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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wicked Marquis, by E. Phillips Oppenheim
+
+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: The Wicked Marquis
+
+Author: E. Phillips Oppenheim
+
+Illustrator: Will Grefé
+
+Release Date: February 22, 2011 [EBook #35361]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WICKED MARQUIS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Cover art]
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: Luncheon at 94 Grosvenor Square was an exceedingly
+simple meal.  FRONTISPIECE.  _See page 92_.]
+
+
+
+
+THE WICKED MARQUIS
+
+
+BY
+
+E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM
+
+
+
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
+
+WILL GREFÉ
+
+
+
+MCCLELLAND & STEWART PUBLISHERS
+
+TORONTO
+
+
+
+
+_Copyright, 1919,_
+
+BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
+
+
+_All rights reserved_
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+Luncheon at Grosvenor Square was an exceedingly
+  simple meal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
+
+"Richard Vont was head-keeper at Mandeleys when
+  I succeeded to the title and estates"
+
+"I expect we are all as bad, though," she went
+  on rather gloomily, "even if we are not
+  quite so blatant"
+
+"You're very hard, father," she said simply
+
+
+
+
+THE WICKED MARQUIS
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Reginald Philip Graham Thursford, Baron Travers, Marquis of Mandeleys,
+issued, one May morning, from the gloomy precincts of the Law Courts
+without haste, yet with certain evidences of a definite desire to leave
+the place behind him.  He crossed first the pavement and then the
+street, piloted here and there by his somewhat obsequious companion,
+and turned along the Strand, westwards.  Then, in that democratic
+thoroughfare, for the first time since the calamity had happened, his
+lips were unlocked in somewhat singular fashion.
+
+"Well, I'm damned!" he exclaimed, with slow and significant emphasis.
+
+His companion glanced up furtively in his direction.  The Marquis, as
+Marquises should be, was very tall and slim, with high well-shaped
+nose, very little flesh upon his face, a mouth of uncertain shape and
+eyes of uncertain colour.  His companion, as solicitors to the
+aristocracy should be, was of a smaller, more rotund and insignificant
+shape.  He had the healthy complexion, however, of the week-end golfer,
+and he affected a certain unlegal rakishness of attire, much in vogue
+amongst members of his profession having connections in high circles.
+In his heart he very much admired the ease and naturalness with which
+his patron, in the heart of professional London, strode along by his
+side in a well-worn tweed suit, a collar of somewhat ancient design,
+and a tie which had seen better days.
+
+"The judge's decision was, without doubt, calamitous," he confessed
+gloomily.
+
+The Marquis turned in at the Savoy courtyard with the air of an habitué.
+
+"I am in need of a brief rest and some refreshment," he said.  "You
+will accompany me, if you please, Mr. Wadham."
+
+The lawyer acquiesced and felt somehow that he had become the tail end
+of a procession, the Marquis's entrance and progress through the
+grillroom towards the smoking-room bar was marked by much deference on
+the part of porters, cloak-room attendants and waiters, a deference
+acknowledged in the barest possible fashion, yet in a manner which his
+satellite decided to make a study of.  They reached a retired corner of
+the smoking room, where the Marquis subsided into the only vacant easy
+chair, ordered for himself a glass of dry sherry, and left his
+companion to select his own refreshment and pay for both.
+
+"What," the former enquired, "is the next step?"
+
+"There is, alas!" Mr. Wadham replied, "no next step."
+
+"Exactly what do you mean by that?" the Marquis demanded, knitting his
+brows slightly as he sipped his sherry.
+
+"We have reached the end," the lawyer pronounced.  "The decision given
+by the Court to-day is final."
+
+The Marquis set down his glass.  The thing was absurd!
+
+"Surely," he suggested, "the House of Lords remains?"
+
+"Without a doubt, your lordship," Mr. Wadham assented, "but it is of no
+use to us in the present instance.  The judge of the Supreme
+Court--this is, by-the-by, our third appeal--has delivered a final
+decision."
+
+The Marquis seemed vaguely puzzled.
+
+"The House of Lords," he persisted, "remains surely a Court of Appeal
+for members of my order whose claims to consideration are not always
+fully recognised in the democracy of the common law court."
+
+"I fear," Mr. Wadham replied, with a little cough, "that the House of
+Lords is supposed to have other functions."
+
+"Other functions?"
+
+"In an indirect sort of fashion," Mr. Wadham continued, "it is supposed
+to assist in the government of the country."
+
+"God bless my soul!" the Marquis exclaimed.
+
+There was a queer, intangible silence.  The lawyer was quite aware that
+a storm was brewing, but as his distinguished client never lost his
+temper or showed annoyance in any of the ordinary plebeian ways, he was
+conscious of some curiosity as to what might happen next.
+
+"You mean to say, then," the Marquis continued, "that for the rest of
+my days, and in the days of those who may succeed me, that edifice,
+that cottage which for generations has sheltered one of the family
+retainers, is to remain the property of--of an alien?"
+
+"I fear that that is the decision of the court," the lawyer admitted.
+"The deed of gift was exceptionally binding."
+
+The Marquis shook his head.  The thing was incomprehensible.
+
+"I can stand upon the roof of Mandeleys," he said, "and I can look
+north, south, east and west, and in no direction can I look off my own
+land.  Yet you mean to tell me that almost in my garden there is to
+remain a demesne which can be occupied by any Tom, Dick or Harry which
+its nominal owner chooses to place in possession?"
+
+The lawyer signed to the waiter for their glasses to be replenished.
+
+"It is certainly not justice, your lordship," he admitted,--"it is not
+even reasonable--but it is the law."
+
+The Marquis produced a gold cigarette case, absently lit a cigarette,
+and returned the case to his pocket without offering it to his
+companion.  He smoked meditatively and sipped his second glass of
+sherry.
+
+"A state of things," he declared, "has been revealed to me which I
+cannot at present grasp.  I must discuss the matter with Robert--with
+my son-in-law, Sir Robert Lees.  He is an intensely modern person, and
+he may be able to suggest something."
+
+"Sir Robert is a very clever man," the lawyer acknowledged, "but
+failing an arrangement with the tenant himself, I cannot see that there
+is anything further to be done.  We have, in short, exhausted the law."
+
+"A process," the Marquis observed sympathetically, "which I fear that
+you must have found expensive, Mr. Wadham."
+
+"The various suits into which we have entered on behalf of your
+lordship, and the costs which we have had to pay," the latter hastened
+to announce, "amount, I regret to say, to something over eighteen
+thousand pounds."
+
+"Dear me!" his companion sighed.  "It seems quite a great deal of
+money."
+
+"Since we are upon the subject," the lawyer proceeded, "my firm has
+suggested that I should approach your lordship with regard to some
+means of--pardon me--reducing the liability in question."
+
+So far as the face of Mr. Wadham's client was capable of expressing
+anything, it expressed now a certain amount of surprise.
+
+"It appears to me, Mr. Wadham," he remarked, "that you are asking me to
+attend to your business for you."
+
+The lawyer knitted his brows in puzzled fashion.
+
+"I am not sure that I quite follow your lordship," he murmured.
+
+"Do I employ you," his patron continued, "to manage my estates, to
+control my finances, to act as agent to all my properties, and yet need
+to keep a perspective myself of my various assets?  If eighteen
+thousand pounds is required, it is for your firm to decide from what
+quarter the money should come.  Personally, as you know, I never
+interfere."
+
+Mr. Wadham coughed in somewhat embarrassed fashion.
+
+"As a matter of fact, your lordship," he confessed, with a most
+illogical sense that it was his duty to apologise for his client's
+impecuniosity, "as a matter of fact, neither my partners nor I can at
+the present moment see where a sum of eighteen thousand pounds can be
+raised."
+
+The Marquis rose to his feet and shook the cigarette ash carefully from
+his coat.
+
+"Our conversation, Mr. Wadham," he said, "is reaching a stage which
+bores me.  I have just remembered, too," he added, with a glance at the
+clock, "that my daughter is entertaining a few friends to lunch.  You
+must write to Merridrew.  He is really a most excellent agent.  He will
+tell you what balances are likely to be available during the next few
+months."
+
+Mr. Wadham received the suggestion without enthusiasm.
+
+"We made an application to Mr. Merridrew some few weeks ago," he
+remarked, "as we needed some ready money for the purpose of briefing
+the barristers.  Mr. Merridrew's reply was not encouraging."
+
+"Ah!" the Marquis murmured.  "Merridrew is a gloomy dog sometimes.  Try
+him again.  It is astonishing how elastic he can be if he is squeezed."
+
+"I am afraid your lordship has done all the squeezing," the solicitor
+observed ruefully.
+
+A little trill of feminine laughter rang through the room.  Two smartly
+attired young ladies were seated upon a divan near the door, surrounded
+by a little group of acquaintances.  One of them leaned forward and
+nodded as the Marquis and his companion passed.
+
+"How do you do, Marquis?" she said, in distinctly transatlantic accents.
+
+The behaviour of his client, under such circumstances, remained an
+object lesson to Mr. Wadham for the rest of his life.  The Marquis
+gazed with the faintest expression of surprise at, or perhaps through,
+the young person who had addressed him.  Fumbling for a moment in his
+waistcoat pocket, he raised a horn-rimmed monocle to his eye, dropped
+it almost at once, and passed on without the flicker of an eyelid.  On
+their way to the outside door, however, he shook his head gravely.
+
+"What a singular exhibition," he murmured,--"demonstration, perhaps I
+should say--of the crudeness of modern social intercourse!  Was it my
+fancy, Wadham, or did the young person up there address me?"
+
+"She certainly did," the other assented.  "She even called you by name."
+
+They were standing in the courtyard now, waiting for a taxi, and the
+Marquis sighed.
+
+"In a public place, too!" he murmured.  "Wadham, I am afraid that we
+are living in the wrong age.  I came to that conclusion only a few days
+ago, when I was invited, actually invited, to dine at the house of--
+But I forget, Wadham, I forget.  Your grandfather would appreciate
+these things.  You yourself are somewhat imbued, I fear, with the
+modern taint.  A handful of silver, if you please," he added, holding
+out his hand.  "I am not accustomed to these chance conveyances."
+
+The lawyer searched his trousers pockets, and produced a couple of pink
+notes and a few half-crowns.  In some mysterious fashion, the whole
+seemed to pass into the Marquis's long, aristocratic hand.  He turned
+to the porter who was standing bare-headed, and slipped a ten-shilling
+note into his palm.
+
+"Well, good morning, Wadham," he said, stepping into his taxicab.  "I
+have no doubt that you did your best, but this morning's unfortunate
+happening will take me some time to get over.  My compliments to your
+senior partner.  You can say that I am disappointed--no more."
+
+The Marquis crossed his legs and leaned back in the vehicle.  Mr.
+Wadham remained upon the pavement, gazing for a moment at his empty
+hand.
+
+"Taxi, sir?" the hall porter asked obsequiously.
+
+Mr. Wadham felt in all his pockets.
+
+"Thank you," he replied gloomily, "I'll walk."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Lady Letitia Thursford, the only unmarried daughter of the Marquis,
+stood in a corner of the spacious drawing-room at 94 Grosvenor Square,
+talking to her brother-in-law.  Sir Robert, although he wanted his
+luncheon very badly and, owing to some mistake, had come a quarter of
+an hour too soon, retained his customary good nature.  He always
+enjoyed talking to his favourite relation-in-law.
+
+"I say, Letty," he remarked, screwing his eyeglass into his eye and
+looking around, "you're getting pretty shabby here, eh?"
+
+Lady Letitia smiled composedly.
+
+"That is the worst of you _nouveaux riches_," she declared.  "You do
+not appreciate the harmonising influence of the hand of Time.  This
+isn't shabbiness, it's tone."
+
+"_Nouveaux riches_, indeed!" he repeated.  "Better not let your father
+hear you call me names!"
+
+"Father wouldn't care a bit," she replied.  "As for this drawing-room,
+Robert, well, sixty years ago it must have been hideous.  To-day I
+rather like it.  It is absolutely and entirely Victorian, even to the
+smell."
+
+Sir Robert sniffed vigorously.
+
+"I follow you," he agreed.  "Old lavender perfume, ottomans,
+high-backed chairs, chintzes that look as though they came out of the
+ark, and a few mouldy daguerreotypes.  The whole thing's here, all
+right."
+
+"Perhaps it's just as well for us that it is," she observed.  "I have
+come to the conclusion that furniture people are the least trustful in
+the world.  I don't think even dad could get a van-load of furniture on
+credit."
+
+Sir Robert nodded sympathetically.  He was a pleasant-looking man, a
+little under middle age, with bright, alert expression, black hair and
+moustache, and perhaps a little too perfectly dressed.  He just escaped
+being called dapper.
+
+"Chucking a bit more away in the Law Courts, isn't he?"
+
+Letitia indulged in a little grimace.
+
+"Not even you could make him see reason about that," she sighed.  "He
+is certain to lose his case, and it must be costing him thousands."
+
+"Dashed annoying thing," Sir Robert remarked meditatively, "to have a
+cottage within a hundred yards of your hall door which belongs to some
+one else."
+
+"It is annoying, of course," Letitia assented, "but there is no doubt
+whatever that Uncle Christopher made it over to the Vonts absolutely,
+and I don't see how we could possibly upset the deed of gift.  I am
+now," she continued, moving towards a stand of geraniums and beginning
+to snip off some dead leaves, "about to conclude the picture.  You
+behold the maiden of bygone days who condescended sometimes to make
+herself useful."
+
+The scissors snipped energetically, and Sir Robert watched his
+sister-in-law.  She was inclined to be tall, remarkably graceful in a
+fashion of her own, a little pale, with masses of brown hair, and eyes
+which defied any sort of colour analysis.  But what Sir Robert chiefly
+loved about her were the two little lines of humour at the corners of
+her firm, womanly mouth.
+
+"Yes, you're in the setting all right, Letty," he declared, "and yet
+you are rather puzzling.  Just now you look as though you only wanted
+the crinoline and the little curls to be some one's grandmother in her
+youth.  Yet at that picture show the other night you were quite the
+most modern thing there."
+
+"It's just how I'm feeling," she confided, with a little sigh, standing
+back and surveying her handiwork.  "I have that rare gift, you know,
+Robert, of governing my personality from inside.  When I am in this
+room, I feel Victorian, and I am Victorian.  When I hear that Russian
+man's music which is driving every one crazy just now--well, I feel and
+I suppose I look different.  Here's Meg coming.  How well she looks!"
+
+They watched the motor-car draw up outside, and the little business of
+Lady Margaret Lees's descent carried out in quite the best fashion.  A
+footman stood at the door, a grey-haired butler in plain clothes
+adventured as far as the bottom step; behind there was just the
+suggestion of something in livery.
+
+"Yes, Meg's all right," Sir Robert replied.  "Jolly good wife she is,
+too.  Why don't you marry, Letty?"
+
+"Perhaps," she laughed, leaning a little towards him, "because I did
+not go to a certain house party at Raynham Court, three years ago."
+
+"Are you conceited enough," he inquired, "to imagine that I should have
+chosen you instead of Meg, if you had been there?"
+
+"Perhaps I should have been a little too young," she admitted.  "Why
+haven't you a brother, Robert?"
+
+"I don't believe you'd have married him, if I had," he answered
+bluntly.  "I'm not really your sort, you know."
+
+Lady Margaret swept in, very voluble but a little discursive.
+
+"Isn't this just like Bob!" she exclaimed.  "I believe he always comes
+here early on purpose to find you alone, Letty!  Who's coming to lunch,
+please?  And where's dad?"
+
+"Father should be on his way home from the Law Courts by now," Letitia
+replied, "and I am afraid it's a very dull luncheon for you, Meg.  Aunt
+Caroline is coming, and an American man she travelled over on the
+steamer with.  I am not quite sure whether she expects to let Bayfield
+to him or offer him to me as a husband, but I am sure she has designs."
+
+"The Duchess is always so helpful," Robert grunted.
+
+"So long as it costs her nothing," Lady Margaret declared, "nothing
+makes her so happy as to put the whole world to rights."
+
+"Here she comes--in a taxicab, too," Sir Robert announced, looking out
+of the window.  "She is getting positively penurious."
+
+"She is probably showing off before the American," Lady Margaret
+remarked.  "She is always talking about living in a semi-detached house
+and making her own clothes.  Up to the present, though, she has stuck
+to Worth."
+
+The Duchess, who duly arrived a few moments later, brought with her
+into the room a different and essentially a more cosmopolitan
+atmosphere.  She was a tall, fair woman, attractive in an odd sort of
+way, with large features, a delightful smile, and a habit of rapid
+speech.  She exchanged hasty greetings with every one present and then
+turned back towards the man who had followed her into the room.
+
+"Letty dear, this is Mr. David Thain--Lady Letitia Thursford.  I told
+you about Mr. Thain, dear, didn't I?  This is almost his first visit to
+England, and I want every one to be nice to him.  Mr. Thain, this is my
+other niece, Lady Margaret Lees, and her husband, Sir Robert Lees.
+Where's Reginald?"
+
+"Father will be here directly," Letitia replied.  "If any one's
+famished, we can commence lunch."
+
+"Then let us commence, by all means," the Duchess suggested.  "I have
+been giving the whole of the morning to Mr. Thain, improving his mind
+and showing him things.  We wound up with the shops--although I am sure
+Alfred's tradespeople are no use to any one."
+
+Letitia moved a few steps towards the bell, and on her way back she
+encountered the somewhat earnest gaze of her aunt's protégé.  Even in
+those few moments since his entrance, she had been conscious of a
+somewhat different atmosphere in the faded but stately room.  He had
+the air of appraising everything yet belonging nowhere, of being wholly
+out of touch with an environment which he could scarcely be expected to
+understand or appreciate.  He was not noticeably ill-at-ease.  On the
+other hand, his deportment was too rigid for naturalness, and she was
+conscious of some quality in his rather too steadfast scrutiny of
+herself which militated strongly against her usual toleration.  He
+seemed to stand for events, and in the lives which they mostly lived,
+events were ignored.
+
+The butler opened the door and announced luncheon.  They crossed the
+very handsome, if somewhat empty hall, into the sombre,
+mahogany-furnished dining room, the walls of which were closely hung
+with oil paintings.  Letitia motioned the stranger to sit at her right
+hand, and fancied that he seemed a little relieved at this brief escape
+from his cicerone.  Having gone so far, however, she ignored him for
+several moments whilst she watched the seating of her other guests.
+Her brother-in-law she drew to the vacant place on her left.
+
+"I dare say father will lunch at the club," she whispered.  "Aunt
+Caroline always ruffles him."
+
+"I am afraid he will have found something down Temple Bar way to ruffle
+him a great deal more this morning," Sir Robert replied.
+
+The door of the dining room was at that moment thrown open, however,
+and the Marquis entered.  Pausing for a moment on the threshold, in
+line with a long row of dingy portraits, there was something distinctly
+striking in the family likeness so mercilessly reproduced in his long
+face, with the somewhat high cheek bones, his tall, angular figure, the
+easy bearing and gracious smile.  One missed the snuffbox from between
+his fingers, and the uniform, but there was yet something curiously
+unmodern in the appearance of this last representative of the Mandeleys.
+
+"Let no one disturb themselves, pray," he begged.  "I am a little late.
+My dear Caroline, I am delighted to see you," he went on, raising his
+sister's fingers to his lips.  "Margaret, I shall make no enquiries
+about your health!  You are looking wonderfully well to-day."
+
+The Duchess glanced towards her protégé, who had risen to his feet and
+stood facing his newly arrived host.  There was a moment's poignant
+silence.  The two men, for some reason or other, seemed to regard each
+other with no common interest.
+
+"This is my friend, Mr. David Thain," the Duchess announced,--"my
+brother, the Marquis of Mandeleys.  Mr. Thain is an American, Reginald."
+
+The Marquis shook hands with his guest, a form of welcome in which he
+seldom indulged.
+
+"Any friend of yours, Caroline," he said quietly, "is very welcome to
+my house.  Robert," he added, as he took his seat, "they tell me that
+you were talking rubbish about agriculture in the House last night.
+Why do you talk about agriculture?  You know nothing about it.  You are
+not even, so far as I remember, a landed proprietor."
+
+Sir Robert smiled.
+
+"And therefore, sir, I am unprejudiced."
+
+"No one can talk about land, nowadays, without being prejudiced," his
+father-in-law rejoined.
+
+"Father," Letitia begged, "do tell us about the case."
+
+The Marquis watched the whiskey and soda with which his glass was being
+filled.
+
+"The case, my dear," he acknowledged, "has, I am sorry to say, gone
+against me.  A remarkably ill-informed and unattractive looking person,
+whom they tell me will presently be Lord Chief Justice, presumed not
+only to give a decision which was in itself quite absurd, but also
+refused leave to appeal."
+
+"Sorry to hear that, sir," Sir Robert remarked.  "Cost you a lot of
+money, too, I'm afraid."
+
+"I believe that it has been an expensive case," the Marquis admitted.
+"My lawyer seemed very depressed about it."
+
+"And you mean to say that it's really all over and done with now?" Lady
+Margaret enquired.
+
+"For the present, it certainly seems so," the Marquis replied.  "I
+cannot believe, personally, that the laws of my country afford me no
+relief, under the peculiar circumstances of the case.  According to Mr.
+Wadham, however, they do not."
+
+"What is it all about, anyway, Reginald?" his sister asked.  "I have
+heard more than once but I have forgotten.  Whenever I look in the
+paper for a divorce case, I nearly always see your name against the
+King, or the King against you, with a person named Vont also
+interested.  Surely the Vont family have been retainers down at
+Mandeleys for generations?  I remember one of them perfectly well."
+
+The Marquis cleared his throat.
+
+"The unfortunate circumstances," he said, "are perhaps little known
+even amongst the members of my own family.  Perhaps it will suffice if
+I say that, owing to an indiscretion of my uncle and predecessor, the
+eleventh Marquis, a gamekeeper's cottage and small plot of land,
+curiously situated in the shadow of Mandeleys, became the property of a
+yeoman of the name of Vont.  This ill-advised and singular action of my
+late uncle is complicated by the fact that the inheritors of his bounty
+have become, as a family, inimical to their patrons.  Their present
+representative, for instance, is obsessed by some real or fancied
+grievance upon which I scarcely care to dilate.  For nearly twenty
+years," the Marquis continued ruminatively, "the cottage has been empty
+except for the presence of an elderly person who died some years ago.
+Since then I have, through my lawyers, endeavoured, both by purchase
+and by upsetting the deed of gift, to regain possession of the
+property.  The legal owner appears to be domiciled in America, and as
+he has been able to resist my lawsuits and has refused all my offers of
+purchase, I gather that in that democratic country he has amassed a
+certain measure of wealth.  We are now confronted with the fact that
+this person announces his intention of returning to England and taking
+up his residence within a few yards of my front door."
+
+Sir Robert laughed heartily.
+
+"Upon my word, sir," he exclaimed, "it's a humorous situation!"
+
+The Marquis was unruffled but bitter.
+
+"Your sense of humour, my dear Robert," he said, "suffers, I fear, from
+your daily associations in the House of Commons."
+
+The man by Letitia's side suddenly leaned forward.  After the smooth
+and pleasant voice of the Marquis, his question, with its slight
+transatlantic accent, sounded almost harsh.
+
+"What did you say that man's name was, Marquis?"
+
+"Richard Vont," was the courteous reply.  "The name is a singular one,
+but America is a vast country.  I imagine it is scarcely possible that
+in the course of your travels you have come across a person so named?"
+
+"A man calling himself Richard Vont crossed in the steamer with me,
+three weeks ago," David Thain announced.  "I have not the least doubt
+that this is the man who is coming to occupy the cottage you speak of."
+
+"It is indeed a small world," the Marquis remarked.  "I will not
+inflict this family matter upon you all any longer.  After lunch,
+perhaps, you will spare me a few moments of your time, Mr.--Mr. Thain.
+I shall be interested to hear more about this person."
+
+Letitia rose, presently, to leave the room.  Whilst she waited for her
+aunt to conclude a little anecdote, she glanced with some interest at
+the man by her side.  More than ever the sense of his incongruity with
+that atmosphere seemed borne in upon her, yet she was forced to concede
+to him, notwithstanding the delicacy of his appearance, a certain
+unexpected strength, a forcefulness of tone and manner, which gave him
+a certain distinction.  He had risen, waiting for her passing, and one
+lean brown hand gripped the back of the chair in which she had been
+sitting.  She carried away with her into the Victorian drawing-room,
+with its odour of faded lavender, a queer sense of having been brought
+into momentary association with stronger and more vital things in life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Sir Robert preferred to join his wife and sister-in-law in the
+drawing-room after luncheon.  The Marquis, with a courteous word of
+invitation, led his remaining guest across the grey stone hall into the
+library beyond--a sparsely furnished and yet imposing looking
+apartment, with its great tiers of books and austere book cases.  On
+his way, he drew attention carelessly to one or two paintings by old
+masters, and pointed out a remarkable statue presented by a famous
+Italian sculptor to his great-grandfather and now counted amongst the
+world's treasures.  His guest watched and observed in silence.  There
+was nothing of the uncouth sight-seer about him, still less of the
+fulsome dilettante.  They settled themselves in comfortable chairs in a
+pleasant corner of the apartment.
+
+A footman served them with coffee, a second man handed cigars, and the
+butler himself carried a tray of liqueurs.  The Marquis assumed an
+attitude of complete satisfaction with the world in general.
+
+"I am pleased to have this opportunity of a few words with you, Mr.
+Thain," he said.  "You are quite comfortable in that chair, I trust?"
+
+"Perfectly, thank you."
+
+"And my Larangas are not too mild?  You will find darker-coloured
+cigars in the cabinet by your side."
+
+"Thank you," David Thain replied, "I smoke only mild tobacco."
+
+"Personally," the Marquis sighed, "I can go no further than cigarettes.
+A vice, perhaps," he added, watching the blue smoke curl upwards, "but
+a fascinating one.  So you came across this man Vont on the steamer.
+Might I ask under what circumstances?"
+
+"Richard Vont, as I think he called himself," was the quiet reply,
+"shared a cabin in the second class with my servant.  I was over there
+once or twice and talked with him."
+
+"That is very interesting," the Marquis observed.  "He travelled second
+class, eh?  And yet the man has many thousands to throw away in these
+absurd lawsuits with me."
+
+"He may have money," Thain pointed out, "and yet feel more at home in
+the second class.  I understood that he had been a gamekeeper in
+England and was returning to his old home."
+
+"Did he speak of his purpose in doing so?"
+
+"On the contrary, he was singularly taciturn.  All that I could gather
+from him was that he was returning to fulfill some purpose which he had
+kept before him for a great many years."
+
+The Marquis sighed.  On his high, shapely forehead could be traced the
+lines of a regretful frown.
+
+"I was sure of it," he groaned.  "The fellow is returning to make
+himself a nuisance to me.  He did not tell you his story, then, Mr.
+Thain?"
+
+"He showed no inclination to do so--in fact he avoided so far as
+possible all discussion of his past."
+
+"Richard Vont," the Marquis continued, raising his eyes to the ceiling,
+"was one of those sturdy, thick-headed, unintelligent yeomen who have
+been spoiled by the trifle of education doled out to their
+grandfathers, their fathers and themselves.  A few hundred years ago
+they formed excellent retainers to the nobles under whose patronage
+they lived.  To-day, in these hideously degenerate days, Mr. Thain,
+when half the world has moved forward and half stood still, they are an
+anachronism.  They find no seemly place in modern life."
+
+David Thain sat very still.  There was just a little flash in his eyes,
+which came and went as sunlight might have gleamed across naked steel.
+
+"But I must not forget," his host went on tolerantly, "that I am
+speaking now to one who must to some extent have lost his sense of
+social proportion by a prolonged sojourn in a country where life is
+more or less a jumble."
+
+"You refer to America?"
+
+"Naturally!  As a country resembling more than anything a gigantic
+sausage machine wherein all races and men of all social status are
+broken up on the wheel, puffed up with false ideas, and thrown out upon
+the world, a newly fledged, cunning, but singularly ignorant race of
+individuals, America possesses great interest to those--to those, in
+short," the Marquis declared, with a little wave of the hand, "whom
+such things interest.  I am English, my forefathers were Saxon, my
+instincts are perhaps feudal.  That is why I regard the case of Richard
+Vont from a point of view which you might possibly fail to appreciate.
+Would it bore you if I continue?"
+
+"Not in the least," David Thain assured him.
+
+"Richard Vont was head-keeper at Mandeleys when I succeeded to the
+title and estates, an advent which occurred a few years after my wife's
+death.  He was already occupying a peculiar position there, owing to
+the generosity of my predecessor, whose life he had had the good
+fortune to save.  He had very foolishly married above him in
+station--the girl was a school mistress, I believe.  When I came to
+Mandeleys, I found him living there, a widower with one daughter, and a
+little boy, his nephew.  The girl inherited her mother's superiority of
+station and intellect, and was naturally unhappy.  I noticed her with
+interest, and she responded.  Consequences which in the days of our
+ancestors, Mr. Thain, would have been esteemed an honour to the persons
+concerned, ensued.  Richard Vont, like an ignorant clodhopper, viewed
+the matter from the wrong standpoint....  You said something, I
+believe?  Pardon me.  I sometimes fancy that I am a little deaf in my
+left ear."
+
+[Illustration: "Richard Vont was head-keeper at Mandeleys when I
+succeeded to the title and estates."]
+
+The Marquis leaned forward but David Thain shook his head.  His lips
+had moved indeed, but no word had issued from them.
+
+"So far," his host went on, "the story contains no novel features.  I
+exercised what my ancestors, in whose spirit I may say that I live,
+would have claimed as an undoubted right.  Richard Vont, as I have
+said, with his inheritance of ill-bestowed education, and a measure of
+that extraordinary socialistic poison which seems, during the last few
+generations, to have settled like an epidemic in the systems of the
+agricultural classes, resented my action.  His behaviour became so
+intolerable that I was forced to dismiss him from my service, and
+finally, to avoid a continuance of melodramatic scenes, which were
+extremely unpleasant to every one concerned, I was obliged to leave
+England for a time and travel upon the Continent."
+
+"And, in the meantime, what happened at Mandeleys?" David Thain asked.
+
+"Richard Vont and his nephew appear to have left for the United States
+very soon after my own departure from England.  The cottage he left in
+the care of an elderly relative, who gave little trouble but much
+annoyance.  She attended a Primitive Methodist Chapel in the village,
+and she passed both myself and the ladies of my household at all times
+without obeisance."
+
+"Dear me!" David Thain murmured under his breath.
+
+"After her death, I instructed my lawyers to examine the legal title to
+the Vont property and to see whether there was any chance of regaining
+it.  Its value would be, at the outside, say six or seven hundred
+pounds.  I advertised and offered two thousand, five hundred pounds to
+regain, it.  My solicitors came into touch with the man Vont through an
+agent in America.  His reply to their propositions on my behalf does
+not bear repetition.  I then instructed my lawyers to take such steps
+as they could to have the deed of gift set aside, sufficient
+compensation of course being promised.  That must have been some eight
+years ago.  My efforts have come to an end to-day.  The cottage remains
+the property of Richard Vont.  My own law costs have been considerable,
+but by some means or other this man Vont has contrived to defend his
+property at the expenditure of some five or six thousand pounds.  One
+can only conclude that he must have prospered in this strange country
+of yours, Mr. Thain."
+
+"To a stranger," the latter observed, "it seems curious that this man
+should have set so high a value upon a property which must be full of
+painful associations to him."
+
+"The very arguments I made use of in our earlier correspondence," his
+host assented.  "I have told you the story, Mr. Thain, because it
+occurred to me that this man might have communicated to you his reason
+for returning after all these years to the neighbourhood."
+
+"He told me nothing."
+
+"Then I have wasted your time with a long and, I fear, a very dull
+story," the Marquis apologised gracefully.  "Shall we join the others?"
+
+"There was just one question, if I might be permitted," David Thain
+said, "which I should like to ask concerning the story which you have
+told me.  The girl to whom you have alluded--Vont's daughter--what
+became of her?"
+
+The Marquis for a moment stood perfectly still.  He had just risen to
+his feet and was standing where a gleam of sunlight fell upon his cold
+and passionless features.  His silence had, in its way, a curious
+effect.  He seemed neither to be thinking nor hesitating.  He was just
+in a state of suspense.  Presently he leaned forward and knocked the
+ash from his cigarette into the grate.
+
+"The lady in question," he replied, "has found that place in the world
+to which her gifts and charm entitle her.  I fear that my sister will
+be getting impatient.  My daughter, too, I am sure, would like to
+improve her acquaintance with you, Mr. Thain."
+
+David Thain was, in his way, an obstinate and self-willed man, but he
+found himself, for those first few moments, subject to his host's calm
+but effectual closure of the conversation.  Nevertheless, he recovered
+himself in time to ask that other question as they left the room.
+
+"The lady is alive, then?"
+
+"She is alive," the Marquis acquiesced, in a colourless tone.
+
+A servant threw open the door of the drawing-room.  The Marquis
+motioned to his guest to precede him.
+
+"As I imagined," he murmured, "I see that my sister is impatient.  You
+will forgive me, Caroline," he went on, turning to the Duchess.  "Mr.
+Thain's conversation was most interesting.  Letitia, my dear, do press
+Mr. Thain to dine with us one evening.  This afternoon I fear that I
+have been unduly loquacious.  I should welcome another opportunity of
+conversing with him concerning his wonderful country."
+
+Letitia picked up a little morocco-bound volume from the table and
+consulted it.  Sir Robert drew the prospective guest a little on one
+side.
+
+"For heaven's sake," he whispered, "don't give the Marquis any
+financial tips.  He has a fancy that he is destined to restore the
+fortunes of the Mandeleys on the Stock Exchange.  He is a delightfully
+ornamental person, but I can assure you that as a father-in-law he is a
+distinct luxury."
+
+David Thain smiled grimly.
+
+"I shall be careful," he promised.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+The Marquis devoted the remainder of that afternoon, as he did most
+others, to paying a call.  Very soon indeed after David Thain's
+departure, he left the house, stepped into the motor-car which was
+waiting for him, and, with a little nod to the chauffeur which
+indicated his indulgence in a customary enterprise, drove off towards
+Battersea.  Here he descended before a large block of flats overlooking
+the gardens, stepped into the lift and, without any direction to the
+porter, was let out upon the sixth floor.  He made his way along the
+corridor to a little mahogany front door, on which was a brass plate
+inscribed with the name of _Miss Marcia Hannaway_.  He rang the bell
+and was at once admitted by a very trim parlourmaid, who took his hat
+and cane, and ushered him into a remarkably pleasant little sitting
+room.  A woman, seated before a typewriter, held out two ink-stained
+hands towards him with a little laugh.
+
+"I've been putting a ribbon in," she confessed.  "Did you ever see such
+a mess!  Please make yourself comfortable while I go and wash."
+
+The Marquis glanced with a slight frown at the machine, and, taking her
+wrists, stooped down and kissed them lightly.
+
+"My dear Marcia," he expostulated, "is this necessary!"
+
+She shook her head with a droll smile.
+
+"Perhaps if it were," she confessed, "I should hate to do it.  There's
+a _Nineteenth Century_ on the sofa.  You can read my article."
+
+She hurried out of the room, from which she was absent only a very few
+moments.  The Marquis, with a finger between the pages of the review
+which he had been reading, looked up as she re-entered.  She was a
+woman of nameless gifts, of pleasant if not unduly slim figure.  Her
+forehead was perhaps a little low, her eyes brilliant and intelligent,
+her mouth large and exceedingly mobile.  She was not above the
+allurements of dress, for her house gown, with its long tunic trimmed
+with light fur, was of fashionable cut and becoming.  Her fingers,
+cleansed now from the violet stains, were shapely, almost elegant.  She
+threw herself into an easy chair opposite her visitor, and reached out
+her hand for a cigarette.
+
+"Well," she asked, "and how has the great trial ended?"
+
+"Adversely," the Marquis confessed.
+
+"You foolish person," she sighed, lighting the cigarette and throwing
+the match away.  "Of course you were bound to lose, and I suppose it's
+cost you no end of money."
+
+"I believe," he admitted, a little stiffly, "that my lawyers are
+somewhat depressed at the amount."
+
+She smoked in silence for a moment.
+
+"So he will go back to Mandeleys.  It is a queer little fragment of
+life.  What on earth does he want to do it for?"
+
+"Obstinacy," the Marquis declared,--"sheer, brutal, ignorant obstinacy."
+
+"And the boy?" she asked, pursuing her own train of thought.  "Have you
+heard anything of him?"
+
+"Nothing.  To tell you the truth, I have made no enquiries.  Beyond the
+fact that it seems as though, for the present, Richard Vont will have
+his way, I take no interest in either of them."
+
+She nodded thoughtfully.
+
+"If only we others," she sighed, "could infuse into our lives something
+of the marvellous persistence of these people whom in other respects we
+have left so far behind!"
+
+"My dear Marcia," he protested, "surely, with your remarkable
+intelligence, you can see that such persistence is merely a form of
+narrow-mindedness.  Your father has shut in his life and driven it
+along one narrow groove.  To you every day brings its fresh sensation,
+its fresh object.  Hence--coupled, of course, with your natural
+gifts--your success.  The person who thinks of but one thing in life
+must be indeed a dull dog."
+
+"Very excellent reasoning," she admitted.  "Still, to come back to this
+little tragedy--for it is a tragedy, isn't it?--have you any idea what
+he means to do when he gets to Mandeleys?"
+
+"None at all!"
+
+"Let me see," she went on, "it is nineteen years ago last September,
+isn't it?--nineteen years out of the middle of his life.  Will he sit
+in the garden and brood, I wonder, or has he brought back with him some
+scheme of mediaeval revenge?"
+
+"There was a time," the Marquis reflected, "when several of my Irish
+tenants used to shoot at me every Saturday night from behind a hedge.
+It was not in the least a dangerous operation, and I presume it brought
+them some relief.  With Vont, however, things would be different.  I
+remember him distinctly as a most wonderful shot."
+
+"Psychologically," Marcia Hannaway observed, "his present action is
+interesting.  If he had shot you or me in his first fit of passionate
+resentment, everything would have been in order, but to leave the
+country, nurse a sullen feeling of revenge for years, and then come
+back, seems curious.  What shall you do when you see him sitting in his
+garden?"
+
+"I shall address him," the Marquis replied.  "I fear that his long
+residence in such a country as America will have altered him
+considerably, but it is of course possible that the instincts of his
+class remain."
+
+"How feudal you are!" she laughed.
+
+The Marquis frowned slightly.  Although this was the one person in the
+world whom he felt was necessary to him, who held a distinct place in
+his very inaccessible heart, there were times when he entertained a dim
+suspicion that she was making fun of him.  At such times he was very
+angry indeed.
+
+"In any case," he said, "we will not waste our time in speculating upon
+this man's attitude.  I am still hoping that I may be able to devise
+means to render his occupancy of the cottage impossible."
+
+"I should like to hear about the boy."
+
+"If," the Marquis promised, "I find Vont's attitude respectful, I will
+make enquiries."
+
+"When are you going to Mandeleys?" she asked.
+
+"I am in no hurry to leave London," he replied.
+
+"When you go," she told him, "I have made up my mind to take a little
+holiday.  I thought even of going to the South of France."
+
+The lines of her companion's forehead were slightly elevated.
+
+"My dear Marcia," he protested gently, "is that like you?  The class of
+people who frequent the Riviera at this time of the year--"
+
+She laughed at him delightfully.
+
+"Oh, you foolish person!" she interrupted.  "If I go, I shall go to a
+tiny little boarding house, or take a villa in one of the quiet
+places--San Raphael, perhaps, or one of those little forgotten spots
+between Hyères and Cannes.  Phillis Grant would go with me.  She isn't
+going to act again until the autumn season."
+
+Her visitor's expression was a little blank.
+
+"In the case of your departure from London," he announced, in a very
+even but very forlorn tone, "I will instruct Mr. Wadham to make a
+suitable addition to your allowance.  At the same time, Marcia," he
+added, "I shall miss you."
+
+His words were evidently a surprise to her.  She threw away her
+cigarette and came and sat on the sofa by his side.
+
+"Do you know, I believe you would," she murmured, resting her hand upon
+his.  "How queer!"
+
+"I have never concealed my affection for you, have I?" he asked.
+
+This time the laugh which broke from her lips was scarcely natural.
+
+"Concealed your affection, Reginald!" she repeated.  "How strangely
+that sounds!  But listen.  You said something just now about my
+allowance.  If I allude to it in return, will you believe that it is
+entirely for your sake?"
+
+"Of course!"
+
+She rose from her chair and, crossing the room, rummaged about her desk
+for a moment, produced a letter, and brought it to him.  The Marquis
+adjusted his horn-rimmed eyeglass and read:
+
+
+_Dear Madam_:
+
+We feel that some explanation is due to you with regard to the
+non-payment for the last two quarters of your allowance from our
+client, the Marquis of Mandeleys.  We have to inform you that for some
+time past we have had no funds in our possession to pay this allowance.
+We informed his lordship of the fact, some time back, but in our
+opinion his lordship scarcely took the circumstance seriously.  We
+think it better, therefore, that you should communicate with him on the
+subject.
+
+Faithfully yours,
+  WADHAM, SON AND DICKSON.
+
+
+The Marquis deliberately folded up the letter, placed his eyeglass in
+his pocket, and sat looking into the fire.  There was very little
+change in his face.  Only Marcia, to whom he had been the study of a
+lifetime, knew that so far as suffering was possible to him, he was
+suffering at that moment.
+
+"You mustn't think it matters," she said gently.  "You know my last
+novel was quite a wonderful success, and for that article in the
+_Nineteenth_ you were looking at, they gave me twenty guineas.  I am
+really almost opulent.  Still, I thought it was better for you to know
+this.  The same thing might refer to other and more important matters,
+and you know, dear, you are rather inclined to walk with your head in
+the air where money matters are concerned."
+
+"You have been very considerate, but foolishly so, my dear Marcia," he
+declared.  "This matter must be put right at once.  I fear that a
+younger element has obtruded itself into the firm of Wadham, an element
+which scarcely grasps the true position.  I will see these people,
+Marcia."
+
+"You are not to worry about it," she begged softly.  "To tell you the
+truth--"
+
+Marcia was a brave woman, and the moment had come up to which she had
+been leading for so long, which for many months, even years, had been
+in her mind.  And when it came she faltered.  There was something in
+the superb, immutable poise of the man who bent a little courteously
+towards her, which checked the words upon her lips.
+
+"It will be no trouble to me, Marcia, to set this little affair right,"
+he assured her.  "I am only glad that your circumstances have been such
+that you have not been inconvenienced.  At the same time, is it
+entirely necessary for you to manipulate that hideous machine
+yourself?" he enquired, inclining his head towards the typewriter.
+
+"There are times," she confessed, "when I find it better.  Of course, I
+send a great deal of my work out to be typed, but my correspondence
+grows, and my friends find my handwriting illegible."
+
+"I have never found it difficult," he remarked.
+
+"Well, you've had a good many years to get used to it," she reminded
+him.
+
+His hand rested for a moment upon her shoulder.  He drew her a little
+towards him.  She suddenly laughed, leaned over and kissed him on both
+cheeks, and jumped up.  The trim little parlourmaid was at the door
+with tea.
+
+"Yes," she went on, "you have learned to read my handwriting, and I
+have learned how you like your tea.  Just one or two more little things
+like that, and life is made between two people, isn't it?  Shall I tell
+you what I think the most singular thing in the world?" she went on,
+pausing for a moment in her task.  "It is fidelity to purpose--and to
+people, too, perhaps.  In a way there is a quaint sort of distinction
+about it, and from another point of view it is most horribly
+constraining."
+
+"I interrupted you this afternoon, I imagine," he observed, "in the
+construction of some work of fiction."
+
+"Oh, no!" she replied.  "What I write isn't fiction.  That's why it
+sells.  It's truth, you see, under another garb.  But there the fact
+remains--that I shouldn't know how to make tea for another man in the
+world, and you wouldn't be able to read the letters of any other woman
+who wrote as badly as I do."
+
+"The fact," he remarked, "seems to me to be a cause for mutual
+congratulation."
+
+She stooped down to place a dish of muffins on a heater near the fire,
+graceful yet as a girl, and as brisk.
+
+"I can't imagine," she declared, "why it is that my sex has acquired
+the reputation for fidelity.  I am sure we crave for experience much
+more than men."
+
+The Marquis helped himself to a muffin and considered the point.  There
+were many times when Marcia's conversation troubled him.  He was by no
+means an ill-read or unintellectual man, only his studies of literature
+had been confined to its polished and classical side, the side which
+deals so much with living and so little with life.
+
+"Are you preparing for a new work of fiction, Marcia," he asked, "or
+are you developing a fresh standpoint?"
+
+"Dear friend," she declared, lightly and yet with an undernote of
+earnestness, "how can I tell?  I never know what I am going to do in
+the way of work.  I wish I could say the same about life.  Now I am
+going to ask you a great favour.  I have to attend a small meeting at
+my club, at the other end of Piccadilly, at half-past five.  Would you
+take me there?"
+
+"I shall be delighted," he answered, a little stiffly.
+
+She went presently to put on her outdoor clothes.  The Marquis was
+disappointed.  He realised how much he had looked forward to that quiet
+twilight hour, when somehow or other his vanity felt soothed, and that
+queer weariness which came over him sometimes was banished.  He
+escorted Marcia to the car when she reappeared, however, without
+complaint.
+
+"I see your name in the papers sometimes, Marcia," he observed as he
+took his place by her side, "in connection with women's work.  Of
+course, I do not interfere in any way with your energies.  I should
+not, in whatever direction they might chance to lead you.  At the same
+time, I must confess that I have noticed with considerable pleasure
+that you have never been publicly associated with this movement in
+favour of Woman's Suffrage."
+
+She nodded.
+
+"I should like a vote myself," she admitted simply, "but when I think
+of the number of other women who would have to have it, and who don't
+yet look at life seriously at all, I think we are better as we are.  Is
+it my fancy," she went on, a little abruptly, "or are you really
+troubled about the return of--of Richard Vont?"
+
+"As usual, Marcia," he said, "you show a somewhat extraordinary
+perception where I am concerned.  I am, as you know, not subject to
+presentiments, and I have no exact apprehension of what the word fear
+may mean.  At the same time, you are right.  I do view the return of
+this man with a feeling which you, as a novelist, might be able to
+analyse, but which I, as a layman, unused to fresh sentiments, find
+puzzling.  You remember what a famous Frenchman wrote in his memoirs,
+suddenly, across one blank page of his journal--'To-day I feel that a
+great change is coming.'"
+
+She smiled reassuringly.
+
+"Personally," she told him, "I believe that it is just the call of
+England to a man who lived very near the soil--her heart.  I think he
+wants the smell of spring flowers, the stillness of an English autumn,
+the winds of February in the woods he was brought up in.  It is a form
+of heart-sickness, you know.  I have felt it myself so often.  It is
+scarcely possible that after all these years he is still nursing that
+bitter hatred of us both."
+
+The car had reached the great building in which Marcia's club was
+situated.  The Marquis handed her out.
+
+"I trust that you are right," he remarked.  "You will allow me to leave
+the car for you?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"There are so many women here with whom I want to talk," she said.  "I
+may even stay and dine.  And would you mind not coming until Wednesday?
+To-morrow I must work all day at an article which has to be typed and
+catch the Wednesday's boat for America."
+
+"Exactly as you wish," he assented.
+
+She waved her hand to him and ran lightly up the steps.  The Marquis
+threw himself back in his car and hesitated.  The footman was waiting
+for an address, and his august master was suddenly conscious that the
+skies were very grey, that a slight rain was falling, and that there
+was nowhere very much he wanted to go.
+
+The man waited with immovable face.
+
+"To--the club."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Messrs. Wadham, Son and Dickson were not habited in luxury.  Theirs was
+one of those old-fashioned suites of offices in Lincoln's Inn, where
+the passages are of stone, the doors of painted deal, and a general air
+of bareness and discomfort prevails.  The Marquis, who was a rare
+visitor, followed the directions of a hand painted upon the wall and
+found himself in what was termed, an enquiry office.  A small boy tore
+himself away with apparent regret from the study of a pile of
+documents, and turned a little wearily towards the caller.
+
+"I desire," the Marquis announced, "to see Mr. Wadham, Senior, or to
+confer at once with any member of the firm who may be disengaged."
+
+The small boy was hugely impressed.  He glanced at the long row of
+black boxes along the wall and a premonition of the truth began to dawn
+upon him.
+
+"What name, sir?" he enquired.
+
+"The Marquis of Mandeleys."
+
+The office boy swung open a wicket gate and pointed to the hard remains
+of a horsehair stuffed easy-chair.  The Marquis eyed it curiously--and
+remained standing.  His messenger thereupon departed, exhibiting a rare
+and unlegal haste.  He returned breathless, in fact, from his mission,
+closely followed by Mr. Wadham, Junior.
+
+"This is quite an honour, your lordship," the latter said, hastily
+withdrawing his hand as he became aware of a certain rigidity in his
+visitor's demeanour.  "My father is disengaged.  Let me show you the
+way to his room."
+
+"I should be obliged," the Marquis assented.
+
+Mr. Wadham, Senior, was an excellent replica of his son, a little
+fatter, a little rosier and a little more verbose.  He rose from behind
+his desk and bowed twice as his distinguished client entered.  The
+Marquis indicated to Mr. Wadham, Junior, the chair upon which he
+proposed to sit, and waited while it was wheeled up to the side of the
+desk.  Then he withdrew his gloves in leisurely fashion and extended
+his hand to the older man, who clasped it reverently.
+
+"Your lordship pays us a rare honour," Mr. Wadham, Senior, observed.
+
+"I should have preferred," the Marquis said, with some emphasis, "that
+circumstances had not rendered my visit to-day necessary."
+
+The head of the firm nodded sympathetically.
+
+"You will bear in mind," he begged, "our advice concerning these recent
+actions."
+
+"Your advice was, without doubt, legally good," his visitor replied,
+"but it scarcely took into account circumstances outside the legal
+point of view.  However, I am not here to discuss those actions, which
+I understand are now finally disposed of."
+
+"Quite finally, I fear, your lordship."
+
+"I find myself," the Marquis continued sternly, "in the painful
+position of having to prefer a complaint against your firm."
+
+"I am very sorry--very sorry indeed," Mr. Wadham murmured.
+
+"I discovered yesterday afternoon, entirely by accident, that the
+allowance which you have my instructions to make to Miss Hannaway has
+not been paid for the last two quarters."
+
+"Through no neglect of ours, I assure your lordship," Mr. Wadham
+insisted gravely.  "You will remember that we wrote to you last
+October, pointing out that the yield from the estates was insufficient,
+without the help of the bank, to meet the interest on the mortgages,
+and that, amongst other claims which we were obliged to leave over, we
+should be unable to forward the usual cheque to the young lady in
+question."
+
+The Marquis cleared his throat and tapped with his long forefingers
+upon the desk.  It was a curious circumstance that, although both Mr.
+Wadham, Senior, and Junior had done more than their duty towards their
+distinguished client, each had at that moment the feeling of a criminal.
+
+"You are, I believe, perfectly well aware, Mr. Wadham," the Marquis
+declared, "that I never read your letters."
+
+Mr. Wadham, Senior, coughed.  His son thrust both hands into his
+trousers pockets.  The statement was unanswerable.
+
+"I was therefore," the Marquis continued severely, "in complete
+ignorance of your failure to carry out my instructions."
+
+Mr. Wadham, Junior, less affected than his father by tradition, and
+priding himself more upon that negligible gift of common sense,
+interposed respectfully but firmly.
+
+"We can scarcely be responsible," he pointed out, "for your lordship's
+indisposition to read letters containing business information of
+importance."
+
+The Marquis changed his position slightly and looked at the speaker.
+Mr. Wadham, Junior, became during the next few seconds profoundly
+impressed with the irrelevance, almost the impertinence of his words.
+
+"I should have imagined," the former said severely, "that my habits are
+well-known to the members of a firm whose connection with my family is
+almost historical."
+
+"We should have waited upon your lordship," Mr. Wadham, Senior,
+admitted.  "But with reference to the case of this young lady, not
+hearing from your lordship, we wrote to her, very politely, indicating
+the great difficulties which we had to face in the management of the
+Mandeleys estates, owing to the abnormal agricultural depression, and
+we promised to send her a cheque as soon as such a step became
+possible.  In reply we heard from her--a most ladylike and reasonable
+letter it was--stating that owing to recent literary successes, and to
+your lordship's generosity through so many years, she was only too glad
+of the opportunity to beg us to cease from forwarding the quarterly
+amount as hitherto.  Under those circumstances, we have devoted such
+small sums of money as have come into our hands to more vital purposes."
+
+"I suppose it did not occur to you," the Marquis observed, "that I am
+the person to decide what is or is not vital in the disposition of my
+own moneys."
+
+"That is a fact which we should not presume to dispute," the lawyer
+admitted, "but I should like to point out that, on the next occasion
+when we had a little money in hand, your household steward, Mr.
+Harrison, was here in urgent need of a thousand pounds for the payment
+of domestic bills connected with the establishment in Grosvenor Square."
+
+"It appears to me," the Marquis said, with a trace of irritability in
+his tone, "that the greater part of my income goes in paying bills."
