+easily--that she didn't think as much as she ought about Mr.
+Porterfield? Didn't I believe she was attached to him--didn't I believe
+she was just counting the hours until she saw him? That would be the
+happiest moment of her life. It showed how little I knew her, if I
+thought anything else.'
+
+'All that must have been rather fine--I should have liked to hear it,' I
+said. 'And what did you reply?'
+
+'Oh, I grovelled; I told her that I accused her (as regards my son) of
+nothing worse than an excess of good nature. She helped him to pass his
+time--he ought to be immensely obliged. Also that it would be a very
+happy moment for me too when I should hand her over to Mr. Porterfield.'
+
+'And will you come up to-day?'
+
+'No indeed--she'll do very well now.'
+
+I gave a sigh of relief. 'All's well that ends well!'
+
+Jasper, that day, spent a great deal of time with his mother. She had
+told me that she really had had no proper opportunity to talk over with
+him their movements after disembarking. Everything changes a little,
+the last two or three days of a voyage; the spell is broken and new
+combinations take place. Grace Mavis was neither on deck nor at dinner,
+and I drew Mrs. Peck's attention to the extreme propriety with which she
+now conducted herself. She had spent the day in meditation and she
+judged it best to continue to meditate.
+
+'Ah, she's afraid,' said my implacable neighbour.
+
+'Afraid of what?'
+
+'Well, that we'll tell tales when we get there.'
+
+'Whom do you mean by "we"?'
+
+'Well, there are plenty, on a ship like this.'
+
+'Well then, we won't.'
+
+'Maybe we won't have the chance,' said the dreadful little woman.
+
+'Oh, at that moment a universal geniality reigns.'
+
+'Well, she's afraid, all the same.'
+
+'So much the better.'
+
+'Yes, so much the better.'
+
+All the next day, too, the girl remained invisible and Mrs. Nettlepoint
+told me that she had not been in to see her. She had inquired by the
+stewardess if she would receive her in her own cabin, and Grace Mavis
+had replied that it was littered up with things and unfit for visitors:
+she was packing a trunk over. Jasper made up for his devotion to his
+mother the day before by now spending a great deal of his time in the
+smoking-room. I wanted to say to him 'This is much better,' but I
+thought it wiser to hold my tongue. Indeed I had begun to feel the
+emotion of prospective arrival (I was delighted to be almost back in my
+dear old Europe again) and had less to spare for other matters. It will
+doubtless appear to the critical reader that I had already devoted far
+too much to the little episode of which my story gives an account, but
+to this I can only reply that the event justified me. We sighted land,
+the dim yet rich coast of Ireland, about sunset and I leaned on the edge
+of the ship and looked at it. 'It doesn't look like much, does it?' I
+heard a voice say, beside me; and, turning, I found Grace Mavis was
+there. Almost for the first time she had her veil up, and I thought her
+very pale.
+
+'It will be more to-morrow,' I said.
+
+'Oh yes, a great deal more.'
+
+'The first sight of land, at sea, changes everything,' I went on. 'I
+always think it's like waking up from a dream. It's a return to
+reality.'
+
+For a moment she made no response to this; then she said, 'It doesn't
+look very real yet.'
+
+'No, and meanwhile, this lovely evening, the dream is still present.'
+
+She looked up at the sky, which had a brightness, though the light of
+the sun had left it and that of the stars had not come out. 'It _is_ a
+lovely evening.'
+
+'Oh yes, with this we shall do.'
+
+She stood there a while longer, while the growing dusk effaced the line
+of the land more rapidly than our progress made it distinct. She said
+nothing more, she only looked in front of her; but her very quietness
+made me want to say something suggestive of sympathy and service. I was
+unable to think what to say--some things seemed too wide of the mark and
+others too importunate. At last, unexpectedly, she appeared to give me
+my chance. Irrelevantly, abruptly she broke out:
+
+'Didn't you tell me that you knew Mr. Porterfield?'
+
+'Dear me, yes--I used to see him. I have often wanted to talk to you
+about him.'
+
+She turned her face upon me and in the deepened evening I fancied she
+looked whiter. 'What good would that do?'
+
+'Why, it would be a pleasure,' I replied, rather foolishly.
+
+'Do you mean for you?'
+
+'Well, yes--call it that,' I said, smiling.
+
+'Did you know him so well?'
+
+My smile became a laugh and I said--'You are not easy to make speeches
+to.'
+
+'I hate speeches!' The words came from her lips with a violence that
+surprised me; they were loud and hard. But before I had time to wonder
+at it she went on--'Shall you know him when you see him?'
+
+'Perfectly, I think.' Her manner was so strange that one had to notice
+it in some way, and it appeared to me the best way was to notice it
+jocularly; so I added, 'Shan't you?'
+
+'Oh, perhaps you'll point him out!' And she walked quickly away. As I
+looked after her I had a singular, a perverse and rather an embarrassed
+sense of having, during the previous days, and especially in speaking to
+Jasper Nettlepoint, interfered with her situation to her loss. I had a
+sort of pang in seeing her move about alone; I felt somehow responsible
+for it and asked myself why I could not have kept my hands off. I had
+seen Jasper in the smoking-room more than once that day, as I passed it,
+and half an hour before this I had observed, through the open door,
+that he was there. He had been with her so much that without him she had
+a bereaved, forsaken air. It was better, no doubt, but superficially it
+made her rather pitiable. Mrs. Peck would have told me that their
+separation was gammon; they didn't show together on deck and in the
+saloon, but they made it up elsewhere. The secret places on shipboard
+are not numerous; Mrs. Peck's 'elsewhere' would have been vague and I
+know not what license her imagination took. It was distinct that Jasper
+had fallen off, but of course what had passed between them on this
+subject was not so and could never be. Later, through his mother, I had
+_his_ version of that, but I may remark that I didn't believe it. Poor
+Mrs. Nettlepoint did, of course. I was almost capable, after the girl
+had left me, of going to my young man and saying, 'After all, do return
+to her a little, just till we get in! It won't make any difference after
+we land.' And I don't think it was the fear he would tell me I was an
+idiot that prevented me. At any rate the next time I passed the door of
+the smoking-room I saw that he had left it. I paid my usual visit to
+Mrs. Nettlepoint that night, but I troubled her no further about Miss
+Mavis. She had made up her mind that everything was smooth and settled
+now, and it seemed to me that I had worried her and that she had worried
+herself enough. I left her to enjoy the foretaste of arrival, which had
+taken possession of her mind. Before turning in I went above and found
+more passengers on deck than I had ever seen so late. Jasper was walking
+about among them alone, but I forebore to join him. The coast of Ireland
+had disappeared, but the night and the sea were perfect. On the way to
+my cabin, when I came down, I met the stewardess in one of the passages
+and the idea entered my head to say to her--'Do you happen to know where
+Miss Mavis is?'
+
+'Why, she's in her room, sir, at this hour.'
+
+'Do you suppose I could speak to her?' It had come into my mind to ask
+her why she had inquired of me whether I should recognise Mr.
+Porterfield.
+
+'No, sir,' said the stewardess; 'she has gone to bed.'
+
+'That's all right.' And I followed the young lady's excellent example.
+
+The next morning, while I was dressing, the steward of my side of the
+ship came to me as usual to see what I wanted. But the first thing he
+said to me was--'Rather a bad job, sir--a passenger missing.'
+
+'A passenger--missing?'
+
+'A lady, sir. I think you knew her. Miss Mavis, sir.'
+
+'_Missing?_' I cried--staring at him, horror-stricken.
+
+'She's not on the ship. They can't find her.'
+
+'Then where to God is she?'
+
+I remember his queer face. 'Well sir, I suppose you know that as well as
+I.'
+
+'Do you mean she has jumped overboard?'
+
+'Some time in the night, sir--on the quiet. But it's beyond every one,
+the way she escaped notice. They usually sees 'em, sir. It must have
+been about half-past two. Lord, but she was clever, sir. She didn't so
+much as make a splash. They say she _'ad_ come against her will, sir.'
+
+I had dropped upon my sofa--I felt faint. The man went on, liking to
+talk, as persons of his class do when they have something horrible to
+tell. She usually rang for the stewardess early, but this morning of
+course there had been no ring. The stewardess had gone in all the same
+about eight o'clock and found the cabin empty. That was about an hour
+ago. Her things were there in confusion--the things she usually wore
+when she went above. The stewardess thought she had been rather strange
+last night, but she waited a little and then went back. Miss Mavis
+hadn't turned up--and she didn't turn up. The stewardess began to look
+for her--she hadn't been seen on deck or in the saloon. Besides, she
+wasn't dressed--not to show herself; all her clothes were in her room.
+There was another lady, an old lady, Mrs. Nettlepoint--I would know
+her--that she was sometimes with, but the stewardess had been with _her_
+and she knew Miss Mavis had not come near her that morning. She had
+spoken to _him_ and they had taken a quiet look--they had hunted
+everywhere. A ship's a big place, but you do come to the end of it, and
+if a person ain't there why they ain't. In short an hour had passed and
+the young lady was not accounted for: from which I might judge if she
+ever would be. The watch couldn't account for her, but no doubt the
+fishes in the sea could--poor miserable lady! The stewardess and he,
+they had of course thought it their duty very soon to speak to the
+doctor, and the doctor had spoken immediately to the captain. The
+captain didn't like it--they never did. But he would try to keep it
+quiet--they always did.
+
+By the time I succeeded in pulling myself together and getting on, after
+a fashion, the rest of my clothes I had learned that Mrs. Nettlepoint
+had not yet been informed, unless the stewardess had broken it to her
+within the previous few minutes. Her son knew, the young gentleman on
+the other side of the ship (he had the other steward); my man had seen
+him come out of his cabin and rush above, just before he came in to me.
+He _had_ gone above, my man was sure; he had not gone to the old lady's
+cabin. I remember a queer vision when the steward told me this--the wild
+flash of a picture of Jasper Nettlepoint leaping with a mad compunction
+in his young agility over the side of the ship. I hasten to add that no
+such incident was destined to contribute its horror to poor Grace
+Mavis's mysterious tragic act. What followed was miserable enough, but I
+can only glance at it. When I got to Mrs. Nettlepoint's door she was
+there in her dressing-gown; the stewardess had just told her and she was
+rushing out to come to me. I made her go back--I said I would go for
+Jasper. I went for him but I missed him, partly no doubt because it was
+really, at first, the captain I was after. I found this personage and
+found him highly scandalised, but he gave me no hope that we were in
+error, and his displeasure, expressed with seamanlike plainness, was a
+definite settlement of the question. From the deck, where I merely
+turned round and looked, I saw the light of another summer day, the
+coast of Ireland green and near and the sea a more charming colour than
+it had been at all. When I came below again Jasper had passed back; he
+had gone to his cabin and his mother had joined him there. He remained
+there till we reached Liverpool--I never saw him. His mother, after a
+little, at his request, left him alone. All the world went above to
+look at the land and chatter about our tragedy, but the poor lady spent
+the day, dismally enough, in her room. It seemed to me intolerably long;
+I was thinking so of vague Porterfield and of my prospect of having to
+face him on the morrow. Now of course I knew why she had asked me if I
+should recognise him; she had delegated to me mentally a certain
+pleasant office. I gave Mrs. Peck and Mrs. Gotch a wide berth--I
+couldn't talk to them. I could, or at least I did a little, to Mrs.
+Nettlepoint, but with too many reserves for comfort on either side, for
+I foresaw that it would not in the least do now to mention Jasper to
+her. I was obliged to assume by my silence that he had had nothing to do
+with what had happened; and of course I never really ascertained what he
+_had_ had to do. The secret of what passed between him and the strange
+girl who would have sacrificed her marriage to him on so short an
+acquaintance remains shut up in his breast. His mother, I know, went to
+his door from time to time, but he refused her admission. That evening,
+to be human at a venture, I requested the steward to go in and ask him
+if he should care to see me, and the attendant returned with an answer
+which he candidly transmitted. 'Not in the least!' Jasper apparently was
+almost as scandalised as the captain.
+
+At Liverpool, at the dock, when we had touched, twenty people came on
+board and I had already made out Mr. Porterfield at a distance. He was
+looking up at the side of the great vessel with disappointment written
+(to my eyes) in his face--disappointment at not seeing the woman he
+loved lean over it and wave her handkerchief to him. Every one was
+looking at him, every one but she (his identity flew about in a moment)
+and I wondered if he did not observe it. He used to be lean, he had
+grown almost fat. The interval between us diminished--he was on the
+plank and then on the deck with the jostling officers of the
+customs--all too soon for my equanimity. I met him instantly however,
+laid my hand on him and drew him away, though I perceived that he had no
+impression of having seen me before. It was not till afterwards that I
+thought this a little stupid of him. I drew him far away (I was
+conscious of Mrs. Peck and Mrs. Gotch looking at us as we passed) into
+the empty, stale smoking-room; he remained speechless, and that struck
+me as like him. I had to speak first, he could not even relieve me by
+saying 'Is anything the matter?' I told him first that she was ill. It
+was an odious moment.
+
+
+
+
+THE LIAR
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+The train was half an hour late and the drive from the station longer
+than he had supposed, so that when he reached the house its inmates had
+dispersed to dress for dinner and he was conducted straight to his room.
+The curtains were drawn in this asylum, the candles were lighted, the
+fire was bright, and when the servant had quickly put out his clothes
+the comfortable little place became suggestive--seemed to promise a
+pleasant house, a various party, talks, acquaintances, affinities, to
+say nothing of very good cheer. He was too occupied with his profession
+to pay many country visits, but he had heard people who had more time
+for them speak of establishments where 'they do you very well.' He
+foresaw that the proprietors of Stayes would do him very well. In his
+bedroom at a country house he always looked first at the books on the
+shelf and the prints on the walls; he considered that these things gave
+a sort of measure of the culture and even of the character of his hosts.
+Though he had but little time to devote to them on this occasion a
+cursory inspection assured him that if the literature, as usual, was
+mainly American and humorous the art consisted neither of the
+water-colour studies of the children nor of 'goody' engravings. The
+walls were adorned with old-fashioned lithographs, principally portraits
+of country gentlemen with high collars and riding gloves: this
+suggested--and it was encouraging--that the tradition of portraiture was
+held in esteem. There was the customary novel of Mr. Le Fanu, for the
+bedside; the ideal reading in a country house for the hours after
+midnight. Oliver Lyon could scarcely forbear beginning it while he
+buttoned his shirt.
+
+Perhaps that is why he not only found every one assembled in the hall
+when he went down, but perceived from the way the move to dinner was
+instantly made that they had been waiting for him. There was no delay,
+to introduce him to a lady, for he went out in a group of unmatched men,
+without this appendage. The men, straggling behind, sidled and edged as
+usual at the door of the dining-room, and the _dénouement_ of this
+little comedy was that he came to his place last of all. This made him
+think that he was in a sufficiently distinguished company, for if he had
+been humiliated (which he was not), he could not have consoled himself
+with the reflection that such a fate was natural to an obscure,
+struggling young artist. He could no longer think of himself as very
+young, alas, and if his position was not so brilliant as it ought to be
+he could no longer justify it by calling it a struggle. He was something
+of a celebrity and he was apparently in a society of celebrities. This
+idea added to the curiosity with which he looked up and down the long
+table as he settled himself in his place.
+
+It was a numerous party--five and twenty people; rather an odd occasion
+to have proposed to him, as he thought. He would not be surrounded by
+the quiet that ministers to good work; however, it had never interfered
+with his work to see the spectacle of human life before him in the
+intervals. And though he did not know it, it was never quiet at Stayes.
+When he was working well he found himself in that happy state--the
+happiest of all for an artist--in which things in general contribute to
+the particular idea and fall in with it, help it on and justify it, so
+that he feels for the hour as if nothing in the world can happen to him,
+even if it come in the guise of disaster or suffering, that will not be
+an enhancement of his subject. Moreover there was an exhilaration (he
+had felt it before) in the rapid change of scene--the jump, in the dusk
+of the afternoon, from foggy London and his familiar studio to a centre
+of festivity in the middle of Hertfordshire and a drama half acted, a
+drama of pretty women and noted men and wonderful orchids in silver
+jars. He observed as a not unimportant fact that one of the pretty women
+was beside him: a gentleman sat on his other hand. But he went into his
+neighbours little as yet: he was busy looking out for Sir David, whom he
+had never seen and about whom he naturally was curious.
+
+Evidently, however, Sir David was not at dinner, a circumstance
+sufficiently explained by the other circumstance which constituted our
+friend's principal knowledge of him--his being ninety years of age.
+Oliver Lyon had looked forward with great pleasure to the chance of
+painting a nonagenarian, and though the old man's absence from table was
+something of a disappointment (it was an opportunity the less to
+observe him before going to work), it seemed a sign that he was rather a
+sacred and perhaps therefore an impressive relic. Lyon looked at his son
+with the greater interest--wondered whether the glazed bloom of his
+cheek had been transmitted from Sir David. That would be jolly to paint,
+in the old man--the withered ruddiness of a winter apple, especially if
+the eye were still alive and the white hair carried out the frosty look.
+Arthur Ashmore's hair had a midsummer glow, but Lyon was glad his
+commission had been to delineate the father rather than the son, in
+spite of his never having seen the one and of the other being seated
+there before him now in the happy expansion of liberal hospitality.
+
+Arthur Ashmore was a fresh-coloured, thick-necked English gentleman, but
+he was just not a subject; he might have been a farmer and he might have
+been a banker: you could scarcely paint him in characters. His wife did
+not make up the amount; she was a large, bright, negative woman, who had
+the same air as her husband of being somehow tremendously new; a sort of
+appearance of fresh varnish (Lyon could scarcely tell whether it came
+from her complexion or from her clothes), so that one felt she ought to
+sit in a gilt frame, suggesting reference to a catalogue or a
+price-list. It was as if she were already rather a bad though expensive
+portrait, knocked off by an eminent hand, and Lyon had no wish to copy
+that work. The pretty woman on his right was engaged with her neighbour
+and the gentleman on his other side looked shrinking and scared, so that
+he had time to lose himself in his favourite diversion of watching face
+after face. This amusement gave him the greatest pleasure he knew, and
+he often thought it a mercy that the human mask did interest him and
+that it was not less vivid than it was (sometimes it ran its success in
+this line very close), since he was to make his living by reproducing
+it. Even if Arthur Ashmore would not be inspiring to paint (a certain
+anxiety rose in him lest if he should make a hit with her father-in-law
+Mrs. Arthur should take it into her head that he had now proved himself
+worthy to _aborder_ her husband); even if he had looked a little less
+like a page (fine as to print and margin) without punctuation, he would
+still be a refreshing, iridescent surface. But the gentleman four
+persons off--what was he? Would he be a subject, or was his face only
+the legible door-plate of his identity, burnished with punctual washing
+and shaving--the least thing that was decent that you would know him by?
+
+This face arrested Oliver Lyon: it struck him at first as very handsome.
+The gentleman might still be called young, and his features were
+regular: he had a plentiful, fair moustache that curled up at the ends,
+a brilliant, gallant, almost adventurous air, and a big shining
+breastpin in the middle of his shirt. He appeared a fine satisfied soul,
+and Lyon perceived that wherever he rested his friendly eye there fell
+an influence as pleasant as the September sun--as if he could make
+grapes and pears or even human affection ripen by looking at them. What
+was odd in him was a certain mixture of the correct and the extravagant:
+as if he were an adventurer imitating a gentleman with rare perfection
+or a gentleman who had taken a fancy to go about with hidden arms. He
+might have been a dethroned prince or the war-correspondent of a
+newspaper: he represented both enterprise and tradition, good manners
+and bad taste. Lyon at length fell into conversation with the lady
+beside him--they dispensed, as he had had to dispense at dinner-parties
+before, with an introduction--by asking who this personage might be.
+
+'Oh, he's Colonel Capadose, don't you know?' Lyon didn't know and he
+asked for further information. His neighbour had a sociable manner and
+evidently was accustomed to quick transitions; she turned from her other
+interlocutor with a methodical air, as a good cook lifts the cover of
+the next saucepan. 'He has been a great deal in India--isn't he rather
+celebrated?' she inquired. Lyon confessed he had never heard of him, and
+she went on, 'Well, perhaps he isn't; but he says he is, and if you
+think it, that's just the same, isn't it?'
+
+'If _you_ think it?'
+
+'I mean if he thinks it--that's just as good, I suppose.'
+
+'Do you mean that he says that which is not?'
+
+'Oh dear, no--because I never know. He is exceedingly clever and
+amusing--quite the cleverest person in the house, unless indeed you are
+more so. But that I can't tell yet, can I? I only know about the people
+I know; I think that's celebrity enough!'
+
+'Enough for them?'
+
+'Oh, I see you're clever. Enough for me! But I have heard of you,' the
+lady went on. 'I know your pictures; I admire them. But I don't think
+you look like them.'
+
+'They are mostly portraits,' Lyon said; 'and what I usually try for is
+not my own resemblance.'
+
+'I see what you mean. But they have much more colour. And now you are
+going to do some one here?'
+
+'I have been invited to do Sir David. I'm rather disappointed at not
+seeing him this evening.'
+
+'Oh, he goes to bed at some unnatural hour--eight o'clock or something
+of that sort. You know he's rather an old mummy.'
+
+'An old mummy?' Oliver Lyon repeated.
+
+'I mean he wears half a dozen waistcoats, and that sort of thing. He's
+always cold.'
+
+'I have never seen him and never seen any portrait or photograph of
+him,' Lyon said. 'I'm surprised at his never having had anything
+done--at their waiting all these years.'
+
+'Ah, that's because he was afraid, you know; it was a kind of
+superstition. He was sure that if anything were done he would die
+directly afterwards. He has only consented to-day.'
+
+'He's ready to die then?'
+
+'Oh, now he's so old he doesn't care.'
+
+'Well, I hope I shan't kill him,' said Lyon. 'It was rather unnatural in
+his son to send for me.'
+
+'Oh, they have nothing to gain--everything is theirs already!' his
+companion rejoined, as if she took this speech quite literally. Her
+talkativeness was systematic--she fraternised as seriously as she might
+have played whist. 'They do as they like--they fill the house with
+people--they have _carte blanche_.'
+
+'I see--but there's still the title.'
+
+'Yes, but what is it?'
+
+Our artist broke into laughter at this, whereat his companion stared.
+Before he had recovered himself she was scouring the plain with her
+other neighbour. The gentleman on his left at last risked an
+observation, and they had some fragmentary talk. This personage played
+his part with difficulty: he uttered a remark as a lady fires a pistol,
+looking the other way. To catch the ball Lyon had to bend his ear, and
+this movement led to his observing a handsome creature who was seated on
+the same side, beyond his interlocutor. Her profile was presented to him
+and at first he was only struck with its beauty; then it produced an
+impression still more agreeable--a sense of undimmed remembrance and
+intimate association. He had not recognised her on the instant only
+because he had so little expected to see her there; he had not seen her
+anywhere for so long, and no news of her ever came to him. She was often
+in his thoughts, but she had passed out of his life. He thought of her
+twice a week; that may be called often in relation to a person one has
+not seen for twelve years. The moment after he recognised her he felt
+how true it was that it was only she who could look like that: of the
+most charming head in the world (and this lady had it) there could never
+be a replica. She was leaning forward a little; she remained in profile,
+apparently listening to some one on the other side of her. She was
+listening, but she was also looking, and after a moment Lyon followed
+the direction of her eyes. They rested upon the gentleman who had been
+described to him as Colonel Capadose--rested, as it appeared to him,
+with a kind of habitual, visible complacency. This was not strange, for
+the Colonel was unmistakably formed to attract the sympathetic gaze of
+woman; but Lyon was slightly disappointed that she could let _him_ look
+at her so long without giving him a glance. There was nothing between
+them to-day and he had no rights, but she must have known he was coming
+(it was of course not such a tremendous event, but she could not have
+been staying in the house without hearing of it), and it was not natural
+that that should absolutely fail to affect her.
+
+She was looking at Colonel Capadose as if she were in love with him--a
+queer accident for the proudest, most reserved of women. But doubtless
+it was all right, if her husband liked it or didn't notice it: he had
+heard indefinitely, years before, that she was married, and he took for
+granted (as he had not heard that she had become a widow) the presence
+of the happy man on whom she had conferred what she had refused to
+_him_, the poor art-student at Munich. Colonel Capadose appeared to be
+aware of nothing, and this circumstance, incongruously enough, rather
+irritated Lyon than gratified him. Suddenly the lady turned her head,
+showing her full face to our hero. He was so prepared with a greeting
+that he instantly smiled, as a shaken jug overflows; but she gave him no
+response, turned away again and sank back in her chair. All that her
+face said in that instant was, 'You see I'm as handsome as ever.' To
+which he mentally subjoined, 'Yes, and as much good it does me!' He
+asked the young man beside him if he knew who that beautiful being
+was--the fifth person beyond him. The young man leaned forward,
+considered and then said, 'I think she's Mrs. Capadose.'
+
+'Do you mean his wife--that fellow's?' And Lyon indicated the subject
+of the information given him by his other neighbour.
+
+'Oh, is _he_ Mr. Capadose?' said the young man, who appeared very vague.
+He admitted his vagueness and explained it by saying that there were so
+many people and he had come only the day before. What was definite to
+Lyon was that Mrs. Capadose was in love with her husband; so that he
+wished more than ever that he had married her.
+
+'She's very faithful,' he found himself saying three minutes later to
+the lady on his right. He added that he meant Mrs. Capadose.
+
+'Ah, you know her then?'
+
+'I knew her once upon a time--when I was living abroad.'
+
+'Why then were you asking me about her husband?'
+
+'Precisely for that reason. She married after that--I didn't even know
+her present name.'
+
+'How then do you know it now?'
+
+'This gentleman has just told me--he appears to know.'
+
+'I didn't know he knew anything,' said the lady, glancing forward.
+
+'I don't think he knows anything but that.'
+
+'Then you have found out for yourself that she is faithful. What do you
+mean by that?'
+
+'Ah, you mustn't question me--I want to question you,' Lyon said. 'How
+do you all like her here?'
+
+'You ask too much! I can only speak for myself. I think she's hard.'
+
+'That's only because she's honest and straightforward.'
+
+'Do you mean I like people in proportion as they deceive?'
+
+'I think we all do, so long as we don't find them out,' Lyon said. 'And
+then there's something in her face--a sort of Roman type, in spite of
+her having such an English eye. In fact she's English down to the
+ground; but her complexion, her low forehead and that beautiful close
+little wave in her dark hair make her look like a glorified
+_contadina_.'
+
+'Yes, and she always sticks pins and daggers into her head, to increase
+that effect. I must say I like her husband better: he is so clever.'
+
+'Well, when I knew her there was no comparison that could injure her.
+She was altogether the most delightful thing in Munich.'
+
+'In Munich?'
+
+'Her people lived there; they were not rich--in pursuit of economy in
+fact, and Munich was very cheap. Her father was the younger son of some
+noble house; he had married a second time and had a lot of little mouths
+to feed. She was the child of the first wife and she didn't like her
+stepmother, but she was charming to her little brothers and sisters. I
+once made a sketch of her as Werther's Charlotte, cutting bread and
+butter while they clustered all round her. All the artists in the place
+were in love with her but she wouldn't look at 'the likes' of us. She
+was too proud--I grant you that; but she wasn't stuck up nor young
+ladyish; she was simple and frank and kind about it. She used to remind
+me of Thackeray's Ethel Newcome. She told me she must marry well: it was
+the one thing she could do for her family. I suppose you would say that
+she _has_ married well.'
+
+'She told _you_?' smiled Lyon's neighbour.
+
+'Oh, of course I proposed to her too. But she evidently thinks so
+herself!' he added.
+
+When the ladies left the table the host as usual bade the gentlemen draw
+together, so that Lyon found himself opposite to Colonel Capadose. The
+conversation was mainly about the 'run,' for it had apparently been a
+great day in the hunting-field. Most of the gentlemen communicated their
+adventures and opinions, but Colonel Capadose's pleasant voice was the
+most audible in the chorus. It was a bright and fresh but masculine
+organ, just such a voice as, to Lyon's sense, such a 'fine man' ought to
+have had. It appeared from his remarks that he was a very straight
+rider, which was also very much what Lyon would have expected. Not that
+he swaggered, for his allusions were very quietly and casually made; but
+they were all too dangerous experiments and close shaves. Lyon perceived
+after a little that the attention paid by the company to the Colonel's
+remarks was not in direct relation to the interest they seemed to offer;
+the result of which was that the speaker, who noticed that _he_ at least
+was listening, began to treat him as his particular auditor and to fix
+his eyes on him as he talked. Lyon had nothing to do but to look
+sympathetic and assent--Colonel Capadose appeared to take so much
+sympathy and assent for granted. A neighbouring squire had had an
+accident; he had come a cropper in an awkward place--just at the
+finish--with consequences that looked grave. He had struck his head; he
+remained insensible, up to the last accounts: there had evidently been
+concussion of the brain. There was some exchange of views as to his
+recovery--how soon it would take place or whether it would take place at
+all; which led the Colonel to confide to our artist across the table
+that _he_ shouldn't despair of a fellow even if he didn't come round for
+weeks--for weeks and weeks and weeks--for months, almost for years. He
+leaned forward; Lyon leaned forward to listen, and Colonel Capadose
+mentioned that he knew from personal experience that there was really no
+limit to the time one might lie unconscious without being any the worse
+for it. It had happened to him in Ireland, years before; he had been
+pitched out of a dogcart, had turned a sheer somersault and landed on
+his head. They thought he was dead, but he wasn't; they carried him
+first to the nearest cabin, where he lay for some days with the pigs,
+and then to an inn in a neighbouring town--it was a near thing they
+didn't put him under ground. He had been completely insensible--without
+a ray of recognition of any human thing--for three whole months; had not
+a glimmer of consciousness of any blessed thing. It was touch and go to
+that degree that they couldn't come near him, they couldn't feed him,
+they could scarcely look at him. Then one day he had opened his eyes--as
+fit as a flea!
+
+'I give you my honour it had done me good--it rested my brain.' He
+appeared to intimate that with an intelligence so active as his these
+periods of repose were providential. Lyon thought his story very
+striking, but he wanted to ask him whether he had not shammed a
+little--not in relating it, but in keeping so quiet. He hesitated
+however, in time, to imply a doubt--he was so impressed with the tone in
+which Colonel Capadose said that it was the turn of a hair that they
+hadn't buried him alive. That had happened to a friend of his in
+India--a fellow who was supposed to have died of jungle fever--they
+clapped him into a coffin. He was going on to recite the further fate of
+this unfortunate gentleman when Mr. Ashmore made a move and every one
+got up to adjourn to the drawing-room. Lyon noticed that by this time no
+one was heeding what his new friend said to him. They came round on
+either side of the table and met while the gentlemen dawdled before
+going out.
+
+'And do you mean that your friend was literally buried alive?' asked
+Lyon, in some suspense.
+
+Colonel Capadose looked at him a moment, as if he had already lost the
+thread of the conversation. Then his face brightened--and when it
+brightened it was doubly handsome. 'Upon my soul he was chucked into the
+ground!'
+
+'And was he left there?'
+
+'He was left there till I came and hauled him out.'
+
+'_You_ came?'
+
+'I dreamed about him--it's the most extraordinary story: I heard him
+calling to me in the night. I took upon myself to dig him up. You know
+there are people in India--a kind of beastly race, the ghouls--who
+violate graves. I had a sort of presentiment that they would get at him
+first. I rode straight, I can tell you; and, by Jove, a couple of them
+had just broken ground! Crack--crack, from a couple of barrels, and they
+showed me their heels, as you may believe. Would you credit that I took
+him out myself? The air brought him to and he was none the worse. He
+has got his pension--he came home the other day; he would do anything
+for me.'
+
+'He called to you in the night?' said Lyon, much startled.
+
+'That's the interesting point. Now _what was it_? It wasn't his ghost,
+because he wasn't dead. It wasn't himself, because he couldn't. It was
+something or other! You see India's a strange country--there's an
+element of the mysterious: the air is full of things you can't explain.'
+
+They passed out of the dining-room, and Colonel Capadose, who went among
+the first, was separated from Lyon; but a minute later, before they
+reached the drawing-room, he joined him again. 'Ashmore tells me who you
+are. Of course I have often heard of you--I'm very glad to make your
+acquaintance; my wife used to know you.'
+
+'I'm glad she remembers me. I recognised her at dinner and I was afraid
+she didn't.'
+
+'Ah, I daresay she was ashamed,' said the Colonel, with indulgent
+humour.
+
+'Ashamed of me?' Lyon replied, in the same key.
+
+'Wasn't there something about a picture? Yes; you painted her portrait.'
+
+'Many times,' said the artist; 'and she may very well have been ashamed
+of what I made of her.'
+
+'Well, I wasn't, my dear sir; it was the sight of that picture, which
+you were so good as to present to her, that made me first fall in love
+with her.'
+
+'Do you mean that one with the children--cutting bread and butter?'
+
+'Bread and butter? Bless me, no--vine leaves and a leopard skin--a kind
+of Bacchante.'
+
+'Ah, yes,' said Lyon; 'I remember. It was the first decent portrait I
+painted. I should be curious to see it to-day.'
+
+'Don't ask her to show it to you--she'll be mortified!' the Colonel
+exclaimed.
+
+'Mortified?'
+
+'We parted with it--in the most disinterested manner,' he laughed. 'An
+old friend of my wife's--her family had known him intimately when they
+lived in Germany--took the most extraordinary fancy to it: the Grand
+Duke of Silberstadt-Schreckenstein, don't you know? He came out to
+Bombay while we were there and he spotted your picture (you know he's
+one of the greatest collectors in Europe), and made such eyes at it
+that, upon my word--it happened to be his birthday--she told him he
+might have it, to get rid of him. He was perfectly enchanted--but we
+miss the picture.'
+
+'It is very good of you,' Lyon said. 'If it's in a great collection--a
+work of my incompetent youth--I am infinitely honoured.'
+
+'Oh, he has got it in one of his castles; I don't know which--you know
+he has so many. He sent us, before he left India--to return the
+compliment--a magnificent old vase.'
+
+'That was more than the thing was worth,' Lyon remarked.
+
+Colonel Capadose gave no heed to this observation; he seemed to be
+thinking of something. After a moment he said, 'If you'll come and see
+us in town she'll show you the vase.' And as they passed into the
+drawing-room he gave the artist a friendly propulsion. 'Go and speak to
+her; there she is--she'll be delighted.'
+
+Oliver Lyon took but a few steps into the wide saloon; he stood there a
+moment looking at the bright composition of the lamplit group of fair
+women, the single figures, the great setting of white and gold, the
+panels of old damask, in the centre of each of which was a single
+celebrated picture. There was a subdued lustre in the scene and an air
+as of the shining trains of dresses tumbled over the carpet. At the
+furthest end of the room sat Mrs. Capadose, rather isolated; she was on
+a small sofa, with an empty place beside her. Lyon could not flatter
+himself she had been keeping it for him; her failure to respond to his
+recognition at table contradicted that, but he felt an extreme desire to
+go and occupy it. Moreover he had her husband's sanction; so he crossed
+the room, stepping over the tails of gowns, and stood before his old
+friend.
+
+'I hope you don't mean to repudiate me,' he said.
+
+She looked up at him with an expression of unalloyed pleasure. 'I am so
+glad to see you. I was delighted when I heard you were coming.'
+
+'I tried to get a smile from you at dinner--but I couldn't.'
+
+'I didn't see--I didn't understand. Besides, I hate smirking and
+telegraphing. Also I'm very shy--you won't have forgotten that. Now we
+can communicate comfortably.' And she made a better place for him on the
+little sofa. He sat down and they had a talk that he enjoyed, while the
+reason for which he used to like her so came back to him, as well as a
+good deal of the very same old liking. She was still the least spoiled
+beauty he had ever seen, with an absence of coquetry or any insinuating
+art that seemed almost like an omitted faculty; there were moments when
+she struck her interlocutor as some fine creature from an asylum--a
+surprising deaf-mute or one of the operative blind. Her noble pagan head
+gave her privileges that she neglected, and when people were admiring
+her brow she was wondering whether there were a good fire in her
+bedroom. She was simple, kind and good; inexpressive but not inhuman or
+stupid. Now and again she dropped something that had a sifted, selected
+air--the sound of an impression at first hand. She had no imagination,
+but she had added up her feelings, some of her reflections, about life.
+Lyon talked of the old days in Munich, reminded her of incidents,
+pleasures and pains, asked her about her father and the others; and she
+told him in return that she was so impressed with his own fame, his
+brilliant position in the world, that she had not felt very sure he
+would speak to her or that his little sign at table was meant for her.
+This was plainly a perfectly truthful speech--she was incapable of any
+other--and he was affected by such humility on the part of a woman whose
+grand line was unique. Her father was dead; one of her brothers was in
+the navy and the other on a ranch in America; two of her sisters were
+married and the youngest was just coming out and very pretty. She didn't
+mention her stepmother. She asked him about his own personal history and
+he said that the principal thing that had happened to him was that he
+had never married.
+
+'Oh, you ought to,' she answered. 'It's the best thing.'
+
+'I like that--from you!' he returned.
+
+'Why not from me? I am very happy.'
+
+'That's just why I can't be. It's cruel of you to praise your state. But
+I have had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of your husband. We
+had a good bit of talk in the other room.'
+
+'You must know him better--you must know him really well,' said Mrs.
+Capadose.
+
+'I am sure that the further you go the more you find. But he makes a
+fine show, too.'
+
+She rested her good gray eyes on Lyon. 'Don't you think he's handsome?'
+
+'Handsome and clever and entertaining. You see I'm generous.'
+
+'Yes; you must know him well,' Mrs. Capadose repeated.
+
+'He has seen a great deal of life,' said her companion.
+
+'Yes, we have been in so many places. You must see my little girl. She
+is nine years old--she's too beautiful.'
+
+'You must bring her to my studio some day--I should like to paint her.'
+
+'Ah, don't speak of that,' said Mrs. Capadose. 'It reminds me of
+something so distressing.'
+
+'I hope you don't mean when _you_ used to sit to me--though that may
+well have bored you.'
+
+'It's not what you did--it's what we have done. It's a confession I must
+make--it's a weight on my mind! I mean about that beautiful picture you
+gave me--it used to be so much admired. When you come to see me in
+London (I count on your doing that very soon) I shall see you looking
+all round. I can't tell you I keep it in my own room because I love it
+so, for the simple reason----' And she paused a moment.
+
+'Because you can't tell wicked lies,' said Lyon.
+
+'No, I can't. So before you ask for it----'
+
+'Oh, I know you parted with it--the blow has already fallen,' Lyon
+interrupted.
+
+'Ah then, you have heard? I was sure you would! But do you know what we
+got for it? Two hundred pounds.'
+
+'You might have got much more,' said Lyon, smiling.
+
+'That seemed a great deal at the time. We were in want of the money--it
+was a good while ago, when we first married. Our means were very small
+then, but fortunately that has changed rather for the better. We had the
+chance; it really seemed a big sum, and I am afraid we jumped at it. My
+husband had expectations which have partly come into effect, so that now
+we do well enough. But meanwhile the picture went.'
+
+'Fortunately the original remained. But do you mean that two hundred was
+the value of the vase?' Lyon asked.
+
+'Of the vase?'
+
+'The beautiful old Indian vase--the Grand Duke's offering.'
+
+'The Grand Duke?'
+
+'What's his name?--Silberstadt-Schreckenstein. Your husband mentioned
+the transaction.'
+
+'Oh, my husband,' said Mrs. Capadose; and Lyon saw that she coloured a
+little.
+
+Not to add to her embarrassment, but to clear up the ambiguity, which
+he perceived the next moment he had better have left alone, he went on:
+'He tells me it's now in his collection.'
+
+'In the Grand Duke's? Ah, you know its reputation? I believe it contains
+treasures.' She was bewildered, but she recovered herself, and Lyon made
+the mental reflection that for some reason which would seem good when he
+knew it the husband and the wife had prepared different versions of the
+same incident. It was true that he did not exactly see Everina Brant
+preparing a version; that was not her line of old, and indeed it was not
+in her eyes to-day. At any rate they both had the matter too much on
+their conscience. He changed the subject, said Mrs. Capadose must really
+bring the little girl. He sat with her some time longer and
+thought--perhaps it was only a fancy--that she was rather absent, as if
+she were annoyed at their having been even for a moment at
+cross-purposes. This did not prevent him from saying to her at the last,
+just as the ladies began to gather themselves together to go to bed:
+'You seem much impressed, from what you say, with my renown and my
+prosperity, and you are so good as greatly to exaggerate them. Would you
+have married me if you had known that I was destined to success?'
+
+'I did know it.'
+
+'Well, I didn't'
+
+'You were too modest.'
+
+'You didn't think so when I proposed to you.'
+
+'Well, if I had married you I couldn't have married _him_--and he's so
+nice,' Mrs. Capadose said. Lyon knew she thought it--he had learned that
+at dinner--but it vexed him a little to hear her say it. The gentleman
+designated by the pronoun came up, amid the prolonged handshaking for
+good-night, and Mrs. Capadose remarked to her husband as she turned
+away, 'He wants to paint Amy.'
+
+'Ah, she's a charming child, a most interesting little creature,' the
+Colonel said to Lyon. 'She does the most remarkable things.'
+
+Mrs. Capadose stopped, in the rustling procession that followed the
+hostess out of the room. 'Don't tell him, please don't,' she said.
+
+'Don't tell him what?'
+
+'Why, what she does. Let him find out for himself.' And she passed on.
+
+'She thinks I swagger about the child--that I bore people,' said the
+Colonel. 'I hope you smoke.' He appeared ten minutes later in the
+smoking-room, in a brilliant equipment, a suit of crimson foulard
+covered with little white spots. He gratified Lyon's eye, made him feel
+that the modern age has its splendour too and its opportunities for
+costume. If his wife was an antique he was a fine specimen of the period
+of colour: he might have passed for a Venetian of the sixteenth century.
+They were a remarkable couple, Lyon thought, and as he looked at the
+Colonel standing in bright erectness before the chimney-piece while he
+emitted great smoke-puffs he did not wonder that Everina could not
+regret she had not married _him_. All the gentlemen collected at Stayes
+were not smokers and some of them had gone to bed. Colonel Capadose
+remarked that there probably would be a smallish muster, they had had
+such a hard day's work. That was the worst of a hunting-house--the men
+were so sleepy after dinner; it was devilish stupid for the ladies,
+even for those who hunted themselves--for women were so extraordinary,
+they never showed it. But most fellows revived under the stimulating
+influences of the smoking-room, and some of them, in this confidence,
+would turn up yet. Some of the grounds of their confidence--not all of
+them--might have been seen in a cluster of glasses and bottles on a
+table near the fire, which made the great salver and its contents
+twinkle sociably. The others lurked as yet in various improper corners
+of the minds of the most loquacious. Lyon was alone with Colonel
+Capadose for some moments before their companions, in varied
+eccentricities of uniform, straggled in, and he perceived that this
+wonderful man had but little loss of vital tissue to repair.
+
+They talked about the house, Lyon having noticed an oddity of
+construction in the smoking-room; and the Colonel explained that it
+consisted of two distinct parts, one of which was of very great
+antiquity. They were two complete houses in short, the old one and the
+new, each of great extent and each very fine in its way. The two formed
+together an enormous structure--Lyon must make a point of going all over
+it. The modern portion had been erected by the old man when he bought
+the property; oh yes, he had bought it, forty years before--it hadn't
+been in the family: there hadn't been any particular family for it to be
+in. He had had the good taste not to spoil the original house--he had
+not touched it beyond what was just necessary for joining it on. It was
+very curious indeed--a most irregular, rambling, mysterious pile, where
+they every now and then discovered a walled-up room or a secret
+staircase. To his mind it was essentially gloomy, however; even the
+modern additions, splendid as they were, failed to make it cheerful.
+There was some story about a skeleton having been found years before,
+during some repairs, under a stone slab of the floor of one of the
+passages; but the family were rather shy of its being talked about. The
+place they were in was of course in the old part, which contained after
+all some of the best rooms: he had an idea it had been the primitive
+kitchen, half modernised at some intermediate period.
+
+'My room is in the old part too then--I'm very glad,' Lyon said. 'It's
+very comfortable and contains all the latest conveniences, but I
+observed the depth of the recess of the door and the evident antiquity
+of the corridor and staircase--the first short one--after I came out.
+That panelled corridor is admirable; it looks as if it stretched away,
+in its brown dimness (the lamps didn't seem to me to make much
+impression on it), for half a mile.'
+
+'Oh, don't go to the end of it!' exclaimed the Colonel, smiling.
+
+'Does it lead to the haunted room?' Lyon asked.
+
+His companion looked at him a moment. 'Ah, you know about that?'
+
+'No, I don't speak from knowledge, only from hope. I have never had any
+luck--I have never stayed in a dangerous house. The places I go to are
+always as safe as Charing Cross. I want to see--whatever there is, the
+regular thing. _Is_ there a ghost here?'
+
+'Of course there is--a rattling good one.'
+
+'And have you seen him?'
+
+'Oh, don't ask me what _I've_ seen--I should tax your credulity. I don't
+like to talk of these things. But there are two or three as bad--that
+is, as good!--rooms as you'll find anywhere.'
+
+'Do you mean in my corridor?' Lyon asked.
+
+'I believe the worst is at the far end. But you would be ill-advised to
+sleep there.'
+
+'Ill-advised?'
+
+'Until you've finished your job. You'll get letters of importance the
+next morning, and you'll take the 10.20.'
+
+'Do you mean I will invent a pretext for running away?'
+
+'Unless you are braver than almost any one has ever been. They don't
+often put people to sleep there, but sometimes the house is so crowded
+that they have to. The same thing always happens--ill-concealed
+agitation at the breakfast-table and letters of the greatest importance.
+Of course it's a bachelor's room, and my wife and I are at the other end
+of the house. But we saw the comedy three days ago--the day after we got
+here. A young fellow had been put there--I forget his name--the house
+was so full; and the usual consequence followed. Letters at
+breakfast--an awfully queer face--an urgent call to town--so very sorry
+his visit was cut short. Ashmore and his wife looked at each other, and
+off the poor devil went.'
+
+'Ah, that wouldn't suit me; I must paint my picture,' said Lyon. 'But do
+they mind your speaking of it? Some people who have a good ghost are
+very proud of it, you know.'
+
+What answer Colonel Capadose was on the point of making to this inquiry
+our hero was not to learn, for at that moment their host had walked into
+the room accompanied by three or four gentlemen. Lyon was conscious
+that he was partly answered by the Colonel's not going on with the
+subject. This however on the other hand was rendered natural by the fact
+that one of the gentlemen appealed to him for an opinion on a point
+under discussion, something to do with the everlasting history of the
+day's run. To Lyon himself Mr. Ashmore began to talk, expressing his
+regret at having had so little direct conversation with him as yet. The
+topic that suggested itself was naturally that most closely connected
+with the motive of the artist's visit. Lyon remarked that it was a great
+disadvantage to him not to have had some preliminary acquaintance with
+Sir David--in most cases he found that so important. But the present
+sitter was so far advanced in life that there was doubtless no time to
+lose. 'Oh, I can tell you all about him,' said Mr. Ashmore; and for half
+an hour he told him a good deal. It was very interesting as well as very
+eulogistic, and Lyon could see that he was a very nice old man, to have
+endeared himself so to a son who was evidently not a gusher. At last he
+got up--he said he must go to bed if he wished to be fresh for his work
+in the morning. To which his host replied, 'Then you must take your
+candle; the lights are out; I don't keep my servants up.'
+
+In a moment Lyon had his glimmering taper in hand, and as he was leaving
+the room (he did not disturb the others with a good-night; they were
+absorbed in the lemon-squeezer and the soda-water cork) he remembered
+other occasions on which he had made his way to bed alone through a
+darkened country-house; such occasions had not been rare, for he was
+almost always the first to leave the smoking-room. If he had not stayed
+in houses conspicuously haunted he had, none the less (having the
+artistic temperament), sometimes found the great black halls and
+staircases rather 'creepy': there had been often a sinister effect, to
+his imagination, in the sound of his tread in the long passages or the
+way the winter moon peeped into tall windows on landings. It occurred to
+him that if houses without supernatural pretensions could look so wicked
+at night, the old corridors of Stayes would certainly give him a
+sensation. He didn't know whether the proprietors were sensitive; very
+often, as he had said to Colonel Capadose, people enjoyed the
+impeachment. What determined him to speak, with a certain sense of the
+risk, was the impression that the Colonel told queer stories. As he had
+his hand on the door he said to Arthur Ashmore, 'I hope I shan't meet
+any ghosts.'
+
+'Any ghosts?'
+
+'You ought to have some--in this fine old part.'
+
+'We do our best, but _que voulez-vous_?' said Mr. Ashmore. 'I don't
+think they like the hot-water pipes.'
+
+'They remind them too much of their own climate? But haven't you a
+haunted room--at the end of my passage?'
+
+'Oh, there are stories--we try to keep them up.'
+
+'I should like very much to sleep there,' Lyon said.
+
+'Well, you can move there to-morrow if you like.'
+
+'Perhaps I had better wait till I have done my work.'
+
+'Very good; but you won't work there, you know. My father will sit to
+you in his own apartments.'
+
+'Oh, it isn't that; it's the fear of running away, like that gentleman
+three days ago.'
+
+'Three days ago? What gentleman?' Mr. Ashmore asked.
+
+'The one who got urgent letters at breakfast and fled by the 10.20. Did
+he stand more than one night?'
+
+'I don't know what you are talking about. There was no such
+gentleman--three days ago.'
+
+'Ah, so much the better,' said Lyon, nodding good-night and departing.
+He took his course, as he remembered it, with his wavering candle, and,
+though he encountered a great many gruesome objects, safely reached the
+passage out of which his room opened. In the complete darkness it seemed
+to stretch away still further, but he followed it, for the curiosity of
+the thing, to the end. He passed several doors with the name of the room
+painted upon them, but he found nothing else. He was tempted to try the
+last door--to look into the room of evil fame; but he reflected that
+this would be indiscreet, since Colonel Capadose handled the brush--as a
+_raconteur_--with such freedom. There might be a ghost and there might
+not; but the Colonel himself, he inclined to think, was the most
+mystifying figure in the house.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Lyon found Sir David Ashmore a capital subject and a very comfortable
+sitter into the bargain. Moreover he was a very agreeable old man,
+tremendously puckered but not in the least dim; and he wore exactly the
+furred dressing-gown that Lyon would have chosen. He was proud of his
+age but ashamed of his infirmities, which however he greatly exaggerated
+and which did not prevent him from sitting there as submissive as if
+portraiture in oils had been a branch of surgery. He demolished the
+legend of his having feared the operation would be fatal, giving an
+explanation which pleased our friend much better. He held that a
+gentleman should be painted but once in his life--that it was eager and
+fatuous to be hung up all over the place. That was good for women, who
+made a pretty wall-pattern; but the male face didn't lend itself to
+decorative repetition. The proper time for the likeness was at the last,
+when the whole man was there--you got the totality of his experience.
+Lyon could not reply that that period was not a real compendium--you had
+to allow so for leakage; for there had been no crack in Sir David's
+crystallisation. He spoke of his portrait as a plain map of the
+country, to be consulted by his children in a case of uncertainty. A
+proper map could be drawn up only when the country had been travelled.
+He gave Lyon his mornings, till luncheon, and they talked of many
+things, not neglecting, as a stimulus to gossip, the people in the
+house. Now that he did not 'go out,' as he said, he saw much less of the
+visitors at Stayes: people came and went whom he knew nothing about, and
+he liked to hear Lyon describe them. The artist sketched with a fine
+point and did not caricature, and it usually befell that when Sir David
+did not know the sons and daughters he had known the fathers and
+mothers. He was one of those terrible old gentlemen who are a repository
+of antecedents. But in the case of the Capadose family, at whom they
+arrived by an easy stage, his knowledge embraced two, or even three,
+generations. General Capadose was an old crony, and he remembered his
+father before him. The general was rather a smart soldier, but in
+private life of too speculative a turn--always sneaking into the City to
+put his money into some rotten thing. He married a girl who brought him
+something and they had half a dozen children. He scarcely knew what had
+become of the rest of them, except that one was in the Church and had
+found preferment--wasn't he Dean of Rockingham? Clement, the fellow who
+was at Stayes, had some military talent; he had served in the East, he
+had married a pretty girl. He had been at Eton with his son, and he used
+to come to Stayes in his holidays. Lately, coming back to England, he
+had turned up with his wife again; that was before he--the old man--had
+been put to grass. He was a taking dog, but he had a monstrous foible.
+
+'A monstrous foible?' said Lyon.
+
+'He's a thumping liar.'
+
+Lyon's brush stopped short, while he repeated, for somehow the formula
+startled him, 'A thumping liar?'
+
+'You are very lucky not to have found it out.'
+
+'Well, I confess I have noticed a romantic tinge----'
+
+'Oh, it isn't always romantic. He'll lie about the time of day, about
+the name of his hatter. It appears there are people like that.'
+
+'Well, they are precious scoundrels,' Lyon declared, his voice trembling
+a little with the thought of what Everina Brant had done with herself.
+
+'Oh, not always,' said the old man. 'This fellow isn't in the least a
+scoundrel. There is no harm in him and no bad intention; he doesn't
+steal nor cheat nor gamble nor drink; he's very kind--he sticks to his
+wife, is fond of his children. He simply can't give you a straight
+answer.'
+
+'Then everything he told me last night, I suppose, was mendacious: he
+delivered himself of a series of the stiffest statements. They stuck,
+when I tried to swallow them, but I never thought of so simple an
+explanation.'
+
+'No doubt he was in the vein,' Sir David went on. 'It's a natural
+peculiarity--as you might limp or stutter or be left-handed. I believe
+it comes and goes, like intermittent fever. My son tells me that his
+friends usually understand it and don't haul him up--for the sake of his
+wife.'
+
+'Oh, his wife--his wife!' Lyon murmured, painting fast.
+
+'I daresay she's used to it.'
+
+'Never in the world, Sir David. How can she be used to it?'
+
+'Why, my dear sir, when a woman's fond!--And don't they mostly handle
+the long bow themselves? They are connoisseurs--they have a sympathy for
+a fellow-performer.'
+
+Lyon was silent a moment; he had no ground for denying that Mrs.
+Capadose was attached to her husband. But after a little he rejoined:
+'Oh, not this one! I knew her years ago--before her marriage; knew her
+well and admired her. She was as clear as a bell.'
+
+'I like her very much,' Sir David said, 'but I have seen her back him
+up.'
+
+Lyon considered Sir David for a moment, not in the light of a model.
+'Are you very sure?'
+
+The old man hesitated; then he answered, smiling, 'You're in love with
+her.'
+
+'Very likely. God knows I used to be!'
+
+'She must help him out--she can't expose him.'
+
+'She can hold her tongue,' Lyon remarked.
+
+'Well, before you probably she will.'
+
+'That's what I am curious to see.' And Lyon added, privately, 'Mercy on
+us, what he must have made of her!' He kept this reflection to himself,
+for he considered that he had sufficiently betrayed his state of mind
+with regard to Mrs. Capadose. None the less it occupied him now
+immensely, the question of how such a woman would arrange herself in
+such a predicament. He watched her with an interest deeply quickened
+when he mingled with the company; he had had his own troubles in life,
+but he had rarely been so anxious about anything as he was now to see
+what the loyalty of a wife and the infection of an example would have
+made of an absolutely truthful mind. Oh, he held it as immutably
+established that whatever other women might be prone to do she, of old,
+had been perfectly incapable of a deviation. Even if she had not been
+too simple to deceive she would have been too proud; and if she had not
+had too much conscience she would have had too little eagerness. It was
+the last thing she would have endured or condoned--the particular thing
+she would not have forgiven. Did she sit in torment while her husband
+turned his somersaults, or was she now too so perverse that she thought
+it a fine thing to be striking at the expense of one's honour? It would
+have taken a wondrous alchemy--working backwards, as it were--to produce
+this latter result. Besides these two alternatives (that she suffered
+tortures in silence and that she was so much in love that her husband's
+humiliating idiosyncrasy seemed to her only an added richness--a proof
+of life and talent), there was still the possibility that she had not
+found him out, that she took his false pieces at his own valuation. A
+little reflection rendered this hypothesis untenable; it was too evident
+that the account he gave of things must repeatedly have contradicted her
+own knowledge. Within an hour or two of his meeting them Lyon had seen
+her confronted with that perfectly gratuitous invention about the profit
+they had made off his early picture. Even then indeed she had not, so
+far as he could see, smarted, and--but for the present he could only
+contemplate the case.
+
+Even if it had not been interfused, through his uneradicated tenderness
+for Mrs. Capadose, with an element of suspense, the question would still
+have presented itself to him as a very curious problem, for he had not
+painted portraits during so many years without becoming something of a
+psychologist. His inquiry was limited for the moment to the opportunity
+that the following three days might yield, as the Colonel and his wife
+were going on to another house. It fixed itself largely of course upon
+the Colonel too--this gentleman was such a rare anomaly. Moreover it had
+to go on very quickly. Lyon was too scrupulous to ask other people what
+they thought of the business--he was too afraid of exposing the woman he
+once had loved. It was probable also that light would come to him from
+the talk of the rest of the company: the Colonel's queer habit, both as
+it affected his own situation and as it affected his wife, would be a
+familiar theme in any house in which he was in the habit of staying.
+Lyon had not observed in the circles in which he visited any marked
+abstention from comment on the singularities of their members. It
+interfered with his progress that the Colonel hunted all day, while he
+plied his brushes and chatted with Sir David; but a Sunday intervened
+and that partly made it up. Mrs. Capadose fortunately did not hunt, and
+when his work was over she was not inaccessible. He took a couple of
+longish walks with her (she was fond of that), and beguiled her at tea
+into a friendly nook in the hall. Regard her as he might he could not
+make out to himself that she was consumed by a hidden shame; the sense
+of being married to a man whose word had no worth was not, in her
+spirit, so far as he could guess, the canker within the rose. Her mind
+appeared to have nothing on it but its own placid frankness, and when he
+looked into her eyes (deeply, as he occasionally permitted himself to
+do), they had no uncomfortable consciousness. He talked to her again and
+still again of the dear old days--reminded her of things that he had not
+(before this reunion) the least idea that he remembered. Then he spoke
+to her of her husband, praised his appearance, his talent for
+conversation, professed to have felt a quick friendship for him and
+asked (with an inward audacity at which he trembled a little) what
+manner of man he was. 'What manner?' said Mrs. Capadose. 'Dear me, how
+can one describe one's husband? I like him very much.'
+
+'Ah, you have told me that already!' Lyon exclaimed, with exaggerated
+ruefulness.
+
+'Then why do you ask me again?' She added in a moment, as if she were so
+happy that she could afford to take pity on him, 'He is everything
+that's good and kind. He's a soldier--and a gentleman--and a dear! He
+hasn't a fault. And he has great ability.'
+
+'Yes; he strikes one as having great ability. But of course I can't
+think him a dear.'
+
+'I don't care what you think him!' said Mrs. Capadose, looking, it
+seemed to him, as she smiled, handsomer than he had ever seen her. She
+was either deeply cynical or still more deeply impenetrable, and he had
+little prospect of winning from her the intimation that he longed
+for--some hint that it had come over her that after all she had better
+have married a man who was not a by-word for the most contemptible, the
+least heroic, of vices. Had she not seen--had she not felt--the smile go
+round when her husband executed some especially characteristic
+conversational caper? How could a woman of her quality endure that day
+after day, year after year, except by her quality's altering? But he
+would believe in the alteration only when he should have heard _her_
+lie. He was fascinated by his problem and yet half exasperated, and he
+asked himself all kinds of questions. Did she not lie, after all, when
+she let his falsehoods pass without a protest? Was not her life a
+perpetual complicity, and did she not aid and abet him by the simple
+fact that she was not disgusted with him? Then again perhaps she _was_
+disgusted and it was the mere desperation of her pride that had given
+her an inscrutable mask. Perhaps she protested in private, passionately;
+perhaps every night, in their own apartments, after the day's hideous
+performance, she made him the most scorching scene. But if such scenes
+were of no avail and he took no more trouble to cure himself, how could
+she regard him, and after so many years of marriage too, with the
+perfectly artless complacency that Lyon had surprised in her in the
+course of the first day's dinner? If our friend had not been in love
+with her he could have taken the diverting view of the Colonel's
+delinquencies; but as it was they turned to the tragical in his mind,
+even while he had a sense that his solicitude might also have been
+laughed at.
+
+The observation of these three days showed him that if Capadose was an
+abundant he was not a malignant liar and that his fine faculty exercised
+itself mainly on subjects of small direct importance. 'He is the liar
+platonic,' he said to himself; 'he is disinterested, he doesn't operate
+with a hope of gain or with a desire to injure. It is art for art and he
+is prompted by the love of beauty. He has an inner vision of what might
+have been, of what ought to be, and he helps on the good cause by the
+simple substitution of a _nuance_. He paints, as it were, and so do I!'
+His manifestations had a considerable variety, but a family likeness ran
+through them, which consisted mainly of their singular futility. It was
+this that made them offensive; they encumbered the field of
+conversation, took up valuable space, converted it into a sort of
+brilliant sun-shot fog. For a fib told under pressure a convenient place
+can usually be found, as for a person who presents himself with an
+author's order at the first night of a play. But the supererogatory lie
+is the gentleman without a voucher or a ticket who accommodates himself
+with a stool in the passage.
+
+In one particular Lyon acquitted his successful rival; it had puzzled
+him that irrepressible as he was he had not got into a mess in the
+service. But he perceived that he respected the service--that august
+institution was sacred from his depredations. Moreover though there was
+a great deal of swagger in his talk it was, oddly enough, rarely swagger
+about his military exploits. He had a passion for the chase, he had
+followed it in far countries and some of his finest flowers were
+reminiscences of lonely danger and escape. The more solitary the scene
+the bigger of course the flower. A new acquaintance, with the Colonel,
+always received the tribute of a bouquet: that generalisation Lyon very
+promptly made. And this extraordinary man had inconsistencies and
+unexpected lapses--lapses into flat veracity. Lyon recognised what Sir
+David had told him, that his aberrations came in fits or periods--that
+he would sometimes keep the truce of God for a month at a time. The
+muse breathed upon him at her pleasure; she often left him alone. He
+would neglect the finest openings and then set sail in the teeth of the
+breeze. As a general thing he affirmed the false rather than denied the
+true; yet this proportion was sometimes strikingly reversed. Very often
+he joined in the laugh against himself--he admitted that he was trying
+it on and that a good many of his anecdotes had an experimental
+character. Still he never completely retracted nor retreated--he dived
+and came up in another place. Lyon divined that he was capable at
+intervals of defending his position with violence, but only when it was
+a very bad one. Then he might easily be dangerous--then he would hit out
+and become calumnious. Such occasions would test his wife's
+equanimity--Lyon would have liked to see her there. In the smoking-room
+and elsewhere the company, so far as it was composed of his familiars,
+had an hilarious protest always at hand; but among the men who had known
+him long his rich tone was an old story, so old that they had ceased to
+talk about it, and Lyon did not care, as I have said, to elicit the
+judgment of those who might have shared his own surprise.
+
+The oddest thing of all was that neither surprise nor familiarity
+prevented the Colonel's being liked; his largest drafts on a sceptical
+attention passed for an overflow of life and gaiety--almost of good
+looks. He was fond of portraying his bravery and used a very big brush,
+and yet he was unmistakably brave. He was a capital rider and shot, in
+spite of his fund of anecdote illustrating these accomplishments: in
+short he was very nearly as clever and his career had been very nearly
+as wonderful as he pretended. His best quality however remained that
+indiscriminate sociability which took interest and credulity for granted
+and about which he bragged least. It made him cheap, it made him even in
+a manner vulgar; but it was so contagious that his listener was more or
+less on his side as against the probabilities. It was a private
+reflection of Oliver Lyon's that he not only lied but made one feel
+one's self a bit of a liar, even (or especially) if one contradicted
+him. In the evening, at dinner and afterwards, our friend watched his
+wife's face to see if some faint shade or spasm never passed over it.
+But she showed nothing, and the wonder was that when he spoke she almost
+always listened. That was her pride: she wished not to be even suspected
+of not facing the music. Lyon had none the less an importunate vision of
+a veiled figure coming the next day in the dusk to certain places to
+repair the Colonel's ravages, as the relatives of kleptomaniacs
+punctually call at the shops that have suffered from their pilferings.
+
+'I must apologise, of course it wasn't true, I hope no harm is done, it
+is only his incorrigible----' Oh, to hear that woman's voice in that
+deep abasement! Lyon had no nefarious plan, no conscious wish to
+practise upon her shame or her loyalty; but he did say to himself that
+he should like to bring her round to feel that there would have been
+more dignity in a union with a certain other person. He even dreamed of
+the hour when, with a burning face, she would ask _him_ not to take it
+up. Then he should be almost consoled--he would be magnanimous.
+
+Lyon finished his picture and took his departure, after having worked
+in a glow of interest which made him believe in his success, until he
+found he had pleased every one, especially Mr. and Mrs. Ashmore, when he
+began to be sceptical. The party at any rate changed: Colonel and Mrs.
+Capadose went their way. He was able to say to himself however that his
+separation from the lady was not so much an end as a beginning, and he
+called on her soon after his return to town. She had told him the hours
+she was at home--she seemed to like him. If she liked him why had she
+not married him or at any rate why was she not sorry she had not? If she
+was sorry she concealed it too well. Lyon's curiosity on this point may
+strike the reader as fatuous, but something must be allowed to a
+disappointed man. He did not ask much after all; not that she should
+love him to-day or that she should allow him to tell her that he loved
+her, but only that she should give him some sign she was sorry. Instead
+of this, for the present, she contented herself with exhibiting her
+little daughter to him. The child was beautiful and had the prettiest
+eyes of innocence he had ever seen: which did not prevent him from
+wondering whether she told horrid fibs. This idea gave him much
+entertainment--the picture of the anxiety with which her mother would
+watch as she grew older for the symptoms of heredity. That was a nice
+occupation for Everina Brant! Did she lie to the child herself, about
+her father--was that necessary, when she pressed her daughter to her
+bosom, to cover up his tracks? Did he control himself before the little
+girl--so that she might not hear him say things she knew to be other
+than he said? Lyon doubted this: his genius would be too strong for
+him, and the only safety for the child would be in her being too stupid
+to analyse. One couldn't judge yet--she was too young. If she should
+grow up clever she would be sure to tread in his steps--a delightful
+improvement in her mother's situation! Her little face was not shifty,
+but neither was her father's big one: so that proved nothing.
+
+Lyon reminded his friends more than once of their promise that Amy
+should sit to him, and it was only a question of his leisure. The desire
+grew in him to paint the Colonel also--an operation from which he
+promised himself a rich private satisfaction. He would draw him out, he
+would set him up in that totality about which he had talked with Sir
+David, and none but the initiated would know. They, however, would rank
+the picture high, and it would be indeed six rows deep--a masterpiece of
+subtle characterisation, of legitimate treachery. He had dreamed for
+years of producing something which should bear the stamp of the
+psychologist as well as of the painter, and here at last was his
+subject. It was a pity it was not better, but that was not _his_ fault.
+It was his impression that already no one drew the Colonel out more than
+he, and he did it not only by instinct but on a plan. There were moments
+when he was almost frightened at the success of his plan--the poor
+gentleman went so terribly far. He would pull up some day, look at Lyon
+between the eyes--guess he was being played upon--which would lead to
+his wife's guessing it also. Not that Lyon cared much for that however,
+so long as she failed to suppose (as she must) that she was a part of
+his joke. He formed such a habit now of going to see her of a Sunday
+afternoon that he was angry when she went out of town. This occurred
+often, as the couple were great visitors and the Colonel was always
+looking for sport, which he liked best when it could be had at other
+people's expense. Lyon would have supposed that this sort of life was
+particularly little to her taste, for he had an idea that it was in
+country-houses that her husband came out strongest. To let him go off
+without her, not to see him expose himself--that ought properly to have
+been a relief and a luxury to her. She told Lyon in fact that she
+preferred staying at home; but she neglected to say it was because in
+other people's houses she was on the rack: the reason she gave was that
+she liked so to be with the child. It was not perhaps criminal to draw
+such a bow, but it was vulgar: poor Lyon was delighted when he arrived
+at that formula. Certainly some day too he would cross the line--he
+would become a noxious animal. Yes, in the meantime he was vulgar, in
+spite of his talents, his fine person, his impunity. Twice, by
+exception, toward the end of the winter, when he left town for a few
+days' hunting, his wife remained at home. Lyon had not yet reached the
+point of asking himself whether the desire not to miss two of his visits
+had something to do with her immobility. That inquiry would perhaps have
+been more in place later, when he began to paint the child and she
+always came with her. But it was not in her to give the wrong name, to
+pretend, and Lyon could see that she had the maternal passion, in spite
+of the bad blood in the little girl's veins.
+
+She came inveterately, though Lyon multiplied the sittings: Amy was
+never entrusted to the governess or the maid. He had knocked off poor
+old Sir David in ten days, but the portrait of the simple-faced child
+bade fair to stretch over into the following year. He asked for sitting
+after sitting, and it would have struck any one who might have witnessed
+the affair that he was wearing the little girl out. He knew better
+however and Mrs. Capadose also knew: they were present together at the
+long intermissions he gave her, when she left her pose and roamed about
+the great studio, amusing herself with its curiosities, playing with the
+old draperies and costumes, having unlimited leave to handle. Then her
+mother and Mr. Lyon sat and talked; he laid aside his brushes and leaned
+back in his chair; he always gave her tea. What Mrs. Capadose did not
+know was the way that during these weeks he neglected other orders:
+women have no faculty of imagination with regard to a man's work beyond
+a vague idea that it doesn't matter. In fact Lyon put off everything and
+made several celebrities wait. There were half-hours of silence, when he
+plied his brushes, during which he was mainly conscious that Everina was
+sitting there. She easily fell into that if he did not insist on
+talking, and she was not embarrassed nor bored by it. Sometimes she took
+up a book--there were plenty of them about; sometimes, a little way off,
+in her chair, she watched his progress (though without in the least
+advising or correcting), as if she cared for every stroke that
+represented her daughter. These strokes were occasionally a little wild;
+he was thinking so much more of his heart than of his hand. He was not
+more embarrassed than she was, but he was agitated: it was as if in the
+sittings (for the child, too, was beautifully quiet) something was
+growing between them or had already grown--a tacit confidence, an
+inexpressible secret. He felt it that way; but after all he could not be
+sure that she did. What he wanted her to do for him was very little; it
+was not even to confess that she was unhappy. He would be
+superabundantly gratified if she should simply let him know, even by a
+silent sign, that she recognised that with him her life would have been
+finer. Sometimes he guessed--his presumption went so far--that he might
+see this sign in her contentedly sitting there.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+At last he broached the question of painting the Colonel: it was now
+very late in the season--there would be little time before the general
+dispersal. He said they must make the most of it; the great thing was to
+begin; then in the autumn, with the resumption of their London life,
+they could go forward. Mrs. Capadose objected to this that she really
+could not consent to accept another present of such value. Lyon had
+given her the portrait of herself of old, and he had seen what they had
+had the indelicacy to do with it. Now he had offered her this beautiful
+memorial of the child--beautiful it would evidently be when it was
+finished, if he could ever satisfy himself; a precious possession which
+they would cherish for ever. But his generosity must stop there--they
+couldn't be so tremendously 'beholden' to him. They couldn't order the
+picture--of course he would understand that, without her explaining: it
+was a luxury beyond their reach, for they knew the great prices he
+received. Besides, what had they ever done--what above all had _she_
+ever done, that he should overload them with benefits? No, he was too
+dreadfully good; it was really impossible that Clement should sit. Lyon
+listened to her without protest, without interruption, while he bent
+forward at his work, and at last he said: 'Well, if you won't take it
+why not let him sit for me for my own pleasure and profit? Let it be a
+favour, a service I ask of him. It will do me a lot of good to paint him
+and the picture will remain in my hands.'
+
+'How will it do you a lot of good?' Mrs. Capadose asked.
+
+'Why, he's such a rare model--such an interesting subject. He has such
+an expressive face. It will teach me no end of things.'
+
+'Expressive of what?' said Mrs. Capadose.
+
+'Why, of his nature.'
+
+'And do you want to paint his nature?'
+
+'Of course I do. That's what a great portrait gives you, and I shall
+make the Colonel's a great one. It will put me up high. So you see my
+request is eminently interested.'
+
+'How can you be higher than you are?'
+
+'Oh, I'm insatiable! Do consent,' said Lyon.
+
+'Well, his nature is very noble,' Mrs. Capadose remarked.
+
+'Ah, trust me, I shall bring it out!' Lyon exclaimed, feeling a little
+ashamed of himself.
+
+Mrs. Capadose said before she went away that her husband would probably
+comply with his invitation, but she added, 'Nothing would induce me to
+let you pry into _me_ that way!'
+
+'Oh, you,' Lyon laughed--'I could do you in the dark!'
+
+The Colonel shortly afterwards placed his leisure at the painter's
+disposal and by the end of July had paid him several visits. Lyon was
+disappointed neither in the quality of his sitter nor in the degree to
+which he himself rose to the occasion; he felt really confident that he
+should produce a fine thing. He was in the humour; he was charmed with
+his _motif_ and deeply interested in his problem. The only point that
+troubled him was the idea that when he should send his picture to the
+Academy he should not be able to give the title, for the catalogue,
+simply as 'The Liar.' However, it little mattered, for he had now
+determined that this character should be perceptible even to the meanest
+intelligence--as overtopping as it had become to his own sense in the
+living man. As he saw nothing else in the Colonel to-day, so he gave
+himself up to the joy of painting nothing else. How he did it he could
+not have told you, but it seemed to him that the mystery of how to do it
+was revealed to him afresh every time he sat down to his work. It was in
+the eyes and it was in the mouth, it was in every line of the face and
+every fact of the attitude, in the indentation of the chin, in the way
+the hair was planted, the moustache was twisted, the smile came and
+went, the breath rose and fell. It was in the way he looked out at a
+bamboozled world in short--the way he would look out for ever. There
+were half a dozen portraits in Europe that Lyon rated as supreme; he
+regarded them as immortal, for they were as perfectly preserved as they
+were consummately painted. It was to this small exemplary group that he
+aspired to annex the canvas on which he was now engaged. One of the
+productions that helped to compose it was the magnificent Moroni of the
+National Gallery--the young tailor, in the white jacket, at his board
+with his shears. The Colonel was not a tailor, nor was Moroni's model,
+unlike many tailors, a liar; but as regards the masterly clearness with
+which the individual should be rendered his work would be on the same
+line as that. He had to a degree in which he had rarely had it before
+the satisfaction of feeling life grow and grow under his brush. The
+Colonel, as it turned out, liked to sit and he liked to talk while he
+was sitting: which was very fortunate, as his talk largely constituted
+Lyon's inspiration. Lyon put into practice that idea of drawing him out
+which he had been nursing for so many weeks: he could not possibly have
+been in a better relation to him for the purpose. He encouraged,
+beguiled, excited him, manifested an unfathomable credulity, and his
+only interruptions were when the Colonel did not respond to it. He had
+his intermissions, his hours of sterility, and then Lyon felt that the
+picture also languished. The higher his companion soared, the more
+gyrations he executed, in the blue, the better he painted; he couldn't
+make his flights long enough. He lashed him on when he flagged; his
+apprehension became great at moments that the Colonel would discover his
+game. But he never did, apparently; he basked and expanded in the fine
+steady light of the painter's attention. In this way the picture grew
+very fast; it was astonishing what a short business it was, compared
+with the little girl's. By the fifth of August it was pretty well
+finished: that was the date of the last sitting the Colonel was for the
+present able to give, as he was leaving town the next day with his wife.
+Lyon was amply content--he saw his way so clear: he should be able to do
+at his convenience what remained, with or without his friend's
+attendance. At any rate, as there was no hurry, he would let the thing
+stand over till his own return to London, in November, when he would
+come back to it with a fresh eye. On the Colonel's asking him if his
+wife might come and see it the next day, if she should find a
+minute--this was so greatly her desire--Lyon begged as a special favour
+that she would wait: he was so far from satisfied as yet. This was the
+repetition of a proposal Mrs. Capadose had made on the occasion of his
+last visit to her, and he had then asked for a delay--declared that he
+was by no means content. He was really delighted, and he was again a
+little ashamed of himself.
+
+By the fifth of August the weather was very warm, and on that day, while
+the Colonel sat straight and gossiped, Lyon opened for the sake of
+ventilation a little subsidiary door which led directly from his studio
+into the garden and sometimes served as an entrance and an exit for
+models and for visitors of the humbler sort, and as a passage for
+canvases, frames, packing-boxes and other professional gear. The main
+entrance was through the house and his own apartments, and this approach
+had the charming effect of admitting you first to a high gallery, from
+which a crooked picturesque staircase enabled you to descend to the
+wide, decorated, encumbered room. The view of this room, beneath them,
+with all its artistic ingenuities and the objects of value that Lyon had
+collected, never failed to elicit exclamations of delight from persons
+stepping into the gallery. The way from the garden was plainer and at
+once more practicable and more private. Lyon's domain, in St. John's
+Wood, was not vast, but when the door stood open of a summer's day it
+offered a glimpse of flowers and trees, you smelt something sweet and
+you heard the birds. On this particular morning the side-door had been
+found convenient by an unannounced visitor, a youngish woman who stood
+in the room before the Colonel perceived her and whom he perceived
+before she was noticed by his friend. She was very quiet, and she looked
+from one of the men to the other. 'Oh, dear, here's another!' Lyon
+exclaimed, as soon as his eyes rested on her. She belonged, in fact, to
+a somewhat importunate class--the model in search of employment, and she
+explained that she had ventured to come straight in, that way, because
+very often when she went to call upon gentlemen the servants played her
+tricks, turned her off and wouldn't take in her name.
+
+'But how did you get into the garden?' Lyon asked.
+
+'The gate was open, sir--the servants' gate. The butcher's cart was
+there.'
+
+'The butcher ought to have closed it,' said Lyon.
+
+'Then you don't require me, sir?' the lady continued.
+
+Lyon went on with his painting; he had given her a sharp look at first,
+but now his eyes lighted on her no more. The Colonel, however, examined
+her with interest. She was a person of whom you could scarcely say
+whether being young she looked old or old she looked young; she had at
+any rate evidently rounded several of the corners of life and had a face
+that was rosy but that somehow failed to suggest freshness. Nevertheless
+she was pretty and even looked as if at one time she might have sat for
+the complexion. She wore a hat with many feathers, a dress with many
+bugles, long black gloves, encircled with silver bracelets, and very bad
+shoes. There was something about her that was not exactly of the
+governess out of place nor completely of the actress seeking an
+engagement, but that savoured of an interrupted profession or even of a
+blighted career. She was rather soiled and tarnished, and after she had
+been in the room a few moments the air, or at any rate the nostril,
+became acquainted with a certain alcoholic waft. She was unpractised in
+the _h_, and when Lyon at last thanked her and said he didn't want
+her--he was doing nothing for which she could be useful--she replied
+with rather a wounded manner, 'Well, you know you _'ave_ 'ad me!'
+
+'I don't remember you,' Lyon answered.
+
+'Well, I daresay the people that saw your pictures do! I haven't much
+time, but I thought I would look in.'
+
+'I am much obliged to you.'
+
+'If ever you should require me, if you just send me a postcard----'
+
+'I never send postcards,' said Lyon.
+
+'Oh well, I should value a private letter! Anything to Miss Geraldine,
+Mortimer Terrace Mews, Notting 'ill----'
+
+'Very good; I'll remember,' said Lyon.
+
+Miss Geraldine lingered. 'I thought I'd just stop, on the chance.'
+
+'I'm afraid I can't hold out hopes, I'm so busy with portraits,' Lyon
+continued.
+
+'Yes; I see you are. I wish I was in the gentleman's place.'
+
+'I'm afraid in that case it wouldn't look like me,' said the Colonel,
+laughing.
+
+'Oh, of course it couldn't compare--it wouldn't be so 'andsome! But I do
+hate them portraits!' Miss Geraldine declared. 'It's so much bread out
+of our mouths.'
+
+'Well, there are many who can't paint them,' Lyon suggested,
+comfortingly.
+
+'Oh, I've sat to the very first--and only to the first! There's many
+that couldn't do anything without me.'
+
+'I'm glad you're in such demand.' Lyon was beginning to be bored and he
+added that he wouldn't detain her--he would send for her in case of
+need.
+
+'Very well; remember it's the Mews--more's the pity! You don't sit so
+well as _us_!' Miss Geraldine pursued, looking at the Colonel. 'If _you_
+should require me, sir----'
+
+'You put him out; you embarrass him,' said Lyon.
+
+'Embarrass him, oh gracious!' the visitor cried, with a laugh which
+diffused a fragrance. 'Perhaps _you_ send postcards, eh?' she went on to
+the Colonel; and then she retreated with a wavering step. She passed out
+into the garden as she had come.
+
+'How very dreadful--she's drunk!' said Lyon. He was painting hard, but
+he looked up, checking himself: Miss Geraldine, in the open doorway, had
+thrust back her head.
+
+'Yes, I do hate it--that sort of thing!' she cried with an explosion of
+mirth which confirmed Lyon's declaration. And then she disappeared.
+
+'What sort of thing--what does she mean?' the Colonel asked.
+
+'Oh, my painting you, when I might be painting her.'
+
+'And have you ever painted her?'
+
+'Never in the world; I have never seen her. She is quite mistaken.'
+
+The Colonel was silent a moment; then he remarked, 'She was very
+pretty--ten years ago.'
+
+'I daresay, but she's quite ruined. For me the least drop too much
+spoils them; I shouldn't care for her at all.'
+
+'My dear fellow, she's not a model,' said the Colonel, laughing.
+
+'To-day, no doubt, she's not worthy of the name; but she has been one.'
+
+'_Jamais de la vie!_ That's all a pretext.'
+
+'A pretext?' Lyon pricked up his ears--he began to wonder what was
+coming now.
+
+'She didn't want you--she wanted me.'
+
+'I noticed she paid you some attention. What does she want of you?'
+
+'Oh, to do me an ill turn. She hates me--lots of women do. She's
+watching me--she follows me.'
+
+Lyon leaned back in his chair--he didn't believe a word of this. He was
+all the more delighted with it and with the Colonel's bright, candid
+manner. The story had bloomed, fragrant, on the spot. 'My dear Colonel!'
+he murmured, with friendly interest and commiseration.
+
+'I was annoyed when she came in--but I wasn't startled,' his sitter
+continued.
+
+'You concealed it very well, if you were.'
+
+'Ah, when one has been through what I have! To-day however I confess I
+was half prepared. I have seen her hanging about--she knows my
+movements. She was near my house this morning--she must have followed
+me.'
+
+'But who is she then--with such a _toupet_?'
+
+'Yes, she has that,' said the Colonel; 'but as you observe she was
+primed. Still, there was a cheek, as they say, in her coming in. Oh,
+she's a bad one! She isn't a model and she never was; no doubt she has
+known some of those women and picked up their form. She had hold of a
+friend of mine ten years ago--a stupid young gander who might have been
+left to be plucked but whom I was obliged to take an interest in for
+family reasons. It's a long story--I had really forgotten all about it.
+She's thirty-seven if she's a day. I cut in and made him get rid of
+her--I sent her about her business. She knew it was me she had to thank.
+She has never forgiven me--I think she's off her head. Her name isn't
+Geraldine at all and I doubt very much if that's her address.'
+
+'Ah, what is her name?' Lyon asked, most attentive. The details always
+began to multiply, to abound, when once his companion was well
+launched--they flowed forth in battalions.
+
+'It's Pearson--Harriet Pearson; but she used to call herself
+Grenadine--wasn't that a rum appellation? Grenadine--Geraldine--the jump
+was easy.' Lyon was charmed with the promptitude of this response, and
+his interlocutor went on: 'I hadn't thought of her for years--I had
+quite lost sight of her. I don't know what her idea is, but practically
+she's harmless. As I came in I thought I saw her a little way up the
+road. She must have found out I come here and have arrived before me. I
+daresay--or rather I'm sure--she is waiting for me there now.'
+
+'Hadn't you better have protection?' Lyon asked, laughing.
+
+'The best protection is five shillings--I'm willing to go that length.
+Unless indeed she has a bottle of vitriol. But they only throw vitriol
+on the men who have deceived them, and I never deceived her--I told her
+the first time I saw her that it wouldn't do. Oh, if she's there we'll
+walk a little way together and talk it over and, as I say, I'll go as
+far as five shillings.'
+
+'Well,' said Lyon, 'I'll contribute another five.' He felt that this was
+little to pay for his entertainment.
+
+That entertainment was interrupted however for the time by the Colonel's
+departure. Lyon hoped for a letter recounting the fictive sequel; but
+apparently his brilliant sitter did not operate with the pen. At any
+rate he left town without writing; they had taken a rendezvous for three
+months later. Oliver Lyon always passed the holidays in the same way;
+during the first weeks he paid a visit to his elder brother, the happy
+possessor, in the south of England, of a rambling old house with formal
+gardens, in which he delighted, and then he went abroad--usually to
+Italy or Spain. This year he carried out his custom after taking a last
+look at his all but finished work and feeling as nearly pleased with it
+as he ever felt with the translation of the idea by the hand--always, as
+it seemed to him, a pitiful compromise. One yellow afternoon, in the
+country, as he was smoking his pipe on one of the old terraces he was
+seized with the desire to see it again and do two or three things more
+to it: he had thought of it so often while he lounged there. The impulse
+was too strong to be dismissed, and though he expected to return to town
+in the course of another week he was unable to face the delay. To look
+at the picture for five minutes would be enough--it would clear up
+certain questions which hummed in his brain; so that the next morning,
+to give himself this luxury, he took the train for London. He sent no
+word in advance; he would lunch at his club and probably return into
+Sussex by the 5.45.
+
+In St. John's Wood the tide of human life flows at no time very fast,
+and in the first days of September Lyon found unmitigated emptiness in
+the straight sunny roads where the little plastered garden-walls, with
+their incommunicative doors, looked slightly Oriental. There was
+definite stillness in his own house, to which he admitted himself by his
+pass-key, having a theory that it was well sometimes to take servants
+unprepared. The good woman who was mainly in charge and who cumulated
+the functions of cook and housekeeper was, however, quickly summoned by
+his step, and (he cultivated frankness of intercourse with his
+domestics) received him without the confusion of surprise. He told her
+that she needn't mind the place being not quite straight, he had only
+come up for a few hours--he should be busy in the studio. To this she
+replied that he was just in time to see a lady and a gentleman who were
+there at the moment--they had arrived five minutes before. She had told
+them he was away from home but they said it was all right; they only
+wanted to look at a picture and would be very careful of everything. 'I
+hope it is all right, sir,' the housekeeper concluded. 'The gentleman
+says he's a sitter and he gave me his name--rather an odd name; I think
+it's military. The lady's a very fine lady, sir; at any rate there they
+are.'
+
+'Oh, it's all right,' Lyon said, the identity of his visitors being
+clear. The good woman couldn't know, for she usually had little to do
+with the comings and goings; his man, who showed people in and out, had
+accompanied him to the country. He was a good deal surprised at Mrs.
+Capadose's having come to see her husband's portrait when she knew that
+the artist himself wished her to forbear; but it was a familiar truth to
+him that she was a woman of a high spirit. Besides, perhaps the lady was
+not Mrs. Capadose; the Colonel might have brought some inquisitive
+friend, a person who wanted a portrait of _her_ husband. What were they
+doing in town, at any rate, at that moment? Lyon made his way to the
+studio with a certain curiosity; he wondered vaguely what his friends
+were 'up to.' He pushed aside the curtain that hung in the door of
+communication--the door opening upon the gallery which it had been found
+convenient to construct at the time the studio was added to the house.
+When I say he pushed it aside I should amend my phrase; he laid his hand
+upon it, but at that moment he was arrested by a very singular sound. It
+came from the floor of the room beneath him and it startled him
+extremely, consisting apparently as it did of a passionate wail--a sort
+of smothered shriek--accompanied by a violent burst of tears. Oliver
+Lyon listened intently a moment, and then he passed out upon the
+balcony, which was covered with an old thick Moorish rug. His step was
+noiseless, though he had not endeavoured to make it so, and after that
+first instant he found himself profiting irresistibly by the accident of
+his not having attracted the attention of the two persons in the studio,
+who were some twenty feet below him. In truth they were so deeply and so
+strangely engaged that their unconsciousness of observation was
+explained. The scene that took place before Lyon's eyes was one of the
+most extraordinary they had ever rested upon. Delicacy and the failure
+to comprehend kept him at first from interrupting it--for what he saw
+was a woman who had thrown herself in a flood of tears on her
+companion's bosom--and these influences were succeeded after a minute
+(the minutes were very few and very short) by a definite motive which
+presently had the force to make him step back behind the curtain. I may
+add that it also had the force to make him avail himself for further
+contemplation of a crevice formed by his gathering together the two
+halves of the _portière_. He was perfectly aware of what he was
+about--he was for the moment an eavesdropper, a spy; but he was also
+aware that a very odd business, in which his confidence had been trifled
+with, was going forward, and that if in a measure it didn't concern him,
+in a measure it very definitely did. His observation, his reflections,
+accomplished themselves in a flash.
+
+His visitors were in the middle of the room; Mrs. Capadose clung to her
+husband, weeping, sobbing as if her heart would break. Her distress was
+horrible to Oliver Lyon but his astonishment was greater than his horror
+when he heard the Colonel respond to it by the words, vehemently
+uttered, 'Damn him, damn him, damn him!' What in the world had happened?
+Why was she sobbing and whom was he damning? What had happened, Lyon saw
+the next instant, was that the Colonel had finally rummaged out his
+unfinished portrait (he knew the corner where the artist usually placed
+it, out of the way, with its face to the wall) and had set it up before
+his wife on an empty easel. She had looked at it a few moments and
+then--apparently--what she saw in it had produced an explosion of dismay
+and resentment. She was too busy sobbing and the Colonel was too busy
+holding her and reiterating his objurgation, to look round or look up.
+The scene was so unexpected to Lyon that he could not take it, on the
+spot, as a proof of the triumph of his hand--of a tremendous hit: he
+could only wonder what on earth was the matter. The idea of the triumph
+came a little later. Yet he could see the portrait from where he stood;
+he was startled with its look of life--he had not thought it so
+masterly. Mrs. Capadose flung herself away from her husband--she dropped
+into the nearest chair, buried her face in her arms, leaning on a table.
+Her weeping suddenly ceased to be audible, but she shuddered there as if
+she were overwhelmed with anguish and shame. Her husband remained a
+moment staring at the picture; then he went to her, bent over her, took
+hold of her again, soothed her. 'What is it, darling, what the devil is
+it?' he demanded.
+
+Lyon heard her answer. 'It's cruel--oh, it's too cruel!'
+
+'Damn him--damn him--damn him!' the Colonel repeated.
+
+'It's all there--it's all there!' Mrs. Capadose went on.
+
+'Hang it, what's all there?'
+
+'Everything there oughtn't to be--everything he has seen--it's too
+dreadful!'
+
+'Everything he has seen? Why, ain't I a good-looking fellow? He has made
+me rather handsome.'
+
+Mrs. Capadose had sprung up again; she had darted another glance at the
+painted betrayal. 'Handsome? Hideous, hideous! Not that--never, never!'
+
+'Not _what_, in heaven's name?' the Colonel almost shouted. Lyon could
+see his flushed, bewildered face.
+
+'What he has made of you--what you know! _He_ knows--he has seen. Every
+one will know--every one will see. Fancy that thing in the Academy!'
+
+'You're going wild, darling; but if you hate it so it needn't go.'
+
+'Oh, he'll send it--it's so good! Come away--come away!' Mrs. Capadose
+wailed, seizing her husband.
+
+'It's so good?' the poor man cried.
+
+'Come away--come away,' she only repeated; and she turned toward the
+staircase that ascended to the gallery.
+
+'Not that way--not through the house, in the state you're in,' Lyon
+heard the Colonel object. 'This way--we can pass,' he added; and he drew
+his wife to the small door that opened into the garden. It was bolted,
+but he pushed the bolt and opened the door. She passed out quickly, but
+he stood there looking back into the room. 'Wait for me a moment!' he
+cried out to her; and with an excited stride he re-entered the studio.
+He came up to the picture again, and again he stood looking at it. 'Damn
+him--damn him--damn him!' he broke out once more. It was not clear to
+Lyon whether this malediction had for its object the original or the
+painter of the portrait. The Colonel turned away and moved rapidly about
+the room, as if he were looking for something; Lyon was unable for the
+instant to guess his intention. Then the artist said to himself, below
+his breath, 'He's going to do it a harm!' His first impulse was to rush
+down and stop him; but he paused, with the sound of Everina Brant's sobs
+still in his ears. The Colonel found what he was looking for--found it
+among some odds and ends on a small table and rushed back with it to the
+easel. At one and the same moment Lyon perceived that the object he had
+seized was a small Eastern dagger and that he had plunged it into the
+canvas. He seemed animated by a sudden fury, for with extreme vigour of
+hand he dragged the instrument down (Lyon knew it to have no very fine
+edge) making a long, abominable gash. Then he plucked it out and dashed
+it again several times into the face of the likeness, exactly as if he
+were stabbing a human victim: it had the oddest effect--that of a sort
+of figurative suicide. In a few seconds more the Colonel had tossed the
+dagger away--he looked at it as he did so, as if he expected it to reek
+with blood--and hurried out of the place, closing the door after him.
+
+The strangest part of all was--as will doubtless appear--that Oliver
+Lyon made no movement to save his picture. But he did not feel as if he
+were losing it or cared not if he were, so much more did he feel that he
+was gaining a certitude. His old friend _was_ ashamed of her husband,
+and he had made her so, and he had scored a great success, even though
+the picture had been reduced to rags. The revelation excited him so--as
+indeed the whole scene did--that when he came down the steps after the
+Colonel had gone he trembled with his happy agitation; he was dizzy and
+had to sit down a moment. The portrait had a dozen jagged wounds--the
+Colonel literally had hacked it to death. Lyon left it where it was,
+never touched it, scarcely looked at it; he only walked up and down his
+studio, still excited, for an hour. At the end of this time his good
+woman came to recommend that he should have some luncheon; there was a
+passage under the staircase from the offices.
+
+'Ah, the lady and gentleman have gone, sir? I didn't hear them.'
+
+'Yes; they went by the garden.'
+
+But she had stopped, staring at the picture on the easel. 'Gracious, how
+you _'ave_ served it, sir!'
+
+Lyon imitated the Colonel. 'Yes, I cut it up--in a fit of disgust.'
+
+'Mercy, after all your trouble! Because they weren't pleased, sir?'
+
+'Yes; they weren't pleased.'
+
+'Well, they must be very grand! Blessed if I would!'
+
+'Have it chopped up; it will do to light fires,' Lyon said.
+
+He returned to the country by the 3.30 and a few days later passed over
+to France. During the two months that he was absent from England he
+expected something--he could hardly have said what; a manifestation of
+some sort on the Colonel's part. Wouldn't he write, wouldn't he explain,
+wouldn't he take for granted Lyon had discovered the way he had, as the
+cook said, served him and deem it only decent to take pity in some
+fashion or other on his mystification? Would he plead guilty or would he
+repudiate suspicion? The latter course would be difficult and make a
+considerable draft upon his genius, in view of the certain testimony of
+Lyon's housekeeper, who had admitted the visitors and would establish
+the connection between their presence and the violence wrought. Would
+the Colonel proffer some apology or some amends, or would any word from
+him be only a further expression of that destructive petulance which our
+friend had seen his wife so suddenly and so potently communicate to him?
+He would have either to declare that he had not touched the picture or
+to admit that he had, and in either case he would have to tell a fine
+story. Lyon was impatient for the story and, as no letter came,
+disappointed that it was not produced. His impatience however was much
+greater in respect to Mrs. Capadose's version, if version there was to
+be; for certainly that would be the real test, would show how far she
+would go for her husband, on the one side, or for him, Oliver Lyon, on
+the other. He could scarcely wait to see what line she would take;
+whether she would simply adopt the Colonel's, whatever it might be. He
+wanted to draw her out without waiting, to get an idea in advance. He
+wrote to her, to this end, from Venice, in the tone of their
+established friendship, asking for news, narrating his wanderings,
+hoping they should soon meet in town and not saying a word about the
+picture. Day followed day, after the time, and he received no answer;
+upon which he reflected that she couldn't trust herself to write--was
+still too much under the influence of the emotion produced by his
+'betrayal.' Her husband had espoused that emotion and she had espoused
+the action he had taken in consequence of it, and it was a complete
+rupture and everything was at an end. Lyon considered this prospect
+rather ruefully, at the same time that he thought it deplorable that
+such charming people should have put themselves so grossly in the wrong.
+He was at last cheered, though little further enlightened, by the
+arrival of a letter, brief but breathing good-humour and hinting neither
+at a grievance nor at a bad conscience. The most interesting part of it
+to Lyon was the postscript, which consisted of these words: 'I have a
+confession to make to you. We were in town for a couple of days, the 1st
+of September, and I took the occasion to defy your authority--it was
+very bad of me but I couldn't help it. I made Clement take me to your
+studio--I wanted so dreadfully to see what you had done with him, your
+wishes to the contrary notwithstanding. We made your servants let us in
+and I took a good look at the picture. It is really wonderful!'
+'Wonderful' was non-committal, but at least with this letter there was
+no rupture.
+
+The third day after Lyon's return to London was a Sunday, so that he
+could go and ask Mrs. Capadose for luncheon. She had given him in the
+spring a general invitation to do so and he had availed himself of it
+several times. These had been the occasions (before he sat to him) when
+he saw the Colonel most familiarly. Directly after the meal his host
+disappeared (he went out, as he said, to call on _his_ women) and the
+second half-hour was the best, even when there were other people. Now,
+in the first days of December, Lyon had the luck to find the pair alone,
+without even Amy, who appeared but little in public. They were in the
+drawing-room, waiting for the repast to be announced, and as soon as he
+came in the Colonel broke out, 'My dear fellow, I'm delighted to see
+you! I'm so keen to begin again.'
+
+'Oh, do go on, it's so beautiful,' Mrs. Capadose said, as she gave him
+her hand.
+
+Lyon looked from one to the other; he didn't know what he had expected,
+but he had not expected this. 'Ah, then, you think I've got something?'
+
+'You've got everything,' said Mrs. Capadose, smiling from her
+golden-brown eyes.
+
+'She wrote you of our little crime?' her husband asked. 'She dragged me
+there--I had to go.' Lyon wondered for a moment whether he meant by
+their little crime the assault on the canvas; but the Colonel's next
+words didn't confirm this interpretation. 'You know I like to sit--it
+gives such a chance to my _bavardise_. And just now I have time.'
+
+'You must remember I had almost finished,' Lyon remarked.
+
+'So you had. More's the pity. I should like you to begin again.'
+
+'My dear fellow, I shall have to begin again!' said Oliver Lyon with a
+laugh, looking at Mrs. Capadose. She did not meet his eyes--she had got
+up to ring for luncheon. 'The picture has been smashed,' Lyon
+continued.
+
+'Smashed? Ah, what did you do that for?' Mrs. Capadose asked, standing
+there before him in all her clear, rich beauty. Now that she looked at
+him she was impenetrable.
+
+'I didn't--I found it so--with a dozen holes punched in it!'
+
+'I say!' cried the Colonel.
+
+Lyon turned his eyes to him, smiling. 'I hope _you_ didn't do it?'
+
+'Is it ruined?' the Colonel inquired. He was as brightly true as his
+wife and he looked simply as if Lyon's question could not be serious.
+'For the love of sitting to you? My dear fellow, if I had thought of it
+I would!'
+
+'Nor you either?' the painter demanded of Mrs. Capadose.
+
+Before she had time to reply her husband had seized her arm, as if a
+highly suggestive idea had come to him. 'I say, my dear, that
+woman--that woman!'
+
+'That woman?' Mrs. Capadose repeated; and Lyon too wondered what woman
+he meant.
+
+'Don't you remember when we came out, she was at the door--or a little
+way from it? I spoke to you of her--I told you about her.
+Geraldine--Grenadine--the one who burst in that day,' he explained to
+Lyon. 'We saw her hanging about--I called Everina's attention to her.'
+
+'Do you mean she got at my picture?'
+
+'Ah yes, I remember,' said Mrs. Capadose, with a sigh.
+
+'She burst in again--she had learned the way--she was waiting for her
+chance,' the Colonel continued. 'Ah, the little brute!'
+
+Lyon looked down; he felt himself colouring. This was what he had been
+waiting for--the day the Colonel should wantonly sacrifice some innocent
+person. And could his wife be a party to that final atrocity? Lyon had
+reminded himself repeatedly during the previous weeks that when the
+Colonel perpetrated his misdeed she had already quitted the room; but he
+had argued none the less--it was a virtual certainty--that he had on
+rejoining her immediately made his achievement plain to her. He was in
+the flush of performance; and even if he had not mentioned what he had
+done she would have guessed it. He did not for an instant believe that
+poor Miss Geraldine had been hovering about his door, nor had the
+account given by the Colonel the summer before of his relations with
+this lady deceived him in the slightest degree. Lyon had never seen her
+before the day she planted herself in his studio; but he knew her and
+classified her as if he had made her. He was acquainted with the London
+female model in all her varieties--in every phase of her development and
+every step of her decay. When he entered his house that September
+morning just after the arrival of his two friends there had been no
+symptoms whatever, up and down the road, of Miss Geraldine's
+reappearance. That fact had been fixed in his mind by his recollecting
+the vacancy of the prospect when his cook told him that a lady and a
+gentleman were in his studio: he had wondered there was not a carriage
+nor a cab at his door. Then he had reflected that they would have come
+by the underground railway; he was close to the Marlborough Road
+station and he knew the Colonel, coming to his sittings, more than once
+had availed himself of that convenience. 'How in the world did she get
+in?' He addressed the question to his companions indifferently.
+
+'Let us go down to luncheon,' said Mrs. Capadose, passing out of the
+room.
+
+'We went by the garden--without troubling your servant--I wanted to show
+my wife.' Lyon followed his hostess with her husband and the Colonel
+stopped him at the top of the stairs. 'My dear fellow, I _can't_ have
+been guilty of the folly of not fastening the door?'
+
+'I am sure I don't know, Colonel,' Lyon said as they went down. 'It was
+a very determined hand--a perfect wild-cat.'
+
+'Well, she _is_ a wild-cat--confound her! That's why I wanted to get him
+away from her.'
+
+'But I don't understand her motive.'
+
+'She's off her head--and she hates me; that was her motive.'
+
+'But she doesn't hate me, my dear fellow!' Lyon said, laughing.
+
+'She hated the picture--don't you remember she said so? The more
+portraits there are the less employment for such as her.'
+
+'Yes; but if she is not really the model she pretends to be, how can
+that hurt her?' Lyon asked.
+
+The inquiry baffled the Colonel an instant--but only an instant. 'Ah,
+she was in a vicious muddle! As I say, she's off her head.'
+
+They went into the dining-room, where Mrs. Capadose was taking her
+place. 'It's too bad, it's too horrid!' she said. 'You see the fates
+are against you. Providence won't let you be so disinterested--painting
+masterpieces for nothing.'
+
+'Did _you_ see the woman?' Lyon demanded, with something like a
+sternness that he could not mitigate.
+
+Mrs. Capadose appeared not to perceive it or not to heed it if she did.
+'There was a person, not far from your door, whom Clement called my
+attention to. He told me something about her but we were going the other
+way.'
+
+'And do you think she did it?'
+
+'How can I tell? If she did she was mad, poor wretch.'
+
+'I should like very much to get hold of her,' said Lyon. This was a
+false statement, for he had no desire for any further conversation with
+Miss Geraldine. He had exposed his friends to himself, but he had no
+desire to expose them to any one else, least of all to themselves.
+
+'Oh, depend upon it she will never show again. You're safe!' the Colonel
+exclaimed.
+
+'But I remember her address--Mortimer Terrace Mews, Notting Hill.'
+
+'Oh, that's pure humbug; there isn't any such place.'
+
+'Lord, what a deceiver!' said Lyon.
+
+'Is there any one else you suspect?' the Colonel went on.
+
+'Not a creature.'
+
+'And what do your servants say?'
+
+'They say it wasn't _them_, and I reply that I never said it was. That's
+about the substance of our conferences.'
+
+'And when did they discover the havoc?'
+
+'They never discovered it at all. I noticed it first--when I came back.'
+
+'Well, she could easily have stepped in,' said the Colonel. 'Don't you
+remember how she turned up that day, like the clown in the ring?'
+
+'Yes, yes; she could have done the job in three seconds, except that the
+picture wasn't out.'
+
+'My dear fellow, don't curse me!--but of course I dragged it out.'
+
+'You didn't put it back?' Lyon asked tragically.
+
+'Ah, Clement, Clement, didn't I tell you to?' Mrs. Capadose exclaimed in
+a tone of exquisite reproach.
+
+The Colonel groaned, dramatically; he covered his face with his hands.
+His wife's words were for Lyon the finishing touch; they made his whole
+vision crumble--his theory that she had secretly kept herself true. Even
+to her old lover she wouldn't be so! He was sick; he couldn't eat; he
+knew that he looked very strange. He murmured something about it being
+useless to cry over spilled milk--he tried to turn the conversation to
+other things. But it was a horrid effort and he wondered whether they
+felt it as much as he. He wondered all sorts of things: whether they
+guessed he disbelieved them (that he had seen them of course they would
+never guess); whether they had arranged their story in advance or it was
+only an inspiration of the moment; whether she had resisted, protested,
+when the Colonel proposed it to her, and then had been borne down by
+him; whether in short she didn't loathe herself as she sat there. The
+cruelty, the cowardice of fastening their unholy act upon the wretched
+woman struck him as monstrous--no less monstrous indeed than the levity
+that could make them run the risk of her giving them, in her righteous
+indignation, the lie. Of course that risk could only exculpate her and
+not inculpate them--the probabilities protected them so perfectly; and
+what the Colonel counted on (what he would have counted upon the day he
+delivered himself, after first seeing her, at the studio, if he had
+thought about the matter then at all and not spoken from the pure
+spontaneity of his genius) was simply that Miss Geraldine had really
+vanished for ever into her native unknown. Lyon wanted so much to quit
+the subject that when after a little Mrs. Capadose said to him, 'But can
+nothing be done, can't the picture be repaired? You know they do such
+wonders in that way now,' he only replied, 'I don't know, I don't care,
+it's all over, _n'en parlons plus_!' Her hypocrisy revolted him. And
+yet, by way of plucking off the last veil of her shame, he broke out to
+her again, shortly afterward, 'And you _did_ like it, really?' To which
+she returned, looking him straight in his face, without a blush, a
+pallor, an evasion, 'Oh, I loved it!' Truly her husband had trained her
+well. After that Lyon said no more and his companions forbore
+temporarily to insist, like people of tact and sympathy aware that the
+odious accident had made him sore.
+
+When they quitted the table the Colonel went away without coming
+upstairs; but Lyon returned to the drawing-room with his hostess,
+remarking to her however on the way that he could remain but a moment.
+He spent that moment--it prolonged itself a little--standing with her
+before the chimney-piece. She neither sat down nor asked him to; her
+manner denoted that she intended to go out. Yes, her husband had trained
+her well; yet Lyon dreamed for a moment that now he was alone with her
+she would perhaps break down, retract, apologise, confide, say to him,
+'My dear old friend, forgive this hideous comedy--you understand!' And
+then how he would have loved her and pitied her, guarded her, helped her
+always! If she were not ready to do something of that sort why had she
+treated him as if he were a dear old friend; why had she let him for
+months suppose certain things--or almost; why had she come to his studio
+day after day to sit near him on the pretext of her child's portrait, as
+if she liked to think what might have been? Why had she come so near a
+tacit confession, in a word, if she was not willing to go an inch
+further? And she was not willing--she was not; he could see that as he
+lingered there. She moved about the room a little, rearranging two or
+three objects on the tables, but she did nothing more. Suddenly he said
+to her: 'Which way was she going, when you came out?'
+
+'She--the woman we saw?'
+
+'Yes, your husband's strange friend. It's a clew worth following.' He
+had no desire to frighten her; he only wanted to communicate the impulse
+which would make her say, 'Ah, spare me--and spare _him_! There was no
+such person.'
+
+Instead of this Mrs. Capadose replied, 'She was going away from us--she
+crossed the road. We were coming towards the station.'
+
+'And did she appear to recognise the Colonel--did she look round?'
+
+'Yes; she looked round, but I didn't notice much. A hansom came along
+and we got into it. It was not till then that Clement told me who she
+was: I remember he said that she was there for no good. I suppose we
+ought to have gone back.'
+
+'Yes; you would have saved the picture.'
+
+For a moment she said nothing; then she smiled. 'For you, I am very
+sorry. But you must remember that I possess the original!'
+
+At this Lyon turned away. 'Well, I must go,' he said; and he left her
+without any other farewell and made his way out of the house. As he went
+slowly up the street the sense came back to him of that first glimpse of
+her he had had at Stayes--the way he had seen her gaze across the table
+at her husband. Lyon stopped at the corner, looking vaguely up and down.
+He would never go back--he couldn't. She was still in love with the
+Colonel--he had trained her too well.
+
+
+
+
+MRS. TEMPERLY
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+'Why, Cousin Raymond, how can you suppose? Why, she's only sixteen!'
+
+'She told me she was seventeen,' said the young man, as if it made a
+great difference.
+
+'Well, only _just_!' Mrs. Temperly replied, in the tone of graceful,
+reasonable concession.
+
+'Well, that's a very good age for me. I'm very young.'
+
+'You are old enough to know better,' the lady remarked, in her soft,
+pleasant voice, which always drew the sting from a reproach, and enabled
+you to swallow it as you would a cooked plum, without the stone. 'Why,
+she hasn't finished her education!'
+
+'That's just what I mean,' said her interlocutor. 'It would finish it
+beautifully for her to marry me.'
+
+'Have you finished yours, my dear?' Mrs. Temperly inquired. 'The way you
+young people talk about marrying!' she exclaimed, looking at the
+itinerant functionary with the long wand who touched into a flame the
+tall gas-lamp on the other side of the Fifth Avenue. The pair were
+standing, in the recess of a window, in one of the big public rooms of
+an immense hotel, and the October day was turning to dusk.
+
+'Well, would you have us leave it to the old?' Raymond asked. 'That's
+just what I think--she would be such a help to me,' he continued. 'I
+want to go back to Paris to study more. I have come home too soon. I
+don't know half enough; they know more here than I thought. So it would
+be perfectly easy, and we should all be together.'
+
+'Well, my dear, when you do come back to Paris we will talk about it,'
+said Mrs. Temperly, turning away from the window.
+
+'I should like it better, Cousin Maria, if you trusted me a little
+more,' Raymond sighed, observing that she was not really giving her
+thoughts to what he said. She irritated him somehow; she was so full of
+her impending departure, of her arrangements, her last duties and
+memoranda. She was not exactly important, any more than she was humble;
+she was too conciliatory for the one and too positive for the other. But
+she bustled quietly and gave one the sense of being 'up to' everything;
+the successive steps of her enterprise were in advance perfectly clear
+to her, and he could see that her imagination (conventional as she was
+she had plenty of that faculty) had already taken up its abode on one of
+those fine _premiers_ which she had never seen, but which by instinct
+she seemed to know all about, in the very best part of the quarter of
+the Champs Elysées. If she ruffled him envy had perhaps something to do
+with it: she was to set sail on the morrow for the city of his affection
+and he was to stop in New York, where the fact that he was but half
+pleased did not alter the fact that he had his studio on his hands and
+that it was a bad one (though perhaps as good as any use he should put
+it to), which no one would be in a hurry to relieve him of.
+
+It was easy for him to talk to Mrs. Temperly in that airy way about
+going back, but he couldn't go back unless the old gentleman gave him
+the means. He had already given him a great many things in the past, and
+with the others coming on (Marian's marriage-outfit, within three
+months, had cost literally thousands), Raymond had not at present the
+face to ask for more. He must sell some pictures first, and to sell them
+he must first paint them. It was his misfortune that he saw what he
+wanted to do so much better than he could do it. But he must really try
+and please himself--an effort that appeared more possible now that the
+idea of following Dora across the ocean had become an incentive. In
+spite of secret aspirations and even intentions, however, it was not
+encouraging to feel that he made really no impression at all on Cousin
+Maria. This certitude was so far from agreeable to him that he almost
+found it in him to drop the endearing title by which he had hitherto
+addressed her. It was only that, after all, her husband had been
+distantly related to his mother. It was not as a cousin that he was
+interested in Dora, but as something very much more intimate. I know not
+whether it occurred to him that Mrs. Temperly herself would never give
+his displeasure the benefit of dropping the affectionate form. She might
+shut her door to him altogether, but he would always be her kinsman and
+her dear. She was much addicted to these little embellishments of human
+intercourse--the friendly apostrophe and even the caressing hand--and
+there was something homely and cosy, a rustic, motherly _bonhomie_, in
+her use of them. She was as lavish of them as she was really careful in
+the selection of her friends.
+
+She stood there with her hand in her pocket, as if she were feeling for
+something; her little plain, pleasant face was presented to him with a
+musing smile, and he vaguely wondered whether she were fumbling for a
+piece of money to buy him off from wishing to marry her daughter. Such
+an idea would be quite in keeping with the disguised levity with which
+she treated his state of mind. If her levity was wrapped up in the air
+of tender solicitude for everything that related to the feelings of her
+child, that only made her failure to appreciate his suit more
+deliberate. She struck him almost as impertinent (at the same time that
+he knew this was never her intention) as she looked up at him--her tiny
+proportions always made her throw back her head and set something
+dancing in her cap--and inquired whether he had noticed if she gave two
+keys, tied together by a blue ribbon, to Susan Winkle, when that
+faithful but flurried domestic met them in the lobby. She was thinking
+only of questions of luggage, and the fact that he wished to marry Dora
+was the smallest incident in their getting off.
+
+'I think you ask me that only to change the subject,' he said. 'I don't
+believe that ever in your life you have been unconscious of what you
+have done with your keys.'
+
+'Not often, but you make me nervous,' she answered, with her patient,
+honest smile.
+
+'Oh, Cousin Maria!' the young man exclaimed, ambiguously, while Mrs.
+Temperly looked humanely at some totally uninteresting people who came
+straggling into the great hot, frescoed, velvety drawing-room, where it
+was as easy to see you were in an hotel as it was to see that, if you
+were, you were in one of the very best. Mrs. Temperly, since her
+husband's death, had passed much of her life at hotels, where she
+flattered herself that she preserved the tone of domestic life free from
+every taint and promoted the refined development of her children; but
+she selected them as well as she selected her friends. Somehow they
+became better from the very fact of her being there, and her children
+were smuggled in and out in the most extraordinary way; one never met
+them racing and whooping, as one did hundreds of others, in the lobbies.
+Her frequentation of hotels, where she paid enormous bills, was part of
+her expensive but practical way of living, and also of her theory that,
+from one week to another, she was going to Europe for a series of years
+as soon as she had wound up certain complicated affairs which had
+devolved upon her at her husband's death. If these affairs had dragged
+on it was owing to their inherent troublesomeness and implied no doubt
+of her capacity to bring them to a solution and to administer the very
+considerable fortune that Mr. Temperly had left. She used, in a
+superior, unprejudiced way, every convenience that the civilisation of
+her time offered her, and would have lived without hesitation in a
+lighthouse if this had contributed to her general scheme. She was now,
+in the interest of this scheme, preparing to use Europe, which she had
+not yet visited and with none of whose foreign tongues she was
+acquainted. This time she was certainly embarking.
+
+She took no notice of the discredit which her young friend appeared to
+throw on the idea that she had nerves, and betrayed no suspicion that he
+believed her to have them in about the same degree as a sound,
+productive Alderney cow. She only moved toward one of the numerous doors
+of the room, as if to remind him of all she had still to do before
+night. They passed together into the long, wide corridor of the hotel--a
+vista of soft carpet, numbered doors, wandering women and perpetual
+gaslight--and approached the staircase by which she must ascend again to
+her domestic duties. She counted over, serenely, for his enlightenment,
+those that were still to be performed; but he could see that everything
+would be finished by nine o'clock--the time she had fixed in advance.
+The heavy luggage was then to go to the steamer; she herself was to be
+on board, with the children and the smaller things, at eleven o'clock
+the next morning. They had thirty pieces, but this was less than they
+had when they came from California five years before. She wouldn't have
+done that again. It was true that at that time she had had Mr. Temperly
+to help: he had died, Raymond remembered, six months after the
+settlement in New York. But, on the other hand, she knew more now. It
+was one of Mrs. Temperly's amiable qualities that she admitted herself
+so candidly to be still susceptible of development. She never professed
+to be in possession of all the knowledge requisite for her career; not
+only did she let her friends know that she was always learning, but she
+appealed to them to instruct her, in a manner which was in itself an
+example.
+
+When Raymond said to her that he took for granted she would let him come
+down to the steamer for a last good-bye, she not only consented
+graciously but added that he was free to call again at the hotel in the
+evening, if he had nothing better to do. He must come between nine and
+ten; she expected several other friends--those who wished to see the
+last of them, yet didn't care to come to the ship. Then he would see all
+of them--she meant all of themselves, Dora and Effie and Tishy, and even
+Mademoiselle Bourde. She spoke exactly as if he had never approached her
+on the subject of Dora and as if Tishy, who was ten years of age, and
+Mademoiselle Bourde, who was the French governess and forty, were
+objects of no less an interest to him. He felt what a long pull he
+should have ever to get round her, and the sting of this knowledge was
+in his consciousness that Dora was really in her mother's hands. In Mrs.
+Temperly's composition there was not a hint of the bully; but none the
+less she held her children--she would hold them for ever. It was not
+simply by tenderness; but what it was by she knew best herself. Raymond
+appreciated the privilege of seeing Dora again that evening as well as
+on the morrow; yet he was so vexed with her mother that his vexation
+betrayed him into something that almost savoured of violence--a fact
+which I am ashamed to have to chronicle, as Mrs. Temperly's own urbanity
+deprived such breaches of every excuse. It may perhaps serve partly as
+an excuse for Raymond Bestwick that he was in love, or at least that he
+thought he was. Before she parted from him at the foot of the staircase
+he said to her, 'And of course, if things go as you like over there,
+Dora will marry some foreign prince.'
+
+She gave no sign of resenting this speech, but she looked at him for
+the first time as if she were hesitating, as if it were not instantly
+clear to her what to say. It appeared to him, on his side, for a moment,
+that there was something strange in her hesitation, that abruptly, by an
+inspiration, she was almost making up her mind to reply that Dora's
+marriage to a prince was, considering Dora's peculiarities (he knew that
+her mother deemed her peculiar, and so did he, but that was precisely
+why he wished to marry her), so little probable that, after all, once
+such a union was out of the question, _he_ might be no worse than
+another plain man. These, however, were not the words that fell from
+Mrs. Temperly's lips. Her embarrassment vanished in her clear smile. 'Do
+you know what Mr. Temperly used to say? He used to say that Dora was the
+pattern of an old maid--she would never make a choice.'
+
+'I hope--because that would have been too foolish--that he didn't say
+she wouldn't have a chance.'
+
+'Oh, a chance! what do you call by that fine name?' Cousin Maria
+exclaimed, laughing, as she ascended the stair.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+When he came back, after dinner, she was again in one of the public
+rooms; she explained that a lot of the things for the ship were spread
+out in her own parlours: there was no space to sit down. Raymond was
+highly gratified by this fact; it offered an opportunity for strolling
+away a little with Dora, especially as, after he had been there ten
+minutes, other people began to come in. They were entertained by the
+rest, by Effie and Tishy, who was allowed to sit up a little, and by
+Mademoiselle Bourde, who besought every visitor to indicate her a remedy
+that was _really_ effective against the sea--some charm, some philter,
+some potion or spell. 'Never mind, ma'm'selle, I've got a remedy,' said
+Cousin Maria, with her cheerful decision, each time; but the French
+instructress always began afresh.
+
+As the young man was about to be parted for an indefinite period from
+the girl whom he was ready to swear that he adored, it is clear that he
+ought to have been equally ready to swear that she was the fairest of
+her species. In point of fact, however, it was no less vivid to him than
+it had been before that he loved Dora Temperly for qualities which had
+nothing to do with straightness of nose or pinkness of complexion. Her
+figure was straight, and so was her character, but her nose was not, and
+Philistines and other vulgar people would have committed themselves,
+without a blush on their own flat faces, to the assertion that she was
+decidedly plain. In his artistic imagination he had analogies for her,
+drawn from legend and literature; he was perfectly aware that she struck
+many persons as silent, shy and angular, while his own version of her
+peculiarities was that she was like a figure on the _predella_ of an
+early Italian painting or a mediæval maiden wandering about a lonely
+castle, with her lover gone to the Crusades. To his sense, Dora had but
+one defect--her admiration for her mother was too undiscriminating. An
+ardent young man may well be slightly vexed when he finds that a young
+lady will probably never care for him so much as she cares for her
+parent; and Raymond Bestwick had this added ground for chagrin, that
+Dora had--if she chose to take it--so good a pretext for discriminating.
+For she had nothing whatever in common with the others; she was not of
+the same stuff as Mrs. Temperly and Effie and Tishy.
+
+She was original and generous and uncalculating, besides being full of
+perception and taste in regard to the things _he_ cared about. She knew
+nothing of conventional signs or estimates, but understood everything
+that might be said to her from an artistic point of view. She was formed
+to live in a studio, and not in a stiff drawing-room, amid upholstery
+horribly new; and moreover her eyes and her voice were both charming. It
+was only a pity she was so gentle; that is, he liked it for himself, but
+he deplored it for her mother. He considered that he had virtually
+given that lady his word that he would not make love to her; but his
+spirits had risen since his visit of three or four hours before. It
+seemed to him, after thinking things over more intently, that a way
+would be opened for him to return to Paris. It was not probable that in
+the interval Dora would be married off to a prince; for in the first
+place the foolish race of princes would be sure not to appreciate her,
+and in the second she would not, in this matter, simply do her mother's
+bidding--her gentleness would not go so far as that. She might remain
+single by the maternal decree, but she would not take a husband who was
+disagreeable to her. In this reasoning Raymond was obliged to shut his
+eyes very tight to the danger that some particular prince might not be
+disagreeable to her, as well as to the attraction proceeding from what
+her mother might announce that she would 'do.' He was perfectly aware
+that it was in Cousin Maria's power, and would probably be in her
+pleasure, to settle a handsome marriage-fee upon each of her daughters.
+He was equally certain that this had nothing to do with the nature of
+his own interest in the eldest, both because it was clear that Mrs.
+Temperly would do very little for _him_, and because he didn't care how
+little she did.
+
+Effie and Tishy sat in the circle, on the edge of rather high chairs,
+while Mademoiselle Bourde surveyed in them with complacency the results
+of her own superiority. Tishy was a child, but Effie was fifteen, and
+they were both very nice little girls, arrayed in fresh travelling
+dresses and deriving a quaintness from the fact that Tishy was already
+armed, for foreign adventures, with a smart new reticule, from which
+she could not be induced to part, and that Effie had her finger in her
+'place' in a fat red volume of _Murray_. Raymond knew that in a general
+way their mother would not have allowed them to appear in the
+drawing-room with these adjuncts, but something was to be allowed to the
+fever of anticipation. They were both pretty, with delicate features and
+blue eyes, and would grow up into worldly, conventional young ladies,
+just as Dora had not done. They looked at Mademoiselle Bourde for
+approval whenever they spoke, and, in addressing their mother
+alternately with that accomplished woman, kept their two languages
+neatly distinct.
+
+Raymond had but a vague idea of who the people were who had come to bid
+Cousin Maria farewell, and he had no wish for a sharper one, though she
+introduced him, very definitely, to the whole group. She might make
+light of him in her secret soul, but she would never put herself in the
+wrong by omitting the smallest form. Fortunately, however, he was not
+obliged to like all her forms, and he foresaw the day when she would
+abandon this particular one. She was not so well made up in advance
+about Paris but that it would be in reserve for her to detest the period
+when she had thought it proper to 'introduce all round.' Raymond
+detested it already, and tried to make Dora understand that he wished
+her to take a walk with him in the corridors. There was a gentleman with
+a curl on his forehead who especially displeased him; he made childish
+jokes, at which the others laughed all at once, as if they had rehearsed
+for it--jokes _à la portée_ of Effie and Tishy and mainly about them.
+These two joined in the merriment, as if they followed perfectly, as
+indeed they might, and gave a small sigh afterward, with a little
+factitious air. Dora remained grave, almost sad; it was when she was
+different, in this way, that he felt how much he liked her. He hated, in
+general, a large ring of people who had drawn up chairs in the public
+room of an hotel: some one was sure to undertake to be funny.
+
+He succeeded at last in drawing Dora away; he endeavoured to give the
+movement a casual air. There was nothing peculiar, after all, in their
+walking a little in the passage; a dozen other persons were doing the
+same. The girl had the air of not suspecting in the least that he could
+have anything particular to say to her--of responding to his appeal
+simply out of her general gentleness. It was not in her companion's
+interest that her mind should be such a blank; nevertheless his
+conviction that in spite of the ministrations of Mademoiselle Bourde she
+was not falsely ingenuous made him repeat to himself that he would still
+make her his own. They took several turns in the hall, during which it
+might still have appeared to Dora Temperly that her cousin Raymond had
+nothing particular to say to her. He remarked several times that he
+should certainly turn up in Paris in the spring; but when once she had
+replied that she was very glad that subject seemed exhausted. The young
+man cared little, however; it was not a question now of making any
+declaration: he only wanted to be with her. Suddenly, when they were at
+the end of the corridor furthest removed from the room they had left, he
+said to her: 'Your mother is very strange. Why has she got such an idea
+about Paris?'
+
+'How do you mean, such an idea?' He had stopped, making the girl stand
+there before him.
+
+'Well, she thinks so much of it without having ever seen it, or really
+knowing anything. She appears to have planned out such a great life
+there.'
+
+'She thinks it's the best place,' Dora rejoined, with the dim smile that
+always charmed our young man.
+
+'The best place for what?'
+
+'Well, to learn French.' The girl continued to smile.
+
+'Do you mean for her? She'll never learn it; she can't.'
+
+'No; for us. And other things.'
+
+'You know it already. And _you_ know other things,' said Raymond.
+
+'She wants us to know them better--better than any girls know them.'
+
+'I don't know what things you mean,' exclaimed the young man, rather
+impatiently.
+
+'Well, we shall see,' Dora returned, laughing.
+
+He said nothing for a minute, at the end of which he resumed: 'I hope
+you won't be offended if I say that it seems curious your mother should
+have such aspirations--such Napoleonic plans. I mean being just a quiet
+little lady from California, who has never seen any of the kind of thing
+that she has in her head.'
+
+'That's just why she wants to see it, I suppose; and I don't know why
+her being from California should prevent. At any rate she wants us to
+have the best. Isn't the best taste in Paris?'
+
+'Yes; and the worst.' It made him gloomy when she defended the old lady,
+and to change the subject he asked: 'Aren't you sorry, this last night,
+to leave your own country for such an indefinite time?'
+
+It didn't cheer him up that the girl should answer: 'Oh, I would go
+anywhere with mother!'
+
+'And with _her_?' Raymond demanded, sarcastically, as Mademoiselle
+Bourde came in sight, emerging from the drawing-room. She approached
+them; they met her in a moment, and she informed Dora that Mrs. Temperly
+wished her to come back and play a part of that composition of
+Saint-Saens--the last one she had been learning--for Mr. and Mrs.
+Parminter: they wanted to judge whether their daughter could manage it.
+
+'I don't believe she can,' said Dora, smiling; but she was moving away
+to comply when her companion detained her a moment.
+
+Are you going to bid me good-bye?'
+
+'Won't you come back to the drawing-room?'
+
+'I think not; I don't like it.'
+
+'And to mamma--you'll say nothing?' the girl went on.
+
+'Oh, we have made our farewell; we had a special interview this
+afternoon.'
+
+'And you won't come to the ship in the morning?'
+
+Raymond hesitated a moment. 'Will Mr. and Mrs. Parminter be there?'
+
+'Oh, surely they will!' Mademoiselle Bourde declared, surveying the
+young couple with a certain tactful serenity, but standing very close to
+them, as if it might be her duty to interpose.
+
+'Well then, I won't come.'
+
+'Well, good-bye then,' said the girl gently, holding out her hand.
+
+'Good-bye, Dora.' He took it, while she smiled at him, but he said
+nothing more--he was so annoyed at the way Mademoiselle Bourde watched
+them. He only looked at Dora; she seemed to him beautiful.
+
+'My dear child--that poor Madame Parminter,' the governess murmured.
+
+'I shall come over very soon,' said Raymond, as his companion turned
+away.
+
+'That will be charming.' And she left him quickly, without looking back.
+
+Mademoiselle Bourde lingered--he didn't know why, unless it was to make
+him feel, with her smooth, finished French assurance, which had the
+manner of extreme benignity, that she was following him up. He sometimes
+wondered whether she copied Mrs. Temperly or whether Mrs. Temperly tried
+to copy her. Presently she said, slowly rubbing her hands and smiling at
+him:
+
+'You will have plenty of time. We shall be long in Paris.'
+
+'Perhaps you will be disappointed,' Raymond suggested.
+
+'How can we be--unless _you_ disappoint us?' asked the governess,
+sweetly.
+
+He left her without ceremony: the imitation was probably on the part of
+Cousin Maria.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+'Only just ourselves,' her note had said; and he arrived, in his natural
+impatience, a few moments before the hour. He remembered his Cousin
+Maria's habitual punctuality, but when he entered the splendid _salon_
+in the quarter of the Parc Monceau--it was there that he had found her
+established--he saw that he should have it, for a little, to himself.
+This was pleasing, for he should be able to look round--there were
+admirable things to look at. Even to-day Raymond Bestwick was not sure
+that he had learned to paint, but he had no doubt of his judgment of the
+work of others, and a single glance showed him that Mrs. Temperly had
+'known enough' to select, for the adornment of her walls, half a dozen
+immensely valuable specimens of contemporary French art. Her choice of
+other objects had been equally enlightened, and he remembered what Dora
+had said to him five years before--that her mother wished them to have
+the best. Evidently, now they had got it; if five years was a long time
+for him to have delayed (with his original plan of getting off so soon)
+to come to Paris, it was a very short one for Cousin Maria to have taken
+to arrive at the highest good.
+
+Rather to his surprise the first person to come in was Effie, now so
+complete a young lady, and such a very pretty girl, that he scarcely
+would have known her. She was fair, she was graceful, she was lovely,
+and as she entered the room, blushing and smiling, with a little
+floating motion which suggested that she was in a liquid element, she
+brushed down the ribbons of a delicate Parisian _toilette de jeune
+fille_. She appeared to expect that he would be surprised, and as if to
+justify herself for being the first she said, 'Mamma told me to come;
+she knows you are here; she said I was not to wait.' More than once,
+while they conversed, during the next few moments, before any one else
+arrived, she repeated that she was acting by her mamma's directions.
+Raymond perceived that she had not only the costume but several other of
+the attributes of a _jeune fille_. They talked, I say, but with a
+certain difficulty, for Effie asked him no questions, and this made him
+feel a little stiff about thrusting information upon her. Then she was
+so pretty, so exquisite, that this by itself disconcerted him. It seemed
+to him almost that she had falsified a prophecy, instead of bringing one
+to pass. He had foretold that she would be like this; the only
+difference was that she was so much more like it. She made no inquiries
+about his arrival, his people in America, his plans; and they exchanged
+vague remarks about the pictures, quite as if they had met for the first
+time.
+
+When Cousin Maria came in Effie was standing in front of the fire
+fastening a bracelet, and he was at a distance gazing in silence at a
+portrait of his hostess by Bastien-Lepage. One of his apprehensions had
+been that Cousin Maria would allude ironically to the difference there
+had been between his threat (because it had been really almost a
+threat) of following them speedily to Paris and what had in fact
+occurred; but he saw in a moment how superficial this calculation had
+been. Besides, when had Cousin Maria ever been ironical? She treated him
+as if she had seen him last week (which did not preclude kindness), and
+only expressed her regret at having missed his visit the day before, in
+consequence of which she had immediately written to him to come and
+dine. He might have come from round the corner, instead of from New York
+and across the wintry ocean. This was a part of her 'cosiness,' her
+friendly, motherly optimism, of which, even of old, the habit had been
+never to recognise nor allude to disagreeable things; so that to-day, in
+the midst of so much that was not disagreeable, the custom would of
+course be immensely confirmed.
+
+Raymond was perfectly aware that it was not a pleasure, even for her,
+that, for several years past, things should have gone so ill in New York
+with his family and himself. His father's embarrassments, of which
+Marian's silly husband had been the cause and which had terminated in
+general ruin and humiliation, to say nothing of the old man's 'stroke'
+and the necessity, arising from it, for a renunciation on his own part
+of all present thoughts of leaving home again and even for a partial
+relinquishment of present work, the old man requiring so much of his
+personal attention--all this constituted an episode which could not fail
+to look sordid and dreary in the light of Mrs. Temperly's high success.
+The odour of success was in the warm, slightly heavy air, which seemed
+distilled from rare old fabrics, from brocades and tapestries, from the
+deep, mingled tones of the pictures, the subdued radiance of cabinets
+and old porcelain and the jars of winter roses standing in soft circles
+of lamp-light. Raymond felt himself in the presence of an effect in
+regard to which he remained in ignorance of the cause--a mystery that
+required a key. Cousin Maria's success was unexplained so long as she
+simply stood there with her little familiar, comforting, upward gaze,
+talking in coaxing cadences, with exactly the same manner she had
+brought ten years ago from California, to a tall, bald, bending, smiling
+young man, evidently a foreigner, who had just come in and whose name
+Raymond had not caught from the lips of the _maître d'hôtel_. Was he
+just one of themselves--was he there for Effie, or perhaps even for
+Dora? The unexplained must preponderate till Dora came in; he found he
+counted upon her, even though in her letters (it was true that for the
+last couple of years they had come but at long intervals) she had told
+him so little about their life. She never spoke of people; she talked of
+the books she read, of the music she had heard or was studying (a whole
+page sometimes about the last concert at the Conservatoire), the new
+pictures and the manner of the different artists.
+
+When she entered the room three or four minutes after the arrival of the
+young foreigner, with whom her mother conversed in just the accents
+Raymond had last heard at the hotel in the Fifth Avenue (he was obliged
+to admit that she gave herself no airs; it was clear that her success
+had not gone in the least to her head); when Dora at last appeared she
+was accompanied by Mademoiselle Bourde. The presence of this lady--he
+didn't know she was still in the house--Raymond took as a sign that
+they were really dining _en famille_, so that the young man was either
+an actual or a prospective intimate. Dora shook hands first with her
+cousin, but he watched the manner of her greeting with the other visitor
+and saw that it indicated extreme friendliness--on the part of the
+latter. If there was a charming flush in her cheek as he took her hand,
+that was the remainder of the colour that had risen there as she came
+toward Raymond. It will be seen that our young man still had an eye for
+the element of fascination, as he used to regard it, in this quiet,
+dimly-shining maiden.
+
+He saw that Effie was the only one who had changed (Tishy remained yet
+to be judged), except that Dora really looked older, quite as much older
+as the number of years had given her a right to: there was as little
+difference in her as there was in her mother. Not that she was like her
+mother, but she was perfectly like herself. Her meeting with Raymond was
+bright, but very still; their phrases were awkward and commonplace, and
+the thing was mainly a contact of looks--conscious, embarrassed,
+indirect, but brightening every moment with old familiarities. Her
+mother appeared to pay no attention, and neither, to do her justice, did
+Mademoiselle Bourde, who, after an exchange of expressive salutations
+with Raymond began to scrutinise Effie with little admiring gestures and
+smiles. She surveyed her from head to foot; she pulled a ribbon
+straight; she was evidently a flattering governess. Cousin Maria
+explained to Cousin Raymond that they were waiting for one more
+friend--a very dear lady. 'But she lives near, and when people live near
+they are always late--haven't you noticed that?'
+
+'Your hotel is far away, I know, and yet you were the first,' Dora
+said, smiling to Raymond.
+
+'Oh, even if it were round the corner I should be the first--to come to
+_you_!' the young man answered, speaking loud and clear, so that his
+words might serve as a notification to Cousin Maria that his sentiments
+were unchanged.
+
+'You are more French than the French,' Dora returned.
+
+'You say that as if you didn't like them: I hope you don't,' said
+Raymond, still with intentions in regard to his hostess.
+
+'We like them more and more, the more we see of them,' this lady
+interposed; but gently, impersonally, and with an air of not wishing to
+put Raymond in the wrong.
+
+'_Mais j'espère bien!_' cried Mademoiselle Bourde, holding up her head
+and opening her eyes very wide. 'Such friendships as we form, and, I may
+say, as we inspire! _Je m'en rapporte à Effie_', the governess
+continued.
+
+'We have received immense kindness; we have established relations that
+are so pleasant for us, Cousin Raymond. We have the _entrée_ of so many
+charming homes,' Mrs. Temperly remarked.
+
+'But ours is the most charming of all; that I will say,' exclaimed
+Mademoiselle Bourde. 'Isn't it so, Effie?'
+
+'Oh yes, I think it is; especially when we are expecting the Marquise,'
+Effie responded. Then she added, 'But here she comes now; I hear her
+carriage in the court.'
+
+The Marquise too was just one of themselves; she was a part of their
+charming home.
+
+'She _is_ such a love!' said Mrs. Temperly to the foreign gentleman,
+with an irrepressible movement of benevolence.
+
+To which Raymond heard the gentleman reply that, Ah, she was the most
+distinguished woman in France.
+
+'Do you know Madame de Brives?' Effie asked of Raymond, while they were
+waiting for her to come in.
+
+She came in at that moment, and the girl turned away quickly without an
+answer.
+
+'How in the world should I know her?' That was the answer he would have
+been tempted to give. He felt very much out of Cousin Maria's circle.
+The foreign gentleman fingered his moustache and looked at him sidewise.
+The Marquise was a very pretty woman, fair and slender, of middle age,
+with a smile, a complexion, a diamond necklace, of great splendour, and
+a charming manner. Her greeting to her friends was sweet and familiar,
+and was accompanied with much kissing, of a sisterly, motherly,
+daughterly kind; and yet with this expression of simple, almost homely
+sentiment there was something in her that astonished and dazzled. She
+might very well have been, as the foreign young man said, the most
+distinguished woman in France. Dora had not rushed forward to meet her
+with nearly so much _empressement_ as Effie, and this gave him a chance
+to ask the former who she was. The girl replied that she was her
+mother's most intimate friend: to which he rejoined that that was not a
+description; what he wanted to know was her title to this exalted
+position.
+
+'Why, can't you see it? She is beautiful and she is good.'
+
+'I see that she is beautiful; but how can I see that she is good?'
+
+'Good to mamma, I mean, and to Effie and Tishy.'
+
+'And isn't she good to you?'
+
+'Oh, I don't know her so well. But I delight to look at her.'
+
+'Certainly, that must be a great pleasure,' said Raymond. He enjoyed it
+during dinner, which was now served, though his enjoyment was diminished
+by his not finding himself next to Dora. They sat at a small round table
+and he had at his right his Cousin Maria, whom he had taken in. On his
+left was Madame de Brives, who had the foreign gentleman for a
+neighbour. Then came Effie and Mademoiselle Bourde, and Dora was on the
+other side of her mother. Raymond regarded this as marked--a symbol of
+the fact that Cousin Maria would continue to separate them. He remained
+in ignorance of the other gentleman's identity, and remembered how he
+had prophesied at the hotel in New York that his hostess would give up
+introducing people. It was a friendly, easy little family repast, as she
+had said it would be, with just a marquise and a secretary of
+embassy--Raymond ended by guessing that the stranger was a secretary of
+embassy--thrown in. So far from interfering with the family tone Madame
+de Brives directly contributed to it. She eminently justified the
+affection in which she was held in the house; she was in the highest
+degree sociable and sympathetic, and at the same time witty (there was
+no insipidity in Madame de Brives), and was the cause of Raymond's
+making the reflection--as he had made it often in his earlier
+years--that an agreeable Frenchwoman is a triumph of civilisation. This
+did not prevent him from giving the Marquise no more than half of his
+attention; the rest was dedicated to Dora, who, on her side, though in
+common with Effie and Mademoiselle Bourde she bent a frequent,
+interested gaze on the splendid French lady, very often met our young
+man's eyes with mute, vague but, to his sense, none the less valuable
+intimations. It was as if she knew what was going on in his mind (it is
+true that he scarcely knew it himself), and might be trusted to clear
+things up at some convenient hour.
+
+Madame de Brives talked across Raymond, in excellent English, to Cousin
+Maria, but this did not prevent her from being gracious, even
+encouraging, to the young man, who was a little afraid of her and
+thought her a delightful creature. She asked him more questions about
+himself than any of them had done. Her conversation with Mrs. Temperly
+was of an intimate, domestic order, and full of social, personal
+allusions, which Raymond was unable to follow. It appeared to be
+concerned considerably with the private affairs of the old French
+_noblesse_, into whose councils--to judge by the tone of the
+Marquise--Cousin Maria had been admitted by acclamation. Every now and
+then Madame de Brives broke into French, and it was in this tongue that
+she uttered an apostrophe to her hostess: 'Oh, you, _ma toute-bonne_,
+you who have the genius of good sense!' And she appealed to Raymond to
+know if his Cousin Maria had not the genius of good sense--the wisdom of
+the ages. The old lady did not defend herself from the compliment; she
+let it pass, with her motherly, tolerant smile; nor did Raymond attempt
+to defend her, for he felt the justice of his neighbour's description:
+Cousin Maria's good sense was incontestable, magnificent. She took an
+affectionate, indulgent view of most of the persons mentioned, and yet
+her tone was far from being vapid or vague. Madame de Brives usually
+remarked that they were coming very soon again to see her, she did them
+so much good. 'The freshness of your judgment--the freshness of your
+judgment!' she repeated, with a kind of glee, and she narrated that
+Eléonore (a personage unknown to Raymond) had said that she was a woman
+of Plutarch. Mrs. Temperly talked a great deal about the health of their
+friends; she seemed to keep the record of the influenzas and neuralgias
+of a numerous and susceptible circle. He did not find it in him quite to
+agree--the Marquise dropping the statement into his ear at a moment when
+their hostess was making some inquiry of Mademoiselle Bourde--that she
+was a nature absolutely marvellous; but he could easily see that to
+world-worn Parisians her quiet charities of speech and manner, with
+something quaint and rustic in their form, might be restorative and
+salutary. She allowed for everything, yet she was so good, and indeed
+Madame de Brives summed this up before they left the table in saying to
+her, 'Oh, you, my dear, your success, more than any other that has ever
+taken place, has been a _succès de bonté_! Raymond was greatly amused at
+this idea of Cousin Maria's _succès de bonté_: it seemed to him
+delightfully Parisian.