+
+The complaint was one which for the moment left Mr. Wadham speechless.
+He was vaguely conscious that an adequate reply existed, but it eluded
+him.  His son, who had adopted the attitude of being outside the
+discussion, was engaged in an abortive attempt to appear as much at
+ease in his own office as this client of theirs certainly was.
+
+"I will discuss the matter of Miss Hannaway's future allowance with
+that young lady, and let you know the result," the Marquis announced.
+"In the meantime, how do we stand for ready money?"
+
+"Ready money, your lordship!" his interlocutor gasped.
+
+"Precisely," the Marquis assented.  "It is, I believe, a few days after
+the period when my tenants usually pay their rents."
+
+"Your lordship," Mr. Wadham said, speaking with every attempt at
+gravity, "if every one of your tenants paid their full rent and brought
+it into this office at the present moment, we should still be unable to
+pay the interest on the mortgages due next month, without further
+advances from the bank."
+
+"These mortgages," the Marquis remarked thoughtfully, "are a nuisance."
+
+So self-evident a fact seemed to leave little room for comment or
+denial.  The Marquis frowned a little more severely and withdrew his
+forefingers from the desk.
+
+"Figures, I fear, only confuse me," he confessed, "but for the sake of
+curiosity, what do my quarterly rents amount to?"
+
+"Between seven and eight thousand pounds, according to deductions, your
+lordship," was the prompt reply.  "That sum I presume will be coming in
+from your agent, Mr. Merridrew, within the course of a few days.  The
+interest upon the mortgages amounts to perhaps a thousand pounds less
+than that sum.  That thousand pounds, I may be permitted to point out
+to your lordship, is all that remains for the carrying on of your
+Grosvenor Square establishment, and for such disbursements as are
+necessary at Mandeleys."
+
+"It is shameful," the Marquis declared severely, "that any one should
+be allowed to anticipate their income in this way.  Mortgages are most
+vicious institutions."
+
+Mr. Wadham coughed.
+
+"Your lordship's expenditure, some ten or fifteen years ago, rendered
+them first necessary.  After that there was the unfortunate speculation
+in the tin mines--"
+
+"That will do, Mr. Wadham," his client interrupted.  "All I desire to
+know from you further is a statement of the approximate sum required to
+clear off the mortgages upon the Mandeleys estates?"
+
+Mr. Wadham, Senior, looked a little startled.  His son stopped
+whistling under his breath and leaned forward in his chair.
+
+"Clear off the mortgages," he repeated.
+
+"Precisely!"
+
+"The exact figures," was the somewhat hesitating pronouncement, "would
+require a quarter of an hour's study, but I should say that a sum of
+two hundred and twenty thousand pounds would be required."
+
+"I have not a head for figures," the Marquis acknowledged gravely, "but
+the amount seems trifling.  I shall wish you good-day now, gentlemen.
+Two hundred and twenty thousand, I think you said, Mr. Wadham?"
+
+"That is as near the amount as possible," the lawyer admitted.
+
+The Marquis drew on his gloves, a sign that he did not intend to honour
+his adviser with any familiar form of farewell.  He inclined his head
+slightly to Mr. Wadham, and more slightly still to Mr. Wadham, Junior,
+who was holding open the door.  The small boy, who was on the alert,
+escorted him to the front steps, and received with delight a gracious
+word of thanks for his attentions.  So the Marquis took his departure.
+
+Mr. Wadham, Junior, closed the door and threw himself into the chair
+which had been occupied by their distinguished client.  There was a
+faint perfume of lavender water remaining in the atmosphere.  His eyes
+wandered around the further rows of tin boxes which encumbered the wall.
+
+"I suppose," he murmured, "it's a great thing to have a Marquis for
+one's client."
+
+"I suppose it is," Mr. Wadham, Senior, assented gloomily.
+
+"Father, do you ever feel at ease with him?" his son asked curiously.
+"Do you ever feel as though you were talking to a real human being, of
+the same flesh and blood as yourself?"
+
+"Never for a single moment," was the vigorous reply.  "If I felt like
+that, John, do you know what I should do?  No?  Well, then, I'll tell
+you.  I should have those tin boxes taken out, one by one, and stacked
+in the hall.  I should say to him, as plainly as I am saying it to
+you--'We lose money every year by your business, Marquis.  We've had
+our turn.  Try some one else--and go to the Devil!'"
+
+"But you couldn't do it!" Mr. Wadham, Junior, observed disconsolately.
+
+"I couldn't," his father agreed, with a note of subdued melancholy in
+his tone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Lady Margaret, who chanced to be the first arrival on the night of the
+dinner party in David Thain's honour, contemplated her sister
+admiringly.  Letitia was wearing a gown of ivory satin, a form of
+attire which seemed always to bring with it almost startling
+reminiscences of her Italian ancestry.
+
+"So glad to find you alone, Letty," she remarked, as she sank into the
+most comfortable of the easy chairs.  "There's something I've been
+wanting to ask you for weeks.  Bob put it into my head again this
+afternoon."
+
+"What is it, dear?" Letitia enquired.
+
+"Why don't you marry Charlie Grantham?" her sister demanded abruptly.
+
+"There are so many reasons.  First of all, he hasn't really ever asked
+me."
+
+"You're simply indolent," Lady Margaret persisted.  "He'd ask you in
+five minutes if you'd let him.  Do you suppose Bob would ever have
+thought of marrying me, if I hadn't put the idea into his head?"
+
+"You're so much cleverer than I," Letitia sighed.
+
+"Not in the least," was the prompt disclaimer.  "I really doubt whether
+I have your brains, and I certainly haven't your taste.  The only thing
+that I have, and always had, is common sense, common sense enough to
+see that girls in our position in life must marry, and the sooner the
+better."
+
+"Why only our class of life?"
+
+"Don't be silly!  It's perfectly obvious, isn't it, that the daughters
+of the middle classes are having the time of their lives.  They are all
+earning money.  Amongst them it has become quite the vogue to take
+situations as secretaries or milliners or that sort of thing, and it
+simply doesn't matter whether they marry or not.  They get all the fun
+they want out of life."
+
+"It sounds quite attractive," Letitia admitted.  "I think I shall take
+a course in typewriting and shorthand."
+
+"You won't," Margaret rejoined.  "You know perfectly well that that is
+one of the things we can never do.  You've got to marry first.  Then
+you can branch out in life in any direction you choose--art, travel,
+amours, or millinery.  You can help yourself with both hands."
+
+"Which have you chosen, Meg?"
+
+"Oh, I am an exception!" Margaret confessed.  "You see, Bob is such
+fun, and I've never got over the joke of marrying him.  Besides, I
+haven't any craving for things at all.  I am not temperamental like
+you.  Where's father?"
+
+"Just back from the country.  He'll be here in time, though."
+
+"And who's dining?"
+
+"Charlie, for one," Letitia replied, "Aunt Caroline, of course, and
+Uncle, Mrs. Honeywell, and the American person.  The party was got up
+on his account, so I expect father wants to borrow money from him."
+
+"He doesn't look an easy lender," Lady Margaret remarked.
+
+"There's no one proof against father," Letitia declared.  "He is too
+exquisitely and transparently dishonest.  You know, there's a man's
+story about the clubs that he once borrowed money from Lewis at five
+per cent. interest."
+
+Margaret remained in a serious frame of mind.
+
+"Something will have to be done," she sighed.  "Robert went down and
+looked at the mortgages, the other day.  He says they are simply
+appalling, there isn't an acre missed out.  It's quite on the cards,
+you know, Letty, that Mandeleys may have to go."
+
+Letitia made a little grimace.
+
+"I am getting perfectly callous," she confided.  "If it did, this house
+would probably follow, father would realise everything he could lay his
+hands upon and become the autocrat of some French watering place, and I
+should cease to be the honest but impecunious daughter of a wicked
+nobleman, and enjoy the liberty of the middle-class young women you
+were telling me about.  It wouldn't be so bad!"
+
+"Or marry--" Margaret began.
+
+"Mr. David Thain," the butler announced.
+
+The juxtaposition of words perhaps incited in Letitia a greater
+interest as she turned away from her sister to welcome the first of her
+guests.  He had to cross a considerable space of the drawing-room, with
+its old-fashioned conglomeration of furniture untouched and unrenovated
+for the last two generations, but he showed not the slightest sign of
+awkwardness or self-consciousness in any form.  He was slight and none
+too powerfully built, but his body was singularly erect, and he moved
+with the alert dignity of a man in perfect health and used to gymnastic
+training.  His clean-shaven face disclosed nervous lines which his
+manner contradicted.  His mouth was unexpectedly hard, his deep-set
+grey eyes steel-like, almost brilliant.  These things made for a
+strength which had in it, however, nothing of the uncouth.  The only
+singularity about his face and manner, as he took his hostess' fingers,
+was the absence of any smile of greeting upon his lips.
+
+"I am afraid that I am a little early," he apologised.
+
+"We are all the more grateful to you," Lady Margaret assured him.
+"Letitia and I always bore one another terribly.  A married sister, you
+know, feels rather like the cuckoo returning to the discarded nest."
+
+"One hates other people's liberty so much," Letitia sighed.
+
+"I should have thought liberty was a state very easy to acquire," David
+Thain observed didactically.
+
+"That is because you come from a land where all the women are clever
+and the men tolerant," Letitia replied.  "Where is that husband of
+yours, Margaret?"
+
+"I am ashamed to say," her sister confessed, "that he stayed down in
+the morning room while Gossett fetched him a glass of sherry.  Look at
+him now," she added, as Sir Robert entered the room unannounced and
+came smiling towards them.  "How can I have any faith in a husband like
+that.  Doesn't he look as though the only thing that could trouble him
+in life was that he hadn't been able to get here a few minutes earlier!"
+
+"Given away, eh?" the newcomer groaned, as he kissed Letitia's fingers.
+"How are you, Mr. Thain?  Your country is entirely to blame for my
+habits.  I got so into the habit of drinking cocktails while I was over
+there that I really prefer my aperitif to my wine at dinner."
+
+Sir Robert, who had discovered within the last few days exactly where
+Mr. David Thain stood amongst the list of American multi-millionaires,
+drew this very distinguished person a little on one side to ask about a
+railway.  Then the Marquis made his appearance, and immediately
+afterwards the remaining guests.  David Thain, of whom many of the
+morning papers, during the last few days, had found something to say,
+found himself almost insinuated into the position of favoured guest.
+He took Mrs. Honeywell--a dark and rather tired-looking lady--in to
+dinner, but he sat at Letitia's left hand, and she gave him a good deal
+of her attention.
+
+"You know everybody, don't you, Mr. Thain?" she asked him, soon after
+they had taken their places.
+
+"Except the gentleman on your right," he answered.
+
+She leaned towards him confidentially.
+
+"His name," she whispered, "is Lord Charles Grantham.  He is the son of
+the Duke of Leicester, who is, between ourselves, almost as wicked a
+duke as my father is a marquis.  Fortunately, however, his mother left
+him a fortune.  Do you notice how thoughtful he looks?"
+
+David Thain glanced across the table at the young man in question, who
+was exchanging rather weary monosyllables with his right-hand neighbour.
+
+"He is perhaps overworked?"
+
+Letitia shook her head.
+
+"Not at all.  He cannot make up his mind whether or not he wants to
+marry me."
+
+"And can you make up your mind whether you wish to marry him?"
+
+Letitia lost for a moment her air of gentle banter.
+
+"What a downright question!" she observed.  "However, I can't tell you
+before I answer him, can I, and he hasn't asked me yet."
+
+"I should think," David Thain said coolly, "that you would make an
+excellent match."
+
+Their eyes met for a moment.  There was a challenging light in hers to
+which he instantly responded.  Her very beautiful white teeth closed
+for a moment upon her lower lip.  Then she smiled upon him once more.
+
+"It is so reassuring," she murmured, "to be told things like that by
+people who are likely to know.  Charles, talk to me at once," she went
+on, turning towards him.  "Mr. Thain and I agree far too perfectly upon
+everything."
+
+Thain was deep in conversation with his neighbour before Lord Charles
+was able to disentangle himself from the conversational artifices of
+the Duchess.  Letitia took note of his aptness with a little, malicious
+smile.  It was towards the close of dinner when she once more turned
+towards him.
+
+"Have you been telling Mrs. Honeywell how you made all your millions?"
+she asked.
+
+"I have been trying to point out," he replied, "that the first million
+is all one has to make.  The rest comes."
+
+"What a delightful country!" Letitia observed.  "If I were to borrow
+from all my friends and collected a million, do you think I could go
+out there and become a multi-millionaire?"
+
+"Women are not natural money-makers," he pronounced.
+
+"What is her real sphere?" she asked sweetly.  "I should so much like
+to know your opinion of us."
+
+"As yet," he replied, "I have had no time to form one."
+
+"What a pity!" she sighed.  "It would have been so instructive."
+
+"In the small amenities of daily life," he said thoughtfully, "in what
+one of our writers calls the insignificant arts, women seem inevitably
+to excel.  They always appear to do better, in fact, in the narrower
+circles.  Directly they step outside, a certain lack of breadth becomes
+noticeable."
+
+"Dear me!" she murmured.  "It's a good thing I'm not one of these
+modern ladies who stand on a tub in Hyde Park and thump the drum for
+votes.  I should be saying quite disagreeable things to you, Mr. Thain,
+shouldn't I?"
+
+"You couldn't be one of those, if you tried," he replied.  "You see, if
+I may be permitted to say so, nature has endowed you with rather a rare
+gift so far as your sex is concerned."
+
+"Don't be over-diffident," she begged.  "I may know it, mayn't I?"
+
+"A sense of humour."
+
+"When a man tells a woman that she has a sense of humour," Letitia
+declared, "it is a sure sign that he--"
+
+She suddenly realised how intensely observant those steely grey eyes
+could be.  She broke off in her sentence.  They still held her, however.
+
+"That he what?"
+
+"Such a bad habit of mine," she confided frankly.  "I so often begin a
+sentence and have no idea how to finish it.  Ada," she went on,
+addressing Mrs. Honeywell, "has Mr. Thain taught you how to become a
+millionairess?"
+
+"I haven't even tried to learn," that lady replied.  "He has promised
+me a subscription to my Cripples' Guild, though."
+
+"What extraordinary bad taste," Letitia remarked, "to cadge from him at
+dinner time!"
+
+"If your father weren't within hearing," Mrs. Honeywell retorted, "I'd
+let you know what I think of you as a hostess!  Why are we all so
+frightened of your father, Letitia?  Look at him now.  He is the most
+picturesque and kindly object you can imagine, yet I find myself always
+choosing my phrases, and slipping into a sort of pre-Victorian English,
+when I fancy that he is listening."
+
+"I see him more from the family point of view, I suppose," Letitia
+observed, "and yet, in a way, he is rather a wonderful person.  For
+instance, I have never seen him hurry, I have never seen him angry, in
+the ordinary sense of the word; in fact he has the most amazing
+complacency I ever knew.  Of course, Aunt Caroline," she went on,
+turning to the Duchess a few moments later, "if you want to stay with
+the men, pray do so.  If not, you might take into account the fact that
+I have been trying to catch your eye for the last three minutes."
+
+Thain drew up nearer to his host after the women had withdrawn, and
+found himself next Sir Robert, who talked railways with eloquence and
+some understanding.  Lord Charles was frankly bored, and bestowed his
+whole attention upon the port.  The Marquis discussed a recent land
+bill with his brother-in-law, but in a very few moments gave the signal
+to rise.  He attached himself at once to David Thain.
+
+"You play bridge?" he asked.
+
+"Never if I can avoid it," was the frank reply.
+
+"Then you and I will entertain one another," his host suggested.
+
+The Marquis's idea of entertainment was to install his guest in a
+comfortable chair in a small den at the back of the house, which he
+kept for his absolutely private use, and to broach the subject which
+had led to David's welcome at Grosvenor Square.
+
+"Let me ask you," he began, "have you seen anything more of this man
+Vont?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+The Marquis looked ruminatively at the cedar spill with which he had
+just lit his cigarette.
+
+"I am almost certain," he said, "that I saw him on the platform at
+Raynham--the nearest station to Mandeleys--yesterday.  He seemed
+marvellously little altered."
+
+"He has probably taken up his abode down there, then," David observed.
+
+The Marquis's face darkened.  He brushed the subject aside.
+
+"There is a matter concerning which I wish to speak to you, Mr. Thain,"
+he said.  "You are one of the fortunate ones of the earth, who have
+attained, by your own efforts, I believe, an immense prosperity."
+
+David listened in silence, watching the ash at the end of his cigar.
+
+"Your money, my son-in-law, Sir Robert, tells me," the Marquis
+continued, "has been made in brilliant and sagacious speculation.
+There have no doubt been others who have followed in your footsteps,
+and, in a humbler way, have shared your success."
+
+David had developed a rare gift of silence.  He smoked steadily, and
+his expression was remarkably stolid.
+
+"I find myself in need of a sum," the Marquis proceeded, with the air
+of a man introducing a business proposition, "of two hundred and twenty
+thousand pounds--there or thereabouts."
+
+There was a momentary gleam of interest in David's eyes, gone, however,
+almost as soon as it had appeared.  For the first time he made a remark.
+
+"Over a million dollars, eh?"
+
+The Marquis inclined his head.
+
+"My position," he continued, "naturally precludes me from making use of
+any of the ordinary methods by means of which men amass wealth.  I have
+at various times, however, made small but not entirely unsuccessful
+speculations--upon the Stock Exchange.  The position in which I now
+find myself demands something upon a larger scale."
+
+"What capital," David Thain enquired, "can you handle?"
+
+The Marquis stroked his chin thoughtfully.  He was aware of a
+pocketbook a shade fuller than usual, of three overdrawn banking
+accounts, and his recent interview with his lawyers.
+
+"Capital," he repeated.  "Ah!  I suppose capital is necessary."
+
+"In any gambling transaction, you always have to take into account the
+possibility," David reminded him, "that you might lose."
+
+"Precisely," the Marquis assented, selecting another cigarette, "but
+that is not the class of speculation I am looking for.  I am anxious to
+discover an enterprise, either by means of my own insight into such
+matters, which is not inconsiderable, or the good offices of a friend,
+in which the chances of loss do not exist."
+
+David was a little staggered.  He contemplated his host curiously.
+
+"Such speculations," he said at last, "are difficult to find."
+
+"Not to a man of your ability, I am sure, Mr. Thain," the Marquis
+asserted.
+
+"Do I gather that you wish for my advice?"
+
+The Marquis inclined his head.
+
+"That," he intimated, "was my object."
+
+David smoked steadily, and his host contemplated him with a certain
+artistic satisfaction.  He had been something of a sculptor in his
+youth, and he saw possibilities in the shape and pose of the great
+financier.
+
+"The long and short of it is," David said at last, "that you want to
+make a million dollars, without any trouble, and without any chance of
+loss.  There are a good many others, Marquis."
+
+"But they have not all the privilege," was the graceful rejoinder, "of
+knowing personally a Goliath of finance.  You will pardon the allegory.
+I take it from this morning's _Daily Express_."
+
+"In my career," David continued, after a moment's pause, "you would
+perhaps be surprised to hear that I have done very little speculating.
+I have made great purchases of railways, and land through which
+railways must run, because I knew my job and because I had insight.
+The time for that is past now.  To make money rapidly one must, as you
+yourself have already decided, speculate.  I can tell you of a
+speculation in which I have myself indulged, but I do not for a moment
+pretend that it is a certainty.  It was good enough for me to put in
+two million dollars, and if what I believe happens, my two millions
+will be forty millions.  But there is no certainty."
+
+The Marquis fidgeted in his chair.
+
+"By what means," he asked tentatively, "could I interest myself in this
+undertaking?"
+
+"By the purchase of shares," was the prompt reply.
+
+The Marquis considered the point.  The matter of purchasing anything
+presented fundamental difficulties to him!
+
+"Tell me about these shares?" he invited.  "What is the nature of the
+undertaking?"
+
+"Oil."
+
+The Marquis grew a little more sanguine.  There was an element of
+fantasy about oil shares.  Perhaps they could be bought on paper.
+
+"Large fortunes have been made in oil," he said.  "Personally, I am a
+believer in oil.  Where are the wells?"
+
+"In Arizona."
+
+"An excellent locality," the Marquis continued approvingly.  "What is
+the present price of the shares?"
+
+"They are dollar shares," David replied, "and their present price is
+par.  You may find them quoted in some financial papers, but as
+practically the entire holding is in my possession, the market for them
+is limited."
+
+"Precisely," the Marquis murmured.  "To come to business, Mr. Thain,
+are you disposed to part with any?"
+
+David appeared to consider the matter.
+
+"Well, I don't know," he said, "I've made something like twenty million
+dollars out of my railways, and I have about reached that point when
+speculations cease to attract."
+
+The Marquis held on to the sides of his chair and struggled against the
+feeling almost of reverence which he feared might be reflected in his
+countenance.
+
+"A very desirable sum of money, Mr. Thain," he conceded.
+
+"It's enough for me," David acknowledged.  "There are two million
+shares in the Pluto Oil Company, practically the whole of which stand
+in my name.  If the calculations which the most experienced oil men in
+the States have worked out materialise, those shares will be worth ten
+million dollars in four months' time.  Let me see," he went on, "two
+hundred and thirty thousand pounds is, roughly speaking, one million,
+one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.  You can have two hundred
+thousand of my shares, if you like, at a dollar."
+
+"This is exceedingly kind of you," the Marquis declared.  "Let me see,"
+he reflected, "two hundred thousand dollars would be--"
+
+"A matter of forty thousand pounds."
+
+"I see!" the Marquis ruminated.  "Forty thousand pounds!"
+
+"You are not, I am sure, a business man," his guest continued, "so you
+will pardon my reminding you that you can easily obtain an advance from
+your bankers upon the title deeds of property, or a short mortgage
+would produce the amount."
+
+"A mortgage," the Marquis repeated, as though the idea were a new one
+to him.  "Ah, yes!  I must confess, though, that I have the strongest
+possible objection to mortgages, if they can in any way be dispensed
+with."
+
+"I suppose that is how you large English landowners generally feel,"
+David remarked tolerantly.  "If you would prefer it, I will take your
+note of hand for the amount of the shares, payable, say, in three
+months' time."
+
+The Marquis upset the box of cigarettes which he was handling.  He was
+not as a rule a clumsy person, but he felt strongly the need of some
+extraneous incident.  He stood on the hearthrug whilst the servant whom
+he summoned collected the cigarettes and replaced them in the box.  As
+soon as the door was closed, he turned to his guest.
+
+"Your offer, Mr. Thain," he said, "is a most kindly one.  It simplifies
+the whole matter exceedingly."
+
+"You had better make the usual enquiries concerning the property," the
+latter advised.  "I am afraid you will find it a little difficult over
+on this side to get exact information, but if you have any friends who
+understand oil prospecting--"
+
+The Marquis held out his hand.
+
+"It is not an occasion upon which a further opinion is necessary," he
+declared.  "I approve of the locality of the property, and the fact
+that you yourself are largely interested is sufficient for me."
+
+"Then any time you like to meet me at your lawyer's," David suggested,
+"I'll hand over the shares and you can sign a note of hand for the
+amount."
+
+The Marquis considered the matter for a moment, thoughtfully.  There
+was something about the idea of letting Mr. Wadham see him sign a
+promissory note for forty thousand pounds which occurred to him as
+somewhat precarious.
+
+"Perhaps you have legal connections of your own here," he ventured.
+"To tell you the truth, I have been obliged to speak my mind in a very
+plain manner to my own solicitors.  I consider that they mismanaged the
+Vont case most shamefully.  I would really prefer to keep away from
+them for a time."
+
+David nodded.
+
+"I have a letter to some lawyers, at my rooms," he said.  "I will send
+you their address, and we can make an appointment to meet at their
+office."
+
+The Marquis assented gravely.  He considered that the matter was now
+better dismissed from further discussion.
+
+"I have no doubt," he said, "that my sister would like to talk to you
+for a time.  Shall we join the ladies?"
+
+David threw away his cigar and professed his readiness.  They crossed
+the hall and entered the drawing-room.  There was one table of bridge,
+and Letitia was seated with her sister on a divan near the window.  The
+former sighed as she watched the entrance of the two men.
+
+"Do look at father, Meg," she whispered.  "I am perfectly certain he
+has been borrowing money."
+
+Margaret shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"What if he has, my dear!" she rejoined.  "These people can afford to
+pay for their entertainment.  I think it's rather clever of him."
+
+Letitia groaned.
+
+"You have such ignoble ideas, Meg," she said reprovingly.  "Now I know
+I shall have to make myself agreeable to Mr. Thain, and I either like
+him or dislike him immensely.  I haven't the least idea which."
+
+"I shouldn't be surprised," her sister whispered, as Thain approached,
+"if he didn't help you presently to make up your mind."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Marcia Hannaway called upon her publisher during the course of the
+following day.  She found the ready entrée of a privileged client--with
+scarcely a moment's delay she was ushered into the presence of James
+Borden, the person who for some years now had occupied the second place
+in her thoughts and life.
+
+"Anything happened, Marcia?" he enquired, after their quiet but
+familiar greeting.  "You look as though you were bringing Fate with
+you."
+
+She made herself comfortable in the easy-chair which he had drawn up to
+the fire.  Outside, an unexpectedly cold wind made the sense of warmth
+doubly pleasant.  She unfastened her simple furs and smiled at him a
+little dolefully.
+
+"Just this," she replied, handing him a letter.
+
+He spread it out, adjusted his eyeglasses and read it deliberately:
+
+
+94, GROSVENOR SQUARE, Thursday.
+
+_My dear Marcia:_
+
+I have made enquiries with reference to the non-payment of your
+allowance for the last two quarters, and now enclose cheque for the
+amount, drawn by my agent in Norfolk and payable to yourself.  I think
+I can promise you that no further irregularities shall occur.
+
+I look forward to seeing you to-morrow afternoon, and I must tell you
+of a financial operation I am now conducting, which, if successful, may
+enable me to pay off the mortgages which render the Norfolk estates so
+unremunerative.
+
+I trust that you are well, dear.  I have ordered Carlton White's to
+send in a few flowers, which I hope will arrive safely.
+
+Yours,
+  REGINALD.
+
+
+James Borden read the letter carefully, glanced at the small coronet at
+the top of the paper, and folded it up.
+
+"I'm sorry, Marcia," he said simply.
+
+She made a little grimace.
+
+"My dear man," she confessed, "so am I.  After all, though, I am not
+sure that the money makes all the difference.  You see, if he really
+were too poor--or rather if his lawyers couldn't raise the money to
+send to me--I fancy that I should feel just the same."
+
+The publisher turned his chair round towards the fire.  He was a man of
+barely middle age, although his black hair was besprinkled with grey
+and growing a little thin at the temples.  His features were good, but
+his face was a little thin, and his clothes were scarcely as tidy, or
+the appointments of his office so comfortable as his name and position
+in the publishing world might have warranted.  Marcia, who had been
+looking at him while he read, leaned forward and brushed the cigarette
+ash from his coat sleeve.
+
+"Such an untidy man!" she declared, straightening his tie.  "I am not
+at all sure that you deserve to have lady clients calling upon you.
+Were you late last night?"
+
+"A little," he confessed.
+
+"That means about one or two, I suppose," she went on reprovingly.
+
+"I dined at the club and stayed on," he told her.  "There was nothing
+else to do except work, and I was a little tired of that."
+
+"Any fresh stuff in--interesting stuff, I mean?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Three more Russian novels," he replied, "all in French and want
+translating, of course.  The only one I have read is terribly grim and
+sordid.  I dare say it would sell.  I am going to read the other two
+before I decide anything.  Then perhaps you'll help me."
+
+"Of course I will," she promised.  "I do wish, though, James, you
+wouldn't stay at the club so late.  How many whiskies and sodas?"
+
+"I didn't count," he confessed.
+
+She sighed.
+
+"I know what that means!  James, why aren't you a little more human?
+You get heaps of invitations to nice houses.  Much better go out and
+make some women friends.  You ought to marry, you know."
+
+"I am quite ready to when you will marry me," he retorted.
+
+"But, my dear man, I am bespoke," she reminded him.  "You know that
+quite well.  I couldn't possibly think of marrying anybody."
+
+"What are you going to do with that money?" he demanded.
+
+"I think I shall keep it," she decided.  "Not to do so would hurt him
+terribly."
+
+"And keeping it hurts me damnably!" he muttered.
+
+She shook her head at him.
+
+"We've had this over so often, haven't we?  I cannot leave Reginald as
+long as he wants me, relies upon me as much as he does now."
+
+"Why not?" was the almost rough demand.  "He has had the best of your
+life."
+
+"And he has given me a great deal of his," she retorted.  "For nineteen
+years I have been his very dear friend.  During all that time he has
+never broken a promise to me, never told a falsehood, never said a
+single word which could grate or hurt.  If he has sometimes seemed a
+little aloof, it is because he really believes himself to be a great
+person.  He believes in himself immensely, you know, James--in the
+privileges and sanctity of his descent.  It seems so strange in this
+world, where we others see other things.  If I only dared, I would
+write a novel about it."
+
+"But you don't care for him any more?"
+
+"Care for him?" she repeated.  "How could I ever stop caring for him!
+He was my first lover, and has been my only one."
+
+"Let me ask you a question," James Borden demanded suddenly.  "Don't
+you ever feel any grudge against him?  He took you away from a very
+respectable position in life.  He ruined all sorts of possibilities.
+He was fifteen or twenty years older than you were, and he knew the
+world.  You pleased him, and he deliberately entrapped your affections.
+Be honest, now.  Don't you sometimes hate him for it?"
+
+"Never," she answered without hesitation.  "I was, as you say, most
+respectably placed--a teacher at a village school--and I might have
+married a young farmer, or bailiff's son, or, with great luck, a
+struggling young doctor, and lived a remarkably rural life, but, as you
+have observed, in great respectability.  My dear James, I should have
+hated it.  I was, I think, nineteen years old when Reginald, in a most
+courtly fashion, suggested that I should come to London with him, and I
+have exactly the same feelings to-day about my acceptance of his
+proposal as I had then."
+
+"You are a puzzle," he declared.  "You wouldn't be, of course, only
+you're such a--such a good woman."
+
+"Of course I am, James," she laughed.  "I am good, inasmuch as I am
+faithful to any tie I may make.  I am kind, or try to be, to all my
+fellow creatures, and I should hate to do a mean thing.  The only
+difference between me and other women is that I prefer to choose what
+tie I should consider sacred.  I claimed the liberty to do that, and I
+exercised it.  As to my right to do so, I have never had the faintest
+possible shadow of hesitation."
+
+"Oh, it all sounds all right when you talk about it," he admitted, "but
+let's come to the crux of this thing now we are about it, Marcia.  I am
+eating my heart out for you.  I should have thought that one of the
+great privileges of your manner of life was your freedom to change, if
+you desired to do so.  Change, I mean--nothing to do with infidelity.
+You may have the nicest feelings in the world towards your Marquis, but
+I don't believe you love him any more.  I don't believe you care for
+him as much as you do for me."
+
+"In one sense you are perfectly right," she acknowledged.  "In another
+you are altogether wrong."
+
+"And yet," he continued, almost roughly, "you have never allowed me to
+touch your fingers, much more your lips."
+
+"But, my dear man," she remonstrated, "you must know that those things
+are impossible.  I would kiss you willingly if you were my friend, and
+if you were content with that, but you know it would only be hypocrisy
+if you pretended that you were.  But listen," she went on.  "I, too,
+sometimes think of these things.  I will be very frank with you.  I
+know that I have changed lately, and I know that the change has
+something to do with you.  Reginald is sometimes a little restless
+about it.  A time may come when he will provoke an explanation.  When
+that time comes, I want to answer him with a clear conscience."
+
+Mr. James Borden brightened up considerably.
+
+"That's the most encouraging thing I've heard you say for a long time,"
+he confessed.
+
+She smiled.
+
+"There are all sorts of possibilities yet," she said.  "Now fetch a
+clothes brush and let me give you a good brushing, and you can take me
+out to lunch--that is to say, if you can find something decent to wear
+on your head," she went on, pointing to a somewhat disreputable looking
+hat which hung behind the door.  "I won't go out with you in that."
+
+"That," he replied cheerfully, "is easily arranged.  I can change my
+clothes in five minutes, if you prefer it."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"You look quite nice when you're properly brushed," she assured him.
+"Send upstairs for another hat, and we'll go into the grill room at the
+Savoy.  I want a sole colbert, and a cutlet, and some of those little
+French peas with sugar.  Aren't I greedy!"
+
+"Delightfully," he assented.  "If you only realised how much easier it
+is to take a woman out who knows what she wants!"
+
+They lunched very well amidst a crowd of cosmopolitans and lingered
+over their coffee.  Their conversation had been of books and nothing
+but books, but towards the end Marcia once more spoke of herself.
+
+"You see, James," she told him, "I have the feeling that if Reginald
+really does succeed in freeing the estates from their mortgages, he
+will have any quantity of new interests in life.  He will probably be
+lord-lieutenant of the county, and open up the whole of Mandeleys.
+Then his town life would of course be quite different.  I shall
+feel--can't you appreciate that?--as though my task with him had come
+naturally and gracefully to an end.  We have both fulfilled our
+obligations to one another.  If he can give me his hand and let me
+go--well, I should like it."
+
+She looked so very desirable as she smiled at him that Borden almost
+groaned.  She patted his hand and changed the conversation.
+
+"Very soon," she continued, "I am going to undertake a painful duty.  I
+am going down to Mandeleys."
+
+"Not with him?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"My father is back in England," she explained.  "He has come back from
+America and is living in the cottage of many lawsuits.  I must go down
+and see him."
+
+"Has the boy returned, too?" he enquired.
+
+"I have heard nothing about him," Marcia replied.  "He was very
+delicate when he was young, and I am not even sure whether he is alive.
+My father probably doesn't want to see me in the least, but I feel I
+ought to go."
+
+"You wouldn't like me to motor you down, I suppose?" Borden suggested
+diffidently.  "The country is delightful just now, and it would do us
+both good.  I could get away for three days quite easily, and I could
+bring some work with me to peg away at whilst you are being dutiful."
+
+"I should love it," she declared frankly, "and I don't see the least
+reason why we shouldn't go.  You won't mind," she went on, after a
+second's hesitation, "if I mention it to Reginald?  I am sure he won't
+object."
+
+James Borden bit through the cigarette which he had just lit, threw it
+away and started another.
+
+"You must do whatever you think right," he said.  "Perhaps you will
+telephone."
+
+"As soon as I know for certain," she promised him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+It was obvious that the Marquis was pleased with himself when he was
+shown into Marcia's little sitting room later on that same afternoon.
+He was wearing a grey tweed check suit, a grey bowler hat, and a bunch
+of hothouse violets in his buttonhole.  His demeanour, as he drew off
+his white chamois leather gloves and handed them, with his coat and
+cane, to the little parlourmaid, was urbane, almost benevolent.
+
+"You look like the springtime," Marcia declared, rising to her feet,
+"and here have I been cowering over the fire!"
+
+"The wind is cold," her visitor admitted, "but I had a brisk walk along
+the Embankment."
+
+"Along the Embankment?"
+
+"I have been to one of those wonderful, cosmopolitan hotels," he told
+her, as he bent down and kissed her, "where they have hundreds of
+bedrooms and every guest is a potential millionaire."
+
+"Business?"
+
+"Business," he assented.  "My lawyers--I am very displeased, by-the-by,
+with Mr. Wadham--having been unable for many years to assist me in
+disposing of the mortgages upon Mandeleys, I am making efforts myself
+in that direction, efforts which, as I believe I told you, show much
+promise of success."
+
+"I am delighted to hear it," she replied.  "From every point of view,
+it would be so satisfactory for you to have the estates freed once
+more.  You would be able to entertain properly, wouldn't you, and take
+up your rightful position in the county?"
+
+The Marquis seated himself in his favourite easy-chair.
+
+"It is quite true," he confessed, "that I have been unable, for the
+last ten years, to exercise that position in the county to which I am
+entitled.  I must confess, moreover, that the small economies which
+have formed a necessary and galling part of my daily life have become
+almost unendurable.  You received my cheque, I hope?"
+
+She nodded and laid it upon the table.
+
+"It was dear of you, Reginald," she said, "but do you know it's
+astonishing how well I seemed to be able to get on without those last
+three payments.  I am earning quite a great deal of money of my own,
+you know, and I do wish you would let me try and be independent."
+
+His grey eyes were fixed almost coldly upon her.
+
+"Independent?  Why?"
+
+"Oh, don't be foolish about it, please," she begged.  "For nineteen
+years, I think it is now, you have allowed me six hundred a year.  Do
+you realise what a great deal of money that is?  Now that I am
+beginning to earn so much for myself, it is absurd for me to go on
+taking it."
+
+"Do I understand it to be your desire, then, Marcia," he asked, "to
+effect any change in our relations?"
+
+She came over and sat on the arm of his chair.
+
+"Not unless you wish it, dear," she replied, "only the money--well, in
+a sense I've got used to having it all these years, because it was
+necessary, but now that it isn't necessary, I can't help feeling that I
+should like to do without it.  I earned nearly six hundred pounds, you
+know, last year, by my stories."
+
+The Marquis had half closed his eyes.  He had become momentarily
+inattentive.  Somehow or other, Marcia realised that her words had
+brought him acute suffering.  There were tears in her eyes as she took
+his hand.
+
+"Don't be silly about this, Reginald dear," she pleaded.  "If it means
+so much to you to feel--I mean, if you look upon this money as really a
+tie between us--give me a little less, then--say three hundred a year,
+instead of six."
+
+Her visitor was recovering his momentarily disturbed composure.
+
+"You are still nothing but a child in money matters, dear," he said.
+"We will speak of this again before the end of the year, but in the
+meantime, if you have anything to spare, invest it.  It is always well
+for a woman to have something to fall back upon."
+
+Tea was brought in, and their conversation for a time became lighter in
+tone.  Presently, however, Marcia became once more a little thoughtful.
+
+"I have made up my mind," she declared abruptly, "to go down to
+Mandeleys to see my father."
+
+The Marquis was silent for a moment.  Then he shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Well, why not, if you really feel it to be your duty," he conceded.
+"Personally, I think you will find that Vont is unchanged.  You will
+find him just as hard and narrow as when he disowned you."
+
+"In that case," Marcia acknowledged, "I shall not trouble him very
+much, but when I think of all these years abroad--it was through me he
+left England, you know, Reginald--I feel that I ought to do my best, at
+any rate, to make him see things differently--to beg his forgiveness
+with my lips, even if I feel no remorse in my heart.  I have a most
+uncomfortable conviction," she went on reflectively, "that I have grown
+completely out of his world, but, of course, in all this time he, too,
+may have changed.  I wonder what has become of my little cousin."
+
+"Vont came back alone, I believe," her visitor told her, "and he came
+back second class, too.  I heard of him, curiously enough, from an
+American gentleman who crossed on the same steamer, and who happened to
+be a guest at my house the other night."
+
+Marcia nodded.
+
+"The boy left England too young," she remarked, "to miss his country.
+I suppose he has settled down in America for ever."
+
+"I must say that I wish Vont had stayed with him," the Marquis
+declared.  "Yes, go down and see him, by all means, Marcia.  I should
+rather like to hear from you what his state of mind is.  I gather that
+he is obdurate, as he resisted all my efforts to repossess myself of
+his cottage, but it would be interesting to hear."
+
+"Should you mind," she asked, "if I motored down there with my
+publisher--Mr. James Borden?  You have heard me speak of him."
+
+"Not in the least," was the ready reply.  "Has your friend connections
+in the locality?"
+
+"None," Marcia admitted.  "He would come simply for the sake of a day
+or two's holiday, and to take me."
+
+"He is one of your admirers, perhaps?"
+
+"He has always been very kind to me."
+
+The Marquis was momentarily pensive.
+
+"You are a better judge than I, Marcia," he observed, "but is such an
+expedition as you suggest--usual?  I know that things have changed very
+much since the days when I myself found adventures possible and
+interesting, but have they really progressed so far as this?"
+
+Marcia considered the matter carefully.
+
+"On the whole," she decided, "I should say that our proposed expedition
+was unusual.  On the other hand, Mr. Borden has no near relatives, and
+I myself enjoy a certain amount of liberty."
+
+The Marquis smiled at her.
+
+"As much liberty as you choose.  If I hesitated then for a moment, it
+was for your own sake.  I do not think that I have ever sought to
+curtail your pleasures, or to interfere in your mode of living."
+
+"You have been wonderful," she admitted gratefully.  "Perhaps for that
+very reason, because my fetters have been of silk, I have never
+realised but always considered them.  Do you know that you are the only
+man who has ever sat down in this flat as my guest, during the whole
+sixteen years I have lived here?"
+
+"I should never have asked you," he said, "but I am not in the least
+surprised to hear it.  Sometimes," he went on, drawing her towards him
+in a slight but affectionate embrace, "you have perhaps thought me a
+little cold, a little staid and distant from you, even in our happiest
+moments.  I was brought up, you must remember, in the school which
+considers any exhibition of feeling as a deplorable lapse.  The thing
+grows on one.  Yet, Marcia," he added, drawing her still closer and
+clasping her hand, "you have been my refuge in all these years.  It is
+here with you that I have spent my happiest hours.  You have been my
+consolation in many weary disappointments.  I often wish that I could
+give you a different position than the one which you occupy."
+
+"I should never be so contented in any other," she assured him, patting
+his hand.  "In all these years I have felt my mind grow.  I have
+read--heavens, how I have read!  I have felt so many of the old things
+fall away, felt my feet growing stronger.  You have given me just what
+I wanted, Reginald.  To quote one of your own maxims, we have only one
+life, but it is for us to subdivide.  We take up a handful of
+circumstances, an emotion, perhaps a passion, and we live them out, and
+when the flame is burnt we are restless for a little time, and then we
+begin it all over again.  That is how we learn, learn to be wise by
+suffering and change."
+
+"I am afraid," the Marquis sighed, "that I do not live up to my own
+principles.  All my life I have detested change.  There could be no
+other home for me but Mandeleys, no other clubs save those where I
+spend my spare time, no other pursuits save those which I have
+cultivated from my youth, no other dear friend, Marcia, to whom one may
+turn in one's more human moments, than you."
+
+Marcia shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"It is queer," she admitted, "to hear such professions of fidelity from
+you."
+
+"Had I a different reputation?" he asked.  "Well, you see how I have
+outlived it."
+
+Marcia's silence, natural enough at the time, puzzled him a little
+afterwards, puzzled him as he leaned back in his car, on his way
+homewards, puzzled him through the evening in the few minutes of
+reflection which he was able to spare from a large dinner party.
+
+"Borden!" he muttered to himself.  "I wonder what sort of a man he is."
+
+In his library, where he lingered for a few moments before retiring to
+bed, he took down a volume of "Who's Who."  Borden's name, rather to
+his surprise, was there.  The man, it seemed, was of decent family, had
+done well at Oxford, both in scholarship and athletics.  He was
+born--the Marquis counted his years.  He was forty-one years
+old--nineteen years younger!  He closed the book and sat down in his
+chair, forgetting for once to mix for himself the whiskey and soda
+which lay ready to his hand.  It seemed to him that there was a tragedy
+in that nineteen years.  Borden was of the age now that he himself had
+been when Marcia had first listened to his very courtly and yet
+uncommonly definite love-making.  He rose almost like a thief, crossed
+the hall, and, opening softly the door of the drawing-room, turned up
+the two lights before a great gilt mirror.  He stood and regarded
+himself thoughtfully, appraisingly, critically.  He was tall and very
+little bowed.  His figure was still the figure of a young man, and the
+court clothes which he was wearing became him.  That he was handsome so
+far as regards his finely chiselled features, his high forehead and his
+soft grey hair, he granted himself.  The world had given him few
+chances of forgetting it.  But there was a little whiteness about his
+cheeks, a slight dropping of the flesh under his eyes, just something
+of that tired look which creeps along with the years, a silent,
+persistent ghost.  The Marquis switched off the lights and turned
+towards the door.  He tiptoed his way across the hall and threw himself
+once more into his easy-chair.  His eyes were fixed upon the opposite
+wall.  He still saw that presentment of himself.  And there was Marcia,
+barely in the prime of her life, the figure of her girlhood developed,
+yet not, even now, matronly; her bright complexion, her broad,
+intellectual forehead with its masses of brown hair, her humorous
+mouth, her dark, undimmed eyes, still hungry for what life might have
+to give.  Those nineteen years remained a tragedy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+David Thain, arrived at the end of his journey, seated himself on the
+second stile from the road, threw away his cigar and looked facts in
+the face.  He who had run the gamut of the Wall Street fever, who in
+his earlier days had relied almost upon chance for a meal, who had
+stood the tests of huge successes as well as the anxieties of possible
+failures without visible emotion--in such a fashion, even, that his
+closest friends could scarcely tell whether he were winning or
+losing--found himself now, without any crisis before him, and engaged
+in the most ordinary undertaking of a stroll from the station across a
+few fields, suddenly the victim of sensations and weaknesses which
+defied analysis and mocked at restraint.  It was the England of his
+boyhood, this, the sudden almost overpowering realisation of those
+dreams which had grown fainter and fainter during his many years of
+struggle in a very different atmosphere.  Birds were singing in the
+long grove which, behind the high, grey-stone wall, fringed the road
+for miles.  Rooks--real English rooks--were cawing above his head.  A
+light evening breeze was bending the meadow grass of the field which
+his footpath had cloven, and from the hedge by his side came the faint
+perfume of hawthorn blossom.  Before him was the park with its
+splendours of giant oaks, with deer resting beneath the trees, and in
+the distance the grey, irregular outline of Mandeleys Abbey.  He had
+played cricket, when he was a boy, in the very field through which he
+was passing.  Some time in that dim past, he had stood with his uncle,
+whilst he had issued with the beaters from that long strip of
+plantation, watching with all a boy's fervid admiration the careless
+ease with which the Lord of Mandeleys was bringing the pheasants down
+from the sky.  He had skated on the lake there, had watched at a
+respectful distance the antics of the ladies Letitia and Margaret,
+anxious to escape from their retinue of servants and attendants.  A
+queer little vision came before him at that moment of Lady Letitia
+hobbling towards him upon the ice, with one skate unbuckled, and a firm
+but gracious entreaty that the little boy--he was at least a head
+taller than she--would fasten it for her.  Strange little flashes of
+memory had come to him now and then in that new world where he had
+carved his way to success, memories so indistinct that they brought
+with them no thrills, scarcely even any longing.  And now all his
+strength and hardness, qualities so necessary to him throughout his
+strenuous life, seemed to have passed away.  He was a child again,
+breathing in all these simple sights and perfumes, his memory taking
+him even further back to the days when he sat in the meadow, in the hot
+sun, picking daisies and buttercups, and watching for the fish that
+sometimes jumped from the stream.  It was an entirely unexpected
+emotion, this.  When once more he strode along the footpath, he felt a
+different man.  He had lost his slight touch of assurance.  He looked
+about him eagerly, almost appealingly.  He was ashamed to confess even
+to himself that he had the feeling of a wanderer who has come home.
+
+He crossed the last stile and was now in the park proper.  Several
+villagers were strolling about under the trees, and they looked at this
+newcomer, with his dark-coloured clothes and strangely-shaped hat, with
+some surprise.  Nevertheless, he held uninterruptedly on his way until
+he reached the broad drive which led to the Abbey.  He walked on the
+turf by the side of it, over the bridge which crossed the stream,
+through the inner iron gates, beyond which the village people were not
+allowed to pass, and so to the well-remembered spot.  On his right was
+the house--a strange, uneven building, at times ecclesiastical, here
+and there domestic, always ancient, with its wings of cloisters running
+almost down to the moat which surrounded it.  And just over the moat,
+crossed by that light iron handbridge, with its back against what he
+remembered as a plantation, but which had now become a wood, the little
+red brick cottage, smothered all over with creepers, its tiny garden
+ablaze with flowers, its empty rows of dog kennels, its deserted line
+of coops.  David glanced for a moment at the drawn blinds of the Abbey.
+Then he crossed the footbridge and the few yards of meadow, lifted the
+latch of the gate and, walking up the gravel path, came to a sudden
+standstill.  A man who was seated almost hidden by a great cluster of
+fox-gloves rose to his feet.
+
+"It's you, then, lad!" he exclaimed, holding out both his hands.
+"You're welcome!  There's no one to the house--there won't be for a
+quarter of an hour--so I'll wring your hands once more.  It's a queer
+world, this, David.  You're back with me here, where I brought you up
+as a stripling, and yon's the Abbey.  Sit you down, boy.  I am not the
+man I was since I came here."
+
+David Thain dragged an old-fashioned kitchen chair from the porch, and
+sat by his uncle's side.  Richard Vont, although he was still younger
+than his sixty-four years, seemed to his nephew curiously changed
+during the last week.  The hard, resolute face was disturbed.  The
+mouth, kept so tight through the years, had weakened a little.  There
+was a vague, almost pathetic agitation, in the man's face.
+
+"You'll take no notice of me, David," his uncle went on.  "I'm honest
+with you.  These few days have been like a great, holy dream, like
+something one reads of in the Scriptures but never expects to see.
+There's old Mary Wells--she's doing for me up there.  Just a word or
+two of surprise, and a grip of the hand, and no more.  And there's the
+Abbey--curse it!--not a stone gone, only the windows are blank.  You
+see the weeds on the lawn, David?  Do you mark the garden behind?  They
+tell me there's but two gardeners there to do the work of twenty.  And
+the drive--look at it as far as you can see--moss and weed!  They're
+coming down in the world, these Mandeleys, David.  Even this last
+little lawsuit, the lawyers told me, has cost the Marquis nineteen
+thousand pounds.  God bless you for your wealth, David!  It's money
+that counts in these days."
+
+David produced a pouch of tobacco from his pocket and handed it over to
+his uncle, who filled a pipe eagerly.
+
+"That's thoughtful of you, David," he declared.  "I'd forgotten to buy
+any, and that's a fact, for I can't stand the village yet.  You're
+looking strange-like, David."
+
+"And I feel it," was the quiet answer.  "Uncle, hasn't it made any
+difference to you, this coming back?"
+
+"In what way?" the old man asked.
+
+"Well, I don't know.  I walked across those fields to the park, and I
+seemed suddenly to feel more like a boy again, and I felt that somehow
+I was letting go of things.  Do you know what I mean?"
+
+"Letting go of things," Richard Vont repeated suspiciously.  "No!"
+
+"Well, somehow or other," David continued, as he filled his own pipe
+and lit it, "I found myself looking back through the years, and I
+wondered whether we hadn't both let one thing grow too big in our
+minds.  Life doesn't vary much here.  Things are very much as we left
+them, and it's all rather wonderful.  I felt a little ashamed, as I
+came up through the park, of some of the things we've planned and
+sworn.  Didn't you feel a little like that, uncle?  Can you sit here
+and think of the past, and remember all that burden we carried, and not
+feel inclined to let it slip, or just a little of it slip, from our
+shoulders?"
+
+Vont laid down his pipe.  He rose to his feet.  His fingers suddenly
+gripped his nephew's shoulder.  He turned him towards the house.
+
+"Listen, David," he said; "there's twilight an hour away yet, but it
+will soon be here.  The blackbirds are calling for it, and the wind's
+dropping.  Now you see.  That was her room," he added, touching the
+window, "and there's the door out, just the same.  You see that tree
+there?  I was crouching behind that with my gun ready loaded, and there
+was murder in my heart--I tell you that, boy.  I watched the Abbey.  I
+was supposed to be safe in Fakenham Town, safe for a good two hours,
+and I lay there and watched because I knew, and no one came.  And then
+I heard a whisper.  I turned my head, although I was most afeared, and
+out of that door--that door from Marcia's room, David--I saw him come.
+I saw her arms come out and draw him back, and then I began to breathe
+hard, but the trees were thick that way--I'd been looking for him
+coming from the Abbey---and they stole out together, arm in arm.  I was
+so near them that they must have heard me groan, for Marcia started.
+And then, before I knew what was happening, he--the Marquis, mind--had
+struck up my gun, caught it by the barrel and sent it flying.  My hand
+was on his throat, but he was as strong as I was, in those days, and a
+mighty wrestler.  It's my shame, boy, after all these years to have to
+confess it, but he got the better of me.  I was crazy with anger, and
+he had me down.  And then he stood aside and bade me get up, and my
+strength seemed all gone.  He stood there looking at me contemptuously.
+'Don't make a fool of yourself, Vont,' he said.  'Your daughter and I
+understand one another, and our concerns have nothing to do with you.
+If you have anything to say to me, come up to the Abbey to-morrow.
+You'll find your gun in the thicket.'  He turned round and he kissed
+Marcia's fingers, just like I'd seen them do in the distance at their
+fine parties up there, and he strolled away.  There was the gun in the
+thicket, and he knew it, and I knew it, and I couldn't move, and he
+went.  And all I could hear was Marcia crying, and those birds singing
+behind, and I just slipped away into the wood."
+
+"Uncle, is it worth while bringing this all up again?" David
+interrupted.
+
+"Aye, it's worth while!" the old man insisted fiercely.  "It's worth
+while for fear I should forget, for the old place has its cling on me.
+That next day I went to the Abbey, and I saw the Marquis.  He was quite
+cool, sent the servants out--he'd no weapon near--and he talked a lot
+that I don't understand and never shall understand, but it was about
+Marcia, and that she was his, and was leaving with him for London that
+evening.  I just asked him one question.  'It's for shame, then?' I
+asked.  And he looked at me just as though I were some person whom he
+was trying to make understand, who didn't quite speak the language.
+And he said--'Your daughter made her choice months ago, Vont.  She will
+live the life she desires to live.  I am sorry to take her away from
+you.  Think it over, and try and feel sensible about it.'  It was then
+I felt a strange joy, that I've never been able rightly to understand.
+I'd just remembered that the cottage was mine, and I had a sudden
+feeling that I wanted to sit at the end of the garden and watch the
+Abbey and curse it, curse it with a Bible on my knee, till its stones
+fell apart and the grass grew up from the walks and the damp grew out
+in blotches on the walls.  And that's why I've come back after all
+these years."
+
+"And you're just the same?" David asked curiously.  "You feel just the
+same about him?"
+
+"Don't you, my lad?" his uncle demanded.  "You're not telling me that
+you're climbing down?"
+
+David took the old man's arm.
+
+"On the contrary, uncle," he said, "my promised share of the work is
+done.  I hold his promissory notes for forty thousand pounds, due in
+three months.  I have sold him some shares that aren't worth forty
+thousand pence, and won't be for many a year.  I've cheated him, if you
+like, but when the three months comes you can make him a bankrupt, if
+you will.  I'll give you the notes."
+
+Richard Vont drew himself up.  He turned his face towards the Abbey,
+growing a little indistinct now in the falling twilight.
+
+"It's grand hearing," was all he said.  "There's Mary, coming round
+with the supper, boy.  I'll take the liberty of asking you to have a
+bite with me and a glass of ale, but I'll not forget that you're the
+great David Thain, the millionaire from America, who took kindly notice
+of me on the steamer.  Come this way, sir," he went on, throwing open
+the cottage door.  "It's a queer little place, but it's a novelty for
+you American gentlemen.  Step right in, sir.  Mrs. Wells," he
+announced, "this is a gentleman who was kind to me upon the steamer,
+and he promised that if ever he was this way he'd drop in.  He'll take
+some supper with me.  You'll do your best for us?"
+
+The old lady looked very hard at David Thain, and she dropped a curtsey.
+
+"From America, too," she murmured.  "'Tis a wonderful country!  Aye,
+I'll do my best, Richard Vont."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Mr. Wadham, Junior, a morning or so later, rang the bell at Number 94
+Grosvenor Square and aired himself for a moment upon the broad
+doorstep, filled with a comfortable sense that this time, at least, in
+his prospective interview, he was destined to disturb the disconcerting
+equanimity of his distinguished client.  He was duly admitted and
+ushered into the presence of the Marquis, who laid down the newspaper
+which he was reading, nodded affably to his visitor and pointed to a
+chair.
+
+"Your request for an interview, Mr. Wadham," the former said,
+"anticipated my own desire to see you.  Pray be seated.  I am entirely
+at your service."
+
+Mr. Wadham paused for a moment and decided to cross his legs.  He was
+already struggling against that enervating sense of insignificance
+which his client's presence inevitably imposed upon him.
+
+"We heard yesterday morning from Mr. Merridrew," he commenced.  "He
+made us a remittance which was four hundred pounds short of what we
+expected.  His explanation was that your lordship had received that sum
+from him."
+
+"Quite right, Mr. Wadham," the Marquis assented affably.  "Quite right.
+I was in the neighbourhood, and, finding Mr. Merridrew with a
+considerable sum of money in hand, I took from him precisely the amount
+you have stated."
+
+"Your lordship has perhaps overlooked the fact," Mr. Wadham continued,
+"that we are that amount short of the interest on the Fakenham
+mortgage--Number Seven mortgage, we usually call it."
+
+"Dear me!" the Marquis observed.  "Surely such a trifling sum does not
+disturb your calculations?  You do not run my affairs on so narrow a
+margin as this, I trust, Mr. Wadham?"
+
+"It isn't a question of a narrow margin, your lordship," Mr. Wadham
+replied.  "There is, as a rule, no margin at all.  We usually have to
+make the amount up by overdrawing, or by advancing it ourselves.  This
+time the firm wish me to point out that we are unable to do either."
+
+"Dear me!  Dear me!" the Marquis ejaculated, in a tone of some concern.
+"I had no idea, Mr. Wadham, if you will forgive my saying so, that your
+firm was in so impecunious a position."
+
+"Impecunious?" the lawyer murmured, with his eyes fixed upon his
+client.  "I scarcely follow your lordship."
+
+"Did I not understand you to say," the Marquis continued, "that this
+trifle of four hundred pounds has upset your arrangements to such an
+extent that you are unable to make your customary payments on my
+behalf?"
+
+"Will your lordship forgive my pointing out," Mr. Wadham explained,
+"that these payments are on your account, and that it is no part of the
+business of solicitors to finance their clients, without a special
+arrangement?  We have our own more lucrative investments continually
+open to us, and we are at the present moment several thousand pounds
+out of pocket on account of recent law expenses."
+
+"The whole thing," the Marquis pronounced, "seems to me very trifling.
+State in precise terms, if you please, Mr. Wadham, the object of your
+visit."
+
+"To ask for your lordship's instructions as to the payment of twelve
+hundred pounds interest, due to-morrow," Mr. Wadham replied.  "We have
+eight hundred pounds in hand from Mr. Merridrew.  So far from having
+any other funds of your lordship's at our disposal, we are, as I have
+pointed out, your creditor for a somewhat considerable amount."
+
+The Marquis was leaning back in his chair, the tips of his long,
+elegant fingers pressed gently together.
+
+"It appears to me, Mr. Wadham," he said quietly, "that your visit is,
+in a sense, an admonitory one.  Your firm resents--am I not right?--the
+fact that I have found it convenient to help myself to a portion of the
+revenue accruing from my estate."
+
+"We should not presume for a moment to take up such an attitude," the
+lawyer protested.  "On the other hand, the four hundred pounds in
+question requires replacement by to-morrow."
+
+"And you find the raising of that sum inconvenient, eh, Mr. Wadham?"
+
+The young man was distinctly ill at ease.  His instructions were to be
+firm and dignified but by no means to offend; to deliver a formal
+protest against this tampering with funds already dedicate, but to do
+or say nothing which would give the Marquis any excuse for reprisals
+against the firm.  Mr. Wadham began to wonder whether perhaps he was a
+person of small tact, or whether these instructions were more than
+usually difficult to carry out.
+
+"There is no sacrifice, your lordship," he said slowly, "which my firm
+would hesitate to make in your interests and the interests of the
+Mandeleys estate.  At the same time, the unexpected necessity for
+finding these sums of money is, I must confess, at times a strain upon
+us."
+
+The Marquis nodded sympathetically.  He rose to his feet, crossed the
+room towards his desk, which he unlocked with a key attached to a gold
+chain, and returned with a bundle of scrip in his hand.
+
+"I have here, Mr. Wadham," he announced, "scrip in a very famous oil
+company, the face value of the shares being, I believe, a trifle over
+forty thousand pounds.  I, in fact, paid that price for them at the
+beginning of the week."
+
+The young lawyer uncrossed his legs and swallowed hard.  He was
+prepared for many shocks, but this one seemed outside the region of all
+human probability.
+
+"Did I understand your lordship to say that you had paid forty thousand
+pounds for them?" he gasped.
+
+The Marquis assented with an equable little nod.
+
+"I was somewhat favoured in the matter," he admitted, "as the value of
+the shares has, I believe, already considerably increased.  The amount
+I actually paid for them was, in round figures, forty thousand and one
+hundred pounds--transfer duty, or something of that sort.  I have
+little head for figures, as you know, Mr. Wadham.  You had better take
+these--not for sale, mind, but for deposit at one of my banks.  You
+will probably find that, under the circumstances, they will permit you
+to overdraw an additional five hundred pounds on my account, without
+embarrassing your own finances."
+
+Mr. Wadham, Junior, took the bundle of scrip into his hand, and glanced
+hastily through it.
+
+"The Pluto Oil Company of Arizona," he murmured reflectively.
+
+"The name of the company is doubtless unknown to you," the Marquis
+observed indulgently; "they are, in fact, only just commencing
+operations--but it is the opinion of my friend and financial adviser,
+Mr. David Thain, that the forty thousand pounds' worth of shares you
+have in your hand will be worth at least two hundred thousand before
+the end of the year."
+
+"Mr. David Thain, the multi-millionaire?" Mr. Wadham faltered.
+
+"The same!"
+
+The lawyer gripped the bundle hard in one hand, closed his eyes for a
+moment, opened them again and struck out boldly.
+
+"As your lordship's adviser," he said, "may I enquire as to the nature
+of the payment which you have made?  Forty thousand pounds is not a sum
+which either of the banks with whom your lordship has credit--"
+
+The Marquis waved his hand.
+
+"My dear young friend," he explained, "it was not necessary for me to
+resort to banks.  Mr. Thain suggested voluntarily that I should give
+him my note of hand for the amount.  He quite understood that a man
+whose chief interest in the country is land does not keep such a sum as
+forty thousand pounds lying at his banker's."
+
+Mr. Wadham groped for his hat.
+
+"The shares shall be deposited, and the interest, of course, paid," he
+murmured.  "I am sorry to have troubled your lordship in the matter."
+
+"Not at all, not at all," the Marquis replied genially.  "Very pleased
+to see you at any time, Mr. Wadham, on any subject connected with the
+estates.  Ah!" he added, glancing at a card which a footman at that
+moment had brought in, "here is my friend, Mr. David Thain.  You must
+meet him, Mr. Wadham.  Such men are rare in this country.  They form
+most interesting adjuncts to our modern civilisation.  Show Mr. Thain
+in, Thomas."
+
+David Thain duly arrived.  He shook hands with the Marquis and was by
+him presented to Mr. Wadham.
+
+"Mr. Wadham is my legal advisor--or rather a junior representative of
+the firm who conduct my affairs," the Marquis explained.  "I have just
+handed him over my shares in the Pluto Oil Company, for safe keeping."
+
+"Very glad to know you, Mr. Thain," the young lawyer observed,
+reverently shaking hands.  "One reads a great deal of your financial
+exploits in the newspapers just now."
+
+"I really can't see," David replied, "that your press men are much
+better over here than in the States.  In any case, Mr. Wadham, you
+mustn't believe all you read."
+
+"You will give my regards to your father and the other members of your
+firm," the Marquis concluded, with the faintest possible indication of
+his head towards the door.  "I shall probably have some instructions of
+an interesting nature to give you before long, with regard to the
+cancellation of, at any rate, the home estate mortgages.  Ah, here is
+Thomas!  Very much obliged for your attention, Mr. Wadham."
+
+The lawyer made his adieux in somewhat confused fashion, and left the
+room with an ignominious sense of dismissal.  The Marquis glanced at
+the clock.
+
+"I am a creature of habit, Mr. Thain," he said.  "At twelve o'clock I
+walk for an hour in the Park.  Will you give me the honour of your
+company?"
+
+"Anywhere you say," David assented.  "There was just a little matter I
+wanted to mention--nothing important."
+
+"Precisely," the Marquis murmured, ringing the bell.  "You will return
+to lunch, of course?  I shall take no denial.  My daughter would be
+distressed to miss you.  Gossett," he added, as they moved out into the
+hall, "my coat and hat, and tell Lady Letitia that Mr. Thain will lunch
+with us.  Have you any idea, Gossett," he added, as he accepted his
+cane and gloves, "how to make cocktails?"
+
+"I have a book of recipes, your lordship," was the somewhat doubtful
+reply.
+
+"See that cocktails are served before luncheon," the Marquis
+instructed.  "You see, we are not altogether ignorant of the habits of
+your countrymen, Mr. Thain, even if in some cases we may not ourselves
+have adopted them.  A cocktail is, I gather, some form of alcoholic
+nourishment?"
+
+Thain indulged in what was, for him, a rare luxury--a hearty laugh.  He
+threw his head back, showing all his white, firm teeth, and the little
+lines at the sides of his eyes wrinkled up with enjoyment.  Suddenly a
+voice on the stairs interposed.
+
+"I must know the joke," Letitia declared.  "How do you do, Mr. Thain?
+A laugh like yours makes one feel positively delirious with the desire
+to share it.  Father, do tell me what it was?"
+
+"To tell you the truth, my dear," the Marquis replied, quite honestly,
+"I am a little ignorant as to the humorous application of a remark I
+have just made."
+
+"It was your father's definition of an American institution, Lady
+Letitia," David explained, "and I am afraid that its humour depended
+solely upon a certain environment which I was able to conjure up in my
+mind--a barroom at the Waldorf, say."
+
+"Another disappointment," Letitia sighed.
+
+"Mr. Thain is lunching with us, dear," her father announced.
+
+"So glad," Letitia remarked, nodding to Thain.  "We shall meet again,
+then."
+
+She passed out of the front door, and David, who was very observant,
+noticing several things, was silent for the first few moments after her
+departure.  She appeared, as she could scarcely fail to appear in his
+eyes, charming even to the point of bewilderment.  Yet, although the
+wind was cold, she had only a small and very inadequate fur collar
+around her neck.  Her tailormade suit showed signs of constant
+brushings.  There was a little--a very modest little patch upon her
+shoes, and a very distinct darn upon her gloves.  David frowned in
+puzzled fashion as he turned into the Park.  Some of his boyish
+antipathies, so carefully nursed by his uncle and fostered by the
+atmosphere in which they lived during his early days in America,
+flashed into his memory, only to be instantly discarded.  He remembered
+the drawn blinds, the weedy walks of Mandeleys; the hasty glimpse which
+he had had of silent, empty rooms and uncarpeted ways in the higher
+storeys of the mansion in Grosvenor Square.
+
+"I am not a person," the Marquis observed, as they proceeded upon their
+promenade, "who needs a great deal of exercise, but I am almost a slave
+to habit, and for many years, when in town, it has been my custom to
+walk here for an hour, to exchange greetings, perhaps, with a few
+acquaintances, to call at my club for ten minutes and take a glass of
+dry sherry before luncheon.  In the afternoons," he went on, "I
+occasionally play a round of golf at Ranelagh.  Are you an expert at
+the game, Mr. Thain?"
+
+"I have made blasphemous efforts," David confessed, "but I certainly
+cannot call myself an expert.  Perhaps what is known as the American
+spirit has rather interfered with my efforts.  You see, we want to get
+things done too quickly.  Golf is a game eminently suited to the
+British temperament."
+
+"You are doubtless right," the Marquis murmured.  "That loitering
+backward swing, eh?--the lazy indisposition to raise one's head?  I
+follow you, Mr. Thain.  Your call this morning, by-the-by," he went on.
+"You have some news, perhaps, of these Pluto Oils?"
+
+David shook his head.
+
+"I came to see you," he announced, "upon a different matter."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+The Marquis was occupied for several minutes in exchanging greetings
+with passing acquaintances.  As soon as they were alone again, he
+reverted to his companion's observation.
+
+"There was a matter, I think you said, Mr. Thain, which you wished to
+discuss with me."
+
+"I was going to ask you about Broomleys," David replied.
+
+The Marquis was puzzled.
+
+"Broomleys?  Are you referring, by chance, to my house of that name?"
+
+"I guess so."
+
+"But, my dear Mr. Thain, you surprise me," the Marquis declared.  "When
+did you hear of Broomleys?"
+
+"I should have explained," David continued, "that I spent this last
+week-end at Cromer.  There I visited an agent and told him that I would
+like to take a furnished house in the neighbourhood.  I motored over,
+at his suggestion, to see Broomleys, and the tenant, Colonel Laycey,
+kindly showed me over.  He is leaving within a few days, I believe."
+
+"Dear me, of course he is!" the Marquis observed genially.  "I had
+quite forgotten the fact--quite forgotten it."
+
+The Marquis saluted more acquaintances.  He was glad of an opportunity
+for reflection.  The Fates were indeed smiling upon him!  A gleam of
+anticipatory delight shone in his eyes as he thought of his next
+interview with Mr. Wadham, Junior!  On his desk at the present moment
+there lay a letter from the firm, announcing Colonel Laycey's departure
+and adding that they saw little hope of letting the house at all in its
+present condition.
+
+"It would be a great pleasure to us, Mr. Thain," the Marquis continued
+pleasantly, "to have you for a neighbour.  Did the agent or Colonel
+Laycey, by-the-by, say anything about the rent?"
+
+"Nothing whatever," David replied.  "The Colonel pointed out to me
+various repairs which certainly seemed necessary, but as I am a single
+man, the rooms affected could very well be closed for a time.  It was
+the garden, I must confess, which chiefly attracted me."
+
+"Broomleys has, I fear, been a little neglected," the Marquis sighed.
+"These stringent days, with their campaign of taxation upon the landed
+proprietor, have left me, I regret to say, a poor man.  Colonel Laycey
+was not always considerate.  His last letter, I remember, spoke of
+restorations which would have meant a couple of years' rent."
+
+"If I find any little thing wants doing urgently when I get there,"
+David promised carelessly, "I will have it seen to myself.  If the rent
+you ask is not prohibitive, it is exactly the place I should like to
+take for, say, a year, at any rate."
+
+"You are a man of modest tastes, Mr. Thain," the Marquis observed.
+"The fact that you are unmarried, however, of course renders an
+establishment an unnecessary burden.  You will bear in mind, so far as
+regards the rent of Broomleys, Mr. Thain, that the house is furnished."
+
+"Very uncomfortably but very attractively furnished, from what I saw,"
+David assented.
+
+The Marquis collected himself.  Colonel Laycey had been asked three
+hundred a year and was paying two hundred, a sum which, somehow or
+other, the Marquis had always considered his own pocket money, and
+which had never gone into the estate accounts.  A little increase would
+certainly be pleasant.
+
+"Would five hundred a year seem too much, Mr. Thain?" he asked.  "I
+cannot for the moment remember what Colonel Laycey is paying, but I
+know that it is something ridiculously inadequate."
+
+"Five hundred a year would be quite satisfactory," David agreed.
+
+"I will have the papers drawn up and sent to you at once," the Marquis
+promised.  "You will be able to enter into possession as soon as you
+like.  You would like a yearly tenancy, I presume?"
+
+"That would suit me quite well."
+
+"You will be able, also, to resume your acquaintance with that singular
+old man whom you met upon the steamer--Richard Vont," the Marquis
+remarked, with a slight grimace.  "I hear that he is in residence
+there."
+
+"I have already done so," David announced.
+
+The Marquis raised his eyebrows.
+
+"You have probably heard his story, then, from his own lips," he
+observed carelessly.  "I am told that he sits out on the lawn of his
+cottage, reading the Bible and cursing Mandeleys.  It is a most
+annoying thing, Mr. Thain, as I dare say you can understand, to have
+your ex-gamekeeper entrenched, as it were, in front of your premises,
+hurling curses across the moat at you.  That class of person is so
+tenacious of ideas as well as of life.  Here comes my daughter Letitia,
+already well escorted, I see."
+
+Letitia, with Grantham by her side, waved her hand without pausing,
+from the other side of the broad pathway.  David for a moment felt the
+chill of the east wind.
+
+"Grantham," the Marquis told his companion confidentially, "is one of
+Lady Letitia's most constant admirers.  My daughter, as I dare say you
+have discovered, Mr. Thain, is rather an unusual young woman.  Her
+predilections are almost anti-matrimonial.  Still, I must confess that
+an alliance with the Granthams would give me much pleasure.  I should,
+in that case, be enabled to give up my town house and be content with
+bachelor apartments--a great saving, in these hard times."
+
+"Naturally," David murmured.
+
+"Often, in the course of our very agreeable conversations," the Marquis
+went on, "I am inclined to ignore the fact of your most amazing
+opulence.  My few friends, I am sorry to say, are in a different
+position.  Money in this country is very scarce, Mr. Thain--very
+scarce, at least, on this side of Temple Bar."
+
+David answered a little vaguely.  His eyes were lifted above the heads
+of the scattered crowd of people through which they were passing.
+
+"May I ask--if it is not an impertinence," he said,--"is Lady Letitia
+engaged to Lord Charles Grantham?"
+
+The Marquis's manner was perhaps a shade stiffer.  Mr. Thain was just
+given to understand that about the family matters of such a personage
+as the Marquis of Mandeleys there must always be a certain reticence.
+
+"There is no formal engagement, Mr. Thain," he replied.  "The fashion
+nowadays seems to preclude anything of the sort.  One's daughter just
+brings a young man in, and, in place of the delightful betrothal of our
+younger days, the date for the marriage is fixed upon the spot."
+
+Luncheon at 94 Grosvenor Square, notwithstanding the cocktails, was an
+exceedingly simple meal, a fact which the Marquis himself seemed
+scarcely to notice.  He kept his eye on his visitor's plate, however,
+and passed the cutlets with an unnoticeable sigh of regret.
+
+"Charlie wouldn't come in to lunch, father," Letitia announced.  "I
+think he was afraid you were going to ask him his intentions."
+
+The Marquis glanced at the modicum of curry with which he was consoling
+himself.
+
+"Upon the whole, my dear," he said, "I am glad that he stayed away.  He
+is a most agreeable person, but not at his best at luncheon time.
+By-the-by, do you know who our new neighbour is to be at Broomleys?"
+
+"You haven't let it?" she asked eagerly.
+
+"This morning, my dear," her father replied, bowing slightly towards
+their guest.  "Mr. Thain has been spending the week-end at Cromer, was
+offered Broomleys by the agent there, and he and I fixed up the matter
+only a few minutes ago."
+
+"How perfectly delightful!" Letitia exclaimed.
+
+David glanced up quickly.  He looked his hostess in the eyes.
+
+"That is very kind of you, Lady Letitia," he said.  She laughed at him.
+
+"Well, I meant it," she declared, "and I still mean it, but not,
+perhaps, exactly in the way it sounded.  Of course, it will be very
+pleasant to have you for a neighbour, but to tell you the truth--you
+see, although we're poor we are honest--our own sojourn at Mandeleys
+rather depends on whether we let Broomleys, and Colonel Laycey,
+although he has the most delightful daughter, with whom you are sure to
+fall in love, was a most troublesome tenant.  He was always wanting
+things done, wasn't he, father?"
+
+"It is certainly a relief," the Marquis sighed, watching with
+satisfaction the arrival of half a Stilton cheese, a present from his
+son-in-law, "a great relief to find a tenant like Mr. Thain."
+
+"I asked your agent," David remarked a little diffidently, "about the
+shooting."
+
+The Marquis touched his glass.
+
+"Serve port, Gossett," he directed,--"the light wood port, if we have
+any," he added a little hastily, to the obvious relief of his domestic.
+"The shooting, eh, Mr. Thain?"
+
+He sipped his wine and considered.  First Broomleys, and then the
+shooting!  The gods were very kind to him on this pleasant April
+morning.
+
+"You haven't preserved lately, I understand," his guest observed.
+
+"Not for some years," the Marquis acknowledged.
+
+"I don't mind about that at all," David went on.  "I am just American
+enough, you know, to find no pleasure in shooting tame birds.  I shall
+have no parties, and I shall not be ambitious about bags.  I like to
+prowl about myself with a gun."
+
+His host nodded appreciatively.
+
+"You shall have the refusal of the shooting," he promised.  "At the
+moment I am not prepared to quote terms.  My people of business can do
+that."
+
+"Have you no friends in England, Mr. Thain?" Letitia asked, a little
+abruptly.
+
+"Very few," David replied.  "I do not make friends easily."
+
+"I always thought Americans were so sociable," she remarked.  "A great
+many of your compatriots have settled down here, you know."
+
+David considered the matter for a moment.
+
+"You would smile, I suppose," he said, "if I were to tell you that
+there are more so-called 'sets' in American Society than in your own.
+I am a very self-made man indeed, and I possess no womenkind to
+entertain for me.  I am therefore dependent upon chance acquaintances."
+
+"Such friends as may make your sojourn in Norfolk more agreeable, Mr.
+Thain," the Marquis promised genially, "you shall most certainly find.
+Mandeleys will always be open to you."
+
+David made no immediate response.  His teeth had come together with a
+little click.  He felt a strange repugnance to lifting the glass, which
+the butler had just filled, to his lips.  A queer little vision of
+Mandeleys and the cottage was there, Richard Vont, seated amongst those
+drooping rose bushes, his face turned towards the Abbey, his eyes full
+of that strange, expectant light.  A sudden wave of self-disgust almost
+broke through a composure which had so far resisted all assaults upon
+it.  Almost he felt that he must rise from his place, tell this
+strange, polished, yet curiously childlike being the truth--that he was
+being drawn into the nets of ruin--that he was entertaining an enemy
+unawares.
+
+"You must really try that wine, Mr. Thain," he heard his host say
+gently.  "I make no excuse for not offering you vintage port.  At
+Mandeleys I have at least the remnants of a cellar.  You shall dine
+with us there, Mr. Thain, and I will give you what my grandfather used
+to declare was 1838 vintage."
+
+David roused himself with an effort.  He brushed aside the
+uncomfortable twinge of conscience which had suddenly depressed him,
+and turning away from Letitia, looked his host in the eyes.
+
+"You are very kind," he said.  "I shall come with much pleasure."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+The Duchess waved her sugar tongs imperiously, and David, who had
+hesitated upon the threshold of her drawing-room, made his way towards
+her.  There were a dozen people sitting around, drinking tea and
+chatting in little groups.
+
+"Now don't look sulky, please," she begged, as she gave him her left
+hand.  "This is not a tea party, and it is quite true that I did ask
+you to come and have a chat with me alone, but I couldn't keep these
+people away.  They'll all go directly, and if they don't I shall turn
+them out.  Letitia has promised me to take care of you and to see that
+no one bites.  Letitia, here is the shy man," she added.
+"There!"--thrusting a cup of tea into his hand.  "Take that, help
+yourself to a muffin and go and hide behind the piano."
+
+Letitia rose from her place by the side of an extremely loquacious
+politician, to whose animated conversation she had paid no attention
+since David's entrance.
+
+"You hear my aunt's orders?" she said, nodding.  "Don't try to shake
+hands, with that collection of things to carry.  I am to pilot you into
+a corner and keep you quite safe until she is ready to take possession
+of you herself."
+
+David looked longingly at some French windows which led out on to a
+wide stone terrace.
+
+"Why not outside?" he suggested.  "It's really quite warm to-day."
+
+"Why not, indeed?" she assented.  "Come along."
+
+They passed out together, found two comfortable wicker chairs and a
+small table, on which, with a sigh of relief, David deposited his
+burden.  Below them was a stretch of the Park, from which they
+themselves were screened by a row of tall trees.
+
+"Don't sit down," she begged him.  "Get me another of those small
+muffins first, and a cup of tea.  If any one suggests coming out here,
+bolt the windows after you."
+
+David executed his task as speedily as possible.  Letitia watched him a
+little curiously as he returned.
+
+"You aren't really a bit shy, you know," she told him.  "I watched you
+through the window there.  How clever you were not to see that tiresome
+Mrs. Raymond!"
+
+"Why should I see her?" he asked.  "She is a perfect stranger to me.
+She came up to me at a party, the other night, and asked me, as a great
+favour, to dine at her house and to tell her how to invest some money
+so that she could double it."
+
+"I know," Letitia assented, with her mouth full of muffin.  "She does
+that to all the financiers and expects them to give her tips just
+because she has dark eyes and asks them to a tête-à-tête dinner.  I
+expect we are all as bad, though," she went on rather gloomily, "even
+if we are not quite so blatant.  What on earth have you been doing to
+father?  He swaggers about as though he were already a millionaire."
+
+[Illustration: "I expect we are all as bad, though," she went on rather
+gloomily, "even if we are not quite so blatant."]
+
+David smiled a little sadly as he looked out across the tree tops.
+
+"Your father has rather a sanguine temperament," he said.
+
+"Well, don't encourage him to speculate, please," Letitia begged.  "We
+couldn't afford to lose a single penny.  As it is," she went on, "we
+are only able to come to Mandeleys because you've taken that ramshackle
+old barn close by and paid twice as much as it's worth.  About the
+shooting, too!  I almost laughed aloud when you mentioned it!  Do you
+know, Mr. Thain, that we haven't reared a pheasant for years, and that
+we don't even feed the wild ones?"
+
+"What about the partridges, though," he reminded her, "and the hares?
+I talked to a farmer when I was down there the other day, and he
+complained bitterly that there was only one vermin-killer on the whole
+estate and that the place was swarming with rabbits.  I rather enjoy
+rabbit shooting."
+
+"Oh, well, so long as you understand," Letitia replied, with a little
+shrug of the shoulders, "take the shoot, for goodness' sake, and pay
+dad as much as he chooses to ask for it.  I've always noticed," she
+went on reflectively, "one extraordinary thing about people who haven't
+the faintest idea of business.  They are always much cleverer than a
+real business man in asking ever so much more than a thing is worth.  A
+person with a sense of proportion, you see, couldn't do it."
+
+"One would imagine," he complained, "that you were trying to keep me
+away from Mandeleys."
+
+"Don't, please, imagine such a thing," she begged earnestly.  "If there
+is anything I hate, it's London--or rather hate the way we have to live
+here.  You are entirely our salvation.  If you desert us now, I shall
+be the most miserable person alive.  Only, you see, I know what father
+is, and what you do you must do with your eyes open."
+
+He was silent for a moment.  The echo of her words lingered in his
+ears.  He moved a little uneasily in his place, more uneasily still
+when he found that she was watching him intently.
+
+"You are really a very mysterious person, Mr. Thain," she declared,
+with a note of curiosity in her tone.  "I hear that you decline to be
+interviewed, and you won't even tell the newspapers whether this is
+your first visit to England or not."
+
+"I don't see what business it is of the newspapers," he rejoined.  "I
+am not a person of any possible interest to any one.  I have done
+nothing except make a great deal of money.  That, too, was purely a
+matter of good fortune and a little foresight.  In America," he went
+on, "one expects to meet with that personal curiosity.  Over here, I
+must say that it surprises me."
+
+"I suppose you are right," she admitted, "but, you see, under the
+present conditions of living, the possession of money does give such
+enormous power to any one.  Then you must remember that our press has
+become Americanised lately.  However, I am not a journalist, so will
+you answer me one question?"
+
+"Certainly," he replied.
+
+"Have you ever been in England before?"
+
+"Once."
+
+"Long ago?"
+
+"A great many years ago."
+
+"I don't really know why I am curious," she went on thoughtfully, "but
+there was a time, when I saw you first--doesn't this sound hackneyed,
+but it's quite true--when I fancied that I'd seen you before.  It
+worried me for days.  Even now it sometimes perplexes me."
+
+He hated the lie which had risen so readily to his lips and choked it
+back.
+
+"A dear lady, a friend of the Duchess, made the same remark to me when
+we were introduced," he said.  "She excused herself gracefully by
+saying that people were so much alike, nowadays."
+
+"I don't think that you are particularly like other people," she
+observed, studying him.  "Would you like to hear what Ada Honeywell
+thinks about you?"
+
+"So long as it leaves me still able to hold up my head," he murmured.
+"Mrs. Honeywell struck me as being rather severe in her strictures."
+
+"It was only of your appearance she was speaking," Letitia continued.
+"She said that she could see three things in your face--a Franciscan
+monk, a head _maïtre d'hôtel_ at the most select of French restaurants,
+and the modern decadent criminal, as opposed to the Charles Peace type."
+
+"I am much obliged, I'm sure," he remarked, leaning back and laughing
+for once quite naturally.  "My type of criminal, I presume, is one who
+brings art to his aid in working out his nefarious schemes."
+
+"Precisely," she murmured.  "Like Wainwright, the poisoner, or the
+Borgias.  But at any rate we agreed upon something.  There is purpose
+in your face."
+
+"You speak as though that were unusual!  I suppose we all have a set
+course in life."
+
+She nodded.
+
+"And a good deal depends upon the goal, doesn't it?"
+
+There was a brief--to David, an enigmatic pause.  Letitia's questions
+had puzzled him.  She might almost have suspected his identity.  They
+both listened idly for a few moments to the music of a violin, which
+some one was playing in the drawing-room.
+
+"You've asked me a great many questions," he said abruptly.  "What
+about you?  What is your goal?"
+
+"My dear Mr. Thain," she replied, "how can you ask!  I am an
+impecunious young woman of luxurious tastes.  It is my purpose to
+entrap somebody with a comfortable income into marrying me.  I have
+been at it for several seasons," she went on a little dolefully, "but
+so far Charles Grantham is my only certainty, and he wobbles
+sometimes--especially when he sees anything of Sylvia Laycey."
+
+"Sylvia Laycey," he repeated.  "Is she the daughter of the present
+tenant of Broomleys?"
+
+Letitia nodded.
+
+"And a very charming girl, too," she declared.  "You'll most certainly
+fall in love with her.  Everybody does when she comes up to stay with
+me."
+
+"Falling in love isn't one of my ordinary amusements," he observed a
+little drily.
+
+"Superior person!" she mocked.
+
+The Duchess suddenly appeared upon the balcony.
+
+"Look here," she said, "there's been quite enough of this.  Mr. Thain
+came especially to see me.  Every one else has gone."
+
+"I wonder if that might be considered a hint," Letitia observed,
+glancing at the watch upon her wrist.  "All right, aunt, I'll go.  You
+wouldn't believe, Mr. Thain," she added, buttoning her gloves, "that
+one's relations are supposed to be a help to one in life?"
+
+"You're only wasting your time with Mr. Thain, dear," her aunt replied
+equably.  "I've studied his character.  We were eight days on that
+steamer, you know, and all the musical comedy young ladies in the world
+seemed to be on board, and I can give you my word that Mr. Thain is a
+woman-hater."
+
+"I am really more interested in him now than I have ever been before,"
+Letitia declared, laughing into his eyes.  "My great grievance with
+Charlie Grantham is that he cannot keep away from our hated rivals in
+the other world.  However, you'll talk to me again, won't you, Mr.
+Thain?"
+
+David was conscious of a curious fit of reserve, a sudden closing up of
+that easy intimacy into which they seemed to have drifted.
+
+"I shall always be pleased," he said stiffly.
+
+Letitia kissed her aunt and departed.  The Duchess sank into her empty
+place.
+
+"I am going to be a beast," she began.  "Have you been lending money to
+my brother?"
+
+"Not a sixpence," David assured her.
+
+The Duchess was evidently staggered.
+
+"You surprise me," she confessed.  "However, so much the better.  It
+won't interfere with what I have to say to you.  I first took you to
+Grosvenor Square, didn't I?"
+
+"You were so kind," he admitted.
+
+"Now I come to think of it," she reflected, "I remember thinking it
+strange at the time that, though I couldn't induce you to go anywhere
+else, or meet any one else, you never hesitated about making Reginald's
+acquaintance."
+
+"He was your brother, you see," David reminded her.
+
+"It didn't occur to me," she replied drily, "that that was the reason.
+However, what I want to say to you is this, in bald words--don't lend
+him money."
+
+David looked once more across the tops of the trees.
+
+"I gather that the Marquis, then, is impecunious?" he said.
+
+"Reginald hasn't a shilling," the Duchess declared earnestly.  "Let me
+just tell you how they live.  Letitia has two thousand a year, and so
+has Margaret, from their mother.  Margaret's husband, who is a decent
+fellow, won't touch her money and makes her an allowance, so that
+nearly all her two thousand, and all of Letitia's, except the few
+ha'pence she spends on clothes, go to keeping an establishment
+together.  Reginald has sold every scrap of land he could, years ago.
+Mandeleys is the only estate he has left, and there isn't a square yard
+of that that isn't mortgaged to the very fullest extent.  It's always a
+scramble between his poor devils of lawyers and himself, whether
+there's a little margin to be got out of the rents after paying the
+interest.  If there is, it goes, I believe, towards satisfying the
+claims of a lady down at Battersea."
+
+"A lady down at Battersea," David replied.  "Is it--may I ask--an old
+attachment?"
+
+"A very old one indeed," the Duchess replied, "and, to tell you the
+truth, it's one of the most reputable things I know connected with
+Reginald.  He is inconstant in everything else he does, and without
+being in any way wilfully dishonest, he is absolutely unreliable.  But
+this lady at Battersea--she belonged to one of his tenants or
+something--I forget the story--has kept him within reasonable bounds
+for more years than I should like to say--  What do you see over there,
+Mr. Thain?" she broke off suddenly, following his steadfast gaze.
+
+David dropped his eyes from the clouds.  His fingers relaxed their
+nervous clutch of the sides of his chair.
+
+"Nothing," he answered.  "I am interested.  Please go on."
+
+"Reginald has stuck at nothing to get money," the Duchess continued.
+"He has been on the board of any company willing to pay him a few
+guineas for his name.  I believe things have come to such a pitch in
+that direction that the most foolhardy investor throws the prospectus
+away if his name is on it.  He has drained his relatives dry.  And yet,
+if you can reconcile all these things, he is, in his way, the very soul
+of honour.  Now, having told you this, you can do as you please.  If
+you lend him money, you'll probably never get it back.  If you've any
+to chuck away, I can show you a hundred deserving charities.  Reginald
+without money is really a harmless and extraordinarily amusing person.
+Reginald in search of money is the most dangerous person I know.  That
+is what I wanted to tell you, and if you like now you can run away.  My
+hairdresser is waiting for me, and he is just a little more independent
+than my chef.  Stop, though, there's one thing more."
+
+The Duchess had rung a bell with her foot, and a servant was waiting at
+the windows to show David out.  The latter turned back.
+
+"You are not making a fool of yourself with Letitia, are you?"
+
+David was very white and cold for a moment.  He looked his hostess in
+the face, and, as she expressed it afterwards, froze her up.
+
+"I am afraid that I do not understand you, Duchess," he said.
+
+"Oh, don't be silly!" she replied.  "Remember that I am your oldest
+friend in this country, and I say what I like to everybody.  You avoid
+most women as you would the plague--most women except Letitia.  I've
+warned you against the father.  Now I am warning you against the
+daughter.  And then you can go and lose your heart to one and lend a
+million to the other, if you want.  Letitia, for all her apparent
+amiability, is the proudest girl I ever knew.  I hope you understand
+me?"
+
+"Perfectly!"
+
+"Letitia will marry for money, all right," her aunt continued.  "She
+understands that that is her duty, and she will do it.  But it will be
+some one--you will forgive me, Mr. Thain--with kindred associations,
+shall I say?  Letitia, fortunately, takes after her father.  She has no
+temperament, but a sense of family tradition which will give her all
+the backbone she needs."
+
+"Is there any other member of the family," David began--
+
+"Don't be a silly boy," the Duchess interrupted, "because that's what
+you are, really, in this world and amongst our stupid class of people.
+You are just as nice as can be, though.  Run along, and don't forget
+that you are coming to dine on Friday.  You'll meet the Chancellor of
+the Exchequer, and he's going to try and persuade you to settle down
+here, for the sake of your income tax."
+
+"Another plunderer!" David groaned.  "I am beginning to feel rather
+like a lamb with an exceedingly long fleece."
+
+"You would look better with your hair cut," the Duchess remarked, as
+she waved her hand.  "Try that place at the bottom of Bond Street.  The
+Duke always goes there.  A Mr. Saunders is his man.  Better ask for
+him.  You'll find him at the top end of the room."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+There was just one drop of alloy in the perfect contentment with which
+the Marquis contemplated his new prospects, and that was contained in a
+telephone message from Mr. Wadham, Junior, which he received upon the
+afternoon of David's call upon the Duchess.
+
+"I must apologise for troubling your lordship," Mr. Wadham began.  "I
+know your objection to the telephone, but in this instance it was quite
+impossible to send a message."
+
+"I accept your apology and am listening," the Marquis declared
+graciously.  "Be so good as to speak quite slowly, and don't mumble."
+
+Mr. Wadham, Junior, cleared his throat before continuing.  He was a
+little proud of his voice, although its rise and fall was perhaps more
+satisfactory from the point of view of a Chancery Court than from one
+who expected to gather the sense of every syllable.
+
+"I am ringing up your lordship," he continued, "concerning the large
+batch of shares in the Pluto Oil Company of Arizona, which you
+entrusted to us for safe keeping, and for deposit with the bank against
+the advance required last Monday."
+
+"I can hear you perfectly," the Marquis acknowledged suavely.  "Pray
+continue."
+
+"Your lordship's bankers sent for me this morning," Mr. Wadham went on,
+"in connection with these shares.  They thought it their duty to point
+out, either through us or by communication with you direct, that
+according to the advice of a most reliable broker, their commercial
+value is practically nil."
+
+"Is what?" the Marquis demanded.
+
+"Nil--nix--not worth a cent," Mr. Wadham, Junior, proclaimed
+emphatically.
+
+The Marquis, in that slang phraseology which he would have been the
+first to decry, never turned a hair.  He had not the least intention,
+moreover, of permitting his interlocutor at the other end of the
+telephone even a momentary sensation of triumph.
+
+"You can present my compliments to the manager," he said, "and tell him
+that the value of the shares in question does not concern either him or
+his brokers.  In any case, they could not possibly have any information
+concerning the company, as it is only just registered and has not yet
+commenced operations.  You understand me, Mr. Wadham?"
+
+"Perfectly, your lordship," was the smooth reply.  "The fact remains,
+however, that the brokers do know something about the company and the
+persons interested in it, and that knowledge, I regret to say, is most
+unfavourable.  We felt it our duty, therefore, to pass on these facts."
+
+"I am exceedingly obliged to you for your anxieties on my behalf," the
+Marquis declared.  "My legal interests are, I am quite sure, safe in
+your hands.  My financial affairs--my outside financial affairs, that
+is to say--I prefer to keep under my own control.  I might remind you
+that these shares are supported, and came into my hands, in fact,
+through the agency of Mr. David Thain, the great financier."
+
+There was a moment's pause.
+
+"I had not forgotten the fact," Mr. Wadham admitted diffidently, "and
+it certainly seems improbable that Mr. Thain would introduce a risky
+investment to your lordship within a few weeks of his arrival in this
+country.  At the same time, we feel compelled, of course, to bring to
+your notice the broker's report."
+
+"Quite so," the Marquis acquiesced.  "Kindly let the people concerned
+know that I am acting in this matter upon special information.
+Good-day, Mr. Wadham.  My compliments to your father."
+
+So the conversation terminated, but the Marquis for the remainder of
+that day felt as though just the shadow of a cloud rested upon his
+happiness.  Twice he stared at the address of David's rooms, which
+occupied a prominent place upon his study table, but on both occasions
+he resisted the impulse to seek him out and obtain the reassurance he
+needed.  He buried himself instead in a Review.
+
+Letitia came in to see him on the way back from her aunt's tea party.
+The Marquis carefully made a note of his place and laid down his
+periodical.
+
+"You found your aunt well, I trust, dear?"
+
+"Oh, she was all right," Letitia replied.  "She had an irritating lot
+of callers there, though."
+
+Her father nodded sympathetically.
+
+"The extraordinary habit which people in our rank of life seem to have
+developed lately for making friends outside their own sphere is making
+Society very difficult," he declared.  "Members of our own family are,
+I am afraid, amongst the transgressors.  Whom did you meet this
+afternoon?"
+
+Letitia mentioned a few names listlessly.
+
+"And Mr. Thain," she concluded.
+
+Her father betrayed his interest.
+
+"Mr. Thain was there, eh?  I understood that he was much averse to
+paying calls."
+
+"He looked as though he had been roped in," Letitia observed, "and aunt
+was all over herself, apologising to him for having other people there.
+She wanted to consult him, it seems, about something or other, and she
+turned him over to me until she was ready."
+
+"And you," the Marquis enquired, with questioning sympathy, "were
+perhaps bored?"
+
+"Not bored, exactly--rather irritated!  I think I am like you, in some
+respects, father," Letitia went on, smoothing out her gloves.  "I
+prefer to find my intimates within the circle of our own relatives and
+connections.  A person like Mr. Thain in some way disturbs me."
+
+"That," the Marquis regretted, "is unfortunate, as he is likely to be
+our neighbour at Mandeleys."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Oh, it is of no consequence," she replied.  "I shall never feel the
+slightest compunction in anything I might do or say to him.  If he pays
+more for Broomleys than it is worth, he has the advantage of our
+countenance, which I imagine, to a person in his position, makes the
+bargain equal.  Mr. Thain does not seem to me to be one of those men
+who would part with anything unless he got some return."
+
+"Money, nowadays," the Marquis reflected, pressing the tips of his
+fingers together, "is a marvellously revitalising influence.  People
+whose social position is almost, if not quite equal to our own, have
+even taken it into the family through marriage."
+
+Letitia's very charming mouth twitched.  Her lips parted, and she
+laughed softly.  Nothing amused her more than this extraordinary
+blindness of her father to actual facts--such, for instance, as the
+Lees' woollen mills!
+
+"I do hope," she remarked, "that you are not thinking of offering me
+up, dad, on the altar of the God of Dollars?"
+
+"My dear child," the Marquis protested, "I can truthfully and proudly
+say that I am acquainted with no young woman of your position in
+connection with whom such a suggestion would be more sacrilegious.  I
+have sometimes hoped," he went on, "that matters were already on the
+eve of settlement in another direction."
+
+"I don't know, I'm sure," Letitia answered thoughtfully.  "I sometimes
+think that I have a great many more feelings, dad, than the sole
+remaining daughter of the Right Honourable Reginald Thursford, Marquis
+of Mandeleys, ought to possess.  The fact is, there are times when I
+can't stand Charlie anywhere near me, and as to discussing any subject
+of reasonable interest, well, he can only see anything from his own
+point of view, and that is always wrong."
+
+"You and he, then," the Marquis observed, "appear to share--or rather
+to possess every essential for domestic happiness.  The constant
+propinquity in which married people of the middle and lower classes are
+forced to live is no doubt responsible, in many cases, for the early
+termination of their domestic happiness."
+
+"I always thought the middle classes were horribly virtuous," Letitia
+yawned.  "However!--Thursday night, dad.  You are dining out, aren't
+you?"
+
+"Thursday night," the Marquis repeated, telling for the hundredth time,
+with bland ease, the falsehood which had almost ceased to have even the
+intention to deceive.  "Yes, I dine at my club to-night, dear."
+
+She bent over and kissed his forehead.
+
+"Remember, my dear," he enjoined, "that I do not wish you to develop
+any feelings of positive dislike towards Mr. Thain.  Such people have
+their uses in the world.  We must not forget that."
+
+Letitia laughed at him understandingly, but she closed the door in
+silence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+Marcia, more especially perhaps during these later days, felt her sense
+of humour gently excited every time she crossed the threshold of
+Trewly's Restaurant.  The programme which followed was always the same.
+The Marquis rose from a cushioned seat in the small entrance lounge to
+greet her, very distinguished looking in his plain dinner clothes, his
+black stock, vainly imitated by the younger generation, his horn-rimmed
+eyeglass, his cambric-fronted shirt with the black pearls, which had
+been the gift of the Regent to his great-grandfather.  The head waiter,
+and generally the manager, hovered in the background while their
+greetings were exchanged and Marcia's coat delivered to the care of an
+attendant.  Then they were shown with much ceremony to the same table
+which they had occupied on these weekly celebrations for many years.
+It was in a corner of the room, a corner which formed a slight recess,
+and special flowers, the gift of the management, were invariably in
+evidence.  The rose-shaded lamp, with its long, silken hangings, was
+arranged at precisely the right angle.  The Marquis asked his usual
+question and waved away the menu.
+
+"What you choose to offer us, Monsieur Herbrand," he would say, in his
+old-world but perfect French.  "If Madame has any fancy, we will send
+you a message."
+
+So the meal commenced.  Trewly's was a restaurant with a past.  In the
+days of the Marquis's youth, when such things were studied more
+carefully than now, it was the one first-class restaurant in London to
+which the gilded youth of the aristocracy, and perhaps their sires,
+might indulge in the indiscretion of entertaining a young lady from the
+Italian chorus without fear of meeting staider relatives.  The world of
+bohemian fashion had changed its laws since those days, and Trewly's
+had been left, high and dry, save for a small clientele who remembered
+its former glories and esteemed its cellar and cuisine.  It belonged to
+the world which the Marquis knew, the world whose maxims he still
+recognised.  After all these years, he would still have thought himself
+committing a breach of social etiquette if he had invited Marcia to
+lunch with him at the Ritz or the Carlton.
+
+They drank claret, decanted with zealous care and served by a
+black-aproned cellarman, who waited anxiously by until the Marquis had
+gravely sipped his first glassful and approved.  Their dinner to-day
+was very much what it had been a dozen years ago--the French-fed
+chicken, the artichokes, and strawberries served with liqueurs
+remained, whatever the season.  And their conversations.  Marcia leaned
+back in her chair for a moment, and again the corners of her lips
+twitched as she remembered.  Faithfully, year after year, she could
+trace those conversations--the courtly, old-fashioned criticism of the
+events of the week, criticism from the one infallible standard, the
+standard of the immutable Whiggism upon which the constitution itself
+rested; conversation with passing references to any new event in art,
+and, until lately, the stage.  To-night Marcia found herself tracing
+the gradual birth of her stimulating rebellion.  She remembered how,
+years ago, she had sat in that same seat and listened as one might
+listen to the words of a god.  And then came the faint revolt, the
+development of her intellect, the necessity for giving tongue to those
+more expansive and more subtle views of life which became her heritage.
+To do him justice, the Marquis encouraged her.  He was as good a judge
+of wit and spirit as he was of claret.  If Marcia had expressed a
+single sentence awkwardly, if her grammar had ever been at fault, her
+taste to be questioned, he would have relapsed into the stiffness of
+his ordinary manner, and she would have felt herself tongue-tied.  But,
+curious though it seemed to her when she looked back, she was forced to
+realise that it was he who had always encouraged the birth of her new
+thoughts, her new ideals, her new outlook upon life, her own drastic
+and sometimes unanswerable criticisms of that state of life in which he
+lived.  She represented modernity, seeking for expression in the
+culture of the moment.  He, remaining of the ancient world, yet found
+himself rejuvenated, mentally refreshed, week by week, preserved from
+that condition of obstinate ossification into which he would otherwise
+have fallen, by this brilliant and unusual companionship.  In all the
+many years of their intimacy he had felt no doubts concerning her.  He
+was possessed of a self-confidence wholly removed from conceit, which
+had spared for him the knowledge of even a moment's jealousy.  In her
+company he had felt the coming and, as he now realised, the passing of
+middle age.  It was only within these last few hours that certain
+formless apprehensions had presented themselves to him.
+
+"You drink your wine slowly to-night," she observed.  "I was just
+thinking how delicious it was."
+
+He touched the long forefinger of his left hand, just a little swollen.
+
+"A touch of gout," he said, "come to remind me, I suppose, that however
+much we set our faces against it, change does exist.  You are the only
+person, Marcia, who seems to defy it."
+
+She laughed at him, but not with entire naturalness.  He found himself
+studying her, during the next few moments.  Just as he was a celebrated
+connoisseur of _objets d'arts_, a valued visitor to Christie's,
+although his purchases were small, so he was, in his way, an excellent
+judge of the beautiful in living things.  He realised, as he studied
+her, that Marcia had only more fully developed the charm which had
+first attracted him.  Her figure was a little rounder but it had lost
+none of its perfections.  Her neck and throat were just as beautiful,
+and the success of her work, and her greater knowledge of life, had
+brought with them an assured and dignified bearing.  There was not a
+vestige of grey in her soft brown hair, not a line in her face, nor any
+sign of the dentist's handiwork in her strong, white teeth.  Only--was
+it his fancy, he wondered, or was there something missing from the way
+she looked at him?--a half shy, half baffled appeal for affection which
+had so often shone out upon him during these evenings, a wholly
+personal, wholly human note, the unspoken message of a woman to her
+lover.  He asked himself whether that had gone, and, if it had, whether
+the companionship which remained sufficed.
+
+"So the journey down to Mandeleys has not materialised yet?" he asked.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"To tell you the truth," she told him, "I rather shrank from it.  I
+could not seem to bring it into perspective--you know what I mean.  How
+am I to go to him?  I don't suppose he has changed.  He is still
+splendidly faithful to the ideas of his earlier days.  I do not suppose
+he has moved a step out of his groove.  He is looking at the same
+things in the same way.  Am I to go to him as a Magdalen, as a
+penitent?  Honestly, Reginald, I couldn't play the part."
+
+Their eyes met, and they both smiled.
+
+"It is very difficult," he admitted, "to discuss or to hold in common a
+matter of importance with a person of another world.  Why do you go?"
+
+"Because," she replied, "he is, after all, my father; because I know
+that the pain and rage which he felt when he left England are there
+to-day, and I would like so much to make him see that they have all
+been wasted.  I want him to realise that my life has been made, not
+spoilt."
+
+"I should find out indirectly, if I were you, how he is feeling," the
+Marquis advised.  "I rather agree with you that you will find him
+unchanged.  His fierce opposition to my reasonable legal movements
+against him give one that impression."
+
+"I shall probably be sorry I went," she admitted, "but it seems to me
+that it is one of those things which must be done.  Let us talk of
+something else.  Tell me how you have spent the week?"
+
+"For one thing, I have improved my acquaintance with the American,
+David Thain, of whom I have already spoken to you," he told her.
+
+"And your great financial scheme?"
+
+"It promises well.  Of course, if it is entirely successful, it will be
+like starting life all over again."