+
+Before dinner was over she inquired of him how he had got on 'in his
+profession' since they last met, and he was too proud, or so he thought,
+to tell her anything but the simple truth, that he had not got on very
+well. If he was to ask her again for Dora it would be just as he was, an
+honourable but not particularly successful man, making no show of lures
+and bribes. 'I am not a remarkably good painter,' he said. 'I judge
+myself perfectly. And then I have been handicapped at home. I have had a
+great many serious bothers and worries.'
+
+'Ah, we were so sorry to hear about your dear father.'
+
+The tone of these words was kind and sincere; still Raymond thought that
+in this case her _bonté_ might have gone a little further. At any rate
+this was the only allusion that she made to his bothers and worries.
+Indeed, she always passed over such things lightly; she was an optimist
+for others as well as for herself, which doubtless had a great deal to
+do (Raymond indulged in the reflection) with the headway she made in a
+society tired of its own pessimism.
+
+After dinner, when they went into the drawing-room, the young man noted
+with complacency that this apartment, vast in itself, communicated with
+two or three others into which it would be easy to pass without
+attracting attention, the doors being replaced by old tapestries, looped
+up and offering no barrier. With pictures and curiosities all over the
+place, there were plenty of pretexts for wandering away. He lost no time
+in asking Dora whether her mother would send Mademoiselle Bourde after
+them if she were to go with him into one of the other rooms, the same
+way she had done--didn't she remember?--that last night in New York, at
+the hotel. Dora didn't admit that she remembered (she was too loyal to
+her mother for that, and Raymond foresaw that this loyalty would be a
+source of irritation to him again, as it had been in the past), but he
+perceived, all the same, that she had not forgotten. She raised no
+difficulty, and a few moments later, while they stood in an adjacent
+_salon_ (he had stopped to admire a bust of Effie, wonderfully living,
+slim and juvenile, the work of one of the sculptors who are the pride of
+contemporary French art), he said to her, looking about him, 'How has
+she done it so fast?'
+
+'Done what, Raymond?'
+
+'Why, done everything. Collected all these wonderful things; become
+intimate with Madame de Brives and every one else; organised her
+life--the life of all of you--so brilliantly.'
+
+'I have never seen mamma in a hurry,' Dora replied.
+
+'Perhaps she will be, now that I have come,' Raymond suggested,
+laughing.
+
+The girl hesitated a moment 'Yes, she was, to invite you--the moment she
+knew you were here.'
+
+'She has been most kind, and I talk like a brute. But I am liable to do
+worse--I give you notice. She won't like it any more than she did
+before, if she thinks I want to make up to you.'
+
+'Don't, Raymond--don't!' the girl exclaimed, gently, but with a look of
+sudden pain.
+
+'Don't what, Dora?--don't make up to you?'
+
+'Don't begin to talk of those things. There is no need. We can go on
+being friends.'
+
+'I will do exactly as you prescribe, and heaven forbid I should annoy
+you. But would you mind answering me a question? It is very particular,
+very intimate.' He stopped, and she only looked at him, saying nothing.
+So he went on: 'Is it an idea of your mother's that you should
+marry--some person here?' He gave her a chance to reply, but still she
+was silent, and he continued: 'Do you mind telling me this? Could it
+ever be an idea of your own?'
+
+'Do you mean some Frenchman?'
+
+Raymond smiled. 'Some protégé of Madame de Brives.'
+
+Then the girl simply gave a slow, sad head-shake which struck him as the
+sweetest, proudest, most suggestive thing in the world. 'Well, well,
+that's all right,' he remarked, cheerfully, and looked again a while at
+the bust, which he thought extraordinarily clever. 'And haven't _you_
+been done by one of these great fellows?'
+
+'Oh dear no; only mamma and Effie. But Tishy is going to be, in a month
+or two. The next time you come you must see her. She remembers you
+vividly.'
+
+'And I remember her that last night, with her reticule. Is she always
+pretty?'
+
+Dora hesitated a moment. 'She is a very sweet little creature, but she
+is not so pretty as Effie.'
+
+'And have none of them wished to do you--none of the painters?'
+
+'Oh, it's not a question of me. I only wish them to let me alone.'
+
+'For me it would be a question of you, if you would sit for me. But I
+daresay your mother wouldn't allow that.'
+
+'No, I think not,' said Dora, smiling.
+
+She smiled, but her companion looked grave. However, not to pursue the
+subject, he asked, abruptly, 'Who is this Madame de Brives?'
+
+'If you lived in Paris you would know. She is very celebrated.'
+
+'Celebrated for what?'
+
+'For everything.'
+
+'And is she good--is she genuine?' Raymond asked. Then, seeing something
+in the girl's face, he added: 'I told you I should be brutal again. Has
+she undertaken to make a great marriage for Effie?'
+
+'I don't know what she has undertaken,' said Dora, impatiently.
+
+'And then for Tishy, when Effie has been disposed of?'
+
+'Poor little Tishy!' the girl continued, rather inscrutably.
+
+'And can she do nothing for you?' the young man inquired.
+
+Her answer surprised him--after a moment. 'She has kindly offered to
+exert herself, but it's no use.'
+
+'Well, that's good. And who is it the young man comes for--the secretary
+of embassy?'
+
+'Oh, he comes for all of us,' said Dora, laughing.
+
+'I suppose your mother would prefer a preference,' Raymond suggested.
+
+To this she replied, irrelevantly, that she thought they had better go
+back; but as Raymond took no notice of the recommendation she mentioned
+that the secretary was no one in particular. At this moment Effie,
+looking very rosy and happy, pushed through the _portière_ with the news
+that her sister must come and bid good-bye to the Marquise. She was
+taking her to the Duchess's--didn't Dora remember? To the _bal
+blanc_--the _sauterie de jeunes filles_.
+
+'I thought we should be called,' said Raymond, as he followed Effie;
+and he remarked that perhaps Madame de Brives would find something
+suitable at the Duchess's.
+
+'I don't know. Mamma would be very particular,' the girl rejoined; and
+this was said simply, sympathetically, without the least appearance of
+deflection from that loyalty which Raymond deplored.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+'You must come to us on the 17th; we expect to have a few people and
+some good music,' Cousin Maria said to him before he quitted the house;
+and he wondered whether, the 17th being still ten days off, this might
+not be an intimation that they could abstain from his society until
+then. He chose, at any rate, not to take it as such, and called several
+times in the interval, late in the afternoon, when the ladies would be
+sure to have come in.
+
+They were always there, and Cousin Maria's welcome was, for each
+occasion, maternal, though when he took leave she made no allusion to
+future meetings--to his coming again; but there were always other
+visitors as well, collected at tea round the great fire of logs, in the
+friendly, brilliant drawing-room where the luxurious was no enemy to the
+casual and Mrs. Temperly's manner of dispensing hospitality recalled to
+our young man somehow certain memories of his youthful time: visits in
+New England, at old homesteads flanked with elms, where a talkative,
+democratic, delightful farmer's wife pressed upon her company rustic
+viands in which she herself had had a hand. Cousin Maria enjoyed the
+services of a distinguished _chef_, and delicious _petits fours_ were
+served with her tea; but Raymond had a sense that to complete the
+impression hot home-made gingerbread should have been produced.
+
+The atmosphere was suffused with the presence of Madame de Brives. She
+was either there or she was just coming or she was just gone; her name,
+her voice, her example and encouragement were in the air. Other ladies
+came and went--sometimes accompanied by gentlemen who looked worn out,
+had waxed moustaches and knew how to talk--and they were sometimes
+designated in the same manner as Madame de Brives; but she remained the
+Marquise _par excellence_, the incarnation of brilliancy and renown. The
+conversation moved among simple but civilised topics, was not dull and,
+considering that it consisted largely of personalities, was not
+ill-natured. Least of all was it scandalous, for the girls were always
+there, Cousin Maria not having thought it in the least necessary, in
+order to put herself in accord with French traditions, to relegate her
+daughters to the middle distance. They occupied a considerable part of
+the foreground, in the prettiest, most modest, most becoming attitudes.
+
+It was Cousin Maria's theory of her own behaviour that she did in Paris
+simply as she had always done; and though this would not have been a
+complete account of the matter Raymond could not fail to notice the good
+sense and good taste with which she laid down her lines and the quiet
+_bonhomie_ of the authority with which she caused the tone of the
+American home to be respected. Scandal stayed outside, not simply
+because Effie and Tishy were there, but because, even if Cousin Maria
+had received alone, she never would have received evil-speakers.
+Indeed, for Raymond, who had been accustomed to think that in a general
+way he knew pretty well what the French capital was, this was a strange,
+fresh Paris altogether, destitute of the salt that seasoned it for most
+palates, and yet not insipid nor innutritive. He marvelled at Cousin
+Maria's air, in such a city, of knowing, of recognising nothing bad: all
+the more that it represented an actual state of mind. He used to wonder
+sometimes what she would do and how she would feel if some day, in
+consequence of researches made by the Marquise in the _grand monde_, she
+should find herself in possession of a son-in-law formed according to
+one of the types of which _he_ had impressions. However, it was not
+credible that Madame de Brives would play her a trick. There were
+moments when Raymond almost wished she might--to see how Cousin Maria
+would handle the gentleman.
+
+Dora was almost always taken up by visitors, and he had scarcely any
+direct conversation with her. She was there, and he was glad she was
+there, and she knew he was glad (he knew that), but this was almost all
+the communion he had with her. She was mild, exquisitely mild--this was
+the term he mentally applied to her now--and it amply sufficed him, with
+the conviction he had that she was not stupid. She attended to the tea
+(for Mademoiselle Bourde was not always free), she handed the _petits
+fours_, she rang the bell when people went out; and it was in connection
+with these offices that the idea came to him once--he was rather ashamed
+of it afterward--that she was the Cinderella of the house, the domestic
+drudge, the one for whom there was no career, as it was useless for the
+Marquise to take up her case. He was ashamed of this fancy, I say, and
+yet it came back to him; he was even surprised that it had not occurred
+to him before. Her sisters were neither ugly nor proud (Tishy, indeed,
+was almost touchingly delicate and timid, with exceedingly pretty
+points, yet with a little appealing, old-womanish look, as if,
+small--very small--as she was, she was afraid she shouldn't grow any
+more); but her mother, like the mother in the fairy-tale, was a _femme
+forte_. Madame de Brives could do nothing for Dora, not absolutely
+because she was too plain, but because she would never lend herself, and
+that came to the same thing. Her mother accepted her as recalcitrant,
+but Cousin Maria's attitude, at the best, could only be resignation. She
+would respect her child's preferences, she would never put on the screw;
+but this would not make her love the child any more. So Raymond
+interpreted certain signs, which at the same time he felt to be very
+slight, while the conversation in Mrs. Temperly's _salon_ (this was its
+preponderant tendency) rambled among questions of bric-à-brac, of where
+Tishy's portrait should be placed when it was finished, and the current
+prices of old Gobelins. _Ces dames_ were not in the least above the
+discussion of prices.
+
+On the 17th it was easy to see that more lamps than usual had been
+lighted. They streamed through all the windows of the charming hotel and
+mingled with the radiance of the carriage-lanterns, which followed each
+other slowly, in couples, in a close, long rank, into the fine sonorous
+court, where the high stepping of valuable horses was sharp on the
+stones, and up to the ruddy portico. The night was wet, not with a
+downpour, but with showers interspaced by starry patches, which only
+added to the glitter of the handsome, clean Parisian surfaces. The
+_sergents de ville_ were about the place, and seemed to make the
+occasion important and official. These night aspects of Paris in the
+_beaux quartiers_ had always for Raymond a particularly festive
+association, and as he passed from his cab under the wide permanent tin
+canopy, painted in stripes like an awning, which protected the low
+steps, it seemed to him odder than ever that all this established
+prosperity should be Cousin Maria's.
+
+If the thought of how well she did it bore him company from the
+threshold, it deepened to admiration by the time he had been half an
+hour in the place. She stood near the entrance with her two elder
+daughters, distributing the most familiar, most encouraging smiles,
+together with hand-shakes which were in themselves a whole system of
+hospitality. If her party was grand Cousin Maria was not; she indulged
+in no assumption of stateliness and no attempt at graduated welcomes. It
+seemed to Raymond that it was only because it would have taken too much
+time that she didn't kiss every one. Effie looked lovely and just a
+little frightened, which was exactly what she ought to have done; and he
+noticed that among the arriving guests those who were not intimate
+(which he could not tell from Mrs. Temperly's manner, but could from
+their own) recognised her as a daughter much more quickly than they
+recognised Dora, who hung back disinterestedly, as if not to challenge
+their discernment, while the current passed her, keeping her little
+sister in position on its brink meanwhile by the tenderest small
+gesture.
+
+'May I talk with you a little, later?' he asked of Dora, with only a
+few seconds for the question, as people were pressing behind him. She
+answered evasively that there would be very little talk--they would all
+have to listen--it was very serious; and the next moment he had received
+a programme from the hand of a monumental yet gracious personage who
+stood beyond and who had a silver chain round his neck.
+
+The place was arranged for music, and how well arranged he saw later,
+when every one was seated, spaciously, luxuriously, without pushing or
+over-peeping, and the finest talents in Paris performed selections at
+which the best taste had presided. The singers and players were all
+stars of the first magnitude. Raymond was fond of music and he wondered
+whose taste it had been. He made up his mind it was Dora's--it was only
+she who could have conceived a combination so exquisite; and he said to
+himself: 'How they all pull together! She is not in it, she is not of
+it, and yet she too works for the common end.' And by 'all' he meant
+also Mademoiselle Bourde and the Marquise. This impression made him feel
+rather hopeless, as if, _en fin de compte_, Cousin Maria were too large
+an adversary. Great as was the pleasure of being present on an occasion
+so admirably organised, of sitting there in a beautiful room, in a
+still, attentive, brilliant company, with all the questions of
+temperature, space, light and decoration solved to the gratification of
+every sense, and listening to the best artists doing their best--happily
+constituted as our young man was to enjoy such a privilege as this, the
+total effect was depressing: it made him feel as if the gods were not
+on his side.
+
+'And does she do it so well without a man? There must be so many details
+a woman can't tackle,' he said to himself; for even counting in the
+Marquise and Mademoiselle Bourde this only made a multiplication of
+petticoats. Then it came over him that she _was_ a man as well as a
+woman--the masculine element was included in her nature. He was sure
+that she bought her horses without being cheated, and very few men could
+do that. She had the American national quality--she had 'faculty' in a
+supreme degree. 'Faculty--faculty,' the voices of the quartette of
+singers seemed to repeat, in the quick movement of a composition they
+rendered beautifully, while they swelled and went faster, till the thing
+became a joyous chant of praise, a glorification of Cousin Maria's
+practical genius.
+
+During the intermission, in the middle of the concert, people changed
+places more or less and circulated, so that, walking about at this time,
+he came upon the Marquise, who, in her sympathetic, demonstrative way,
+appeared to be on the point of clasping her hostess in her arms.
+'Décidément, ma bonne, il n'y a que vous! C'est une perfection----' he
+heard her say. To which, gratified but unelated, Cousin Maria replied,
+according to her simple, sociable wont: 'Well, it _does_ seem quite a
+successful occasion. If it will only keep on to the end!'
+
+Raymond, wandering far, found himself in a world that was mainly quite
+new to him, and explained his ignorance of it by reflecting that the
+people were probably celebrated: so many of them had decorations and
+stars and a quiet of manner that could only be accounted for by renown.
+There were plenty of Americans with no badge but a certain fine
+negativeness, and _they_ were quiet for a reason which by this time had
+become very familiar to Raymond: he had heard it so often mentioned that
+his country-people were supremely 'adaptable.' He tried to get hold of
+Dora, but he saw that her mother had arranged things beautifully to keep
+her occupied with other people; so at least he interpreted the
+fact--after all very natural--that she had half a dozen fluttered young
+girls on her mind, whom she was providing with programmes, seats, ices,
+occasional murmured remarks and general support and protection. When the
+concert was over she supplied them with further entertainment in the
+form of several young men who had pliable backs and flashing breastpins
+and whom she inarticulately introduced to them, which gave her still
+more to do, as after this serious step she had to stay and watch all
+parties. It was strange to Raymond to see her transformed by her mother
+into a precocious duenna. Him she introduced to no young girl, and he
+knew not whether to regard this as cold neglect or as high
+consideration. If he had liked he might have taken it as a sweet
+intimation that she knew he couldn't care for any girl but her.
+
+On the whole he was glad, because it left him free--free to get hold of
+her mother, which by this time he had boldly determined to do. The
+conception was high, inasmuch as Cousin Maria's attention was obviously
+required by the ambassadors and other grandees who had flocked to do her
+homage. Nevertheless, while supper was going on (he wanted none, and
+neither apparently did she), he collared her, as he phrased it to
+himself, in just the right place--on the threshold of the conservatory.
+She was flanked on either side with a foreigner of distinction, but he
+didn't care for her foreigners now. Besides, a conservatory was meant
+only for couples; it was a sign of her comprehensive sociability that
+she should have been rambling among the palms and orchids with a double
+escort. Her friends would wish to quit her but would not wish to appear
+to give way to each other; and Raymond felt that he was relieving them
+both (though he didn't care) when he asked her to be so good as to give
+him a few minutes' conversation. He made her go back with him into the
+conservatory: it was the only thing he had ever made her do, or probably
+ever would. She began to talk about the great Gregorini--how it had been
+too sweet of her to repeat one of her songs, when it had really been
+understood in advance that repetitions were not expected. Raymond had no
+interest at present in the great Gregorini. He asked Cousin Maria
+vehemently if she remembered telling him in New York--that night at the
+hotel, five years before--that when he should have followed them to
+Paris he would be free to address her on the subject of Dora. She had
+given him a promise that she would listen to him in this case, and now
+he must keep her up to the mark. It was impossible to see her alone,
+but, at whatever inconvenience to herself, he must insist on her giving
+him his opportunity.
+
+'About Dora, Cousin Raymond?' she asked, blandly and kindly--almost as
+if she didn't exactly know who Dora was.
+
+'Surely you haven't forgotten what passed between us the evening before
+you left America. I was in love with her then and I have been in love
+with her ever since. I told you so then, and you stopped me off, but you
+gave me leave to make another appeal to you in the future. I make it
+now--this is the only way I have--and I think you ought to listen to it.
+Five years have passed, and I love her more than ever. I have behaved
+like a saint in the interval: I haven't attempted to practise upon her
+without your knowledge.'
+
+'I am so glad; but she would have let me know,' said Cousin Maria,
+looking round the conservatory as if to see if the plants were all
+there.
+
+'No doubt. I don't know what you do to her. But I trust that to-day your
+opposition falls--in face of the proof that we have given you of mutual
+fidelity.'
+
+'Fidelity?' Cousin Maria repeated, smiling.
+
+'Surely--unless you mean to imply that Dora has given me up. I have
+reason to believe that she hasn't.'
+
+'I think she will like better to remain just as she is.'
+
+'Just as she is?'
+
+'I mean, not to make a choice,' Cousin Maria went on, smiling.
+
+Raymond hesitated a moment. 'Do you mean that you have tried to make her
+make one?'
+
+At this the good lady broke into a laugh. 'My dear Raymond, how little
+you must think I know my child!'
+
+'Perhaps, if you haven't tried to make her, you have tried to prevent
+her. Haven't you told her I am unsuccessful, I am poor?'
+
+She stopped him, laying her hand with unaffected solicitude on his arm.
+'_Are_ you poor, my dear? I should be so sorry!'
+
+'Never mind; I can support a wife,' said the young man.
+
+'It wouldn't matter, because I am happy to say that Dora has something
+of her own,' Cousin Maria went on, with her imperturbable candour. 'Her
+father thought that was the best way to arrange it. I had quite
+forgotten my opposition, as you call it; that was so long ago. Why, she
+was only a little girl. Wasn't that the ground I took? Well, dear, she's
+older now, and you can say anything to her you like. But I do think she
+wants to stay----' And she looked up at him, cheerily.
+
+'Wants to stay?'
+
+'With Effie and Tishy.'
+
+'Ah, Cousin Maria,' the young man exclaimed, 'you are modest about
+yourself!'
+
+'Well, we are all together. Now is that all? I _must_ see if there is
+enough champagne. Certainly--you can say to her what you like. But
+twenty years hence she will be just as she is to-day; that's how I see
+her.'
+
+'Lord, what is it you do to her?' Raymond groaned, as he accompanied his
+hostess back to the crowded rooms.
+
+He knew exactly what she would have replied if she had been a
+Frenchwoman; she would have said to him, triumphantly, overwhelmingly:
+'Que voulez-vous? Elle adore sa mère!' She was, however, only a
+Californian, unacquainted with the language of epigram, and her answer
+consisted simply of the words: 'I am sorry you have ideas that make you
+unhappy. I guess you are the only person here who hasn't enjoyed
+himself to-night.'
+
+Raymond repeated to himself, gloomily, for the rest of the evening,
+'Elle adore sa mère--elle adore sa mère!' He remained very late, and
+when but twenty people were left and he had observed that the Marquise,
+passing her hand into Mrs. Temperly's arm, led her aside as if for some
+important confabulation (some new light doubtless on what might be hoped
+for Effie), he persuaded Dora to let the rest of the guests depart in
+peace (apparently her mother had told her to look out for them to the
+very last), and come with him into some quiet corner. They found an
+empty sofa in the outlasting lamp-light, and there the girl sat down
+with him. Evidently she knew what he was going to say, or rather she
+thought she did; for in fact, after a little, after he had told her that
+he had spoken to her mother and she had told him he might speak to
+_her_, he said things that she could not very well have expected.
+
+'Is it true that you wish to remain with Effie and Tishy? That's what
+your mother calls it when she means that you will give me up.'
+
+'How can I give you up?' the girl demanded. 'Why can't we go on being
+friends, as I asked you the evening you dined here?'
+
+'What do you mean by friends?'
+
+'Well, not making everything impossible.'
+
+'You didn't think anything impossible of old,' Raymond rejoined,
+bitterly. 'I thought you liked me then, and I have even thought so
+since.'
+
+'I like you more than I like any one. I like you so much that it's my
+principal happiness.'
+
+'Then why are there impossibilities?'
+
+'Oh, some day I'll tell you!' said Dora, with a quick sigh. 'Perhaps
+after Tishy is married. And meanwhile, are you not going to remain in
+Paris, at any rate? Isn't your work here? You are not here for me only.
+You can come to the house often. That's what I mean by our being
+friends.'
+
+Her companion sat looking at her with a gloomy stare, as if he were
+trying to make up the deficiencies in her logic.
+
+'After Tishy is married? I don't see what that has to do with it. Tishy
+is little more than a baby; she may not be married for ten years.'
+
+'That is very true.'
+
+'And you dispose of the interval by a simple "meanwhile"? My dear Dora,
+your talk is strange,' Raymond continued, with his voice passionately
+lowered. 'And I may come to the house--often? How often do you mean--in
+ten years? Five times--or even twenty?' He saw that her eyes were
+filling with tears, but he went on: 'It has been coming over me little
+by little (I notice things very much if I have a reason), and now I
+think I understand your mother's system.'
+
+'Don't say anything against my mother,' the girl broke in, beseechingly.
+
+'I shall not say anything unjust. That is if I am unjust you must tell
+me. This is my idea, and your speaking of Tishy's marriage confirms it.
+To begin with she has had immense plans for you all; she wanted each of
+you to be a princess or a duchess--I mean a good one. But she has had to
+give _you_ up.'
+
+'No one has asked for me,' said Dora, with unexpected honesty.
+
+'I don't believe it. Dozens of fellows have asked for you, and you have
+shaken your head in that divine way (divine for me, I mean) in which you
+shook it the other night.'
+
+'My mother has never said an unkind word to me in her life,' the girl
+declared, in answer to this.
+
+'I never said she had, and I don't know why you take the precaution of
+telling me so. But whatever you tell me or don't tell me,' Raymond
+pursued, 'there is one thing I see very well--that so long as you won't
+marry a duke Cousin Maria has found means to prevent you from marrying
+till your sisters have made rare alliances.'
+
+'Has found means?' Dora repeated, as if she really wondered what was in
+his thought.
+
+'Of course I mean only through your affection for her. How she works
+that, you know best yourself.'
+
+'It's delightful to have a mother of whom every one is so fond,' said
+Dora, smiling.
+
+'She is a most remarkable woman. Don't think for a moment that I don't
+appreciate her. You don't want to quarrel with her, and I daresay you
+are right.'
+
+'Why, Raymond, of course I'm right!'
+
+'It proves you are not madly in love with me. It seems to me that for
+you _I_ would have quarrelled----'
+
+'Raymond, Raymond!' she interrupted, with the tears again rising.
+
+He sat looking at her, and then he said, 'Well, when they _are_
+married?'
+
+'I don't know the future--I don't know what may happen.'
+
+'You mean that Tishy is so small--she doesn't grow--and will therefore
+be difficult? Yes, she _is_ small.' There was bitterness in his heart,
+but he laughed at his own words. 'However, Effie ought to go off
+easily,' he went on, as Dora said nothing. 'I really wonder that, with
+the Marquise and all, she hasn't gone off yet. This thing, to-night,
+ought to do a great deal for her.'
+
+Dora listened to him with a fascinated gaze; it was as if he expressed
+things for her and relieved her spirit by making them clear and
+coherent. Her eyes managed, each time, to be dry again, and now a
+somewhat wan, ironical smile moved her lips. 'Mamma knows what she
+wants--she knows what she will take. And she will take only that.'
+
+'Precisely--something tremendous. And she is willing to wait, eh? Well,
+Effie is very young, and she's charming. But she won't be charming if
+she has an ugly appendage in the shape of a poor unsuccessful American
+artist (not even a good one), whose father went bankrupt, for a
+brother-in-law. That won't smooth the way, of course; and if a prince is
+to come into the family, the family must be kept tidy to receive him.'
+Dora got up quickly, as if she could bear his lucidity no longer, but he
+kept close to her as she walked away. 'And she can sacrifice you like
+that, without a scruple, without a pang?'
+
+'I might have escaped--if I would marry,' the girl replied.
+
+'Do you call that escaping? She has succeeded with you, but is it a part
+of what the Marquise calls her _succès de bonté_?'
+
+'Nothing that you can say (and it's far worse than the reality) can
+prevent her being delightful.'
+
+'Yes, that's your loyalty, and I could shoot you for it!' he exclaimed,
+making her pause on the threshold of the adjoining room. 'So you think
+it will take about ten years, considering Tishy's size--or want of
+size?' He himself again was the only one to laugh at this. 'Your mother
+is closeted, as much as she can be closeted now, with Madame de Brives,
+and perhaps this time they are really settling something.'
+
+'I have thought that before and nothing has come. Mamma wants something
+so good; not only every advantage and every grandeur, but every virtue
+under heaven, and every guarantee. Oh, she wouldn't expose them!'
+
+'I see; that's where her goodness comes in and where the Marquise is
+impressed' He took Dora's hand; he felt that he must go, for she
+exasperated him with her irony that stopped short and her patience that
+wouldn't stop. 'You simply propose that I should wait?' he said, as he
+held her hand.
+
+'It seems to me that you might, if _I_ can.' Then the girl remarked,
+'Now that you are here, it's far better.'
+
+There was a sweetness in this which made him, after glancing about a
+moment, raise her hand to his lips. He went away without taking leave of
+Cousin Maria, who was still out of sight, her conference with the
+Marquise apparently not having terminated. This looked (he reflected as
+he passed out) as if something might come of it. However, before he went
+home he fell again into a gloomy forecast. The weather had changed, the
+stars were all out, and he walked the empty streets for an hour.
+Tishy's perverse refusal to grow and Cousin Maria's conscientious
+exactions promised him a terrible probation. And in those intolerable
+years what further interference, what meddlesome, effective pressure,
+might not make itself felt? It may be added that Tishy is decidedly a
+dwarf and his probation is not yet over.
+
+
+THE END
+
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+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of A London Life, and Other Tales, by Henry James.
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+/*<![CDATA[  XML blockout */
+<!--
+    p {  margin-top: .75em;
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+            /*  visibility: hidden;  */
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+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar;
+Mrs. Temperly, by Henry James
+
+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: A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly
+
+Author: Henry James
+
+Release Date: May 17, 2008 [EBook #25500]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LONDON LIFE ET AL. ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Martin Pettit and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1>A LONDON LIFE</h1>
+
+<h2>AND OTHER TALES</h2>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="center"><img src="images/logo.jpg" width='200' height='59' alt="Publisher's logo" /></div>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h1>A LONDON LIFE</h1>
+
+<h1>THE PATAGONIA</h1>
+
+<h1>THE LIAR</h1>
+
+<h1>MRS. TEMPERLY</h1>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>HENRY JAMES</h2>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h4>London</h4>
+
+<h3>MACMILLAN AND CO.</h3>
+
+<h4>AND NEW YORK<br />1889</h4>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>COPYRIGHT 1889<br /><i>BY</i><br />HENRY JAMES</h3>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<div class="index">
+<ul>
+<li><a href="#A_LONDON_LIFE"><span class="smcap">A London Life</span></a>
+<ul>
+	<li class="subitem"><a href="#I">I</a></li>
+	<li class="subitem"><a href="#II">II</a></li>
+	<li class="subitem"><a href="#III">III</a></li>
+	<li class="subitem"><a href="#IV">IV</a></li>
+	<li class="subitem"><a href="#V">V</a></li>
+	<li class="subitem"><a href="#VI">VI</a></li>
+	<li class="subitem"><a href="#VII">VII</a></li>
+	<li class="subitem"><a href="#VIII">VIII</a></li>
+	<li class="subitem"><a href="#IX">IX</a></li>
+	<li class="subitem"><a href="#X">X</a></li>
+	<li class="subitem"><a href="#XI">XI</a></li>
+	<li class="subitem"><a href="#XII">XII</a></li>
+	<li class="subitem"><a href="#XIII">XIII</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+<li><a href="#THE_PATAGONIA"><span class="smcap">The Patagonia</span></a>
+<ul>
+	<li class="subitem"><a href="#AI">I</a></li>
+	<li class="subitem"><a href="#AII">II</a></li>
+	<li class="subitem"><a href="#AIII">III</a></li>
+	<li class="subitem"><a href="#AIV">IV</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+<li><a href="#THE_LIAR"><span class="smcap">The Liar</span></a>
+<ul>
+	<li class="subitem"><a href="#BI">I</a></li>
+	<li class="subitem"><a href="#BII">II</a></li>
+	<li class="subitem"><a href="#BIII">III</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+<li><a href="#MRS_TEMPERLY"><span class="smcap">Mrs. Temperly</span></a>
+<ul>
+	<li class="subitem"><a href="#CI">I</a></li>
+	<li class="subitem"><a href="#CII">II</a></li>
+	<li class="subitem"><a href="#CIII">III</a></li>
+	<li class="subitem"><a href="#CIV">IV</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+<li><a href="#ADVERTISEMENTS"><span class="smcap">Advertisements</span></a></li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>NOTE</h3>
+
+<p class="center">The last of the following four Tales originally appeared under a different name.</p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+<h1><a name="A_LONDON_LIFE" id="A_LONDON_LIFE"></a>A LONDON LIFE</h1>
+
+<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h2>
+
+<p>It was raining, apparently, but she didn't mind&mdash;she would put on stout
+shoes and walk over to Plash. She was restless and so fidgety that it
+was a pain; there were strange voices that frightened her&mdash;they threw
+out the ugliest intimations&mdash;in the empty rooms at home. She would see
+old Mrs. Berrington, whom she liked because she was so simple, and old
+Lady Davenant, who was staying with her and who was interesting for
+reasons with which simplicity had nothing to do. Then she would come
+back to the children's tea&mdash;she liked even better the last half-hour in
+the schoolroom, with the bread and butter, the candles and the red fire,
+the little spasms of confidence of Miss Steet the nursery-governess, and
+the society of Scratch and Parson (their nicknames would have made you
+think they were dogs) her small, magnificent nephews, whose flesh was so
+firm yet so soft and their eyes so charming when they listened to
+stories. Plash was the dower-house and about a mile and a half, through
+the park, from Mellows. It was not raining after all, though it had
+been; there was only a grayness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> in the air, covering all the strong,
+rich green, and a pleasant damp, earthy smell, and the walks were smooth
+and hard, so that the expedition was not arduous.</p>
+
+<p>The girl had been in England more than a year, but there were some
+satisfactions she had not got used to yet nor ceased to enjoy, and one
+of these was the accessibility, the convenience of the country. Within
+the lodge-gates or without them it seemed all alike a park&mdash;it was all
+so intensely 'property.' The very name of Plash, which was quaint and
+old, had not lost its effect upon her, nor had it become indifferent to
+her that the place was a dower-house&mdash;the little red-walled, ivied
+asylum to which old Mrs. Berrington had retired when, on his father's
+death, her son came into the estates. Laura Wing thought very ill of the
+custom of the expropriation of the widow in the evening of her days,
+when honour and abundance should attend her more than ever; but her
+condemnation of this wrong forgot itself when so many of the
+consequences looked right&mdash;barring a little dampness: which was the fate
+sooner or later of most of her unfavourable judgments of English
+institutions. Iniquities in such a country somehow always made pictures;
+and there had been dower-houses in the novels, mainly of fashionable
+life, on which her later childhood was fed. The iniquity did not as a
+general thing prevent these retreats from being occupied by old ladies
+with wonderful reminiscences and rare voices, whose reverses had not
+deprived them of a great deal of becoming hereditary lace. In the park,
+half-way, suddenly, Laura stopped, with a pain&mdash;a moral pang&mdash;that
+almost took away her breath; she looked at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> misty glades and the
+dear old beeches (so familiar they were now and loved as much as if she
+owned them); they seemed in their unlighted December bareness conscious
+of all the trouble, and they made her conscious of all the change. A
+year ago she knew nothing, and now she knew almost everything; and the
+worst of her knowledge (or at least the worst of the fears she had
+raised upon it) had come to her in that beautiful place, where
+everything was so full of peace and purity, of the air of happy
+submission to immemorial law. The place was the same but her eyes were
+different: they had seen such sad, bad things in so short a time. Yes,
+the time was short and everything was strange. Laura Wing was too uneasy
+even to sigh, and as she walked on she lightened her tread almost as if
+she were going on tiptoe.</p>
+
+<p>At Plash the house seemed to shine in the wet air&mdash;the tone of the
+mottled red walls and the limited but perfect lawn to be the work of an
+artist's brush. Lady Davenant was in the drawing-room, in a low chair by
+one of the windows, reading the second volume of a novel. There was the
+same look of crisp chintz, of fresh flowers wherever flowers could be
+put, of a wall-paper that was in the bad taste of years before, but had
+been kept so that no more money should be spent, and was almost covered
+over with amateurish drawings and superior engravings, framed in narrow
+gilt with large margins. The room had its bright, durable, sociable air,
+the air that Laura Wing liked in so many English things&mdash;that of being
+meant for daily life, for long periods, for uses of high decency. But
+more than ever to-day was it incongruous that such an habitation, with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
+its chintzes and its British poets, its well-worn carpets and domestic
+art&mdash;the whole aspect so unmeretricious and sincere&mdash;should have to do
+with lives that were not right. Of course however it had to do only
+indirectly, and the wrong life was not old Mrs. Berrington's nor yet
+Lady Davenant's. If Selina and Selina's doings were not an implication
+of such an interior any more than it was for them an explication, this
+was because she had come from so far off, was a foreign element
+altogether. Yet it was there she had found her occasion, all the
+influences that had altered her so (her sister had a theory that she was
+metamorphosed, that when she was young she seemed born for innocence) if
+not at Plash at least at Mellows, for the two places after all had ever
+so much in common, and there were rooms at the great house that looked
+remarkably like Mrs. Berrington's parlour.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Davenant always had a head-dress of a peculiar style, original and
+appropriate&mdash;a sort of white veil or cape which came in a point to the
+place on her forehead where her smooth hair began to show and then
+covered her shoulders. It was always exquisitely fresh and was partly
+the reason why she struck the girl rather as a fine portrait than as a
+living person. And yet she was full of life, old as she was, and had
+been made finer, sharper and more delicate, by nearly eighty years of
+it. It was the hand of a master that Laura seemed to see in her face,
+the witty expression of which shone like a lamp through the ground-glass
+of her good breeding; nature was always an artist, but not so much of an
+artist as that. Infinite knowledge the girl attributed to her, and that
+was why she liked her a little <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>fearfully. Lady Davenant was not as a
+general thing fond of the young or of invalids; but she made an
+exception as regards youth for the little girl from America, the sister
+of the daughter-in-law of her dearest friend. She took an interest in
+Laura partly perhaps to make up for the tepidity with which she regarded
+Selina. At all events she had assumed the general responsibility of
+providing her with a husband. She pretended to care equally little for
+persons suffering from other forms of misfortune, but she was capable of
+finding excuses for them when they had been sufficiently to blame. She
+expected a great deal of attention, always wore gloves in the house and
+never had anything in her hand but a book. She neither embroidered nor
+wrote&mdash;only read and talked. She had no special conversation for girls
+but generally addressed them in the same manner that she found effective
+with her contemporaries. Laura Wing regarded this as an honour, but very
+often she didn't know what the old lady meant and was ashamed to ask
+her. Once in a while Lady Davenant was ashamed to tell. Mrs. Berrington
+had gone to a cottage to see an old woman who was ill&mdash;an old woman who
+had been in her service for years, in the old days. Unlike her friend
+she was fond of young people and invalids, but she was less interesting
+to Laura, except that it was a sort of fascination to wonder how she
+could have such abysses of placidity. She had long cheeks and kind eyes
+and was devoted to birds; somehow she always made Laura think secretly
+of a tablet of fine white soap&mdash;nothing else was so smooth and clean.</p>
+
+<p>'And what's going on <i>chez vous</i>&mdash;who is there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> and what are they
+doing?' Lady Davenant asked, after the first greetings.</p>
+
+<p>'There isn't any one but me&mdash;and the children&mdash;and the governess.'</p>
+
+<p>'What, no party&mdash;no private theatricals? How do you live?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, it doesn't take so much to keep me going,' said Laura. 'I believe
+there were some people coming on Saturday, but they have been put off,
+or they can't come. Selina has gone to London.'</p>
+
+<p>'And what has she gone to London for?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I don't know&mdash;she has so many things to do.'</p>
+
+<p>'And where is Mr. Berrington?'</p>
+
+<p>'He has been away somewhere; but I believe he is coming back
+to-morrow&mdash;or next day.'</p>
+
+<p>'Or the day after?' said Lady Davenant. 'And do they never go away
+together?' she continued after a pause.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, sometimes&mdash;but they don't come back together.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you mean they quarrel on the way?'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know what they do, Lady Davenant&mdash;I don't understand,' Laura
+Wing replied, with an unguarded tremor in her voice. 'I don't think they
+are very happy.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then they ought to be ashamed of themselves. They have got everything
+so comfortable&mdash;what more do they want?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, and the children are such dears!'</p>
+
+<p>'Certainly&mdash;charming. And is she a good person, the present governess?
+Does she look after them properly?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes&mdash;she seems very good&mdash;it's a blessing. But I think she's unhappy
+too.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p><p>'Bless us, what a house! Does she want some one to make love to her?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, but she wants Selina to see&mdash;to appreciate,' said the young girl.</p>
+
+<p>'And doesn't she appreciate&mdash;when she leaves them that way quite to the
+young woman?'</p>
+
+<p>'Miss Steet thinks she doesn't notice how they come on&mdash;she is never
+there.'</p>
+
+<p>'And has she wept and told you so? You know they are always crying,
+governesses&mdash;whatever line you take. You shouldn't draw them out too
+much&mdash;they are always looking for a chance. She ought to be thankful to
+be let alone. You mustn't be too sympathetic&mdash;it's mostly wasted,' the
+old lady went on.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I'm not&mdash;I assure you I'm not,' said Laura Wing. 'On the contrary,
+I see so much about me that I don't sympathise with.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, you mustn't be an impertinent little American either!' her
+interlocutress exclaimed. Laura sat with her for half an hour and the
+conversation took a turn through the affairs of Plash and through Lady
+Davenant's own, which were visits in prospect and ideas suggested more
+or less directly by them as well as by the books she had been reading, a
+heterogeneous pile on a table near her, all of them new and clean, from
+a circulating library in London. The old woman had ideas and Laura liked
+them, though they often struck her as very sharp and hard, because at
+Mellows she had no diet of that sort. There had never been an idea in
+the house, since she came at least, and there was wonderfully little
+reading. Lady Davenant still went from country-house to country-house
+all winter,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> as she had done all her life, and when Laura asked her she
+told her the places and the people she probably should find at each of
+them. Such an enumeration was much less interesting to the girl than it
+would have been a year before: she herself had now seen a great many
+places and people and the freshness of her curiosity was gone. But she
+still cared for Lady Davenant's descriptions and judgments, because they
+were the thing in her life which (when she met the old woman from time
+to time) most represented talk&mdash;the rare sort of talk that was not mere
+chaff. That was what she had dreamed of before she came to England, but
+in Selina's set the dream had not come true. In Selina's set people only
+harried each other from morning till night with extravagant
+accusations&mdash;it was all a kind of horse-play of false charges. When Lady
+Davenant was accusatory it was within the limits of perfect
+verisimilitude.</p>
+
+<p>Laura waited for Mrs. Berrington to come in but she failed to appear, so
+that the girl gathered her waterproof together with an intention of
+departure. But she was secretly reluctant, because she had walked over
+to Plash with a vague hope that some soothing hand would be laid upon
+her pain. If there was no comfort at the dower-house she knew not where
+to look for it, for there was certainly none at home&mdash;not even with Miss
+Steet and the children. It was not Lady Davenant's leading
+characteristic that she was comforting, and Laura had not aspired to be
+coaxed or coddled into forgetfulness: she wanted rather to be taught a
+certain fortitude&mdash;how to live and hold up one's head even while knowing
+that things were very bad. A brazen indifference<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>&mdash;it was not exactly
+that that she wished to acquire; but were there not some sorts of
+indifference that were philosophic and noble? Could Lady Davenant not
+teach them, if she should take the trouble? The girl remembered to have
+heard that there had been years before some disagreeable occurrences in
+<i>her</i> family; it was not a race in which the ladies inveterately turned
+out well. Yet who to-day had the stamp of honour and credit&mdash;of a past
+which was either no one's business or was part and parcel of a fair
+public record&mdash;and carried it so much as a matter of course? She herself
+had been a good woman and that was the only thing that told in the long
+run. It was Laura's own idea to be a good woman and that this would make
+it an advantage for Lady Davenant to show her how not to feel too much.
+As regards feeling enough, that was a branch in which she had no need to
+take lessons.</p>
+
+<p>The old woman liked cutting new books, a task she never remitted to her
+maid, and while her young visitor sat there she went through the greater
+part of a volume with the paper-knife. She didn't proceed very
+fast&mdash;there was a kind of patient, awkward fumbling of her aged hands;
+but as she passed her knife into the last leaf she said abruptly&mdash;'And
+how is your sister going on? She's very light!' Lady Davenant added
+before Laura had time to reply.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Lady Davenant!' the girl exclaimed, vaguely, slowly, vexed with
+herself as soon as she had spoken for having uttered the words as a
+protest, whereas she wished to draw her companion out. To correct this
+impression she threw back her waterproof.</p>
+
+<p>'Have you ever spoken to her?' the old woman asked.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span></p><p>'Spoken to her?'</p>
+
+<p>'About her behaviour. I daresay you haven't&mdash;you Americans have such a
+lot of false delicacy. I daresay Selina wouldn't speak to you if you
+were in her place (excuse the supposition!) and yet she is capable&mdash;&mdash;'
+But Lady Davenant paused, preferring not to say of what young Mrs.
+Berrington was capable. 'It's a bad house for a girl.'</p>
+
+<p>'It only gives me a horror,' said Laura, pausing in turn.</p>
+
+<p>'A horror of your sister? That's not what one should aim at. You ought
+to get married&mdash;and the sooner the better. My dear child, I have
+neglected you dreadfully.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am much obliged to you, but if you think marriage looks to me happy!'
+the girl exclaimed, laughing without hilarity.</p>
+
+<p>'Make it happy for some one else and you will be happy enough yourself.
+You ought to get out of your situation.'</p>
+
+<p>Laura Wing was silent a moment, though this was not a new reflection to
+her. 'Do you mean that I should leave Selina altogether? I feel as if I
+should abandon her&mdash;as if I should be a coward.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, my dear, it isn't the business of little girls to serve as
+parachutes to fly-away wives! That's why if you haven't spoken to her
+you needn't take the trouble at this time of day. Let her go&mdash;let her
+go!'</p>
+
+<p>'Let her go?' Laura repeated, staring.</p>
+
+<p>Her companion gave her a sharper glance. 'Let her stay, then! Only get
+out of the house. You can come to me, you know, whenever you like. I
+don't know another girl I would say that to.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p><p>'Oh, Lady Davenant,' Laura began again, but she only got as far as
+this; in a moment she had covered her face with her hands&mdash;she had burst
+into tears.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah my dear, don't cry or I shall take back my invitation! It would
+never do if you were to <i>larmoyer</i>. If I have offended you by the way I
+have spoken of Selina I think you are too sensitive. We shouldn't feel
+more for people than they feel for themselves. She has no tears, I'm
+sure.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, she has, she has!' cried the girl, sobbing with an odd effect as
+she put forth this pretension for her sister.</p>
+
+<p>'Then she's worse than I thought. I don't mind them so much when they
+are merry but I hate them when they are sentimental.'</p>
+
+<p>'She's so changed&mdash;so changed!' Laura Wing went on.</p>
+
+<p>'Never, never, my dear: <i>c'est de naissance</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'You never knew my mother,' returned the girl; 'when I think of
+mother&mdash;&mdash;' The words failed her while she sobbed.</p>
+
+<p>'I daresay she was very nice,' said Lady Davenant gently. 'It would take
+that to account for you: such women as Selina are always easily enough
+accounted for. I didn't mean it was inherited&mdash;for that sort of thing
+skips about. I daresay there was some improper ancestress&mdash;except that
+you Americans don't seem to have ancestresses.'</p>
+
+<p>Laura gave no sign of having heard these observations; she was occupied
+in brushing away her tears. 'Everything is so changed&mdash;you don't know,'
+she remarked in a moment. 'Nothing could have been happier&mdash;nothing
+could have been sweeter.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> And now to be so dependent&mdash;so helpless&mdash;so
+poor!'</p>
+
+<p>'Have you nothing at all?' asked Lady Davenant, with simplicity.</p>
+
+<p>'Only enough to pay for my clothes.'</p>
+
+<p>'That's a good deal, for a girl. You are uncommonly dressy, you know.'</p>
+
+<p>'I'm sorry I seem so. That's just the way I don't want to look.'</p>
+
+<p>'You Americans can't help it; you "wear" your very features and your
+eyes look as if they had just been sent home. But I confess you are not
+so smart as Selina.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, isn't she splendid?' Laura exclaimed, with proud inconsequence.
+'And the worse she is the better she looks.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh my child, if the bad women looked as bad as they are&mdash;&mdash;! It's only
+the good ones who can afford that,' the old lady murmured.</p>
+
+<p>'It was the last thing I ever thought of&mdash;that I should be ashamed,'
+said Laura.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, keep your shame till you have more to do with it. It's like lending
+your umbrella&mdash;when you have only one.'</p>
+
+<p>'If anything were to happen&mdash;publicly&mdash;I should die, I should die!' the
+girl exclaimed passionately and with a motion that carried her to her
+feet. This time she settled herself for departure. Lady Davenant's
+admonition rather frightened than sustained her.</p>
+
+<p>The old woman leaned back in her chair, looking up at her. 'It would be
+very bad, I daresay. But it wouldn't prevent me from taking you in.'</p>
+
+<p>Laura Wing returned her look, with eyes slightly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> distended, musing.
+'Think of having to come to that!'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Davenant burst out laughing. 'Yes, yes, you must come; you are so
+original!'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't mean that I don't feel your kindness,' the girl broke out,
+blushing. 'But to be only protected&mdash;always protected: is that a life?'</p>
+
+<p>'Most women are only too thankful and I am bound to say I think you are
+<i>difficile</i>.' Lady Davenant used a good many French words, in the
+old-fashioned manner and with a pronunciation not perfectly pure: when
+she did so she reminded Laura Wing of Mrs. Gore's novels. 'But you shall
+be better protected than even by me. <i>Nous verrons cela.</i> Only you must
+stop crying&mdash;this isn't a crying country.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, one must have courage here. It takes courage to marry for such a
+reason.'</p>
+
+<p>'Any reason is good enough that keeps a woman from being an old maid.
+Besides, you will like him.'</p>
+
+<p>'He must like me first,' said the girl, with a sad smile.</p>
+
+<p>'There's the American again! It isn't necessary. You are too proud&mdash;you
+expect too much.'</p>
+
+<p>'I'm proud for what I am&mdash;that's very certain. But I don't expect
+anything,' Laura Wing declared. 'That's the only form my pride takes.
+Please give my love to Mrs. Berrington. I am so sorry&mdash;so sorry,' she
+went on, to change the talk from the subject of her marrying. She wanted
+to marry but she wanted also not to want it and, above all, not to
+appear to. She lingered in the room, moving about a little; the place
+was always so pleasant to her that to go away&mdash;to return to her own
+barren home<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>&mdash;had the effect of forfeiting a sort of privilege of
+sanctuary. The afternoon had faded but the lamps had been brought in,
+the smell of flowers was in the air and the old house of Plash seemed to
+recognise the hour that suited it best. The quiet old lady in the
+firelight, encompassed with the symbolic security of chintz and
+water-colour, gave her a sudden vision of how blessed it would be to
+jump all the middle dangers of life and have arrived at the end, safely,
+sensibly, with a cap and gloves and consideration and memories. 'And,
+Lady Davenant, what does <i>she</i> think?' she asked abruptly, stopping
+short and referring to Mrs. Berrington.</p>
+
+<p>'Think? Bless your soul, she doesn't do that! If she did, the things she
+says would be unpardonable.'</p>
+
+<p>'The things she says?'</p>
+
+<p>'That's what makes them so beautiful&mdash;that they are not spoiled by
+preparation. You could never think of them <i>for</i> her.' The girl smiled
+at this description of the dearest friend of her interlocutress, but she
+wondered a little what Lady Davenant would say to visitors about <i>her</i>
+if she should accept a refuge under her roof. Her speech was after all a
+flattering proof of confidence. 'She wishes it had been you&mdash;I happen to
+know that,' said the old woman.</p>
+
+<p>'It had been me?'</p>
+
+<p>'That Lionel had taken a fancy to.'</p>
+
+<p>'I wouldn't have married him,' Laura rejoined, after a moment.</p>
+
+<p>'Don't say that or you will make me think it won't be easy to help you.
+I shall depend upon you not to refuse anything so good.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't call him good. If he were good his wife would be better.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p><p>'Very likely; and if you had married him <i>he</i> would be better, and
+that's more to the purpose. Lionel is as idiotic as a comic song, but
+you have cleverness for two.'</p>
+
+<p>'And you have it for fifty, dear Lady Davenant. Never, never&mdash;I shall
+never marry a man I can't respect!' Laura Wing exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>She had come a little nearer her old friend and taken her hand; her
+companion held her a moment and with the other hand pushed aside one of
+the flaps of the waterproof. 'And what is it your clothing costs you?'
+asked Lady Davenant, looking at the dress underneath and not giving any
+heed to this declaration.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't exactly know: it takes almost everything that is sent me from
+America. But that is dreadfully little&mdash;only a few pounds. I am a
+wonderful manager. Besides,' the girl added, 'Selina wants one to be
+dressed.'</p>
+
+<p>'And doesn't she pay any of your bills?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, she gives me everything&mdash;food, shelter, carriages.'</p>
+
+<p>'Does she never give you money?'</p>
+
+<p>'I wouldn't take it,' said the girl. 'They need everything they
+have&mdash;their life is tremendously expensive.'</p>
+
+<p>'That I'll warrant!' cried the old woman. 'It was a most beautiful
+property, but I don't know what has become of it now. <i>Ce n'est pas pour
+vous blesser</i>, but the hole you Americans <i>can</i> make&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>Laura interrupted immediately, holding up her head; Lady Davenant had
+dropped her hand and she had receded a step. 'Selina brought Lionel a
+very considerable fortune and every penny of it was paid.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span></p><p>'Yes, I know it was; Mrs. Berrington told me it was most satisfactory.
+That's not always the case with the fortunes you young ladies are
+supposed to bring!' the old lady added, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>The girl looked over her head a moment. 'Why do your men marry for
+money?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why indeed, my dear? And before your troubles what used your father to
+give you for your personal expenses?'</p>
+
+<p>'He gave us everything we asked&mdash;we had no particular allowance.'</p>
+
+<p>'And I daresay you asked for everything?' said Lady Davenant.</p>
+
+<p>'No doubt we were very dressy, as you say.'</p>
+
+<p>'No wonder he went bankrupt&mdash;for he did, didn't he?'</p>
+
+<p>'He had dreadful reverses but he only sacrificed himself&mdash;he protected
+others.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I know nothing about these things and I only ask <i>pour me
+renseigner</i>,' Mrs. Berrington's guest went on. 'And after their reverses
+your father and mother lived I think only a short time?'</p>
+
+<p>Laura Wing had covered herself again with her mantle; her eyes were now
+bent upon the ground and, standing there before her companion with her
+umbrella and her air of momentary submission and self-control, she might
+very well have been a young person in reduced circumstances applying for
+a place. 'It was short enough but it seemed&mdash;some parts of it&mdash;terribly
+long and painful. My poor father&mdash;my dear father,' the girl went on. But
+her voice trembled and she checked herself.</p>
+
+<p>'I feel as if I were cross-questioning you, which God forbid!' said Lady
+Davenant. 'But there is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> one thing I should really like to know. Did
+Lionel and his wife, when you were poor, come freely to your
+assistance?'</p>
+
+<p>'They sent us money repeatedly&mdash;it was <i>her</i> money of course. It was
+almost all we had.'</p>
+
+<p>'And if you have been poor and know what poverty is tell me this: has it
+made you afraid to marry a poor man?'</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to Lady Davenant that in answer to this her young friend
+looked at her strangely; and then the old woman heard her say something
+that had not quite the heroic ring she expected. 'I am afraid of so many
+things to-day that I don't know where my fears end.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have no patience with the highstrung way you take things. But I have
+to know, you know.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, don't try to know any more shames&mdash;any more horrors!' the girl
+wailed with sudden passion, turning away.</p>
+
+<p>Her companion got up, drew her round again and kissed her. 'I think you
+would fidget me,' she remarked as she released her. Then, as if this
+were too cheerless a leave-taking, she added in a gayer tone, as Laura
+had her hand on the door: 'Mind what I tell you, my dear; let her go!'
+It was to this that the girl's lesson in philosophy reduced itself, she
+reflected, as she walked back to Mellows in the rain, which had now come
+on, through the darkening park.</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2>
+
+<p>The children were still at tea and poor Miss Steet sat between them,
+consoling herself with strong cups, crunching melancholy morsels of
+toast and dropping an absent gaze on her little companions as they
+exchanged small, loud remarks. She always sighed when Laura came in&mdash;it
+was her way of expressing appreciation of the visit&mdash;and she was the one
+person whom the girl frequently saw who seemed to her more unhappy than
+herself. But Laura envied her&mdash;she thought her position had more dignity
+than that of her employer's dependent sister. Miss Steet had related her
+life to the children's pretty young aunt and this personage knew that
+though it had had painful elements nothing so disagreeable had ever
+befallen her or was likely to befall her as the odious possibility of
+her sister's making a scandal. She had two sisters (Laura knew all about
+them) and one of them was married to a clergyman in Staffordshire (a
+very ugly part) and had seven children and four hundred a year; while
+the other, the eldest, was enormously stout and filled (it was a good
+deal of a squeeze) a position as matron in an orphanage at Liverpool.
+Neither of them seemed destined to go into the English divorce-court,
+and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> such a circumstance on the part of one's near relations struck
+Laura as in itself almost sufficient to constitute happiness. Miss Steet
+never lived in a state of nervous anxiety&mdash;everything about her was
+respectable. She made the girl almost angry sometimes, by her drooping,
+martyr-like air: Laura was near breaking out at her with, 'Dear me, what
+have you got to complain of? Don't you earn your living like an honest
+girl and are you obliged to see things going on about you that you
+hate?'</p>
+
+<p>But she could not say things like that to her, because she had promised
+Selina, who made a great point of this, that she would never be too
+familiar with her. Selina was not without her ideas of decorum&mdash;very far
+from it indeed; only she erected them in such queer places. She was not
+familiar with her children's governess; she was not even familiar with
+the children themselves. That was why after all it was impossible to
+address much of a remonstrance to Miss Steet when she sat as if she were
+tied to the stake and the fagots were being lighted. If martyrs in this
+situation had tea and cold meat served them they would strikingly have
+resembled the provoking young woman in the schoolroom at Mellows. Laura
+could not have denied that it was natural she should have liked it
+better if Mrs. Berrington would <i>sometimes</i> just look in and give a sign
+that she was pleased with her system; but poor Miss Steet only knew by
+the servants or by Laura whether Mrs. Berrington were at home or not:
+she was for the most part not, and the governess had a way of silently
+intimating (it was the manner she put her head on one side when she
+looked at Scratch and Parson&mdash;of course <i>she</i> called them Geordie and
+Ferdy)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> that she was immensely handicapped and even that they were.
+Perhaps they were, though they certainly showed it little in their
+appearance and manner, and Laura was at least sure that if Selina had
+been perpetually dropping in Miss Steet would have taken that discomfort
+even more tragically. The sight of this young woman's either real or
+fancied wrongs did not diminish her conviction that she herself would
+have found courage to become a governess. She would have had to teach
+very young children, for she believed she was too ignorant for higher
+flights. But Selina would never have consented to that&mdash;she would have
+considered it a disgrace or even worse&mdash;a <i>pose</i>. Laura had proposed to
+her six months before that she should dispense with a paid governess and
+suffer <i>her</i> to take charge of the little boys: in that way she should
+not feel so completely dependent&mdash;she should be doing something in
+return. 'And pray what would happen when you came to dinner? Who would
+look after them then?' Mrs. Berrington had demanded, with a very shocked
+air. Laura had replied that perhaps it was not absolutely necessary that
+she should come to dinner&mdash;she could dine early, with the children; and
+that if her presence in the drawing-room should be required the children
+had their nurse&mdash;and what did they have their nurse for? Selina looked
+at her as if she was deplorably superficial and told her that they had
+their nurse to dress them and look after their clothes&mdash;did she wish the
+poor little ducks to go in rags? She had her own ideas of thoroughness
+and when Laura hinted that after all at that hour the children were in
+bed she declared that even when they were asleep she desired the
+governess to be at hand&mdash;that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> was the way a mother felt who really took
+an interest. Selina was wonderfully thorough; she said something about
+the evening hours in the quiet schoolroom being the proper time for the
+governess to 'get up' the children's lessons for the next day. Laura
+Wing was conscious of her own ignorance; nevertheless she presumed to
+believe that she could have taught Geordie and Ferdy the alphabet
+without anticipatory nocturnal researches. She wondered what her sister
+supposed Miss Steet taught them&mdash;whether she had a cheap theory that
+they were in Latin and algebra.</p>
+
+<p>The governess's evening hours in the quiet schoolroom would have suited
+Laura well&mdash;so at least she believed; by touches of her own she would
+make the place even prettier than it was already, and in the winter
+nights, near the bright fire, she would get through a delightful course
+of reading. There was the question of a new piano (the old one was
+pretty bad&mdash;Miss Steet had a finger!) and perhaps she should have to ask
+Selina for that&mdash;but it would be all. The schoolroom at Mellows was not
+a charmless place and the girl often wished that she might have spent
+her own early years in so dear a scene. It was a sort of panelled
+parlour, in a wing, and looked out on the great cushiony lawns and a
+part of the terrace where the peacocks used most to spread their tails.
+There were quaint old maps on the wall, and 'collections'&mdash;birds and
+shells&mdash;under glass cases, and there was a wonderful pictured screen
+which old Mrs. Berrington had made when Lionel was young out of
+primitive woodcuts illustrative of nursery-tales. The place was a
+setting for rosy childhood, and Laura believed her sister never knew<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>
+how delightful Scratch and Parson looked there. Old Mrs. Berrington had
+known in the case of Lionel&mdash;it had all been arranged for him. That was
+the story told by ever so many other things in the house, which betrayed
+the full perception of a comfortable, liberal, deeply domestic effect,
+addressed to eternities of possession, characteristic thirty years
+before of the unquestioned and unquestioning old lady whose sofas and
+'corners' (she had perhaps been the first person in England to have
+corners) demonstrated the most of her cleverness.</p>
+
+<p>Laura Wing envied English children, the boys at least, and even her own
+chubby nephews, in spite of the cloud that hung over them; but she had
+already noted the incongruity that appeared to-day between Lionel
+Berrington at thirty-five and the influences that had surrounded his
+younger years. She did not dislike her brother-in-law, though she
+admired him scantily, and she pitied him; but she marvelled at the waste
+involved in some human institutions (the English country gentry for
+instance) when she perceived that it had taken so much to produce so
+little. The sweet old wainscoted parlour, the view of the garden that
+reminded her of scenes in Shakespeare's comedies, all that was exquisite
+in the home of his forefathers&mdash;what visible reference was there to
+these fine things in poor Lionel's stable-stamped composition? When she
+came in this evening and saw his small sons making competitive noises in
+their mugs (Miss Steet checked this impropriety on her entrance) she
+asked herself what <i>they</i> would have to show twenty years later for the
+frame that made them just then a picture. Would they be wonderfully ripe
+and noble, the perfection of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> human culture? The contrast was before her
+again, the sense of the same curious duplicity (in the literal meaning
+of the word) that she had felt at Plash&mdash;the way the genius of such an
+old house was all peace and decorum and the spirit that prevailed there,
+outside of the schoolroom, was contentious and impure. She had often
+been struck with it before&mdash;with that perfection of machinery which can
+still at certain times make English life go on of itself with a stately
+rhythm long after there is corruption within it.</p>
+
+<p>She had half a purpose of asking Miss Steet to dine with her that
+evening downstairs, so absurd did it seem to her that two young women
+who had so much in common (enough at least for that) should sit feeding
+alone at opposite ends of the big empty house, melancholy on such a
+night. She would not have cared just now whether Selina did think such a
+course familiar: she indulged sometimes in a kind of angry humility,
+placing herself near to those who were laborious and sordid. But when
+she observed how much cold meat the governess had already consumed she
+felt that it would be a vain form to propose to her another repast. She
+sat down with her and presently, in the firelight, the two children had
+placed themselves in position for a story. They were dressed like the
+mariners of England and they smelt of the ablutions to which they had
+been condemned before tea and the odour of which was but partly overlaid
+by that of bread and butter. Scratch wanted an old story and Parson a
+new, and they exchanged from side to side a good many powerful
+arguments. While they were so engaged Miss Steet narrated at her
+visitor's invitation the walk she had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> taken with them and revealed that
+she had been thinking for a long time of asking Mrs. Berrington&mdash;if she
+only had an opportunity&mdash;whether she should approve of her giving them a
+few elementary notions of botany. But the opportunity had not come&mdash;she
+had had the idea for a long time past. She was rather fond of the study
+herself; she had gone into it a little&mdash;she seemed to intimate that
+there had been times when she extracted a needed comfort from it. Laura
+suggested that botany might be a little dry for such young children in
+winter, from text-books&mdash;that the better way would be perhaps to wait
+till the spring and show them out of doors, in the garden, some of the
+peculiarities of plants. To this Miss Steet rejoined that her idea had
+been to teach some of the general facts slowly&mdash;it would take a long
+time&mdash;and then they would be all ready for the spring. She spoke of the
+spring as if it would not arrive for a terribly long time. She had hoped
+to lay the question before Mrs. Berrington that week&mdash;but was it not
+already Thursday? Laura said, 'Oh yes, you had better do anything with
+the children that will keep them profitably occupied;' she came very
+near saying anything that would occupy the governess herself.</p>
+
+<p>She had rather a dread of new stories&mdash;it took the little boys so long
+to get initiated and the first steps were so terribly bestrewn with
+questions. Receptive silence, broken only by an occasional rectification
+on the part of the listener, never descended until after the tale had
+been told a dozen times. The matter was settled for 'Riquet with the
+Tuft,' but on this occasion the girl's heart was not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> much in the
+entertainment. The children stood on either side of her, leaning against
+her, and she had an arm round each; their little bodies were thick and
+strong and their voices had the quality of silver bells. Their mother
+had certainly gone too far; but there was nevertheless a limit to the
+tenderness one could feel for the neglected, compromised bairns. It was
+difficult to take a sentimental view of them&mdash;they would never take such
+a view of themselves. Geordie would grow up to be a master-hand at polo
+and care more for that pastime than for anything in life, and Ferdy
+perhaps would develop into 'the best shot in England.' Laura felt these
+possibilities stirring within them; they were in the things they said to
+her, in the things they said to each other. At any rate they would never
+reflect upon anything in the world. They contradicted each other on a
+question of ancestral history to which their attention apparently had
+been drawn by their nurse, whose people had been tenants for
+generations. Their grandfather had had the hounds for fifteen
+years&mdash;Ferdy maintained that he had always had them. Geordie ridiculed
+this idea, like a man of the world; he had had them till he went into
+volunteering&mdash;then he had got up a magnificent regiment, he had spent
+thousands of pounds on it. Ferdy was of the opinion that this was wasted
+money&mdash;he himself intended to have a real regiment, to be a colonel in
+the Guards. Geordie looked as if he thought that a superficial ambition
+and could see beyond it; his own most definite view was that he would
+have back the hounds. He didn't see why papa didn't have them&mdash;unless it
+was because he wouldn't take the trouble.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p><p>'I know&mdash;it's because mamma is an American!' Ferdy announced, with
+confidence.</p>
+
+<p>'And what has that to do with it?' asked Laura.</p>
+
+<p>'Mamma spends so much money&mdash;there isn't any more for anything!'</p>
+
+<p>This startling speech elicited an alarmed protest from Miss Steet; she
+blushed and assured Laura that she couldn't imagine where the child
+could have picked up such an extraordinary idea. 'I'll look into it&mdash;you
+may be sure I'll look into it,' she said; while Laura told Ferdy that he
+must never, never, never, under any circumstances, either utter or
+listen to a word that should be wanting in respect to his mother.</p>
+
+<p>'If any one should say anything against any of my people I would give
+him a good one!' Geordie shouted, with his hands in his little blue
+pockets.</p>
+
+<p>'I'd hit him in the eye!' cried Ferdy, with cheerful inconsequence.</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps you don't care to come to dinner at half-past seven,' the girl
+said to Miss Steet; 'but I should be very glad&mdash;I'm all alone.'</p>
+
+<p>'Thank you so much. All alone, really?' murmured the governess.</p>
+
+<p>'Why don't you get married? then you wouldn't be alone,' Geordie
+interposed, with ingenuity.</p>
+
+<p>'Children, you are really too dreadful this evening!' Miss Steet
+exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>'I shan't get married&mdash;I want to have the hounds,' proclaimed Geordie,
+who had apparently been much struck with his brother's explanation.</p>
+
+<p>'I will come down afterwards, about half-past eight, if you will allow
+me,' said Miss Steet, looking conscious and responsible.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p><p>'Very well&mdash;perhaps we can have some music; we will try something
+together.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, music&mdash;<i>we</i> don't go in for music!' said Geordie, with clear
+superiority; and while he spoke Laura saw Miss Steet get up suddenly,
+looking even less alleviated than usual. The door of the room had been
+pushed open and Lionel Berrington stood there. He had his hat on and a
+cigar in his mouth and his face was red, which was its common condition.
+He took off his hat as he came into the room, but he did not stop
+smoking and he turned a little redder than before. There were several
+ways in which his sister-in-law often wished he had been very different,
+but she had never disliked him for a certain boyish shyness that was in
+him, which came out in his dealings with almost all women. The governess
+of his children made him uncomfortable and Laura had already noticed
+that he had the same effect upon Miss Steet. He was fond of his
+children, but he saw them hardly more frequently than their mother and
+they never knew whether he were at home or away. Indeed his goings and
+comings were so frequent that Laura herself scarcely knew: it was an
+accident that on this occasion his absence had been marked for her.
+Selina had had her reasons for wishing not to go up to town while her
+husband was still at Mellows, and she cherished the irritating belief
+that he stayed at home on purpose to watch her&mdash;to keep her from going
+away. It was her theory that she herself was perpetually at home&mdash;that
+few women were more domestic, more glued to the fireside and absorbed in
+the duties belonging to it; and unreasonable as she was she recognised
+the fact that for her to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> establish this theory she must make her
+husband sometimes see her at Mellows. It was not enough for her to
+maintain that he would see her if he were sometimes there himself.
+Therefore she disliked to be caught in the crude fact of absence&mdash;to go
+away under his nose; what she preferred was to take the next train after
+his own and return an hour or two before him. She managed this often
+with great ability, in spite of her not being able to be sure when he
+<i>would</i> return. Of late however she had ceased to take so much trouble,
+and Laura, by no desire of the girl's own, was enough in the confidence
+of her impatiences and perversities to know that for her to have wished
+(four days before the moment I write of) to put him on a wrong scent&mdash;or
+to keep him at least off the right one&mdash;she must have had something more
+dreadful than usual in her head. This was why the girl had been so
+nervous and why the sense of an impending catastrophe, which had lately
+gathered strength in her mind, was at present almost intolerably
+pressing: she knew how little Selina could afford to be more dreadful
+than usual.</p>
+
+<p>Lionel startled her by turning up in that unexpected way, though she
+could not have told herself when it would have been natural to expect
+him. This attitude, at Mellows, was left to the servants, most of them
+inscrutable and incommunicative and erect in a wisdom that was founded
+upon telegrams&mdash;you couldn't speak to the butler but he pulled one out
+of his pocket. It was a house of telegrams; they crossed each other a
+dozen times an hour, coming and going, and Selina in particular lived in
+a cloud of them. Laura had but vague ideas as to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> what they were all
+about; once in a while, when they fell under her eyes, she either failed
+to understand them or judged them to be about horses. There were an
+immense number of horses, in one way and another, in Mrs. Berrington's
+life. Then she had so many friends, who were always rushing about like
+herself and making appointments and putting them off and wanting to know
+if she were going to certain places or whether she would go if they did
+or whether she would come up to town and dine and 'do a theatre.' There
+were also a good many theatres in the existence of this busy lady. Laura
+remembered how fond their poor father had been of telegraphing, but it
+was never about the theatre: at all events she tried to give her sister
+the benefit or the excuse of heredity. Selina had her own opinions,
+which were superior to this&mdash;she once remarked to Laura that it was
+idiotic for a woman to write&mdash;to telegraph was the only way not to get
+into trouble. If doing so sufficed to keep a lady out of it Mrs.
+Berrington's life should have flowed like the rivers of Eden.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2>
+
+<p>Laura, as soon as her brother-in-law had been in the room a moment, had
+a particular fear; she had seen him twice noticeably under the influence
+of liquor; she had not liked it at all and now there were some of the
+same signs. She was afraid the children would discover them, or at any
+rate Miss Steet, and she felt the importance of not letting him stay in
+the room. She thought it almost a sign that he should have come there at
+all&mdash;he was so rare an apparition. He looked at her very hard, smiling
+as if to say, 'No, no, I'm not&mdash;not if you think it!' She perceived with
+relief in a moment that he was not very bad, and liquor disposed him
+apparently to tenderness, for he indulged in an interminable kissing of
+Geordie and Ferdy, during which Miss Steet turned away delicately,
+looking out of the window. The little boys asked him no questions to
+celebrate his return&mdash;they only announced that they were going to learn
+botany, to which he replied: 'Are you, really? Why, I never did,' and
+looked askance at the governess, blushing as if to express the hope that
+she would let him off from carrying that subject further. To Laura and
+to Miss Steet he was amiably explanatory, though<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> his explanations were
+not quite coherent. He had come back an hour before&mdash;he was going to
+spend the night&mdash;he had driven over from Churton&mdash;he was thinking of
+taking the last train up to town. Was Laura dining at home? Was any one
+coming? He should enjoy a quiet dinner awfully.</p>
+
+<p>'Certainly I'm alone,' said the girl. 'I suppose you know Selina is
+away.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh yes&mdash;I know where Selina is!' And Lionel Berrington looked round,
+smiling at every one present, including Scratch and Parson. He stopped
+while he continued to smile and Laura wondered what he was so much
+pleased at. She preferred not to ask&mdash;she was sure it was something that
+wouldn't give <i>her</i> pleasure; but after waiting a moment her
+brother-in-law went on: 'Selina's in Paris, my dear; that's where Selina
+is!'</p>
+
+<p>'In Paris?' Laura repeated.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, in Paris, my dear&mdash;God bless her! Where else do you suppose?
+Geordie my boy, where should <i>you</i> think your mummy would naturally be?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I don't know,' said Geordie, who had no reply ready that would
+express affectingly the desolation of the nursery. 'If I were mummy I'd
+travel.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well now that's your mummy's idea&mdash;she has gone to travel,' returned
+the father. 'Were you ever in Paris, Miss Steet?'</p>
+
+<p>Miss Steet gave a nervous laugh and said No, but she had been to
+Boulogne; while to her added confusion Ferdy announced that he knew
+where Paris was&mdash;it was in America. 'No, it ain't&mdash;it's in Scotland!'
+cried Geordie; and Laura asked Lionel how he knew&mdash;whether his wife had
+written to him.</p>
+
+<p>'Written to me? when did she ever write to me?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> No, I saw a fellow in
+town this morning who saw her there&mdash;at breakfast yesterday. He came
+over last night. That's how I know my wife's in Paris. You can't have
+better proof than that!'</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose it's a very pleasant season there,' the governess murmured,
+as if from a sense of duty, in a distant, discomfortable tone.</p>
+
+<p>'I daresay it's very pleasant indeed&mdash;I daresay it's awfully amusing!'
+laughed Mr. Berrington. 'Shouldn't you like to run over with me for a
+few days, Laura&mdash;just to have a go at the theatres? I don't see why we
+should always be moping at home. We'll take Miss Steet and the children
+and give mummy a pleasant surprise. Now who do you suppose she was with,
+in Paris&mdash;who do you suppose she was seen with?'</p>
+
+<p>Laura had turned pale, she looked at him hard, imploringly, in the eyes:
+there was a name she was terribly afraid he would mention. 'Oh sir, in
+that case we had better go and get ready!' Miss Steet quavered, betwixt
+a laugh and a groan, in a spasm of discretion; and before Laura knew it
+she had gathered Geordie and Ferdy together and swept them out of the
+room. The door closed behind her with a very quick softness and Lionel
+remained a moment staring at it.</p>
+
+<p>'I say, what does she mean?&mdash;ain't that damned impertinent?' he
+stammered. 'What did she think I was going to say? Does she suppose I
+would say any harm before&mdash;before <i>her</i>? Dash it, does she suppose I
+would give away my wife to the servants?' Then he added, 'And I wouldn't
+say any harm before you, Laura. You are too good and too nice and I like
+you too much!'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p><p>'Won't you come downstairs? won't you have some tea?' the girl asked,
+uneasily.</p>
+
+<p>'No, no, I want to stay here&mdash;I like this place,' he replied, very
+gently and reasoningly. 'It's a deuced nice place&mdash;it's an awfully jolly
+room. It used to be this way&mdash;always&mdash;when I was a little chap. I was a
+rough one, my dear; I wasn't a pretty little lamb like that pair. I
+think it's because you look after them&mdash;that's what makes 'em so sweet.
+The one in my time&mdash;what was her name? I think it was Bald or Bold&mdash;I
+rather think she found me a handful. I used to kick her shins&mdash;I was
+decidedly vicious. And do <i>you</i> see it's kept so well, Laura?' he went
+on, looking round him. ''Pon my soul, it's the prettiest room in the
+house. What does she want to go to Paris for when she has got such a
+charming house? Now can you answer me that, Laura?'</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose she has gone to get some clothes: her dressmaker lives in
+Paris, you know.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dressmaker? Clothes? Why, she has got whole rooms full of them. Hasn't
+she got whole rooms full of them?'</p>
+
+<p>'Speaking of clothes I must go and change mine,' said Laura. 'I have
+been out in the rain&mdash;I have been to Plash&mdash;I'm decidedly damp.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, you have been to Plash? You have seen my mother? I hope she's in
+very good health.' But before the girl could reply to this he went on:
+'Now, I want you to guess who she's in Paris with. Motcomb saw them
+together&mdash;at that place, what's his name? close to the Madeleine.' And
+as Laura was silent, not wishing at all to guess, he continued&mdash;'It's
+the ruin of any woman, you know; I can't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> think what she has got in her
+head.' Still Laura said nothing, and as he had hold of her arm, she
+having turned away, she led him this time out of the room. She had a
+horror of the name, the name that was in her mind and that was
+apparently on his lips, though his tone was so singular, so
+contemplative. 'My dear girl, she's with Lady Ringrose&mdash;what do you say
+to that?' he exclaimed, as they passed along the corridor to the
+staircase.</p>
+
+<p>'With Lady Ringrose?'</p>
+
+<p>'They went over on Tuesday&mdash;they are knocking about there alone.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know Lady Ringrose,' Laura said, infinitely relieved that the
+name was not the one she had feared. Lionel leaned on her arm as they
+went downstairs.</p>
+
+<p>'I rather hope not&mdash;I promise you she has never put her foot in this
+house! If Selina expects to bring her here I should like half an hour's
+notice; yes, half an hour would do. She might as well be seen with&mdash;&mdash;'
+And Lionel Berrington checked himself. 'She has had at least fifty&mdash;&mdash;'
+And again he stopped short. 'You must pull me up, you know, if I say
+anything you don't like!'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't understand you&mdash;let me alone, please!' the girl broke out,
+disengaging herself with an effort from his arm. She hurried down the
+rest of the steps and left him there looking after her, and as she went
+she heard him give an irrelevant laugh.</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2>
+
+<p>She determined not to go to dinner&mdash;she wished for that day not to meet
+him again. He would drink more&mdash;he would be worse&mdash;she didn't know what
+he might say. Besides she was too angry&mdash;not with him but with
+Selina&mdash;and in addition to being angry she was sick. She knew who Lady
+Ringrose was; she knew so many things to-day that when she was
+younger&mdash;and only a little&mdash;she had not expected ever to know. Her eyes
+had been opened very wide in England and certainly they had been opened
+to Lady Ringrose. She had heard what she had done and perhaps a good
+deal more, and it was not very different from what she had heard of
+other women. She knew Selina had been to her house; she had an
+impression that her ladyship had been to Selina's, in London, though she
+herself had not seen her there. But she had not known they were so
+intimate as that&mdash;that Selina would rush over to Paris with her. What
+they had gone to Paris for was not necessarily criminal; there were a
+hundred reasons, familiar to ladies who were fond of change, of
+movement, of the theatres and of new bonnets; but nevertheless it was
+the fact of this little excursion quite as much as the companion that
+excited Laura's disgust.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p><p>She was not ready to say that the companion was any worse, though
+Lionel appeared to think so, than twenty other women who were her
+sister's intimates and whom she herself had seen in London, in Grosvenor
+Place, and even under the motherly old beeches at Mellows. But she
+thought it unpleasant and base in Selina to go abroad that way, like a
+commercial traveller, capriciously, clandestinely, without giving
+notice, when she had left her to understand that she was simply spending
+three or four days in town. It was bad taste and bad form, it was
+<i>cabotin</i> and had the mark of Selina's complete, irremediable
+frivolity&mdash;the worst accusation (Laura tried to cling to that opinion)
+that she laid herself open to. Of course frivolity that was never
+ashamed of itself was like a neglected cold&mdash;you could die of it morally
+as well as of anything else. Laura knew this and it was why she was
+inexpressibly vexed with her sister. She hoped she should get a letter
+from Selina the next morning (Mrs. Berrington would show at least that
+remnant of propriety) which would give her a chance to despatch her an
+answer that was already writing itself in her brain. It scarcely
+diminished Laura's eagerness for such an opportunity that she had a
+vision of Selina's showing her letter, laughing, across the table, at
+the place near the Madeleine, to Lady Ringrose (who would be
+painted&mdash;Selina herself, to do her justice, was not yet) while the
+French waiters, in white aprons, contemplated <i>ces dames</i>. It was new
+work for our young lady to judge of these shades&mdash;the gradations, the
+probabilities of license, and of the side of the line on which, or
+rather how far on the wrong side, Lady Ringrose was situated.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p><p>A quarter of an hour before dinner Lionel sent word to her room that
+she was to sit down without him&mdash;he had a headache and wouldn't appear.
+This was an unexpected grace and it simplified the position for Laura;
+so that, smoothing her ruffles, she betook herself to the table. Before
+doing this however she went back to the schoolroom and told Miss Steet
+she must contribute her company. She took the governess (the little boys
+were in bed) downstairs with her and made her sit opposite, thinking she
+would be a safeguard if Lionel were to change his mind. Miss Steet was
+more frightened than herself&mdash;she was a very shrinking bulwark. The
+dinner was dull and the conversation rare; the governess ate three
+olives and looked at the figures on the spoons. Laura had more than ever
+her sense of impending calamity; a draught of misfortune seemed to blow
+through the house; it chilled her feet under her chair. The letter she
+had in her head went out like a flame in the wind and her only thought
+now was to telegraph to Selina the first thing in the morning, in quite
+different words. She scarcely spoke to Miss Steet and there was very
+little the governess could say to her: she had already related her
+history so often. After dinner she carried her companion into the
+drawing-room, by the arm, and they sat down to the piano together. They
+played duets for an hour, mechanically, violently; Laura had no idea
+what the music was&mdash;she only knew that their playing was execrable. In
+spite of this&mdash;'That's a very nice thing, that last,' she heard a vague
+voice say, behind her, at the end; and she became aware that her
+brother-in-law had joined them again.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p><p>Miss Steet was pusillanimous&mdash;she retreated on the spot, though Lionel
+had already forgotten that he was angry at the scandalous way she had
+carried off the children from the schoolroom. Laura would have gone too
+if Lionel had not told her that he had something very particular to say
+to her. That made her want to go more, but she had to listen to him when
+he expressed the hope that she hadn't taken offence at anything he had
+said before. He didn't strike her as tipsy now; he had slept it off or
+got rid of it and she saw no traces of his headache. He was still
+conspicuously cheerful, as if he had got some good news and were very
+much encouraged. She knew the news he had got and she might have
+thought, in view of his manner, that it could not really have seemed to
+him so bad as he had pretended to think it. It was not the first time
+however that she had seen him pleased that he had a case against his
+wife, and she was to learn on this occasion how extreme a satisfaction
+he could take in his wrongs. She would not sit down again; she only
+lingered by the fire, pretending to warm her feet, and he walked to and
+fro in the long room, where the lamp-light to-night was limited,
+stepping on certain figures of the carpet as if his triumph were alloyed
+with hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>'I never know how to talk to you&mdash;you are so beastly clever,' he said.
+'I can't treat you like a little girl in a pinafore&mdash;and yet of course
+you are only a young lady. You're so deuced good&mdash;that makes it worse,'
+he went on, stopping in front of her with his hands in his pockets and
+the air he himself had of being a good-natured but dissipated boy; with
+his small stature, his smooth, fat, suffused<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> face, his round, watery,
+light-coloured eyes and his hair growing in curious infantile rings. He
+had lost one of his front teeth and always wore a stiff white scarf,
+with a pin representing some symbol of the turf or the chase. 'I don't
+see why <i>she</i> couldn't have been a little more like you. If I could have
+had a shot at you first!'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't care for any compliments at my sister's expense,' Laura said,
+with some majesty.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh I say, Laura, don't put on so many frills, as Selina says. You know
+what your sister is as well as I do!' They stood looking at each other a
+moment and he appeared to see something in her face which led him to
+add&mdash;'You know, at any rate, how little we hit it off.'</p>
+
+<p>'I know you don't love each other&mdash;it's too dreadful.'</p>
+
+<p>'Love each other? she hates me as she'd hate a hump on her back. She'd
+do me any devilish turn she could. There isn't a feeling of loathing
+that she doesn't have for me! She'd like to stamp on me and hear me
+crack, like a black beetle, and she never opens her mouth but she
+insults me.' Lionel Berrington delivered himself of these assertions
+without violence, without passion or the sting of a new discovery; there
+was a familiar gaiety in his trivial little tone and he had the air of
+being so sure of what he said that he did not need to exaggerate in
+order to prove enough.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Lionel!' the girl murmured, turning pale. 'Is that the particular
+thing you wished to say to me?'</p>
+
+<p>'And you can't say it's my fault&mdash;you won't pretend to do that, will
+you?' he went on. 'Ain't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> I quiet, ain't I kind, don't I go steady?
+Haven't I given her every blessed thing she has ever asked for?'</p>
+
+<p>'You haven't given her an example!' Laura replied, with spirit. 'You
+don't care for anything in the wide world but to amuse yourself, from
+the beginning of the year to the end. No more does she&mdash;and perhaps it's
+even worse in a woman. You are both as selfish as you can live, with
+nothing in your head or your heart but your vulgar pleasure, incapable
+of a concession, incapable of a sacrifice!' She at least spoke with
+passion; something that had been pent up in her soul broke out and it
+gave her relief, almost a momentary joy.</p>
+
+<p>It made Lionel Berrington stare; he coloured, but after a moment he
+threw back his head with laughter. 'Don't you call me kind when I stand
+here and take all that? If I'm so keen for my pleasure what pleasure do
+<i>you</i> give me? Look at the way I take it, Laura. You ought to do me
+justice. Haven't I sacrificed my home? and what more can a man do?'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't think you care any more for your home than Selina does. And
+it's so sacred and so beautiful, God forgive you! You are all blind and
+senseless and heartless and I don't know what poison is in your veins.
+There is a curse on you and there will be a judgment!' the girl went on,
+glowing like a young prophetess.</p>
+
+<p>'What do you want me to do? Do you want me to stay at home and read the
+Bible?' her companion demanded with an effect of profanity, confronted
+with her deep seriousness.</p>
+
+<p>'It wouldn't do you any harm, once in a while.'</p>
+
+<p>'There will be a judgment on <i>her</i>&mdash;that's very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> sure, and I know where
+it will be delivered,' said Lionel Berrington, indulging in a visible
+approach to a wink. 'Have I done the half to her she has done to me? I
+won't say the half but the hundredth part? Answer me truly, my dear!'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know what she has done to you,' said Laura, impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>'That's exactly what I want to tell you. But it's difficult. I'll bet
+you five pounds she's doing it now!'</p>
+
+<p>'You are too unable to make yourself respected,' the girl remarked, not
+shrinking now from the enjoyment of an advantage&mdash;that of feeling
+herself superior and taking her opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>Her brother-in-law seemed to feel for the moment the prick of this
+observation. 'What has such a piece of nasty boldness as that to do with
+respect? She's the first that ever defied me!' exclaimed the young man,
+whose aspect somehow scarcely confirmed this pretension. 'You know all
+about her&mdash;don't make believe you don't,' he continued in another tone.
+'You see everything&mdash;you're one of the sharp ones. There's no use
+beating about the bush, Laura&mdash;you've lived in this precious house and
+you're not so green as that comes to. Besides, you're so good yourself
+that you needn't give a shriek if one is obliged to say what one means.
+Why didn't you grow up a little sooner? Then, over there in New York, it
+would certainly have been you I would have made up to. <i>You</i> would have
+respected me&mdash;eh? now don't say you wouldn't.' He rambled on, turning
+about the room again, partly like a person whose sequences were
+naturally slow but also a little as if,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> though he knew what he had in
+mind, there were still a scruple attached to it that he was trying to
+rub off.</p>
+
+<p>'I take it that isn't what I must sit up to listen to, Lionel, is it?'
+Laura said, wearily.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, you don't want to go to bed at nine o'clock, do you? That's all
+rot, of course. But I want you to help me.'</p>
+
+<p>'To help you&mdash;how?'</p>
+
+<p>'I'll tell you&mdash;but you must give me my head. I don't know what I said
+to you before dinner&mdash;I had had too many brandy and sodas. Perhaps I was
+too free; if I was I beg your pardon. I made the governess bolt&mdash;very
+proper in the superintendent of one's children. Do you suppose they saw
+anything? I shouldn't care for that. I did take half a dozen or so; I
+was thirsty and I was awfully gratified.'</p>
+
+<p>'You have little enough to gratify you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Now that's just where you are wrong. I don't know when I've fancied
+anything so much as what I told you.'</p>
+
+<p>'What you told me?'</p>
+
+<p>'About her being in Paris. I hope she'll stay a month!'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't understand you,' Laura said.</p>
+
+<p>'Are you very sure, Laura? My dear, it suits my book! Now you know
+yourself he's not the first.'</p>
+
+<p>Laura was silent; his round eyes were fixed on her face and she saw
+something she had not seen before&mdash;a little shining point which on
+Lionel's part might represent an idea, but which made his expression
+conscious as well as eager. 'He?' she presently asked. 'Whom are you
+speaking of?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></p><p>'Why, of Charley Crispin, G&mdash;&mdash;' And Lionel Berrington accompanied this
+name with a startling imprecation.</p>
+
+<p>'What has he to do&mdash;&mdash;?'</p>
+
+<p>'He has everything to do. Isn't he with her there?'</p>
+
+<p>'How should I know? You said Lady Ringrose.'</p>
+
+<p>'Lady Ringrose is a mere blind&mdash;and a devilish poor one at that. I'm
+sorry to have to say it to you, but he's her lover. I mean Selina's. And
+he ain't the first.'</p>
+
+<p>There was another short silence while they stood opposed, and then Laura
+asked&mdash;and the question was unexpected&mdash;'Why do you call him Charley?'</p>
+
+<p>'Doesn't he call me Lion, like all the rest?' said her brother-in-law,
+staring.</p>
+
+<p>'You're the most extraordinary people. I suppose you have a certain
+amount of proof before you say such things to me?'</p>
+
+<p>'Proof, I've oceans of proof! And not only about Crispin, but about
+Deepmere.'</p>
+
+<p>'And pray who is Deepmere?'</p>
+
+<p>'Did you never hear of Lord Deepmere? He has gone to India. That was
+before you came. I don't say all this for my pleasure, Laura,' Mr.
+Berrington added.</p>
+
+<p>'Don't you, indeed?' asked the girl with a singular laugh. 'I thought
+you were so glad.'</p>
+
+<p>'I'm glad to know it but I'm not glad to tell it. When I say I'm glad to
+know it I mean I'm glad to be fixed at last. Oh, I've got the tip! It's
+all open country now and I know just how to go. I've<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> gone into it most
+extensively; there's nothing you can't find out to-day&mdash;if you go to the
+right place. I've&mdash;I've&mdash;&mdash;' He hesitated a moment, then went on: 'Well,
+it's no matter what I've done. I know where I am and it's a great
+comfort. She's up a tree, if ever a woman was. Now we'll see who's a
+beetle and who's a toad!' Lionel Berrington concluded, gaily, with some
+incongruity of metaphor.</p>
+
+<p>'It's not true&mdash;it's not true&mdash;it's not true,' Laura said, slowly.</p>
+
+<p>'That's just what she'll say&mdash;though that's not the way she'll say it.
+Oh, if she could get off by your saying it for her!&mdash;for you, my dear,
+would be believed.'</p>
+
+<p>'Get off&mdash;what do you mean?' the girl demanded, with a coldness she
+failed to feel, for she was tingling all over with shame and rage.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, what do you suppose I'm talking about? I'm going to haul her up
+and to have it out.'</p>
+
+<p>'You're going to make a scandal?'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Make</i> it? Bless my soul, it isn't me! And I should think it was made
+enough. I'm going to appeal to the laws of my country&mdash;that's what I'm
+going to do. She pretends I'm stopped, whatever she does. But that's all
+gammon&mdash;I ain't!'</p>
+
+<p>'I understand&mdash;but you won't do anything so horrible,' said Laura, very
+gently.</p>
+
+<p>'Horrible as you please, but less so than going on in this way; I
+haven't told you the fiftieth part&mdash;you will easily understand that I
+can't. They are not nice things to say to a girl like you&mdash;especially
+about Deepmere, if you didn't know it. But when they happen you've got
+to look at them, haven't you? That's the way I look at it.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span></p><p>'It's not true&mdash;it's not true&mdash;it's not true,' Laura Wing repeated, in
+the same way, slowly shaking her head.</p>
+
+<p>'Of course you stand up for your sister&mdash;but that's just what I wanted
+to say to you, that you ought to have some pity for <i>me</i> and some sense
+of justice. Haven't I always been nice to you? Have you ever had so much
+as a nasty word from me?'</p>
+
+<p>This appeal touched the girl; she had eaten her brother-in-law's bread
+for months, she had had the use of all the luxuries with which he was
+surrounded, and to herself personally she had never known him anything
+but good-natured. She made no direct response however; she only
+said&mdash;'Be quiet, be quiet and leave her to me. I will answer for her.'</p>
+
+<p>'Answer for her&mdash;what do you mean?'</p>
+
+<p>'She shall be better&mdash;she shall be reasonable&mdash;there shall be no more
+talk of these horrors. Leave her to me&mdash;let me go away with her
+somewhere.'</p>
+
+<p>'Go away with her? I wouldn't let you come within a mile of her, if you
+were <i>my</i> sister!'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, shame, shame!' cried Laura Wing, turning away from him.</p>
+
+<p>She hurried to the door of the room, but he stopped her before she
+reached it. He got his back to it, he barred her way and she had to
+stand there and hear him. 'I haven't said what I wanted&mdash;for I told you
+that I wanted you to help me. I ain't cruel&mdash;I ain't insulting&mdash;you
+can't make out that against me; I'm sure you know in your heart that
+I've swallowed what would sicken most men. Therefore I will say that you
+ought to be fair. You're too clever not to be; <i>you</i> can't pretend to
+swallow&mdash;&mdash;'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> He paused a moment and went on, and she saw it was his
+idea&mdash;an idea very simple and bold. He wanted her to side with him&mdash;to
+watch for him&mdash;to help him to get his divorce. He forbore to say that
+she owed him as much for the hospitality and protection she had in her
+poverty enjoyed, but she was sure that was in his heart. 'Of course
+she's your sister, but when one's sister's a perfect bad 'un there's no
+law to force one to jump into the mud to save her. It <i>is</i> mud, my dear,
+and mud up to your neck. You had much better think of her children&mdash;you
+had much better stop in <i>my</i> boat.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you ask me to help you with evidence against her?' the girl
+murmured. She had stood there passive, waiting while he talked, covering
+her face with her hands, which she parted a little, looking at him.</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated a moment. 'I ask you not to deny what you have seen&mdash;what
+you feel to be true.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then of the abominations of which you say you have proof, you haven't
+proof.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why haven't I proof?'</p>
+
+<p>'If you want <i>me</i> to come forward!'</p>
+
+<p>'I shall go into court with a strong case. You may do what you like. But
+I give you notice and I expect you not to forget that I have given it.
+Don't forget&mdash;because you'll be asked&mdash;that I have told you to-night
+where she is and with whom she is and what measures I intend to take.'</p>
+
+<p>'Be asked&mdash;be asked?' the girl repeated.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, of course you'll be cross-examined.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, mother, mother!' cried Laura Wing. Her hands were over her face
+again and as Lionel <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>Berrington, opening the door, let her pass, she
+burst into tears. He looked after her, distressed, compunctious,
+half-ashamed, and he exclaimed to himself&mdash;'The bloody brute, the bloody
+brute!' But the words had reference to his wife.</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h2>
+
+<p>'And are you telling me the perfect truth when you say that Captain
+Crispin was not there?'</p>
+
+<p>'The perfect truth?' Mrs. Berrington straightened herself to her height,
+threw back her head and measured her interlocutress up and down; it is
+to be surmised that this was one of the many ways in which she knew she
+looked very handsome indeed. Her interlocutress was her sister, and even
+in a discussion with a person long since initiated she was not incapable
+of feeling that her beauty was a new advantage. On this occasion she had
+at first the air of depending upon it mainly to produce an effect upon
+Laura; then, after an instant's reflection, she determined to arrive at
+her result in another way. She exchanged her expression of scorn (of
+resentment at her veracity's being impugned) for a look of gentle
+amusement; she smiled patiently, as if she remembered that of course
+Laura couldn't understand of what an impertinence she had been guilty.
+There was a quickness of perception and lightness of hand which, to her
+sense, her American sister had never acquired: the girl's earnest,
+almost barbarous probity blinded her to the importance of certain
+pleasant little forms. 'My poor child, the things you do say!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> One
+doesn't put a question about the perfect truth in a manner that implies
+that a person is telling a perfect lie. However, as it's only you, I
+don't mind satisfying your clumsy curiosity. I haven't the least idea
+whether Captain Crispin was there or not. I know nothing of his
+movements and he doesn't keep me informed&mdash;why should he, poor man?&mdash;of
+his whereabouts. He was not there for me&mdash;isn't that all that need
+interest you? As far as I was concerned he might have been at the North
+Pole. I neither saw him nor heard of him. I didn't see the end of his
+nose!' Selina continued, still with her wiser, tolerant brightness,
+looking straight into her sister's eyes. Her own were clear and lovely
+and she was but little less handsome than if she had been proud and
+freezing. Laura wondered at her more and more; stupefied suspense was
+now almost the girl's constant state of mind.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Berrington had come back from Paris the day before but had not
+proceeded to Mellows the same night, though there was more than one
+train she might have taken. Neither had she gone to the house in
+Grosvenor Place but had spent the night at an hotel. Her husband was
+absent again; he was supposed to be in Grosvenor Place, so that they had
+not yet met. Little as she was a woman to admit that she had been in the
+wrong she was known to have granted later that at this moment she had
+made a mistake in not going straight to her own house. It had given
+Lionel a degree of advantage, made it appear perhaps a little that she
+had a bad conscience and was afraid to face him. But she had had her
+reasons for putting up at an hotel, and she thought it unnecessary to
+express them very definitely. She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> came home by a morning train, the
+second day, and arrived before luncheon, of which meal she partook in
+the company of her sister and in that of Miss Steet and the children,
+sent for in honour of the occasion. After luncheon she let the governess
+go but kept Scratch and Parson&mdash;kept them on ever so long in the
+morning-room where she remained; longer than she had ever kept them
+before. Laura was conscious that she ought to have been pleased at this,
+but there was a perversity even in Selina's manner of doing right; for
+she wished immensely now to see her alone&mdash;she had something so serious
+to say to her. Selina hugged her children repeatedly, encouraging their
+sallies; she laughed extravagantly at the artlessness of their remarks,
+so that at table Miss Steet was quite abashed by her unusual high
+spirits. Laura was unable to question her about Captain Crispin and Lady
+Ringrose while Geordie and Ferdy were there: they would not understand,
+of course, but names were always reflected in their limpid little minds
+and they gave forth the image later&mdash;often in the most extraordinary
+connections. It was as if Selina knew what she was waiting for and were
+determined to make her wait. The girl wished her to go to her room, that
+she might follow her there. But Selina showed no disposition to retire,
+and one could never entertain the idea for her, on any occasion, that it
+would be suitable that she should change her dress. The dress she
+wore&mdash;whatever it was&mdash;was too becoming to her, and to the moment, for
+that. Laura noticed how the very folds of her garment told that she had
+been to Paris; she had spent only a week there but the mark of her
+<i>couturi&egrave;re</i> was all over her: it was simply<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> to confer with this great
+artist that, from her own account, she had crossed the Channel. The
+signs of the conference were so conspicuous that it was as if she had
+said, 'Don't you see the proof that it was for nothing but <i>chiffons</i>?'
+She walked up and down the room with Geordie in her arms, in an access
+of maternal tenderness; he was much too big to nestle gracefully in her
+bosom, but that only made her seem younger, more flexible, fairer in her
+tall, strong slimness. Her distinguished figure bent itself hither and
+thither, but always in perfect freedom, as she romped with her children;
+and there was another moment, when she came slowly down the room,
+holding one of them in each hand and singing to them while they looked
+up at her beauty, charmed and listening and a little surprised at such
+new ways&mdash;a moment when she might have passed for some grave, antique
+statue of a young matron, or even for a picture of Saint Cecilia. This
+morning, more than ever, Laura was struck with her air of youth, the
+inextinguishable freshness that would have made any one exclaim at her
+being the mother of such bouncing little boys. Laura had always admired
+her, thought her the prettiest woman in London, the beauty with the
+finest points; and now these points were so vivid (especially her
+finished slenderness and the grace, the natural elegance of every
+turn&mdash;the fall of her shoulders had never looked so perfect) that the
+girl almost detested them: they appeared to her a kind of advertisement
+of danger and even of shame.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Steet at last came back for the children, and as soon as she had
+taken them away Selina observed that she would go over to Plash&mdash;just
+as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> she was: she rang for her hat and jacket and for the carriage. Laura
+could see that she would not give her just yet the advantage of a
+retreat to her room. The hat and jacket were quickly brought, but after
+they were put on Selina kept her maid in the drawing-room, talking to
+her a long time, telling her elaborately what she wished done with the
+things she had brought from Paris. Before the maid departed the carriage
+was announced, and the servant, leaving the door of the room open,
+hovered within earshot. Laura then, losing patience, turned out the maid
+and closed the door; she stood before her sister, who was prepared for
+her drive. Then she asked her abruptly, fiercely, but colouring with her
+question, whether Captain Crispin had been in Paris. We have heard Mrs.
+Berrington's answer, with which her strenuous sister was imperfectly
+satisfied; a fact the perception of which it doubtless was that led
+Selina to break out, with a greater show of indignation: 'I never heard
+of such extraordinary ideas for a girl to have, and such extraordinary
+things for a girl to talk about! My dear, you have acquired a
+freedom&mdash;you have emancipated yourself from conventionality&mdash;and I
+suppose I must congratulate you.' Laura only stood there, with her eyes
+fixed, without answering the sally, and Selina went on, with another
+change of tone: 'And pray if he <i>was</i> there, what is there so monstrous?
+Hasn't it happened that he is in London when I am there? Why is it then
+so awful that he should be in Paris?'</p>
+
+<p>'Awful, awful, too awful,' murmured Laura, with intense gravity, still
+looking at her&mdash;looking all the more fixedly that she knew how little
+Selina liked it.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p><p>'My dear, you do indulge in a style of innuendo, for a respectable
+young woman!' Mrs. Berrington exclaimed, with an angry laugh. 'You have
+ideas that when I was a girl&mdash;&mdash;' She paused, and her sister saw that
+she had not the assurance to finish her sentence on that particular
+note.</p>
+
+<p>'Don't talk about my innuendoes and my ideas&mdash;you might remember those
+in which I have heard you indulge! Ideas? what ideas did I ever have
+before I came here?' Laura Wing asked, with a trembling voice. 'Don't
+pretend to be shocked, Selina; that's too cheap a defence. You have said
+things to me&mdash;if you choose to talk of freedom! What is the talk of your
+house and what does one hear if one lives with you? I don't care what I
+hear now (it's all odious and there's little choice and my sweet
+sensibility has gone God knows where!) and I'm very glad if you
+understand that I don't care what I say. If one talks about your
+affairs, my dear, one mustn't be too particular!' the girl continued,
+with a flash of passion.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Berrington buried her face in her hands. 'Merciful powers, to be
+insulted, to be covered with outrage, by one's wretched little sister!'
+she moaned.</p>
+
+<p>'I think you should be thankful there is one human being&mdash;however
+wretched&mdash;who cares enough for you to care about the truth in what
+concerns you,' Laura said. 'Selina, Selina&mdash;are you hideously deceiving
+us?'</p>
+
+<p>'Us?' Selina repeated, with a singular laugh. 'Whom do you mean by us?'</p>
+
+<p>Laura Wing hesitated; she had asked herself whether it would be best she
+should let her sister<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> know the dreadful scene she had had with Lionel;
+but she had not, in her mind, settled that point. However, it was
+settled now in an instant. 'I don't mean your friends&mdash;those of them
+that I have seen. I don't think <i>they</i> care a straw&mdash;I have never seen
+such people. But last week Lionel spoke to me&mdash;he told me he <i>knew</i> it,
+as a certainty.'</p>
+
+<p>'Lionel spoke to you?' said Mrs. Berrington, holding up her head with a
+stare. 'And what is it that he knows?'</p>
+
+<p>'That Captain Crispin was in Paris and that you were with him. He
+believes you went there to meet him.'</p>
+
+<p>'He said this to <i>you</i>?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, and much more&mdash;I don't know why I should make a secret of it.'</p>
+
+<p>'The disgusting beast!' Selina exclaimed slowly, solemnly. 'He enjoys
+the right&mdash;the legal right&mdash;to pour forth his vileness upon <i>me</i>; but
+when he is so lost to every feeling as to begin to talk to you in such a
+way&mdash;&mdash;!' And Mrs. Berrington paused, in the extremity of her
+reprobation.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, it was not his talk that shocked me&mdash;it was his believing it,' the
+girl replied. 'That, I confess, made an impression on me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Did it indeed? I'm infinitely obliged to you! You are a tender, loving
+little sister.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I am, if it's tender to have cried about you&mdash;all these days&mdash;till
+I'm blind and sick!' Laura replied. 'I hope you are prepared to meet
+him. His mind is quite made up to apply for a divorce.'</p>
+
+<p>Laura's voice almost failed her as she said this&mdash;it was the first time
+that in talking with Selina she had uttered that horrible word. She had
+heard it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> however, often enough on the lips of others; it had been
+bandied lightly enough in her presence under those somewhat austere
+ceilings of Mellows, of which the admired decorations and mouldings, in
+the taste of the middle of the last century, all in delicate plaster and
+reminding her of Wedgewood pottery, consisted of slim festoons, urns and
+trophies and knotted ribbons, so many symbols of domestic affection and
+irrevocable union. Selina herself had flashed it at her with light
+superiority, as if it were some precious jewel kept in reserve, which
+she could convert at any moment into specie, so that it would constitute
+a happy provision for her future. The idea&mdash;associated with her own
+point of view&mdash;was apparently too familiar to Mrs. Berrington to be the
+cause of her changing colour; it struck her indeed, as presented by
+Laura, in a ludicrous light, for her pretty eyes expanded a moment and
+she smiled pityingly. 'Well, you are a poor dear innocent, after all.
+Lionel would be about as able to divorce me&mdash;even if I were the most
+abandoned of my sex&mdash;as he would be to write a leader in the <i>Times</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'I know nothing about that,' said Laura.</p>
+
+<p>'So I perceive&mdash;as I also perceive that you must have shut your eyes
+very tight. Should you like to know a few of the reasons&mdash;heaven forbid
+I should attempt to go over them all; there are millions!&mdash;why his hands
+are tied?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not in the least.'</p>
+
+<p>'Should you like to know that his own life is too base for words and
+that his impudence in talking about me would be sickening if it weren't
+grotesque?' Selina went on, with increasing emotion. 'Should you like me
+to tell you to what he has stooped&mdash;to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> the very gutter&mdash;and the
+charming history of his relations with&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'No, I don't want you to tell me anything of the sort,' Laura
+interrupted. 'Especially as you were just now so pained by the license
+of my own allusions.'</p>
+
+<p>'You listen to him then&mdash;but it suits your purpose not to listen to me!'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Selina, Selina!' the girl almost shrieked, turning away.</p>
+
+<p>'Where have your eyes been, or your senses, or your powers of
+observation? You can be clever enough when it suits you!' Mrs.
+Berrington continued, throwing off another ripple of derision. 'And now
+perhaps, as the carriage is waiting, you will let me go about my
+duties.'</p>
+
+<p>Laura turned again and stopped her, holding her arm as she passed toward
+the door. 'Will you swear&mdash;will you swear by everything that is most
+sacred?'</p>
+
+<p>'Will I swear what?' And now she thought Selina visibly blanched.</p>
+
+<p>'That you didn't lay eyes on Captain Crispin in Paris.'</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Berrington hesitated, but only for an instant. 'You are really too
+odious, but as you are pinching me to death I will swear, to get away
+from you. I never laid eyes on him.'</p>
+
+<p>The organs of vision which Mrs. Berrington was ready solemnly to declare
+that she had not misapplied were, as her sister looked into them, an
+abyss of indefinite prettiness. The girl had sounded them before without
+discovering a conscience at the bottom of them, and they had never
+helped any one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> to find out anything about their possessor except that
+she was one of the beauties of London. Even while Selina spoke Laura had
+a cold, horrible sense of not believing her, and at the same time a
+desire, colder still, to extract a reiteration of the pledge. Was it the
+asseveration of her innocence that she wished her to repeat, or only the
+attestation of her falsity? One way or the other it seemed to her that
+this would settle something, and she went on inexorably&mdash;'By our dear
+mother's memory&mdash;by our poor father's?'</p>
+
+<p>'By my mother's, by my father's,' said Mrs. Berrington, 'and by that of
+any other member of the family you like!' Laura let her go; she had not
+been pinching her, as Selina described the pressure, but had clung to
+her with insistent hands. As she opened the door Selina said, in a
+changed voice: 'I suppose it's no use to ask you if you care to drive to
+Plash.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, thank you, I don't care&mdash;I shall take a walk.'</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose, from that, that your friend Lady Davenant has gone.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, I think she is still there.'</p>
+
+<p>'That's a bore!' Selina exclaimed, as she went off.</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h2>
+
+<p>Laura Wing hastened to her room to prepare herself for her walk; but
+when she reached it she simply fell on her knees, shuddering, beside her
+bed. She buried her face in the soft counterpane of wadded silk; she
+remained there a long time, with a kind of aversion to lifting it again
+to the day. It burned with horror and there was coolness in the smooth
+glaze of the silk. It seemed to her that she had been concerned in a
+hideous transaction, and her uppermost feeling was, strangely enough,
+that she was ashamed&mdash;not of her sister but of herself. She did not
+believe her&mdash;that was at the bottom of everything, and she had made her
+lie, she had brought out her perjury, she had associated it with the
+sacred images of the dead. She took no walk, she remained in her room,
+and quite late, towards six o'clock, she heard on the gravel, outside of
+her windows, the wheels of the carriage bringing back Mrs. Berrington.
+She had evidently been elsewhere as well as to Plash; no doubt she had
+been to the vicarage&mdash;she was capable even of that. She could pay
+'duty-visits,' like that (she called at the vicarage about three times a
+year), and she could go and be nice to her mother-in-law with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> her fresh
+lips still fresher for the lie she had just told. For it was as definite
+as an aching nerve to Laura that she did not believe her, and if she did
+not believe her the words she had spoken were a lie. It was the lie, the
+lie to <i>her</i> and which she had dragged out of her that seemed to the
+girl the ugliest thing. If she had admitted her folly, if she had
+explained, attenuated, sophisticated, there would have been a difference
+in her favour; but now she was bad because she was hard. She had a
+surface of polished metal. And she could make plans and calculate, she
+could act and do things for a particular effect. She could go straight
+to old Mrs. Berrington and to the parson's wife and his many daughters
+(just as she had kept the children after luncheon, on purpose, so long)
+because that looked innocent and domestic and denoted a mind without a
+feather's weight upon it.</p>
+
+<p>A servant came to the young lady's door to tell her that tea was ready;
+and on her asking who else was below (for she had heard the wheels of a
+second vehicle just after Selina's return), she learned that Lionel had
+come back. At this news she requested that some tea should be brought to
+her room&mdash;she determined not to go to dinner. When the dinner-hour came
+she sent down word that she had a headache, that she was going to bed.
+She wondered whether Selina would come to her (she could forget
+disagreeable scenes amazingly); but her fervent hope that she would stay
+away was gratified. Indeed she would have another call upon her
+attention if her meeting with her husband was half as much of a
+concussion as was to have been expected. Laura had found herself
+listening hard, after knowing that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> her brother-in-law was in the house:
+she half expected to hear indications of violence&mdash;loud cries or the
+sound of a scuffle. It was a matter of course to her that some dreadful
+scene had not been slow to take place, something that discretion should
+keep her out of even if she had not been too sick. She did not go to
+bed&mdash;partly because she didn't know what might happen in the house. But
+she was restless also for herself: things had reached a point when it
+seemed to her that she must make up her mind. She left her candles
+unlighted&mdash;she sat up till the small hours, in the glow of the fire.
+What had been settled by her scene with Selina was that worse things
+were to come (looking into her fire, as the night went on, she had a
+rare prevision of the catastrophe that hung over the house), and she
+considered, or tried to consider, what it would be best for her, in
+anticipation, to do. The first thing was to take flight.</p>
+
+<p>It may be related without delay that Laura Wing did not take flight and
+that though the circumstance detracts from the interest that should be
+felt in her character she did not even make up her mind. That was not so
+easy when action had to ensue. At the same time she had not the excuse
+of a conviction that by not acting&mdash;that is by not withdrawing from her
+brother-in-law's roof&mdash;she should be able to hold Selina up to her duty,
+to drag her back into the straight path. The hopes connected with that
+project were now a phase that she had left behind her; she had not
+to-day an illusion about her sister large enough to cover a sixpence.
+She had passed through the period of superstition, which had lasted the
+longest&mdash;the time when it seemed to her, as at first, a kind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> of
+profanity to doubt of Selina and judge her, the elder sister whose
+beauty and success she had ever been proud of and who carried herself,
+though with the most good-natured fraternisings, as one native to an
+upper air. She had called herself in moments of early penitence for
+irrepressible suspicion a little presumptuous prig: so strange did it
+seem to her at first, the impulse of criticism in regard to her bright
+protectress. But the revolution was over and she had a desolate, lonely
+freedom which struck her as not the most cynical thing in the world only
+because Selina's behaviour was more so. She supposed she should learn,
+though she was afraid of the knowledge, what had passed between that
+lady and her husband while her vigil ached itself away. But it appeared
+to her the next day, to her surprise, that nothing was changed in the
+situation save that Selina knew at present how much more she was
+suspected. As this had not a chastening effect upon Mrs. Berrington
+nothing had been gained by Laura's appeal to her. Whatever Lionel had
+said to his wife he said nothing to Laura: he left her at perfect
+liberty to forget the subject he had opened up to her so luminously.
+This was very characteristic of his good-nature; it had come over him
+that after all she wouldn't like it, and if the free use of the gray
+ponies could make up to her for the shock she might order them every day
+in the week and banish the unpleasant episode from her mind.</p>
+
+<p>Laura ordered the gray ponies very often: she drove herself all over the
+country. She visited not only the neighbouring but the distant poor, and
+she never went out without stopping for one of the vicar's fresh
+daughters. Mellows was now half the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> time full of visitors and when it
+was not its master and mistress were staying with their friends either
+together or singly. Sometimes (almost always when she was asked) Laura
+Wing accompanied her sister and on two or three occasions she paid an
+independent visit. Selina had often told her that she wished her to have
+her own friends, so that the girl now felt a great desire to show her
+that she had them. She had arrived at no decision whatever; she had
+embraced in intention no particular course. She drifted on, shutting her
+eyes, averting her head and, as it seemed to herself, hardening her
+heart. This admission will doubtless suggest to the reader that she was
+a weak, inconsequent, spasmodic young person, with a standard not
+really, or at any rate not continuously, high; and I have no desire that
+she shall appear anything but what she was. It must even be related of
+her that since she could not escape and live in lodgings and paint fans
+(there were reasons why this combination was impossible) she determined
+to try and be happy in the given circumstances&mdash;to float in shallow,
+turbid water. She gave up the attempt to understand the cynical <i>modus
+vivendi</i> at which her companions seemed to have arrived; she knew it was
+not final but it served them sufficiently for the time; and if it served
+them why should it not serve her, the dependent, impecunious, tolerated
+little sister, representative of the class whom it behoved above all to
+mind their own business? The time was coming round when they would all
+move up to town, and there, in the crowd, with the added movement, the
+strain would be less and indifference easier.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever Lionel had said to his wife that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>evening she had found
+something to say to him: that Laura could see, though not so much from
+any change in the simple expression of his little red face and in the
+vain bustle of his existence as from the grand manner in which Selina
+now carried herself. She was 'smarter' than ever and her waist was
+smaller and her back straighter and the fall of her shoulders finer; her
+long eyes were more oddly charming and the extreme detachment of her
+elbows from her sides conduced still more to the exhibition of her
+beautiful arms. So she floated, with a serenity not disturbed by a
+general tardiness, through the interminable succession of her
+engagements. Her photographs were not to be purchased in the Burlington
+Arcade&mdash;she had kept out of that; but she looked more than ever as they
+would have represented her if they had been obtainable there. There were
+times when Laura thought her brother-in-law's formless desistence too
+frivolous for nature: it even gave her a sense of deeper dangers. It was
+as if he had been digging away in the dark and they would all tumble
+into the hole. It happened to her to ask herself whether the things he
+had said to her the afternoon he fell upon her in the schoolroom had not
+all been a clumsy practical joke, a crude desire to scare, that of a
+schoolboy playing with a sheet in the dark; or else brandy and soda,
+which came to the same thing. However this might be she was obliged to
+recognise that the impression of brandy and soda had not again been
+given her. More striking still however was Selina's capacity to recover
+from shocks and condone imputations; she kissed again&mdash;kissed
+Laura&mdash;without tears, and proposed problems connected with the
+rearrangement of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>trimmings and of the flowers at dinner, as
+candidly&mdash;as earnestly&mdash;as if there had never been an intenser question
+between them. Captain Crispin was not mentioned; much less of course, so
+far as Laura was concerned, was he seen. But Lady Ringrose appeared; she
+came down for two days, during an absence of Lionel's. Laura, to her
+surprise, found her no such Jezebel but a clever little woman with a
+single eye-glass and short hair who had read Lecky and could give her
+useful hints about water-colours: a reconciliation that encouraged the
+girl, for this was the direction in which it now seemed to her best that
+she herself should grow.</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII</h2>
+
+<p>In Grosvenor Place, on Sunday afternoon, during the first weeks of the
+season, Mrs. Berrington was usually at home: this indeed was the only
+time when a visitor who had not made an appointment could hope to be
+admitted to her presence. Very few hours in the twenty-four did she
+spend in her own house. Gentlemen calling on these occasions rarely
+found her sister: Mrs. Berrington had the field to herself. It was
+understood between the pair that Laura should take this time for going
+to see her old women: it was in that manner that Selina qualified the
+girl's independent social resources. The old women however were not a
+dozen in number; they consisted mainly of Lady Davenant and the elder
+Mrs. Berrington, who had a house in Portman Street. Lady Davenant lived
+at Queen's Gate and also was usually at home of a Sunday afternoon: her
+visitors were not all men, like Selina Berrington's, and Laura's
+maidenly bonnet was not a false note in her drawing-room. Selina liked
+her sister, naturally enough, to make herself useful, but of late,
+somehow, they had grown rarer, the occasions that depended in any degree
+upon her aid, and she had never been much appealed to&mdash;though it would
+have seemed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> natural she should be&mdash;on behalf of the weekly chorus of
+gentlemen. It came to be recognised on Selina's part that nature had
+dedicated her more to the relief of old women than to that of young men.
+Laura had a distinct sense of interfering with the free interchange of
+anecdote and pleasantry that went on at her sister's fireside: the
+anecdotes were mostly such an immense secret that they could not be told
+fairly if she were there, and she had their privacy on her conscience.
+There was an exception however; when Selina expected Americans she
+naturally asked her to stay at home: not apparently so much because
+their conversation would be good for her as because hers would be good
+for them.</p>
+
+<p>One Sunday, about the middle of May, Laura Wing prepared herself to go
+and see Lady Davenant, who had made a long absence from town at Easter
+but would now have returned. The weather was charming, she had from the
+first established her right to tread the London streets alone (if she
+was a poor girl she could have the detachment as well as the
+helplessness of it) and she promised herself the pleasure of a walk
+along the park, where the new grass was bright. A moment before she
+quitted the house her sister sent for her to the drawing-room; the
+servant gave her a note scrawled in pencil: 'That man from New York is
+here&mdash;Mr. Wendover, who brought me the introduction the other day from
+the Schoolings. He's rather a dose&mdash;you must positively come down and
+talk to him. Take him out with you if you can.' The description was not
+alluring, but Selina had never made a request of her to which the girl
+had not instantly responded: it seemed to her she was there for that.
+She joined<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> the circle in the drawing-room and found that it consisted
+of five persons, one of whom was Lady Ringrose. Lady Ringrose was at all
+times and in all places a fitful apparition; she had described herself
+to Laura during her visit at Mellows as 'a bird on the branch.' She had
+no fixed habit of receiving on Sunday, she was in and out as she liked,
+and she was one of the few specimens of her sex who, in Grosvenor Place,
+ever turned up, as she said, on the occasions to which I allude. Of the
+three gentlemen two were known to Laura; she could have told you at
+least that the big one with the red hair was in the Guards and the other
+in the Rifles; the latter looked like a rosy child and as if he ought to
+be sent up to play with Geordie and Ferdy: his social nickname indeed
+was the Baby. Selina's admirers were of all ages&mdash;they ranged from
+infants to octogenarians.</p>
+
+<p>She introduced the third gentleman to her sister; a tall, fair, slender
+young man who suggested that he had made a mistake in the shade of his
+tight, perpendicular coat, ordering it of too heavenly a blue. This
+added however to the candour of his appearance, and if he was a dose, as
+Selina had described him, he could only operate beneficently. There were
+moments when Laura's heart rather yearned towards her countrymen, and
+now, though she was preoccupied and a little disappointed at having been
+detained, she tried to like Mr. Wendover, whom her sister had compared
+invidiously, as it seemed to her, with her other companions. It struck
+her that his surface at least was as glossy as theirs. The Baby, whom
+she remembered to have heard spoken of as a dangerous flirt, was in
+conversation with Lady Ringrose and the guardsman with Mrs. Berrington;
+so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> she did her best to entertain the American visitor, as to whom any
+one could easily see (she thought) that he had brought a letter of
+introduction&mdash;he wished so to maintain the credit of those who had given
+it to him. Laura scarcely knew these people, American friends of her
+sister who had spent a period of festivity in London and gone back
+across the sea before her own advent; but Mr. Wendover gave her all
+possible information about them. He lingered upon them, returned to
+them, corrected statements he had made at first, discoursed upon them
+earnestly and exhaustively. He seemed to fear to leave them, lest he
+should find nothing again so good, and he indulged in a parallel that
+was almost elaborate between Miss Fanny and Miss Katie. Selina told her
+sister afterwards that she had overheard him&mdash;that he talked of them as
+if he had been a nursemaid; upon which Laura defended the young man even
+to extravagance. She reminded her sister that people in London were
+always saying Lady Mary and Lady Susan: why then shouldn't Americans use
+the Christian name, with the humbler prefix with which they had to
+content themselves? There had been a time when Mrs. Berrington had been
+happy enough to be Miss Lina, even though she was the elder sister; and
+the girl liked to think there were still old friends&mdash;friends of the
+family, at home, for whom, even should she live to sixty years of
+spinsterhood, she would never be anything but Miss Laura. This was as
+good as Donna Anna or Donna Elvira: English people could never call
+people as other people did, for fear of resembling the servants.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wendover was very attentive, as well as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> communicative; however his
+letter might be regarded in Grosvenor Place he evidently took it very
+seriously himself; but his eyes wandered considerably, none the less, to
+the other side of the room, and Laura felt that though he had often seen
+persons like her before (not that he betrayed this too crudely) he had
+never seen any one like Lady Ringrose. His glance rested also on Mrs.
+Berrington, who, to do her justice, abstained from showing, by the way
+she returned it, that she wished her sister to get him out of the room.
+Her smile was particularly pretty on Sunday afternoons and he was
+welcome to enjoy it as a part of the decoration of the place. Whether or
+no the young man should prove interesting he was at any rate interested;
+indeed she afterwards learned that what Selina deprecated in him was the
+fact that he would eventually display a fatiguing intensity of
+observation. He would be one of the sort who noticed all kinds of little
+things&mdash;things she never saw or heard of&mdash;in the newspapers or in
+society, and would call upon her (a dreadful prospect) to explain or
+even to defend them. She had not come there to explain England to the
+Americans; the more particularly as her life had been a burden to her
+during the first years of her marriage through her having to explain
+America to the English. As for defending England to her countrymen she
+had much rather defend it <i>from</i> them: there were too many&mdash;too many for
+those who were already there. This was the class she wished to
+spare&mdash;she didn't care about the English. They could obtain an eye for
+an eye and a cutlet for a cutlet by going over there; which she had no
+desire to do&mdash;not for all the cutlets in Christendom!</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p><p>When Mr. Wendover and Laura had at last cut loose from the Schoolings
+he let her know confidentially that he had come over really to see
+London; he had time, that year; he didn't know when he should have it
+again (if ever, as he said) and he had made up his mind that this was
+about the best use he could make of four months and a half. He had heard
+so much of it; it was talked of so much to-day; a man felt as if he
+ought to know something about it. Laura wished the others could hear
+this&mdash;that England was coming up, was making her way at last to a place
+among the topics of societies more universal. She thought Mr. Wendover
+after all remarkably like an Englishman, in spite of his saying that he
+believed she had resided in London quite a time. He talked a great deal
+about things being characteristic, and wanted to know, lowering his
+voice to make the inquiry, whether Lady Ringrose were not particularly
+so. He had heard of her very often, he said; and he observed that it was
+very interesting to see her: he could not have used a different tone if
+he had been speaking of the prime minister or the laureate. Laura was
+ignorant of what he had heard of Lady Ringrose; she doubted whether it
+could be the same as what she had heard from her brother-in-law: if this
+had been the case he never would have mentioned it. She foresaw that his
+friends in London would have a good deal to do in the way of telling him
+whether this or that were characteristic or not; he would go about in
+much the same way that English travellers did in America, fixing his
+attention mainly on society (he let Laura know that this was especially
+what he wished to go into) and neglecting the antiquities and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> sights,
+quite as if he failed to believe in their importance. He would ask
+questions it was impossible to answer; as to whether for instance
+society were very different in the two countries. If you said yes you
+gave a wrong impression and if you said no you didn't give a right one:
+that was the kind of thing that Selina had suffered from. Laura found
+her new acquaintance, on the present occasion and later, more
+philosophically analytic of his impressions than those of her countrymen
+she had hitherto encountered in her new home: the latter, in regard to
+such impressions, usually exhibited either a profane levity or a
+tendency to mawkish idealism.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Berrington called out at last to Laura that she must not stay if
+she had prepared herself to go out: whereupon the girl, having nodded
+and smiled good-bye at the other members of the circle, took a more
+formal leave of Mr. Wendover&mdash;expressed the hope, as an American girl
+does in such a case, that they should see him again. Selina asked him to
+come and dine three days later; which was as much as to say that
+relations might be suspended till then. Mr. Wendover took it so, and
+having accepted the invitation he departed at the same time as Laura. He
+passed out of the house with her and in the street she asked him which
+way he was going. He was too tender, but she liked him; he appeared not
+to deal in chaff and that was a change that relieved her&mdash;she had so
+often had to pay out that coin when she felt wretchedly poor. She hoped
+he would ask her leave to go with her the way she was going&mdash;and this
+not on particular but on general grounds. It would be American, it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>
+would remind her of old times; she should like him to be as American as
+that. There was no reason for her taking so quick an interest in his
+nature, inasmuch as she had not fallen under his spell; but there were
+moments when she felt a whimsical desire to be reminded of the way
+people felt and acted at home. Mr. Wendover did not disappoint her, and
+the bright chocolate-coloured vista of the Fifth Avenue seemed to surge
+before her as he said, 'May I have the pleasure of making my direction
+the same as yours?' and moved round, systematically, to take his place
+between her and the curbstone. She had never walked much with young men
+in America (she had been brought up in the new school, the school of
+attendant maids and the avoidance of certain streets) and she had very
+often done so in England, in the country; yet, as at the top of
+Grosvenor Place she crossed over to the park, proposing they should take
+that way, the breath of her native land was in her nostrils. It was
+certainly only an American who could have the tension of Mr. Wendover;
+his solemnity almost made her laugh, just as her eyes grew dull when
+people 'slanged' each other hilariously in her sister's house; but at
+the same time he gave her a feeling of high respectability. It would be
+respectable still if she were to go on with him indefinitely&mdash;if she
+never were to come home at all. He asked her after a while, as they
+went, whether he had violated the custom of the English in offering her
+his company; whether in that country a gentleman might walk with a young
+lady&mdash;the first time he saw her&mdash;not because their roads lay together
+but for the sake of the walk.</p>
+
+<p>'Why should it matter to me whether it is the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> custom of the English? I
+am not English,' said Laura Wing. Then her companion explained that he
+only wanted a general guidance&mdash;that with her (she was so kind) he had
+not the sense of having taken a liberty. The point was simply&mdash;and
+rather comprehensively and strenuously he began to set forth the point.
+Laura interrupted him; she said she didn't care about it and he almost
+irritated her by telling her she was kind. She was, but she was not
+pleased at its being recognised so soon; and he was still too
+importunate when he asked her whether she continued to go by American
+usage, didn't find that if one lived there one had to conform in a great
+many ways to the English. She was weary of the perpetual comparison, for
+she not only heard it from others&mdash;she heard it a great deal from
+herself. She held that there were certain differences you felt, if you
+belonged to one or the other nation, and that was the end of it: there
+was no use trying to express them. Those you <i>could</i> express were not
+real or not important ones and were not worth talking about. Mr.
+Wendover asked her if she liked English society and if it were superior
+to American; also if the tone were very high in London. She thought his
+questions 'academic'&mdash;the term she used to see applied in the <i>Times</i> to
+certain speeches in Parliament. Bending his long leanness over her (she
+had never seen a man whose material presence was so insubstantial, so
+unoppressive) and walking almost sidewise, to give her a proper
+attention, he struck her as innocent, as incapable of guessing that she
+had had a certain observation of life. They were talking about totally
+different things: English society, as he asked her judgment upon it and
+she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> had happened to see it, was an affair that he didn't suspect. If
+she were to give him that judgment it would be more than he doubtless
+bargained for; but she would do it not to make him open his eyes&mdash;only
+to relieve herself. She had thought of that before in regard to two or
+three persons she had met&mdash;of the satisfaction of breaking out with some
+of her feelings. It would make little difference whether the person
+understood her or not; the one who should do so best would be far from
+understanding everything. 'I want to get out of it, please&mdash;out of the
+set I live in, the one I have tumbled into through my sister, the people
+you saw just now. There are thousands of people in London who are
+different from that and ever so much nicer; but I don't see them, I
+don't know how to get at them; and after all, poor dear man, what power
+have you to help me?' That was in the last analysis the gist of what she
+had to say.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wendover asked her about Selina in the tone of a person who thought
+Mrs. Berrington a very important phenomenon, and that by itself was
+irritating to Laura Wing. Important&mdash;gracious goodness, no! She might
+have to live with her, to hold her tongue about her; but at least she
+was not bound to exaggerate her significance. The young man forbore
+decorously to make use of the expression, but she could see that he
+supposed Selina to be a professional beauty and she guessed that as this
+product had not yet been domesticated in the western world the desire to
+behold it, after having read so much about it, had been one of the
+motives of Mr. Wendover's pilgrimage. Mrs. Schooling, who must have been
+a goose, had told him that Mrs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> Berrington, though transplanted, was
+the finest flower of a rich, ripe society and as clever and virtuous as
+she was beautiful. Meanwhile Laura knew what Selina thought of Fanny
+Schooling and her incurable provinciality. 'Now was that a good example
+of London talk&mdash;what I heard (I only heard a little of it, but the
+conversation was more general before you came in) in your sister's
+drawing-room? I don't mean literary, intellectual talk&mdash;I suppose there
+are special places to hear that; I mean&mdash;I mean&mdash;&mdash;' Mr. Wendover went
+on with a deliberation which gave his companion an opportunity to
+interrupt him. They had arrived at Lady Davenant's door and she cut his
+meaning short. A fancy had taken her, on the spot, and the fact that it
+was whimsical seemed only to recommend it.</p>
+
+<p>'If you want to hear London talk there will be some very good going on
+in here,' she said. 'If you would like to come in with me&mdash;&mdash;?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, you are very kind&mdash;I should be delighted,' replied Mr. Wendover,
+endeavouring to emulate her own more rapid processes. They stepped into
+the porch and the young man, anticipating his companion, lifted the
+knocker and gave a postman's rap. She laughed at him for this and he
+looked bewildered; the idea of taking him in with her had become
+agreeably exhilarating. Their acquaintance, in that moment, took a long
+jump. She explained to him who Lady Davenant was and that if he was in
+search of the characteristic it would be a pity he shouldn't know her;
+and then she added, before he could put the question:</p>
+
+<p>'And what I am doing is <i>not</i> in the least usual. No, it is not the
+custom for young ladies here to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> take strange gentlemen off to call on
+their friends the first time they see them.'</p>
+
+<p>'So that Lady Davenant will think it rather extraordinary?' Mr. Wendover
+eagerly inquired; not as if that idea frightened him, but so that his
+observation on this point should also be well founded. He had entered
+into Laura's proposal with complete serenity.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, most extraordinary!' said Laura, as they went in. The old lady
+however concealed such surprise as she may have felt, and greeted Mr.
+Wendover as if he were any one of fifty familiars. She took him
+altogether for granted and asked him no questions about his arrival, his
+departure, his hotel or his business in England. He noticed, as he
+afterwards confided to Laura, her omission of these forms; but he was
+not wounded by it&mdash;he only made a mark against it as an illustration of
+the difference between English and American manners: in New York people
+always asked the arriving stranger the first thing about the steamer and
+the hotel. Mr. Wendover appeared greatly impressed with Lady Davenant's
+antiquity, though he confessed to his companion on a subsequent occasion
+that he thought her a little flippant, a little frivolous even for her
+years. 'Oh yes,' said the girl, on that occasion, 'I have no doubt that
+you considered she talked too much, for one so old. In America old
+ladies sit silent and listen to the young.' Mr. Wendover stared a little
+and replied to this that with her&mdash;with Laura Wing&mdash;it was impossible to
+tell which side she was on, the American or the English: sometimes she
+seemed to take one, sometimes the other. At any rate, he added, smiling,
+with regard to the other great division it was easy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> to see&mdash;she was on
+the side of the old. 'Of course I am,' she said; 'when one <i>is</i> old!'
+And then he inquired, according to his wont, if she were thought so in
+England; to which she answered that it was England that had made her so.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Davenant's bright drawing-room was filled with mementoes and
+especially with a collection of portraits of distinguished people,
+mainly fine old prints with signatures, an array of precious autographs.
+'Oh, it's a cemetery,' she said, when the young man asked her some
+question about one of the pictures; 'they are my contemporaries, they
+are all dead and those things are the tombstones, with the inscriptions.
+I'm the grave-digger, I look after the place and try to keep it a little
+tidy. I have dug my own little hole,' she went on, to Laura, 'and when
+you are sent for you must come and put me in.' This evocation of
+mortality led Mr. Wendover to ask her if she had known Charles Lamb; at
+which she stared for an instant, replying: 'Dear me, no&mdash;one didn't meet
+him.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I meant to say Lord Byron,' said Mr. Wendover.</p>
+
+<p>'Bless me, yes; I was in love with him. But he didn't notice me,
+fortunately&mdash;we were so many. He was very nice-looking but he was very
+vulgar.' Lady Davenant talked to Laura as if Mr. Wendover had not been
+there; or rather as if his interests and knowledge were identical with
+hers. Before they went away the young man asked her if she had known
+Garrick and she replied: 'Oh, dear, no, we didn't have them in our
+houses, in those days.'</p>
+
+<p>'He must have been dead long before you were born!' Laura exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span></p><p>'I daresay; but one used to hear of him.'</p>
+
+<p>'I think I meant Edmund Kean,' said Mr. Wendover.</p>
+
+<p>'You make little mistakes of a century or two,' Laura Wing remarked,
+laughing. She felt now as if she had known Mr. Wendover a long time.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, he was very clever,' said Lady Davenant.</p>
+
+<p>'Very magnetic, I suppose,' Mr. Wendover went on.</p>
+
+<p>'What's that? I believe he used to get tipsy.'</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps you don't use that expression in England?' Laura's companion
+inquired.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I daresay we do, if it's American; we talk American now. You seem
+very good-natured people, but such a jargon as you <i>do</i> speak!'</p>
+
+<p>'I like <i>your</i> way, Lady Davenant,' said Mr. Wendover, benevolently,
+smiling.</p>
+
+<p>'You might do worse,' cried the old woman; and then she added: 'Please
+go out!' They were taking leave of her but she kept Laura's hand and,
+for the young man, nodded with decision at the open door. 'Now, wouldn't
+<i>he</i> do?' she asked, after Mr. Wendover had passed into the hall.</p>
+
+<p>'Do for what?'</p>
+
+<p>'For a husband, of course.'</p>
+
+<p>'For a husband&mdash;for whom?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why&mdash;for me,' said Lady Davenant.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know&mdash;I think he might tire you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh&mdash;if he's tiresome!' the old lady continued, smiling at the girl.</p>
+
+<p>'I think he is very good,' said Laura.</p>
+
+<p>'Well then, he'll do.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, perhaps <i>you</i> won't!' Laura exclaimed, smiling back at her and
+turning away.</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII</h2>
+
+<p>She was of a serious turn by nature and unlike many serious people she
+made no particular study of the art of being gay. Had her circumstances
+been different she might have done so, but she lived in a merry house
+(heaven save the mark! as she used to say) and therefore was not driven
+to amuse herself for conscience sake. The diversions she sought were of
+a serious cast and she liked those best which showed most the note of
+difference from Selina's interests and Lionel's. She felt that she was
+most divergent when she attempted to cultivate her mind, and it was a
+branch of such cultivation to visit the curiosities, the antiquities,
+the monuments of London. She was fond of the Abbey and the British
+Museum&mdash;she had extended her researches as far as the Tower. She read
+the works of Mr. John Timbs and made notes of the old corners of history
+that had not yet been abolished&mdash;the houses in which great men had lived
+and died. She planned a general tour of inspection of the ancient
+churches of the City and a pilgrimage to the queer places commemorated
+by Dickens. It must be added that though her intentions were great her
+adventures had as yet been small. She had wanted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> for opportunity and
+independence; people had other things to do than to go with her, so that
+it was not till she had been some time in the country and till a good
+while after she had begun to go out alone that she entered upon the
+privilege of visiting public institutions by herself. There were some
+aspects of London that frightened her, but there were certain spots,
+such as the Poets' Corner in the Abbey or the room of the Elgin marbles,
+where she liked better to be alone than not to have the right companion.
+At the time Mr. Wendover presented himself in Grosvenor Place she had
+begun to put in, as they said, a museum or something of that sort
+whenever she had a chance. Besides her idea that such places were
+sources of knowledge (it is to be feared that the poor girl's notions of
+knowledge were at once conventional and crude) they were also occasions
+for detachment, an escape from worrying thoughts. She forgot Selina and
+she 'qualified' herself a little&mdash;though for what she hardly knew.</p>
+
+<p>The day Mr. Wendover dined in Grosvenor Place they talked about St.
+Paul's, which he expressed a desire to see, wishing to get some idea of
+the great past, as he said, in England as well as of the present. Laura
+mentioned that she had spent half an hour the summer before in the big
+black temple on Ludgate Hill; whereupon he asked her if he might
+entertain the hope that&mdash;if it were not disagreeable to her to go
+again&mdash;she would serve as his guide there. She had taken him to see Lady
+Davenant, who was so remarkable and worth a long journey, and now he
+should like to pay her back&mdash;to show <i>her</i> something. The difficulty
+would be that there was probably nothing she had not seen; but if she
+could think of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> anything he was completely at her service. They sat
+together at dinner and she told him she would think of something before
+the repast was over. A little while later she let him know that a
+charming place had occurred to her&mdash;a place to which she was afraid to
+go alone and where she should be grateful for a protector: she would
+tell him more about it afterwards. It was then settled between them that
+on a certain afternoon of the same week they would go to St. Paul's
+together, extending their ramble as much further as they had time. Laura
+lowered her voice for this discussion, as if the range of allusion had
+had a kind of impropriety. She was now still more of the mind that Mr.
+Wendover was a good young man&mdash;he had such worthy eyes. His principal
+defect was that he treated all subjects as if they were equally
+important; but that was perhaps better than treating them with equal
+levity. If one took an interest in him one might not despair of teaching
+him to discriminate.</p>
+
+<p>Laura said nothing at first to her sister about her appointment with
+him: the feelings with which she regarded Selina were not such as to
+make it easy for her to talk over matters of conduct, as it were, with
+this votary of pleasure at any price, or at any rate to report her
+arrangements to her as one would do to a person of fine judgment. All
+the same, as she had a horror of positively hiding anything (Selina
+herself did that enough for two) it was her purpose to mention at
+luncheon on the day of the event that she had agreed to accompany Mr.
+Wendover to St. Paul's. It so happened however that Mrs. Berrington was
+not at home at this repast; Laura partook of it in the company of Miss
+Steet and her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> young charges. It very often happened now that the
+sisters failed to meet in the morning, for Selina remained very late in
+her room and there had been a considerable intermission of the girl's
+earlier custom of visiting her there. It was Selina's habit to send
+forth from this fragrant sanctuary little hieroglyphic notes in which
+she expressed her wishes or gave her directions for the day. On the
+morning I speak of her maid put into Laura's hand one of these
+communications, which contained the words: 'Please be sure and replace
+me with the children at lunch&mdash;I meant to give them that hour to-day.
+But I have a frantic appeal from Lady Watermouth; she is worse and
+beseeches me to come to her, so I rush for the 12.30 train.' These lines
+required no answer and Laura had no questions to ask about Lady
+Watermouth. She knew she was tiresomely ill, in exile, condemned to
+forego the diversions of the season and calling out to her friends, in a
+house she had taken for three months at Weybridge (for a certain
+particular air) where Selina had already been to see her. Selina's
+devotion to her appeared commendable&mdash;she had her so much on her mind.