+
+"There is a certain amount of risk, I suppose?" she asked, a little
+anxiously.
+
+The Marquis waved his hand.
+
+"In this affair quite negligible," he declared.
+
+"It would make you very happy, of course, to free the estates," she
+ruminated.
+
+The Marquis for a moment revealed a side of himself which always made
+Marcia feel almost maternal towards him.
+
+"It would give me very great pleasure, also," he confessed, "to point
+out to my solicitors--to Mr. Wadham, Junior, especially--that the task
+which they have left unaccomplished for some twenty-five years I have
+myself undertaken successfully."
+
+"This Mr. Thain must be rather interesting," Marcia said musingly.
+"Could you describe him?"
+
+It was at that precise moment that the Marquis raised his head and
+discovered that David Thain was being shown by an obsequious _maître
+d'hôtel_ to the table adjoining their own.
+
+In the case of almost any other of his acquaintances, the Marquis's
+course of action would have been entirely simple.  David, however,
+complicated things.  With the naïve courtesy of his American bringing
+up, he no sooner recognised the Marquis than he approached the table
+and offered his hand.
+
+"Good evening, Marquis," he said.
+
+The Marquis shook hands.  Some banalities passed between the two men.
+Then, as though for the first time, David was suddenly and vividly
+aware of Marcia's presence.  Some instinct told him who she was, and
+for a moment he forgot himself.  He looked at her steadily, curiously,
+striving to remember, and Marcia returned his gaze with a strange
+absorption which at first she failed to understand.  This slim,
+nervous-looking man, with the earnest eyes and the slight stoop of the
+head, was bringing back to her some memory.  From the first stage of
+the struggle her common sense was worsted.  She was looking back down
+the avenues of her memory.  Surely somewhere in that shadowland she had
+known some one with eyes like these!--there must be something to
+explain this queer sense of excitement.  And then the Marquis, who had
+been deliberating, spoke the words which brought her to herself.
+
+"Marcia, let me present to you Mr. David Thain, of whom we were
+speaking a few minutes ago.  Mr. Thain, this is Miss Marcia Hannaway,
+whose very clever novel you may have read."
+
+David's eyes were still eagerly fixed upon her face, but the
+introduction had brought Marcia back to the earth.  There could be no
+connection between those half-formed memories and the American
+millionaire whose name was almost a household word!
+
+"I am very pleased to meet you, Miss Hannaway," David said.  "I was
+just telling the Marquis that I was surprised to find any one here whom
+I knew.  I asked a friend to tell me of a restaurant near my rooms
+where I should meet no one, and he sent me here."
+
+"Why such misanthropy?" she asked.
+
+"It is my own bad manners," he explained.  "I accepted an invitation
+for this evening, and found at the last moment so much work that I was
+obliged to send an excuse."
+
+"You carry your work about with you, then?"
+
+"Not always, I hope," he replied, "only I am just now clearing out a
+great many of my interests in America, and that alone is sufficient to
+keep one busy."
+
+He passed on with a little bow, and took his place at the table which
+the _maître d'hôtel_ had indicated.  The Marquis, to whom his coming
+had been without any real significance, continued his conversation with
+Marcia until he found to his surprise that she was giving him less than
+her whole attention.
+
+"What do you think of our hero of finance?" he enquired, a little
+coldly.
+
+"He seems very much as you described him," Marcia answered.  "To tell
+you the truth, his sudden appearance just as we were talking about him
+rather took my breath away."
+
+"It was a coincidence, without doubt," the Marquis acknowledged.
+
+Her eyes wandered towards the man who had given his brief order for
+dinner, and whose whole attention now seemed absorbed by the newspaper
+which he was reading.
+
+"It is Mr. Thain, is it not, who introduced to you this wonderful
+speculation?" she asked, a little abruptly.
+
+"That is so," the Marquis admitted.  "I have always myself, however,
+been favourably disposed towards oil."
+
+Marcia suddenly withdrew her glance, laughed softly to herself and
+sipped her wine.
+
+"I was indulging in a ridiculous train of thought," she confessed.
+"Mr. Thain looks very clever, even if he is not exactly one's idea of
+an American financier.  I expect the poor man does get hunted about.  A
+millionaire, especially from foreign parts, has become a sort of Monte
+Cristo, nowadays."
+
+The subject of David Thain dropped.  The Marquis, as their coffee was
+brought, began to wonder dimly whether it was possible that the thread
+of their conversation was a little more difficult to hold together than
+in the past; whether that bridge between their interests and daily life
+became a little more difficult to traverse as the years passed.  He
+fell into a momentary fit of silence.  Marcia leaned towards him.
+
+"Reginald," she said, "do you know, there was something I wanted to ask
+you this evening.  Shall I ask it now?"
+
+"If you will, dear."
+
+She paused for a moment.  The matter had seemed so easy and reasonable
+when she had revolved it in her mind, yet at this moment of broaching
+it, she realised, not for the first time, how different he was from
+other men; how difficult a nameless something about his environment
+made certain discussions.  Nevertheless, she commenced her task.
+
+"Reginald," she began, "do you realise that during the whole of my life
+I have never dined alone with any other man but you?"
+
+"Nor I, since you came, with any other woman," he rejoined calmly.
+"You have some proposition to make?"
+
+She was surprised to find that he had penetrated her thoughts.
+
+"Don't you think, perhaps," she continued, "that we are a little too
+self-enclosing?  Thanks to you, as I always remember, dear, the world
+has grown a larger place for me, year by year.  At first I really tried
+to avoid friendships.  I was perfectly satisfied.  I did not need them.
+But my work, somehow, has made things different.  It has brought me
+amongst a class of people who look upon freedom of intercourse between
+the sexes as a part of their everyday life.  I found a grey hair in my
+head only the night before last, and do you know how it came?  Just by
+refusing invitations from perfectly harmless people."
+
+"I have never placed any restrictions upon your life," her companion
+reminded her.
+
+"I know it," she admitted, "but, you see, the principal things between
+us have always been unspoken.  I knew just how you felt about it.  What
+I want to know is, now that the times have changed around you as well
+as around me, whether you would feel just the same if I, to take an
+example, were to lunch or dine with Mr. Borden, now and then, or with
+Morris Hyde, the explorer.  I met him at an Authors' Club
+_conversazione_ and he was immensely interesting.  It struck me then
+that perhaps I was interpreting your wishes a little too literally."
+
+The Marquis selected a cigarette from his battered gold case with its
+tiny coronet, tapped it upon the table and lit it.  Marcia was already
+smoking.
+
+"I fear that I am very old-fashioned in my notions, Marcia," he
+confessed.  "I should find it very difficult to adapt myself to the
+perfectly harmless, I am sure, lack of restraint which, as you say, has
+opened the doors to a much closer friendship between men and women.
+The place which you have held in my life has grown rather than lessened
+with the years.  It is only natural, however, that the opposite should
+be the case with you.  I should like to consider what you have said,
+Marcia."
+
+"You have meant so much to me," she continued, "you have been so much.
+In our earlier days, too, especially during that year when we
+travelled, you were such a wonderful mentor.  It was your fine taste,
+Reginald, which enabled me to make the best of those months in Florence
+and Rome.  You knew the best, and you showed it to me.  You never tried
+to understand why it was the best, but you never made a mistake."
+
+"Those things are matters of inheritance," he replied, "and
+cultivation.  It was a great joy to me, Marcia, to give you the keys."
+
+"Yes," she repeated, "that is what you did, Reginald--you gave me the
+keys, and I opened the doors."
+
+"And now," he went on, "you have pushed your way further, much further
+into the world where men and women think, than I could or should care
+to follow you.  Is it likely to separate us?"
+
+She saw him suddenly through a little mist of tears.
+
+"No!" she exclaimed, "it must not!  It shall not!"
+
+"Nevertheless," he persisted, "the thought is in your mind.  I cannot
+alter my life, Marcia.  I live to a certain extent by tradition, and by
+habits which have become too strong to break.  There is a great
+difference in our years and in our outlook upon life.  There is much
+before you, flowers which you may pick and heights which you may climb,
+which can have no message for me."
+
+"Nothing," Marcia declared fervently, "shall disturb our--our
+friendship."
+
+"That does not rest with you, dear, but rather with Fate," he replied.
+"You might control your actions, and I know that you would, but your
+will, your desires, your temperament, may still lead you in opposite
+directions.  I have been your lover too long to slip easily into the
+place of your guardian.  Hold out your hand, if you will, now, and bid
+me farewell.  Try the other things, and, if they fail you, send for me."
+
+"I shall do nothing of the sort," she objected.  "We are both of us
+much too serious.  The only question we are considering is whether you
+would object to my dining with Mr. Borden and lunching with Mr. Hyde?"
+
+"It would give you an opportunity," he remarked, with a rather grim
+smile, "of seeing the inside of some other restaurant."
+
+"How understanding you are!" she exclaimed.  "Do you know, although I
+love our dinners here, I sometimes feel as though this room were a
+little cage, a little corner of the world across the threshold of which
+you had drawn a chalk line, so that no one of your world or mine might
+enter.  The coming of Mr. Thain was almost like an earthquake."
+
+With every moment it seemed to him that he understood her a little
+more, and with every moment the pain of it all increased.
+
+"My dear Marcia," he said, "you have spoken the word.  More than once
+lately I have fancied that I noticed indications of this desire on your
+part.  I am glad, therefore, that you have spoken.  Dine with your
+publisher, by all means, and lunch with Mr. Hyde.  Take to yourself
+that greater measure of liberty which it is only too natural that you
+should covet.  We will look upon it as a brief vacation, which
+certainly, after all these years, you have earned.  When you have made
+up your mind, write to me.  I shall await your letter with interest."
+
+"But you mean that you are not coming down to see me before then?" she
+asked, a little tremulously.
+
+"I think it would be better not," he decided.  "I have kept you to
+myself very stringently, Marcia.  You see, I recognise this, and I set
+you free for a time."
+
+He paid the bill, and they left the room together.
+
+"You are coming home?" she whispered, as they passed down the vestibule.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Not to-night, if you will excuse me, Marcia," he said.  "The car is
+here.  I will take a cab myself.  There is a meeting of the committee
+at my club."
+
+They were on the pavement.  She gripped his hand.
+
+"Do come," she begged.
+
+He handed her in with a smile.
+
+"You will go down to Battersea, James," he told the chauffeur, "and
+fetch me afterwards from the club."
+
+A queer feeling caught at her heart as the car glided off and left him
+standing there, bareheaded.  It was the first time--she felt something
+like the snap of a chain in her heart--the first time in all these
+years!  Yet she never for a moment deceived herself.  The tears which
+stood in her eyes, the pain in her heart, were for him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+The Duchess, a few mornings later, leaned back in her car and watched
+the perilous progress of her footman, dodging in and out of the traffic
+in the widest part of Piccadilly.  He returned presently in safety,
+escorting the object of his quest.  The Duchess pointed to the seat by
+her side.
+
+"Can I take you or drop you anywhere?" she asked.  "Please don't look
+as though you had been taken into custody.  I saw you in the distance,
+walking aimlessly along, and I really wanted to talk to you."
+
+David for a moment indulged in the remains of what was almost a boyish
+resentment.
+
+"I have to go to the Savoy," he explained, "and I was rather intending
+to walk across St. James's Park."
+
+"You can walk after your lunch," she insisted.  "If you walk before, it
+gives you too much of an appetite,--afterwards, it helps your
+digestion, so get in with me, and I will drive you to the Savoy."
+
+He took his place by her side with a distinct air of resignation.  The
+Duchess laughed at him.
+
+"You are a very silly person to dislike other people so," she
+admonished.  "If you begin to give way to misanthropy at your time of
+life, you will be a withered up old stick whom no one will want to be
+decent to, except to get money out of, before you're fifty.  Don't you
+know that the society of human beings is good for you?"
+
+"There isn't a medicine in the world one can't take too much of," David
+ventured, smiling in spite of himself.
+
+"To the Savoy, John," his mistress directed.  "Tell Miles to drive
+slowly.  To abandon abstruse discussions," she continued, leaning back,
+"have you regarded my warning?"
+
+"Which one?" he demanded.
+
+"I mean with reference to my brother.  I happen to have come across him
+once or twice, during the last few days.  On Wednesday he was in the
+most buoyant spirits--for him.  He had the air of a man who has
+accomplished some great feat.  If you only knew how amusing Reginald is
+at such times!  His manner isn't in the least different, but you know
+perfectly well that he is thinking himself one of the most brilliant
+creatures ever born.  There is a note of the finest and most delicate
+condescension in the way he speaks.  I am perfectly certain that if he
+had happened to come across the Chancellor of the Exchequer on
+Wednesday, he would have discussed finance with him in a patronising
+fashion, and probably offered him a few hints as to how to reduce the
+National Debt."
+
+"On Wednesday this was," David murmured.
+
+"And on Friday," the Duchess continued, "he was a different man.  He
+carried himself exactly as usual, but his footsteps were falling like
+lead.  He looked over the eyes of every one, and there was that queer,
+grey look in his face which helps one to remember that, notwithstanding
+his figure, he is nearly sixty years old.  What have you been doing to
+him, Mr. Thain?"
+
+"Nothing that would account for his latter state," David assured her.
+
+"When did you see him last?" she asked.
+
+"On Thursday."
+
+"Where?"
+
+David hesitated.
+
+"At Trewly's Restaurant."
+
+"He was lunching or dining with some one?"
+
+"Dining."
+
+The Duchess nodded.
+
+"Of course!  With a lady, wasn't it?"
+
+"Is this a fair cross-examination?" David protested.
+
+"My dear Mr. Thain, don't be absurd," his companion admonished.  "Every
+one in London and out of it has known of my brother's friendship with
+Marcia Hannaway for years.  As a matter of fact, we all approve of it
+immensely.  The young woman, although she must be getting on now, is a
+very clever writer, and I think that the influence she has exercised
+upon Reginald, throughout his life, has been an excellent one.  So that
+was Thursday night, eh?"
+
+David assented.  He was looking out of the window of the car, as though
+interested in the passing throngs.
+
+"I will tell you something," the Duchess continued.  "You have heard, I
+dare say, of the lawsuits down at Mandeleys, and of that keeper's
+cottage within a hundred yards from the lawn, and of the old man Vont,
+who has come back just as bitter as ever?  That girl is his daughter."
+
+"The Marquis seems to have displayed the most extraordinary fidelity,"
+David remarked.
+
+"My dear Mr. Thain," was the emphatic reply, "they have been the making
+of one another's lives.  It is the sort of thing one reads more of in
+French memoirs than meets with in actual life, but I can assure you
+that Reginald would be absolutely miserable without her, and she--well,
+see what she has become through his influence and companionship.  Yet
+they tell me that that old man has come back to his ridiculous cottage,
+and sits there in the front garden, reading the Bible and blasting the
+very gooseberry bushes with his curses against Reginald.  Most
+uncomfortable it will be, I should think, when you all get down there."
+
+"Nothing that you have said alters the fact," David reminded her, "that
+Vont's daughter has been all her life, and is to-day, in an invidious
+situation with regard to your brother."
+
+The Duchess's eyebrows were slightly raised.
+
+"And why not?" she asked, in genuine surprise.  "Of course, I don't
+claim to be so absolutely feudal in my ideas as Reginald, but I still
+cannot find the slightest disadvantage which has accrued to the young
+woman from her position."
+
+"I have been brought up myself in a different school," David said
+quietly, "in the school Richard Vont was brought up in.  I see no
+difference fundamentally between a Marquis and a gamekeeper, and to me
+the womenkind of the gamekeeper should be as sacred to the Marquis as
+the womenkind of the Marquis to the gamekeeper."
+
+The Duchess laughed good-humouredly.
+
+"I have always insisted," she declared, "that America is the most
+backward country in the world.  So many of you come to Europe now,
+though, that one would have thought you would have attained to a more
+correct perspective of life.  But you are certainly much more amusing
+as you are.  No, be quiet, please," she went on.  "I didn't call for
+you to enter into general discussions.  I just wanted to know about
+Reginald.  Of course, you have discovered already that I am
+ridiculously fond of him, and I am trying to find out what is
+depressing him so much.  Do you know what I am most afraid of?"
+
+"I have no idea," David confessed.  "The workings of your mind seem to
+lead you to such unexpected conclusions."
+
+"Don't be peevish," she replied.  "What I am really more afraid of than
+anything is that Marcia Hannaway will leave him."
+
+"Why?"
+
+The Duchess shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"She is twenty years younger than Reginald, and she has made for
+herself an entirely new place in life.  That is the wonderful goal a
+woman reaches who has brains and is enabled to put them to some
+practical use.  She has a circle of friends and admirers and
+sympathisers, already made.  Now Reginald is a dear, but his outlook
+upon life is almost whimsical, and I have always wondered whether he
+would be able to hold a woman like this to the end.  The only thing
+is," she concluded ruminatively, "that the affair has been going on for
+so long, and is so well known, that it would be positively indecent of
+her to break it off.  Don't you think so, Mr. Thain?"
+
+David looked at the Duchess and shook his head.
+
+"Honestly," he admitted, "I can't give an opinion.  I thought I
+understood something of human nature before I came into touch with you
+and those few members of your aristocracy whom I have met through you.
+But frankly, to use a homely metaphor, you take the wind out of my
+sails.  I don't know where I am when you lay down the law.  There is
+something wrong between us fundamentally.  I was brought up the same
+way Vont was brought up.  Things were right or wrong, moral or immoral.
+You people seem to have made laws of your own."
+
+"It's time some one revised the old ones," his companion laughed.
+"However, I can see that you can be no help to me about Reginald, and
+here we are at the Savoy.  By-the-by, I've never seen you except with
+men.  Have you no women friends?  Are none of those charming little
+musical comedy ladies I see through the windows there expecting you as
+their host?"
+
+"They look very attractive," David admitted, smiling back at his
+companion, "but I am, in reality, lunching alone.  I came here because
+I know my stockbroker lunches every day in the grillroom, and I want to
+see him."
+
+"How pathetic!" she sighed.  "I really believe that I have a duty in
+connection with you."
+
+"At any rate," he promised, as he held out his hand, "there is a man
+here who will serve us some American lobster which is very nearly the
+real thing."
+
+"Don't make me feel too gluttonous," she begged, as she stepped out.
+"I really am not in the habit of inviting myself to luncheon like this,
+but the fact of it is--"
+
+She hesitated.  He passed behind her into the little vestibule.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, I rather like you, Mr. David Thain," she whispered.  "You won't
+be vain about it, will you, but all the financiers I have ever met have
+been so extraordinarily full of their money and how they made it.  You
+are different, aren't you?"
+
+"I am content if you find me so," he answered, with rare gallantry.
+
+David ordered a thoroughly American luncheon, of which his guest
+heartily approved.
+
+"If you Americans," she observed, "only knew how to live as well as you
+know how to eat, what a nation you would be!"
+
+"We fancy that we have some ideas that way, also," he told her.
+"Wherein do we fail most, from your English point of view?"
+
+"In matters of sex," the Duchess replied coolly.  "You know so much
+more about lobster Newburg than you do about women.  I suppose it is
+all this strenuous money-getting that is responsible for your
+ignorance.  No one over here, you see, tries for anything very much."
+
+"You certainly all live in a more enervating atmosphere," David
+admitted.
+
+"Tell me about your younger days?" she demanded.
+
+"There is nothing to tell in the least interesting," he assured her.
+"My people were poor.  I was sent to Harvard with great difficulty by a
+relative who kept a boot store.  I became a clerk in a railway office,
+took a fancy to the work and planned out some schemes--which came off."
+
+"How much money have you, in plain English?" she asked.
+
+"About four millions," he answered.
+
+"And what are you going to do with it?"
+
+"Buy an estate, for one thing," he replied.  "Fortunately, I am very
+fond of shooting and riding, so I suppose I shall amuse myself."
+
+"Are those your only resources?" she enquired, with a faint smile.
+
+"I may marry."
+
+"Come, this gets more interesting!  Any lady in your mind yet?"
+
+"None whatever," he assured her, with almost exaggerated firmness.
+
+"You'd better give yourself a few years first and then let me choose
+for you," she suggested.  "I know just the type--unless you change."
+
+"And why should I change?"
+
+"Because," she said, eying him penetratively, "there is at present
+something bottled up in you.  I do not know what it is, and if I asked
+you wouldn't tell me, but you're not quite your natural self, whatever
+that may be.  Is it, I wonder, the result of that twenty years'
+struggle of yours?  Perhaps you have really lost the capacity for
+generous life, Mr. Thain."
+
+"You are a very observant person."
+
+"Trust me, then, and tell me your secret sorrow?" she suggested.  "I
+could be a very good friend, Mr. Thain, if friends amuse you."
+
+"I have lived under a shadow," he confessed.  "I am sorry, but I cannot
+tell you much about it.  But in a sense you are right.  Life for me
+will begin after the accomplishment of a certain purpose."
+
+"You have a rival to ruin, eh?"
+
+"No, it isn't that," he assured her.  "It happens to be something of
+which I could not give you even the smallest hint."
+
+"Well, I don't see how you are going to get on with it down at
+Broomleys," she observed.  "What a horrid person you are to go there at
+all!  You might as well bury yourself.  You have the wealth of a Monte
+Cristo and you take a furnished villa--for that's all it is!  Perhaps
+you are waiting till the mortgages fall in, to buy Mandeleys?  Or did
+my warning come too late and is Letitia the attraction?"
+
+He was conscious of her close observation, but he gave no sign.
+
+"I have seen nothing of Lady Letitia," he said, "but even if she were
+content to accept my four millions as a compensation for my other
+disadvantages, it would make no difference."
+
+"Any entanglements on the other side?" she asked airily.
+
+"None!"
+
+The Duchess finished her lobster and leaned back in her chair.  Through
+her tiny platinum lorgnette she looked around the room for several
+moments.  Then a little abruptly she turned again to him.
+
+"Really," she said, "people are doing such mad things, now-a-days, that
+I am not at all sure that I am right in putting you off Letitia.  It
+would be frightfully useful to have four millions in the family.  And
+yet, do you know," she went on, "it's queer, isn't it, but I don't want
+you to marry my niece."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"How crude!" she sighed.  "I really shall have to take a lot of trouble
+with you, Mr. David Thain.  However, if you persist--because Letitia is
+my niece."
+
+"And you don't like me well enough," he asked, "to accept me as a
+husband for your niece?"
+
+She laughed at him very quietly.
+
+"Are you very ingenuous," she demanded, "or just a little subtle?
+Hadn't it occurred to you, for instance, that I might prefer to keep
+you to myself?"
+
+"You must forgive me if I seem stupid," he begged, "or unresponsive.  I
+don't wish to be either.  I can understand that in America I might be a
+person of some interest.  Over here--well, the whole thing is
+different, isn't it?  Apart from my money, I know and realise how
+ignorant I am of your ways, of the things to do here and how to do
+them.  I feel utterly at a disadvantage with every one, unless they
+happen to want my money."
+
+"You are too modest, Mr. Thain," she declared, leaning a little towards
+him and dropping her voice.  "I will tell you one reason why you
+interest me.  It is because I am quite certain that there is something
+in your life, some purpose or some secret, which you have not confided
+to any living person in this country.  I want to know what it is.  It
+isn't exactly vulgar inquisitiveness, believe me.  I am perfectly
+certain that there is something more of you than you show to people
+generally."
+
+David was conscious of an odd sense of relief.  After all, the woman
+was only curious--and it was most improbable that her curiosity would
+lead her in the right direction.
+
+"You are very discerning, Duchess," he said.  "Unfortunately, I have no
+confidence to offer you.  The one secret in my life is some one else's
+and not my own."
+
+"And you never betray a confidence?" she asked, looking at him
+steadfastly.  "You could be trusted?"
+
+"I hope so," he assured her.
+
+Their lunch passed on to its final stages.  The Duchess smoked a
+Russian cigarette with her coffee, and it seemed to him that
+imperceptibly she had moved a little nearer to him.  Her elbows were
+upon the table and her hands clasped.  She seemed for a moment to study
+one or two quaint rings upon her fingers.
+
+"A few more questions, and I shall feel that we know one another," she
+said.  "Just why have you left America and this wonderful pursuit of
+wealth?"
+
+"Because there were no more railways in which I was interested," he
+answered, "nor any particular speculation or enterprise that appealed
+to me.  I have more money than I can ever spend, and I know very well
+that if I remained in America I should have no peace.  I should be a
+target for years for every man who has land to sell near railways, or
+shares to sell, or an invention to perfect.  As soon as I decided to
+wind up, I decided also that it was necessary for me to clear right
+away.  Apart from that, England and English life attracts me."
+
+"And this purpose?" she enquired.  "This secret--which is somebody
+else's secret?"
+
+"Such as it is," he replied, "it belongs to this country."
+
+"How old are you?" she asked suddenly.
+
+"I am thirty-seven," he told her.
+
+She sighed.  Her slightly tired blue eyes seemed to be looking through
+the little cloud of cigarette smoke to the confines of the room.
+
+"A magnificent age for a man," she murmured, "but a little ghastly for
+a woman.  I was thirty-nine last birthday.  Never mind, one has the
+present.  So here are you, in the prime of life, with an immense
+fortune and no responsibilities.  If Disraeli had been alive, he would
+have written a novel about you.  There is so much which you could do,
+so much in which you could fail.  Will you become just a man about town
+here, make friends partly in Bohemia and partly amongst some of us,
+endow a theatre and marry the first chorus girl who is too clever for
+you?  Or--"
+
+"I am more interested in the 'or,'" he declared rashly.
+
+She turned her eyes slightly without moving her head, and knocked the
+ash from her cigarette into her plate.
+
+"Let us go," she said, a little abruptly.  "I am tired of talking here.
+If you really wish to know, you can accept the invitation which I shall
+send you presently, and come to Scotland."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Letitia and her escort pulled up their horses at the top of Rotten Row.
+Letitia was a little out of breath, but her colour was delightful, and
+the slight disarrangement of her tightly coiled brown hair most
+becoming.
+
+"It was dear of you, Charlie, to think of lending me a hack," she
+declared.  "I haven't enjoyed a gallop so much for ages.  When we get
+down to Mandeleys I am going to raid Bailey's stables.  He always has
+some young horses."
+
+"Want schooling a bit before they're fit to ride," Grantham observed.
+
+"If I had been born in another walk of life," Letitia said, "I am sure
+horse-breaking would have been my profession.  You haven't been in to
+see us for ages, Charles."
+
+"You weren't particularly gracious the last time I did come," he
+reminded her gloomily.
+
+"Don't be silly," she laughed.  "You must have come on an irritating
+afternoon.  I get into such a terrible tangle sometimes with my
+housekeeping accounts up here.  You know how impossible dad is with
+money matters, and he leaves everything to me."
+
+The young man cleared his throat.
+
+"I think you've borne the burdens of the family long enough," he
+remarked.  "I wish you'd try mine."
+
+"You do choose the most original forms of proposal," Letitia
+acknowledged frankly.  "As a matter of fact, I have had enough of
+keeping accounts.  I have almost made up my mind that when I do marry,
+if I ever do, I will marry some one enormously wealthy, who can afford
+to let me have a secretary-steward as well as a housekeeper."
+
+"You've been thinking of that fellow Thain," he muttered.
+
+"Oh, no, I haven't!" she replied.  "Mr. Thain is a very pleasant
+person, but I can assure you that I have never considered him
+matrimonially.  I suppose I ought to have done," she went on, "but, you
+know, I am just a little old-fashioned."
+
+"I can't see what's the matter with me," the young man said
+disconsolately.  "I've a bit of my own, a screw from my job, and the
+governor allows me a trifle.  We might work it up to ten thousand a
+year.  We ought to be able to make a start on that."
+
+"It is positive wealth," Letitia acknowledged, "but I am sure you don't
+want me really, and I haven't the least inclination to get married, and
+heaven knows what would happen to dad if I let him go back to bachelor
+apartments!"
+
+"He'd take care of himself all right," Letitia's suitor observed
+confidently.
+
+"Would he!" she replied.  "I am not at all sure.  Our menkind always
+seem to have gone on sowing their wild oats most vigorously after
+middle age.  Of course, if Ada Honeywell would marry him, I might feel
+a little easier in my mind."
+
+"Ada won't marry any one," Grantham declared, "and I am perfectly
+certain, if she were willing, your father wouldn't marry her.  She's
+too boisterous."
+
+"Poor woman!" Letitia sighed.  "She's immensely rich, but, you see, she
+has no past--I mean no pedigree.  I am afraid it's out of the question."
+
+"I wish you would chuck rotting and marry me, Letitia," he begged.
+"There's a little house in Pont Street--suit us down to the ground."
+
+Letitia found herself gazing over the tops of the more distant trees.
+
+"We are going down to Mandeleys in a few days," she said presently.
+"I'll take myself seriously to task there.  I suppose I must really
+want to be married only I don't know it.  Don't be surprised if you get
+a telegram from me any day."
+
+"I'd come down there myself, if I had an invitation," he suggested.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Charlie," she declared, "it couldn't be done.  So far as I can see at
+present, unless some of the tenantry offer their services for
+nothing--and our tenantry aren't like that--we shall have to keep house
+with about half a dozen servants, which means of course, only opening a
+few rooms.  As a matter of fact, we shan't be able to go at all, unless
+Mr. Thain pays his rent for Broomleys in advance."
+
+They turned out of the Park and not a word passed between them again
+until Letitia descended from her horse in Grosvenor Square.
+
+"You were a dear to think of this, Charles," she said, standing on the
+steps and smiling at him.  "I haven't enjoyed anything so much for a
+long time."
+
+"You wouldn't care about a theatre this evening?" he proposed.
+
+"Come in at tea time and see how I am feeling," she suggested.  "I have
+dad rather on my hands.  He has been wandering about like a lost sheep,
+the last few afternoons.  I can't think what is wrong."
+
+She strolled across the hall and looked in at the study.  The Marquis
+was seated in an easy-chair, reading a volume of Memoirs.  She crossed
+the room towards him.
+
+"Father," she exclaimed, "you ought to have been out a beautiful
+morning like this."
+
+The Marquis laid down his book.  He was certainly looking a little
+tired.  Letitia came up to his side and patted his hand.
+
+"How's the gout?" she asked.
+
+"Better," he replied, examining the offending finger.
+
+"You're just lazy, I believe," Letitia observed reprovingly.  "The
+sooner we get down to Mandeleys the better."
+
+The Marquis glanced at a silver-framed calendar which stood upon the
+table.  He had glanced at it about a hundred times during the last few
+days.
+
+"A little country air," he confessed, "will be very agreeable.  I think
+perhaps, too," he went on, "that I am inclined to be weary of London.
+It is more of a city, after all, isn't it, for the bourgeois rich than
+for a penniless Marquis.  Where did you get your mount from, dear?"
+
+"Charlie lent me a hack," she replied.  "I've had a perfectly
+delightful ride."
+
+"You have not yet arrived, I suppose," her father went on, "at any
+fixed matrimonial intentions with regard to Charlie?"
+
+She shook her head a little dejectedly.
+
+"It's so hard," she confessed.  "I am dying to say 'yes,' especially,
+somehow, during the last few days, but somehow I can't.  I think it
+must be his fault," she added resentfully.  "He doesn't ask me
+properly."
+
+"You'll find some one will be taking him off your hands before long,"
+her father warned her.  "Personally, I have no objection to find with
+the alliance."
+
+"Of course," Letitia complained, "it's very clear what you are thinking
+of!  You want your bachelor apartments in the Albany again, and the gay
+life.  I really feel that it is my duty to remain a spinster and look
+after you."
+
+The Marquis smiled.  Once more his eyes glanced towards the calendar.
+
+"Better ask Charlie down to Mandeleys and settle it with him there," he
+suggested.
+
+"That's just what he wants," she sighed.  "If we begin a house party
+there, though, think what a picnic it will be!  And besides, Sylvia
+Laycey is sure to be somewhere about, and he'll probably fall in love
+with her again.  I do wish I could make up my mind.  What are you doing
+to-night, dad?"
+
+"I am dining with Montavon," her father replied, "at the club.  He has
+a party of four for whist."
+
+"Dear old things!" Letitia murmured affectionately.  "I hope you have
+Sheffield plate candlesticks on the table.  Why not go in fancy
+dress--one of those Georgian Court dresses, you know--black velvet
+knickerbockers, a sword and peruke!  Much better let me give you a
+lesson at auction bridge."
+
+The Marquis shivered.
+
+"You play the game?" he asked politely.
+
+"I tried it as a means of subsistence," Letitia confessed, "but my
+partners always did such amazing things that I found there was nothing
+in it.  If you are really dining out, dad, I shall go to the play with
+Charlie."
+
+"Alone?"
+
+"Don't be silly, dear," Letitia protested, flicking her whip.
+"Remember what that wicked old lady wrote in her memoirs--'Balham
+requires a chaperon, but Grosvenor Square never.'  I shall try and get
+used to him this evening.  I may even have wonderful news for you in
+the morning."
+
+The Marquis took up his book again.
+
+"I wish, my dear, that I could believe it," he told her fervently.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+"I feel like the German lady," Marcia observed, as she stood before her
+little sideboard and mixed a whisky and soda, "who went on cutting
+bread and butter.  The world falls to pieces before my eyes--and I
+press the handle of a syphon.  There!"
+
+She carried the tumbler to Borden, who was seated by her fireside, and
+threw herself into an easy-chair opposite to him.
+
+"I know it's all wrong," she declared.  "My instincts are so obstinate
+even about the simplest things.  You see, I have even wheeled away his
+easy-chair so that you shan't sit in it."
+
+"Women always confuse instincts with prejudices," Borden rejoined,
+calmly sipping his whisky and soda.  "May I smoke a pipe?"
+
+Marcia gave a little gesture of despair.
+
+"I never knew a man," she exclaimed, "who exhibited such a propensity
+for making himself at home!  Tell me," she went on, "did you notice a
+very aristocratic looking, almost beautiful girl, with large brown eyes
+and a pale skin, seated in the stalls just below our box?"
+
+"The girl with Charles Grantham?"
+
+Marcia nodded.
+
+"That was Lady Letitia Thursford," she told him.
+
+"Is she engaged to Grantham?"
+
+"She wasn't last week," Marcia replied.  "I think the Marquis would
+like it, but Lady Letitia is by way of being difficult.  I saw her
+looking at me thoughtfully, once or twice.  I was dying to send down
+word to her that I had permission."
+
+Borden moved in his chair a little uneasily.
+
+"You are bound to no one," he reminded her.  "There is no one of whom
+you need to ask permission."
+
+"Don't be silly," Marcia replied.  "I asked permission, and without it
+I wouldn't have dined with you alone to-night or lunched with Morris
+Hyde on Tuesday."
+
+"I trust that both entertainments," he ventured, "have been a success."
+
+Marcia shook her head.
+
+"Morris Hyde was very disappointing," she confessed.  "I was looking
+forward to being tremendously entertained, but instead of telling me
+all about these unknown tribes in Central America, his only anxiety
+seemed to be to know if I was going to let him kiss me in the taxi
+afterwards.  Explorers, I am afraid, are far too promiscuous."
+
+"Publishers," Borden said firmly, "are renowned throughout the world
+for their fidelity."
+
+"Fidelity to their cash boxes," Marcia scoffed.
+
+Borden, who had lit his pipe, blinked at her through a little cloud of
+smoke.  They had come straight from the theatre, and he was in the
+evening clothes of a man who cares nothing about his appearance,--the
+black waistcoat, the none-too-well fitting shirt, the plainest of
+studs, and the indifferently arranged white tie.  Nevertheless, Marcia
+liked the look of him, seated at ease in her low chair, and it was very
+obvious that he, too, approved of his hostess.  She was curled up now
+at the end of the sofa, a cigarette in her mouth, an expression of
+curious perplexity upon her face.  She was dressed very plainly in
+black, having alternately tried on and discarded all her more elaborate
+evening gowns.  She had had a queer, almost desperate fancy to make
+herself look as unattractive as possible, but the very simplicity of
+her dress enhanced the gleaming perfection of her throat and arms.
+Even her posture, which should have been ungraceful, suited her.  Her
+disturbed and doubtful frame of mind had softened her firm mouth, and
+lit with a sort of sweet plaintiveness her beautiful eyes.
+
+"Do you think," he asked, "that I look upon you as a promising
+investment?"
+
+"Well, I am," Marcia replied.  "You admit having made money out of me
+this spring."
+
+"At any rate, I am willing to divide it," he suggested.
+
+"Upon conditions!"
+
+"No one in the world gives something for nothing," he reminded her.
+
+"We seem to be mixing up business and the other things most
+shockingly," Marcia declared.  "Do you really mean that you are willing
+to share the profits of my next novel with me?"
+
+"I couldn't do that," he objected, "it would be too unbusinesslike.  I
+am quite willing, however, to share my life and all I have with you."
+
+"Mere rhetoric!" Marcia exclaimed uneasily.
+
+"Solemn earnest," he insisted.  "Will you marry me, Marcia?"
+
+She looked across at him.  Her eyebrows were a little raised, her eyes
+inclined to be misty, her mouth tremulous.
+
+"James," she replied, "I believe I'd like to.  I'm not quite sure--I
+believe I would.  But just tell me--how can I?"
+
+"He has kept you to himself for pretty well twenty years," Borden said
+gruffly.
+
+She sighed.
+
+"When I was a child of seventeen," she confided, "a young farmer down
+at Mandeleys kissed me.  If I had been one year younger," she went on,
+"I should have spat at him.  As it was, I never spoke to him again.
+Then, a few months after that, the schoolmaster at the school where I
+was teaching made an awkward attempt at the same thing.  He missed me,
+but his lips just touched my cheek.  Then Reginald came.  Let me see,
+that was nineteen years ago, and since then no one else has kissed me."
+
+"A record of fidelity," Borden observed, "at which, even in your own
+stories, you would scoff."
+
+"But then, you see," she reminded him, "I never write about a person
+with queer ideas like mine, because they wouldn't be interesting.
+People like a little more resilience about their heroines."
+
+"Couldn't we talk brutal common sense for once?" he asked impatiently.
+"I have never abused your Marquis.  From your own showing, he has
+played the game, as you have.  All I want to say is that the natural
+time has come for your separation.  I have waited for you a good many
+years, and I am a domestic man.  I want a home--and children.  It's
+quite time you wanted the same."
+
+Perhaps for a moment the light in her eyes was a shade softer.  She
+moved uneasily in her place.
+
+"Quite primitive, aren't you, James?" she murmured.
+
+"Life's a primitive thing when we get down to the bone," he answered.
+"You and I have wasted many an hour discussing the ologies, trying to
+thrust ourselves into the peculiar point of view of these neurotic
+Norwegians or mad Russians.  When you come down to bedrock, though, for
+sober, decent people there is only one outlet to passion, only one
+elementary satisfaction for man and woman."
+
+"You make things sound very simple."
+
+"It isn't that," he persisted.  "It's you who make them complex by
+being maudlin about this man.  He has had what many would call the best
+part of your life.  He has given up nothing for your sake, done nothing
+for your sake.  He has kept you in the same seclusion that his
+grandfather would have done.  He has treated you, so far as regards the
+outside world, as a man does--"
+
+He stopped abruptly.  Something in her eyes warned him.
+
+"There are limits," she told him drily, "to my appreciation of
+unbridled speech.  According to his lights, Reginald has been
+wonderful.  To me there has been more romance than ignominy in many of
+his ideas.  My trouble is something different.  I can't quite make up
+my mind what it would mean for him if I were to strike out for myself
+now."
+
+"You are like all women," he declared furiously.  "You complicate every
+situation in life by thinking of other people.  Think for yourself,
+Marcia.  What about your own future?  I promise you that your Marquis
+would think for himself, if he were up against a similar problem.  He
+is getting all he wants.  Are you?  Of course you aren't!"
+
+"Does anybody get all they want out of life?"
+
+"It is generally their own fault if they don't get the main things," he
+insisted.  "But, see here, I'll attack you with your own weapons.  Here
+am I, forty-one years old, in love with you since I was thirty-two.
+What about those nine years?  I am dropping into the ways of untidy,
+unsatisfactory bachelordom.  I only order new clothes when some friend
+chaffs me into it, and if I do I forget the ties and shirts and those
+sorts of things.  I've lost all interest in myself.  I loaf at the
+club, play auction bridge when I might be doing something a great deal
+better, and drink a whisky and soda when any one asks me.  I hang on to
+the business, but when I've finished my work I drift.  In another five
+years' time I shall begin to stoop, I shall live with cigar ash all
+over my clothes, and I shall have to be taken home from the club every
+other night.  Your doing, Marcia--your responsibility."
+
+"I should think," she said severely, "that your self-respect--"
+
+"Oh, don't bother about my self-respect!" he interrupted.  "I am a
+human being, and I tell you, Marcia, that every man needs something in
+his life to lift him just a little, to live up to, not down to.  There
+is only one person in the world can take that place for me.  I'm a
+clear charge upon your hands.  You know that I love you, that you've
+driven all thoughts of other women out of my head, that you keep me
+beating against the walls of my impotence every time we meet and part.
+I am perfectly certain, if you don't come down to the world of common
+sense, I shall sink into the world of melodrama and go and tackle your
+Marquis myself.  He must let you go."
+
+"Do you want me as much as all that?" she asked, a little wistfully.
+
+He was by her side in a moment, inspired by the break in her tone, the
+sweet, soft look in her eyes.  He sank on one knee by the side of her
+couch and took her hands in his, kissing them one after the other.
+
+"Ah, Marcia," he murmured, "I want you more than anything else on
+earth!  I want you so much that, when you come, you will make the years
+that have passed seem like nothing but a nightmare, and the minutes, as
+they come, years of happiness.  I am awkward, I know, sometimes, and
+gruff and morose, but so is any man who spends his life fretting for
+the thing he can't get.  I only ask you, dear, to be fair.  I have
+never said an unkind word about the man for whom you have cared so
+long.  I only say now that you belong to me.  I am not a bit foolish--I
+am not even jealous--only your time has come, your time for that little
+home in the country, a husband always with you, and, I hope to Heaven,
+children."
+
+She took his face between her hands and kissed him.  He understood her
+so perfectly that, as she drew her lips away, he rose and stood on the
+hearthrug, a conqueror yet humble.
+
+"You won't mind," she begged, "if I choose my own time?  It may be very
+soon, it may be a little time.  You will leave it to me, and you will
+trust me.  From to-night, of course--"
+
+She hesitated, but his gesture was sufficient.  She knew that she was
+understood.
+
+"You have made me the happiest man in the world," he said.  "I can't
+stop a moment longer--I should simply say extravagant things.  And I
+know how you feel.  It isn't quite time for them yet.  But you'll send
+for me?"
+
+"Of course!"
+
+"And about your visit to Mandeleys?" he asked.  "I shan't begin to be
+busy again for another fortnight."
+
+She hesitated.
+
+"Somehow," she confessed, "it seems a little different now.
+
+"It needn't," he replied.  "I am content with what I have."
+
+She glanced at the calendar.
+
+"Tuesday?" she suggested.
+
+"Tuesday would suit me admirably," he assented.
+
+She let him out herself, and he kissed her fingers.  He was never quite
+sure whether he walked down the stairs or whether he rang for the lift.
+He was never quite sure whether he looked for a taxi or decided to
+walk.  He passed over the bridge, and the lights reflected in the dark
+waters below seemed suddenly like jewels.  He made his way to his club
+because of the sheer impossibility of sleep.  He stood on the threshold
+of the reading room and looked in at the little group of semi-somnolent
+men.  In his way he was popular, and he received a good many sleepy
+greetings.
+
+"What's the matter with Borden?" one man drawled.  "He looks as though
+some one had left him a fortune."
+
+"He has probably discovered another literary star," a rival publisher
+suggested.
+
+"I wish to God some one would send him to a decent tailor!" a third man
+yawned.
+
+Borden rang the bell for a drink.
+
+"Dickinson was right," he said.  "I've found a new star."
+
+
+Letitia, on her return from the theatre that same evening, found her
+father seated in a comfortable corner of the library, with a volume of
+Don Quixote in his hand, a whisky and soda and a box of cigarettes by
+his side.  He had exchanged his dinner jacket for a plain black velvet
+coat, and, as he laid his book down at her coming, she seemed to notice
+again that vague look of tiredness in his face.
+
+"Quiet evening, dad?" she asked, flinging herself into a low chair by
+his side.
+
+"A very pleasant one," he replied.  "Montavon's party was postponed,
+but I have reopened an old fund of amusement here.  With the exception
+of Borrow, none of our modern humourists appeal to me like Cervantes."
+
+"You wouldn't call Borrow exactly modern, would you?"
+
+"Perhaps not," the Marquis conceded.  "I may be wrong to ignore the
+literature of the present day, but such attempts as I have made to
+appreciate it have been unsatisfactory.  You enjoyed the play, dear?"
+
+"Very much," Letitia acquiesced.  "The house was crowded."
+
+"Any one you know?"
+
+She mentioned a few names, then she hesitated.  "And that clever woman
+who wrote 'The Changing Earth' was there in a box--Marcia Hannaway.
+She was with rather a dour-looking man--her publisher, I think Charlie
+said it was."
+
+The Marquis received the information with no signs of particular
+interest.  Letitia stretched out for a cigarette, lit it and looked a
+little appealingly at her father.
+
+"Dad," she said, "I've made an awful idiot of myself."
+
+"In what direction?" the Marquis enquired sympathetically.  "If it is a
+financial matter, I am fortunately--"
+
+"Worse!" Letitia groaned.  "I've promised to marry Charlie Grantham."
+
+The Marquis stretched out his long, elegant hand and patted his
+daughter's.
+
+"But, my dear child," he said, "surely that was inevitable, was it not?
+I have looked upon it as almost certain to happen some day."
+
+"Well, I'm rather glad you take it like that," Letitia remarked.  "Now
+I come to think of it, I suppose I should have had to say 'yes'
+sometime or another."
+
+"Where is Charlie?"
+
+"Gone home in a huff, because I wouldn't let him kiss me in the car or
+bring him in with me."
+
+"Either course would surely have been usual," the Marquis ventured.
+
+"Perhaps, but I feel unusual," Letitia declared.  "It isn't that I mind
+marrying Charlie, but I know I shall detest being married to him."
+
+"One must remember, dear," her father went on soothingly, "that with
+us, marriage is scarcely a subject for neurotic ecstasies or most
+unwholesome hysterics.  Your position imposes upon you the necessity of
+an alliance with some house of kindred associations.  The choice,
+therefore, is not a large one, and you are spared the very undignified
+competitive considerations which attach themselves to people when it
+does not matter whom on earth they marry.  The Dukedom of Grantham is
+unfortunately not an ancient one, nor was it conferred upon such
+illustrious stock as the Marquisate of Mandeleys.  However, the
+Granthams have their place amongst us, and I imagine that the alliance
+will generally be considered satisfactory."
+
+"Oh, I hope so," Letitia replied, without enthusiasm.  "I only hope I
+shall find it satisfactory.  I didn't mean to say 'yes' for at least
+another year."
+
+The Marquis smiled tolerantly.
+
+"Then what, my dear child," he asked, "hastened your decision?"
+
+Letitia became suddenly more serious.  She bit her lip and frowned
+distinctly into the fire.  At that moment she was furious with a
+thought.
+
+"I can't tell you, dad," she confessed.  "I'd hate to tell you.  I'd
+hate to put it in plain words, even to myself."
+
+He patted her hand tolerantly.
+
+"You must not take yourself too hardly to task, Letitia," he said, "if
+at times you feel the pressure of the outside world.  You are young and
+of versatile temperament.  Believe me, those voices to which you may
+have listened are only echoes.  Nothing exists or is real in life which
+the brain does not govern.  I am quite sure that you will never regret
+the step which you have taken this evening."
+
+Letitia stood up.
+
+"I hope not, father," she sighed, a little wistfully.  "There are times
+when I am very dissatisfied with myself, and to-night, I am afraid, is
+one of them."
+
+"You analyse your sentiments, my dear, too severely," her father told
+her.  "You are too conscientious.  Your actions are all that could be
+desired."
+
+"You won't be lonely if that idiot takes me away from you soon?" she
+asked.
+
+The Marquis looked almost shocked.
+
+"Loneliness is not a complaint from which I ever expect to suffer,
+dear," he said, as he rose and opened the door for her.
+
+He returned to his empty chair, his half consumed whisky and soda, his
+vellum-bound volume, carefully marked.  Somehow or other, the echoes of
+his last words seemed to be ringing in his ears.  The fire had burned a
+little low, the sound of passing vehicles from outside had grown
+fainter and fainter.  He took up his book, threw himself into his
+chair, gazed with vacant eyes at the thick black print.  There was a
+sudden chill in his heart, a sudden thought, perhaps a fear.  There was
+one way through which loneliness could come.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+Marcia, who had dreamed all night of blue skies flecked with little
+fragments of white cloud, a soft west wind and sun-bathed meadows,
+descended the creaking stairs of the Inn at Fakenham, paused upon the
+broad landing to admire the great oak chests and the cupboards full of
+china, and then made her way to the coffee room.  She found Borden
+standing at the window, looking down into the country street and
+talking with a stranger, whom he left, however, at her entrance.  They
+took their places at the breakfast table to which a waiter ushered them.
+
+"Still lucky," her companion remarked, as he watched Marcia pour out
+the coffee.  "It's going to be another delightful day."
+
+She glanced out into the sunlit street.  Just opposite was a house
+almost hidden in clematis, and in the background was a tall row of elm
+trees amongst the branches of which the rooks were cawing.
+
+"I feel like Rip van Winkle," she whispered.  "Do you know that
+twenty-five years ago I came to what is called a Farmers' Ordinary in
+this very room?  Tell me," she went on, "who was the man with whom you
+were talking?  His face is quite familiar to me."
+
+He glanced around.  Thain had taken his place at the further end of the
+room.
+
+"The man of whom we were speaking the other day," he said,--"David
+Thain.  I think that you have met him, haven't you?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Why, of course!  I didn't recognise him in tweeds.  Whatever is he
+doing down here?  But I know before you can tell me," she continued
+quickly.  "He has taken Broomleys, hasn't he?"
+
+"He told me that he had taken a house in the neighbourhood," Borden
+replied.  "He is going over there this morning to meet the present
+occupiers."
+
+"It is a very small world," Marcia observed.  "I wonder whether he
+recognised me."
+
+"Without undue flattery, I think I might say that I should think it
+probable."
+
+"And of course he is imagining all sorts of improper things,--chuckling
+about them, I dare say, in the way men do.  He is being what I suppose
+he thinks tactful.  He never glances in this direction at all.  I'll
+give him a surprise in a minute or two!"
+
+They finished their breakfast, and Marcia crossed towards David's
+table.  As soon as he was conscious of her approach, he rose.  He
+welcomed her, however, without a smile.
+
+"From Trewly's at dinner to the Mandeleys Arms for breakfast," she
+remarked, smiling.  "I feel quite flattered that you remembered me, Mr.
+Thain."
+
+"Did I show any signs of remembering you?" he asked a little grimly.
+
+"Of course you didn't," she acknowledged.  "You ignored even my
+sweetest bow.  That is why I felt sure that you recognised me
+perfectly."
+
+David remained silent, standing still with an air of complete but
+respectful patience.
+
+"You have taken a house down here, the Marquis tells me," she continued.
+
+"I have taken Broomleys."
+
+"I hope that you will like the neighbourhood," she said.  "I used to
+live here once myself."
+
+"So I understood."
+
+She was for a moment taken aback, conscious now of a certain definitely
+inimical attitude in the man who stood looking coldly into her eyes.
+
+"You know all about me, then?  That is the worst of getting into 'Who's
+Who.'"
+
+"I know more about you than I do about your companion, certainly," he
+admitted.
+
+She laughed mockingly.  To a downright declaration of war she had no
+objection whatever.
+
+"That is Mr. Borden, who publishes my stories," she told him.  "I don't
+suppose you read them, do you?"
+
+"I am not sure," he replied.  "I read very little modern fiction, and I
+never look at the names of the authors."
+
+"Then we must take it for granted," she sighed, "that my fame is
+unknown to you.  If you should see the Marquis before I do, please tell
+him that he was entirely wrong about the best route here.  His advice
+has cost us nearly thirty miles and a punctured tire.  You won't
+forget?"
+
+"Certainly not," he promised.
+
+She turned away with a little nod of farewell, to which David's
+response was still entirely formal.  Left alone in the room he resumed
+his breakfast, finished it with diminished appetite, and within a few
+minutes was speeding through the country lanes in his great Rolls-Royce
+car.  The chauffeur sat a little uneasily in his place.  It was very
+seldom that his master showed such signs of haste.  In a quarter of an
+hour they were in the avenue of Mandeleys.  Instead of turning to the
+right, however, to Broomleys, he took the turning to the Abbey and
+pulled up short when within a hundred yards of the house.
+
+"Wait here for me," he directed.  "If you see another car coming up,
+blow your horn."
+
+He walked across the smooth, ancient turf, stepped over the wire fence
+and raised the latch of Richard Vont's cottage gate.  His uncle, a
+little disturbed, came hastily down the garden path.  His clothes were
+stained with clay, and the perspiration was on his forehead.  David
+looked at him in surprise.
+
+"Working so early?"
+
+Vont nodded.
+
+"You forget," he said, "that this is not early for me.  All my life I
+have risen with the sun and gone to bed with it.  Come inside, David.
+I'll get this muck off my hands.  You spoke of the afternoon."
+
+"I came direct from the village," David replied, as he followed his
+uncle into the house.  "I came because I thought you would like to know
+that there is another visitor on the way to see you."
+
+Richard Vont looked round and faced his nephew.  His shirt was open at
+the throat, his trousers were tied up with little pieces of string.  In
+whatever labour he had been engaged, it had obviously been of a
+strenuous character.  He wiped the perspiration from his forehead.
+
+"What's that, David?" he demanded.  "A visitor?"
+
+"Marcia is at the Mandeleys Arms," David told him.  "I am taking it for
+granted that she is on her way to see you."
+
+Vont turned deliberately away, and David heard his heavy feet ascending
+the staircase.  In a few moments he called downstairs.  His voice was
+as usual.
+
+"Step round this afternoon, lad, if you think it's well."
+
+David passed out of the little garden, crossed the strip of park, and,
+taking the wheel, drove slowly round by the longer route to Broomleys.
+He passed before the front of the Abbey--a mansion of the dead, with
+row after row of closed blinds, masses of smokeless chimneys, and
+patches of weeds growing thick in the great sweep before the house.
+Even with its air of pitiless desertion, its severe,
+semi-ecclesiastical outline, its ruined cloisters empty to the sky on
+one wing, its unbroken and gloomy silence, the place had its
+atmosphere.  David slackened the speed of his car, paused for a moment
+and looked back at the little creeper-covered cottage on the other side
+of the moat.  So those two had faced one another through the years--the
+Abbey, silent, magnificent, historical, with all the placid majesty of
+its countless rows of windows; its chapel, where Mandeleys for
+generations had been christened and buried,--at its gates the little
+cottage, whose garden was filled with spring flowers, and from whose
+single stack of chimneys the smoke curled upwards.  Even while he
+watched, Richard Vont stood there upon the threshold with a great book
+under his arm.
+
+David shivered a little as he threw in the clutch, passed on round the
+back of the building and through the iron gates of the ancient dower
+house.  He felt a little sigh of relief as he pulled up in front of the
+long, grey house, in front of which Sylvia Laycey was waiting to
+receive him.  She waved her hand gaily and looked with admiration at
+the car.
+
+"They are all here, Mr. Thain," she exclaimed,--"Mr. Merridrew and
+father and your own builder.  Come along and quarrel about the
+fixtures.  I thought I had better stay with you because dad loses his
+temper so."
+
+David descended almost blithely from his car.  He was back again in a
+human atmosphere, and the pressure of the girl's fingers was an instant
+relief to him.
+
+"I am not going to quarrel with any one," he declared.  "I shall do
+exactly what Mr. Muddicombe tells me--and you."
+
+She was a very pleasant type of young Englishwoman--distinctly pretty,
+fair-skinned, healthy and good-humoured.  Notwithstanding the fact that
+their acquaintance was of the briefest, David was already conscious of
+her charm.
+
+"You'll find me, in particular, very grasping," she declared, as they
+entered the long, low hall.  "I want to make everything I can out of
+you, so that daddy and I can have a real good two months in London.  I
+don't believe you know the value of things a bit, do you--except of
+railways and those colossal things?  Cupboards, for instance?  Do you
+know anything about cupboards?  And are you going to allow us anything
+for the extra bathroom we put in?"
+
+"Well, I am rather partial to bathrooms," he confessed, "and I should
+hate you to take it away with you."
+
+She drew a sigh of relief.
+
+"So long as you look upon the bathroom matter reasonably, I am quite
+sure we shan't quarrel.  Tell me about Lady Letitia, please?  Is she
+quite well--and the Marquis and all of them?  And when are they coming
+down?"
+
+"They are quite well," he told her, "and Lady Letitia sent you her
+love.  They talk of coming down almost at once."
+
+"I do hope they will," she replied, "because when we leave here dad and
+I are going to stay for a week or so with some friends quite near.
+There!  Did you hear that noise?  That's daddy stamping because he is
+getting impatient."
+
+"Then perhaps--" David suggested.
+
+"I suppose we'd better," she interrupted.  "Be lenient about the
+bathroom, please.  And if you could manage not to notice that the
+dining room wants papering, you'd be an angel.  This way."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+David proved himself such a very satisfactory incoming tenant that the
+Colonel insisted upon his staying to lunch and hastened off into the
+cellar to find a bottle of old Marsala, of which he proposed that they
+should partake with a dry biscuit before Mr. Merridrew's departure.
+Sylvia sank into a low chair with a little exclamation of despair.
+
+"Now daddy's done it!" she exclaimed.  "Are you hungry, Mr. Thain?"
+
+"Not very--yet," David replied, glancing at his watch.  "You see, it's
+only half-past eleven."
+
+"Because," she said impressively, "there are exactly three rather
+skinny cutlets in the house.  All the servants left this
+morning--'all', I said.  We only have two!--and an old woman from the
+village is coming up at half-past twelve to cook them.  One was for me
+and two were for father.  Perhaps you will tell me what I am to do?"
+
+David smiled.
+
+"Well," he observed, "I was distinctly asked to luncheon, and I
+accepted.  Haven't you anything--"
+
+"Anything what?" she asked patiently.
+
+"Tinned in the house, or that sort of thing?" he suggested, a little
+vaguely.
+
+"Of course we haven't," she replied.  "Don't you know that we are all
+packed up and leaving to-morrow?  It's the biggest wonder in the world
+that we have any biscuits to eat with that precious Marsala."
+
+"Why not," he proposed hopefully, "put on your hat and motor into
+Fakenham with me?  I suppose there is a butcher's shop there.  We can
+buy something together."
+
+She sprang to her feet.
+
+"And you can choose exactly what you like!" she exclaimed.  "Mr. Thain,
+you are delightful!  That is the best of you Americans.  You are full
+of resource.  I shan't be a minute getting a hat and a pair of gloves."
+
+David strolled about the gardens of his new demesne until Sylvia
+reappeared.  She had pinned on a blue tam-o'-shanter and was wearing a
+jersey of the same colour.
+
+"I shall love a spin in your car!" she exclaimed.  "And you drive
+yourself, too.  How delightful!"
+
+They swung off through the more thickly wooded part of the park,
+driving in places between dense clumps of rhododendrons, and coming
+unexpectedly upon a walled garden, neglected, but brilliant with spring
+and early summer flowers.
+
+"Isn't it queer to have a garden so far away from the house," the girl
+remarked, "but I dare say you've heard that the late Marquis of
+Mandeleys was mad about underground passages.  There is one existing
+somewhere or other to the summer house in that garden from the Abbey,
+and lots of others.  I am not at all sure that there isn't one to
+Broomleys."
+
+"Haven't you been afraid sometimes lest the ghosts of the dead monks
+might pay you an unexpected visit?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"They always held the funeral services in the chapel," she explained,
+"but the burying place is at the side of the hill there.  You can see
+the Mandeleys vault from here."
+
+"And the cypress trees," David pointed out.  "I wonder how old they
+are."
+
+"The American of you!" she scoffed.  "You ought to love Mandeleys--and
+Broomleys.  Everything about the place is musty and ancient and worn
+out.  You know the Marquis, don't you?"
+
+"Slightly," David assented.
+
+"Is he really human," she asked, "or is he something splendidly
+picturesque which has just stepped out of one of the frames in his
+picture gallery?  I can never make up my mind.  He is so beautiful to
+look at, but he doesn't look as though he belonged to this generation,
+and why on earth they ever used to call him 'The Wicked Marquis' I
+can't imagine.  I've tried him myself," she went on ingenuously, "in no
+end of ways, but he treats me always as though I were some grandchild,
+walking on stilts.  Of course you're in love with Lady Letitia?"
+
+"Must I be?"
+
+"But isn't it all absolutely preordained?" she insisted, "in fact, it's
+almost depressingly obvious.  Here are the Mandeleys estates, the
+finest in Norfolk, mortgaged up to the hilt, the Abbey shut up, the
+Marquis and all of them living on credit, the family fortunes at their
+lowest ebb.  And here come you, an interesting American stranger, with
+more millions than the world has ever heard of before.  Of course you
+marry Lady Letitia and release the estates!"
+
+"Do I!" he murmured.  "Well, it seems plausible."
+
+"It has to be done," she decided, with a sigh.  "It's a pity."
+
+"Why?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"We mustn't flirt.  We should be interfering with the decrees of
+Providence.--What an interesting-looking woman!  You know her, too."
+
+They passed Marcia and her companion, about half-way to Fakenham.
+Marcia bowed cheerfully and looked with interest at Sylvia.
+
+"I know her very slightly," David admitted.
+
+"She doesn't belong to these parts," Sylvia said.  "We've lived here
+for nearly seven years, you know, and I know every one for miles round,
+by sight."
+
+"She came originally from somewhere in the neighbourhood, I believe,"
+David observed.
+
+"Tell me everything about her, please?" his companion demanded.  "I am
+a born gossip."
+
+"You finish with the romance of Mandeleys first," he suggested
+evasively.
+
+"Well, we've finished that, so far as you are concerned," she said,
+"but as soon as you have rescued the family and the wedding bells have
+ceased ringing, you'll find yourself faced with another problem.  Did
+you notice a queer little cottage, right opposite the Abbey?"
+
+"Of course I did."
+
+"Well, there's an old man sits in the garden there," she went on,
+"reading the Bible and cursing the Marquis, most of the day.  He used
+to do it years ago, and then he went to America.  Now he's come back,
+and he's started it again."
+
+"And what does the Marquis do about it?" David enquired.
+
+"He can't do anything.  The late Marquis made the old man a present of
+the cottage for saving his life, and they can't take it away from him
+now.  I suppose he must have been really wicked when he was young--I
+mean the Marquis," she went on, "because, you see, he ran away with
+that old man's daughter.  It's the sort of thing," she went on, "that
+Marquises are supposed to do in stories, but it doesn't make them
+popular in a small neighbourhood.  Now tell me about the good-looking
+woman who bowed to you, please?"
+
+"She is the daughter of the man of whom you have been speaking," David
+told her.  "She is the lady with whom the wicked Marquis eloped nearly
+twenty years ago."
+
+Sylvia's interest was almost breathless.
+
+"You mean to say that you knew the story--you--an American?"
+
+"Absolutely," he replied.  "I came into touch with it in a queer way.
+The old man Vont came back from America on the same steamer that I did.
+I'll tell you another thing.  The wicked Marquis, as you call him, and
+that lady whom we have just passed, dine together now at least one
+night a week, and the woman has become quite a famous authoress.  She
+writes under the name, I believe, of Marcia Hannaway."
+
+Sylvia threw herself back in her seat.
+
+"Why, it's amazing!" she declared.  "It turns a sordid little village
+tragedy into a piece of wonderful romance.  Perhaps, after all, that is
+what makes the Marquis seem like a piece of wood to every other woman."
+
+"I have heard it said," David continued, "that he has been entirely
+faithful to her all his life.  Where do I stop, please?"
+
+"Here," she replied, "at this shop.  Please come in and choose your own
+meat.  I feel in much too romantic a frame of mind to even know beef
+from mutton."
+
+David followed her a little doubtfully into the shop.
+
+"Perhaps," he ventured to suggest, "as the nucleus of your meal has
+already been decided upon--"
+
+"Of course," she interrupted; "cutlets.  We want more cutlets.  You
+needn't bother.  I'll see about it."
+
+David slipped into the next shop and reappeared with a huge box of
+chocolates, which he handed over apologetically.
+
+"I am not sure whether you'll find these up to much."
+
+"For the first time," she exclaimed, as she accepted them, "I realise
+what it must be to be a millionaire!  I have never seen such a box of
+chocolates in my life.  Do you mind going over to the grocer's and
+letting him see me with you?" she went on.  "It will be so good for our
+credit, and his is just one of the accounts we have to leave for a
+little time.  Were you ever poor, Mr. Thain?"
+
+"Poor, but not, alas! romantically so," he confessed.  "To be the real
+thing, I ought to have earned my first few pounds, oughtn't I?  You
+see, I didn't.  I was educated by relatives, and when a great chance
+came my way I was able to take advantage of it.  An uncle advanced me a
+thousand pounds, upon one condition."
+
+"Had you to make him a partner?" she asked, in the intervals of giving
+a small order at the grocer's.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"No," he answered gravely, "it wasn't a financial condition.  In a way
+it was something more difficult."
+
+She looked at him curiously.
+
+"Whatever it was," she said, "if you promised, I am quite sure that you
+would keep your word."
+
+They motored homewards and David was for a few minutes unexpectedly
+thoughtful.  He deliberately approached Broomleys from the back, but
+even then it was impossible to avoid a distant view of the cottage.  He
+looked towards it grimly.
+
+"Conditions are stern things," he sighed.
+
+"Haven't you kept that one yet?" she asked.
+
+"The time is only just coming," he told her.
+
+She looked up at him pleadingly.
+
+"Don't bother about it now, please," she begged.  "This is such a
+delightful day.  And whatever you do, you mustn't let it interfere with
+your eating three cutlets."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+Borden's car came to a standstill in the avenue, and Marcia looked
+across the strip of green turf towards the cottage with a queer little
+thrill of remembrance.
+
+"You are sure you won't mind waiting?" she asked, as she sprang down.
+"If there is any fatted calf about, I'll call you in."
+
+Borden showed her his pockets, bulging with newspapers.
+
+"I shall be perfectly content here," he said, "however long you may be.
+I shall back the car on to the turf and read."
+
+She nodded, turned away, lifted the latch of the gate and made her way
+towards the cottage,--curiously silent, and with no visible sign of
+habitation except for the smoke curling up from the chimney.  As she
+drew nearer to the rustic entrance, she hesitated.  A rush of those
+very sensations at which she had so often gently mocked swept through
+her consciousness, unsteadying and bewildering her.  Mandeleys,
+imposing in its grim stillness, seemed to be throwing out shadows
+towards her, catching her up in a whirlpool of memories, half
+sentimental, half tragical.  It was in the little cottage garden where
+she now stood, and in the woods beyond, that she had wandered with that
+strange new feeling in her heart of which she was, even at that moment,
+intensely conscious, gazing through the mists of her inexperience
+towards the new world and new heaven which her love was unfolding
+before her.  A hundred forgotten fancies flashed into her brain.  She
+remembered, with a singular and most unnerving accuracy, the silent
+vigils which she had spent, half hidden amongst those tall hollyhocks.
+She had seen the grey twilight of morning pass, seen the mists roll
+away and, turret by turret, the great house stand out like some fairy
+palace fashioned from space in a single night.  She had seen the
+thrushes hop from the shrubberies and coverts on to the dew-spangled
+lawn, had heard their song, growing always in volume, had seen the
+faint sunlight flash in the windows, before she had crept back to her
+room.  Another day in that strange turmoil which had followed the
+coming of her love!  She had watched shooting parties assemble in the
+drive outside, her father in command, she herself hidden yet watchful,
+her eyes always upon one figure, her thoughts with him.  And then the
+nights--the summer nights--when men and women in evening costume
+strolled down from the house.  She could see their white shirt fronts
+glistening in the twilight.  Again she heard the firm yet loitering
+step and the quiet, still voice which had changed the world for her.
+"Is Vont about, Miss Marcia?" she would hear him say.  "I want to have
+a talk with him about the partridge drives to-morrow."  She closed her
+eyes.  The smell of the honeysuckle and the early cottage roses seemed
+suddenly almost stupefying.  There were a few seconds--perhaps even a
+minute--before Vont had donned his brown velveteen coat and issued from
+the cottage--just time for a whispered word, a glance, a touch of the
+fingers.--Marcia felt her knees shake as she lingered underneath the
+porch.  She was swept with recalcitrant memories, stinging like the
+lash of a whip.  Perhaps this new wisdom of hers was, after all, a
+delusion, the old standards of her Calvinistic childhood unassailable.
+Then, for the first time, she was conscious of a familiar figure.
+Richard Vont was seated in a hard kitchen chair at the end of the
+garden, with a book upon his knee and his face turned to Mandeleys.  At
+the sound of her little exclamation he turned his head.  At first it
+was clear that he did not recognise his visitor.  He laid down the book
+and rose to his feet.  Marcia came a few steps towards him and then
+paused.  Several very ingenious openings escaped her altogether.
+
+"Father," she began, a little hesitatingly, "you see, I've come to see
+you.  Are you glad?"
+
+He stood looking at her--a man of rather more than middle height but
+bowed, with silvery hair and a little patch of white whiskers.  The
+rest of his face was clean-shaven, still hard and brown as in his
+youth, and his eyes were like steel.
+
+"No," he answered, "I am not glad.  Since you are here, though, take
+this chair.  I will fetch another while I hear what you have to say."
+
+"Shall we go inside?" she suggested.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Your mother lived and died there," he reminded her.
+
+Marcia set her teeth.
+
+"I suppose she walked in the garden sometimes," she said resentfully.
+
+"The garden is different," he declared.  "The earth changes from
+generation to generation, just as the flowers here throw out fresh
+blossoms and the weeds come and go.  But my rooftree stands where it
+always did.  Wait."
+
+He disappeared into the house and returned in a few moments with a
+chair which he placed a few feet away from Marcia.  Then he sat and
+looked at her steadily.
+
+"So you are Marcia," he said.  "You've grown well-looking."
+
+"Marcia--your daughter," she reminded him gently.  "Are you going to
+forget that altogether?"
+
+"Not," he replied, "if you are in need of succour or help, but I judge
+from your appearance that you need neither.  You are flesh of my flesh,
+as I well know."
+
+"I want nothing from you, father, except a little kindness," she
+pleaded.
+
+His hands trembled.
+
+"Kindness," he repeated.  "That's strange hearing.  You are without
+friends, perhaps?  You made some, maybe, and they heard of your
+disgrace, and they've cast you off?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"No, it isn't that at all.  I have many friends, and they most of them
+know my history."
+
+"Friends of your own sort, then!"
+
+Marcia moved uneasily in her chair.
+
+"Father," she said gently, "don't you sometimes think that your views
+of life are a little narrow?  I am very sorry indeed for what I did,
+inasmuch as it brought unhappiness to you.  For the rest, I have
+nothing to regret."
+
+He was breathing a little harder now.
+
+"Nothing to regret?" he muttered.
+
+"Nothing," she repeated firmly.  "For many years the man who took me
+away from you gave me everything I asked of him in life, everything he
+promised.  He is still willing to do the same.  If any change comes
+into our relations, now or in the future, it will be my doing, not his."
+
+"Meaning," he demanded, "that you've seen the wickedness of it?"
+
+"Meaning nothing of the sort," she replied.  "I want you to try and
+realise, father, if you can, that I have passed into a larger world
+than you or this little village community here know very much about.  I
+have written books and been praised for them by men whose praise is
+worth having.  There are plenty of perfectly good and well-living
+people who know what I have done and who are glad to be my friends.
+There is one who wants to marry me."
+
+Richard Vont looked at her long and steadily.  Marcia was, as usual,
+dressed with extreme simplicity, but her clothes were always good, and
+economy in boots and hats was a vice which she had never practised.
+When she told him that she had passed into a world apart from his, he
+realised it.  The only wonder was that she had ever been his daughter!
+
+"To marry you!" he repeated.  "It's one of those of your own loose way
+of thinking, eh?  One of those who have forgotten the laws of God and
+have set up for themselves some graven image in which there's nought of
+the truth?"
+
+"The man who wishes to marry me, father," she said warmly, "is a man of
+honour and position.  Can't you believe me when I assure you that there
+is another way of looking at what you consider so terrible?  I have
+been as faithful to my vows as you to your marriage ones.  The man whom
+I am told you still hate has never wavered in his loyalty to me, any
+more than I have in my fidelity to him.  Can't you believe that to some
+extent, at least, we have sanctified our love?"
+
+James Vont passed his hand a little wearily over his forehead.
+
+"It's blasphemous gibberish that you're talking," he declared.  "If you
+had come back to me, Marcia, in rags and in want, maybe there is
+something in my heart would have gone, and I'd have taken you and we'd
+have found a home somewhere far away.  But to see you sitting there,
+soft and well-spoken, speaking of your success, pleased with your life,
+turns that very hatred you spoke of into fury!  You and your learning
+and your writing of books!  Why, you're ignorant, woman, more ignorant
+than the insects about you.  You don't know right from wrong."
+
+"Father," she pleaded--
+
+"Aye, but listen," he went on.  "You've children, eh?"
+
+"No," she answered softly.
+
+"No children to bear your shame, eh?  And why not?"
+
+She looked for a moment into his eyes, and then away.
+
+"That may be the one weak spot," she confessed.
+
+"The one weak spot!" he repeated bitterly.  "Shall I tell you what you
+are, you women who live cheerfully with the men you sell yourselves to,
+and defy the laws of God and the teaching of the Bible?  You're just
+wastrels and Jezebels.  Ay, and there's the garden gate, Marcia, and my
+heart's as hard as a flint, even though the tears are in your eyes and
+you look at me as your mother used to look.  It's no such tears as
+you're shedding as'll bring you back into my heart.  Your very
+prosperity's an offence.  You carry the price of your shame on your
+back and in your smooth speech and in this false likeness of yours to
+the world you don't belong to.  If it's duty that's brought you here,
+you'd better not have come."
+
+Marcia rose to her feet.
+
+"You're very hard, father," she said simply.
+
+[Illustration: "You're very hard, father," she said simply.]
+
+"The ways of the transgressors are hard," he replied, pointing still
+towards the gate.  "If you'd come here in shame and humiliation, if
+you'd come here as one as had learnt the truth, you'd have found me all
+that you sought.  But you come here a very ignorant woman, Marcia, and
+you leave me a little harder than ever before, and you leave the curses
+that choke my throat a little hotter, a little more murderous."
+
+His clenched fist was pointing towards Mandeleys, his face was like
+granite.  Marcia turned and left him without a word, opened the gate,
+walked across the little strip of turf, and half shrank from, half
+clung to the hand which helped her up into the car.
+
+"Get away quickly, please," she implored him.  "Don't talk to me,
+James.  Outside the gates as quickly as you can go!"
+
+He started his engine, and they drove off, through the lodge gates into
+the country lane, where the hedges were beautiful with fresh green
+foliage and fragrant with early honeysuckle.
+
+"To London," she begged.  "Don't stop--anywhere yet."
+
+He nodded and drove a little faster, his eyes always upon the road.  It
+was not until they had reached the heath country and the great open
+spaces around Newmarket that a little colour came back into her cheeks.
+
+"It wasn't a success, James," she said quietly.
+
+"I was afraid it mightn't be," he admitted.
+
+"Nothing but a Drury Lane heroine would have moved him," she went on,
+with an uneasy little laugh.  "If I could have gone back in rags, in a
+snowstorm, with a child in my arms, he'd have forgiven me.  As I am
+now, I am an offence to all that he holds right, and his ideas are like
+steel cables--you can't twist or bend them."
+
+Borden nodded.  He relaxed his speed a little and glanced towards his
+companion.
+
+"You know what our friend said in that Russian manuscript I lent you,"
+he reminded her: "'The primitive laws are for the primitive world.'"
+
+"But what do we learn, Jim?" she asked him tremulously.  "What is its
+value?  Is it sophistry or knowledge?  I lived in that little cottage
+once.  I have smiled at the memory of those days so often.  I did
+homely tasks and dreamed of books and learning.  To me it seems,
+although my fingers are bleeding, that I have climbed.  And to him--and
+he looked just like something out of the Bible, Jim--I am nothing
+more--"
+
+"Don't," he interrupted.  "He is of his world and you of yours.  You
+can't work out the sum you are trying to solve, there isn't any common
+denominator."
+
+"I don't know," she answered, a little pitifully.  "There was a single
+second, as I saw him sitting there with his Bible on his knee and
+remembered that he was a clean, well-living, honest man, when my heart
+began to shake.  I remembered that he was my father.  It seems to me
+that it is all wrong that there should be any difference between us.  I
+suddenly felt that a brain really didn't count for anything, after all,
+that all the culture in the world wasn't so beautiful as a single right
+feeling."
+
+He slackened again the speed of the car.  As far as they could see was
+a great open space of moorland, with flaming bushes of yellow gorse,
+little clumps of early heather, and, in the distance, a streak of blue
+from the undergrowth of a long belt of firs.  She looked about her for
+a moment and closed her eyes.
+
+"There," he said, "is one of the simplest phases of beauty, the world
+has ever given us--flowers and trees, an open space and a west wind.
+There isn't any one who can look at these things and be happy who isn't
+somewhere near the right path, Marcia."
+
+She leaned back, her eyes fixed dreamily upon the blue distance.
+
+"Just drive on, please, Jim," she begged.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+David ate his three cutlets and, both as regards appetite and in other
+ways, was a great success at the little luncheon party.  Afterwards,
+they finished the bottle of Marsala under a cedar tree, and whilst the
+Colonel indulged in reminiscences, Sylvia's eyes rested more than once
+upon the automobile drawn up before the door.  It was quite an
+adventure in her rather humdrum life, and, after all, there was no
+reason why a fairy prince shouldn't be an American millionaire and come
+in a Rolls-Royce.
+
+"I am sure I hope you'll like Broomleys, Mr. Thain," the Colonel said,
+as David rose to make his adieux.  "I am delighted to leave the place
+in the hands of such a good tenant.  It makes one almost sorry to go
+away when one realises what one is missing in the shape of neighbours,
+eh, Sylvia?"
+
+Sylvia was unaccountably shy, but she raised her eyes to David's for a
+moment.
+
+"It is most disappointing," she agreed.  "Mr. Thain is such a
+sympathetic shopper."
+
+David drove off a little gloomily.
+
+"Why the devil couldn't I fall in love with a nice girl like that," he
+muttered to himself, "instead of--"
+
+He pulled up short, set his heel upon that other vision, and braced
+himself for the immediate task before him.  He drove around the park,
+drew up outside the cottage, and, descending from the car, approached
+the low hedge.  At the further end of the garden he could hear his
+uncle's sonorous voice.  He was seated in a high-backed chair, the
+Bible upon his knee, reading to himself slowly and with great
+distinctness the Ten Commandments.  On the ground by his side were the
+remnants of another chair.  As David came up the little path, his uncle
+concluded his reading and laid down the Bible.
+
+"Bring out a chair and sit with me, David," he invited.
+
+David pointed to the ground.
+
+"Your furniture seems--"
+
+"Don't jest," his uncle interrupted.  "That chair I have broken to
+pieces with my own hands because of the woman who sat upon it not many
+hours since."
+
+David frowned.
+
+"You mean Marcia?"
+
+"I mean Marcia--the woman who was my daughter," was the stern reply,
+"the woman of whose visit you warned me."
+
+"Come into the house with me," David begged, turning his back upon
+Mandeleys.  "You sit and look at that great drear building and brood
+overmuch.  I want to talk with you."
+
+Richard Vont rose obediently to his feet and followed his visitor into
+the little parlour.  David looked around him curiously.
+
+"This place seems to have the flavour of many years ago," he said.
+"Sometimes I can scarcely realise that I have ever eaten my meals off
+that oak table.  Sometimes it seems like yesterday."
+
+"Time passes, but time don't count for much," the old man sighed.
+"Mary Wells will be up from the village soon, and she'll make us a cup
+of tea.  Sit opposite me, lad.  Is there any more news?"
+
+"None!"
+
+"Them shares, for instance?"
+
+"There will be no change in them," David replied.  "In two months' time
+he will know it."
+
+"And he'll have forty thousand pounds to find, eh?--forty thousand
+pounds which he will never be able to raise!" Richard Vont muttered,
+his eyes curiously bright.  "There isn't an acre of land here that
+isn't mortgaged over and over again."
+
+"You'll make him a bankrupt, I suppose," David said thoughtfully.
+
+"Ay, a bankrupt!" his uncle repeated, lingering over the word with a
+fierce joy.  "But there's something more as'll fall to your lot,
+David," he went on,--"something more--and the time's none so far off."
+
+David moved in his chair uneasily.
+
+"Something more?"
+
+"Ay, ay!" the old man assented.  "You'll find it hard, my boy, but
+you'll keep your word.  You've got that much of the Vonts in your
+blood.  Your word's a bond with you."
+
+"Tell me," David begged, "about that something more?"
+
+"The time's not yet," his uncle replied.  "You shall know, lad, in good
+season."
+
+David was silent for a moment, filled with nameless and displeasing
+apprehensions.  He was brave enough, prepared to meet any ordinary
+emergency, but somehow or other the vagueness of the task which lay
+before him seemed appalling.  Outside was Mandeleys, a grim and silent
+remembrance.  Inside the cottage everything seemed to speak of
+changeless times.  The pendulum of the tall clock swung drowsily, as it
+had swung thirty years ago.  The pictures on the wall were the same,
+the china, the furniture, even its arrangement.  And the man who sat in
+his easy-chair was the same, only that his whiskers and hair were white
+where once they had been black.
+
+"Uncle," he begged, "let me know the worst now?"
+
+"You'll know in good time and not before," was the almost fierce reply.
+"Don't weary me to-night, lad," Vent continued, his voice breaking a
+little.  "The day has been full of trials for me.  'Twas no light
+matter to have a strange woman here--the strange woman, David, that was
+once my daughter."
+
+David frowned a little.
+
+"Uncle," he said, "I don't wish to pain you, but I am sorry about
+Marcia."
+
+"You don't need to be, lad.  She isn't sorry for herself.  She is
+puffed up with the vanity of her brain.  She came here in fine clothes
+and with gentle manners, and a new sort of voice.  She has made
+herself--a lady!  Poor lass, her day of suffering is to come!  Maybe I
+was hard on her, but I couldn't bear the sight of her, and that's the
+truth.  She talked to me like one filled with wisdom.  It was me whom
+she thought the ignorant one.  Put Marcia out of your mind, David.  We
+will talk of other things."
+
+David leaned forward in his chair.  His eyes were bright, his tone
+eager.
+
+"Let us have this out, uncle," he begged.  "I've been thinking of
+it--perhaps as much as you lately.  They may have been wrong, those
+two; they may be sinners, but, after all, the world isn't a place for
+holy people only.  The Bible tells you that.  For nearly twenty years
+he has stood by her and cared for her.  There has been no meanness, no
+backing out on his part.  He is as much to her to-day as ever he was."
+
+"Ay," his listener interposed scornfully, "she talked that way.  Do you
+reckon that a man and woman who sinned a score of years ago are any the
+better because they are going on sinning to-day?  Faithfulness to good
+is part of the Word of God.  Faithfulness in sin is of the Devil's
+handing out."
+
+David shook his head.
+
+"I am sorry, uncle," he said earnestly, "I have come to look on these
+things a little differently.  Many years ago, in America, I used to
+wonder what it was that kept you apart from every one else, kept the
+smile from your lips, made you accept good fortune or ill without any
+sign of feeling.  I was too young to understand then, but I realise
+everything now.  I know how you denied yourself to send me to school
+and college.  I know how you left yourself almost a beggar when you
+gave me the chance of my life and trusted me with all your savings.
+These things I shall never forget."
+
+"One word, lad," Vont interrupted.  "It's the truth you say.  I trusted
+you with well-nigh all I had that stood between me and starvation, but
+I trusted you with it on one condition.  Do you mind that condition?
+We sat outside the little shanty I'd built with my own hands, up in the
+Adirondacks there, and before us were the mountains and the woods and
+the silence.  We were close to God up there, David.  You remember?"
+
+"I remember."
+
+"You'd come hot-foot from the city, and you told me your story.  I sat
+and listened, and then I told you mine.  I told you of the shame that
+had driven me from England, and I told you of the thoughts that were
+simmering in my mind.  As we sat there your wrath was as mine, and the
+oath which I had sworn, you swore, too.  I lent you the money over that
+oath, boy.  Look back, if you will.  You remember the night?  There was
+a hot wind--cool before it reached us, though--rushing up from the
+earth, rushing through the pine trees till they shook and bowed around
+us; and a moon, with the black clouds being driven across it, looking
+down; and the smell of the pines.  You remember?"
+
+"I remember," David repeated.
+
+"We stood there hand in hand, and there was no one to hear us except
+those voices that come from God only knows where, and you swore on your
+soul that you would help me as soon as the time came to punish the man
+who had blasted my life.  In my way you promised--not yours.  There
+should be no will but mine.  For this one thing I was master and you
+were slave, and you swore."
+
+"I swore.  I am not denying it," David acknowledged.  "Haven't I made a
+start?  Haven't I deceived the man at whose table I sat and laid a plot
+to ruin him?  And I have ruined him!  Do you want more than this?"
+
+"Yes!" was the unshaken reply.
+
+"Then what, in heaven's name, is it?" David demanded.  "Out with it,
+for God's sake!  I carry this whole thing about with me, like a weight
+upon my soul.  Granted that you are master and I am slave.  Well, I've
+done much.  What is there left?"
+
+"That you will be told in due season."
+
+"And meantime," David continued passionately, "I am to live in a sort
+of prison!"
+
+"You've no need to find it such," the old man declared doggedly.
+
+David sprang to his feet.  The time had come for his appeal.  The words
+seemed to rush to his lips.  He was full of confidence and hope.
+
+"Uncle," he began, "you must never let a single word that I may say
+seem to you ungrateful, but I beseech you to listen to me.  Life is
+like a great city in which there are many thoroughfares.  It is an
+immense, insoluble problem which no one can understand.  You never open
+another book except your Bible.  You have never willingly exchanged
+speech with any human being since you left here.  In America you
+shunned all company, you lived in the gloomiest of solitudes.  This
+little corner of the earth is all you know of.  Perhaps there is more
+in life even than that Book can teach you."
+
+"Marcia talked like this," Richard Vont said quietly.  "She spoke of
+another world, a world for cleverer folk than I.  Are you going to try
+and break my purpose, too?"
+
+"I would if I could," David declared fervently.  "This man is what his
+ancestors and his education have made him.  He has led a simple,
+ignorant, and yet in some respects a decent life.  He is too narrow to
+understand any one's point of view except his own.  When he took Marcia
+away, she was the village girl and he the great nobleman.  To-day
+Marcia holds his future in her hands.  She is the strong woman, and he
+is the weak man.  She has achieved fame and made friends.  She has
+lived a happy life, she is at the present moment perfectly content.
+Every promise he made her he has kept.  Well, why not let it go at
+that?"
+
+"So you are another poor child who knows all about this wonderful world
+of which I am so ignorant," Richard Vont said bitterly.  "Yet, my lad,
+I tell you that there's one great truth that none of you can get over,
+and that is that sin lives, and there is nothing in this world, save
+atonement, can wash it out."
+
+"There's a newer doctrine than that, uncle," David insisted.  "You talk
+with the voice of the black-frocked minister who dangles Hell in front
+of his congregation.  There is something else can clear away sin, and
+the Book over which you pore, day by day, will teach it you, if you
+know where to look for it.  There's love."
+
+"Was it love, then, that brought him down through the darkness to
+dishonour my daughter?" Vont demanded, with blazing eyes.
+
+"It didn't seem like it, but love must have been there," David
+answered.  "Nothing but love could have kept these two people together
+all this time, each filling a great place in the other's life.  I
+haven't thought of these things much, uncle, but I tell you frankly,
+I've read the Bible as well as you, and I don't believe in this black
+ogre of unforgivable sin.  If these two started in wrong fashion,
+they've purified themselves.  I hold that it's your duty now to leave
+them alone.  I say that this vengeance you still hanker after is the
+eye for an eye and limb for a limb of the Old Testament.  There has
+been a greater light in the world since then."
+
+"Have you done?" Vont asked, without the slightest change in his tone
+or expression.
+
+"I suppose so," David replied wearily.  "I wish you'd think over it
+all, uncle.  I know I'm right.  I know there is justice in my point of
+view."
+
+"I'll not argue with you, lad," his uncle declared.  "I'll ask you
+no'but this one question, and before you answer it just go back in your
+mind to the night we stood outside my shack, when the wind was blowing
+up from the valleys.  Are you going to stand by your pledged word or
+are you going to play me false?"
+
+The great clock ticked drearily on.  From outside came the clatter of
+teacups.  David walked to the latticed window and came back again.
+Richard Vont was seated in his high-backed chair, his hands grasping
+its sides.  His mouth was as hard and tightly drawn as one of his own
+vermin traps, but his eyes, steadfastly fixed upon his nephew, were
+filled with an inscrutable pathos.  David remembered that passionate
+outburst of feeling on a far-distant night, when the tears had rolled
+down this man's cheeks and his voice was choked with sobs.  And he
+remembered--
+
+"I shall keep my word in every way," he promised solemnly.
+
+Vont rose slowly to his feet.  His knees were trembling.  He seemed to
+be looking into a mist.  His hands shook as he laid them on David's
+shoulders.
+
+"Thank God!" he muttered.  "David, boy, remember.  This light talk is
+like an April shower on the warm earth.  Goodness and sin are the same
+now as a thousand years ago, and they will be the same in a thousand
+years to come.  We may pipe a new tune, but it's only the Devil's
+children that dance to it--sin must be punished.  There's no getting
+over that!  Forgiveness later maybe--but first comes punishment."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+A queer atmosphere of depression seemed about this time to have
+affected the two inhabitants of Number 94 Grosvenor Square.  The
+Marquis had suddenly become aware of an aimlessness in life which not
+even his new financial hopes enabled him to combat.  The night of his
+weekly dinner at Trewly's he spent in the entertainment of three
+ancient whist companions, and it was not until they had gone and he was
+left alone in the silent house that he realised how empty and
+profitless the evening had been.  Day by day, after lunch, he sent out
+the same message to his chauffeur--five o'clock for the club instead of
+three o'clock for Battersea, and on each occasion the words seemed to
+leave his lips with more reluctance.  He walked each morning in the
+Park, as carefully dressed and as upright as ever, but one or two of
+his acquaintances noticed a certain difference.  There was an increased
+pallor, a listlessness of gait, which seemed to bespeak an absent or a
+preoccupied mind.  He even welcomed the coming, one morning just as he
+was starting for his promenade, of Mr. Wadham, Junior.  Here at least
+was diversion.
+
+Mr. Wadham, Junior, had been rehearsing his interview and his
+prospective deportment towards the Marquis on the way up, and he
+started the enterprise to his own entire satisfaction.  He entered the
+library with an exceedingly serious air, and he took great pains to be
+sure that the door was closed after the retreating butler before he did
+more than respond to his distinguished client's greeting.
+
+"Anything fresh, Wadham?" the latter enquired.
+
+"I have ventured to see your lordship once more," Mr. Wadham began,
+"with reference to the scrip which we deposited at the bank to meet
+certain liabilities on your behalf."
+
+"Well, what about it?" the Marquis asked good-humouredly.  "You lawyers
+know nothing of the Stock Exchange."
+
+Mr. Wadham assumed an expression of great gravity.
+
+"Would your lordship," he begged, "for the satisfaction of my firm, the
+members of which I think you will admit have always been devoted to
+your lordship's interests, ring up the stockbroking firm
+of--say--Messrs. Youngs, Fielden and Company, or any other you like,
+with reference to the value of those shares?"
+
+"I am, unfortunately," the Marquis replied, "not in a position to do
+so.  The shares were sold me by a personal friend.  I am content to
+believe that if they had not been of their face value, the transaction
+would not have been suggested to me."
+
+"That," Mr. Wadham declared seriously, "is not business."
+
+"It happens to be the only way in which I can look upon the matter,"
+was the cool reply.
+
+"To proceed a little further," the lawyer continued, "I am here to
+enquire, solely in your own interests and as a matter of business,
+whether you have made any definite agreement to pay for these shares?
+I am under the impression that your lordship mentioned a note of hand."
+
+"I have signed," the Marquis acknowledged, "a bill, I believe the
+document was called, for forty thousand pounds, due in about two
+months' time."
+
+"Has your lordship any idea as to how this liability is to be met?"
+
+"None at all.  It is possible that the shares will have advanced in
+value sufficiently to justify my selling them.  If not, I take it that
+the bank will advance the sum against the scrip."
+
+Mr. Wadham, Junior, could scarcely contain himself.
+
+"Does your lordship know," he exclaimed, "that the bank hesitated about
+advancing a sum of less than a thousand pounds upon the security of
+those shares?"
+
+The Marquis yawned.
+
+"They will probably have changed their minds in two months' time," he
+remarked.
+
+"But if they have not?" Mr. Wadham persisted.
+
+"It is the unfortunate proclivity of you who are immersed in the narrow
+ways of legal procedure," his client observed, "to look only upon the
+worst side of a matter.  Personally, I am an optimist.  I rather expect
+to make a fortune on those shares."
+
+"It is the belief of my firm, on the contrary," Mr. Wadham confessed
+gloomily, "that they will end in a petition in bankruptcy being
+presented against your lordship."
+
+The Marquis shook out his handkerchief, wiped his lips and lit a
+cigarette.
+
+"Yours appears to be rather a dismal errand, Mr. Wadham," he said
+coldly.  "Is there any reason why I should detain you further?"
+
+"None whatever, so long as I have made it quite clear that there is no
+prospect of raising a single half-penny in excess of the mortgages
+already completed.  The matter of the forty thousand pounds draft is,
+of course, entirely in your lordship's hands.  I thought it my duty to
+inform you as to the value of the shares, in case you were able to
+persuade the gentleman who sold them to you to cancel the transaction."
+
+"You mean well, Wadham, no doubt," the Marquis declared, a little
+patronisingly, "but, as I said before, your turn of mind is too legal.
+My respects to your father.  You will forgive my ringing, will you not?
+Lady Letitia is waiting for me to walk with her."
+
+Mr. Wadham departed, saying blasphemous things all the way into
+Piccadilly, and the Marquis walked with Lady Letitia in the Park.  As a
+rule their conversation, although mostly of personal matters, was
+conducted in light-hearted fashion enough by Letitia, and responded to
+with a certain dry though stately humour by her father.  This morning,
+however, a silence which amounted almost to constraint reigned between
+them.  The Marquis, realising this, finally dragged his thoughts with
+difficulty away from his own affairs.
+
+"I had intended to speak to you, Letitia," he began, "concerning the
+announcement of your marriage.  Some festivities must naturally follow,
+and a meeting between myself and the Duke."
+
+"Whom you hate like poison, don't you, dad!" Letitia said, with a
+little grimace.  "Well, so do I, for the matter of that."
+
+"One's personal feelings are scarcely of account in such a case," the
+Marquis averred; "that is to say, any personal feelings with the
+exception of yours and Grantham's.  The match is suitable in every way,
+and at a time when every young man of account is being chased by a new
+race of ineligible young women, it must be a comfort to his family to
+contemplate an alliance like this."
+
+Letitia shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"With regard to the actual announcement, dad," she said, "we are going
+to keep it to ourselves for a few weeks longer, or at any rate until we
+are safely settled in the country.  It's such a bore to have every one
+you have ever spoken to in your life come rushing round to wish you
+happiness and that sort of thing.  Charlie rather agrees with me."
+
+"The matter, naturally, is in your hands," the Marquis replied, with a
+slight air of relief.
+
+"Of course, I am seeing rather more of Charlie," Letitia went on, "but
+people won't take any notice of that.  There have been rumours of our
+engagement at least half a dozen times already.  Aren't you getting
+just a little sick, dad, of this everlasting walk and these everlasting
+people we keep on bowing to and wish we didn't know?"
+
+"I hadn't thought of it exactly in that way," her father confessed,
+"and yet perhaps London is a little wearisome this season."
+
+"I think," Letitia sighed, "that I never felt so keen about leaving
+town and getting into the country.  I suppose you wouldn't care to go
+down to Mandeleys a week earlier, would you?" she asked tentatively.
+
+The Marquis looked upwards towards the tops of the trees.  He thought
+of that particular spot on the hall table where notes were left for
+him, of the old-fashioned silver salver laid by his side on the
+breakfast table, upon which his letters were placed.  He thought of the
+queer new feeling with which, day by day, he glanced them through,
+opening none, searching always, covering his disappointment by means of
+some ingenious remark; and of the days when he returned from such a
+walk as this, or from the club, his eyes glued upon the sideboard even
+while the butler was relieving him of his coat and gloves.  This
+morning all the accumulated sickness, all the little throbs of
+disappointment, seemed to be lumped into one gigantic and intolerable
+depression, so that his knees even trembled a little while he walked,
+and his feet felt as though they were shod with lead.  He remembered
+his sleepless nights.  He thought of that dull ache which came to him
+sometimes in the still hours, when he lay and fancied that he could
+hear her voice, her cheerful laugh, the tender touch of her fingers.
+He felt a sudden, overmastering desire to be free, at any rate, from
+that minute by minute agony.  At Mandeleys there would be only the
+post.  Or perhaps, if he made up his mind to leave town earlier than he
+had expected, he would not be breaking his word to himself if he sent
+just a line to tell her of his changed plans.  The country, by all
+means!
+
+"So far as I am concerned, Letitia," he said, "I think that I have
+never before felt so strongly the desire to leave London.  I suppose
+that, if we were content to take things quietly, we could collect a few
+servants and be comfortable there?"
+
+"I am sure of it, dad!" she exclaimed eagerly.  "You don't need to
+bother.  I could arrange it all," she went on, passing her arm through
+his.  "Four or five women will be all that we need, and Mrs. Harris can
+collect those in the village.  Then we need only take Gossett and Smith
+from here, and of course cook.  The others can go on to board wages."
+
+The Marquis smiled indulgently.
+
+"You must not disperse the establishment too completely, my dear," he
+said.  "I have great hopes that a certain business venture which I have
+made will place us in a very different financial position before very
+long."
+
+She looked a little dubious.
+
+"Was that what Mr. Wadham was worrying about this morning?" she asked.
+
+"Mr. Wadham, Junior, is a most ignorant young man," her father
+proclaimed stiffly.  "The venture, such as it is, is one which I have
+made entirely on my own responsibility."
+
+A sudden thought struck her.  Her arm tightened upon her father's.
+
+"Has it anything to do with Mr. Thain?"
+
+"It was Mr. Thain who placed the matter before me," he assented.
+
+"And Mr. Wadham doesn't approve?"
+
+"You really are a most intelligent young person," her father declared,
+smiling.  "Mr. Wadham's disapproval, however, does not disturb me."
+
+Letitia was conscious of a curious uneasiness.
+
+"Are you quite sure that Mr. Thain is an honest man, father?" she asked.
+
+The Marquis's eyebrows were slightly elevated.
+
+"My dear!" he said reprovingly.  "Mr. Thain's position as a financier
+is, I believe, beyond all question.  Your aunt, who, you will remember,
+first brought him to us, spoke of his reputation in the States as being
+entirely unexceptionable."
+
+"After all, aunt only met him on the steamer," Letitia observed.
+
+"Consider further," the Marquis continued, "that he has taken Broomleys
+and will therefore be a neighbour of ours for some time.  Do you think
+that he would have done this with the knowledge in his mind he had
+involved me in a transaction which was destined to have an unfortunate
+conclusion?"
+
+Letitia was silent.  Her fine forehead was clouded by a little
+perplexed frown.  The problem of David Thain was not so easily solved.
+Then the Duchess called to them from her car and beckoned Letitia to
+her side.
+
+"I have heard rumours, Letitia," she whispered.
+
+Letitia nodded.
+
+"I was coming round to see you, aunt," she replied.  "We are not going
+to announce it until a little later on."
+
+The Duchess smiled her approbation.
+
+"I am delighted," she declared.  "You are so difficult, Letitia, and
+there are so many girls about just now, trying to get hold of our young
+men.  Some one was telling me only last night of an American girl--or
+was she South American; I don't remember--with millions and millions,
+who almost followed Charlie about.  Of course, that sort of thing is
+being done, but it hasn't happened in our family yet.  Dear people,
+both of you!  When are you going to Mandeleys?"
+
+"We have just decided," the Marquis told her, "to shorten our stay in
+London.  Letitia's engagements are capable of curtailment, and my own
+are of no account.  We are thinking of going at once."
+
+"And your neighbour," the Duchess enquired; "when is he going into
+residence?"
+
+"I have not heard."
+
+"I am expecting him to come to Scotland later on," she observed.
+
+The Marquis was gently surprised.
+
+"Won't he be just a little--"
+
+"Not at all," the Duchess interrupted.  "He shoots and fishes, and does
+everything other men do.  I am not quite sure," she went on, "that you
+thoroughly appreciate Mr. Thain."
+
+"My dear Caroline, you are entirely mistaken," the Marquis assured her.
+"What Letitia's sentiments with regard to him may be, I do not know,
+but so far as I am concerned, I consider him a most desirable
+acquisition to my acquaintances."
+
+"If only I had your manner!" she said earnestly.  "Poor Mr. Thain!"
+
+With a little nod she drove off.  The Marquis and Letitia continued
+their promenade.
+
+"Why 'Poor Mr. Thain'?" the former mused.  "Exactly what did Caroline
+mean, I wonder?"
+
+"I think," Letitia replied, "that she was emphasising the distinction
+between your acceptance of Mr. Thain and hers."
+
+Her father remained puzzled.
+
+"Mr. Thain has been a guest at my house," he said, "and we shall treat
+him as a neighbour when we meet at Mandeleys."
+
+"Those things are indications of a friendly feeling," Letitia observed,
+"but you yourself know where you have placed the barriers.  Now Aunt
+Caroline doesn't mean to have any barriers.  If Mr. Thain can be
+awakened to his great opportunities, it is perfectly clear that she
+means to enter upon a flirtation with him."
+
+The Marquis was a little shocked.
+
+"You are somewhat blunt, my dear," he said.  "So far as your Aunt
+Caroline is concerned, too, I fear that she has in a measure lost that
+fine edge--perhaps I should say that very delicate perception of the
+differences which undoubtedly do exist.  I am pointing this out to you,
+Letitia," he continued, as they left the Park, "but it occurs to me
+that my doing so is unnecessary.  I have noticed that since your
+entrance into Society, some four or five years ago, you have identified
+yourself entirely with my views.  Nothing could have been more
+discriminating than your treatment of the various excellent people with
+whom you have been brought into contact."
+
+Letitia did not speak for a moment.  Then she turned to her father with
+a little sigh.
+
+"An inherited weakness, I suppose," she murmured.  "I sometimes rather
+envy other people their standpoint."
+
+The Marquis made no reply.  They were nearing Number 94, and he was
+conscious of that slight, nervous expectancy which required always a
+firm hand.  The door was opened before they could ring.  The young man
+who served under Gossett was already relieving him of his hat and
+gloves.  With a perfectly leisurely step, the Marquis advanced towards
+the hall table.  He glanced at the superscription of two or three
+notes, dropped his eyeglass, and turned away towards his
+study--empty-handed.
+
+"Several notes for you, Letitia," he said, without looking around.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+Richard Vont, a few mornings later, leaned upon his spade and gazed
+over towards Mandeleys with set, fixed eyes.  His clothes and hands
+were stained with clay, the sweat was pouring down his face, he was
+breathing heavily like a man who has been engaged in strenuous labour.
+But of his exhausted condition he seemed to take no count.  There was
+something new at the Abbey, something which spoke to him intimately,
+which was crowding his somewhat turgid brain with the one great
+imagining of his life.  For Mandeleys had opened its eyes.  A hundred
+blinds had been raised, long rows of windows stood open.  Men were at
+work, weeding the avenue, and driving mowing machines across the lawns
+which stretched down to the ring fence and the moat.  Flaming borders
+of yellow crocuses became miraculously visible as the dank grass
+disappeared, and many spiral wreaths of smoke were ascending into the
+misty stillness of the spring morning.  Away behind, in the high-walled
+garden, were more gardeners, bending at their toil.  Richard Vont was
+no reader of the _Morning Post_, but an item in its fashionable
+intelligence of that morning lay clearly written before him.  The
+Marquis was coming back!
+
+Vont turned slowly away, left his spade in the tool shed, entered the
+cottage by the back door, carefully changed his clothes, washed the
+clay from his face and hands, and descended into the sitting room,
+where his breakfast awaited him.  Mrs. Wells looked at him curiously.
+She was a distant connection and stood upon no ceremony with him.
+
+"Richard," she demanded, "where were you when I come this morning?"
+
+"Sleeping, maybe," he answered, taking his place at the table.
+
+"And that you weren't," she contradicted, "for I made bold to knock at
+your door to ask if you'd like a rasher of bacon with your eggs."
+
+He raised his head and looked at her steadily.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I'm not one to pry into other people's affairs," she continued, "but
+your goings on are more than I can understand.  All day long you sit
+with the Book upon your knee, and if a neighbour asks why you never
+pass the gate, or seemingly move a limb, it's the rheumatics you speak
+of.  And yet last night your bed was never slept in, my man, and I
+begin to suspect other nights as well.  What's it mean, eh?"
+
+Richard Vont rose to his feet and opened the door.
+
+"Just that," he answered harshly, pointing to it.  "I'll not be spied
+on.  Inch for inch and yard for yard, this cottage and garden are mine,
+I tell you--mine with dishonour, maybe, but mine.  I'll have none
+around me that watches and frets because of the things that I choose to
+do.  I'll lie out in the garden at nights, if I will, and not account
+to you, Mary Wells; or sleep on the floor, if it pleases me, and it's
+no concern of any one but mine.  So back to the village gossips, if you
+will, and spread your tale.  Maybe I'm a midnight robber and roam the
+countryside at night.  It's my affair."