+Laura had observed in her sister in relation to other persons and
+objects these sudden intensities of charity, and she had said to
+herself, watching them&mdash;'Is it because she is bad?&mdash;does she want to
+make up for it somehow and to buy herself off from the penalties?'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wendover called for his <i>cicerone</i> and they agreed to go in a
+romantic, Bohemian manner (the young man was very docile and
+appreciative about this), walking the short distance to the Victoria
+station and taking the mysterious underground railway. In the carriage
+she anticipated the inquiry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> that she figured to herself he presently
+would make and said, laughing: 'No, no, this is very exceptional; if we
+were both English&mdash;and both what we are, otherwise&mdash;we wouldn't do
+this.'</p>
+
+<p>'And if only one of us were English?'</p>
+
+<p>'It would depend upon which one.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, say me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, in that case I certainly&mdash;on so short an acquaintance&mdash;would not go
+sight-seeing with you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I am glad I'm American,' said Mr. Wendover, sitting opposite to
+her.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, you may thank your fate. It's much simpler,' Laura added.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, you spoil it!' the young man exclaimed&mdash;a speech of which she took
+no notice but which made her think him brighter, as they used to say at
+home. He was brighter still after they had descended from the train at
+the Temple station (they had meant to go on to Blackfriars, but they
+jumped out on seeing the sign of the Temple, fired with the thought of
+visiting that institution too) and got admission to the old garden of
+the Benchers, which lies beside the foggy, crowded river, and looked at
+the tombs of the crusaders in the low Romanesque church, with the
+cross-legged figures sleeping so close to the eternal uproar, and
+lingered in the flagged, homely courts of brick, with their
+much-lettered door-posts, their dull old windows and atmosphere of
+consultation&mdash;lingered to talk of Johnson and Goldsmith and to remark
+how London opened one's eyes to Dickens; and he was brightest of all
+when they stood in the high, bare cathedral, which suggested a dirty
+whiteness, saying it was fine but wondering why it was not finer and
+letting a glance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> as cold as the dusty, colourless glass fall upon
+epitaphs that seemed to make most of the defunct bores even in death.
+Mr. Wendover was decorous but he was increasingly gay, and these
+qualities appeared in him in spite of the fact that St. Paul's was
+rather a disappointment. Then they felt the advantage of having the
+other place&mdash;the one Laura had had in mind at dinner&mdash;to fall back upon:
+that perhaps would prove a compensation. They entered a hansom now (they
+had to come to that, though they had walked also from the Temple to St.
+Paul's) and drove to Lincoln's Inn Fields, Laura making the reflection
+as they went that it was really a charm to roam about London under valid
+protection&mdash;such a mixture of freedom and safety&mdash;and that perhaps she
+had been unjust, ungenerous to her sister. A good-natured, positively
+charitable doubt came into her mind&mdash;a doubt that Selina might have the
+benefit of. What she liked in her present undertaking was the element of
+the <i>impr&eacute;vu</i> that it contained, and perhaps it was simply the same
+happy sense of getting the laws of London&mdash;once in a way&mdash;off her back
+that had led Selina to go over to Paris to ramble about with Captain
+Crispin. Possibly they had done nothing worse than go together to the
+Invalides and Notre Dame; and if any one were to meet <i>her</i> driving that
+way, so far from home, with Mr. Wendover&mdash;Laura, mentally, did not
+finish her sentence, overtaken as she was by the reflection that she had
+fallen again into her old assumption (she had been in and out of it a
+hundred times), that Mrs. Berrington <i>had</i> met Captain Crispin&mdash;the idea
+she so passionately repudiated. She at least would never deny that she
+had spent the afternoon with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> Mr. Wendover: she would simply say that he
+was an American and had brought a letter of introduction.</p>
+
+<p>The cab stopped at the Soane Museum, which Laura Wing had always wanted
+to see, a compatriot having once told her that it was one of the most
+curious things in London and one of the least known. While Mr. Wendover
+was discharging the vehicle she looked over the important old-fashioned
+square (which led her to say to herself that London was endlessly big
+and one would never know all the places that made it up) and saw a great
+bank of cloud hanging above it&mdash;a definite portent of a summer storm.
+'We are going to have thunder; you had better keep the cab,' she said;
+upon which her companion told the man to wait, so that they should not
+afterwards, in the wet, have to walk for another conveyance. The
+heterogeneous objects collected by the late Sir John Soane are arranged
+in a fine old dwelling-house, and the place gives one the impression of
+a sort of Saturday afternoon of one's youth&mdash;a long, rummaging visit,
+under indulgent care, to some eccentric and rather alarming old
+travelled person. Our young friends wandered from room to room and
+thought everything queer and some few objects interesting; Mr. Wendover
+said it would be a very good place to find a thing you couldn't find
+anywhere else&mdash;it illustrated the prudent virtue of keeping. They took
+note of the sarcophagi and pagodas, the artless old maps and medals.
+They admired the fine Hogarths; there were uncanny, unexpected objects
+that Laura edged away from, that she would have preferred not to be in
+the room with. They had been there half an hour&mdash;it had grown much
+darker&mdash;when they heard<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> a tremendous peal of thunder and became aware
+that the storm had broken. They watched it a while from the upper
+windows&mdash;a violent June shower, with quick sheets of lightning and a
+rainfall that danced on the pavements. They took it sociably, they
+lingered at the window, inhaling the odour of the fresh wet that
+splashed over the sultry town. They would have to wait till it had
+passed, and they resigned themselves serenely to this idea, repeating
+very often that it would pass very soon. One of the keepers told them
+that there were other rooms to see&mdash;that there were very interesting
+things in the basement. They made their way down&mdash;it grew much darker
+and they heard a great deal of thunder&mdash;and entered a part of the house
+which presented itself to Laura as a series of dim, irregular
+vaults&mdash;passages and little narrow avenues&mdash;encumbered with strange
+vague things, obscured for the time but some of which had a wicked,
+startling look, so that she wondered how the keepers could stay there.
+'It's very fearful&mdash;it looks like a cave of idols!' she said to her
+companion; and then she added&mdash;'Just look there&mdash;is that a person or a
+thing?' As she spoke they drew nearer to the object of her reference&mdash;a
+figure in the middle of a small vista of curiosities, a figure which
+answered her question by uttering a short shriek as they approached. The
+immediate cause of this cry was apparently a vivid flash of lightning,
+which penetrated into the room and illuminated both Laura's face and
+that of the mysterious person. Our young lady recognised her sister, as
+Mrs. Berrington had evidently recognised her. 'Why, Selina!' broke from
+her lips before she had time to check the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> words. At the same moment the
+figure turned quickly away, and then Laura saw that it was accompanied
+by another, that of a tall gentleman with a light beard which shone in
+the dusk. The two persons retreated together&mdash;dodged out of sight, as it
+were, disappearing in the gloom or in the labyrinth of the objects
+exhibited. The whole encounter was but the business of an instant.</p>
+
+<p>'Was it Mrs. Berrington?' Mr. Wendover asked with interest while Laura
+stood staring.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh no, I only thought it was at first,' she managed to reply, very
+quickly. She had recognised the gentleman&mdash;he had the fine fair beard of
+Captain Crispin&mdash;and her heart seemed to her to jump up and down. She
+was glad her companion could not see her face, and yet she wanted to get
+out, to rush up the stairs, where he would see it again, to escape from
+the place. She wished not to be there with <i>them</i>&mdash;she was overwhelmed
+with a sudden horror. 'She has lied&mdash;she has lied again&mdash;she has
+lied!'&mdash;that was the rhythm to which her thought began to dance. She
+took a few steps one way and then another: she was afraid of running
+against the dreadful pair again. She remarked to her companion that it
+was time they should go off, and then when he showed her the way back to
+the staircase she pleaded that she had not half seen the things. She
+pretended suddenly to a deep interest in them, and lingered there
+roaming and prying about. She was flurried still more by the thought
+that he would have seen her flurry, and she wondered whether he believed
+the woman who had shrieked and rushed away was <i>not</i> Selina. If she was
+not Selina why had she shrieked? and if she was Selina<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> what would Mr.
+Wendover think of her behaviour, and of her own, and of the strange
+accident of their meeting? What must she herself think of that? so
+astonishing it was that in the immensity of London so infinitesimally
+small a chance should have got itself enacted. What a queer place to
+come to&mdash;for people like them! They would get away as soon as possible,
+of that she could be sure; and she would wait a little to give them
+time.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wendover made no further remark&mdash;that was a relief; though his
+silence itself seemed to show that he was mystified. They went upstairs
+again and on reaching the door found to their surprise that their cab
+had disappeared&mdash;a circumstance the more singular as the man had not
+been paid. The rain was still coming down, though with less violence,
+and the square had been cleared of vehicles by the sudden storm. The
+doorkeeper, perceiving the dismay of our friends, explained that the cab
+had been taken up by another lady and another gentleman who had gone out
+a few minutes before; and when they inquired how he had been induced to
+depart without the money they owed him the reply was that there
+evidently had been a discussion (he hadn't heard it, but the lady seemed
+in a fearful hurry) and the gentleman had told him that they would make
+it all up to him and give him a lot more into the bargain. The
+doorkeeper hazarded the candid surmise that the cabby would make ten
+shillings by the job. But there were plenty more cabs; there would be
+one up in a minute and the rain moreover was going to stop. 'Well, that
+<i>is</i> sharp practice!' said Mr. Wendover. He made no further allusion to
+the identity of the lady.</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX</h2>
+
+<p>The rain did stop while they stood there, and a brace of hansoms was not
+slow to appear. Laura told her companion that he must put her into
+one&mdash;she could go home alone: she had taken up enough of his time. He
+deprecated this course very respectfully; urged that he had it on his
+conscience to deliver her at her own door; but she sprang into the cab
+and closed the apron with a movement that was a sharp prohibition. She
+wanted to get away from him&mdash;it would be too awkward, the long,
+pottering drive back. Her hansom started off while Mr. Wendover, smiling
+sadly, lifted his hat. It was not very comfortable, even without him;
+especially as before she had gone a quarter of a mile she felt that her
+action had been too marked&mdash;she wished she had let him come. His
+puzzled, innocent air of wondering what was the matter annoyed her; and
+she was in the absurd situation of being angry at a desistence which she
+would have been still angrier if he had been guiltless of. It would have
+comforted her (because it would seem to share her burden) and yet it
+would have covered her with shame if he had guessed that what she saw
+was wrong. It would not occur to him that there was a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> scandal so near
+her, because he thought with no great promptitude of such things; and
+yet, since there was&mdash;but since there was after all Laura scarcely knew
+what attitude would sit upon him most gracefully. As to what he might be
+prepared to suspect by having heard what Selina's reputation was in
+London, of that Laura was unable to judge, not knowing what was said,
+because of course it was not said to <i>her</i>. Lionel would undertake to
+give her the benefit of this any moment she would allow him, but how in
+the world could <i>he</i> know either, for how could things be said to him?
+Then, in the rattle of the hansom, passing through streets for which the
+girl had no eyes, 'She has lied, she has lied, she has lied!' kept
+repeating itself. Why had she written and signed that wanton falsehood
+about her going down to Lady Watermouth? How could she have gone to Lady
+Watermouth's when she was making so very different and so extraordinary
+a use of the hours she had announced her intention of spending there?
+What had been the need of that misrepresentation and why did she lie
+before she was driven to it?</p>
+
+<p>It was because she was false altogether and deception came out of her
+with her breath; she was so depraved that it was easier to her to
+fabricate than to let it alone. Laura would not have asked her to give
+an account of her day, but she would ask her now. She shuddered at one
+moment, as she found herself saying&mdash;even in silence&mdash;such things of her
+sister, and the next she sat staring out of the front of the cab at the
+stiff problem presented by Selina's turning up with the partner of her
+guilt at the Soane Museum, of all places in the world.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> The girl shifted
+this fact about in various ways, to account for it&mdash;not unconscious as
+she did so that it was a pretty exercise of ingenuity for a nice girl.
+Plainly, it was a rare accident: if it had been their plan to spend the
+day together the Soane Museum had not been in the original programme.
+They had been near it, they had been on foot and they had rushed in to
+take refuge from the rain. But how did they come to be near it and above
+all to be on foot? How could Selina do anything so reckless from her own
+point of view as to walk about the town&mdash;even an out-of-the-way part of
+it&mdash;with her suspected lover? Laura Wing felt the want of proper
+knowledge to explain such anomalies. It was too little clear to her
+where ladies went and how they proceeded when they consorted with
+gentlemen in regard to their meetings with whom they had to lie. She
+knew nothing of where Captain Crispin lived; very possibly&mdash;for she
+vaguely remembered having heard Selina say of him that he was very
+poor&mdash;he had chambers in that part of the town, and they were either
+going to them or coming from them. If Selina had neglected to take her
+way in a four-wheeler with the glasses up it was through some chance
+that would not seem natural till it was explained, like that of their
+having darted into a public institution. Then no doubt it would hang
+together with the rest only too well. The explanation most exact would
+probably be that the pair had snatched a walk together (in the course of
+a day of many edifying episodes) for the 'lark' of it, and for the sake
+of the walk had taken the risk, which in that part of London, so
+detached from all gentility, had appeared to them small. The last<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> thing
+Selina could have expected was to meet her sister in such a strange
+corner&mdash;her sister with a young man of her own!</p>
+
+<p>She was dining out that night with both Selina and Lionel&mdash;a conjunction
+that was rather rare. She was by no means always invited with them, and
+Selina constantly went without her husband. Appearances, however,
+sometimes got a sop thrown them; three or four times a month Lionel and
+she entered the brougham together like people who still had forms, who
+still said 'my dear.' This was to be one of those occasions, and Mrs.
+Berrington's young unmarried sister was included in the invitation. When
+Laura reached home she learned, on inquiry, that Selina had not yet come
+in, and she went straight to her own room. If her sister had been there
+she would have gone to hers instead&mdash;she would have cried out to her as
+soon as she had closed the door: 'Oh, stop, stop&mdash;in God's name, stop
+before you go any further, before exposure and ruin and shame come down
+and bury us!' That was what was in the air&mdash;the vulgarest disgrace, and
+the girl, harder now than ever about her sister, was conscious of a more
+passionate desire to save herself. But Selina's absence made the
+difference that during the next hour a certain chill fell upon this
+impulse from other feelings: she found suddenly that she was late and
+she began to dress. They were to go together after dinner to a couple of
+balls; a diversion which struck her as ghastly for people who carried
+such horrors in their breasts. Ghastly was the idea of the drive of
+husband, wife and sister in pursuit of pleasure, with falsity and
+detection and hate between them. Selina's maid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> came to her door to tell
+her that she was in the carriage&mdash;an extraordinary piece of punctuality,
+which made her wonder, as Selina was always dreadfully late for
+everything. Laura went down as quickly as she could, passed through the
+open door, where the servants were grouped in the foolish majesty of
+their superfluous attendance, and through the file of dingy gazers who
+had paused at the sight of the carpet across the pavement and the
+waiting carriage, in which Selina sat in pure white splendour. Mrs.
+Berrington had a tiara on her head and a proud patience in her face, as
+if her sister were really a sore trial. As soon as the girl had taken
+her place she said to the footman: 'Is Mr. Berrington there?'&mdash;to which
+the man replied: 'No ma'am, not yet.' It was not new to Laura that if
+there was any one later as a general thing than Selina it was Selina's
+husband. 'Then he must take a hansom. Go on.' The footman mounted and
+they rolled away.</p>
+
+<p>There were several different things that had been present to Laura's
+mind during the last couple of hours as destined to mark&mdash;one or the
+other&mdash;this present encounter with her sister; but the words Selina
+spoke the moment the brougham began to move were of course exactly those
+she had not foreseen. She had considered that she might take this tone
+or that tone or even no tone at all; she was quite prepared for her
+presenting a face of blankness to any form of interrogation and saying,
+'What on earth are you talking about?' It was in short conceivable to
+her that Selina would deny absolutely that she had been in the museum,
+that they had stood face to face and that she had fled in confusion. She
+was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>capable of explaining the incident by an idiotic error on Laura's
+part, by her having seized on another person, by her seeing Captain
+Crispin in every bush; though doubtless she would be taxed (of course
+she would say <i>that</i> was the woman's own affair) to supply a reason for
+the embarrassment of the other lady. But she was not prepared for
+Selina's breaking out with: 'Will you be so good as to inform me if you
+are engaged to be married to Mr. Wendover?'</p>
+
+<p>'Engaged to him? I have seen him but three times.'</p>
+
+<p>'And is that what you usually do with gentlemen you have seen three
+times?'</p>
+
+<p>'Are you talking about my having gone with him to see some sights? I see
+nothing wrong in that. To begin with you see what he is. One might go
+with him anywhere. Then he brought us an introduction&mdash;we have to do
+something for him. Moreover you threw him upon me the moment he
+came&mdash;you asked me to take charge of him.'</p>
+
+<p>'I didn't ask you to be indecent! If Lionel were to know it he wouldn't
+tolerate it, so long as you live with us.'</p>
+
+<p>Laura was silent a moment. 'I shall not live with you long.' The
+sisters, side by side, with their heads turned, looked at each other, a
+deep crimson leaping into Laura's face. 'I wouldn't have believed
+it&mdash;that you are so bad,' she said. 'You are horrible!' She saw that
+Selina had not taken up the idea of denying&mdash;she judged that would be
+hopeless: the recognition on either side had been too sharp. She looked
+radiantly handsome, especially with the strange new expression that
+Laura's last<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> word brought into her eyes. This expression seemed to the
+girl to show her more of Selina morally than she had ever yet
+seen&mdash;something of the full extent and the miserable limit.</p>
+
+<p>'It's different for a married woman, especially when she's married to a
+cad. It's in a girl that such things are odious&mdash;scouring London with
+strange men. I am not bound to explain to you&mdash;there would be too many
+things to say. I have my reasons&mdash;I have my conscience. It was the
+oddest of all things, our meeting in that place&mdash;I know that as well as
+you,' Selina went on, with her wonderful affected clearness; 'but it was
+not your finding me that was out of the way; it was my finding you&mdash;with
+your remarkable escort! That was incredible. I pretended not to
+recognise you, so that the gentleman who was with me shouldn't see you,
+shouldn't know you. He questioned me and I repudiated you. You may thank
+me for saving you! You had better wear a veil next time&mdash;one never knows
+what may happen. I met an acquaintance at Lady Watermouth's and he came
+up to town with me. He happened to talk about old prints; I told him how
+I have collected them and we spoke of the bother one has about the
+frames. He insisted on my going with him to that place&mdash;from
+Waterloo&mdash;to see such an excellent model.'</p>
+
+<p>Laura had turned her face to the window of the carriage again; they were
+spinning along Park Lane, passing in the quick flash of other vehicles
+an endless succession of ladies with 'dressed' heads, of gentlemen in
+white neckties. 'Why, I thought your frames were all so pretty!' Laura
+murmured. Then she added: 'I suppose it was your eagerness to save<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> your
+companion the shock of seeing me&mdash;in my dishonour&mdash;that led you to steal
+our cab.'</p>
+
+<p>'Your cab?'</p>
+
+<p>'Your delicacy was expensive for you!'</p>
+
+<p>'You don't mean you were knocking about in <i>cabs</i> with him!' Selina
+cried.</p>
+
+<p>'Of course I know that you don't really think a word of what you say
+about me,' Laura went on; 'though I don't know that that makes your
+saying it a bit less unspeakably base.'</p>
+
+<p>The brougham pulled up in Park Lane and Mrs. Berrington bent herself to
+have a view through the front glass. 'We are there, but there are two
+other carriages,' she remarked, for all answer. 'Ah, there are the
+Collingwoods.'</p>
+
+<p>'Where are you going&mdash;where are you going&mdash;where are you going?' Laura
+broke out.</p>
+
+<p>The carriage moved on, to set them down, and while the footman was
+getting off the box Selina said: 'I don't pretend to be better than
+other women, but you do!' And being on the side of the house she quickly
+stepped out and carried her crowned brilliancy through the
+long-lingering daylight and into the open portals.</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X</h2>
+
+<p>What do you intend to do? You will grant that I have a right to ask you
+that.'</p>
+
+<p>'To do? I shall do as I have always done&mdash;not so badly, as it seems to
+me.'</p>
+
+<p>This colloquy took place in Mrs. Berrington's room, in the early morning
+hours, after Selina's return from the entertainment to which reference
+was last made. Her sister came home before her&mdash;she found herself
+incapable of 'going on' when Selina quitted the house in Park Lane at
+which they had dined. Mrs. Berrington had the night still before her,
+and she stepped into her carriage with her usual air of graceful
+resignation to a brilliant lot. She had taken the precaution, however,
+to provide herself with a defence, against a little sister bristling
+with righteousness, in the person of Mrs. Collingwood, to whom she
+offered a lift, as they were bent upon the same business and Mr.
+Collingwood had a use of his own for his brougham. The Collingwoods were
+a happy pair who could discuss such a divergence before their friends
+candidly, amicably, with a great many 'My loves' and 'Not for the
+worlds.' Lionel Berrington disappeared after dinner, without holding any
+communication with his wife, and Laura <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>expected to find that he had
+taken the carriage, to repay her in kind for her having driven off from
+Grosvenor Place without him. But it was not new to the girl that he
+really spared his wife more than she spared him; not so much perhaps
+because he wouldn't do the 'nastiest' thing as because he couldn't.
+Selina could always be nastier. There was ever a whimsicality in her
+actions: if two or three hours before it had been her fancy to keep a
+third person out of the carriage she had now her reasons for bringing
+such a person in. Laura knew that she would not only pretend, but would
+really believe, that her vindication of her conduct on their way to
+dinner had been powerful and that she had won a brilliant victory. What
+need, therefore, to thresh out further a subject that she had chopped
+into atoms? Laura Wing, however, had needs of her own, and her remaining
+in the carriage when the footman next opened the door was intimately
+connected with them.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't care to go in,' she said to her sister. 'If you will allow me
+to be driven home and send back the carriage for you, that's what I
+shall like best.'</p>
+
+<p>Selina stared and Laura knew what she would have said if she could have
+spoken her thought. 'Oh, you are furious that I haven't given you a
+chance to fly at me again, and you must take it out in sulks!' These
+were the ideas&mdash;ideas of 'fury' and sulks&mdash;into which Selina could
+translate feelings that sprang from the pure depths of one's conscience.
+Mrs. Collingwood protested&mdash;she said it was a shame that Laura shouldn't
+go in and enjoy herself when she looked so lovely. 'Doesn't she look
+lovely?' She appealed to Mrs. Berrington. 'Bless us, what's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> the use of
+being pretty? Now, if she had <i>my</i> face!'</p>
+
+<p>'I think she looks rather cross,' said Selina, getting out with her
+friend and leaving her sister to her own inventions. Laura had a vision,
+as the carriage drove away again, of what her situation would have been,
+or her peace of mind, if Selina and Lionel had been good, attached
+people like the Collingwoods, and at the same time of the singularity of
+a good woman's being ready to accept favours from a person as to whose
+behaviour she had the lights that must have come to the lady in question
+in regard to Selina. She accepted favours herself and she only wanted to
+be good: that was oppressively true; but if she had not been Selina's
+sister she would never drive in her carriage. That conviction was strong
+in the girl as this vehicle conveyed her to Grosvenor Place; but it was
+not in its nature consoling. The prevision of disgrace was now so vivid
+to her that it seemed to her that if it had not already overtaken them
+she had only to thank the loose, mysterious, rather ignoble tolerance of
+people like Mrs. Collingwood. There were plenty of that species, even
+among the good; perhaps indeed exposure and dishonour would begin only
+when the bad had got hold of the facts. Would the bad be most horrified
+and do most to spread the scandal? There were, in any event, plenty of
+them too.</p>
+
+<p>Laura sat up for her sister that night, with that nice question to help
+her to torment herself&mdash;whether if she was hard and merciless in judging
+Selina it would be with the bad too that she would associate herself.
+Was she all wrong after all&mdash;was she cruel by being too rigid? Was Mrs.
+Collingwood's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>attitude the right one and ought she only to propose to
+herself to 'allow' more and more, and to allow ever, and to smooth
+things down by gentleness, by sympathy, by not looking at them too hard?
+It was not the first time that the just measure of things seemed to slip
+from her hands as she became conscious of possible, or rather of very
+actual, differences of standard and usage. On this occasion Geordie and
+Ferdy asserted themselves, by the mere force of lying asleep upstairs in
+their little cribs, as on the whole the proper measure. Laura went into
+the nursery to look at them when she came home&mdash;it was her habit almost
+any night&mdash;and yearned over them as mothers and maids do alike over the
+pillow of rosy childhood. They were an antidote to all casuistry; for
+Selina to forget <i>them</i>&mdash;that was the beginning and the end of shame.
+She came back to the library, where she should best hear the sound of
+her sister's return; the hours passed as she sat there, without bringing
+round this event. Carriages came and went all night; the soft shock of
+swift hoofs was on the wooden roadway long after the summer dawn grew
+fair&mdash;till it was merged in the rumble of the awakening day. Lionel had
+not come in when she returned, and he continued absent, to Laura's
+satisfaction; for if she wanted not to miss Selina she had no desire at
+present to have to tell her brother-in-law why she was sitting up. She
+prayed Selina might arrive first: then she would have more time to think
+of something that harassed her particularly&mdash;the question of whether she
+ought to tell Lionel that she had seen her in a far-away corner of the
+town with Captain Crispin. Almost impossible as she found it now to feel
+any tenderness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> for her, she yet detested the idea of bearing witness
+against her: notwithstanding which it appeared to her that she could
+make up her mind to do this if there were a chance of its preventing the
+last scandal&mdash;a catastrophe to which she saw her sister rushing
+straight. That Selina was capable at a given moment of going off with
+her lover, and capable of it precisely because it was the greatest
+ineptitude as well as the greatest wickedness&mdash;there was a voice of
+prophecy, of warning, to this effect in the silent, empty house. If
+repeating to Lionel what she had seen would contribute to prevent
+anything, or to stave off the danger, was it not her duty to denounce
+his wife, flesh and blood of her own as she was, to his further
+reprobation? This point was not intolerably difficult to determine, as
+she sat there waiting, only because even what was righteous in that
+reprobation could not present itself to her as fruitful or efficient.
+What could Lionel frustrate, after all, and what intelligent or
+authoritative step was he capable of taking? Mixed with all that now
+haunted her was her consciousness of what his own absence at such an
+hour represented in the way of the unedifying. He might be at some
+sporting club or he might be anywhere else; at any rate he was not where
+he ought to be at three o'clock in the morning. Such the husband such
+the wife, she said to herself; and she felt that Selina would have a
+kind of advantage, which she grudged her, if she should come in and say:
+'And where is <i>he</i>, please&mdash;where is he, the exalted being on whose
+behalf you have undertaken to preach so much better than he himself
+practises?'</p>
+
+<p>But still Selina failed to come in&mdash;even to take<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> that advantage; yet in
+proportion as her waiting was useless did the girl find it impossible to
+go to bed. A new fear had seized her, the fear that she would never come
+back at all&mdash;that they were already in the presence of the dreaded
+catastrophe. This made her so nervous that she paced about the lower
+rooms, listening to every sound, roaming till she was tired. She knew it
+was absurd, the image of Selina taking flight in a ball-dress; but she
+said to herself that she might very well have sent other clothes away,
+in advance, somewhere (Laura had her own ripe views about the maid); and
+at any rate, for herself, that was the fate she had to expect, if not
+that night then some other one soon, and it was all the same: to sit
+counting the hours till a hope was given up and a hideous certainty
+remained. She had fallen into such a state of apprehension that when at
+last she heard a carriage stop at the door she was almost happy, in
+spite of her prevision of how disgusted her sister would be to find her.
+They met in the hall&mdash;Laura went out as she heard the opening of the
+door, Selina stopped short, seeing her, but said nothing&mdash;on account
+apparently of the presence of the sleepy footman. Then she moved
+straight to the stairs, where she paused again, asking the footman if
+Mr. Berrington had come in.</p>
+
+<p>'Not yet, ma'am,' the footman answered.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah!' said Mrs. Berrington, dramatically, and ascended the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>'I have sat up on purpose&mdash;I want particularly to speak to you,' Laura
+remarked, following her.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah!' Selina repeated, more superior still. She went fast, almost as if
+she wished to get to her room before her sister could overtake her. But
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> girl was close behind her, she passed into the room with her. Laura
+closed the door; then she told her that she had found it impossible to
+go to bed without asking her what she intended to do.</p>
+
+<p>'Your behaviour is too monstrous!' Selina flashed out. 'What on earth do
+you wish to make the servants suppose?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, the servants&mdash;in <i>this</i> house; as if one could put any idea into
+their heads that is not there already!' Laura thought. But she said
+nothing of this&mdash;she only repeated her question: aware that she was
+exasperating to her sister but also aware that she could not be anything
+else. Mrs. Berrington, whose maid, having outlived surprises, had gone
+to rest, began to divest herself of some of her ornaments, and it was
+not till after a moment, during which she stood before the glass, that
+she made that answer about doing as she had always done. To this Laura
+rejoined that she ought to put herself in her place enough to feel how
+important it was to <i>her</i> to know what was likely to happen, so that she
+might take time by the forelock and think of her own situation. If
+anything should happen she would infinitely rather be out of it&mdash;be as
+far away as possible. Therefore she must take her measures.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the mirror that they looked at each other&mdash;in the strange,
+candle-lighted duplication of the scene that their eyes met. Selina drew
+the diamonds out of her hair, and in this occupation, for a minute, she
+was silent. Presently she asked: 'What are you talking about&mdash;what do
+you allude to as happening?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, it seems to me that there is nothing left for you but to go away
+with him. If there is a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> prospect of that insanity&mdash;&mdash;' But here Laura
+stopped; something so unexpected was taking place in Selina's
+countenance&mdash;the movement that precedes a sudden gush of tears. Mrs.
+Berrington dashed down the glittering pins she had detached from her
+tresses, and the next moment she had flung herself into an armchair and
+was weeping profusely, extravagantly. Laura forbore to go to her; she
+made no motion to soothe or reassure her, she only stood and watched her
+tears and wondered what they signified. Somehow even the slight
+refreshment she felt at having affected her in that particular and, as
+it had lately come to seem, improbable way did not suggest to her that
+they were precious symptoms. Since she had come to disbelieve her word
+so completely there was nothing precious about Selina any more. But she
+continued for some moments to cry passionately, and while this lasted
+Laura remained silent. At last from the midst of her sobs Selina broke
+out, 'Go away, go away&mdash;leave me alone!'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course I infuriate you,' said the girl; 'but how can I see you rush
+to your ruin&mdash;to that of all of us&mdash;without holding on to you and
+dragging you back?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, you don't understand anything about anything!' Selina wailed, with
+her beautiful hair tumbling all over her.</p>
+
+<p>'I certainly don't understand how you can give such a tremendous handle
+to Lionel.'</p>
+
+<p>At the mention of her husband's name Selina always gave a bound, and she
+sprang up now, shaking back her dense braids. 'I give him no handle and
+you don't know what you are talking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> about! I know what I am doing and
+what becomes me, and I don't care if I do. He is welcome to all the
+handles in the world, for all that he can do with them!'</p>
+
+<p>'In the name of common pity think of your children!' said Laura.</p>
+
+<p>'Have I ever thought of anything else? Have you sat up all night to have
+the pleasure of accusing me of cruelty? Are there sweeter or more
+delightful children in the world, and isn't that a little my merit,
+pray?' Selina went on, sweeping away her tears. 'Who has made them what
+they are, pray?&mdash;is it their lovely father? Perhaps you'll say it's you!
+Certainly you have been nice to them, but you must remember that you
+only came here the other day. Isn't it only for them that I am trying to
+keep myself alive?'</p>
+
+<p>This formula struck Laura Wing as grotesque, so that she replied with a
+laugh which betrayed too much her impression, 'Die for them&mdash;that would
+be better!'</p>
+
+<p>Her sister, at this, looked at her with an extraordinary cold gravity.
+'Don't interfere between me and my children. And for God's sake cease to
+harry me!'</p>
+
+<p>Laura turned away: she said to herself that, given that intensity of
+silliness, of course the worst would come. She felt sick and helpless,
+and, practically, she had got the certitude she both wanted and dreaded.
+'I don't know what has become of your mind,' she murmured; and she went
+to the door. But before she reached it Selina had flung herself upon her
+in one of her strange but, as she felt, really not encouraging
+revulsions. Her arms were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> about her, she clung to her, she covered
+Laura with the tears that had again begun to flow. She besought her to
+save her, to stay with her, to help her against herself, against <i>him</i>,
+against Lionel, against everything&mdash;to forgive her also all the horrid
+things she had said to her. Mrs. Berrington melted, liquefied, and the
+room was deluged with her repentance, her desolation, her confession,
+her promises and the articles of apparel which were detached from her by
+the high tide of her agitation. Laura remained with her for an hour, and
+before they separated the culpable woman had taken a tremendous
+vow&mdash;kneeling before her sister with her head in her lap&mdash;never again,
+as long as she lived, to consent to see Captain Crispin or to address a
+word to him, spoken or written. The girl went terribly tired to bed.</p>
+
+<p>A month afterwards she lunched with Lady Davenant, whom she had not seen
+since the day she took Mr. Wendover to call upon her. The old woman had
+found herself obliged to entertain a small company, and as she disliked
+set parties she sent Laura a request for sympathy and assistance. She
+had disencumbered herself, at the end of so many years, of the burden of
+hospitality; but every now and then she invited people, in order to
+prove that she was not too old. Laura suspected her of choosing stupid
+ones on purpose to prove it better&mdash;to show that she could submit not
+only to the extraordinary but, what was much more difficult, to the
+usual. But when they had been properly fed she encouraged them to
+disperse; on this occasion as the party broke up Laura was the only
+person she asked to stay. She wished to know in the first place why she
+had not been to see her for so long, and in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> the second how that young
+man had behaved&mdash;the one she had brought that Sunday. Lady Davenant
+didn't remember his name, though he had been so good-natured, as she
+said, since then, as to leave a card. If he had behaved well that was a
+very good reason for the girl's neglect and Laura need give no other.
+Laura herself would not have behaved well if at such a time she had been
+running after old women. There was nothing, in general, that the girl
+liked less than being spoken of, off-hand, as a marriageable
+article&mdash;being planned and arranged for in this particular. It made too
+light of her independence, and though in general such inventions passed
+for benevolence they had always seemed to her to contain at bottom an
+impertinence&mdash;as if people could be moved about like a game of chequers.
+There was a liberty in the way Lady Davenant's imagination disposed of
+her (with such an <i>insouciance</i> of her own preferences), but she forgave
+that, because after all this old friend was not obliged to think of her
+at all.</p>
+
+<p>'I knew that you were almost always out of town now, on Sundays&mdash;and so
+have we been,' Laura said. 'And then I have been a great deal with my
+sister&mdash;more than before.'</p>
+
+<p>'More than before what?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, a kind of estrangement we had, about a certain matter.'</p>
+
+<p>'And now you have made it all up?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, we have been able to talk of it (we couldn't before&mdash;without
+painful scenes), and that has cleared the air. We have gone about
+together a good deal,' Laura went on. 'She has wanted me constantly with
+her.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span></p><p>'That's very nice. And where has she taken you?' asked the old lady.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, it's I who have taken her, rather.' And Laura hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>'Where do you mean?&mdash;to say her prayers?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, to some concerts&mdash;and to the National Gallery.'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Davenant laughed, disrespectfully, at this, and the girl watched
+her with a mournful face. 'My dear child, you are too delightful! You
+are trying to reform her? by Beethoven and Bach, by Rubens and Titian?'</p>
+
+<p>'She is very intelligent, about music and pictures&mdash;she has excellent
+ideas,' said Laura.</p>
+
+<p>'And you have been trying to draw them out? that is very commendable.'</p>
+
+<p>'I think you are laughing at me, but I don't care,' the girl declared,
+smiling faintly.</p>
+
+<p>'Because you have a consciousness of success?&mdash;in what do they call
+it?&mdash;the attempt to raise her tone? You have been trying to wind her up,
+and you <i>have</i> raised her tone?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Lady Davenant, I don't know and I don't understand!' Laura broke
+out. 'I don't understand anything any more&mdash;I have given up trying.'</p>
+
+<p>'That's what I recommended you to do last winter. Don't you remember
+that day at Plash?'</p>
+
+<p>'You told me to let her go,' said Laura.</p>
+
+<p>'And evidently you haven't taken my advice.'</p>
+
+<p>'How can I&mdash;how can I?'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course, how can you? And meanwhile if she doesn't go it's so much
+gained. But even if she should, won't that nice young man remain?' Lady
+Davenant inquired. 'I hope very much<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> Selina hasn't taken you altogether
+away from him.'</p>
+
+<p>Laura was silent a moment; then she returned: 'What nice young man would
+ever look at me, if anything bad should happen?'</p>
+
+<p>'I would never look at <i>him</i> if he should let that prevent him!' the old
+woman cried. 'It isn't for your sister he loves you, I suppose; is it?'</p>
+
+<p>'He doesn't love me at all.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, then he does?' Lady Davenant demanded, with some eagerness, laying
+her hand on the girl's arm. Laura sat near her on her sofa and looked at
+her, for all answer to this, with an expression of which the sadness
+appeared to strike the old woman freshly. 'Doesn't he come to the
+house&mdash;doesn't he say anything?' she continued, with a voice of
+kindness.</p>
+
+<p>'He comes to the house&mdash;very often.'</p>
+
+<p>'And don't you like him?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, very much&mdash;more than I did at first.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, as you liked him at first well enough to bring him straight to
+see me, I suppose that means that now you are immensely pleased with
+him.'</p>
+
+<p>'He's a gentleman,' said Laura.</p>
+
+<p>'So he seems to me. But why then doesn't he speak out?'</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps that's the very reason! Seriously,' the girl added, 'I don't
+know what he comes to the house for.'</p>
+
+<p>'Is he in love with your sister?'</p>
+
+<p>'I sometimes think so.'</p>
+
+<p>'And does she encourage him?'</p>
+
+<p>'She detests him.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, then, I like him! I shall immediately<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> write to him to come and see
+me: I shall appoint an hour and give him a piece of my mind.'</p>
+
+<p>'If I believed that, I should kill myself,' said Laura.</p>
+
+<p>'You may believe what you like; but I wish you didn't show your feelings
+so in your eyes. They might be those of a poor widow with fifteen
+children. When I was young I managed to be happy, whatever occurred; and
+I am sure I looked so.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh yes, Lady Davenant&mdash;for you it was different. You were safe, in so
+many ways,' Laura said. 'And you were surrounded with consideration.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know; some of us were very wild, and exceedingly ill thought
+of, and I didn't cry about it. However, there are natures and natures.
+If you will come and stay with me to-morrow I will take you in.'</p>
+
+<p>'You know how kind I think you, but I have promised Selina not to leave
+her.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, then, if she keeps you she must at least go straight!' cried the
+old woman, with some asperity. Laura made no answer to this and Lady
+Davenant asked, after a moment: 'And what is Lionel doing?'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know&mdash;he is very quiet.'</p>
+
+<p>'Doesn't it please him&mdash;his wife's improvement?' The girl got up;
+apparently she was made uncomfortable by the ironical effect, if not by
+the ironical intention, of this question. Her old friend was kind but
+she was penetrating; her very next words pierced further. 'Of course if
+you are really protecting her I can't count upon you': a remark not
+adapted to enliven Laura, who would have liked immensely to transfer
+herself to Queen's Gate and had her very private ideas as to the
+efficacy of her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> protection. Lady Davenant kissed her and then suddenly
+said&mdash;'Oh, by the way, his address; you must tell me that.'</p>
+
+<p>'His address?'</p>
+
+<p>'The young man's whom you brought here. But it's no matter,' the old
+woman added; 'the butler will have entered it&mdash;from his card.'</p>
+
+<p>'Lady Davenant, you won't do anything so loathsome!' the girl cried,
+seizing her hand.</p>
+
+<p>'Why is it loathsome, if he comes so often? It's rubbish, his caring for
+Selina&mdash;a married woman&mdash;when you are there.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why is it rubbish&mdash;when so many other people do?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, well, he is different&mdash;I could see that; or if he isn't he ought to
+be!'</p>
+
+<p>'He likes to observe&mdash;he came here to take notes,' said the girl. 'And
+he thinks Selina a very interesting London specimen.'</p>
+
+<p>'In spite of her dislike of him?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, he doesn't know that!' Laura exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>'Why not? he isn't a fool.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I have made it seem&mdash;&mdash;' But here Laura stopped; her colour had
+risen.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Davenant stared an instant. 'Made it seem that she inclines to him?
+Mercy, to do that how fond of him you must be!' An observation which had
+the effect of driving the girl straight out of the house.</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI</h2>
+
+<p>On one of the last days of June Mrs. Berrington showed her sister a note
+she had received from 'your dear friend,' as she called him, Mr.
+Wendover. This was the manner in which she usually designated him, but
+she had naturally, in the present phase of her relations with Laura,
+never indulged in any renewal of the eminently perverse insinuations by
+means of which she had attempted, after the incident at the Soane
+Museum, to throw dust in her eyes. Mr. Wendover proposed to Mrs.
+Berrington that she and her sister should honour with their presence a
+box he had obtained for the opera three nights later&mdash;an occasion of
+high curiosity, the first appearance of a young American singer of whom
+considerable things were expected. Laura left it to Selina to decide
+whether they should accept this invitation, and Selina proved to be of
+two or three differing minds. First she said it wouldn't be convenient
+to her to go, and she wrote to the young man to this effect. Then, on
+second thoughts, she considered she might very well go, and telegraphed
+an acceptance. Later she saw reason to regret her acceptance and
+communicated this circumstance to her sister, who remarked that it was
+still not too late<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> to change. Selina left her in ignorance till the
+next day as to whether she had retracted; then she told her that she had
+let the matter stand&mdash;they would go. To this Laura replied that she was
+glad&mdash;for Mr. Wendover. 'And for yourself,' Selina said, leaving the
+girl to wonder why every one (this universality was represented by Mrs.
+Lionel Berrington and Lady Davenant) had taken up the idea that she
+entertained a passion for her compatriot. She was clearly conscious that
+this was not the case; though she was glad her esteem for him had not
+yet suffered the disturbance of her seeing reason to believe that Lady
+Davenant had already meddled, according to her terrible threat. Laura
+was surprised to learn afterwards that Selina had, in London parlance,
+'thrown over' a dinner in order to make the evening at the opera fit in.
+The dinner would have made her too late, and she didn't care about it:
+she wanted to hear the whole opera.</p>
+
+<p>The sisters dined together alone, without any question of Lionel, and on
+alighting at Covent Garden found Mr. Wendover awaiting them in the
+portico. His box proved commodious and comfortable, and Selina was
+gracious to him: she thanked him for his consideration in not stuffing
+it full of people. He assured her that he expected but one other
+inmate&mdash;a gentleman of a shrinking disposition, who would take up no
+room. The gentleman came in after the first act; he was introduced to
+the ladies as Mr. Booker, of Baltimore. He knew a great deal about the
+young lady they had come to listen to, and he was not so shrinking but
+that he attempted to impart a portion of his knowledge<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> even while she
+was singing. Before the second act was over Laura perceived Lady
+Ringrose in a box on the other side of the house, accompanied by a lady
+unknown to her. There was apparently another person in the box, behind
+the two ladies, whom they turned round from time to time to talk with.
+Laura made no observation about Lady Ringrose to her sister, and she
+noticed that Selina never resorted to the glass to look at her. That
+Mrs. Berrington had not failed to see her, however, was proved by the
+fact that at the end of the second act (the opera was Meyerbeer's
+<i>Huguenots</i>) she suddenly said, turning to Mr. Wendover: 'I hope you
+won't mind very much if I go for a short time to sit with a friend on
+the other side of the house.' She smiled with all her sweetness as she
+announced this intention, and had the benefit of the fact that an
+apologetic expression is highly becoming to a pretty woman. But she
+abstained from looking at her sister, and the latter, after a wondering
+glance at her, looked at Mr. Wendover. She saw that he was
+disappointed&mdash;even slightly wounded: he had taken some trouble to get
+his box and it had been no small pleasure to him to see it graced by the
+presence of a celebrated beauty. Now his situation collapsed if the
+celebrated beauty were going to transfer her light to another quarter.
+Laura was unable to imagine what had come into her sister's head&mdash;to
+make her so inconsiderate, so rude. Selina tried to perform her act of
+defection in a soothing, conciliating way, so far as appealing eyebeams
+went; but she gave no particular reason for her escapade, withheld the
+name of the friends in question and betrayed no consciousness that it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>
+was not usual for ladies to roam about the lobbies. Laura asked her no
+question, but she said to her, after an hesitation: 'You won't be long,
+surely. You know you oughtn't to leave me here.' Selina took no notice
+of this&mdash;excused herself in no way to the girl. Mr. Wendover only
+exclaimed, smiling in reference to Laura's last remark: 'Oh, so far as
+leaving you here goes&mdash;&mdash;!' In spite of his great defect (and it was his
+only one, that she could see) of having only an ascending scale of
+seriousness, she judged him interestedly enough to feel a real pleasure
+in noticing that though he was annoyed at Selina's going away and not
+saying that she would come back soon, he conducted himself as a
+gentleman should, submitted respectfully, gallantly, to her wish. He
+suggested that her friends might perhaps, instead, be induced to come to
+his box, but when she had objected, 'Oh, you see, there are too many,'
+he put her shawl on her shoulders, opened the box, offered her his arm.
+While this was going on Laura saw Lady Ringrose studying them with her
+glass. Selina refused Mr. Wendover's arm; she said, 'Oh no, you stay
+with <i>her</i>&mdash;I daresay <i>he'll</i> take me:' and she gazed inspiringly at Mr.
+Booker. Selina never mentioned a name when the pronoun would do. Mr.
+Booker of course sprang to the service required and led her away, with
+an injunction from his friend to bring her back promptly. As they went
+off Laura heard Selina say to her companion&mdash;and she knew Mr. Wendover
+could also hear it&mdash;'Nothing would have induced me to leave her alone
+with <i>you</i>!' She thought this a very extraordinary speech&mdash;she thought
+it even vulgar; especially considering that she had never seen the
+young<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> man till half an hour before and since then had not exchanged
+twenty words with him. It came to their ears so distinctly that Laura
+was moved to notice it by exclaiming, with a laugh: 'Poor Mr. Booker,
+what does she suppose I would do to him?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, it's for you she's afraid,' said Mr. Wendover.</p>
+
+<p>Laura went on, after a moment: 'She oughtn't to have left me alone with
+you, either.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh yes, she ought&mdash;after all!' the young man returned.</p>
+
+<p>The girl had uttered these words from no desire to say something
+flirtatious, but because they simply expressed a part of the judgment
+she passed, mentally, on Selina's behaviour. She had a sense of
+wrong&mdash;of being made light of; for Mrs. Berrington certainly knew that
+honourable women didn't (for the appearance of the thing) arrange to
+leave their unmarried sister sitting alone, publicly, at the playhouse,
+with a couple of young men&mdash;the couple that there would be as soon as
+Mr. Booker should come back. It displeased her that the people in the
+opposite box, the people Selina had joined, should see her exhibited in
+this light. She drew the curtain of the box a little, she moved a little
+more behind it, and she heard her companion utter a vague appealing,
+protecting sigh, which seemed to express his sense (her own corresponded
+with it) that the glory of the occasion had somehow suddenly departed.
+At the end of some minutes she perceived among Lady Ringrose and her
+companions a movement which appeared to denote that Selina had come in.
+The two ladies in front turned round&mdash;something went on at the back of
+the box. 'She's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> there,' Laura said, indicating the place; but Mrs.
+Berrington did not show herself&mdash;she remained masked by the others.
+Neither was Mr. Booker visible; he had not, seemingly, been persuaded to
+remain, and indeed Laura could see that there would not have been room
+for him. Mr. Wendover observed, ruefully, that as Mrs. Berrington
+evidently could see nothing at all from where she had gone she had
+exchanged a very good place for a very bad one. 'I can't imagine&mdash;I
+can't imagine&mdash;&mdash;' said the girl; but she paused, losing herself in
+reflections and wonderments, in conjectures that soon became anxieties.
+Suspicion of Selina was now so rooted in her heart that it could make
+her unhappy even when it pointed nowhere, and by the end of half an hour
+she felt how little her fears had really been lulled since that scene of
+dishevelment and contrition in the early dawn.</p>
+
+<p>The opera resumed its course, but Mr. Booker did not come back. The
+American singer trilled and warbled, executed remarkable flights, and
+there was much applause, every symptom of success; but Laura became more
+and more unaware of the music&mdash;she had no eyes but for Lady Ringrose and
+her friend. She watched them earnestly&mdash;she tried to sound with her
+glass the curtained dimness behind them. Their attention was all for the
+stage and they gave no present sign of having any fellow-listeners.
+These others had either gone away or were leaving them very much to
+themselves. Laura was unable to guess any particular motive on her
+sister's part, but the conviction grew within her that she had not put
+such an affront on Mr. Wendover simply in order to have a little chat
+with Lady<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> Ringrose. There was something else, there was some one else,
+in the affair; and when once the girl's idea had become as definite as
+that it took but little longer to associate itself with the image of
+Captain Crispin. This image made her draw back further behind her
+curtain, because it brought the blood to her face; and if she coloured
+for shame she coloured also for anger. Captain Crispin was there, in the
+opposite box; those horrible women concealed him (she forgot how
+harmless and well-read Lady Ringrose had appeared to her that time at
+Mellows); they had lent themselves to this abominable proceeding. Selina
+was nestling there in safety with him, by their favour, and she had had
+the baseness to lay an honest girl, the most loyal, the most unselfish
+of sisters, under contribution to the same end. Laura crimsoned with the
+sense that she had been, unsuspectingly, part of a scheme, that she was
+being used as the two women opposite were used, but that she had been
+outraged into the bargain, inasmuch as she was not, like them, a
+conscious accomplice and not a person to be given away in that manner
+before hundreds of people. It came back to her how bad Selina had been
+the day of the business in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and how in spite of
+intervening comedies the woman who had then found such words of injury
+would be sure to break out in a new spot with a new weapon. Accordingly,
+while the pure music filled the place and the rich picture of the stage
+glowed beneath it, Laura found herself face to face with the strange
+inference that the evil of Selina's nature made her wish&mdash;since she had
+given herself to it&mdash;to bring her sister to her own colour by putting an
+appearance of 'fastness'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> upon her. The girl said to herself that she
+would have succeeded, in the cynical view of London; and to her troubled
+spirit the immense theatre had a myriad eyes, eyes that she knew, eyes
+that would know her, that would see her sitting there with a strange
+young man. She had recognised many faces already and her imagination
+quickly multiplied them. However, after she had burned a while with this
+particular revolt she ceased to think of herself and of what, as
+regarded herself, Selina had intended: all her thought went to the mere
+calculation of Mrs. Berrington's return. As she did not return, and
+still did not, Laura felt a sharp constriction of the heart. She knew
+not what she feared&mdash;she knew not what she supposed. She was so nervous
+(as she had been the night she waited, till morning, for her sister to
+re-enter the house in Grosvenor Place) that when Mr. Wendover
+occasionally made a remark to her she failed to understand him, was
+unable to answer him. Fortunately he made very few; he was
+preoccupied&mdash;either wondering also what Selina was 'up to' or, more
+probably, simply absorbed in the music. What she <i>had</i> comprehended,
+however, was that when at three different moments she had said,
+restlessly, 'Why doesn't Mr. Booker come back?' he replied, 'Oh, there's
+plenty of time&mdash;we are very comfortable.' These words she was conscious
+of; she particularly noted them and they interwove themselves with her
+restlessness. She also noted, in her tension, that after her third
+inquiry Mr. Wendover said something about looking up his friend, if she
+didn't mind being left alone a moment. He quitted the box and during
+this interval Laura tried more than ever to see with her glass what had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
+become of her sister. But it was as if the ladies opposite had arranged
+themselves, had arranged their curtains, on purpose to frustrate such an
+attempt: it was impossible to her even to assure herself of what she had
+begun to suspect, that Selina was now not with them. If she was not with
+them where in the world had she gone? As the moments elapsed, before Mr.
+Wendover's return, she went to the door of the box and stood watching
+the lobby, for the chance that he would bring back the absentee.
+Presently she saw him coming alone, and something in the expression of
+his face made her step out into the lobby to meet him. He was smiling,
+but he looked embarrassed and strange, especially when he saw her
+standing there as if she wished to leave the place.</p>
+
+<p>'I hope you don't want to go,' he said, holding the door for her to pass
+back into the box.</p>
+
+<p>'Where are they&mdash;where are they?' she demanded, remaining in the
+corridor.</p>
+
+<p>'I saw our friend&mdash;he has found a place in the stalls, near the door by
+which you go into them&mdash;just here under us.'</p>
+
+<p>'And does he like that better?'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wendover's smile became perfunctory as he looked down at her. 'Mrs.
+Berrington has made such an amusing request of him.'</p>
+
+<p>'An amusing request?'</p>
+
+<p>'She made him promise not to come back.'</p>
+
+<p>'Made him promise&mdash;&mdash;?' Laura stared.</p>
+
+<p>'She asked him&mdash;as a particular favour to her&mdash;not to join us again. And
+he said he wouldn't.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, the monster!' Laura exclaimed, blushing crimson.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p><p>'Do you mean poor Mr. Booker?' Mr. Wendover asked. 'Of course he had to
+assure her that the wish of so lovely a lady was law. But he doesn't
+understand!' laughed the young man.</p>
+
+<p>'No more do I. And where is the lovely lady?' said Laura, trying to
+recover herself.</p>
+
+<p>'He hasn't the least idea.'</p>
+
+<p>'Isn't she with Lady Ringrose?'</p>
+
+<p>'If you like I will go and see.'</p>
+
+<p>Laura hesitated, looking down the curved lobby, where there was nothing
+to see but the little numbered doors of the boxes. They were alone in
+the lamplit bareness; the <i>finale</i> of the act was ringing and booming
+behind them. In a moment she said: 'I'm afraid I must trouble you to put
+me into a cab.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, you won't see the rest? <i>Do</i> stay&mdash;what difference does it make?'
+And her companion still held open the door of the box. Her eyes met his,
+in which it seemed to her that as well as in his voice there was
+conscious sympathy, entreaty, vindication, tenderness. Then she gazed
+into the vulgar corridor again; something said to her that if she should
+return she would be taking the most important step of her life. She
+considered this, and while she did so a great burst of applause filled
+the place as the curtain fell. 'See what we are losing! And the last act
+is so fine,' said Mr. Wendover. She returned to her seat and he closed
+the door of the box behind them.</p>
+
+<p>Then, in this little upholstered receptacle which was so public and yet
+so private, Laura Wing passed through the strangest moments she had
+known. An indication of their strangeness is that when she <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>presently
+perceived that while she was in the lobby Lady Ringrose and her
+companion had quite disappeared, she observed the circumstance without
+an exclamation, holding herself silent. Their box was empty, but Laura
+looked at it without in the least feeling this to be a sign that Selina
+would now come round. She would never come round again, nor would she
+have gone home from the opera. That was by this time absolutely definite
+to the girl, who had first been hot and now was cold with the sense of
+what Selina's injunction to poor Mr. Booker exactly meant. It was worthy
+of her, for it was simply a vicious little kick as she took her flight.
+Grosvenor Place would not shelter her that night and would never shelter
+her more: that was the reason she tried to spatter her sister with the
+mud into which she herself had jumped. She would not have dared to treat
+her in such a fashion if they had had a prospect of meeting again. The
+strangest part of this remarkable juncture was that what ministered most
+to our young lady's suppressed emotion was not the tremendous reflection
+that this time Selina had really 'bolted' and that on the morrow all
+London would know it: all that had taken the glare of certainty (and a
+very hideous hue it was), whereas the chill that had fallen upon the
+girl now was that of a mystery which waited to be cleared up. Her heart
+was full of suspense&mdash;suspense of which she returned the pressure,
+trying to twist it into expectation. There was a certain chance in life
+that sat there beside her, but it would go for ever if it should not
+move nearer that night; and she listened, she watched, for it to move. I
+need not inform the reader that this chance presented<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> itself in the
+person of Mr. Wendover, who more than any one she knew had it in his
+hand to transmute her detestable position. To-morrow he would know, and
+would think sufficiently little of a young person of <i>that</i> breed:
+therefore it could only be a question of his speaking on the spot. That
+was what she had come back into the box for&mdash;to give him his
+opportunity. It was open to her to think he had asked for it&mdash;adding
+everything together.</p>
+
+<p>The poor girl added, added, deep in her heart, while she said nothing.
+The music was not there now, to keep them silent; yet he remained quiet,
+even as she did, and that for some minutes was a part of her addition.
+She felt as if she were running a race with failure and shame; she would
+get in first if she should get in before the degradation of the morrow.
+But this was not very far off, and every minute brought it nearer. It
+would be there in fact, virtually, that night, if Mr. Wendover should
+begin to realise the brutality of Selina's not turning up at all. The
+comfort had been, hitherto, that he didn't realise brutalities. There
+were certain violins that emitted tentative sounds in the orchestra;
+they shortened the time and made her uneasier&mdash;fixed her idea that he
+could lift her out of her mire if he would. It didn't appear to prove
+that he would, his also observing Lady Ringrose's empty box without
+making an encouraging comment upon it. Laura waited for him to remark
+that her sister obviously would turn up now; but no such words fell from
+his lips. He must either like Selina's being away or judge it damningly,
+and in either case why didn't he speak? If he had nothing to say, why
+<i>had</i> he said, why had he done, what did he mean&mdash;&mdash;? But the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> girl's
+inward challenge to him lost itself in a mist of faintness; she was
+screwing herself up to a purpose of her own, and it hurt almost to
+anguish, and the whole place, around her, was a blur and swim, through
+which she heard the tuning of fiddles. Before she knew it she had said
+to him, 'Why have you come so often?'</p>
+
+<p>'So often? To see you, do you mean?'</p>
+
+<p>'To see <i>me</i>&mdash;it was for that? Why have you come?' she went on. He was
+evidently surprised, and his surprise gave her a point of anger, a
+desire almost that her words should hurt him, lash him. She spoke low,
+but she heard herself, and she thought that if what she said sounded to
+<i>him</i> in the same way&mdash;&mdash;! 'You have come very often&mdash;too often, too
+often!'</p>
+
+<p>He coloured, he looked frightened, he was, clearly, extremely startled.
+'Why, you have been so kind, so delightful,' he stammered.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, of course, and so have you! Did you come for Selina? She is
+married, you know, and devoted to her husband.' A single minute had
+sufficed to show the girl that her companion was quite unprepared for
+her question, that he was distinctly not in love with her and was face
+to face with a situation entirely new. The effect of this perception was
+to make her say wilder things.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, what is more natural, when one likes people, than to come often?
+Perhaps I have bored you&mdash;with our American way,' said Mr. Wendover.</p>
+
+<p>'And is it because you like me that you have kept me here?' Laura asked.
+She got up, leaning against the side of the box; she had pulled the
+curtain far forward and was out of sight of the house.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p><p>He rose, but more slowly; he had got over his first confusion. He
+smiled at her, but his smile was dreadful. 'Can you have any doubt as to
+what I have come for? It's a pleasure to me that you have liked me well
+enough to ask.'</p>
+
+<p>For an instant she thought he was coming nearer to her, but he didn't:
+he stood there twirling his gloves. Then an unspeakable shame and
+horror&mdash;horror of herself, of him, of everything&mdash;came over her, and she
+sank into a chair at the back of the box, with averted eyes, trying to
+get further into her corner. 'Leave me, leave me, go away!' she said, in
+the lowest tone that he could hear. The whole house seemed to her to be
+listening to her, pressing into the box.</p>
+
+<p>'Leave you alone&mdash;in this place&mdash;when I love you? I can't do
+that&mdash;indeed I can't.'</p>
+
+<p>'You don't love me&mdash;and you torture me by staying!' Laura went on, in a
+convulsed voice. 'For God's sake go away and don't speak to me, don't
+let me see you or hear of you again!'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wendover still stood there, exceedingly agitated, as well he might
+be, by this inconceivable scene. Unaccustomed feelings possessed him and
+they moved him in different directions. Her command that he should take
+himself off was passionate, yet he attempted to resist, to speak. How
+would she get home&mdash;would she see him to-morrow&mdash;would she let him wait
+for her outside? To this Laura only replied: 'Oh dear, oh dear, if you
+would only go!' and at the same instant she sprang up, gathering her
+cloak around her as if to escape from him, to rush away herself. He
+checked this movement, however, clapping on his hat and holding the
+door. One<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> moment more he looked at her&mdash;her own eyes were closed; then
+he exclaimed, pitifully, 'Oh Miss Wing, oh Miss Wing!' and stepped out
+of the box.</p>
+
+<p>When he had gone she collapsed into one of the chairs again and sat
+there with her face buried in a fold of her mantle. For many minutes she
+was perfectly still&mdash;she was ashamed even to move. The one thing that
+could have justified her, blown away the dishonour of her monstrous
+overture, would have been, on his side, the quick response of
+unmistakable passion. It had not come, and she had nothing left but to
+loathe herself. She did so, violently, for a long time, in the dark
+corner of the box, and she felt that he loathed her too. 'I love
+you!'&mdash;how pitifully the poor little make-believe words had quavered out
+and how much disgust they must have represented! 'Poor man&mdash;poor man!'
+Laura Wing suddenly found herself murmuring: compassion filled her mind
+at the sense of the way she had used him. At the same moment a flare of
+music broke out: the last act of the opera had begun and she had sprung
+up and quitted the box.</p>
+
+<p>The passages were empty and she made her way without trouble. She
+descended to the vestibule; there was no one to stare at her and her
+only fear was that Mr. Wendover would be there. But he was not,
+apparently, and she saw that she should be able to go away quickly.
+Selina would have taken the carriage&mdash;she could be sure of that; or if
+she hadn't it wouldn't have come back yet; besides, she couldn't
+possibly wait there so long as while it was called. She was in the act
+of asking one of the attendants, in the portico, to get her a cab, when
+some one hurried up to her from behind, overtaking her&mdash;a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> gentleman in
+whom, turning round, she recognised Mr. Booker. He looked almost as
+bewildered as Mr. Wendover, and his appearance disconcerted her almost
+as much as that of his friend would have done. 'Oh, are you going away,
+alone? What must you think of me?' this young man exclaimed; and he
+began to tell her something about her sister and to ask her at the same
+time if he might not go with her&mdash;help her in some way. He made no
+inquiry about Mr. Wendover, and she afterwards judged that that
+distracted gentleman had sought him out and sent him to her assistance;
+also that he himself was at that moment watching them from behind some
+column. He would have been hateful if he had shown himself; yet (in this
+later meditation) there was a voice in her heart which commended his
+delicacy. He effaced himself to look after her&mdash;he provided for her
+departure by proxy.</p>
+
+<p>'A cab, a cab&mdash;that's all I want!' she said to Mr. Booker; and she
+almost pushed him out of the place with the wave of the hand with which
+she indicated her need. He rushed off to call one, and a minute
+afterwards the messenger whom she had already despatched rattled up in a
+hansom. She quickly got into it, and as she rolled away she saw Mr.
+Booker returning in all haste with another. She gave a passionate
+moan&mdash;this common confusion seemed to add a grotesqueness to her
+predicament.</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII</h2>
+
+<p>The next day, at five o'clock, she drove to Queen's Gate, turning to
+Lady Davenant in her distress in order to turn somewhere. Her old friend
+was at home and by extreme good fortune alone; looking up from her book,
+in her place by the window, she gave the girl as she came in a sharp
+glance over her glasses. This glance was acquisitive; she said nothing,
+but laying down her book stretched out her two gloved hands. Laura took
+them and she drew her down toward her, so that the girl sunk on her
+knees and in a moment hid her face, sobbing, in the old woman's lap.
+There was nothing said for some time: Lady Davenant only pressed her
+tenderly&mdash;stroked her with her hands. 'Is it very bad?' she asked at
+last. Then Laura got up, saying as she took a seat, 'Have you heard of
+it and do people know it?'</p>
+
+<p>'I haven't heard anything. Is it very bad?' Lady Davenant repeated.</p>
+
+<p>'We don't know where Selina is&mdash;and her maid's gone.'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Davenant looked at her visitor a moment. 'Lord, what an ass!' she
+then ejaculated, putting the paper-knife into her book to keep her
+place.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> 'And whom has she persuaded to take her&mdash;Charles Crispin?' she
+added.</p>
+
+<p>'We suppose&mdash;we suppose&mdash;&mdash;' said Laura.</p>
+
+<p>'And he's another,' interrupted the old woman. 'And who
+supposes&mdash;Geordie and Ferdy?'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know; it's all black darkness!'</p>
+
+<p>'My dear, it's a blessing, and now you can live in peace.'</p>
+
+<p>'In peace!' cried Laura; 'with my wretched sister leading such a life?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, my dear, I daresay it will be very comfortable; I am sorry to say
+anything in favour of such doings, but it very often is. Don't worry;
+you take her too hard. Has she gone abroad?' the old lady continued. 'I
+daresay she has gone to some pretty, amusing place.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know anything about it. I only know she is gone. I was with her
+last evening and she left me without a word.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, that was better. I hate 'em when they make parting scenes: it's
+too mawkish!'</p>
+
+<p>'Lionel has people watching them,' said the girl; 'agents, detectives, I
+don't know what. He has had them for a long time; I didn't know it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you mean you would have told her if you had? What is the use of
+detectives now? Isn't he rid of her?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I don't know, he's as bad as she; he talks too horribly&mdash;he wants
+every one to know it,' Laura groaned.</p>
+
+<p>'And has he told his mother?'</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose so: he rushed off to see her at noon. She'll be overwhelmed.'</p>
+
+<p>'Overwhelmed? Not a bit of it!' cried Lady<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> Davenant, almost gaily.
+'When did anything in the world overwhelm her and what do you take her
+for? She'll only make some delightful odd speech. As for people knowing
+it,' she added, 'they'll know it whether he wants them or not. My poor
+child, how long do you expect to make believe?'</p>
+
+<p>'Lionel expects some news to-night,' Laura said. 'As soon as I know
+where she is I shall start.'</p>
+
+<p>'Start for where?'</p>
+
+<p>'To go to her&mdash;to do something.'</p>
+
+<p>'Something preposterous, my dear. Do you expect to bring her back?'</p>
+
+<p>'He won't take her in,' said Laura, with her dried, dismal eyes. 'He
+wants his divorce&mdash;it's too hideous!'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, as she wants hers what is simpler?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, she wants hers. Lionel swears by all the gods she can't get it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Bless me, won't one do?' Lady Davenant asked. 'We shall have some
+pretty reading.'</p>
+
+<p>'It's awful, awful, awful!' murmured Laura.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, they oughtn't to be allowed to publish them. I wonder if we
+couldn't stop that. At any rate he had better be quiet: tell him to come
+and see me.'</p>
+
+<p>'You won't influence him; he's dreadful against her. Such a house as it
+is to-day!'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, my dear, naturally.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, but it's terrible for me: it's all more sickening than I can
+bear.'</p>
+
+<p>'My dear child, come and stay with me,' said the old woman, gently.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I can't desert her; I can't abandon her!'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p><p>'Desert&mdash;abandon? What a way to put it! Hasn't she abandoned you?'</p>
+
+<p>'She has no heart&mdash;she's too base!' said the girl. Her face was white
+and the tears now began to rise to her eyes again.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Davenant got up and came and sat on the sofa beside her: she put
+her arms round her and the two women embraced. 'Your room is all ready,'
+the old lady remarked. And then she said, 'When did she leave you? When
+did you see her last?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, in the strangest, maddest, crudest way, the way most insulting to
+me. We went to the opera together and she left me there with a
+gentleman. We know nothing about her since.'</p>
+
+<p>'With a gentleman?'</p>
+
+<p>'With Mr. Wendover&mdash;that American, and something too dreadful happened.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear me, did he kiss you?' asked Lady Davenant.</p>
+
+<p>Laura got up quickly, turning away. 'Good-bye, I'm going, I'm going!'
+And in reply to an irritated, protesting exclamation from her companion
+she went on, 'Anywhere&mdash;anywhere to get away!'</p>
+
+<p>'To get away from your American?'</p>
+
+<p>'I asked him to marry me!' The girl turned round with her tragic face.</p>
+
+<p>'He oughtn't to have left that to you.'</p>
+
+<p>'I knew this horror was coming and it took possession of me, there in
+the box, from one moment to the other&mdash;the idea of making sure of some
+other life, some protection, some respectability. First I thought he
+liked me, he had behaved as if he did. And I like him, he is a very good
+man. So I asked him, I couldn't help it, it was too hideous&mdash;I offered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
+myself!' Laura spoke as if she were telling that she had stabbed him,
+standing there with dilated eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Davenant got up again and went to her; drawing off her glove she
+felt her cheek with the back of her hand. 'You are ill, you are in a
+fever. I'm sure that whatever you said it was very charming.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I am ill,' said Laura.</p>
+
+<p>'Upon my honour you shan't go home, you shall go straight to bed. And
+what did he say to you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, it was too miserable!' cried the girl, pressing her face again into
+her companion's kerchief. 'I was all, all mistaken; he had never
+thought!'</p>
+
+<p>'Why the deuce then did he run about that way after you? He was a brute
+to say it!'</p>
+
+<p>'He didn't say it and he never ran about. He behaved like a perfect
+gentleman.'</p>
+
+<p>'I've no patience&mdash;I wish I had seen him that time!' Lady Davenant
+declared.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, that would have been nice! You'll never see him; if he <i>is</i> a
+gentleman he'll rush away.'</p>
+
+<p>'Bless me, what a rushing away!' murmured the old woman. Then passing
+her arm round Laura she added, 'You'll please to come upstairs with me.'</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour later she had some conversation with her butler which led
+to his consulting a little register into which it was his law to
+transcribe with great neatness, from their cards, the addresses of new
+visitors. This volume, kept in the drawer of the hall table, revealed
+the fact that Mr. Wendover was staying in George Street, Hanover Square.
+'Get into a cab immediately and tell him to come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> and see me this
+evening,' Lady Davenant said. 'Make him understand that it interests him
+very nearly, so that no matter what his engagements may be he must give
+them up. Go quickly and you'll just find him: he'll be sure to be at
+home to dress for dinner.' She had calculated justly, for a few minutes
+before ten o'clock the door of her drawing-room was thrown open and Mr.
+Wendover was announced.</p>
+
+<p>'Sit there,' said the old lady; 'no, not that one, nearer to me. We must
+talk low. My dear sir, I won't bite you!'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, this is very comfortable,' Mr. Wendover replied vaguely, smiling
+through his visible anxiety. It was no more than natural that he should
+wonder what Laura Wing's peremptory friend wanted of him at that hour of
+the night; but nothing could exceed the gallantry of his attempt to
+conceal the symptoms of alarm.</p>
+
+<p>'You ought to have come before, you know,' Lady Davenant went on. 'I
+have wanted to see you more than once.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have been dining out&mdash;I hurried away. This was the first possible
+moment, I assure you.'</p>
+
+<p>'I too was dining out and I stopped at home on purpose to see you. But I
+didn't mean to-night, for you have done very well. I was quite intending
+to send for you&mdash;the other day. But something put it out of my head.
+Besides, I knew she wouldn't like it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, Lady Davenant, I made a point of calling, ever so long ago&mdash;after
+that day!' the young man exclaimed, not reassured, or at any rate not
+enlightened.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p><p>'I daresay you did&mdash;but you mustn't justify yourself; that's just what
+I don't want; it isn't what I sent for you for. I have something very
+particular to say to you, but it's very difficult. Voyons un peu!'</p>
+
+<p>The old woman reflected a little, with her eyes on his face, which had
+grown more grave as she went on; its expression intimated that he failed
+as yet to understand her and that he at least was not exactly trifling.
+Lady Davenant's musings apparently helped her little, if she was looking
+for an artful approach; for they ended in her saying abruptly, 'I wonder
+if you know what a capital girl she is.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you mean&mdash;do you mean&mdash;&mdash;?' stammered Mr. Wendover, pausing as if he
+had given her no right not to allow him to conceive alternatives.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I do mean. She's upstairs, in bed.'</p>
+
+<p>'Upstairs in bed!' The young man stared.</p>
+
+<p>'Don't be afraid&mdash;I'm not going to send for her!' laughed his hostess;
+'her being here, after all, has nothing to do with it, except that she
+<i>did</i> come&mdash;yes, certainly, she did come. But my keeping her&mdash;that was
+my doing. My maid has gone to Grosvenor Place to get her things and let
+them know that she will stay here for the present. Now am I clear?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not in the least,' said Mr. Wendover, almost sternly.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Davenant, however, was not of a composition to suspect him of
+sternness or to care very much if she did, and she went on, with her
+quick discursiveness: 'Well, we must be patient; we shall work it out
+together. I was afraid you would go<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> away, that's why I lost no time.
+Above all I want you to understand that she has not the least idea that
+I have sent for you, and you must promise me never, never, never to let
+her know. She would be monstrous angry. It is quite my own idea&mdash;I have
+taken the responsibility. I know very little about you of course, but
+she has spoken to me well of you. Besides, I am very clever about
+people, and I liked you that day, though you seemed to think I was a
+hundred and eighty.'</p>
+
+<p>'You do me great honour,' Mr. Wendover rejoined.</p>
+
+<p>'I'm glad you're pleased! You must be if I tell you that I like you now
+even better. I see what you are, except for the question of fortune. It
+doesn't perhaps matter much, but have you any money? I mean have you a
+fine income?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, indeed I haven't!' And the young man laughed in his bewilderment.
+'I have very little money indeed.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I daresay you have as much as I. Besides, that would be a proof
+she is not mercenary.'</p>
+
+<p>'You haven't in the least made it plain whom you are talking about,'
+said Mr. Wendover. 'I have no right to assume anything.'</p>
+
+<p>'Are you afraid of betraying her? I am more devoted to her even than I
+want you to be. She has told me what happened between you last
+night&mdash;what she said to you at the opera. That's what I want to talk to
+you about.'</p>
+
+<p>'She was very strange,' the young man remarked.</p>
+
+<p>'I am not so sure that she was strange. However, you are welcome to
+think it, for goodness knows she says so herself. She is overwhelmed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>
+with horror at her own words; she is absolutely distracted and
+prostrate.'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wendover was silent a moment. 'I assured her that I admire
+her&mdash;beyond every one. I was most kind to her.'</p>
+
+<p>'Did you say it in that tone? You should have thrown yourself at her
+feet! From the moment you didn't&mdash;surely you understand women well
+enough to know.'</p>
+
+<p>'You must remember where we were&mdash;in a public place, with very little
+room for throwing!' Mr. Wendover exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, so far from blaming you she says your behaviour was perfect. It's
+only I who want to have it out with you,' Lady Davenant pursued. 'She's
+so clever, so charming, so good and so unhappy.'</p>
+
+<p>'When I said just now she was strange, I meant only in the way she
+turned against me.'</p>
+
+<p>'She turned against you?'</p>
+
+<p>'She told me she hoped she should never see me again.'</p>
+
+<p>'And you, should you like to see her?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not now&mdash;not now!' Mr. Wendover exclaimed, eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't mean now, I'm not such a fool as that. I mean some day or
+other, when she has stopped accusing herself, if she ever does.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, Lady Davenant, you must leave that to me,' the young man returned,
+after a moment's hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>'Don't be afraid to tell me I'm meddling with what doesn't concern me,'
+said his hostess. 'Of course I know I'm meddling; I sent for you here to
+meddle. Who wouldn't, for that creature? She makes one melt.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span></p><p>'I'm exceedingly sorry for her. I don't know what she thinks she said.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, that she asked you why you came so often to Grosvenor Place. I
+don't see anything so awful in that, if you did go.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I went very often. I liked to go.'</p>
+
+<p>'Now, that's exactly where I wish to prevent a misconception,' said Lady
+Davenant. 'If you liked to go you had a reason for liking, and Laura
+Wing was the reason, wasn't she?'</p>
+
+<p>'I thought her charming, and I think her so now more than ever.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then you are a dear good man. Vous faisiez votre cour, in short.'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wendover made no immediate response: the two sat looking at each
+other. 'It isn't easy for me to talk of these things,' he said at last;
+'but if you mean that I wished to ask her to be my wife I am bound to
+tell you that I had no such intention.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, then I'm at sea. You thought her charming and you went to see her
+every day. What then did you wish?'</p>
+
+<p>'I didn't go every day. Moreover I think you have a very different idea
+in this country of what constitutes&mdash;well, what constitutes making love.
+A man commits himself much sooner.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I don't know what <i>your</i> odd ways may be!' Lady Davenant exclaimed,
+with a shade of irritation.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, but I was justified in supposing that those ladies did: they at
+least are American.'</p>
+
+<p>'"They," my dear sir! For heaven's sake don't mix up that nasty Selina
+with it!'</p>
+
+<p>'Why not, if I admired her too? I do extremely, and I thought the house
+most interesting.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p><p>'Mercy on us, if that's your idea of a nice house! But I don't know&mdash;I
+have always kept out of it,' Lady Davenant added, checking herself. Then
+she went on, 'If you are so fond of Mrs. Berrington I am sorry to inform
+you that she is absolutely good-for-nothing.'</p>
+
+<p>'Good-for-nothing?'</p>
+
+<p>'Nothing to speak of! I have been thinking whether I would tell you, and
+I have decided to do so because I take it that your learning it for
+yourself would be a matter of but a very short time. Selina has bolted,
+as they say.'</p>
+
+<p>'Bolted?' Mr. Wendover repeated.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know what you call it in America.'</p>
+
+<p>'In America we don't do it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, well, if they stay, as they do usually abroad, that's better. I
+suppose you didn't think her capable of behaving herself, did you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you mean she has left her husband&mdash;with some one else?'</p>
+
+<p>'Neither more nor less; with a fellow named Crispin. It appears it all
+came off last evening, and she had her own reasons for doing it in the
+most offensive way&mdash;publicly, clumsily, with the vulgarest bravado.
+Laura has told me what took place, and you must permit me to express my
+surprise at your not having divined the miserable business.'</p>
+
+<p>'I saw something was wrong, but I didn't understand. I'm afraid I'm not
+very quick at these things.'</p>
+
+<p>'Your state is the more gracious; but certainly you are not quick if you
+could call there so often and not see through Selina.'</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Crispin, whoever he is, was never there,' said the young man.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p><p>'Oh, she was a clever hussy!' his companion rejoined.</p>
+
+<p>'I knew she was fond of amusement, but that's what I liked to see. I
+wanted to see a house of that sort.'</p>
+
+<p>'Fond of amusement is a very pretty phrase!' said Lady Davenant,
+laughing at the simplicity with which her visitor accounted for his
+assiduity. 'And did Laura Wing seem to you in her place in a house of
+that sort?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, it was natural she should be with her sister, and she always
+struck me as very gay.'</p>
+
+<p>'That was your enlivening effect! And did she strike you as very gay
+last night, with this scandal hanging over her?'</p>
+
+<p>'She didn't talk much,' said Mr. Wendover.</p>
+
+<p>'She knew it was coming&mdash;she felt it, she saw it, and that's what makes
+her sick now, that at <i>such</i> a time she should have challenged you, when
+she felt herself about to be associated (in people's minds, of course)
+with such a vile business. In people's minds and in yours&mdash;when you
+should know what had happened.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, Miss Wing isn't associated&mdash;&mdash;' said Mr. Wendover. He spoke slowly,
+but he rose to his feet with a nervous movement that was not lost upon
+his companion: she noted it indeed with a certain inward sense of
+triumph. She was very deep, but she had never been so deep as when she
+made up her mind to mention the scandal of the house of Berrington to
+her visitor and intimated to him that Laura Wing regarded herself as
+near enough to it to receive from it a personal stain. 'I'm extremely
+sorry to hear of Mrs. Berrington's misconduct,' he continued<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> gravely,
+standing before her. 'And I am no less obliged to you for your
+interest.'</p>
+
+<p>'Don't mention it,' she said, getting up too and smiling. 'I mean my
+interest. As for the other matter, it will all come out. Lionel will
+haul her up.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear me, how dreadful!'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, dreadful enough. But don't betray me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Betray you?' he repeated, as if his thoughts had gone astray a moment.</p>
+
+<p>'I mean to the girl. Think of her shame!'</p>
+
+<p>'Her shame?' Mr. Wendover said, in the same way.</p>
+
+<p>'It seemed to her, with what was becoming so clear to her, that an
+honest man might save her from it, might give her his name and his faith
+and help her to traverse the bad place. She exaggerates the badness of
+it, the stigma of her relationship. Good heavens, at that rate where
+would some of us be? But those are her ideas, they are absolutely
+sincere, and they had possession of her at the opera. She had a sense of
+being lost and was in a real agony to be rescued. She saw before her a
+kind gentleman who had seemed&mdash;who had certainly seemed&mdash;&mdash;' And Lady
+Davenant, with her fine old face lighted by her bright sagacity and her
+eyes on Mr. Wendover's, paused, lingering on this word. 'Of course she
+must have been in a state of nerves.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am very sorry for her,' said Mr. Wendover, with his gravity that
+committed him to nothing.</p>
+
+<p>'So am I! And of course if you were not in love with her you weren't,
+were you?'</p>
+
+<p>'I must bid you good-bye, I am leaving London.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> That was the only
+answer Lady Davenant got to her inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>'Good-bye then. She is the nicest girl I know. But once more, mind you
+don't let her suspect!'</p>
+
+<p>'How can I let her suspect anything when I shall never see her again?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, don't say that,' said Lady Davenant, very gently.</p>
+
+<p>'She drove me away from her with a kind of ferocity.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, gammon!' cried the old woman.</p>
+
+<p>'I'm going home,' he said, looking at her with his hand on the door.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, it's the best place for you. And for her too!' she added as he
+went out. She was not sure that the last words reached him.</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a>XIII</h2>
+
+<p>Laura Wing was sharply ill for three days, but on the fourth she made up
+her mind she was better, though this was not the opinion of Lady
+Davenant, who would not hear of her getting up. The remedy she urged was
+lying still and yet lying still; but this specific the girl found
+well-nigh intolerable&mdash;it was a form of relief that only ministered to
+fever. She assured her friend that it killed her to do nothing: to which
+her friend replied by asking her what she had a fancy to do. Laura had
+her idea and held it tight, but there was no use in producing it before
+Lady Davenant, who would have knocked it to pieces. On the afternoon of
+the first day Lionel Berrington came, and though his intention was
+honest he brought no healing. Hearing she was ill he wanted to look
+after her&mdash;he wanted to take her back to Grosvenor Place and make her
+comfortable: he spoke as if he had every convenience for producing that
+condition, though he confessed there was a little bar to it in his own
+case. This impediment was the 'cheeky' aspect of Miss Steet, who went
+sniffing about as if she knew a lot, if she should only condescend to
+tell it. He saw more of the children now; 'I'm going to have 'em in
+every day, poor little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> devils,' he said; and he spoke as if the
+discipline of suffering had already begun for him and a kind of holy
+change had taken place in his life. Nothing had been said yet in the
+house, of course, as Laura knew, about Selina's disappearance, in the
+way of treating it as irregular; but the servants pretended so hard not
+to be aware of anything in particular that they were like pickpockets
+looking with unnatural interest the other way after they have cribbed a
+fellow's watch. To a certainty, in a day or two, the governess would
+give him warning: she would come and tell him she couldn't stay in such
+a place, and he would tell her, in return, that she was a little donkey
+for not knowing that the place was much more respectable now than it had
+ever been.</p>
+
+<p>This information Selina's husband imparted to Lady Davenant, to whom he
+discoursed with infinite candour and humour, taking a highly
+philosophical view of his position and declaring that it suited him down
+to the ground. His wife couldn't have pleased him better if she had done
+it on purpose; he knew where she had been every hour since she quitted
+Laura at the opera&mdash;he knew where she was at that moment and he was
+expecting to find another telegram on his return to Grosvenor Place. So
+if it suited <i>her</i> it was all right, wasn't it? and the whole thing
+would go as straight as a shot. Lady Davenant took him up to see Laura,
+though she viewed their meeting with extreme disfavour, the girl being
+in no state for talking. In general Laura had little enough mind for it,
+but she insisted on seeing Lionel: she declared that if this were not
+allowed her she would go after him, ill as she was&mdash;she would dress
+herself and drive to his house. She dressed herself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> now, after a
+fashion; she got upon a sofa to receive him. Lady Davenant left him
+alone with her for twenty minutes, at the end of which she returned to
+take him away. This interview was not fortifying to the girl, whose
+idea&mdash;the idea of which I have said that she was tenacious&mdash;was to go
+after her sister, to take possession of her, cling to her and bring her
+back. Lionel, of course, wouldn't hear of taking her back, nor would
+Selina presumably hear of coming; but this made no difference in Laura's
+heroic plan. She would work it, she would compass it, she would go down
+on her knees, she would find the eloquence of angels, she would achieve
+miracles. At any rate it made her frantic not to try, especially as even
+in fruitless action she should escape from herself&mdash;an object of which
+her horror was not yet extinguished.</p>
+
+<p>As she lay there through inexorably conscious hours the picture of that
+hideous moment in the box alternated with the vision of her sister's
+guilty flight. She wanted to fly, herself&mdash;to go off and keep going for
+ever. Lionel was fussily kind to her and he didn't abuse Selina&mdash;he
+didn't tell her again how that lady's behaviour suited his book. He
+simply resisted, with a little exasperating, dogged grin, her pitiful
+appeal for knowledge of her sister's whereabouts. He knew what she
+wanted it for and he wouldn't help her in any such game. If she would
+promise, solemnly, to be quiet, he would tell her when she got better,
+but he wouldn't lend her a hand to make a fool of herself. Her work was
+cut out for her&mdash;she was to stay and mind the children: if she was so
+keen to do her duty she needn't go further than that for it. He talked a
+great deal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> about the children and figured himself as pressing the
+little deserted darlings to his bosom. He was not a comedian, and she
+could see that he really believed he was going to be better and purer
+now. Laura said she was sure Selina would make an attempt to get
+them&mdash;or at least one of them; and he replied, grimly, 'Yes, my dear,
+she had better try!' The girl was so angry with him, in her hot, tossing
+weakness, for refusing to tell her even whether the desperate pair had
+crossed the Channel, that she was guilty of the immorality of regretting
+that the difference in badness between husband and wife was so distinct
+(for it was distinct, she could see that) as he made his dry little
+remark about Selina's trying. He told her he had already seen his
+solicitor, the clever Mr. Smallshaw, and she said she didn't care.</p>
+
+<p>On the fourth day of her absence from Grosvenor Place she got up, at an
+hour when she was alone (in the afternoon, rather late), and prepared
+herself to go out. Lady Davenant had admitted in the morning that she
+was better, and fortunately she had not the complication of being
+subject to a medical opinion, having absolutely refused to see a doctor.
+Her old friend had been obliged to go out&mdash;she had scarcely quitted her
+before&mdash;and Laura had requested the hovering, rustling lady's-maid to
+leave her alone: she assured her she was doing beautifully. Laura had no
+plan except to leave London that night; she had a moral certainty that
+Selina had gone to the Continent. She had always done so whenever she
+had a chance, and what chance had ever been larger than the present? The
+Continent was fearfully vague, but she would deal sharply with
+Lionel&mdash;she would show him she had a right to knowledge.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> He would
+certainly be in town; he would be in a complacent bustle with his
+lawyers. She had told him that she didn't believe he had yet gone to
+them, but in her heart she believed it perfectly. If he didn't satisfy
+her she would go to Lady Ringrose, odious as it would be to her to ask a
+favour of this depraved creature: unless indeed Lady Ringrose had joined
+the little party to France, as on the occasion of Selina's last journey
+thither. On her way downstairs she met one of the footmen, of whom she
+made the request that he would call her a cab as quickly as
+possible&mdash;she was obliged to go out for half an hour. He expressed the
+respectful hope that she was better and she replied that she was
+perfectly well&mdash;he would please tell her ladyship when she came in. To
+this the footman rejoined that her ladyship <i>had</i> come in&mdash;she had
+returned five minutes before and had gone to her room. 'Miss Frothingham
+told her you were asleep, Miss,' said the man, 'and her ladyship said it
+was a blessing and you were not to be disturbed.'</p>
+
+<p>'Very good, I will see her,' Laura remarked, with dissimulation: 'only
+please let me have my cab.'</p>
+
+<p>The footman went downstairs and she stood there listening; presently she
+heard the house-door close&mdash;he had gone out on his errand. Then she
+descended very softly&mdash;she prayed he might not be long. The door of the
+drawing-room stood open as she passed it, and she paused before it,
+thinking she heard sounds in the lower hall. They appeared to subside
+and then she found herself faint&mdash;she was terribly impatient for her
+cab. Partly to sit down till it came (there was a seat on the landing,
+but another servant might come up or down and see<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> her), and partly to
+look, at the front window, whether it were not coming, she went for a
+moment into the drawing-room. She stood at the window, but the footman
+was slow; then she sank upon a chair&mdash;she felt very weak. Just after she
+had done so she became aware of steps on the stairs and she got up
+quickly, supposing that her messenger had returned, though she had not
+heard wheels. What she saw was not the footman she had sent out, but the
+expansive person of the butler, followed apparently by a visitor. This
+functionary ushered the visitor in with the remark that he would call
+her ladyship, and before she knew it she was face to face with Mr.
+Wendover. At the same moment she heard a cab drive up, while Mr.
+Wendover instantly closed the door.</p>
+
+<p>'Don't turn me away; do see me&mdash;do see me!' he said. 'I asked for Lady
+Davenant&mdash;they told me she was at home. But it was you I wanted, and I
+wanted her to help me. I was going away&mdash;but I couldn't. You look very
+ill&mdash;do listen to me! You don't understand&mdash;I will explain everything.
+Ah, how ill you look!' the young man cried, as the climax of this
+sudden, soft, distressed appeal. Laura, for all answer, tried to push
+past him, but the result of this movement was that she found herself
+enclosed in his arms. He stopped her, but she disengaged herself, she
+got her hand upon the door. He was leaning against it, so she couldn't
+open it, and as she stood there panting she shut her eyes, so as not to
+see him. 'If you would let me tell you what I think&mdash;I would do anything
+in the world for you!' he went on.</p>
+
+<p>'Let me go&mdash;you persecute me!' the girl cried, pulling at the handle.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span></p><p>'You don't do me justice&mdash;you are too cruel!' Mr. Wendover persisted.</p>
+
+<p>'Let me go&mdash;let me go!' she only repeated, with her high, quavering,
+distracted note; and as he moved a little she got the door open. But he
+followed her out: would she see him that night? Where was she going?
+might he not go with her? would she see him to-morrow?</p>
+
+<p>'Never, never, never!' she flung at him as she hurried away. The butler
+was on the stairs, descending from above; so he checked himself, letting
+her go. Laura passed out of the house and flew into her cab with
+extraordinary speed, for Mr. Wendover heard the wheels bear her away
+while the servant was saying to him in measured accents that her
+ladyship would come down immediately.</p>
+
+<p>Lionel was at home, in Grosvenor Place: she burst into the library and
+found him playing papa. Geordie and Ferdy were sporting around him, the
+presence of Miss Steet had been dispensed with, and he was holding his
+younger son by the stomach, horizontally, between his legs, while the
+child made little sprawling movements which were apparently intended to
+represent the act of swimming. Geordie stood impatient on the brink of
+the imaginary stream, protesting that it was his turn now, and as soon
+as he saw his aunt he rushed at her with the request that she would take
+him up in the same fashion. She was struck with the superficiality of
+their childhood; they appeared to have no sense that she had been away
+and no care that she had been ill. But Lionel made up for this; he
+greeted her with affectionate jollity, said it was a good job she had
+come back, and remarked to the children that they would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> have great
+larks now that auntie was home again. Ferdy asked if she had been with
+mummy, but didn't wait for an answer, and she observed that they put no
+question about their mother and made no further allusion to her while
+they remained in the room. She wondered whether their father had
+enjoined upon them not to mention her, and reflected that even if he had
+such a command would not have been efficacious. It added to the ugliness
+of Selina's flight that even her children didn't miss her, and to the
+dreariness, somehow, to Laura's sense, of the whole situation that one
+could neither spend tears on the mother and wife, because she was not
+worth it, nor sentimentalise about the little boys, because they didn't
+inspire it. 'Well, you do look seedy&mdash;I'm bound to say that!' Lionel
+exclaimed; and he recommended strongly a glass of port, while Ferdy, not
+seizing this reference, suggested that daddy should take her by the
+waistband and teach her to 'strike out.' He represented himself in the
+act of drowning, but Laura interrupted this entertainment, when the
+servant answered the bell (Lionel having rung for the port), by
+requesting that the children should be conveyed to Miss Steet. 'Tell her
+she must never go away again,' Lionel said to Geordie, as the butler
+took him by the hand; but the only touching consequence of this
+injunction was that the child piped back to his father, over his
+shoulder, 'Well, you mustn't either, you know!'</p>
+
+<p>'You must tell me or I'll kill myself&mdash;I give you my word!' Laura said
+to her brother-in-law, with unnecessary violence, as soon as they had
+left the room.</p>
+
+<p>'I say, I say,' he rejoined, 'you <i>are</i> a wilful one!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> What do you want
+to threaten me for? Don't you know me well enough to know that ain't the
+way? That's the tone Selina used to take. Surely you don't want to begin
+and imitate her!' She only sat there, looking at him, while he leaned
+against the chimney-piece smoking a short cigar. There was a silence,
+during which she felt the heat of a certain irrational anger at the
+thought that a little ignorant, red-faced jockey should have the luck to
+be in the right as against her flesh and blood. She considered him
+helplessly, with something in her eyes that had never been there
+before&mdash;something that, apparently, after a moment, made an impression
+on him. Afterwards, however, she saw very well that it was not her
+threat that had moved him, and even at the moment she had a sense, from
+the way he looked back at her, that this was in no manner the first time
+a baffled woman had told him that she would kill herself. He had always
+accepted his kinship with her, but even in her trouble it was part of
+her consciousness that he now lumped her with a mixed group of female
+figures, a little wavering and dim, who were associated in his memory
+with 'scenes,' with importunities and bothers. It is apt to be the
+disadvantage of women, on occasions of measuring their strength with
+men, that they may perceive that the man has a larger experience and
+that they themselves are a part of it. It is doubtless as a provision
+against such emergencies that nature has opened to them operations of
+the mind that are independent of experience. Laura felt the dishonour of
+her race the more that her brother-in-law seemed so gay and bright about
+it: he had an air of positive prosperity, as if his misfortune had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
+turned into that. It came to her that he really liked the idea of the
+public <i>&eacute;claircissement</i>&mdash;the fresh occupation, the bustle and
+importance and celebrity of it. That was sufficiently incredible, but as
+she was on the wrong side it was also humiliating. Besides, higher
+spirits always suggest finer wisdom, and such an attribute on Lionel's
+part was most humiliating of all. 'I haven't the least objection at
+present to telling you what you want to know. I shall have made my
+little arrangements very soon and you will be subp&oelig;naed.'</p>
+
+<p>'Subp&oelig;naed?' the girl repeated, mechanically.</p>
+
+<p>'You will be called as a witness on my side.'</p>
+
+<p>'On your side.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course you're on my side, ain't you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Can they force me to come?' asked Laura, in answer to this.</p>
+
+<p>'No, they can't force you, if you leave the country.'</p>
+
+<p>'That's exactly what I want to do.'</p>
+
+<p>'That will be idiotic,' said Lionel, 'and very bad for your sister. If
+you don't help me you ought at least to help her.'</p>
+
+<p>She sat a moment with her eyes on the ground. 'Where is she&mdash;where is
+she?' she then asked.</p>
+
+<p>'They are at Brussels, at the H&ocirc;tel de Flandres. They appear to like it
+very much.'</p>
+
+<p>'Are you telling me the truth?'</p>
+
+<p>'Lord, my dear child, <i>I</i> don't lie!' Lionel exclaimed. 'You'll make a
+jolly mistake if you go to her,' he added. 'If you have seen her with
+him how can you speak for her?'</p>
+
+<p>'I won't see her with him.'</p>
+
+<p>'That's all very well, but he'll take care of that.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> Of course if you're
+ready for perjury&mdash;&mdash;!' Lionel exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>'I'm ready for anything.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I've been kind to you, my dear,' he continued, smoking, with his
+chin in the air.</p>
+
+<p>'Certainly you have been kind to me.'</p>
+
+<p>'If you want to defend her you had better keep away from her,' said
+Lionel. 'Besides for yourself, it won't be the best thing in the
+world&mdash;to be known to have been in it.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't care about myself,' the girl returned, musingly.</p>
+
+<p>'Don't you care about the children, that you are so ready to throw them
+over? For you would, my dear, you know. If you go to Brussels you never
+come back here&mdash;you never cross this threshold&mdash;you never touch them
+again!'</p>
+
+<p>Laura appeared to listen to this last declaration, but she made no reply
+to it; she only exclaimed after a moment, with a certain impatience,
+'Oh, the children will do anyway!' Then she added passionately, 'You
+<i>won't</i>, Lionel; in mercy's name tell me that you won't!'</p>
+
+<p>'I won't what?'</p>
+
+<p>'Do the awful thing you say.'</p>
+
+<p>'Divorce her? The devil I won't!'</p>
+
+<p>'Then why do you speak of the children&mdash;if you have no pity for them?'</p>
+
+<p>Lionel stared an instant. 'I thought you said yourself that they would
+do anyway!'</p>
+
+<p>Laura bent her head, resting it on the back of her hand, on the leathern
+arm of the sofa. So she remained, while Lionel stood smoking; but at
+last, to leave the room, she got up with an effort that was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> a physical
+pain. He came to her, to detain her, with a little good intention that
+had no felicity for her, trying to take her hand persuasively. 'Dear old
+girl, don't try and behave just as <i>she</i> did! If you'll stay quietly
+here I won't call you, I give you my honour I won't; there! You want to
+see the doctor&mdash;that's the fellow you want to see. And what good will it
+do you, even if you bring her home in pink paper? Do you candidly
+suppose I'll ever look at her&mdash;except across the court-room?'</p>
+
+<p>'I must, I must, I must!' Laura cried, jerking herself away from him and
+reaching the door.</p>
+
+<p>'Well then, good-bye,' he said, in the sternest tone she had ever heard
+him use.</p>
+
+<p>She made no answer, she only escaped. She locked herself in her room;
+she remained there an hour. At the end of this time she came out and
+went to the door of the schoolroom, where she asked Miss Steet to be so
+good as to come and speak to her. The governess followed her to her
+apartment and there Laura took her partly into her confidence. There
+were things she wanted to do before going, and she was too weak to act
+without assistance. She didn't want it from the servants, if only Miss
+Steet would learn from them whether Mr. Berrington were dining at home.
+Laura told her that her sister was ill and she was hurrying to join her
+abroad. It had to be mentioned, that way, that Mrs. Berrington had left
+the country, though of course there was no spoken recognition between
+the two women of the reasons for which she had done so. There was only a
+tacit hypocritical assumption that she was on a visit to friends and
+that there had been nothing queer about her departure. Laura knew that
+Miss<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> Steet knew the truth, and the governess knew that she knew it.
+This young woman lent a hand, very confusedly, to the girl's
+preparations; she ventured not to be sympathetic, as that would point
+too much to badness, but she succeeded perfectly in being dismal. She
+suggested that Laura was ill herself, but Laura replied that this was no
+matter when her sister was so much worse. She elicited the fact that Mr.
+Berrington was dining out&mdash;the butler believed with his mother&mdash;but she
+was of no use when it came to finding in the 'Bradshaw' which she
+brought up from the hall the hour of the night-boat to Ostend. Laura
+found it herself; it was conveniently late, and it was a gain to her
+that she was very near the Victoria station, where she would take the
+train for Dover. The governess wanted to go to the station with her, but
+the girl would not listen to this&mdash;she would only allow her to see that
+she had a cab. Laura let her help her still further; she sent her down
+to talk to Lady Davenant's maid when that personage arrived in Grosvenor
+Place to inquire, from her mistress, what in the world had become of
+poor Miss Wing. The maid intimated, Miss Steet said on her return, that
+her ladyship would have come herself, only she was too angry. She was
+very bad indeed. It was an indication of this that she had sent back her
+young friend's dressing-case and her clothes. Laura also borrowed money
+from the governess&mdash;she had too little in her pocket. The latter
+brightened up as the preparations advanced; she had never before been
+concerned in a flurried night-episode, with an unavowed clandestine
+side; the very imprudence of it (for a sick girl alone) was romantic,
+and before Laura had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> gone down to the cab she began to say that foreign
+life must be fascinating and to make wistful reflections. She saw that
+the coast was clear, in the nursery&mdash;that the children were asleep, for
+their aunt to come in. She kissed Ferdy while her companion pressed her
+lips upon Geordie, and Geordie while Laura hung for a moment over Ferdy.
+At the door of the cab she tried to make her take more money, and our
+heroine had an odd sense that if the vehicle had not rolled away she
+would have thrust into her hand a keepsake for Captain Crispin.</p>
+
+<p>A quarter of an hour later Laura sat in the corner of a
+railway-carriage, muffled in her cloak (the July evening was fresh, as
+it so often is in London&mdash;fresh enough to add to her sombre thoughts the
+suggestion of the wind in the Channel), waiting in a vain torment of
+nervousness for the train to set itself in motion. Her nervousness
+itself had led her to come too early to the station, and it seemed to
+her that she had already waited long. A lady and a gentleman had taken
+their place in the carriage (it was not yet the moment for the outward
+crowd of tourists) and had left their appurtenances there while they
+strolled up and down the platform. The long English twilight was still
+in the air, but there was dusk under the grimy arch of the station and
+Laura flattered herself that the off-corner of the carriage she had
+chosen was in shadow. This, however, apparently did not prevent her from
+being recognised by a gentleman who stopped at the door, looking in,
+with the movement of a person who was going from carriage to carriage.
+As soon as he saw her he stepped quickly in, and the next moment Mr.
+Wendover was seated on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> edge of the place beside her, leaning toward
+her, speaking to her low, with clasped hands. She fell back in her seat,
+closing her eyes again. He barred the way out of the compartment.</p>
+
+<p>'I have followed you here&mdash;I saw Miss Steet&mdash;I want to implore you not
+to go! Don't, don't! I know what you're doing. Don't go, I beseech you.
+I saw Lady Davenant, I wanted to ask her to help me, I could bear it no
+longer. I have thought of you, night and day, these four days. Lady
+Davenant has told me things, and I entreat you not to go!'</p>
+
+<p>Laura opened her eyes (there was something in his voice, in his pressing
+nearness), and looked at him a moment: it was the first time she had
+done so since the first of those detestable moments in the box at Covent
+Garden. She had never spoken to him of Selina in any but an honourable
+sense. Now she said, 'I'm going to my sister.'</p>
+
+<p>'I know it, and I wish unspeakably you would give it up&mdash;it isn't
+good&mdash;it's a great mistake. Stay here and let me talk to you.'</p>
+
+<p>The girl raised herself, she stood up in the carriage. Mr. Wendover did
+the same; Laura saw that the lady and gentleman outside were now
+standing near the door. 'What have you to say? It's my own business!'
+she returned, between her teeth. 'Go out, go out, go out!'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you suppose I would speak if I didn't care&mdash;do you suppose I would
+care if I didn't love you?' the young man murmured, close to her face.</p>
+
+<p>'What is there to care about? Because people will know it and talk? If
+it's bad it's the right thing for me! If I don't go to her where else
+shall I go?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p><p>'Come to me, dearest, dearest!' Mr. Wendover went on. 'You are ill, you
+are mad! I love you&mdash;I assure you I do!'</p>
+
+<p>She pushed him away with her hands. 'If you follow me I will jump off
+the boat!'</p>
+
+<p>'Take your places, take your places!' cried the guard, on the platform.
+Mr. Wendover had to slip out, the lady and gentleman were coming in.
+Laura huddled herself into her corner again and presently the train drew
+away.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wendover did not get into another compartment; he went back that
+evening to Queen's Gate. He knew how interested his old friend there, as
+he now considered her, would be to hear what Laura had undertaken
+(though, as he learned, on entering her drawing-room again, she had
+already heard of it from her maid), and he felt the necessity to tell
+her once more how her words of four days before had fructified in his
+heart, what a strange, ineffaceable impression she had made upon him: to
+tell her in short and to repeat it over and over, that he had taken the
+most extraordinary fancy&mdash;&mdash;! Lady Davenant was tremendously vexed at
+the girl's perversity, but she counselled him patience, a long,
+persistent patience. A week later she heard from Laura Wing, from
+Antwerp, that she was sailing to America from that port&mdash;a letter
+containing no mention whatever of Selina or of the reception she had
+found at Brussels. To America Mr. Wendover followed his young compatriot
+(that at least she had no right to forbid), and there, for the moment,
+he has had a chance to practise the humble virtue recommended by Lady
+Davenant. He knows she has no money and that she is staying with some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>
+distant relatives in Virginia; a situation that he&mdash;perhaps too
+superficially&mdash;figures as unspeakably dreary. He knows further that Lady
+Davenant has sent her fifty pounds, and he himself has ideas of
+transmitting funds, not directly to Virginia but by the roundabout road
+of Queen's Gate. Now, however, that Lionel Berrington's deplorable suit
+is coming on he reflects with some satisfaction that the Court of
+Probate and Divorce is far from the banks of the Rappahannock.
+'Berrington <i>versus</i> Berrington and Others' is coming on&mdash;but these are
+matters of the present hour.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1><a name="THE_PATAGONIA" id="THE_PATAGONIA"></a>THE PATAGONIA</h1>
+
+<h2><a name="AI" id="AI"></a>I</h2>
+
+<p>The houses were dark in the August night and the perspective of Beacon
+Street, with its double chain of lamps, was a foreshortened desert. The
+club on the hill alone, from its semi-cylindrical front, projected a
+glow upon the dusky vagueness of the Common, and as I passed it I heard
+in the hot stillness the click of a pair of billiard balls. As 'every
+one' was out of town perhaps the servants, in the extravagance of their
+leisure, were profaning the tables. The heat was insufferable and I
+thought with joy of the morrow, of the deck of the steamer, the
+freshening breeze, the sense of getting out to sea. I was even glad of
+what I had learned in the afternoon at the office of the company&mdash;that
+at the eleventh hour an old ship with a lower standard of speed had been
+put on in place of the vessel in which I had taken my passage. America
+was roasting, England might very well be stuffy, and a slow passage
+(which at that season of the year would probably also be a fine one) was
+a guarantee of ten or twelve days of fresh air.</p>
+
+<p>I strolled down the hill without meeting a creature,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> though I could see
+through the palings of the Common that that recreative expanse was
+peopled with dim forms. I remembered Mrs. Nettlepoint's house&mdash;she lived
+in those days (they are not so distant, but there have been changes) on
+the water-side, a little way beyond the spot at which the Public Garden
+terminates; and I reflected that like myself she would be spending the
+night in Boston if it were true that, as had been mentioned to me a few
+days before at Mount Desert, she was to embark on the morrow for
+Liverpool. I presently saw this appearance confirmed by a light above
+her door and in two or three of her windows, and I determined to ask for
+her, having nothing to do till bedtime. I had come out simply to pass an
+hour, leaving my hotel to the blaze of its gas and the perspiration of
+its porters; but it occurred to me that my old friend might very well
+not know of the substitution of the <i>Patagonia</i> for the <i>Scandinavia</i>,
+so that it would be an act of consideration to prepare her mind.
+Besides, I could offer to help her, to look after her in the morning:
+lone women are grateful for support in taking ship for far countries.</p>
+
+<p>As I stood on her doorstep I remembered that as she had a son she might
+not after all be so lone; yet at the same time it was present to me that
+Jasper Nettlepoint was not quite a young man to lean upon, having (as I
+at least supposed) a life of his own and tastes and habits which had
+long since drawn him away from the maternal side. If he did happen just
+now to be at home my solicitude would of course seem officious; for in
+his many wanderings&mdash;I believed he had roamed all over the globe&mdash;he
+would certainly have learned how to manage. None<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> the less I was very
+glad to show Mrs. Nettlepoint I thought of her. With my long absence I
+had lost sight of her; but I had liked her of old; she had been a close
+friend of my sisters; and I had in regard to her that sense which is
+pleasant to those who, in general, have grown strange or detached&mdash;the
+feeling that she at least knew all about me. I could trust her at any
+time to tell people what a respectable person I was. Perhaps I was
+conscious of how little I deserved this indulgence when it came over me
+that for years I had not communicated with her. The measure of this
+neglect was given by my vagueness of mind about her son. However, I
+really belonged nowadays to a different generation: I was more the old
+lady's contemporary than Jasper's.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Nettlepoint was at home: I found her in her back drawing-room,
+where the wide windows opened upon the water. The room was dusky&mdash;it was
+too hot for lamps&mdash;and she sat slowly moving her fan and looking out on
+the little arm of the sea which is so pretty at night, reflecting the
+lights of Cambridgeport and Charlestown. I supposed she was musing upon
+the loved ones she was to leave behind, her married daughters, her
+grandchildren; but she struck a note more specifically Bostonian as she
+said to me, pointing with her fan to the Back Bay&mdash;'I shall see nothing
+more charming than that over there, you know!' She made me very welcome,
+but her son had told her about the <i>Patagonia</i>, for which she was sorry,
+as this would mean a longer voyage. She was a poor creature on shipboard
+and mainly confined to her cabin, even in weather extravagantly termed
+fine&mdash;as if any weather could be fine at sea.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, then your son's going with you?' I asked.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span></p><p>'Here he comes, he will tell you for himself much better than I am able
+to do.'</p>
+
+<p>Jasper Nettlepoint came into the room at that moment, dressed in white
+flannel and carrying a large fan.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, my dear, have you decided?' his mother continued, with some irony
+in her tone. 'He hasn't yet made up his mind, and we sail at ten
+o'clock!'</p>
+
+<p>'What does it matter, when my things are put up?' said the young man.
+'There is no crowd at this moment; there will be cabins to spare. I'm
+waiting for a telegram&mdash;that will settle it. I just walked up to the
+club to see if it was come&mdash;they'll send it there because they think the
+house is closed. Not yet, but I shall go back in twenty minutes.'</p>
+
+<p>'Mercy, how you rush about in this temperature!' his mother exclaimed,
+while I reflected that it was perhaps <i>his</i> billiard-balls I had heard
+ten minutes before. I was sure he was fond of billiards.</p>
+
+<p>'Rush? not in the least. I take it uncommonly easy.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, I'm bound to say you do,' Mrs. Nettlepoint exclaimed,
+inconsequently. I divined that there was a certain tension between the
+pair and a want of consideration on the young man's part, arising
+perhaps from selfishness. His mother was nervous, in suspense, wanting
+to be at rest as to whether she should have his company on the voyage or
+be obliged to make it alone. But as he stood there smiling and slowly
+moving his fan he struck me somehow as a person on whom this fact would
+not sit very heavily. He was of the type of those whom other people
+worry about, not of those who worry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> about other people. Tall and
+strong, he had a handsome face, with a round head and close-curling
+hair; the whites of his eyes and the enamel of his teeth, under his
+brown moustache, gleamed vaguely in the lights of the Back Bay. I made
+out that he was sunburnt, as if he lived much in the open air, and that
+he looked intelligent but also slightly brutal, though not in a morose
+way. His brutality, if he had any, was bright and finished. I had to
+tell him who I was, but even then I saw that he failed to place me and
+that my explanations gave me in his mind no great identity or at any
+rate no great importance. I foresaw that he would in intercourse make me
+feel sometimes very young and sometimes very old. He mentioned, as if to
+show his mother that he might safely be left to his own devices, that he
+had once started from London to Bombay at three-quarters of an hour's
+notice.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, and it must have been pleasant for the people you were with!'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, the people I was with&mdash;&mdash;!' he rejoined; and his tone appeared to
+signify that such people would always have to come off as they could. He
+asked if there were no cold drinks in the house, no lemonade, no iced
+syrups; in such weather something of that sort ought always to be kept
+going. When his mother remarked that surely at the club they <i>were</i>
+going he went on, 'Oh, yes, I had various things there; but you know I
+have walked down the hill since. One should have something at either
+end. May I ring and see?' He rang while Mrs. Nettlepoint observed that
+with the people they had in the house&mdash;an establishment reduced
+naturally at such a moment to its simplest expression<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> (they were
+burning-up candle-ends and there were no luxuries) she would not answer
+for the service. The matter ended in the old lady's going out of the
+room in quest of syrup with the female domestic who had appeared in
+response to the bell and in whom Jasper's appeal aroused no visible
+intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>She remained away some time and I talked with her son, who was sociable
+but desultory and kept moving about the room, always with his fan, as if
+he were impatient. Sometimes he seated himself for an instant on the
+window-sill, and then I saw that he was in fact very good-looking; a
+fine brown, clean young athlete. He never told me on what special
+contingency his decision depended; he only alluded familiarly to an
+expected telegram, and I perceived that he was probably not addicted to
+copious explanations. His mother's absence was an indication that when
+it was a question of gratifying him she had grown used to spare no
+pains, and I fancied her rummaging in some close storeroom, among old
+preserve-pots, while the dull maid-servant held the candle awry. I know
+not whether this same vision was in his own eyes; at all events it did
+not prevent him from saying suddenly, as he looked at his watch, that I
+must excuse him, as he had to go back to the club. He would return in
+half an hour&mdash;or in less. He walked away and I sat there alone,
+conscious, in the dark, dismantled, simplified room, in the deep silence
+that rests on American towns during the hot season (there was now and
+then a far cry or a plash in the water, and at intervals the tinkle of
+the bells of the horse-cars on the long bridge, slow in the suffocating
+night), of the strange influence, half sweet, half sad, that abides in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>
+houses uninhabited or about to become so&mdash;in places muffled and
+bereaved, where the unheeded sofas and patient belittered tables seem to
+know (like the disconcerted dogs) that it is the eve of a journey.</p>
+
+<p>After a while I heard the sound of voices, of steps, the rustle of
+dresses, and I looked round, supposing these things to be the sign of
+the return of Mrs. Nettlepoint and her handmaiden, bearing the
+refreshment prepared for her son. What I saw however was two other
+female forms, visitors just admitted apparently, who were ushered into
+the room. They were not announced&mdash;the servant turned her back on them
+and rambled off to our hostess. They came forward in a wavering,
+tentative, unintroduced way&mdash;partly, I could see, because the place was
+dark and partly because their visit was in its nature experimental, a
+stretch of confidence. One of the ladies was stout and the other was
+slim, and I perceived in a moment that one was talkative and the other
+silent. I made out further that one was elderly and the other young and
+that the fact that they were so unlike did not prevent their being
+mother and daughter. Mrs. Nettlepoint reappeared in a very few minutes,
+but the interval had sufficed to establish a communication (really
+copious for the occasion) between the strangers and the unknown
+gentleman whom they found in possession, hat and stick in hand. This was
+not my doing (for what had I to go upon?) and still less was it the
+doing of the person whom I supposed and whom I indeed quickly and
+definitely learned to be the daughter. She spoke but once&mdash;when her
+companion informed me that she was going out to Europe the next day to
+be married. Then she said, 'Oh, mother!'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> protestingly, in a tone which
+struck me in the darkness as doubly strange, exciting my curiosity to
+see her face.</p>
+
+<p>It had taken her mother but a moment to come to that and to other things
+besides, after I had explained that I myself was waiting for Mrs.
+Nettlepoint, who would doubtless soon come back.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, she won't know me&mdash;I guess she hasn't ever heard much about me,'
+the good lady said; 'but I have come from Mrs. Allen and I guess that
+will make it all right. I presume you know Mrs. Allen?'</p>
+
+<p>I was unacquainted with this influential personage, but I assented
+vaguely to the proposition. Mrs. Allen's emissary was good-humoured and
+familiar, but rather appealing than insistent (she remarked that if her
+friend <i>had</i> found time to come in the afternoon&mdash;she had so much to do,
+being just up for the day, that she couldn't be sure&mdash;it would be all
+right); and somehow even before she mentioned Merrimac Avenue (they had
+come all the way from there) my imagination had associated her with that
+indefinite social limbo known to the properly-constituted Boston mind as
+the South End&mdash;a nebulous region which condenses here and there into a
+pretty face, in which the daughters are an 'improvement' on the mothers
+and are sometimes acquainted with gentlemen resident in more
+distinguished districts of the New England capital&mdash;gentlemen whose
+wives and sisters in turn are not acquainted with them.</p>
+
+<p>When at last Mrs. Nettlepoint came in, accompanied by candles and by a
+tray laden with glasses of coloured fluid which emitted a cool tinkling,
+I was in a position to officiate as master of the ceremonies,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> to
+introduce Mrs. Mavis and Miss Grace Mavis, to represent that Mrs. Allen
+had recommended them&mdash;nay, had urged them&mdash;to come that way, informally,
+and had been prevented only by the pressure of occupations so
+characteristic of her (especially when she was up from Mattapoisett just
+for a few hours' shopping) from herself calling in the course of the day
+to explain who they were and what was the favour they had to ask of Mrs.
+Nettlepoint. Good-natured women understand each other even when divided
+by the line of topographical fashion, and our hostess had quickly
+mastered the main facts: Mrs. Allen's visit in the morning in Merrimac
+Avenue to talk of Mrs. Amber's great idea, the classes at the public
+schools in vacation (she was interested with an equal charity to that of
+Mrs. Mavis&mdash;even in such weather!&mdash;in those of the South End) for games
+and exercises and music, to keep the poor unoccupied children out of the
+streets; then the revelation that it had suddenly been settled almost
+from one hour to the other that Grace should sail for Liverpool, Mr.
+Porterfield at last being ready. He was taking a little holiday; his
+mother was with him, they had come over from Paris to see some of the
+celebrated old buildings in England, and he had telegraphed to say that
+if Grace would start right off they would just finish it up and be
+married. It often happened that when things had dragged on that way for
+years they were all huddled up at the end. Of course in such a case she,
+Mrs. Mavis, had had to fly round. Her daughter's passage was taken, but
+it seemed too dreadful that she should make her journey all alone, the
+first time she had ever been at sea, without any companion or escort.
+<i>She</i> couldn't go&mdash;Mr. Mavis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> was too sick: she hadn't even been able to
+get him off to the seaside.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, Mrs. Nettlepoint is going in that ship,' Mrs. Allen had said; and
+she had represented that nothing was simpler than to put the girl in her
+charge. When Mrs. Mavis had replied that that was all very well but that
+she didn't know the lady, Mrs. Allen had declared that that didn't make
+a speck of difference, for Mrs. Nettlepoint was kind enough for
+anything. It was easy enough to know her, if that was all the trouble.
+All Mrs. Mavis would have to do would be to go up to her the next
+morning when she took her daughter to the ship (she would see her there
+on the deck with her party) and tell her what she wanted. Mrs.
+Nettlepoint had daughters herself and she would easily understand. Very
+likely she would even look after Grace a little on the other side, in
+such a queer situation, going out alone to the gentleman she was engaged
+to; she would just help her to turn round before she was married. Mr.
+Porterfield seemed to think they wouldn't wait long, once she was there:
+they would have it right over at the American consul's. Mrs. Allen had
+said it would perhaps be better still to go and see Mrs. Nettlepoint
+beforehand, that day, to tell her what they wanted: then they wouldn't
+seem to spring it on her just as she was leaving. She herself (Mrs.
+Allen) would call and say a word for them if she could save ten minutes
+before catching her train. If she hadn't come it was because she hadn't
+saved her ten minutes; but she had made them feel that they must come
+all the same. Mrs. Mavis liked that better, because on the ship in the
+morning there would be such a confusion. She didn't think<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> her daughter
+would be any trouble&mdash;conscientiously she didn't. It was just to have
+some one to speak to her and not sally forth like a servant-girl going
+to a situation.</p>
+
+<p>'I see, I am to act as a sort of bridesmaid and to give her away,' said
+Mrs. Nettlepoint. She was in fact kind enough for anything and she
+showed on this occasion that it was easy enough to know her. There is
+nothing more tiresome than complications at sea, but she accepted
+without a protest the burden of the young lady's dependence and allowed
+her, as Mrs. Mavis said, to hook herself on. She evidently had the habit
+of patience, and her reception of her visitors' story reminded me afresh
+(I was reminded of it whenever I returned to my native land) that my
+dear compatriots are the people in the world who most freely take mutual
+accommodation for granted. They have always had to help themselves, and
+by a magnanimous extension they confound helping each other with that.
+In no country are there fewer forms and more reciprocities.</p>
+
+<p>It was doubtless not singular that the ladies from Merrimac Avenue
+should not feel that they were importunate: what was striking was that
+Mrs. Nettlepoint did not appear to suspect it. However, she would in any
+case have thought it inhuman to show that&mdash;though I could see that under
+the surface she was amused at everything the lady from the South End
+took for granted. I know not whether the attitude of the younger visitor
+added or not to the merit of her good-nature. Mr. Porterfield's intended
+took no part in her mother's appeal, scarcely spoke, sat looking at the
+Back Bay and the lights on the long bridge. She declined the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> lemonade
+and the other mixtures which, at Mrs. Nettlepoint's request, I offered
+her, while her mother partook freely of everything and I reflected (for
+I as freely consumed the reviving liquid) that Mr. Jasper had better
+hurry back if he wished to profit by the refreshment prepared for him.</p>
+
+<p>Was the effect of the young woman's reserve ungracious, or was it only
+natural that in her particular situation she should not have a flow of
+compliment at her command? I noticed that Mrs. Nettlepoint looked at her
+often, and certainly though she was undemonstrative Miss Mavis was
+interesting. The candle-light enabled me to see that if she was not in
+the very first flower of her youth she was still a handsome girl. Her
+eyes and hair were dark, her face was pale and she held up her head as
+if, with its thick braids, it were an appurtenance she was not ashamed
+of. If her mother was excellent and common she was not common (not
+flagrantly so) and perhaps not excellent. At all events she would not
+be, in appearance at least, a dreary appendage, and (in the case of a
+person 'hooking on') that was always something gained. Is it because
+something of a romantic or pathetic interest usually attaches to a good
+creature who has been the victim of a 'long engagement' that this young
+lady made an impression on me from the first&mdash;favoured as I had been so
+quickly with this glimpse of her history? Certainly she made no positive
+appeal; she only held her tongue and smiled, and her smile corrected
+whatever suggestion might have forced itself upon me that the spirit was
+dead&mdash;the spirit of that promise of which she found herself doomed to
+carry out the letter.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span></p><p>What corrected it less, I must add, was an odd recollection which
+gathered vividness as I listened to it&mdash;a mental association which the
+name of Mr. Porterfield had evoked. Surely I had a personal impression,
+over-smeared and confused, of the gentleman who was waiting at
+Liverpool, or who would be, for Mrs. Nettlepoint's <i>prot&eacute;g&eacute;e</i>. I had met
+him, known him, some time, somewhere, somehow, in Europe. Was he not
+studying something&mdash;very hard&mdash;somewhere, probably in Paris, ten years
+before, and did he not make extraordinarily neat drawings, linear and
+architectural? Didn't he go to a <i>table d'h&ocirc;te</i>, at two francs
+twenty-five, in the Rue Bonaparte, which I then frequented, and didn't
+he wear spectacles and a Scotch plaid arranged in a manner which seemed
+to say, 'I have trustworthy information that that is the way they do it
+in the Highlands'? Was he not exemplary and very poor, so that I
+supposed he had no overcoat and his tartan was what he slept under at
+night? Was he not working very hard still, and wouldn't he be in the
+natural course, not yet satisfied that he knew enough to launch out? He
+would be a man of long preparations&mdash;Miss Mavis's white face seemed to
+speak to one of that. It appeared to me that if I had been in love with
+her I should not have needed to lay such a train to marry her.
+Architecture was his line and he was a pupil of the &Eacute;cole des Beaux
+Arts. This reminiscence grew so much more vivid with me that at the end
+of ten minutes I had a curious sense of knowing&mdash;by implication&mdash;a good
+deal about the young lady.</p>
+
+<p>Even after it was settled that Mrs. Nettlepoint would do everything for
+her that she could her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> mother sat a little, sipping her syrup and
+telling how 'low' Mr. Mavis had been. At this period the girl's silence
+struck me as still more conscious, partly perhaps because she deprecated
+her mother's loquacity (she was enough of an 'improvement' to measure
+that) and partly because she was too full of pain at the idea of leaving
+her infirm, her perhaps dying father. I divined that they were poor and
+that she would take out a very small purse for her trousseau. Moreover
+for Mr. Porterfield to make up the sum his own case would have had to
+change. If he had enriched himself by the successful practice of his
+profession I had not encountered the buildings he had reared&mdash;his
+reputation had not come to my ears.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Nettlepoint notified her new friends that she was a very inactive
+person at sea: she was prepared to suffer to the full with Miss Mavis,
+but she was not prepared to walk with her, to struggle with her, to
+accompany her to the table. To this the girl replied that she would
+trouble her little, she was sure: she had a belief that she should prove
+a wretched sailor and spend the voyage on her back. Her mother scoffed
+at this picture, prophesying perfect weather and a lovely time, and I
+said that if I might be trusted, as a tame old bachelor fairly
+sea-seasoned, I should be delighted to give the new member of our party
+an arm or any other countenance whenever she should require it. Both the
+ladies thanked me for this (taking my description only too literally),
+and the elder one declared that we were evidently going to be such a
+sociable group that it was too bad to have to stay at home. She inquired
+of Mrs. Nettlepoint if there were any one else&mdash;if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> she were to be
+accompanied by some of her family; and when our hostess mentioned her
+son&mdash;there was a chance of his embarking but (wasn't it absurd?) he had
+not decided yet, she rejoined with extraordinary candour&mdash;'Oh dear, I do
+hope he'll go: that would be so pleasant for Grace.'</p>
+
+<p>Somehow the words made me think of poor Mr. Porterfield's tartan,
+especially as Jasper Nettlepoint strolled in again at that moment. His
+mother instantly challenged him: it was ten o'clock; had he by chance
+made up his great mind? Apparently he failed to hear her, being in the
+first place surprised at the strange ladies and then struck with the
+fact that one of them was not strange. The young man, after a slight
+hesitation, greeted Miss Mavis with a handshake and an 'Oh, good
+evening, how do you do?' He did not utter her name, and I could see that
+he had forgotten it; but she immediately pronounced his, availing
+herself of an American girl's discretion to introduce him to her mother.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, you might have told me you knew him all this time!' Mrs. Mavis
+exclaimed. Then smiling at Mrs. Nettlepoint she added, 'It would have
+saved me a worry, an acquaintance already begun.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, my son's acquaintances&mdash;&mdash;!' Mrs. Nettlepoint murmured.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, and my daughter's too!' cried Mrs. Mavis, jovially. 'Mrs. Allen
+didn't tell us <i>you</i> were going,' she continued, to the young man.</p>
+
+<p>'She would have been clever if she had been able to!' Mrs. Nettlepoint
+ejaculated.</p>
+
+<p>'Dear mother, I have my telegram,' Jasper remarked, looking at Grace
+Mavis.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span></p><p>'I know you very little,' the girl said, returning his observation.</p>
+
+<p>'I've danced with you at some ball&mdash;for some sufferers by something or
+other.'</p>
+
+<p>'I think it was an inundation,' she replied, smiling. 'But it was a long
+time ago&mdash;and I haven't seen you since.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have been in far countries&mdash;to my loss. I should have said it was for
+a big fire.'</p>
+
+<p>'It was at the Horticultural Hall. I didn't remember your name,' said
+Grace Mavis.</p>
+
+<p>'That is very unkind of you, when I recall vividly that you had a pink
+dress.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I remember that dress&mdash;you looked lovely in it!' Mrs. Mavis broke
+out. 'You must get another just like it&mdash;on the other side.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, your daughter looked charming in it,' said Jasper Nettlepoint.
+Then he added, to the girl&mdash;'Yet you mentioned my name to your mother.'</p>
+
+<p>'It came back to me&mdash;seeing you here. I had no idea this was your home.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I confess it isn't, much. Oh, there are some drinks!' Jasper went
+on, approaching the tray and its glasses.</p>
+
+<p>'Indeed there are and quite delicious,' Mrs. Mavis declared.</p>
+
+<p>'Won't you have another then?&mdash;a pink one, like your daughter's gown.'</p>
+
+<p>'With pleasure, sir. Oh, do see them over,' Mrs. Mavis continued,
+accepting from the young man's hand a third tumbler.</p>
+
+<p>'My mother and that gentleman? Surely they can take care of themselves,'
+said Jasper Nettlepoint.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span></p><p>'But my daughter&mdash;she has a claim as an old friend.'</p>
+
+<p>'Jasper, what does your telegram say?' his mother interposed.</p>
+
+<p>He gave no heed to her question: he stood there with his glass in his
+hand, looking from Mrs. Mavis to Miss Grace.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, leave her to me, madam; I'm quite competent,' I said to Mrs. Mavis.</p>
+
+<p>Then the young man looked at me. The next minute he asked of the young
+lady&mdash;'Do you mean you are going to Europe?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, to-morrow; in the same ship as your mother.'</p>
+
+<p>'That's what we've come here for, to see all about it,' said Mrs. Mavis.</p>
+
+<p>'My son, take pity on me and tell me what light your telegram throws,'
+Mrs. Nettlepoint went on.</p>
+
+<p>'I will, dearest, when I've quenched my thirst.' And Jasper slowly
+drained his glass.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, you're worse than Gracie,' Mrs. Mavis commented. 'She was first
+one thing and then the other&mdash;but only about up to three o'clock
+yesterday.'</p>
+
+<p>'Excuse me&mdash;won't you take something?' Jasper inquired of Gracie; who
+however declined, as if to make up for her mother's copious
+<i>consommation</i>. I made privately the reflection that the two ladies
+ought to take leave, the question of Mrs. Nettlepoint's goodwill being
+so satisfactorily settled and the meeting of the morrow at the ship so
+near at hand; and I went so far as to judge that their protracted stay,
+with their hostess visibly in a fidget, was a sign of a want of
+breeding. Miss Grace after all then was not such an improvement on her
+mother, for she easily might<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> have taken the initiative of departure, in
+spite of Mrs. Mavis's imbibing her glass of syrup in little interspaced
+sips, as if to make it last as long as possible. I watched the girl with
+an increasing curiosity; I could not help asking myself a question or
+two about her and even perceiving already (in a dim and general way)
+that there were some complications in her position. Was it not a
+complication that she should have wished to remain long enough to
+assuage a certain suspense, to learn whether or no Jasper were going to
+sail? Had not something particular passed between them on the occasion
+or at the period to which they had covertly alluded, and did she really
+not know that her mother was bringing her to <i>his</i> mother's, though she
+apparently had thought it well not to mention the circumstance? Such
+things were complications on the part of a young lady betrothed to that
+curious cross-barred phantom of a Mr. Porterfield. But I am bound to add
+that she gave me no further warrant for suspecting them than by the
+simple fact of her encouraging her mother, by her immobility, to linger.
+Somehow I had a sense that <i>she</i> knew better. I got up myself to go, but
+Mrs. Nettlepoint detained me after seeing that my movement would not be
+taken as a hint, and I perceived she wished me not to leave my
+fellow-visitors on her hands. Jasper complained of the closeness of the
+room, said that it was not a night to sit in a room&mdash;one ought to be out
+in the air, under the sky. He denounced the windows that overlooked the
+water for not opening upon a balcony or a terrace, until his mother,
+whom he had not yet satisfied about his telegram, reminded him that
+there was a beautiful balcony in front, with room for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> a dozen people.
+She assured him we would go and sit there if it would please him.</p>
+
+<p>'It will be nice and cool to-morrow, when we steam into the great
+ocean,' said Miss Mavis, expressing with more vivacity than she had yet
+thrown into any of her utterances my own thought of half an hour before.
+Mrs. Nettlepoint replied that it would probably be freezing cold, and
+her son murmured that he would go and try the drawing-room balcony and
+report upon it. Just as he was turning away he said, smiling, to Miss
+Mavis&mdash;'Won't you come with me and see if it's pleasant?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, well, we had better not stay all night!' her mother exclaimed, but
+without moving. The girl moved, after a moment's hesitation; she rose
+and accompanied Jasper into the other room. I observed that her slim
+tallness showed to advantage as she walked and that she looked well as
+she passed, with her head thrown back, into the darkness of the other
+part of the house. There was something rather marked, rather surprising
+(I scarcely knew why, for the act was simple enough) in her doing so,
+and perhaps it was our sense of this that held the rest of us somewhat
+stiffly silent as she remained away. I was waiting for Mrs. Mavis to go,
+so that I myself might go; and Mrs. Nettlepoint was waiting for her to
+go so that I might not. This doubtless made the young lady's absence
+appear to us longer than it really was&mdash;it was probably very brief. Her
+mother moreover, I think, had a vague consciousness of embarrassment.
+Jasper Nettlepoint presently returned to the back drawing-room to get a
+glass of syrup for his companion, and he took occasion to remark that it
+was lovely on the balcony: one really<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> got some air, the breeze was from
+that quarter. I remembered, as he went away with his tinkling tumbler,
+that from <i>my</i> hand, a few minutes before, Miss Mavis had not been
+willing to accept this innocent offering. A little later Mrs.
+Nettlepoint said&mdash;'Well, if it's so pleasant there we had better go
+ourselves.' So we passed to the front and in the other room met the two
+young people coming in from the balcony. I wondered in the light of
+subsequent events exactly how long they had been sitting there together.
+(There were three or four cane chairs which had been placed there for
+the summer.) If it had been but five minutes, that only made subsequent
+events more curious. 'We must go, mother,' Miss Mavis immediately said;
+and a moment later, with a little renewal of chatter as to our general
+meeting on the ship, the visitors had taken leave. Jasper went down with
+them to the door and as soon as they had gone out Mrs. Nettlepoint
+exclaimed&mdash;'Ah, but she'll be a bore&mdash;she'll be a bore!'</p>
+
+<p>'Not through talking too much&mdash;surely.'</p>
+
+<p>'An affectation of silence is as bad. I hate that particular <i>pose</i>;
+it's coming up very much now; an imitation of the English, like
+everything else. A girl who tries to be statuesque at sea&mdash;that will act
+on one's nerves!'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know what she tries to be, but she succeeds in being very
+handsome.'</p>
+
+<p>'So much the better for you. I'll leave her to you, for I shall be shut
+up. I like her being placed under my "care."'</p>
+
+<p>'She will be under Jasper's,' I remarked.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, he won't go&mdash;I want it too much.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p><p>'I have an idea he will go.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why didn't he tell me so then&mdash;when he came in?'</p>
+
+<p>'He was diverted by Miss Mavis&mdash;a beautiful unexpected girl sitting
+there.'</p>
+
+<p>'Diverted from his mother&mdash;trembling for his decision?'</p>
+
+<p>'She's an old friend; it was a meeting after a long separation.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, such a lot of them as he knows!' said Mrs. Nettlepoint.</p>
+
+<p>'Such a lot of them?'</p>
+
+<p>'He has so many female friends&mdash;in the most varied circles.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, we can close round her then&mdash;for I on my side knew, or used to
+know, her young man.'</p>
+
+<p>'Her young man?'</p>
+
+<p>'The <i>fianc&eacute;</i>, the intended, the one she is going out to. He can't by
+the way be very young now.'</p>
+
+<p>'How odd it sounds!' said Mrs. Nettlepoint.</p>
+
+<p>I was going to reply that it was not odd if you knew Mr. Porterfield,
+but I reflected that that perhaps only made it odder. I told my
+companion briefly who he was&mdash;that I had met him in the old days in
+Paris, when I believed for a fleeting hour that I could learn to paint,
+when I lived with the <i>jeunesse des &eacute;coles</i>, and her comment on this was
+simply&mdash;'Well, he had better have come out for her!'</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps so. She looked to me as she sat there as if she might change
+her mind at the last moment.'</p>
+
+<p>'About her marriage?'</p>
+
+<p>'About sailing. But she won't change now.'</p>
+
+<p>Jasper came back, and his mother instantly challenged him. 'Well, <i>are</i>
+you going?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></p><p>'Yes, I shall go,' he said, smiling. 'I have got my telegram.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, your telegram!' I ventured to exclaim. 'That charming girl is your
+telegram.'</p>
+
+<p>He gave me a look, but in the dusk I could not make out very well what
+it conveyed. Then he bent over his mother, kissing her. 'My news isn't
+particularly satisfactory. I am going for <i>you</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, you humbug!' she rejoined. But of course she was delighted.</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="AII" id="AII"></a>II</h2>
+
+<p>People usually spend the first hours of a voyage in squeezing themselves
+into their cabins, taking their little precautions, either so excessive
+or so inadequate, wondering how they can pass so many days in such a
+hole and asking idiotic questions of the stewards, who appear in
+comparison such men of the world. My own initiations were rapid, as
+became an old sailor, and so it seemed were Miss Mavis's, for when I
+mounted to the deck at the end of half an hour I found her there alone,
+in the stern of the ship, looking back at the dwindling continent. It
+dwindled very fast for so big a place. I accosted her, having had no
+conversation with her amid the crowd of leave-takers and the muddle of
+farewells before we put off; we talked a little about the boat, our
+fellow-passengers and our prospects, and then I said&mdash;'I think you
+mentioned last night a name I know&mdash;that of Mr. Porterfield.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh no, I never uttered it,' she replied, smiling at me through her
+closely-drawn veil.</p>
+
+<p>'Then it was your mother.'</p>
+
+<p>'Very likely it was my mother.' And she continued to smile, as if I
+ought to have known the difference.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span></p><p>'I venture to allude to him because I have an idea I used to know him,'
+I went on.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I see.' Beyond this remark she manifested no interest in my having
+known him.</p>
+
+<p>'That is if it's the same one.' It seemed to me it would be silly to say
+nothing more; so I added 'My Mr. Porterfield was called David.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, so is ours.' 'Ours' struck me as clever.</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose I shall see him again if he is to meet you at Liverpool,' I
+continued.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, it will be bad if he doesn't.'</p>
+
+<p>It was too soon for me to have the idea that it would be bad if he did:
+that only came later. So I remarked that I had not seen him for so many
+years that it was very possible I should not know him.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I have not seen him for a great many years, but I expect I shall
+know him all the same.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, with you it's different,' I rejoined, smiling at her. 'Hasn't he
+been back since those days?'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know what days you mean.'</p>
+
+<p>'When I knew him in Paris&mdash;ages ago. He was a pupil of the &Eacute;cole des
+Beaux Arts. He was studying architecture.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, he is studying it still,' said Grace Mavis.</p>
+
+<p>'Hasn't he learned it yet?'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know what he has learned. I shall see.' Then she added:
+'Architecture is very difficult and he is tremendously thorough.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes, I remember that. He was an admirable worker. But he must have
+become quite a foreigner, if it's so many years since he has been at
+home.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, he is not changeable. If he were <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>changeable&mdash;&mdash;' But here my
+interlocutress paused. I suspect she had been going to say that if he
+were changeable he would have given her up long ago. After an instant
+she went on: 'He wouldn't have stuck so to his profession. You can't
+make much by it.'</p>
+
+<p>'You can't make much?'</p>
+
+<p>'It doesn't make you rich.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, of course you have got to practise it&mdash;and to practise it long.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes&mdash;so Mr. Porterfield says.'</p>
+
+<p>Something in the way she uttered these words made me laugh&mdash;they were so
+serene an implication that the gentleman in question did not live up to
+his principles. But I checked myself, asking my companion if she
+expected to remain in Europe long&mdash;to live there.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, it will be a good while if it takes me as long to come back as it
+has taken me to go out.'</p>
+
+<p>'And I think your mother said last night that it was your first visit.'</p>
+
+<p>Miss Mavis looked at me a moment. 'Didn't mother talk!'</p>
+
+<p>'It was all very interesting.'</p>
+
+<p>She continued to look at me. 'You don't think that.'</p>
+
+<p>'What have I to gain by saying it if I don't?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, men have always something to gain.'</p>
+
+<p>'You make me feel a terrible failure, then! I hope at any rate that it
+gives you pleasure&mdash;the idea of seeing foreign lands.'</p>
+
+<p>'Mercy&mdash;I should think so.'</p>
+
+<p>'It's a pity our ship is not one of the fast ones, if you are
+impatient.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span></p><p>She was silent a moment; then she exclaimed, 'Oh, I guess it will be
+fast enough!'</p>
+
+<p>That evening I went in to see Mrs. Nettlepoint and sat on her sea-trunk,
+which was pulled out from under the berth to accommodate me. It was nine
+o'clock but not quite dark, as our northward course had already taken us
+into the latitude of the longer days. She had made her nest admirably
+and lay upon her sofa in a becoming dressing-gown and cap, resting from
+her labours. It was her regular practice to spend the voyage in her
+cabin, which smelt good (such was the refinement of her art), and she
+had a secret peculiar to herself for keeping her port open without
+shipping seas. She hated what she called the mess of the ship and the
+idea, if she should go above, of meeting stewards with plates of
+supererogatory food. She professed to be content with her situation (we
+promised to lend each other books and I assured her familiarly that I
+should be in and out of her room a dozen times a day), and pitied me for
+having to mingle in society. She judged this to be a limited privilege,
+for on the deck before we left the wharf she had taken a view of our
+fellow-passengers.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I'm an inveterate, almost a professional observer,' I replied, 'and
+with that vice I am as well occupied as an old woman in the sun with her
+knitting. It puts it in my power, in any situation, to <i>see</i> things. I
+shall see them even here and I shall come down very often and tell you
+about them. You are not interested to-day, but you will be to-morrow,
+for a ship is a great school of gossip. You won't believe the number of
+researches and problems you will be engaged in by the middle of the
+voyage.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p><p>'I? Never in the world&mdash;lying here with my nose in a book and never
+seeing anything.'</p>
+
+<p>'You will participate at second hand. You will see through my eyes, hang
+upon my lips, take sides, feel passions, all sorts of sympathies and
+indignations. I have an idea that your young lady is the person on board
+who will interest me most.'</p>
+
+<p>'Mine, indeed! She has not been near me since we left the dock.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, she is very curious.'</p>
+
+<p>'You have such cold-blooded terms,' Mrs. Nettlepoint murmured. '<i>Elle ne
+sait pas se conduire</i>; she ought to have come to ask about me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, since you are under her care,' I said, smiling. 'As for her not
+knowing how to behave&mdash;well, that's exactly what we shall see.'</p>
+
+<p>'You will, but not I! I wash my hands of her.'</p>
+
+<p>'Don't say that&mdash;don't say that.'</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Nettlepoint looked at me a moment. 'Why do you speak so solemnly?'</p>
+
+<p>In return I considered her. 'I will tell you before we land. And have
+you seen much of your son?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh yes, he has come in several times. He seems very much pleased. He
+has got a cabin to himself.'</p>
+
+<p>'That's great luck,' I said, 'but I have an idea he is always in luck. I
+was sure I should have to offer him the second berth in my room.'</p>
+
+<p>'And you wouldn't have enjoyed that, because you don't like him,' Mrs.