+
+"A robber you're not, Richard Vont," was the somewhat dazed reply, "and
+that the world knows.  And there's summut more that the world knows,
+too, and that is that since you came back from Americy, never have you
+set foot outside that gate.  There's friends waiting for you at the
+village, and there's them as smokes their pipe at night in the
+alehouse, whose company 'd do you no harm, but for some reason of your
+own you live like a hermit.  And yet--yet--"
+
+"Go on, Mary," he said sturdily.  "Finish it."
+
+"It's the nights that are baffling," Mrs. Wells declared.  "There's
+some of your clothes in the morning wrings with sweat.  There's
+sometimes the look in your face at breakfast time as though you'd had a
+hard day's work and done more than was good for your strength."
+
+"I'm no sleeper," he declared, "no sleeper at all.  If I choose to walk
+in the garden, what business is it of yours, Mary, or of any one down
+in th' village?  Answer me that, woman?"
+
+"Every man, I suppose, may please himself," she conceded grudgingly,
+"but I don't hold with mysteries myself."
+
+"Then you full well know," he replied, "how to escape from them.  If
+they're too much for you, Mary, I've fended for myself before, and I
+can do it again."
+
+Mrs. Wells snorted.
+
+"Keep your own counsel, then, Richard."
+
+"And you keep yours," he advised.  "You're my nearest of kin, Mary,
+though you're but my cousin's widdy.  If you can learn to keep a still
+tongue in your head and do what's asked of you, there may be a trifle
+coming to you when my time comes.  But if you get these curious fits on
+you, and they're more than you can stand; if you're going bleating from
+house to house in the village, and spending your time in
+tittle-tattling, then we'll part.  Them's plain words, anyhow."
+
+Mrs. Wells became almost abject.
+
+"You've said the word, Richard, and I'll bide by it," she declared.
+"You can run races with yourself round the garden all night long, if
+you've a will.  I'll close my eyes from now.  But," she added, as a
+parting shot, "that clay on your old clothes takes a sight of getting
+off."
+
+Richard Vont ate his breakfast slowly and thoughtfully, entirely with
+the air of a man who accomplishes a duty.  Afterwards, with the Bible
+under his arm, he took his accustomed seat at the end of the garden
+facing Mandeleys.  There were tradesmen's carts and motor-vans passing
+occasionally on their way to and from the house, but he saw none of
+them.  He was in his place, waiting, watching, perhaps, but without
+curiosity.  Presently a summons came, however, which he could not
+ignore.  He turned his head.  David Thain, on a great black horse, had
+come galloping across the park from Broomleys, and had brought his
+restive horse with some difficulty up to the side of the paling.  The
+greeting between the two was a silent, yet, so far as Vont was
+concerned, an eager one.
+
+"You know what that means?" David observed, pointing with his crop
+towards the house.
+
+"I know well," was the swift answer.  "It's what I've prayed for.  Move
+your horse out of the way, boy.  Can't you see I'm watching?"
+
+David looked at the old man curiously.  Then he dismounted, and with
+his arm through the reins, leaned against the paling.
+
+"There's nothing to watch yet," he said, "but tradesmen's carts."
+
+"It's just the beginning," Vont muttered.  "Soon there'll be servants,
+and then--him!  If he comes in the night," the old man went on, his
+voice thickening, "I'll--"
+
+Words seemed to fail him, but he had clenched his hands on the cover of
+the book he had closed, and his blue veins stood out in ugly fashion.
+David sighed.  Yet, notwithstanding his despair, some measure of
+curiosity prompted a question.
+
+"Just why do you want to see him so much?" he asked.
+
+"Hate," was the quiet reply.  "It's twenty years since, and I've a kind
+of craving to see him that much older.  There's hate and love, you
+know, David.  They're both writ of here.  But I tell you it's hate that
+lasts the longest.  Love is like my flowers.  Look at them--my tall
+hollyhocks, my bush roses, my snapdragon there.  They blossom and they
+fade, and they lie dead--who knows where?  And in the spring they come
+again, or something like them.  And hate," he went on, pointing to a
+spade which lay propped against the paling, "is like that lump of
+metal.  It's here winter and summer alike.  It doesn't change, it
+doesn't die; there's no heat would melt it.  It was there last year,
+it's there to-day, it will be there to-morrow."
+
+David sighed, and looked for a moment wearily away.  The old man
+watched him anxiously.  Exercise had brought a slight flush to his
+pallid cheeks and an added brightness to his eyes.  He sat his horse
+well, and his tweed riding-clothes were fashionably cut.  His uncle's
+frown became deeper.
+
+"You're young, David," he said, "and I know well that you and me look
+out on life full differently.  But an oath--an oath's a sacred thing,
+eh?"
+
+"An oath is a sacred thing," David repeated.  "I've never denied it."
+
+"You'll not flinch, lad?" the old man persisted eagerly.
+
+"I shall not flinch."
+
+"Then ride off now.  There's no gain to either of us in talking here,
+for your mind is set one way and mine another.  You'll have a score of
+years of youth left after you've done my behest."
+
+David paused with his foot in the stirrup, withdrew it and returned to
+the paling.
+
+"Let me know the worst," he begged.  "I've beggared your enemy for you.
+I've soiled my conscience for the first time in my life.  I've lied to
+and ruined the man who trusted in my word.  What is this further deed
+that I must do?"
+
+Richard Vont shook his head.
+
+"When the time comes," he promised, "you shall know.  Meanwhile, let
+be!  It's a summer morning, and you are but young; make the most of it.
+Come when I send for you."
+
+So David rode off, up the broad slopes of the great park, along the
+wonderful beech avenue and out on to the highway.  He turned in his
+saddle for a moment and looked towards the road from London.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+The Marquis, with an after-breakfast cigarette in his mouth, strolled
+out of his front door, a few mornings later, to find himself face to
+face with Richard Vont.  He called Letitia, who was behind.
+
+"The worst has happened," he groaned.
+
+Letitia stood by her father's side and looked across the stone flags,
+across the avenue, with its central bed of gay-coloured flowers, the
+ring fence, the moat, the few yards of park, to where, just inside his
+little enclosed garden, Richard Vont was seated, directly facing them.
+
+"Well, you expected it, didn't you, father?" she observed.
+
+"All the same," the Marquis declared, with a frown, "it's an irritating
+thing to have a man seated there within a hundred yards of your front
+door, with a Bible on his knee, cursing you.  I am convinced now, more
+than ever, that my case against this man must have been grossly
+mismanaged.  The law could never permit such an indignity."
+
+Letitia stepped back for a moment to light a cigarette.  Then she
+rejoined her father and contemplated that somewhat grim figure
+critically.
+
+"If he is going to do that all the time," the Marquis went on, "I shall
+have nerves.  I shall have to live in the back part of the house."
+
+Letitia gravely considered the matter.
+
+"Why don't you try talking common sense to him?" she suggested.
+"Perhaps a few words from you would make all the difference."
+
+"He is probably sitting there with a gun," her father sighed.
+"However, it's an idea, Letitia.  I'll try it."
+
+He strolled across the avenue, through a little iron gate in the
+railings, and across the moat by a footbridge.  When he had approached
+within a dozen paces of the palings, however, Richard Vont rose to his
+feet.
+
+"You're nigh enough, Lord Mandeleys," he called out, "nigh enough for
+your own safety."
+
+The Marquis advanced with his usual leisurely and aristocratic walk to
+the edge of the palings.  Richard Vont stood glaring at him like a wild
+beast, but there was no signs of any weapon about.
+
+"Vont," the former said, "we both have rights.  This park is mine so
+far as your paling, just as your garden is yours where you are.  I have
+no fancy for shouting, and I have a word to say to you."
+
+"Say it and begone, then," Vont exclaimed fiercely.
+
+"Really," the Marquis expostulated, "you are behaving in a most
+unreasonable manner.  I am here to discuss the past.  For any wrong
+which you may consider I have done you, I express my regret.  I suggest
+to you that your daughter's present position in life should reconcile
+you to what has happened."
+
+"My daughter's brains nor your money don't make an honest woman of her."
+
+The Marquis sighed wearily.
+
+"Your outlook, Vont," he said, "is full of prejudice and utterly
+illogical.  I found qualities in your daughter which endeared her to
+me, and she has lived a perfectly reputable and engrossing life ever
+since she left your home, such a life as she could not possibly have
+lived under your roof or in this part of the world.  In every way that
+counts, she has prospered.  Therefore, I ask you to reconsider the
+matter.  I claim that any wrong I may have done you is expiated, and I
+suggest that you abandon an attitude which--pardon me--is just a little
+theatrical, put aside that very excellent Book or else read it as a
+whole, and give me your hand."
+
+"I'd cut it off first," Vont declared savagely.
+
+"This is rank prejudice," the Marquis protested.
+
+"It seems so to you, belike," was the scornful answer.  "You clever
+folk who can crowd your brain with thoughts and ideas from
+books--you've no room there for the big things.  You've so many little
+weeds growing up around that the flower doesn't count.  Nought that you
+can say about Marcia can alter matters.  I'd sooner have seen her
+married to the poorest creature on your land than to know that she has
+lived as your dependent for all these years."
+
+The Marquis shook his head sorrowfully.
+
+"You're an obstinate old man, Vont," he said, "and a very selfish one.
+You are wrapped up in your own narrow ideas, and you won't even allow
+any one else to show you the truth.  Marcia has been happy with me.
+She would have been the most miserable creature on earth married to a
+clod."
+
+"Ay, she's been here to show herself," Vont muttered, "down in a
+motor-car, in furs and silks, like a creature from some world that I
+know not about.  She's talked as you've talked.  I've listened to the
+pair of you.  I thrust my daughter out of the garden and bade her go
+away and learn the truth.  And you--well, I just take leave to say that
+as I cursed you nigh on a score of years ago, and have cursed you in my
+heart ever since, so I curse you now!"
+
+"But are you going to sit there every day doing it?" the Marquis
+enquired, a little irritably.
+
+"This house and garden are mine," Richard Vont replied stolidly,
+"although you've done your best to beggar me by taking them away.  When
+I choose, I shall sit here.  When I choose, I shall sit and watch you
+with your guests, watch you morning, noon and night.  I've one wish in
+my heart, hour by hour.  Maybe that wish will reach home, Marquis of
+Mandeleys.  If it does, you'll see them all in black along the
+churchyard path there, and hear the doors of your vault roll open."
+
+"You're a little mixed in your similes, my friend," the Marquis
+remarked, "because, you know, if those things happen--to me, I shall be
+the one person who doesn't hear them.  Still, I gather that you are
+implacable, and that is what I came to find out.  What astonishingly
+fine hollyhocks!" he observed, as he turned away.  "I must go and look
+at my own."
+
+For a moment there was tragedy in Vont's clenched fists and fierce,
+convulsive movement forward.  The Marquis, however, without a backward
+glance, lounged carelessly away and, finding Letitia, strolled with her
+to the walled garden.
+
+"The man is impossible," he proclaimed.  "It is obviously his intention
+to sit there and make himself a nuisance.  Well, we get used to
+everything.  I may get used to Richard Vont."
+
+Letitia hesitated for a few moments.
+
+"Father," she said, "there are certain subjects which are not, as a
+rule, mentioned, but if you will permit me--"
+
+The Marquis stopped her.
+
+"My dear, please not," he begged, a little stiffly.  "Remember, if you
+will, that I have little in common with the somewhat modern school of
+thought indulged in by most of your friends.  There are certain
+subjects which cannot be discussed between us.  Let us hear what Mr.
+Hales has to say."
+
+Hat in hand, the head gardener had hastened down to meet them, and
+under his tutelage they explored his domain.  His master murmured
+little words of congratulation.
+
+"I have done my best, your lordship," the man observed, "but Mr.
+Merridrew has been cruel hard on me for bulbs and seeds and plants, and
+as to shrubs and young trees, he'll not have a word to say."
+
+The Marquis nodded sympathetically.
+
+"We may be able to alter that next year, Hales," he promised.  "Mr.
+Merridrew, I know, has had great trouble with the tenants for the last
+few quarters.  Next year, Mr. Hales, we will see what we can do."
+
+The gardener once more doffed his cap and received the intelligence
+with gratified interest.  Over the top of the hill, a small governess'
+cart, drawn by a fat pony, came into sight, and Letitia waved her hand
+to the girl who was driving.
+
+"It's Sylvia Laycey," she murmured.  "Now how on earth can that child
+still be at Broomleys, if Mr. Thain is really here?"
+
+Sylvia explained the matter as she drove into the great stableyard,
+Letitia walking on one side of her and the Marquis on the other.
+
+"Of course we've left Broomleys," she told them, "but we are staying
+with the Medlingcourts for three or four days.  They asked us at the
+last moment.  And then your letter came, Letitia--just in time.  I'm
+simply crazy to come and stay with you.  Letitia, you lucky girl!  You
+are going to be here all the time!  I am simply foolish about him!"
+
+"About whom?" Letitia asked indifferently.
+
+"Why, Mr. David Thain, of course!  He's the nicest thing I've ever
+talked to.  He lunched with us on Thursday--but of course you're in
+love with him, too, so there'll be no chance for me."
+
+Letitia's laugh was half amused, half scornful.
+
+"If you are in earnest, Sylvia," she said, "which doesn't seem very
+likely, I can assure you that you need fear no rival.  Mr. Thain does
+not appeal to me."
+
+"We have nevertheless found Mr. Thain," the Marquis observed, suddenly
+reminding them both of his presence, "a very agreeable and interesting
+acquaintance."
+
+Sylvia made a little grimace.  She thrust her arm through Letitia's and
+drew her off towards the lawn, where some chairs had been brought out
+under a cedar tree.
+
+"You are such a wonderful person, Letitia," she said, "and of course
+your father's a Marquis and mine isn't.  But I thought, nowadays,
+Americans were good enough for anybody in the world, if only they had
+enough money."
+
+"Both my father and I, you see," Letitia observed, "are a little
+old-fashioned.  I have never had any idea of marriage, except with some
+one whose family I knew all about."
+
+"Of course," Sylvia declared, "I am a horrid Radical, and I think I'd
+sooner not know about mine.  If Mr. Thain's antecedents were
+unmentionable, I should adore him just the same, but, as I know your
+father would remind me in some very delicate fashion if he were here,
+the situation is different.  You don't mind talking about him, do you,
+Letitia, because that's what I've come for?"
+
+"Well, I'll listen," Letitia promised, as she settled herself in an
+easy-chair.  "I really don't know what I should find to say, except
+that he's moderately good-looking, has quite nice manners, and money
+enough to buy the whole county."
+
+"You are fearfully severe," Sylvia sighed.  "Of course, I've been
+talking rot, as I always do, but we did find him charming, Letitia,
+both Daddy and I.  He was so simple and unaffected, and he drove me
+into Fakenham and bought cutlets for our luncheon.  When I come to
+think of it," she went on, with a look of horror in her face, "I
+believe he paid for them, too."
+
+"He can well afford to," Letitia laughed.
+
+The Marquis came to them across the lawn.  He held in his hand an open
+telegram.
+
+"From Grantham, my dear," he said to Letitia.  "It appears that he is
+bored with town and proposes to come down to-morrow night instead of
+waiting until Saturday.  I have replied that he will be very welcome.
+Mrs. Foulds will really have to bestir herself.  I have a line from
+Caroline, too, to ask if she may stay for a couple of days on her way
+to Harrogate."
+
+Letitia rose to her feet.  The cloud which had fallen upon her face was
+doubtless owing to housekeeping cares.  The Marquis, shading his eyes
+with his hand, was gazing across the park.
+
+"Really," he remarked, a little drily, "I shall have to hint to our new
+neighbour that turf which is several hundred years old is not meant to
+be cut up like prairie-land.  He sits his horse well, though."
+
+Sylvia jumped quickly up and Letitia gazed in the direction which her
+father had indicated.  David, on his black horse, was riding across the
+park towards Broomleys.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+The Marquis, as he sat at his study table after lunch, was not inclined
+to regard his first day at Mandeleys as a success.  The only post of
+the day had been delivered, and the letter for which he was waiting
+with an anxiety greater than he even realised himself, was still
+absent.  There was a letter, however, from Mr. Wadham, which afforded
+him some food for thought.  It was a personal letter, written by the
+head of the firm, and he perused it for the second time with a frown
+upon his forehead.
+
+
+_My dear Lord Mandeleys:_
+
+I have ventured, in your interests, to do what my son tells me you
+yourself felt some hesitation in doing--namely, I have made enquiry
+through a firm of stockbrokers who make a speciality of American oil
+shares, as to the Pluto Oil Company, Limited, of whose shares you have
+made so large a purchase.  I find that no development of this property
+has taken place, very little, if any, machinery has been erected, no
+oil has ever been discovered in the locality or upon the estate.  May I
+beg of you that, to avoid disastrous consequences, you at once see your
+friend from whom you purchased these shares, and endeavour to make some
+arrangement with him to take them off your hands, as they were
+doubtless tendered to you by false representations.
+
+I am quite sure that I need not point out to your lordship that I write
+you this letter entirely without prejudice and in the interests of the
+Mandeleys name and estates.
+
+There could be no possibility of the drafts executed by your lordship
+being met, unless the shares themselves provided the funds, which,
+under the existing conditions, appears impossible.
+
+Respectfully yours,
+  STEPHEN WADHAM.
+
+
+The Marquis looked out upon the lawn.  There was in his memory, too, a
+recent and serious conversation with Mr. Merridrew, concerning the
+accumulating charges for dilapidations upon the property.  He watched
+David playing croquet with Sylvia Laycey with a deepening frown upon
+his face, glanced from them to where Letitia sat, apparently absorbed
+in a book which she was reading, and from her he looked through a side
+window towards that hated little demesne across the moat, where Richard
+Vont, in his shabby brown velveteen suit, with his white hair and his
+motionless figure, seemed to dominate the otherwise peaceful prospect.
+Somehow or other, both outlooks irritated him almost as much as his own
+mental condition.  The hard pressure of circumstances was asserting
+itself in his mind.  He found himself struggling against an insidious
+longing to see Letitia in Sylvia's place.  In his way he was
+superstitious.  He even began to wonder whether that silent, ceaseless
+hate, that daily litany of curses, could really in any way be
+responsible for the increasing embarrassments by which he was
+surrounded, that great, dumb anxiety which kept him with wide-open eyes
+at night and sent him about in the daytime with a constant, wearing
+pain at his heart.
+
+He turned at last wearily away from the window, rose to his feet,
+opened the French doors which led out into the gardens, and strolled
+across the lawn to where Letitia was seated.  She laid down her book
+and welcomed him with a smile which had in it just a shade of fatigue.
+
+"Our friend Thain," he observed, "seems to be a success with Miss
+Sylvia."
+
+Letitia turned her head and watched them.
+
+"Sylvia has already confided to me her ardent admiration."
+
+The Marquis sighed as he sank into a chair.  Letitia glanced at him a
+little anxiously.
+
+"Anything wrong, dad?"
+
+"Nothing that should depress one on such a wonderful day.  It is more a
+state of mind than anything.  You and I, I fancy, were both born a few
+hundred years too late."
+
+"Money again?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"It is one of the most humiliating features of modern existence," he
+declared, "to find the course of one's daily life interfered with by
+the paltry necessities of pounds, shillings and pence.  One inherits a
+great name," he went on ruminatively, "great traditions, an estate
+brimful of associations with illustrious ancestors.  In one's daily
+life one's sense of dignity, one's whole position, is all the time
+affected, I may say poisoned, by the lack of that one commodity which
+is neither a proof of greatness or even deserving.  We are very poor
+indeed, Letitia."
+
+She sighed.
+
+"Is it anything fresh?"
+
+"Mr. Merridrew has been here this morning," her father continued, "and
+has spoken to me very seriously about the condition of the whole
+estate.  No repairs or rebuilding have been effected for years.  The
+whole of the rents, as they have been received, have been required to
+pay interests on the mortgages.  Mr. Merridrew adds that he scarcely
+dare show himself before any one of the tenants, to whose just demands
+he is continually promising attention.  He considers that unless the
+whole of the next quarter's rents are spent in making repairs, we shall
+lose our tenants and the property itself will be immensely
+deteriorated."
+
+"There are those shares that Mr. Thain sold you," she reminded him
+hopefully.
+
+"You must take this for what it is worth," he said.  "I have a private
+letter from Mr. Wadham himself this morning, in which he tells me
+frankly that he has received reports indicating that those shares are
+worthless."
+
+"Worthless?" Letitia exclaimed, bewildered.
+
+Her father nodded.
+
+"He begs me earnestly to appeal to Mr. Thain to take them off my hands.
+Even if I could bring myself to contemplate such a step, we should even
+then be faced with the fact that, adopting Mr. Merridrew's views, there
+are no funds to provide the interest on the mortgages next quarter day."
+
+Letitia glanced once more uneasily towards David Thain.
+
+"Worthless!" she repeated.  "I don't understand it, father.  Do you
+really believe that Mr. Thain would do you an ill turn like this?"
+
+The Marquis shook his head.
+
+"I can conceive no possible reason for such an action," he declared.
+"We have not injured him in any way.  On the contrary, we have, at your
+Aunt Caroline's solicitation, offered him a hospitality somewhat rarely
+accorded by you and me, dear, to persons of his nationality and
+position."
+
+Letitia made a little grimace.
+
+"Aunt Caroline looks at him from a different point of view, doesn't
+she!"
+
+"Your aunt is intensely modern," the Marquis agreed.  "She is modern,
+too, without any real necessity.  Her outlook upon life is one which,
+considering her descent, I cannot understand."
+
+"Don't you think, father," Letitia asked him squarely, "that, however,
+disagreeable it may be, you ought to speak to Mr. Thain about the
+shares?  He could probably tell you something which would relieve your
+mind, or he might offer to take them back."
+
+The Marquis was silent for a moment.  Probably no one in the world
+except Letitia knew how much it cost him to say the next few words.
+
+"I will do so," he promised.  "I will find an early opportunity of
+doing so.  At the same time, in the absence of any more definite
+information, I prefer to retain my belief in their value."
+
+Sylvia and David came strolling towards them.  The former was looking
+almost distressed.
+
+"Letitia dear, isn't it horrid!" she said.  "I must go now!  I promised
+Mrs. Medlingcourt that I'd be back to tea.  She has some stupid people
+coming in.  We've had such a wonderful game of croquet.  I am quite
+sure I could make an expert of Mr. Thain in a very short time.  Can I
+have my pony cart, please, Letitia?  And what time shall I come on
+Thursday?"
+
+"We shall be ready for you any time you like," Letitia replied, "so
+please suit yourself."
+
+They all strolled round to see her start.  She looked a little
+wistfully at the vacant place in the governess' cart, as she took her
+seat.
+
+"I can't drop you at Broomleys gate, can I, Mr. Thain?" she asked.
+
+He shook his head smilingly.
+
+"I should never dare to face your pony again," he declared.  "Bring
+your father over to see me, and we'll mark out a croquet court at
+Broomleys."
+
+"We'll come," she promised.
+
+She drove away.  David, too, turned to take his leave.
+
+"So nice of you to entertain our little visitor," Letitia said, smiling
+graciously upon him.  "She is charming, isn't she?"
+
+"Quite," he replied.
+
+"I'll show you a way into the park from the flower gardens," she
+continued.  "It saves you a little."
+
+She led the way across the lawn, very erect, very graceful, very
+indifferent.  David walked by her side with his hands behind him.
+
+"You must find these country pursuits a relaxation after your more
+strenuous life," she observed.
+
+"I find them very pleasant."
+
+"To-morrow," Letitia told him, "my aunt arrives for a day or two.  You
+are almost as popular with her, you know, as you seem to be with
+Sylvia."
+
+"The Duchess," he repeated.  "I did not know that she was coming here.
+She was kind enough to ask me to go to Scotland later on."
+
+"You will be very foolish if you don't go, then," Letitia advised.
+"The Rossdale grouse moors are almost the best in Scotland.  Aunt
+Caroline is staying here for two days on her way to Harrogate.  You
+must dine with us on Thursday night.  She will be so disappointed if
+she does not see you at once."
+
+"You are very kind, Lady Letitia," he said.  "I fear that I am inclined
+to encroach upon your hospitality."
+
+She picked a rose and held it to her lips for a moment.
+
+"We must amuse Aunt Caroline," she observed languidly.  "It is many
+years since she imposed herself as a visitor here.  We dine at a
+quarter past eight.  This is the gate."
+
+He passed through it and turned to make his farewells.  Her left hand
+was resting upon the iron railing, her right supported her parasol.
+She nodded to him a little curtly.
+
+"You promised," he reminded her, "that some day you would come over and
+help me about the garden."
+
+"Did I?" she answered.  "Well, remind me sometime, won't you?"
+
+"Why not now?" he persisted.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I have to go and consult with Mrs. Foulds as to where to put all our
+visitors.  Charlie Grantham is coming with aunt, I think, and we have
+so many rooms closed up.  Don't fall into the moat.  There's a bridge
+just to the left."
+
+She turned away, and David watched her for several moments before he
+swung round.  He was conscious of a sudden and entirely purposeless
+feeling of anger, almost of fury.  From the higher slopes of the park
+he turned and looked once more towards Mandeleys.  Letitia had
+evidently forgotten her household duties.  She had thrown herself back
+in her chair and was once more apparently engrossed in her book.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+David Thain, a few hours later, lounged in a basket chair in the one
+corner of his lawn from which he could catch, through the hedge of yew
+trees, a furtive glimpse of Mandeleys.  By his side stood a small
+coffee equipage and an unopened box of cigars; in the distance was the
+vanishing figure of the quiet-mannered and very excellent butler with
+whom a famous registry office had endowed his household.  It was an
+hour of supreme ease.  An unusually warm day was succeeded by an
+evening from which only the warmth of the sun had departed, an evening
+full of scents from flowers and shrubs alike, an evening during which
+the thrushes prolonged their music until, from somewhere in the distant
+groves at the back of the house, a nightingale commenced, like the
+tuning up of an orchestra, to make faint but sweet essays at continued
+song.  It was as light as day but there were stars already in the sky,
+and a pale, colourless moon was there, waiting for the slowly moving
+mantle of twilight.  David Thain was alone with his thoughts.
+
+They had started somewhere in the background, in the first throb and
+excitement of life, in the moment when his lips had framed that
+horrible oath which held him now in its meshes.  Then had come the real
+struggle, years of brilliant successes, the final coup, the stepping in
+a single day on to one of those pedestals which a great republic keeps
+for her most worshipped sons.  Always it seemed to him that there was
+that old man in the background, waiting.  At last had come the
+question.  Yes, he was ready.  He had come to England a little
+protesting, a little incredulous, always believing that those fierce
+fires which had burned for so long in the grey-haired, patient old man
+would have burned themselves out, or would become softened by
+sentimental associations as soon as he set foot in his native place.
+David's awakening was complete and disconcerting.  The fury of Richard
+Vont showed no signs of abatement.  He found himself committed already
+to one loathsome enterprise--and there was the future.  He looked down
+gloomily at the magnificent pile below, with its many chimneys, its
+stretching front and far-reaching wings, and some echo of the
+bitterness which raged in the old man who sat and watched at its gates,
+found an echo in his own heart.  He remembered the amusement with which
+that subtle but absolutely natural air of superiority, on the part of
+father and daughter alike, had first imbued him.  Their very kindness,
+the frank efforts of the Marquis, as well as of Lady Letitia, to lead
+him into some channel of conversation in which he could easily express
+himself was the kindness of those belonging to another world and
+fearing lest the consciousness of it might depress their visitor.  And
+with his resentment was mingled another feeling; not exactly
+acquiescence--his American education had been too strong for that--but
+admiration for those inherent gifts which seemed to bring with them a
+certain grace, carried into even the smaller matters of life.  Perhaps
+he exaggerated to himself their importance as he sat there in the soft
+gathering twilight, poured out his neglected coffee and still played
+with his unlighted cigar.  The rooks had ceased to caw above his head.
+Some of the peace of night was stealing down upon the land.  In the
+windows of Mandeleys little pinpricks of light were beginning to show.
+
+The iron hand-gate which led from the park into his domain was suddenly
+opened and closed.  The way led through a grove of trees and through
+another gate into the garden.  He turned his head and watched the spot
+where the figure of his visitor must appear.  It was curious that from
+the first, although his common sense should have told him how
+impossible such a thing was, he had an intuitive presentiment as to who
+this visitor might be.  He laid down the unlighted cigar upon his table
+and leaned a little forward in his chair.  First he heard footsteps
+falling softly upon a carpet of pine needles and yielding turf, slowly
+too, as though the movements of their owner were in a sense reluctant.
+And then a slim, tall figure in white--a familiar figure!  He was up in
+a moment, striding forwards.  She had already passed through the gate,
+however, and was moving towards him across the lawn.
+
+"Lady Letitia!" he exclaimed.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Please don't look as though I'd done anything so terribly unusual,"
+she begged.  "What a pleasant spot you have chosen for your coffee!"
+
+David's new treasure proved fully equal to the occasion.  From some
+unseen point of vantage he seemed to have foretold the coming of this
+visitor, and prepared to minister to her entertainment.  Lady Letitia
+sank into her chair and praised the coffee.
+
+"So much better than the stuff we have been trying to drink," she told
+David.  "I must bring dad round one evening.  He loves good coffee.
+How beautiful your trees are!"
+
+"Your trees," he reminded her.
+
+She shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"It seems ages since I was here," she remarked.  "Sylvia was away when
+we were down last, and dad and Colonel Laycey were annoyed with one
+another about some repairs.  You don't want any repairs, do you, Mr.
+Thain?"
+
+"I have arranged to do whatever is necessary myself," David told her,
+"in consideration of a somewhat reduced rent."
+
+"I am glad you consider it reduced!" Letitia observed.  "Of course, you
+think I am mad to come and see you like this, don't you?" she added a
+little aggressively.
+
+"Not in the least," he replied.  "I should not have ventured to have
+expected such a visit, but now that you are here it seems quite
+natural."
+
+"After all, why isn't it?" she agreed.  "I walked round the garden
+once, thinking about a certain matter in which you are concerned, and
+then I walked in the park, and it occurred to me that you would
+probably be sitting out here, only a few hundred yards away, just as
+you are doing, and that you could, if you would, set my mind at rest."
+
+"If I can do that," he said, "I am very glad that you came."
+
+"I am going to unburden my mind, then," she continued.  "It is about
+those shares you sold father, Mr. Thain."
+
+His manner seemed, to her quick apprehension, instantly to stiffen.
+Nevertheless, he was expectant.  He was willing to go through a good
+deal if only he could hear her voice for once falter, if even her tone
+would lose its half-wearied, half-insolent note, if she would raise her
+eyes and speak to him as woman to man.
+
+"The Pluto Oil shares," he murmured.  "Well?"
+
+"Of course, father hadn't the least right to buy them," she went on,
+"because we haven't a penny in the world, and he couldn't possibly pay
+for them unless they fetched as much, when the payment fell due, as he
+gave for them.  I am rather stupid at these things, Mr. Thain, but you
+understand?"
+
+"Perfectly!"
+
+Her long fingers stole into the cigarette box.  She accepted a light
+from him and leaned back once more in her chair.
+
+"Father," she proceeded, "has the most implicit faith in everybody.
+The fact that you are an American millionaire was ample proof to him
+that anything in the way of shares you possessed must be worth a great
+deal more than their face value.  I do not know what led to his buying
+them--you probably do.  Did he asked for any assurances as to their
+intrinsic value?"
+
+"I warned him," David said, "that they were entirely a speculation.  He
+asked my advice as to some way of raising a large sum of money, much
+larger than he could hope to gain by any ordinary enterprise.  I
+presumed that he was willing to speculate and I suggested these shares.
+They certainly are as speculative as any man could desire."
+
+"Are they worth any more now than when father bought them?" she
+enquired.
+
+"To the best of my belief they have not moved," he replied.  "As a
+matter of fact, they have not yet had a chance to prove themselves."
+
+"They are still worth a dollar a share, then?"
+
+"They are worth a dollar a share as much as they were when your father
+bought them."
+
+She turned her head and looked at him.
+
+"My father," she said, "declines to ask you any questions.  He would
+consider it in bad taste to suggest for a moment that he felt any
+uneasiness with regard to the necessary payment for them.  He is none
+the less, however, worried.  He was foolish enough to tell his lawyers
+about them, and lawyers, I am afraid, have very little faith in him as
+a business man.  The result of the enquiries they made was most
+depressing."
+
+"It probably would be," David assented.
+
+"Forty thousand pounds' worth of shares," Letitia continued, "which are
+worth as much now as when my father bought them, are, I suppose,
+nothing to you.  I wondered whether you would object to have them back
+again?  I think that it would relieve my father's mind."
+
+Thain was silent for a moment.  He had lit a cigar now and was smoking
+steadily.
+
+"You have not much idea of business, Lady Letitia," he remarked.
+
+"Business?" she repeated, with a note of surprise in her tone.  "How
+should I have?  There are certain matters of common sense and of honour
+which I suppose are common to every one of reasonable intelligence.
+There did not seem to me to be any principle of business involved in
+this."
+
+"Supposing," David said, "the shares had risen and were worth two
+dollars to-day, you would not in that case, I presume, have honoured me
+with this visit?"
+
+"Certainly not," she replied.
+
+"I did not sell those shares to your father as an act of philanthropy,"
+he continued.  "He asked me to show him a speculation, and I showed him
+this.  Those shares, so far as I know, are as likely to be worth five
+times their value next week, or nothing at all.  I am a very large
+holder, and it seemed to me that it would be a reasonable act of
+prudence to sell a few of them at a price which showed me a small
+margin of profit."
+
+"Profit?" she repeated wonderingly.  "Are you in need of profit?"
+
+"It is the poison of wealth," he observed.  "One is always trying to
+add to what one has."
+
+She turned her head and looked at him intently.  For a moment she was
+almost startled.  There was something unreal in the sound of his words.
+Something that was almost a foreboding chilled her.
+
+"Mr. Thain," she said calmly.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Had you any reason--any special reason, I mean--for selling those
+shares to my father?"
+
+His face was inscrutable.
+
+"What reason should I have, Lady Letitia?"
+
+"I can't imagine any," she replied, "and yet--for a moment I thought
+that you were talking artificially.  I probably did you an injustice.
+I am sorry."
+
+David's teeth came together.  There was lightning in his eyes as he
+glanced down through the trees towards Vont's little cottage.
+
+"Don't apologise too soon, Lady Letitia," he warned her.
+
+She raised her eyebrows.
+
+"I am not accustomed to think the worst of people," she said.  "I can
+scarcely picture to myself any person, already inordinately wealthy,
+singling out my father as a victim for his further cupidity.  Let me
+return to the question which I have already asked you.  Would you care,
+without letting my father know of this visit and my request, to return
+his cheque or promissory note, or whatever it was, in exchange for
+these shares?"
+
+"I am not even sure, Lady Letitia," he reminded her, after a moment's
+pause, "that your father wishes this."
+
+"You can, I think, take my word that it would be a relief to him," she
+asserted.
+
+He pondered for a few moments.  The light through the trees seemed to
+be burning brighter in Vont's sitting room.
+
+"I will be frank with you, Lady Letitia," he said.  "There has been no
+increase in the value of these shares.  The news which I have expected
+concerning them has not arrived.  The transaction, therefore, is one
+which at the present moment would probably entail a loss.  Do you wish
+me to make your father a present of twenty or thirty thousand pounds?"
+
+She rose deliberately to her feet and shook the few grains of cigarette
+ash from her dress.  The cigarette itself she threw into a laurel bush.
+
+"I understand," she remarked, "what you implied when you said that
+women did not understand business."
+
+Her tone was unhurried, her manner expressed no indignation.  Yet as
+she strolled towards the gate, David felt the colour drained from his
+cheeks, felt the wicker sides of his chair crash in the grip of his
+fingers.  He rose and hurried after her.
+
+"Lady Letitia," he began impulsively--
+
+She turned upon him as though surprised.
+
+"Pray do not trouble to escort me home," she begged.
+
+"It isn't that," he went on, falling into step by her side.  "You make
+me feel like a thief."
+
+"Are you not a thief?" she asked.  "I have been told that nearly all
+very rich men are thieves.  I begin to understand that it may be so."
+
+"It is possible to juggle with money honestly," he assured her.
+
+"It is also possible, I suppose," she observed, with faint sarcasm, "to
+lower the standard of honesty.  Thank you," she added, as she passed
+through the second gate, "you perhaps did not understand me.  I should
+prefer to return alone."
+
+"I am going your way," he insisted desperately.
+
+"My way?" she repeated.  "But there is nowhere to go to, unless you are
+proposing to honour us with a call at Mandeleys."
+
+"I am going in to see old Richard Vont," he said.
+
+She laughed in surprised fashion.
+
+"What, the old man who sits and curses us!  Is he a friend of yours?"
+
+"He was on the steamer, coming home," David reminded her.  "I told you
+so before.  I take an interest in him."
+
+His point now was momentarily gained, and he walked unhindered by her
+side.  The soft twilight had fallen around them, little wreaths of mist
+were floating across the meadows, the birds were all silent.  The
+pathway led through another narrow grove of trees.  As they neared the
+gate, Letitia hesitated.
+
+"I think it is just as near across the meadow," she said.
+
+He held open the gate for her.
+
+"You had better stay on the path," he advised.  "The grass is wet and
+your shoes are thin."
+
+She looked into his face, still hesitating.  Then she swiftly dropped
+her eyes.  The man must be mad!  Nevertheless, she seemed for a moment
+to lose her will.  The gate had fastened behind them with a sharp
+click.  They were in the grove.  The way was very narrow and the fir
+trees almost black.  There was only a glimpse of deep blue sky to be
+seen ahead and in front.  The pigeons rustled their wings, and a great
+owl lumbered across the way.  Something happened to Letitia then which
+had never happened before.  She felt both her hands gripped by a man's,
+felt herself powerless in his grasp.
+
+"Lady Letitia," he exclaimed feverishly, "don't think I'm a fool!  I'll
+not ask for what you haven't got to give--me.  You shall have your
+father's note--you shall have--for him--what will make him free, if
+you'll only treat me like a human being--if you'll be--kind--a little
+kinder."
+
+Her eyes flashed at him through the darkness, yet he could see that one
+thing at least he had achieved.  Her bosom was rising and falling
+quickly, her voice shook as she answered him.  For the first time he
+had penetrated that intolerable reserve.
+
+"Are you mad?" she cried.  "Are you trying to buy me?"
+
+"How else should I win even a kind glance?" he answered bitterly.
+
+"You mistake me for a railroad system," she mocked.
+
+"I have never mistaken you for anything but a woman," was the vibrating
+reply.  "The only trouble is that to me you always posture as something
+else."
+
+His hands were burning upon her wrists, but she showed no resentment.
+
+"Is this the way," she asked, "that Americans woo?  Do they imprison
+the lady of their choice in some retired spot and make a cash offer for
+their affections?  You are at least original, Mr. Thain!"
+
+"If I can't bring myself to ask you in plain words what I am craving
+for," he answered hoarsely, "you can guess why.  I know very well that
+there is only one thing about me that counts in your eyes.  I know that
+I should be only an appendage to the money that would make your father
+happy and Mandeleys free.  And yet I don't care.  I want you--you
+first, and then yourself."
+
+"You have some faith, then, in your eligibility--and your methods of
+persuasion?" she observed.
+
+"Haven't I reason?" he retorted.  "You people here are all filled up
+with rotten, time-exploded notions, bound with silken bonds,
+worshippers of false gods.  You don't see the truth--you don't know it.
+I am not sure that I blame you, for it's a beautiful slavery, and but
+for the ugly realities of life you'd prosper in it and have children
+just as wonderful and just as ignorant.  But, you see, the times are
+changing.  I am one of the signs of them."
+
+"If this were an impersonal discussion," Letitia began, struggling to
+compose her voice--
+
+"But it isn't," he broke in.  "I am speaking of you and of me, and no
+one else.  I'm fool enough to love you, to be mad about you!  Fool
+enough to make you an offer of which any man with a grain of
+self-respect should be ashamed."
+
+"I quite agree with you," she said smoothly.  "Perhaps it will end this
+very interesting little episode if I tell you that I am engaged to
+marry Lord Charles Grantham, and that he is coming down to-morrow."
+
+He released her hands--flung them from him almost.
+
+"Is this the truth?" he demanded.
+
+She laughed lightly.
+
+"Why on earth," she asked, "should I take the trouble to tell you
+anything else?"
+
+He pointed to the path.
+
+"Get on," he ordered.
+
+She found herself obeying him--without resentment, even.  When they
+reached the gate that led into the park, he held it open and remained.
+She hesitated for a moment.
+
+"You are going to leave me to brave the perils of the rest of the
+journey alone?" she asked.
+
+He made no answer.  She lifted her skirts a little, for the dew was
+becoming heavier, and made her graceful way down the slope and across
+the bridge to the postern gate.  Arrived there, she looked round.
+David Thain had vanished back into the grove.
+
+Letitia made her way into her own room and closed the door.  She lit
+both of the candles upon her dressing table, pulled back the lace of
+her sleeves and looked at her wrists.  There were two red marks there,
+red marks which, as she stared at them, seemed suddenly again to feel
+the iron pressure.  She stared at them, half in surprise, without anger
+and yet with a curious emotion.  Suddenly she found that she was
+trembling, obsessed with a strange yet irresistible impulse.  She bent
+down and lightly kissed the flaming marks.  Then she blew out the
+candles, threw herself into the easy-chair which, earlier in the day,
+she had drawn up to the window, and looked steadily back into the park
+now fast becoming a phantasy of shadowland.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+The Marquis, with several account books and Mr. Merridrew, who had
+ridden over from his office on a motor-bicycle, had settled down to a
+laborious evening.  The former, for no particular reason, was enjoying
+a slight relapse into his customary optimism.
+
+"I am not without expectation," the Marquis commenced by explaining to
+his agent, "that at the end of the next two months I may find myself in
+possession of a large sum of money.  Under those circumstances, it will
+not be a purposeless proceeding to work out what is really required in
+the way of repairs on the various farms.  It will be a great pleasure
+for me to meet my tenants in any way possible.  On the whole, I
+consider that they have been very reasonable and loyal."
+
+Mr. Merridrew agreed with his lordship, agreed with him fervently.
+
+"Some of them," he confessed, "have been very troublesome.  A few of
+them have been driven to make some slight repairs themselves, but on
+the whole, your lordship, it would be a great relief if one were able
+to assist them so far as regards positive dilapidations."
+
+The Marquis dipped his pen in the ink and settled down to his task.  At
+that moment, however, Gossett knocked at the door, opened it and
+advanced towards his master with a card upon a salver.
+
+"The gentleman is staying at Fakenham, I believe, sir, and has motored
+over."
+
+The Marquis lifted the card.  "Mr. James Borden" at first conveyed
+nothing to him.  Then he felt a sudden stab of memory.
+
+"The gentleman wishes to see me?" he enquired.
+
+"He begs to be allowed a short interview with your lordship," Gossett
+replied.
+
+"You can show him into the library," was the brief direction.  "Mr.
+Merridrew," he added, turning to the agent, "you can proceed with the
+abstract without me.  I shall return in time to go through the totals
+and learn the family records of the various tenants--I refer, of
+course, to those with which I am not acquainted."
+
+Mr. Merridrew was quite sure that he could manage alone and settled
+down to his task.  The Marquis presently left him and crossed the great
+hall, one of the wonders of Mandeleys, the walls of which were still
+hung with faded reproductions, in ornate tapestry, of mediaeval
+incidents.  From somewhere amongst the shadows came Gossett, who
+gravely took up his stand outside the library.  As though with some
+curious prescience of the fact that this was an unwelcome visitor, his
+bow, as he threw open the door, was lower even than usual.
+
+"Shall I light the lamp, your lordship?" he asked.
+
+The Marquis glanced towards the oriel windows, through which the light
+came scantily, and at the figure of James Borden, advancing now from
+somewhere in the dim recesses of the room--an apartment which remained
+marvellously little altered since the days when it had contained the
+laboriously collected books of a Franciscan order of Monks.
+
+"Perhaps it would be as well, Gossett," his master assented.  "You wish
+to see me?" he added, turning towards his visitor.
+
+James Borden had come posthaste from London, acting upon an impulse
+which had swept him off his feet.  All the way down he had been the
+prey to turbulent thoughts.  A hundred different ways of conducting
+this interview had presented themselves before him with such facility
+that he had come to look upon it as one of the easiest things on earth.
+Yet now the moment had arrived he was conscious of an unexpected
+embarrassment.  The strange tranquillity of the house and this stately
+apartment, the personality of the Marquis himself--serene, slightly
+curious, yet with that indefinable air of good-breeding which magnifies
+the obligations of a host--had a paralysing effect upon him.  He was
+tongue-tied, uncertain of himself.  All the many openings which had
+come to him so readily faded away.
+
+"My name is Borden," he announced.  "I have come here, hoping for a
+short conversation with you."
+
+The Marquis made no immediate reply.  He watched the lighting of a huge
+lamp which Gossett silently placed in the middle of an ebony black
+writing table, to the side of which he had already drawn up two
+high-backed chairs.
+
+"Is there anything else your lordship desires?" the man asked.
+
+"Not at present, Gossett.  I will ring."
+
+The Marquis pointed towards one of the chairs, and seated himself in
+the other.
+
+"I shall be very glad to hear of your business with me, Mr. Borden," he
+said courteously.
+
+His visitor had lost none of his embarrassment.  The Marquis, in his
+old-fashioned dinner clothes, his black stock, the fob which hung from
+his waistcoat, his finely chiselled features, and that mysterious air
+of being entirely in touch with his surroundings, had him at a
+disadvantage from the first.  Borden was wearing the somewhat shabby
+blue serge suit in which he had travelled all day, and which he had
+neglected to brush.  He had been too much in earnest about his mission
+to do more than make the most hasty toilet at the hotel.  The
+high-backed chair, which suited the Marquis so well, was an unfamiliar
+article of furniture to him, and he sat upon it stiffly and without
+ease.  Nevertheless, he reminded himself that he was there--he must say
+what he had come to say.
+
+"I am venturing to address you, Lord Mandeleys," he began, "upon a
+personal subject."
+
+The Marquis raised his eyebrows gently.  It was perhaps a suggestion of
+surprise that a personal subject should exist, lending itself to
+discussion between him and this visitor.
+
+"And before I go any further," the latter continued, "I want to make it
+clear that I am here at my own initiative only--that the other person
+interested is entirely ignorant of my visit."
+
+Mr. Borden paused, and the Marquis made no sign whatever.  He was
+sitting quite upright in his chair, the fingers of his right hand
+toying lazily with an ancient paper knife, fashioned of yellow ivory.
+
+"Nevertheless," the speaker went on, "I wish to tell you that my visit
+is a sequel to a conversation which I had last night with Miss Marcia
+Hannaway, a conversation during which I asked her, not for the first
+time, to be my wife."
+
+The Marquis's fingers ceased to trifle with the paper knife.
+Otherwise, not a muscle of his body or a single twitch of the features
+betrayed any emotion.  Nevertheless, his visitor realised for the first
+time that all his life he had had a wrong conception of this man.  He
+knew quite well that he had altogether underrated the difficulties of
+his task.
+
+"I am taking it for granted," he proceeded, "that you are broad-minded
+enough, Lord Mandeleys, to admit that we can discuss this, or any other
+matter, on terms of equality.  I am unknown to you.  My father was a
+Dean of Peterborough; I was myself at Harrow and Magdalen."
+
+The Marquis's fingers stretched out once more towards the paper knife.
+
+"You mentioned, I believe," he said, "the name of a lady with whom I am
+acquainted."
+
+"I am coming to that," was the eager reply.  "I only wanted to have it
+understood that this was a matter which we could discuss as equals, as
+man to man."
+
+"I am so far from agreeing with you," the Marquis declared calmly,
+"that I prefer to choose my own companions in any discussion, and my
+own subjects.  It happens that you are a stranger to me."
+
+Borden checked a hasty retort, which he realised at once would have
+placed him at a further disadvantage.
+
+"Lord Mandeleys," he said, "I was at first Miss Hannaway's publisher.
+I have become her friend.  I desire to become her husband.  Her whole
+story is known to me, even from the day when you brought her away from
+the Vont cottage and chose her for your companion.  I have watched the
+slow development of her brain, I know how much she has benefited
+intellectually by the forced seclusion entailed upon her by the
+conditions of your friendship.  I realise, however, that the time has
+come when in justice to her gifts, which have not yet reached fruition,
+it is necessary that she should come into closer personal contact with
+the world of which she knows so little.  She can attain that position
+by becoming my wife."
+
+"Really!" his listener murmured, with a faint note of unruffled
+surprise in his tone.
+
+Borden set his teeth.  The task which had seemed to him so easy was
+presenting now a very different appearance.  Nevertheless, he kept an
+iron restraint upon himself.
+
+"I do not wish to weary you," he went on, "by making a long story of
+this.  I am forty-one years old and unmarried.  Marcia Hannaway is the
+first woman whom I have wished to make my wife, and I wish it because
+I--care for her.  I have been her suitor for nine years.  During all
+that time she has given me no word of encouragement.  I have never
+once, until these last few days, been permitted to dine alone with her,
+nor been allowed even the privilege of visiting her at her home.  The
+restrictions upon our intercourse have been, I presume, in obedience to
+your wishes, or to Marcia's interpretation of them."
+
+"If we could come," the Marquis said gently, "to the reason for this
+visit--"
+
+The words supplied the sting that Borden needed.
+
+"I believe," he declared, "that Marcia Hannaway in her heart wishes to
+marry me.  I believe that she cares enough to marry me.  Only a short
+time ago she admitted it, and within twelve hours I received a note,
+retracting all that she had promised."
+
+There was a deep silence throughout the great room.  The faces of the
+two men--a little closer now, for Borden had moved his chair--were both
+under the little circle of lamplight.  For a single second something
+had disturbed the imperturbability of the Marquis's countenance--it
+seemed, indeed, as though some strange finger had humanised it, had
+softened the eyes and drawn apart the lips.  Then the moment passed.
+
+"Are we nearing the end of this discussion, Mr. Borden?"
+
+"Every word brings us nearer the end," was the ready reply.  "I am
+going to tell you the truth as I feel it in my heart.  Marcia would be
+at her best in the life to which I should bring her.  Mentally,
+spiritually and humanly, as my wife she would be happier.  She has
+refused me out of loyalty to you."
+
+"Are you suggesting," the Marquis enquired, "that I should intervene in
+favour of your suit?"
+
+Borden struck the table with the flat of his hand.
+
+"Damn it," he exclaimed, "can't you talk of this like a man!  Don't you
+care enough for Marcia to think a little of her happiness?  I want you
+to let her go--to let her believe, whether it is the truth or not, that
+she is not, as she seems to think, necessary to your life.  Come!  Life
+has its sacrifices as well as its compensations.  You've had the best
+part of a wonderful woman's life.  I am not saying a word about the
+conditions which exist between you.  I don't presume.  If I did, I
+should have to remember that Marcia speaks always of your treatment of
+her with tears of gratitude in her eyes.  But your time has come.
+Marcia has many years to live.  There is something grown up within her
+which you have nothing to do with--a little flame of genius which burns
+there all the time, which at this very moment would be a furnace but
+for the fact of the unnatural life she is forced to lead as
+your--companion.  Now you ask what I've come for, and you know.  I want
+you to forget yourself and to think of the woman who has been your
+faithful and sympathetic companion for all these years.  She hasn't
+come to her own yet.  She can't with you.  She can with me.  Write and
+thank her for what she has given you, and tell her that for the future
+she is free.  She can make her choice then, unfettered by these
+infernal bonds which you have laid around her."
+
+The Marquis turned the lamp a little lower with steady fingers.  The
+necessity for his action was not altogether apparent.
+
+"You suggest, Mr. Borden, if I understand you rightly," he said, "that
+I am now too old and too unintelligent to afford Marcia the stimulating
+companionship which her gifts deserve?"
+
+"There can't be a great sympathy between you," the other declared,
+"and, to be brutal, the place in life which she deserves, and to which
+she aspires, is not open to her under present conditions."
+
+"You allude, I presume," the Marquis said, "to the absence of any legal
+tie between Miss Hannaway and myself?"
+
+"I do," Borden assented.  "The world is a broad-minded place enough,
+but there are differences and backwaters--I am not here to explain them
+to you.  I don't need to.  Marcia Hannaway, married to her publisher,
+going where she will, thinking how she will, meeting whom she will,
+would be a different person to Miss Marcia Hannaway, living in
+isolation in Battersea, with nothing warm nor human in her life
+except--"
+
+"Precisely," the Marquis interrupted, with a little gesture which might
+have concealed--anything.  "I am beginning to grasp your point of view,
+Mr. Borden."
+
+"And your answer?"
+
+"I have no answer to give you, sir.  You have made certain suggestions,
+which I may or may not be prepared to accept.  In any case, matters of
+so much importance scarcely lend themselves to decisions between
+strangers.  I shall probably allude to what you have said when I see or
+write Miss Hannaway."
+
+"You've nothing more to say to me about it, then?" Borden persisted, a
+little wistfully.
+
+"Nothing whatever!  You may possibly consider my attitude selfish," the
+Marquis added, "but I find myself wholly indifferent to your interests
+in this matter."