+Nettlepoint took upon herself to say.</p>
+
+<p>'What put that into your head?'</p>
+
+<p>'It isn't in my head&mdash;it's in my heart, my <i>c&oelig;ur de m&egrave;re</i>. We guess
+those things. You think he's selfish&mdash;I could see it last night.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span></p><p>'Dear lady,' I said, 'I have no general ideas about him at all. He is
+just one of the phenomena I am going to observe. He seems to me a very
+fine young man. However,' I added, 'since you have mentioned last night
+I will admit that I thought he rather tantalised you. He played with
+your suspense.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, he came at the last just to please me,' said Mrs. Nettlepoint.</p>
+
+<p>I was silent a moment. 'Are you sure it was for your sake?'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, perhaps it was for yours!'</p>
+
+<p>'When he went out on the balcony with that girl perhaps she asked him to
+come,' I continued.</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps she did. But why should he do everything she asks him?'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know yet, but perhaps I shall know later. Not that he will tell
+me&mdash;for he will never tell me anything: he is not one of those who
+tell.'</p>
+
+<p>'If she didn't ask him, what you say is a great wrong to her,' said Mrs.
+Nettlepoint.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, if she didn't. But you say that to protect Jasper, not to protect
+her,' I continued, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>'You <i>are</i> cold-blooded&mdash;it's uncanny!' my companion exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, this is nothing yet! Wait a while&mdash;you'll see. At sea in general
+I'm awful&mdash;I pass the limits. If I have outraged her in thought I will
+jump overboard. There are ways of asking (a man doesn't need to tell a
+woman that) without the crude words.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know what you suppose between them,' said Mrs. Nettlepoint.</p>
+
+<p>'Nothing but what was visible on the surface. It transpired, as the
+newspapers say, that they were old friends.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span></p><p>'He met her at some promiscuous party&mdash;I asked him about it afterwards.
+She is not a person he could ever think of seriously.'</p>
+
+<p>'That's exactly what I believe.'</p>
+
+<p>'You don't observe&mdash;you imagine,' Mrs. Nettlepoint pursued.' How do you
+reconcile her laying a trap for Jasper with her going out to Liverpool
+on an errand of love?'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't for an instant suppose she laid a trap; I believe she acted on
+the impulse of the moment. She is going out to Liverpool on an errand of
+marriage; that is not necessarily the same thing as an errand of love,
+especially for one who happens to have had a personal impression of the
+gentleman she is engaged to.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, there are certain decencies which in such a situation the most
+abandoned of her sex would still observe. You apparently judge her
+capable&mdash;on no evidence&mdash;of violating them.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, you don't understand the shades of things,' I rejoined. 'Decencies
+and violations&mdash;there is no need for such heavy artillery! I can
+perfectly imagine that without the least immodesty she should have said
+to Jasper on the balcony, in fact if not in words&mdash;"I'm in dreadful
+spirits, but if you come I shall feel better, and that will be pleasant
+for you too."'</p>
+
+<p>'And why is she in dreadful spirits?'</p>
+
+<p>'She isn't!' I replied, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>'What is she doing?'</p>
+
+<p>'She is walking with your son.'</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Nettlepoint said nothing for a moment; then she broke out,
+inconsequently&mdash;'Ah, she's horrid!'</p>
+
+<p>'No, she's charming!' I protested.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p><p>'You mean she's "curious"?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, for me it's the same thing!'</p>
+
+<p>This led my friend of course to declare once more that I was
+cold-blooded. On the afternoon of the morrow we had another talk, and
+she told me that in the morning Miss Mavis had paid her a long visit.
+She knew nothing about anything, but her intentions were good and she
+was evidently in her own eyes conscientious and decorous. And Mrs.
+Nettlepoint concluded these remarks with the exclamation 'Poor young
+thing!'</p>
+
+<p>'You think she is a good deal to be pitied, then?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, her story sounds dreary&mdash;she told me a great deal of it. She fell
+to talking little by little and went from one thing to another. She's in
+that situation when a girl <i>must</i> open herself&mdash;to some woman.'</p>
+
+<p>'Hasn't she got Jasper?' I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>'He isn't a woman. You strike me as jealous of him,' my companion added.</p>
+
+<p>'I daresay <i>he</i> thinks so&mdash;or will before the end. Ah no&mdash;ah no!' And I
+asked Mrs. Nettlepoint if our young lady struck her as a flirt. She gave
+me no answer, but went on to remark that it was odd and interesting to
+her to see the way a girl like Grace Mavis resembled the girls of the
+kind she herself knew better, the girls of 'society,' at the same time
+that she differed from them; and the way the differences and
+resemblances were mixed up, so that on certain questions you couldn't
+tell where you would find her. You would think she would feel as you did
+because you had found her feeling so, and then suddenly, in regard to
+some other matter (which was yet quite the same) she would be terribly
+wanting. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>Mrs. Nettlepoint proceeded to observe (to such idle
+speculations does the vanity of a sea-voyage give encouragement) that
+she wondered whether it were better to be an ordinary girl very well
+brought up or an extraordinary girl not brought up at all.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I go in for the extraordinary girl under all circumstances.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is true that if you are <i>very</i> well brought up you are not
+ordinary,' said Mrs. Nettlepoint, smelling her strong salts. 'You are a
+lady, at any rate. <i>C'est toujours &ccedil;a.</i>'</p>
+
+<p>'And Miss Mavis isn't one&mdash;is that what you mean?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well&mdash;you have seen her mother.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, but I think your contention would be that among such people the
+mother doesn't count.'</p>
+
+<p>'Precisely; and that's bad.'</p>
+
+<p>'I see what you mean. But isn't it rather hard? If your mother doesn't
+know anything it is better you should be independent of her, and yet if
+you are that constitutes a bad note.' I added that Mrs. Mavis had
+appeared to count sufficiently two nights before. She had said and done
+everything she wanted, while the girl sat silent and respectful. Grace's
+attitude (so far as her mother was concerned) had been eminently decent.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, but she couldn't bear it,' said Mrs. Nettlepoint.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, if you know it I may confess that she has told me as much.'</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Nettlepoint stared. 'Told you? There's one of the things they do!'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, it was only a word. Won't you let me know whether you think she's
+a flirt?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span></p><p>'Find out for yourself, since you pretend to study folks.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, your judgment would probably not at all determine mine. It's in
+regard to yourself that I ask it.'</p>
+
+<p>'In regard to myself?'</p>
+
+<p>'To see the length of maternal immorality.'</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Nettlepoint continued to repeat my words. 'Maternal immorality?'</p>
+
+<p>'You desire your son to have every possible distraction on his voyage,
+and if you can make up your mind in the sense I refer to that will make
+it all right. He will have no responsibility.'</p>
+
+<p>'Heavens, how you analyse! I haven't in the least your passion for
+making up my mind.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then if you chance it you'll be more immoral still.'</p>
+
+<p>'Your reasoning is strange,' said the poor lady; 'when it was you who
+tried to put it into my head yesterday that she had asked him to come.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, but in good faith.'</p>
+
+<p>'How do you mean in good faith?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, as girls of that sort do. Their allowance and measure in such
+matters is much larger than that of young ladies who have been, as you
+say, <i>very</i> well brought up; and yet I am not sure that on the whole I
+don't think them the more innocent. Miss Mavis is engaged, and she's to
+be married next week, but it's an old, old story, and there's no more
+romance in it than if she were going to be photographed. So her usual
+life goes on, and her usual life consists (and that of ces demoiselles
+in general) in having plenty of gentlemen's society. Having it I mean
+without having any harm from it.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p><p>'Well, if there is no harm from it what are you talking about and why
+am I immoral?'</p>
+
+<p>I hesitated, laughing. 'I retract&mdash;you are sane and clear. I am sure she
+thinks there won't be any harm,' I added. 'That's the great point.'</p>
+
+<p>'The great point?'</p>
+
+<p>'I mean, to be settled.'</p>
+
+<p>'Mercy, we are not trying them! How can <i>we</i> settle it?'</p>
+
+<p>'I mean of course in our minds. There will be nothing more interesting
+for the next ten days for our minds to exercise themselves upon.'</p>
+
+<p>'They will get very tired of it,' said Mrs. Nettlepoint.</p>
+
+<p>'No, no, because the interest will increase and the plot will thicken.
+It can't help it.' She looked at me as if she thought me slightly
+Mephistophelean, and I went on&mdash;'So she told you everything in her life
+was dreary?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not everything but most things. And she didn't tell me so much as I
+guessed it. She'll tell me more the next time. She will behave properly
+now about coming in to see me; I told her she ought to.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am glad of that,' I said. 'Keep her with you as much as possible.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't follow you much,' Mrs. Nettlepoint replied, 'but so far as I do
+I don't think your remarks are in very good taste.'</p>
+
+<p>'I'm too excited, I lose my head, cold-blooded as you think me. Doesn't
+she like Mr. Porterfield?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, that's the worst of it.'</p>
+
+<p>'The worst of it?'</p>
+
+<p>'He's so good&mdash;there's no fault to be found with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> him. Otherwise she
+would have thrown it all up. It has dragged on since she was eighteen:
+she became engaged to him before he went abroad to study. It was one of
+those childish muddles which parents in America might prevent so much
+more than they do. The thing is to insist on one's daughter's waiting,
+on the engagement's being long; and then after you have got that started
+to take it on every occasion as little seriously as possible&mdash;to make it
+die out. You can easily tire it out. However, Mr. Porterfield has taken
+it seriously for some years. He has done his part to keep it alive. She
+says he adores her.'</p>
+
+<p>'His part? Surely his part would have been to marry her by this time.'</p>
+
+<p>'He has absolutely no money.'</p>
+
+<p>'He ought to have got some, in seven years.'</p>
+
+<p>'So I think she thinks. There are some sorts of poverty that are
+contemptible. But he has a little more now. That's why he won't wait any
+longer. His mother has come out, she has something&mdash;a little&mdash;and she is
+able to help him. She will live with them and bear some of the expenses,
+and after her death the son will have what there is.'</p>
+
+<p>'How old is she?' I asked, cynically.</p>
+
+<p>'I haven't the least idea. But it doesn't sound very inspiring. He has
+not been to America since he first went out.'</p>
+
+<p>'That's an odd way of adoring her.'</p>
+
+<p>'I made that objection mentally, but I didn't express it to her. She met
+it indeed a little by telling me that he had had other chances to
+marry.'</p>
+
+<p>'That surprises me,' I remarked. 'And did she say that <i>she</i> had had?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p><p>'No, and that's one of the things I thought nice in her; for she must
+have had. She didn't try to make out that he had spoiled her life. She
+has three other sisters and there is very little money at home. She has
+tried to make money; she has written little things and painted little
+things, but her talent is apparently not in that direction. Her father
+has had a long illness and has lost his place&mdash;he was in receipt of a
+salary in connection with some waterworks&mdash;and one of her sisters has
+lately become a widow, with children and without means. And so as in
+fact she never has married any one else, whatever opportunities she may
+have encountered, she appears to have just made up her mind to go out to
+Mr. Porterfield as the least of her evils. But it isn't very amusing.'</p>
+
+<p>'That only makes it the more honourable. She will go through with it,
+whatever it costs, rather than disappoint him after he has waited so
+long. It is true,' I continued, 'that when a woman acts from a sense of
+honour&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, when she does?' said Mrs. Nettlepoint, for I hesitated
+perceptibly.</p>
+
+<p>'It is so extravagant a course that some one has to pay for it.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are very impertinent. We all have to pay for each other, all the
+while; and for each other's virtues as well as vices.'</p>
+
+<p>'That's precisely why I shall be sorry for Mr. Porterfield when she
+steps off the ship with her little bill. I mean with her teeth
+clenched.'</p>
+
+<p>'Her teeth are not in the least clenched. She is in perfect
+good-humour.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, we must try and keep her so,' I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> said. 'You must take care that
+Jasper neglects nothing.'</p>
+
+<p>I know not what reflection this innocent pleasantry of mine provoked on
+the good lady's part; the upshot of them at all events was to make her
+say&mdash;'Well, I never asked her to come; I'm very glad of that. It is all
+their own doing.'</p>
+
+<p>'Their own&mdash;you mean Jasper's and hers?'</p>
+
+<p>'No indeed. I mean her mother's and Mrs. Allen's; the girl's too of
+course. They put themselves upon us.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh yes, I can testify to that. Therefore I'm glad too. We should have
+missed it, I think.'</p>
+
+<p>'How seriously you take it!' Mrs. Nettlepoint exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, wait a few days!' I replied, getting up to leave her.</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="AIII" id="AIII"></a>III</h2>
+
+<p>The <i>Patagonia</i> was slow, but she was spacious and comfortable, and
+there was a kind of motherly decency in her long, nursing rock and her
+rustling, old-fashioned gait. It was as if she wished not to present
+herself in port with the splashed eagerness of a young creature. We were
+not numerous enough to squeeze each other and yet we were not too few to
+entertain&mdash;with that familiarity and relief which figures and objects
+acquire on the great bare field of the ocean, beneath the great bright
+glass of the sky. I had never liked the sea so much before, indeed I had
+never liked it at all; but now I had a revelation of how, in a midsummer
+mood, it could please. It was darkly and magnificently blue and
+imperturbably quiet&mdash;save for the great regular swell of its
+heart-beats, the pulse of its life, and there grew to be something so
+agreeable in the sense of floating there in infinite isolation and
+leisure that it was a positive satisfaction the <i>Patagonia</i> was not a
+racer. One had never thought of the sea as the great place of safety,
+but now it came over one that there is no place so safe from the land.
+When it does not give you trouble it takes it away&mdash;takes away letters
+and telegrams and newspapers and visits<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> and duties and efforts, all the
+complications, all the superfluities and superstitions that we have
+stuffed into our terrene life. The simple absence of the post, when the
+particular conditions enable you to enjoy the great fact by which it is
+produced, becomes in itself a kind of bliss, and the clean stage of the
+deck shows you a play that amuses, the personal drama of the voyage, the
+movement and interaction, in the strong sea-light, of figures that end
+by representing something&mdash;something moreover of which the interest is
+never, even in its keenness, too great to suffer you to go to sleep. I,
+at any rate, dozed a great deal, lying on my rug with a French novel,
+and when I opened my eyes I generally saw Jasper Nettlepoint passing
+with his mother's <i>prot&eacute;g&eacute;e</i> on his arm. Somehow at these moments,
+between sleeping and waking, I had an inconsequent sense that they were
+a part of the French novel. Perhaps this was because I had fallen into
+the trick, at the start, of regarding Grace Mavis almost as a married
+woman, which, as every one knows, is the necessary status of the heroine
+of such a work. Every revolution of our engine at any rate would
+contribute to the effect of making her one.</p>
+
+<p>In the saloon, at meals, my neighbour on the right was a certain little
+Mrs. Peck, a very short and very round person whose head was enveloped
+in a 'cloud' (a cloud of dirty white wool) and who promptly let me know
+that she was going to Europe for the education of her children. I had
+already perceived (an hour after we left the dock) that some energetic
+step was required in their interest, but as we were not in Europe yet
+the business could not be said to have begun. The four little Pecks, in
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> enjoyment of untrammelled leisure, swarmed about the ship as if
+they had been pirates boarding her, and their mother was as powerless to
+check their license as if she had been gagged and stowed away in the
+hold. They were especially to be trusted to run between the legs of the
+stewards when these attendants arrived with bowls of soup for the
+languid ladies. Their mother was too busy recounting to her
+fellow-passengers how many years Miss Mavis had been engaged. In the
+blank of a marine existence things that are nobody's business very soon
+become everybody's, and this was just one of those facts that are
+propagated with a mysterious and ridiculous rapidity. The whisper that
+carries them is very small, in the great scale of things, of air and
+space and progress, but it is also very safe, for there is no
+compression, no sounding-board, to make speakers responsible. And then
+repetition at sea is somehow not repetition; monotony is in the air, the
+mind is flat and everything recurs&mdash;the bells, the meals, the stewards'
+faces, the romp of children, the walk, the clothes, the very shoes and
+buttons of passengers taking their exercise. These things grow at last
+so insipid that, in comparison, revelations as to the personal history
+of one's companions have a taste, even when one cares little about the
+people.</p>
+
+<p>Jasper Nettlepoint sat on my left hand when he was not upstairs seeing
+that Miss Mavis had her repast comfortably on deck. His mother's place
+would have been next mine had she shown herself, and then that of the
+young lady under her care. The two ladies, in other words, would have
+been between us, Jasper marking the limit of the party on that side.
+Miss Mavis was present at luncheon the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> first day, but dinner passed
+without her coming in, and when it was half over Jasper remarked that he
+would go up and look after her.</p>
+
+<p>'Isn't that young lady coming&mdash;the one who was here to lunch?' Mrs. Peck
+asked of me as he left the saloon.</p>
+
+<p>'Apparently not. My friend tells me she doesn't like the saloon.'</p>
+
+<p>'You don't mean to say she's sick, do you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh no, not in this weather. But she likes to be above.'</p>
+
+<p>'And is that gentleman gone up to her?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, she's under his mother's care.'</p>
+
+<p>'And is his mother up there, too?' asked Mrs. Peck, whose processes were
+homely and direct.</p>
+
+<p>'No, she remains in her cabin. People have different tastes. Perhaps
+that's one reason why Miss Mavis doesn't come to table,' I added&mdash;'her
+chaperon not being able to accompany her.'</p>
+
+<p>'Her chaperon?'</p>
+
+<p>'Mrs. Nettlepoint&mdash;the lady under whose protection she is.'</p>
+
+<p>'Protection?' Mrs. Peck stared at me a moment, moving some valued morsel
+in her mouth; then she exclaimed, familiarly, 'Pshaw!' I was struck with
+this and I was on the point of asking her what she meant by it when she
+continued: 'Are we not going to see Mrs. Nettlepoint?'</p>
+
+<p>'I am afraid not. She vows that she won't stir from her sofa.'</p>
+
+<p>'Pshaw!' said Mrs. Peck again. 'That's quite a disappointment.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you know her then?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, but I know all about her.' Then my <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>companion added&mdash;'You don't
+meant to say she's any relation?'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you mean to me?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, to Grace Mavis.'</p>
+
+<p>'None at all. They are very new friends, as I happen to know. Then you
+are acquainted with our young lady?' I had not noticed that any
+recognition passed between them at luncheon.</p>
+
+<p>'Is she yours too?' asked Mrs. Peck, smiling at me.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, when people are in the same boat&mdash;literally&mdash;they belong a little
+to each other.'</p>
+
+<p>'That's so,' said Mrs. Peck. 'I don't know Miss Mavis but I know all
+about her&mdash;I live opposite to her on Merrimac Avenue. I don't know
+whether you know that part.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh yes&mdash;it's very beautiful.'</p>
+
+<p>The consequence of this remark was another 'Pshaw!' But Mrs. Peck went
+on&mdash;'When you've lived opposite to people like that for a long time you
+feel as if you were acquainted. But she didn't take it up to-day; she
+didn't speak to me. She knows who I am as well as she knows her own
+mother.'</p>
+
+<p>'You had better speak to her first&mdash;she's shy,' I remarked.</p>
+
+<p>'Shy? Why she's nearly thirty years old. I suppose you know where she's
+going.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh yes&mdash;we all take an interest in that.'</p>
+
+<p>'That young man, I suppose, particularly.'</p>
+
+<p>'That young man?'</p>
+
+<p>'The handsome one, who sits there. Didn't you tell me he is Mrs.
+Nettlepoint's son?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh yes; he acts as her deputy. No doubt he does all he can to carry out
+her function.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span></p><p>Mrs. Peck was silent a moment. I had spoken jocosely, but she received
+my pleasantry with a serious face. 'Well, she might let him eat his
+dinner in peace!' she presently exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, he'll come back!' I said, glancing at his place. The repast
+continued and when it was finished I screwed my chair round to leave the
+table. Mrs. Peck performed the same movement and we quitted the saloon
+together. Outside of it was a kind of vestibule, with several seats,
+from which you could descend to the lower cabins or mount to the
+promenade-deck. Mrs. Peck appeared to hesitate as to her course and then
+solved the problem by going neither way. She dropped upon one of the
+benches and looked up at me.</p>
+
+<p>'I thought you said he would come back.'</p>
+
+<p>'Young Nettlepoint? I see he didn't. Miss Mavis then has given him half
+of her dinner.'</p>
+
+<p>'It's very kind of her! She has been engaged for ages.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, but that will soon be over.'</p>
+
+<p>'So I suppose&mdash;as quick as we land. Every one knows it on Merrimac
+Avenue. Every one there takes a great interest in it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, of course, a girl like that: she has many friends.'</p>
+
+<p>'I mean even people who don't know her.'</p>
+
+<p>'I see,' I went on: 'she is so handsome that she attracts attention,
+people enter into her affairs.'</p>
+
+<p>'She <i>used</i> to be pretty, but I can't say I think she's anything
+remarkable to-day. Anyhow, if she attracts attention she ought to be all
+the more careful what she does. You had better tell her that.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, it's none of my business!' I replied, leaving<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> Mrs. Peck and going
+above. The exclamation, I confess, was not perfectly in accordance with
+my feeling, or rather my feeling was not perfectly in harmony with the
+exclamation. The very first thing I did on reaching the deck was to
+notice that Miss Mavis was pacing it on Jasper Nettlepoint's arm and
+that whatever beauty she might have lost, according to Mrs. Peck's
+insinuation, she still kept enough to make one's eyes follow her. She
+had put on a sort of crimson hood, which was very becoming to her and
+which she wore for the rest of the voyage. She walked very well, with
+long steps, and I remember that at this moment the ocean had a gentle
+evening swell which made the great ship dip slowly, rhythmically, giving
+a movement that was graceful to graceful pedestrians and a more awkward
+one to the awkward. It was the loveliest hour of a fine day, the clear
+early evening, with the glow of the sunset in the air and a purple
+colour in the sea. I always thought that the waters ploughed by the
+Homeric heroes must have looked like that. I perceived on that
+particular occasion moreover that Grace Mavis would for the rest of the
+voyage be the most visible thing on the ship; the figure that would
+count most in the composition of groups. She couldn't help it, poor
+girl; nature had made her conspicuous&mdash;important, as the painters say.
+She paid for it by the exposure it brought with it&mdash;the danger that
+people would, as I had said to Mrs. Peck, enter into her affairs.</p>
+
+<p>Jasper Nettlepoint went down at certain times to see his mother, and I
+watched for one of these occasions (on the third day out) and took
+advantage of it to go and sit by Miss Mavis. She wore a blue<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> veil drawn
+tightly over her face, so that if the smile with which she greeted me
+was dim I could account for it partly by that.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, we are getting on&mdash;we are getting on,' I said, cheerfully,
+looking at the friendly, twinkling sea.</p>
+
+<p>'Are we going very fast?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not fast, but steadily. <i>Ohne Hast, ohne Rast</i>&mdash;do you know German?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I've studied it&mdash;some.'</p>
+
+<p>'It will be useful to you over there when you travel.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well yes, if we do. But I don't suppose we shall much. Mr. Nettlepoint
+says we ought,' my interlocutress added in a moment.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, of course <i>he</i> thinks so. He has been all over the world.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, he has described some of the places. That's what I should like. I
+didn't know I should like it so much.'</p>
+
+<p>'Like what so much?'</p>
+
+<p>'Going on this way. I could go on for ever, for ever and ever.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, you know it's not always like this,' I rejoined.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, it's better than Boston.'</p>
+
+<p>'It isn't so good as Paris,' I said, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I know all about Paris. There is no freshness in that. I feel as if
+I had been there.'</p>
+
+<p>'You mean you have heard so much about it?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh yes, nothing else for ten years.'</p>
+
+<p>I had come to talk with Miss Mavis because she was attractive, but I had
+been rather conscious of the absence of a good topic, not feeling at
+liberty to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> revert to Mr. Porterfield. She had not encouraged me, when I
+spoke to her as we were leaving Boston, to go on with the history of my
+acquaintance with this gentleman; and yet now, unexpectedly, she
+appeared to imply (it was doubtless one of the disparities mentioned by
+Mrs. Nettlepoint) that he might be glanced at without indelicacy.</p>
+
+<p>'I see, you mean by letters,' I remarked.</p>
+
+<p>'I shan't live in a good part. I know enough to know that,' she went on.</p>
+
+<p>'Dear young lady, there are no bad parts,' I answered, reassuringly.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, Mr. Nettlepoint says it's horrid.'</p>
+
+<p>'It's horrid?'</p>
+
+<p>'Up there in the Batignolles. It's worse than Merrimac Avenue.'</p>
+
+<p>'Worse&mdash;in what way?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, even less where the nice people live.'</p>
+
+<p>'He oughtn't to say that,' I returned. 'Don't you call Mr. Porterfield a
+nice person?' I ventured to subjoin.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, it doesn't make any difference.' She rested her eyes on me a moment
+through her veil, the texture of which gave them a suffused prettiness.
+'Do you know him very well?' she asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Porterfield?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, Mr. Nettlepoint.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, very little. He's a good deal younger than I.'</p>
+
+<p>She was silent a moment; after which she said: 'He's younger than me,
+too.' I know not what drollery there was in this but it was unexpected
+and it made me laugh. Neither do I know whether Miss Mavis took offence
+at my laughter, though<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> I remember thinking at the moment with
+compunction that it had brought a certain colour to her cheek. At all
+events she got up, gathering her shawl and her books into her arm. 'I'm
+going down&mdash;I'm tired.'</p>
+
+<p>'Tired of me, I'm afraid.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, not yet.'</p>
+
+<p>'I'm like you,' I pursued. 'I should like it to go on and on.'</p>
+
+<p>She had begun to walk along the deck to the companion-way and I went
+with her. 'Oh, no, I shouldn't, after all!'</p>
+
+<p>I had taken her shawl from her to carry it, but at the top of the steps
+that led down to the cabins I had to give it back. 'Your mother would be
+glad if she could know,' I observed as we parted.</p>
+
+<p>'If she could know?'</p>
+
+<p>'How well you are getting on. And that good Mrs. Allen.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, mother, mother! She made me come, she pushed me off.' And almost as
+if not to say more she went quickly below.</p>
+
+<p>I paid Mrs. Nettlepoint a morning visit after luncheon and another in
+the evening, before she 'turned in.' That same day, in the evening, she
+said to me suddenly, 'Do you know what I have done? I have asked
+Jasper.'</p>
+
+<p>'Asked him what?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, if <i>she</i> asked him, you know.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't understand.'</p>
+
+<p>'You do perfectly. If that girl really asked him&mdash;on the balcony&mdash;to
+sail with us.'</p>
+
+<p>'My dear friend, do you suppose that if she did he would tell you?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></p><p>'That's just what he says. But he says she didn't.'</p>
+
+<p>'And do you consider the statement valuable?' I asked, laughing out.
+'You had better ask Miss Gracie herself.'</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Nettlepoint stared. 'I couldn't do that.'</p>
+
+<p>'Incomparable friend, I am only joking. What does it signify now?'</p>
+
+<p>'I thought you thought everything signified. You were so full of
+signification!'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, but we are farther out now, and somehow in mid-ocean everything
+becomes absolute.'</p>
+
+<p>'What else <i>can</i> he do with decency?' Mrs. Nettlepoint went on. 'If, as
+my son, he were never to speak to her it would be very rude and you
+would think that stranger still. Then <i>you</i> would do what he does, and
+where would be the difference?'</p>
+
+<p>'How do you know what he does? I haven't mentioned him for twenty-four
+hours.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, she told me herself: she came in this afternoon.'</p>
+
+<p>'What an odd thing to tell you!' I exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>'Not as she says it. She says he's full of attention, perfectly
+devoted&mdash;looks after her all the while. She seems to want me to know it,
+so that I may commend him for it.'</p>
+
+<p>'That's charming; it shows her good conscience.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, or her great cleverness.'</p>
+
+<p>Something in the tone in which Mrs. Nettlepoint said this caused me to
+exclaim in real surprise, 'Why, what do you suppose she has in her
+mind?'</p>
+
+<p>'To get hold of him, to make him go so far that he can't retreat, to
+marry him, perhaps.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span></p><p>'To marry him? And what will she do with Mr. Porterfield?'</p>
+
+<p>'She'll ask me just to explain to him&mdash;or perhaps you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, as an old friend!' I replied, laughing. But I asked more
+seriously, 'Do you see Jasper caught like that?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, he's only a boy&mdash;he's younger at least than she.'</p>
+
+<p>'Precisely; she regards him as a child.'</p>
+
+<p>'As a child?'</p>
+
+<p>'She remarked to me herself to-day that he is so much younger.'</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Nettlepoint stared. 'Does she talk of it with you? That shows she
+has a plan, that she has thought it over!'</p>
+
+<p>I have sufficiently betrayed that I deemed Grace Mavis a singular girl,
+but I was far from judging her capable of laying a trap for our young
+companion. Moreover my reading of Jasper was not in the least that he
+was catchable&mdash;could be made to do a thing if he didn't want to do it.
+Of course it was not impossible that he might be inclined, that he might
+take it (or already have taken it) into his head to marry Miss Mavis;
+but to believe this I should require still more proof than his always
+being with her. He wanted at most to marry her for the voyage. 'If you
+have questioned him perhaps you have tried to make him feel
+responsible,' I said to his mother.</p>
+
+<p>'A little, but it's very difficult. Interference makes him perverse. One
+has to go gently. Besides, it's too absurd&mdash;think of her age. If she
+can't take care of herself!' cried Mrs. Nettlepoint.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p><p>'Yes, let us keep thinking of her age, though it's not so prodigious.
+And if things get very bad you have one resource left,' I added.</p>
+
+<p>'What is that?'</p>
+
+<p>'You can go upstairs.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, never, never! If it takes that to save her she must be lost.
+Besides, what good would it do? If I were to go up she could come down
+here.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, but you could keep Jasper with you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Could I?' Mrs. Nettlepoint demanded, in the manner of a woman who knew
+her son.</p>
+
+<p>In the saloon the next day, after dinner, over the red cloth of the
+tables, beneath the swinging lamps and the racks of tumblers, decanters
+and wine-glasses, we sat down to whist, Mrs. Peck, among others, taking
+a hand in the game. She played very badly and talked too much, and when
+the rubber was over assuaged her discomfiture (though not mine&mdash;we had
+been partners) with a Welsh rabbit and a tumbler of something hot. We
+had done with the cards, but while she waited for this refreshment she
+sat with her elbows on the table shuffling a pack.</p>
+
+<p>'She hasn't spoken to me yet&mdash;she won't do it,' she remarked in a
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>'Is it possible there is any one on the ship who hasn't spoken to you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not that girl&mdash;she knows too well!' Mrs. Peck looked round our little
+circle with a smile of intelligence&mdash;she had familiar, communicative
+eyes. Several of our company had assembled, according to the wont, the
+last thing in the evening, of those who are cheerful at sea, for the
+consumption of grilled sardines and devilled bones.</p>
+
+<p>'What then does she know?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span></p><p>'Oh, she knows that I know.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, we know what Mrs. Peck knows,' one of the ladies of the group
+observed to me, with an air of privilege.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, you wouldn't know if I hadn't told you&mdash;from the way she acts,'
+said Mrs. Peck, with a small laugh.</p>
+
+<p>'She is going out to a gentleman who lives over there&mdash;he's waiting
+there to marry her,' the other lady went on, in the tone of authentic
+information. I remember that her name was Mrs. Gotch and that her mouth
+looked always as if she were whistling.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, he knows&mdash;I've told him,' said Mrs. Peck.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I presume every one knows,' Mrs. Gotch reflected.</p>
+
+<p>'Dear madam, is it every one's business?' I asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, don't you think it's a peculiar way to act?' Mrs. Gotch was
+evidently surprised at my little protest.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, it's right there&mdash;straight in front of you, like a play at the
+theatre&mdash;as if you had paid to see it,' said Mrs. Peck. 'If you don't
+call it public&mdash;&mdash;!'</p>
+
+<p>'Aren't you mixing things up? What do you call public?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, the way they go on. They are up there now.'</p>
+
+<p>'They cuddle up there half the night,' said Mrs. Gotch. 'I don't know
+when they come down. Any hour you like&mdash;when all the lights are out they
+are up there still.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, you can't tire them out. They don't want relief&mdash;like the watch!'
+laughed one of the gentlemen.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, if they enjoy each other's society what's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> the harm?' another
+asked. 'They'd do just the same on land.'</p>
+
+<p>'They wouldn't do it on the public streets, I suppose,' said Mrs. Peck.
+'And they wouldn't do it if Mr. Porterfield was round!'</p>
+
+<p>'Isn't that just where your confusion comes in?' I inquired. 'It's
+public enough that Miss Mavis and Mr. Nettlepoint are always together,
+but it isn't in the least public that she is going to be married.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, how can you say&mdash;when the very sailors know it! The captain knows
+it and all the officers know it; they see them there&mdash;especially at
+night, when they're sailing the ship.'</p>
+
+<p>'I thought there was some rule&mdash;&mdash;' said Mrs. Gotch.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, there is&mdash;that you've got to behave yourself,' Mrs. Peck
+rejoined. 'So the captain told me&mdash;he said they have some rule. He said
+they have to have, when people are too demonstrative.'</p>
+
+<p>'Too demonstrative?'</p>
+
+<p>'When they attract so much attention.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, it's we who attract the attention&mdash;by talking about what doesn't
+concern us and about what we really don't know,' I ventured to declare.</p>
+
+<p>'She said the captain said he would tell on her as soon as we arrive,'
+Mrs. Gotch interposed.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>She</i> said&mdash;&mdash;?' I repeated, bewildered.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, he did say so, that he would think it his duty to inform Mr.
+Porterfield, when he comes on to meet her&mdash;if they keep it up in the
+same way,' said Mrs. Peck.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, they'll keep it up, don't you fear!' one of the gentlemen
+exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>'Dear madam, the captain is laughing at you.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span></p><p>'No, he ain't&mdash;he's right down scandalised. He says he regards us all
+as a real family and wants the family to be properly behaved.' I could
+see Mrs. Peck was irritated by my controversial tone: she challenged me
+with considerable spirit. 'How can you say I don't know it when all the
+street knows it and has known it for years&mdash;for years and years?' She
+spoke as if the girl had been engaged at least for twenty. 'What is she
+going out for, if not to marry him?'</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps she is going to see how he looks,' suggested one of the
+gentlemen.</p>
+
+<p>'He'd look queer&mdash;if he knew.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I guess he'll know,' said Mrs. Gotch.</p>
+
+<p>'She'd tell him herself&mdash;she wouldn't be afraid,' the gentleman went on.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, she might as well kill him. He'll jump overboard.'</p>
+
+<p>'Jump overboard?' cried Mrs. Gotch, as if she hoped then that Mr.
+Porterfield would be told.</p>
+
+<p>'He has just been waiting for this&mdash;for years,' said Mrs. Peck.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you happen to know him?' I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Peck hesitated a moment. 'No, but I know a lady who does. Are you
+going up?'</p>
+
+<p>I had risen from my place&mdash;I had not ordered supper. 'I'm going to take
+a turn before going to bed.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well then, you'll see!'</p>
+
+<p>Outside the saloon I hesitated, for Mrs. Peck's admonition made me feel
+for a moment that if I ascended to the deck I should have entered in a
+manner into her little conspiracy. But the night was so warm and
+splendid that I had been intending<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> to smoke a cigar in the air before
+going below, and I did not see why I should deprive myself of this
+pleasure in order to seem not to mind Mrs. Peck. I went up and saw a few
+figures sitting or moving about in the darkness. The ocean looked black
+and small, as it is apt to do at night, and the long mass of the ship,
+with its vague dim wings, seemed to take up a great part of it. There
+were more stars than one saw on land and the heavens struck one more
+than ever as larger than the earth. Grace Mavis and her companion were
+not, so far as I perceived at first, among the few passengers who were
+lingering late, and I was glad, because I hated to hear her talked about
+in the manner of the gossips I had left at supper. I wished there had
+been some way to prevent it, but I could think of no way but to
+recommend her privately to change her habits. That would be a very
+delicate business, and perhaps it would be better to begin with Jasper,
+though that would be delicate too. At any rate one might let him know,
+in a friendly spirit, to how much remark he exposed the young
+lady&mdash;leaving this revelation to work its way upon him. Unfortunately I
+could not altogether believe that the pair were unconscious of the
+observation and the opinion of the passengers. They were not a boy and a
+girl; they had a certain social perspective in their eye. I was not very
+clear as to the details of that behaviour which had made them (according
+to the version of my good friends in the saloon) a scandal to the ship,
+for though I looked at them a good deal I evidently had not looked at
+them so continuously and so hungrily as Mrs. Peck. Nevertheless the
+probability was that they knew what was thought of them&mdash;what naturally
+would be&mdash;and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> simply didn't care. That made Miss Mavis out rather
+cynical and even a little immodest; and yet, somehow, if she had such
+qualities I did not dislike her for them. I don't know what strange,
+secret excuses I found for her. I presently indeed encountered a need
+for them on the spot, for just as I was on the point of going below
+again, after several restless turns and (within the limit where smoking
+was allowed) as many puffs at a cigar as I cared for, I became aware
+that a couple of figures were seated behind one of the lifeboats that
+rested on the deck. They were so placed as to be visible only to a
+person going close to the rail and peering a little sidewise. I don't
+think I peered, but as I stood a moment beside the rail my eye was
+attracted by a dusky object which protruded beyond the boat and which,
+as I saw at a second glance, was the tail of a lady's dress. I bent
+forward an instant, but even then I saw very little more; that scarcely
+mattered, however, for I took for granted on the spot that the persons
+concealed in so snug a corner were Jasper Nettlepoint and Mr.
+Porterfield's intended. Concealed was the word, and I thought it a real
+pity; there was bad taste in it. I immediately turned away and the next
+moment I found myself face to face with the captain of the ship. I had
+already had some conversation with him (he had been so good as to invite
+me, as he had invited Mrs. Nettlepoint and her son and the young lady
+travelling with them, and also Mrs. Peck, to sit at his table) and had
+observed with pleasure that he had the art, not universal on the
+Atlantic liners, of mingling urbanity with seamanship.</p>
+
+<p>'They don't waste much time&mdash;your friends in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> there,' he said, nodding
+in the direction in which he had seen me looking.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah well, they haven't much to lose.'</p>
+
+<p>'That's what I mean. I'm told <i>she</i> hasn't.'</p>
+
+<p>I wanted to say something exculpatory but I scarcely knew what note to
+strike. I could only look vaguely about me at the starry darkness and
+the sea that seemed to sleep. 'Well, with these splendid nights, this
+perfection of weather, people are beguiled into late hours.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes. We want a nice little blow,' the captain said.</p>
+
+<p>'A nice little blow?'</p>
+
+<p>'That would clear the decks!'</p>
+
+<p>The captain was rather dry and he went about his business. He had made
+me uneasy and instead of going below I walked a few steps more. The
+other walkers dropped off pair by pair (they were all men) till at last
+I was alone. Then, after a little, I quitted the field. Jasper and his
+companion were still behind their lifeboat. Personally I greatly
+preferred good weather, but as I went down I found myself vaguely
+wishing, in the interest of I scarcely knew what, unless of decorum,
+that we might have half a gale.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Mavis turned out, in sea-phrase, early; for the next morning I saw
+her come up only a little while after I had finished my breakfast, a
+ceremony over which I contrived not to dawdle. She was alone and Jasper
+Nettlepoint, by a rare accident, was not on deck to help her. I went to
+meet her (she was encumbered as usual with her shawl, her sun-umbrella
+and a book) and laid my hands on her chair, placing it near the stern of
+the ship, where she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> liked best to be. But I proposed to her to walk a
+little before she sat down and she took my arm after I had put her
+accessories into the chair. The deck was clear at that hour and the
+morning light was gay; one got a sort of exhilarated impression of fair
+conditions and an absence of hindrance. I forget what we spoke of first,
+but it was because I felt these things pleasantly, and not to torment my
+companion nor to test her, that I could not help exclaiming cheerfully,
+after a moment, as I have mentioned having done the first day, 'Well, we
+are getting on, we are getting on!'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh yes, I count every hour.'</p>
+
+<p>'The last days always go quicker,' I said, 'and the last hours&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, the last hours?' she asked; for I had instinctively checked
+myself.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, one is so glad then that it is almost the same as if one had
+arrived. But we ought to be grateful when the elements have been so kind
+to us,' I added. 'I hope you will have enjoyed the voyage.'</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated a moment, then she said, 'Yes, much more than I expected.'</p>
+
+<p>'Did you think it would be very bad?'</p>
+
+<p>'Horrible, horrible!'</p>
+
+<p>The tone of these words was strange but I had not much time to reflect
+upon it, for turning round at that moment I saw Jasper Nettlepoint come
+towards us. He was separated from us by the expanse of the white deck
+and I could not help looking at him from head to foot as he drew nearer.
+I know not what rendered me on this occasion particularly sensitive to
+the impression, but it seemed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> to me that I saw him as I had never seen
+him before&mdash;saw him inside and out, in the intense sea-light, in his
+personal, his moral totality. It was a quick, vivid revelation; if it
+only lasted a moment it had a simplifying, certifying effect. He was
+intrinsically a pleasing apparition, with his handsome young face and a
+certain absence of compromise in his personal arrangements which, more
+than any one I have ever seen, he managed to exhibit on shipboard. He
+had none of the appearance of wearing out old clothes that usually
+prevails there, but dressed straight, as I heard some one say. This gave
+him a practical, successful air, as of a young man who would come best
+out of any predicament. I expected to feel my companion's hand loosen
+itself on my arm, as indication that now she must go to him, and was
+almost surprised she did not drop me. We stopped as we met and Jasper
+bade us a friendly good-morning. Of course the remark was not slow to be
+made that we had another lovely day, which led him to exclaim, in the
+manner of one to whom criticism came easily, 'Yes, but with this sort of
+thing consider what one of the others would do!'</p>
+
+<p>'One of the other ships?'</p>
+
+<p>'We should be there now, or at any rate to-morrow.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well then, I'm glad it isn't one of the others,' I said, smiling at the
+young lady on my arm. My remark offered her a chance to say something
+appreciative and gave him one even more; but neither Jasper nor Grace
+Mavis took advantage of the opportunity. What they did do, I perceived,
+was to look at each other for an instant; after which Miss Mavis turned
+her eyes silently to the sea. She made<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> no movement and uttered no word,
+contriving to give me the sense that she had all at once become
+perfectly passive, that she somehow declined responsibility. We remained
+standing there with Jasper in front of us, and if the touch of her arm
+did not suggest that I should give her up, neither did it intimate that
+we had better pass on. I had no idea of giving her up, albeit one of the
+things that I seemed to discover just then in Jasper's physiognomy was
+an imperturbable implication that she was his property. His eye met mine
+for a moment, and it was exactly as if he had said to me, 'I know what
+you think, but I don't care a rap.' What I really thought was that he
+was selfish beyond the limits: that was the substance of my little
+revelation. Youth is almost always selfish, just as it is almost always
+conceited, and, after all, when it is combined with health and good
+parts, good looks and good spirits, it has a right to be, and I easily
+forgive it if it be really youth. Still it is a question of degree, and
+what stuck out of Jasper Nettlepoint (if one felt that sort of thing)
+was that his egotism had a hardness, his love of his own way an avidity.
+These elements were jaunty and prosperous, they were accustomed to
+triumph. He was fond, very fond, of women; they were necessary to him
+and that was in his type; but he was not in the least in love with Grace
+Mavis. Among the reflections I quickly made this was the one that was
+most to the point. There was a degree of awkwardness, after a minute, in
+the way we were planted there, though the apprehension of it was
+doubtless not in the least with him.</p>
+
+<p>'How is your mother this morning?' I asked.</p>
+
+<p>'You had better go down and see.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span></p><p>'Not till Miss Mavis is tired of me.'</p>
+
+<p>She said nothing to this and I made her walk again. For some minutes she
+remained silent; then, rather unexpectedly, she began: 'I've seen you
+talking to that lady who sits at our table&mdash;the one who has so many
+children.'</p>
+
+<p>'Mrs. Peck? Oh yes, I have talked with her.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you know her very well?'</p>
+
+<p>'Only as one knows people at sea. An acquaintance makes itself. It
+doesn't mean very much.'</p>
+
+<p>'She doesn't speak to me&mdash;she might if she wanted.'</p>
+
+<p>'That's just what she says of you&mdash;that you might speak to her.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, if she's waiting for that&mdash;&mdash;!' said my companion, with a laugh.
+Then she added&mdash;'She lives in our street, nearly opposite.'</p>
+
+<p>'Precisely. That's the reason why she thinks you might speak; she has
+seen you so often and seems to know so much about you.'</p>
+
+<p>'What does she know about me?'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, you must ask her&mdash;I can't tell you!'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't care what she knows,' said my young lady. After a moment she
+went on&mdash;'She must have seen that I'm not very sociable.' And
+then&mdash;'What are you laughing at?'</p>
+
+<p>My laughter was for an instant irrepressible&mdash;there was something so
+droll in the way she had said that.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, you are not sociable and yet you are. Mrs. Peck is, at any rate,
+and thought that ought to make it easy for you to enter into
+conversation with her.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span></p><p>'Oh, I don't care for her conversation&mdash;I know what it amounts to.' I
+made no rejoinder&mdash;I scarcely knew what rejoinder to make&mdash;and the girl
+went on, 'I know what she thinks and I know what she says.' Still I was
+silent, but the next moment I saw that my delicacy had been wasted, for
+Miss Mavis asked, 'Does she make out that she knows Mr. Porterfield?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, she only says that she knows a lady who knows him.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I know&mdash;Mrs. Jeremie. Mrs. Jeremie's an idiot!' I was not in a
+position to controvert this, and presently my young lady said she would
+sit down. I left her in her chair&mdash;I saw that she preferred it&mdash;and
+wandered to a distance. A few minutes later I met Jasper again, and he
+stopped of his own accord and said to me&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'We shall be in about six in the evening, on the eleventh day&mdash;they
+promise it.'</p>
+
+<p>'If nothing happens, of course.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, what's going to happen?'</p>
+
+<p>'That's just what I'm wondering!' And I turned away and went below with
+the foolish but innocent satisfaction of thinking that I had mystified
+him.</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="AIV" id="AIV"></a>IV</h2>
+
+<p>'I don't know what to do, and you must help me,' Mrs. Nettlepoint said
+to me that evening, as soon as I went in to see her.</p>
+
+<p>'I'll do what I can&mdash;but what's the matter?'</p>
+
+<p>'She has been crying here and going on&mdash;she has quite upset me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Crying? She doesn't look like that.'</p>
+
+<p>'Exactly, and that's what startled me. She came in to see me this
+afternoon, as she has done before, and we talked about the weather and
+the run of the ship and the manners of the stewardess and little
+commonplaces like that, and then suddenly, in the midst of it, as she
+sat there, <i>&agrave; propos</i> of nothing, she burst into tears. I asked her what
+ailed her and tried to comfort her, but she didn't explain; she only
+said it was nothing, the effect of the sea, of leaving home. I asked her
+if it had anything to do with her prospects, with her marriage; whether
+she found as that drew near that her heart was not in it; I told her
+that she mustn't be nervous, that I could enter into that&mdash;in short I
+said what I could. All that she replied was that she <i>was</i> nervous, very
+nervous, but that it was already over; and then she jumped up and kissed
+me and went away. Does<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> she look as if she had been crying?' Mrs.
+Nettlepoint asked.</p>
+
+<p>'How can I tell, when she never quits that horrid veil? It's as if she
+were ashamed to show her face.'</p>
+
+<p>'She's keeping it for Liverpool. But I don't like such incidents,' said
+Mrs. Nettlepoint. 'I shall go upstairs.'</p>
+
+<p>'And is that where you want me to help you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, your arm and that sort of thing, yes. But something more. I feel as
+if something were going to happen.'</p>
+
+<p>'That's exactly what I said to Jasper this morning.'</p>
+
+<p>'And what did he say?'</p>
+
+<p>'He only looked innocent, as if he thought I meant a fog or a storm.'</p>
+
+<p>'Heaven forbid&mdash;it isn't that! I shall never be good-natured again,'
+Mrs. Nettlepoint went on; 'never have a girl put upon me that way. You
+always pay for it, there are always tiresome complications. What I am
+afraid of is after we get there. She'll throw up her engagement; there
+will be dreadful scenes; I shall be mixed up with them and have to look
+after her and keep her with me. I shall have to stay there with her till
+she can be sent back, or even take her up to London. <i>Voyez-vous &ccedil;a?</i>'</p>
+
+<p>I listened respectfully to this and then I said: 'You are afraid of your
+son.'</p>
+
+<p>'Afraid of him?'</p>
+
+<p>'There are things you might say to him&mdash;and with your manner; because
+you have one when you choose.'</p>
+
+<p>'Very likely, but what is my manner to his? Besides, I have said
+everything to him. That is I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> have said the great thing, that he is
+making her immensely talked about.'</p>
+
+<p>'And of course in answer to that he has asked you how you know, and you
+have told him I have told you.'</p>
+
+<p>'I had to; and he says it's none of your business.'</p>
+
+<p>'I wish he would say that to my face.'</p>
+
+<p>'He'll do so perfectly, if you give him a chance. That's where you can
+help me. Quarrel with him&mdash;he's rather good at a quarrel, and that will
+divert him and draw him off.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then I'm ready to discuss the matter with him for the rest of the
+voyage.'</p>
+
+<p>'Very well; I count on you. But he'll ask you, as he asks me, what the
+deuce you want him to do.'</p>
+
+<p>'To go to bed,' I replied, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, it isn't a joke.'</p>
+
+<p>'That's exactly what I told you at first.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, but don't exult; I hate people who exult. Jasper wants to know why
+he should mind her being talked about if she doesn't mind it herself.'</p>
+
+<p>'I'll tell him why,' I replied; and Mrs. Nettlepoint said she should be
+exceedingly obliged to me and repeated that she would come upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>I looked for Jasper above that same evening, but circumstances did not
+favour my quest. I found him&mdash;that is I discovered that he was again
+ensconced behind the lifeboat with Miss Mavis; but there was a needless
+violence in breaking into their communion, and I put off our interview
+till the next day. Then I took the first opportunity, at breakfast, to
+make sure of it. He was in the saloon when I went in and was preparing
+to leave the table; but I stopped him and asked if he would give me a
+quarter of an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> hour on deck a little later&mdash;there was something
+particular I wanted to say to him. He said, 'Oh yes, if you like,' with
+just a visible surprise, but no look of an uncomfortable consciousness.
+When I had finished my breakfast I found him smoking on the forward-deck
+and I immediately began: 'I am going to say something that you won't at
+all like; to ask you a question that you will think impertinent.'</p>
+
+<p>'Impertinent? that's bad.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am a good deal older than you and I am a friend&mdash;of many years&mdash;of
+your mother. There's nothing I like less than to be meddlesome, but I
+think these things give me a certain right&mdash;a sort of privilege. For the
+rest, my inquiry will speak for itself.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why so many preliminaries?' the young man asked, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>We looked into each other's eyes a moment. What indeed was his mother's
+manner&mdash;her best manner&mdash;compared with his? 'Are you prepared to be
+responsible?'</p>
+
+<p>'To you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear no&mdash;to the young lady herself. I am speaking of course of Miss
+Mavis.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah yes, my mother tells me you have her greatly on your mind.'</p>
+
+<p>'So has your mother herself&mdash;now.'</p>
+
+<p>'She is so good as to say so&mdash;to oblige you.'</p>
+
+<p>'She would oblige me a great deal more by reassuring me. I am aware that
+you know I have told her that Miss Mavis is greatly talked about.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, but what on earth does it matter?'</p>
+
+<p>'It matters as a sign.'</p>
+
+<p>'A sign of what?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span></p><p>'That she is in a false position.'</p>
+
+<p>Jasper puffed his cigar, with his eyes on the horizon. 'I don't know
+whether it's <i>your</i> business, what you are attempting to discuss; but it
+really appears to me it is none of mine. What have I to do with the
+tattle with which a pack of old women console themselves for not being
+sea-sick?'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you call it tattle that Miss Mavis is in love with you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Drivelling.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then you are very ungrateful. The tattle of a pack of old women has
+this importance, that she suspects or knows that it exists, and that
+nice girls are for the most part very sensitive to that sort of thing.
+To be prepared not to heed it in this case she must have a reason, and
+the reason must be the one I have taken the liberty to call your
+attention to.'</p>
+
+<p>'In love with me in six days, just like that?' said Jasper, smoking.</p>
+
+<p>'There is no accounting for tastes, and six days at sea are equivalent
+to sixty on land. I don't want to make you too proud. Of course if you
+recognise your responsibility it's all right and I have nothing to say.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't see what you mean,' Jasper went on.</p>
+
+<p>'Surely you ought to have thought of that by this time. She's engaged to
+be married and the gentleman she is engaged to is to meet her at
+Liverpool. The whole ship knows it (I didn't tell them!) and the whole
+ship is watching her. It's impertinent if you like, just as I am, but we
+make a little world here together and we can't blink its conditions.
+What I ask you is whether you are prepared to allow her to give up the
+gentleman I have just mentioned for your sake.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span></p><p>'For my sake?'</p>
+
+<p>'To marry her if she breaks with him.'</p>
+
+<p>Jasper turned his eyes from the horizon to my own, and I found a strange
+expression in them. 'Has Miss Mavis commissioned you to make this
+inquiry?'</p>
+
+<p>'Never in the world.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well then, I don't understand it.'</p>
+
+<p>'It isn't from another I make it. Let it come from yourself&mdash;<i>to</i>
+yourself.'</p>
+
+<p>'Lord, you must think I lead myself a life! That's a question the young
+lady may put to me any moment that it pleases her.'</p>
+
+<p>'Let me then express the hope that she will. But what will you answer?'</p>
+
+<p>'My dear sir, it seems to me that in spite of all the titles you have
+enumerated you have no reason to expect I will tell you.' He turned away
+and I exclaimed, sincerely, 'Poor girl!' At this he faced me again and,
+looking at me from head to foot, demanded: 'What is it you want me to
+do?'</p>
+
+<p>'I told your mother that you ought to go to bed.'</p>
+
+<p>'You had better do that yourself!'</p>
+
+<p>This time he walked off, and I reflected rather dolefully that the only
+clear result of my experiment would probably have been to make it vivid
+to him that she was in love with him. Mrs. Nettlepoint came up as she
+had announced, but the day was half over: it was nearly three o'clock.
+She was accompanied by her son, who established her on deck, arranged
+her chair and her shawls, saw that she was protected from sun and wind,
+and for an hour was very properly attentive. While this went on Grace
+Mavis was not visible, nor did she reappear during the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> whole afternoon.
+I had not observed that she had as yet been absent from the deck for so
+long a period. Jasper went away, but he came back at intervals to see
+how his mother got on, and when she asked him where Miss Mavis was he
+said he had not the least idea. I sat with Mrs. Nettlepoint at her
+particular request: she told me she knew that if I left her Mrs. Peck
+and Mrs. Gotch would come to speak to her. She was flurried and fatigued
+at having to make an effort, and I think that Grace Mavis's choosing
+this occasion for retirement suggested to her a little that she had been
+made a fool of. She remarked that the girl's not being there showed her
+complete want of breeding and that she was really very good to have put
+herself out for her so; she was a common creature and that was the end
+of it. I could see that Mrs. Nettlepoint's advent quickened the
+speculative activity of the other ladies; they watched her from the
+opposite side of the deck, keeping their eyes fixed on her very much as
+the man at the wheel kept his on the course of the ship. Mrs. Peck
+plainly meditated an approach, and it was from this danger that Mrs.
+Nettlepoint averted her face.</p>
+
+<p>'It's just as we said,' she remarked to me as we sat there. 'It is like
+the bucket in the well. When I come up that girl goes down.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, but you've succeeded, since Jasper remains here.'</p>
+
+<p>'Remains? I don't see him.'</p>
+
+<p>'He comes and goes&mdash;it's the same thing.'</p>
+
+<p>'He goes more than he comes. But <i>n'en parlons plus</i>; I haven't gained
+anything. I don't admire the sea at all&mdash;what is it but a magnified
+water-tank? I shan't come up again.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span></p><p>'I have an idea she'll stay in her cabin now,' I said. 'She tells me
+she has one to herself.' Mrs. Nettlepoint replied that she might do as
+she liked, and I repeated to her the little conversation I had had with
+Jasper.</p>
+
+<p>She listened with interest, but 'Marry her? mercy!' she exclaimed. 'I
+like the manner in which you give my son away.'</p>
+
+<p>'You wouldn't accept that.'</p>
+
+<p>'Never in the world.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then I don't understand your position.'</p>
+
+<p>'Good heavens, I have none! It isn't a position to be bored to death.'</p>
+
+<p>'You wouldn't accept it even in the case I put to him&mdash;that of her
+believing she had been encouraged to throw over poor Porterfield?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not even&mdash;not even. Who knows what she believes?'</p>
+
+<p>'Then you do exactly what I said you would&mdash;you show me a fine example
+of maternal immorality.'</p>
+
+<p>'Maternal fiddlesticks! It was she began it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then why did you come up to-day?'</p>
+
+<p>'To keep you quiet.'</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Nettlepoint's dinner was served on deck, but I went into the
+saloon. Jasper was there but not Grace Mavis, as I had half expected. I
+asked him what had become of her, if she were ill (he must have thought
+I had an ignoble pertinacity), and he replied that he knew nothing
+whatever about her. Mrs. Peck talked to me about Mrs. Nettlepoint and
+said it had been a great interest to her to see her; only it was a pity
+she didn't seem more sociable. To this I replied that she had to beg to
+be excused&mdash;she was not well.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p><p>'You don't mean to say she's sick, on this pond?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, she's unwell in another way.'</p>
+
+<p>'I guess I know the way!' Mrs. Peck laughed. And then she added, 'I
+suppose she came up to look after her charge.'</p>
+
+<p>'Her charge?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, Miss Mavis. We've talked enough about that.'</p>
+
+<p>'Quite enough. I don't know what that had to do with it. Miss Mavis
+hasn't been there to-day.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, it goes on all the same.'</p>
+
+<p>'It goes on?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, it's too late.'</p>
+
+<p>'Too late?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, you'll see. There'll be a row.'</p>
+
+<p>This was not comforting, but I did not repeat it above. Mrs. Nettlepoint
+returned early to her cabin, professing herself much tired. I know not
+what 'went on,' but Grace Mavis continued not to show. I went in late,
+to bid Mrs. Nettlepoint good-night, and learned from her that the girl
+had not been to her. She had sent the stewardess to her room for news,
+to see if she were ill and needed assistance, and the stewardess came
+back with the information that she was not there. I went above after
+this; the night was not quite so fair and the deck was almost empty. In
+a moment Jasper Nettlepoint and our young lady moved past me together.
+'I hope you are better!' I called after her; and she replied, over her
+shoulder&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes, I had a headache; but the air now does me good!'</p>
+
+<p>I went down again&mdash;I was the only person there but they, and I wished to
+not appear to be watching<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> them&mdash;and returning to Mrs. Nettlepoint's
+room found (her door was open into the little passage) that she was
+still sitting up.</p>
+
+<p>'She's all right!' I said. 'She's on the deck with Jasper.'</p>
+
+<p>The old lady looked up at me from her book. 'I didn't know you called
+that all right.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, it's better than something else.'</p>
+
+<p>'Something else?'</p>
+
+<p>'Something I was a little afraid of.' Mrs. Nettlepoint continued to look
+at me; she asked me what that was. 'I'll tell you when we are ashore,' I
+said.</p>
+
+<p>The next day I went to see her, at the usual hour of my morning visit,
+and found her in considerable agitation. 'The scenes have begun,' she
+said; 'you know I told you I shouldn't get through without them! You
+made me nervous last night&mdash;I haven't the least idea what you meant; but
+you made me nervous. She came in to see me an hour ago, and I had the
+courage to say to her, "I don't know why I shouldn't tell you frankly
+that I have been scolding my son about you." Of course she asked me what
+I meant by that, and I said&mdash;"It seems to me he drags you about the ship
+too much, for a girl in your position. He has the air of not remembering
+that you belong to some one else. There is a kind of want of taste and
+even of want of respect in it." That produced an explosion; she became
+very violent.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you mean angry?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not exactly angry, but very hot and excited&mdash;at my presuming to think
+her relations with my son were not the simplest in the world. I might<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>
+scold him as much as I liked&mdash;that was between ourselves; but she didn't
+see why I should tell her that I had done so. Did I think she allowed
+him to treat her with disrespect? That idea was not very complimentary
+to her! He had treated her better and been kinder to her than most other
+people&mdash;there were very few on the ship that hadn't been insulting. She
+should be glad enough when she got off it, to her own people, to some
+one whom no one would have a right to say anything about. What was there
+in her position that was not perfectly natural? What was the idea of
+making a fuss about her position? Did I mean that she took it too
+easily&mdash;that she didn't think as much as she ought about Mr.
+Porterfield? Didn't I believe she was attached to him&mdash;didn't I believe
+she was just counting the hours until she saw him? That would be the
+happiest moment of her life. It showed how little I knew her, if I
+thought anything else.'</p>
+
+<p>'All that must have been rather fine&mdash;I should have liked to hear it,' I
+said. 'And what did you reply?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I grovelled; I told her that I accused her (as regards my son) of
+nothing worse than an excess of good nature. She helped him to pass his
+time&mdash;he ought to be immensely obliged. Also that it would be a very
+happy moment for me too when I should hand her over to Mr. Porterfield.'</p>
+
+<p>'And will you come up to-day?'</p>
+
+<p>'No indeed&mdash;she'll do very well now.'</p>
+
+<p>I gave a sigh of relief. 'All's well that ends well!'</p>
+
+<p>Jasper, that day, spent a great deal of time with his mother. She had
+told me that she really had had no proper opportunity to talk over with
+him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> their movements after disembarking. Everything changes a little,
+the last two or three days of a voyage; the spell is broken and new
+combinations take place. Grace Mavis was neither on deck nor at dinner,
+and I drew Mrs. Peck's attention to the extreme propriety with which she
+now conducted herself. She had spent the day in meditation and she
+judged it best to continue to meditate.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, she's afraid,' said my implacable neighbour.</p>
+
+<p>'Afraid of what?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, that we'll tell tales when we get there.'</p>
+
+<p>'Whom do you mean by "we"?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, there are plenty, on a ship like this.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well then, we won't.'</p>
+
+<p>'Maybe we won't have the chance,' said the dreadful little woman.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, at that moment a universal geniality reigns.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, she's afraid, all the same.'</p>
+
+<p>'So much the better.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, so much the better.'</p>
+
+<p>All the next day, too, the girl remained invisible and Mrs. Nettlepoint
+told me that she had not been in to see her. She had inquired by the
+stewardess if she would receive her in her own cabin, and Grace Mavis
+had replied that it was littered up with things and unfit for visitors:
+she was packing a trunk over. Jasper made up for his devotion to his
+mother the day before by now spending a great deal of his time in the
+smoking-room. I wanted to say to him 'This is much better,' but I
+thought it wiser to hold my tongue. Indeed I had begun to feel the
+emotion of prospective arrival (I was delighted to be almost back in my
+dear old Europe again) and had less to spare for other matters. It will
+doubtless appear to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> the critical reader that I had already devoted far
+too much to the little episode of which my story gives an account, but
+to this I can only reply that the event justified me. We sighted land,
+the dim yet rich coast of Ireland, about sunset and I leaned on the edge
+of the ship and looked at it. 'It doesn't look like much, does it?' I
+heard a voice say, beside me; and, turning, I found Grace Mavis was
+there. Almost for the first time she had her veil up, and I thought her
+very pale.</p>
+
+<p>'It will be more to-morrow,' I said.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh yes, a great deal more.'</p>
+
+<p>'The first sight of land, at sea, changes everything,' I went on. 'I
+always think it's like waking up from a dream. It's a return to
+reality.'</p>
+
+<p>For a moment she made no response to this; then she said, 'It doesn't
+look very real yet.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, and meanwhile, this lovely evening, the dream is still present.'</p>
+
+<p>She looked up at the sky, which had a brightness, though the light of
+the sun had left it and that of the stars had not come out. 'It <i>is</i> a
+lovely evening.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh yes, with this we shall do.'</p>
+
+<p>She stood there a while longer, while the growing dusk effaced the line
+of the land more rapidly than our progress made it distinct. She said
+nothing more, she only looked in front of her; but her very quietness
+made me want to say something suggestive of sympathy and service. I was
+unable to think what to say&mdash;some things seemed too wide of the mark and
+others too importunate. At last, unexpectedly, she appeared to give me
+my chance. Irrelevantly, abruptly she broke out:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span></p><p>'Didn't you tell me that you knew Mr. Porterfield?'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear me, yes&mdash;I used to see him. I have often wanted to talk to you
+about him.'</p>
+
+<p>She turned her face upon me and in the deepened evening I fancied she
+looked whiter. 'What good would that do?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, it would be a pleasure,' I replied, rather foolishly.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you mean for you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, yes&mdash;call it that,' I said, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>'Did you know him so well?'</p>
+
+<p>My smile became a laugh and I said&mdash;'You are not easy to make speeches
+to.'</p>
+
+<p>'I hate speeches!' The words came from her lips with a violence that
+surprised me; they were loud and hard. But before I had time to wonder
+at it she went on&mdash;'Shall you know him when you see him?'</p>
+
+<p>'Perfectly, I think.' Her manner was so strange that one had to notice
+it in some way, and it appeared to me the best way was to notice it
+jocularly; so I added, 'Shan't you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, perhaps you'll point him out!' And she walked quickly away. As I
+looked after her I had a singular, a perverse and rather an embarrassed
+sense of having, during the previous days, and especially in speaking to
+Jasper Nettlepoint, interfered with her situation to her loss. I had a
+sort of pang in seeing her move about alone; I felt somehow responsible
+for it and asked myself why I could not have kept my hands off. I had
+seen Jasper in the smoking-room more than once that day, as I passed it,
+and half an hour before this I had observed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> through the open door,
+that he was there. He had been with her so much that without him she had
+a bereaved, forsaken air. It was better, no doubt, but superficially it
+made her rather pitiable. Mrs. Peck would have told me that their
+separation was gammon; they didn't show together on deck and in the
+saloon, but they made it up elsewhere. The secret places on shipboard
+are not numerous; Mrs. Peck's 'elsewhere' would have been vague and I
+know not what license her imagination took. It was distinct that Jasper
+had fallen off, but of course what had passed between them on this
+subject was not so and could never be. Later, through his mother, I had
+<i>his</i> version of that, but I may remark that I didn't believe it. Poor
+Mrs. Nettlepoint did, of course. I was almost capable, after the girl
+had left me, of going to my young man and saying, 'After all, do return
+to her a little, just till we get in! It won't make any difference after
+we land.' And I don't think it was the fear he would tell me I was an
+idiot that prevented me. At any rate the next time I passed the door of
+the smoking-room I saw that he had left it. I paid my usual visit to
+Mrs. Nettlepoint that night, but I troubled her no further about Miss
+Mavis. She had made up her mind that everything was smooth and settled
+now, and it seemed to me that I had worried her and that she had worried
+herself enough. I left her to enjoy the foretaste of arrival, which had
+taken possession of her mind. Before turning in I went above and found
+more passengers on deck than I had ever seen so late. Jasper was walking
+about among them alone, but I forebore to join him. The coast of Ireland
+had disappeared, but the night and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> the sea were perfect. On the way to
+my cabin, when I came down, I met the stewardess in one of the passages
+and the idea entered my head to say to her&mdash;'Do you happen to know where
+Miss Mavis is?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, she's in her room, sir, at this hour.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you suppose I could speak to her?' It had come into my mind to ask
+her why she had inquired of me whether I should recognise Mr.
+Porterfield.</p>
+
+<p>'No, sir,' said the stewardess; 'she has gone to bed.'</p>
+
+<p>'That's all right.' And I followed the young lady's excellent example.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning, while I was dressing, the steward of my side of the
+ship came to me as usual to see what I wanted. But the first thing he
+said to me was&mdash;'Rather a bad job, sir&mdash;a passenger missing.'</p>
+
+<p>'A passenger&mdash;missing?'</p>
+
+<p>'A lady, sir. I think you knew her. Miss Mavis, sir.'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Missing?</i>' I cried&mdash;staring at him, horror-stricken.</p>
+
+<p>'She's not on the ship. They can't find her.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then where to God is she?'</p>
+
+<p>I remember his queer face. 'Well sir, I suppose you know that as well as
+I.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you mean she has jumped overboard?'</p>
+
+<p>'Some time in the night, sir&mdash;on the quiet. But it's beyond every one,
+the way she escaped notice. They usually sees 'em, sir. It must have
+been about half-past two. Lord, but she was clever, sir. She didn't so
+much as make a splash. They say she <i>'ad</i> come against her will, sir.'</p>
+
+<p>I had dropped upon my sofa&mdash;I felt faint. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> man went on, liking to
+talk, as persons of his class do when they have something horrible to
+tell. She usually rang for the stewardess early, but this morning of
+course there had been no ring. The stewardess had gone in all the same
+about eight o'clock and found the cabin empty. That was about an hour
+ago. Her things were there in confusion&mdash;the things she usually wore
+when she went above. The stewardess thought she had been rather strange
+last night, but she waited a little and then went back. Miss Mavis
+hadn't turned up&mdash;and she didn't turn up. The stewardess began to look
+for her&mdash;she hadn't been seen on deck or in the saloon. Besides, she
+wasn't dressed&mdash;not to show herself; all her clothes were in her room.
+There was another lady, an old lady, Mrs. Nettlepoint&mdash;I would know
+her&mdash;that she was sometimes with, but the stewardess had been with <i>her</i>
+and she knew Miss Mavis had not come near her that morning. She had
+spoken to <i>him</i> and they had taken a quiet look&mdash;they had hunted
+everywhere. A ship's a big place, but you do come to the end of it, and
+if a person ain't there why they ain't. In short an hour had passed and
+the young lady was not accounted for: from which I might judge if she
+ever would be. The watch couldn't account for her, but no doubt the
+fishes in the sea could&mdash;poor miserable lady! The stewardess and he,
+they had of course thought it their duty very soon to speak to the
+doctor, and the doctor had spoken immediately to the captain. The
+captain didn't like it&mdash;they never did. But he would try to keep it
+quiet&mdash;they always did.</p>
+
+<p>By the time I succeeded in pulling myself together and getting on, after
+a fashion, the rest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> of my clothes I had learned that Mrs. Nettlepoint
+had not yet been informed, unless the stewardess had broken it to her
+within the previous few minutes. Her son knew, the young gentleman on
+the other side of the ship (he had the other steward); my man had seen
+him come out of his cabin and rush above, just before he came in to me.
+He <i>had</i> gone above, my man was sure; he had not gone to the old lady's
+cabin. I remember a queer vision when the steward told me this&mdash;the wild
+flash of a picture of Jasper Nettlepoint leaping with a mad compunction
+in his young agility over the side of the ship. I hasten to add that no
+such incident was destined to contribute its horror to poor Grace
+Mavis's mysterious tragic act. What followed was miserable enough, but I
+can only glance at it. When I got to Mrs. Nettlepoint's door she was
+there in her dressing-gown; the stewardess had just told her and she was
+rushing out to come to me. I made her go back&mdash;I said I would go for
+Jasper. I went for him but I missed him, partly no doubt because it was
+really, at first, the captain I was after. I found this personage and
+found him highly scandalised, but he gave me no hope that we were in
+error, and his displeasure, expressed with seamanlike plainness, was a
+definite settlement of the question. From the deck, where I merely
+turned round and looked, I saw the light of another summer day, the
+coast of Ireland green and near and the sea a more charming colour than
+it had been at all. When I came below again Jasper had passed back; he
+had gone to his cabin and his mother had joined him there. He remained
+there till we reached Liverpool&mdash;I never saw him. His mother, after a
+little, at his request,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> left him alone. All the world went above to
+look at the land and chatter about our tragedy, but the poor lady spent
+the day, dismally enough, in her room. It seemed to me intolerably long;
+I was thinking so of vague Porterfield and of my prospect of having to
+face him on the morrow. Now of course I knew why she had asked me if I
+should recognise him; she had delegated to me mentally a certain
+pleasant office. I gave Mrs. Peck and Mrs. Gotch a wide berth&mdash;I
+couldn't talk to them. I could, or at least I did a little, to Mrs.
+Nettlepoint, but with too many reserves for comfort on either side, for
+I foresaw that it would not in the least do now to mention Jasper to
+her. I was obliged to assume by my silence that he had had nothing to do
+with what had happened; and of course I never really ascertained what he
+<i>had</i> had to do. The secret of what passed between him and the strange
+girl who would have sacrificed her marriage to him on so short an
+acquaintance remains shut up in his breast. His mother, I know, went to
+his door from time to time, but he refused her admission. That evening,
+to be human at a venture, I requested the steward to go in and ask him
+if he should care to see me, and the attendant returned with an answer
+which he candidly transmitted. 'Not in the least!' Jasper apparently was
+almost as scandalised as the captain.</p>
+
+<p>At Liverpool, at the dock, when we had touched, twenty people came on
+board and I had already made out Mr. Porterfield at a distance. He was
+looking up at the side of the great vessel with disappointment written
+(to my eyes) in his face&mdash;disappointment at not seeing the woman he
+loved lean over it and wave her handkerchief to him. Every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> one was
+looking at him, every one but she (his identity flew about in a moment)
+and I wondered if he did not observe it. He used to be lean, he had
+grown almost fat. The interval between us diminished&mdash;he was on the
+plank and then on the deck with the jostling officers of the
+customs&mdash;all too soon for my equanimity. I met him instantly however,
+laid my hand on him and drew him away, though I perceived that he had no
+impression of having seen me before. It was not till afterwards that I
+thought this a little stupid of him. I drew him far away (I was
+conscious of Mrs. Peck and Mrs. Gotch looking at us as we passed) into
+the empty, stale smoking-room; he remained speechless, and that struck
+me as like him. I had to speak first, he could not even relieve me by
+saying 'Is anything the matter?' I told him first that she was ill. It
+was an odious moment.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1><a name="THE_LIAR" id="THE_LIAR"></a>THE LIAR</h1>
+
+<h2><a name="BI" id="BI"></a>I</h2>
+
+<p>The train was half an hour late and the drive from the station longer
+than he had supposed, so that when he reached the house its inmates had
+dispersed to dress for dinner and he was conducted straight to his room.
+The curtains were drawn in this asylum, the candles were lighted, the
+fire was bright, and when the servant had quickly put out his clothes
+the comfortable little place became suggestive&mdash;seemed to promise a
+pleasant house, a various party, talks, acquaintances, affinities, to
+say nothing of very good cheer. He was too occupied with his profession
+to pay many country visits, but he had heard people who had more time
+for them speak of establishments where 'they do you very well.' He
+foresaw that the proprietors of Stayes would do him very well. In his
+bedroom at a country house he always looked first at the books on the
+shelf and the prints on the walls; he considered that these things gave
+a sort of measure of the culture and even of the character of his hosts.
+Though he had but little time to devote to them on this occasion a
+cursory inspection assured him that if the literature, as usual, was
+mainly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>American and humorous the art consisted neither of the
+water-colour studies of the children nor of 'goody' engravings. The
+walls were adorned with old-fashioned lithographs, principally portraits
+of country gentlemen with high collars and riding gloves: this
+suggested&mdash;and it was encouraging&mdash;that the tradition of portraiture was
+held in esteem. There was the customary novel of Mr. Le Fanu, for the
+bedside; the ideal reading in a country house for the hours after
+midnight. Oliver Lyon could scarcely forbear beginning it while he
+buttoned his shirt.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps that is why he not only found every one assembled in the hall
+when he went down, but perceived from the way the move to dinner was
+instantly made that they had been waiting for him. There was no delay,
+to introduce him to a lady, for he went out in a group of unmatched men,
+without this appendage. The men, straggling behind, sidled and edged as
+usual at the door of the dining-room, and the <i>d&eacute;nouement</i> of this
+little comedy was that he came to his place last of all. This made him
+think that he was in a sufficiently distinguished company, for if he had
+been humiliated (which he was not), he could not have consoled himself
+with the reflection that such a fate was natural to an obscure,
+struggling young artist. He could no longer think of himself as very
+young, alas, and if his position was not so brilliant as it ought to be
+he could no longer justify it by calling it a struggle. He was something
+of a celebrity and he was apparently in a society of celebrities. This
+idea added to the curiosity with which he looked up and down the long
+table as he settled himself in his place.</p>
+
+<p>It was a numerous party&mdash;five and twenty people;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> rather an odd occasion
+to have proposed to him, as he thought. He would not be surrounded by
+the quiet that ministers to good work; however, it had never interfered
+with his work to see the spectacle of human life before him in the
+intervals. And though he did not know it, it was never quiet at Stayes.
+When he was working well he found himself in that happy state&mdash;the
+happiest of all for an artist&mdash;in which things in general contribute to
+the particular idea and fall in with it, help it on and justify it, so
+that he feels for the hour as if nothing in the world can happen to him,
+even if it come in the guise of disaster or suffering, that will not be
+an enhancement of his subject. Moreover there was an exhilaration (he
+had felt it before) in the rapid change of scene&mdash;the jump, in the dusk
+of the afternoon, from foggy London and his familiar studio to a centre
+of festivity in the middle of Hertfordshire and a drama half acted, a
+drama of pretty women and noted men and wonderful orchids in silver
+jars. He observed as a not unimportant fact that one of the pretty women
+was beside him: a gentleman sat on his other hand. But he went into his
+neighbours little as yet: he was busy looking out for Sir David, whom he
+had never seen and about whom he naturally was curious.</p>
+
+<p>Evidently, however, Sir David was not at dinner, a circumstance
+sufficiently explained by the other circumstance which constituted our
+friend's principal knowledge of him&mdash;his being ninety years of age.
+Oliver Lyon had looked forward with great pleasure to the chance of
+painting a nonagenarian, and though the old man's absence from table was
+something of a disappointment (it was an opportunity the less to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
+observe him before going to work), it seemed a sign that he was rather a
+sacred and perhaps therefore an impressive relic. Lyon looked at his son
+with the greater interest&mdash;wondered whether the glazed bloom of his
+cheek had been transmitted from Sir David. That would be jolly to paint,
+in the old man&mdash;the withered ruddiness of a winter apple, especially if
+the eye were still alive and the white hair carried out the frosty look.
+Arthur Ashmore's hair had a midsummer glow, but Lyon was glad his
+commission had been to delineate the father rather than the son, in
+spite of his never having seen the one and of the other being seated
+there before him now in the happy expansion of liberal hospitality.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur Ashmore was a fresh-coloured, thick-necked English gentleman, but
+he was just not a subject; he might have been a farmer and he might have
+been a banker: you could scarcely paint him in characters. His wife did
+not make up the amount; she was a large, bright, negative woman, who had
+the same air as her husband of being somehow tremendously new; a sort of
+appearance of fresh varnish (Lyon could scarcely tell whether it came
+from her complexion or from her clothes), so that one felt she ought to
+sit in a gilt frame, suggesting reference to a catalogue or a
+price-list. It was as if she were already rather a bad though expensive
+portrait, knocked off by an eminent hand, and Lyon had no wish to copy
+that work. The pretty woman on his right was engaged with her neighbour
+and the gentleman on his other side looked shrinking and scared, so that
+he had time to lose himself in his favourite diversion of watching face
+after face. This<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> amusement gave him the greatest pleasure he knew, and
+he often thought it a mercy that the human mask did interest him and
+that it was not less vivid than it was (sometimes it ran its success in
+this line very close), since he was to make his living by reproducing
+it. Even if Arthur Ashmore would not be inspiring to paint (a certain
+anxiety rose in him lest if he should make a hit with her father-in-law
+Mrs. Arthur should take it into her head that he had now proved himself
+worthy to <i>aborder</i> her husband); even if he had looked a little less
+like a page (fine as to print and margin) without punctuation, he would
+still be a refreshing, iridescent surface. But the gentleman four
+persons off&mdash;what was he? Would he be a subject, or was his face only
+the legible door-plate of his identity, burnished with punctual washing
+and shaving&mdash;the least thing that was decent that you would know him by?</p>
+
+<p>This face arrested Oliver Lyon: it struck him at first as very handsome.
+The gentleman might still be called young, and his features were
+regular: he had a plentiful, fair moustache that curled up at the ends,
+a brilliant, gallant, almost adventurous air, and a big shining
+breastpin in the middle of his shirt. He appeared a fine satisfied soul,
+and Lyon perceived that wherever he rested his friendly eye there fell
+an influence as pleasant as the September sun&mdash;as if he could make
+grapes and pears or even human affection ripen by looking at them. What
+was odd in him was a certain mixture of the correct and the extravagant:
+as if he were an adventurer imitating a gentleman with rare perfection
+or a gentleman who had taken a fancy to go about with hidden arms. He
+might have been a dethroned prince or the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>war-correspondent of a
+newspaper: he represented both enterprise and tradition, good manners
+and bad taste. Lyon at length fell into conversation with the lady
+beside him&mdash;they dispensed, as he had had to dispense at dinner-parties
+before, with an introduction&mdash;by asking who this personage might be.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, he's Colonel Capadose, don't you know?' Lyon didn't know and he
+asked for further information. His neighbour had a sociable manner and
+evidently was accustomed to quick transitions; she turned from her other
+interlocutor with a methodical air, as a good cook lifts the cover of
+the next saucepan. 'He has been a great deal in India&mdash;isn't he rather
+celebrated?' she inquired. Lyon confessed he had never heard of him, and
+she went on, 'Well, perhaps he isn't; but he says he is, and if you
+think it, that's just the same, isn't it?'</p>
+
+<p>'If <i>you</i> think it?'</p>
+
+<p>'I mean if he thinks it&mdash;that's just as good, I suppose.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you mean that he says that which is not?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh dear, no&mdash;because I never know. He is exceedingly clever and
+amusing&mdash;quite the cleverest person in the house, unless indeed you are
+more so. But that I can't tell yet, can I? I only know about the people
+I know; I think that's celebrity enough!'</p>
+
+<p>'Enough for them?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I see you're clever. Enough for me! But I have heard of you,' the
+lady went on. 'I know your pictures; I admire them. But I don't think
+you look like them.'</p>
+
+<p>'They are mostly portraits,' Lyon said; 'and what I usually try for is
+not my own resemblance.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p><p>'I see what you mean. But they have much more colour. And now you are
+going to do some one here?'</p>
+
+<p>'I have been invited to do Sir David. I'm rather disappointed at not
+seeing him this evening.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, he goes to bed at some unnatural hour&mdash;eight o'clock or something
+of that sort. You know he's rather an old mummy.'</p>
+
+<p>'An old mummy?' Oliver Lyon repeated.</p>
+
+<p>'I mean he wears half a dozen waistcoats, and that sort of thing. He's
+always cold.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have never seen him and never seen any portrait or photograph of
+him,' Lyon said. 'I'm surprised at his never having had anything
+done&mdash;at their waiting all these years.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, that's because he was afraid, you know; it was a kind of
+superstition. He was sure that if anything were done he would die
+directly afterwards. He has only consented to-day.'</p>
+
+<p>'He's ready to die then?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, now he's so old he doesn't care.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I hope I shan't kill him,' said Lyon. 'It was rather unnatural in
+his son to send for me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, they have nothing to gain&mdash;everything is theirs already!' his
+companion rejoined, as if she took this speech quite literally. Her
+talkativeness was systematic&mdash;she fraternised as seriously as she might
+have played whist. 'They do as they like&mdash;they fill the house with
+people&mdash;they have <i>carte blanche</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'I see&mdash;but there's still the title.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, but what is it?'</p>
+
+<p>Our artist broke into laughter at this, whereat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> his companion stared.
+Before he had recovered himself she was scouring the plain with her
+other neighbour. The gentleman on his left at last risked an
+observation, and they had some fragmentary talk. This personage played
+his part with difficulty: he uttered a remark as a lady fires a pistol,
+looking the other way. To catch the ball Lyon had to bend his ear, and
+this movement led to his observing a handsome creature who was seated on
+the same side, beyond his interlocutor. Her profile was presented to him
+and at first he was only struck with its beauty; then it produced an
+impression still more agreeable&mdash;a sense of undimmed remembrance and
+intimate association. He had not recognised her on the instant only
+because he had so little expected to see her there; he had not seen her
+anywhere for so long, and no news of her ever came to him. She was often
+in his thoughts, but she had passed out of his life. He thought of her
+twice a week; that may be called often in relation to a person one has
+not seen for twelve years. The moment after he recognised her he felt
+how true it was that it was only she who could look like that: of the
+most charming head in the world (and this lady had it) there could never
+be a replica. She was leaning forward a little; she remained in profile,
+apparently listening to some one on the other side of her. She was
+listening, but she was also looking, and after a moment Lyon followed
+the direction of her eyes. They rested upon the gentleman who had been
+described to him as Colonel Capadose&mdash;rested, as it appeared to him,
+with a kind of habitual, visible complacency. This was not strange, for
+the Colonel was unmistakably formed to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> attract the sympathetic gaze of
+woman; but Lyon was slightly disappointed that she could let <i>him</i> look
+at her so long without giving him a glance. There was nothing between
+them to-day and he had no rights, but she must have known he was coming
+(it was of course not such a tremendous event, but she could not have
+been staying in the house without hearing of it), and it was not natural
+that that should absolutely fail to affect her.</p>
+
+<p>She was looking at Colonel Capadose as if she were in love with him&mdash;a
+queer accident for the proudest, most reserved of women. But doubtless
+it was all right, if her husband liked it or didn't notice it: he had
+heard indefinitely, years before, that she was married, and he took for
+granted (as he had not heard that she had become a widow) the presence
+of the happy man on whom she had conferred what she had refused to
+<i>him</i>, the poor art-student at Munich. Colonel Capadose appeared to be
+aware of nothing, and this circumstance, incongruously enough, rather
+irritated Lyon than gratified him. Suddenly the lady turned her head,
+showing her full face to our hero. He was so prepared with a greeting
+that he instantly smiled, as a shaken jug overflows; but she gave him no
+response, turned away again and sank back in her chair. All that her
+face said in that instant was, 'You see I'm as handsome as ever.' To
+which he mentally subjoined, 'Yes, and as much good it does me!' He
+asked the young man beside him if he knew who that beautiful being
+was&mdash;the fifth person beyond him. The young man leaned forward,
+considered and then said, 'I think she's Mrs. Capadose.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you mean his wife&mdash;that fellow's?' And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> Lyon indicated the subject
+of the information given him by his other neighbour.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, is <i>he</i> Mr. Capadose?' said the young man, who appeared very vague.
+He admitted his vagueness and explained it by saying that there were so
+many people and he had come only the day before. What was definite to
+Lyon was that Mrs. Capadose was in love with her husband; so that he
+wished more than ever that he had married her.</p>
+
+<p>'She's very faithful,' he found himself saying three minutes later to
+the lady on his right. He added that he meant Mrs. Capadose.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, you know her then?'</p>
+
+<p>'I knew her once upon a time&mdash;when I was living abroad.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why then were you asking me about her husband?'</p>
+
+<p>'Precisely for that reason. She married after that&mdash;I didn't even know
+her present name.'</p>
+
+<p>'How then do you know it now?'</p>
+
+<p>'This gentleman has just told me&mdash;he appears to know.'</p>
+
+<p>'I didn't know he knew anything,' said the lady, glancing forward.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't think he knows anything but that.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then you have found out for yourself that she is faithful. What do you
+mean by that?'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, you mustn't question me&mdash;I want to question you,' Lyon said. 'How
+do you all like her here?'</p>
+
+<p>'You ask too much! I can only speak for myself. I think she's hard.'</p>
+
+<p>'That's only because she's honest and straightforward.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span></p><p>'Do you mean I like people in proportion as they deceive?'</p>
+
+<p>'I think we all do, so long as we don't find them out,' Lyon said. 'And
+then there's something in her face&mdash;a sort of Roman type, in spite of
+her having such an English eye. In fact she's English down to the
+ground; but her complexion, her low forehead and that beautiful close
+little wave in her dark hair make her look like a glorified
+<i>contadina</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, and she always sticks pins and daggers into her head, to increase
+that effect. I must say I like her husband better: he is so clever.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, when I knew her there was no comparison that could injure her.
+She was altogether the most delightful thing in Munich.'</p>
+
+<p>'In Munich?'</p>
+
+<p>'Her people lived there; they were not rich&mdash;in pursuit of economy in
+fact, and Munich was very cheap. Her father was the younger son of some
+noble house; he had married a second time and had a lot of little mouths
+to feed. She was the child of the first wife and she didn't like her
+stepmother, but she was charming to her little brothers and sisters. I
+once made a sketch of her as Werther's Charlotte, cutting bread and
+butter while they clustered all round her. All the artists in the place
+were in love with her but she wouldn't look at 'the likes' of us. She
+was too proud&mdash;I grant you that; but she wasn't stuck up nor young
+ladyish; she was simple and frank and kind about it. She used to remind
+me of Thackeray's Ethel Newcome. She told me she must marry well: it was
+the one thing she could do for her family. I suppose you would say that
+she <i>has</i> married well.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span></p><p>'She told <i>you</i>?' smiled Lyon's neighbour.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, of course I proposed to her too. But she evidently thinks so
+herself!' he added.</p>
+
+<p>When the ladies left the table the host as usual bade the gentlemen draw
+together, so that Lyon found himself opposite to Colonel Capadose. The
+conversation was mainly about the 'run,' for it had apparently been a
+great day in the hunting-field. Most of the gentlemen communicated their
+adventures and opinions, but Colonel Capadose's pleasant voice was the
+most audible in the chorus. It was a bright and fresh but masculine
+organ, just such a voice as, to Lyon's sense, such a 'fine man' ought to
+have had. It appeared from his remarks that he was a very straight
+rider, which was also very much what Lyon would have expected. Not that
+he swaggered, for his allusions were very quietly and casually made; but
+they were all too dangerous experiments and close shaves. Lyon perceived
+after a little that the attention paid by the company to the Colonel's
+remarks was not in direct relation to the interest they seemed to offer;
+the result of which was that the speaker, who noticed that <i>he</i> at least
+was listening, began to treat him as his particular auditor and to fix
+his eyes on him as he talked. Lyon had nothing to do but to look
+sympathetic and assent&mdash;Colonel Capadose appeared to take so much
+sympathy and assent for granted. A neighbouring squire had had an
+accident; he had come a cropper in an awkward place&mdash;just at the
+finish&mdash;with consequences that looked grave. He had struck his head; he
+remained insensible, up to the last accounts: there had evidently been
+concussion of the brain. There was some exchange of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> views as to his
+recovery&mdash;how soon it would take place or whether it would take place at
+all; which led the Colonel to confide to our artist across the table
+that <i>he</i> shouldn't despair of a fellow even if he didn't come round for
+weeks&mdash;for weeks and weeks and weeks&mdash;for months, almost for years. He
+leaned forward; Lyon leaned forward to listen, and Colonel Capadose
+mentioned that he knew from personal experience that there was really no
+limit to the time one might lie unconscious without being any the worse
+for it. It had happened to him in Ireland, years before; he had been
+pitched out of a dogcart, had turned a sheer somersault and landed on
+his head. They thought he was dead, but he wasn't; they carried him
+first to the nearest cabin, where he lay for some days with the pigs,
+and then to an inn in a neighbouring town&mdash;it was a near thing they
+didn't put him under ground. He had been completely insensible&mdash;without
+a ray of recognition of any human thing&mdash;for three whole months; had not
+a glimmer of consciousness of any blessed thing. It was touch and go to
+that degree that they couldn't come near him, they couldn't feed him,
+they could scarcely look at him. Then one day he had opened his eyes&mdash;as
+fit as a flea!</p>
+
+<p>'I give you my honour it had done me good&mdash;it rested my brain.' He
+appeared to intimate that with an intelligence so active as his these
+periods of repose were providential. Lyon thought his story very
+striking, but he wanted to ask him whether he had not shammed a
+little&mdash;not in relating it, but in keeping so quiet. He hesitated
+however, in time, to imply a doubt&mdash;he was so impressed with the tone in
+which Colonel Capadose said that it was the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> turn of a hair that they
+hadn't buried him alive. That had happened to a friend of his in
+India&mdash;a fellow who was supposed to have died of jungle fever&mdash;they
+clapped him into a coffin. He was going on to recite the further fate of
+this unfortunate gentleman when Mr. Ashmore made a move and every one
+got up to adjourn to the drawing-room. Lyon noticed that by this time no
+one was heeding what his new friend said to him. They came round on
+either side of the table and met while the gentlemen dawdled before
+going out.</p>
+
+<p>'And do you mean that your friend was literally buried alive?' asked
+Lyon, in some suspense.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Capadose looked at him a moment, as if he had already lost the
+thread of the conversation. Then his face brightened&mdash;and when it
+brightened it was doubly handsome. 'Upon my soul he was chucked into the
+ground!'</p>
+
+<p>'And was he left there?'</p>
+
+<p>'He was left there till I came and hauled him out.'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>You</i> came?'</p>
+
+<p>'I dreamed about him&mdash;it's the most extraordinary story: I heard him
+calling to me in the night. I took upon myself to dig him up. You know
+there are people in India&mdash;a kind of beastly race, the ghouls&mdash;who
+violate graves. I had a sort of presentiment that they would get at him
+first. I rode straight, I can tell you; and, by Jove, a couple of them
+had just broken ground! Crack&mdash;crack, from a couple of barrels, and they
+showed me their heels, as you may believe. Would you credit that I took
+him out myself? The air brought him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> to and he was none the worse. He
+has got his pension&mdash;he came home the other day; he would do anything
+for me.'</p>
+
+<p>'He called to you in the night?' said Lyon, much startled.</p>
+
+<p>'That's the interesting point. Now <i>what was it</i>? It wasn't his ghost,
+because he wasn't dead. It wasn't himself, because he couldn't. It was
+something or other! You see India's a strange country&mdash;there's an
+element of the mysterious: the air is full of things you can't explain.'</p>
+
+<p>They passed out of the dining-room, and Colonel Capadose, who went among
+the first, was separated from Lyon; but a minute later, before they
+reached the drawing-room, he joined him again. 'Ashmore tells me who you
+are. Of course I have often heard of you&mdash;I'm very glad to make your
+acquaintance; my wife used to know you.'</p>
+
+<p>'I'm glad she remembers me. I recognised her at dinner and I was afraid
+she didn't.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, I daresay she was ashamed,' said the Colonel, with indulgent
+humour.</p>
+
+<p>'Ashamed of me?' Lyon replied, in the same key.</p>
+
+<p>'Wasn't there something about a picture? Yes; you painted her portrait.'</p>
+
+<p>'Many times,' said the artist; 'and she may very well have been ashamed
+of what I made of her.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I wasn't, my dear sir; it was the sight of that picture, which
+you were so good as to present to her, that made me first fall in love
+with her.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you mean that one with the children&mdash;cutting bread and butter?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span></p><p>'Bread and butter? Bless me, no&mdash;vine leaves and a leopard skin&mdash;a kind
+of Bacchante.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, yes,' said Lyon; 'I remember. It was the first decent portrait I
+painted. I should be curious to see it to-day.'</p>
+
+<p>'Don't ask her to show it to you&mdash;she'll be mortified!' the Colonel
+exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>'Mortified?'</p>
+
+<p>'We parted with it&mdash;in the most disinterested manner,' he laughed. 'An
+old friend of my wife's&mdash;her family had known him intimately when they
+lived in Germany&mdash;took the most extraordinary fancy to it: the Grand
+Duke of Silberstadt-Schreckenstein, don't you know? He came out to
+Bombay while we were there and he spotted your picture (you know he's
+one of the greatest collectors in Europe), and made such eyes at it
+that, upon my word&mdash;it happened to be his birthday&mdash;she told him he
+might have it, to get rid of him. He was perfectly enchanted&mdash;but we
+miss the picture.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is very good of you,' Lyon said. 'If it's in a great collection&mdash;a
+work of my incompetent youth&mdash;I am infinitely honoured.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, he has got it in one of his castles; I don't know which&mdash;you know
+he has so many. He sent us, before he left India&mdash;to return the
+compliment&mdash;a magnificent old vase.'</p>
+
+<p>'That was more than the thing was worth,' Lyon remarked.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Capadose gave no heed to this observation; he seemed to be
+thinking of something. After a moment he said, 'If you'll come and see
+us in town she'll show you the vase.' And as they passed into the
+drawing-room he gave the artist<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> a friendly propulsion. 'Go and speak to
+her; there she is&mdash;she'll be delighted.'</p>
+
+<p>Oliver Lyon took but a few steps into the wide saloon; he stood there a
+moment looking at the bright composition of the lamplit group of fair
+women, the single figures, the great setting of white and gold, the
+panels of old damask, in the centre of each of which was a single
+celebrated picture. There was a subdued lustre in the scene and an air
+as of the shining trains of dresses tumbled over the carpet. At the
+furthest end of the room sat Mrs. Capadose, rather isolated; she was on
+a small sofa, with an empty place beside her. Lyon could not flatter
+himself she had been keeping it for him; her failure to respond to his
+recognition at table contradicted that, but he felt an extreme desire to
+go and occupy it. Moreover he had her husband's sanction; so he crossed
+the room, stepping over the tails of gowns, and stood before his old
+friend.</p>
+
+<p>'I hope you don't mean to repudiate me,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>She looked up at him with an expression of unalloyed pleasure. 'I am so
+glad to see you. I was delighted when I heard you were coming.'</p>
+
+<p>'I tried to get a smile from you at dinner&mdash;but I couldn't.'</p>
+
+<p>'I didn't see&mdash;I didn't understand. Besides, I hate smirking and
+telegraphing. Also I'm very shy&mdash;you won't have forgotten that. Now we
+can communicate comfortably.' And she made a better place for him on the
+little sofa. He sat down and they had a talk that he enjoyed, while the
+reason for which he used to like her so came back to him,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> as well as a
+good deal of the very same old liking. She was still the least spoiled
+beauty he had ever seen, with an absence of coquetry or any insinuating
+art that seemed almost like an omitted faculty; there were moments when
+she struck her interlocutor as some fine creature from an asylum&mdash;a
+surprising deaf-mute or one of the operative blind. Her noble pagan head
+gave her privileges that she neglected, and when people were admiring
+her brow she was wondering whether there were a good fire in her
+bedroom. She was simple, kind and good; inexpressive but not inhuman or
+stupid. Now and again she dropped something that had a sifted, selected
+air&mdash;the sound of an impression at first hand. She had no imagination,
+but she had added up her feelings, some of her reflections, about life.
+Lyon talked of the old days in Munich, reminded her of incidents,
+pleasures and pains, asked her about her father and the others; and she
+told him in return that she was so impressed with his own fame, his
+brilliant position in the world, that she had not felt very sure he
+would speak to her or that his little sign at table was meant for her.
+This was plainly a perfectly truthful speech&mdash;she was incapable of any
+other&mdash;and he was affected by such humility on the part of a woman whose
+grand line was unique. Her father was dead; one of her brothers was in
+the navy and the other on a ranch in America; two of her sisters were
+married and the youngest was just coming out and very pretty. She didn't
+mention her stepmother. She asked him about his own personal history and
+he said that the principal thing that had happened to him was that he
+had never married.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p><p>'Oh, you ought to,' she answered. 'It's the best thing.'</p>
+
+<p>'I like that&mdash;from you!' he returned.</p>
+
+<p>'Why not from me? I am very happy.'</p>
+
+<p>'That's just why I can't be. It's cruel of you to praise your state. But
+I have had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of your husband. We
+had a good bit of talk in the other room.'</p>
+
+<p>'You must know him better&mdash;you must know him really well,' said Mrs.
+Capadose.</p>
+
+<p>'I am sure that the further you go the more you find. But he makes a
+fine show, too.'</p>
+
+<p>She rested her good gray eyes on Lyon. 'Don't you think he's handsome?'</p>
+
+<p>'Handsome and clever and entertaining. You see I'm generous.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; you must know him well,' Mrs. Capadose repeated.</p>
+
+<p>'He has seen a great deal of life,' said her companion.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, we have been in so many places. You must see my little girl. She
+is nine years old&mdash;she's too beautiful.'</p>
+
+<p>'You must bring her to my studio some day&mdash;I should like to paint her.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, don't speak of that,' said Mrs. Capadose. 'It reminds me of
+something so distressing.'</p>
+
+<p>'I hope you don't mean when <i>you</i> used to sit to me&mdash;though that may
+well have bored you.'</p>
+
+<p>'It's not what you did&mdash;it's what we have done. It's a confession I must
+make&mdash;it's a weight on my mind! I mean about that beautiful picture you
+gave me&mdash;it used to be so much admired. When you come to see me in
+London (I count on your<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> doing that very soon) I shall see you looking
+all round. I can't tell you I keep it in my own room because I love it
+so, for the simple reason&mdash;&mdash;' And she paused a moment.</p>
+
+<p>'Because you can't tell wicked lies,' said Lyon.</p>
+
+<p>'No, I can't. So before you ask for it&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I know you parted with it&mdash;the blow has already fallen,' Lyon
+interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah then, you have heard? I was sure you would! But do you know what we
+got for it? Two hundred pounds.'</p>
+
+<p>'You might have got much more,' said Lyon, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>'That seemed a great deal at the time. We were in want of the money&mdash;it
+was a good while ago, when we first married. Our means were very small
+then, but fortunately that has changed rather for the better. We had the
+chance; it really seemed a big sum, and I am afraid we jumped at it. My
+husband had expectations which have partly come into effect, so that now
+we do well enough. But meanwhile the picture went.'</p>
+
+<p>'Fortunately the original remained. But do you mean that two hundred was
+the value of the vase?' Lyon asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Of the vase?'</p>
+
+<p>'The beautiful old Indian vase&mdash;the Grand Duke's offering.'</p>
+
+<p>'The Grand Duke?'</p>
+
+<p>'What's his name?&mdash;Silberstadt-Schreckenstein. Your husband mentioned
+the transaction.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, my husband,' said Mrs. Capadose; and Lyon saw that she coloured a
+little.</p>
+
+<p>Not to add to her embarrassment, but to clear up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> the ambiguity, which
+he perceived the next moment he had better have left alone, he went on:
+'He tells me it's now in his collection.'</p>
+
+<p>'In the Grand Duke's? Ah, you know its reputation? I believe it contains
+treasures.' She was bewildered, but she recovered herself, and Lyon made
+the mental reflection that for some reason which would seem good when he
+knew it the husband and the wife had prepared different versions of the
+same incident. It was true that he did not exactly see Everina Brant
+preparing a version; that was not her line of old, and indeed it was not
+in her eyes to-day. At any rate they both had the matter too much on
+their conscience. He changed the subject, said Mrs. Capadose must really
+bring the little girl. He sat with her some time longer and
+thought&mdash;perhaps it was only a fancy&mdash;that she was rather absent, as if
+she were annoyed at their having been even for a moment at
+cross-purposes. This did not prevent him from saying to her at the last,
+just as the ladies began to gather themselves together to go to bed:
+'You seem much impressed, from what you say, with my renown and my
+prosperity, and you are so good as greatly to exaggerate them. Would you
+have married me if you had known that I was destined to success?'</p>
+
+<p>'I did know it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I didn't'</p>
+
+<p>'You were too modest.'</p>
+
+<p>'You didn't think so when I proposed to you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, if I had married you I couldn't have married <i>him</i>&mdash;and he's so
+nice,' Mrs. Capadose said. Lyon knew she thought it&mdash;he had learned that
+at dinner&mdash;but it vexed him a little to hear her say<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> it. The gentleman
+designated by the pronoun came up, amid the prolonged handshaking for
+good-night, and Mrs. Capadose remarked to her husband as she turned
+away, 'He wants to paint Amy.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, she's a charming child, a most interesting little creature,' the
+Colonel said to Lyon. 'She does the most remarkable things.'</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Capadose stopped, in the rustling procession that followed the
+hostess out of the room. 'Don't tell him, please don't,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>'Don't tell him what?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, what she does. Let him find out for himself.' And she passed on.</p>
+
+<p>'She thinks I swagger about the child&mdash;that I bore people,' said the
+Colonel. 'I hope you smoke.' He appeared ten minutes later in the
+smoking-room, in a brilliant equipment, a suit of crimson foulard
+covered with little white spots. He gratified Lyon's eye, made him feel
+that the modern age has its splendour too and its opportunities for
+costume. If his wife was an antique he was a fine specimen of the period
+of colour: he might have passed for a Venetian of the sixteenth century.
+They were a remarkable couple, Lyon thought, and as he looked at the
+Colonel standing in bright erectness before the chimney-piece while he
+emitted great smoke-puffs he did not wonder that Everina could not
+regret she had not married <i>him</i>. All the gentlemen collected at Stayes
+were not smokers and some of them had gone to bed. Colonel Capadose
+remarked that there probably would be a smallish muster, they had had
+such a hard day's work. That was the worst of a hunting-house&mdash;the men
+were so sleepy after dinner; it was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> devilish stupid for the ladies,
+even for those who hunted themselves&mdash;for women were so extraordinary,
+they never showed it. But most fellows revived under the stimulating
+influences of the smoking-room, and some of them, in this confidence,
+would turn up yet. Some of the grounds of their confidence&mdash;not all of
+them&mdash;might have been seen in a cluster of glasses and bottles on a
+table near the fire, which made the great salver and its contents
+twinkle sociably. The others lurked as yet in various improper corners
+of the minds of the most loquacious. Lyon was alone with Colonel
+Capadose for some moments before their companions, in varied
+eccentricities of uniform, straggled in, and he perceived that this
+wonderful man had but little loss of vital tissue to repair.</p>
+
+<p>They talked about the house, Lyon having noticed an oddity of
+construction in the smoking-room; and the Colonel explained that it
+consisted of two distinct parts, one of which was of very great
+antiquity. They were two complete houses in short, the old one and the
+new, each of great extent and each very fine in its way. The two formed
+together an enormous structure&mdash;Lyon must make a point of going all over
+it. The modern portion had been erected by the old man when he bought
+the property; oh yes, he had bought it, forty years before&mdash;it hadn't
+been in the family: there hadn't been any particular family for it to be
+in. He had had the good taste not to spoil the original house&mdash;he had
+not touched it beyond what was just necessary for joining it on. It was
+very curious indeed&mdash;a most irregular, rambling, mysterious pile, where
+they every now and then discovered a walled-up room or a secret
+staircase.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> To his mind it was essentially gloomy, however; even the
+modern additions, splendid as they were, failed to make it cheerful.
+There was some story about a skeleton having been found years before,
+during some repairs, under a stone slab of the floor of one of the
+passages; but the family were rather shy of its being talked about. The
+place they were in was of course in the old part, which contained after
+all some of the best rooms: he had an idea it had been the primitive
+kitchen, half modernised at some intermediate period.</p>
+
+<p>'My room is in the old part too then&mdash;I'm very glad,' Lyon said. 'It's
+very comfortable and contains all the latest conveniences, but I
+observed the depth of the recess of the door and the evident antiquity
+of the corridor and staircase&mdash;the first short one&mdash;after I came out.
+That panelled corridor is admirable; it looks as if it stretched away,
+in its brown dimness (the lamps didn't seem to me to make much
+impression on it), for half a mile.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, don't go to the end of it!' exclaimed the Colonel, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>'Does it lead to the haunted room?' Lyon asked.</p>
+
+<p>His companion looked at him a moment. 'Ah, you know about that?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, I don't speak from knowledge, only from hope. I have never had any
+luck&mdash;I have never stayed in a dangerous house. The places I go to are
+always as safe as Charing Cross. I want to see&mdash;whatever there is, the
+regular thing. <i>Is</i> there a ghost here?'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course there is&mdash;a rattling good one.'</p>
+
+<p>'And have you seen him?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, don't ask me what <i>I've</i> seen&mdash;I should tax your credulity. I don't
+like to talk of these things.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> But there are two or three as bad&mdash;that
+is, as good!&mdash;rooms as you'll find anywhere.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you mean in my corridor?' Lyon asked.</p>
+
+<p>'I believe the worst is at the far end. But you would be ill-advised to
+sleep there.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ill-advised?'</p>
+
+<p>'Until you've finished your job. You'll get letters of importance the
+next morning, and you'll take the 10.20.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you mean I will invent a pretext for running away?'</p>
+
+<p>'Unless you are braver than almost any one has ever been. They don't
+often put people to sleep there, but sometimes the house is so crowded
+that they have to. The same thing always happens&mdash;ill-concealed
+agitation at the breakfast-table and letters of the greatest importance.
+Of course it's a bachelor's room, and my wife and I are at the other end
+of the house. But we saw the comedy three days ago&mdash;the day after we got
+here. A young fellow had been put there&mdash;I forget his name&mdash;the house
+was so full; and the usual consequence followed. Letters at
+breakfast&mdash;an awfully queer face&mdash;an urgent call to town&mdash;so very sorry
+his visit was cut short. Ashmore and his wife looked at each other, and
+off the poor devil went.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, that wouldn't suit me; I must paint my picture,' said Lyon. 'But do
+they mind your speaking of it? Some people who have a good ghost are
+very proud of it, you know.'</p>
+
+<p>What answer Colonel Capadose was on the point of making to this inquiry
+our hero was not to learn, for at that moment their host had walked into
+the room accompanied by three or four gentlemen.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> Lyon was conscious
+that he was partly answered by the Colonel's not going on with the
+subject. This however on the other hand was rendered natural by the fact
+that one of the gentlemen appealed to him for an opinion on a point
+under discussion, something to do with the everlasting history of the
+day's run. To Lyon himself Mr. Ashmore began to talk, expressing his
+regret at having had so little direct conversation with him as yet. The
+topic that suggested itself was naturally that most closely connected
+with the motive of the artist's visit. Lyon remarked that it was a great
+disadvantage to him not to have had some preliminary acquaintance with
+Sir David&mdash;in most cases he found that so important. But the present
+sitter was so far advanced in life that there was doubtless no time to
+lose. 'Oh, I can tell you all about him,' said Mr. Ashmore; and for half
+an hour he told him a good deal. It was very interesting as well as very
+eulogistic, and Lyon could see that he was a very nice old man, to have
+endeared himself so to a son who was evidently not a gusher. At last he
+got up&mdash;he said he must go to bed if he wished to be fresh for his work
+in the morning. To which his host replied, 'Then you must take your
+candle; the lights are out; I don't keep my servants up.'</p>
+
+<p>In a moment Lyon had his glimmering taper in hand, and as he was leaving
+the room (he did not disturb the others with a good-night; they were
+absorbed in the lemon-squeezer and the soda-water cork) he remembered
+other occasions on which he had made his way to bed alone through a
+darkened country-house; such occasions had not been rare, for he was
+almost always the first to leave the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> smoking-room. If he had not stayed
+in houses conspicuously haunted he had, none the less (having the
+artistic temperament), sometimes found the great black halls and
+staircases rather 'creepy': there had been often a sinister effect, to
+his imagination, in the sound of his tread in the long passages or the
+way the winter moon peeped into tall windows on landings. It occurred to
+him that if houses without supernatural pretensions could look so wicked
+at night, the old corridors of Stayes would certainly give him a
+sensation. He didn't know whether the proprietors were sensitive; very
+often, as he had said to Colonel Capadose, people enjoyed the
+impeachment. What determined him to speak, with a certain sense of the
+risk, was the impression that the Colonel told queer stories. As he had
+his hand on the door he said to Arthur Ashmore, 'I hope I shan't meet
+any ghosts.'</p>
+
+<p>'Any ghosts?'</p>
+
+<p>'You ought to have some&mdash;in this fine old part.'</p>
+
+<p>'We do our best, but <i>que voulez-vous</i>?' said Mr. Ashmore. 'I don't
+think they like the hot-water pipes.'</p>
+
+<p>'They remind them too much of their own climate? But haven't you a
+haunted room&mdash;at the end of my passage?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, there are stories&mdash;we try to keep them up.'</p>
+
+<p>'I should like very much to sleep there,' Lyon said.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, you can move there to-morrow if you like.'</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps I had better wait till I have done my work.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span></p><p>'Very good; but you won't work there, you know. My father will sit to
+you in his own apartments.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, it isn't that; it's the fear of running away, like that gentleman
+three days ago.'</p>
+
+<p>'Three days ago? What gentleman?' Mr. Ashmore asked.</p>
+
+<p>'The one who got urgent letters at breakfast and fled by the 10.20. Did
+he stand more than one night?'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know what you are talking about. There was no such
+gentleman&mdash;three days ago.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, so much the better,' said Lyon, nodding good-night and departing.
+He took his course, as he remembered it, with his wavering candle, and,
+though he encountered a great many gruesome objects, safely reached the
+passage out of which his room opened. In the complete darkness it seemed
+to stretch away still further, but he followed it, for the curiosity of
+the thing, to the end. He passed several doors with the name of the room
+painted upon them, but he found nothing else. He was tempted to try the
+last door&mdash;to look into the room of evil fame; but he reflected that
+this would be indiscreet, since Colonel Capadose handled the brush&mdash;as a
+<i>raconteur</i>&mdash;with such freedom. There might be a ghost and there might
+not; but the Colonel himself, he inclined to think, was the most
+mystifying figure in the house.</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="BII" id="BII"></a>II</h2>
+
+<p>Lyon found Sir David Ashmore a capital subject and a very comfortable
+sitter into the bargain. Moreover he was a very agreeable old man,
+tremendously puckered but not in the least dim; and he wore exactly the
+furred dressing-gown that Lyon would have chosen. He was proud of his
+age but ashamed of his infirmities, which however he greatly exaggerated
+and which did not prevent him from sitting there as submissive as if
+portraiture in oils had been a branch of surgery. He demolished the
+legend of his having feared the operation would be fatal, giving an
+explanation which pleased our friend much better. He held that a
+gentleman should be painted but once in his life&mdash;that it was eager and
+fatuous to be hung up all over the place. That was good for women, who
+made a pretty wall-pattern; but the male face didn't lend itself to
+decorative repetition. The proper time for the likeness was at the last,
+when the whole man was there&mdash;you got the totality of his experience.
+Lyon could not reply that that period was not a real compendium&mdash;you had
+to allow so for leakage; for there had been no crack in Sir David's
+crystallisation. He spoke of his portrait as a plain map of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>
+country, to be consulted by his children in a case of uncertainty. A
+proper map could be drawn up only when the country had been travelled.
+He gave Lyon his mornings, till luncheon, and they talked of many
+things, not neglecting, as a stimulus to gossip, the people in the
+house. Now that he did not 'go out,' as he said, he saw much less of the
+visitors at Stayes: people came and went whom he knew nothing about, and
+he liked to hear Lyon describe them. The artist sketched with a fine
+point and did not caricature, and it usually befell that when Sir David
+did not know the sons and daughters he had known the fathers and
+mothers. He was one of those terrible old gentlemen who are a repository
+of antecedents. But in the case of the Capadose family, at whom they
+arrived by an easy stage, his knowledge embraced two, or even three,
+generations. General Capadose was an old crony, and he remembered his
+father before him. The general was rather a smart soldier, but in
+private life of too speculative a turn&mdash;always sneaking into the City to
+put his money into some rotten thing. He married a girl who brought him
+something and they had half a dozen children. He scarcely knew what had
+become of the rest of them, except that one was in the Church and had
+found preferment&mdash;wasn't he Dean of Rockingham? Clement, the fellow who
+was at Stayes, had some military talent; he had served in the East, he
+had married a pretty girl. He had been at Eton with his son, and he used
+to come to Stayes in his holidays. Lately, coming back to England, he
+had turned up with his wife again; that was before he&mdash;the old man&mdash;had
+been put to grass. He was a taking dog, but he had a monstrous foible.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span></p><p>'A monstrous foible?' said Lyon.</p>
+
+<p>'He's a thumping liar.'</p>
+
+<p>Lyon's brush stopped short, while he repeated, for somehow the formula
+startled him, 'A thumping liar?'</p>
+
+<p>'You are very lucky not to have found it out.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I confess I have noticed a romantic tinge&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, it isn't always romantic. He'll lie about the time of day, about
+the name of his hatter. It appears there are people like that.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, they are precious scoundrels,' Lyon declared, his voice trembling
+a little with the thought of what Everina Brant had done with herself.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, not always,' said the old man. 'This fellow isn't in the least a
+scoundrel. There is no harm in him and no bad intention; he doesn't
+steal nor cheat nor gamble nor drink; he's very kind&mdash;he sticks to his
+wife, is fond of his children. He simply can't give you a straight
+answer.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then everything he told me last night, I suppose, was mendacious: he
+delivered himself of a series of the stiffest statements. They stuck,
+when I tried to swallow them, but I never thought of so simple an
+explanation.'</p>
+
+<p>'No doubt he was in the vein,' Sir David went on. 'It's a natural
+peculiarity&mdash;as you might limp or stutter or be left-handed. I believe
+it comes and goes, like intermittent fever. My son tells me that his
+friends usually understand it and don't haul him up&mdash;for the sake of his
+wife.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, his wife&mdash;his wife!' Lyon murmured, painting fast.</p>
+
+<p>'I daresay she's used to it.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span></p><p>'Never in the world, Sir David. How can she be used to it?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, my dear sir, when a woman's fond!&mdash;And don't they mostly handle
+the long bow themselves? They are connoisseurs&mdash;they have a sympathy for
+a fellow-performer.'</p>
+
+<p>Lyon was silent a moment; he had no ground for denying that Mrs.
+Capadose was attached to her husband. But after a little he rejoined:
+'Oh, not this one! I knew her years ago&mdash;before her marriage; knew her
+well and admired her. She was as clear as a bell.'</p>
+
+<p>'I like her very much,' Sir David said, 'but I have seen her back him
+up.'</p>
+
+<p>Lyon considered Sir David for a moment, not in the light of a model.
+'Are you very sure?'</p>
+
+<p>The old man hesitated; then he answered, smiling, 'You're in love with
+her.'</p>
+
+<p>'Very likely. God knows I used to be!'</p>
+
+<p>'She must help him out&mdash;she can't expose him.'</p>
+
+<p>'She can hold her tongue,' Lyon remarked.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, before you probably she will.'</p>
+
+<p>'That's what I am curious to see.' And Lyon added, privately, 'Mercy on
+us, what he must have made of her!' He kept this reflection to himself,
+for he considered that he had sufficiently betrayed his state of mind
+with regard to Mrs. Capadose. None the less it occupied him now
+immensely, the question of how such a woman would arrange herself in
+such a predicament. He watched her with an interest deeply quickened
+when he mingled with the company; he had had his own troubles in life,
+but he had rarely been so anxious about anything as he was now to see
+what the loyalty of a wife and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> infection of an example would have
+made of an absolutely truthful mind. Oh, he held it as immutably
+established that whatever other women might be prone to do she, of old,
+had been perfectly incapable of a deviation. Even if she had not been
+too simple to deceive she would have been too proud; and if she had not
+had too much conscience she would have had too little eagerness. It was
+the last thing she would have endured or condoned&mdash;the particular thing
+she would not have forgiven. Did she sit in torment while her husband
+turned his somersaults, or was she now too so perverse that she thought
+it a fine thing to be striking at the expense of one's honour? It would
+have taken a wondrous alchemy&mdash;working backwards, as it were&mdash;to produce
+this latter result. Besides these two alternatives (that she suffered
+tortures in silence and that she was so much in love that her husband's
+humiliating idiosyncrasy seemed to her only an added richness&mdash;a proof
+of life and talent), there was still the possibility that she had not
+found him out, that she took his false pieces at his own valuation. A
+little reflection rendered this hypothesis untenable; it was too evident
+that the account he gave of things must repeatedly have contradicted her
+own knowledge. Within an hour or two of his meeting them Lyon had seen
+her confronted with that perfectly gratuitous invention about the profit
+they had made off his early picture. Even then indeed she had not, so
+far as he could see, smarted, and&mdash;but for the present he could only
+contemplate the case.</p>
+
+<p>Even if it had not been interfused, through his uneradicated tenderness
+for Mrs. Capadose, with an element of suspense, the question would still
+have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> presented itself to him as a very curious problem, for he had not
+painted portraits during so many years without becoming something of a
+psychologist. His inquiry was limited for the moment to the opportunity
+that the following three days might yield, as the Colonel and his wife
+were going on to another house. It fixed itself largely of course upon
+the Colonel too&mdash;this gentleman was such a rare anomaly. Moreover it had
+to go on very quickly. Lyon was too scrupulous to ask other people what
+they thought of the business&mdash;he was too afraid of exposing the woman he
+once had loved. It was probable also that light would come to him from
+the talk of the rest of the company: the Colonel's queer habit, both as
+it affected his own situation and as it affected his wife, would be a
+familiar theme in any house in which he was in the habit of staying.
+Lyon had not observed in the circles in which he visited any marked
+abstention from comment on the singularities of their members. It
+interfered with his progress that the Colonel hunted all day, while he
+plied his brushes and chatted with Sir David; but a Sunday intervened
+and that partly made it up. Mrs. Capadose fortunately did not hunt, and
+when his work was over she was not inaccessible. He took a couple of
+longish walks with her (she was fond of that), and beguiled her at tea
+into a friendly nook in the hall. Regard her as he might he could not
+make out to himself that she was consumed by a hidden shame; the sense
+of being married to a man whose word had no worth was not, in her
+spirit, so far as he could guess, the canker within the rose. Her mind
+appeared to have nothing on it but its own placid frankness, and when he
+looked into her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> eyes (deeply, as he occasionally permitted himself to
+do), they had no uncomfortable consciousness. He talked to her again and
+still again of the dear old days&mdash;reminded her of things that he had not
+(before this reunion) the least idea that he remembered. Then he spoke
+to her of her husband, praised his appearance, his talent for
+conversation, professed to have felt a quick friendship for him and
+asked (with an inward audacity at which he trembled a little) what
+manner of man he was. 'What manner?' said Mrs. Capadose. 'Dear me, how
+can one describe one's husband? I like him very much.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, you have told me that already!' Lyon exclaimed, with exaggerated
+ruefulness.</p>
+
+<p>'Then why do you ask me again?' She added in a moment, as if she were so
+happy that she could afford to take pity on him, 'He is everything
+that's good and kind. He's a soldier&mdash;and a gentleman&mdash;and a dear! He
+hasn't a fault. And he has great ability.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; he strikes one as having great ability. But of course I can't
+think him a dear.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't care what you think him!' said Mrs. Capadose, looking, it
+seemed to him, as she smiled, handsomer than he had ever seen her. She
+was either deeply cynical or still more deeply impenetrable, and he had
+little prospect of winning from her the intimation that he longed
+for&mdash;some hint that it had come over her that after all she had better
+have married a man who was not a by-word for the most contemptible, the
+least heroic, of vices. Had she not seen&mdash;had she not felt&mdash;the smile go
+round when her husband executed some especially characteristic
+conversational caper? How could a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> woman of her quality endure that day
+after day, year after year, except by her quality's altering? But he
+would believe in the alteration only when he should have heard <i>her</i>
+lie. He was fascinated by his problem and yet half exasperated, and he
+asked himself all kinds of questions. Did she not lie, after all, when
+she let his falsehoods pass without a protest? Was not her life a
+perpetual complicity, and did she not aid and abet him by the simple
+fact that she was not disgusted with him? Then again perhaps she <i>was</i>
+disgusted and it was the mere desperation of her pride that had given
+her an inscrutable mask. Perhaps she protested in private, passionately;
+perhaps every night, in their own apartments, after the day's hideous
+performance, she made him the most scorching scene. But if such scenes
+were of no avail and he took no more trouble to cure himself, how could
+she regard him, and after so many years of marriage too, with the
+perfectly artless complacency that Lyon had surprised in her in the
+course of the first day's dinner? If our friend had not been in love
+with her he could have taken the diverting view of the Colonel's
+delinquencies; but as it was they turned to the tragical in his mind,
+even while he had a sense that his solicitude might also have been
+laughed at.</p>
+
+<p>The observation of these three days showed him that if Capadose was an
+abundant he was not a malignant liar and that his fine faculty exercised
+itself mainly on subjects of small direct importance. 'He is the liar
+platonic,' he said to himself; 'he is disinterested, he doesn't operate
+with a hope of gain or with a desire to injure. It is art for art and he
+is prompted by the love of beauty. He has an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> inner vision of what might
+have been, of what ought to be, and he helps on the good cause by the
+simple substitution of a <i>nuance</i>. He paints, as it were, and so do I!'
+His manifestations had a considerable variety, but a family likeness ran
+through them, which consisted mainly of their singular futility. It was
+this that made them offensive; they encumbered the field of
+conversation, took up valuable space, converted it into a sort of
+brilliant sun-shot fog. For a fib told under pressure a convenient place
+can usually be found, as for a person who presents himself with an
+author's order at the first night of a play. But the supererogatory lie
+is the gentleman without a voucher or a ticket who accommodates himself
+with a stool in the passage.</p>
+
+<p>In one particular Lyon acquitted his successful rival; it had puzzled
+him that irrepressible as he was he had not got into a mess in the
+service. But he perceived that he respected the service&mdash;that august
+institution was sacred from his depredations. Moreover though there was
+a great deal of swagger in his talk it was, oddly enough, rarely swagger
+about his military exploits. He had a passion for the chase, he had
+followed it in far countries and some of his finest flowers were
+reminiscences of lonely danger and escape. The more solitary the scene
+the bigger of course the flower. A new acquaintance, with the Colonel,
+always received the tribute of a bouquet: that generalisation Lyon very
+promptly made. And this extraordinary man had inconsistencies and
+unexpected lapses&mdash;lapses into flat veracity. Lyon recognised what Sir
+David had told him, that his aberrations came in fits or periods&mdash;that
+he would sometimes keep the truce of God<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> for a month at a time. The
+muse breathed upon him at her pleasure; she often left him alone. He
+would neglect the finest openings and then set sail in the teeth of the
+breeze. As a general thing he affirmed the false rather than denied the
+true; yet this proportion was sometimes strikingly reversed. Very often
+he joined in the laugh against himself&mdash;he admitted that he was trying
+it on and that a good many of his anecdotes had an experimental
+character. Still he never completely retracted nor retreated&mdash;he dived
+and came up in another place. Lyon divined that he was capable at
+intervals of defending his position with violence, but only when it was
+a very bad one. Then he might easily be dangerous&mdash;then he would hit out
+and become calumnious. Such occasions would test his wife's
+equanimity&mdash;Lyon would have liked to see her there. In the smoking-room
+and elsewhere the company, so far as it was composed of his familiars,
+had an hilarious protest always at hand; but among the men who had known
+him long his rich tone was an old story, so old that they had ceased to
+talk about it, and Lyon did not care, as I have said, to elicit the
+judgment of those who might have shared his own surprise.</p>
+
+<p>The oddest thing of all was that neither surprise nor familiarity
+prevented the Colonel's being liked; his largest drafts on a sceptical
+attention passed for an overflow of life and gaiety&mdash;almost of good
+looks. He was fond of portraying his bravery and used a very big brush,
+and yet he was unmistakably brave. He was a capital rider and shot, in
+spite of his fund of anecdote illustrating these accomplishments: in
+short he was very nearly as clever and his career<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> had been very nearly
+as wonderful as he pretended. His best quality however remained that
+indiscriminate sociability which took interest and credulity for granted
+and about which he bragged least. It made him cheap, it made him even in
+a manner vulgar; but it was so contagious that his listener was more or
+less on his side as against the probabilities. It was a private
+reflection of Oliver Lyon's that he not only lied but made one feel
+one's self a bit of a liar, even (or especially) if one contradicted
+him. In the evening, at dinner and afterwards, our friend watched his
+wife's face to see if some faint shade or spasm never passed over it.
+But she showed nothing, and the wonder was that when he spoke she almost
+always listened. That was her pride: she wished not to be even suspected
+of not facing the music. Lyon had none the less an importunate vision of
+a veiled figure coming the next day in the dusk to certain places to
+repair the Colonel's ravages, as the relatives of kleptomaniacs
+punctually call at the shops that have suffered from their pilferings.</p>
+
+<p>'I must apologise, of course it wasn't true, I hope no harm is done, it
+is only his incorrigible&mdash;&mdash;' Oh, to hear that woman's voice in that
+deep abasement! Lyon had no nefarious plan, no conscious wish to
+practise upon her shame or her loyalty; but he did say to himself that
+he should like to bring her round to feel that there would have been
+more dignity in a union with a certain other person. He even dreamed of
+the hour when, with a burning face, she would ask <i>him</i> not to take it
+up. Then he should be almost consoled&mdash;he would be magnanimous.</p>
+
+<p>Lyon finished his picture and took his departure,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> after having worked
+in a glow of interest which made him believe in his success, until he
+found he had pleased every one, especially Mr. and Mrs. Ashmore, when he
+began to be sceptical. The party at any rate changed: Colonel and Mrs.
+Capadose went their way. He was able to say to himself however that his
+separation from the lady was not so much an end as a beginning, and he
+called on her soon after his return to town. She had told him the hours
+she was at home&mdash;she seemed to like him. If she liked him why had she
+not married him or at any rate why was she not sorry she had not? If she
+was sorry she concealed it too well. Lyon's curiosity on this point may
+strike the reader as fatuous, but something must be allowed to a
+disappointed man. He did not ask much after all; not that she should
+love him to-day or that she should allow him to tell her that he loved
+her, but only that she should give him some sign she was sorry. Instead
+of this, for the present, she contented herself with exhibiting her
+little daughter to him. The child was beautiful and had the prettiest
+eyes of innocence he had ever seen: which did not prevent him from
+wondering whether she told horrid fibs. This idea gave him much
+entertainment&mdash;the picture of the anxiety with which her mother would
+watch as she grew older for the symptoms of heredity. That was a nice
+occupation for Everina Brant! Did she lie to the child herself, about
+her father&mdash;was that necessary, when she pressed her daughter to her
+bosom, to cover up his tracks? Did he control himself before the little
+girl&mdash;so that she might not hear him say things she knew to be other
+than he said? Lyon doubted this: his genius would be too<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> strong for
+him, and the only safety for the child would be in her being too stupid
+to analyse. One couldn't judge yet&mdash;she was too young. If she should
+grow up clever she would be sure to tread in his steps&mdash;a delightful
+improvement in her mother's situation! Her little face was not shifty,
+but neither was her father's big one: so that proved nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Lyon reminded his friends more than once of their promise that Amy
+should sit to him, and it was only a question of his leisure. The desire
+grew in him to paint the Colonel also&mdash;an operation from which he
+promised himself a rich private satisfaction. He would draw him out, he
+would set him up in that totality about which he had talked with Sir
+David, and none but the initiated would know. They, however, would rank
+the picture high, and it would be indeed six rows deep&mdash;a masterpiece of
+subtle characterisation, of legitimate treachery. He had dreamed for
+years of producing something which should bear the stamp of the
+psychologist as well as of the painter, and here at last was his
+subject. It was a pity it was not better, but that was not <i>his</i> fault.
+It was his impression that already no one drew the Colonel out more than
+he, and he did it not only by instinct but on a plan. There were moments
+when he was almost frightened at the success of his plan&mdash;the poor
+gentleman went so terribly far. He would pull up some day, look at Lyon
+between the eyes&mdash;guess he was being played upon&mdash;which would lead to
+his wife's guessing it also. Not that Lyon cared much for that however,
+so long as she failed to suppose (as she must) that she was a part of
+his joke. He formed such a habit now of going to see her of a Sunday
+afternoon that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> he was angry when she went out of town. This occurred
+often, as the couple were great visitors and the Colonel was always
+looking for sport, which he liked best when it could be had at other
+people's expense. Lyon would have supposed that this sort of life was
+particularly little to her taste, for he had an idea that it was in
+country-houses that her husband came out strongest. To let him go off
+without her, not to see him expose himself&mdash;that ought properly to have
+been a relief and a luxury to her. She told Lyon in fact that she
+preferred staying at home; but she neglected to say it was because in
+other people's houses she was on the rack: the reason she gave was that
+she liked so to be with the child. It was not perhaps criminal to draw
+such a bow, but it was vulgar: poor Lyon was delighted when he arrived
+at that formula. Certainly some day too he would cross the line&mdash;he
+would become a noxious animal. Yes, in the meantime he was vulgar, in
+spite of his talents, his fine person, his impunity. Twice, by
+exception, toward the end of the winter, when he left town for a few
+days' hunting, his wife remained at home. Lyon had not yet reached the
+point of asking himself whether the desire not to miss two of his visits
+had something to do with her immobility. That inquiry would perhaps have
+been more in place later, when he began to paint the child and she
+always came with her. But it was not in her to give the wrong name, to
+pretend, and Lyon could see that she had the maternal passion, in spite
+of the bad blood in the little girl's veins.</p>
+
+<p>She came inveterately, though Lyon multiplied the sittings: Amy was
+never entrusted to the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>governess or the maid. He had knocked off poor
+old Sir David in ten days, but the portrait of the simple-faced child
+bade fair to stretch over into the following year. He asked for sitting
+after sitting, and it would have struck any one who might have witnessed
+the affair that he was wearing the little girl out. He knew better
+however and Mrs. Capadose also knew: they were present together at the
+long intermissions he gave her, when she left her pose and roamed about
+the great studio, amusing herself with its curiosities, playing with the
+old draperies and costumes, having unlimited leave to handle. Then her
+mother and Mr. Lyon sat and talked; he laid aside his brushes and leaned
+back in his chair; he always gave her tea. What Mrs. Capadose did not
+know was the way that during these weeks he neglected other orders:
+women have no faculty of imagination with regard to a man's work beyond
+a vague idea that it doesn't matter. In fact Lyon put off everything and
+made several celebrities wait. There were half-hours of silence, when he
+plied his brushes, during which he was mainly conscious that Everina was
+sitting there. She easily fell into that if he did not insist on
+talking, and she was not embarrassed nor bored by it. Sometimes she took
+up a book&mdash;there were plenty of them about; sometimes, a little way off,
+in her chair, she watched his progress (though without in the least
+advising or correcting), as if she cared for every stroke that
+represented her daughter. These strokes were occasionally a little wild;
+he was thinking so much more of his heart than of his hand. He was not
+more embarrassed than she was, but he was agitated: it was as if in the
+sittings (for the child, too, was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> beautifully quiet) something was
+growing between them or had already grown&mdash;a tacit confidence, an
+inexpressible secret. He felt it that way; but after all he could not be
+sure that she did. What he wanted her to do for him was very little; it
+was not even to confess that she was unhappy. He would be
+superabundantly gratified if she should simply let him know, even by a
+silent sign, that she recognised that with him her life would have been
+finer. Sometimes he guessed&mdash;his presumption went so far&mdash;that he might
+see this sign in her contentedly sitting there.</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="BIII" id="BIII"></a>III</h2>
+
+<p>At last he broached the question of painting the Colonel: it was now
+very late in the season&mdash;there would be little time before the general
+dispersal. He said they must make the most of it; the great thing was to
+begin; then in the autumn, with the resumption of their London life,
+they could go forward. Mrs. Capadose objected to this that she really
+could not consent to accept another present of such value. Lyon had
+given her the portrait of herself of old, and he had seen what they had
+had the indelicacy to do with it. Now he had offered her this beautiful
+memorial of the child&mdash;beautiful it would evidently be when it was
+finished, if he could ever satisfy himself; a precious possession which
+they would cherish for ever. But his generosity must stop there&mdash;they
+couldn't be so tremendously 'beholden' to him. They couldn't order the
+picture&mdash;of course he would understand that, without her explaining: it
+was a luxury beyond their reach, for they knew the great prices he
+received. Besides, what had they ever done&mdash;what above all had <i>she</i>
+ever done, that he should overload them with benefits? No, he was too
+dreadfully good; it was really impossible that Clement should sit. Lyon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span>
+listened to her without protest, without interruption, while he bent
+forward at his work, and at last he said: 'Well, if you won't take it
+why not let him sit for me for my own pleasure and profit? Let it be a
+favour, a service I ask of him. It will do me a lot of good to paint him
+and the picture will remain in my hands.'</p>
+
+<p>'How will it do you a lot of good?' Mrs. Capadose asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, he's such a rare model&mdash;such an interesting subject. He has such
+an expressive face. It will teach me no end of things.'</p>
+
+<p>'Expressive of what?' said Mrs. Capadose.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, of his nature.'</p>
+
+<p>'And do you want to paint his nature?'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course I do. That's what a great portrait gives you, and I shall
+make the Colonel's a great one. It will put me up high. So you see my
+request is eminently interested.'</p>
+
+<p>'How can you be higher than you are?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I'm insatiable! Do consent,' said Lyon.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, his nature is very noble,' Mrs. Capadose remarked.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, trust me, I shall bring it out!' Lyon exclaimed, feeling a little
+ashamed of himself.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Capadose said before she went away that her husband would probably
+comply with his invitation, but she added, 'Nothing would induce me to
+let you pry into <i>me</i> that way!'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, you,' Lyon laughed&mdash;'I could do you in the dark!'</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel shortly afterwards placed his leisure at the painter's
+disposal and by the end of July had paid him several visits. Lyon was
+disappointed neither in the quality of his sitter nor in the degree<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> to
+which he himself rose to the occasion; he felt really confident that he
+should produce a fine thing. He was in the humour; he was charmed with
+his <i>motif</i> and deeply interested in his problem. The only point that
+troubled him was the idea that when he should send his picture to the
+Academy he should not be able to give the title, for the catalogue,
+simply as 'The Liar.' However, it little mattered, for he had now
+determined that this character should be perceptible even to the meanest
+intelligence&mdash;as overtopping as it had become to his own sense in the
+living man. As he saw nothing else in the Colonel to-day, so he gave
+himself up to the joy of painting nothing else. How he did it he could
+not have told you, but it seemed to him that the mystery of how to do it
+was revealed to him afresh every time he sat down to his work. It was in
+the eyes and it was in the mouth, it was in every line of the face and
+every fact of the attitude, in the indentation of the chin, in the way
+the hair was planted, the moustache was twisted, the smile came and
+went, the breath rose and fell. It was in the way he looked out at a
+bamboozled world in short&mdash;the way he would look out for ever. There
+were half a dozen portraits in Europe that Lyon rated as supreme; he
+regarded them as immortal, for they were as perfectly preserved as they
+were consummately painted. It was to this small exemplary group that he
+aspired to annex the canvas on which he was now engaged. One of the
+productions that helped to compose it was the magnificent Moroni of the
+National Gallery&mdash;the young tailor, in the white jacket, at his board
+with his shears. The Colonel was not a tailor, nor was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> Moroni's model,
+unlike many tailors, a liar; but as regards the masterly clearness with
+which the individual should be rendered his work would be on the same
+line as that. He had to a degree in which he had rarely had it before
+the satisfaction of feeling life grow and grow under his brush. The
+Colonel, as it turned out, liked to sit and he liked to talk while he
+was sitting: which was very fortunate, as his talk largely constituted
+Lyon's inspiration. Lyon put into practice that idea of drawing him out
+which he had been nursing for so many weeks: he could not possibly have
+been in a better relation to him for the purpose. He encouraged,
+beguiled, excited him, manifested an unfathomable credulity, and his
+only interruptions were when the Colonel did not respond to it. He had
+his intermissions, his hours of sterility, and then Lyon felt that the
+picture also languished. The higher his companion soared, the more
+gyrations he executed, in the blue, the better he painted; he couldn't
+make his flights long enough. He lashed him on when he flagged; his
+apprehension became great at moments that the Colonel would discover his
+game. But he never did, apparently; he basked and expanded in the fine
+steady light of the painter's attention. In this way the picture grew
+very fast; it was astonishing what a short business it was, compared
+with the little girl's. By the fifth of August it was pretty well
+finished: that was the date of the last sitting the Colonel was for the
+present able to give, as he was leaving town the next day with his wife.
+Lyon was amply content&mdash;he saw his way so clear: he should be able to do
+at his convenience what remained, with or without his friend's
+attendance. At any rate, as there was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> no hurry, he would let the thing
+stand over till his own return to London, in November, when he would
+come back to it with a fresh eye. On the Colonel's asking him if his
+wife might come and see it the next day, if she should find a
+minute&mdash;this was so greatly her desire&mdash;Lyon begged as a special favour
+that she would wait: he was so far from satisfied as yet. This was the
+repetition of a proposal Mrs. Capadose had made on the occasion of his
+last visit to her, and he had then asked for a delay&mdash;declared that he
+was by no means content. He was really delighted, and he was again a
+little ashamed of himself.</p>
+
+<p>By the fifth of August the weather was very warm, and on that day, while
+the Colonel sat straight and gossiped, Lyon opened for the sake of
+ventilation a little subsidiary door which led directly from his studio
+into the garden and sometimes served as an entrance and an exit for
+models and for visitors of the humbler sort, and as a passage for
+canvases, frames, packing-boxes and other professional gear. The main
+entrance was through the house and his own apartments, and this approach
+had the charming effect of admitting you first to a high gallery, from
+which a crooked picturesque staircase enabled you to descend to the
+wide, decorated, encumbered room. The view of this room, beneath them,
+with all its artistic ingenuities and the objects of value that Lyon had
+collected, never failed to elicit exclamations of delight from persons
+stepping into the gallery. The way from the garden was plainer and at
+once more practicable and more private. Lyon's domain, in St. John's
+Wood, was not vast, but when the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> door stood open of a summer's day it
+offered a glimpse of flowers and trees, you smelt something sweet and
+you heard the birds. On this particular morning the side-door had been
+found convenient by an unannounced visitor, a youngish woman who stood
+in the room before the Colonel perceived her and whom he perceived
+before she was noticed by his friend. She was very quiet, and she looked
+from one of the men to the other. 'Oh, dear, here's another!' Lyon
+exclaimed, as soon as his eyes rested on her. She belonged, in fact, to
+a somewhat importunate class&mdash;the model in search of employment, and she
+explained that she had ventured to come straight in, that way, because
+very often when she went to call upon gentlemen the servants played her
+tricks, turned her off and wouldn't take in her name.</p>
+
+<p>'But how did you get into the garden?' Lyon asked.</p>
+
+<p>'The gate was open, sir&mdash;the servants' gate. The butcher's cart was
+there.'</p>
+
+<p>'The butcher ought to have closed it,' said Lyon.</p>
+
+<p>'Then you don't require me, sir?' the lady continued.</p>
+
+<p>Lyon went on with his painting; he had given her a sharp look at first,
+but now his eyes lighted on her no more. The Colonel, however, examined
+her with interest. She was a person of whom you could scarcely say
+whether being young she looked old or old she looked young; she had at
+any rate evidently rounded several of the corners of life and had a face
+that was rosy but that somehow failed to suggest freshness. Nevertheless
+she was pretty and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> even looked as if at one time she might have sat for
+the complexion. She wore a hat with many feathers, a dress with many
+bugles, long black gloves, encircled with silver bracelets, and very bad
+shoes. There was something about her that was not exactly of the
+governess out of place nor completely of the actress seeking an
+engagement, but that savoured of an interrupted profession or even of a
+blighted career. She was rather soiled and tarnished, and after she had
+been in the room a few moments the air, or at any rate the nostril,
+became acquainted with a certain alcoholic waft. She was unpractised in
+the <i>h</i>, and when Lyon at last thanked her and said he didn't want
+her&mdash;he was doing nothing for which she could be useful&mdash;she replied
+with rather a wounded manner, 'Well, you know you <i>'ave</i> 'ad me!'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't remember you,' Lyon answered.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I daresay the people that saw your pictures do! I haven't much
+time, but I thought I would look in.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am much obliged to you.'</p>
+
+<p>'If ever you should require me, if you just send me a postcard&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'I never send postcards,' said Lyon.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh well, I should value a private letter! Anything to Miss Geraldine,
+Mortimer Terrace Mews, Notting 'ill&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Very good; I'll remember,' said Lyon.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Geraldine lingered. 'I thought I'd just stop, on the chance.'</p>
+
+<p>'I'm afraid I can't hold out hopes, I'm so busy with portraits,' Lyon
+continued.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; I see you are. I wish I was in the gentleman's place.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span></p><p>'I'm afraid in that case it wouldn't look like me,' said the Colonel,
+laughing.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, of course it couldn't compare&mdash;it wouldn't be so 'andsome! But I do
+hate them portraits!' Miss Geraldine declared. 'It's so much bread out
+of our mouths.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, there are many who can't paint them,' Lyon suggested,
+comfortingly.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I've sat to the very first&mdash;and only to the first! There's many
+that couldn't do anything without me.'</p>
+
+<p>'I'm glad you're in such demand.' Lyon was beginning to be bored and he
+added that he wouldn't detain her&mdash;he would send for her in case of
+need.</p>
+
+<p>'Very well; remember it's the Mews&mdash;more's the pity! You don't sit so
+well as <i>us</i>!' Miss Geraldine pursued, looking at the Colonel. 'If <i>you</i>
+should require me, sir&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'You put him out; you embarrass him,' said Lyon.</p>
+
+<p>'Embarrass him, oh gracious!' the visitor cried, with a laugh which
+diffused a fragrance. 'Perhaps <i>you</i> send postcards, eh?' she went on to
+the Colonel; and then she retreated with a wavering step. She passed out
+into the garden as she had come.</p>
+
+<p>'How very dreadful&mdash;she's drunk!' said Lyon. He was painting hard, but
+he looked up, checking himself: Miss Geraldine, in the open doorway, had
+thrust back her head.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I do hate it&mdash;that sort of thing!' she cried with an explosion of
+mirth which confirmed Lyon's declaration. And then she disappeared.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span></p><p>'What sort of thing&mdash;what does she mean?' the Colonel asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, my painting you, when I might be painting her.'</p>
+
+<p>'And have you ever painted her?'</p>
+
+<p>'Never in the world; I have never seen her. She is quite mistaken.'</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel was silent a moment; then he remarked, 'She was very
+pretty&mdash;ten years ago.'</p>
+
+<p>'I daresay, but she's quite ruined. For me the least drop too much
+spoils them; I shouldn't care for her at all.'</p>
+
+<p>'My dear fellow, she's not a model,' said the Colonel, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>'To-day, no doubt, she's not worthy of the name; but she has been one.'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Jamais de la vie!</i> That's all a pretext.'</p>
+
+<p>'A pretext?' Lyon pricked up his ears&mdash;he began to wonder what was
+coming now.</p>
+
+<p>'She didn't want you&mdash;she wanted me.'</p>
+
+<p>'I noticed she paid you some attention. What does she want of you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, to do me an ill turn. She hates me&mdash;lots of women do. She's
+watching me&mdash;she follows me.'</p>
+
+<p>Lyon leaned back in his chair&mdash;he didn't believe a word of this. He was
+all the more delighted with it and with the Colonel's bright, candid
+manner. The story had bloomed, fragrant, on the spot. 'My dear Colonel!'
+he murmured, with friendly interest and commiseration.</p>
+
+<p>'I was annoyed when she came in&mdash;but I wasn't startled,' his sitter
+continued.</p>
+
+<p>'You concealed it very well, if you were.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, when one has been through what I have!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> To-day however I confess I
+was half prepared. I have seen her hanging about&mdash;she knows my
+movements. She was near my house this morning&mdash;she must have followed
+me.'</p>
+
+<p>'But who is she then&mdash;with such a <i>toupet</i>?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, she has that,' said the Colonel; 'but as you observe she was
+primed. Still, there was a cheek, as they say, in her coming in. Oh,
+she's a bad one! She isn't a model and she never was; no doubt she has
+known some of those women and picked up their form. She had hold of a
+friend of mine ten years ago&mdash;a stupid young gander who might have been
+left to be plucked but whom I was obliged to take an interest in for
+family reasons. It's a long story&mdash;I had really forgotten all about it.
+She's thirty-seven if she's a day. I cut in and made him get rid of
+her&mdash;I sent her about her business. She knew it was me she had to thank.
+She has never forgiven me&mdash;I think she's off her head. Her name isn't
+Geraldine at all and I doubt very much if that's her address.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, what is her name?' Lyon asked, most attentive. The details always
+began to multiply, to abound, when once his companion was well
+launched&mdash;they flowed forth in battalions.</p>
+
+<p>'It's Pearson&mdash;Harriet Pearson; but she used to call herself
+Grenadine&mdash;wasn't that a rum appellation? Grenadine&mdash;Geraldine&mdash;the jump
+was easy.' Lyon was charmed with the promptitude of this response, and
+his interlocutor went on: 'I hadn't thought of her for years&mdash;I had
+quite lost sight of her. I don't know what her idea is, but practically
+she's harmless. As I came in I thought I saw her a little way up the
+road. She must have found out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> I come here and have arrived before me. I
+daresay&mdash;or rather I'm sure&mdash;she is waiting for me there now.'</p>
+
+<p>'Hadn't you better have protection?' Lyon asked, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>'The best protection is five shillings&mdash;I'm willing to go that length.
+Unless indeed she has a bottle of vitriol. But they only throw vitriol
+on the men who have deceived them, and I never deceived her&mdash;I told her
+the first time I saw her that it wouldn't do. Oh, if she's there we'll
+walk a little way together and talk it over and, as I say, I'll go as
+far as five shillings.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well,' said Lyon, 'I'll contribute another five.' He felt that this was
+little to pay for his entertainment.</p>
+
+<p>That entertainment was interrupted however for the time by the Colonel's
+departure. Lyon hoped for a letter recounting the fictive sequel; but
+apparently his brilliant sitter did not operate with the pen. At any
+rate he left town without writing; they had taken a rendezvous for three
+months later. Oliver Lyon always passed the holidays in the same way;
+during the first weeks he paid a visit to his elder brother, the happy
+possessor, in the south of England, of a rambling old house with formal
+gardens, in which he delighted, and then he went abroad&mdash;usually to
+Italy or Spain. This year he carried out his custom after taking a last
+look at his all but finished work and feeling as nearly pleased with it
+as he ever felt with the translation of the idea by the hand&mdash;always, as
+it seemed to him, a pitiful compromise. One yellow afternoon, in the
+country, as he was smoking his pipe on one of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> old terraces he was
+seized with the desire to see it again and do two or three things more
+to it: he had thought of it so often while he lounged there. The impulse
+was too strong to be dismissed, and though he expected to return to town
+in the course of another week he was unable to face the delay. To look
+at the picture for five minutes would be enough&mdash;it would clear up
+certain questions which hummed in his brain; so that the next morning,
+to give himself this luxury, he took the train for London. He sent no
+word in advance; he would lunch at his club and probably return into
+Sussex by the 5.45.</p>
+
+<p>In St. John's Wood the tide of human life flows at no time very fast,
+and in the first days of September Lyon found unmitigated emptiness in
+the straight sunny roads where the little plastered garden-walls, with
+their incommunicative doors, looked slightly Oriental. There was
+definite stillness in his own house, to which he admitted himself by his
+pass-key, having a theory that it was well sometimes to take servants
+unprepared. The good woman who was mainly in charge and who cumulated
+the functions of cook and housekeeper was, however, quickly summoned by
+his step, and (he cultivated frankness of intercourse with his
+domestics) received him without the confusion of surprise. He told her
+that she needn't mind the place being not quite straight, he had only
+come up for a few hours&mdash;he should be busy in the studio. To this she
+replied that he was just in time to see a lady and a gentleman who were
+there at the moment&mdash;they had arrived five minutes before. She had told
+them he was away from home but they said it was all right; they only
+wanted to look at a picture and would be very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> careful of everything. 'I
+hope it is all right, sir,' the housekeeper concluded. 'The gentleman
+says he's a sitter and he gave me his name&mdash;rather an odd name; I think
+it's military. The lady's a very fine lady, sir; at any rate there they
+are.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, it's all right,' Lyon said, the identity of his visitors being
+clear. The good woman couldn't know, for she usually had little to do
+with the comings and goings; his man, who showed people in and out, had
+accompanied him to the country. He was a good deal surprised at Mrs.
+Capadose's having come to see her husband's portrait when she knew that
+the artist himself wished her to forbear; but it was a familiar truth to
+him that she was a woman of a high spirit. Besides, perhaps the lady was
+not Mrs. Capadose; the Colonel might have brought some inquisitive
+friend, a person who wanted a portrait of <i>her</i> husband. What were they
+doing in town, at any rate, at that moment? Lyon made his way to the
+studio with a certain curiosity; he wondered vaguely what his friends
+were 'up to.' He pushed aside the curtain that hung in the door of
+communication&mdash;the door opening upon the gallery which it had been found
+convenient to construct at the time the studio was added to the house.
+When I say he pushed it aside I should amend my phrase; he laid his hand
+upon it, but at that moment he was arrested by a very singular sound. It
+came from the floor of the room beneath him and it startled him
+extremely, consisting apparently as it did of a passionate wail&mdash;a sort
+of smothered shriek&mdash;accompanied by a violent burst of tears. Oliver
+Lyon listened intently a moment, and then he passed out upon the
+balcony, which was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> covered with an old thick Moorish rug. His step was
+noiseless, though he had not endeavoured to make it so, and after that
+first instant he found himself profiting irresistibly by the accident of
+his not having attracted the attention of the two persons in the studio,
+who were some twenty feet below him. In truth they were so deeply and so
+strangely engaged that their unconsciousness of observation was
+explained. The scene that took place before Lyon's eyes was one of the
+most extraordinary they had ever rested upon. Delicacy and the failure
+to comprehend kept him at first from interrupting it&mdash;for what he saw
+was a woman who had thrown herself in a flood of tears on her
+companion's bosom&mdash;and these influences were succeeded after a minute
+(the minutes were very few and very short) by a definite motive which
+presently had the force to make him step back behind the curtain. I may
+add that it also had the force to make him avail himself for further
+contemplation of a crevice formed by his gathering together the two
+halves of the <i>porti&egrave;re</i>. He was perfectly aware of what he was
+about&mdash;he was for the moment an eavesdropper, a spy; but he was also
+aware that a very odd business, in which his confidence had been trifled
+with, was going forward, and that if in a measure it didn't concern him,
+in a measure it very definitely did. His observation, his reflections,
+accomplished themselves in a flash.</p>
+
+<p>His visitors were in the middle of the room; Mrs. Capadose clung to her
+husband, weeping, sobbing as if her heart would break. Her distress was
+horrible to Oliver Lyon but his astonishment was greater than his horror
+when he heard the Colonel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> respond to it by the words, vehemently
+uttered, 'Damn him, damn him, damn him!' What in the world had happened?
+Why was she sobbing and whom was he damning? What had happened, Lyon saw
+the next instant, was that the Colonel had finally rummaged out his
+unfinished portrait (he knew the corner where the artist usually placed
+it, out of the way, with its face to the wall) and had set it up before
+his wife on an empty easel. She had looked at it a few moments and
+then&mdash;apparently&mdash;what she saw in it had produced an explosion of dismay
+and resentment. She was too busy sobbing and the Colonel was too busy
+holding her and reiterating his objurgation, to look round or look up.
+The scene was so unexpected to Lyon that he could not take it, on the
+spot, as a proof of the triumph of his hand&mdash;of a tremendous hit: he
+could only wonder what on earth was the matter. The idea of the triumph
+came a little later. Yet he could see the portrait from where he stood;
+he was startled with its look of life&mdash;he had not thought it so
+masterly. Mrs. Capadose flung herself away from her husband&mdash;she dropped
+into the nearest chair, buried her face in her arms, leaning on a table.
+Her weeping suddenly ceased to be audible, but she shuddered there as if
+she were overwhelmed with anguish and shame. Her husband remained a
+moment staring at the picture; then he went to her, bent over her, took
+hold of her again, soothed her. 'What is it, darling, what the devil is
+it?' he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>Lyon heard her answer. 'It's cruel&mdash;oh, it's too cruel!'</p>
+
+<p>'Damn him&mdash;damn him&mdash;damn him!' the Colonel repeated.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span></p><p>'It's all there&mdash;it's all there!' Mrs. Capadose went on.</p>
+
+<p>'Hang it, what's all there?'</p>
+
+<p>'Everything there oughtn't to be&mdash;everything he has seen&mdash;it's too
+dreadful!'</p>
+
+<p>'Everything he has seen? Why, ain't I a good-looking fellow? He has made
+me rather handsome.'</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Capadose had sprung up again; she had darted another glance at the
+painted betrayal. 'Handsome? Hideous, hideous! Not that&mdash;never, never!'</p>
+
+<p>'Not <i>what</i>, in heaven's name?' the Colonel almost shouted. Lyon could
+see his flushed, bewildered face.</p>
+
+<p>'What he has made of you&mdash;what you know! <i>He</i> knows&mdash;he has seen. Every
+one will know&mdash;every one will see. Fancy that thing in the Academy!'</p>
+
+<p>'You're going wild, darling; but if you hate it so it needn't go.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, he'll send it&mdash;it's so good! Come away&mdash;come away!' Mrs. Capadose
+wailed, seizing her husband.</p>
+
+<p>'It's so good?' the poor man cried.</p>
+
+<p>'Come away&mdash;come away,' she only repeated; and she turned toward the
+staircase that ascended to the gallery.</p>
+
+<p>'Not that way&mdash;not through the house, in the state you're in,' Lyon
+heard the Colonel object. 'This way&mdash;we can pass,' he added; and he drew
+his wife to the small door that opened into the garden. It was bolted,
+but he pushed the bolt and opened the door. She passed out quickly, but
+he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> stood there looking back into the room. 'Wait for me a moment!' he
+cried out to her; and with an excited stride he re-entered the studio.
+He came up to the picture again, and again he stood looking at it. 'Damn
+him&mdash;damn him&mdash;damn him!' he broke out once more. It was not clear to
+Lyon whether this malediction had for its object the original or the
+painter of the portrait. The Colonel turned away and moved rapidly about
+the room, as if he were looking for something; Lyon was unable for the
+instant to guess his intention. Then the artist said to himself, below
+his breath, 'He's going to do it a harm!' His first impulse was to rush
+down and stop him; but he paused, with the sound of Everina Brant's sobs
+still in his ears. The Colonel found what he was looking for&mdash;found it
+among some odds and ends on a small table and rushed back with it to the
+easel. At one and the same moment Lyon perceived that the object he had
+seized was a small Eastern dagger and that he had plunged it into the
+canvas. He seemed animated by a sudden fury, for with extreme vigour of
+hand he dragged the instrument down (Lyon knew it to have no very fine
+edge) making a long, abominable gash. Then he plucked it out and dashed
+it again several times into the face of the likeness, exactly as if he
+were stabbing a human victim: it had the oddest effect&mdash;that of a sort
+of figurative suicide. In a few seconds more the Colonel had tossed the
+dagger away&mdash;he looked at it as he did so, as if he expected it to reek
+with blood&mdash;and hurried out of the place, closing the door after him.</p>
+
+<p>The strangest part of all was&mdash;as will doubtless appear&mdash;that Oliver
+Lyon made no movement to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> save his picture. But he did not feel as if he
+were losing it or cared not if he were, so much more did he feel that he
+was gaining a certitude. His old friend <i>was</i> ashamed of her husband,
+and he had made her so, and he had scored a great success, even though
+the picture had been reduced to rags. The revelation excited him so&mdash;as
+indeed the whole scene did&mdash;that when he came down the steps after the
+Colonel had gone he trembled with his happy agitation; he was dizzy and
+had to sit down a moment. The portrait had a dozen jagged wounds&mdash;the
+Colonel literally had hacked it to death. Lyon left it where it was,
+never touched it, scarcely looked at it; he only walked up and down his
+studio, still excited, for an hour. At the end of this time his good
+woman came to recommend that he should have some luncheon; there was a
+passage under the staircase from the offices.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, the lady and gentleman have gone, sir? I didn't hear them.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; they went by the garden.'</p>
+
+<p>But she had stopped, staring at the picture on the easel. 'Gracious, how
+you <i>'ave</i> served it, sir!'</p>
+
+<p>Lyon imitated the Colonel. 'Yes, I cut it up&mdash;in a fit of disgust.'</p>
+
+<p>'Mercy, after all your trouble! Because they weren't pleased, sir?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; they weren't pleased.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, they must be very grand! Blessed if I would!'</p>
+
+<p>'Have it chopped up; it will do to light fires,' Lyon said.</p>
+
+<p>He returned to the country by the 3.30 and a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> few days later passed over
+to France. During the two months that he was absent from England he
+expected something&mdash;he could hardly have said what; a manifestation of
+some sort on the Colonel's part. Wouldn't he write, wouldn't he explain,
+wouldn't he take for granted Lyon had discovered the way he had, as the
+cook said, served him and deem it only decent to take pity in some
+fashion or other on his mystification? Would he plead guilty or would he
+repudiate suspicion? The latter course would be difficult and make a
+considerable draft upon his genius, in view of the certain testimony of
+Lyon's housekeeper, who had admitted the visitors and would establish
+the connection between their presence and the violence wrought. Would
+the Colonel proffer some apology or some amends, or would any word from
+him be only a further expression of that destructive petulance which our
+friend had seen his wife so suddenly and so potently communicate to him?
+He would have either to declare that he had not touched the picture or
+to admit that he had, and in either case he would have to tell a fine
+story. Lyon was impatient for the story and, as no letter came,
+disappointed that it was not produced. His impatience however was much
+greater in respect to Mrs. Capadose's version, if version there was to
+be; for certainly that would be the real test, would show how far she
+would go for her husband, on the one side, or for him, Oliver Lyon, on
+the other. He could scarcely wait to see what line she would take;
+whether she would simply adopt the Colonel's, whatever it might be. He
+wanted to draw her out without waiting, to get an idea in advance. He
+wrote to her, to this end, from Venice, in the tone of their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>
+established friendship, asking for news, narrating his wanderings,
+hoping they should soon meet in town and not saying a word about the
+picture. Day followed day, after the time, and he received no answer;
+upon which he reflected that she couldn't trust herself to write&mdash;was
+still too much under the influence of the emotion produced by his
+'betrayal.' Her husband had espoused that emotion and she had espoused
+the action he had taken in consequence of it, and it was a complete
+rupture and everything was at an end. Lyon considered this prospect
+rather ruefully, at the same time that he thought it deplorable that
+such charming people should have put themselves so grossly in the wrong.
+He was at last cheered, though little further enlightened, by the
+arrival of a letter, brief but breathing good-humour and hinting neither
+at a grievance nor at a bad conscience. The most interesting part of it
+to Lyon was the postscript, which consisted of these words: 'I have a
+confession to make to you. We were in town for a couple of days, the 1st
+of September, and I took the occasion to defy your authority&mdash;it was
+very bad of me but I couldn't help it. I made Clement take me to your
+studio&mdash;I wanted so dreadfully to see what you had done with him, your
+wishes to the contrary notwithstanding. We made your servants let us in
+and I took a good look at the picture. It is really wonderful!'
+'Wonderful' was non-committal, but at least with this letter there was
+no rupture.</p>
+
+<p>The third day after Lyon's return to London was a Sunday, so that he
+could go and ask Mrs. Capadose for luncheon. She had given him in the
+spring a general invitation to do so and he had availed himself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> of it
+several times. These had been the occasions (before he sat to him) when
+he saw the Colonel most familiarly. Directly after the meal his host
+disappeared (he went out, as he said, to call on <i>his</i> women) and the
+second half-hour was the best, even when there were other people. Now,
+in the first days of December, Lyon had the luck to find the pair alone,
+without even Amy, who appeared but little in public. They were in the
+drawing-room, waiting for the repast to be announced, and as soon as he
+came in the Colonel broke out, 'My dear fellow, I'm delighted to see
+you! I'm so keen to begin again.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, do go on, it's so beautiful,' Mrs. Capadose said, as she gave him
+her hand.</p>
+
+<p>Lyon looked from one to the other; he didn't know what he had expected,
+but he had not expected this. 'Ah, then, you think I've got something?'</p>
+
+<p>'You've got everything,' said Mrs. Capadose, smiling from her
+golden-brown eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'She wrote you of our little crime?' her husband asked. 'She dragged me
+there&mdash;I had to go.' Lyon wondered for a moment whether he meant by
+their little crime the assault on the canvas; but the Colonel's next
+words didn't confirm this interpretation. 'You know I like to sit&mdash;it
+gives such a chance to my <i>bavardise</i>. And just now I have time.'</p>
+
+<p>'You must remember I had almost finished,' Lyon remarked.</p>
+
+<p>'So you had. More's the pity. I should like you to begin again.'</p>
+
+<p>'My dear fellow, I shall have to begin again!' said Oliver Lyon with a
+laugh, looking at Mrs. Capadose. She did not meet his eyes&mdash;she had got
+up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> to ring for luncheon. 'The picture has been smashed,' Lyon
+continued.</p>
+
+<p>'Smashed? Ah, what did you do that for?' Mrs. Capadose asked, standing
+there before him in all her clear, rich beauty. Now that she looked at
+him she was impenetrable.</p>
+
+<p>'I didn't&mdash;I found it so&mdash;with a dozen holes punched in it!'</p>
+
+<p>'I say!' cried the Colonel.</p>
+
+<p>Lyon turned his eyes to him, smiling. 'I hope <i>you</i> didn't do it?'</p>
+
+<p>'Is it ruined?' the Colonel inquired. He was as brightly true as his
+wife and he looked simply as if Lyon's question could not be serious.
+'For the love of sitting to you? My dear fellow, if I had thought of it
+I would!'</p>
+
+<p>'Nor you either?' the painter demanded of Mrs. Capadose.</p>
+
+<p>Before she had time to reply her husband had seized her arm, as if a
+highly suggestive idea had come to him. 'I say, my dear, that
+woman&mdash;that woman!'</p>
+
+<p>'That woman?' Mrs. Capadose repeated; and Lyon too wondered what woman
+he meant.</p>
+
+<p>'Don't you remember when we came out, she was at the door&mdash;or a little
+way from it? I spoke to you of her&mdash;I told you about her.
+Geraldine&mdash;Grenadine&mdash;the one who burst in that day,' he explained to
+Lyon. 'We saw her hanging about&mdash;I called Everina's attention to her.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you mean she got at my picture?'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah yes, I remember,' said Mrs. Capadose, with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>'She burst in again&mdash;she had learned the way<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span>&mdash;she was waiting for her
+chance,' the Colonel continued. 'Ah, the little brute!'</p>
+
+<p>Lyon looked down; he felt himself colouring. This was what he had been
+waiting for&mdash;the day the Colonel should wantonly sacrifice some innocent
+person. And could his wife be a party to that final atrocity? Lyon had
+reminded himself repeatedly during the previous weeks that when the
+Colonel perpetrated his misdeed she had already quitted the room; but he
+had argued none the less&mdash;it was a virtual certainty&mdash;that he had on
+rejoining her immediately made his achievement plain to her. He was in
+the flush of performance; and even if he had not mentioned what he had
+done she would have guessed it. He did not for an instant believe that
+poor Miss Geraldine had been hovering about his door, nor had the
+account given by the Colonel the summer before of his relations with
+this lady deceived him in the slightest degree. Lyon had never seen her
+before the day she planted herself in his studio; but he knew her and
+classified her as if he had made her. He was acquainted with the London
+female model in all her varieties&mdash;in every phase of her development and
+every step of her decay. When he entered his house that September
+morning just after the arrival of his two friends there had been no
+symptoms whatever, up and down the road, of Miss Geraldine's
+reappearance. That fact had been fixed in his mind by his recollecting
+the vacancy of the prospect when his cook told him that a lady and a
+gentleman were in his studio: he had wondered there was not a carriage
+nor a cab at his door. Then he had reflected that they would have come
+by the underground railway; he was close to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> the Marlborough Road
+station and he knew the Colonel, coming to his sittings, more than once
+had availed himself of that convenience. 'How in the world did she get
+in?' He addressed the question to his companions indifferently.</p>
+
+<p>'Let us go down to luncheon,' said Mrs. Capadose, passing out of the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>'We went by the garden&mdash;without troubling your servant&mdash;I wanted to show
+my wife.' Lyon followed his hostess with her husband and the Colonel
+stopped him at the top of the stairs. 'My dear fellow, I <i>can't</i> have
+been guilty of the folly of not fastening the door?'</p>
+
+<p>'I am sure I don't know, Colonel,' Lyon said as they went down. 'It was
+a very determined hand&mdash;a perfect wild-cat.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, she <i>is</i> a wild-cat&mdash;confound her! That's why I wanted to get him
+away from her.'</p>
+
+<p>'But I don't understand her motive.'</p>
+
+<p>'She's off her head&mdash;and she hates me; that was her motive.'</p>
+
+<p>'But she doesn't hate me, my dear fellow!' Lyon said, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>'She hated the picture&mdash;don't you remember she said so? The more
+portraits there are the less employment for such as her.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; but if she is not really the model she pretends to be, how can
+that hurt her?' Lyon asked.</p>
+
+<p>The inquiry baffled the Colonel an instant&mdash;but only an instant. 'Ah,
+she was in a vicious muddle! As I say, she's off her head.'</p>
+
+<p>They went into the dining-room, where Mrs. Capadose was taking her
+place. 'It's too bad, it's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> too horrid!' she said. 'You see the fates
+are against you. Providence won't let you be so disinterested&mdash;painting
+masterpieces for nothing.'</p>
+
+<p>'Did <i>you</i> see the woman?' Lyon demanded, with something like a
+sternness that he could not mitigate.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Capadose appeared not to perceive it or not to heed it if she did.
+'There was a person, not far from your door, whom Clement called my
+attention to. He told me something about her but we were going the other
+way.'</p>
+
+<p>'And do you think she did it?'</p>
+
+<p>'How can I tell? If she did she was mad, poor wretch.'</p>
+
+<p>'I should like very much to get hold of her,' said Lyon. This was a
+false statement, for he had no desire for any further conversation with
+Miss Geraldine. He had exposed his friends to himself, but he had no
+desire to expose them to any one else, least of all to themselves.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, depend upon it she will never show again. You're safe!' the Colonel
+exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>'But I remember her address&mdash;Mortimer Terrace Mews, Notting Hill.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, that's pure humbug; there isn't any such place.'</p>
+
+<p>'Lord, what a deceiver!' said Lyon.</p>
+
+<p>'Is there any one else you suspect?' the Colonel went on.</p>
+
+<p>'Not a creature.'</p>
+
+<p>'And what do your servants say?'</p>
+
+<p>'They say it wasn't <i>them</i>, and I reply that I never said it was. That's
+about the substance of our conferences.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span></p><p>'And when did they discover the havoc?'</p>
+
+<p>'They never discovered it at all. I noticed it first&mdash;when I came back.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, she could easily have stepped in,' said the Colonel. 'Don't you
+remember how she turned up that day, like the clown in the ring?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, yes; she could have done the job in three seconds, except that the
+picture wasn't out.'</p>
+
+<p>'My dear fellow, don't curse me!&mdash;but of course I dragged it out.'</p>
+
+<p>'You didn't put it back?' Lyon asked tragically.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, Clement, Clement, didn't I tell you to?' Mrs. Capadose exclaimed in
+a tone of exquisite reproach.</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel groaned, dramatically; he covered his face with his hands.
+His wife's words were for Lyon the finishing touch; they made his whole
+vision crumble&mdash;his theory that she had secretly kept herself true. Even
+to her old lover she wouldn't be so! He was sick; he couldn't eat; he
+knew that he looked very strange. He murmured something about it being
+useless to cry over spilled milk&mdash;he tried to turn the conversation to
+other things. But it was a horrid effort and he wondered whether they
+felt it as much as he. He wondered all sorts of things: whether they
+guessed he disbelieved them (that he had seen them of course they would
+never guess); whether they had arranged their story in advance or it was
+only an inspiration of the moment; whether she had resisted, protested,
+when the Colonel proposed it to her, and then had been borne down by
+him; whether in short she didn't loathe herself as she sat there. The
+cruelty, the cowardice of fastening their unholy act upon the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> wretched
+woman struck him as monstrous&mdash;no less monstrous indeed than the levity
+that could make them run the risk of her giving them, in her righteous
+indignation, the lie. Of course that risk could only exculpate her and
+not inculpate them&mdash;the probabilities protected them so perfectly; and
+what the Colonel counted on (what he would have counted upon the day he
+delivered himself, after first seeing her, at the studio, if he had
+thought about the matter then at all and not spoken from the pure
+spontaneity of his genius) was simply that Miss Geraldine had really
+vanished for ever into her native unknown. Lyon wanted so much to quit
+the subject that when after a little Mrs. Capadose said to him, 'But can
+nothing be done, can't the picture be repaired? You know they do such
+wonders in that way now,' he only replied, 'I don't know, I don't care,
+it's all over, <i>n'en parlons plus</i>!' Her hypocrisy revolted him. And
+yet, by way of plucking off the last veil of her shame, he broke out to
+her again, shortly afterward, 'And you <i>did</i> like it, really?' To which
+she returned, looking him straight in his face, without a blush, a
+pallor, an evasion, 'Oh, I loved it!' Truly her husband had trained her
+well. After that Lyon said no more and his companions forbore
+temporarily to insist, like people of tact and sympathy aware that the
+odious accident had made him sore.</p>
+
+<p>When they quitted the table the Colonel went away without coming
+upstairs; but Lyon returned to the drawing-room with his hostess,
+remarking to her however on the way that he could remain but a moment.
+He spent that moment&mdash;it prolonged itself a little&mdash;standing with her
+before the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span>chimney-piece. She neither sat down nor asked him to; her
+manner denoted that she intended to go out. Yes, her husband had trained
+her well; yet Lyon dreamed for a moment that now he was alone with her
+she would perhaps break down, retract, apologise, confide, say to him,
+'My dear old friend, forgive this hideous comedy&mdash;you understand!' And
+then how he would have loved her and pitied her, guarded her, helped her
+always! If she were not ready to do something of that sort why had she
+treated him as if he were a dear old friend; why had she let him for
+months suppose certain things&mdash;or almost; why had she come to his studio
+day after day to sit near him on the pretext of her child's portrait, as
+if she liked to think what might have been? Why had she come so near a
+tacit confession, in a word, if she was not willing to go an inch
+further? And she was not willing&mdash;she was not; he could see that as he
+lingered there. She moved about the room a little, rearranging two or
+three objects on the tables, but she did nothing more. Suddenly he said
+to her: 'Which way was she going, when you came out?'</p>
+
+<p>'She&mdash;the woman we saw?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, your husband's strange friend. It's a clew worth following.' He
+had no desire to frighten her; he only wanted to communicate the impulse
+which would make her say, 'Ah, spare me&mdash;and spare <i>him</i>! There was no
+such person.'</p>
+
+<p>Instead of this Mrs. Capadose replied, 'She was going away from us&mdash;she
+crossed the road. We were coming towards the station.'</p>
+
+<p>'And did she appear to recognise the Colonel&mdash;did she look round?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; she looked round, but I didn't notice<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> much. A hansom came along
+and we got into it. It was not till then that Clement told me who she
+was: I remember he said that she was there for no good. I suppose we
+ought to have gone back.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; you would have saved the picture.'</p>
+
+<p>For a moment she said nothing; then she smiled. 'For you, I am very
+sorry. But you must remember that I possess the original!'</p>
+
+<p>At this Lyon turned away. 'Well, I must go,' he said; and he left her
+without any other farewell and made his way out of the house. As he went
+slowly up the street the sense came back to him of that first glimpse of
+her he had had at Stayes&mdash;the way he had seen her gaze across the table
+at her husband. Lyon stopped at the corner, looking vaguely up and down.
+He would never go back&mdash;he couldn't. She was still in love with the
+Colonel&mdash;he had trained her too well.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1><a name="MRS_TEMPERLY" id="MRS_TEMPERLY"></a>MRS. TEMPERLY</h1>
+
+<h2><a name="CI" id="CI"></a>I</h2>
+
+<p>'Why, Cousin Raymond, how can you suppose? Why, she's only sixteen!'</p>
+
+<p>'She told me she was seventeen,' said the young man, as if it made a
+great difference.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, only <i>just</i>!' Mrs. Temperly replied, in the tone of graceful,
+reasonable concession.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, that's a very good age for me. I'm very young.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are old enough to know better,' the lady remarked, in her soft,
+pleasant voice, which always drew the sting from a reproach, and enabled
+you to swallow it as you would a cooked plum, without the stone. 'Why,
+she hasn't finished her education!'</p>
+
+<p>'That's just what I mean,' said her interlocutor. 'It would finish it
+beautifully for her to marry me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Have you finished yours, my dear?' Mrs. Temperly inquired. 'The way you
+young people talk about marrying!' she exclaimed, looking at the
+itinerant functionary with the long wand who touched into a flame the
+tall gas-lamp on the other side of the Fifth Avenue. The pair were
+standing, in the recess of a window, in one of the big public rooms of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>
+an immense hotel, and the October day was turning to dusk.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, would you have us leave it to the old?' Raymond asked. 'That's
+just what I think&mdash;she would be such a help to me,' he continued. 'I
+want to go back to Paris to study more. I have come home too soon. I
+don't know half enough; they know more here than I thought. So it would
+be perfectly easy, and we should all be together.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, my dear, when you do come back to Paris we will talk about it,'
+said Mrs. Temperly, turning away from the window.</p>
+
+<p>'I should like it better, Cousin Maria, if you trusted me a little
+more,' Raymond sighed, observing that she was not really giving her
+thoughts to what he said. She irritated him somehow; she was so full of
+her impending departure, of her arrangements, her last duties and
+memoranda. She was not exactly important, any more than she was humble;
+she was too conciliatory for the one and too positive for the other. But
+she bustled quietly and gave one the sense of being 'up to' everything;
+the successive steps of her enterprise were in advance perfectly clear
+to her, and he could see that her imagination (conventional as she was
+she had plenty of that faculty) had already taken up its abode on one of
+those fine <i>premiers</i> which she had never seen, but which by instinct
+she seemed to know all about, in the very best part of the quarter of
+the Champs Elys&eacute;es. If she ruffled him envy had perhaps something to do
+with it: she was to set sail on the morrow for the city of his affection
+and he was to stop in New York, where the fact that he was but half
+pleased did not alter the fact that he had his studio<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> on his hands and
+that it was a bad one (though perhaps as good as any use he should put
+it to), which no one would be in a hurry to relieve him of.</p>
+
+<p>It was easy for him to talk to Mrs. Temperly in that airy way about
+going back, but he couldn't go back unless the old gentleman gave him
+the means. He had already given him a great many things in the past, and
+with the others coming on (Marian's marriage-outfit, within three
+months, had cost literally thousands), Raymond had not at present the
+face to ask for more. He must sell some pictures first, and to sell them
+he must first paint them. It was his misfortune that he saw what he
+wanted to do so much better than he could do it. But he must really try
+and please himself&mdash;an effort that appeared more possible now that the
+idea of following Dora across the ocean had become an incentive. In
+spite of secret aspirations and even intentions, however, it was not
+encouraging to feel that he made really no impression at all on Cousin
+Maria. This certitude was so far from agreeable to him that he almost
+found it in him to drop the endearing title by which he had hitherto
+addressed her. It was only that, after all, her husband had been
+distantly related to his mother. It was not as a cousin that he was
+interested in Dora, but as something very much more intimate. I know not
+whether it occurred to him that Mrs. Temperly herself would never give
+his displeasure the benefit of dropping the affectionate form. She might
+shut her door to him altogether, but he would always be her kinsman and
+her dear. She was much addicted to these little embellishments of human
+intercourse&mdash;the friendly apostrophe and even the caressing hand&mdash;and
+there was something homely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> and cosy, a rustic, motherly <i>bonhomie</i>, in
+her use of them. She was as lavish of them as she was really careful in
+the selection of her friends.</p>
+
+<p>She stood there with her hand in her pocket, as if she were feeling for
+something; her little plain, pleasant face was presented to him with a
+musing smile, and he vaguely wondered whether she were fumbling for a
+piece of money to buy him off from wishing to marry her daughter. Such
+an idea would be quite in keeping with the disguised levity with which
+she treated his state of mind. If her levity was wrapped up in the air
+of tender solicitude for everything that related to the feelings of her
+child, that only made her failure to appreciate his suit more
+deliberate. She struck him almost as impertinent (at the same time that
+he knew this was never her intention) as she looked up at him&mdash;her tiny
+proportions always made her throw back her head and set something
+dancing in her cap&mdash;and inquired whether he had noticed if she gave two
+keys, tied together by a blue ribbon, to Susan Winkle, when that
+faithful but flurried domestic met them in the lobby. She was thinking
+only of questions of luggage, and the fact that he wished to marry Dora
+was the smallest incident in their getting off.</p>
+
+<p>'I think you ask me that only to change the subject,' he said. 'I don't
+believe that ever in your life you have been unconscious of what you
+have done with your keys.'</p>
+
+<p>'Not often, but you make me nervous,' she answered, with her patient,
+honest smile.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Cousin Maria!' the young man exclaimed, ambiguously, while Mrs.
+Temperly looked humanely at some totally uninteresting people who came<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span>
+straggling into the great hot, frescoed, velvety drawing-room, where it
+was as easy to see you were in an hotel as it was to see that, if you
+were, you were in one of the very best. Mrs. Temperly, since her
+husband's death, had passed much of her life at hotels, where she
+flattered herself that she preserved the tone of domestic life free from
+every taint and promoted the refined development of her children; but
+she selected them as well as she selected her friends. Somehow they
+became better from the very fact of her being there, and her children
+were smuggled in and out in the most extraordinary way; one never met
+them racing and whooping, as one did hundreds of others, in the lobbies.
+Her frequentation of hotels, where she paid enormous bills, was part of
+her expensive but practical way of living, and also of her theory that,
+from one week to another, she was going to Europe for a series of years
+as soon as she had wound up certain complicated affairs which had
+devolved upon her at her husband's death. If these affairs had dragged
+on it was owing to their inherent troublesomeness and implied no doubt
+of her capacity to bring them to a solution and to administer the very
+considerable fortune that Mr. Temperly had left. She used, in a
+superior, unprejudiced way, every convenience that the civilisation of
+her time offered her, and would have lived without hesitation in a
+lighthouse if this had contributed to her general scheme. She was now,
+in the interest of this scheme, preparing to use Europe, which she had
+not yet visited and with none of whose foreign tongues she was
+acquainted. This time she was certainly embarking.</p>
+
+<p>She took no notice of the discredit which her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> young friend appeared to
+throw on the idea that she had nerves, and betrayed no suspicion that he
+believed her to have them in about the same degree as a sound,
+productive Alderney cow. She only moved toward one of the numerous doors
+of the room, as if to remind him of all she had still to do before
+night. They passed together into the long, wide corridor of the hotel&mdash;a
+vista of soft carpet, numbered doors, wandering women and perpetual
+gaslight&mdash;and approached the staircase by which she must ascend again to
+her domestic duties. She counted over, serenely, for his enlightenment,
+those that were still to be performed; but he could see that everything
+would be finished by nine o'clock&mdash;the time she had fixed in advance.
+The heavy luggage was then to go to the steamer; she herself was to be
+on board, with the children and the smaller things, at eleven o'clock
+the next morning. They had thirty pieces, but this was less than they
+had when they came from California five years before. She wouldn't have
+done that again. It was true that at that time she had had Mr. Temperly
+to help: he had died, Raymond remembered, six months after the
+settlement in New York. But, on the other hand, she knew more now. It
+was one of Mrs. Temperly's amiable qualities that she admitted herself
+so candidly to be still susceptible of development. She never professed
+to be in possession of all the knowledge requisite for her career; not
+only did she let her friends know that she was always learning, but she
+appealed to them to instruct her, in a manner which was in itself an
+example.</p>
+
+<p>When Raymond said to her that he took for granted she would let him come
+down to the steamer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> for a last good-bye, she not only consented
+graciously but added that he was free to call again at the hotel in the
+evening, if he had nothing better to do. He must come between nine and
+ten; she expected several other friends&mdash;those who wished to see the
+last of them, yet didn't care to come to the ship. Then he would see all
+of them&mdash;she meant all of themselves, Dora and Effie and Tishy, and even
+Mademoiselle Bourde. She spoke exactly as if he had never approached her
+on the subject of Dora and as if Tishy, who was ten years of age, and
+Mademoiselle Bourde, who was the French governess and forty, were
+objects of no less an interest to him. He felt what a long pull he
+should have ever to get round her, and the sting of this knowledge was
+in his consciousness that Dora was really in her mother's hands. In Mrs.
+Temperly's composition there was not a hint of the bully; but none the
+less she held her children&mdash;she would hold them for ever. It was not
+simply by tenderness; but what it was by she knew best herself. Raymond
+appreciated the privilege of seeing Dora again that evening as well as
+on the morrow; yet he was so vexed with her mother that his vexation
+betrayed him into something that almost savoured of violence&mdash;a fact
+which I am ashamed to have to chronicle, as Mrs. Temperly's own urbanity
+deprived such breaches of every excuse. It may perhaps serve partly as
+an excuse for Raymond Bestwick that he was in love, or at least that he
+thought he was. Before she parted from him at the foot of the staircase
+he said to her, 'And of course, if things go as you like over there,
+Dora will marry some foreign prince.'</p>
+
+<p>She gave no sign of resenting this speech, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> she looked at him for
+the first time as if she were hesitating, as if it were not instantly
+clear to her what to say. It appeared to him, on his side, for a moment,
+that there was something strange in her hesitation, that abruptly, by an
+inspiration, she was almost making up her mind to reply that Dora's
+marriage to a prince was, considering Dora's peculiarities (he knew that
+her mother deemed her peculiar, and so did he, but that was precisely
+why he wished to marry her), so little probable that, after all, once
+such a union was out of the question, <i>he</i> might be no worse than
+another plain man. These, however, were not the words that fell from
+Mrs. Temperly's lips. Her embarrassment vanished in her clear smile. 'Do
+you know what Mr. Temperly used to say? He used to say that Dora was the
+pattern of an old maid&mdash;she would never make a choice.'</p>
+
+<p>'I hope&mdash;because that would have been too foolish&mdash;that he didn't say
+she wouldn't have a chance.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, a chance! what do you call by that fine name?' Cousin Maria
+exclaimed, laughing, as she ascended the stair.</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CII" id="CII"></a>II</h2>
+
+<p>When he came back, after dinner, she was again in one of the public
+rooms; she explained that a lot of the things for the ship were spread
+out in her own parlours: there was no space to sit down. Raymond was
+highly gratified by this fact; it offered an opportunity for strolling
+away a little with Dora, especially as, after he had been there ten
+minutes, other people began to come in. They were entertained by the
+rest, by Effie and Tishy, who was allowed to sit up a little, and by
+Mademoiselle Bourde, who besought every visitor to indicate her a remedy
+that was <i>really</i> effective against the sea&mdash;some charm, some philter,
+some potion or spell. 'Never mind, ma'm'selle, I've got a remedy,' said
+Cousin Maria, with her cheerful decision, each time; but the French
+instructress always began afresh.</p>
+
+<p>As the young man was about to be parted for an indefinite period from
+the girl whom he was ready to swear that he adored, it is clear that he
+ought to have been equally ready to swear that she was the fairest of
+her species. In point of fact, however, it was no less vivid to him than
+it had been before that he loved Dora Temperly for qualities which had
+nothing to do with straightness of nose or pinkness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> of complexion. Her
+figure was straight, and so was her character, but her nose was not, and
+Philistines and other vulgar people would have committed themselves,
+without a blush on their own flat faces, to the assertion that she was
+decidedly plain. In his artistic imagination he had analogies for her,
+drawn from legend and literature; he was perfectly aware that she struck
+many persons as silent, shy and angular, while his own version of her
+peculiarities was that she was like a figure on the <i>predella</i> of an
+early Italian painting or a medi&aelig;val maiden wandering about a lonely
+castle, with her lover gone to the Crusades. To his sense, Dora had but
+one defect&mdash;her admiration for her mother was too undiscriminating. An
+ardent young man may well be slightly vexed when he finds that a young
+lady will probably never care for him so much as she cares for her
+parent; and Raymond Bestwick had this added ground for chagrin, that
+Dora had&mdash;if she chose to take it&mdash;so good a pretext for discriminating.
+For she had nothing whatever in common with the others; she was not of
+the same stuff as Mrs. Temperly and Effie and Tishy.</p>
+
+<p>She was original and generous and uncalculating, besides being full of
+perception and taste in regard to the things <i>he</i> cared about. She knew
+nothing of conventional signs or estimates, but understood everything
+that might be said to her from an artistic point of view. She was formed
+to live in a studio, and not in a stiff drawing-room, amid upholstery
+horribly new; and moreover her eyes and her voice were both charming. It
+was only a pity she was so gentle; that is, he liked it for himself, but
+he deplored it for her mother. He considered that he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> had virtually
+given that lady his word that he would not make love to her; but his
+spirits had risen since his visit of three or four hours before. It
+seemed to him, after thinking things over more intently, that a way
+would be opened for him to return to Paris. It was not probable that in
+the interval Dora would be married off to a prince; for in the first
+place the foolish race of princes would be sure not to appreciate her,
+and in the second she would not, in this matter, simply do her mother's
+bidding&mdash;her gentleness would not go so far as that. She might remain
+single by the maternal decree, but she would not take a husband who was
+disagreeable to her. In this reasoning Raymond was obliged to shut his
+eyes very tight to the danger that some particular prince might not be
+disagreeable to her, as well as to the attraction proceeding from what
+her mother might announce that she would 'do.' He was perfectly aware
+that it was in Cousin Maria's power, and would probably be in her
+pleasure, to settle a handsome marriage-fee upon each of her daughters.
+He was equally certain that this had nothing to do with the nature of
+his own interest in the eldest, both because it was clear that Mrs.
+Temperly would do very little for <i>him</i>, and because he didn't care how
+little she did.</p>
+
+<p>Effie and Tishy sat in the circle, on the edge of rather high chairs,
+while Mademoiselle Bourde surveyed in them with complacency the results
+of her own superiority. Tishy was a child, but Effie was fifteen, and
+they were both very nice little girls, arrayed in fresh travelling
+dresses and deriving a quaintness from the fact that Tishy was already
+armed, for foreign adventures, with a smart new<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span> reticule, from which
+she could not be induced to part, and that Effie had her finger in her
+'place' in a fat red volume of <i>Murray</i>. Raymond knew that in a general
+way their mother would not have allowed them to appear in the
+drawing-room with these adjuncts, but something was to be allowed to the
+fever of anticipation. They were both pretty, with delicate features and
+blue eyes, and would grow up into worldly, conventional young ladies,
+just as Dora had not done. They looked at Mademoiselle Bourde for
+approval whenever they spoke, and, in addressing their mother
+alternately with that accomplished woman, kept their two languages
+neatly distinct.</p>
+
+<p>Raymond had but a vague idea of who the people were who had come to bid
+Cousin Maria farewell, and he had no wish for a sharper one, though she
+introduced him, very definitely, to the whole group. She might make
+light of him in her secret soul, but she would never put herself in the
+wrong by omitting the smallest form. Fortunately, however, he was not
+obliged to like all her forms, and he foresaw the day when she would
+abandon this particular one. She was not so well made up in advance
+about Paris but that it would be in reserve for her to detest the period
+when she had thought it proper to 'introduce all round.' Raymond
+detested it already, and tried to make Dora understand that he wished
+her to take a walk with him in the corridors. There was a gentleman with
+a curl on his forehead who especially displeased him; he made childish
+jokes, at which the others laughed all at once, as if they had rehearsed
+for it&mdash;jokes <i>&agrave; la port&eacute;e</i> of Effie and Tishy and mainly about them.
+These two joined in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> merriment, as if they followed perfectly, as
+indeed they might, and gave a small sigh afterward, with a little
+factitious air. Dora remained grave, almost sad; it was when she was
+different, in this way, that he felt how much he liked her. He hated, in
+general, a large ring of people who had drawn up chairs in the public
+room of an hotel: some one was sure to undertake to be funny.</p>
+
+<p>He succeeded at last in drawing Dora away; he endeavoured to give the
+movement a casual air. There was nothing peculiar, after all, in their
+walking a little in the passage; a dozen other persons were doing the
+same. The girl had the air of not suspecting in the least that he could
+have anything particular to say to her&mdash;of responding to his appeal
+simply out of her general gentleness. It was not in her companion's
+interest that her mind should be such a blank; nevertheless his
+conviction that in spite of the ministrations of Mademoiselle Bourde she
+was not falsely ingenuous made him repeat to himself that he would still
+make her his own. They took several turns in the hall, during which it
+might still have appeared to Dora Temperly that her cousin Raymond had
+nothing particular to say to her. He remarked several times that he
+should certainly turn up in Paris in the spring; but when once she had
+replied that she was very glad that subject seemed exhausted. The young
+man cared little, however; it was not a question now of making any
+declaration: he only wanted to be with her. Suddenly, when they were at
+the end of the corridor furthest removed from the room they had left, he
+said to her: 'Your mother is very strange. Why has she got such an idea
+about Paris?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span></p><p>'How do you mean, such an idea?' He had stopped, making the girl stand
+there before him.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, she thinks so much of it without having ever seen it, or really
+knowing anything. She appears to have planned out such a great life
+there.'</p>
+
+<p>'She thinks it's the best place,' Dora rejoined, with the dim smile that
+always charmed our young man.</p>
+
+<p>'The best place for what?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, to learn French.' The girl continued to smile.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you mean for her? She'll never learn it; she can't.'</p>
+
+<p>'No; for us. And other things.'</p>
+
+<p>'You know it already. And <i>you</i> know other things,' said Raymond.</p>
+
+<p>'She wants us to know them better&mdash;better than any girls know them.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know what things you mean,' exclaimed the young man, rather
+impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, we shall see,' Dora returned, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>He said nothing for a minute, at the end of which he resumed: 'I hope
+you won't be offended if I say that it seems curious your mother should
+have such aspirations&mdash;such Napoleonic plans. I mean being just a quiet
+little lady from California, who has never seen any of the kind of thing
+that she has in her head.'</p>
+
+<p>'That's just why she wants to see it, I suppose; and I don't know why
+her being from California should prevent. At any rate she wants us to
+have the best. Isn't the best taste in Paris?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; and the worst.' It made him gloomy when she defended the old lady,
+and to change the subject he asked: 'Aren't you sorry, this last night,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span>
+to leave your own country for such an indefinite time?'</p>
+
+<p>It didn't cheer him up that the girl should answer: 'Oh, I would go
+anywhere with mother!'</p>
+
+<p>'And with <i>her</i>?' Raymond demanded, sarcastically, as Mademoiselle
+Bourde came in sight, emerging from the drawing-room. She approached
+them; they met her in a moment, and she informed Dora that Mrs. Temperly
+wished her to come back and play a part of that composition of
+Saint-Saens&mdash;the last one she had been learning&mdash;for Mr. and Mrs.
+Parminter: they wanted to judge whether their daughter could manage it.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't believe she can,' said Dora, smiling; but she was moving away
+to comply when her companion detained her a moment.</p>
+
+<p>Are you going to bid me good-bye?'</p>
+
+<p>'Won't you come back to the drawing-room?'</p>
+
+<p>'I think not; I don't like it.'</p>
+
+<p>'And to mamma&mdash;you'll say nothing?' the girl went on.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, we have made our farewell; we had a special interview this
+afternoon.'</p>
+
+<p>'And you won't come to the ship in the morning?'</p>
+
+<p>Raymond hesitated a moment. 'Will Mr. and Mrs. Parminter be there?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, surely they will!' Mademoiselle Bourde declared, surveying the
+young couple with a certain tactful serenity, but standing very close to
+them, as if it might be her duty to interpose.</p>
+
+<p>'Well then, I won't come.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, good-bye then,' said the girl gently, holding out her hand.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span></p><p>'Good-bye, Dora.' He took it, while she smiled at him, but he said
+nothing more&mdash;he was so annoyed at the way Mademoiselle Bourde watched
+them. He only looked at Dora; she seemed to him beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>'My dear child&mdash;that poor Madame Parminter,' the governess murmured.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall come over very soon,' said Raymond, as his companion turned
+away.</p>
+
+<p>'That will be charming.' And she left him quickly, without looking back.</p>
+
+<p>Mademoiselle Bourde lingered&mdash;he didn't know why, unless it was to make
+him feel, with her smooth, finished French assurance, which had the
+manner of extreme benignity, that she was following him up. He sometimes
+wondered whether she copied Mrs. Temperly or whether Mrs. Temperly tried
+to copy her. Presently she said, slowly rubbing her hands and smiling at
+him:</p>
+
+<p>'You will have plenty of time. We shall be long in Paris.'</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps you will be disappointed,' Raymond suggested.</p>
+
+<p>'How can we be&mdash;unless <i>you</i> disappoint us?' asked the governess,
+sweetly.</p>
+
+<p>He left her without ceremony: the imitation was probably on the part of
+Cousin Maria.</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CIII" id="CIII"></a>III</h2>
+
+<p>'Only just ourselves,' her note had said; and he arrived, in his natural
+impatience, a few moments before the hour. He remembered his Cousin
+Maria's habitual punctuality, but when he entered the splendid <i>salon</i>
+in the quarter of the Parc Monceau&mdash;it was there that he had found her
+established&mdash;he saw that he should have it, for a little, to himself.
+This was pleasing, for he should be able to look round&mdash;there were
+admirable things to look at. Even to-day Raymond Bestwick was not sure
+that he had learned to paint, but he had no doubt of his judgment of the
+work of others, and a single glance showed him that Mrs. Temperly had
+'known enough' to select, for the adornment of her walls, half a dozen
+immensely valuable specimens of contemporary French art. Her choice of
+other objects had been equally enlightened, and he remembered what Dora
+had said to him five years before&mdash;that her mother wished them to have
+the best. Evidently, now they had got it; if five years was a long time
+for him to have delayed (with his original plan of getting off so soon)
+to come to Paris, it was a very short one for Cousin Maria to have taken
+to arrive at the highest good.</p>
+
+<p>Rather to his surprise the first person to come in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> was Effie, now so
+complete a young lady, and such a very pretty girl, that he scarcely
+would have known her. She was fair, she was graceful, she was lovely,
+and as she entered the room, blushing and smiling, with a little
+floating motion which suggested that she was in a liquid element, she
+brushed down the ribbons of a delicate Parisian <i>toilette de jeune
+fille</i>. She appeared to expect that he would be surprised, and as if to
+justify herself for being the first she said, 'Mamma told me to come;
+she knows you are here; she said I was not to wait.' More than once,
+while they conversed, during the next few moments, before any one else
+arrived, she repeated that she was acting by her mamma's directions.
+Raymond perceived that she had not only the costume but several other of
+the attributes of a <i>jeune fille</i>. They talked, I say, but with a
+certain difficulty, for Effie asked him no questions, and this made him
+feel a little stiff about thrusting information upon her. Then she was
+so pretty, so exquisite, that this by itself disconcerted him. It seemed
+to him almost that she had falsified a prophecy, instead of bringing one
+to pass. He had foretold that she would be like this; the only
+difference was that she was so much more like it. She made no inquiries
+about his arrival, his people in America, his plans; and they exchanged
+vague remarks about the pictures, quite as if they had met for the first
+time.</p>
+
+<p>When Cousin Maria came in Effie was standing in front of the fire
+fastening a bracelet, and he was at a distance gazing in silence at a
+portrait of his hostess by Bastien-Lepage. One of his apprehensions had
+been that Cousin Maria would allude ironically to the difference there
+had been between his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> threat (because it had been really almost a
+threat) of following them speedily to Paris and what had in fact
+occurred; but he saw in a moment how superficial this calculation had
+been. Besides, when had Cousin Maria ever been ironical? She treated him
+as if she had seen him last week (which did not preclude kindness), and
+only expressed her regret at having missed his visit the day before, in
+consequence of which she had immediately written to him to come and
+dine. He might have come from round the corner, instead of from New York
+and across the wintry ocean. This was a part of her 'cosiness,' her
+friendly, motherly optimism, of which, even of old, the habit had been
+never to recognise nor allude to disagreeable things; so that to-day, in
+the midst of so much that was not disagreeable, the custom would of
+course be immensely confirmed.</p>
+
+<p>Raymond was perfectly aware that it was not a pleasure, even for her,
+that, for several years past, things should have gone so ill in New York
+with his family and himself. His father's embarrassments, of which
+Marian's silly husband had been the cause and which had terminated in
+general ruin and humiliation, to say nothing of the old man's 'stroke'
+and the necessity, arising from it, for a renunciation on his own part
+of all present thoughts of leaving home again and even for a partial
+relinquishment of present work, the old man requiring so much of his
+personal attention&mdash;all this constituted an episode which could not fail
+to look sordid and dreary in the light of Mrs. Temperly's high success.
+The odour of success was in the warm, slightly heavy air, which seemed
+distilled from rare old fabrics, from brocades and tapestries, from the
+deep, mingled tones of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> pictures, the subdued radiance of cabinets
+and old porcelain and the jars of winter roses standing in soft circles
+of lamp-light. Raymond felt himself in the presence of an effect in
+regard to which he remained in ignorance of the cause&mdash;a mystery that
+required a key. Cousin Maria's success was unexplained so long as she
+simply stood there with her little familiar, comforting, upward gaze,
+talking in coaxing cadences, with exactly the same manner she had
+brought ten years ago from California, to a tall, bald, bending, smiling
+young man, evidently a foreigner, who had just come in and whose name
+Raymond had not caught from the lips of the <i>ma&icirc;tre d'h&ocirc;tel</i>. Was he
+just one of themselves&mdash;was he there for Effie, or perhaps even for
+Dora? The unexplained must preponderate till Dora came in; he found he
+counted upon her, even though in her letters (it was true that for the
+last couple of years they had come but at long intervals) she had told
+him so little about their life. She never spoke of people; she talked of
+the books she read, of the music she had heard or was studying (a whole
+page sometimes about the last concert at the Conservatoire), the new
+pictures and the manner of the different artists.</p>
+
+<p>When she entered the room three or four minutes after the arrival of the
+young foreigner, with whom her mother conversed in just the accents
+Raymond had last heard at the hotel in the Fifth Avenue (he was obliged
+to admit that she gave herself no airs; it was clear that her success
+had not gone in the least to her head); when Dora at last appeared she
+was accompanied by Mademoiselle Bourde. The presence of this lady&mdash;he
+didn't know she was still<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span> in the house&mdash;Raymond took as a sign that
+they were really dining <i>en famille</i>, so that the young man was either
+an actual or a prospective intimate. Dora shook hands first with her
+cousin, but he watched the manner of her greeting with the other visitor
+and saw that it indicated extreme friendliness&mdash;on the part of the
+latter. If there was a charming flush in her cheek as he took her hand,
+that was the remainder of the colour that had risen there as she came
+toward Raymond. It will be seen that our young man still had an eye for
+the element of fascination, as he used to regard it, in this quiet,
+dimly-shining maiden.</p>
+
+<p>He saw that Effie was the only one who had changed (Tishy remained yet
+to be judged), except that Dora really looked older, quite as much older
+as the number of years had given her a right to: there was as little
+difference in her as there was in her mother. Not that she was like her
+mother, but she was perfectly like herself. Her meeting with Raymond was
+bright, but very still; their phrases were awkward and commonplace, and
+the thing was mainly a contact of looks&mdash;conscious, embarrassed,
+indirect, but brightening every moment with old familiarities. Her
+mother appeared to pay no attention, and neither, to do her justice, did
+Mademoiselle Bourde, who, after an exchange of expressive salutations
+with Raymond began to scrutinise Effie with little admiring gestures and
+smiles. She surveyed her from head to foot; she pulled a ribbon
+straight; she was evidently a flattering governess. Cousin Maria
+explained to Cousin Raymond that they were waiting for one more
+friend&mdash;a very dear lady. 'But she lives near, and when people live near
+they are always late&mdash;haven't you noticed that?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span></p><p>'Your hotel is far away, I know, and yet you were the first,' Dora
+said, smiling to Raymond.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, even if it were round the corner I should be the first&mdash;to come to
+<i>you</i>!' the young man answered, speaking loud and clear, so that his
+words might serve as a notification to Cousin Maria that his sentiments
+were unchanged.</p>
+
+<p>'You are more French than the French,' Dora returned.</p>
+
+<p>'You say that as if you didn't like them: I hope you don't,' said
+Raymond, still with intentions in regard to his hostess.</p>
+
+<p>'We like them more and more, the more we see of them,' this lady
+interposed; but gently, impersonally, and with an air of not wishing to
+put Raymond in the wrong.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Mais j'esp&egrave;re bien!</i>' cried Mademoiselle Bourde, holding up her head
+and opening her eyes very wide. 'Such friendships as we form, and, I may
+say, as we inspire! <i>Je m'en rapporte &agrave; Effie</i>', the governess
+continued.</p>
+
+<p>'We have received immense kindness; we have established relations that
+are so pleasant for us, Cousin Raymond. We have the <i>entr&eacute;e</i> of so many
+charming homes,' Mrs. Temperly remarked.</p>
+
+<p>'But ours is the most charming of all; that I will say,' exclaimed
+Mademoiselle Bourde. 'Isn't it so, Effie?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh yes, I think it is; especially when we are expecting the Marquise,'
+Effie responded. Then she added, 'But here she comes now; I hear her
+carriage in the court.'</p>
+
+<p>The Marquise too was just one of themselves; she was a part of their
+charming home.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span></p><p>'She <i>is</i> such a love!' said Mrs. Temperly to the foreign gentleman,
+with an irrepressible movement of benevolence.</p>
+
+<p>To which Raymond heard the gentleman reply that, Ah, she was the most
+distinguished woman in France.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you know Madame de Brives?' Effie asked of Raymond, while they were
+waiting for her to come in.</p>
+
+<p>She came in at that moment, and the girl turned away quickly without an
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>'How in the world should I know her?' That was the answer he would have
+been tempted to give. He felt very much out of Cousin Maria's circle.
+The foreign gentleman fingered his moustache and looked at him sidewise.
+The Marquise was a very pretty woman, fair and slender, of middle age,
+with a smile, a complexion, a diamond necklace, of great splendour, and
+a charming manner. Her greeting to her friends was sweet and familiar,
+and was accompanied with much kissing, of a sisterly, motherly,
+daughterly kind; and yet with this expression of simple, almost homely
+sentiment there was something in her that astonished and dazzled. She
+might very well have been, as the foreign young man said, the most
+distinguished woman in France. Dora had not rushed forward to meet her
+with nearly so much <i>empressement</i> as Effie, and this gave him a chance
+to ask the former who she was. The girl replied that she was her
+mother's most intimate friend: to which he rejoined that that was not a
+description; what he wanted to know was her title to this exalted
+position.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, can't you see it? She is beautiful and she is good.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span></p><p>'I see that she is beautiful; but how can I see that she is good?'</p>
+
+<p>'Good to mamma, I mean, and to Effie and Tishy.'</p>
+
+<p>'And isn't she good to you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I don't know her so well. But I delight to look at her.'</p>
+
+<p>'Certainly, that must be a great pleasure,' said Raymond. He enjoyed it
+during dinner, which was now served, though his enjoyment was diminished
+by his not finding himself next to Dora. They sat at a small round table
+and he had at his right his Cousin Maria, whom he had taken in. On his
+left was Madame de Brives, who had the foreign gentleman for a
+neighbour. Then came Effie and Mademoiselle Bourde, and Dora was on the
+other side of her mother. Raymond regarded this as marked&mdash;a symbol of
+the fact that Cousin Maria would continue to separate them. He remained
+in ignorance of the other gentleman's identity, and remembered how he
+had prophesied at the hotel in New York that his hostess would give up
+introducing people. It was a friendly, easy little family repast, as she
+had said it would be, with just a marquise and a secretary of
+embassy&mdash;Raymond ended by guessing that the stranger was a secretary of
+embassy&mdash;thrown in. So far from interfering with the family tone Madame
+de Brives directly contributed to it. She eminently justified the
+affection in which she was held in the house; she was in the highest
+degree sociable and sympathetic, and at the same time witty (there was
+no insipidity in Madame de Brives), and was the cause of Raymond's
+making the reflection&mdash;as he had made it often in his earlier
+years&mdash;that an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> agreeable Frenchwoman is a triumph of civilisation. This
+did not prevent him from giving the Marquise no more than half of his
+attention; the rest was dedicated to Dora, who, on her side, though in
+common with Effie and Mademoiselle Bourde she bent a frequent,
+interested gaze on the splendid French lady, very often met our young
+man's eyes with mute, vague but, to his sense, none the less valuable
+intimations. It was as if she knew what was going on in his mind (it is
+true that he scarcely knew it himself), and might be trusted to clear
+things up at some convenient hour.</p>
+
+<p>Madame de Brives talked across Raymond, in excellent English, to Cousin
+Maria, but this did not prevent her from being gracious, even
+encouraging, to the young man, who was a little afraid of her and
+thought her a delightful creature. She asked him more questions about
+himself than any of them had done. Her conversation with Mrs. Temperly
+was of an intimate, domestic order, and full of social, personal
+allusions, which Raymond was unable to follow. It appeared to be
+concerned considerably with the private affairs of the old French
+<i>noblesse</i>, into whose councils&mdash;to judge by the tone of the
+Marquise&mdash;Cousin Maria had been admitted by acclamation. Every now and
+then Madame de Brives broke into French, and it was in this tongue that
+she uttered an apostrophe to her hostess: 'Oh, you, <i>ma toute-bonne</i>,
+you who have the genius of good sense!' And she appealed to Raymond to
+know if his Cousin Maria had not the genius of good sense&mdash;the wisdom of
+the ages. The old lady did not defend herself from the compliment; she
+let it pass, with her motherly, tolerant smile; nor did Raymond attempt
+to defend<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> her, for he felt the justice of his neighbour's description:
+Cousin Maria's good sense was incontestable, magnificent. She took an
+affectionate, indulgent view of most of the persons mentioned, and yet
+her tone was far from being vapid or vague. Madame de Brives usually
+remarked that they were coming very soon again to see her, she did them
+so much good. 'The freshness of your judgment&mdash;the freshness of your
+judgment!' she repeated, with a kind of glee, and she narrated that
+El&eacute;onore (a personage unknown to Raymond) had said that she was a woman
+of Plutarch. Mrs. Temperly talked a great deal about the health of their
+friends; she seemed to keep the record of the influenzas and neuralgias
+of a numerous and susceptible circle. He did not find it in him quite to
+agree&mdash;the Marquise dropping the statement into his ear at a moment when
+their hostess was making some inquiry of Mademoiselle Bourde&mdash;that she
+was a nature absolutely marvellous; but he could easily see that to
+world-worn Parisians her quiet charities of speech and manner, with
+something quaint and rustic in their form, might be restorative and
+salutary. She allowed for everything, yet she was so good, and indeed
+Madame de Brives summed this up before they left the table in saying to
+her, 'Oh, you, my dear, your success, more than any other that has ever
+taken place, has been a <i>succ&egrave;s de bont&eacute;</i>! Raymond was greatly amused at
+this idea of Cousin Maria's <i>succ&egrave;s de bont&eacute;</i>: it seemed to him
+delightfully Parisian.</p>
+
+<p>Before dinner was over she inquired of him how he had got on 'in his
+profession' since they last met, and he was too proud, or so he thought,
+to tell her anything but the simple truth, that he had not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span> got on very
+well. If he was to ask her again for Dora it would be just as he was, an
+honourable but not particularly successful man, making no show of lures
+and bribes. 'I am not a remarkably good painter,' he said. 'I judge
+myself perfectly. And then I have been handicapped at home. I have had a
+great many serious bothers and worries.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, we were so sorry to hear about your dear father.'</p>
+
+<p>The tone of these words was kind and sincere; still Raymond thought that
+in this case her <i>bont&eacute;</i> might have gone a little further. At any rate
+this was the only allusion that she made to his bothers and worries.
+Indeed, she always passed over such things lightly; she was an optimist
+for others as well as for herself, which doubtless had a great deal to
+do (Raymond indulged in the reflection) with the headway she made in a
+society tired of its own pessimism.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner, when they went into the drawing-room, the young man noted
+with complacency that this apartment, vast in itself, communicated with
+two or three others into which it would be easy to pass without
+attracting attention, the doors being replaced by old tapestries, looped
+up and offering no barrier. With pictures and curiosities all over the
+place, there were plenty of pretexts for wandering away. He lost no time
+in asking Dora whether her mother would send Mademoiselle Bourde after
+them if she were to go with him into one of the other rooms, the same
+way she had done&mdash;didn't she remember?&mdash;that last night in New York, at
+the hotel. Dora didn't admit that she remembered (she was too loyal to
+her mother for that, and Raymond foresaw that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span> this loyalty would be a
+source of irritation to him again, as it had been in the past), but he
+perceived, all the same, that she had not forgotten. She raised no
+difficulty, and a few moments later, while they stood in an adjacent
+<i>salon</i> (he had stopped to admire a bust of Effie, wonderfully living,
+slim and juvenile, the work of one of the sculptors who are the pride of
+contemporary French art), he said to her, looking about him, 'How has
+she done it so fast?'</p>
+
+<p>'Done what, Raymond?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, done everything. Collected all these wonderful things; become
+intimate with Madame de Brives and every one else; organised her
+life&mdash;the life of all of you&mdash;so brilliantly.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have never seen mamma in a hurry,' Dora replied.</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps she will be, now that I have come,' Raymond suggested,
+laughing.</p>
+
+<p>The girl hesitated a moment 'Yes, she was, to invite you&mdash;the moment she
+knew you were here.'</p>
+
+<p>'She has been most kind, and I talk like a brute. But I am liable to do
+worse&mdash;I give you notice. She won't like it any more than she did
+before, if she thinks I want to make up to you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Don't, Raymond&mdash;don't!' the girl exclaimed, gently, but with a look of
+sudden pain.</p>
+
+<p>'Don't what, Dora?&mdash;don't make up to you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Don't begin to talk of those things. There is no need. We can go on
+being friends.'</p>
+
+<p>'I will do exactly as you prescribe, and heaven forbid I should annoy
+you. But would you mind answering me a question? It is very particular,
+very intimate.' He stopped, and she only looked at him, saying nothing.
+So he went on: 'Is it an idea of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> your mother's that you should
+marry&mdash;some person here?' He gave her a chance to reply, but still she
+was silent, and he continued: 'Do you mind telling me this? Could it
+ever be an idea of your own?'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you mean some Frenchman?'</p>
+
+<p>Raymond smiled. 'Some prot&eacute;g&eacute; of Madame de Brives.'</p>
+
+<p>Then the girl simply gave a slow, sad head-shake which struck him as the
+sweetest, proudest, most suggestive thing in the world. 'Well, well,
+that's all right,' he remarked, cheerfully, and looked again a while at
+the bust, which he thought extraordinarily clever. 'And haven't <i>you</i>
+been done by one of these great fellows?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh dear no; only mamma and Effie. But Tishy is going to be, in a month
+or two. The next time you come you must see her. She remembers you
+vividly.'</p>
+
+<p>'And I remember her that last night, with her reticule. Is she always
+pretty?'</p>
+
+<p>Dora hesitated a moment. 'She is a very sweet little creature, but she
+is not so pretty as Effie.'</p>
+
+<p>'And have none of them wished to do you&mdash;none of the painters?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, it's not a question of me. I only wish them to let me alone.'</p>
+
+<p>'For me it would be a question of you, if you would sit for me. But I
+daresay your mother wouldn't allow that.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, I think not,' said Dora, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled, but her companion looked grave. However, not to pursue the
+subject, he asked, abruptly, 'Who is this Madame de Brives?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span></p><p>'If you lived in Paris you would know. She is very celebrated.'</p>
+
+<p>'Celebrated for what?'</p>
+
+<p>'For everything.'</p>
+
+<p>'And is she good&mdash;is she genuine?' Raymond asked. Then, seeing something
+in the girl's face, he added: 'I told you I should be brutal again. Has
+she undertaken to make a great marriage for Effie?'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know what she has undertaken,' said Dora, impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>'And then for Tishy, when Effie has been disposed of?'</p>
+
+<p>'Poor little Tishy!' the girl continued, rather inscrutably.</p>
+
+<p>'And can she do nothing for you?' the young man inquired.</p>
+
+<p>Her answer surprised him&mdash;after a moment. 'She has kindly offered to
+exert herself, but it's no use.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, that's good. And who is it the young man comes for&mdash;the secretary
+of embassy?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, he comes for all of us,' said Dora, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose your mother would prefer a preference,' Raymond suggested.</p>
+
+<p>To this she replied, irrelevantly, that she thought they had better go
+back; but as Raymond took no notice of the recommendation she mentioned
+that the secretary was no one in particular. At this moment Effie,
+looking very rosy and happy, pushed through the <i>porti&egrave;re</i> with the news
+that her sister must come and bid good-bye to the Marquise. She was
+taking her to the Duchess's&mdash;didn't Dora remember? To the <i>bal
+blanc</i>&mdash;the <i>sauterie de jeunes filles</i>.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span></p><p>'I thought we should be called,' said Raymond, as he followed Effie;
+and he remarked that perhaps Madame de Brives would find something
+suitable at the Duchess's.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know. Mamma would be very particular,' the girl rejoined; and
+this was said simply, sympathetically, without the least appearance of
+deflection from that loyalty which Raymond deplored.</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CIV" id="CIV"></a>IV</h2>
+
+<p>'You must come to us on the 17th; we expect to have a few people and
+some good music,' Cousin Maria said to him before he quitted the house;
+and he wondered whether, the 17th being still ten days off, this might
+not be an intimation that they could abstain from his society until
+then. He chose, at any rate, not to take it as such, and called several
+times in the interval, late in the afternoon, when the ladies would be
+sure to have come in.</p>
+
+<p>They were always there, and Cousin Maria's welcome was, for each
+occasion, maternal, though when he took leave she made no allusion to
+future meetings&mdash;to his coming again; but there were always other
+visitors as well, collected at tea round the great fire of logs, in the
+friendly, brilliant drawing-room where the luxurious was no enemy to the
+casual and Mrs. Temperly's manner of dispensing hospitality recalled to
+our young man somehow certain memories of his youthful time: visits in
+New England, at old homesteads flanked with elms, where a talkative,
+democratic, delightful farmer's wife pressed upon her company rustic
+viands in which she herself had had a hand. Cousin Maria enjoyed the
+services of a distinguished <i>chef</i>, and delicious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span> <i>petits fours</i> were
+served with her tea; but Raymond had a sense that to complete the
+impression hot home-made gingerbread should have been produced.</p>
+
+<p>The atmosphere was suffused with the presence of Madame de Brives. She
+was either there or she was just coming or she was just gone; her name,
+her voice, her example and encouragement were in the air. Other ladies
+came and went&mdash;sometimes accompanied by gentlemen who looked worn out,
+had waxed moustaches and knew how to talk&mdash;and they were sometimes
+designated in the same manner as Madame de Brives; but she remained the
+Marquise <i>par excellence</i>, the incarnation of brilliancy and renown. The
+conversation moved among simple but civilised topics, was not dull and,
+considering that it consisted largely of personalities, was not
+ill-natured. Least of all was it scandalous, for the girls were always
+there, Cousin Maria not having thought it in the least necessary, in
+order to put herself in accord with French traditions, to relegate her
+daughters to the middle distance. They occupied a considerable part of
+the foreground, in the prettiest, most modest, most becoming attitudes.</p>
+
+<p>It was Cousin Maria's theory of her own behaviour that she did in Paris
+simply as she had always done; and though this would not have been a
+complete account of the matter Raymond could not fail to notice the good
+sense and good taste with which she laid down her lines and the quiet
+<i>bonhomie</i> of the authority with which she caused the tone of the
+American home to be respected. Scandal stayed outside, not simply
+because Effie and Tishy were there, but because, even if Cousin Maria
+had received alone, she never would have received evil-speakers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span>
+Indeed, for Raymond, who had been accustomed to think that in a general
+way he knew pretty well what the French capital was, this was a strange,
+fresh Paris altogether, destitute of the salt that seasoned it for most
+palates, and yet not insipid nor innutritive. He marvelled at Cousin
+Maria's air, in such a city, of knowing, of recognising nothing bad: all
+the more that it represented an actual state of mind. He used to wonder
+sometimes what she would do and how she would feel if some day, in
+consequence of researches made by the Marquise in the <i>grand monde</i>, she
+should find herself in possession of a son-in-law formed according to
+one of the types of which <i>he</i> had impressions. However, it was not
+credible that Madame de Brives would play her a trick. There were
+moments when Raymond almost wished she might&mdash;to see how Cousin Maria
+would handle the gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>Dora was almost always taken up by visitors, and he had scarcely any
+direct conversation with her. She was there, and he was glad she was
+there, and she knew he was glad (he knew that), but this was almost all
+the communion he had with her. She was mild, exquisitely mild&mdash;this was
+the term he mentally applied to her now&mdash;and it amply sufficed him, with
+the conviction he had that she was not stupid. She attended to the tea
+(for Mademoiselle Bourde was not always free), she handed the <i>petits
+fours</i>, she rang the bell when people went out; and it was in connection
+with these offices that the idea came to him once&mdash;he was rather ashamed
+of it afterward&mdash;that she was the Cinderella of the house, the domestic
+drudge, the one for whom there was no career, as it was useless for the
+Marquise to take up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> her case. He was ashamed of this fancy, I say, and
+yet it came back to him; he was even surprised that it had not occurred
+to him before. Her sisters were neither ugly nor proud (Tishy, indeed,
+was almost touchingly delicate and timid, with exceedingly pretty
+points, yet with a little appealing, old-womanish look, as if,
+small&mdash;very small&mdash;as she was, she was afraid she shouldn't grow any
+more); but her mother, like the mother in the fairy-tale, was a <i>femme
+forte</i>. Madame de Brives could do nothing for Dora, not absolutely
+because she was too plain, but because she would never lend herself, and
+that came to the same thing. Her mother accepted her as recalcitrant,
+but Cousin Maria's attitude, at the best, could only be resignation. She
+would respect her child's preferences, she would never put on the screw;
+but this would not make her love the child any more. So Raymond
+interpreted certain signs, which at the same time he felt to be very
+slight, while the conversation in Mrs. Temperly's <i>salon</i> (this was its
+preponderant tendency) rambled among questions of bric-&agrave;-brac, of where
+Tishy's portrait should be placed when it was finished, and the current
+prices of old Gobelins. <i>Ces dames</i> were not in the least above the
+discussion of prices.</p>
+
+<p>On the 17th it was easy to see that more lamps than usual had been
+lighted. They streamed through all the windows of the charming hotel and
+mingled with the radiance of the carriage-lanterns, which followed each
+other slowly, in couples, in a close, long rank, into the fine sonorous
+court, where the high stepping of valuable horses was sharp on the
+stones, and up to the ruddy portico. The night was wet, not with a
+downpour, but with showers <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span>interspaced by starry patches, which only
+added to the glitter of the handsome, clean Parisian surfaces. The
+<i>sergents de ville</i> were about the place, and seemed to make the
+occasion important and official. These night aspects of Paris in the
+<i>beaux quartiers</i> had always for Raymond a particularly festive
+association, and as he passed from his cab under the wide permanent tin
+canopy, painted in stripes like an awning, which protected the low
+steps, it seemed to him odder than ever that all this established
+prosperity should be Cousin Maria's.</p>
+
+<p>If the thought of how well she did it bore him company from the
+threshold, it deepened to admiration by the time he had been half an
+hour in the place. She stood near the entrance with her two elder
+daughters, distributing the most familiar, most encouraging smiles,
+together with hand-shakes which were in themselves a whole system of
+hospitality. If her party was grand Cousin Maria was not; she indulged
+in no assumption of stateliness and no attempt at graduated welcomes. It
+seemed to Raymond that it was only because it would have taken too much
+time that she didn't kiss every one. Effie looked lovely and just a
+little frightened, which was exactly what she ought to have done; and he
+noticed that among the arriving guests those who were not intimate
+(which he could not tell from Mrs. Temperly's manner, but could from
+their own) recognised her as a daughter much more quickly than they
+recognised Dora, who hung back disinterestedly, as if not to challenge
+their discernment, while the current passed her, keeping her little
+sister in position on its brink meanwhile by the tenderest small
+gesture.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span></p><p>'May I talk with you a little, later?' he asked of Dora, with only a
+few seconds for the question, as people were pressing behind him. She
+answered evasively that there would be very little talk&mdash;they would all
+have to listen&mdash;it was very serious; and the next moment he had received
+a programme from the hand of a monumental yet gracious personage who
+stood beyond and who had a silver chain round his neck.</p>
+
+<p>The place was arranged for music, and how well arranged he saw later,
+when every one was seated, spaciously, luxuriously, without pushing or
+over-peeping, and the finest talents in Paris performed selections at
+which the best taste had presided. The singers and players were all
+stars of the first magnitude. Raymond was fond of music and he wondered
+whose taste it had been. He made up his mind it was Dora's&mdash;it was only
+she who could have conceived a combination so exquisite; and he said to
+himself: 'How they all pull together! She is not in it, she is not of
+it, and yet she too works for the common end.' And by 'all' he meant
+also Mademoiselle Bourde and the Marquise. This impression made him feel
+rather hopeless, as if, <i>en fin de compte</i>, Cousin Maria were too large
+an adversary. Great as was the pleasure of being present on an occasion
+so admirably organised, of sitting there in a beautiful room, in a
+still, attentive, brilliant company, with all the questions of
+temperature, space, light and decoration solved to the gratification of
+every sense, and listening to the best artists doing their best&mdash;happily
+constituted as our young man was to enjoy such a privilege as this, the
+total effect was depressing:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span> it made him feel as if the gods were not
+on his side.</p>
+
+<p>'And does she do it so well without a man? There must be so many details
+a woman can't tackle,' he said to himself; for even counting in the
+Marquise and Mademoiselle Bourde this only made a multiplication of
+petticoats. Then it came over him that she <i>was</i> a man as well as a
+woman&mdash;the masculine element was included in her nature. He was sure
+that she bought her horses without being cheated, and very few men could
+do that. She had the American national quality&mdash;she had 'faculty' in a
+supreme degree. 'Faculty&mdash;faculty,' the voices of the quartette of
+singers seemed to repeat, in the quick movement of a composition they
+rendered beautifully, while they swelled and went faster, till the thing
+became a joyous chant of praise, a glorification of Cousin Maria's
+practical genius.</p>
+
+<p>During the intermission, in the middle of the concert, people changed
+places more or less and circulated, so that, walking about at this time,
+he came upon the Marquise, who, in her sympathetic, demonstrative way,
+appeared to be on the point of clasping her hostess in her arms.
+'D&eacute;cid&eacute;ment, ma bonne, il n'y a que vous! C'est une perfection&mdash;&mdash;' he
+heard her say. To which, gratified but unelated, Cousin Maria replied,
+according to her simple, sociable wont: 'Well, it <i>does</i> seem quite a
+successful occasion. If it will only keep on to the end!'</p>
+
+<p>Raymond, wandering far, found himself in a world that was mainly quite
+new to him, and explained his ignorance of it by reflecting that the
+people were probably celebrated: so many of them had decorations and
+stars and a quiet of manner<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span> that could only be accounted for by renown.
+There were plenty of Americans with no badge but a certain fine
+negativeness, and <i>they</i> were quiet for a reason which by this time had
+become very familiar to Raymond: he had heard it so often mentioned that
+his country-people were supremely 'adaptable.' He tried to get hold of
+Dora, but he saw that her mother had arranged things beautifully to keep
+her occupied with other people; so at least he interpreted the
+fact&mdash;after all very natural&mdash;that she had half a dozen fluttered young
+girls on her mind, whom she was providing with programmes, seats, ices,
+occasional murmured remarks and general support and protection. When the
+concert was over she supplied them with further entertainment in the
+form of several young men who had pliable backs and flashing breastpins
+and whom she inarticulately introduced to them, which gave her still
+more to do, as after this serious step she had to stay and watch all
+parties. It was strange to Raymond to see her transformed by her mother
+into a precocious duenna. Him she introduced to no young girl, and he
+knew not whether to regard this as cold neglect or as high
+consideration. If he had liked he might have taken it as a sweet
+intimation that she knew he couldn't care for any girl but her.</p>
+
+<p>On the whole he was glad, because it left him free&mdash;free to get hold of
+her mother, which by this time he had boldly determined to do. The
+conception was high, inasmuch as Cousin Maria's attention was obviously
+required by the ambassadors and other grandees who had flocked to do her
+homage. Nevertheless, while supper was going on (he wanted none, and
+neither apparently did she), he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span> collared her, as he phrased it to
+himself, in just the right place&mdash;on the threshold of the conservatory.
+She was flanked on either side with a foreigner of distinction, but he
+didn't care for her foreigners now. Besides, a conservatory was meant
+only for couples; it was a sign of her comprehensive sociability that
+she should have been rambling among the palms and orchids with a double
+escort. Her friends would wish to quit her but would not wish to appear
+to give way to each other; and Raymond felt that he was relieving them
+both (though he didn't care) when he asked her to be so good as to give
+him a few minutes' conversation. He made her go back with him into the
+conservatory: it was the only thing he had ever made her do, or probably
+ever would. She began to talk about the great Gregorini&mdash;how it had been
+too sweet of her to repeat one of her songs, when it had really been
+understood in advance that repetitions were not expected. Raymond had no
+interest at present in the great Gregorini. He asked Cousin Maria
+vehemently if she remembered telling him in New York&mdash;that night at the
+hotel, five years before&mdash;that when he should have followed them to
+Paris he would be free to address her on the subject of Dora. She had
+given him a promise that she would listen to him in this case, and now
+he must keep her up to the mark. It was impossible to see her alone,
+but, at whatever inconvenience to herself, he must insist on her giving
+him his opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>'About Dora, Cousin Raymond?' she asked, blandly and kindly&mdash;almost as
+if she didn't exactly know who Dora was.</p>
+
+<p>'Surely you haven't forgotten what passed between us the evening before
+you left America. I was in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span> love with her then and I have been in love
+with her ever since. I told you so then, and you stopped me off, but you
+gave me leave to make another appeal to you in the future. I make it
+now&mdash;this is the only way I have&mdash;and I think you ought to listen to it.
+Five years have passed, and I love her more than ever. I have behaved
+like a saint in the interval: I haven't attempted to practise upon her
+without your knowledge.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am so glad; but she would have let me know,' said Cousin Maria,
+looking round the conservatory as if to see if the plants were all
+there.</p>
+
+<p>'No doubt. I don't know what you do to her. But I trust that to-day your
+opposition falls&mdash;in face of the proof that we have given you of mutual
+fidelity.'</p>
+
+<p>'Fidelity?' Cousin Maria repeated, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>'Surely&mdash;unless you mean to imply that Dora has given me up. I have
+reason to believe that she hasn't.'</p>
+
+<p>'I think she will like better to remain just as she is.'</p>
+
+<p>'Just as she is?'</p>
+
+<p>'I mean, not to make a choice,' Cousin Maria went on, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>Raymond hesitated a moment. 'Do you mean that you have tried to make her
+make one?'</p>
+
+<p>At this the good lady broke into a laugh. 'My dear Raymond, how little
+you must think I know my child!'</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps, if you haven't tried to make her, you have tried to prevent
+her. Haven't you told her I am unsuccessful, I am poor?'</p>
+
+<p>She stopped him, laying her hand with unaffected<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span> solicitude on his arm.
+'<i>Are</i> you poor, my dear? I should be so sorry!'</p>
+
+<p>'Never mind; I can support a wife,' said the young man.</p>
+
+<p>'It wouldn't matter, because I am happy to say that Dora has something
+of her own,' Cousin Maria went on, with her imperturbable candour. 'Her
+father thought that was the best way to arrange it. I had quite
+forgotten my opposition, as you call it; that was so long ago. Why, she
+was only a little girl. Wasn't that the ground I took? Well, dear, she's
+older now, and you can say anything to her you like. But I do think she
+wants to stay&mdash;&mdash;' And she looked up at him, cheerily.</p>
+
+<p>'Wants to stay?'</p>
+
+<p>'With Effie and Tishy.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, Cousin Maria,' the young man exclaimed, 'you are modest about
+yourself!'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, we are all together. Now is that all? I <i>must</i> see if there is
+enough champagne. Certainly&mdash;you can say to her what you like. But
+twenty years hence she will be just as she is to-day; that's how I see
+her.'</p>
+
+<p>'Lord, what is it you do to her?' Raymond groaned, as he accompanied his
+hostess back to the crowded rooms.</p>
+
+<p>He knew exactly what she would have replied if she had been a
+Frenchwoman; she would have said to him, triumphantly, overwhelmingly:
+'Que voulez-vous? Elle adore sa m&egrave;re!' She was, however, only a
+Californian, unacquainted with the language of epigram, and her answer
+consisted simply of the words: 'I am sorry you have ideas that make you
+unhappy. I guess you are the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span> only person here who hasn't enjoyed
+himself to-night.'</p>
+
+<p>Raymond repeated to himself, gloomily, for the rest of the evening,
+'Elle adore sa m&egrave;re&mdash;elle adore sa m&egrave;re!' He remained very late, and
+when but twenty people were left and he had observed that the Marquise,
+passing her hand into Mrs. Temperly's arm, led her aside as if for some
+important confabulation (some new light doubtless on what might be hoped
+for Effie), he persuaded Dora to let the rest of the guests depart in
+peace (apparently her mother had told her to look out for them to the
+very last), and come with him into some quiet corner. They found an
+empty sofa in the outlasting lamp-light, and there the girl sat down
+with him. Evidently she knew what he was going to say, or rather she
+thought she did; for in fact, after a little, after he had told her that
+he had spoken to her mother and she had told him he might speak to
+<i>her</i>, he said things that she could not very well have expected.</p>
+
+<p>'Is it true that you wish to remain with Effie and Tishy? That's what
+your mother calls it when she means that you will give me up.'</p>
+
+<p>'How can I give you up?' the girl demanded. 'Why can't we go on being
+friends, as I asked you the evening you dined here?'</p>
+
+<p>'What do you mean by friends?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, not making everything impossible.'</p>
+
+<p>'You didn't think anything impossible of old,' Raymond rejoined,
+bitterly. 'I thought you liked me then, and I have even thought so
+since.'</p>
+
+<p>'I like you more than I like any one. I like you so much that it's my
+principal happiness.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span></p><p>'Then why are there impossibilities?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, some day I'll tell you!' said Dora, with a quick sigh. 'Perhaps
+after Tishy is married. And meanwhile, are you not going to remain in
+Paris, at any rate? Isn't your work here? You are not here for me only.
+You can come to the house often. That's what I mean by our being
+friends.'</p>
+
+<p>Her companion sat looking at her with a gloomy stare, as if he were
+trying to make up the deficiencies in her logic.</p>
+
+<p>'After Tishy is married? I don't see what that has to do with it. Tishy
+is little more than a baby; she may not be married for ten years.'</p>
+
+<p>'That is very true.'</p>
+
+<p>'And you dispose of the interval by a simple "meanwhile"? My dear Dora,
+your talk is strange,' Raymond continued, with his voice passionately
+lowered. 'And I may come to the house&mdash;often? How often do you mean&mdash;in
+ten years? Five times&mdash;or even twenty?' He saw that her eyes were
+filling with tears, but he went on: 'It has been coming over me little
+by little (I notice things very much if I have a reason), and now I
+think I understand your mother's system.'</p>
+
+<p>'Don't say anything against my mother,' the girl broke in, beseechingly.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall not say anything unjust. That is if I am unjust you must tell
+me. This is my idea, and your speaking of Tishy's marriage confirms it.
+To begin with she has had immense plans for you all; she wanted each of
+you to be a princess or a duchess&mdash;I mean a good one. But she has had to
+give <i>you</i> up.'</p>
+
+<p>'No one has asked for me,' said Dora, with unexpected honesty.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span></p><p>'I don't believe it. Dozens of fellows have asked for you, and you have
+shaken your head in that divine way (divine for me, I mean) in which you
+shook it the other night.'</p>
+
+<p>'My mother has never said an unkind word to me in her life,' the girl
+declared, in answer to this.</p>
+
+<p>'I never said she had, and I don't know why you take the precaution of
+telling me so. But whatever you tell me or don't tell me,' Raymond
+pursued, 'there is one thing I see very well&mdash;that so long as you won't
+marry a duke Cousin Maria has found means to prevent you from marrying
+till your sisters have made rare alliances.'</p>
+
+<p>'Has found means?' Dora repeated, as if she really wondered what was in
+his thought.</p>
+
+<p>'Of course I mean only through your affection for her. How she works
+that, you know best yourself.'</p>
+
+<p>'It's delightful to have a mother of whom every one is so fond,' said
+Dora, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>'She is a most remarkable woman. Don't think for a moment that I don't
+appreciate her. You don't want to quarrel with her, and I daresay you
+are right.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, Raymond, of course I'm right!'</p>
+
+<p>'It proves you are not madly in love with me. It seems to me that for
+you <i>I</i> would have quarrelled&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Raymond, Raymond!' she interrupted, with the tears again rising.</p>
+
+<p>He sat looking at her, and then he said, 'Well, when they <i>are</i>
+married?'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know the future&mdash;I don't know what may happen.'</p>
+
+<p>'You mean that Tishy is so small&mdash;she doesn't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span> grow&mdash;and will therefore
+be difficult? Yes, she <i>is</i> small.' There was bitterness in his heart,
+but he laughed at his own words. 'However, Effie ought to go off
+easily,' he went on, as Dora said nothing. 'I really wonder that, with
+the Marquise and all, she hasn't gone off yet. This thing, to-night,
+ought to do a great deal for her.'</p>
+
+<p>Dora listened to him with a fascinated gaze; it was as if he expressed
+things for her and relieved her spirit by making them clear and
+coherent. Her eyes managed, each time, to be dry again, and now a
+somewhat wan, ironical smile moved her lips. 'Mamma knows what she
+wants&mdash;she knows what she will take. And she will take only that.'</p>
+
+<p>'Precisely&mdash;something tremendous. And she is willing to wait, eh? Well,
+Effie is very young, and she's charming. But she won't be charming if
+she has an ugly appendage in the shape of a poor unsuccessful American
+artist (not even a good one), whose father went bankrupt, for a
+brother-in-law. That won't smooth the way, of course; and if a prince is
+to come into the family, the family must be kept tidy to receive him.'
+Dora got up quickly, as if she could bear his lucidity no longer, but he
+kept close to her as she walked away. 'And she can sacrifice you like
+that, without a scruple, without a pang?'</p>
+
+<p>'I might have escaped&mdash;if I would marry,' the girl replied.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you call that escaping? She has succeeded with you, but is it a part
+of what the Marquise calls her <i>succ&egrave;s de bont&eacute;</i>?'</p>
+
+<p>'Nothing that you can say (and it's far worse than the reality) can
+prevent her being delightful.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span></p><p>'Yes, that's your loyalty, and I could shoot you for it!' he exclaimed,
+making her pause on the threshold of the adjoining room. 'So you think
+it will take about ten years, considering Tishy's size&mdash;or want of
+size?' He himself again was the only one to laugh at this. 'Your mother
+is closeted, as much as she can be closeted now, with Madame de Brives,
+and perhaps this time they are really settling something.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have thought that before and nothing has come. Mamma wants something
+so good; not only every advantage and every grandeur, but every virtue
+under heaven, and every guarantee. Oh, she wouldn't expose them!'</p>
+
+<p>'I see; that's where her goodness comes in and where the Marquise is
+impressed' He took Dora's hand; he felt that he must go, for she
+exasperated him with her irony that stopped short and her patience that
+wouldn't stop. 'You simply propose that I should wait?' he said, as he
+held her hand.</p>
+
+<p>'It seems to me that you might, if <i>I</i> can.' Then the girl remarked,
+'Now that you are here, it's far better.'</p>
+
+<p>There was a sweetness in this which made him, after glancing about a
+moment, raise her hand to his lips. He went away without taking leave of
+Cousin Maria, who was still out of sight, her conference with the
+Marquise apparently not having terminated. This looked (he reflected as
+he passed out) as if something might come of it. However, before he went
+home he fell again into a gloomy forecast. The weather had changed, the
+stars were all out, and he walked the empty streets for an hour.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span>
+Tishy's perverse refusal to grow and Cousin Maria's conscientious
+exactions promised him a terrible probation. And in those intolerable
+years what further interference, what meddlesome, effective pressure,
+might not make itself felt? It may be added that Tishy is decidedly a
+dwarf and his probation is not yet over.</p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>THE END</h3>
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@@ -0,0 +1,11029 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar;
+Mrs. Temperly, by Henry James
+
+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: A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly
+
+Author: Henry James
+
+Release Date: May 17, 2008 [EBook #25500]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LONDON LIFE ET AL. ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Martin Pettit and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A LONDON LIFE
+
+AND OTHER TALES
+
+
+[Illustration: Publisher's logo]
+
+
+A LONDON LIFE
+
+THE PATAGONIA
+
+THE LIAR
+
+MRS. TEMPERLY
+
+BY
+
+HENRY JAMES
+
+London
+MACMILLAN AND CO.
+AND NEW YORK
+1889
+
+
+COPYRIGHT 1889
+
+_BY_
+
+HENRY JAMES
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                  PAGE
+
+A LONDON LIFE        1
+
+THE PATAGONIA      159
+
+THE LIAR           241
+
+MRS. TEMPERLY      317
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+The last of the following four Tales originally appeared under a
+different name.
+
+
+
+
+A LONDON LIFE
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+It was raining, apparently, but she didn't mind--she would put on stout
+shoes and walk over to Plash. She was restless and so fidgety that it
+was a pain; there were strange voices that frightened her--they threw
+out the ugliest intimations--in the empty rooms at home. She would see
+old Mrs. Berrington, whom she liked because she was so simple, and old
+Lady Davenant, who was staying with her and who was interesting for
+reasons with which simplicity had nothing to do. Then she would come
+back to the children's tea--she liked even better the last half-hour in
+the schoolroom, with the bread and butter, the candles and the red fire,
+the little spasms of confidence of Miss Steet the nursery-governess, and
+the society of Scratch and Parson (their nicknames would have made you
+think they were dogs) her small, magnificent nephews, whose flesh was so
+firm yet so soft and their eyes so charming when they listened to
+stories. Plash was the dower-house and about a mile and a half, through
+the park, from Mellows. It was not raining after all, though it had
+been; there was only a grayness in the air, covering all the strong,
+rich green, and a pleasant damp, earthy smell, and the walks were smooth
+and hard, so that the expedition was not arduous.
+
+The girl had been in England more than a year, but there were some
+satisfactions she had not got used to yet nor ceased to enjoy, and one
+of these was the accessibility, the convenience of the country. Within
+the lodge-gates or without them it seemed all alike a park--it was all
+so intensely 'property.' The very name of Plash, which was quaint and
+old, had not lost its effect upon her, nor had it become indifferent to
+her that the place was a dower-house--the little red-walled, ivied
+asylum to which old Mrs. Berrington had retired when, on his father's
+death, her son came into the estates. Laura Wing thought very ill of the
+custom of the expropriation of the widow in the evening of her days,
+when honour and abundance should attend her more than ever; but her
+condemnation of this wrong forgot itself when so many of the
+consequences looked right--barring a little dampness: which was the fate
+sooner or later of most of her unfavourable judgments of English
+institutions. Iniquities in such a country somehow always made pictures;
+and there had been dower-houses in the novels, mainly of fashionable
+life, on which her later childhood was fed. The iniquity did not as a
+general thing prevent these retreats from being occupied by old ladies
+with wonderful reminiscences and rare voices, whose reverses had not
+deprived them of a great deal of becoming hereditary lace. In the park,
+half-way, suddenly, Laura stopped, with a pain--a moral pang--that
+almost took away her breath; she looked at the misty glades and the
+dear old beeches (so familiar they were now and loved as much as if she
+owned them); they seemed in their unlighted December bareness conscious
+of all the trouble, and they made her conscious of all the change. A
+year ago she knew nothing, and now she knew almost everything; and the
+worst of her knowledge (or at least the worst of the fears she had
+raised upon it) had come to her in that beautiful place, where
+everything was so full of peace and purity, of the air of happy
+submission to immemorial law. The place was the same but her eyes were
+different: they had seen such sad, bad things in so short a time. Yes,
+the time was short and everything was strange. Laura Wing was too uneasy
+even to sigh, and as she walked on she lightened her tread almost as if
+she were going on tiptoe.
+
+At Plash the house seemed to shine in the wet air--the tone of the
+mottled red walls and the limited but perfect lawn to be the work of an
+artist's brush. Lady Davenant was in the drawing-room, in a low chair by
+one of the windows, reading the second volume of a novel. There was the
+same look of crisp chintz, of fresh flowers wherever flowers could be
+put, of a wall-paper that was in the bad taste of years before, but had
+been kept so that no more money should be spent, and was almost covered
+over with amateurish drawings and superior engravings, framed in narrow
+gilt with large margins. The room had its bright, durable, sociable air,
+the air that Laura Wing liked in so many English things--that of being
+meant for daily life, for long periods, for uses of high decency. But
+more than ever to-day was it incongruous that such an habitation, with
+its chintzes and its British poets, its well-worn carpets and domestic
+art--the whole aspect so unmeretricious and sincere--should have to do
+with lives that were not right. Of course however it had to do only
+indirectly, and the wrong life was not old Mrs. Berrington's nor yet
+Lady Davenant's. If Selina and Selina's doings were not an implication
+of such an interior any more than it was for them an explication, this
+was because she had come from so far off, was a foreign element
+altogether. Yet it was there she had found her occasion, all the
+influences that had altered her so (her sister had a theory that she was
+metamorphosed, that when she was young she seemed born for innocence) if
+not at Plash at least at Mellows, for the two places after all had ever
+so much in common, and there were rooms at the great house that looked
+remarkably like Mrs. Berrington's parlour.
+
+Lady Davenant always had a head-dress of a peculiar style, original and
+appropriate--a sort of white veil or cape which came in a point to the
+place on her forehead where her smooth hair began to show and then
+covered her shoulders. It was always exquisitely fresh and was partly
+the reason why she struck the girl rather as a fine portrait than as a
+living person. And yet she was full of life, old as she was, and had
+been made finer, sharper and more delicate, by nearly eighty years of
+it. It was the hand of a master that Laura seemed to see in her face,
+the witty expression of which shone like a lamp through the ground-glass
+of her good breeding; nature was always an artist, but not so much of an
+artist as that. Infinite knowledge the girl attributed to her, and that
+was why she liked her a little fearfully. Lady Davenant was not as a
+general thing fond of the young or of invalids; but she made an
+exception as regards youth for the little girl from America, the sister
+of the daughter-in-law of her dearest friend. She took an interest in
+Laura partly perhaps to make up for the tepidity with which she regarded
+Selina. At all events she had assumed the general responsibility of
+providing her with a husband. She pretended to care equally little for
+persons suffering from other forms of misfortune, but she was capable of
+finding excuses for them when they had been sufficiently to blame. She
+expected a great deal of attention, always wore gloves in the house and
+never had anything in her hand but a book. She neither embroidered nor
+wrote--only read and talked. She had no special conversation for girls
+but generally addressed them in the same manner that she found effective
+with her contemporaries. Laura Wing regarded this as an honour, but very
+often she didn't know what the old lady meant and was ashamed to ask
+her. Once in a while Lady Davenant was ashamed to tell. Mrs. Berrington
+had gone to a cottage to see an old woman who was ill--an old woman who
+had been in her service for years, in the old days. Unlike her friend
+she was fond of young people and invalids, but she was less interesting
+to Laura, except that it was a sort of fascination to wonder how she
+could have such abysses of placidity. She had long cheeks and kind eyes
+and was devoted to birds; somehow she always made Laura think secretly
+of a tablet of fine white soap--nothing else was so smooth and clean.
+
+'And what's going on _chez vous_--who is there and what are they
+doing?' Lady Davenant asked, after the first greetings.
+
+'There isn't any one but me--and the children--and the governess.'
+
+'What, no party--no private theatricals? How do you live?'
+
+'Oh, it doesn't take so much to keep me going,' said Laura. 'I believe
+there were some people coming on Saturday, but they have been put off,
+or they can't come. Selina has gone to London.'
+
+'And what has she gone to London for?'
+
+'Oh, I don't know--she has so many things to do.'
+
+'And where is Mr. Berrington?'
+
+'He has been away somewhere; but I believe he is coming back
+to-morrow--or next day.'
+
+'Or the day after?' said Lady Davenant. 'And do they never go away
+together?' she continued after a pause.
+
+'Yes, sometimes--but they don't come back together.'
+
+'Do you mean they quarrel on the way?'
+
+'I don't know what they do, Lady Davenant--I don't understand,' Laura
+Wing replied, with an unguarded tremor in her voice. 'I don't think they
+are very happy.'
+
+'Then they ought to be ashamed of themselves. They have got everything
+so comfortable--what more do they want?'
+
+'Yes, and the children are such dears!'
+
+'Certainly--charming. And is she a good person, the present governess?
+Does she look after them properly?'
+
+'Yes--she seems very good--it's a blessing. But I think she's unhappy
+too.'
+
+'Bless us, what a house! Does she want some one to make love to her?'
+
+'No, but she wants Selina to see--to appreciate,' said the young girl.
+
+'And doesn't she appreciate--when she leaves them that way quite to the
+young woman?'
+
+'Miss Steet thinks she doesn't notice how they come on--she is never
+there.'
+
+'And has she wept and told you so? You know they are always crying,
+governesses--whatever line you take. You shouldn't draw them out too
+much--they are always looking for a chance. She ought to be thankful to
+be let alone. You mustn't be too sympathetic--it's mostly wasted,' the
+old lady went on.
+
+'Oh, I'm not--I assure you I'm not,' said Laura Wing. 'On the contrary,
+I see so much about me that I don't sympathise with.'
+
+'Well, you mustn't be an impertinent little American either!' her
+interlocutress exclaimed. Laura sat with her for half an hour and the
+conversation took a turn through the affairs of Plash and through Lady
+Davenant's own, which were visits in prospect and ideas suggested more
+or less directly by them as well as by the books she had been reading, a
+heterogeneous pile on a table near her, all of them new and clean, from
+a circulating library in London. The old woman had ideas and Laura liked
+them, though they often struck her as very sharp and hard, because at
+Mellows she had no diet of that sort. There had never been an idea in
+the house, since she came at least, and there was wonderfully little
+reading. Lady Davenant still went from country-house to country-house
+all winter, as she had done all her life, and when Laura asked her she
+told her the places and the people she probably should find at each of
+them. Such an enumeration was much less interesting to the girl than it
+would have been a year before: she herself had now seen a great many
+places and people and the freshness of her curiosity was gone. But she
+still cared for Lady Davenant's descriptions and judgments, because they
+were the thing in her life which (when she met the old woman from time
+to time) most represented talk--the rare sort of talk that was not mere
+chaff. That was what she had dreamed of before she came to England, but
+in Selina's set the dream had not come true. In Selina's set people only
+harried each other from morning till night with extravagant
+accusations--it was all a kind of horse-play of false charges. When Lady
+Davenant was accusatory it was within the limits of perfect
+verisimilitude.
+
+Laura waited for Mrs. Berrington to come in but she failed to appear, so
+that the girl gathered her waterproof together with an intention of
+departure. But she was secretly reluctant, because she had walked over
+to Plash with a vague hope that some soothing hand would be laid upon
+her pain. If there was no comfort at the dower-house she knew not where
+to look for it, for there was certainly none at home--not even with Miss
+Steet and the children. It was not Lady Davenant's leading
+characteristic that she was comforting, and Laura had not aspired to be
+coaxed or coddled into forgetfulness: she wanted rather to be taught a
+certain fortitude--how to live and hold up one's head even while knowing
+that things were very bad. A brazen indifference--it was not exactly
+that that she wished to acquire; but were there not some sorts of
+indifference that were philosophic and noble? Could Lady Davenant not
+teach them, if she should take the trouble? The girl remembered to have
+heard that there had been years before some disagreeable occurrences in
+_her_ family; it was not a race in which the ladies inveterately turned
+out well. Yet who to-day had the stamp of honour and credit--of a past
+which was either no one's business or was part and parcel of a fair
+public record--and carried it so much as a matter of course? She herself
+had been a good woman and that was the only thing that told in the long
+run. It was Laura's own idea to be a good woman and that this would make
+it an advantage for Lady Davenant to show her how not to feel too much.
+As regards feeling enough, that was a branch in which she had no need to
+take lessons.
+
+The old woman liked cutting new books, a task she never remitted to her
+maid, and while her young visitor sat there she went through the greater
+part of a volume with the paper-knife. She didn't proceed very
+fast--there was a kind of patient, awkward fumbling of her aged hands;
+but as she passed her knife into the last leaf she said abruptly--'And
+how is your sister going on? She's very light!' Lady Davenant added
+before Laura had time to reply.
+
+'Oh, Lady Davenant!' the girl exclaimed, vaguely, slowly, vexed with
+herself as soon as she had spoken for having uttered the words as a
+protest, whereas she wished to draw her companion out. To correct this
+impression she threw back her waterproof.
+
+'Have you ever spoken to her?' the old woman asked.
+
+'Spoken to her?'
+
+'About her behaviour. I daresay you haven't--you Americans have such a
+lot of false delicacy. I daresay Selina wouldn't speak to you if you
+were in her place (excuse the supposition!) and yet she is capable----'
+But Lady Davenant paused, preferring not to say of what young Mrs.
+Berrington was capable. 'It's a bad house for a girl.'
+
+'It only gives me a horror,' said Laura, pausing in turn.
+
+'A horror of your sister? That's not what one should aim at. You ought
+to get married--and the sooner the better. My dear child, I have
+neglected you dreadfully.'
+
+'I am much obliged to you, but if you think marriage looks to me happy!'
+the girl exclaimed, laughing without hilarity.
+
+'Make it happy for some one else and you will be happy enough yourself.
+You ought to get out of your situation.'
+
+Laura Wing was silent a moment, though this was not a new reflection to
+her. 'Do you mean that I should leave Selina altogether? I feel as if I
+should abandon her--as if I should be a coward.'
+
+'Oh, my dear, it isn't the business of little girls to serve as
+parachutes to fly-away wives! That's why if you haven't spoken to her
+you needn't take the trouble at this time of day. Let her go--let her
+go!'
+
+'Let her go?' Laura repeated, staring.
+
+Her companion gave her a sharper glance. 'Let her stay, then! Only get
+out of the house. You can come to me, you know, whenever you like. I
+don't know another girl I would say that to.'
+
+'Oh, Lady Davenant,' Laura began again, but she only got as far as
+this; in a moment she had covered her face with her hands--she had burst
+into tears.
+
+'Ah my dear, don't cry or I shall take back my invitation! It would
+never do if you were to _larmoyer_. If I have offended you by the way I
+have spoken of Selina I think you are too sensitive. We shouldn't feel
+more for people than they feel for themselves. She has no tears, I'm
+sure.'
+
+'Oh, she has, she has!' cried the girl, sobbing with an odd effect as
+she put forth this pretension for her sister.
+
+'Then she's worse than I thought. I don't mind them so much when they
+are merry but I hate them when they are sentimental.'
+
+'She's so changed--so changed!' Laura Wing went on.
+
+'Never, never, my dear: _c'est de naissance_.'
+
+'You never knew my mother,' returned the girl; 'when I think of
+mother----' The words failed her while she sobbed.
+
+'I daresay she was very nice,' said Lady Davenant gently. 'It would take
+that to account for you: such women as Selina are always easily enough
+accounted for. I didn't mean it was inherited--for that sort of thing
+skips about. I daresay there was some improper ancestress--except that
+you Americans don't seem to have ancestresses.'
+
+Laura gave no sign of having heard these observations; she was occupied
+in brushing away her tears. 'Everything is so changed--you don't know,'
+she remarked in a moment. 'Nothing could have been happier--nothing
+could have been sweeter. And now to be so dependent--so helpless--so
+poor!'
+
+'Have you nothing at all?' asked Lady Davenant, with simplicity.
+
+'Only enough to pay for my clothes.'
+
+'That's a good deal, for a girl. You are uncommonly dressy, you know.'
+
+'I'm sorry I seem so. That's just the way I don't want to look.'
+
+'You Americans can't help it; you "wear" your very features and your
+eyes look as if they had just been sent home. But I confess you are not
+so smart as Selina.'
+
+'Yes, isn't she splendid?' Laura exclaimed, with proud inconsequence.
+'And the worse she is the better she looks.'
+
+'Oh my child, if the bad women looked as bad as they are----! It's only
+the good ones who can afford that,' the old lady murmured.
+
+'It was the last thing I ever thought of--that I should be ashamed,'
+said Laura.
+
+'Oh, keep your shame till you have more to do with it. It's like lending
+your umbrella--when you have only one.'
+
+'If anything were to happen--publicly--I should die, I should die!' the
+girl exclaimed passionately and with a motion that carried her to her
+feet. This time she settled herself for departure. Lady Davenant's
+admonition rather frightened than sustained her.
+
+The old woman leaned back in her chair, looking up at her. 'It would be
+very bad, I daresay. But it wouldn't prevent me from taking you in.'
+
+Laura Wing returned her look, with eyes slightly distended, musing.
+'Think of having to come to that!'
+
+Lady Davenant burst out laughing. 'Yes, yes, you must come; you are so
+original!'
+
+'I don't mean that I don't feel your kindness,' the girl broke out,
+blushing. 'But to be only protected--always protected: is that a life?'
+
+'Most women are only too thankful and I am bound to say I think you are
+_difficile_.' Lady Davenant used a good many French words, in the
+old-fashioned manner and with a pronunciation not perfectly pure: when
+she did so she reminded Laura Wing of Mrs. Gore's novels. 'But you shall
+be better protected than even by me. _Nous verrons cela._ Only you must
+stop crying--this isn't a crying country.'
+
+'No, one must have courage here. It takes courage to marry for such a
+reason.'
+
+'Any reason is good enough that keeps a woman from being an old maid.
+Besides, you will like him.'
+
+'He must like me first,' said the girl, with a sad smile.
+
+'There's the American again! It isn't necessary. You are too proud--you
+expect too much.'
+
+'I'm proud for what I am--that's very certain. But I don't expect
+anything,' Laura Wing declared. 'That's the only form my pride takes.
+Please give my love to Mrs. Berrington. I am so sorry--so sorry,' she
+went on, to change the talk from the subject of her marrying. She wanted
+to marry but she wanted also not to want it and, above all, not to
+appear to. She lingered in the room, moving about a little; the place
+was always so pleasant to her that to go away--to return to her own
+barren home--had the effect of forfeiting a sort of privilege of
+sanctuary. The afternoon had faded but the lamps had been brought in,
+the smell of flowers was in the air and the old house of Plash seemed to
+recognise the hour that suited it best. The quiet old lady in the
+firelight, encompassed with the symbolic security of chintz and
+water-colour, gave her a sudden vision of how blessed it would be to
+jump all the middle dangers of life and have arrived at the end, safely,
+sensibly, with a cap and gloves and consideration and memories. 'And,
+Lady Davenant, what does _she_ think?' she asked abruptly, stopping
+short and referring to Mrs. Berrington.
+
+'Think? Bless your soul, she doesn't do that! If she did, the things she
+says would be unpardonable.'
+
+'The things she says?'
+
+'That's what makes them so beautiful--that they are not spoiled by
+preparation. You could never think of them _for_ her.' The girl smiled
+at this description of the dearest friend of her interlocutress, but she
+wondered a little what Lady Davenant would say to visitors about _her_
+if she should accept a refuge under her roof. Her speech was after all a
+flattering proof of confidence. 'She wishes it had been you--I happen to
+know that,' said the old woman.
+
+'It had been me?'
+
+'That Lionel had taken a fancy to.'
+
+'I wouldn't have married him,' Laura rejoined, after a moment.
+
+'Don't say that or you will make me think it won't be easy to help you.
+I shall depend upon you not to refuse anything so good.'
+
+'I don't call him good. If he were good his wife would be better.'
+
+'Very likely; and if you had married him _he_ would be better, and
+that's more to the purpose. Lionel is as idiotic as a comic song, but
+you have cleverness for two.'
+
+'And you have it for fifty, dear Lady Davenant. Never, never--I shall
+never marry a man I can't respect!' Laura Wing exclaimed.
+
+She had come a little nearer her old friend and taken her hand; her
+companion held her a moment and with the other hand pushed aside one of
+the flaps of the waterproof. 'And what is it your clothing costs you?'
+asked Lady Davenant, looking at the dress underneath and not giving any
+heed to this declaration.
+
+'I don't exactly know: it takes almost everything that is sent me from
+America. But that is dreadfully little--only a few pounds. I am a
+wonderful manager. Besides,' the girl added, 'Selina wants one to be
+dressed.'
+
+'And doesn't she pay any of your bills?'
+
+'Why, she gives me everything--food, shelter, carriages.'
+
+'Does she never give you money?'
+
+'I wouldn't take it,' said the girl. 'They need everything they
+have--their life is tremendously expensive.'
+
+'That I'll warrant!' cried the old woman. 'It was a most beautiful
+property, but I don't know what has become of it now. _Ce n'est pas pour
+vous blesser_, but the hole you Americans _can_ make----'
+
+Laura interrupted immediately, holding up her head; Lady Davenant had
+dropped her hand and she had receded a step. 'Selina brought Lionel a
+very considerable fortune and every penny of it was paid.'
+
+'Yes, I know it was; Mrs. Berrington told me it was most satisfactory.
+That's not always the case with the fortunes you young ladies are
+supposed to bring!' the old lady added, smiling.
+
+The girl looked over her head a moment. 'Why do your men marry for
+money?'
+
+'Why indeed, my dear? And before your troubles what used your father to
+give you for your personal expenses?'
+
+'He gave us everything we asked--we had no particular allowance.'
+
+'And I daresay you asked for everything?' said Lady Davenant.
+
+'No doubt we were very dressy, as you say.'
+
+'No wonder he went bankrupt--for he did, didn't he?'
+
+'He had dreadful reverses but he only sacrificed himself--he protected
+others.'
+
+'Well, I know nothing about these things and I only ask _pour me
+renseigner_,' Mrs. Berrington's guest went on. 'And after their reverses
+your father and mother lived I think only a short time?'
+
+Laura Wing had covered herself again with her mantle; her eyes were now
+bent upon the ground and, standing there before her companion with her
+umbrella and her air of momentary submission and self-control, she might
+very well have been a young person in reduced circumstances applying for
+a place. 'It was short enough but it seemed--some parts of it--terribly
+long and painful. My poor father--my dear father,' the girl went on. But
+her voice trembled and she checked herself.
+
+'I feel as if I were cross-questioning you, which God forbid!' said Lady
+Davenant. 'But there is one thing I should really like to know. Did
+Lionel and his wife, when you were poor, come freely to your
+assistance?'
+
+'They sent us money repeatedly--it was _her_ money of course. It was
+almost all we had.'
+
+'And if you have been poor and know what poverty is tell me this: has it
+made you afraid to marry a poor man?'
+
+It seemed to Lady Davenant that in answer to this her young friend
+looked at her strangely; and then the old woman heard her say something
+that had not quite the heroic ring she expected. 'I am afraid of so many
+things to-day that I don't know where my fears end.'
+
+'I have no patience with the highstrung way you take things. But I have
+to know, you know.'
+
+'Oh, don't try to know any more shames--any more horrors!' the girl
+wailed with sudden passion, turning away.
+
+Her companion got up, drew her round again and kissed her. 'I think you
+would fidget me,' she remarked as she released her. Then, as if this
+were too cheerless a leave-taking, she added in a gayer tone, as Laura
+had her hand on the door: 'Mind what I tell you, my dear; let her go!'
+It was to this that the girl's lesson in philosophy reduced itself, she
+reflected, as she walked back to Mellows in the rain, which had now come
+on, through the darkening park.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+The children were still at tea and poor Miss Steet sat between them,
+consoling herself with strong cups, crunching melancholy morsels of
+toast and dropping an absent gaze on her little companions as they
+exchanged small, loud remarks. She always sighed when Laura came in--it
+was her way of expressing appreciation of the visit--and she was the one
+person whom the girl frequently saw who seemed to her more unhappy than
+herself. But Laura envied her--she thought her position had more dignity
+than that of her employer's dependent sister. Miss Steet had related her
+life to the children's pretty young aunt and this personage knew that
+though it had had painful elements nothing so disagreeable had ever
+befallen her or was likely to befall her as the odious possibility of
+her sister's making a scandal. She had two sisters (Laura knew all about
+them) and one of them was married to a clergyman in Staffordshire (a
+very ugly part) and had seven children and four hundred a year; while
+the other, the eldest, was enormously stout and filled (it was a good
+deal of a squeeze) a position as matron in an orphanage at Liverpool.
+Neither of them seemed destined to go into the English divorce-court,
+and such a circumstance on the part of one's near relations struck
+Laura as in itself almost sufficient to constitute happiness. Miss Steet
+never lived in a state of nervous anxiety--everything about her was
+respectable. She made the girl almost angry sometimes, by her drooping,
+martyr-like air: Laura was near breaking out at her with, 'Dear me, what
+have you got to complain of? Don't you earn your living like an honest
+girl and are you obliged to see things going on about you that you
+hate?'
+
+But she could not say things like that to her, because she had promised
+Selina, who made a great point of this, that she would never be too
+familiar with her. Selina was not without her ideas of decorum--very far
+from it indeed; only she erected them in such queer places. She was not
+familiar with her children's governess; she was not even familiar with
+the children themselves. That was why after all it was impossible to
+address much of a remonstrance to Miss Steet when she sat as if she were
+tied to the stake and the fagots were being lighted. If martyrs in this
+situation had tea and cold meat served them they would strikingly have
+resembled the provoking young woman in the schoolroom at Mellows. Laura
+could not have denied that it was natural she should have liked it
+better if Mrs. Berrington would _sometimes_ just look in and give a sign
+that she was pleased with her system; but poor Miss Steet only knew by
+the servants or by Laura whether Mrs. Berrington were at home or not:
+she was for the most part not, and the governess had a way of silently
+intimating (it was the manner she put her head on one side when she
+looked at Scratch and Parson--of course _she_ called them Geordie and
+Ferdy) that she was immensely handicapped and even that they were.
+Perhaps they were, though they certainly showed it little in their
+appearance and manner, and Laura was at least sure that if Selina had
+been perpetually dropping in Miss Steet would have taken that discomfort
+even more tragically. The sight of this young woman's either real or
+fancied wrongs did not diminish her conviction that she herself would
+have found courage to become a governess. She would have had to teach
+very young children, for she believed she was too ignorant for higher
+flights. But Selina would never have consented to that--she would have
+considered it a disgrace or even worse--a _pose_. Laura had proposed to
+her six months before that she should dispense with a paid governess and
+suffer _her_ to take charge of the little boys: in that way she should
+not feel so completely dependent--she should be doing something in
+return. 'And pray what would happen when you came to dinner? Who would
+look after them then?' Mrs. Berrington had demanded, with a very shocked
+air. Laura had replied that perhaps it was not absolutely necessary that
+she should come to dinner--she could dine early, with the children; and
+that if her presence in the drawing-room should be required the children
+had their nurse--and what did they have their nurse for? Selina looked
+at her as if she was deplorably superficial and told her that they had
+their nurse to dress them and look after their clothes--did she wish the
+poor little ducks to go in rags? She had her own ideas of thoroughness
+and when Laura hinted that after all at that hour the children were in
+bed she declared that even when they were asleep she desired the
+governess to be at hand--that was the way a mother felt who really took
+an interest. Selina was wonderfully thorough; she said something about
+the evening hours in the quiet schoolroom being the proper time for the
+governess to 'get up' the children's lessons for the next day. Laura
+Wing was conscious of her own ignorance; nevertheless she presumed to
+believe that she could have taught Geordie and Ferdy the alphabet
+without anticipatory nocturnal researches. She wondered what her sister
+supposed Miss Steet taught them--whether she had a cheap theory that
+they were in Latin and algebra.
+
+The governess's evening hours in the quiet schoolroom would have suited
+Laura well--so at least she believed; by touches of her own she would
+make the place even prettier than it was already, and in the winter
+nights, near the bright fire, she would get through a delightful course
+of reading. There was the question of a new piano (the old one was
+pretty bad--Miss Steet had a finger!) and perhaps she should have to ask
+Selina for that--but it would be all. The schoolroom at Mellows was not
+a charmless place and the girl often wished that she might have spent
+her own early years in so dear a scene. It was a sort of panelled
+parlour, in a wing, and looked out on the great cushiony lawns and a
+part of the terrace where the peacocks used most to spread their tails.
+There were quaint old maps on the wall, and 'collections'--birds and
+shells--under glass cases, and there was a wonderful pictured screen
+which old Mrs. Berrington had made when Lionel was young out of
+primitive woodcuts illustrative of nursery-tales. The place was a
+setting for rosy childhood, and Laura believed her sister never knew
+how delightful Scratch and Parson looked there. Old Mrs. Berrington had
+known in the case of Lionel--it had all been arranged for him. That was
+the story told by ever so many other things in the house, which betrayed
+the full perception of a comfortable, liberal, deeply domestic effect,
+addressed to eternities of possession, characteristic thirty years
+before of the unquestioned and unquestioning old lady whose sofas and
+'corners' (she had perhaps been the first person in England to have
+corners) demonstrated the most of her cleverness.
+
+Laura Wing envied English children, the boys at least, and even her own
+chubby nephews, in spite of the cloud that hung over them; but she had
+already noted the incongruity that appeared to-day between Lionel
+Berrington at thirty-five and the influences that had surrounded his
+younger years. She did not dislike her brother-in-law, though she
+admired him scantily, and she pitied him; but she marvelled at the waste
+involved in some human institutions (the English country gentry for
+instance) when she perceived that it had taken so much to produce so
+little. The sweet old wainscoted parlour, the view of the garden that
+reminded her of scenes in Shakespeare's comedies, all that was exquisite
+in the home of his forefathers--what visible reference was there to
+these fine things in poor Lionel's stable-stamped composition? When she
+came in this evening and saw his small sons making competitive noises in
+their mugs (Miss Steet checked this impropriety on her entrance) she
+asked herself what _they_ would have to show twenty years later for the
+frame that made them just then a picture. Would they be wonderfully ripe
+and noble, the perfection of human culture? The contrast was before her
+again, the sense of the same curious duplicity (in the literal meaning
+of the word) that she had felt at Plash--the way the genius of such an
+old house was all peace and decorum and the spirit that prevailed there,
+outside of the schoolroom, was contentious and impure. She had often
+been struck with it before--with that perfection of machinery which can
+still at certain times make English life go on of itself with a stately
+rhythm long after there is corruption within it.
+
+She had half a purpose of asking Miss Steet to dine with her that
+evening downstairs, so absurd did it seem to her that two young women
+who had so much in common (enough at least for that) should sit feeding
+alone at opposite ends of the big empty house, melancholy on such a
+night. She would not have cared just now whether Selina did think such a
+course familiar: she indulged sometimes in a kind of angry humility,
+placing herself near to those who were laborious and sordid. But when
+she observed how much cold meat the governess had already consumed she
+felt that it would be a vain form to propose to her another repast. She
+sat down with her and presently, in the firelight, the two children had
+placed themselves in position for a story. They were dressed like the
+mariners of England and they smelt of the ablutions to which they had
+been condemned before tea and the odour of which was but partly overlaid
+by that of bread and butter. Scratch wanted an old story and Parson a
+new, and they exchanged from side to side a good many powerful
+arguments. While they were so engaged Miss Steet narrated at her
+visitor's invitation the walk she had taken with them and revealed that
+she had been thinking for a long time of asking Mrs. Berrington--if she
+only had an opportunity--whether she should approve of her giving them a
+few elementary notions of botany. But the opportunity had not come--she
+had had the idea for a long time past. She was rather fond of the study
+herself; she had gone into it a little--she seemed to intimate that
+there had been times when she extracted a needed comfort from it. Laura
+suggested that botany might be a little dry for such young children in
+winter, from text-books--that the better way would be perhaps to wait
+till the spring and show them out of doors, in the garden, some of the
+peculiarities of plants. To this Miss Steet rejoined that her idea had
+been to teach some of the general facts slowly--it would take a long
+time--and then they would be all ready for the spring. She spoke of the
+spring as if it would not arrive for a terribly long time. She had hoped
+to lay the question before Mrs. Berrington that week--but was it not
+already Thursday? Laura said, 'Oh yes, you had better do anything with
+the children that will keep them profitably occupied;' she came very
+near saying anything that would occupy the governess herself.
+
+She had rather a dread of new stories--it took the little boys so long
+to get initiated and the first steps were so terribly bestrewn with
+questions. Receptive silence, broken only by an occasional rectification
+on the part of the listener, never descended until after the tale had
+been told a dozen times. The matter was settled for 'Riquet with the
+Tuft,' but on this occasion the girl's heart was not much in the
+entertainment. The children stood on either side of her, leaning against
+her, and she had an arm round each; their little bodies were thick and
+strong and their voices had the quality of silver bells. Their mother
+had certainly gone too far; but there was nevertheless a limit to the
+tenderness one could feel for the neglected, compromised bairns. It was
+difficult to take a sentimental view of them--they would never take such
+a view of themselves. Geordie would grow up to be a master-hand at polo
+and care more for that pastime than for anything in life, and Ferdy
+perhaps would develop into 'the best shot in England.' Laura felt these
+possibilities stirring within them; they were in the things they said to
+her, in the things they said to each other. At any rate they would never
+reflect upon anything in the world. They contradicted each other on a
+question of ancestral history to which their attention apparently had
+been drawn by their nurse, whose people had been tenants for
+generations. Their grandfather had had the hounds for fifteen
+years--Ferdy maintained that he had always had them. Geordie ridiculed
+this idea, like a man of the world; he had had them till he went into
+volunteering--then he had got up a magnificent regiment, he had spent
+thousands of pounds on it. Ferdy was of the opinion that this was wasted
+money--he himself intended to have a real regiment, to be a colonel in
+the Guards. Geordie looked as if he thought that a superficial ambition
+and could see beyond it; his own most definite view was that he would
+have back the hounds. He didn't see why papa didn't have them--unless it
+was because he wouldn't take the trouble.
+
+'I know--it's because mamma is an American!' Ferdy announced, with
+confidence.
+
+'And what has that to do with it?' asked Laura.
+
+'Mamma spends so much money--there isn't any more for anything!'
+
+This startling speech elicited an alarmed protest from Miss Steet; she
+blushed and assured Laura that she couldn't imagine where the child
+could have picked up such an extraordinary idea. 'I'll look into it--you
+may be sure I'll look into it,' she said; while Laura told Ferdy that he
+must never, never, never, under any circumstances, either utter or
+listen to a word that should be wanting in respect to his mother.
+
+'If any one should say anything against any of my people I would give
+him a good one!' Geordie shouted, with his hands in his little blue
+pockets.
+
+'I'd hit him in the eye!' cried Ferdy, with cheerful inconsequence.
+
+'Perhaps you don't care to come to dinner at half-past seven,' the girl
+said to Miss Steet; 'but I should be very glad--I'm all alone.'
+
+'Thank you so much. All alone, really?' murmured the governess.
+
+'Why don't you get married? then you wouldn't be alone,' Geordie
+interposed, with ingenuity.
+
+'Children, you are really too dreadful this evening!' Miss Steet
+exclaimed.
+
+'I shan't get married--I want to have the hounds,' proclaimed Geordie,
+who had apparently been much struck with his brother's explanation.
+
+'I will come down afterwards, about half-past eight, if you will allow
+me,' said Miss Steet, looking conscious and responsible.
+
+'Very well--perhaps we can have some music; we will try something
+together.'
+
+'Oh, music--_we_ don't go in for music!' said Geordie, with clear
+superiority; and while he spoke Laura saw Miss Steet get up suddenly,
+looking even less alleviated than usual. The door of the room had been
+pushed open and Lionel Berrington stood there. He had his hat on and a
+cigar in his mouth and his face was red, which was its common condition.
+He took off his hat as he came into the room, but he did not stop
+smoking and he turned a little redder than before. There were several
+ways in which his sister-in-law often wished he had been very different,
+but she had never disliked him for a certain boyish shyness that was in
+him, which came out in his dealings with almost all women. The governess
+of his children made him uncomfortable and Laura had already noticed
+that he had the same effect upon Miss Steet. He was fond of his
+children, but he saw them hardly more frequently than their mother and
+they never knew whether he were at home or away. Indeed his goings and
+comings were so frequent that Laura herself scarcely knew: it was an
+accident that on this occasion his absence had been marked for her.
+Selina had had her reasons for wishing not to go up to town while her
+husband was still at Mellows, and she cherished the irritating belief
+that he stayed at home on purpose to watch her--to keep her from going
+away. It was her theory that she herself was perpetually at home--that
+few women were more domestic, more glued to the fireside and absorbed in
+the duties belonging to it; and unreasonable as she was she recognised
+the fact that for her to establish this theory she must make her
+husband sometimes see her at Mellows. It was not enough for her to
+maintain that he would see her if he were sometimes there himself.
+Therefore she disliked to be caught in the crude fact of absence--to go
+away under his nose; what she preferred was to take the next train after
+his own and return an hour or two before him. She managed this often
+with great ability, in spite of her not being able to be sure when he
+_would_ return. Of late however she had ceased to take so much trouble,
+and Laura, by no desire of the girl's own, was enough in the confidence
+of her impatiences and perversities to know that for her to have wished
+(four days before the moment I write of) to put him on a wrong scent--or
+to keep him at least off the right one--she must have had something more
+dreadful than usual in her head. This was why the girl had been so
+nervous and why the sense of an impending catastrophe, which had lately
+gathered strength in her mind, was at present almost intolerably
+pressing: she knew how little Selina could afford to be more dreadful
+than usual.
+
+Lionel startled her by turning up in that unexpected way, though she
+could not have told herself when it would have been natural to expect
+him. This attitude, at Mellows, was left to the servants, most of them
+inscrutable and incommunicative and erect in a wisdom that was founded
+upon telegrams--you couldn't speak to the butler but he pulled one out
+of his pocket. It was a house of telegrams; they crossed each other a
+dozen times an hour, coming and going, and Selina in particular lived in
+a cloud of them. Laura had but vague ideas as to what they were all
+about; once in a while, when they fell under her eyes, she either failed
+to understand them or judged them to be about horses. There were an
+immense number of horses, in one way and another, in Mrs. Berrington's
+life. Then she had so many friends, who were always rushing about like
+herself and making appointments and putting them off and wanting to know
+if she were going to certain places or whether she would go if they did
+or whether she would come up to town and dine and 'do a theatre.' There
+were also a good many theatres in the existence of this busy lady. Laura
+remembered how fond their poor father had been of telegraphing, but it
+was never about the theatre: at all events she tried to give her sister
+the benefit or the excuse of heredity. Selina had her own opinions,
+which were superior to this--she once remarked to Laura that it was
+idiotic for a woman to write--to telegraph was the only way not to get
+into trouble. If doing so sufficed to keep a lady out of it Mrs.
+Berrington's life should have flowed like the rivers of Eden.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Laura, as soon as her brother-in-law had been in the room a moment, had
+a particular fear; she had seen him twice noticeably under the influence
+of liquor; she had not liked it at all and now there were some of the
+same signs. She was afraid the children would discover them, or at any
+rate Miss Steet, and she felt the importance of not letting him stay in
+the room. She thought it almost a sign that he should have come there at
+all--he was so rare an apparition. He looked at her very hard, smiling
+as if to say, 'No, no, I'm not--not if you think it!' She perceived with
+relief in a moment that he was not very bad, and liquor disposed him
+apparently to tenderness, for he indulged in an interminable kissing of
+Geordie and Ferdy, during which Miss Steet turned away delicately,
+looking out of the window. The little boys asked him no questions to
+celebrate his return--they only announced that they were going to learn
+botany, to which he replied: 'Are you, really? Why, I never did,' and
+looked askance at the governess, blushing as if to express the hope that
+she would let him off from carrying that subject further. To Laura and
+to Miss Steet he was amiably explanatory, though his explanations were
+not quite coherent. He had come back an hour before--he was going to
+spend the night--he had driven over from Churton--he was thinking of
+taking the last train up to town. Was Laura dining at home? Was any one
+coming? He should enjoy a quiet dinner awfully.
+
+'Certainly I'm alone,' said the girl. 'I suppose you know Selina is
+away.'
+
+'Oh yes--I know where Selina is!' And Lionel Berrington looked round,
+smiling at every one present, including Scratch and Parson. He stopped
+while he continued to smile and Laura wondered what he was so much
+pleased at. She preferred not to ask--she was sure it was something that
+wouldn't give _her_ pleasure; but after waiting a moment her
+brother-in-law went on: 'Selina's in Paris, my dear; that's where Selina
+is!'
+
+'In Paris?' Laura repeated.
+
+'Yes, in Paris, my dear--God bless her! Where else do you suppose?
+Geordie my boy, where should _you_ think your mummy would naturally be?'
+
+'Oh, I don't know,' said Geordie, who had no reply ready that would
+express affectingly the desolation of the nursery. 'If I were mummy I'd
+travel.'
+
+'Well now that's your mummy's idea--she has gone to travel,' returned
+the father. 'Were you ever in Paris, Miss Steet?'
+
+Miss Steet gave a nervous laugh and said No, but she had been to
+Boulogne; while to her added confusion Ferdy announced that he knew
+where Paris was--it was in America. 'No, it ain't--it's in Scotland!'
+cried Geordie; and Laura asked Lionel how he knew--whether his wife had
+written to him.
+
+'Written to me? when did she ever write to me? No, I saw a fellow in
+town this morning who saw her there--at breakfast yesterday. He came
+over last night. That's how I know my wife's in Paris. You can't have
+better proof than that!'
+
+'I suppose it's a very pleasant season there,' the governess murmured,
+as if from a sense of duty, in a distant, discomfortable tone.
+
+'I daresay it's very pleasant indeed--I daresay it's awfully amusing!'
+laughed Mr. Berrington. 'Shouldn't you like to run over with me for a
+few days, Laura--just to have a go at the theatres? I don't see why we
+should always be moping at home. We'll take Miss Steet and the children
+and give mummy a pleasant surprise. Now who do you suppose she was with,
+in Paris--who do you suppose she was seen with?'
+
+Laura had turned pale, she looked at him hard, imploringly, in the eyes:
+there was a name she was terribly afraid he would mention. 'Oh sir, in
+that case we had better go and get ready!' Miss Steet quavered, betwixt
+a laugh and a groan, in a spasm of discretion; and before Laura knew it
+she had gathered Geordie and Ferdy together and swept them out of the
+room. The door closed behind her with a very quick softness and Lionel
+remained a moment staring at it.
+
+'I say, what does she mean?--ain't that damned impertinent?' he
+stammered. 'What did she think I was going to say? Does she suppose I
+would say any harm before--before _her_? Dash it, does she suppose I
+would give away my wife to the servants?' Then he added, 'And I wouldn't
+say any harm before you, Laura. You are too good and too nice and I like
+you too much!'
+
+'Won't you come downstairs? won't you have some tea?' the girl asked,
+uneasily.
+
+'No, no, I want to stay here--I like this place,' he replied, very
+gently and reasoningly. 'It's a deuced nice place--it's an awfully jolly
+room. It used to be this way--always--when I was a little chap. I was a
+rough one, my dear; I wasn't a pretty little lamb like that pair. I
+think it's because you look after them--that's what makes 'em so sweet.
+The one in my time--what was her name? I think it was Bald or Bold--I
+rather think she found me a handful. I used to kick her shins--I was
+decidedly vicious. And do _you_ see it's kept so well, Laura?' he went
+on, looking round him. ''Pon my soul, it's the prettiest room in the
+house. What does she want to go to Paris for when she has got such a
+charming house? Now can you answer me that, Laura?'
+
+'I suppose she has gone to get some clothes: her dressmaker lives in
+Paris, you know.'
+
+'Dressmaker? Clothes? Why, she has got whole rooms full of them. Hasn't
+she got whole rooms full of them?'
+
+'Speaking of clothes I must go and change mine,' said Laura. 'I have
+been out in the rain--I have been to Plash--I'm decidedly damp.'