+
+"I should be able to reconcile myself even to that," was the grim
+reply, "if I have been able to penetrate for a single moment that
+accursed selfishness of yours--if I have been able to make you think,
+for however short a time, of Marcia's future instead of your own."
+
+The Marquis rose without haste from his place, and rang the bell.
+
+"You will permit me, Mr. Borden," he invited, "to offer you some
+refreshments?"
+
+"Thank you, I desire nothing."
+
+The Marquis pointed to the door, by which Gossett was standing.
+
+"That, then, I think, concludes our interview," he said, with icy
+courtesy.
+
+Mr. Borden walked the full length of the very long apartment, suffered
+himself to be respectfully conducted across the great hall, out on to
+the flags and into the motor-car which he had hired in Fakenham.  It
+was not until he was on his way through the park that he opened his
+lips and found them attuned to blasphemy.  At the top of the gentle
+slope, however, where the car was brought to a standstill while the
+driver opened the iron gate, he turned back and looked at Mandeleys,
+looked at its time-worn turrets, its mullioned windows, the Norman
+chapel, the ruined cloisters, the ivy-covered west wing, the beautiful
+Elizabethan chimneys.  A strange, heterogeneous mass of architecture,
+yet magnificent, in its way impressive, almost inspiring.  He looked at
+the little cottage almost at its gates, from which a thin, spiral
+column of smoke was ascending.  Perhaps in those few seconds, and with
+the memory of that interview still rankling, he felt a glimmering of
+real understanding.  Something which had always been incomprehensible
+to him in Marcia's story stood more or less revealed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+The Marquis, if he had been a keen physiognomist, might perhaps have
+read all that he had come to London to know in Marcia's expression as
+he made his unexpected entrance into her sitting room on the following
+day.  She was seated at her desk, with a great pile of red roses on one
+side of her, and a secretary, to whom she was dictating, on the other.
+She swung round in her chair and for a moment was speechless.  She
+looked at her visitor incredulously, a little helplessly, with some
+traces of an emotion which puzzled him.  Her greeting, however, was
+hearty enough.  She sprang to her feet and held out both her hands.
+
+"My dear man, how unlike you!  Really, I think that I like surprises.
+Give me both your hands--so!  Let me look at you."
+
+"I should have warned you of my coming," he said, raising the
+ink-stained fingers which he was clasping to his lips, "but to tell you
+the truth it was a caprice."
+
+"I thought you were in the country, at Mandeleys!" she exclaimed.
+
+"I was," he replied.  "I have motored up from there this morning.  I
+came to see you."
+
+She dismissed her secretary, gazed at herself in the glass and made a
+grimace.
+
+"And a nice sight I look!  Never mind.  Fancy motoring up from
+Mandeleys!  What time did you start?"
+
+"At six o'clock," he answered, with a little smile.  "It was somewhat
+before my regular hour for rising.  If you have no other arrangements,
+I should be glad if you would take luncheon with me."
+
+"Bless the man, of course I will!" she assented, passing her arm
+through his and leading him to a chair.  "You are not looking quite so
+well as you ought to after a breath of country air."
+
+"I am passing through a time of some anxiety," he acknowledged.
+
+She remained on the side of his chair, still holding his arm.  The
+Marquis sank back with a little air of relief.  There seemed to be
+something different, something warmer in the world.  He was moved by a
+rare and unaccountable impulse--he drew her towards him and kissed her
+lips.
+
+"I had a birthday last week," he said, with a very slight smile.  "I
+think that it affected me.  One begins to wonder after one has passed
+middle age, not what there is to look forward to, but how much it is
+worth while enduring."
+
+"Of course," she declared, with a grimace, "you've been diving into
+musty old volumes at Mandeleys and reading the mutterings of one of
+those primitive philosophers who growled at life from a cave."
+
+"I have found myself a little lonely at Mandeleys," he confessed.
+
+"But this visit to London," she persisted.  "Is it business?  Is there
+anything wrong?"
+
+"I came to see you."
+
+"My head is going round," she declared.  "This is Wednesday.  Besides,
+I thought you were going to stay away until I wrote you--not that I
+wanted you to."
+
+"I changed my mind," he told her, "in consequence of a visit which I
+received yesterday from a Mr. James Borden."
+
+She gave vent to an exclamation of dismay.
+
+"You mean that Jimmy has been down to see you?"
+
+"If Jimmy and Mr. James Borden are identical," the Marquis replied, a
+little stiffly, "he undoubtedly has."
+
+She looked at him helplessly.
+
+"Oh, dear," she exclaimed, "how could he be so foolish!"
+
+"He wanted, it seems," the Marquis continued, "to have what he called a
+man-to-man talk.  I am not the sort of person, as you know, Marcia, who
+appreciates man-to-man talks with strangers.  I listened to all that he
+had to say, and because I gathered that he was your friend, I was
+polite to him.  That is all.  He gave me to understand that he was your
+suitor."
+
+"He'd no right to tell you anything of the sort," she declared, "but in
+a sense I suppose it is true.  He wants me to marry him.  It's most
+fearfully unsettling.  But that he should come to you!  I wish he
+hadn't, Reginald."
+
+"It appeared to me to be a quixotic action," the Marquis assented.
+"However, indirectly it has been conducive of good--it has brought me a
+great pleasure.  I have missed you very much, Marcia.  I am very happy
+to be here again, for however short a time."
+
+"You are going back, then, to Mandeleys?"
+
+"When we part, directly after luncheon.  I have guests arriving there
+to-night--my sister and Grantham, and I believe some others.  But after
+my talk with Borden, or rather his talk to me, I felt that I must see
+you."
+
+"Well, I've missed you," she confessed frankly.  "I seem to have had
+lots to do, and I have been going to the theatres, and I have quite
+made up my mind to write a play.  But I have missed you.--Shall I go
+and put on my hat?"
+
+"If you will," he answered.  "We can talk in the car and at luncheon."
+
+The Marquis watched her cross the room and sighed.  At thirty-nine, he
+thought, she was wonderfully young.  Her figure was a little more
+mature, but in all other respects she seemed only to have found poise
+and assurance with the passing years.  He leaned back in his chair
+almost with a sense of luxury.  He was back again in the atmosphere
+which had kept him young, the atmosphere which unconsciously had hung
+around him and kept him warm and contented--kept him, too, from looking
+over the edge into strange places.  The room was deliciously feminine,
+notwithstanding a certain fascinating disorder.  There were magazines,
+Reviews and illustrated papers everywhere in evidence, an open box of
+cigarettes upon the chimneypiece, an armful of flowers thrown loose
+upon the table, as well as the roses upon her desk.  One of her gloves
+lay upon a chair by the side of a pile of proofs.  It seemed to him
+that there were some new photographs on the mantelpiece, but his own,
+in the uniform of his county yeomanry, still occupied the central
+position.  There were songs upon the piano; on the sideboard a silver
+cocktail shaker, and, as he noticed with a little pang, two glasses.
+Nevertheless, he sat there waiting in great content until Marcia came
+in, dressed for the street.  She was followed by a servant with some
+ice upon a tray, and bottles.
+
+"Now for my new vice," she exclaimed gaily, taking up the cocktail
+shaker and half filling it with ice.  "You are not going to be
+obstinate, are you?"
+
+"I shall take anything you may give me, with great pleasure," he
+assured her, a little stiffly.
+
+She saw him looking at the second glass, and laughed.
+
+"It is Phyllis Grant who is responsible for this," she explained.  "She
+lives in the next flat, you know, and she comes in most days, either
+before luncheon or before dinner, for an apéritif and a cigarette."
+
+The Marquis's face cleared.  He drank his cocktail and pronounced it
+delicious.  On the threshold he paused and looked back.
+
+"I like your little room, Marcia," he said.  "I find it a strange thing
+to confess, but there is nowhere else in the world where I feel quite
+as much at home, quite as contented, as I do here."
+
+She seemed almost startled, for a moment unresponsive.  Such a speech
+was so unlike him that it seemed impossible that he could be in
+earnest.  She walked down the stairs by his side with a new gravity in
+her face.  Perhaps he noticed it.  At any rate, as soon as they were
+seated in the car he began to talk to her.
+
+"The object of Mr. Borden's visit to me, I gathered, was to impress
+upon me the fact that by marrying him you would gain many advantages
+from which you are at present debarred.  I naturally made no comment,
+nor did I argue the matter with him.  I have come to you."
+
+She sat silent in her corner.  Her eyes were fixed upon a nursemaid,
+with two or three young children, passing by.  Suddenly she touched her
+companion on the arm and pointed to them.
+
+"There is that, you know," she faltered.
+
+The Marquis nodded.
+
+"My great fear," he continued, "is that sometimes I am too much
+inclined to treat you as a contemporary, and to forget that you have
+never known those things which are a part of every woman's life.  I
+must give Mr. Borden the credit for having had the good taste not to
+mention them."
+
+"Oh, Jimmy isn't a cad," she answered, "but, without mentioning them, I
+cannot understand what he came to you for.  As regards the other things
+you have spoken of, I don't care a rap about them, in fact I love my
+independence.  I go where I choose, I have found no one indisposed to
+make my acquaintance, and the more I see of life--such life as comes to
+me--the more I love it.  When Jim--Mr. Borden--uses such arguments, he
+bores me.  They are directly against him instead of for him.  If I were
+Mrs. James Borden, people would leave cards upon me and I should have
+to eat dinners with fellow-publishers' wives, and exchange calls, and
+waste many hours of my life in all the tomfoolery of middle-class
+respectable living.  It doesn't appeal to me, Reginald.  He is an idiot
+not to realise it."
+
+"What does appeal to you, then?" he asked.
+
+"That," she answered, moving her head backwards.
+
+They crossed Battersea Bridge in silence.
+
+"It's such a silly, ordinary problem," she went on presently, "and yet
+it's so difficult.  It's either now or never, you know, Reginald.  I
+shall say good-by to the thirties before long."
+
+"It is your problem," he said sadly, "not mine."
+
+She held his fingers in hers.
+
+"If only, when we were both so much younger," she sighed, "we had had a
+little more courage.  But I was so ignorant, and there was so much
+else, too, to distract.  I shall never forget our first few months of
+travel--Paris, the Riviera, Italy.  I was impressionable, too, and I
+loved it all so--the colour and the beauty, the rich, warm stream of
+life, after that wretched village school.  I was so aching to
+understand, and you were such a good tutor.  You fed my brain
+wonderfully.  Oh, I suppose I ought to be content!"
+
+"And I," he murmured, "I, too, ought to be ready to creep into my own
+little shelter and be content with--memories."
+
+"Ah, no!" she protested, laying her hand upon his.  "If you feel like
+that, it is ended.--Now come, this is a gala day.  You have come so far
+to see me.  I am seriously flattered.  You must be starved, too.  Not
+another word until we have lunched."
+
+At Trewly's their entrance produced a mild sensation.  Their usual
+table was fortunately unoccupied.  The manager himself welcomed them
+with many compliments.  Marcia glanced around her a little listlessly.
+
+"There is something rather mausoleum-like about this restaurant in the
+daytime," she declared.  "Won't you take me somewhere else one day,
+Reginald?"
+
+"Why not?" he answered.  "It is for you to choose."
+
+"There are some queer, foreign little places," she went on hastily.
+"The things to eat, perhaps, are not so good, but the people seem
+alive.  There is an air here, isn't there, of faded splendour about the
+decorations and the people, too."
+
+"I will make enquiries," the Marquis promised.
+
+"Don't," she begged.  "You must leave it to me.  I will find somewhere.
+And now let us be serious, Reginald.  Here we are come to rather a late
+crisis in our lives.  Tell me, how much do I really mean to you?  Am I
+just a habit, or have you really in the background memories and
+thoughts about me which you seldom express?"
+
+He leaned across the table.
+
+"I will confess," he said, "that I have been surprised, during the last
+few days, to discover how much you do mean to me, Marcia.  Your quicker
+apprehension, perhaps, finds fault with me, rebels against the too
+great passivity of my appreciation.  You have been the refuge of my
+life.  Perhaps I have accepted too much and given too little.  That is
+what may reasonably happen when there is a disparity in years and
+vitality as great as exists between us.  What seemed to you to be
+habit, Marcia, is really peace.  I have forgotten what I should always
+have remembered--that you are still young."
+
+Her eyes glistened as she looked at him.  A ray of sunshine which found
+its way through an overhead window was momentarily unkind.  The lines
+under his eyes, the wrinkles in his face, the thinning of his hair,
+were all a little more apparent.  Marcia was conscious of an unworthy,
+a hateful feeling, a sensation of which she was hideously ashamed.  And
+yet, though her voice shook, there was still self-pity in her heart.
+
+"I am so glad that you came," she said.  "I am so glad that you have
+spoken to me like this.  You need have no fear.  Those other things
+were born of just a temperamental fancy.  They will pass.  Be to me
+just what you have been.  I shall be satisfied."
+
+A cloud passed over the sun.  His face was once more in the shadow, and
+curiously enough her fancy saw him through strangely different eyes.
+Age seemed to pass, although something of the helpless wistfulness
+remained.  It was the pleading of a boy, the eager hope of a child, of
+which she suddenly seemed conscious.
+
+"Do you think that you can be happy--as things are, Marcia?" he asked.
+"Your friend, Mr. Borden, doesn't think so.  He came down--he was just
+a little melodramatic, I think--hoping to incite me to a great
+sacrifice.  I was to play the part of the self-denying hero.  I was to
+give away the thing I loved, for its own sake.  I had no fancy for the
+rôle, Marcia."
+
+"And I should hate you in it, dear," she assured him. "Mr. James 
+Borden will always be a dear friend, but he must learn what every 
+one else in the world has had to learn--a lesson of self-denial.
+He will find some one else."
+
+"I am not jealous of the man," the Marquis said.  "I am jealous of just
+one thought that his coming may have brought into your brain--one
+instinct."
+
+"Don't be," she begged.  "It will go just as it came.  It is part of a
+woman's nature, I suppose.  Every now and then it tortures."
+
+Luncheon was served excellently but without undue haste.  They fell to
+discussing lighter topics.
+
+"You will be interested to hear," he told her, "that my daughter
+Letitia is engaged to be married to Charles Grantham.  I am quite
+expecting that by Christmas I shall be alone.  I find Letitia a
+charming and dutiful companion," he went on, "but I must confess that I
+look forward to her marriage with some satisfaction.  It has occurred
+to me that if it suited your work, we might travel for a time, or
+rather settle down--in Italy, if you prefer it.  There is so much there
+to keep one always occupied.  In Florence, for instance, one commences
+a new education every spring."
+
+"I should love it," she answered, with an enthusiasm which still lacked
+something.
+
+"A villa somewhere on the slopes of Fiesole," he continued, "with a
+garden, a real Italian garden, with fountains and statuary, and
+straight paths, and little strips of deep lawn, and a few cypress
+trees.  And there must be a view of Florence.  I think that you would
+work well there, Marcia.  If things go as I expect, I thought that we
+might leave England about Christmas-time, and loiter a little on the
+Riviera till the season for the cold winds has passed.  Browning wrote
+of the delights of an English spring, but he lived in Florence."
+
+"There is so much there that I am longing to see again," she murmured.
+
+"You shall see it all," he promised.  "If you wish, you shall live with
+it.  I do not know whether there is anything strange about me," he went
+on, after a moment's hesitation, "but I must confess that I find myself
+a little out of touch with modern English life.  The atmosphere of my
+sister's house, for instance, invariably repels me.  The last
+generation was amused by the efforts of those without just claims to
+penetrate into the circles of their social superiors.  To-day the
+reverse seems to be the case.  The men, and the women especially, of my
+order, seem to be perpetually struggling to imitate the manners and
+weaknesses of a very interesting but irresponsible world of Bohemia.  I
+find myself with few friends, nowadays.  The freedom and yet the
+isolation of foreign life, therefore, perhaps appeals to me all the
+more.
+
+"But you would not care to leave Mandeleys, surely?"
+
+"My dear Marcia," he said, "I am possessed, perhaps, of a peculiar
+temperament, but I can assure you that Mandeleys is spoiled for me so
+long as that--that ridiculous old man--you will forgive me--your
+father, sits at the end of his garden, invoking curses upon my head.
+To every one except myself, the humour of the situation is obvious.  To
+me there is something else which I cannot explain.  Whether it is a
+presentiment, a fear, an offence to my dignity, I cannot tell.  I have
+spent all the spare money I have in the world trying to get that Vont
+cottage back again into the family estates, but I have failed.  Really,
+your father might just as well have Mandeleys itself."
+
+"You know that I went to see him?" she asked.
+
+"I remember your telling me that you were going," he replied.
+
+"My mission was a dismal failure," she confessed.  "I felt as though I
+were talking to a stranger, and he looked as though he were speaking to
+a Jezebel.  We stood in different worlds, and called to one another
+over the gulf in different languages."
+
+"Perhaps," the Marquis sighed, "it is as well that he is your father.
+The other morning I passed down the fencing gallery and examined my
+father's collection of rifles.  There was one there with a range of six
+hundred yards, which was supposed in those days to be marvellous, and
+some cartridges which fitted it.  The window was open.  You think,
+Marcia, that I am too placid for impulses, yet I can assure you that I
+slipped a cartridge into the magazine of that rifle, closed it, and
+knelt down before the open window.  I held your father covered by the
+sight until I could have shrieked.  Then I turned away and fired at a
+log of wood in the park.  I found the bullet afterwards, half a foot
+deep in the centre of it."
+
+She shivered a little.
+
+"For heaven's sake, don't go near that fencing gallery again!" she
+begged.--"You see the time?"
+
+He rose to his feet, and they passed down the restaurant together.
+Outside, the car was waiting.
+
+"Will you think me very discourteous," he asked, "if I send you back in
+a taxicab?  I shall be hard pushed, as it is, to reach home before my
+guests."
+
+"Of course," she assented.
+
+He stood for a moment after she had taken her place in the vehicle,
+with her hand in his.
+
+"My visit," he whispered, "has made me very happy."
+
+She looked at him through a mist of unexpected tears.
+
+"Come to me soon," she begged a little abruptly.  "I shall want you."
+
+"Early next month," he promised, "or, if you send for me, before."
+
+She seemed restless, indisposed to let him go.  "I wish you weren't
+going away at all," she declared with unusual fervour.  "I wish--Come
+back with me now, won't you?  Do!"
+
+For a moment he hesitated.  He felt an extraordinary impulse to throw
+everything on one side and accept her invitation.  The crisis passed,
+however, before he could yield.  Marcia, with a little laugh, became
+her normal self.
+
+"What an idiot I am!" she exclaimed good-humouredly.  "Of course, you
+must get down to Mandeleys as quickly as you can.  Good-by!"
+
+She threw herself back in the corner of the taxicab and waved her
+farewells.  The Marquis stood for a moment bareheaded upon the
+pavement.  He watched the vehicle until it became lost in the stream of
+traffic.  The impulse of a few moments ago was stronger than ever,
+linked now, too, with an intolerable sense of depression.  It was with
+an extraordinary effort of will that he took his place in his own car
+and motioned the chauffeur to proceed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+The Duchess walked with Letitia in the high-walled garden at Mandeleys,
+on the morning after her arrival.  She appeared to be in a remarkably
+good temper.
+
+"I have not the least intention of boring myself, my dear Letitia," she
+said, in reply to some conventional remark of her niece's.  "So long as
+I get plenty of fresh air during the day, good plain food, and my
+bridge between tea and dinner, I am always contented.  Let me see," she
+went on, coming to a standstill and pointing with her stick to the
+little belt of tall elm trees and the fir plantation behind, "Broomleys
+is that way, isn't it?  Yes, I can see the house."
+
+Letitia nodded, but only glanced in the direction her aunt indicated.
+
+"And Mr. Thain?  Do you find him a pleasant neighbour?"
+
+Letitia looked deliberately the other way.  It was just as well that
+her aunt should not see the flash in her eyes.
+
+"We do not see much of him," she replied.  "He gallops round the park
+every day like a lunatic, and he spends a great deal of time, I think,
+in his car."
+
+"My dear," the Duchess said impressively, "David Thain may have his
+peculiarities, but he is really a most simple and sincere person.  I
+was attracted to him upon the steamer simply because of his shyness,
+and a good thing for you, dear, that I was.  It must make quite a
+difference to have Broomleys properly let to a man who can pay a good
+rent for it."
+
+"We have never denied that," Letitia admitted drily.  "We are keeping
+house now upon the first quarter's rent."
+
+"Is it my fancy," her aunt continued, stooping to pick herself a sprig
+of lavender, "or do you really dislike Mr. Thain?"
+
+"Intensely!" Letitia confessed with emphasis.
+
+The Duchess was surprised.
+
+"Well, really!" she exclaimed.  "And to me he seems such a harmless,
+inoffensive person, absolutely without self-consciousness and not in
+the least bumptious."
+
+"What on earth has he to be bumptious about?" Letitia scoffed.  "He has
+simply made a lot of money out of other people."
+
+"That shows brains, at least," her aunt reminded her.
+
+"Cunning!" Letitia retorted.
+
+The Duchess twirled the sprig of lavender between her fingers.  She
+could not remember ever to have heard her niece so much in earnest.
+
+"Well, I hope you don't feel too strongly about him," she said.  "I
+must have him asked to dinner while I am here."
+
+"We have anticipated your wishes," Letitia remarked.  "He is coming
+to-night."
+
+"I am very glad to hear it," was the satisfied reply.  "I shall do my
+best to persuade him to come up to Scotland later on.  There is nothing
+that Henry enjoys more than a little flutter in American railways.
+Perhaps he will help us to make some money."
+
+"Personally," Letitia said slowly, "I should be very careful how I
+trusted Mr. Thain."
+
+The Duchess was shocked.
+
+"You carry your aversions too far, my dear," she remonstrated.
+
+"Perhaps, I only know that he sold father a lot of shares which it is
+my profound conviction are entirely worthless."
+
+"Sold your father shares?" the Duchess repeated.  "I don't understand.
+How on earth could Reginald pay for any shares!"
+
+"He gave what is called an acceptance," Letitia explained.  "It falls
+due in about six weeks."
+
+The Duchess smiled.  She had a great idea of her own capacity for
+business.
+
+"My dear," she said, "if between now and then the shares have not
+improved sufficiently for your father to make a profitable sale, Mr.
+Thain can extend the time of payment by renewing the bill."
+
+"You have more confidence in Mr. Thain than I have," Letitia remarked
+drily.
+
+Her aunt was a little puzzled.  She decided to change the conversation.
+
+"Where is Charles this morning?" she enquired.
+
+"In the library with father.  They are discussing possible settlements.
+I thought that sort of thing was always left to lawyers."
+
+"I hope you are happier about your marriage than you seem," her aunt
+observed.  "Charles is quite a _parti_, in a way, you know, although he
+is not rich."
+
+"Oh, I suppose it may as well be Charles as any one else," Letitia
+assented, a little drearily.
+
+The Duchess shook her head.
+
+"You need a change, my dear," she declared.  "I hate to hear you talk
+like that, especially as you are by way of being one of those
+single-minded young persons who must find everything in marriage or
+else be profoundly unhappy.  I am not at all sure that you ought to
+have considered the question of marriage until you were in love."
+
+"Thank you," Letitia retorted, "I have a horror of being an old maid."
+
+Her aunt sighed.
+
+"Now I come to think of it," she went on reminiscently, "there is a
+curious streak of fidelity, isn't there, in your father's character.
+You must take after him.  It ought to make you very careful, Letitia.
+I don't want to say a word against Charles, but he doesn't carry his
+head quite so high as you do, you know.  When are you going to announce
+your engagement?"
+
+"As soon as he leaves here, I think."
+
+"Hm!  Is Charlie very much in love with you?"
+
+"If he is, he hasn't mentioned it," Letitia observed.  "Nowadays, men
+seem to reserve that sort of protestation for their musical comedy
+friends, and suggest a joint establishment, as a matter of mutual
+convenience, to us."
+
+"Bitter, my dear--very bitter for your years!" her aunt sighed.
+
+"What would you like to do this morning?" Letitia asked, abruptly
+changing the subject.
+
+"I shall amuse myself," was the prompt reply.  "First of all, I am
+going to undertake a little mission on Reginald's account.  I am going
+over to talk to that ridiculous old man Vont.  Afterwards, I shall walk
+across to Broomleys."
+
+"Most improper!" Letitia remarked.
+
+"My dear," her aunt reminded her, "I am nearly forty years old,
+although no one in the world would guess it if it were not for those
+wretched Court Guides.  I look upon Mr. Thain as a sort of protégé of
+mine, and I have an idea that you are not being so nice to him as you
+might be."
+
+"I do my best," Letitia replied, "and I really don't think he has
+anything to complain of."
+
+The Duchess parted from her niece as they neared the house and
+proceeded to pay her first visit.  She crossed the moat by the little
+handbridge, walked briskly across the intervening strip of park, and
+approached the little enclosure in which the cottage was situated.
+Richard Vont, seated in his usual corner of the garden, remained
+motionless at her approach.  He neither rose nor offered any sort of
+greeting.
+
+"Good morning, Vont," she said briskly, as she reached the paling.
+
+He was looking at her fixedly from underneath his bushy grey eyebrows.
+He sat bolt upright in his chair, and he kept his hat upon his head.
+
+"What do you want?" he demanded.
+
+"My good man," she remonstrated, "you might as well be civil.  Why
+don't you stand up and take off your hat?  You know who I am."
+
+"Yes, I know who you are," he replied, without moving.  "You are
+Caroline, Duchess of Winchester.  I keep my hat upon my head because I
+owe you no respect and I feel none.  As to asking you in, no one of
+your family will ever, of my will, step inside these palings."
+
+"You are a very obstinate old man, Vont," she said severely.
+
+"I am what the Lord made me."
+
+"Well," she continued, leaning slightly against the paling and looking
+down at him, "I came down here to say a few words to you, and I shall
+say them, unless you run away.  You are one of those simple, ignorant
+men, Vont, who love to nurse an imaginary injustice until the idea that
+you have been wronged becomes so fixed in your brain that you haven't
+room for anything else there.  This behaviour of yours, you know, is
+perfectly ridiculous."
+
+Vont made no sign even of having heard her.  She continued.
+
+"You haven't even a grievance.  My brother took your daughter away from
+her home.  Under some conditions, that would have been a very
+reprehensible thing.  As things turned out, it has been the making of
+the young woman.  She has received a wonderful education, has been
+taken abroad, and has been treated with respect and consideration by
+every one.  My brother has devoted a considerable portion of his
+lifetime to ensuring her happiness.  She is now a contented, clever,
+talented and respected woman.  If she had remained here, she would
+probably have become the wife-drudge of a farmer or a local tradesman.
+You are listening, Richard Vont?"
+
+"Yes, I am listening!"
+
+"If the Marquis had betrayed your daughter, taken her away and deserted
+her," she continued, "there might have been some justification for this
+theatrical attitude of yours.  Under the present circumstances, there
+is none at all.  Why don't you rid yourself of the idea, once for all,
+that you or your daughter have suffered any wrong?  You've only a few
+years to live.  Take up your work again.  There is plenty to be done
+here.  Go and mix with your old friends and live like a reasonable man.
+This brooding attitude of yours is all out of date.  Put your Bible
+away, light a pipe, and set to work and kill some of the rabbits.  The
+farmers are always complaining."
+
+"You have a niece up yonder," Vont said, knitting his shaggy grey
+eyebrows and gazing steadfastly at his visitor, "a well-looking young
+woman, they say--Lady Letitia Thursford.  Would you like her to live
+with a man and not be married to him?"
+
+"Of course," the Duchess replied, "that is simply impertinent.  If you
+are going to compare the doings of your very excellent yeomen stock
+with the doings of the Thursfords, you are talking and thinking like a
+fool.  A few hundred years ago, it would have been your duty to have
+offered your womenkind to your master when you paid your rent.  We have
+changed all that, quite properly, but not all the socialists who ever
+breathed, or all the democratic teachings you may have imbibed in
+America, can entitle you to talk of the Vonts and the Thursfords in the
+same breath."
+
+The old man rose slowly to his feet.  He leaned a little upon his
+stick, and pointed to Mandeleys.
+
+"You are an ignorant, shameless woman," he said.  "Get you home and
+read your Bible.  If you want a last word to carry away with you, here
+it is.  My daughter was just as much to me as the young woman who
+walked yonder with you in the garden is to her father.  Let him
+remember that."
+
+"But, you foolish person," she expostulated, "Lady Letitia enjoys all
+the advantages to which her station entitles her.  Your daughter, with
+a mind and intelligence very much superior to her position, was
+employed in the miserable drudgery of teaching village children."
+
+"Honest work," he replied, "hurts no one, unless they are full of
+sickly fancies.  It's idleness that brings sin.  They tell me you've
+new creeds amongst those in your walk of life, and a new manner of
+living.  Live as you will, then, but let others do the same.  I stand
+by the Book, and maybe, when your last days come, you will be sorry you
+cast it aside."
+
+"So far as I remember," she reminded him, "the chief teaching of that
+Book is forgiveness."
+
+"Your memory fails you, then," he answered grimly, "for what the Book
+preaches is justice to poor and rich alike."
+
+The Duchess sighed.  She was a good-hearted woman and full of
+confidence, but she recognised her limitations.
+
+"My good man," she said, "I shall not argue with you any more.  You
+won't believe it, but you are simply narrow and pig-headed and
+obstinate, and you won't believe that there may be a grain of reason in
+anybody else's point of view but your own.  Just look at yourself!  You
+can't be more than sixty-five or so, and you might be a hundred!  You
+sit there nursing your grievance and thinking about it, while your
+whole life is running to seed.  Why don't you get up and be a human
+being?  Send for your daughter to come down and look after you--she'd
+come--and choke it all down.  Put the Book away for a time, or read a
+little more of the New Testament and a little less of the Old.  Come,
+will you be sensible, and I'll come in and shake hands with you, and
+we'll write your daughter together."
+
+Vont was still leaning on his stick.  Save that his eyebrows were drawn
+a little closer together, his expression was unchanged.  Yet his
+visitor, though the sunshine was all around them, shivered.
+
+"Did he send you here?"
+
+"Of course not," she replied.  "I came of my own accord.  I remembered
+the days when you used to take me rabbiting and let me shoot a pheasant
+if there was no one about.  You were a sensible, well-balanced man
+then.  I came, hoping to find that there was a little of the old
+Richard Vont left in you."
+
+"There is just enough of the old Richard Vont left," he said, "to send
+you back to where you came from, with a message, if you care to carry
+it.  Tell him--your brother, the Lord of Mandeleys--that I am not
+sitting here of idle purpose, that I don't hear the voices around me
+for nothing, that I don't look day and night at Mandeleys for nothing.
+Tell him to make the most of the sun that shines to-day and the soft
+bed he lies on to-night and the woman he kisses to-morrow, for he is
+very close to the end.  I am an old man, but I'm here to see the end.
+It has been promised."
+
+The Duchess, brimful of common sense and good humour, brave as a lion
+and ready of tongue as she was, felt a little giddy, and clung to the
+rail as she crossed the little bridge over the moat.  She looked back
+only once.  Richard Vont remained standing just as she had left
+him--grim, motionless, menacing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+The Marquis glanced at the note which was handed to him at luncheon
+time, frowned slightly and handed it across to Letitia.
+
+"What have you people been doing to Thain?" he asked a little
+irritably.  "He doesn't want to come to dinner."
+
+The Duchess and Sylvia, who had just arrived on her projected visit,
+made no attempt to conceal their disappointment.  Letitia picked, up
+the note and read it indifferently.
+
+"I am very sorry, aunt," she said.  "I gave him all the notice I could."
+
+"There is perhaps some misunderstanding," the Marquis remarked.  "In
+any case, he would not know that you were here for so short a time,
+Caroline.  After luncheon I will walk across and see him."
+
+"I will go with you," the Duchess decided.  "I should like to see
+Broomleys again.  As a matter of fact, I meant to go there this
+morning, but I found one call enough for me."
+
+They took their coffee in the garden.  Letitia followed her father to a
+rose bush which he had crossed the lawn to examine.
+
+"Dad," she asked, passing her hand through his arm, "have you had any
+good news?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because you look so much better.  I think that motoring must agree
+with you."
+
+He patted her hand.
+
+"I rather enjoyed the drive," he admitted.  "As a matter of fact,
+perhaps I am better," he went on.
+
+"You haven't any good news about the shares, I suppose?" she asked
+hesitatingly.
+
+For a moment he was grave.
+
+"I have no news at all," he confessed, "or rather what news I have is
+not good.  I put an enquiry through an independent firm of stockbrokers
+with whom I have had some transactions; and their reply coincided with
+the information already afforded to me."
+
+Letitia glanced across the park, and her face darkened.
+
+"Has it ever struck you," she asked, "that there is something peculiar
+about Mr. Thain in his attitude towards us--as a family, I mean?"
+
+The Marquis shook his head.
+
+"On the contrary," he replied, "I have always considered his deportment
+unimpeachable."
+
+Letitia hesitated, pulled a rose to pieces and turned back with her
+father towards where the Duchess was reclining in a wicker chair.
+
+"I dare say it's my fancy.  Why don't you all go," she suggested, "and
+take Mr. Thain by storm?  He can scarcely resist you, aunt, and Sylvia."
+
+"Why don't you come yourself?" the Duchess asked.
+
+"My duty lies here," Letitia observed, with a little smile towards
+Grantham, who had just strolled up with Sylvia.
+
+The Duchess rose to her feet.
+
+"Dear me, yes!" she acquiesced.  "You two had better go off and have a
+long country walk.  If I sit for long after luncheon, I always go to
+sleep; so come along, Reginald, we'll beard the lion in his den."
+
+The Marquis glanced towards Sylvia, but she shook her head.
+
+"I must see after my unpacking," she said, "but I should very much like
+Mr. Thain to come.  Do try to persuade him."
+
+The Duchess and her brother strolled up the garden and out of the
+postern gate into the park.
+
+"That's a terrible old man of yours, Reginald," the former observed,
+glancing over her shoulder.  "I never came across such a person off the
+boards at Drury Lane."
+
+"He is an infernal nuisance," the Marquis grumbled.  "It seems absurd,
+but he gets on my nerves.  Day by day, there he sits, wet or fine.  You
+can't see his lips move, but you can always feel sure that he is
+hunting up choice bits of damnation out of the Old Testament and
+hurling them across at me."
+
+"I have come to the conclusion," his sister decided, "that he is out of
+his mind.  An ignorant man who lives with one idea all his life is apt
+to lose his reason.  He has never attempted any violence, has he?"
+
+"Never," the Marquis replied, "but since you have mentioned it,
+Caroline, I always have a queer sensation when I am that side of the
+house.  It is just about the distance to be picked off nicely with a
+rifle.  I can't think why he doesn't do it--why he contents himself
+with abuse."
+
+"I am going to consult Mr. Thain about him," his companion said.  "A
+man of his robust common sense is much more likely to influence a
+lunatic like Vont than you or I.--So this is where our millionaire
+hermit is hidden," she went on, as they reached the gate.  "Dear me,
+the place has changed!"
+
+"It will soon be in order again," the Marquis observed.  "Thain has a
+dozen men at work in the grounds, and he is having the rooms done up,
+one by one.  He lives in the library, I think, and the bedroom over it."
+
+They passed through the plantation and into the gardens.  Thain was
+there, talking to one of the workmen.  He came to meet them with a
+somewhat forced smile of welcome upon his lips.
+
+"This is very unexpected," he declared, as he shook hands.  "I should
+have called upon you this afternoon, Duchess."
+
+"I should think so!" she replied severely.  "Will you be so good as to
+tell me at once what you mean by refusing my niece's invitation to
+dine?"
+
+He hesitated for a moment, then he smiled.  There was something very
+attractive about his visitor's frank directness of speech and manner.
+
+"I refused," he admitted, glancing around to where the Marquis was
+engaged in conversation with a gardener, "because I didn't want to
+come."
+
+"But I am there, you stupid person!" she reminded him.  "You are
+invited to dine with me!  I know you don't get on with Lady Letitia,
+and I know you don't like large parties, but there are only half a
+dozen of us there, and I promise you my whole protection.  Show me
+something at once.  I want to talk to you.  Those Dorothy Perkins roses
+will do, at the other end of the lawn."
+
+He walked in silence by her side.  She waited until they were well out
+of earshot.
+
+"David Thain," she said, "have I shown an interest in you or have I
+not?"
+
+"You have been extraordinarily kind," he confessed.
+
+"And in return," she continued, "you have decided to avoid me.  I won't
+have it.  Are you afraid that I might want you to make love to me?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"I am sure you wouldn't find that amusing," he declared.  "In the
+society of your sex I generally behave pretty well as your brother
+would do if he were dumped down in an office in Wall Street."
+
+"I honestly believe that you are diffident," she admitted.  "I never
+met a millionaire before who was, and at first I thought it was a pose
+with you.  Perhaps I was mistaken.  You really don't think, then, that
+you have any attraction apart from your millions?"
+
+"I'm quite sure that I haven't," he answered bitterly.
+
+"A love affair!" she exclaimed, looking into his face scrutinisingly.
+"And I knew nothing of it!--I, your sponsor, your lady confessor,
+your--well, heaven knows what I might not be if you would only behave
+decently!  A love affair, indeed!  That little yellow-haired chit, I
+suppose, who is down here raving about you all the time--Sylvia
+What's-her-name?"
+
+He smiled.
+
+"I know very little of Miss Sylvia Laycey," he said, "beyond the fact
+that she seems very charming."
+
+"I suppose you ought to marry," she continued regretfully.  "It seems a
+pity, but they'll never leave you alone till you do.  What is your
+type, then?  Sylvia Laycey is much too young for you.  I suppose you
+know that."
+
+"I don't think I have one," he answered.
+
+"That's because I am married, of course," she went on.  "If you were a
+sensible man, you would settle down to adore me and not think of
+anybody else at all.  But you won't do it.  You'll want to buy palaces
+and yachts and town houses and theatres, like all the rest of the
+superfluously rich, and you'll want a musical comedy star to wear your
+jewels, and a wife to entertain your friends."
+
+"Well, you must admit that I haven't been in a hurry about any of these
+things yet," he observed.
+
+She looked at him keenly.
+
+"Look here, my young friend," she said, "you haven't made the one
+mistake I warned you against, have you?  You haven't fallen in love
+with Letitia?"
+
+He laughed almost brutally.
+
+"I am not quite such a fool as that," he assured her.
+
+"Well, I should hope not," she enjoined severely.  "Besides, as a
+matter of fact, Letitia is engaged.  Her young man is staying at
+Mandeleys now.  Just answer me one question, David--why did you refuse
+that invitation to dinner?"
+
+"Because I didn't feel like coming," he answered.  "I thought it would
+probably be a large party, most of them neighbours, and every one would
+have to make an effort to entertain me because I am a stranger, and
+don't know their ways or anything about them."
+
+"There you are again!" she exclaimed.  "Just as sensitive as you can
+be, for all your millions!  You'll come, David--please?"
+
+"Of course I will, if you ask me like that," he assented.
+
+She turned to her brother, who was approaching.
+
+"Success!" she announced.  "Mr. Thain has promised to dine.  He refused
+under a misapprehension."
+
+"We are delighted," the Marquis said.  "At a quarter past eight, Mr.
+Thain."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+Gossett in the country was a very different person from Gossett in
+Grosvenor Square.  An intimate at Mandeleys was not at all the same
+thing as a caller in town, and David found himself welcomed that
+evening with a grave but confidential smile.
+
+"The drawing-room here is closed for the present, sir," he observed,
+after he had superintended the bestowal of David's coat and hat upon an
+underling.  "We are using the gallery on the left wing.  If you will be
+so kind as to come this way."
+
+David was escorted into a long and very lofty apartment, cut off from
+the hall by some wonderful curtains, obviously of another generation.
+The walls were hung with pictures and old-fashioned weapons.  At the
+far end was a small stage, and at the opposite extremity a little box
+which had apparently at some time been used by musicians.  Some large
+beech logs were burning in an open fireplace.  The room contained
+nothing in the way of furniture except a dozen or so old-fashioned
+chairs and a great settee.
+
+"These large rooms," Gossett explained, "get a little damp, sir, so his
+lordship desired a fire here."
+
+He had scarcely disappeared when a door which led into the gallery was
+opened, and Lady Letitia came slowly down the stairs.  The place was
+lit only by hanging lamps, and David's impression of her, as he turned
+around, were a little unsubstantial.  All the way down the stairs and
+across that strip of floor, it seemed to him that he could see nothing
+but her face.  She carried herself as usual, there was all the pride of
+generations of Mandeleys in her slow, unhurried movements and the
+carriage of her head.  But her face.--David gripped at the back of one
+of the tall chairs.  He made at first no movement towards her.  This
+was the face of a woman into which he looked.  The change there was so
+complete that the high walls seemed to melt away.  It was just such a
+vision as he might have conceived to himself.  Her words checked the
+fancies which were pouring into his brain.  He became again the puzzled
+but everyday dinner guest.
+
+"I am very glad that you have come, Mr. Thain," she said, giving him
+her hand, "and I am very glad indeed to see you alone, even if it is
+only for a moment, because I feel--perhaps it is my thoughts that
+feel--that they owe you an amende."
+
+"You are very kind," he replied, a little bewildered.  "I am glad to be
+here.  What have you ever done which needs apology?"
+
+"I spoke of my thoughts," she reminded him, with a little smile.  "What
+I once thought, or rather feared, I am now ashamed of, and now that I
+have told you so I am more at ease."
+
+She stood up by his side, little flashes of firelight lighting her soft
+white skin, gleaming upon the soft fabric of her gown.  She wore no
+ornaments.  The Mandeleys pearls, generally worn by the unmarried women
+of the family, were reposing in the famous vaults of a West End
+pawnbroker.  Her strong, capable fingers were innocent of even a single
+ring, although upon her dressing table there was even at that moment
+reposing a very beautiful pearl one, concerning which she had made some
+insignificant criticism with only one object, an object which she
+refused to admit even to herself.  David remained silent through sheer
+wonder.  He had a sudden feeling that he had been admitted, even if for
+only these few moments, into the inner circle of her
+toleration--perhaps even more than that.
+
+"I hurried down," she explained, "just to say these few words, and I
+see that I was only just in time."
+
+The curtain had been raised without their noticing it, and the Duchess,
+with Grantham by her side, had entered.  There was a slight frown upon
+the latter's forehead; the Duchess was humming softly to herself.
+
+"Well, Sir Anthony, so you've kept your word," she said to David, when
+he had shaken hands with Grantham.  "I can see quite well what the
+country is going to do for you, unless you are looked after.  The
+amiable misanthrope is the part you have in your mind.  Gracious!
+Motors outside!  Have we got a party, Letitia?"
+
+Letitia, who to David's keen observation seemed already to have lost
+something of that strange new quality which she had shown to him only a
+few moments ago, shook her head.
+
+"The Vicar and Mrs. Vicar, and the Turnbulls, and Sylvia's father."
+
+"I am not going to be bored," the Duchess declared firmly.  "I insist
+upon sitting next to Mr. Thain.  How pretty Sylvia looks!  And what a
+becoming colour!  Now listen to me, David Thain," she went on, drawing
+him a little on one side, "you are not to flirt with that child.  It's
+like shooting them before they begin to fly.  You understand?"
+
+"Not guilty," David protested.  "I can assure you that I am a passive
+victim."
+
+"Silly little goose," the Duchess murmured under her breath, "waiting
+there for you to go and speak to her, with all sorts of sentimental
+nonsense shining out of her great eyes, too.  I shall go and talk to
+old General Turnbull till the gong goes.  Why we can't have dinner
+punctually with a small party like this, I can't imagine."
+
+Sylvia was certainly glad to welcome David.  Her father came up in a
+few moments and shook hands heartily.
+
+"Still buy your own cutlets, eh, Mr. Thain?" he asked.  "Jolly good
+cutlets they were, too!"
+
+"I suppose you have a housekeeper and all sorts of things," Sylvia
+laughed, "and live in what they call regal magnificence."
+
+David's protest was almost eager.
+
+"I have a man and his wife who came down with me from London," he said,
+"and one or two servants--very few, I can assure you.  Won't you come
+and try my housekeeping, Colonel, before you move on, and bring Miss
+Sylvia?"
+
+"With pleasure, my boy," the Colonel declared.  "We leave for town next
+Saturday.  Any day between now and then that suits Sylvia."
+
+Dinner was announced, and David found himself placed at a round table
+between the Duchess and Sylvia.  The former looked around the
+banqueting hall with a shiver.
+
+"Reginald," she protested, "why on earth do you plant us in the middle
+of a vault like this?  Why on earth not open up some of the smaller
+rooms?"
+
+The Marquis smiled deprecatingly.  His extreme pallor of the last few
+days had disappeared.  He seemed younger, and his tone was more alert.
+
+"This room is really a weakness of mine," he confessed.  "I like a
+vaulted roof, and I rather like the shadows.  It isn't damp, if that is
+what you are thinking of, Caroline.  We have had fires in it ever since
+we came down--timber being the only thing for which we don't have to
+pay," he added.
+
+"It makes one feel so insignificant," the Duchess sighed.  "If you were
+dining fifty or sixty people, of course, I should love it, but a dozen
+of us--why, we seem like spectral mites!  Look at old Grand-Uncle
+Philip staring at us," she went on, gazing at one of the huge pictures
+opposite.  "Pity you cannot afford to have electric light here,
+Reginald, and have it set in the frames."
+
+"A most unpleasant idea!" her brother objected.  "Confess, now, if you
+could see two rows of ancestors, all illuminated, looking at you while
+you ate, wouldn't it make you feel greedy?"
+
+The conversation drifted away and became general.  The Duchess leaned
+towards her neighbour.
+
+"I think I am rather sorry I came here," she whispered.
+
+"Why?" he asked.
+
+"Because I find you disappointing.  I thoroughly enjoyed discovering
+you upon the steamer.  You were delightfully primitive, an absolute
+cave-dweller, but you quite repaid my efforts to make a human being of
+you.  You were really almost as interesting when we first met in
+London.  And now, I don't know what it is, but you seem to have gone
+thousands of miles away again.  You don't seem properly human.  Don't
+you like women, or have you got some queer scheme in your head which
+keeps you living like a man with his head in the clouds?  Or are you in
+love?"
+
+"I haven't settled down to idleness yet, perhaps," he suggested.
+
+"Of course," she went on, "you ought to be in love with me, and
+miserable about it, but I am horribly afraid you aren't.  I believe you
+have matrimonial schemes in your mind.  I believe that your affections
+are so well-trained that they mean to trot all along the broad way to
+St. George's, Hanover Square."
+
+"And would you advise something different?" he asked bluntly.
+
+"My dear man, why am I here?" she expostulated.  "I have a fancy for
+having you devoted to me.  What I mean to do with it when I have
+captured your heart, I am not quite sure."
+
+Every one was listening to a story which old General Turnbull was
+telling.  Even Sylvia had leaned across the table.  David turned and
+looked steadily into his companion's face.
+
+"It seems to me," he said, "that only a very short time ago, Duchess,
+out of solicitude for my extreme ignorance, you warned me against
+setting my affections too high."
+
+"I was speaking then of marriage," she replied coolly.
+
+"I see!  And yet," he went on, "I am not quite sure that I do see.  Is
+there any radical difference between marriage and a really intimate
+friendship between a man and a woman?"
+
+She smiled.  Her slight movement towards him was almost a caress.
+
+"My dear, unsophisticated cave-dweller!" she murmured.  "Marriage is an
+alliance which lasts for all time.  It is apt, is it not, to leave its
+stamp upon future generations.  Great friendships have existed amongst
+people curiously diverse in tastes and temperament and position.  A
+certain disparity, in fact, is rather the vogue."
+
+"I begin to understand," he admitted.  "That accounts for the curious
+club stories which one is always having dinned into one's ears,
+hatefully uninteresting though they are, of Lady So-and-So entertaining
+a great fiddler at her country house, or some other Society lady
+dancing in a singular lack of costume for the pleasure of artists in a
+borrowed studio."
+
+"You are not nearly so nice-minded as I thought you were," the Duchess
+snapped.
+
+"It is just my painful efforts to understand," he protested.
+
+"Any one but an idiot would have understood long ago," she retorted.
+
+David turned to his left-hand neighbour.
+
+"The Duchess is being unkind," he said.  "Will you please take some
+notice of me?"
+
+"I'd love to," she replied.  "I was just thinking that you were rather
+neglecting me.  I want to know all about America, please, and American
+people."
+
+"I am afraid," he told her, "that I know much more about America than I
+do about American people.  All my life, since I left Harvard, I have
+been busy making money.  I never went into Society over there.  I never
+accepted an invitation if I could help it.  When I had any time to
+spare I went and camped out, up in the Adirondacks, or further afield
+still, when I could.  We had lots of sport, and we were able to lead a
+simple life, well away from the end of the cable."
+
+"And you killed bears and things, I suppose?" she said.  "How lucky
+that you are fond of sport!  It makes living in England so easy."
+
+He smiled.
+
+"I am not so sure," he confessed, "that I should consider England quite
+so much of a sporting country as she thinks herself."
+
+"What heresy!" the Marquis exclaimed, leaning forward.
+
+"Of course, I didn't know that I was going to be overheard," David said
+good-humouredly, "but I must stick to it.  I mean, of course, sport as
+apart from games."
+
+"Shooting?" the Marquis queried.
+
+"I am afraid I don't consider that shooting at birds, half of them
+hand-reared, is much of a sport," David continued.  "Have you ever
+tried pig-sticking, or lying on the edge of a mountain after three
+hours' tramp, watching for the snout of a bear?"
+
+Letitia had broken off her conversation with Lord Charles and was
+leaning a little forward.  The Marquis nodded sympathetically.
+
+"Hunting, then?"
+
+David smiled.
+
+"You gallop over a pastoral country on a highly-trained animal, with a
+pack of assistant hounds to destroy one miserable, verminous creature,"
+he said.  "Of course, you take risks now and then, and the whole thing
+looks exceedingly nice on a Christmas card, but for thrills, for real,
+intense excitement, I prefer the mountain ledge and the bear, or the
+rounding up of a herd of wild elephants."
+
+"Mr. Thain preserves the instincts of the savage," the Duchess
+observed, as she sipped her wine.  "Perhaps he may be right.
+Civilisation certainly tends to emasculate sport."
+
+"The sports to which Mr. Thain has alluded," the Marquis pointed out,
+"are the sports of the stay-at-home Englishman.  Most of our younger
+generation--those whose careers permitted of it--have tried their hand
+at big game shooting.  I myself," he continued reminiscently, "have
+never felt quite the same with a shotgun and a stream of pheasants,
+since a very wonderful three weeks I had in my youth, tiger hunting in
+India.--I see that Letitia is trying to catch your eye, Caroline."
+
+The women left the room in a little group, their figures merging almost
+into indistinctness as they passed out of the lighted zone.  David's
+eyes followed Letitia until she had disappeared.  Then he was conscious
+that a servant was standing with a note on a salver by his side.
+
+"This has been sent down from Broomleys, sir," the man explained.
+
+David took it and felt a sudden sinking of the heart.  The envelope was
+thin, square and of common type, the writing was painstaking but
+irregular.  There was a smudge on one corner, a blot on another.  David
+glanced at the Marquis, who nodded and immediately commenced a
+conversation with Grantham.  He tore open his message and read it:
+
+
+"The time has arrived.  I wait for you here."
+
+
+He crushed the half-sheet of notepaper in his fingers and then dropped
+it into his pocket.
+
+"There is no answer," he told the servant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+Grantham, who had been unusually silent throughout the service of
+dinner, slipped away from the room a few minutes before the other men.
+He found Letitia arranging a bridge table, and drew her a little on one
+side.
+
+"Letitia," he said, "I am annoyed."
+
+"My dear Charles," she replied, "was anything ever more obvious!"
+
+"You perhaps do not realise," he continued, "that you are the cause."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"In the first place," he complained, "you are not wearing my ring."
+
+"I thought I told you," she reminded him, "that I would prefer not to
+until we formally announced our engagement."
+
+"Why on earth shouldn't we do that at once--this evening?" he
+suggested.  "I can see no reason for delay."
+
+"I, on the other hand, have a fancy to wait," she replied carelessly,
+"at least until your visit here is over.
+
+"Your hesitation is scarcely flattering," he remarked with some
+irritation.
+
+"Is there anything else you wish to say?" she enquired.  "I really must
+get out those bridge markers."
+
+He began to show signs of temper.  Watching him closely for the first
+time, Letitia decided that he had most unpleasant-looking eyes.
+
+"I should like to know the subject of your conversation with that Thain
+fellow when I came in this evening," he demanded.
+
+"I am sorry," she said coolly.  "We were speaking upon a private
+subject."
+
+The anger in his eyes became more evident.
+
+"Private subject?  You mean to say that you have secrets with a fellow
+like that?"
+
+"A fellow like that?" she repeated.  "You don't like Mr. Thain, then?"
+
+"Like him?  I don't like him or dislike him.  I think he ought to be
+very flattered to be here at all--and you are the last person in the
+world, Letitia, I should have expected to find talking in whispers with
+him, with your heads only a few inches apart.  I feel quite justified
+in asking what that confidence indicated."
+
+Letitia smiled sweetly but dangerously.
+
+"And I feel quite justified," she retorted, "in refusing to answer that
+or any similar question.  Are you going to play bridge, Charlie?"
+
+"No!" he replied, turning away.  "I am going to talk to Miss Laycey."