+
+'Oh, you have been to Plash? You have seen my mother? I hope she's in
+very good health.' But before the girl could reply to this he went on:
+'Now, I want you to guess who she's in Paris with. Motcomb saw them
+together--at that place, what's his name? close to the Madeleine.' And
+as Laura was silent, not wishing at all to guess, he continued--'It's
+the ruin of any woman, you know; I can't think what she has got in her
+head.' Still Laura said nothing, and as he had hold of her arm, she
+having turned away, she led him this time out of the room. She had a
+horror of the name, the name that was in her mind and that was
+apparently on his lips, though his tone was so singular, so
+contemplative. 'My dear girl, she's with Lady Ringrose--what do you say
+to that?' he exclaimed, as they passed along the corridor to the
+staircase.
+
+'With Lady Ringrose?'
+
+'They went over on Tuesday--they are knocking about there alone.'
+
+'I don't know Lady Ringrose,' Laura said, infinitely relieved that the
+name was not the one she had feared. Lionel leaned on her arm as they
+went downstairs.
+
+'I rather hope not--I promise you she has never put her foot in this
+house! If Selina expects to bring her here I should like half an hour's
+notice; yes, half an hour would do. She might as well be seen with----'
+And Lionel Berrington checked himself. 'She has had at least fifty----'
+And again he stopped short. 'You must pull me up, you know, if I say
+anything you don't like!'
+
+'I don't understand you--let me alone, please!' the girl broke out,
+disengaging herself with an effort from his arm. She hurried down the
+rest of the steps and left him there looking after her, and as she went
+she heard him give an irrelevant laugh.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+She determined not to go to dinner--she wished for that day not to meet
+him again. He would drink more--he would be worse--she didn't know what
+he might say. Besides she was too angry--not with him but with
+Selina--and in addition to being angry she was sick. She knew who Lady
+Ringrose was; she knew so many things to-day that when she was
+younger--and only a little--she had not expected ever to know. Her eyes
+had been opened very wide in England and certainly they had been opened
+to Lady Ringrose. She had heard what she had done and perhaps a good
+deal more, and it was not very different from what she had heard of
+other women. She knew Selina had been to her house; she had an
+impression that her ladyship had been to Selina's, in London, though she
+herself had not seen her there. But she had not known they were so
+intimate as that--that Selina would rush over to Paris with her. What
+they had gone to Paris for was not necessarily criminal; there were a
+hundred reasons, familiar to ladies who were fond of change, of
+movement, of the theatres and of new bonnets; but nevertheless it was
+the fact of this little excursion quite as much as the companion that
+excited Laura's disgust.
+
+She was not ready to say that the companion was any worse, though
+Lionel appeared to think so, than twenty other women who were her
+sister's intimates and whom she herself had seen in London, in Grosvenor
+Place, and even under the motherly old beeches at Mellows. But she
+thought it unpleasant and base in Selina to go abroad that way, like a
+commercial traveller, capriciously, clandestinely, without giving
+notice, when she had left her to understand that she was simply spending
+three or four days in town. It was bad taste and bad form, it was
+_cabotin_ and had the mark of Selina's complete, irremediable
+frivolity--the worst accusation (Laura tried to cling to that opinion)
+that she laid herself open to. Of course frivolity that was never
+ashamed of itself was like a neglected cold--you could die of it morally
+as well as of anything else. Laura knew this and it was why she was
+inexpressibly vexed with her sister. She hoped she should get a letter
+from Selina the next morning (Mrs. Berrington would show at least that
+remnant of propriety) which would give her a chance to despatch her an
+answer that was already writing itself in her brain. It scarcely
+diminished Laura's eagerness for such an opportunity that she had a
+vision of Selina's showing her letter, laughing, across the table, at
+the place near the Madeleine, to Lady Ringrose (who would be
+painted--Selina herself, to do her justice, was not yet) while the
+French waiters, in white aprons, contemplated _ces dames_. It was new
+work for our young lady to judge of these shades--the gradations, the
+probabilities of license, and of the side of the line on which, or
+rather how far on the wrong side, Lady Ringrose was situated.
+
+A quarter of an hour before dinner Lionel sent word to her room that
+she was to sit down without him--he had a headache and wouldn't appear.
+This was an unexpected grace and it simplified the position for Laura;
+so that, smoothing her ruffles, she betook herself to the table. Before
+doing this however she went back to the schoolroom and told Miss Steet
+she must contribute her company. She took the governess (the little boys
+were in bed) downstairs with her and made her sit opposite, thinking she
+would be a safeguard if Lionel were to change his mind. Miss Steet was
+more frightened than herself--she was a very shrinking bulwark. The
+dinner was dull and the conversation rare; the governess ate three
+olives and looked at the figures on the spoons. Laura had more than ever
+her sense of impending calamity; a draught of misfortune seemed to blow
+through the house; it chilled her feet under her chair. The letter she
+had in her head went out like a flame in the wind and her only thought
+now was to telegraph to Selina the first thing in the morning, in quite
+different words. She scarcely spoke to Miss Steet and there was very
+little the governess could say to her: she had already related her
+history so often. After dinner she carried her companion into the
+drawing-room, by the arm, and they sat down to the piano together. They
+played duets for an hour, mechanically, violently; Laura had no idea
+what the music was--she only knew that their playing was execrable. In
+spite of this--'That's a very nice thing, that last,' she heard a vague
+voice say, behind her, at the end; and she became aware that her
+brother-in-law had joined them again.
+
+Miss Steet was pusillanimous--she retreated on the spot, though Lionel
+had already forgotten that he was angry at the scandalous way she had
+carried off the children from the schoolroom. Laura would have gone too
+if Lionel had not told her that he had something very particular to say
+to her. That made her want to go more, but she had to listen to him when
+he expressed the hope that she hadn't taken offence at anything he had
+said before. He didn't strike her as tipsy now; he had slept it off or
+got rid of it and she saw no traces of his headache. He was still
+conspicuously cheerful, as if he had got some good news and were very
+much encouraged. She knew the news he had got and she might have
+thought, in view of his manner, that it could not really have seemed to
+him so bad as he had pretended to think it. It was not the first time
+however that she had seen him pleased that he had a case against his
+wife, and she was to learn on this occasion how extreme a satisfaction
+he could take in his wrongs. She would not sit down again; she only
+lingered by the fire, pretending to warm her feet, and he walked to and
+fro in the long room, where the lamp-light to-night was limited,
+stepping on certain figures of the carpet as if his triumph were alloyed
+with hesitation.
+
+'I never know how to talk to you--you are so beastly clever,' he said.
+'I can't treat you like a little girl in a pinafore--and yet of course
+you are only a young lady. You're so deuced good--that makes it worse,'
+he went on, stopping in front of her with his hands in his pockets and
+the air he himself had of being a good-natured but dissipated boy; with
+his small stature, his smooth, fat, suffused face, his round, watery,
+light-coloured eyes and his hair growing in curious infantile rings. He
+had lost one of his front teeth and always wore a stiff white scarf,
+with a pin representing some symbol of the turf or the chase. 'I don't
+see why _she_ couldn't have been a little more like you. If I could have
+had a shot at you first!'
+
+'I don't care for any compliments at my sister's expense,' Laura said,
+with some majesty.
+
+'Oh I say, Laura, don't put on so many frills, as Selina says. You know
+what your sister is as well as I do!' They stood looking at each other a
+moment and he appeared to see something in her face which led him to
+add--'You know, at any rate, how little we hit it off.'
+
+'I know you don't love each other--it's too dreadful.'
+
+'Love each other? she hates me as she'd hate a hump on her back. She'd
+do me any devilish turn she could. There isn't a feeling of loathing
+that she doesn't have for me! She'd like to stamp on me and hear me
+crack, like a black beetle, and she never opens her mouth but she
+insults me.' Lionel Berrington delivered himself of these assertions
+without violence, without passion or the sting of a new discovery; there
+was a familiar gaiety in his trivial little tone and he had the air of
+being so sure of what he said that he did not need to exaggerate in
+order to prove enough.
+
+'Oh, Lionel!' the girl murmured, turning pale. 'Is that the particular
+thing you wished to say to me?'
+
+'And you can't say it's my fault--you won't pretend to do that, will
+you?' he went on. 'Ain't I quiet, ain't I kind, don't I go steady?
+Haven't I given her every blessed thing she has ever asked for?'
+
+'You haven't given her an example!' Laura replied, with spirit. 'You
+don't care for anything in the wide world but to amuse yourself, from
+the beginning of the year to the end. No more does she--and perhaps it's
+even worse in a woman. You are both as selfish as you can live, with
+nothing in your head or your heart but your vulgar pleasure, incapable
+of a concession, incapable of a sacrifice!' She at least spoke with
+passion; something that had been pent up in her soul broke out and it
+gave her relief, almost a momentary joy.
+
+It made Lionel Berrington stare; he coloured, but after a moment he
+threw back his head with laughter. 'Don't you call me kind when I stand
+here and take all that? If I'm so keen for my pleasure what pleasure do
+_you_ give me? Look at the way I take it, Laura. You ought to do me
+justice. Haven't I sacrificed my home? and what more can a man do?'
+
+'I don't think you care any more for your home than Selina does. And
+it's so sacred and so beautiful, God forgive you! You are all blind and
+senseless and heartless and I don't know what poison is in your veins.
+There is a curse on you and there will be a judgment!' the girl went on,
+glowing like a young prophetess.
+
+'What do you want me to do? Do you want me to stay at home and read the
+Bible?' her companion demanded with an effect of profanity, confronted
+with her deep seriousness.
+
+'It wouldn't do you any harm, once in a while.'
+
+'There will be a judgment on _her_--that's very sure, and I know where
+it will be delivered,' said Lionel Berrington, indulging in a visible
+approach to a wink. 'Have I done the half to her she has done to me? I
+won't say the half but the hundredth part? Answer me truly, my dear!'
+
+'I don't know what she has done to you,' said Laura, impatiently.
+
+'That's exactly what I want to tell you. But it's difficult. I'll bet
+you five pounds she's doing it now!'
+
+'You are too unable to make yourself respected,' the girl remarked, not
+shrinking now from the enjoyment of an advantage--that of feeling
+herself superior and taking her opportunity.
+
+Her brother-in-law seemed to feel for the moment the prick of this
+observation. 'What has such a piece of nasty boldness as that to do with
+respect? She's the first that ever defied me!' exclaimed the young man,
+whose aspect somehow scarcely confirmed this pretension. 'You know all
+about her--don't make believe you don't,' he continued in another tone.
+'You see everything--you're one of the sharp ones. There's no use
+beating about the bush, Laura--you've lived in this precious house and
+you're not so green as that comes to. Besides, you're so good yourself
+that you needn't give a shriek if one is obliged to say what one means.
+Why didn't you grow up a little sooner? Then, over there in New York, it
+would certainly have been you I would have made up to. _You_ would have
+respected me--eh? now don't say you wouldn't.' He rambled on, turning
+about the room again, partly like a person whose sequences were
+naturally slow but also a little as if, though he knew what he had in
+mind, there were still a scruple attached to it that he was trying to
+rub off.
+
+'I take it that isn't what I must sit up to listen to, Lionel, is it?'
+Laura said, wearily.
+
+'Why, you don't want to go to bed at nine o'clock, do you? That's all
+rot, of course. But I want you to help me.'
+
+'To help you--how?'
+
+'I'll tell you--but you must give me my head. I don't know what I said
+to you before dinner--I had had too many brandy and sodas. Perhaps I was
+too free; if I was I beg your pardon. I made the governess bolt--very
+proper in the superintendent of one's children. Do you suppose they saw
+anything? I shouldn't care for that. I did take half a dozen or so; I
+was thirsty and I was awfully gratified.'
+
+'You have little enough to gratify you.'
+
+'Now that's just where you are wrong. I don't know when I've fancied
+anything so much as what I told you.'
+
+'What you told me?'
+
+'About her being in Paris. I hope she'll stay a month!'
+
+'I don't understand you,' Laura said.
+
+'Are you very sure, Laura? My dear, it suits my book! Now you know
+yourself he's not the first.'
+
+Laura was silent; his round eyes were fixed on her face and she saw
+something she had not seen before--a little shining point which on
+Lionel's part might represent an idea, but which made his expression
+conscious as well as eager. 'He?' she presently asked. 'Whom are you
+speaking of?'
+
+'Why, of Charley Crispin, G----' And Lionel Berrington accompanied this
+name with a startling imprecation.
+
+'What has he to do----?'
+
+'He has everything to do. Isn't he with her there?'
+
+'How should I know? You said Lady Ringrose.'
+
+'Lady Ringrose is a mere blind--and a devilish poor one at that. I'm
+sorry to have to say it to you, but he's her lover. I mean Selina's. And
+he ain't the first.'
+
+There was another short silence while they stood opposed, and then Laura
+asked--and the question was unexpected--'Why do you call him Charley?'
+
+'Doesn't he call me Lion, like all the rest?' said her brother-in-law,
+staring.
+
+'You're the most extraordinary people. I suppose you have a certain
+amount of proof before you say such things to me?'
+
+'Proof, I've oceans of proof! And not only about Crispin, but about
+Deepmere.'
+
+'And pray who is Deepmere?'
+
+'Did you never hear of Lord Deepmere? He has gone to India. That was
+before you came. I don't say all this for my pleasure, Laura,' Mr.
+Berrington added.
+
+'Don't you, indeed?' asked the girl with a singular laugh. 'I thought
+you were so glad.'
+
+'I'm glad to know it but I'm not glad to tell it. When I say I'm glad to
+know it I mean I'm glad to be fixed at last. Oh, I've got the tip! It's
+all open country now and I know just how to go. I've gone into it most
+extensively; there's nothing you can't find out to-day--if you go to the
+right place. I've--I've----' He hesitated a moment, then went on: 'Well,
+it's no matter what I've done. I know where I am and it's a great
+comfort. She's up a tree, if ever a woman was. Now we'll see who's a
+beetle and who's a toad!' Lionel Berrington concluded, gaily, with some
+incongruity of metaphor.
+
+'It's not true--it's not true--it's not true,' Laura said, slowly.
+
+'That's just what she'll say--though that's not the way she'll say it.
+Oh, if she could get off by your saying it for her!--for you, my dear,
+would be believed.'
+
+'Get off--what do you mean?' the girl demanded, with a coldness she
+failed to feel, for she was tingling all over with shame and rage.
+
+'Why, what do you suppose I'm talking about? I'm going to haul her up
+and to have it out.'
+
+'You're going to make a scandal?'
+
+'_Make_ it? Bless my soul, it isn't me! And I should think it was made
+enough. I'm going to appeal to the laws of my country--that's what I'm
+going to do. She pretends I'm stopped, whatever she does. But that's all
+gammon--I ain't!'
+
+'I understand--but you won't do anything so horrible,' said Laura, very
+gently.
+
+'Horrible as you please, but less so than going on in this way; I
+haven't told you the fiftieth part--you will easily understand that I
+can't. They are not nice things to say to a girl like you--especially
+about Deepmere, if you didn't know it. But when they happen you've got
+to look at them, haven't you? That's the way I look at it.'
+
+'It's not true--it's not true--it's not true,' Laura Wing repeated, in
+the same way, slowly shaking her head.
+
+'Of course you stand up for your sister--but that's just what I wanted
+to say to you, that you ought to have some pity for _me_ and some sense
+of justice. Haven't I always been nice to you? Have you ever had so much
+as a nasty word from me?'
+
+This appeal touched the girl; she had eaten her brother-in-law's bread
+for months, she had had the use of all the luxuries with which he was
+surrounded, and to herself personally she had never known him anything
+but good-natured. She made no direct response however; she only
+said--'Be quiet, be quiet and leave her to me. I will answer for her.'
+
+'Answer for her--what do you mean?'
+
+'She shall be better--she shall be reasonable--there shall be no more
+talk of these horrors. Leave her to me--let me go away with her
+somewhere.'
+
+'Go away with her? I wouldn't let you come within a mile of her, if you
+were _my_ sister!'
+
+'Oh, shame, shame!' cried Laura Wing, turning away from him.
+
+She hurried to the door of the room, but he stopped her before she
+reached it. He got his back to it, he barred her way and she had to
+stand there and hear him. 'I haven't said what I wanted--for I told you
+that I wanted you to help me. I ain't cruel--I ain't insulting--you
+can't make out that against me; I'm sure you know in your heart that
+I've swallowed what would sicken most men. Therefore I will say that you
+ought to be fair. You're too clever not to be; _you_ can't pretend to
+swallow----' He paused a moment and went on, and she saw it was his
+idea--an idea very simple and bold. He wanted her to side with him--to
+watch for him--to help him to get his divorce. He forbore to say that
+she owed him as much for the hospitality and protection she had in her
+poverty enjoyed, but she was sure that was in his heart. 'Of course
+she's your sister, but when one's sister's a perfect bad 'un there's no
+law to force one to jump into the mud to save her. It _is_ mud, my dear,
+and mud up to your neck. You had much better think of her children--you
+had much better stop in _my_ boat.'
+
+'Do you ask me to help you with evidence against her?' the girl
+murmured. She had stood there passive, waiting while he talked, covering
+her face with her hands, which she parted a little, looking at him.
+
+He hesitated a moment. 'I ask you not to deny what you have seen--what
+you feel to be true.'
+
+'Then of the abominations of which you say you have proof, you haven't
+proof.'
+
+'Why haven't I proof?'
+
+'If you want _me_ to come forward!'
+
+'I shall go into court with a strong case. You may do what you like. But
+I give you notice and I expect you not to forget that I have given it.
+Don't forget--because you'll be asked--that I have told you to-night
+where she is and with whom she is and what measures I intend to take.'
+
+'Be asked--be asked?' the girl repeated.
+
+'Why, of course you'll be cross-examined.'
+
+'Oh, mother, mother!' cried Laura Wing. Her hands were over her face
+again and as Lionel Berrington, opening the door, let her pass, she
+burst into tears. He looked after her, distressed, compunctious,
+half-ashamed, and he exclaimed to himself--'The bloody brute, the bloody
+brute!' But the words had reference to his wife.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+'And are you telling me the perfect truth when you say that Captain
+Crispin was not there?'
+
+'The perfect truth?' Mrs. Berrington straightened herself to her height,
+threw back her head and measured her interlocutress up and down; it is
+to be surmised that this was one of the many ways in which she knew she
+looked very handsome indeed. Her interlocutress was her sister, and even
+in a discussion with a person long since initiated she was not incapable
+of feeling that her beauty was a new advantage. On this occasion she had
+at first the air of depending upon it mainly to produce an effect upon
+Laura; then, after an instant's reflection, she determined to arrive at
+her result in another way. She exchanged her expression of scorn (of
+resentment at her veracity's being impugned) for a look of gentle
+amusement; she smiled patiently, as if she remembered that of course
+Laura couldn't understand of what an impertinence she had been guilty.
+There was a quickness of perception and lightness of hand which, to her
+sense, her American sister had never acquired: the girl's earnest,
+almost barbarous probity blinded her to the importance of certain
+pleasant little forms. 'My poor child, the things you do say! One
+doesn't put a question about the perfect truth in a manner that implies
+that a person is telling a perfect lie. However, as it's only you, I
+don't mind satisfying your clumsy curiosity. I haven't the least idea
+whether Captain Crispin was there or not. I know nothing of his
+movements and he doesn't keep me informed--why should he, poor man?--of
+his whereabouts. He was not there for me--isn't that all that need
+interest you? As far as I was concerned he might have been at the North
+Pole. I neither saw him nor heard of him. I didn't see the end of his
+nose!' Selina continued, still with her wiser, tolerant brightness,
+looking straight into her sister's eyes. Her own were clear and lovely
+and she was but little less handsome than if she had been proud and
+freezing. Laura wondered at her more and more; stupefied suspense was
+now almost the girl's constant state of mind.
+
+Mrs. Berrington had come back from Paris the day before but had not
+proceeded to Mellows the same night, though there was more than one
+train she might have taken. Neither had she gone to the house in
+Grosvenor Place but had spent the night at an hotel. Her husband was
+absent again; he was supposed to be in Grosvenor Place, so that they had
+not yet met. Little as she was a woman to admit that she had been in the
+wrong she was known to have granted later that at this moment she had
+made a mistake in not going straight to her own house. It had given
+Lionel a degree of advantage, made it appear perhaps a little that she
+had a bad conscience and was afraid to face him. But she had had her
+reasons for putting up at an hotel, and she thought it unnecessary to
+express them very definitely. She came home by a morning train, the
+second day, and arrived before luncheon, of which meal she partook in
+the company of her sister and in that of Miss Steet and the children,
+sent for in honour of the occasion. After luncheon she let the governess
+go but kept Scratch and Parson--kept them on ever so long in the
+morning-room where she remained; longer than she had ever kept them
+before. Laura was conscious that she ought to have been pleased at this,
+but there was a perversity even in Selina's manner of doing right; for
+she wished immensely now to see her alone--she had something so serious
+to say to her. Selina hugged her children repeatedly, encouraging their
+sallies; she laughed extravagantly at the artlessness of their remarks,
+so that at table Miss Steet was quite abashed by her unusual high
+spirits. Laura was unable to question her about Captain Crispin and Lady
+Ringrose while Geordie and Ferdy were there: they would not understand,
+of course, but names were always reflected in their limpid little minds
+and they gave forth the image later--often in the most extraordinary
+connections. It was as if Selina knew what she was waiting for and were
+determined to make her wait. The girl wished her to go to her room, that
+she might follow her there. But Selina showed no disposition to retire,
+and one could never entertain the idea for her, on any occasion, that it
+would be suitable that she should change her dress. The dress she
+wore--whatever it was--was too becoming to her, and to the moment, for
+that. Laura noticed how the very folds of her garment told that she had
+been to Paris; she had spent only a week there but the mark of her
+_couturiere_ was all over her: it was simply to confer with this great
+artist that, from her own account, she had crossed the Channel. The
+signs of the conference were so conspicuous that it was as if she had
+said, 'Don't you see the proof that it was for nothing but _chiffons_?'
+She walked up and down the room with Geordie in her arms, in an access
+of maternal tenderness; he was much too big to nestle gracefully in her
+bosom, but that only made her seem younger, more flexible, fairer in her
+tall, strong slimness. Her distinguished figure bent itself hither and
+thither, but always in perfect freedom, as she romped with her children;
+and there was another moment, when she came slowly down the room,
+holding one of them in each hand and singing to them while they looked
+up at her beauty, charmed and listening and a little surprised at such
+new ways--a moment when she might have passed for some grave, antique
+statue of a young matron, or even for a picture of Saint Cecilia. This
+morning, more than ever, Laura was struck with her air of youth, the
+inextinguishable freshness that would have made any one exclaim at her
+being the mother of such bouncing little boys. Laura had always admired
+her, thought her the prettiest woman in London, the beauty with the
+finest points; and now these points were so vivid (especially her
+finished slenderness and the grace, the natural elegance of every
+turn--the fall of her shoulders had never looked so perfect) that the
+girl almost detested them: they appeared to her a kind of advertisement
+of danger and even of shame.
+
+Miss Steet at last came back for the children, and as soon as she had
+taken them away Selina observed that she would go over to Plash--just
+as she was: she rang for her hat and jacket and for the carriage. Laura
+could see that she would not give her just yet the advantage of a
+retreat to her room. The hat and jacket were quickly brought, but after
+they were put on Selina kept her maid in the drawing-room, talking to
+her a long time, telling her elaborately what she wished done with the
+things she had brought from Paris. Before the maid departed the carriage
+was announced, and the servant, leaving the door of the room open,
+hovered within earshot. Laura then, losing patience, turned out the maid
+and closed the door; she stood before her sister, who was prepared for
+her drive. Then she asked her abruptly, fiercely, but colouring with her
+question, whether Captain Crispin had been in Paris. We have heard Mrs.
+Berrington's answer, with which her strenuous sister was imperfectly
+satisfied; a fact the perception of which it doubtless was that led
+Selina to break out, with a greater show of indignation: 'I never heard
+of such extraordinary ideas for a girl to have, and such extraordinary
+things for a girl to talk about! My dear, you have acquired a
+freedom--you have emancipated yourself from conventionality--and I
+suppose I must congratulate you.' Laura only stood there, with her eyes
+fixed, without answering the sally, and Selina went on, with another
+change of tone: 'And pray if he _was_ there, what is there so monstrous?
+Hasn't it happened that he is in London when I am there? Why is it then
+so awful that he should be in Paris?'
+
+'Awful, awful, too awful,' murmured Laura, with intense gravity, still
+looking at her--looking all the more fixedly that she knew how little
+Selina liked it.
+
+'My dear, you do indulge in a style of innuendo, for a respectable
+young woman!' Mrs. Berrington exclaimed, with an angry laugh. 'You have
+ideas that when I was a girl----' She paused, and her sister saw that
+she had not the assurance to finish her sentence on that particular
+note.
+
+'Don't talk about my innuendoes and my ideas--you might remember those
+in which I have heard you indulge! Ideas? what ideas did I ever have
+before I came here?' Laura Wing asked, with a trembling voice. 'Don't
+pretend to be shocked, Selina; that's too cheap a defence. You have said
+things to me--if you choose to talk of freedom! What is the talk of your
+house and what does one hear if one lives with you? I don't care what I
+hear now (it's all odious and there's little choice and my sweet
+sensibility has gone God knows where!) and I'm very glad if you
+understand that I don't care what I say. If one talks about your
+affairs, my dear, one mustn't be too particular!' the girl continued,
+with a flash of passion.
+
+Mrs. Berrington buried her face in her hands. 'Merciful powers, to be
+insulted, to be covered with outrage, by one's wretched little sister!'
+she moaned.
+
+'I think you should be thankful there is one human being--however
+wretched--who cares enough for you to care about the truth in what
+concerns you,' Laura said. 'Selina, Selina--are you hideously deceiving
+us?'
+
+'Us?' Selina repeated, with a singular laugh. 'Whom do you mean by us?'
+
+Laura Wing hesitated; she had asked herself whether it would be best she
+should let her sister know the dreadful scene she had had with Lionel;
+but she had not, in her mind, settled that point. However, it was
+settled now in an instant. 'I don't mean your friends--those of them
+that I have seen. I don't think _they_ care a straw--I have never seen
+such people. But last week Lionel spoke to me--he told me he _knew_ it,
+as a certainty.'
+
+'Lionel spoke to you?' said Mrs. Berrington, holding up her head with a
+stare. 'And what is it that he knows?'
+
+'That Captain Crispin was in Paris and that you were with him. He
+believes you went there to meet him.'
+
+'He said this to _you_?'
+
+'Yes, and much more--I don't know why I should make a secret of it.'
+
+'The disgusting beast!' Selina exclaimed slowly, solemnly. 'He enjoys
+the right--the legal right--to pour forth his vileness upon _me_; but
+when he is so lost to every feeling as to begin to talk to you in such a
+way----!' And Mrs. Berrington paused, in the extremity of her
+reprobation.
+
+'Oh, it was not his talk that shocked me--it was his believing it,' the
+girl replied. 'That, I confess, made an impression on me.'
+
+'Did it indeed? I'm infinitely obliged to you! You are a tender, loving
+little sister.'
+
+'Yes, I am, if it's tender to have cried about you--all these days--till
+I'm blind and sick!' Laura replied. 'I hope you are prepared to meet
+him. His mind is quite made up to apply for a divorce.'
+
+Laura's voice almost failed her as she said this--it was the first time
+that in talking with Selina she had uttered that horrible word. She had
+heard it however, often enough on the lips of others; it had been
+bandied lightly enough in her presence under those somewhat austere
+ceilings of Mellows, of which the admired decorations and mouldings, in
+the taste of the middle of the last century, all in delicate plaster and
+reminding her of Wedgewood pottery, consisted of slim festoons, urns and
+trophies and knotted ribbons, so many symbols of domestic affection and
+irrevocable union. Selina herself had flashed it at her with light
+superiority, as if it were some precious jewel kept in reserve, which
+she could convert at any moment into specie, so that it would constitute
+a happy provision for her future. The idea--associated with her own
+point of view--was apparently too familiar to Mrs. Berrington to be the
+cause of her changing colour; it struck her indeed, as presented by
+Laura, in a ludicrous light, for her pretty eyes expanded a moment and
+she smiled pityingly. 'Well, you are a poor dear innocent, after all.
+Lionel would be about as able to divorce me--even if I were the most
+abandoned of my sex--as he would be to write a leader in the _Times_.'
+
+'I know nothing about that,' said Laura.
+
+'So I perceive--as I also perceive that you must have shut your eyes
+very tight. Should you like to know a few of the reasons--heaven forbid
+I should attempt to go over them all; there are millions!--why his hands
+are tied?'
+
+'Not in the least.'
+
+'Should you like to know that his own life is too base for words and
+that his impudence in talking about me would be sickening if it weren't
+grotesque?' Selina went on, with increasing emotion. 'Should you like me
+to tell you to what he has stooped--to the very gutter--and the
+charming history of his relations with----'
+
+'No, I don't want you to tell me anything of the sort,' Laura
+interrupted. 'Especially as you were just now so pained by the license
+of my own allusions.'
+
+'You listen to him then--but it suits your purpose not to listen to me!'
+
+'Oh, Selina, Selina!' the girl almost shrieked, turning away.
+
+'Where have your eyes been, or your senses, or your powers of
+observation? You can be clever enough when it suits you!' Mrs.
+Berrington continued, throwing off another ripple of derision. 'And now
+perhaps, as the carriage is waiting, you will let me go about my
+duties.'
+
+Laura turned again and stopped her, holding her arm as she passed toward
+the door. 'Will you swear--will you swear by everything that is most
+sacred?'
+
+'Will I swear what?' And now she thought Selina visibly blanched.
+
+'That you didn't lay eyes on Captain Crispin in Paris.'
+
+Mrs. Berrington hesitated, but only for an instant. 'You are really too
+odious, but as you are pinching me to death I will swear, to get away
+from you. I never laid eyes on him.'
+
+The organs of vision which Mrs. Berrington was ready solemnly to declare
+that she had not misapplied were, as her sister looked into them, an
+abyss of indefinite prettiness. The girl had sounded them before without
+discovering a conscience at the bottom of them, and they had never
+helped any one to find out anything about their possessor except that
+she was one of the beauties of London. Even while Selina spoke Laura had
+a cold, horrible sense of not believing her, and at the same time a
+desire, colder still, to extract a reiteration of the pledge. Was it the
+asseveration of her innocence that she wished her to repeat, or only the
+attestation of her falsity? One way or the other it seemed to her that
+this would settle something, and she went on inexorably--'By our dear
+mother's memory--by our poor father's?'
+
+'By my mother's, by my father's,' said Mrs. Berrington, 'and by that of
+any other member of the family you like!' Laura let her go; she had not
+been pinching her, as Selina described the pressure, but had clung to
+her with insistent hands. As she opened the door Selina said, in a
+changed voice: 'I suppose it's no use to ask you if you care to drive to
+Plash.'
+
+'No, thank you, I don't care--I shall take a walk.'
+
+'I suppose, from that, that your friend Lady Davenant has gone.'
+
+'No, I think she is still there.'
+
+'That's a bore!' Selina exclaimed, as she went off.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Laura Wing hastened to her room to prepare herself for her walk; but
+when she reached it she simply fell on her knees, shuddering, beside her
+bed. She buried her face in the soft counterpane of wadded silk; she
+remained there a long time, with a kind of aversion to lifting it again
+to the day. It burned with horror and there was coolness in the smooth
+glaze of the silk. It seemed to her that she had been concerned in a
+hideous transaction, and her uppermost feeling was, strangely enough,
+that she was ashamed--not of her sister but of herself. She did not
+believe her--that was at the bottom of everything, and she had made her
+lie, she had brought out her perjury, she had associated it with the
+sacred images of the dead. She took no walk, she remained in her room,
+and quite late, towards six o'clock, she heard on the gravel, outside of
+her windows, the wheels of the carriage bringing back Mrs. Berrington.
+She had evidently been elsewhere as well as to Plash; no doubt she had
+been to the vicarage--she was capable even of that. She could pay
+'duty-visits,' like that (she called at the vicarage about three times a
+year), and she could go and be nice to her mother-in-law with her fresh
+lips still fresher for the lie she had just told. For it was as definite
+as an aching nerve to Laura that she did not believe her, and if she did
+not believe her the words she had spoken were a lie. It was the lie, the
+lie to _her_ and which she had dragged out of her that seemed to the
+girl the ugliest thing. If she had admitted her folly, if she had
+explained, attenuated, sophisticated, there would have been a difference
+in her favour; but now she was bad because she was hard. She had a
+surface of polished metal. And she could make plans and calculate, she
+could act and do things for a particular effect. She could go straight
+to old Mrs. Berrington and to the parson's wife and his many daughters
+(just as she had kept the children after luncheon, on purpose, so long)
+because that looked innocent and domestic and denoted a mind without a
+feather's weight upon it.
+
+A servant came to the young lady's door to tell her that tea was ready;
+and on her asking who else was below (for she had heard the wheels of a
+second vehicle just after Selina's return), she learned that Lionel had
+come back. At this news she requested that some tea should be brought to
+her room--she determined not to go to dinner. When the dinner-hour came
+she sent down word that she had a headache, that she was going to bed.
+She wondered whether Selina would come to her (she could forget
+disagreeable scenes amazingly); but her fervent hope that she would stay
+away was gratified. Indeed she would have another call upon her
+attention if her meeting with her husband was half as much of a
+concussion as was to have been expected. Laura had found herself
+listening hard, after knowing that her brother-in-law was in the house:
+she half expected to hear indications of violence--loud cries or the
+sound of a scuffle. It was a matter of course to her that some dreadful
+scene had not been slow to take place, something that discretion should
+keep her out of even if she had not been too sick. She did not go to
+bed--partly because she didn't know what might happen in the house. But
+she was restless also for herself: things had reached a point when it
+seemed to her that she must make up her mind. She left her candles
+unlighted--she sat up till the small hours, in the glow of the fire.
+What had been settled by her scene with Selina was that worse things
+were to come (looking into her fire, as the night went on, she had a
+rare prevision of the catastrophe that hung over the house), and she
+considered, or tried to consider, what it would be best for her, in
+anticipation, to do. The first thing was to take flight.
+
+It may be related without delay that Laura Wing did not take flight and
+that though the circumstance detracts from the interest that should be
+felt in her character she did not even make up her mind. That was not so
+easy when action had to ensue. At the same time she had not the excuse
+of a conviction that by not acting--that is by not withdrawing from her
+brother-in-law's roof--she should be able to hold Selina up to her duty,
+to drag her back into the straight path. The hopes connected with that
+project were now a phase that she had left behind her; she had not
+to-day an illusion about her sister large enough to cover a sixpence.
+She had passed through the period of superstition, which had lasted the
+longest--the time when it seemed to her, as at first, a kind of
+profanity to doubt of Selina and judge her, the elder sister whose
+beauty and success she had ever been proud of and who carried herself,
+though with the most good-natured fraternisings, as one native to an
+upper air. She had called herself in moments of early penitence for
+irrepressible suspicion a little presumptuous prig: so strange did it
+seem to her at first, the impulse of criticism in regard to her bright
+protectress. But the revolution was over and she had a desolate, lonely
+freedom which struck her as not the most cynical thing in the world only
+because Selina's behaviour was more so. She supposed she should learn,
+though she was afraid of the knowledge, what had passed between that
+lady and her husband while her vigil ached itself away. But it appeared
+to her the next day, to her surprise, that nothing was changed in the
+situation save that Selina knew at present how much more she was
+suspected. As this had not a chastening effect upon Mrs. Berrington
+nothing had been gained by Laura's appeal to her. Whatever Lionel had
+said to his wife he said nothing to Laura: he left her at perfect
+liberty to forget the subject he had opened up to her so luminously.
+This was very characteristic of his good-nature; it had come over him
+that after all she wouldn't like it, and if the free use of the gray
+ponies could make up to her for the shock she might order them every day
+in the week and banish the unpleasant episode from her mind.
+
+Laura ordered the gray ponies very often: she drove herself all over the
+country. She visited not only the neighbouring but the distant poor, and
+she never went out without stopping for one of the vicar's fresh
+daughters. Mellows was now half the time full of visitors and when it
+was not its master and mistress were staying with their friends either
+together or singly. Sometimes (almost always when she was asked) Laura
+Wing accompanied her sister and on two or three occasions she paid an
+independent visit. Selina had often told her that she wished her to have
+her own friends, so that the girl now felt a great desire to show her
+that she had them. She had arrived at no decision whatever; she had
+embraced in intention no particular course. She drifted on, shutting her
+eyes, averting her head and, as it seemed to herself, hardening her
+heart. This admission will doubtless suggest to the reader that she was
+a weak, inconsequent, spasmodic young person, with a standard not
+really, or at any rate not continuously, high; and I have no desire that
+she shall appear anything but what she was. It must even be related of
+her that since she could not escape and live in lodgings and paint fans
+(there were reasons why this combination was impossible) she determined
+to try and be happy in the given circumstances--to float in shallow,
+turbid water. She gave up the attempt to understand the cynical _modus
+vivendi_ at which her companions seemed to have arrived; she knew it was
+not final but it served them sufficiently for the time; and if it served
+them why should it not serve her, the dependent, impecunious, tolerated
+little sister, representative of the class whom it behoved above all to
+mind their own business? The time was coming round when they would all
+move up to town, and there, in the crowd, with the added movement, the
+strain would be less and indifference easier.
+
+Whatever Lionel had said to his wife that evening she had found
+something to say to him: that Laura could see, though not so much from
+any change in the simple expression of his little red face and in the
+vain bustle of his existence as from the grand manner in which Selina
+now carried herself. She was 'smarter' than ever and her waist was
+smaller and her back straighter and the fall of her shoulders finer; her
+long eyes were more oddly charming and the extreme detachment of her
+elbows from her sides conduced still more to the exhibition of her
+beautiful arms. So she floated, with a serenity not disturbed by a
+general tardiness, through the interminable succession of her
+engagements. Her photographs were not to be purchased in the Burlington
+Arcade--she had kept out of that; but she looked more than ever as they
+would have represented her if they had been obtainable there. There were
+times when Laura thought her brother-in-law's formless desistence too
+frivolous for nature: it even gave her a sense of deeper dangers. It was
+as if he had been digging away in the dark and they would all tumble
+into the hole. It happened to her to ask herself whether the things he
+had said to her the afternoon he fell upon her in the schoolroom had not
+all been a clumsy practical joke, a crude desire to scare, that of a
+schoolboy playing with a sheet in the dark; or else brandy and soda,
+which came to the same thing. However this might be she was obliged to
+recognise that the impression of brandy and soda had not again been
+given her. More striking still however was Selina's capacity to recover
+from shocks and condone imputations; she kissed again--kissed
+Laura--without tears, and proposed problems connected with the
+rearrangement of trimmings and of the flowers at dinner, as
+candidly--as earnestly--as if there had never been an intenser question
+between them. Captain Crispin was not mentioned; much less of course, so
+far as Laura was concerned, was he seen. But Lady Ringrose appeared; she
+came down for two days, during an absence of Lionel's. Laura, to her
+surprise, found her no such Jezebel but a clever little woman with a
+single eye-glass and short hair who had read Lecky and could give her
+useful hints about water-colours: a reconciliation that encouraged the
+girl, for this was the direction in which it now seemed to her best that
+she herself should grow.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+In Grosvenor Place, on Sunday afternoon, during the first weeks of the
+season, Mrs. Berrington was usually at home: this indeed was the only
+time when a visitor who had not made an appointment could hope to be
+admitted to her presence. Very few hours in the twenty-four did she
+spend in her own house. Gentlemen calling on these occasions rarely
+found her sister: Mrs. Berrington had the field to herself. It was
+understood between the pair that Laura should take this time for going
+to see her old women: it was in that manner that Selina qualified the
+girl's independent social resources. The old women however were not a
+dozen in number; they consisted mainly of Lady Davenant and the elder
+Mrs. Berrington, who had a house in Portman Street. Lady Davenant lived
+at Queen's Gate and also was usually at home of a Sunday afternoon: her
+visitors were not all men, like Selina Berrington's, and Laura's
+maidenly bonnet was not a false note in her drawing-room. Selina liked
+her sister, naturally enough, to make herself useful, but of late,
+somehow, they had grown rarer, the occasions that depended in any degree
+upon her aid, and she had never been much appealed to--though it would
+have seemed natural she should be--on behalf of the weekly chorus of
+gentlemen. It came to be recognised on Selina's part that nature had
+dedicated her more to the relief of old women than to that of young men.
+Laura had a distinct sense of interfering with the free interchange of
+anecdote and pleasantry that went on at her sister's fireside: the
+anecdotes were mostly such an immense secret that they could not be told
+fairly if she were there, and she had their privacy on her conscience.
+There was an exception however; when Selina expected Americans she
+naturally asked her to stay at home: not apparently so much because
+their conversation would be good for her as because hers would be good
+for them.
+
+One Sunday, about the middle of May, Laura Wing prepared herself to go
+and see Lady Davenant, who had made a long absence from town at Easter
+but would now have returned. The weather was charming, she had from the
+first established her right to tread the London streets alone (if she
+was a poor girl she could have the detachment as well as the
+helplessness of it) and she promised herself the pleasure of a walk
+along the park, where the new grass was bright. A moment before she
+quitted the house her sister sent for her to the drawing-room; the
+servant gave her a note scrawled in pencil: 'That man from New York is
+here--Mr. Wendover, who brought me the introduction the other day from
+the Schoolings. He's rather a dose--you must positively come down and
+talk to him. Take him out with you if you can.' The description was not
+alluring, but Selina had never made a request of her to which the girl
+had not instantly responded: it seemed to her she was there for that.
+She joined the circle in the drawing-room and found that it consisted
+of five persons, one of whom was Lady Ringrose. Lady Ringrose was at all
+times and in all places a fitful apparition; she had described herself
+to Laura during her visit at Mellows as 'a bird on the branch.' She had
+no fixed habit of receiving on Sunday, she was in and out as she liked,
+and she was one of the few specimens of her sex who, in Grosvenor Place,
+ever turned up, as she said, on the occasions to which I allude. Of the
+three gentlemen two were known to Laura; she could have told you at
+least that the big one with the red hair was in the Guards and the other
+in the Rifles; the latter looked like a rosy child and as if he ought to
+be sent up to play with Geordie and Ferdy: his social nickname indeed
+was the Baby. Selina's admirers were of all ages--they ranged from
+infants to octogenarians.
+
+She introduced the third gentleman to her sister; a tall, fair, slender
+young man who suggested that he had made a mistake in the shade of his
+tight, perpendicular coat, ordering it of too heavenly a blue. This
+added however to the candour of his appearance, and if he was a dose, as
+Selina had described him, he could only operate beneficently. There were
+moments when Laura's heart rather yearned towards her countrymen, and
+now, though she was preoccupied and a little disappointed at having been
+detained, she tried to like Mr. Wendover, whom her sister had compared
+invidiously, as it seemed to her, with her other companions. It struck
+her that his surface at least was as glossy as theirs. The Baby, whom
+she remembered to have heard spoken of as a dangerous flirt, was in
+conversation with Lady Ringrose and the guardsman with Mrs. Berrington;
+so she did her best to entertain the American visitor, as to whom any
+one could easily see (she thought) that he had brought a letter of
+introduction--he wished so to maintain the credit of those who had given
+it to him. Laura scarcely knew these people, American friends of her
+sister who had spent a period of festivity in London and gone back
+across the sea before her own advent; but Mr. Wendover gave her all
+possible information about them. He lingered upon them, returned to
+them, corrected statements he had made at first, discoursed upon them
+earnestly and exhaustively. He seemed to fear to leave them, lest he
+should find nothing again so good, and he indulged in a parallel that
+was almost elaborate between Miss Fanny and Miss Katie. Selina told her
+sister afterwards that she had overheard him--that he talked of them as
+if he had been a nursemaid; upon which Laura defended the young man even
+to extravagance. She reminded her sister that people in London were
+always saying Lady Mary and Lady Susan: why then shouldn't Americans use
+the Christian name, with the humbler prefix with which they had to
+content themselves? There had been a time when Mrs. Berrington had been
+happy enough to be Miss Lina, even though she was the elder sister; and
+the girl liked to think there were still old friends--friends of the
+family, at home, for whom, even should she live to sixty years of
+spinsterhood, she would never be anything but Miss Laura. This was as
+good as Donna Anna or Donna Elvira: English people could never call
+people as other people did, for fear of resembling the servants.
+
+Mr. Wendover was very attentive, as well as communicative; however his
+letter might be regarded in Grosvenor Place he evidently took it very
+seriously himself; but his eyes wandered considerably, none the less, to
+the other side of the room, and Laura felt that though he had often seen
+persons like her before (not that he betrayed this too crudely) he had
+never seen any one like Lady Ringrose. His glance rested also on Mrs.
+Berrington, who, to do her justice, abstained from showing, by the way
+she returned it, that she wished her sister to get him out of the room.
+Her smile was particularly pretty on Sunday afternoons and he was
+welcome to enjoy it as a part of the decoration of the place. Whether or
+no the young man should prove interesting he was at any rate interested;
+indeed she afterwards learned that what Selina deprecated in him was the
+fact that he would eventually display a fatiguing intensity of
+observation. He would be one of the sort who noticed all kinds of little
+things--things she never saw or heard of--in the newspapers or in
+society, and would call upon her (a dreadful prospect) to explain or
+even to defend them. She had not come there to explain England to the
+Americans; the more particularly as her life had been a burden to her
+during the first years of her marriage through her having to explain
+America to the English. As for defending England to her countrymen she
+had much rather defend it _from_ them: there were too many--too many for
+those who were already there. This was the class she wished to
+spare--she didn't care about the English. They could obtain an eye for
+an eye and a cutlet for a cutlet by going over there; which she had no
+desire to do--not for all the cutlets in Christendom!
+
+When Mr. Wendover and Laura had at last cut loose from the Schoolings
+he let her know confidentially that he had come over really to see
+London; he had time, that year; he didn't know when he should have it
+again (if ever, as he said) and he had made up his mind that this was
+about the best use he could make of four months and a half. He had heard
+so much of it; it was talked of so much to-day; a man felt as if he
+ought to know something about it. Laura wished the others could hear
+this--that England was coming up, was making her way at last to a place
+among the topics of societies more universal. She thought Mr. Wendover
+after all remarkably like an Englishman, in spite of his saying that he
+believed she had resided in London quite a time. He talked a great deal
+about things being characteristic, and wanted to know, lowering his
+voice to make the inquiry, whether Lady Ringrose were not particularly
+so. He had heard of her very often, he said; and he observed that it was
+very interesting to see her: he could not have used a different tone if
+he had been speaking of the prime minister or the laureate. Laura was
+ignorant of what he had heard of Lady Ringrose; she doubted whether it
+could be the same as what she had heard from her brother-in-law: if this
+had been the case he never would have mentioned it. She foresaw that his
+friends in London would have a good deal to do in the way of telling him
+whether this or that were characteristic or not; he would go about in
+much the same way that English travellers did in America, fixing his
+attention mainly on society (he let Laura know that this was especially
+what he wished to go into) and neglecting the antiquities and sights,
+quite as if he failed to believe in their importance. He would ask
+questions it was impossible to answer; as to whether for instance
+society were very different in the two countries. If you said yes you
+gave a wrong impression and if you said no you didn't give a right one:
+that was the kind of thing that Selina had suffered from. Laura found
+her new acquaintance, on the present occasion and later, more
+philosophically analytic of his impressions than those of her countrymen
+she had hitherto encountered in her new home: the latter, in regard to
+such impressions, usually exhibited either a profane levity or a
+tendency to mawkish idealism.
+
+Mrs. Berrington called out at last to Laura that she must not stay if
+she had prepared herself to go out: whereupon the girl, having nodded
+and smiled good-bye at the other members of the circle, took a more
+formal leave of Mr. Wendover--expressed the hope, as an American girl
+does in such a case, that they should see him again. Selina asked him to
+come and dine three days later; which was as much as to say that
+relations might be suspended till then. Mr. Wendover took it so, and
+having accepted the invitation he departed at the same time as Laura. He
+passed out of the house with her and in the street she asked him which
+way he was going. He was too tender, but she liked him; he appeared not
+to deal in chaff and that was a change that relieved her--she had so
+often had to pay out that coin when she felt wretchedly poor. She hoped
+he would ask her leave to go with her the way she was going--and this
+not on particular but on general grounds. It would be American, it
+would remind her of old times; she should like him to be as American as
+that. There was no reason for her taking so quick an interest in his
+nature, inasmuch as she had not fallen under his spell; but there were
+moments when she felt a whimsical desire to be reminded of the way
+people felt and acted at home. Mr. Wendover did not disappoint her, and
+the bright chocolate-coloured vista of the Fifth Avenue seemed to surge
+before her as he said, 'May I have the pleasure of making my direction
+the same as yours?' and moved round, systematically, to take his place
+between her and the curbstone. She had never walked much with young men
+in America (she had been brought up in the new school, the school of
+attendant maids and the avoidance of certain streets) and she had very
+often done so in England, in the country; yet, as at the top of
+Grosvenor Place she crossed over to the park, proposing they should take
+that way, the breath of her native land was in her nostrils. It was
+certainly only an American who could have the tension of Mr. Wendover;
+his solemnity almost made her laugh, just as her eyes grew dull when
+people 'slanged' each other hilariously in her sister's house; but at
+the same time he gave her a feeling of high respectability. It would be
+respectable still if she were to go on with him indefinitely--if she
+never were to come home at all. He asked her after a while, as they
+went, whether he had violated the custom of the English in offering her
+his company; whether in that country a gentleman might walk with a young
+lady--the first time he saw her--not because their roads lay together
+but for the sake of the walk.
+
+'Why should it matter to me whether it is the custom of the English? I
+am not English,' said Laura Wing. Then her companion explained that he
+only wanted a general guidance--that with her (she was so kind) he had
+not the sense of having taken a liberty. The point was simply--and
+rather comprehensively and strenuously he began to set forth the point.
+Laura interrupted him; she said she didn't care about it and he almost
+irritated her by telling her she was kind. She was, but she was not
+pleased at its being recognised so soon; and he was still too
+importunate when he asked her whether she continued to go by American
+usage, didn't find that if one lived there one had to conform in a great
+many ways to the English. She was weary of the perpetual comparison, for
+she not only heard it from others--she heard it a great deal from
+herself. She held that there were certain differences you felt, if you
+belonged to one or the other nation, and that was the end of it: there
+was no use trying to express them. Those you _could_ express were not
+real or not important ones and were not worth talking about. Mr.
+Wendover asked her if she liked English society and if it were superior
+to American; also if the tone were very high in London. She thought his
+questions 'academic'--the term she used to see applied in the _Times_ to
+certain speeches in Parliament. Bending his long leanness over her (she
+had never seen a man whose material presence was so insubstantial, so
+unoppressive) and walking almost sidewise, to give her a proper
+attention, he struck her as innocent, as incapable of guessing that she
+had had a certain observation of life. They were talking about totally
+different things: English society, as he asked her judgment upon it and
+she had happened to see it, was an affair that he didn't suspect. If
+she were to give him that judgment it would be more than he doubtless
+bargained for; but she would do it not to make him open his eyes--only
+to relieve herself. She had thought of that before in regard to two or
+three persons she had met--of the satisfaction of breaking out with some
+of her feelings. It would make little difference whether the person
+understood her or not; the one who should do so best would be far from
+understanding everything. 'I want to get out of it, please--out of the
+set I live in, the one I have tumbled into through my sister, the people
+you saw just now. There are thousands of people in London who are
+different from that and ever so much nicer; but I don't see them, I
+don't know how to get at them; and after all, poor dear man, what power
+have you to help me?' That was in the last analysis the gist of what she
+had to say.
+
+Mr. Wendover asked her about Selina in the tone of a person who thought
+Mrs. Berrington a very important phenomenon, and that by itself was
+irritating to Laura Wing. Important--gracious goodness, no! She might
+have to live with her, to hold her tongue about her; but at least she
+was not bound to exaggerate her significance. The young man forbore
+decorously to make use of the expression, but she could see that he
+supposed Selina to be a professional beauty and she guessed that as this
+product had not yet been domesticated in the western world the desire to
+behold it, after having read so much about it, had been one of the
+motives of Mr. Wendover's pilgrimage. Mrs. Schooling, who must have been
+a goose, had told him that Mrs. Berrington, though transplanted, was
+the finest flower of a rich, ripe society and as clever and virtuous as
+she was beautiful. Meanwhile Laura knew what Selina thought of Fanny
+Schooling and her incurable provinciality. 'Now was that a good example
+of London talk--what I heard (I only heard a little of it, but the
+conversation was more general before you came in) in your sister's
+drawing-room? I don't mean literary, intellectual talk--I suppose there
+are special places to hear that; I mean--I mean----' Mr. Wendover went
+on with a deliberation which gave his companion an opportunity to
+interrupt him. They had arrived at Lady Davenant's door and she cut his
+meaning short. A fancy had taken her, on the spot, and the fact that it
+was whimsical seemed only to recommend it.
+
+'If you want to hear London talk there will be some very good going on
+in here,' she said. 'If you would like to come in with me----?'
+
+'Oh, you are very kind--I should be delighted,' replied Mr. Wendover,
+endeavouring to emulate her own more rapid processes. They stepped into
+the porch and the young man, anticipating his companion, lifted the
+knocker and gave a postman's rap. She laughed at him for this and he
+looked bewildered; the idea of taking him in with her had become
+agreeably exhilarating. Their acquaintance, in that moment, took a long
+jump. She explained to him who Lady Davenant was and that if he was in
+search of the characteristic it would be a pity he shouldn't know her;
+and then she added, before he could put the question:
+
+'And what I am doing is _not_ in the least usual. No, it is not the
+custom for young ladies here to take strange gentlemen off to call on
+their friends the first time they see them.'
+
+'So that Lady Davenant will think it rather extraordinary?' Mr. Wendover
+eagerly inquired; not as if that idea frightened him, but so that his
+observation on this point should also be well founded. He had entered
+into Laura's proposal with complete serenity.
+
+'Oh, most extraordinary!' said Laura, as they went in. The old lady
+however concealed such surprise as she may have felt, and greeted Mr.
+Wendover as if he were any one of fifty familiars. She took him
+altogether for granted and asked him no questions about his arrival, his
+departure, his hotel or his business in England. He noticed, as he
+afterwards confided to Laura, her omission of these forms; but he was
+not wounded by it--he only made a mark against it as an illustration of
+the difference between English and American manners: in New York people
+always asked the arriving stranger the first thing about the steamer and
+the hotel. Mr. Wendover appeared greatly impressed with Lady Davenant's
+antiquity, though he confessed to his companion on a subsequent occasion
+that he thought her a little flippant, a little frivolous even for her
+years. 'Oh yes,' said the girl, on that occasion, 'I have no doubt that
+you considered she talked too much, for one so old. In America old
+ladies sit silent and listen to the young.' Mr. Wendover stared a little
+and replied to this that with her--with Laura Wing--it was impossible to
+tell which side she was on, the American or the English: sometimes she
+seemed to take one, sometimes the other. At any rate, he added, smiling,
+with regard to the other great division it was easy to see--she was on
+the side of the old. 'Of course I am,' she said; 'when one _is_ old!'
+And then he inquired, according to his wont, if she were thought so in
+England; to which she answered that it was England that had made her so.
+
+Lady Davenant's bright drawing-room was filled with mementoes and
+especially with a collection of portraits of distinguished people,
+mainly fine old prints with signatures, an array of precious autographs.
+'Oh, it's a cemetery,' she said, when the young man asked her some
+question about one of the pictures; 'they are my contemporaries, they
+are all dead and those things are the tombstones, with the inscriptions.
+I'm the grave-digger, I look after the place and try to keep it a little
+tidy. I have dug my own little hole,' she went on, to Laura, 'and when
+you are sent for you must come and put me in.' This evocation of
+mortality led Mr. Wendover to ask her if she had known Charles Lamb; at
+which she stared for an instant, replying: 'Dear me, no--one didn't meet
+him.'
+
+'Oh, I meant to say Lord Byron,' said Mr. Wendover.
+
+'Bless me, yes; I was in love with him. But he didn't notice me,
+fortunately--we were so many. He was very nice-looking but he was very
+vulgar.' Lady Davenant talked to Laura as if Mr. Wendover had not been
+there; or rather as if his interests and knowledge were identical with
+hers. Before they went away the young man asked her if she had known
+Garrick and she replied: 'Oh, dear, no, we didn't have them in our
+houses, in those days.'
+
+'He must have been dead long before you were born!' Laura exclaimed.
+
+'I daresay; but one used to hear of him.'
+
+'I think I meant Edmund Kean,' said Mr. Wendover.
+
+'You make little mistakes of a century or two,' Laura Wing remarked,
+laughing. She felt now as if she had known Mr. Wendover a long time.
+
+'Oh, he was very clever,' said Lady Davenant.
+
+'Very magnetic, I suppose,' Mr. Wendover went on.
+
+'What's that? I believe he used to get tipsy.'
+
+'Perhaps you don't use that expression in England?' Laura's companion
+inquired.
+
+'Oh, I daresay we do, if it's American; we talk American now. You seem
+very good-natured people, but such a jargon as you _do_ speak!'
+
+'I like _your_ way, Lady Davenant,' said Mr. Wendover, benevolently,
+smiling.
+
+'You might do worse,' cried the old woman; and then she added: 'Please
+go out!' They were taking leave of her but she kept Laura's hand and,
+for the young man, nodded with decision at the open door. 'Now, wouldn't
+_he_ do?' she asked, after Mr. Wendover had passed into the hall.
+
+'Do for what?'
+
+'For a husband, of course.'
+
+'For a husband--for whom?'
+
+'Why--for me,' said Lady Davenant.
+
+'I don't know--I think he might tire you.'
+
+'Oh--if he's tiresome!' the old lady continued, smiling at the girl.
+
+'I think he is very good,' said Laura.
+
+'Well then, he'll do.'
+
+'Ah, perhaps _you_ won't!' Laura exclaimed, smiling back at her and
+turning away.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+She was of a serious turn by nature and unlike many serious people she
+made no particular study of the art of being gay. Had her circumstances
+been different she might have done so, but she lived in a merry house
+(heaven save the mark! as she used to say) and therefore was not driven
+to amuse herself for conscience sake. The diversions she sought were of
+a serious cast and she liked those best which showed most the note of
+difference from Selina's interests and Lionel's. She felt that she was
+most divergent when she attempted to cultivate her mind, and it was a
+branch of such cultivation to visit the curiosities, the antiquities,
+the monuments of London. She was fond of the Abbey and the British
+Museum--she had extended her researches as far as the Tower. She read
+the works of Mr. John Timbs and made notes of the old corners of history
+that had not yet been abolished--the houses in which great men had lived
+and died. She planned a general tour of inspection of the ancient
+churches of the City and a pilgrimage to the queer places commemorated
+by Dickens. It must be added that though her intentions were great her
+adventures had as yet been small. She had wanted for opportunity and
+independence; people had other things to do than to go with her, so that
+it was not till she had been some time in the country and till a good
+while after she had begun to go out alone that she entered upon the
+privilege of visiting public institutions by herself. There were some
+aspects of London that frightened her, but there were certain spots,
+such as the Poets' Corner in the Abbey or the room of the Elgin marbles,
+where she liked better to be alone than not to have the right companion.
+At the time Mr. Wendover presented himself in Grosvenor Place she had
+begun to put in, as they said, a museum or something of that sort
+whenever she had a chance. Besides her idea that such places were
+sources of knowledge (it is to be feared that the poor girl's notions of
+knowledge were at once conventional and crude) they were also occasions
+for detachment, an escape from worrying thoughts. She forgot Selina and
+she 'qualified' herself a little--though for what she hardly knew.
+
+The day Mr. Wendover dined in Grosvenor Place they talked about St.
+Paul's, which he expressed a desire to see, wishing to get some idea of
+the great past, as he said, in England as well as of the present. Laura
+mentioned that she had spent half an hour the summer before in the big
+black temple on Ludgate Hill; whereupon he asked her if he might
+entertain the hope that--if it were not disagreeable to her to go
+again--she would serve as his guide there. She had taken him to see Lady
+Davenant, who was so remarkable and worth a long journey, and now he
+should like to pay her back--to show _her_ something. The difficulty
+would be that there was probably nothing she had not seen; but if she
+could think of anything he was completely at her service. They sat
+together at dinner and she told him she would think of something before
+the repast was over. A little while later she let him know that a
+charming place had occurred to her--a place to which she was afraid to
+go alone and where she should be grateful for a protector: she would
+tell him more about it afterwards. It was then settled between them that
+on a certain afternoon of the same week they would go to St. Paul's
+together, extending their ramble as much further as they had time. Laura
+lowered her voice for this discussion, as if the range of allusion had
+had a kind of impropriety. She was now still more of the mind that Mr.
+Wendover was a good young man--he had such worthy eyes. His principal
+defect was that he treated all subjects as if they were equally
+important; but that was perhaps better than treating them with equal
+levity. If one took an interest in him one might not despair of teaching
+him to discriminate.
+
+Laura said nothing at first to her sister about her appointment with
+him: the feelings with which she regarded Selina were not such as to
+make it easy for her to talk over matters of conduct, as it were, with
+this votary of pleasure at any price, or at any rate to report her
+arrangements to her as one would do to a person of fine judgment. All
+the same, as she had a horror of positively hiding anything (Selina
+herself did that enough for two) it was her purpose to mention at
+luncheon on the day of the event that she had agreed to accompany Mr.
+Wendover to St. Paul's. It so happened however that Mrs. Berrington was
+not at home at this repast; Laura partook of it in the company of Miss
+Steet and her young charges. It very often happened now that the
+sisters failed to meet in the morning, for Selina remained very late in
+her room and there had been a considerable intermission of the girl's
+earlier custom of visiting her there. It was Selina's habit to send
+forth from this fragrant sanctuary little hieroglyphic notes in which
+she expressed her wishes or gave her directions for the day. On the
+morning I speak of her maid put into Laura's hand one of these
+communications, which contained the words: 'Please be sure and replace
+me with the children at lunch--I meant to give them that hour to-day.
+But I have a frantic appeal from Lady Watermouth; she is worse and
+beseeches me to come to her, so I rush for the 12.30 train.' These lines
+required no answer and Laura had no questions to ask about Lady
+Watermouth. She knew she was tiresomely ill, in exile, condemned to
+forego the diversions of the season and calling out to her friends, in a
+house she had taken for three months at Weybridge (for a certain
+particular air) where Selina had already been to see her. Selina's
+devotion to her appeared commendable--she had her so much on her mind.
+Laura had observed in her sister in relation to other persons and
+objects these sudden intensities of charity, and she had said to
+herself, watching them--'Is it because she is bad?--does she want to
+make up for it somehow and to buy herself off from the penalties?'
+
+Mr. Wendover called for his _cicerone_ and they agreed to go in a
+romantic, Bohemian manner (the young man was very docile and
+appreciative about this), walking the short distance to the Victoria
+station and taking the mysterious underground railway. In the carriage
+she anticipated the inquiry that she figured to herself he presently
+would make and said, laughing: 'No, no, this is very exceptional; if we
+were both English--and both what we are, otherwise--we wouldn't do
+this.'
+
+'And if only one of us were English?'
+
+'It would depend upon which one.'
+
+'Well, say me.'
+
+'Oh, in that case I certainly--on so short an acquaintance--would not go
+sight-seeing with you.'
+
+'Well, I am glad I'm American,' said Mr. Wendover, sitting opposite to
+her.
+
+'Yes, you may thank your fate. It's much simpler,' Laura added.
+
+'Oh, you spoil it!' the young man exclaimed--a speech of which she took
+no notice but which made her think him brighter, as they used to say at
+home. He was brighter still after they had descended from the train at
+the Temple station (they had meant to go on to Blackfriars, but they
+jumped out on seeing the sign of the Temple, fired with the thought of
+visiting that institution too) and got admission to the old garden of
+the Benchers, which lies beside the foggy, crowded river, and looked at
+the tombs of the crusaders in the low Romanesque church, with the
+cross-legged figures sleeping so close to the eternal uproar, and
+lingered in the flagged, homely courts of brick, with their
+much-lettered door-posts, their dull old windows and atmosphere of
+consultation--lingered to talk of Johnson and Goldsmith and to remark
+how London opened one's eyes to Dickens; and he was brightest of all
+when they stood in the high, bare cathedral, which suggested a dirty
+whiteness, saying it was fine but wondering why it was not finer and
+letting a glance as cold as the dusty, colourless glass fall upon
+epitaphs that seemed to make most of the defunct bores even in death.
+Mr. Wendover was decorous but he was increasingly gay, and these
+qualities appeared in him in spite of the fact that St. Paul's was
+rather a disappointment. Then they felt the advantage of having the
+other place--the one Laura had had in mind at dinner--to fall back upon:
+that perhaps would prove a compensation. They entered a hansom now (they
+had to come to that, though they had walked also from the Temple to St.
+Paul's) and drove to Lincoln's Inn Fields, Laura making the reflection
+as they went that it was really a charm to roam about London under valid
+protection--such a mixture of freedom and safety--and that perhaps she
+had been unjust, ungenerous to her sister. A good-natured, positively
+charitable doubt came into her mind--a doubt that Selina might have the
+benefit of. What she liked in her present undertaking was the element of
+the _imprevu_ that it contained, and perhaps it was simply the same
+happy sense of getting the laws of London--once in a way--off her back
+that had led Selina to go over to Paris to ramble about with Captain
+Crispin. Possibly they had done nothing worse than go together to the
+Invalides and Notre Dame; and if any one were to meet _her_ driving that
+way, so far from home, with Mr. Wendover--Laura, mentally, did not
+finish her sentence, overtaken as she was by the reflection that she had
+fallen again into her old assumption (she had been in and out of it a
+hundred times), that Mrs. Berrington _had_ met Captain Crispin--the idea
+she so passionately repudiated. She at least would never deny that she
+had spent the afternoon with Mr. Wendover: she would simply say that he
+was an American and had brought a letter of introduction.
+
+The cab stopped at the Soane Museum, which Laura Wing had always wanted
+to see, a compatriot having once told her that it was one of the most
+curious things in London and one of the least known. While Mr. Wendover
+was discharging the vehicle she looked over the important old-fashioned
+square (which led her to say to herself that London was endlessly big
+and one would never know all the places that made it up) and saw a great
+bank of cloud hanging above it--a definite portent of a summer storm.
+'We are going to have thunder; you had better keep the cab,' she said;
+upon which her companion told the man to wait, so that they should not
+afterwards, in the wet, have to walk for another conveyance. The
+heterogeneous objects collected by the late Sir John Soane are arranged
+in a fine old dwelling-house, and the place gives one the impression of
+a sort of Saturday afternoon of one's youth--a long, rummaging visit,
+under indulgent care, to some eccentric and rather alarming old
+travelled person. Our young friends wandered from room to room and
+thought everything queer and some few objects interesting; Mr. Wendover
+said it would be a very good place to find a thing you couldn't find
+anywhere else--it illustrated the prudent virtue of keeping. They took
+note of the sarcophagi and pagodas, the artless old maps and medals.
+They admired the fine Hogarths; there were uncanny, unexpected objects
+that Laura edged away from, that she would have preferred not to be in
+the room with. They had been there half an hour--it had grown much
+darker--when they heard a tremendous peal of thunder and became aware
+that the storm had broken. They watched it a while from the upper
+windows--a violent June shower, with quick sheets of lightning and a
+rainfall that danced on the pavements. They took it sociably, they
+lingered at the window, inhaling the odour of the fresh wet that
+splashed over the sultry town. They would have to wait till it had
+passed, and they resigned themselves serenely to this idea, repeating
+very often that it would pass very soon. One of the keepers told them
+that there were other rooms to see--that there were very interesting
+things in the basement. They made their way down--it grew much darker
+and they heard a great deal of thunder--and entered a part of the house
+which presented itself to Laura as a series of dim, irregular
+vaults--passages and little narrow avenues--encumbered with strange
+vague things, obscured for the time but some of which had a wicked,
+startling look, so that she wondered how the keepers could stay there.
+'It's very fearful--it looks like a cave of idols!' she said to her
+companion; and then she added--'Just look there--is that a person or a
+thing?' As she spoke they drew nearer to the object of her reference--a
+figure in the middle of a small vista of curiosities, a figure which
+answered her question by uttering a short shriek as they approached. The
+immediate cause of this cry was apparently a vivid flash of lightning,
+which penetrated into the room and illuminated both Laura's face and
+that of the mysterious person. Our young lady recognised her sister, as
+Mrs. Berrington had evidently recognised her. 'Why, Selina!' broke from
+her lips before she had time to check the words. At the same moment the
+figure turned quickly away, and then Laura saw that it was accompanied
+by another, that of a tall gentleman with a light beard which shone in
+the dusk. The two persons retreated together--dodged out of sight, as it
+were, disappearing in the gloom or in the labyrinth of the objects
+exhibited. The whole encounter was but the business of an instant.
+
+'Was it Mrs. Berrington?' Mr. Wendover asked with interest while Laura
+stood staring.
+
+'Oh no, I only thought it was at first,' she managed to reply, very
+quickly. She had recognised the gentleman--he had the fine fair beard of
+Captain Crispin--and her heart seemed to her to jump up and down. She
+was glad her companion could not see her face, and yet she wanted to get
+out, to rush up the stairs, where he would see it again, to escape from
+the place. She wished not to be there with _them_--she was overwhelmed
+with a sudden horror. 'She has lied--she has lied again--she has
+lied!'--that was the rhythm to which her thought began to dance. She
+took a few steps one way and then another: she was afraid of running
+against the dreadful pair again. She remarked to her companion that it
+was time they should go off, and then when he showed her the way back to
+the staircase she pleaded that she had not half seen the things. She
+pretended suddenly to a deep interest in them, and lingered there
+roaming and prying about. She was flurried still more by the thought
+that he would have seen her flurry, and she wondered whether he believed
+the woman who had shrieked and rushed away was _not_ Selina. If she was
+not Selina why had she shrieked? and if she was Selina what would Mr.
+Wendover think of her behaviour, and of her own, and of the strange
+accident of their meeting? What must she herself think of that? so
+astonishing it was that in the immensity of London so infinitesimally
+small a chance should have got itself enacted. What a queer place to
+come to--for people like them! They would get away as soon as possible,
+of that she could be sure; and she would wait a little to give them
+time.
+
+Mr. Wendover made no further remark--that was a relief; though his
+silence itself seemed to show that he was mystified. They went upstairs
+again and on reaching the door found to their surprise that their cab
+had disappeared--a circumstance the more singular as the man had not
+been paid. The rain was still coming down, though with less violence,
+and the square had been cleared of vehicles by the sudden storm. The
+doorkeeper, perceiving the dismay of our friends, explained that the cab
+had been taken up by another lady and another gentleman who had gone out
+a few minutes before; and when they inquired how he had been induced to
+depart without the money they owed him the reply was that there
+evidently had been a discussion (he hadn't heard it, but the lady seemed
+in a fearful hurry) and the gentleman had told him that they would make
+it all up to him and give him a lot more into the bargain. The
+doorkeeper hazarded the candid surmise that the cabby would make ten
+shillings by the job. But there were plenty more cabs; there would be
+one up in a minute and the rain moreover was going to stop. 'Well, that
+_is_ sharp practice!' said Mr. Wendover. He made no further allusion to
+the identity of the lady.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+The rain did stop while they stood there, and a brace of hansoms was not
+slow to appear. Laura told her companion that he must put her into
+one--she could go home alone: she had taken up enough of his time. He
+deprecated this course very respectfully; urged that he had it on his
+conscience to deliver her at her own door; but she sprang into the cab
+and closed the apron with a movement that was a sharp prohibition. She
+wanted to get away from him--it would be too awkward, the long,
+pottering drive back. Her hansom started off while Mr. Wendover, smiling
+sadly, lifted his hat. It was not very comfortable, even without him;
+especially as before she had gone a quarter of a mile she felt that her
+action had been too marked--she wished she had let him come. His
+puzzled, innocent air of wondering what was the matter annoyed her; and
+she was in the absurd situation of being angry at a desistence which she
+would have been still angrier if he had been guiltless of. It would have
+comforted her (because it would seem to share her burden) and yet it
+would have covered her with shame if he had guessed that what she saw
+was wrong. It would not occur to him that there was a scandal so near
+her, because he thought with no great promptitude of such things; and
+yet, since there was--but since there was after all Laura scarcely knew
+what attitude would sit upon him most gracefully. As to what he might be
+prepared to suspect by having heard what Selina's reputation was in
+London, of that Laura was unable to judge, not knowing what was said,
+because of course it was not said to _her_. Lionel would undertake to
+give her the benefit of this any moment she would allow him, but how in
+the world could _he_ know either, for how could things be said to him?
+Then, in the rattle of the hansom, passing through streets for which the
+girl had no eyes, 'She has lied, she has lied, she has lied!' kept
+repeating itself. Why had she written and signed that wanton falsehood
+about her going down to Lady Watermouth? How could she have gone to Lady
+Watermouth's when she was making so very different and so extraordinary
+a use of the hours she had announced her intention of spending there?
+What had been the need of that misrepresentation and why did she lie
+before she was driven to it?
+
+It was because she was false altogether and deception came out of her
+with her breath; she was so depraved that it was easier to her to
+fabricate than to let it alone. Laura would not have asked her to give
+an account of her day, but she would ask her now. She shuddered at one
+moment, as she found herself saying--even in silence--such things of her
+sister, and the next she sat staring out of the front of the cab at the
+stiff problem presented by Selina's turning up with the partner of her
+guilt at the Soane Museum, of all places in the world. The girl shifted
+this fact about in various ways, to account for it--not unconscious as
+she did so that it was a pretty exercise of ingenuity for a nice girl.
+Plainly, it was a rare accident: if it had been their plan to spend the
+day together the Soane Museum had not been in the original programme.
+They had been near it, they had been on foot and they had rushed in to
+take refuge from the rain. But how did they come to be near it and above
+all to be on foot? How could Selina do anything so reckless from her own
+point of view as to walk about the town--even an out-of-the-way part of
+it--with her suspected lover? Laura Wing felt the want of proper
+knowledge to explain such anomalies. It was too little clear to her
+where ladies went and how they proceeded when they consorted with
+gentlemen in regard to their meetings with whom they had to lie. She
+knew nothing of where Captain Crispin lived; very possibly--for she
+vaguely remembered having heard Selina say of him that he was very
+poor--he had chambers in that part of the town, and they were either
+going to them or coming from them. If Selina had neglected to take her
+way in a four-wheeler with the glasses up it was through some chance
+that would not seem natural till it was explained, like that of their
+having darted into a public institution. Then no doubt it would hang
+together with the rest only too well. The explanation most exact would
+probably be that the pair had snatched a walk together (in the course of
+a day of many edifying episodes) for the 'lark' of it, and for the sake
+of the walk had taken the risk, which in that part of London, so
+detached from all gentility, had appeared to them small. The last thing
+Selina could have expected was to meet her sister in such a strange
+corner--her sister with a young man of her own!
+
+She was dining out that night with both Selina and Lionel--a conjunction
+that was rather rare. She was by no means always invited with them, and
+Selina constantly went without her husband. Appearances, however,
+sometimes got a sop thrown them; three or four times a month Lionel and
+she entered the brougham together like people who still had forms, who
+still said 'my dear.' This was to be one of those occasions, and Mrs.
+Berrington's young unmarried sister was included in the invitation. When
+Laura reached home she learned, on inquiry, that Selina had not yet come
+in, and she went straight to her own room. If her sister had been there
+she would have gone to hers instead--she would have cried out to her as
+soon as she had closed the door: 'Oh, stop, stop--in God's name, stop
+before you go any further, before exposure and ruin and shame come down
+and bury us!' That was what was in the air--the vulgarest disgrace, and
+the girl, harder now than ever about her sister, was conscious of a more
+passionate desire to save herself. But Selina's absence made the
+difference that during the next hour a certain chill fell upon this
+impulse from other feelings: she found suddenly that she was late and
+she began to dress. They were to go together after dinner to a couple of
+balls; a diversion which struck her as ghastly for people who carried
+such horrors in their breasts. Ghastly was the idea of the drive of
+husband, wife and sister in pursuit of pleasure, with falsity and
+detection and hate between them. Selina's maid came to her door to tell
+her that she was in the carriage--an extraordinary piece of punctuality,
+which made her wonder, as Selina was always dreadfully late for
+everything. Laura went down as quickly as she could, passed through the
+open door, where the servants were grouped in the foolish majesty of
+their superfluous attendance, and through the file of dingy gazers who
+had paused at the sight of the carpet across the pavement and the
+waiting carriage, in which Selina sat in pure white splendour. Mrs.
+Berrington had a tiara on her head and a proud patience in her face, as
+if her sister were really a sore trial. As soon as the girl had taken
+her place she said to the footman: 'Is Mr. Berrington there?'--to which
+the man replied: 'No ma'am, not yet.' It was not new to Laura that if
+there was any one later as a general thing than Selina it was Selina's
+husband. 'Then he must take a hansom. Go on.' The footman mounted and
+they rolled away.
+
+There were several different things that had been present to Laura's
+mind during the last couple of hours as destined to mark--one or the
+other--this present encounter with her sister; but the words Selina
+spoke the moment the brougham began to move were of course exactly those
+she had not foreseen. She had considered that she might take this tone
+or that tone or even no tone at all; she was quite prepared for her
+presenting a face of blankness to any form of interrogation and saying,
+'What on earth are you talking about?' It was in short conceivable to
+her that Selina would deny absolutely that she had been in the museum,
+that they had stood face to face and that she had fled in confusion. She
+was capable of explaining the incident by an idiotic error on Laura's
+part, by her having seized on another person, by her seeing Captain
+Crispin in every bush; though doubtless she would be taxed (of course
+she would say _that_ was the woman's own affair) to supply a reason for
+the embarrassment of the other lady. But she was not prepared for
+Selina's breaking out with: 'Will you be so good as to inform me if you
+are engaged to be married to Mr. Wendover?'
+
+'Engaged to him? I have seen him but three times.'
+
+'And is that what you usually do with gentlemen you have seen three
+times?'
+
+'Are you talking about my having gone with him to see some sights? I see
+nothing wrong in that. To begin with you see what he is. One might go
+with him anywhere. Then he brought us an introduction--we have to do
+something for him. Moreover you threw him upon me the moment he
+came--you asked me to take charge of him.'
+
+'I didn't ask you to be indecent! If Lionel were to know it he wouldn't
+tolerate it, so long as you live with us.'
+
+Laura was silent a moment. 'I shall not live with you long.' The
+sisters, side by side, with their heads turned, looked at each other, a
+deep crimson leaping into Laura's face. 'I wouldn't have believed
+it--that you are so bad,' she said. 'You are horrible!' She saw that
+Selina had not taken up the idea of denying--she judged that would be
+hopeless: the recognition on either side had been too sharp. She looked
+radiantly handsome, especially with the strange new expression that
+Laura's last word brought into her eyes. This expression seemed to the
+girl to show her more of Selina morally than she had ever yet
+seen--something of the full extent and the miserable limit.
+
+'It's different for a married woman, especially when she's married to a
+cad. It's in a girl that such things are odious--scouring London with
+strange men. I am not bound to explain to you--there would be too many
+things to say. I have my reasons--I have my conscience. It was the
+oddest of all things, our meeting in that place--I know that as well as
+you,' Selina went on, with her wonderful affected clearness; 'but it was
+not your finding me that was out of the way; it was my finding you--with
+your remarkable escort! That was incredible. I pretended not to
+recognise you, so that the gentleman who was with me shouldn't see you,
+shouldn't know you. He questioned me and I repudiated you. You may thank
+me for saving you! You had better wear a veil next time--one never knows
+what may happen. I met an acquaintance at Lady Watermouth's and he came
+up to town with me. He happened to talk about old prints; I told him how
+I have collected them and we spoke of the bother one has about the
+frames. He insisted on my going with him to that place--from
+Waterloo--to see such an excellent model.'
+
+Laura had turned her face to the window of the carriage again; they were
+spinning along Park Lane, passing in the quick flash of other vehicles
+an endless succession of ladies with 'dressed' heads, of gentlemen in
+white neckties. 'Why, I thought your frames were all so pretty!' Laura
+murmured. Then she added: 'I suppose it was your eagerness to save your
+companion the shock of seeing me--in my dishonour--that led you to steal
+our cab.'
+
+'Your cab?'
+
+'Your delicacy was expensive for you!'
+
+'You don't mean you were knocking about in _cabs_ with him!' Selina
+cried.
+
+'Of course I know that you don't really think a word of what you say
+about me,' Laura went on; 'though I don't know that that makes your
+saying it a bit less unspeakably base.'
+
+The brougham pulled up in Park Lane and Mrs. Berrington bent herself to
+have a view through the front glass. 'We are there, but there are two
+other carriages,' she remarked, for all answer. 'Ah, there are the
+Collingwoods.'
+
+'Where are you going--where are you going--where are you going?' Laura
+broke out.
+
+The carriage moved on, to set them down, and while the footman was
+getting off the box Selina said: 'I don't pretend to be better than
+other women, but you do!' And being on the side of the house she quickly
+stepped out and carried her crowned brilliancy through the
+long-lingering daylight and into the open portals.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+What do you intend to do? You will grant that I have a right to ask you
+that.'
+
+'To do? I shall do as I have always done--not so badly, as it seems to
+me.'
+
+This colloquy took place in Mrs. Berrington's room, in the early morning
+hours, after Selina's return from the entertainment to which reference
+was last made. Her sister came home before her--she found herself
+incapable of 'going on' when Selina quitted the house in Park Lane at
+which they had dined. Mrs. Berrington had the night still before her,
+and she stepped into her carriage with her usual air of graceful
+resignation to a brilliant lot. She had taken the precaution, however,
+to provide herself with a defence, against a little sister bristling
+with righteousness, in the person of Mrs. Collingwood, to whom she
+offered a lift, as they were bent upon the same business and Mr.
+Collingwood had a use of his own for his brougham. The Collingwoods were
+a happy pair who could discuss such a divergence before their friends
+candidly, amicably, with a great many 'My loves' and 'Not for the
+worlds.' Lionel Berrington disappeared after dinner, without holding any
+communication with his wife, and Laura expected to find that he had
+taken the carriage, to repay her in kind for her having driven off from
+Grosvenor Place without him. But it was not new to the girl that he
+really spared his wife more than she spared him; not so much perhaps
+because he wouldn't do the 'nastiest' thing as because he couldn't.
+Selina could always be nastier. There was ever a whimsicality in her
+actions: if two or three hours before it had been her fancy to keep a
+third person out of the carriage she had now her reasons for bringing
+such a person in. Laura knew that she would not only pretend, but would
+really believe, that her vindication of her conduct on their way to
+dinner had been powerful and that she had won a brilliant victory. What
+need, therefore, to thresh out further a subject that she had chopped
+into atoms? Laura Wing, however, had needs of her own, and her remaining
+in the carriage when the footman next opened the door was intimately
+connected with them.
+
+'I don't care to go in,' she said to her sister. 'If you will allow me
+to be driven home and send back the carriage for you, that's what I
+shall like best.'
+
+Selina stared and Laura knew what she would have said if she could have
+spoken her thought. 'Oh, you are furious that I haven't given you a
+chance to fly at me again, and you must take it out in sulks!' These
+were the ideas--ideas of 'fury' and sulks--into which Selina could
+translate feelings that sprang from the pure depths of one's conscience.
+Mrs. Collingwood protested--she said it was a shame that Laura shouldn't
+go in and enjoy herself when she looked so lovely. 'Doesn't she look
+lovely?' She appealed to Mrs. Berrington. 'Bless us, what's the use of
+being pretty? Now, if she had _my_ face!'
+
+'I think she looks rather cross,' said Selina, getting out with her
+friend and leaving her sister to her own inventions. Laura had a vision,
+as the carriage drove away again, of what her situation would have been,
+or her peace of mind, if Selina and Lionel had been good, attached
+people like the Collingwoods, and at the same time of the singularity of
+a good woman's being ready to accept favours from a person as to whose
+behaviour she had the lights that must have come to the lady in question
+in regard to Selina. She accepted favours herself and she only wanted to
+be good: that was oppressively true; but if she had not been Selina's
+sister she would never drive in her carriage. That conviction was strong
+in the girl as this vehicle conveyed her to Grosvenor Place; but it was
+not in its nature consoling. The prevision of disgrace was now so vivid
+to her that it seemed to her that if it had not already overtaken them
+she had only to thank the loose, mysterious, rather ignoble tolerance of
+people like Mrs. Collingwood. There were plenty of that species, even
+among the good; perhaps indeed exposure and dishonour would begin only
+when the bad had got hold of the facts. Would the bad be most horrified
+and do most to spread the scandal? There were, in any event, plenty of
+them too.
+
+Laura sat up for her sister that night, with that nice question to help
+her to torment herself--whether if she was hard and merciless in judging
+Selina it would be with the bad too that she would associate herself.
+Was she all wrong after all--was she cruel by being too rigid? Was Mrs.
+Collingwood's attitude the right one and ought she only to propose to
+herself to 'allow' more and more, and to allow ever, and to smooth
+things down by gentleness, by sympathy, by not looking at them too hard?
+It was not the first time that the just measure of things seemed to slip
+from her hands as she became conscious of possible, or rather of very
+actual, differences of standard and usage. On this occasion Geordie and
+Ferdy asserted themselves, by the mere force of lying asleep upstairs in
+their little cribs, as on the whole the proper measure. Laura went into
+the nursery to look at them when she came home--it was her habit almost
+any night--and yearned over them as mothers and maids do alike over the
+pillow of rosy childhood. They were an antidote to all casuistry; for
+Selina to forget _them_--that was the beginning and the end of shame.
+She came back to the library, where she should best hear the sound of
+her sister's return; the hours passed as she sat there, without bringing
+round this event. Carriages came and went all night; the soft shock of
+swift hoofs was on the wooden roadway long after the summer dawn grew
+fair--till it was merged in the rumble of the awakening day. Lionel had
+not come in when she returned, and he continued absent, to Laura's
+satisfaction; for if she wanted not to miss Selina she had no desire at
+present to have to tell her brother-in-law why she was sitting up. She
+prayed Selina might arrive first: then she would have more time to think
+of something that harassed her particularly--the question of whether she
+ought to tell Lionel that she had seen her in a far-away corner of the
+town with Captain Crispin. Almost impossible as she found it now to feel
+any tenderness for her, she yet detested the idea of bearing witness
+against her: notwithstanding which it appeared to her that she could
+make up her mind to do this if there were a chance of its preventing the
+last scandal--a catastrophe to which she saw her sister rushing
+straight. That Selina was capable at a given moment of going off with
+her lover, and capable of it precisely because it was the greatest
+ineptitude as well as the greatest wickedness--there was a voice of
+prophecy, of warning, to this effect in the silent, empty house. If
+repeating to Lionel what she had seen would contribute to prevent
+anything, or to stave off the danger, was it not her duty to denounce
+his wife, flesh and blood of her own as she was, to his further
+reprobation? This point was not intolerably difficult to determine, as
+she sat there waiting, only because even what was righteous in that
+reprobation could not present itself to her as fruitful or efficient.
+What could Lionel frustrate, after all, and what intelligent or
+authoritative step was he capable of taking? Mixed with all that now
+haunted her was her consciousness of what his own absence at such an
+hour represented in the way of the unedifying. He might be at some
+sporting club or he might be anywhere else; at any rate he was not where
+he ought to be at three o'clock in the morning. Such the husband such
+the wife, she said to herself; and she felt that Selina would have a
+kind of advantage, which she grudged her, if she should come in and say:
+'And where is _he_, please--where is he, the exalted being on whose
+behalf you have undertaken to preach so much better than he himself
+practises?'
+
+But still Selina failed to come in--even to take that advantage; yet in
+proportion as her waiting was useless did the girl find it impossible to
+go to bed. A new fear had seized her, the fear that she would never come
+back at all--that they were already in the presence of the dreaded
+catastrophe. This made her so nervous that she paced about the lower
+rooms, listening to every sound, roaming till she was tired. She knew it
+was absurd, the image of Selina taking flight in a ball-dress; but she
+said to herself that she might very well have sent other clothes away,
+in advance, somewhere (Laura had her own ripe views about the maid); and
+at any rate, for herself, that was the fate she had to expect, if not
+that night then some other one soon, and it was all the same: to sit
+counting the hours till a hope was given up and a hideous certainty
+remained. She had fallen into such a state of apprehension that when at
+last she heard a carriage stop at the door she was almost happy, in
+spite of her prevision of how disgusted her sister would be to find her.
+They met in the hall--Laura went out as she heard the opening of the
+door, Selina stopped short, seeing her, but said nothing--on account
+apparently of the presence of the sleepy footman. Then she moved
+straight to the stairs, where she paused again, asking the footman if
+Mr. Berrington had come in.
+
+'Not yet, ma'am,' the footman answered.
+
+'Ah!' said Mrs. Berrington, dramatically, and ascended the stairs.
+
+'I have sat up on purpose--I want particularly to speak to you,' Laura
+remarked, following her.
+
+'Ah!' Selina repeated, more superior still. She went fast, almost as if
+she wished to get to her room before her sister could overtake her. But
+the girl was close behind her, she passed into the room with her. Laura
+closed the door; then she told her that she had found it impossible to
+go to bed without asking her what she intended to do.
+
+'Your behaviour is too monstrous!' Selina flashed out. 'What on earth do
+you wish to make the servants suppose?'
+
+'Oh, the servants--in _this_ house; as if one could put any idea into
+their heads that is not there already!' Laura thought. But she said
+nothing of this--she only repeated her question: aware that she was
+exasperating to her sister but also aware that she could not be anything
+else. Mrs. Berrington, whose maid, having outlived surprises, had gone
+to rest, began to divest herself of some of her ornaments, and it was
+not till after a moment, during which she stood before the glass, that
+she made that answer about doing as she had always done. To this Laura
+rejoined that she ought to put herself in her place enough to feel how
+important it was to _her_ to know what was likely to happen, so that she
+might take time by the forelock and think of her own situation. If
+anything should happen she would infinitely rather be out of it--be as
+far away as possible. Therefore she must take her measures.
+
+It was in the mirror that they looked at each other--in the strange,
+candle-lighted duplication of the scene that their eyes met. Selina drew
+the diamonds out of her hair, and in this occupation, for a minute, she
+was silent. Presently she asked: 'What are you talking about--what do
+you allude to as happening?'
+
+'Why, it seems to me that there is nothing left for you but to go away
+with him. If there is a prospect of that insanity----' But here Laura
+stopped; something so unexpected was taking place in Selina's
+countenance--the movement that precedes a sudden gush of tears. Mrs.
+Berrington dashed down the glittering pins she had detached from her
+tresses, and the next moment she had flung herself into an armchair and
+was weeping profusely, extravagantly. Laura forbore to go to her; she
+made no motion to soothe or reassure her, she only stood and watched her
+tears and wondered what they signified. Somehow even the slight
+refreshment she felt at having affected her in that particular and, as
+it had lately come to seem, improbable way did not suggest to her that
+they were precious symptoms. Since she had come to disbelieve her word
+so completely there was nothing precious about Selina any more. But she
+continued for some moments to cry passionately, and while this lasted
+Laura remained silent. At last from the midst of her sobs Selina broke
+out, 'Go away, go away--leave me alone!'
+
+'Of course I infuriate you,' said the girl; 'but how can I see you rush
+to your ruin--to that of all of us--without holding on to you and
+dragging you back?'
+
+'Oh, you don't understand anything about anything!' Selina wailed, with
+her beautiful hair tumbling all over her.
+
+'I certainly don't understand how you can give such a tremendous handle
+to Lionel.'
+
+At the mention of her husband's name Selina always gave a bound, and she
+sprang up now, shaking back her dense braids. 'I give him no handle and
+you don't know what you are talking about! I know what I am doing and
+what becomes me, and I don't care if I do. He is welcome to all the
+handles in the world, for all that he can do with them!'
+
+'In the name of common pity think of your children!' said Laura.
+
+'Have I ever thought of anything else? Have you sat up all night to have
+the pleasure of accusing me of cruelty? Are there sweeter or more
+delightful children in the world, and isn't that a little my merit,
+pray?' Selina went on, sweeping away her tears. 'Who has made them what
+they are, pray?--is it their lovely father? Perhaps you'll say it's you!
+Certainly you have been nice to them, but you must remember that you
+only came here the other day. Isn't it only for them that I am trying to
+keep myself alive?'
+
+This formula struck Laura Wing as grotesque, so that she replied with a
+laugh which betrayed too much her impression, 'Die for them--that would
+be better!'
+
+Her sister, at this, looked at her with an extraordinary cold gravity.
+'Don't interfere between me and my children. And for God's sake cease to
+harry me!'
+
+Laura turned away: she said to herself that, given that intensity of
+silliness, of course the worst would come. She felt sick and helpless,
+and, practically, she had got the certitude she both wanted and dreaded.
+'I don't know what has become of your mind,' she murmured; and she went
+to the door. But before she reached it Selina had flung herself upon her
+in one of her strange but, as she felt, really not encouraging
+revulsions. Her arms were about her, she clung to her, she covered
+Laura with the tears that had again begun to flow. She besought her to
+save her, to stay with her, to help her against herself, against _him_,
+against Lionel, against everything--to forgive her also all the horrid
+things she had said to her. Mrs. Berrington melted, liquefied, and the
+room was deluged with her repentance, her desolation, her confession,
+her promises and the articles of apparel which were detached from her by
+the high tide of her agitation. Laura remained with her for an hour, and
+before they separated the culpable woman had taken a tremendous
+vow--kneeling before her sister with her head in her lap--never again,
+as long as she lived, to consent to see Captain Crispin or to address a
+word to him, spoken or written. The girl went terribly tired to bed.
+
+A month afterwards she lunched with Lady Davenant, whom she had not seen
+since the day she took Mr. Wendover to call upon her. The old woman had
+found herself obliged to entertain a small company, and as she disliked
+set parties she sent Laura a request for sympathy and assistance. She
+had disencumbered herself, at the end of so many years, of the burden of
+hospitality; but every now and then she invited people, in order to
+prove that she was not too old. Laura suspected her of choosing stupid
+ones on purpose to prove it better--to show that she could submit not
+only to the extraordinary but, what was much more difficult, to the
+usual. But when they had been properly fed she encouraged them to
+disperse; on this occasion as the party broke up Laura was the only
+person she asked to stay. She wished to know in the first place why she
+had not been to see her for so long, and in the second how that young
+man had behaved--the one she had brought that Sunday. Lady Davenant
+didn't remember his name, though he had been so good-natured, as she
+said, since then, as to leave a card. If he had behaved well that was a
+very good reason for the girl's neglect and Laura need give no other.
+Laura herself would not have behaved well if at such a time she had been
+running after old women. There was nothing, in general, that the girl
+liked less than being spoken of, off-hand, as a marriageable
+article--being planned and arranged for in this particular. It made too
+light of her independence, and though in general such inventions passed
+for benevolence they had always seemed to her to contain at bottom an
+impertinence--as if people could be moved about like a game of chequers.
+There was a liberty in the way Lady Davenant's imagination disposed of
+her (with such an _insouciance_ of her own preferences), but she forgave
+that, because after all this old friend was not obliged to think of her
+at all.
+
+'I knew that you were almost always out of town now, on Sundays--and so
+have we been,' Laura said. 'And then I have been a great deal with my
+sister--more than before.'
+
+'More than before what?'
+
+'Well, a kind of estrangement we had, about a certain matter.'
+
+'And now you have made it all up?'
+
+'Well, we have been able to talk of it (we couldn't before--without
+painful scenes), and that has cleared the air. We have gone about
+together a good deal,' Laura went on. 'She has wanted me constantly with
+her.'
+
+'That's very nice. And where has she taken you?' asked the old lady.
+
+'Oh, it's I who have taken her, rather.' And Laura hesitated.
+
+'Where do you mean?--to say her prayers?'
+
+'Well, to some concerts--and to the National Gallery.'
+
+Lady Davenant laughed, disrespectfully, at this, and the girl watched
+her with a mournful face. 'My dear child, you are too delightful! You
+are trying to reform her? by Beethoven and Bach, by Rubens and Titian?'
+
+'She is very intelligent, about music and pictures--she has excellent
+ideas,' said Laura.
+
+'And you have been trying to draw them out? that is very commendable.'
+
+'I think you are laughing at me, but I don't care,' the girl declared,
+smiling faintly.
+
+'Because you have a consciousness of success?--in what do they call
+it?--the attempt to raise her tone? You have been trying to wind her up,
+and you _have_ raised her tone?'
+
+'Oh, Lady Davenant, I don't know and I don't understand!' Laura broke
+out. 'I don't understand anything any more--I have given up trying.'
+
+'That's what I recommended you to do last winter. Don't you remember
+that day at Plash?'
+
+'You told me to let her go,' said Laura.
+
+'And evidently you haven't taken my advice.'
+
+'How can I--how can I?'
+
+'Of course, how can you? And meanwhile if she doesn't go it's so much
+gained. But even if she should, won't that nice young man remain?' Lady
+Davenant inquired. 'I hope very much Selina hasn't taken you altogether
+away from him.'
+
+Laura was silent a moment; then she returned: 'What nice young man would
+ever look at me, if anything bad should happen?'
+
+'I would never look at _him_ if he should let that prevent him!' the old
+woman cried. 'It isn't for your sister he loves you, I suppose; is it?'
+
+'He doesn't love me at all.'
+
+'Ah, then he does?' Lady Davenant demanded, with some eagerness, laying
+her hand on the girl's arm. Laura sat near her on her sofa and looked at
+her, for all answer to this, with an expression of which the sadness
+appeared to strike the old woman freshly. 'Doesn't he come to the
+house--doesn't he say anything?' she continued, with a voice of
+kindness.
+
+'He comes to the house--very often.'
+
+'And don't you like him?'
+
+'Yes, very much--more than I did at first.'
+
+'Well, as you liked him at first well enough to bring him straight to
+see me, I suppose that means that now you are immensely pleased with
+him.'
+
+'He's a gentleman,' said Laura.
+
+'So he seems to me. But why then doesn't he speak out?'
+
+'Perhaps that's the very reason! Seriously,' the girl added, 'I don't
+know what he comes to the house for.'
+
+'Is he in love with your sister?'
+
+'I sometimes think so.'
+
+'And does she encourage him?'
+
+'She detests him.'
+
+'Oh, then, I like him! I shall immediately write to him to come and see
+me: I shall appoint an hour and give him a piece of my mind.'
+
+'If I believed that, I should kill myself,' said Laura.
+
+'You may believe what you like; but I wish you didn't show your feelings
+so in your eyes. They might be those of a poor widow with fifteen
+children. When I was young I managed to be happy, whatever occurred; and
+I am sure I looked so.'
+
+'Oh yes, Lady Davenant--for you it was different. You were safe, in so
+many ways,' Laura said. 'And you were surrounded with consideration.'
+
+'I don't know; some of us were very wild, and exceedingly ill thought
+of, and I didn't cry about it. However, there are natures and natures.
+If you will come and stay with me to-morrow I will take you in.'
+
+'You know how kind I think you, but I have promised Selina not to leave
+her.'
+
+'Well, then, if she keeps you she must at least go straight!' cried the
+old woman, with some asperity. Laura made no answer to this and Lady
+Davenant asked, after a moment: 'And what is Lionel doing?'
+
+'I don't know--he is very quiet.'
+
+'Doesn't it please him--his wife's improvement?' The girl got up;
+apparently she was made uncomfortable by the ironical effect, if not by
+the ironical intention, of this question. Her old friend was kind but
+she was penetrating; her very next words pierced further. 'Of course if
+you are really protecting her I can't count upon you': a remark not
+adapted to enliven Laura, who would have liked immensely to transfer
+herself to Queen's Gate and had her very private ideas as to the
+efficacy of her protection. Lady Davenant kissed her and then suddenly
+said--'Oh, by the way, his address; you must tell me that.'
+
+'His address?'
+
+'The young man's whom you brought here. But it's no matter,' the old
+woman added; 'the butler will have entered it--from his card.'
+
+'Lady Davenant, you won't do anything so loathsome!' the girl cried,
+seizing her hand.
+
+'Why is it loathsome, if he comes so often? It's rubbish, his caring for
+Selina--a married woman--when you are there.'
+
+'Why is it rubbish--when so many other people do?'
+
+'Oh, well, he is different--I could see that; or if he isn't he ought to
+be!'
+
+'He likes to observe--he came here to take notes,' said the girl. 'And
+he thinks Selina a very interesting London specimen.'
+
+'In spite of her dislike of him?'
+
+'Oh, he doesn't know that!' Laura exclaimed.
+
+'Why not? he isn't a fool.'
+
+'Oh, I have made it seem----' But here Laura stopped; her colour had
+risen.
+
+Lady Davenant stared an instant. 'Made it seem that she inclines to him?
+Mercy, to do that how fond of him you must be!' An observation which had
+the effect of driving the girl straight out of the house.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+On one of the last days of June Mrs. Berrington showed her sister a note
+she had received from 'your dear friend,' as she called him, Mr.
+Wendover. This was the manner in which she usually designated him, but
+she had naturally, in the present phase of her relations with Laura,
+never indulged in any renewal of the eminently perverse insinuations by
+means of which she had attempted, after the incident at the Soane
+Museum, to throw dust in her eyes. Mr. Wendover proposed to Mrs.
+Berrington that she and her sister should honour with their presence a
+box he had obtained for the opera three nights later--an occasion of
+high curiosity, the first appearance of a young American singer of whom
+considerable things were expected. Laura left it to Selina to decide
+whether they should accept this invitation, and Selina proved to be of
+two or three differing minds. First she said it wouldn't be convenient
+to her to go, and she wrote to the young man to this effect. Then, on
+second thoughts, she considered she might very well go, and telegraphed
+an acceptance. Later she saw reason to regret her acceptance and
+communicated this circumstance to her sister, who remarked that it was
+still not too late to change. Selina left her in ignorance till the
+next day as to whether she had retracted; then she told her that she had
+let the matter stand--they would go. To this Laura replied that she was
+glad--for Mr. Wendover. 'And for yourself,' Selina said, leaving the
+girl to wonder why every one (this universality was represented by Mrs.
+Lionel Berrington and Lady Davenant) had taken up the idea that she
+entertained a passion for her compatriot. She was clearly conscious that
+this was not the case; though she was glad her esteem for him had not
+yet suffered the disturbance of her seeing reason to believe that Lady
+Davenant had already meddled, according to her terrible threat. Laura
+was surprised to learn afterwards that Selina had, in London parlance,
+'thrown over' a dinner in order to make the evening at the opera fit in.
+The dinner would have made her too late, and she didn't care about it:
+she wanted to hear the whole opera.
+
+The sisters dined together alone, without any question of Lionel, and on
+alighting at Covent Garden found Mr. Wendover awaiting them in the
+portico. His box proved commodious and comfortable, and Selina was
+gracious to him: she thanked him for his consideration in not stuffing
+it full of people. He assured her that he expected but one other
+inmate--a gentleman of a shrinking disposition, who would take up no
+room. The gentleman came in after the first act; he was introduced to
+the ladies as Mr. Booker, of Baltimore. He knew a great deal about the
+young lady they had come to listen to, and he was not so shrinking but
+that he attempted to impart a portion of his knowledge even while she
+was singing. Before the second act was over Laura perceived Lady
+Ringrose in a box on the other side of the house, accompanied by a lady
+unknown to her. There was apparently another person in the box, behind
+the two ladies, whom they turned round from time to time to talk with.
+Laura made no observation about Lady Ringrose to her sister, and she
+noticed that Selina never resorted to the glass to look at her. That
+Mrs. Berrington had not failed to see her, however, was proved by the
+fact that at the end of the second act (the opera was Meyerbeer's
+_Huguenots_) she suddenly said, turning to Mr. Wendover: 'I hope you
+won't mind very much if I go for a short time to sit with a friend on
+the other side of the house.' She smiled with all her sweetness as she
+announced this intention, and had the benefit of the fact that an
+apologetic expression is highly becoming to a pretty woman. But she
+abstained from looking at her sister, and the latter, after a wondering
+glance at her, looked at Mr. Wendover. She saw that he was
+disappointed--even slightly wounded: he had taken some trouble to get
+his box and it had been no small pleasure to him to see it graced by the
+presence of a celebrated beauty. Now his situation collapsed if the
+celebrated beauty were going to transfer her light to another quarter.
+Laura was unable to imagine what had come into her sister's head--to
+make her so inconsiderate, so rude. Selina tried to perform her act of
+defection in a soothing, conciliating way, so far as appealing eyebeams
+went; but she gave no particular reason for her escapade, withheld the
+name of the friends in question and betrayed no consciousness that it
+was not usual for ladies to roam about the lobbies. Laura asked her no
+question, but she said to her, after an hesitation: 'You won't be long,
+surely. You know you oughtn't to leave me here.' Selina took no notice
+of this--excused herself in no way to the girl. Mr. Wendover only
+exclaimed, smiling in reference to Laura's last remark: 'Oh, so far as
+leaving you here goes----!' In spite of his great defect (and it was his
+only one, that she could see) of having only an ascending scale of
+seriousness, she judged him interestedly enough to feel a real pleasure
+in noticing that though he was annoyed at Selina's going away and not
+saying that she would come back soon, he conducted himself as a
+gentleman should, submitted respectfully, gallantly, to her wish. He
+suggested that her friends might perhaps, instead, be induced to come to
+his box, but when she had objected, 'Oh, you see, there are too many,'
+he put her shawl on her shoulders, opened the box, offered her his arm.
+While this was going on Laura saw Lady Ringrose studying them with her
+glass. Selina refused Mr. Wendover's arm; she said, 'Oh no, you stay
+with _her_--I daresay _he'll_ take me:' and she gazed inspiringly at Mr.
+Booker. Selina never mentioned a name when the pronoun would do. Mr.
+Booker of course sprang to the service required and led her away, with
+an injunction from his friend to bring her back promptly. As they went
+off Laura heard Selina say to her companion--and she knew Mr. Wendover
+could also hear it--'Nothing would have induced me to leave her alone
+with _you_!' She thought this a very extraordinary speech--she thought
+it even vulgar; especially considering that she had never seen the
+young man till half an hour before and since then had not exchanged
+twenty words with him. It came to their ears so distinctly that Laura
+was moved to notice it by exclaiming, with a laugh: 'Poor Mr. Booker,
+what does she suppose I would do to him?'
+
+'Oh, it's for you she's afraid,' said Mr. Wendover.
+
+Laura went on, after a moment: 'She oughtn't to have left me alone with
+you, either.'
+
+'Oh yes, she ought--after all!' the young man returned.
+
+The girl had uttered these words from no desire to say something
+flirtatious, but because they simply expressed a part of the judgment
+she passed, mentally, on Selina's behaviour. She had a sense of
+wrong--of being made light of; for Mrs. Berrington certainly knew that
+honourable women didn't (for the appearance of the thing) arrange to
+leave their unmarried sister sitting alone, publicly, at the playhouse,
+with a couple of young men--the couple that there would be as soon as
+Mr. Booker should come back. It displeased her that the people in the
+opposite box, the people Selina had joined, should see her exhibited in
+this light. She drew the curtain of the box a little, she moved a little
+more behind it, and she heard her companion utter a vague appealing,
+protecting sigh, which seemed to express his sense (her own corresponded
+with it) that the glory of the occasion had somehow suddenly departed.
+At the end of some minutes she perceived among Lady Ringrose and her
+companions a movement which appeared to denote that Selina had come in.
+The two ladies in front turned round--something went on at the back of
+the box. 'She's there,' Laura said, indicating the place; but Mrs.
+Berrington did not show herself--she remained masked by the others.
+Neither was Mr. Booker visible; he had not, seemingly, been persuaded to
+remain, and indeed Laura could see that there would not have been room
+for him. Mr. Wendover observed, ruefully, that as Mrs. Berrington
+evidently could see nothing at all from where she had gone she had
+exchanged a very good place for a very bad one. 'I can't imagine--I
+can't imagine----' said the girl; but she paused, losing herself in
+reflections and wonderments, in conjectures that soon became anxieties.
+Suspicion of Selina was now so rooted in her heart that it could make
+her unhappy even when it pointed nowhere, and by the end of half an hour
+she felt how little her fears had really been lulled since that scene of
+dishevelment and contrition in the early dawn.
+
+The opera resumed its course, but Mr. Booker did not come back. The
+American singer trilled and warbled, executed remarkable flights, and
+there was much applause, every symptom of success; but Laura became more
+and more unaware of the music--she had no eyes but for Lady Ringrose and
+her friend. She watched them earnestly--she tried to sound with her
+glass the curtained dimness behind them. Their attention was all for the
+stage and they gave no present sign of having any fellow-listeners.
+These others had either gone away or were leaving them very much to
+themselves. Laura was unable to guess any particular motive on her
+sister's part, but the conviction grew within her that she had not put
+such an affront on Mr. Wendover simply in order to have a little chat
+with Lady Ringrose. There was something else, there was some one else,
+in the affair; and when once the girl's idea had become as definite as
+that it took but little longer to associate itself with the image of
+Captain Crispin. This image made her draw back further behind her
+curtain, because it brought the blood to her face; and if she coloured
+for shame she coloured also for anger. Captain Crispin was there, in the
+opposite box; those horrible women concealed him (she forgot how
+harmless and well-read Lady Ringrose had appeared to her that time at
+Mellows); they had lent themselves to this abominable proceeding. Selina
+was nestling there in safety with him, by their favour, and she had had
+the baseness to lay an honest girl, the most loyal, the most unselfish
+of sisters, under contribution to the same end. Laura crimsoned with the
+sense that she had been, unsuspectingly, part of a scheme, that she was
+being used as the two women opposite were used, but that she had been
+outraged into the bargain, inasmuch as she was not, like them, a
+conscious accomplice and not a person to be given away in that manner
+before hundreds of people. It came back to her how bad Selina had been
+the day of the business in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and how in spite of
+intervening comedies the woman who had then found such words of injury
+would be sure to break out in a new spot with a new weapon. Accordingly,
+while the pure music filled the place and the rich picture of the stage
+glowed beneath it, Laura found herself face to face with the strange
+inference that the evil of Selina's nature made her wish--since she had
+given herself to it--to bring her sister to her own colour by putting an
+appearance of 'fastness' upon her. The girl said to herself that she
+would have succeeded, in the cynical view of London; and to her troubled
+spirit the immense theatre had a myriad eyes, eyes that she knew, eyes
+that would know her, that would see her sitting there with a strange
+young man. She had recognised many faces already and her imagination
+quickly multiplied them. However, after she had burned a while with this
+particular revolt she ceased to think of herself and of what, as
+regarded herself, Selina had intended: all her thought went to the mere
+calculation of Mrs. Berrington's return. As she did not return, and
+still did not, Laura felt a sharp constriction of the heart. She knew
+not what she feared--she knew not what she supposed. She was so nervous
+(as she had been the night she waited, till morning, for her sister to
+re-enter the house in Grosvenor Place) that when Mr. Wendover
+occasionally made a remark to her she failed to understand him, was
+unable to answer him. Fortunately he made very few; he was
+preoccupied--either wondering also what Selina was 'up to' or, more
+probably, simply absorbed in the music. What she _had_ comprehended,
+however, was that when at three different moments she had said,
+restlessly, 'Why doesn't Mr. Booker come back?' he replied, 'Oh, there's
+plenty of time--we are very comfortable.' These words she was conscious
+of; she particularly noted them and they interwove themselves with her
+restlessness. She also noted, in her tension, that after her third
+inquiry Mr. Wendover said something about looking up his friend, if she
+didn't mind being left alone a moment. He quitted the box and during
+this interval Laura tried more than ever to see with her glass what had
+become of her sister. But it was as if the ladies opposite had arranged
+themselves, had arranged their curtains, on purpose to frustrate such an
+attempt: it was impossible to her even to assure herself of what she had
+begun to suspect, that Selina was now not with them. If she was not with
+them where in the world had she gone? As the moments elapsed, before Mr.
+Wendover's return, she went to the door of the box and stood watching
+the lobby, for the chance that he would bring back the absentee.
+Presently she saw him coming alone, and something in the expression of
+his face made her step out into the lobby to meet him. He was smiling,
+but he looked embarrassed and strange, especially when he saw her
+standing there as if she wished to leave the place.
+
+'I hope you don't want to go,' he said, holding the door for her to pass
+back into the box.
+
+'Where are they--where are they?' she demanded, remaining in the
+corridor.
+
+'I saw our friend--he has found a place in the stalls, near the door by
+which you go into them--just here under us.'
+
+'And does he like that better?'
+
+Mr. Wendover's smile became perfunctory as he looked down at her. 'Mrs.
+Berrington has made such an amusing request of him.'
+
+'An amusing request?'
+
+'She made him promise not to come back.'
+
+'Made him promise----?' Laura stared.
+
+'She asked him--as a particular favour to her--not to join us again. And
+he said he wouldn't.'
+
+'Ah, the monster!' Laura exclaimed, blushing crimson.
+
+'Do you mean poor Mr. Booker?' Mr. Wendover asked. 'Of course he had to
+assure her that the wish of so lovely a lady was law. But he doesn't
+understand!' laughed the young man.
+
+'No more do I. And where is the lovely lady?' said Laura, trying to
+recover herself.
+
+'He hasn't the least idea.'
+
+'Isn't she with Lady Ringrose?'
+
+'If you like I will go and see.'
+
+Laura hesitated, looking down the curved lobby, where there was nothing
+to see but the little numbered doors of the boxes. They were alone in
+the lamplit bareness; the _finale_ of the act was ringing and booming
+behind them. In a moment she said: 'I'm afraid I must trouble you to put
+me into a cab.'
+
+'Ah, you won't see the rest? _Do_ stay--what difference does it make?'
+And her companion still held open the door of the box. Her eyes met his,
+in which it seemed to her that as well as in his voice there was
+conscious sympathy, entreaty, vindication, tenderness. Then she gazed
+into the vulgar corridor again; something said to her that if she should
+return she would be taking the most important step of her life. She
+considered this, and while she did so a great burst of applause filled
+the place as the curtain fell. 'See what we are losing! And the last act
+is so fine,' said Mr. Wendover. She returned to her seat and he closed
+the door of the box behind them.
+
+Then, in this little upholstered receptacle which was so public and yet
+so private, Laura Wing passed through the strangest moments she had
+known. An indication of their strangeness is that when she presently
+perceived that while she was in the lobby Lady Ringrose and her
+companion had quite disappeared, she observed the circumstance without
+an exclamation, holding herself silent. Their box was empty, but Laura
+looked at it without in the least feeling this to be a sign that Selina
+would now come round. She would never come round again, nor would she
+have gone home from the opera. That was by this time absolutely definite
+to the girl, who had first been hot and now was cold with the sense of
+what Selina's injunction to poor Mr. Booker exactly meant. It was worthy
+of her, for it was simply a vicious little kick as she took her flight.
+Grosvenor Place would not shelter her that night and would never shelter
+her more: that was the reason she tried to spatter her sister with the
+mud into which she herself had jumped. She would not have dared to treat
+her in such a fashion if they had had a prospect of meeting again. The
+strangest part of this remarkable juncture was that what ministered most
+to our young lady's suppressed emotion was not the tremendous reflection
+that this time Selina had really 'bolted' and that on the morrow all
+London would know it: all that had taken the glare of certainty (and a
+very hideous hue it was), whereas the chill that had fallen upon the
+girl now was that of a mystery which waited to be cleared up. Her heart
+was full of suspense--suspense of which she returned the pressure,
+trying to twist it into expectation. There was a certain chance in life
+that sat there beside her, but it would go for ever if it should not
+move nearer that night; and she listened, she watched, for it to move. I
+need not inform the reader that this chance presented itself in the
+person of Mr. Wendover, who more than any one she knew had it in his
+hand to transmute her detestable position. To-morrow he would know, and
+would think sufficiently little of a young person of _that_ breed:
+therefore it could only be a question of his speaking on the spot. That
+was what she had come back into the box for--to give him his
+opportunity. It was open to her to think he had asked for it--adding
+everything together.
+
+The poor girl added, added, deep in her heart, while she said nothing.
+The music was not there now, to keep them silent; yet he remained quiet,
+even as she did, and that for some minutes was a part of her addition.
+She felt as if she were running a race with failure and shame; she would
+get in first if she should get in before the degradation of the morrow.
+But this was not very far off, and every minute brought it nearer. It
+would be there in fact, virtually, that night, if Mr. Wendover should
+begin to realise the brutality of Selina's not turning up at all. The
+comfort had been, hitherto, that he didn't realise brutalities. There
+were certain violins that emitted tentative sounds in the orchestra;
+they shortened the time and made her uneasier--fixed her idea that he
+could lift her out of her mire if he would. It didn't appear to prove
+that he would, his also observing Lady Ringrose's empty box without
+making an encouraging comment upon it. Laura waited for him to remark
+that her sister obviously would turn up now; but no such words fell from
+his lips. He must either like Selina's being away or judge it damningly,
+and in either case why didn't he speak? If he had nothing to say, why
+_had_ he said, why had he done, what did he mean----? But the girl's
+inward challenge to him lost itself in a mist of faintness; she was
+screwing herself up to a purpose of her own, and it hurt almost to
+anguish, and the whole place, around her, was a blur and swim, through
+which she heard the tuning of fiddles. Before she knew it she had said
+to him, 'Why have you come so often?'
+
+'So often? To see you, do you mean?'
+
+'To see _me_--it was for that? Why have you come?' she went on. He was
+evidently surprised, and his surprise gave her a point of anger, a
+desire almost that her words should hurt him, lash him. She spoke low,
+but she heard herself, and she thought that if what she said sounded to
+_him_ in the same way----! 'You have come very often--too often, too
+often!'
+
+He coloured, he looked frightened, he was, clearly, extremely startled.
+'Why, you have been so kind, so delightful,' he stammered.
+
+'Yes, of course, and so have you! Did you come for Selina? She is
+married, you know, and devoted to her husband.' A single minute had
+sufficed to show the girl that her companion was quite unprepared for
+her question, that he was distinctly not in love with her and was face
+to face with a situation entirely new. The effect of this perception was
+to make her say wilder things.
+
+'Why, what is more natural, when one likes people, than to come often?
+Perhaps I have bored you--with our American way,' said Mr. Wendover.
+
+'And is it because you like me that you have kept me here?' Laura asked.
+She got up, leaning against the side of the box; she had pulled the
+curtain far forward and was out of sight of the house.
+
+He rose, but more slowly; he had got over his first confusion. He
+smiled at her, but his smile was dreadful. 'Can you have any doubt as to
+what I have come for? It's a pleasure to me that you have liked me well
+enough to ask.'
+
+For an instant she thought he was coming nearer to her, but he didn't:
+he stood there twirling his gloves. Then an unspeakable shame and
+horror--horror of herself, of him, of everything--came over her, and she
+sank into a chair at the back of the box, with averted eyes, trying to
+get further into her corner. 'Leave me, leave me, go away!' she said, in
+the lowest tone that he could hear. The whole house seemed to her to be
+listening to her, pressing into the box.
+
+'Leave you alone--in this place--when I love you? I can't do
+that--indeed I can't.'
+
+'You don't love me--and you torture me by staying!' Laura went on, in a
+convulsed voice. 'For God's sake go away and don't speak to me, don't
+let me see you or hear of you again!'
+
+Mr. Wendover still stood there, exceedingly agitated, as well he might
+be, by this inconceivable scene. Unaccustomed feelings possessed him and
+they moved him in different directions. Her command that he should take
+himself off was passionate, yet he attempted to resist, to speak. How
+would she get home--would she see him to-morrow--would she let him wait
+for her outside? To this Laura only replied: 'Oh dear, oh dear, if you
+would only go!' and at the same instant she sprang up, gathering her
+cloak around her as if to escape from him, to rush away herself. He
+checked this movement, however, clapping on his hat and holding the
+door. One moment more he looked at her--her own eyes were closed; then
+he exclaimed, pitifully, 'Oh Miss Wing, oh Miss Wing!' and stepped out
+of the box.
+
+When he had gone she collapsed into one of the chairs again and sat
+there with her face buried in a fold of her mantle. For many minutes she
+was perfectly still--she was ashamed even to move. The one thing that
+could have justified her, blown away the dishonour of her monstrous
+overture, would have been, on his side, the quick response of
+unmistakable passion. It had not come, and she had nothing left but to
+loathe herself. She did so, violently, for a long time, in the dark
+corner of the box, and she felt that he loathed her too. 'I love
+you!'--how pitifully the poor little make-believe words had quavered out
+and how much disgust they must have represented! 'Poor man--poor man!'
+Laura Wing suddenly found herself murmuring: compassion filled her mind
+at the sense of the way she had used him. At the same moment a flare of
+music broke out: the last act of the opera had begun and she had sprung
+up and quitted the box.
+
+The passages were empty and she made her way without trouble. She
+descended to the vestibule; there was no one to stare at her and her
+only fear was that Mr. Wendover would be there. But he was not,
+apparently, and she saw that she should be able to go away quickly.
+Selina would have taken the carriage--she could be sure of that; or if
+she hadn't it wouldn't have come back yet; besides, she couldn't
+possibly wait there so long as while it was called. She was in the act
+of asking one of the attendants, in the portico, to get her a cab, when
+some one hurried up to her from behind, overtaking her--a gentleman in
+whom, turning round, she recognised Mr. Booker. He looked almost as
+bewildered as Mr. Wendover, and his appearance disconcerted her almost
+as much as that of his friend would have done. 'Oh, are you going away,
+alone? What must you think of me?' this young man exclaimed; and he
+began to tell her something about her sister and to ask her at the same
+time if he might not go with her--help her in some way. He made no
+inquiry about Mr. Wendover, and she afterwards judged that that
+distracted gentleman had sought him out and sent him to her assistance;
+also that he himself was at that moment watching them from behind some
+column. He would have been hateful if he had shown himself; yet (in this
+later meditation) there was a voice in her heart which commended his
+delicacy. He effaced himself to look after her--he provided for her
+departure by proxy.
+
+'A cab, a cab--that's all I want!' she said to Mr. Booker; and she
+almost pushed him out of the place with the wave of the hand with which
+she indicated her need. He rushed off to call one, and a minute
+afterwards the messenger whom she had already despatched rattled up in a
+hansom. She quickly got into it, and as she rolled away she saw Mr.
+Booker returning in all haste with another. She gave a passionate
+moan--this common confusion seemed to add a grotesqueness to her
+predicament.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+The next day, at five o'clock, she drove to Queen's Gate, turning to
+Lady Davenant in her distress in order to turn somewhere. Her old friend
+was at home and by extreme good fortune alone; looking up from her book,
+in her place by the window, she gave the girl as she came in a sharp
+glance over her glasses. This glance was acquisitive; she said nothing,
+but laying down her book stretched out her two gloved hands. Laura took
+them and she drew her down toward her, so that the girl sunk on her
+knees and in a moment hid her face, sobbing, in the old woman's lap.
+There was nothing said for some time: Lady Davenant only pressed her
+tenderly--stroked her with her hands. 'Is it very bad?' she asked at
+last. Then Laura got up, saying as she took a seat, 'Have you heard of
+it and do people know it?'
+
+'I haven't heard anything. Is it very bad?' Lady Davenant repeated.
+
+'We don't know where Selina is--and her maid's gone.'
+
+Lady Davenant looked at her visitor a moment. 'Lord, what an ass!' she
+then ejaculated, putting the paper-knife into her book to keep her
+place. 'And whom has she persuaded to take her--Charles Crispin?' she
+added.
+
+'We suppose--we suppose----' said Laura.
+
+'And he's another,' interrupted the old woman. 'And who
+supposes--Geordie and Ferdy?'
+
+'I don't know; it's all black darkness!'
+
+'My dear, it's a blessing, and now you can live in peace.'
+
+'In peace!' cried Laura; 'with my wretched sister leading such a life?'
+
+'Oh, my dear, I daresay it will be very comfortable; I am sorry to say
+anything in favour of such doings, but it very often is. Don't worry;
+you take her too hard. Has she gone abroad?' the old lady continued. 'I
+daresay she has gone to some pretty, amusing place.'
+
+'I don't know anything about it. I only know she is gone. I was with her
+last evening and she left me without a word.'
+
+'Well, that was better. I hate 'em when they make parting scenes: it's
+too mawkish!'
+
+'Lionel has people watching them,' said the girl; 'agents, detectives, I
+don't know what. He has had them for a long time; I didn't know it.'
+
+'Do you mean you would have told her if you had? What is the use of
+detectives now? Isn't he rid of her?'
+
+'Oh, I don't know, he's as bad as she; he talks too horribly--he wants
+every one to know it,' Laura groaned.
+
+'And has he told his mother?'
+
+'I suppose so: he rushed off to see her at noon. She'll be overwhelmed.'
+
+'Overwhelmed? Not a bit of it!' cried Lady Davenant, almost gaily.
+'When did anything in the world overwhelm her and what do you take her
+for? She'll only make some delightful odd speech. As for people knowing
+it,' she added, 'they'll know it whether he wants them or not. My poor
+child, how long do you expect to make believe?'
+
+'Lionel expects some news to-night,' Laura said. 'As soon as I know
+where she is I shall start.'
+
+'Start for where?'
+
+'To go to her--to do something.'
+
+'Something preposterous, my dear. Do you expect to bring her back?'
+
+'He won't take her in,' said Laura, with her dried, dismal eyes. 'He
+wants his divorce--it's too hideous!'
+
+'Well, as she wants hers what is simpler?'
+
+'Yes, she wants hers. Lionel swears by all the gods she can't get it.'
+
+'Bless me, won't one do?' Lady Davenant asked. 'We shall have some
+pretty reading.'
+
+'It's awful, awful, awful!' murmured Laura.
+
+'Yes, they oughtn't to be allowed to publish them. I wonder if we
+couldn't stop that. At any rate he had better be quiet: tell him to come
+and see me.'
+
+'You won't influence him; he's dreadful against her. Such a house as it
+is to-day!'
+
+'Well, my dear, naturally.'
+
+'Yes, but it's terrible for me: it's all more sickening than I can
+bear.'
+
+'My dear child, come and stay with me,' said the old woman, gently.
+
+'Oh, I can't desert her; I can't abandon her!'
+
+'Desert--abandon? What a way to put it! Hasn't she abandoned you?'
+
+'She has no heart--she's too base!' said the girl. Her face was white
+and the tears now began to rise to her eyes again.
+
+Lady Davenant got up and came and sat on the sofa beside her: she put
+her arms round her and the two women embraced. 'Your room is all ready,'
+the old lady remarked. And then she said, 'When did she leave you? When
+did you see her last?'
+
+'Oh, in the strangest, maddest, crudest way, the way most insulting to
+me. We went to the opera together and she left me there with a
+gentleman. We know nothing about her since.'
+
+'With a gentleman?'
+
+'With Mr. Wendover--that American, and something too dreadful happened.'
+
+'Dear me, did he kiss you?' asked Lady Davenant.
+
+Laura got up quickly, turning away. 'Good-bye, I'm going, I'm going!'
+And in reply to an irritated, protesting exclamation from her companion
+she went on, 'Anywhere--anywhere to get away!'
+
+'To get away from your American?'
+
+'I asked him to marry me!' The girl turned round with her tragic face.
+
+'He oughtn't to have left that to you.'
+
+'I knew this horror was coming and it took possession of me, there in
+the box, from one moment to the other--the idea of making sure of some
+other life, some protection, some respectability. First I thought he
+liked me, he had behaved as if he did. And I like him, he is a very good
+man. So I asked him, I couldn't help it, it was too hideous--I offered
+myself!' Laura spoke as if she were telling that she had stabbed him,
+standing there with dilated eyes.
+
+Lady Davenant got up again and went to her; drawing off her glove she
+felt her cheek with the back of her hand. 'You are ill, you are in a
+fever. I'm sure that whatever you said it was very charming.'
+
+'Yes, I am ill,' said Laura.
+
+'Upon my honour you shan't go home, you shall go straight to bed. And
+what did he say to you?'
+
+'Oh, it was too miserable!' cried the girl, pressing her face again into
+her companion's kerchief. 'I was all, all mistaken; he had never
+thought!'
+
+'Why the deuce then did he run about that way after you? He was a brute
+to say it!'
+
+'He didn't say it and he never ran about. He behaved like a perfect
+gentleman.'
+
+'I've no patience--I wish I had seen him that time!' Lady Davenant
+declared.
+
+'Yes, that would have been nice! You'll never see him; if he _is_ a
+gentleman he'll rush away.'
+
+'Bless me, what a rushing away!' murmured the old woman. Then passing
+her arm round Laura she added, 'You'll please to come upstairs with me.'
+
+Half an hour later she had some conversation with her butler which led
+to his consulting a little register into which it was his law to
+transcribe with great neatness, from their cards, the addresses of new
+visitors. This volume, kept in the drawer of the hall table, revealed
+the fact that Mr. Wendover was staying in George Street, Hanover Square.
+'Get into a cab immediately and tell him to come and see me this
+evening,' Lady Davenant said. 'Make him understand that it interests him
+very nearly, so that no matter what his engagements may be he must give
+them up. Go quickly and you'll just find him: he'll be sure to be at
+home to dress for dinner.' She had calculated justly, for a few minutes
+before ten o'clock the door of her drawing-room was thrown open and Mr.
+Wendover was announced.
+
+'Sit there,' said the old lady; 'no, not that one, nearer to me. We must
+talk low. My dear sir, I won't bite you!'
+
+'Oh, this is very comfortable,' Mr. Wendover replied vaguely, smiling
+through his visible anxiety. It was no more than natural that he should
+wonder what Laura Wing's peremptory friend wanted of him at that hour of
+the night; but nothing could exceed the gallantry of his attempt to
+conceal the symptoms of alarm.
+
+'You ought to have come before, you know,' Lady Davenant went on. 'I
+have wanted to see you more than once.'
+
+'I have been dining out--I hurried away. This was the first possible
+moment, I assure you.'
+
+'I too was dining out and I stopped at home on purpose to see you. But I
+didn't mean to-night, for you have done very well. I was quite intending
+to send for you--the other day. But something put it out of my head.
+Besides, I knew she wouldn't like it.'
+
+'Why, Lady Davenant, I made a point of calling, ever so long ago--after
+that day!' the young man exclaimed, not reassured, or at any rate not
+enlightened.
+
+'I daresay you did--but you mustn't justify yourself; that's just what
+I don't want; it isn't what I sent for you for. I have something very
+particular to say to you, but it's very difficult. Voyons un peu!'
+
+The old woman reflected a little, with her eyes on his face, which had
+grown more grave as she went on; its expression intimated that he failed
+as yet to understand her and that he at least was not exactly trifling.
+Lady Davenant's musings apparently helped her little, if she was looking
+for an artful approach; for they ended in her saying abruptly, 'I wonder
+if you know what a capital girl she is.'
+
+'Do you mean--do you mean----?' stammered Mr. Wendover, pausing as if he
+had given her no right not to allow him to conceive alternatives.
+
+'Yes, I do mean. She's upstairs, in bed.'
+
+'Upstairs in bed!' The young man stared.
+
+'Don't be afraid--I'm not going to send for her!' laughed his hostess;
+'her being here, after all, has nothing to do with it, except that she
+_did_ come--yes, certainly, she did come. But my keeping her--that was
+my doing. My maid has gone to Grosvenor Place to get her things and let
+them know that she will stay here for the present. Now am I clear?'
+
+'Not in the least,' said Mr. Wendover, almost sternly.
+
+Lady Davenant, however, was not of a composition to suspect him of
+sternness or to care very much if she did, and she went on, with her
+quick discursiveness: 'Well, we must be patient; we shall work it out
+together. I was afraid you would go away, that's why I lost no time.
+Above all I want you to understand that she has not the least idea that
+I have sent for you, and you must promise me never, never, never to let
+her know. She would be monstrous angry. It is quite my own idea--I have
+taken the responsibility. I know very little about you of course, but
+she has spoken to me well of you. Besides, I am very clever about
+people, and I liked you that day, though you seemed to think I was a
+hundred and eighty.'
+
+'You do me great honour,' Mr. Wendover rejoined.
+
+'I'm glad you're pleased! You must be if I tell you that I like you now
+even better. I see what you are, except for the question of fortune. It
+doesn't perhaps matter much, but have you any money? I mean have you a
+fine income?'
+
+'No, indeed I haven't!' And the young man laughed in his bewilderment.
+'I have very little money indeed.'
+
+'Well, I daresay you have as much as I. Besides, that would be a proof
+she is not mercenary.'
+
+'You haven't in the least made it plain whom you are talking about,'
+said Mr. Wendover. 'I have no right to assume anything.'
+
+'Are you afraid of betraying her? I am more devoted to her even than I
+want you to be. She has told me what happened between you last
+night--what she said to you at the opera. That's what I want to talk to
+you about.'
+
+'She was very strange,' the young man remarked.
+
+'I am not so sure that she was strange. However, you are welcome to
+think it, for goodness knows she says so herself. She is overwhelmed
+with horror at her own words; she is absolutely distracted and
+prostrate.'
+
+Mr. Wendover was silent a moment. 'I assured her that I admire
+her--beyond every one. I was most kind to her.'
+
+'Did you say it in that tone? You should have thrown yourself at her
+feet! From the moment you didn't--surely you understand women well
+enough to know.'
+
+'You must remember where we were--in a public place, with very little
+room for throwing!' Mr. Wendover exclaimed.
+
+'Ah, so far from blaming you she says your behaviour was perfect. It's
+only I who want to have it out with you,' Lady Davenant pursued. 'She's
+so clever, so charming, so good and so unhappy.'
+
+'When I said just now she was strange, I meant only in the way she
+turned against me.'
+
+'She turned against you?'
+
+'She told me she hoped she should never see me again.'
+
+'And you, should you like to see her?'
+
+'Not now--not now!' Mr. Wendover exclaimed, eagerly.
+
+'I don't mean now, I'm not such a fool as that. I mean some day or
+other, when she has stopped accusing herself, if she ever does.'
+
+'Ah, Lady Davenant, you must leave that to me,' the young man returned,
+after a moment's hesitation.
+
+'Don't be afraid to tell me I'm meddling with what doesn't concern me,'
+said his hostess. 'Of course I know I'm meddling; I sent for you here to
+meddle. Who wouldn't, for that creature? She makes one melt.'
+
+'I'm exceedingly sorry for her. I don't know what she thinks she said.'
+
+'Well, that she asked you why you came so often to Grosvenor Place. I
+don't see anything so awful in that, if you did go.'
+
+'Yes, I went very often. I liked to go.'
+
+'Now, that's exactly where I wish to prevent a misconception,' said Lady
+Davenant. 'If you liked to go you had a reason for liking, and Laura
+Wing was the reason, wasn't she?'
+
+'I thought her charming, and I think her so now more than ever.'
+
+'Then you are a dear good man. Vous faisiez votre cour, in short.'
+
+Mr. Wendover made no immediate response: the two sat looking at each
+other. 'It isn't easy for me to talk of these things,' he said at last;
+'but if you mean that I wished to ask her to be my wife I am bound to
+tell you that I had no such intention.'
+
+'Ah, then I'm at sea. You thought her charming and you went to see her
+every day. What then did you wish?'
+
+'I didn't go every day. Moreover I think you have a very different idea
+in this country of what constitutes--well, what constitutes making love.
+A man commits himself much sooner.'
+
+'Oh, I don't know what _your_ odd ways may be!' Lady Davenant exclaimed,
+with a shade of irritation.
+
+'Yes, but I was justified in supposing that those ladies did: they at
+least are American.'
+
+'"They," my dear sir! For heaven's sake don't mix up that nasty Selina
+with it!'
+
+'Why not, if I admired her too? I do extremely, and I thought the house
+most interesting.'
+
+'Mercy on us, if that's your idea of a nice house! But I don't know--I
+have always kept out of it,' Lady Davenant added, checking herself. Then
+she went on, 'If you are so fond of Mrs. Berrington I am sorry to inform
+you that she is absolutely good-for-nothing.'
+
+'Good-for-nothing?'
+
+'Nothing to speak of! I have been thinking whether I would tell you, and
+I have decided to do so because I take it that your learning it for
+yourself would be a matter of but a very short time. Selina has bolted,
+as they say.'
+
+'Bolted?' Mr. Wendover repeated.
+
+'I don't know what you call it in America.'
+
+'In America we don't do it.'
+
+'Ah, well, if they stay, as they do usually abroad, that's better. I
+suppose you didn't think her capable of behaving herself, did you?'
+
+'Do you mean she has left her husband--with some one else?'
+
+'Neither more nor less; with a fellow named Crispin. It appears it all
+came off last evening, and she had her own reasons for doing it in the
+most offensive way--publicly, clumsily, with the vulgarest bravado.
+Laura has told me what took place, and you must permit me to express my
+surprise at your not having divined the miserable business.'
+
+'I saw something was wrong, but I didn't understand. I'm afraid I'm not
+very quick at these things.'
+
+'Your state is the more gracious; but certainly you are not quick if you
+could call there so often and not see through Selina.'
+
+'Mr. Crispin, whoever he is, was never there,' said the young man.
+
+'Oh, she was a clever hussy!' his companion rejoined.
+
+'I knew she was fond of amusement, but that's what I liked to see. I
+wanted to see a house of that sort.'
+
+'Fond of amusement is a very pretty phrase!' said Lady Davenant,
+laughing at the simplicity with which her visitor accounted for his
+assiduity. 'And did Laura Wing seem to you in her place in a house of
+that sort?'
+
+'Why, it was natural she should be with her sister, and she always
+struck me as very gay.'
+
+'That was your enlivening effect! And did she strike you as very gay
+last night, with this scandal hanging over her?'
+
+'She didn't talk much,' said Mr. Wendover.
+
+'She knew it was coming--she felt it, she saw it, and that's what makes
+her sick now, that at _such_ a time she should have challenged you, when
+she felt herself about to be associated (in people's minds, of course)
+with such a vile business. In people's minds and in yours--when you
+should know what had happened.'
+
+'Ah, Miss Wing isn't associated----' said Mr. Wendover. He spoke slowly,
+but he rose to his feet with a nervous movement that was not lost upon
+his companion: she noted it indeed with a certain inward sense of
+triumph. She was very deep, but she had never been so deep as when she
+made up her mind to mention the scandal of the house of Berrington to
+her visitor and intimated to him that Laura Wing regarded herself as
+near enough to it to receive from it a personal stain. 'I'm extremely
+sorry to hear of Mrs. Berrington's misconduct,' he continued gravely,
+standing before her. 'And I am no less obliged to you for your
+interest.'
+
+'Don't mention it,' she said, getting up too and smiling. 'I mean my
+interest. As for the other matter, it will all come out. Lionel will
+haul her up.'
+
+'Dear me, how dreadful!'
+
+'Yes, dreadful enough. But don't betray me.'
+
+'Betray you?' he repeated, as if his thoughts had gone astray a moment.
+
+'I mean to the girl. Think of her shame!'
+
+'Her shame?' Mr. Wendover said, in the same way.
+
+'It seemed to her, with what was becoming so clear to her, that an
+honest man might save her from it, might give her his name and his faith
+and help her to traverse the bad place. She exaggerates the badness of
+it, the stigma of her relationship. Good heavens, at that rate where
+would some of us be? But those are her ideas, they are absolutely
+sincere, and they had possession of her at the opera. She had a sense of
+being lost and was in a real agony to be rescued. She saw before her a
+kind gentleman who had seemed--who had certainly seemed----' And Lady
+Davenant, with her fine old face lighted by her bright sagacity and her
+eyes on Mr. Wendover's, paused, lingering on this word. 'Of course she
+must have been in a state of nerves.'
+
+'I am very sorry for her,' said Mr. Wendover, with his gravity that
+committed him to nothing.
+
+'So am I! And of course if you were not in love with her you weren't,
+were you?'
+
+'I must bid you good-bye, I am leaving London.' That was the only
+answer Lady Davenant got to her inquiry.
+
+'Good-bye then. She is the nicest girl I know. But once more, mind you
+don't let her suspect!'
+
+'How can I let her suspect anything when I shall never see her again?'
+
+'Oh, don't say that,' said Lady Davenant, very gently.
+
+'She drove me away from her with a kind of ferocity.'
+
+'Oh, gammon!' cried the old woman.
+
+'I'm going home,' he said, looking at her with his hand on the door.
+
+'Well, it's the best place for you. And for her too!' she added as he
+went out. She was not sure that the last words reached him.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+Laura Wing was sharply ill for three days, but on the fourth she made up
+her mind she was better, though this was not the opinion of Lady
+Davenant, who would not hear of her getting up. The remedy she urged was
+lying still and yet lying still; but this specific the girl found
+well-nigh intolerable--it was a form of relief that only ministered to
+fever. She assured her friend that it killed her to do nothing: to which
+her friend replied by asking her what she had a fancy to do. Laura had
+her idea and held it tight, but there was no use in producing it before
+Lady Davenant, who would have knocked it to pieces. On the afternoon of
+the first day Lionel Berrington came, and though his intention was
+honest he brought no healing. Hearing she was ill he wanted to look
+after her--he wanted to take her back to Grosvenor Place and make her
+comfortable: he spoke as if he had every convenience for producing that
+condition, though he confessed there was a little bar to it in his own
+case. This impediment was the 'cheeky' aspect of Miss Steet, who went
+sniffing about as if she knew a lot, if she should only condescend to
+tell it. He saw more of the children now; 'I'm going to have 'em in
+every day, poor little devils,' he said; and he spoke as if the
+discipline of suffering had already begun for him and a kind of holy
+change had taken place in his life. Nothing had been said yet in the
+house, of course, as Laura knew, about Selina's disappearance, in the
+way of treating it as irregular; but the servants pretended so hard not
+to be aware of anything in particular that they were like pickpockets
+looking with unnatural interest the other way after they have cribbed a
+fellow's watch. To a certainty, in a day or two, the governess would
+give him warning: she would come and tell him she couldn't stay in such
+a place, and he would tell her, in return, that she was a little donkey
+for not knowing that the place was much more respectable now than it had
+ever been.