+
+Sylvia was quite willing, and they soon established themselves on a
+settee.  The Duchess, rather against her inclinations, was included in
+the bridge quartette.  Letitia, having disposed of her guests, strolled
+over towards David, who was standing with his hands behind him,
+gloomily studying one of the paintings.
+
+"I must show you our Vandykes, Mr. Thain," she said, leading him a
+little further away.  "When these wonderful oil shares of yours have
+made us all rich, we shall have little electric globes round our old
+masters.  Until then, I find it produces quite a curious effect to try
+one of these."
+
+She drew an electric torch from one of the drawers of an oak cabinet
+and flashed a small circle of light upon the picture.  Thain gave a
+little exclamation.  The face which seemed to spring suddenly into
+life, looking down upon them with a faintly repressed smile upon the
+Mandeleys mouth, presented an almost startling likeness to the Marquis.
+
+"Fearfully alike, all our menkind, aren't they?" she observed, lowering
+the torch.  "Come and I will show you a Lely."
+
+They passed further down the gallery.  She looked at him a little
+curiously.
+
+"Is it my fancy," she asked, "or have you something on your mind?  The
+note which reached you contained no ill news, I hope?"
+
+"I don't know," he answered, with unexpected candour.  "I have a great
+deal on my mind."
+
+"I am so sorry," she murmured.
+
+They had reached the further end of the gallery now.  She sank into the
+window seat and made room for him by her side.  For a moment he looked
+out across the park.  In the moonless night the trees were like little
+dark blurs, the country rose and fell like a turbulent sea.  And very
+close at hand, ominously close at hand as it seemed to him, a bright
+light from Richard Vont's cottage was burning steadily.
+
+"Let me ask you a question," he begged a little abruptly.  "Supposing
+that you had given your word of honour, solemnly, in return for a vital
+service rendered, to commit a dishonourable action; what should you do?"
+
+"Well, that is rather a dilemma, isn't it?" she acknowledged.  "To tell
+you the truth, I can't quite reconcile the circumstances.  I can't, for
+instance, conceive your promising to do a dishonourable thing."
+
+"At the time," he explained, "it did not seem dishonourable.  At the
+time it seemed just an act of justice.  Then circumstances changed, new
+considerations intervened, and the whole situation was altered."
+
+"Is it a monetary matter?" she enquired, "one in which money would make
+any difference, I mean?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Money has nothing to do with it," he replied.  "It is just a question
+whether one is justified in breaking a solemn oath, one's word of
+honour, because the action which it entails has become, owing to later
+circumstances, hideously repugnant."
+
+"Why ask my advice?"
+
+"I do not know.  Anyhow, I desire it."
+
+"I should go," she said thoughtfully, "to the person to whom I had
+bound myself, and I should explain the change in my feelings and in the
+circumstances.  I should beg to be released from my word."
+
+"And if they refused?"
+
+"I don't see how you could possibly break your word of honour," she
+decided reluctantly.  "It is not done, is it?"
+
+He looked steadily down the gallery, through the darkened portion, to
+where the soft, overhead lights fell upon the two card tables.  There
+was very little conversation.  They could even hear the soft fall of
+the cards and Sylvia's musical laugh in the background.  All the time
+Letitia watched him.  The strength of his face seemed only intensified
+by his angry indecision.
+
+"You are right," he assented finally.  "I must not."
+
+"Perhaps," she suggested, "you can find some way of keeping it, and yet
+keeping it without that secondary dishonour you spoke of.  Now I must
+really go and see that my guests are behaving properly."
+
+She rose to her feet.  Sylvia's laugh rang out again from the far
+corner of the gallery, where she and Grantham were seated, their heads
+very close together.  Letitia watched them for a moment tolerantly.
+
+"I will recall my fiancé to his duty," she declared, "and you can go
+and talk nonsense to Sylvia."
+
+"Thank you," he answered, "I am afraid that I am not in the humour to
+talk nonsense with anybody."
+
+She turned her head slightly and looked at him.
+
+"Sylvia is such an admirer of yours," she said, "and she has such a
+delightful way of being light-hearted herself and affecting others in
+the same fashion.  If I were a man--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I should marry Sylvia."
+
+"And if I," he declared, with a sudden flash in his eyes, "possessed
+that ridiculous family tree of Lord Charles Grantham's--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I should marry you."
+
+She looked at him through half-closed eyes.  There was a little smile
+on her lips which at first he thought insolent, but concerning which
+afterwards he permitted himself to speculate.  He stopped short.
+
+"Lady Letitia," he pleaded, "there is a door there which leads into the
+hall.  You don't expect manners of me, anyway, but could you accept my
+farewell and excuse me to the others?  I have really a serious reason
+for wishing to leave--a reason connected with the note I received at
+dinner time."
+
+"Of course," she answered, "but you are sure that you are well?  There
+is nothing that we can do for you?"
+
+He paused for a moment with his hand upon the fastening of the door.
+
+"There is nothing anybody can do for me, Lady Letitia," he said.
+"Good-by!"
+
+She stood for a moment, watching the door through which he had passed
+with a puzzled frown upon her face.  Then she continued her progress
+down the room.  Arrived at the bridge table, she stooped for a moment
+to look over her aunt's score.
+
+"Finished your flirtation, my dear?" the latter asked coolly.
+
+Letitia accepted the challenge.
+
+"So effectually," she replied, "that the poor man has gone home.  I am
+to present his excuses to every one."
+
+The Duchess paused for a moment in the playing of her hand.  Her
+brother, with unfailing tact, threw himself into the breach.
+
+"I suppose," he said, "that we can scarcely realise the
+responsibilities which these kings of finance carry always upon their
+shoulders.  They tell me that Mr. Thain has his telegrams and cables
+stopped in London by a secretary and telephoned here, just to save a
+few minutes.  He receives sometimes as many as half a dozen messages
+during the night."
+
+The Duchess continued to play her hand.
+
+"After all," she remarked, "I fear that I shall not be able to ask Mr.
+Thain to Scotland.  One would feel the responsibility so much if he
+were to lose anything he valued, by coming."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+Richard Vont, as though he had been sitting there listening for the
+raising of the latch, was on his feet before David could enter the
+sitting room.
+
+"The Lord's day has come," he muttered, dragging him in.  "It's been a
+weary while, but it's come."
+
+David threw off his overcoat in silence, and the old man looked
+wonderingly at his clothes.
+
+"You've been taking your dinner up with them--at the house?" he asked.
+
+David nodded.
+
+"Yes," he assented.  "Your note found me there.  I came as soon as I
+could."
+
+"I never doubted ye," the old man muttered.  "I knew you'd come."
+
+David, suddenly stifled, threw open the cottage window.  When he came
+back into the little circle of lamp-light, his face was pale and set.
+He was filled with a premonition of evil.
+
+"I want you to listen to me, uncle," he said earnestly.  "I have
+something to say."
+
+"Something to say?" the old man repeated.  "Another time, my
+boy---another time.  To-night you have work to do," he added, with a
+fierce flash of triumph in his eyes.
+
+"Work?"
+
+"Aye!--to keep your oath."
+
+"But to-night?  What can I do to-night?" David exclaimed.  "No, don't
+tell me," he went on quickly.  "I'll have my say first."
+
+"Get on with it, then.  There's time.  I'm listening."
+
+"I have forgotten nothing," David began, "I am denying nothing.  I
+remember even the words of the oath I swore."
+
+"With your hand upon the Bible," Vont interrupted eagerly,--"your hand
+upon the Book."
+
+David shivered.
+
+"I am not likely to forget that night," he said.  "What I swore we both
+know.  Well?  I have begun to keep my word.  You know that."
+
+"Aye, and to-night you'll finish it!" Vont cried, with uplifted head.
+"After to-night you'll be quit of your oath, and you can go free of me.
+I've made it all easy for you.  It's all planned out."
+
+"I must finish what I have to say," David insisted.  "It's been on my
+mind like lead.  He's a ruined man, uncle--beggared to the last penny.
+I've dishonoured myself, but I've done it--for your sake.  Beyond that
+I cannot go."
+
+"You cannot go?" Vont muttered blankly.
+
+"I cannot.  I don't know what this scheme of yours is, uncle, but leave
+me out of it.  I'm in Hell already!"
+
+"You think--"
+
+Vont was breathing heavily.  The words suddenly failed him, his fingers
+seemed to grip the air.  David had a momentary shock of terror.  Then,
+before he could stop him, the old man was down upon his knees, holding
+him by the legs, his upraised face horrible with a new storm of passion.
+
+"David, you'll not back out!  You'll not break that oath you swore when
+I lent you the money--all my savings!  And it might have gone wrong,
+you know.  It might have beggared me.  But I risked it for this!  You
+don't know what I've been through.  I tell you there isn't a night,
+from darkness till nigh the dawn, I haven't toiled with these hands,
+toiled while the sweat's run off my forehead and my breath's gone from
+me.  And I've done it!  I've made all ready for you--and to-night--it's
+to-night, boy!  If you go back on me, David, as sure as that Book's the
+truth, you shall know what it is to feel like a murderer, for I'll sit
+and face you, and I'll die!  I mean it.  As God hears me at this
+moment, I mean it.  If you falter to-night, you shall find me dead
+to-morrow, and if it blackens my lips, I'll die cursing you as well as
+him--you for your softness because they've flattered you round, him
+because he still lives, with the wrong he did me unpunished."
+
+David dragged him up by sheer force and pushed him back into his chair.
+
+"What is it you want me to do?" he asked in despair.
+
+"You can't refuse me," Vont went on, his voice strong enough now.
+"Watch me and listen," he added, leaning forward.  "There's my hand on
+the Book.  Here's my right hand to Heaven, and I swear by the living
+God that if you fail me, you shall find me to-morrow, sitting dead.
+That's what your broken oath will do."
+
+"Oh, I hear," David answered drearily.  "I'll keep my word.  Come, what
+is it?"
+
+Vont rose deliberately to his feet.  All trace of passion seemed to
+have disappeared.  He took an electric torch from his pocket and led
+the way to the door.
+
+"Just follow me," he whispered.
+
+They made their way down the little tiled path to the bottom of the
+garden.  In the right-hand corner was what seemed to be the top of a
+well.
+
+"You remember that, perhaps?"
+
+David nodded.
+
+"I know," he said.  "I used to play down there once."
+
+Vont rolled the top away, and, stooping down, flashed the light.  There
+were stone steps leading to a small opening, and at the bottom the
+mouth of what seemed to be a tunnel.  David started.
+
+"It's one of the secret passages to Mandeleys!" he exclaimed.
+
+"There are seven of them somewhere," his uncle replied, in a hoarse
+undertone--"one, they say, from Broomleys, but that's too far, and the
+air would be too foul, and maybe it don't lead where I want it to.
+I've made air-holes along this, David.  You take the torch, and you
+make your way.  There's nothing to stop you.  It's dry--I've sprinkled
+sand in places--and there's air, too.  When you come to the end there's
+a door.  Four nights it took me to move that door.  It's wide open now.
+Then you mount a little flight of stairs.  They go round and round, and
+at the top there's a little stone landing.  You'll see before you what
+seems to be blank wall.  You press your palms on it--so--and soon you
+find an iron handle.  It'll turn easy--I've oiled it well--and you step
+right into the room."
+
+"What room?" David demanded, in bewilderment.
+
+The old man's fingers clutched his arm.
+
+"Into the bedchamber of the Lady Letitia Mandeleys!" he proclaimed
+triumphantly.  "Keep your voice low, boy.  Remember we are out of
+doors."
+
+"Into the--!  Are you mad, uncle?" David muttered, catching at his
+voice as though it were some loose quality that had escaped from him.
+
+"There's never a saner man in this county," was the fierce reply.
+"It's what I've worked for.  It's the worst blow I can deal his pride.
+Oh, I know she is a haughty lady!  You'll step into her chamber, and
+she'll see you, and she'll shriek for her servants, but--but, David,"
+he added, leaning forward, "they'll find you there--they'll find you
+there!  The Marquis--he'll be told.  The nephew of Richard Vont will be
+found in his daughter's chamber!  There'll be explanations enough, but
+those things stick."
+
+David suddenly found himself laughing like a madman.
+
+"Uncle," he cried, "for God's sake--for Heaven's sake, listen to me.
+This is the maddest scheme that ever entered into any one's head.  I
+should be treated simply like a common burglar.  I should have no
+excuse to offer, nothing to say.  I should be thrown out of the house,
+and there isn't a human being breathing who'd think the worse of the
+Lady Letitia.  You don't know what she's like!  She's wonderful!
+She's--"
+
+"I'll not argue with you, boy," Vont interrupted doggedly.  "You think
+I know nothing of the world and its ways, of the tale-bearing and the
+story-telling that goes on, women backbiting each other, men grasping
+even at shadows for a sensation.  You'll do your job, David, you'll
+keep your oath, and from to-night you'll stand free of me.  There'll be
+no more.  You can lift your head again after you've crossed that
+threshold.  Make what excuse you like--come back, if you will, like a
+frightened hare after they've found you there--but you'll have stood in
+her bedchamber!"
+
+David shivered like a man in a fever.  He was beginning to realise that
+this was no nightmare--that the wild-eyed man by his side was in sober
+and ghastly earnest.
+
+"Uncle," he pleaded, "not this.  Lady Letitia has been kind and
+gracious to me always.  We can't strike through women.  I'd rather you
+bade me take his life."
+
+"But I don't bid you do anything of the sort," was the sullen reply.
+"Death's no punishment to any man, and the like of him's too brave to
+feel the fear of it.  It's through her the blow must come, and you'll
+do my bidding, David, or you'll see me sitting waiting for you
+to-morrow, with a last message to you upon my dead lips."
+
+David gripped the torch from his hand.  After all, Hell might come to
+any man!
+
+"I'll go," he said.
+
+It was a nightmare that followed.  Stooping only a little, flashing his
+torch always in front, he half ran, half scrambled along a paved way,
+between paved walls which even the damp of centuries seemed scarcely to
+have entered.  Soon the path descended steeply and then rose on the
+other side of the moat.  Once a rat paused to look at him with eyes
+gleaming like diamonds, and bolted at the flash of the torch.  More
+than once he fancied that he heard footsteps echoing behind him.  He
+paused to listen.  There was nothing.  He lost sense of time or
+distance.  He stole on, dreading the end--and the end came sooner even
+than he had feared.  There was the door that yielded easily to his
+touch, the steep steps round and round the interior of the tower, the
+blank wall before him.  The iron handle was there.  His hands closed
+upon it.  For a moment he stood in terrible silence.  This was
+something worse than death!  Then he set his teeth firmly, pressed the
+handle and stepped through the wall.
+
+Afterwards it seemed to him that there must have been something
+mortally terrifying in his own appearance as he stood there with his
+back to the wall and his eyes fixed upon the solitary occupant of the
+room.  Lady Letitia, in a blue dressing gown, was lying upon a couch
+drawn up before a small log fire.  There seemed to be no detail of the
+room which in those sickening moments of mental absorption was not
+photographed into his memory.  The old four-poster bedstead, hung with
+chintz; the long, black dressing table, once a dresser, covered
+carelessly with tortoise-shell backed toilet articles, with a large
+mirror in the centre from which a chair had just been pushed back.
+But, above all, that look in her face, from which every other
+expression seemed to have permanently fled.  Her lips were parted, her
+eyes were round with horrified surprise.  The book which she had been
+reading slipped from her fingers and fell noiselessly on to the
+hearth-rug.  She sat up, supporting herself with her hands, one on
+either side, pressed into the sofa.  She seemed denied the power of
+speech, almost as he was.  And then a sudden wonderful change came to
+him.  He spoke quite distinctly, although he kept his voice low.
+
+"Lady Letitia," he said, "let me explain.  I shall never ask for your
+forgiveness.  I shall never venture to approach you again.  I have come
+here by the secret passage from Vont's cottage.  I have come here to
+keep an oath which I swore in America to Richard Vont, and I have come
+because, if I had broken my word, he would have killed himself."
+
+He spoke with so little emotion, so reasonably, that she found herself
+answering him, notwithstanding her bewilderment, almost in the same key.
+
+"But who are you?" she demanded.  "Who are you to be the slave of that
+old man?"
+
+"I am his nephew," David answered.  "I am the little boy who played
+about the park when you were a girl, who picked you up on the ice once
+when you fell.  All that I have I owe to Richard Vont.  He sent me to
+college.  He lent me the money upon which I built my fortune, but on
+the day he lent it to me he made me swear a terrible oath, and to-night
+he has forced me to keep it by setting foot within your chamber.  Now I
+shall return the way I came, and may God grant that some day you will
+forgive me."
+
+Almost as he spoke there was a little click behind.  He started round
+and felt along the wall.  There was a moment's silence.  Then he turned
+once more towards Letitia, his cheeks whiter than ever, his sunken eyes
+filled with a new horror.  Even the composure which had enabled him to
+explain his coming with some show of reason, had deserted him.  He
+seemed threatened with a sort of hysteria.
+
+"He followed me!  Damn him, he followed me!" he muttered.  "I heard
+footsteps.  He has fastened us in!"
+
+He tore desperately at the tapestry, shook the concealed door and
+rattled it, in vain.  Letitia rose slowly to her feet.
+
+"You see what has happened," she said.  "Richard Vont was more cunning
+than you.  He was not content that you should make your little speech
+and creep back amongst the rats.  Tell me, what do you propose to do?"
+
+He looked around him helplessly.
+
+"There is the window," he muttered.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"We are on the second story," she told him, "and there is nothing to
+break your fall upon the flags below.  To be found with a broken neck
+beneath my window would be almost as bad as anything that could happen."
+
+"I am not afraid to try," he declared.
+
+He moved towards the window.  She crossed the room swiftly and
+intercepted him.
+
+"Don't be absurd," she admonished.  "Come, let us think.  There must be
+a way."
+
+"Let me out of your room on to the landing," he begged eagerly.  "If I
+can reach the hall it will be all right.  I can find a window open, or
+hide somewhere.  Only, for God's sake," he added, his voice breaking,
+"let me out of this room!"
+
+A flash of her old manner came back to her.
+
+"I am sorry you find it so unattractive," she said.  "I thought it
+rather pretty myself.  And blue, after all, is my colour, you know,
+although I don't often wear it."
+
+"Oh, bless you!" he exclaimed.  "Bless you, Lady Letitia, for speaking
+to me as though I were a human being.  Now I am going to steal out of
+that door on tiptoe."
+
+"Wait till I have listened there," she whispered.
+
+She stole past him and stooped down with her ear to the keyhole.  She
+frowned for a moment and held out her hand warningly.  It seemed to him
+that he could feel his heart beating.  Close to where he was standing,
+her silk stockings were hanging over the back of a chair.--He suddenly
+closed his eyes, covered them desperately with the palms of his hand.
+Her warning finger was still extended.
+
+"That was some one passing," she said.  "I don't understand why.  They
+all came to bed some time ago.  Stay where you are and don't move."
+
+They both listened.  David seemed in those few minutes to have lost all
+the composure which had become the habit of years.  His heart was
+beating madly.  He was shaking as though with intense cold.  Lady
+Letitia, on the other hand, seemed almost unruffled.  Only he fancied
+that at the back of her eyes there was something to which as yet she
+had given no expression, something which terrified him.  Then, as they
+stood there, neither of them daring to move, there came a sudden awful
+sound.  It had seemed to him that the world could hold no greater
+horror than he was already suffering, but the sound to which they
+listened was paralysing, hideous, stupefying.  With hoarse, brazen
+note, rusty and wheezy, yet pulled as though with some desperate
+clutch, the great alarm bell which hung over the courtyard was tolling
+its dreadful summons.
+
+Letitia stood up, her cheeks ghastly pale.  She, too, was struggling
+now for composure.
+
+"Really," she exclaimed, "this is an evening full of incidents.--Don't
+touch me," she added.  "I shall be all right directly."
+
+For a single moment he knew that she had nearly fainted.  She caught at
+the side of the wall.  Then they heard a cry from outside.  A spark
+flew past the window.  A hoarse voice from somewhere below shouted
+"Fire!"  And then something more alarming still.  All down the
+corridor, doors were thrown open.  There was the sound of eager
+voices--finally a loud knocking at the door which they were guarding.
+Letitia shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"This," she murmured, "is fate."
+
+She opened the door.  There was a little confused group outside.  The
+Marquis, fully dressed, stood with his eyes fixed upon Thain at first
+in blank astonishment,--afterwards as one who looks upon some horrible
+thing.  Grantham in a dressing gown, took a quick step forward.
+
+"My God, it's Thain!" he exclaimed.  "What in hell's name--?"
+
+Letitia turned towards her father.
+
+"Father," she began--
+
+The Marquis made no movement, yet she was suddenly aware of something
+in his expression, something which shone more dimly in the face of her
+aunt, which throbbed in Grantham's incoherent words.  Her brave little
+speech died away.  She staggered.  The Marquis still made no movement.
+It was David who caught her in his arms and carried her to the couch.
+He turned and faced them.  In the background, Sylvia was clinging to
+Grantham's arm.
+
+"You gibbering fools!" he cried.  "What if an accursed chance has
+brought me here!  Isn't she Lady Letitia, your daughter, Marquis?
+Isn't she your betrothed, Grantham?  Your niece, Duchess?  Do you think
+that anything but the rankest and most accursed accident could ever
+have brought me within reach even of her fingers?"
+
+No one spoke.  The faces into which he looked seemed to David like a
+hideous accusation.  Suddenly Gossett's voice was heard from behind.
+
+"The fire is nothing, your lordship.  It is already extinguished.  Some
+one seems to have brought some blazing brambles and thrown them into
+the courtyard."
+
+"Get some water, you fools!" Thain shouted.  "Can't you see that she is
+faint?"
+
+The Duchess began to collect herself.  She advanced further into the
+room in search of restoratives.  The Marquis came a step nearer to
+Thain.
+
+"Tell me how you found your way into this room, sir?" he demanded.
+
+"By the foulest means on God's earth," Thain answered.  "I came through
+the secret passage from Vont's cottage."
+
+"Without Lady Letitia's knowledge, I presume?" Grantham interposed
+hoarsely.
+
+"No one but a cad would have asked such a question," David thundered.
+"I broke into her room, meaning to deliver one brief message and to go
+back again.  Vont followed me and fastened the door.--Can't you read
+the story?" he added, turning appealingly to the Marquis.  "Don't you
+know who I am?  I am Vont's nephew, the boy who played about here years
+ago.  I lived with him in America.  He paid for my education at
+Harvard; he lent me the money to make my first venture.  He has been
+all the relative I ever had.  Out there I pledged my word blindly to
+help him in his revenge upon you, Marquis, in whatever manner he might
+direct.  To-night he sprung this upon me.  I was face to face with my
+word of honour, and the certainty that if I refused to fulfil my pledge
+he would kill himself before morning.  So I came.  It was he who rang
+the alarm bell, he who planned the pretence of a fire to trap me here.
+This was to be his vengeance.--Be reasonable.  Don't take this
+miserable affair seriously.  God knows what I have suffered, these last
+few minutes!"
+
+Letitia sat up, revived.  She was still very pale, and there was
+something terrible in her face.
+
+"For heaven's sake," she begged, "bring this wretched melodrama to an
+end.  Turn that poor man out," she added, pointing to David.  "His
+story is quite true."
+
+Every one had gone except the Marquis and Grantham.  Neither of them
+spoke for several moments.  Then the Marquis, as though he were awaking
+from a dream, moved to the door, opened it and beckoned to David.
+
+"Will you follow me," he invited.
+
+Very slowly they passed along the great corridor, down the broad stairs
+and into the hall.  The Marquis led the way to the front door and
+opened it.  Neither had spoken.  To Thain, every moment was a moment of
+agony.  The Marquis held the door open and stood on one side.  David
+realised that he was expected to depart without a word.
+
+"There is nothing more I can say?" he faltered despairingly.
+
+The Marquis stood upon his own threshold.  He spoke slowly and with a
+curious lack of expression.
+
+"Nothing.  It is the times that are to blame.  We open our houses and
+offer our hospitality to servants and the sons of servants, and we
+expect them to understand our code.  We are very foolish.--Since you
+have broken this silence, let me spare myself the necessity of further
+words.  If your contrition is genuine, you will break the lease of
+Broomleys and depart from this neighbourhood without further delay.  My
+agent will wait upon you."
+
+Without haste, yet before any reply was possible, the Marquis had
+closed the great door.  David was once more in the darkness, staggering
+as though his knees would give way.  The avenue stretched unevenly
+before him.  He started off towards Broomleys.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+At a few minutes after nine, the following morning, the Marquis entered
+the room where breakfast was usually served.  The Duchess, in
+travelling clothes and a hat, was lifting the covers from the silver
+dishes upon the sideboard, with a fork in her hand.  She welcomed him a
+little shortly.
+
+"Good morning, Reginald!"
+
+"Good morning, Caroline," he replied.  "Are you the only representative
+of the household?"
+
+She snorted.
+
+"Charlie Grantham went off in his little two-seater at eight o'clock
+this morning," she announced.  "He is motoring up to town.  Left
+apologies with Gossett, I believe--telegram or something in the night.
+All fiddlesticks, of course!"
+
+"Naturally," the Marquis assented, helping himself from one of the
+dishes and drawing his chair up to his sister's side.  "So exit Charles
+Grantham, eh?"
+
+"And me," the Duchess declared, returning to her place and pouring out
+the coffee.  "I suppose you can send me to Fakenham for the ten o'clock
+train?"
+
+The Marquis considered for a moment.
+
+"I am not sure, Caroline," he said, "that your departure is entirely
+kind."
+
+"Well, I'm jolly certain I don't mean it to be," she answered bitterly.
+"I ask no questions, and I hate scenes.  A week ago I should have
+scoffed at the idea of David Thain as a prospective suitor for Letitia.
+Now, my advice to you is, the sooner you can get them married, the
+better."
+
+"Really!" he murmured.  "You've given up the idea, then, of taking the
+young man to Scotland?"
+
+"Entirely," the Duchess assured him emphatically.  "I was an idiot to
+ever consider it.  When people of his class find their way amongst us,
+disaster nearly always follows.  You see, they don't know the rules of
+the game, as we play it.  Whilst we are on this subject, Reginald, what
+are you going to do about it?"
+
+The Marquis unlocked his letter case and shook out the contents.
+
+"You mean about last night?" he asked.  "Well, as I don't want to be
+the laughing-stock of the county, I shall keep as quiet as I can.  I
+knew that something ridiculous would happen, with that poor lunatic
+sitting in the garden, poring over the Bible all day long."
+
+The Duchess looked distinctly malicious.
+
+"I am not at all as sure as I should like to be," she said, "that the
+old man is to blame for everything."
+
+The Marquis looked at his sister intently.  She bent over the milk jug.
+
+"You leave me in some doubt, Caroline," he observed coldly, "as to what
+frame of mind you are in, when you make such utterly incomprehensible
+remarks and curtail your visit to us so suddenly.  At the same time, I
+hope that whatever your private feelings may be, you will not forget
+certain--shall I call them obligations?"
+
+"Oh, don't be afraid!" she rejoined.  "I am not likely to advertise my
+folly, especially at Letitia's expense.  I don't care a jot whether the
+young man came through a hole in the wall or dropped down from the
+clouds.  I only know that his presence in Letitia's bedchamber--"
+
+"We will drop the discussion, if you please," the Marquis interrupted.
+
+There was just the one note in his tone, an inheritance, perhaps, from
+those more virile ancestors, which reduced even his sister to silence.
+The Marquis adjusted his eyeglass and commenced a leisurely inspection
+of his letters.  He did so without any anxiety, without the slightest
+premonition of evil.  Even when he recognised her handwriting, he did
+so with a little thrill of pleasurable anticipation.  He drew the
+letter closer to him and with a word of excuse turned away towards the
+window.  Perhaps she was wanting him.  After all, it would be quite
+easy to run up to London for a day--and wonderfully pleasant.  He drew
+the single sheet from its envelope.  The letters seemed magnified.  The
+whole significance of those cruel words seemed to reach him with a
+single mental effort.
+
+
+Reginald, I was married to James Borden this morning.  I suppose it is
+the uncivilised part of me which has been pulling at my heartstrings,
+day by day, week by week, the savage in me clamouring for its right
+before it is too late.
+
+So we change positions, only whereas you have atoned and justified
+every one of your actions towards me since our eyes first met, I am
+left without any means of atonement.
+
+Will you forgive?
+
+Your very humble and penitent
+  MARCIA.
+
+
+The Marquis replaced the letter in the envelope.  For several moments
+he stood looking across the park, beyond, to the well-cultivated farms
+rolling away to the distant line of hills.  His brain was numbed.
+Marcia had gone!--There was a mist somewhere.  He rubbed the
+windowpane, in vain.  Then he set his teeth, and his long, nervous
+fingers gripped at his throat for a moment.
+
+"Your coffee is getting cold," his sister reminded him.
+
+He came back to his place.  She watched him a little curiously.
+
+"Any message from our pseudo-Lothario?" she asked.
+
+The Marquis gathered up his other letters.
+
+"There is nothing here from him," he said, "but I must ask you to
+excuse me, Caroline.  There is an urgent matter which needs my
+attention."
+
+He crossed the room a little more slowly than usual, and his sister,
+who was still watching him critically, sighed.  There was no doubt at
+all that his walk was becoming the walk of an old man.  The stoop of
+the shoulders was also a new thing.  She counted up his age on her
+fingers, and, rising from her place, looked at herself in the mirror
+opposite.  Her face for a moment was hard and set, and her fingers
+clenched.
+
+"Years!" she muttered to herself.  "How I hate them!"
+
+
+The Marquis selected a grey Homburg hat of considerable antiquity, and
+a thicker stick than usual, from the rack in the hall.  The front doors
+stood wide open, and he walked out into the pleasant sunshine.  It was
+a warm morning, but twice he shivered as he passed down the broad sweep
+of drive and, with a curious sensation of unfamiliarity, crossed the
+little bridge over the moat, the few yards of park, and finally
+approached the palings which bordered Richard Vont's domain.  The mist
+still seemed to linger before his eyes, but through it he could see the
+familiar figure seated in his ancient chair, with the book upon his
+knee.  The Marquis drew close to the side of the palings.
+
+"Richard Vont," he began, "I have come down from Mandeleys to speak to
+you.  Will you listen to what I have to say?"
+
+There was no reply.  The Marquis drew the letter from his pocket.
+
+"You are a cruel and stubborn man, Vont," he continued.  "You have gone
+far out of your way to bring injury and unhappiness upon me.  All your
+efforts are as nothing.  Will you hear from me what has happened?"
+
+There was silence, still grim silence.  The Marquis stretched out his
+hand and leaned a little upon the paling.
+
+"I took your daughter, Richard Vont, not as a libertine but as a lover.
+It was perhaps the truest impulse my life has ever felt.  If there was
+sin in it, listen.  Hear how I am punished.  Month followed month and
+year followed year, and Marcia was content with my love and I with
+hers, so that during all this time my lips have touched no other
+woman's, no other woman has for a moment engaged even my fancy.  I have
+been as faithful to your daughter, Richard Vont, as you to your
+vindictive enmity.  From a discontented and unhappy girl she has become
+a woman with a position in the world, a brilliant writer, filled with
+the desire and happiness of life to her finger tips.  From me she
+received the education, the travel, the experience which have helped
+her to her place in the world, and with them I gave her my heart.  And
+now--you are listening, Richard Vont?  You will hear what has happened?"
+
+Still that stony silence from the figure in the chair.  Still that
+increasing mist before the eyes of the man who leaned towards him.
+
+"Your daughter, Richard Vont," the Marquis concluded, "has taken your
+vengeance into her own hands.  Your prayers have come true, though not
+from the quarter you had hoped.  You saw only a little way.  You tried
+to strike only a foolish blow.  It has been given to your daughter to
+do more than this.  She has broken my heart, Richard Vont.  She grew to
+become the dearest thing in my life, and she has left me.--Yesterday
+she was married."
+
+No exclamation, no movement.  The Marquis wiped his eyes and saw with
+unexpected clearness.  What had happened seemed so natural that for a
+moment he was not even surprised.  He stepped over the palings, leaned
+for a single moment over the body of the man to whom he had been
+talking, and laid the palm of his hand over the lifeless eyes.  Then he
+walked down the tiled path and called to the woman whose face he had
+seen through the latticed window.
+
+"Mrs. Wells," he said, "something serious has happened to Vont."
+
+"Your lordship!"
+
+"He is dead," the Marquis told her.  "You had better go down to the
+village and fetch the doctor.  I will send a message to his nephew."
+
+Back again across the park, very gorgeous now in the fuller sunshine,
+casting quaint shadows underneath the trees, glittering upon the
+streaks of yellow cowslips on the hillside.  The birds were singing and
+the air was as soft as midsummer.  He crossed the bridge, turned into
+the drive and stood for a moment in his own hall.  A servant came
+hurrying towards him.
+
+"Run across the park to Broomleys as fast as you can," his master
+directed.  "Tell Mr. Thain to go at once to Vont's cottage.  You had
+better let him know that Vont is dead."
+
+The young man hastened off.  Gossett appeared from somewhere in the
+background and opened the door of the study towards which the Marquis
+was slowly making his way.
+
+"The shock has been too much for your lordship," the man murmured.
+"May I bring you some brandy?"
+
+The Marquis shook his head.
+
+"It is necessary, Gossett," he said, "that I should be absolutely
+undisturbed for an hour.  Kindly see that no one even knocks at my door
+for that period of time."
+
+Gossett held open the door and closed it softly.  He was a very old
+servant, and in great measure he understood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+Richard Vont was buried in the little churchyard behind Mandeleys, the
+churchyard in which was the family vault and which was consecrated
+entirely to tenants and dependents of the estate.  The little
+congregation of soberly-clad villagers received more than one surprise
+during the course of the short and simple service.  The Marquis
+himself, clad in sombre and unfamiliar garments, stood in his pew and
+followed the little procession to the graveside.  The new tenant of
+Broomleys was there, and Marcia, deeply veiled but easily recognisable
+by that brief moment of emotion which followed the final ceremony.  At
+its conclusion, the steward, following an immemorial custom, invited
+the little crowd to accompany him to Mandeleys, where refreshments were
+provided in the back hall.  The Marquis had stepped back into the
+church.  David and Marcia were alone.  He came round to her side.
+
+"You don't remember me?" he asked.
+
+"Remember you?" she repeated.  "Aren't you Mr. David Thain?"
+
+"Yes," he admitted, "but many years ago I was called Richard David
+Vont--when I lived down there with you, Marcia."
+
+Emotion had become so dulled that even her wonder found scanty
+expression.
+
+"I remember your eyes," she said.  "They puzzled me more than once.
+Did he know?"
+
+"Of course," David answered.  "We lived together in America for many
+years, and we came home together.  Directly we arrived, however, he
+insisted on our separating.  You know the madness of his life, Marcia."
+
+"I know," she answered bitterly.  "Was I not the cause of it?"
+
+"It was part of his scheme that I should help towards his revenge," he
+explained.  "I did his bidding, and the end was disaster and
+humiliation."
+
+They stood under the little wooden porch which led out into the park.
+
+"You will come up to Broomleys?" he invited.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Just now I would rather go back to the cottage," she said.  "We shall
+meet again."
+
+"I shall be in England only for a few more days," he told her gloomily.
+"I am returning to America."
+
+She looked at him in some surprise.
+
+"I thought you had settled down here?"
+
+"Only to carry out my share in that infernal bargain.  I have done it,
+I kept my word, I am miserably ashamed of myself, and I have but one
+feeling now--to get as far away as I can."
+
+"But tell me, David," she asked, "what was this scheme?  What have you
+done to hurt him--the Marquis?"
+
+"I have done my best to ruin him," David replied, "and through some
+accursed scheme in which I bore an evil and humiliating part, I have
+brought some shadow of a scandal upon--"
+
+He broke off.  Marcia waited for him to continue, but he shook his head.
+
+"The whole thing is too insignificant and yet too damnable," he said.
+"Some day, Marcia, I will tell you of it.  If you won't come with me,
+forgive me if I hurry away."
+
+He was gone before she could remonstrate.  She looked around and saw
+the reason.  The Marquis was coming down the gravel path from the
+church in which he had taken refuge from the crowd.  She felt a sudden
+shaking of the knees, a momentary return of that old ascendency which
+he had always held over her.  Then she turned and waited for him.  He
+smiled very gravely as he held her hand for a moment.
+
+"You are going back to the cottage?" he asked.  "I will walk with you,
+if I may."
+
+They had a stretch of park before them, a wonderful, rolling stretch of
+ancient turf.  Here and there were little clusters of cowslips, golden
+as the sunshine which was making quaint patterns of shadow beneath the
+oaks and drawing the perfume from the hawthorn trees, drooping beneath
+their weight of blossom.  Marcia tried twice to speak, but her voice
+broke.  There was the one look in his face which she dreaded.
+
+"I shall not say any conventional things to you," he began gently.
+"Your father's life for many years must have been most unhappy.  In a
+way, I suppose you and I are the people who are responsible for it.
+And yet, behind it all--I say it in justice to ourselves, and not with
+disrespect to the dead--it was his primeval and colossal ignorance, the
+heritage of that stubborn race of yeomen, which was responsible for his
+sorrow."
+
+"He never understood," she murmured.  "No one in this world could make
+him understand."
+
+"You know that our new neighbour up there," he continued, moving his
+head towards Broomleys, "was his nephew--a sharer, however unwilling,
+in his folly?"
+
+"He has just told me," she admitted.
+
+"I was the first to find your father dead," he went on.  "When I
+received your letter, Marcia, I took it to him.  I went to offer him
+the sacrifice of my desolation.  That, I thought, would end his enmity.
+And I read your letter to dead ears.  He was seated there, believing
+that all the evil he wished me had come.  I suppose the belief brought
+him peace.  He was a stubborn old man."
+
+Marcia would have spoken, but there was a lump in her throat.  She
+opened her lips only to close them again.
+
+"I wished to see you, Marcia," he continued, "because I wanted you to
+understand that I have only one feeling in my heart towards you, and
+that is a feeling of wonderful gratitude.  For many years you have been
+the most sympathetic companion a somewhat dull person could have had.
+The memory of these years is imperishable.  And I want to tell you
+something else.  In my heart I approve of what you have done."
+
+"Oh, but that is impossible!" she replied.  "I cannot keep the bitter
+thoughts from my own heart.  I am ashamed when I think of your
+kindness, of your fidelity, of all that you have given and done for me
+throughout these years.  And now I have the feeling that I am leaving
+you when you need me most."
+
+He smiled at her.
+
+"Your knowledge of life," he said gently, "should teach you better.
+The years that lay between us when you first gave me all that there was
+worth having of love in the world were nothing.  To-day they are an
+impassable gulf.  I have reached just those few years which become the
+aftermath of actual living, and you are young still, young in mind and
+body.  We part so naturally.  There is something still alive in you
+which is dead in me."
+
+"But you are so lonely," she faltered.
+
+"I should be lonelier still," he answered, "or at least more unhappy,
+if I dragged you with me through the cheerless years.  Life is a matter
+of cycles.  You are commencing a new one, and so am I, only the things
+that are necessary to you are not now necessary to me.  So it is
+natural and best that we should part."
+
+She pointed to the cottage, now only a few yards away.  Its doors and
+windows were wide open, there was smoke coming from the chimney, a
+wealth of flowers in the garden.
+
+"The cottage is mine," she said.  "Sometimes I believe that it was left
+to me in the hope that I might come back with my heart, too, full of
+bitterness, and that I might take his place.  It is yours whenever you
+choose to take it.  I shall send the deeds to Mr. Merridrew."
+
+He looked at it thoughtfully.  For a moment the shadow passed from his
+face.  He stood a little more upright, his eyes seemed to grow larger.
+Perhaps he thought of those days when he had stolen down from the house
+with beating heart, drawn nearer and nearer to the cottage, felt all
+the glow and fervour of his great love.  There was a breath of perfume
+from the garden, full of torturing memories--a little wind in the trees.
+
+"One of the desires of my life gratified," he declared.  "Mr. Merridrew
+shall draw up a deed of sale.  Look," he added, pointing to the drive,
+"there is some one waiting for you in the car there.  Isn't it your
+husband?"
+
+She glanced in the direction he indicated.
+
+"Yes," she murmured.
+
+"I will not stay and see him now," the Marquis continued.  "You will
+forgive me, I know.  Present to him, if you will," he went on, with
+some faint touch of his old manner, "my heartiest good wishes.  And to
+you, Marcia," he added, raising the fingers of her ungloved hand to his
+lips, "well, may you find all that there is left in the world of
+happiness.  And remember, too, that every drop of happiness that comes
+into your life means greater peace for me.--We talk too seriously for
+such a brilliant morning," he concluded, his voice measured, though
+kindly, his attitude suddenly reminiscent of that long, pictured line
+of gallant ancestors.  "Take my advice and use some of this beautiful
+afternoon for your ride to London.  There will be a moon to-night and
+you may enter it as the heroine in your last story--a fairy city."
+
+He left her quite easily, but when she tried to start to meet her
+husband, her knees gave way.  She clung to the paling and watched him
+cross the bridge and stroll up the little strip of turf, still erect,
+contemplating the great pile in front of him with the beneficent
+satisfaction of inherited proprietorship.  She watched him pass through
+the front door and disappear.  Then she turned around and drew her
+husband into the cottage.
+
+"James," she cried, sobbing in his arms, "take me away--please take me
+away!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+During those few hours of strenuous, almost fierce work into which
+David threw himself after the funeral, he found in a collection of
+belated cablegrams which his secretary handed him an explanation of
+Letitia's half apology, an explanation, he told himself bitterly, of
+her altered demeanour towards him.  The old proverb stood justified.
+Even this, the wildest of his speculations, had become miraculously
+successful.  Pluto Oil shares, unsalable at a dollar a few weeks ago,
+now stood at eight.  Oil had been discovered in extraordinary and
+unprecedented quantities.  Oil was spurting another great fortune for
+him out of the sandy earth.  He paused to make a calculation.  The
+Marquis's forty thousand pounds' worth were worth, at a rough estimate,
+three hundred thousand.
+
+"Extraordinary news, this, Jackson," he remarked to the quiet,
+sad-faced young man, who had been his right hand since the time of his
+first railway deal.
+
+"Most extraordinary," was the quiet reply.  "I congratulate you, Mr.
+Thain.  You do seem to have the knack of turning everything you touch
+into gold."
+
+"Do I?" Thain murmured listlessly.
+
+"I took the liberty of investing in a small parcel of shares myself,
+just to lock away," the young man continued.  "I gave seventy cents for
+them."
+
+"Not enough to make you a millionaire, I hope?" Thain asked, with some
+bitterness.
+
+"Enough, with my savings, to give me a very comfortable feeling of
+independence, sir," Jackson replied.  "I have never aspired any further
+than that."
+
+Thain returned to his desk.  He gave letter after letter, and more than
+once his secretary, who had received no previous intimation of his
+master's intended departure, glanced at him in mild surprise.
+
+"I presume, as you are returning to the States, sir," he suggested,
+"that we must try to cancel the contracts which we have already
+concluded for the restoration of this place?"
+
+Thain shook his head.
+
+"Let them go on," he said.  "It makes very little difference.  I have a
+seven years' lease.  I may come back again.  The letters which I gave
+you with a cross you had better take into your own study and type.  I
+shall be here to sign them when you have finished."
+
+The young man bowed and departed.  David listened to the closing of the
+door and turned his head a little wearily towards the night.  The
+French windows stood open.  Through the still fir trees, whose perfume
+reached him every now and then in little wafts, he could see one or two
+of the earlier lights shining from the great house.  Once more his
+thoughts travelled back to the ever-present subject.  Could he have
+done differently?  Was there any way in which he could have spared
+himself the ignominy, the terrible humiliation of those few minutes?
+There was something wrong about it all, something almost suicidal--his
+blind obedience to the old man's prejudiced hatred, his own frenzied
+tearing to pieces of what might at least have remained a wonderful
+dream.  One half of his efforts, too, had fallen pitifully flat.  The
+Marquis had only to keep the shares to which he was justly entitled, to
+free for the first time for generations his far-spreading estates, to
+take his place once more as the greatest nobleman and landowner in the
+county.  If only it had been the other scheme which had miscarried!
+
+His avenue of elms was sheltering now an orchestra of singing birds.
+With the slightly moving breeze which had sprung up since sunset, the
+perfume of his roses became alluringly manifest.  Through the trees he
+heard the chiming of the great stable clock from Mandeleys, and the
+sound seemed somehow to torture him.  His head drooped for a moment
+upon his arms.
+
+The room seemed suddenly to become darker.  He raised his head and
+remained staring, like a man who looks upon some impossible vision.
+Lady Letitia, bare-headed, a little paler than usual, a little, it
+seemed to him, more human, was standing there, looking in upon him.  He
+managed to rise to his feet, but he had no words.
+
+"I am not a ghost," she said.  "Please come out into the garden.  I
+want to talk to you."
+
+He followed her without a word.  It was significant that his first
+impulse had been to shrink away from her as one dreading to receive a
+hurt.  She seemed to notice it and smiled.
+
+"Let us try and be reasonable for a short time," she continued.  "We
+seem to have been living in some perfectly absurd nightmare for the
+last few hours.  I have come to you to try and regain my poise.  Yes,
+we will sit down--here, please."
+
+They sat in the same chairs which they had occupied on her previous
+visit.  David had been through many crises in his life, but this one
+left him with no command of coherent speech--left him curiously,
+idiotically tongue-tied.
+
+"I have thought over this ridiculous affair," she went on.  "I must
+talk about it to some one, and there is only you left."
+
+"Your guests," he faltered.
+
+"Gone!" she told him a little melodramatically.  "Didn't you know that
+we had been alone ever since the morning afterwards?  First of all, my
+almost fiancé, Charlie Grantham, drove off at dawn.  He left behind him
+a little note.  He had every confidence in me, but--he went.  Then my
+aunt.  She was the most peevish person I ever knew.  She seemed to
+imagine that I had in some way interfered with her plans for your
+subjugation, and although she knew quite well that no woman of the
+Mandeleys family could ever stoop to any unworthy or undignified
+action, she decided to hurry her departure.  She left at midday."
+
+"But Miss Sylvia?"
+
+"Sylvia was most ingenuous," Letitia continued, her voice regaining a
+little of its natural quality.  "Sylvia came to me quite timidly and
+asked me to walk with her in the garden.  She wondered--was it really
+settled between me and Lord Charles?  If it was, she was quite willing
+to go into a nunnery or something equivalent,--Chiswick, I believe it
+was, with a maiden aunt.  But if not, she believed--he had whispered a
+few things to her--he was hoping to see her that week in town.  It was
+most extraordinary---she couldn't understand it--but it seemed that
+their old flirtations--you knew, of course, that they had met often
+before--had left a void in his heart which only she could fill.  He had
+discovered his mistake in time.  She threw herself upon my mercy.  She
+left by the three-thirty."
+
+"My God!" he groaned.  "And this was all my doing!"
+
+"All your doing," she assented equably.  "They were all of them
+perfectly content to accept your story.  There is not one of them who
+disputes it for a single moment.  But you were there, with the secret
+door closed behind you, and, as my aunt said, there is really no
+accounting for what people will do, nowadays.  And now," she concluded,
+"I gather that you are leaving, too."
+
+"I am motoring up to town to-morrow morning," he said.  "I haven't
+ventured to speak of atonement, but your coming here like this, Lady
+Letitia, is the kindest thing you have ever done--you could ever do.  I
+have tried, in my way," he went on, after a moment's pause, "to live
+what I suppose one calls a self-respecting life.  I have never before
+been in a position when I have been ashamed of anything I have done.
+And now, since those few minutes, I have lived in a burning furnace of
+it.  I daren't let my mind dwell upon it.  Those few minutes were the
+most horrible, psychological tragedy which any man could face.  If your
+coming really means," he went on, and his voice shook, and his eyes
+glowed as he leaned towards her, "that I may carry away with me the
+feeling that you have forgiven me, I can't tell you the difference it
+will make."
+
+"But why go?" she asked him softly.
+
+His heart began to beat with sudden, feverish throbs.  His eyes
+searched her face hungrily.  She seemed in earnest.  Her lips had lost
+even their usual, faintly contemptuous curl.  If anything, she was
+smiling at him.
+
+"Why go?" he repeated.  "Can't you understand that the one desire I
+have, the one burning desire, is to put myself as far away as possible
+from the sight and memory of what happened that night?  We have been
+telephoning through to London.  I have taken my passage for America on
+Saturday.  I shall go straight out to the Rockies.  I just want to get
+where I can forget your look and the words with which your father
+turned me out of his house.  And worse than that," he added, with a
+little shake in his tone, "their justice--their cruel, abominable
+justice."
+
+Then what was surely a miracle happened.  She leaned forward and took
+his hand.  Her eyes were soft with sympathy.
+
+"You poor thing!" she exclaimed.  "You couldn't do anything else.  I
+have been thinking it over very seriously.  It was a horrible position
+for you, but you really couldn't do anything else, that I can see.  You
+told your story simply and like a man.  But wait.  There is one thing I
+can't understand.  Those shares--were they not to be part of that poor
+man's vengeance.  You surely never intended that we should benefit by
+them in this extraordinary way?"
+
+"I believed them," he told her firmly, "when I sold them to your
+father, to be, until long after he would have had to pay for them, at
+any rate, absolutely worthless.  The wholly unexpected has happened, as
+it does often in oil.  Your father's shares are worth a fortune.  He
+can realise his idea of clearing Mandeleys.  He can dispose of them
+to-day for three hundred thousand pounds.  Lady Letitia, you have come
+to me like an angel.  This is the sweetest thing any woman ever did.
+Be still kinder.  Please make your father keep the shares.  They are
+his.  They were sold to ruin him.  It is just the chance of something
+that happened many thousand miles away, which has turned them in his
+favour.  He accepts nothing from me.  It is fate only which brings him
+this windfall."
+
+"I promise," she said.  "To tell you the truth, I think father is as
+much changed, during the last few days, as I am.  When I saw him, about
+an hour ago, and told him that I was coming to see you, I was almost
+frightened at first.  He looks older, and I fancy that something which
+has happened lately--something quite outside--has been a great blow to
+him."
+
+"Does he know, then, how kind you are being to me?" David asked.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"He rather hoped," she whispered, leaning a little closer still to him
+and smiling into his face, "that you would come back with me and dine."
+
+David suddenly clutched her hands.  He was a man again.  He threw away
+his doubts.  He accepted Paradise.
+
+On their way across the park, a short time later, he suddenly pointed
+down towards the little cottage.
+
+"You haven't forgotten, Letitia," he said, "that I lived there?  You
+haven't forgotten that that old man was my uncle!--that his father and
+grandfather were the servants of your family?"
+
+"My dear David," she replied, "I have forgotten nothing, only I think
+that I have learned a little.  I am still full of family tradition,
+proud of my share of it, if you will, but somehow or other I don't
+think that it is more than a part, and a very small part, of our daily
+life.  So let there be an end of that, please.  You have done great
+things and I am proud of you, and I have done nothing except suffer
+myself to be born into a very ancient and occasionally disreputable
+family....  Oh, I must tell you!" she went on, with a little laugh.
+"What do you think father was settling down to do when I came out?"
+
+David shook his head.
+
+"I have no idea."
+
+"I left him seated at his desk," she told him.  "He is writing a line
+to Mr. Wadham, Junior, asking him to-day's price of the Pluto Oil
+shares."
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+NOVELS by E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM
+
+He is past master of the art of telling a story.  He has humor, a keen
+sense of the dramatic, and a knack of turning out a happy ending just
+when the complications of the plot threaten worse disasters.--_New York
+Times_.
+
+Mr. Oppenheim has few equals among modern novelists.  He is prolific,
+he is untiring in the invention of mysterious plots, he is a clever
+weaver of the plausible with the sensational, and he has the necessary
+gift of facile narrative.--_Boston Transcript_.
+
+  A Prince of Sinners
+  Mysterious Mr. Sabin
+  The Master Mummer
+  A Maker of History
+  The Malefactor
+  A Millionaire of Yesterday
+  The Man and His Kingdom
+  The Betrayal
+  The Yellow Crayon
+  The Traitors
+  Enoch Strone
+  A Sleeping Memory
+  A Lost Leader
+  The Great Secret
+  The Avenger
+  The Long Arm of Mannister
+  The Governors
+  Jeanne of the Marshes
+  The Illustrious Prince
+  The Lost Ambassador
+  The Mystery of Mr. Bernard Brown
+  A Daughter of the Marionis
+  Berenice
+  The Moving Finger
+  Havoc
+  The Lighted Way
+  The Tempting of Tavernake
+  The Mischief-Maker
+  The World's Great Snare
+  The Survivor
+  Those Other Days
+  A People's Man
+  The Vanished Messenger
+  Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo
+  The Double Traitor
+  The Way of These Women
+  Mr. Marx's Secret
+  An Amiable Charlatan
+  The Kingdom of the Blind
+  The Hillman
+  The Cinema Murder
+  Bernard The Pawns Count
+  The Zeppelin's Passenger
+  The Curious Quest
+  The Wicked Marquis
+
+
+LITTLE, BROWN & CO., Publishers, BOSTON
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Wicked Marquis, by E. Phillips Oppenheim
+
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