+
+This information Selina's husband imparted to Lady Davenant, to whom he
+discoursed with infinite candour and humour, taking a highly
+philosophical view of his position and declaring that it suited him down
+to the ground. His wife couldn't have pleased him better if she had done
+it on purpose; he knew where she had been every hour since she quitted
+Laura at the opera--he knew where she was at that moment and he was
+expecting to find another telegram on his return to Grosvenor Place. So
+if it suited _her_ it was all right, wasn't it? and the whole thing
+would go as straight as a shot. Lady Davenant took him up to see Laura,
+though she viewed their meeting with extreme disfavour, the girl being
+in no state for talking. In general Laura had little enough mind for it,
+but she insisted on seeing Lionel: she declared that if this were not
+allowed her she would go after him, ill as she was--she would dress
+herself and drive to his house. She dressed herself now, after a
+fashion; she got upon a sofa to receive him. Lady Davenant left him
+alone with her for twenty minutes, at the end of which she returned to
+take him away. This interview was not fortifying to the girl, whose
+idea--the idea of which I have said that she was tenacious--was to go
+after her sister, to take possession of her, cling to her and bring her
+back. Lionel, of course, wouldn't hear of taking her back, nor would
+Selina presumably hear of coming; but this made no difference in Laura's
+heroic plan. She would work it, she would compass it, she would go down
+on her knees, she would find the eloquence of angels, she would achieve
+miracles. At any rate it made her frantic not to try, especially as even
+in fruitless action she should escape from herself--an object of which
+her horror was not yet extinguished.
+
+As she lay there through inexorably conscious hours the picture of that
+hideous moment in the box alternated with the vision of her sister's
+guilty flight. She wanted to fly, herself--to go off and keep going for
+ever. Lionel was fussily kind to her and he didn't abuse Selina--he
+didn't tell her again how that lady's behaviour suited his book. He
+simply resisted, with a little exasperating, dogged grin, her pitiful
+appeal for knowledge of her sister's whereabouts. He knew what she
+wanted it for and he wouldn't help her in any such game. If she would
+promise, solemnly, to be quiet, he would tell her when she got better,
+but he wouldn't lend her a hand to make a fool of herself. Her work was
+cut out for her--she was to stay and mind the children: if she was so
+keen to do her duty she needn't go further than that for it. He talked a
+great deal about the children and figured himself as pressing the
+little deserted darlings to his bosom. He was not a comedian, and she
+could see that he really believed he was going to be better and purer
+now. Laura said she was sure Selina would make an attempt to get
+them--or at least one of them; and he replied, grimly, 'Yes, my dear,
+she had better try!' The girl was so angry with him, in her hot, tossing
+weakness, for refusing to tell her even whether the desperate pair had
+crossed the Channel, that she was guilty of the immorality of regretting
+that the difference in badness between husband and wife was so distinct
+(for it was distinct, she could see that) as he made his dry little
+remark about Selina's trying. He told her he had already seen his
+solicitor, the clever Mr. Smallshaw, and she said she didn't care.
+
+On the fourth day of her absence from Grosvenor Place she got up, at an
+hour when she was alone (in the afternoon, rather late), and prepared
+herself to go out. Lady Davenant had admitted in the morning that she
+was better, and fortunately she had not the complication of being
+subject to a medical opinion, having absolutely refused to see a doctor.
+Her old friend had been obliged to go out--she had scarcely quitted her
+before--and Laura had requested the hovering, rustling lady's-maid to
+leave her alone: she assured her she was doing beautifully. Laura had no
+plan except to leave London that night; she had a moral certainty that
+Selina had gone to the Continent. She had always done so whenever she
+had a chance, and what chance had ever been larger than the present? The
+Continent was fearfully vague, but she would deal sharply with
+Lionel--she would show him she had a right to knowledge. He would
+certainly be in town; he would be in a complacent bustle with his
+lawyers. She had told him that she didn't believe he had yet gone to
+them, but in her heart she believed it perfectly. If he didn't satisfy
+her she would go to Lady Ringrose, odious as it would be to her to ask a
+favour of this depraved creature: unless indeed Lady Ringrose had joined
+the little party to France, as on the occasion of Selina's last journey
+thither. On her way downstairs she met one of the footmen, of whom she
+made the request that he would call her a cab as quickly as
+possible--she was obliged to go out for half an hour. He expressed the
+respectful hope that she was better and she replied that she was
+perfectly well--he would please tell her ladyship when she came in. To
+this the footman rejoined that her ladyship _had_ come in--she had
+returned five minutes before and had gone to her room. 'Miss Frothingham
+told her you were asleep, Miss,' said the man, 'and her ladyship said it
+was a blessing and you were not to be disturbed.'
+
+'Very good, I will see her,' Laura remarked, with dissimulation: 'only
+please let me have my cab.'
+
+The footman went downstairs and she stood there listening; presently she
+heard the house-door close--he had gone out on his errand. Then she
+descended very softly--she prayed he might not be long. The door of the
+drawing-room stood open as she passed it, and she paused before it,
+thinking she heard sounds in the lower hall. They appeared to subside
+and then she found herself faint--she was terribly impatient for her
+cab. Partly to sit down till it came (there was a seat on the landing,
+but another servant might come up or down and see her), and partly to
+look, at the front window, whether it were not coming, she went for a
+moment into the drawing-room. She stood at the window, but the footman
+was slow; then she sank upon a chair--she felt very weak. Just after she
+had done so she became aware of steps on the stairs and she got up
+quickly, supposing that her messenger had returned, though she had not
+heard wheels. What she saw was not the footman she had sent out, but the
+expansive person of the butler, followed apparently by a visitor. This
+functionary ushered the visitor in with the remark that he would call
+her ladyship, and before she knew it she was face to face with Mr.
+Wendover. At the same moment she heard a cab drive up, while Mr.
+Wendover instantly closed the door.
+
+'Don't turn me away; do see me--do see me!' he said. 'I asked for Lady
+Davenant--they told me she was at home. But it was you I wanted, and I
+wanted her to help me. I was going away--but I couldn't. You look very
+ill--do listen to me! You don't understand--I will explain everything.
+Ah, how ill you look!' the young man cried, as the climax of this
+sudden, soft, distressed appeal. Laura, for all answer, tried to push
+past him, but the result of this movement was that she found herself
+enclosed in his arms. He stopped her, but she disengaged herself, she
+got her hand upon the door. He was leaning against it, so she couldn't
+open it, and as she stood there panting she shut her eyes, so as not to
+see him. 'If you would let me tell you what I think--I would do anything
+in the world for you!' he went on.
+
+'Let me go--you persecute me!' the girl cried, pulling at the handle.
+
+'You don't do me justice--you are too cruel!' Mr. Wendover persisted.
+
+'Let me go--let me go!' she only repeated, with her high, quavering,
+distracted note; and as he moved a little she got the door open. But he
+followed her out: would she see him that night? Where was she going?
+might he not go with her? would she see him to-morrow?
+
+'Never, never, never!' she flung at him as she hurried away. The butler
+was on the stairs, descending from above; so he checked himself, letting
+her go. Laura passed out of the house and flew into her cab with
+extraordinary speed, for Mr. Wendover heard the wheels bear her away
+while the servant was saying to him in measured accents that her
+ladyship would come down immediately.
+
+Lionel was at home, in Grosvenor Place: she burst into the library and
+found him playing papa. Geordie and Ferdy were sporting around him, the
+presence of Miss Steet had been dispensed with, and he was holding his
+younger son by the stomach, horizontally, between his legs, while the
+child made little sprawling movements which were apparently intended to
+represent the act of swimming. Geordie stood impatient on the brink of
+the imaginary stream, protesting that it was his turn now, and as soon
+as he saw his aunt he rushed at her with the request that she would take
+him up in the same fashion. She was struck with the superficiality of
+their childhood; they appeared to have no sense that she had been away
+and no care that she had been ill. But Lionel made up for this; he
+greeted her with affectionate jollity, said it was a good job she had
+come back, and remarked to the children that they would have great
+larks now that auntie was home again. Ferdy asked if she had been with
+mummy, but didn't wait for an answer, and she observed that they put no
+question about their mother and made no further allusion to her while
+they remained in the room. She wondered whether their father had
+enjoined upon them not to mention her, and reflected that even if he had
+such a command would not have been efficacious. It added to the ugliness
+of Selina's flight that even her children didn't miss her, and to the
+dreariness, somehow, to Laura's sense, of the whole situation that one
+could neither spend tears on the mother and wife, because she was not
+worth it, nor sentimentalise about the little boys, because they didn't
+inspire it. 'Well, you do look seedy--I'm bound to say that!' Lionel
+exclaimed; and he recommended strongly a glass of port, while Ferdy, not
+seizing this reference, suggested that daddy should take her by the
+waistband and teach her to 'strike out.' He represented himself in the
+act of drowning, but Laura interrupted this entertainment, when the
+servant answered the bell (Lionel having rung for the port), by
+requesting that the children should be conveyed to Miss Steet. 'Tell her
+she must never go away again,' Lionel said to Geordie, as the butler
+took him by the hand; but the only touching consequence of this
+injunction was that the child piped back to his father, over his
+shoulder, 'Well, you mustn't either, you know!'
+
+'You must tell me or I'll kill myself--I give you my word!' Laura said
+to her brother-in-law, with unnecessary violence, as soon as they had
+left the room.
+
+'I say, I say,' he rejoined, 'you _are_ a wilful one! What do you want
+to threaten me for? Don't you know me well enough to know that ain't the
+way? That's the tone Selina used to take. Surely you don't want to begin
+and imitate her!' She only sat there, looking at him, while he leaned
+against the chimney-piece smoking a short cigar. There was a silence,
+during which she felt the heat of a certain irrational anger at the
+thought that a little ignorant, red-faced jockey should have the luck to
+be in the right as against her flesh and blood. She considered him
+helplessly, with something in her eyes that had never been there
+before--something that, apparently, after a moment, made an impression
+on him. Afterwards, however, she saw very well that it was not her
+threat that had moved him, and even at the moment she had a sense, from
+the way he looked back at her, that this was in no manner the first time
+a baffled woman had told him that she would kill herself. He had always
+accepted his kinship with her, but even in her trouble it was part of
+her consciousness that he now lumped her with a mixed group of female
+figures, a little wavering and dim, who were associated in his memory
+with 'scenes,' with importunities and bothers. It is apt to be the
+disadvantage of women, on occasions of measuring their strength with
+men, that they may perceive that the man has a larger experience and
+that they themselves are a part of it. It is doubtless as a provision
+against such emergencies that nature has opened to them operations of
+the mind that are independent of experience. Laura felt the dishonour of
+her race the more that her brother-in-law seemed so gay and bright about
+it: he had an air of positive prosperity, as if his misfortune had
+turned into that. It came to her that he really liked the idea of the
+public _eclaircissement_--the fresh occupation, the bustle and
+importance and celebrity of it. That was sufficiently incredible, but as
+she was on the wrong side it was also humiliating. Besides, higher
+spirits always suggest finer wisdom, and such an attribute on Lionel's
+part was most humiliating of all. 'I haven't the least objection at
+present to telling you what you want to know. I shall have made my
+little arrangements very soon and you will be subpoenaed.'
+
+'Subpoenaed?' the girl repeated, mechanically.
+
+'You will be called as a witness on my side.'
+
+'On your side.'
+
+'Of course you're on my side, ain't you?'
+
+'Can they force me to come?' asked Laura, in answer to this.
+
+'No, they can't force you, if you leave the country.'
+
+'That's exactly what I want to do.'
+
+'That will be idiotic,' said Lionel, 'and very bad for your sister. If
+you don't help me you ought at least to help her.'
+
+She sat a moment with her eyes on the ground. 'Where is she--where is
+she?' she then asked.
+
+'They are at Brussels, at the Hotel de Flandres. They appear to like it
+very much.'
+
+'Are you telling me the truth?'
+
+'Lord, my dear child, _I_ don't lie!' Lionel exclaimed. 'You'll make a
+jolly mistake if you go to her,' he added. 'If you have seen her with
+him how can you speak for her?'
+
+'I won't see her with him.'
+
+'That's all very well, but he'll take care of that. Of course if you're
+ready for perjury----!' Lionel exclaimed.
+
+'I'm ready for anything.'
+
+'Well, I've been kind to you, my dear,' he continued, smoking, with his
+chin in the air.
+
+'Certainly you have been kind to me.'
+
+'If you want to defend her you had better keep away from her,' said
+Lionel. 'Besides for yourself, it won't be the best thing in the
+world--to be known to have been in it.'
+
+'I don't care about myself,' the girl returned, musingly.
+
+'Don't you care about the children, that you are so ready to throw them
+over? For you would, my dear, you know. If you go to Brussels you never
+come back here--you never cross this threshold--you never touch them
+again!'
+
+Laura appeared to listen to this last declaration, but she made no reply
+to it; she only exclaimed after a moment, with a certain impatience,
+'Oh, the children will do anyway!' Then she added passionately, 'You
+_won't_, Lionel; in mercy's name tell me that you won't!'
+
+'I won't what?'
+
+'Do the awful thing you say.'
+
+'Divorce her? The devil I won't!'
+
+'Then why do you speak of the children--if you have no pity for them?'
+
+Lionel stared an instant. 'I thought you said yourself that they would
+do anyway!'
+
+Laura bent her head, resting it on the back of her hand, on the leathern
+arm of the sofa. So she remained, while Lionel stood smoking; but at
+last, to leave the room, she got up with an effort that was a physical
+pain. He came to her, to detain her, with a little good intention that
+had no felicity for her, trying to take her hand persuasively. 'Dear old
+girl, don't try and behave just as _she_ did! If you'll stay quietly
+here I won't call you, I give you my honour I won't; there! You want to
+see the doctor--that's the fellow you want to see. And what good will it
+do you, even if you bring her home in pink paper? Do you candidly
+suppose I'll ever look at her--except across the court-room?'
+
+'I must, I must, I must!' Laura cried, jerking herself away from him and
+reaching the door.
+
+'Well then, good-bye,' he said, in the sternest tone she had ever heard
+him use.
+
+She made no answer, she only escaped. She locked herself in her room;
+she remained there an hour. At the end of this time she came out and
+went to the door of the schoolroom, where she asked Miss Steet to be so
+good as to come and speak to her. The governess followed her to her
+apartment and there Laura took her partly into her confidence. There
+were things she wanted to do before going, and she was too weak to act
+without assistance. She didn't want it from the servants, if only Miss
+Steet would learn from them whether Mr. Berrington were dining at home.
+Laura told her that her sister was ill and she was hurrying to join her
+abroad. It had to be mentioned, that way, that Mrs. Berrington had left
+the country, though of course there was no spoken recognition between
+the two women of the reasons for which she had done so. There was only a
+tacit hypocritical assumption that she was on a visit to friends and
+that there had been nothing queer about her departure. Laura knew that
+Miss Steet knew the truth, and the governess knew that she knew it.
+This young woman lent a hand, very confusedly, to the girl's
+preparations; she ventured not to be sympathetic, as that would point
+too much to badness, but she succeeded perfectly in being dismal. She
+suggested that Laura was ill herself, but Laura replied that this was no
+matter when her sister was so much worse. She elicited the fact that Mr.
+Berrington was dining out--the butler believed with his mother--but she
+was of no use when it came to finding in the 'Bradshaw' which she
+brought up from the hall the hour of the night-boat to Ostend. Laura
+found it herself; it was conveniently late, and it was a gain to her
+that she was very near the Victoria station, where she would take the
+train for Dover. The governess wanted to go to the station with her, but
+the girl would not listen to this--she would only allow her to see that
+she had a cab. Laura let her help her still further; she sent her down
+to talk to Lady Davenant's maid when that personage arrived in Grosvenor
+Place to inquire, from her mistress, what in the world had become of
+poor Miss Wing. The maid intimated, Miss Steet said on her return, that
+her ladyship would have come herself, only she was too angry. She was
+very bad indeed. It was an indication of this that she had sent back her
+young friend's dressing-case and her clothes. Laura also borrowed money
+from the governess--she had too little in her pocket. The latter
+brightened up as the preparations advanced; she had never before been
+concerned in a flurried night-episode, with an unavowed clandestine
+side; the very imprudence of it (for a sick girl alone) was romantic,
+and before Laura had gone down to the cab she began to say that foreign
+life must be fascinating and to make wistful reflections. She saw that
+the coast was clear, in the nursery--that the children were asleep, for
+their aunt to come in. She kissed Ferdy while her companion pressed her
+lips upon Geordie, and Geordie while Laura hung for a moment over Ferdy.
+At the door of the cab she tried to make her take more money, and our
+heroine had an odd sense that if the vehicle had not rolled away she
+would have thrust into her hand a keepsake for Captain Crispin.
+
+A quarter of an hour later Laura sat in the corner of a
+railway-carriage, muffled in her cloak (the July evening was fresh, as
+it so often is in London--fresh enough to add to her sombre thoughts the
+suggestion of the wind in the Channel), waiting in a vain torment of
+nervousness for the train to set itself in motion. Her nervousness
+itself had led her to come too early to the station, and it seemed to
+her that she had already waited long. A lady and a gentleman had taken
+their place in the carriage (it was not yet the moment for the outward
+crowd of tourists) and had left their appurtenances there while they
+strolled up and down the platform. The long English twilight was still
+in the air, but there was dusk under the grimy arch of the station and
+Laura flattered herself that the off-corner of the carriage she had
+chosen was in shadow. This, however, apparently did not prevent her from
+being recognised by a gentleman who stopped at the door, looking in,
+with the movement of a person who was going from carriage to carriage.
+As soon as he saw her he stepped quickly in, and the next moment Mr.
+Wendover was seated on the edge of the place beside her, leaning toward
+her, speaking to her low, with clasped hands. She fell back in her seat,
+closing her eyes again. He barred the way out of the compartment.
+
+'I have followed you here--I saw Miss Steet--I want to implore you not
+to go! Don't, don't! I know what you're doing. Don't go, I beseech you.
+I saw Lady Davenant, I wanted to ask her to help me, I could bear it no
+longer. I have thought of you, night and day, these four days. Lady
+Davenant has told me things, and I entreat you not to go!'
+
+Laura opened her eyes (there was something in his voice, in his pressing
+nearness), and looked at him a moment: it was the first time she had
+done so since the first of those detestable moments in the box at Covent
+Garden. She had never spoken to him of Selina in any but an honourable
+sense. Now she said, 'I'm going to my sister.'
+
+'I know it, and I wish unspeakably you would give it up--it isn't
+good--it's a great mistake. Stay here and let me talk to you.'
+
+The girl raised herself, she stood up in the carriage. Mr. Wendover did
+the same; Laura saw that the lady and gentleman outside were now
+standing near the door. 'What have you to say? It's my own business!'
+she returned, between her teeth. 'Go out, go out, go out!'
+
+'Do you suppose I would speak if I didn't care--do you suppose I would
+care if I didn't love you?' the young man murmured, close to her face.
+
+'What is there to care about? Because people will know it and talk? If
+it's bad it's the right thing for me! If I don't go to her where else
+shall I go?'
+
+'Come to me, dearest, dearest!' Mr. Wendover went on. 'You are ill, you
+are mad! I love you--I assure you I do!'
+
+She pushed him away with her hands. 'If you follow me I will jump off
+the boat!'
+
+'Take your places, take your places!' cried the guard, on the platform.
+Mr. Wendover had to slip out, the lady and gentleman were coming in.
+Laura huddled herself into her corner again and presently the train drew
+away.
+
+Mr. Wendover did not get into another compartment; he went back that
+evening to Queen's Gate. He knew how interested his old friend there, as
+he now considered her, would be to hear what Laura had undertaken
+(though, as he learned, on entering her drawing-room again, she had
+already heard of it from her maid), and he felt the necessity to tell
+her once more how her words of four days before had fructified in his
+heart, what a strange, ineffaceable impression she had made upon him: to
+tell her in short and to repeat it over and over, that he had taken the
+most extraordinary fancy----! Lady Davenant was tremendously vexed at
+the girl's perversity, but she counselled him patience, a long,
+persistent patience. A week later she heard from Laura Wing, from
+Antwerp, that she was sailing to America from that port--a letter
+containing no mention whatever of Selina or of the reception she had
+found at Brussels. To America Mr. Wendover followed his young compatriot
+(that at least she had no right to forbid), and there, for the moment,
+he has had a chance to practise the humble virtue recommended by Lady
+Davenant. He knows she has no money and that she is staying with some
+distant relatives in Virginia; a situation that he--perhaps too
+superficially--figures as unspeakably dreary. He knows further that Lady
+Davenant has sent her fifty pounds, and he himself has ideas of
+transmitting funds, not directly to Virginia but by the roundabout road
+of Queen's Gate. Now, however, that Lionel Berrington's deplorable suit
+is coming on he reflects with some satisfaction that the Court of
+Probate and Divorce is far from the banks of the Rappahannock.
+'Berrington _versus_ Berrington and Others' is coming on--but these are
+matters of the present hour.
+
+
+
+
+THE PATAGONIA
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+The houses were dark in the August night and the perspective of Beacon
+Street, with its double chain of lamps, was a foreshortened desert. The
+club on the hill alone, from its semi-cylindrical front, projected a
+glow upon the dusky vagueness of the Common, and as I passed it I heard
+in the hot stillness the click of a pair of billiard balls. As 'every
+one' was out of town perhaps the servants, in the extravagance of their
+leisure, were profaning the tables. The heat was insufferable and I
+thought with joy of the morrow, of the deck of the steamer, the
+freshening breeze, the sense of getting out to sea. I was even glad of
+what I had learned in the afternoon at the office of the company--that
+at the eleventh hour an old ship with a lower standard of speed had been
+put on in place of the vessel in which I had taken my passage. America
+was roasting, England might very well be stuffy, and a slow passage
+(which at that season of the year would probably also be a fine one) was
+a guarantee of ten or twelve days of fresh air.
+
+I strolled down the hill without meeting a creature, though I could see
+through the palings of the Common that that recreative expanse was
+peopled with dim forms. I remembered Mrs. Nettlepoint's house--she lived
+in those days (they are not so distant, but there have been changes) on
+the water-side, a little way beyond the spot at which the Public Garden
+terminates; and I reflected that like myself she would be spending the
+night in Boston if it were true that, as had been mentioned to me a few
+days before at Mount Desert, she was to embark on the morrow for
+Liverpool. I presently saw this appearance confirmed by a light above
+her door and in two or three of her windows, and I determined to ask for
+her, having nothing to do till bedtime. I had come out simply to pass an
+hour, leaving my hotel to the blaze of its gas and the perspiration of
+its porters; but it occurred to me that my old friend might very well
+not know of the substitution of the _Patagonia_ for the _Scandinavia_,
+so that it would be an act of consideration to prepare her mind.
+Besides, I could offer to help her, to look after her in the morning:
+lone women are grateful for support in taking ship for far countries.
+
+As I stood on her doorstep I remembered that as she had a son she might
+not after all be so lone; yet at the same time it was present to me that
+Jasper Nettlepoint was not quite a young man to lean upon, having (as I
+at least supposed) a life of his own and tastes and habits which had
+long since drawn him away from the maternal side. If he did happen just
+now to be at home my solicitude would of course seem officious; for in
+his many wanderings--I believed he had roamed all over the globe--he
+would certainly have learned how to manage. None the less I was very
+glad to show Mrs. Nettlepoint I thought of her. With my long absence I
+had lost sight of her; but I had liked her of old; she had been a close
+friend of my sisters; and I had in regard to her that sense which is
+pleasant to those who, in general, have grown strange or detached--the
+feeling that she at least knew all about me. I could trust her at any
+time to tell people what a respectable person I was. Perhaps I was
+conscious of how little I deserved this indulgence when it came over me
+that for years I had not communicated with her. The measure of this
+neglect was given by my vagueness of mind about her son. However, I
+really belonged nowadays to a different generation: I was more the old
+lady's contemporary than Jasper's.
+
+Mrs. Nettlepoint was at home: I found her in her back drawing-room,
+where the wide windows opened upon the water. The room was dusky--it was
+too hot for lamps--and she sat slowly moving her fan and looking out on
+the little arm of the sea which is so pretty at night, reflecting the
+lights of Cambridgeport and Charlestown. I supposed she was musing upon
+the loved ones she was to leave behind, her married daughters, her
+grandchildren; but she struck a note more specifically Bostonian as she
+said to me, pointing with her fan to the Back Bay--'I shall see nothing
+more charming than that over there, you know!' She made me very welcome,
+but her son had told her about the _Patagonia_, for which she was sorry,
+as this would mean a longer voyage. She was a poor creature on shipboard
+and mainly confined to her cabin, even in weather extravagantly termed
+fine--as if any weather could be fine at sea.
+
+'Ah, then your son's going with you?' I asked.
+
+'Here he comes, he will tell you for himself much better than I am able
+to do.'
+
+Jasper Nettlepoint came into the room at that moment, dressed in white
+flannel and carrying a large fan.
+
+'Well, my dear, have you decided?' his mother continued, with some irony
+in her tone. 'He hasn't yet made up his mind, and we sail at ten
+o'clock!'
+
+'What does it matter, when my things are put up?' said the young man.
+'There is no crowd at this moment; there will be cabins to spare. I'm
+waiting for a telegram--that will settle it. I just walked up to the
+club to see if it was come--they'll send it there because they think the
+house is closed. Not yet, but I shall go back in twenty minutes.'
+
+'Mercy, how you rush about in this temperature!' his mother exclaimed,
+while I reflected that it was perhaps _his_ billiard-balls I had heard
+ten minutes before. I was sure he was fond of billiards.
+
+'Rush? not in the least. I take it uncommonly easy.'
+
+'Ah, I'm bound to say you do,' Mrs. Nettlepoint exclaimed,
+inconsequently. I divined that there was a certain tension between the
+pair and a want of consideration on the young man's part, arising
+perhaps from selfishness. His mother was nervous, in suspense, wanting
+to be at rest as to whether she should have his company on the voyage or
+be obliged to make it alone. But as he stood there smiling and slowly
+moving his fan he struck me somehow as a person on whom this fact would
+not sit very heavily. He was of the type of those whom other people
+worry about, not of those who worry about other people. Tall and
+strong, he had a handsome face, with a round head and close-curling
+hair; the whites of his eyes and the enamel of his teeth, under his
+brown moustache, gleamed vaguely in the lights of the Back Bay. I made
+out that he was sunburnt, as if he lived much in the open air, and that
+he looked intelligent but also slightly brutal, though not in a morose
+way. His brutality, if he had any, was bright and finished. I had to
+tell him who I was, but even then I saw that he failed to place me and
+that my explanations gave me in his mind no great identity or at any
+rate no great importance. I foresaw that he would in intercourse make me
+feel sometimes very young and sometimes very old. He mentioned, as if to
+show his mother that he might safely be left to his own devices, that he
+had once started from London to Bombay at three-quarters of an hour's
+notice.
+
+'Yes, and it must have been pleasant for the people you were with!'
+
+'Oh, the people I was with----!' he rejoined; and his tone appeared to
+signify that such people would always have to come off as they could. He
+asked if there were no cold drinks in the house, no lemonade, no iced
+syrups; in such weather something of that sort ought always to be kept
+going. When his mother remarked that surely at the club they _were_
+going he went on, 'Oh, yes, I had various things there; but you know I
+have walked down the hill since. One should have something at either
+end. May I ring and see?' He rang while Mrs. Nettlepoint observed that
+with the people they had in the house--an establishment reduced
+naturally at such a moment to its simplest expression (they were
+burning-up candle-ends and there were no luxuries) she would not answer
+for the service. The matter ended in the old lady's going out of the
+room in quest of syrup with the female domestic who had appeared in
+response to the bell and in whom Jasper's appeal aroused no visible
+intelligence.
+
+She remained away some time and I talked with her son, who was sociable
+but desultory and kept moving about the room, always with his fan, as if
+he were impatient. Sometimes he seated himself for an instant on the
+window-sill, and then I saw that he was in fact very good-looking; a
+fine brown, clean young athlete. He never told me on what special
+contingency his decision depended; he only alluded familiarly to an
+expected telegram, and I perceived that he was probably not addicted to
+copious explanations. His mother's absence was an indication that when
+it was a question of gratifying him she had grown used to spare no
+pains, and I fancied her rummaging in some close storeroom, among old
+preserve-pots, while the dull maid-servant held the candle awry. I know
+not whether this same vision was in his own eyes; at all events it did
+not prevent him from saying suddenly, as he looked at his watch, that I
+must excuse him, as he had to go back to the club. He would return in
+half an hour--or in less. He walked away and I sat there alone,
+conscious, in the dark, dismantled, simplified room, in the deep silence
+that rests on American towns during the hot season (there was now and
+then a far cry or a plash in the water, and at intervals the tinkle of
+the bells of the horse-cars on the long bridge, slow in the suffocating
+night), of the strange influence, half sweet, half sad, that abides in
+houses uninhabited or about to become so--in places muffled and
+bereaved, where the unheeded sofas and patient belittered tables seem to
+know (like the disconcerted dogs) that it is the eve of a journey.
+
+After a while I heard the sound of voices, of steps, the rustle of
+dresses, and I looked round, supposing these things to be the sign of
+the return of Mrs. Nettlepoint and her handmaiden, bearing the
+refreshment prepared for her son. What I saw however was two other
+female forms, visitors just admitted apparently, who were ushered into
+the room. They were not announced--the servant turned her back on them
+and rambled off to our hostess. They came forward in a wavering,
+tentative, unintroduced way--partly, I could see, because the place was
+dark and partly because their visit was in its nature experimental, a
+stretch of confidence. One of the ladies was stout and the other was
+slim, and I perceived in a moment that one was talkative and the other
+silent. I made out further that one was elderly and the other young and
+that the fact that they were so unlike did not prevent their being
+mother and daughter. Mrs. Nettlepoint reappeared in a very few minutes,
+but the interval had sufficed to establish a communication (really
+copious for the occasion) between the strangers and the unknown
+gentleman whom they found in possession, hat and stick in hand. This was
+not my doing (for what had I to go upon?) and still less was it the
+doing of the person whom I supposed and whom I indeed quickly and
+definitely learned to be the daughter. She spoke but once--when her
+companion informed me that she was going out to Europe the next day to
+be married. Then she said, 'Oh, mother!' protestingly, in a tone which
+struck me in the darkness as doubly strange, exciting my curiosity to
+see her face.
+
+It had taken her mother but a moment to come to that and to other things
+besides, after I had explained that I myself was waiting for Mrs.
+Nettlepoint, who would doubtless soon come back.
+
+'Well, she won't know me--I guess she hasn't ever heard much about me,'
+the good lady said; 'but I have come from Mrs. Allen and I guess that
+will make it all right. I presume you know Mrs. Allen?'
+
+I was unacquainted with this influential personage, but I assented
+vaguely to the proposition. Mrs. Allen's emissary was good-humoured and
+familiar, but rather appealing than insistent (she remarked that if her
+friend _had_ found time to come in the afternoon--she had so much to do,
+being just up for the day, that she couldn't be sure--it would be all
+right); and somehow even before she mentioned Merrimac Avenue (they had
+come all the way from there) my imagination had associated her with that
+indefinite social limbo known to the properly-constituted Boston mind as
+the South End--a nebulous region which condenses here and there into a
+pretty face, in which the daughters are an 'improvement' on the mothers
+and are sometimes acquainted with gentlemen resident in more
+distinguished districts of the New England capital--gentlemen whose
+wives and sisters in turn are not acquainted with them.
+
+When at last Mrs. Nettlepoint came in, accompanied by candles and by a
+tray laden with glasses of coloured fluid which emitted a cool tinkling,
+I was in a position to officiate as master of the ceremonies, to
+introduce Mrs. Mavis and Miss Grace Mavis, to represent that Mrs. Allen
+had recommended them--nay, had urged them--to come that way, informally,
+and had been prevented only by the pressure of occupations so
+characteristic of her (especially when she was up from Mattapoisett just
+for a few hours' shopping) from herself calling in the course of the day
+to explain who they were and what was the favour they had to ask of Mrs.
+Nettlepoint. Good-natured women understand each other even when divided
+by the line of topographical fashion, and our hostess had quickly
+mastered the main facts: Mrs. Allen's visit in the morning in Merrimac
+Avenue to talk of Mrs. Amber's great idea, the classes at the public
+schools in vacation (she was interested with an equal charity to that of
+Mrs. Mavis--even in such weather!--in those of the South End) for games
+and exercises and music, to keep the poor unoccupied children out of the
+streets; then the revelation that it had suddenly been settled almost
+from one hour to the other that Grace should sail for Liverpool, Mr.
+Porterfield at last being ready. He was taking a little holiday; his
+mother was with him, they had come over from Paris to see some of the
+celebrated old buildings in England, and he had telegraphed to say that
+if Grace would start right off they would just finish it up and be
+married. It often happened that when things had dragged on that way for
+years they were all huddled up at the end. Of course in such a case she,
+Mrs. Mavis, had had to fly round. Her daughter's passage was taken, but
+it seemed too dreadful that she should make her journey all alone, the
+first time she had ever been at sea, without any companion or escort.
+_She_ couldn't go--Mr. Mavis was too sick: she hadn't even been able to
+get him off to the seaside.
+
+'Well, Mrs. Nettlepoint is going in that ship,' Mrs. Allen had said; and
+she had represented that nothing was simpler than to put the girl in her
+charge. When Mrs. Mavis had replied that that was all very well but that
+she didn't know the lady, Mrs. Allen had declared that that didn't make
+a speck of difference, for Mrs. Nettlepoint was kind enough for
+anything. It was easy enough to know her, if that was all the trouble.
+All Mrs. Mavis would have to do would be to go up to her the next
+morning when she took her daughter to the ship (she would see her there
+on the deck with her party) and tell her what she wanted. Mrs.
+Nettlepoint had daughters herself and she would easily understand. Very
+likely she would even look after Grace a little on the other side, in
+such a queer situation, going out alone to the gentleman she was engaged
+to; she would just help her to turn round before she was married. Mr.
+Porterfield seemed to think they wouldn't wait long, once she was there:
+they would have it right over at the American consul's. Mrs. Allen had
+said it would perhaps be better still to go and see Mrs. Nettlepoint
+beforehand, that day, to tell her what they wanted: then they wouldn't
+seem to spring it on her just as she was leaving. She herself (Mrs.
+Allen) would call and say a word for them if she could save ten minutes
+before catching her train. If she hadn't come it was because she hadn't
+saved her ten minutes; but she had made them feel that they must come
+all the same. Mrs. Mavis liked that better, because on the ship in the
+morning there would be such a confusion. She didn't think her daughter
+would be any trouble--conscientiously she didn't. It was just to have
+some one to speak to her and not sally forth like a servant-girl going
+to a situation.
+
+'I see, I am to act as a sort of bridesmaid and to give her away,' said
+Mrs. Nettlepoint. She was in fact kind enough for anything and she
+showed on this occasion that it was easy enough to know her. There is
+nothing more tiresome than complications at sea, but she accepted
+without a protest the burden of the young lady's dependence and allowed
+her, as Mrs. Mavis said, to hook herself on. She evidently had the habit
+of patience, and her reception of her visitors' story reminded me afresh
+(I was reminded of it whenever I returned to my native land) that my
+dear compatriots are the people in the world who most freely take mutual
+accommodation for granted. They have always had to help themselves, and
+by a magnanimous extension they confound helping each other with that.
+In no country are there fewer forms and more reciprocities.
+
+It was doubtless not singular that the ladies from Merrimac Avenue
+should not feel that they were importunate: what was striking was that
+Mrs. Nettlepoint did not appear to suspect it. However, she would in any
+case have thought it inhuman to show that--though I could see that under
+the surface she was amused at everything the lady from the South End
+took for granted. I know not whether the attitude of the younger visitor
+added or not to the merit of her good-nature. Mr. Porterfield's intended
+took no part in her mother's appeal, scarcely spoke, sat looking at the
+Back Bay and the lights on the long bridge. She declined the lemonade
+and the other mixtures which, at Mrs. Nettlepoint's request, I offered
+her, while her mother partook freely of everything and I reflected (for
+I as freely consumed the reviving liquid) that Mr. Jasper had better
+hurry back if he wished to profit by the refreshment prepared for him.
+
+Was the effect of the young woman's reserve ungracious, or was it only
+natural that in her particular situation she should not have a flow of
+compliment at her command? I noticed that Mrs. Nettlepoint looked at her
+often, and certainly though she was undemonstrative Miss Mavis was
+interesting. The candle-light enabled me to see that if she was not in
+the very first flower of her youth she was still a handsome girl. Her
+eyes and hair were dark, her face was pale and she held up her head as
+if, with its thick braids, it were an appurtenance she was not ashamed
+of. If her mother was excellent and common she was not common (not
+flagrantly so) and perhaps not excellent. At all events she would not
+be, in appearance at least, a dreary appendage, and (in the case of a
+person 'hooking on') that was always something gained. Is it because
+something of a romantic or pathetic interest usually attaches to a good
+creature who has been the victim of a 'long engagement' that this young
+lady made an impression on me from the first--favoured as I had been so
+quickly with this glimpse of her history? Certainly she made no positive
+appeal; she only held her tongue and smiled, and her smile corrected
+whatever suggestion might have forced itself upon me that the spirit was
+dead--the spirit of that promise of which she found herself doomed to
+carry out the letter.
+
+What corrected it less, I must add, was an odd recollection which
+gathered vividness as I listened to it--a mental association which the
+name of Mr. Porterfield had evoked. Surely I had a personal impression,
+over-smeared and confused, of the gentleman who was waiting at
+Liverpool, or who would be, for Mrs. Nettlepoint's _protegee_. I had met
+him, known him, some time, somewhere, somehow, in Europe. Was he not
+studying something--very hard--somewhere, probably in Paris, ten years
+before, and did he not make extraordinarily neat drawings, linear and
+architectural? Didn't he go to a _table d'hote_, at two francs
+twenty-five, in the Rue Bonaparte, which I then frequented, and didn't
+he wear spectacles and a Scotch plaid arranged in a manner which seemed
+to say, 'I have trustworthy information that that is the way they do it
+in the Highlands'? Was he not exemplary and very poor, so that I
+supposed he had no overcoat and his tartan was what he slept under at
+night? Was he not working very hard still, and wouldn't he be in the
+natural course, not yet satisfied that he knew enough to launch out? He
+would be a man of long preparations--Miss Mavis's white face seemed to
+speak to one of that. It appeared to me that if I had been in love with
+her I should not have needed to lay such a train to marry her.
+Architecture was his line and he was a pupil of the Ecole des Beaux
+Arts. This reminiscence grew so much more vivid with me that at the end
+of ten minutes I had a curious sense of knowing--by implication--a good
+deal about the young lady.
+
+Even after it was settled that Mrs. Nettlepoint would do everything for
+her that she could her mother sat a little, sipping her syrup and
+telling how 'low' Mr. Mavis had been. At this period the girl's silence
+struck me as still more conscious, partly perhaps because she deprecated
+her mother's loquacity (she was enough of an 'improvement' to measure
+that) and partly because she was too full of pain at the idea of leaving
+her infirm, her perhaps dying father. I divined that they were poor and
+that she would take out a very small purse for her trousseau. Moreover
+for Mr. Porterfield to make up the sum his own case would have had to
+change. If he had enriched himself by the successful practice of his
+profession I had not encountered the buildings he had reared--his
+reputation had not come to my ears.
+
+Mrs. Nettlepoint notified her new friends that she was a very inactive
+person at sea: she was prepared to suffer to the full with Miss Mavis,
+but she was not prepared to walk with her, to struggle with her, to
+accompany her to the table. To this the girl replied that she would
+trouble her little, she was sure: she had a belief that she should prove
+a wretched sailor and spend the voyage on her back. Her mother scoffed
+at this picture, prophesying perfect weather and a lovely time, and I
+said that if I might be trusted, as a tame old bachelor fairly
+sea-seasoned, I should be delighted to give the new member of our party
+an arm or any other countenance whenever she should require it. Both the
+ladies thanked me for this (taking my description only too literally),
+and the elder one declared that we were evidently going to be such a
+sociable group that it was too bad to have to stay at home. She inquired
+of Mrs. Nettlepoint if there were any one else--if she were to be
+accompanied by some of her family; and when our hostess mentioned her
+son--there was a chance of his embarking but (wasn't it absurd?) he had
+not decided yet, she rejoined with extraordinary candour--'Oh dear, I do
+hope he'll go: that would be so pleasant for Grace.'
+
+Somehow the words made me think of poor Mr. Porterfield's tartan,
+especially as Jasper Nettlepoint strolled in again at that moment. His
+mother instantly challenged him: it was ten o'clock; had he by chance
+made up his great mind? Apparently he failed to hear her, being in the
+first place surprised at the strange ladies and then struck with the
+fact that one of them was not strange. The young man, after a slight
+hesitation, greeted Miss Mavis with a handshake and an 'Oh, good
+evening, how do you do?' He did not utter her name, and I could see that
+he had forgotten it; but she immediately pronounced his, availing
+herself of an American girl's discretion to introduce him to her mother.
+
+'Well, you might have told me you knew him all this time!' Mrs. Mavis
+exclaimed. Then smiling at Mrs. Nettlepoint she added, 'It would have
+saved me a worry, an acquaintance already begun.'
+
+'Ah, my son's acquaintances----!' Mrs. Nettlepoint murmured.
+
+'Yes, and my daughter's too!' cried Mrs. Mavis, jovially. 'Mrs. Allen
+didn't tell us _you_ were going,' she continued, to the young man.
+
+'She would have been clever if she had been able to!' Mrs. Nettlepoint
+ejaculated.
+
+'Dear mother, I have my telegram,' Jasper remarked, looking at Grace
+Mavis.
+
+'I know you very little,' the girl said, returning his observation.
+
+'I've danced with you at some ball--for some sufferers by something or
+other.'
+
+'I think it was an inundation,' she replied, smiling. 'But it was a long
+time ago--and I haven't seen you since.'
+
+'I have been in far countries--to my loss. I should have said it was for
+a big fire.'
+
+'It was at the Horticultural Hall. I didn't remember your name,' said
+Grace Mavis.
+
+'That is very unkind of you, when I recall vividly that you had a pink
+dress.'
+
+'Oh, I remember that dress--you looked lovely in it!' Mrs. Mavis broke
+out. 'You must get another just like it--on the other side.'
+
+'Yes, your daughter looked charming in it,' said Jasper Nettlepoint.
+Then he added, to the girl--'Yet you mentioned my name to your mother.'
+
+'It came back to me--seeing you here. I had no idea this was your home.'
+
+'Well, I confess it isn't, much. Oh, there are some drinks!' Jasper went
+on, approaching the tray and its glasses.
+
+'Indeed there are and quite delicious,' Mrs. Mavis declared.
+
+'Won't you have another then?--a pink one, like your daughter's gown.'
+
+'With pleasure, sir. Oh, do see them over,' Mrs. Mavis continued,
+accepting from the young man's hand a third tumbler.
+
+'My mother and that gentleman? Surely they can take care of themselves,'
+said Jasper Nettlepoint.
+
+'But my daughter--she has a claim as an old friend.'
+
+'Jasper, what does your telegram say?' his mother interposed.
+
+He gave no heed to her question: he stood there with his glass in his
+hand, looking from Mrs. Mavis to Miss Grace.
+
+'Ah, leave her to me, madam; I'm quite competent,' I said to Mrs. Mavis.
+
+Then the young man looked at me. The next minute he asked of the young
+lady--'Do you mean you are going to Europe?'
+
+'Yes, to-morrow; in the same ship as your mother.'
+
+'That's what we've come here for, to see all about it,' said Mrs. Mavis.
+
+'My son, take pity on me and tell me what light your telegram throws,'
+Mrs. Nettlepoint went on.
+
+'I will, dearest, when I've quenched my thirst.' And Jasper slowly
+drained his glass.
+
+'Well, you're worse than Gracie,' Mrs. Mavis commented. 'She was first
+one thing and then the other--but only about up to three o'clock
+yesterday.'
+
+'Excuse me--won't you take something?' Jasper inquired of Gracie; who
+however declined, as if to make up for her mother's copious
+_consommation_. I made privately the reflection that the two ladies
+ought to take leave, the question of Mrs. Nettlepoint's goodwill being
+so satisfactorily settled and the meeting of the morrow at the ship so
+near at hand; and I went so far as to judge that their protracted stay,
+with their hostess visibly in a fidget, was a sign of a want of
+breeding. Miss Grace after all then was not such an improvement on her
+mother, for she easily might have taken the initiative of departure, in
+spite of Mrs. Mavis's imbibing her glass of syrup in little interspaced
+sips, as if to make it last as long as possible. I watched the girl with
+an increasing curiosity; I could not help asking myself a question or
+two about her and even perceiving already (in a dim and general way)
+that there were some complications in her position. Was it not a
+complication that she should have wished to remain long enough to
+assuage a certain suspense, to learn whether or no Jasper were going to
+sail? Had not something particular passed between them on the occasion
+or at the period to which they had covertly alluded, and did she really
+not know that her mother was bringing her to _his_ mother's, though she
+apparently had thought it well not to mention the circumstance? Such
+things were complications on the part of a young lady betrothed to that
+curious cross-barred phantom of a Mr. Porterfield. But I am bound to add
+that she gave me no further warrant for suspecting them than by the
+simple fact of her encouraging her mother, by her immobility, to linger.
+Somehow I had a sense that _she_ knew better. I got up myself to go, but
+Mrs. Nettlepoint detained me after seeing that my movement would not be
+taken as a hint, and I perceived she wished me not to leave my
+fellow-visitors on her hands. Jasper complained of the closeness of the
+room, said that it was not a night to sit in a room--one ought to be out
+in the air, under the sky. He denounced the windows that overlooked the
+water for not opening upon a balcony or a terrace, until his mother,
+whom he had not yet satisfied about his telegram, reminded him that
+there was a beautiful balcony in front, with room for a dozen people.
+She assured him we would go and sit there if it would please him.
+
+'It will be nice and cool to-morrow, when we steam into the great
+ocean,' said Miss Mavis, expressing with more vivacity than she had yet
+thrown into any of her utterances my own thought of half an hour before.
+Mrs. Nettlepoint replied that it would probably be freezing cold, and
+her son murmured that he would go and try the drawing-room balcony and
+report upon it. Just as he was turning away he said, smiling, to Miss
+Mavis--'Won't you come with me and see if it's pleasant?'
+
+'Oh, well, we had better not stay all night!' her mother exclaimed, but
+without moving. The girl moved, after a moment's hesitation; she rose
+and accompanied Jasper into the other room. I observed that her slim
+tallness showed to advantage as she walked and that she looked well as
+she passed, with her head thrown back, into the darkness of the other
+part of the house. There was something rather marked, rather surprising
+(I scarcely knew why, for the act was simple enough) in her doing so,
+and perhaps it was our sense of this that held the rest of us somewhat
+stiffly silent as she remained away. I was waiting for Mrs. Mavis to go,
+so that I myself might go; and Mrs. Nettlepoint was waiting for her to
+go so that I might not. This doubtless made the young lady's absence
+appear to us longer than it really was--it was probably very brief. Her
+mother moreover, I think, had a vague consciousness of embarrassment.
+Jasper Nettlepoint presently returned to the back drawing-room to get a
+glass of syrup for his companion, and he took occasion to remark that it
+was lovely on the balcony: one really got some air, the breeze was from
+that quarter. I remembered, as he went away with his tinkling tumbler,
+that from _my_ hand, a few minutes before, Miss Mavis had not been
+willing to accept this innocent offering. A little later Mrs.
+Nettlepoint said--'Well, if it's so pleasant there we had better go
+ourselves.' So we passed to the front and in the other room met the two
+young people coming in from the balcony. I wondered in the light of
+subsequent events exactly how long they had been sitting there together.
+(There were three or four cane chairs which had been placed there for
+the summer.) If it had been but five minutes, that only made subsequent
+events more curious. 'We must go, mother,' Miss Mavis immediately said;
+and a moment later, with a little renewal of chatter as to our general
+meeting on the ship, the visitors had taken leave. Jasper went down with
+them to the door and as soon as they had gone out Mrs. Nettlepoint
+exclaimed--'Ah, but she'll be a bore--she'll be a bore!'
+
+'Not through talking too much--surely.'
+
+'An affectation of silence is as bad. I hate that particular _pose_;
+it's coming up very much now; an imitation of the English, like
+everything else. A girl who tries to be statuesque at sea--that will act
+on one's nerves!'
+
+'I don't know what she tries to be, but she succeeds in being very
+handsome.'
+
+'So much the better for you. I'll leave her to you, for I shall be shut
+up. I like her being placed under my "care."'
+
+'She will be under Jasper's,' I remarked.
+
+'Ah, he won't go--I want it too much.'
+
+'I have an idea he will go.'
+
+'Why didn't he tell me so then--when he came in?'
+
+'He was diverted by Miss Mavis--a beautiful unexpected girl sitting
+there.'
+
+'Diverted from his mother--trembling for his decision?'
+
+'She's an old friend; it was a meeting after a long separation.'
+
+'Yes, such a lot of them as he knows!' said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
+
+'Such a lot of them?'
+
+'He has so many female friends--in the most varied circles.'
+
+'Well, we can close round her then--for I on my side knew, or used to
+know, her young man.'
+
+'Her young man?'
+
+'The _fiance_, the intended, the one she is going out to. He can't by
+the way be very young now.'
+
+'How odd it sounds!' said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
+
+I was going to reply that it was not odd if you knew Mr. Porterfield,
+but I reflected that that perhaps only made it odder. I told my
+companion briefly who he was--that I had met him in the old days in
+Paris, when I believed for a fleeting hour that I could learn to paint,
+when I lived with the _jeunesse des ecoles_, and her comment on this was
+simply--'Well, he had better have come out for her!'
+
+'Perhaps so. She looked to me as she sat there as if she might change
+her mind at the last moment.'
+
+'About her marriage?'
+
+'About sailing. But she won't change now.'
+
+Jasper came back, and his mother instantly challenged him. 'Well, _are_
+you going?'
+
+'Yes, I shall go,' he said, smiling. 'I have got my telegram.'
+
+'Oh, your telegram!' I ventured to exclaim. 'That charming girl is your
+telegram.'
+
+He gave me a look, but in the dusk I could not make out very well what
+it conveyed. Then he bent over his mother, kissing her. 'My news isn't
+particularly satisfactory. I am going for _you_.'
+
+'Oh, you humbug!' she rejoined. But of course she was delighted.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+People usually spend the first hours of a voyage in squeezing themselves
+into their cabins, taking their little precautions, either so excessive
+or so inadequate, wondering how they can pass so many days in such a
+hole and asking idiotic questions of the stewards, who appear in
+comparison such men of the world. My own initiations were rapid, as
+became an old sailor, and so it seemed were Miss Mavis's, for when I
+mounted to the deck at the end of half an hour I found her there alone,
+in the stern of the ship, looking back at the dwindling continent. It
+dwindled very fast for so big a place. I accosted her, having had no
+conversation with her amid the crowd of leave-takers and the muddle of
+farewells before we put off; we talked a little about the boat, our
+fellow-passengers and our prospects, and then I said--'I think you
+mentioned last night a name I know--that of Mr. Porterfield.'
+
+'Oh no, I never uttered it,' she replied, smiling at me through her
+closely-drawn veil.
+
+'Then it was your mother.'
+
+'Very likely it was my mother.' And she continued to smile, as if I
+ought to have known the difference.
+
+'I venture to allude to him because I have an idea I used to know him,'
+I went on.
+
+'Oh, I see.' Beyond this remark she manifested no interest in my having
+known him.
+
+'That is if it's the same one.' It seemed to me it would be silly to say
+nothing more; so I added 'My Mr. Porterfield was called David.'
+
+'Well, so is ours.' 'Ours' struck me as clever.
+
+'I suppose I shall see him again if he is to meet you at Liverpool,' I
+continued.
+
+'Well, it will be bad if he doesn't.'
+
+It was too soon for me to have the idea that it would be bad if he did:
+that only came later. So I remarked that I had not seen him for so many
+years that it was very possible I should not know him.'
+
+'Well, I have not seen him for a great many years, but I expect I shall
+know him all the same.'
+
+'Oh, with you it's different,' I rejoined, smiling at her. 'Hasn't he
+been back since those days?'
+
+'I don't know what days you mean.'
+
+'When I knew him in Paris--ages ago. He was a pupil of the Ecole des
+Beaux Arts. He was studying architecture.'
+
+'Well, he is studying it still,' said Grace Mavis.
+
+'Hasn't he learned it yet?'
+
+'I don't know what he has learned. I shall see.' Then she added:
+'Architecture is very difficult and he is tremendously thorough.'
+
+'Oh, yes, I remember that. He was an admirable worker. But he must have
+become quite a foreigner, if it's so many years since he has been at
+home.'
+
+'Oh, he is not changeable. If he were changeable----' But here my
+interlocutress paused. I suspect she had been going to say that if he
+were changeable he would have given her up long ago. After an instant
+she went on: 'He wouldn't have stuck so to his profession. You can't
+make much by it.'
+
+'You can't make much?'
+
+'It doesn't make you rich.'
+
+'Oh, of course you have got to practise it--and to practise it long.'
+
+'Yes--so Mr. Porterfield says.'
+
+Something in the way she uttered these words made me laugh--they were so
+serene an implication that the gentleman in question did not live up to
+his principles. But I checked myself, asking my companion if she
+expected to remain in Europe long--to live there.
+
+'Well, it will be a good while if it takes me as long to come back as it
+has taken me to go out.'
+
+'And I think your mother said last night that it was your first visit.'
+
+Miss Mavis looked at me a moment. 'Didn't mother talk!'
+
+'It was all very interesting.'
+
+She continued to look at me. 'You don't think that.'
+
+'What have I to gain by saying it if I don't?'
+
+'Oh, men have always something to gain.'
+
+'You make me feel a terrible failure, then! I hope at any rate that it
+gives you pleasure--the idea of seeing foreign lands.'
+
+'Mercy--I should think so.'
+
+'It's a pity our ship is not one of the fast ones, if you are
+impatient.'
+
+She was silent a moment; then she exclaimed, 'Oh, I guess it will be
+fast enough!'
+
+That evening I went in to see Mrs. Nettlepoint and sat on her sea-trunk,
+which was pulled out from under the berth to accommodate me. It was nine
+o'clock but not quite dark, as our northward course had already taken us
+into the latitude of the longer days. She had made her nest admirably
+and lay upon her sofa in a becoming dressing-gown and cap, resting from
+her labours. It was her regular practice to spend the voyage in her
+cabin, which smelt good (such was the refinement of her art), and she
+had a secret peculiar to herself for keeping her port open without
+shipping seas. She hated what she called the mess of the ship and the
+idea, if she should go above, of meeting stewards with plates of
+supererogatory food. She professed to be content with her situation (we
+promised to lend each other books and I assured her familiarly that I
+should be in and out of her room a dozen times a day), and pitied me for
+having to mingle in society. She judged this to be a limited privilege,
+for on the deck before we left the wharf she had taken a view of our
+fellow-passengers.
+
+'Oh, I'm an inveterate, almost a professional observer,' I replied, 'and
+with that vice I am as well occupied as an old woman in the sun with her
+knitting. It puts it in my power, in any situation, to _see_ things. I
+shall see them even here and I shall come down very often and tell you
+about them. You are not interested to-day, but you will be to-morrow,
+for a ship is a great school of gossip. You won't believe the number of
+researches and problems you will be engaged in by the middle of the
+voyage.'
+
+'I? Never in the world--lying here with my nose in a book and never
+seeing anything.'
+
+'You will participate at second hand. You will see through my eyes, hang
+upon my lips, take sides, feel passions, all sorts of sympathies and
+indignations. I have an idea that your young lady is the person on board
+who will interest me most.'
+
+'Mine, indeed! She has not been near me since we left the dock.'
+
+'Well, she is very curious.'
+
+'You have such cold-blooded terms,' Mrs. Nettlepoint murmured. '_Elle ne
+sait pas se conduire_; she ought to have come to ask about me.'
+
+'Yes, since you are under her care,' I said, smiling. 'As for her not
+knowing how to behave--well, that's exactly what we shall see.'
+
+'You will, but not I! I wash my hands of her.'
+
+'Don't say that--don't say that.'
+
+Mrs. Nettlepoint looked at me a moment. 'Why do you speak so solemnly?'
+
+In return I considered her. 'I will tell you before we land. And have
+you seen much of your son?'
+
+'Oh yes, he has come in several times. He seems very much pleased. He
+has got a cabin to himself.'
+
+'That's great luck,' I said, 'but I have an idea he is always in luck. I
+was sure I should have to offer him the second berth in my room.'
+
+'And you wouldn't have enjoyed that, because you don't like him,' Mrs.
+Nettlepoint took upon herself to say.
+
+'What put that into your head?'
+
+'It isn't in my head--it's in my heart, my _coeur de mere_. We guess
+those things. You think he's selfish--I could see it last night.'
+
+'Dear lady,' I said, 'I have no general ideas about him at all. He is
+just one of the phenomena I am going to observe. He seems to me a very
+fine young man. However,' I added, 'since you have mentioned last night
+I will admit that I thought he rather tantalised you. He played with
+your suspense.'
+
+'Why, he came at the last just to please me,' said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
+
+I was silent a moment. 'Are you sure it was for your sake?'
+
+'Ah, perhaps it was for yours!'
+
+'When he went out on the balcony with that girl perhaps she asked him to
+come,' I continued.
+
+'Perhaps she did. But why should he do everything she asks him?'
+
+'I don't know yet, but perhaps I shall know later. Not that he will tell
+me--for he will never tell me anything: he is not one of those who
+tell.'
+
+'If she didn't ask him, what you say is a great wrong to her,' said Mrs.
+Nettlepoint.
+
+'Yes, if she didn't. But you say that to protect Jasper, not to protect
+her,' I continued, smiling.
+
+'You _are_ cold-blooded--it's uncanny!' my companion exclaimed.
+
+'Ah, this is nothing yet! Wait a while--you'll see. At sea in general
+I'm awful--I pass the limits. If I have outraged her in thought I will
+jump overboard. There are ways of asking (a man doesn't need to tell a
+woman that) without the crude words.'
+
+'I don't know what you suppose between them,' said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
+
+'Nothing but what was visible on the surface. It transpired, as the
+newspapers say, that they were old friends.'
+
+'He met her at some promiscuous party--I asked him about it afterwards.
+She is not a person he could ever think of seriously.'
+
+'That's exactly what I believe.'
+
+'You don't observe--you imagine,' Mrs. Nettlepoint pursued.' How do you
+reconcile her laying a trap for Jasper with her going out to Liverpool
+on an errand of love?'
+
+'I don't for an instant suppose she laid a trap; I believe she acted on
+the impulse of the moment. She is going out to Liverpool on an errand of
+marriage; that is not necessarily the same thing as an errand of love,
+especially for one who happens to have had a personal impression of the
+gentleman she is engaged to.'
+
+'Well, there are certain decencies which in such a situation the most
+abandoned of her sex would still observe. You apparently judge her
+capable--on no evidence--of violating them.'
+
+'Ah, you don't understand the shades of things,' I rejoined. 'Decencies
+and violations--there is no need for such heavy artillery! I can
+perfectly imagine that without the least immodesty she should have said
+to Jasper on the balcony, in fact if not in words--"I'm in dreadful
+spirits, but if you come I shall feel better, and that will be pleasant
+for you too."'
+
+'And why is she in dreadful spirits?'
+
+'She isn't!' I replied, laughing.
+
+'What is she doing?'
+
+'She is walking with your son.'
+
+Mrs. Nettlepoint said nothing for a moment; then she broke out,
+inconsequently--'Ah, she's horrid!'
+
+'No, she's charming!' I protested.
+
+'You mean she's "curious"?'
+
+'Well, for me it's the same thing!'
+
+This led my friend of course to declare once more that I was
+cold-blooded. On the afternoon of the morrow we had another talk, and
+she told me that in the morning Miss Mavis had paid her a long visit.
+She knew nothing about anything, but her intentions were good and she
+was evidently in her own eyes conscientious and decorous. And Mrs.
+Nettlepoint concluded these remarks with the exclamation 'Poor young
+thing!'
+
+'You think she is a good deal to be pitied, then?'
+
+'Well, her story sounds dreary--she told me a great deal of it. She fell
+to talking little by little and went from one thing to another. She's in
+that situation when a girl _must_ open herself--to some woman.'
+
+'Hasn't she got Jasper?' I inquired.
+
+'He isn't a woman. You strike me as jealous of him,' my companion added.
+
+'I daresay _he_ thinks so--or will before the end. Ah no--ah no!' And I
+asked Mrs. Nettlepoint if our young lady struck her as a flirt. She gave
+me no answer, but went on to remark that it was odd and interesting to
+her to see the way a girl like Grace Mavis resembled the girls of the
+kind she herself knew better, the girls of 'society,' at the same time
+that she differed from them; and the way the differences and
+resemblances were mixed up, so that on certain questions you couldn't
+tell where you would find her. You would think she would feel as you did
+because you had found her feeling so, and then suddenly, in regard to
+some other matter (which was yet quite the same) she would be terribly
+wanting. Mrs. Nettlepoint proceeded to observe (to such idle
+speculations does the vanity of a sea-voyage give encouragement) that
+she wondered whether it were better to be an ordinary girl very well
+brought up or an extraordinary girl not brought up at all.
+
+'Oh, I go in for the extraordinary girl under all circumstances.'
+
+'It is true that if you are _very_ well brought up you are not
+ordinary,' said Mrs. Nettlepoint, smelling her strong salts. 'You are a
+lady, at any rate. _C'est toujours ca._'
+
+'And Miss Mavis isn't one--is that what you mean?'
+
+'Well--you have seen her mother.'
+
+'Yes, but I think your contention would be that among such people the
+mother doesn't count.'
+
+'Precisely; and that's bad.'
+
+'I see what you mean. But isn't it rather hard? If your mother doesn't
+know anything it is better you should be independent of her, and yet if
+you are that constitutes a bad note.' I added that Mrs. Mavis had
+appeared to count sufficiently two nights before. She had said and done
+everything she wanted, while the girl sat silent and respectful. Grace's
+attitude (so far as her mother was concerned) had been eminently decent.
+
+'Yes, but she couldn't bear it,' said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
+
+'Ah, if you know it I may confess that she has told me as much.'
+
+Mrs. Nettlepoint stared. 'Told you? There's one of the things they do!'
+
+'Well, it was only a word. Won't you let me know whether you think she's
+a flirt?'
+
+'Find out for yourself, since you pretend to study folks.'
+
+'Oh, your judgment would probably not at all determine mine. It's in
+regard to yourself that I ask it.'
+
+'In regard to myself?'
+
+'To see the length of maternal immorality.'
+
+Mrs. Nettlepoint continued to repeat my words. 'Maternal immorality?'
+
+'You desire your son to have every possible distraction on his voyage,
+and if you can make up your mind in the sense I refer to that will make
+it all right. He will have no responsibility.'
+
+'Heavens, how you analyse! I haven't in the least your passion for
+making up my mind.'
+
+'Then if you chance it you'll be more immoral still.'
+
+'Your reasoning is strange,' said the poor lady; 'when it was you who
+tried to put it into my head yesterday that she had asked him to come.'
+
+'Yes, but in good faith.'
+
+'How do you mean in good faith?'
+
+'Why, as girls of that sort do. Their allowance and measure in such
+matters is much larger than that of young ladies who have been, as you
+say, _very_ well brought up; and yet I am not sure that on the whole I
+don't think them the more innocent. Miss Mavis is engaged, and she's to
+be married next week, but it's an old, old story, and there's no more
+romance in it than if she were going to be photographed. So her usual
+life goes on, and her usual life consists (and that of ces demoiselles
+in general) in having plenty of gentlemen's society. Having it I mean
+without having any harm from it.'
+
+'Well, if there is no harm from it what are you talking about and why
+am I immoral?'
+
+I hesitated, laughing. 'I retract--you are sane and clear. I am sure she
+thinks there won't be any harm,' I added. 'That's the great point.'
+
+'The great point?'
+
+'I mean, to be settled.'
+
+'Mercy, we are not trying them! How can _we_ settle it?'
+
+'I mean of course in our minds. There will be nothing more interesting
+for the next ten days for our minds to exercise themselves upon.'
+
+'They will get very tired of it,' said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
+
+'No, no, because the interest will increase and the plot will thicken.
+It can't help it.' She looked at me as if she thought me slightly
+Mephistophelean, and I went on--'So she told you everything in her life
+was dreary?'
+
+'Not everything but most things. And she didn't tell me so much as I
+guessed it. She'll tell me more the next time. She will behave properly
+now about coming in to see me; I told her she ought to.'
+
+'I am glad of that,' I said. 'Keep her with you as much as possible.'
+
+'I don't follow you much,' Mrs. Nettlepoint replied, 'but so far as I do
+I don't think your remarks are in very good taste.'
+
+'I'm too excited, I lose my head, cold-blooded as you think me. Doesn't
+she like Mr. Porterfield?'
+
+'Yes, that's the worst of it.'
+
+'The worst of it?'
+
+'He's so good--there's no fault to be found with him. Otherwise she
+would have thrown it all up. It has dragged on since she was eighteen:
+she became engaged to him before he went abroad to study. It was one of
+those childish muddles which parents in America might prevent so much
+more than they do. The thing is to insist on one's daughter's waiting,
+on the engagement's being long; and then after you have got that started
+to take it on every occasion as little seriously as possible--to make it
+die out. You can easily tire it out. However, Mr. Porterfield has taken
+it seriously for some years. He has done his part to keep it alive. She
+says he adores her.'
+
+'His part? Surely his part would have been to marry her by this time.'
+
+'He has absolutely no money.'
+
+'He ought to have got some, in seven years.'
+
+'So I think she thinks. There are some sorts of poverty that are
+contemptible. But he has a little more now. That's why he won't wait any
+longer. His mother has come out, she has something--a little--and she is
+able to help him. She will live with them and bear some of the expenses,
+and after her death the son will have what there is.'
+
+'How old is she?' I asked, cynically.
+
+'I haven't the least idea. But it doesn't sound very inspiring. He has
+not been to America since he first went out.'
+
+'That's an odd way of adoring her.'
+
+'I made that objection mentally, but I didn't express it to her. She met
+it indeed a little by telling me that he had had other chances to
+marry.'
+
+'That surprises me,' I remarked. 'And did she say that _she_ had had?'
+
+'No, and that's one of the things I thought nice in her; for she must
+have had. She didn't try to make out that he had spoiled her life. She
+has three other sisters and there is very little money at home. She has
+tried to make money; she has written little things and painted little
+things, but her talent is apparently not in that direction. Her father
+has had a long illness and has lost his place--he was in receipt of a
+salary in connection with some waterworks--and one of her sisters has
+lately become a widow, with children and without means. And so as in
+fact she never has married any one else, whatever opportunities she may
+have encountered, she appears to have just made up her mind to go out to
+Mr. Porterfield as the least of her evils. But it isn't very amusing.'
+
+'That only makes it the more honourable. She will go through with it,
+whatever it costs, rather than disappoint him after he has waited so
+long. It is true,' I continued, 'that when a woman acts from a sense of
+honour----'
+
+'Well, when she does?' said Mrs. Nettlepoint, for I hesitated
+perceptibly.
+
+'It is so extravagant a course that some one has to pay for it.'
+
+'You are very impertinent. We all have to pay for each other, all the
+while; and for each other's virtues as well as vices.'
+
+'That's precisely why I shall be sorry for Mr. Porterfield when she
+steps off the ship with her little bill. I mean with her teeth
+clenched.'
+
+'Her teeth are not in the least clenched. She is in perfect
+good-humour.'
+
+'Well, we must try and keep her so,' I said. 'You must take care that
+Jasper neglects nothing.'
+
+I know not what reflection this innocent pleasantry of mine provoked on
+the good lady's part; the upshot of them at all events was to make her
+say--'Well, I never asked her to come; I'm very glad of that. It is all
+their own doing.'
+
+'Their own--you mean Jasper's and hers?'
+
+'No indeed. I mean her mother's and Mrs. Allen's; the girl's too of
+course. They put themselves upon us.'
+
+'Oh yes, I can testify to that. Therefore I'm glad too. We should have
+missed it, I think.'
+
+'How seriously you take it!' Mrs. Nettlepoint exclaimed.
+
+'Ah, wait a few days!' I replied, getting up to leave her.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+The _Patagonia_ was slow, but she was spacious and comfortable, and
+there was a kind of motherly decency in her long, nursing rock and her
+rustling, old-fashioned gait. It was as if she wished not to present
+herself in port with the splashed eagerness of a young creature. We were
+not numerous enough to squeeze each other and yet we were not too few to
+entertain--with that familiarity and relief which figures and objects
+acquire on the great bare field of the ocean, beneath the great bright
+glass of the sky. I had never liked the sea so much before, indeed I had
+never liked it at all; but now I had a revelation of how, in a midsummer
+mood, it could please. It was darkly and magnificently blue and
+imperturbably quiet--save for the great regular swell of its
+heart-beats, the pulse of its life, and there grew to be something so
+agreeable in the sense of floating there in infinite isolation and
+leisure that it was a positive satisfaction the _Patagonia_ was not a
+racer. One had never thought of the sea as the great place of safety,
+but now it came over one that there is no place so safe from the land.
+When it does not give you trouble it takes it away--takes away letters
+and telegrams and newspapers and visits and duties and efforts, all the
+complications, all the superfluities and superstitions that we have
+stuffed into our terrene life. The simple absence of the post, when the
+particular conditions enable you to enjoy the great fact by which it is
+produced, becomes in itself a kind of bliss, and the clean stage of the
+deck shows you a play that amuses, the personal drama of the voyage, the
+movement and interaction, in the strong sea-light, of figures that end
+by representing something--something moreover of which the interest is
+never, even in its keenness, too great to suffer you to go to sleep. I,
+at any rate, dozed a great deal, lying on my rug with a French novel,
+and when I opened my eyes I generally saw Jasper Nettlepoint passing
+with his mother's _protegee_ on his arm. Somehow at these moments,
+between sleeping and waking, I had an inconsequent sense that they were
+a part of the French novel. Perhaps this was because I had fallen into
+the trick, at the start, of regarding Grace Mavis almost as a married
+woman, which, as every one knows, is the necessary status of the heroine
+of such a work. Every revolution of our engine at any rate would
+contribute to the effect of making her one.
+
+In the saloon, at meals, my neighbour on the right was a certain little
+Mrs. Peck, a very short and very round person whose head was enveloped
+in a 'cloud' (a cloud of dirty white wool) and who promptly let me know
+that she was going to Europe for the education of her children. I had
+already perceived (an hour after we left the dock) that some energetic
+step was required in their interest, but as we were not in Europe yet
+the business could not be said to have begun. The four little Pecks, in
+the enjoyment of untrammelled leisure, swarmed about the ship as if
+they had been pirates boarding her, and their mother was as powerless to
+check their license as if she had been gagged and stowed away in the
+hold. They were especially to be trusted to run between the legs of the
+stewards when these attendants arrived with bowls of soup for the
+languid ladies. Their mother was too busy recounting to her
+fellow-passengers how many years Miss Mavis had been engaged. In the
+blank of a marine existence things that are nobody's business very soon
+become everybody's, and this was just one of those facts that are
+propagated with a mysterious and ridiculous rapidity. The whisper that
+carries them is very small, in the great scale of things, of air and
+space and progress, but it is also very safe, for there is no
+compression, no sounding-board, to make speakers responsible. And then
+repetition at sea is somehow not repetition; monotony is in the air, the
+mind is flat and everything recurs--the bells, the meals, the stewards'
+faces, the romp of children, the walk, the clothes, the very shoes and
+buttons of passengers taking their exercise. These things grow at last
+so insipid that, in comparison, revelations as to the personal history
+of one's companions have a taste, even when one cares little about the
+people.
+
+Jasper Nettlepoint sat on my left hand when he was not upstairs seeing
+that Miss Mavis had her repast comfortably on deck. His mother's place
+would have been next mine had she shown herself, and then that of the
+young lady under her care. The two ladies, in other words, would have
+been between us, Jasper marking the limit of the party on that side.
+Miss Mavis was present at luncheon the first day, but dinner passed
+without her coming in, and when it was half over Jasper remarked that he
+would go up and look after her.
+
+'Isn't that young lady coming--the one who was here to lunch?' Mrs. Peck
+asked of me as he left the saloon.
+
+'Apparently not. My friend tells me she doesn't like the saloon.'
+
+'You don't mean to say she's sick, do you?'
+
+'Oh no, not in this weather. But she likes to be above.'
+
+'And is that gentleman gone up to her?'
+
+'Yes, she's under his mother's care.'
+
+'And is his mother up there, too?' asked Mrs. Peck, whose processes were
+homely and direct.
+
+'No, she remains in her cabin. People have different tastes. Perhaps
+that's one reason why Miss Mavis doesn't come to table,' I added--'her
+chaperon not being able to accompany her.'
+
+'Her chaperon?'
+
+'Mrs. Nettlepoint--the lady under whose protection she is.'
+
+'Protection?' Mrs. Peck stared at me a moment, moving some valued morsel
+in her mouth; then she exclaimed, familiarly, 'Pshaw!' I was struck with
+this and I was on the point of asking her what she meant by it when she
+continued: 'Are we not going to see Mrs. Nettlepoint?'
+
+'I am afraid not. She vows that she won't stir from her sofa.'
+
+'Pshaw!' said Mrs. Peck again. 'That's quite a disappointment.'
+
+'Do you know her then?'
+
+'No, but I know all about her.' Then my companion added--'You don't
+meant to say she's any relation?'
+
+'Do you mean to me?'
+
+'No, to Grace Mavis.'
+
+'None at all. They are very new friends, as I happen to know. Then you
+are acquainted with our young lady?' I had not noticed that any
+recognition passed between them at luncheon.
+
+'Is she yours too?' asked Mrs. Peck, smiling at me.
+
+'Ah, when people are in the same boat--literally--they belong a little
+to each other.'
+
+'That's so,' said Mrs. Peck. 'I don't know Miss Mavis but I know all
+about her--I live opposite to her on Merrimac Avenue. I don't know
+whether you know that part.'
+
+'Oh yes--it's very beautiful.'
+
+The consequence of this remark was another 'Pshaw!' But Mrs. Peck went
+on--'When you've lived opposite to people like that for a long time you
+feel as if you were acquainted. But she didn't take it up to-day; she
+didn't speak to me. She knows who I am as well as she knows her own
+mother.'
+
+'You had better speak to her first--she's shy,' I remarked.
+
+'Shy? Why she's nearly thirty years old. I suppose you know where she's
+going.'
+
+'Oh yes--we all take an interest in that.'
+
+'That young man, I suppose, particularly.'
+
+'That young man?'
+
+'The handsome one, who sits there. Didn't you tell me he is Mrs.
+Nettlepoint's son?'
+
+'Oh yes; he acts as her deputy. No doubt he does all he can to carry out
+her function.'
+
+Mrs. Peck was silent a moment. I had spoken jocosely, but she received
+my pleasantry with a serious face. 'Well, she might let him eat his
+dinner in peace!' she presently exclaimed.
+
+'Oh, he'll come back!' I said, glancing at his place. The repast
+continued and when it was finished I screwed my chair round to leave the
+table. Mrs. Peck performed the same movement and we quitted the saloon
+together. Outside of it was a kind of vestibule, with several seats,
+from which you could descend to the lower cabins or mount to the
+promenade-deck. Mrs. Peck appeared to hesitate as to her course and then
+solved the problem by going neither way. She dropped upon one of the
+benches and looked up at me.
+
+'I thought you said he would come back.'
+
+'Young Nettlepoint? I see he didn't. Miss Mavis then has given him half
+of her dinner.'
+
+'It's very kind of her! She has been engaged for ages.'
+
+'Yes, but that will soon be over.'
+
+'So I suppose--as quick as we land. Every one knows it on Merrimac
+Avenue. Every one there takes a great interest in it.'
+
+'Ah, of course, a girl like that: she has many friends.'
+
+'I mean even people who don't know her.'
+
+'I see,' I went on: 'she is so handsome that she attracts attention,
+people enter into her affairs.'
+
+'She _used_ to be pretty, but I can't say I think she's anything
+remarkable to-day. Anyhow, if she attracts attention she ought to be all
+the more careful what she does. You had better tell her that.'
+
+'Oh, it's none of my business!' I replied, leaving Mrs. Peck and going
+above. The exclamation, I confess, was not perfectly in accordance with
+my feeling, or rather my feeling was not perfectly in harmony with the
+exclamation. The very first thing I did on reaching the deck was to
+notice that Miss Mavis was pacing it on Jasper Nettlepoint's arm and
+that whatever beauty she might have lost, according to Mrs. Peck's
+insinuation, she still kept enough to make one's eyes follow her. She
+had put on a sort of crimson hood, which was very becoming to her and
+which she wore for the rest of the voyage. She walked very well, with
+long steps, and I remember that at this moment the ocean had a gentle
+evening swell which made the great ship dip slowly, rhythmically, giving
+a movement that was graceful to graceful pedestrians and a more awkward
+one to the awkward. It was the loveliest hour of a fine day, the clear
+early evening, with the glow of the sunset in the air and a purple
+colour in the sea. I always thought that the waters ploughed by the
+Homeric heroes must have looked like that. I perceived on that
+particular occasion moreover that Grace Mavis would for the rest of the
+voyage be the most visible thing on the ship; the figure that would
+count most in the composition of groups. She couldn't help it, poor
+girl; nature had made her conspicuous--important, as the painters say.
+She paid for it by the exposure it brought with it--the danger that
+people would, as I had said to Mrs. Peck, enter into her affairs.
+
+Jasper Nettlepoint went down at certain times to see his mother, and I
+watched for one of these occasions (on the third day out) and took
+advantage of it to go and sit by Miss Mavis. She wore a blue veil drawn
+tightly over her face, so that if the smile with which she greeted me
+was dim I could account for it partly by that.
+
+'Well, we are getting on--we are getting on,' I said, cheerfully,
+looking at the friendly, twinkling sea.
+
+'Are we going very fast?'
+
+'Not fast, but steadily. _Ohne Hast, ohne Rast_--do you know German?'
+
+'Well, I've studied it--some.'
+
+'It will be useful to you over there when you travel.'
+
+'Well yes, if we do. But I don't suppose we shall much. Mr. Nettlepoint
+says we ought,' my interlocutress added in a moment.
+
+'Ah, of course _he_ thinks so. He has been all over the world.'
+
+'Yes, he has described some of the places. That's what I should like. I
+didn't know I should like it so much.'
+
+'Like what so much?'
+
+'Going on this way. I could go on for ever, for ever and ever.'
+
+'Ah, you know it's not always like this,' I rejoined.
+
+'Well, it's better than Boston.'
+
+'It isn't so good as Paris,' I said, smiling.
+
+'Oh, I know all about Paris. There is no freshness in that. I feel as if
+I had been there.'
+
+'You mean you have heard so much about it?'
+
+'Oh yes, nothing else for ten years.'
+
+I had come to talk with Miss Mavis because she was attractive, but I had
+been rather conscious of the absence of a good topic, not feeling at
+liberty to revert to Mr. Porterfield. She had not encouraged me, when I
+spoke to her as we were leaving Boston, to go on with the history of my
+acquaintance with this gentleman; and yet now, unexpectedly, she
+appeared to imply (it was doubtless one of the disparities mentioned by
+Mrs. Nettlepoint) that he might be glanced at without indelicacy.
+
+'I see, you mean by letters,' I remarked.
+
+'I shan't live in a good part. I know enough to know that,' she went on.
+
+'Dear young lady, there are no bad parts,' I answered, reassuringly.
+
+'Why, Mr. Nettlepoint says it's horrid.'
+
+'It's horrid?'
+
+'Up there in the Batignolles. It's worse than Merrimac Avenue.'
+
+'Worse--in what way?'
+
+'Why, even less where the nice people live.'
+
+'He oughtn't to say that,' I returned. 'Don't you call Mr. Porterfield a
+nice person?' I ventured to subjoin.
+
+'Oh, it doesn't make any difference.' She rested her eyes on me a moment
+through her veil, the texture of which gave them a suffused prettiness.
+'Do you know him very well?' she asked.
+
+'Mr. Porterfield?'
+
+'No, Mr. Nettlepoint.'
+
+'Ah, very little. He's a good deal younger than I.'
+
+She was silent a moment; after which she said: 'He's younger than me,
+too.' I know not what drollery there was in this but it was unexpected
+and it made me laugh. Neither do I know whether Miss Mavis took offence
+at my laughter, though I remember thinking at the moment with
+compunction that it had brought a certain colour to her cheek. At all
+events she got up, gathering her shawl and her books into her arm. 'I'm
+going down--I'm tired.'
+
+'Tired of me, I'm afraid.'
+
+'No, not yet.'
+
+'I'm like you,' I pursued. 'I should like it to go on and on.'
+
+She had begun to walk along the deck to the companion-way and I went
+with her. 'Oh, no, I shouldn't, after all!'
+
+I had taken her shawl from her to carry it, but at the top of the steps
+that led down to the cabins I had to give it back. 'Your mother would be
+glad if she could know,' I observed as we parted.
+
+'If she could know?'
+
+'How well you are getting on. And that good Mrs. Allen.'
+
+'Oh, mother, mother! She made me come, she pushed me off.' And almost as
+if not to say more she went quickly below.
+
+I paid Mrs. Nettlepoint a morning visit after luncheon and another in
+the evening, before she 'turned in.' That same day, in the evening, she
+said to me suddenly, 'Do you know what I have done? I have asked
+Jasper.'
+
+'Asked him what?'
+
+'Why, if _she_ asked him, you know.'
+
+'I don't understand.'
+
+'You do perfectly. If that girl really asked him--on the balcony--to
+sail with us.'
+
+'My dear friend, do you suppose that if she did he would tell you?'
+
+'That's just what he says. But he says she didn't.'
+
+'And do you consider the statement valuable?' I asked, laughing out.
+'You had better ask Miss Gracie herself.'
+
+Mrs. Nettlepoint stared. 'I couldn't do that.'
+
+'Incomparable friend, I am only joking. What does it signify now?'
+
+'I thought you thought everything signified. You were so full of
+signification!'
+
+'Yes, but we are farther out now, and somehow in mid-ocean everything
+becomes absolute.'
+
+'What else _can_ he do with decency?' Mrs. Nettlepoint went on. 'If, as
+my son, he were never to speak to her it would be very rude and you
+would think that stranger still. Then _you_ would do what he does, and
+where would be the difference?'
+
+'How do you know what he does? I haven't mentioned him for twenty-four
+hours.'
+
+'Why, she told me herself: she came in this afternoon.'
+
+'What an odd thing to tell you!' I exclaimed.
+
+'Not as she says it. She says he's full of attention, perfectly
+devoted--looks after her all the while. She seems to want me to know it,
+so that I may commend him for it.'
+
+'That's charming; it shows her good conscience.'
+
+'Yes, or her great cleverness.'
+
+Something in the tone in which Mrs. Nettlepoint said this caused me to
+exclaim in real surprise, 'Why, what do you suppose she has in her
+mind?'
+
+'To get hold of him, to make him go so far that he can't retreat, to
+marry him, perhaps.'
+
+'To marry him? And what will she do with Mr. Porterfield?'
+
+'She'll ask me just to explain to him--or perhaps you.'
+
+'Yes, as an old friend!' I replied, laughing. But I asked more
+seriously, 'Do you see Jasper caught like that?'
+
+'Well, he's only a boy--he's younger at least than she.'
+
+'Precisely; she regards him as a child.'
+
+'As a child?'
+
+'She remarked to me herself to-day that he is so much younger.'
+
+Mrs. Nettlepoint stared. 'Does she talk of it with you? That shows she
+has a plan, that she has thought it over!'
+
+I have sufficiently betrayed that I deemed Grace Mavis a singular girl,
+but I was far from judging her capable of laying a trap for our young
+companion. Moreover my reading of Jasper was not in the least that he
+was catchable--could be made to do a thing if he didn't want to do it.
+Of course it was not impossible that he might be inclined, that he might
+take it (or already have taken it) into his head to marry Miss Mavis;
+but to believe this I should require still more proof than his always
+being with her. He wanted at most to marry her for the voyage. 'If you
+have questioned him perhaps you have tried to make him feel
+responsible,' I said to his mother.
+
+'A little, but it's very difficult. Interference makes him perverse. One
+has to go gently. Besides, it's too absurd--think of her age. If she
+can't take care of herself!' cried Mrs. Nettlepoint.
+
+'Yes, let us keep thinking of her age, though it's not so prodigious.
+And if things get very bad you have one resource left,' I added.
+
+'What is that?'
+
+'You can go upstairs.'
+
+'Ah, never, never! If it takes that to save her she must be lost.
+Besides, what good would it do? If I were to go up she could come down
+here.'
+
+'Yes, but you could keep Jasper with you.'
+
+'Could I?' Mrs. Nettlepoint demanded, in the manner of a woman who knew
+her son.
+
+In the saloon the next day, after dinner, over the red cloth of the
+tables, beneath the swinging lamps and the racks of tumblers, decanters
+and wine-glasses, we sat down to whist, Mrs. Peck, among others, taking
+a hand in the game. She played very badly and talked too much, and when
+the rubber was over assuaged her discomfiture (though not mine--we had
+been partners) with a Welsh rabbit and a tumbler of something hot. We
+had done with the cards, but while she waited for this refreshment she
+sat with her elbows on the table shuffling a pack.
+
+'She hasn't spoken to me yet--she won't do it,' she remarked in a
+moment.
+
+'Is it possible there is any one on the ship who hasn't spoken to you?'
+
+'Not that girl--she knows too well!' Mrs. Peck looked round our little
+circle with a smile of intelligence--she had familiar, communicative
+eyes. Several of our company had assembled, according to the wont, the
+last thing in the evening, of those who are cheerful at sea, for the
+consumption of grilled sardines and devilled bones.
+
+'What then does she know?'
+
+'Oh, she knows that I know.'
+
+'Well, we know what Mrs. Peck knows,' one of the ladies of the group
+observed to me, with an air of privilege.
+
+'Well, you wouldn't know if I hadn't told you--from the way she acts,'
+said Mrs. Peck, with a small laugh.
+
+'She is going out to a gentleman who lives over there--he's waiting
+there to marry her,' the other lady went on, in the tone of authentic
+information. I remember that her name was Mrs. Gotch and that her mouth
+looked always as if she were whistling.
+
+'Oh, he knows--I've told him,' said Mrs. Peck.
+
+'Well, I presume every one knows,' Mrs. Gotch reflected.
+
+'Dear madam, is it every one's business?' I asked.
+
+'Why, don't you think it's a peculiar way to act?' Mrs. Gotch was
+evidently surprised at my little protest.
+
+'Why, it's right there--straight in front of you, like a play at the
+theatre--as if you had paid to see it,' said Mrs. Peck. 'If you don't
+call it public----!'
+
+'Aren't you mixing things up? What do you call public?'
+
+'Why, the way they go on. They are up there now.'
+
+'They cuddle up there half the night,' said Mrs. Gotch. 'I don't know
+when they come down. Any hour you like--when all the lights are out they
+are up there still.'
+
+'Oh, you can't tire them out. They don't want relief--like the watch!'
+laughed one of the gentlemen.
+
+'Well, if they enjoy each other's society what's the harm?' another
+asked. 'They'd do just the same on land.'
+
+'They wouldn't do it on the public streets, I suppose,' said Mrs. Peck.
+'And they wouldn't do it if Mr. Porterfield was round!'
+
+'Isn't that just where your confusion comes in?' I inquired. 'It's
+public enough that Miss Mavis and Mr. Nettlepoint are always together,
+but it isn't in the least public that she is going to be married.'
+
+'Why, how can you say--when the very sailors know it! The captain knows
+it and all the officers know it; they see them there--especially at
+night, when they're sailing the ship.'
+
+'I thought there was some rule----' said Mrs. Gotch.
+
+'Well, there is--that you've got to behave yourself,' Mrs. Peck
+rejoined. 'So the captain told me--he said they have some rule. He said
+they have to have, when people are too demonstrative.'
+
+'Too demonstrative?'
+
+'When they attract so much attention.'
+
+'Ah, it's we who attract the attention--by talking about what doesn't
+concern us and about what we really don't know,' I ventured to declare.
+
+'She said the captain said he would tell on her as soon as we arrive,'
+Mrs. Gotch interposed.
+
+'_She_ said----?' I repeated, bewildered.
+
+'Well, he did say so, that he would think it his duty to inform Mr.
+Porterfield, when he comes on to meet her--if they keep it up in the
+same way,' said Mrs. Peck.
+
+'Oh, they'll keep it up, don't you fear!' one of the gentlemen
+exclaimed.
+
+'Dear madam, the captain is laughing at you.'
+
+'No, he ain't--he's right down scandalised. He says he regards us all
+as a real family and wants the family to be properly behaved.' I could
+see Mrs. Peck was irritated by my controversial tone: she challenged me
+with considerable spirit. 'How can you say I don't know it when all the
+street knows it and has known it for years--for years and years?' She
+spoke as if the girl had been engaged at least for twenty. 'What is she
+going out for, if not to marry him?'
+
+'Perhaps she is going to see how he looks,' suggested one of the
+gentlemen.
+
+'He'd look queer--if he knew.'
+
+'Well, I guess he'll know,' said Mrs. Gotch.
+
+'She'd tell him herself--she wouldn't be afraid,' the gentleman went on.
+
+'Well, she might as well kill him. He'll jump overboard.'
+
+'Jump overboard?' cried Mrs. Gotch, as if she hoped then that Mr.
+Porterfield would be told.
+
+'He has just been waiting for this--for years,' said Mrs. Peck.
+
+'Do you happen to know him?' I inquired.
+
+Mrs. Peck hesitated a moment. 'No, but I know a lady who does. Are you
+going up?'
+
+I had risen from my place--I had not ordered supper. 'I'm going to take
+a turn before going to bed.'
+
+'Well then, you'll see!'
+
+Outside the saloon I hesitated, for Mrs. Peck's admonition made me feel
+for a moment that if I ascended to the deck I should have entered in a
+manner into her little conspiracy. But the night was so warm and
+splendid that I had been intending to smoke a cigar in the air before
+going below, and I did not see why I should deprive myself of this
+pleasure in order to seem not to mind Mrs. Peck. I went up and saw a few
+figures sitting or moving about in the darkness. The ocean looked black
+and small, as it is apt to do at night, and the long mass of the ship,
+with its vague dim wings, seemed to take up a great part of it. There
+were more stars than one saw on land and the heavens struck one more
+than ever as larger than the earth. Grace Mavis and her companion were
+not, so far as I perceived at first, among the few passengers who were
+lingering late, and I was glad, because I hated to hear her talked about
+in the manner of the gossips I had left at supper. I wished there had
+been some way to prevent it, but I could think of no way but to
+recommend her privately to change her habits. That would be a very
+delicate business, and perhaps it would be better to begin with Jasper,
+though that would be delicate too. At any rate one might let him know,
+in a friendly spirit, to how much remark he exposed the young
+lady--leaving this revelation to work its way upon him. Unfortunately I
+could not altogether believe that the pair were unconscious of the
+observation and the opinion of the passengers. They were not a boy and a
+girl; they had a certain social perspective in their eye. I was not very
+clear as to the details of that behaviour which had made them (according
+to the version of my good friends in the saloon) a scandal to the ship,
+for though I looked at them a good deal I evidently had not looked at
+them so continuously and so hungrily as Mrs. Peck. Nevertheless the
+probability was that they knew what was thought of them--what naturally
+would be--and simply didn't care. That made Miss Mavis out rather
+cynical and even a little immodest; and yet, somehow, if she had such
+qualities I did not dislike her for them. I don't know what strange,
+secret excuses I found for her. I presently indeed encountered a need
+for them on the spot, for just as I was on the point of going below
+again, after several restless turns and (within the limit where smoking
+was allowed) as many puffs at a cigar as I cared for, I became aware
+that a couple of figures were seated behind one of the lifeboats that
+rested on the deck. They were so placed as to be visible only to a
+person going close to the rail and peering a little sidewise. I don't
+think I peered, but as I stood a moment beside the rail my eye was
+attracted by a dusky object which protruded beyond the boat and which,
+as I saw at a second glance, was the tail of a lady's dress. I bent
+forward an instant, but even then I saw very little more; that scarcely
+mattered, however, for I took for granted on the spot that the persons
+concealed in so snug a corner were Jasper Nettlepoint and Mr.
+Porterfield's intended. Concealed was the word, and I thought it a real
+pity; there was bad taste in it. I immediately turned away and the next
+moment I found myself face to face with the captain of the ship. I had
+already had some conversation with him (he had been so good as to invite
+me, as he had invited Mrs. Nettlepoint and her son and the young lady
+travelling with them, and also Mrs. Peck, to sit at his table) and had
+observed with pleasure that he had the art, not universal on the
+Atlantic liners, of mingling urbanity with seamanship.
+
+'They don't waste much time--your friends in there,' he said, nodding
+in the direction in which he had seen me looking.
+
+'Ah well, they haven't much to lose.'
+
+'That's what I mean. I'm told _she_ hasn't.'
+
+I wanted to say something exculpatory but I scarcely knew what note to
+strike. I could only look vaguely about me at the starry darkness and
+the sea that seemed to sleep. 'Well, with these splendid nights, this
+perfection of weather, people are beguiled into late hours.'
+
+'Yes. We want a nice little blow,' the captain said.
+
+'A nice little blow?'
+
+'That would clear the decks!'
+
+The captain was rather dry and he went about his business. He had made
+me uneasy and instead of going below I walked a few steps more. The
+other walkers dropped off pair by pair (they were all men) till at last
+I was alone. Then, after a little, I quitted the field. Jasper and his
+companion were still behind their lifeboat. Personally I greatly
+preferred good weather, but as I went down I found myself vaguely
+wishing, in the interest of I scarcely knew what, unless of decorum,
+that we might have half a gale.
+
+Miss Mavis turned out, in sea-phrase, early; for the next morning I saw
+her come up only a little while after I had finished my breakfast, a
+ceremony over which I contrived not to dawdle. She was alone and Jasper
+Nettlepoint, by a rare accident, was not on deck to help her. I went to
+meet her (she was encumbered as usual with her shawl, her sun-umbrella
+and a book) and laid my hands on her chair, placing it near the stern of
+the ship, where she liked best to be. But I proposed to her to walk a
+little before she sat down and she took my arm after I had put her
+accessories into the chair. The deck was clear at that hour and the
+morning light was gay; one got a sort of exhilarated impression of fair
+conditions and an absence of hindrance. I forget what we spoke of first,
+but it was because I felt these things pleasantly, and not to torment my
+companion nor to test her, that I could not help exclaiming cheerfully,
+after a moment, as I have mentioned having done the first day, 'Well, we
+are getting on, we are getting on!'
+
+'Oh yes, I count every hour.'
+
+'The last days always go quicker,' I said, 'and the last hours----'
+
+'Well, the last hours?' she asked; for I had instinctively checked
+myself.
+
+'Oh, one is so glad then that it is almost the same as if one had
+arrived. But we ought to be grateful when the elements have been so kind
+to us,' I added. 'I hope you will have enjoyed the voyage.'
+
+She hesitated a moment, then she said, 'Yes, much more than I expected.'
+
+'Did you think it would be very bad?'
+
+'Horrible, horrible!'
+
+The tone of these words was strange but I had not much time to reflect
+upon it, for turning round at that moment I saw Jasper Nettlepoint come
+towards us. He was separated from us by the expanse of the white deck
+and I could not help looking at him from head to foot as he drew nearer.
+I know not what rendered me on this occasion particularly sensitive to
+the impression, but it seemed to me that I saw him as I had never seen
+him before--saw him inside and out, in the intense sea-light, in his
+personal, his moral totality. It was a quick, vivid revelation; if it
+only lasted a moment it had a simplifying, certifying effect. He was
+intrinsically a pleasing apparition, with his handsome young face and a
+certain absence of compromise in his personal arrangements which, more
+than any one I have ever seen, he managed to exhibit on shipboard. He
+had none of the appearance of wearing out old clothes that usually
+prevails there, but dressed straight, as I heard some one say. This gave
+him a practical, successful air, as of a young man who would come best
+out of any predicament. I expected to feel my companion's hand loosen
+itself on my arm, as indication that now she must go to him, and was
+almost surprised she did not drop me. We stopped as we met and Jasper
+bade us a friendly good-morning. Of course the remark was not slow to be
+made that we had another lovely day, which led him to exclaim, in the
+manner of one to whom criticism came easily, 'Yes, but with this sort of
+thing consider what one of the others would do!'
+
+'One of the other ships?'
+
+'We should be there now, or at any rate to-morrow.'
+
+'Well then, I'm glad it isn't one of the others,' I said, smiling at the
+young lady on my arm. My remark offered her a chance to say something
+appreciative and gave him one even more; but neither Jasper nor Grace
+Mavis took advantage of the opportunity. What they did do, I perceived,
+was to look at each other for an instant; after which Miss Mavis turned
+her eyes silently to the sea. She made no movement and uttered no word,
+contriving to give me the sense that she had all at once become
+perfectly passive, that she somehow declined responsibility. We remained
+standing there with Jasper in front of us, and if the touch of her arm
+did not suggest that I should give her up, neither did it intimate that
+we had better pass on. I had no idea of giving her up, albeit one of the
+things that I seemed to discover just then in Jasper's physiognomy was
+an imperturbable implication that she was his property. His eye met mine
+for a moment, and it was exactly as if he had said to me, 'I know what
+you think, but I don't care a rap.' What I really thought was that he
+was selfish beyond the limits: that was the substance of my little
+revelation. Youth is almost always selfish, just as it is almost always
+conceited, and, after all, when it is combined with health and good
+parts, good looks and good spirits, it has a right to be, and I easily
+forgive it if it be really youth. Still it is a question of degree, and
+what stuck out of Jasper Nettlepoint (if one felt that sort of thing)
+was that his egotism had a hardness, his love of his own way an avidity.
+These elements were jaunty and prosperous, they were accustomed to
+triumph. He was fond, very fond, of women; they were necessary to him
+and that was in his type; but he was not in the least in love with Grace
+Mavis. Among the reflections I quickly made this was the one that was
+most to the point. There was a degree of awkwardness, after a minute, in
+the way we were planted there, though the apprehension of it was
+doubtless not in the least with him.
+
+'How is your mother this morning?' I asked.
+
+'You had better go down and see.'
+
+'Not till Miss Mavis is tired of me.'
+
+She said nothing to this and I made her walk again. For some minutes she
+remained silent; then, rather unexpectedly, she began: 'I've seen you
+talking to that lady who sits at our table--the one who has so many
+children.'
+
+'Mrs. Peck? Oh yes, I have talked with her.'
+
+'Do you know her very well?'
+
+'Only as one knows people at sea. An acquaintance makes itself. It
+doesn't mean very much.'
+
+'She doesn't speak to me--she might if she wanted.'
+
+'That's just what she says of you--that you might speak to her.'
+
+'Oh, if she's waiting for that----!' said my companion, with a laugh.
+Then she added--'She lives in our street, nearly opposite.'
+
+'Precisely. That's the reason why she thinks you might speak; she has
+seen you so often and seems to know so much about you.'
+
+'What does she know about me?'
+
+'Ah, you must ask her--I can't tell you!'
+
+'I don't care what she knows,' said my young lady. After a moment she
+went on--'She must have seen that I'm not very sociable.' And
+then--'What are you laughing at?'
+
+My laughter was for an instant irrepressible--there was something so
+droll in the way she had said that.
+
+'Well, you are not sociable and yet you are. Mrs. Peck is, at any rate,
+and thought that ought to make it easy for you to enter into
+conversation with her.'
+
+'Oh, I don't care for her conversation--I know what it amounts to.' I
+made no rejoinder--I scarcely knew what rejoinder to make--and the girl
+went on, 'I know what she thinks and I know what she says.' Still I was
+silent, but the next moment I saw that my delicacy had been wasted, for
+Miss Mavis asked, 'Does she make out that she knows Mr. Porterfield?'
+
+'No, she only says that she knows a lady who knows him.'
+
+'Yes, I know--Mrs. Jeremie. Mrs. Jeremie's an idiot!' I was not in a
+position to controvert this, and presently my young lady said she would
+sit down. I left her in her chair--I saw that she preferred it--and
+wandered to a distance. A few minutes later I met Jasper again, and he
+stopped of his own accord and said to me--
+
+'We shall be in about six in the evening, on the eleventh day--they
+promise it.'
+
+'If nothing happens, of course.'
+
+'Well, what's going to happen?'
+
+'That's just what I'm wondering!' And I turned away and went below with
+the foolish but innocent satisfaction of thinking that I had mystified
+him.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+'I don't know what to do, and you must help me,' Mrs. Nettlepoint said
+to me that evening, as soon as I went in to see her.
+
+'I'll do what I can--but what's the matter?'
+
+'She has been crying here and going on--she has quite upset me.'
+
+'Crying? She doesn't look like that.'
+
+'Exactly, and that's what startled me. She came in to see me this
+afternoon, as she has done before, and we talked about the weather and
+the run of the ship and the manners of the stewardess and little
+commonplaces like that, and then suddenly, in the midst of it, as she
+sat there, _a propos_ of nothing, she burst into tears. I asked her what
+ailed her and tried to comfort her, but she didn't explain; she only
+said it was nothing, the effect of the sea, of leaving home. I asked her
+if it had anything to do with her prospects, with her marriage; whether
+she found as that drew near that her heart was not in it; I told her
+that she mustn't be nervous, that I could enter into that--in short I
+said what I could. All that she replied was that she _was_ nervous, very
+nervous, but that it was already over; and then she jumped up and kissed
+me and went away. Does she look as if she had been crying?' Mrs.
+Nettlepoint asked.
+
+'How can I tell, when she never quits that horrid veil? It's as if she
+were ashamed to show her face.'
+
+'She's keeping it for Liverpool. But I don't like such incidents,' said
+Mrs. Nettlepoint. 'I shall go upstairs.'
+
+'And is that where you want me to help you?'
+
+'Oh, your arm and that sort of thing, yes. But something more. I feel as
+if something were going to happen.'
+
+'That's exactly what I said to Jasper this morning.'
+
+'And what did he say?'
+
+'He only looked innocent, as if he thought I meant a fog or a storm.'
+
+'Heaven forbid--it isn't that! I shall never be good-natured again,'
+Mrs. Nettlepoint went on; 'never have a girl put upon me that way. You
+always pay for it, there are always tiresome complications. What I am
+afraid of is after we get there. She'll throw up her engagement; there
+will be dreadful scenes; I shall be mixed up with them and have to look
+after her and keep her with me. I shall have to stay there with her till
+she can be sent back, or even take her up to London. _Voyez-vous ca?_'
+
+I listened respectfully to this and then I said: 'You are afraid of your
+son.'
+
+'Afraid of him?'
+
+'There are things you might say to him--and with your manner; because
+you have one when you choose.'
+
+'Very likely, but what is my manner to his? Besides, I have said
+everything to him. That is I have said the great thing, that he is
+making her immensely talked about.'
+
+'And of course in answer to that he has asked you how you know, and you
+have told him I have told you.'
+
+'I had to; and he says it's none of your business.'
+
+'I wish he would say that to my face.'
+
+'He'll do so perfectly, if you give him a chance. That's where you can
+help me. Quarrel with him--he's rather good at a quarrel, and that will
+divert him and draw him off.'
+
+'Then I'm ready to discuss the matter with him for the rest of the
+voyage.'
+
+'Very well; I count on you. But he'll ask you, as he asks me, what the
+deuce you want him to do.'
+
+'To go to bed,' I replied, laughing.
+
+'Oh, it isn't a joke.'
+
+'That's exactly what I told you at first.'
+
+'Yes, but don't exult; I hate people who exult. Jasper wants to know why
+he should mind her being talked about if she doesn't mind it herself.'
+
+'I'll tell him why,' I replied; and Mrs. Nettlepoint said she should be
+exceedingly obliged to me and repeated that she would come upstairs.
+
+I looked for Jasper above that same evening, but circumstances did not
+favour my quest. I found him--that is I discovered that he was again
+ensconced behind the lifeboat with Miss Mavis; but there was a needless
+violence in breaking into their communion, and I put off our interview
+till the next day. Then I took the first opportunity, at breakfast, to
+make sure of it. He was in the saloon when I went in and was preparing
+to leave the table; but I stopped him and asked if he would give me a
+quarter of an hour on deck a little later--there was something
+particular I wanted to say to him. He said, 'Oh yes, if you like,' with
+just a visible surprise, but no look of an uncomfortable consciousness.
+When I had finished my breakfast I found him smoking on the forward-deck
+and I immediately began: 'I am going to say something that you won't at
+all like; to ask you a question that you will think impertinent.'
+
+'Impertinent? that's bad.'
+
+'I am a good deal older than you and I am a friend--of many years--of
+your mother. There's nothing I like less than to be meddlesome, but I
+think these things give me a certain right--a sort of privilege. For the
+rest, my inquiry will speak for itself.'
+
+'Why so many preliminaries?' the young man asked, smiling.
+
+We looked into each other's eyes a moment. What indeed was his mother's
+manner--her best manner--compared with his? 'Are you prepared to be
+responsible?'
+
+'To you?'
+
+'Dear no--to the young lady herself. I am speaking of course of Miss
+Mavis.'
+
+'Ah yes, my mother tells me you have her greatly on your mind.'
+
+'So has your mother herself--now.'
+
+'She is so good as to say so--to oblige you.'
+
+'She would oblige me a great deal more by reassuring me. I am aware that
+you know I have told her that Miss Mavis is greatly talked about.'
+
+'Yes, but what on earth does it matter?'
+
+'It matters as a sign.'
+
+'A sign of what?'
+
+'That she is in a false position.'
+
+Jasper puffed his cigar, with his eyes on the horizon. 'I don't know
+whether it's _your_ business, what you are attempting to discuss; but it
+really appears to me it is none of mine. What have I to do with the
+tattle with which a pack of old women console themselves for not being
+sea-sick?'
+
+'Do you call it tattle that Miss Mavis is in love with you?'
+
+'Drivelling.'
+
+'Then you are very ungrateful. The tattle of a pack of old women has
+this importance, that she suspects or knows that it exists, and that
+nice girls are for the most part very sensitive to that sort of thing.
+To be prepared not to heed it in this case she must have a reason, and
+the reason must be the one I have taken the liberty to call your
+attention to.'
+
+'In love with me in six days, just like that?' said Jasper, smoking.
+
+'There is no accounting for tastes, and six days at sea are equivalent
+to sixty on land. I don't want to make you too proud. Of course if you
+recognise your responsibility it's all right and I have nothing to say.'
+
+'I don't see what you mean,' Jasper went on.
+
+'Surely you ought to have thought of that by this time. She's engaged to
+be married and the gentleman she is engaged to is to meet her at
+Liverpool. The whole ship knows it (I didn't tell them!) and the whole
+ship is watching her. It's impertinent if you like, just as I am, but we
+make a little world here together and we can't blink its conditions.
+What I ask you is whether you are prepared to allow her to give up the
+gentleman I have just mentioned for your sake.'
+
+'For my sake?'
+
+'To marry her if she breaks with him.'
+
+Jasper turned his eyes from the horizon to my own, and I found a strange
+expression in them. 'Has Miss Mavis commissioned you to make this
+inquiry?'
+
+'Never in the world.'
+
+'Well then, I don't understand it.'
+
+'It isn't from another I make it. Let it come from yourself--_to_
+yourself.'
+
+'Lord, you must think I lead myself a life! That's a question the young
+lady may put to me any moment that it pleases her.'
+
+'Let me then express the hope that she will. But what will you answer?'
+
+'My dear sir, it seems to me that in spite of all the titles you have
+enumerated you have no reason to expect I will tell you.' He turned away
+and I exclaimed, sincerely, 'Poor girl!' At this he faced me again and,
+looking at me from head to foot, demanded: 'What is it you want me to
+do?'
+
+'I told your mother that you ought to go to bed.'
+
+'You had better do that yourself!'
+
+This time he walked off, and I reflected rather dolefully that the only
+clear result of my experiment would probably have been to make it vivid
+to him that she was in love with him. Mrs. Nettlepoint came up as she
+had announced, but the day was half over: it was nearly three o'clock.
+She was accompanied by her son, who established her on deck, arranged
+her chair and her shawls, saw that she was protected from sun and wind,
+and for an hour was very properly attentive. While this went on Grace
+Mavis was not visible, nor did she reappear during the whole afternoon.
+I had not observed that she had as yet been absent from the deck for so
+long a period. Jasper went away, but he came back at intervals to see
+how his mother got on, and when she asked him where Miss Mavis was he
+said he had not the least idea. I sat with Mrs. Nettlepoint at her
+particular request: she told me she knew that if I left her Mrs. Peck
+and Mrs. Gotch would come to speak to her. She was flurried and fatigued
+at having to make an effort, and I think that Grace Mavis's choosing
+this occasion for retirement suggested to her a little that she had been
+made a fool of. She remarked that the girl's not being there showed her
+complete want of breeding and that she was really very good to have put
+herself out for her so; she was a common creature and that was the end
+of it. I could see that Mrs. Nettlepoint's advent quickened the
+speculative activity of the other ladies; they watched her from the
+opposite side of the deck, keeping their eyes fixed on her very much as
+the man at the wheel kept his on the course of the ship. Mrs. Peck
+plainly meditated an approach, and it was from this danger that Mrs.
+Nettlepoint averted her face.
+
+'It's just as we said,' she remarked to me as we sat there. 'It is like
+the bucket in the well. When I come up that girl goes down.'
+
+'Yes, but you've succeeded, since Jasper remains here.'
+
+'Remains? I don't see him.'
+
+'He comes and goes--it's the same thing.'
+
+'He goes more than he comes. But _n'en parlons plus_; I haven't gained
+anything. I don't admire the sea at all--what is it but a magnified
+water-tank? I shan't come up again.'
+
+'I have an idea she'll stay in her cabin now,' I said. 'She tells me
+she has one to herself.' Mrs. Nettlepoint replied that she might do as
+she liked, and I repeated to her the little conversation I had had with
+Jasper.
+
+She listened with interest, but 'Marry her? mercy!' she exclaimed. 'I
+like the manner in which you give my son away.'
+
+'You wouldn't accept that.'
+
+'Never in the world.'
+
+'Then I don't understand your position.'
+
+'Good heavens, I have none! It isn't a position to be bored to death.'
+
+'You wouldn't accept it even in the case I put to him--that of her
+believing she had been encouraged to throw over poor Porterfield?'
+
+'Not even--not even. Who knows what she believes?'
+
+'Then you do exactly what I said you would--you show me a fine example
+of maternal immorality.'
+
+'Maternal fiddlesticks! It was she began it.'
+
+'Then why did you come up to-day?'
+
+'To keep you quiet.'
+
+Mrs. Nettlepoint's dinner was served on deck, but I went into the
+saloon. Jasper was there but not Grace Mavis, as I had half expected. I
+asked him what had become of her, if she were ill (he must have thought
+I had an ignoble pertinacity), and he replied that he knew nothing
+whatever about her. Mrs. Peck talked to me about Mrs. Nettlepoint and
+said it had been a great interest to her to see her; only it was a pity
+she didn't seem more sociable. To this I replied that she had to beg to
+be excused--she was not well.
+
+'You don't mean to say she's sick, on this pond?'
+
+'No, she's unwell in another way.'
+
+'I guess I know the way!' Mrs. Peck laughed. And then she added, 'I
+suppose she came up to look after her charge.'
+
+'Her charge?'
+
+'Why, Miss Mavis. We've talked enough about that.'
+
+'Quite enough. I don't know what that had to do with it. Miss Mavis
+hasn't been there to-day.'
+
+'Oh, it goes on all the same.'
+
+'It goes on?'
+
+'Well, it's too late.'
+
+'Too late?'
+
+'Well, you'll see. There'll be a row.'
+
+This was not comforting, but I did not repeat it above. Mrs. Nettlepoint
+returned early to her cabin, professing herself much tired. I know not
+what 'went on,' but Grace Mavis continued not to show. I went in late,
+to bid Mrs. Nettlepoint good-night, and learned from her that the girl
+had not been to her. She had sent the stewardess to her room for news,
+to see if she were ill and needed assistance, and the stewardess came
+back with the information that she was not there. I went above after
+this; the night was not quite so fair and the deck was almost empty. In
+a moment Jasper Nettlepoint and our young lady moved past me together.
+'I hope you are better!' I called after her; and she replied, over her
+shoulder--
+
+'Oh, yes, I had a headache; but the air now does me good!'
+
+I went down again--I was the only person there but they, and I wished to
+not appear to be watching them--and returning to Mrs. Nettlepoint's
+room found (her door was open into the little passage) that she was
+still sitting up.
+
+'She's all right!' I said. 'She's on the deck with Jasper.'
+
+The old lady looked up at me from her book. 'I didn't know you called
+that all right.'
+
+'Well, it's better than something else.'
+
+'Something else?'
+
+'Something I was a little afraid of.' Mrs. Nettlepoint continued to look
+at me; she asked me what that was. 'I'll tell you when we are ashore,' I
+said.
+
+The next day I went to see her, at the usual hour of my morning visit,
+and found her in considerable agitation. 'The scenes have begun,' she
+said; 'you know I told you I shouldn't get through without them! You
+made me nervous last night--I haven't the least idea what you meant; but
+you made me nervous. She came in to see me an hour ago, and I had the
+courage to say to her, "I don't know why I shouldn't tell you frankly
+that I have been scolding my son about you." Of course she asked me what
+I meant by that, and I said--"It seems to me he drags you about the ship
+too much, for a girl in your position. He has the air of not remembering
+that you belong to some one else. There is a kind of want of taste and
+even of want of respect in it." That produced an explosion; she became
+very violent.'
+
+'Do you mean angry?'
+
+'Not exactly angry, but very hot and excited--at my presuming to think
+her relations with my son were not the simplest in the world. I might
+scold him as much as I liked--that was between ourselves; but she didn't
+see why I should tell her that I had done so. Did I think she allowed
+him to treat her with disrespect? That idea was not very complimentary
+to her! He had treated her better and been kinder to her than most other
+people--there were very few on the ship that hadn't been insulting. She
+should be glad enough when she got off it, to her own people, to some
+one whom no one would have a right to say anything about. What was there
+in her position that was not perfectly natural? What was the idea of
+making a fuss about her position? Did I mean that she took it too
+easily--that she didn't think as much as she ought about Mr.
+Porterfield? Didn't I believe she was attached to him--didn't I believe
+she was just counting the hours until she saw him? That would be the
+happiest moment of her life. It showed how little I knew her, if I
+thought anything else.'
+
+'All that must have been rather fine--I should have liked to hear it,' I
+said. 'And what did you reply?'
+
+'Oh, I grovelled; I told her that I accused her (as regards my son) of
+nothing worse than an excess of good nature. She helped him to pass his
+time--he ought to be immensely obliged. Also that it would be a very
+happy moment for me too when I should hand her over to Mr. Porterfield.'
+
+'And will you come up to-day?'
+
+'No indeed--she'll do very well now.'
+
+I gave a sigh of relief. 'All's well that ends well!'
+
+Jasper, that day, spent a great deal of time with his mother. She had
+told me that she really had had no proper opportunity to talk over with
+him their movements after disembarking. Everything changes a little,
+the last two or three days of a voyage; the spell is broken and new
+combinations take place. Grace Mavis was neither on deck nor at dinner,
+and I drew Mrs. Peck's attention to the extreme propriety with which she
+now conducted herself. She had spent the day in meditation and she
+judged it best to continue to meditate.
+
+'Ah, she's afraid,' said my implacable neighbour.
+
+'Afraid of what?'
+
+'Well, that we'll tell tales when we get there.'
+
+'Whom do you mean by "we"?'
+
+'Well, there are plenty, on a ship like this.'
+
+'Well then, we won't.'
+
+'Maybe we won't have the chance,' said the dreadful little woman.
+
+'Oh, at that moment a universal geniality reigns.'
+
+'Well, she's afraid, all the same.'
+
+'So much the better.'
+
+'Yes, so much the better.'
+
+All the next day, too, the girl remained invisible and Mrs. Nettlepoint
+told me that she had not been in to see her. She had inquired by the
+stewardess if she would receive her in her own cabin, and Grace Mavis
+had replied that it was littered up with things and unfit for visitors:
+she was packing a trunk over. Jasper made up for his devotion to his
+mother the day before by now spending a great deal of his time in the
+smoking-room. I wanted to say to him 'This is much better,' but I
+thought it wiser to hold my tongue. Indeed I had begun to feel the
+emotion of prospective arrival (I was delighted to be almost back in my
+dear old Europe again) and had less to spare for other matters. It will
+doubtless appear to the critical reader that I had already devoted far
+too much to the little episode of which my story gives an account, but
+to this I can only reply that the event justified me. We sighted land,
+the dim yet rich coast of Ireland, about sunset and I leaned on the edge
+of the ship and looked at it. 'It doesn't look like much, does it?' I
+heard a voice say, beside me; and, turning, I found Grace Mavis was
+there. Almost for the first time she had her veil up, and I thought her
+very pale.
+
+'It will be more to-morrow,' I said.
+
+'Oh yes, a great deal more.'
+
+'The first sight of land, at sea, changes everything,' I went on. 'I
+always think it's like waking up from a dream. It's a return to
+reality.'
+
+For a moment she made no response to this; then she said, 'It doesn't
+look very real yet.'
+
+'No, and meanwhile, this lovely evening, the dream is still present.'
+
+She looked up at the sky, which had a brightness, though the light of
+the sun had left it and that of the stars had not come out. 'It _is_ a
+lovely evening.'
+
+'Oh yes, with this we shall do.'
+
+She stood there a while longer, while the growing dusk effaced the line
+of the land more rapidly than our progress made it distinct. She said
+nothing more, she only looked in front of her; but her very quietness
+made me want to say something suggestive of sympathy and service. I was
+unable to think what to say--some things seemed too wide of the mark and
+others too importunate. At last, unexpectedly, she appeared to give me
+my chance. Irrelevantly, abruptly she broke out:
+
+'Didn't you tell me that you knew Mr. Porterfield?'
+
+'Dear me, yes--I used to see him. I have often wanted to talk to you
+about him.'
+
+She turned her face upon me and in the deepened evening I fancied she
+looked whiter. 'What good would that do?'
+
+'Why, it would be a pleasure,' I replied, rather foolishly.
+
+'Do you mean for you?'
+
+'Well, yes--call it that,' I said, smiling.
+
+'Did you know him so well?'
+
+My smile became a laugh and I said--'You are not easy to make speeches
+to.'
+
+'I hate speeches!' The words came from her lips with a violence that
+surprised me; they were loud and hard. But before I had time to wonder
+at it she went on--'Shall you know him when you see him?'
+
+'Perfectly, I think.' Her manner was so strange that one had to notice
+it in some way, and it appeared to me the best way was to notice it
+jocularly; so I added, 'Shan't you?'
+
+'Oh, perhaps you'll point him out!' And she walked quickly away. As I
+looked after her I had a singular, a perverse and rather an embarrassed
+sense of having, during the previous days, and especially in speaking to
+Jasper Nettlepoint, interfered with her situation to her loss. I had a
+sort of pang in seeing her move about alone; I felt somehow responsible
+for it and asked myself why I could not have kept my hands off. I had
+seen Jasper in the smoking-room more than once that day, as I passed it,
+and half an hour before this I had observed, through the open door,
+that he was there. He had been with her so much that without him she had
+a bereaved, forsaken air. It was better, no doubt, but superficially it
+made her rather pitiable. Mrs. Peck would have told me that their
+separation was gammon; they didn't show together on deck and in the
+saloon, but they made it up elsewhere. The secret places on shipboard
+are not numerous; Mrs. Peck's 'elsewhere' would have been vague and I
+know not what license her imagination took. It was distinct that Jasper
+had fallen off, but of course what had passed between them on this
+subject was not so and could never be. Later, through his mother, I had
+_his_ version of that, but I may remark that I didn't believe it. Poor
+Mrs. Nettlepoint did, of course. I was almost capable, after the girl
+had left me, of going to my young man and saying, 'After all, do return
+to her a little, just till we get in! It won't make any difference after
+we land.' And I don't think it was the fear he would tell me I was an
+idiot that prevented me. At any rate the next time I passed the door of
+the smoking-room I saw that he had left it. I paid my usual visit to
+Mrs. Nettlepoint that night, but I troubled her no further about Miss
+Mavis. She had made up her mind that everything was smooth and settled
+now, and it seemed to me that I had worried her and that she had worried
+herself enough. I left her to enjoy the foretaste of arrival, which had
+taken possession of her mind. Before turning in I went above and found
+more passengers on deck than I had ever seen so late. Jasper was walking
+about among them alone, but I forebore to join him. The coast of Ireland
+had disappeared, but the night and the sea were perfect. On the way to
+my cabin, when I came down, I met the stewardess in one of the passages
+and the idea entered my head to say to her--'Do you happen to know where
+Miss Mavis is?'
+
+'Why, she's in her room, sir, at this hour.'
+
+'Do you suppose I could speak to her?' It had come into my mind to ask
+her why she had inquired of me whether I should recognise Mr.
+Porterfield.
+
+'No, sir,' said the stewardess; 'she has gone to bed.'
+
+'That's all right.' And I followed the young lady's excellent example.
+
+The next morning, while I was dressing, the steward of my side of the
+ship came to me as usual to see what I wanted. But the first thing he
+said to me was--'Rather a bad job, sir--a passenger missing.'
+
+'A passenger--missing?'
+
+'A lady, sir. I think you knew her. Miss Mavis, sir.'
+
+'_Missing?_' I cried--staring at him, horror-stricken.
+
+'She's not on the ship. They can't find her.'
+
+'Then where to God is she?'
+
+I remember his queer face. 'Well sir, I suppose you know that as well as
+I.'
+
+'Do you mean she has jumped overboard?'
+
+'Some time in the night, sir--on the quiet. But it's beyond every one,
+the way she escaped notice. They usually sees 'em, sir. It must have
+been about half-past two. Lord, but she was clever, sir. She didn't so
+much as make a splash. They say she _'ad_ come against her will, sir.'
+
+I had dropped upon my sofa--I felt faint. The man went on, liking to
+talk, as persons of his class do when they have something horrible to
+tell. She usually rang for the stewardess early, but this morning of
+course there had been no ring. The stewardess had gone in all the same
+about eight o'clock and found the cabin empty. That was about an hour
+ago. Her things were there in confusion--the things she usually wore
+when she went above. The stewardess thought she had been rather strange
+last night, but she waited a little and then went back. Miss Mavis
+hadn't turned up--and she didn't turn up. The stewardess began to look
+for her--she hadn't been seen on deck or in the saloon. Besides, she
+wasn't dressed--not to show herself; all her clothes were in her room.
+There was another lady, an old lady, Mrs. Nettlepoint--I would know
+her--that she was sometimes with, but the stewardess had been with _her_
+and she knew Miss Mavis had not come near her that morning. She had
+spoken to _him_ and they had taken a quiet look--they had hunted
+everywhere. A ship's a big place, but you do come to the end of it, and
+if a person ain't there why they ain't. In short an hour had passed and
+the young lady was not accounted for: from which I might judge if she
+ever would be. The watch couldn't account for her, but no doubt the
+fishes in the sea could--poor miserable lady! The stewardess and he,
+they had of course thought it their duty very soon to speak to the
+doctor, and the doctor had spoken immediately to the captain. The
+captain didn't like it--they never did. But he would try to keep it
+quiet--they always did.
+
+By the time I succeeded in pulling myself together and getting on, after
+a fashion, the rest of my clothes I had learned that Mrs. Nettlepoint
+had not yet been informed, unless the stewardess had broken it to her
+within the previous few minutes. Her son knew, the young gentleman on
+the other side of the ship (he had the other steward); my man had seen
+him come out of his cabin and rush above, just before he came in to me.
+He _had_ gone above, my man was sure; he had not gone to the old lady's
+cabin. I remember a queer vision when the steward told me this--the wild
+flash of a picture of Jasper Nettlepoint leaping with a mad compunction
+in his young agility over the side of the ship. I hasten to add that no
+such incident was destined to contribute its horror to poor Grace
+Mavis's mysterious tragic act. What followed was miserable enough, but I
+can only glance at it. When I got to Mrs. Nettlepoint's door she was
+there in her dressing-gown; the stewardess had just told her and she was
+rushing out to come to me. I made her go back--I said I would go for
+Jasper. I went for him but I missed him, partly no doubt because it was
+really, at first, the captain I was after. I found this personage and
+found him highly scandalised, but he gave me no hope that we were in
+error, and his displeasure, expressed with seamanlike plainness, was a
+definite settlement of the question. From the deck, where I merely
+turned round and looked, I saw the light of another summer day, the
+coast of Ireland green and near and the sea a more charming colour than
+it had been at all. When I came below again Jasper had passed back; he
+had gone to his cabin and his mother had joined him there. He remained
+there till we reached Liverpool--I never saw him. His mother, after a
+little, at his request, left him alone. All the world went above to
+look at the land and chatter about our tragedy, but the poor lady spent
+the day, dismally enough, in her room. It seemed to me intolerably long;
+I was thinking so of vague Porterfield and of my prospect of having to
+face him on the morrow. Now of course I knew why she had asked me if I
+should recognise him; she had delegated to me mentally a certain
+pleasant office. I gave Mrs. Peck and Mrs. Gotch a wide berth--I
+couldn't talk to them. I could, or at least I did a little, to Mrs.
+Nettlepoint, but with too many reserves for comfort on either side, for
+I foresaw that it would not in the least do now to mention Jasper to
+her. I was obliged to assume by my silence that he had had nothing to do
+with what had happened; and of course I never really ascertained what he
+_had_ had to do. The secret of what passed between him and the strange
+girl who would have sacrificed her marriage to him on so short an
+acquaintance remains shut up in his breast. His mother, I know, went to
+his door from time to time, but he refused her admission. That evening,
+to be human at a venture, I requested the steward to go in and ask him
+if he should care to see me, and the attendant returned with an answer
+which he candidly transmitted. 'Not in the least!' Jasper apparently was
+almost as scandalised as the captain.
+
+At Liverpool, at the dock, when we had touched, twenty people came on
+board and I had already made out Mr. Porterfield at a distance. He was
+looking up at the side of the great vessel with disappointment written
+(to my eyes) in his face--disappointment at not seeing the woman he
+loved lean over it and wave her handkerchief to him. Every one was
+looking at him, every one but she (his identity flew about in a moment)
+and I wondered if he did not observe it. He used to be lean, he had
+grown almost fat. The interval between us diminished--he was on the
+plank and then on the deck with the jostling officers of the
+customs--all too soon for my equanimity. I met him instantly however,
+laid my hand on him and drew him away, though I perceived that he had no
+impression of having seen me before. It was not till afterwards that I
+thought this a little stupid of him. I drew him far away (I was
+conscious of Mrs. Peck and Mrs. Gotch looking at us as we passed) into
+the empty, stale smoking-room; he remained speechless, and that struck
+me as like him. I had to speak first, he could not even relieve me by
+saying 'Is anything the matter?' I told him first that she was ill. It
+was an odious moment.
+
+
+
+
+THE LIAR
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+The train was half an hour late and the drive from the station longer
+than he had supposed, so that when he reached the house its inmates had
+dispersed to dress for dinner and he was conducted straight to his room.
+The curtains were drawn in this asylum, the candles were lighted, the
+fire was bright, and when the servant had quickly put out his clothes
+the comfortable little place became suggestive--seemed to promise a
+pleasant house, a various party, talks, acquaintances, affinities, to
+say nothing of very good cheer. He was too occupied with his profession
+to pay many country visits, but he had heard people who had more time
+for them speak of establishments where 'they do you very well.' He
+foresaw that the proprietors of Stayes would do him very well. In his
+bedroom at a country house he always looked first at the books on the
+shelf and the prints on the walls; he considered that these things gave
+a sort of measure of the culture and even of the character of his hosts.
+Though he had but little time to devote to them on this occasion a
+cursory inspection assured him that if the literature, as usual, was
+mainly American and humorous the art consisted neither of the
+water-colour studies of the children nor of 'goody' engravings. The
+walls were adorned with old-fashioned lithographs, principally portraits
+of country gentlemen with high collars and riding gloves: this
+suggested--and it was encouraging--that the tradition of portraiture was
+held in esteem. There was the customary novel of Mr. Le Fanu, for the
+bedside; the ideal reading in a country house for the hours after
+midnight. Oliver Lyon could scarcely forbear beginning it while he
+buttoned his shirt.
+
+Perhaps that is why he not only found every one assembled in the hall
+when he went down, but perceived from the way the move to dinner was
+instantly made that they had been waiting for him. There was no delay,
+to introduce him to a lady, for he went out in a group of unmatched men,
+without this appendage. The men, straggling behind, sidled and edged as
+usual at the door of the dining-room, and the _denouement_ of this
+little comedy was that he came to his place last of all. This made him
+think that he was in a sufficiently distinguished company, for if he had
+been humiliated (which he was not), he could not have consoled himself
+with the reflection that such a fate was natural to an obscure,
+struggling young artist. He could no longer think of himself as very
+young, alas, and if his position was not so brilliant as it ought to be
+he could no longer justify it by calling it a struggle. He was something
+of a celebrity and he was apparently in a society of celebrities. This
+idea added to the curiosity with which he looked up and down the long
+table as he settled himself in his place.
+
+It was a numerous party--five and twenty people; rather an odd occasion
+to have proposed to him, as he thought. He would not be surrounded by
+the quiet that ministers to good work; however, it had never interfered
+with his work to see the spectacle of human life before him in the
+intervals. And though he did not know it, it was never quiet at Stayes.
+When he was working well he found himself in that happy state--the
+happiest of all for an artist--in which things in general contribute to
+the particular idea and fall in with it, help it on and justify it, so
+that he feels for the hour as if nothing in the world can happen to him,
+even if it come in the guise of disaster or suffering, that will not be
+an enhancement of his subject. Moreover there was an exhilaration (he
+had felt it before) in the rapid change of scene--the jump, in the dusk
+of the afternoon, from foggy London and his familiar studio to a centre
+of festivity in the middle of Hertfordshire and a drama half acted, a
+drama of pretty women and noted men and wonderful orchids in silver
+jars. He observed as a not unimportant fact that one of the pretty women
+was beside him: a gentleman sat on his other hand. But he went into his
+neighbours little as yet: he was busy looking out for Sir David, whom he
+had never seen and about whom he naturally was curious.
+
+Evidently, however, Sir David was not at dinner, a circumstance
+sufficiently explained by the other circumstance which constituted our
+friend's principal knowledge of him--his being ninety years of age.
+Oliver Lyon had looked forward with great pleasure to the chance of
+painting a nonagenarian, and though the old man's absence from table was
+something of a disappointment (it was an opportunity the less to
+observe him before going to work), it seemed a sign that he was rather a
+sacred and perhaps therefore an impressive relic. Lyon looked at his son
+with the greater interest--wondered whether the glazed bloom of his
+cheek had been transmitted from Sir David. That would be jolly to paint,
+in the old man--the withered ruddiness of a winter apple, especially if
+the eye were still alive and the white hair carried out the frosty look.
+Arthur Ashmore's hair had a midsummer glow, but Lyon was glad his
+commission had been to delineate the father rather than the son, in
+spite of his never having seen the one and of the other being seated
+there before him now in the happy expansion of liberal hospitality.
+
+Arthur Ashmore was a fresh-coloured, thick-necked English gentleman, but
+he was just not a subject; he might have been a farmer and he might have
+been a banker: you could scarcely paint him in characters. His wife did
+not make up the amount; she was a large, bright, negative woman, who had
+the same air as her husband of being somehow tremendously new; a sort of
+appearance of fresh varnish (Lyon could scarcely tell whether it came
+from her complexion or from her clothes), so that one felt she ought to
+sit in a gilt frame, suggesting reference to a catalogue or a
+price-list. It was as if she were already rather a bad though expensive
+portrait, knocked off by an eminent hand, and Lyon had no wish to copy
+that work. The pretty woman on his right was engaged with her neighbour
+and the gentleman on his other side looked shrinking and scared, so that
+he had time to lose himself in his favourite diversion of watching face
+after face. This amusement gave him the greatest pleasure he knew, and
+he often thought it a mercy that the human mask did interest him and
+that it was not less vivid than it was (sometimes it ran its success in
+this line very close), since he was to make his living by reproducing
+it. Even if Arthur Ashmore would not be inspiring to paint (a certain
+anxiety rose in him lest if he should make a hit with her father-in-law
+Mrs. Arthur should take it into her head that he had now proved himself
+worthy to _aborder_ her husband); even if he had looked a little less
+like a page (fine as to print and margin) without punctuation, he would
+still be a refreshing, iridescent surface. But the gentleman four
+persons off--what was he? Would he be a subject, or was his face only
+the legible door-plate of his identity, burnished with punctual washing
+and shaving--the least thing that was decent that you would know him by?
+
+This face arrested Oliver Lyon: it struck him at first as very handsome.
+The gentleman might still be called young, and his features were
+regular: he had a plentiful, fair moustache that curled up at the ends,
+a brilliant, gallant, almost adventurous air, and a big shining
+breastpin in the middle of his shirt. He appeared a fine satisfied soul,
+and Lyon perceived that wherever he rested his friendly eye there fell
+an influence as pleasant as the September sun--as if he could make
+grapes and pears or even human affection ripen by looking at them. What
+was odd in him was a certain mixture of the correct and the extravagant:
+as if he were an adventurer imitating a gentleman with rare perfection
+or a gentleman who had taken a fancy to go about with hidden arms. He
+might have been a dethroned prince or the war-correspondent of a
+newspaper: he represented both enterprise and tradition, good manners
+and bad taste. Lyon at length fell into conversation with the lady
+beside him--they dispensed, as he had had to dispense at dinner-parties
+before, with an introduction--by asking who this personage might be.
+
+'Oh, he's Colonel Capadose, don't you know?' Lyon didn't know and he
+asked for further information. His neighbour had a sociable manner and
+evidently was accustomed to quick transitions; she turned from her other
+interlocutor with a methodical air, as a good cook lifts the cover of
+the next saucepan. 'He has been a great deal in India--isn't he rather
+celebrated?' she inquired. Lyon confessed he had never heard of him, and
+she went on, 'Well, perhaps he isn't; but he says he is, and if you
+think it, that's just the same, isn't it?'
+
+'If _you_ think it?'
+
+'I mean if he thinks it--that's just as good, I suppose.'
+
+'Do you mean that he says that which is not?'
+
+'Oh dear, no--because I never know. He is exceedingly clever and
+amusing--quite the cleverest person in the house, unless indeed you are
+more so. But that I can't tell yet, can I? I only know about the people
+I know; I think that's celebrity enough!'
+
+'Enough for them?'
+
+'Oh, I see you're clever. Enough for me! But I have heard of you,' the
+lady went on. 'I know your pictures; I admire them. But I don't think
+you look like them.'
+
+'They are mostly portraits,' Lyon said; 'and what I usually try for is
+not my own resemblance.'
+
+'I see what you mean. But they have much more colour. And now you are
+going to do some one here?'
+
+'I have been invited to do Sir David. I'm rather disappointed at not
+seeing him this evening.'
+
+'Oh, he goes to bed at some unnatural hour--eight o'clock or something
+of that sort. You know he's rather an old mummy.'
+
+'An old mummy?' Oliver Lyon repeated.
+
+'I mean he wears half a dozen waistcoats, and that sort of thing. He's
+always cold.'
+
+'I have never seen him and never seen any portrait or photograph of
+him,' Lyon said. 'I'm surprised at his never having had anything
+done--at their waiting all these years.'
+
+'Ah, that's because he was afraid, you know; it was a kind of
+superstition. He was sure that if anything were done he would die
+directly afterwards. He has only consented to-day.'
+
+'He's ready to die then?'
+
+'Oh, now he's so old he doesn't care.'
+
+'Well, I hope I shan't kill him,' said Lyon. 'It was rather unnatural in
+his son to send for me.'
+
+'Oh, they have nothing to gain--everything is theirs already!' his
+companion rejoined, as if she took this speech quite literally. Her
+talkativeness was systematic--she fraternised as seriously as she might
+have played whist. 'They do as they like--they fill the house with
+people--they have _carte blanche_.'
+
+'I see--but there's still the title.'
+
+'Yes, but what is it?'
+
+Our artist broke into laughter at this, whereat his companion stared.
+Before he had recovered himself she was scouring the plain with her
+other neighbour. The gentleman on his left at last risked an
+observation, and they had some fragmentary talk. This personage played
+his part with difficulty: he uttered a remark as a lady fires a pistol,
+looking the other way. To catch the ball Lyon had to bend his ear, and
+this movement led to his observing a handsome creature who was seated on
+the same side, beyond his interlocutor. Her profile was presented to him
+and at first he was only struck with its beauty; then it produced an
+impression still more agreeable--a sense of undimmed remembrance and
+intimate association. He had not recognised her on the instant only
+because he had so little expected to see her there; he had not seen her
+anywhere for so long, and no news of her ever came to him. She was often
+in his thoughts, but she had passed out of his life. He thought of her
+twice a week; that may be called often in relation to a person one has
+not seen for twelve years. The moment after he recognised her he felt
+how true it was that it was only she who could look like that: of the
+most charming head in the world (and this lady had it) there could never
+be a replica. She was leaning forward a little; she remained in profile,
+apparently listening to some one on the other side of her. She was
+listening, but she was also looking, and after a moment Lyon followed
+the direction of her eyes. They rested upon the gentleman who had been
+described to him as Colonel Capadose--rested, as it appeared to him,
+with a kind of habitual, visible complacency. This was not strange, for
+the Colonel was unmistakably formed to attract the sympathetic gaze of
+woman; but Lyon was slightly disappointed that she could let _him_ look
+at her so long without giving him a glance. There was nothing between
+them to-day and he had no rights, but she must have known he was coming
+(it was of course not such a tremendous event, but she could not have
+been staying in the house without hearing of it), and it was not natural
+that that should absolutely fail to affect her.
+
+She was looking at Colonel Capadose as if she were in love with him--a
+queer accident for the proudest, most reserved of women. But doubtless
+it was all right, if her husband liked it or didn't notice it: he had
+heard indefinitely, years before, that she was married, and he took for
+granted (as he had not heard that she had become a widow) the presence
+of the happy man on whom she had conferred what she had refused to
+_him_, the poor art-student at Munich. Colonel Capadose appeared to be
+aware of nothing, and this circumstance, incongruously enough, rather
+irritated Lyon than gratified him. Suddenly the lady turned her head,
+showing her full face to our hero. He was so prepared with a greeting
+that he instantly smiled, as a shaken jug overflows; but she gave him no
+response, turned away again and sank back in her chair. All that her
+face said in that instant was, 'You see I'm as handsome as ever.' To
+which he mentally subjoined, 'Yes, and as much good it does me!' He
+asked the young man beside him if he knew who that beautiful being
+was--the fifth person beyond him. The young man leaned forward,
+considered and then said, 'I think she's Mrs. Capadose.'
+
+'Do you mean his wife--that fellow's?' And Lyon indicated the subject
+of the information given him by his other neighbour.
+
+'Oh, is _he_ Mr. Capadose?' said the young man, who appeared very vague.
+He admitted his vagueness and explained it by saying that there were so
+many people and he had come only the day before. What was definite to
+Lyon was that Mrs. Capadose was in love with her husband; so that he
+wished more than ever that he had married her.
+
+'She's very faithful,' he found himself saying three minutes later to
+the lady on his right. He added that he meant Mrs. Capadose.
+
+'Ah, you know her then?'
+
+'I knew her once upon a time--when I was living abroad.'
+
+'Why then were you asking me about her husband?'
+
+'Precisely for that reason. She married after that--I didn't even know
+her present name.'
+
+'How then do you know it now?'
+
+'This gentleman has just told me--he appears to know.'
+
+'I didn't know he knew anything,' said the lady, glancing forward.
+
+'I don't think he knows anything but that.'
+
+'Then you have found out for yourself that she is faithful. What do you
+mean by that?'
+
+'Ah, you mustn't question me--I want to question you,' Lyon said. 'How
+do you all like her here?'
+
+'You ask too much! I can only speak for myself. I think she's hard.'
+
+'That's only because she's honest and straightforward.'
+
+'Do you mean I like people in proportion as they deceive?'
+
+'I think we all do, so long as we don't find them out,' Lyon said. 'And
+then there's something in her face--a sort of Roman type, in spite of
+her having such an English eye. In fact she's English down to the
+ground; but her complexion, her low forehead and that beautiful close
+little wave in her dark hair make her look like a glorified
+_contadina_.'
+
+'Yes, and she always sticks pins and daggers into her head, to increase
+that effect. I must say I like her husband better: he is so clever.'
+
+'Well, when I knew her there was no comparison that could injure her.
+She was altogether the most delightful thing in Munich.'
+
+'In Munich?'
+
+'Her people lived there; they were not rich--in pursuit of economy in
+fact, and Munich was very cheap. Her father was the younger son of some
+noble house; he had married a second time and had a lot of little mouths
+to feed. She was the child of the first wife and she didn't like her
+stepmother, but she was charming to her little brothers and sisters. I
+once made a sketch of her as Werther's Charlotte, cutting bread and
+butter while they clustered all round her. All the artists in the place
+were in love with her but she wouldn't look at 'the likes' of us. She
+was too proud--I grant you that; but she wasn't stuck up nor young
+ladyish; she was simple and frank and kind about it. She used to remind
+me of Thackeray's Ethel Newcome. She told me she must marry well: it was
+the one thing she could do for her family. I suppose you would say that
+she _has_ married well.'
+
+'She told _you_?' smiled Lyon's neighbour.
+
+'Oh, of course I proposed to her too. But she evidently thinks so
+herself!' he added.
+
+When the ladies left the table the host as usual bade the gentlemen draw
+together, so that Lyon found himself opposite to Colonel Capadose. The
+conversation was mainly about the 'run,' for it had apparently been a
+great day in the hunting-field. Most of the gentlemen communicated their
+adventures and opinions, but Colonel Capadose's pleasant voice was the
+most audible in the chorus. It was a bright and fresh but masculine
+organ, just such a voice as, to Lyon's sense, such a 'fine man' ought to
+have had. It appeared from his remarks that he was a very straight
+rider, which was also very much what Lyon would have expected. Not that
+he swaggered, for his allusions were very quietly and casually made; but
+they were all too dangerous experiments and close shaves. Lyon perceived
+after a little that the attention paid by the company to the Colonel's
+remarks was not in direct relation to the interest they seemed to offer;
+the result of which was that the speaker, who noticed that _he_ at least
+was listening, began to treat him as his particular auditor and to fix
+his eyes on him as he talked. Lyon had nothing to do but to look
+sympathetic and assent--Colonel Capadose appeared to take so much
+sympathy and assent for granted. A neighbouring squire had had an
+accident; he had come a cropper in an awkward place--just at the
+finish--with consequences that looked grave. He had struck his head; he
+remained insensible, up to the last accounts: there had evidently been
+concussion of the brain. There was some exchange of views as to his
+recovery--how soon it would take place or whether it would take place at
+all; which led the Colonel to confide to our artist across the table
+that _he_ shouldn't despair of a fellow even if he didn't come round for
+weeks--for weeks and weeks and weeks--for months, almost for years. He
+leaned forward; Lyon leaned forward to listen, and Colonel Capadose
+mentioned that he knew from personal experience that there was really no
+limit to the time one might lie unconscious without being any the worse
+for it. It had happened to him in Ireland, years before; he had been
+pitched out of a dogcart, had turned a sheer somersault and landed on
+his head. They thought he was dead, but he wasn't; they carried him
+first to the nearest cabin, where he lay for some days with the pigs,
+and then to an inn in a neighbouring town--it was a near thing they
+didn't put him under ground. He had been completely insensible--without
+a ray of recognition of any human thing--for three whole months; had not
+a glimmer of consciousness of any blessed thing. It was touch and go to
+that degree that they couldn't come near him, they couldn't feed him,
+they could scarcely look at him. Then one day he had opened his eyes--as
+fit as a flea!
+
+'I give you my honour it had done me good--it rested my brain.' He
+appeared to intimate that with an intelligence so active as his these
+periods of repose were providential. Lyon thought his story very
+striking, but he wanted to ask him whether he had not shammed a
+little--not in relating it, but in keeping so quiet. He hesitated
+however, in time, to imply a doubt--he was so impressed with the tone in
+which Colonel Capadose said that it was the turn of a hair that they
+hadn't buried him alive. That had happened to a friend of his in
+India--a fellow who was supposed to have died of jungle fever--they
+clapped him into a coffin. He was going on to recite the further fate of
+this unfortunate gentleman when Mr. Ashmore made a move and every one
+got up to adjourn to the drawing-room. Lyon noticed that by this time no
+one was heeding what his new friend said to him. They came round on
+either side of the table and met while the gentlemen dawdled before
+going out.
+
+'And do you mean that your friend was literally buried alive?' asked
+Lyon, in some suspense.
+
+Colonel Capadose looked at him a moment, as if he had already lost the
+thread of the conversation. Then his face brightened--and when it
+brightened it was doubly handsome. 'Upon my soul he was chucked into the
+ground!'
+
+'And was he left there?'
+
+'He was left there till I came and hauled him out.'
+
+'_You_ came?'
+
+'I dreamed about him--it's the most extraordinary story: I heard him
+calling to me in the night. I took upon myself to dig him up. You know
+there are people in India--a kind of beastly race, the ghouls--who
+violate graves. I had a sort of presentiment that they would get at him
+first. I rode straight, I can tell you; and, by Jove, a couple of them
+had just broken ground! Crack--crack, from a couple of barrels, and they
+showed me their heels, as you may believe. Would you credit that I took
+him out myself? The air brought him to and he was none the worse. He
+has got his pension--he came home the other day; he would do anything
+for me.'
+
+'He called to you in the night?' said Lyon, much startled.
+
+'That's the interesting point. Now _what was it_? It wasn't his ghost,
+because he wasn't dead. It wasn't himself, because he couldn't. It was
+something or other! You see India's a strange country--there's an
+element of the mysterious: the air is full of things you can't explain.'
+
+They passed out of the dining-room, and Colonel Capadose, who went among
+the first, was separated from Lyon; but a minute later, before they
+reached the drawing-room, he joined him again. 'Ashmore tells me who you
+are. Of course I have often heard of you--I'm very glad to make your
+acquaintance; my wife used to know you.'
+
+'I'm glad she remembers me. I recognised her at dinner and I was afraid
+she didn't.'
+
+'Ah, I daresay she was ashamed,' said the Colonel, with indulgent
+humour.
+
+'Ashamed of me?' Lyon replied, in the same key.
+
+'Wasn't there something about a picture? Yes; you painted her portrait.'
+
+'Many times,' said the artist; 'and she may very well have been ashamed
+of what I made of her.'
+
+'Well, I wasn't, my dear sir; it was the sight of that picture, which
+you were so good as to present to her, that made me first fall in love
+with her.'
+
+'Do you mean that one with the children--cutting bread and butter?'
+
+'Bread and butter? Bless me, no--vine leaves and a leopard skin--a kind
+of Bacchante.'
+
+'Ah, yes,' said Lyon; 'I remember. It was the first decent portrait I
+painted. I should be curious to see it to-day.'
+
+'Don't ask her to show it to you--she'll be mortified!' the Colonel
+exclaimed.
+
+'Mortified?'
+
+'We parted with it--in the most disinterested manner,' he laughed. 'An
+old friend of my wife's--her family had known him intimately when they
+lived in Germany--took the most extraordinary fancy to it: the Grand
+Duke of Silberstadt-Schreckenstein, don't you know? He came out to
+Bombay while we were there and he spotted your picture (you know he's
+one of the greatest collectors in Europe), and made such eyes at it
+that, upon my word--it happened to be his birthday--she told him he
+might have it, to get rid of him. He was perfectly enchanted--but we
+miss the picture.'
+
+'It is very good of you,' Lyon said. 'If it's in a great collection--a
+work of my incompetent youth--I am infinitely honoured.'
+
+'Oh, he has got it in one of his castles; I don't know which--you know
+he has so many. He sent us, before he left India--to return the
+compliment--a magnificent old vase.'
+
+'That was more than the thing was worth,' Lyon remarked.
+
+Colonel Capadose gave no heed to this observation; he seemed to be
+thinking of something. After a moment he said, 'If you'll come and see
+us in town she'll show you the vase.' And as they passed into the
+drawing-room he gave the artist a friendly propulsion. 'Go and speak to
+her; there she is--she'll be delighted.'
+
+Oliver Lyon took but a few steps into the wide saloon; he stood there a
+moment looking at the bright composition of the lamplit group of fair
+women, the single figures, the great setting of white and gold, the
+panels of old damask, in the centre of each of which was a single
+celebrated picture. There was a subdued lustre in the scene and an air
+as of the shining trains of dresses tumbled over the carpet. At the
+furthest end of the room sat Mrs. Capadose, rather isolated; she was on
+a small sofa, with an empty place beside her. Lyon could not flatter
+himself she had been keeping it for him; her failure to respond to his
+recognition at table contradicted that, but he felt an extreme desire to
+go and occupy it. Moreover he had her husband's sanction; so he crossed
+the room, stepping over the tails of gowns, and stood before his old
+friend.
+
+'I hope you don't mean to repudiate me,' he said.
+
+She looked up at him with an expression of unalloyed pleasure. 'I am so
+glad to see you. I was delighted when I heard you were coming.'
+
+'I tried to get a smile from you at dinner--but I couldn't.'
+
+'I didn't see--I didn't understand. Besides, I hate smirking and
+telegraphing. Also I'm very shy--you won't have forgotten that. Now we
+can communicate comfortably.' And she made a better place for him on the
+little sofa. He sat down and they had a talk that he enjoyed, while the
+reason for which he used to like her so came back to him, as well as a
+good deal of the very same old liking. She was still the least spoiled
+beauty he had ever seen, with an absence of coquetry or any insinuating
+art that seemed almost like an omitted faculty; there were moments when
+she struck her interlocutor as some fine creature from an asylum--a
+surprising deaf-mute or one of the operative blind. Her noble pagan head
+gave her privileges that she neglected, and when people were admiring
+her brow she was wondering whether there were a good fire in her
+bedroom. She was simple, kind and good; inexpressive but not inhuman or
+stupid. Now and again she dropped something that had a sifted, selected
+air--the sound of an impression at first hand. She had no imagination,
+but she had added up her feelings, some of her reflections, about life.
+Lyon talked of the old days in Munich, reminded her of incidents,
+pleasures and pains, asked her about her father and the others; and she
+told him in return that she was so impressed with his own fame, his
+brilliant position in the world, that she had not felt very sure he
+would speak to her or that his little sign at table was meant for her.
+This was plainly a perfectly truthful speech--she was incapable of any
+other--and he was affected by such humility on the part of a woman whose
+grand line was unique. Her father was dead; one of her brothers was in
+the navy and the other on a ranch in America; two of her sisters were
+married and the youngest was just coming out and very pretty. She didn't
+mention her stepmother. She asked him about his own personal history and
+he said that the principal thing that had happened to him was that he
+had never married.
+
+'Oh, you ought to,' she answered. 'It's the best thing.'
+
+'I like that--from you!' he returned.
+
+'Why not from me? I am very happy.'
+
+'That's just why I can't be. It's cruel of you to praise your state. But
+I have had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of your husband. We
+had a good bit of talk in the other room.'
+
+'You must know him better--you must know him really well,' said Mrs.
+Capadose.
+
+'I am sure that the further you go the more you find. But he makes a
+fine show, too.'
+
+She rested her good gray eyes on Lyon. 'Don't you think he's handsome?'
+
+'Handsome and clever and entertaining. You see I'm generous.'
+
+'Yes; you must know him well,' Mrs. Capadose repeated.
+
+'He has seen a great deal of life,' said her companion.
+
+'Yes, we have been in so many places. You must see my little girl. She
+is nine years old--she's too beautiful.'
+
+'You must bring her to my studio some day--I should like to paint her.'
+
+'Ah, don't speak of that,' said Mrs. Capadose. 'It reminds me of
+something so distressing.'
+
+'I hope you don't mean when _you_ used to sit to me--though that may
+well have bored you.'
+
+'It's not what you did--it's what we have done. It's a confession I must
+make--it's a weight on my mind! I mean about that beautiful picture you
+gave me--it used to be so much admired. When you come to see me in
+London (I count on your doing that very soon) I shall see you looking
+all round. I can't tell you I keep it in my own room because I love it
+so, for the simple reason----' And she paused a moment.
+
+'Because you can't tell wicked lies,' said Lyon.
+
+'No, I can't. So before you ask for it----'
+
+'Oh, I know you parted with it--the blow has already fallen,' Lyon
+interrupted.
+
+'Ah then, you have heard? I was sure you would! But do you know what we
+got for it? Two hundred pounds.'
+
+'You might have got much more,' said Lyon, smiling.
+
+'That seemed a great deal at the time. We were in want of the money--it
+was a good while ago, when we first married. Our means were very small
+then, but fortunately that has changed rather for the better. We had the
+chance; it really seemed a big sum, and I am afraid we jumped at it. My
+husband had expectations which have partly come into effect, so that now
+we do well enough. But meanwhile the picture went.'
+
+'Fortunately the original remained. But do you mean that two hundred was
+the value of the vase?' Lyon asked.
+
+'Of the vase?'
+
+'The beautiful old Indian vase--the Grand Duke's offering.'
+
+'The Grand Duke?'
+
+'What's his name?--Silberstadt-Schreckenstein. Your husband mentioned
+the transaction.'
+
+'Oh, my husband,' said Mrs. Capadose; and Lyon saw that she coloured a
+little.
+
+Not to add to her embarrassment, but to clear up the ambiguity, which
+he perceived the next moment he had better have left alone, he went on:
+'He tells me it's now in his collection.'
+
+'In the Grand Duke's? Ah, you know its reputation? I believe it contains
+treasures.' She was bewildered, but she recovered herself, and Lyon made
+the mental reflection that for some reason which would seem good when he
+knew it the husband and the wife had prepared different versions of the
+same incident. It was true that he did not exactly see Everina Brant
+preparing a version; that was not her line of old, and indeed it was not
+in her eyes to-day. At any rate they both had the matter too much on
+their conscience. He changed the subject, said Mrs. Capadose must really
+bring the little girl. He sat with her some time longer and
+thought--perhaps it was only a fancy--that she was rather absent, as if
+she were annoyed at their having been even for a moment at
+cross-purposes. This did not prevent him from saying to her at the last,
+just as the ladies began to gather themselves together to go to bed:
+'You seem much impressed, from what you say, with my renown and my
+prosperity, and you are so good as greatly to exaggerate them. Would you
+have married me if you had known that I was destined to success?'
+
+'I did know it.'
+
+'Well, I didn't'
+
+'You were too modest.'
+
+'You didn't think so when I proposed to you.'
+
+'Well, if I had married you I couldn't have married _him_--and he's so
+nice,' Mrs. Capadose said. Lyon knew she thought it--he had learned that
+at dinner--but it vexed him a little to hear her say it. The gentleman
+designated by the pronoun came up, amid the prolonged handshaking for
+good-night, and Mrs. Capadose remarked to her husband as she turned
+away, 'He wants to paint Amy.'
+
+'Ah, she's a charming child, a most interesting little creature,' the
+Colonel said to Lyon. 'She does the most remarkable things.'
+
+Mrs. Capadose stopped, in the rustling procession that followed the
+hostess out of the room. 'Don't tell him, please don't,' she said.
+
+'Don't tell him what?'
+
+'Why, what she does. Let him find out for himself.' And she passed on.
+
+'She thinks I swagger about the child--that I bore people,' said the
+Colonel. 'I hope you smoke.' He appeared ten minutes later in the
+smoking-room, in a brilliant equipment, a suit of crimson foulard
+covered with little white spots. He gratified Lyon's eye, made him feel
+that the modern age has its splendour too and its opportunities for
+costume. If his wife was an antique he was a fine specimen of the period
+of colour: he might have passed for a Venetian of the sixteenth century.
+They were a remarkable couple, Lyon thought, and as he looked at the
+Colonel standing in bright erectness before the chimney-piece while he
+emitted great smoke-puffs he did not wonder that Everina could not
+regret she had not married _him_. All the gentlemen collected at Stayes
+were not smokers and some of them had gone to bed. Colonel Capadose
+remarked that there probably would be a smallish muster, they had had
+such a hard day's work. That was the worst of a hunting-house--the men
+were so sleepy after dinner; it was devilish stupid for the ladies,
+even for those who hunted themselves--for women were so extraordinary,
+they never showed it. But most fellows revived under the stimulating
+influences of the smoking-room, and some of them, in this confidence,
+would turn up yet. Some of the grounds of their confidence--not all of
+them--might have been seen in a cluster of glasses and bottles on a
+table near the fire, which made the great salver and its contents
+twinkle sociably. The others lurked as yet in various improper corners
+of the minds of the most loquacious. Lyon was alone with Colonel
+Capadose for some moments before their companions, in varied
+eccentricities of uniform, straggled in, and he perceived that this
+wonderful man had but little loss of vital tissue to repair.
+
+They talked about the house, Lyon having noticed an oddity of
+construction in the smoking-room; and the Colonel explained that it
+consisted of two distinct parts, one of which was of very great
+antiquity. They were two complete houses in short, the old one and the
+new, each of great extent and each very fine in its way. The two formed
+together an enormous structure--Lyon must make a point of going all over
+it. The modern portion had been erected by the old man when he bought
+the property; oh yes, he had bought it, forty years before--it hadn't
+been in the family: there hadn't been any particular family for it to be
+in. He had had the good taste not to spoil the original house--he had
+not touched it beyond what was just necessary for joining it on. It was
+very curious indeed--a most irregular, rambling, mysterious pile, where
+they every now and then discovered a walled-up room or a secret
+staircase. To his mind it was essentially gloomy, however; even the
+modern additions, splendid as they were, failed to make it cheerful.
+There was some story about a skeleton having been found years before,
+during some repairs, under a stone slab of the floor of one of the
+passages; but the family were rather shy of its being talked about. The
+place they were in was of course in the old part, which contained after
+all some of the best rooms: he had an idea it had been the primitive
+kitchen, half modernised at some intermediate period.
+
+'My room is in the old part too then--I'm very glad,' Lyon said. 'It's
+very comfortable and contains all the latest conveniences, but I
+observed the depth of the recess of the door and the evident antiquity
+of the corridor and staircase--the first short one--after I came out.
+That panelled corridor is admirable; it looks as if it stretched away,
+in its brown dimness (the lamps didn't seem to me to make much
+impression on it), for half a mile.'
+
+'Oh, don't go to the end of it!' exclaimed the Colonel, smiling.
+
+'Does it lead to the haunted room?' Lyon asked.
+
+His companion looked at him a moment. 'Ah, you know about that?'
+
+'No, I don't speak from knowledge, only from hope. I have never had any
+luck--I have never stayed in a dangerous house. The places I go to are
+always as safe as Charing Cross. I want to see--whatever there is, the
+regular thing. _Is_ there a ghost here?'
+
+'Of course there is--a rattling good one.'
+
+'And have you seen him?'
+
+'Oh, don't ask me what _I've_ seen--I should tax your credulity. I don't
+like to talk of these things. But there are two or three as bad--that
+is, as good!--rooms as you'll find anywhere.'
+
+'Do you mean in my corridor?' Lyon asked.
+
+'I believe the worst is at the far end. But you would be ill-advised to
+sleep there.'
+
+'Ill-advised?'
+
+'Until you've finished your job. You'll get letters of importance the
+next morning, and you'll take the 10.20.'
+
+'Do you mean I will invent a pretext for running away?'
+
+'Unless you are braver than almost any one has ever been. They don't
+often put people to sleep there, but sometimes the house is so crowded
+that they have to. The same thing always happens--ill-concealed
+agitation at the breakfast-table and letters of the greatest importance.
+Of course it's a bachelor's room, and my wife and I are at the other end
+of the house. But we saw the comedy three days ago--the day after we got
+here. A young fellow had been put there--I forget his name--the house
+was so full; and the usual consequence followed. Letters at
+breakfast--an awfully queer face--an urgent call to town--so very sorry
+his visit was cut short. Ashmore and his wife looked at each other, and
+off the poor devil went.'
+
+'Ah, that wouldn't suit me; I must paint my picture,' said Lyon. 'But do
+they mind your speaking of it? Some people who have a good ghost are
+very proud of it, you know.'
+
+What answer Colonel Capadose was on the point of making to this inquiry
+our hero was not to learn, for at that moment their host had walked into
+the room accompanied by three or four gentlemen. Lyon was conscious
+that he was partly answered by the Colonel's not going on with the
+subject. This however on the other hand was rendered natural by the fact
+that one of the gentlemen appealed to him for an opinion on a point
+under discussion, something to do with the everlasting history of the
+day's run. To Lyon himself Mr. Ashmore began to talk, expressing his
+regret at having had so little direct conversation with him as yet. The
+topic that suggested itself was naturally that most closely connected
+with the motive of the artist's visit. Lyon remarked that it was a great
+disadvantage to him not to have had some preliminary acquaintance with
+Sir David--in most cases he found that so important. But the present
+sitter was so far advanced in life that there was doubtless no time to
+lose. 'Oh, I can tell you all about him,' said Mr. Ashmore; and for half
+an hour he told him a good deal. It was very interesting as well as very
+eulogistic, and Lyon could see that he was a very nice old man, to have
+endeared himself so to a son who was evidently not a gusher. At last he
+got up--he said he must go to bed if he wished to be fresh for his work
+in the morning. To which his host replied, 'Then you must take your
+candle; the lights are out; I don't keep my servants up.'
+
+In a moment Lyon had his glimmering taper in hand, and as he was leaving
+the room (he did not disturb the others with a good-night; they were
+absorbed in the lemon-squeezer and the soda-water cork) he remembered
+other occasions on which he had made his way to bed alone through a
+darkened country-house; such occasions had not been rare, for he was
+almost always the first to leave the smoking-room. If he had not stayed
+in houses conspicuously haunted he had, none the less (having the
+artistic temperament), sometimes found the great black halls and
+staircases rather 'creepy': there had been often a sinister effect, to
+his imagination, in the sound of his tread in the long passages or the
+way the winter moon peeped into tall windows on landings. It occurred to
+him that if houses without supernatural pretensions could look so wicked
+at night, the old corridors of Stayes would certainly give him a
+sensation. He didn't know whether the proprietors were sensitive; very
+often, as he had said to Colonel Capadose, people enjoyed the
+impeachment. What determined him to speak, with a certain sense of the
+risk, was the impression that the Colonel told queer stories. As he had
+his hand on the door he said to Arthur Ashmore, 'I hope I shan't meet
+any ghosts.'
+
+'Any ghosts?'
+
+'You ought to have some--in this fine old part.'
+
+'We do our best, but _que voulez-vous_?' said Mr. Ashmore. 'I don't
+think they like the hot-water pipes.'
+
+'They remind them too much of their own climate? But haven't you a
+haunted room--at the end of my passage?'
+
+'Oh, there are stories--we try to keep them up.'
+
+'I should like very much to sleep there,' Lyon said.
+
+'Well, you can move there to-morrow if you like.'
+
+'Perhaps I had better wait till I have done my work.'
+
+'Very good; but you won't work there, you know. My father will sit to
+you in his own apartments.'
+
+'Oh, it isn't that; it's the fear of running away, like that gentleman
+three days ago.'
+
+'Three days ago? What gentleman?' Mr. Ashmore asked.
+
+'The one who got urgent letters at breakfast and fled by the 10.20. Did
+he stand more than one night?'
+
+'I don't know what you are talking about. There was no such
+gentleman--three days ago.'
+
+'Ah, so much the better,' said Lyon, nodding good-night and departing.
+He took his course, as he remembered it, with his wavering candle, and,
+though he encountered a great many gruesome objects, safely reached the
+passage out of which his room opened. In the complete darkness it seemed
+to stretch away still further, but he followed it, for the curiosity of
+the thing, to the end. He passed several doors with the name of the room
+painted upon them, but he found nothing else. He was tempted to try the
+last door--to look into the room of evil fame; but he reflected that
+this would be indiscreet, since Colonel Capadose handled the brush--as a
+_raconteur_--with such freedom. There might be a ghost and there might
+not; but the Colonel himself, he inclined to think, was the most
+mystifying figure in the house.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Lyon found Sir David Ashmore a capital subject and a very comfortable
+sitter into the bargain. Moreover he was a very agreeable old man,
+tremendously puckered but not in the least dim; and he wore exactly the
+furred dressing-gown that Lyon would have chosen. He was proud of his
+age but ashamed of his infirmities, which however he greatly exaggerated
+and which did not prevent him from sitting there as submissive as if
+portraiture in oils had been a branch of surgery. He demolished the
+legend of his having feared the operation would be fatal, giving an
+explanation which pleased our friend much better. He held that a
+gentleman should be painted but once in his life--that it was eager and
+fatuous to be hung up all over the place. That was good for women, who
+made a pretty wall-pattern; but the male face didn't lend itself to
+decorative repetition. The proper time for the likeness was at the last,
+when the whole man was there--you got the totality of his experience.
+Lyon could not reply that that period was not a real compendium--you had
+to allow so for leakage; for there had been no crack in Sir David's
+crystallisation. He spoke of his portrait as a plain map of the
+country, to be consulted by his children in a case of uncertainty. A
+proper map could be drawn up only when the country had been travelled.
+He gave Lyon his mornings, till luncheon, and they talked of many
+things, not neglecting, as a stimulus to gossip, the people in the
+house. Now that he did not 'go out,' as he said, he saw much less of the
+visitors at Stayes: people came and went whom he knew nothing about, and
+he liked to hear Lyon describe them. The artist sketched with a fine
+point and did not caricature, and it usually befell that when Sir David
+did not know the sons and daughters he had known the fathers and
+mothers. He was one of those terrible old gentlemen who are a repository
+of antecedents. But in the case of the Capadose family, at whom they
+arrived by an easy stage, his knowledge embraced two, or even three,
+generations. General Capadose was an old crony, and he remembered his
+father before him. The general was rather a smart soldier, but in
+private life of too speculative a turn--always sneaking into the City to
+put his money into some rotten thing. He married a girl who brought him
+something and they had half a dozen children. He scarcely knew what had
+become of the rest of them, except that one was in the Church and had
+found preferment--wasn't he Dean of Rockingham? Clement, the fellow who
+was at Stayes, had some military talent; he had served in the East, he
+had married a pretty girl. He had been at Eton with his son, and he used
+to come to Stayes in his holidays. Lately, coming back to England, he
+had turned up with his wife again; that was before he--the old man--had
+been put to grass. He was a taking dog, but he had a monstrous foible.
+
+'A monstrous foible?' said Lyon.
+
+'He's a thumping liar.'
+
+Lyon's brush stopped short, while he repeated, for somehow the formula
+startled him, 'A thumping liar?'
+
+'You are very lucky not to have found it out.'
+
+'Well, I confess I have noticed a romantic tinge----'
+
+'Oh, it isn't always romantic. He'll lie about the time of day, about
+the name of his hatter. It appears there are people like that.'
+
+'Well, they are precious scoundrels,' Lyon declared, his voice trembling
+a little with the thought of what Everina Brant had done with herself.
+
+'Oh, not always,' said the old man. 'This fellow isn't in the least a
+scoundrel. There is no harm in him and no bad intention; he doesn't
+steal nor cheat nor gamble nor drink; he's very kind--he sticks to his
+wife, is fond of his children. He simply can't give you a straight
+answer.'
+
+'Then everything he told me last night, I suppose, was mendacious: he
+delivered himself of a series of the stiffest statements. They stuck,
+when I tried to swallow them, but I never thought of so simple an
+explanation.'
+
+'No doubt he was in the vein,' Sir David went on. 'It's a natural
+peculiarity--as you might limp or stutter or be left-handed. I believe
+it comes and goes, like intermittent fever. My son tells me that his
+friends usually understand it and don't haul him up--for the sake of his
+wife.'
+
+'Oh, his wife--his wife!' Lyon murmured, painting fast.
+
+'I daresay she's used to it.'
+
+'Never in the world, Sir David. How can she be used to it?'
+
+'Why, my dear sir, when a woman's fond!--And don't they mostly handle
+the long bow themselves? They are connoisseurs--they have a sympathy for
+a fellow-performer.'
+
+Lyon was silent a moment; he had no ground for denying that Mrs.
+Capadose was attached to her husband. But after a little he rejoined:
+'Oh, not this one! I knew her years ago--before her marriage; knew her
+well and admired her. She was as clear as a bell.'
+
+'I like her very much,' Sir David said, 'but I have seen her back him
+up.'
+
+Lyon considered Sir David for a moment, not in the light of a model.
+'Are you very sure?'
+
+The old man hesitated; then he answered, smiling, 'You're in love with
+her.'
+
+'Very likely. God knows I used to be!'
+
+'She must help him out--she can't expose him.'
+
+'She can hold her tongue,' Lyon remarked.
+
+'Well, before you probably she will.'
+
+'That's what I am curious to see.' And Lyon added, privately, 'Mercy on
+us, what he must have made of her!' He kept this reflection to himself,
+for he considered that he had sufficiently betrayed his state of mind
+with regard to Mrs. Capadose. None the less it occupied him now
+immensely, the question of how such a woman would arrange herself in
+such a predicament. He watched her with an interest deeply quickened
+when he mingled with the company; he had had his own troubles in life,
+but he had rarely been so anxious about anything as he was now to see
+what the loyalty of a wife and the infection of an example would have
+made of an absolutely truthful mind. Oh, he held it as immutably
+established that whatever other women might be prone to do she, of old,
+had been perfectly incapable of a deviation. Even if she had not been
+too simple to deceive she would have been too proud; and if she had not
+had too much conscience she would have had too little eagerness. It was
+the last thing she would have endured or condoned--the particular thing
+she would not have forgiven. Did she sit in torment while her husband
+turned his somersaults, or was she now too so perverse that she thought
+it a fine thing to be striking at the expense of one's honour? It would
+have taken a wondrous alchemy--working backwards, as it were--to produce
+this latter result. Besides these two alternatives (that she suffered
+tortures in silence and that she was so much in love that her husband's
+humiliating idiosyncrasy seemed to her only an added richness--a proof
+of life and talent), there was still the possibility that she had not
+found him out, that she took his false pieces at his own valuation. A
+little reflection rendered this hypothesis untenable; it was too evident
+that the account he gave of things must repeatedly have contradicted her
+own knowledge. Within an hour or two of his meeting them Lyon had seen
+her confronted with that perfectly gratuitous invention about the profit
+they had made off his early picture. Even then indeed she had not, so
+far as he could see, smarted, and--but for the present he could only
+contemplate the case.
+
+Even if it had not been interfused, through his uneradicated tenderness
+for Mrs. Capadose, with an element of suspense, the question would still
+have presented itself to him as a very curious problem, for he had not
+painted portraits during so many years without becoming something of a
+psychologist. His inquiry was limited for the moment to the opportunity
+that the following three days might yield, as the Colonel and his wife
+were going on to another house. It fixed itself largely of course upon
+the Colonel too--this gentleman was such a rare anomaly. Moreover it had
+to go on very quickly. Lyon was too scrupulous to ask other people what
+they thought of the business--he was too afraid of exposing the woman he
+once had loved. It was probable also that light would come to him from
+the talk of the rest of the company: the Colonel's queer habit, both as
+it affected his own situation and as it affected his wife, would be a
+familiar theme in any house in which he was in the habit of staying.
+Lyon had not observed in the circles in which he visited any marked
+abstention from comment on the singularities of their members. It
+interfered with his progress that the Colonel hunted all day, while he
+plied his brushes and chatted with Sir David; but a Sunday intervened
+and that partly made it up. Mrs. Capadose fortunately did not hunt, and
+when his work was over she was not inaccessible. He took a couple of
+longish walks with her (she was fond of that), and beguiled her at tea
+into a friendly nook in the hall. Regard her as he might he could not
+make out to himself that she was consumed by a hidden shame; the sense
+of being married to a man whose word had no worth was not, in her
+spirit, so far as he could guess, the canker within the rose. Her mind
+appeared to have nothing on it but its own placid frankness, and when he
+looked into her eyes (deeply, as he occasionally permitted himself to
+do), they had no uncomfortable consciousness. He talked to her again and
+still again of the dear old days--reminded her of things that he had not
+(before this reunion) the least idea that he remembered. Then he spoke
+to her of her husband, praised his appearance, his talent for
+conversation, professed to have felt a quick friendship for him and
+asked (with an inward audacity at which he trembled a little) what
+manner of man he was. 'What manner?' said Mrs. Capadose. 'Dear me, how
+can one describe one's husband? I like him very much.'
+
+'Ah, you have told me that already!' Lyon exclaimed, with exaggerated
+ruefulness.
+
+'Then why do you ask me again?' She added in a moment, as if she were so
+happy that she could afford to take pity on him, 'He is everything
+that's good and kind. He's a soldier--and a gentleman--and a dear! He
+hasn't a fault. And he has great ability.'
+
+'Yes; he strikes one as having great ability. But of course I can't
+think him a dear.'
+
+'I don't care what you think him!' said Mrs. Capadose, looking, it
+seemed to him, as she smiled, handsomer than he had ever seen her. She
+was either deeply cynical or still more deeply impenetrable, and he had
+little prospect of winning from her the intimation that he longed
+for--some hint that it had come over her that after all she had better
+have married a man who was not a by-word for the most contemptible, the
+least heroic, of vices. Had she not seen--had she not felt--the smile go
+round when her husband executed some especially characteristic
+conversational caper? How could a woman of her quality endure that day
+after day, year after year, except by her quality's altering? But he
+would believe in the alteration only when he should have heard _her_
+lie. He was fascinated by his problem and yet half exasperated, and he
+asked himself all kinds of questions. Did she not lie, after all, when
+she let his falsehoods pass without a protest? Was not her life a
+perpetual complicity, and did she not aid and abet him by the simple
+fact that she was not disgusted with him? Then again perhaps she _was_
+disgusted and it was the mere desperation of her pride that had given
+her an inscrutable mask. Perhaps she protested in private, passionately;
+perhaps every night, in their own apartments, after the day's hideous
+performance, she made him the most scorching scene. But if such scenes
+were of no avail and he took no more trouble to cure himself, how could
+she regard him, and after so many years of marriage too, with the
+perfectly artless complacency that Lyon had surprised in her in the
+course of the first day's dinner? If our friend had not been in love
+with her he could have taken the diverting view of the Colonel's
+delinquencies; but as it was they turned to the tragical in his mind,
+even while he had a sense that his solicitude might also have been
+laughed at.
+
+The observation of these three days showed him that if Capadose was an
+abundant he was not a malignant liar and that his fine faculty exercised
+itself mainly on subjects of small direct importance. 'He is the liar
+platonic,' he said to himself; 'he is disinterested, he doesn't operate
+with a hope of gain or with a desire to injure. It is art for art and he
+is prompted by the love of beauty. He has an inner vision of what might
+have been, of what ought to be, and he helps on the good cause by the
+simple substitution of a _nuance_. He paints, as it were, and so do I!'
+His manifestations had a considerable variety, but a family likeness ran
+through them, which consisted mainly of their singular futility. It was
+this that made them offensive; they encumbered the field of
+conversation, took up valuable space, converted it into a sort of
+brilliant sun-shot fog. For a fib told under pressure a convenient place
+can usually be found, as for a person who presents himself with an
+author's order at the first night of a play. But the supererogatory lie
+is the gentleman without a voucher or a ticket who accommodates himself
+with a stool in the passage.
+
+In one particular Lyon acquitted his successful rival; it had puzzled
+him that irrepressible as he was he had not got into a mess in the
+service. But he perceived that he respected the service--that august
+institution was sacred from his depredations. Moreover though there was
+a great deal of swagger in his talk it was, oddly enough, rarely swagger
+about his military exploits. He had a passion for the chase, he had
+followed it in far countries and some of his finest flowers were
+reminiscences of lonely danger and escape. The more solitary the scene
+the bigger of course the flower. A new acquaintance, with the Colonel,
+always received the tribute of a bouquet: that generalisation Lyon very
+promptly made. And this extraordinary man had inconsistencies and
+unexpected lapses--lapses into flat veracity. Lyon recognised what Sir
+David had told him, that his aberrations came in fits or periods--that
+he would sometimes keep the truce of God for a month at a time. The
+muse breathed upon him at her pleasure; she often left him alone. He
+would neglect the finest openings and then set sail in the teeth of the
+breeze. As a general thing he affirmed the false rather than denied the
+true; yet this proportion was sometimes strikingly reversed. Very often
+he joined in the laugh against himself--he admitted that he was trying
+it on and that a good many of his anecdotes had an experimental
+character. Still he never completely retracted nor retreated--he dived
+and came up in another place. Lyon divined that he was capable at
+intervals of defending his position with violence, but only when it was
+a very bad one. Then he might easily be dangerous--then he would hit out
+and become calumnious. Such occasions would test his wife's
+equanimity--Lyon would have liked to see her there. In the smoking-room
+and elsewhere the company, so far as it was composed of his familiars,
+had an hilarious protest always at hand; but among the men who had known
+him long his rich tone was an old story, so old that they had ceased to
+talk about it, and Lyon did not care, as I have said, to elicit the
+judgment of those who might have shared his own surprise.
+
+The oddest thing of all was that neither surprise nor familiarity
+prevented the Colonel's being liked; his largest drafts on a sceptical
+attention passed for an overflow of life and gaiety--almost of good
+looks. He was fond of portraying his bravery and used a very big brush,
+and yet he was unmistakably brave. He was a capital rider and shot, in
+spite of his fund of anecdote illustrating these accomplishments: in
+short he was very nearly as clever and his career had been very nearly
+as wonderful as he pretended. His best quality however remained that
+indiscriminate sociability which took interest and credulity for granted
+and about which he bragged least. It made him cheap, it made him even in
+a manner vulgar; but it was so contagious that his listener was more or
+less on his side as against the probabilities. It was a private
+reflection of Oliver Lyon's that he not only lied but made one feel
+one's self a bit of a liar, even (or especially) if one contradicted
+him. In the evening, at dinner and afterwards, our friend watched his
+wife's face to see if some faint shade or spasm never passed over it.
+But she showed nothing, and the wonder was that when he spoke she almost
+always listened. That was her pride: she wished not to be even suspected
+of not facing the music. Lyon had none the less an importunate vision of
+a veiled figure coming the next day in the dusk to certain places to
+repair the Colonel's ravages, as the relatives of kleptomaniacs
+punctually call at the shops that have suffered from their pilferings.
+
+'I must apologise, of course it wasn't true, I hope no harm is done, it
+is only his incorrigible----' Oh, to hear that woman's voice in that
+deep abasement! Lyon had no nefarious plan, no conscious wish to
+practise upon her shame or her loyalty; but he did say to himself that
+he should like to bring her round to feel that there would have been
+more dignity in a union with a certain other person. He even dreamed of
+the hour when, with a burning face, she would ask _him_ not to take it
+up. Then he should be almost consoled--he would be magnanimous.
+
+Lyon finished his picture and took his departure, after having worked
+in a glow of interest which made him believe in his success, until he
+found he had pleased every one, especially Mr. and Mrs. Ashmore, when he
+began to be sceptical. The party at any rate changed: Colonel and Mrs.
+Capadose went their way. He was able to say to himself however that his
+separation from the lady was not so much an end as a beginning, and he
+called on her soon after his return to town. She had told him the hours
+she was at home--she seemed to like him. If she liked him why had she
+not married him or at any rate why was she not sorry she had not? If she
+was sorry she concealed it too well. Lyon's curiosity on this point may
+strike the reader as fatuous, but something must be allowed to a
+disappointed man. He did not ask much after all; not that she should
+love him to-day or that she should allow him to tell her that he loved
+her, but only that she should give him some sign she was sorry. Instead
+of this, for the present, she contented herself with exhibiting her
+little daughter to him. The child was beautiful and had the prettiest
+eyes of innocence he had ever seen: which did not prevent him from
+wondering whether she told horrid fibs. This idea gave him much
+entertainment--the picture of the anxiety with which her mother would
+watch as she grew older for the symptoms of heredity. That was a nice
+occupation for Everina Brant! Did she lie to the child herself, about
+her father--was that necessary, when she pressed her daughter to her
+bosom, to cover up his tracks? Did he control himself before the little
+girl--so that she might not hear him say things she knew to be other
+than he said? Lyon doubted this: his genius would be too strong for
+him, and the only safety for the child would be in her being too stupid
+to analyse. One couldn't judge yet--she was too young. If she should
+grow up clever she would be sure to tread in his steps--a delightful
+improvement in her mother's situation! Her little face was not shifty,
+but neither was her father's big one: so that proved nothing.
+
+Lyon reminded his friends more than once of their promise that Amy
+should sit to him, and it was only a question of his leisure. The desire
+grew in him to paint the Colonel also--an operation from which he
+promised himself a rich private satisfaction. He would draw him out, he
+would set him up in that totality about which he had talked with Sir
+David, and none but the initiated would know. They, however, would rank
+the picture high, and it would be indeed six rows deep--a masterpiece of
+subtle characterisation, of legitimate treachery. He had dreamed for
+years of producing something which should bear the stamp of the
+psychologist as well as of the painter, and here at last was his
+subject. It was a pity it was not better, but that was not _his_ fault.
+It was his impression that already no one drew the Colonel out more than
+he, and he did it not only by instinct but on a plan. There were moments
+when he was almost frightened at the success of his plan--the poor
+gentleman went so terribly far. He would pull up some day, look at Lyon
+between the eyes--guess he was being played upon--which would lead to
+his wife's guessing it also. Not that Lyon cared much for that however,
+so long as she failed to suppose (as she must) that she was a part of
+his joke. He formed such a habit now of going to see her of a Sunday
+afternoon that he was angry when she went out of town. This occurred
+often, as the couple were great visitors and the Colonel was always
+looking for sport, which he liked best when it could be had at other
+people's expense. Lyon would have supposed that this sort of life was
+particularly little to her taste, for he had an idea that it was in
+country-houses that her husband came out strongest. To let him go off
+without her, not to see him expose himself--that ought properly to have
+been a relief and a luxury to her. She told Lyon in fact that she
+preferred staying at home; but she neglected to say it was because in
+other people's houses she was on the rack: the reason she gave was that
+she liked so to be with the child. It was not perhaps criminal to draw
+such a bow, but it was vulgar: poor Lyon was delighted when he arrived
+at that formula. Certainly some day too he would cross the line--he
+would become a noxious animal. Yes, in the meantime he was vulgar, in
+spite of his talents, his fine person, his impunity. Twice, by
+exception, toward the end of the winter, when he left town for a few
+days' hunting, his wife remained at home. Lyon had not yet reached the
+point of asking himself whether the desire not to miss two of his visits
+had something to do with her immobility. That inquiry would perhaps have
+been more in place later, when he began to paint the child and she
+always came with her. But it was not in her to give the wrong name, to
+pretend, and Lyon could see that she had the maternal passion, in spite
+of the bad blood in the little girl's veins.
+
+She came inveterately, though Lyon multiplied the sittings: Amy was
+never entrusted to the governess or the maid. He had knocked off poor
+old Sir David in ten days, but the portrait of the simple-faced child
+bade fair to stretch over into the following year. He asked for sitting
+after sitting, and it would have struck any one who might have witnessed
+the affair that he was wearing the little girl out. He knew better
+however and Mrs. Capadose also knew: they were present together at the
+long intermissions he gave her, when she left her pose and roamed about
+the great studio, amusing herself with its curiosities, playing with the
+old draperies and costumes, having unlimited leave to handle. Then her
+mother and Mr. Lyon sat and talked; he laid aside his brushes and leaned
+back in his chair; he always gave her tea. What Mrs. Capadose did not
+know was the way that during these weeks he neglected other orders:
+women have no faculty of imagination with regard to a man's work beyond
+a vague idea that it doesn't matter. In fact Lyon put off everything and
+made several celebrities wait. There were half-hours of silence, when he
+plied his brushes, during which he was mainly conscious that Everina was
+sitting there. She easily fell into that if he did not insist on
+talking, and she was not embarrassed nor bored by it. Sometimes she took
+up a book--there were plenty of them about; sometimes, a little way off,
+in her chair, she watched his progress (though without in the least
+advising or correcting), as if she cared for every stroke that
+represented her daughter. These strokes were occasionally a little wild;
+he was thinking so much more of his heart than of his hand. He was not
+more embarrassed than she was, but he was agitated: it was as if in the
+sittings (for the child, too, was beautifully quiet) something was
+growing between them or had already grown--a tacit confidence, an
+inexpressible secret. He felt it that way; but after all he could not be
+sure that she did. What he wanted her to do for him was very little; it
+was not even to confess that she was unhappy. He would be
+superabundantly gratified if she should simply let him know, even by a
+silent sign, that she recognised that with him her life would have been
+finer. Sometimes he guessed--his presumption went so far--that he might
+see this sign in her contentedly sitting there.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+At last he broached the question of painting the Colonel: it was now
+very late in the season--there would be little time before the general
+dispersal. He said they must make the most of it; the great thing was to
+begin; then in the autumn, with the resumption of their London life,
+they could go forward. Mrs. Capadose objected to this that she really
+could not consent to accept another present of such value. Lyon had
+given her the portrait of herself of old, and he had seen what they had
+had the indelicacy to do with it. Now he had offered her this beautiful
+memorial of the child--beautiful it would evidently be when it was
+finished, if he could ever satisfy himself; a precious possession which
+they would cherish for ever. But his generosity must stop there--they
+couldn't be so tremendously 'beholden' to him. They couldn't order the
+picture--of course he would understand that, without her explaining: it
+was a luxury beyond their reach, for they knew the great prices he
+received. Besides, what had they ever done--what above all had _she_
+ever done, that he should overload them with benefits? No, he was too
+dreadfully good; it was really impossible that Clement should sit. Lyon
+listened to her without protest, without interruption, while he bent
+forward at his work, and at last he said: 'Well, if you won't take it
+why not let him sit for me for my own pleasure and profit? Let it be a
+favour, a service I ask of him. It will do me a lot of good to paint him
+and the picture will remain in my hands.'
+
+'How will it do you a lot of good?' Mrs. Capadose asked.
+
+'Why, he's such a rare model--such an interesting subject. He has such
+an expressive face. It will teach me no end of things.'
+
+'Expressive of what?' said Mrs. Capadose.
+
+'Why, of his nature.'
+
+'And do you want to paint his nature?'
+
+'Of course I do. That's what a great portrait gives you, and I shall
+make the Colonel's a great one. It will put me up high. So you see my
+request is eminently interested.'
+
+'How can you be higher than you are?'
+
+'Oh, I'm insatiable! Do consent,' said Lyon.
+
+'Well, his nature is very noble,' Mrs. Capadose remarked.
+
+'Ah, trust me, I shall bring it out!' Lyon exclaimed, feeling a little
+ashamed of himself.
+
+Mrs. Capadose said before she went away that her husband would probably
+comply with his invitation, but she added, 'Nothing would induce me to
+let you pry into _me_ that way!'
+
+'Oh, you,' Lyon laughed--'I could do you in the dark!'
+
+The Colonel shortly afterwards placed his leisure at the painter's
+disposal and by the end of July had paid him several visits. Lyon was
+disappointed neither in the quality of his sitter nor in the degree to
+which he himself rose to the occasion; he felt really confident that he
+should produce a fine thing. He was in the humour; he was charmed with
+his _motif_ and deeply interested in his problem. The only point that
+troubled him was the idea that when he should send his picture to the
+Academy he should not be able to give the title, for the catalogue,
+simply as 'The Liar.' However, it little mattered, for he had now
+determined that this character should be perceptible even to the meanest
+intelligence--as overtopping as it had become to his own sense in the
+living man. As he saw nothing else in the Colonel to-day, so he gave
+himself up to the joy of painting nothing else. How he did it he could
+not have told you, but it seemed to him that the mystery of how to do it
+was revealed to him afresh every time he sat down to his work. It was in
+the eyes and it was in the mouth, it was in every line of the face and
+every fact of the attitude, in the indentation of the chin, in the way
+the hair was planted, the moustache was twisted, the smile came and
+went, the breath rose and fell. It was in the way he looked out at a
+bamboozled world in short--the way he would look out for ever. There
+were half a dozen portraits in Europe that Lyon rated as supreme; he
+regarded them as immortal, for they were as perfectly preserved as they
+were consummately painted. It was to this small exemplary group that he
+aspired to annex the canvas on which he was now engaged. One of the
+productions that helped to compose it was the magnificent Moroni of the
+National Gallery--the young tailor, in the white jacket, at his board
+with his shears. The Colonel was not a tailor, nor was Moroni's model,
+unlike many tailors, a liar; but as regards the masterly clearness with
+which the individual should be rendered his work would be on the same
+line as that. He had to a degree in which he had rarely had it before
+the satisfaction of feeling life grow and grow under his brush. The
+Colonel, as it turned out, liked to sit and he liked to talk while he
+was sitting: which was very fortunate, as his talk largely constituted
+Lyon's inspiration. Lyon put into practice that idea of drawing him out
+which he had been nursing for so many weeks: he could not possibly have
+been in a better relation to him for the purpose. He encouraged,
+beguiled, excited him, manifested an unfathomable credulity, and his
+only interruptions were when the Colonel did not respond to it. He had
+his intermissions, his hours of sterility, and then Lyon felt that the
+picture also languished. The higher his companion soared, the more
+gyrations he executed, in the blue, the better he painted; he couldn't
+make his flights long enough. He lashed him on when he flagged; his
+apprehension became great at moments that the Colonel would discover his
+game. But he never did, apparently; he basked and expanded in the fine
+steady light of the painter's attention. In this way the picture grew
+very fast; it was astonishing what a short business it was, compared
+with the little girl's. By the fifth of August it was pretty well
+finished: that was the date of the last sitting the Colonel was for the
+present able to give, as he was leaving town the next day with his wife.
+Lyon was amply content--he saw his way so clear: he should be able to do
+at his convenience what remained, with or without his friend's
+attendance. At any rate, as there was no hurry, he would let the thing
+stand over till his own return to London, in November, when he would
+come back to it with a fresh eye. On the Colonel's asking him if his
+wife might come and see it the next day, if she should find a
+minute--this was so greatly her desire--Lyon begged as a special favour
+that she would wait: he was so far from satisfied as yet. This was the
+repetition of a proposal Mrs. Capadose had made on the occasion of his
+last visit to her, and he had then asked for a delay--declared that he
+was by no means content. He was really delighted, and he was again a
+little ashamed of himself.
+
+By the fifth of August the weather was very warm, and on that day, while
+the Colonel sat straight and gossiped, Lyon opened for the sake of
+ventilation a little subsidiary door which led directly from his studio
+into the garden and sometimes served as an entrance and an exit for
+models and for visitors of the humbler sort, and as a passage for
+canvases, frames, packing-boxes and other professional gear. The main
+entrance was through the house and his own apartments, and this approach
+had the charming effect of admitting you first to a high gallery, from
+which a crooked picturesque staircase enabled you to descend to the
+wide, decorated, encumbered room. The view of this room, beneath them,
+with all its artistic ingenuities and the objects of value that Lyon had
+collected, never failed to elicit exclamations of delight from persons
+stepping into the gallery. The way from the garden was plainer and at
+once more practicable and more private. Lyon's domain, in St. John's
+Wood, was not vast, but when the door stood open of a summer's day it
+offered a glimpse of flowers and trees, you smelt something sweet and
+you heard the birds. On this particular morning the side-door had been
+found convenient by an unannounced visitor, a youngish woman who stood
+in the room before the Colonel perceived her and whom he perceived
+before she was noticed by his friend. She was very quiet, and she looked
+from one of the men to the other. 'Oh, dear, here's another!' Lyon
+exclaimed, as soon as his eyes rested on her. She belonged, in fact, to
+a somewhat importunate class--the model in search of employment, and she
+explained that she had ventured to come straight in, that way, because
+very often when she went to call upon gentlemen the servants played her
+tricks, turned her off and wouldn't take in her name.
+
+'But how did you get into the garden?' Lyon asked.
+
+'The gate was open, sir--the servants' gate. The butcher's cart was
+there.'
+
+'The butcher ought to have closed it,' said Lyon.
+
+'Then you don't require me, sir?' the lady continued.
+
+Lyon went on with his painting; he had given her a sharp look at first,
+but now his eyes lighted on her no more. The Colonel, however, examined
+her with interest. She was a person of whom you could scarcely say
+whether being young she looked old or old she looked young; she had at
+any rate evidently rounded several of the corners of life and had a face
+that was rosy but that somehow failed to suggest freshness. Nevertheless
+she was pretty and even looked as if at one time she might have sat for
+the complexion. She wore a hat with many feathers, a dress with many
+bugles, long black gloves, encircled with silver bracelets, and very bad
+shoes. There was something about her that was not exactly of the
+governess out of place nor completely of the actress seeking an
+engagement, but that savoured of an interrupted profession or even of a
+blighted career. She was rather soiled and tarnished, and after she had
+been in the room a few moments the air, or at any rate the nostril,
+became acquainted with a certain alcoholic waft. She was unpractised in
+the _h_, and when Lyon at last thanked her and said he didn't want
+her--he was doing nothing for which she could be useful--she replied
+with rather a wounded manner, 'Well, you know you _'ave_ 'ad me!'
+
+'I don't remember you,' Lyon answered.
+
+'Well, I daresay the people that saw your pictures do! I haven't much
+time, but I thought I would look in.'
+
+'I am much obliged to you.'
+
+'If ever you should require me, if you just send me a postcard----'
+
+'I never send postcards,' said Lyon.
+
+'Oh well, I should value a private letter! Anything to Miss Geraldine,
+Mortimer Terrace Mews, Notting 'ill----'
+
+'Very good; I'll remember,' said Lyon.
+
+Miss Geraldine lingered. 'I thought I'd just stop, on the chance.'
+
+'I'm afraid I can't hold out hopes, I'm so busy with portraits,' Lyon
+continued.
+
+'Yes; I see you are. I wish I was in the gentleman's place.'
+
+'I'm afraid in that case it wouldn't look like me,' said the Colonel,
+laughing.
+
+'Oh, of course it couldn't compare--it wouldn't be so 'andsome! But I do
+hate them portraits!' Miss Geraldine declared. 'It's so much bread out
+of our mouths.'
+
+'Well, there are many who can't paint them,' Lyon suggested,
+comfortingly.
+
+'Oh, I've sat to the very first--and only to the first! There's many
+that couldn't do anything without me.'
+
+'I'm glad you're in such demand.' Lyon was beginning to be bored and he
+added that he wouldn't detain her--he would send for her in case of
+need.
+
+'Very well; remember it's the Mews--more's the pity! You don't sit so
+well as _us_!' Miss Geraldine pursued, looking at the Colonel. 'If _you_
+should require me, sir----'
+
+'You put him out; you embarrass him,' said Lyon.
+
+'Embarrass him, oh gracious!' the visitor cried, with a laugh which
+diffused a fragrance. 'Perhaps _you_ send postcards, eh?' she went on to
+the Colonel; and then she retreated with a wavering step. She passed out
+into the garden as she had come.
+
+'How very dreadful--she's drunk!' said Lyon. He was painting hard, but
+he looked up, checking himself: Miss Geraldine, in the open doorway, had
+thrust back her head.
+
+'Yes, I do hate it--that sort of thing!' she cried with an explosion of
+mirth which confirmed Lyon's declaration. And then she disappeared.
+
+'What sort of thing--what does she mean?' the Colonel asked.
+
+'Oh, my painting you, when I might be painting her.'
+
+'And have you ever painted her?'
+
+'Never in the world; I have never seen her. She is quite mistaken.'
+
+The Colonel was silent a moment; then he remarked, 'She was very
+pretty--ten years ago.'
+
+'I daresay, but she's quite ruined. For me the least drop too much
+spoils them; I shouldn't care for her at all.'
+
+'My dear fellow, she's not a model,' said the Colonel, laughing.
+
+'To-day, no doubt, she's not worthy of the name; but she has been one.'
+
+'_Jamais de la vie!_ That's all a pretext.'
+
+'A pretext?' Lyon pricked up his ears--he began to wonder what was
+coming now.
+
+'She didn't want you--she wanted me.'
+
+'I noticed she paid you some attention. What does she want of you?'
+
+'Oh, to do me an ill turn. She hates me--lots of women do. She's
+watching me--she follows me.'
+
+Lyon leaned back in his chair--he didn't believe a word of this. He was
+all the more delighted with it and with the Colonel's bright, candid
+manner. The story had bloomed, fragrant, on the spot. 'My dear Colonel!'
+he murmured, with friendly interest and commiseration.
+
+'I was annoyed when she came in--but I wasn't startled,' his sitter
+continued.
+
+'You concealed it very well, if you were.'
+
+'Ah, when one has been through what I have! To-day however I confess I
+was half prepared. I have seen her hanging about--she knows my
+movements. She was near my house this morning--she must have followed
+me.'
+
+'But who is she then--with such a _toupet_?'
+
+'Yes, she has that,' said the Colonel; 'but as you observe she was
+primed. Still, there was a cheek, as they say, in her coming in. Oh,
+she's a bad one! She isn't a model and she never was; no doubt she has
+known some of those women and picked up their form. She had hold of a
+friend of mine ten years ago--a stupid young gander who might have been
+left to be plucked but whom I was obliged to take an interest in for
+family reasons. It's a long story--I had really forgotten all about it.
+She's thirty-seven if she's a day. I cut in and made him get rid of
+her--I sent her about her business. She knew it was me she had to thank.
+She has never forgiven me--I think she's off her head. Her name isn't
+Geraldine at all and I doubt very much if that's her address.'
+
+'Ah, what is her name?' Lyon asked, most attentive. The details always
+began to multiply, to abound, when once his companion was well
+launched--they flowed forth in battalions.
+
+'It's Pearson--Harriet Pearson; but she used to call herself
+Grenadine--wasn't that a rum appellation? Grenadine--Geraldine--the jump
+was easy.' Lyon was charmed with the promptitude of this response, and
+his interlocutor went on: 'I hadn't thought of her for years--I had
+quite lost sight of her. I don't know what her idea is, but practically
+she's harmless. As I came in I thought I saw her a little way up the
+road. She must have found out I come here and have arrived before me. I
+daresay--or rather I'm sure--she is waiting for me there now.'
+
+'Hadn't you better have protection?' Lyon asked, laughing.
+
+'The best protection is five shillings--I'm willing to go that length.
+Unless indeed she has a bottle of vitriol. But they only throw vitriol
+on the men who have deceived them, and I never deceived her--I told her
+the first time I saw her that it wouldn't do. Oh, if she's there we'll
+walk a little way together and talk it over and, as I say, I'll go as
+far as five shillings.'
+
+'Well,' said Lyon, 'I'll contribute another five.' He felt that this was
+little to pay for his entertainment.
+
+That entertainment was interrupted however for the time by the Colonel's
+departure. Lyon hoped for a letter recounting the fictive sequel; but
+apparently his brilliant sitter did not operate with the pen. At any
+rate he left town without writing; they had taken a rendezvous for three
+months later. Oliver Lyon always passed the holidays in the same way;
+during the first weeks he paid a visit to his elder brother, the happy
+possessor, in the south of England, of a rambling old house with formal
+gardens, in which he delighted, and then he went abroad--usually to
+Italy or Spain. This year he carried out his custom after taking a last
+look at his all but finished work and feeling as nearly pleased with it
+as he ever felt with the translation of the idea by the hand--always, as
+it seemed to him, a pitiful compromise. One yellow afternoon, in the
+country, as he was smoking his pipe on one of the old terraces he was
+seized with the desire to see it again and do two or three things more
+to it: he had thought of it so often while he lounged there. The impulse
+was too strong to be dismissed, and though he expected to return to town
+in the course of another week he was unable to face the delay. To look
+at the picture for five minutes would be enough--it would clear up
+certain questions which hummed in his brain; so that the next morning,
+to give himself this luxury, he took the train for London. He sent no
+word in advance; he would lunch at his club and probably return into
+Sussex by the 5.45.
+
+In St. John's Wood the tide of human life flows at no time very fast,
+and in the first days of September Lyon found unmitigated emptiness in
+the straight sunny roads where the little plastered garden-walls, with
+their incommunicative doors, looked slightly Oriental. There was
+definite stillness in his own house, to which he admitted himself by his
+pass-key, having a theory that it was well sometimes to take servants
+unprepared. The good woman who was mainly in charge and who cumulated
+the functions of cook and housekeeper was, however, quickly summoned by
+his step, and (he cultivated frankness of intercourse with his
+domestics) received him without the confusion of surprise. He told her
+that she needn't mind the place being not quite straight, he had only
+come up for a few hours--he should be busy in the studio. To this she
+replied that he was just in time to see a lady and a gentleman who were
+there at the moment--they had arrived five minutes before. She had told
+them he was away from home but they said it was all right; they only
+wanted to look at a picture and would be very careful of everything. 'I
+hope it is all right, sir,' the housekeeper concluded. 'The gentleman
+says he's a sitter and he gave me his name--rather an odd name; I think
+it's military. The lady's a very fine lady, sir; at any rate there they
+are.'
+
+'Oh, it's all right,' Lyon said, the identity of his visitors being
+clear. The good woman couldn't know, for she usually had little to do
+with the comings and goings; his man, who showed people in and out, had
+accompanied him to the country. He was a good deal surprised at Mrs.
+Capadose's having come to see her husband's portrait when she knew that
+the artist himself wished her to forbear; but it was a familiar truth to
+him that she was a woman of a high spirit. Besides, perhaps the lady was
+not Mrs. Capadose; the Colonel might have brought some inquisitive
+friend, a person who wanted a portrait of _her_ husband. What were they
+doing in town, at any rate, at that moment? Lyon made his way to the
+studio with a certain curiosity; he wondered vaguely what his friends
+were 'up to.' He pushed aside the curtain that hung in the door of
+communication--the door opening upon the gallery which it had been found
+convenient to construct at the time the studio was added to the house.
+When I say he pushed it aside I should amend my phrase; he laid his hand
+upon it, but at that moment he was arrested by a very singular sound. It
+came from the floor of the room beneath him and it startled him
+extremely, consisting apparently as it did of a passionate wail--a sort
+of smothered shriek--accompanied by a violent burst of tears. Oliver
+Lyon listened intently a moment, and then he passed out upon the
+balcony, which was covered with an old thick Moorish rug. His step was
+noiseless, though he had not endeavoured to make it so, and after that
+first instant he found himself profiting irresistibly by the accident of
+his not having attracted the attention of the two persons in the studio,
+who were some twenty feet below him. In truth they were so deeply and so
+strangely engaged that their unconsciousness of observation was
+explained. The scene that took place before Lyon's eyes was one of the
+most extraordinary they had ever rested upon. Delicacy and the failure
+to comprehend kept him at first from interrupting it--for what he saw
+was a woman who had thrown herself in a flood of tears on her
+companion's bosom--and these influences were succeeded after a minute
+(the minutes were very few and very short) by a definite motive which
+presently had the force to make him step back behind the curtain. I may
+add that it also had the force to make him avail himself for further
+contemplation of a crevice formed by his gathering together the two
+halves of the _portiere_. He was perfectly aware of what he was
+about--he was for the moment an eavesdropper, a spy; but he was also
+aware that a very odd business, in which his confidence had been trifled
+with, was going forward, and that if in a measure it didn't concern him,
+in a measure it very definitely did. His observation, his reflections,
+accomplished themselves in a flash.
+
+His visitors were in the middle of the room; Mrs. Capadose clung to her
+husband, weeping, sobbing as if her heart would break. Her distress was
+horrible to Oliver Lyon but his astonishment was greater than his horror
+when he heard the Colonel respond to it by the words, vehemently
+uttered, 'Damn him, damn him, damn him!' What in the world had happened?
+Why was she sobbing and whom was he damning? What had happened, Lyon saw
+the next instant, was that the Colonel had finally rummaged out his
+unfinished portrait (he knew the corner where the artist usually placed
+it, out of the way, with its face to the wall) and had set it up before
+his wife on an empty easel. She had looked at it a few moments and
+then--apparently--what she saw in it had produced an explosion of dismay
+and resentment. She was too busy sobbing and the Colonel was too busy
+holding her and reiterating his objurgation, to look round or look up.
+The scene was so unexpected to Lyon that he could not take it, on the
+spot, as a proof of the triumph of his hand--of a tremendous hit: he
+could only wonder what on earth was the matter. The idea of the triumph
+came a little later. Yet he could see the portrait from where he stood;
+he was startled with its look of life--he had not thought it so
+masterly. Mrs. Capadose flung herself away from her husband--she dropped
+into the nearest chair, buried her face in her arms, leaning on a table.
+Her weeping suddenly ceased to be audible, but she shuddered there as if
+she were overwhelmed with anguish and shame. Her husband remained a
+moment staring at the picture; then he went to her, bent over her, took
+hold of her again, soothed her. 'What is it, darling, what the devil is
+it?' he demanded.
+
+Lyon heard her answer. 'It's cruel--oh, it's too cruel!'
+
+'Damn him--damn him--damn him!' the Colonel repeated.
+
+'It's all there--it's all there!' Mrs. Capadose went on.
+
+'Hang it, what's all there?'
+
+'Everything there oughtn't to be--everything he has seen--it's too
+dreadful!'
+
+'Everything he has seen? Why, ain't I a good-looking fellow? He has made
+me rather handsome.'
+
+Mrs. Capadose had sprung up again; she had darted another glance at the
+painted betrayal. 'Handsome? Hideous, hideous! Not that--never, never!'
+
+'Not _what_, in heaven's name?' the Colonel almost shouted. Lyon could
+see his flushed, bewildered face.
+
+'What he has made of you--what you know! _He_ knows--he has seen. Every
+one will know--every one will see. Fancy that thing in the Academy!'
+
+'You're going wild, darling; but if you hate it so it needn't go.'
+
+'Oh, he'll send it--it's so good! Come away--come away!' Mrs. Capadose
+wailed, seizing her husband.
+
+'It's so good?' the poor man cried.
+
+'Come away--come away,' she only repeated; and she turned toward the
+staircase that ascended to the gallery.
+
+'Not that way--not through the house, in the state you're in,' Lyon
+heard the Colonel object. 'This way--we can pass,' he added; and he drew
+his wife to the small door that opened into the garden. It was bolted,
+but he pushed the bolt and opened the door. She passed out quickly, but
+he stood there looking back into the room. 'Wait for me a moment!' he
+cried out to her; and with an excited stride he re-entered the studio.
+He came up to the picture again, and again he stood looking at it. 'Damn
+him--damn him--damn him!' he broke out once more. It was not clear to
+Lyon whether this malediction had for its object the original or the
+painter of the portrait. The Colonel turned away and moved rapidly about
+the room, as if he were looking for something; Lyon was unable for the
+instant to guess his intention. Then the artist said to himself, below
+his breath, 'He's going to do it a harm!' His first impulse was to rush
+down and stop him; but he paused, with the sound of Everina Brant's sobs
+still in his ears. The Colonel found what he was looking for--found it
+among some odds and ends on a small table and rushed back with it to the
+easel. At one and the same moment Lyon perceived that the object he had
+seized was a small Eastern dagger and that he had plunged it into the
+canvas. He seemed animated by a sudden fury, for with extreme vigour of
+hand he dragged the instrument down (Lyon knew it to have no very fine
+edge) making a long, abominable gash. Then he plucked it out and dashed
+it again several times into the face of the likeness, exactly as if he
+were stabbing a human victim: it had the oddest effect--that of a sort
+of figurative suicide. In a few seconds more the Colonel had tossed the
+dagger away--he looked at it as he did so, as if he expected it to reek
+with blood--and hurried out of the place, closing the door after him.
+
+The strangest part of all was--as will doubtless appear--that Oliver
+Lyon made no movement to save his picture. But he did not feel as if he
+were losing it or cared not if he were, so much more did he feel that he
+was gaining a certitude. His old friend _was_ ashamed of her husband,
+and he had made her so, and he had scored a great success, even though
+the picture had been reduced to rags. The revelation excited him so--as
+indeed the whole scene did--that when he came down the steps after the
+Colonel had gone he trembled with his happy agitation; he was dizzy and
+had to sit down a moment. The portrait had a dozen jagged wounds--the
+Colonel literally had hacked it to death. Lyon left it where it was,
+never touched it, scarcely looked at it; he only walked up and down his
+studio, still excited, for an hour. At the end of this time his good
+woman came to recommend that he should have some luncheon; there was a
+passage under the staircase from the offices.
+
+'Ah, the lady and gentleman have gone, sir? I didn't hear them.'
+
+'Yes; they went by the garden.'
+
+But she had stopped, staring at the picture on the easel. 'Gracious, how
+you _'ave_ served it, sir!'
+
+Lyon imitated the Colonel. 'Yes, I cut it up--in a fit of disgust.'
+
+'Mercy, after all your trouble! Because they weren't pleased, sir?'
+
+'Yes; they weren't pleased.'
+
+'Well, they must be very grand! Blessed if I would!'
+
+'Have it chopped up; it will do to light fires,' Lyon said.
+
+He returned to the country by the 3.30 and a few days later passed over
+to France. During the two months that he was absent from England he
+expected something--he could hardly have said what; a manifestation of
+some sort on the Colonel's part. Wouldn't he write, wouldn't he explain,
+wouldn't he take for granted Lyon had discovered the way he had, as the
+cook said, served him and deem it only decent to take pity in some
+fashion or other on his mystification? Would he plead guilty or would he
+repudiate suspicion? The latter course would be difficult and make a
+considerable draft upon his genius, in view of the certain testimony of
+Lyon's housekeeper, who had admitted the visitors and would establish
+the connection between their presence and the violence wrought. Would
+the Colonel proffer some apology or some amends, or would any word from
+him be only a further expression of that destructive petulance which our
+friend had seen his wife so suddenly and so potently communicate to him?
+He would have either to declare that he had not touched the picture or
+to admit that he had, and in either case he would have to tell a fine
+story. Lyon was impatient for the story and, as no letter came,
+disappointed that it was not produced. His impatience however was much
+greater in respect to Mrs. Capadose's version, if version there was to
+be; for certainly that would be the real test, would show how far she
+would go for her husband, on the one side, or for him, Oliver Lyon, on
+the other. He could scarcely wait to see what line she would take;
+whether she would simply adopt the Colonel's, whatever it might be. He
+wanted to draw her out without waiting, to get an idea in advance. He
+wrote to her, to this end, from Venice, in the tone of their
+established friendship, asking for news, narrating his wanderings,
+hoping they should soon meet in town and not saying a word about the
+picture. Day followed day, after the time, and he received no answer;
+upon which he reflected that she couldn't trust herself to write--was
+still too much under the influence of the emotion produced by his
+'betrayal.' Her husband had espoused that emotion and she had espoused
+the action he had taken in consequence of it, and it was a complete
+rupture and everything was at an end. Lyon considered this prospect
+rather ruefully, at the same time that he thought it deplorable that
+such charming people should have put themselves so grossly in the wrong.
+He was at last cheered, though little further enlightened, by the
+arrival of a letter, brief but breathing good-humour and hinting neither
+at a grievance nor at a bad conscience. The most interesting part of it
+to Lyon was the postscript, which consisted of these words: 'I have a
+confession to make to you. We were in town for a couple of days, the 1st
+of September, and I took the occasion to defy your authority--it was
+very bad of me but I couldn't help it. I made Clement take me to your
+studio--I wanted so dreadfully to see what you had done with him, your
+wishes to the contrary notwithstanding. We made your servants let us in
+and I took a good look at the picture. It is really wonderful!'
+'Wonderful' was non-committal, but at least with this letter there was
+no rupture.
+
+The third day after Lyon's return to London was a Sunday, so that he
+could go and ask Mrs. Capadose for luncheon. She had given him in the
+spring a general invitation to do so and he had availed himself of it
+several times. These had been the occasions (before he sat to him) when
+he saw the Colonel most familiarly. Directly after the meal his host
+disappeared (he went out, as he said, to call on _his_ women) and the
+second half-hour was the best, even when there were other people. Now,
+in the first days of December, Lyon had the luck to find the pair alone,
+without even Amy, who appeared but little in public. They were in the
+drawing-room, waiting for the repast to be announced, and as soon as he
+came in the Colonel broke out, 'My dear fellow, I'm delighted to see
+you! I'm so keen to begin again.'
+
+'Oh, do go on, it's so beautiful,' Mrs. Capadose said, as she gave him
+her hand.
+
+Lyon looked from one to the other; he didn't know what he had expected,
+but he had not expected this. 'Ah, then, you think I've got something?'
+
+'You've got everything,' said Mrs. Capadose, smiling from her
+golden-brown eyes.
+
+'She wrote you of our little crime?' her husband asked. 'She dragged me
+there--I had to go.' Lyon wondered for a moment whether he meant by
+their little crime the assault on the canvas; but the Colonel's next
+words didn't confirm this interpretation. 'You know I like to sit--it
+gives such a chance to my _bavardise_. And just now I have time.'
+
+'You must remember I had almost finished,' Lyon remarked.
+
+'So you had. More's the pity. I should like you to begin again.'
+
+'My dear fellow, I shall have to begin again!' said Oliver Lyon with a
+laugh, looking at Mrs. Capadose. She did not meet his eyes--she had got
+up to ring for luncheon. 'The picture has been smashed,' Lyon
+continued.
+
+'Smashed? Ah, what did you do that for?' Mrs. Capadose asked, standing
+there before him in all her clear, rich beauty. Now that she looked at
+him she was impenetrable.
+
+'I didn't--I found it so--with a dozen holes punched in it!'
+
+'I say!' cried the Colonel.
+
+Lyon turned his eyes to him, smiling. 'I hope _you_ didn't do it?'
+
+'Is it ruined?' the Colonel inquired. He was as brightly true as his
+wife and he looked simply as if Lyon's question could not be serious.
+'For the love of sitting to you? My dear fellow, if I had thought of it
+I would!'
+
+'Nor you either?' the painter demanded of Mrs. Capadose.
+
+Before she had time to reply her husband had seized her arm, as if a
+highly suggestive idea had come to him. 'I say, my dear, that
+woman--that woman!'
+
+'That woman?' Mrs. Capadose repeated; and Lyon too wondered what woman
+he meant.
+
+'Don't you remember when we came out, she was at the door--or a little
+way from it? I spoke to you of her--I told you about her.
+Geraldine--Grenadine--the one who burst in that day,' he explained to
+Lyon. 'We saw her hanging about--I called Everina's attention to her.'
+
+'Do you mean she got at my picture?'
+
+'Ah yes, I remember,' said Mrs. Capadose, with a sigh.
+
+'She burst in again--she had learned the way--she was waiting for her
+chance,' the Colonel continued. 'Ah, the little brute!'
+
+Lyon looked down; he felt himself colouring. This was what he had been
+waiting for--the day the Colonel should wantonly sacrifice some innocent
+person. And could his wife be a party to that final atrocity? Lyon had
+reminded himself repeatedly during the previous weeks that when the
+Colonel perpetrated his misdeed she had already quitted the room; but he
+had argued none the less--it was a virtual certainty--that he had on
+rejoining her immediately made his achievement plain to her. He was in
+the flush of performance; and even if he had not mentioned what he had
+done she would have guessed it. He did not for an instant believe that
+poor Miss Geraldine had been hovering about his door, nor had the
+account given by the Colonel the summer before of his relations with
+this lady deceived him in the slightest degree. Lyon had never seen her
+before the day she planted herself in his studio; but he knew her and
+classified her as if he had made her. He was acquainted with the London
+female model in all her varieties--in every phase of her development and
+every step of her decay. When he entered his house that September
+morning just after the arrival of his two friends there had been no
+symptoms whatever, up and down the road, of Miss Geraldine's
+reappearance. That fact had been fixed in his mind by his recollecting
+the vacancy of the prospect when his cook told him that a lady and a
+gentleman were in his studio: he had wondered there was not a carriage
+nor a cab at his door. Then he had reflected that they would have come
+by the underground railway; he was close to the Marlborough Road
+station and he knew the Colonel, coming to his sittings, more than once
+had availed himself of that convenience. 'How in the world did she get
+in?' He addressed the question to his companions indifferently.
+
+'Let us go down to luncheon,' said Mrs. Capadose, passing out of the
+room.
+
+'We went by the garden--without troubling your servant--I wanted to show
+my wife.' Lyon followed his hostess with her husband and the Colonel
+stopped him at the top of the stairs. 'My dear fellow, I _can't_ have
+been guilty of the folly of not fastening the door?'
+
+'I am sure I don't know, Colonel,' Lyon said as they went down. 'It was
+a very determined hand--a perfect wild-cat.'
+
+'Well, she _is_ a wild-cat--confound her! That's why I wanted to get him
+away from her.'
+
+'But I don't understand her motive.'
+
+'She's off her head--and she hates me; that was her motive.'
+
+'But she doesn't hate me, my dear fellow!' Lyon said, laughing.
+
+'She hated the picture--don't you remember she said so? The more
+portraits there are the less employment for such as her.'
+
+'Yes; but if she is not really the model she pretends to be, how can
+that hurt her?' Lyon asked.
+
+The inquiry baffled the Colonel an instant--but only an instant. 'Ah,
+she was in a vicious muddle! As I say, she's off her head.'
+
+They went into the dining-room, where Mrs. Capadose was taking her
+place. 'It's too bad, it's too horrid!' she said. 'You see the fates
+are against you. Providence won't let you be so disinterested--painting
+masterpieces for nothing.'
+
+'Did _you_ see the woman?' Lyon demanded, with something like a
+sternness that he could not mitigate.
+
+Mrs. Capadose appeared not to perceive it or not to heed it if she did.
+'There was a person, not far from your door, whom Clement called my
+attention to. He told me something about her but we were going the other
+way.'
+
+'And do you think she did it?'
+
+'How can I tell? If she did she was mad, poor wretch.'
+
+'I should like very much to get hold of her,' said Lyon. This was a
+false statement, for he had no desire for any further conversation with
+Miss Geraldine. He had exposed his friends to himself, but he had no
+desire to expose them to any one else, least of all to themselves.
+
+'Oh, depend upon it she will never show again. You're safe!' the Colonel
+exclaimed.
+
+'But I remember her address--Mortimer Terrace Mews, Notting Hill.'
+
+'Oh, that's pure humbug; there isn't any such place.'
+
+'Lord, what a deceiver!' said Lyon.
+
+'Is there any one else you suspect?' the Colonel went on.
+
+'Not a creature.'
+
+'And what do your servants say?'
+
+'They say it wasn't _them_, and I reply that I never said it was. That's
+about the substance of our conferences.'
+
+'And when did they discover the havoc?'
+
+'They never discovered it at all. I noticed it first--when I came back.'
+
+'Well, she could easily have stepped in,' said the Colonel. 'Don't you
+remember how she turned up that day, like the clown in the ring?'
+
+'Yes, yes; she could have done the job in three seconds, except that the
+picture wasn't out.'
+
+'My dear fellow, don't curse me!--but of course I dragged it out.'
+
+'You didn't put it back?' Lyon asked tragically.
+
+'Ah, Clement, Clement, didn't I tell you to?' Mrs. Capadose exclaimed in
+a tone of exquisite reproach.
+
+The Colonel groaned, dramatically; he covered his face with his hands.
+His wife's words were for Lyon the finishing touch; they made his whole
+vision crumble--his theory that she had secretly kept herself true. Even
+to her old lover she wouldn't be so! He was sick; he couldn't eat; he
+knew that he looked very strange. He murmured something about it being
+useless to cry over spilled milk--he tried to turn the conversation to
+other things. But it was a horrid effort and he wondered whether they
+felt it as much as he. He wondered all sorts of things: whether they
+guessed he disbelieved them (that he had seen them of course they would
+never guess); whether they had arranged their story in advance or it was
+only an inspiration of the moment; whether she had resisted, protested,
+when the Colonel proposed it to her, and then had been borne down by
+him; whether in short she didn't loathe herself as she sat there. The
+cruelty, the cowardice of fastening their unholy act upon the wretched
+woman struck him as monstrous--no less monstrous indeed than the levity
+that could make them run the risk of her giving them, in her righteous
+indignation, the lie. Of course that risk could only exculpate her and
+not inculpate them--the probabilities protected them so perfectly; and
+what the Colonel counted on (what he would have counted upon the day he
+delivered himself, after first seeing her, at the studio, if he had
+thought about the matter then at all and not spoken from the pure
+spontaneity of his genius) was simply that Miss Geraldine had really
+vanished for ever into her native unknown. Lyon wanted so much to quit
+the subject that when after a little Mrs. Capadose said to him, 'But can
+nothing be done, can't the picture be repaired? You know they do such
+wonders in that way now,' he only replied, 'I don't know, I don't care,
+it's all over, _n'en parlons plus_!' Her hypocrisy revolted him. And
+yet, by way of plucking off the last veil of her shame, he broke out to
+her again, shortly afterward, 'And you _did_ like it, really?' To which
+she returned, looking him straight in his face, without a blush, a
+pallor, an evasion, 'Oh, I loved it!' Truly her husband had trained her
+well. After that Lyon said no more and his companions forbore
+temporarily to insist, like people of tact and sympathy aware that the
+odious accident had made him sore.
+
+When they quitted the table the Colonel went away without coming
+upstairs; but Lyon returned to the drawing-room with his hostess,
+remarking to her however on the way that he could remain but a moment.
+He spent that moment--it prolonged itself a little--standing with her
+before the chimney-piece. She neither sat down nor asked him to; her
+manner denoted that she intended to go out. Yes, her husband had trained
+her well; yet Lyon dreamed for a moment that now he was alone with her
+she would perhaps break down, retract, apologise, confide, say to him,
+'My dear old friend, forgive this hideous comedy--you understand!' And
+then how he would have loved her and pitied her, guarded her, helped her
+always! If she were not ready to do something of that sort why had she
+treated him as if he were a dear old friend; why had she let him for
+months suppose certain things--or almost; why had she come to his studio
+day after day to sit near him on the pretext of her child's portrait, as
+if she liked to think what might have been? Why had she come so near a
+tacit confession, in a word, if she was not willing to go an inch
+further? And she was not willing--she was not; he could see that as he
+lingered there. She moved about the room a little, rearranging two or
+three objects on the tables, but she did nothing more. Suddenly he said
+to her: 'Which way was she going, when you came out?'
+
+'She--the woman we saw?'
+
+'Yes, your husband's strange friend. It's a clew worth following.' He
+had no desire to frighten her; he only wanted to communicate the impulse
+which would make her say, 'Ah, spare me--and spare _him_! There was no
+such person.'
+
+Instead of this Mrs. Capadose replied, 'She was going away from us--she
+crossed the road. We were coming towards the station.'
+
+'And did she appear to recognise the Colonel--did she look round?'
+
+'Yes; she looked round, but I didn't notice much. A hansom came along
+and we got into it. It was not till then that Clement told me who she
+was: I remember he said that she was there for no good. I suppose we
+ought to have gone back.'
+
+'Yes; you would have saved the picture.'
+
+For a moment she said nothing; then she smiled. 'For you, I am very
+sorry. But you must remember that I possess the original!'
+
+At this Lyon turned away. 'Well, I must go,' he said; and he left her
+without any other farewell and made his way out of the house. As he went
+slowly up the street the sense came back to him of that first glimpse of
+her he had had at Stayes--the way he had seen her gaze across the table
+at her husband. Lyon stopped at the corner, looking vaguely up and down.
+He would never go back--he couldn't. She was still in love with the
+Colonel--he had trained her too well.
+
+
+
+
+MRS. TEMPERLY
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+'Why, Cousin Raymond, how can you suppose? Why, she's only sixteen!'
+
+'She told me she was seventeen,' said the young man, as if it made a
+great difference.
+
+'Well, only _just_!' Mrs. Temperly replied, in the tone of graceful,
+reasonable concession.
+
+'Well, that's a very good age for me. I'm very young.'
+
+'You are old enough to know better,' the lady remarked, in her soft,
+pleasant voice, which always drew the sting from a reproach, and enabled
+you to swallow it as you would a cooked plum, without the stone. 'Why,
+she hasn't finished her education!'
+
+'That's just what I mean,' said her interlocutor. 'It would finish it
+beautifully for her to marry me.'
+
+'Have you finished yours, my dear?' Mrs. Temperly inquired. 'The way you
+young people talk about marrying!' she exclaimed, looking at the
+itinerant functionary with the long wand who touched into a flame the
+tall gas-lamp on the other side of the Fifth Avenue. The pair were
+standing, in the recess of a window, in one of the big public rooms of
+an immense hotel, and the October day was turning to dusk.
+
+'Well, would you have us leave it to the old?' Raymond asked. 'That's
+just what I think--she would be such a help to me,' he continued. 'I
+want to go back to Paris to study more. I have come home too soon. I
+don't know half enough; they know more here than I thought. So it would
+be perfectly easy, and we should all be together.'
+
+'Well, my dear, when you do come back to Paris we will talk about it,'
+said Mrs. Temperly, turning away from the window.
+
+'I should like it better, Cousin Maria, if you trusted me a little
+more,' Raymond sighed, observing that she was not really giving her
+thoughts to what he said. She irritated him somehow; she was so full of
+her impending departure, of her arrangements, her last duties and
+memoranda. She was not exactly important, any more than she was humble;
+she was too conciliatory for the one and too positive for the other. But
+she bustled quietly and gave one the sense of being 'up to' everything;
+the successive steps of her enterprise were in advance perfectly clear
+to her, and he could see that her imagination (conventional as she was
+she had plenty of that faculty) had already taken up its abode on one of
+those fine _premiers_ which she had never seen, but which by instinct
+she seemed to know all about, in the very best part of the quarter of
+the Champs Elysees. If she ruffled him envy had perhaps something to do
+with it: she was to set sail on the morrow for the city of his affection
+and he was to stop in New York, where the fact that he was but half
+pleased did not alter the fact that he had his studio on his hands and
+that it was a bad one (though perhaps as good as any use he should put
+it to), which no one would be in a hurry to relieve him of.
+
+It was easy for him to talk to Mrs. Temperly in that airy way about
+going back, but he couldn't go back unless the old gentleman gave him
+the means. He had already given him a great many things in the past, and
+with the others coming on (Marian's marriage-outfit, within three
+months, had cost literally thousands), Raymond had not at present the
+face to ask for more. He must sell some pictures first, and to sell them
+he must first paint them. It was his misfortune that he saw what he
+wanted to do so much better than he could do it. But he must really try
+and please himself--an effort that appeared more possible now that the
+idea of following Dora across the ocean had become an incentive. In
+spite of secret aspirations and even intentions, however, it was not
+encouraging to feel that he made really no impression at all on Cousin
+Maria. This certitude was so far from agreeable to him that he almost
+found it in him to drop the endearing title by which he had hitherto
+addressed her. It was only that, after all, her husband had been
+distantly related to his mother. It was not as a cousin that he was
+interested in Dora, but as something very much more intimate. I know not
+whether it occurred to him that Mrs. Temperly herself would never give
+his displeasure the benefit of dropping the affectionate form. She might
+shut her door to him altogether, but he would always be her kinsman and
+her dear. She was much addicted to these little embellishments of human
+intercourse--the friendly apostrophe and even the caressing hand--and
+there was something homely and cosy, a rustic, motherly _bonhomie_, in
+her use of them. She was as lavish of them as she was really careful in
+the selection of her friends.
+
+She stood there with her hand in her pocket, as if she were feeling for
+something; her little plain, pleasant face was presented to him with a
+musing smile, and he vaguely wondered whether she were fumbling for a
+piece of money to buy him off from wishing to marry her daughter. Such
+an idea would be quite in keeping with the disguised levity with which
+she treated his state of mind. If her levity was wrapped up in the air
+of tender solicitude for everything that related to the feelings of her
+child, that only made her failure to appreciate his suit more
+deliberate. She struck him almost as impertinent (at the same time that
+he knew this was never her intention) as she looked up at him--her tiny
+proportions always made her throw back her head and set something
+dancing in her cap--and inquired whether he had noticed if she gave two
+keys, tied together by a blue ribbon, to Susan Winkle, when that
+faithful but flurried domestic met them in the lobby. She was thinking
+only of questions of luggage, and the fact that he wished to marry Dora
+was the smallest incident in their getting off.
+
+'I think you ask me that only to change the subject,' he said. 'I don't
+believe that ever in your life you have been unconscious of what you
+have done with your keys.'
+
+'Not often, but you make me nervous,' she answered, with her patient,
+honest smile.
+
+'Oh, Cousin Maria!' the young man exclaimed, ambiguously, while Mrs.
+Temperly looked humanely at some totally uninteresting people who came
+straggling into the great hot, frescoed, velvety drawing-room, where it
+was as easy to see you were in an hotel as it was to see that, if you
+were, you were in one of the very best. Mrs. Temperly, since her
+husband's death, had passed much of her life at hotels, where she
+flattered herself that she preserved the tone of domestic life free from
+every taint and promoted the refined development of her children; but
+she selected them as well as she selected her friends. Somehow they
+became better from the very fact of her being there, and her children
+were smuggled in and out in the most extraordinary way; one never met
+them racing and whooping, as one did hundreds of others, in the lobbies.
+Her frequentation of hotels, where she paid enormous bills, was part of
+her expensive but practical way of living, and also of her theory that,
+from one week to another, she was going to Europe for a series of years
+as soon as she had wound up certain complicated affairs which had
+devolved upon her at her husband's death. If these affairs had dragged
+on it was owing to their inherent troublesomeness and implied no doubt
+of her capacity to bring them to a solution and to administer the very
+considerable fortune that Mr. Temperly had left. She used, in a
+superior, unprejudiced way, every convenience that the civilisation of
+her time offered her, and would have lived without hesitation in a
+lighthouse if this had contributed to her general scheme. She was now,
+in the interest of this scheme, preparing to use Europe, which she had
+not yet visited and with none of whose foreign tongues she was
+acquainted. This time she was certainly embarking.
+
+She took no notice of the discredit which her young friend appeared to
+throw on the idea that she had nerves, and betrayed no suspicion that he
+believed her to have them in about the same degree as a sound,
+productive Alderney cow. She only moved toward one of the numerous doors
+of the room, as if to remind him of all she had still to do before
+night. They passed together into the long, wide corridor of the hotel--a
+vista of soft carpet, numbered doors, wandering women and perpetual
+gaslight--and approached the staircase by which she must ascend again to
+her domestic duties. She counted over, serenely, for his enlightenment,
+those that were still to be performed; but he could see that everything
+would be finished by nine o'clock--the time she had fixed in advance.
+The heavy luggage was then to go to the steamer; she herself was to be
+on board, with the children and the smaller things, at eleven o'clock
+the next morning. They had thirty pieces, but this was less than they
+had when they came from California five years before. She wouldn't have
+done that again. It was true that at that time she had had Mr. Temperly
+to help: he had died, Raymond remembered, six months after the
+settlement in New York. But, on the other hand, she knew more now. It
+was one of Mrs. Temperly's amiable qualities that she admitted herself
+so candidly to be still susceptible of development. She never professed
+to be in possession of all the knowledge requisite for her career; not
+only did she let her friends know that she was always learning, but she
+appealed to them to instruct her, in a manner which was in itself an
+example.
+
+When Raymond said to her that he took for granted she would let him come
+down to the steamer for a last good-bye, she not only consented
+graciously but added that he was free to call again at the hotel in the
+evening, if he had nothing better to do. He must come between nine and
+ten; she expected several other friends--those who wished to see the
+last of them, yet didn't care to come to the ship. Then he would see all
+of them--she meant all of themselves, Dora and Effie and Tishy, and even
+Mademoiselle Bourde. She spoke exactly as if he had never approached her
+on the subject of Dora and as if Tishy, who was ten years of age, and
+Mademoiselle Bourde, who was the French governess and forty, were
+objects of no less an interest to him. He felt what a long pull he
+should have ever to get round her, and the sting of this knowledge was
+in his consciousness that Dora was really in her mother's hands. In Mrs.
+Temperly's composition there was not a hint of the bully; but none the
+less she held her children--she would hold them for ever. It was not
+simply by tenderness; but what it was by she knew best herself. Raymond
+appreciated the privilege of seeing Dora again that evening as well as
+on the morrow; yet he was so vexed with her mother that his vexation
+betrayed him into something that almost savoured of violence--a fact
+which I am ashamed to have to chronicle, as Mrs. Temperly's own urbanity
+deprived such breaches of every excuse. It may perhaps serve partly as
+an excuse for Raymond Bestwick that he was in love, or at least that he
+thought he was. Before she parted from him at the foot of the staircase
+he said to her, 'And of course, if things go as you like over there,
+Dora will marry some foreign prince.'
+
+She gave no sign of resenting this speech, but she looked at him for
+the first time as if she were hesitating, as if it were not instantly
+clear to her what to say. It appeared to him, on his side, for a moment,
+that there was something strange in her hesitation, that abruptly, by an
+inspiration, she was almost making up her mind to reply that Dora's
+marriage to a prince was, considering Dora's peculiarities (he knew that
+her mother deemed her peculiar, and so did he, but that was precisely
+why he wished to marry her), so little probable that, after all, once
+such a union was out of the question, _he_ might be no worse than
+another plain man. These, however, were not the words that fell from
+Mrs. Temperly's lips. Her embarrassment vanished in her clear smile. 'Do
+you know what Mr. Temperly used to say? He used to say that Dora was the
+pattern of an old maid--she would never make a choice.'
+
+'I hope--because that would have been too foolish--that he didn't say
+she wouldn't have a chance.'
+
+'Oh, a chance! what do you call by that fine name?' Cousin Maria
+exclaimed, laughing, as she ascended the stair.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+When he came back, after dinner, she was again in one of the public
+rooms; she explained that a lot of the things for the ship were spread
+out in her own parlours: there was no space to sit down. Raymond was
+highly gratified by this fact; it offered an opportunity for strolling
+away a little with Dora, especially as, after he had been there ten
+minutes, other people began to come in. They were entertained by the
+rest, by Effie and Tishy, who was allowed to sit up a little, and by
+Mademoiselle Bourde, who besought every visitor to indicate her a remedy
+that was _really_ effective against the sea--some charm, some philter,
+some potion or spell. 'Never mind, ma'm'selle, I've got a remedy,' said
+Cousin Maria, with her cheerful decision, each time; but the French
+instructress always began afresh.
+
+As the young man was about to be parted for an indefinite period from
+the girl whom he was ready to swear that he adored, it is clear that he
+ought to have been equally ready to swear that she was the fairest of
+her species. In point of fact, however, it was no less vivid to him than
+it had been before that he loved Dora Temperly for qualities which had
+nothing to do with straightness of nose or pinkness of complexion. Her
+figure was straight, and so was her character, but her nose was not, and
+Philistines and other vulgar people would have committed themselves,
+without a blush on their own flat faces, to the assertion that she was
+decidedly plain. In his artistic imagination he had analogies for her,
+drawn from legend and literature; he was perfectly aware that she struck
+many persons as silent, shy and angular, while his own version of her
+peculiarities was that she was like a figure on the _predella_ of an
+early Italian painting or a mediaeval maiden wandering about a lonely
+castle, with her lover gone to the Crusades. To his sense, Dora had but
+one defect--her admiration for her mother was too undiscriminating. An
+ardent young man may well be slightly vexed when he finds that a young
+lady will probably never care for him so much as she cares for her
+parent; and Raymond Bestwick had this added ground for chagrin, that
+Dora had--if she chose to take it--so good a pretext for discriminating.
+For she had nothing whatever in common with the others; she was not of
+the same stuff as Mrs. Temperly and Effie and Tishy.
+
+She was original and generous and uncalculating, besides being full of
+perception and taste in regard to the things _he_ cared about. She knew
+nothing of conventional signs or estimates, but understood everything
+that might be said to her from an artistic point of view. She was formed
+to live in a studio, and not in a stiff drawing-room, amid upholstery
+horribly new; and moreover her eyes and her voice were both charming. It
+was only a pity she was so gentle; that is, he liked it for himself, but
+he deplored it for her mother. He considered that he had virtually
+given that lady his word that he would not make love to her; but his
+spirits had risen since his visit of three or four hours before. It
+seemed to him, after thinking things over more intently, that a way
+would be opened for him to return to Paris. It was not probable that in
+the interval Dora would be married off to a prince; for in the first
+place the foolish race of princes would be sure not to appreciate her,
+and in the second she would not, in this matter, simply do her mother's
+bidding--her gentleness would not go so far as that. She might remain
+single by the maternal decree, but she would not take a husband who was
+disagreeable to her. In this reasoning Raymond was obliged to shut his
+eyes very tight to the danger that some particular prince might not be
+disagreeable to her, as well as to the attraction proceeding from what
+her mother might announce that she would 'do.' He was perfectly aware
+that it was in Cousin Maria's power, and would probably be in her
+pleasure, to settle a handsome marriage-fee upon each of her daughters.
+He was equally certain that this had nothing to do with the nature of
+his own interest in the eldest, both because it was clear that Mrs.
+Temperly would do very little for _him_, and because he didn't care how
+little she did.
+
+Effie and Tishy sat in the circle, on the edge of rather high chairs,
+while Mademoiselle Bourde surveyed in them with complacency the results
+of her own superiority. Tishy was a child, but Effie was fifteen, and
+they were both very nice little girls, arrayed in fresh travelling
+dresses and deriving a quaintness from the fact that Tishy was already
+armed, for foreign adventures, with a smart new reticule, from which
+she could not be induced to part, and that Effie had her finger in her
+'place' in a fat red volume of _Murray_. Raymond knew that in a general
+way their mother would not have allowed them to appear in the
+drawing-room with these adjuncts, but something was to be allowed to the
+fever of anticipation. They were both pretty, with delicate features and
+blue eyes, and would grow up into worldly, conventional young ladies,
+just as Dora had not done. They looked at Mademoiselle Bourde for
+approval whenever they spoke, and, in addressing their mother
+alternately with that accomplished woman, kept their two languages
+neatly distinct.
+
+Raymond had but a vague idea of who the people were who had come to bid
+Cousin Maria farewell, and he had no wish for a sharper one, though she
+introduced him, very definitely, to the whole group. She might make
+light of him in her secret soul, but she would never put herself in the
+wrong by omitting the smallest form. Fortunately, however, he was not
+obliged to like all her forms, and he foresaw the day when she would
+abandon this particular one. She was not so well made up in advance
+about Paris but that it would be in reserve for her to detest the period
+when she had thought it proper to 'introduce all round.' Raymond
+detested it already, and tried to make Dora understand that he wished
+her to take a walk with him in the corridors. There was a gentleman with
+a curl on his forehead who especially displeased him; he made childish
+jokes, at which the others laughed all at once, as if they had rehearsed
+for it--jokes _a la portee_ of Effie and Tishy and mainly about them.
+These two joined in the merriment, as if they followed perfectly, as
+indeed they might, and gave a small sigh afterward, with a little
+factitious air. Dora remained grave, almost sad; it was when she was
+different, in this way, that he felt how much he liked her. He hated, in
+general, a large ring of people who had drawn up chairs in the public
+room of an hotel: some one was sure to undertake to be funny.
+
+He succeeded at last in drawing Dora away; he endeavoured to give the
+movement a casual air. There was nothing peculiar, after all, in their
+walking a little in the passage; a dozen other persons were doing the
+same. The girl had the air of not suspecting in the least that he could
+have anything particular to say to her--of responding to his appeal
+simply out of her general gentleness. It was not in her companion's
+interest that her mind should be such a blank; nevertheless his
+conviction that in spite of the ministrations of Mademoiselle Bourde she
+was not falsely ingenuous made him repeat to himself that he would still
+make her his own. They took several turns in the hall, during which it
+might still have appeared to Dora Temperly that her cousin Raymond had
+nothing particular to say to her. He remarked several times that he
+should certainly turn up in Paris in the spring; but when once she had
+replied that she was very glad that subject seemed exhausted. The young
+man cared little, however; it was not a question now of making any
+declaration: he only wanted to be with her. Suddenly, when they were at
+the end of the corridor furthest removed from the room they had left, he
+said to her: 'Your mother is very strange. Why has she got such an idea
+about Paris?'
+
+'How do you mean, such an idea?' He had stopped, making the girl stand
+there before him.
+
+'Well, she thinks so much of it without having ever seen it, or really
+knowing anything. She appears to have planned out such a great life
+there.'
+
+'She thinks it's the best place,' Dora rejoined, with the dim smile that
+always charmed our young man.
+
+'The best place for what?'
+
+'Well, to learn French.' The girl continued to smile.
+
+'Do you mean for her? She'll never learn it; she can't.'
+
+'No; for us. And other things.'
+
+'You know it already. And _you_ know other things,' said Raymond.
+
+'She wants us to know them better--better than any girls know them.'
+
+'I don't know what things you mean,' exclaimed the young man, rather
+impatiently.
+
+'Well, we shall see,' Dora returned, laughing.
+
+He said nothing for a minute, at the end of which he resumed: 'I hope
+you won't be offended if I say that it seems curious your mother should
+have such aspirations--such Napoleonic plans. I mean being just a quiet
+little lady from California, who has never seen any of the kind of thing
+that she has in her head.'
+
+'That's just why she wants to see it, I suppose; and I don't know why
+her being from California should prevent. At any rate she wants us to
+have the best. Isn't the best taste in Paris?'
+
+'Yes; and the worst.' It made him gloomy when she defended the old lady,
+and to change the subject he asked: 'Aren't you sorry, this last night,
+to leave your own country for such an indefinite time?'
+
+It didn't cheer him up that the girl should answer: 'Oh, I would go
+anywhere with mother!'
+
+'And with _her_?' Raymond demanded, sarcastically, as Mademoiselle
+Bourde came in sight, emerging from the drawing-room. She approached
+them; they met her in a moment, and she informed Dora that Mrs. Temperly
+wished her to come back and play a part of that composition of
+Saint-Saens--the last one she had been learning--for Mr. and Mrs.
+Parminter: they wanted to judge whether their daughter could manage it.
+
+'I don't believe she can,' said Dora, smiling; but she was moving away
+to comply when her companion detained her a moment.
+
+Are you going to bid me good-bye?'
+
+'Won't you come back to the drawing-room?'
+
+'I think not; I don't like it.'
+
+'And to mamma--you'll say nothing?' the girl went on.
+
+'Oh, we have made our farewell; we had a special interview this
+afternoon.'
+
+'And you won't come to the ship in the morning?'
+
+Raymond hesitated a moment. 'Will Mr. and Mrs. Parminter be there?'
+
+'Oh, surely they will!' Mademoiselle Bourde declared, surveying the
+young couple with a certain tactful serenity, but standing very close to
+them, as if it might be her duty to interpose.
+
+'Well then, I won't come.'
+
+'Well, good-bye then,' said the girl gently, holding out her hand.
+
+'Good-bye, Dora.' He took it, while she smiled at him, but he said
+nothing more--he was so annoyed at the way Mademoiselle Bourde watched
+them. He only looked at Dora; she seemed to him beautiful.
+
+'My dear child--that poor Madame Parminter,' the governess murmured.
+
+'I shall come over very soon,' said Raymond, as his companion turned
+away.
+
+'That will be charming.' And she left him quickly, without looking back.
+
+Mademoiselle Bourde lingered--he didn't know why, unless it was to make
+him feel, with her smooth, finished French assurance, which had the
+manner of extreme benignity, that she was following him up. He sometimes
+wondered whether she copied Mrs. Temperly or whether Mrs. Temperly tried
+to copy her. Presently she said, slowly rubbing her hands and smiling at
+him:
+
+'You will have plenty of time. We shall be long in Paris.'
+
+'Perhaps you will be disappointed,' Raymond suggested.
+
+'How can we be--unless _you_ disappoint us?' asked the governess,
+sweetly.
+
+He left her without ceremony: the imitation was probably on the part of
+Cousin Maria.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+'Only just ourselves,' her note had said; and he arrived, in his natural
+impatience, a few moments before the hour. He remembered his Cousin
+Maria's habitual punctuality, but when he entered the splendid _salon_
+in the quarter of the Parc Monceau--it was there that he had found her
+established--he saw that he should have it, for a little, to himself.
+This was pleasing, for he should be able to look round--there were
+admirable things to look at. Even to-day Raymond Bestwick was not sure
+that he had learned to paint, but he had no doubt of his judgment of the
+work of others, and a single glance showed him that Mrs. Temperly had
+'known enough' to select, for the adornment of her walls, half a dozen
+immensely valuable specimens of contemporary French art. Her choice of
+other objects had been equally enlightened, and he remembered what Dora
+had said to him five years before--that her mother wished them to have
+the best. Evidently, now they had got it; if five years was a long time
+for him to have delayed (with his original plan of getting off so soon)
+to come to Paris, it was a very short one for Cousin Maria to have taken
+to arrive at the highest good.
+
+Rather to his surprise the first person to come in was Effie, now so
+complete a young lady, and such a very pretty girl, that he scarcely
+would have known her. She was fair, she was graceful, she was lovely,
+and as she entered the room, blushing and smiling, with a little
+floating motion which suggested that she was in a liquid element, she
+brushed down the ribbons of a delicate Parisian _toilette de jeune
+fille_. She appeared to expect that he would be surprised, and as if to
+justify herself for being the first she said, 'Mamma told me to come;
+she knows you are here; she said I was not to wait.' More than once,
+while they conversed, during the next few moments, before any one else
+arrived, she repeated that she was acting by her mamma's directions.
+Raymond perceived that she had not only the costume but several other of
+the attributes of a _jeune fille_. They talked, I say, but with a
+certain difficulty, for Effie asked him no questions, and this made him
+feel a little stiff about thrusting information upon her. Then she was
+so pretty, so exquisite, that this by itself disconcerted him. It seemed
+to him almost that she had falsified a prophecy, instead of bringing one
+to pass. He had foretold that she would be like this; the only
+difference was that she was so much more like it. She made no inquiries
+about his arrival, his people in America, his plans; and they exchanged
+vague remarks about the pictures, quite as if they had met for the first
+time.
+
+When Cousin Maria came in Effie was standing in front of the fire
+fastening a bracelet, and he was at a distance gazing in silence at a
+portrait of his hostess by Bastien-Lepage. One of his apprehensions had
+been that Cousin Maria would allude ironically to the difference there
+had been between his threat (because it had been really almost a
+threat) of following them speedily to Paris and what had in fact
+occurred; but he saw in a moment how superficial this calculation had
+been. Besides, when had Cousin Maria ever been ironical? She treated him
+as if she had seen him last week (which did not preclude kindness), and
+only expressed her regret at having missed his visit the day before, in
+consequence of which she had immediately written to him to come and
+dine. He might have come from round the corner, instead of from New York
+and across the wintry ocean. This was a part of her 'cosiness,' her
+friendly, motherly optimism, of which, even of old, the habit had been
+never to recognise nor allude to disagreeable things; so that to-day, in
+the midst of so much that was not disagreeable, the custom would of
+course be immensely confirmed.
+
+Raymond was perfectly aware that it was not a pleasure, even for her,
+that, for several years past, things should have gone so ill in New York
+with his family and himself. His father's embarrassments, of which
+Marian's silly husband had been the cause and which had terminated in
+general ruin and humiliation, to say nothing of the old man's 'stroke'
+and the necessity, arising from it, for a renunciation on his own part
+of all present thoughts of leaving home again and even for a partial
+relinquishment of present work, the old man requiring so much of his
+personal attention--all this constituted an episode which could not fail
+to look sordid and dreary in the light of Mrs. Temperly's high success.
+The odour of success was in the warm, slightly heavy air, which seemed
+distilled from rare old fabrics, from brocades and tapestries, from the
+deep, mingled tones of the pictures, the subdued radiance of cabinets
+and old porcelain and the jars of winter roses standing in soft circles
+of lamp-light. Raymond felt himself in the presence of an effect in
+regard to which he remained in ignorance of the cause--a mystery that
+required a key. Cousin Maria's success was unexplained so long as she
+simply stood there with her little familiar, comforting, upward gaze,
+talking in coaxing cadences, with exactly the same manner she had
+brought ten years ago from California, to a tall, bald, bending, smiling
+young man, evidently a foreigner, who had just come in and whose name
+Raymond had not caught from the lips of the _maitre d'hotel_. Was he
+just one of themselves--was he there for Effie, or perhaps even for
+Dora? The unexplained must preponderate till Dora came in; he found he
+counted upon her, even though in her letters (it was true that for the
+last couple of years they had come but at long intervals) she had told
+him so little about their life. She never spoke of people; she talked of
+the books she read, of the music she had heard or was studying (a whole
+page sometimes about the last concert at the Conservatoire), the new
+pictures and the manner of the different artists.
+
+When she entered the room three or four minutes after the arrival of the
+young foreigner, with whom her mother conversed in just the accents
+Raymond had last heard at the hotel in the Fifth Avenue (he was obliged
+to admit that she gave herself no airs; it was clear that her success
+had not gone in the least to her head); when Dora at last appeared she
+was accompanied by Mademoiselle Bourde. The presence of this lady--he
+didn't know she was still in the house--Raymond took as a sign that
+they were really dining _en famille_, so that the young man was either
+an actual or a prospective intimate. Dora shook hands first with her
+cousin, but he watched the manner of her greeting with the other visitor
+and saw that it indicated extreme friendliness--on the part of the
+latter. If there was a charming flush in her cheek as he took her hand,
+that was the remainder of the colour that had risen there as she came
+toward Raymond. It will be seen that our young man still had an eye for
+the element of fascination, as he used to regard it, in this quiet,
+dimly-shining maiden.
+
+He saw that Effie was the only one who had changed (Tishy remained yet
+to be judged), except that Dora really looked older, quite as much older
+as the number of years had given her a right to: there was as little
+difference in her as there was in her mother. Not that she was like her
+mother, but she was perfectly like herself. Her meeting with Raymond was
+bright, but very still; their phrases were awkward and commonplace, and
+the thing was mainly a contact of looks--conscious, embarrassed,
+indirect, but brightening every moment with old familiarities. Her
+mother appeared to pay no attention, and neither, to do her justice, did
+Mademoiselle Bourde, who, after an exchange of expressive salutations
+with Raymond began to scrutinise Effie with little admiring gestures and
+smiles. She surveyed her from head to foot; she pulled a ribbon
+straight; she was evidently a flattering governess. Cousin Maria
+explained to Cousin Raymond that they were waiting for one more
+friend--a very dear lady. 'But she lives near, and when people live near
+they are always late--haven't you noticed that?'
+
+'Your hotel is far away, I know, and yet you were the first,' Dora
+said, smiling to Raymond.
+
+'Oh, even if it were round the corner I should be the first--to come to
+_you_!' the young man answered, speaking loud and clear, so that his
+words might serve as a notification to Cousin Maria that his sentiments
+were unchanged.
+
+'You are more French than the French,' Dora returned.
+
+'You say that as if you didn't like them: I hope you don't,' said
+Raymond, still with intentions in regard to his hostess.
+
+'We like them more and more, the more we see of them,' this lady
+interposed; but gently, impersonally, and with an air of not wishing to
+put Raymond in the wrong.
+
+'_Mais j'espere bien!_' cried Mademoiselle Bourde, holding up her head
+and opening her eyes very wide. 'Such friendships as we form, and, I may
+say, as we inspire! _Je m'en rapporte a Effie_', the governess
+continued.
+
+'We have received immense kindness; we have established relations that
+are so pleasant for us, Cousin Raymond. We have the _entree_ of so many
+charming homes,' Mrs. Temperly remarked.
+
+'But ours is the most charming of all; that I will say,' exclaimed
+Mademoiselle Bourde. 'Isn't it so, Effie?'
+
+'Oh yes, I think it is; especially when we are expecting the Marquise,'
+Effie responded. Then she added, 'But here she comes now; I hear her
+carriage in the court.'
+
+The Marquise too was just one of themselves; she was a part of their
+charming home.
+
+'She _is_ such a love!' said Mrs. Temperly to the foreign gentleman,
+with an irrepressible movement of benevolence.
+
+To which Raymond heard the gentleman reply that, Ah, she was the most
+distinguished woman in France.
+
+'Do you know Madame de Brives?' Effie asked of Raymond, while they were
+waiting for her to come in.
+
+She came in at that moment, and the girl turned away quickly without an
+answer.
+
+'How in the world should I know her?' That was the answer he would have
+been tempted to give. He felt very much out of Cousin Maria's circle.
+The foreign gentleman fingered his moustache and looked at him sidewise.
+The Marquise was a very pretty woman, fair and slender, of middle age,
+with a smile, a complexion, a diamond necklace, of great splendour, and
+a charming manner. Her greeting to her friends was sweet and familiar,
+and was accompanied with much kissing, of a sisterly, motherly,
+daughterly kind; and yet with this expression of simple, almost homely
+sentiment there was something in her that astonished and dazzled. She
+might very well have been, as the foreign young man said, the most
+distinguished woman in France. Dora had not rushed forward to meet her
+with nearly so much _empressement_ as Effie, and this gave him a chance
+to ask the former who she was. The girl replied that she was her
+mother's most intimate friend: to which he rejoined that that was not a
+description; what he wanted to know was her title to this exalted
+position.
+
+'Why, can't you see it? She is beautiful and she is good.'
+
+'I see that she is beautiful; but how can I see that she is good?'
+
+'Good to mamma, I mean, and to Effie and Tishy.'
+
+'And isn't she good to you?'
+
+'Oh, I don't know her so well. But I delight to look at her.'
+
+'Certainly, that must be a great pleasure,' said Raymond. He enjoyed it
+during dinner, which was now served, though his enjoyment was diminished
+by his not finding himself next to Dora. They sat at a small round table
+and he had at his right his Cousin Maria, whom he had taken in. On his
+left was Madame de Brives, who had the foreign gentleman for a
+neighbour. Then came Effie and Mademoiselle Bourde, and Dora was on the
+other side of her mother. Raymond regarded this as marked--a symbol of
+the fact that Cousin Maria would continue to separate them. He remained
+in ignorance of the other gentleman's identity, and remembered how he
+had prophesied at the hotel in New York that his hostess would give up
+introducing people. It was a friendly, easy little family repast, as she
+had said it would be, with just a marquise and a secretary of
+embassy--Raymond ended by guessing that the stranger was a secretary of
+embassy--thrown in. So far from interfering with the family tone Madame
+de Brives directly contributed to it. She eminently justified the
+affection in which she was held in the house; she was in the highest
+degree sociable and sympathetic, and at the same time witty (there was
+no insipidity in Madame de Brives), and was the cause of Raymond's
+making the reflection--as he had made it often in his earlier
+years--that an agreeable Frenchwoman is a triumph of civilisation. This
+did not prevent him from giving the Marquise no more than half of his
+attention; the rest was dedicated to Dora, who, on her side, though in
+common with Effie and Mademoiselle Bourde she bent a frequent,
+interested gaze on the splendid French lady, very often met our young
+man's eyes with mute, vague but, to his sense, none the less valuable
+intimations. It was as if she knew what was going on in his mind (it is
+true that he scarcely knew it himself), and might be trusted to clear
+things up at some convenient hour.
+
+Madame de Brives talked across Raymond, in excellent English, to Cousin
+Maria, but this did not prevent her from being gracious, even
+encouraging, to the young man, who was a little afraid of her and
+thought her a delightful creature. She asked him more questions about
+himself than any of them had done. Her conversation with Mrs. Temperly
+was of an intimate, domestic order, and full of social, personal
+allusions, which Raymond was unable to follow. It appeared to be
+concerned considerably with the private affairs of the old French
+_noblesse_, into whose councils--to judge by the tone of the
+Marquise--Cousin Maria had been admitted by acclamation. Every now and
+then Madame de Brives broke into French, and it was in this tongue that
+she uttered an apostrophe to her hostess: 'Oh, you, _ma toute-bonne_,
+you who have the genius of good sense!' And she appealed to Raymond to
+know if his Cousin Maria had not the genius of good sense--the wisdom of
+the ages. The old lady did not defend herself from the compliment; she
+let it pass, with her motherly, tolerant smile; nor did Raymond attempt
+to defend her, for he felt the justice of his neighbour's description:
+Cousin Maria's good sense was incontestable, magnificent. She took an
+affectionate, indulgent view of most of the persons mentioned, and yet
+her tone was far from being vapid or vague. Madame de Brives usually
+remarked that they were coming very soon again to see her, she did them
+so much good. 'The freshness of your judgment--the freshness of your
+judgment!' she repeated, with a kind of glee, and she narrated that
+Eleonore (a personage unknown to Raymond) had said that she was a woman
+of Plutarch. Mrs. Temperly talked a great deal about the health of their
+friends; she seemed to keep the record of the influenzas and neuralgias
+of a numerous and susceptible circle. He did not find it in him quite to
+agree--the Marquise dropping the statement into his ear at a moment when
+their hostess was making some inquiry of Mademoiselle Bourde--that she
+was a nature absolutely marvellous; but he could easily see that to
+world-worn Parisians her quiet charities of speech and manner, with
+something quaint and rustic in their form, might be restorative and
+salutary. She allowed for everything, yet she was so good, and indeed
+Madame de Brives summed this up before they left the table in saying to
+her, 'Oh, you, my dear, your success, more than any other that has ever
+taken place, has been a _succes de bonte_! Raymond was greatly amused at
+this idea of Cousin Maria's _succes de bonte_: it seemed to him
+delightfully Parisian.
+
+Before dinner was over she inquired of him how he had got on 'in his
+profession' since they last met, and he was too proud, or so he thought,
+to tell her anything but the simple truth, that he had not got on very
+well. If he was to ask her again for Dora it would be just as he was, an
+honourable but not particularly successful man, making no show of lures
+and bribes. 'I am not a remarkably good painter,' he said. 'I judge
+myself perfectly. And then I have been handicapped at home. I have had a
+great many serious bothers and worries.'
+
+'Ah, we were so sorry to hear about your dear father.'
+
+The tone of these words was kind and sincere; still Raymond thought that
+in this case her _bonte_ might have gone a little further. At any rate
+this was the only allusion that she made to his bothers and worries.
+Indeed, she always passed over such things lightly; she was an optimist
+for others as well as for herself, which doubtless had a great deal to
+do (Raymond indulged in the reflection) with the headway she made in a
+society tired of its own pessimism.
+
+After dinner, when they went into the drawing-room, the young man noted
+with complacency that this apartment, vast in itself, communicated with
+two or three others into which it would be easy to pass without
+attracting attention, the doors being replaced by old tapestries, looped
+up and offering no barrier. With pictures and curiosities all over the
+place, there were plenty of pretexts for wandering away. He lost no time
+in asking Dora whether her mother would send Mademoiselle Bourde after
+them if she were to go with him into one of the other rooms, the same
+way she had done--didn't she remember?--that last night in New York, at
+the hotel. Dora didn't admit that she remembered (she was too loyal to
+her mother for that, and Raymond foresaw that this loyalty would be a
+source of irritation to him again, as it had been in the past), but he
+perceived, all the same, that she had not forgotten. She raised no
+difficulty, and a few moments later, while they stood in an adjacent
+_salon_ (he had stopped to admire a bust of Effie, wonderfully living,
+slim and juvenile, the work of one of the sculptors who are the pride of
+contemporary French art), he said to her, looking about him, 'How has
+she done it so fast?'
+
+'Done what, Raymond?'
+
+'Why, done everything. Collected all these wonderful things; become
+intimate with Madame de Brives and every one else; organised her
+life--the life of all of you--so brilliantly.'
+
+'I have never seen mamma in a hurry,' Dora replied.
+
+'Perhaps she will be, now that I have come,' Raymond suggested,
+laughing.
+
+The girl hesitated a moment 'Yes, she was, to invite you--the moment she
+knew you were here.'
+
+'She has been most kind, and I talk like a brute. But I am liable to do
+worse--I give you notice. She won't like it any more than she did
+before, if she thinks I want to make up to you.'
+
+'Don't, Raymond--don't!' the girl exclaimed, gently, but with a look of
+sudden pain.
+
+'Don't what, Dora?--don't make up to you?'
+
+'Don't begin to talk of those things. There is no need. We can go on
+being friends.'
+
+'I will do exactly as you prescribe, and heaven forbid I should annoy
+you. But would you mind answering me a question? It is very particular,
+very intimate.' He stopped, and she only looked at him, saying nothing.
+So he went on: 'Is it an idea of your mother's that you should
+marry--some person here?' He gave her a chance to reply, but still she
+was silent, and he continued: 'Do you mind telling me this? Could it
+ever be an idea of your own?'
+
+'Do you mean some Frenchman?'
+
+Raymond smiled. 'Some protege of Madame de Brives.'
+
+Then the girl simply gave a slow, sad head-shake which struck him as the
+sweetest, proudest, most suggestive thing in the world. 'Well, well,
+that's all right,' he remarked, cheerfully, and looked again a while at
+the bust, which he thought extraordinarily clever. 'And haven't _you_
+been done by one of these great fellows?'
+
+'Oh dear no; only mamma and Effie. But Tishy is going to be, in a month
+or two. The next time you come you must see her. She remembers you
+vividly.'
+
+'And I remember her that last night, with her reticule. Is she always
+pretty?'
+
+Dora hesitated a moment. 'She is a very sweet little creature, but she
+is not so pretty as Effie.'
+
+'And have none of them wished to do you--none of the painters?'
+
+'Oh, it's not a question of me. I only wish them to let me alone.'
+
+'For me it would be a question of you, if you would sit for me. But I
+daresay your mother wouldn't allow that.'
+
+'No, I think not,' said Dora, smiling.
+
+She smiled, but her companion looked grave. However, not to pursue the
+subject, he asked, abruptly, 'Who is this Madame de Brives?'
+
+'If you lived in Paris you would know. She is very celebrated.'
+
+'Celebrated for what?'
+
+'For everything.'
+
+'And is she good--is she genuine?' Raymond asked. Then, seeing something
+in the girl's face, he added: 'I told you I should be brutal again. Has
+she undertaken to make a great marriage for Effie?'
+
+'I don't know what she has undertaken,' said Dora, impatiently.
+
+'And then for Tishy, when Effie has been disposed of?'
+
+'Poor little Tishy!' the girl continued, rather inscrutably.
+
+'And can she do nothing for you?' the young man inquired.
+
+Her answer surprised him--after a moment. 'She has kindly offered to
+exert herself, but it's no use.'
+
+'Well, that's good. And who is it the young man comes for--the secretary
+of embassy?'
+
+'Oh, he comes for all of us,' said Dora, laughing.
+
+'I suppose your mother would prefer a preference,' Raymond suggested.
+
+To this she replied, irrelevantly, that she thought they had better go
+back; but as Raymond took no notice of the recommendation she mentioned
+that the secretary was no one in particular. At this moment Effie,
+looking very rosy and happy, pushed through the _portiere_ with the news
+that her sister must come and bid good-bye to the Marquise. She was
+taking her to the Duchess's--didn't Dora remember? To the _bal
+blanc_--the _sauterie de jeunes filles_.
+
+'I thought we should be called,' said Raymond, as he followed Effie;
+and he remarked that perhaps Madame de Brives would find something
+suitable at the Duchess's.
+
+'I don't know. Mamma would be very particular,' the girl rejoined; and
+this was said simply, sympathetically, without the least appearance of
+deflection from that loyalty which Raymond deplored.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+'You must come to us on the 17th; we expect to have a few people and
+some good music,' Cousin Maria said to him before he quitted the house;
+and he wondered whether, the 17th being still ten days off, this might
+not be an intimation that they could abstain from his society until
+then. He chose, at any rate, not to take it as such, and called several
+times in the interval, late in the afternoon, when the ladies would be
+sure to have come in.
+
+They were always there, and Cousin Maria's welcome was, for each
+occasion, maternal, though when he took leave she made no allusion to
+future meetings--to his coming again; but there were always other
+visitors as well, collected at tea round the great fire of logs, in the
+friendly, brilliant drawing-room where the luxurious was no enemy to the
+casual and Mrs. Temperly's manner of dispensing hospitality recalled to
+our young man somehow certain memories of his youthful time: visits in
+New England, at old homesteads flanked with elms, where a talkative,
+democratic, delightful farmer's wife pressed upon her company rustic
+viands in which she herself had had a hand. Cousin Maria enjoyed the
+services of a distinguished _chef_, and delicious _petits fours_ were
+served with her tea; but Raymond had a sense that to complete the
+impression hot home-made gingerbread should have been produced.
+
+The atmosphere was suffused with the presence of Madame de Brives. She
+was either there or she was just coming or she was just gone; her name,
+her voice, her example and encouragement were in the air. Other ladies
+came and went--sometimes accompanied by gentlemen who looked worn out,
+had waxed moustaches and knew how to talk--and they were sometimes
+designated in the same manner as Madame de Brives; but she remained the
+Marquise _par excellence_, the incarnation of brilliancy and renown. The
+conversation moved among simple but civilised topics, was not dull and,
+considering that it consisted largely of personalities, was not
+ill-natured. Least of all was it scandalous, for the girls were always
+there, Cousin Maria not having thought it in the least necessary, in
+order to put herself in accord with French traditions, to relegate her
+daughters to the middle distance. They occupied a considerable part of
+the foreground, in the prettiest, most modest, most becoming attitudes.
+
+It was Cousin Maria's theory of her own behaviour that she did in Paris
+simply as she had always done; and though this would not have been a
+complete account of the matter Raymond could not fail to notice the good
+sense and good taste with which she laid down her lines and the quiet
+_bonhomie_ of the authority with which she caused the tone of the
+American home to be respected. Scandal stayed outside, not simply
+because Effie and Tishy were there, but because, even if Cousin Maria
+had received alone, she never would have received evil-speakers.
+Indeed, for Raymond, who had been accustomed to think that in a general
+way he knew pretty well what the French capital was, this was a strange,
+fresh Paris altogether, destitute of the salt that seasoned it for most
+palates, and yet not insipid nor innutritive. He marvelled at Cousin
+Maria's air, in such a city, of knowing, of recognising nothing bad: all
+the more that it represented an actual state of mind. He used to wonder
+sometimes what she would do and how she would feel if some day, in
+consequence of researches made by the Marquise in the _grand monde_, she
+should find herself in possession of a son-in-law formed according to
+one of the types of which _he_ had impressions. However, it was not
+credible that Madame de Brives would play her a trick. There were
+moments when Raymond almost wished she might--to see how Cousin Maria
+would handle the gentleman.
+
+Dora was almost always taken up by visitors, and he had scarcely any
+direct conversation with her. She was there, and he was glad she was
+there, and she knew he was glad (he knew that), but this was almost all
+the communion he had with her. She was mild, exquisitely mild--this was
+the term he mentally applied to her now--and it amply sufficed him, with
+the conviction he had that she was not stupid. She attended to the tea
+(for Mademoiselle Bourde was not always free), she handed the _petits
+fours_, she rang the bell when people went out; and it was in connection
+with these offices that the idea came to him once--he was rather ashamed
+of it afterward--that she was the Cinderella of the house, the domestic
+drudge, the one for whom there was no career, as it was useless for the
+Marquise to take up her case. He was ashamed of this fancy, I say, and
+yet it came back to him; he was even surprised that it had not occurred
+to him before. Her sisters were neither ugly nor proud (Tishy, indeed,
+was almost touchingly delicate and timid, with exceedingly pretty
+points, yet with a little appealing, old-womanish look, as if,
+small--very small--as she was, she was afraid she shouldn't grow any
+more); but her mother, like the mother in the fairy-tale, was a _femme
+forte_. Madame de Brives could do nothing for Dora, not absolutely
+because she was too plain, but because she would never lend herself, and
+that came to the same thing. Her mother accepted her as recalcitrant,
+but Cousin Maria's attitude, at the best, could only be resignation. She
+would respect her child's preferences, she would never put on the screw;
+but this would not make her love the child any more. So Raymond
+interpreted certain signs, which at the same time he felt to be very
+slight, while the conversation in Mrs. Temperly's _salon_ (this was its
+preponderant tendency) rambled among questions of bric-a-brac, of where
+Tishy's portrait should be placed when it was finished, and the current
+prices of old Gobelins. _Ces dames_ were not in the least above the
+discussion of prices.
+
+On the 17th it was easy to see that more lamps than usual had been
+lighted. They streamed through all the windows of the charming hotel and
+mingled with the radiance of the carriage-lanterns, which followed each
+other slowly, in couples, in a close, long rank, into the fine sonorous
+court, where the high stepping of valuable horses was sharp on the
+stones, and up to the ruddy portico. The night was wet, not with a
+downpour, but with showers interspaced by starry patches, which only
+added to the glitter of the handsome, clean Parisian surfaces. The
+_sergents de ville_ were about the place, and seemed to make the
+occasion important and official. These night aspects of Paris in the
+_beaux quartiers_ had always for Raymond a particularly festive
+association, and as he passed from his cab under the wide permanent tin
+canopy, painted in stripes like an awning, which protected the low
+steps, it seemed to him odder than ever that all this established
+prosperity should be Cousin Maria's.
+
+If the thought of how well she did it bore him company from the
+threshold, it deepened to admiration by the time he had been half an
+hour in the place. She stood near the entrance with her two elder
+daughters, distributing the most familiar, most encouraging smiles,
+together with hand-shakes which were in themselves a whole system of
+hospitality. If her party was grand Cousin Maria was not; she indulged
+in no assumption of stateliness and no attempt at graduated welcomes. It
+seemed to Raymond that it was only because it would have taken too much
+time that she didn't kiss every one. Effie looked lovely and just a
+little frightened, which was exactly what she ought to have done; and he
+noticed that among the arriving guests those who were not intimate
+(which he could not tell from Mrs. Temperly's manner, but could from
+their own) recognised her as a daughter much more quickly than they
+recognised Dora, who hung back disinterestedly, as if not to challenge
+their discernment, while the current passed her, keeping her little
+sister in position on its brink meanwhile by the tenderest small
+gesture.
+
+'May I talk with you a little, later?' he asked of Dora, with only a
+few seconds for the question, as people were pressing behind him. She
+answered evasively that there would be very little talk--they would all
+have to listen--it was very serious; and the next moment he had received
+a programme from the hand of a monumental yet gracious personage who
+stood beyond and who had a silver chain round his neck.
+
+The place was arranged for music, and how well arranged he saw later,
+when every one was seated, spaciously, luxuriously, without pushing or
+over-peeping, and the finest talents in Paris performed selections at
+which the best taste had presided. The singers and players were all
+stars of the first magnitude. Raymond was fond of music and he wondered
+whose taste it had been. He made up his mind it was Dora's--it was only
+she who could have conceived a combination so exquisite; and he said to
+himself: 'How they all pull together! She is not in it, she is not of
+it, and yet she too works for the common end.' And by 'all' he meant
+also Mademoiselle Bourde and the Marquise. This impression made him feel
+rather hopeless, as if, _en fin de compte_, Cousin Maria were too large
+an adversary. Great as was the pleasure of being present on an occasion
+so admirably organised, of sitting there in a beautiful room, in a
+still, attentive, brilliant company, with all the questions of
+temperature, space, light and decoration solved to the gratification of
+every sense, and listening to the best artists doing their best--happily
+constituted as our young man was to enjoy such a privilege as this, the
+total effect was depressing: it made him feel as if the gods were not
+on his side.
+
+'And does she do it so well without a man? There must be so many details
+a woman can't tackle,' he said to himself; for even counting in the
+Marquise and Mademoiselle Bourde this only made a multiplication of
+petticoats. Then it came over him that she _was_ a man as well as a
+woman--the masculine element was included in her nature. He was sure
+that she bought her horses without being cheated, and very few men could
+do that. She had the American national quality--she had 'faculty' in a
+supreme degree. 'Faculty--faculty,' the voices of the quartette of
+singers seemed to repeat, in the quick movement of a composition they
+rendered beautifully, while they swelled and went faster, till the thing
+became a joyous chant of praise, a glorification of Cousin Maria's
+practical genius.
+
+During the intermission, in the middle of the concert, people changed
+places more or less and circulated, so that, walking about at this time,
+he came upon the Marquise, who, in her sympathetic, demonstrative way,
+appeared to be on the point of clasping her hostess in her arms.
+'Decidement, ma bonne, il n'y a que vous! C'est une perfection----' he
+heard her say. To which, gratified but unelated, Cousin Maria replied,
+according to her simple, sociable wont: 'Well, it _does_ seem quite a
+successful occasion. If it will only keep on to the end!'
+
+Raymond, wandering far, found himself in a world that was mainly quite
+new to him, and explained his ignorance of it by reflecting that the
+people were probably celebrated: so many of them had decorations and
+stars and a quiet of manner that could only be accounted for by renown.
+There were plenty of Americans with no badge but a certain fine
+negativeness, and _they_ were quiet for a reason which by this time had
+become very familiar to Raymond: he had heard it so often mentioned that
+his country-people were supremely 'adaptable.' He tried to get hold of
+Dora, but he saw that her mother had arranged things beautifully to keep
+her occupied with other people; so at least he interpreted the
+fact--after all very natural--that she had half a dozen fluttered young
+girls on her mind, whom she was providing with programmes, seats, ices,
+occasional murmured remarks and general support and protection. When the
+concert was over she supplied them with further entertainment in the
+form of several young men who had pliable backs and flashing breastpins
+and whom she inarticulately introduced to them, which gave her still
+more to do, as after this serious step she had to stay and watch all
+parties. It was strange to Raymond to see her transformed by her mother
+into a precocious duenna. Him she introduced to no young girl, and he
+knew not whether to regard this as cold neglect or as high
+consideration. If he had liked he might have taken it as a sweet
+intimation that she knew he couldn't care for any girl but her.
+
+On the whole he was glad, because it left him free--free to get hold of
+her mother, which by this time he had boldly determined to do. The
+conception was high, inasmuch as Cousin Maria's attention was obviously
+required by the ambassadors and other grandees who had flocked to do her
+homage. Nevertheless, while supper was going on (he wanted none, and
+neither apparently did she), he collared her, as he phrased it to
+himself, in just the right place--on the threshold of the conservatory.
+She was flanked on either side with a foreigner of distinction, but he
+didn't care for her foreigners now. Besides, a conservatory was meant
+only for couples; it was a sign of her comprehensive sociability that
+she should have been rambling among the palms and orchids with a double
+escort. Her friends would wish to quit her but would not wish to appear
+to give way to each other; and Raymond felt that he was relieving them
+both (though he didn't care) when he asked her to be so good as to give
+him a few minutes' conversation. He made her go back with him into the
+conservatory: it was the only thing he had ever made her do, or probably
+ever would. She began to talk about the great Gregorini--how it had been
+too sweet of her to repeat one of her songs, when it had really been
+understood in advance that repetitions were not expected. Raymond had no
+interest at present in the great Gregorini. He asked Cousin Maria
+vehemently if she remembered telling him in New York--that night at the
+hotel, five years before--that when he should have followed them to
+Paris he would be free to address her on the subject of Dora. She had
+given him a promise that she would listen to him in this case, and now
+he must keep her up to the mark. It was impossible to see her alone,
+but, at whatever inconvenience to herself, he must insist on her giving
+him his opportunity.
+
+'About Dora, Cousin Raymond?' she asked, blandly and kindly--almost as
+if she didn't exactly know who Dora was.
+
+'Surely you haven't forgotten what passed between us the evening before
+you left America. I was in love with her then and I have been in love
+with her ever since. I told you so then, and you stopped me off, but you
+gave me leave to make another appeal to you in the future. I make it
+now--this is the only way I have--and I think you ought to listen to it.
+Five years have passed, and I love her more than ever. I have behaved
+like a saint in the interval: I haven't attempted to practise upon her
+without your knowledge.'
+
+'I am so glad; but she would have let me know,' said Cousin Maria,
+looking round the conservatory as if to see if the plants were all
+there.
+
+'No doubt. I don't know what you do to her. But I trust that to-day your
+opposition falls--in face of the proof that we have given you of mutual
+fidelity.'
+
+'Fidelity?' Cousin Maria repeated, smiling.
+
+'Surely--unless you mean to imply that Dora has given me up. I have
+reason to believe that she hasn't.'
+
+'I think she will like better to remain just as she is.'
+
+'Just as she is?'
+
+'I mean, not to make a choice,' Cousin Maria went on, smiling.
+
+Raymond hesitated a moment. 'Do you mean that you have tried to make her
+make one?'
+
+At this the good lady broke into a laugh. 'My dear Raymond, how little
+you must think I know my child!'
+
+'Perhaps, if you haven't tried to make her, you have tried to prevent
+her. Haven't you told her I am unsuccessful, I am poor?'
+
+She stopped him, laying her hand with unaffected solicitude on his arm.
+'_Are_ you poor, my dear? I should be so sorry!'
+
+'Never mind; I can support a wife,' said the young man.
+
+'It wouldn't matter, because I am happy to say that Dora has something
+of her own,' Cousin Maria went on, with her imperturbable candour. 'Her
+father thought that was the best way to arrange it. I had quite
+forgotten my opposition, as you call it; that was so long ago. Why, she
+was only a little girl. Wasn't that the ground I took? Well, dear, she's
+older now, and you can say anything to her you like. But I do think she
+wants to stay----' And she looked up at him, cheerily.
+
+'Wants to stay?'
+
+'With Effie and Tishy.'
+
+'Ah, Cousin Maria,' the young man exclaimed, 'you are modest about
+yourself!'
+
+'Well, we are all together. Now is that all? I _must_ see if there is
+enough champagne. Certainly--you can say to her what you like. But
+twenty years hence she will be just as she is to-day; that's how I see
+her.'
+
+'Lord, what is it you do to her?' Raymond groaned, as he accompanied his
+hostess back to the crowded rooms.
+
+He knew exactly what she would have replied if she had been a
+Frenchwoman; she would have said to him, triumphantly, overwhelmingly:
+'Que voulez-vous? Elle adore sa mere!' She was, however, only a
+Californian, unacquainted with the language of epigram, and her answer
+consisted simply of the words: 'I am sorry you have ideas that make you
+unhappy. I guess you are the only person here who hasn't enjoyed
+himself to-night.'
+
+Raymond repeated to himself, gloomily, for the rest of the evening,
+'Elle adore sa mere--elle adore sa mere!' He remained very late, and
+when but twenty people were left and he had observed that the Marquise,
+passing her hand into Mrs. Temperly's arm, led her aside as if for some
+important confabulation (some new light doubtless on what might be hoped
+for Effie), he persuaded Dora to let the rest of the guests depart in
+peace (apparently her mother had told her to look out for them to the
+very last), and come with him into some quiet corner. They found an
+empty sofa in the outlasting lamp-light, and there the girl sat down
+with him. Evidently she knew what he was going to say, or rather she
+thought she did; for in fact, after a little, after he had told her that
+he had spoken to her mother and she had told him he might speak to
+_her_, he said things that she could not very well have expected.
+
+'Is it true that you wish to remain with Effie and Tishy? That's what
+your mother calls it when she means that you will give me up.'
+
+'How can I give you up?' the girl demanded. 'Why can't we go on being
+friends, as I asked you the evening you dined here?'
+
+'What do you mean by friends?'
+
+'Well, not making everything impossible.'
+
+'You didn't think anything impossible of old,' Raymond rejoined,
+bitterly. 'I thought you liked me then, and I have even thought so
+since.'
+
+'I like you more than I like any one. I like you so much that it's my
+principal happiness.'
+
+'Then why are there impossibilities?'
+
+'Oh, some day I'll tell you!' said Dora, with a quick sigh. 'Perhaps
+after Tishy is married. And meanwhile, are you not going to remain in
+Paris, at any rate? Isn't your work here? You are not here for me only.
+You can come to the house often. That's what I mean by our being
+friends.'
+
+Her companion sat looking at her with a gloomy stare, as if he were
+trying to make up the deficiencies in her logic.
+
+'After Tishy is married? I don't see what that has to do with it. Tishy
+is little more than a baby; she may not be married for ten years.'
+
+'That is very true.'
+
+'And you dispose of the interval by a simple "meanwhile"? My dear Dora,
+your talk is strange,' Raymond continued, with his voice passionately
+lowered. 'And I may come to the house--often? How often do you mean--in
+ten years? Five times--or even twenty?' He saw that her eyes were
+filling with tears, but he went on: 'It has been coming over me little
+by little (I notice things very much if I have a reason), and now I
+think I understand your mother's system.'
+
+'Don't say anything against my mother,' the girl broke in, beseechingly.
+
+'I shall not say anything unjust. That is if I am unjust you must tell
+me. This is my idea, and your speaking of Tishy's marriage confirms it.
+To begin with she has had immense plans for you all; she wanted each of
+you to be a princess or a duchess--I mean a good one. But she has had to
+give _you_ up.'
+
+'No one has asked for me,' said Dora, with unexpected honesty.
+
+'I don't believe it. Dozens of fellows have asked for you, and you have
+shaken your head in that divine way (divine for me, I mean) in which you
+shook it the other night.'
+
+'My mother has never said an unkind word to me in her life,' the girl
+declared, in answer to this.
+
+'I never said she had, and I don't know why you take the precaution of
+telling me so. But whatever you tell me or don't tell me,' Raymond
+pursued, 'there is one thing I see very well--that so long as you won't
+marry a duke Cousin Maria has found means to prevent you from marrying
+till your sisters have made rare alliances.'
+
+'Has found means?' Dora repeated, as if she really wondered what was in
+his thought.
+
+'Of course I mean only through your affection for her. How she works
+that, you know best yourself.'
+
+'It's delightful to have a mother of whom every one is so fond,' said
+Dora, smiling.
+
+'She is a most remarkable woman. Don't think for a moment that I don't
+appreciate her. You don't want to quarrel with her, and I daresay you
+are right.'
+
+'Why, Raymond, of course I'm right!'
+
+'It proves you are not madly in love with me. It seems to me that for
+you _I_ would have quarrelled----'
+
+'Raymond, Raymond!' she interrupted, with the tears again rising.
+
+He sat looking at her, and then he said, 'Well, when they _are_
+married?'
+
+'I don't know the future--I don't know what may happen.'
+
+'You mean that Tishy is so small--she doesn't grow--and will therefore
+be difficult? Yes, she _is_ small.' There was bitterness in his heart,
+but he laughed at his own words. 'However, Effie ought to go off
+easily,' he went on, as Dora said nothing. 'I really wonder that, with
+the Marquise and all, she hasn't gone off yet. This thing, to-night,
+ought to do a great deal for her.'
+
+Dora listened to him with a fascinated gaze; it was as if he expressed
+things for her and relieved her spirit by making them clear and
+coherent. Her eyes managed, each time, to be dry again, and now a
+somewhat wan, ironical smile moved her lips. 'Mamma knows what she
+wants--she knows what she will take. And she will take only that.'
+
+'Precisely--something tremendous. And she is willing to wait, eh? Well,
+Effie is very young, and she's charming. But she won't be charming if
+she has an ugly appendage in the shape of a poor unsuccessful American
+artist (not even a good one), whose father went bankrupt, for a
+brother-in-law. That won't smooth the way, of course; and if a prince is
+to come into the family, the family must be kept tidy to receive him.'
+Dora got up quickly, as if she could bear his lucidity no longer, but he
+kept close to her as she walked away. 'And she can sacrifice you like
+that, without a scruple, without a pang?'
+
+'I might have escaped--if I would marry,' the girl replied.
+
+'Do you call that escaping? She has succeeded with you, but is it a part
+of what the Marquise calls her _succes de bonte_?'
+
+'Nothing that you can say (and it's far worse than the reality) can
+prevent her being delightful.'
+
+'Yes, that's your loyalty, and I could shoot you for it!' he exclaimed,
+making her pause on the threshold of the adjoining room. 'So you think
+it will take about ten years, considering Tishy's size--or want of
+size?' He himself again was the only one to laugh at this. 'Your mother
+is closeted, as much as she can be closeted now, with Madame de Brives,
+and perhaps this time they are really settling something.'
+
+'I have thought that before and nothing has come. Mamma wants something
+so good; not only every advantage and every grandeur, but every virtue
+under heaven, and every guarantee. Oh, she wouldn't expose them!'
+
+'I see; that's where her goodness comes in and where the Marquise is
+impressed' He took Dora's hand; he felt that he must go, for she
+exasperated him with her irony that stopped short and her patience that
+wouldn't stop. 'You simply propose that I should wait?' he said, as he
+held her hand.
+
+'It seems to me that you might, if _I_ can.' Then the girl remarked,
+'Now that you are here, it's far better.'
+
+There was a sweetness in this which made him, after glancing about a
+moment, raise her hand to his lips. He went away without taking leave of
+Cousin Maria, who was still out of sight, her conference with the
+Marquise apparently not having terminated. This looked (he reflected as
+he passed out) as if something might come of it. However, before he went
+home he fell again into a gloomy forecast. The weather had changed, the
+stars were all out, and he walked the empty streets for an hour.
+Tishy's perverse refusal to grow and Cousin Maria's conscientious
+exactions promised him a terrible probation. And in those intolerable
+years what further interference, what meddlesome, effective pressure,
+might not make itself felt? It may be added that Tishy is decidedly a
+dwarf and his probation is not yet over.
+
+
+THE END
+
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